Hello friends welcome back to another episode here on the channel. I hope you're all doing well. For anyone new to the channel my name is Lee also known as Osiris and in today's episode we're going to take a look at a few series 8 teams that I've been looking at and just have a general chat about the format before it officially begins next week on Monday the 1st of February. So there's a lot of you know I had an operation before Christmas and that's predominantly been the reason why we've not had content regularly consistently on the channel. I was hoping this week would be a little bit different but again I'm still in the the kind of the end part of my recovery I feel. Getting used to being back at work juggling home life it's just really tiring me out and draining me and I've just not had one the motivation to be able to do content and just the energy in general. So I hope you understand it's not that I don't want to do content and it's not because I haven't got ideas for content it's literally adjusting back to just regular life after being in bed for like four weeks especially because of how active I was prior to the operation has just really knocked me for six and it's just taken a little bit longer so I hope you guys can appreciate that that is the the only reason why content's been a little bit slower but like I say I keep saying week on week hopefully next week is the week and I'm really keeping my fingers crossed my energy levels are a little bit better next week and we can get back into a bit more of a consistent schedule with everything. So getting into today's episode I want to talk about series eight like I say the rules are dropping officially on the ladder updating on Monday this coming Monday the 1st of February which is very exciting we do have the legacy VGC server which is an alt shutdown server where you can actually practice these rules at the minute it's amazing that'll be linked down in the description if you want to check that out if you already haven't it's a really good way to just hop in and test some teams out and bounce some ideas around before the format officially begins on Monday and what we're going to do today is just jump over have a look at a few things that I've been playing around with and just talk about the format in general I have thought about doing a tier list of the restricted Pokemon I've seen some very cool ones already that other content creators have done and it has been something that I thought about doing if you'd like to see a tier list video do comment down below let me know if there's enough of you that want to see it I will put that together over the weekend it'll be a very fun video to do so do let me know right getting into it today we're going to hop over into showdown we'll start off I guess with a few games with this team that have been running the calorex ice rider team that have been playing I really wanted to test calorex the ice rider as soon as I saw it as soon as I saw it stats which are just ridiculous I think it's one of the best restrictive pokemon in the format it definitely has a hard time because of all the steel types and fire types that it doesn't really appreciate going up against but I still think it's got a very strong place in the format and solely because of this attack stat this 165 attack stat is just phenomenal and it's defenses which is 100 HP 150 defense and 130 special defense it's nuts 50 base speed is quite nice as well so it can really take advantage of trick room but doesn't depend on it so much that it has to it has to be up for it to function well um I just I'm just toying around with it at the minute I haven't done any fancy EV spreads and I'd say a big big thing for all of you like new players out there don't spend too much time when you're initially testing a pokemon or a team on EV spreads don't get bogged down by them just chuck in 252 252 the EV spread um like fixing polishing up can come at the end you can spend a lot of time on it at the end when you've had a lot of experience playing with that pokemon in particular you'll know exactly what certain calcs that you'd like to survive have a look at the ones that you commonly come up against to take down that pokemon you got a lot more knowledge base after you've tested a lot but if you're bogging yourself down with working on EV spreads before you're even starting a game you're already behind because the the the time that you could have just invested in to see if you wanted to play that pokemon is way more valuable than what it is spending on EVs that are maybe not so relevant that you initially thought were my two cents anyway we'll get into it uh calyrexian as I say nothing fancy a few of the other pokemon that do have specific EV spreads this is because I've used incineroar in multiple teams and I've used tepofini and katana in multiple teams so they have specific EV spreads and they're just stuck in this team anyway you've got then the nice firewater grass core I think that's very solid in this format we'll get into the the details of the team it'll be down in the description there'll be a poker paste but I think we're already five minutes in so let's jump into some battles I can explain the team along the way I've obviously been testing a lot of other stuff as well obviously tonaga one of the big things I do like it but there are some drawbacks to using it and I don't think it's the best restricted pokemon in the format that we've got access to it's definitely not something to snub though the same time right zygarde not something we commonly see in the format very much but and also the other sunset of the drought user nine tails so I'm kind of interested to see what's going on here we've got a chlorophyll vile plume and then double genies but not the landeris and thunderous we've got a till wind and a defiant boy over here so um basically if we get a trick room up this is it if we get a trick room up we're golden we are golden and I mean golden because there's nothing that they've got to really stop calyrex under a trick room so I'm going to go with what we've picked here we need to trick room fake out the tornadoes don't really care what the landeris does it may pivot out I think the one thing that I maybe would have feared here would be maybe vile plume tornadoes because then we can't stop both a taunt or a sleep powder uh onto our a porygon too but this this leads fine for us we can just fake out the tornadoes stop that taunt get a trick room up and we're sitting in a very good spot so there's the u-turn which is even better you know I don't think that my opponent's really got anything to come in that can cause us too many issues it's going to be the nine tails I mean that does make it a little bit more tricky for sure but I think rather than getting uh calyrex on the field straight away we can um I mean what we could potentially do here is eerie impulse go for the flare blitz eerie impulse uh nine tails heatwave it's doing nothing now we can parting shot out onto this and get calyrex onto the field because I'm not really or we could eerie impulse here again in parting shot now onto the tornadoes we may see a taunt this turn from the tornadoes into p2 which would be a little bit problematic but we're not going to see that um but yeah I mean now it's minus four and we're going to get calyrex and still take damage from the heatwave for sure you can't like underestimate that oh willow isp that could have been a bad one but you're never going to willow isp um an incident are you really so we're in a good spot now to uh start doing some stuff we need to remove the nine tails though that's the big thing um let's go try attack into lander us and let's go for a quick I do worry about the tornadoes coming in for the the nine tails but it may be sash as well which could be the other big issue here no sash though we get away with that one the other option there would have been bringing tapu finia I think to support the calyrex and like I say I don't think my pond has got anything to stop this sweep now trick room's ending so we do need to be you know a little bit cautious around that um I think we're pretty safe to just bring an incinero I know they've got the problem is bringing incinero here if they've got protect and they protect the thunderous here and we we activate the define for them to to go to town next turn but they're just maxing yeah there's not there's nothing my opponent can do now so chill in here you can see this is just a good example I guess we're pretty fortunate here to see a good example of like how teams like really fall apart when calyrex is kind of um allowed to to function uh and and the vein that it wants eerie impulse p2 as well we saw how popular that was pre series seven and I think it's transitioned into series eight really nicely I I tested the ice beam shadow ball set and even with a download boost it was it was very underwhelming against a lot of the restricted pokemon you'd want to hit especially with the shadow ball so I feel like the utility of eerie impulse it's just such a way better utility move way better use of it on on p2 especially in this format where you've got a lot of special heavy hitting special attackers so to speak so we've got another thunderous here uh calyrex ghost rider so we go horse versus horse here um redirection which could be a little bit tricky gotta be careful again with incinero um and they've definitely got a trick room mode as well but am I so worried about it I think our tonic can be quite good here we need to be careful around the the calyrex though uh no fake out I think we'll lead regio lecky um tapu finni what do we lead tapu finni whether we lead regio lecky uh p2 tapu finni and calyrex let's go for that yeah we're gonna see the osha food come out here first um now the problem is I think we could probably get a trick room up but I don't know if we'll be able to get it up if they double into p2 which is the big issue here um yeah I think this is a difficult lead for most teams I think to prepare against I am gonna trick room I'm gonna try because I think it means my opponent has to double in to the p2 otherwise they get super punished for not wicked blow and max knuckle I mean the the um the electro web was definitely the bad player there from us I've been really looking at it it was definitely the bad player because we're boosting the defiant there but I'm not too worried about the thunderous right now I think we just need to break a sash on this osha food and make sure that we're kind of taking it down before it is able to do too much damage we're gonna to live another day with with uh with a lecky though because we'll um we'll be able to at least get rid of the osha food now and um we'll be able to get good old glass trail and color x onto the field uh oh the indeedy makes things a little bit more tricky for sure but we can't we can remove it um I think probably just I don't want to I'm gonna nature's madness nature's madness we'll go do I just go glass glacial lance will it be enough though we could just go nature's madness and protect this turn and then glacial lance the next turn we should take it'll definitely take the thunderous down it's just what we see from the thunderous is it going after is it going after the um yeah it's going after the color x yeah that's fine and then we just glacial lance now and we're kind of we're kind of all right to be honest because you can just muddy water glacial lance and this gets around redirection takes everything down and it's done and then we still got a max with one turn a trick room left so we're in a decent spot depends what my opponent's got left it is the ghost rider but they can't max it and like I say we're plus two right now uh light screen max hail storm and there we go that should wrap that one up okay we're 12 minutes in we're not too bad protect coming out that's okay though that's all right isn't it and we still got heal pulse as well I mean support finny's