Welcome back to my channel guys. Today we're going to talk about the cost of groceries in New Zealand compared to the US. Now this is probably the number one question I get for people on social media and just clients of mine that have just asked like it sounds so expensive to live there. Can I afford that? If I get a job am I going to be able to afford to live? Now that's a hard question to answer because everybody's standard of living is a little bit different but today we're going to tackle one of the big costs groceries and you're not going to want to miss it because you're going to be surprised at what I found. Before we dive in let's talk a little bit how I came up with the numbers. So I picked a mid-range grocery store in both countries. New Zealand has nationalized grocery stores so that was easy. I went with countdown. It's the mid-priced one and then in the US it's all over the place depending on which state you're in what they have you know and then I'm not going to use Walmart the most the cheapest and I'm not going to use Whole Foods the most expensive so I just picked the Pigley Wiggly. Yeah there's a grocery store called Pigley Wiggly. Shop the Pig is our tagline like what was going on in that boardroom when they came up. Anyway I never thought that so I did Pigley Wiggly because it's a mid-range and it's also different prices depending on where you live so it's a little bit complicated but I just thought let's pick some and like let's compare it because in my mind when I visited the US I thought man I feel like this food is more expensive than the New Zealand and so I just wanted to compare it a little bit and so I went through some common food items and everything is like I generally used KGs otherwise unless I specified otherwise and then I have the price in US dollars and New Zealand dollars for each store so you can see it and you can kind of see the difference and I think you're going to be surprised so here we go. All right so let's just jump right in. I also want to note that if you're not aware the US dollar is very strong compared to the New Zealand dollar so just keep that in mind as well but I have used the currency exchange formula that's in Google Docs so you could check that out below if you want. Okay so bread I'm going to quote everything in New Zealand dollars so I love for bread and I just didn't do the cheapest cheapest but I did kind of like a little bit nicer like what people probably typically buy and what I would buy in both countries and so the bread at Countdown in New Zealand was $1.50 New Zealand dollars which is equivalent to the Piggly Wiggly version of $5.05 New Zealand. Quite a big difference the bread. Now of course there's variety and there's choices and there's different stores like if you want to go to Walmart or whatever but I found that the US dollar Piggly Wiggly equivalent bread to what I was looking at at Countdown was $2.89 US dollars which is equivalent to $5 New Zealand so that's crazy. Anyway let's go to flour so like a common baking item that we all need I did one kg of flour a $1.47 at Countdown New Zealand and it was $5.15 in the pig at the pig in the US so I was like oh gosh that's quite a bit more. Okay so let me go through these quite quickly so I'm not boring you in this really long video so an apple and I'm just picking things randomly you guys can do this yourselves you can go on you know Piggly Wiggly website Countdown and you can do it yourself and you can pick out the exact items that you buy but this is just an idea in one apple so the price for one apple is a dollar in New Zealand is $2.25 New Zealand in the US for the equivalent same same type of bag at one kg bag of potatoes that's washed so these are like the cheapest one the washed potatoes one kg bag $2.99 in New Zealand $3.79 New Zealand in the US at the pig milk one liter a dollar 96 for one liter in the US the conversion is $3.47 so I just was like I knew the prices were higher in the US but I didn't expect this so so those are a couple of them let's continue and you'll start noticing some differences so let's talk about meat okay so we have ground mince is what they call it here in New Zealand our ground beef in the US so one kg of ground mince is $17 in New Zealand um in the equivalent is $15.31 in the US and so meat is a little bit cheaper although you know how the meat is processed and what their animals eat can be quite different so that all depends this was just I just did like a mid-range like the same two products that I would have bought in each one they're they're not premium they're not organic okay but they're just like the basic level but then a chicken breast one kg of chicken breast $15 as opposed to $19.17 in the US and so so ground beef a little bit more expensive chicken breast a little bit cheaper but roughly the same I mean a couple dollars difference a 12 pack of eggs in New Zealand is $6 and in the US is $7.32 so still a little bit more in the US not a ton more and then rice so there's so many choices of rice I went with jasmine rice so one kg of jasmine rice is $3.30 in New Zealand countdown and $6.44 in the Piggly Wiggly and that was their generic version I am using the generic version when I can um in the pig um and so another thing to note is it's really funny it's hard to find the generic they're definitely trying to sell you the name brands on the first page so I hate you have to do a little bit of digging so that's interesting and it's also interesting to note that in the US when I'm shopping when like I type in simple things like rice or flour and I'm not getting flour I'm getting like you know pre-packaged things like rice cakes there was like pages of rice cakes before I got to rice so it's interesting because I think it's either like what they sell more of or what they want to push or maybe they have a lot of inventory I don't know comment below if you're a grocery person and you know okay so let's move on to a couple other here let me scroll down let's talk cereal okay so there is a lot of the same there's okay there's a lot of cereal in the US and it's a lot of choices but I picked um you'll see what I did okay so I did the special k cereal they have the same size box the same everything although it's really annoying in the US there was like 16 different varieties of the special k like can you just give me the original one because in New Zealand you're only getting one choice so the special k the one 300 grand box is $7.60 New Zealand it is $7.84 in the US so roughly the same price but a little bit more expensive oddly in the US because you know with shipping you'd think it was more here okay and then how about a bag of oats so um like oatmeal you know oats that's like a bag of quick oats one kg of it four dollars and 60 cents here in New Zealand it's 15 dollars and 33 cents in the US when you do the currency difference so that was really surprising and just so you know for the oats it was the quicker oats like that barrel that they sell and you know calculated to a kg with their price you know so I think New Zealand has a little bit of advantage where like they generally will package in a kg and so the quantity enables the price to be a little bit lower whereas you know the US is crazy like there's all different units of measurement on all these items which made it difficult but yeah so 15 dollars for oats and obviously I think you can get it cheaper but that's just what I found doing this if you're looking to get your business in front of new customers I'm telling you the best place to start is with short form video so tiktok video instagram reel a facebook reel or youtube short is your business on any of these platforms already then just start there you do not need fancy equipment and you just need to record and it gets easier with practice comment below if you would like some help on this I had just created a free course and I'll send it to you otherwise I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about creating short form video if you don't know I have been very successful on tiktok under my personal brand Kiwi Americans and on youtube under the same name and you can check those out as well but I am here to help you be successful in addition to that if you are a brand that just is not interested in creating their own videos I do UGC service I basically create content that you can use on your channels if you're interested in that comment below and I'll reach out to you okay I had to wait for a minute because it just down poured here and I was like okay it's really loud okay so let's talk about sweets so we have some sweets that I looked at and so I just looked at some plain m&m's the same size bag in both countries $1.80 in New Zealand and $2.43 in the US and I thought for sure it was going to be more expensive in New Zealand because you got to ship it here but apparently not although sour patch kids $3.50 in New Zealand $2.08 in the US so that's cheaper I don't know what the deal is with m&m's they're probably produced in Australia so anyway I hope that was a fun video for you to think about you know some of the price differences so I know a lot of you are concerned when you're if you're moving here or visiting here especially if you're moving here like how expensive food is and of course you can find it cheaper in New Zealand and you can find it cheaper in the US this is just a mid price I don't even shop at countdown I shop at pack and save and I know that these prices aren't cheaper because I buy it every week with this will give you a good idea so the total for New Zealand for all of those items together was $71.02 the equivalent was $89.95 in the US so interesting isn't it so I know if you're living in New Zealand you think the food is outrageous while the food is outrageous probably around the world including the US and so I hope this was a little bit insightful and helpful and of course you can check this on your own whatever grocery store you go to in the US and in mid-range one would be countdown a high end one would be New World and pack and save would be your lower end and so if you want to check that out if you're thinking about moving here I think that that would be helpful I'll see you guys next week


Hello and welcome to today's episode of the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from around the world. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Workers across 58 UK universities go on strike. US re-imposers remain in Mexico migrant policy. Hunger rises by 30% in Latin America and the Caribbean. And report links major brands to Amazon deforestation. In our first story, we go to the United Kingdom where workers across 58 universities went on strike this week. The three-day action was organised by the university and college union or the UCU over what it calls the four fights. These include pay, workload, casualisation of contracts and equality. Among the key issues is cuts to pensions under the university's superannuation scheme. According to the UCU, average lecturers would see a 35% decline in their defined and guaranteed benefits. Meanwhile, the union has also pointed to an almost 20% fall in salaries against inflation since 2009. The pay is also unequal with 15.1% gap between men and women and 17% gap between black and white staff. Union has also noted a 9% gap for people with disabilities. UCU members are also protesting job insecurity wherein 67% of researchers and 49% of teaching only staff are employed under fixed term casualised contracts. Over 6,500 academic staff are employed under zero hour contracts where the employer is not obliged to provide minimum working hours. The UCU held two separate strike ballots with one for pensions and another for pay. Workers at 33 universities walked out for both issues including the London School of Economics and the universities of Cambridge, Sussex, Edinburgh, Leeds, Ulster, Dundee and Glasgow, among others. Strikes only for pay were held in 21 institutions and for pension only in four. A poll by the National Union of Students found that 73% of students also supported the UCU strike. Fresh ballots over strikes will also be held in 42 universities between December 