I wonder why mathematicians love blackboards so much. Personally, I chalk it up to a silly tradition, but there's no way that I'm going to get on their bad side by trying to make them change. I can read the writing on the wall. When the Japanese Hageromo Company closed its doors in 2015, a number of the world's most respected mathematicians started hoarding boxes at their widely respected full-touch chalk, buying up whatever they could get their hands on. The articles written about the event share a tone of rye indulgence, implying that the panic induced by the imminent shortage of a particular brand of chalk is just a nerd's being nerd's thing. A foible of academics who are stuck in the story traditions of their field and can't seem to get with the times of smart whiteboards and tablets. The Gizmodo article on the subject implies that the anxious professors are like hipsters chasing a bygone aesthetic, saying, It's not hard to see chalk having old-fashioned appeal, much like final records and mason jars. But for all the light-hearted dismissal, mathematicians did buy up a significant amount of the stuff. There are numerous forum threads where you can see them sharing information about businesses likely to have stock, where to find decent substitute brands, all sorts of very real preparation for the chalk ellipse. It has a semi-serious tone that doesn't feel like Doritos fans tracking down the last few bags of sour cream and onion, chasing some rare luxury for those who can get their hands on it. Some of those threads mention the tongue-in-cheek legend that it's impossible to write a false theorem with Hagodomo Chalk, but I want to consider something less fantastic, but no less fascinating. Maybe the act of writing with the chalk is literally good for doing math. Michael J. Barony, a science historian, noticed an interesting trend. Time after time, mathematics departments would turn down offers from their institutions for fancy high-tech upgrades, like smart cloud-enabled whiteboard projectors, doggedly demanding that their blackboards remain untouched. If you wanted to explain this phenomenon in a way, you could probably say that the mathematicians are just stodgy or old-fashioned by nature. But Barony spent some time observing how people use various media, like whiteboards or pen and paper, and came up with some observations about the act of writing equations on a chalkboard that are unique to the medium. Firstly, it's loud. The quiet scribbling of a pencil or the gentle squeaking of a whiteboard marker doesn't compare to the tack-to-tack-tack of someone banging out a line of proof in chalk. That sound carries an interesting social characteristic. It sort of forbids interruption, at least until the end of the line when the writer has to walk back to the other side of the board. Barony posits that this uninterrupted time is useful, especially for mathematicians who are trying to wind their way carefully down a long path of reasoning and might be derailed by an errant thought or interjection. Whiteboards invite commentary.  Second, in order to write with chalk, you need a fair amount of space between strokes to keep everything legible, forcing you to stay succinct if you want to fit everything you want to say on a single line. That's kind of what mathematics is, condensing a chain of ideas into a single statement. So it's advantageous for that. Finally, and perhaps most poetically, Barony suggests that the smudges left by small erasures and modifications to the existing equations make the resulting work feel less like an immutable obelisk of perfect truth and more like a creative wrangling of ideas, a hack that shows the hand of its author in which bits get tweaked. Now those are all very squishy feeling notions. If I asked someone to justify using a whiteboard, they could offer all sorts of very straightforward practical sounding arguments. The marker glides effortlessly. Black text on a white background is the most legible combination. There's no chalk dust. You can use a projector without needing a separate screen. Erasing is effortless and clean. But even so, if you were to sneak into a math department and stealthily upgrade all their blackboards with whiteboards, you might well end up with less and worse mathematics than you would if you'd let them keep their chalk. The math-chalk relationship, if it exists the way Barony posits, shares an interesting space with several other traits of human reasoning that can be reliably exploited to vastly improve our cognitive performance in one area or another, but they sound dumb. At the very least, they're difficult to quantify. But also, there's a way we like to conceptualize our thinking. A mental model or story we like to tell about how our minds nominally ought to work. When someone's especially brilliant and exhibits some masterful use of their little gray cells, there are inevitably comparisons to machines or computers. That guy solved the escape room in 20 minutes by himself. He's like a frickin' robot. Researchers have discovered numerous facts that contradict that model. But even if those observations could be incredibly useful for genius-level mental gymnastics, a lot of people tend to ignore them, possibly because they highlight the squishy, often impractical nature of our cognition. For example, there are numerous concrete advantages granted by cloud-based note-taking apps. You can always access your notes anywhere you have access to the internet. You can easily sync them with your calendar software, create reminders, and share them with others. They're searchable, editable, indexable, color-codable, and take up no physical space on your person. With all that functionality and all those advantages, you'd think that paper notebooks, journals, and planners would have simply evaporated. But as much as we might like to imagine that there's no appreciable difference between information conveyed via paper or a screen, there's a substantial body of research that highlights numerous cognitive benefits for physically writing things down versus typing them into your phone or computer. It aids memory and recall. It organizes important information in a way that helps to filter and categorize. It harnesses different kinds of memory, notably spatial memory, in ways that typing just doesn't. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, dead trees might be the best option. But many people, myself included, have this nagging feeling that with all those benefits of software, we should be able to go paperless. Another example. Numerous private elementary schools have included more and more instruction time in children's schedules, pushing breaks and recesses aside for additional lessons in math, science, whatever. It makes perfect sense. If you're trying to pump as much information as you possibly can into their tiny heads, that you'd want more hours in the day to do that. But kids who spend some of their time playing outside perform better than those who slave away in class by just about any metric you can imagine. Test scores, academic achievement, whatever. The same goes for music classes. There are obvious practical arguments for a correlation between time spent on a subject and performance in that subject. Once your kids to be better at French, they should spend more time in French class. But musicians do better than non-musicians in every possible subject across the board. If you want your kid to be better at French, English, math, science, chemistry, and sports, give them a trumpet. Why? We don't know. We have some ideas. Maybe physical movement builds better mental models about physics. Maybe music encourages synchronization between disparate parts of the brain. We can tell all sorts of stories that explain these phenomena in retrospect, but there's no narrative of the ideal brain as a well-oiled machine that jives with these sorts of findings. When's the last time you took your car into a mechanic for a tune-up and or peggio practice? I think there's a real danger in that sort of misalignment. A possibility of both failing to achieve our full cognitive potential and of judging others by their resemblance to a flawed model. Of course, status quo bias is a thing too. Many people refuse to invest the time or mental energy necessary to learn new systems, work in unfamiliar environments, or develop new skills, because they're uncomfortable. That's how you get AOL email addresses in 2020. But even so, maybe we're doing mathematicians of the service when we tease them about their very specific chalk preferences, suggesting that it's just a quaint affinity for anachronisms or that they just can't get used to other media. Maybe when Hagaromo Chak became scarce, it really was a blow to mathematics as a discipline, robbing us of a tool that leveraged some useful features of the human mind. Despite our narratives about how minds are supposed to work, it's important to pay close attention to how they actually work, including all the little foibles and idiosyncrasies that we tend to roll our eyes at or feel embarrassed about.  Can you think of some useful tricks that work on human thought but don't square with our usual conception of it? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah, blah, subscribe, blah, share, try out the Discord, and don't stop thunking.


Hey, what's going on guys? Patriot Prime here once again with another episode of the Sit Rep. And my guest tonight is Kato from Kato's Toy Box. Sir, how are you doing this evening? If I was any better, I'd be twins. Excellent, excellent. Well, first off, tell my guests or tell my viewers a little bit about yourself. Uh, well, um, not much to say. I'm not a, I'm a boring guy, but, uh, I just don't really have much going on right now.  Well, you're my type of person in. You fit right in with us real well. Well, um, just to let everybody a quick recap on how the Sit Rep works is I have 10 questions for you. The first five questions regarding regards you as a Transformer collector and the last five questions is regarding you as a YouTuber. So if you're ready to go, we will rock and roll. Let's do it. All right, sir. Question number one, what's the appeal of Transformers for you? Well, I think the answer probably goes along with what a lot of other people say, but as a kid, I really liked two things, maybe three things majorly, robots, cars, and soldiers fighting. So it's pretty much when they came out with Transformers, I said, wait a minute, these are robot soldiers that turn in the cars and they fight. Sign me up and mom go to the store. Nice. Pretty much it. All right. Question number two, aside from G1, which is always the number one answer, what is your favorite Transformers fiction? I thought about this one for a little bit because it's almost entirely G1, but the Dreamwave series before it went over to IDW, the Dreamwave comics like the war within, probably one of my favorite fictions because they mixed things up so much from what the cartoon did, but still kept a lot of my favorite characters. And the art in that series was that Pat Lee Art was amazing. So that's how he kept the boxy style yet modernized. That's right. It looked gorgeous, but he took these like, if you play G1 now, these cheesy looking, maybe not the right word, but these really simple shapes and figures, and he just destroyed it on that on that series. And then who was the other artist that came along later was Figueroa that did, I think he did the war within. And it was just all really cool looking stuff. And you could tell everyone was from the G1 series, but seeing Grimlock become more of a leader with the, what was it, Lightning Strike? Lightning Strike Coalition. Coalition. It actually showed him in an alt mode that wasn't a dinosaur. Remember that big tank looking thing with the flames coming out of the exhaust? That's right.  I'm trying to remember, didn't it start off where they found the deceptive, they were all frozen in the Arctic? They found, I remember they found Soundwave. Yeah, they found Soundwave. I've got them all in graphic novel form. I haven't looked at them for a long time because I always thought that's kind of where they got the idea for, you know, finding Megatron in the ice in the movies is from the, like the dream wave series that did that. But yeah, the series came out in 2002 because I remember after the, after 9-11, I was on duty station and I remember picking up a, what was the comic book magazine back in, was it Wizard? Wizard. Yeah. Wizard. I remember picking up a comic, one of those Wizard magazines, just something to read and there was an article talking about bringing the Transformers back and it was all about Dreamwave. So it had to come out in 2001, 2002. Yeah, it was the, it was early 2000s because it was around the same time that I was getting things like, you know, the Ultimate Marvel series. It really kicked off or somewhere around that line. So I was in, I was collecting a lot of books at that point, like Ultimate Spider-Man and all that stuff was like. That's a good series. I've got all those things. Such a great series. So I didn't, I didn't get into the Miles Morales line. I wish I would have because I hear it's pretty good too, but. Have you seen that new movie, the Animator one? Oh yeah, it's one of the, it's probably the best Spider-Man movie I've ever seen. Oh, I had my doubts at first and now I kick myself. I didn't go see it in the theater. Yeah, I went to the theater. A girlfriend and I went and watched it in the theater just because, yeah, I had my doubts too, but I was like, Spider-Man, I gotta go watch it. It's just, I'm kind of a fan, you know. Yeah, I saw that today. I love that. And man, I got, I left that theater. This is going to probably sound like Harrison saying it this weekend, but I still think it's a better movie than even Avengers Endgame was as far as an overall story and how it was done. I thought it was great. We won't talk anymore like that because no spoilers. No, no, no spoilers. I actually unfriended somebody because they decided to be funny and post the end of the movie and I'd delete them and they're like, well, I thought we were friends.   