I am your host, Raya Salter. I'm a clean energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist. I'm also the principal attorney of Imagine Power LLC. Now, Hawaii's facing cutting-edge energy challenges. While our policies are helping to lead the way, similar issues with regard to rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and other topics are playing out here and throughout the nation and the world. Today, we're going to take a look at important energy and utility news from Hawaii, around the country, and the world as reported in the news over this past week. So first, as reported by CBS News on January 19th, Hawaii is considering a new 100% renewable energy goal for transportation. Now, Hawaii already has the most aggressive renewable energy targets in the nation, aiming for its utilities to get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2045. Now, advocates want to extend that goal to the transportation sector to urge all forms of ground transportation to fuel up using renewable sources by 2045. But Hawaii officials aren't planning to make everyone get rid of their fuel-powered cars, at least not yet. Nobody wants to step in and force people to get rid of cars they may love now, said State Representative Chris Lee, chairman of the Energy and Environment Committee. Now, this goal represents a steep climb for the auto industry in a state when there are about 5,000 electric vehicles out of an estimated 1 million cars on the road. Unlike Hawaii's groundbreaking 100% renewable goal for electricity, where utilities in the state will be fined if they don't comply by deadline, the proposed transportation goal isn't a mandate. With 1 million cars on the road, hundreds of auto dealerships and multiple counties with fleets of vehicles, it's unclear how the state could enforce a renewable fuels mandate, advocates said. This is an extremely important issue for Hawaii. Do we need to get to 100% renewable energy for transportation? Yes. Is this easy? Well, no, it's not for several reasons. One, as we know, for air transportation, air planes, it's an important part of new research, but right now, planes are heavily reliant on traditional fuel. Can we change the way that we fuel up on the ground? Absolutely, yes. There are electric vehicles available and folks love electric vehicles here, but there's a pressing need to move forward on the electric vehicle infrastructure in Hawaii. In addition, I think a lot of people are really struggling to stay in the current cars they have now and stay up to safety standards, and there's also a real preference here, especially for folks who work in the construction industry or other building industries to have a large truck or large families to have a big vehicle. So I think that it'll be important that a new transportation goal is couched in a way that doesn't seem out of touch and seems that it is something that can be practical and bring benefits to drivers in Hawaii. So let's see what happens as that goes forward. More news in Hawaii. Now, as reported on Hawaii News Now on January 17th, Hawaii now has a new consumer advocate. Dean Nishina has been named Executive Director of the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Division of Consumer Advocacy, effective January 1. He's been serving as Acting Executive Director since September, following the departure of Jeffrey Ono, who returned to private practice. Now, as the consumer advocate, Nishina will oversee the division's representation of consumer interests before the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission and other local and federal agencies. Nishina previously served in the role from December 2009 to January 2011. Now, I think this is good things. Dean Nishina is an experienced and passionate consumer advocate, and I think that we can expect that this appointment is only going to strengthen the office of the consumer advocate for the energy consumers of Hawaii. Next, as reported by Dwayne Shimogawa of Pacific Business Use on January 20th, Hawaii's struggling $150 million Clean Energy Loan Program named a new chief. The Hawaii Green Infrastructure Authority has named Gwen Yamamoto-Lau as its new Executive Director, the state agency regulating the use of a controversial $150 million Clean Energy Loan Program, according to the agency on Friday. Yamamoto-Lau, whose appointment became effective Friday, joined the authority last year as its managing director. She has more than three decades of executive experience in commercial and credit union banking, as well as community development financing. Now, the Green Infrastructure Loan Program, which is also known as Green Energy Market Securitization, or GEMS, aims to address financing barriers to increase the installation of renewable energy projects in order to meet the state's clean energy goals. The struggling $150 million Clean Energy Loan Program has launched several years ago, and it has only doled out about 3.5 million as of the end of 2016, although there may be some positive steps taken in 2017. The program, which has suffered from several challenges, including going head-to-head against conventional local lenders, has seen some renewed interest, with 109 million in the pipeline to be loaned for project in such areas as consumer efficiency, commercial efficiency, non-profit renewable, small business renewable, and community solar. So this is a great development, I think, that we've got leadership, the permanent leadership at the helm. Let's see what happens with the GEMS program. It's absolutely critical that this huge $150 million program actually get pointed towards doing some good. I know I would personally love to see that power some community solar projects for low and moderate-income ratepayers, really with the focus of providing clean power, environmental benefit, and a reduced cost for people who are paying very high bills. More news, next we're going to Maui. Now, as reported yesterday by Lea Mehta of the Maui News, a new EPA report shows that power plants are responsible for most of Maui County's toxic air. Three Maui facilities spewed nearly 190,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air in 2015, with the two Maui Electric Company power plants logging the largest releases in Maui County, the EPA reported. The EPA's annual toxic release inventory national analysis was released on January 12 for the Pacific Southwest. It showed that a total of 188,500 pounds of chemicals were released into the air in Maui County, most of which was sulfuric acid from the Mico, Kahului, and Maalea power plants. The Kahului power plant released 100,000 pounds, mostly sulfuric acid, in 2015. Now that's down from 130,000 pounds in 2014. There was a small release of polycyclic aromatic compounds, a possible carcinogen as well. The Maalea power plant released 87,000 pounds, up from 79,000 pounds in 2014. Now there are also small releases of benzoparoline, lead compounds, naphthalene, and polycyclic aromatic compounds, all suspected carcinogens. So this is really just to really emphasize that there are serious consequences that we pay for Hawaii's reliance on fossil fuels to burn for oil. Maui, one of the world's most beautiful places and home to many, is being poisoned by burning of fossil fuels according to the EPA. So it's important to keep track of that. We know where the toxicity is coming from. We know where there's success and failure and increasing and decreasing that toxicity. So I think it's something important to keep our eyes on. Also reported by Maui News yesterday, utilities there have, and this could be a potential solution, made a request regarding renewable energy. So Maui Electric Company and Hawaii Electric Light Company on the Big Island have asked the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission to start the process to seek new renewable energy generation on Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Hawaii Islands, the utility said last week. Now, this request would target projects that can be in service by the end of 2020. Following established regulatory rules, the two utilities, subsidiaries of Hawaiian Electric Company, are asking the PUC to open dockets to facilitate issuing formal requests for proposals for new renewable energy projects and to appoint an independent observer to oversee the procurement process. So this is an interesting and excellent development. We want to see more renewable energy development and we want to make sure that there is a fair and equitable process that allows for developers to have the opportunity to execute those projects. So we will see what happens and hopefully it can provide some relief. Renewable energy can provide some relief from the toxicity spewed by the burning of fossil fuels. So now we will leave Hawaii and let's talk a bit about some news that's happening in other parts of the country. So utility dives Robert Walton reported this morning that Massachusetts lawmakers have floated an aggressive bill mandating 100% renewables for Massachusetts by 2035. Now, three Democratic lawmakers in Massachusetts have proposed this bill and it would require that the state use 100% renewable energy by 2035 but then goes further to eliminate fossil fuels from heating and the transport sectors as well. The proposal calls for phasing out the use of fossil fuels in Massachusetts entirely by 2050 while requiring the transportation sector to run on 50% renewables in the same time frame. The state already has some modest goals in place with regard to the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act requiring Massachusetts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. So I think that we are seeing clearly that Hawaii's 100% goal was leadership. I think renewable energy portfolio standards and 100% goals are great ideas and ambitious states that want to reach for them. I think it also shows with the transportation goal that maybe Hawaii is onto something and wanting to have a real vision for the transportation sector. At the same time, Massachusetts and others risk being all talk and no follow through. So it will be important here in Hawaii and also in Massachusetts and other places that these mandates are backed by extremely solid planning and plans to execute going forward. Now we're going to take a break and when we come back, we'll have more news from across the country in the world. Hi, I'm Tim Appichella. I'm the host for Moving Hawaii Forward and the show is dedicated to transportation and traffic issues in Oahu. We are all frustrated by sitting in our cars in bumper-to-bumper traffic and this show is dedicated to talking with folks that not only we can define the problem but we hopefully can come to the table with some solutions. So I invite you to join me every Tuesday at 12 noon and let's move Hawaii forward.  Noon! ThinkTekHawaii.com. Watch the show. Be there. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to ThinkTekHawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hello and welcome back to Power of Hawaii. I'm Raya Salter, your host and today we're talking about energy news in Hawaii around the country and around the world as reported in the last week. So let's go ahead and get going. We're talking about news from around the United States. Now, as reported by Robert Walton in Utility Dive yesterday, Tesla batteries are helping to power a small North Carolina island. Now, Ocracoke, a small island off North Carolina has installed 10 first generation Tesla power packs and a small solar array that will help reduce demand charges and maintain reliability in the event the mainland transmission link falters. Now, there are less than 1,000 permanent residents on Ocracoke, but the island's unspoiled beaches attract throngs of tourists every summer. Good for the local economy, but not good for power bills. Linked to the mainland by a single transmission line, demand charges drive up costs while reliability is strained during storms. So, North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation owns a 3 megawatt diesel generator on the island to help reduce demand charges and now the new microgrid will add carbon-free energy to the reliability backstop. Microgrid Knowledge reports... Oh, sorry, moving on to the next story. Let me make a few comments on that about Tesla. Clearly, anyone here hearing that story about the tourist economy and places that have low populations yet need to deal with the bulging on tourists, of course, we identify with that here. In fact, I just came from a legislative briefing that Chris Lee had at the Capitol and Tesla was there talking about their battery storage and the work that they're doing for islands. So it is exciting that islands are taking these opportunities with these ambitious and, frankly, cool new storage projects. I don't mean to bet on any particular horse in terms of Tesla or another provider, but I think that Tesla is certainly putting itself out ahead looking to provide island solutions as we know from American Samoa and also now from North Carolina. So that is clearly something and a company that we're going to want to keep our eyes on. So let's move on to the next story. Microgrid Knowledge reports the local utility... Actually, I think this is going to continue more about North Carolina, but we'll go ahead and do that. Tideland Electric Membership has also installed 150 ecobee smart thermostats to help shift demand during peak times. The project is similar, albeit much smaller, to the microgrid Tesla helped install on the island in American Samoa that I just referred to. This one is powered by 1.5 megawatts solar and Tesla batteries supplying 6 megawatt hours of energy. So the island is poised to go 100% renewable. And the island was previously dependent on petroleum imports to run diesel generators. So great story, island renewable energy success. As also reported by Robert Walton yesterday, the Trump administration is hitting pause on Obama-era efficiency standards. Now, the Obama administration issued several new efficiency regulations in late December. Nonpartisan efforts that still needed to be published in the National Federal Register in order to be finalized. But a 45-day white waiting period means they could not be published until the Trump administration came into office setting up the current situation. That means regulations covering portable air conditioners, walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial boilers, and uninterruptible power supplies are all now being reconsidered. The Obama administration also issued new regulations on pool pumps in December. But those rules will be finalized under a different process, though one that will still allow the Trump administration to have final say. According to the Department of Energy, the new standards for five product classes could potentially save between $15 billion and $35 billion a year. The Obama administration has used appliance standards to try and reduce carbon emissions by at least 3 billion metric tons cumulatively by 2030. So this is, let's hope that these rules are allowed to go forward. This is really a case where energy efficiency is by far in a way the first and least cost and most just way to save money, save energy, and reduce carbon emissions. I think the energy community was very excited about these rules, and that's the thing about energy efficiency. I was an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and I can tell you, we fully understand that chillers and walking coolers and thinking about what happens with your refrigerator may not be the sexiest thing in the world, but when aggregated, it is extremely important. So let's hope that things like energy efficiency standards that save us money, that save energy, that help the environment, can continue to be nonpartisan efforts. Here's one from this morning that is another explosive piece of news. So Timothy Kama of The Hill reported this morning that President Trump is to advance Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines. President Trump today signed orders to advance construction of the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines. The orders do not grant the final permits needed for the oil pipelines, but will move both projects towards approval. A person familiar with the action said, the Trump administration began to inform lawmakers starting late Monday that the orders were coming. The orders fulfill Trump's campaign promise to approve both pipelines, which have staunch support from the oil industry and the GOP, but are strongly opposed by Democrats and environmentalists. If fully built by developer TransCanada Corp, Keystone would run from Alberta, Canada, which contains a bulk of that nation's oil sands to the Gulf Coast of Texas, bringing heavy oil sands petroleum to refineries. Last month, the Obama administration ordered a comprehensive environmental impact statement to be conducted on the Dakota Access Pipeline before any decision could be made on building its final section below Lake Oohi in North Dakota. Now, the pipeline has been the subject of international protests that have fired up environmentalists and indigenous rights activists. They say that the pipeline threatens the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and further development of oil infrastructure threatens the climate. This is explosive news to folks who follow energy, issues of energy in the environment. We have known for a long time that the Keystone Exxon Pipeline has been strongly opposed by environmentalists, and I think as equally as, if not more explosive, is the issue with the Dakota Access Pipeline. Really, the international community has rallied behind the Sioux at Standing Rock, and I think to come in on his first day of office and sign an order without in any way looking to reach out to the various constituencies that have been so passionate about this, personally I will add as my own anecdote I think that that's troubling, and I guess we shall see, but I suspect that the folks who are standing up to stop that pipeline and the Keystone Exxon Pipeline aren't going anywhere, anywhere soon, so hopefully we're not seeing just a real standoff situation being moved into place by these actions. Moving on, Robert Walton of Utility Dive reported this morning that President Trump has a new FERC pick. This is always interesting stuff. President Donald Trump is expected to nominate Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur to lead the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission according to reports replacing current Chairman Norman Bay. Now, while all current FERC members are Democrats, Bloomberg reports LaFleur is seen as more sympathetic to the industry. She previously served as Executive Vice President and Acting CEO of National Grid USA. Now, LaFleur is expected to serve as chair until Republicans can be nominated to the Commission Green Wire reports. There are currently three sitting regulators and two vacancies on the five-person commission, Gavin. So, yes. This is interesting. I think in terms of the nominations that we've seen from the Trump administration, this one is relatively non-controversial. Commissioner LaFleur has been at the Commission. She's got a lot of experience, I think is well regarded by colleagues. This particular move, I don't think, is as controversial as some of the others. So, congratulations to Commissioner LaFleur, and we shall see what Republicans and others come together to do to fill the other vacancies in that important energy commission. Moving right along, Gavin Bade reported today that important Trump energy nominations had been put on hold. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has indefinitely suspended confirmation votes on Donald Trump's nominees to lead the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior, the Hill reports. The Committee on Monday said the votes would be delayed until further notice, the Commission for the Delay, and did not reportedly respond to requests for comment. In the Environment and Public Works Committee, Democrats will continue their campaign against Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Trump's pick for the EPA, by holding a panel discussion with environmental groups today, according to Politico. No vote yet has been set for Pruitt. As reported by Gavin Bade of Utility Dive also, actually, let's stop for a second before we move on to Rick Perry. So this is interesting. I think folks had pretty much understood that former Texas Governor Rick Perry was going to head the Department of Energy. We don't have a lot of news on why things are put on hold. I think we can perhaps expect, I won't try and have a crystal ball, but we'll see how things move forward. And the next story I was going to talk about was about Governor Perry, former Governor Perry on how he really pledges to protect energy, R&D, and climate science. So we'll go forward and talk about that while we know that perhaps those nominations are on hold and we don't know what's at play there. So former Texas Governor Rick Perry has been President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Energy, and he told Senate lawmakers that he regrets an earlier proposal to eliminate the agency and said he would protect its mission if confirmed. Contrary to media reports that the Trump administration is planning to gut DOE funding, Perry said he would defend DOE programs for renewables, fossil fuels, and advanced nuclear energy, as well as basic and applied research and development. Now Perry, like other Trump nominees, says he believes the climate is changing, but broke with mainstream science on the causes and the pace of change. Perry declined to say whether he believes climate change demands the transformation of the energy sector. So we'll see. There's a lot going along with former Texas Governor Perry's nomination. Now as we discussed when we had Carl Robigo on Power Up Hawaii, he revealed how much of the Department of Energy is really about safeguarding our nuclear assets. So I think Governor Perry has come in and realized he's got some really important responsibilities here. So thank you so much and thank you so much for joining me for another edition of Power Up Hawaii, and we'll see you next week. Thank you very much.


