All right. Welcome. Our meeting format is integrated with members of the public via zoom members of the public who are using zoom may view and listen to the meeting as noted on the city's website and on the agenda. Welcome fellow board members. Welcome individuals of the public and those joining us today via zoom. I am Vice Chair Castillo board members present today. We have Guido Occhleoni Omar Lopez, Carolina Spence and Caroline Kwant. As a reminder to all present, please silence your cell phones. If you are phoning in to join the meeting and you choose to speak during the public comment portion of the agenda. For privacy concerns, the host will rename you to caller and show only the last four digits of your phone number. Additionally, the city of Santa Rosa is committed to providing a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption and will not tolerate hateful speech or actions. Everyone is expected to participate respectfully, or if necessary, the meeting will end immediately. Madam host, will you please explain how public comments will be heard at today's meeting. Thank you, Vice Chair Castillo. If you're attending in person, there are cards located at the entrance. Please complete a card for each item and place it in the basket. You will be called up by your name. And when your item number has been discussed and open to public comment, you will be asked to approach the podium and state your name for the record. After the agenda has been presented, the chair will ask the board members for their comments and questions and then immediately following the item will be open for public comment. If virtual hands are raised on Zoom prior to the public comment, the host will lower all hands until the public comments item is open to all. If your card is called for public comment, those in person may raise their hand and wait to be called to the podium, even if you have a comment card has been completed. Those on Zoom may then raise their virtual hand and if you are called, dial nine. If you call dial nine to raise your hand. And will be called in order they appear on the screen. Sorry. Those joining by phone will be called by the last four numbers of their phone number. The host will determine the order in which the public may comment whether on Zoom or in person. All public comments will be heard until there are no more hands raised in person or virtually. Each comment, public comment is limited to three minutes and the courtesy timer will display on the screen. All emails that are received by the deadline will have been included and uploaded to the prior agenda prior to the start of today's meeting and emails received are not read into the record. Wonderful. Thank you. With that, I call this July 26 2023 meeting of the Board of Community Services to order at 509 pf. All right. There we go. May we have a roll call? Please respond when I call your name. Chair Pitts. Vice Chair Cascio. Present. Board Chair Bob Leone. Here. Board Member Cruz. Board Member Lopez. Here. Board Member Spence. Here. Board Member Cuant. Here. All right. With that, I would like to open the floor for public comments on non-agenda matters. This is a time when any person may address the board on matters not listed on this agenda, but are within the subject matter of the jurisdiction of the Board of Community Services. Madam host, do we have any public comments? Yes. We have one public comment in the room. All right. Thank you, sir. Hello. My name is Dwayne DeWitt. Rosalind. I've been here recently now that you've reopened the meetings for public participation in person. And I'm glad that you're doing that. I'm glad you kept the hybrid format to allow people to speak through the Zoom. Although I've never done that. I wanted to make a point of talking about Southwest Community Park today. But first, I wanted to talk about something called Make a Difference Day. I hope some of you have heard of it. And those who have not, can look into it. It's something that's been going on for decades. And over in Rosalind, where I'm from, we've been working on it. Oh, at least 14, 15 years, I think. It's the last Saturday in October. People in the community get together to make a difference in their community. Traditionally, what we've done is we've gone out and worked in what we call the neighborhood. It's an area that was put aside by the Sonoma County agricultural preservation and open space district about 13 years ago. And we'll be out there again doing positive stuff for the community, along with Rosalind Creek would do some things there too. Southwest Community Park is diamond in the rock. And it's been this way now for over 25 years. The thing is now, there's basketball tournaments that are happening. And it's really good because people come in and play basketball. On the two full-size basketball courts that are there. And often it might be every weekend in a row for extended times. And people are enjoying the park. The thing is the park could be so much more. And one of the dilemmas is that there's some sort of a lack of information as to whether or not things can be done at the park because they used to believe California Tiger Salamander were nearby. And I don't believe those salamanders still exist. I believe they have been extirpators, the term they use. And I hope the minutes will show what I've said. Okay. When I come and I make the time to be here, on this limited schedule, it's because it's an important matter. And I hope the minutes will reflect what I've been saying. And if that California Tiger Salamander breeding pond is there that the park is no longer occupied by salamanders. And you don't have to have all of these restrictions. You could release that. And no more salamanders. And no one's ever really taken the time to look and see. I've asked about this. And it's like, well, we just know we got the signs of them. And it's like, well, this is the year to check because there was a big rain this year. And so in the fall is when, if you have salamanders, they'll be moving about. Okay. So I'm hoping that goes in the record as people will look and see. Do we actually have to still worry about salamanders there? Last but not least. Naming of parks. It's been brought up by the elected official for the Roseland district and the South Park district. He's supportive of renaming what staff calls Roseland Creek Community Park to be Pomo Park and preserve. And that was told to me by the state. And that can be checked in published accounts. Also on his Facebook page. So these are the times and places where we can talk about that. We got to find out how that gets done though. I remember watching an effort go forward to be named in a park after a woman that was a volunteer nearby. And it seemed rather cumbersome. So I'd like to find out how that all works. And I'll see you in a couple of minutes. Thank you for your time. All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you for those comments. With respect to reflection in the minutes. The meetings are recorded. So there, there is that with respect to the salamander. Comment. I believe that is out of our jurisdiction, but we can potentially discuss that as well later. Not sure. All right. With that, thank you everyone. We will move on to item four, which is next. And that is the approval of minutes. Are there any edits or corrections to the minutes of the June 28, 2023. Meeting. All right. Seeing no hands, hands, the minutes from the June 20th meeting. Is that a commentable item? Every item on the agenda is comment. Approval of the minutes. Do you have a comment for that? Yes. Okay. I'll mean, sir. Come on. Thank you. All right. Seeing no hands, hands, the minutes from the June 28th, 2023 meeting are approved as. I've turned you to cards. Comment on that before you make an approval. Is that a commentable item? Every item on the agenda is comment. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'll do that again, sir. Come on. Your decision. Hello. My name is Dawain from Rose London has previously mentioned. And the minutes. Now that you do. A recording. Is nice for those folks that have access to technology. But. The. Past approach with the Brown act. reflect accurately in writing so that those folks who used written approaches can find out what happened in a meeting and could see in writing what someone has been talking about. So I came last meeting and I made comments almost each time utilizing the full three minutes that was allowed and then you look at here it's just one short small sentence each saying I support whatever was going on and that's not an accurate reflection. It's something that I think you can look deeper into this. The vice chair today can make the comment to the chair that it would be a reasonable request from the public that the minutes be more reflective of the total comments made. They should be something that anyone who wasn't in attendance at the meeting could find the written document in the city's archives and see what was talked about. It's really an important type of thing. You may think it's too much extra work but it really isn't. In the past minutes were really done well by Santa Rosa City staff. I served on boards and commissions in the past and then it's accurately reflected far deeper what was going on at various meetings especially during the 90s and the early part of the century. So thank you for your time. Thank you for those comments and they are noted. Well with that let's approve the minutes again I believe. Is that the appropriate course? All right. So based on those comments board members are there any edits or corrections to the minutes of the June 28, 2023 meeting? I see no hands but your comments are noted. The minutes for the June 28, 2023 meeting are approved as submitted. Next Deputy Director Santos please give your report on upcoming and accomplished events. Thank you Chair Castillo. I am going to highlight one upcoming event and that is on August 3rd. We have registration for city builders. This is for five to seven year olds and structural coed soccer for kids and there's a free field day on September 9th in the morning to check it out. So it's a really cool program that's being run and I wanted to highlight that because it's coming up for registration. Also on our accomplished events I would like to highlight the July 8th Park a month at Juilliard Park. We had a nice event there where we had the mayor providing thank you lunch for the volunteers and for the staff that were there. And that's the end of my report. Wonderful. Thank you Jen and will you kindly provide the director updates at this time? Thank you and so I have some sad and happy news to announce that you probably all know our Secretary, Administrative Secretary Shelly McClure is moving to our finance department and her last day with Parks is this Friday. We will definitely miss her but I wish her the best. It's a fantastic opportunity for her and we're in good hands with with Julie and with Amy you've met at the previous meeting as well. So thank you Shelly for all your efforts. All right, thank you Jen. Thank you Shelly. A little bit more. Yeah, jump the gun. All right guys. We also had a nice retirement party for our longtime aquatic supervisor Don Hicks. It was a lovely party to thank him for his years of service and aquatics and wanted to let you know we're definitely in good hands with his replacement Brandon Hammond who was here at our two meetings ago I think so we're looking forward to Brandon taking that on and many thanks to Don Hicks for his years of service. Last night at council the city council approved the purchase of the Southeast Greenway property which is a really monumental task to have gotten it to this point and there's a lot of work being put in by the real estate team to bring this to fruition and it looks like we should have ownership of that within the next six months or so. There's a lot