Don't float Christmas card. Who's ready for this next battle make some noise special one right now? It's a one-rounder. It was set up on five days prep because unfortunately the Who dropped out one dropped out.    They said how do you feel about battling soul I said what big news a title match Harry Baker versus so it's Jew He'll lose that relatively new chain like they just sold it to they said no soul Jitsu known for exposing dudes I thought well I better not wear any old shit shoes You are more annoying than having to sneeze with no tissues You're more annoying than karaoke with no tissues I didn't know whether to write bars or jokes for you sir Baker brought the best of both like hovis, dude Cuz on the first day of the Christmas card Bama Lam sent to me Somebody doesn't prayer properly for battles He's got another battle See when I got this with five days prep I thought excellent I'll try and set some time aside and put a little bit of effort in when you got the fireplace prep He thought excellent. I'll do another round about how I didn't prep for this HK Ain't worth the ink from your pen, but then seventh birthday main stage you did it again the biggest battle of your life Why should that be different unless? You were saving yourself for a last-minute one round of it the Christmas of Because I was so shit super the hundred bullets Here's what I know through this main stage battles are like Helen of Bonham Carter's lawyers settled that once with her partner They don't suit him And that is one of the differences with this blagger in me how we've reacted to the chance that we've had in the league Because bullets shouldn't be a problem with a man from the street But you were given the shot and couldn't handle the heat About what I'll say pamphlet matter making big steps with vets.  It's got confound He was like Corvette Because he was like Corvette like an American car. I was like cheer rookie See if you think we must hang like American cars you've got like you can't afford focus Camera enthusiast and wants to buy an expensive lens Or an American car Because oh This is where it gets exciting Because I've forgotten what I'm right You're new this when you choke is kind of whack, bro. When I choke quill promised that he'd have bitters back up Where is quill There is quill You were joking I can go to the bar grab you some coax That's a couple bars that you haven't for soft. Yeah, now you can carry over the floor now You're basically a polished turd that never brings a polish third The first rounds are amazing your last rounds are terrible today. That is the same thing so this could be incredible I Thank you for stepping in when and Rob stay ducking then next on the menu.  This is so he's still getting sun that is peaked like summer souls. This is You're from Redbridge Redbridge Known for his award-winning parks and open spaces Redbridge, yeah, he walks around with that golden gate.   I know it's a tad bit late, but they have given me Harry Baker So I've got to say thanks to ban today card This has come as a massive favor seeing that our stars compliment each other like Danny J first Frankie Fraser I took a leaf out of pamphlets page just to say that I rap it greater when I'm multi and Harry Baker with Harry Baker It's Harry Baker rhymes with Harry I'm gonna keep rhyming Harry Baker with Harry Until I remember why I actually wrote No, real shit I Won't get I usually rap about how the grams of came bring me major stacks of paper Or I talk about guns, but in this crowd guns shop nigga, that's a taser For battles, I usually prep the day before the battle day or actually later But this time it was two days prep you can thank me later Actual bakers need to make dough to make dough so they need to make No This Baker makes dough with poetry I make dough by growing trees not the smoking trees that cocoa leaf that makes a product with the potency to turn motherfuckers into Overdosing things I could do bars.


And the Supreme Court has upheld up to last Suley's election as governor of Nassarua state following a five-member panel's decision to dismiss four appeals filed by PDP candidates Emmanuel David Ombugadou for unmeritorious reasons. Justice Kudirat Kekere-Drum ekon resolved all issues against the PDP and Ombugadou and dismiss their appeal. Notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


I called one of my friends and I was telling him about this crazy idea that just had the previous night and then he said, I can already see it, San Francisco love tours. My name is Alan and I am the founder of San Francisco Love Tours, a sightseeing company that captures the essence of what San Francisco is and the reason why we love it. My previous life before I started doing tourism, I was in, you know, tech finance. But once I left that, I knew I wanted to do something different, something more with the people of San Francisco. I just started putting my passions and my love together.  The first year I did every single tour. It was a lot of work, but I got to meet thousands of people on our first year. Their energy filled me with energy. We have a total of eight buses, six dedicated to San Francisco. And this 72-V-Dub was the very first one that we got. We got it in Los Santos, California. We negotiated with a family who had it. Then we met Maddie, who is our artist. She definitely had all this talent. She was living in one of her buses. That bus actually is one of our buses in our fleet now. I think when you work with vintage vehicles that are 45 years old, you are going to have a challenge in maintenance. And so we created relationships with, you know, mechanics nearby. What we did about six months ago is that we were able to finally hire a full-time mechanic. You know, one of the things that we would love for people to walk away with when they take our tours is to be inspired. To be inspired about the stories, about the music, about the people, about the sights that they've seen here in San Francisco. So when they go back to their hometown, where there is, you know, a little town in America or another big city in New York that you walk away saying that, yes, I can, and that will make some changes in my life. You want to inspire them to move forward with their lives. To start any company, it's my genuine belief that you must have the passion because the passion is going to take you through the times that are hard, through the times that you need to overcome the lows of the business.  When I go and meet people and I tell them what I do and I just think, oh, I have this company, San Francisco, I've seen that. Oh my gosh, I love that so much.


This paper presents a comprehensive evaluation of the state-of-the-art LIDAR SLAM algorithms for various combinations of LIDAR sensors and SLAM algorithms. The authors benchmarked the algorithms with a multi-modal LIDAR sensor setup, including spinning in solid-state LIDARs, as well as LIDAR cameras, mounted on a mobile sensing and computing platform. They extended their previous multimodal multi-leadier dataset with additional sequences and new sources of ground truth data. Additionally, they proposed a new multimodal multi-leadar SLAM-assisted and ICP-based sensor fusion method for generating ground truth maps. With these maps, they matched real-time point cloud data using a normal distributions transform, NDT, method to obtain the ground truth with a full six degrees of freedom, six DOEF, pose estimation. Furthermore, they included new open-road sequences with global navigation satellite system real-time kinematic, GNSS-RTK, data and additional indoor sequences with motion capture, MOCAP, ground truth, complementing the previous forest sequences with MOCAP data. Finally, they performed an analysis of the positioning accuracy achieved, COMPRA. This article was authored by Ha Seer, Ching Ching Lee, Shien Jia Yu, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Live from Seattle, Washington. It's theCUBE at Tableau Conference 2014. Brought to you by headline sponsor, Tableau. Here are your hosts, John Furrier and Jeff Kelly. Okay, welcome back. You're going live in Seattle for Tableau's data 14 conference. Hashtag data 14. If you want to join us, go to crowdchat.net slash data 14. I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon Angle. This is theCUBE. Our next guest is Ben Jones, Senior Product Marketing Manager with Tableau. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, John. Tableau, a lot of great press, a lot of great community. Is that part of the plan? Is that part of the marketing plan? Or is it just the great product sells itself? Huge success on the product side. Clearly the product announcements are here, but great community. People have Kool-Aid injection of Tableau. People are happy. Right, no doubt. I mean, the product is great, but you're right. I mean, there's a community aspect that's hard to engineer. And it seems like it's grown out of a number of factors, one of which Tableau Public, the product I manage, is literally a free version of the software that anyone can use and share data online. So it just creates this network of individuals who are kind of having this dialogue around data in the public arena. So it's a lot of fun.  Thanks for sharing the data and the commentary. And then we started talking to her and she was a woman who was changing careers and she was talking about how I'm not going to name names, but the other older vendors, big upfront license, huge heavy lift to deploy, a lot of work to get the time to value. And it brings up the comments that Jeff and I were talking. So the question for you to comment on is, is that we are living in a cloud, born in the cloud kind of mentality where people are shifting into new roles and the freemium model is working. So can you comment? Obviously that's in your wheelhouse. So, you know, how has that played out? Obviously people play with it, get addicted. Obviously visualization is like the eye candy, but the data behind is real. So how has that rolled out? I mean, obviously freemium makes a lot of sense, but from a business perspective, share some color on how that's rolled out. Well, I think one of the remarkable things about Tableau Public is just that since it's free, journalists around the world can use, and bloggers as well can use Tableau to visualize everything from the World Cup to the election results. And so it allows people like me, for example, when I first got involved and started using Tableau, I was able to download Tableau Public and start to use it. And like you said, really get hooked on it. So it creates, I think, an environment where people can try and when they learn our software they see that it is actually very easy to use. And so like you said, they really start to get addicted to it. And so I think it was just a great stroke of genius on the part of the founders to sit there and say, hey, Tableau is really all about visualizing data, seeing and understanding data. Not just company data, we're talking about any data, data that's in the public arena even. And so how can we go about allowing individuals to talk about data at a higher level than just within companies? So it's created a little bit of a momentum happening where like you said, you know, I'm included in this as well of people changing careers to join. What they see is just a really a way of speaking data. And so, talk about how journalists would use that. So obviously we love data, we have our data, we have a data science team. Right. Advertising is kind of going away in the sense of the old banner ads, but people want, the data seems to be the asset in media. What can we do with Tableau Public? Well, a journalist, you know, they're going to kind of be making a point and data journalism is a term you'll see out there and it's really becoming more and more common, but the reality is data journalism has been around for a long time. What's different now is that there's a whole lot more data. The tools that are available to the journalists to make use of that data are becoming easier and easy to use like Tableau. And so we work with, you know, journalists like, say for example, Sarah Riley at the New York Daily News, Buena Serres has a, you know, organization called La Nación and they're just essentially augmenting, enhancing their stories with interactive data, day in and day out. And it's really a global phenomenon. So sometimes we'll look at the top 10 visualizations on Tableau Public worldwide and, you know, we'll see visualizations from people as far from Chile to Belarus. And so sometimes the top 10 doesn't even include one from the United States. So it's very global and a journalist sees data as a way to make a very compelling point. So is it integrated into the journalist workflow or is it into more in the CMS side?  