Coming up on DTNS, we cover the big Twitter news, scheduling tweets, but also the stuff with the president. We know, but we have to. And to balance it out, Sarah Lane has done a deep dive on TikTok cults, and we're all joining stepchickens. This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, May 29, 2020. In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. Also in Los Angeles, I'm Lamar Wilson. Drawn from Studio Cleveland, I'm Len Peralta. And I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We just had a very long conversation about Sarah's very short rolls of toilet paper. I knew you were going there. I knew it. So if you want that conversation and more, we're going to talk groceries. Get good day internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Twitter announced that scheduled tweets are now available on the Twitter website to all users. A calendar icon in the compose window will now let users schedule tweets up to 18 months in advance. And list of all scheduled tweets is now available in the scheduling interface. This is Insider Attain, the memo from Magic Leap co-founder and CEO Tony Apovitz, hope I said that right, to employees saying that he will step down and the company is actively recruiting candidates to replace them as CEO. The memo also mentions a new round of funding previously reported. Ah, that's I guess not surprising. Facebook's R&D group NPE team launched an app called Venue that acts as a second screen for live events. Starting with NASCAR's Food City presents the supermarket heroes 500 race on Sunday, May 31st. Venue sends out notifications when there's a new moment available in the app. Commentators for a given event hosted in Venue will include journalists, current or former athletes, or aspiring analysts. And hosts may also open up limited chats around specific moments during the event. So kind of a locked down Twitter. Man, that watch party thing, it is really catching on. The Financial Times reports that tracking app maker Tyle has sent a letter to Europe's competition commissioner asking for an investigation into Apple. Tyle complains that Apple made tracking default off for tracking apps, but leaves it on for its own My Find My App. That Tyle also complained about the app store placement and Apple stopping selling at Tyle tags in Apple stores. Apple denies allegations of uncompetitive behavior. Tyle has filed similar complaints in the US. All I heard there was wham. Alright, IDC reports that wearable shipments in quarter one increased 29.7 to 29% percent, which amounts to 72.6 million units. That was driven by strong growth in the hearables category, aka wireless earbuds, which increased 68.3% on the year to account for almost 55% of the overall market. Smartwatches and fitness tracker shipments grew 16.2% on the year, with IDC noting that COVID-19 impacted the available component supply chain for the category. Among the top five wearable companies of Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung, Huawei, and Fitbit, only Fitbit saw a year on year decrease in shipments. Why didn't my voice go up like I was a teenager? Sorry. Because you're so excited about hearables and wearables. Engineers from Microsoft and Google are working on the Chromium project together these days and have integrated the Windows spell check feature into current builds of the Chrome and Edge browsers. This replaces the Hun spell open source implementation and features better support for URLs, acronyms, email addresses, and improved shared custom dictionary. The spell check will be enabled when the browsers are updated or you can enable it through flag pages in the browsers right now. Qualcomm announced the first two chip lines with support for Wi-Fi 6E designed to take advantage of the 6 GHz wireless spectrum. One chip is designed for routers with a theoretical top speed of 5.4 Gbps, on the low end to 16 streams, and 10.8 Gbps on the high end. The second chip line is designed for phones with a top theoretical speed of 3 Gbps and 3.6 Gbps on the higher end. These chips will be available in the second half of 2020. Time to buy a new router. Oh yeah. Uber has added hourly booking in 12 US cities to let you hire a driver for $50 an hour for up to 7 hours. Now hourly bookings cannot be used for airport trips or outside the city service area. Hourly booking was already available from Uber in Australia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. I like this. Yeah. You want to do that? I think it should be $25. $50 is a little much. Bring it down. Bring it down. Sony officially announced it will show off games for the PlayStation 5 as we expected, but it will be on June 4th at 4 p.m. Eastern. The stream will run on Twitch and YouTube, and they say it should be just a little more than an hour. Yay. All right. Let's talk about Twitter and the president of the United States. Thursday, the president signed an executive order related to social networks. It happened right around showtime, so we told you about it yesterday. Now we've had a chance to read through it. We got ahold of the text. It orders the attorney general to establish a working group to look into whether social networks have violated individual state laws against unfair and deceptive practices, as well as help states develop those kinds of laws. It reviews federal ad spending on social networks in light of their moderation practices regarding government communication. It doesn't actually order them to stop.  It orders the Department of Commerce to petition the FCC, because the president can't order the FCC to do anything, but it orders the Department of Commerce to petition the FCC to clarify rules regarding the application of CDA Section 230, the Safe Harbor legislation that protects companies from liability for content removal. And it asks the Federal Trade Commission, again, the president can't make the FTC do anything, but it asked the FTC to investigate social networks for unfair or deceptive practices regarding their moderation rules compared to how moderation is conducted. The FCC and FTC are independent agencies. They're not under the direction of the president, so they can implement those requests how they see fit, which means they can ignore them or they can pursue them. The executive order itself does nothing to change CDA Section 230. That is the law that protects the right of the internet companies to moderate content without risking liability. What the executive order says a lot about is a second clause of CDA 230 that says you can't be punished for removing objectionable content, content that you as a platform find objectionable as long as you're acting in good faith. So that's what they're going after is saying, hey, FCC, look and make sure it's that they're acting in good faith, that they're doing what they say, that the terms of service match their moderation policies. That's what they're asking the FTC and the FCC to do. Now, that order came in response to Twitter adding fact-checking links to two of the president's personal tweets regarding mail-in ballots. We talked about that on Wednesday. Thursday evening, Twitter added a more restrictive warning to one of the president's personal tweets regarding the protests in Minneapolis. The president had posted a tweet that used the phrase, quote, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. That is a December 1967 quote of Miami Police Chief Walter Headley, who targeted black communities. The president later tweeted that he intended a different meaning for that quote, but it is exactly what Headley said, and that is usually attributed as the origin of that quote. Twitter cited that historical context in its decision that the tweet violated its policy against glorifying violence and so put a label up that obscures the post when you first go to it with a message. This tweet violated the Twitter rules on glorifying violence. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the tweet to remain accessible. There's then a link to learn more about that policy and a link to click through and view the original post. Users cannot reply or retweet the post. However, they can retweet with comment, so you can't just retweet it. But if you want to retweet with comment, you can pass it along that way, and it still has the label on it. Twitter's policy says you can't glorify, celebrate, praise or condone violent crimes, violent events where people were targeted because of their membership in a protected group. That's why they're picking on that Headley quote. They're saying that's exactly what that police chief was doing in 1967, so quoting him is doing that. The policy also says exceptions may be made for violent acts by state actors where violence was not primarily targeting protected groups. So there's wiggle room there, which may be why they didn't remove the tweet. But there's no clear consequence for violating the policy if you are a world leader. Consequences for violating the policy are to remove the tweet and have the account temporarily locked. World leaders, which we talked about on Wednesday have a particular definition, are exempt from that, but there's nothing about labeling their tweets. They didn't take the action of removing the president's tweet or his personal account. They picked a middle ground. Facebook has not removed the post by the president with the same language. Facebook's policy calls for removal of a post when, quote, there is a genuine risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety. It's worded slightly different. I bring up the text of the posts and the text of the policies because the executive order is specifically saying are the actions of the platforms matching what they say they will do. And so there you go. Now you have the information to make your judgment. Lamar, how do you feel about not only Twitter's policy, but what's happening here? Well, listen, I mean, it's been a tough last day dealing with this. Obviously just, you know, being in a minority group and listen to my opinion is that the president knew exactly what he was doing. He knows history. He knows what that quote came from. And it was entirely inappropriate and tie entirely what Twitter thought it was, in my opinion, a stoking violence in some way. And then even threatening later to send it, which he actually did send a national guard over all of that to say this.  However, as I mentioned to you earlier, it's one of those things like if, if I wouldn't do this, or you were to do this, or, or anyone else, you know, what what what I still have an account on Twitter, right. You know, and so I understand it's a world leader. I understand you want to tip toe carefully with that. But the double standard is getting old is getting old with me is getting old with a lot of people. And I, there's just a helpless feeling. I can just say from a personal experience, I do not enjoy Twitter anymore. I, I think I told you this earlier I probably would be taking a leaf of absence for it. And it's just, it's too much to deal with right now. And it shouldn't be that way for for social service. So I applaud what Twitter did. I hope they continue it and don't get bullied by him or anyone else that decides to bully. I don't condone the violence. I was I don't condone the the the the riots or anything. Of course not. You know, but he's a leader and the leaders need to be corrected when they're wrong. Simple as that. Yeah. The snobo s podcast calls it social network distancing, where you just kind of put the social network at arm arms length for a while. We're talking about just kind of, you know, getting off of it for a while. Sarah, do you have any more thoughts on this? I, I, I find the whole, I find the whole thing with Twitter, because I see a lot of, and perhaps it's because on Twitter, I've a lot of people who are in media space, saying what they should have done this, they should have done that or the opposite. And to me, the company. It does not. I don't think Twitter is doing anything wrong.  But as far as introducing new layers to what a tweet means, where it came from, how you might get more context, it's not being rolled out in a very elegant way. I will, I will, I will agree with a lot of people who have, have given them grief for that. I'm not quite sure what Twitter does differently at this point. If they do nothing, it's wrong.  That's not going to go over well either. So this seems like the appropriate middle ground, but it's not going to make a lot of people happy. So there you go, folks, we've got the facts of the situation. You got a couple of opinions. This is not going away as Justin and Sarah talked about yesterday. In fact, US Senator Ted Cruz sent a letter to the Justice and Treasury departments calling for a criminal investigation into Twitter. He alleges they're violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by allowing Iranian officials to hold Twitter accounts. Twitter says that it believes it has an exemption from sanction requirements. But that is probably going to be another aspect of this fight as well. All right, let's switch gears a little bit here, Lamar, and talk a little bit about a new function coming to YouTube. Hi, I'm back. Yeah, but YouTube wrote out a new feature. I think that's of today or yesterday, but yeah, they wrote up video chapter markers to all users across desktop phones and tablets. Now on desktop, the playback timeline will feature small breaks to show chapter start points. Mousing over the markers will show the title of the chapter. The mobile app will give haptic feedback when you advance to a new chapter. I think it's cool. And on tablets, videos will snap play to the start of a chapter of user selects. Creators must manually enter in time codes for the start of each chapter, and videos must have at least three time steps and last longer than 10 seconds to use the chapters. So I looked a little bit in depth to this. I didn't actually see this on a couple videos. I think Phil DeFranco was one person who had it, and a few others who were testing it. I think it's a great feature. People who are in news, podcasts, this show, you know, you'll talk about that in a second, could benefit from this type of thing where you talk about different type of stories and have the time codes. It is on the creator of course to do that. So that's the first challenge. I also think how to channels, I think the verge mentioned is to where like how to make a burrito, how to how to use a blender, how to how to sew this. It has multiple steps. And sometimes if the video is 20 minutes long, you like, can I just find out this one part? I already