Yn y bwysig fydd y gweithio am gyflawni, rydych chi'n ddweud yn 2019 yn y rhanau sydd wedi, ddweud yn ddweud. Felly, rydw i'n cael ei bod yn seithio i gyd yn y panel honno, ond rydyn ni'n fawr i'n grwm i'r gweithio i'r ymddangos i ei ddweud mewn Llywodraeth a Llywodraeth i'r gweithio i'r cyfrifio gyda'r cyfrifio ac yn cyflawni. The commissioner has launched many reports with us in the past, including the previous drug markets report, and we're very happy and honoured to have him with us again today. We also have on the panel the EMCG director, Alexi Goosdale, and the Europol executive director, Madame Catherine de Boll. First of all, the commissioner will speak, so I'd like to pass the floor to the commissioner. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. Have a nice day. As it was said before, I'm more than happy to share this event with you today. You know that I'm running the last minutes here in Brussels. I was supposed to be in Strasbourg today, but I decided to share this moment with you. And I'm more than happy to share this moment with two good friends and very capable directors of their agencies, Catherine and Alexis. But out of that is the high sensitivity of this issue. I had embraced all the efforts made by EMCD from day one, and I'm more than happy to see that there are very concrete and tangible results in our common efforts. So, again, I'd like to express my thanks to you and to your staff, Catherine and Alexis, and the EU directs agency for the tremendous believe me work you've done during these past years to address the challenges related to issues, to drug issues. The evidence provided in the third European drug market report and the links to organized crime, it draws a major contribution to informing us policy makers as well as all those involved on the ground. It's very important that we hear together today because drugs is as much about health as it is about security. If we want to truly protect our citizens, the two must go hand in hand. Ladies and gentlemen, this report presents a worrying picture of Europe's drug market, one that is evolving rapidly. Drugs are increasingly potent and pure when they arrive on the market. There has been a record number of seizures, which together with increased production in the European Union, points to growing availability of illicit substances. We have also seen a dramatic increase in new and often highly potent synthetic substances appearing on the market. These results in more drug overdoses, deaths and individuals seeking help from treatment providers and emergency services, but also in more violence and crime. As you know, organized crime benefits significantly from the drug trade. Moreover, violence and corruption long seen in drug-producing countries is now increasingly evident within our home, within the European Union. This is linked in part to the huge profits that the illicit drugs trade providers and the growing willingness to use violent means to extend market share. It is also driven by Europe's growing importance as a drug-producing area. Organized crime, as you know, is forward looking and quick to innovate in order to reduce threats to its business model or seize new opportunities. Drug markets have become more digitally enabled. When purchased online, they can be rapidly transported across borders and delivered to consumers. This creates new challenges for law enforcement and this means we must be equally innovative and forward looking in our responses. The drug market is now one of the major sources of income for organized crime and is linked to other areas of criminality or even terrorist activities. It is an important driver for the recruitment of young people into criminal organizations and gangs. Let me be clear, the increasingly global nature and reach of groups involved in drug production and trafficking is a major cross-border health and security threat. Confronted with such a threat, the European Union must step up its efforts to fight these criminal activities while keeping drugs policy anchored on a balanced and evidence-based approach. At the EU level, I can say that our efforts the last five years have started to bear fruits. The latest action plan on drugs legislation, which adopted new psychoactive substances, provides a strengthened response to the newly emerging health and security challenges in the area of illicit drug use and trafficking. Moreover, our work with our international partners is starting to gain traction. For example, Europe in cooperation with Eurojust and the law enforcement authorities of Germany, the Netherlands and the United States took down the second largest market on the dark web known as the Wall Street market. Dear friends, I suspect that this will be my last press conference as European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship. Believe me, it has been a privilege to serve the Union these last five years and you all know why. When I started with you, no one knew, no one could imagine that migration and security would raise to the top of the European and not only to the global agenda and stay there. And unfortunately, they will be there for many years. This commission made security a priority from day one. We have taken many decisive decisions to modernize the European security framework through new legislation, through reinforced operational cooperation between member states, and through strengthening the role and involvement of our agencies. The European Union's drugs agency in Europe, as well as all of the agencies in the justice and home affairs family, have played, believe me, a critical operational role in our policies. Without them, we would all have done our jobs less well. Over the last five years, we have come a very long way and have accomplished much, but that work is not finished today. It will continue under the new commission. And when it comes to our fight against drugs, we need to continue showing determination and commitment in order to strengthen our fight in all its aspects for our youth, our citizens and of course our societies. Once again, I would like to express my gratitude both to Catherine. She had her name day in Greece yesterday and to Alex, who is speaking Greek, so I tried to link them both to my country because I'm going back home and I want to keep this friendship alive for the future. They've done a fantastic job. I'm grateful to them. Europe is in good hands. Commissioners come and go, but the agencies are here and all the ones who have been striving for the last six years to keep the European project and the European vision alive. And during the last five years, we were all confronted with huge challenges that they put at stake the European project. In the heart of that was migration and security. But in all my efforts, I was accompanied by capable people, convinced Europeans that are here with me today and I wish them all the best for the future. Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you very much, Commissioner. I'd now like to pass the floor to Alexi Gorsdale. Thank you. Dear Commissioner, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. First, I would like to thank all the staff of EMCDDA and the staff of Europol that have been working those three years, collecting the information, making all the analysis. Of course, I have a special thanks to my good and close colleague, Catherine de Boll, the Executive Director of Europol for support and for very close and very fruitful cooperation. The report covers trends along the supply chain from production, trafficking to distribution and sales. Even if today we are going to speak more about market than about the problems associated to the use of those substances. As the Commissioner said and is putting us under challenge because we launched together the previous report. So what has changed? What is new? The main answer is that the European drug market is changing faster than before. Both under the influence of internal and external drivers and you have in the report a very detailed and holistic analysis of those changes. What we observe today is the hyper production of drugs within and beyond EU borders which is leading to high availability of natural and synthetic substances. This means that now consumers have access to a diverse range of highly potent and pure products at a very affordable price. As the Commissioner mentioned, mounting concern is the rise in drug related violence and corruption within the EU and this is a very worrying evolution of the situation over the last five years. First of all, the drug market remains a major source of income for organized crime groups in the EU and we estimate that the Europeans are spending around 30 billion of euros every year for the retail level. It doesn't encompass the value or potential values of seizures or any interference with the drug business. Here we talk only about the money that is spent by people who are using drugs in Europe. Around two-fifth of this total, 39% is spent on cannabis, 31% on cocaine that has taken out the second place, not only as the second most consumed drug but also in terms of market value and heroin is the third with 25%. Finally, amphetamines, metamphetamines and MDMA ecstasy represent 5% of that market. Let's have a quick look at the key drug markets, let's then put under the microscope. Cannabis is the largest drug market in Europe, worth at least 11.6 billion of euro, with some 25 million of Europeans who have used cannabis at least once last year. While cannabis herb and resin still dominate, we see new products that are appearing on the drug market and this makes monitoring of the potency and potential health effects essential. We also observed increased violence that is associated to the cannabis business between organized crime groups and this is putting another strain on law enforcement activities. Let's have a look at heroin and other opioids. Opioids still account for the largest proportion of arms associated with drug use and the heroin market is estimated at least at 7.4 billion of euros per year. There are approximately 1.3 million of people who are considered as problem opioid users, mainly of heroin. Talking about market and trafficking, the Balkan route remains the key corridor for heroin into the EU, but there are signs of increase there in trafficking along the southern route, particularly through the Suez canal. There is also evidence of the dimension of the chemical precursors that are needed to produce those drugs and those precursors, they are being produced in Europe and they are being smuggled from the EU to heroin producing areas. We also noticed, although not in the same proportion in the United States, that there are highly potent synthetic opioids like the fentanyl derivatives that are responsible in the US for the big wave of drug related death, while they represent also in Europe a growing health risk, but still not in the same proportion. These are increasingly traded online and dispatched by post. Let's come now to a drug that has called a lot of attention in the recent years, which is cocaine. There is a record production and corresponding expanding markets for cocaine with a market retail value that is estimated at minimum 9.1 billion of euros. This is the second most commonly consumed illicit drugs in the EU. We have around 4 million of Europeans that report having used the drug in the past year, but we need to add to those people, those who have more recently joined and are consuming not only cocaine in this more common version but also crack cocaine and they are worrying signs of an increase in the use of crack cocaine also in Europe. Use is still concentrated in south and west Europe, but the market appears to be spreading, including outside Europe like for instance in the western Balkans. Record production in Latin America has intensified trafficking to