If you look at the tight ends in this game, Cook had the second most deep targets behind Andrews. Andrews had 24, Cook had 16, and that was in an offense where they never threw deep. So, Jared Cook, we know, has downfield ability, and... So, Cook had 16 downfield targets? That's what I have. Because Michael Thomas, despite like 9,000 targets this year, had 22 downfield targets. Yeah, that's wild. But, and Jared Cook missed a couple of games too. So, I think that if I had to pick one, I might prefer Jared Cook. He is under contract for 2020. It's kind of a high cap number, so I prefer Cook over Andrews. Because Andrews has banged up all year, and I don't know what his health is at. I think that Jared Cook is my favorite because he got deep targets in an offense that didn't throw deep. Whereas Lamar Jackson did throw deep. And Jared Cook is really freaking good. Not that Mark Andrews isn't, but he's also healthier. So, I think Jared Cook would be my preference at tight end. Austin Hooper is the other NSC tight end. He's fine. Like, he gets some downfield targets. He had 11 this year despite missing time to injury. Again, Jack Doyle at 5. So, if I had to rank the tight ends, I go Cook won Andrews 2 in a tier of their own. They're the top tier for me. Hooper in a tier by himself. Jack Doyle in consideration, but only out of obligation.


Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for coming before we talk from Alex Babich and Adrian Logan. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Alex Babich and this is my partner Adrian Logan, my business partner. And today we're going to be giving you a brief introduction into hydroponic systems in commercial facilities. So before we start, we'll tell you a little bit about ourselves. Our company is called Neurovine. We're based out of New York City. We're a startup been around for about a year and a half. And we're coming out with our first product. It's a automated nutrient dosing data collection machine and has a web application. But don't worry, we're not here to like sell you anything. Just kind of tell you a little bit about ourselves. So one of our last things we went into in terms of like our startup was like a little accelerator called the ICOR from the National Science Foundation. It's where they give engineers and scientists money to go travel around the United States and do customer discovery. And so for us, we went out and visited cannabis farms all over the country. In Washington, Oregon, California, of course, Nevada as well. And so some of these interviews were super insightful for us. So we wanted to share with you a little bit about what we learned and teach you a bit about hydroponics. So to get started about hydroponics, we're going to first start by talking about soil, which most people are familiar with. So first of all, soil provides a medium for the roots to grow into so the plant can stay upright, of course. Then we also, the soil also provides a lot of different nutrients the plant needs. The nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, many other things that helps the plant actually grow to its full size. And finally, soil provides a medium where water can be held so that the plants can drink, especially if there's no rain, because the plants always need a supply of water. So let's contrast that with what hydroponics is. It's really not so different. So first of all, you need some sort of a medium. So there's many different types of mediums. So if you look here on the left, this is something called rock wool, which is kind of like cotton candy that's made out of rock. And on the right, we have cocoa core, so it's made out of coconut husks. And both of these mediums are pretty good for holding water. So if you're not watering all the time, then the plants will be able to survive for a couple of hours. Over here, these are some different types of mediums.  And then we also have clay pebbles on the top. These mediums, they provide structure for the plant, but they don't actually hold very much water. So you're going to need to give these plants a constant supply of water. So just looking at this in a very, very, very basic hydroponic system, you see this is something like clay pebbles. And they're held in what's called a net cup. So you can imagine a net that has holes in it so that the roots can eventually get out of the cup and get into the water so that they can drink. And then the final aspect of hydroponics is the nutrients, right? So because you have these inert substances, you have water, the plants really need nutrients in order to grow. So to get nutrients, you just got to go to some hydroponics store and you'll see all these funky looking bottles. There's sometimes they come in single varieties. Sometimes you have to have like multiple different solutions to feed the plants. Also during different stages of growth, the plants need different nutrients. So for cannabis, like you have the vegetative stage, which is where the plant is growing to its full size, growing all its leaves, and then you have the flowering stage where the plant is actually growing all of its buds. So you can imagine during these different stages of growth, you're going to have different nutritional needs, which is why you'll need different nutrients. So why would anyone use hydroponics over soil? It seems a little bit complicated, but one of the main factors is that you can actually increase your yields by about 25% if you're doing it correctly. Another factor is that you can grow the plants about 30% faster. Again, this is if you're doing things properly, of course. So why is it like this? Well, if you see like on the right side, you have the plant in soil, and you see the roots are trying to find a place to grow into. So that takes a lot of energy for the roots to grow into. So if it didn't have to use that energy, it could use the energy to grow up instead. So if you see on the left, you see this mass of roots because it's just roots that are growing in water. So for them to grow, they don't have to expend so much energy. And so just kind of a rule of thumb is like the larger the roots you have, the larger the plant. So if you allow your roots to get very large, you're going to have a much larger plant. Another thing is that when you're feeding plants in soil, you're actually going to be feeding these microorganisms in the soil, which will in turn feed the roots of the plants. So with hydroponics, you're using these sometimes inorganic nutrient salts, which go directly to the roots of the plants. So you're skipping one stage of the process, which again allows things to move a little bit more quickly. And then finally, for us and a lot of guys that are doing hydroponics, it's really good because you have so much control over everything. You can always, you can change the nutrient levels on the fly. You can change the pH on the fly. So when you have a lot of experience, it can really help you dial in your environment and really get the most out of your plants. So of course, there's still some reasons to use dirt. If you look at the photo on the left, we just have a plant sitting in dirt, and that's pretty basic. You just plant the seeds and the dirt and let it grow. Of course, you need some light. And then of course, on the right side, you have this very complicated hydroponic system. So already have complexity just to get it set up. And in this case, the system needs a pump in order to work, and the water is constantly running through it. So if you have the pump fails or anything like that, there's a good chance that your crops can die. So you're definitely going to have some complexity there. And then another pretty big factor is that soil typically gives a better flavor for the cannabis plants because there's just a full spectrum of nutrients in the soil. Of course, there's a lot of things in there that we know what they are, different types of fungal organisms, lots of nutrients. There's also a lot of things that we don't know what's in the soil. So when we're trying to create hydroponic nutrients, we're only putting certain different nutrient salts in there. So there's going to be some things that are missing. However, people are figuring out how to make them as close to soil as possible. And also, it's not necessarily hydroponics. For hydroponics, you can use organic nutrients, which are made of organic materials, but that also adds some challenges because they can be a little bit messier and can cause more clogging in the different systems. All right, so next we're going to start off kind of explaining a few commercial systems that we've seen in facilities that we've visited. Sorry. Technical difficulty. So this is a drain to waste dripper system. This is one of the most common systems that we've seen in visiting commercial facilities. It's a relatively low complexity system, and we're also able to grow a lot of smaller plants rather than growing kind of a smaller number of large plants. And so if we look kind of at the system here, it's characterized by you'll have some sort of reservoir or source of water that will be distributed to drippers that are connected to the top of rock wool cubes or you could also use different mediums. And the drippers will be put on timers and they will give off a nutrient solution over the set interval and then any excess water will run through the rock wool cube and then run down a leach tray into a drainage system or drainage reservoir. Here's an example of a farm we visited in California in Los Angeles. This is room one of nine. They do them in kind of different batches and then they have a central nutrient mixing and reservoir system in a different room and they'll be pumping those nutrients into the different rooms. Here you can see that they have a large number of plants on, looks like, five trays and these trays actually, they're rolling trays so that you can have one aisle away and then you don't have to waste many hundreds more square feet in a commercial facility and this is a very important factor because it really helps reduce the cost of maintaining the environments. And here you can also see on the top of each of these rock wool cubes there's kind of a green little kind of plastic attachment and that distributes the water from the drippers across the rock wool cube more evenly and then from these leach trays they'll go down into a central collection system and here we actually have another facility. This facility is a little bit different. They're actually a vertical cannabis farm and they're in Colorado and so what's really cool about these systems is they can go between six and I think 12 to 13 levels and the lights are actually in between so that they get side lighting and the plants kind of grow towards the side. Again we see that we have movable racks to save the square footage in the facility and also to help kind of space the lights between the plants. There are drippers that go into each of these blue buckets and then at the bottom of each bucket again they're being drained to a central waste and actually this facility goes directly into the municipal sewer. A lot of facilities, water consumption for these drained waste systems may be a little bit higher especially if you don't have your timing and everything set correctly. So water usage can become an issue especially if states like California maybe or is implementing new regulations where you can't dump these nutrient solutions into the municipal sewers and then you have to pay for transportation and offsite treatment. You're already wasting nutrients and water that you probably had to pay for so there's a bit of waste in this type of system especially if you're not using a control system that's properly dialed in. Another thing that's a potential hazard to watch out for in kind of systems like this this facility uses a centralized inline nutrient mixing system so basically what this means as they're pumping the water through the line they're adding the nutrients directly into that and it gets directly