know part I knew step one to three. I don't know four and five. Can I get to that part? It's so funny you brought up burrito because that that is a use case for me. I'm always fold the burrito. I just need the tortilla part. I don't need any of the rest of your recipe. That is exactly why I mentioned it because I really the other week I was just like, I don't know how to fold this. How did they do it at Chipotle? How did they do this? So I found a video that showed exactly how to do a step by step. It was really cool. So it's a good feature. I wish there was some consistency across, but I understand why mobile needs to be haptic. I get that, you know, but you know, but tablet having to have a little different thing. But yeah, I hope more creators use it so that the users will kind of encourage the ones who aren't using it to do that. Will it hurt people who have ads and things? Yeah, probably if you get to skip an ad or so. But you know, I still think in the I think this is better than not having it. It's just labor intensive. I mean, they've had a similar feature for podcasts for audio podcasts for a long time. And because we want to get news out fast. We don't take the time to put in those chapter markers because it takes a long time. So I think you're right. I think it's a great feature. I just you got to figure out that balance between how how labor intensive it is to go in and mark all that stuff versus how many people are going to take advantage of it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, if it's like you said Lamar, like if it's a 20 minute video that's about very specific things and really all I care about is what's between minute six and nine, then that actually makes a lot of sense just depends on the kind of video. It does. Hey folks, if you want to get all the tech headlines each day in about five minutes, be sure to subscribe to daily tech headlines dot com. Thankfully, Sarah Lane has done great work in digging into the implications of a story from the New York Times called step chickens and the rise of tick tock cults. Sarah, what have you found? Oh, man, Tom, I'm glad you asked. So we were talking about social media distancing a couple of minutes ago and I have distanced myself from tick tock on purpose. I understand what it is. We talk about it on the show quite a bit. It's fast rising, you know, a lot of money being made for bite dance, etc, etc. But I stayed away from it because I knew it was going to be a time suck. I mean, I can barely manage my dog's Instagram accounts. You know what I'm saying? All right, so here's the deal with step chickens. And as you mentioned, there was a New York Times article that just it was sort of like tick tock cults. And I was like, All right, let's dig in. Let's see what this whole thing is. So I will attempt to condense this as much as possible because it's kind of a crazy story. A woman named Melissa Ong was working at Google, which actually has really nothing to do with the story, but that's where she was working and wore a chicken suit to a like a Halloween company costume contest, right? So she had this chicken suit. And she was like, Oh, tick tock, I should get on tick tock and, you know, the chicken suit that I have in my house, I'd be all like, maybe I'll put it to good use and do some funny videos on tick tock and maybe I'll get a little bit of a following.  She says, in actually a YouTube video, hilariously, she was like, Yeah, I didn't really get any traction, but I was committed. I felt like eventually it would be funny to somebody. Eventually, on a video that she was doing and she was doing all sorts of kind of off color stuff. Somebody wrote in a comment, quote, step chicken, what are you doing? And she she Melissa says, it was just funny, like what I don't really know what they meant. I don't think they know what I meant I was doing. It was just funny. And it kind of stuck. You know, fast forward a little bit. She had gotten more followers from various tick tock comedy stuff that she was doing. She was definitely trying to, you know, try to make a name for herself. And she started experimenting with just like, crazy stuff where she was like, I then just asked my followers. Hey, everyone just like, type the comment e. And she was like, and I woke up the next morning and they were like, 100,000 people who did it. And I realized, I might be on to something here. There's something going on here. It's not about what I'm asking them to do. It's the fact that we're all kind of in this together. So there was a little bit of a quote, cult that emerged. Now, Melissa had a random photo that she sent to a friend way back in the day. This is, you know, previous to tick tock even existing.  And to the point where so many people who are on tick tock and, you know, we're talking millions of people were like, who is this woman in all of your profile pictures because all of these people had moved her picture to their pictures and, you know, it was is a very sort of ha ha inside baseball type thing. Now, because it's tick tock and because we're in the world that we're living in now, there are now the rival gangs of sorts that have cropped up so that now that step chickens, as they're known, they're the step chickens step chickens rise up. They're now battling other tick tock gangs. And it's all very, it's, it's, it's very friendly. It's not mean spirit and stuff at all. It's just silly. But it's like, it's a, it's an identity thing that is really fascinating to me. And I, you know, just learned about this over the last few days, they're definitely going to be people listening to the show saying, well, what about the purple versus green alien gangs, you know, in, in, in Grand Theft Auto like that preceded this, which it did. Don't happen to play that game myself. So I was not privy to this whole thing. But the idea that, and, and, and before I, you know, open it up to the group, the New York Times article weighed very heavily on, well, you got a lot of board teenagers right now because no one can go outside. And so that's what this is all about. And I think that there's some truth in that. But I also think that there's some, just some like, just the fun aspect of how silly this is and how nonsensical it is. And Melissa on really didn't have some sort of a goal besides being like, I don't know, just trying to see what stuck. And this eventually stuck. And now a lot of people are really into it. This reminds me of BB Live show, NSFW show, Night Attack, the Diamond Club. If people aren't aware, those are sister podcasts of DTNS hosted by Justin Robert Young and Brian Brushwood, where you just found a bunch of like minded people. You got them and like, Oh, we're all on the internet. Let's play pranks. They did, they did pranks where they just responded, Oh, or E in the the step chickens to someone's account just to see if they could get everyone to do it. And so then they're like, what else can we do if we tell people to do stuff? They'll do it as long as it's good nature. And that was the Diamond Club. That's exactly it. And Diamond Club joked around like not a cult, just a loose affiliation. This is all in the pattern. I was watching Melissa Ong's video describing all this. I'm like, Oh, yes. No, you've you've done all the same steps. It's just you've reached higher heights because you surfed in on the random TikTok wave. Yeah. And what was interesting, this is a YouTube video that she she laid out being like, okay, if you're very confused, here's how here's how this whole thing happened from front to back. And, you know, it's it's it's well produced. And she's very well spoken. And it's like, she's not sitting there being like, I don't know. I don't know how this happened. She's like, No, I know how this happened. And here's how it happened. She doesn't know why, but she knows how. She doesn't know why caught on to the point that it did. But she understands that she was going for something and it eventually worked. And next up YouTube and Instagram. That's why this video is on YouTube because she says, like, though that's my target. Yeah, they're coming. Oh, yeah, I better watch out. Or join this or join. Yeah, you used the word gang, which I thought was was was very accurate because people who joined gangs usually it's just it's a sense of belonging wanting to be part of something. And then that's what the New York Times article mentioned to, you know, these kids, you know, even some adults just, yeah, they're bored. But a lot of people, even when you're not bored, just want to be part of something that's cool. Step chickens is cool. And it's cool to be associated with that it's cool to change your, your profile picture to make memes out of it. And so that's all it's about it's harmless is not it's not some, you know, some crazy business idea. It may fade out in a few months, but it's just a great moment. Like, why not? It's just, it's a nice diversion. I love it. I did too.  But I mean, there were like sports teams who were changing their official Tik Tok logos to the step chickens logo, which is a picture of her face. Like the Houston Rockets, the NBA team. Yeah. Right. Yeah.  It's like, no, this was quite a movement. And what like, what were we all going for? What was the, what was the mantra of the movement? No, there wasn't, there isn't one. But it is fun. I would, I would say, like, especially in this day and age, there is something to that whole idea of, you know, we all need a little something fun going on. This is fun. Well, social media, just like I mentioned earlier about Twitter, I don't, I don't consider Twitter fun anymore. Twitter used to be fun. And it's just not enjoyable. So just, it's nice to have a place or hear about a movement of people just kind of just having fun on social media again. It's nice. Yeah, the New York Times tried to make the point, and I think it's a fine point that you don't need even a thousand true fans anymore. Like we can have all these cults of a few hundred people. At the same time, Melissa Ong's got millions of people following her on TikTok. So I don't know that she is the example of the point they were trying to make. But instead, sort of like, you know, the the idea that like we we on the on the Internet, we think like, oh, the gatekeepers have arrived. Maybe maybe not, you know, there's still chances for these random explosions to happen. Yeah, right on. Well, speaking of random explosions, sometimes there are very heated debates going on in our discord. But for the most part, we're all just won't just step chickens just hanging out and having a great time. And you can join by linking to a patron account at patreon.com. And have fun with us. Also, shout out to patrons at our master and grandmaster levels, including Ruchan Brantley, Paulo Jacob and Martin James. Yes, all step chickens welcome in the DTNS cult. Please join us. Let's check in with Len Peralta, who has been drawing during the show. Oh my gosh, Len, this is my new profile picture. You know, the thing about the chickens, I only found out about them today. And it was very, very interesting to hear just her process, everything else that went on. And, you know, one thing I took away from it is you only know if you know. So I wanted to be a little bit more coy with this image. In case you didn't know what step chickens were, you should go check it out. This is today it's the it's called you only know if you know I don't mention step chickens in this. So it but but it's alluded to. But it's here is perfection. It's a great it's a great image of her. And it was a lot of fun to draw. And, and yeah, it you only you only know if you know that's all I'll say about this one. And if you're interested in seeing it or or actually getting it is you sent my Patreon right now on Patreon.com forward slash Len or at my online store at Len Brawl store.com. What if they use this as their picture? Oh, that'd be I'd be flattered. Oh, yeah, your life will change overnight, man.  Thanks to Lamar Wilson.  And we haven't seen you in a few. And I don't and I don't even know what I was doing when I was saying it. We haven't seen you in a few weeks though so let everybody know what you've been up to. Yeah, you know, just, you know, just dealing with the whole pandemic thing and all that working from home. But my latest video on YouTube is, I think it'll be interesting to this audience I kind of go. The first night, like literally after HBO Max dropped. I did a walkthrough through it. So if you haven't seen anyone do that yet. I talk about HBO Max because I'm, I'm very passionate about it. I'm, I'm even more so about the Flintstones and things but you know, we can ignore that for now but yeah just check out YouTube.com slash Lamar Wilson. And oh yeah, you'll you'll learn some stuff about HBO Max because I love it. And I keep on to keep saying that because you're paying me every time I say I love it. And I'm kidding. Not paying. Not paying. Now you have to double disclose. Great. Yeah, right. Hey, yesterday I put, yesterday I was not on the show because I was working on an upcoming series called Know a Little More where I'm going to deep dive into individual topics. One of the topics I had planned to work on anyway, serendipitously, was Safe Harbor. So if you noticed yesterday, there was an episode where I dig in for 15, 20 minutes about Safe Harbor and CDA 203. If you really want to understand what that law actually says and what it doesn't, why it was created, what it's meant to do, go listen to that episode. James C. Smith from Irvine said, the Safe Harbor explainer show was fantastic. I thought I understood that already, but I learned so much more when Tom went into great detail that was easy to follow. I also like the way Tom and team covered the story of the U.S. President's Twitter posting getting labeled and the full history of how Twitter's policy has evolved over time. You guys are the best. Thank you, James. That's exactly why we do it. So I appreciate the feedback and I hope everyone else gets the benefit from that as well. You can keep us going by supporting us at DailyTechNewShow.com slash Patreon. And if you've got burning questions or comments, our email address is feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. Keep them coming. We love to read your stuff. We're also live Monday through Friday at 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. And you can find out more at DailyTechNewShow.com slash live. You only know if you know. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at FrogPants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this program.


