Heartbeat hits 10 million! Click right over here to see the live number of channels we have currently in the database. George had spent a lot of time talking about Heartbeat, and rightfully so. Heartbeat is freedom solution to being able to help match YouTubers based on common interests. So for instance, let's say you're a Minecrafter who happens to watch a lot of podcasts. And then we've got a podcaster over here who watches a lot of Minecraft and they're looking for a collaborator. Well, we can match these two together based on common interests and their common goals to collaborate. And those two can go off, record a couple of podcasts, maybe some Minecraft content, and expose each other's audience to something they would normally wouldn't have. The same thing works for two gaming channels, two makeup channels, a makeup and vlogging channel. Who knows, the possibilities are endless. When it comes to looking for people to do collaborations with, a lot of times it's really hard to be able to find someone easily that has similar interests to you. And that is what Heartbeat is all about. So why is the number 10 million so important? Because the first 5 million that George talked about previously took us forever to get. And the 5 million after that didn't take so long. And I'm guessing the 5 million after that, the 5 million after that and the 5 million after that won't take very long either. That means we're getting even closer to bringing something to market for you. And that's why I'm making this video, because we are making massive inroads of progress. And I am excited. I know you're excited. And that's why I want to share this news with you. We've also recently started a YouTube channel specifically for Heartbeat, so that you can keep up to date with Heartbeat news as well as possible demonstrations as soon as we have a working prototype, how to's and guides as far as using the software, and hopefully many, many, many success stories about how it helped people find each other and started dating. Not boyfriend-girlfriend dating, but common interest dating, YouTube dating. My question to you is, if you could tell the developers any one specific way that you would like to be matched, how would you do that? Would you set a set of tags, like we do here on YouTube? Would you want to be matched based just on the tags that are already in your YouTube videos? Or maybe your channel tags? Would you want to be matched based on, say, a questionnaire like a personality quiz? Let us know if you have any ideas in the comment section down below. Till next time, I'm Anthony with Freedom. Like, subscribe, comment please. Click the first video for a fireside chat with George, where he shares our future and how he grew from $20,000 to $120,000 in just one month. And click the second video to see how to monetize all of your videos with just a few clicks to enable all ad formats and monetize in all countries. And we will grow together as a family because this is the Freedom family. You are part of it. We are all part of it. And we're all growing together. So grow with us and partner with Freedom. That play now button right there on the video bar is all you need to click to get started.


All right, Mr. Gibson here with the next lesson in cryptography today. We're going to be looking at a method of scoring potential candidates for decryption To see which one of those is most likely to be our plain text That method we're going to use is a statistical measure called a chi-squared score that you might be familiar with if you've taken a course in statistics Let's figure out what it is how to calculate it and see how we can use this score to help us really do a better job Decrypting cipher text for today. We're going to be looking at this cipher text message It has nine hundred and ninety four characters in it and we don't know how it was created Could have been a Caesar cipher it could have been a multiplicative cipher or it could have been an affine cipher any one of our Substitution ciphers that we've covered so far we're going to try and figure out which method was used and then how it was generated so meaning which keys were used to generate the text Let's get started by just plotting or using a bar chart of the characters we have So what we've done here is we've counted the number of a's b's c's and so on and we've plotted them on a bar chart So we've you took all nine hundred ninety four characters And we have a distribution now of those characters and thinking back on an earlier lesson in this unit We can see that the order of our standard distribution of English characters has not been preserved I don't see that a and e close together even if they've been shifted I don't see two things two bars on a row that could have been an h or an i or an n and o and I don't see a triple spike of RST so we know this isn't Caesar Which leads us to believe it's either multiplicative or affine So we're going to figure out which one of those it is and then try and figure out. Well, which were the keys used So what we're going to do is we're going to figure out well since we don't know what the distribution of the plain text should Look like we're going to estimate it So we're going to take the fact that we know that there's nine hundred ninety four characters in the message And we know the standard frequency of each letter So if we think about the letter a if there's nine hundred ninety four characters in the message We know that eight point one six seven of those Percentage of those should be a's so we can run the numbers on that and eight point one six seven percent of Nine hundred ninety four characters gives us eighty one point one seven nine nine eight So we would expect there to be roughly eighty one a is in the message of this length Even though there's no B's in the ciphertext what we would expect there to be in the message are roughly fourteen because again We know roughly that one point four nine two percent of The English language is the letter B So that's where we can get our roughly 14 B's that we would expect to be in this message when it was in the plain text We can go on down the line We'd expect it to be about 27 C's in the plain text about 20 y's in the plain text and just under one Z in the plain text so we've kind of created here what we would assume to be based off of probabilities the distribution of characters in our plain text and Now we're going to try and create a bunch of candidates that we think might be plain text So the way we're going to create candidates is by deciphering the ciphertext Using an algorithm with some keys and I just randomly decided to do affine with a multiplicative key of 15 and an additive key of 7 Counted up all the characters and I created the bar chart on the left And when we look at that compared to the bar chart of what we expected in the plain text on the right We can quickly see that that was probably not the right key that these two bar charts do not look anything like But we could generate this here's another random key pairing doesn't look right Here's another key pairing doesn't look right and you can see that we're really no better off than brute force We're just trying all of these and we're again looking at two distributions as opposed to earlier Just looking for English in the candidate plain text. This is no better than what we've been doing before What we hope we could do is find a way to quantitatively meaning based off of calculations and numbers Find a way to compare the candidate text that we generate by trying to decipher with some key pairings To the expected text based off of probabilities. So we're going to find a way to score this and here's how we're going to do that We're going to start by taking this candidate So we're going to stick with this candidate I created by deciphering the ciphertext with a multiplicative key of seven and additive key of 12 I'm going to count up how many letters are in the candidate text So in this case and this this matches with the bar chart There's 11 a's 58 b's 18 c's and so on and we all the way down in the end we get 60 y's and 1 z And we can look at that and compare it to what we expected to be there and again The expected is based off of probabilities of what we would expect there to be in the plain text for a message of this length And you can see that they're they're pretty different and we can actually quantify that difference and we call that error So if we if we subtract off the expected from what we counted or the actual count in the candidate We can produce a value that measures the error in each category and what I mean my category is letter So for letter a we had an error of negative 70 for letter b We had an error of 44 and so on down the line And you might think well, let's just add up all the errors and figure out What's the total error that we had for our candidate? The problem with that is that no matter what and this is just the way that we are doing this um We add up all the errors and some are positive and some are negative they will always sum to be exactly zero So so that's not going to be helpful to our us to figure out which candidate text is better than the other If the sum of all their errors is always going to be zero no matter what So we're going to have to do a little something with that So in mathematically, we have a few operations that we like to use to make things all positive Because that's the reason why these are summing to zeros. We got some positive and some negatives Let's just find a way to make them all positive In a popular way that statisticians like to do that is to square the error So I'm going to move the bar chart out of the way here to give us some more root So we're going to go down this squared error column And the way we generate those values is by just taking the error in the column to the left and just squaring it So you can see that for a we have a squared error of 49 125.23 for letter b. We have a squared error of 1950 for c 83 and so on Let's think about what we expected. So if we look at letter a And we were expecting there to be 81 and we were off by 70 Is that better or worse than expecting there to be 14 and we're off by 44 I would actually argue that being off by 70 when you're expecting 80 Is actually it should be better than being off by 44 when you only thought there is going to be 14 The like the size of the miss compared to what you are projecting Is actually closer for a being off by 70 And the way that we can quantify that is by taking your squared error and dividing by the expected So that number 60.67 in the first row we got by taking 4925 and dividing it by the 81 So the squared error divided by the expected And this gives us a way to kind of directly compare how badly we we missed and by missed we mean Not create the correct number of letters in our in our candidate Between all the different letters so we can see that we did better on c We're closer to getting the correct number of c's in our candidate Then we were for y's because the the squared normalized squared error of 3.07 is much smaller Than the normalized squared error of 83 And if we were to total all of the normalized squared errors This is the statistic that we were trying to create this score Of 18926.41 is a chi-squared score for this candidate So again the candidate was generated using the affine decipher with a multiplicative key of 7 and an additive key of 12 And you want to think about what what what would be a good value for this score And you think okay Well, what makes a good candidate a good candidate would have very small errors Meaning the letters the number of letters we see in the candidate is close to what statistically we would expect there