Hello and welcome to Scripting for Artists, my name is Sibren and in this episode we'll be looking at creating your own add-on. In the previous video we took our existing code to create a monkey grid, added some stuff around it to turn it into an operator and in this video we'll do basically the same, we take our existing operator, we add some code around it, save it to a different place and then we'll have our add-on. Up to now our code has always been inside the blend file itself and this is perfect for situations where it is specific to that blend file, it was one itch you wanted to scratch there. However, this is not always useful because you maybe want to use it in different blend files as well, you always want to have it available to you and maybe you even want to share your code with colleagues or with friends and in all these cases turning your code into an add-on is really the right choice. In this video we'll look at the following, we'll look at what is actually a code file and how do you edit it, we'll look at ingredients of an add-on, we'll turn our monkey grid operator into a monkey grid add-on and finally we'll be looking at something you will be doing a lot which is reloading your code after editing it. So let's get started, what is a code file actually? Well, you may have guessed it, it's actually just a plain text file with a name that ends in .py and there really is nothing more to it. Editing the code is also simple, you can pretty much use any text editor out there, I just don't use a word processor like OpenOffice or Microsoft Word because those are really not for just plain text. You may be tempted to use Blender's own internal text editor for it, after all it even has syntax highlighting for Python that means that it has some basic knowledge of Python, it knows the keywords like for and if and death and it can color them differently making it easier for you to understand the structure of the code. But with Blender's editor I always get confused, I never know whether I'm editing a text file that is part of Blender or that is externally saved to disk. To save the file you have to press alt S and not control S otherwise you save the blend file instead of the text file. I would rather recommend something different, something more suitable for the task. My personal favorite is Visual Studio Code, it's an open source project by Microsoft and it's a really nice editor. Other popular choices are Atom or Sublime Text or if you want to go really big pie charm. There's lots of choice out there so I recommend just download a few, give them all a try, see what you like best. As for the name of the code file I already mentioned that it has to end in a pie, there are a few more requirements though, you don't have to know all of them, if you just stick to letters without any accents, underscores and numbers you'll be fine. If you want to know more about creating add-ons you can go to help, manual and there go to advanced scripting and extending Blender and there's a lot of info there including an add-on tutorial. Now let's look at the ingredients of an add-on. There were three things that you really have to have in your add-on, at the top of the file there should be some metadata in a BL Info dict and this metadata should include the name of the add-on, which version of Blender is compatible with it, the category the add-on should be in and some other info. The second and third thing you need to have you've already seen and that's the register and unregister functions. These functions tell Blender what your add-on contains so that it can be loaded and unloaded properly. The BL info you see at the top is called a Dictionary and this is basically a lookup table. We've seen it before in chapter five of scripting for artists. Okay, let's get this miniature add-on to work. First we have to save it to a location on disk. It doesn't really matter where right now because we will install it and then Blender will copy it into the final location and we can edit it from there later. So I'm going to save it to my scripting for artist folder and I'm using only lowercase letters and underscores for the name ending the name in .py. Now we have to install the add-on.  Now the add-on is installed and Blender copied it for us to the right location. You can see where here. So it is my home directory.config slash Blender slash the version of Blender scripts add-ons smallest add-on.py. We could have manually put it there. That's all fine as long as the file is there is good. But this way Blender tells you where it has to go. You can see that the user interface shows very little information about our add-on. So before we even enable our add-on, let's see if we can fix that. We could go back to the Blender text editor, change the file, save it again, install it again over writing the file we just installed and then click refresh. But I think that's too much work. So let's just take this file that you see here and open that in a code editor instead. So here's a little trick for you. If you want to figure out where a Python file is, you can import it. So you can say import smallest add-on and this loads our add-on. You can see that because we have a register function for example that prints hello world and we have an unregister function that says goodbye world as we expected. So this gives you access from Blender to your add-on and there's a secret name there that doesn't just show up underscore underscore file underscore underscore and that will give you the file that the add-on is stored in. So this you can copy paste into your editor and actually open the file. So here we are in Visual Studio Code and let's open the file. And of course the file open dialogue is very platform specific. In my case, I can just paste the file name with Ctrl V, press enter and then I open the file and here we see the code that Blender just installed for us, it is our code file. Now let's extend that deal infodict with some more information. First let's add an author field. You can add an email address if you want that way people can easily read you. The rest of the fields are documented in the Python API manual. So in Blender just go to help Python API and then search for BL info. Here are some more of the fields that I just copied from that documentation. Location is the location of your add-on where people can find it in Blender itself. Since we won't have any user interface yet, we can just type operator search here and then people will have to find it for themselves. Description just describes the functionality of your add-on. More monkeys, the other fields will leave empty for now. I've saved it with Ctrl S. We're back at the user preferences in Blender and we have changed the file on disk. So let's click the refresh button. You can see that it collapsed this panel again, which is an indication that it was reloaded and when we open it, we get the info that we typed there. Our registered and unregistered functions don't do much, they just print something to the screen so let's see what happens. I show the terminal here and when we enable the add-on, you can see Hello World. Of course, when we disable, you can see Goodbye World and this just keeps going and going. So now we know everything that's needed to turn our monkey grid operator into a monkey grid add-on. So we're back in Visual Studio Code and you can see that I've opened the add-ons directory on the side. So you can see I have a Blender Cloud add-on installed and our smallest add-on that we just made. So let's make a new one, create a new file called monkeygrid.py. From my smallest add-on, I copy the BL info into it. I change the name to monkey grid because it's not the monkey grid add-on. It's going to add new meshes so let's change the category to mesh. Location is to operator search. The description is now even more applicable than ever. Let's keep it all like it is now. Next to what we had, this is the only thing we need. We have a code file that's in the right location that has the right name that has to write BL info at the top and now all we need to do is copy all the code that we already had in that Blend file into this file. So back at Blender, I copy all the code and in Visual Studio Code, I paste it in. Just a quick check that there is nothing weird. This we can remove because we're no longer running it from the editor itself, but only loading it as an add-on, we no longer need that little bit of magic. Save the file and now we go back to Blender. Let's start with a new file just to be sure and then go to the user preferences again. Refresh the list, search for monkey and there we have our monkey grid. We can enable it, let's see if it works.  Our own add-on is working. It's nice that things are working but things never are perfect in the first run. So what you will do is often go back and forth between your code editor and Blender itself and then you have to tell Blender to reload your scripts. We've already seen this refresh button in the add-ons list but that only refreshes the add-ons list. It does not actually reload your add-on from disk once it's been loaded, but first let's make it change so that we can see that reloading actually did something. Back in the code editor, let's say we changed the default value of count y, change it from two to five and save the file. Back in Blender, of course, if we redo the monkey grid, you still see two as the default value because we haven't reloaded the script yet. Press F3, reload scripts, that will actually reload your script and now when we do a monkey grid, you can see that the default has been set to five. So this is something you will do a lot. So that is it for this episode of scripting for artists. To recap, an add-on is just a text file that has a specific name in a certain location on your computer. It has metadata at the top in a BL info dictionary and it has a registered and unregistered function at the bottom. And finally, reloading was done with a reload script operator. So this is it. If you have any questions or remarks, please leave a comment below and I will see you soon.


