So thank you again. And now I would like to welcome Dr. Katarzyna Bonkovic, who is affiliated with the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. And she will tell us the fascinating story about Blue Whale Game. Her talk is entitled Fake News, Real Consequences, the Blue Whale Game Study. Dr. Bonkovic, the screen is yours, please. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for invitation. Yes, the story about Blue Whale Game. Okay, so maybe at first, maybe at first my presentation. Just a moment. Okay. Okay, so a few words of introduction because the real consequences, the consequences of fake news are the part of my study about Blue Whale Game. And there was very big studies from two years.  So today about consequences. But the first point, the important point is the birth of the Blue Whale Game, because the whole story began on March 2016 in Russia, of course, when Galina Mursaev in Novaya Gazeta was published her article about suicide to teenagers. Yeah, that was the title of this article of suicide groups. And she, in this article, described in details two suicides and everything will be okay. But an author connect these two suicides with 130 others suicides. And the one and only key and the common point was the fact that every victim's every 130 person has a profile of contactive platform. So what is contactive platform? Contactive platform is something like Facebook Russian Facebook with 90 million users. So it's not so small. And Galina Mursaev said in this article that the problem of these victims and the common point was the Blue Whale Game. And she said the Blue Whale Game, which is a game in the internet. And you log in on the sites with this game only in internet and you have your mentor or something like this and you have to do many things. And the last things 50 is suicide. Yeah, and that's all. And next day, of course, after this publication, a lot of media from around the world has a question. Okay, what is the problem? What is the Blue Whale Game? How do you find every victim, solve victims 130 in Russia? And in the same time, after publication, next day after publication, Vice Editor-in-Chief was fired to the use of unacceptable methods of verifying information. But the media panic started. And there's a very important fact here in this moment that in the 2016, World Media and the government institution in many countries confirmed that the story is fake. Yeah, so after journalist investigation and the government process, we knew it that the story is fake. In 2016, too, was arrested Philip Budeikin. He reported to the police himself and said that he is an author of this game. Now he is in prison in Russia, but only for encouraging to commit suicide to teenagers, his friends, but not to teenagers from article and not to teenagers from 130 others in article. But the story was beginning. What is the true story? The true story is that there is a game called the Whale. And still is this game. And this game is only on smartphones or tablets, not on the desktop. And this is a game on the website of a French producer of Echo Apples. And this is not fake and this is not a joke. And the goal and the game is that you are the blue whale, you have a basket of your head, basket with fruits, and you have to overcome distance in different countries. So this is a very simple game to small kids.  On the full legal internet, we have without problems find web pages with information about techniques and tools to commit suicide. And the fake news in this blue whale game story, it's connected to different unrelated facts. We have to remember that fake news, there is not the same so false news. Sometimes in translation, we have two words, fake news or false news. But this is not the same. We have to remember about Claire Wardle typology. She gave us seven types of fake news between satire and lying. And fake news is in the middle of that. So the lying is not the same like fake news. And in this case, fake news, there are connect to real to different facts. Methodology of my studies was that I researched media materials from 30 countries around the world. And this was a media in all four types. So press, radio, television and internet. And I researched the content of media materials and visual components, see how media presented the topic. And today my speech, I researched what were the reaction to the publication in all countries. And I would like to explain about this reaction and this consequences. Results. So these consequences were in 21 countries. Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, Egypt, Ecuador, France, Greece, Honduras, Iran, India, Ireland, Canada, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, Malaysia, Moldova, Portugal, Russia, and USA 21 from 30. I think it's a is a big number. I divide the consequences into two types. And that one, the most important fact here, I would like to say that this conclusion from this study is the fact that in one material, in one from the 30 countries materials, was in a formation that fake news, the blue way game is fake news. This is the one material from Austria. In any countries, in any materials, we haven't this information. And I think that a lot of materials still are in the internet, we can find them. So I divided the consequences into two types. First are the consequences of on the educational system in the second on government institution. In my opinion, this consequences from education side are positive. Because in five countries, Bulgaria, India, Ireland, Honduras, and Canada, we had, for example, preventive medic in school with students and parents. We had educational campaigns about online treats. So these consequences are the positive because they play a preventive role. And now, 21st century, if we have a chaos of information, if we have too many fake news, and we have a problem to check information, verifying information, so every campaigns are good and every meetings with students and parents and the people about knowledge and the tools against this information are positive. But the results, the consequences from government side for governments institution are not so optimistic. So in 18 countries, we have a very, very real life consequences, very serious consequences. The lot of that was in nine countries that are police actions. And here we had two types of Polish actions, so our prevention and the investigations. And that was a similar like in an educational consequences because this prevention that are meetings with people about the possibilities dangerous and warning in internet. But initiation from this meeting was not from school, like in the other consequences from the government's institution from police. And the second was an investigation every situation around suicide. Second popular consequences, if we can speak about it, were in four countries were creating a department for fighting for fighting cyber crime and helping the victims. And I think that we're still in this positive space of consequences because helping the victims is still we need this institution and department for fighting cyber crime too. And everything will be okay, but we have to remember about one fact. Every consequences are only after media materials, only after publication, not after analysis, consultation, or something like that, not only after media publication. In two countries in Kazakhstan and in Moldova, we had an extraordinary government meetings, only of the topic of blow away game and possibilities dangerous from this situation. And I think that we have to see and we have to think about about one type of of this government's consequences. There is from the Bangladesh, it's slowing down internet speeds during the night. Between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., internet speeds were slowing down in Bangladesh. So in this moment, I think, for example, about journalists who have to prepare news to the next day. Maybe we need some information without full speed internet, it is impossible. So after media materials, only about maybe it's a blow away game, maybe it's dangerous, it's slowing down internet speeds. In one country in Russia was the plans. In media articles, we can read about the plans of using the army against suicide groups on the internet. We don't know if continuation of this or not, but the plans were. In one country in Saudi Arabia was launching services that were to limit access to the game. And this is very, very funny, I think, because which game? So if we haven't a blow away game, this blow away game, this dangerous blow away game, so which game we were to limit access? In the second, in one country to in Egypt was an official government appeal to the Ministry of Communication to block access to online games. We have to remember that online games now in 21st century are a big part of a branch of online business and computer business, internet business. So block access to online games is a very big problem, it's an economy problem to this part of this business. In one country in Ecuador, we had a request to Interpol in helping to prosecute game administrators. We know that that we haven't a game administrator. But in Russia University, I don't remember name of professor made a study about blow away game administrator. And he said the results was were administrators, but after media materials too. So not before, not when the blow away game was born when the when this topic was started when fake news was born. So after media publication is blow away game and our administrators was a we can find this administrator in online and very very important thing that every administrator was in the 10 12 years old. Yeah, so I think very very young people in one country in Iran was a blocking access to contact the platform. We have to remember that 90 million users without possibility communicate in Iran after media materials. And which conclusions we have after this this situation when we when we are listening on writing about about fake news about blow away game. I think that we have to remember that fake news where are and will exist. And blow away game case show us that fake news. It's very simple to prepare. It's very simple to distribute and it's real warning to all of us as a society modern society. And we have to remember that the consequences are very serious. And we have to remember that we as a user of users of social media we participate in distribution process. If we haven't awareness about online about cyber crime and about fake news. We need knowledge. We need the tools to verify information. And we have to start thinking before. Yeah. For example, a study from I suppose it from MIT but I don't remember clearly is a study about do you remember from where you share an article of your social media. 80% users don't remember from where are articles on my wall for example on Facebook. So I think that this is dangerous because this is a simple way to distribute fake news like for example blow away game. So I think that we we can't stop fake news but we can limited society impact of fake news. We have to building an awareness of media. We have to we need to still observe and educate educate us and and react what if I see a fake news. And so I have here my of course only my proposition that if we gave a tools from journalists from media and for us for society we can limit fake news society impact. Media needs standards of verifying information. Media needs a more discuss about ethics and media needs tools to checking process. Now we have to remember that inside in the newsrooms in redaction we have a conflict without conflict between ethics and economy. And the journalists are in the middle and they have preparing and articles preparing and media materials without ethics or without economy site and they have still still problem with that. And we need a society education campaign knowledge about this information took tools to checking information. Now okay we are speaking about okay check information check in two places yeah but where where can we need concrete we need concrete knowledge is good is a good source this is BBC or maybe Polish public television yeah which source is good which source is gave us true yeah and of course we have to start discussion about responsibility because I think that not the responsibility of fake news is not in only media and not in social media as I think this responsibility is in the middle yeah because we have to think that lying it's more it's better for our brain for our mind yeah it's more interesting and we have to give people knowledge about true and false and fake news and speak about it and and now is discussion in a public discourse is about what can we do with fake news and I ask what can we do before we prepare to fake news because if we have fake news of course we can delay it or not we can share or not but this fake news is and I asked what can we do before preparing fake news process thank you very much


With the continual rise of unemployment and uncertainty of those currently employed, vocational education has been identified as a major key to ending this menace. This was the call when Stephen Osengwegea led the youth and been inciting the adorsted capital to the secretariat of the Labour Party to indicate his desire to seek for the party's governorship ticket. Adorsted and Nigeria is not in isolation. We are part of the global community. So young children in Adorsted should be learning what they are learning in Japan. They should be learning what they are learning in New York because we are together in this world which will not be having substandard level of training and facilities in our schools. So my idea is simple. Let our education meet the standard of the global community and also introduce skills acquisition to our education because I believe that at the end of secondary school you should have a skill because what I found when I lived in the United States was most of them have hand skills beyond just theory. So why not we put woodwork, electrical work, prom based into the curriculum so that when you finish you don't want to go to university you can start a trade and the government will invest in that. Another thing is the employment. Adorsted the largest resources we have is human capacity. Human capital is being underutilized. We have the most vibrant young dynamic people. You enter a hospital in New York, one of the best doctors there is an adult person.  Those people are waiting to come back and come and invest in their state and help to bring Adorsted into a prosperous life. As an aspirant, the Labour Party has not concluded on anybody as of today. I will also make it clear that it is solely what is right, the Labour Party will do from this point. No more, no less. The Labour clean grant will replace the front of all aspirants that are here to aspire with a view to being elected here as candidates of the party in 2024.