the EU mainly to maritime containers where record seizures have been recorded. The presence of European organized crime groups in Latin America is also changing the dynamic and allowing them to manage the supply chain end to end. It is also disrupting the market not only in Europe but in Latin America and there are a lot of changes intervening in the organization of those trafficking groups between the sources and the EU. And also increasingly it seems that Europe is emerging as a transit area for cocaine that is destined to other markets like Middle East and Asia. For Amphetamine, Metamphetamine and MDMA the estimated value is 1.5 billion euro a year. They are produced for domestic production and export. They make up around 5% of the total EU market. More recently we have noticed that not only the market is very well controlled, we have also other organized crime groups that are intervening in the market for instance Mexican cartels who are controlling the entire logistic chain. Finally the new psychoactive substances we discovered 55 new substances one per week on the European market last year. Source countries are China and India. The total of substances that have been detected and that are monitored by the EMCDDA together with Europol and with the support of other EU agencies amount to 731 substances. The NPS continue to represent a very important threat to health with potent synthetic cannabinoids, synthetic opioids and fake benzodiazepines appearing on the market. Those create more at the origin of more health emergencies, acute intoxications and deaths. Dear commissioner, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, the contemporary drug market is increasingly complex, adaptive and dynamic. It is also more global in nature and more interlinked than in the past. In addition, as the commissioner highlighted of the direct impact on health and security, the drug market has also indirect and wide-ranging negative consequences on other important policy areas. It includes violence and community safety, economic development and governance and the environment. Finally, the human and societal costs associated with the drug market remain considerable. The reduction of the harm associated with the drug market should remain a priority. So you will ask me what can we do on the top of what was done and the commissioner explained we made some good progress in the recent five years. We have a lot of work in front of us. The work in that area must remain an absolute priority and this report is a clear wake-up call for policymakers to address the rapidly growing drug market. All message is that important progress has been made but more needs to be done. At the time when a new European commission will take its duties in the coming days, and the EU and the member states are discussing the political priorities and actions for the next European budget 2021-2027, we jointly call together with Europol for an upgrade of priorities and resources proportional to the importance of the emerging threats. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Alexi. I'd now like to give the floor to the Europol Executive Director, Catherine de Boll. Thank you. Always grateful for your help commissioner. Dear commissioner, dear Alexis, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, the availability of drugs in the EU is at an unprecedented high level. Organised crime constitutes the highest and the most diverse risk for our EU citizens. Today we present you the Drug Report 2019. This is the third edition of the joint analysis of Europol and the EMCDDA of the illicit drugs market. Every three years we publish such a joint analysis. The report is important because it's the reference for future strategies to combat drugs production and drugs trafficking. First of all, it focuses on the impact and the consequences of illicit drugs in the EU. And second, it looks into the main drugs markets and it explores also possible responses on the international level to counter the production of drugs and the supply of narcotics. Organised crime constitutes the highest and the most diverse risk for the EU member states. What we see is that the organised crime groups are becoming more complex, highly international and they infiltrate in the legal economy. Polycriminality is a key feature for them. They use more and more violence and they use more and more corruption. Contract killings and other types of violence associated with drugs trafficking is increasing and is expanding in the European Union. High risk crime groups use corruption to infiltrate in the public and in the private sector organisations. The drugs market is the largest criminal market in the European Union. When we look for 2018 to our intelligence at Europe level, we can see that the organised crime groups involved in cocaine trafficking to EU may have profited for at least 40 billion euros, which is nearly one fourth of the 2019 EU budget. Same figures from our intelligence for 2018 for the protection of synthetic drugs in the EU by organised crime groups. And we still believe that these figures are an underestimation. The increasing profits of organised crime threatens as a commissioner set and as Alexis said, our internal security, our economy, the public health and the integrity. Asset tracing has to be reinforced. We do not cease enough and we do not confiscate enough. What can be the answers to counter this threat? We need to support the EU member states, the law enforcement community in the EU member states in cross-border investigations even more. We need to support the resource intensive operations. Therefore, we need to invest in specialised skills, analysis, IT forensic, special tactics, technical support. We developed with the support of the commissioner the concepts of the high value targets and the operational task forces against individuals and organisations constituting the highest security risks. We want to have the big bosses in the organised crime area. We started since late 2018 with this approach. 125 high value targets were selected. 21 operational task forces have been established. 31 investigations have been supported. So far, 400 suspects were arrested, including 51 high value targets and a seizure of a variety of assets. Targeted investigations prove to have a broad security impact beyond specific crime areas. To increase the impact against trafficking and organised crime, we believe that we need to intensify the exchange of operational information even more. We have to increase our focus and our presence at key geographical locations. We need cooperation outside the EU with the source countries. We need a common EU response to criminal use of the new technology and here innovative approaches are key. Encrypted communications, online trade, cryptocurrencies are current now in the use by serious and organised crime groups. More investments in Europe and more investments in the EMCDDA to support all these measures are needed. The European Union and especially the commissioner for justice and home affairs, you have done a lot in the past and we hope that we can continue and even strengthen the approach regarding serious and organised crime in the European Union with a focus on drugs. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Before we move to the Q&A session where you'll be able to ask your technical questions to both agencies, the commissioner will have to leave us for another appointment, but if you'd like to say your goodbyes now and take a picture. Well, I said what I had to say before. As I said, I'm living in two days' time, actually my last institutional activity in Brussels. Once again, I'd like to thank you all, thank you Ben and Alexis and of course the people behind them who are doing the real job. We shall keep being in contact. We don't know what the future is holding for us, but one thing is sure what we have done during the last three years has established a very strong and good friendship and relationship. I wish you all the best. Thank you. Thanks for everything. Let's hear it. Thank you everybody. We'll now move to the question and answer session. Apart from the two directors here, we also have many of our experts in the room from both agencies as well as the Belgian focal point from the Raytox network. So if you would like to start asking your questions and state your name and the media you're representing. Are there any questions for the panel? Inder. Thank you. Inder Bugarin from the Newspaper, Mexico. Five years ago, at least, Europe launched an alert about the presence of Cartel of Sinaloa and the Zetas in Europe. Now this report is telling us that the Mexican cartels are increasing the presence in the business of cocaine and crystal meth. What this report is telling us about the activities of the Mexican cartels here in Europe? Director of Europe, you just said that you need more cooperation with another third countries. Since at least five years ago, you have been negotiating with Mexico an agreement of cooperation. Why is it going on with this agreement? So thank you for your question. First of all, regarding the cartels, I will refer to my colleague who is here and specialized in the whole overview of the market. Regarding the cooperation with South America, we have an operational agreement with Colombia. We will have a working arrangement. This means that we cannot exchange personal data with Brazil. This has been voted on their institutional level. And indeed with Mexico, we need to cooperate more and further. We went to South America a few weeks ago to have a good view on what is going on and to strive for more cooperation with them regarding the issue we have in the European Union. To have more cases together. The focus was on Colombia and Brazil because of the cooperation agreements that are already in place or will be in place in a few weeks. But regarding Mexico, we need to do a bit more. The information we need from a Europe perspective and from a perspective from third countries is key for us. We need this information to have a good view on what is going on in the European Union and what is the impact of the serious and organized crime groups and what are the links with the other continents. We see for instance that there is a clear link between organized crime groups in South America and in the European Union. And we see that the methodologies and the violence and the techniques used by organized crime groups in South America also are used now in the European Union. We are not used to it. We see non-increase of violence in a lot of countries. We see more corruption and we see and it is confirmed direct links between organized crime groups in the Union and in the third countries. But I would like to give the floor to my colleagues regarding the presence of the Mexican cartels in the Union. Okay, thank you for the question. Les Fianna, I'm head of the drugs team at Europol. I mean, Mexican organized crime has been very prevalent for many years, particularly in the cocaine trade. There's a big issue of course with Mexican organized crime in the sense of supply of fentanyl, which is an extremely dangerous drug. It's something we're very concerned about in Europe. Quite recently, we've seen evidence of Mexicans involved in the illicit production of methamphetamine in Europe and this is quite unprecedented. It's quite a wake-up call for us. They have been found in methamphetamine laboratories. They have been linked to an incredibly large seizure of methamphetamine. So, we are of course keeping a close eye, a watching grief. We are gathering as much intelligence as we can to identify those high-value targets who are behind this activity. Thank you very much. Do we have another question? The scale of the problem is obviously enormous. In terms of what the European Union can do as an organization to help you, what would