super nice it's not something I really touched on when we were just looking over the team because I think like the calm mindset's not really the most beneficial in this format at all I don't think you've got room to do it especially when you've got a bunch of pokemon like regi alecki rillaboom katana all running around kind of running rampant in this format I think it's very difficult for you to get space for the calm mind to utilize it so that's one of the other things interesting incinero spread and set on this team as well if we have a quick look here I've got the pashio berry so I was initially playing around with a salt vest but with this spread in particular you can take a mystic water boostage in the rain water spurt from a modest kayoga and that just gives you a little bit more freedom and a bit more flexibility against torn aga leads where you can fake out the tornadoes without worrying that you're incinero is going to get taken down or you can go for a snarl a parting shot or whatever in that situation it's quite nice just to have that kind of flexibility I know it's very dedicated to a kayoga but it is testing and it's just an idea to throw out there for for a few of you um to see how well it does I think what we'll do is go for incinero and we'll go for regi alecki um do we want calorex here I mean calorex is good if we can get the trick room up it might be a bit difficult though they've got quite a lot of things to be able to kind of prevent it but we might be able to position like incinero next to p2 and get our trick room up potentially okay and we've got incinero and tornadoes probably double torn here predicting against the poion too I'd imagine uh we probably see protect on tornadoes I'd imagine um I think we've got to fake it out stop it getting the tail wind up um I don't really want our sash broken on regi alecki though yeah and there's no point in switching p2 in right now I don't think um I think actually what we'll do is we'll go for a parting shot into incinero and I'm just gonna do a protect yeah protect regi alecki okay yeah we'll protect where they're gonna go are they gonna go for a parting shot into our regi alecki gone for the taunt okay that makes sense I guess now they've got taunt so we definitely know about that so we can bring um yeah incinero and we'll vault switch out onto the tornadoes because then we've got access to I'm assuming they're gonna bring in they're gonna take incinero out now for kayoga and then we should be able to have that pairing of incinero next to p2 oh they're gone for taunt again they're not going for the tail wind just yet wow we take down that pokemon pretty easily are they gonna go for the taunt here are they gonna go for the parting shot just a snarl which is ideal perfect now whatever they bring in we can definitely guarantee our trick room up and then we can just get Glastra in and start doing some big damage uh okay we'll go for fake out into we can't afford to fake out into urshifu though because we'll get taunted otherwise um we should be able to take a choice band close combat though so let's see oh they go after incinero which is perfect perfect because now this just opens the door for calorex to come in and get the smackdown not worried about the uh the incinero one iota we're gonna go max knuckle we're gonna go try attack and we're gonna go after the urshifu just cover the sash here really that's what the that's all we want to do it might be better off nah the max knuckle's good because we can get the boost and if we do take it down on one shot we get the double boost um don't worry about intimidate too much i just think it may be like you could max quake there try attack that would be enough it would give you a boost special defensive boost so if it is kayaga in the back then at least you've got a bit more kind of special defense going for you but we'll see it is sash we are covering for that so that is helpful uh we are gonna definitely see a parting shot from the incinero here there's no way it attacks wow you're like mine okay you get very lucky my friend with that burn i'm like why are you attacking you're like minus two but that is why you were attacking that is why um okay so we need to max knuckle once again we're not worried about the incinero like we said um and we'll go for a try attack into the cartana we'll see what the cart cart throws out at us it's gonna stop max knuckling itself i think resetting the uh the attack drops from the incinero man the burn the burn is so annoying the burn is so annoying but it happens it happens doesn't it i don't mind from a willow isp when it's dedicated but from a flablets come on give me a break try attack doing nada but we do get the burn there we go that's why there we go try attack coming back for a vengeance um they're going for steel spikes which makes sense we're back to neutral attack and they are going to forfeit so very good game to my opponent um and that is this team like i say it'll be down in the description below what we on 18 minutes we've got a bit of time to play with some other stuff let's have a look what other teams have been playing around with before we end the video today so yeah zazian glastria that's something i've been playing around with as well i love zazian i think it's a really cool pokemon obviously you got your standard august stuff uh which is good i think we could have probably a few games of that today and it's just it's just ridiculously strong um i think uh diva kutesh did a really cool video on this build and went deep dive into it and um this is a slightly different build this isn't his build this is um something that i put together prior to seeing his video but it's very similar we got very similar items on everything uh different spreads though um okay we got nick megrega what's he got the um that thing i can't remember what it's called but it's a very fast fish it loves the rain and it can't be redirected potentially with propeller tail um okay we got a uh a mirror a mirror which is never never the most fun um and zaptos not so good i think a leckie is very good here um maybe a leckie a leckie incineral i think we got car we need we need tailwind we need tailwind for sure so i think we've got a leckie um cart tonelis kaioga okay well this isn't so bad because we can max kartana and just nuke the kaioga right now what have they got to switch in there not a great deal um not a great deal at all i think we bring in tonelis uh or max overgrow there's not really they have to switch the kaioga they're not what they're doing okay it could be scarfed but i mean yeah we're gonna see a grass glide that's fine though we just want to guarantee a tailwind up while we can um right now i think the other option here is tailwind and go for um an airstream into rillaboom because then that frees up uh the idea that you know kaioga can then come in late game or come in now in particular if we can get rid of the rillaboom and it's got to wait oh wow wow that rillaboom takes that like a champ um okay well a leckie's still not bad in this in this spot we need to watch out for i mean we can origin pulse i mean the yeah the problem is okay i think that what we need to do is get rid of the rillaboom um go for a thunder into zaptos get rid of the rillaboom the max airstream another one yeah that's fine take us down to our sash we'll get a bit of damage into this zaptos it's gonna max flare and imagine we'll get the rillaboom gone we need that gone for kaioga to come in and do some work uh we got the oh it's gone airstream huh that's interesting okay here prerogative number two is getting rid of the zaptos now then can we do it that is it what have they got left kaioga huh not really i'm kind of confused confused do we go into the zaptos heavy i think we do i think honestly we just go yeah we just go um heavy into the zaptos the grassy terrain still helps a leaf blade thunder's gonna be enough to get it yeah more than enough and then we just close this one up i always worry there about the max guard and then the kaioga going for a water spot cheeky one but you know when your opponent's back to the wall anything can happen in that that situation um is that it or they've got they've got the barracuda okay we are plus one with and we got tailwind up so we're actually not in a bad spot at all so um barracudas are going to be sashed most likely not i don't think it will be no because you've got to have the sash on tornadoes most of the time i know i haven't in this team i got mental herb uh but that's because i want the sash on regi alecki so there we go oh and we're finishing up on that nice neat there we go one three three seven i don't know what it's like in the grand scheme of things uh on the ladder let's see let's have a look what's the ladder looking like at the minute okay wow people are up to the dizzy heights of 500 already on this ladder so yeah long way to go but um like i say i'm going to be playing next week on the channel um we'll have rental cords ready to go monday we'll be kicking off with a rental cord so it'll be a lot of fun um if this particular pokemon you'd like to see first as well let me know uh i probably will throw out dialga first i think that's probably one of my favorite pokemon that i'd like to kind of feature but there's so many different restricted pokemon restricted bills as well and we'll do a deep dive into some actual cores as well had some really good feedback from my discord server uh through the question out there earlier in the week asking what kind of content they'd like to see in regards to series eight and it's a big popular one was kind of looking at different cores and how to kind of uh approach those different cores that we're seeing that are picking up a lot of popularity in the format at the minute and how to kind of uh wall out certain cores and approach different matchups so that's something we'll look at we'll look at the common teams that are being played at the minute and we'll take and try and dissect them so we'll do that and like i say just um thanks so much for the patience while we've not had content here on the channel it's uh it's not ideal for myself it's very frustrating um and it's not it's not generally me so i would just like to um say thank you for uh all of you for continuing to watch the channel support in it and there will be very a lot of exciting content to come and the other note as well is that we do have the flinch squad circuit it is starting on monday the first of february so a few days time now signups will be open until sunday the 31st of january you can find out all about the circuit in the patreon link below which will tell you all about the circuit coming up this season and how you can sign up and become a member of the circuit and take part in it and compete in that tournament it is going to be probably one of the biggest and first vgc series eight tournaments it's being set up and run we've got our first weekly starting a week today so keep an eye on the discord for that uh that'll be a lot of fun the signup will be going up on monday for that uh i'm very excited about that first one but yeah all the information and if you have any doubt about the the the patreon and the the flinch squad i've got a couple of testimony videos that i'm going to throw up at the end of this one here before we finish up so you can you guys can hear from a couple of our probably longest uh seven members in the uh the flinch squad so i'll leave it with their thanks for tuning in friends enjoy these uh testimonials from uh crim and johnny and big shout out to those guys for actually providing that content for us have a great rest of the day and i'll see you all very soon thanks again friends take care and bye bye hi i'm david you might know me as johnny hax i've been part of the flinch squad from pretty much the beginning i joined because i loved the project and i really wanted to get better at the game not only i improved my team