Yeah, thanks everybody. It's actually a pleasure to be able to present this here because literally the concepts of Threadweaver have been developed when Qt was not yet able to do anything that it tried to do. So the first proof of concept of what we were trying to build with Threadweaver came up at the time of Qt 3 when reference counting for example was not atomic and all the relatively simple and easy to use concepts that we wanted to have practically impossible without writing a new Qt which then happened with Qt 4. And then that's why it has this long history. You're looking probably at the fourth version of Threadweaver. The concepts have stayed the same and then the implementation has been redone and redone. Then in Qt 4 we needed quite a number of small helpers and tips and tricks to make things work and with the current Qt the code is very straightforward. So yeah, it's really interesting to look at it today. What's the presentation about? We are going to have two main parts. One will be just introducing the basic concepts of what Threadweaver is built off, if you will. And then the second part, pretty equally distributed in terms of time, will be, well Qt things you can do in Threadweaver, things that other ThreadPool-like concepts in Qt applications don't necessarily have. In case you're wondering who that guy is. Yeah, I've been programming with Qt and KDE since 97. I was on the KDE board for a couple of years. I worked at KDAB, learned more about Qt, so I'm teaching Qt a lot. Today, the focus of my work is less technical. My two main free software contributions today are working at the Open Invention Network, where we're trying to build a patent pool of cross-licensing that protects Linux and other free software. Very successful 2,000 member companies and the sponsor of this conference, by the way. And then I'm working with the FSFE, I'm part of the German team and I'm in the General Assembly. And that's that. Also, yeah, and I teach the stuff. So in case you live in Berlin and you want to take university course on open source intellectual property, you can take that here. What is Threadweaver? It's not a ThreadPool. Well, the kind of it is. You can do everything with Threadweaver that you could do with a ThreadPool, but you can do a lot of more things with ThreadWeaver that you can't do with a ThreadPool. We call the Concurrent Execution Scheduler. It is written for Qt and KDE programs. It's written for Qt because that's its only dependency and it's written for KDE programs because it's a KDE framework. So you get ThreadWeaver by installing a KDE framework into your application. Built with CMake. The only thing that you need extra from CMake and Qt are the KDE extra CMake modules that are used to configure it. And once you've done that, it's very simple to integrate ThreadWeaver into your applications. And all the code I'm going to show you today or I'm going to reference is in the original ThreadWeaver repository. It's based either on the unit chest or the examples that are in the repository. And there you can also see kind of the three lines of built system code that you need to add to your project to, for example, use ThreadWeaver in a CMake project. I'm assuming that if you do production code then you don't use QMake. So what's the focus of ThreadWeaver? First, it provides high level functionality for concurrent execution. High level in that it's not necessarily concerned with like something as small as a runnable. Like, of course there's a basic unit of execution but we're looking at a higher level. For example, we're saying I have this set of things that needs to get done. And before this gets done, some setup needs to be done. When that's all done, some tear down needs to be done. And this is something you can model in ThreadWeaver which I think is, if you think about it, probably matches the problem that you're trying to solve more than saying, I want to apply this algorithm in a parallel way. So this is also the differentiation from, for example, from something Qt concurrent. So ThreadWeaver was written with the work of an application developer in mind whereas Qt concurrent was written by computer science PhDs, for computer science PhDs. ThreadWeaver is modular in a way that all the concepts that ThreadWeaver is applying kind of extend each other, not necessarily building on each other. You will see that. So there are Qs and jobs and the policies, et cetera, that you can understand each of these concepts separately and use them. And I call it conceptual usability. So I want this to be relatively easy to use and intuitive as well. And if you're interested in seeing kind of what it can do, the tests are actually a very good way to learn about it because the tests use all this kind of conceptual usability a lot. So you can create a local pool as a local variable and you can leave that scope and the pool goes away, et cetera. So things like that are, I think, pretty powerful concepts for parallel execution that, for example, QthreadPool itself doesn't have. I don't want to bash QthreadPool. It's a very good thing and a very good tool and it's built into Qt, but it solves a very specific problem and it's very limited, right? There's one pool, you don't understand yet another pool, et cetera. And this seems to be like you need a little more time sometimes and then you can use ThreadWeaver. So in a way, if you've ever looked into what Apple built with Grand Central, I think we built what they wanted to do and didn't finish. Let's talk about basics. The absolute essential thing that you need to know about in ThreadWeaver is a job. Of course, that's your runnable, right? If you want to implement something that does something, you need a job. We call it a basic unit of queuing and execution and it works much like a runnable. So you create it, you can either, sometimes you can provide payload, for example, there's a way to use a standard Lambda function and wrap that into a job and throw it away. So and then it just is executed. So that's basically intuitive. You already know how a runnable works. So that's, think of a job like a runnable. However, memory management. The, one of the issues that you probably have seen is what the question of when is a job obsolete? Like when is the runnable done and you don't need it anymore? ThreadWeaver solves this problem by queuing SharePointers. So you're creating a SharePointer to a job and you're handing this over to ThreadWeaver. If you keep a reference to that, then the reference count is one, right? And then two and you pass it into a queue. So this thing stays there. If you don't keep one, it's a fire and forget job. You queue it, you don't keep a reference and it gets destroyed immediately after it's finished. And you don't have to worry about this. That and alone, I think, if you look at the code and the management of the payload, simplifies a lot of solutions that I've seen that use this. Jobs are also a little more, they're not meant to be absolutely minimal like runnable, like one virtual function, no local variables because we're assuming that you do something with a job that is like substantial work. So it obitrates the cost of creating it as opposed to like the intention to create millions of them. So it has things like success status. It has a way to like a mechanism to request cancellation. You know that cancellation is a very difficult issue. You can't just go and delete the job. It might be in progress. You can call it and say, stop what you're doing because there's no way to do that and C++ we don't have interrupts or something that would implement that. So all you can do is ask the job nicely to cancel and there's a mechanism for that. And jobs have priorities. Priorities here are not priorities for the threading scheduler, like an operating system. They're priorities for scheduling in the queue. So you can add jobs to the queue and you say there's a higher priority, there's lower priority and they will just end up, the queue's a sorted queue if you will and the highest level priority jobs will be executed first. That there's no order here and in terms of priorities, there's no guarantee of order of execution because the higher priority job can still be done like take longer time and another one can be picked up by another thread, right? So if you look at order of execution there's a different mechanism for that. This picture here shows somebody doing a job and then two other people looking at it. This is also a metaphor for the decorators that we have, right? So you will see later how we can wrap jobs into other jobs and therefore this way change the behavior. Job is a very central concept of the threat viewer in that a lot of the things that we talk about later are actually jobs, which means there's exactly one way to queue something in like to enqueue some work. That's one method says enqueue this job, not the job, a vector of jobs. Why is it a vector? Because one of the standard issues that you have with using thread pools is atomic queuing of work. You always have this like if you write a for loop and you queue things up, then of course the first things get already done while you're still queuing and that's hard to manage sometimes. In front of you what you do is you create a vector, you put all your jobs in there and then you have this one method we say do this please and then yeah then that happens. So because so much is based on job the API of the queue is super simple. There's one thing, you can put a vector of jobs in there. And I talked about queues, so your queue is the threat pool, sort of. Similar to queue threat pool, there is a global instance. So when you have a queue application object and you link threat viewer, then you also have a global instance. However, you can create a local variable of type queue and say please have eight work threats and that will be a local queue. There's functionality in the queue class to suspend execution. That means you call a function that says all the working threads should finish what they do but they should not pick up new work and then after a couple of minutes, seconds, whatever how long your job takes, job's take, the queue will send a signal I am now suspended. That means it will not start new work. Sometimes that's very useful. So this is less, this is what I meant with conceptual usability. This is less something related to parallel execution but more related to managing the workload in your application. So it's like a suspended queue is a wonderful thing to work with because you can put up, you can set up a complex structure of things that it should do and then you tell it to do it. So that's sometimes easier than to use lots of, for example, features to make sure you wait at a specific point before something happens. And then of course you can resume it and there's a function to finish what is in the queue, which is blockings. This for example, something you can use before you exit your application. One thing I have not on the slides is the number of worker threads is dynamic. That means you can set the target number at any time and it will adjust it. So if you have eight worker threads running and they're doing something and you say the target is now six, then two of them will, as soon as they finish what they're currently doing, they will exit. And I will have a demo for that a little later. So we talked about jobs and queues. Now we talk about a very central concept to Fred River and that's aggregation of jobs. So the essential class here is called collection and that's, as the name says, a collection of jobs. So you create a collection and you put 