Hello everybody, my name is Aaron Walker-Loud with Big World Breaks, and I'm here on behalf of the creative advantage working on elements of percussion, rhythm, cultural innovation, improvisation, and studying different techniques. Ultimately, there are a lot of things about feel that we're going to get into it. When I say feel, some people say groove or the pocket or style, but when I talk about feel, to let you know, usually we're looking at two different major feels and then a variety in between. So we have straight and we have swing. So I'm going to use some rudiments with the desk to help us get warmed up, and then we're going to start talking more about that through the rest of this video. So rudiments, that's a fancy way of talking about a pattern, a pattern of certain rhythms to connect our brain to our hands, right? If you're playing drum set, you'll also be using your feet. The idea is if a singer and a trombone player, if they have to use scales and arpeggios to train how to improve their muscle memory and their knowledge and their dexterity, we as percussionists may not have as many notes, but we have infinite rhythms we can be working on. I'm going to show you a few and you can find hundreds or thousands of more online and you can make up your own rudiment patterns, I'm sure. So starting with singles versus doubles, we have a low, medium, and a high sound on most any surface of a drum or a table. So using your fist to get the lowest sound, using your slap for the medium sound, using your knock to get the highest pitch, right? So starting with singles versus doubles, I'm going to go between all three pitches. Here we go. Play along with me, please. One, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and let's switch to slap. One, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and nice. Let's increase the speed. What's the word for speed? Tempo. Here we go. Same thing. Singles versus doubles. One, two, ready, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two. Let's switch to the knock. Okay. Now let's look at triplets. We're going to do doubles and triplets so we can kind of keep reviewing and moving forward at the same time. So that's two at a time and then three at a time with me. One, two, ready, and one, two, one, and two, and one, and two, and three, and a, four, and a one, and two, and three, and a four, and a double, double, triplet, triplet. Triple it, triple it, double it, double it, triple it, triple it. Okay. Now, paradiddles, that is another term for the next rudiment I want to show you, which is essentially two singles and then a double, and then we switch to our other lead, trying to get balance of left and right. Most people are not ambidextrous. The paradiddle helps us to get more balance between our right and our left. So let's try that together.  Right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left, right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left. Now a term we use double time, that just means twice as fast as what we did before. So now we're going to do paradiddles at single time like we just did, and then double time. Here we go. One, two, ready with me. Okay. Now, if you want more of a challenge, let's try to go single time, double time, triple time. Here we go. I'm going to do two cycles of that. One, two, paradiddle starting at single time. Okay, nice, nice. If you're finding yourself a little bit challenged or you can't keep up on certain tempos, please do not worry. My goal is to give you things that work with you and always push with a little challenge. You may hear some teachers talk about growth mindset or perseverance. These are terms that really help us to think about that we're human. We have to embrace our mistakes. We have to embrace the fact that our effort and our patience with ourselves on a daily basis is how we meet our goals. We cannot snap our fingers and be as good as we want at anything.  So the last thing we're going to do using the table for now is what I call the echo game, where I'm going to play something and you try and repeat it back to me. I'm going to be using fist, slap, knock, low, mid, high. I'm going to be changing tempos. I'm going to be mixing it up a little bit and keep that growth mindset in mind. Don't worry about being perfect. Do your best. We're going to trade one measure at a time. We'll do a few in a row. Here we go. Starting with me. One, two, one, two, ready, and last one. Okay. Nice. Nice. So now that we've warmed up a little bit, I'm going to move us over to the gym bay and we're going to start looking at a little bit of idea. We talked about straight and swing, and I'll tell you more over there. So straight and swing, there feels in music and there's a lot in between. When we're using a hand drum like this, congas, gym bass, bongos, the concept of bass tone and slap as low, mid, high are universal, right?  That's tone, bass, tone, slap with your fingertips towards the edge. High pitch, low, mid, high, just to review. Now moving forward, thinking about straight and swing. Let's play eighth notes straight and then I'll show you how I start switching to swing and we'll go back and forth. Here we go with me. One, two, one, two, ready and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and two and three and four. Two more times. One and two and three and four, one and two and three. Keep playing with me. Now remember, if you don't have a hand drum or you don't have a snare drum and All you have is your own creation at home or a table. That's totally fine. Keep using that as long as the adults are in your home are cool with that. Now, let's use 16th notes. So playing them straight, I'm gonna use slap. Now, the highest pitch. One E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a. And I'll switch to swing. Straight. Nice. Now, the people who were creating the swing feel, and I'll tell you more about that in a little bit, they might not have looked at it like this, but sometimes for me I'm a visual learner and I think about what's the math in the count. So I was thinking about how the triplet, which we've done before. Right, right, right, left, left, left, right, right, right, left, left, left. Or you could play with singles doing triplet. One and a two and a three and a four and a. Whichever way you like. The idea is there's three notes. What if we made this one invisible? One and a two and a three and a four and a one and two and three and four and one and a two and a three and a four and a one and two. And you see what I'm saying? So let's try triplets and then eliminate the middle triplet to see what happens. Three and a four and a one. Let's try and increase the tempo. One, two, ready and a. Okay, now, that's a little bit of a clue on how to be thinking about it, but it's really more about the feel over time. And there's, like I said, an infinite difference between swing and straight and everything in between. Now I'm gonna move back to the table and we're gonna start listening to a song that I have developed that'll help us in getting more free playing swing, all right? So in creating this draft here with Big World Breaks, I was thinking about influences that impacted me over time. Artists like Chuck Brown with go-go music. Teddy Riley with R&B. New Jack swing. Artists who use their mouth with beatboxing percussion like Dougie Fresh and Ready Rock C. These are just some of the influences. Now this has a swing feel in it. So right now we're gonna do an echo game where you're gonna repeat after me anything I try and play to you, just imitate me the best you can. Here we go, repeat after me. Ready and. If you've noticed, I did some swing and some straight. So it's nice to think about what's possible when you can go in between and play one thing on top of the other, right? So in me thinking about swing, I couldn't have done any of this, this feel, without great teachers and mentors in my life. So once again, find those people who can help you achieve your goals. Mr. Nat at Washington Middle School in the central district where I grew up. Mr. Acox at Garfield High School, a jazz band drumline at both schools in that neighborhood. Then with Mr. Brian Kirk over at Seattle Central, these great mentors helped me cultivate my style and understanding. And they also taught me about how the roots of this music is before jazz. We're talking about from Congo Square in New Orleans where gospel music and blues music, innovations of black Americans led to the birth of jazz in a very unique place. And so in New Orleans on every Sunday, for whatever reason, they decided let's let everybody play. When there was a lot of people confined by slavery and confined by Jim Crow and all these horrible things, on Sundays, they were allowed to be in the park. And they were making music and singing and dancing and sharing cultural ideas. So what I want you to understand is all the stuff we're hearing today that we've talked about like hip hop and funk and EDM and R&B, all these things, they come from a family tree that started way, way long ago. And I encourage you to look up Congo Square. And we're gonna use this song one more time. And now instead of imitating me in an echo game, what I'm gonna ask you to do, I'm gonna move over to the snare.   All right, after me. Yep, let's do it more. Now I'm gonna move over to the jimbay and we're gonna utilize a different piece of music that Big World Breaks worked on that helps us navigate between straight and swing and some of the in-betweens, all right? Follow me over here. So when thinking about what influenced this creation working with my peers in Big World Breaks from a wide variety of Pan-African music, which is a way of talking about influences from people who are all around the world who originate culturally and ethnically from African diaspora. And these styles merging together from different lands, from different cultures, from different nationalities, but sharing that common bond. So artists like Shade, The Roots, Erika Badu, Burning Spear, these are just some examples of artists that influenced me creating this with my peers in Big World Breaks. But once again, there's so many people to check out, but check them out too. Now we're gonna start with eighth notes and then sixteenth notes going from straight to swing. Then we're gonna try and find that in-between spot. Let's straight again and then swing. Now I went back and forth, but in this song we're trying to find that a sweet spot in between. So now I'm gonna do straight, then swing and then follow right in the middle somewhere to lock in. Next sixteenth notes, which even articulate a little bit more. Once again, sixteenths, one in with straight, keep it going on the in-between. Back to straight, let's stay in-between after this. Nice, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna let you try to improvise to freestyle your own rhythms. Ideally you're trying to pick one or the other, straight, swing, or in-between. I'll go first, you go after me, here we go. And you can play in-between, right? Nice, thank you for participating in that. And I just wanted to review for us some of the essentials that we've talked about today. So we did some rudiments up front, the patterns, we did singles, doubles, triplets, paradiddles, right? We talked about the importance of feel and things in-between, the two major fields of straight and swing. We talked about finding your own teachers and mentors and thinking about artists that you may like or teachers that you come across or people you find online. For me, the main drummer that has influenced me separate from my teachers is Elvin Jones. So I definitely encourage you to check him out too. But find your own. We also talked about being able to think about how to eliminate the middle triplet, one and two and one and two and right? So that's a little bit of a specific mathematical way to think about the swing feel. And I'd encourage you also to keep looking up some of these styles of music that have influenced everything that brings this feel about. So blues and gospel music and then how that gave birth to jazz and everything that came after that to the modern day. And it's really important to keep in mind as Mr. Natt always said, there's no shortcut in music. So you can't wake up one day and say, I wanna be good at this exactly how I wanna be. You have to spend an hour at a time, a day at a time, be honest with yourself and think about what your weaknesses are, what your strengths are and keep navigating through it. And no matter what equipment you have at home or what you do have at home or what you don't or when you can practice, when you can't or if you do like your teacher, you don't like your teacher, the thing is you're gonna be your own best teacher in your life. So figure out what you need to do to do what you love and hold yourself accountable to get better at it every day. And I guarantee you, you're gonna find more happiness than most people. So thank you again. This is Aaron Walker Loud with Big World Breaks and this has been brought to you by The Creative Advantage. Have a great day.


Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to tomorrow. So I actually struggled a bit to decide what to talk about for my final space pod of 2016 and finally I decided to review and count down the final major rocket launches of this year since We're not going to be talking about any rocket launches until our next live show on January 7th So I wanted to kind of update the scorecard for this year of how many launches have taken place this year and Also make a couple predictions about next year. This is your space pod for December 24th 2016 So first up we have an Atlas V launch which launched the Echo Star 19 communication satellite into a geosynchronous transfer orbit three two One we have RD-180 ignition and we have liftoff of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Echo Star 19 This Atlas V launched on Sunday, December 18th at 1913 coordinated Universal Time from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral, Florida This particular Atlas V was in the 4-3-1 configuration with a four meter payload fairing Three solid rocket boosters and a single engine Centaur upper stage now the payload the Echo Star 19 Satellite also known as Jupiter 2 is a high capacity Communication satellite which will be used by Hughes network systems to provide broadband internet access across North America in Remote areas that don't have access to fiber optics This is supposed to be a new generation that will provide more bandwidth than before and work in conjunction with Existing satellites in the Hughes network. This was United Launch Alliance's final launch of this year And they successfully completed 12 launches this year using both their Atlas V and Delta IV rockets So congratulations to United Launch Alliance for an awesome year next up We have a launch from Japan and this is kind of a rare launch This was a launch of their Epsilon rocket and this was the second ever launch of this particular rocket This launch took place on Tuesday December 20th at 1100 coordinated Universal Time from the Ushinora Space Center on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu Now the Epsilon rocket is a really interesting rocket It's a three-stage solid rocket the first stage of which is based upon the solid rocket boosters that are used on the Japanese H2a rocket the upper stages of the Epsilon are actually Upgraded versions of the upper stages that Japan used to use on their now retired M5 Four-stage all-solid rocket now the payload for this mission was the ERG Satellite which is an acronym which stands for exploration of Energization and radiation in geospace Also, the satellite is nicknamed Arase the ERG or Arase satellite will study the Van Allen radiation belts in Conjunction with NASA's Van Allen probes which were launched back in 2012 Next up. We have a launch out of China and this was a long March 2d rocket This two-stage liquid booster launched on Wednesday December 21st at 1922 Coordinated Universal Time from the G-Quan satellite launch center the payload for this mission was the tan sat satellite Which is designed to track greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere And it will generate monthly maps of where the densest carbon dioxide levels are distributed worldwide Next we have an area on five rocket, which also launched on Wednesday December 21st Just 68 minutes after the tan sat satellite This area on five launched at 2030 coordinated Universal Time from the French Guiana and it carried the star one D1 and JC sat 15 communications satellites Into a geosynchronous transfer orbit now star one D1 will broadcast internet TV Satellite phone calls and high-speed data transmissions over Brazil Mexico and other parts of Latin America star one D1 is the top most payload and the bottom most payload is JC sat 15 which will cover Japan and neighboring countries in the Asian Pacific and Indian Ocean regions It will also replace the nSat 110 communication satellite and JC sat 15 will broadcast Satellite TV as well as provide maritime and aviation connectivity I also love the way that Arianne space does double satellite rideshare launches like this It's so cool to see and I really like the payload fairing within the payload fairing Now there's only two more planned rocket launches before the end of this year both of which could be Chinese launches The first of which would be another long March 2d rocket the two-stage liquid fuel rocket that's scheduled launch on December 26th the day after Christmas and that would be launching the Superview 1 and 2 Earth observation spacecraft and then they have one more launch which has still yet to be decided that would have to happen before December 31st and that would be a long March 3d rocket and that would hopefully be launching the TJS 2 spacecraft which is actually an experimental spacecraft to test new types of broadcast communication technologies What those technologies are? I don't know. I don't have that much access to the Chinese Academy of Science So let's get into the final count of how many Successful orbital rocket launches took place this year coming in at first place the United States had 22 Successful orbital launches this year and coming in in a close second place and could possibly tie for first place is China They currently have 20 successful launches And if those last two planned launches take place this year and are successful then they would tie with the United States with 22 successful launches coming in third place would be Russia with 18 successful launches or Only 16 successful launches if you don't count the Soyuz rockets which launched from French Guiana Speaking of French Guiana coming in fourth place is the European Space Agency with nine successful launches if you only count the Ariane 5 and Vega launches or 11 launches if you also count those two Soyuz launches that took place from French Guiana Coming in fifth place is India with seven successful launches this year of their PSLV and GSLV Rockets and coming in sixth place is Japan with four successful launches this year and Tying for last place is North Korea and Israel with one successful launch apiece Now there was also quite a few successful suborbital launches this year But the ones that I only really wanted to highlight were the four successful launches of blue origins new Shepard rocket and Especially that last and final flight of that particular new Shepard rocket was just amazing to have the launch abort of the capsule and Still successfully land the rocket itself. That was just an amazing flight Which brings me into predictions for next year based on how much blue origins surprised us this year with their Successful launches and their email updates and being a lot more transparent about what they're doing and the activities That they're up to I'm really looking forward to next year and the progress that blue origin makes Seems to me like they might be the first company to start doing actual space tourism or at least Suborbital space tourism they might be the first company to start flying pain customers And that's what I am gonna stick with I think that blue origin is going to win that suborbital race And who are they competing with well virgin galactic of course Which saw the return of their spaceship to spacecraft this year which hasn't yet flown into space and still might be Quite a bit longer than six months away, but we'll see on that I really hope that they prove me wrong course blue origin and virgin galactic are also competing with X-Corp aerospace who I am very happy is still producing their link spacecraft And might be doing a lot of cool work and might even be able to do some sort of test flights next year But looking higher up into orbital space flight I'm really looking forward to the SpaceX return to flight which should be happening sometime next month then January of 2017 but I'm also looking forward to the progress that they're gonna be making on the commercial crew program and their crewed Version of their Dragon capsule if the schedule holds and I'm really hoping that it does they'll have their first test flight of the Crew Dragon capsule next year although there won't actually be a crew on board But you know that's expected for a test flight We're gonna make sure that everything works on it first before you have people on board I'm also gonna be paying really close attention to Boeing next year And I'm really hoping that they don't have any more scheduled delays and any hardware problems I'm really hoping that they're able to do their launch report test next year And that everything will be able to go well with that and they'll be able to finish the construction at the launch pad So that they would be able to have crews be able to ingress into the vehicle when it's on the Atlas 5 rocket ready for launch Something that is going to happen next year is the first flight of China's Tianzhou cargo spacecraft Which is going to rendezvous and dock with the Tian Gong 2 Space station and test out the first type of autonomous propellant transfer Which will be very important to build their mirror class space station in the future There's so many more things that I want to talk about But the last thing that I wanted to touch on was the Google Lunar XPRIZE The deadline for that entire competition is December 31st of 2017 So even though it's gonna be at the very very end of next year We're going to see the Google Lunar XPRIZE come to its conclusion Whether the contest is just lost entirely or if one of the teams win it Anyway, this video is getting pretty long So I need to end things here But I really want to know what you think will be the most exciting moment of next year of 2017 I'm kind of thinking that Blue Origin is going to surprise us with their first Crude flight of the new Shepard and have the first suborbital space tourist happen next year Even if it's not a paying customer It'll probably be like the Blue Origin test pilots or even Jeff Bezos himself But that might happen next year. Who knows? They're they're pretty far along But anyway, let me know what you think in the comments and connect with us on social media As well and start the discussion there of what you think are going to be the most exciting moments of next year Tomorrow is of course a crowdfunded show through Patreon And I am very very very grateful to every single one of you who have contributed to this show over the past year I'm very happy that we were able to bring back space pods and talk about so many cool subjects this year And it's all because of you guys. You you're wonderful wonderful generosity has made all of this possible And I'm really excited that we've been able to create these videos that we've made this past year and create so many interesting discussions and kind of illuminate so many cool things that are happening in space flight And I hope that we were able to do so much more. We here tomorrow have so many cool things planned for orbit 10 next year And it's going to be really a lot of fun And thanks to you guys and your contributions were able to do this And if you're watching this video and you're not one of our patrons already Please visit patreon.com slash space pod for more information and to sign up at whatever level that you feel is appropriate Thank you very much for watching this video. My name is Michael Clark Keep moving onwards and upwards everybody and I will see you next year


One day out of the blue I started having abdominal pain and I knew it wasn't like any other pain that I've had before. I knew something was different. So I went to the emergency room at Ocean Medical Center. I had a CAT scan and it revealed a mass in my colon. I was extremely frightened because I do have two children. I'm a single mother and I was afraid, you know, that they would be left alone. I made an appointment with Dr. Wolfman in Brick for a colonoscopy. That revealed the definitive diagnosis of colorectal cancer via a biopsy. Dr. Lake reviewed my options with me. He said that we could do the surgery real quick and open me up or we could do it robotically which would take a little bit longer but the healing time is much faster and it's a lot less painful. I chose to do the surgery robotically. Because the surgery was done robotically, I was able to get up right away after surgery and walk. I resumed a regular diet. I had very little pain and took very little pain medication. Now, a few months later, I'm back to normal. I have no residual problems and it's like it really never happened. My plans for the future are to hopefully remain healthy and just stay on track with visiting Dr. Wolfman on a yearly basis and just keeping a positive outlook and hopefully helping others that are diagnosed.