pumped right to the plants. Usually that's nice, you don't have the central reservoir although if somebody makes a mistake you can see millions of dollars worth of product killed in the matter of hours due to this problem and there's not too much you can do about it though these are in a medium that usually can hold some amount of water so you have a little bit of a buffering if you have a pump system that goes down or something like that. Next we have a recirculating deep water culture system these are a slightly higher complexity, harder to use they're also somewhat more significantly expensive to set up but what you're really able to do with systems like these is grow a smaller number of really, really big trees like really big cannabis plants there's the farms that we visited they grow up to like maybe eight, nine feet tall at least I mean they're just beautiful it's crazy and so really how we're able to do this is each plant is sitting in a bucket and you'll have a net pot that just has like those clay pebbles or those kind of grow stones that just give a good amount of support to the plant and then the roots just grow right into this bucket which has a large amount of water that's being recirculated kind of through the system so each bucket is connected in series and then there's also a controller bucket that is generally attached so that you can take measurements on the system and also centrally add nutrients and correct for the pH in the water and since this is being rapidly recirculated through the system you can have a generally uniform nutrient profile across the system and so let's move here so this is a facility we visited in Rhode Island they're a medical facility and right here in the center you can see the main control bucket and that's attached to 24 plants and then also right to the left of that you can see a water chiller it's important to keep the water temperature sometimes like around 5-10 degrees cooler than the ambient air temperature and so here these trees aren't at full maturity but you can see that they're a bit larger than the previous plants before but you're also definitely limited when it comes to kind of setup because these buckets they have to be very sturdy and the plumbing is a little bit harder to set up than just these kind of little lines going to the tops of more or less normal buckets these systems also cleanliness is extremely important so that's why this facility you can see is very whitewashed and it has very clean floors and stuff like that so this generally farms that we visited that are dirtier have a lot of problems and then farms that are kind of cleaner and they have higher standards they're able to keep pests and other diseases away from the plants and yeah next we have a nutrient film technique system this is generally actually not used for cannabis we haven't seen it but it's still kind of important I think to show you that they're just kind of there are a million different ways that you can set up a hydroponic system with these basic kind of core principles again here we have a more or less central reservoir also in here we have an air stone so for these recirculating systems they use less water but we also have to make sure that we're maintaining the nutrient pH and oxygen levels in the water so the air stones will be bubbling generally regular air or sometimes people will just use regulators and pump straight oxygen into the system this is actually to kind of feed some of the microbial life that you will see in a hydroponic system so for nutrient film technique system you'll again have a water pump that will pump to the top of a channel and then this is at a slight incline so that or decline so that the water will sort of run in a thin film down this channel and then the smaller plants will have their roots they're in kind of net cups again with the clay pebbles or something like that and then the roots will kind of get some of this nutrient film as it runs down and then ultimately it drains back into the central reservoir so let's look at this facility this facility is Gotham Greens they're in Brooklyn, New York they're actually on top of whole foods and kind of the nifty thing that they do here is they'll actually pick the produce, package it, bring it into whole foods and then people will buy it and it says it was picked at 115 today really fresh it tastes a lot better to have it locally and we're just seeing now that hydroponics, the cost of technology the efficiency that people are able to achieve this is becoming cost competitive with the large commercial farming especially on the leafy greens and those like spices, those basils and stuff like that it looks like this is growing a lot of basil right here in this photo and so here you can see that we have hundreds of these gutters that are just lined up and then towards the middle here on the right side you can see the nutrient lines and those will run delivering water and they run down to the center here all of these channels are angled and then they'll kind of recirculate again there these systems are kind of hard to clean again, cleanliness is important so it causes a problem to have so many channels that are hard to clean and stuff like that and especially with these recirculating systems you run the risk if you have a pathogen that gets into a system you're again feeding and recirculating to all of the plants so you do run the risk of killing basically all of the plants per system which is why they'll generally limit kind of the fates like the fates that they tie together on the plants so they'll limit it to maybe 2,000 square feet of these channels will be one reservoir and then they'll kind of like multiply that as they have a different scale so other rooftop greenhouses they're about 10,000 square feet and they had about six different systems going next up we have aeroponics which is another system generally again used for smaller leafy greens what's really great about aeroponics is one of the most water efficient systems in general and they're able to grow plants quite quickly so in the system here you'll generally have water in the bottom and a pump that'll pump up to these small misting nozzles that will mist the roots of the plants again we're getting a very nice mixture of air, nutrients and water to the root system which is highly, highly important but what you will see aeroponics is definitely used pretty commonly in cannabis just not for growing the plants it's used for starting clones and so what clones are they're clippings from what are generally referred to as mother plants or sometimes they'll clip it off of other plants in production and it'll be one kind of fan leaf with a few inches of stem they'll put it into these green collars and then they'll have this aeroponic system so on the right side you can see these green nozzles those are their aeroponic misting nozzles and they're spraying the nutrient solution and sometimes they'll also add root starting hormones to this to encourage root development on the plants and you can see pretty exciting root development very quickly on plants that you would otherwise think it's just like I just clipped this off of a plant and all of a sudden you're able to clone it very easily which is kind of an exciting idea and this is really important for commercial facilities because consistency is extremely important so this allows them to have an entire crop of genetically identical plants they'll all grow to more or less the same height and stuff like that you'll often see, if you were just cracking seeds and growing fresh, you'll have one plant kind of short not very attractive, not a lot of flower on it and then you'll have other plants, for some reason they're twice as high, they have better spacing of the flowers and stuff like that so this is one of the important things on the genetics and continuing the generations of these plants as you grow hundreds or thousands of them and so that's it for the hydroponic systems that we're going over there are a million different ways to actually set up a hydroponic system based on the core principles of a nutrient solution being somehow distributed to the plants kind of making sure that we're emulating some of the conditions and the things that are provided by soil and then there are also a lot of other environmental factors we didn't necessarily go over such as lighting which is generally interchangeable between the different ways that you do it and we thank you all for coming here and the opportunity to come and speak to you guys and we'd love to answer any questions you have Any questions? Yeah, how about aquaponics? Yeah, so aquaponics, like aquaponics that's a method of hydroponics where you have fish as a part of the system and you feed the fish in this system and then ultimately it's the experiment from the fish and you have to make sure that you have a part of the system that can with bacteria and other microbial life to process this and make the nutrients bioavailable to the plants that we don't really see it too often in cannabis it's a little bit harder to maintain because you kind of have to take care of the fish and then the plants so often on a commercial setting like the variability that you might see in the plants especially for cannabis is tougher we'll see it definitely a lot more on the leafy greens because their requirements for nutrients are a little bit less stringent I imagine that how much you'll be given for the process or do they have interesting ways to measure and optimize? Sure, so as you're trying to optimize the environment there's a lot of different things that you have to take into account so you're going to be taking into account the temperature, humidity CO2 levels, light levels that's all the things in the air you also need to make sure you keep track of the water the nutrient levels, pH, water temperature so basically you want to be collecting a lot of information also you want to have cameras taking pictures of things if you really want to get to that advanced level so that you can have all this data coming to you and then you can really see what's going on so that's kind of the next step in farming and that's farming of the future is collecting tons of data and then making small optimizations to the environment so you can see growth and comparing things in a scientific way so yeah, I think that answer your question? It definitely runs again newer farms, the one in Colorado that we showed you that was a pretty newly built farm they were relatively highly automated although a lot of the system could really stand for a lot of improvement right now a lot of the technology used in cannabis is more of a, it's kind of ported over from traditional greenhouse agriculture which is sort of stuck in the 80s or maybe the 90s rather but we definitely see that there's a lot of room right now where technology can assist in growing cannabis in particular since it is such a high value crop and there are a lot of things that we still don't know about the plants since it's been generally unstudied or understudied so I think as we move forward getting more data, getting more insight keeping track of more things we saw the farms that had better data recording practices I mean, most of the time they're using clipboards still even in kind of the relatively advanced farms so there's a lot of room for improvement but the data is a driving factor mostly there's a lot of work that the growers are doing it's mostly not computers the growers have to do lots of things they have to cut the clones they have to move the plants around they need to feed the plants take measures yes sure sure so I'll tell you a story about one of our customers so we're very new we have one customer that was our early adopter and he was spending about three hours a day maintaining his hydroponic system so that was measuring the nutrients, measuring the pH making adjustments trying to make sure that the plants were optimized so when he incorporated our automation systems which automatically feed