There's Twitter data, we have that as well. Is it, where do you guys sit? Who uses Tableau, the actual writers or the? Yeah, in some cases. So John Shown, who's a reporter at CNBC in New Jersey, creates the visualizations himself. Sometimes we'll see a newsroom have a team of specialists that work with data and they'll be paired up with a reporter to create an interactive graphic for that reporter's story. But since the software is easier to use, you do see individual reporters themselves, bloggers as well, creating their own visualizations for their own stories. In fact, even sometimes finding the story based on the data discovery itself. So the Nate Silver was here last year or here, but in DC you guys had him. Obviously he's the poster child for data journalism because the election coverage. How he's doing at ESPN, we'll see how that plays out, but that is the trend. I mean, you see that, and obviously he was speaking last year, any new updates around that front that you can share in terms of trends around that kind of new role? Oh, even since last year when Nate gave his great keynote, we've seen more data journalism specific sites launch. So the upshot by New York Times, Vox, these other sites where the data is really front and center in a broad swath of their content. Where I think it's going though, actually believe it or not, is that it's just gonna become part and parcel to the way a journalist does their work. It's not going to be necessarily something that's a specialty anymore. For example, video journalism or photo journalism, those were buzzwords of the past as well. Now let's just integrate it into the way those stories are told. So I think the same will be true of interactive data within the sphere of journalism. You're just going to start to see, and in the years down the road, that's just kind of expected it to be a way to articulate a point, and hopefully what will follow there is an increase in the numerical literacy of the population. Also adds a new element to the production, right? So I mean, to me, obviously you tweet, people tweet all the time, oh yeah, had the hotdog for launch, or they type about something specific, domain expertise type chats, tech chats. We have the crowd chat application container, engagement container. So data's being acquired. So how do you guys view that these new sources of data, and how does someone get their data into Tableau Public? Yeah, it's a great question. So Tableau Public is a version of the application that can connect to Excel files, text files, access databases, but you know, there's all these storehouses out there. This is open data movement where virtually every country around the world has some kind of a portal where you can go get and download that data. But it's not really easy to make a lot of sense of what's in there, it's accessible, but it's not necessarily something that people are gleaning insight from unless someone does the work of visualizing it. So where Tableau comes in is it's the tool to be able to connect to all that raw data and create it out of that visualization that people can understand. And what we see is dwell times go up. If you have a story with a data visualization on it, the reader's going to stay. There's something for them to do. They can check it out. They can explore the data for themselves. Sharing goes way up, especially if you let them drill down to their part of the country. Maybe there's a zip code lookup and I can see what this story, maybe it's IRS contributions are like in my neck of the woods, they're much more likely to share on social when you give them that kind of a story. You know, Ben, I kind of smile because sometimes I say a lot of things that are wrong, but sometimes I say things that are right. I wrote a post in 2008, I think it was, on my old blog before I started SiliconANGLE and it was around Twitter and I said, data's the new development kit. Back in the old days when I was writing software, you had to get a development kit, a Microsoft or what not. And that ends up becoming a true thing now. You guys essentially have created an instruction for programming where data is the programming tool, where the data is the resource. So, can you share some updates on how the product itself has changed from even go back into a few years back into today, to make it more user friendly? So that the fact that journalists can do it is a testament, but what other new things are you adding? Yeah, well when we launched Tableau 8, the game changer there for the journalist was what we call free form dashboards. So instead of having to arrange all of your views in a tiled fashion, you can drag and drop and place things in a floating manner. That really opened up a whole world of multimedia. So you can put a video in the corner of the timeline and have that interact with the data itself. You can float a logo or an image or a picture from the story right there within the chart or dashboard. So that was a big game changer that was last year. What we've done this year, which I think has been huge for journalists is frankly making it available on the Mac. I mean, newsrooms across the world very commonly use Mac. So we were real excited to this Tableau public team to be able to finally go into those newsrooms and not have to ask them to use Bootcamp or one of those virtual machines. And they love that. Where it's going from here, we've got this wealth of author generated content on our server and it's not always as accessible as we want it to be. So we're really seeing a great pathway forward for Tableau to make searchable, findable, more integrating into a community style site where people can follow their favorite data visualization author or comment on a vis or things like that or some things we're exploring. But we're really trying to take this momentum and build on it.  It's what I think about pretty much every minute of the day when I'm not relaxing. But data is the gravity around a lot of the stuff going on around conversation. So when you look at the social web, you look at the communities that you guys have, sharing and collaboration is a big part of the new production that we see. So you're starting to see some of that now with some of the crowdsourcing stuff with our crowd chat. You see people sharing content with attribution, what not, it's going on, but that's the trend. So what are you guys doing on the sharing front? Because when data gets created and visualized, it is a presentation. I mean, infographics is a good example of an elementary version of it. But when you start getting into someone who's got some unique skillset or domain expertise, they might stumble upon a little nugget that can open up a conversation, open up more content. Do you guys have a sharing element? Yeah, Tableau Public was really built for sharing. So at the bottom of every visualization is a share footer that doesn't just share the visualization, but it shares the version of the dashboard that the reader has filtered to. So in other words, if my home state is Washington and there's election results, I click on Washington and I see the results in my area. When I share that using the footer in a Tableau Public visualization, it's sending to my network and my connections that version of the dashboard that focuses in on the part of the story that I wanna share and tell. But also, Tableau Public, sort of like YouTube, you can get the embed code and we really love to see it when there's republishing occurring, when people are talking about visualizations that others have made or posted. So yeah, and not only that, but it's a great way for people to be able to learn. You can download the workbook itself with Tableau Public, kind of reverse engineer what that person did and see how they made what they made. So it's a great way for people to learn some best practices and some techniques. Have you had any inquiries about the CMS side of the business? One of the things I always rant in town that fits on the table is, I mean, we love WordPress, don't get me wrong, but WordPress is kind of old and clunky. CMS.  You're seeing these companies having a whole new style, kind of an unstructured, anyway, canvas, you guys certainly showed a lot of that demo on stage. Do you see you guys fill in that gap or some other cool CMSs out there because if you have the ability to pull in multiple visualizations, the storytelling becomes really compelling? Well, with the embed code, the goal is to be able to let the Table of Public Author take their visualization and drop it right into whatever CMS they're using. It works better. So WordPress is an example of WordPress.org is an example of a CMS where it works particularly well. A lot of these newsrooms have very customized CMS applications and sometimes that can be tricky, but there's usually workarounds where you can embed an iframe or something of that nature, but I don't see us really kind of becoming a CMS, more allowing visualizations to- But you'll support it through the iframe, basically. Yes, right. That's pretty much the vehicle. So similar to YouTube, our servers on the Table of Public Side are serving up these interactive visualizations, and so the goal is just allow that journalist, blogger, researcher to be able to put their work in whatever site it is that they want to share. One of the things I also write for creative forms, and they don't let you put iframes except for like a short list. Hopefully that will change, but is that a common thread or is that just a one-off? No, so I think it was more common in the past. WordPress.com is an example which is obviously a very popular blogging platform where you needed to have a short list embed code to be able to have an interactive iframe serve it up on the site, but going forward, I'm not seeing that incurring more. I'm assuming more, as long as it's the HTML5 compliant, there's a lot of ways in which those CMSs, for the most part, the ones that where we see trouble are where they're, I would call them, antiquated versions of CMSs, or very highly customized to the point where it's difficult because of all of the, just the elaborate nature of the CMS that got built, but the standard ones are pretty easy to use. So we're going to have to kick the tires. I was talking to Dave Martin, also some of the product guys, we're going to try to get some of our crowd chat data into Tableau to get that visualized, because I just love what you guys have done with the product. But to change gears, I want to get your perspective on journalism, since we're talking about journalism. There seems to be kind of like a change going on in journalism. What's your take on it? And I'll see, with now more connected mobile devices, now with visualization, do you see any bright spots in journalism and what do you wish you could change? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, it's an interesting time for journalism. Obviously, we've seen some, it's a tough profession, right? I mean, a world from a global standpoint, obviously we're seeing some stories of these, some tragic type stories coming in, but also freedom of the press is slipping in a lot of countries, and so that's a concern. But regardless, and even in some countries where maybe they're less democratic than others, we're definitely seeing journalists have an interest in showing interactive data. That's, I think, a positive trend. And as I mentioned before, I hope that it becomes just part and parcel to the way a journalist does their job. But I had the chance to go to the New School University in New York City last week and work with Scott Klein, who's a top data journalist at ProPublica. And I'll tell you, these university students, designers, journalists, they really took to it. They seemed like they were very excited and passionate. They had a lot of fun interacting with the data. So I think there's a new wave of journalists coming in that are really going to find this to be, you know, an activity that's not as intimidating. Yeah, I mean, one of the things, obviously, we have all open content, so we believe in open data, sharing the data, whether on theCUBE or on the blog or on Wikibon. But we interviewed Andrew Kreitzer from Young Kid coming out of a UVA. Okay. He's a total tableau junkie. Right. And it's changed his career because he's just in math, not in a stats geek, but he's an operational guy. He's basically turned it into a career now working at LinkedIn. He was on theCUBE earlier. That's the trend. The younger generation, this is like oxygen to them, right? It's like a PowerPoint. Yeah, I think so. And we're just having a conversation over breakfast with one of my colleagues from India and same thing over there. You know, they're really trying to find their own identity with these tools and try to find the way to express, you know, what they want to express. But a great example of a journalist who has really risen to the top using Tableau Public is Chad Skelton, who's based out of Vancouver, British Columbia. So he just recently won the Global Editor Network's Data Journalism Portfolio Award of 2014. So four of his five visualizations that he submitted were Tableau Public visualizations.  