Welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I am so happy to bring you this tutorial on how to paint a wildflower meadow. Now this is going to be considered an easy lesson with lots of instruction and here's a little intro message from me. Hello and welcome to Monet Cafe. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I am happy to bring you this painting tutorial of some lovely wild flowers in a meadow in some beautiful mountains. Oh my mama would love this image and I am focusing in this tutorial on loosening up. It's the theme this month in the Monet Cafe art group on Facebook and for my patrons on my Patreon page and for the general lessons that I share here on YouTube this month. And I will be sharing with you how to do that, how to loosen up your artwork. I know many artists aspire for an impressionistic look and a painterly feel. So that's kind of the focus of this tutorial. I'll be introducing some products to you that I love. I love this set of pastels and I do love this surface too. So you're going to get all of that in this video and if you're a patron of mine I'll also be sharing with you on your Patreon page, my Patreon page, our Patreon page, my color guide. I did a little differently this time, a little more detailed and you should be able to find the colors you need to go along with this lesson. So here we go. Let's get started. And I would really appreciate it if you would take a moment right now to like, subscribe and hit that bell icon to get notified of future videos. It really does help this video get seen by many others who need free art instruction. Also a shout out to my patrons on my Patreon page. It's because of their support of $5 a month. I'm able to keep these free videos coming to Monet Cafe. I'd like to give credit to the reference photo. It's from unsplash.com and I have a profile on unsplash.com where I gather all kinds of different albums of different subject matter. You're welcome to follow me on there and use any of the photos that I've gathered together. This is my Flowers album and here's the photo that I'm using. The profile name for this photo is Nature Uninterrupted Photography. So thank you for this lovely reference photo. Alright, here we go. The surface I'll be using is called Pastel Matte. It's by Claire Fontaine and it's a wonderful water-friendly surface. I'll be talking about this more as I paint and I've just taped it to my easel and also I'm going to be using these Arteza Metallic gouache. I've never used these before. It's a product that they sent me to do a product review and I wasn't even sure what to expect. But many of you know I like to do an underpainting when I start a pastel painting and you certainly don't need this product. You can do an underpainting with pastels. You can do it with watercolor but because this was Pastel Matte and a water-friendly surface I thought, you know what, let me just give it a try. I like to just experiment and find out what's in my studio I can use and often you have really exciting results. Now I will share with you that it's called Metallic gouache. Gouache is pronounced like squash, okay, and it's a water-friendly medium and it is opaque rather than translucent. It's semi-opaque. Watercolor is considered translucent. And here I'm zooming in to show you my Princeton Brush Company watercolor brush which works obviously with gouache. It is the 40-50 round and I believe this is the size 16. It's a pretty large brush. I like using the largest brush I possibly can. Now let me talk about this gouache. I really liked this gold color and I thought this would make a nice underpainting color for all of the grasses. And so I'm loosely adding my stroke work to emulate those grasses reaching up and it's controlled similar to watercolor depending on the amount of water that you add. It controls how dark or light it's going to be. And with an underpainting it is great to be able to keep loose strokes. We're really developing that impressionism underneath our painting and we're giving ourselves a roadmap to follow and also just some interesting color. In this case kind of a complementary color. Now I did find out pretty much immediately that the gouache didn't seem metallic at all. Maybe it does on different surfaces but I wasn't really seeing a metallic finish but I didn't care. Again you could do this with a pastel that's a similar color. You would literally just lay it on its side and brush, do some stroke work, not brush work, stroke work and then you can later get a brush and add some water to it or alcohol but just keep your strokes loose and free. Now this was fun. It was kind of this minty green-blue color and I am using this to get this expression of the tree line. And like I said before we're just giving ourselves a little fun underpainting with some very basic and loose shapes. Now I add a little bit of blue to that. It's kind of like a cyan blue and again this is just that little tree line in the back and when we learn to think of things just as shapes, kind of zone out and forget your painting trees. Just look at those shapes and really it becomes a whole lot easier than when our brains overthink things and we're trying to produce branches and leaves and at this point we're not doing that at all. And I'm calling this a simple pastel lesson because really this one didn't take all that long and our focus this month is called Loosen Up and so we're loosening up our strokes and my patrons on my Patreon page we have all kind of goals that we've set for ourselves of things we're going to try gave them a little idealist of things we can try to loosen up and get more of that impressionistic and painterly feel to our work. I thought I'd add a little bit of this blue or blue green down into the grasses as well and now I'm going to add a little bit of purple to those distant mountains. You can kind of see something behind the trees especially in the reference photo over to the right. It looked like mountains to me. It could be clouds but it doesn't really matter and you know I get questions all the time about how do you know what color to paint and underpainting. Well I do have some basic rules and by the way I have a video I uploaded recently actually a series of videos called Pastel 101. It's a four-part free course here on Monet Cafe where I break down the whole process of pastel paintings and video number three is specifically about under paintings but really a lot of times my rule is just to use a color that I think is going to enhance the final color that I'm laying down or sometimes just to give myself a little value study. Again just some creative colorful energy to lay down to get started. Now that was a combination I think of that blue and that white and here are the soft pastels I'll be using. It's the Schminke 120 half stick set. These pastels are very soft and they just go on like a dream. Sadly I don't think they even offer the 120 half stick set anymore and as I often say I certainly couldn't start out with these types of pastels. When I first started painting I couldn't afford the quality pastels so use what you have to emulate the colors and do your best but it's not necessary to go out and buy all these expensive pastels. You should be able to find some basic sets to find colors that will be somewhat close and I used primarily the Schminke pastels but I did use a few others of different brands. This is just kind of my little setup on my desk and also if you're a patron of mine this is one of the perks from being a patron. Like I said it's only $5 a month and you often get extra goodies. I made a color guide for my patrons. I literally numbered every color as I used them in succession. I also made little notes as references to which type of pastel it was and what subject matter I used the particular color for. Alright now back to that. This would be number one patrons on your color guide list. So I use kind of a sagey green to get started with these background trees. Now here's a little tip for pastel painting. If you're beginning we have a tendency to feel like we have to color like a coloring book where we put down solid hard pressure color to cover the whole surface. Not so with soft pastel. Keep your strokes light and gestural and know that the colors play with each other. They interact and if we press too hard or put down too much of a solid application of color we're gonna lose or squelch that beautiful aspect about soft pastels. You can see now that I'm keeping my strokes soft and gestural and you can still see a little bit of that little minty green showing through. Not that that will you know continue throughout the whole painting but that's the general idea of how you want to paint. I'm also holding my pastel not totally on the side. You learn to kind of control whether you hold it flat or lift up to a point. I have a video called 12 soft pastel techniques. I think it's called it's been a real successful little video because I think a lot of people don't realize how many different types of strokes we can do and it will really bring life and excitement to your paintings when you learn to vary your strokes. All right you see I got a little basic tree line also ever green trees. They typically have a little bit of a zig-zaggy pattern. You'll see more of that as I add other colors to the tree line. Now with this background mountains often sometimes too it does help to be able to be ambidextrous. Use both your hands. In that case I did switch back to my left hand which I'm left-handed. I decided on this blue. The other blue was a little bit too drab. I wanted to get a rich pretty blue in there and just to start the general layout of the mountains and I'm just kind of really subtly gradually working in between the trees the negative spaces but I'm not so worried about perfection at this point. And back to that concept of colors playing with each other. This purple on top of the blue is going to create some nice color energy. Also too things in the distance do cool off in color temperature so that's why a lot of times you do see mountains have a little blue-purplish tone to it. Now my paper this was a scrap piece of pastel matte. I had used the other side of