Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland PBS with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. For information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals online at NiswaTax.com. Hello again everyone and welcome to Lakeland Currents. We're glad you could join us this evening. Tonight we're going to be talking a little about bond issues and specifically tonight we're talking about the Staples-Motley bond issue that will be coming up this May. And my guest this evening is Ron Bratley who is the interim superintendent at the Staples-Motley Schools.  Well I'm an interim so you know my investment is just to get her done and move on. Well tell us a little bit about your background Ron because I know you've been a superintendent in other school districts and what is your background? Well I started my educational career in Flint Michigan as a math teacher. I was in Flint for five years and it was during the riots and I was a small town farm boy from Detroit lakes so that didn't set very well. My wife was lucky enough to meet me there and so we moved back to Minnesota and been a superintendent in Minnesota for 53 years including this year so I'm pretty seasoned about that. I retired in 2007 from Elk River School District as an assistant superintendent and my main job there was building schools. Really? I built about 250 million dollars worth of new schools and renovations so that was the best job I ever had. And how is it that you became the interim superintendent at Staples-Motley? Well this is the uh actually this is the fifth interim I've done since I retired in 2007 and I got a call from a friend of yours Bruce Lund and asked me if I was interested and and I just evolved from there and uh basically I said oh two years is is it my wife I can't afford a divorce so I think I better retire for real. I can remember reading in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the early 90s about how difficult it is going to become to find quality superintendents, quality college presidents quality principals in the high school and the elementary schools and that's really come to fruition hasn't it it's getting to be very very difficult to find people that want to do these jobs they're not easy jobs being a superintendent as you know I've never been a superintendent but it's a very very challenging job and and it's it's it's a shame we're not getting more young talented people and want to do these kinds of jobs so you often fill in because some of these districts do have a challenge finding replacements don't you correct yes and um this will be your last term with Staples in I promise my wife this would be my last year as a superintendent and that I will retire for real the last time you're taking out a job yes well I know in Staples and Motley I think they merge those two school communities together I believe in the early 90s correct and at the time I was the college vice president here working on both campuses in Brainerd and Staples so I remember some of that period but I wasn't actually involved with it very much but I do remember an opportunity that we missed and that was and I don't remember I know you would know what the the legislation was but there was legislation out there that allowed communities that want to pair the opportunity to build new schools and I don't remember the details but Staples and Motley I think maybe more on the Staples side turned down that opportunity to build a brand new school which has led up to some of the challenges that you have now hasn't it yes and you said that's kind of a you're you're going to approach this kind of a from a two prong approach one is called uh you're going to be talking about your athletics academics and what was the third one activities activities yeah so tell us a little bit about that campaign because it is kind of a PR campaign in a sense but a lot of times schools don't do a good enough job telling about the good things that they do that's exactly right and that's uh that's an initiative that we started last year is to tell our story tell about the good things the things that the students are achieving you're telling about you know for example the FFA uh has got state and national officers from Staples Motley that's that's quite an achievement and we have a lot of other success stories that we need to tell and in education we don't brag very much we kind of keep those things hidden some to some degree so that's one uh part of the build 2170 is to kind of tell our story and that's the I call that the 18 the 18 yeah and then do you have people just to make a comparison in 2017 brainered past three referenda which is incredible I think in this day and age yes but they also had probably a different funding mechanism maybe a different um level of money that's going to be committed from local people that that you might be dealing with but to have three referendums pass in one year like brainer did is just an amazing thing and you said before we went on air that there's quite a few districts looking at floating some bonding issues this this coming year well actually uh if you we look around the neighboring districts of staples motley every district around us has either built or is in the process of building pillager verndale uh wadena uh and and brainer they and piqua too I know piqua great so there's been you know buildings are getting old and education is changing and and so we need to kind of get up to date so to speak so currently what are you dealing with for buildings now how are you structured so that you're you're struggling with the cost for sure operating costs we have three buildings we have two buildings and staples and one building in motley we're currently studying the process of going from three buildings to two next year because of the costs involved just making that adjustment we'll save over a hundred thousand dollars just in transportation and then we also we will appreciate up to four hundred thousand of other efficiencies but it's not only efficiencies but it'll be providing better more efficient expand our courses for instance music just by making that adjustment we will pick up between five and six hours of additional music classes and and activities that we don't have now because we our teachers won't have to travel and that uses up time so so you're looking you'll be looking to to actually have a referendum in may of 2019 is that correct so this coming may right and that's do you have groups that are going out and working with people and explaining how this is operating and what you're trying to do well right now we're at this stage we're we're doing some surveying and we're doing we're establishing a steering committee but after the first of the year yes we'll be developing you know there'll be a vote yes committee at some point I would guess there's already been some interest in that and in and kind of coordinating that so we certainly will welcome that opportunity but it'll be it's a process going through until May and so we're doing a lot of our homework now and we'll continue to do that so you said regardless of whether the bond would pass or not in this coming May you still have a plan to go down to two buildings right and what is that plan what are the two buildings you're looking at well it'd be the staples elementary and the staples high school that will be our property and and we will have a k3 and a 412 or a 512 and a k4 program we haven't quite got all those logistic logistics put together yet and then the motley building I am working with the city of motley as far as if they can use the building for other purposes repurposing the building if you will and their city offices are limited and they have some other needs but we're also going to if in case motley takes the city of motley takes that building on we need to rent some space for early childhood for the head start and some of those other programs and so we're going to develop a partnership between us and so that building would still have kids in it during different most likely yep and some interest there's a lot of interest in daycare and you know there's a shortage of daycare right now we're also looking at some other opportunities that will help the the city of staples because they don't have a senior citizen center in motley in motley I'm sorry in motley and so there's some there's some real advantages for the city of motley to take advantage of no some opportunities you will have probably some of the same challenges that brain or did and that and well maybe almost more pillager than brain or did in that pillager's last bond referendum did not pass and there's a pretty good contingency of people live on the lakes who do not have kids or maybe even grandkids so getting those folks to buy in is a you've got shaman on lake alexander south of motley so you've got some of the same issues to to meet those challenges and and with your experience I can't imagine there's probably hasn't anything that you haven't seen when you're trying to deal with this and so you're really trying to encourage people to make an investment in the future of their communities as well whether they have kids or not right and when you're looking at this new plan what is it basically trying to do are you going to add on to the buildings in town in staples or what is it that you're looking to do well the plan right now which is subject to change as we move down the road but right now we're going to utilize the elementary site staples elementary site as a k-12 site and that's pillager has kind of the same situation and and other districts so we'll be using that site and one of the main reasons for that is all the athletic fields and such are on the on the elementary site and so it just makes sense that we utilize those we've looked at that is a huge expense yes if you have to start developing football baseball track fields that's a very big piece of money we did an extensive study of all three sites you know what is what are the pluses and minuses we even looked at a site in between motley and staples a kind of right in right in the middle we call that mile marker 111 but when you start to develop fields like you just alluded to you know then all at once you're looking at 10 20 million dollars more an expense it's a big deal it just didn't wasn't going to work so if you moved out and then you would add on to the north elementary school which is on the north side of staples for people who don't know what would happen then to the old high school and staples and the auditorium well the auditorium we're again we're looking at that we're working with the city of staples they have a community center that has a pool and some meeting rooms it's it's need of repair significant amount of repair and so we're having conversations of you know should we look at putting a pool onto the high school and how would that work pools as you know are expensive to build but they're also expensive to operate so how in order to justify having a pool at the high school it's got to be part of our program so we're working with the city of staples to see you know how do we do this is it a community pool is it is a competition pool you know all of those questions need to be answered so would you tear any of the old high school down or would that be repurposed too I think the majority of the high school would probably be demolished because we it's old part of it it's 1935 yeah there's no insulation in the walls or anything and 1960 and so on so forth the auditorium that's another situation where we need to work with the city the city has some interest in that utilizing that and maybe bringing in productions and such and if it's not part of the school district then they have a little more flexibility as far as you know how they can utilize it what would happen if