That's right. Just by definition, you are no longer worthy of being anything close. It's just a douchey thing to do and I don't like it. Exactly. All right, number three, question number three. Do you have a favorite figure or grail? This is the one toy you will never let go of. And I know it's probably not one of those princess pops that I've seen behind you before. No, you cut out this image now. Yeah, no. So it's actually, yeah, I've got I don't have my original G1 Sunstreaker. So the answer is Sunstreaker. I don't have my original G1 Sunstreaker, but I got one off of eBay that's probably about 99% complete. He's missing his spoiler in the back, but all the other accessories are there. I would never let that thing go. That was the first transformer I ever got, and I'll always keep that for sure. Nice. I think Christmas of 84, I got a jazz and he broke like immediately out of the pack. The door snapped off. I remember the next day we went to the store. It was a western auto. Remember those? That's where my sister bought him for me. They were all out of jazzes, so I got to trade it out for a Sunstreaker instead. Yeah, there was something I can't say that he was one of my favorites while watching the cartoon because as a like a nine, ten-year-old kid, you almost are always going to go to like Optimus or one of those, but him being the first one that I ever got for my birthday probably in 85, probably 85, was such a huge deal because money was tight back then, so I could go pick out something for like 10 bucks that I knew I was going to get for my birthday. It was the 80s, so I wanted a yellow Lamborghini who didn't, so it was cool to have him. I hope we get one in the Siege line. I'd love to see a Sunstreaker pop up in Siege. We got a decent one with Combiner Wars. I've got him over there. I actually like the Combiner Wars prowl better than the Siege prowl. Do you really? Some Repro labels might fix him up. Yeah, you're the Repro label king. I loved what they did to Sandwave. Yeah, that was really cool. I love the chess piece, how it fixed that. That has been my fastest growing video. I have hit over a thousand within three days. That's crazy. I wonder what the draw was. Sandwave, popular character, I guess. Yeah, I guess most of my videos, I mean, I'm happy if I break 500, but my toy hacks ones always score a lot. Yeah, that's like probably my most popular one is that Magic Square Prime, the full-sized Prime, their masterpiece scale one. That one, I mean, for my channel, it grew up there pretty big and I don't know why. I mean, I wasn't early with it or anything, so I don't know what that was. But yeah, that sound wave, what toy hacks does to that thing is magic. Well, after I got what they did with their Titan's Return sound wave, they did the blue chests and everything, as soon as I saw the, I think I mentioned in my video, as soon as I saw them release or the pictures of a sound wave, I was like, toy hacks is going to fix all that nastyness on it. That's right. They nailed it. They nailed it. It's a great, what a great company. I've done a few things from them for the, some of the third-party stuff I've got to get some labels right on them, but I haven't done any of the C stuff, which that might change. And they're such a fantastic company. You got a problem with one of their things? Are they sending you something that's messed up? They'll send you a replacement. No questions asked. Yeah, that's really cool. They offer those sales all the time. Yeah, you can't go wrong with them. Me plugging away at toy hacks. Hey, that's all right.  It's worth it. It's worth it because they're great. All right. Well, question number four, what figure is your white whale? What is your most wanted toy? Pretty easy. A G1 Megatron, not necessarily in the box because I'll have him out. And the reason is that was my first, I guess at the time, what would have been a like one of the fuller size figures. I got it for Christmas one year and we were allowed to take one toy with us if we went anywhere. So we went to church the next day. I guess it fell on a Saturday, but went to church the next day and this kid who I will never forget. I'm not going to put his name out there because he doesn't deserve it, but I had Megatron out and showing him. And you remember how the transformation of that barrel flipped over to the side? He swatted it. I guess trying to swat it out of my hand or something in it spun it the wrong way. So less than 24 hours that it just popped right off on that little plastic swivel. Oh, that hurts. So yeah, I would love to find a G1 Megatron at a reasonable price. I know I can, they're out there. So, but if I got my hands on one, it wouldn't go anywhere either.  That's all right, I enjoy seeing it. Okay, well, last transformers question. What's your favorite transformer character? Any fiction, any media? I won't judge. This isn't a toy. This is the character. Well, favorite character.  I love John Wayne and watching stuff with Peter Cullen. He's always said, or at least in some interviews, he said that he, you know, channeled his inner John Wayne for his Optimus Prime voice and every once in a while you can hear it. And the mixture of Peter Cullen's voice with Optimus, just such a cool character and and really want to icon now. I mean, who would have thought it? Who would have thought that red truck is such an icon now, even people that don't like transformers know who Optimus Prime is. That's right.  Yeah, we don't like those people. Those people don't exist. Everybody likes transformers. They ranked right out there with those spoiler people. That's right. Unless they're just trying to be all hipster about it.  Not that there's anything wrong with go box. But you know, there's those people that are going to be all hipster and say that yeah, there you go.  