6th and January 14th. The United States is re-implementing the widely condemned Remain in Mexico policy. Known as the migrant protection protocols, it was introduced under the Trump administration in 2019. The policy forces migrants to return to Mexico while they await asylum hearings in US courts. The Mexican government was forced to accept the protocols under threat of sanctions. At least 71,000 people were pushed back under the protocols and forced to live in border towns without access to care. While President Biden had scrapped this policy, a Texas district judge and then the Supreme Court overturned this order. The policy was subject to approval by Mexico, which was finalized this week with some changes. The US will have to try and complete asylum cases within 180 days. Officials will also ask if people fear being returned to Mexico. If they do, they will be screed and have only 24 hours to find a representative. Mexico is also pushing for exemptions for vulnerable groups. Both countries are also working on a joint plan to address the causes of migration from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. However, the US is retaining the discriminatory Title 42 provision, which allows deportations without giving people a chance to apply for asylum. Border agents had already detained a record 1.7 million migrants by the end of September. Meanwhile, Mexico has reached agreements with thousands of migrants which would transfer them to other states and grant them work permits. Migrants often end up being stranded for months without proper food, housing and work in the southern town of Tapachula. Thousands of Haitian asylum seekers camped outside a processing center this week to seek urgent help and relocation. In our next story, the Latin America and Caribbean region has experienced a 30% increase in hunger with over 59 million people lacking proper access to food. An additional 13.8 million people face hunger in 2020 as compared to 2019. These findings are part of a recent joint report by five UN agencies, including the World Food Program. The level of hunger in the region has reached 9.1%, which is the highest in 15 years. Moreover, 267 million people were affected by moderate to severe food insecurity and an increase of 74% since 2014. In Brazil alone, 19 million people were pushed into hunger in 2020. The UN report also noted gender differences in food insecurity with 41.8% women facing hunger as compared to 32.3% men. It reiterated the need to transform how food is produced, processed, distributed and consumed. The report's findings are also indicative of the broader insecurity faced across the region during the COVID-19 pandemic. The gross domestic product of Latin America and the Caribbean region also declined by 7.7% in 2020. An estimated 34 million people lost their jobs. The region's annual inflation rate is also expected to reach over 10% this year. And for our final story, we look at a report linking over 400 brands to deforestation in the Amazon. Major companies like Nike, Adidas and Zara have multiple connections to tanneries and other companies making leather goods. A report by the Stand Earth Organization found that over 50 companies had supply chain links to JBS. The Brazilian company is the world's largest meat processor. It has been repeatedly linked to cattle farms in parts of the Amazon which have been illegally destroyed. The cattle industry has been found to be the single biggest driver of deforestation in the area. JBS is reportedly responsible for deforestation in 3 million hectares of the forest. As reported by Brasil de Fato, 81% of this would have been done illegally. The Stand Earth report focuses on how garments and goods being produced by brands are coming from cattle ranching in the Amazon. The findings are based on satellite images tracking deforestation, customs documents and cattle purchase data. The report analyzed 84 companies, 23 of which had clear policies on deforestation. Based on the data, researchers argue that these companies are likely violating their own policies. These findings have emerged at a time when deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has reached a 15-year high. According to Brasil's INPE, destruction increased by 22% in one year to over 13,200 square kilometres. President Jair Bolsonaro is working to expand agribusiness and mining in these areas while attacking the territorial rights of indigenous communities. And that's all for today. For more such stories, visit our website at www.peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you.


We're applying for residency. All right, guys, what is going on? Luxury for the empty journey, helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. Sorry about the silly intro, but obviously I'm excited because tomorrow is one residency applications officially open for the rest of the programs. And you would know that if you follow me on Instagram. So follow me if you haven't. And we can you can see what life behind the camera looks like. But this video is going to be episode, I believe five, correct me if I'm wrong. Of the residency chronicles is just going to be talking about what the process will be like from this point on applications have been turned in. So tomorrow is September 15th as of making this video. And the residency start to see all my stuff. All right, guys, what is going on? Luxury for the empty journey, helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. Sorry about the silly intro, but you know, I'm excited. If you follow me on Instagram, you know why it's because tomorrow residency applications open. And that means different programs can start seeing my application. So today is going to be episode number five, I think, correct me if I'm wrong. And it's just going to be a quick spiel on what the process is going to be like from here on out. So so this week I turned in my residency application, super excited. And tomorrow, different programs will be able to see my extracurriculars, my personal statements, a lot of recommendations and my grades. And so it's going to be potentially that I can start getting interviews as early as sometime next week or the weeks after, depending on what field you go into when you apply to residency here in the United States. Different specialties and schools will offer interviews at different times. So certain specialties like urology can be on a totally different timeline than somebody like me who's applying internal medicine. So the goal of this whole process is you want to one apply to enough schools that you give yourself a shot to match. I'll go over the match in a different video, because it's pretty complicated, but it essentially it's a computer system that when I get my interviews, I have to basically rank the schools that I interviewed at from a list of legislation I interviewed at 10 schools that I would rank them from one to 10. And then the schools themselves interviewed a collection of students. Let's say they interviewed 100 students and they had 10 spots. So they would rank the students one to 100. And the system would start matching it to where I got into a school that I matched in order. And the schools, if they only had 10 spots to fill, got their ideal, the highest people on their list, right? So if I ranked the school number one and I was in their top 10, I would go there. But if I ranked the school number one and they had I was like 12, then I would be having to hope that there's other people on the list ahead of me that choose to go somewhere else. So that's kind of how the match works. And it's a computer system on one day in March. You learn with the rest of your medical school peers of where you're going by opening up an envelope. Obviously, it'd be taking you guys when that moment comes. But the idea of residency is to try to get enough of those interviews under your belt. That way you can rank a good amount of schools, but it's also good to get enough exposure. Every program is different in some sense. They can be a community program. They can be a private program. They can be a big residency class or they can be a small one. And they can have different potentials for future careers.  And other ones are more likely where you get a job or you you do residency and you go for fellowship. So it really depends on where you go. So it's nice to get that kind of exposure to different cities, different environments, different patient populations, a lot of things to consider. So when I was deciding for the schools I want to go to, one, I decided on only applying to cities and institutions that I would honestly consider going to if I matched. You never want to be in a position where you match to somewhere and you have regrets. So while I did apply to less programs, I definitely scrutinized each program severely. And I only selected the ones that I would honestly be OK. And me and my my significant other would be OK with going to as I'm really excited to get any offers that would be a grateful moment because it's a program that I'm considering. So I'm glad that they'd be considering me. So I'm trying to get some exposure and get enough interviews under my belt within the next few weeks. And then I'm going to start scheduling interviews any time from like mid-October to late December. And we'll go from there. So obviously we take you guys on the interview trail, but that's kind of where the process is. And it's really exciting because now it's kind of a little bit out of my hands. I'm waiting for people to like look at me a paper, which is really hard to do and saying, you know, I think you may be good enough or worth a shot. And so fingers crossed that we started getting some interviews soon. As always, I'll be taking you guys on the journey, not telling you the schools I'm applying to, obviously, just for confidentiality's sake and for the respect of the institutions themselves, but just giving you an idea of what it's like to be in this process. It's stressful. It's, you know, it's anxiety provoking. But at the same time, it's fun. This is this is what we signed up for.  What's exciting and terrifying at the same time. But I'm ready. I'm really confident. I feel good. And I just I just want to get some exposure to these different institutions. It's been four years since I've done the interview trail myself. So I'm going to be a little rusty and so I'm going to have to look up things that I need to reflect and learn about myself. And that's going to be covered in a video that I already made, which I'll link up here, which is how I prepare for my interviews in general. So if you guys are having your med school interviews, this will be a perfect segue to check that out. So enough blabbing and babbling. So enough babbling. You guys get the point. Residency applications are in. Hopefully some interviews start to trickle in within the next few weeks. And so I'll take you guys on my first couple and then we'll go from there. But hopefully you guys enjoyed this video and there's many exciting, many huge announcement. Thank you guys so much for following my journey so thus far. I'm really appreciative of all you guys. I really do act like I'm talking to you on the other side of the screen and not the other, you know, many subscribers. So just thank you for taking the time out to watching this video from start to finish. As always, if you guys have any questions that I can answer on your journey to help you a little bit, please comment down below. Most of my subscribers know this already, but if you comment down below with any questions or anything, or if you just put the hashtag, the MD journey, I'm always picking one random subscriber, sometimes two, where they get my books and my video course for free. So if you want to are interested in getting those for free and you have a question or if you just want to put the MD journey, put that in the comment section down below. I'm going to end this video. Like this video if you enjoyed it. Subscribe to the channel if you want more videos like this. And I will take you guys on my residency process. But again, no more battling. I will see you guys in the next video. Take care of my friends.