During the product management interview, there are two types of candidates. So, do you have product management experience? Do you know what it is? MVP? Role map? Requirements? Voice of customers? Candidate one. Candidate two. Yes, I have product before it. Almost all the product managers asked for prior product management experience. However, how would you be able to show that you have relevant product management experience without a product manager title? In this video, I'm going to show you how to build a product portfolio to gain the product management experience and succeed in the product manager resume and interviews. This is Dr. Nancy Lee, a director of product from DrNancyLee.com. I help people transition from worker B to a product manager and business leader. To learn the most effective way to land a job as a product manager, you can subscribe to my channel and hit the bell button so that every time when I upload a new video, you'll be notified every Monday. Product portfolio is a critical part of landing a product manager. Recently, a student of mine got a product manager job in the e-commerce business only one week into my product management bootcamp, was because she used her product portfolio to impress the hiring manager. Today, let me show you how exactly we can help you to build your product portfolio as well. Please make sure you smash the like button and subscribe to this YouTube channel for the YouTube algorithm. First of all, what is a product portfolio and what are the key components of a product portfolio? Product portfolio is a collection of product you have built before using the product management methodology to demonstrate that you already had the prior product management experience and understand the methodology and key components of building a product. In this specific product portfolio, I know you may think about the designer's product portfolio. This is quite different because designer's portfolio is more focused on the visual design. As a product manager portfolio, we're more focused on the customer persona, customer journey and requirements that's more relevant to developing a product and launch a product from concept to execution. There are three key components of a product portfolio. They are customer persona, requirements, and MVP. Regarding customer persona, it's truly leveraged in terms of how we conduct customer interviews and usually you will have more than one customer persona. You can see some examples right here. Regarding the product requirements, there are five different types of product requirements you need to write about in your product portfolio. We'll talk about those five different kinds of requirements in details in my prior video. Talk about the must-have product manager resume keywords so that you're able to land that job. Now the last part is MVP. You can build many different kinds of MVPs, but the most common type of MVPs are mockups and videos. The best part of product portfolio is that if you can bring this mockups and MVPs and videos directly to the hands and users and ask them for feedback so that you're able to improve it so that you have the entire end-to-end experience of building a product, improving it, and launching a product. And second, you should build a product manager portfolio to gain the product management experience. So product manager jobs is experience-based job, which means it's all based on your prior experience, how much you have done related to product. So building this portfolio will enable you to capture and identify what you've done before that's relevant to product management. You need to sincerely build this portfolio, and I recommend all my Brookham students to spend at least 20 hours to build a product manager portfolio so that you can digest and learn product management concepts even before you get the job. And once you get the offer, you can immediately hit the ground and start running. Now for all my audience, I can put you guys into two categories, and one group is that one of you guys might have prior experience that are relevant to product management, such as consulting experience or digital transformation experience. And in that case, you can turn your prior project into a product portfolio and build a part you haven't done before, such as customer interviews and build it up your prior project's product portfolio. If you have nothing to do with product management in your prior life, you can start from scratch by building some side projects, helping some startups and build everything ground up. In my last video, I talked about how would you become a product manager within nine steps without prior experience. Over there, I gave you three top examples, what kind of project you can do, how would you gain product management experience? If you want to learn all the 13 different types of projects you can build on the site, you can download the specific cheat sheet here, which you can take it to build your own specific product portfolio. Now I have a question for all of you guys. Have you already had a product manager portfolio or not? Please comment down below in the video, let me say yes portfolio, no portfolio. So I know how many of you guys already get the head start. Number three, you can get interviews using your product portfolio. By this time, I assume you'll already build your product portfolio, then you can directly use it in your networking script. As I talked to you guys in my masterclass, how would you be able to land a product manager job without applying jobs online? So networking is a key part of landing a product manager interview. So when you send over your networking script and trying to network with higher managers, you should send over your product portfolio to show that you already gained product management experience and you're very sincere. You have done extra steps to move forward to the next round of becoming a product manager. So it's a very critical that can lend you a product manager interview. Number four, put your product portfolio into your product manager resumes and job application. In your product manager resume, there's a specific session called product manager project where all your side project can go into the session and you should talk about you have conducted voice of customer interviews, you have road requirement, you have drove like roadmap before so that you're able to hit all the product manager keywords. I have made a specific video talk about all the keywords you need to hit. You can check out this must have product manager resume Once you hit all those keywords, you should also think about is any prior work experience of relevant to product management? If so, you can also hit all the keywords in another session called work experience in those work experience because you build a product portfolio. Have you done anything relevant to product management? You can write over there about your product manager keywords as well. Number five, bring your product portfolio to your product manager interview. During your product manager interview, people will ask you lots of questions regarding tell me example when you turn a product from concept to execution. Those are perfect example you have done in your product portfolio and especially this can be used in answering those behavior questions. You should also bring the product portfolio to an in-person interview. This is post the pandemic, but during pandemic, you can directly send a link of your portfolio. To be honest, prior to the pandemic, I would bring a stack of my portfolio, print out and bring it into the interview. And in case any of the conversations or questions rise up regarding product portfolio, I can bring this to my hiring manager and show them that I already have done all the homework and I'm already outstanding candidate and it's more likely I'm able to get a job. If you want to hear more tips like this about how to build a product portfolio and you can subscribe to my newsletter where I'm going to send you more tips about product portfolio. If you want to join a secret society of aspiring product managers like you where we discuss product manager interviews, questions and answers, you can check out my WeChat group and Facebook there. And don't forget to smash the like button, subscribe to this channel for the YouTube algorithm and check out my other videos about product manager interviews and questions. And hopefully all of you guys are getting a job very soon as a product manager. I'm going to see you next time. This is Dr. Nancy Lee. Bye.


This paper reviews the use of clay brick waste powder, CBWP, as a replacement for cement in self-compacting concrete, SCC. The effects of CBWP on the physical and mechanical properties of SCC were examined, as well as the environmental impact of SCC with various CBWP contents. The results showed that up to 10% CBWP could be used without significantly affecting the physical and mechanical properties of SCC. Furthermore, the environmental impact of SCC with 10% CBWP was lower than that of conventional concrete, resulting in a reduction of environmental damage. This article was authored by Muhammad Sala Nasser, Awam Juma Salman, Rozal Jaber Ghaib and others.


The Text Block A text block is a customizable block allowing you to add images, text, links or even embedded code or widgets to blocks at the side of your course. You don't need to understand any code to use it. You can add more than one text block as you see here where we have, for instance, a block introducing the course teacher and an image of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. To add a block, we enable edit mode and then from the block draw, click add block and choose the block we want, here text block. Let's add an image of the course teacher with a short message. We give it a title, I'm going to call it. Welcome. And then in the content, we add the image we want. Teacher Sam has her image on the desktop so simply needs to drag it in. Moodle's editor allows you to drag and drop an image. We then click on it to give it a description. Underneath the image we can add text including making a link and then when we click save, the text block displays in the block draw.