building skills and my in-game plays but i also found people i can genuinely call friends it's thanks to this amazing community and me that i could improve so much especially because the circuit gave me the structure i needed to keep playing and keep practicing hi guys i'm uh joe better known as crim your friendly neighborhood mod for osiris studios um least one of them and uh this is kind of a little testimonial that i'm doing for the flinch squad circuit so um as some of you or many of you know i've been involved in the circuit for uh quite a while now um i actually i hopped in maybe a little later than some of the other guys um sun series uh for anyone who might recognize that um i just wanted to talk to you for a second about some of the things that it's done for me uh since i started um i hopped back into vgc after quite a while off and so um i didn't really know what i was getting back into um i wasn't really familiar with with the scene or with what i was doing and i can't begin to explain how much i've learned from everybody in our circuit from lee himself um and how many great friends i've made um i've got a guy that i build with all the time now um i built with a lot of the other members too um i i've i've gone to a bunch of events with guys from this circuit like in real life events back when we were having those and uh it's it's been a ton of fun i feel like i can call or chat or hit up any of them to talk about any number of things um we all do a whole bunch of different jobs in real life you know um i me personally could probably see i'm a musician but i know we've got weather guys and we've got government employees and accountants and web designers so all walks of life um but we all connect together with uh with this game and we all have a ton of fun playing it um we like to laugh we like to joke and honestly um i don't think that there's a better group out there um in the pokemon community than this one that we have here so uh if you're thinking about joining the flinch squad circuit and you want to just have some fun um playing some pokemon and uh laughing about what we love then stop on by we're all friendly um there's no egos here and uh i think that you'll really find that you enjoy it you'll make some good great great friends and um it'll be a huge benefit to your life in general so uh that's all for me and uh hope to see you guys around


Good morning John, here in America it is the day after Thanksgiving which means that it is Black Friday. Hey Hank. It's Twitter. It's Twitter. I have a question. What? What's your most controversial opinion? Oh come on Twitter. Why would I tell you that? Content man. It's content. It's easy format to put your own personal spin on without having to come up with something fresh. Yeah. No, yeah that makes sense. But look. My most controversial opinions are pretty controversial and they're also like nuanced and take a long time to explain it. Oh god.  Why would anyone say that? Like even if I don't like Indian food I recognize that some people must, right? What's the point? To make people mad. Yeah, you're right. It's engaging. I'm leading you to the water here but I can't make you drink.  Oh my god. Like this seems complicated. No one said any of this was easy, baby. Your job is to make it look easy. Well, actually I think it is. What? It's easy. Butt is legs. What? Butt is legs. That's ludicrous. Butt is butt. Butt is butt. Butt is also legs. Butt is butt. Butt is legs.   I know! That's what makes this such an interesting sentence. It's grammatically confusing because you have a singular butt but plural legs. But this isn't a grammatical question. It's an anatomical one and butt is legs.  So butt is torso, right?    It's in the name!  Arm transitions into hand. Okay. Hand is not arm then shoulder is not arm then butt is not legs. Shoulder is arm. Don't say it.  Oh God! Okay. Look, I can't tell you why but you are obviously wrong. You told me to have a controversial opinion.  Oh my God, I did, didn't I? Like I had legitimate, I had forgotten, good, good work. Twitter, this is the world that we have chosen for ourselves. You got any others? Alright, second controversial opinion, Black Friday is dope. My first book, an absolutely remarkable thing, was picked as a Black Friday deal by Audible and the United Kingdom. So this week into the UK it's only three pounds. Also I have a book coming out July 7th, 2020, a beautifully foolish endeavor. I can't believe I did it, but I did it, and lots of links to pre-order that and also get a quick synopsis in the description. I'll be talking more about it soon. And right now through Monday there's free shipping everywhere in the world for all orders over $50 at DFTBA.com. We have lots of amazing new Black Friday products, I'm wearing many of our pins that are coming out right now, including the Stenter Carulius pen from Journey to the Microcosmos. And also because we did a Pizza John bandana this year, now we are also doing a handkerchief. Look, I don't expect to sell a lot of them, but we had to make the joke. So go to dftba.com right now! Was this entire video a setup for a Black Friday promotion? Conversual opinion? Yeah, man. But is links. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.


What's up guys and welcome back to the Johnny Q Channel. Thanks so much for watching. In today's video, it is all about Thursday boots and more specifically, the Cavalier by Thursday boots. So let's get into it. Boom, these right here, the Cavalier by Thursday boots. Before we get into it, full disclaimer, Thursday boots did send me these boots to review so I just wanna let you know. And if it's great, I'll tell you the boots are great.  So, but they don't really suck.  So for me personally, I'm a big fan of how the Chelsea boot looks and fits on me. Comes above the ankle and, you know, not too tall and not too short. I just love that look. I love the feel and I love the style of what it can do to a wardrobe or to an outfit. Some of the product features of this boot is the black fold grain leather. It's hand burnished finish. The Goodyear welt construction. The full glove leather interior lining. The anti-microbial shock absorbing insole. The cork bending midsole. The leather outsole with its TPU studs for traction. And it's hand crafted with integrity. As you can see, these boots, I mean, I've worn these for about two, two and a half months and they are still in pretty good shape. They're not, they haven't been worn. The only thing that I have realized at the bottom of these boots, obviously they're a little bit more worn here because that's where I'm stepping and that's where I'm using the boot mainly. I didn't think that they would wear out that quick. That to me looks a little bit quicker than normal but it doesn't affect the overall integrity of the shoe. Like I have not slipped at all and I live in Wisconsin where there's ice and snow right now, tons of it. So I can definitely say that I have not slipped.  These are budget friendly shoes. About under $200, about 190 plus tax and shipping. Now for about two months, the Cavaliers have been my main boots, if you will. They've been my everyday drivers, if you will. When I look for Chelsea boots per se, like I was saying, I really want the overall shoe factor or form to be kind of a wing tip, kind of to meet at a point. Kind of like this one does right here. Some of the other boots that I have from Thirsty Boots kind of come in a little bit fatter and not so tapered at the front. And that's okay, like I can rock those too. I love them, but I really do prefer and I really do enjoy the look and the feel of this kind of tapered, almost wing tip look. What will also happen with most boots is when you start wearing them in for about a couple of months, back and we'll start squishing on itself and kind of like, I can't even do it on this boot because it's so thick, it's so sturdy and so like the durability of this boot. Because it won't break or tear or kind of come down on you, it's because of the cork bed midsals. These over time will form to your midsals and that's why it won't really break. It'll kind of just conform to how you walk in your overall foot. When it comes to Thirsty Boots and you're gonna order one of these boots, they do recommend to order half a size smaller than regular tennis or sneaker shoes. I'm usually a nine and a half to 10 and so with Thirsty Boots, if let's say you're a 10, I'd go down to nine and a half. So for all the guys out there, if you want a budget friendly boot, a fashionable boot and a boot that's not going to break or wearing you in three to four months, then Thirsty Boots, the Cavalier by Thirsty Boots is the way to go. I've said it once, but I'll say it again, Thirsty Boots are now my only go-to boots from now on. I will not wear anything else but Thirsty Boots. And those are the Cavalier Boots from Thirsty Boots. I hope this video gave you some insight into the Cavalier by Thirsty Boots on its measuring sizes, the comfort, the durability.   The midsals aren't gonna be crushed in about one or two months. You know, the genuine leather made in America, all these different things to make a really unique and really great shoe for guys all over. So on terms of you should buy them and you should buy them, you should definitely buy them. That's how strongly I feel about the Thirsty Boots. And with that being said, guys, thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you next time on the Jonahki Channel. Peace. All right, I am going to go buy another pair of Thirsty Boots right now.


Ukrainian guerrillas spot ships in Novorossiysk used by Russia to shell Ukraine. Ukrainian guerrillas have spotted Russian ships in Novorossiysk from which the occupiers are shelling Ukraine. In particular they took part in the attack on February the 7th according to the Atezh guerrilla movement. Agents of our movement report the deployment of several missile ships in the port of Novorossiysk the statement reads in particular the following was spotted a small missile corvette of project 228-800 Karakurt, a small missile ship of project 21631 Buyan-M. According to the guerrillas it was from these vessels that caliber missiles were launched during the shelling of Ukraine on February the 7th. The ships are part of the 41st Brigade of Missile Boats of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. They were redeployed from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk after successful attacks by the Ukrainian Defence Forces. However they continue to be involved in criminal attacks on peaceful cities Atezh states. Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine on February the 7th using kamikaze drones and missiles. Kiev where four people were killed and dozens wounded. Kiev region, Kharkiv where non-residential infrastructure was damaged. Mykolaev where one person was killed. Novorossiysk, Nipropetrovsk region and Drohobych, Lviv region were hit. In total Russia fired 64 missiles and drones at Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Defence Forces shot down 44 targets, 26 Kh-101-Kh-555-Kh-555 cruise missiles, three caliber cruise missiles and 15 Shaheads.


The participation of three prominent Israeli universities in the Indo-global Education Summit that began in Hyderabad today drew a spirited protest by activists of several democratic organizations. The venue of the summit, Taj Deccan Hotel in the Posh Vanjara Hills, was laid siege by hundreds of protesters who carried placards saying end blockade of Palestine, no to Israeli universities, among others. The police, which was deployed in large numbers at the hotel in view of the protest, swooped on the protesters and tried to prevent them from surging into the hotel. Severe scuffles ensued when the police tried to evict the protests. Traffic came to a standstill for about half an hour and the busy thought of them. The police arrested the protesters and shifted them to Banjara Hills police station.


