Welcome back to the Independent Investor Channel. We have a very, very special show for you guys today. We have a couple of guests here that follow the Aduro Clean Technology story, and they are the foregone experts on this topic, and you guys are going to want to sit back and enjoy what has been a phenomenal 2023 here for Aduro Clean Technologies. Much going on currently on the landscape, much has transpired over this year, and it just makes us that much more optimistic looking toward the future. We've got Yazan in the group here, who is a subject matter expert on all things Aduro, as well as Mariush, who runs a YouTube channel and was the very first one to break this story for the grander YouTube audience. So you guys can do them both a softy, kick down into the comments section and offer your appreciation, give them a thanks and a thumbs up for their efforts, because we are in debt to them for their time. I want to kick it off with Yazan first and allow him to kind of update us on the current progress and the goings on with Aduro. So with that, I'm going to kick it over and welcome you to the channel. Yazan? Thank you so much for having me, and it is always a pleasure to come on your channel. So what I wanted to do with this is I wanted it to be because there's been a lot that has happened since, I would say, you know, the summertime with Aduro. And I think a lot of times what happens is with a lot of the headlines that are happening, whether, you know, geopolitical, economy, so on, people forget about their high convection stories. So I thought, you know, take a step back, go back to the time where I think things started to get exciting. And I think that started when the company announced their HPU is up and running. And I believe that was sometime in the summer. So what happened there is that they have successfully commissioned their R2 reactor. And what that does is it is able to upscale the various types to date. They say four out of these seven families of plastic waste. And they've been able to start to generate data and gather the data. And the concept here is what they want to do is they want to do two things. One is they want to do a what they call the customer engagement program, which we'll talk about in a minute. And the second, which is a paid program whereby a partner, I like that I'm going to borrow from Penny. She conned the term, try it till you buy it. And that term kind of, you know, what it kind of boils down to is it allows partners, potential partners to kind of do a test run on their feedstock and see what are the outcomes. Is it better than the competition as a duo claims? And if it is, then they can start talking about partnerships, commercial and the like. So that's one part of why they need the data. The second part and this team, as Maryish mentioned a couple of times, these guys are working 16 hours nonstop, seven days a week, I think. And the reason is now outside of doing that, they're also starting to collect data in order to start the design and the engineering phase of R3, which is the tons per day. So just for a reminder for people that are not up to speed, the R2 is the continuous flow reactor that can process few kilograms per or few liters per hour up to 100 or 120 kg per day. And then the next phase is going to be the one where they're going to be dealing with tons per day. So that's the purpose of, you know, HPU up and running. Now, after that, or in the same PR, they also mentioned that they've established the ACT-E, which is the European angle of a duo. At the beginning, people were skeptical, why are you doing that? Why are you opening a second hub at this stage? And I think to parlay that, a few months later, Eric Appelman, who is one of the heads at Brightlands, who has seen the technology, has seen it since two and a half years. He was the first guy to say, we have not seen a similar technology like this come across Brightlands for 20 years. He decided to join them as the chief revenue officer. And again, to borrow from Mary Shumpenny, you know, the significance of that is, you don't hire a chief revenue officer if you're not going to get revenue. So the concept is, obviously, you're getting closer, which was kind of the hook to the fact that they started getting more engagements, which we will touch on in a minute. So I think that was very important in terms of where things are at. I'm going to talk in a minute about the HPU, but I'm going to continue to kind of with that line. The other thing that happened during this time is Airheads went out with a valuation report, an independent valuation report that came out for our Canadian audience, $3.60 to $5. And for our US audience, it's about roughly $2.60 US to around $3.60 US, something like that. Now, it's worth noting that, and I think Mary has touched on this, it's worth noting that that report was clear. It said it's based on, some of these comparables are not really the best, but they said it's based on the discounted cash flows of the company. But again, this is assuming that, again, Aduro is using small players, players that are not the players that we've started seeing or hearing about, not the shells or the multi-billion dollar players that they started announcing. And these are important because the entire business model till now is very much discounted. But even at that severe discount, $2.60 to $3.60 US represents, call it an average of 200 and some percent upside from here in 12 months. That's not something to kind of joke about. In my opinion, it's to the downside because, again, of the caveat that they made clear, I also liked in that valuation report that they said that the value of the IP alone should be worth over $100 million and that's being conservative. So even today, I read somewhere that we're about close to $55 or $60 million US. So even today, we're nowhere near these metrics. We're just like too far away from the... So I think what's happening here is we, and I think Mary should have spoken about this. The only reason why the share price was kept kind of quiet was they had the free trading financing that was done in April. That kept the lid on the stock. Then they had some warrants at 87 Schemedium that came in, that kept the lid. And now what we're starting to see is we're starting to see that the only supply that is out there are basically the dollar warrants that expire in April and 50 cent warrants that expire in 2025.  But the other alternative is I still have few months till April. The 50 cent warrant holder has a bigger dilemma because they're deeper in the money but they have a year and a half still. So it's quite interesting and that offers what you were telling me, Brian, about, you know, luckily we're in the stage where we're not seeing a lot of sign pressure. And I think this is what happens. A lot of this has been cleaned up. People are starting to wake up and I'm seeing more and more people talking about this name. One other thing I want to mention from our heads is that they make it clear that most institutions till now, based on the meetings that they had, cannot invest in a duo at the current valuation. They need at least 100 million US of a market cap. So this is the delta for, if you want to call it kind of the retail delta before institutions come in. And that doesn't mean that the institutional head, so, you know, I understand from Ofer that some of the institutions that they met with, family offices and so on, on a personal level they started buying the stock but not, they can't buy it for their clients because it has to cross that threshold of 100 million US. So, and I'm going to conclude with the last thing that I kept the most important to the last, which is that last press release that we got. And I think people still undermine the significance of this. You don't get four multi-billion dollar companies to test, partner, pay for your service, for your technology. If it's not something different than everything that they've seen, that's the crux of it. So when you read it, when you read that last press release, you know, that customer participation or engagement program, you will see that the two multi-billion dollar companies that have multi-billion dollar sales are in the petrochemical space. They are focused on helping a duo, partnering with a duo, helping a duo towards going to commercial. Look, no one's going to be doing this just because they want to do some testing and move on. If it's working the way that Eric has said and he said like, what makes you bifurcate or leave a stable job to a startup? He said the results, you know, you go to a lot of these clients, you test the feedstock and the results show it off. So, I'll take stock here. I know I've taken a bunch of time. Happy to address any questions and I'll pass it back to you, Brian. I think for the grander audience, I think I would recommend that you go back and play Yazan's piece again, actually. Thank you, Yazan. Your summary of the goings-on, especially in the short term here, just the back half of this year, really sets up for an exciting 2024. And I spoke with Ofer some point last year and he was explaining to me what 2023 was going to look like. And I think not only did he deliver on those fronts, but he surpassed a lot of my expectations. You were right, 57 million here, USD, Yazan on the figures, up year to date, 31% and up year over year, about 45%. I still think the stock is sleeping. I think what I wanted to say is in face of this current market that we have that has been absolutely atrocious, that has been picking apart at every company out there, you name it, large cap growth, all the way down into the microcap space, which I'm going to turn it over to Marius, who's a featured channel of mine on YouTube because he's a subject matter expert on this topic. And I don't know if he would share in my sentiment, but I think it's been absolutely atrocious investing in 2023. And we've got this bright spot here in 2023 called Aduro Clean Technologies, which if you look at it top to bottom, you look at the stock, you look at the charts, you look at the performance, you look at the delivery of information, I think you can quickly ascertain that they've earned everything they've got and then some, and it really sets them up for an amazing 2024. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Marius to go ahead and comment on Yazan's comment and then give his twist on the Aduro story thus far. Marius, thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. I mean, to say that this market has been atrocious. Yeah, atrocious. It's an understatement. Send the toilet, man. It's an understatement. I don't think I have ever experienced the market being as horrible as it is right now. You know, and it's just like a never-ending torture. But because of this, people like underestimate Aduro, they underestimate or don't appreciate what they have. They think that they have all the time in the world. But, you know, I've looked at, when I wrote my coronavirus book, I've looked at, I would say, 6,000 companies, one by one. You don't find things like Aduro very often. You just don't. And here we have this, you know, major solution to a problem and we have, like Azan said, four multi-billion-dollar companies at the table testing this thing. And if they are testing on R2, which is the continuous process, that means the batch system already satisfied them. The chemistry already proved to them that it works. Otherwise, they wouldn't bother. All they're trying to do now is to make sure that whatever already worked for them is also going to work on a continuous flow basis. And when I was there in Canada, my understanding is that running these things on continuous flow improves results from the batch system. And now we get clue after clue after clue. And as Azan said, Eric, I interviewed Eric. I think, Azan, you called him Mr. Recycling. He is.  