And I was telling him from Transformers and video games that I need to track him down. The same year that I got Sunstreaker, I got a character called Vanguard. And he was either, I don't think he was a minivan. I think he was like an actual like box fan. If I remember right. But his name was Vanguard. Was he one of their one of the regulars that spilt my drink? Yeah, he was one of all ones. Yeah. Not like one of their larger ones that Rudy showed. But yeah, I had him and it's really cheap because it was the same year I got Sunstreaker as far as our memory serves me right. But, you know, obviously got overshadowed by transformers. And at least at the time, because I had like a transform. My sister and I have the same birthday four years apart to the day. So we had a split day cake, a Barbie on one side and transformers on the other. So you should have blended it together made like a Barbie cyborg. Yeah, I don't know if my mom would have and I say it to me in my in my head. It was a beautiful cake, but she probably literally just like stuck a plastic transformer and a Barbie on there and wrote happy birthday on there, which that's fine. It was great. I also got that same year. I got a book from a cousin, the Call of the Wild by Jack London. And I say that like it's important only because it's the only book that I ever did a book report on my entire high school life. And I never read it. So it was a good year. It was a good year that year for for for birthdays. I guess that's awesome. All right, well, that's it for the transformer questions. Now it's on to YouTuber questions. And I've noticed you're you're starting to pick up a little bit. You're getting getting some recognition on your channel. You know, I think it's seeing your name thrown around a few places here. That's good. Oh, I'm sorry. I keep interrupting you. No, go ahead. I'll say you're not on Facebook. Are you? I am not. I gave up the Facebook ghost a few years ago. I've seen you pop up a few times on there.  Well, first, before I thought about doing that. And I talked to Matthew about it a little bit. I was rebuilding my collection slowly. It was I'm really fairly new at rebuilding my collection because I had plenty of stuff as a kid. I got rid of it going up. But the quick answer is last year, there was a hurricane. And where I work, basically, we evacuated up to Tennessee, came back down. I was ready to go back to work. And we got an email saying, don't worry about opening the store up. We're closing it now. There's no damage to the store. No, nothing. They just basically use it as an excuse to get out of business. It was actually a moonshine distillery. So moonshine. But so at that point, I had been doing retail. I worked that, you know, as long as I could work, I'd been working retail. And I was just so bummed out that I lost this job. It was great because it gave me time to do another job that I have. But once they did that, I was like, I've got I'm going to start doing something I want to do. You know, I've got to find something I actually enjoy doing. I had this other job that helped, you know, pay the bills and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, I lost my job. So I'm going to go buy some transformers and get on YouTube. So that's basically what I did. I just kind of said, it's my turn to do something I want to do. And my girlfriend was like, I think you should do it. I think it's a great idea. And it's like, okay, pay the rent. But I mean, that's really how it went. I just said honestly, I think I saw a few reviewers. I had started wanting to get back into collecting. And I saw you and Matthew and or deluxe. And I don't like throwing people's real names out there. But deluxe. Another guy, the first guy that I did on my little show was Sardo, NumSpa, followed the, I started watching Mgo and all the big guys too. And I was like, I want to talk about transformers with people. It's the actual talking part is free. You know, so I'm going to buy them anyway. So that's how it started. And it's amazing the people you meet doing this.  I mean, I saw you live the other day. But now it's like you and I've known each other forever because of these plastic robots. Yeah. And there is, I say it, I said it at the end of a few of mine. And I really mean it. I was like, by the time I'm done with this, these people that I've met who know the odds of ever meeting you or any of these other guys are, I mean, nonexistent, right? I mean, it just wouldn't have happened without this. And then add to the fact that we all have something in common. It's innocent, good fun. Like I have, this is going to sound really ridiculous, but I have no idea what any of these people's political beliefs are, right? Nothing. I know nothing. All I know is we have this fun thing in common. And we can all love it together. We can all talk together about it. And nothing else matters. And that's just, that's great. And I mean it every time when I say now that I've known these people, I would do anything for you. So if there's something I can do, I consider all you guys friends now and I'm okay with it. Oh yeah. And I'm going to thank you right now for the donation on my channel. That was all and that was, I appreciate that. I noticed it. And I was like, well, if I can't go, I can at least, you know, help somebody else go. Yeah, I was talking to Joel from Larkin's Lair. And I'm sorry, I threw first names out because I've got to know these guys so well. But and I was talking about how something about dipping into my TFcon fund. He says, you need to create a donate button. I was like, how in the world do you do that? And he helped me line it up. So I got on there. So yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you're not, you're being honest about what it's for. It's why not have people in the community say, here's a something to help you get there. I think it's brilliant. I would, like if you if I did know you before this, and you were like, Hey, man, can I borrow a few bucks to get into TFcon? Yeah. Well, so this is no different to me than. Well, I thank you very much. It was kind of a shock to see the notifications. Now, I mean, I got a couple of them already. Well, that's good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Okay, so you kind of answered question number seven.  