Welcome to the course on computer programming and to the session on code blocks. In this session, we will see how to customize the default code provided by code blocks while creating a file, the different coding styles and finally, the auto complete feature. So, let us begin by modifying the default code. We will click on settings, editor. In the left pane, we will scroll down to default code. As you can see, this is a blank window in which we need to type the default code. Say for example, let us type hash include iostream using namespace std int main return 0. And let us say normally, our programs will have atleast two variables of integer, int num1, num2 and a variable called counter. Let us click on ok. Now, we will click file, new file, click c++ source, go next c++, next we will create a file in a c++ programs directory. We will write here say for example, prime dot cpp, we will click save and we will click finish. As you can see, the default code has appeared over here. We will now move ahead to discuss the different coding styles and the format. Let us imagine that a programmer has written a large code without any formatting. We are now supposed to read it, understand it and then modify it to improve its features. A difficult task indeed to format a code. Consider an example like this. I do not understand anything. Well, let me see yes, there is a function called fill matrix which is also called over here. I do not know where my main function is. Let me search using control f main, we will click find, oh here is my main function. Well, if I need to study this as a programmer, my first task would be to format it. Formatting this code manually would be very time consuming and very tedious. Well, let us not worry about it as code blocks has provided us with a plugin for formatting any kind of code written by a programmer. Let us see it. We will click anywhere in the editor and we will click plugins, source code formatter. Let us click this, plugins and source code formatter. Wow, the code has been formatted as the way we wanted. Now, let us go through the code. There is a function called fill matrix excluding row call which has some parameters. There is a for loop over here which in there is some condition if it is satisfied then the row is incremented, if not then the column is incremented, there is a temporary array and there is a return. There is another function called bool determinant which has three parameters. If I scroll down, yes, I can now see my main function. I could not even identify in the previous example which we saw. So, the determinant is called and finally, the see-out determinant value is printed. So, this is how we format the code using this plugin. Let us now see the different coding styles. We will just save this program, control S, we will go to settings, editor, scroll down in the left pane to source formatter. If you can see, there are different styles, Alman, ANSI, KNR that is Carnegie and Richie, Strauss-Strauss-Strauss, White Smith, Gnu, Hotsman and many more. Let us click on KNR. Let us click on Strauss-Strauss-Strauss-White Smith. So, what is the difference between all of these? The source code or the coding style is nothing but the spaces that we have on indentation and where the curly brace is placed, opening curly brace and the closing curly brace. If you see in the GNU format, the GNU format, there are two spaces for indentation and the curly brace is placed on the next line of the statement. Now, let us click on K and R. Well, K and R has four spaces for indentation and the curly brace is placed on the same line as that of the command. Let us click on Hotsman. Hotsman is also similar to GNU and K and R, but with some changes like the if statement appears over here. By default, if you recollect a program which we just formatted, it was unsee style. As you can see, there is a function over here with four spaces indentation. The curly brace placed over here, four spaces indentation, the if and other things. Well, let us format it to Hotsman style. You are free to choose any coding style. Code blocks ID will format your code according to the style that you have selected. Since Hotsman is selected, we will click OK. Now, we want this program to be formatted as per the Hotsman style. We will click on plugins, source code format. If you see, the coding style has changed. Let us now cover the autocomplete feature. Code blocks ID provides some keywords which we need to write in the editor and press control J, control J on the keyboard. On doing this action, some part of code is generated in the editor. For example, let us write inside the main function IFEI and press control J. This code has been generated which is nothing but IIF ELSEIF ELSE, IFEI. So let us go into the details. We will click on settings, editor. We will go down to abbreviations. These are the keywords which code blocks offers and this is the code that is generated. So let us see IFEI. Yes, this code indeed appeared in our editor when we wrote IFEI and pressed control J. Let us modify say for, this is the default code. Let us write say for counter equal to 1, counter less than equal to 10, counter plus plus, curly brace is open, curly brace is closed and let us say for example, some cout statement. And we will click on ok. Now we will come here and we will write for, we will type the for command and press control J. If you notice the statement for counter equal to 1, counter less than equal to 10, counter plus plus with the cout statement and opening and curly braces which we had written has appeared over here. In this fashion we can create some templates and use it in our program whenever we require it. With this we conclude the session and hope that coding style and autocomplete features of code blocks will help you using this ID effectively. Thank you.


Hi y'all, okay, so I just finished a live Google Hangout with MA 2.0 and y'all can check the video out on his channel when it's uploaded, probably upload it sometime today, but now I think I wanted to go live with you guys today Just to say hi, maybe answer some questions So if you have any questions Put them in the comments or the group chat or whatever I don't know if anyone's watching this. This is a five viewer. So so far I'm gonna type hi So y'all can get started. So if y'all have any questions or you know need some advice or relationship advice I'll be on for the next hour or so And I'll be here So if y'all have anything you want to ask type it in the comments if not then I'll just start talking Okay, so I feel like a lot of women these days We were talking about this on the Google Hangout with MA 2.0 and he was saying that too many women are led by their emotion and they overreact for everything And it pushes men away because they think they're crazy.  So I would suggest, you know going somewhere to calm down writing in a journal talking to your friend about it or a stranger about it and getting all the anger out first and then approaching the issue with you know Your partner and solving it with logic, you know Some people break up and they really didn't want to break up because they were just over Emotional and they thought that oh if I break up, it's gonna hurt you But really what it ended up doing was hurting the person that broke up with them So, you know, and then you're like, oh, I want him back, but he's not coming back Because a lot of the things that we say when we're upset and mad Are very hurtful and you can't take words back. You just can't take them back and a lot of women reveal stuff when they're angry like oh, that's why I cheated on you and You know once a man hears that they probably aren't coming back You know I'm saying and if they do it's only to use you up and then leave you again. You know I'm saying so don't Speak out of emotion be strategic as MA 2.0 says in his video be strategic on how you do things and Calculating and you know if I say this in five years, is this gonna haunt me? You know what I'm saying because it will you know men cheating on a Cheating on a man and him finding out it's like 10 times worse than him cheating on you and you find out because it hurts them way more hurts their ego their pride you know, it's Like women are very forgiving when it comes to cheaters Some of them not all of them, but some of them are very forgiving when it comes to cheaters So I feel like Men are not that forgiving when their woman is cheating. You know what I'm saying so if you if you cheat it don't ever tell her because It's It's a risk you're gonna have to take for him not coming back, okay Um, I don't I don't see any comments or anyone asking questions. So I guess there's no question. So I just keep talking Um, or I don't see them like I don't see any questions. I Think you have to go to Google Hangouts or Google or something. I don't know. Let me put the link There a link Make it with a link Come put my youtube page. Yeah, I don't know how to walk this. I'm just I'm still trying Let's see and put the other link in there too. There's two links So y'all figured out But um, I just keep talking But anyway I have a lot of people writing me who are dating Successful men and they just can't get the ring. They can't get married. They what am I doing law? A lot of advice a lot of the advice some women are getting from other women is very wrong.  You don't you'll know, you know You got to play reverse psychology. Okay First of all life is not All peaches and cream, you know You have to play chess. Okay, so if you if you see a man that you want to marry What the first thing you do is treat him like he is not husband material, you know Make him prove himself because first of all he might not even want to get married But if he feels like the whole offer is off the table and you don't even see him As potential husband material and that he's not even good enough for you. He's gonna start asking himself Well, dang. Why am I not husband material and then he's going to start to try to prove himself to you Like I am husband material. I can be a good husband. I can do this. I can do that And then subconsciously he's training his own mind to be a husband And you know, the all you're probably the only one or the one in the last few years that he's been trying to prove himself as a husband too And so the logical next step is today.  