you say the main things are? Is it finding the money and tighter anti-money laundering? What we know is that this isn't working very well. In terms of risk and reward, it seems to be a low-risk, high-reward career option for many people. Are there more radical solutions? Legalization always comes up as a suggestion. Certainly, when you look at the scale of the problem, the resources that go into it. For example, I don't know about other countries, but certainly in the UK, a high proportion of those who are incarcerated are linked to drugs. So, are there more innovative ways of tackling this problem? I will explain to you how we see it from a law enforcement perspective. What is very important is that all the police chiefs of the European Union agree on one fact, that we have a real issue with drugs and that serious and organized crime is becoming more and more important. So, we need to have a plan and we need to have a strategy to tackle it, and we need to find common answers. There we see that there is a real will from the law enforcement community to work together and to share more information. We need to be creative on the European level. We need to look for new answers to the threats because our regular only seizures are not enough. We need to work in depth. So, from a police perspective, we say that we have to exchange even more operational data regarding drugs. When you have an issue in one country, it can have an impact in another country. When you have a modus operandi in one country, it can be relevant for a modus operandi in another country. So, we have to exchange information as much as we can. Secondly, we have to focus really on the key areas on a geographical level. What are the key geographical locations for us and how will we deal with these source countries and how will we try to give the answers. And then the new technologies we have to do with a global organization, a global problem. The innovation and the technology are very much used by the serious and organized crime groups. So, we have to be innovative too, and we really have to invest in more expertise in IT forensic, in specialized skills, and of course this is very resource demanding. So, this means that we need to pool our resources to come with a global answer. That is why we need to work with experts for the whole of the European Union, not only experts in each country. So, we need to have people who can use the new technologies and the new methodologies in the investigations they are dealing with. At the European level, we introduced this approach from high value targets. So, at the national level, you look at the criminals you have to deal with and you make an analysis of the most important ones and you go after them. On the European level, we do the same. We make a list of the big bosses of the organized crime groups and then together with the member states, we make an action plan and we determine who will do what in this action. And we see that this approach is a good one. It's about the investigation but it's also about economical and financial crime investigation. It's about money laundering. It's about corruption. That is why we decided at Europol with a management board in December last year that Europol will create a center related to economic and financial crime. We are now assessing what the member states need, how do they manage their economic and financial crime issues and what is the expectation from a European perspective. So, we are investing in it. It's a high level expertise you need in that one. So, it's also about pooling resources and trying to get the best experts for the benefit of the whole of the European Union. We have a problem and we are determined to try to find answers to the problem. And we have to be creative and innovative to find new ways to tackle the drugs issues we are confronted with at the moment. Yes, thank you for the question. First of all, I would like to say that when you said that we know it is not working very well, I would like to give you much more positive image because there is a very close cooperation between the EU member states and also between the justice and home affairs agencies. We just have both countries and myself are meeting of the directors of justice and home affairs agencies network last week that took place in Europe, Poland and Hague. So, there is a very close cooperation. There is the European strategy on drugs that is delivering results. That's the only regional policy and strategy that has an external evaluation and that is based on evidence. So, is everything perfect? No. Do we have new challenges? Yes. But certainly to say that things do not work very well. It's certainly a bit too dark as an image. But I think it highlights one thing I wanted to say. It's the fact that we do a lot of things and we do a lot of things, especially Europe, at the operational level. We do together with other agencies the strategic and holistic analysis. The problem we have for the moment is not so much about the EU level. It's the fact that over the last 25 years, and you mentioned the UK, there have been a lot of innovative responses to drug use and treatment. The problem is that there were so many good responses that part of the problem that was associated to error in use and the negative health consequences is less visible because it's better addressed. We consider there are more or less 1.2 million of people in treatment today in the EU. This was not the case 25 years ago. In parallel with that, the drugs and the different substances, natural and synthetic, they have disseminated throughout the entire society, but they are less visible, or at least the negative consequences. You don't see them in the streets with people dying from overdose. I think one of the main challenges we are facing and we are actively working on that together with Catherine, the colleagues of Europol, but also the other EU agencies who are also working partly on drugs is the fact that if there is a clear priority at the EU level, in the member states it's not always the case because it's not perceived as important because it lacks visibility. So I think what the report today is showing is that despite the fact that because of those changes in the expression of the problem, the fact that now it is invading the entire society is the first time five years ago we were not mentioning problems of or so important problems related to violence, homicides or corruption. So situation is changing so this is why we say it's a wake-up call. It's not a wake-up call in the sense you do nothing, you should do something. No, it's the fact that we have delivered at European level what we were being asked to do. We have a very close cooperation and this report is the example of many things all agencies in the area of justice and home affairs do together. Now the question is there is a discussion about the priorities for the next seven years and in the meeting of the justice and home affairs ministers last year in December one country mentioned drugs. So the message is look at the evidence. Use make even better use of what the EU and the EU agencies are doing but take into account that the situation has changed and don't look only at terrorism or migration because drugs, as the commission, they are a problem both for health and for security and that's what we are contributing. Next question please. Hello, I am Mark from Associated Press. You've outlined the difficulties with the drug markets. The war on drugs has been going on longer than I've been alive. It's been going on longer than the war in Afghanistan. Are we ever going to reach a situation where we view a solution as legalization, regulation and taxation? You've mentioned the violence with legalization got rid of the violence of the alcohol sales during prohibition in the US. Would you think that would be a solution for this area too with organized crime and taxation? You've mentioned the billions and euros that are being traded in this industry and you highlight the enormously high figures. Would taxation be a good thing in this scenario? Can you please share your thoughts? So from Catherine, thank you very much. So thank you for your question. I think it's a very important question because obviously nobody can imagine that there is such a problem of availability just because it is prohibited. Let's be clear on that. So the fact that it is a global problem and it has many factors, this is what we describe in the report and if there was a magic solution to be found it would already have been used. So the situation is there is production, there are different addictive behaviors and we have not here mentioned gambling and gaming that are also getting traction everywhere in the world including in Europe. So there is something that has to do with the fact that we are human beings and that some people in some circumstances in the specific setting may be willing to use substances or be using or having addictive behaviors. What we see of course we observe with the interest and curiosity what is happening in the US or in other countries like Canada or Uruguay. For the moment it is I think really premature to have any conclusion about it. What we also see is that there are new problems that are created with some policy changes at the state level for instance in the US. What we also see is that there is an increasing number of non-European countries visiting the EU to look at what is the so-called balanced approach in the EU which is combining demand reduction, harm reduction and strong law enforcement action including the example of countries like Portugal who have criminalized drug use. Does it mean it is legalized but it has changed the orientation and the issue or the merit of the policy in Portugal is not only to have decriminalized, they have not done that only. They have done together investment in demand reduction, treatment prevention, harm reduction interventions and strong investment in fighting against the supply. So I think what is important is to understand that we need a more holistic approach understanding and action and there we see differences that are in the other way around. Last year there was an estimate of 72,000 people who died from overdose associated to opioids in particular fentanyls in the US. In Europe there were approximately 9,500. So to say it is a failure or to say that the war on drugs doesn't work first we don't do war on drugs. We have a balanced approach in Europe. We don't have perfect results but there are results and there are achievements and as we had the question last week from a journalist the fact that only last year there were 50 tonnes of cocaine that were seized in Antwerp and another 50 tonnes that had a destination Antwerp that was seized outside Europe it shows that judiciary cooperation works and that's an achievement because we have 28 countries in the EU plus the other outside and of course it's not easy, legal systems are different, the culture are different but it works so what the report shows is that okay there are not magic solutions but there is best practice, there is evidence and today what we need is to continue the effort and to make sure that for the next strategy the EU strategy will be evaluated next year and EMCDDA and Europol they are contributing providing evidence for that evaluation I think what is important is to have everybody on board and today this means in a moment where there are also budgetary constraints we need to make sure that we also give the right level of priority to address not to fight the drugs issue in the EU. Thank you, are there any other questions from the room? Okay we have the room for about another hour and there are some interviews booked in advance so I suggest that we close the press conference now and then we move to the interview stage so thank you very much for coming everybody.