of details to work out including a negotiation with the Sonoma County Agriculture Preservation and Open Space District for funding a portion of the purchase of the of the Greenway. So that's really exciting following the purchase of will be coming over to parks to run it through our a city wide engagement process to understand what the community would like as far as amenities. We definitely know we need a transportation corridor for bicycle and pedestrians but beyond that we'd like to check in with the community so it'll be a very huge endeavor to move that forward and we're looking forward to that coming sometime early next year. A couple other things the South Davis Park project we are working on that we did request it. Time extension on that one we having a little bit harder time with the grade elevations at that park and so we need a little bit more time to work out some of the nuances of the underground. All the stuff that happens underground that nobody gets to see what's really important. And also forgot to mention our last meeting that at Railroad Depot Park if you drive by there's a new monument sign that was put up and it's looking pretty pretty nice. And our folks from the business district down in Railroad Square are really happy with it. They worked on it with us to put that sign together for for years that had been in disrepair and been constantly vandalized. So we're super excited to have a nice new sign up there. And for Kiwana Springs Community Park that's our one of our last community parks that needs to be built. We received the grant last year and we are moving forward with receiving proposals to design and build that park. And we're going through the interview process with the highest ranked firms right now. So I'll keep you posted when we know more but it's moving forward. It's a really exciting project. And we'll be back at Council in August late August or early September to talk about the Bennett Valley Golf Course Irrigation Supply Bond as well as the Golf Course Golf Cart contract that needs to be updated. And the Martin Luther King Master Plan and Construction Documents RFP will be released soon and we hope to receive competitive bids for that. So that'll be for another community engagement process to find out besides the athletic field that we know the community would like. Well confirming that but also asking the community what else and what other amenities should we be including the master plan and they'll be implementing the community's desires. And another thing we I just wanted to clarify if you've been at Howard Court Howard Park tennis courts the courts are there's a couple of courts that are closed. We're actually going to close a lock the gates to protect community members are getting people that are getting hurt. We have a project to replace those tennis courts. They have underground issues underneath the tennis courts beyond just surfacing. So we need to actually replace those courts. And so we're going to close them until we can get that process rolling forward which is happening right now. We're getting a request for proposals out to replace those tennis courts. Once those are replaced those courts as well as the others will all be resurfaced at Howard Park. So that's an exciting project funded by Measure M and something we've been waiting on a long time to bring that to the community. And last but not least I wanted to mention that movies in the park has start will start on August 18th didn't make it into our upcoming event. So I wanted to give a shout out for that because it's a really popular really fun thing to do Friday nights starting August 18th the first movie will be Lion King and each Friday until the last movie Ratatouille on September 15th. That's the end of my report. Wonderful. Thank you. Questions from the board. John. John, will you be putting signage up on the tennis courts explaining why they're locked great. And yes, perfect. And email correspondence that we have been getting from Shelley. Who will we be getting it from moving forward? You can send it straight to me and I'll make sure getting from getting from. Yes, it'll most likely be me updating updating the board. But myself and Julie and Amy will be working with you all. But definitely if you need anything, it'll help me and I'm going to be trying to do the same as much as Shelley was doing. Maybe. So just personally, I got to the point where I recognize Shelley's name. Okay, recognize your name. But beyond that, be above my pay grade. Okay, we'll make sure you get the message. Okay. Guino. Interim Director Santos. Is there a chance that I could get the addresses for those three parts that you just mentioned? Yes, no, we're at absolutely we'll get that over to you for sure. Any questions, comments? Personally, just like to thank Shelley for all of your hard work. Thank you. It's been a pleasure working with you. And I'm sure this is a great new opportunity for you. So congratulations. Hope you got a pay raise. Nice. Thank you. Now we'll move on to Vice Chair Kristi and we have my apologies. We have a comment. Thank you, sir. Going to wait for Rosalind and thank you to the director for the report. It's good to hear those items. The concern that some have in Rosalind is that our requests fall on deaf ears. For many years, there's been people who live near the South Davis Park who've asked about the possibility of having it redeemed in honor of a World War Two veteran from Santa Rosa who died on the USS Arizona.  I said, well, maybe you should have called the recreation of parks and they'd pay attention. The thing was, they don't think it's funny when I try to say to them that it's a bureaucratic situation. They feel that honoring a veteran who died on the USS Arizona has already been said as a president with Montgomery Drive Montgomery High School named after a shipmate of sailor AB MA YBE. What's his name? Anyway, long story short, we need to learn how the community can move forward to get names on parks on public assets rather than just calling them by the geographic South Davis Street. The Howard Park situation. Did you know there's a house up there? It was moved up there because they saved the house from destruction when they were building Highway 101. It was just a matter of frugality. The house didn't really have a lot of special or exceptional notoriety. It was just back in the day they didn't tear houses down like we do now. So the house was moved up to Howard Park. It's been up there and it was used for a long time. It was rented out, brought in money, but then a recent administration decided not to do that. It's been boarded up and sitting up there. Some veterans would like to see about the possibility of that house being moved again off of that site, not destroyed but moved from there and let the veterans utilize it elsewhere in the city. So we'd like to find out who you talk to about that because it's owned by the city, but it's in the recreation and parks department purview or Baylor Wick. Last but not least, this meeting about Southeast Greenway last night. Interesting meeting. It was already something that's been worked on for a really long time. Now is when the really hard stuff happens. Because once you get all that land, you have to manage it and maintain it. And they can't even maintain Doyle Park right now. It's locked off. They can't even maintain a lot of the parks due to whatever reasons. And now you're going to have a nice big 50-some-odd acre responsibility. So during budget hearings, I'm hoping the new folks, especially new appointees as our advocates, will be making a point to the elected officials that more money needs to come to this department, for this department to be able to take on the responsibilities that are coming its way. All right, they can't do it right now with what they have. So with more coming, they need more money. Thank you for your time. Thanks, sir. Thank you for those comments. With that now, I believe we'll move on to reports from the board. Board members, do we have any brief updates relevant to recreation or parks or similar updates within the jurisdiction of the board? Anyone? We don't have a comment I'd like to make. And I really pleased with the quick and attention to the problem that I brought up last meeting. That was with self-question. I'll get my new team. Southwest Community Park. And I mentioned it to the interim director at Santos. And the next day, it was done. It looked all the grass was cut and the place looks macular. I'm just really pleased with that. I think she should be the director of taking interim over there. Thank you, sir. Noted in the comments. Anyone else? Any other comments from the board? Any updates? Anyone? I have a few, along with Guido and Madonna. We were all at the heard of community meeting that was live at the middle school on Spastipole Road. I had good attendance. I was able to participate in the first Saturday of the month creek cleanup at Prince Memorial Greenway and instrumental in the forming of a new volunteer group, specifically for Prince Memorial. It's actually not new people. It's just formalizing a volunteer group of people who are already dedicated to preaching. I've had the pleasure of going to two of the joint art concerts on Sunday nights. If you haven't, there's lots of shade there. And it's something that Park and Rec, I think is in partnership with along with other places. And I had the true honor of going to overnight at Camp Waton last Thursday night. I don't know if anybody else has kids who have been in that program. But it's still growing strong. And Mr. Big was there. He didn't have to be Ryan Shepherd was there when I introduced him to my city council person, whose daughter I was there to see. He just took off. He has so many ideas. I he's he's just seasonable, right? That the man is just amazing. And I reminded him when he would do the Swedish chef when he made pancakes on Friday mornings, when he was maybe 19 or 20 years old. He's still a very big kid. He is. I hope we keep him until the end. And his goals and visions for expanding the camp program are incredible. I'm in. Thank you for that. And thanks for your volunteer work. As well. Anyone else any additional comments? I have one quick update. I just want to say thank you to the Parks and Rec. Everyone, my kids are actually in the little swimming program where how to swim. And so far, it's been a great, very pleasant experience. So I just want to thanks to everyone for all your hard work. Kids enjoy it. So thank you. All right, with that, thank you board members will be moving on to schedule items. Public comments. All right. Jackie, will you update the board regarding programs and rentals at the community centers? I am the recreation supervisor over the facilities section of the recreation division. And so I just want to tell you a little bit about what my team is working on and what we've been doing. So basically, we are in charge of the community centers and the programs and rentals that happen in them. So next slide, please. So I first wanted to introduce my team. So we have three recreation coordinators skip Wallace and Michael Marx are in charge of the rentals. Gene Pugh is in charge of the contract classes, the some of our special events and our tiny cops are our tops programs. Sarah Costa is our recreation specialist and she is our intake queen. She started every single rental that happens in any of our facilities all start out with Sarah. So she is in constant contact with the public. And then we have three facility attendance that is Stefan George, Dennis Layden and Amanda Hurst, and they are in charge of our facilities. They do everything from setting up the tables and chairs, they get all this ready for us each week, all of our programs and classes, taking down mats, setting mats up, and also doing like janitorial and maintenance work in addition to all the setups and getting everything prepared for the days. Next slide, please. So I don't know if you know that we did some internal reorganization in 2022. And so we kind of brought this team together. Previously, like the historic sites in Steele Lane were managed on a separate team from the rentals team that ran this. And what we've done is we've kind of collaborated we've brought it all together. So that all of the coordinators who are doing rentals in any of the facilities are all on the same team, as well as who does all the contract classes and stuff inside the buildings, the camps that I'll be here. And it's really been an opportunity for us to work more collaboratively. It also has one intake person, Sarah, that I mentioned. And that has really given us the opportunity to when the public is looking for a space for an event or a party or a business meeting, we can talk to them about what their needs are. And the building or the room that they were originally thinking of isn't available, we can redirect them to our other facilities. So it's really been a nice way to to collaborate and to actually get the most out of our of our centers and really direct the public into appropriate spaces for their needs. So what we do other than rentals is we this kind of like our five big pieces that we do, we do our contract classes. So gene organizes people who come to us with something they want to share with the public. And we create classes, they say, this is what I want to teach the public, we find spaces and times that will work with that, and allow the public to experience those things.  