So, hello. My name is Corey Moss. I do indeed live near New York City these days, came over to visit you wonderful people and after a few days in Manchester, I've had a great time. Belfast is great. So, first and foremost, I want to say that I am not a psychologist. This is a standard disclaimer, right? There are, as it is still technically May, it is mental health month, which is great. There's a lot of attention being drawn to the trials and tribulations that a lot of people will go through and our industry, whatever our industry is, I guess, is not to be discluded from that. So, I encourage all of you to take this, not necessarily what I'm going to say, but take this stuff seriously, mental health, your own health is very important. So, with that going forward, as she said, I've been doing this for building websites for about 20 years. I've been specifically focused on WordPress for about eight. My main product is called Kanban. From those of you going, what the heck is Kanban? If you're familiar with Trello, Trello is an example of a Kanban board, and if you don't know what Trello is, come talk to me afterwards. So, what I wanted to talk about is, like I said, there's a lot of attention being drawn to some of the bigger issues, depression and physical problems, and especially where a lot of us work remotely. There are issues with isolation, that kind of thing. And, well, I find obviously that stuff is very important. For me, I went through a real hard time last year, but I didn't, for me, I didn't feel like I warranted, you know, the diagnosis, if you will, of depression. It wasn't that deep. I was still doing fine, happy with my dogs and my wife and that kind of thing. And a friend of mine said, you know, but you've still been going through something, and so I kind of wanted to share that story with you, just to draw attention to it doesn't have to be the darkest days for, there's still to be a need for community and, and getting some help. So, in 2017, it was actually the first year I'd been working on Kanban for over a year. And it was the first year that I was a responsible business owner and sat down and wrote out the goals for the year. I'd never done that before. Usually I'd just flown by the seat of my pants. And for better or worse, I accomplished them by May. So that kind of left me going, okay, so now what do I do? And I felt actually really good about myself. I thought, you know, I'd gotten a lot done. So I decided to look at, okay, so then what would be the next thing, right? And suddenly I'm back into my old patterns of flying by the seat of my pants. And the, the next thing that I'd had in mind was to rewrite my, my plugin. So here's where I'll introduce sort of the first. There's going to be, there's going to be some takeaways here. There's going to be little lessons that I've learned. Hopefully, you'll learn from my mistakes. But lesson number one, don't go off the rails. So think long and hard. If you find yourself the type of person anyway who does make a plan, the moment you suddenly sort of step sideways. Take a hard look at that. And I realized that self-awareness is, is very difficult and I'll address that in a minute with some possible solutions. But anyway, so lesson number one, try not to go off the rails. The next thing was I said, okay, I'm, I'm looking at this product and I really think that I need to rewrite it from scratch. And for those developers in the room, you'll understand lesson number two, which is conventional wisdom in development as you do not ever write something from scratch. Because you're reintroducing all of the bugs. You're reintroducing all the problems. And it's a hard decision. I still think it's the right one. But lesson number two here is basically if, if conventional, if there is conventional wisdom, if a lot of, you know, smarter older people than you have sort of laid down the law and said things like, don't write, rewrite your app from scratch, question it. So that led me to thinking hard about, okay, so what, what technology should I use? And, and last year, if, if you're a nerd like me and or a WordPress nerd going even deeper like I am, you know that there was this great debate about what should be sort of the next framework that gets JavaScript framework that gets introduced into WordPress. And there was a lot of discussion around, should it be react? Should it be view? And I was already looking at some of the issues that had led me to wanting to do this rewrite would basically be solved, built it with the built in technology of something like React. So I was already looking at React. But it led me to, you know, this great internal struggle, this great internal debate of like, well, a couple of things. One is there is this syndrome called shiny object syndrome. If you're not familiar, the joy is inevitably you're working in the way that you know how to work and there's always a new framework, there's always a new technology, there's always a new app, and it's always more exciting than whatever you're working on. Grass is always greener kind of thing. So thankfully, at least in this case, I'm looking at this and I'm going React at this point is being adopted by the WordPress community, is being debated highly, is being used by smarter, better developers than I am. I think this is the right decision. But again, it leads to a lot of insecurity. The other thing is that I am a developer for 20 years. I started this when there weren't frameworks, right? And so I'm just used to building a lot of things from scratch for myself. It also leads to a deeper understanding, right? But that's this thing called not invented here syndrome, which is many developers suffer from, well, I didn't write it so it's undoubtedly inferior because I'm smarter than everybody in the room, generally not true. But so I start to sort of end up in this mental cycle of what I think this is the right technology, but is this the right technology? I didn't write it. The other thing that started to happen was I said, okay, well, I don't know React at all. And I'm basically under pressure to rewrite my product using this new technology, which means that when I finally ship a product that it has React built in, it's got to be great. It's got to work, right? And so I don't have a lot of time to ramp up, which inevitably leads to yet another syndrome that is common to our community, which is called imposter syndrome, right? Where basically it's a nice way to say insecurity. We all feel like we aren't adequate, that we don't know in fact as much as we do, because honestly, we are constantly bombarded with, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but experts who clearly come across teaching us new things and whatnot, and so leaves you going, well, I don't know as much as this guy or gal, am I good enough? So just to put a cap on the first half of this story, basically while I'm sitting there, kind of learning React, kind of insecure about whether I should build React, kind of insecure about, well, if I build it in React, is this going to actually do what I needed to do, and all that kind of stuff, I of course basically stopped working on the product, because I don't want to keep developing it if I'm going to rewrite it. So that starts to introduce feelings of depression and anxiety while I should be doing these other things, but I'm not doing these other things. Where my priorities, I'm also watching other businesses succeed, you know, everybody blogs about how great they're doing, and you go to a meetup, and you talk to people, and how is your company doing, we're killing it, it's the best year ever, because what else are they going to say, right? But so now I'm starting to get a little jealous, and basically all these emotions are just running through my head, running through my head, and this is where I basically just froze in place for a few months, where I just couldn't get out of my own way, I couldn't decide, nothing quite felt right. It's a little pause there. I'll leave you, that's where a boy loses girl, right, or developer loses Wi-Fi password, or whatever it is. So what I, thankfully, at that point, you know, I could pick my head up, and there were at least a few things that I had done right, because I have been doing this for a long time. One is, I had been working alone for a year and a half, and realized that I needed help, specifically with marketing, but also just a sounding board, so I basically, I'm now collaborating with Jake, who's sitting there, I'm calling him out, the other handsome gentleman in the Kanban shirt, but having somebody else, any other voice, and this doesn't have to be a coworker or colleague, it could be a friend, it could be a loved one. Just having somebody who's willing to listen makes all the difference. I'd also just previously joined, there's an online community called post status, which is kind of meant for people focused on business in the context of WordPress, but there are WordPress forums, there are Facebook groups, and again, it doesn't have to be WordPress, that just happens to be the world that I revolve in. But again, having these people and watching these conversations go by, and seeing that at least once in a while, I wasn't the only one chiming in and saying, hey, I'm having a hard day, or I'm not sure about, you know, this technical decision, or that kind of thing. The other thing that came out of those communities was I started what's called, or joined what's called a mastermind group, really, really handy, I encourage everybody to start one, you know, free and easy. Basically, you find a few like minded individuals kind of pursuing the same goals in life and business, and do a once a week call. And there's, you know, I won't go into this, but there's lots of different ways to run it, the simplest one just being each of you take 15 minutes to kind of talk about the problems that you're having. And everybody helps brainstorm solutions. And then there's a nice element of accountability. What are you going to do by next week? And then the next week, you say, I did it, or I didn't, and your group very nicely says, why? Or why not? But it helps keep you moving forward. And it helps, it's again, just voice of reason, or one of my favorite phrases, sanity check, right? Kind of to just make sure you're on the right track. The other thing is, I see a therapist, and I'm willing to admit it. Just somebody that I talk to once a week.  Sometimes I talk about business, my career, all that kind of stuff. And this doesn't have to be a lay down on the bed and tell me about your mother kind of thing. But a weekly check in again, with an objective voice, somebody who is literally paid to be honest with you makes all the difference. The last thing, no, not the last thing, the next thing. During this whole process, something was wrong. And this is where again, I'll say self awareness is really, really tough. But again, having voices coming in from the outside that can sometimes enable your self awareness or be your self awareness, which makes no sense at all. But hopefully you understand the point I'm trying to make. My gut just told me that there's something about this process was wrong that I dug a hole. And it wasn't the right place to be. So I kept questioning. The other thing is I'm a bit of a productivity nerd. And I've tried to develop pretty good habits over time. And so understanding the power of something as simple as making a list and going, okay, sorry, what was that again? Oh, I'm done. Oh, shoot. Okay, fast forward. Well, that's most of the good stuff. Anyway, these are the solutions mastermind group, lots of peers, people around you. So the punchline or the inverted punchline to this story is basically in my mastermind group, I had a gentleman tell me, you know, why are you using react? And I had a can dancer that I told everybody over and over again.  And I had to go let him in to fix my hot water heater that was flooding my basement. And he said, and so I didn't get a chance to give my my standard answer. So I walked around for the rest of the day going, why react, why react? And basically, it came down to, wait, no, this isn't the right answer. And I was kind of able to walk back through all of these decisions that I'd made, and all these syndromes that I'd experienced, and said, you know, this isn't the right decision. And suddenly, a lot of other things started to make sense.  And also look at ways to, to reframe your thinking, ask your friends or, or loved ones or, or, you know, your mastermind group to sort of say things back to you, and see if it makes sense and see if, if they can say it in a way and with a straight face, so that you in fact know that it is the right thing. So the good, the good news at the end of all this is, I'm solidly halfway through rewriting it exactly the way I know, and feeling much better about my day to day. Thank you very much.


Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is a special On the Ground here at the B-Tug Summer Slam and happy to welcome to the program a longtime friend, but first time on the program as somebody that's known this community for many years. Luigi Danicos, who's a senior systems engineer in the hyperconverged infrastructure space at VMware. Luigi, great to talk to you on camera. Oh, thank you, Stu. Actually, this has been one of my bucket list items since EMC World 2010 when the cube actually first started. Yeah, so you've been watching since the beginning. You knew me back from you know disclosure. I used to work at EMC and I've been working with VMware for a long time. So you've had a number of jobs, but one of those consistencies out there is I know when I would go to the winter warmer, I would usually see them there. Your wife has helped out at the event here. So give us to start off a little bit. What is this event meant to you, your career and your friendships over the years? Oh man, that's a great question, Stu. Actually, I don't think I would be where I am today without this particular user group. It was my first ever user group and my first ever real major exposure into VMware in January 2010 at the first winter warmer that I attended. So for me, it actually gave me exposure into the technology and then to see the community and the users behind that. And I was already following you on Twitter at the time and you were kind of my mentor into the social space and getting involved in there and to have it all accumulate together. And it was just for me, honestly, it was amazing and it was life changing.   You've been at VMworld a number of times, you want to free tip there one, you've been to the, you know, some of the discovers with HP when you were there, you know, what's different about, you know, a regional event like this, compared to some of the big ones? Well, I think the conversations that you have at most of those events are the same. I think where the benefit regionally is, you can meet up with these people afterwards for coffee, for tea, you can continue that conversation in person a lot easier. And also having the same being in the same geographical region kind of helps you relate to some of the, you can, you can laugh about some of the nuances with the weather or just, you know, the local sports and then what's happening there. And you can just, it's more like home, right? And you get that sense of comfort when you go out to a big conference, right? Yes, you're going to know people. Well, you're in a strange environment.  Like when I talk to Chris Colotti here, he says they don't like when we talk about the Patriots, but you're a big Patriots. I am a diar. You're okay talking about the Patriots. All right. The other thing, we really talk about jobs here, you know, something I know over the years, I've loved helping introducing people and helping them get jobs. The S.E. positions are always something that every company is going to walk around this expo floor. They're always going to see people that are hiring and you're going to find people that need jobs. You know, what's your experience in there? Oh, no, I would say that's the biggest thing about the regional area is when you're actually in the market for a new job. I mean, for me, if you look at me, I started out years ago as a CIS admin, then I went to tech marketing, then I went to social media marketing. And now I'm doing S.E. work for VMware, which is still a dream, in my opinion, to be working at VMware. But for me, it's you build those connections and you have those conversations, those real world conversations. I was just speaking with a gentleman earlier who's possibly contemplating a job change. That's not a conversation he would have just normally. He feels comfortable with these users and the experiences that they've had and he wants to learn from that. And I'm happy to share that information with anyone. Yeah. Luigi, what are some of the things that you've seen, you know, changed the industry, how that impacting, you know, you were involved with Matt and Sean helping with the social media aspect of this event, really, you know, being an open tent to embrace not just virtualization, but cloud computing, obviously things like DevOps, you know, the changing the workforce is something that I heavily focused on at this show. Yeah, I would think from, if I look at it, I was actually having this conversation last night with Hans and a friend of his and I was explaining to her about the VTUG and how it came about. And, you know, if you really think about back in 2012, you know, companies weren't talking multi cloud or multi virtualization technologies, and the user group started that. And if you look at where the trend is now in the marketplace, it's cloud, it's this, it's that, you know, so the users started to dictate that back then. So for me, it's really about that, right?  And I don't even know if I really answered your question, because I may have went off on a tangent with my ADD, but it was more about that watching the technology change and being able to have those conversations with with people on in from a from an SC low perspective. It's, it keeps you in the touch of actually what the users are going through because you listen to them, you know, they start talking, even if you just sit in on some of these sessions, it's like they start posing real challenges to you. All right.  It's the end of an error. So, you know, what would your, you know, takeaways here and any final memories that you want to share from these events? Final memories would have to be my very first VTUG, or at the time it was New England VMAG Summerslam. It was my wife's birthday. And I said to her, babe, I'm going to Maine for the day. And she's like, what? It's my birthday. Yeah, but baby, this is going to be important for us in the long run from a career perspective. And here it is nine years later, you know, I came home that day with three lobsters for her, you know, I got a sweet talker. But, you know, nine years later, she works and participates in the user group and gives back. And I now work for the company that we were supporting as a user in the community. So for me, that's, you've got to go full circle. It's pretty surreal if you ask me. And I had a question for you still. Oh, I don't know if we're going to let you turn the mic on me, but go ahead, Luigi. I know that I'm a Die Hard Yankees fan, but which way do you go, Yankees Red Sox? Well, come on, Luigi, you know that like you and like a certain Tom Brady, I am still a Yankee fan born and raised in New Jersey. So just don't talk about it in England too much because my boss is a Die Hard Red Sox fan and New England fans are pretty fanatical. And don't, you know, understand like Patriots fans have become just like Yankee fans.  So looking forward to the banner unveiling for the Patriots on September 9th, you know, number six for, you know, TV 12. Are you going to be in the team? And of course, I will be there. I've been lucky enough to be, it was actually, it was the Giants Connection with the Patriots that got me there, but I do love football. And I'll miss having the VTUG event there. It was fun. You know, got to meet a number of the alumni from there.  I have not converted to the Red Sox. Fenway's a nice place to go, but I'm more of a football guy. And the Patriots are my number one team, never an Eli Manning fan. So yeah, I think, I think that's the other thing that I respect about you is we're both Patriots and Yankee fans. So that's I had to throw that out here. All right. Well, Luigi, welcome to the Cube alumni. Thanks so much always for your support over the year and your contributions to the community. And be sure to check out thecube.net. We're of course at VMworld. We've got the entire executive team on all the big cloud shows. I'm Stu Miniman as always. Thank you so much for watching the Cube.