So it's nice to see, like you said, these individuals finding a way to use the tools and their disposal, tell the stories of our time, really, and get recognized for that. So I think it's gratifying for all of us, especially on my Tableau Public team, when we see journalists really, you know, earn quite a number of accolades for their work. Yeah, and any data journalists out there watching, you know, we're hiring at SiliconANGLE, so if you're interested in the geek side, we certainly love data. And we have our own little data practice. The thing I want to bring up now is, my little always rant about the blogging and publishing is, and the media is, it's a real time game now, right? So you have the old model of, I need to get a source material, I got to call someone up, validate the facts, more and more you hear sources close to the company, because the Wall Street Journalist trying to beat that blogger and you got a zillion percent journalist now. So data becomes instant source material. So one of the trends that's really a bright spot is, the source material is right there. Yeah, it's there to mine. It's there to mine. So the new journalism technique is source material. Obviously, Rolodex, Twitter. Yeah. Two, data to back it up or fact checking. So that seems to have, the lack of good data has kind of dumbed down the journalism and people have been complaining about the content mills and the lack of source material. But now, you guys have this tool. Right, well, a couple examples. One, after the Boston Marathon bombing, we saw the Guardian in the UK mine Boston.com for, I would say is maybe one of the positive sides of the story, which was all the individuals that came out and offered a couch, a hot shower, a hot meal for people who were stranded in the area. So what they did is they mined a message board and they turned it into a timeline of data visualization showing how these offers began kind of pouring in. But that data was there and it was accessible for anyone and they were the creative thinkers to go and mine that, turn that into a visualization that told a very compelling side of the story. Another example, last year with Obamacare, there was a period of time where the data was not very easy to find, it was not forthcoming and people were looking for it. So we did see some journalists get very creative with looking at social sentiment, looking at what people are saying as a way to discuss the story. So the data's out there, whether it's being generated in social media, whether it's posted to some portal by a government or whether you mine it some other way, there's tools like import.io, which is a tool that, similar to Tableau, you don't have to program, you can go in and actually go and mine that data. Import.io, they're based out of the UK and we see a lot of times where someone will use import.io to go find and mine a website for data, connect that data once they have it with Tableau and then they're off and running. So it's getting easier and easier to the point where you don't have to be an expert programmer to get this done.  So the emphasis is on data prep. So import.io, tools like that, data prep is a huge issue and an opportunity for you guys. What are you guys doing on the data prep slideshow versus for the journalists who aren't the programmers who might not be really fluent in these toolings, what can we do as journalists to be better data preppers? Well, a lot of times we'll see 80% of the time spent on a project is what we call data munging or wrangling or in Chris Dolti's keynote yesterday morning, I think he showed a tool which is going to be a game changer for journalists because you'll be able to download spreadsheet from the federal government which has headers and is formatted awkwardly and has comments in the footers and merged cells and in the past that would have been a nightmare to work with, right? You'd have to spend forever turning this thing into a workable version and so what Tableau is doing is investing in features to be able to automatically go in and detect where the data is, make that something much, much easier to connect with to try to minimize the time spent wrangling of these data. So that's a top priority for you guys. Oh, absolutely. The easier it is to connect to your data, the more likely it is that you're going to get your insight out of it and it's all about time to insight. So Ben, thanks for coming on theCUBE. I'll give you the final word. What are you excited about these days besides your product, outside of your product? What's getting you all jazzed up? Obviously you're active on the social channels.  The world's transforming. DevOps born in the cloud, a whole new era of modern infrastructure and new benefits to come. What are you getting excited about? I mean, the growth itself is exciting. Our team's growing. So we get to work with more talented people. But with Tableau Public, every month someone comes out of the woodwork as being an incredibly talented individual who really changes the way we think about the way data can be shared. So I'm just excited about the next year and who we get to meet. And what's the big mega trend you think that's powering the opportunity for you guys? Ease of use, right? I mean, it's really a UX thing. I mean, to the point where this can become something that's simple that anyone can do. I mean, it really doesn't have to be something that only a specialist can do. So that to me, I think is the part of what's fueling our growth, is just the fact that we're trying to reach out and let anyone at any level of the organization make use of their data. So Ben Jones, senior product marketing manager at Tableau, talking about Tableau Public for journalists, for normal people who can put stories together, data and be participating in the consumerization of journalism, I guess was a good term. Ben, thanks for coming on. You really appreciate it. This is live in Seattle. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break. Thank you, John.


One of the relatively new research areas that we're planning to develop is understanding much better the role that animal-sourced foods, meat, milk and eggs play in human nutrition. We're now beginning to realise that animal-sourced foods are a critical source of some really important nutrients, not only protein but micronutrients like zinc and iron, which are extremely important to some of the most vulnerable groups. They're particularly important for women and they're really important for young children for 1,000 days of life. But if we were to understand how animal-sourced foods affect human nutrition, we really need to understand how food is distributed at the household level, so who is eating what? And because those decisions are usually made in the household by the woman, understanding that dynamics is going to be critical if we're going to understand the role that meat and milk and eggs play in nutrition. So understanding the decision-making process, how households make decisions and the central role of women in those processes is going to be critical if we're going to get a better understanding of the role of livestock in nutrition. And that's a relatively new area of research for us.


Going on everyone Sam here late in sports cards ripping three boxes of 22 tops stadium club baseball for Thanks, Zach Rory B. Good luck Rory All the hard work right I know god, that's the best part got what to Boxed opera Jaren Durant Yeah, no the Rory break as well red foil Scherzer Weird this entire like case has been this way Like all that's messed up like the way that it's supposed to be like the inserts backwards trade turner for the Dodgers now a Philly Mariana red foil Got rookie auto Nick Fortez for the Marlins Yeah, trade Turner did get paid Holy yes, he did Lars Newport He's a very efficient hitter better like you have a great year last year, but the important bad 338 So he's at like his average is what you go for and he's a good defender. Yes, very fast good defender So Derek Jeter chrome J rod rookie McMahon Game used Nationals Jersey. That's sick. Yeah That's awesome SG Anthony Anthony backup quarterback Yeah, oh man. Yeah, that's the dream life right there Rice and stop red a lot of guys made a lot of money and never touched that field. Yep, like Chase Daniel, dude career earnings of like a hundred million Joe Ryan read Because like punter there's a lot of things you could do wrong, you know, you can mess it up or something You get fired quickly. Yeah Back up quarterback. I mean as long as you don't go out there Yeah, as long as your guy stays healthy and you don't do anything you're good to go Zach short Rookie order prayed and get hurt.  Yeah, I saw Ben Nunez shoes with the XFL. That's kind of wild.  Let's go Miramar Patriots. Nice about that. That's awesome Contreras black foil and base. I'm glad for Gina poor guy was such a meme for so many years, especially with like the The jets like when you got punched in the face Yeah, remember that because John was out for like eight weeks We've lost the starting job that way Ricky Henderson Nice one there Ericko red. Oh, yeah, there's a pain your rookie in there Jonah don't for the nationals. Was he good?  Yeah You're not wrong. No, not at all Zach short rookie auto. Nice Colton welker black foil McCutcheon Hey, I think McCutcheon was just not stamped, right? base red Josiah Gray face PGA golfer. Yeah That's stressful. Oh, yeah, four days of 18 holes and you're walking it. That's true There's a Yanni Hernandez to 10. Oh rookie auto nice one there those Hands team hands team's a good one Yeah, I'm in I'm back up quarterback all day That's the way to do it. That's for sure. I heard that I would play nothing That was a PGA golfer. I'd let my sponsorships go win one tournament and that would be it Jeremy Pena Yeah back up quarterback man, hold the clipboard. That's all you got to do and pray you don't have to go in Just like he said chrome David right Mike trout First place Base couple more to go here base Ronesy contraris and base. All right, Rory. We are on to box number three and final the hats back on Wow, and they guys see today We've got Bobby went junior rookie for the Royals Box stopper. I just break his lasted forever There's a wander rookie red Moncada. That's kind of cool Ryan Sandberg on the members only nice Super short print congrats on that Rory Rhino Oh, yeah There's Peyton Henry for the Marlins city connector is he Come on man, you serious that's the show on right there.  Got Jansen junk for the angels I'm out of control. Yeah, man losing it over here Losing it Colton welker orange That was out of control Be read You can't go back now You tell me I only hit that that walk off that show Congress Or did he actually physically like say something even make it right? Aaron Ashby blackfoil And he did it Never forget that Strowman watch him run them bases man. Oh, yeah, that's like what yeah Live for right there. No, no, just an upset young Philly span Sean's out of control Hans Krause Red rookie. Oh, yeah, Jimmy Rollins is fire. Yeah, he was so good really good. He does announcing our like Yeah, yep Freak Scoobal I wish I'd be an upgrade from anybody who came out of my high school Say a Suzuki we had like one MLB air No, because you know the issue with my high school was like I went to a public school So and it's Connecticut. So it's not necessarily known for sports, but We had like two really good prep schools around like and everybody who is good would just go and go to prep school So everybody who has left it are like all of our high schools and rival high schools were never gonna obviously go anywhere nowhere like important and Last pack Rory. Good luck, buddy Gladdy, Jr. Chrome Nolan Ryan. I Love that one with the Labrador that'll do it for your break there Rory. Thanks as always my man appreciate it We'll get it right out to you, buddy


Thank you. Many thanks to everybody. Obviously, great motivation for all of us and many thanks to Jury, right? Many thanks to forum and to you too sir. These are not, you know, these are tough times and good times. Both times, it's a good motivation for all of us. So many, many thanks.