And we have been expanding that program, our rentals, I'll talk more about in a minute, but they range from everything, they range from social gatherings like quinceaneras, baptisms, weddings, retirement parties, to the firefighter association, banquet, or all of our market does their staff trainings here. So all sorts of different opportunities for the public to use our spaces in different ways. We do special events. So my team is just do all the special events, but kind of the internal special events. The crafts fair is one of our big ones, the fairy tale ball, and we also support some of the events like senior expo. And then I put gathering space and I'll get into this a little bit more, but using our facilities, not just for our, our structured programming, but also places where people can come to eat their lunch by the fountain can meet a friend and play cards, that sort of thing. So using the spaces as gathering places. Next slide, please. So kind of touched on this a little bit already. But you're looking for contract instructors all the time. We want people who want to share their passion with the community. They come to us with proposals of what they would like to share. We evaluate those programs and see if they'll work within our structure. And then we try to offer them to public. And we do a great multitude of things. We do dog training classes, we do flamenco dance classes, we do children's arts classes. There is just kind of an unlimited opportunity to offer things to the public. And that also includes summer camps for kids. Like today in this room before we were here, there was a kids vet camp. That's really very popular where a veterinarian comes in and shares what she does and some information, you know, kind of training our next, our next generation of vets or inspired hopefully. So this year, we came back strong from COVID. So we had a couple years after COVID, where obviously, with restrictions, there was some challenges having contract classes. But this year, we have had a really successful year, we had almost 5000 registrations in our contract classes. And our revenue numbers are on target. We are currently working with 33 contract instructors, and we are always looking for more. So if you notice somebody who is passionate about something that they would like to share with the public, send them our way, we love to discuss that with them. Next slide please. Our TOTS program is always growing. We have a tiny TOTS program, which is similar to a kind of a traditional preschool program. We do have priority registration for that program. So we do try to keep people in the program through the entire school year, so that they kind of go through our whole program. That is an in house program. We have is not contract instructors, it's staff that teach that program, and we actually create our own curriculum. We also have some deep programs like art to play to, which is a art and a kinder gym mixed class. So they do art for part of the time and then they do kinder gym for part of the time, really keeping kids both mentally and physically active. And we have our teeny talks program, which is a parent led with an instructor. So parents come work with their kids getting used to being in a classroom taking instructions. So this is just really our opportunity to engage with the youngest members of our community and get them involved in our programs. We found that when we engage with kids as TOTS, we see them done in our summer camps program when they get to be school age, we see them in our CIT program when they get to be middle school age and then we see them as our employees when they are teenagers. So we really like to start them into our programs young and kind of work them through the system. So next slide slide please. So I was talking earlier about rentals. So we do actually rent out seven facilities. So we have the Finlay Community Center, the person senior wing and the Steel Lane Community Center as our main community center. We have the two historic sites, which is the deterred ground bar and church of one tree. And then we have two clubhouses. We have a clubhouse at Franklin Park and a clubhouse at Doyle Park. And we do rentals of all of those facilities. And we had over 700 contracts on those facilities last year that was managed by my team. And that is actually reflects over 7000 hours of facility used just in rentals. That doesn't include any of our programs or classes or camps or any of those things. So just that's just in rentals. We do a really good job of surveying all of our rental clients. So everybody who rents with us at the end of their rental, we send them email them for the business, send them a survey. Hey, would you would you mind telling us how we did how we can improve? And we're getting really good feedback. We selected this year, several hundred people have taken the time to actually fill out the survey. So it's really great to have that feedback. And 95% of our rental customers would recommend the venue to a friend which we feel really good about. You know, it's there is for improvement, obviously, but we feel really good about that number and are continuing to take that feedback to try to improve our service and what the things that we do have control of. I know that Jeff talked to you earlier this year about our fee structure and how we are trying to streamline our rentals fee structure. And that's still something that we're working on. We've come up with a really nice proposal for what we'd like that to look like, where we're kind of simplifying how we apply speeds, make it simpler for us on the booking end and hopefully simpler for the customer to know what those fees are going to look like. And we we are not at this time raising fees at any point. That's not our goal. And actually, it's reflected in our surveying that 97% felt that their rental was appropriately priced and affordability was listed as the top reason that people selected our community centers for their events. So we thought that was really valuable feedback while we're making those decisions. Next slide, please. So gathering space. So I was the recreational coordinator when we were opening at the person senior me. So I worked really closely with seniors Inc. at the time. And Board Member Spence was a very, very big part of that. And one of the visions that I always heard from seniors Inc. was that they wanted the wing to have a opportunities for just social gathering. And you'll notice that's really reflected in the design of the building with the lobby being so warm the fireplace with upstairs the book room being available to read books and do puzzles and things. And that's I think something that has been really, really successful at the person senior wing and something that I would like to emulate in this in this part of the building in the in the community center. We are doing it somewhat with some of our art displays. And I think that's bringing people into the center to use it in a passive recreation. And I'd like to see us working towards that as a goal. But I have a I when I was putting the other slides for this presentation, I went over to the person senior wing because I wanted to get a couple of visuals of how I see the center being used in the afternoon. And you'll see the one picture there of the ladies playing cards. And I went up to the table and I said, Hey, would you mind if I took a photo of you and working on a presentation for work? And would you mind me taking a photo of you? And one of the ladies at the table said, Oh, what's your presentation going to be about? And I said, Oh, you know, I'm going to be talking about gathering spaces in a place for people to just come and be at our community centers and how I think that that's an important aspect of what we do.  She said, my spouse died this last year. And I didn't know what to do. So I just came and was here. And I came and I sat and I met friends and now I play cards. And she's like, it saved my life and it gave me something to do. And I think it was just a really good reminder of how important the spaces that we create are. And that inspired me further. I was already heading that direction with the presentation. And I just wanted to say that because I thought it was really meaningful for me. So that's another another way to keep moving forward in that direction. And next slide please. So that being said, I want to put kind of my goals for this year. And things that I'm working on is, I don't know, you probably have noticed on your way in that our floor here at the family community center in our main hallway and lobby spaces is failing. There is some definite issues with the flooring. It has broken and it is coming up in places and peeling and some unfortunate things. The great news is that a funding source has been identified for replacement of the flooring. And so that project should be getting started imminently and hopefully have the purchasing process beginning anytime the next couple of months and get fixed and get a really nice new sturdy flooring in here that is going to serve all the people that are coming through and make that gallery space really nice for all of the great, I know we have great quilts up there right now, but the public arts program has been coming and presented to you guys I think last month. And they are doing a wonderful job with those they are really bringing in new faces to our to our center with the diversity of displays that they're doing. And so we're really excited about that and having a new floor in that space is really going to make that a nicer space for those viewings. Another goal of mind for this year is I had mentioned that we have been doing a really good job of surveying our rental customers and I would like to solicit more feedback from the people who are participating in our contract classes. So I'm working with Gene, our contract classes coordinator to get a system going where we are providing surveys to everybody who's participating in our courses so we can be soliciting feedback that we cannot only give back to our instructors some feedback on how their courses are going so they can grow and improve as instructors but also to help us help us guide decisions on what things we want to be offering and what things we maybe want to be moving away from. So we're