The guy comes, you know, has worked at Unity Leader. He worked at several plastic producing companies. Then he decided for six years to be at the hub of the plastic recycling in one of the largest hubs where he's worked with Saabek, BASF, Shell, you name it. And he decided that this is his next thing. I mean, it just, you got to take a step back and see these guys, like he's very calculating. You know, you've seen that in his interview. He's a very shrewd, smart guy. He hasn't done this on a leap of faith. You don't spend two and a half years looking at something before you make a move unless you know that that move makes total sense. Yeah. And, you know, when I interviewed him, and a lot of times when you interview somebody, you're kind of in the mode of interviewing and you don't see the impact of the responses. And then you replay the video and you get goosebumps. You're like, this is insane. But also, you know, one other thing that investors don't really understand what they have is that they take it for granted because most of the time companies like this, retail investors don't get a chance to buy into them because they most of the time stay private and the private hands or private equity, they get, you know, they get taken to a certain level and then they get kind of like a product, right? Like a retail product. They get packaged properly. The story is told properly. And then they get, they get taken IPO at billion dollar valuations. And then, then the Jeremy's of the world, you know, what's this other guy? Kevin's of the world get, you know, catch on to these things. Retail gets introduced to those names at a billion dollar valuation. And we see now over and over various companies getting acquired. They're so cheap. And I know Ryan is kind of nodding his head because I've seen some of his videos with Helyan or whatever you call the name of the company.  Private equity comes in, scoops up these cheap companies and what they're going to do with them is they're going to finance them. They're going to prepare them in two years and they're going to take them out at, you know, billion dollar valuations. And because retail community today doesn't care about those names today. Don't want to, you know, support them to enough valuations for those companies to stay public. And as a result, private equity comes in, gets them out, but the private equity will get the benefit of the growth. Retail investors are going to, they always complain how the hedge funds are there.  We get the scraps and here you have an opportunity to get great companies and they just refuse to get them. I bet, I think you have a lot of conversations with various bankers. I wouldn't be surprised if there was, you know, some kind of interest to take over Aduro and then sometime down the road, you know, take it public. Do you have any comment on that?  And he said, look, I mean, the exact same theme that you're saying. He actually mentioned Canadian and it was interesting. He's like private equity in the U.S. And Mary and she covered, I think two or three of them are really on a hunt to acquire companies that in their view, they're extremely undervalued. They know that, you know, especially with the exchange rate being what it is, it makes us very lucrative. If you think about it, a company like, you know, like a couple of the companies that you mentioned, they give them 200% premium. 200% premiums to take them out is not normal. Typically in a normal market, what premium do you think a takeout is 30, 50% to give 200%. It tells you that the private equity sector is just saying, guys, you have this wrong. We know how to take it from X, add to it some cash, fix a few things. And in a year or two, we're going to, you know, sell it on NASDAQ or on a bigger exchange to someone or maybe privately. And this is one of the things that I read and I agree with. Some people have said that their main fear is that Adura gets taken out early. And I agree that that's a risk. The one advantage or saving grace that we have is that offer and the insiders own close to 43, 44% of the company. So any takeover has to go through a vote by shareholders. That being said, I mean, the issue is it's not just, you know, if you put yourself in the shoes of the operator and Mary, you spoke about that. Here you have a market which is very turbulent. Every day you are judged by the share price that you're at. It doesn't matter what people say.  We love the product. We don't love the product. You're doing a solution that's, you know, to a world problem or not. What you're judged on is your share price. That's 99% of people will say.  You don't have to worry about all this. You worry about what you get at, which is operating a business, running the business, improving it smoothly. And guess what? You as founders, you're going to get 200, 300% premium on your, on the current market cap.  We don't, we didn't want to, but it's such a hardship of raising capital dealing with, you know, the average folk that says, oh, I don't like this. You know, you issued this on the other day we had this kind of conversation. Oh, this Ted Danson coverage didn't get enough eyeballs. This thing didn't, like there's always a critic. And to them, it's like, you know, why do I need to do with all this? I could simply cash out and go into operating mode and be focused on the business. And by cashing out doesn't mean that they are going to sell completely. They could retain significant positions still. But I'm just saying that, you know, we take things for granted until they're not. But even just what people don't understand is dealing with the shareholder base. It is exhausting to deal with them. It is exhausting. I want to, like, murder half of the shareholder base in my companies. Okay. It is exhausting for these operators. So I will, I'm just not surprised that they're like, I'm going to take the 200% premium, not to deal with the moronic people. I think Mary used to your point. Right. I think a lot of people just get in over their skis. Okay. So although I agree with you, my sympathy only goes so far. This is a company at the end of the day that's just shy of 60 million U.S. And as Yazan said, until it gets to that 100 million market cap, that institutional buying is not going to happen. And the follow on question to that is what is going to happen when they hit that? Because this isn't the first time I've discussed it. It was actually over last year who mentioned that $100 million threshold for really kind of turning into a whole new arena of companies from that 100 million mark up to a billion dollar mark. Right now, it's market cap. Yazan, you said it. The stock means everything. Okay. And they will not be looked at below the surface until they get to that. I really think that that right there is going to be a huge catalyst for institutional momentum. Now I have monitored the volumes over the last year or so, and we have been improving in our volumes, but you know, these tens of thousands of shares that trade hands every day is not going to move the needle to the magnitude that we would expect it to move. But I, you know, I do agree with you. I just think that people can probably put themselves at ease by doing a lot more homework. And I will also say, look, how much more do you expect us to do? I mean, we're putting it right there on your dinner table.  That's all you've got to do. You know, now there's no promise to follow through. Durro's got a long way to go. I'm one of those in the camp that believe that they will not get bought out. There's always that overhang. I get it. I mean, they are a target right now at their current market cap. Somebody could pick them up on huge value, but where I value it right now on the low end of a couple hundred million dollars just inclusive of the technology. I don't even have to value the other verticals and I don't have to value the business. We just look at the technology alone. I think that that gap probably is a blessing in disguise right now. If we were looking at a company that was getting the eyeballs at over a hundred million and also getting that attention that I think they deserve right now that I think is probably forthcoming. No, I don't think they're going to get bought out for the reasons that Yazan mentioned. The insiders own too much stock. They're not going to let it go cheaply. But I do think the end game is getting bought out. But it's going to have a B billions at the end of it. That's when the insiders might say this is enough, but not not anywhere close to where it is right now. Any thoughts Yazan? Yeah, I mean, I think I recall the days when offer was talking to me when this was batch back in 2021. And I think we were, you know, discussing the pre IPO raise with the IPO raise trust 55 cents. This is laughable. I actually want to take a step back like imagine in what happened since going public till today, the company has done so much. Their IPO price was 55 cents Canadian 40 cents US. We're almost like double that. Like just tick stock of that.  We had no clue. Don't have a third party validation. We don't have a following. We don't have Shell. We don't have three other multi billion dollar companies. We don't have three verticals. We don't have a third party validation evaluation saying it's worth anywhere between, you know, an average of $3 sum us. You know, it's just mind boggling. And I really think as much as and you said best right. I think at one point you have to agree that you have to trust the process. Meaning we can do a lot of homework and a lot of we've we've said the investment thesis. I think there's no one that have spent so much time and energy like marriage and penny yourself covering the story. Marriage and penny have put so many so much content out there. And you know, at one point people have to kind of get out of that zone of we're in a recession. We're going to a recession. We're going to a war. We're going to and just hold on regardless of the conditions solutions that matter. Resolve worldwide problems will get adopted and will get validated and will get bought out or will get to a certain valuation. And look, I'm not the same person to say if we're always going to say the caveat that execution has to continue to be the way it is. And if today we're sitting at a billion dollars. There's no way that me marriage yourself frying are going to sit here and say, well, the bullish cases, we're going to go to 10. It might be, you know, I'm going to be honest. It might be 10 might be more. But at 60 million US, the bullish case is so, so much bigger. The reward to risk is just, you know, skewed towards a reward. The risk is, I can't say it's, it's not there because obviously everything can, you know, everything is risky. But I'm going to parlay a comment that I heard the other day. When you see 5.9 or some trillion dollars sitting in money markets because they're scared because we're going to a recession. We're going the highest levels seen ever. Okay. I always think the crowded trade is not the trade you want to be in. You don't want to be in T-Bills. I really don't think that's the play because when it's too crowded, like, is everyone there so super smart? And, you know, the rest, like it's typically it doesn't work that way. When everyone was saying we're going to this year, we're going to head to a recession. Nasdaq is going to be below or around 8,000. Guess what happened? We saw what happened in India, all the AI. So consensus to me is not a way to invest. And at least that doesn't fit my profile. But some people are contrarians, which that's the camp I like to be in. But again, I can't tell people what to do. And I'll say, again, I'm not an investment advisor.  