When you have to do something as large as climate change, the scale of the transformation terrifies people. People from West Virginia say, I saw what happened to Cleveland and Detroit. Why should I join this romance when you guys are gonna leave us behind and crush us? In other words, the resistance to the obvious dangers of climate come from the people who don't trust the system to create transformational energy so that we're all better off. Rob Johnson has been a player among the elites, but he's also a plain-spoken, passionate critic of an economic, financial, and political system that leaves too many behind. He previously served as chief economist of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, was an executive producer of the Oscar-winning documentary Taxi to the Dark Side, was a management director at Soros Fund Management, and is now the president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and host of the podcast Economics and Beyond. Welcome, Rob Johnson, again, to free-form a world that just might work. Well, Terence, it's a pleasure to be here with you, and I was delighted to look through your crystal ball from November of 2020 and see how much foresight you brought to the table. I'm looking forward to more of it today. Yeah. You know, I like listeners to get a feel for the people. I say we don't interview books or projects. We talk to people. So people behind the ideas in the work, and I'm going to throw you a curve. I know there's a segment of your life and career that doesn't show up in the bio very often, and that's your time in the music business. I want you to just tell me a little bit about your time in the music, what you did, and what you learned that stays with you in the work you do today. Okay. Well, that's a fascinating challenge. I'll start with, in growing up in Detroit, I have a father, his name was Arthur Johnson, who was a jazz pianist and a physician. He had various patients, famous Motown artists and so forth. He was very involved in the jazz scene. My mother was a choral singer for holidays and so forth with the Detroit Symphony and became their development director. So if you said to me, what did I learn? When I came home from sports practice, I'd take a shower, I'd sit at the top of the steps, dad's on the piano, mom's in the kitchen, she's singing along. I could tell, can I ask for an increase in my allowance, the car keys, report a bad test or report card. I could feel from the music where we were, and the music was more truthful than words. And so that, what you might call spirit compass, was a very, very big part of my childhood. And I got very involved in the music scene. Obviously Motown music was there in Detroit, but even the British invasion in Iraq, I'm talking about late 60s, early 70s, and you would harken back to the blues. So a little bit later in my life, when I left the financial industry, I set up a blues label. And I was very fortunate to meet and work with a man named Jim O'Neill, who founded Living Blues magazine. He had founded Rooster Blues and I could work with him. I bought some masters from him and then we worked on a whole variety of things, some new artists at the time, Willie King, who won all kinds of W.C. Handy Awards for Best New Artists, and his song Terrorized was written as he watched 9-Eleven, but it was a song about how his people had been terrorized and we didn't have the sympathetic reaction that you were seeing for the people that were victimized in the buildings. And there were all kinds of dilemmas in that. I worked with a genius artist who was a very controversial creature, Ike Turner, in his comeback. And he made a record, which we called Here and Now, and then he made a subsequent record, some of the masters came from us, where he won a Grammy just in 2007 for Best Traditional Blues Record. It was on another label, because I had closed my label by the time, but what I learned about that was redemption. This is a guy, I'm not apologizing for what he did or denying anything, but I watched him take the gifts that God gave him, what he could impart, put himself together and get back out there.  So that, I've been involved with a wonderful project in 2018, the film Amazing Grace. Aretha Franklin made it in 1972, but came back to life, reconnected with Detroit, saw her just before, a few months before she passed away, when she thought her cancer was in remission. And what I can say to you to summarize all of this is, my father was an atheist, my mother was a devout Scottish Presbyterian.  But I think there is a Holy Ghost. I think there is a spiritual dimension that rides right along with this guy who got trained as an economist and worked in which might call the mechanics of government and finance. And so it changed my lens in ways that are very powerful. So let me ask you any response to my introduction. You already said that you think it's a good starting point, but any more specifics? I think what you perceived was that an election, there might be a lesser of two evils, but there was a systemic structure that was largely broken and there are enormous challenges on the horizon, albeit the pandemic was emerging then, but it's been more persistent than either of you or I might have expected. Climate change has reared its head. And what I would say is it had reared its head long before. My friend David Fenton and all kinds of other people, Naomi Klein, others have been telling us, but what happened was with the turmoil, and I'll add January 6th to that though, that's not in your night, but with the turmoil in the politics, with the disservice to large portions of the country during globalization, automation, machine learning and so forth, the stresses were accumulating. And once you become afraid, you become more sensitive to that, which makes you more afraid. So the awareness of climate change is heightened. The prescient ones that I mentioned were already there. The merchants of doubt were working the media channels for the fossil fuel industry, but everybody now I think is on deck and alert. The pandemic in some ways was an unmasking of all the structural flaws that we see. And as I said, and we said that it does create an opportunity, and the question is who attempts to take advantage of that opportunity and are we able to reach deeper than usual because of the break to, as we reimagine how we come out of this, do we make enough of a difference to make a difference? Yeah. Let me take us back a little bit. What I perceive is that there was a time when people on the left believed in government. I'll talk about the New Deal FDR era through Lyndon Johnson. It's a faith in the Kennedy administration early on. And there were people who disagreed with that, largely in the Republican Party, and they believed in the market. So you had what you might call a romantic faith in government on the left and a romantic faith in markets on the right. What's happened in recent years as the role, I'll start with approximately the Carter administration, as the role of money in politics has become enormous. And my research director, Tom Ferguson, Benjamin Page, Martin Gil, and a lot of these scholars have really codified this. The role of money in politics led to something. There's a gentleman, a former musical artist named Stuart Zekman, who gave a prescient podcast in 2010, where he said an unnamed Obama official said, we can't go back to be like the New Deal. People don't believe in that anymore. And he dug into the Gallup polls that this anonymous Obama official put on an interview, I think on Politico or something. And in the Gallup polls, what did he find? He found that the people on the left didn't trust the government because he thought it was captured, that the role of money in politics had overridden the legitimacy of governance. And that has really scrambled our deck, bringing it closer to the present, not the surface. Now you have a left. If I may, I don't want to lose your train of thought, but two thoughts that have come to me so far. One is that one of the things that we were told was that President-elections, that the influence of television in presidential elections happened in 1960 when the debate between Kennedy and Nixon were televised. I think the real revolution of television happened a bit later when television advertising became the key component of campaigns because that skyrocketed the money. And you had Republicans whose platforms, when they used to have them, were aligned with their funders. So Republicans could go for touchdowns. They were doing their funders bidding. Democrats, funders became the same. Clinton was the strongest one to go in that direction. Although, as you say, once the price of campaigns changed, all Democrats began leaning in that direction, and yet they espoused principles. And this is very much that thing that we both have noticed and will talk about more. They espoused principles that weren't necessarily their funders, but were more the people. But if you're split that way, you don't go for touchdowns. You satisfy yourself with getting to the 20-yard line and kicking a field goal. And you end up losing. Go ahead. Yes, yes. I think you're right on target. I'll cite my friend Tom Ferguson again, his book with Joel Rogers' right turn, the form of the Democratic Leadership Council, the move which Clinton eventually became, which you might call the candidate of their choice. And people can lament, which you might call the immoral nature of that, but you're talking about something that's true. The structural change meant if you're going to thrive, you have to raise money. Now you've got to find donors. And that transformed the very nature of politics. So when you come forward, a person like Barack Obama, there was a certain magic about him when he was a candidate in 2007 and 2008. I had a son who was in college at the time, at Pomona College in California. And he said, Dad, your generation makes sure that Obama's going to win. I said, why is that? He said, because you guys all talk romantically about the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. He's anti-Iraq war. He sounds like a preacher. This guy's going to get elected. The young people are really going to flock to it. And so will your generation. We did. But then the money concentration of Wall Street and the bailouts, as David Sarota has recently articulated beautifully in his podcast that he made with my old friend Alex Gibney called Meltdown, which you can get on Audible for free. That changed us into an environment where, as you're saying, you're trying to kick a field goal, but you got the Tea Party on one side and Occupy Wall Street spawned on the other. Nobody's happy with field goals. And then it continues on Republican control of the House, role of the Senate, Donald Trump elected. I was in Detroit the night before the election in 2016 preparing for a conference that we were doing on the Friday after the election. And I talked to a man who used to work in a building as a security officer where my father worked. And I asked him, what do you think's going to happen in the election? He said, Mr. Johnson, when there is nothing on the menu anybody wants to order, they don't go out to dinner. There's not one B turnout. And I said, well, you got Trump in this. And he said, well, Trump's telling everybody the system is rigged and the big three have lost all the jobs. Very few people have talked that kind of truth. I said, okay, why'd you come out for him? Well, I'm scared of him. What about on the Clinton side? Well, they did NAFTA. They did criminal justice reform. They did welfare reform. That's not going to sell in Michigan. And as you know, Donald Trump won, I think, by 13,000 votes in the state. Why didn't the bailout of the auto companies play bigger in that vote? I've always wondered that. You may know. I don't know, but I heard from people who stayed there. I have a lot of friends who like gone to law school, gone to MBAs and stuff that work in the southeastern Michigan. And what they said