it for a larger painting and so I just you know I grabbed it and said hey let's paint something. And I didn't notice when I first got started the upper right hand corner here had a little bend in the paper. I do something to rectify that towards the end so I was able to salvage that. Now the colors I used in the sky before this very beautiful periwinkle light color I had put a little bit of that blue that was a little darker up in the corners of the sky. The skies are typically a little darker at the horizon but just so you know I didn't want to overwork the sky at all. This image was not about the sky it was about these flowers. Now what I'm using here is what's called a Terry Ludwig egg plant color. Terry Ludwig is a manufacturer of soft pastels. They make luscious gorgeous pastels but they have a dark that is a lot of artists favorites and it really is great. It looks black right here putting it down especially the replaying the image but it's really a dark dark purple. I rarely rarely almost never use black just the color that you would perceive as black. It's just very lifeless you can use other darks that are just so much more interesting with color. And speaking of Terry Ludwig pastels they have two sets that are called darks. Darks set one and dark set two and they just have some absolutely beautiful darks. Now I'm sprinkling in some of these darks in the foreground. I know these flowers if you look at the reference image down there squint your eyes especially the lower right hand side you can see some really dark darks but the foreground typically is a little darker and also I know I've got these roots of these flowers going down into shadow and now I'm having a really light touch and I'm just glazing over that that pretty gold color. So that's really the first stage right there. Again the underpainting was very simple the first layering of color big shapes and just getting in some of your basic color. Now I wanted to kind of scumble in some of the scumble just means to kind of varying strokes this way and that way as you cover a surface and I'm scumbling in some of this blue I think it's a maybe a little bit of a different blue it might be the same blue I put down originally and I'm just kind of blending the color. The colors start to blend themselves you don't have to worry about too many blending tools although I'm gonna show you a neat blending tool pretty soon. Now this kind of almost neutral gray color is believe it or not going to be one of those flowers that's peeking up that's what interested me in this particular reference image. These flowers that will reach way up over the horizon line even over into the over the mountains into the sky and I decided to call this painting I lift my eyes very soon after I created it I heard a Christian song it's called I lift my eyes and it says I lift my eyes to the heavens you are there I lift my eyes to the mountains you are there and I was like wow that's what it feels like these flowers are doing it just seems like creation is in an act of worship for our amazing creator as artist we we definitely have a propensity to admire our beautiful earth. I used that sagey green to put in some of the other flower heads they're kind of like smaller flowers or ones that just have buds up above the horizon line and into the sky and I'm also using the terry Ludwig dark here again to get a few more little accents of darks in there and I wanted to mention real quickly that neutral kind of gray color that I put up in the sky that is a white flower but it's not going to appear white because the sun is it's in shadow the sun is coming from the other side so those are little things to keep in mind pay attention to the values in your reference image and it's going to really give you a guide as to where the light is and how to make things appear more accurate if I had put that as white up in the sky for one it'd be light like the sky you wouldn't get any contrast and it wouldn't be how the flower really is represented or should be represented in value according to the where the light is coming from hope that makes sense all right I'll talk a little more about those purple flowers but right now I'm putting in it's a little bit more of a teal color and I'm just sneaking it behind some of these evergreens to give some neat negative spaces and also it gives the illusion of maybe some other trees real far away back there maybe on the mountain side I'm putting in a little bit more of this blue carving in some negative shapes negative shapes are like the spaces between the branches of the trees you're not painting the branches positively you're painting you're carving them out negatively now there's that purple that I added you will notice in the final when you see the final painting I purposely kept those out of focus I want them to look blurry kind of like one of those photographs well it is like the photograph was the photograph had its focus on more of the other flowers in the middle ground area the foreground flowers were a little bit more out of focus and I wanted to accentuate that I thought it made for a more interesting composition and it's a focal point strategy you don't want the detail everywhere you want to keep it more in the area of your focal point so the eye doesn't get hung up on something initially stopping it from going to where you want it to go to all right now is this creative blending tool I mentioned earlier this looks like an eye shadow applicator and you could use an eye shadow applicator it's a little applicator used with pastels that are called pan pastels I really do need to do more tutorials on pan pastels I like them I just I sometimes forget to use them but it worked really great to just gently blend in some of those mountains and I was trying to fix that little break in the paper with this and it did work so it's often the mountains a bit I don't want to over blend when you over blend whether you use whatever blending tool you use you actually end up crushing the little crystals that are like in pastels and you're if you have ever wondered why does it look muddy well for one you've kind of muddied the colors but you've crushed the pastels as well now I softened that edge of the mountain to you can see I did that with the little applicator now I zoomed in so I could go in and show you how I'm putting some of the light on the trees they were just kind of dark I had a few layers of color remember that initial sage green then the eggplant and now this it's a little bit darker than that first sage green I think it might even be the same color but it makes for nice lights on the trees or highlights from the sun they're still not going to be very dark but now you can see a little bit of that kind of zigzaggy pattern of the evergreens another neat trick oh I added a little dark to that tree I wanted it to be more of the focal point than the other ones and another thing to keep in mind is with trees with flowers it's better it's more artistically pleasing to have things not equally spaced some I've heard some artists say like soldiers and aligned you want them to have that poetic flow you know where they're not all exactly the same now I'm just dotting in some I'm doing the same concept here that I just mentioned I don't want all these little blue flowers to be all in a row I'm making little clusters kind of leading the eye in up and around everything I want to come and bring kind of up to that flower over the horizon the reference photo already had a lot going for it sometimes I will improvise and go my own direction to give a better focal point strategy but this photo was already so great now this blue it most of these have been from the schmincke 120 half sticks set you can tell they're the ones that are I love half sticks for one oh that's a terry Ludwig okay that was compared to a schmincke terry Ludwigs are rectangular and have little edges on them you can use and the schmincke along with Sennelier mount vision they're all round and they each have their advantages but you can kind of tell the schmincke pastels as I'm working because they're the ones that are round they're a little shorter like this back to the half sticks though I like half sticks because they are shorter and I can layer things better they're not just this long kind of chunky stick or or awkward it becomes awkward when it's too long to lay down and get some little strokes of color the half sticks are perfect for that and also half sticks you get more color for your money with a half stick set you can get double the color for about the same price as the whole stick so that's good now I wanted to get in some earthy colors I felt like I didn't have enough warmth I did have that underpainting of the gold but I felt I needed a little more color interest before laying on some of these grasses I believe this pastel I'm using here I'm not even sure what that pastel is it's not one of the schminckas though but again the warmth and the tone first of all dirt is the color that's usually warm it's usually leans a little bit more towards a reddish brownish goldish color and so it just made more complementary interest complementary colors are colors that are opposite on the color wheel I really am excited to do another color theory kind of educating on the color wheel video coming up soon I've got a neat way I want to explain it I think it'll really help but complementary colors work well together in art and complements are red and green so that's why the warm colors underneath look good with grasses now I'm using my little blending tool again I wanted to soften a little bit of some of the trees I want the flowers to be the focus so the trees had a little bit too much of hard edges so I just softened them just a bit once again don't over blend sorry for my shaky easel here I'm working on my little tabletop easel here now this is a Sennelier pastel Sennelier is another wonderful soft professional grade pastel and it's from the Paris collection many of my patrons on my patreon page have gotten the Paris collection I've been doing a lot of videos using almost exclusively that set it has a lot of great colors it's another 120 half stick set and it was on sale on