Hey, what's good boys, Malibu Wheel of Mutt episode 2, although I don't even know what episode Wheel of Mutt's on right now, I never do. I do want to apologize last episode, had some recording issues. I think I got them ironed out here, but also this is the last Wheel of Mutt I'm doing with my travel set up, so we'll be back in business soon enough. I got my basic white girl drink, the gas station classic, bro these bust down so hard. I got my breakfast, shabbani breakfast smoothie, and a banana. But guys, have I ever shown you guys how I can deep throw a banana? Oh, same for another time. Today, we need to worry about getting another W. Last episode I know it's discombobulated, I do apologize. Technology is difficult enough, especially when you try to like record on a mobile setup like this, but we're making it work. The alternative is I don't post nearly as often as I do, and I want you guys to get heaters damn near every day. As of right now, our record is 3 and 2, which means we're two wins away from a playoff berth, and we're one loss away from being sent home. Resetting this entire team and starting a brand new season. Now I really don't want to do that. Also this is a random thought that popped in my head, but what would you guys think of a double or nothing grand finale when I did an entire season of double or nothing in one video? It randomly popped to my brain, I wanted to see what you guys think, so let me know if you wanna see that.  Either way, dude, I think if we can iron out this offensive line and make the playoffs, this will undoubtedly be one of my favorite wheel of mutt teams actually of all time. We've got Alvin Kamera, a halfback who can get Texas routes. We've got Justin Fields who is absolutely insane so fast, so dominant, can throw a ball anywhere, and one of my favorite cards of all time, the Nigerian nightmare fullback. We've also got 93 Jay Jedis, as we know is insane. We got Mike Kosicki, he's not my favorite tight end of all time, but he's solid. Then on defense we got Micah Parsons, Troy Palamalu, Champ Bailey, Reavis Island, it's a dope team. Unfortunately, our power-up player, Ed Reid, though, we're five games in. I haven't gotten him an upgrade.  We had a similar issue with Steve Atwater, but eventually I made some monster plays with Steve Atwater and we got back in the game. We'll give it some time, I'm not going to be antsy. As of right now, Ed Reid is getting the job done, and it's a power-up player. I'm not guaranteed an awesome version I have to earn. All right, baby, let's get our wheelspin in. Tito's spending all these years behind bars, so we're going to make the playoffs for my minions. Come on, baby. Come on! Ooh!  This is very realistic, but I got to work on that online. So, 100 rush yards doesn't matter if it's quarterback, fullback, halfback, who gets it doesn't matter. So, if I get between 0 and 99, I get nothing. 100, 100, 99, I get 5. 200 to 299, I get 10 packs. So, we'll have to wait on that one. All right, doesn't help us right now, but that's okay. This team is actually decently filled out. I'm just hoping that this wheelspin can give me a right guard. Oh! Hey! Damn! Okay, it is a bummer because there are awesome 90 overall campus heroes. There's actually a lot of awesome campus heroes, but they definitely have a right guard. I think it's Will Shields, but the big campus heroes, there's Ricky Williams, Michael Crabtree, Derek Johnson, I think, but none of those are good options right now. Yeah, Derek Johnson, there's Jim Taylor, and this right here is exactly who we're looking for. Will Shields, 40k, 87 overall right guard. Our team needed that bad. And I apologize.  Let's see we got on our third and final. Dude, I feel like a beauty vlogger with this shot. But hey, as long as we get a heater. Oh! What are my favorites? What are my favorite wheelspins of all time? House Rules, dubs, times 30k. There is House Rules right now, thanks to the Harvest Promo. I'm just gonna play. If I lose my first game, I literally get nothing. If I win the first game, it's 30k and keeps adding 30k for every win after that. And of course, if you need Madden Coins, make sure to go to instantmaddencoins.com. They sell coins on every single platform. You can also directly buy players or training points. Buying limited and quick selling them is probably the safest route. So I recommend that. This is a significantly better deal than what EA is gonna offer you. And you can get 10% off when using the code MMG. Just use the link at the top of the description. Oh, they updated this. Last time I played this, House Rules, they didn't even have the tug-of-war thing at the top. Reminds me of Superstar KO. Dude, Justin Jefferson's impressed coverage.  Can I get there? Nope, his user is there. There's nobody open.  I'm on that. Oh, Jefferson whip route. Oh my god, he torched him. Oh, Camaro. If Camaro gives a better block there, I actually have a shot. Let's see what he goes for here. Just throws middle, makes a nice pass. All right, I've got one play. Blues. That is 30k. Wow, we needed that, bro. I could have walked away with nothing. I'm gonna run this ball left side of a very strong run game. Oh my god, wait a minute, a coyote with a pancake? I could have ran that even better. I might have been able to touch down that. Oh, a run of his own, but Palomalu is there. See what he's in? Oh, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna run man. I'm gonna see what happens here. I know whip routes are pretty strong against the man coverage, especially Jay Jettas because he's so, oh, good blocks. Good downfield blocks, Camaro. I think we should be able to stop that. I'm surprised he keeps going to the run. I mean, it worked last time, but I don't know. He's got to get more yards. I think I can hit Kosiki. Kosiki. Great route, baby. We're fighting the man coverage. I'm just gonna try and get to the quarterback. Hopefully Michael Parsons can get there. No, he just can't get to the 50. W. Let's go, baby. Michael Vick is dialing something up. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on, champ. Oh, champ. Nice laser. Don't know what I'm gonna want here. Oh, that's open. Maybe hit that window again. Alright, I'm hoping he goes clay pool again. I'm just gonna lurk it. Did he just high ball me? Well, you know what? That's actually poor way to justice because I lost somebody for my first win. Alright, that's okay. That's two wins. 60k to spend on one player. So, 60k for a right tackle. I'm gonna get someone probably just like Willshield. There's not a single 88 overall right tackle in the entire game. Who makes this game? There is 87. Oh, I could get two campus. I can get two campus heroes. I've had this Panay Sewell on like so many occasions, but that's my guy, bro. He's a Detroit lion. I gotta take him once more. Here we go, baby. Right tackle Panay. So, I added two campus heroes. Campus legends, whatever it's called. That's actually awesome. So, now my offensive line is 85, 79, 89, 87, 88. And we get five packs for every 100 rushing yards in this game. We are now an 87 overall with a stacked offense and a slightly not so stacked defense, 88, 0, 86 D. Our top three is nasty. I'm ready for the game. We do of course have the challenge wheel. I fell very, very far short last episode, but that's okay. Well, maybe that's exaggeration. I was almost there. Our challenge wheel today is 12 receptions. Oh, no. He's got that prime time. It's all right. We can fight through this. Look at that top three, baby. 12 receptions. I don't like this. You know why? Because 100 rushing yards is five packs, but my challenge wheel is 12 receptions. Now, the challenge wheel obviously is worth only one pack. So, let's do some simple math here. Let's prioritize the rushing yards and then we can worry about the 12 receptions after that.  I've got him boxed like a... Nope.   I thought he was boxed. I'm on it. I'm on it this time. Oh, we're so close. He hit me with that same thing twice. Dude, that is a demon play.  That did not take him long, although again, this is just like last episode. If I can figure out this one thing, he has to change his whole offense. I'll find with that. Oh, he's got a lot of people down there. I don't know if I trust this anymore. Oh my god. Do I trust it? Let's go. Easy five yards. I'm going to hit him with a play action now. I'm going to hit Camero out of the backfield. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Keep it simple. This guy is going to hate seeing formation after today. I'll tell you that much. Let's get it baby. I don't even know what happened there, but that's 12 yards. Still in linebacker dogs. He doesn't know what I'm going to hit him with.  Hit start and game concede game out of there. Dude, the guy I said skill issue two said what? You know what? I'm going to be honest though.  He got me. He got me. Dude, I can't believe this guy quit though. Profile pictures Justin Fields too. That run from Camero was one of my best of all time and formally and officially I am going to reinstate the rule that if we get a rage quit, we are entitled to an upgrade for our power up players. I mean, that's really good for us. Everything that just happened is really good for us, but every got completely screwed there. There's no possible chance for every to get an upgrade if the guy's going to quit that fast. So we will give Ed Reid his first available upgrade. Also, that kind of claps our challenge wheel too. There was no way for me to get dude. That claps a lot of things. They clap my wheel spin a hundred rushing yards for five packs. I couldn't get that. That is a bummer. Although we do get a win. We lock in our players and we get the rage quit wheel. So I feel like it kind of evens itself out. So Ed Reid is now an 84 overall. He has two more speed already, which is actually crazy. He was at 86 speed, 84. So now he's 88, 86 nasty. Hopefully that little bit of speed will let him get an interception in an upcoming game. And I'm really sorry you guys. I normally might go play another game, but the next game I'm now four and two, which means I'm one game away from either playoffs or one game away from losing. It's winter. Go home. I think I will have to end this video off early, but we do have the rage quit wheel. And you know what? Actually, I'm just gonna pull rank here. I'm also opening a pack. I had an opportunity to get a pack from the challenge wheel and five packs for my wheel spin. And I didn't get any of them. I'm gonna open one pack. Oh, and by the way, the challenge wheel in the playoffs where I can get training packs. There's an 89 plus overall a k a player. So I need to complete the challenge probably in the first round of the playoffs. That'd be awesome. All right. Ali legends pack. This is my one pack. Uh, let's see if he's got any sauce in it for us. Actually, Loki, I would take a kicker. If there wants to be a kicker in here, I wouldn't be mad at all. Christian Wilkins. I don't know if he helps us. I'm at Smith. I don't think he helps us. 88 Keekley. All right, wait a minute. I think 88 Keekley is a nasty pull for us. All right. Defense. Yeah, because we got Drake Greenlaw right outside linebacker and Lawrence Taylor. How is Keekley as an outside linebacker? Oh, he's better as an outside linebacker? Oh my god. He's nasty. We got Keekley, Vanderech and Micah Parsons. I do. You know what? I still need on this team though. I need an elite edge rusher. Obviously, Michael Parsons is one of them, but Michael Strahan. I should definitely try and get a 90 plus right there. All right, range quick wheel and we're out of here, baby. Nice game, gentlemen. Dude, that was so awesome. I really can't believe we got that to happen. See what it is? Our 86 jackpot. So any 86 overall player in the game, I say we take kicker, right? My kicker right now is KD York and that's just so scary. Yeah, let's take a kicker. I could get left guard also, but I mean, we just ran the ball kind of like crazy, like three or four plays. Let's go with kicker. We can worry about left guard, right end, all that stuff. The next one. And you know what's good news? I think Justin Tucker's base kicker card is an 86. I'm really hoping there's a chance there's no 86 overall kicker. Oh, yes. So Harrison Bucker's 86. Justin Tucker is 86. Jay Tuck's the goat. Dude, this is the greatest kicker of all time. I'm going Jay Tuck. Does he get any abilities? I feel like he does not. No, he doesn't. It's kind of weird how that works. Justin Reed's 83 overall gets one, but he doesn't.  He's going to kick further. He's going to kick further and more accurate by far. That's a big rage when we'll pick up. We also added Luke Keekley and two essential pieces to the O-line. This was a massive episode. This is a very important episode. Got our job. We moved to four and two, which means we are one win away from the playoffs. Oh, that's so scary. We're one of the most heartbreaking losses of all time in the second game of the season. So if we can really come back on the playoffs, make it to the Super Bowl and win historic season. Either way, boys, I love you. Thanks for watching as always. I'm sorry I got cut short, but still a heater and I'll see you in the next one. Peace!