Hello Chiefs, this year marks 122 years of excellence. If I could coin one word for this year's birthday theme, it would be progress. Our Navy is 239 years old. Could you imagine, I mean, could you really imagine where we would be without progress? Let's talk about that for just a moment. When the Navy first started, we had muskets. Then we went to single cartridge fired rifles and then on to automatic weapons. We first started out with sails, then we moved to coal fired steam and then fuel oil steam and now we sail under nuclear power. Our first airplanes were bi planes, double wing planes. Then we transitioned to single wing planes. We went from propeller power to jet power. We went from CPO initiation to transition to induction and now we're at CPO 365. Without change, we need to recognize that there is no progress and you and I, we're leaders and as leaders we have to understand that change is necessary. I get it, change is hard, but hard is what we do, right Chiefs? And we have a responsibility to help our Navy to continue to progress because if we don't, who will? Speaking of change and progress, I would encourage you to read a tradition of change, CPO initiation to CPO 365. Please contact your CMC if you need access to this research paper. Chiefs, hey, I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am of you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for 122 years of excellence and I wish you and your families all the best. Happy birthday Chiefs.


How's it going everybody? Dottodoy here and I have a question for you. Do you know what Dragon Ball Z is? You know the one the show in which Goku, a Saiyan raised on Earth, has to defend his planet from numerous threats including other Saiyans, Frieza, and terrifying creatures like Majin Buu. Well now I really hope that your answer to that question was yes because if not I spoiled the entire show for you. But what if that wasn't how the show actually went? In fact what if the show wasn't created by a human at all? What would Dragon Ball Z look like then? In today's video we are going to find out what exactly that looks like as I am going to leave it up to an AI to completely rewrite the Dragon Ball Z storyline. The way we're going to be attempting this today is through a game called AI Dungeon. This thing is actually an amazing piece of tech. It allows you to go through a completely AI generated almost dungeon sort of thing, but there is a way to activate your own custom scenario. It allows you to go through a text based adventure of almost anything you can imagine. Now the way we're going to bring this back to Dragon Ball is by making the main protagonist of our dungeon Goku and setting up the scenario for exactly where the show starts in Z. You know on the island where Raditz comes in. Basically where the show really picks up. Now again it's important to stress that AI Dungeon is really really cool, but it's not magic. It's still a computer. It's still going to get stuff wildly wrong, but you can sort of steer it in the right direction and you're going to see me attempt to do stuff like that in this video. But again to be completely honest the AI has more control than I do here. I'm just going to try to steer it the right way and react to whatever it throws at me. So without any more of an intro let's go ahead and see how an AI would approach the story of Dragon Ball Z. Alright so now that we've broken down what we're going to go ahead and do we're just going to enter six for a custom story. Now that we've done that we get to write in our own prompts. Of course I'm not going to really write in anything original. We're just going to go ahead and ease it into the Saiyan saga starting off when they're all on the island and Raditz appears from above. Alright so the prompt I wrote is you are Goku along with your son Gohan you have come to Kame House to meet up with your friends Bulma and Krillin. You are all enjoying a peaceful reunion when suddenly a mysterious figure approaches Kame House from above. Oh wait this is not my prompt they added some in. He is dressed in black but his face is completely masked. The man looks like he has some sort of machine gun on him so you don't even try to shoot at him. Wait what he came strapped. Come on Raditz let's not be that way. Alright hello everyone. Alright so it looks like Raditz has decided to say hello to everyone. He's also strapped at this point so clearly the most dangerous foe that our heroes have ever fought. We have to approach this situation carefully. I'm not shooting anyone. The man doesn't seem convinced. He starts walking towards you but then stops and turns around. Oh okay we're making small plot points happen. He's on the island now. He's not shooting anyone uh but he's he's doing so he's up to something. He's not telling the entire truth. Okay I think the only appropriate thing to do here is to ask why he came to Kame House because I'm here to help you and because I can he says that he will be able to get rid of any threats to your life if you give him information about. Am I being interrogated? Is Raditz interrogating me? Alright now I'm going to go ahead and try to make the story think that Raditz is a threat to me and the friends. Okay so I'm saying I'm not telling you anything about my friends. Your energy is unlike anything I've ever experienced. Don't worry I won't hurt them. Well well then what are you doing here? Why didn't you just go to planet Namagri? Okay the continuity is completely broken at this point. We're not even three seconds into the Saiyan saga and I've completely lost track of everything. I can tell that we need to restart this. Alright with take two of the story our prompt has changed a little bit. We are now a martial artist known as Goku and together with your son Gohan you have gone to an island to meet up with your friends Krillin and Bulma. Everything is going well until Raditz appears on the island. He's been training for this moment for years but he's not prepared when he finally gets his chance. Raditz is a little nervous about this but yeah the basically the only things we changed is I took out Kame House I figured that might have confused it for just the random island and also I went ahead and let it know that Raditz is the guy coming here. I figured giving him a name instead of a mysterious figure whose motives are unanswered would be a little bit better. Alright because Raditz is uneasy I'm going to go ahead and start it off. I'm gonna get in front of Gohan and demand to know why Raditz is here. You charge forward at Raditz who dodges your attack by jumping back. Okay that's a bit extreme. This causes him to lose balance and fall into the water below. You quickly swim over to him and grab his hand before he can. Hey this is actually kind of accurate to the show. If you haven't watched DBZ or just haven't in a while Raditz because Goku is a very pure and naive person there are multiple times when he could beat Raditz but then just doesn't finish the job all the way. This leads to other things but it's happening here it didn't happen like this Raditz I assume can swim but Goku has saved him from drowning in the three feet water of Kame Island. You say don't worry Raditz I won't let you drown.  It's still beating and it makes you oh no no I killed Raditz in the first two seconds of the saga. No this how am I gonna get the snake away. Okay there's only one way I can get the snake away now. Okay let's just see if we could take the forgiveness path. Oh my gosh I'm so sorry Raditz that was definitely not intentional. I know but I also know you're right we must stop these Saiyans from destroying Earth.  Raditz and Goku teaming up to fight Vegeta. Napa's not in the story unfortunately but instead of going with Piccolo the AI has decided that Raditz is a main character. Yo all right I'm so stoked about this dude of course I got a high five Raditz in front of Vegeta you run up to Raditz and give him a high five he looks down at you confused before laughing what high fiving someone in front of everyone oh come on Raditz you know that's just that's just our brotherly bond bro of course there's a different reason for my high five it was just a bit of distraction while we're laughing I quickly shoot a ki blast at Vegeta you fire a beam of light at Vegeta which hits him directly in the chest causing him glass the two of you look at each other and laugh yo me and Raditz are done with the we're done with the Saiyan saga we took out Vegeta with our high five technique Vegeta was looking at us I was like hey Raditz night okay and I just just shopped he's dead so in summary in our AI created world the Saiyan saga consisted of Goku protecting Gohan by ripping the heart of Raditz out forcing Raditz to quite literally have a change of heart in which he realizes he wants to help his brother fight the Saiyans the only Saiyan that shows up though is Vegeta who is very quickly taken out by a single ki it's still pretty funny to me all right let's go on to the Namek saga not because I guess they don't really have a reason but why not see what the Raditz and Goku brother team up can do over on Namek that's why this time around our prompt is you are Goku along with your brother Raditz you have successfully arrived on a planet known as Namek your greatest enemy Frieza has been defeating the locals of this planet and must be stopped you are not sure what to expect when you arrive but it isn't anything like what you expected the planet is beautiful in many ways but there is something about its surface that seems unnatural but this is actually like weirdly good Planet Namek was a very good looking planet but it had forever daytime like that was that was the one weird thing we have no time to inspect our environment me and Raditz look around to find Frieza you see several people walking around but none of them seem to recognize you you can only assume