the plants and take care of the nutrients and pH levels he said that he now instead of spending three hours a day spends about 25 minutes every 20 days on the same activity and so for him, as a researcher he's now spending more of that time reading research papers and figuring out better ways to optimize this plant so what we feel like we're doing for this example and hopefully for many others is giving them an opportunity to increase the value of their operation by doing more higher value activities you're welcome so in these farms you're not really allowed to sample it because they actually have to be sold through a dispenser or something like that however we're allowed to maybe hang out with the farmers afterwards and maybe sample some of their products so yeah I'm not even sure if all the farmers that we sampled was their products or was a product that they had yeah I'm not like a huge connoisseur so it's hard for me to tell but from what I could tell the products were pretty good when we went to one of the farms in Oregon the guy he gave us some joints and they were really cool after we got out of the farm we went because in Oregon it was this place in Hood River, Oregon so it was gorgeous scenery and everything so we went to this river really close by and smoked one of the joints and then we started thinking of all these crazy ideas so now we're gonna like help him so it's like he helped us like help him yeah we wrote him down but I gotta write him down yeah so for the most part we saw kind of the traditional highlights and stuff like that they're less expensive and the capital expenditure for setting up farms is relatively high number of the farmers that we visit including the one in Oregon they're typically experimenting with LEDs they're looking into it one farm they had one room that was using LEDs and another two rooms that were using the HIDs and stuff like that LEDs are coming it's definitely going to be a very important factor states such as Massachusetts actually have laws limiting how much electricity you can use per square foot essentially making it that LEDs are really the only real option so yeah LEDs they're great there's some things we don't fully know yet about maybe the light spectrums although there are a plethora of companies that are working on it and selling the best lights in the industry so we're excited to see it move more towards the LEDs maybe once they're a little bit less expensive to install but is there a standard after they grow a few batches like you clean out the system or what is the maintainability of these things and I'm sure it varies depending on what technique you're using but is that a standard practice or does it vary between different growers? yeah I'm sure each grower has their own way of doing it but a lot of times when you're taking the plants out of the system so sometimes it could be like two weeks four weeks when you remove the plants that's usually when they'll go ahead and clean them they're not usually going to be cleaning them like while the plants are actually in the system and it's definitely cleaning should probably be more of a constant practice rather than something that people are doing at specific intervals some of the farms we visited they don't have a speck of dust speck of water or anything on the ground and they're able to use no pesticides by just using extremely rigorous cleanliness policies some of the facilities we go into we're literally put in jumpsuits and crocs and we're spraying alcohol on the bottom of our feet and we have these little pads as we go into each room and they don't need to use any pesticides other facilities we visited they're basically they are open to the public they let people in there are rooms that they say don't go in here we just like sprayed pesticides in here like you know it's going to be a nightmare so it really runs the gamut you know of different cleanliness practices although definitely the farms that are doing it the best for the most part are doing it with rigorous cleanliness standards and that's one of the things that automation would be really good like automate certain tasks like nutrient dosing so that people can spend more time on cleaning to ensure that you know they don't have an entire room you know spider mites or something and then it costs them millions of dollars and then just to like add to that another reason for automation is so that you don't have to be constantly going in and out of the rooms and changing things all the time like humans are one of the greatest sources of contamination of the system so by having less traffic touching the plants less you're going to have less chances of having these problems yeah I also live in New York City and I build apartments in my living space cool huh I actually really curious what yours looks like but yeah we haven't I don't know I can't think of anyone on the top of my head that's mixed with you the one farm in California that we visited they had one room that was like a deep water culture room and then they had eight rooms that were the dripper systems they actually just recently shut down the deep water culture room commercially speaking they like it to be uniform just have a standard operating procedure and have it kind of more like a manufacturing process and then you'll see hobbyists and people who are doing on smaller scales they might be playing around more or even farmers who are maybe like not quite getting started but are planning to get started they might be kind of experimenting seeing what system they can handle the best are you saying did we see any small? yeah it's definitely kind of consolidating the markets in general we also visited an outdoor grower in Washington and he grows 35,000 pounds a year which is essentially unheard of for indoor growers they're like if they hit 5000 pounds that would be insane usually maybe they're around one or two thousand and this outdoor is he's the low cost producer in the state he can blow it out he can sell he sells eighths for 25 dollars to the dispensary you can have it out the door for 75 there is definitely though a space for the indoor kind of growing with hydroponics because you're able to play more with the chemical profiles and the plants and you're able to get this higher quality you'll probably see the lower end of the market get pretty much completely consolidated especially once you have a federal legalization there's no way you're going to be able to really compete with you know John Deere tractors in massive fields but you know we will probably see you know and this is kind of this is really more opinion or sort of like kind of in the ether but you'll probably see something kind of like the model of like the craft brewery like kind of would be like you have like your craft breweries you know kind of focused on quality and like you know pesticides and all that and then you know the outdoor you'll have your Budweiser's as well the outdoor grower I'm not entirely sure they have they have a permitting system based on square footage so they have permits of 30,000 square feet that they multiplied they had like a hundred permits well they had room for a hundred permits they maybe had like eight to ten permits that they were growing 35,000 pounds under and like the regulations in Washington made it extremely inefficient for them actually to do the farming because they had each 30,000 square foot plots separately staked out and so they could and they had fencing around each one of those so you can really the economies of scale as the regulations may change could really change the landscape of the lower end yes yeah I mean typically you want to use something called like a carbon filter which is just like a fan that's going to be sucking up all the air and making sure that it takes out all the different things that smell from the cannabis plant so and if you want to have like a commercial facility somewhere then you definitely need to have that because you don't want to be all that scent and if you're growing like in your house if you have like some sort of a growth tent you can set up like a small carbon filter so you can take care of that yeah pretty often states have regulations and say like once you're outside of the facility like you should not be able to small it that's not necessarily true for probably most of the facilities we've visited like when you're outside you know where you're going so yeah yes yeah so security is you know definitely a major part of these facilities mostly on the regulation side the regulations are often very stringent and explicit on what sort of security is necessary I think most of the time what we've seen is that there's a camera everywhere there's like you accept the bathroom but basically anywhere you go in many of these facilities there's a camera on you and the state has a direct link into each and every one of those cameras so there could be someone watching you in the you know tending to the plants trimming drying rooms everything cameras everywhere everywhere and California's implementing you know new regulations that have much stricter security concerns and even the outdoor there was a camera on every corner at least of these plots again someone's watching over your shoulder every step the government really wants their tax money as things become automated like I've seen grow operations with auto elevating tables business shifts to move water around to keep the level or keep everything clean there's a lot and then you look to the left and there's a massive sets of PLCs that are connected to a bunch of other bullshit somewhere else like that part is one of the things I'm curious about how are they thinking about those systems and say does the state necessarily need access to that as well because that's a whole you could ruin somebody's entire crop I'm shifting lights a little bit yeah so the state doesn't really you know the states don't care if you go out of business generally so they're really watching the people in the facilities that's what they want to make sure that every little gram I mean every leaf typically needs to be pretty much accounted for and disposed of with you know different procedures and you know again depending on the state you might be weighing the plant right when you cut it down weighing the flower that you cut off weighing the trim that you took off and stuff like that in terms of the technology the PLCs the control systems we haven't heard or seen of any integrations with the the state really besides maybe like seed to sail like tracking so they might be in kind of the inventory management systems but environmental control systems they don't care if your plants die they just care you know someone is kind of diverting something to a gray or black market do they do they throw things like that some farms are more technically sophisticated than others although we haven't seen you know too much technical sophistication in most of the facilities any other questions thank you very much alright thank you so much


Who am I? Yeah, so yeah, I am a late diagnosed autistic adult. I was diagnosed in my mid 30s and I'm also the mother to two autistic children and another child who isn't autistic who I always feel like I need to mention because I'm like two autistic children but I actually have three children and when I got my autism diagnosis I have a background as a performer I was actually a circus artist in my former life. Really? I did not know that. Yeah so yeah so I used to do acrobatics and juggling and you know street performing stage performing I guess I just like performing always have done so when I got my diagnosis I guess I started making YouTube videos as a way partly to kind of process I'm a verbal processor so partly as a way to process my experience that I was having but also partly to share my experience thinking like it might benefit other people in a similar situation because at that time it wasn't an unusual thing to be the mother of an autistic child realising that you yourself were...