the bond issue doesn't pass then would you sort of be stuck with the two buildings that you're looking at moving into in 2020 I guess it would be or 2019 well it's going to pass so we don't have to look at that well you know then we have to regroup we have to regroup and see you know what is it was it too much money did we not do a good job of selling it to what are the options and and quite honestly the three principles myself are having discussions about that because that certainly is something that we need to be prepared for now maybe you're not prepared to talk about that today but when you're looking at the average household have you determined what it will cost the average household yet well right now we're using the number of 60 million dollars for the project for the overall project that's you know that's an estimate at this point in time but basically on a hundred thousand dollar home that would be about 32 dollars a month and now there's going to be some changes we had a new hospital as you're well aware of and that's going to boost up the property values the taxable value in the school district and that will have a positive effect on the taxpayers but i i don't have those numbers yet so i'm using numbers from 2016 and that's kind of dangerous but you know those are things we have to look at but in april before the bond you'll be putting out a lot of information i should know that in the next two weeks sure you know really pinpoint it and are you have you got much data on marketing data on what the population growth might be in the staples motley communities do you see that as staying flat or do you see it growing slightly or you know it's pretty stable right now i know that i've been working with the hospital people and they really are in need of housing in staples motley they're trying to attract new doctors and and medical personnel and you know when people are coming into a community they look at the school and they look at housing and we don't really have any housing available so i know there's an effort in staples to to start looking at getting some housing that or at least available land for for people to move in so that's going to affect the future right now it's pretty much stable of course the the community is as a whole is is getting older and so are we have a slight decline in student enrollment so over the next i've done some projections and over the next 10 years we could lose somewhere between 30 and 50 students total but if housing comes in change a whole thing can change it could go the other direction absolutely easily yeah in the hospital for people who don't know staples motley area the hospital is a very large employer a lot of those people though live in baxter or wadena and it's interesting because you come to essential health and brainerd and a lot of those people come from staples so we're changing up and down the highway 10 to 10 corridor and there's a lot of a lot of people transferring around but uh what what are some of the things that you've got planned in the new building are you looking at new gymnasiums and do you have a new do you have a theater con concept at all there or what's basically your basic plan looking like at this stage at this stage we're looking at six gyms in that in that building and we're also trying to have a floor plan that will facilitate people coming in senior citizens and and so on during the day at the same time and other activities are going on so we really want it to be a community-centered building not that it's a community center right but that there are our activities available for and especially if we have the pool you know that's another factor so we're trying to plan that we that we can separate the building but yet utilize the whole building because that you you want to use a 12 15 hours a day not just four or five just for school days yeah so would you be building to the south of the elementary school then is that the direction uh actually we would be looking to the north and to the west to the north and so it'd be almost kind of like a box okay and and a little bit uh well not to the south it'd be to the west and to the north primarily yeah and and if when the referendum passes yes what is your timeline for actually starting to have things happen well um if the bond passes in 19 we will go out for bids uh in january of 20 and so we will then the bids would come in uh you know like april march april and if we're organized enough it's like to start doing some renovations and construction in 20 but realistically the building would probably not open until 22 i i see it that we would be phasing it in different parts of the building as we go but fully operational in 22 so using some of the old buildings in the process of yes that transition we'll use the buildings as a transition now you say six gymnasiums is that six new gymnasium yes and not counting the one that's at the elementary school now right yeah because there's that's not a very big gymnasium that's not no no and that's not going to be a gym they'll be repurposed right you know for the program and who are the architects that you're working with on this project we're working with wsn oh yeah yeah okay and are you giving any consideration to energy conservation and energy alternatives well when i was at elk river i got real involved in green schools and uh and we we built several lead certified buildings there um so we're going to use i don't know that this is going to be a lead building but we're going to bill it according to lead requirements so that it will be as in energy efficient as possible we're going to have in good indoor air quality a lot of natural daylight is what we're planning and and just making it a real sound educational building for good learning now being that we're in january or now uh what is the plan is a plan to have a new superintendent on board then july one of 2019 is that kind of yes the plan so you would step out of the picture then and yes this new person would take over that in that role so you would have all of the rule up your sleeve work done and if it passes this person can come in and well there's been some discussions uh since a big based on my background and construction that i might stay on for just that component on a part-time basis because you have the experience yeah yeah and so um we'll see how that goes but uh you know it'll be pretty nice for a person to come in and see the building and help actually uh you know design the building in the final stages no i i know your board is made up of staples people and i think just probably one motley person right now do you have any sense for how the motley community feels about this do you have any feel for that at all you know uh maybe the negative people aren't talking to me but uh i'm getting a real positive feel from throughout the district i mean there's advantages you know there's a lot of people live in motley that uh have complained that i have got kids in three different buildings in two different towns it sure would be nice if i was one stop athletics into that and they got a bus back and forth yeah i know that's a real headache for parents and and no community wants to lose their school right and that's why we're looking at repurposing it and and making a situation for the city that will be helpful for everyone so the planning you're doing really is involving both the cities heavily is yes and the hospital yes because the hospital also serves motley and the whole area there and there's some and then we have source well that's located right there too that are looking for employment sure always looking for source well as uh the old region concept where they were providing expertise to school districts but they also do um competitive bidding purchasing for nonprofits and i think nationwide over a billion dollars yes in a year is amazing business there so that's an amazing resource and a good place for they pay pay well too don't they yes that's good so they're involved with your planning a little bit too yeah we're trying to involve everybody in the you know the business community and and the uh residents it's their school would would this involve uh much for new streets would you would you have to do a fair amount of work to redesign the streets around that area well one of the things we're you know schools are always looking at safety and security and so we will we're our plan right now is that we'll be closing off some streets so that we'll be reconfiguring you know where buses come in and where parents come in to make it as safe as possible and also with athletic fields or now we have streets that will probably block off we've been in discussion with the city on how we could do you know have make this happen i've talked with lane larson i know you know lane well too and i know they're putting a great deal of time into building safety because unfortunately that's a big part of our school business now is having our kids be safe so that gives if you get this bond referendum through that gives you an opportunity to sort of start from scratch and build this as safely as possible which is a very positive thing too so didn't and law enforcement is one of our partners we're including them in the design too because it's important you bet now did you say there was would be a theater involved i didn't remember if you said you know that's again we're not sure depends on what happens the right place we're measuring we're measuring the sentiment of as far as the keeping the old one or it's not that old and utilizing that or having a performance center in the high school we prefer to have the performance center in the high school because obviously you don't have to transport students and have them running around they can and then have like a 600 or 700 seat theater so yeah there's a lot of a lot of questions to be answered yet and it's exciting i think one of the nice things for you too is you don't have to displace homeowners right your area is all pretty open that's been a little bit of a challenge i know here in brandard there's been a number of homeowners that are having to relocate and it's created some hard feelings in places but you've got all that property pretty much under control already don't you yes in that area and so that's really nice that was one real strong point to having it at the elementary site that we didn't have to disturb any you know property owners at all so do you see a new facility changing how you approach the curriculum oh yes how do you see that change well you know you know we're going to build flexibility into this building so that when we build it in 22 we got to keep in mind that in 25 or 30 it may be a whole different way that we approach education so flexibility is going to be built in uh to the building uh as much as we can just so that we're prepared for down the road uh you know i've already met with the teachers and asked them what do you want to see what do you need what do you see five ten years from now we're also going to have an emphasis on cte career and technical education oh that's great we're partnering with clc the college uh to say you know should we be partnering on some of this you've got a lot of nice equipment up in your facility we don't want to duplicate that so can we have established some type of partnership and it's right down the road it's not very far so i think we're thinking smarter not harder and trying to involve everybody and and get the best a possible learning situation is possible so if people want to find out more without necessarily having to call you or to call someone from the school district do you have a website that they can go to and find out information about this or what what is that well it's our it's our school website and under the school website we have bill 2170 which has got the a team that we talked about and then it's also got the construction or the b team the bricks and mortar so that's where there'll be information as far as tax impact as far as what we're doing what what's it look like you know where are we on this process so there's where people can get their information and what what is that website called it's uh just ISD 2170 dot k12 dot mn dot okay so that's the root of the place to get almost anything answered that you would need and then we're also going on social media too we're going to utilize social media uh to get out the word facebook and facebook and twitter and all of those type of things so well i wish you the best i know i'm being that i live in staples we have some really really old buildings there will be a great addition to the whole area if that could happen so good luck on that okay thanks for jumping on the show with us we really appreciate it thank you thank you very much ron you've been watching lakeland currents where we're talking about what you're talking about i'm ray gildow so long until next time


