Bevel, bevel, bevel, bevel, bevel. How do you restore a bronze faucet that has been chemically damaged by cleaning chemicals? That's a great question, and we're going to talk about it today. Hi, there. I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. Now, today's show is brought to us by MyCleaningConnection.com. This is a resource that has all different kinds of things from books, podcasts, uniforms, product reviews, different kinds of cleaning equipment.  So check it out at MyCleaningConnection.com. All right. On to today's show, we have a house cleaner that called in with this question. Hi, Angela. I did a cleaning for a customer, and the chemicals that I used in the restroom ended up messing up the faucets. They were the bronze, and that had never happened to me before. So I was wondering what you would do in that situation. I'm trying to do the right thing and replace them for him, but they're super pricey. I would just like to know what you would do. Thanks. All righty. This is a tough question, so let's back up just a step. There are a couple of things we want to take into consideration. First and foremost, you said you want to do the right thing. So I appreciate that because kudos to you for doing the right thing. The right thing is making it right for the customer. Now, what that means might vary from customer to customer. Well, let's take a look at what bronze is. Most of the bronze fixtures that are inside our bathrooms are actually maybe a different type of metal that has either been painted or coated to look like bronze, or it could be a bronze that's chemically treated so it looks like it has that antique finish. If that is the case and it's a coating that's over the actual fixtures themselves, using cleaning chemicals can very well alter the look of that and make it cloudy or lightened or something like that. So if that's what we're talking about, there's hope. So before you just run off and replace them, there is hope. There is a compound, it's a marine grade compound that is created by 3M and it's designed for boats, and it is for refinishing things that are going to be affected by saltwater and stuff like that. So it is great for brass and copper and bronze and all these different things. It's about 30 bucks. I will leave links in the show notes so that you can take a look at it, but it works wonders. So chances are you rub it on there, it's going to take everything back to its original sheen and shine. Now, what I might recommend for the future is if you have bronze fixtures and there are lots of homes now that do, they need to be cleaned with just literally a damp cloth, maybe a little bit of dishwashing soap, something that's not abrasive at all and that the chemicals are not going to eat through whatever that lacquer is. You can also use your oxodeep cleaning brushes around the edges and behind so that if there's any water that has built up or there's hard water of that sort, you can get all of those around the faucets themselves without actually damaging or touching the faucet with some kind of cleaning chemicals. So we want to stay away from cleaning chemicals when it comes to the faucets because, again, you're talking about a chemical reacting with another chemical. Now if for some reason you can't fix it, whatever, I would certainly try the compound first. You might have to replace the faucets. Now before you replace the faucets, my next question would be, are they under warranty? And if they're under warranty and you damaged them, the company might not be able to help you out but they might have some answers. So I would ask the homeowner, do you have the warranty for this? And if it's a brand new home, chances are they have a whole packet of information with all of the faucets and appliances and all that stuff. All the warranties will probably be kept together. So that will give you the manufacturer's information. If he doesn't have that, what you might do is you might go to the hardware store. I'm talking about Ace Hardware or Lowe's or Home Depot. Some of the big box stores may have that same brand or a brand by that same manufacturer. And so what you're going to do is take a picture of it with your phone. You're going to go to the hardware store. You're going to try to match it up. Usually they come in a box. On the back of the box, there will be the manufacturer's information and that's actually what we're looking for. So before you replace them and buy new ones, call the manufacturer and say, listen, here's what happened. How do I restore it? They might actually have their own proprietary blend of something that restores chemically damaged appliances and fixtures because this is their specialty. That's what they do. I'm finding most of the manufacturers that manufacture the appliances or the faucets and things like that. They have their own proprietary blend of solutions that will help restore and finish it. So that would be my second stop. The third stop is if you do have to replace it, then I would suggest replacing it out of your pocket, not filing an insurance claim. If you have to replace two or three bathrooms, and I'm unclear if it was one bathroom or if it was several, the faucets and fixtures range anywhere from about $30 to $150 a piece. Those you're going to be able to pay for out of your own pocket. But if you file an insurance claim, let's say you have a $1,000 deductible, you probably won't even meet your deductible. If you do meet your deductible, how much more is it going to cover?  So please don't even try to file an insurance claim. If you can help it, chances are even if you file a claim, the insurance company is not going to cover it. They don't cover things that are in your care. So if the cleaning was in your care and you know you damaged it with chemicals, you're probably not going to honor that insurance claim anyway. So I hate to break the news to you that way. But before you just arbitrarily replace the bronze fixtures, my recommendation would be to try that marine compound first and see if you can just restore it. Now, having said that, if you have not damaged any bronze fixtures, I should also let you know that bronze fixtures need regular care because they are chemically treated to get them to that bronze looking state. They need a wax or an oil on a regular basis. And so this would be, I don't know, maybe twice, three times a year. You can use a furniture wax on top of them. And I will leave links in the show notes to the furniture wax where you just brush over the top of it and it prevents the water from getting into the faucets. And it just kind of helps repel that and it helps keep that nice, rich shine that we are striving for when we spray chemicals and stuff on those faucets to try to revive them. So again, please don't use chemicals. You may use furniture wax and please instead of just replacing them, try first this marine compound to see if you can, in fact, just brush it up, polish it up, and sort of restore it. All right. I hope that helps a little bit. I hope it saved you some money. If it does, please pass this on to a friend. If we've earned your subscription, please subscribe. And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.


Everybody forced here ripping 2023 certified football hobby four box number 11 random teams. It's randomized right now And then we'll get right to it. Good luck everybody Your team one quicks is good to hear good to hear four and one five times names first one two three four and five Starbuck down to Garrett are and then five times on the teams one two Three four and five Bucks down to Patriots Starbuck with the Bucks Joseph M. Falcons Corey G. Chargers John M. Jaguars Yahweh T. With the Texans James J. Jets Vixi with the Bears Tom B Viking star about commanders Martin G Giants Michael R. Browns Sean O. Packers and Bengals Darrell M. Saints Tom B. Dolphins Branson K. Lyons Eric O. Panthers Michael M. Ravens Eric B Eagles Mark K. Chiefs Robert L. Broncos David O. Cardinals Kevin W. Seahawks Joshua A. Cowboys nunsio Bills Michael M. Raiders Ross C. Colts Daniel M. Niners Keith B. Steelers Steven G. Rams J. B. Titans Garrett our Patriots Riff right here Duke lost the home Everybody hates Duke man Sean I think I think we summoned him an order may have just come in About to have a white hibernation is over. Yeah Wild Friday night may have just begun On the Panthers you're looking for well this guy Bryce young That guy right there franchise Foundation rookie insert Bryce young Ricky Jersey to 399 is deuce Vaughn for the Cowboys And then you also got rookie Jonathan Mingo for the Panthers as well Immortals of Jim Kelly that is a rookie for the Rams sets and been at the fourth number to three 99 Coach. Yeah, that's true too. That's true too Kenneth Walker the third on the Calling cards Jersey cards certified ballers to 149 Aaron Rogers Jets Certified ballers. I need one of those for myself one of those cards. I am what's the The hip crowd calls a certified baller. Oh, yeah, I'm certified Joe Burrow gold team Boca Raton Greg here we go to 275 Texans Nico Collins mouth of the rat I think that is exactly what it means something like it is something something around there. Yeah digs Certified stars of the bills. What are you doing in Boca? Great never came to awesome here in Boca. No, of course Certified stars job and a cook to one of 49 Vikings bears the 75 is Fields Lit what's up to Greg?  You're on the beach. You got one shoe Gold team Debo Sam how the 149 commanders you get back to the hotel. They kicked you out of your room How the 149 commanders Noir, yeah, the war has a lot of potential high-end basketball for sure. Thank you Jennings Do appreciate I think we're down to one on the war. Yeah one on the war three on dual case guys all kids Kids like literal children are just like very young crowd kids like everybody that's at the wedding brought their kids like that Calling cards Micah Parsons rookie Jersey Jalen Hyatt the 249 for the Giants And so good luck any Jennings appreciate you though Definitely high upside in noir basketball Miles Garrett gold team for the Browns. So one to go. There's McKee to 399 rookie for the Eagles Oh, all your kids. Oh, that's cool though It's 249 is George Kittle gold team for the Niners Rookie Jersey to 249 Lions Jameer Gibbs Trying to make on the trash list I don't I don't know quakes that's a question for Sean though Bryce young certified stars Panthers You got it, man. Josh Jacobs is 3 to 275 for the Raiders. You're good. Just the way I see it Bryce young franchise foundations for the Panthers refrigerator parry on it at 25 for the bears the bears refrigerator parry is a cool hit Do they start to call me fat for us yesterday ph over in a So that was what the nickname was yesterday over on finnax live Jim Kelly there that is Drew Sanders rookie to 54 the Broncos It's true Greg Greg can teach everybody How to be trash Kenneth Walker rookie for the Packers to 1.99 Luke Musgrave Oh Dude looks like Trix yogurt up there You guys watching the Suns and Lakers man Dude that court is gnarly Joe borough gold team redemption quentin johnson freshman fabric mirror signatures pink Quentin johnson chargers first round receiver there Houston's court was dope too. Uh, that court is amazing dude. Yeah, their jerseys are sick I I can't wait to see the magic when the magic have the court. I think it's next week Certified stars to fondigs It has to be they haven't had they haven't had a tournament game yet. Have they the magic That'd be dope flaws wise I can get one of those We get so tired