Good afternoon, everyone. So I'm going to talk about a project that we've conducted together with the World Bank. And so the project is really about leveraging any kind of freely accessible data, geospatial information coming from GIS databases, but also low-resolution satellite imagery to make assessments of road network infrastructure at scale. And by that, it means evaluating the condition of roads in developing countries to better plan investment programs and make road networks more resilient to climate change. So first, an introduction for people who do not necessarily know who the World Bank is. It's actually the largest lender in the world. They loan about $70 billion a year for any kind of education, health, food, or infrastructure programs. And infrastructure actually represents 25% of the money that the World Bank is even investing every year. And the World Bank mainly invests in developing countries. And so the context of the work we've been doing at the World Bank, and by the way, we are Altea, we're a software company. We specialize in leveraging any form of data source, mostly coming from visual sensors, to make predictions and work on analysis at scale. And so the context was to help World Bank understand how much and how to prioritize their lending programs tied to road improvements in developing countries. And the main issue that was faced by the organization, it's something that's really simple. The cost of getting access to data in order to make those assessments can be really high. If you talk about high resolution satellite images, it could be more than $1.5 to $2 million just for the data collection process. And so we've worked together trying to think of a method that would actually make the right amount that will give actually the right amount of information while minimizing the data cost. And so the state of the art for geospatial data analysis at scale, if you talk about infrastructure projects, but also, I guess, any type of business topic, you have available open source data that's coming from many different databases. OpenStreetMap is one of them. And that kind of open source data gives you access to, I would say, a first scope of information. In our case, it was the mapping of the road network for the developing countries that we work on. Then you have also low resolution satellite images that are available through different kind of databases. OpenData by AWS is one of them. Or you can also get them directly from the Copernicus portal. And the resolution of that type of imagery is about 10 meters per pixel, which, when it's combined to open source data, can give you great information on the type of the road, if it's paved or unpaved, and the general condition of it, especially if you do not only use optical data, but also SAR information coming from radar satellites. And then on the right side of the screen, what's more expensive is high resolution imagery that will give you more granular information. And usually, you would leverage high resolution images to make like a real microscopic assessment on a portion of the network. So this was kind of like the framework of our analysis. And what we've decided to do was to build an artificial intelligence model to improve artificially the granularity of the low resolution satellite image by multiplying the different data sources that we had access to. So you can see it a little bit as of aggregating so much information together that at the end, the results is a bit bigger than the sum of all the elements that you put into play. And so to do so, we leveraged, as I said, optical data from Sentinel-2, SAR data from the same program, and about a dozen open source databases, GIS, like OpenStreetMap, but also initiatives like Mapillary, which is a way to get access to ground-based images in developing countries. If I take a little bit more, if I talk a little bit more about the approach and get into the technical workflow that we've enabled, it was kind of like three steps. The first step was to build a digital representation of an entire-road network, so at the country level. In our case, we did it for the countries of Peru and Mexico. So linking our AI model to all of the accessible databases that are available in the cloud and work on some aggregation algorithm to build a network model that would be the best representation of that road network. And then what we've done is enrich that representation, the digital twin of our road model network, by getting from the cloud all the optical and SAR information that we could in order to build a pavement index and a condition index. So basically, the pavement index would give you information on if the road is paved or unpaved, and the quality index would be more like how practical is the road. Is it like in a very good state, or is it like completely broke? And that information is crucial because it helps governments, and in that case, the World Bank lending the money. Understand how to develop a specific area. You can understand that if you want to develop a commercial relationship between two cities in Peru, you have to make sure that the highway that links those two cities is actually in great shape and allows the commercial traffic to be handled. So that was the second step. So using that digital twin and reach it with aerial images coming from freely accessible satellite data. And the third step was to do some ground truthing. So using available data that is very granular and available at the country level to understand how good our model was and basically comparing the prediction to information that was available on the ground. And that indicator was actually a KPI for the project and enabled us to compare ourselves to other types of indicators, macroeconomic indicators that are used by the financial institutions. I'm going to pass on the technical details, but what's interesting is to look a little bit at the results that we've obtained. So with that multilayered AI model, combining information and then enriching it with heterogeneous data, we built a road network that was 60% richer than OpenStreetMap with information on the pavement and the condition of the road that was 80% accurate based on the ground truthing that we've made. And so just to give you a perspective on what it means for a country like Mexico or Peru, usually the Department of Transportation only gets information on 20% of their network. And so we offer them a method at scale that was giving them very granular information on 100% of the roads that they have in their country and basically opening their eyes on most of the investment initiatives that they have to do to connect to the most rural populations. And I'm going to close on the benefits and next steps we see for that type of large-scale initiative, mostly relying on freely accessible data. So if I take Peru, again, we mapped more than 500,000 kilometers of roads, mostly in rural areas where usually you don't really get any information. And this is highly critical, again, to connect to those rural population. Understand if you can plan to put a hospital, schools, or any infrastructure that would actually make the life of these communities better. And that approach is actually, like, six times less expensive than the traditional methods that are used and actually takes only a month to be deployed at a country level, while if you have to do that by ground means, driving a vehicle and take notes on every road of the network, it would take more than 20 years. And what you can see on the left is kind of like an overview of the road quality that we have computed for the country of Peru. And what's interesting about the type of approach for the digital city, but also digital infrastructure initiative is once you have built a digital twin of your network, then you can start analyzing it even further by deploying models that simulate, in that case, that you see on the right, the pressure of the network to climate events. And this is something we've actually done in Tunisia. We've modeled with the same method, a digital twin of the primary and secondary road network, and then built a model to simulate the impact of climate change at the country level and understand which sections of the network would be more or less resilient to those new type of events. And as such, help the government plan for renovation programs that would encompass that notion of climate change in their decision process.