Okay, so I'm going to hit this. I'm going to start my screen share. It says you were in a practice session. Are you going to change that. I'm going to change it and I'm going to change it right now and we are. There we go. All right, so we'll get started in just a moment or letting folks in. Welcome friends will get started in just a moment. And I let the room fill up. Until then, I'm going to put a link in the chat box. To tonight's document. And make sure that everyone. And use the chat is open. I'm going to go ahead and get started with tonight's library announcements. Hello everyone. I'm an ESA. I'm a librarian at San Francisco Public Library. One of my biggest jobs is working on our one city one book campaign. And if you have not heard, I hope you've heard because I feel like I've been talking about it for almost a year now. But our one city one book for 2022 was this is your hustle. And so the, the amazing thing with this campaign is I get to work with all sorts of people who are tied to the concept of the book, which ear hustle is a podcast coming out of San Quentin, which brings us to tonight's presenter Peter Mertz, who is a photographer. And I will get to him and tell you all about him in just a moment. The one city one book events, most of them. Some of them were in person and weren't recorded, but some of them were in person and recorded and we had many virtual events they are available on our YouTube channel. I'm going to throw that in the chat in case you missed any of those amazing events because, wow, the people that work in this in the subject of incarceration reentry artist transformation, they are amazing. Let's get that out. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the raw, nutrition lonely people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homelands and as uninvited guests, we want to pay our respects to their ancestors, elders, and relatives of the raw nutrition community. I encourage you to check out a amazing women led group in the East Bay Sigourte Land Trust, and I will put them in the chat in a bit, and follow the work that they're doing they're doing amazing work, and I'm also going to throw down a great reading list. So I want to tell you about some upcoming events we have tomorrow in person at our main library. The Irish Repertory Theater and Fish Ambul will be doing a theatrical reading should be amazing so folks all the way traveling from Ireland. Today, we did a stop in New York City, San Francisco, and LA so we're one of the fortunate stops please come out 530 the correct auditorium. We are back open and available. We're operating in April climate action month, and we will be having our friends of the soulmates of the natural world. The National Park Services will be presenting about forced health and resilience in more and they are always a fun group and informative. We're partnering with our, one of our favorite bookstores on the 24th Street corridor medicine for nightmares, and the diasporic Vietnamese artist network, and we'll be having Jennifer Chang and Diana coin new in in conversation. And so I love an offsite event. Come check out the bookstore if you haven't seen it is gorgeous. April 15 main library learning studio hard to get to fifth floor and then it's way in the back corner but come this is sure to be a great book. It is a top seller, and I'm sure it's going to be very informative. If you've been in the Bay area for any amount of time you know who any sprinkle is so any sprinkle and her partner best Stevens are going to be celebrating Earth Day with a walking tour. We'll meet at Bernal Heights library out front in the amphitheater area. And we will be taking walking to Holly Park and it is so fun we did it last year we have about 40 people, and it is a fun ride so where you walking shoes, the rest for the occasion if you like. So this is an Earth Day eco sex walking tour with Annie and Beth of earth lab. Not to miss, I promise you. Alright, so tonight we have Peter Merz. And Peter is a photographer residing in the San Francisco area for decades he's focused on documenting the work of several arts based nonprofit organizations. He's the co author of paths of discovery, art practice and its impact in California prisons, and the author of X crucible the passion of incarcerated artists. And his books cover 15 years both women and men's prisons, showing images of incarcerated artists engaging in visual performance and literary art forms, more than 100 photos including images of prison towns. And we all know that. Well, if we don't all know I love you all to know how much art does transform people and I think we're going to learn some stuff tonight and see some stuff tonight. Without further ado, Peter Merz take it away. Thank you and it's in the San Francisco public library for this opportunity to present my work of photographing in California State prisons, and thank you for audience for for signing in today. And I'm going to start by sharing my screen. So, as I mentioned, for the last 15 years, I've been driving up and down the state of California to some of the remotest, most desolate corners, where the state prisons are. I visited all 36 California prisons, and I photographed an art class, at least one art class in each of those prisons and some prisons have been that many times. Over the 15 years, one of the products of that project was this book, Excrucible, A Passion of Incarcerated Artists, which I was delighted to have published last year by Daylight Books. But tonight, I think what I'll do is talk not about this product of my photography project, but really I'm going to lift the curtain and take you behind the scenes and show you some of my process of engaging with this photographic project over the last 15 years. And I will say that when I photograph art classes, I have the same focus, which is that I tend to focus on process rather than the art product or the art performance. If I can only visit a class, you know, classes run 10 or 15 weeks, if I can only visit one class, my sweet spot is the second half of the class somewhere in there. So the guys have already started working together, they're hitting their stride, they got no other initial nervousness or jitters, and there's some art product that can be photographed, you know, three quarters of the way through the class. So that's my goal. So, so I'm going to talk to you about process. And the structure I'll use is I thought I would address three of the most common questions I get about this project, which are, how did I get started photographing in prisons that's a popular question. How did I get access to the prisons with a camera over such a sustained period of time. And the third question I'll address tonight is, do folks in prison want to be photographed an important question. So let's start with the first question, how did I get started on this project. I'm not saying myself, but this was the late 70s and I took the job with a nonprofit in burning county called bread and roses, some of you may know of bread and roses. Bread and roses takes free live quality entertainment into institutional settings where people can't get out to see live entertainment. Bread and roses takes performers into senior centers, children's hospitals, daycare centers, drug behaviors, and also jails and prisons. During my three years of working for bread and roses and those subsequent decades since when I've continued to photograph bread and roses programs. I would occasionally go to a program on at San Quentin State Prison. Here is Audrey all of Bay Area. Well, she's originally from Tasmania but she lived in the Bay Area until unfortunately her death some years ago but here she is going into San Quentin this is the Sally Port of San Quentin. And she's going in with some other musicians to perform a concert at San Quentin and this is the mobile home boys who played country Western and Americana on the upper yard and Quentin this way this is. And here's Michael Franti on the upper yard at San Quentin saluting the audience that came out to hear him on this day and also he seems to be saluting Mount Tomopaius which is in the background there. This is Michael from the upper yard at San Quentin. So, one of the days I was photographing a concert at San Quentin I think it was at Franti concert. A man approached me who was working at the prison and he said, Peter I teach art classes here at San Quentin, would you be interested in coming to have a look maybe you could help us document the art classes there. So, sounded interesting to me so I went up and visited the art class and I almost immediately fell in love with the art program and I'll explain why as we go further. But at that point I started visiting San Quentin quite regularly, going back to the to many of the art programs that were being taught at San Quentin so here's. This is a picture of the main gate at San Quentin, the main entrance into the prison. This is North Block housing unit at San Quentin. The San Quentin art studio is just to the left of this picture. And this is North Block from inside the San Quentin art studio. Now I have some. This is a painting by an incarcerated artist his name was Ronnie Goodman who painted this. This is a painting of the San Quentin lower yard. Ronnie was incarcerated for many years. Spent some of that time in San Quentin was an exceptional artist, and he was released some years ago. He struggled once he got out and unfortunately just passed away. But he's done. This is also Ronnie's work of San Quentin. What we're looking at here is the old there was an old building at San Quentin that was there since the 1800s it was knocked down because they needed to build a new hospital, but they love that the old facade. So they left the facade up they knocked the rest of the building down and then they built a new hospital behind that facade so here's this is the setting sun. And this is a painting by Ronnie Goodman of the art studio itself at San Quentin. That was how I got started with this project bread and roses kind of led me into it. So the next thing I want to talk about is how do I get such good access to prison programming particularly with the cameras. As you may imagine, prisons are skeptical of cameras. Well, with regards to my relationship with the Department of Corrections, as you can imagine, working with any large institution or particular security minded institution. It's important to follow the rules, learn the lingo communicate thoroughly, exercise patience, there's all sorts of things that happen that are unexpected in prison. And, and I tried to to streamline the process to make it easy for everyone that I was coming in contact with because I wanted to be able to return to the prisons. So I wanted, you know, to do what I could to make sure that my visit