Well, now that's actually probably maybe I did answer it. I don't know. But you guys, like honestly, one that being fun, right, it is just fun. And I don't like most people say I don't have a lot of folks that collect to sit down and have conversations with. So that's a big thing is just having folks to talk about a common commonality with. But then again, see you guys out there doing this. And I try not to directly copy anyone. But at the same time, I'm like, That's a brilliant idea. I want to do that. And I think all of us have to thank Deluxe Baldwin for the idea of doing this because he had me on his show and I had a blast. And of course, I realized I couldn't do the live thing. That's where I got the idea with the set questions and just turn it into a show type deal. So it works works pretty good. So yeah, we don't have that great interaction like we can't the community can interact with it interact with us. But I think people watch enough they know the questions I'm going to ask. So I think they enjoy hearing your answers. Yeah. And I think that whole idea and again, like you said, thank him for that because I just opened up a whole new thing. And and prior to that, I was not about to get in front of the camera. Like it just wasn't even I mean, all my reviews up until that point were, you know, wrist up just me yammering on about stuff. But then when that changed is we were doing some remodeling of the apartment, they were coming in to redo carpet and put hardwood down because it had just been a while. So the apartment complex was doing that. And in the process, you know, we basically lost the table that I did most of my stuff on. And I was like, well, I got this new figure and I think I'd gotten that new age cosmos in. I was like, I've got to show this to people and I don't know how to do it. And so finally, I just said, well, I'll sit in front of the TV and just show it to people and see what happens. And from then I think got on deluxe is about around 30. It's like, well, I'm out there now. So why don't I do this too? And now I'm probably live as much or video my noggin as much as I did anything else by now. Well, mine came from the fact that I have been on TV a lot. I did a lot of things for when I came back from Iraq. The job I had when I got back from the desert was I got a gym job where I created children's programs. I'm always on the news doing things with that. I had video channels before and so when it kind of flipped around to this, I knew a lot of reviewers that's all you saw was the hands. And I said, why won't do it different? I'm going to talk to you for a little bit, do the hands and then do an outro. And that's why I did my very first video. People liked it. So that's why I stuck with the only thing is toy hacks videos. I just go right to the stickers. I don't fool with it. Well, there's no introduction to do with a toy. Yeah, you're just introducing the toy again. Well, yeah, I love seeing what everybody's formats are. You know, I'd like deluxe was one of the first ones I saw that, you know, didn't transform the figure.  Yeah, he convinced me not to do that. Actually, I was on I am on Reddit and I actually asked a few guys on there. And I was like, what do you look for out of a review? And so many people, a lot of people said that they just don't if they watch a review, they don't look always for a transformation in a review that, you know, maybe that could be a separate thing or whatever. And I was like, well, I don't want to I'm already from the south and talk to damn slow anyway. So, you know, my videos were being way too long. So I just took that out. And he was the first one I saw that, you know, showed the figure here rather than just his hands. And I wasn't quite ready for that yet. So when I film a G one, I've got no problem with the transformation. It's the newer ones. I will have to redo that transformation sequence two or three times. And oh, I go into a full fit of cussing rage. Yeah, that's speaking of that. I want your I want your blooper real probably at least once a week. That's hilarious. What a great thing to do. I loved it. I loved it. Thank you. Because I can I can relate because I try to be very because I know that maybe there's going to be kids that watch it and full disclosure, talking for 30 to 40 minutes and not cursing is a feat of miraculous proportions that I don't think a lot of people can comprehend. So especially when you're up, one of these. Yeah, and I've been surrounded most of my life by one of those and there's a lot of those. And yeah, it's conversation happens in special ways. And have you seen the blooper real where Dylan's sitting on my lap? No, instead of me letting the f bombs go, you'll see me growl. Yeah, there's a blooper real where it's him and I sitting there. Oh, I haven't seen he just happened to hop on my lap. We're doing a review and I'll get mad. I sit to go. Fantastic. He looks at me at one point and goes, Daddy, you gonna do this right or what? And then the growl. Yeah, I got you. It's great. All right. Question number eight. There are thousands of toy reviewers on YouTube. What makes you any different from the rest? I thought about this question too. And honestly, I don't have an answer yet. I think I'm still finding my place. I do have a few things coming up that are a little different.  Yeah, that is so cool. That was a huge accident because of the same, you know, the whole thing. And now we're building this table that's going to be hopefully fantastic or non existent. It's only going to be one of those two things. It's either going to be greater. It's not going to exist. But the where most things are going to happen and that's going to take me away from this. So I don't know. I don't know if I'll use that table for reviews or videos or mix it up a little bit or why because I like this. I like like on the on the present show where I do where I was talking to Joel and Sardo throw their channels up there. That's the first thing I noticed and let people see that. You know, when I'm doing something when I'm talking, I'll have mine up there. You know, it's I kind of I do kind of like that. So but you got to watch what you have in the background because you get people like me that will point out the Twilight books. Yeah, I actually wish my girlfriend was in here to hear that. I haven't told her that yet. That was so funny. Well, I didn't say Twilight. I said, yeah, but look behind you. I was going crazy in my head trying to think that I accidentally throw out a Twilight reference. She's a huge fan. As far as she's concerned, it's the best thing that's ever existed, possibly for being for those of you watching that don't know what's going on. He did a live show the other day and it was a wider shot of what you're looking at right now. And on the in the back is a bookshelf and there was the Twilight books. Yeah, you can see the little there it is right there that hands and the apple. And I noticed that and I called him out on us. I didn't know you're a Twilight fan and it just blew his mind. Yeah, I was I stopped for a minute because I couldn't figure out if I had said something and I actually got defensive.  