All right, guys, go ahead and get started. Just one thing real quick before we get started. Des Kitchens, hey, D-Led, Des Kitchens. I was just going to say something quick, D-Led. OK. Just to update you guys, Des Kitchens, who's our running back coach, is taking the offensive coordinator job in the University of Virginia. And we're happy for Des. It's a great opportunity.  And so he will assume that position immediately. And we will, obviously, finish the season in the running back room by committee. So we've got a lot of good coaches here that can help. D-Led. I tweet that out, coach. Hold on. We got breaking news here. I don't know if this is going to be breaking, but. Yeah, I'll tweet it out. Ross, you're going to probably beat me. Tweet it out. I'll fight over who gets it first here. Yeah. Well, let me go to my question. You've driven me a curve ball. Give it a couple of seconds if you need to finish tight. Yeah. Just, Coach, can you discuss the juggling job the staff did to get ready for this game? And you had 66 snapped by the practice squatters. And I imagine you and your staff went through great links to get ready for this game. Yeah, that's part of the job description of a professional coach. And those were what the circumstances were. And so we had to adapt. We had to adapt in game. There was a lot of moving parts going on in the middle of the game. And guys stepped up. We've got a lot of production from guys that weren't necessarily with us in camp. Guys have been on our practice squad. They've had to step up. So that obviously came up short. But I appreciate those guys and the staff and getting the guys ready to go. And as far as Coach Kitchen's going, what will that committee look like with what Lefler? Regardless, Lefler's works with some backs, I guess, too, at one point. How would that committee look for you? We've got plenty of coaches here. I can step in. Dave Ragon, TJ Yates, lead. We'll get this thing done for this week. And then I'll take some time and be thorough about anybody else, anybody we bring in here and staff. So it won't be immediate. We know Russia Judd with their. OK. And just a little bit more on Parker, Hesse, what's y'all see during the draft process to make y'all think he can move from defensive end to tight end? It's been a three-year process, I guess. Yeah. No, it was Todd Downing, who's now the coordinator in Tennessee, was our tight end coach. We went out to the pro day with Hocketson and Phant. And Hesse was willing to work out. He was a team captain in Iowa at the defensive end. And then we got post-draft. And a lot of times when it's sometimes it's hard to fill that spot, especially when you've got a lot of production in that room, coming back, a lot of guys may not sign them as undrafted free agents. And we took a flyer on Parker. Todd liked him and said, hey, look, this guy's willing to come in here and try. And I believe he was in a rookie camp. And then I think he was going somewhere else to try out as a defensive guy. And we had him try out as tight end. And he hung around with a lot of guys on IR. He took a ton of reps that spring in 19, hung around on P-Squad, kind of went up and down. And when they let him go in Tennessee, he was a guy I was familiar with that wanted to get a shot here. Thanks, coach. Michael. Hi, Arthur. How are you? All right, Coach, how are you doing? All right, I'm getting better. This thing's coming for everybody, it feels like. So yeah. Yeah. Definitely is. Panging in, watching TV broadcasts, apparently, instead. What, I know you talked a little bit about yesterday or didn't, but what did the officials tell you about the Matt Ryan slide slash play? What were you told about that and the calls slash not calls? Yeah, I'm not going to get into the officiating thing with the way they ruled it. I'd imagine they clarify that on the TV broadcast, Michael. It's not the only time it's happened this season, but that's something that has an emphasis by the competition committee. But that's the way they ruled it. So that's what happened. And the calls and effect from that, to where you're at after that, being in a third long situation. As far as Kyle goes, any update or clarity on what's going on with him there and whether you expect him? I'm not going to get a lot of clarity. Let's see how the week goes. So we're not ruling him out today. This maybe is a weird question, but the fact that he's close to getting into Dick's mark, does that play into it at all this week? If he pushes for it and he comes to you and says, hey, listen, I want to make a run at that, how do you weigh that in a last game scenario? Not coming to that. He's going to come and say, how would he help us win? So I guess those things are nice. I'm not disregarding those things, those stats. But the only stat that matters, can we go out there and beat the Saints? And so that's Kyle. That's why we like Kyle. He's going to be, as he's proven this year already. And I think I've said it multiple times. I think he's just scratching the surface. But he wants to help the team win. That's your goal as a football player and as a football coach. How do you, this is your first year doing this. And how do you handle the last week of the year with guys? Do you start playing other guys? Maybe start to get them some reps, some looks? Do you stick with it, kind of just as is? These different guys take different philosophies on this. That's great. Our approach is to win the game. Every game we go out, that's our job description. And when you look at it, I know you guys have one game left. But how do you view what this team has accomplished this year and what this team has done? You know, obviously, you want to play in the postseason. We came up short. But like I said, that's probably a better question for sometime next week or thereafter that might. Appreciate it. Thanks, Arthur. Josh. This might follow up a little bit on that. But how much of what you do from here on out and in terms of personnel will be with an eye toward 2022 as you start to figure out what the roster is going to look like next season? We're playing to win this game, Josh. That's the best way I can describe it. There are so many things that happen.  