went well. To that end, here's an example of one way that I tried to streamline the process. A couple of weeks before I visit any particular class to photograph it. I have to mail in my equipment list of the all the equipment that I plan to take that day. This is my equipment list. You can see at the bottom it was signed by someone at the prison. This list was then forwarded to the security gate so that when I showed up for my appointment at the prison with all of my gear. There was an officer there who had this and he said, okay, let's open your bags and I want to see everything that you have and we'll check it off against this. So what I've done to streamline the process is I know where everything is in my bag and my cart so that when we, it's really fast for us to go through this. We go through it when I go in and we go through it when I come out. So that's just an example of ways that I can make things easy for the officers with my photography. So another thing I do is I share the photos with the Department of Corrections. Because it's their program this the arts and corrections program that is the main thing that I'm photographing the Department of Corrections was happy to use my photographs to promote this programming and I was happy to let them use my photos. And in fact I maintain an archive of all of my prison art photos for the last 15 years on my website. As you can see, each time I do a new shoot, I create a new folder which goes here this is in reverse chronological order so that you should skip to the top of this stack. And that's, and the archive is searchable on a number of features like the, the prison name, the type of art that's being taught, which could be anything from drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking. So visual arts, also performance arts, music theater, literary arts such as creative writing, and even audio journalism is being taught now in a few of the prisons. Another thing that helped me a lot. And this is not something I could arrange myself but I was lucky enough to develop a supporter in the Department of Corrections who appreciated the work that I was doing. And she's been whenever I go to a new prison and I want to photograph a class there if the prison doesn't know who I am and wants to know why I want to take a camera into a prison. So my friend up in Sacramento and CDC are headquarters. It helps grease grease the wheels for me so that's really appreciate it really helps a lot. Her name is Chrissy Coco Bush feeling she's great. Corrections there are entities that need to coordinate with and stay in contact with for all of my shoots so this little chart is the only one like this we'll have to look at today but let me just walk you through this. And the Department of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation they fund the arts and corrections program and all of their state prisons, but CDC are wisely recognized they don't know how to teach art or run art classes. So they connect they contracted with the California Arts Council. And so money passers from CDC are to see a city. The California Arts Council then works with providers and instructors throughout the state. Now, I just listed three here but there can be as many as 20 at a time. These are the organizations that provide the teachers William James Association when Shakespeare Company Fresno Arts Council actors gang down in the LA area. Each of these teaching organizations, then contracts with one or more prisons. And there are 36 prisons I didn't have them to show all of them here. This is just sort of a sample representative sample. And then there are multiple teachers teaching different subjects in each prison. And then of course they the teachers interact directly with the art students. And either before during or after a shoot I will have connected with someone at every level of this chart it's just how it, how it works. So it's a great it's a great team. All right, let's look at some images. This one is from San Quentin. Now some of the images I'm showing tonight are in the book the excrucible book that I showed you in the beginning and some are not. I'm showing you more of my overall process here not just that book, that one book. This is origami class at San Quentin portraiture. This is Ronnie Goodman on the left the painter. This happens to be at San Quentin as well. This many of the art classes are held wherever they can in chapels and visiting rooms are very common. This is a gymnasium. The rooms are not very well lit. So this man was in the corner of this gym. They had a, they all had their easels set up and the whole class was painting their instructor was there so they painted for three hours. And then the class was over and so they were all leaving. So this man was curious to see what he had been painting on in the dark, basically for the last few hours. So as he was leaving, he stopped in this window light to take a look at his painting by taking pains to coordinate with all of those organizations and smooth things and make things go as smoothly as possible. I do get some benefits had access to all 36 California State prisons. They're actually only 34 now they've been closing the couple in recent years. I get support from all levels of CDCR and from the teaching organizations. My expenses covered by the teaching organization so if I get invited to go down to Southern California, I live in San Francisco area if I get invited to go to Southern California to photograph a class in a prison there, I'll have to spend the night. So the teaching organizations who invite me to do the photography often cover somewhere, or most of my expenses. So during that 15 year period, when I was working on this project for 15 months of that I was actually on contract for the California Arts Council, which allowed me to go to all the prisons, especially the most remote ones. Visiting their two prisons in Blythe, California, which is on the Arizona border right there on the Colorado River, Ironwood and Chacoala Valley and here I am going into Ironwood this day. The sign says no video or filming or picture taking beyond this point. Almost, I think all the prisons have that sign somewhere that I noticed as I'm driving in the course I have special permission so I'm able to photograph beyond that. Okay. Now this is a big question right the folks in prison want to be photographed. So let's think about a few things. Number one images of incarcerated people. They have their state ID badge which has their image on it, and that's maybe re photographed every five or 10 years that they're incarcerated, but it's usually a really bad photo. So I don't think incarcerated people get much comfort from their state ID badge. Another possibility of how they can get photographs themselves is in the visiting rooms when visitors come and incarcerated people go in to meet their loved ones in the visiting room. If they paid $2 they can have one of the prison staff use an inexpensive camera and take a quick snapshot. I've seen a lot of these snapshots that were made in visiting rooms and they're really bad. The colors bad the light is low they're just awful. The only good thing about it is that the incarcerated person can stand with their loved one who's visiting and they can be photographed together so that's really special. But in terms of good photographs of the incarcerated people. Well, they can't get those. Not only that but they don't really have real mirrors in prisons you know they have polished steel plates that shows reflection that you know in the toilet areas. So on the what so. Well, the other thing is that when I show up in the prison with my camera and other journalists go into prisons occasionally but when journalists go into prison and they make photographs. The men or women who are being photographed often never see those photos right it appears in a magazine or newspaper somewhere or they might not even know what the subject of the article is. When I show up and I'm being accompanied by a prison staff person because I have a camera. I'm most likely seen as part of the establishment part of the Department of Corrections like who is this guy and why is he here. So that doesn't work well for me making photographs right I. I think that the photographs I'm making of these art classes, I think the students will love to see them but how do I convince them of that how do I get buy in from him. So, I've developed a process for getting for trying to explain who I am what I'm doing. Now, here's an example. This is before I photograph anyone inside a prison. They must have signed a CDC or 146 form, which is what this is. So this gives me permission to photograph the person who signed it. And I will say, as you might be able to tell, it's a long form, there are a lot of fields, some of which are to be filled in by a staff person and some of which are to be filled in by the incarcerated person. It's hard to fill this in, and particularly for people who don't speak English very well. It's really difficult. So, one of the things I did to try to process this or was I just use a highlighter to highlight just the fields that the incarcerated person needs to fill out, pre populated some of the fields where I could. And then I make 50 or 60 copies of this and take them to the prison, because my escort who is supposed to bring these forms to the shoot usually forgets. And so they don't have to run back out through the security gate to their office in the admin building then come back into the forums. I usually just make sure I always have a stack with me. We asked the students to fill these out before I start photographing. So, another thing I do to try to get myself on the inside of these classes instead of being on the outside is I align myself with the instructors. The instructors are beloved by the students. The instructors are just amazing. They're such a, they're, they're talented artists. The instructors are, but they also are kind. And, and they have a way of engaging with incarcerated people that just really works. So, what I will do is a couple of weeks before I plan to go in and photograph. I'll ask instructor to inform the students that a photographer will be coming. This allows the students to think in advance about whether they want to be photographed. And if they do want to be photographed it allows them to come camera ready. So I asked instructors to inform the students in advance. And then on the day of the shoot. This is an art class but I asked for five minutes at the beginning of each class that I'm going to photograph so that I can address the students. And I take five minutes and I tell why I'm shooting it's to promote prison art programming. I know that I'll be moving in really close but you know give me a signal if I'm getting too close so you can't even concentrate on what you're doing I let him know the flashes. I used to flashes on stands 11 of the flashes are going to flash. So, I really try to just paint a picture for them of what I'm going to be doing. And it helps, I think, these days, many classes no one opts out. Or sometimes there's two or three people who might opt out in the big class. This, the scene we're looking at now the instructor is the woman with her.  