15 jobs in it and that's now one unit. They belong together. Interestingly, the collection class is a job itself so you queue it as you queue a job. So that's why we only have one method to queue. So now you have a way to say I want all these things to be done together. And for example, decorate this with a queue object and send me a signal when all this is done. So you see that the concepts in Fred River are made for people that are, for example, worried about managing the use interfaces as well. Where you say I have all these things that need to be done, I need to my use interface to update when that's done. I don't want to implement code that counts how many things are done or et cetera because I can formulate with a Fred River collection that this should all be done and when that's done, please tell me. Since it's a job, the collection is a job, it has a run method and the run method of the job itself, of the collection itself was executed first. It actually works to create payload, like elements of the collection in the run method. And I have an example for that later. There's a special version of collection that's called sequence and it does exactly what sequence would do. So you put jobs in there and they're executed in the order in which you add them to do a sequence. Now, question? No, okay. You can aggregate these things. So a collection or a sequence is a job, right? So there's nothing that speaks against using a sequence to create and to add collections into that sequence and add elements into that collection, in these collections. And then you can draw a graph of how this should be executed and you can trust that we were to do that for you and it will happen. A very common way to use this is to use a sequence for your, like we have three steps to do, setup, main work, processing of the results. And then since you're adding the main work as one collection, you can be sure that the third step only gets executed when all the other steps have been done in parallel as fast as the pool can do it, but only when they're done. I think of something like rendering a web page where say I'm pausing the original text, it contains lots of external references and I have a collection that downloads all these external references and now I'm waiting for this collection to be finished and then I render the page. So this is the kind of level of abstraction that you should think of. Don't think of programming the run method. This is a little too low level. Policies are your way to impose your will on the queue or multiple queues because policies work even if you assign them to multiple queues at the same time. So for example, there's already built in something called a resource restriction policy. You can define any resource, which is a counter. So for example, you say I would like to have this many jobs that access the network running at the same time at most. Then you create a resource restriction that says this is my network job resource restriction and you assign it to the jobs. If you do that and this thing says maximum four at a time, you can queue as many network requests as you like into the queue. The queue will only process four at a time. This is very interesting because one thing that I see repeatedly is that people use the work account of the pool to manage payload or workload. How much should be done at the same time? This is the absolute worst way to do it. What you want is a pool with a lot of workers and you want to use policies to say what the workers should be able to do or not. Because that means, for example, that you have one pool and if you have four network jobs working, you still have 12 threads waiting and the other things will just bypass. That works much better than using the size of the work account to manage something. Interestingly, dependencies as in we talked about sequence where things are done in a certain order. You can also declare this job depends on that one and then the second one will only be executed when the first one finished. This is also a queue policy, so it is kind of a modular concept here as well. So internally, that really uses these policies as well. I will have an example later where you can see that you can use queue policies to manage overall load. So you implement something that reads the system load and then adapts the number of, say, CPU intensive jobs using a resource restriction.  That's the overall system. Yeah, question? It's CPU, heavily using the CPU. Is that also a resource that you can say? This job is just logging your CPU? Yeah, so basically what you do is you create a... Can you read the question? Yeah, so the question was, how can CPU, is that a resource? The answer is yes, but you have to program that. So you say, here's a resource restriction. This is my CPU intensive resource restriction. I assign this to, like I have a job class that does image calculations and in their constructor, they all assign this policy. So it's like, set it up, two lines of code. And now you can say, whenever you queue one of these jobs, the policy will make sure that only say eight of them will be processed at the same time. This is a very good question because that's why you want to pay your pool than that because you don't only do CPU intensive things. You want your pool to be bypassing the CPU intensive work with network operations all the time. So that's why you want a big pool and the resource restrictions to manage what should be limited. Good question. Decorators, if you read your book about design patterns, then you understand decorators. They're like the Matroshka puppets. So you wrap one job into another, into another. And we use this to change all kinds of properties of jobs. So for example, if you want to adapt the priority a job has and you don't have, you're not creating the job. Somebody else created it. You can change your pool to say everything that comes in is down prioritized immediately. I have an example for that. If you want to add logging to the run methods of all jobs, you don't change the run methods of all jobs. You decorate them with a logger. Then you have a log message before the payload gets called and log message after or you want to collect time sequences, time series with Prometheus, then you add a Prometheus data generator as a decorator. Here's an example of that in a minute. For, to make this all usable and you don't have to write a gazillion lines of code, there's a stream like API like IO stream like API where you can say, here's a sequence and you have stream operators saying, job, job, job, job, job, job, job. That reduces clutter I guarantee by this many percent. You will see some examples of that. One interesting aspect here is if you do that, there's something called the stream. So the thing that you stream into is action object and you create that or you reference that. Everything that you do in this set of streaming operations all the way to your finishing semi colon will be queued in an atomic operation from the queues perspective. That means again, the queue does not start to process this while you're still queuing, which is helpful because sometimes otherwise you already done half way but then this instruction returns. So that was a lot of basic and introduction. Let's look at some code. This is the streaming API. And this is from code that is in the factory repository. So you create a sequence and then you, for example, use streaming operators to add elements to the sequence. Make job is a function that creates a SharePoint or two job and this takes a lambda function. So, and this is a member function or calls a member function. The lambda function that calls a member function. So this way you can basically say in this sequence from the pool call these three functions. So in this order, three lines of code. Try that with thread pool. And then you see last line is this, put this into the stream. Understood? The other make jobs, make job variants where you don't have to use lambdas. So it's supposedly rather simple. The pattern of calling back to an object that is in the main thread and calling member functions from the pool is quite common. It's helpful to not have to copy lots of member variables. Of course, then you have to make sure your member functions actually get called from a different thread. But typically, if you can synchronize that, well, it's a good approach. Because then you can create an object. Oh, it is also good for testing because you have an object where you call the functions and if you write the functions re-entrant and then thread save, then you can write the test but then using them, you can call them from a different thread. So that's why it's good to keep all the logic in one object, the payload object. Cool, here's some decorator examples. So this is the priority decorator, the example that I gave where you get jobs and you want to adjust their priority without calling their functions. So you have a job and you wrap it in a priority decorator, classes up there. These all will have priority too. And the concept of decorators is that you wrap one object into another object into another object. They also delete what they hold. There's a constructor parameter of the decorator if you don't want that. So the idea is that in one line of code you can create three objects and the result is what you'd queue as a job. And then this is, for example, a self-made one that one you could implement that adopts the priorities. That's a simple example, let's look at this one. Queue object decorator, that's actually built in. And it's very easy to use. Jobs in that threat reviewer are not queue objects. You cannot send a signal I'm done from the job itself because that would be a lot of overhead. But all you have to do is you, when you create your sequence, right, you meet the weapon in the queue object decorator and now you have a done signal. It's really simple. It's so simple that people look that it didn't understand it and ask me to write a blog post about it. But this, three lines of code. All right, just keep in mind that with this you have to make sure that auto-relate is declared properly because the outside decorator assumes that it owns the payload. Here's one interesting one. We have this issue that you have a global instance and the global instance is, what if you want to wrap the global instance into something or change its behavior? It's created before you access it. It's in a single. So there's a factory that you can register and with that you can register an object that will create your global queue. Generally the queues are, you can subclass the queue and change what it does. For example, job counting weaver is a queue that counts how many jobs have been processed. You can look at the code. It's in the factory repository. Or if you want to add logging to the global queue, that's how you would do it. You would intercept when the queue is created and then you implement something that whenever the queue performs a job would log and then that's how you add logging without changing the code all over the place. That's a very modular thing to do. And then you have two lines of code. You set up a global queue factory and then you create your queue core application object. Here's an example of these that we call the generator collections. So a collection that when you execute generates its own payload. You see this is the run method of the collection itself.  