amazon for a really good price you might still be able to go to my amazon shop I have a link in the description of every recent video anyway and I have things categorized in idealist for you to find things easily and you'll see one of the idealist has pastels and painting products I think and you'll be able to find this the Sennelier set unfortunately like I said the Schmincke set I don't even think they offer this 120 set but that Paris collection set is awesome you could do this painting using that as well so I did add a little bit of that pretty pink of the Sennelier that I had onto that flower in the foreground the pink one but again keeping it really out of focus so I'm I'm dotting in some of these other pinks once again getting myself a little flow to keep things harmonious and you know nature does this so beautifully without even trying you know like I said it's God's gorgeous creation by how the wind blows by how flowers grow and it it just has always equate it to a song or dance and it's just so beautifully orchestrated and often as artists as humans we sometimes have a tendency to pattern things and it's good when we can learn we have to break out of that habit to put everything in a row and we can learn to emulate nature how it's so spontaneously creates harmony and so it's it's a trick and the more you do it the better you get now the one other great thing about these Schmincke pastels look it has that nice round edge I like to roll my pastel often to make grasses they're much more interesting than doing just a straight line because that's how nature does nature has broken lines and and bends and curves and things that aren't just so uniformed or patterned so I just started rolling some around and once again I'm calling this an easy pastel lesson because there's really not a whole lot of layering it was really just the initial underpainting getting in some of the darks for the trees the mountain and the sky I didn't do much to that and the rest was a little bit of grass layering and sprinkling in some flowers so you know you should be able to give this a try as long as you have values that are close that means the lights and the darks you don't necessarily even have to have the same color so try to focus on the value how light or dark the color is now I love these blues I've got a lot of questions about these gotten a lot of question about these blues when I did one particular tutorial I think the painting was called my blue heaven it had all these gorgeous blue flowers in them and I got a lot of question asking which blues they were and it was a combination of the one big rectangular terry Ludwig you saw and some Sennelier blues that I had and they are in that Paris collection the blues I'm referring to in that Sennelier set so still just getting in some of these flowers now I didn't want to get I wasn't sure if I was going to do this or not but I sprayed a little bit of fixative on the foreground you can see now it's a little darker I didn't get the footage of me spraying it but I wanted to get the foreground a little darker so I purposely used the fixative to do that and I wanted to layer in some more grasses and what can happen if you layer now I didn't overlay or this I probably didn't even need to use the fixative and you don't either but if you have too many layers going on when you go to add another one they they look kind of muddied the color doesn't show up as good so if you can just add a little bit of fixative in the foreground it it actually gives a little bit more texture it darkens it just a tad and it gives more grit to the paper so you can get a few more fresh layers down that's probably the best way to put it I wanted my layers to look fresh so you definitely don't have to do that if you recreate from this tutorial but I want to mention that I did use that so now you can see I'm getting some grasses over it and I do have that feeling that there are roots down deep in the in the grasses in the foreground there and I'm getting close to being done here now notice this beautiful warm green I believe this is a Sennelier pastel and again if you're a patron of mine you'll get my color notes you'll know what all these colors are I don't have the specific color numbers but I will have the brand and kind of an idea of where I used it this one will say foreground grasses or something but notice how this green is more mossy green it's more of a yellow green and I wanted to use those more towards the tops where the sunlight would be hitting adding a few more of these little blue flowers I don't want to overdo the flowers but there were a lot of flowers in this reference photo I think that's what drew me to it they and they the colors were so neat now I am going to be adding in a few just a few minutes here the flowers that I think made the final punch most of you know if you're a subscriber here I talk about punching up color well sometimes you can just add color as an accent a little punch of color that is going to just make make interest in your painting and for me it was the reds at the end now I really love this purple too you know it's kind of a warm purple I believe that's a maybe a Rembrandt or that had had broke I dropped my pastels one time so the reds that I'm going to add are going to really make a little neat expression of color and now I'm just adding a little bit more just creating color interest it's like I mentioned at the beginning color I'm letting the colors play there's so much more interesting than if I just used one pink and it just creates these little vibrations of color and now let's get to those red flowers that are going to make everything pop I know that one's a shminka it's kind of a burgundy it's darker now why did I put the darker one down before I put the lighter one you'll see me do it again darker lighter just a little bit on top I'm not covering up all of the like that burgundy color but the reason you do that is you need some color interest like I mentioned with the pink flowers but also you need a little contrast you need something light doesn't show up as light unless it's next to something dark and our eyes go to things with high contrast and I wouldn't call these high contrast but I wanted to give some contrast so that these red flowers really showed up better and again I'm kind of strategically and harmoniously placing them to create a pleasing composition overall I wanted to mention one other thing about the fixative one of the most common questions I get on my comments on the youtube videos is how do you protect your final painting and often people will say do you spray a fixative and I never spray a final fixative at the end of a painting because of what I just mentioned before it darkens the image you don't want to darken your whole painting and you really don't need to spray a fixative to protect a pastel painting I use clear bags I get them from clearbags.com I have a specific link that could take you right to the exact bags I use often I paint in standard sizes so I can buy my clear bags just a little bit larger than standard sizes and I insert my painting in the clear bag with a piece of foam core board cut to fit I usually use black foam core board and when you have it nicely packaged like that in clear bag people can handle it you can look at it I can store my work I store all of my paintings before they get shipped off when I make sales on my Etsy shop and I ship them in the clear bags with another little sandwich of foam core to protect it during shipping so I find that's a great way to protect them also in a tablet of tracing paper if you buy a tablet of tracing paper and you want to protect your paintings prior to framing or whatever you can put your paintings in between the individual sheets I would tape them into place you see I have my tape on my board here basically it's a piece of tape on the back of the surface facing forward with another piece of tape on the front to hold it and that way you don't touch any of the painting with the tape I'm zooming in more closely here so you can see my little rolling technique this is one of the Schmincke pastels and that was not quite the lightest that I'll use this one's a little more neutral and I'm using the neutrals down a little deeper into the grasses you're not going to get as many highlights there and also notice how some of the flowers are buried that's what happens in nature they're not all going to be pasted on the top thus adding the grasses or more of the grasses at the end will give that feeling of hidden flowers buried down deep and I'm pretty much done at this point and even though I've sped this up slightly in some areas I think the final painting took me maybe less than an hour and I really enjoyed this one it was just so free and happy my mama would have loved this painting we're all from the mountains of North Carolina and we just love it there and lately I've really been enjoying when you tag me on Instagram if you recreate from this tutorial or any of my tutorials and you tag me at Susan Jenkins Artist so follow me on Instagram and tag me and then I can see your recreations of course if you're a patron of mine I'll see what you do in our homework album and our other private sharing groups this original piece is available in my Etsy shop I'll have a link in the description of this video and once again please hit the like button for this video it really does help leave me a comment I love the hearing what you have to say questions you have comments you have that's how this channel keeps getting better god bless everyone I have more tutorials on the way and happy painting


Second, you should build a product manager portfolio to gain the product management experience. So product manager jobs is experience-based job, which means it's all based on your prior experience, how much are down related to product. So building this portfolio will enable you to capture and identify what you've done before that's relevant to product management. You need to sincerely build this portfolio so that you can digest and learn product management concept even before you get the job. And once you get offered, you can immediately hit the ground and start running.