It's only one week to performance time and they're having a choreographic problem. It's kind of soft and so she's a little bit stress I think these lies paper dolls in front of the men represent the women in the men's lives. And, and they, and the men during the piece which is a movement and spoken word piece. They interact with these paper dolls. So more of these amazing instructors. This is a mariachi band class. This is Afro Caribbean drumming. This is down in Central Valley, I believe one of the prisons down there. So, so incarcerated people do have mixed feelings about photographs but I've been fairly successful in breaking through that initial resistance. This is actually a charcoal drawing of one of the instructors this Patrick was an art instructor at San Quentin he was a painting instructor. This is a charcoal drawing done by Ronnie Goodman you can see at the bottom it was signed by many of the of Patrick's current and former students. Patrick taught at San Quentin into his 80s I believe he taught there for almost 20 years I believe. And he unfortunately passed away a few years ago, before the pandemic. Another thing the instructors do that makes them so beloved is they are where they can and it varies on how easy or difficult it is from the prison. But the instructors when they can they bring original artwork out of the prison to put it on display in public spaces. This is the San Francisco Opera House, the play of the Beethoven's Fidelio was playing there and of course that's a play about prison life. And so, the teacher of San Quentin had the opportunity to to show some of the inmates artwork here, including as well as context. This is an art exhibit going up in outside of Governor Newsom's office this is a state capital building in Sacramento. This included original artwork from the prison arts collective down in Southern California as well as some of my photographs which are used for context. Another thing that I will do in trying to in trying to give the artists anything that I can so that I'm just not wanting to take pictures. I want to be able to give them something back. I started thinking about families. Now, families are really important to incarcerated minimum and as you can imagine, if you look at all of these many of these people, this artwork was done by the father or an uncle of their child or their nephew niece, daughter or wife. But in addition to men and women making artwork about their family. The artists in prison are very well respected and people commission them to do to do portraits. So in some of these cases, a man might go to an artist with a photograph and say hey could you I love your drawing can you do the drawing of my daughter and in exchange will be made. So some of these may be contracted portraits here and occasionally when I'm shooting and I'm shooting the artwork but occasionally an artist will take the opportunity to speak directly to a loved one through my camera such as this. This is I call these URL strips what I'll do is in that five minutes where I'm addressing the artist before I start shooting when I'm asking if they will opt in for photographs. I give each person one of these slips of paper they're just small slips of paper. And this shows how to find the photos I'm shooting that day on my website so it gives a URL and a click sequence. Now, of course the incarcerated artist is useless to them because they don't have access to the internet, but this is information they can pass to their family members so the family members do look at these the photos that I make of their loved ones. I'm unable to do because I'm not able to give us directly to the people that I photograph inside. There's an over familiar policy that prevents to prevent over familiarization between visitors and incarcerated people. So I'm not allowed to give anything. So what I've done is found a way to post these on my archive on my website and I've got a widget on my website that connects to a third party photo printing service. So people can order prints from my photo archive at their cost at the cost of printing so I don't the money doesn't come to me. I don't get any I don't need any money off of this I do it as a service for the families. They're able to order prints and pay for them to this third party service and it works pretty well so a lot of the inmates so the families will order prints and send them into the inmates. Occasionally also sometimes the teaching artists will make prints and give them are able to get them into the students in some prisons where the rules are a little, a little bit less severe. The first thing I do when I have time at the end of a documenting of an art class. If there's finished work or even in process work, I'll photograph that for the artists. And so I've got some examples of some artwork that I copied here. In this case I just happened to pick the subject of birds to show you some examples of artwork that was made in the prisons. You can imagine why birds are a popular subject for artists in prison. I love the variety of styles to looking looking through actually any, any art class if it's a very beginner class they may all be doing exercises but some of the classes they're advanced students and the student and the teachers usually let the advanced students just work on whatever they want to work on sort of independent study. There's a lot of incarcerated artists will focus on their culture and heritage and really drill down into that sometimes, which you can see here. And yet another thing I'll do if there's time is so I'll check with the instructor and I'll say hey, do you think I'll be timed do a few portraits at the end of the class. And if it's okay with the instructor and I'll offer that to the students and it's usually in very enthusiastically received they love having portraits taken and of course the families love the portraits to. So whenever I can I'll take portraits that's a same Quentin in the background there. This is what Tony Steiner one of the more well known. Folks incarcerated saying Quentin, he's had quite a history. He's out now. Many of the people in the photographs you did some of the photo some of these photos are old, older than I'm showing you tonight and many of the men are out now, including what time.  He did some work on his brain, which is why they see the scar there. California institution for women down in Los Angeles area. The face pain is because this is a theater class, based on the theatrical form of committee adult art day this ancient Italian form, which uses masks to play stock characters. This man is a writer. So now more communication with family members you can see here. Another point is that for some art forms are less dynamic than others visually dynamic. For example, writing class. As you can imagine, it doesn't make sense to photograph people sitting and writing. You can't even read to each other so that's when I make the photographs is during the readings. This man was in a storytelling class. And he was interested in a portrait at the end of the class. And I'll interact with these artists when I'm making the portraits and together well, figure out ideas of, you know, what of how to pose and whether we want to use props or not. That's the three basic questions I wanted to, to explore here in terms of explaining my process. This is a bonus question. I'll throw in one more question. What is the meaning of crucible where they come so crucible you know that the original meaning crucible is a this inert stone container that you apply a lot of heat to and it's used for refining precious metals, such as gold and silver. So in my formulation. I believe that the prison is the immutable stone container. The high energy that's applied is, is just a fact of incarceration and the trauma that got men and women into the incarceration, the trauma that they're experiencing while they're incarcerated. This is this is the energy that. The precious substance that's refined in my formulation is artistic passion. So that's why I came up with the title from the crucible. What what delights come from the crucible. And that I believe is all I had to say about my photography project thank you all for attending. And let me say I'm going to stop share now and hopefully lists. I am here Peter. We did have a question in the audience which was how much time you get per shoot. How much time is each shoot.  So, this is kind of tricky because I have a camera I have to be escorted by a staff member of the prison. So when I asked to go in and photograph a class, I'm basically asking a lieutenant at the prison to spend half a day with me. In which case he can't do any other work because he's got to be sharp running escorting me. So, my preference is, is to attend the entire class, however long the class is most classes, they run two to three hours, something like that. Occasionally you'll have classes that run longer, even, but I'll try to shoot for typically an entire three hour class. I don't want to stop because you never know, you know, soon as I pack my lights up in my camera if the class is still going something will happen that I really wish that I had captured. So I shoot for the entire few hours of each class. That's great it seems like it seems like you I mean your relationship from what I can see with the photos it seems like you're spent like a week with them so that's amazing Peter. Thank you. Jennifer asks how do you choose the classes, if you're able to. That's that's a good question yeah. So, basically that I'm invited by the teaching organizations to photograph a class so I'll go I'll go and photograph any class that where I'm invited basically. And although we'll say that I have become particularly fond of theater and dance classes lately just because they're so visual. But I also love the challenge of photographing a writing class, or, you know, or, or a storytelling class with his less props and movement. Anything. Let's see we got any more questions out there. Let's see let's see I do. There was lots of comments during the while you were talking and lots of good stuff of course like wonderful. Everyone loved that the fact that you set it up so you could share with family members. I think that's amazing to people. Have you ever shot some of the same folks. Have you ever shot someone the same folks in different prisons and then you find them in another person that would be interesting. Yeah, I'll tell you what's happened three times just recently. I was at the Pelican Bay about a month ago, photographing a class up there. And a man came walking towards me handing with a sheet of paper in his hand. And he looked vaguely familiar. If he hadn't spoken to me and explained who he was maybe I could eventually figure out who he was but but he, he came up and said Peter. You photographed me so this was a Pelican Bay which is on the Oregon border it's the northern most California prison. He said Peter you photographed me at RJ Donovan, which is outside of San Diego, almost Mexico. Three or four years ago. And guess what I had that photo here he had with him that day of photographs that I had made of him years before on the other end of the state. What had happened was, his family had gotten the photos on off my website, mailed it into him on just printed it out on on note paper and sent it to him. And he heard that a photographer was coming to his art class at Pelican Bay, he thought, maybe it's that same guy who photographed me in RJ Donovan. So he brought that that's why he brought the piece of paper with him. So I've seen a number of, and there was another man at that same in the same art class actually that I had photographed in yet a different prison. He introduced himself to me again, and I love that right when they come up and say, In fact, I was just the other day at a prison in Chacoala, and all the guys were coming in there about 30 guys in the class. And I hear this, Peter Merz yelled out. And so yes, so I've been doing this long enough now that I'm, it's getting easier to get access for one thing and I, it's getting in. Because the artists have heard about my photography now they, they, they trust me now and let me make that you know they opt in for the photographs.  