It does something with the sequence element by element. So it adds jobs to itself. You see that this new job something. And that means when the collection itself is done, its elements are what you just queued. Now this is of course a very simple example. I use this to implement HTTP download requests that are win load. You know these where you request the resource and then the response is they are 1000. I'm giving you the first 20. And you do that in a run method. And then you write a for loop that says and now with the window size I know I'm creating 19 other jobs that should download all the other elements. And instead of now waiting and doing this in loop I queued this as my collection elements which means they can all be done in parallel and I'm done. And so this way you can actually model things like I don't really know how many elements I need to execute before my first request is done. You combine that with a resource restriction for network requests and you have modeled your download manager in a couple of lines of code. Load management, this is an example. So I will show it in real life in a second. Load management means we want to, for example, in some way dynamically react to the system state.  So imagine we have an application that scales images. So up to 16 workers. Now we say manage system load automatically. Yeah, let me just add some files to it. So either the display quality is a bit difficult, not too good here, but now watch it. It will start processing these images to generate thumbnails. 13 workers. So basically what now happens is because we are doing something, system load goes up then the code I just showed you uses the standard Unix get average, I think a system call. Calculates an ideal number of workers but based on that it emits it as a signal. And we use that to adapt the maximum number of threats in a queue or in a queue policy for CPU intensive threats jobs. Now you see how it goes down to 11. So I said in the beginning that a lot of the things that ThreatMeverers are supposed to be modular and composable and orthogonal and individually usable. And here you see how things then start to come together. And I don't think this is something you can easily do with queue ThreatPool. So, and this is the code that you just saw in action except that where they say it's magic that computes target work account, work account there is actual code that does it. And we have one minute left and I'm done. So this was really just an introduction. ThreatMeverers easy to understand if you use it. Basically everything that you tried to do is supposed to work as you imagine it should work. If it doesn't, it's a bug report. So send me a unit test that fails and I'll fix it. Enjoy it. And if you have any questions I think we have a minute or something to answer them. No questions whatsoever. Any questions? There's one. In the example you just showed you had 11 workers. I was wondering how many cores do you have? Why do you think it comes to the number 11? I actually had a top maximum of 16. That's just a restriction that is set in the code. This is an I7 quad cores or eight virtual cores. The general assumption is in queue ThreatPool I think the general recommendation is like use as many workers as they have CPUs plus one or something. With ThreatMever I would generally recommend to have a bigger pool. So 16 or 32 is actually good because you see these four numbers, file orders, image loaders, et cetera. These are resource restrictions. So the example implements saying I only want four objects to write to the disk at the same time or to scale the images. So the assumption here is that image scaling is CPU intensive, file writing is IO intensive. So you manage what happens at the same time using resource restrictions and use a large pool. This also shows of course how you can, the image scalers are limited because you don't want to hog all the CPUs or you want to reduce them if the system load goes up but then the file writers can bypass them because you didn't limit the number of worker threads you limit it how many CPU intensive things can run. So does that answer the question? By the way, you can see now that system load goes down and the recommended work account goes up again. Hi, at the beginning you've mentioned that how can you tell what our job is finished and you said that you're gonna be using SharePointers to do that. But after that I saw you adding some jobs into the queue using operator new. So how does that work? Does it get robbed in a SharePointer inside and how does it work? Yes. No. There's one assumption here and that is if you give a raw pointer, not a SharePointer, you are managing it. Which is an interesting idea because for example you can create jobs as local like stack variables in your code and as a member variable for example of an object. Then you can queue this job and then you don't want it to be auto-deleted and so you don't want to create a SharePointer that doesn't destroy it. So you queue it as a non-SharedPointer and then Fatweaver assumes that you're managing it. So that's something to know actually. Yeah, I have a question. Okay, so thank you very much Merko. Thanks everybody.


Kentucky is continuing to see coronavirus numbers fall from the peak of the Delta variant surge. That was the headline from Governor Andy Bashir's COVID-19 briefing on Monday. And while the governor says the steep drop in cases is welcome news, the numbers are still too high. Just about everything is moving in the right direction and actually at a speed that the decrease in cases and in hospitalizations, ventilators and ICUs is significant. It is a real trend. It's a positive trend. It has not plateaued. It is moving downward, which is reason for optimism. But our deaths, which trail cases and hospitalizations, ICUs and ventilators are still very high. In fact, over the three days we're reporting on today, Saturday, Sunday, and today, Monday, we've lost 103 additional Kentuckians. Looking at the latest numbers, there were more than 3,200 new cases Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, bringing the total to more than 727,000. 103 more Kentuckians have died, raising the death toll to 9,396. Nearly 1,200 people are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, including 337 in intensive care and 219 on ventilators. Its positivity rate is now 7.36%, which is nearly half the rate seen at the peak of the current surge one month ago.


Coach champions are people who sit outside the school, who are available to provide support for the coaches who work in schools. Now, sometimes in some school jurisdictions, there are coaches who work in multiple schools. And the coach champion is someone who holds the best interest of the coach in mind, whether those coaches are assigned to a school or whether they work in multiple schools. And here's the reason why I like a coach champion not to be the school principal. So school principals, listen carefully to this, try not to be offended by what I'm gonna say, because I know sometimes you might think, well, I'm that person, and I would agree with you wholeheartedly. You are holding the best interest of the coach in mind. However, you have a much better and bigger task to be paying attention to, and that is the success of every educator within your school and every student in your school. And because you may only have one coach, sometimes in the very busy day that you have, the focus on the success of the coach is subordinated to many other major tasks on your plight. Sometimes too, coaches have conflicts or challenges with their principals. And they may need a confident, confidant outside of the school, if they're having a problem with a particular teacher, that they don't feel comfortable bringing to you because of the breach of confidentiality, for example. And so having a champion who resides outside of the school, who can serve as a champion to support the coach in those situations is sometimes better than expecting the school principal to serve that role. So a champion is a person who coaches the coach in a sense, who helps the coach problem solve, who allows the coach to process, who may step in when there's a potential problem or conflict, who monitors and supports and is responsible for the professional development of the coaches. So that's who a coach champion is. And we began talking about the importance of this role many years ago when we discovered that when coaches were assigned to schools out of no one's fault at all, those coaches were doing a million different things and very quickly their task and their focus became pulled away, started to being pulled away from improving instruction because there's so many things to do in a school in never enough hands. There's an interesting research study that was done about literacy coaching in Florida that basically in the result of the study said coaching doesn't work. And it was troublesome to me and I pulled the study and I started reading it and here's what I discovered. The coaches were spending less than 50% of their time actually coaching. They were involved in so many administrative tasks. And I think you know how that can easily happen. A coach is available. A coach is competent. A coach is willing. And I could go on.


This new method combines volumetric absorptive microsampling, the AMS, and the Emplex-Lew assay to accurately measure anti-influenza HA antibody levels in a single-fingistic sample. It also corrects the serum volume based on hemoglobin measurement, which improves accuracy and stability of the results. Furthermore, this method can be easily implemented in large population studies and clinical trials as it requires minimal training and is cost effective. This article was authored by Jiang Wang, Dong Meili, Alexander Wilts, and others.


Ifet morality is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Typically the term ephemeral is used to describe objects found in nature, although it can describe the wide range of things, including human artifacts intentionally made to last for only a temporary period, in order to increase their perceived aesthetic value. With respect to unique performances, for example, it has been noted that ephemerality is a quality caused by the ebb and flow of the crowd's concentration on the performance and a reflection of the nostalgic character of specific performances. Because different people may value the passage of time differently, the concept of ephemerality is a relative one. An ephemeral water body is a wetland, spring, stream, river, pond or lake that only exists for a short period following precipitation or snow melt. They are not the same as intermittent or seasonal water bodies, which exist for longer periods, but not all year round. Examples of ephemeral streams are the Lune River in Rajasthan, India, Ufgab River in southern Africa, and a number of small ephemeral water corpses that drain tail up in northern Niger. Other notable ephemeral rivers include the Todd River and Sandal River in central Australia as well as the Sun River, Batha River and the Tridbankos River. Any indoor hike basin, or closed basin, that contains a plyo or dry lake that its drainage low point can become an ephemeral lake. Examples include Lake Carnegie in western Australia, Lake Powell in New South Wales, Mystic Lake and Rogers Lake in California, and Severe Lake in Utah. Even the driest and lowest place in North America, Death Valley more specifically that water basin became flooded with a short-lived ephemeral lake in the spring of 2005.4. There are also ephemeral islands such as Banyu and Wuhu and Home Reef. These islands appear when volcanic activity increases their height above sea level, but disappear over several years due to wave erosion. Bassasda, India, on the other hand, is a near sea level island that appears only at low tide.