to be there So small errors would be small squared errors And small squared errors would lead to small normalized squared errors for each letter So if we total up all 26 normalized squared errors We'd want that they'd be really small a really small chi-squared score should indicate something That's very close to what we would expect in a plain old plain text So we could do this for all 312 possible key pairings with the affine cipher This is reminiscent of brute force. We're going to try all of the keys The only difference here is we're not going to be wading through candidate text and trying to find some English in it We're not going to be comparing a bar chart of the candidate compared to the standard distribution of English What we're going to be looking at is just the chi-squared score, which is much more numerical Which means that we can sort it So here's what we did. I took I got our top five candidates here based off of their chi-squared score We did it for all 312. I'm just showing the best five and by best. I mean the smallest chi-squared score So we can see that the top line candidate there with an additive key of four and a multiplicative key of seven When we deciphered using those keys The resulting candidate text had a score of 66.868 So that's the sum of the normalized squared errors for each of the 26 letters. It was only 66 And when in fact when you now decipher that candidate using those two keys we get English And you can see that that that score was far below the next closest of 1312 So there's our there's are going to be a really nice method here is this chi-squared score We can if we can run through all the possible keys for a particular algorithm Use all of those keys to decipher the message Creating candidate messages. We know hopefully one of those is the actual plain text But we're going to get a lot of other things that are just gibberish This method the chi-squared scoring gives us a nice quantitative way to measure How closely our candidates align to what we would expect there to be in the plain text And if we just trust the probability and the statistics When we when we choose the keys that generated the lowest chi-squared score More often than not those keys will result in the correct plain text That is it for today on chi-squared scoring. Thanks for watching and we'll catch you in the next one


Welcome to Talk Story with John Wahee. We are in the middle of a very historic series of interviews. We're going to be talking this morning with Congressman Ed Case. And he is going to tell us a little bit about where he was, what happened during the insurrection and then we'll follow up with impeachment and the aftermath. But I am so glad to get to Congressman on the show knowing how busy you are, particularly at this moment in time up in Washington. So Aloha and Mahalo as they say back home, so to speak. So Congressman. Aloha Governor and to all of your listeners. It's great to join you again. As you can tell I'm on Capitol Hill right now. And yes, it's a very, very busy time. We're trying as hard as we can to get COVID-19 emergency assistance out to the American people. And that's for one right now. That is a priority. And I hope to spend some time talking a little bit about that at the end of the session. But before then, I want to know where were you when the insurrection took place?  I was sitting exactly where I'm sitting right now, which is my office, my congressional office on Capitol Hill. We have, of course, the United States Capitol itself and then very, very close to the U.S. Capitol, no more than a few minutes walk. Our three house office buildings, Rayburn, Longworth, and Kennan. And I was in my office in the Rayburn building sitting where I'm sitting right now. And I was watching on the screen behind me the debate over certification of the election results, because of course, let's remember that that was the day that right day under our Constitution and laws for Congress to meet to to certify the results of the election. And we knew already from the from the previous months and days and hours that that was going to be a very, very difficult day contrary to the vast majority of elections throughout our history, where certification has been more pro forma than anything else, because all of the states would have already certified as they did in this situation. But we knew that this was going to be objected to. And so we were all instructed, for the most part, to stay away from the chambers of the U.S. House for COVID-19 purposes. And so we were told, don't go there unless you have to speak. There were a limited number of our colleagues that that were there to speak, or there were a limited number of seats where they could watch the proceedings from from the from the from the balcony of the chamber. But there were no more than about 30 members in the chamber total and the rest of us. This was not this was the precautions that you were taking because of COVID-19. I mean, none of this had anything to do with the rally that Paul or President Trump was holding. Not at all. And in the normal course in a non-COVID-19 environment, I would have been there and I would have wanted to be there for such a critical series of votes. And I would have wanted to be there to participate in the debate personally. But the fact of the matter was most of us were not. So I was sitting in my office, I was watching the debate. And there came a time where the debate was obviously heated. We obviously knew that there were there were many protesters around the Capitol. I had they had been there since the previous night. We had had votes that night and I had walked out from outside from from the US Capitol back to my office and stopped to talk to some of the folks that were starting to gather. So, you know, clearly we knew it was a difficult day to start with. We didn't know that this was going to be the outcome of it. But but for me, personally, I was watching the proceedings that there came a point at which I could tell that something was wrong just because I know what the rhythms of the house are. And I could tell from watching that TV that that something had disrupted the house. At first, I thought it was perhaps some protesters up in the up in the balcony and the visitors gallery, you know, yelling or something like that. Until I realized there were no such people in the gallery. Well, something else was happening. So you became aware of this watching television. When did you really get a sense that the Capitol was under siege? Well, a couple of things happened very, very quickly. First of all, I saw what was happening on TV, and then the feed went blank, which was highly unusual. At that moment, my personal device, because we are all connected to security through through, you know, a very specific personal network to alert us to emergencies and my my my emergency assistance, you know, system went off. And the message was, you know, capital, you know, capital, I forget exactly what it was, but the capital is under assault.  Did you have staff in your office with you that morning? I had some members of my staff because my chief of staff was with me here, and I had a couple of brand new members who were appropriately, you know, spaced out for COVID-19 purposes. So we were taking the precautions, but they were here. And they had just started like two to three days before that. What an experience to walk into as a new staffer, you know.  Well, yes, I mean, and an unfortunate experience, but none, but clearly a very disturbing moment in our history, but they were witness to it, because we did then shelter in place for six hours. And then of course, after I got that alert, I turned on the TV to the regular stations and they showed the capital under siege. So I knew pretty clearly that that was happening, although I did not at the time know the extent of it. And I certainly didn't understand the severity of it in terms of loss of life and serious injury. Now you're in which building at the next to the state capitol? You're in the Rayburn? I mean the Rayburn building. Well, there must have been the Rayburn building. There were so many people involved in that whole incident that they actually, from what little I know about Washington, it would seem that even the Rayburn building must have had people right outside of it. Well, very close by to it. Well, you know, first of all, the focus of the assault was the U.S. capital itself. However, from all reports, some of the folks that assaulted the capitol had quite detailed maps of the capitol to include the underground tunnel that leads from the capitol directly to the Rayburn building. So I can walk from where I'm sitting through a tunnel underground to the floor of the U.S. capitol in about four minutes. And so that means they could have basically run down the same tunnel and arrived at the Rayburn building. And in fact, that the capitol police was rightly concerned that that would be what they would do. It didn't turn out to be what happened. Also we, at the same time, before the actual assault, there were two, as I recall, alerts on my phone of suspicious objects in the grounds around the capitol. So right outside the Rayburn and Cannon and Longworth buildings. And in fact, as it turned out, one of them was a false alarm, but one of them was not a false alarm. It was a pipe bomb that had been left within 75 yards of the entrance to the Cannon building. Now I had nothing like the experience my colleagues did, or that for that matter, thousands of capital police and National Guard troops, et cetera, that were actually defending the capitol. And a number of my colleagues were in the capitol at the time. And the U.S. Senate was in session. They chose to, for the most part, because they can distance a little bit more in their chamber, but they were in personal sessions. So the consequences and risks to those that were in the Senate chamber was far broader than in the House chamber. Nonetheless, to listen to my colleagues talk about their own experiences during the attack was they legitimately felt that they were in danger of up to and including losing their life. And so there's no reason to doubt that it could have happened under different circumstances. Wow, that's what an incredible experience. Now, you know, we move on from that day and it triggers a second impeachment of the former president. And tell us a little what it was like to go through that experience first in formulating the articles of impeachment and watching the trial being presented by your colleagues. Well, the charge, of course, let's remember that in impeachment that the job of the United States House is to charge. The job of the United States House is not to decide but to charge. And so our job was to evaluate the evidence that we had and decide whether to charge other president by passage of articles of impeachment with a crime that justified removal from office or could justify removal from office. And when I use the word crime, one thing that I want to be very clear on is that although there are analogies to an actual criminal offense, as most people understand it, that's not what our job is. Our job is to decide whether the president violated his oath of office in such a way as to justify removal from office. And so that's the context for crime in this situation. And so it was necessary, I believe, for us to enter into the deliberation over whether to actually pass articles of impeachment. The decision that we made very early on, which I thought was the correct decision, was to focus very narrowly on the exact attack on the Capitol and the linkage from that attack to the actions of the president in order to determine whether, in fact, the