This specific model was why I joined the club entirely, and if you don't already know her, Kylie Parks, she's one of the top dogs, top contenders. She creates really pretty stuff, and it's really appealing. I haven't disliked a thing that she's done so far. She's very, very sought after in the community, and she's usually the winner of the Best Customs contest every year. That being said, she was hired by Briar to make a premier club model, and so I have intentions of leaving this guy O.F. to have in my collection because I really admire her work. So not only did Kylie Parks sculpt this model, she actually painted it, and that was the first time in Briar Premier Club history that this has happened. That being said, Next Year's Club 2021, they have released the thumbnail for that, and that is the Fireheart model, and it is also sculpted and painted by Raven Maddock of Chrysalis Studios. That's really cool because she's actually a pretty close friend of mine, and she lives in Canada as well. So there's a big trend happening here. Top dog artists completing sculptural and painted pieces for Briar. What an accomplishment for them. I'm like so proud of them, so I definitely want to have these models as a token of their milestone because I look up to them so much. Let's open it! It was supposed to be delivered on Friday and it made me wait until today. I didn't even change. I'm like wearing my scrubs from work. They put it for whatever reason inside this box. It's a Canadian thing, I don't know. That's just how they do it. It's so colorful! It's so bright! So she called this guy Troubadour. There's the little back piece of Kylie there on the box. She's an incredible artist but also a really nice person. I've reached out to her many, many times and I'm kind of forcing her to be my friend in a way. I ask her a lot of questions and she's never once like sound annoyed or shut me down. So she's a really, really positive influence in the community, so I'm really excited to be supporting her in this situation. I really just hope it's a nice one because all the other ones actually this year have been nice. My first year was a disaster and this year was actually pretty good and I am joining for next year because I need Raven's Horse which sucks because it's expensive and I didn't want to join again. Very nice! Good job! So there he is! Troubadour! He's really, really striking. The color is really fun because he's considered silver bae actually because he has the kind of silvering in the hair but he's like a really rich color and I wish Briar did more of these kind of basic colors like a really rich buckskin or a really rich bae or just like something simpler with less snazzy markings but the splash is really fun too. He has a blue eye on this side and a brown eye on that side but I love this whole thing like happening. You can see there's pinking in there so so lovely. Definitely keeping him. He's not perfect in a sense of a live shower. He does have some flaws happening. It's really just about having this horse. It's not really about it being absolutely perfect so I'm not too upset about it. That's Troubadour! I'm really excited for Kylie and I'm really excited to have him in my collection and it's inspirational to you know see these guys and maybe hopefully one day Sculpt for Briar. We'll see. That's Troubadour. I'm super excited for you Kylie and I can't wait to see him in other colors. I really want one in Liberichess and yes it is confirmed that I will be joining for 2021 so these videos will continue. That was a more successful year of of collecting and I actually have all three of these guys. So thank you so much for watching and happy collecting!


The importance of understanding how the Internet is laid out is essential to understanding how the next generation networks are going to be like. In this particular module, we'll see how the International Standards Organization has developed an open system interconnect model to describe the architecture of any kind of network. Then specifically, we'd look at how the Internet is organized. The ISO has defined that telecommunication networks can be characterized by a distributed architecture from different perspectives. For instance, how the protocols interact with each other, how the network is shaped up, and how the services are provided to the users. The seven-layer ISO OSI stack, shown to you on the left-hand side, is quite general in nature. It can be translated to any kind of network that we are intending to. In the case of Internet, as we can see that starting from layer 5 to 7 of the ISO OSI are grouped into the application layer, the transport layer conforms to the transport layer as such, and the network layer, also called the IP layer, corresponds to the network layer of the seven-layer architecture. These upper layers can also be considered to be the software layers which implement the protocols that are used for communication over the Internet. The lower two layers, that is the data link layer and the physical layer, are realized mostly in hardware and are responsible for providing a platform onto which the upper layers are executed. Internet can also be understood as a topology, a graph that is based on certain entities. These entities in the Internet jargon are the end hosts which implement all seven layers of the ISO OSI stack, a repeater which only implements physical layer, the hub which also implements only the physical layer, but it is a multi-port repeater that allows the triple R operation for multiple hosts. Then we have the bridge. These bridges are used to isolate different networks so that the collision domains of these networks do not overlap. A multi-port bridge is also known as a switch, and lastly we have a layer three device that is a router which isolates networks on the basis of their IP addressing schemes and allows the organization of each network as an independent entity administered by an independent administrator. If you look at this figure, it looks more like a tree where the higher order or the ancestor node is grouped to the descendant nodes which are also its children. So we can see that starting from local area networks which converge into a metropolitan area network and multiple metropolitan area networks can then feed into a wide area network. These WANs are in turn connected to each other as autonomous entities through a gateway router. We can also appreciate the presence of certain interesting devices like a Wi-Fi hotspot shown to you at the bottom and a smart device such as a tablet or an iPad are also shown to you next to it. So what it implies is that this internet topology comprises both wide and wireless architecture. There are certain interesting aspects to the internet architecture. The first and foremost is that internet emerged as a best effort network. Of course it can attempt to provide value added services but to begin with essentially it is best effort. Because of that it allows scalability because an arbitrary number of users can be multiplexed together. And the type and nature of these devices could vary which means that the internet architecture is heterogeneous. Please note that these are the pluses. In fact these are the strengths of the internet architecture that helps it to eventually emerge as the dominating candidate for next generation networks. Internet architecture is also increasingly flexible. Starting from the initially perceived client server architecture we have seen the torrents in the form of peer-to-peer networks and the resultant service oriented architecture in which every service provider and every service solicitor are connected through the internet architecture on the fly.