They change so much from year to year. We obviously have a long-term vision. But short-term, the way it always is when we line up and play on Sunday, we plan to do whatever we have to do, play our way we can to win that game. Deron Harmon mentioned yesterday about liking the way that some of the young players on this team approached the game. How have you tried to balance, or did you try to balance this year, the youth that you had to have by necessity with the cap concerns with enough veteran guys like Deron to counterbalance that? And will that formula always be the same, or does it change as you go through this process? It changes, but that certainly was our intention and why we brought Deron and Eric in here. I don't think there's any secrets about it. I got a great appreciation for Deron Harmon, Eric Harris, and what they've meant to this football team. But Josh, you've got to evaluate what are your circumstances, and the way you asked it, you kind of answered it. It will change year to year. It's not just like, hey, we did it for 21. We're going to have to do it again for 22 or 23. And your circumstances are going to be, we're going to be at a different spot. So. Thanks. Thank you. Tori? Yeah, I think just kind of going back to what Michael was talking about, just preparing for the final week. I mean, do you feel like this team has kind of the wherewithal to honestly go into itself motivated to where you don't really have to kind of lay it out and be like, hey, this is a big game, even though there's no playoff implications? I mean, do you feel as though this team kind of has that culture in place to be able to do that on their own? Yeah, we don't, Tori, we got the wrong people. So I guess you find out about, you find a lot of people through adversity. I think that's, we found out a lot about this team throughout the year.  For the most part, we answered that. You said we came up short yesterday, but if you've got to answer your question, we would think we had the wrong guys if we had to sit there and trick them and motivate them. That's absurd. That's nobody that we want here. Terry and I want here to play here. We'd have an issue with that and they won't be here. Cool, thanks. That's it for me. Do you have any follow-ups? Yeah, yeah. Coach, just the defense yesterday came on 4-3. Was that just part of what y'all felt you had to do? And then I had to rail, you know, follow-ups to find, you know, it looked like y'all had to just, you know, it was a lot of things that we hadn't seen. I had to just kind of do some stuff because of the situation, I believe. That's what you do when you're trying to win the game. So I thought that was best on the circumstances. I thought that was best for this game plan. And it was a nice job by those guys executing that package. AJ did a nice job, matching for the most part, but that'll always be our charge every week. You'll always look to problem-solve and give us the best chance to go win a game.   I would imagine y'all got him, you know, real late last week. Well, Thurman's been here. Thurman's been in our program. I've been called up, called up. Yeah, but he's been here and that's real. And you got a development program and you need everybody here and you get somebody in your program. And he showed improvement every week. And the circumstances, I mean, there was an opportunity there. And same with Leonard, who was here and y'all had to go back and getting. And he had to play, he looks like the three snaps on the kicks. Sure.  Now that's part of it.  And so, you know, we bounce around and so does practice squad, but at least he had been here and we felt confident if he had to play, at least he knew, he would know what to do. And just one question on the Saints here, eight and eight, y'all could knock them out. You know, it's a rivalry around here.   Yeah, it's about us. And, you know, you know, we need to go out and win this game. Do you, Ed? You know, division game, we got a, I got a ton of respect for the Saints and what they've done their program for a long time and Sean Payton said it the last time we played them. We understand, you know, any division game is huge. Certainly this one being here in Atlanta, being another home game against a really quality opponent. And we need to go win this game. All right, thanks coach. Thank you, Michael. Yeah, I've got a couple. First, when it comes to Dez, you've been an offensive coordinator in your past. What do you see from him that makes you believe that he'll be a good OC? He's a smart coach, communicates well, understands how to provide value every week in terms of strategically, you know, coming up with ideas, getting his guys ready to go. There's a lot of things, communicates well. So he's a good, smart coach. He'll be missed around here, but it's a heck of an opportunity for him. And just at the end of the first half, there was maybe a little bit of, you know, every time management, I guess the clock went down again at points, just what was the strategy and the thinking there toward the end? I believe it wasn't like little under two minutes left. Can you tell him about after AJ's interception? Yeah. We had our timeouts, we had the ball midfield. We got in position to score. That's what we're supposed to do. Yeah, I guess I just meant like, was there a thought process maybe taking some timeouts earlier there in that or no?  I mean, they got the ball back after half. We need to score and then a fine line, you know, we're obviously trying to score touchdown. And, you know, you're playing that game there, not giving them the ball back too quick either with an explosive offense. So it's pretty obvious. Appreciate it, thank you. Josh. I know you're fairly neutral, but when it comes to analytics, whatever that means necessarily, but are there any statistics that you monitor internally that you think do show fairly progress or not as a season goes on? Yeah, we have a good analytic department. I think, you know, it's a kind of industry that's popped up. I think it's a lot of very misunderstood from the outside. I think a lot of people on the fringe, you know, when I make a dollar, I don't fault them for that. I don't think most people understand it. It sounds smart to write about, sounds smart to the user when something goes bad. But like I said, we have a, I'd argue one of the better analytic departments and pro sports, we put a lot of thought into it. And it's all about user application, but you're talking about splicing up stacks and you're coming at it. This isn't baseball and basketball. So some of them are really good to look at and you listen, you learn, and some of them are just, you know, you can bunch things, bundle things together, try to create your own narrative. So I don't know really what you're asking there, Josh, other than you get to the bottom of it. And, you know, you have a more direct question about it. When you get that stat sheet, the first time after a game you get, when you get that stat sheet, is there one place your eye goes? One or two places where your eye goes that you say that's a fair indication of how we played today and how we're playing through the season? I think it'd probably be the final score. The first place my eyes will go, Josh. You got a place you start?  Everybody's different in terms of something that they think. But I mean, the ultimate thing is the score. I think there are a lot of things too. There's a lot of misleading stats, I think when you're having a bad season and you're playing a lot of down a lot of games and you're in a lot of two-minute drives and you sit there and pat yourself on the back for some pattern souped up passing stats. Great, you know, we want to be balanced. You know, there's some of the things that are pretty obviously situational that matter. But the first stat I look at, Josh, I look at the scoreboard. Corey? I'm good, thank you. All right, anything else? All right, thanks guys, thank you. Thank you.