president, in our view, the president, had incited the violence that then resulted in the attack on the Capitol and had conducted himself in a way as to violate his oath of office. And that was the actual article of impeachment that we evaluated and eventually passed. And I voted for that because I felt that that charge was entirely justified under the facts. You know, as a lawyer, you must have been, at least I was, impressed by the case that the House of Representatives made in the act trial itself. You know, I know that there are different standards for impeachment as they might be in the court of law in the sense that you are looking at things from a different perspective in a way. But I felt that the House managers did a job that in the court of law would have rendered a positive verdict. I mean, are you got any thoughts about the case that was presented to the State Senate? Well, I believe that had the president actually been charged in a court of law with incitement to violence, using the standards that are applied to evaluate whether incitement to violence had actually occurred. And you know this also as a lawyer that you go through a couple of steps. Did the president say something that could incite violence? Was there a connection between the statement that he made and the actual occurrence of what happened? These are the basic elements of incitement to violence in a criminal case in the court of law. And I believe that our charge was appropriate so that if a prosecutor had made the same charge on the same facts, it would have been entirely appropriate. And I believe that a jury having listened to the case on both sides may well have found President Trump guilty of incitement to violence. It was entirely plausible. That was again, was not the standard that we applied because our standard is have you violated your oath of office, which is to protect the Constitution, protect the democratic process, and protect your fellow citizens. And I felt that he violated that basic, fundamental oath of office. But it's analogous again to the criminal prosecution. And I thought, I agree with you. I think the house managers laid out a very deliberate case.  I don't think that's what the founders anticipated. And then on the facts, I don't think they effectively disputed the connection between what the president did and the assessment of his motives, which is part of this. Did that actually intend that result? And I think we have to conclude that the president at least knew it was a possibility. And even knowing it was a possibility, from my perspective, justified impeachment. Well, we're going to take a short break and then come back to this very interesting conversation. I want to talk to you about a little bit about the Senate's participation in all of this and what happened. But I think right now we're going to take a one minute break and we'll be right back, Congressman. Thank you so much for your insight. Welcome back. We are here talking story with Congressman Ed Case. And he is laying the foundation for our study of American history, frankly, and learning a lot about what happened at the State Capitol during the insurrection and the impeachment. Congressman, you made your case as the House, and that went before the Senate. Do you have any thoughts about the way the Senate conducted its trial? Well, again, I think that the House managers, and these are the representatives of the House in effectively being the prosecutors of the president in the US Senate, which again has the duty to actually hear the charge and decide what to do with it. I think they did a great job of laying out the facts. They did not lay out, I didn't think, a political case. They laid out the facts. They laid out what happened and when and why the charge was justified in terms of causal connection between the actions of the president and the assault on the Capitol, which was what the president did was fairly straightforward and what the crowd did was a very, very straightforward. I got to say this though. It seemed like on one hand things were done very factually, but it was also done in a very political context. I mean, you can't get away from the fact that ultimately the impeachment process is about politics. Well, the impeachment process is the accountability of a president of the United States to his or her fellow citizens through the mechanism under the US Constitution. There is nothing in the US Constitution that limits that inquiry to purely violations of criminal law or for that matter to so-called politics. Yes, there was some element of politics and some legal scholars going back to the founding fathers have always said that impeachment is a political response by which they don't mean politics as we know it, but by which they mean the accountability of a president to Congress and to the American people through Congress. In that sense, there was a broader sense of accountability that was at the heart of the question in the US Senate. The impeachment managers put on their case and the president's defense team put on its case, but I think we can all. I want to thank you for clarifying that because sometimes we use the word politics or political a little too loosely. There were some tones of partisanship, but really it was the impeachment itself is about political accountability as you just so eloquently expressed. Of course, there were political ramifications to the debate that went well beyond the assault on the Capitol. It was not the basis of my decision to impeach him, but I can't speak for all of my colleagues and certainly the broader picture of the Trump presidency was part of that debate in one way shape or form and accountability for it, for that matter. But at the end of the day, as we know, it was not a partisan vote. In fact, it was the least partisan vote ever for any impeachment and it came closer really on a nonpartisan basis to actual conviction than any of the other situations that we've dealt with impeachment. You know, the first impeachment of President Trump with one exception was a purely partisan vote. This one wasn't. You had a number of Republicans who felt that there was a violation of President Trump's oath of office, and so you can't wrap this up and call it, you know, pure part of. Well, I'm glad you're bringing that out because it so underscores the idea of the merits of the underlying case that you would in a divided environment still have people acting in a nonpartisan way on the facts. And so it also underscores in my mind because there's a kind of some of the political fallout has to do with the fact that the former president is going around basically claiming vindication that somehow not reaching two-thirds vote is the vindication of his actions.  Anyway, so that happened. Okay, we went through the trial, we went through, what happens now? I mean, is there any fallout for any of this? Oh, yes. I mean, clearly the impeachment, second impeachment, has amplified divisions within the Republican Party itself. And so if I could say, you know, one of the principal areas of fallout is what direction will the Republican Party go now? It has been one of our two major parties for a long, long time. It clearly still has a major role in our country, given a number of factors, the switches in the majorities in the House and the Senate over the last 20 years and in the presidency for that matter. But the Republican Party has kind of a day of reckoning right now, which is, you know, which way are we gonna go? Are we gonna be the party that sanctions the behavior of President Trump and or is unwilling politically? And I make that, I use that word in the political sense of politically, unwilling to depart from him, unwilling to take the risk, unwilling to stand on principle to say that his conduct is not acceptable and there's a different place for our party or is it the other side of the Republican Party, which, whether you agree with it or not, is kind of back to the principles of conservatism under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and really before we got into a Republican Party that started to, you know, divert into, you know, other approaches. And by the way, I'm not accepting my own party because I think my own party has many of the same questions to face, but not in the context of a former leader like Trump, not in the crystallized context of, are you the party of Trump or are you the party of Lincoln? Of the party of Lincoln or of the people, but with a conservative viewpoint? You know, when I was active, they involved with issues and things on the Congress, you know, the leadership of the Senate, for example, was George Mitchell or Bob Dole. And Bob, in my opinion, an outstanding gentleman.  So we used to sit around and talk politics, but there was this feeling that no matter where you are from the center line, that the interest at stake was the country. You know, I don't know whether we have moved on from something like that to something more like what was the interest at stake might be some kind of a cultural divide. I mean, people just don't see the same America anymore. Well, I mean, we have moved on, but the question is whether there's enough of what was, which I thought was far preferable from the perspective of the president future of our country and whether we can get back to that. So is this kind of more of a permanent divide? I don't believe so. I can't believe so. I can't, personally, I can't accept the notion of a permanently divided country. And let me also observe that in, for example, just take Hawaii as an example. And my own district for that matter, one third plus of the voters of Hawaii and of my district voted for President Trump just a few months ago. And I have to represent them as I represent the people that did not vote for President Trump. And so, you know, my responsibility is to my district and to my constituents there. And of course, I have to make my judgments based on my own, you know, perspectives and guidance from my constituents. But that doesn't mean I walk away from one third plus of my own constituents. And I neither can I say that our country and walk away from one half of our fellow citizens because of a disagreement. I can't accept that result. And I would go back also to your question what happens now and observe that we're not to the bottom of what actually happened on January 6th. There are ongoing investigations, including by the FBI on large scale, to determine some of the basic questions that are still outstanding. For example, to what degree was this a coordinated attack and who actually coordinated it. And so, there may well be major developments as we get through that evaluation. You know, I read an article recently that talked about America in general in what the article, the point of the article was saying that we know what evil looks like, Hitler and you know, Stalin and the rest. What we don't know in America right now is what's good. That a lot of our debate on policy centers on people who are culturally divided on the definition of what is good. And do you see any way that that kind of drift can be overcome? Because I agree with you. I think, you know, I long, I remember what it was like to be able to, you know, go across the aisle and talk to an Everett Dirksen or talk to somebody or talk to Bob Know about the country as a Democrat and persuade him to see Hawaii's point of view. And yeah, and I don't know whether that's even possible. Well, I would say this back to you on that. First of all, I think we all know inside ourselves what looks like good. I think we all know and believe that we should try to work together as one country. We may have great disagreements and we may feel very, very