Thank you. Thank you for having me here. I'm quite excited being invited into such an exciting conference indeed and I well there was a lot of input already. I hope I can add someone as something to that. So what's the subject today? It's the question of the relevance of central bank digital currency in the context of Bitcoin and I start with a headline of the third of January 2009 from the times Chancellor on Brink of second bailout for banks. I don't know if some of you know this headline because it's encrypted in the first block of the Bitcoin blockchain and was written by Satoshi Nakamoto into into this Genesis block which was obviously a big signal to the people that he did not choose very accidentally but he chooses it as a kind of attack on the current banking system which was already under attack indeed in this during this time. So attack on the banking system as well as on as implication on the central bank money. Now many central banks have reacted in a way to the emergence of Bitcoin and of cryptocurrencies. They did a lot of research and are doing still a lot of research in crypto in and not really in cryptocurrencies but in central bank digital currency which is indeed a different thing. They are actively exploring into it. This list is not complete there. You can add quite another dozens to it and it shows okay there is something happening over there and people are at the central banks are aware that something is happening with a payment system and also with the monetary system. Now before going deeper into the question why central banks are bothered, concerned about the central bank digital currency and what is the motivation behind thinking harder about central bank digital currency let's go more into detail what forms of money actually exist and a good approach to do that is to go into the so-called money flower which has been well invented in a way by authors of the Bank of International Settlement and it's a quite good way to to localize where cash is located where central bank digital currency is located where Bitcoin is also located so let's start and explaining this this money flower for example if you take this ellipse of the green one the green one includes all kind of money which has been issued by the central bank all money which is not issued by the central bank is outside this green ellipse the same is true for the blue ellipse all kind of money which takes a digital form is included in this ellipse all kind of money which is not digital so it's physical not digital is outside this ellipse and the same is true for the characteristic of being widely accessible all included in the in the red one if it's not widely accessible it's outside or token-based inside outside is account-based so if you take these four characteristics for money then you get to four kinds of central bank digital currencies the most well known in banking banking is this kind of central bank digital currency which already exists it's not widely accessible only but it's digital it's central bank issued obviously and it's not token-based so it's account-based that's the well actually it's a central bank accounts which banks hold at the central bank this central bank digital currency already exists what it does not exist is central bank account for general purpose so widely accessible this is this one this does not exist already but it can exist it can be built up and so central bank accounts with general purpose are widely accessible they are digital and there are central bank issued okay where is cash cash is here cash is token-based it's not digital but it's central bank issued so cash is indeed central bank money where our bank deposits they are outside the central bank issued money because banks are generating this money not the central bank and it's digital in form and widely accessible and whereas Bitcoin Bitcoin is digital is widely accessible is token based but obviously is not central bank issued so it's outside the central bank system okay so let's go back into the question to the question why are central banks thinking about digital forms of central bank money now the Bank of International settlement they thought also hard about it and they thought okay let's ask the central banks they asked indeed 33 central banks and what it's quite interesting that between advanced economies and emerging market economies the priorities are quite different so if you look at it emerging market economies they are quite concerned about payment efficiency and financial inclusion given the fact that for example in many countries around only 40% of people have access to a banking account 60% have not while financial inclusion is not a big issue in advanced economies it's the lowest of priority when they're think about a central bank digital currency okay there are other motives I will not go deeper into it but there is one thing which concerns quite a lot of central banks which is the dwindling use of cash Sweden is one big example where in the year 2018 only 13 out of 100 people have made their latest payments with cash the other payments were all done electronically and this trend which is going downward quite significantly in Sweden but if you look at the global development in China Japan Australia Singapore it's a slightly other measure but the trend is also there that the use of cash in relative terms is going down so what could we expect well Sweden is really thinking hard that maybe there comes a day when the whole society is cashless so where no cash does exist anymore and you may say okay it's fine so we have a cashless society it's very modern very very efficient why bother what be being concerned about it well the point is that if you rely fully on non cash so on on electronic payment then you rely fully on the banking system because cash is the only way you can hold to central bank money and this means in terms of payments and in terms of storing your money if you don't cannot hold cash anymore because society is cashless then you rely in terms of payment and in terms of storage fully on the central bank on the banking sector because every payment is going through the bank the central bank banking system now this is fine as long as the banking system works nobody would complain about it however we know from 2015 from Greece we know from 2012 in Cyprus we know from 2001 in Argentina well Indonesia Turkey Ukraine and you name it there are plenty of examples where the banking system went down the payment system was disrupted and the whole economy was hit quite hard so a way to to avoid this or to make the the system more resilient would be to well add a new payment system in a way where every citizen gets a central bank account so in today's word it's looking like this so if you have a account holder a he has a banking account at a at bank a let's say and if you want to make a transfer to bank account holder B then he must go through the banking system and through the central bank system what you can do to shorten it and to well circumvent the banking sector to you can do it like this so account holder a has a central bank account at the central bank and the counter B has also a central bank account at the central bank and so you don't need the banking sector in this respect which could be good in the case that a banking crisis hit the economy so it doesn't mean that necessarily the banking system does not play any must not play any role in the bank in a payment system but it means that if there is a banking crisis the whole system would be more resilient because you have still redundant double payment system and could rely on it so that the heart of the economy which is the payment system in a way is not destroyed fully now this is one way to think about central bank digital currency to think about it in terms of okay everybody holds a central bank account this would be the equivalent of central bank digital currency and Sweden for example is thinking in this way about this entertainment even though they say well we are not at the state where we will really introduce it now the other question is if a blockchain approach makes sense for central banks to when when they think about central bank digital currency does it make sense to go away from a central bank account or to to structure the central bank account in a blockchain way now let me skip this there are a few trade-offs in the blockchain system which I will go into it so if you think about the left hand which is the most radical solution which is obviously Bitcoin a public decentralized blockchain this is obviously not an alternative for the central bank because it would be contradicting Bitcoin is outside the central bank system so it doesn't make sense to think about it as a central bank issued money however they are if you go to the right many possibilities of structuring the blockchain first it should be permissioned if you want as a central bank manage this blockchain and it could be partly or fully centralized well the big advantage of a centralized blockchain where you have a big big server and or a cloud if you would like so is that in terms of speed and storage capacity you get the maximum so Amazon web service they have a big big server or various big service but but they have the capacity to to offer really high speed and high storage now if you go way back and decentralized the thing and have let's say 1,000 or 10,000 nodes which are actually acting in this blockchain then it would be much more difficult to get the speed and and the storage capacity well the trade-off between speed and storage capacity is the immutability of data if you have all concentrated in all in one blockchain in one central cloud then obviously it's more vulnerable to manipulation or a distraction of data so on the however on the other side on the other side if you have a more decentralized system then obviously the data are more secure because you have so many copies of the data of the transaction that you made on the payment system so if one copy or one blockchain is destroyed you have all the others that still do work now and that's one thing that a few central banks from the Caribbean states have thought about but okay we have a payment system which runs in our island system let's say and these islands are quite vulnerable towards weather conditions so if a hurricane hits one island then the payment system could run out of control or could run down could come down and there would be a disruption how could we encounter it well we could encounter it with a blockchain system where there are various copies and if one system goes down then the other systems still run so for such an event it could make sense to think about a blockchain based central bank digital currency otherwise I would