What did I say? You're the Twilight fan. You are. You're faced.  So, that was great. See how off the rails we went. You were so bad about this. Yeah, my bad. I love it. That's what happened. That's what happens with these shows. I dig it. All right. Question number nine, we've touched on this a little bit. What's your thoughts on the Transformers social community, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, any shout outs? Do you have any shout outs people? Well, I haven't had any issue with the social community, mostly because it's been limited to Instagram, YouTube and Reddit. And most I haven't had any issues there. So everybody that I've met through all three of those formats have been fantastic. I'm not on Facebook, like I said earlier, so I don't really get into a lot of the bitter debates that seem to happen a lot there, mostly because I think that's not as bad. I mean, the forums like the TFW 2005 sites like that, those are a lot worse than Facebook. With Facebook, I'm on a bunch of groups that are very well maintained. And yeah, I met a lot of good people that way. I think that's a good thing when you can kind of rein in who you're talking to. I think Instagram is good for that because, you know, it's a follow or unfollow thing. It's you can fine tune your audience and who you're talking to about who you follow or whatever. And I would think Facebook could be like that too.  But which I don't understand. I think people, we should all be at least grateful that it kept the franchise alive. If nothing else. But yeah, I haven't really had any issue with the social community. So I dig it. I don't have a problem with any of it. And as far as shoutouts go, man, everybody that I've been talking to lately deserve to shout out.  I have been wildly addicted to watching everything that the anyone from the figure force puts out. You know, Rudy, Rudy ever admit that what he does to your girlfriend that makes her want to watch him so bad. Oh yeah, he said that they had a torrid love affair. He gave her that science fantasy experience. That's right. That's right. That fantastical science fantasy experience. She doesn't know about that yet either. We don't have a conversation. So it was so funny. I got him on the set rep one day. I just happened. I was off work. Dylan was I don't know what I don't know what was going on. I was off work. And he sent me a Facebook message.  What are you doing right now? And I ran to set the whole thing up. So yeah, you actually introduced me to him his channel and all of them. I love watching his stuff. He has some of the coolest. I don't know how to put it, but the way he presents the nostalgia of the figure just is perfect. And I always see something new in his background. That's right. Every time I'm like, Oh, look at there. That's that's that thing or you know, whatever. And I just think he does just good, honest, open conversation. And I love I love it. There's so many different ways for all of us to do the same thing. In a sense, and yeah, all those guys.  Eric a new tabby. He's a great dude. Oh, man, I could be here all night with with shout outs. They're all awesome.  No, I'm just kidding.  That's great. Okay, last question.  You plug yourself. Where do I like kind of where do I see myself in five years kind of thing? Channel goals. I just want to keep having fun. I'd like to come up with interesting new ways to talk about stuff, maybe some new product, but it's mostly going to be transformers. As far as like where I see myself in five years, I don't know.  TF con 2023, baby. Yeah, I think that'd be a blast. Just look around and, you know, sipping on a Miller white going. Yeah. As far as plugging myself, God, I'll be 50 in five years. Yeah, you're just a tad older than me. Yeah, I'll be 48 in five years. So you were right behind you. I'm on YouTube and Kato's toy box reviews, Instagram and Kato's toy box reviews. And that's pretty much it. So other than that, you can knock on the door and come on inside. But I'm not giving you my address. I wouldn't do that on here. No. And just to let my viewers know that I will link Kato's channel at the end of this video and in the description. So I got you covered there. Appreciate you. Well, buddy, that is it for the set rep. I really appreciate you stopping by and allowing me to interrupt your evening plan so we can sit there and talk about plastic robots. I'm all about that. That isn't that was my evening plan. So coincidentally it worked out. Excellent. Perfect. And I want to thank you guys for watching. Don't forget to like and don't forget to subscribe. I try to put out new content at least once or twice a week just depends on my schedule. Sit reps anywhere from two to one a week just depends on how I can grab a guess. Guys, this is Patriot Prime signing out. Who are


Welcome to Access a Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, good evening everybody. Welcome to another edition of theaxesatrader.com. Nightly wrap up show. Hope everybody is doing well. Hope everybody had a good day of trading. Today was definitely the aftermath. We'll get to that in a second. If you are brand new to the channel, guys, all we ask is take one second. That's all it takes. Take one second, show some support for the channel, click a like, come aboard, subscribe, share, and we can continue to provide you some pretty decent value. At least hope to give you some pretty decent value on the day-to-day basis. Let's talk about the facts. Let's talk about the data. I've always maintained through every single video, through every single year that goes by that nobody can predict of what happens in the stock market tomorrow. You can get ready for it. You can accumulate the data. You can watch for confirmations, but the market because of the Fed and geopolitical concerns and hell, UFOs ready for the last year or so, you just don't know. It's not set in stone what's going to happen for the next year, for the next day. All we can do is basically trade on the data on the research from the night before. This is the data coming into today's session. Let's look at the indexes first. The Dow jealous industrial average, we talked about this now for a number of days, lost its 50-day moving average on April the 4th. Since it lost its moving average on April the 4th, the diamonds have gone from 385 all the way down to 376. Again, it doesn't sound like a lot, but it's about 800-900 Dow points. The IWM has