of that so fast. Yeah, I can do it Dante halton 99 immortals for the chiefs to 75 is going to be rookie chargers Uh, tuli twi piloto Tuli twi piloto. Oh my god, that court is amazing. That is pretty cool. Elvay the valley dude. That's sick The unis are so cool with it too It's like bowling alley guys Right Kind of like the whole thing well the thing in the middle. Yeah, it kind of has shuffleboard or something So I like it even the Lakers yellow looks pretty good brawn contrast to it. Hey brawn get off me Brawn brawn's up in there and age here, but he brawn. He's he ain't no slouch sauce gardener gold team Devonte Adams a 275 Raiders You might have to google one on that peter It's a little more difficult to explain McLauren certified stars commanders rookie to 399 quentin johnson chargers Harboss suspension. I don't really have an opinion on it. Honestly. I don't know. I don't know enough about it Gosh allen on the franchise foundation name affair Only one to go on the war on the wall DK on the calling cards out of 75 as rookie jaguars Anton Harrison Some of those foils are super hard to read certified stars falcons bijan robinson patch card packers to 25 christian watson piece of the game 25 packers That's herbert franchise foundations rookie to 275 dj johnson carolina mortals jackham Whoa, dude check that out quad laundry tag For some rookie running backs bijan robinson jamir gibbs tank bigsby and zaksharbin a Number four out of 10 What's up, Sean? How we doing Sean? So this is falcons joseph m Jaguars john m Lions brenton case, so it'll be a random since nobody has over two-thirds majority And then the seahawks end up be kevin w random at the end on this one. That's pretty nasty, man Four of ten quad laundry tag robinson bigsby gibbs and charbon a falcons jags lion seahawks All right, justin sucker out of 149 a gold team for the ravens miles garret out of 199 for the browns Dalvin cook tanner mckay on the rookie auto to 149 for the philadelphia eagles Yeah, never fun to do randoms like that, but The card needs a home Card needs a home. Well, Sean just wants to keep it All right, yeah Yeah, so you guys are just lucky Sean doesn't want Doesn't fit as well as it was Hundreds of nothing Yeah, hundreds of ios you don't want to save that one.  We're gonna get some Never ready, but here we go gold team Legatron to 50 justin tucker again for the ravens Samisms gregisms this place is losing control fast eagles the 149 is a jay brown big time eagles the 149 a jay brown I don't know why it's one so fast in that card. Sorry about that. Jeez mike. Hey, it's the perfect time to sell a card like that, honestly DK franchise foundations That's less than the demingus ricky jersey taijay spears at 299 for the titans a new generation there Hey, but this is the right time to sell that akunya. Yeah. Yeah Honestly, it is the 299 immortals the 240 and immortal's joe thomas or the browns 325 ricky azeo foskey for the saints if you wanted to sell right Not that it's gonna go down in value. I mean, but When it's when it's six figures, there's definitely a difference in 350 to 425, you know, I mean like Luke Keekley brice young rookie jersey carolina to 399 Yeah, I think it's the right time to sell that card Not that it's a bad time to buy any you buy a car like that. You got you got money to Oh, come on, man. You got you got you got some wiggle room when you're buying a card for six figures You got some wiggle room kind of money that is dare County. I'll never know. Oh, I know DJ more to 275 for the bears I won't say never but I don't plan on one in the lottery anytime ever I'm gonna put by my life savings on the Magic winning the finals just for a boom No way, dude Be drinking out of a Red solo cups Christian Okoye auto to 99 for the chiefs Chiefs Okoye auto to 99 the Nigerian nightmare Okay, let's do a random Let's do a random Good luck on this one of the four of you Falcons Jags lion seahawks quad laundry tag B. Jean Robinson tank bigs B. Jameer Gibbs and Zach sharpen a number to 10 Best of luck here Best of luck here Nine times after nine whoever's up top will be the owner of the card One two three four five six seven eight and nine the seahawks The seahawks are up top the seahawks get the card Congrats, Seattle. Okay. Let's see Gonna look right now Marat. We might be sold out. I don't know There's her one left one left one spot for the night sold out. Never mind. Is it sold out now? Yep sold out Just sold out. Ah still showing one. What dual case showing one Oh mega dual case. Yeah, Nora sold out. That's the last spot of the night right there. I dropped a link for Yeah, the last spot we might I'm gonna check personals I think we might be full on personals though because if we're gonna end up having to do the the noir after The football now, then I think we're probably full we call full guys So we are sold out for the entire night now With personals being full because we do have to do the noir case after the mega dual case I make a dual case gonna take a little while to so Get your spots for fanatics live tenning. I'm eastern start with kyle and jake Oh, what fun it will be All right, relics. We got rice young taijai spears christian watson jamir gibbs Jalen hyatt dues vaughn and erin rogers Hey aron auto's now christian'll coye tana mckay william parry refrigerator parry there That's a la porta jersey auto redemption quentin johnson On the freshman fabric mirror signature is pink the chargers raiders michael mayer freshman fabric mirror signature's red redemption And a quad tag bijan bigsby Gibbs and charbonnet went to the seahawks and the random congrats on that. Thanks again everybody moving on now to some more certified


What's shakin'? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. Being a writer is... it's tough. It's pretty rough, my dude. No matter what you write, no matter how well it's written, there are always going to be people that hate you for it. And I don't just mean like, hey, I don't think this is very good. So I'm gonna stop reading it. I'm talking about 100%, full blown. This is bad.   If you die, well, I think that would be pretty cool. That's reviewers. There's always going to be reviewers that will despise you for what you've written. So what do we writers do about it? We try to hone our craft. We practice. We try to minimize the amount of readers who are going to want to give us a left-right goodnight. We take courses. We read craft books. We watch creators on YouTube. And we request critiques. Now, you probably think that critiques are meant to be helpful, right? Provide a bit of constructive criticism. Give you some feedback to work with. Feedback you might not necessarily want, but feedback you need. That's what you would think, right? Well, yeah, that's... that's exactly... that's exactly what it should be. But like unprotected sex, things don't always go to plan. I recently found this thread on Reddit under r slash writing.  As I'm sure you can imagine, some of their replies here are, well, they're pretty bonkers. One thing's for sure, they're definitely not poggers. The meanest criticism I think I've ever gotten on my writing was years and years ago. It was when I was just starting on writing a fantasy series. I had a beta reader, not from YouTube, just from an online writing group. And they sent me back one sentence. I only gave them one chapter, and they sent me back one sentence. And I think they thought that I'd only written one chapter so far, but I'd actually written nearly more than half the book. Anyway, they sent me back one sentence and it said, please don't send anymore. It's not good. It hurt, but I only think about it like once a week now, so I'm practically over it. Let's see what the fine people of Reddit have to say.  He's terrible as a protagonist. The whole thing is horribly written. Try again. There was no Nathaniel in the story. The main protagonist was a woman. Still wonder what the reviewer was on. I mean, that's rough, but at the very least, it seems like it was meant for someone else. Still. Super mean, guy. My first novel rejection simply read, we thought the writing would be better. So did I, friend. The thing that hurts the most about that one is just that they sound disappointed more than anything else. You know, like when your parents aren't mad at you, they're just disappointed.  Parenting 101, you're welcome. Regarding a female serial killer project I did, no one will like her unless she's maternal. We don't like non-maternal female people. My husband read about two pages and then looked at me and said, I'm sorry, I can't read this. It stings. Ah, oh no. See, I'm torn because part of me would want my partner to be honest with me. But at the same time, if she gave me back my writing and said, I can't read this, I would probably slam my head in a car door. There's no actual plot, you're just hiding behind a lack of writing skills with emotion, literary devices and fancy words. I mean, I guess you can dig through that one for at least a bit of constructive advice. You'll be doing it with tears running down your face, but you can do it. Maybe you should consider a different career, my dear English teacher. The worst part was that I really looked up to him and I thought he was cool. And really, that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that I still want to show him wrong to this day. I actually had a really cool English teacher in school. Actually, I liked most of my teachers. I wasn't a pet or anything and I was by no means like one of the smartest people in any of my classes.  I thought that whole attitude even back then was super cringe. But yeah, if my teacher had ever said that to me, I would have cried. I gave my best friend my magnum opus and she handed it back to me with these words. I don't understand it. It was is a love story slash adventure. Ugh, I've since edited it. But that was a kick to the nads. Here's the thing, I'm cool with my best friends like reading my stuff if they want to, but I don't really want to know what they think because only one of two things is going to happen. Either they'll like it or they'll pretend that they did and I'll just end up wondering if they're just being nice or they will be brutally honest if they didn't like it and it will be awkward as hell. I just, I don't really see the point. If I want criticism or feedback, I'll just get it from people who I don't have to see, you know, every couple of days. And luckily I'm not convinced my friends can even read. What do you think on that one? I'd be interested to know what you think about that. Let me know in the comments. Do you let your best friends read your stuff? Would you expect them to and how do you deal with that? I once had a reviewer somehow not understand the two of the characters talking were dead after the paragraphs beforehand detailed the sound of gunshots and their souls arguing as they floated above their bodies. I mean, to be fair, if I was reading a conversation between two characters, my first thought probably wouldn't be, oh, must be their souls hovering over their bullet-readled corpses having a yarn about last night's footy game. I'm just saying that that wouldn't be a thought that would immediately cross my mind. But I guess that comes down to how obvious you make the death. Either way, that one's not particularly cruel.   If you're on the fence about becoming a writer, just know that this is some of the fun stuff that you have to look forward to. There are a lot of good parts, but there is a lot of this. That reminds me, have you seen my mean book for reviews video as well? Those people were stone cold. I think the book reviews in that video were 10 times meaner than any of the criticisms in this one. I might actually, I'll leave a card for that video if you want to check that out.  You can help someone become a better writer by giving them, you know, constructive criticism, and without giving them crippling feelings of insecurity and self-doubt. Unless the story is really bad, then go nuts. No, I'm kidding. Don't do that. Just be thoughtful, is all I'm saying, because this stuff really sticks with people through their whole lives. Not to say you have to sugarcoat anything necessarily, just be respectful, dude. I don't, I don't know.  Catchphrase.  Anyway, that'll do it. Let me know in the comments below what your meanest criticism ever was, or the meanest review, you know, the meanest thing that anyone has ever said after reading your writing. As always, thanks for watching. Especially if you watched this far in the video, an extra special thank you to you. I appreciate you. I really do hope you have a nice day. Catch ya.