was that the bailout of the auto industry took care of the white collar workers, but allowed some of the money to be used to build new plants in China and Mexico. Now, I don't have a zoom lens on that, but that is what I kept hearing over and over and over. When Trump got nominated in Cleveland, he came to Detroit, to the economic club at Detroit. And he took on top management. He didn't pander to donors in that theatrical episode. Obviously, you might say in the subsequent years, because that structural system we're talking about is there, he seduced and abandoned the people that he got to support him with his tax cuts and support for the fossil fuel industry and what have you. And how would I say it felt to a lot of people, like Obama had gone to Wall Street and Trump had gone to Plutocracy, both engendered a hope, neither delivered on the hope. Right, right. Well, yeah, the way I had thought about it last night was Obama didn't try and Trump did bait and switch. Got it. Hell, that's right. But then, and if we can, let's deal just a little bit with the Biden administration, because my third thing is, the Biden platform did seem to speak to some of the pain of both not just people of color, but also white working class, the working class and the middle class, if you could snap your fingers and the Biden platform were enacted, they would benefit. However, from my perspective, and then I'll toss it to you, the precariousness of the Senate majority, if you will, 50-50 with the Vice President is a result of the past two decades of everything we've been talking about, of the Democrats not delivering for those people. So now when you come 20 years later, and you say, now I'm going to deliver for you, you haven't got the backing that allows you to do it, and now that feeling that government is rigged and incompetent or insufficient is now reinforced. And I feel that's the moment we're kind of in now. Your thoughts on where we stand a year after where we started? I think that's right. I mean, my own intuition at the time was that someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren put a progressive platform out there, but nobody trusted that they could navigate the rapids of this system. Biden gave the feel of an awareness and caring, particularly for what you might call white middle class, what they used to call Reagan Democrats. So people thought he may be the guy that can take the Reagan Democrats back from Trump and win. But once he won, he inherited the system that you talked about, and what you might call the stalemates, build back better, can't change the filibuster, all the kind of things that are taking place. It's demoralizing the public. This current debate about whether congressional officials working on policy ought to be able to buy stocks in the realm where they are the architects of what will be the rules of the game or the enforcement is also, it's extremely demoralizing. And it also makes you feel almost like the politicians are tone deaf about what angst is out there. And what kills me, Rob, is that the people that like Pelosi, let's say, and others, the people in power in the Democratic Party, they've made enough damn money. They're old. They've made plenty. To right now come out for that policy, full force would be such a smart thing to do. No, it's a restoration of ethical balance. It's on, how would I say? It's what the doctor ordered in part. It's not sufficient, but it's a dimension of it. And it's symbolic of a healthier sense of governance. And the other thing that I find very, very painful, you know, coming from Detroit, create some of the echoes here. I always tell people, I grew up in the city that America divorced when it needed help. But when I see evidence that Inet has fostered in some of his research about, let's call, the geography of up and down in the economy, in the localities where there's a downturn, obviously surveys of anxiety about health and future economic prosperity concerned about for your children rises up in the surveys. When you look at the geographic map in the United States, and I'll go beyond that in a moment, but when you look at that geographic map, what you see is the places where people are anxious about employment security are also the places where racial animosity explodes. People blame others when they're scared. And the destruction, my friend and scholar Peter Timmons wrote a book about the decline of the middle class. And what he essentially said is, because of automation, other things, we transform to a service-based economy. With a service-based economy, there are two kinds of services, low-margin services, what they call like flipping hamburgers or whatever. And high-margin services that require an education. So in the old days, people like the great Nobel laureate, W. Arthur Lewis, talked about the migration from the farm to the cities and the plants. The Wizard of Oz is a parable of that whole thing. But you were moving to high productivity. Today, the movement from low to high productivity services is through the education system. But when you had all this racial animosity, all of the turmoil impeded the formulation of a national education platform, what we call public schools, so that everybody could have a chance to go up that escalator. And this was very interesting to Dr. Peter Timmons because as he said in some panels and wrote that where Inet was working on, he said this is really a problem because about 70% of the population is going to be in these low-margin services. And these white people are destroying their own ladder because they're distracted in a way that you and I have talked about Nancy Frazier in a wonderful, illuminating pamphlet talked about the substitution of identity politics for focus on economic structure of which the education system is a part. Yeah, let's jump to Nancy Frazier. There's no telling what will end up missing and what will end up covering in this hour. But you recommended Nancy Frazier's... You call it a pamphlet because it's a 63-page book. It's called The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born and I in turn recommend it to listeners and viewers because I feel she clarifies in names some aspects of our political and economic situation, which I'd been talking about sort of in rougher terms. And she very specifically coins the term progressive neoliberalism. And that's what came with Clinton and Blair in the UK and so on and Gore and the Democratic Leadership Council. And what you did was, going back to what we said before, your funders are now Wall Street and big corporations and wealthy individuals. And Silicon Valley. And Silicon Valley, exactly Hollywood. Whoa, yeah, Hollywood, exactly. And yet you speak, as you said, identity politics, women, gender issues and race and so on, but it means that you can make progress socially, you can make progress culturally, but you won't really change the money issues. And at the same time, you're not changing the money issues for the white working in lower middle class. And they see that you are making gains for the other and that goes back to Arleigh Hoek's chilled strangers in their own land in which she has that wonderful image of the deep story that she discovered in Southern Louisiana, which is that I'm in line for the American dream.  And so it's such a, well, on the one hand I look at it, you look at it and we say this is such a losing strategy and yet it completely took over the Democratic leadership for two decades. There's also a book that I thought illuminated this very well. Sarah Krenzier book, I think was called The View from Fly Over America, where the coastal regions were prospering and the Midwest, the core, the Mid-South were migrating towards Donald Trump out of despair. Yeah, I suppose you take it one step further and you go to the folks who wrote about the deaths of despair, the ones who didn't just vote for Trump, but died of obesity and opioid addiction and alcoholism from the same disappointment, desperation, and just a feeling that you no longer matter, you no longer belong. And the media has been no help at all in this. No, Angus Deaton, some Angus Deaton and case. That's right. Woman named Shannon Monot, who was at Syracuse for a time. And they, by the way, I said, I'd take this a little bit internationally. When I look at these geographic studies of despair, where economies suffer largely because of machine learning, automation, globalization, or austere state and local budgets, you see things happen like Brexit in the UK, Marie Le Pen in France, the AFD party in Germany, or a comparison of how Donald Trump did against Hillary Clinton versus the last time that two challengers were running against each other. And that was when George W. Bush was running against Al Gore. And the places where Trump's Delta was biggest were the same places that were suffering from the diseases of despair. Sure. And the analog in the other countries fits like a glove too. And the thing is, despair can lead to suicide. It can lead to self-destruction. But if you think that the only time you get to express your despair is in an election, it leads to anger. Yes. Right? You don't take it out on yourself on that one election day that comes up every two to four years. You take it out and you vote for Trump. When Nancy Fraser analyzes, she says, what we've been saddled with on the Democratic side is progressive neoliberalism. And neoliberalism, I'll let you give us a quick definition and then let me return to what I'm saying. So you're the economist among us. Well, I guess when people talk about neoliberalism, it's joining the market romance. It's not like we're looking at the ends that people experience. We're looking at the means, which is the use of the market, the illusions that it creates freedom, where those in poverty are not entirely responsible. There's a notion they call economic justice. Economic justice says in the literature, you have a certain level of productivity for which you are responsible to cultivate through education, disciplines, good nutrition, what are all the elements of it? And you get paid what economists call your marginal product. And that's economic justice. If you get paid more than your marginal product, that's called a subsidy. If you get paid less than your marginal product, that's called exploitation. Now, there's a problem. Your marginal product is grown in the context of social institutions for which we are all collectively responsible. And so it's not as if you can blame the victim when certain regions of the country get devastated while the wealthiest winners who used to be accused of tax evasion have lobbied and now keep their money offshore and we call it tax avoidance. And then we say we can't afford it in the United States. So the collective systemic design has an awful lot to do with whether your position of productivity and economic justice allows you to support a family, your health, your life, etc. In other words, the illusion that neoliberalism fosters or contributes to is that the market is providing that vitality and efficiency and that there is no collective responsibility. And that's a convenient ideology for a progressive Democrat who needs to go raise money in order to get reelected. And I think offline, I've shared this with you, I recently interviewed in the last few months both Branko Milanovic, economist who's a great focused on. I know it's done a lot of work with him. Yeah, he's great. And Rebecca Henderson at the Business School at Harvard and both of them said that when the raising of stockholder value becomes the primary goal of corporate action rather than in other countries and in other times it's been much broader than that. But Milton Friedman suggested in 1970 that it should just be the stock price. When you do that it becomes logical in pursuit of that goal to rig the rules you play by. The return for the stockholder is going to be improved if you can use your wealth and your influence to rig the rules. And that's what corporations have done. It was