Item number SCP-2686 Object Class, Euclid Special Containment Procedures Due to its static and distant nature, complete containment of SCP-2686-1 and subsequently SCP-2686 is not at this time feasible. However, as a result of SCP-2686-1's proximity to Outpost Thoth 1, observation equipment has been located near SCP-2686-1 and personnel are to observe the area for any significant changes in conditions or unusual behavior on the part of SCP-2686. Additionally, personnel from Outpost Thoth 1 are to travel via a signed rover to SCP-2686-1 on a weekly basis in order to evaluate the status of SCP-2686. All images captured of SCP-2686-1 by non-foundation organizations are to be edited in accordance with Security Regulation Document Thoth 1-F. Description, SCP-2686 is an adult male human estimated to be approximately 75 years of age currently located at within Mare Imbrium on the lunar surface. This location is designated as SCP-2686-1 and is detailed below. SCP-2686 is itself not visibly biologically anomalous, though has claimed in past interviews to possess anomalous capabilities, primarily those generally assigned in Welsh traditions or originating in the early Middle Ages as belonging to a magician or wizard. These anomalous abilities include the ability to travel large distances instantaneously, the ability to project energy towards a target, the ability to transform its body at will into the shape of various animals and several others. None of the abilities have at any point been observed by Foundation personnel. SCP-2686 has, at time of writing, only been seen to wear a single blue-green robe of coarse wool and a small gray night cap. SCP-2686 is also known to at all times carry a moderately sized 85-90 centimeter piece of oak wood which it uses as a walking cane. The entity will respond to most lines of inquiry, but will not answer any questions regarding its origins or nature in a direct manner, instead attempting to change the line of discussion to subjects of religion, mythology, folklore, philosophy, or historical events, both anomalous and mundane. The entity acts in a non-hostile manner when interviewed, but will refuse any suggestions by Foundation personnel that it leave SCP-2686-1. SCP-2686-1 is a spherical area of a radius of 45 meters located at on the lunar surface. The area has been reported by SCP-2686 to possess an atmosphere identical to that of Earth, but this cannot be confirmed due to the nature of the region. Objects which enter the area of SCP-2686-1 are immediately transported to the opposite side of the region without interacting with the intervening space. SCP-2686 has reported that this effect does not persist on the inside of SCP-2686-1. The area encompassed by SCP-2686-1 contains a large amount of soil and grass, along with various trees, primarily oak and ash, as well as a small residence constructed of a mixture of wood, thatch, and stone. The exact architecture of the structure does not specifically match any styles found on Earth, although the design is in line with what would be required by a single person living in a rural area. SCP-2686 has at several points been observed to produce food from within the structure, including fresh meats and fruits which could not reasonably have been acquired in the area or stored for the amount of time which SCP-2686-1 has been under observation. When questioned about this, SCP-2686 has claimed that said food was acquired by a cat, apparently named Commodore Buckles, which SCP-2686 referred to as its, quote, animal companion, end quote. This entity has at no time been observed by Foundation personnel or by autonomous observation equipment. Interview Log Interviewed, SCP-2686, interviewer, agent, forward. As part of initial containment, Foundation personnel were tasked with interviewing the entity in an attempt to establish its history. The following interview was conducted by personnel stationed at Outpost Thoth 1, three days following the discovery of SCP-2686-1. Begin log. Hello, sir. Do you mind if I ask your name? I am known as the Great Wizard Nipereus, Lord of the Moon and Stars Above. I see. And could you describe for me how it is you came to reside on the surface of the Moon? You dare question me, mortal man? If you don't want to tell us, that's perfectly all right. Now, moving on. Wait, wait. You're giving up just like that. Don't even want to ask me for my ancient wisdom? Maybe seek the secrets of the stars? And of your future? Not particularly. Mostly just taking down physical information at this point in time. Now then, if you could provide us with your date and place of birth?  I will have you know that in my day, I was the greatest wizard of them all. Thousands sought my wisdom and magic to help them in their noble quest. Only the most powerful could reach my ancient wizardly sanctum, atop the highest mountain in the land. But still there were too many, and I used my awesome might to transport my home to this distant land where only the truest of heart could seek my wisdom. I see. And when would you say that this change in location occurred? Oh well, I have lived in this land for nigh on 300 years, growing in power every day. And in that time period, how many persons have visited this location? An approximate figure would be fine. Um, well, you see, the thing about that, there haven't actually been any, save you. Surely you've got a quest you need Aiden, yes? Well, we could use some biographical information if that wouldn't be too much trouble. Well, I'd hardly call that a quest. Only the truest of heroes deserve my power. Then why do you not just go back to wherever it is you came from? I don't think you'll be getting much anyone here, do you? It's a bit out of the way, isn't it? Well, the thing is though, I am a moon wizard after all. Yes, and? That means that my power is divine from the light of the moon above, you know? Right. And we are on the moon itself after all. I see. Where the moonlight is rather below. Huh. Hmm, indeed. End log. Closing statement. It has been determined that SCP-2686, in its current state, poses no actual threat to the foundation or its holdings, but steps should be taken to ensure that it does not leave the surface of the moon. Footnote. Meets noted by observers to consist of various livestock and reported by SCP-2686 to also include gazelle, caribou, blue whale, and griffin.


All ya Batih Karebo karibu, ya want to take some juice, some mat, some tea? Hatana kuña juice? Tio fudu nimi mazo wa ya? Hatana kuña? Okay, kikido Okay, no problem Katia Una jiwa, msani vocals, na jo lazima Ebu ni rienbei siri ya vocals, niku gunya freods, ni ni Nakewa mimi, bebe Ya, buni unani, funguli anga jegitu. Oh, sir. Thank you. Inmejiwa. Oh, Kariboni... Thank you so much. Kido feel at home. Thank you so much. Uku unakula kila kitu unamaniza. Sir. Uh... Uku sihuzu ngu nukitaka tunoongaza.  Takaka tunoongaza, Kariboni. Asanti. Let me put it for Kido. Kido wants to take some juice. Oh, so nikulize maybe... Just to make sure bahati yana penda nini for breakfast. Ana nipenda for breakfast. Yes, she starts with me. My hub is actually not a breakfast person. He's a branch person, but he's a branch person. So I am going to eat. So I'll start. He's a cavagara but I'll go out and enjoy the food. Why?  Welcome kiddo, welcome. Feel at home. Thank you madam. Asante. Asante. Okay.  Every day I strive to, what can I say? I strive to make sure that I live a life that I never had before, and not just me. I think my focus is my kids. Kuna places, actually na masawu kwa biawenu, there's most of the places in this house, I've never, siji yataka. Like I have a, is it a bathtub or a Jacuzzi, I've never sat on that Jacuzzi. I have never, siji e pata yo time, you know. Siji e pata time ya kuka, I have a balcony and it's very well equipped, you know with swinging chairs and all that, magazines. I've never gotten a time to even go through one of the magazines, you know.   I never imagined and that's why I always tell people, I thank God for everything. But one of the things I always told myself, I wanted to have a different life. Men metokala maisha ya familie eni ata. Atu kwa tana ele, ona jule TV ele bak, ele men na kwa ngamu, ele amugongo. We never heard that in a room, I remember. Eni kwa nana kwa kwa htv kwa kwa demal kwa netwakina naumi. I say, later took me in, you know, before I went to the children's home. And when you look at that journey, I, every day and everything I do, I always want to make sure that I do to my level best, I give it my level best. Kido, I don't call myself the best singer in Kenya. But can I tell you something, even the best singer are not on my level because I chose to be the best in what I do. I may not be the best vocalist, but I do the best songs. I have one of the most watched songs at Yambo, over 24 million. Wanani, you know, I have a baby which is almost 10 million, Wanani 10 million. It's because I chose to do it with excellence, you know. I never play with branding, I never take things for granted, you know. And God has blessed us with a fan base that supports what we do. So we always make sure we give them the best. That's why I always tell my wife, if you're doing vlogging, don't just be a basic vlogger, be the best. Right now you're speaking a video, it's trending. She has three videos on trending for the seven gifts and all of them trending at top ten. And she has the number one video on trending, you know. Because if you're doing vlogging, don't just do it, you know. And that's why when I surprise her, I make sure we're not acting. It's a real surprise. How do you plan all these surprises? I do TV, I'm a producer. So as I'm surprising, I always surprise also the public. I am a storyteller. That's one of my strengths, you know. I have a TV show called Bahati Reality, trained for three seasons on NTV. I was the scriptwriter, the producer, the director. Same time, you understand. So for me, I always give my best. Any opportunity I may pay, I give my best. Even in politics. Niveletu Baba li say maweu ki jarangutu from paya kazi. He knows. I did my best, kiddo. Nelukuja kwa siyasa 30 days, 45 days to elections. And I was the most talked candidate. On these MPs, you understand. It's only that, you know, even the system had their way. So the system fight you? At that time, the system did not support me. It was very clear. Because Baba wanted his candidate in Madari. It was very clear, you understand. But all of you know. All of you know. Mipiwa Madari wa ni kikuliza, uesimujuwa, you understand. It's normal because I stood out at the end of the day. You understand. And I'm still young. I am not bitter. That's one of the things that helped me. I don't live with bitterness. I make sure I allow things. Ikipita mi pita. I don't live. I don't get bitter over things. I let go and I forge forward. Now, talking about politics. Yesterday you were performing at Zitik University. And there was a video about the trends. In English, I was in Funzi. I was in Taja, in 27. I was in Somia. I'll be your governor. But... Was it cloutious? Is it real you want to become the governor of Nairobi? Because I believe you have it. Why are people talking? Sakaja is still in power. And he is a very good friend of mine. I respect him. I respect him. And he is a very humble guy, by the way. I don't know if we have any problems. We have been together for a while now. But he is still a young man. But what are we doing? We are just here for him. Just relax. How's the pressure? Of course, I have a trend. We are in the same party, UDA party and right now we are not talking about succession politics as our party leader is Excellency William Ruto says and he is a board deputy and at the moment it is working for the people. Where we can by the way, I think I actually chatted with Excellency Sakaja the other day and I'm willing to actually support him for DC and county and all that. So let's gochakon that wachey, tumwacha fanyi jobiaki. You've mentioned about your music, of course you've become the most successful music artist, not only in East Africa but in Africa.  