say there is quite a consensus amongst most people who are doing research in central banks that the blockchain system has not yet very strong advantages in comparison to the system that we have today so in kind in terms of speed in terms of storage capacity it's not a system that runs much better or even it does not run better than the current system so there are some central banks who did research in terms of having a blockchain a centralized blockchain for example the central bank of South Africa has done so but they did not take the consequence okay we will switch to this one it could make sense because perhaps the payments are more transparent you can go better into history and so on this maybe maybe an issue but there is no convincing argument for it until now and so what I believe and I will skip this so okay I can go into this because I have still a few minutes so the idea of the blockchain system that the Caribbean islands have thought about it is okay if one is destroyed we have all these copies and so we do not have to worry too much about it or if one blockchain is manipulated then it would disappear and would not be considered anymore but the payment system as a whole would still work because we have all these blockchains which each one has the same copies of the transactions now I think it's it's right now time to make the conclusions so I think that Sandelbank digital currency will remain a hot topic for central banks especially for emerging economies I have the feeling that there the interest for it is is much bigger especially with respect to the the argument of financial inclusion payment efficiency is also playing quite a role Bitcoin obviously is not an alternative for the Sandelbank because it's outside the Sandelbank sphere but in terms of of resilience of a blockchain based system it could be an inspiration small countries are I named the one the Caribbean states with vulnerable payment system there it could make sense to think about the blockchain based Sandelbank digital currency however I think that bigger and more advanced countries and they will or stick to the old system so where banks still play a key role especially if the banking sector has a good track record and has not failed in the past in the in the nearer past or they may introduce Sandelbank digital currency system on a retail basis so that every citizen has a Sandelbank digital currency account so with a with a consequence that there would be an additional payment system which would make the economy more resilient against shocks and finally I think it's important to to say that that the introduction of Sandelbank digital currency should happen quite in a cautious way because the design there are plenty of design possibilities and it depends very much on the design how stable the system at the at the end is and so it's quite good to make pilot projects and so on like Sandelbanks are doing at the moment or many are doing at the moment but I think at the same time that they should be have an open mind toward changes which could be disruptive however at the same time they could be welfare increasing so thank you very much for your attention and I'm happy to discuss with you


Welcome to MOOC course on Introduction to Proteogenomics. In the last lecture you were introduced to the effect of mutations on gene expression and how they could alter the signaling pathways. You have also taught about how these mutations can lead to the modifications of phosphocytes and play a role in downstream signaling processes. Today's lecture by Dr. Kerstin Krug is a continuation of the last lecture and he will cover the use of two important tools active DB and MIMP. So, we are going to go quickly through the different steps here I mean here the idea is to get the principle how it works. So, if you do not understand like all the details that is that is not crucial you know to for our hands on session. But I mean this is again very similar to what we have just looked at. So, you have two sets of phosphocytes collection. So, one is ok. So, this is actually how we built the model here. So, one is all positive kind of phosphocytes. So, these are known substrates and then to get like a background data set or like a negative distribution you choose random negative phosphocytes. And then you construct your model and then you use a Bayesian approach to you know to determine whether your phosphocytes that you that you are interested is comes from a negative distribution or from the positive distribution. So, this is you know money was talking about mixture modeling yesterday and this is kind of a related approach here. So, in this case amino acid frequencies are calculated by what they call a position rated matrices again is very similar to what we what we have looked at. But so, it is it is the relative frequency of each amino acid at each position. So, again we have the positions on the x axis and the amino acids on the y axis and they add some some error term here. So, that is basically the only difference. So, from that you can already calculate these sequence windows here. So, in order to yeah in order to calculate the score for yours for a specific phosphocyte they came up with these with this matrix similarity score which is actually a concept it has been introduced for for genomics sequence analysis. So, again like the principle is you want to calculate a score given a phosphosequence how likely it is or how similar is it to my position rate matrix matrix here. So, this is this you have for each kinase and you calculate a score for each phosphocyte how likely or how similar is it to that motif and you know it is it is based on on information content. Again we do not have to to go into too much detail here, but what you do you calculate the phosphocyte the score for your sequence you you subtract the minimum given your matrix and your scalar by by the range. So, in order to build up these these Bayesian models what the software does it calculates exactly this score for all known binding sites this is one distribution this is the blue distribution here and then in order to get a negative distribution it takes randomly sampled phosphocytes from the union polyohm right and then it can it calculates again all of these scores and then you end up having a negative distribution. Then for a given this is what I just said and then for a given peptide let us say now you are looking at your peptide that you measured you get a score which is might maybe here and then using Bayesian theory we can calculate the probability whether this score is more likely to be derived from that distribution or from that distribution that is the entire concept. So, now with this approach we can actually calculate kinase substrate specificity given a phospho peptide how likely it is that it has been calculated by phosphorylated by this particular kinase or maybe by another one. So, now how do we connect that to mutations? So, we basically calculate these specificities for both versions one is the wild type phospho side and then if there is mutation that happened in this sequence window here we calculate the same specificity you know using the mutated sequence right. And these again these are can be known cancer mutations from TCGA or you can upload your own mutations that is both possible. And so, then you basically look for differences in these probabilities. So, one is your wild type was a very likely that you know kinase or kinase B phosphorylated this wild type sequence and now after the mutation how likely is it that still or B can can phosphorylate that. So, this is how MIMP you know calculates the effect of or predicts the effect of mutations on these kinase binding motives. So, this is the entire concept of MIMP and I hope that we will make that work during the hands on. So, this is one example output here that you get from MIMP. So, basically this is the mutation that I fed in. So, it is an arginine at 1555 which has been mutated into a lysine effect in this particular gene here. And here you actually see you know the sequence window. So, this is the wild type sequence window it has this arginine at position minus 3 and after the mutation this arginine has been replaced by a lysine. So, in here in this case we see that the predicted effect is actually a loss of phosphorylation exactly. So, the motive is gone. So, I do not see. So, the wild type sequence has a probability of 0.97 to be phosphorylated by AKD1 which apparently recognizes the arginine at minus 3 after mutation AKD1 is no longer able to phosphorylate it to phosphorylate this side. So, this is how we read these kind of plots here. And then for the same side you have other kinase motives I mean what I probably forgot to mention is these kinase motives are very loose and not very specific. So, many kinases share the same motif or at least parts of the motif right. As you can see here you know the CAMK2A also is able to recognize an arginine. Loss means AKD cannot phosphorylate this phosphocyte anymore. So, that is just an example I mean we will go through more examples to enhance on I hope. So, here you see. So, these are the scores that we have calculated a couple of slides back for the wild type sequence it is 0.6. For the wild type sequence and this is for the mutated sequence almost 0 right and you know this difference kind of determines the probability. Further questions? Before I move on to this is actual data from a patient. So, the question was whether this is real data or like some example data, but this is a TCGA sample that I have used here. Can you use the mic please? So, what you are saying is it is very unlikely that this is a loss because it is too unspecific. I mean the data that goes into this analysis is real data, but I mean you know keep in mind these are all predicted events right. So, we do not know of course yeah. So, I mean using this computational framework which I just you know tried to explain to you we calculate given this data we calculate the probability you know that this might happen given our statistical framework. So, that is not an experimental proof that this phosphorylation site is actually loss right. And also you must you know know that we do not know these kind of sequence motifs for all kinases. So, this model has been trained on 120 kinases or so right for which we actually have very highly curated high quality substrate sites. So, it might very likely be that this phosphorylation you know site after it has been mutated can be recognized by any other kinase that we might not know the motif of right. Again, so this is all computational it is all predicted, but you know it is a way to kind of approach these kind of relationships between mutations and signaling. Sure, but you know I am not the one who is going in the red lab. So, that is your part. Sure. So, I mean what goes in here are phosphorylation sites that I have measured that has been measured like in the lab you know that have been measured in a sample in a patient sample in this case. And also we have genome mixed data it comes from the same patient right mutation somatic mutations in a patient. So, these are the data that goes into this analysis right as I already mentioned. So, you can access MIMP on a web server. So, I encountered a couple of difficulties while trying to run analysis on a web server. So, that is why actually I decided to use the R package ok. Let us move on. So, the second tool I briefly want to talk about in the next 10 minutes or so is it is more like a database it is not really like a tool, but this database also enables you to upload your own mutations and see what you know could possibly be the effect of these mutations on phosphorous signaling events. Again, so these are all predictions right. So, we there is no validation whatsoever. So, active I would