divided and polarized, but I think we all understand that at the end of the day we are still all Americans and we owe it to each other to try to work through our differences. So I think that's good. And I think most of us recognize that good. I would also say that you may, you started out by saying we don't, we can see what evil is. And I will tell you that in the course of history, many times people did not see evil as it was approaching them. They only saw it when it was upon them and or when it was too late. You made reference to Germany under Hitler. Germany democratically elected Otto Hitler before he, before, before they saw it through evil. And so, you know, he stormed the capital in Germany and took the problem. Exactly. You know, he burned down the Rex Bank. And so, and so I think that we can never be too vigilant. And I think that although some people discount it, when we, when we just looked the other way, when the citadel of our democracy, the, the, the, the living representation of our democracy is assaulted by fellow citizens with, I believe, the incitement of the president of the United States, that's something that you better pay attention to because from them, from there, it can get a lot worse very, very fast until pretty soon, you know, pretty soon you're into the, the true, true evil phase. Thank you so much for all that, you know, that your participation this morning, but I got a few minutes to start running over, but I do want you to tell the people of Hawaii a little bit about what you're doing in Congress in terms of your committee assignments, how did that all work for Hawaii and the rest of it? If you don't mind. Sure. No, thank you very much. Well, you know, first of all, I just took in early January, my fifth oath of office in, in Congress. And so, I'm starting to, I'm starting to have some mileage up here. And, and I, and I hope that that that seniority is, is being used for the benefit, not only of our country, but especially for Hawaii. So, so the committees that I'm on here are very good committees for Hawaii. So the, the main committee that I'm on here is the Appropriations Committee, which is, which is the oldest committee in the United States Congress, the House Appropriations Committee, and is the committee responsible for allocating and fighting up and sending out federal funding. That's very important, very important committee. Very important committee. I was very, very privileged and lucky to get on it in my last time in Congress. And so I've tried to use that committee to the maximum on behalf of Hawaii to take care of many, many needs. And by the way, it's not all about just money. The Appropriations Committee gives you a great deal of ability to influence the direction of federal departments and, and if Congress itself in areas that help Hawaii in a non-money way. That's number one. Number two, I'm a member again, this time of the committee on natural resources, which has jurisdiction over all of our public lands, including national parks, etc., etc., which is very important in Hawaii. It also has jurisdiction of all of our oceans, which is critical to us. And I take a personal interest in our oceans being from the ocean, if I can put it that way. And then finally, that committee has jurisdiction over native Hawaiians. And so there's a critical nexus to Hawaii through that committee. And so those are my two committees. Of course, I work with my fellow delegation members, Senators Hirano and Shotsen, and now Representative Kaheli, who also have very, very good committees. And so our challenge as a delegation is to exert the positions and influence that we have, which is one of the best collective positions and influences in a generation plus for the Hawaii congressional delegation to the benefit of Hawaii. Well, thank you. And thank you so much for joining us this morning here that, I guess it's early afternoon in Washington. You got any last words for people in Hawaii? When are we going to see some COVID relief or whatever? Well, we're still seeing COVID relief from, especially from the $900 billion bill that we passed in December that's still coming into Hawaii and the billions of dollars. But the one that we're working on right now is the next big one, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan proposed by President Biden. And I'm very much hoping and believing that we will pass that by mid-March and that we will start to see the results pretty much immediately. And as a final closing item, I welcome anybody to contact me or to check me out through case.house.gov. So if you have any comments on this show or anything else, we can help you out with anything. Just contact us at case.house.gov. Mahalo, Congressman. I really appreciate your taking time from your very busy schedule to participate in our show. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you very much for doing this. Aloha.


What's good job about Ross back again with another video? So I Wanted to talk to you guys kind of get your guys opinion on where does the bloodline story go from here We've just seen Jimmy Superkick Roman not once but twice tell Jay Uso This is something you should have did a long time ago and pretty much screw Roman and solo Sacoa I'll be coming the tag team champs, which that is a beautiful thing to see So my question Now is where do we go from here? Now? If you saw the end of the show night of champions you could tell that Jimmy he was he was cool with what he did But Jay was still on the fence like he actually wanted to go help Roman after Jimmy kicked him in the face twice and Jimmy had to kind of persuade him to just come on. Let's get out of here, but you can tell One of the last few shots is Jay still conflicted on what he wants to do like where does his allegiance lie? He loves his brother, but at the same time he's he's trying to do all he can to you know Be by Roman's side or whatnot and show his loyalty But people around them like Sammy and now we're starting to see Jimmy or you know Basically telling him or I have told him what recently with Jimmy with his actions by kicking Roman in face But Sammy's been telling him for a long time Roman doesn't really care about you. He's only been using you That's about it So the question is where do we go from here? now The ultimate goal is to obviously get Roman by himself when Roman has no one left left He doesn't have so low. He doesn't have the Usos That's when he will lose You know, I honestly think Paul Haman will probably be the last person to go And Paul will probably leave after Roman loses most likely I don't think Paul is leaving anytime soon before that even if so the lease but just off his family alone when he has no one left When he is completely by himself in a sense outside of Paul Haman I Think that's when we can you know, we can finally tell Okay This is where his tyrant ends. This is where it comes to an end So the question is how quick do we get to that point? Do we get to that point at SummerSlam or do we get to that point all the way at next year's WrestleMania? I honestly don't think it should be drawn out all the way to next year's WrestleMania because I think if you're starting with Jimmy Leaving the bloodline and kind of being done with this at some point Jay is gonna get on the train and then at some point Solo is gonna get on the train and I think that's gonna be the very biggest Like blow to Roman Reigns because solo has been that enforcer and that we all know when solo Finally hits Roman with that Samoan spike. It's gonna be great Just the same way is when Jay finally Realizes in super kicks Roman that's gonna be a great moment, too so the question is Do Roman does Roman lose his family the bloodline? Before SummerSlam or at SummerSlam or does he lose them bit by bit all the way up to WrestleMania? And that's really kind of the hard decision because I honestly still think Cody is probably the ending point and I don't think It would make sense to draw it out all the way to WrestleMania So I think The most I guess opportune moment would be somehow Cody's able to get a match Maybe money in the bank. I don't know how that's gonna go I may make a separate video talking about what we're gonna do with money in the bank Involving Cody Rhodes if he is gonna be involved, I'm sure he will be and we also know that the Brock storyline and Cody It's not done. So the question is How do we get from where we are now to SummerSlam if that's the goal say? Hypothetically, we're gonna have Roman lose all his family members by SummerSlam. Well You would essentially have to have a match of money in the bank and that money in the bank I'm thinking maybe do we get another tag match? You know some people have suggested does Jimmy get an opportunity at the title and then Roman starts doing him dirty And then eventually Jace J has enough of it and he steps in does that happen or? Or do we get another tag match? Do we get Roman and solo? versus the Usos which I think people would be interested in because solo Can still somewhat feel top some type of way because they he did get super kicked by the Usos and Roman can be the master manipulator Pretty much same. They're not the same. They're not a part of this You've held it down since you've been here. You've been more You know, you've been more important to the bloodline than they have as a recent few months you know, he could kind of just hype him up egg him up and Really cause that that that confusion, you know trying to keep solo on his side because he knows he needs solo So honestly, maybe they could do a a situation like that where it's a potential tag match Roman and solo versus the Usos. I think that would be good and Maybe in that match in that match Finally see, you know solo is really, you know He's starting to see how Roman is or or say you can have an exit You can have a situation where Roman and solo wins have Roman and solo win that tag match at money in the bank or whatever And then you can have after the match is over Roman's trying to destroy them But solo's not having it Like solo's very hesitant He's not having it and then Roman gets besides himself and pushes solo And that could be an epic moment where solo says screw you pushes him back and they get each other's face and then Maybe they tease it right there and then Roman just walks out the ring instead of trying to destroy them But solo's looking at them Like damn like he's conflicted Like and then maybe weeks leading up, you know saying before Summer slam or whatever the case solo has enough and he's Samoan spikes Roman Reigns and then He pretty much aligns himself with the Usos and he's by himself And then if you were to do something like this have Cody win the money in the bank says he's gonna cash in at summer slam romans by himself And then we can have that dynamic. I think that could be a possibility But honestly, I do think they need to have a match and when they have the match Weeks leading up to money in the bank. You can have Jay finally realize Roman doesn't give a damn about him They they have a match solo is kind of still listening to roman and they have that nice tag team match have roman and solo win Now roman and solo win And then roman tries to disrespect them more solo gets upset or whatnot and tells roman to calm down.  They're teasing it.  I'm done with this. I'm done with you. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna take care of this My I'm done with you roman. You you've disrespected the family far too much I'm not gonna stand for it nor and he's Samoan spikes roman and now roman's by himself going into summer slam which makes him much more of a a A uh, I guess you can say it makes him more vulnerable now because he has no help He's by himself outside of paul haiming And then you can set up The the cody and roman rematch and have cody win that summer slam if that's what they choose to do I I just don't think you need to draw out this family feud situation with the bloodline All the way to rest of mania. I think we we're already here now Let's get the ball rolling summer slam is right around the corner build it up all the way to summer slam Roman now has no help. He's by himself Have cody do what he needs to do and then we go from there. So that could be one possible outcome Comment down below. Let me know how you guys would book the ending of the bloodline I want to get your guys thought and thoughts and opinions how you guys would set this up Would you set it up before it to end that summer slam? Or would you set it up to end that wrestle mania roman reigns bloodline and his Isn't his in pretty much his title reign. Let me know down below, but I appreciate all love and support Road to 150k, and I'm still young speedy you to wrestling champion. Well, I appreciate y'all kicking me see our next one


