In this video I want to take a look at two different critical lenses for critical analysis in the same video here because they are connected but different. So we're going to take a look in this video at feminist and gender studies criticism. So feminism and feminist critical theory and gender studies critical theory, really two separate schools but closely connected enough that I think we can talk about them combined in this video. So first of all let's take a look at feminist criticism. Feminist criticism examines articles using a framework that considers the ways in which an artifact reinforces or undermines the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women. So we're taking a look at things here through the lens of essentially women and how women are represented in whatever artifact we're looking at, whether that's literature, whether it's other types of media, movies, anything at all really, even through the news or any other publication like that. We're looking at how women are represented and how traditionally feminine or values would be represented and characterized there in all of across the across the spectrum here and economically, politically, socially, psychologically just how are women represented and portrayed in these works in comparison in particular to men. So the history here of sort of the history of feminism and just this is going to be just so surface level but just to give us a little bit of background, feminism is typically divided into what they call three waves and the first wave really runs from the late 1700s into the early 1900s. So here we're talking about just general attention being drawn to the inequality of the sexes and how the sexes are treated, how they're represented in the United States in particular. This has been happening worldwide but in the United States in particular, probably the biggest representation of this came in the early 1900s with the suffrage, women's suffrage movement and so things like trying to earn the right to vote for women and just being treated as equals in that sense started for us here in the United States. Well, it started a long time ago but really represented well with the women's suffrage movement in the early 1900s. But the first wave of feminism again starting in the late 1700s really just was about seeking equality and equality of treatment in general for the sexes. The second wave then sort of runs from you know, unofficially from the early 1960s to the late 1970s so that 20 or so year period there where you have this post-World War II where in World War II women really demonstrated that they could work right alongside men and did pick up a lot of slack from men that were fighting overseas so women filled those roles in the factories and in the workplaces and different things like that. So really had an opportunity to demonstrate that they were equally as capable and qualified as men to do really anything and then this sort of in this period coincided of course with the civil rights movement in the United States so coinciding with the civil rights movement for people of color and minorities in that sense. You also had the Equal Rights Amendment for women and things like that that were being pushed and so you have this sort of second wave of feminism so to speak sorry forgot to scroll forward here but you have the second wave of feminism running from again the early 1960s through the late 1970s where again searching for recognition of equal rights but also equal opportunity in terms of not just employment equal opportunity to for things like you know abortion would be representative of this the idea of control of their own body being able to make decisions about their own body being able to make decisions about whether or not they would work and if they were going to work should they be you know treated equally and things like that that was their their goal in that sense still in the in the late early 60s through the late 70s in that second wave of feminism then finally the third wave which would be what we're presently and it started in the early 1990s really to recognize there and runs through the present time this third wave and really the biggest difference in the third wave between the others is the emphasis on what we call marginalized women or marginalized people in general but marginalized women so I can women of color women of lower economic classes so you know in the initial first wave and second wave really the predominant focus was on middle and upper class white women those are the people that were you know we're we were basically saying these people should have equal rights and now in this third wave we're there's there's a statement that you know it's not just middle and upper class white women who have you know you should have these equal rights and be seen as equals it's it's all women women of all colors women of all economic classes deserve this this freedom and this recognition and and so there's this third wave now starting in the early 1990s through present day so and and the history of feminism is important because it's really also the history of feminist criticism right so it follows along those the same types of lines as long as you've had feminism at work you've had this feminist criticism at work people viewing things through the lens of these particular feminist and yeah the viewpoint of feminism and these particular feminist frameworks so some of the major premises of the feminist criticism are first of all women are oppressed by the patriarchy that's that's kind of their cool their core mantras that women have been oppressed by the patriarchy patriarchy being this male-dominated male-controlled culture and society that we've had for you know thousands of years now that men have really been on top and men have really been seen as the dominant dominant sex and and had more opportunities and and greater opportunities the women have had so that the and and have that men have been really systematically as a result systematically displaced women and and undervalued women and treated them equally so that women have been oppressed by the patriarchy we also as part of the one of the premises see the Western culture is deeply rooted in this patriarch patriarchical ideology perhaps more so than other cultures where there is more imbalance probably in Western cultures than there are in other cultures in terms of some other cultures not all but some other cultures as far as how women are treated and whether or not they're seen as equals and where their value lies that the Western culture is deeply rooted in that sort of patriarchy that while sex meaning male or female is determined by biology that gender masculine or feminine is determined by culture and that different cultures identify what is you know kind of masculine and what is feminine as opposed to biological determinants determining what is male and female we have this you know differing ideas about masculine or feminine that are entirely based on culture and that whether we're consciously aware of the gender issues that they play a part in every aspect of human production and experience including the production and experience of literature and other artifacts so the things that we might be examining here in terms of artifacts that that culture those gender issues play a part in that just because they're they're sort of a they have become sort of our and a human viewpoint based on how deeply they're rooted in our culture and that they are then exhibited through as a natural byproduct in the types of art that we produce and the types of literature that we produce and also how the respective sexes are represented in those works so some common questions that you see in feminist criticism some of these will not surprise you how is the relationship between men and women portrayed so how does this piece or this artifact whatever it is this book this piece of music this whatever how does it indicate or what what kind of relationship does it indicate that men and women have how does it portray that relationship what are the power relationships between men and women or are they or characters assuming male female roles are they assuming those traditional roles but what and if so what are the the power relationships like who's in charge here who has the who has clearly has the power in this particular relationship and how is that represented in that work how are male and female roles defined you know again is this a fairly traditional breakdown of male versus female attributes and responsibilities and roles and things versus a little more contemporary way of some more androgynous portrayals you know males just representing feminist ideals and vice versa female representing male ideals and things like that what constitutes masculinity and femininity in this in this work and how do the characters embody these traits so how does this work seem to define masculine versus feminine and then how do the characters embody those traits what is it they do or don't do I say or don't say them that gives the idea that they embody those traditional or nontraditional roles the characters take on traits from opposite genders how so and how does this change others reactions to them right so our do we have men again acting in an androgynous way or acting in a feminine way where you have men portraying feminist traits or feminine traits and females portraying masculine traits and if so how so and if so how does that change the way people react to them or is it is it considered commonplace or is it considered out of place for people to do that so how do people respond to them doing so what is the work reveal about the operations in economically politically socially psychologically of patriarchy so what does this tell us about how patriarchy is is maintained and how it's established in a particular culture all those types of things about the operations of those things what is the history of the works reception by the public and by the critics tell us about the operation of the patriarchy so you know again how do people's responses to this what does that tell us about the patriarchy and then finally what role does the the work play in terms of women's artistic history and artistic tradition so looking back what does this particular piece tell us about that particular artistry or tradition okay shifting gears here just for a second let's take a look at gender studies criticism again very closely related but different from feminism here we have gender studies criticism gender studies criticism examines artifacts using a framework that considers roles and issues of sexuality power and marginalized populations in an artifact so I can not just looking exclusively at the dichotomy between men and women now we're looking at all aspects of sexuality power and marginalized populations in an artifact so in kind of a brief history of gender studies it's really is an offshoot of feminist criticism it started kind of within that framework of feminist criticism we started looking at you know again how women were represented in and how this patriarchy was represented in in artifacts and in literature and all different kinds of of media and so then as an offshoot of that people started thinking well you know this is really kind of too binary too binary and so they focus started generous gender studies really started focusing on what they call the in-betweens the in-betweens so it's again a less binary approach than feminist criticism which is very much masculine feminine that's it let's look at those two things let's look at the dichotomy between how feminist how women are represented in these works as opposed to men whereas gender studies says let's look at all the elements look let's look at all the in-betweens not just this binary men and women thing