From Hollywood it's time now for Johnny dollar I kiddo Carter at Universal Adjustment Jim. How are you in a rush?  Uh-huh, and you'll never guess why I'll bite why mr. Lansing starved to death Why with a 50,000 he died of malnutrition got the coroner's report from Tucson right in my hand Well if a man could buy a $50,000 policy you ought to be able to buy himself a square meal. Yeah Johnny flight 203 leaves at 1045 you interested See at the airport Jim tonight and every weekday night Bob Bailey in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator yours truly Johnny dollar Expense account submitted by special investigator Johnny dollar to the Universal Adjustment Bureau home office Hartford, Connecticut The following is an accounting of expenditure is during my investigation of the Lansing fraud Expense account item one one hundred seventy eight dollars and thirteen cents cost a plane ticket Hartford to Tucson I Shaved showered packed and got out to the airport in time to have breakfast there Jim Carter found me at the cashiers case Hey, kiddo, you won't need a coat out there in that desert country as usual Jim Carter was bigger than I thought a man Who stands six foot five always is a little rudder a little more blustery, but as efficient as ever I wrote a special delivery air mail to the insurance commission in Arizona this morning and explained it worldwide They wrote the policy were holding a payment pending investigation Are you gonna tell them that in person will be out there as soon as the letter? Well, I like to be formal on these things especially with the state commission Besides I just soon let them think we'll get around to a routine investigation later in a week or two in other words You didn't tell anybody we're coming. No, I didn't maybe we can work it better this way The faster we move in and find out what's what and aren't bothered by anybody the better off will be Hey, give me a ticket with you. Yeah, sure Hey, yeah, pal. Thank you, sir. Yeah Johnnyette commission is going to get formal sooner or later and ask a lot of questions Mainly why doesn't worldwide honor the claim and pay off the beneficiary? So we'll have to skedaddle and get ourselves some good answers for him. Yeah, sir. Hey board the plane. Yeah, thanks pal Has anybody asked that question here the beneficiary sure James Lansing sisters and Arlene Kennedy She called the broker and he referred her to claims division at worldwide and she called them long distance and then they called me I Told her put her off for a while telling her it was just routine. I see. She's gonna be tough. Yeah, she could be Johnny Understand she has money of her own and she has some influence in and around Tucson a lot of money. Yeah trust She's very comfortably fixed It watch yourself get up Yes, Mrs. Kennedy is pretty upset by the whole business can't blame it for that James Lansing died on the street with no identification on him by the time police found out who he Was a routine PM was already been performed to determine cause You know the county was gonna bury this guy with $50,000 worth of insurance. Yeah Imagine that oh, excuse me, lady Yeah, the post mortem never had happened unless Lansing dropped dead on a public street. Yeah, I see what you mean Oh, I requested the coroner's office in Tucson a whole of bodies What a picture seatbelt First thing that occurred to me when I saw the PM planning was that it might not be James Lansing at all Chronic heart condition long history the ability doesn't sound like anybody worldwide would ensure Lansing took a physical before the policy was issued didn't of course. He did See if you got any material on his insurance examination sure Right here Standard form James Lansing was 100% okay when the policy was issued a couple of years ago Malnutrition long history chronic heart How could he get in that bad shape in two years? That's a pretty good question Johnny. Oh, but the answer is gonna be great. Yeah What's the examining physician's name? Here's a dr. Carl may hood sweet 932 Valley National Building Tucson. He's our first job Johnny Hey cute stories Yeah Well back to business kill It was a long trip and I spent most of it going over the material and Jim Curtis briefcase By the time we circled Tucson Airport at 445 on the afternoon. I had the facts pretty well in mind Expense account item to 350 care fair Tucson Airport to the Pioneer Hotel Jim Carter and I took a joining role. I unpacked my clothes and got on the phone a Sergeant younger Tucson police had made the DOA report on James Lansing. Yes. He was in. Yes He'd be glad to talk to me. I left Jim Carter contacting the state medical Well, I've been here two hours sergeant whether certainly nice like this all through the winter months a little warm in the summer though sir And this Lansing man. Yeah Isn't really much to tell you mr. Dollar one of the cars I answered the call man was found dead in the doorway of a jewelry store about four blocks down the street Uh-huh. This was a day before yesterday sergeant. Yeah, I went down to the scene and call the coroner's office No identification on him. So we started to check him out. It took a little while The time we got a make on the coroner had already performed an autopsy. Yeah, I understood that was about the way it was Say tell me how did you identify him as Lansing? One of his prints matched up on our cards here Lansing was booked on a traffic beef year ago Otherwise, we'd still be trying to make him. You're sure it's Lansing over in the morgue. We're sure his sister came down Identified him name of Kennedy. Yes What did Mrs. Kennedy have to say about the cause of death? Nothing that malnutrition bit didn't do a thing for her Now see we all thought Lansing is some sort of a transient, you know, just some old bum until we identified him Any witnesses see him die? No, I haven't found any According to the coroner. He'd been dead an hour or so before anybody noticed him at all Happened early in the morning. I see Say did Lansing have any other business down here other than that traffic violation? Nope All right Who do I have to see to get into the morgue? Go out on the corner for you won't be any trouble there You want to go over now? No later on baby Dollar yeah Death was from natural causes There's no doubt about that.  Maybe We just have to be sure of one thing. What's that? That we insured the right man By the time I finished with Sergeant younger it was six o'clock I phoned the hotel and Jim Carter busy and efficient as always had already gotten the vital statistics on Dr. Carl Mayhood Northwestern University Medical School 1940 Army Medical Corps 1941 to 45 Dr. Mayhood's license to practice medicine in Arizona was issued in June of 1946 married two children in common practice according to Carter was average in Person Dr. Mayhood was a tall blonde man in the late 30s. He looked like he needed a week's rest in a few light Day and night You haven't a lime clock around the house, Mr. Garland Man use that Yes, goodbye Yes, sir, Dr. Mayhood my name is Johnny dollar. I'm from Hartford. I represent the adjustment bureau handling a claim for worldwide insurance Well, what does that mean? I'm an investigator So July 14th, 1953 you examined a man. I'd like to get some information about I hope this won't take too long Was it an insurance examination? Yeah, the man's name was James Lansing Do you happen to remember him? James Lansing No, I can't say that I do remember him Mr. Donner What about it? Well, I'd like to show you the standard examination form first Is this your signature? Hmm is that your signature doctor? I suppose so yes, I Don't know Aren't you sure how many people are certain of their signatures? It looks like my signature mr. Dollar. I can't say for sure if it is a reason all right. What about these? Are these notations on the form in your handwriting? I Would think so. I don't know it looks like my handwriting I can't say According to this form you gave mr. Lansing a complete physical and pronounced him sound That's my job as a doctor on these insurance examinations anything unusual about that That's the Lansing died two days ago doctor. There's nothing unusual about that either Did they send you all away from Hartford so I could tell you to go back there and buy a book on heart disease? You can get them anywhere in the country the simplest kind not even a doctor's book Read it know it and don't take up my valuable time Now let me have that sure This patient Lansing was 41 years old If he had no heart condition when I examined him two years ago, obviously he didn't according to my findings It's entirely reasonable to assume that he could have developed heart trouble in a very short while Even the day after I examined him you people gauge those things in your premiums. Why do you bother me? Are you finished?  We don't have to go into that doctor James Lansing died of malnutrition Hmm, I said Lansing died of malnutrition I'll be darker on his report. Look for yourself. Well He should know now was it possible for you to overlook that condition at the time you examined Lansing If he'd been suffering from malnutrition in any degree I would have discovered it and noted it according to the Corners findings James Lansing had been ill several years The lung and heart condition existed at least 10 years Can you explain how you were able to pronounce them physically fit doctor? No, I can't all about this the angina condition. I Could have missed that but it's unlikely with the degree of aggravation noted here on the Corners report Have you had much experience reading chest x-rays doctor? The lesions reported by the corner if there'd been any lesions on Lansing's chest I would have reported them. I can't explain that either. Well now you understand why I'm here Certainly I Wish I could help you you can just let me see your file copy of the examination and the x-ray you took at that time I'll have my nurse look them up. I don't keep files over a year old up here. We have a place down in the basement Okay, I'll have them for you tomorrow. What time tomorrow? Soon as possible like to have them first thing doctor You're kind of on me, aren't you? That's right doctor.  Won't you yours truly Johnny dolly truly Johnny dollars starring Bob Bailey is transcribed in Hollywood Written by John Dawson. It is produced and directed by Jack Johnstone Be sure and join us tomorrow night same time and station for the next exciting episode of your truly Johnny dollar Roy Rowan speaking


Thank you for having me today. As was already mentioned, I am very fortunate to have had a fellow from Stamford, Madalsa Singh, I don't know if she's in the room, but she has contributed tremendously or maybe she's virtually actually because I think she's still at home. But I'm very excited about the prospect of all of you really joining the space and considering it for your careers and really excited about all the solutions you're going to bring forward. So I welcome you to this arena, you're much needed, and there's lots of work to do. I'm going to share my screen here. Okay, so I want to just kind of start off with some, you know, EJ101. I'll go through that quickly. I'm not really sure where everyone's coming from on this. So we'll just do a little level setting. Then we'll talk about some of our recent programs that are really focused on disadvantaged communities and then talk a little bit about that being one strategy as we look towards a equitable transition to our clean energy future here. And then I'll delve into one of the pilots that I've been very focused on and talk about some of the hard truths with that. And then kind of bring come back out and talk about some of the different approaches we're taking and some of the risks that we can encounter if we're not very intentional at the forefront here. Okay, so again, if I'm not sure about where everyone's coming here, so we're going to start really basic. And I know over the last couple years, we've had a real national discussion and reckoning with our history here in this country. And so we have had the privilege of talking about the differences amongst all of these efforts. But just to really level set, I think it's important to really talk about what the differences are in this nomenclature. I'll let you read it for yourself here, but really focusing in on what equity means. And sometimes that really means acknowledging where people are starting from and what the history is. And when we talk about energy, that's a really important thing because people are not starting in the same place. And so as we head towards a clean energy economy, we have to acknowledge that and acknowledge that there might be different