Color. It's everywhere. We experience its beauty every day. Have you ever imagined a world without color? It would be dark, gray, and lifeless. As artists, if we could just imagine not having any color, well, it would certainly take away a lot of the fun. We get our color from our source of light, which is the sun. What a blessing that we have such a gift. As artists, we're very familiar with the color wheel, but there's so much more to color when we can see and experience the way it dances and behaves in our world. It can take white lifeless snow and turn it into a virtual rainbow. And it's absolutely true that without light, there is no color. So I hope you'll join me in this lesson where I'll not only share how I take a somewhat dull and lifeless white scene of snow and turn it into a painting that brilliantly displays the magic of color. So before the painting lesson, I thought it would be fun to go over some color facts that will enhance your ability as an artist to use color. Plus, it's neat trivia information, so let's get started. And if you'd like to go ahead and skip to the painting process, please just see the time on the screen below. Now, as humans, we are very fortunate, and I think blessed, to be able to see a wide range or spectrum of colors. But did you know that there are certain insects, such as the hybe, that has receptors allowing them to see a far greater range of colors than we do? And it seems a rainbow always takes our breath away as we stand in awe at the beauty of the seven colors that combine to form pure white light. Color is actually divided into two categories, color in light and color in pigment. Color in pigment is called subtractive color. Even non-artists are familiar with school projects where we mixed all the colors together in pigment to make black. Additive color behaves differently. It is the color in light. As a child, I was always fascinated by color, and I remember doing an experiment where we took three different flashlights and put a colored filter over each one with the primary colors. When combined, I was fascinated to see that they formed pure white light. So what does all of this have to do with painting? Well, a lot. First of all, we need to become students of our world and constantly looking at our surroundings to see how light behaves. And second, we need to understand our tools, and that is whatever medium you may be working with, whether it be pastels, oil, acrylics or watercolor, and learn how that pigment behaves on your surfaces. And while the subject of color can be somewhat overwhelming as a beginner artist, I want to encourage you to just continue to paint every day, examine your world, explore your materials, and in time you will be using color confidently to create beautiful pieces of art. So I hope you will join me in this painting tutorial where I will continue to explain and expound upon color and how using it properly can bring beautiful life and color to our world. For this painting, I'll be working on a piece of UART sanded pastel paper. And these are the pastels I'm using. I want to specifically point out the warmer tones that I have here on the right. They are the complementary colors, and you can learn more about that in some of my other videos, that are going to bring some life to this more dull photograph. A lot of the shadows are going to have purples and blues, and then of course I'm going to have some more neutral colors that are on the left. And I'll explain a little bit more about some of my color choices as I progress in the painting. So without further ado, let's get started. Now you're going to notice how I'm using these warmer complementary colors to really get bold and big blocking in shapes. Now I've slowed this down to real time because I want to talk a little bit more about what I'm doing here. Color is really just the same as value. It's no different than a grayscale value study. If you notice the colors that I'm using right here, you can already see three different values. Lighter on the left, medium on the bottom right, and darker on the top right there. But if you look at my photograph, it's pretty much a grayscale photo. It's not very colorful at all. So the point of this is to show you how to add color when something looks like it's pretty dead. I'm showing my little palette again. This is before I had the video of my other colors. But I'm going to start adding in just a second. You'll see where I'm having a hard time keeping them up while I'm showing it. But I'm going to start adding some of the bluer tones here. Notice that that right side, if you look at the reference photo, is cooler. It's just darker and cooler. And the trees, the thick trees on the upper right are definitely darker in value and cooler. And so you just got to learn to see value and interpret the color according to the value. Notice how I just added that blue on the left? That's lighter in value than the blue or purple or perma-rosi color. Then the value on the right. Now, this is where I'm going to transition to use the light as the sun. We talked a little bit about our source of light as the sun. So you can interpret your painting any way you want according to what time of day it is, or the sunshine. And in my view, this is going to be a time of day, you know, when that sun sets or rises. But I'm thinking of a sunset here where it's that warm glow. They call it the golden hour. And yes, it will make snow not white. The light that is in our environment refracts and reflects upon everything.  And when you can start, and I, you know what? I'm just going to talk right here. I think I talk a lot to the beginners because I don't really consider myself an expert artist. I've been painting a long time, but I know a lot of artists that have so much more talent than I do, or experience and just gifted more than I am. But enough of that. Now I'm going to show you how I am making this an underpainting with an alcohol wash. It's very cool, and it's very effective. So I know you guys know the expression less is more, and it's very hard to do that and start to understand that as an artist. But this is really just going to be an underpainting. And I know sometimes when I first got started, I thought, why do you have to do an underpainting? And I say it all the time. It sets a mood. It sets a tone. It creates that drama, if you will, that starts to set the tone for where you're going. And this underpainting, I have to say, really did that for me with this painting. So I'm just really, I want to explain a little bit more about what I'm doing with this. I'm rinsing my brush in water and kind of drying it off on a paper towel so I don't blend the colors too much. I want to preserve, see how I got a little blue or purple into that. I want to preserve that luminescence. Talking again about light. You can't get that light back again once you start applying pastel on top of this. There's something about the brilliance of the paper. That's one of the things I like about a watercolor underpainting and even doing these washes like I'm doing right now with pastels is keeping the light is so important. Because even if I took a white pastel and applied it over some of this right now, it's not going to be as translucent as the paper glowing behind it. So that's pretty important. And you don't figure that out. I don't think you can have people teach you and tell you or whatever until you do it and experiment and try it. So that's why I say paint a lot. That's your best teacher is yourself and doing a lot of painting. Do some studies and everything. So again, I'm playing around with this. I'm keeping that beautiful. Can't you see that glow? That like an afternoon sunset glow. And it's going to set the tone for this whole painting. And now I'm starting to use that blue that's in that middle section to just give a hint of the shadows. Shadows are almost always going to be cooler. I think they are always cooler in temperature because they're in the shadow. The temperature is cooler when the sun is not shining directly on it. So this is giving me a roadmap to where my painting is going to go. And I think it does take a lot of practice to get the confidence to do an underpainting to where you're just feeling it. You're just feeling the light and the energy. And again, I think I've kind of learned how to use the alcohol wash to paint. You know, as pastel artists, we're typically working with solid pigment. But if you can learn to use a brush to do... And this is all I've been using right here as pastel and alcohol. Okay. But learning to use a brush is only going to help you in accomplishing some of the looseness that, you know, a lot of us want to try to achieve. And I talk a lot about value and color and intensity and how things behave in the distance. And that's what I'm trying to achieve right here. There's some distant trees in the background there. Now I'm working on that tree that's coming up. Again, just a roadmap. But in the background, there's some really far distant trees. They're going to be much less intense in color. They're going to be less lighter in value. And they're going to be grayed down in color. So using this underpainting to get that established is awesome. Because then you don't have to go back and figure it out later. You're like, oh, I know where I'm going now. This is all set. And it helps me a lot when I finally start to establish the painting. Now, this is exciting. I like using this product. And I often forget about it. These are acrylic inks by Dayla Rowney. And this is, I believe this color is called Purple Lake. I really like this color. It's a nice dark. But this is the product I'm going to use now to get in my dark values. Now let me tell you something interesting about this product. You know, if I was to put a darker pastel down on the surface right now, it would fill up the tooth of the paper. Acrylic inks don't fill up the tooth of the paper. So you're kind of preserving your ability to lay down more pastels if you use acrylic inks to get in your values. Now I'm just showing you. This is a sponge that I'm using. I'm going to get some texture to this. And I just see a little piece that I need. I learned this technique from artist Bethany Fields. I think she might even use a piece of burlap or something to use this as a value study. But I didn't have any burlap and I've done the sponge technique before.   