lost the 50-day moving average and the Russell has gone from not a huge move yet, but the point this has gone from 202 all the way down to 193. Yesterday, we had two things happen. The SPY lost its 50-day moving average to 509 level and it traded all the way down to the next support, which is roughly around this 502-503 level. And the big one, the one I track, the one I trade is the NASDAQ 100. Yes, they finally gave back the 50-day moving average and traded all the way into the next rising support to this 430 level. Now, here's the hard data coming into today's session. We already know below the 50-day moving average, if you're a brand new trader, this is kind of a cheat sheet. Above the 50-day moving average, you're bullish. Below the 50-day moving average is a sell signal. And when the market is above the 50-day moving average, you are a buyer on weakness into rising support. When stocks are below the 50-day moving average, you are a seller or shorter into declining supply. And that literally is the cheat code. You can't buy strength in a market that has technical damage. Because what you wind up doing is, the majority of you guys don't have all these useless lines that I have. So you're kind of trading blind. You're buying stocks into supply.  Like when this morning you woke up, you saw it meta up six, this one up six, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all I kept on saying is you really got to be on strong pills to buy stocks into strength the day after there was technical damage. And I tweeted this out a few hours ago. It's like going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? There was massive casualties, massive damage. And the people who survived the next day, they finally opened up the door to see how many people were actually left. That's exactly what today's session felt like. Yesterday we talked about the idea is it possible to have a dead cat bounce today? Yeah, it's possible, right? After technical damage, you'll probably see a situation of an inside day. And the problem was that didn't happen, right? It didn't happen. And when you look at today's Skoll board, after yesterday's 300 point decline in the Nasdaq, they couldn't even sweep out a green day. Okay, the Nasdaq today, Nasdaq was down 20 points to S&P was down 10 handles and the Dow after having a massive 8900 point decline from the 50 day moving average was finally up a whopping 63 points. Not great, right? Absolutely not great. We had some more, I guess, I don't know if you want to call it testimony or some statements by Powell. Basically, you know, he said and reiterated the same mumbo jumbo that they basically reiterate every single time anybody in the Fed has to talk, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, inflation, blah, blah, blah, we hope to curb it, blah, blah, blah, our goal is 2%. Up and down, up and down, up and down. That's exactly what happened after he started and stopped speaking. Let me just get rid of this. Right. You can see here when he stopped, when he started speaking, the Nasdaq literally, the Qs went from 432 all the way down to 2970. And then they ripped, all the way ripped to 433s. And then they sold off all the way back down to 430s. So nothing got accomplished by the bulls. We couldn't, we couldn't even muscle, they couldn't muscle a dead cab balance. Like I said in last line's video, the longer we continue to build below the 50-day moving average, the higher probability we are going to go lower. So here's some more stats for today. Forget it. I'm a big believer in data. I'm a big believer in accumulating data because it confirms basically what I'm seeing with my own two eyes. So here's where we begin, right? So the Qs, we know we lost the 50-day moving average. Yesterday, that created a cell signal. Today on this rally attempt, okay, on at least a rally attempt, only 11 of the Nasdaq 100 members were green on the day. Okay. It's a very, very important point. The more important point of that was zero out of the Nasdaq 100 members price improved and got above yesterday's channel. These are the numbers. Okay. Again, I love a good bull market. Just like everybody else, like I've said, there's more liquidity. People feel better, but there's something that hits different when there's a cell signal and stocks are taking the elevator down versus the steps up. And that's a very, very big deal. There was a couple of names that did show some strength today. NVIDIA today got upgraded along with pretty much every tech stock today. And yeah, the stock was up 13 points. But guess what it did, right? It was up 13 points, but it's still put in an inside day. It didn't take out the previous days high. It didn't take out the previous low. Again, not exactly a great thing. However, SMCI did, right? SMCI did put in a pretty big move today, a 10% move. And if we somehow we do get a dead cat bounce back tomorrow. Yeah, this is the one you definitely want to keep an eye on. At least it reclaimed the previous channel. And now it actually looks pretty good. So if it starts building above today's channel for tomorrow, yeah.  But that's the problem guys, right? And I've always maintained this. We always talked about this, especially during the bear market of 2022. Unfortunately, new traders are looking for the stock that stands out. Look at this one. It's relatively strong. I'm not looking for the one that stands out. I'm looking for the 12,000. We don't. That's the point. It's not the sum of the parts. I don't care about the sum of the parts. I care about the whole. So if the whole is telling me we are directional bias in one direction, how much confidence do you really have taking anything to the long side that's more than a scalp? Again, like I sort of talked about in last night's video and I'm going to reiterate today, the longer we stay below the 50, the higher probability, well, we're going to go lower. So the bulls need to in the next day or so to get their asses back above the 50 day, we're going to have a conversation in the lower prices. So if you look at individual names, you'll kind of see what I'm saying, right? So let's start off with Tesla, right? Start off with Tesla. Third time's a charm. Fourth time's a charm. There we go. Tesla, right? We talked about Tesla. Yesterday was the lowest close in the whole formation. It got below this range here. It got just absolutely hit today when it traded all the way down to 5370s. I finally covered the thing into the 5450s wash, which was great. Kind of firmed up a little bit today. I'm going to be looking for any type of rejection in the next couple of days into strength. As long as this keeps on staying