What's up everybody? This is CoasterDaddy back today with another review of the Raven at Holiday World. Now this is one of my personal all-time favorite coasters and it opened in 1995. And I remember back when I originally became a roller coaster enthusiast at roughly the age of 11. This was one of my all-time, you know, top bucket list rides because I had heard so much about it at the time. You know, a lot of people, you know, would hype it up, talk about it as being one of the best wooden coasters on the planet, which it definitely was back then. I truly still believe it is today. I finally got to ride this in September of 2015 when I went to Holiday World for the first time. And I have to say, I was blown away even after all I had heard about this ride, even with voyage at the same park, you know, having ridden, you know, another great gravity group wooden coaster and a ravine flyer too, which I do like a little more than this, but I was absolutely blown away. The Raven is the first thing you see in the park from the parking lot. And it's so deceiving looking at it because it only stands at 80 feet tall. And it looks like a ride that's fun. But when you get on this thing, I mean, it hauls. It's flying through those woods. It's got that big drop midway through the course of the ride. And it is just so intense. And in this day and age of, you know, RMCs and all these fancy new coasters that have come out, which are all great rides. I feel like the Raven actually gets a little bit overlooked now, you know, a coaster that was once considered the number one wooden coaster on the planet by pretty much all enthusiasts. But I still believe this ride holds its own. The ride experience on the Raven starts with this slow left turn out of the station. Those over the hues there through the shed with the transfer track, take a little dip down, and then you hit the lift hill. So as you can see, just from being on the lift hill, this ride is heavily engulfed by the woods in the area, which as I briefly touched upon earlier is going to make for an awesome ride experience. So pretty quick to get to the top. It's only 80 feet tall. Take a slight turn to the right there. Then you hit the first drop, 85 feet, and then into the 120 foot long tunnel.  Then you head up into this hill, bank to the right. You go over the sweeping turn over Lake Rudolph, which is awesome. One of the only parts of the ride you can see when you're not actually on it.  Then down this awesome 61 foot drop into the woods. This part is this where it gets really wild. You go through this double banked S turn here. This is one of the best parts of the ride. And you're just flying right here. Go through another turn there. And then you just take a turn, you know, left into the final breaks. So as you can see, the Raven is a pretty short ride overall. But what it gives you is absolutely amazing. I mean, the pacing is excellent. The ride starts out great. Once you hit that first drop, then you have the tunnel.  And then when when it goes back into the woods from, you know, that swooping turn over the lake, that's where the ride really heats up. And that's where you're going to get the best moments on the Raven. This ride is not all about the airtime. I do remember there being some decent airtime, but this ride is just really about the sheer speed at what you're flying. You know, you're low to the ground flying by all these trees. And something interesting, according to Holiday World's website, that the famous S turn through the woods after that fifth drop on the Raven was actually placed there to save some trees from being cut down. This is a great example of a ride that was designed around the existing terrain, truly making it a awesome terrain coaster. I have not ridden a lot of coasters up to this point. And this is one of my all time personal favorites right now, ranks very highly. One last thing I want to point out with my review of the Raven is that from my experience when I rode it in 2015, and I believe I got at least five rides on it. I know I rode it several times. The Raven was a pretty rough coaster and it really honestly just added to the excitement in my opinion. It was the out of control type of experience that you want out of a wooden coaster a lot of times. At least that's, you know, what a lot of enthusiasts want. And I have to say, I think the Raven is truly an exciting ride and very fun and enjoyable as well. For my review, I'm going to give the Raven a nine out of 10. At some point, I'm going to be doing a top 10 coaster list of the rides I've ridden so far. That'll probably come sometime before the end of the year or possibly in January. Thank you guys for watching. This is CoasterDaddy. I'll see you all next time.


So, this is just an introduction to the DF membership and also to, let's say, the community itself and why to become a member of the community and then of TGF. This is our usual talk I used to give at every conference and not only there. This time I'm going to give this with our dear friend, Muhammad Karah, who also edited the slides so I will find some surprise. The Librafi community, obviously, is a community of people spread all around the globe and this is really a great thing. And also, especially within this online event, we are experiencing maybe much more, even if when we had all our conferences in person, we saw so many people coming from the very parts of the globe. But in this case, they don't have to travel, so it's much better. As we have understood and seen previously with the membership committee surveys, there are so many spoken languages and written, obviously. And this is, again, something which enriches the community itself, but at the same time it's something that can be a barrier for the communication between the various people and various members of the community itself. Then we obviously come from many different and diverse life experiences and skills and so on. So this brings, again, a rich effort to the community itself just because everyone of us can have different skills again and experiences of life and work also. I wanted to highlight that the community is not only developers, but there is every kind of them because we have, as we'll see, translators, people who cares about the documentation and so on. How to get involved. We try and strive to be really inclusive and so we are open to anyone, to everyone, sorry, and this means that we have no kind of barriers, no kind of limits to become a member, a part of our community. And obviously, using LibreOffice as a software, it's the very first step to become at least a user and then you may appreciate the software and you may probably feel the enthusiasm and the spirit and the philosophy, somehow, which is behind LibreOffice and the open-source software in general. So when you get that, when you can feel that spirit, probably it's time to get in. As I was saying before, every one of us has some passion or hobby or interest or somehow and they could be useful for the project just because, for example, I used to be a DJ in the past and a speaker, I'm still a professional speaker, so this is something that I try to apply and to give us an effort to the project. So I used to, for example, give my voice for the video, the tutorials and whatever, of the LibreOffice announcement, for example. So in Italian, usually the official, let's say, but not just because I'm volunteering, the official Italian voice usually is me. But I mean, again, it's open to anyone who wants to give this voice or her voice. And so it's just enough to have some spare time and goodwill and with no obligation, especially to be a community member, there is no obligation at all. There are tons of things to do and so everyone is welcome to help in one of those things which are the most diverse because as we'll see later, there are many activities which can be done in the spare time of a user and a community, then a community member. The idea which is behind being a participant, so being a member of the community, is to give back. What I mean is that everyone, at least we wish that everyone knows that LibreOffice is free software, it's open source software, so you may download it for free and use it wherever and whenever you want. And this is clear, hopefully, but anyway, we don't dislike having something back in terms of usually contributions and I mean, so doing something for the project or donations of money. But when and if you feel, you know, the need to give back something to the project, just because you trust, you see that the project, the software is really awesome and you use it with profit, probably, and you like it so much sooner or later, hopefully, we come the time to, that you will feel that you would like to give something back. So that's the good spirit and the moment to be part of the community, at least, and then of TDF, the foundation. Why contribute? First of all, I was saying, as I was saying just before, the satisfaction. I was telling you about my satisfaction when I sew my bug reapers fixed, but this is just one of the satisfaction you can get back from, you know, being part of the project because just feeling part of the project is already a reason of satisfaction to feel useful to others just because, for example, reporting the bugs, the bugs were fixed but not just for me, but for everyone. Getting in touch with the community and, you know, learn so many cultures and different languages and so on and something I really love and possibly meeting these people in person as long as we can do that and so know different people and cultures. Being recognized by others because, yes, it may happen, I mean, I'm not that famous, but sometimes it happens, oh, you got really, I saw your video, something like that, which is something that, anyway, gives a bit of satisfaction back. And also, the advocating, I mean, encouraging others to join is something that, from my point of view, gives a lot of satisfaction. Please, I can't see, because of the presentation screen, I can't see any message on the chat room and so on, so Stephanie, if someone has something to say, just report to me because I can't see it. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Thank you. The reason, obviously, the side of growing your knowledge because, indeed, even if you apply with your personal skills and experience to the project, probably sooner or later, you will face and you will meet some other skill just like today. So for the very first time, the bye-bye setting in kind of live as well as the performance and so on. So sooner or later, you're going to learn something and grow your knowledge. And those knowledge and the membership itself could be a reference for job applications. You can put in your CV, all those experience you had and also the membership itself. And fixing your bugs or letting them to get fixed, which is what I was mentioning before. Finding your name in the credits, because why not? At the end of the story, there is a page of the credits on the liberal office website and find your name there is always satisfaction as well. And finally, to make the difference, because someone more famous than me said if you want the world to change, just be the change of the world. Everyone knows what is liberal office, but what about the document liberation project? This is something I want to always push just because sometimes the document foundation is recognized just like liberal office itself. Well, the document foundation is the home for liberal office project, but also for the document liberation project. For those who doesn't know what is a document liberation project, it is the part of the software which gives you the possibility to open and save in different formats, just like SVG, for example, or Corel, Drow, for example, just to cite some of them. And this is possible thanks to the filters, which are those pieces of software. And the team who cares for the filters is the document liberation project. And the name of it I think is self-explanarity. So how to contribute to liberal office? I would hand over to Mohammed here so he can continue the presentation. Thank you, Gabriela. Could you please confirm you hear me? Yes, definitely. Thank you. Yes, I'm fine. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks to Gabriela for explaining why to contribute. Now let's talk about how to contribute to liberal office and document liberation project. You can contribute in various ways, like marketing, documentation, translations, quality assurance infrastructure. You can contribute with design and you can also take part in development of the projects. Now let's talk about them in detail. Yes, I just want to remark that the icons, I don't know if you can see my arrow. Yeah, okay. Can you see it? As you can see the two icons, this is the liberal office project, which is obviously present in all of these activities, while some of them are really are also applicable to the document liberation project. Thank you. Thank you. The first topic to talk about in detail is marketing. You can know how good and beautiful is your project and product or software, doesn't matter if you can't market it to people, to have users to use it, who will use benefit from it and appreciate it. So marketing is a crucial part of the project. You can go to conferences and seminars, talk about liberal office and DLP. You can also organize yourself subconferences or seminars. By the way, if you would like to organize something locally, for example, you can ask for support, financial support or for mentorship. You can run training sessions, you can train people about liberal office on a user level or developer level, technical level. You can contribute with promotions. I don't know if this is a typo, G-locally. No, it meant locally and globally at the same time. Yeah, I thought so. Globally you can do your promotions on a local level and they can combine it, resulting in some global promotion. You can promote liberal office in your school, at your workplace, in your country. You can do, especially nowadays since most things are big online, you can easily do some international promotional things. You can prepare promotional stuff which can be reused by others also, like photos, presentations, videos, interviews. You can, for example, interview with someone well-known and publish that. You can also help spreading the love of liberal office and DLP on social networks.  How about now? Touching, much better, thank you. Okay, it was hanging. Okay. And about documentation, again, it is a very important part of the project. By the way, I will probably be repeating this sentence because all parts of the project are very important. I think of it like a human body which needs to be in harmony and all parts needs to be healthy so that you will be healthy and productive. Good. I like this. For documentation, this part I am talking about when I say documentation here, it is mostly about user documentation or for regular users, common users or expert users. We have a documentation team, writing and updating, maintaining our documentation, writing manuals, maintaining our online help, also our wiki pages. You can contribute in all of them or one of them as you like. If you would like to join the documentation team, you can just go to liberaloffice.org and click on the Get Involved link, then under that you will find the relevant links to join mailing list of documentation team. You can also write file format papers for DLP and you can support others in English or your language. You can do this on mailing lists by taking part in discussions, providing feedback, answering questions of other users. You can also do that on social networks and liberaloffice.org, which is a platform, question and answer platform. You can search through questions and you can answer the questions which haven't been answered yet. It is very important because it serves as a knowledge base. It's a memory for all users. If you're even asking a question, that is a contribution because if someone else is capable of answering and answers, then even if after you are done with it, other people in the future will find that and benefit from it. I want to add really quickly and probably we should go a little bit faster just because the timing is running fast. For example, in the documentation team, you don't have hallways to know English just because sometimes when the manual are translated in your native language, you could be a translator and we'll see it, but you could also just provide the screenshots. The screenshot is not about translating, it's just about taking the very same image of the software in your locale, so that's it. Thank you. You can provide translations. It's a common part of almost all open source projects, large open source projects. They all have translation and localization teams because open source projects are meant to be used all over the world by people speaking different languages. You can help LibreOffice speak in your language. You can translate menus, translate online help, translate the website, wiki pages. You can translate LibreOffice interface or marketing stuff. For menus, you should probably join the documentation team. For website, you might need a bit of knowledge about Silver Stripe. Probably the easiest to get involved here from this list are wiki pages and LibreOffice interface because for wiki pages, you don't need any permission to start. You just go register on the wiki and start contributing by creating new pages in your language. You can create local versions of existing pages, for example. Or you can just go to our weblet instance where translations are done for the interface and start translating LibreOffice. I just said that I must update the slides just because the picture here is about Puto. I'm sorry. I didn't realize we now have weblet. Also, please notice that all the links in blue, they are hyperlinks. We will let the slides available, obviously, and when you will download them, you will be able to click on them and go straight to the resources we are talking about. Thank you. You can also contribute with quality assurance, which is, again, a very important part because it, as its name says, assures quality of LibreOffice. It is mainly, it can be divided into two parts as its benefits, probably, although there are some more experienced people among us, probably, on quality assurance. You can get out from them when you would like to get involved, like Ilmari. One is assuring the quality by, for example, testing beta versions or development versions of the software and reporting bugs you encounter. The other one is when someone reports a bug, there is a work that needs to be done before it can be fixed by developers. That is bug triaging, and it can, it simply consists of looking into newly reported bugs and triaging them, categorizing them, making sure they are real bugs, and maybe finding the exact points where it started to, where it started, like some bugs may start at a certain point, so you can find that point. You mean the history of the project, so in which version? Yeah, you can find where it started without knowing any programming. We have instructions for this. This is called buy-by section. When you do this, you make that bug report ready to be worked on by developers. You can, as I said, join in bug hunting by beta testing. You can report broken links, prepare files for import-export filters, and you can report layout mismatch, like if you open a dokex file and you see some visual discrepancies, you can report those. I have a question for Cisco, and then I will read the answer afterwards. If this bug shown is one of them or the ones fixed or not, because at the moment it's just a screenshot, I can't, and I also can't check now. And design, if you feel like, I mean, the designers, why design is important is it is related to the face of LibreOffice. Under the hood, how good is software, how good you make it, doesn't matter to the user if you present it with an unusable or ugly interface. So it is, again, a very important part. And if you have some talent in that regard, or you see some parts of LibreOffice that could be better, if you think you can do it better, please come and join the design team. There are very friendly people in the design team. They usually hang out in telegram group. You can just join and pick up a task. You can contribute by preparing templates. You can help with beautifying and standardizing user interface. You can help with icons and dialogue windows. And you can also help with infra if you are, for example, a Linux veteran or a Linux system admin or a technical person who would like to help with those. You can help our infra team to keep our platforms running. We have Bugzilla, Gerrit, OpenGrock, Viki, TinderBugs, and the list goes on. There is a long list where our small infra team is maintaining. So your help there will be much appreciated. And development, finally. We just have two minutes. Cool. And this is, again, a very important part. In the body of LibreOffice, I see it like the beating heart. Because it moves the underlying infra of the project moving. It brings new features and fixes bugs. That's the part. You can contribute with development. You can contribute with macro writing, extensions, EZX, or you can contribute directly to the core. And at some point, you can become a LibreOffice certified developer. You can find a job with that. We usually hang out in LibreOffice dev channel on IRC, and from time to time, we run HackFest and workshops. So if you're okay, I would take back the word and just to thank you for your interesting I mean, I really like just because being just me, you have a different perspective. Let's say that. So it's really enriching the speech itself. So really quickly, why to become a member of the TDF? So why to apply for membership? If you contribute regularly, regularly means that you do now and then something. You don't have to do tons of things or huge work or huge effort. For asking potency. Let me in, please, because we are running out of time now, unfortunately. Okay. I want to thank you and Mohamed Kader very much for this interesting talk. But yeah, Italo is waiting for the next slot. So thank you very much to show us how to contribute to this TDF membership and what's the possibilities and have there. Thank you very much and keep on going on on this on this matter. Thank you.