Welcome to Stand Energy Man, Stan Osserman here. Instead of coming to you live and direct from Kailua today, I'm coming live and direct you from the other Kailua, the better Kailua, Kailua, Kona on the Big Island. We had a great meeting this weekend about a great project that a group of us are starting up to actually kickstart clean energy and clean environment and clean transportation on the Big Island of Hawaii. And we've got a quick video that'll kind of show you what we're doing. We're going to build some hydrogen stations, bring in some vehicles, and try and help get things started because as the rest of our show will point out, it's going to be tough to have the state do much more than policy stuff to help get things kicked off because our economy is riding pretty rough, been ridden hard and put away wet as they stay here on the Big Island. So let's roll that video and get you excited. Aloha, everyone, it's Saturday morning. We know what time that is. It's Hawaii, the state of clean energy time. Welcome to Stand Energy Man, Stan Osterman here as usual, coming to you from the great state of Hawaii, the beautiful community of Kailua on the windward side of Oahu, our main island. And we're going to talk about sustainability. Asia Pacific players, they're calling it green hydrogen. So I said, OK, that's it. Green hydrogen. That's what we call the answer to what we've been looking for. How to solve global problems with a local solution. Beautiful station. It was designed like a biolocal architecture. And we that was a brand new Toyota Mirai, the new model is what's illustrated in the video, but we're bringing in some of the three year old Mirai's with under 30,000 miles on them. And we're going to be leasing them out for three years with the fuel at a pretty reasonable price, actually a really reasonable price. So we're looking forward to you. That started here in Hawaii and building the infrastructure and kick starting hydrogen electric fuel cell vehicles in Hawaii. And today to talk about why we need to do things like that is another host here on Think Tech Hawaii, Dr. Kilii Akina from the Grassroots Institute. And I wanted him on. I've been wanting to have him on for a long time because really it's all about the economics of Hawaii. When you think about why we should get off of fossil fuels, it's not just to be clean and green. It's not just to be environmentally friendly. It's economics. We import so much oil and so much fuel every year into the state that we're sending all our money overseas or out of the state and out of the country. And what we need to be doing is using the renewable resources we have here in Hawaii to stop that outflow of cash. We call that an import. When we're importing fuel, it's taking money out of the state. When we're exporting products, it brings money into the state. So Dr. Kilii Akina, thanks so much for being with us today. And just I'm excited to have you on. I'm beyond words. I've been trying hard to get you on here. But could you give us a picture of what Hawaii's economy is like right now? Just a snapshot. Well, certainly Stan. And just delighted to be on the program with you. Always a joy talking with you. And I think it's a time for new thinking. Absolutely. You know, because of the COVID lockdowns across the country, many economies have suffered greatly, but none has suffered as much as the Hawaii economy. Last year, we saw in 2020, tens of thousands of our workers in the state lose their jobs. Our unemployment rate is now the highest in the nation. It was the lowest. Now it's the highest at 9.3 percent. And we have something going on here. We have a high cost of living due to two factors. First, we have high prices of everything, including housing. But secondly, we've got low salaries. In fact, did you know Stan? I know you're working on a new house now, but a monthly mortgage on a typical home here in Hawaii costs most people 41 percent of their monthly salary. That's just incredible. It's the highest in the nation. As a result, thousands of people are leaving our state. We have a mass exodus and we are the second highest per capita rate of people leaving the state for greener pastures elsewhere. I could go on with hundreds of statistics, but I think that gives a picture that our economy is definitely not where we want it to be. And being that our state collects taxes from us and those revenues run the state, the more people we lose and the tougher it gets, the tougher the state's economy gets. So now that we've had the pandemic hit us and we have all that unemployment on our shoulders, it's really dragged your wise economy down. Can you talk a little bit about how bad that happened and how maybe we can get it out of the hole, how we can get out of the hole we're in? Sure. There's no question about it, Stan. The pandemic has hurt our economy tremendously. The economic lockdowns have really damaged our major industry tourism and we've been overly dependent on that one industry. But very few people realize that it wasn't just the pandemic response. It's decades and decades of bad economic planning that have really been at the heart of what's taken place. Economic policies by our government have actually put us into a weaker position and have accelerated the rate at which the pandemic has been able to make us very vulnerable. For example, we've seen over the last decade increased tax rates to record high levels in some categories. We've seen increased burdens and regulations on businesses which has reduced opportunity and really just stymied innovation here in Hawaii. And probably something that has been an albatross for a long time has become a bigger albatross and that's the cost of government. That's a very expensive cost to every individual and every business in Hawaii. One of the biggest factors is the level of debt that our government has taken on. I think many of your viewers would be familiar with the fact that we have unfunded liabilities and this is something that we have made a point of letting the public know about at the grassroots institute. Our ERS, our employee retirement system, which is the retirement system for public workers, is $14.6 billion in the hole. That's $15 billion. It owes public workers for their pensions and we don't even have that. If you take a look at their health benefits, the EUTF, that's underfunded by $12.4 billion. So you add those together, we owe our public workers $26 billion that we don't have and their great-grandchildren are going to be paying the price tag. Now the state's other debts are up to $14 billion and there's a new one that just happened last year and that's the unemployment fund. It's projected to be a billion dollars in debt coming up. And if you take a look at deferred maintenance and infrastructure costs, I'm going to say something that's really staggering. Before the COVID crisis, we were $88 billion of unfunded liabilities. That's $88 billion which we will owe to our people over the next 30 years that we don't have for everything from the employee retirement system through infrastructure and so forth. Well, that is now at a level of $100 billion in total debt. And the consequences are staggering. The biggest one is we're going to have to pay it off. But along with that, our bond rating fell last year and interest rates go up. That means our taxpayers are paying higher rates just to keep the government going. So that's just half the picture, Stan. And I better stop here so I can let you ask another question. The other half of the picture is that in addition to the debt I just described, our government has been increasing its spending.  Yes, and I can tell you that it's pretty relevant that the retirement system has been kind of a burden coming to us and the COVID actually accentuating the debt. And the interest on the debt can be huge as that interest rate. It just gets, it compounds on itself and makes it even worse. But something else is in there too. The federal government has had a role in this over the last few years. And that is the burden of federal regulations. And President Trump lifted a lot of those regulations. But for example, here on the Big Island, I'm going to be building a house that requires an aerobic sewage system, waste disposal system. Normally that system would cost about $7,000 or $8,000. Mine cost $21,000. And it's all being driven by the EPA because I'm within 1,000 feet of a water well. But it's based on generic anywhere in the US which might have hard clay soil or sandy soil. It doesn't matter. And all those are different. Our well is 24, it's a quarter mile deep, almost a half mile deep actually. And there's no way my effluence is going to get down to that well. But I still have to put it in this expensive system. And it's like it's all driven by government regulations. So you're right. It's not just the management of our own personnel systems and our own retirement system, but a lot of the regulation that's being put on businesses that drives the cost of everything up and also makes the cost of government more expensive. Because when the EPA hands down a regulation like that, the Department of Health or Department of Ag, those guys end up handling it. And that means they have to have more manpower to do all the paperwork. And it gets out of control. So that's how kind of we got here. But really, how do we get ourselves out? The numbers you gave us were staggering. And you didn't even talk about the rail. I mean, heaven forbid, the County of Honolulu started a $3 billion project that's already four years late to need, $7 billion over budget and climbing. And not even going the full route that it was supposed to go. So, holy mackerel, it's so depressing to think about it. How are we going to get ourselves out of this, Dr.? Well, you know, that is quite an incredible situation we have found ourselves in. And you talk about the federal impact on the state of Hawaii. There are numerous industries and businesses that are impacted by federal regulations here. And it just makes it harder. And you talked about the city. We've got to recognize that there's a difference between the city budget and the state budget. But the city is in pretty much the similar situation that the state is in terms of its unfunded liabilities. And it uses the same ERS system for its pensioners as well. And so what's happening at the state we see in a microcosm is happening at the city. Now, talking about the state, Governor Igay's accountants have told us that when we look at what he's planning to spend over the next four years, every year we're going to have a $1.4 billion deficit. That's huge. And so our legislators are right now scrambling to figure out how in the world we're going to pay for that. And one of the ways we're doing is a very bad precedent. Just to make payroll, the state took out $750 million in loan funds. That's the first time that's happened. And that's a terrible thing because payroll is supposed to be something that lends toward our productivity. It's not something that we should be paying debt for. The state unemployment taxes are also set to triple next year because the fund was so depleted. It kicks into gear something you're going to have to worry about as a small businessman. And that is nearly tripling for most businesses of the taxes they pay for unemployment. So that's not looking good. But Stan, before we go on, I do want to mention there are some bright spots that if we can take these and really develop them and leverage them, they'll be helpful. The economy we're told by the council on revenues is not going to be as bad as predicted. It's still going to be bad, but that little margin of not being as bad as predicted means that we can inject another $400 million into this year's budget. And that's good news. A little bit of a good economy goes a long way. And that's the lesson we should learn that when the government takes its hands off of regulation and taxation, we can have a better economy. And that goes a long way in terms of tax revenues. So lawmakers are doing the right thing now. They're considering lowering the unemployment tax. And the state seems to be focused, at least for the time being, on cutting its spending. Those are good signs. And I hope that they'll continue to cut spending. Yeah, I agree. That's really critical. And I'm not a big economics fan, but unfortunately, when I took my masters, all my extra classes, my optional classes were in economics because that's all that was available. And the big takeaway I had from the economics classes that I've had is what you want to do is grow the pie instead of trying to cut the pie into thinner pieces for everybody. So growing your economy is really critical.  So is the state kind of gearing itself for growing productivity and increasing productivity to solve our problems? Or are they stuck on trying to slice the pie into smaller pieces to handle things? Well, Stan, that's a great illustration. And unfortunately, as you point out, the state has got it backward. You see, the problem that the state struggles with is how do we raise more revenue? How do we get more money for the rising cost of state government? And instead of dealing with the question of how can we bring the costs down? Or how can the state possibly even become more efficient and make money? The most common question, the common answer given is raise taxes. But there's a problem when you raise taxes. And that is you're killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.  And as a result, consumers buy less from businesses. Businesses, as a result, don't raise as much money. And therefore, they don't pay as much taxes. And so it's kind of backward. But when you do it the other way and recognize reducing taxes, for example, reducing the GE tax could do this, would put more money back into businesses, they would grow, they would become more productive. As a result, they'd make more money. And making more money, they'd employ more people. People would have more money. They'd spend more money. And businesses would make more money. And guess what? In the end, the government would have higher tax revenues. And that's how it works in the real world. Unfortunately, we are not expanding the pie, as you mentioned. And that's really what we need to be doing. And so when we hear the term GDP or gross domestic product or, you know, and that term, that economic term comes in, that's really kind of the key measurement of growing that pie.  