they don't know who you are either who are you one man asks hopefully this is a Namekian asking me this question not Frieza's men so I'm Goku this is my brother Raditz we're here to defeat Frieza the man looks at you for a moment then turns away from his computer screen and walks over the greet you he doesn't look too happy though what do you want he says the Namekians do not want our help and once again he's asked me what I wanted so I'm going to state it clearly this time I only want to defeat Frieza and get the dragon balls he looks back at his screen in size all right all right I'll tell you everything he says okay it looks like we're getting some information this is important plot so we're just going to go ahead and listen to what he has to say after he tells you everything you nod your head in agreement I get to miss out on all the plot yeah maybe he just told us the directions well we need to go into battle right now he exclaims oh he's coming too as you walk over to Frieza Raditz and yourself all begin to fight off the guards they aren't very strong but they're still there as you approach him he smiles at you in waves very polite greeting but I'm not here to make another friend out of an enemy that's why I'm gonna immediately start off with a combination attack you charge up an energy blast which oh no you charge up an energy blast which hits Frieza in the chest he falls backwards and gasps gasps for breath we did it we defeated him Raditz says excitingly but now I'm going to go ahead and add in a story beat Frieza is not one to be taken lightly Frieza gets up off the ground and begins to transform into his final form his eyes glow red and he grows larger than life size no no this cannot be happening he screams out it's oh wait is Frieza is Frieza panicking before Frieza could transform me and Raditz need to stop him I say Raditz we have to stop Frieza right now Raditz nods and run towards Frieza wait you shout don't just stand there run over to him but how Raditz okay so Raditz is very confused Raditz is panicking I gotta go ahead and jump in here I'm throwing another combination attack I'm going in Raditz you hit Frieza with another risky attack you quickly fire a beam of light at Frieza which causes him to fall down to the ground that was stupid he yells as he stands up oh it didn't even hurt him this time his final form is too strong Frieza begins to shoot out multiple energy beams that are all insanely strong no no no he cries out wow I think Frieza's own energy is hurting him here Raditz is hit by Frieza and he begins to fade away you see Raditz slowly fading away before your eyes oh no you cry out Frieza fires a deadly energy wave that destroys the entire island and kills everyone on it wow Frieza just did all of that in front of me you messed up now Frieza I transform into a super Saiyan out of range you unleash a burst of key that knocks Frieza back several feet ah he cries out as he tries to regain his footing yeah Frieza is so dead he is so dead he's been blown back by every attack this is about to destroy him you say you roar as you unleash a powerful punch that sends Frieza flying he lands hard on the ground and begins to twitch violently he's not getting up you yell out what Frieza's on the ground in pain after I hit him like that that's fine though this is almost exactly like the actual story in a way so now as Goku I'm going to run over to Frieza and give him a little bit of my own energy he grab onto Frieza and begin to channel your energy through him how much do you need he asks enough I begin to fly away from Frieza as I've decided to spare his life Frieza then decides that I must die by his hand and attempts to hit me with a beam of energy no I scream in pain as I attempt to block the attack aha good one kid Frieza laughs as he shoots a blast of dark energy at me you say you fool Frieza with an incredible amount of concentration I block the attack and follow up with a powerful kick to Frieza's face wow got him Frieza's head is not clean off his body and falls to the ground well looks like I won't be able to use my new super Saiyan form anymore Frieza says is he Frieza still alive all right that's it I'm I'm being direct I'm being direct Frieza you kill Frieza you charge up and strike Frieza with a powerful punch kill him you shout as you begin to glow red hot you swing your fist at Frieza who dodges it he he's coming back he's going to beat me how is he beating me without a head you start a desperate fist fight with Frieza you charge forward and land a solid punch to Frieza's face ah he screams out as his nose is broken you kill Frieza you quickly finish off Frieza by smashing his skull in with a final blow yippee that was fun Frieza shouts as he stands up stay down okay at this point I gotta roll with what the story is giving me so I'm just going to work in some of the Dragon Ball lore here you realize at this point Frieza has obtained immortality through some means Frieza continues to attack you so how about it are we going to continue this or not Frieza ask no I'm not finished yet we still have more work to do you reply all right maybe this is where I start charging the spirit bomb this is it this is the final technique this has to end the Frieza saga you begin the spirit bomb attack you ask all of the living things in the world to lend you their energy for one final attack let's get this party started you exclaim as you release a massive explosion that causes everyone to feel it everyone feels the energy around them increase dramatically and they can sense everything within a certain area wow this is having a weird effect on them you throw the spirit bomb at Frieza it explodes harmlessly against his armor what an impressive display of power but I think you overestimate yourself Frieza remarks all right guys at this point I gotta be honest I don't know how we're beating Frieza I don't know how we're beating Frieza I've knocked his head off clean oh oh right it's his body is still in the area and he's strapped if a spirit bomb couldn't do it maybe my brother's machine gun will I take right it's a machine gun and use it on Frieza killing him once and for all the end what a beautiful story yeah and with that we have officially seen what both the Saiyan saga and the Namek saga would look like if it was written by an AI and there was an extra idiot controlling one of the characters hopefully you guys enjoyed this one if you did let me know down below I would love to do this again honestly I had a blast with it but I'd only do that if you guys really want to see it if you didn't enjoy though let me know your favorite moment in the comments as well as leaving a like and subscribing to the channel to stay up to date on all of our normalish videos and maybe a odd one like this every now and again I have been Dr. do it thank you so much for watching this one all the way to the end and I will see you in the next video


move on we're going back to okay thank you you can stop sharing thank you very much okay now we're gonna we're gonna move back we're going back to Cape Coast uh so peter uh peter and a bunch of friends um are you there you can turn on your video and you can unmute hi can you hear me please yes okay yeah good evening to everybody um it was said we're dreaming from the University of Cape Coast as I've been already introduced I'm presenting on uh a technique that has helped us to safely discriminate cataract lens from healthy lens tissue of the sprak delirats and the basically these are my team members who help in the work and then this is my outline for the presentation introduction is from entameter and procedure and then I'll talk about some results and then conclusions cataracts as we all know is a major course of visual disability where what globally is a major course of visual disability and it accounts for more than half of blindness in developing countries and actually it increases absorption and then significantly decreases vision over time now contracts has been projected to increase globally due to increase in our aging population clinically of dream clinical experiments the good standard of evaluating cataract lens or discriminating cataract lens from healthy lens is history pathology history pathology has been the good standard of evaluating cataract lens from healthy lenses but this method has been found to be very very very subjective therefore there's the need for us to go get an objective technique that is also non-destructive to be able to discriminate cataract lenses from healthy lenses and then laser induced auto fluorescence technique with if advantage of being rapid and highly sensitive have been found to be a technique that is widely used in the medical field and then in the in the optometry automotive field it has also been used widely for research researchers have used it to actually monitor the healing process of conia they've also used it so many times and ma'am was love and his team have also used this same technique to work on secondary cataracts but interestingly they used tradition in the ultraviolet region but this tradition has also been found to cause cataracts long exposure of this tradition rather causes cataracts it's has another way of by which cataract is also being formed so it makes the usage of this tradition very on safe for the technique therefore we embark on analysis to use other techniques other licenses that can which are safe that can also be used to differentiate or discriminate cataract lens from healthy lens so the objective of the work is to use laser induced auto fluorescence technique with a safer light source to discriminate cataract lens from the healthy lens so experimentally 10-day old spagol rats were used of edas ex they were put into groups 45 per group one group was actually kept as the control and the other group was the cataract was actually created another group and then after cataract