So first, thank you all for coming today. Especially, thank you to the San Francisco Public Library, to our wonderful host, Amna Ali, and to the Business Science and Technology Department of the San Francisco Public Library. This would not be possible without you. So thank you again for all of your efforts. Today's presentation is a state planning and the tagline there is because at least one thing is certain. And I think it was Benjamin Franklin, who was quoting a French Revolutionary who said, there are only two things certain in life and that's death and taxes. And depending on what side of the tax code you're on these days, that last part might not even be true. But we are going to talk about the one certain thing that we know is going to happen and that is that unfortunately none of us get out of life alive. And so we're going to talk a little bit about estate planning to that end. First, a little bit about me. This is my educational pedigree which you guys can review as I'm speaking but the reason why I got into estate planning was because I lost my father. When I was in my, I guess it was my mid 20s, and it was rather unexpected, and I had to watch my mother go through a very unforgiving probate court system with a lawyer that she did not really trust or get along with. And on top of that he died around the beginning of May. And so, on top of burying her husband she didn't know if the taxes have been paid she didn't know if the mortgage has been paid. She didn't know if the utilities bills have been paid there were a lot of things that were up in the air, and watching her go through that more than anything else propelled me to never have to let somebody go through that again if I could help it. And so that's essentially why I got into estate planning. We are going to have some time for question and answers and we'll talk more about what this presentation is going to tell on the next slide but there's a QR code down at the bottom here that if you have any questions that are specific to you that are not appropriate to be asked. During this time please go ahead and scan that QR code here, or perhaps at the very tail ended our last slide, or if you do have questions go ahead and throw those in the chat. And I'm now will be monitoring those for me. So what should you expect for the next 45 minutes. I'm going to do my best to make this as entertaining as possible I know that the subject matter can run into the realm of being a little bit dry and technical but whenever possible I am going to use real world examples to help illustrate the point and to make sure that that things are discussed in a much more clear manner. The next thing that we're really going to be doing though is we're going to be defining the probate process and talking about, you know, what exactly that means what what is probate and what should you expect from a probate procedure. The next set of slides are we're going to talk about common issues with probate and how to avoid them, essentially, and there are quite a few issues with California probate. We're also going to have a discussion about what the components of a well rounded California estate plan should look like. And then with any time that we might have left over, we're going to take questions at that time. Before we move on though I do want to say a little bit of a disclaimer. Nothing in this presentation is geared to be legal advice. Okay, this is going to be 100% purely information, purely informational driven. This is going to be a 30,000 foot view of what the estate plan of an average Californian should look like what the California probate system looks like, and the pitfalls that you may want to try to avoid. Also, and again, I have to say this because the bar association is kind of stickler about this, simply attending this does not create an attorney client relationship. So just by attending please don't expect that that's what this is but if you if you do have questions again, there is a QR code at the tail end of this presentation feel free to contact me through that. And maybe we can have a little bit more of an in depth conversation about your particular situation. So without further ado, let's talk about what is probate. So probate, according to Webster's as I said here is the process of proving in a court competent jurisdiction such as a probate court, that an instrument of document if you will, is the valid last will and testament of a deceased person. And more broadly, it is the process of administering an estate in California that process is pretty much built on nine steps. First, if there is a will you lodge that will with your probate court, and you have to then prove up its authenticity. If the will is proven to be authentic then we admit that will to probate, and we appoint an executor, and that executor's job is to marshal all of the assets in the estate, and to get those assets appraised and submit all of that paperwork to the court. From there we also go about identifying the errors that are listed in the will, or if there is no will, then we identify the errors by doing an investigation of the family and marital history of the deceased person. Okay. Once all of that paperwork has been submitted to the court and the court has approved it. Then we take those assets and we distribute them according to the terms of that will, or if there are no terms to the will then we distribute them in a manner that's according to the California probate code. And that basically means that everything gets liquidated and distributed out in equal shares to the errors outlaw. And so, why should you try to avoid probate like the plague. Okay, and I know that that sounds a little dramatic, but I just want to make sure that I drive home the point. It's not that you can't go through California probate you can absolutely do that. But there are some really big problems with the California probate system as of today, as we know, in 2020, we were hit with coven. And that means that there is a huge backlog of probate cases from people who did not expect to die when they did. And so that means people died without wills that meant that they died with all sorts of property problems, maybe their errors have been quite identified maybe people are fighting over the assets. I can tell you that right now I have colleagues that practice California probate that I've had probates sitting in the California probate system for years, and they are still there. And so it's really important. If you can at all avoid that system as much as possible. And that's why I'm telling you in the first bullet point their time grinds to a halt. So right now the average time it takes to probate an estate in California is 12 months. And that is depending on the county that you're probating in the county that you'll be doing that in is the county where the the dead person resided. And so if it's a very populated county you can expect that that timeline is going to be much longer. Also, it depends on the complexity of the estate. So if there are a lot of assets in that estate and they need to be appraised and a probate referee has to be appointed to do that, that adds to that turnaround time as well. Another thing that can add to that turnaround time is whether or not the errors are readily identifiable. So again, if you die without a will we have to find out where your things go. And if we can't identify or locate those errors that also increases the time it takes to probate an estate. So again, just remember probate takes time. And, and it's something that you're going to want to avoid. The second reason why you're going to want to avoid the probate system like the plague is that there are very expensive probate fees associated with probate.  So in terms of a modest California estate, let's say $1.5 million estate in California, your total fees set by statute are going to be $56,000. So think about that. That's $56,000 that is automatically going to an attorney and to an executor to administer the estate. And I can guarantee you that that is not the low number that you're going to be hitting. That's the minimum. You still have to pay for a probate for referee that's appointed by the court. You still have to pay all of your court fees. And if the estate in any way becomes litigated that number only goes up the hourly rate of your attorney is now going to be factored in to defending any claims against the estate. So again, that $56,000 fee number for a $1.5 million estate is really not very accurate. The other thing I want to say is in terms of those fees again one half of those fees goes to your executor and the other half goes to your attorney. Okay. And so again the expense is something that you want to avoid. The next thing that you're going to want to think about is that the probate process is public. So I talked about before in our previous slide that your executor the administrator of your state has to prove up the inventory in that estate that means that they have to list all of the non cash assets in that estate and a probate referee has to submit that all of that paperwork is then submitted to the court and that becomes part of the public record. So think about it this way for that $1.5 million estate which we all know in the San Francisco