It's just got neat random variety to it. So I'm dipping it into the acrylic ink that I have in the little dish. And again, all this stuff is like finesse. You learn the more you do it. When I first tried this, it was horrible. So do some more practice pieces. But anyway, I've learned kind of how it goes on dark at first. So I'm kind of light handed at it. And I'm trying to avoid the Bob Ross technique of things looking so precise and you want to turn it a lot to keep it random. And so it's lessening in value. The more that I'm dabbing. And so I use that to my advantage when I need things lighter in value. Now I needed the bottom trees. Obviously, that's the darkest thing in this whole reference image. I'm brushing it off a little on my paper now. So I like that being dark. But you see how these acrylic inks work great because you can lessen the value with your pressure with how much obviously how much ink is on the sponge at the time. So I'm just working in, like I said, it takes a little finesse. But I'm looking carefully at my reference image not for specifics, but for value. Now I'm just getting a little more free and loose. Things in those upper branches are going to be lighter than things in the lower branches. Obviously, things underneath the tree. You're going to get some shadows. That middle blue section there you see kind of goes almost to the middle of the painting there. That's like a hill or a hump. There's a lighter value in that field in the background. And there's like a ditch that happens behind that tree. That's why it's darker in value. I don't know that for any other reason than I've just examined the photo. I took this photo, but I honestly can't even remember where I was when I took the photo. But you can just tell there's a darker ditch that goes down and then the light that is coming from everything else goes across that foreground plane of snow that's coming. So again, just working this acrylic ink and getting some values in. And notice the value, I mean, sorry, the color of this acrylic ink is very cohesive, if that's the right word, with the underpainting that I've used. It's in the same family of warm magenta, magenta-y, purple-y kind of colors. And you get more of those colors as the sun sets, warmer magenta. And I shared a lot in the beginning of this video about color and not to intimidate anybody, but the more that you learn about color and how it behaves, not as a school project, but as an exciting experiment about nature, it's just gonna make your art not just better, but more fun. It's like an adventure. It's really cool. I know I'm talking to some of my friends in Monet Café. You guys understand this stuff.  Get excited. This is fun. Now, I've switched to using a brush here and it's gonna give me more control. The sponge gave me looseness for those trees. This brush is giving me some control. I couldn't have done this with the sponge to get some of those trees. They're gonna be dark in value, so I'm putting a decent amount of acrylic ink on the brush. And you can see me pausing there, because I'm studying. You want to get the positioning of these things, right? Because I've got shadows that are dependent upon where the trees are. Your painting's gonna look amateurish if you don't have things in nature correct. We like in painting things to be loose and free, but you still have to follow the rules of nature.  There's some cool stuff. I like science. I just love how nature has an order to it, like a rhythm. I've used the word dance before. And yet, it has spontaneity and mysterious places that go sometimes that keeps things spicy and fun. So that's what I mean about kind of following the rules of nature in art. And it does help to learn these rules. That's why I mentioned the Fibonacci sequence. It's an amazing principle that happens in nature the way things grow, the order, the pattern. That's a good word to describe how things are in our world. There are patterns. And you know what's interesting is that, you know, you cannot really logically believe that all of this is random by chance because of the patterns and the order that we have in our world. I mean, things don't just happen from nothing. And I don't want to get too carried away on that because I have my beliefs. And you know, I'm very thankful that in our Monet Café art group on Facebook, we've got people from certainly all over the world that have different faiths, different beliefs. And it's awesome that we all get along so well. You don't find that in the rest of the world. But I think the reason for that is that a beautiful thing that we can do in life and I think we do it in our group is to find common ground. You know, we can pick apart at each other's differences all day long and usually you don't get anywhere with that. But we find a common ground. You know, we have a lot more in common than we do different. And I just love that we can love each other and still have some differences too. So I'm thankful for those who see things that way.  But it's who I am. And I hope you can appreciate it for that. Okay, so now I am going to speed this up a little bit now and get back to painting. I typically do a voiceover when I'm making these videos for multiple reasons. One is because my studio happens to be near a very noisy road. And I don't think it comes out too much, but sometimes it's just better if I do a voiceover. But sometimes I just want to stop and talk to you guys while I'm painting.  You see, there's a lot of tree stuff going on. I mean, if I was trying to paint all of those trees and all of that, it's not letting me zoom around on it. All of the brush and everything that's growing up, I mean, it would be too tedious, too many lines and everything. So you just paint ideas or suggestions of it. And that's why you can do something so simple, like using the sponge and just dab, because our eyes don't pick up all the details and that stuff back there anyway. So you just kind of, like, if I was to try to figure out what's back there, that would be really hard. I think there's actually a building back there. There's another thing of snow behind it, or it could be a lake back there. I don't know. But you know what? It doesn't really matter. If you get your values right and you keep the painting interesting, that's what art is. It doesn't have to be exact. It's more of your interpretation of it. And again, when you get the values right and the colors right, and obviously notice, I am using a totally different color palette here than here. But, you know, part of the lesson of this video is snow is not white. And it's so cold here in Florida today. Maybe that's why I wanted to do a snow scene. This is actually a picture I took. I'm almost positive. But anyway, snow has so many colors. In our minds, we think of snow as white, but with the light that reflects all around, you know, you get blues, you get purples.  And I think it just really makes a snow scene that much more interesting.  And my UART paper is warping again. Some of you guys know that with the flooding of my home last year, a lot of my things that I stored upstairs, it was so much humidity in the house from the flooding that my UART paper warped and I do the little technique of ironing it out, but it still kind of warps up a little bit sometimes. So it makes it a little harder to paint on it, especially when I wet it as much as I just did. But I'm going to get started now and let's make a warm and cozy snow scene because I'm cold. Let's get going. Here's the final painting and I wanted to take a moment to share with you something quite interesting. Most of you may be too young to remember Paul Harvey and the rest of the story, but I have a bit more to share about this photograph. I actually posted the original painting on my art page and my cousin named Mark saw it and he remembered that this was he didn't even see the photograph, but he saw the painting and remembered that it was of this photograph that he had sent me. Oh gosh, seven years ago. And it's very special because it was a time, a very dark time in our lives when his son, Marky, passed away from a childhood terminal cancer. And, you know, I find it so poetically perfect that I added such color to this more drab scene because we do believe that there is a hope beyond this life and Mark and I both know we will see Marky again. So I'm dedicating this painting to Marky and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. And of course, as always, happy, happy painting.


You know, COVID has been a huge learning experience for all of us at the first in person program that we ran last December. We had two different sessions about mindfulness and what it means to be in the moment and to be thinking in terms of the whole person as opposed to just solving this one data management problem. And I think you'll see that reflected in more of our content in the future is putting our jobs in a larger context, a business context, you know, dare I say societal context, I don't want to get too grandiose about this.


Okay, this is Jay Fidel here on Think Tech, and I feel wise today. And a much wiser person is Marco Manglisdorf, because he's in Washington, D.C., he joins us from Washington. Hi, Marco. Now, watch out about being a wise guy, Jay. You're a good wise guy in every sense of the word. So greetings from the nation's capital to you. Let's call this dispatch from D.C. This up on the national solar scene, and nobody could be better qualified to tell us, A, because he's done this with Provision Solar for the last 200 years, and B, because he's in Washington, where the conference took place in Utah, and he was there in Utah, at Salt Lake, and now he's in Washington to ruminate about what happened. Marco, tell us about this conference on solar. Well, now you promised never to talk about my age, Jay. So let me take a moment to compose myself and take a deep breath here. So you outed me, but hey, one shouldn't be ashamed of one's age, right? No, no, no shame. Yeah, so I decided to continue East after several days at what is kind of considered the be-all and end-all, and the big whoop-de-doo, dark and pony solar conference on the planet called Solar Power International, SPI for short, and this year the organizers chose a beautiful Salt Lake City in Utah of all places, which is a little bit of an odd choice. Not that they don't have plenty of sun there, but they don't have a whole lot of solar in terms of roofed up solar utility scale solar, but nonetheless it's a charming place to visit, and it's kind of an overwhelming experience. I don't know how many trade shows you've been to in your lustrious-wise career, my friend, but this particular trade show was one of many that I've attended for almost 40 years. So again, I'm dating myself, and I say the number one reason to go is usually to see people you don't see otherwise, except for these shows, but also, of course, to kind of get a thing around the pulse to see, what's the solar industry doing, where is it going, who's doing what, where, why, and how, you know, the typical questions the reporters ask, and what's clear to me is that it's an interesting time as far as solar now is becoming more integrally connected to and working harmoniously with energy storage. So there was no shortage of battery peddlers from Japan, from China, from European countries as well, because the only way we're going to get to most people believe we need to go in terms of vastly more intermittent power, non-firm power, renewable energy, i.e. solar and wind, is to take these power sources and combine them with storage so that we get closer and closer to what the utility companies believe and describe as firm power and be able to provide a base load dispatchable, dependable, firm power, so to me, specifically for my company, I wanted to see what else is out there as far as residential solar plus storage, and I'm, you know, I'll go on a