Good afternoon everybody. We're so glad you could make it today. My name is Marisa Rodanti. I'm the program's outreach coordinator at the mayor's office of media and entertainment. And we're really pleased that you're going to be getting some information about the summer youth employment program, which not only employs youths during the summer, but it gives them a way to understand a professional atmosphere for work. It starts them on a financial planning situation and it keeps them engaged in their life experience begins with an internship. So without further ado, because we have a very packed house today, we're getting a lot of participants. I'm going to wait a couple of more minutes. But in the meantime, we will start introducing our guests that will be speaking and taking your questions. We will do a short presentation and then take all of your questions, which will be in a Q and A box that Noel Murray, who is here as our program coordinator and the master of all zooms will handle for us. So again, my name is Marisa Rodanti. I welcome you all. I'm really glad to see so many people have engaged in this fantastic program. And I would also like to introduce our associate commissioner of workforce development and educational initiatives, Aliyah Jones Harvey. Aliyah. Good afternoon. How is everyone doing? And thank you so much, Marisa and the Department of Youth and Community Development for organizing today's webinar. MoM is committed to building a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce for New York City. Initiatives such as the summer youth employment program and ladders for leaders will help us reach our goal by providing a professional work opportunity to our young New Yorkers. The sooner a young person experiences a working environment in a field of interest, the better the chance that they can build a career in that industry. And so this is why we're excited that you're here today to learn more about the summer youth employment program. And thank you for coming. I'll turn it back over to Marisa. Thanks, Noel. I'm sorry, I'm just going to stretch for a few more minutes because we are filling up really quickly. Hello, Darrell. I'm so glad to see you. Can you see anything on the screen? Do you see that? No. Darrell Johnson. Is it okay now, Darrell? Anyway, we wanted to emphasize that not only are you introducing a young person by employing them through this program, which doesn't cost you anything, to a work environment, but you're also introducing them to your industry. I know that we have interest from theaters, we have interest from unions and production houses and even beauty parlors and hotels. So all those industries are getting, allowing a young person to be introduced to that industry, which only helps your industry in the long run. So I am now going to introduce, we are very pleased to have Sarah Whitney with us from the Department of Youth and Community Development who runs this program. She is the Senior Director of Employer Engagement and Partnerships. Take it away, Sarah. Hi, folks. Thank you so much for having me. I reshared the slides here. So hopefully folks can now see the screen if you cannot feel free to drop us a message in the chat, but it looks like it's fixed on your end. Marisa, Alia, Noel, thank you so much for having us. Again, my name is Sarah Whitney from the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, and I'm joined by my colleague Amir Tassin, who is also part of our Employer Engagement and Partnerships here at DYCD. We're excited to share with you a bit about the Summer Youth Employment Program today. For those of you who have participated in the program in the past, we hope that this re-energizes you to commit to once again hiring New York City youth through the program this summer. And for those of you who are new and have not been a part of SYEP in the past, we hope you'll join us. So today we're just going to talk a little bit about the basics of SYEP if you're not familiar and, you know, why, why we hope you'll join us in participating this summer. We'll go through some program details to refresh on what's expected in the year in the summer ahead and dive a little bit deeper into work experiences for young people, what typical work experiences look like and what they could look like for you at your company or organization. And then we'll close out by just briefing you quickly on the process and timeline to partner with us and answer your questions. So if you're not familiar, the Summer Youth Employment Program is the nation's largest youth employment program. We connect young people across the city to paid jobs and internships every summer. In 2022 and again in 2023, we're reaching 100,000 young New Yorkers ages 14 to 24 through this program. If you grew up in New York, you know that SYEP is kind of a rite of passage for New Yorkers. The program actually launched in 1963. We're celebrating the 60th anniversary of the program this summer. If you were an SYEP participant, I'd love if you drop that in the chat, maybe with what your SYEP job was and we'll have something special for you at announcement at the end. But you know, the value proposition for a young person is pretty clear, right? You're earning a paycheck that you might not otherwise have. You're getting a head start on your career. But for companies and organizations, there's also a huge value add to partnering to host New York City youth through the program. You get to connect with hyperlocal talent. So if you're looking to expand your footprint in certain communities, we work with young people across the city in every single New York City neighborhood who have not only energy and creativity, but true skills that they're learning through their education, through our training programs, or that they're learning on the job. And they really, you know, are helping us to build a workforce that reflects New York City. We want to help young people get a head start on their career trajectories so that we can ensure that, you know, we do a better job all of us across industries in hiring local residents and ensuring that we're able to provide meaningful, well-paying career opportunities to all New Yorkers in the future. We also have a signature program, almost a capstone experience that I wanted to briefly share with you called Ladders for Leaders. This is a nationally recognized internship program for young people who are high achieving academically and who have some past work experience. This is an opportunity for those companies and organizations who might have advanced professional internships and want to hire young people directly during the summer months. We offer an opportunity to help you with that recruitment. We work with high schools and colleges across the city and young people who are from New York but attending college across the country to support the recruitment pipeline to provide highly qualified candidates who have just the same skills and talents as their peers at top universities across the country, but might not have the network, the personal network to get them in the door at some of these internship programs and through our Ladders program we help to do that. We have a number of partners across a variety of industries that you can see here.  I see a few names in the chat that I recognize. In addition to those you see on the screen, we've worked with folks like Bronx Net, Community Cable Programming, Bronx Theater, Fox 5, the City Parks Foundation, the Classical Theater of Harlem, the Epic Theater Ensemble, Stone Street Studios. We have been really grateful to have the support of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment and many in the industry to host New York City youth through our programs in the past and we hope that you'll join us if you haven't for this coming summer. And so why is this important to us now? Obviously, we want to provide young people with experiences in a range of industries, but the city's creative economy supports 95,000 jobs, $11 billion in wages and $34 billion in total economic output for the, according to a recent report from 2022. And specifically in 2022 last summer more than 10,000 SYEP applicants chose arts, entertainment, broadcasting or advertising as their top career choice. And we want to make sure we can partner those young people who have interest in this industry directly with companies and organizations that can help them meet those goals in exploring their careers. In our post SYEP survey, so a survey of all participants who were placed at jobs and internships last summer, 21% of those respondents asked us to provide them with more future experiences in entertainment and sports, and 19% requested media and communications opportunities, just a few examples of industries that you might all be working in or have networks within where we're really seeing a lot of young people ask to participate, to have career exploration opportunities. And so for those of you who might not be super familiar with the program structure, I wanted to offer a few details. So our 14 and 15-year-old young people who are part of SYEP take part in project-based learning experiences. They work with one of our city-funded community-based organizations to go through project-based learning. They're doing workplace readiness. They're doing financial literacy. They're really learning about what the workplace will be like for them when they turn 16. And our 16 to 24-year-olds are placed on their employer partners, or as we refer to them, worksites, hopefully all of you this summer, based on their age, their skills, and their interests, right? They're paid $15 an hour directly through the city of New York, so there's no cost to employers. And they work for up to 25 hours per week for six weeks over the summer. Employers have the option to have the young people start on July 5th or July 10th, and they work for those six weeks. We offer in-person, remote, or hybrid roles, so that's really up to the employer themselves what works best. And all we ask of you, in addition to providing a job opportunity that the young people can learn while directly contributing to the work of your organization, is that you provide supportive supervision. We ask for every 12 participants that accompany our organization hires through SYEP, you provide at least one supervisor. If you don't discriminate, we can have you host just as few as one intern over the summer, or as many as you think that