Bay area is incredibly modest. Okay, that means that you own, if you own real estate it's a postage stamp, and maybe there's a house on it maybe it's not a house maybe it's a shack, it's probably worth more in land. But we all know that that's really, really undervalued. But all of that information becomes part of the public record. So your heirs, they can get phone calls from people that are trying to scam them out of what they've just inherited. And that's something also that you want to avoid. There is, I should say there are scams running currently where if there is an elderly beneficiary, they will call and pretend to be a grandchild or some other relative looking for money. And they know now that the grandparent has that money because this information is out there in the public sphere. They can get phone calls from fake investors saying I know that you just came into money and I want you to invest in my, my new tech company and it's going to be really, really great and I just need a modest investment of $30,000 to get a startage you can be on the ground floor and once we go public you'll make a fortune. So all of those things can happen. And so again, we really want to avoid that public process and keep that kind of information off the internet. The last reason and probably the most important reason why you want to avoid probate is because, frankly, estate planning is a love letter to your family. What you're saying in that set of documents is that I knew that this was going to happen. I knew that I was going to pass away. I knew that there were going to be issues in terms of this estate or just, I don't want you to have to deal with this in a court system. I just, I just want to take care of this for you and I cared enough about you to think about it ahead of time. And so, you know, just to recap again, it's very important to avoid because of the time, the expense, the publicity and the fact that you care about your family. And let's assume that you do end up going through probate here. And so let's talk about some of the most common issues with the probated estate in California and remember we talked about that $56,000 fee attached to a very modest estate. This is when your probate fee start going up because this is when the court starts rolling up their sleeves and getting involved in the process. The number one reason why probated estates have issues in California is because there's not enough liquid in the estate or beneficiaries can't buy each other out. So what does, what does that mean? What does that terminology mean? When I say that there is not enough liquid in the estate, what I mean to say is that there is not enough cash to divide all of the property evenly without selling off major assets to do it. So think about it this way. Let's go back to that $1.5 million estate. Let's say that we're talking about the estate being in San Francisco. And let's say we have two beneficiaries and that will says everything to my two beneficiaries equally. If there is a piece of real estate involved in that transaction and one of those beneficiaries lives in that piece of real estate, we're going to inadvertently make that beneficiary homeless because we're going to have to sell that house to divide up the estate evenly. And so a really good estate plan should avoid a consequence like that. We all know that this housing crisis in the Bay Area is very real. We know it's very difficult for people to find good affordable housing. If you have a family home and you have a beneficiary living in that home and you have another beneficiary that just needs the cash, something's going to have to give somewhere. And a really good estate planning attorney should be able to walk you through how you mitigate something like that and avoid probate at the same time. Another reason or another issue with probated estates in California is that you may have beneficiaries that don't get along or that are suspicious of each other. And this generally happens when the will names somebody that the family does not like to either be the administrator or administrator of the estate. That can be very, very problematic. And that means that you're going to enter into the land of probate litigation because if a beneficiary feels as though they are not getting their fair share out of an estate. The likelihood of them lodging a complaint with the court lodging a motion to challenge the distribution of these assets is very real. And frankly, it's expensive. It's incredibly expensive. So I have seen wills that named two people as executors that did not get along. That's also another reason to have somebody walk you through the process. But again, when you have beneficiaries that don't get along or they are suspicious of each other, it can be a very expensive problem that your estate is going to have to pay to fix. And again, a really good estate plan should mitigate all of that. And this last bullet point that I want to talk about is actually really important. I actually used to work for a special needs trust planning attorney I know that's a really long set of words. But when we start talking about the distribution of assets and we just say let's say the will says I'm going to give all of my assets to my children and equal shares. That's fine. Provided that your children are not on means based public benefits. So what is a means based public benefit. That's something like social security disability. That's like Medicaid. Okay. In those programs, your available resources are used in a calculation to determine your eligibility for those benefits. And if you are disabled, it's really important that you hang on to those benefits as long as you can. The application process is very long and tedious. And if you get kicked off of that off of those benefits, the application the reapplication process is even worse. And so we want to avoid all of that. When you make a distribution and outright distribution of cash or property to a person who is on those mean means based public benefits, you are running the risk the very real risk of kicking them off of those benefits. And so again, it's really important that your, your estate planning documents have language in there that mitigates that sort of activity so that whoever is administering the estate has the power to set up a special needs trust for that person so that the beneficiary can retain all of the use and benefit of those assets without being knocked off of their public benefit. So again, that's another really big consequence in terms of a probate to say and it's something that can be mitigated.  And I know it is, I'm not trying to scare you but I am trying to bring awareness to again the expense and hostility of this kind of environment. What should a good California estate plan look like. Okay, we're going to be spending a lot of time on these documents I do anticipate questions on this so I'm going to take a minute and I'm going to slow down. And we're just going to go through these documents one at a time. Okay. The mother ship document, the flagship document of your California estate plan should be a revocable living trust sometimes called a grant or trust. This is a document that is actually it's not its own entity what it is is an agreement it's an agreement between one group of people and a trustee to manage property based on the language in that document so what does that mean. That means that if there is property that's being held in trust. When you pass away the trustee manages the transition of that property from you as an individual to your beneficiaries without having to go through probate. The document itself supersedes the probate court system. So anything that's held in trust avoids probate so this is absolutely key in terms of avoiding probate in California. The first document that that trust should name your successor trustees. So you would be initially the initial trustee of that trust. When you pass away somebody steps into your shoes, marshals the assets in the trust and makes the distributions to your beneficiaries, according to the terms in that trust. Completely avoiding probate clear and concise language as to who gets what no infighting between beneficiaries again we're removing the expense from the situation completely. It also has back stops for what ifs right so we talked about, you know how to avoid kicking people off of public benefits, your trust should have language in there that says specifically if there is a beneficiary who is either under age or on public benefits, or suffering from, let's say a drug and alcohol problem. Your trustee should have the power to not claw back I should say claw back those, those distributions. So that way people are not kicked off public benefits. It doesn't go to somebody with a drug or alcohol problem and potentially cause much more harm in the process. It doesn't go into a court registry, which it would if it was a distribution to an underage beneficiary court registries are also incredibly expensive to maintain. So again, your revocable living trust is the flagship document. It contains all of the language that manages your property and avoids probate. And so again that is at its core you should have at least that. There are other ancillary documents that