costs and strategies to get to a place of equity. This is a great graphic. I'm sure many of you have seen this on the differences that we're talking about here. And as you'll see the little stools that are underneath some of the folks in the middle graphic really represent what we're talking about when we're talking about equity. And of course, justice is really that systemic change that most often we search for. Not always attainable. But equity is really something that's very often attainable with a lot of intention. And certainly justice is, but it is far more comprehensive and difficult. Okay. This is just a little bit of some of the work I did in my previous role. This was a big example I used when we were distributing money. And a lot of what we do at the commission also comes down to a distribution of money. And that can come in the form of infrastructure. It can come in the form of technical capacity. But just to really give an example here. So equality we all know everybody, everybody's, when you take the approach that everybody's equal, then everyone should get the same amount. And that's the equal and fair thing to do. That's what people really talk about when they talk about equality. We talk about equity. We really acknowledge that burden that we're talking about. And I'm going to share, I'm sure something that many of you are familiar with, which is a indicator tool that was developed by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard and Assessment, which should be something that you should become very familiar with and build upon and use in your work. And it's that acknowledgement that some communities and individuals will need more funding because they're dealing with a higher level of burden. And they've come from a place of a lack of wealth. And of course, justice. That is certainly the end goal. Okay. So this is, that was an exercise graph, but we don't have too much time for that. This is the enviro screen, maybe by show of hands as I can see your, I can see your hands if folks can tell me if they're familiar with this tool. Okay, just a few it looked like. Yeah. Well, good. And this is a great opportunity to share this fantastic tool. As I said, one of the state agencies here, they're often called OEHA. And I'm seeing that I don't give them proper credit. Sorry for not mentioning it might be in this little screen down here, but the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assess and Assessment, they are one of the agencies under the California Environmental Protection Agency. And they are all the scientists, really some of the top environmental health scientists in the country and possibly the world. And they do everything from setting risk assessments on, you know, chemical exposure levels, including pesticide exposures to drinking water levels. And they also have taken on this tool that was first used within the climate realm by the ARB primarily on the distribution of the greenhouse gas reduction fund, the cap and trade revenues. And one of the earliest policies that was adopted under that program was that a minimum threshold that has been increasing over the years, I think now they're up to 35% of the funds minimum, much more than that goes to disadvantaged communities. But this was a tool derived of a set of indicators, I think there's about 12 core ones and 20 overall that looks at everything from air quality, you know, all exposure levels, water quality, and accumulates, toxics, all of those puts that together. And some of key demographic information like income to come up with the most environmentally and health vulnerable communities and the term that is used is disadvantaged communities to capture who are the most disadvantaged communities and in need of further investment. And as you can see, the Central Valley unfortunately has a large portion of these. And you can't really tell because sorry for my background noise for the geography here, but Los Angeles, San Bernardino counties have a tremendous amount of high poverty and high environmental hazard communities that deal with that. So this presentation, I encourage you to learn so much more about this, it's constantly updated. And it's really driven fact driven. So it's a very useful tool. And we have used it at the PUC and many of our decisions. Most recently, we've required that 50% of the electric vehicle charging infrastructure be in disadvantaged communities. So that's when you talk about equity in practice, equity in our clean energy transition. That's what it means. We have limited funds, where do we put them? I would support 100% of our investments being used in these communities.  And so there's a tension between you want it accessible to the most folks that could make that transition most quickly, which are the wealthier Californians, with the fact that you want to make sure the transition is equitable. So you want to make sure those are proportional. And that's not easy. It's really not easy because the market drives to no criteria. And so you're in many occasions, you know, in conflict with the market transition that you want to see. Now, I don't personally think conflict is the right word for it, but it is true. Okay, this goes into some of those indicators. So I won't go through them, but as you can see, and all of these, they have existing databases that they were able to pull from. So it's not anything that we have necessarily develops on their own. Okay, so here's another example. We talk about solar. In general, the biggest tool for distributed solar has been the tariff itself, the rate structure that a solar customer is under. And many of you know that as the net energy metering program. All utilities, public and private will require to establish a net energy metering tariff, and that essentially set the rules for how much you are paid for the energy, the excess energy you put on the grid, and how much you pay for the energy you consume. And the net is really, obviously, the benefit, the net savings in many occasions. And this is a proceeding that is being updated, the rules, we have a proceeding open to update the rules for this program, and really the whole structure of that tariff. And once again, a call out to Medalsa for all her work on this exciting program. But to date, I think the highest number I've seen, I've seen a range, depending on how they're looking at it, only 9% of low income Californians are participating in them. So today, it is primarily not benefiting the poor. And so these programs were developed to attempt that attempt to get and see a benefit of distributed solar may not be rooftop and we'll get into those, but seeing a benefit to customers that don't necessarily own their home or don't necessarily have the disposable income to finance a storage project on their rooftop. The first program is actually a program that was continued. It used to be called just sash single family homes. And the focus became not just low income, but in disadvantaged communities. And it's a big important, it's a big, big thing to be you know, benefiting particularly not not just low income, but again, poor people that live in environmentally difficult communities, and are really burdened by pollution. So that was one program that was expanded. And the other program that was developed that were really in the last year and a half that really started to see take full effect is a disadvantaged community green tariff program. And this is a program where you can benefit from distributed generation that is not on your rooftop. There are certain rules about the generation that could be up to 20 megawatts. So you see this little picture on the side here. Really, that generation is then allocated to customers. And that allocation derives a 20% discount. And it's very different than the net intermediate net energy metering structure. And so this is a utility contract, the utility goes out and contracts for this distributed solar has to be in a disadvantaged community, but not necessarily the same community where the customers will be benefiting. And it's become, like I said, quite a popular program. And another thing that we did for the utilities is we targeted which customers would be receiving the benefit of this distributed energy. And we targeted the chronically disconnected customers. And so with the with the presumption being that those customers who deal with two or three disconnections annually is that they're having an affordability issue. And so seeing a 20% discount could help with that. Finally, the the program that is still being developed and I think there may be one project approved now. I can't confirm that, but I but this one is much more in the community. So this is a project that's would be about the same size, possibly even smaller, because that one looks like it's a few megawatts, but probably looking at a one megawatt project could be at a community center at a church and in the same community where the folks would receive once again that 20% bill discount. So the goal of the community solar green tariff was really to not only benefit from that generation, but benefit from the building of the project and and some of the economic development that comes with that within these same disadvantaged communities. Okay, so another program that was a legislatively mandated program is the what we call the SOMA program solar on multifamily affordable housing. Again, recognizing that many renters are not able to do their own because they live in multifamily housing or other reasons but this was particularly targeted to those renters. And this has also been a very successful program. Actually getting an update on it later this week. And it's interesting because all of these installations have to happen on affordable housing so not just multifamily that's market multifamily but affordable housing. And what we've seen so far is actually that you know, a good amount I see here that is taking place in disadvantaged communities but not quite enough as I'd like to see personally. So it's one of those questions where you start to really kind of step back and ask about these equity questions. Is it is it enough to just to be investing in low income, you know, there's affordable housing in many wealthy areas across the state, or do we really want to target low income in disadvantaged communities where you see the cumulative benefit and and obviously dealing with some of the more cumulative harm. So that is a very successful program in terms of development. Okay, let's see here. I talked a little bit about this already that we are revisiting the tariff. I know I live here in Sacramento Sacramento just recently the municipal utility districts mud just last week updated their tariff. So it is a recognition that there has been a pretty significant cost shift from ratepayers to subsidize what looks to be a benefit that at least thus far has not gone to low income customers. So there's a bit of an equity issue within this program in and of itself. And I could talk a lot about that but we'll go on. Okay, another major evolution I would say that we've seen in the climate policy over the last decade is the acknowledgement that some of our short term climate pollutants like methane are causing a much greater heating effect than previously anticipated. And as you all know, one of the major emitters of methane is natural gas. That's what it is. And so there has been an increased focus California policy to switch fuel switch what we call to really incentivize communities turning off the gas heater the gas water heater the gas stove and switching that to electric. And that is a tremendous cultural and economic shift that will have to take place for us to meet our climate goals. And one of the things that is going to be difficult is making sure that the reduction in our dependency on natural gas and that transition off of natural gas is not regressive. And there's so many pieces of this but one of the strategies is the strategy of investment. And just like we talked about is the strategy for electric vehicles, as we just talked about with solar, also with the transition off of our use of natural gas. And so there was a bill in 2007 I believe that directed us to look at clean energy alternatives for communities in the San Joaquin Valley. Originally when the bill was introduced, it was to require us to require the gas company to connect these communities to the natural gas system. And as time evolved by the time we got working on this proceeding, it was clear that that that's not the most sustainable solution. And in fact, it was more costly of a solution. So here's a bit of history again on the legislation that required us to look at communities