Welcome to the Farmer's Market! Thanks! It's our first time here. The sign saying we accept SNAP really caught our attention. I'm glad you decided to stop by. Have you heard about our Double Up Dakota program? I don't think so. What is Double Up Dakota? Double Up Dakota is a program that gives SNAP participants a dollar for dollar match up to $10 to use on fruits and vegetables when they use their SNAP EBT card. For example, if you swipe your SNAP EBT card for $8, you will get $8 through Double Up Dakota, allowing you to spend $16 on fruits and vegetables while at the farmer's market today. Or if you swipe your card for $20, you will get the maximum $10 through Double Up, so you'll have $30 to spend on fruits and vegetables. That sounds interesting, but what's the catch? I guess I'm asking, why are you doing this? When farmers market accepts SNAP, it is a win for the entire community. Participants gain access to locally produced foods that might not be available otherwise, and Double Up programs make the local foods even more affordable to SNAP participants. Local farmers benefit because more customers will come to the farmer's market and make purchases. So, how does it work if we want to use our EBT card today? Do I need to sign up for Double Up Dakota? And is there a fee? I'm so glad you asked. There is no cost to participate and you don't have to sign up at all. You'll need to first visit the market booth where all SNAP transactions occur. As soon as you swipe your SNAP EBT card, you will receive up to $10 in Double Up Dakota tokens to use at any vendor booth selling eligible items. You can use them immediately or save them for another time. This benefit isn't limited to once a month. You can use your EBT card each market day to claim Double Up Dakota tokens. You say eligible items, so what can we use our SNAP benefits in Double Up Dakota tokens to purchase at the farmer's market? Great question. SNAP EBT cards can be used to purchase any food item that is meant to be taken home to be prepared and eaten, much like when used in a grocery store. You can use your EBT card to buy baked goods, meat, eggs, canned goods, fruits, vegetables, herbs, and food producing plants or seeds. However, Double Up Dakota tokens can only be used to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. If you have specific questions about anything, don't hesitate to visit the market info booth. Everyone is always eager to answer questions. That's good to know. I've never used my SNAP EBT card at the farmer's market before and I had no idea that I could get free tokens to buy more fruits and veggies. Is there anything else I need to know? Oh, maybe that there is no cash value to the Double Up Dakota tokens and you won't receive any cash back. So let's say you have $12.50 worth of cucumbers and beets to purchase, you will need to use $13 in tokens and you won't get any change back from that. If you don't have enough tokens, you can use multiple payment methods for the purchase. I see, I'm glad you mentioned that. Let me see if I've got this right. My SNAP transactions don't have any limits at the farmer's market. It just depends on how much I have on my card. Also, I can get anywhere from one up to $10 in tokens through the Double Up Dakota program and can use as much or as little of the tokens as I want on fruits and vegetables. Sounds like you've got it, but be sure to stop by anytime with more questions. Will do. I really appreciate that you accept SNAP at this farmer's market.


how to make basic scrambled eggs. You can follow along with your recipe. Eggs are a great food to have for breakfast, meals, or even a snack because they're extremely nutritious and they're very affordable. Eggs only cost between 15 to 20 cents a piece and they are loaded with a high quality protein that helps build muscle. They also give us many other nutrients and are considered one of our most complete foods. So following this recipe to make the scrambled eggs, your recipe says it means four large eggs. I'm going to have this recipe so I will need first up two eggs and eggs come in a variety of sizes but a nice general size egg to use is the large. So I've already washed my hands for 20 seconds which you should do the same and I'm going to put the two eggs into this large glass measuring cup and discard the eggs into my garbage bowl. And if you happen to get a little bit of shell into your bowl, a helpful trick you can do is take the shell of the egg and actually scoop it out. This will cut through the egg very easily and is much easier to do than using a spoon or your fingers. Okay the next ingredient needed says one fourth cup milk. Well we're having the recipe so before the cup is the same as four tablespoons. So I am going to do roughly two tablespoons of milk. You could use water if you don't have milk or a milk replacement. Then it calls for a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper. You know what in most homes we don't have salt in a container so I'm just going to put a couple sprinkles of each in. You can doctor it up with more if you would like. I have the burner on and I'm careful to put the fry pan with the handle in 30 rather than like that so I don't trip over it. When I have it warm enough I have the choice of using two different kinds of non-stick ingredients. I could use the non-stick cooking spray or like the recipe calls for I could use a small amount of butter or margarine. To follow the recipe I will use butter in this case. So I will put about one teaspoon of butter on the bottom of the pan and I will let that warm up while I do the next step. I need to whisk these ingredients together and this is a whisk. If you don't have a whisk at home which something may not you can use a fork so there's ways around it. When we whisk the egg mix with the milk, salt and pepper we do it until everything blended together. It looks about right. Okay now I'm going to use my burner and when we cook eggs we usually cook them over a lower heat I would say around a medium level heat and I'm going to pour my eggs into the pan and when we do this we gently are going to pull from the side to the center to cook the scrambled eggs. Now overmix them because we still want them to have some shape and form so once I pull this at some point I can almost pull them over and we want to cook them until they're no longer runny. Now my family likes to put shredded cheese in their eggs. Sometimes we'll put salsa, cut up onions or peppers. Scrambled eggs can be doctored many different ways to what your family's case art. You can see this I'm going to gently fold it over and I would say that we're about half ways done. My pan is using a nonstick cooking pan so it doesn't stick very much which is nice but when they're no longer runny then they are finished. Maybe you like hot sauce in your scrambled eggs as well. So this says continue cooking pulling lifting and folding eggs until thickened and no visible egg remains. Do not stir constantly then we remove from heat and serve immediately. Remember when you're in the kitchen to always turn your stove off for safety reasons when you are finished. You'll notice because my heat was only on about a medium it's not overly browned it's still nice and soft and it's looking like my scrambled eggs are about finished. I'm going to turn my heat off and now it's time to enjoy these scrambled eggs. See you next time. This is Aspen Lening. I'm working with NDSU Extension and today I'm going to be showing you how to make cloud eggs. You should have gotten your recipe. It's pretty easy to follow along with but I'm just going to show you so you have a little more of the basics. So like always I started with washed hands. I started with clean surfaces everything's laid out so that I'm ready to rock and roll. I did a couple of things in advance just so that the video is shorter because I'm sure you don't want to watch me with eggs for five minutes. So I'm going to start with my eggs. I'm going to follow the recipe and I'm going to do two. So you're going to crack your egg.  I like to take it and you just kind of swish it back and forth between the shells a couple of times and then you end up with the yolk right there. I'm going to put that in a separate bowl. If you're really gentle because if not just like exactly what I just did the yolk is going to break. Not a big deal. We'll fix it in a minute and we'll do better with our second one. So another way if you don't want to do this method it is kind of tricky and I who have done this many many times just screwed up because the eggshell is pretty jaggedy on the side. You can just dump the whole egg in a bowl and take a spoon just put it separate it. You can use your hands. I like this method because it just gets all dirty. So what we're going to do next is we're going to whip our eggs. So basically what we're going to be doing is making a meringue. This is really popular with like French kind of fancy things. They put sugar in it all sorts of stuff like that. I'm just going to start it here just to kind of show you what to do. So I'm going to use the electric hand mixer because this really makes your life a lot easier but you can use a whisk. You can use a non-electric hand mixer. You can even use a fork. It really depends on how much of a workout you want to get with this. I just want to kind of get these ready to go. Mix and mix and mix and mix until it looks. The egg whites got all nice and fluffy and they hang and then in the bowl you can see if you dig in here and pull it up. There's a stiff peak and that's exactly what you want. So what you're going to do next is set this aside, take a spoon and make your cloud eggs. So I took half of my recipe and already have it in the oven just to save some time but you'll make two mounts. I'm just going to make one, set it right on the pan, kind of spread it around a little bit and then what you're going to do is you're going to make a little hole because you're going to put your egg yolk there in a little bit and then you're going to put it in the oven at 450 degrees for three minutes. I've already done it earlier and what I'm going to do is put my yolk in with my glove.   Then this goes back in the oven for three minutes. So while those are in the oven we can talk about a little bit of variations that you can do with this. So your recipe actually says that you can add different kind of cheeses, so Swiss or Parmesan. I've done that in the past and it definitely adds to it and then in addition to that you can add different spices and herbs, you can add salt and pepper. You can really do whatever you want here. I would love to see if you guys do anything different. See what you guys like. I, when I make it at home, definitely add the cheese. It's awesome and what you would do is way back here when you have your original cloud you would take your cheese, add it in, just fold it a couple of times really gentle and then put it on the sheet and everything else is the same. So the total cook time for this is six minutes so it really doesn't take a whole lot of time. They look pretty fancy so if there's like Mother's Day or someone's birthday it's pretty fun to make, pretty easy. The hardest part and the most dangerous part is gonna be when we take it out of the oven. You always want to make sure you have your oven mitts and you have a good safe place to put it. You never want to put a hot pan on some plastic, it'll melt, then they're done that. Something else I wanted to mention, I just found this out like a year ago and I should have known this a long time ago. Parts from paper, safe for the oven. Great stuff, you don't have to do as many dishes, things don't stick as much versus wax paper. Also a great tool, it helps prevent sticking, it's good for things that don't go in the oven but this stuff in the oven will start on fire so don't do it. Then they're done that for my mistake. So I'm gonna pull that cloud egg out and we're gonna take a look at it. So here's our cloud egg. If you like it runny then just leave it like this, really running around. If you don't like it runny that's perfectly okay, just take a fork, break the yolk, put it back in the oven a little bit longer and it'll be harder. I like it this way because it's like the egg has its own sauce. Anyway this is our cloud egg, thanks for joining us today. My name is Trish Jessen with NDSU Extension. Today we are going to hard-boil eggs. You can follow along with your recipe, it says the perfect hard-cooked eggs. What makes this