But when it comes to your music, most people feel like you're not giving the best out of yourself. My fans, you know there's positive criticism. I support. Puna wa nani watch. Muna jana nani mevunja record I had almost 25,000 watching live. Don't listen to the few, listen to the many. Kido, always listen to the many. I broke my own record. In Kenya we have never seen such numbers on live streaming. We do seven gifts, all of them is almost 15,000. The last one is almost 25. So I think, why are they supporting? It's because they know we do our best. I can only give my best, Kido. I can only give my best. Why are they watching? They're watching the best. So I don't listen to the few. But when you listen to the few, they'll make you lose focus and always listen to the many. And that's when in my life I don't focus on addressing haters every day. Because focus on addressing the people that always love you and support you. Why asking that question? Because kuna time flani ulu kuna chile angoma. Numbers zina kwa kido ko extraordinary na atu na chuliza. Wenda mebe baati anafanya ile kitu anafanya roboti?  The interviews will do, they'll have good numbers. The interviews will do, they'll have small numbers. Because you're targeting different people.  So the songs I'll do for a different audience. Wenda jiyu kitu akuogopati na fanyango maivi. Ita kwa na namba kido ko. Iundu kitu na fanyanga adi muna nanda kugopo, sanyo nanda kugopo kupi even new artist, collabo. Because nanda eh napea, Ike kwa chani leki ita kwa na namba zinjinki. No, I've done a song with SWAT. I wanted to support that guy, Zayang King. And you know, from ethic and I respect him. So, singi muambia tiju chani langu na ita kwa na big numbers. Because I have bigger subscribers. I think I'm second most subscribed artist in the country, you know. I'm almost, you know, I think me or Otile, someone. So I would like that you kwa sango madi a new artist. Ni eke wa chani langu. That will not be support. So you should not view it that way.  Of kusukona hii tsuon na leo na sama baati yewai ita support wa tu. Onani mamatu collabo. Nanda na nana na mepea, nimapeo sani wengi, mwaasa. Nanda na lei ba do na feel like. Stake kutaji amaji na baati. Af kusukona isu taji ama jinakwa nyumba hangu. Zutanda jina. Anda sa baati. Miya molo isu willing. Anda molo isu open. I have supported many artists. Only that I closed that chapter. Ya record label. And all that. Like in gospel I created many new brands. Than any artist has ever done. Many, you understand. It's only of kusu it's a story for another day. But it's only that it never worked. You understand. There was a lot of those scenarios. And I think the church has more fights than the world. You understand. So I did all that. So you do this with grace. When God gives you grace to do something. You understand. So I will support. I admit not shout but I will. I will always support. The best way I can. And I'm not looking for credit. You understand. And that's why I'm not mentioning people. But I have supported many people. And I don't force them to mention me. Because glory belongs to God. Ya. Baat. Let's talk about the seven gifts. Nujome set standard. Umetrend the whole week. You know from gift one to baka seven. Nakunotu mbao na sema. Ano baat yeme prove of kosa na penda queen. Then ano go extra. Sayi na mga like a dream holiday. Gift nambarechi. No the gifts are done. Now it's just our birthday is coming. So I'm planning to fly out. I know my Shijundu nari because I had a lot of. I have a lot of show bookings in the country. And also I told you I have a very huge project coming out. That needs me. So but I will try. If I will not take her during her old days. At least a few days before. Before her birthday. How much have you spent on the gifts? In total? Yes. All of them can say. In total let's say 30 million. 30 million. Ya. That's a good amount of money. You've been saving for this? Ya. Everyone has to sacrifice for something. That's the word I'll use. So you've sacrificed a lot for this? Ya you've sacrificed for the one you love. Of course Diana nakuza liya. Penda legit love. But you see he's sacrificing all this. Bahati you'll prove to Diana. You love her so many. To prove. I was not being that to prove. I was doing it. For the love. For the love. And to make her happy. But now why all these seven kids? We don't want to say Bahati na. This is a focus. This is a bestiao pesa kwa kitu ingine. But. How do you invest in music? No, no. I don't need to invest in music. Because I have done enough investment in music. Of course and I'm still doing and other businesses. But before any other thing family comes first. Ya never forget that. If you're not happy even the business will not flourish. Ya. Alright Bahati. Let's now focus more on Shobis. Ya know. A lot has happened to your life. Ya know. Marafiki umekata sakua kwa marafiki. Auna wana fiki wengi. Ya know. You shifted from being a gospel artist now to a secular artist. Ya know. A few interviews, a few videos you mentioned. You'll go back. Atakuna video kitama mboili tembea sanoka sema. How to achamungu. Ya know. Is it, is it, is it hard for you to live back. Them days because kuna kati flani. Thika stadium. Ula kuna jaza watu na liya wana kwa higledo na kwa touch. Ya know doing that because of money. But you're doing it just to reach out to your fans. To preach the gospel message. When are we seeing Bahati back? Because shows in Afanya Kenya zama kubo kubo.  I don't. Not as a gospel. When the secular shows? The secular shows? Which big? Which one? There's no big show that has not called me. And if you've not seen me on a big show, you know, I don't just go for platform. No kidomi am pasta platform. If you're not paying this, you'll not see me there. What is your haircut, Bahati?  Yes. What is your haircut? What is your haircut? It's good to know your haircut. You have Sylvester's number. No, it's good to know. For me to book you for a show. I need to have how many? For club. It's a family. Club appearance. Any club appearance. Any club appearance. And for any main stage is one million if it's playback, 1.8 if it's a band. So you... That's it. That's what I'm telling you. You see? Any Kenyan artist you see here. You know you're talking about a Kenyan artist. You see some of the people will call you. They will call you to curtain raise. Because they feel like this is the main artist. But I'm the main artist in my own league. So I don't do things to be seen and performed. Kidomi am past that. When are we seeing Bahati? Arena, Bahati? City? Kidomi have done that. Like you said. Nafanya is gospel and all that. Everything has a structure and a strategy. I don't just do juwatu amefanya. I want to leave an impact and also after doing it, I want to make impact in my bank account. So you have to consider all that.  The fact that you're seeing me and not seeing every brand that shows you the Bahatis is a movement. And Kidomi, you know, there is no household in Kenya. A couple that commands numbers like Bahati and Diana. You know that.  So if you see me, if the brands are coming for us, that means we are bringing them business.  One of our brands, let's say Ra Premium, you had it first with the Bahatis. It's now a national brand because of the Bahatis. We also have worked with different brands. I remember when we took a refuge, Rwai, it was just an empty house. For real, it was just a new structure and we filled it. We went to Komarok Modern, we have done magic. So just to mention but a few. So if I can pull a customer that is paying money, what about pulling someone that is coming to enjoy?  So it's just that we don't want to be everywhere with Kedogo money and then your brand is diluted.  So we are waiting, we always wait for the right money. Bati, have you ever felt life, just to live a good life? Yes, people to see you living large. No, I think what has worked for me is being real. All the time? Kiki umana una tema kimi umana. Eh, kwa ni kwa zi kwa zi kwa zi kwa mambela kamerasi ni zemi nanyanganyo ticket na niliye. Kina umana una tema e kimi umana. Kimi umana.  So in short... Eh, badeh hasiku ok... Is it a strategy? No no, I'll tell you. Kimi umana kimi umana, unnormal man will hide the tears so that he can look expensive Ya, it's how you can inspire people, you don't inspire people by only showing your good side, you show most of the weak side, you understood? It's because we went to home for a wiki who are in their way to change the situation. Right, as we wind up now, Now, the year is coming to an end. There are rumors. Rola shuili kwa pali kwenya gifts. Wedding bells. If you don't want to pay my preparation so far, shefa may talk to you up here. You have an invite. It will be very exclusive. It will be the best wedding Kenya has seen. The best wedding of the year. Kido. It is Kenya's dream wedding. It is not Diana's dream wedding. Kenya's dream wedding. This is it. I know, we had announced for 12th, I announced without telling Diana. Diana is a festive season. We have a lot of bookings. I think I will be in Australia days before for my Australia tour. I will be performing in Melbourne or something. So she was like she is not comfortable. We cannot do it earlier because of November. But we are about to announce the date. We are about to announce the date. We are about to announce the date, make it public and announce the venue. We are announcing the date and venue. I think on Diana's YouTube channel next week. So as I told you guys, go. Guest. Guest. The who is who. If you don't see yourself in that list. You know the who is who. Adulia. Nani putita hata kuwa. Putita hata kuwa. Wajana putita. Wajana putita. Wajana putita. Wajana putita. Wajana putita. Wajana putita. Wajana putita. Thank you so much for your time. I have been so inspired to my life. You are always being honest with me. You are always telling me. Webeni rafiki wa raizu, ebutu wambi usiyanao kuna raizu, nata kuhuleta raizu aende geto, nanugandu kunao na raizu na vijana na wasani wata fahidika vipi na raizu. Ukuwa rafiki wa raizu. You see one of the things, first, our president is very forgiving. That's one of the things. Uliwa kusame ya? Uliwa na malini meka na e kando, kwa'su nashino lante muwewe. Uliwa na sako. He is not exposing video. Uliwa, so I think one thing I'm also pushing is for the inclusivity of the creatives in this new government in terms of… We have a lot in Kwazeri. Tumbe has been also pushing for that. Even for the marketing budget. Sikila marketing ina nda siji kwa, kwa gazeti, kwa in mainstream. We have influencers that have big numbers and they are creatives. That's one of the things that Kwazeri, Tumbe is just pushing. Another thing that I'm so encouraged with is he understands the young people. He understands. And someone that understands the young people, it's easier to share an idea and they can buy it. A colabo with rice maybe? Tulia. Tulia. Lagi ni na yo mambo emba ya na raka kubanga na rafiki yangu rice. Nimbaya. Nimbaya. I don't want to say a lot but you know. Tulia. Just relax. Izi siyo zili colabo ulkona se ma pali kwa nye mi tandao di siya. Dhafaza suna nani na nani. Tulia. Tulia please. But one thing I'll tell you, the dream wedding is coming. Kenya's dream wedding will be also inviting a few people from the public, a few fans. Ya of course outside Kenya will have representatives because also I have very huge friends from Rwanda, from Tanzania, Uganda, Mejali and South Africa. So I'm looking at making it an East African wedding but this will be Kenya's dream wedding for really. We will see how many millions. I'm just pushing. But you've really invested. You