of course accelerated with Citizens United but at that point capitalism has no chance of fulfilling an illusion of fairness. Well the idea of capitalism is that it is embedded in a democracy that governs it to give it its moral legitimacy. And when the servant becomes the master when you have the inversion as I guess Sting had that song wrapped around your finger. Then the moral legitimacy of the system breaks down and the side effects the results the despair the the unresponsiveness of the system becomes rampant. I was going to say so so we what what Nancy Fraser says is there's progressive neoliberalism which we've kind of you pander or not pander you may even deliver on social and cultural aspects to as we said people you know on on gender issues on on Latino black women and so on all of that stuff but you don't deliver where it really matters. And then she's the rival is reactionary neoliberalism the old-fashioned one that makes no bones about who's you know what it's what its vision is and what it's trying to do. And she says that what can deliver us from this current situation we're in and she says she doesn't think that reactionary neoliberalism could ever bring along the folks that the Democrats are serving with their identity politics but that if you had a transformed and revitalized progressive set of policies you might be able to bring people who were the Trump voters the Reagan Democrats over can you talk just a little bit about that. Yeah let me let me start with something that really sticks in my cross 400 years and slavery in the United States is the absolute contradiction of our founding principles that's most vivid and repairing that whether you call it reparations or what is necessary to our rebalancing but we are in an era where while that mission is essential when I look at our prison industrial system and all that it's a nightmare when I look at the and my friend Peter Teman has a book coming out shortly I net series Cambridge University Press called Never Together about all of the pushback to refute racial progress that's taken place since the reconstruction after the civil war and it's it's really a haunting manuscript to read but what I'm what I want to bring this to is all of that is part of justice but when everybody else's ship is sinking to they're not going to say you can take care of them while I drown you've got to do something much more broad based which includes that necessary condition and what I don't like on what I'll call the hard right is how they demonize people who've suffered because they're not being carried by the agenda that relates to the necessary reparation of of 400 years of crime as a friend of mine former NBA basketball player Isaiah Thomas said we shouldn't be talking about human rights we should be talking about birth rights that all humans have regardless of their ethnic or racial background and my sense is that we are in this place where the the pain and the fear is so large that we're splitting further rather than healing and the danger that I see now with the U.S. at the center of a world system with China growing up in terms of its prosperity and its power and its military when I see all of these tensions related to environment and everything else the danger of fear leading to an authoritarian alternative rather than the healing in an inclusive democratic alternative is upon us and I think as you and I have focused on in the earlier parts of this conversation the role of money in politics the role in money and who gets appointed to the courts and whether you're dealing with argentine sovereign debt in new york courts by judges who were appointed because hedge fund managers wanted them or whether you're talking about anything related to voter representation what's okay about gerrymandering or not the struggle to disenfranchise for concentrated powerful interest benefit is terrifying and people can see this the struggle going on in plain sight so I do think that the fear and we got a taste of it from donald trump the fear when that man runs around the country and says the system is rigged if you look at the ads you can find them on youtube of his last message that was played during that cubs versus cleveland world series when the cubs finally won the world series and the next day which was right before election day it was a sunday and a monday and he is saying and the american people are the only ones that can rise up to defeat this rigged system as he's showing pictures of the chinese with hillary clinton of people like george soros people like um gulman sacks executives and he is painting a picture of him being their warrior and then as you said when he got acclimated to the system he seduced and abandoned the people he inspired well i think found he found a taste of the disease to surf on but he didn't heal it and if we don't get into the healing business now with climate change requiring us to both heal and massively transform the economy and what i and i want to say one last piece when you have to do something as large as climate change the scale of the transformation terrifies people people from west virginia say i saw what happened to cleveland in detroit why should i join this romance when you guys are going to leave us behind and crush us in other words the resistance to the obvious dangers of climate come from the people who don't trust the system to create transformational energy so that we're all better off yeah a couple of reflections from what you said one was that well it all comes down to the sort same sort of thing really is that i've often felt that we now as i said in the intro face crises that range from the really critical to the existential um and you know i enumerate them previously in these in these conversations climate change pandemic and future pandemics uh economic injustice racial injustice uh and um the nuclear weapons the bigger and the and the and the fragility of democracy itself yes the bigger the crisis the more we need to come together yes and yet the crises are feeding tribalism fear all of that sort of thing and it's tension between how people are responding to what they feel and what's needed to actually respond as a nation or as a global society to what we face are pulling pulling apart i wanted to say just one other thing that i've realized as you were speaking and then let's talk about what might help what might begin to move us in the right direction and one was that as difficult as the civil rights advances of the 1960s were and we we know the pic the pictures we saw we know the mistreatment we know the divides in society that were taking place the country was doing pretty well the middle class was living a good life you felt your kids were going to have a better life than you did your kids were going to have more education than you did you and so the fact that we could handle a huge problem like that in as much as we did partly rested in the fact that the need to scapegoat the african-american was less felt by less people let or you know what i'm saying well they didn't see it as a zero-sum game that's right saw us on an escalator yeah right and those were the biggest advances we made in the 20th century you know were because and now when the last 50 years have hollowed out the possibilities for those people now you try to solve critical problems and you run into what we're talking about resignation anger tribalism fear etc yes yes how i think about this a lot you think about this a lot how are we going to be able to move together to solve some of this it's we're talking about systemic change political economic social and cultural yes but political and economic it seems to me hand in glove are working against our best fortunes rather than for them at this point yeah i think there are lots of dimensions to this one which you're a wonderful counterweight to is what kind of information do people get about the possibilities and the dangers if you say universities are dependent on big corporate laboratories and wealthy donors if you say the mainstream media is dependent upon advertisers what what is either i mean you're kind of where you come down to as as you go to sleep each night thinking about this stuff or as you get up in the morning thing where where do you in your in your gut in your heart where do you think where is our path to actually solving some of this which given the crises we've talked about is is um is serious business for us for our children and for the rest of the planet yep i think that we are in a place where each individual in our republic has to start with resisting their own temptation to rage from fear you


What is up everybody? It is players championship week. The best segment of the PGA Tour season is about to start. I am Brandon Godulla, managing editor at NumberFire.com. And here are my quick picks for the players championship based on odds at Fandall Sportsbook. My first quick pick for the week is Patrick Cantlay to win at plus 2100. Cantlay, always a bit of a curious case depending on how you view closing out close calls as a skill versus luck. He's left a little bit to be desired in that regard for sure, but if you're looking for someone who's going to give you a chance to cash your tickets, Cantlay always fits because he's always around. Cantlay over the past year, if you account for recency and field strength. Trails only John Robb and my Strokes game database. And he has started 2022 with four top 10s before finishing T33 at Riviera in a tough field for the Genesis. His last miscut came with the open championship. He's just again, he's making cuts, he's golfing really well. He's the only one kind of in the tier of John Robb right now. He has two top 25s at TPC Sawgrass and a 21 to 1, still a good number for Cantlay for this week. My second quick pick is going to be Daniel Berger to win at plus 3400. When you dig into key stats at TPC Sawgrass, you are going to hear driving accuracy lingering. That doesn't usually mesh with the game's best players who are usually longer hitters, but Berger is very accurate off the tee. And if you remove Strokes game off the tee from the Strokes game equation and you do all my adjustments there, he's in the 99th percentile and Strokes game fairway through green over the past year. He's a phenomenal golfer. He's coming off a T9 at TPC Sawgrass last year as well. And in 2022, he has four top 20 finishes, three of which were top 10s, did miss the cut at the WM Phoenix Open as a return from injury, lost strokes with the short game. That's what you want to see. And if you want to golfers in the 90th percentile are better and adjusted Strokes game tee to green and in fairways gained while also being a plus putter on this week's surface, Berger is the only one in the field who fits that criteria. My third quick pick is going to be Sung JM to finish in the top 10 at plus 490. Since the players championship moved back to March from May, we've had two finished events. We've seen both golfers win that with odds of 20 to one or shorter. I was Justin Thomas and Roy McElroy. So I don't want to be throwing out too many long shot darts this week. So I'm settling in for a top 10 for Sung JM. So last week finished T20 at Bay Hill. He's very accurate off the tee. He's got a good short game and we've seen him find success here last year with the T17. And if you want to factor this in, he was three under through the first round in 2020 when this event got cancelled during the middle of the event. He fits what we should be looking for this week. He's got accuracy off the tee. He's got iron play. He's got a good all around game. So that's why I'm in for Sung JM for a top 10 for this week at plus 490. That'll do it for my quick picks for the players championship. Best of luck this weekend. Let's hit a winner.


ISR reports two enemy PCs in your sector, come up on job here at Conway. Send it. It's going to be an offensive engagement from DC1. ISR reports enemy troops in PC in your sector, come up on job here at Conway. Come on, get it. Send it.


Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of our VGC 2020 battle series My name is Lee also known as Osiris and today on the channel We're gonna be featuring a team all around the Buffalo Pokemon Bufalon. So it is a normal type it has been introduced within the Isle of Armour and It is picking up a little bit of usage recently. So it's got a definite niche It's got the sap zipper ability makes it immune to grass type attacks And when it does get hit with the grass type attack, it does boost its attack So it is quite a unique Pokemon in a lot of respects It works in a similar way to what Gudra has been used for at the minute and obviously with Less weakness as I would say just in a different mode and more of a trick room dynamic as well to play along with comfy as you can see we've kind of Combined those two together here in the team so you can see the team on your screen in front of you now Bufalon comfy Lapras Mungas dust globs and Arcanine So we've got the intimidate support from the Arcanine and grass type as well to give us a little bit of more of a Helping hand against things like ferrathon. It could be a bit more problematic We've got the trick room setters in our comfy and dust globs We've got a mungas redirection then it gives us a grass type in as well to help against things like Gastrodon, Primerina things like would be a little bit more tricky to deal with we've got weakness policy Lapras here that plays off nicely with the comfy obviously with the triage ability there We'll be able to proc that weakness policy and then support Lapras really nicely as we've seen come to do a bunch of times here on the Channel with that floral healing and then you could also pair it up with the Bufalon Which is an alternative Dynamax Pokemon and what we're kind of going for here today on the channel with that assault vest So without further ado, let's look into the team as always the team pace will be down in the description below There will be a rental code at the end of the episode so do stick around for that And we'll have a couple of games now with the team kind of showcase to talk through some of the mods with there how it works and Then we'll we'll put that rental team up and Lomba hold We've got a kind of a mirror match here, but it's a little bit different because we've got a goudre comfy team with their Duraladon Right you ferrathon and Primerina so And there's no definite Well, there is kind of a trick room mod in my opponent's team But more of kind of well I guess there is with the Primerina ferrathon definitely a trick room mod and then you've got more faster mod with the Duraladon and the goudre they're double dragon. So You know, I do feel like Lapras with the weakness policy does pretty well here I'm gonna be careful with certain things of course, but we do hit a lot of stuff on my opponent's team pretty hard So even though this is a Bufalon team and I kind of am more leaning towards going for the Bufalon There's not a great deal. It like threatens a super hard and Although the the ferrathon does worry me slightly and we it means we're gonna need to bring the arcanine I think we could probably get away with comfy Bufalon and then maybe Arcanine and Amungus in the back that might not be a bad player at all Because we technically need the arcanine to deal help us deal with the ferrathon really It does help us with the Duraladon as well. So now we can go from there. So let's see Let's dive into it now. I Really should probably bring the Lapras here, but for Because this is Bufalon and it is all about Bufalon. We're gonna we're gonna force it We're gonna bring it and see what we can do. I believe it's a very good Pokemon It's all quite a little bit of usage quite a little bit of usage It's all a lot. It's all a lot of usage in the early days of X and Y When that format first came around in 2011 very early format played with Mushurana Taking advantage of the the SAP separability is particularly against things like Amungus here Now with this office we're in a decent position We could actually just go for Max Quake straight away and imagine the rides She's probably gonna fake out comfy and in all honesty That'd be my best guess You know we could try for a trick room for sure Just the extra special Defense boost would be pretty nice in all honesty if we can get that so we'll go for the trick room See if we can get it. We'll go for a Max Quake into the rides you I'm guessing they're gonna suspect that the Bufalon does Max so they'll probably fake out into the comfy here to Stop our support Chins and we'll probably see the Primerina Hyper voice if it doesn't max here, which it may do. I don't think it will though because Bufalon On our side of the field gonna be the slowest Pokemon out at the moment So it would indicate that there's no max gone there.  So that's quite nice for us Okay, well I Might be worth See what options are now we could go for an attack boost as well right now if we want and we could max knuckle We could max max steel spike as well max steel spike might be nice and go for a giga drain into Bufalon as well Just to give us that attack boost and and depending if we yeah, we're not not gonna see a max from my the opposing Primerina, so what we might be able to pick up the knockout here as we see an electro web come out from the right You're gonna lower our speed stat by one stage Not so concerned really as we see a moon blast into Bufalon leave in the comfy alone Which is kind of interesting honestly and As you do get the steels bike and give us that defense boost as well, which is quite nice just prolonging our Our ability to stick around a little bit longer now We're gonna be in a position now where we can giga drain the Primerina now with comfy and just go for another Attack into the right you here and probably better off going for a knuckle now booster attack again And go for that giga drain into Primerina now We'll be the end of our max turns, but we've got enough out of these max turns where we We've got enough boosts to kind of help us out going forward here. I'm gonna see the Goudre come on to the field So we get the giga drain into the Primerina gonna dodge any damage from that going into this next turn, which is always good And we'll get the max knuckle into the Goudre which should do a decent chunk of damaging I was gonna put us into plus two and You know it is capped you should still do I mean that's not bad is it? That's not bad 50% damage even if that thing maxes the next turn I'm gonna be able to check out a head charge and probably pick up a knockout I'd imagine plus two Booth along and there's no way that good dress knocking us out this next turn So you see the coffee come out for my opponent So we know what my opponent's got left. They got the coffee and They got the right you and a good draft now. I wonder if we can get a trick room up that would be Incredibly good if we could Better to go for the iron head into Probably not into the comfy. I kind of just want to go head charge into Goudre here And I think I'm gonna try and get a trick room my biggest worry here is the Goudre attacks into boofalent and There's enough damage to the head charge recall takes us down and that would be I mean at this point Boofalent's done so much work. So it doesn't really matter. I think we'll be in a great position If we get rid of the Goudre and Kind of clean up the rest of the team that my opponent's got to be honest So I don't think we need to worry too much there. It's just I could be something that could be a little bit of a problem Yeah, the floor healing not ideal at all man, but not doing Much there the one when coming out. Okay, we should take this Yeah, like a champ like a job But yeah, it does depend on how much damage we're doing what the recalls I mean, we've got the floor healing as well the next turn which is always gonna be nice If we can survive this Yeah, we do a big chunk and manage to actually hang on which is great We get a trick room up and now we're in a great position for healing head charge will get Well, it won't get the knockout onto Goudre because I think the thing is we probably need to go for an head Get rid of their comfy before anything I think for healing into us because we're just gonna be in this cycle of taking recall damage and taking a lot of recall damage Every turn until they're not max anymore, so we're better off kind of preserving ourselves get rid of that comfy as well if we can So you see a draining kiss come out just not gonna really do very much at all as you can see We got the iron head and the big beery Berry revealed And we are losing our attack and boosts as well So you've gotta gotta keep that in mind and max quick coming up don't mind this too much special defense boost not to Concerning for us right now because we are more physically Oriented now another iron head should take down that comfy. Um, now we could go for a healing or we could go Sapsiper and comfy. I think probably sapsip as a career better idea It's gonna be the last turn of my opponent's max as well Just to give us that attack boost back and make sure that we do pick up the comfy With Bufalon, and I think even a double up in the book lot now is not going to be Enough to take it down like the draining case and whatever the Goudre chucks out It's just not going to be enough and as we see another floor healing into the Goudre Which we don't mind at all because it's not really getting too much out of these turns If I'm completely honest and getting rid of the comfy is like the big thing for us because that's the support network for my opponent's team, you know, that is the thing that's gonna Prolong the longevity of these max Pokemon and the Pokemon that my opponent's got as we see another one when you come out and Yeah, the good we're not able to get any boosts at all It's really the thing that's kind of helped us out here, right?  I believe So that should help us and even if not, we should be able to get a head smash into the Goudre And that'll be able to kind of deal with that now Because we are plus one and it's not max anymore So that should be enough to take it down as we just got head smash I mean head charge and charge and we'll go for that floor healing into If they're right, you fix out boofalon here, then it's fine We'll get the floor here and we'll take an attack from Goudre You know when we're in a super nice position to kind of wrap this one up pretty pretty comfortably And we still got two fresh Pokemon sitting in the back. So But boofalon here we go. Here we go. This is exactly what we want You know the feature match is sometimes a little bit tricky where we can't get there the Pokemon that we like The team's kind of based around to work as well as we wanted to But really doing a lot of work here as we see an earthquake come up from the Goudre Just sacrificing its own right you are quiet enough to get the comfy on our team Unfortunately because of that defense boost that we got with the steel spike earlier And that's one of the beauties about boofalon as well, you know, it's max moves are ideal. It's it's really good at Having the best like max moves to offer, you know a boost the special defense with the max quick boosts defense with The max steel spike and then gets max knuckle as well to boost that attack and max strike If you need it to lower the speed on your opponent's team, so Very nice win for us there to kick off with and we'll swiftly move on to our next match as we team gets the We don't know disrespect my opponent, but we're on it. We're on a timescale tight timescale We've got no time to check out teams just yet. So That's a nice victory and we will move on. So yes, like I say and Boofalon doing really well there and hopefully be nice to see it do a little bit better in this next one as we've got our next opponent playing a team of go guys Urshifu, PZ, Clefairy, Talonflame and Rotomwash. So Hmm, I mean Comfy nice here to get the trick room up for sure Maybe Comfy Arcanine isn't a bad play Then we can get the trick room up if we get if we can get Boofalon into a trick room environment I think that would be and there's not a moongus on my opponent's team to kind of Threaten that so that'd be would be a nice option for us I think they've really got much like if we get the trick room out it feels like we've got a pretty free reign to kind of Do what we want here And if Comfy fails, I guess we could maybe Rely on Dusclops or a moongus Moongus is probably the better one because it's dressed like Urshifu and Rotomwash Could be a little bit problematic I think a moongus is a nice one, especially if we can get a trick room up and if we're in a really tight spot where And we can't get a trick room up at least we've got the redirection to kind of maybe help Comfy out a little bit there Intimidate it's going to be useful against things like Urshifu And Talonflame especially the Urshifu now normally it's going to be creating with its whatever attack it's got But close combat some more threatening thing to Boofalon So you know being able to intimidate that that hasn't got that guaranteed crit chance is a little bit better for us So let's see if we can pick up a second of victory which would be Extremely good. I'd be I'd be super happy if we can But Boofalon is always a Pokemon that I really like. I've always thought it's like um Taurus like Like 2.0 really isn't it like Taurus it should have been the Taurus evolution Taurus is a Pokemon that I really do like as well, but uh, again, doesn't see as much play as it maybe maybe should Right. Well, we see the PZ and the Ecliphari So what we can do is trick room, which