They they're not But if you say, oh, I love this relationship is so fun Um, in a couple years, I'm gonna want to get married and blah, and have kids and stuff And he's gonna be like, oh, I don't know about that. He's like, oh, I wasn't talking about you.  That's so cute. Ah, you thought you was gonna be my husband And then we're like, why not? You're not husband material. You are someone that I would not marry.  Why am I not husband material?  So at that point you're gonna be like, dang She's not even taking me seriously. Is everything she's saying to me, uh, not true I wonder what type of guy she wants to marry and then so he's gonna be like, well, what is husband material? Okay, and this is where you this is how you get him. What is husband material? What is husband material husband material? Oh You really want to know what what I want in my future husband? Like why are you asking me, you know? um And don't tell him the first time around make him keep asking and then You know, he'll say, okay. Well, you know husband material and just start naming the exact opposite of him Or the things that you want him to do that he's not currently doing, you know what I mean?   They want to chill. They want to stay at home They want to whine and dine you on special case.   And you said, oh maybe in a couple years from now That way he has time to kind of either become husband material start talking about being your husband Subconsciously turning into husband material because now that you know, when a man tries to please you and impress you And he knows that you've already dismissed him in two years and that you're going to be looking for something totally different He is then going to start taking on the traits of husband material and trying to prove himself and Please you and impress you with being Husband material and then the logical next step is to ask you to marry them Ask you to marry them. Okay.  I will never forget time that we spent together and you know You'll always be a great friend and blah blah blah blah blah blah But now I think it's time for me to move on to that next chapter of my life And he's gonna be so used to you by there. He's gonna be like so used to trying to impress you and being husband material He's gonna be like, well Have you ever considered that, you know, maybe I've changed my mind. Maybe I've changed.  I mean, look, you're having so much fun, you know I don't I wouldn't want to tie you down. You know what I'm saying? You're Are you sure this is what you want? And now it's their idea and not even yours. You know what I'm saying? So When you um When you get That urge to get married you have to use reverse psychology Or you have to say, you know, I'm getting ready to leave and you know, go explore some other options because You don't even ask them to marry you. You're just like, you know, I'm getting I'm getting to that point in life where I want to start You know getting married and having kids and stuff like that.   You're trying to be the boss. You're trying to call all the shots You're gonna take his role away from him, you know So what you got to do is trick him to make him think it was his idea, you know A lot of women will be like, well, how do I get him to propose and You know, I always say make up a fake job in a different state that you're you've been offered and you know When you feel like it's time to get married and say, you know what I've been offered this really great opportunity in this other state And I'm really thinking about take it say it's a state where you're one of your ex-boyfriends with you Just make it up if it's not even true I'm gonna be I'm gonna be moving to this different city and I've been offered a new job It pays about the same but I feel like I need to change in my life right now Um, you know, I'm kind of ready to start on a new chapter, you know Um new job The next person that I probably get involved with I want, you know to get married and have a relationship with But you know, I'm I'm really in love with you and I'm very torn But I know that I don't I don't know if you're ready for that next step You know, I don't know if you're ready for marriage.  You know, I know a few people in that city, um, you know Name a couple girls in the name of guy don't guys name And he was like, well, who's that?   Good luck. That means he was never gonna marry you anyway But if he says, well, I want you to stay. Why do you have to go? You know, I love you But he's gonna start thinking about marrying you and moving on and getting engaged and stuff like that because now He's he's gonna have to imagine his life without you. You know what I'm saying? So, um, yeah So I just wanted to pop on for a minute. I don't see any questions. Um, I don't think this google hangout thing It's like working great for my youtube channel But I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and go live from my youtube channel without the google hangouts I'm gonna go ahead and go live on my own Like I normally do So you guys can ask me questions and I can see them There's no questions being asked and I don't know even though if you guys know how to do it I sure don't know how to do this and plus the webcam. It's not as good as On camera I'm gonna go ahead and sign off and if you got any information out of this video, I'm very thankful and If you can comment on this after it's downloaded on youtube if it downloads on youtube because I don't even know if we can do that Then you know Thumbs up. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and stop this broadcast And I will see y'all on my live video


Good morning, John. We have recently reached a number of milestones here on the Vogue with this channel. We uploaded our 1500th Vlogbrothers video. We got our 3 millionth subscriber, and we're about to upload our 100th episode of Dear Hank and John. As soon as you get back from vacation, no rush. I think this is thus a good moment to take a look back, and I'm gonna do that with the help of the Wayback Machine. This is a product from the Internet Archive. You can look up any website you want to, like go to youtube.com and see what it looked like back in the past. Oh God, it's beautiful. I'll load it up. Wait, wait. I'm a male seeking everyone between eight. Was YouTube a dating site? This feels like information I should have had in my head. This is beautiful, but it's not what we're here to look at today. We're gonna take a look at what youtube.com slash vlogbrothers has looked like, starting with today and moving backwards in time. YouTube has looked pretty much the same for the last, like, three years. I don't super love it. And I think we have to go pretty far back before we see a significant change in YouTube's design. So now we're in 2014. Same thing. Let's check out 2013. Aha! This is new. I remember this. It took quite a long time. And I think I remember being called by YouTube, Cosmic Panda, when it was first launching. It was like, code name Cosmic Panda, the new design is coming. And look at this customization you could do. You, like, all of this is image mapped. But if we continue to go back, back, back in time, we see that we've broken the thing. Oh yeah. I got a new one. Oh yeah. I remember that. I liked this. You could design around it, you know. You knew exactly how it was gonna display. But it's sad that we can't have as much fun as we once had. It's probably 2010 here, back when we had first launched VidCon. Oh yeah. This, this, this. I liked this. I'll see. I remember doing this. Don't know what's happening all here with the blankness, but we've got 344,000 subscribers. We are number 82 most subscribed all time with that number. That's different now. Still pushing the truth or fail. It never worked. It was such a good show. That worked so hard on truth or fail. Oh, it just, it was just, it was destined to fail. Maybe with the new end screens, it could work. I don't, don't do it. All right. Let's go to 2009. All right. Yeah. This one. This one that Shark Eye Jones did. Look at this. This is gorgeous. Doesn't this look better than what it looks like now? One of the short sisters, Monica, now works for VidCon. She's running PodCon right now. August 2009, we have 98,000 subscribers. So we're about to hit 100,000 and look how nice all this looks. I don't know how we ended up with just John's face as our channel icon. All right. We're putting a pop all the way to 2008 now and probably lose this, this cooler design and end up with, yeah, this. Oh God. Edit undo. And then on the sidebar here, you got like comments on the channel. I think that we have like one channel design left before we're out. And here it is. This is the first capture archive.org ever made of Vlogbrothers. We had 9,700 subscribers. This YouTube drama subscribed to Household Hacker. YouTube watchdog has 20 videos removed due to TOS violations. Renato says the YouTube community is on its last breath because of telemarketers. There's been YouTube drama since there has been YouTube. Ms. K. Chief says, so since you have cracked most subscribed, guess you can just stop making videos back in 2007. We thought about it in December of 2007. Absolutely. We said we were going to do it for a year. We'd been doing it for a year. We had 11,000 subscribers. That was super big back then. It's not super big now, but yeah, we decided to keep doing it. It turned out okay. The channel archive.org archive is from December 1st, 2007. So basically there's no record of our YouTube channel for the first 11 months that we did it. But John, if you remember, in the early days, YouTube was not where we like had our main community. We had it at Brotherhood2.com. And if we go back to 2007, I think that we're going to get, oh yeah, we are. Oh yeah, we are. Check it out. Discussion questions. How should Hank take nerdfighters to the next level? How comes horse radish looks like mayo and tastes like poison? We don't do discussion questions anymore. That's fun. What was the first book you ever loved? That's a good one. John, thanks for doing stuff with me. I've been recording for 36 minutes, so there's probably a much longer version of this video over on Hank's channel. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.