below this 16050 level, which was the whole range that we talked about for the last couple of days, it's going to continue to go lower. You saw pretty aggressive 145, 150 weekly puts coming in for next week's expiration as well. So any strength in Tesla, I'll be using at least for one or two days using that for a potential rejection into strength. Look at Meta, right? Meta yesterday lost its 20-day moving average and just couldn't price improve today. It held the bottom of the channels, the same price back-to-back days. I'm watching this thing for tomorrow. There's more market weakness. I'm definitely watching this thing. Look at Microsoft. Same thing, right? Same thing. Microsoft lost $14 yesterday. It was up 94 cents today. Same thing. It held the bottom of the range here. Now back-to-back days, if it loses the bottom of the range, it should get hit more. So you have a whole bunch of names that are doing exactly the same thing. Look at Amazon, right? Amazon today stopped at the 20-day. Now what happens? Again, it couldn't even price improve. And this is one of the better-looking charts out that couldn't price improve today's action. Look at a name, for example, like, what else is there? We talked about AMD, right? AMD as well. AMD tried to get back above yesterday's channel, got rejected off the five-day moving average. And this is after losing the 50-day moving average at 182. So the stock is already down. Already down after yesterday down about 25 points from the 50-day moving average. And again, this is why we keep on reiterating the point of the lower stocks continue to build underneath the 50-day. More and more names are going to start to crack. So it's very, very important that the bulls step up tomorrow or the next day and start doing what they have to. Because if not, again, like I said in the last line's video, I'm not saying this is going to turn into 2022. But the longer we stay, the longer we have the ability to go down. So that's it, guys. That's it. It's a game plan going into tomorrow. It's the same thing today. Use weak stocks that are confirming lower, short them into supply, stocks that are breaking down below the previous day's channel. Obviously, short them into weakness. And until the narrative changes, until we start neglecting and engulfing bad news, that's going to be the game plan. Because that's the formula. That's the blueprint in a sell-bias market. And unfortunately, again, you can close your eyes, close your ears, stop your feet, go, nah, nah, nah. That's where we are. We're in sell signal. Below 50-day moving average is a sell signal. And the faster you understand that in your developing career, the faster you'll stop making mistakes like buying stocks into strength below supply. Guys, have a great night, everybody.  I got to take my kids to basketball training. Tomorrow's a new day. Game plan in hand. Always, we're ready for both sides of the market. We have an opinion. We have a bias. And now we wait for confirmation to play itself out. Guys, God bless. Have a great night. And I will see you all in the field tomorrow.


What is going on guys, welcome back to the channel and I appreciate you being here today. I am back with another Destiny 2 video and today I have another leak for you guys on possibly what could be the 4th September DLC, what it could be titled and what it will offer to us as players. But before we get into that guys, if you do enjoy the video and would like to support the channel, hitting that like button truly does do that and I do appreciate that support. Ok so a recent post on 4 channels made of which you guys can find a link to within the video description if you want to check it out. Supposedly holds details of the September DLC. Now I will mention take this with a pinch of salt, it sounds cool, sounds legit but sometimes they do and they do end up being fake. I mean the 4 DLC reveal drops pretty soon and E3 is just around the corner. I mean these kind of details are known by many folks so it could indeed be possible, it could indeed be true, it could indeed be factual information but we will see. Remember though as of now take it with a pinch of salt. So this was posted anonymously on 4chan and it states the comic expansion is called The Summoning of the Nine and it's being released on September 7th. Storyline revolves around Uldren resurfacing with an army of fallen soldiers to rescue his sister from the Nine. Nine are forced to unleash the Nazareff to stop Uldren's army, brand new enemy race avoid demons. Nazareff are led by Nazareff, the main antagonist of the expansion besides Uldren. Nazareff is a former 10th member of the Nine who was banished from betraying his brethren. The expansion's new raid is called The Tomb of Eternity and revolves around stopping Nazareff for good. The Nine are met during the expansion's campaign and help you stop Nazareff. 10 new story missions and 4 new strikes, two new destinations, the Reef and the Void, brand new cooperative activity known as The Court. Details on this are scarce at the moment but it's a brand new PVE activity, new to the Destiny series. The expansion's been officially revealed on Tuesday. Now going by the hints we have seen already, Uldren's ship in game, the reveal image yesterday clearly showed the Reef and at the community summit, many folks that attended played a new mod, new to the series. Was this The Court?  A new raid which is called The Tomb of Eternity sounds absolutely epic, it revolves around us stopping Nazareff for good. A new enemy race? Well that clears things up people, it's got to be fake. Jokes aside, Void demons? They ain't holding back there? I mean much of this makes sense but again guys, like I said, take it with a pinch of salt. It only takes one smart geek out there to put this all together, go on off what we know already. But I will say many big sources are covering like Forbes and so forth. There could indeed be some legitimacy behind it, you just never know. A 9 DLC sounds great in my opinion though. Is it too good to be true? You know what they say? In this case I hope this actually is true, it sounds great for sure and it's something I believe the game actually needs. What do you think? Does it sound legit? Do you think it's legit? I'm in two minds. Let me know your thoughts on this down below in that comments section. There's so many of the 9 DLC, September 7th. This is that major fall expansion. I don't know, sounds too good to be true. And that note guys, I am out. If you enjoyed the video leave a like, truly does help me out. Thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully people I will see you on that next one.