is the main thing that we want to do We've identified that already team preview. We want a trick room Obviously got to worry about seeing from the Clifari, which it's bound to have. Wow. And uh We just had a follow whoever that was thank you very much for the follow That's bled over into the into the video Which it probably has done so Whoever it was. Thank you. I can't actually see right now Yeah, like I say, we're going to be able to get the snarl off into PZ We've got to worry about I guess if they think we're going to trick room They could counteract a trick room With a trick room if they are and it doesn't really get them anywhere I mean, this thing is the one thing that I do worry about on Clifari Twice sometimes having to safeguard on on arcanine isn't a bad play But really what we want to be looking at here is they go follow me maybe protect on Clifari and um Get rid of the arcanine here because we can't survive an attack from the PZ after the snarl But getting that special defense drop is going to be going to be really big for us here Help in hand and deal if they go after the comfy though We are sash so it doesn't mean that arcanine is going to stick around and get another snarl off the next turn again, just helping out Support the the porygon Z a little bit And reduce its attacks that so it's max strike coming out and it is into comfy Um, but like I say with the sash there, this is the main reason why I got the sash on comfy because Um, just for reasons like this It just means that we can take this big the huge attacks from PZ and make sure that we can get a trick room setup Now speed has dropped on both comfy and arcanine um, but Same time it's not the worst thing in the world because we do get a trick room up, which is the most important thing. Um Now it's a little tricky, of course Just because of this thing That's what makes it more tricky than anything else, you know And I don't really want to switch comfy in to something I mean we could bring in a movie and then we could put things to sleep which might be quite nice Um, it would mean that we um, we'll go for another snarl, of course I think arcanine at the minute is probably the most expendable thing on the team It's probably not they're never expendable, but the thing that I don't want to bring in is poofalon here I want to get poofalon they're kind of in for free if we can Um moonblast coming out. I'm going to be into that comfy slot So that's fine because we probably see a max strike into the the arcanine I would imagine to try and take that down there, but we do get a second snarl off Which is so huge for us here. Um, and we've got a mungus on the field perfect position Where this next time we can put the cliff area to sleep and shut that thing down Got for another snarl maybe all get from flaunt onto the field. Yeah arcanine gonna tank that now on minus two So that's what I mean The next time we're gonna be able to get another snarl slow this mungus down This poor can see don't even further and get the um Get the sport off into the cliff very which is which is nice And this is the thing anymore what you need to do with pz is slow it down because if it starts picking up momentum and getting those Knockouts that's when things get like really bad, you know And that's when things get super tricky So i'm hoping now we see follow me just to kind of protect the pz from the sleep Like pz is not really the the the problem pokemon anymore You know that this thing from the cliff varies more of an issue for me now So being able to shut down the uh, the cliff area is nice We'll get another snarl off and we'll probably lose arcanine like ideally we want to lose arcanine now That's what we want because we want to get buffalon onto the field because the next turn We can go for the steel spike into the cliff area get rid of it there with buffalon Uh get the defense boost to put the pz to sleep and then start the um, no, okay, no, okay max max lightning There we go. Okay. Well Not what we want to see uh Because it stops us being able to uh have things to sleep but at the same time um It's not the end of the world Because we are going to be able to rage powder. I mean we could just giga drain I mean what's pz? I do worry about the hyper beam coming out. I mean, what is the pz? Is it minus three now? Minus three. It's not going to be doing anything. It's not doing anything. Okay. We're going to go for a giga drain I'm going to get buffalon onto the field right now. We've got this whole vest as well. So it's kind of further boosting that um special defense I imagine the uh, the pz to maybe switch out here, but it doesn't appear as it's going to Or is it no no switch up very gonna stay in the field And uh, we're gonna test your giga drain into the pz get some nice damage there onto it. Um always useful To save for play obviously every time it's going to be rage powder. So you see a shadow ball Um, but I mean if they shadow ball into arc and that would have been a great great result for us I think the pz is going to be in giga drain range now honestly So as we giga drain and I will go for that steel spike into the cliff area It could be really cheeky here Honestly and go for a giga drain into buffalon boost the attack and get the the plus one steel spike into cliff area So we've got that option as well to go for you You know, you don't always have to rely on the confi in the trick room um Setting to take advantage of buffalon. Um I still think the the poor you can see may switch out. You know, I do see I can't see Makes sense. Yeah to to withdraw we set those drops so you can get it in the late game Maybe and take advantage of it there and we need to make sure that we're getting at least I mean as long as a moongus is sticking around on the field, it's going to be fine. Um, Obviously the rotom coming in there Uh, it's fine for a moongus gonna Lap up that giga drain into the air The rotom wash there can be super effective and hopefully be able to take down this cliff area right now with a Steel spike. I'm gonna say just get the defense boost, which is gonna be super super good for us Maybe in the late game depending on what my opponents last pokemon is of course Uh, so there's a giga drain that should take about 50% Oh, not quite. So it's definitely a calm calm Rotom probably a little maybe maybe just invested who knows as we get the steel spike from boofalot Not quite enough to pick up the knockout onto cliff area, which is uh Not great honestly. Um, but we'll be able to see the speed tiers here. Okay. I mentioned turn back to normal Kind of all right honestly, I think maybe we go for another giga drain. I'm not really too I am worried about the rotom. It could have willow isp. I don't really want to risk the willow isp here I'm going to go max quick into the ferry now because we need that extra special defense boost because Um, it's going to be one of those things Where pz is going to come back in if we don't have that extra special defense boost It's going to make it harder taking the the hyper beam remember we've only got two max turns less for them We can't see us getting clear in the field this turn. Um, unfortunately, the rotom's probably got a berry as well So we have to be a little bit careful around what? Um, what we do, I think just to be a little bit more Precautious because right, you know willow isp used to be a very common thing on rotom wash, but see not so much anymore That's what I do worry about a little bit the uh, the nasty plot coming out from the rotom not ideal Um, now it's going to be on plus two. So that does become a bit more of a threat I'm just not too concerned about that but um It is going to be a lot more threatening and going forward in this match Than it was before then getting quite a little bit my pot of making a nice player there Taking advantage of us having to get rid of the conferee really because we need to remove it because the the follow me threat That's there. Okay. So now I think what we will do is we will we will protect and i'm going to ignore the rotom and i'm going to go after The porygon z I'm going to go after the porygon z Because I think you doubled a like you've got to target the moongus here. I think if you're pz You've got to target it. You've got to I mean you could double into a bufflon I don't even think pz rotom is going to be enough to get the bufflon We'll soon find out though because they might have just done that hyper beam into moongus. Yeah, and then What we're going to see thunderbolt. Okay Into moongus doubling in there making sure they get rid of it All covering for a switch. I guess Um, it will get the pz. So that's nice to get rid of that threat Um, and also a lot of the speed on that rotom, which might help us out a little bit later on in this match Maybe not that Um, but I think with the moongus on the field like it's not really worried about a boosted Rotom so that you know, that's the one thing that we don't need to worry about an ocean food coming in now This is a bit of a problem for us, of course, but with uh, if we can just get some damage onto ocean food now Uh confi's going to be able to to deal with it. What what ocean food is it as well? It's a fighting dark type. Okay. Well, we do have close combat. So it's going to wicked blow. I think um Okay, that's that I think we need to um okay No, let's rage powder And let's head charge Now let's close combat the ocean food because then like the rotom if it protects It like the ocean view has to attack here. The ocean view has to attack Has to wicked blow. Yeah, let's take a stand about eight percent damage. It should proc a berry What's not even doing that so it's not banded Had your pump We get lucky we get very lucky there Um, okay. That's perfect And now it's in drain kiss range. So that's ideal. So now we just rage powder and just head smash the rotom Um a wicked blow might take us down But a hydro pump from the rotom is definitely not going to do that. So we just head head charge the rotom And that should allow us to get Confian and draining kiss for the win onto the ocean view. So that's that like yeah Could have been a bit trickier and game, but um I think because they have to try and get rid of the moon The moon is being the big player here for us and causing my opponent all sorts of problems Wicked blonde should take us down now Oh, I'm mungus hanging on with 2 hp hero and mungus and going to be able to take whatever the rotom throws out is now so We might be able to Finish this game off with our man another hydro pump miss. That is brutal my opponent. That is very unfortunate Head charge. What great animation as well. So first time I've seen the animation for that as well on In-game, so that's super nice and buffalon going to be able to Literally pick up every KO in this match as we rage powder and sacrifice the mungus for another Head charge into the ocean view and I hope my opponent allows us to play this one out Cancellation oh well good game to my opponent and two great games of their showing buffalon So I'm actually really excited for this episode going up. I really am looking forward to it It's weird that we've got the lapras in the team and we've not featured it But it gives the team another dimension another element for you to play around with if the buffalon is an extremely bad picking in games, you know so As I said earlier, what we will do is we'll get the rental team for you guys Again, like I always have been saying of the past few episodes. I am taking down a lot of the older Rentals these new ones will be up for a little while But if there is any of the older rentals that you You had seen you'd like to play around with still let me know and I can put them up on my second switch So I'm going to pick a team to take down. Which one is it going to be? Um, I think it might have to be Oh the rabbit the rabbit because we've got everything new Recently, I think can't really take perish down because that's just recently gone up I'll be the next one to go down. So I think it's going to have to be the bunny The bunny's gonna have to go. Unfortunately. The bunny's just went up though. That's the problem. Um Bunny has just went up Might have to be this one the gengar ish if you want Don't make public. Okay. I'm sad because I do love this team. It's probably my favorite team this gen Honestly, this is the oldest one. So it makes sense to take this one down. Um, and then I can pull the buffalon And make it public And then get the code for you friends Friends friends friends I like the poker face to be down in the description a poker face for all of the teams is always down in the description So it's always going to be there the information be there for you to check even if the rental team isn't up But uh, we'll keep this one up for as long as possible. You've got the buffalon and the laparous dustclops Comfy and mungus and arcanine. So the team did really well today. There is a code Hope you have fun with it if you test the team out try it out on the ladder Do let me know as always though I'd love to hear and that about wraps it up for today's episode Thank you so much for tuning in As I always say if you have enjoyed this episode, please remember to hit that like button It literally takes two seconds just to go down there smash the like and really helps the video more than you can know And if you want you to the channel, make sure you do hit that subscribe button as well for more of these videos and Future pokemon content. So thank you so much for tuning. Have a great rest of your day friends And I will see you all for the next one. So until then take care of yourselves and bye. Bye