So, how many of you are familiar with Brother Man? How many of you aren't familiar with Brother Man? Wow, so you will be spending your money today because this is probably one of the most important comics in the entire quote-unquote, we need diverse comics movement. So first off, I really wanna introduce a brother, I do, Dawoud Nyabwile, the Emmy award-winning Dawoud Abwile, the artist of Brother Man. You wanna come out, bro? And brother, I think, brother Brian McGee, you hear? Come on out, colorist. Yeah, come on out. You are not the father. So, first off, I wanna thank you for being the artistic face of VCAF 2016. I mean, everything you've seen, all of the posters, all of the, any of the POP, everything on the internet, that's those brothers right there, so that's their work. And so thank you for doing that, it's absolutely amazing. I appreciate that. So, I don't know if you saw the hands that were raised or not, but there's quite a few people in here who aren't familiar with Brother Man. So if you have to give the Brother Man origin story, what would it be? Okay, well, the Brother Man was first introduced on the market in 1990. So the book's actually been around for 25 years. For those who may not know about it, the actual premise of the story is, it's about a lawyer named Antonio Valar, who is pretty much, it started on that whole concept of, the superhero concept, he has this occupation by day, crime fighter by night. And when we came out with this in 89, my brother's nine, we had the idea of, okay, this guy doesn't have any superpowers. But he's determined to make a change within his city, which we call Big City, because the whole thing was this was gonna be a metaphor. It's really all metaphoric. It wasn't really us trying to do like a Black Batman, Superman, that wasn't in our psyche. It was really telling a story about who we are, ourselves through this medium of comics. So the story actually evolved over the years and it's actually a lot more refined where the city is kind of like a character within itself. Each of the characters all represent different types of attributes, different types of people that you may know. And but the main premise I would say is consciousness versus apathy, because since he doesn't have superpowers, he can't do it all himself. But when you think of like Superman, Superman, that's who you call on. He can fix problems on the East Coast and five minutes later, fix problems on the West Coast. You know what I mean? Brother Man, he's not that character that can do that. His powers are innate. It's like we all have these powers within ourselves, but who actually taps into it to help their community. So, and also Brother Man is some, you look at the Brother Man attributes as something where anybody can possess, but everybody won't take on this opportunity. So when you think of Spider-Man, Peter Parker owns Spider-Man, Clark Kent owns Superman. Thor, Iron Man, you've just run it down. Each, I can't be Iron Man, I can't be Spider-Man, but Brother Man is that character that Antonio Valet, who is Brother Man, he, it's like he doesn't own the title. He just proclaimed the ideas of what Brother Man personified. And he wanted to make this hero icon. So he stepped into the real world to combat crime. However, he knows he can die. So how many people you're on the sub and something goes down? How many people actually stand up and do something? Sometimes you can't blame them. I got kids at home. I don't know if I can get involved in this, but you have some people that say, no, this is not right. I'm gonna get up and do something. I could die, but this has to happen. So that's really what the story metaphorically represents. But anybody who reads the comic book, they'll probably say it's hard to explain because there's so many levels to it than that, that that's just kind of the underlying theme. So I remember when it first came out and it's legendary how you first came out. I mean, you did it at the Black Expo. It was almost like a mixtape. And so why that route, as opposed to traditional diamond distributor or direct to market? So why would that route, as opposed to any other routes? Well, it was actually birthed out of the Black Expo. The Black Expo USA started in 1989. And one of my brother Jason and I had a custom airbrush shop in East Orange, New Jersey. So we were right across the river from Manhattan. So after going to the Expo in 89, we said, hey, nobody has a comic book. So let's do that. Prior to that, I was airbrushing. All throughout the 80s, I had a rep and Philly for airbrushing shirts. That's my hometown. So I had the airbrush shop in East Orange, but we wanted to do something different because with the airbrushing, you gotta do like $25 shirt, $30 a shirt, but you gotta do all these custom shirts. With a comic book, okay, I put all my effort into one book, sell for $2. So that way I did all the work. You just mass marketing. It had nothing to do with Marvel. It had nothing to do with DC. It just had to do with commerce. Let's make a product that can make money fast and sell it to our people. And that's what the Black Expo did. It provided the atmosphere where you got thousands of your people looking for product. So we said, oh, we gotta be here in 90. And let's make this comic book. So we made the comic book and we did a print run of 10,000 books. So our mathematics was, hmm, if we get more than 10,000 people here, all we need is 10,000 to buy one comic and we'll go home with $20,000. So the first Expo, we didn't sell out, but we sold a lot of books. That sparked us doing the next show. Before the end of the year, we had 40,000 books by the end of the year. We were up to working on the third book, but we were reprinting the first and second book. And that's when the media press jumped on like Arsenio Hall, America's Most Wanted, John Walsh, they did a big story on it. And actually that's historical because it was America's Most Wanted only story, basically where we're not the criminals. You know what I mean? So I can proudly say that. So there was so much of a snowball of media and people were asking us, how are y'all selling all these books? Because by the first, but the second year, I think we had 150,000. Then we had 350,000, then we had 500,000. And by 1994, we had 750,000 books. So we were closing on a million. So during