looking for more feedback on our courses through our contract classes. So that's a goal for this year. And then my final goal for this year which I haven't quite identified the funding for yet but I'm going to is I would like to do a sensory space in the Cedar Lobby. So the Cedar Lobby is the lobby over here on the west end of our building. It's outside adjacent to our tiny talks room in the drone room and also our oak rooms. We use that being of the building almost exclusively for youth program and we do a few adult things down there but it's the tiny talks it's the karate the ballet all of the kind of kids kids programs and one of the things that I've noticed often when I'm down there is we have siblings of people waiting for you know pick up at classes or just waiting for a sibling to take a class and they're playing with the chairs and the magazine racks and whatever else that's down there because kids kids are being kids and so I'd really like to create a space that is more than inviting for them and gives them something to do and I also feel like that could be a passive recreation space if someone's not playing in the park they need to come in and cool off they need to use the restroom there's something engaging for them to do and it's a space that's forming welcoming for them so that is another goal of buying for this here. Next slide please so that is everything I had to tell you guys about I would love any suggestions or ideas that you guys have for programming or things that you would like to see happening at the centers I should mention Jen had mentioned the the city booters registration begins on August 3rd our fall winter activity guide is supposed to be arriving at the community centers tomorrow and will be distributing it to local locations libraries and like that and then over the next couple of days but our registration for the fall and winter does begin on August 3rd for all of our programming. Thank you wonderful thank you for that thank you Jackie are there any questions from the board? Jackie I wonder if you and I could talk about similar fundraising for the center because that was my job and I've never you know pulled away completely from that so I would like to if we could sit down I'll email you with an appointment. Absolutely yeah I'd be happy to okay yeah maybe we can get some money to flow in okay I love that right you know I remember the chili fast right yeah and all those dances it looks wonderful thank you it is yeah absolutely thank you um thank you so much I know the classes are all registered through the portal the rental spaces is there preliminary information on spaces available on specific days online or does everything have to be done through a staff person? There is not so it does have to be done through a staff person. Is that intentional at this point or something that's being reviewed? It is intentional so one of the challenges in in preserving spaces is it's not quite as simple as like the space is available we can book it because there's parking considerations there's noise considerations there's you know adjacency considerations and so having you know like a rentals calendar public like our program does allow us to do that like we could make it like where you can see that this room is available at a certain time but unfortunately it doesn't really show the public the full the full picture of whether that's actually available so it really does the requests really do need to be reviewed by a staff member to say yes that makes sense for us to rent it for that function at that time or not so it that's why we intentionally don't do that because it kind of gives a false impression of availability so as a for instance let's say i wanted to rent this room for two hours how much staff time would it take for me to make that minimal to make that like the inquiry or i just to say it again maybe i don't care what's the overhead what's the staff overhead in the renting this room for two hours because it's all done with a staff person you know a simple rental like if you're like i want a business meeting in this room pretty minimal i would say the the staff total staff time i mean with the input of that rental probably 15 minutes with the setup of the room by the facility staff probably another 15 minutes so for something like that now something like a quinceanera or a expo or something like that it's going to be greater than that because there's going to be a pre-event meeting where they go through every detail but basic business meetings the staff input for that is is pretty minimal and currently there's no consideration of making it a more automated process not for the facility rentals no we do do that we do use our program in that way to seven degree for our parks bookings like our parks rentals the picnic rentals um but even at that it comes in and then staff actually opens it up looks at it make sure that it's going to work and then contacts the customer and still has to go through that process so it um that it kind of takes out the researching available dates um but the other part about that is that we kind of like is when a customer comes to us and they have a specific something in mind and it won't work we can then make other suggestions of other locations like maybe they had this room in mind that's not going to work because of whatever considerations but maybe we can put them in the Dimeo room at Steel Lane and that will work just as well so sometimes it's helpful to have that someone not just self-select out and you have us have the opportunity to redirect them to something and another alternative space thank you you're welcome any additional questions i got a quick one uh just regarding revenue with respect to the contract classes is that direct revenue for the center is that just how much revenue was generated overall from the class itself it is uh it's total revenue it does not take into consideration the expenditures understood and just real quick for the sensory wall about how much funding do you think would be required it kind of depends on what what we go with right like uh so you know uh you know like one panel you can get for you know like two thousand dollars depends on how many panels what size we're looking at um kind of kind of see what I could what budget I could come up with and and then go from there and see maybe doing something in like a piece piecemeal like get a sense you know as budget allows where we can build it out um it is uh not a project that I have a really nailed down exactly what I wanted to do because I kind of it's kind of a vision I've had and so it's kind of a goal to head that direction um and uh so I mean probably could get something pretty pretty good in like the six to eight thousand dollar range so thank you all right thank you for that any additional questions all right madam host do we have any public comments on item eight point one yeah no hands raised thank you then uh next on the agenda is item nine committee reports uh me update from the mayor's lunch uh I have no personal update on the mayor's lunch I do not know if that was conducted or not um board member quant would you please provide us an update for the waterways committee report yes the calendar is such that we need tomorrow for this month and um we're running out at colgan reach two for an update on um the second phase of the colgan creek undertaking very exciting wonderful uh do you happen to have a quorum for the meeting will it take place well considering it's on site the staff's going to be there we bloody well good very good uh public comment I don't believe all right uh update from the board governing documents subcommittee yes so we were able to meet earlier this month I would say we had an extremely successful meeting we moved through a several of our bylaw changes and they happened forwarded to the attorney's office and we are meeting sometime in august I believe we're looking at mid to early august and to further discuss our diversity equity inclusion that be long in language and how we're going to bring that into our board I think we're doing bylaws we're going to go with the board bylaws for that one wonderful great update oh my thank you uh no public comment today uh deputy director santas do we have any written or electronic communications we have received the july uh cemetery wonderful copy of the packet thank you jen uh moving on to item 11 are there board members are there any items you'd like to see on a future uh board agenda carol please um I don't know when the last time was we had a review of prince memorial greenway I know it's a complicated matter because it's both creeks and parks but with the downtown specific plan and master plan and also with the building of the cannery project it is becoming all the more vital in my opinion and second item um probably everyone saw in the paper the fallen oak tree at spring lake um we have um an invasive beetle attacking oak trees in northern california now down from oregon and at some point to get some staff information on how that's being addressed in the parks will be very helpful thank you for that any additional potential agenda items we don't just had a question regarding where we at southwest community park was there a swimming pool scheduled to go in there so originally at southwest community park there was a master plan that was developed that showed everything the library the community center and a pool at all at southwest community park and you know how popular southwest community park already is so we had the opportunity to move those things to the hern hub and create those opportunities there so we're the as part of the hern community hub they're asking should a pool go in there can we afford it or is it something that maybe that part of that active recreation is a better location for southwest so that's a question that was asked at the last meeting as part of the survey so we'll be finding that out in the future from the consultant who is running that but yes originally there was quite a bit of in for a bit of infrastructure that was planned for southwest community park i wouldn't spoke to the superintendent of belview school district and you was him the property adjacent to southwest community park on the east side that big four acres that's sitting there is available he said we don't have a plan for it the only thing that has maybe is a salamander problem but he said that that would be an ideal spot where we could take it but a library which that's the libraries thing but that library and the swimming pool over on our park and that would make it a really perfect thing for for the community to have those two facilities there and i think it's just a bad spot for having our pool which will be run by our department market right down at that shopping center area because you're going to have a lot of children a lot of kids running around in cars and everything else whereas up at this area here where i'm mentioning it's it's perfectly set up for that when you know what's on set parcel belview school district and are they going to give it to the department you know but they said that and then besides they have a school that's over there off of san rosa avenue um in the back there's a area there that he said i'm willing to let park and rec didn't say own it but i said take and develop it and put a baseball field and other things there and he said i wish they'd do something with it because he said we you know it's there you can use it and in that particular area we really need some parks because it's going to be a lot of a lot of 500 unit building that are down from smart and final that's going to be opening up soon if there's one kid in every one of those partners and that's 500 kids and there's nothing we don't really have anything close by for them and that would be an ideal spot you know i mean it's just uh we've got to get more and we have one small park um i think we'll take a look at it but that's there between there and yolanda and it's just not i mean we need to have some some bigger bigger facilities there because there's going to be a lot of kids and then exactly around our location there southwest community park i mean there's hundreds and hundreds of housing that's going in and that pool would be perfect there and not down to that shopping center i'm jammed up with you know cars coming and going and backing up and so on and here you got kids coming on on a bicycle to go down or whatever it's just it's just not the right to me it's not the right spot should be up in southwest community park beautiful uh thank you for that any any additional items all right then with that i think we're good uh anything else director no all right then with that our next regularly scheduled meeting of the board will be held on wednesday august 23rd at 5 p.m uh with that i adjourn this meeting on the board of community services at 6 0 5 thank you all