but what about all the in-betweens what about the in-between sexualities what about the in-between power structures what about the things that aren't just about men versus women but still related somehow to gender so let's take a look at those types of things so it's an offshoot of criticism of feminist criticism but but it focuses more on those in-between areas and actually takes on a broader scope as opposed to a very narrow scope of feminist which is you know again men or women men versus women or you know women versus patriarchy or whatever you want to call it but generously broadens that spectrum and looks at a variety of different factors there so the major premises of of gender studies criticism are that that a binary view of artifacts is too narrow that it's just not it's just not broad enough and that there's more to this than just masculine versus feminine and that the the other issue is that the definition of those concepts of masculine and feminine and so forth and any kind of term along those lines is constantly changing within a culture which also then defies attempts at binary classification so when we look at you know we look at feminism again we've talked about there are three different waves to feminism they're all different but we just look at the idea of what is what do we consider masculine and feminine these days as opposed to you know 50 years ago 50 years ago let's say well let's just say in the 1950s our idea of feminism and what it meant to be feminine is different than what our idea of feminine is today right that the the idea of you know the prospect in the 1950s if you'd said that that a woman wearing genes and you know things like that would have been appropriate and would have been considered you know sexual or sexy or whatever or you know would have been considered feminine still if a woman was wearing pants even in the 1950s that would have been you know absurd women don't wear pants right so our idea of feminists what feminism what it means to be feminine has changed over the years and is constantly changing and so our ideas about everything else they're all culturally bound and as we know our culture evolves and changes over time so so our definition of these things changes over time so it's you know gender studies says it's not just as simple as a masculine versus feminine because those things aren't even stable those things aren't even static they're changing all the time those those notions of what it is to be masculine or feminine right so so how can our study of those things remain the same be static so gender studies both allows for looking at those in-betweens but also broadens the scope into saying okay let's adapt and go with the times here and and look at things in a different light so this is the major premises of cultural gender studies sorry gender studies in criticism a couple common questions that you have in in general studies when you're looking at these types of things first of all what what sort of support if any is given to the elements and characters who question the masculine feminine binary and what happens to those elements or those characters so what do you what happens when a character doesn't fit neatly into you know the traditionally masculine or traditionally feminine viewpoint and and how is that character treated in the in the artifact and and what happens to those characters in those elements as a result what elements in the text exist in the middle between the perceived masculine feminine binary in other words what elements exhibit traits of both so where do we see androgynous behavior between character or within a character where they're exhibiting both masculine and feminine or maybe those you know just some other non-binary connection between whatever it is that people are working at them what is the word or what does the work rather contribute to knowledge of queer gay or lesbian experience and history including artistic history okay so again looking at those kind of marginalized populations what does this work contribute to our knowledge of that culture and of that of that population including their artistic history and the way that their artistic history relates to the artifact that we're looking at and how does the artifact illustrate the problematics of sexuality and sexual identity what approach does it take on that or does it avoid it completely yeah which would be very telling in and of itself so you have some common questions that we oftentimes associate with gender studies criticism so as an example here just real quickly i just wanted to go through you know kind of a well-known piece of literature or film or however you want to look at it it's both it was literature first and then it was film and has branched into every other kind of media i think as well but i think it's it's it's an interesting because it's very very popular many people have have experienced this and are fans of this series and so wanted to take a look at it in terms of feminism feminist theory because it's very well known work here so we're going to take a look at the harry potter series just in again not any one particular book or movie or whatever just in general harry potter as a world and that was created there by jk rowling and and so again just scratching the surface here's just just giving an idea of what some of these look like in application so if we look at some common questions from feminist criticism and relate them to the harry potter world how is the relationship between men and women portrayed i think there's you know there's a lot of interesting connections between men and women you you have women in some ways that are in positions of power like professor mcgonigal but not in the ultimate sense of power right and then when there is a woman in the ultimate sense of power over hogwarts for example it's the evil woman right who takes over after dumbledore and in place of dumbledore and is is very cruel and and just so it's interesting that when when a woman does finally get in a position of power over hogwarts that she has to be the the cruel headmaster and and you know the one that everybody hates it's also interesting the relationship between men and women when you look at the main characters between harry and ron and and hermione i think that hermione hermione is received some interesting character work she's portrayed as really probably the smartest of the people there and the most accomplished most capable and yet not the main character that's interesting that she's not the main character in some ways is is is is consigned to that kind of second tier and her power only comes through really when it's in combination with harry and oron but but you know there's there at least is a significant bond or relationship between the three of them including both men and women one of the power relationships between men and women or characters assuming male female roles i think that obviously the the it's this is sort of a traditional even though it was written by women it's sort of a traditional men and power type of work here that again hermione really isn't the focus of this book but or this series she's not the title character of course but she's also not the main character she works really in conjunction with other people and never really on her own for that for that matter so so there are some power relationships here that where men tend to be in the powerful and controlling roles however the male and female roles defined somewhat traditionally i mean even in the in the in the instance of the weasleys for example ron's parents his dad is the one who goes to work the mom stays at home for the most part and and does home body type stuff home stay at home mom type stuff which is not knock on stay at home moms but but not very progressive in that sense right that we don't see a lot of women we don't have a lot of strong examples of women who are who are leading the charge there so their the roles are fairly traditionally defined in these in these books and movies what constitutes masculinity and femininity and how the characters embody these traits so it's interesting a lot of times there are fairly standard displays of masculinity and femininity especially when you look like Iran and you know Hermione or Ginny or people like that the women in these roles that have a fairly traditional masculine and feminine relationships Henry is somewhat androgynous he's a little bit more sensitive and would be characterized as having a few more feminine traits i think than than the others but but really not so much there are a few cases of women who are portrayed with highly masculine traits again for the most part these are women who are in the quote-unquote evil roles right you have you have Bellatrix Bellatrix Lestrange is a very strong woman but very masculinely strong in those senses has a lot of masculine traits in that sense the the new headmaster whose name is case-racking remember um umbridge i think her name but uh anyway very masculine oriented very you know powerful very very strong in terms of her power but uh but does not wield it in a very feminine sense if you will the characters take on traits from opposite genders how so does this change others reactions to them as i said harry does a little bit he's a little bit more sensitive a little more empathetic and and get some flak for it right he gets called a lot of names and people tend to think he's weak as a result of that so um so he does a little bit but but not no it's not necessarily portrayed in a positive way what's his work reveal about the operations economically politically socially or psychologically of patriarchy what we see the men in charge of pretty much everything for the most part and the men making all the decisions men uh men kind of run on the show so it does kind of reveal itself in that way somewhat i think um what is the history of the works reception by the public and the critics tell us about the operation of patriarchy well it's very popular obviously one of the most popular book series in the world uh in in the history uh of the world one of the most popular movie franchises and highest gross movie franchise franchises so there's a a lot of positive reception by the public that they must not mind so much that that this is primarily male driven and and really women have at best subordinate roles what is the history of the works reception by the public and by the critics tell us about that's what we just looked at so let's take a look at what role does the work play in terms of the women's artistic history and artistic tradition you know that's a tough one i don't really know um it could because it's it is sort of falls into that patriarch patriarchal framework where it is fairly traditional despite having a couple of strong female you know characters those characters really have more male attributes in terms of personality so it really kind of falls into that old the old system of supporting that kind of patriarchy and patriarchal system or ideological system anyway okay so next time we're we're looking at something we can think about it through this lens as well this feminist and gender studies theory and just try to consider it from as always from a variety of different viewpoints and and standpoints if you have any questions about this feel free to email me i'd be happy to respond to any email so that you might have so don't hesitate to do that but in the meantime i hope you'll consider next time we're looking at an artifact or piece of literature or whatever you consider the the kind of feminist implications or the general gender studies implications of that work as well