We are here to educate people and tell them that there is an opportunity that, as you said, Ryan, it's almost on a silver platter. You got to do your digging. I agree. Thank you for that, Yazan. I tend to try not to focus so much on selling the idea of Aduro, like you said. And it's just I know people who hold positions. I'm one of them. Aduro from the beginning for me, since I did my due diligence, actually is a very easy company to hold. I chalk up some of my larger cap investments, some that the masses would justify going out there and buying Alibaba, for example, a company like AT&T that's absolutely drowning in debt. Holders. Sorry about that. I muted my mic. I was talking about Alibaba and AT&T, but people will do everything they can do to justify just looking at an opportunity like this. For me, it's easy. I don't need to be talked into anything, but I do kind of want to shift the focus a little bit for those people that actually do own shares, what it actually means to be an Aduro shareholder. What this 2023 is actually meant for the company. What it could potentially look like out to 2024 and beyond. Aduro has forecasted for us their revenue projections based on their licensing model out to 2027. And ever since last year I started investing in this company, it has been a 2027 first look for me. Yeah, it's great to look at the stock every day and it's great to monitor the progress, which in Aduro's case has been pretty much positive and spot on. They've executed in 2023 in a way that is fantastic. And again, it might just be a blessing and disguise in that the pressure that's building up with Aduro might actually really start to come to fruition come next year. But what is it that we can actually tell would be share owners to expect potentially for not just reviewing where we currently are, but maybe looking at 2024. I mean, we're going to have the results of Game Changer in December. What that could potentially mean. Aduro is obviously on a path to build out their both international exposure and their team here domestically. The offices under Works R2 is completed. You know, there's just a lot of moving parts here he is on. And I would almost rather just continue to focus on driving on those share owners out there that just dare I say get it. No, I think you're right. I think we got bogged down with the weeds of day to day and we forget about the bigger picture. The problem is not going away. Eric Appelman was very clear when when Mary Shastam is like 2025 is a deadline so on second. Hold on a second in Europe right now. It's a problem right now. You have to find the solution whereby 35% of the product has to be recycled from a sub 10%. So the selling feature is that and it's the results. Now, I'll tell you what I like to say and we're going to stick with what what the company says and then I'm going to give my one country. Management is focused on getting the results to these counterparts that they're working with. And although the six phase of shell will finish in December, I'm pretty sure same way that they did with the midway, you know, point shells very well calculated. They're probably going to bet this they're going to spend some time and they are going to probably take a quarter. So Q1 of next year till we probably hear anything about the outcome. But here's one thing that you recall and replay it from the videos that Mary Shadam has an offer mentioned when they signed the agreement with Shell that there was a commercial agreement at the back end of it. So these guys have spent enough time to say that if everything works out and we're saying if everything so because we finished only three of the six, then there is going to be a discussion to start about the commercial unit. And that's what really matters. You know, that's where it's going to matter. Because they will next year there there are a few things that we know will happen. So we knew we were going to hear from Shell at some point. They are going to they already said they're starting the design of our three. That doesn't mean that they started build out build outs next year. And they are just getting started. So I think where we're going to get to is those two things, the Shell side, the R3 is no. Now what we also now know which I really like. I always like when you have competition, competition for you, not against you. So suddenly now the paradigm has shifted because now it's not only Shell that is announced. There are two other mega players, multi billion players that are interested in the solution. And clearly neither one of us here can say it's going to, you know, it's going to meet their targets. It's not going to meet when is it, when is it not. But what that does, and I don't need to explain how big companies operate. If I start seeing that there's more tension on a solution that could potentially be taken out by someone else, I might start having a different conversation sooner. So this is why I like the most recent announcement because it just now propels or puts a lot of heat on the other side that they need to start talking. And this is great. I do know from Ufer that when Eric Appelman joined, a lot of people were like, wow, and I'm talking industry. I'm not talking about retail. I'm talking about industry players said, wow, you've got something here. So I think those are the things that we can hang our hat on. Remember, we're all talking about the HP, the, you know, plastic upscaling. HPU we haven't touched on. Okay. And that unit is about the R2. HPU is about to get up and running soon. Again, that's a complete huge vertical. I was in talks and there is another major involved here. That's 80% of the work has been done and they're just waiting to run the last 20% when it's finished. And that major you're referring to is in the oil sands in Canada. So, and you did a great video. Guys, truly, if you look, there's no shortcuts. Okay. You want to be an investor in Enduro. You really want to sleep well at night. You got to go do the homework. There's at least 50, 60 hours worth of diligence that has been done for you. You just need to listen to it a couple of times and you're going to get there. That's what it's going to need. You to break the habit of this is take it serious, take it forward. These don't come by that often. And once you get there, you're going to realize why are we this bullish? So, going back to the R2 HPU being operational, now the same way they'll start getting traction from industry players. And again, that creates more traction in competition. So, those are the things I think we should look at. We should look at what are the outputs or outcomes from Shell? What are the outcomes from those two new companies that they announced? Where is the HPU, which is the heavy to light? And then, you know, what happens with Prospero? What happens with that? But also what I really like is the fact that one thing that I really like about the position that Aduro sits in, is that they're lucky in the way that they've built their cap table, whereby they do have warrants to take them throughout next year. So, it's not one of those companies where you're going to be, yes, warrants selling is annoying because they're going to create some pressure on the stock, granted. But what it does is it guarantees that the company does not have to go beg for money during a bad time. So, so long as obviously Shell price is holding up and knocking on what it does. So, I think there's quite a lot to look for too. And I really think that no matter where you go, and we're only talking about two verticals, I always say there are so many others, it's like an octopus. You know, I think no matter how you slice this thing, there's so much upside to it, especially from these levels. And again, I use the capital, what are we, 56 million US? Use that as your benchmark. Use that versus what the independent valuation said. You know, 4x from here. Use that against what you mentioned, Ryan, about, you know what the IP is valued.  And then go from there. And I do. And those insights are just absolutely invaluable. On behalf of the audience, I really want to thank you. I do want to get Mariusian for last word for sure. And I do want to take this opportunity to encourage any viewers, the content to kick over to Mariusian's channel. He's really the first and foremost. He kind of broke the story through YouTube and he needs to have proper kudos, but his videos are fantastic. If you want to learn more about the Adura story, all you've got to do is just sit back and enjoy the content creator delivering the message to the very best of our ability with what we know at the time. And that's the beauty of the deliverance of information nowadays is that these opportunities can be presented to somebody that just would have never had the opportunity to have it if it weren't for these streams of information. And we really do owe both of these guys a big thank you and appreciation for their time. With that, I want to thank you, Yazan. And I'm going to kick Mariusia over because I want him to continue to remain in the pocket with his content. Because I can tell you what, man, if you subscribe to his channel, he can really make you think. And he puts you right in line with the mental mindset that you have to have in succeeding in investing. It speaks to the majority of people get involved with stock market investing and they run against their very first barrier and they fall over never to invest again. And until we can get over that habit-forming behavior and Mariusia can really condition that mental application, you're really missing out if you're not subscribed. But I'll turn it over to Mariusia to give his last word on the Aduro story and then we'll look to close down the live stream. Mariusia? Yeah, I mean, look, I never want to tell people to buy or sell something. I just provide information. And now, as you said at the beginning, the market is so horrible. I have an army. I have an army of haters out there. People like on Twitter, they set up Twitter accounts with my name on it, just a little misspelled. But that's what happens when you're a celebrity. It's my own fault. But there's a reason why I own almost a million shares. And I'll just leave it at that. I bought it with my own money. You figure it out. You figure it out why I have so many shares. Thank you, Ryan. You betcha. I appreciate your time. And Yazzan, again, thank you for your time. Again, subscribe. Stay tuned to the Independent Investor Channel. We're going to continue to cover the story intimately, as we always do. Like I said, this is a very easy story for me, very easy. I think they're on an addressable market here that is untapped. We are in the early innings of rolling out this technology, Aduro, and a few other players in the space. And it's fascinating. Thank you to become part of the movement on the story here and the flow of information as real-time as we can deliver it. Maryouche, thank you for your time. And Yazzan, we'll talk soon. Gentlemen, take it easy and have a great, great evening. Thank you so much. Have a good one.