And so that growing the pie, in my mind, when you hear economists talk about growing your GDP or expanding your GDP or raising your GDP, that's the key you're looking for, lowering unemployment and expanding your production and your sales and exports. Another thing. That's right. In fact, Stan, I know on your program, you talk about overall sustainability. And a part of sustainability has got to be economic sustainability. And if you were to ask me the question, is Hawaii's government budget sustainable? It clearly is not at this time. One of the ways we know this is that over the past decade, the state government has grown at nearly double the rate of the private sector economy. Can you imagine that? That the government costs have grown at a rate double that of the private sector economy? That's absolutely unsustainable. It's unhealthy for the entire state of Hawaii. And our research shows that in the meantime, over the last 10 years, our government has breached the constitutional spending limit by over $1.4 billion. And this is forcing us, at least for the time being, to tighten our belts in government. But the government is looking at a very terrible solution, which is to borrow to the hilt, to borrow as much money as possible from future generations and from the federal government. While that's a short-term solution, it has to be paid back. And as we discussed earlier, it impacts our bond ratings and our ability to raise credit. And ultimately, we have an unsustainable government economy. And that translates into an unsustainable private sector economy. We started off talking about the tourism being a major driver of our current economy. But over my lifetime here, we've had three major drivers, agriculture, when we had sugarcane and pineapple, tourism, and the military. And those are all exports. It doesn't sound like tourism is an export. But those people bring their money here and leave it here. And we rotate it through our economy. The military brings military people here and their families, and they bring their money here and into our economy. We have 10% of our population are military and federal retirees. They bring their money in here. So we're not sending any money out of the state. That's all bringing money in. But sugar and pineapple are gone. They're not coming back. And we need to, that sustainability piece on agriculture needs to be, we need to get local farmers and local ranchers feeding us instead of importing all the food that we bring in. That's a sustainability piece. And tourism, we can grow it to a certain point, but at a certain point it becomes unsustainable as well. And the military is a great piece here with the shipyard and the 25th Infantry Division up at Schofield bringing people and civil service jobs here. But we can't keep depending on the federal government to keep us going. So in the sustainability realm, I see energy and agriculture, particularly as the two legs we have to keep growing to make Hawaii's economy come back. And that's why I started off with that video. I think there's going to be, in the clean energy world, it's not, we're not doing clean and green just to be environmentally friendly. We're going to start doing clean and green because Hawaii has at least eight times the energy it needs to run and we're not harvesting it. We just waste it. Whether it's water flowing downhill in old sugar flumes or whether it's solar electricity or whether it's wind-powered electricity or whether it's geothermal. We need to look at all those things and use agriculture and energy to help bring our economy back. Would you agree with that? Well, absolutely Stan. And let me say something that our listeners, our viewers may not realize. You and I had a nice little chat before today's program in which you mentioned that you were absolutely frustrated with the government's role in diversifying our economy or in growing the energy sector and so forth. And you said something which is not often heard and basically you told me that you and a group of other business people are just going to take it into your own hands and use your private sector means to raise capital and make an industry happen. And I wish you could have seen me. I was virtually standing up and applauding because that kind of dedication and that kind of that kind of approach from the private sector is exactly what is needed. You see, our government here in Hawaii has known since as early as the 50s and the 1960s and 70s that the tourist economy is putting our eggs into one basket. While it's always going to be part of Hawaii's economy and we need to grow tourism within a sustainable framework, we can't put all those eggs in one basket. So there has been this buzzword that has been around since largely the 60s and 70s and mainly the 70s and that was diversification. In concept, it sounds great. Diversify the economy, have multiple sectors, bringing in revenues to the islands. But the flaw in all attempts to diversify the economy by the government is that it has been the government's attempts. It has been the government saying, we're going to put tax breaks and credits and we're going to do incentives for this one industry or for that one industry or this friend's industry. And the problem is industry doesn't grow by government playing the odds and saying I'm going to choose winners and losers. Industry grows by competition in the free market and that's what I want to applaud you and your colleagues for because competition in the free market going back to your question of agriculture and energy is precisely what we're going to need to grow these sectors and other sectors such as high tech. The more the government takes its hands off and allows free market competition, the more it's likely for capital to come to Hawaii and for businesses to really be able to compete and flourish and without the government picking and choosing winners and losers. I'm all excited about the prospects for the future if we can somehow get that drive on the part of private industry to really innovate and really go after market competition. Well, you said something really important there and I don't know if many people picked up on it and part of the problem I see is that we do have government picking winners and losers or maybe even picking friends that can give them some money for their campaigns versus the best decision or the best solution and the best sustainable answer for Hawaii. How do we get past that? I mean, the C word corruption is really ugly so we don't want to raise that but in reality it's kind of we call it mission creep where it starts off as being a good thing you get your friend a contract and he does a good job and see but then after a while it becomes a detriment because it's government controlling too much stuff and not giving the free market a chance to do what it means to do how do we start to regulate that in our state? Well, you know, that's a very profound question and you know that the Grassroot Institute plays a role of a watchdog on government watching for transparency and accountability and so forth. But let me just go back to something that really made me excited when I heard about you and your colleagues starting a new venture simply don't play the game with the government if you have to play the game of corruption of favored parties in terms of contracts or of lobbying in order to get the government to pass a tax credit or of an incentive for a certain industry just don't play the game get out there and show that private industry can actually compete in the free market and can do so successfully take the risks lose some but win at least once and in the long run the consumer wins the the market wins and we are no longer dependent upon the processes that have become corrupt within government I think that's the way to go That's that's good advice and and I'd like to add to that there's a local component here too where you know especially here on the Big Island in places like Malachi where we bring in innovation or big companies and there's a lot of pushback from the local folks because they've been messed up over too many times by big companies or mainland companies or people that are out to get profits for themselves and not take care of the community how do we rally the community behind the sustainability effort and growing our economy effort through the private sector and avoid having pushback from our own people and our own communities how do how do we convince them that it's really in their best interest I think we have to move out of an either or mindset into a both and in other words it's not either the environment or the economy it's not either left or right it's got to be we bring all people together around our common values and there's no better place to demonstrate that than in Hawaii because when we do bring people together when we practice what I've called ehana kakou let's work together it means that from the beginning of any venture we exercise our kuleana or our responsibility and that means that we understand that we are related to one another and we bring stakeholders to the table you see no economic no economic venture exists in isolation every economic venture in some way involves and impacts the entire community that surrounds us and so I think as entrepreneurs reach out to the entire community and recognize our kuleana and engage stakeholders from the start they all have a much more successful pathway than processes that leave people out in isolation I agree with you and you know part of the effort that we're doing here on the big island in our venture is I set up a separate standalone committee that's going to do outreach to the sustainable energy Hawaii group and to other local groups to make sure that they are on board with what we're doing and if they have questions or problems or issues that they can bring them up but we have about 30 seconds left and I'd like to leave that to you to give us some closing comments well I think we've got a bright future ahead of us when we all come together as stakeholders around the table when we practice a hana kako let's work together for the greater good then we're no longer pitting options against each other instead of being at odds with each other we're working together for a better Hawaii and if anybody wants information on some of our toughest issues visit us at the grass root institute website that's grassrootinstitute.org thanks Dan for letting me be with you today Hello Dr. Akina I appreciate you spending some time with us and sharing your thoughts on a Hawaii's economy and what we need to do to move forward in sustainability and I hope you'll be able to join us again in the future Until then Aloha to you and Mahalo


Sunday in LA, the Nets beat the Clippers 1-12, 1-0-8, clean 5-0 sweep on the West Coast. And as Steve Dash pointed out, getting it done in a variety of different ways. A really historic road trip for the Brooklyn Nets, winning all these games. Kevin Durant only played in one of the five West Coast games. What I love too, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, they combined for 65 points, 15 rebounds and 15 assists. But the big moment of the game was DeAndre Jordan with the tap in. DeAndre Jordan off the bench, 13 points, 11 rebounds. Like you mentioned, finding different ways to win. Big time performance tonight against a Clipper team that was at full strength, the Nets weren't. Yep, now Brooklyn now the first Eastern Conference team since the 0-6-0-7 Pistons to sweep a road trip of at least five games exclusively against Western Conference opponents. And of the previous four teams to accomplish the feat, one went on to win an NBA title, Michael Jordan's 91-92 Bulls. The former Clipper, DeAndre Jordan, as Frank mentioned, had the biggest bucket of all. And after the game, our Michael Grady started his interview with DJ by asking how the Nets were able to hold off a charge from L.A. down the stretch. Defense and rebound man, limit those guys to one shot, make it tough for them. You know, when we switch, switch up physical, getting to the body. We were able to lock in and get a couple stops in a row.  Describe that final offensive possession, though. Look like three bodies were around you as you aggressively were able to get that go-ahead tip in. Uh, man, you know, just trying to be able to keep the ball alive. You know, I think it was Kai who got a good look at it. Or James, you know, those guys really are our main guys. But I was just trying to, you know, either keep the ball alive. Hopefully they would have made it. But I was just, you know, trying to keep it alive and then hopefully something will happen. Five and O on this West Coast trip. That's the first time in franchise history that you guys have been able to accomplish that feat. What are you most proud of with the way that you guys have gone about competing during this winning streak? Just the way we were able to, you know, turn around our season a little bit.  Teams came out and really jumped on us and were aggressive and we responded. But I feel like now we turn that around and we're the aggressors.  It's going to take a lot of fight and then it's going to take some, you know, some chibi games. And, you know, that's, that's, that's a great win against a really great team. Last thing for you real quick.  Message to the fan base as you guys get ready to return home. It's lit. A Brooklyn will return to action Tuesday with a home game against Sacramento. And a limited number of fans will be in attendance at Barclay Center. Coverage starts on yes and seven o'clock. For Frank, I saw Bob Lorenz. Thanks for watching. That's post game plus.