Good to have you all back for another episode of Think Tech Hawaii's Human Humane Architecture, broadcasting live these days from half around the world, from the Munich, Germany, where I am, and back to Honolulu, Hawaii. So can we get the first picture up which illustrates our friend DeSoto wandering around and documenting for us how it looks in back of Honolulu and unfortunately after the COVID-19 lockdown when we started to open up or we planned to. Another happening which is the racial riots came which actually didn't develop as drastically on our island for several reasons but especially the high-end stores were afraid enough to close their store fronts again and they boarded them up with plywood that they probably got from Home Depot likewise and that comes from the Pacific Northwest. The ship there is boarded over there so not the most pleasant use and appearance of wood for us woodpeckers who are very very passionate about wood. So that being the case let's get our spirits up and get to the next slide because already some shows ago we had shared an emerging talent's work, Nicholas Chivitano's Doctor of Architecture of Eases proposing a new wood construction system in his case out of a cross nailed with an aluminum nails at that point out of local eucalyptus trees and ironwood and DeSoto and I have been doing some covering about that one. Today which the picture on the left gives you a little clue about another material that's even more unconventional and surprising and we get to the third slide and with that I am going to introduce my guest Kaldi Keano. Hi Kaldi. Aloha. Hi Martin. Hi good to have you on the show and please help us about when you came up with what we're talking about today and refer a little bit to this slide here what we see. Sure and I appreciate you having me on the show. So just graduated University of Hawaii School of Architecture and this is one of the projects that we had one of our studio projects focusing on Vietnam and worker housing and how we can provide for that need and so in this project we had looked at two different local options as far as material and providing something that was natural that was cheap that was affordable and that was pleasing aesthetically visually to the touch and feel and so with this project we began our search to look for what that local material would be and this led us into using coconut wood as one of the main sources of the building material and so this project like I said focusing on Vietnam and being very humid and hot place. We also wanted to focus on a material that would be not only local and beautiful but also could help with ventilation and different aspects of improving workers life as they work all day you know very hard labor and then come home to something pleasing that they can enjoy. Absolutely and we want to add that we did that in collaboration with our utmost Vietnam and tropical expert, Tropicure Rockwood, hi David and thanks for having joined Ventures with us on that. So go to the next slide and this is actually illustrating what you already talked about here is your project that you did with your team the more overall concept at the bottom and at the top you came up with this idea of a very unconventional again say the least material construction system right. Exactly, exactly and so here we wanted to use traditional materials and local materials found in coconut wood and kind of infuse that with some of this modern wood technology that is found in cross laminated timber and so with this we started to develop our own version of a coconut wood cross laminated timber product for the main structure of this building. Let's go to the next slide here. What do you remember about that one? You see the next slide yeah so on the next slide we see again where I was kicking in back again because oh we go to the previous sorry Eric we're too fast. This is something I'm hoping to offer when travel gets safer although Europe we opened up again and so hopefully this can happen soon. It's an anticipated study abroad and I want to share with interested members, participants, the post occupancy and evidence-based design life cycle assessment projects we've done. This one on top is our home we might have been ahead of the game the office home how we call it so obviously the reverse of something that we're all very used to working from home, home office and this project next slide is built in which way maybe fully explain all of it. Yeah so you know this was part of the inspiration of where we got for our Vietnam project and in looking at Martin's project and how we use this type of cross laminated timber to make this simple yet beautiful structure all natural all made out of wood and you know the not only is it beautiful but the way that it's constructed quick construction time very solid very efficient type building structure great for you know mechanical systems and and so this was a lot of inspiration for where we got to put together our Vietnam project using coconut cross laminated timber and in this case we have to say it was a couple years ago so this is still sort of the original and kind of the arcade way of cross-laminating we actually use glue to put them together and that presents some challenges of obviously glue is a material questioned by some people also as far as the fire rating there were some concerns about that so so again that was then and now is now and let's go to the next slide which is a project and even the earlier project however on our side that inspired even more to be explained open why and how this is different than the previous construction system. Yeah so and you know understanding some of the things that Martin was able to share in his personal experience of actually using this material and the success of it you know inspired us to be able to take this one step further and bring it from you know a European setting to a tropical setting and infuse that with a local understanding of local woods and the benefits of using material found right here in in the local construction sites. And while the previous project is CLT so cross-laminated this one here as we can call it side nailed because you just nail one board to the next and so on and while I was honored to share with you my previous experience I had a similar situation back then in 2002 with a gentleman that you see at the very top left his portrait there just below the book he's an author which is the timber manual and that's Julius Natura who's a professor at the EPFL in Busan so thanks Julius for having been a coach and an inspiration for me in order to convince my client I had to build that sort of full-scale lockup that you see me with more hair in front of it and so we the client was very suspicious of building entirely in solid timber for 40 thousand square foot school and so we had to go ahead and build this full-scale lockup that shows all the details and all the connections and how that was a motivation for you we will see further down our talk really so let's go to the next slide and kick in and and start where you where you departed from where we picked off here and on this picture. Yes definitely so here in this slide you know I worked with as a carver and woodworker here in Hawaii for quite a few years so I understand a lot of the woods and a lot of the uses and benefits of it but coming across this diagram really connected with me because it showed all the benefits of coconut wood and if you can see that you know as far as a numbering system and giving it a rating coconut wood compared to other local woods here in Hawaii has some of the best benefits across the board as far as different types of uses but one category that was discerning to me is the category of a major commercial timber where there's a circle and there's no X there and so coconut wood although it's been around for many years it's a it's a it's a material that has been used for local civilizations for thousands of years as a main major material in many different ways in building homes and building canoes and building musical instruments and using it for weapons and different types of things but although it's been used traditionally in in native Polynesian or different even in different tropical regions as a construction material or it's not been commercialized at all it's not mass produced and it's not used across the board in any way and so what I wanted to focus on is how can we use this local material and bring it into the commercial realm and use it more fully in different cities and regions whether it's in the you know major major cities such as Andalulu or more rural areas of Hawaii or even other countries like Vietnam or the Philippines where there are millions literally millions of coconut trees growing and ready to be used absolutely and the top row of pictures is in a little sort of funny way showing how most people and especially we with our mono economy at least in the past currently not working which is tourism this is how the visitors basically know about cocoa nuts in various way you know as the food trucks along the roads you know serving coconut milk drinks and then you got the coconut bras and you got all sorts of things but again hardly ever would anyone imagine it being of significance for the built environment and that's the exciting endeavor you took on and while you said you know it applies to many of the other tropics which maybe more abundance of actually the wood source but you still wanted to take it home or keep it home at the same time so that brings us to the next slide here and explain a little bit your your how you looked on the island and what you're suggesting to actually then have sufficient you know material to go what which you will share with us for a long yes exactly so you know it's it's obvious that Hawaii is for hundreds of years been an agricultural state I mean looking at pineapple looking at sugarcane and even before that before these commercial type of items were used there was abundance of other tropical crops such as taro or even coconut trees were highly used here as well and so although we do not have a large coconut forest such as in southeast Asia where they they really have this market of making coconut water and coconut oil there is still opportunity to bring this this material back to Hawaii and help with economics of Hawaii's agriculture as well as agroforestry sectors and so looking at different areas throughout Hawaii and there's quite a bit of open land agricultural land and opportunities to grow this material here in Hawaii and so the diagram in the bottom if you took a one acre plot and you space these coconut trees and a recommended 21 feet apart you can grow about 81 trees on one acre of lot and so you know understanding this and looking at all the open land throughout Hawaii throughout the state of Oahu and many of the outer islands here in Hawaii there's a lot of opportunity to grow these coconut forests and so one of the great benefits of coconut trees unlike other trees in agroforestry or other crops such as sugarcane and pineapple coconut tree it's beneficial throughout pretty much its entire life as it grows you have the leaves you have the coconuts which there is no limit to the amount of things that it can be used for whether coconut oil coconut water making things to the coconut shell things to the coconut husks things woven from the leaves of the coconut tree so it's it's a giving tree that's why it's called the tree of life in many tropical nations it's a tree of life for an important reason because it gives life and it's useful for a wide variety of things so not only growing these trees for the end use of the wood but throughout its span we can use many of its resources even before we harvest the wood absolutely and to comply to our rules and regulations at the School of Architecture of the University of Hawaii you had to gather a team of at least interested in best case expertise and experienced people