I'm sick and tired of it. I'm gonna tell you guys what I believe in right now Okay, leave me the alone and shoot full auto, baby Head on over to pyramidair.com slash SOC pick up your targets and your stickers today If you don't want to buy the targets you can download them. It's okay. We forgive you get in on the giveaway There's awesome giveaways this week You're gonna have some daily stuff weekly stuff and don't forget to enter for your chance to win a $3,000 shopping spree Now go out and show us why you're sick with COVID


I'd like to just say a few words to introduce the panel that we'll have for lunch here and kick off the discussion that we'll have about advocacy work that's happening both here in Vermont and then also in other states around the country, particularly here in the region. But before we get to the panel, just a couple of quick notes for you all. The first thing I'd say is that if you have not had a chance to be at either the national or state public policy panels that have taken place here the last couple of days, we'll talk a little bit about that work. We won't talk a lot about national policy because a lot of what we're trying to do is prevent bad things from happening at the national level. So if you don't know it yet, just say no to HR 3557. Say yes to the Protecting Community Television Act at the national level. And then also, if you are an ACM member, please know that we are here as a resource for you to help your advocacy work at the local, state, and federal level and that we work in partnership with our state organizations and with our members to help build their capacity to advocate on behalf of their residents. Every month, the first Thursday of the month, we have a national public policy call where we review things that are going on in Washington, D.C., but then also compare notes for states around the union. And that's actually been a huge boon to the advocacy work for individual states as people who are fighting a fight in one state compare notes with their colleagues in another state. And that's part of the resource that ACM provides, so we're happy to do that for you. Quick other couple of notes here before we start the conversation. I want to say a big round of applause and thank you to board members for the national organization who are here today. If you want to stand up and say hello to folks, a quick recognition for national board members. A special thank you to Richard Turner, our national board chair, who will be concluding his service in about two weeks' time. I want to thank you for the partnership and leadership that you provided us over the course of the last several years as a national board chair. And then a quick note for you, if you're beginning to think about 2024, I would like to invite you to come to Washington, D.C. next March. We're setting a date for a national hill date for you to be able to advocate on behalf of your communities, your operations, and also the residents that depend upon your work as community media operations. Be on the lookout for that date, but I think it will probably be the second week of March. And we welcome you to Washington, D.C. It's a great time to be. It's not stick season in Washington, D.C. then. How's that? I've learned something here in the last couple, stick season, delightful. So let's turn to the panel today, and I guess the context I want to give to you as we turn things over to the work that's been happening in Vermont and in some of other states is that the status of public policymaking at the federal level has either been bad or sclerotic. And sclerotic is bad, you know, I'm not a health, I'm not a heart surgeon. Sclerosis is bad for you. It's been frozen in many respects. It's been very much stalled out as also an entire question about the extent to which there's policy capture, regulatory capture at the federal level, which I think doesn't exist in some states. So that's provided us an opportunity in the last several years for states working in the telecom space and working on community media initiatives to really be thinking creatively about how they can serve the needs of their residents. And that's certainly the case here in Vermont. And it's been like our pleasure at ACM to partner with Vermont Access Network over the course of the last, gosh, it's been about the last, it's been actually since the franchising work that occurred with both Charter and Comcast post-2015 was really sort of like the sort of groundwork that sort of made for that partnership that we've had with ACM supporting your work for the Public Service Commission here in Vermont with those renewals that took place and some historic work that occurred as a result of that advocacy work that you did.  Since that time, you've been working on some very, very groundbreaking initiatives that are beginning to both gain some traction, but then also are gaining some attention from people around the country. So we'll be talking a little bit about that here during this discussion. So with that, I want to kind of hand things over to you Angeliki and introduce yourself to folks who don't know you and lead off the discussion. Okay, great. So I'm Angeliki Contis and I'm director of a pretty small to medium sized community media center in Richmond, Vermont, which is about a half an hour from here. And I've also been on the van board for as long as I can remember it feels like now, at least two or three terms. And yeah, first of all, we all want to welcome everybody who's trekked into Vermont or even those from Southern Vermont who have come a long way. And thank you especially to Mike from the ACM. It's so great for us during the course of the year to always be able to check in and be like, Mike, what do you think of this? What should we do about that? I mean, it's like it's invaluable, I mean, to be able to just check things that are coming through the pipeline and what we're doing and let him know about things that we're up to. And we're hoping that our discussion today and I'm very humbled to be here because I know everybody is doing amazing work in their centers around the country and we saw some of that last night in the awards ceremony. But we were hoping that our case today would be helpful for you as you navigate the elephant in the room, which is the fact that our stable source of income for a long time and for many of us, as long as we've been doing this, the cable revenue is going down and we know it's happening. And we want to be ahead of this before it's a total disaster. And I know that there have been some of those centers that have had to close because of this. So here in Vermont, we have the advantage that we're kind of small. And there's 24 of us and we all know each other and speak to each other regularly and we have a very strong organization in van. And we've decided to work on this for at least since 2015 and we'll get more into the details of that. And we want to tell you a little bit about our efforts for short-term funding as well as long-term funding because there's only so long you can ask for short-term funding and it's not a fix to the existential problem. So since 2020, we've been working with Action Circles and we have someone here who's a lobbying organization and they have helped us navigate all this stuff because we know a lot about cables and how to film shows and we don't necessarily know a lot about how to get things done in a political context. On the plus side, we also know everybody because we're conveniently located throughout the state and they all know and love us. I think I don't know anyone who doesn't love us, I think. And that's a big advantage when you're doing things like this. And we're useful, I think. So we've been working with Action Circles since 2020 and we've had success. It's allowed us to obtain 2.4 million in short-term funding and that includes ARPA funds as well as other kind of funding. And during the pandemic, we were deemed an essential service and you all know what that looks like and it's been nice to have support even in the last two days from our Secretary of State and Peter Anthony, our legislator, who's here from Barrie, Vermont and our Lieutenant Governor, so we do have a lot of support. So thank you to the Vermont system for recognizing our value. That's the first step. And we're going to start today showing you a video of Peter Blum, who was the author of the PEG study, which was commissioned by the State of Vermont, to look into our existential problem of what are we going to do now that the cable revenue is going down and what are options and how are we going to make up this revenue. And he came up with a bunch of different solutions which have eventually made their way into a bill that we're working on having introduced right now. We have senators, a senator in the Senate, obviously who's bringing that in front of Legislative Council and the same thing is happening in the House. So that's all going to happen when the legislature starts up in January. So we're going to first see this video that Peter Blum sent sort of going over. He was the author of the PEG study and he goes over what's involved with that. And then Tammy, who's on the van board with me, is going to talk a little bit about the work that the van organization has done to make all this happen. And then we're going to hear from Representative Peter Anthony about the work that the State of Vermont is generally doing to to improve and modernize the telecommunications legal framework in this state because we all know how everything is changing so rapidly and we have to keep ahead of it. So I guess we can start with the video first. Why do telecommunications rules need to be modernized and what role do you see public educational and government access in that mix? Well, you know, I had seen what was going on in what was then the telephone world. When I got to the public service board, I discovered something that I should have known about already, which was that PEG had already gotten a separate source of funding through the Cable Act. So back in the 80s, when this was all done, cable and telephone were completely different silos. The cable people wanted the cable industry came along in the 80s and they wanted to be recognized in federal law and they were, but they needed franchises. They needed the right to run their wires up and down the highways. And the quid pro quo that they had worked out was a gross receipts tax of up to 5% plus a little bit for capital. And states like Vermont and in some places, in some states, other non-state actors like cities and towns were able to negotiate about those franchises. And they were able to use the revenues from those surcharges as they chose. Vermont chose to use it all for PEG access. So there's a 5% surcharge on cable in Vermont that goes directly to PEG organizations and doesn't even pass through the state treasury. It's just a direct transfer. The technological advance has made the funding mechanism for your particular mechanism, I think, moderately obsolete. But the immediate pressing point is that your revenues have been declining and you don't have less need. You just have less revenue coming in. So we did the study. I did the study to try to look at alternative sources of revenue. And since I had experience in Vermont looking at sort of multiple different programs that were related to telecommunications in the 1990s, I tried the same thing again. I said, well, what if Vermont continues with its established policies of funding telecommunications related services with telecommunications related taxes? What kinds of taxes would be appropriate? And one of the new problems with it is, if you're going to do that, you really should try to do it in a way that's competitively neutral so that you're not picking out just one industry, say cable or internet services and saying, well, you're going to pay it all, pal. It's all on you.  