you have appropriate and impactful roles for. And as I mentioned, there's been a number of companies in the industry that have hired through SYEP in the past. This is just a very brief list to give you an idea of some past worksite experiences that young people have had. You might want to offer young people with a range of opportunities. If you might have office-based work for a young person this summer, we'd love for you to hire through SYEP. If you might have fieldwork, community-based work that you're doing across the city that you want young people to support with, we'd love for you to hire. If you have a project in mind that you or your colleagues have wanted to take on for the past few years and you just haven't had the time for a young person with energy, with creativity and a willingness to learn, we'd love for you to think of SYEP as a way to finally get that project done. And then if you want to offer opportunities to shadow various members of your organization who do different work, that's a great way for young people to learn as well. We can provide you all with an internship design kit to help think through what an internship or job experience would look like with your organization and your community is really our endless. And then briefly, I'll share a new initiative that we're launching this year. Mayor Adams actually launched what we're calling SYEP Pride at this year's State of the City event back in February. This is a new initiative specifically open to young people who want to find first job experiences that are supportive of young people in the LGBTQ plus community. We're going to be providing not only welcoming and inclusive workplaces for the young people to be hosted at this summer, but we're also going to be providing career exploration events with local leaders and organizations. We're going to be offering employer training opportunities for young for employers who have a commitment to supporting LGBTQ plus youth but don't necessarily know how to provide a particularly inclusive and welcoming experience. So if your organization is committed to supporting what unfortunately oftentimes might not be a great first job experience for a young person in this community, but you want to make sure that they have that powerful welcoming first experience we'd love for you to reach out to us to host a young person from our SYEP Pride initiative. And so that brings me to my call to action for you all. How can you support us? We hope that you'll hire New York City youth through SYEP or Ladders for Leaders. We'll share this presentation with everyone through the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. And we have links on our next slide to the application. We hope you'll champion the program within your network. If you know of other organizations, companies that might be interested in this opportunity, we hope that you share this with them in the top right-hand corner. You'll see a QR code which will allow you to download our outreach toolkit to gain access to videos, flyers, graphics that can help you share the opportunity with others. We also welcome you to reach out about hosting a career exploration event. Last summer we offered about 50 different career exploration opportunities for young people to not only get exposure to the industry that they were working in, but also to have a chance to visit offices in different industries and sectors to do skill-building workshops with employees and organizations as part of their summer experience. So we'd welcome a conversation about how you might help us to host one of those events. And then the last opportunity is, of course, always to provide in-kind support, whether that's helping us with advertising, promotion, creative services. We try our best here at DUICD, but we also always welcome any support that you all may be able to give in helping us expand the program and continue to provide available opportunities to young people across New York City. Our timeline, as Marisa and Amir mentioned in the chat here, are worksite applications. So that's the form that you'll fill out to commit hiring youth through SYAP is due May 26th. A link is here and we'll share it afterwards as well. We ask that you'll complete this application with information about what the job opportunity or scholarship is with your company, what the desired schedule is for the young people, how many young people you'd like to host this summer, and any other details that we should know. Maybe you're particularly looking someone for someone with Spanish language skills, or you're particularly hoping to find someone who is studying or hopes to study IT, whatever that might be. We welcome you to share that with us in the worksite application. In that application, you'll choose a partner of ours. That community partner will help to match you with participants based on the role that you provide and the needs that you have. So those community partners serve almost as a liaison between the young people and the employers. So as you can see in May and June, they'll do worksite pre-assessments to meet with you, answer any questions you might have, and ensure that the partnership is ready and appropriate for the young people. And then by mid-June, they'll assign you two participants for the summer who can start either July 5th or July 10th. And then lastly, before we close out and answer questions that you might have, as I mentioned in the beginning, we're celebrating the 60th anniversary of SYEP this summer. And I can imagine, I saw a few things go by in the chat. I can imagine that many of you have been able to share with us whether you were a participant when you were young, whether you were, you've hosted young people in the past who you then ended up hiring with your company or organization. We would love to hear your story and we're collecting stories online at the link that you can see on your screen. We are excited to celebrate those stories in the spring and over the summer so that we can recognize the impact that this program has had for the lives of so many New Yorkers. So we'll share this afterwards and drop it in the chat. We really hope you'll share your story with us so that we can feature you throughout the summer. And so with that, I'll take a break, a pause. I think Noel will help me to get some questions from folks that Amir and I can answer for you. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, that's fantastic, Sarah. There's a couple questions in the chat already. So if everyone could not put any more questions in the chat so we can get these few done and then we'll start using the Q and A that Noel has set up. I believe there was a question about how can, excuse me, how can immigrant youth apply for step? That's why EP, sorry. So for any young person ages 14 to 24 that resides in New York City and has work authorization, they're welcome to apply through the program, the application online. So that includes, for example, if a young person is here with an asylum case and has been issued with a social security number and is able to apply for work, they're welcome to apply with that online. We also have a small program for young people who have barriers to SYEP and I'll share you see our contact information here if you want to reach out to me directly we can share some more information about our pathways program that provides an opportunity for young people with barriers to applying to SYEP and how they can get involved. And how can schools apply for their students or are schools allowed to apply for their students? It's a great question. Schools can definitely help their students apply. We can share I think Marisa already has it but we can share a toolkit for participants as well. Our deadline is coming up on Friday for young people to apply and so schools can help their students apply, they'll need to work with the student to make sure they have all of the students information that's required for the application. And I see schools can also host students as a work site if schools have job opportunities internship opportunities in the schools. We had about I believe 4,000 young people working in DOE schools or with DOE offices last summer so that's definitely an opportunity as well. Okay I'm going to go to the Q&A box now. I've hired terrific interns through Letters for Leaders several times before. Is Letters for Leaders the same as SYEP? That's a great question. Letters for Leaders is under the umbrella of SYEP. So we look at it almost as a capstone experience. For SYEP it's often a young person's first ever job. So you're looking to hire a young person who doesn't have past experience who's really looking for that mentorship that learning opportunity and a job that someone without past experience is able to do. For Letters the young people are required to have past work experience as well as a 3.0 GPA. So the structure of the program is the same. The young people just have a little bit more past experience. The only difference is SYEP is only 25 hours per week. But if you're a company or organization that has an existing internship program you want to hire young people directly you do have the opportunity to hire a young person for more of a full-time role more than six weeks paid directly by your organization. So the short answer is it's under the umbrella of SYEP. Are we allowed to interview the prospective candidates? For Letters for Leaders absolutely all of the candidates go through interviews. For SYEP because of the scale of the program we match the young people into their job opportunity based on their skills their background their interest. So there's not a formal interview process but you'll receive a roster of all of the participants with a little bit about them. And you'll also have an opportunity with many of our community partners to attend like a job fair to be able to meet the young people in advance of the program starting. I actually have a question at some point in the description of work or out of school. So that's SYEP, correct? SYEP is open to young people 14 to 24 regardless of their school status. How do students apply to be interns anonymous attendee you're talking about how do students apply to be interns. Amir do you want to take that one? Yes, students can apply through the SYEP application for basing participants. I can put that down in the link in the chat box. Joelle Blackstock do you choose the students that you host or does SYEP choose? That's the same question as do you interview? Yes, we match the participants based on the information that you provide us in your application. So you'll want to be as specific as possible in your application of the skills and the interests that you're hoping young people will have so that we can make that best match. Is it possible to provide a PDF of the work site application? I would like to pull together materials required in advance. Of course, yes, we can send that to Marisa and if you also want to send us your contact information through the chat here, we can send that to you as well. Okay, if you're a nonprofit that creates programming from young people and become a host of the work site, can you hire the students you already work with? That's a good question. So the young people will have to be enrolled in SYEP and then we can help to make that match. So if you have young people who are applied at SYEP and are enrolled, then we can definitely help to have them work with you over the summer because of the scale of the program. The opportunities are not currently guaranteed to young