Well, good afternoon, everyone, live from Costa Rica today. You got not only me from Costa Rica, but one of my most favorite people in the whole wide world, Dr. Eileen Naomi Rusk, who I will introduce in a minute. Today we're gonna be talking about, for sure her favorite topic and one of my favorite topics to talk to her about is optimizing brain health and optimizing stress levels and neuroplasticity. She will explain everything. And as you can see, I am miles away. I'm trying to reduce my stress by staying for a week here in Costa Rica, doing a little work, but lots of adventure and rest and relaxation. And we'll talk about how important that is for the brain as well. Let me quick introduce my beautiful friend and colleague, Dr. Rusk, and then we'll get right in with the program. Dr. Eileen Naomi Rusk is the Director of Healthy Brain Program and the Coordinator of Cognitive Rehabilitation and Trauma Treatment Programs at the Brain and Behavioral Clinic in Boulder, Colorado. She has completed a fellowship in neuropsychology while studying new treatments and strategies for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and has authored peer-reviewed papers in the areas of psychology, neuropharmacology and neuroscience. More recently, she trained extensively with Dr. Dale Bredesen in the Institute of Functional Medicine and using an integrative approach to treat the root cause of cognitive decline and dementia. Her personalized approach to brain health coaching and incorporating lifestyle practices like meditation, trauma healing, inspires others to build emotional resilience and optimally live long, optimal longevity plans. She supports the earliest initiation of mental wellness and healthy brain and lifestyle and envisions a time where dementia is a rare occurrence. I love that. So welcome, Dr. Rusk. So glad to have you here. So glad we could have the time to connect even across the many, many miles. Me too. Yes, and as many of you know, many don't. On the outside, she's a dear, precious friend of mine. So this is a special time that we get to connect on multiple levels. So I'd love to start off with the story. And I'd love if you have any, I want to talk about stress and neuroplasticity on these topics, but tell us a little bit about why you're doing what you're doing. Like why did you get into neuroplasticity? Why did you, because the story behind the why always matters as far as motivation to do what you do. Yeah, no, I've seen you do that with other people and it's really compelling. And I think actually, as you asked me about my story, I'll have to say to everyone who's watching that as we tell our story and we understand our story, we begin to weave kind of a quilt of who we are, who we're becoming, who we were and who we really want to be. So I think that, you know, I don't even know if you actually know my story. And I don't know if I have one story, I have many stories, but integrating story is a very important part of stress reduction and trauma healing, just to say that. So a big part of my own work and my own life's journey has been weaving the pieces of my story together that have been fragmented or not incorporated into me understanding who I am. So thanks for asking, but I'm sure you ask your other speakers the same wonderful question. I was a very, very anxious child. And it was only later in life that I realized that my seemingly normal and healthy childhood was actually fraught with occurrences and a history that didn't resonate well with my nervous system. So it wasn't that I had, thank God, I had amazing parents. Again, things that happened inside my home were very stressful. And I think a lot of the people watching this will resonate with that. You know, we had wonderful loving parents, many of us hopefully, but if there's that lack of attunement or lack of resonance with our family environment or with our primary caregiver or caregivers, then our nervous system sometimes doesn't rest or develop the flexibility that it needs to develop in order to be able to face some of the adversities or challenges or stressors that we normally meet in life. We don't develop that flexibility because that kind of consistent safety experience or our ability to actually come down off of a stressor doesn't necessarily happen. And as far as my particular story goes, I was a very anxious child and I used to have a lot of panic. So I wouldn't want to eat. I remember that the doctor gave me medicine to get me to calm down, like knockout type drops that caused me to kind of really collapse into a nervous system response that settled me, but it also shut me off. Yeah. At the age of 11, I'm thinking about, I remember my father saying to me, is everything okay right before bed? And I said, daddy, it's not the way it's supposed to be. I know I'm not supposed to feel this way. Wow. I think I was, the good thing is we all know, everyone who's watching this has a sense inside of how it could be, how it should be. But sometimes that sense of what it is to be free and calm and joyful is so hidden that we forget about it. But children know it, right? Oh, I love the story and you're right. I don't know if I've ever heard so joyful though, because it also shows the qualities that make you such a great clinician and teacher is that intuition, that ability to see things that other people don't see. And you started by seeing it in yourself and being able to articulate it. I mean, even the fact that you, a lot of 11 year olds might feel that way, but then to be able to say those words in that clear of a way to your father, that to me is profound. And that shows the ability to not only sense this thing that's happening, but being able to bring it out and tell your father at that age, that's amazing. Good point. And so part of the relational success there is what you're pointing out. The other part of the relational success is that my father listened. Yes. That doesn't always happen very often growing up throughout our entire adulthood into our intimate partnerships later in life. We say something, but we don't feel the person feeling us. We don't feel the person hearing us. So he heard me and I promptly ended up with a wonderful psychiatrist. Wow. So I think I'm gonna say her name. She wouldn't mind anyways.  She would really, she was a soft and very nervous system regulated person. And it turns out I really needed that relational piece because I don't remember one thing she said to me. Wow. And so many of us, as you know, need that consistent, relational, co-regulation assurance. Yes. That's consistent. Yes. Oh, I love that. So I had that. I had that for a year and you wanna hear a really beautiful story. Most people don't know this story. This year, when I returned to Montreal, I met with a clinician who said that this woman who had been my psychiatrist at 11 years old was still alive at 95, turning 96 and she'd just retired. So I found her, I met with her and we chatted. And next time I'll show, you know. Oh my goodness, I love that. Amazing, amazing, amazing. She worked as a pediatric psychiatrist until she was 95. Wow. Hatching the nervous systems of children everywhere. And so just- The thousands of lives, she impact. I mean, really, that's amazing over all those years. Wow. And I just wanna like personalize this for anyone who's watching it now. I'm imagining that there was someone or a moment in everyone's life who's watching this. That didn't have to be a parent. Yeah. It could have been a gym teacher or a guidance counselor. I've heard that from my patients. It's like it was that one person, the aunt I used to see at holiday celebrations who saw me, who heard me, who loved me unconditionally. Yeah. And sometimes the plan in your family system, the parents are lovely, wonderful, but busy with other children or other concerns. And so it's not a parent. Yeah, exactly. Wow. So just for everyone to kind of just take a moment and it can be an ancestor, it can be someone who's passed already and who's just someone who looks upon us with benevolence, kindness, and in a loving way ensues our nervous systems. Yes, so important. And I love that that changed part of your trajectory to have that experience because obviously you have always had the insight and some of the talents and gifts that you bring to your work now, but that kind of just shows that even as a child you were very insightful and thoughtful and able to even, like I said, the articulation is mind blowing to me. So let's shift just a little. One of the big topics that has been affecting, I know both your patients and mine are a stress and stress is this big vague term. It's almost overused. Talk a little about what is stress, what's the difference between good and bad stress and then we'll go into what we can do about it. Okay, good. So I wanna talk about the different subcategories of stress because stress has a really bad name. We all associate it with mental health issues now. Thank God people are starting to make that connection. We associate it with physical health issues when we work with people who have chronic illness. We know that's an important component. And indeed when we talk about stress in the common nomenclature, now we use the word stress to really mean distress. Yeah. And I wanna talk to you now about you stress. Yeah. You know, the positive stress that gets us up in the morning, we don't wanna get out of bed, but we do wanna do the things that we're meant to be doing in that day. So we get out of bed with a feeling of this is a little bit uncomfortable, but I'm motivated. So you stress is motivating. It's adaptive. It's important for building our capacity for resilience. And I guess I want us to all start to use the word stress and translate it for our own selves in a way that's more positive because I actually want stress to be reframed as motivating as well. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I feel it in our bodies, in our minds as something, okay, I'm a little bit uncomfortable. I am being stretched, which is what I like to talk to my patient. Know the difference between a stretch, a stretching of capacity and distress. No, get a sense of what that difference is for you. And the stress again, that's associated with illness and challenge is the stress cycle we actually don't come out of. Yeah. The distress cycle really. Hormesis is something I want to talk about as well. And it's a biological term that I'm sure you're familiar with in medicine. It's a conditioning, right? Our cells get conditioned with a little bit of stress. Yes. We work towards something and we build capacity for a marathon by tearing muscles and stretching them in. And I'm sure you know tons about the biology and biochemistry of that, but also know that this capacity to build capacity is an important part of developing a flexible and strong resilient nervous system as well. Yeah, we actually wouldn't be able to do what we do or live or if we didn't have stress. It's kind of like gravity being able to make the muscles work, right? And I'm reminded as you talk of a couple of months ago, maybe now six, nine months ago, I went on another climb. And it's scary stuff. Even if you've done it before, I remember walking with my guide and he said, are you nervous? And I said, well, no, I don't think so, but I'm excited. And I remember thinking, I think I chose to say that I probably was a little bit nervous, but I told myself I was excited because it feels the same. And it was a wonderful climb and I was a little nervous. But at that moment, I wasn't registering the nervousness as much as the excitement. But then I'm talking to you and just knowing the truth about it. I wonder if I was just telling my system it was other than it really was. And I think there was both, but... No, but I think it's good. I think what you're pointing out is that same, the sentence you said, I experienced it. It is indeed physiologically the same. It can be the same, but that's of course different than chronic stress, right? Right, absolutely. Right? And I think that I know that we're wired for transient stress that has a beginning, a middle and an end. And those physiologic curves that then take us down for they bring us up to a peak of, I need to take action and I need my autonomic nerve assistant to really move me out of this potential car crash or out of this being yelled at or threat