Many times in debates between religious apologists and scientists I've heard the religious person defend his or her position by an insistence that evolution is a religion Darwinism, they say, takes as much faith as Christianity. Is that right? Is evolution a religion? Should we describe the positions of scientists as dogma? There's another related question that I've heard asked. Is science democratic? Isn't there room for debate on the issues of science? This is the public relations spin being used by the Christian apologetics legal defense fund called the Discovery Institute Teach the controversy or academic freedom. Is that right? Everybody likes freedom, of course, and hey scientists are supposed to be really open-minded. Why can't we teach both sides? Isn't that good science pedagogy? Is there a mainstream in science that resists these new ideas? Well, I'm a scientist a molecular biologist and I can tell you that we are not open-minded. We do not operate on democracy and we do have a central overriding principle we operate by. That overriding principle is expressed as one thing evidence. Science exists under the tyranny of evidence. That's the most important difference between religion and science. It doesn't accept anything. It can't test or prove. Faith never comes into it. There is no dogma in science. Every theory is tentative and only valued and proportioned to its ability to explain the evidence. Science is not interested in ultimate realities in explanations of meaning or purpose. All science can be reduced to accurate model building. Science is descriptive, predictive, and objective. Scientists who failed to bow to the tyranny of evidence are cast out. We have no room in our world for unsupported views. Many other videos have discussed the harsh gauntlet of peer review. This is where those who fail to support their views with adequate evidence are culled from the herd. It has nothing to do with how controversial an idea is, how fringe or revolutionary. If you have the evidence to back your claim. If your worst enemy can repeat your tests and get the same results. If no better explanation can be supported. Then your idea is accepted as a valid model until new evidence can be produced to challenge it. That's experimental science in one paragraph. I want to illustrate this with two different ideas. One is accepted science. The other is not. The first is the aquatic ape theory, which postulates that at some point in the ancient lineage of humans, one or more of our ancestor species may have lived in shallow water. This helps to explain why we, among the apes, have such unusual characteristics. We walk upright, are primarily bipedal, have almost hairless skin, have specific hair growth patterns, have a descended larynx, voluntary control of breeding, oily skin, a hooded nose, vestigial webbing between the fingers, and why our babies are born with a dive reflex. This is pretty amazing stuff, and does a pretty good job of explaining many of the features that puzzle us so much when we compare ourselves to our nearest living ancestors, the chimps, who are very poorly designed for an aquatic environment. There are dozens of other puzzles about the human line explained by this model, which has been championed by Elaine Morgan, a Welsh feminist writer. The idea has been wildly controversial among mainstream biologists. The second idea is the endosymbiotic theory. It's championed by another woman, Lynn Margulis, who was the first wife of the late great Carl Sagan. Endosymbiotic theory postulates that the origin of mitochondria, the eukaryotic organelle that is the site of energy production, and chloroplasts, the organelle that's the site of photosynthesis, both originated as separate prokaryotic cells. That is a key part of all of your cells is actually an ancient bacteria that learned to live inside a eukaryotic cell. This helps to explain a great deal about these organelles, but it also explains a great deal about the sudden emergence of large functional eukaryotic cells over such a short time. It proposes a new role for cooperation in the process of evolution that starts from the very first eukaryotic cell, even before multicellularity. This idea has been wildly controversial too. So there they are, the aquatic ape theory and the endosymbiotic theory. Both have much to commend them. Both explain phenomenon in the natural world, and both are controversial revolutionary ideas resisted by the mainstream. Now which is an accepted theory and which is not? Pause the video if you want to think it over. Can you decide on the argument alone? I certainly can. We need one more piece of this puzzle. The endosymbiotic theory has been tested and supported by mountains of evidence. Even the people who were the worst critics of the theory initially have changed their tune in light of the evidence and experimental testing for the theory. It's now in the biology textbooks of many high school students. The aquatic ape theory on the other hand, while it is a powerful idea, has failed to produce sufficient positive evidence to support it. That doesn't kill it as an idea, and it has provoked some useful discussion, but you won't see many references to it in the science literature. I happen to be quite fond of the idea of the aquatic ape, but I recognize that it has failed to meet the basic burdens of proof. Now when we take a look at intelligent design, does it fall into the same category as endosymbiotic theory, an idea that is controversial but well supported by evidence, or into the aquatic ape theory category, of an idea that is controversial but unsupported? A quick scan of the literature shows that they have failed to meet basic burdens of proof. Of course, they are only interested in the appearance of scientific debate, but they're missing a key point. Scientists don't debate ideas. We debate evidence, and they forgot to bring any. Philosophers debate ideas, and since the Discovery Institute is primarily composed of philosophers, perhaps they were unaware of the importance of evidentiary support. So why not teach the controversy in science class? Because there is no scientific controversy. There is only ideological controversy. Mathological naturalism versus theistic supernaturalism. Not evidence for one theory versus evidence for the other. What about academic freedom, the new rallying cry of the subverters of the Constitution at the Discovery Institute? There is an academic freedom to question whatever theory you like, and for the moment they call it science, they need to bring out the experimental evidence. Science tolerates no freedom in the face of evidence. This is not a free-for-all democracy of ideas. Not all ideas are equally valid in science, only those supported by evidence. What about strengths and weaknesses? Now that's a valid concept. We should debate the strengths and weaknesses of the evidence for a theory, but the debate needs to be between scientists who are actually familiar with the evidence, not high school students who have just covered DNA in a week and a half. The appropriate place for scientific matters to be resolved is in the science literature, not amongst 15 and 16 year olds in the first year biology class. And we shouldn't single out the theory of evolution. If we discuss strengths and weaknesses, we need to dissect and debate the cell theory, the germ theory, the atomic theory, the theory of gravity, and the many other ideas that passed critical review over 100 years ago. So, to conclude, scientists do not believe in the academic freedom of theories. We do not support a free-for-all of ideas, and we do not permit dogma to exist in our field. Anyone who attempts to advance science as a matter of faith is utterly destroyed. We live under a complete and utter tyrant who will permit no rivals. All hail King Evidence.


We wind down day one here at the Mustang Classic, and Stevenson picks up the 12-9 win over Lynchburg in the nightcap joined now by Lynchburg head coach Steve Kadelka. Coach your team showed a lot of metal, fell behind a couple of times, battled right back into the game, just couldn't quite overcome things at the end. What was the difference?  You know, you're at the top of the lacrosse pile, and you know, you got to make plays, you know, and I thought Stevenson made a little bit more than us in the fourth quarter, a couple ground balls that could have went either way that they came up with, but it really just, I think there's a lot of little plays, little things that just added up in their favor more than we had. It has to feel good, however, knowing that when they fell behind those two times, your team didn't roll over, they battled back. Yeah, I mean, you know, that might be a surprise to you, that's zero surprise to me. We got some tough kids, and you know, we've been down before in games, and we've come back in one big game.  You know, CJ Santora made save after save after save the night, and I know there are a couple of issues with the clears at the end of the game, but the plays that he made, he really battled to keep you guys in the game. Yeah, you know, we felt like we could, you know, we did miss up a couple clears, but CJ, you know, didn't start off great, but that's kind of kid he is, and he came back and made some great saves for us and got into a rhythm, I think running down the field in the very beginning of the game was good for him, you know, being a former goal head, I remember those days, and you got the blood flowing a little bit, you know, Stevenson came at him pretty good. You could tell he wanted that one. Yeah, you know, you get down there, you want to score, there's no doubt about it, but he did, he did some really good things for us, and I thought our defense, close defense played pretty well, and, you know, it was, we maybe gave a couple too many chances at the end there. You know, another big one tomorrow, obviously, it's another good team and another team that had a really tough battle tonight, and just ended up coming a little bit short.  I mean, it's kind of nice, and I think if you're a player, you lose and usually have a week or several days to kind of think about it now. It's a quick turnaround, I don't know, you know, that's good or bad, but I think as a player, you want to get back out and play. I think both kids want to play, and, you know, we'll be excited. Tomorrow night, this has been a great event. I mean, hats off to Stevenson and their crew for all the work. This has been, I told our guys, and this is an environment that's second to none right now in Division III of the Cross. We're excited to be a part of it, and, you know, we get to play two games here, you know, which is to come back tomorrow and give it our best shot again. Coach, I appreciate it. Best of luck tomorrow. Thank you very much. Here's Coach Steve Kadelka from Lynchburg. I'm Glenn Clark. This is GoMustangSports.com.