You need to try to make this all a little more balanced so that it applies ideally across all the competitive markets. And the trouble I found, Lauren Glenn, was that there are so many silo-based federal restrictions that trying to find a new source of revenue in the telecommunications space is a little bit like skiing on a slalom course. It's something I was never able to do myself. And so I know that it's very hard to do. But you have to go around all these polls and zigzag around and miss things and try to get to the bottom without crashing. And there are a lot of polls on this federal preemption slope that we looked at in the report and tried to find a way through. And what would you say are the solutions that we came up with that avoid, for example, the Internet Tax Freedom Act or some of the other federal prescriptions? Yeah. So there's about four or five major areas of preemption. There's the restrictions on the use of the Cable Act revenues, that 5% restrictions. There's the Internet Tax Freedom Act. There's the FCC decisions that have restricted the use of the Federal Universal Service Fund. And by extension, what states cannot do in the universal service area. So that's very little available. And you can't add more than 5% to Cable. You can't tax Internet access by congressional action. You can't impose a connection fee on Internet connections, at least so said the FCC at the time. And so when you get all done, there would seem to be very little left. But I realize that because there are two things that are relevant here, technological things. One is Vermont has almost everything telecom-wise up on polls. That's not the case in the Midwest, where they bury everything. But in Vermont, because of rocky soils and tradition, things are up on polls. And the second thing is that fiber optics are so much more efficient than the traditional voltage-based copper communications that it's the mechanism of choice for almost every telecom carrier. Satellite guys accept it. Even the satellite guys use terrestrial fiber for a lot of their communications to their ground stations, for example. But everybody pretty much uses some or exclusively fiber-based communications. And there still is a lot of copper up on the polls. But I thought, well, if you're looking for something that everybody uses that you want to generate tax revenue from, why not try some kind of a cable on polls charge? And I thought, well, maybe we could ask people to go out and measure the length of their cables. That seems kind of arduous and time-consuming and likely to create controversy. But I thought, well, the other thing is that polls tend to be about equally spaced apart. And they're farther apart in the country than they are on major highways. But if you attach to a poll, there's a existing regulation that applies for how the price is set for the poll attacher to pay the poll owner. So there is already data around about how many of these poll attachments there are. And I thought, well, maybe a surcharge on poll attachments might be a way to get down to the bottom of that slalom slope without crashing into any gates. And that was what we explored in the paper. So forgive us all the metaphors to skiing, but you'll hear more of that as we go through the conversation. And I'd be remiss not to mention that we have an advocacy committee in Van, which is kind of people from the board, but also Lauren Glenn Davidian from Town Meeting TV, who is otherwise known as sort of like the mother of community media in Vermont, and has really helped us a lot in terms of contacting legislators, following up immediately with legislators, and also teaching us whatever action circles is in teaching us about how to do that important work. And I forgot to mention that at the end of this conversation, we do want to hear from everybody in different states. And I know Peter Anthony was also interested in hearing how other people are tackling the challenges of substituting cable funding with other revenue. So Tammy, who I speak with on a regular basis, let's talk about how the van board started on this work, because it's been a really long process. It's not like we did it in a few months or a year. It's been going on for a long time. Do you want to kind of go to the beginning? Yes. How we decided to hire action circles to help us. My main message that I want you all to take away today is that this didn't happen overnight. And we made a decision as a sector to tackle the existential crisis that we have. Probably 10, 12 years ago. And our first step was to get some grant funding to do business planning and strategic planning, to hold some special education events with our members, to talk about the big bag future of where's our money. And that was a very uncomfortable time for us back then. But over the years, we made that decision and then we committed to it. And we worked on a number of projects from VMX to the CPG with Comcast and Charter. That was a five, six year process that Lisa from CAT TV helped us through. And Kevin. And VMX is the file sharing system. So we started educating our membership on the problem. And then we started educating our membership on the solutions. And we made a decision to make this a priority. And I think that's my main message. And we worked on a number. We also worked on a statewide contract as a cohesive group. And so we started doing this work many, many years ago. And the other important thing is to dedicate time in your leadership. Whether it's an executive director or board members to dedicate time to this advocacy work, because without the buy-in from your board, you're not going to have the time to do it. And that's really important. So I bring the advocacy work to my board and they understand the importance of it and the value of it. So they're not questioning, Tammy, why are you spending so much time doing this advocacy work? They get it. So I would say that's the first step is really getting the buy-in from your board and the staff on why it's important to do this work when there's other things to do. And then secondly, start working together and make a commitment to it. And know that it's a slow process, democracy slow, right? So that's really the takeaway I want you to get from me. But we worked on the CPG. We did the business planning and strategic planning. We started working together around the FNPR on rulemaking and the gap accounting change that happened in 2018. And we really realized that we needed some professional help and that's why we hired the lobbyists, because we're not, as Angeliki said, we don't have the history to understand how to do this work. The large organizations in the beginning pitched in to pay for this work because they understood the value of it. And then slowly we all, we added it to our membership structure, to our membership fees. So we could build up a fund to pay for this work. And we hired Action Circles in 2018. The advocacy team meets just about every Monday. So when I say commitment, that's the commitment that I'm talking about. It's a weekly adventure. And may I say that there are lobbyists and lobbyists. And for us, it was really important to pick someone that has a really good reputation, that when you say their name, people don't cringe. And as the opposite, whenever we mention Action Circles and Amy, everyone is just excited that we're working with them.  And that helped us because we didn't. Yeah. So the next topic that we wanted to talk about was how, how do we find success in getting short term funding and getting $2.4 million that we all needed to help boost our services in our communities. And we started by doing research on our revenue and made some solid revenue projections so that we could really show the need. And we did our homework and we came prepared. And we're not coming to the legislature when it's too late with our, you know, with the pants on fire, we're saying we know and we're getting our ducks in a row. And we started then in 2018 building those relationships with legislators. And Peter can talk about how long he's known. Lauren Glenn, it's not been since 2018, but and we really started focusing on building relationships with our municipalities. And during COVID really streaming government and action on a three times a week, four times a week basis, getting identified as an essential service. And then our value really became evident and became a little easier for us to work through the legislative process. And Megan has put the the chart up there, the chart that we've been presenting to legislators in our one page ask, let's say, just kind of explaining the situation and the funding that we're going to need to make up in the next few years. And I think this was based on kind of conservative numbers with cable cord cutting. And without the crazy inflation we've had in recent years. So things are changing, but we're trying to get ahead of it. And it was based on real data, real research, real numbers. And so I think that's an important point. So I think we're on to the third piece. And then we can turn it over to Peter and yet and have a discussion. So tell us about our solution in our bill. Yes. So in 2018, we had the request of the general funds. We started meeting with legislators in 2019. We requested a study committee in the state legislature. And out of that study committee, the PEG study was formed. We got some funding for Peter to do the study. And that took about a year and a half or so. And he looked at everything from he looked at where your efficiencies, what can, you know, be done better and lots of things. It was 150 page report, which I'm happy to share with all of you if you need some reading material in the night. But what came out of that white paper were five solutions. And then out of those five, as we dug into it, we came onto the poll attachment as a viable solution for what Vermont has the authority to do. And so that was the PEG study was really the springboard for this bill, which will be introduced this session, which is a long term revenue stream for PEG, which we're really excited about. So a lot of years in the making, it'll be introduced. And then we'll see what happens. We're hopeful. We're going to keep exploring future solutions and keep working it. And we're hoping to move forward. Really want to hear from you all about what you're experiencing in your states as well. But that's really all I have to say. And I can turn it over. And we will have time for questions because we just threw a lot of information at you. I'm sure there's many different cases in different states, but to continue on to the Vermont trend. So Peter, Anthony, can you tell us a little bit about the work that your committee is doing, the Ways and Means Committee, when it comes to telecommunications law and changes to it? Delighted to do so. As Peter Bloom in the video explained, the real difficulty is that there are only a few openings that seem to be, emphasize the word seem, seem to be left to the states. Thanks to our speaker in the House and the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, a working group was established to take custody, if you will, of the proposal from the PEG and Action Circle, which is specifically just focused on this group's interest. In Vermont, and I suspect in other states, we have a wider set of needs that impact the public sphere and communications crosses into emergency services, communication, dispatch. All of those had been funded by similar types of assessments, which have historically declined, as Peter explained. So well, I know you folks are interested specifically in a future funding force solely to support PEG activities, we have a larger problem. But Peter Bloom's exercise was extremely useful, and the working group, which has been at it since our legislature adjourned back in May, took that study. Though it's focused on PEG needs, we realize that there are other ancillary and related activities that, in fact, you had an address from the Secretary of State. She, I had served on the committee that she chaired when she was in the legislature until 2022 when she was