little bit of a sub box here, you know, I've been a Tesla certified installer my company has for the past several years, and it's just amazing to me, and of course I somewhat bias, but I'm mostly objective, but Tesla continues to lead the pack, and not just by a few months, but by seemingly several years, so whether it's automotive or electric vehicles, or whether it's for energy storage, both behind the meter for residential applications and commercial industrial applications, and also utility scale is Tesla continues to be far ahead of the pack, in my opinion, but fortunately, other companies, whether it's Sony, a company called Sonin out of Germany, LG out of, which is part of a big conglomerate of course in South Korea. So over the next one to two or three years, it's going to be a lot more choice to be able to take a solar, electric system, rooftop solar, and utility scale solar, and combine it with cost effective reliable, reliable battery storage. That's kind of my number one takeaway. Well, there's two things at these conferences that I'd like to break it down. You know, one is the new technology, and that means the exhibit hall with all the hundreds, probably you are thousands of exhibitors who are demonstrating their new technology, their new systems. So what did you see in the exhibits, you know, that turned you on? Was there anything there? That was remarkable. That was, you know, ahead of the game. Disruptive, if you will. I would have to say on the whole, no, Jay, I mean, crystalline solar PV modules have been around since the 1950s and the original solar cells developed by the folks of Bell Labs, you know, 70 years ago, and the improvements in solar technology have been greater reliability and also higher efficiencies in terms of inverting sunlight striking the servers to electricity, actual usable power. But we are reaching kind of the practical limits of increased efficiency. I mean, it's definitely been creeping up, but you know, solar modules, the best solar modules on the planet haven't been made by a company called Sunpower, and they are maximum of 23, 24 percent efficient. So that's obviously, you know, quarter. You know, a lot of physics says nothing is ever 100 percent efficient and never will be. But the likelihood of, in my experience of 40 plus years of a solar module going to 50 or 60 percent efficiency, you know, while you can get up, jump up and down and hear about these reports out of this laboratory in Finland or that laboratory in Japan or some Tinkerer somewhere that's achieved a breakthrough or a disruptive solar technology, I mean, I'm kind of jaded in a sense in that I've gotten excited, you know, time after time after time after time only to find that stuff doesn't seem to make it to the marketplace. So I think we're dealing with incremental increases in efficiency, which is still a good thing. We're dealing with a substantial decrease in the cost by 80, 90 plus percent over the past 10 years. I mean, the cost of solar modules now is incredibly cheap, especially compared to only a handful of years ago. So solar, I think, is pretty much down. I mean, in terms of efficiencies are up, liability is up, prices are down. And the next great frontier is to, as I mentioned before, mine now was storage, storage on a massive scale, on a massively exponentially greater scale. So I think that's where the industry is right now. So to go back to your question, you know, anything that was massively disrupting that I saw, I would have to say no. No, I mean, the only thing that's kind of disruptive is you're wandering through these halls and, you know, these vendors have spent tens of thousands of dollars for these glissie displays and screens that are 20 by 20 and show surfers, you know, diving down 50 foot waves and so forth. I mean, that's kind of disruptive to one's psyche. But other than that, as far as technological breakthrough, I would say that's not the case. Well, a couple of thoughts about that, Marco. You know, you probably saw the presence of other countries there, for example, China. So beyond South Korea, beyond the U.S., beyond Germany, I understood that China was making a lot of solar cells. Did you see them there? And did you see, you know, a change in the pie slices on who was contributing to the marketplace, you know, who was feeding in technology and who was their present there, you know, in the conference? Did you see a lot of Asia? Did you see a lot of Europe? Where is it going to? Well, certainly no shortage of companies and individuals from the People's Republic of China and just to a lesser extent, Taiwan. In fact, I was walking down the hall and I saw in the distance, I thought, I think I looked familiar. And it turns out to be with my friend Vincent, who works for a company called Suntak in Wuxi, China, which is not far from Shanghai. And I met Vincent 15 years ago during my first trip to the People's Republic. And it was an incredible pleasure to see him and to connect with him. So you have plenty, plenty of Chinese, both in terms of photovoltaic modules and also in storage. I mean, if you look at the total market for PV across the planet, I'm going to say that somewhere in the 65 to 70% of all photovoltaic production is taking place in the People's Republic of China and in Taiwan. So a lot of that is going to meet domestic demands in China. And since the these tariffs, tariffs wars have been going on, gosh, pretty solid for the past seven or eight years. There has been a lot less or significantly less Chinese PV coming into the US market compared to four or five years ago. What about graphene? Did you see any graphene there? You know, graphene came up on my radar probably four or five years ago. And I wonder if anybody is trying to commercialize or market graphene? Not that I saw there. And again, you know, my threshold to get my attention, Jay, is what technology, what product is going to be readily, commercially available in the near term, as opposed to, oh, this looks super hot in the laboratory. They're getting a 45% efficiency. It's going to revolutionize the market and all sorts of other hyperbolic claims. And I need to see it actually being introduced to market at scale and sticking around for at least one or two or three years, because, you know, again, there are so many so much spin and bright, pretty bubbles that come out of press releases, or somebody touting the latest breakthrough. But to me, it has to be able to make it to market. And it has to show that it deserves to be there. You know, we've had a number of shows lately about hydrogen as a storage mechanism. In other words, solar runs an electrolyzer, the electrolyzer creates hydrogen. Now the hydrogen can be exported and transported and so forth all over the place in these tanks. And of course, for vehicles, it's faster to charge your hydrogen car than it is your electric car. I don't know about other uses, but I wonder if there was anybody in this huge conference who was trying to sell hydrogen as a storage methodology. I did not see anybody. Then again, I wasn't kind of Marco on a mission to find, you know, homebrew, residential scale, electrolyzers, which, you know, is not something you typically need to order. You cannot order from Home Depot or put an order on Amazon, as far as I know. So it's, I think we're a ways away, unfortunately, as far as being able to have a small scale H2 production at a home. I mean, we both know Hank Rogers is ranch on the west side of the Big Island. He makes his own hydrogen. But, you know, Hank is a, you know, fairly affluent individual and can can afford to do really cool stuff like that, you know, which is great. And he can set an example.  I think we're a little bit of ways away from that. You know, you and I have talked a number of times about the need for and the possibilities of overnight storage, overnight battery storage with Tesla or one with other companies that are making Bessoni. This is not this true. And I wonder if you saw anybody who was, you know, either either realistically or hyper-hyperbolically suggesting they had a battery system that would go overnight or for days and days while the sky was dark for one reason or another. Do you see any storage systems that were advanced in that way? Well, I mean, it's not, you know, proverbially, it's not rocket science to get storage that's going to last 12, 24, 36 hours. You just need a lot more of it. So far, utility is both in Hawaii, IEK, IUC, and also on the US mainland are putting in storage for solar that typically has maybe four or five, six hours worth of capacity. And, you know, five, six years ago, we didn't even have that. So where is it going to take to go from five or six hours to three or four or five X that? It's just going to take a heck of a lot more storage. And, you know, it is going to take continued decreases in the price of storage and working out the power electronics so that it all plays nicely together. But it's not any type of Einstein type of challenge or Hawking type of challenge in terms of my goodness. How do we figure this out? No, I mean, it's pretty nice and both. You just need a heck of a lot more storage and it's got to come cost effectively. And I have no doubt that as there continues to be more competition amongst the Americans, the Europeans, the Chinese, the Japanese, that storage will come down. It will be more cost effective. And you're going to have more and more utility skills, solar and wind that will have much more capacity, much more ability to be able to ride through and provide discharge, you know, over more and more time. So it's definitely happening. Well, I'm sure the conference was really stimulating. I would love to be there. Next time you go, I'll carry your suitcase and we can, you know, examine it together. But in the meantime, you had some charts that I think we'd like to discuss showing a comparison of what is it, 2007 and then more recently. 2009, excuse me, the US energy consumption by source. It's very interesting to see the delta factor. Can you explain this chart? Yeah, I'd be happy to. And the recent thoughts that would be appropriate to talk about this is, you know, being in the nation's capital, it's kind of a heavy place for someone who is spending a fair amount of time in the political science world, which has kind of been a parallel track career wise for me over the past 40 years, is I thought, well, what can I, what's going to be kind of juicy to talk about in terms of kind of national energy and try to determine some trends here. So the slide that you put up there is total energy consumption in the United States by energy source and it's measured in in BTUs or quadrillion BTUs, BTUs being British thermal units. So to me, the takeaways on this particular slide, you see roughly about 94.578 quads of BTUs for for all of 2009, which is you know, roughly 10 years ago, right? And you see petroleum there is 37 NAD gas 25 coal 21 and renewable energy, the combined renewable energy of 9% and then nuclear also at 9. So if we go to to the next slide there, which is the most recent data I could get eight years later in 2017, I couldn't find anything for this year, of course, the year thought over and I couldn't find anything as recent as 20 2017. So I don't know if you put the the 2017 slide up, I'm still seeing no, we have it up now. Okay. Okay. So the to me the striking difference in the course of the past eight years is petroleum petroleum is is flat is still a 37% and which I guess shouldn't be a surprise perhaps because petroleum has become more abundant these past seven years in terms of from various fracking fields across the continental mainland US. So petroleum is is steady at 37% that