The last news my name is Robin today. Just the thumbnail and title suggest I took some profits on crypto I'm gonna tell you why and what I did and everything involves so let's just jump right in so first things first I think it's important to note that before we get into the conversation of of selling crypto or are Taking profits just to realize some important things and that is that's before we get into the Philosophical of you know because there's always gonna be somebody in the chats later or in the comments It'll say well, how dare you sell it? How dare you sell any of your crypto because you should hold on to it forever and diamond hands and so on and so forth look I Don't know if you've read the Bitcoin white paper. I'm not gonna read it for you But I'm gonna link in the description. You can check it out. It's nine pages very short very simple It's a peer-to-peer transaction. It's a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. That's exactly what it is That's what's atoshi Nakamoto made it for and that's it So if for some reason you have to you know come around and and sell something for things You need to buy in case I don't know somebody doesn't take Bitcoin Well, there you go and also on top of that as we get into More of the bull run or maybe heavier into the bear market Just remember people are gonna sell and this is a story that we covered a couple of days ago But as people will will tell you you know Bitcoin is great and Bitcoin is fantastic. I believe it is. I think it's gonna be the future I think that has a very long and lustrous life ahead of it However saying all that there will there's still gonna be people who will sell it even as they tell you to your face How great it is and you should never sell and that's not what Peter teal said specifically But when he was on the Bitcoin conference in April 2022 or May 2022 He was pretty much talking about how great it is and how it's it is the most fantastic thing of all time And of course we should buy it all and just a month before he had sold a billion dollars worth of it Offloading eight years of crypto investments. So that's just what it is. So that's the philosophical part Let's get into the the nuts and bolts.  I mean all the way back into 9th November 15 9 and then sold it around here. I think we can all agree there It's been chopping sideways just going here around 15,000 16,000 16,000 all the way up to 21 And of course today. It's at almost 23,000 pretty good Now does that mean that this won't keep going up? No, they could go up another. I don't know 10 The jillion percent. I have no idea I don't think everything goes up forever and just along the lines. I like to take profits along the way and See keeps and dry powder in case there's I don't know a little bit of a dip and you can do this with bitcoin You can see here in a theorem kind of like the same thing Dropped off you could have a dollar-cost average and sold a little bit up here But there's some that you like for me for polygon like recently I couldn't do that It looks like it's been you know doing the pretty much the same thing as far as the price action So pay attention to polygons been holding up quite well And of course the original video that we talked about Well, there was two this one dca profits a link in the description You can watch that and of course we had uh been from in the cryptiverse and uh guy from coin bureau We do the nfa live. We talked about that about Delacost averaging and if you do it or not hint hint I do it these guys don't right now yet, but they're gonna jump in at some point so the whole thing It really comes down to this the question you're saying is well, how the heck does that work? I mean if you're gonna dollar-cost average energy is buying back at the same price genius Well, hold on So when we talk about those things you have to understand it's just timeframes So in that original video I showed you this It's a number sheet kind of like excel, but it's for mac is what I got And you can just see here. It's quite simple ish You can see that I've been buying I've been dollar-cost averaging actually Like forever it seems like I'm sure you're in the same boat if you've been dollar-cost averaging But if I just I just the last video I did I said okay and from December 16th I put in 40 bucks a day and here was the bitcoin equivalent It was very simple 40 40 40 40 40 and then the average of all the the price action for every day that I did It came out around around 16,0782 Okay, so I spent about a thousand And that was on January 9th. I spent a thousand bucks. I got 0.05 Bitcoin and again one bitcoin is still worth one bitcoin. That's not going to change so All they had to do is wait a couple weeks And then of course I could you know if it went up I I could sell or just keep dollar-cost averaging Now, let me make make this crystal clear I'm still dollar-cost averaging on January 10th. I bought it at 17 2 January 11 17 5 January 12 15 and of course there's question mark here, but of course Yes, I had no I haven't updated it yet But I bought on the 16th the 17 18 19 20 21 22 doesn't matter. Well, I don't know what the date it is What is the date today? It is the of course everybody's screaming at me. Oh, that's 20 seconds. Look at that So I'm still buying 40 bucks with the bitcoin, but From here in that little time frame I'm selling this off And I'm selling and I'm putting in profits and then the same thing today Let me get rid of this The same thing for right now. I just sold back in till December 16th, but I could have I could have Actually sold off Going all the way back to here because I bought on this day That's the that's the beauty of dollar-cost averaging you you buy I Well, depending on what you do like I buy every day So I'm always gonna buy the the lowest points always Always because I dollar-cost average bitcoin every day. So I bought at 15 9 So I could have gone back to 9th of November instead of just December 16 That's why the day I went back and I took some profits because I took some profits here When it was around 21,000 I took some profits here at 23,000 again Does that mean that it's not going to keep going on forever? I could Bitcoin's pretty strong not for sure But I do think that things are going to tumble down at some point and even I take a look at just overall charts I take a look at like the mvrv z score the market value was realized value This orange part here is the z score It kind of gives out rid of the noise and we were still in accumulation phase And if we actually zoom in a little bit, we just crossed above that point We could go all the way up to here. I mean we could go to the moon. I don't know Then of course, we take a look at the uh, the well multiple. It's a little bit different It looks at the supply side It's calculated by dividing the daily issuance value of bitcoin by the one-year moving average And this is all about bitcoin mining and miners and when they sell so when it's uh When it's up It's pretty overvalued down here.  It's not easy out there Some breakeven points are around 22 22,500 But we can just see that we're actually above and into this this point. We can go up again Not for sure But I just take a look at the long haul I'm still going to dollar cost average today and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that And at some point if it goes up, well, great Maybe if it goes up under a thousand percent, I might take some more profits Or maybe if it goes down, which I think it will at some point Then I'll just dollar cost average some more and I'll actually do what's called dynamic dcaing which is put more money into it Because then when it goes up In six months three months two days, I don't know Then I'll do the same thing again Now The things I'm looking at lately is this The feds going to come out the mini is going to be in 10 days There's about this is what it's stating 99.3 percent chance Of a fed rate hike not that much 25 basis points if they pause it if they pause You're going to see some massive action You're going to see some some prices go up like crazy So the question is where rob wants you to just wait until that day. Look I could I could have waited But the thing I'm trying to do here And I've talked about this before probably the 50th time I've talked to this now Is that when I get into the bull run and it's going to happen to you and guarantee it not everybody but most of you The price is going to go up exponentially and you're going to look at that and go, you know what Bitcoin went from 20,000 to I don't know 100,000 or whatever it does And you're going to say if it can do that it can probably go to 100,000 to 200,000 no problem So I'm not going to sell a dime And you if you you think if it's not going to happen But it is And you'll wait for it to go up and then it'll dip a little bit down And you were like, ah, it'll go back again It'll dip some more and dip some more and it'll keep pulling on the up down it goes I am trying to do The selling to put it into my muscle memory to remind myself what it feels like it's easy Everybody on the internet and youtube will tell you the same bs Which is you need to buy everything and you could I mean, you could buy everything by the dips and and everything else and and get all dipped out and and that's fantastic But very few people Are going to remind you to take some profits along the way So you don't get wrecked and you're holding on to some massive amount of bags Now again, you can dial across average and you can hold it all the way to the very top And you probably like I said, you probably do very well if you have a very long outlook But as time goes on I'm just going to guess I could be wrong here that maybe there was a point in time in the last two years Where maybe you wish you had some extra cash on the side to pay for something Whatever that was if that's the case Maybe you could do a little research into this But if it's not and your name is mark cuban Or whoever billionaire that you are then this video is not for you and that's it So on top of that to finish this up I'm also taking a look at the the 10 and 2 year treasury yield every time on that to inverts That means between uh, we're on 12 months roughly to 18 months We start to have a recession and the 10 and 2 actually flipped in july So we're six months down another six months to go. Maybe it happens. Maybe it doesn't Still think it could and there's also another one that uh Ben showed me This is his website you can check it out links in the description and the cryptiverse This is the the 10 year and three month Which really can tell you a little bit more tight time frame as far as the treasury yields when those flip negative Or when those inverse then you have a a much higher chance Of hitting a recession this little this little grayed out area right here This is recessions and it usually happens about 12 months or so into it happened here Where did it happen happen right was this? 2000 to 2001 happened there It inverted about right here 2006 2007 and when did it invert? Yeah October roughly So here we go and that's what's happening So if that happens probably see a little price dip I don't think that crypto will skyrocket in a recession. I could be wrong. Hope i'm wrong But that's what we got and that's it for today and the lastly I will just say this When you sell and take profits you have to understand about one thing which is Taxes So with taxes the short term and long term gains and it's all depends on how you set it up first in first out First in last out. I don't I'm not your cpa. Not your dad. Not your cpa. Don't give financial advice.  Yes, you're gonna take capital gains tax. However, I will remind you that if you did this thing Well, it's called wash trading and equities But we call it tax loss harvesting which is really what it is and you use this program called coin ledger Which is that thing? Spinning above my enormous head crypto tax has made easy They are a sponsor of the show Just so you know If you cannot stand using affiliate links, that's cool Just go to coin ledger.io, but you'll miss out on 20 off if you sign up for the program And this one it helps you do your crypto taxes and it helps you to figure out What your cost basis is Maybe potentially when you could sell Maybe when All the different things that you might want to know About your crypto and how things are going and you know, what's great about it if you want to run a tax report It'll cost you it's like 100 or 200 bucks depending on how many trades you do But if you don't want to do that, you just want to do like a cost-based analysis You just click this button called get started for free You can integrate all your api There's a video on how to do it for me when I did this it took me 30 minutes to when I Shot it off to my cpa and I was done And that's for you. That's for you. I did that for you To help you out a little bit and that's what I do But you're welcome to do whatever you want to and that's it for today. So look That is it for today's video. We don't usually do Uh the live streams much anymore got a lot of things happening Then just haven't really been the same for a while, but uh, that is it for today So if you like today's video give it a thumbs up consider subscribing Now if you like to stick around with me and I'll answer all your questions We'll do so in the q&a. So if you're ready, let's jump in the q&a If not get out of here enjoy football and do whatever you got to do Thanks for stopping by do appreciate you stopping stopping by and chatting with me. All right. Let's get into it so