experience. That keeps us safe. We want that system to be really flexible. We want the up and down. It needed, don't we? And it just reminds me, like I know you have so much that you could tell us about this, but with the pandemic, we're still somewhat in, but out of it in the most part. But what just happened to all of us was the threat to ego, sense of control, all the classical markers of Han Selie and his stress system and what causes stress, which is our nuts, novelty, unpredictability, threat to ego and sense of self. Those things happened and they were stained. So talk just a little bit about the sustained stressors like most of us just went through and the lack of an ending. So someone who's experiencing a chronic medical condition that doesn't change or someone who, that you probably have better examples than me, but I think of the pandemic because a lot of that was sustained for a long time. And even when we thought it was gonna end, it didn't quite end and then it came back and now we're living with a new normal. But to me that sustained stress is very different. What do we do in those situations or how can we have better coping mechanisms with sustained things that are changing our world? So the pandemic is particularly interesting and I happen to have done a study over the period of the pandemic with a wonderful international volunteer organization of professionals who study stress and we develop and offer stress coping strategies for children, for families and for educators. So we're working again with that very vulnerable population of young people whose nervous systems are being formed. And this is a, we ask the question, what were your best coping strategies? And everyone around the world, it was an interesting study because everyone around the world was experiencing the same components of fear. But the magnitude, right? It was so different than any of us. There's like wars and things that are not original, but to have, yeah, really like unprecedented almost, right? So there's also a beauty in it that nobody talked about. So inside of the fear, inside of the unpredictability that you're talking about, there was also a shared common humanity. And believe it or not, that was incredibly resourceful for people to know that we were all experiencing a similar type of distress. And when we share distress like that, it softens the blow for all of us. As you- It's like the classical, you're not alone. Like that simple phrase, right? That so many of us go on- Oh, right. Thinking that we're the only ones that are experiencing this painful trauma or painful illness. And when we know, now that we want anyone else to experience it, but when we just know you're not alone, that thing alone, and that's what you're saying, right? You're saying that the fact that we knew that we weren't experiencing it alone was helpful to our psyche. That's right. That's exactly right. And when people were connected to that sense of overall we're in this together, it was a buffer for that stress. But just to summarize the findings from 12 countries, we just published a very small preliminary study and we're extending our reach. We'll probably, hopefully we'll have about 1,000 subjects in the next survey. But what's beautiful is that we got information from people, participants from 12 different countries. And what you said was true. People really found that being in contact and being in connection was the primary resource. The other thing was really resourceful for people was taking a walk, people reconnected with nature all over the world in a whole different way. And I think that's partly why the climate emergency and the climate crisis has risen to the top as quickly as it had, it always had been, but I think people were more one-to-one connected with the rhythms of nature and gratitude for nature in calming their nervous systems. Wow. That was such a primary resource. That doesn't surprise you, I'm sure. No, I'm just kind of my jaws dropping because it doesn't surprise me, but I hadn't really thought about the, I mean, because climate change is clearly accelerating and the conversation is finally becoming where it should be. But I never thought about the connection to possible the pandemic and people being in nature and actually realizing this beautiful precious resource that we have, one of our most precious things is being destroyed. So I love that you make that connection because I hadn't thought about it, but it makes absolute sense that it would be that way. Yeah. People felt the stillness, people heard the waves, people listened to the trees, people saw dolphins in Venice, people saw things they had never seen before because nature became much closer as a resource for us. So hopefully that was part of the impetus, but I wanna speak a little bit about this persistent stress, which we call distress. And this consistent stress really does tax the nervous system. And I wanna name some things that people can really relate to. Consistent and persistent stress can happen in a bad work environment. Consistent and persistent stress can happen in an intimate partnership. And it's sometimes barely perceptible, sometimes it's very obvious, but I think it's good to at least, sometimes it happens with raising children who are challenged and parenting. It happens in many different contexts, but it's good to know when we're in those situations of where our nervous system doesn't ever feel. I don't wanna use the word relaxed, I wanna use the word safe. Safe. Because I often don't even know when, I think people often don't even know when they're relaxed and when they're not relaxed, when they're in this kind of just heightened above baseline, not relaxed. So funny you say that, at just case in point, I went to a Pilates class this morning and she said, what do you wanna do? And I said, well, I like to move, I don't like to slow down too much. And she said, well, that's exactly what we're gonna do then. Because you need that if you don't like to, so it's just a great point that like, then by the time the class was over, I was like, oh, that was wonderful. Best thing I could have done for my nervous system, but I didn't recognize that, the need for relaxation and that need for kind of like, I was like, let's go, let's go do something and do this. And probably those people who are kind of, usually busy moving like myself, need that thing that you're just, the calming. That's right. It's nice to picture it like we are, our nervous systems are elastic bands wanting that level of flexibility. Yeah, the flexibility, that's a great, great way to say it. Because that's a nice thing. Sometimes do you think that it's supposed to be like we're always both, but often patients misunderstand, it's like, what does it mean to have a calm nervous system? I actually don't think calm nervous systems are particularly healthy. Yeah, you're right. You're being right. That's right. Sometimes I just want to name that, a calm nervous system means that we are under stimulated. We are depressed. Yeah. We are not engaged in life, not connected, not challenged. Those are actually, since we haven't talked about brain health, those are all things that are not good for brain health. So this is actually nice. Yeah, I want to go into neuroplasticity. I mean, that is your thing. You're such an expert on that. What is, many people have heard the term, but what is neuroplasticity first? And then let's talk about like how we can, how we can keep our neuroplasticity, how we can maintain, how we can. And I want to talk about that, but if I don't mention the word going back to your other question, and I promise I'll come back to this. If I don't mention the word loneliness. Yes. You asked me about the stress of the pandemic. Yes. Then I have not honored all of the root causes of the mental health issues. Fear and loneliness were root causes of a lot of the physiologic challenges, neurologic, immune, hormonal that we're seeing now. So I want to talk about loneliness as a threat. Loneliness is physiologically, neurologically experienced as a threat to the nervous system. No wonder. It meant to belong. Yeah. So that's why people in my study and in other surveys found that this reconnection with others, whether it was a Facebook live with you, whether it was meeting with me on another platform, what doesn't matter what it was in person or not in person. Satisfied that nervous system need for belonging. So your other question, neuroplasticity. We have this incredible capacity, inherent natural endemic endogenous so deep in us, this great capacity for our nervous systems and our brains to change, to be flexible and to be, everyone hears the term neuroplasticity, everyone thinks it's a new term. I'd like to tell you all it's not a new term. When I was a neuroscientist 40 years ago, we talked about how one dose of Haldol, haloperidol, when I was working in animal models, one dose of haloperidol changed the dopamine system for a very long time. That is neuroplasticity too. Yes, true. We forget because it can be trauma cause neuroplasticity too, right? It really is neuroscientists, Kahal or Hujal, however you pronounce his name. We were talking about neuroplasticity 100 years ago. So I just wanna say it's not a new term. I know some people talk about it as new, it's not. I think what we're knowing now is that we can optimize our health, our cognition, our longevity, our happiness, our minds. Amazing. That's the best hack. A lot of people do biohacking, that's the best hack, engaging neuroplasticity optimally. I thought there's positive neuroplasticity and there's negative neuroplasticity, Dr. Jill. And I really want people to also know that there are influences internally and there are external influences too, which modify, moderate and change neuroplasticity. So let's start with negative neuroplasticity. Negative neuroplasticity, many of those factors happened during the pandemic. Yeah. The pandemic was not good for nervous system flexibility. Okay? Some of the things that are under the category of negative neuroplasticity are being solitary, being alone. Yeah. Wow. Being afraid and being stuck, you know, that frozen state we talk about in the nervous system, a collapsed state, stagnant, that means not learning, not being stimulated. So for my patients who are looking to optimize brain health, many of them slip back if they kind of just pulled back and I didn't see them regularly during the pandemic. Hey, did you see some decline with this? Oh my God. Yeah, that's the obvious, right? That's the one who stayed in that. People who didn't stay engaged to, patients who stayed with me and who were really kind of on top of it and their sleep schedule was good, they were working with their stress, they were staying connected. Connected to you or? People did really well during the pandemic. And actually, with people who weren't in fear or frozen states, they were able to kind of tap into, I found, places inside of very, very deep resource inside. I agree, I love that you're saying that because I think. It was so positive for some people. Yeah, it was really a transformational time for all of us, some negative transformations, some positive, but like, I don't know of anybody who was unchanged by it and didn't have some catalyst for the change in their life. Again, some of it very negative, a lot of it very positive, but I think you're right, I think it was. If we look at more of a, again, I don't think there was like a big divine plan with this or anything, but I do believe that there's purpose and meaning in everything and I know we share that. And it was a greater purpose and meaning, it was a catalyst, wasn't it? It was a catalyst for change. That's right, that's right. And even now, just to be able to reflect back on what did we learn, what did, and a lot of us learned about grief, a lot of us learned about fear. And I was particularly moved, it's a little tangential, but I was just particularly moved when I was working with a pediatric neuropsychologist yesterday and talking about the nervous systems of children who were kind of being formed during this pandemic and how parents related to their children around fear, around loneliness, around buffering kids. I think that's really important, even now, to be able to work with children. This is kind of a tangent with me, but it makes me curious as I hear you. Obviously