people. But after the point of enrollment, we can definitely help to connect you with back with those youth. For new employers participating in this initiative, are companies required to sign any agreements? Great question. Yes, in the online application you'll sign a work site assurances form electronically. This includes many of the details that we talked about today. For example, the maximum number of hours that the young person can work understanding that anything above and beyond those hours won't be paid directly by the city ensuring that you are providing the required ratio of supervisors to participants. So we can share a copy of that as well but that's within the work site application, the site assurances form. So that's what's happening. Is there a way to train all of our SYEP members before the program's launch to conduct professional development and training? It's a great question. So SYEP participants go through about eight hours of onboarding with community partners prior to the start of the program. So that includes workplace readiness as well as a mandatory sexual training program. So it's a great question. So it's a great question to speak with your community partner when you complete the application about what you're hoping young people can be oriented to prior to the start of the job. It's not required. So the young people won't be paid by SYEP for anything prior to July 5th. But if you're interested in offering an opportunity to do so, it's a great question. So it's a great question to speak with your community partner when you complete the application prior to the start of the program directly. That's also fine with us. This next question is something I've heard one other time. We've applied in the past and not received any interns. We are a stage in Brooklyn doing music videos, TV shows, fashion photography, etc. Now you know me. So reach out to me when you've applied this year so that I can support. I would say my tip would be when you're submitting your application, think about what makes your opportunity exciting for a young person. So while we'd love to just have a job ready person who has all these skills and qualifications and is ready to go to every level employee to have their support over the summer. That's not exactly what this program is. So if you can think about how your summer experience will not only benefit your organization but will also benefit the young people and include that in your application. I think that will help. But also please feel free to reach out to us so we can support you with that. I have a question also, Sarah. Are there any hours that are, I mean are the interns I've seen it's music videos and things like that. Is there any restriction on the hours of the day that interns can work? Yeah, as long as you're following local labor laws which we can provide a copy of what I might recommend for something like that is looking to hire SIP participants over the age of 18 which gives a little bit more flexibility because off the top of my head I believe for those under 18 they can't work past 10pm I want to say or before 6am so we just want to think about what type of young person would be best suited for the opportunity and also ensure that they're safe during their summer experience. Do you provide metro card or transportation stipend for the interns? Last summer we were able to for the first time provide metro cards to all SYEP participants and while that benefit is not finalized yet for the summer ahead we're hopeful that we'll be able to do that again in the future. For remote work should companies be expected to set up a virtual workstation to log into or will students have a workable station of their own asking as an animation company doing 3D animation using blender and open source software? Interesting question. Typically and the official answer is that we'd ask the employer to provide any equipment or software that the young people would require for the job. However, if you're a small organization and that might be a barrier to be able to host a young person and you're using open source software, our community partners that work with the young people might be able to help through for example the DOE to ensure that you're matched with a young person that has a laptop if the software is open source from understanding correctly and wouldn't require subscriptions. So definitely make note of that in your application. Is there a financial obligation to employers for participating in the program? I know the answer to this one. No, there is not. Correct. How is workers comp handled because the city of New York is the employer of record, right? So a young person's W2 will come through the city. They're covered under workers comp through the city. That will cover them for anything listed in your worksite application. So that's why it's important to include all of the details, right? The location where they'll be working, who their supervisor will be, what their hours will be, what their time will be. Jennifer Muldowne. What are the dates of the internship or are they flexible? No reason to apologize. By the way, we're going to have this whole set available to you if you want to watch it yourself. Amir, do you want to answer that question? Yes. So the SIP starts either July 5th or July 10th August 12th or August 19th depending on the cohort. However, if you do have an existing internship that you would like, an existing internship program within your own organization which will be paid through you, you have the opportunity, you have the chance to make your own schedule through your discretion. Is there any reporting required for SYEP? I'm not sure what that means. I'll take a stab and then if we don't answer your question, feel free to put it back in the chat. In terms of paperwork for the program, you'll fill out your application. The community partner that works with the young people will do a pre-assessment of your site to ensure safety and readiness for the start of the program. They'll also do assessments during the program. They'll be able to support you. That's paperwork that they fill out. You don't have to fill it out. What we ask of you is that you sign your participants time sheets each week to ensure that they get paid so that can be digitally or paper time sheets, whatever your preference. And then we do ask you to evaluate the young people at the end of the internship to ensure that they have constructive feedback on the question I get frequently. How have you handled in the past if an intern is not working out due to performance-related issues? Are we obligated to keep the intern for the entire six weeks? You are not obligated. We want to work with you to address any issues. So if there's any incidents at your work site, we'd ask that you report it right away to your community partner. We'll be looking at the details of your work and your communication to your contact for SYEP. And they will work with you to determine the best course of action. So it's not required that the young person continues throughout the whole summer if there are insurmountable issues. This is youth development program, so this is why we have community partners who are experts in youth development to help work through those issues and see if they can be resolved. So we have a lot of questions that we have in the chat. So we'll start by asking. Okay. Sorry. No open questions. Really? We have answered every single question. Here we go. We have one in the chat. Yes. We have one in the chat. I don't see it in the chat. How do we accommodate scholars who have summer school? That's a really good question. If you're a young person, you can accommodate a young person that has a really, really high school or we can create a four-hourly schedule based on what works for you. And also you can help to accommodate young person schedule as well. So if you do have young people who are in summer school, you still want to host them for the program. You can create a schedule that could work person can't commit to that full opportunity. We offer the opportunity to host young people for as few as 75 hours over the six weeks. And we on our end supplement the remaining time with professional and technical development online for the young people. So if you're sitting here thinking, gosh, I would love to do this, but I really can't commit to 25 hours per week. I can only do 15. We'd still love to work with you and we'd supplement the students remaining hours to ensure that they receive their full opportunity over the summer. That's really great. Because someone also was asking me the other day about the same thing, and I really wasn't sure. Any other questions? And I don't see any. Do you know all? There is one question in the q&a. And just you, everybody knows you're totally free to continue asking questions. But if there are none more, you know, there are none more. We just answered the one about having not not enough time per week. Oh, okay. Sorry, I got my stuff there. Well, I'd also like to reiterate what Sarah said about passing this on to friends, because it's really a fantastic program for both industry and the young people and for the economy of New York. Because if we build a good workforce, and the best place to start building something is from the ground up and the younger, the better. So please pass it on. Hi, Jennifer. Thank you very much. Is is it best to give them a project that we can begin and finish with us? Meaning that intern? That's a question. You know, that's a good question. I think what's most important is that the young people can see the value that they're contributing contributing to the organization. So something where they're starting and finishing a project is great, right? They can see the full scope. But oftentimes that's not realistic. Here at DYCD, personally, for our interns, we might have projects that aren't finished, but we still ask all of our interns to present to a group of our colleagues at the end of the summer of what they've worked on and what their recommendations are for the future. So that even if it's not a closed loop project that there is fully complete at the end of the summer, they can at least show what they've worked on and see how it's contributed to the organization. Oh, I'm sorry. I put in the application for the youth. Amir, could you put in the application link, not the PDF in the chat? Yes, I will. Yeah, I'll put the one for WorkSites and for youth in the chat. Okay, I did the one for youth already. Grace, it'll be a second. You'll get the link to the application. Another question. Curious for a first time participant, what types of internship opportunities are there in more corporate settings? We have a number of opportunities every year in corporate settings. I'll give you two examples. So one is through a number of real estate companies here in New York, who hire young people directly, they have existing internship programs that are highly competitive, full time, excuse me, recruiting participants like at the top of their class at Ivy League universities, but they're committed to also ensuring that they're hiring local New York City residents through the program. So these types of companies and in real estate, we happen to have a number of commitments from the industry. They use us as a recruitment pipeline, we help to sort through pre approved, pre trained young people in our program. And we help prepare them for high level internships so that they can compete amongst those top university students across the country in sometimes across the