so let's go to the next slide and please introduce your extended team to us for me yes definitely so as part of my team I really wanted to bring on people who were familiar with this type of system that I was trying to put together and motivated in this realm so besides Martin who was my chairperson I also had Ian Robertson who was over at the School of Engineering here at the University of Hawaii who also collaborated with some folks in Maui to do some of Mandala Homes to do some studies on using coconut wood as a construction material also Bill Chapman Dean Chapman was on our team as well as Joey Valenti many people know him for his albizia work and and all his research and his applied studies and the things that he's contributed to using trees here in Hawaii that it might be looked at as waste trees but actually can be used in structure as a structural material as well and so collaborated with this team we're able to come up with a great project with a lot of good direction and and help from each member of the team yeah and another team member you introduced by looking finding it at the which you see at the very top left which is my alchemist chamber my office and and one of these Christmases when I came back from my home trip I basically brought something with me that I introduced to you and do that hooked on that one and that gets us to the next slide even explain please what what that one is yes so you know quite a few years ago in one of our studio classes Martin had introduced us to this big company who had a wood nail gun that is what they call lignolock which is the first of its kind to pneumatically shoot wood nails into material and so I really wanted to incorporate this in my research and in my studies one because it was natural and all the benefits as well that comes from it in my project it was something that I wanted to not only use this modern understanding of mass timber but also to keep it as natural as possible and so infusing this lignolock wood nails in my project was very important a key for the success of of this project and also explain to us the guy next to the nail and the nail is next to the the back company name but explain the guy next to us and who has the fantastic name of and the mysterious name of vascular bundle so what is that yeah so in the picture in the bottom left corner if you took a you know small piece of coconut wood and you kind of smashed it apart you would find that really the structural strength of the coconut wood is found in its vascular bundles which are these veins that run up through the entire trunk and the more density of these veins the higher the density is the stronger the the wood is and so ironically unlike other types of hardwoods or woods in general where the center is the hardwood and the hardest part of the the densest part of the tree that is quite opposite with coconut wood where the peripheral area is the densest part of the tree and so the one of the signs of finding one of the densest part is these vascular bundles that run through the trunk and when you find a higher density of these vascular bundles that's where the strength is and so in the upper right pictures you'll see on the right one of the lignolock wood nail wood nails and on the left you'll see one of these vascular bundles that are extracted so side by side you know it's almost complementary to each other like coconut wood and vascular bundles wanted to be a lignolock wood nail or vice versa the wood nail wanted to be a vascular bundle and so collaboratively you know they work great as far as being sustainable and using materials that are you know that we don't have to worry about as far as any VOCs or you know what it comes from and it's what it's made out of. Yeah and also different than the which already the the aluminum nail that from a previous system that Nick used already not as vulnerable to ruin the the the saws that you and the blades of the saws you cut the wood with but obviously wood you know connecting wood is a even more mutual fit and they indeed look like buddies you know getting along very well with each other and getting along very well with each other gets us to the next slide because you're a man of many occupations and the silver and I were looking at aviation on the island connecting us to the rest of the world in a multiple variety of shows and one of them is quoted up there and below that I put the airline delta airline and explain us how are you connected with them and how they were helpful here exactly so prior to going to school you know I worked for Delta Airlines for quite a few years and actually my first couple of years while going to school I was still working as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines and so having that benefit you know I really wanted to use it to my advantage especially in my research so Martin introduced me to not only the ligno log nail gun but also to the CEO and to the crew there at ligno lock in Austria so in getting contact with them and getting contact with Christian Beck the CEO of the company we had a lot of good conversation and understanding how their technology can be used in our coconut wood and I also asked them if he wouldn't mind if I visited their company and brought some wood along with me and we did some testing at their facility so in January of this year I actually took a flight with a big box of coconut wood and we did quite a bit of testing right there at their facility in Germany and I was so fortunate not only to have Christian Beck on board with my research but he also dedicated the whole day's worth with his research and development team and we spent the entire day working on this coconut wood and understanding how the coconut wood and the ligno lock are compatible and compared to each other so the large picture shows one of these initial testings that we did there at their facility in shooting some coconut wood with the ligno lock nail guns yeah and at the bottom left we have to say that was you when you were proactively on your own bought a gun online and then share with us what then happened once you met Christian and gets us to the next slide and explain a little bit more of the process going from there yeah so a couple of weeks prior to my trip I actually found the company online where I could buy my own gun and so I did some of my own testing just to understand if it is actually a viable resource to bring these two together and I did have a couple of you know great uses of it and it was working well but there was also quite a few issues with using the gun that they had at that time and so they did have upgraded model which when I went to their company in Austria I brought my nail gun that I bought just a couple of weeks before with me and they actually traded out for their newest model which was actually had a lot of enhancements which made each shot go in a lot smoother and and so it was a great upgrade to have their latest gun and they actually sent me home with one of their newer guns which was great for my applied research part of my studies absolutely and on the left we can see again on the very left we can see how it is in the coconut wood and on the next to that we can see how it's in more conventional wood and again for all of you this was new territory so you guys were extremely excited when you were all but you didn't just do the mere shooting you also did another test that gets us to the next slide and explain to us what they were doing. Yes so like I said Christian had dedicated a whole team to work with me for one full day his research and development team as well as his guy Thomas who also does the testing so after each shot we we put together pieces that we could test for sheer as well as pull out pull out strength and not only was I impressed but also their team there in Germany their research team was also impressed as well how well not only did the ligno lock nails shoot into the coconut wood but also the the amount of strength that it provided in sheer as well as in holding and so we had great results from that and of course you know to get excellent and results you should do you know 30 of these tests for each but you know I was limited to the amount of coconut wood I could take so we only did about three tests for each category but still we had great results. Yeah absolutely we're getting close to the end of the show and we will close with you showing us your team your Austrian team so let's go to the next and last slide and again explain to us who is who to introduce so myself for the Aloha short of course a shirt of course and to my right is Christian Beck the CEO of the company and this Beck company I believe he's the fourth generation it was started by his great great great grandfather and so he is recently I believe about two years ago became the CEO and what a wonderful guy picked me up from the airport and really hosted me very well to his right Stefan his director of research and development and then on the other side to my left in the picture Thomas who was a great resource there and so this is the team that hosted me for not only that one day of testing but for a day prior and after taking you around the city and showing me so a little bit in Germany and really developed my appreciation for not only their facility and their team but also for this beautiful country and so great results we had there you know great collaboration we came good friends and we've kept in contact since then and so you know with this with this experience we've been able to grow and develop upon this and actually jokingly Christian and his team were talking about how those vascular bundles that I mentioned earlier maybe one day they could turn into these ligno lock nails to be shot with their pneumatic gun so we'll see how the one day come up endless opportunities and where this led once you return to the islands we will share with you in the next volume two of that show and then and this is exciting enough but then a more important project has come to fruition and that will be the birth of your son who is about to see the light of the earth in a few hours we can say so we wish you all the best and join happiness for that fantastic most important project of yours and this is already very important so hard to talk but you will so from a proud father of many sons and all the best wishes to you Kelly and your wife and again once you have recovered a little bit from your hospitality challenge for your new family member we will share with the audience volume two and the fantastic project and you came up with based upon this initial research so thank you very much Kelly and all the best all right I appreciate it thank you so much thank you bye