in the San Joaquin Valley that were on propane, that were on wood burning, using mostly propane for their heating needs, and what the clean energy options were. So there's 170 communities, most of these communities have some natural gas infrastructure at the core of the community, the older part of the community. And for whatever reasons, the outskirts didn't get that extension. And I'm sure there are many reasons, including in the 70s, there used to be a pre-fracking notion that we were going to run out of natural gas. But this is not a situation where the homes were built all electric. This is just a situation where development happened in a very unorganized way. Okay, so the other big component we had in this is we decided to do a pilot. And we went through a process where we decided to focus on the 11 communities that had no infrastructure. They weren't kind of those typical communities that had some infrastructure, but not a lot in the outskirts. So these 11 communities really, we wanted to hear from them, what were those clean energy alternatives that they wanted? And many of them wanted gas. You know, gas is what they knew, gas is what their cousin in the other town has that's really a lot more affordable than propane, certainly less contaminating than wood. And so, you know, what we ultimately decided was a per household budget. And that budget lent itself to electrification. So this is just a little bit more detail. And some of these communities in the Valley have really been historically just so disinvested in. There was one project that we did allow for natural gas. And it was one of those, it was very much those instances where there were main lines going through the streets, but no connections. And there's just each one of these communities has a history as to why they stopped being invested in why the infrastructure stopped to be invested in. One community that I really encourage you all to learn about is the community of Allensworth. And the community of Allensworth was one of the first communities settled by some of the you know, slaves that left the south. And it was a thriving community, one of the, so it's one of the utopia communities is what they're known as huge history. There's now a state park there in Allensworth that really provides the history. And of course, what happened through the years is as that community thrived, different interests came and destroyed it much as we heard. We've all learned of course of what's happened in Black Wall Street in Oklahoma, something similar not as violent happened in Allensworth where they removed access to the railroad. So all trade was stopped. And the community, as you know, you need transportation to make the economy run. And it's tremendous to see the impact, unfortunate impact there tremendously unfortunate. So anyway, many of these communities have similar stories. And so that, you know, the racism that led to what they are today. And many of them are farm worker communities with a different history. But wanting, wanting to really see as we do this transition, as we say that we're committed to equity and the clean energy transition, clean economy transition, we must look at these communities first. And so we have learned many things recently an organization called GridWorks did a review of how we're progressing in the project. And they highlighted a few important barriers and struggles and recommendations, of course. The first is, as we do this transition, we of course need the technology and the science to lead us. But we also need to be in touch with people, we need to be in touch with whatever their cultural necessities are, and be respectful of that. And so that's really something I'm sure you all understand, but something that needs to be really invested in, it has to be part of our strategy of really knowing that. And particularly when it comes to natural gas and how much it is ingrained in our daily lives, just as oil is and our dependency on gasoline. So it will be no different. And in fact, potentially more difficult to make that transition. The other thing that was not anticipated and this goes with the disinvestment the historical disinvestment that already existed in the communities, with really, you know, all distribution systems. So all that as the communities grew, the distribution upgrades did not grow with them. And so in many of these communities, you know, the actual distribution infrastructure as it is today is really not ready for the tripling of the energy use as people want to go all electric. And it's become a factor because that's an upgrade that needs to happen at the utility side. So that's become an issue we've been having to deal with work through. But also is an opportunity for distributed energy because although we have been focused on the fuel switching of the appliances, the question is really, now should we be coupling it with distributed energy that can really help with foregoing distribution upgrade costs. So this is kind of an opportunity to make perhaps meld those two areas. And then just to mention the uniqueness of the needs of mobile homes. And all of the mobile homes that I've heard of in this area have lack proper registration, you know, they came together. It's not that they squatted, they do own the land. But much of what how they evolved wasn't properly permitted. And so when we go to seek an upgrade for these homes, they're dealing with a backlog of that lack of proper registration. And so that's a burden because if you have to go back and pay those fees and potentially taxes and things like that, it becomes too much. And so this is a real thing. Again, just talking about communities that have lacked infrastructure, lacked wealth, lacked any sort of knowledge in there coming out and then trying to get them to a place to be, you know, fully electric, all of these become barriers because it's not just about today, it's about the historical path that has brought them here. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about where we're headed with these as we started to distributed energy and micro grids. Micro grids has become a much more popular topic now with the unfortunate advent of more power shutoffs. Also with the recognition of having local generation, either for backup purposes, or for resiliency for other reasons, certainly, you know, there's never a full proof energy source. We've learned that many times over the last two years from what happened in the freeze over in Texas, where natural gas plants were off as well as wind was off. And there's an interesting report that just came out on that showing the percentages of that. And it was a largely natural gas. And although that's not what the Texans wanted to say. And but so I want to just talk about the interesting thing from my perspective is that micro grids can provide solutions for emergency situations. There's been in lieu of, you know, diesel generators, essentially, you could develop a infrastructure to have solar and storage most most most importantly storage to really provide for some continuity and certain locations. And that's where the equity issue comes into place. Because not everyone will have their own micro grid, just like not everyone will have their own rooftop solar. So where there is a micro grid today, based on the rules we have today, there will be a cross subsidy. And all of us in our bills will pay for that because those customers will not have will not be paying into the electricity that was purchased for all of us, not to mention all of the distribution charges. So from my perspective, we should be investing in more local distributed generation. But it should be tied to substations, because substations are already programmed to serve the whole area downstream from it. And not necessarily. So that's the optimum to me. Do we need micro grids at community centers at areas where, you know, folks go for emergency situations? Yes, of course, that's also a no brainer. But if we talk about a distributed energy future, we really want to match it up to the substations. And right now the policy isn't quite there.  Okay, so I just wanted to just note here that we're trying to put a framework around this so that we can foster, continue to foster distributed energy development, but also make sure that we're benefiting customers at large, and particularly if there's an opportunity to benefit disadvantaged communities. Okay, let's see here. I think this is just putting some numbers behind what I've already said. And I think that's it. So, you know, high level. Many of these investments are good. And we certainly want to be more dependent on localized generation for resiliency purposes. Although we also want to foster, you know, large scale renewable generation that is not in our backyards, because of the benefit it has to us economy wide. But in terms of how we do this, we have to make sure not only is it most importantly, is it benefiting everyone? Is it benefiting everybody? We can say, as we learned earlier, is it an equal benefit? Or isn't it equitable benefit? And I think what we're striving for here is a more equitable benefit. And that's really hard to do with distributed generation. It's doable. But it's very hard to do because we don't want to fall back into the rooftop solar dynamic, where we're not getting enough equity out of those investments. We have to be more intentional. And we have to really not leave it all to the market. So that's where our rules are important. And that's where many other agencies are important in that development. So that's just one piece of getting to equity is proportional investments. There are many other pieces. But I think this highlights one of the lower hanging fruits, which is identify those communities that have had the disparities and invest in them and be conscious of it as we transform our economy. Okay, I can talk a lot more about the regressive gas policy. But but I appreciate you guys being here. And I think it's a good time for some questions. Thanks very much for having me. Thank you very much, Commissioner. Thank you all cities for that and engaging in informative talk. And for all the work you do on behalf of all of us Californians. As is our tradition in this seminar, we give first priority for questions to students. And since you're here and they're not, it's going to be pretty easy to see this here. So we have about 15 minutes. So I'd like to know if we can end in the room and if you have good questions. Thank you. We do have some questions coming in over the internet in the general audience. That was good. Yeah. So you see people. If you just speak up, you should be able to hear. Any questions that people have about the programs as a commissioner? My question is, you were talking about how around out of the county, and I think that it's like hard to allocate because of pollution and all these stuff. So what is the measurement to quantify like this number? So when you see the graph, it is basically marking red. But what is the algorithm on how this measures to make it, to make it conclude that I think that region is especially based on you. So did you get it? How do you measure the burden of pollution specifically in LA on the Central Valley? How do you get the data in what form and how do you use it? Yeah, that's great. I see Pilata's on here, one of my staff, and I wonder if she could just pull up the WIHA website and put on the chat. I did have a slide on this. It has about 20 key indicators. It's everything from some of the key air quality indicators, like PM particulates and ozone and also has so they're all all of these are just environmental indicators that exist through different state and local agencies that are aggregated and then basically weighted appropriately. I think Aaron Water probably have the highest weight there. There's also toxic indicator from and they have and they come up with a rating and those that are receiving the highest pollution obviously have the higher rating. And so I think I'm answering your question, but the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, you can go on their website and viral screen. It is a great and they go through a public process of updating it. So as an example, some of the burden communities in the Bay Area have said that their weighting is not really captured as appropriately as it could be. And so they'll advocate for you know, instead of using income as just as income, they would want to weighted income based on affordability of the region. So those are the types of things that people advocate for to get a more balanced weighting as an example, but that tool has been around for some time now. And so it gets more refined