There he is, man, my God, man, my friend. The guy that everybody looks up to. I'm talking. Matter of fact, it's like a class for bosses. So I think that's why they call it Boss Talk 101. Man, if all y'all are media players, we got a summer community class coming out at the local community college, Boss Talk 099. That's for all of y'all that's self-employed, you don't have no employees, but you're your own boss. If Boss Talk 099, that's coming. I think you got to register at the urban community. We don't ever stick with your goal. Yeah, Boss Talk 099. They can see it because they know you'd be lying. No sweatshirts, they can't describe it. Man, got a whole store. Boss Talk now, man. It's a whole other level. Man, thank you so much for coming by. Check us out behind the scenes. We're here with this nigga right here who'll be tripping. Boss, run. No, man, let's go. I love this, man. Here you go. Right here a little bit. Let's go. Boss Talk 101. I'm gonna be honest with you. I was really like, who is this dude? This bump on me. And then my photographer. This dude, this videographer I got. He said, man, that's black. My nigga who? He was on me, man. So I went and did my research, man, that night, man, dope show, man. I appreciate it. You and she go beam, man. I ain't gonna lie, man. There's certain shows I've watched there when people invite us down. And that was one to be remembered, man.  You know what I'm saying? Just seeing you in reform after we had talked at the comedy show. Right. I found out that I was talking to a guy that really was that guy. So I really respect that, man. I appreciate that. How could I have slipped up and not known? I'm supposed to know that. You know what I'm saying? I'm rockin' them boys. Carlos Miller. Chico being me. They call me. We know that this is going down over here. So them guys mean a lot to me. I should have been up on this. And Alex Thomas, you and him was on the same type show. We did plenty of shows together, actually. Yeah, Alex is a good one. I had on here Bubba Dubb, one of them. That's my guy. For some reason, this show has become a base for the comedians. They's on love. So I know that. I embraced that because I knew that there was an open lane for that. The respect that was due on a noted platform in this market wasn't here. Because at first, when you were doing boss talk, you were interviewing street cats, self-made men, ballers, hustlers. So it really wasn't a space for cats in my realm. Then I look around, you got one comedian on here. I'm like, okay, that's cool.   Then you go to Jesse. You know, Jesse, self-made millionaire. He the first internet millionaire. Then you start all the niggas that work with me. But we had Phazon before we even had him. That's what I'm saying. So we got Phazon, Carlos, Chico, Bubba Dubb, Alex Thomas. And I'm like, wait a minute. I just got off the road with half of that lease. Rungee was only in town for two days. That's crazy. So I hope in some of your homework that you did on me, you went and saw that I got some of the highest views at the lab factor. What's up with it, y'all? We outside. We made it. Yeah, I've seen it. So I'm like, that's when I started to take it person. So I feel like he was the one with everybody but me. Maybe it's because I never walked up and shook the man's hand and told him I like what he's doing. But in telling you that I like what you're doing, my feelings got in. I was like, hey, man, I like what you're doing.  Why you didn't have me on there, baby? I'm him.  They got fabuloso on the back. Cause I don't like bragging, bro. I'm a decorated black comedian from Dallas and I used to say the highest decorated comedian from Dallas but here lately, my man Ralph Barbosa been tanning it up. And he's here in Dallas? He's an old Cliff native and he, shout out to my essay. Harry having a baby at a young age. I feel like I'm a new employee who just got put to train and even newer employees. There's also just as old Cliff as we are. You know what I'm saying? Hey. I am the highest decorated comedian. I don't care who, you fit a name, that nigga don't have more credits than me. And the only credit that Ralph has that I don't have is Jimmy he just performed on Jimmy's family. He just got to write up in the L.A. Times. He just got to write up in Variety Magazine. He just got through beefing with George Lopez. You know what I'm saying? In fact, that George pulled the E.C. E.C. you already did nothing to you wrong. George didn't know who Ralph was. Oh, that's what he did. So they said, hey George, what you think about the new kid Ralph Barbosa? People saying he the next you.   I ain't never heard of that. Ralph Barbosa. Not knowing that Ralph is the new rising star and he's a Latino and he's always looked up to George. He's always admired George.  So when George found out about that, he called Ralph up personally.  I genuinely did not know you were never heard of you. Shout out to you young man. I see what you are doing. Salute. That's big because the old G's really don't take that kind of humility when talking to us young cats. But before this last three months that Ralph been on this mediocre rise, Black Run was the highest decorated comedian from Dallas.


Johnny, we always talk about the goat quarterback of all time in a fellow. People say Tom Brady, obviously. Who do you think the goat is? The goat in my eyes probably still, man, I have a different opinion. I love Michael Vick, but that was just the way, that was just the running style and this.  My home's just well on his way, but you gotta go win six, seven Super Bowls to go beat Brady. Michelle's a real dog lover. I just was like that, I have all the names. I'm like, that's not the one I thought was coming out today.