recipe unique is rather than boiling for so many minutes we actually bring a pot of water to a boil, put a lid on, set it aside for around 15 minutes and this method of cooking can help prevent the egg from getting the green color which is a chemical reaction for heating too quickly and cooling but when we cook this way, our hard-boiled egg, it can help prevent that green color and it's really easy. So we are going to hard-boil a couple eggs. Eggs are extremely nutritious, a high protein source and they're also very affordable. So what we're going to need is the size based on how many eggs you want to hard-boil. The first step says to place the eggs in a single layer in the pan. I'm going to remind you that our hands should always be clean with a 20 second hand wash and make sure that your kitchen surfaces are also clean for food safety reasons. So we are going to hard-boil two eggs. So they're in a single layer on the pan and it says to add cold water to the pan, covering them so there's one inch of water giving it enough water to fully cook them. So I have about that much water above the eggs. Then it says to place them over a high heat. So I'm going to turn it to about between high and medium high, careful so it doesn't boil over. And when we want water to boil quicker, we can put a lid on top and that can help speed how fast it is to come to a boil. Now I got this one already showing what level of boil we want to work towards. It should be a full rapid boil before we start timing. This would be considered a rapid boil because the bubbles are rising to the top quickly. So once this is completely a rapid boil, it says that we are to turn the heat off, remove it from the heat, and then I will set a timer for 15 minutes. If you want your eggs set even firmer, you could let them sit longer or if you want them to not be cooked as much, perhaps even a little less. So I set the timer. Once the timer goes off, what we do to remove them is we take a spotted spoon and we can carefully get them out and we place them in a bowl or container of cold water to cool them. This one I boiled ahead of time and so I will show our hard-cooked or perfect hard-cooked egg. What we can do is crack it a couple different ways. You could tap it and peel and it's actually peeling with ease because it was placed in that cold water after boiling. And what I like to do to make sure that all the shell is removed from the egg is I like to put it under running water in this case I'll just do this because nobody wants to bite into shell. And there is my perfect hard-cooked egg that can be sliced, eaten plain, and enjoyed. This is our perfect hard-cooked egg. I'm Ellen Bieland with the MDSU Extension Service here in Ward County and today we're going to learn about frying eggs. Now pretty much every Saturday or Sunday I fry myself a couple of eggs for my morning breakfast and there's a couple different methods that I've used and we're going to talk about both of those today. But before you do anything in the kitchen, what do you need to do? You need to wash your hands. So I'm going to say that I have washed my hands and we are ready to roll because I have washed my hands. Okay so the first method I'm going to talk a little bit about equipment too. This particular pan is a cast-iron skillet and it is actually seasoned meaning it's been covered in oil baked in the oven and now it's pretty much non-stick. So that's, this is probably my favorite egg pan. We're going to talk about another method in a minute. Now whatever you cook with eggs, you have some choices as to the fat that you use. Most of the time I prefer just a couple little sprays of cookie spray. That's what I'm going to do here today. Even though my pan is non-stick and obviously I have my eggs all heated here for my stove off. All right, I always crack my eggs into a bowl before I put them into the pan. And there's a couple reasons for doing that. One is to make sure that there's no blood spots in the egg.  And then I just slide it in. So this first method I'm going to actually use a tiny bit of water in here. There we go. Basically we are steaming our Friday with this method. So this method creates an egg which has a running yolk. Now maybe you don't like a runny yolk. So that'll be our next method of cooking. All right, you probably can't see this very well, but my white is set and the yolk is still running. That's our one method. Grab my, let's see here, remove that. There's a different fry pan. Now this is a non-stick fry pan which is ideal for making eggs. So we're going to heat it up and this is our second method. So this is if you don't like to have a runny yolk. We're going to talk about flipping it over and making it into something a little more solid in the yolk will be. So again, I'm going to just hit my fry pan a little bit here, break an egg into my bowl. I'm going to slide this in here. So I'm going to wait for it to start cooking. I actually put the heat on medium. Now we try to cook eggs because our protein on low to medium. You notice they started off pretty high with the other one. This one I'm going to put it only on medium because I don't want to damage the protein. So it's cooking. I'm going to wait until it starts to set and that would be the white part of it setting. Doing pretty well here. Now at this point you can also add some seasoning if you like. I'm pretty much just a salt and pepper kind of gal on my eggs. You can still put a little dab on. Probably more pepper than salt. You can see this, but it's now starting to set up. This is when I take my spatula and flip it over. Now we're going to let it cook a little bit longer until the yolk is set. Now however long you cook it at this point is how you get over easy, over medium, or over hard. And over hard means that the yolk is hard and set. So I'm going to try to make mine over medium. This nonstick skillet works really well. Other than to flip it, I really don't even need this turner.  So in this case we've got an over medium egg. You can see that in these cases the yolks are different colors. So one is more orange versus this one. All right, the two methods of frying an egg. Both of them work really well and depending on what kind of egg you like, you can do both. All right, thanks. See you again.


I'm your host Pedro Ducosta. Welcome to the State of Working America podcast, where we seek to elevate workers' voices to make sure they're heard in the economic policy debate in Washington and beyond. I'm on the sidelines of Erncon here in Pittsburgh, and I have the pleasure of being joined by Tanya Wallace-Gobern, who's executive director of the National Black Worker Center Project. And she gave a fascinating talk here yesterday, and I wanted to follow up with her. You talked a little bit about the concept of work that goes unrecognized, that's done by minority and primarily black communities, really. And you talked about the concept of a curb cutout, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, and I would love for you to expand on that. Sure. Well, thank you, Pedro. So the reason that I came up with this analogy is because frequently, we are asked, why focus on black workers, why not focus on all black workers? And I think that all workers, excuse me, all workers of all races, yes, thank you. I think that that question stems from a belief that if you just focus on black workers or people of color or minorities, that somehow you're not quite cutting, you're not getting to the gist of the root causes of oppression, discrimination, harassment, worker justice type issues. And so we came up with this analogy of the curb cutout, because it's something that people don't even think about. So what is a curb cutout? It's that part of the sidewalk that you come to that's on an incline that allows you to have easy access to the street or to the sidewalk. You don't even recognize that you don't think about it unless you are dragging luggage or baby carriage or something heavy or a bicycle, and there's no curb cutout. And then you get pissed off that it's not there. And the reality. I literally didn't even know it was called a curb cutout. Until I heard you talk about it. So that's how much we just assume it's existed. That's right. The other thing that we assume is that the curb cutout is for people like you and I, people who are not disabled. But the reality is that the curb cutout was created in response to World War II veterans. Disabled veterans coming back in 1945 and easing access to them. And it's because of that ease of access for people who were disabled that we have all benefited. And that is true, I believe, for African-Americans and predominantly African-Americans, especially African-American workers. The work that we do, the accomplishments that we make, the struggles that we have, benefit everyone. And so that's why it's important for us to focus on Black workers. At the National Black Worker Center, we say that African-American workers are the economic canary in the coal mines of this country. So if anything is going to happen and by way of harassment by discrimination, we are the testing grounds for that exploitation. And the way that power works is it doesn't just stop with African-Americans with Black people. Discrimination is not siloed, right? And so if African-Americans and Black people are successfully harassed, discriminated against, and disenfranchised, then power just moves on to the next sector. And so we have to hold the line, if you will, to ensure the safety and rights and liberties for the rest of this country. Could you talk about the particularities or specific challenges that you face as someone who does the kind of work that you do in the South? It's interesting that you asked about what happens in the South, and I'll share with you. So I'm originally from Chicago, and I moved to the South to organize African-American women in particular, and that led me to organizing in the clothing and textile industry, like that was in the early 90s. And in the early 90s, there was a saying that we had in the South, as goes the South goes the rest of the country. And it's important to kind of call that out because there's a narrative that's told about the South. And when I talked about those silos for Black people, there's silos also for the South. And so back in the early 90s and beyond, there was the stereotypes where the South is slower, that they're different, and because of that, they don't get the same types of benefits that everyone else has throughout the rest of the country, that racism, that's a Southern problem. But the reality, just like my story about Black workers is, when we allow ourselves to believe this lie, basically, then power doesn't just stay in that one area. So the Southern problem is a Northern problem, it's a Western problem, it's an issue that we see everywhere. Some of the ways that that has manifested is with right to work laws, right? Right to work, or as we would say in the South, the right to work for less, like used to just be a Southern problem. And no one did anything about it, right? Because it was just our issue. Now it is the country's issue. And so I wanna just kind of highlight that this isn't really a Southern problem, it's a worker justice problem that we are working to address. I really appreciate that framing, and that's really important. And can you talk about some of the kinds of work, going back to the curb cut out concept, the kinds of work over the years, concrete examples, I think of, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is kind of voting rights and civil, you know, the fight for civil rights, which of course benefits everybody, but it was led by Black individuals who are at the forefront of it. Can you think, can you tell me about other examples of that kind of progress that's been made over the years that we neglect, but that started because of activism within Black community? So some recent things come to my mind, but I think about just the civil rights movement and affirmative action language, right in the attacks on affirmative action. So I told a story about my experience when I went to college and that one of my friends thought that I was at school on a Black scholarship, excuse me, because I was a Black student and because of affirmative action and I think that's some of the stories that we hear, but one of the things that we talk about in our community is like, who has benefited the most from affirmative action? It hasn't been white people. I mean, okay, so. Actually, I