be is a very very well developed very complete database proteogenomic database that annotates disease mutations, but also population variants and relates them to two PDMs. So, we have like two major types of omics data which has been integrated here. So, one are like post translation modification sites like more than 380,000 and also like more than 3.5 or 3.6 million Smiths and yeah. So, basically it also predicts network rewiring impact of mutations and also it uses actually the MIMP software we just talked about. So, it basically comes from the same lab. So, there are three types of human genome variation data sets that goes in here. So, one is TCGA, the other are disease mutations that come from the CLEANFAR database and also mutations from the 1000 Genomes Project. So, it again it uses these publicly available data sets, but also enables the user to upload your own mutation parts and again this is something that we are trying to do during hands on. So, in terms of proteomics and interaction data it uses you know data that is available in several different databases like phosphocypylase, phosphVML and the human protein reference database and in terms of PDMs we are not only looking at phosphorylation here we are also looking at acetylation, ubiquitylation and methylation and also pulls in information of you know drug enzyme interactions and also PDM site specific protein interactions. So, these are you know these information are all passed from publicly available databases and now are gathered in one place and it is a very nice very intuitive user interface which enables you you know you know everybody who doesn't have the computational skills to do these kinds of analysis to do those. So, what you do is very similar to what you know what we have learned in the previous part of the talks. So, we look as to the combined genome variation with PDM data and you basically map SMVs and PDMs to your protein sequence and look what are the non-synonymous events in your protein and you calculate motifs or using you know the effect of mutations on the motif around that. But again so here we are not only looking at phosphorylation, but also other modifications. So, it's very interactive this entire web page. There's many different ways how to view your data. So, one is the sequence view where you have you can look at your protein sequence you know along the X axis and then you have like all mutation events or PDM events you know highlighting in this protein sequence. You can actually look at distribution of PDMs along the sequence and it also has a way to build up these interactive network views between proteins kinase and trucks and PDMs and so on and so forth. So, this is something again we are going to explore during the hands-on session. So, there's a web server available which works pretty well and also there's a github page where you can access the tool you can download it, you can fork it, you can modify it and run it locally on your computer. So, to sum up mutations affect signaling networks. I don't think that there's any doubt that this is not going to happen, but that this is not happening. So, there's millions of mutations that have been identified that are associated with cancer, but we still don't know the exact molecular mechanism. So, how so what is the association between phenotype and genotype or genotype and phenotype. So, and I think that the integrative analysis of these mutations in PDM has a great potential to shed light into these kind of relationships. And here I just pointed out two of these tools there's many out and there's also many you know ongoing efforts. So, I know that that Binks Group is also working a very nice tool that uses deep neural networks to look into these kind of relationships. So, I just picked these two because there's they're kind of easy to use and very intuitive to use and the output is very easy to interpret and so on and so forth. This does not mean that these are the best tools right. And here I just put you know a lot of references for all of the papers and tools that I've used here in these in my talk. Today you were introduced to two tools namely MIMP an active driver DB which have been used to export the mutations and their effects on a few cancers. You've also shown how MIMP predicts the gain or loss of a mutation by calculating a probabilistic score at different locations in a given sequence. Active DB is another proteogenomic database that annotates disease mutations and population variants as PTMs. It also provides information about various molecular interactions from publicly available databases. There may be more tools freely available and you are encouraged to try out using them and then you will explore many features which could really help you for much better and deeper understanding. In the next lecture, we will look at pathway enrichment using a few widely used tools and softwares. Thank you.


Hi, this is Matika Parker and I am going to show you how to use conditional formatting in Google Sheets. Starting off, I'm going to show you the different ways to access Google Sheets. One way is if you open up a new tab, you can type in your search bar sheet.new And press enter and that will open up a new Google Sheets for you. Or you can go over to your waffle here for your Google Apps and select Sheets. And then of course after that you press blank and it will start a new sheet for you. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and title this Google Sheet as Food in Spanish. And I'm going to create this little quick check for students. I'm going to select this first cell here and I will drag it out to select more. And I'm going to go up to my format toolbar. I'm going to choose text wrapping and just make sure that that wrap is selected. Also, I am going to stay up here in my format toolbar and I'm going to click merge cells. As you see, whatever I clicked on my cells instead of having 16 cells that I have selected, they all merged into one large one. This is going to be where I'm going to type my directions for this activity. Okay, so after I type my directions and click off of it into another cell, you can see here that my direction box, the text in it is a little small. So you can click back into it and you can of course enlarge it. And you can also change the font. I personally like Ubuntu, so I'm going to click on that. Also, a cool thing is, notice when I clicked off of it earlier, it all is just kind of like pushed down to the bottom.  So like, it looks like that as well. But that's just a personal preference for me. Now I am just going to create these columns. And now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of want these to be blended, or at least larger. So what I can do is I can select this column B right here, and I can completely delete this column. And notice what it did whenever I deleted that column, it didn't get rid of my direction. And it didn't get rid of what I had written for my Spanish and my English terms.  So I'm going to select my A column here. And I'm going to hold down my control key and also select B, since I will only really need these two columns. And now that they're selected, I can go to any of these lines here and pull and resize these columns. And that does that to both columns, so I don't have to worry about, like, clicking and dragging and trying to see if they are actually the same size or not. Also, I guess I didn't think too far ahead of this. I don't really need this column either, so I'm going to go ahead and delete that. And then now I have really what I need. You could go here to select all of these cells in your spreadsheet. And again, if you did that, you could change the size of your rows. You could change the size of your columns, and they all will end up looking like that whenever you do that. You can even change the font to all look the same. So all the things that I did earlier where I did like text wrapping and changing the alignment. Spanish and English don't have enough space here, so I'm going to change those. So now I am going to fill in these words in Spanish. I'm going to center those. So now here comes the formatting. So what I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to click underneath my English column. Let me center these as well. I'm going to click under my English column right next to the word that means onion. And I am going to go to Format and Conditional Formatting. And it's going to open up this little menu for me. And so you want to do B6 to B13. You can do that. I'm going to select all of them. And so let's say if text empty, then let's say you can turn these to be yellow. And so what that does is because these cells are empty, they have been changed to a yellow background. And then you could do done. I'm going to add another rule here. And I'm only going to have B6 selected this time because this is where it gets really important. So I'm going to say Format Rules, Text Contained. And then underneath that it's going to open up a value or formula underneath the text contained far now. I'm going to type the word onion here because that is the word that needs to go here in order for the students to get it correct. And so by default, it will turn this green. And you can change it to whatever green you want, whatever color you want. You could customize the colors down here. I am just going to keep the theme of these kind of like pastel colors going, I guess. And I won't change the screen, but if you would like to, you could. And then I will close down and do done. Then I'm going to add another rule and you do not have to do this. But I always like to because it's easier for the students to be able to see if they need to change anything. So again, B6 is selected. I'm going to underneath Format Cells If. I'm going to open this drop down menu again. And I'm going to do if text does not contain type onion again. And now with my does not contain, I'm going to change that background. I'm going to change that background color.  So now that I've done that, notice that the cell B6 is empty, which means that it needs to be worked on. If I type in the word onion and I click off, then it turns green. If I go back and get rid of it, it automatically goes back to being yellow because it's empty again. But let's say that I think that this means potato. When I click off of it, it turns red. And this is a quick way for students to just kind of check themselves and see if they have their answers correct or incorrect. So that yellow is just letting them know, OK, it's empty. It needs to be worked on. You type in your word. If it's correct, it will turn green. If not, it's going to turn red. And we can do that for all of these other words. So I'm going to show you that again. I'm going to go to B7. So quick B7 format up here in the toolbar. Conditional formatting. Remember that we already selected this whole range from B6 to B13 to remain yellow as long as the cell is empty. So we don't have to do that again. We're going to add another rule. We're going to go underneath the format cells if and we're going to do text contains. We are going to type for this one, potato. And we do want it to go green. I'm going to add another rule. Hit this drop down menu again. If text does not contain potato, we are going to turn this red. So let's say they think that this word means onion. When we click off of it, it turns red. That's the red flag. They know that they need to go back and change it. And you may be wondering if it matters how they type the words like do uppercase and lowercase letters matter. No, they don't. I can type O, capital O, lowercase in, capital I, so in. And it will still turn green. So that is how you do conditional formatting to do quick checks with your students. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to like and subscribe.