Hey folks! Aside from the controversy of whether or not we should be rarefying our data, in the recent episodes I have been talking about how rarefaction works, what is the math behind it, conceptually what's going on. Two episodes ago I showed you how we can use the choose function and factorials to get the pure math, the exact computation of the expected number of taxa we would see for a smaller sampling depth than what you may have gotten experimentally. That way then we can compare samples, richnesses, on an equal footing, an equal level of sampling effort. In the last episode then I showed you how the conceptual idea of a collector's curve, where you might go into a bag of candies or go out into a field and sample individuals, and as you're sampling individuals you keep track of how many new things do you see, and you generate a collector's curve, right? On the x-axis you can think of number of individual sampled, the y-axis the number of new types sampled, right? And so we talked about how that profile of sampling new taxa versus sampling effort is a random process, and so if you repeated it again you'd get a different shaped curve. And so what rarefaction curves really are is repeating that collector's curve process say a hundred or a thousand times and generating the average curve through all those collector's curves. In general I'm not super interested in a refraction curve. I don't need to know the expected number of taxa I would have seen for every possible number of individuals that I could have sampled. It's just not that relevant to me. Typically what I would do is pick a threshold say 2,000 individuals or 10,000 individuals and then I would want to know how many taxa would I see at that sampling depth across all of my samples. And so that's what I'm going to talk about today, is empirically how can we pick a threshold sampling depth and then get the expected number of taxa for that sampling depth. We'll do this empirically and we'll compare it back to the exact solution using that rarefaction function we created a few episodes back. Here I am in RStudio. I have my rarefaction.r script open and ready to go. You can get your own copy so you can follow along. It's really the best way to learn this stuff. You can get the code, the data, add a link down below in the description. Also I'll leave some instructions here so you can get caught up by using all that information in the blog post. So as we've seen I have loaded the library, the tidyverse, I'm setting a random number generator seed, and then I've got some code here to read in data from a mouse study that my lab published a number of years ago. Again if you want more information about that study down below in the description you'll find some information. Anyway this generates a table called shared that has a column for the sample ID or what I call group. The name of the taxa in my case it's going to be otus and then a column for the values which is the number of times each otu is seen in each sample. Then I've got my rarefaction function here which does the exact computation of the expected number of taxa I would see for a given sampling depth and for a given frequency distribution. I'm going to load all this. There's other stuff in this script that went into generating those rarefaction curves and collector's curves that I'm not going to worry about too much today. And so again if we look at shared we see this three column data frame. So I'm taking on a problem like this. I try to kind of make things as simple as possible before I expand them out. So in this case what I'll do is filter my data to only look at the group samples that were from f3d0 and so now I have the 1588 rows that correspond to that sample. I think I'll also go ahead and limit to the values greater than zero. There are some zero values in here and so we see there's 167 different taxa that have observed counts. What I'd like to do is to deconvolute this data from. Now we saw this in the previous episode that I can take that value column so like that 115 for o2u1 and I can uncount the data so that it then replicate o2u1 115 times o2u2 26 times. So again we can do uncount on a value and so again I see that I've got o2u1 a whole bunch of times right and so now what I want to do is I want to sub sample out this data frame to get out 1800 and 1828 rows randomly selected from my data frame and so I can do this with sample n, sample n function and I can say size equals 1828 and now I can count the number of distinct o2u names. I talked about this in the last episode where I needed like a cumulative and distinct function but I didn't have one so what instead I'll do is a summarize and I will say s for number of species or number of taxa equals n distinct and if this is the name column and so I get back a value for s of 130. So now I'm going to try to scale out to all the samples. I'm going to go ahead and remove this line 73. I also don't need that value greater than zero because when I do the uncount if an o2u has a count of zero it's not going to be deconvoluted zero times or it's going to be deconvoluted zero times so it doesn't show up right so I'll go ahead and remove that line so in here I'll add a group by group right and I'll pipe that into my uncount and let's give that a run and see what we get well sure enough we get 227 rows one for each of our samples with the number of observed taxa now you'll notice that this number is fluctuating that I had for f3d0 above I think it was 126 and now it's 119 again that's because the sample n function is using a random number generator so if I run this multiple times I'm going to get different values every time I run it and so that's why I need to repeat this say a hundred or a thousand times so that I can get a sense of what is the central tendency what is the average number of taxa I would see if I got 1828 sequences from all of my samples so what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this into a function that I can then replicate any number of times so I will call this subsample it'll be a function so I'll give this data which will be the data frame that I'm bringing into like I have shared here and then I'll have sample size for the number of sequences that I want to subsample down to and I'll create my curly braces to define the body of that function and I'll bump that over and instead of shared again I want data and instead of 1828 I want sample size right and so now if I do load that so I should be able to take subsample on shared and 1828 and I then get output much like what I had before so again now we need to replicate this a bunch of times and what we can do is we can replicate this using the map dfr function so I could do map dfr and the values that I want to iterate over let's do one to ten again a nice small data set so we're not waiting a long time only to find error messages and we'll put a tilde in front of that subsample and then I want an id column that I'll call itters and then I'll close out with the parentheses running that we now get 2270 rows so again there are 227 samples 10 times replicates and so I will then call this subsamples or maybe subsamplings right and then I can take subsamplings and I can then feed that into a group by um group and then summarize on um I'll say s being the mean of s I believe this column was s right yep it is so we'll run that and so then we get our rarefied values for each of the different groups I'll call this empirical and then I also want an exact and so I'll take shared and then feed that into a group by group and then summarize um s equals rarefied and then my rarefied is the data coming through and uh the samples of the 1828 um actually that x is going to be value so I want the value column the the number of counts for each oq in each sample and so now I get my yeah I've get my exact so I'll call this exact we see the values here look fairly similar to what we got for the empirical before and what I can do is I can go ahead now and bring those together and so previously I might do this but the join let me show you a different way and that's with bind rows so I can bind two data frames together uh row y so one will be at the top rows one will be the bottom rows if they have the same column names and so exact um has group and s and empirical also has group and s so I can then bind rows with empirical it'll say empirical equals empirical and then exact equals exact and the reason I'm naming the data frames this way is because I can then have an id column that will then be approach and so as you'll see we now have a column for the approach where it's empirical or further down exact and what we could then do is we could then say plot the points with like a slope plot right my favorite plot we've seen a lot of me making slope plots in the past so we'll do gg plot aes x equals and we'll do approach so we'll have exact and empirical and then y will have s and we'll have group equals group so we'll connect the points by their group and then we'll do geome line and so as we can see the lines look pretty flat um we are only using 10 iterations so there's a bit of noise I would say in the data but I'd like to go ahead and build out these plots kind of build out our analysis before we scale up to a larger number of um refaction steps so that's one approach we could look at I don't know that's super useful another approach would be to put the exact values on the x axis and the empirical on the y and represent each group with a different point and we'd expect them to fall on a straight line so let's go ahead and um take this line again and this might be a case where it would be useful to use inner join instead because I'm going to want exact and empirical in separate columns but we'll go ahead and use a pivot wider instead so we'll do pivot wider I'd encourage you to experiment using the inner join to see if you can do that instead of bind rows and pivot wider again we'll get to the same place here um and so what I will do is names from and it'll be approach and then values from equals s so sure enough we now have an empirical and exact column I can then do gg plot and then aes x equals exact y equals empirical and we'll do geome point and yep they fall on a pretty good line let's go ahead and add in here a geome ab line and so geome ab line allows you to indicate the slope and intercept so we'll say intercept equals zero slope equals one and I'm going to make the color gray and I will add that and I'm going to go ahead and add um theme light I'm going to spell light right and let's go ahead and add uh theme light to this previous plot as well for a slope plot and this is again what our plot looks like with the um the ideal case where the values are identical uh going in behind there so a final way I'd like to look at the data is by looking at the percent error of the empirical relative to the exact so again I'm going to take these two lines 97 or 98 um and we will then go ahead and do a mutate on to create a column called error and I'll say 100 times and we'll do um exact minus empirical divided by exact yep and so then that gets us our percent error and then I'm going to feed this into making a geome density plot and so the gg plot aes x equals error and then we'll do plus geome density and I'll go ahead and do theme light and there we go we see that we have central tendency right at zero maybe a little bit to the right of zero uh we could get that exact value by again borrowing uh these first three lines of this latest pipeline um and we could then do a summarize with uh mean uh of mean of error and we could do sd on the sd of error and we see that our average error rate is right at zero right that's point zero zero five seven seven percent so it's pretty small but we do see kind of a wide spread in the data we have a standard deviation of just over one now let's repeat this going back up and instead of using 10 let's use 100 and see what happens