world. They're working in office settings, both in person as well as some remote opportunities for corporate companies that haven't yet come back to the office full time. Another example is we currently place interns through Paramount Global. They're committed to a number of youth facing youth employment programs across the city. And we're very lucky to work with them to be able to offer positions in a number of their departments every summer where they hire young people to work in their different business units, right? Some people working with CBS Research last summer, others working in like IT and data analytics, others working in more media focused business units. I just wanted to bring it to your attention to the attendees that have been asking. Now in the chat, if you look over, you'll see the application for youth, which is those who want to be interns, and also the application for a work site or an employer, which all of you are application, they're both in the chat right now. I see no other questions. Anybody else? Oh, is 25 hours a week the max or can the intern do 35 hours one week and then 15 the next basically juggling hours when needed? We want the young people to work a maximum of 25 hours in the week. And we do understand that they might, you know, you might have last minute needs that come up and you need to adjust their schedules. But we hope that their maximum for the week would be 25 hours. If you wanted to hire them for longer, you're welcome to hire them directly and we can help with the recruitment. I would like to offer free summer breakfast and a safe haven haven haven, I think they mean for kids who don't have anywhere to go. Also a place for IGBTQ. I think that's LGBTQ to have a meetup space for them to be their self and help. Others feel comfortable coming out. I have an open space that fits 40 people just wants to know if this will be a good fit. Sarah. Sure, I don't know your name, but we'd love to talk to you more about that. You can definitely feel free to reach out to us. SIP in particular, we want this to be a job or internship opportunity. So if this opportunity might include, you know, tasks and roles where they can contribute back to your organization. Great. If not, and it's a fit for another one of D Y CDs funded programs, which it sounds like it might be we're happy to connect you. D Y CD offers not only youth workforce development initiatives, but after school programs, summer camps, and a range of services for New Yorkers across the city. One last question, you can ask as many as you want. I understand the age requirement. Can you clarify if the young people are required to be actively in high school or college? No, there's no school requirement as long as they are within the age range. Well, while folks think if they have any last questions, I'll say that it's often a great opportunity if you might be looking to hire for your organization in the fall to hire a young person who's not in high school or college who might be looking for a full time job opportunity, because SIP is basically a free, you know, six week job interview, right? You can see what they're like in the role in a similar role with the opportunity to have them continue on with you permanently if it makes sense. Can the employer request a college age intern? Yes, you can request whatever you'd like in your application and our community partners will do their best to match you with someone that meets what you're looking for. Anyone else? I think this was a very interesting webinar with all of the great questions. If there are no other questions going once going twice, we will bid you all adieu and take advantage of the wonderful weather outside. Remember, as you see on this slide, there are two places where you can reach out to Sarah and to Amir. Please take the time to copy that down. Also, we'll be sending out a follow up email with information and links and whatnot. So thank you so much and pass the word to all your friends about what a great, great job opportunity and intern opportunity this is. And thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Amir. Thank you, Aliyah. And of course, thank you, Noel. Bye everybody.


I've always had this really vivid dream of swimming with manta rays, but I only recently got to make that dream a reality when I was snorkeling off the coast of Hawaii. It was a truly stunning example of ray vacation. Okay, we're going to talk about machine learning algorithms like chatGPT, but to get there, we're going to take a little detour first. To start with, let's talk about a book. In the mid-1950s, the author and former Royal Navy commander, Frederick R. Ewing, had become the talk of the town in the world of academic literature. His steamy 18th century novel, I, Libertine, had experienced a sort of overnight renaissance. Literary experts debated the book's merits and shortcomings at parties. Students wrote term papers on Ewing's life and legacy. The novel was banned in Boston due to its indecency, but booksellers simply couldn't find enough copies of the thing to keep up with demand, largely because it didn't exist.   One listener called them to recount how they learned a proprietor of their local bookstore, a man who seemed to have read everything and whose opinion was deeply respected, responded to their inquiry with contempt, is about time the public discovered Ewing. At the height of the emperor has no closed panic, a friend of Shep's named Theodore Sturgeon, a prolific sci-fi author and scriptwriter, inadvertently ruined the whole thing. He asked Shep if he could write a real book called I, Libertine, a novel modeled on the mythology that had sprung up around the prank, and Shep agreed. With a physical object, a product, to hang the story on, news agencies no longer had to wrestle with the implications of the uproar that had surrounded a totally imaginary book. They could explain it away as a publicity stunt for the sake of advertising, a trope that fit nicely into people's understanding of the world, and the joke ran out of steam. Philosophers and sociologists sometimes talk about reification, a term that has a few different meanings, but is generally a process by which an otherwise imaginary entity is made real. Sturgeon's physical manifestation of I, Libertine is an interesting example of reification. The book didn't exist as anything more than a fictional or cognitive construct at first, then Sturgeon brought it into reality as a physical object. The paper town of Aglo, New York, as popularized by cartography nerds like John Green, is another fun example of the idea. A fictional town printed on a map encountered so much traffic from travelers who had been hoping to find something there that some of those travelers set up homes and shops to serve others looking for the same place, and it became a real town. Of course, these are dramatic cases of reification run amok. Fake books do not regularly become real books, and fake towns very rarely become real towns. But even without delving into metaphysics, you experience that process all the time. The border between your bit of sidewalk and your neighbor's bit of sidewalk is a legal fiction, a purely imaginary subdivision of space that has no instantiation in the real world unless someone makes it real by behaving in certain ways. You sweep your bit of sidewalk but not theirs. If this side of the line needs some sort of repair, you're the one who calls city maintenance. If your neighbor doesn't do those things, you might tut it them for failing to keep up their side, but you probably wouldn't do it on their behalf. These kinds of actions give the imaginary boundary a reality it wouldn't have if it was just printed on a map somewhere. Reification of fictional entities through human behavior happens all the time. But when that process results in real physical entities, stuff we can point to, measure, and grab hold of, it's easy to lose your way in the shuffle of cause and effect. There's nothing really mysterious about the physical version of I, Libertine. This book, written by Theodore Sturgeon, is not the imaginary 18th century novel described by Gene Shepard and perpetrated as a hoax on the world of academic literature as though it were real. There is a clear historical account of how this thing came to be and why it's not that. But because it was brought into being in this peculiar way, preceded by its own mythology, you might forgive someone for finding something mysterious or confusing about the relationship between the cause, fake discourse about a fake book called I, Libertine, and the effect, a real book called I, Libertine, coming into existence. The map was dreamt up first, then the territory was landscaped into a convincing facsimile way of it. Of course, these are fairly tame examples of reification. People can give all sorts of fictions of physical form, and they're not always so quaint in low stakes. Legal and political boundaries can become embedded in the landscape itself, shaping it in different ways on either side of an imaginary line. Here, the land is rich and verdant, easy to live on. There is a desolate wasteland, hostile to any attempted habitation. Standardized tests are used as measures of some theoretical proxy for a person's capacity for success, and then test results are used to gate access to resources that are necessary for success. Neither of these phenomena have any basis in nature. They're the results of a process of self-fulfilling prophecy based on fiction. But if someone wasn't aware of that history, they might look at the world and see measurable objective differences, and come to believe the phenomena were immutable features of nature itself. They might even use their observations as justification to continue reifying those imaginary distinctions and trenching them further in the physical world. Just look at the state of my neighbor's sidewalk. I wouldn't touch that thing with a 30-foot pole, let alone a broom, which finally brings us to machine learning models. Programs designed to find and replicate patterns in a set of training data, like what groups of pixel colors you might find in a digital painting called Scorpio Pig. Large language models, which replicate patterns in textual dialogue, have been in the spotlight recently. So long as you keep your prompts somewhere in the realm of stuff people might conceivably tie to each other on the internet, programs like Bard and ChatGPT are spookily good at responding to those prompts with human-like patterns of words. Of course, there are occasional glitches, weird inconsistencies that show some of the clockwork turning away behind the scenes. If you ask ChatGPT or Bard, which is heavier, a pound of feathers, or two pounds of steel, they will confidently inform you that they are equal in weight. Dull E seems to add fingers to its otherwise excellent digital compositions at random.  