want to start over because I heard you tell this story about what happened in college and I want you to tell it more in full. Can you tell us how that experience, you know, what that experience was like for you? Sure, so as I mentioned before, I'm from Chicago, I went to Loyola University as a way to pay for my books. I had a part-time job, like a lot of college students do. And one of my girlfriends, we got a job at the same law firm together and we were lamenting about how expensive school was, how much our books cost and Kathy said to me, my girlfriend at the time, well, at least you have these Black scholarship dollars. And I asked her, what was she talking about? And she said that all of the Black students, you know, get Black scholarship. And I was 18 at the time and I believed her. So I went to the financial aid office to let them know that I had not received my Black financial aid. And it was there that I learned, of course, right, that there was no such thing as Black financial aid. But it really spoke to one of the narratives that we hear and that become, they start off as a stereotype, then it becomes a narrative, then it becomes reality for a lot of people. And affirmative action, I think, has had that same trajectory. And when we think about the successes of affirmative action, frequently people think about Black people having access to jobs, to different experiences, to different environments where they traditionally were excluded from. But we don't think about the success of affirmative action for white women. And white women have benefited greatly from affirmative action. And so I would say that is another cut out, right? That we experience, that we take for granted that we don't think of. So while it's no longer seen as questionable as a woman, how she got to a certain place, or maybe it is, but it's not as much as it used to be, we don't realize what led to that process taking place. I can think of another example of the curb cut out. Although it's not a curb cut in the sense because the person that cut out the curb recognized that they were making the cut out. Which is the way in which the Me Too movement transitioned from Tehran and Burke's rather quiet and contained intra-Black community movement, to the way Alyssa Milano, whom I've gotten to know over social media, after Trumpism, she created that hashtag and, but to her credit, she elevated Tehran and Burke all throughout and made sure that she was central. This is the story. But again, there were stories that Black women had been telling all this time and then suddenly it reached Hollywood in a sort of white world and it became national news. That's correct, that's correct. That's exactly correct. It reminds me of, I listened to the Tom Joyner morning show and one of the things that they talk about is little-known Black history facts, right? Things that you just don't, that one you aren't taught, that we aren't educated about, but we take for granted as part of the way that we function in society and these are things that Black people did and created that people just don't acknowledge or realize. I mean, that's, I was talking to Nina Banks earlier about the importance of diversity in the most real and concrete sense rather than the sort of the poster board like faces of different colors sense, diversity in the sense of having literally actual different perspectives at the table and whatever discipline it is, whether it's economics or activism, because people tend to ask the questions that are most relevant to themselves. That's right and I think that we need to go beyond diversity, right? Because if you think about the framing and the narrative about diversity, it means that you have a spot at the table and not necessarily a voice at the table and so I'd like to think of us moving from having conversations around diversity to conversations of inclusion because in order for you to give that perspective, space has to be created and if your space is a diversity spot, then I've got my Black and then I've got my Latinx and then I've got my woman and then I've got my Asian and you know your role and that role is to just sit there and be at the table as opposed to what is your role of inclusion and that role of inclusion means that you have a voice and I think that that's what leads to true value of diversity and that's what we have to do more of in this country. We have to value the diversity of opinions, the diversity of experience, the diversity of skill and realize that that is a true American dream, right? When we can bring together people from different backgrounds and those experiences weave something stronger that we would not have if again we were siloed. As a Brazilian Italian American from Boston via Paris, I can relate. No, that's so important that you make that point because I can tell you from personal experience that EPI in my 20-year career is the first place where let's put it this way, it's the first place where there's more than one Black person in the office because I worked in newsrooms. There were extremely, I mean people ask why the news is the way it is, go visit a newsroom. The newsrooms are led by white men and there's even a diversity, there's still a massive gender diversity problem even within the white sphere. And so, I lost my train of thought, but this is my point. So EPI is the first workplace that I've experienced that where my Black co-worker wasn't like the only Black co-worker in the place and it makes such a difference to the way that people are able to be themselves in the workplace even, right? Because as you said before, if they're just like, they're gonna act cautiously as one does if you're the only one, if you're the representative of anything in a place, you're gonna feel alone. But once you are surrounded by people like yourself, you're able to be yourself in a way that you're not in other spaces. That's right, not only will you feel alone, you will feel the need to assimilate, right? And not be, and to cover and hide your true self. It's only when we see ourselves reflected back and forth then we feel empowered, right? If I don't see myself, if I don't hear myself, then how comfortable am I being myself? And the reality is to be yourself in a space when you are the only one is to take a risk. And a lot of people aren't willing to take that risk. And when we don't have those risk takers, when we don't open up inclusion, then we don't have the best. We don't have the best because we don't have diversity. And it speaks to when you talked about the media, this is something that we are at the Black Workers Center talking about, right? The underfunding of media now. We look at the different outlets that are just going out of business, right? And so we know what that looks like for mainstream and it's tenfold for black press, for black media. And so where will we go? Where will people of color go? Where will black people go to get information that is specifically about them? Absolutely. Where will we go to get our news? And so our hope is that, and the work that needs to be done is to ensure that these spaces are inclusive spaces and that there is a press for news that is inclusive and all news is told. Well, the State of Working America podcast is certainly such a forum. But, and the other thing about inclusiveness that I was thinking about as you mentioned it, is it matters that to have inclusion or inclusiveness with regards to positions of power as well. You can't just have sort of the tokenization of diversity hires in positions that are not powerful. Because I'll give you an example in newsrooms, a lot of times women editors, women are promoted to editorial positions but then they report, they ultimately report to a male editor and that sets the tone for the kinds of stories they get told, the kinds of stories that make it through, the kinds of questions they get asked. Yeah, you know, and it's interesting that you raise it because there's something else that we've been doing some research and looking into. So we know about the glass ceiling. We know about the concrete ceiling. And so we're also looking at what's being called the glass cliff. Have you heard of that term? It's a term that's used for a specific occasion and it's a study that's been done on when are these opportunities, or when is it that African American women are raised to a level of leadership within organizations? And that traditionally tends to be when the organization is in a place of chaos, right? That's when that woman gets that opportunity and it's a glass cliff, right? Because it's kind of a catch 22. So you don't have any support. You're in the best, the worst possible scenarios. And this is your one shot to make it. Wow. That reminds me of Obama's election. We've got a great recession coming. Let's get a black president in the White House. So that's pretty amazing. Which makes people hesitant, right? To take on leadership and responsibility. Well, thank you so much for your time. This is really fascinating. I really appreciate it. Actually, I wanted to ask you one more thing. So before we go, can you talk about the kinds of projects that you guys are engaged in and what is exciting to you in your work right now? What kinds of projects and what kinds of, especially as far as activism that is working and the positive stories that we can tell in this time of chaos. Definitely, we need some positivity. So the National Black Worker Center is a network of eight black worker centers in cities across the country. We are in Mississippi, New Orleans, North Carolina, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, L.A., and Oakland, California. And we are doing tremendous work. And I'm so proud of our network and our membership. So a couple of examples that I will give you of things that are working and that are hard but are still working for us. Chicago did a tremendous campaign on banning the box that they were successful in in Oakland, California. They negotiated with Alameda County to identify 14,000 county positions for formerly incarcerated individuals. And by these positions, not the traditional positions that they're offered, right? The people in the orange vest, really good jobs that come with quality wages. And L.A., the L.A. Black Worker Center has done a tremendous amount of work within the construction industry. They are working on a light rail campaign right now. Working to also change the affirmative action EEOC language, which was written in 1967 that speaks to hiring minorities but doesn't disaggregate which minorities those are or how we quantify those minorities. And if you go back to that silo, right? It's a race to the bottom when you just call people minorities. And it turns to be, who can we exploit the most in this timeframe? So they're doing that wonderful work. And then nationally, we've launched a campaign called Black Voices, Black Votes. And Black Voices, Black Votes is really about understanding the realities of voting in the African-American community. There's tremendous work that's being done by other organizations on voter registration and GLTV activities, get out the vote activities. But where we think that we can lean in and have been leaning in is the third leg of that stew which is holding elected officials accountable. And so we are doing work to survey African-Americans and Wake County and North Carolina to find out what their economic priorities are. Just this September 3rd, we had our first people's forum of the local candidates that were running for election and reelection in North Carolina. And our goal is to take those economic priorities and present them to folks who are running for office and to say to them, if you want our vote, this is what we expect from you. Far too often, the Black vote is something that is trotted out and pimped before each election, right? Black votes matter, but Black voters do not matter. And we are changing that to make sure and ensure that all Black voters actually matter and that we are building power for them together that is sustainable, not just during the election season but throughout their lives and throughout their communities. Thank you so much. I'm glad I asked. Thank you so much. That was Tanya Wallace-Govern. She's the executive director at the National Black Worker Center Project and this was the State of Working America podcast. You can download us on iTunes and Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts or you can go to epi.org slash podcast and sign up there. Thank you so much.