we know from research around Holocaust survivors the effects of unborn children and their parents' stress and life and that. What do you think we'll see in the next generation or so of babies that were born or conceived during this pandemic? Do you think we'll see an effect on that generation in any way? There's no doubt. Yeah, there's no doubt. Rachel, who does work with Holocaust survivors show those kind of sometimes stocks, sometimes low, sometimes high cortisol. Yes. DPPA is associated with chronic stress or trauma, but I love talking about the epigenetic piece I also love talking about the ancestral trauma piece that's inherited in a way that may not yet be measurable. And I make some assumptions about the ancestral inheritance that we all have. And we may think about it as a generation, but again, I know you know more about this than I do, but clearly it can be transgenerational, multi-generational. That's the inherited piece. And so the answer is, I want to share a really beautiful piece of research that was done and has continued to be done in Montreal by some very wonderful neurophysiologists and social psychologists and neuropsychologists on the Montreal Ice Storm. Oh, wow. The studies were done. I think the Montreal Ice Storm might have been about 10 years ago in Montreal where the city was blanketed in a thick coating of ice. Wow. I don't know how many days it lasted for. I'm gonna say a month. Wow. A long time. And McGill University did a huge study looking at women who had been pregnant during the Montreal Ice Storm and found, and I'm sorry because I wasn't planning on talking about this. Okay, it's perfect. Let's look it up because I've studied it before and talked about it in other talks, found incredible changes, long-term changes in children of mothers that's cortisol levels, GHA, changes in HPA axis. If mothers were pregnant during that ice storm. So you asked me about the pandemic, were children affected? Yes, even if they were in utero. Yes. Yeah, I mean it has to have an effect and we've seen from past that it does, but it'll be interesting to see when it in the next generations of how that affects. Now the other thing is neuroplasticity means that that can change. That's right, that's right. And so like if we just name the things that parents can do, the things that we can do that we know are common to both brain health, positive neuroplasticity and stress resilience. Perfect. These are all things that we, they may seem obvious, but there's data on each of these points that we create stress resilience when we engage these aspects of positive neuroplasticity as well, which kind of makes sense. There are all things that we can do. We can insert calm into our day. And I'm not saying that we need to be calm all day. I don't think that that's healthy for a nervous system. We can move our bodies every day. We can have kind of a, even a written down ritual routine every day, which is I think important. So that these things get slotted in every day, even if it's for 10 minutes or an hour. So moving and grooving, keeping our bodies moving in a happy way. Yes. Not because we're forced to. And there's some data on when we exercise our attitude and thoughts about engaging with our muscles changes our physiology too. Oh, no surprise. I love that. So just keeping our mind, keeping our attention on why we're doing what we're doing that we're building positive neuroplasticity, nourishing our bodies, nourishing our gut. We haven't even talked about that brain access and how important and pivotal that wisdom center is in our body. Like basically tending to our wisdom center, nourishing our gut, nourishing our heart, nourishing our brain. Think about those as kind of generative wisdom centers that all engage neuroplasticity, depending upon. Yeah, we forget we think that it's all in the brain, but you've just thought about a great point because of functional medicine model, which you and I both use is about really engaging all the organs and they've connected the heart and the brain and the brain and the heart and the gut and the heart and all of this goes together. So I love that. And I love that because even for me, it's a reminder, as you well know, sometimes I work these days at the clinic and I barely stop for food, but that nourishment really is a part of the sustaining and ability for me to think clearly and do what I do. So good reminder for all of us. Right, and sometimes it's simple, right? Sometimes working with our nervous system means I'm feeling a little jittery, I'm really not clear in my thinking. We forget about something simple like hydration, ultrasonic pain. Absolutely, yeah, we do. Drinking, in fact, this place I stay, the little nightstand says drinking so many 32 ounces first thing in the morning is good. Of course, I know that, right? I teach this. And having the... Having the little reminder. Having the little reminder, that's right. It's just like, oh yeah, I know that, but I needed to hear that.  And so often in the work that we do, we get into the weeds around the particulars, the biochemistry or the detoxification. And sometimes we forget, just inserting ritual and routine into the day can be very soothing for the nervous system to create a ritual for the nervous system. And that includes sleep. We hadn't talked about sleep yet, but I like to talk to my patients about preparing for sleep, kind of when it's daytime. Yeah, oh yeah.  I'm not just talking about sleep hygiene, but actually like making sure we wake up at the same time every day and using an horror ring or some of the other devices. Yeah, it's so important. I mean, I just love that you're saying that because it's such a simple thing. And yet, so there's probably, we've both talked about with our patients, getting them to sleep well is probably the first and most important thing we could do. And we don't think about it with neuroplasticity, but clearly sleep may be the most important thing with cognition. You could probably say, right? That's right. And we also get to experience. We need to have the experience, and I won't talk about electrophysiology now, but we need to talk about the experience of our brain waves bearing, having varied brain waves throughout the day. Yeah, we can't have all deep. We can't have all REM. We need to. That's right. So being able to create flexibility in that system too, which I hadn't planned on, it just came up, but we want flexibility again and again, connection. Yes. You know, having a meaningful connection and becoming aware of who is it nourishing to be with? Who do I feel safe with? Who do I feel healed by? Yes. And who do I feel safe with?  I think I have it there. And it's all of the different functional mode of medicine components that contribute to brain health and optimized cognition. The ones we talked about today really are, you know, stress resilience. Yes. Sleep. We just touched on sleep. We touched on digestion, nutrition, nourishment and emotional resilience. Yes. But all of those other things are very important components of brain health too. Healing trauma. We really didn't talk about healing trauma, but building stress resilience gives us kind of a great baseline with which to heal trauma. It's very hard to heal. We can do a lot of our own trauma healing at home. I used to be someone who said, you have to see a trauma psychologist right away. Don't do anything else. But now we kind of want to be able to take on some of the building of stress resilience and building of resources, building allies, like we talked about right at the beginning of our conversation. Who's an ally for me? And just begin to feel what it feels like in my body to feel okay, to feel safe. That's the beginning of trauma work. It is, isn't it? Like just like you said, the safety and finding those connections and people that like our friendship is one of those places. It's a beautiful, we've talked before, but it's just an amazing place where we can go analytical or whatever places we want to go and it's a beautiful place of support and unconditional love. So our last couple of minutes or so here, I want to ask where they can find you, so in a second we'll give a website in that, but what kind of, if someone's listening and they've maybe felt distress, which we clarified what was what and they're feeling overwhelmed, they're feeling anxious. And we clearly, if you've been, unless you've been not watching the news, we know what's happening. I mean, every day there's news that is so much suffering and so unbelievable, unprecedented. What would you say to someone out there who is struggling with distress? And I mean, you've given them practical tips of what kind of one final hopeful thing might you say to them? I know we have to stop in a minute and I really feel like mind wandering and getting a hold of our minds is something we haven't talked about, but we let our minds wander and become the CEO of our lives. And we often walk through our day unaware that we're being controlled by thoughts that are anxious thoughts, that are thoughts that are memories coming back, that are trauma patterns we haven't been aware of. I really still wanna suggest to people that there are things to do at home, but it's PTSD Awareness Month I just found out. I mean, start to kind of recognize if there are patterns in your own life. Walk through every day just noticing when is there distress? Is it with a person? Is it with the job that I'm doing? Is it an activity that I'm doing? Try to find fun and creative. It might sound simple, but I think you yourself know the value of fun, pleasure, creativity, drawing, music. So engage in pleasurable activities and know what that start to recognize what it feels like to do something that's peaceful, pleasurable, calming. And notice your thoughts. Take a moment, take one minute. Take five minutes every hour during the day. What a good, yeah, they can set an alarm, right? If you want. There's so many wonderful apps. There's so many wonderful apps, like Calm or Insight Timer, that can just remind you on the hour. Or either to check in. Check in with your thoughts. Check in with your breath. I love going to breath first, because there's so much we can play with breath. We can activate a sympathetic browser response. Or we can totally settle with breath. So breath is a fun thing to play with, to create flexibility and get to know the flexibility and the nervous system that I've been talking about with you today. And so I love breath, connecting with breath and taking that minute or five minutes. To just notice, I'm letting my mind wander. I'm going to connect with breath and let my thought wander off, like a cloud in the sky, whatever visual works for you. The cloud in the sky, the I am the sky. My thought is the cloud moving by. We can get still enough. And if we had longer, I'd do a practice with your viewers right now, but we don't have long enough. But just even right now, you and I can do it together. We could just both settle and we can both get to the bottom of our breath on the exhale. We can create just a moment of space. That's lovely. And we can attend intentionally. Yeah. To a breath. What a great thing. And it takes us out of the busyness, right? And what a beautiful way to end because it's something everybody can do. You don't have to have a special training and you can practice and you can experiment. And granted there's a lot you can do with someone who's trained like you, but very, very simple, very practical. So where can people find you? Give us your website so people can look up information tonight. Yeah, sure. And it's aileennaomirusk.com. Perfect. And Instagram is Dr. Rusk. Perfect. And I think you'll probably have it on your- Yes, I will link it up to where you hear this. And I have a lot of blogs. I'd love people to learn about their nervous systems, brain health, a functional medicine approach that includes trauma healing and trauma release. I think that's really important. Senai, because it just happens to be PTSD Awareness Month. Yes, such a perfect time. That's why I said we had kind of a crazy day.  You both did. So good. Yeah, I know. Thank you for your time today. You're in a lot of wisdom. We will definitely come back and do this again. And thank you all listeners. Everywhere you watch this, you will find the links that we just gave out and we'll talk to you soon.