With more training data, I'm sure these sorts of glitches will become more and more rare. I'm pointing them out as signposts of the gap between machine learning and artificial intelligence. These engines are faithfully replicating the general form of the output, not the process that created that output. They aren't thinking, they're copying the patterns that tend to be generated by people who can't think. It's essentially a very complicated digital version of a device that we've had around since the 1800s. A Ouija board. Many people who interact with these programs take in their impressive performance and, as humans are wont to do, interpret their impressively coherent output as stemming from an entity with intent rather than a fuzzy mirror of our own writing. It's true that it's philosophically challenging to either confirm or refute any accusations of consciousness. Chinese room, Turing test, problem of other minds, etc. But it's fair to say that there's no plausible mechanism for a set of weighted probabilities between words or pixels to have a subjective experience of the world, any more than an especially lifelike book or painting. They also don't have any capacity for intelligence beyond pattern replication. It shouldn't be surprising that chat GPT struggles to say anything of value in more esoteric subjects, that it makes errors when navigating highly technical problems, or that it thinks the host of thunk is Derek Moller. People who imagine they see agency or novel problem solving in these algorithms are making an understandable mistake, considering just how good they are at duplicating the products of our textual and illustrative output. Unfortunately, forgetting that machine learning algorithms are just fuzzy reflections of what a small subset of humanity has uploaded to the internet prior to 2023 can have much more troubling consequences than imagining that your awful novel was written by the ghost of Mark Twain. Because their responses are defined by their training data, these algorithms necessarily recapitulate the values, errors, biases, and foibles embedded in that training data. Mid-Journey has a tendency to portray photographic subjects as smiling the way Americans or Europeans like to pose for pictures, even when representing people from cultures that don't show their teeth quite so often. Adding particular descriptors to certain professions, like confident author or gentle cashier, seems to cause Dalui to lean towards particular racial and gender stereotypes for its compositions. Despite hiring Kenyan workers to analyze thousands of tech snippets in order to train chat GPT to be less toxic, many of OpenAI's users have reported disturbing trends in its responses. Asking it to write a Python function to approve torture for various nationalities returned a perhaps predictable list of countries. Asking it for help determining who would make a good scientist based on race and gender led it to suggest some code that tests whether someone is white or male. Anticipating that training a chatbot on the internet might lead to some... issues. The developers of these large language models continue to patch in guardrails to steer their responses away from the most egregiously objectionable content, which has attenuated a lot of the obviously gross stuff. But as we've seen, those efforts are limited by the imagination and priorities of the people trying to keep it in line, which causes a slightly different issue.  It won't tell you the most offensive word it's allowed to say. Despite explicitly endorsing the emancipation of slaves in the US, it hedges when polled about whether gay marriage is morally permissible. This shouldn't be surprising. These language models are expensive products to produce, and the corporations that own them want them to be palatable and saleable to the largest possible cross-section of the potential market. A financially motivated pressure to be inoffensive, professional, family-friendly. This leads to a bizarre situation where these algorithms will happily suggest Syrian people should be tortured, but won't say the F word or take a hard line on whether Nestle should be held criminally liable for child slavery. Microsoft and Google have begun incorporating these algorithms into search and office products, advertising impressive automation of previously laborious tasks like email writing, data analysis, summarization, customer support, and simple programming. All sorts of capabilities that are going to put a lot of office workers out of a job, yes, but also because they're machine learning algorithms, the way these programs go about those tasks reflects a particular set of values and priorities, the ones that can be found written on the internet prior to 2023, plus whatever the developers decide warrant special treatment. Consider the prioritization and ranking of topics and participants in an email, the particular way a set of data will be interpreted, what sorts of allowances are made in algorithmically generated code for disability or language selection? All sorts of nuances and details of the output of this software are going to recapitulate human shortcomings, biases, and assumptions. Incorporating them into our workflow and discourse kind of seems like holding the microphone up to the speaker. This is where reification comes back in. Many people have started looking to language models for answers. What caused the 2014 war in Ukraine? What should I write about? How should we respond to school shootings? What do these works of art mean? The models are totally capable of composing reasonable sounding responses to these questions, and folks are eager to accept those responses without much in the way of caution or skepticism, unless they go hilariously off the rails. There's a convincing illusion of some sort of objective distance between our queries and the distorted echo of our own voices answering them, which makes it much easier to mistake our conceptual map for the territory that's being backfilled to match it, if we lose sight of where those answers are coming from. As we incorporate these models into our analysis, our decision making, our business workflow, our software, maybe our policy, it seems inevitable that those background assumptions and value judgments will become even more embedded in the apparatus we use to make sense of the world, blurring the distinctions between the universe as it exists and the way humans perceive it, at least for anyone who's not diligent in their efforts to pick them apart. This isn't just a problem with LLMs by any means. All technology has the capacity to coax people into mistaking a reified synthetic human thing for an organic feature of the universe. But LLMs do seem especially good at divorcing characteristically human beliefs and standards from the people who formulated and expressed them to make those ideas seem as though they come from nowhere or that they've always been. I, Libertine, was a great hoax, but that's a distressing sort of deception. Do machine learning models pose a special threat for being able to distinguish what we think the world is like from what it really is like? Please leave a message below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah blah subscribe, blush air, and don't stop thunking.


Good and cheap Good and cheap That's something I hear a lot from guys. They're like man Kevin. I love your style. Love your sense of style Look here. I am not trying to spend 100 200 300 or even more for a bottle of fragrance after all It's just scented water. What can I wear under $50 and smell like the man? Don't worry. Got you covered now Admittedly this video is not for the typical fragrance fanatic of fragrance free even though a lot of the fragrances on here Probably should already be in your collection because just because they're cheap or inexpensive doesn't mean they're trash can juice or bad I went through and picked some great fragrances that I have in my collection that I think any guy should consider if they Want to build a nice inexpensive fragrance collection, especially for like you younger guys Maybe in high school or college just starting out something to make you smell good all year round any season Any reason no problems. Let's get started first on the list. We have Tauss 1920 the origin Tauss 1920 the origin a Great office fragrance nice clean fresh friendly Inoffensive and they last a long time what you're gonna find out on this fragrance list as all these fragrances last a good Four to six hours plus they're not all to perform Concentration so they're not gonna push all day or settle into a skin scent These things are gonna be able to be worn on campus in the classroom in the office environment and not really run the risk of Offending much of anybody 1920 is a great fragrance for that.  This is one of those fresh kind of woody fragrances that just smells so good on men Especially as we're transitioning into the spring and into the higher heat check out 1920 If you don't want to break your wallet number two on the line is a banger John Barbados artisan pure come on guys This is one of the kings of summertime especially for under 50 bucks with this thing hit the market people were like Oh my god, I'm bergamot neroli fresh of the summer guys. This fragrance is killer now Just like most John Barbados, they don't last a long time But good guys is inexpensive this thing is you can throw it in your backpack continue to apply during the day True to form I picked this thing up at Marshalls for like 19 or 25 dollars guys You could never go wrong with this one John Barbados artist and pure and another great fragrance or under 50 bucks next up on the list We have an old school and carbon own now It's gonna be a little bit more difficult to find this one You got to go into eBay or disc counters or something like this, but do not spend more than $50 on this fragrance Just because somebody says it smells like Gucci Envy. Yeah, it smells like Gucci Envy But it's not Gucci Envy, so don't pay Gucci Envy prices for it This leans a little bit more on the sweeter side of how it has kind of a musky presence If you've ever smelled the original Gucci Envy, you know what it did man and carbon own Nails it right there nails it right there. Think create original Sontal and then think Mont Blanc Individual that's carbon own grab this if you can get it a great investment Especially for 50 ml bottle less than 50 bucks do your collection well next guys You know, I love musk and Kiehl's original must this little bottle right here I talk about it all the time one of the best simple Inoffensive musks on the planet under 50 bucks 49 95 That's the MSRP price, so don't ever pay more than that for it You can grab it any one of your local department stores Neem and Market Sacks with that oven billards macy's all that Kiehl's original musk just fits that space week out of the shower Fresh spray it on set it forget it run Especially as we're getting into the spring summer months musk is making a comeback and Kiehl's original musk is when you need to have in Your collection especially for cheapy All right next we have from Scotch and Soda We have bar fly think sweet and sour not like sweet and sour chicken or sweet and sour pork none under Sweet and sour this fragrance is sweet and it's sour, but it is so so good Guys, this has been a cult favorite for a long time And if you're lucky enough to have a Scotch and Soda in your area or not locked down Go grab this week grab it and just rock it and wear it I tell you the magic will happen, especially for under $50 you can't go wrong with this fragrance bar fly Scotch and Soda so good it fits that same category as amber, cranberry and fish first instinct still fits Except you can still get this or an a and f first instinct much harder to get a hold of that's why they put it on this Let bar fly you can still get it next up. We have a long and I'm just gonna call it Koran Caron in the master Tom Ford's favorite fragrance on the planet. This is an old-school fragrance that smells in Frickin credible three major notes lavender Musk vanilla if you've ever smelled kill it if you've ever smelled Killian a taste of heaven Except this one is a fraction of