RAND becomes stronger than dollar, RAND breaches 12 to the dollar. Johannesburg, the RAND on Wednesday morning breached the R-12 slash dollar barrier for the first time since 2015, reaching R-1194 slash dollar by 11.30 cat. The RAND was relatively stronger throughout Wednesday morning, helped by a weak dollar. The impetus this time came from the overseas markets where the dollar hovered at fresh three-year lows against the basket of currencies. The dollar weakness since the start of the year has caught some off-guard coming in the face of upbeat indicators that backed the case for more interest rate increases. May 1, 2018 RAND becomes stronger than dollar, RAND breaches 12 to the dollar. Mzansi Stories, http colon slash slash www.mzansistories.com slash 2018 slash 01 slash RAND hyphen becomes hyphen stronger hyphen than hyphen dollar hyphen RAND dot html 2 fourths newer post older post global equity markets showed continued upward momentum helping the RAND which has been one of the best performing currencies at least since December. Standard Bank trader Warwick Butler said in an emailed note on Tuesday that the RAND moves since December, when Cyril Ramaphosa was elected as the new leader of the ANC, were overextended. There has been so much priced into the RAND since Ramaphosa's victory that the potential for increasingly swift moves are probably highly unlikely. If anything further strengthening should be more of a grind. At 9.39 AM the RAND was at R12.0259 to the dollar from R12.0333 at R14.8104 to the euro from R14.7987 and at R16.8756 to the pound from R16.8456. The euro was at 1.2315 dollars from 1.2298 dollars.


My online presence and YouTube and social media has changed my life It's insane what Filming yourself Selfie style can do to connect through the worldwide web and touch other people's lives Not just in your area, but all over the world I remember I would FaceTime my fans too to gauge because early on I didn't know who my demographic was this was before Analytics were available. So I would literally be at home. I think I had like about nine or ten thousand followers on Instagram And that's when I started I would say call me Or leave your info below your email number and I will FaceTime you and I would surprise all these people and Beside me, I would really document my analytics. I was trying to see who this Minority demo was as as a plus-size Filipino gay man. The fan response has been amazing Surpassing one million was such a milestone and then two and then three and then Now many partnerships with with brands has changed my life and brand partnerships are so so so important It's integral for a digital beauty influencer because what brands and influencers do is Influencers give brands this tangibility this quality that you cannot buy. It's a persona We personify products, which means it's so special and then brands give us this credibility and this trust this authority To to to be seen and be heard and be trusted most of all because how are you gonna trust someone that doesn't is it backed up by a Brand for brands to even partner us partner with us or even repost us It's such a huge deal from Anastasia to benefit to NARS to to Nix It's crazy and then now having worked at a counter like Mac cosmetics and also in store To now having my full-blown collection and your long partnership with Mac just blows my mind this when we went to a store I see my face in a lightbox It's crazy. So brand partnerships are are really integral to one's career


Happy Sunday everybody. It's Robin with Creativity RV. I hope you're all doing well out there. I am doing great I am boondocking solo in a beautiful place, but a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to camp with some rad nomads of Different ages and different work and relationship statuses and in much different ranks And they were nice enough to let me ask them Four questions about what they wish they knew before they hit the road now I had to cram them into one RV on a couch to get them all in one spot to ask the questions So it looks a little bit like a hostage video, but their answers were so amazing So I'm going to introduce them all now so you can see their rigs and hear about them and then we're gonna get to the questions. I Have the best group of nomads here to tell you what it's really like to be on the road and what they wish they knew before they got started Ashley this is my husband Jared and we travel in a minivan. We've been on the road since September of 2022 and He is a project manager and I'm really a relationship consultant. So my name is Marie I've been on the road almost two years. I travel in a 2019 leisure travel van a Serenity model And I am retired very happily retired nice. Hi, my name is Jackie And this is Moon Pie Mary. I am recently retired. However, I do volunteer work San Francisco based organization woman in clean tech and sustainability. I Have been part-time traveling meaning six to nine months out of the year for two years and Went through an evolution started with a trailer dead in workout. That's another video and Went to car camping camping until I could figure out What I could live with and what I needed and now I have Moon Pie Mary and she is a game changer Hi, my name is Debbie Bruning and I live in a 2000 lazy days classy motor home. I've been on the road This is my third year as a full-timer and I work from the road my business is Debs RV services I'm a certified inspector question number one What were you afraid of before you hit the road that you found out later? You didn't need to be afraid of Ashley so for me I had safety concerns and it just took me making sure that I took the Appropriate measures that made me feel more comfortable and just realizing that I just need to be cautious aware of my Surroundings, but I wasn't gonna let it stop me from the new experiences that I wanted to have Do you feel afraid now? No, no, okay. How about you Marie?  It gets easier. Yeah. Yeah How about you I almost mirror Maria I was actually had a fear of not being able to get help if I needed it And also a fear of not being able to ask for help when I needed it And I have been able to overcome both of those both right, right So are you scared now? I mean nobody wants to break down or have some kind of a problem, but I Am not in the rig that I am in now when I was pulling the trailer if something was constantly breaking down And I never got over that fear and frustration it turned into frustration and then it turned into I'm doing this to simplify my life and all of a sudden it became more and more complicated But I'm in a good spot now, so I do not have that fear anymore. Yeah, it's good So I was actually afraid of the road itself like driving across the country for me It felt like it would it was gonna be such a scary situation Like what was it? What were the roads gonna be like was I gonna end up at on a like Incline where I wasn't gonna need like be able to tow my car and take my rig over some pass that was gonna feel really scary and dangerous But it wasn't scary at all when I actually got out there traveling across the country You're just really going like three or four hours at a time So you just make it to the next stop and after I traveled like several times across the country I realized that there really wasn't anything to be afraid of I'm surprised that none of you said you were afraid to be out you know in nature or You know scared of wild animals scared of Like I always say the guy with the hook hanging off the side of your door Michael Myers Yeah, exactly because I think a lot of people ask women especially aren't you afraid to be out there?  They're out here to enjoy themselves just like I am So you just you get over it. The serial killer really isn't out there in the desert, right? They're in the city statistically you're much more likely to be well Killed by somebody you know People and also in the city so right right right if you're a solo female traveler not in the city your chances are pretty good You'll be fine. Yeah, and I think too is just as we've all do is listen to our instincts and intuition and Yep, that's it. I feel right. Yeah, it doesn't feel right move your spot. Yeah Yeah, so I think for all of you the fear whatever your fear wasn't diminished over time Yeah, it's greatly outweighed by the joy of what we're doing You know that just totally you know, it may be there but the the benefits far outweighed concerns And most of the things that we're afraid of they're bigger in our minds and our thoughts than they are in reality Yeah, they're really not that scary. Yeah, so yeah, okay second question What was more difficult than you imagined it would be before you got on the road Ashley So mine was not having a private bathroom So I really recommend just educating yourself exploring the different toilet and shower options that are there and Finding out what you're the most comfortable with to definitely What did you decide to do? Can I ask what your toilet and shower solutions were? so we're in the mini van and so we just have a Portable toilet that we use our bags and our kitty litter and then for our shower We typically are going to use Planet Fitness. We've done truck stops as well. We actually do have a Portable shower that we can use if we're out on like, you know private land and things like that as well. Yeah, our public land. Yeah Okay, great. How about you Marie? Well, I think what's kind of surprised me was the amount of time that you need To do all the research and figure out where you're going and you know, there's so many apps out there You're looking at all the apps. You're looking at reviews You're trying to see what do I want to see when I'm in that area? It takes a lot of time That was a lot more than I thought it was gonna be difficulties for me Oddly enough it was I think you can relate to this driving east coast west coast from Washington I drove the Cascades and then the Sierra Nevada's down to Tahoe and So I just I never really left the ridges. I Had no idea of the vertical height and Straight down the mountains were oh, yes Versus them my the mountains that I live in. Yes And because of the fires, there's miles and miles and miles and miles of no trees So what once gave you a visible? I think comfort maybe horizon of looking over and seeing something there There's no trees. So you're going thousands of feet down I was white knuckle for miles upon miles and