elected Secretary of State. The Secretary of State and Sarah Copeland-Hanses is extremely interested in improving the relationship and the interest of young people in public service, elections, voting, all that area. And part of that in a rural state like Vermont will be delivered through cable. We're busily building out broadband, but that's going to take five years. And so cable remains a very essential part of outreach. I'm delighted to see that you had at least one session focused on what your local board is composed of in terms of skill sets and ages, because that's a problem. And I'm a poster child for somebody who's been in and out of public service for over 40 years, and I should have retired a while ago, but I didn't. Well, I'm aging out and so are a lot of folks. But back to your central topic. What we realized with our universal service charge that funded the universal service funds, which funded Peg, is it's cumulatively, cumulatively racking up deficits. So we started with Peter's encouragement for a poll tax. We poll connection tax essentially. We also realized that streaming is essentially untouched at the moment. We also realized that the use of the right of way, again, this is a rural state, as Peter mentioned, we have polls all over the place. That's been the standard, if you will, technology of attack to get wires to people. So it's a natural attraction. However, Vermont has never assessed private companies regulated or not for profit or not have never assessed the use of the public right of way to put the polls. So while we're talking about a connection fee, interestingly enough, we've given away the roadways and the publicly owned real estate to put the polls in the ground. There's obviously politics as to why that's happened. But the point is it's a missed opportunity. So there's the poll tax that's missed as use of the right of way that's missed. There's streaming assessments that have never happened before. And as Peter said, and our committee chair has said explicitly, try to avoid being competitive, anti competitive in your assessment regime. Spread the pain. And he mentions his phrase is try to have it be competitively neutral in the sense that you don't simply hit up the low fruit and a bunch of other deliverers of telecom services get a free ride. The idea is for everyone to contribute to the public sphere. And we said, Well, what about streaming?  And so we're exploring that. Again, as as Peter mentioned, it's a challenge to be competitively neutral. That is to say, not simply hit up the obvious and easy target for funding, but it's also difficult to wed competitive neutrality with the avoidance of the preemption issue. So that's the challenge that at least our working group is grappling with. I am optimistic that we could be aggressive without being hauled into federal court. Because frankly, I think most everybody understands that Congress has passed what it passed and then went to sleep on the issue. And so there's really room for reform of the early attempt to keep the states out of this. The problem is whether you use the medical metaphor of sclerosis or sclerotic or not. The fact is that Congress is not going to return to that. They can barely get a spending bill through. So I think the states should think about this as an opportunity to be aggressive. I just doubt that US attorneys are just waiting to sue a state. And we have looked and are very proud of the representation of the New England states, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, though they're not technically in New England safe. They have a huge rural area which is comparable to Vermont's and can teach us a few things. So those are the three states we have looked to. Because one of the rules of our ways and means tradition in a committee work is try not to be an outlier. So we look to other states. If they said they've decided to adopt a gross receipts tax, well, we'll consider that, but we're not going to be outside of the rate range that they have established. We're a small state, and in a way, we have, consequently, a small cash box, which means we don't have a lot of people breathing down our neck because we're pretty insignificant. So that's good. It allows us freedom of movement without a bunch of corporate lobbyists knocking on the door all the time. But at the same time, we want to keep that way. We want to keep out of being, if you like, in the outer reaches, if you will, of aggressiveness in this area. So that's sort of the lowdown. We are not delivering a report until January, which is when the legislature comes back into session. And as I say, poll tax, streaming, revision in the use of the property tax and clarifying the basis on which the tax is assessed. It's a complicated, it's an accountant's dreamland, but it's not easy to administer now because it's based on depreciable net value, which is complicated to say the least. We are going to switch it to a fair market value assessment, which we deal with all the time in real and personal property terms. So that's the sort of overview summary of where we are and where we hope we'll get in the early part of this next session. And I have one more question. But the fact is that when I went up with others in the organization to testify to the EUC committee of the legislature in Maine, they were the subcommittee that was going to hear this bill, which is LD 1967, an act to support municipal franchising. The problem we're having, like many of you all have, is that we can't get charter, for example, to come to the table and negotiate anymore. We have 16 towns that have tried it together in Maine, and it's just not going anywhere. And there are a lot of reasons for this. But again, part of what I wanted to share is that once you've gone through this process and you have an organization that understands that our role is, in fact, to bring these ideas to the legislators and you can find a champion, and that's really the key. We have a brilliant champion right now on the bill that we're working with, Melanie Sacks, who, by the way, was introduced to public access in the town, a little town of Freeport, Maine, where all being is, because they invited her to come and talk about what she was doing in the legislature. And she's like, this is interesting. This is great. I didn't know this.  And when we went up to testify, we had six organizations, including the Maine Municipal Association. And that's a big deal. This is the organization in Maine that supports municipal public policy. We worked hard with them to make sure that the language we crafted fit within their purview, within what they were looking for in order to support that bill. So the sausage making happened very early.  And six organizations came to testify in favor of the bill. And of course, the Motion Picture Association was there to speak against it. Because one of the things we're trying to grapple with is this, you know, this whole question of if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. Well, people keep saying, this is cable we're dealing with. And we all know that that's really not the truth. We're dealing with digital networks. We're dealing with streaming. And everybody says, well, what does that mean? And that's a good question. So a lot of what we've done is worked with legal advisors to craft definitions of these new technologies that we're trying to understand how we're going to be part of. And one of those definitions is a video service provider. And, you know, there are other states that have gone down this path and tried this. But our AG, the Attorney General, was one of the six people that came up and spoke in support of this bill. And literally told the committee that, in fact, one of the committee members asked them, would you defend this language? Because the motion picture guy said, this is illegal. You know, we're going to fight this. You can't charge Netflix for, you know, have you can't make Netflix have a franchise in your community. And, you know, we basically say, if you're providing content and you have some form of a plant within the within the municipality, you're required to have a franchise and agreement with that community as to how you're using the right of ways. And everybody in the legislature, they know exactly what you're talking about when you say right of ways. It's something we all own. So we're talking about the community now, right? It's been interesting, again, to just sort of hear how various states are dealing with these issues of not just funding, but trying to hold the cable industry and the telecommunications industry accountable for their actions. I mean, one of the things we did was we went and got the profit margin numbers for charter and put those into our documentation for this bill and it came up in the questioning. Guy says, it looks to me here, you're telling me that this is going to be passed on, you know, they played the same game, the cable company came up. There was one cable executive who came up against the bill and said, well, this is just going to cost the cable subscribers more money, right? That's always been the way. And, you know, we certainly have heard this and we know this argument. But in this case, the legislator said, I've got some notes here that say you had a 71% profit margin over the last two years. Is that true? He said, wow, that's not really accurate. It's not all profits. Some of them we got caught. He says, that's unheard and I'm a republicans and I'm somebody who would generally support this. But he says, you guys have been really pillaging our communities and I know that we can't get anybody to return our calls. So one of the things in the bill is that if you can't get the cable company to come to the table, you can now go to the Maine's EUC committee and say, look, they're not negotiating. And suddenly it becomes a state level AG's issue and the AG office under the direction of the Governor Mills in Maine who has defended at least one other piece of legislation all the way to the first district is saying they're going to defend it. So stick around, this is going to be voted on in the full legislature in January. And Tony and myself and Nate and others who are here from Maine, Terry, we're all keeping our constituents informed and making sure they're talking to their legislative representatives. So when this thing comes up, we're going to be on it and we're going to try to get it passed. And that's the way we're fighting it in Maine and it's unique to Maine, but it's also something I think we all experience. So there you go. And I think that while all of us do not have the legal budgets of some of the cable companies that we speak with, hearing the information through the ACM and each other in situations like this is incredibly helpful because we're all trying to figure out, we're all testing different solutions. And believe me, if one of them works in one state, I'm sure it'll get adapted in others. And it's an evolving situation as they stay on the news, slowly evolving and we're all working on it together. Did you have any thoughts? I knew that this was creeping, if you will, towards coming to a head and we are watching Maine because that idea in fact has occurred to us as well. And we have to figure out language, as you pointed out, which stays away from intruding on content but nevertheless gets to the issue of using the public space. And if I may add, for those of you who don't live where their telephone poles every 250 feet, we will adopt language if we go with the pole connection fee, which has a counterpart for buried cables. In other words, we know what the spacing of poles are. So frankly, we can translate that into linear feet of underground infrastructure. So don't get fixated on the fact that you don't have telephone poles every five miles because it doesn't matter. You can write the language to be compatible with underground calculations, just as you can with a pole sticking out of the ground. That's good to know. My local