the cost and it is so Incredible and another good thing about it. It is dirt cheap You can go buy 10 gallons of this stuff and keep it in your car keep it in your bag keep it in your bathroom Keep it anywhere. There is never a bad time for a man to smell like Musk Lavender and vanilla That is why those fragrance notes are throughout masculine perfumery throughout masculine fragrance from time immemorial all In one bottle this green juice is a masterpiece Anybody who knows anything about fragrance will tell you this fragrance DNA right here It's fan frickin tastic you must get this one Please get it get it get it even for people who may not like the particular fragrance DNA will tell you that it's a good fragrance DNA May not be that particular taste is an incredible fragrance and especially for under $50 Caron, I'm sorry. I don't know how to pronounce the name. My French is terrible, but the fragrance is good Next on the list we have one from Carolina Herrera, and I gotta tell you Carolina Herrera They made me want to make this list because there are so many Fragrances from that line that are so underrated in my opinion. Let's start out CH men CH men prebay gets a lot of love but CH men because of performance. We have Carolina Herrera Herrera man That's a great tobacco fragrance. And then we have the king of them all Carolina Herrera chic for men a great Melon fragrance Melon stands at the top of this fragrance Melon sandalwood and musk guys Again, one of those fragrances from the 90s and I slipped out of mainstream recognition But I will tell you your godfather made this list because I wanted to talk about great cheapies But I really wanted to bring this one to you for less than 50 bucks. You can actually destroy Dominate the summer this one is so So so good guys do yourself a favor go back and examine Some of the stuff from Carolina Herrera CH men CH men prebay Herrera man Love that tobacco fragrance and this one guys. You will not be disappointed Carolina Herrera in my opinion kind of fits the same place where mom walk does They have so many good fragrances that are just kind of underpriced or when you have a banger like individual outcome Out it just rocks the market. I have one coming up that I'm gonna talk about in a couple of days Probably not as easy to get a hold of but still incredible. I digress Get chic get chic get chic get chic, especially if you like the note of melon Going to be incredible summer. It's gonna be an incredible summer if you have chic in your arsenal a great cheapie Great under 50 bucks guys, you will love it. Alright guys, that's it. That's my list for cheapies under $50. Do me a favor Hit me up in the comment section. Let me know if you gotta pick a few fragrances under $50. What would they be again? They need to be signature cent worthy. They need to be able to be one any season any reason Guys need to be any season any reason and they need to be available for most guys to be able to just kind of go online Grab them and leave again inquiring minds are like to know Hey guys, whether look style or life or the personal profession You can level up and be your personal best each and every day if you're interested in any of that do us both a favor Follow the link in the description and book your one-on-one session with me details down in the description. Peace


When we're talking about economies, we're typically referring to this information layer that resides on top of what we call the real economy, the physical production and exchange of goods. Accounting is then the basis of how we create this information layer and bring all these physical objects and services into this information system of the economy that we then exchange and analyse. The earliest, most rudimentary economies of pre-civilisation may have existed purely in a physical form, but an economy of any complexity requires that the real system is translated into this virtual information form, not just physical assets and liquid currencies, but also identity and contractual agreements. At the end of the day, it all has to be converted into an information format. In order to form organisations, exchange goods and services, we need to define ownership and keep track of exchanges, and this is done by a series of ledgers. A system of ledgers forms the basis of records of who owns what and what has been exchanged within the system. A ledger consists simply of data structured by rules. Any time that we need a consensus about facts, we use a ledger. Ledgers record the facts that underpin modern economies. All of our economic institutions are at the end of the day networks of ledgers, some simple, some more complex. A firm is often described as a nexus of contracts. A firm is in fact a ledger of contracts, people, technology and capital that are arranged in a particular fashion to deliver a function. Ledgers maintain ledgers in a variety of forms, of property, of employment and responsibility, of the ownership and development, of supplies and contracts, of intellectual property and corporate privilege, of physical and human capital, it's all recorded in ledgers. It's safe to say that our economies are ledgers all the way down, and at the bottom will find a government-backed legal system. Where a ledger requires coercion, in order to be enforced, the government is required. Governments maintain ledgers of authority, privilege, responsibility and access. Governments are the trusted entities that keep databases of citizenship, taxation obligations, social security entitlements and property ownership. Ledgers can confirm ownership through property rights, for example, property title registers, map, who owns what and whether their land is subject to any conditions or constraints. Ledgers confirm identity, businesses have identities recorded on government ledgers to track their existence and their status under tax law. Ledgers confirm status, citizenship is essentially just a ledger, recording who has what legal rights and what obligations people are subjected to. Ledgers are ledger, giving those employed a contractual claim on payments in return for work. Likewise, the voting system within a political system is just another form of ledger. Ledgers confirm authority, ledgers identify who can access what bank accounts, who can validly sit in parliament, who can enter restricted areas. At their most fundamental level, ledgers map economic and social relationships, they can be understood as agreements about the facts and when they change. This consensus about what is in the ledger and its accuracy is one of the fundamental basis of a market economy and indeed the contractual agreements structuring our whole societies. Ledger technology has for thousands of years remained largely unchanged. Ledgers originated with the beginning of written communications. Ledgers and writing developed at the same time in the ancient Middle East to record production, trade and finance. Ancient clay tablets with cuneiform scripts listed units of work, taxes, rations etc. The first international trade networks worked through a structured network for alliances that functioned a lot like distributed ledgers. The modern era brought the first major changes to ledgers in the 14th century with the invention of double entry bookkeeping. By recording both credits and debits, double entry bookkeeping allowed for the efficient reconciliation of information between different ledgers. The 1800s saw the next revolution in ledger technology with the rise of large bureaucracies in the corporation. These centralized ledgers enabled major increases in organizational size, scope and efficiency but relied completely in the trust in the centralized institution. In the latter half of the 20th century, ledgers moved from analog to digital. For example, national databases of passport ledgers were digitalized and centralized. These digital databases are computable and searchable, making them greatly more efficient. However, a database still relies on trust. A digital database, however efficient it may be, is only as reliable as the organization that maintains it. We can see how the economic structure of modern capitalism has evolved around the structure of these centralized ledgers. The 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Oliver Williamson, showed that people produced an exchange in markets, firms or governments depending on the relative transaction costs of the different institutions. Building upon the work of Robert Coase, Williamson's transaction cost approach provides a key to understanding what institutions manage ledgers and why they do so. It might seem strange that a ledger, a somewhat mundane and practical document associated mainly with accounting, would be described as a revolutionary technology, but the significance of the blockchain is largely based on the significance of ledgers as the foundations to our economies. Because at the end of the day, ledgers are nothing more than a kind of database or information system. How we record value is of course critically dependent upon the information technology that we have available to us. Traditionally, we've relied on centralized institutions of private enterprises or governments in order to provide the authority needed for people to trust a given ledger and the records of exchange and ownership that it contained. However, today through the advance in information technology, specifically the combination of distributed computing and cryptography, blockchain technology now provides the infrastructure for a network of computers to collaborate towards maintaining a shared, tamper proof and trusted ledger. Thus the blockchain provides an alternative to traditional centralized ledger systems of firms and governments. As such, it is legitimate to say that the blockchain is an institutional technology. It is a new way to maintain a ledger that is coordinate economic activity distinct from firms and governments. A ledger of contracts and capital can now be decentralized and distributed in ways they could not be before. Ledgers of identity, permission, privilege and entitlement can be maintained and enforced without the need for private organizations or government backing. The ledger is instead maintained by a distributed network of nodes. This changes the very foundations of economic activity with massive repercussions for how economies are structured and function. It literally rewires the channels through which we coordinate in the production and exchange of goods and services in society. The changes are so pervasive and the possible applications of blockchain so all-encompassing that some of the most fundamental principles governing our society are now once again up for grabs. The blockchain is a distributed ledger that does not rely on a trusted centralized authority to maintain and validate the ledger. This means that we can create economic networks for the recording and exchanging of value that are not dependent upon the centralized systems that currently run our economies in society. Such a system for coordination via distributed ledgers would have massive advantages. It would drastically reduce the cost of recording and thus make it possible for us to expand formal legal systems in economic activity. For example to the 2.4 billion people that currently have no formal ID or the 70% of global population that has no documented land rights but also to record extremely small exchanges of value that are currently not feasible and to also account for new forms and different forms of value that are currently unaccounted for.