Yeah, I think that's that's really amazing. I mean, it takes a special kind of person to be able to walk all of those lines so the judicial side of it and then the art side of it and then the incarcerated side of it so you must have a very even keeled temperament Peter. And how can the public know if there's an art exhibit from a prison somewhere currently on display. Yeah. You know, I don't think there's a really, really a central clearinghouse for it so it would be each of the teaching organization so I would say, if you want to see prison or if you could find out who are the teaching organizations in your area. You can get on their mailing list and you'll probably find like here in the San Francisco area there's the Marine Shakespeare Company, there's the William James Association down out of Santa Cruz. KELW teaches audio journalism. That's a radio station that's teaching audio journalism in prisons. I'm forgetting there's a lot of them that in Southern California, but that Southern California, if one were to go to the California Arts Council website and look for arts and corrections, you can see all of the arts providers listed there. And so that that's what I would recommend. And if someone wants to reach out to me, they're welcome to do that and I can help them find what teaching organizations are near them. That's great. Thank you Peter and same same with me you can reach out to me I can help. Let me help you I'm a librarian. And let's see, have you noticed any changes overall or specific prisons over the course of your work in them, have you noticed changes overall as specific prisons over the course of your work in them. What comes to mind, initially, I mean thinking about that is the announcement that just came out this week about San Quentin State Prison, which is going to be turned into a rehabilitation center. Governor Newsom announced that and that is very sounds very exciting course we don't know yet how it's going to be implemented. But the fact that there is a recent move to increase rehabilitated services is great, great to hear. And that, you know, I, it's people ask me about the differences between different prisons, but my view of each prison is very narrow when I go in, you know, I'm escorted by by a staff person from the front gate all the way into the classroom and the arts happening. So I'll see folks in the yards as I walk by but I don't really have an arrest so the only folks inside I'm interacting with the artists, art students. In fraction free for a year so it's you know it's the best behaved people in the prison who get to take the art classes. So it's hard for me to make generalizations about differences between prisons. I do get reports about which ones have more incidents of violence and things like that but but that I'm usually answer the art classes are usually insulated from any kind of trouble or violence and in fact, the students, the art students police their own classes because they know if anything happens, like if a cutting tool were to disappear from one of the classes. The class could get shut down for some time months at a time. And the men don't want that because they love their classes so they work together to help each other, make sure that nothing goes awry. Oops, I can't hear you and this I think you're. I was muted yes. That is interesting news about San Quentin and there is an ear hustle episode about Norwegian prison model that you can check out. It's very interesting. And you know what that would be just that could transform so many lives has this changed yours or any of the people you know perspective on the prison system after photographing so many folks. Well it's it's changed my opinion and yeah I've had friends who have told me that looking at my books about this project have changed has changed the way that they think about incarcerated people. And it changed me to I was really surprised at the spirit that goes on in these art classes there's a lot of mentorship is joking. I mean there's occasionally a little bit of jealousy I'm sure but the spirit of the feeling of room is very free that the men and women set aside the normal rules of the yard. When they come into an art class so for example, races don't mix on the yards at all in book cause. Well as there's just a rule unwritten rule about that, but in the art room, the races mentor each other they collaborate they work together so it's very it's just really different. I heard a number of artists have told me that the art class is their sanctuary inside prison. I can imagine. Let's see. I recently saw a film that Nigel and Erlon kind of moderated called art and crimes, and all about an artist who gets pretty famous from his work but then it also features, I think three other artists and it does tell their story and it's very interesting. They talk a lot about how much the artist is revered inside, and then the revelation of coming out and seeing that it's not quite exactly the same as, you know, it's not, you're more respected as an artist inside at times. And is that a is that a Ronnie Goodman painting in the background. Yes. Yeah, I showed a picture of that during my Ronnie Goodman is well loved at the library. He's done even some some illustrations of the library he often came by. So he's a well well he was a well loved person at our library. What's your most memorable photographic shoot. Oh man. My most memorable photographic shoot. I'm pretty I'm sort of drawing a blank, you know what is it's often the most recent shoot I did.  Plus, I've got all my gear, my lights and my cameras and wagon and I have some pulling this wagon all over the prison. So it's exhausting, but invariably at the end of a three hour shoot, which more like a five hour effort on my part. I feel energized and excited just by being in this room with all this creativity and just the spirit that the men and women have. So, I always come out just really excited and enthused about the project. And so, even though I've just published a book and I'm doing these book docs. It's, I'm still shooting I still want to shoot that I still have ideas about different portraits I want to make and things like that so I'm continuing. That's great yeah there's there is a question about are there scenes that you are still hoping to capture that you haven't yet and I think you answered that. I will say also that when I first started doing this project, I thought about doing it. Objectively sort of this is an objective documentary photographer fly on the wall uninvolved sort of standing back and photographing. But what I found was that didn't capture the spirit of what was going on in these rooms so I started moving closer in closer. So, and now if there's a dance class I'm right in the middle of everybody or a theater product, you know, or they're a theater rehearsal. I'm right in the middle of things. And it's just an exciting place to be. Okay, we'll have time for two more. So you must. And this is, okay, three more including my own. You must know Redessa Jones work to then right. She does a lot of work in the women's prisons. Yes. She's amazing. Yes. It's just amazing. Are there prison are the prison artists allowed to keep or hang up their artwork after they make it. They are allowed to keep it. Sometimes they take it back to their cells. Well, I have not seen incarcerated artists organize their own art exhibits inside so I don't think they're allowed to display it inside unfortunately. And I've heard people suggest you know, why not. If artists on one yard could just put up a temporary exhibit in the mess hall or something like that. You know, the teaching artists have more experience with that than I do. There may be issues as to why that hasn't been done yet that I'm not aware of, but inside exhibits know but it's the outside exhibits. Even though the incarcerated artists don't get to see these exhibits which are in the public outside. They know that they're there and they love that they're there and their teachers go to these exhibits and photograph the exhibits with the people watching and the opening and everything and take those photos back inside. And in fact, at San Quentin, at one point, the men, a guest printmaker came and worked with the guys to do a huge collaborative print it was three foot by three foot carved on the nollium block. So they carved this really elaborate low and block. There were a group of like six right men who worked on this together. They didn't print it inside they took it to a book fair in San Francisco where there was a steamroller an actual steamroller who who and they use the steamroller as the press. And so they printed this thing and they, and so I went to San Francisco to the book fair and photographed the inking of the of the linoleum blocks and the steamroller, and we were able to take those photos back in to the guys inside so they can see how their work that they had produced was printed on the outside. And one last question is, have there been any images that the CD that the CD CD does not like that the So, at the end of every shoot, I go home, delete my rejects, get my selects, and I send those to the prison to be approved. Every prison requires me to do that because I'm accompanied on each shoot so they can see what I'm photographing, but for my own safety and just to make sure everything's about you know, every, no problems are created. I insist that the prison staff review all of my photos before I post them. And occasionally they will ask me to withdraw a photo, and usually it's because of some sort of infraction, such as improper dress.  And I've been really lucky so far, and no one has asked me to pull an image that was really unique and really special to me that I really loved it's usually been once that's been sort of replaceable anyway. So, so occasionally, yeah, I do get some images pulled. I think that also answers why you are invited back so often you know you do your due diligence and are able to hit on all three of those areas and really, really fit in. Peter Merz thank you so much for being here and audience. Thank you for sharing you had some great words and great questions. And, like Peter said you can email him. You can email me. I have a lot of resources San Francisco public library is one of the only libraries that does reference by mail for our prisons. And we do it for almost all of the prison systems this side of the Mississippi. So our little department of jail and range resources is a small and mighty team so you can reach out to me, you can reach out to Peter, and I'm going to give you one more time here in the chat. The link to tonight's doc and I put a lot of links in this as as Peter was giving his demonstration, I mean his presentation. And again, when it come on view so I can say goodbye to everybody. Right. Thank you Peter so much I really appreciate you being here tonight sharing your work and library community. Have a good night. We'll see you again.


Members of the Italian media toured the inside of one of the Navy's newest aircraft, the P-8 Poseidon. I just took host nation media through the P-8 Poseidon aircraft. I could tell that they were very impressed, not just with the platform itself because it's such an impressive jet, but with the U.S. Navy sailors and the officers that fly and operate the equipment onboard. I mean, Italy has been absolutely superb in their support to us, and I was delighted to make the debut of the P-8 right here in Naples. These new aircraft will provide upgraded surveillance and patrol capabilities in the Europe-Africa theater and support exercises such as the recently concluded Northern Coast. So these aircraft are flying around the Baltic Sea, primarily in the waters near the Danish coast, looking for allied and potential adversaries sometimes. Reporting from Naples, Italy, I'm Petty Officer, I'm Bres Hernandez.


Let's talk chips because the US has imposed a new round of sanctions on China. It's halting shipments of the more advanced AI chips to the rival economy and it's also trying to close any back doors by rolling out similar restrictions for countries that it thinks are at risk of buying up advanced semiconductors from the US and then reselling them to China. Now there have been concerns in the States for a while that exporting tech to China could fuel breakthroughs in AI and might help the country develop military applications. It's only about a year since the first controls were introduced over chip exports. As you would probably expect this did hit US chip companies and there are also modest market falls for tech stock in China as well.