Devotion 23 from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Dunn Devotion 23 Metuske Relabi They warn me of the fearful danger of relapsing. 23. Meditation It is not in man's body, as it is in the city, that when the bell hath rung to cover your fire and rake up the embers, you may lie down and sleep without fear. Though you have by physics and diet raked up the embers of your disease, still there is a fear of a relapse, and the greater danger is in that. Even in pleasures and in pains there is a proprietary, a meum et tuum, and a man is most affected with that pleasure which is his, his by former enjoying and experience, and most intimidated with those pains which are his, his by a woeful sense of them in former afflictions. A covetous person, who hath preoccupated all his senses, filled all his capacities with the delight of gathering, wonders how any man can have any taste of any pleasure in any openness or liberality. So also in bodily pains, in a fit of the stone, the patient wonders why any man should call the gout a pain, and he that hath felt neither but the toothache is as much afraid of a fit of that as either of the other of either of the other. Diseases which we never felt in ourselves come but to a compassion of others that have endured them. Nay, compassion itself comes to no great degree if we have not felt in some proportion in ourselves that which we lament and condole in another, but when we have had those torments in their exaltation ourselves we tremble at relapse. When we must pant through all those fiery heats and sail through all those overflowing sweats, when we must watch through all those long nights and mourn through all those long days, days and nights so long as that nature herself shall seem to be perverted, and to have put the longest day and the longest night, which should be six months asunder, into one natural unnatural day. When we must stand at the same bar, expect the return of physicians from their consultations, and not be sure of the same verdict in any good indications, when we must go to the same way over again and not see the same issue, that is a state, a condition, a calamity in respect of which any other sickness were a convalescence, and any greater, less. It adds to the affliction that relapses are, and for the most part justly, imputed to ourselves as occasioned by some disorder in us, and so we are not only passive but active in our own ruin. We do not only stand under a falling house, but pull it down upon us, and we are not only executed, that implies guiltiness, but we are executioners, that implies dishonor, and the executioners of ourselves, and that implies impiety. And we fall from that comfort which we might have in our first sickness, from that meditation, alas how generally miserable is man, and how subject to diseases, for in that it is some degree of comfort that we are but in the state common to all. We fall, I say, to this discomfort, and self-accusing and self-condemning, alas how improvident, and in that how unthankful to God and His instruments, am I in making so ill use of so great benefits, in destroying so soon so long a work, in relapsing, by my disorder, to that from which they had delivered me. And so my meditation is fearfully transferred from the body to the mind, and from the consideration of the sickness to that sin, that sinful carelessness, by which I have occasioned my relapse. And amongst the many weights that aggravate a relapse, this also is one, that a relapse proceeds with a more violent dispatch and more irremediably, because it finds the country weakened and depopulated before. Upon a sickness which as yet appears not, we can scarce fix a fear, because we know not what to fear. But as fear is the busiest and irksommest affection, so is a relapse, which is still ready to come, into that which is but newly gone, the nearest object, the most immediate exercise of that affection of fear. 23 EXPOSTILATION Not so large as that of thy whole people, the nation, the numerous and glorious nation of Israel, and yet how often, how often did they fall into relapses. And then where is my assurance? How easily thou pass itsst over many other sins in them, and how vehemently thou insistedst in those which they so often relapsed, those were their murmurings against thee, in thine instruments and ministers, and their turnings upon other gods and embracing the idolatries of their neighbors. Oh my God, how slippery a way to how irrecoverable a bottom is murmuring, and how near thyself he comes that murmurs at him who comes from thee. The magistrate is the garment in which thou apparelest thyself, and he that shoots at the clothes cannot say he meant no ill to the man. Thy people were fearful examples of that, for how often did their murmurings against thy ministers end in a departing from thee. When they would have other officers, they would have other gods, and still today's murmuring was tomorrow's idolatry. As their murmuring induced idolatry, and they relapsed often into both, I have found in myself, oh my God, oh my God, thou hast found it in me, and thy finding it has showed it to me, such a trans-migration of sin, as makes me afraid of relapsing too. The soul of sin, for we have made sin immortal, and it must have a soul, the soul of sin is disobedience to thee, and when one sin hath been dead in me, that soul hath passed into another sin. Our youth dies, and the sins of our youth with it.   Many ways we become unable to do that sin, but still the soul lives and passes into another sin. And that that was licentiousness grows ambition, and that comes to indivotion and spiritual coldness. We have three lives in our state of sin, and where the sins of youth expire, those of our middle years enter, and those of our age after them. This trans-migration of sin found in myself makes me afraid, oh my God, of a relapse. But the occasion of my fear is more pregnant than so, for I have had, I have multiplied relapses already. Why, oh my God, is a relapse so odious to thee? Not so much their murmuring and their idolatry as their relapsing into those sins seems to affect thee and thy disobedient people. They limited the Holy One of Israel, Psalm 7841, as thou complainest of them. That was a murmuring. But before thou charged them with the fault itself, in the same place thou charged them with the iterating, the redoubling of that fault before the fault was named. How oft did they provoke me in the wilderness and grieve me in the desert. That which brings thee to that exasperation against them, as to say that thou wouldst break thine own oath rather than leave them unpunished, they shall not see the land which I swear unto their fathers, was because they had tempted thee ten times, Numbers 14, 22 and 23, infinitely, upon that thou threatenest with that vehementcy, if you do in any wise go back, know for a certainty God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you, but they shall be snares and traps unto you and scourges in your sides and thorns in your eyes till ye perish, Joshua 23, 12 and 13. No tongue but thine own, oh my God, can express thine indignation against a nation relapsing to idolatry. Idolatry in any nation is deadly, but when the disease is complicated with a relapse, a knowledge and a profession of a former recovery, it is desperate, and thine anger works not only where the evidence is pregnant and without exception, so thou sayest when it is said that certain men in a city have withdrawn others to idolatry and that inquiry is made and it is found true, the city and the inhabitants and the cattle are to be destroyed. Deuteronomy 13, 12 through 16. But where there is but a suspicion, a rumor of such a relapse to idolatry, thine anger is awakened and thine indignation stirred. In the government of thy servant Joshua, there was a voice that Reuben and Gad, with those of the Nasa, had built a new altar, Joshua 22, 11 and 12. Israel doth not send one to inquire, but the whole congregation gathered to go up to war against them, Joshua 22, 11 and 12, and there went a prince of every tribe, and they object to them, not so much their present declination to idolatry as their relapse, is the iniquity of Peor too little for us, Joshua 22, 17, and idolatry formerly committed and punished with the slaughter of 24,000 delinquents. At last Reuben and Gad satisfy them that that altar was not built for idolatry, but built as a pattern of theirs, that they might thereby profess themselves to be of the same profession that they were, and so the army returned without blood. Even where it comes not so far as to an actual relapse into idolatry, thou, oh my God, becomeest sensible of it, though thou who seeest the heart all the way preventest all dangerous effects where there was no ill meaning, however there were occasion of suspicious rumors given to thine Israel of relapsing. So odious to thee, and so aggravating a weight upon sin is a relapse. But, oh my God, why is it so? So odious. It must be so, because he that hath sinned and then repented hath weighed God and the devil in a balance. He hath heard God and the devil plead, and after hearing given judgment on that sight to which he adheres by his subsequent practice. Footnote Tertullian and Footnote If he returned to his sin, he decrees for Satan he prefers sin before grace and Satan before God, and in contempt of God declares the precedency for his adversary, and a contempt wounds deeper than an injury, a relapse deeper than a blasphemy. And when thou hast told me that a relapse is more odious to thee, need I ask why it is more dangerous, more pernicious to me? Is there any other measure of the greatness of my danger than the greatness of thy displeasure? How fitly and how fearfully hast thou expressed my case in a storm at sea if I relapse? They mount up to heaven, and they go down again to the depth, Psalm 107, 26. My sickness brought me to thee in repentance, and my relapse hath cast me farther from thee. The end of that man shall be worse than the beginning. Matthew 1245 says thy word, thy son. My beginning was sickness, punishment for sin, but a worse thing may follow. John 514 says he also if I sin again. Not only death, which is an end worse than sickness, which was the beginning, but hell, which is a beginning worse than that end. Thy great servant denied thy son, Mark 1470, and he denied him again, but all before repentance. Here was no relapse. O, if thou hadst ever readmitted Adam into paradise, how abstinently would he have walked by that tree? And would not angels that fell have fixed themselves upon thee if thou hadst once readmitted them to thy sight? They never relapsed. If I do must not my case be as desperate? Not so desperate, for as thy majesty so is thy mercy, Sirach 218, both infinite. And thou, who hast commanded me to pardon my brother seventy-seven times, hast limited thyself to no number. If death were ill in itself, thou wouldst never have raised any dead man to life again, because that man must necessarily die again. If thy mercy and pardoning did so far aggravate a relapse as that there were no more mercy after it, our case were the worst for that former mercy. For who is not under even a necessity of sinning whilst he is here, if we place this necessity in our own infirmity and not in thy decree? But I speak not this, O my God, as preparing a way to my relapse out of presumption, but to preclude all accesses of desperation, though out of infirmity I should relapse. 23. PRAYER O eternal and most gracious God, who though thou beest ever infinite, yet enlargest thyself by the number of our prayers, and takest our often petitions to thee to be in addition to thy glory and thy greatness, as ever upon all occasions, so now, O my God, I come to thy majesty with two prayers, two supplications. I have meditated upon the jealousy which thou hast of thine own honor, and considered that nothing comes nearer of violating of that honor, nearer to the nature of a scorn to thee than to sue out thy pardon and receive the seals of reconciliation to thee, and then return to that sin for which I needed and had thy pardon before. I know that this comes too nearer to a making thy holy ordinances, thy word, thy sacraments, thy seals, thy grace, instruments of my spiritual fornications. Since therefore thy correction hath brought me to such a participation of thyself, thyself, O my God, cannot be parted, to such an entire possession of thee, as that I durst deliver myself over to thee this minute, if this minute thou wouldst accept my dissolution, preserve me, O my God, the God of constancy and perseverance, in this state from all relapses into those sins which have induced thy former judgments upon me. But because by too lamentable experience I know how slippery my customs of sin have made my ways of sin, I presume to add this petition, too, that if my infirmity overtake me, thou forsake me not. Say to my soul, my son, thou hast sinned, do so no more, Sirac 121, but say also, that though I do, thy spirit of remorse and compunction shall never depart from me. Thy holy Apostle, Saint Paul, was shipwrecked thrice, 2 Corinthians 1125, and yet still saved. Though the rocks and the sands, the heights and the shallows, the prosperity and the adversity of this world, do diversely threaten me, though my own leaks endanger me, yet, O God, let me never put myself aboard with hymenias, nor make shipwreck of faith and good conscience, 1 Timothy 119, and then thy long-lived, thy everlasting mercy, will visit me, though that which I most earnestly pray against should fall upon me, a relapse into those sins which I have truly repented and now hast fully pardoned. End of Devotion 23 End of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Dunn