All right, welcome everyone to today's call, how to prepare transfer requests in ERA 2.0. Please note that our audio connections are muted until the Q&A portion of the call. And if you are not a speaker, please make sure that your video is off. I will give you instructions on how to ask a question at the end of the meeting, however, you may submit questions via the chat throughout the meeting and they will be answered at the end of the conference. If you will have closed captioning, there is usually a window that does open behind the WebEx screen if you need closed captioning. And if you have any technical issues, please send a chat to the host event producer. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Arian Ravanabash, Supervisory of Policy and Program Team. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hello and welcome to our webinar on how to prepare transfer requests in ERA 2.0. My name is Arian Ravanabash and I will be serving as the moderator this afternoon. During this webinar, representatives from our custodial units here at the National Archives will cover topics such as the differences between ERA Base and ERA 2.0, the difference between textual records transfers and transfers of electronic records, as well as the transfer methods for electronic records. All attendees should have received the slides via email. After the webinar, we will be posting the recording of the presentations. With that out of the way, I would like to turn the webinar over to our first speaker, Eleanor Saxton from the Textual Records Division. Eleanor, good afternoon. Hi, thank you, Arian. As Arian said, I'm Eleanor Saxton. I'm the Accessioning Coordinator for the Archives II Textual Records Division. Next slide, please. I'm going to be speaking to the differences and continuities between ERA Base and ERA 2.0. So the most obvious change is that the system looks completely different. The most important cosmetic change is the dashboard, which shows transfer requests that actively need your attention. The slides linked to an excellent orientation video, walking through the features of the new system as they appear for an approving official, I do recommend it. Another major change is the roles in ERA 2.0. They're structured very differently. In ERA Base, each action or permission had a role associated with it, and accordingly you would need multiple roles to accomplish multiple different types of tasks. On the other hand, in ERA 2.0, each user has one role for transfer and one role if you work on scheduling for scheduling. Roles with greater permissions have all of the capabilities of the less permissive roles built in. The slides linked to the user manual on this, which has a lot more detail, but in short, transferring officials can create and reassign transfer requests. Approving officials can do everything the transferring officials can do and can also review and propose transfer requests. The next major change is the ERA 2.0 statuses. ERA Base had a system of statuses and versions that could be a little confusing. ERA 2.0 simplifies this down to just one copy of each TR. The status name reflects the most recent signatory action taken on the transfer request. So for example, a transfer request which NARA decided we could not approve will be in either returned or rejected status in the ERA 2.0. This is opposed to ERA Base where those statuses went back to draft and could not be distinguished from transfer requests which had never been proposed. In ERA 2.0, a returned status transfer request can be resubmitted and a rejected status transfer request cannot. ERA Base also had two other forms for specific pieces of the transfer request of the accessioning process, that is, the transfer processing results form and the legal transfer instrument form. Those have both been subsumed into the transfer request in the ERA 2.0. Copies of all three forms have been exported from ERA Base and are attached to the migrated transfer request in ERA 2.0 in case you need them. The next major change is editability. In ERA Base, transfer requests were only editable when they were in draft status. In ERA 2.0, transfer requests are editable throughout the accessioning process. And finally, or next, another major change is the ERA 2.0 has an assignment feature. Each transfer request can be assigned to exactly one user at a time, and that user is the only person who can act on the TR, the only person who can edit it, the only person who can move it to another status. So if you find that you can't act on a TR that you need to work with, the first thing to check is to make sure that it's assigned to you. And finally, search looks a lot different now. The slides link to a detailed guide on how to search in ERA 2.0, which I recommend. There are two search options. The basic search looks at one field at a time and allows wild cards. The advanced search lets you look for transfer requests that meet specific criteria in multiple fields. For those of you familiar with Boolean searching, advanced search is an AND type search. It's quite powerful. I use it almost daily. Next slide, please. The next thing I wanted to speak to is the annual move, since we've recently kicked off the 2024 annual move. The first bullet point on the slides links to an excellent job aid that walks through the detailed steps for locating and proposing annual move transfer requests. And that covers everything I'm going to say right now and more. Newly created draft annual move transfer requests will appear in approving official dashboards. If your agency has one approving official, they will appear in the my tasks tab without approving official. If your agency has multiple approving officials, they will appear in the unassigned tasks tab. Approving officials can take a transfer request directly from draft status to proposed status themselves. But if you need to reassign these transfer requests to a transferring official or a different approving official, use the reassign function. This can be done one TR at a time using the menu that appears when you click on the three vertical dots next to your TR. Or it can be done in bulk by checking the boxes next to each transfer request and then using the bulk, the reassign option from the bulk action list. If you want to search for all transfer requests from your agency, we recommend an advanced search. There's a user field down at the bottom. You can fill in the name of the annual move as the user. So if you want to search for all of your 2024 transfer requests, just fill in 2024 annual move as the user and they will all appear in whatever status they're currently in. Next slide, please. The slide lists field names that have changed and fields that have been combined from ERA base to ERA 2.0. The field names on the transfer request form have been tweaked in several ways for increased clarity and usability. I think you all will agree with me that accession title is a much clearer field name than transfer group description was. I do want to emphasize, though, that the underlying data is the same. All we did was change the names of the fields. For example, information that appeared in the transaction number field in ERA base will now appear in the tracking number field on the migrated TR in ERA 2.0. Next slide, please. We did make a couple more substantive changes to transfer request fields, which I'm going to cover on this slide. First, we removed two fields that were not providing useful information to us, the use restriction fields, and for non-electronic records, we removed the physical media type field. We also added one major new field in the access restriction section for controlled unclassified information. The field is called our subjects, our record subject to controlled unclassified information, CUI controls, with the options being yes and no. If you select yes, then the safeguarding and dissemination authority field appears and is required. What we're looking for as a safeguarding or dissemination authority is either the CFR or statutory citation that controls access to the records as listed in the CUI registry. I've linked to the CUI registry on the slide. We know this is a new field. If you have any questions about whether your records are CUI or what safeguarding and or dissemination authority applies to them, please contact your agency CUI officer. One final field I wanted to speak to is the transfer details, which is changed. In ERA base, you needed to provide the number of containers of each box type. So if you had a two-box transfer where one was an FRC box and one was a legal size Hollander, you would just say that there was one of each. In ERA 2.0, we need an additional piece of information. We need the container numbers, the identifying numbers written on the outside of those boxes as well. So you would say you have one FRC, numbered one, and one legal Hollander, numbered two, in your two-box transfer. Next slide, please. And finally, there are several important things that have not changed at all. First is the transfer request numbers. Forms that migrated from ERA base to ERA 2.0 have the same transfer request number. Another thing that hasn't changed is the DAA and DAL numbers for record schedules. Any schedule numbers you have in your internal documentation that start with a DAA or a DAL prefix are the same between the two systems. Last thing that hasn't changed is our accession and documentation requirements. We still require finding aids for all transfers. And for classified records, we require an NA-14130 form or equivalent documenting the results of your declassification review. For classified records, we also require certification that the records have undergone Kailot review. For those of you who routinely transfer classified records to us, this should all be familiar. There's no change. That's the end of my slides. With this, I'll turn it over to Rebecca Baker, the accessioning branch chief for our electronic records division. Thank you, Ellie. Next slide, please. So I would like to discuss some of the major differences between transferring electronic records and textual records. So first of all, electronic records are typically not stored in FRCs or the Federal Records Center program facilities across the country. So these transfers to NARA do not involve archives, and that's one major difference between the annual move transfers that are typically the textual accessions. So as a result, proposed transfers of electronic records are typically direct offers rather than any annual move. We may receive annual move accessions, but that is by far the exception. The records that make up a proposed electronic records accession should be in file formats that are suited for long-term preservation. NARA has developed bulletin 2014-04, which established file format guidance for the transfer of permanent electronic records. That bulletin contains a table appendix that has preferred and acceptable file formats for each category of records that NARA expects to receive. I would highly recommend reviewing that appendix and ensuring that you are incorporating use of these file formats into your agency work process that creates records, ensuring that the systems of records that you're using throughout your agencies can export into file formats that conform with this guidance. And we also have contacts if you have any questions about file formats. Our appendix is not an exhaustive list of every file format that is accessible, so we are evaluating these as file formats change. But you can see that by and large, the majority of different types of programmatic records that an agency may create are represented in that list. So in addition to complying with finding or file format requirements, we also have finding aid requirements. And finding aids are documentation that must be transferred with electronic records or all transfers of records to NARA. For electronic transfers, this is typically metadata spreadsheets that comply with NARA bulletin 2015-04, the metadata guidance for transfer of permanent electronic records, which established a minimum set of metadata that you should be using to describe your records. And these links will also be in the slides so you can see for more information about what metadata we have as required. And then one really big difference between textual records and electronic to note is that custody is taken for electronic records after they're preserved in our ERA 2.0 repository. And this is because the staff at NARA have to perform validation and verification tasks to ensure that the files are well-formed and do not need replacement