miles. I did not expect that I'm normally not a scaredy cat with stuff like that, but You would glad that didn't happen to me Yeah, I it was so unpleasant. I will never take that route again So how do you plan your routes now? Do you have a solution? So you don't have to do I do I don't go over the mountains Literally go around the mountain literally I'll take three days out of my yeah route And I will go around the mountains because I can yeah, you can also ask other people like I know when I was Traveling out in Colorado. I actually asked Robin about the route that would be best that would take me Where I wouldn't feel like I was on a cliff, you know going around these huge vertical drops and then around these you know Ben's so I found out you can find out from other people or Facebook groups Which route is best and a lot of other travelers will know there's actually YouTube channels that show you routes They're just the driving no words. No nothing so you can say it like truckers do it So drive from here to here. You can see the route. Also. There's a website called the flattest route comm I wish somebody would make an app it would kill if it Somebody has to make it Google Maps where you could put the little person on the road I've done that to see like but mostly it's like is this prettier or this prettier and I draw I'll be Person and I'm like, oh, I'll go this route You know when you've got something big and heavy behind you pushing you or you know You're big and you're going over the edge and it's a drop. That's scary Can I go back in and Before I should have asked Marie, how long does it take you to find a spot and do you feel pretty comfortable finding your your camping locations now? I feel pretty comfortable because I have some really good apps and you know it varies I think a lot of it is You know, it takes like I don't know four hours or so to find like the next spot to camp But then it's like well, what should I do when I'm there? How many days should I spend? Oh, is this worth going looking at? Let me see what they said and that sort of stuff. That's where it gets time-consuming.  Yeah beforehand. Yeah. Yeah, I like to know sometimes I feel really bad because I feel sometimes I spend more time doing my homework than getting out and doing things Planning for the next trip, but I haven't visited the fun You know, I actually have the opposite where it was easier than I thought it wasn't as difficult I had in my mind I had all this anxiety about what if I don't find a parking spot or a boondocking spot, you know What if I'm driving in this situation? Well, I mean it's all the what-ifs were in my head while I was at home But when I got out there, it just seemed so much easier. It just flowed I never really have a problem if I'm driving from one side of the country to the other I I can always stop at a rest stop. There's so many apps that you can look at. There's cracker barrels And then once I get out West it's like BLM land is everywhere I've made friends on the road some people fear that they won't they'll be alone or lonely And I've met so many people on the road that I have friendships and like it seems like almost every state I could always connect with somebody I one time I was driving and I was going into Custer State Park and It was like a hundred degrees and I was freaking out because I had gotten a harvest host at the time And when I landed at the first harvest host, I was so hot that I was like miserable So I just reached out to a Facebook group and this one woman connected with me and said Oh, I have a spot on the side of my house where you can get hookup Come on over and you can stay the night and it was and then now we're friends We're hiking buddies because you're not afraid to ask. I'm not afraid to ask, right You know, I think probably just the most frustrating part is like you have to when you have to dump your tanks and Like you have to get propane and stuff because what happens is you start to get really comfortable when you boondock like I do You get comfortable in a spot And then you're you have to like look for a place where you can go dump and get all the supplies Right, and it's not really that that's difficult. It's just that that is something that you Don't want to have to do necessarily. So it's a little bit Yeah, and you have to conserve water and you're always watching your water and everything that you have so you don't use it up So I guess that that would be my a lot of chores a lot of chores. You're constantly doing stuff Yeah, you're always busy for your spot or Do your choice so you can get to the your next spot the next question is how has been a nomad changed or enhanced their lives Ashley So for me, I feel like I'm starting my life over I'm really learning what my true wants and needs are I'm learning What kind of physical things that I want to have around me what kind of energy from other people? I'm willing to tolerate And I'm learning what drains me what motivates me and I'm going out there And I'm just trying and experiencing things that I never thought I was capable of and it's really showing me what I can do That's inspiring For me like when I are being for me is not camping. It's really traveling. I love to travel. I love to see things changes love Scenery that changes and so it's really I mean I just love every day. I mean in beautiful scenery. I get to meet great people I mean do wonderful things So it's it for me It's a huge enhancement to my life and stuff and you know, you call the shots you do what you want You go where you want when you want. I mean, it's it's incredibly free. Yeah, that's how it's enhanced it for me That's great Jackie. I Have to again mirror Marie because I travel six to nine months out of the year I consider myself a part-timer not a full-timer because I still have a six and bricks But guess a lot It's still a lot to go and I feel like I'm kind of going back to my own roots My mom used to always say that I was born with happy traveling feet And I was the one who would get lost inside of a snowstorm drift Or the creek or something. It was me always. Yeah, so I feel this This is the opportunity now to learn how to chill. I'm learning how to chill. It's taken a while It's taken almost a year to learn how to chill to learn how to go with the flow be happy and Just travel and kind of do what I want when I want within limits within reason and I wouldn't have it any other way Debbie So I know one thing that I feel is that how it enhanced my life is I don't need near the things that I thought I needed I am living so little in comparison to how I used to live and I could probably even go smaller and You kind of learn as you go as you're on the road what you need and what you don't need But I also I have such joy in my life. I feel happy. I feel free all the time and It's just it's amazing to me the whole world we are the country that we have out here that we are looking at and we can You know travel to and there's just so much to see and do so when I get tired of a place or frustrated I just moved to a new location. Yeah, and it's just that easy and I just I don't know I just feel like a lot of joy in this lifestyle. I really love it. It's not that it's easy There's a lot of a lot of things that are not easy and you have to be the type of person that can Be open to change and those little struggles and to be able you're gonna have to tinker with things or find a mechanic If you can't but overall the joy outweighs anything negative. So yeah question number four When you told your friends and family what you were going to be doing how did they react? Ashley I didn't ask for permission I Just did it we were saying this is what we're gonna do and and we'll have you know things in place to where we can stay connected and stay in touch and We have select family members and friends that we send our GPS coordinates to so when we're in different areas They they know where we're at but It was the decision, you know for for us and our happiness and so that was that's great. How was presented?  You think it's not all this sort of so a lot of like, you know You don't know what's out there And then the other half were like didn't believe I was gonna do it and then it was like oh my god Like they thought I was a dreamer for five years right looking at RVs and all this sort of stuff And then when I bought my RV, they're like, oh my god. She did it. What are they thinking now? They're very happy for me. They're following me on Facebook.  They're like, you know a few have definitely said I'm living vicariously through you because and the amount of people that you meet that say oh my god, you're living my dream and It's just it's just been great. So yeah, now everyone's totally psyched about it and stuff. So Jackie I thought my family was going to think it was the most ridiculous thing I've ever done in my life And it was just the opposite. They just looked at me and said went back to the happy traveling fee As a kid. They said what took you so long? Yeah, they said of course why would you we would not expect you to do anything else. That's great. So I Had did not have an issue and I do I'm not I don't have a big social media presence But we do have ways that I share my pictures and travels and they love it and where are you now and Yeah, my brother has you know that you can follow people on Google Maps. Yeah, so he'll be like, are you in the foothills of Yuma? That's a good point always give your location to Follow each other so I'm like You know, it's funny because I think that it for when I first started looking into this life when I was binging the YouTube my mom is actually the one that sent me my first Bob Wells video And she was just sending it to me because she thought it was cute And then all of a sudden I was like hyper focused and that's all I watched was how to have this life And I was I think they thought I was I had fallen off my rocker like really I was you know, what is she doing? What is going on? I was planning it I was like talking about it all the time and then once I really like as the years passed and I really started progressing towards doing it I think that um, they were really on board. My mom was like my biggest fan So my you know, they the friends and family just love it. They they love to watch my travels So I post a lot of stuff on social media and they're always following me and they love it I don't know if that translates translated the way that I meant it. Um, so like for me We just didn't leave room for opinions is what I meant.  