was developed the lenses in the the catalysis were actually removed and then it was integrated and was safe for measurements so this is the experimental setup the laser induced auto fluorescence setup that was used to acquire auto fluorescence from the lens tissues of both the healthy lenses and the cataract of lenses and it comprises of a laser source here as I said earlier on we use a cipher light light source in the visible region so 445 nanometer and then 405 nanometer light source was used comprises of microscope objective a fiber pod micro processor in the bifurated fiber and the Texas system is UV 2000 spectrometer so in acquiring the auto fluorescence from the from the lenses the lens the lenses were put on the sample stage and then auto fluorescence was applied from each of the lenses so this is a figure of normalized mean auto fluorescence spectrometer from both cataract lens and that of the healthy lens and as you can see it ranges a fingerprint standard from 450 nanometers to about 750 nanometers and the realize that the auto fluorescence from the cataract lenses are higher compared to that of the healthy lenses then employing principle component analysis we were able to discriminate the cataract lenses from the from the healthy lenses so here you can see that the red the red with the cataract lenses and the blue is the healthy lenses and we further classify new cataract lenses using employing facial linear discriminant analysis and employing this we're also able to classify a new lens as either being cataractors or a healthy lens so in all we are saying that the laser induced auto fluorescence technique has been able to have been used to discriminate cataract lenses from healthy lens and then cataract lenses show higher auto fluorescence intensity than that of the healthy lens and using principle component analysis three pcs were able to confirm the discrimination between the cataract lens and that of the healthy lenses and then employing the facial linear discriminant analysis we have hundreds of hundred percent success in discriminating cataract lenses from the healthy lenses so in all the citation laser source in the visible region offer a safer uh laser induced auto fluorescence technique to objectively distinguish and discriminate cataract lenses from the healthy lenses these are some references and then I thank you for your attention thank you very much thanks a lot Peter that was that was great um is this a low cost system can is it small enough can you take it to remote areas if you wanted to apply this to people not to rats yeah um uh system is actually relatively low cost uh as you said it's the it's relative depending on who is actually buying the or actually putting the setup together but in actual fact apart from the spectrum it is actually expensive I think it's quite expensive relatively low yeah okay thanks any other questions that don't look like it okay thanks a lot Peter I'll wait Nicoletta's got a question uh yeah hello uh very very nice work yeah I have a question it is a fluorescence spectrometer you use or you just use the normal spectrometer and you have some filters to block the question thank you for your question we use the normal spectrometer but we use the filter high pass filter to block the citation source okay okay great thanks all right great well thanks thanks a lot Peter say hi to everybody and thank you okay so next up Henry Henry year round


Well, obviously it was a major disappointment to lose by that score. I think that we had a pretty good game plan coming into it. We knew that they were going to be a top caliber team, and we knew that we had to play a little bit more defensive to handle their speed and their strength. However, we didn't take advantage of utilizing our counterattacks when we could have. So Kelsey is a phenomenal goalie. She's just a freshman, so she's only going to get better and more confident. She's a tough kid. She's a competitor, and she's got solid skills. So we're very pleased to have her. Right. So I mean, I talked to the girls about it, and I think that we have to recognize, first of all, the strength of Salisbury. Certainly year in and year out there, a machine. They just continue to fill strong athletes in. But I was not pleased with our overall tenacity. I think that we could have been tougher, you know? And I think that's the next step where we need to be. And that's a mindset. That's a mentality. And we just don't have that quite yet. And we have a couple. We have a handful of players that have that. But we need to spread that wealth.


I don't trust anyone, you know, you thought you sounded cool when you said that.  You think you're the main character, homeboy? First of all, okay, I'm the main character, let's get that straight.  I'm no psychologist, but um, I think you may have some deep trauma. What happened, huh? Some girl cheated on you in middle school, a nigga will get his heart broke in first grade and join the dark side for life.  I don't trust anyone, you think we care, huh? Nigga no, dude probably at a whole party, everyone dancing and having fun. Meanwhile he's in the corner of the room, they don't know I don't trust them. He thinks to himself with a smirk on his face.  Actually don't, I think that might actually increase your trust issues, find a girlfriend. Actually don't, you can't actually have a healthy relationship with someone if you can't trust anyone. If anything, I think the people I'm speaking to actually do have bitches. Just a surplus of hoes lined up in their contacts like the Super Smash Bros character selection screen, pun intended.   Have you ever considered therapy? I have.   That's like $3,000 a month. We should be a lot more empathetic in these sorts of situations. I'm not saying befriend people like that, nah, I've made that mistake before.    Not everyone that distrusts people are inherently criminal, but it's best to keep a safe distance. I make it sound like there's some sort of bubonic plague patient. I don't mean physically, it's more of like a mental thing. The more you try to get close to someone that distrusts people, it actually has the opposite effect. It's kinda like the cats from Minecraft, it honestly does depend on the type of personality the person has. Are they a fighter or a flyer? A flyer pretty much is gonna keep to themselves, if they don't trust people, they might just stay home all the time.  You befriend a fighter that doesn't trust people? Maybe have a little slumber party with them?  You gonna wake up?  Where did my kidneys go?  That's right. He bout to pay for them therapy sessions. I mean hey, at least he's trying to better himself.  My heart is behind the brick wall. Bless your heart, okay? I hope one day you ease up a bit, okay? Just relax.


Aaron, what does it tell you about your swing when you're able to launch the ball 436 feet to center field? They were just in a good spot. I'm just putting a lot of work in past couple days, past couple weeks. I think it kind of started in the Cleveland series making some changes. You know, really working with, you know, Marcus and PJ and working on different approaches. And, you know, then from there it just takes, you know, our bats and reps just to feel comfortable with it, you know. But I think all around our team is just really, you know, starting to get comfortable, you know. Slow start this season. That's why we play 162, you know. And, you know, we're staying aggressive. We're attacking pitches in the zone. And, you know, when we do that, this team is something special. You mentioned making some changes. What exactly did you change?  And it's, I got to be here all night, Meredith talking with you about it. But, you know, just to simplify it, you know, just getting in a better position to hit. I think that's what it all comes down to, you know, because early on I felt like I was seeing some good pitches and seeing the ball well, but just wasn't able to execute or fire when I wanted to. So now it's just about getting in a better position to where, you know, when I want to fire, you know, the barrel's coming through. How did you come through tonight? Did you feel okay physically? Yeah. I think the results speak for itself. Thank you. Go next to Justin Shackle. Please unmute. There. How satisfying is a near flawless win like this all around to open up a home stand and close out a month here? Oh, it's big. You know, like I said a little bit earlier, you know, teams are going to go through ups and downs throughout the season. You know, we started out on a kind of a downer, you know, so far here in April. That's why we play 162.    Ken David off, please unmute. Hey, Aaron. Yeah, you obviously missed the didn't start a couple games. I tried yesterday. And it was twice in April where you sat a couple games with stuff that sort of vague stuff described by your manager and then came back and looked quite good. I mean, is this a new approach? Do you think it matters being more proactive in terms of managing what, you know, you're you're playing?  But in my opinion, I'd rather miss, you know, if I miss one day here, I think that's better than, you know, pushing through some things and, you know, missing a whole month because of an injury. You know, so I just trying to be smart about it.  And can you be any more specific on what was Bobby's last few days? Just lower leg soreness. That's about it. Thanks, Brian. Hope you have the next question. Go ahead. Aaron, did that lower leg soreness come from anything in particular?  Just where do you think that all came from and did the two days clear it up? It's tough to pinpoint it. Exactly. I wish I'd have answered because then I would make some changes so it didn't happen again. But now it's just something you got to play with, you know, and, you know, manage it. That's the biggest thing is learning how to manage it and just being out there for the team.