representatives were asking, like, what about urban areas? There aren't so many of these ugly poles all over the place. You could do that. I'm wondering if somebody from Massachusetts or from Connecticut might be able to give us a little bit of information. We've been talking about that over the last couple of days right here in the center. I was the stand-in for Dave got here at the state advocacy update. So Massachusetts, we're talking about streaming. We've got the quote unquote streaming bill that we are currently wrestling through the joint committee for advanced technology and cybersecurity and internet. Oh, I almost got that in the right order. So the hearing that happened and the testimony that happened over this summer was a really interesting watch. And the main argument that's being brought against it is again that, oh, this cost is going to get passed on to the consumer, and it's a tax on the constituents. So it's really been encouraging to hear how other states are handling similar arguments because it is a very difficult thing to go up against. This bill has been introduced in a couple of different capacities before, and we are coming close to the end of our current two-year session. So we're trying to get it approved through this joint committee so that it can go on for review in the next committee by February, early February is the date, I can't remember the exact date right now. So that's our current major push. There's also another bill about cash flow, especially in smaller towns that function in the town meeting format, so that smaller stations can go back to the court, getting paid on a quarterly basis. But I don't have as much information on that one. But the streaming bill in particular, we're really watching how some of the other New England states are handling some of those arguments because that's going to be really helpful for us. In Connecticut, first of all, we just like to thank all the other states for the work that they've been doing because that is really helping us. We have a very unique set where a significant number of areas are cable run. We basically have an argument that if we want, well, municipalities should pay for PEG if they want it, and that's their primary argument. We had a streaming bill last session that got converted into a study bill, but the language was written by the industry. The good news is that draft of that study came out on November 1st, and we have until November 29th to get our comments, and there are, is some good news in that they looked at the attachment, pole attachment, they looked at potentially population-based measurement assessment. They also looked at, who will help me here? There's five potential funding strategies that came out of that study, but no concrete recommendations options. So that's going to get kicked back to the legislature, and we're hoping to capitalize on being in the space and promoting solutions that will protect PEG. And one of the conditions of the study was that potentially consolidating all the access centers into much larger footprints. So we have 169 towns, but we have, let's see, help me. How many access centers? Yeah, 13. Whatever that. 19. Oh my gosh, my math skills. It's too early on a Friday. Anyway, so we're kind of eager to be able to, you know, take what we've learned here and try to push towards a public-sphere-friendly solution? How about that? Yeah. You know, I mean, it's a rough road in Connecticut, but we just keep walking it. And hopefully, on a good note, like a lot of times when we've come here, we've said that there are wins in that our capital funding used to be swept perennially by the government. And we've had three or four years of consistent, since the pandemic, consistent capital funding. And that is making a big difference in the capacity of our access centers to serve, you know, their communities. And I think that that is if we can continue to protect the capital funding, then there's options to show value where maybe we didn't have that same strength. It's not as if we were withering away. So thank you. I think there's probably time for one more question. Mark, do you have a question over here? I get the close. This is awesome. I'm learning a lot today. So first, I just want to thank you for the session. I was late. I apologize for coming in late. And I did want to note that if we were to multiply, if we were to do the math on our population compared to New Hampshire, we would have about 400 reps if we were to do the math. I think it's about, what is it, two and a half times our size, the population? Just a factoid. 400 people is a lot of people, though. I'm wondering if we could, is there any conversation in looking into, and maybe this might be like way off the rails, is there is a bucket of money over there? And I'm sorry, I don't remember your name representative, but I know I see you all the time in the state house. I just like family. The cannabis excise tax is stacked up. And I think it's probably going to go back into the general fund if we don't make a decision on what to do with it. And I like the idea because of the connotation and also its relationship to what I believe to be equity, that's another conversation. And so yeah, I just would love to hear some thoughts about that, whether that had been considered or whether it's kind of a, it creates a problem because we're dealing with something that's federal and we might be fearful that that might be jeopardized. The other thing is, is the process itself. I'm wondering if there's any way that we could get information on how we could, how I personally could be engaged in this process, because I'd be curious to hear more. I'm happy to show up, testify and so forth, but I'd be curious to hear how we could kind of get out in front of it. I know Amy and company and all those folks as well. And I'll just leave it there since we're at the end and I think I can circle back around with you and if I get some breadcrumbs on how to do so. Thanks. Let me quickly respond. First off, the lead sponsor of the bill for the PEG specific proposal is Avram Pat, representative from Worcester. So I would Avram Pat, P-A-T-T, a representative from Worcester. And I would email him because that committee of which he's a member is bound to have hearings on that very bill as soon as we reconvene in January. That's the cleanest way to make sure that you're invited to give testimony. And we'll be in touch because I know we collaborated on various series here in the state and we are actually, we'll send you a link because maybe nobody has already because we're gathering from nonprofits and we're great to have the Richard Kemp Center on there. So definitely. I'm sorry. Well, all of our committee business and I think Avram's committee as well are available on Zoom on YouTube all the time. Whenever we're in session, the legislative YouTube channel is recording it for public access. He's asking about the cannabis, the cannabis excise going into the general fund. As a solution for PEG, I think. Yeah. There's a perennial argument in the legislature about dedicated funds. It's unresolved and unresolvable. There are two sides to that. If it's dedicated and the funding goes down, everybody says, oh gee, I'm sorry. It shouldn't have been dedicated because now the fund will not support the uses to which it was originally intended. That's the problem with the universal service charge. That's why PEG is here. So dedicated funding is, if you will, a choice. The legislature is conflicted internally about making. I think my primary piece of that. My primary reason for asking the question was, is more to understand, is it even viable as an option? With this particular challenge on the table, is the excise tax that's currently unallocated for cannabis, which is due to go back into the general fund, could it even be considered as an option as a possible solution to what it is that we're looking at? Of course. I don't sit on the appropriations committee, which is the area that you're asking about, which is to say, if there's some funds that are uncommitted, what do we do with them? That's an appropriations committee. I'm charged with raising money, not spending it. And just a little correction that's pointed out. So PEG is not, we are not funded through the universal service charge fund currently. We're through the cable franchise fees directly. They're both declining and that's a bigger problem. Yeah, both are part of the parcel of old things that need to change and be, you know, keep up with the times. And thank you, Mark. And we will definitely reach out. We appreciate your support. And I wish I could match the energy you had at your talk, but I tried. So before we wrap things up, I don't know if anyone had like a burning last comment. I have just one small that before you go away, I wanted to address. Yes. Liz Harkins. I run random cable aid in Massachusetts. I wear multiple hats today. But I wanted to first off say thank you so much for your for everything here. It's really, really important information that everybody should be aware of. With the kind of stemming off of the dialogue of how do we get involved? I've heard a lot of dialogue specifically in Massachusetts where a lot of people just really aren't aware of the impact that this is having on us in our future. The longevity that we want to have for us and how to accomplish that. I guess I really just wanted to take to mention that in front of least for us in Massachusetts, the best thing is through what we're doing now talking, really helping educate those around us. And through that education, I really feel that we're going to hopefully make a really positive change. I know we've seen some some great movements with mass access with help of Robert and everybody else. He also wears multiple hats. So again, I just always like to vocalize like if you know someone, if you know another community that isn't aware of this, get them on board, talk to them about what's going on. And hopefully we can really make a difference. Thank you so much. And thank you to everybody for hanging out now till the near end. We have one more surprise. And thank you for Peter Anthony for spending the time and talking about these things and we're definitely going to be continuing to be in touch. Just one small van thing, some van business, since we have lots of witnesses here. So we would like to ask our colleague for Trowbridge to come up who hates surprises, but we're going to do it anyway. I almost was as tall as Cora, but now it's over. Cora has been with Brattleboro Community TV for 18 years and has announced recently she's retiring and has served in many capacities on the van board, working on the statewide channel, formerly VMX, and has done so much. And she always has this group of great young people with her and it's happened again. But we wanted a small, and here's the ski metaphor, a small something because of your many years with van and with the Harris Hill ski jump. So thank you, Cora, and put it on and show us. Thanks, everybody. All right. It's a very small token, but we wanted your ACM colleagues to also be involved. Excellent. There we go. I really appreciate it. It's really been such a privilege to work with people who care so much about the public interest and the public good. There's a subset of people in the universe that I can always count on who are doing things for the right reasons, and that is everybody in this room. And I've learned so much from you, and I've been so impressed by the dedication and the commitment of everyone. And nobody does it for personal gain is just because it's the right swear word thing to do. So I really thank you for letting me be a part of it for all these years. And I'm sure I'll be around and bossing people around in some other format. But thanks. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Over to Rob. That sounds like it. Thank you guys for being here and letting us know. Just a reminder that the last session starts here at two o'clock.