OK, everyone, we're going to do something really exciting now. I think this is always the most.  And that's, of course, not very elegant. We really want to have the whole story in pictures. The whole story has been also the classical communication. And for example, measurement-based quantum computing, there's a lot of classical computation going on. You want to get these only pictures, everything in pictures. And that's the goal now. So we have to come up with a paradigm on how we distinguish something that is classical from something that is quantum, like classical computation, like data versus quantum systems. And in a way, von Neumann already knew how to do that. Von Neumann already knew this in a way. So basically, what we're going to do, and this may seem ad hoc, like if I just draw a diagram like this, I will always think of it as classical. So what we've been drawing so far, these diagrams, I'm now going to think of all of them as classical. Of course, there can't be any phases, because that doesn't mean anything phases classically. And this will be automatic, as you will see. Now, if this is classical, what is quantum? Well, quantum simple is everything doubled. You just draw everything twice. That's quantum. So if you see single wires, it's classical. If you see double wires, it's quantum. And this is something you actually already know, but you didn't realize. So, oh yeah, I should say, if you double, what you have to do is then, if I've got an alpha phase here, then the other one should be the conjugate. In the doubled picture, everything should be conjugate. So you've got something, a picture, and it's conjugate. And that's quantum. And so you can write it like this. It's a bit more elegant, takes less space. Let's now see why this is the case, why double corresponds to quantum and single corresponds to classical. I mean, intuitively, if you think of density matrices, if you think going from pure states density matrices, what do you do? You take psi, psi ket and psi bra. So you double it. Now, taking psi ket and psi bra is actually the same as taking psi ket and ket conjugate. It's the same thing. And that's really what we're doing here. So we move from a ket to a ket and it's conjugate, just like you do in density matrices. Okay. And so, okay, here is a spider. Two inputs, one output. What is this? This is a measurement. This is a measurement. This is what philosophers have written 100,000 papers about in 100 years. Measurement problem. This is a measurement. It's just a spider. Two inputs, one output. What is this? One input, two outputs. Okay, this is encoding classical data as a quantum state. This is encoding classical data as a quantum state. So going from quantum to classical and back is actually very simple now. It's also just using spiders. So okay, so how would this look? Suppose I've got a density matrix here. This is a density matrix. So I've got all the diagonal P and one minus P and then I've got some off diagonal Z and maybe Z bar. If you apply this, you remember this is an operation which now you have to read this backwardly. It's take zero, zero in, spits zero out. It takes one, one in, spits one out, which means it only takes in the diagonal elements. It gets rid of the off diagonal elements. And so, you see some density matrix like this would actually turn into this probability distribution. So we've got a probability distribution here. So if you've got a density matrix, if you take this density matrix and you measure it with the Z observable, then this would indeed be the probabilities for your two possible outcomes. So it does what you expected to do. It does what you expected to do. The encoding, the encoding takes a probability distribution and just lays it off on the diagonal. So it's what you would expect it to do. So this is just plain quantum representation of this. Now we can do stuff again. Okay, so this is, I take classical data. I encode this as a quantum state and then I measure it in the same basis. It's not a very useful thing to do because what comes in goes out. That is a lot of work for nothing. So this is, so again, encoding, measuring does nothing. Okay, so the measurement and coding, blah, blah, blah. Now, I encode in one basis and I measure in the other basis. So I encode in Z and I measure in X. Now Z and X are mutually unbiased. They're as far apart as possible as they can and the probabilities for any outcome in red will be equal for any basis vector in green. So we get this. This actually is randomness. This represents the state of randomness. So nothing that goes in comes out. Everything is lost. This is deletion. You delete your input and you get randomness. See this simple equation which we saw before tells you now something about what happens if you encode and then measure in different colors. Okay, I said that. So these are basically just, this is the state. This is the uniform probability distribution associated with the, let's go back. This is the uniform probability distribution associated with the green measurement. This is uniform probability distribution associated with the red measurement. So we discover something new. So these are classical things. I'm gonna remind you that this measurement is actually measurement against the red basis and this measurement is actually measuring against the green base. I said this before. So that's the only thing you have to be careful if you don't get this wrong. Don't get this wrong. Okay, this is a non-demolition measurement. So sometimes in the measurements and then the system still exists. Like in our I&Trap computers, you can actually do that. You can measure something and the thing is still there. It just collapsed, just collapsed. And so this is a measurement with collapse. Let's disentangle it.  This is as if you do a measurement, then you copy the outcome and then you encode again. And this actually corresponds to the collapse. So this really is the collapse which is happening here. And now you can see this internal spy. This collapse of the wave package, like people say, okay? So I got two measurements, non-demolition measurements, one in Z, one in X. And let's see what happens if we compose them. So suppose we do first a Z measurement, then an X measurement and then a Z measurement. These are sort of the question philosophers asked very early on in quantum mechanics. Say okay, if I observe this and then I do another measurement and I observe it again, of course, we would expect to get twice the same. That's what a philosopher said. But if we do the calculation, we see two wires in the middle there, they just vanish. So this one is completely disconnected from this one. There's not gonna be any connection between them. And this is pretty much gonna be randomness and this is gonna measure whatever comes in. So you see, and this is also the technique who knows about quantum key distribution. Yeah, yeah. So this is also the reason quantum key distribution works. So Alice encodes the certain bases and Bob measures in the corresponding bases. And then if Eve is messing in the middle, it's gonna break down the correlation between Alice and Bob's measurements. And they can then detect that there has been an intruder. That's really how quantum key distribution works. It's because of this phenomenon. Okay, you've seen that. Okay, this is also an interesting one. So these are all very simple calculations. So suppose I've got a phase, a state with a phase. State with a phase, a non-trivial state. And I'm gonna see what happens if I measure it. So I said these two have to be conjugate. These two have to be conjugate. So they're gonna cancel out. So this is kind of saying that if I go from quantum to classical and I measure, all the phase is vanish. So phases is something that has no counterpart in the classical world. They get eliminated. Okay, so now you understand. So you can actually buy these t-shirts with this dodo if you want to. So you have to look on Etsy for Dave, the dodo t-shirt. And I can advertise this because I'm not making money with it because my co-author, Alex Kissinger, takes all the money.  Oh, you can also get MUX and stuff like that. But what I'm showing, this is really teleportation, this little picture. So you see, you've got this cup state. You've got this cup state. This is what's coming in. That's the incoming state at Alice's end. This really is the Bell measurement. This is the classical communication of your two measurement outcomes. And this is the correction. So this is now how it looks teleportation just as a picture and nothing more than a picture. So that's kind of cool. I mean, here it's, so this is what we had before. These two possible measurement outcomes, these two possible corrections. What we do now is we use this representation in terms of circuits. We use this representation in terms of circuit of these Bell states. So we turn it upside down. We get this, we get this. And now we just need to do a measurement here and a measurement there to get actually these outcomes there. That's what we do. And this is full teleportation with classical and quantum wires. Everything inside. Okay, I said that again. Okay, I think this is more or less the last thing I'm gonna do before questions. Let me check, let me check. What else do I have? Oh, so I'm going backward. I think do I have anything? No, that's the last thing I have. So this is from the kids book. This is in here. And what is this? This is the proof of non-locality. This is a proof of quantum non-locality for kids. And it involves both classical and quantum wires. Let's, let's, does anybody who knows sort of the mermin architecture, the mermin proof for quantum non-locality using a GHZ state? Nobody? That's the most, it's much more elegant than Bellini qualities, but okay. So, so basically what you got is like, so what you got here on the bottom are three, four GHZ state. It's actually one GHZ state, but in four different scenarios. So you got a GHZ state here. And then you got some rotation here. You see, you got some rotation. This is doing nothing. There's no, and this is like doing a 90 degree rotation. This is rotation around the, around the X axis. Rotation around the X axis, 90 degree, 90 degree. So, so basically you got the GHZ state. Here I do nothing. There I do two rotations to the two last particles. Here I do rotation to the first and the last. Here I do rotation to the two first ones. And then I do a measurement. So basically I'm actually taking this, this, these are, these are Z measurements. And I'm actually rotating them, the Z measurements to a Y measurement. So these are, the 90 ones are actually Y measurements. And the zero ones are actually Z measurements. So I'm doing four different measurement scenarios on this GHZ state. That's what I'm doing. Got a GHZ state. I'm considering four different measurement scenarios with these, using these different rotations. And what I do then is I take all the classical data together and apply red spider to it. So what does a red spider do to classical data? It's a parity test. It's, it's, it's like an XOR, but it's like a generalized XOR. So it's like a parity test. It sees whether the outcomes are either even or odd. So, I mean, this is something you can do in the laboratory. As I did, this is in the laboratory. So I've got these four scenarios, four measurement scenarios. And then I basically measure the parity of the whole thing. Now, what? No, I'm gonna, I'm not, I'm not, I'm gonna do the calculation just like that in my head. So basically, do you remember, do you remember that we had this rule for the squares? And I said it's like commutation, green and red sort of gets exchanged. Remember, I said this commutation? So, so you can actually use this rule here to actually move these red dots above the green dots. And then the green dots are gonna vanish. And so then basically what you have is I've got 90 degree, 90 degree, 90 degree, 90 degree, and 90 degree, and 90 degree. So I end up with 180 degrees. So I will, and then ultimately, you just end up with this thing, no wires anymore with 180 degrees. That's really the computation you do here. I mean, I didn't put the slides in, but it's quite the easy thing to do. Okay, now, so this is what quantum mechanics tells you. This is what quantum mechanics tells you. If I do these four scenarios, I get under 180 degrees there, which is actually one, which is the classical state one. With zero, it would be the classical bit zero. This is the classical bit one. You get the classical bit one here. Okay. Now, we're gonna assume that there is a local hidden variable model. That's what monocality is about. Local hidden variable model means that whatever these measurements are, whatever these measurements are that we are here, we've got one, two, three measurements. We've got this measurement on the first system and these measurements on the first system. So