know you do business in music business. I've seen it, I've watched it. I'm not saying it because of the cameras I'm being real. Towa ni pata unwa kiza. Mwewh hitona kiza kwa Vaaschana, kwa Magari, kwa Fioru, kwa Zunka, zunca, kwa Highway. Tava wingina wata kwa Kuikak. Of course, Ulzamu leka gairi. Umenda keri children welk wka mashudzade. Humeda tembea. Nodhan bypass. Well we'll leave. Namuoja juna isikari buna butita dikarood. Tulia ban. Please, tembeini! Siku muka na jamua. Muka na kariku muka. Tembeini, wakini mabudu bamu tembeini. Bura wajama bubi. Alright Bahati, thank you so much for your time. This was an amazing experience. I wish you the best in your life. May this year be your year of course. Your family says a lot that they live in the best life. Of course your friends are very close to you. And your wife, your queen, has always stand out to protect you, to defend you whenever you're going through a lot. And as it's espiambas, we're very grateful for my directors here. I'm here for the first time, guys. Atani me shimdo kula breakfast. Na tako, ma liza wukai na chin na director mukule. All right, all right. Enjoy. Ongelesha ma fansuakuna. The family behati. One thing I'll tell you first is so much thanks for always supporting. We have been a brand that has gone through a lot, of course, gone through the fire out again in and out. So what I will say is thank you so much for always supporting. We can say we have one of the most loyal fan base, you know, Tim Dian and Tim Behati. We really appreciate for your prayers also, for your support. And above all, glory and honor goes back to our Lord God Jesus Christ, you know. We just bat vessels. That was a day and exclusive interview with one and only Bahati. Thank you, Bahati. May God bless you. Thank you for speaking to us. Please write to us down in the comment below. Say, what have you learned from Bahati? What are you looking for from Bahati? The Bahatis. And then... We'll go to the house. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's fry. Relax. You understand. The reason is that as much as you wanted to come home, it's because, you know, in my generation, many people feel like when we do or rather when I do something, when I do something, because in the music generation that we have right now, I think I'm the first one to own a home like this. It's just clear, you know. And because people are not used to young artists showing what they have, because you can't show what you don't. Become any clout, any, any and all that, you know. But I allow you to come home to inspire, you know. Even young people show them it is possible. It can be done, you know. And even another thing I'll tell even my fellow musicians, when you get the small you have in vest, in vest, and in vest in assets, you know. Make sure you have land, you have a house, you have a home, because unfortunately you not make it every day, you understand. But an investment prolongs your season as a celebrity because you are at peace and you can't think. I have the title deed. Danakwa na title deed.  You understand. And that's the reason, Kido. I was like... Even most of my close friends, they have never been at my place.  And through that we will be able even to inspire so many other young people coming up. Kido, welcome for breakfast. I'll be out because... Alright, thank you so much.


Our goal in all forms of writing should always be clarity. It needs to be important that our writing is clear. We want to share our ideas to our readers in a clear manner. Mathematics is actually quite confusing enough even for mathematicians at times, right? So we don't wanna make our writing any worse by making it more unclear when the topics themselves are challenging enough. Now, one way we can make our writing more confusing is when we introduce mathematical symbols we don't actually need. The symbols, every time we introduce a mathematical symbol it adds to the cognitive load of the reader. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends how we're using it. When we add symbols, we have to be adding them to try to add to the clarity and not lose the clarity. And so therefore my advice to you in this video is to avoid using unnecessary symbols. Don't make the mathematical waters more money than they already are. So let me give you an example of such a thing. So let's consider the sentence no set X has a negative cardinality, okay? So let's focus on this mathematical symbol X. Why did I introduce the symbol X right here? If I'm only trying to describe a generic set then I probably didn't need the mathematical symbol. If I'm gonna reference this generic set in the future and I should say the immediate future like I'm gonna talk about X in the next sentence again then sure by all means we can introduce the set X and so for the rest of the paragraph when I talk about X you realize I'm talking about just some generic set right here. But if I'm, and as that's the case then it's appropriate to use the symbol. It's necessary to help simplify later on. But if I'm just trying to make a statement about sets that no set has a negative cardinality like this sentence right here notice the sentence makes just as much sense without the symbol X and in fact you could argue it's more clear because I don't need a specific set X in mind here when I'm talking about a universal sentence about sets. So I think it's probably clear in this example that without the symbol I have the same meaning and in fact it's clearer because I'm not introducing a new mathematical symbol that I don't actually need. And so try to avoid unnecessary symbols. If you can do it with words alone do it. Use symbols when precision is necessary or when appropriate abbreviations are necessary. Don't introduce a symbol just because you think you need to because in this case you don't. And now with this video now complete that brings us to the end of lecture 20 in our lecture series. Thanks for watching. If you learned anything in this video or these videos for this lesson please like these videos, subscribe to the channel and see more videos like this in the future share these videos with friends if they're interested as well. And as always feel free to post your comments or your questions in the comments below and I'll be glad to answer them as soon as I can.


Γεια σας, είναι Vicky εδώ και σήμερα θα δημιουργήσουμε ένα κρυσματικό καρδί. Θα χρησιμοποιήσω αυτό το τάι, που είναι called Snowflake Block και και αυτό το stamp set που είναι called Christmas Graphics. They are both products from the latest Stamptember release by Simon Says Stamp. Είμαι ξεκινώντας από να δημιουργήσω το καρδί μου, οπότε θα χρησιμοποιήσω ένα ρεδό καρδί, το οποίο θα χρησιμοποιήσω μπροστά. Θα αφήνω να αφήνω το σκορδί μου, θα αφήνω το σκορδί, με 5.5 λεπτά. Θα δημιουργήσω ένα καρδί μεταφόλου, που θα είναι το καρδί μου. Θα έχω το καρδί μου σκορδί και θα αφήνω να το αφήνω για μέσα, και θα δημιουργήσω στο μπροστά μου. Θα χρησιμοποιήσω το σκορδί μου, να αφήνω το Snowflake, και όπως μπορείς να δείξεις, έχω χρησιμοποιήσει το μεταλπλί μου, αυτό είναι από το μεταλπλί και θα αφήνω να αφήνω πιο καρδί, και θα αφήνω να το αφήνω πιο καρδί. Αυτό έχει been cut out perfectly, but just because this is so detailed, I am taking my time as I separate it from the rest of the paper just to make sure that I don't tear it by mistake. So now to make this even more interesting, I am smoothing it over at my VersaMarking. So this is going to make it nice and wet, and then I can apply some embossing powder. I will be using Crystal Clear, which actually is going to add a layer of shimmer all over. Now this is not only going to make it shiny, but it's also going to make it as if it was made out of plastic. It's going to round up the edges and give it a smooth and very nice texture. After using my heat gun, here is the result. It's nice and sturdy, and I can't really catch the light for you, but you can see how shiny it is. But the texture is really nice. So now I am going to work on my sentiment. For the sentiment I am going to use this beautiful Christmas word. I just love how the font looks, and I think I will be using this certain Christmas word again and again on this year's Christmas cards. I have applied some powder with my powder tool just to minimize static electricity, but now I am stamping with VesaMark ink. Now I am also going to use the word Mary, which actually comes from a phrase that I have cut out with my scissors. You can always use masking to stamp only one word out of a certain sentence, but I don't really mind cutting out my acrylic stamps. So now I am going to apply my white embossing powder and heat set it with my heat gun. For a full list of all the supplies that I have used today, make sure to check below in the details area if you are watching on YouTube or you can always find a list of all the supplies on my blog. I want to create a background for my die-cut. Instead of measuring how big it is, I am going to use this piece of scrap paper, which was actually the paper where I have cut it out from, using my scissors. I am laying it corner to corner. I am going to show you again, and I am making a mark on where I need to cut it out. So now I am going to use my paper trimmer and I am going to cut a panel, which is exactly the same size as my die-cut. Although I am using a white cardstock, I am not planning to matte my die-cut with white, since all those snowflakes will not show white on white. So I am going for something more festive and I have decided to do some embossing. So I am making sure that this piece of paper is nice and wet with VersaMark ink and then I can apply some gold embossing powder. The embossing powder that I am using is by Zinc, and I am going to cover up the whole piece of paper. Instead of using gold embossing powder to do that, you can always use a patterned paper that is already glittered. But I really love how the embossing powder sticks the glitter and kind of locks the glitter on the paper so it doesn't move to the touch. So I am melting my embossing powder and I just love how this melts. And I will end up with a beautiful piece of gold paper. To stick my snowflake die-cut on my glitter paper, I am going to use some matte medium and just to make my life easier, I am going to use this fine tip applicator which has matte medium inside. So you can see how easy it is to apply in such a detailed die-cut. Now to embellish it even more, I am going to use these brads that have a nice gem on top. I believe these are by Hero Arts and I will make sure to link those below. So I am going to add a red one at the center of one of those snowflakes and I have decided to add a few more green ones but I don't want to have everything at the center of snowflakes so I decided to add them kind of randomly there. And these are going to add even more sparkle on my card. I am also using a thin strip of satin ribbon which I am going to tie in a bow. I am going to use my scissors to cut out the excess and now I can stick this panel on the center of my card using some foam tape at the back. This is going to add a little bit of dimension. I love traditional colors on Christmas cards and I especially like how elegant this card looks. So that was the card for today. I hope you had fun and could inspire. And if you did, don't forget to leave me a comment as well as give me a thumbs up on my YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe to my channel because this is the way to tell me that you love my videos and you want to see more. For more inspiration, here are a couple of old videos where I am creating a Christmas and a winter card. Just click on the video you want to see. If you are watching from a mobile device you can find links to both those videos just below in the details area. Or you can click the info card that just popped on your screen. Thank you all for watching.