Hey there friends! How's it going? My name is Kevin, and I am far too high definition right now. I don't know if it shows, but I got a new camera, and it's just way- it's way too high-deaf. Like, it's more high-deaf than- than my eyes, and I don't really like that, but we're gonna keep going anyway. Ugh! So, we just got a new expansion for the Sims, Snowy Escape.   They put in a lot of work killing people. Earning money to get this gated community last time, and I feel like they deserve a break. Yeah, Jim looks depressed. What are you eating? A garden salad.  Alright guys, honestly, you need a getaway. Let's go to the computer, and not the one in the hedge maze. She's still googling out to get out of here. You'd think she'd figure it out since it's only shoulder high, but oh well, power has been shut off. Pay your bills. I'm trying to, but you turned off my power so I can't use my computer to pay the bills. I don't think I even have a mailbox. How can I pay my bills? There we go. Thank God I have a data connector on my phone. Harvest fest. Oh, so many organs to be harvested today. Fantastic. Everyone's happy. They're all just on the rocking chairs. Oh, this is gonna be the hotspot for literally no reason, isn't it? The kid even came in like, hey guys, any rocking chairs free? Oh, you left your rocking chair vacant for a second. It's gonna get stolen.  The early bird catches the worm, or in this case, the rocking chair. I should have just put a rocking chair in the middle of the hedge maze. At least she's playing a few games now. Or I think she might be on MSN. Status update. Stuck in hedge maze. Oh yeah, no one uses MSN anymore. All contacts offline. All right, let me try and get this holiday going. How do I book a holiday? Okay, is this the right vacation? I don't understand. Okay, who's coming with me?  And a random firefighter, I think. Okay, so this is it. Mount unpronounceable. I'm gonna go there. Oh, this map looks cool. Wait, I have to rent a lot? I'll go for the expensive one. The prisoners will pay for this. Oh my God, 10 days here and I'd be bankrupt. Okay, fine, we'll go there. We just won't stay 10 days. Nine days, sounds more reasonable. Oh, I hope someone pays the bills when I'm gone. But no, in reality, I know they're all just sitting there, like on the rocking chairs, having a blast. It's an addiction. Rocking chairs are a gateway drug. Oh no, I've just realized the custom content got disabled with the new thing. And people are saying it can break the game. And now we're stuck with a maskless turg, which is honestly somehow more terrifying than when he has his mask on. This place looks awesome. Wait, who are you? Who is the kid? No, knit woman, you were not invited. Go home. You're the fireman, right? Yeah, the fireman was invited, but you, you were not invited. You know what?  This is just plain disowning, removed from family. Good luck out there. Good luck in the snow.  Tell him to go away.  Oh sh.  All right folks, how about we go start some fires? The firefighters like, God damn it, I knew this free vacation was too good to be true. Where is the firefighter? Oh, he's out in the backyard. He seems like he's not having a good time if he's separating himself from the group. Here, make him feel at home, Jim. You just see him casting spells in the background. There we go. Now you've something to do. He's lucky he didn't catch fire himself.  Luckily default is here to fight the fire. Why did I even bring a firefighter? He's useless. And Jim is just running away. Default swapped into her jogging gear to jog away. And Turg is now running also. They put out the fire to save the barbecue but they don't save the firefighter. Jim is going to bed. Guys, he's dying. Does anyone care? Where are you all going? You're watching TV. Where's Turg? Playing chess. Great. You know, if you saved the firefighter you'd have someone to play chess with. Sorry dude, I know this has been just a horrible holiday. I'd rate it probably three out of 10 if I'm being honest with you. It was that bad. Why didn't you get two or one? Well, I've had worse holidays to be honest. I've been on holidays to the Arran Islands. Nothing to do there. People talking Osqueliga, Irish, with a fan, that's a no- A fate worse than death, some might say. Oh, who hunts burgers? Guys, please get out of the way. I'm trying to get burger. Please, I just want burger. Turg is demanding. Greg, be spared. I don't know if you have that authority, Turg. Yeah, that didn't work. Guys, could you please hurry this up? Me want burger.  Jim just comes out naked from the bath. Oh, don't do it to yourself. Oh, you brave man. Default's done. Hey, death. You might have to come back to me in a second. It's freezing out here.  Anyway, I really got to get on with this holiday of mine. I don't even know what I can do here. There's cable cars. I wonder, can you cut the wire? And just like that, my game crashes for no reason. I say one thing about cutting the wire to a cable car and the game's like, no, you've had enough. Stop it, get some help. Oh, well, look on the bright side, we get to go back in time slightly and the fireman is still alive. You can't fight fate, Greg. You can't fight Jim. Honestly, he went straight to the barbecue. Like I can't control him and he just walked straight to the barbecue. The only difference in this timeline is no one has noticed that he is dying. The only issue with this one, where no one has seen him die, is that the whole house is on fire and no one has noticed. Let's go. Leave a zoo. Dwarme base. Very nice, everyone. You can just see them singing in the background. I don't know why they told us to bring our coats. Honestly, it's not that cold up here. The house is actually boiling. What's a gum to pray? Seven-A, basic growth. I'm getting flashbacks to Tomodachi life here. The band is back together. The end is only the time. No one can stop you being out. Uh, guys, toilets on fire.  What do we do? Oh, they're coming out to the back now. Wait, Default, what are you doing? Okay, she's putting it out again. Default is the hero, as well as no emotions. Default has no fear. She put out a pair to the fire, but the rest is still just kind of going. Meanwhile, the Grim Reaper's over there watching static. They're just kind of waiting out the fire. I don't know if this strategy works with fire. I don't think you can just say, I'll get bored eventually and just do nothing. She's freaking out when no one else is and I don't even know who she is.  Something just appeared. Oh my God, is this place haunted or something? The place is on fire and there's like garden gnomes appearing. We still haven't even gone out into the mountain. This is day one. Everything is just on fire. Okay, now the whole dining room is kind of burnt up because I hope the fire doesn't reach the fireplace. I wouldn't want that to get ruined. Okay, everything is back to normal, guys. Go about your day. Just don't use the toilet or the dining room.  Take a selfie. Oh yeah, I think that's part of his wants. He's got new goals now. He wants to be a sightseer and one of them is get a selfie. There we go. This will be the first fun thing we do on the holiday. Oh, Jesus Christ, he scared me. Mind if I take a selfie with you? The person I'm staying with just died and half the house burnt down. So been a bit of a rough day and it would just cheer me up a lot. All right, where are we gonna go explore everyone? Right to top. Yeah, there we go. Everyone, let's go. I don't think any of them, none of them have skied or done like any sports in their life. How are they gonna ski down this massive hill? High intensity. Go skiing. I didn't even get him good skis. He's using loner ones that apparently don't fit him very well. Whoa, look at him. He's a natural.  Good job, Jim. Good job, Jim. Very good job. He made it down safely. Now where's Turg? Oh, here he goes on the snowboard. They are just the definition of cool. Default, where are you? Not as confident looking. I'm gonna be honest with you. I'm just skipping the ramps entirely going down the safe route. Good job, everyone. That was fun. Not as fun as the fire, but still fun. Let's go visit the neighbors if there's anyone there. Oh, it's a bath house. Skinny dip in hot springs. Ignore that there are children about. Turg's the only one who committed. Come on, gang. Now, why did it immediately change color? When you got in naked? And then he changed to his clothes because a kid came out. Not even into swimwear, just full clothes. I think that's just as scaring, seeing that thing fully clothed, staring out at you from the springs. And when she approaches in that music place, oh my God, he's just consuming them. Turg is telling everyone to get out so he can clean it. All right, guys, you've been in for almost 40 seconds. It's time for a cleaning. He's still telling him to get out, but Jim is just not listening. He's refusing to get out. Okay, he's just going skinny dipping now. After all that, Jim must be like, why did you tell them all to leave just so you can get in naked and be with me alone? And now Jim is leaving. Okay, now they're all skinny dipping. Great, except for this dude. He must feel really awkward right now. He's enjoying being naked in there. They all need to use the bathroom. This isn't good. Wait, age up. Jim, think about this. Is this really what he wanna age up? Naked in the snow? Oh my God, his back hurts. No, I don't like this at all. He doesn't have his youthful figure. We're gonna have to age him down somehow. He aged up into an elder and now he's just wandering around the building naked. They're gonna lock him up somewhere. Let's go be naked somewhere else. Come on, let's go. There's a bar. Let's go visit there. He looks sad. He didn't want to grow old. Don't worry, Jim. Age is just a number. That's right. Show him your moves. See, you still got youth and energy. No, don't get sleepy. What are you eating and where did you find this? He bought a cupcake from a vending