one with zero and one with 90. One with zero and one with 90 on the second system. One with zero and one with 90 on the third systems. So there are six different measurements we need to consider. Six different measurements we need to consider. And so this is the first measurement that's getting the zero. And this is the 90. Second measurement, second system measurement of the 0 and of the 19, 30 system measurements of the 19, and we assume that there are variables determining the measurement outcome. That's what the local hidden variable model is. So for each of these measurements, there's a variable, and so we copy these variables out, we copy these variables out to these four different measurement scenarios we have. So this is really just copying them out to the four different measurement scenarios live somewhere here. And then we do the parity test. So this is what the local hidden variable tells us, and what do you see? Anybody knows how to simplify this? We got red dots, we got green dots, we got wires between red and green dots. Yeah, you see, between every one of these green dots, and this is because of the choice of the scenarios, the way it was made, there's exactly two wires to the red, so they vanish. So basically what we get is a red dot with nothing inside, which is the bit zero. So we got bit zero here, we got bit one there, so quantum mechanics gives you bit one, local hidden variable theory gives you bit zero, and zero is not equal to one. So we have a contradiction. So whatever quantum mechanics predicts in this particular scenario is in contradiction with whatever a local hidden variable model could ever give you. So quantum mechanics is not local, and this is now entirely just in picture, so that this is in honor of this year's Nobel Prize. Zeilinger came to ask me two weeks ago to sign his copy of quantum in pictures. So that was pretty cool. So he's the one who came up with this idea and did it in the lab, and that's why he got his Nobel Prize pretty much for this experiment. I think I can stop here. It's been long. I've got nothing more to say, so I'll leave it to questions now. So let me just end up with this. Any questions? If you have questions, raise your hand. I'll bring you a microphone, actually. Yeah, sorry. I would like to go back to the question I asked before because I didn't really get the whole answer. So I understand that, I mean, when you have a real quantum device, for instance, the one of continuum, it's not like as simple as just applying a synod gate. You have to implement it physically, and this makes sense. So what you understand is if you have this complicated synod stack and you want to translate it into the phase gadget, that's really cool. But did you say that the phase gadget is what you can actually apply physically in this quantum device? Yes, I mean, I'm not a specialist there on the hardware implementation, but specifically for iron traps, they're in a way more native than your usual quantum gates. I mean, if a tonic's people use completely different, I mean, like the measurement-based thing, which I explained, that's what people are trying to build that psych quantum, not gates, because it's much more natural to do that sort of stuff with light, than the usual gates. So different architectures will have different limitations. It's not just all gate-based. Thank you. And like I said in the beginning of the talk, with photonics, it's sort of encoding of qubits. They do something like dual rail encoding and stuff like that. It becomes really complicated to describe this in Hilbert space, not the same possible. So they're all using these diagrams now to basically, yeah, reason about their program, reason about the error correction and stuff like that. And in Quandela in France, they're doing the same. They're also just using diagrams for everything now. That this is the place where this is now the number one language, quantum photonics. So I have another question here. Oh, okay. So thank you for the wonderful lecture. Yeah, the sound comes from here for me. Yeah, I never know where. Okay, sorry. So I have two questions, actually. The first one is, so would you say that ZX calculus or like what you showed us today is more natural for optical photonics, right? Than gate-based architectures? So I can tell, so basically, Rosdank and I, we came up with ZX calculus, trying to look at a problem in measurement-based quantum computing specifically to do with what's called generalized flow because it doesn't look like this measurement-based quantum pattern. So you've got a very complicated state and then you start doing measurements all over the place. And there are some criteria which tell you when you can actually translate this into a circuit and not and stuff like that. And it was looking in a problem like that that we actually came up with ZX calculus. So ZX calculus actually came out of measurement-based quantum computing so it's not a surprise, it's quite useful for it. On the other hand, when you actually want to work with beam splitters, beam splitters and stuff like that, then it turns out that there's a different calculus than ZX calculus that's quite useful which is called ZW calculus, which is something Alex Kissinger and I did in 2010. And in the way we now are reasoning about photonics, we actually mix the two up. Z, because for some things having the W is more useful around and for other things having the Z and the X is and Richie who's here, you can talk to Richie about it. He's not asleep anymore. So you can talk to him, he's doing a lot of work on that sort of stuff. So for the second part of the question, you mentioned about beam splitters. So any other quantum optics or photonics experiments or basic stuff can be explained by ZW calculus, right?  So any other useful practical that we see in photonic quantum computing? So just compilation, just compiling circuits to optical, that's something we are now developing at the moment, specifically for Quandela. Kragi is here, he's involved in that sort of collaboration. And we're going to do similar stuff for quantum now, where they use these diagrams. It's really in their calculation of error correction stuff of a photon and it's super complicated. You should look at this paper from Naomi. You should go and look in the sort of diagrams you find there. And you should look at this paper from Naomi. You should look at this paper from Naomi. What you find there, they're just too, they're so big and it would be completely impossible, let me go back. So if you go in that one then you find tons of applications and you should just imagine trying to do these things with Hilbert spaces from the pictures you're gonna see in there. And I think they have a new paper out too. Like I think a few weeks ago where they even do more complicated stuff. So my slides a bit outdated. Thank you so much. Sorry, one last quick question for me. What is the relationship between tensor, networks, and the x-dent conclusion? Okay, I just answered a question, it's a very good question. So on the one hand say tensor, networks, and Feynman diagram they're in the same space. They are a graphical representation of stuff you do in Hilbert space. But it's just like you have a calculation in Hilbert space and they will help you to do something there with that calculation. They are no substitute for Hilbert space. You use them to guide your calculation in Hilbert space. This stuff lives on its own. This stuff lives on its own. You don't need Hilbert space anymore. You can completely forget about it. I mean I'll tell this afternoon a little bit history like the sort of historical development of these sort of ideas. I'll talk about that this afternoon. But so we've got a genuine substitute of a Hilbert space here. And you do everything in the calculus. You never go back to Hilbert space. So that's different. It's a complete logical maximization of Hilbert space while a tensor network network is like a calculation of eight when you're working in Hilbert space. I mean these are tensor networks. You can think of them, but they are sort of very precise, well-defined tensor networks. In many cases tensor networks have a lot of variables inside, say okay a matrix product state or something like that. So they're not fully defined. Here we work with exactly defined entities and all you need is the rules I showed you. There is no such thing as the tensor network calculus that lets you compute everything you want. But these are tensor networks, very special example of tensor networks. I don't think anybody can hear that. There's been some work out there where people use ZX calculus to rewrite ZX diagrams to make them as small as possible and then use tensor networks to contract it leading to faster tensor network contractions. You can combine ZX techniques and tensor network techniques and also stabilize the compositions. So if I understood it, can you also do some expectation value calculation if you have density matrix? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean in one calculation I said I throw away the numbers. But basically the numbers in the doubled world, so you got a number, multiply it with a complex number. With this conjugate, so it's a positive number. So basically you would just drop, I mean this, the example of G and Z which I gave is not like actually a probabilistic process. It's an exact thing. But a close diagram like that would usually give you a probability. The diagram would become a number and that's the probability. Oh okay, and so like if I imagine quantum chemistry, so you have molecular basis and like certain basis to compute. So in this case what's the input and output basis would look like? I mean I'm not involved in that but I know that some of our people are talking to Nate in there and they're starting to do some quantum chemistry using CXW. Oh, actually you're involved in that, right? Yeah, so we only just start to apply but this is basically full blown quantum mechanics. The entire quantum formula is everything is there, probabilities, everything. So whatever you can do in quantum you can do here. But it's all just as a diagram. Okay, thanks. Yeah, this is just for two by two intense products essentially whereas quantum chemistry would require more general basis states. But I think that's what Hani's working on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With this CXW in higher dimensions, yeah. Okay, if we're done I got one more thing to say. Are we done? So who has a copy of this one? That's bad luck because everybody's gonna get one for free now, ha ha. They're there. Can I ask one more question? Yeah? Can you explain again this deformation of the rectangle? Like how do you break down the rectangle again? Oh, what happened? Oh, there. Yeah, this one? Yeah, so it's my microphone's alone, yeah. So basically, did I take this? I don't know. So you got four loose wires. You number them. They are like alternating colors. You take whatever's connected to green and you connect to a red dot. You take whatever's connected to red and you connect to a green dot and then you connect those two. So in this case, if we take like this red and the green on the other side, that would be an equivalent representation. Would this be? So if we take that green and the red on the right side, so that would be an equivalent diagram. Oh yeah, this inequality. Oh, sorry, like in the right plot, if we take this green and the red on the right side. Yeah, that's all the same. Okay, okay. That's all the same. Like this crossing doesn't mean anything. Oh, okay, I think. Crossing doesn't mean anything. You have to think of these wires lying on the table. So there is no crossing. The only thing that would matter is what is connected to what? Like in electricity. Okay, good, thanks.