All right guys, it's been a while Obviously enough. I am back upstate. I'm no longer down there helping out Which is a nice load off my back because that was getting stressful Probably not for the reason to you guys are thinking either but Definitely glad to be back It doesn't mean for the time being I'm looking for another job, so That's that means a lot of free time to do development. So the pace of that is going to pick up quite a bit That being said there are some stuff that I want to talk about that I have done that Just hasn't had any updates on it yet We'll cover the most interesting first there's been a prototype streams API that I've been working on that Just for the longest time as I'm in making any progress I Needed it for one feature Literally just one method that you can't add as an extension method And it's so annoying that I had to do this, but it wound up being useful for other things as well, so But to peek at the next Character or rune in the stream Regardless of what the underlying type of stream is And that's actually incredibly important for many text processing algorithms But yeah Whole project because of that that being said after looking through the code in the dot-net runtime I was pretty sure that very large portions of it weren't being written all that well and Had trouble getting my own implementation to be any better, so Maybe I was wrong. Maybe that is written as best as it could possibly be right well There's one thing to know about me. It's that I am Incredibly determined and we'll keep chipping away at something until I finally have a breakthrough or And completely certain that There's that I'm just wrong and I got these results that is such a massive performance boost that I genuinely thought I Had the benchmarks wrong somehow that I was I don't know only reading part of the stream in my case and That's why the numbers were so small, but no Nope, that is Spent about four hours Testing the shit out of that to make sure I was actually benchmarking what I thought I was and yeah Now that is specifically for an in-memory buffer, which is Actually surprising because that's the one I would expect the least amount of performance gang at all, but It's possible No one thing to keep in mind about what I am doing is because I have the opportunity to start completely fresh on a new API It's getting a rune nutty character each time and that's because that helps avoid quite a lot of the problems that Come from people making assumptions about what a character actually is depends on your language, but in the net world a character is a UTF 16 code unit not a Unicode scalar value and C or C++ it gets even more confusing and then various languages have their own thing that they do In a few cases it is actually a Unicode scalar value But more often than not it's a code unit associated with a specific encoding type That causes a lot of confusion So by fetching a rune each time instead of a character you greatly simplified things You can ensure that the same exact code can be written Regardless of whether it's basic multilingual plain languages like English or Russian Russian and basic middle way the way either way you've got to get way way way way way out there for UTF-16 surrogate pairs to be required to be used and We're actually seeing more and more cases where that has to be done so Avoiding that greatly simplifies things same code no matter where it is there's a number of architectural reasons behind this and I'm not gonna actually delve into why that's the case You may have noticed that a few of my libraries now are closed-source at least partially Streams is an example of this and streams will in its entirety be a closed-source library I'm not gonna open up any part of it You can probably at least somewhat tell why given the performance implications and I'll explain some more about the general stuff Part of the glyphs library is closed-source, but only part of it the data structure and the algorithms behind it are closed-source whereas the tables that drive it are open-source So if you want to add support for New glyph equivalencies say like I haven't gotten to Russian yet or the Cyrillic Characters yet, so if Say somebody wanted to do that. They wouldn't have to put in an issue They could actually go in and add that stuff to those tables and the other library will just work Which is pretty awesome There's not a whole lot to say about that library however because there's just not a whole lot there It's a sort of micro library just for glyph equivalencies and working with glyphs Sort of the most useful thing to most people would be the glyph dot equals method that Doesn't much better job at what we really mean by two strings being equal That being said If it's a hot path kind of thing, especially like if it's say Code for a compiler or some other type of language analyzer where you've got a You know computer language, even if it's not a compiled one say Or even if it's not a programming language say it's like XML or something You wouldn't want to be interested in that. That's Not the kind of thing you want to be doing because it's slower It's what people mean, but it's it's slower Which would make sense. You've got to check all sorts of equivalencies. You've got to build up the glyphs Which takes additional Time to parse and But the so that's the that's the other closed up one there, but To cover more on streams Despite being closed source it is any extensible Library there's the stream base class Which implements the absolute bare minimum for a stream to work at all and when I say bare minimum I mean incredibly bare minimum read a bite write a bite and a few properties and that's it If you want to extend the streams to support a new data stream type Say like right now it doesn't support streaming over a pipe so no network streams You would Go and extend the stream base to support working with pipes and boom you have an entire network stream There's a read buffer and write buffer for implementing your own buffers That's another rather useful thing in that they're I Mean the fact that they're separate means they're obviously not tightly coupled together Which is a generally good programming practice and something Microsoft did that is just dumb and Actually causes some problems And if you want it to support a new encoding type you'll actually have to put an issue for that one in That one's not publicly exposed at all because for like bomb detection and other stuff You actually have to do that inside of the constructor So there's no pause Shouldn't say that there's no feasible way To extend that You could But it's a it's it's a massive pain to do it in a plug-in kind of way Now I don't want to mess around with that Because one thing I will say is my constructor takes quite a bit longer than Microsoft's it's not horrible, but it can be It's quite a bit longer Luckily you're typically not creating a bunch of very tiny streams So that's kind of why I optimized it that way as well I say like parsing an entire file Which is a actually rather common way to use streams You're gonna instantiate the stream and then you're going to be Literally spending 99% of the time doing a combination of reading and parsing it the instantiation really just isn't that much time so of course I'm not gonna care if the approach I have is Really fast for the common case and slow really slow for the For the time you barely spent doing anything that means that it's not like atrociously slow Figure As far as parsing speed goes mine is about six to eight times faster Whereas construction time Microsoft's about four to five times faster So even if you were doing a completely balanced situation of both of those you're still gonna get an overall performance boost out of mine anyways But it is something to keep in mind I don't know why anybody would ever create like thousands of very tiny streams But if you're going to do that don't use mine but lastly the stream type itself is Inheritable But barely Partially as an optimization partially because I don't want people going into breaking things The majority of the methods are actually sealed so the major point and inheriting from the type is to add support for entirely new things or Or To add in or utilize the protected constructors I Have my own use case for this where I want to sort of expose this as like a file API as well That's sort of just experimental, but regardless I'm gonna keep the the stream inheritable minimally inheritable but There may be other Uses for that. I could definitely see some situations where That could potentially be useful Note that that is not the way to support new new data streams, so if you were going to say stream and a I don't know controller input which is something that I would never provide in the library itself you Would not inherit from that you would inherit the stream base That handles the actual data stream The the stream class itself really is just orchestration between all the different components and the high-level API Lastly I've been some work on and this is released the The streams API has not been released yet. It's just in like a beta, but the The literary sub project has actually been released and What that is is a collection of methods used for Literary kind of applications It's quite small right now, but I have quite a few things that I intend to add to it But it's primarily for Well, I already said what it's primarily for but there's some examples of what's in it would be like methods to determine whether something is a palindrome or not Correctly because it's actually quite a bit more complicated than just reversing a string and comparing it to two are equal There's things you've got to remove and there's The comparisons can't just be simple index in and compare kind of comparisons Palindromes actually get sort of complicated But also currently methods for things like whether or not something is a heterogram a pangram a lipogram and others I think I've also implemented isogram. I think but there's there's quite a few others that I need to do and Quite a few other literary things that I need to be able to identify This library is entirely public and Part of that is because I didn't want the table separate But also in that I wanted to show off a little bit about the power of table-driven algorithms so Typically speaking when you come across methods like that they work for a specific language They're written assuming say English and they'll give you any English palindrome and any English pangram Well, that's great and all but What about all the other languages? Do you write one of those for every single language? Because I get super tedious But what you can do is take tables code algorithms to those tables and Then swap out the table that it's determining for No, it just so happens that these tables are language orthographies and so currently I have it written for three different English orthographies because Well, you've got English with Latin script, which is the one everybody knows You're probably getting the hint that it's a little more complicated than just that right now There are two other scripts that English is written in You don't see either of them particularly often But they were defined because it was easy to transcribe them because you're just transcribing them You're not translating them And It would show off that what this this approach is actually capable of so it's also got it for Shopee in the script written by Written by the author George Bernard Shaw, I think it's the full name as well as Desiret of the the Mormons, I believe they're the ones responsible for that Some Interesting reasons behind that I'm not gonna get into that right now. This is some sort of channel on cults. This is a channel on programming And a few other random things but not cults so Because of this because of