I want to talk to you about as well the first being an advanced healthcare directive. Now, this is a document that is effective during your lifetime. And generally speaking, it can be springing into action meaning that upon your incapacity your inability to communicate your wishes with the medical community. So this document springs into effect and allows the people listed in that document to make medical decisions based on the language in the document. So if you have medical care preferences, let's say that you don't want to be placed on a ventilator you don't want to be treated with certain antibiotics. If you are in a persistent vegetative state, you want your agents to have the power to make a decision about whether or not to terminate life support. So at a minimum you want to have that as well. It also can give direction regarding what kind of in home healthcare you might need if you're incapacitated for a long time. It can have commentary about what happens if you're having a psychotic break. Basically, you're giving your agents the power to make medical decisions again based on the language in the document I highly recommend that everybody has one of these. I shouldn't have to mention this but I'm going to anyway. Some of you may not be old enough to remember this, but there was a woman in Florida probably about 30 years ago and her name was Terry shy bow. And she was in an accident that left her in a persistent vegetative state. And over the course of years, her husband claimed that they had had a conversation about her preference to not live in that kind of situation and how she would have wanted to have the plug pulled essentially, and her parents on the other hand fought that in the court system for 10 years. So for 10 years, she was in this persistent vegetative coma. The medical meals were piling up and the litigation costs were piling up as well. And so all of that could have been avoided simply by filling out that document. Okay, and it's just so important, because again, you really want to have the right people making the right decisions. Another reason why that document is important is because I want to say members of the LGBTQ community, especially if you travel to states where gender affirming care is not necessarily available, or you feel as though your conservative parents will not respect your wishes. The California code system says that your next of kin is going to be the default in terms of who is making your medical care decisions for you. You are in a protected community like the LGBTQ community and you know that your next to kin are not going to be making the kind of medical care decisions that you would want to have made for you. This document is also incredibly important for that reason. Another group of people that this need this document again, soon to be divorced people. So if you and your soon to be ex spouse are separated, and you know that this is going to be a contentious divorce or you just really don't want this person again making those health care decisions. I can't stress enough, the importance of a really well drafted advanced health care directive because again, the California law is going to say your husband or your wife or your spouse your partner is going to be the one making that decision for you unless and until you're divorced. So this document circumvents that. Moving on, HIPAA authorization again, sort of an ancillary document but again it gives the people listed in that document, the ability to handle your medical records to access them in the event that they need to. And that again that's a document that can go live as soon as as soon as it's signed or it can spring into effect upon incapacity just like your advanced health care directive. So this is a really important document to have the documents that we typically dropped in my office, they go live. As soon as you put your pen to paper because again there may be instances where you are incapacitated, but perhaps not necessarily ambulatory and a really great example of that I have a friend of mine who really likes to go to very exotic places on vacation and she has fallen down a mountain and broken her leg once before, and it was really important that somebody had the ability to go and get for medical records for her and take them to a specialist on her behalf. She absolutely had capacity but again was just not ambulatory so again, a really great reason to have that kind of document in place. The physician's directive is sort of a cousin to the advanced health care directive but it states more specifically what your termination of life sustaining care should look like and under those kinds of circumstances what you want that to look like. This document I want to talk to you about is called a durable power of attorney, and instead of making health care decisions like your advanced health care directive. This document allows the people listed in it to make financial decisions on your behalf. And so that includes the management of your real estate, your bank accounts, your investment accounts, your cryptocurrency, NFTs, your stocks bonds, etc. This is a really, really powerful document and I recommend that when you fill this out. You make sure that the people that you choose have really good adulting skills. Okay, they make really good financial decisions for themselves. They're really good about doing the research before they do something. If they don't know how to do something they find another adult who does again, you want to make sure that the person that you're putting in charge of your money and your property knows what they're doing. This document allows you to do that. And again, it is something that soon to be divorcee should absolutely be filling out as soon as you become legally separated that is a document that you're going to want to have waiting in the wings. And also the same thing, again for LGBTQ community members as well and for all of the same reasons. This document that I want to talk to you about is a guardianship nomination for minor children. And this document is the key document for parents with minor children. This document not only nominates the guardians for your minor children if you and your spouse or just you become incapacitated, or if you pass away unexpectedly. I can't tell you how important this document is enough. In fact, it is the number one document that my clients asked me about if they are parents to minor children. Again, I'm not trying to scare anybody here, but the CPS system, the child protective services system is really underfunded and very overwhelmed and there are a lot of children in there that are still cycling through that system. Now, imagine these are your minor children and you've just passed away and now the court is trying to determine where they should go. And they don't have any say from you they don't have any example of who you want to be nominated for that guardianship nomination. I can tell you that that is not a situation that you do not want to find your children in. And this document really helps to eliminate that kind of confusion. Not only does it nominate guardians, but you can also give direction for education for your children. Whether or not you want them to be exposed to social media or if you do at what ages, whether or not you ever want them to be exposed to firearms or any other any other preferences that you may have for your children. You can also express the aspirations that you have for your children.  That can also go into that guardianship nomination as well.  And I do recommend that each and every one of you look into whether or not those documents are something that you should have for yourself. So let's talk about what a California estate plan should accomplish. First and foremost your California estate plan should absolutely avoid probate. Again, if you're not avoiding probate. You are really spending or I should say your estate is spending a lot of money and time unnecessarily unwinding your affairs basically winding things up and then making that distribution happen. And really the avoidance piece of this cannot be overstated. It costs a lot of money to do this. You can inadvertently make people homeless just by having to sell off a primary asset. It's really it is an avoidable thing and you should really look to do that. You should also have concise language identifying the succession of your trustees. Again, we are looking not to litigate we are looking to make this process of transition of you passing away and your property transitioning on. We are looking to make that as easy and as painless as possible. And again, when you pick the right people, just like in that durable power of attorney scenario you pick the right adult who has good adulting skills and knows how to find another adult if they need help. Again, make those make those identifications known and make sure that you've chosen the right people and have language that allows that succession to have to hand off seamlessly. The other thing that it should accomplish is again clear identification of errors and beneficiaries. I'm not going to tell you that you can't write out your family members you can absolutely do that I have seen people do it. I do recommend though, if you do decide to write out a family member that you mentioned why. Another reason why estate plans regardless of whether their will or trust base go into litigation is because people can test that they weren't placed in the will for a reason they weren't placed in the estate plan for a reason. And so one of the pro tips that a lot of us estate planners use is that we will mention that person's name and give them a nominal amount like maybe five or $6 to say yes, you were included in the will and no you're not getting anything.  