Hi, I'm Jake Guest, and this is Kildia Farm in Norwich, Vermont. We farm here, my wife and I, on about 40 acres, most of which actually is rented, but we have about three acres on the home farm and another 10 acres nearby, and we own about 12 miles away to 24 acres, which we actually are, personally, leasing to someone else. My first experience, practical experience with flaming, was this little device here. The idea is that I can apply flame to anything, to a row. What I do is I actually go over the rows that are planted just before the seeds come up. And this thing is very useful for times when a crop, for instance, a crop that comes up much sooner than other crops, where I just don't, there's no point in going to get the tractor and putting the flame around and doing the whole thing just for radishes or something, something that's quick. So all the beds are prepared ahead of time, and then I just take this flame around just before the crop comes up and go along in the mark and flame the mark with a cedar, the cedar mark. And it kills everything that's germinated and the crop comes up right behind it. Sometimes it literally, as the crop is coming, it's actually cracked the soil. And when I flame it, it's literally hours before it emerges. But when it comes up, there's no weeds available, no weeds left. The flaming is very effective on weeds that are newly emerged, small weeds that are just emerged. It's less effective when the weeds are a little bit bigger, two or three inches tall or so, still works, but sometimes you have to go a little slower or use more heat. It's also not particularly effective on grasses, unfortunately, because any grasses or any weed that comes from deeper in the soil and not right on the surface doesn't get hit or can regrow. I found that the flatter the surfaces of the stale seabed, the better the flamer works. It's really important. If there's any ridges or lumpy soil, the weeds manage to, the flamer deflects off the lumps of the ridges. So I've experimented with different ways of preparing the beds and flat is important. That works really well. I found that grasses are a real problem. The problem is that the growing tip of the grass is slightly below the surface. So the flamer goes over the top, kills the top of what's visible, and a few days later the grass reemerges. One way that I think I've dealt with the problem is to flame a little later where grass is a problem, because for some reason, I mean, at later time the growing tip has actually come out of the soil and is vulnerable and I can hit it with the flame. The ideal way to use this technique is to prepare the beds way ahead of time, as many weeks even ahead of time. What I try to do is get an area all fertilized, ready to go, and all the beds actually physically made. Then I start at one side and, you know, I have to plant some early crops early. I plant them and do the flaming, whatever flaming I can, and then flame ahead. I always flame a week or so ahead of the actual planting. For those beds which I'm not planning to plant for, say, four or five weeks, I may actually go do a tillage with a rotovator, a very light tillage with a rotovator before I even get to the flaming and then they're part of the sequence. I actually have some fields where I make it a cycle and I start back in the beginning again, re-prepare the beds and start all over again. Spinach is a crop, for instance, where every week I plant two beds and I always have flamed the week before and flame right after the planting and then have flamed a couple weeks for the beds yet to be planted and tilled four weeks ahead of time. There are actually four components to the flamer. There is the flaming, the flame heads themselves. There's the frame, there's the tank, and then there's the regulating mechanisms. The regulator consists of a solenoid-activated valve which simply turns the machine on or off. This tank, the tank is really important.  This has to be a motor fuel tank and they're not so easy to locate. This was used when we got pretty cheap but they knew they cost about $700. As you can see, it holds about 40 gallons of fuel. I figure it takes about $19 to $20 an acre. Worth a fuel. This device uses liquid propane as opposed to gas and that's very significant because one of the difficulties that some of the European burners have is that using gas means that they get too cold from the evaporation of all the gas. These burners are much different. They move the propane in a liquid form all the way down to the burners before it's actually burned so that there's no super cooling of the lines. The expansion of the gas just before it burns all takes place right down at the bottom of the burners. Each burner is a 250,000 BTU burner. It's pretty arbitrary what you need. It depends on the width of the bed. This seems to be sufficient for my uses. It covers a 52-inch bed quite nicely. Sometimes I use the burner for a single row crop in which case I don't even use the outside two burners, the outside four burners. I only use the two inside ones and tilt them so that they direct the flame right down to a single row down below there. It's very versatile. There's lots of different uses for it. This is a good example of what the flamer does. On my left here is a bed. These beds were prepared at the same time, the one on the right and the one on the left, were prepared at the same time. They were tilled and then rolled and marked. I use this roller. You can see it just barely. There are marks of three rows are marked out and that's the guide my planter, I plant by hand with a push planter. I flamed this bed about three days ago and it looked identical to this bed over here. As you can see, there are hardly any weeds left. There are new weeds emerging. What I will do now at this point is I'll plant the crop in this bed and then wait a few days before the crop comes up and flame it again. That's going to get any weeds that germinate between now and the time I flame. It also will get rid of these few little ones. You can't even see them. They're tiny little weeds that have germinated since I flamed it last time. I think one of the few downsides to using this machine concerns safety. There's a lot of energy in here and it has the potential for being pretty dangerous. I think that it's especially important that all the valves are tight and that the pins are all in and everything. If this thing dropped off or something broke it could be a real disaster. I think the flame weeder has a real place in our operation here. There are some improvements and there are some techniques that I need to work on but I think it's not enough alone but in conjunction with a proper and appropriate and timely tillage I think it's indispensable. I find that I'm using it finding more and more uses for it every year and I certainly am very encouraged by what I've discovered.


It's me, Ginny Metherall, I fourth generation witch. I learnt my witchery literally at my mother's knee. She taught me how to tie my shoelaces, how to bake a cake, how to read tea leaves. So I grew up thinking this is normal. And I still do actually. Now I've been seeing on the internet a lot recently these signs that you are a witch. And there's several videos on YouTube and some TikToks all about it. And in fact I did do one on my Instagram because it made me laugh and I thought it was fun. But then it got me thinking, is this true? And would I qualify? So I've searched out the greatest meme. And I think it's this one from Atcrafting Witch that signs that you are a witch are as follows. I thought we'd have a look and see if I qualify because I actually don't think I do. Anyway. So let's begin. So the first one of this post is that animals are attracted to you. I don't think animals are attracted to me any more than I'm attracted to them. I mean I love animals and I have a lot of animals. At the moment we have five beautiful bouncing puppies who I play with continuously and on a daily basis until they're going to go to their new homes. And I love and adore them. Does that make me a witch or does that just make me someone who's got some puppies? I think so. Anyway. I didn't qualify as that one. So the second one on this list is that you are an empath and feel drawn to healing others. Now I cannot heal to save my life. It is not my strength. I understand the principle. I understand how it works. It's just that I'm not very good at it. I mean I can do a basic healing, basic, but you're far better off going to your doctor than coming to me. So no, I can't heal people. It is not something that I am good at. However, the empath bit, meaning that I can pick up other people's emotions like that. Yes, that I do have. I can clearly feel and see emotions. And so if that makes me an empath, yeah, I've got half this sign. So therefore I'm half a witch according to that sign. So that's quite good. So I can't qualify there. So what is empathy though? For example, I had a friend of mine whose father died and she sat and cried in her kitchen. And I cried with her because I completely felt her pain. And that pain affected me and made me cry. So I was empathising with her. I don't think that that makes me a witch though. I think that makes you a human being. Yes, I would say that makes you human. Number three, you feel drawn to collecting things like shells and crystals. So I collected shells as you may know from my previous videos. I did have a collection of hagstones, which I had very kindly given to my subscribers. But my hagstone collection is now seriously depleted. I've only got one left. I don't think I've got two. I don't know. I think even my husband walks along and picks up stuff off the beach. If we're, doesn't everybody, you look, you like pretty things and pretty crystals. Does that make you a witch? I'm not drawn to massive crystals, but I am drawn to picking pretty things up off the beach. But surely that's everybody again. I use crystals. I use a pendulum crystal in my day-to-day witchery. Four spells I might add in some crystals, but I'm not hugely drawn to them. I'm more drawn to flowers and nature. But that's because I like gardening, because I'm middle-aged and I enjoy gardening. I like it in clubs too and dancing, but no one likes seeing a middle-aged woman dancing in a club. They think it's a bit odd. Don't get to go to them very often. Next one is you have an obsession with fairies as a child. Well, I did have an obsession. Not obsession. I had an interest in fairies and thoroughly believed in them. I still do. So does that make me a witch? I think it makes me, if they're not true, which is just fake news, then that just makes me slightly insane. And if they are true, then, well, I believe in something that actually exists. So I think believing in fairies doesn't make anybody anything, does it? I feel drawn to the moon. Do I? I like the moon. It's very pretty. I look at it. I notice when it's full. Does that mean I'm drawn to it? No. Not much as I'm drawn to the sun really. I think I like the sun more. I'm a real sun worshiper. You know, I love being outside and having the sun on my face and feeling it's warmth. I like the warmth. The moon's pretty enough. I don't think that makes me a witch either. So I'm not doing very well, am I? I don't think I am particularly drawn to the moon. I like the moon. I'm more drawn to the sun. Next one. You feel drawn to nature. Well, I like nature. Doesn't everybody though? Isn't that normal? Doesn't everybody like going outside? Because it's nice. To be fair, I do live in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a wood, surrounded by nature who I spend hours. Yes, so let's say I'm drawn to nature. But I don't think I'm drawn to nature. I think I just like living with nature. I am part of nature after all. As a child, you intuitively threw random things together and called it a potion. Yes, I did do that. But as my children do that still, they're always making potions. So my child used to get this potion. It's called Dragonweed, I think. And they used to get Dragonweed and cut it up and have it in pots festering around in their bedrooms. And all three of them did this. And it was just some reeds that they cut up. And I didn't know what they were doing. They did it for, you know, years. They made Dragonweed potion. So yes, I did do that. And the last one is you notice repeated patterns and numbers. I have never noticed repeated patterns and numbers. I think it's because I'm so quite blind. And I can't really see that well. And so I don't. I just can't see them. I can't really see anything from here to here. I'm slightly blind from this area to this area. So I can see far away, just. So I definitely don't notice patterns and numbers. According to this list, I think I don't qualify. So I don't see patterns and numbers. Am I drawn to nature? Well, yes. Okay, I'm going to say yes to that one. Am I an empath? Yes. Can I heal? Not really. Animals are attracted to me no more than any other person. No, no. I feel drawn to collecting shells and crystals. I picked up shells on the beach, but I then throw them away because they start to smell. So no, I don't think I qualify on that one. I have an obsession with fairies as a child. Yes, I did. Still do. I'm possibly one of the only people I know who still believes that there's fairies at the bottom of my garden. In fact, it's a niad at the bottom of my garden, but that's for another day. I feel drawn to the moon. No, I like the sun.  I think it's beautiful and I look at it, but I don't feel drawn to it. So of all those signs of a witch, I think I've only qualified for believing in fairies at the bottom of my garden and being obsessed with fairies when I was young. I don't think that makes me a witch. So then what does make you a witch? Well, my opinion, and this is only mine. Everyone's different, you know, because I don't have that healing capability. My witchery is probably the fact that I can detect certain types of energy, bad energy normally, and get rid of them, which is when I say I am an exorcist. I understand that over there, that over that's a bad juju. I can grab that bad juju and cast it out. And that makes me a witch in that way. However, there's all sorts of other things. A friend of mine is very good at healing. So she is a healing which another friend of mine is extremely good at cooking, but because she puts her warmth and her love and her energy into the recipes she makes that she then feeds to her family, that is a spell in itself. And so that makes her a witch. Witchery is about the use and command of energy and or Prana. And my Prana is particularly good at one thing, and not particularly good at another. So everybody has Prana, which is your life force. Everybody has this energy. And what makes you a witch is how you understand how to use and change and divert and encourage that energy. If you put your love and energy and warmth into making whatever it is a sponge cake for your kids when they come home from school or for your mum on her birthday, then that is a spell because it's got your energy in it. That all is all spells are is learning energy. And I think that's what makes you a witch is understanding that the world is made up of energy. And I'll tell you how you can feel it if you walked into a room and there was a couple in there and they just been arguing, you would immediately know because you can feel the tension in that room. Now that is energy. That's what I'm talking about this life force, this Prana, we've all got it. That's how you use it. So everybody can do it. Everybody has this power.  We all have this power. We all have this ability. I've signs that you're a witch are really easy. One, are you alive? Yeah, you probably wish them to do you have the courage to stand up to your convictions and believe that what you are feeling, which you can't prove is right. Are you willing to learn? And are you willing to unfetter your mind and your body from the constraints of this world and move in to the occult? Because that's what it is. It's looking at the occult. I'm not talking about Satanism here. The occult means the hidden. If you're very drawn to healing, people be drawn to healing. If you're very drawn to fairies, go and talk to them. If you're very drawn to lay lines, go and sit in one practice, practice, practice, practice makes perfect. You can't become Beyonce in singing. If you don't practice. So I really hope you enjoyed this video. And if you did, please give me a thumbs up and do subscribe. And I'll see you in my next one.