Do have they told you? Um, I mean everybody, you know loves it. I mean they they love, you know When they see the different things that we get to do an experience and and and definitely are very supportive I mean, of course you have the ones that are like, are you being safe? Are you aware? You know, because that the other but um, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah This is my favorite question If there's somebody out there that is thinking about doing what you're doing What advice would you give them? Ashley I just think that everyone has different financial means and physical abilities and life skills that Sometimes I feel like it's a little bit challenging to give people advice Because I don't want someone to feel that this is like a cookie cutter kind of lifestyle And if you don't do it a certain way then, you know, you're not going to be happy or successful with it Um, but I also want them to realize, you know, as debbie said things are going to pop up Things are going to happen, you know, and you may have, you know friends and family and even strangers that may question You know why you're doing this there's going to be days you're going to question why you did that If you should keep doing it, you know So I guess really my advice would be it's just to get really clear on what your why is Why are you doing this? What do you want to get from this? Do you want to grow? Do you want to find your peace? Do you want to just have fun and go out and see things? You know, what what is it? Um, and then the other thing I would just add is that you're not homeless.  That's awesome. I love that. Yeah, that's great Marie so I have two two different things one What well what I did is I went and you know, I did a lot of research went to shows I rented I went on five rv trips with different rvs different sizes lengths everything So I could see what I would like, you know, I you know Just the regular class b van was way too small the 28 footer was way too big So it got me to where I wanted to be Um, so I think it's really good because you also want to know is this lifestyle for you I mean you don't want to go out and just buy something and then like have to deal with all this stuff That you didn't know is going to happen So that would be my first recommendation then just another thing To put you a little bit at ease to Debbie's point about you're out on the road and you're thinking Oh, you know, you're you're by yourself and I but you're you're not there are so many clubs you can join I I belong to so many clubs. I go to different rallies and stuff I've met people on the road like we all have I've traveled with these people You know, we hook up in different states and stuff and I you know, you make really strong bonds and everything So it's not a lonely lifestyle. Now if you want it to be alone, you can't you want to be at the top of the mountain by yourself You can't but it's by choice. It's not, you know, so Don't be afraid of that is what I would say. Yeah Uh, I would say that we have all sorts of resources now in tools that we can go to to learn and understand however, I would caution Of not to put yourself into a box that you think you're supposed to be in I started out as with a travel traveler Was a disaster just for me not for everybody just for me because I thought that that's what I needed to do I thought the first thing you did was you bought a trailer and then that's what you did and then I Rather than giving up and getting frustrated. I said step back I tent camped and car camped for two years nine months out of the year Until I could figure out My wants and needs and what was making me happy which has led to the rig that I'm in now and I'm very very happy Be flexible though because in three years, I'm you know, I'm getting a little Rig envy and some of these meetups that we have So if we had this discussion in three years, I might be you know in a 30 footer So be flexible. It's okay to say, you know what this worked three years ago, but it's not working now So it's okay to change it. It's fine to be flexible. Yep.


Good day, film investors. A few days ago I released a video discussing one of the most bullish thesis that I have over the next five years, a decade. I like those kind of investments where the upside is pretty sure there is low risk but high uncertainty. And a lot of the comments on the video and on the article that I made were about how, yes, copper is good, Sven, but not now, we might be a recession ahead, blah, blah, blah, et cetera. And now, in financial times, article came out discussing Dr. Copper, its perspective on the economy on a potential recession. And I find it as a great example to discuss copper as an environment, but also my main investing points where I want to show you how you or how I at least take advantage of what's going on in the market. I'm looking for low risk, high uncertainty. I don't know when will copper boom? Will it be next year or in five years? Nobody knows, but I know that I have low risk, high uncertainty. I don't know when it will happen, but I know that when it happens, I'll make a lot of money. So low risk, high reward, high uncertainty. I wait, I accumulate, I trade a bit or something gets bought out like Neveson was bought out last year. So I make money also in the process. But let me show you my theory. My theory is pretty simple. Where do I get my investing advantage? I like buying when nobody wants to buy, like it is the case now. In five years, they'll be crazy about it. And investments, copper miner prices will be five times higher. The second point is to look at the long term fundamentals. Not that the short term fundamentals, we'll discuss both. Then look at low risk, high uncertainty, high reward investments. And of course, the key is to pick up value when it is there. No matter when it is there. And what does that mean? That means that when I see value over the long term, long term fundamentals that gives me good return over the next five, 10 years, I have to buy it sooner or later. I make a lot of money. So let's see what the financial times has to say. Dr. Copper, two year low at $5,600 per ton, deteriorating global macro sentiment and commodity investors. Correction here, there aren't commodity investors. There are just commodity speculators and those work in very, very short term time frames. So they are very negative and appear to assume the worst. The recent data supports this view, the worst being a recession, lower demand for copper over the next six months a year. And when the environment is in such a situation, everybody is selling because you don't want to be the full holding and seeing others outperform you. So that's something that creates an opportunity for me. Further on the short term, city group estimates copper demand will grow, still grow just 2% in 2019. The price of copper has dropped, but look at the fundamentals a little bit longer term. This year's 2% fall in global mine supply. So copper is a limited asset. You cannot mine it easily. It gets more expensive to mine and there has been a 2% fall in global mine supply. That's a fundamental. But still sluggish, slow demand, lower prices, nobody likes it. But let's look at longer term fundamentals. Many analysts and investors meet to are bullish on copper. If we shift to a low carbon economy, then for example a wind turbine needs 3 tons of copper just to be built, not to mention electric vehicles, motors, inverters, renewables, whatever. So further it's becoming more difficult for miners to find large, high-grade copper projects and there aren't many projects. And we have seen Turquoise Hill, you also have a video I think, how it's difficult to create such a mine without high, high costs. So the conclusion for our from birth time is that to meet government 2040 emission targets, copper needs to be priced at 8000 per ton. So 40% uplift from the current prices. Keep in mind, 240 is just in 10 years and when that happens, perhaps in 2024, copper miners will really, really explode. If we need to be in a Greta scenario, then copper needs to be at 20,000 per ton to produce the required copper for a low CO2 or renewable world. And then on the risk side, what if decarbonization fails, renewables, we have more CO2, then it will be hotter. Europeans and many other countries will need air conditioners, will need more power, thus more copper. And everybody's focusing on the short term, five-day change last week on copper, very negative, 4.64% down copper miners, ETF just to take an example. Over the long term, we see those ups and downs depending on the bullishness of the sector and you can never predict those. You can buy when you have cheap value in relation to long term fundamentals. I don't know whether copper will go down another 10-20% in the next six months a year. I know that the next decline 2040-40% will be nothing in relation to the upside. And I remember it always something that comes up in my mind. 2002 when I was buying stocks, everybody was saying, Sven, don't buy stocks, it are all scams, you will lose money, it's betting, it's gambling, don't do it, don't do it. I made so much money because I was buying in 2002. 2009, I was buying good businesses, dividends, earnings, no matter the crash, 2009-2011, the biggest fear investors had at that point in time was what if it goes lower? What if it goes lower? What if my stock with a dividend yield of 7% goes 25% lower? I'll buy more, I'll reinvest the dividends and I'll make even more money on the upside. So that's my answer to what if it goes lower? It can always go lower, everything can become cheaper. I know that if I time it, if I had tried to time it in 2002, 2011, 2016, 2018, I would have missed on huge gains and opportunities. And really I wanted to take this opportunity to show you what I'm doing, how I'm doing, it's different, it doesn't take care of volatility, everybody's so scared about short-term volatility.  One, two, five, ten years.  If you want to check what I do, my research, my teasers, my minors, please check my stock market research platform. Looking forward to your comments, really I think here we touch on the key psychological behavioral aspects of investing. So I think I'm sure there will be a lot of comments. Thank you and I'll see you in the next video.