machine. That is the saddest birthday I've ever seen. Do what a normal adult does. Get absolutely hammered. How hard are drinks? A pros and pop. $306 and I'm buying one for everyone. All right, everyone, enjoy your drink. Happy birthday to me. Why is no one sitting next to me? Okay, thank you. Okay, it looks like everyone's having a good time now at least. Why is Turg eyeing me like that? He keeps turning around and looking at me from other sides. He's just confused. He's like, how is Jim there? But also there. But he's easily entertained, isn't he? Oh, rock climbing. Let's go, everyone. Sounds dangerous. He just pissed himself before he gets climbing. You know what? It's in the snow. No one will notice. Yellow snow is a natural phenomenon. No, dude, stop cheating. Just use the feckin' wall. There we go. Look at him go. That was fast, actually. And in those clothes, that is impressive. Imagine how good you could do it naked. Try again. Oh, he won't do it naked. Jesus, might be better off not to do it naked. That would have been a nasty scrape. Oh, default fell off. Oh, but there's a festival on Saturday. What day is it? It's Friday. In the meantime, I think you can do a hike or something. You can't plan a social event if you were not greeted. What does that even mean? She's not greeted either. Maybe if we just go home to the lodge. All right, you can do it from home for some reason. It's the point of having a mobile phone if it's not mobile. So why are there like, yugs? Come here, let's go. Who are you talking to? Who is planning this mountain climb excursion? There you go. We climbed one little tiny wall and now we're like, I bet we could climb that mountain. Excursion leader is me. Excursion team member, Perg, and default. And who else will we invite? Will we invite the other firemen? Or you know what? Let's invite Gideon. We don't really mind if he dies either, but the town needs a fireman. All right, we're here, everyone. Gideon, lead the way. All right, gather excursion members near the trailman marker at the top of the climbing roof. Where's that? Why am I the leader? Check excursion members climbing readiness. No, no, that's fine. So where is this near the trailman marker? What? Where? Reach silver medal to unlock passage to the next excursion. Okay, so we need to, this comes in in a swimsuit. We need to climb up a rock wall to get a medal. Let's do that. Perfect, done. Gideon's gone. Oh, I think he's ready. Wait, how did Gideon climb up there? He just arrived and he just scales it without us even noticing. Hey, Jim, can I join the tunnel snakes? Sure, I don't even know who you are. Okay, we're all here. Some of us may have cheated. Wait, what? Why do you sound like that, Gideon? He looks like he's retiring to Florida, but he sounds like he's seven, but he's somewhere in the middle. He's like 17. Have a sim rest for at least an hour. It's not much, but it's honest work, folks. I'll take care of that. I'll be in the tent if you need me. Gideon, you take care of the climbing. Wait, where's, okay. default's just going home. She's changed her mind. I think Gideon is dead or something. I don't know where he is. Oh, he's over here. He's staring into the abyss wondering why he exists. Oh, default's falling asleep in the snow now as well. He's just crying. We've left him out here in the dark.  Be asked advice by Gideon. No, no time. Okay, Gideon is finally coming. We're all already up on the top here. We may have cheated to get here. Gideon, you're gonna have to climb in the night up this really dangerous rock wall. I don't think he's even gonna make it to the wall. He's struggling. Come on, Gideon with it, he's actually attempting it. God bless him. He's falling and he's only like 10% of the way done. Come on, Gideon, you can do it. Hurry, hurry. We don't have much time. We're gonna get kicked off the mountain. He's just like, I just wanna go to school and have a normal childhood. I'm 15 and I'm starting to go bald already, please. Okay, he made it. But who am I? What? I'm not sure what I wanna be when I grew up and all my friends seem to have figured it out. No worries, you got time. I don't think you do. We made it. We didn't do the rest for an hour, but we still made it. Gideon looks like he's about to collapse. What's wrong with him? Move on up the mountain. This is gonna end in death. Did we make it? Is this the peak? Oh no, this is the peak. Good God. Well, I'm just gonna fly up there if that's cool. Gideon, are you actually gonna do it? You mad lad. The turg is as well, they're all doing it. I thought your skills weren't high enough, but look at them go. Someone, please don't die. I mean, if you have to die, let it be Gideon, but I don't want anyone to die to be honest. Good job, everyone.  Oh, turg, be careful.  What you're doing it. Gideon's just showing off now. He's just doing core as soon as he gets up there. Someone has to eat something, by the way. I found this food and turg's inventory. Gideon, can you eat that please? I'll garnish it for you.  All right, let's just move on. The peak must be ahead. The group made it to the peak. Everyone is elated. Is this the peak?  Jim felt like the climb could have gone slightly better, although nothing could get better than the view up here. I mean, you can't see anything, but sure. I have them all shoving snow in Gideon's face. Poor Gideon, he did all the work. He's being tormented. Default is just standing up here, looking into the abyss. This is all it is. This is why we climbed up here. I'm neutral on this. All right, well now that we've reached the peak, I think here's a good time to end it. What an adventure. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed. I appreciate you watching as always, folks. If you like my stuff, I post every day, so you can subscribe and check out more of my other stuff if you like. But yeah, I appreciate you watching. Hope to see you next time. Bye for now.


Why don't you change, Mr. President? Speak of peace in Central America. Why are you asking for $270 million for the conference? What would you like the church to do to help for peace in the region? What can the church do? Not to play. Not to play. But you like the weather. And then, for the world peace, I'm convinced that it's necessary to respect also the secret of each lesson. Oh, cool. Mr. President, how do you square asking for more than $170 million to play out in the United Arab Emirates? I think you can't let them stop. Yes, sir. I don't like things here. You're too many. It is wholeness who can lose on the progress that has been made toward the establishment of a genuine peace in Central America. I assured His Holiness that the United States is committed to the extension of democracy throughout Latin America. The Pope committed to the establishment of an enduring world peace and to the extension or expansion of human freedom around the globe. Indeed, without freedom, there can be no peace. In the hard work, honesty, thrift initiative and daring. Generous aid from the wealthier nations to the poorer is certainly of great importance. But in the long term, it's even more important to share the conditions, the moral causes of prosperity. Mr. President, I'm grateful for the great courtesy that you extend to me by coming personally, express my own deep respect for the constitutional structure of this democracy, which you are called to preserve, protect and defend. In addressing you, Mr. President, I willingly pay honor to the United States for what she has accomplished for her own people, for all those whom she has embraced in a cultural creativity and welcomed into an indivisible national unity according to her own motto, a pluribus to center. For all of you, this is a special hour in your history. The celebration of the bicentennial of you is a time to recall the original American political faith with its appeal to the sovereignty of God. To celebrate the origin of the United States is to stand. At every turn, he said, your bicentennial speaks to you of moral principles, religious convictions, in early naval rights given by the creator. And he added, we earnestly call that this call gives a great blessing of God. From the beginning of America, freedom was directed to forming a well-ordered society and to promoting its peaceful life. Freedom was... This is the freedom that America is called to live and guard and to transmit. This call to exercise is satisfied. It's the freedom to do what we ought as human beings created by God according to his plan. It is the freedom to live the truth of what we are and what we as brothers and sisters in a common humanity. That is why Jesus Christ linked truth and freedom together, stating solemnly, you will know the truth and the effort to guard and perfect the gift of freedom. Must also include the relentless pursuit of truth. Speaking to America, Fred can be the big overnight. This, when he told the Christians, never to use their freedom. To use it with what I said to the President of the United States in 1979, I would now repeat attachment to human values and to ethical concerns which have been a hallmark of the American people must be situated especially in the present context of the growing interdependence of people, present-day relationships between peoples and between nations demand the establishment of greater international cooperation also in the economic field. The more powerful nation is, the greater becomes its international responsibility for a more just relationship between all the nations of the world in respect for their dignity and their own personality. A link to service, freedom is in detail. The freedom to be America, the freedom to be America, constitutional democracy. Pope John Paul II is now taking hands with the President and his shutter is exploding around it and they make their way back towards the mansion to summarize the people address and that of President Reagan to begin with. The President sort of outlined what they had talked about inside by this media...