Hey everyone, welcome back to another XOZeroes episode. So today's episode, we're going to discuss the announcement for FateCourtChanceup for Blue FC Rera, so GARGEN of the Minds Eye Rera. Okay, so Rera is, again, was teased a couple of weeks ago, and Rera comes from a parallel world of a new timeline. So the period would be May 20th, would be this Thursday after the maintenance, up to May 26th. So again, the design actually looks good, looks actually kind of on par with her current first GARGEN design. This is a bit more conservative, of course, but she's all grown up here. So let us see her skills. Okay, before we go to the skills, let us look at her, you know, the stats that are given to her when you equip Blue Fate Correra. So attack 97, additional, and defense 43 additional health, and 281, and combat power of 16,200 additional stats. So one Rera with gold, and one Rera with blue. Okay, so that the buffs would be applied to the certain conditions that it gives. So obtain FateCourtGARGEN of the Mind Rera buff to chaos type. Okay, let's, before we proceed with the breakdown of her skills, let us break down first who are the chaos units that will she help buff? Okay. Okay, so I have basically sorted out the chaos heroes that we have in the game. These are all chaos heroes. So that's it. So if you can see here as proof, it's all chaos. So first, let us determine first if you need Blue Fate Correra. So the question is, are you using these heroes? So before you summon her, if you're not using these heroes, so if you're not using, or if they're not in your main PVP team, or if they're the heroes that you're not, you know, it's not in your main team, you would have to consider, you know, if you're going to pull for her or not, primary heroes. So Rera, Junae, Jean, Dorca, not even Jean, Dorca, Valentina, Baraka. Those are usually in your main teams that are being used frequently. So except for Jean, so you have Rera, Junae, Dorca, Valentina, and Baraka. So those are the five. So if you don't have those five, I would suggest you decide whether, you know, 50-50 whether you're going to pull on Blue FC Rera or not, because they're going to benefit from her most of all. Okay. The other heroes here that could be, you know, could be useful and will benefit for her would be Deva, Jin, probably Soon, Awaken Xeon if when he gets his FC, Heken could be one as well that can, you know, be used. If you're not using these heroes, you won't get the benefit of it, of the boost or of the buff. So again, try to consider first who are the heroes that you are bringing? Are they Chaos heroes? And if they are then yes, pull for Blue FC Rera. If not, then as much as possible, you move on to the next banner. Okay. So we've discussed the heroes that will benefit from her buff. So more or less right now, you can decide whether you're going to pull for her or not. Again, she is a good buff if you have those heroes that I mentioned a while ago. Okay. So again, the buff increases as you have numerous copies of FC Rera. So multiple copies will do will increase her buff. And here is the level of increase. So for fusion one at E fusion two, three, four and five. So this is the increase that you'll be receiving for each fusion of fate core. Okay. So take a look at the increase in terms of percentage. It's actually good. And once you'll reach level five, five, 70 to 630% would be good enough for it. And and and combat power is not that bad as well, because you'll be able to if you haven't cleared some of the PVP contents because of combat power, this will also help you in terms of combat power as well. So let's take a look at her skills. So she has passive afflicts target. Sorry, focus fire afflicts target with focus fire mark and decreases that dodge block for one round on basic attack. So gains one mana when target mark dies gains one mana if health of target is at 70%. So dimension leap. She has dimension leap. So she actually belongs with with the blooming some some day or or I think they call it time walker. So increases increases dodge for self by 40% and attack by 1000 when attack and removes all dimension leap mark on self after a successful dodge stacks up to four times. Okay. So this is actually a very good combination with Rera enhances her dodge as well. Okay, her S1 is is adamant solidarity deals 187% damage to one enemy. Over time poisons the target dealing 82% damage every turn for three turns deals 50% additional damage for each mana on target that mana that the target has when you are tranquil. Okay. Tranquil of course is being applied by Bathory if Bathory has greater attack than Rera. So next is your S2. You have their moonlight arrow deals 249 piercing damage to all enemies deals 50% damage for each mana and target has when you are tranquil. Okay. My comment on blue FC Rera because she has her gold fate core and that gold fate core has core memory. I don't think you'll be able to use this FC and the the skills are just more or less just decorations or just ornaments there. But I'm sure you don't you won't be able to use her skills. You won't be able to use this FC. You'll be able to use this FC only for buffs. So more or less multiple copies then don't upgrade the hero herself unless if you really want to use her kit for this one. But again, the first Guardian kit is actually much better than this one. So if you can see Guardian of the Minds Rera is a blue rated fate core. So again, the fate core chance up is 0.5%. Core mileage is at 28 and you get a free blue fate career. Once you reach that and the exclusive weapon at the same time, I'm not recommending whether it's a good design or not. So again, this is just a waste of zest. So more or less just skip this one. Okay. So for my recommendations again, um, number one, let me go back to what I said earlier. If you have Chaos Heroes that you like buffed, then get her. Especially if those Chaos Heroes are in your core like Janai, like Baraka, like Rera, of course, like who else? Dorka. So again, if you have those core heroes, then I think it's a must because you're using them and they will greatly benefit from what they call this from blue FC Rera. Okay. I'm actually getting confused about her blue and gold faker, but that is that. If you don't have, if you, if most of those heroes are on your secondary teams, I would suggest you don't pull for this banner. Save your zest, especially if you've depleted your zest from the previous pulls from the previous banners. Save your zest. Like me, I don't, I don't use Rera on my primary team. She's using it in my third team or Janai. A Janai is my in my second team, which I'm not really, I'm building right now, but really not investing that much. Dorka, I haven't been using since I'm still waiting for her FC. And who else? Baraka. I'm actually not, not, not using. I'm only, I've only built FC Baraka, his blue fate core for only the buffs as well. So again, if you're a fan of Rera, be my guest, pull for her. If you really love the design, pull for her. But if you really want to maximize your pulls for her, please think about who they're going to, to affect. Who are they going to buff? And if those heroes, you will be using those heroes in your main teams, in your, you know, your main roster, so that you could maximize the buff from blue fate core Rera. Okay guys, if you have any comments, please put them right. Please put them down in the comments section below. Also for those who haven't subscribed yet to my channel, please do around 79% of my viewers have not subscribed yet. So please do because this helps my channel a lot. Okay guys, thank you. Stay safe. Take care. This is The Warden and I'm out of here.


Hey guys, welcome to the 30 Paintings in 30 Days project. So every day of this month, at least 30 days of this month, we are going to create a little painting a day and we're going to see what happens. I'm going to experiment mostly with watercolor and gouache and let's get to painting and I will see you at the end. If you want instruction on the painting, you need to be over on Patreon. They are going to get the talking version here on YouTube. You're just going to get the speed food through version, sorry. If you'd like to support the free content here on Facebook or here on Facebook, holy cow. If you'd like to support the free content here on YouTube or over in the Facebook art groups, I certainly would appreciate that. You can of course join Patreon. We do have YouTube membership here for a small fee. And also I have an Etsy shop and I have PayPal tip jar and all that stuff. So check out the video description. Relevant links will also be down there. And yeah, don't forget the most important things.  Do share your work with me. I would love to see what you're doing. That's it for now. See you later. Bye guys.