gas went up by 4% points from 25 to 29 coal is really striking J coal went down by one third from 21% 10 years ago to 14% as of 2017. Of course, that's no big surprise, right? I mean, it's been all over the news these past years that coal is an effect, I believe terminal terminal in terms of yes, we'll continue to have coal plants, but there's no way despite President Trump's desire to bring coal back as he's been talking about for the past several years, a market forces just are not going to allow that to happen. Nuclear power steady at 9% same as as 2009. And then renewables went up from 9 percentage points that to 11% which is of course not not huge but what kind of struck me is that both solar and wind although still relatively small percentages of the total total combined production of all renewables is a solar and wind went up significantly. So there's there's quite the quite the carving amongst the the non believers, I'll say the non believers of renewable energy quite the carpeting as far as the will solar and wind too expensive. It would take you know the entire state of Texas to have enough solar panels to provide power for the country and you know wind turbines are are are big and bulky and a lot of people don't want them in their backyard and so forth and so on and you know the reality is that solar and wind and other renewables aren't going to happen just overnight and and then when we're seeing you know very positive trend lines and again with a combination of lower cost renewable energy and lower cost storage I mean the future on a macro level looks incredibly bright across the US writ large then you know I asked myself what's the the connection between these macro numbers to what's going on in our little state in the middle of the Pacific and we are in some some sense where we're kind of an island you know no puns intended here I guess actually puns are intended we're islands into ourselves because as I think I mentioned to you and I still find so striking we use more petroleum to produce electricity in Hawaii than the rest of the mainland combined so we're dealing with different sets of challenges and issues in our isolated state would be interesting it'd be interesting to compare that 2017 chart with what's happening why won't we put it back up again and make a little bit of a comparison you know for example I think relatively speaking we have more solar than than the country as an average we probably have less wind than the country as an average because then on the chart the national chart shows a oh gee wind is three times more than three times the amount of solar that's certainly not the case in Hawaii we you know we we don't have any natural gas to speak of I don't think our biofuels so that much or our wood for that matter or our hydroelectric so it'd be very interesting to make a chart just like this you know with the same kind of you know divisions and colors and the like just for Hawaii to compare it against the national averages because it is different the other thing I want to mention Marco and I sort of like your view of it you spoke before about demand and I think that's a very interesting term in terms of energy especially with climate change so we have a show called energy in America we have a fellow named Lou Pugirisi who is an energy consultant but over time it's been clear that he's consulting on oil and gas mostly and he goes all over the world he spends a lot of time in Asia most recently he was in Nanjing a couple days ago reporting for what's going on in China in Nanjing and elsewhere in China and the message you know that I get out of all of that is that you can say that the US has a certain certain direction towards solar and renewables in general but the world is building infrastructure or natural gas at a very rapid rate and the world is using oil maybe not so much as you you know we saw percentage-wise you know a few years ago but the natural gas is is taking is taking the share so to speak of oil in many places so what we've got is fossil fuels are actually on the rise and they are you know relative to investment relative to share of the energy marketplace and relative to government policy in this country with your president Donald Trump so we're spending a lot of time and money and policy direction on fossil fuels right now and so is China and so so are a lot of places and so you know we talk about these percentages of renewables we talk about the decline of coal you know but the fact is we're in climate change and Greta Thunberg is not kidding we are doing exactly what she has told us we're wrong to do and we're continuing to do it so our goals to me whatever they are are too remote our goals to me according to Greta anyway we're not moving fast enough and you can watch the weather you can watch the change there in our ecosystems our environment our whole planet and you say hmm should we be shouldn't we be doing something more dramatic here what's your response to that Marco? Well I was incredibly moved by that four or some in a speech that Ms. Thunberg gave before a panel there she was on a panel at the UN not two weeks ago at the General Assembly in New York very moved by her the passion and the anger and the hurt so I you know I agree wholeheartedly with her of course the reality is we you and I would both agree it's a hydrocarbon based fuels i.e. oil i.e. that gas and coal are going to continue for the decades to come to play a very very big role in in the world's in the world economy and national economies and that said you know we still need to go farther farther faster further deeper in terms of getting away from hydrocarbon based fuels and one of the things that struck me is as I looked at those two pie charts that that you showed today is the increase from 2017 to 2009 again eight years right the increase in total quad quadrillion BTUs in terms of total energy consumption in the US was 3.3 percent okay 3.3 percent over eight years so just stick that in your brain for a moment I happen to know it's not because I'm so smart it's because the data is right out there I happen to know that many developing countries including ones I'm interested particularly in the interest of these days in Southeast Asia Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar those countries are increasing their energy consumption per annum by rates of six, seven, eight or more percent per year per year so you play that out over five or ten years you're talking about substantial increases so is that increase Marco is that increase in fossil fuels or in renewables well it depends on the country Laos is incredibly Lao PDR is incredibly blessed by hydro so they make so much of it they export it to the hungry Chinese of the north the hungry tribes of the south but Vietnam for example they are a kind of a really important crossroads in terms of their economy is bubbling along will continue to do so for the for civil future they hope and we have this direct relationship these past decades where more economic growth corresponds commensurably with higher energy use because that's just kind of the way it's been so they're at a crossroads in terms of they need a heck of a lot more electricity where's it going to come from so they're talking to the Americans are talking to the Chinese they're talking to the Russians so it's kind of all in in terms of we need more electricity where's it going to come from so it's not an academic exercise to these people and it really portends you know for some serious decisions as far as whether the Social Republic of Vietnam decides to go on a more soft energy path or or believe that the the costs are such the economics are such that cheap coal from Australia or nuclear plants from from elsewhere are the ways to go but again I was so struck by we become the American the United States has become much less energy intensive in terms of breaking that traditional relationship between quantitative economic growth leading to quantitative increase in energy we're becoming you become much better one of the world's best in terms of doing that but developing countries many of them are still very much locked into that the greater the economic growth the more energy they need so that that's a real concern well I think the US could be a leader was a leader is not a leader now Trump is not a leader in this in fact it's just the other way I mean he's he's he's left a cop 21 2 3 and 4 and the whole notion of climate change it's amazing in a time where climate change is revealed every day he still rejects it and so what you know what I come to think of you know is an irony about Hawaii being ahead in its way on on renewables it's not enough we we can't we can't stop climate change here in these islands with just too small but we can develop it here we can develop an energy system that is more and more renewable and something we can be proud of and export and go speak about and just like Greta Thunberg makes an appearance at the UN you know and and stirs people up over the issue raises raises consciousness about it Hawaii could do it too this would be a very uh a most and everything for us to do to send emissaries like you for example to speak to other places and say wait a minute you guys here's what we've done in Hawaii we want to do it better and we want you to do it better so you know I think it's certainly worth just a second it's certainly worth our effort to try to be a leader even if the country itself is not being a leader just a second just one second okay yeah you there yes I'm just going to say I couldn't agree more and I'm you know it's easy to get kind of downcast by the challenges ahead but then you know we do have people like Hank Rogers and people like Jeff Avon at Value Act and you know Stan Osterman and and the folks at Elemental Accelerator and other other people who are committed passionate right dedicated to trying to not trying but also you know may actually making happen that Hawaii is on on the forefront in terms of the of the energy transition uh that's not just kind of a luxury I mean to me it's an absolute necessity and while I may have issues at times with with Governor Ege in terms of his decisiveness I mean the state government is you know in fits the starts is moving in the right direction so I you know we need as I think we've spoken about before we need multiple champions who are out there you know beating the drum day after day year after year and continuing to to challenge us to to do to do what we're doing faster with with more conviction well we we've spoken about it before we need to speak about it again we need to talk about whether our our goals and targets are realistic uh and for that matter whether we can move them up faster and and thus be even more uh an example for the world to follow and we should talk about the kind of things and people that we would send overseas to talk about this and to blow our own horn but also to make a contribution to the world conversation and in effect participate in saving the planet Marco you and I we really have great conversations and I'm looking forward to the next one when you're back in two weeks I guess right yes yes indeed and I've I've confirmed with a little bit of luck that's Mary Powell who is current CEO of Green Mountain Power she will be joining us in about a month in November for for show and she's going to be great she just recently announced she is resigning retiring from the CEO position of Green Mountain Power later this year to allow for and bigger bolder opportunities and I'm real happy that she'll be joining us because she's just uh she's stellar that's great Marco thanks so much talk to you soon aloha thank you my friend bye bye