the table-driven approach you could specify that hey, I need a pen. I want to see if this is a you know a lipogram in English written in Desiret script that excludes these characters and It'll do that Which is pretty damn awesome If you're interested It's actually super easy to add in any new tables All you have to do is it make quick language definition if your language is not defined So English already is but say you want to do I don't know Ukrainian you would need to add in the language for Ukrainian The language itself is a rather simple definition There's a few properties that need to be filled out. But otherwise it's super easy kind of thing You could code in about a minute then's the script. That's the writing system used And Ukrainian sense it would be Cyrillic Now assuming say Russian was already implemented in there, then Cyrillic probably would be as well And you would not need to duplicate that however Currently it's not so you would need to also implement Cyrillic as well and That's just some information about how this Cyrillic script works That again very small thing could take you about a minute to code So the two of them together something you can easily just jot down during the middle of a break Then is the orthography and the orthographies are written for every combination of language in script That's valid Those are A little bit longer because that's where you're actually writing out every single character in the orthography so every single symbol of your language uses as part of its writing gets written down there and There's some holes currently it really only deals with like The consonant vowel semi-vowel kind of thing Other symbols like punctuation and numbers are not currently a part of that so they'll Need to be at some point, but I'm figuring out how best I want to do that So currently it's just you know letters Different letters or whatever your system uses But in that case like Ukrainian with Cyrillic script would need to be added that takes a little bit longer But still shouldn't take any longer than five minutes.  So eight minutes Well, thanks you take eight minutes to add in a Single orthography and that's for if you're not experienced and can't do these really quickly yet because you're still learning like what goes where so And then boom they should just work with Ukrainian at that point So that that kind of thing is actually pretty awesome And this why I did that approach because it helps ensure that it's very easy to add in And every every algorithm defined in the in that library will just work with that now So I go in to add something else later on Say like determining alliteration and Every language that is supported will just work with that new alliteration algorithm That's pretty awesome So Yeah, that's where I'm at right now. You can expect more videos soon Especially since you know, there's gonna be more to talk about and it's stuff I can actually talk about can't talk about medical stuff That's that's bad. Don't do that So until then have a good one guys


Hey, Psych2Goers! Hope you're all having a splendid day! Lately, there's been someone who's been a bit flirty with you, at least you think so. In fact, you're having a hard time telling whether or not they like you. Maybe they're not obviously flirting with you, but you have a hunch that they may be attracted to you. So how can you tell? Well, if you think they like you and they ask these questions too, then it may just be that they find you attractive. Here are five questions someone will ask only if they really like you. 1. Do you find me attractive? Perhaps they're trying to flirt, or maybe they genuinely want to know. Likely, both. When someone asks if you find them attractive, it's likely they want to find out whether or not you like them so they can then make the next move. If you know that you're just friends and they make it pretty clear that they're just messing around and asking, then that's a different story. If you sense something is up and they give you those goo goo eyes, they probably really want you to think that they're good looking, so they can admit that they think you're attractive too. 2. Are you single? Or they hint at your relationship status. Do you know someone who's recently tried to find out about your relationship status? Maybe they smoothly throw in a statement that requires you to reveal a bit of info about if you're dating someone, but I assume you have a romantic partner, so they can see if you deny it. If someone flirtally asks if you're single, or tries to find out if you are, they're doing this likely because they want you to no longer be single, if you know what I mean. Because, you know, they want to date you. Anyways, watch out for any awkwardness when they try to hint at your relationship status. They could be nervous to ask you, or look out for any signs of flirting as well when they bring up the subject. 3. Tell me more about yourself. Or they eagerly try to get to know you emotionally or personally. Friends want to get to know their friends personally and emotionally, but have you noticed a new acquaintance eagerly trying to get to know you on a more personal level? Maybe you have a bit of small talk with them, maybe they flirt a little too, but they're really interested in the deeper conversations and getting to know you. They keep up the conversation by asking follow-up questions and reveal personal things about themselves too. Being vulnerable and open with you. This could mean they not only find you attractive, but really like you. They probably want to jump right into getting to know you because they feel a serious connection, or admire your personality as well. 4. Do you believe in love at first sight? Have you ever been asked by someone if you believe in love at first sight? Well, do you? If you're asked this by someone and their tone strays away from friendliness, lying somewhere between playfulness and seriousness, then they could be flirting with you. Do they look deep into your eyes, subtly touch your hand, give you a good ol' wink? Well, they don't need to do that to flirt with you, but it would give you a clear idea of whether or not they were flirting with you. 5. Where do you want to go on a date? Or if they ask you out? Hmm, you don't say. Have someone been asking you a few of these questions? Maybe they've even flirted with you. And then they ask you about your date preferences. Odds are they may be trying to see whether you like them before making a full move towards asking you out. They're trying to give you a hint, and see where you'd like to go on a date so they can ask you on that perfect date you described. Or maybe they have asked you out on a date. Yeah. I'm gonna guess they're attracted to you. The question now is, do you want to go out on that date with them? So, has someone asked you these questions before? Have you asked anyone else these questions? Or will you ask your crush these questions now? Hmm, do you believe in love at first sight? No, I'm not flirting with you, but here at Psych2Go, we do appreciate our Psych2Goers. We really like you, friend. Had to let them down easy. We hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did, don't forget to click the like button with someone, a friend, family member, or crush. Ask them a question, too. Subscribe to Psych2Go and hit the notification bell icon for more content like this. As always, thanks for watching.


It's a great privilege for me to be back for the third year in a row to raise the flag of pride on the Parliamentary Colline. It's also really important that this be open to everyone, and I see a whole bunch of MPs from different parties. I see Green Party Leasers, Elizabeth May, a whole bunch of Liberals, including Cabinet Ministers, a handful of others as well. We're going to get a group picture with all MPs up on stage afterwards, so if you could slowly make your ways to the edges, that would probably be better, the MPs. And we can celebrate, as we always do, that this goes beyond partisanship, because over the past years we've made some significant progress as a country on recognizing and celebrating the rights not just of LGBTQ2 communities, but of all Canadians. We've moved forward in significant ways because respecting each other's rights is foundational to a country that understands that differences should and can always be a source of strength, never a source of weakness, that we are stronger and more resilient when different identities, different communities come together around a shared vision of a stronger future, of a better neighborhood, of a better country for us all, and that is truly what we are celebrating. But specific to the LGBTQ2 community, we've made some incredible advances over the past year. Now, trans-Canadians have full protections under the human rights legislation. That is something that we've added. And I was reminded that last year at this ceremony, I made a commitment that we would move forward on expunging the criminal records of those convicted of offenses just because of who they loved. And that, I can tell you, we're receiving royal assent for C-66, that piece of legislation tomorrow. So it took one year to get that through. And of course, many of you will remember last November, we formally apologized for decades of institutional discrimination by the Canadian government, by various organizations like the Armed Forces and the police against LGBT community members. And this is something that we continue to know we have a lot more work to do, because we do have a lot more work to do. And for everything that government can and should be doing and support in changing legislation, there is a lot more than each and every one of you in your communities across the country can do of promoting not just tolerance, because when you think about it, tolerance, use tolerance in a sentence, I tolerate you. That doesn't sound very warm and fuzzy. That's not what we should be aspiring to as a country. When you say I tolerate you, it's I agree that you have a right to exist. Just don't get in my face too much about it. We shouldn't be talking about tolerance. We should be talking about love and acceptance and friendship and respect. That's what we should be aiming for and that's what we should be building and that's something on each and every one of us as citizens that we can and should do. And if you're looking for inspiration, you're seeing us around here and all these politicians and these big buildings, they can make real changes happen. Well, I want to introduce you to someone that Randy mentioned, someone who's been an inspiration for me with the quiet actions that he's taken that led to a real concrete change in his community. Now, if you know your geography, you know that Owen's sound isn't perhaps the first place you think of when you think of diversity and tolerance and acceptance. But my friend here, Ryan Brown, has proved that it is. He stepped up and realized that Owen's sound didn't have a pride parade and decided that he needed to organize it. He wasn't too sure of how it was going to happen, but he got a few organizations involved and suddenly it snowballed and more than a thousand people walked through the streets of Owen's sound, 25 different floats, local leaders of all different levels coming together to show that pride is something we all can and must be involved in, that it goes beyond identity politics. It goes beyond partisan politics. It's something that each of us need to share that message, that we are there for each other in respect, in acceptation, and indeed in love, like your t-shirt says. So thank you so much, Ryan. Give me a hug. Thank you so much. And Ryan and I are going to raise the pride flag while Randy raises the trans flag and we're going to make history for the third year in a row on Parliament Hill.