What's going on guys welcome back to the channel critical overload here so I'm a scream six once again today And this will be about Neff Campbell as well as some other stuff regarding the cast that I believe has already been secured since Production supposed to start this summer on scream six So this is coming to us from one take news this first half of the video Saying that Neff Campbell is in talks to return to Cindy Prescott in scream six This is an exclusive that they're reporting now if you want some type of reason as to why you should believe them These are the same people who told us about the Ryan Johnson Involvement with screen 5 and we know how that came to be I think also bits big screen leaks if you're someone who follows them on Twitter. They haven't associated with this site as well So Neff Campbell Or according to one take news multiple sources tells them that scream franchise star Neff Campbell is in talks to once again Reprise the role of Sydney Prescott in the upcoming sequel to the 2022's scream one source mentions That talks have been underway for quite a while now This of course would line up with again a lot of the breadcrumbs that we've been getting post-screen fire release with Neff Campbell talking to Screen rent saying that she would love to be back involved It would also come down to how the script is being done kind of kind of honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Neff Campbell herself was already read the script. I wouldn't be surprised if the script is already finished you know, they've had between 2020 when the film stopped filming and All the way from 2021 to now now to now with where we are today in 2022 to pin up a script Have the people that they think they want to have back read over the script During the during the time of screen 5 releasing maybe a little bit before in like December of last year Maybe somewhere in between last year. They've had time to pin together a treatment And have the people that they want back look over it and say, you know, I think this is a great idea You know, but they're just not gonna come out and talk about it right away Like how Neff Campbell has come out and say that it will come down to the script how they handle Sydney Etc. So all of these things are factors into what we know will bring Neff Campbell back to the table or back into the fold for a Scream 6 she's already made that clear David Arquette can still return of course is Dewey Riley if Gale Weathers actually gets to make that book that she says She wants to make at the end of screen 5 talking about a good man who used to be the sheriff of this town That's a good way to bring David Arquette back as Dewey Gale Weathers herself will be involved in it I would imagine Just showing her on her TV show or just her coming around being the the news reporter Gale Weathers that we've come to know and love from screen 1 and screen 2 How she kind of also was in screen 5 but just back even more so in screen 6 Maybe we see a little bit more of that darker side or bitchy side of her I would say Come back to full full effect with Dewey being gone, you know again the tension between her and Sydney I would say is non-existent at this point. I think they're very good friends, but Gale still has her ways She's still Gale So it's not shocking that Sydney Prescott Neve Campbell is in fact in talks apparently to reprise her role That's expected the film still doesn't have to be focused on Sydney Prescott I'm expecting Sydney to again be in this Sarah Connor type of role this time around where she's just guiding these new girls And we're gonna focus on salmon salmon terror I hope Jen Ortega is the one that's carrying the bulk of this film Honestly with Melissa Barrera being kind of the side piece to how terror was the side piece to Sam in the screen 5 that we got I just want them to flip the roles around and let Tara Jen Ortega's character carry and we get to focus more on Terrorist a group of friends and fleshed him out a little bit more Chad and Mindy once again played by Jasmine's Ford Brown and Mason Gooding The other thing we need to talk about is again going to the fact that if the film isn't deset set to film this summer That means that the casting announcement are coming sooner rather than later And it also means that again stuff has been in place for some time But now with the success of scream sick or screen 5 scream 6 has officially been confirmed and they're gonna move ahead They've already been making arrangements. It's clear as day. They had faith in the film. That's why they made these arrangements I would imagine so go also from one take news They said that currently no other cast members new or attorney have been announced But sources say casting has been on the way for quite some time Christ from time now so announcements are imminent again going off the fact that we know that they're expected to start filming this summer That would indicate to you that they already had certain things locked in such as such as the survivors that we got from screen 5 that again being Melissa Barrera Jen Ortega Mason Gooding Jasmine Savoy Brown Courtney Cox Nev Campbell And then of course considering the things that they've talked they that they wanted to do with screen 5 You'd have to consider Samara weaving being locked down probably you'd have to consider Hayden Pancier being locked down probably You also would have to consider some of the things that you if you've heard someone who read the original script for screen 5 or one of the original drafts You know that there was a moment where we first met up with Sydney during that phone conversation where she looked over at her husband So you have to consider Patrick Dempsey possibly being involved There's just so many things and so many people you could expect to be involved with this film That have already been secured and the announcements are gonna come sooner rather than later if production is again set to start in This upcoming summer with a release date. Hopefully this hasn't been announced I'm just predicting sometime in early 2023 or October 2023 or even the summer of 2023 or the spring You know at any point in 2023, you know if you're filming the movie this year if there's nothing that's gonna stop you It's gonna come out in 2023 So I know a lot of you feel they're rushing this I don't feel that it's rushed again You need to consider that scream 5 was supposed to be out in 2021 They had all of 2021 to pin together a script pin together a treatment They could still be working on said script and coming up on the final details of the script Or they could be in the revision process at this stage with filming already set to begin This summer there's they've had a lot of time to come up with this script and come up with this idea Radio silencing themselves again, they've been leaving breadcrumbs about this announcement that we got today in another interview again This was post screen 5 they said that guy and Jamie have some amazing ideas about where they could take us next again They're not coming out and saying that you know, they're the ones writing this script They're just saying that their friends guy and Jamie had some amazing ideas it's not that hard to believe that guy and Jamie already wrote the script and they have been going back and forth on Revising it and coming down to what they already want while at the same time when they finished that locking down People who they want to have in scream 6 when the announcement was made for it to be officials again Samar weaving someone who they wanted to have in screen 5 Hayden Panetti or someone else who expressed interest in wanting to be in screen 5 They just didn't want to shoehorn Kirby and they want to do Kirby justice because they are fans of Kirby read So the involvement of Kirby read in scream 6 is not something that should shock anyone if it actually becomes a thing This would be a great return for Hayden Panetti air who I think hasn't been involved in anything major for many years at this point So I can't wait to see what Jen or Tega brings to the table when she comes back And I really do think that focusing on her and her group of friends and her trauma from the events of screen 5 is the route to go Given that she's younger I just feel like you're going to a lot more sympathy from your audience with this younger character And I think Melissa Barrera if Sam is off her meds this time around I think you'll see a different side of Sam Maybe that'll satisfy a lot more people who thought that she did a bad job You know, I don't think that but let me know what you guys think about this down in the comment section below If you have already of course, make sure you subscribe turn on post notification You never miss a video in the description I have links my social media accounts my Facebook Twitter and Instagram You can message me there of course to let me know if there's any movies news or reviews You'd like me to cover in the future with all that in mind guys. I will see you in the next video