by the year. I hope I'm answering your question. Yeah, thanks so much. I think one thing that's probably helping you work is the technology is a lot better. So we're able to measure if this is apart from what you do with the information, we probably have some big data people I predict with probability one in the audience. So there may be some help you can get from both the technologists and the big data. It doesn't make it more equitable, but it gives you the ability to put forward regulations. I'm afraid you have to actually talk back to this laptop, everyone. It's very unnatural because she's up on the screen. I'll go like this, maybe. Thanks for joining us today. I think questions we just look at and them and want to make that process more equitable or how much to look into the financing structure, especially around ITCs and how the tax credit is applied to income. Because I think from what I've seen, there's a lot of the funds are structured in a way such that the IPPAs will only go towards people that own their home have higher than 650 picos for things of that nature. And I don't know if you guys have boards at all with federal government and looked into making it maybe a tax rebate instead of as we've had like maybe 10 years ago. I'm just wondering how much time that you guys spent looking into that aspect of how that is actually happening. Yes, it's a very good question. In fact, one of the other areas that I just all the work we do, we didn't put it all on the side here. But another area I've actually spent a lot of my time on is consumer fraud issues with men. And unfortunately, putting aside the renter issue, which is what I focus on today, the issue with those, the 9% that are low income homeowners, there's been a tremendous amount of fraud. And it has a lot, a lot of it has to do with financing. I'll get to your ITC question, but the fraud issue is very prevalent with certain types of financing, in particular pace financing, which is essentially an assessment on your property. And there's nobody really that says you can't charge more than X amount for this solar, the solar arrays, because it's all free market, of course. And the financing has put people into really atrocious positions, particularly with the pace financing, some folks have been at the verge of losing their homes, because it becomes a property assessment, and they can put a lien on your property. And that's happened. So it's a big concern. And for that reason, I personally favor a less generous NAMM tariff and a more generous upfront incentive. And for that very reason, and I do see this is a great reason why your guys's minds are needed in the space. The ITC is currently being evaluated as part of our cost effectiveness analysis. And so it's more about setting what the right level of export rate of payment compensation, it's kind of pulled into that whole formula that ultimately be derived into what is the tariff look like. But on the financing, I agree. I think part of what we're looking at is there's two proposals right now really on the table as we're looking through the proceeding on how to be more targeted to low income customers. Some people say keep a more generous tariff. That's how you'll get more benefit to low income customers. But the reality is you can't guarantee that the benefit of that financing is going to the customer. That financing structure often doesn't lend itself to particularly an unsophisticated customer. And so the other solution is to do an expansion of those very programs that I just mentioned that are upfront incentive based programs and or the utility administered ones as the third option. Great. So now you need lawyers, finance, people and tax accountants for sure. It's been really building up a little demand for services here. Any other questions in the room at this point? Sir. Hi, so some of these projects move around a lot of money. I'm wondering what the process is like to get those large amounts of money from the government, state, federal. Could you hear that? I think so. Some of the projects use different funding sources and well, they involve a lot of money. And how do you actually get the, what does the money come from and under what conditions from federal government, state government, local governments, private sector? Yeah. Well, the majority of the of the current, there's two strategies that are used right now. One is a strategy that allows the market literally Wall Street and, you know, some of the solar developers, Sun Run, Solar City, now Tesla, you know, they come up with financing mechanisms based off of leveraging the tariff itself, the rate structure. So they come up with power purchase agreements, just regular sales agreements, and they put products together and they themselves leverage the ITC. Sometimes that is transferred to them as part of the deal. And so many of the solar companies, the developers are really finance, financers, and they sub out to contract it, you know. So that's one model. The other model is we allow the utilities to spend money on this. You know, we allow the utilities to spend a lot of money on transportation, charging, electric charging, infrastructure, hookups. So we have allowed them to spend hundreds of millions over over a billion cumulatively on elective infrastructure. Some of the more exciting stuff is happening with freight, where they're establishing charging infrastructure at the ports. And so we authorize that. We say you can spend that money. Utilities sometimes can gain further benefit off that from from the tax side, but not not not as much as end users. You know, so I think project developers when it comes to like more traditional generation and distributed generation is a is, you know, a little bit in the space, but the most common bread and butter is, you know, somebody's developing a hundred megawatt solar facility, and they're definitely leveraging the ITC, and they're getting the, you know, price per kilowatt hour down to a level that they incorporate that into their contracts to bid to the utilities. And so as part of the utility customers were paying that generation cost, but it's really the developer that can bundle it and come up with a rate to sell back to the utility. And that happens at the wholesale level. It happens at the retail level with them as well. Any other questions in the room? Too much time left. I'd like to ask the question of the top of the student that I'm working with all of that, which fits into your program. I think she'd be delighted to talk to you about that. And you said, do you think the community choice aggregation programs here in California have been equitable from your point of view? The incidence has been equitable? Well, so one of the other fun things I get to work on is this power charge and difference assessment that we do PCA. And basically, those are the rules that say, if I'm a PG&E customer that lives in San Jose, and then tomorrow San Jose forms a community choice aggregator, what's my contribution? What's my responsibility to the energy that PG&E already purchased to serve me? And so, you know, when you have a million customers leave, the utility has already bought energy for them. And there's a process that we have where the utility then sells that energy back to the market. And whatever difference exists that they didn't, they weren't able to recover. Most of the time, they're not able to recover because you've got to remember, one big dynamic is we force the utilities to buy renewable energy early on. So they have a lot of expensive projects, you know, the price of solar has gone from like 40 cents a kilowatt hour to three. So when they sell it today, it's not selling for what they bought it for. So that difference, that gap is passed on to the CCA customers until those contracts expire.  There are a few in the inland part of California. And unfortunately, one of those few just recently filed for bankruptcy during COVID. So it's only an equity issue if we burden the customers that are still with the investor on utilities, the PG knees, the Edison's, it's only an equity issue if we don't do the math right. And those customers that remain with utilities are burdened with the energy that was consumed, purchased to be consumed by those customers that left. We think we got the formula pretty good. It's definitely a science and art type of thing. We can talk about prices of energy. But, you know, CCA customers, they're, they're only, they're still paying for all the distribution and transmission costs at the same rate as the non CCA customers. So, you know, I think, I think actually, every year we have more and more CCAs. And with this more recent bankruptcy, it's been the only major hiccup on the road. But most likely than not in the future, most areas will have their energy purchased by their local government is that's a very likely scenario. And maybe not, maybe it's going to continue to be a hybrid for some time. But there's a lot of benefit I see in the CCAs procuring that generation, because as local governments, they're inherently interested in some of the other co benefits of generation, like maybe if it's distributed, there could be an economic development harm to that. They certainly want to see more transportation electrification. And they're putting in a lot of charging infrastructure. So, you know, they're the permitting agency, they could see a lot more nexus with that, you know, building whatever rules they put in place for that. So there's a lot of opportunities with local governments being involved. But, you know, it could have equity issues if we allow for some of that cost shifting. And today, we haven't done that. But every year, there's legislation to try to that the CCAs would like to eliminate the obligation that they have to those old contracts. There's a full disclosure of CCA customer. I wanted to make sure I'm doing a good thing. And I thought you could tell me, at least I'm not totally going in the wrong direction. So that's it. I see we're out of time here in the room. And elsewhere, I'd like to thank you very much for this very engaging and inspirational seminar. We do hope you're in the market for more interns next summer. Oh, yes. I actually know Madalsa pretty well. So if you need an intro to Madalsa, to find out what her experience was, which before I knew that you were the her supervisor, she said she had a terrific experience. I think, sir, can back me up on that as well. Great. So thank you. Once again, now we're going to break to a close session with Marley's, our CA for some of the students, lucky students, to be able to talk to you a little bit more up close. And personally, thanks for doing this and for dealing with our very first hybrid energy seminar. Thank you so much. Okay. Good luck, everyone.


Hello friends, let's discuss the following question. It says, find the equation of a line drawn perpendicular to the line x upon 4 plus y upon 6 is equal to 1 through the point where it needs y x's. For this question we need to know the equation of line passing through the point say x1, y1 and having slope m and its equation is given by y minus y1 is equal to m into x minus x1. So this knowledge will work as key idea for this question. Let us now proceed on with the solution where given that the required line is perpendicular to the line x upon 4 plus y upon 6 is equal to 1 and in this line 4 is the x-intercept and 6 is the y-intercept. That means it cuts the x-axis at the point 40 and it cuts the y-axis at the point 06 and we have to find the equation of the line which is perpendicular to this line and where it needs the y-axis. That means the line passes through the point 06. Let's call this equation as 1. Now we simplify 1, take the same so the equation 1 becomes 6x plus 4y is equal to 24. This implies y is equal to minus 6x upon 4 plus 24 upon 4 and that means the slope of given line is 6 upon 4 which is equal to minus 3 by 2. Now we can find the slope of the line perpendicular to the given line that is slope of the line AC and we know that the slope of the line perpendicular to the given line is equal to minus 1 upon the slope of the given line. So this is equal to minus 1 upon minus 3 upon 2 and this is equal to 2 upon 3. Now we know that the required line passes through the point 06 and having slope 2 upon 3. So equation of line passing through 06 and having slope 3 is given by y minus 6 is equal to 2 upon 3 into x minus 0. Using the key idea this implies 2y minus 6 is equal to 2x and this implies 2x minus 3y plus 18 is equal to 0. Hence the required line is 2ax minus 3y plus 18 is equal to 0. So this completes the question. Hope you enjoyed the session. Goodbye and take care.