Prime Minister, I want you to know they've been sitting quietly like this the whole time. Well, that's not quite true. I would like to say a very, very hearty welcome to a very good friend. Asotaro has been with us here at CSIS many times in many roles. And he comes now as the finance minister at a time that's of remarkable significance in Japan. Everyone has heard about the so-called Abe economics. But there's no success to Abe economics without aso action. I mean, it's going to require this man who is going to put in place the structure to bring around this transformation. This is a very, very big deal. And it's important for Japan, obviously. It's very important for the United States. And we all need to learn and listen carefully. We were talking just as we were coming down about this metaphor that the Prime Minister has used about arrows. I don't know if you saw the FT this morning. The finance minister talked about bazookas. Now, that grows very naturally having been a marksman and represented Japan at the Olympics as a marksman. But he didn't use bazookas then, but he's using bazookas now. And it's a good thing for Japan. Would you please, with your applause, welcome Taro Aso. We're delighted to have him here with us today. Thank you, Dr. Hamle. Thank you, Dr. Green. And thank you all for coming to join me here. I'm Taro Aso, and I will say this. I am back, too. When you say that each Japanese Prime Minister spends only an ear in office, you are talking about me. When you say that in Japan politics is like a revolving door. You are talking about the Shinzo Abe and me. Again, thank you very much. But you can see something not so bad here. You are now looking at an administration that has two former prime ministers and three former party presidents. You must envious because you can't do anything like that under your presidential system. Bill Clinton as a vice president of Obama, very difficult to imagine, I think. Now I will start off by touching upon our alliance. My view is that something is wrong when you say that the U.S. is always on the giving end and Japan always on the receiving end about the provision of security under our alliance. The Japanese must stand tall as an equal and responsible ally to the U.S. The Japanese must work hard as a guardian of international common goods, peace, prosperity, and democracy. In fact, that was my grandfather's aspiration. When Shigeru Yoshida signed the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty on September 19, 1951 in San Francisco, he hoped that one day Japan could work with the U.S. as an equal partner to sustain the liberal international order. Sixty-two years later, that aspiration still holds. It is my belief that Japan has a noble responsibility to enhance peace, happiness, and democracy in the world. That's why, ladies and gentlemen, Japan must regain its economic power. That's why we are working hard to turn around our economy, pushing what you call abenomics. Make no mistake, we are pushing abenomics, not only for the sake of the economic growth. We are doing that precisely to make Japan your reliable ally and the responsible guardian of peace, prosperity, and democracy. That also applies to the TPP. In March, we said that we would be joined the TPP negotiations. Last week, Tokyo and Washington reached an agreement about some of the issues we needed to solve in advance. Now, I am very much glad that we are on the right track to enter the negotiation. Yes, the TPP is about the economic integration, but it is also much more than that. Remember that Japan is still the second biggest democratic economy in the world. If bound together under the TPP, the Americans and the Japanese can make the world a much better place. The U.S. and Japan bound together by the TPP can emerge as a mega-stabilizer across the Pacific. Think about our combined side, it is really mega. Once again, for the purpose as well, Japan must be stronger. Now, I will spend the next couple of minutes to tell you about so-called abenomics. The logic is plain, simple, and straightforward. First, the bank of Japan is money. Second, the government comes in with fiscal policies stimulating real demand. And third, the government introduces a gross package including TPP, massive deregulations, and other gross plans putting the gross on the sustainable orbit. That is it. That is what you call abenomics, and it's three arrows. Oh, by the way, Shinzo Abe-san was an archery player in his college days. To call abenomics a kind of combination of three arrows fits in most nicely. I was not an archery player. I was a skid shooter and represented Japan for the 1976 Olympic in Montreal. So instead of arrows, I called them bazookas. Anyhow, the yen has become cheaper as a result, but only as a by-product. To say that cheap yen is our goal would grossly miss the point. The big D, deflation is too much difficult and too much persistent to get rid of. We have to use every possible means. At the end of the day, shrinking Japan could do only harm to the world. Only a growing Japan could do good for the people in Japan, for the people in America, and for the people in the world. That is what we are aiming to bring about. If you are still in doubt about what I say, it is probably because you have never gone through deflation, deflation, economic deflation. Let me tell you a bit about what it is like. It all started when the asset price bubble collapsed in the early 1990s. Stock price index at the end of 1989 was about 300,000 yen. It fell down to as low as 7,000 yen. The land price in major cities hit its peak in 1991. It became lower by 87 percent, 110 to 13 yen. As a result, many banks had negative equity. Many companies also had negative equity. Banks were interested only in reducing their balance sheet. Companies were interested only in paying back their debt. Rather than investing in new ideas or products for future growth, they chose to minimize the cost, cutting wages, and so on. Labour unions wanted no layoff, so they chose to accept the pay cut. Gradually, money gained value. Relative to goods grows slow because no one except for the government was willing to invest. Vicious circle took root. Deflation, hence, became very persistent. I must tell you, deflation is like slow motion deaths by losing temperature. It is early stage. It does not feel so painful. Your wage may not grow, but CPI consumption price is also flat. So your purchasing power does not decline that much. It is already too late when you have finally become aware that you are hostage and that you cannot escape the vicious cycle.  That's why deflation is much more harmful. So what ought to be done? Why amenomics necessary? Before the December general election, we thought that the most important thing would be to get rid of deflation mindset of Japanese at the outset of amenomics. We thought that the economic landscape should be redrawn dramatically so that people can get willing to take risks. It was at that time the idea of three arrows over three bazookas showed in our first group, Okara to us. We made it our campaign platform and pushed it hard during the campaign. And the result was we won the landslide victory. At long last, voters gave us mandate, political capital, strong enough to do bold things that were long time coming. We had done nothing then. Other than just voicing our policy package and our will to do it. Interestingly, the market started to respond. Tokyo Stoke English started to rise. It speaks volumes about how importantly it is to change people's perceptions, outlook and mindset. It is true that Japan is only a country that has gone through deflation. None of the nation had a deflation recession after a Second World War ended. That is about the post-war history. If you see pre-war examples, I must mention that Japan is among the few countries that have succeeded in containing a deflation. John Maynard King published his general theory in 1936. Prior to that, there was someone in Japan who did Keynesian policy in the early 1930s. His name is Korehiko Takahashi, who was six-time finance minister and one-time prime minister in the early 1920s, early 1930s, sorry. Takahashi saved Japan by doing exactly what we are doing now. His bold, monetary easing and fiscal spending stopped the deflationary spiral. Like us today, he also did it big and fast, or shock and awe. So much so if we are flanking in Roosevelt would say later that Takahashi had given him inspiration. It encouraged me to think that among our predecessor there was someone who made it. We wished to follow his footsteps. Now back to the real genesis of our dynamics. It started when Mr. Masaki Shirakawa, then head of the BAOJ, Bank of Japan, and I issued a joint statement for the first time in Japan's Monetary History, January this year, so-called joint statement with BAOJ. In that joint statement, the BAOJ essentially introduced the inflation target of 2%. We call it price stability target. On our part, the government pledged to run the kind of macroeconomics and fiscal policies that are flexible and responsive. It was also written that the government should encourage the competition and enhance Japan's gross potentials and establish sustainable fiscal structure. What we did thereafter or what we will do from now on is all based on this joint statement. Anyhow, the first Bazookas is both Monetary Policy. I will not say more about it. You may just want to open your newspaper or magazine. They are now telling a lot about so-called Kuroda comics. Haruhiko Kuroda, the new governor of the Bank of Japan, really did it big and fast, were shocked and all. We are all glad. First of all, he showed guts. Second of all, he is a good communicator. Third, he is well connected with and respected by the member of the central banking community. Now, let me go on to tell you more about the second Bazooka. That is a fiscal policy I am looking after. Please note at this point that we are not making a big government. American conservatism does not apply to the Japanese situation. Here in the US, conservatism is about small government and tax reduction. The situation in Japan is more complex. When the private sector cannot spend and only save under deflation, the government must be the spender of the last resort. Thinking that way, we put forth a large-scale supplementary budget for the fiscal year of 2012. Public works are also important. Not only important, they are vital. Unless we spend more and do it now on the bridge, load and tunnels that are all more than 50 years old, at any given time they may fall apart. I know in the state you have exactly the same problem in the 1980s. I would also like you to remember what people said about Golden Gate Bridge, Huber Dam and so on. When constructed in the 1930s during the Roosevelt period, many people called them simply lavish and extravagant. However, more than 70 years after its creation, Huber Dam continues to draw more than a million visitors a year. Without that dam, Las Vegas would have been a very different place, I say. Without Golden Gate Bridge, the tourist economy in San Francisco would have been much smaller, I'm sure. So we are investing into our future generation when we do public works. That is my definition for public works. I also believe that our tax policy should play a bigger role. In Japan, interest rates and land prices are still extremely low, and yet the companies don't invest. Their capital investment will remain below their depreciation cost, again as a result of deflation. So my ministry introduced a new arrangement. Another new arrangement, if you buy a new machine and equipment for your domestic business expansion, you can get tax deduction or special depreciation. If you invest more in research and development, you can also get your tax reduced. Furthermore, if you hire more or pay more to your employees, you can get a tax benefit as well. Please also note that we do what we do in order to generate domestic demand, not to increase our export. Japanese economy exports only 11% to 13% of GDP. The number is bigger than that of US or Brazil, maybe.  