So, I mean maybe throughout that five or $6 and maybe you get to sort of thumb your nose at them from wherever you are at that moment but it is possible to write in that language, just as a heads up. The other thing that we're looking to do again is that effective transfer of property to reduce conflict, you know, I can't tell you how many times I've seen a will that says, I'm just going to divide up between my two children and just wipe my hands with it. Well, if you're two children don't get along. This is going to be a very expensive and very painful process and again this is all avoidable just with that clear and concise language. If you mean to say I want everything liquidated and everybody gets a cash distribution great say that if you mean to say that child one gets the house and child to gets the retirement accounts, say that, you know, but just have that concise language in there to reduce conflict is so important when, when people die and I say this from personal experience when people die. It gets very stressful and is one of the most stressful situations you can find yourselves in. And when people start infighting it just gets worse. And so you can take care of all of that just by having a good effectively drafted a state plan at our fingertips. One thing I want to mention in terms of what a good California state plans to accomplish is the reduction or elimination of tax exposure and I say this because if you're lucky enough to own a piece of real estate in California congratulations you probably have one of the safest investments in the country I am so excited for you. But I do want to tell you that depending on how that piece of real estate is titled can actually determine how much of a capital gains exposure your beneficiaries have later. And so it's really important that your state planning attorney reviews the titling on that on that piece of real estate to see if they can reduce capital gains and let's be honest. Real estate in California almost never goes down in value I mean unless you're building on top of the Superfund site, which is rare. Your property is probably only ever going to go up in value, especially if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area and I think we can all attest to that. So, naturally, the next thing you want to talk about is, let's look for in a good California estate planning attorney. Okay, this is where it gets a little tricky. I don't like to trash other attorneys. I'm not that I'm not that guy. But I will say that there are some there are some bad attorneys out there and so you need to be really good about vetting that attorney not just for a personal fit obviously you're going to be spending a lot of time with this, this person so you're going to want to make sure that your personalities mesh and that you feel like you're being listened to. But the other thing is, in terms of their expertise. Do they have subject matter expertise. Are they are they specifically an estate planning and probate attorney or are they part of a more general practice. Personally, I like to go with a more focused practice that we do with state planning and probate. Maybe we do some business succession planning. Maybe we handle some guardianships, but really we're going to stay in the probate court and we're going to focus our attention here. You know, the law changes so frequently that keeping up with those changes is really daunting. And so, again, if you have a general practice and you are, I do divorce and I also do cut the custody cases and I also do a state planning and I also do probate. It's really difficult to sort of put all of that together and make a really good estate plan, especially with the laws in California. I have to say the legislation there is.  You're going to really want somebody who looks at this from the, from the perspective of this is the core of what I do and I really love what I'm doing. That being said, watch out for trust mills. A trust mill is the kind of law office that spits out the same trust over and over and over and over and over again, with very minimal changes depending on who you are. Make no mistake, every single person in this presentation has a very different scenario than everybody else here. If you're a state planning attorney says, well, you know, this is the one kind of trust that I do. And it fits everybody and I, you know, I don't really change this too much because there's a really need to be changed. I would probably advise you to turn around and walk out and that's again not legal advice is no legal advisor. But if that happens if they're telling you that they really only do one or two different varieties of trust. I have to tell you that is not the right law office for you because things change. The financial situation and property situation that you find yourself in today is not necessarily where you're going to be in 10 years. And so you need an estate planning attorney who is well versed in the estate planning, the state the estate planning techniques. They know what different trusts can do. And they know that they have those tools at their disposal and they know how to use them. Another thing that you're going to want to look for in terms of that subject matter expertise, especially as it pertains to estate planning. They need to have some experience with the tax code more experiences better than less, but at a fair minimum they need to be able to identify facts that lead to taxable events. So what does that mean. Okay, so we talked about titling before. Okay. And how titling can determine what your capital gains exposure looks like.  That's a taxable event. Okay, that's a taxable event that means that not only do they have all of that capital gains exposure from when you first bought that property to when they sell it, but it's also going to get reassessed. And that can be a problem. You really want to make sure that again, you have an attorney that says, you know, red flag, big red flag, we don't want to do this. Why don't we put this in a trust? And why don't we, why don't we let it pass when you pass.  Somebody should be thinking about that for you. And frankly, the average person unless you're very experienced in the tax code yourself, you're not going to know that your estate planning attorney should. And there are a couple other things that they should be looking for as well, but primarily the tax code. That's that's something that they should know about. And then just on a personal note, you know, in terms of in terms of an attorney and again I draw back to the experience that my mother had with her probate attorney. She didn't like him. She didn't trust him. And she felt like she didn't really have a choice because again she was stuck in this scenario where she's burying her husband. And she doesn't really know what to do and she just wants this easy out to make this stress go away. Okay. If you walk into an estate planning attorney's office and you get a bad feeling, you need to turn around and walk out there are tons of other attorneys out there and I have to tell you, when you're spending that kind of time and money with somebody if you don't get a good feeling about them. That's a problem. Another thing is again, if they're not listening to you if you feel like you're repeating yourself or the documents that you get back, don't reflect the conversations that you've had. That's an issue. The estate planning attorney should be asking you questions about your family dynamic and I'm going to be honest with you in my intake sessions. I warn my clients ahead of time look. This conversation is going to delve into some really sensitive topics. I'm not here to embarrass you.  But I do need to know about your family dynamic because I for one do not want to find out that I inadvertently put your and I have a drunk uncle so I can make fun of this. I don't want to put your drunk uncle in charge of the trust for your minor children. If you pass away unexpectedly you might love your brother to death. You might love your uncle to death but let's be honest if they have an alcohol or drug problem they're probably not the right person to be managing that trust. Same thing with somebody who's recently had a bankruptcy somebody who's recently going through a divorce, somebody who let's say that they are elderly, and this is just way too much you don't want to put elderly people in charge of a trust for minor unless again they have an adult that they can go to to actually manage it for them. These are the questions that need to be asked. And again, a basic search about how your title is or your property is titled again for the same reasons to mitigate that tax exposure and make sure that you're reducing it as much as possible if not eliminating it.