The effects of a vegetarian diet on systemic diseases like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease have been studied and revealed predominantly less systemic diseases in vegetarians. But there have only been a few studies on oral health, which I covered in previous videos. But what's the latest? In a study of 100 vegetarians compared to 100 non-vegetarians, the vegetarians had better periodontal conditions, less signs of inflammation like gum bleeding, less periodontal damage, and better dental home care, brushing and flossing 2.17 times a day compared to 2.02 times a day. Not much of a difference, so maybe it was something about their diet, though vegetarians may have a healthier lifestyle overall beyond just avoiding meat. They control for smoking, but other things like obesity can adversely affect oral health, so there may be confounding factors. What we need is an interventional study, where they take people eating the standard Western diet, improve their diets, and see what happens. But no such study existed until now. With professional support of nutritionists, the participants of the study with existing periodontal disease changed their dietary patterns to so-called wholesome nutrition. A diet emphasizing veggies, fruits, whole grains, potatoes, beans, peas, lentils, spices, with water as the preferred beverage. What a concept. To make sure any changes they witnessed were due to the diet, they made sure everyone maintained their same moral hygiene before and after the dietary change. What did they find? They found that eating healthier appeared to lead to a significant reduction of probing pocket depth, gingival inflammation, gum inflammation, and levels of inflammatory cytokines, which mediate the tissue destruction in periodontal disease. So maybe it concluded that wholesome nutrition may improve periodontal health. Why, though? Yes, plant-based diets have a number of nutritional benefits in terms of nutrient density, but it also may be about improving the balance between free radicals and our antioxidant defense system. Traditionally, dietary advice for oral health was just about avoiding sugar, which feed the bad bacteria on our teeth. But now we realize some foods and beverages like green tea possess antimicrobial properties to combat the plaque-producing bacteria directly. Streptococcus mutants has been identified as oral enemy number one. If plaque is caused by bacteria, though, why not just use antibiotics? Many such attempts have been made. However, undesirable side effects such as antibiotic resistance, vomiting, diarrhea, and teeth stains have precluded their use. In a Petri dish, green tea phytonutrients effectively inhibited the growth of these bacteria, but what about in our mouth? They found that rinsing with green tea strongly inhibited the growth of plaque bacteria on our teeth within minutes. Seven minutes after swishing with green tea, the number of these bacteria in the plaque scraped from people's teeth was cut nearly in half. So if you have people swish with sugar water in their mouths, within three minutes the pH on their teeth can drop into the cavity formation danger zone. But if 20 minutes before swishing with that sugar water, you swish with some green tea, you wipe out so many plaque bacteria that the same sugar water hardly has any effect at all. So they conclude using green tea as a mouthwash or adding it to toothpaste could be a cost-effective cavity prevention measure, especially in developing countries, because here in the civilized world we have antiseptic mouth washes with fancy chemicals like chlorhexidine, considered the gold-standard anti-plac agent. If only it didn't cause genetic damage.  Thirteen volunteers rinsed their mouth with this stuff for a few weeks, and there was not only an increase in DNA damage in the cells lining their cheeks, but also in their peripheral blood cells, suggesting it was absorbed into their bodies. Yes, it reduced plaque better than other antiseptic chemicals. However, it might be doubtful whether chlorhexidine can still be considered the gold standard when considering how toxic it is to human cells. So are we left with having to decide between effectiveness or safety? How about a head-to-head test between chlorhexidine and green tea? Green tea worked better than chlorhexidine at reducing plaque. So using green tea as a mouthwash may work cheaper, safer, and better. And if as a bonus you want to sprinkle some amla powder into it, dried Indian gooseberry powder, it evidently shows an outstanding cavity-stopping potential, not by killing off the bacteria like green tea, but just by suppressing the bacteria's plaque-forming abilities. Here's how much plaque is formed without amla. Here's how much is formed with.


While Dekker Stasis Bomb no longer traveling through minions pisses me off to no end, her new Q traveling through absolutely everything is amazing.


My fellow Americans, throughout our history and particularly in recent years, America's taken on an ever-increasing role as peacemaker, taking the initiative time after time to try to help countries settle their differences peacefully. I don't need to recite the list of diplomatic efforts spanning all administrations in which we've been instrumental in ending war and restoring peace, yet there are some who still ask which nation is the true peacemaker, the United States or the Soviet Union. Well, let us ask them, which country has nearly a hundred thousand troops trying to occupy the once-nigh-aligned nation of Afghanistan? Which country has tried to crush a spontaneous workers' movement in Poland? And what country has engaged in the most massive arms build-up in history? Or let's put the question another way. What country helped its World War II enemies back on their feet? What country is employing trade, aid and technology to help the developing peoples of the world and actively seeking to bring peace to the Middle East, the South Atlantic and to Southern Africa? The answer is clear, and it should give us both pride and hope in America. Today, I know there are a great many people who are pointing to the unimaginable horror of nuclear war. I welcome that concern. Those who've governed America throughout the nuclear age and we who govern it today have had to recognize that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. So to those who protest against nuclear war, I can only say, I'm with you. Like my predecessors, it is now my responsibility to do my utmost to prevent such a war. No one feels more than I the need for peace. Throughout the first half of my lifetime, the entire world was engaged in war or in recovering from war or in preparing for war. Since the end of World War II, there's not been another world conflict. But there have been and are wars going on in various other parts of the world. This stretch of 37 years since World War II has been the result of our maintaining a balance of power between the United States and the Soviet Union and between the strategic nuclear capabilities of either side. As long as this balance has been maintained, both sides have been given an overwhelming incentive for peace. In the 1970s, the United States altered that balance by in effect unilaterally restraining our own military defenses while the Soviet Union engaged in an unprecedented buildup of both its conventional and nuclear forces. As a result, the military balance which permitted us to maintain the peace is now threatened. If steps are not taken to modernize our defense, the United States will progressively lose the ability to deter the Soviet Union from employing force or threats of force against us and against our allies. It would be wonderful if we could restore our balance with the Soviet Union without increasing our own military power. And ideally, it would be a long step in ensuring peace if we could have significant and verifiable reductions of arms on both sides. But let's not fool ourselves. The Soviet Union will not come to any conference table bearing gifts. Soviet negotiators will not make unilateral concessions. To achieve parity, we must make it plain that we have the will to achieve parity by our own effort. Many have been attracted to the idea of a nuclear freeze. Now that would be fine if we were equal in strategic capability. We're not. We cannot accept an agreement which perpetuates current disparities. The current level of nuclear forces is too high on both sides. It must be the objective of any negotiations on arms control to reduce the numbers of nuclear weapons. Since World War II, the United States has attempted to get Soviet agreement to such reductions countless times. We began back when we alone had such weapons. We were never able to persuade the Soviet Union to join in such an understanding, even when we proposed turning all nuclear material and information over to an international body, and when we were the only nation that had nuclear weapons. We're preparing a new arms reduction effort with regard to strategic nuclear forces and are already in negotiations in Geneva on intermediate-range missiles threatening Europe. Our objective in these talks is for the elimination of such missiles on the strategic nuclear forces. We will aim on those at substantial reductions on both sides leading to equal and verifiable limits. We'll make every effort to reach an agreement that will reduce the possibility of nuclear war. If we can do this, perhaps one day we can achieve a relationship with the Soviet Union which doesn't depend upon nuclear deterrence to secure Soviet restraint. I invite the Soviet Union to take such a step with us, and I ask you, the American people, to support our efforts at negotiating an end to this threat of doomsday which hangs over the world. Thank you and God bless you.