We are number three nations from below. Lower than Japan is US and Brazil, I think. The German and maybe 40% of its GDP out of the export, while China about 25%, for instance. There is another power we can use to invite more growth, that is the power of Sweden. Here Shinzo Abe and I are lucky as both of us are ex-Prior Ministers. He and I have met a whole bunch of CEOs and requested that they should remember their patriotism and hire more or pay more to their employees. It is working. For the first time in many years, an increasing number of companies are willing to pay more. However, getting rid of deflation mindset alone cannot warrant long-lasting recovery. We must lead people's expectations to sustainable economic growth. And for the purpose, we must address two downside risks. One, inflation without growth. Two, interest rate hike without growth. Let me address them one by one. Let's assume that you now have rising CPI, but you have no pay rise because your economy is not growing. That's a bad inflation. People should suffer then. It is right here. The sad bazooka should come into play. The sad bazooka, if you recall, is a package of growth enhancement policies. I know that it's hard to come by. I am not saying we can grow very easily. Still, it takes us only to look into Miller to see who we are. Then you realize you can do more. I know I sound like an optimist. I even believe that to lead your nation, you had better be an optimist rather than cynic or pessimist. One thing in common between Shinzo Abe and I is both of us are true believers in Japan's untapped resources. In that regard, call us an optimistic duo. See, for example, what Japan can offer. High-speed train, bullet train. The bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka runs with average delay time of 30 seconds, not a minute. Since its launch in 1964, the service has caused absolutely no human injury, not to mention the fighter accident. They are actually offering you magnetic levitation technology which could connect New York and Washington D.C. in 40 minutes, not 40 seconds, 40 minutes. Next, good for products. In my part of the world, from Singapore, Hong Kong, Grandon, China, Japanese rice, Japanese apple or Japanese sake and spirits are on high demand. I have said all the time to the farmers in Japan that they can make another Toyota, a giant export industry. Also, content industry. Manga, I hope you know this. This manga has become a French now, you know. Not English, French. Manga and animation, pop music and so on. Some of you may recall that as a foreign minister, I introduced Manga Award to be given to non-Japanese manga creators. Furthermore, some of the small companies in Japan are amazing. My favorite one, Okano in Tokyo, boasts a total monopoly in the market of injection needles. Why? It is only company that produces injection needles as sharp as the mouth of mosquito. In other words, you don't feel any pain. How many employees are there? Only six, including the president and his wife. Amazing. Few other countries have such unknown yet world-class craftsmen companies. Only in Japan you have family businesses whose roots date back to southern years ago. So the real challenge for government is this. To let go. We should simply let the companies shine themselves. That must be at the cost of our third bazooka. For further details, bear with me a couple of months more. We have set up an expert group. They will give us their proposal about the deregulation, innovation and other gross strategies. I am looking forward to the proposals. They are likely to be bold, something that could dramatically change the problems that were at the root of the inflation. In sum, to prevent bad inflation from taking shape, pursuit of gross policies is most important. What about the bad interest rate like hike, which is a second downside risk? It is evident that if we pursue only bold monetary easing, without putting our fiscal house in order, we would lose your confidence and trust. After all, in Japan, gross government debt exceeds 200% relative to GDP. Unless we pursue fiscal prudence, very much hard, there may be a sudden rise in the interest rate. No one will benefit from that, needless to say. However, you should not overly anxious. The truth is, there are only a handful of countries that can fund their entire government debt in their own currencies. Most of the countries must issue bonds denominated in currencies other than their own. Japan can finance its debt by issuing bonds in its own currency. Other such countries include Britain, Switzerland, and of course the US, United States of America. Only four countries in the whole world, I think. For them, what is most important is first of all to lay out the credible roadmap for reducing the debt and second of all to stick to the roadmap and win confidence from the market. In that regard, I am proud of the government agreement. Both ruling and opposition parties achieved last year. The agreement has become a bill. The bill enables the government to raise the rate of the consumption tax from 5% to 8% and then 8% to 10%. The first increase should take place in a year from now and the second in October 2015. No one wants to see tax rate becoming higher. Tax hike is the most unpopular thing to do for the politicians. I think it is the maturity of Japanese democracy that has made it possible for the parliament to pass that bill and I am proud of it. What is also remembering here is the fact that Governor Kuroda's massive easing was made possible on one condition. The government must pursue the fiscal prudence really hard. That is what we promised in the joint statement I mentioned earlier. Within the next two years, the BOJ will buy a huge amount of government bonds in a scale unthinkable so far. The market must become more nervous to see whether or not the government is committed is improving its fiscal situation. So far, the fiscal prudence is not a task for the future. It is a clear and present one that we ought to start tackling now rather than later. I am determined to facilitate the economic environment and raise the consumption tax rate as scheduled based on the provision on the Comprehensive Tax Reform Act. We must also address Japan's own entitlement reform to put the growth of the government expenditure in check. Previously, at the Toronto G20 meetings, Japan pledged fiscal consolidation together with other member nations. We stick to it. We aim at halving the primary balance deficit ratio to GDP by fiscal year 2015 from there in 2010. We also aim at achieving primary balance surplus by 2020. We are going to publish a medium term fiscal consolidation plan around the middle of this year. The second down the list of interest rate hike is avoidable. Abelomics should take a deep root again in order for the economy to seek sustainable growth. Finally, before the conclusion, let me say only a few words about what kind of country Japan ought to be. Japan must be a place where reward meets effort. Japan must be a place where risk takers can be given opportunities not just once but many times. Both of the former ministers represent that there is a chance for a second coming in Japan. Japan must be a place where animal spirit in the sense of John Maynard's cane used invites successes. Japan must be a place for innovation. Japan is now on cutting the edge of new medical technologies. To cite what Shinya Yamanaka, Nobel Prize winner, said, Japan is a country that is closest to bringing the stem cell technology to the bedside. That is about it, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, we are doing all that not only for the sake of the Japanese, but also to make our allies stronger. At the end of the day, the U.S. is the biggest democratic economy in Japan still the second. Together, we could do a lot. For us, the sky is the limit. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm Michael Green from CSIS, and we're now going to take some questions. Twenty-five years ago, about this month, I went to work in the Japanese diet, and my then boss asked a young rising star named Aso Taro to make sure I didn't get in any trouble. He failed, but I was correctly informed that he was a rising star, and I was not told he would be Japan's Takahashi Kurekyo, let alone a skeet-shooting bazooka-wielding Takahashi Kurekyo. But it's a good thing for Japan, and for the world economy, he's on the job. Let me ask the first question about the third bazooka. I know you're waiting a few months. Is something happening in Japan in July? I know you're probably waiting until after the election and also gathering the views of experts. But could you say more about your personal philosophy or principles that would guide the third bazooka, long-term growth strategy? Prime Minister Aso mentioned women's empowerment when he was here, which could add considerable sustained economic growth, or deregulation of other things. What are some of the principles that you think about for that third bazooka? The third bazooka I'm talking about right now is a question I've been asking myself for a few months. I think it's more appropriate to ask the people who are making the bazooka directly. But I hope you can answer my question as far as I know. Regarding the third bazooka, perhaps this question might be better addressed to someone else than myself. I hope you can wait for another few months and hear directly from the people who are responsible for building the ideas right now, and you will be able to get the most accurate answer from them. But as far as I know, allow me to also try to answer the question. Well, at this moment, a large number of people are coming up with wonderful ideas in large numbers. And each of them has a number of ideas. I think it's more appropriate to ask the people who are making the bazooka to get the most accurate answer from them. I think it's more appropriate to ask the people who are making the bazooka with wonderful ideas in large numbers. And it mainly has to do with deregulation or regulatory form. Particularly, let me focus on the medical care area for the moment. For example, in Japan, there is already a production going on for producing nursing care robots. Because we already have the technology which enable people to just think something in their mindset, then it would drive the robot's arm in whatever direction that we would like to see them move. And already that type of technology has been developed in Japan. So the idea is to apply this fully to the use for the nursing care robots. But unfortunately, at this moment, we have a ministry called MAGLW, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, who knows nothing about the robot development system. Of course, they are good at developing drugs and pharmaceuticals. So what they are trying to do is to just apply directly the pharmaceutical oriented development system to the development of the nursing care robots. So many times over clinical trial and clinical experiments have to be performed so that by the time approval is given, the said robot will become highly outdated. So this is not the way to go. So we are going to introduce a new system to overcome this type of issue, for example. This robot is one example. For example, in Japan now, the water supply system, in almost all countries in the world, the private companies are running the water supply system, but in Japan, other than the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we cannot use this water supply system. However, there are 99.99% of the water supply system in Japan, except for the Japanese water supply companies. But all of these water supply systems are made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and all of these systems are made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So this robot is one example. Another example can be found in the water supply system. I think in the world, countries apart from Japan, having the private companies to run those systems, but in Japan, the whole preview belongs to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So this robot is one example. But in Japan, the whole preview belongs to the MIC, Ministry of Information and Internal Affairs and Communication. That is the exclusive area that they will influence on. But Japan is a country which is known for being successful in recovering 99.99% of the water charges. So almost most of them is revenue water, as opposed to non-revenue water. And those systems are run by either the state or the municipalities. So we hope that we can privatize these areas as well. It's just like a schooling facility. The public sector can construct the structures like schools, but we can let the private sector to run the facility. Thank you. Matthew? We have microphones and Matthew set an example by identifying himself. I'm Matthew Goodman here at CSIS. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for those compelling remarks. I have a question about the first arrow, Bazooka, but first I want to comment on your answer to Mike's question, because I think it was very helpful that you're specific in your answer to the question about the growth strategy. And I appreciate that. You like manga, and if I may cite the most famous American manga, Peanuts, there is a regular installment in Peanuts in which Charlie Brown faces his friend Lucy, and she's holding a football and encouraging him to come down and kick the football. And he wants to kick the football, but he doubts that she will hold it. He thinks she will take it away, because every year she takes it away and he lies on his back. He ends up on his back, flat on his back. And so I think a lot of us in Washington are like Charlie Brown. We want to believe, but there have been experiences in the past where the growth strategy has not been specific or has not been carried through. And so I think everyone is looking forward very much to this growth strategy and to the specific elements that are credible and that get carried through on. So that's my comment. The question is about the first arrow. Can you give us a little bit more flavor of the discussion today in the G20 about monetary stimulus, not just in Japan but in other advanced economies and the impact of that on global markets and whether there was a significant concern about that issue and any agreement to address monetary stimulus. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. With regard to this issue, in fact yesterday and today, G20 meetings have been held to which the finance ministers as well as central bank governors have attended. And the previous one was held in Moscow in February and the second one of which has been held just now in Washington. And as was asked in the question, of course, everyone wanted to know about the impact of the monetary easing policy for the banks in Japan because right now the interest rate on the JGB solo, it's at 0.5%, not 5% but 0.5%. So people were worried that it might induce a situation whereby a massive flow of the funds might end up in the emerging market economy. As for us, the three values of this meeting are basically the gap between Japan's inflation and the inflation. This is the target for us. Priority number one. The fact that the money will be cheap is simply a buy-product. So when we are talking about the three basic hours, the primary aim of which is to lift the Japanese economy out from the deflationary recession. That is precisely the priority number one for us. So if the yen might depreciate, then this is only a mere buy-product of the works that we are attempting to make. So these are the storylines that we've been saying to people who want to know more about our measures. And I think more or less understanding has been gained. May I just read out the paragraph 4 of the joint communique and perhaps I can gain your understanding on this. May I read them out? We have agreed that while progress has been made, fire reactions are required to make growth strong, sustainable and balanced. Some countries have taken steps to stimulate activity since we last met. Last met means Moscow. Last met. In particular, Japan's recent policy actions are intended to stop deflation and support domestic demand. I think the portion that I have just read out to you corresponds to the answer, which might be due to answer your question, which might have contained some doubts about our measures. Arthur? I'm Arthur Alexander. I teach Japan Economy at Georgetown, and you're making the subject interesting again. One of the interesting problems that you face, and I do not envy you, is you said the fiscal consolidations that you have made in the past are very different from what you've done in the past. And I think that's a good point. One of the interesting problems that you face, and I do not envy you, is you said the fiscal consolidation, the consumption tax will go up next year in the following year. And you're certainly aware that we'll take a big hit on consumption on income that will have a negative impact on the economy. And I'm wondering how you're balancing these two different issues of fiscal consolidation and demand. The question is, why do we think that we need to raise the unemployment rate to the highest level? That's one of the most important things that we can do to raise the unemployment rate. The question is, why do we think that we need to raise the unemployment rate to the highest level? I think you have hit on the most important points, because whenever we may try to increase the taxes, It does not necessarily result in increasing the tax revenue. We have known the actual examples which had happened in the past in many numbers. As a result, the increase in the tax revenue was reduced. As a result, the economy in Japan became worse. The tax revenue, tax revenue, tax revenue, and tax revenue increased to 41 trillion yen in the next year. In the next year, it was reduced to 37 trillion yen. 5 trillion yen should have been reduced to 4 trillion yen. That is our history. What we want to say now is that we have already paid enough attention. Back in 1997, when the consumption tax rate was raised from 3% to 5%, we initially thought that by doing this, we will receive the increase in the tax revenue by 5 trillion yen. However, it turned out to be that as a result of the tax increase, it had dampened the consumption by individuals. As a result of that, the economy had gotten worse. It used to be back in 1997 that the total tax revenue raised from the corporate tax, income tax, and consumption tax was 41 trillion yen. But in the following year, it was reduced down to 37 trillion yen. So we hoped that it would add on another 5 trillion yen to our tax revenue, but it didn't. Instead, we ended up losing 4 trillion yen. In the following year, last year, when the government, the local government, the government, the government, the government, the local government, and the local government signed an agreement with the government to increase the tax revenue by 18 trillion yen. In other words, it is said that if the economy is not good, it is said that if the economy is not good, it is said that it will not increase. It will be decided by October this year. If there is no good result until October this year, it is said that it will increase from April next year. The current situation is that we are thinking about such things. And last year, then the ruling party, DPJ, as well as LDP and Komei, were able to strike an agreement, have signed the agreement. And there was number 18th provision included in that document. And the government, the government, the local government, the local government, the local government, the other provision included in that document. And put it simply, what it meant was that we have to see, first of all, the pickup in the economy, otherwise no raise in the consumption tax would take place. And whether to do it or not will be decided by coming October. So by October, if we end up having a picked up economy, then we can raise the tax, but if it doesn't work out that well, then the timing of the raising of the said tax will be deferred to a later date. So as shown in these kind of responses, we have been seriously considering the implications of the tax increase. So if you ask me if we can make a decision right now to say definitely that taxation will be raised at this stage of March, we cannot say that definitely. We have to allow some more time to make sure that the economy would really get better, and then the judgment will be made, definitely. We have time for a very short question. Mr. Griggs in the middle here. Wait for the mic. I'm Chandler Griggs, student at Georgetown University. Thank you for speaking to us today. You mentioned the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a means for economic growth for Japan. I was just wondering about the agricultural sector, specifically rice, soy, wheat, beef, and milk, and how these domestic political pressures will influence the negotiations going forward. In what we have just said, the idea of making all of the imperfections zero is what we call TPP. I know that TPP initially started with an ideal that all the tariff has to be eliminated entirely. But for example, in the case of the United States, if we look at sugarcane, if it is liberalized 100 percent, then the sugarcane produces in the southern part of the United States will go down completely due to Mexico. Likewise, if the beef is liberalized 100 percent, then Australia's OG beef will be completely destroyed, and the US will lose its face. I don't think that will happen. Likewise, look at beef. If beef is liberalized 100 percent, then OG beef will take over for sure. So there is going to be no more cowboys left in the United States. That situation is totally, utterly inconceivable. And I know that any country has a sensitive issue to themselves. For example, the United States has been requesting Japan to do something about the automotive area because already Japanese tariff on the automobile is zero. But the United States would like to maintain the 25 percent tariff rate on the trucks and the 2.5 percent on the passenger cars. And this is a condition that the US has asked us to keep. For the agricultural industry, we are not sure how much we will be able to produce or how much we will be able to produce. But we are not sure how much we will be able to produce or how much we will be able to supply. Also, as a Japanese agricultural leader, for example, the first language of Japan is the same as the first language. The first language is 300 yen, or 350 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, or 300 yen, the same kind of agriculture has a very strong impact. In that sense, there are a lot of things related to agriculture. So now, what kind of things do we need to strengthen? Also, in terms of rice, in the end, thanks to the global warming, Hokkaido's rice used to be the representative of the bad rice, but now, the rice in Hokkaido is now the same as last year's rice and the same as last year's rice. After all, what does that mean? The difference between the rice that is in the average price of Hokkaido's agriculture is the lack of land, or the lack of land or the lack of land is 25 to 25 times more than the average price of Hokkaido's agriculture. So the rice that is made in that area has a strong impact. So the rice is moving northward and southward, and the contents of the agriculture are different. I think that it's going to flow. I don't know much about agriculture, but I think it's going to flow southward. That's what I think. Likewise, in regards to agriculture products offered by Japan, of course, from now on we have to decide which tar is should be imposed on which item in the agriculture. So we might decide eventually that some items I would qualify for subsidy and so forth. But there is a positive side to the agriculture as well. For example, look at strawberries produced by Japan. To us, it's just an ordinary strawberries, but one piece of a strawberry can claim price of 300 to 350 yen a piece in Shanghai or countries in the Arab area. For us, we hesitate that one package or packet of strawberry is sold at 300 yen, for example, but if the selling place is different then you can command a spectacularly high price. So one just piece of strawberry would be enjoyed much more in some of the countries in the world. So in this way farmers will have a way to make a profit out of the products that they make. So I think all depends on what agriculture product or item you are talking about. There are certain areas that definitely are competitive and can be raised and maintained. Unfortunately, in case of rice as well, thanks to the global warming, the Hokkaido which is the northernmost island in Japan is now enjoying the benefit as a result of it, as a result of able to grow a much more tasty rice. In the past, Hokkaido produced rice was known for most undelicious kinds of rice. No good reputation at all, but last year as well as one year before that Hokkaido produced rice has been given golden price for the excellence in their products consecutively. Why? Because in Hokkaido you can have on average much bigger paddy rice, paddy field to raise rice unlike Kyushu or Shikoku for example. Their cultivation area is 20 or 25 larger, 25 times larger than elsewhere. So in this way even rice could claim a much more high competitiveness and right now because of this climate change and so forth rice production area is really shifting toward northward much more so I think the areas in the south would be shifting their crops to much more in the fruits area like strawberries for example. So this is a flow that I see I'm not an expert on the agriculture, but since I live in the southern part of Japan and when I look around the areas around my residence I could tell that changes are occurring. Minister, thank you for a comprehensive concrete and candid presentation. We would appreciate it if you could give the minister and his delegation a chance to get to the airport and get on to their next appointment. We'll have copies of the speech available out front and also on our website, but first let's conclude. Please join me in expressing our appreciation.