In this picture we are seeing how the ozone layer is destroyed and the effects of that destruction. Certain compounds such as chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs are released into the atmosphere by human activities and these CFCs particularly they are very very unreactive at the atmospheric or ground level and they go all the way up to the stratosphere and then the CFCs dissociate or give up the chlorine. Each chlorine atom is capable of destroying or basically turning ozone into oxygen and which again doesn't have the same capability as ozone does in shielding us from the UV radiation. Once that ozone layer or the number of ozone molecules in that layer goes down, more and more UV rays can pass through the atmosphere and reach the surface and can cause more skin cancer and cataract in older people.


Everybody, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP buzz chat, and I'm talking today with Shabazz. Hello. Hi, Christian. How are you? It's great to have you and yet another grand spanking new MVPs. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Thank you. You know, it's for people that might be watching the series, I might think like I only go and select people that just get their, their MVPs like, no, I think this, I don't know what episode we're in the 130s. Wow. But yeah, the, but it's, you know, open invitation to any MVP, the series was started so I could get to know MVPs around the world and in other areas. So you're an enterprise mobility. Yeah, that's correct.  So my name is Shabazz Da, based in the UK, you couldn't tell by the accent from the north, the UK. I work for a net company, they're a Danish based company, but they've got a presence in the United Kingdom.  Yeah, I've been in IT for about 15 years now, and I'm just really into whole cloud thing really, really enjoying it. Yeah, so I'm interested in your, your thoughts and feel free if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine, but with the announcement around Windows 365, and how that changes so much of like, you know, I was never in that role in IT I've been in technology my entire career, but always had all the friends that that did that that were setting up all the laptops for new employees or systems and and pushing that out there. So how is that world changed or changing. I think it should give us give organizations just a different option and really it's not. I don't think it's about replacing anything. There's always going to be a place for hardware and laptops and you know personal devices. I just think this gives people another option. You know that the pandemic came all of a sudden no one knew there was going to happen and it came out of nowhere.  Have you ever relied on Hyper-V in production environments? Yeah, exactly. And by by introducing this Windows 365, they just given it God forbid there's another another issue like this in the future where all of a sudden people have to go work from home. It just gives businesses know there's another option for us and I think that's all it is. I don't see it replacing anything. And they're still they're still there. And then you know it's an excuse for IT admins to upskill and learning new technology. That's where I see it. So what are what are some of the topics that you're focusing on? What are you writing about talking about lately? A lot of hybrid is probably the main thing I talk about anything hybrid. There's no very rare we talk about I'm talking about cloud native or you know just on premises all hybrid. Again with with the pandemic it caused a lot of companies to sort of go straight into the cloud because they're in a short space of time and they didn't have that time to plan their sort of roadmap. But I think now that companies have got that time now they started to think right we need to maybe roll some things back and go back to a sort of more hybrid role, which is probably supports their organization better. And also probably a bit more cost effective because even though the clouds been here for a while now it's still not massively cheap.  Okay, you know it's interesting so I so I was originally a SharePoint MVP so came from kind of that that side of things and actually my last company we did research and for ISV for partners with the Microsoft ecosystem and I did a study back in. So it was published in early 2017 which you can find out my blog Buckley Planet and the resources, you can scroll down you'll find it, but around, you know, on prem hybrid online from the SharePoint perspective. And basically Microsoft, when they started pushing the cloud this is before Steve bomber left to CEO was all like cloud now go go go to the to the cloud. And there were a lot of us that were just kind of looking at and saying it's like, yeah, you know we're doing a lot of things it's great the technologies, just about they're not quite yet. The reality is that the cost of you can't just lift and shift and move those workloads over. It's certainly not true in the SharePoint world like running that, like what you're doing on prem with SharePoint, moving that in the cloud. It just was not cost effective it was so expensive do that. Now obviously the version of your SharePoint online as part of Microsoft 365 as part of the infrastructure of teams. It's a different beast than 10 years ago we started talking about hybrid. But you mean how is that you know where the areas that organizations are struggling to move to pure cloud kind of what are those common areas where they are remain hybrid. So these applications if I'm honest with you and the identity aspect of it has got much easier with the integration with Azure AD and on premises active directory. So that's allowed a lot of business and you'll find most organizations now haven't have a hybrid identity model. So they have the same object both in cloud and on premises. But I think it's, it's legacy applications that's again all the conversations that I have it's all based on well we've got, we've got XYZ legacy applications that are not supported. And that's, that's where I'm seeing most of it in the application stack really. As far as, you know, the sort of end user compute aspect goes that's that's pretty much there, especially with endpoint manager being able to. And again, there's always people worry about endpoint manager taking over from SCCM and config manager but even that co management is a lot of the conversations I'm having companies don't want to go all into in tune and then point manager and autopilot they want that. They still want that on premises server there but they want to have the best of both worlds why not. Well, that was always the promise I think even from the beginning was move when it makes sense to move I mean obviously Microsoft other vendors and they want to push as hard as they can against that. And that's one of the things that Jared Spitaro so over marketing from Microsoft 365 and had conversations with him at the partner conference back in Houston so like six, seven years ago, seven years ago, eight years ago, I don't know, anyway, a long time ago, time is relevant anymore that's one thing as the benefits like time doesn't matter. I've actually done a bunch, I think three or four all nighters this year. There's a lot of stuff to do. Yeah, it doesn't do much for productivity the next day, but you know got stuff done. No but I had conversations about moving to the cloud and one of the things and this was kind of the thinking with Microsoft was, you know, when do they think that they're going to see the majority of production of production systems, all cloud based meaning no more hybrid no more on prem in cloud and they said oh we think you know in four or five years very quickly. In the next year, the very next year, I met with him again and we talked about that I said do you remember what you said he's like yes I do. And I said do you want to amend any statements is as the data is now showing us and conversations with customers that we're not putting an end date on the transition so which meant they were shifting their messaging away from move to the cloud and now you're a fool if you're not in the cloud to the reality of move when it makes sense for you to move will continue supporting you what you need. And so Microsoft, you know, in saying like again in SharePoint world, there is no end date on SharePoint on prem. They're not talking about it it's not in their plans, I can. I'll give you the inside view people that are watching there is no inside plan to secretly shut down SharePoint server. You're the on prem version of it like doesn't exist. But it's the it's the more embrace of to your point. Bring the tools where they sit what they what you have now will make sure that they all work together. So it should be irrelevant whether you're you've got a line of business application that is a core data source. And as long as you've got the identity authentication issues resolved. It's just pointing to where that data is making sure it has the right level of access for those people. So if you look at if you look at the recent integration with VMware like as your VMware solution. That's another hybrid service really because it supports that on premises ESXi servers as well as your your sort of as your hosted VMware. So again it's just another element of hybrid even though it's integrated with VMware still another hybrid service that they've been lucky you know they're doing. Yeah, hybrid and there so there's those those issues I think that's getting to be a better story. There's still a Clujie story around multi tenant access and the multi cloud access and the. The fact that we are and it's not just MVPs and consultants that are working in this that it's becoming more commonplace for users to be working across multiple clouds and running into a lot of the authentication issues and movement and you know between those those applications that also part of your world. Yeah, I mean again i'm not too versed in the Amazon web services or gcp areas but but again i'm finding that customers that are more agnostic that they they're not really bothered to them Microsoft AWS Google these are all at the same level for them. So they're not they're not too long as it meets all their sort of security requirements, they're not really bothered where it says they just want the best application or the best service that fits their use case. So it might be some services in Amazon it might be you know identity in Microsoft and some applications in good they're not really first I suppose and so yeah not as yeah those conversations are more with bigger enterprises that's what I would say not the smaller types. So it's kind of a conversation I'm hearing. Well, it's it just doesn't exist anymore at least I don't believe you get your opinion but that of a company no matter what the size to say like, we are a Microsoft company and we will only use Microsoft products. Done. Like, you know anybody that says that is not talking with their end users, because their end users are using a lot of different things and there is intellectual property from your company that are on the other clouds that are in those other worlds. Yeah, I've never heard anybody say I wear a Microsoft house or it just to be companies just tend to generally was a 90s early 2000s thing but you know used to hear that all the time. But I think I think most time companies just landing in a with it with a vendor like they just naturally, you know, progressing to a specific vendor I don't think they do it with the thought of, we're only going to use a diverse or they're going to use. Just because it's just naturally gone that way and again it's all dependent on on integration as well as the integrations of a big thing as well having their different services integrate with each other. And I think with again with with with Azure AD being so integrated with with other public identities and other other public sort of vendors. I mean that's helping quite a bit as well. And that was always one of the fears to people say well you make it so easy to to work across those like our customers go and this was something that like analysts and reporters and stuff I remember asking that question is like if you make it so easy. And to move across and they could just as easily move off, move off of your stack. And the reality is that, you know, companies were moving this direction anyway. And if you don't support that ease of use of crossing between, then