to the shape of these different plots as well as the mean and standard deviation we can see that our mean is still pretty close to zero our standard deviation has gone from just over one to under point four right so before we had point zero zero five seven seven one point one nine uh and now we're a smaller uh variation from the mean and our state standard deviation is quite less if we go over and look at our figures before this geome density plot went out to plus or minus two and now we're kind of at plus or minus one uh similarly if we scale back here looking at putting exact on the x and empirical on the y those points are a lot tighter um and here again was our slope plot and we can see that those slopes uh just kind of visually look a lot more horizontal although there certainly is still some kind of vertical variation if you will let's go now and do a thousand iterations so repeating that code with a thousand iterations we see that we still have a very small mean right at zero and our standard deviation went from like point three three down to point one two one and so as we increase the number of iterations again the standard deviation is going to keep dropping looking at our density plot um we again see a bell shaped curve kind of center just to the left of zero as we would have expected from that summary output um and we noticed that our curve uh started at plus or minus two when we had 10 iterations down to one and now down to about plus or minus point four or so and if we look at this um plot with the exact value on the x and the empirical on the y those values look pretty dead on um as does this slope plot looking pretty flat for all those different values so usually people are pretty content with a thousand or a hundred iterations as we can see there's not a huge difference in the values that you will get for the same data again i hope you found this progression of episodes useful two episodes ago we talked about the exact solution for calculating the estimated number of taxa we would see for any sampling depth for a given uh frequency distribution in the last episode we saw how we could make collectors curves and then convert those into refaction curves again the refaction curve is the average of a whole bunch of collectors curves and then in this episode we hone down into a single um sampling depth that we want to then look at across all of our different samples of course there are many different ways to do the same thing that i've done here what i would encourage you to do is of course as always do this with your own data but i would encourage you after watching this and kind of running through the code with me to start with a blank script and to repeat the analysis that i did see if you can write your own code to verify the data and then compare it back to the exact solution and see if you get the right value right see if you get a value that's really close to the exact value that would have been predicted from the mathematical theory if you can do that then you've definitely mastered a whole bunch of concepts beyond what is refaction and that's what's really important here again the ability to think through a problem and pull together the different tools that we have at our disposal here in r so practice with that exercise and we'll see you next time for another episode of code club


They hide behind a mask of happiness. Perhaps one of the most practiced habits amongst those with concealed depression is constantly wearing a mask of happiness. They may overcompensate for the depression by attempting to feign well-being. It is important to remember that just because you perceive happiness in someone doesn't always mean that they are as carefree in reality. Number two, they're a perfectionist. Are they really hard on themselves? Oftentimes people with concealed depression set really high expectations for themselves. As a result, they may feel internal pressure to hide any blemishes in projecting a picture-perfect image of themselves to others. Because of this, they may have the tendency to accomplish everything without needing to pull the curtains back, to reveal the actual effort that they've exhausted and the scars they've had while doing so. Number three, they often absorb other people's energy. Do they find it easy to empathize with others?  The extent to which they feel emotion may translate into a deeper understanding of others and their feelings. Because of this, they often embody an enhanced sense of empathy. Oftentimes just perceiving the sadness of others is enough to make themselves sad as well. Number four, they often spend time alone. Have you noticed that they're really sensitive to outside stimuli? Sometimes people with concealed depression can be hypersensitive to the world and the environment around them as they have a highly attuned brain. It can be overwhelming to just live with a constant stream of thoughts and noise running through their head that you might find them needing time alone and away from people to recalibrate themselves. Number five, they're flippant when asked about their well-being. Are they quick to change the subject when you ask them how they're doing? While it's good to reach out to people you're concerned about, sometimes those with concealed depression may continue to deny their conditions in front of you. Instead, you may notice them frequently indulging in self-deprecation or showing little regard for their own health and safety. Number six, they have a knack for the arts. People with concealed depression may find an outlet for their emotions in the art they design or the music they produce. Their emotional experience may help them elevate their craft, but as healthy as it is to channel the suffering and affliction they experience through these creative pursuits, it's also crucial that they seek help when they need it as well. Number seven, there are subtle cries for help. Have they shown subtle signs of wanting help? These cries may not be perceptible at first, but if you pay attention, you may spot little inconsistencies in their routine. Perhaps they've started to skip class or school on a constant basis or have neglected their much-loved hobbies. Number eight, they understand how to self-remedy. Those with concealed depression may have grown accustomed to the responsibility of maintaining their own wellness. This means they know which activities can bring them solace and comfort or which foods and medications they should intake to supply them with a chemical boost. And number nine, they're prone to risky behavior. We all find ways to cope with stresses of everyday life, but sometimes those with concealed depression may turn to escapism or risky activities, such as gambling or drinking to avoid confronting and dealing with their emotions. Meditation, exercise or an engaging hobby can often serve as healthy alternatives to these unhealthy tendencies. So do you recognize any of these habits in your friends, family or acquaintances? Because those with depression cannot be categorized by one shared trait or another, remember to approach each individual case with an open mind and sensitivity. Just reaching out and checking in are two of the most effective actions you can take. If you found this video helpful, be sure to like, subscribe and share this video with those who might benefit from it. And don't forget to hit the notification bell icon to get notified whenever Psych2Go posts a new video. The references and studies used in this video are added in the description below. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you in our next video.


Yeah, the headlines changed from when I last looked but basically there's massive panic out there massive panic out there over the fact that children are getting COVID and Being hospitalized is COVID now remember that in the first few rounds of COVID children basically didn't get much So here's some of the facts It's true nearly 94,000 children kids got COVID-19 last week They were 15% of all new cases now. Why is this? Well, it's primarily because COVID is now Attacking the unvaccinated and children are unvaccinated and it's morphed into a You know a Virus that is very effective in terms of in terms of getting unvaccinated Vaccinated getting getting an unvaccinated people covered and indeed some vaccinated people But primarily the unvaccinated since children are most of the people who are unvaccinated it You're getting a higher percentage of children. They're the ones Where you're seeing the virus manifest But if you look at the state level data, it's been analyzed by the American Academy of Pediatrics It shows the children accounted for roughly 15% of all newly reported COVID-19 cases in the nation 94,000 were recorded during a period This is last week and 31% increase over 72,000 the week before that and 39,000 the week before that so it's it's spiked quite a bit over the last two three weeks Now This has been increasing steadily since July After it's been declining decline most of the so this is nowhere near yet And this is primarily they're saying because they're now vaccinated but the fact is the fact is That in states where data was available less than 2% of all child COVID cases require hospitalization and The fatality rates this is the fatality rate The fatality rate is basically zero Maybe in some cases It's 0.03 It's not true 95% of new Israeli patients were vaccinated. That's just not true. I was just in Israel That is just That's just not true a majority of the people being admitted into hospital in Israel hospital in Israel I mean overwhelming majority are unvaccinated and There's large segments of the Israeli population that unvaccinated So it's just sorry you wonder for you man, but that's just the data is wrong It might be true the 95% of new Israeli cases of vaccinated, but that's Relevant because what's happening is you take parents are taking their kids in to get vaccinations now as well as vaccinating children And when they go in they get tested And they're discovering a lot of non-syntomatic cases in vaccinated people of COVID Who cares The fatality rate among children Is between zero and zero point zero three percent. That's not three percent. That's Zero point zero three percent basically zero so If you're vaccinated for COVID by the way, the other thing that you can see in Israel is that The vaccinated people who are getting COVID Are all over 65 And they all were the first people to get vaccinated in the world really they were all vaccinated in January December of January, right? So they all have had the antibody levels Drop dramatically They're the ones that are most likely to get, you know, my parents Antibody count when they did a Serialogical test a few weeks ago was very low in spite of the fact that they got two boosts in the vaccine for some reason they body It's not functioning right. They're old right there in the 80s And they're the ones that are likely to get COVID Who were vaccinated If you're recently vaccinated if you're young and vaccinated If you're healthy and vaccinated You're fine The chances of you going to hospital are almost zero My parents just got the third shot. So they got a vaccine boost About a week ago, which is fine because they need to get those antibodies up so they can cope right What we need today what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason By the intellect not by feelings wishes wins or mystic revelations Any man or woman who values his life And who does not want to give in to today's scout of the spare cynicism and impedance and does not intend to give up the world To the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads All right before we go on reminder Please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now 30 likes That should be at least a hundred. I figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show Maybe they're like 60 of the matthews out there who hate it But but at least the people who like it, you know, I want to see I want to see a thumbs up There you go start liking it. I want to see that go to a hundred All it takes is a click of a click of a thing whether you're looking at this And and you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego It's an issue of the algorithm the more you like something the more the algorithm likes it So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes But if you like it, don't just sit there Help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share And you can support the show at your own book show Dot com slash support on patreon or subscribe star or locals And and show your support for all for for the work for the value.  So, uh, yes, like share subscribe support like share subscribe support. There you go easy Do one or all of those please