Hello, and welcome to my talk, You Are What You Measure, Digital Biomarkers for Insights in Personalized Health. My name is Irina von der Brug, and I'm excited to share with you my journey that started two years ago when I decided to quit my career in molecular biomarker research and dive into the world of data science and digital health. Since then, I started my Quantified Self project and the freelance business named You Are What You Measure. Through this project, I try to track as many facets of my life as possible on the one hand to see if and how I can optimize my own health using this health data and on the other hand to use all the data to improve and practice my data science and data visualization skills. So to do so, I'm using a wide variety of wearables, apps and sensors like this ring, for example, that measures my activity, sleep and readiness. My watch is tracking my steps and my heart rate. When I'm sleeping, I'm wearing a headband that is measuring my brain activity. I have this sensor in my upper arm that measures my glucose, and everywhere I go, I take my air quality sensor or my light intensity sensor with me just in a few things. I also use different type of apps like the Strava app to record my workouts, the rescue time app that monitors the time that I'm using my mobile device or my laptop and the chronometer app to record a food diary. So in this talk today, I'm really excited to share with you two things and I hope to inspire you in at least one of two ways. First goal is to demonstrate the potential of digital biomarkers to its funds, personalized health, whether for personal use or for implementation in your clinical trial or clinical practice. The other goal is to share with you my enthusiasm about R to collect, analyze and in particular visualize digital health data. With digital biomarkers, I refer to objective and quantifiable data collected by digital devices such as apps, sensors and wearables that provide information about a physiology, behavior or environment. Typically, such digital devices allow continuous, if not at least more frequent, collection of data and thereby instead of comparing a single time point to a population mean and a more individualized feedback, even in real time. A perfect example of molecular biomarkers gone digital are the reasons that founders in blood glucose monitor. Various sensor-based devices now exist that allow continuous or flash measurement of blood sugar levels. This helps patients in managing their diabetes but can also provide insights in an individual's response to different food types. Another digital biomarker that deserves specific mention is heart rate variability. Heart rate variability or HRV is the variation in the time between consecutive heartbeats. This variation in heart rhythm is a good thing. It keeps the heart flexible so it can easily adapt to certain changes or stresses. When we are under stress, the variability in our heart typically lowers. HRV is relatively easy to measure with commercially available heart rate monitors. I use HRV myself as an aid to better listen to my body by taking a three minute short-term HRV measurement every morning and then awakened using a heart rate monitor on my finger in combination with the HRV Portraying app. In this chart, you can see my HRV fluctuating over time, indicating a period of stress about here in the middle of May, as well as a strong response of my body to my second COVID-19 vaccination, indicated by a strong drop in HRV. In a similar way as HRV, I track my long-term trends for various auto parameters. For most of these, I don't really care about the numbers at the moment. I just want to keep track and build my personal data bits. But that's not always easy. At the moment, I first analyzed my step count. I tracked with the Apple Watch, which was about here after a year of wearing the Apple Watch in October last year. I was shocked by my sedentary lifestyle. As you see, I hardly reached the 5,000 steps a day. From that moment on, I started to almost obsessively track my step counts to make sure I hit at least 10,000 steps a day, as you can see later on. In the same way, actually, in the name of science, I measure my body weight every single day using the cardio smart scale. Although I try hard to not look at the scale every day, I can't help to do so. I then feel a little bit frustrated now and then. But I really like to keep on connecting this data and just see how my weight evolves over time. Probably the easiest thing to track is your sleep. You don't have to do anything for it. Just sleep, and your data is ready when you wake up. Therefore, I'm using the dream hatband that measures brain activity. And besides tracking the amount of sleep, motion and heart rate, the product algorithm can make a pretty accurate prediction of my sleep phases. So I use the sleep phases to gain more insights in my sleep. I, for example, plotted the frequency of my sleep phases along the night. And here you can see that sleeping in is not likely to get more deep sleep, which is needed for recovery. As deep sleep is this purple band, it occurs mostly in the beginning of the night. So for increasing my amount of deep sleep, I better make sure to go to bed in time. In addition, I keep track of my nightly patterns in HRP, which should show an increase during the night as a sign of recovery, as well as my heart rate. I also measured with the oro ring, which should show an early decrease as a sign of recovery during the deep sleep. Another interesting thing about sleep, or lifestyle in general, is granularity. Going to bed and waking up at about the same time each night is important to keep our bodies by a logical clock functioning correctly and not to suffer from a so-called social jet lag. As you can see, during the one and a half year of the pandemic, my sleep pattern has been nearly excellent. No late night parties in the weekend, no needs to sleep in, and no early morning flights to Keshe. My eating patterns on the other hand is a different story. Working from home has especially messed up my lunchtime. On some days, I'd have my lunch already at 11 a.m., whereas on other days, I completely forget about lunch until late in the afternoon. Talking about working from home and for myself, I got some other interesting insights using the rescue app for my laptop and mobile devices. As you see, I start to use the mobile phone almost first thing in the morning and, yes, I also seem to go to bed with it. You can also see that I had a hard time to close my laptop in the evening or put aside my work in the weekends. So it's clear that I got hooked on data science and data visualization. It's actually pretty addictive. And with so much data that I'm collecting, there's always something more to visualize, to analyze, but not all our blog posts to read or, I must admit, another coding issue to be solved. As another data visualization example, I'd like to end my talk with this data visualization of patterns around my morning period. In this chart, where each ring represents another cycle, you see how the oer ring picks up the rising body temperature after ovulation. Although not very surprising, I was more surprised to see a similar pattern for my breathing rate during sleep. Apparently, some hormonal influences cause my breathing rate to be higher at the end than the beginning of each new cycle. And the same hormonal influences would be seen for the base that I noted a headache. Although I still don't know what is triggering the headaches, it is fairly obvious from that plot that my headaches that occur only during the first half of my menstrual cycle.  And I hope you agree with me that you are what you measure. And if I am what I measure, then, well, I sleep, I move, I work, and I use R. A lot for about two hours, almost two hours a day, every day, including the weekends and holidays over the past year. But I'm excited to keep on working. I look forward to update and update my skills further to automate and share the data upload analysis and visualization tools that I have worked on so far. I hope to create an interactive shiny dashboard. But most of all, I really look forward to working together on some awesome digital health and data-fist projects. So please get in touch. If you have any ideas on those projects, I would be happy to hear from you. For now, I'd like to thank you for listening. And again, please get in touch. I'd love to hear from you. Bye.