records or additional documentation. And this is quite different than boxes of textual records where as long as you have that finding aid requirement where you have the list, your box list, the folder list, everything makes sense, there's still going to be that conservation element. But for electronic records, we actually have to do a bite-wise comparison and make sure that we've received every file, the files are well-formed, they're not corrupt, they can open. They aren't encrypted or password protected or anything that could hinder access. So that's one big difference is that agencies need to keep a copy until we take custody of those records. And this is fulfilling CFR requirements that the agency needs to keep a copy for that time period, depending on the backlog, since our unit is accessioning direct offers from every federal agency in the government, essentially. We'll have a backlog of accession so the time it takes to take custody is variable. I think it definitely depends on the size of the transfer, the complexity of the transfer and such. But we have accessioning POCs that you'll see later in the presentation, a contact information that you can check in on anything and we may be reaching out to you if we see any problems like replacement files or more documentation. So the one thing to help out facilitating these transfers is that back in March of 2022, the Electronic Records Division had worked with our Office of Innovation, the National Archives catalog and they developed a GitHub repository and this GitHub repository on the U.S. National Archives GitHub repo since we have a few. It's specifically for electronic records accessioning support tools and this provides tools that are free available to the public. They're Java JAR files that you, of course, want to go through your IT process to get approval to use. But we have tools like FileLister that can help you extract metadata elements from a directory of files and a file compare tool to compare file list, a junk file finder tool to find empty files, empty folders and hidden files and such as well as a funny file name finder to find any characters and file names that don't match ASCII standards like symbols or punctuation and such that can cause preservation issues when you're moving from one area to the next or transferring those files to us. So we definitely encourage agencies to explore our GitHub. We have PDF documentation files for each tool and to check those out and please use them because then it gives us more documentation and information about mixed session. We run the tools ourselves here and it gives us just more data points to get along with the records which is much appreciated and they can be pointed to directories. So as long as your files can be discoverable in a directory location, so that could be something like SharePoint, Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or just a shared network drive or removable media. As long as you have that configuration, you can point and run the tools and export in those cases of CSV log. So I will move on from this slide. So this slide is a visual that shows the process of proposing an electronic records transfer to NARA starting from the draft stage to ultimately having custody being accepted by the National Archives. So your agency records management staff are going to draft a transfer request and that could be either the approving or transferring official. And then the approving official is going to review those drafts and ultimately propose the transfer request to NARA. Once the TR has been proposed to NARA, your accessioning point of contact will get a notification within the ERA 2.0 system and review the TR and decide whether they have all the information they need to approve, reject or return the accession for revision. I think we're going to answer a rejection question that was asked in the chat later in the presentation and we typically will have this open dialogue with our agencies since we're doing direct offers to if there's modifications that need to be made, adding documentation, ensuring that the records are eligible according to the schedule and such. And once that TR gets into the process where it's ready to be approved, we being the electronic records archivist will work with the agency to transfer the records through our approved methods of transfer, which are currently SFTP or external media. And when the records are now at NARA, we will perform a series of validation and verification steps to ensure that the records are not corrupt, they match the schedule, they're well-formed, and they have an adequate documentation and ability to be described. If we run into any issues, like I said, we may reach out to the agency for more documentation or replacement files, files in a different format that may be more accessible. And once the records are processed, we will then create descriptions that we'll use for the National Archives Catalog. The agency finding aids help us develop these descriptions, so we appreciate any descriptive information that you can give us if they're code lists, data dictionaries for databases, any finding aids, any type of documentation is much appreciated. And then once we have our process and verification complete, our descriptions ready, we are uploading the records into our ELA 2.0 repository for in long-term preservation, and we'll begin closing out the exception, which includes accepting custody. And once that custody is accepted, we will formally notify the agency via email, and that notification the agency can use to then enact disposition and they can dispose of their copy of the records. If the agency would like for reference purchases to hold on to a copy of the records, that's okay, as long as they acknowledge that NARA has legal custody of the record copy and that NARA is now under the obligation for any FOIA responses and such. But we have had examples where agencies like to hold on to copies of records and that's been an okay working relationship. So I think we can move on to the next slide. So here I'm going to transition into our electronic records transfer methods. And I'll first we'll discuss what we currently do and then we'll discuss like looking towards forward to the future with, and that'll be when I turn it over to my colleague, Billy. So as far as SFTP, which is a current approved method, this is only for unclassified records. So that's one big important element is do not try to SFTP any classified materials to NARA at this time. And we typically are working with an agency once the transfer request has been approved in ERA 2.0. We have the TR, we already know about the records. The National Archives will email a designated point of contact at the agency, a time-sensitive SFTP link. Currently each link has a 30 gigabyte limit. So we highly recommend that agencies zip their files into a zip container. And this helps if you have quite a few files that you're transferring to us, you can zip them. And we can send you more than one link if needed. So if you're trying to send us 60 gigabytes, we can send you two links. And with the compressive files and metadata, we'll make sure that everything you intended to send us, we were able to receive and extract. And those links are only active for 14 days. We can send you new links if links expire, but we do ask if you're ready to SFTP to please have those records ready to send and upload. And we have facilitated large transfers where we'll do multiple SFTP links. Next slide, please. And then the last slide that I'll be covering is the electronic transfer media. So this is for both unclassified or classified records. And this is currently the only approved transfer method for classified records that are ready to be transferred to the National Archives. And we can accept a series of magnetic tape formats, optical discs, external hard drives, U.S. speed drives. And you can see on this visual, we have a picture that shows various media types. Some of the media types in this picture document the legacy media that we may receive or have received in the past. And we do ask that agencies please maintain awareness and compliance of their CFR requirements for the 10-year copy of any media onto new verified electronic media. And that helps facilitate if you're managing your records on external media that they still are accessible, have content, have not been degraded or bit rot, and that you're moving from older media types like floppy disk and such to more modern media types. Because NARA may not accept a transfer if you only have them in legacy media and if you cannot read them yourselves. If you have things like floppy disks that you can't read, we do recommend that the agency contact a GSA approved data recovery service. And agencies should contact and consult with their accession archivist on the best transfer method for their records. And again, that contact information will be provided at the end of this presentation. We can accommodate transfers where we've done hard drives or for very large volumes and such and coordinate sending those back to get more media. So please don't hesitate if you have a lot of media or you have a high volume of electronic records eligible for transfer. We're here to discuss that with you. And now I'll be turning it over to Billy. Thank you. Next slide. Thanks, Rebecca. And hello, everyone. I'm Billy Wade and I'm chief at a still picture branch. Now in the next couple of slides, I want to go over current and future methods of electronically transferring records into ERA 2.0. We first are going to start with cloud to cloud transfer, which is the transfer electronic records directly from an agency's cloud storage bucket into ERA 2.0. ERA 2.0 is currently an Amazon Gov cloud. NAR does not yet have an operational capability for cloud based transfers from agencies. We do not yet have to have a timeframe for when we will implement such capabilities. In 2022, we conducted a pilot transfer of permanent federal records from one agency to NAR within AWS Gov cloud, Amazon Gov cloud. NAR is considering criteria for further testing with agencies. We will continue to test cloud based transfers to ERA 2.0 using our own digital content. Currently, several NAR offices are successfully moving digital surrogates and more digital records from our own AWS Gov cloud buckets outside of ERA into ERA 2.0 storage. Next slide. Now I'm going to talk about direct upload into ERA 2.0. This is basically an agency directly uploading into the system using the ERA 2.0, ERA 2.0 upload web interface. Initially, only a select number of agencies who have electronic records eligible for transfer will work with NAR, a sessioning archivist to upload records directly into ERA 2.0. We need to implement additional enhancements and functionality before a full rollout to all agencies. If you have electronic records ready for transfer, you must contact your sessioning archivist associated with your transfer to determine if direct upload via ERA 2.0 is the appropriate means of transfer for your records. Next slide. With this next couple of slides, we just have some useful links and contact information. This one is useful links for those transferring records. We have the ERA training materials link at archives.gov. The ERA 2.0 job training aid is the sessioning guidance of policy and the FOQs about transferring permanent electronic records to NARA. And then our last slide. And this is the sessioning contacts here at NARA. We actually have the homepage for textual records. Also the emails for their electronic records division. And then also the three special media branches, moving image and sound, still pictures, and cardiac graphic. Now back to Arden. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Billy. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you, Ellie, for the informative presentations.


The study aimed to model the change in tumor size over time for outpatients with cervical cancer using a linear mixed effect model. The results showed that a one-month increase in visit time led to a 0.009 square centimeters reduction in tumor size, while every kilogram more in weight decreased the tumor size change by 0.0098 square centimeters. Additionally, HIV-positive patients had a greater tumor size change than HIV-negative outpatients. The study found a significant association between longitudinal changes in tumor size and predictor variables such as visit time, therapy, patient weight, cancer stage, HIV, oral contraceptive use, history of abortion, and smoking status. This article was authored by Chalachu Gashu and Aragore Eshiti Aguade.