they're just not going to select you at all. Exactly. Again, the organizations want that flexibility they want that agility they don't want to. If they want to silo they want to silo themselves they don't want a vendor telling them you have to use ours and we're not going to integrate with anyone else don't want they don't want to be told that which is why it's better to have that flexibility. I worked in, you know, in enterprise application space and you're back in the 90s and working with. So I did huge data center consolidation projects and these are months and months long projects to move off of certain pieces of hardware to move out of certain applications. So you're talking about like your business objects, sass, you know, platforms like that. And, you know, one of the very valid questions is we go into it's like, what is your process to get back out of that that system that was part of the decision making process, because in 1996, 1997, we had already been a couple different and been locked into and then those companies, you know, part of the fear was, they're not going to keep up on on the latest technology that these, you know, smaller now in our world now, you know, cloud based solution providers can be very agile very fast in the development of new features and we want to have the flexibility to be able to go and give our that user experience and features that our users need. If we don't provide it as it, they'll just go around us they'll go get it in another way and then it won't be managed by it by the organization we won't have the governance and visibility and do what they're doing. That is one of my one of the things I do like about the sort of Microsoft sort of methodology that they do try and integrate as much as they can with other vendors, even you know, I mean I know there are certain services in Amazon Web Services like their services equivalent of ABD that integrates with Azure AD as well. So I do like the way they are open to integrating with other vendors and other SAS applications. Again, it makes them more flexible for that for that organization that wants to keep an open mind as to their application stack. We are also competing based on the features and the unique IP and not on those common services. So again if you if the it's a given, it's understood that there's no customer out there these days that is in any single camp they're going to be using different solutions, but that you make a case based on price based on functionality based on support and support ability the solution that yours is the best capability and can plug into those other competitors that's, that's just where we are now and and where companies need to be. Again, multi cloud hybrid they're all, they're all there and they're all there based on making the organization the clients lives easier, rather than more difficult given given choice. Don't don't make it so they have to go one or the other, the more choice you give them the more, the more they are to go with, go with your service. Right. Well, let's change the topics here. You're talking about you becoming an MVP. I hear this is a question I hear a lot and as if it can be canned into a single activity but what was it that pushed you over the ledge into becoming a an MVP what do you think made the difference. So, I've never really aimed so I've always looked up to MVPs and when I first started with with community. I was very naive, and I was a bit younger as well and I kind of looked at what I want to be an MVP, and then I actually realized you know what community is not about that it's about sharing giving back helping people. I'm not bothered now the MVP is what it is. If if one day somebody thinks I'm appropriate for it then then great. I suppose the amount that I just started being more more more visible on social media. I do a lot of Twitter stuff and I think that was just being more visible and more more just out there helping people really that that's what got me noticed I would say. Yeah, I like that the MVP award is the icing but you got a lot of cake you can eat along the way. You know there's a lot of benefits that are out there and there's quite a few people that had that attitude where maybe they were. They had kind of a plan to go and become an MVP and they're working and making sure they're checking off, you know boxes of things that they need to do. And they finally just kind of gave up and said you know doesn't really matter. And you know because I'm doing these things because I enjoy it I like giving back, I'm just going to participate if it happens it happens, and then shortly thereafter, you know they got the recognition so. I think it's the best attitude to it's the most stress free attitude to have it and it's because of that I've been able to enjoy the content that I do. I've been able to enjoy having those conversations on social media being able to enjoy doing user groups. I'll be honest in a sort of twisted way that the pandemic has massively helped me because virtual events have been the main thing over the last 18 months. I've been able to present an American user group, a user group within Europe, all from sitting where I'm, I wouldn't have necessarily had that opportunity. And because I've been able to do that it's gotten me better well known within the wider community within the global community. So that's helped me quite a bit. And the thing is it's a passion of mine it's, I made it into a passion and because it's become that passion in the content that I do you can see that I'm enjoying it. And it's, it's, it's, like I said there's nothing, I probably think just being more vocal and being more helping people more really got me noticed I would say. So what are what are kind of your, your, your primary community activities like how what do you what do you do what are your primary contributions. So I, I've got a YouTube channel. So my moniker is I am it geek. So you can find me on YouTube, YouTube.com slash I am it geek where, again, I just do I do sort of series of videos. So I've done a series on identity I did a series on as your virtual desktop, like a zero to hero with it with a colleague with a friend of mine Simon Lee. And I just do just do videos if I have an idea. I'll blog about it and do a little video demo. Again, I have a blog again, I am it HTTPS I am it geek.com. Again, just blogging about, I tend to blog more on there about when I do certifications I'll blog about my experience the resources I used and what the exam was like without giving away everything obviously just helping people who with resources I used. So the thing about the things I enjoy the most is presenting. It's, it's something that I was always nervous about but then again, through the pandemic I got through it virtually and, and I've hopefully got a few in person gigs coming up as well. So those are my three main sources of, of helping the community that I tend to do user groups are presenting blogs in a video. So I agree with you I mean it's just as far as opportunities for people that are not MVPs that would hear all the time can I was participated in an all over the world presenting at SharePoint Saturday events these different in person community driven events, as well as bigger conferences and the struggle with those as an organizer of those kinds of events is always finding new people and people like well I don't want to go and do that it's like look you're going to be in front of 20 to 30 people. So I'm presenting nobody's expecting you to be perfect and gifted up there just, you know be prepared, have a good topic and and tried out but how difficult it was to find people. So that from the comfort of your own home office, joining and presenting that way is a good, you know, toe in the water for people and introduction into that. And there are just so many different opportunities. So I'm on the board for the, for the, we call it the Microsoft user group Utah or mug it just hashtag. And it was available for some reason as a site and tag, but that we're we still struggle to find speakers. And so we just recently did a call for speaker we're like anybody in the world. It's all virtual. You don't have to be here. One of the things that I started a user group as well again during the pandemic was all virtual and the two friends of mine were also I'm from a place called Bradford it's a little city within and off the UK. And to my friends who, again I got to know through Twitter and the cloud community. We just started a Bradford cloud user group. And I think because we're fairly new, I said say less than a year. We've not had an issue with getting speakers and because it's virtual. The problem we've had is engaging people and getting people to actually join the user group because what I found is people starting to get virtual. Yes, virtual fatigue is the right phrase, even I'm getting it. Do you know what I mean. It must be the most difficult thing from a user group as organizers with perspective I think what makes me think now is virtual fatigue. Real. Is it. It's not phantom fatigue. It's a real thing. And play on words for the word virtual. I'm virtually fatigued. Yeah, so, but yeah, I mean it's easy to get burnout and and no matter how good a job you try to do in that engagement side in conversations and an email and other things like I wish there I think one thing that's kind of died off that I've seen are the kind of open our just no topic dial in and just chat with people when the pandemic first started like I loved that. Yeah, so I used to I so I started dropping in. I had friends down in South Africa I participated some there over on the East Coast in the US in Australia where I just dropped in and be like yeah we got a guest from, you know from the the western US like hey and, and so that that was great I'd love to see more like that but yeah, I am so ready to get back to in person. I know we're looking to organize an in person user group hopefully in October. And there's like today I don't know if you saw on Twitter there's comms versus happening. Yeah, oh that's right. Yeah. And I just look at the people who are just all the photos it was so much fun in person. Happy. I wonder what the numbers are like that's that's the thing. So I did sold out. Well that's fantastic. Like we I know we had our my first event was like three weeks ago four weeks ago, and flew to the Midwest it's a smaller event, but the North American club summit, but it was great to see people that interaction even the small numbers mean got so much value out of doing that. I think there's another one coming up in time presenting at the South Coast Summit in October that's in Southampton in the UK. So I know people who are coming from abroad, people from Europe are coming to that as well. And so that's like a Microsoft 365 free that's a free event as well. I'm really looking forward that'll be my first in person conference since the pandemic so massively looking forward to that we're we've started to talk about we did for almost a decade we did our. We rebrand it from SharePoint Saturday to Microsoft 365 Friday so we moved it to Fridays and then expanded the content within it. And when we did that we moved it there's a cultural difference here in Utah with the you know the rest of the world where, but you know where we doubled our numbers by moving into Friday so we're sticking with that, but where we didn't do it this year. And so our last one was in February of 2020. Right. Before pandemic. And so we're now looking at February, March, you know, whether we're going to do our next in person where we're going to try again and whether people will still show up to make it worthwhile to for the cost and time and effort and pull that together. I think there will. And again it's we will go back to that virtual fatigue I think people want in person events now. I agree. I, I do. Yeah, same. Well she was really appreciate your time and meaning today getting to know you hopefully we'll see each other at the next MVP summit, which maybe, maybe next year. It'll it'll happen, but in the meantime people want to find out more about you where do they find you out on social. Yeah, so I'm a Twitter handle at Shavas da and you can hit me up on them. I'm very approachable obviously on LinkedIn as well.  We'll have all the links out on the blog post of course out on the buck the planet.com. And so for that, Shavas really think, thank you for your time and we'll connect with you soon. Thank you.