and welcome back. Today what we're going to do is we're going to talk about theoretical probability. So theoretical probability is the probability that an event will happen. Now these probabilities, they range from 0 to 1, so a probability of an event, it goes from 0 to 1, where 0 is that the event is not going to happen and then 1 is there's 100% chance that it's going to happen. So most of these probabilities that we're going to be finding are going to be fractions in between 0 and 1. Now the probability event is always the outcomes that we want over the total number of outcomes that could possibly happen. So we're going to look at these two couple of examples to get a better idea of what theoretical probability is. So each letter of the word probable is written on a separate card. The cards are shuffled. What is the probability that a randomly selected card is a consonant? So we need a little bit of English knowledge here. So what we're looking for is the probability of drawing a consonant out of this deck of cards that we've made. So now when you write your probabilities, when you start with your notation here, p stands for probability and an in parentheses here is simply just a word that you're going to use to help you, a word to help with whatever probability you're finding. In this case, we're looking for consonants. We're looking for consonants, so that's the word that I use here. Now in English, in a word, we have consonants and vowels. Vowels are the O, the A, and the L. The consonants are everything else. P, R, B, B, and L are my consonants. So those are the outcomes that we want. So if I randomly select a card, I want P. I want R. I want B. I want B or I want L. One of these one, two, three, four, five different cards. Those are the ones that I want. Let me write this a little different. This is just a five there. Let's do wants. So I usually abbreviate this. Want over total is what I usually use to abbreviate my probabilities. So in this case, I want those five cards for a total of one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight total cards. So there is my probability. Five out of every eight cards that you draw theoretically are going to be consonants. Next one down here, two number cubes. Now when we talk about number cubes, we're talking about six-sided die. We're talking about those cubes that you see in the movies when they throw at the roulette table or something like that. That's what we mean by number cubes. They have the numbers one through six on them. So I get another number cube out here. The numbers one through six, and interestingly enough, cool fact about the number cubes is that the numbers on one side and then the number on the complete opposite side always add up to seven. So notice the one and the six, those are on completely opposite sides of the cube. Anyway, so two number cubes, numbers one through six are rolled. What is the probability that the difference between the two numbers is four? What's the probability that the difference between the two numbers is four? Now what I'm going to do is this one's going to involve just a little bit more math other than just what we used up here. So this is a little bit more difficult problem. But the notation stays basically the same. Probability of rolling two number cubes was the probability that the difference between the two numbers is four. So I'm looking for a difference, difference of four. Now notice I just abbreviated it. Again, what's in here, what's in the parentheses, is just used as a way for us to kind of understand when we're writing the problem what we're actually looking for. We're looking for the difference of four. So in this case, what numbers give me a difference of four? Well, when I roll these dice, a six and a two, that's going to give me a difference of four. So that works. Also, when I roll these die, a five and a one will also give me a difference of four. So what I'm doing here is I'm actually writing on top here the different combinations of dice that are going to give me this difference of four. I'm just writing them out. These are what I want. This is what I want here on top. Instead of writing numbers, I'm drawing pictures to get a better understanding of what's going on. Now, but here's the thing. I'm rolling two number cubes. I can roll a six first for one number cube and a two for the second number cube. Well, actually I can also roll a two for the first number cube and I can roll a six for the second number cube that would also give me a difference of four. And same vice versa with this other one. I could also roll a one first and then I could roll a five second. This would also give me a difference of four. Interesting. Now, the thing is when we're looking at these type of problems, you have to think of all the possible different combinations that we can have. All right. Now, as I'm working with this, now this is what I want. These are the four different combinations of dice that would work for me. Now, what I need to know on the bottom here is the total. Well, the first dice that I roll is going to have six different numbers that could happen. And then the second dice that I roll is going to have six different numbers that can happen. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use my fundamental counting principle and I'm going to take six times six, six choices for the first dice times six choices for the second dice to get my total number of possible events that could happen, my total here. So this is going to be four over 36. Four possible combinations of dice that give me a difference of four over a possible 36 dice rolls that could happen for a total of reduce this number to, what is that, one over nine. So one out of every nine tosses of these two number cubes is going to give me a difference of four. So there we go. Now, the reducing, the fractions in reducing is pretty straightforward. It's the notation here and then the coming up with your what you want over your totals, which can be a little bit difficult. Okay, that's a short video on theoretical probability. Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time.


India just witnessed the largest strike in the world in recent times. Around 200 million industrial workers, employees, farmers and agricultural laborers observed a two-day general strike on March 28 and 29. The strike was supported by students in youth, artists, intellectuals, scientists and other middle class sections. The last two years have seen a further deterioration of the living standards of working people due to the pandemic and the lack of enough policy interventions by the Modi government. Some of the key demands of the protesters were abandon all attempts to privatise public sector undertakings, provide income support of Rs. 7,500 or Rs. 98 US dollars per month to all non-income tax-paying families, increase allocation for rural job guarantee scheme, extend employment guarantee programmes to urban areas, provide universal social security for all informal sector workers. At the moment, only about 10% of India's 400 million strong workforce is covered by some form of social security. Provide statutory minimum wages and social security cover for 6 million scheme workers. Scheme workers are primarily women who do crucial jobs like providing front-line healthcare services, childcare services etc. Provide full protection and insurance cover for front-line workers serving the people in the midst of the pandemic. Regularise all contract workers and scheme workers and ensure equal pay for equal work for all. Scrab the four labour codes. These codes allow employers to increase the workload on workers, make it more difficult to get fair wages and form trade unions and reduce barriers to firing workers. Provide minimum support prices for crops. Minimum support prices is a safety net given to the farmers to ensure guaranteed minimum prices for their produce. Redraw all cases against farmers who are part of the farmers agitation. Cancel the new pension scheme and restore the old scheme. Increase minimum pension under the employee's pension scheme. Substantially reduce central excise duty on petroleum products. Take concrete steps to arrest the price rise. Increase public investment in agriculture, education and health. The strike on March 28-29 is a challenge by working people and their families to the far right Narendra Modi government. The strike is also a fight to save the people's future and save the country.