It's July and it's getting hot, just like the deals at Appalachian Wireless. All months get the Samsung Galaxy S8 for just a penny with a two-year agreement. But don't wait because the deal ends soon. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. The Appalachian Regional Commission, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky today released a report on the health of Appalachian counties. While much of the attention and national coverage has been focused on bright spots where health statistics are trending better than expected, none of those communities were in our immediate area. As a whole, all of Appalachia continues to struggle with signs of poor health. The region has some of the nation's highest rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. However, the most troubling statistic is one with a grim name, years of potential life lost. The number is calculated by adding the total years lost by residents prior to age 75. Every county in our coverage area has rates that are nearly double the national average or even higher. There are certain things that you can focus on that tend to improve the overall health of the community and there were four things that stood out particularly. One was focusing on having fewer teen birds, another was focusing on lowering the smoking rate in the community, a third one was increasing physical activity, and a fourth one was trying to work on curbing the substance abuse rate. You've got high levels of all of those things that we're particularly concerned about. Now why are those levels high? Obviously, some of it has to do with what we call social determinants of health. Poverty levels tend to be somewhat higher, it's more difficult to get a job. In some cases it's hard to acquire an education, it's also hard environmentally to be able to get as much exercise. Chandler adds that the report gives local communities a picture of the health challenges they face which will allow them to devise strategies for making improvements. And he says bright spots such as nearby Morgan County show that those efforts can pay off. In Pikeville, Shelby Porter, EKB News.


Huge upset turkey is about to absolutely destroy great Britain in underwater hockey. That's right This is underwater hockey It's basically a bunch of water polo players got high and said what if we did this under the water And then they did so six on six you can't breathe So you got to go up top to catch your breath whenever you want see and then they sub in the The area on the left is where they hang out the puck is weighted now This is a really nice goal by turkey here watch this this guy Right there he's fighting for it with the leg tattoo watch leg tattoo now He's fast-breaking. He's got a guy trailing him behind because eventually he's gonna run out of breath He's fighting the good fight.  They're holding it in the corner really good bank pass to this dude Who's gonna rifle at home for the goal looks like a bunch of fish in a fish tank? It's not it's humans playing underwater hockey one nothing turkey So did I call him Croatia at one point? That's turkey now look at this guy on the right He's coming down gets the puck this guy's here for a while just fighting getting bodied He's gonna break to the outside sweep around and throw that puck past everyone on great bring They didn't even see it goggles must have fogged up This is a penalty shot and it's pretty simple one two three score defense kind of has no shot there So, you know turkey ends up winning three nothing this guy's gonna say yes It was a goal and the crowd's gonna say oh, okay, cool. We will cheer now We couldn't see we can see because it was underwater, but if you tell us that they scored that's awesome We didn't know Because they're underwater. We just couldn't see anything but the top of the water


You know, you're saying that he was struggling with dating, like, had he tried other things before as you know? Yeah, he tried the traditional apps out there, like, I think he tried Tinder and I don't know if I don't think Hinge was as big back then, but he definitely tried Tinder. Didn't find any success, found it very difficult to connect with people and found it very based on what he shared with me, challenging to understand when to disclose, if to disclose, how to disclose. Yeah. Yeah. And I really knew if he should be doing it or, you know, I think it was just it adds a layer of things to navigate, which isn't to say it's unnavigatable. You know, I think there's certainly success. I think there's success to be found anywhere depending on what you're looking for and who you are. But for him specifically, it was challenging. So I guess, you know, one thing that sort of separates autistic people from neurotypical in dating is understanding the unwritten social codes. And I found talking to my friends who use dating apps that they're neurotypical that they just kind of, that they understand the process a bit more like it's more of a natural thing for them.  And I really struggled with the communication and social and emotional aspects. And it took me a long time to sort of build up my skills and understanding of myself and other people. And it was only until I'd done all that work that I started to kind of understand the framework of, you know, how dating works and, you know, what boundaries I need to put down and, you know, things of that nature.  And it's, I find it, it's very, very difficult because the psychology as well with dating apps and meeting people online is very different to meeting people in real life through hobbies and things like there's, there's a clear sort of you connect with people, talk about things. And oh, they're quite attractive. I quite like to go on a date with them. And then you go on a date with them, like not saying that that's easy. But, you know, there's, it's very different to just swipe, swipe, swipe. Oh, there's a match, right? I'm going to text them. How can I fully understand how this situation works and, you know, get a get a date? And then what happens after? I don't, I don't know, with the only time that we've interacted each other is in, in, you know, once in person and then messages and, you know, it's all very complicated. And very hard to, to understand the, the process of and work with it as an autistic person. Yeah, it's, you know, I think the, the core of why we exist and why, why Hiki is out there is so that you don't have to subscribe to those social norms and those unwritten rules of communication and, you know, to put it simply, you don't have to mask when you're on Hiki. You can just, that is very important. You can just be who, be whoever you are.  And I suppose considering that, you know, it's, it's for autistic people, you don't have to, well, it's, yeah, about masking and masking, not, not even in the sense of talking and interacting with someone, it's more like, you know, if I was to create the, the perfect profile for myself, it would be including all my special interests and what I do and like, and, you know, from, from experience, that kind of thing doesn't work. And it's just pick the photos that you look most, most attractive in and, you know, try and talk in their language as much as you can. And then maybe, and maybe when you meet up with them, you can sort of say I'm autistic and sort of let the mask slip a bit, but you're just going straight to it, like, this is me, this is the autistic me, your autistic. We know the ins and outs of things that, that won't be like required or optional questions on mainstream dating sites. Yeah. That's right. That's, that's it, man. That's, that's exactly why we're here, so that you don't have to exhaust yourself doing all those things. You can just, you can just be here. Brilliant. You know, just to kind of round up the, the main questions I had. Where do you hope to take Hiki in the future? Do you have any grand plans that you're aspiring to or your team is aspiring to?