that time, my mother died. My mother died right when issue number 10 came out. The day 10 came out, my mother died. So, and we were at the Black Expo, New York, at the Javits Center on the first day. So we lost all sales that weekend and the New York was like the biggest show. So everything kind of like stopped. Brother Man never fell off. It stopped in demand. So the following year I worked on number 11, then my dad died. So when he died, it was like number 11 sat in a box for a year. And then I used money from a job that I got when I started working in New York doing like game animation. So I just saved my money, put out number 11 for big city comics as an entity stopped. But I always thought I would bring it back. And here it is now. We have the Brother Man, Brother Man Revelation. If anybody reads the original series in 94, no, 96, when my father died, this is the compilation. We have these available. These are compilation of the original series from 19 years ago. And on the last page, that's yours. The last page, it said next issue, Revelation. So we think it's gonna come out like next year. You know, two years ago, okay, I'll get out next year. And it's like, next year, no, it's 2005, 2010. And then I met this brother, Brian, when I was working a cartoon network in Atlanta. And then he said, well, he has a story to tell his own, but it was really a spiritual journey that led to Revelation. And this is the first full color Brother Man book. It's 108 pages. This is like, we were proud to say, man, we can't come back with a black and white page after 20 years. We gotta give him full color, like a masterpiece. You know what I mean? And we literally, literally last year, I got laid off from my job, turning studios. I was doing like storyboarding, all types of stuff for like Cartoon Network, TNT, TNT sports, prior to that I was working on the show Wild Thornberries and Rugrats when I was in LA. So basically after Brother Man, I started working on my own, you know, just working in studios, experience I never had. Cause I was really more like a street artist when I was coming up in Philly. And then I met this brother here. So this is really like a combination of us now gaining our studio experience. Cause Brian, he'll tell you about his background of Disney and all these places. And it's like, we always understood working at those studios, the purpose wasn't necessarily to just uphold what they're doing, it's kind of like to get that knowledge. You know, so then our kids can have things that look like them, but it stands up, the quality stands up to everything else that they're looking at. Or better. Or better, you know what I'm saying? So that's the gist of it. So Brother Brian, I mean, cause you look at that and it pops. I mean, there's a vibrancy in a life to that book. I mean, there's color combinations I've never seen. And I've, you know, been collecting comics for 40 years.  What were you thinking about? Like what did you want to bring to that particular book that you didn't see maybe before? Cause you're kind of new to it. Cause like shout out to Guy, who's back East, who brother couldn't come out. They were in New York yesterday. And they came out here today. So shout out to brother Guy Sims. But what was it that you wanted to bring and fuse in that book?  So I'm kind of curious like, what was your palette for that? I mean, I didn't, I didn't start out as a colorist. I was, I was into comic books. And I was into storyboarding film and music videos. And I was the penciler. I was one of, when I worked at Disney, I just was a pencil guy. But I had this curiosity about color that I wanted to kind of push myself towards. And there's a lot of adversity with that. But anyway, I studied color theory. I studied classical art. And all the things that I saw and I learned from the studio experience, I wanted to take and transform it within and then push it into something like a project like Brother Man. I love comic books, but I never really wanted to be a comic book artist until I saw Brother Man. That was in 93. And it was like an aha moment. Like this is what's, where it's at for me.  If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it something like that. When I approached I would, we first met in 2004. After my relocation from Los Angeles, I went from New York to LA to Atlanta, where I am now. We met in 2004. And I explained to him that over my travels, I had many conversations with people who asked and wondered about whatever happened to Brother Man, Brother Man comics. And I didn't know at the time, I didn't know Dawood at the time. But when I got the heads up that I was gonna be traveling to and living in Atlanta, a friend of mine who lives in New Jersey told me, you know that guy that comic book that you like, he lives there.  And I'm gonna approach him and ask if I could team up with him to bring back Brother Man. Which wasn't a difficult thing at all. It just took time. And I thought this is, there was a spiritual component to the book that ensured that it would be back. To me, there was just never any doubt in my mind that it was going to come to fruition. And when it did, and I explained to him, there's a spiritual current behind it. And that when that wave breaks, we have to be riding it on surfboards, just like hanging ten. And this is it. You're all witnessing that event. But to answer your question, I wanted to bring a new dynamic to the book without hampering what it was that the fans loved about the original books. So basically I wanted to put my stamp on it, but stay out of the way at the same time. That was weird, because it was a, I mean the original Brother Man is a family affair. Right, yeah. And then I'm just curious, how was it for you kind of stepping into, you know, a family business, and then you accepting someone outside of the family into that same business? Is that for him or me? Either one because you're both traveling different directions. But you can answer that first and I'll take a stop. Well, yeah, that's a good one, because like somebody asked me, I think somebody said, this is very personal to you. I say, yeah, man, this came out, I mean, this is my life, man. You know, this came out of like, dating back to third grade, you know what I mean? Like my father, when my father was an activist going up in Philly, and he, I just remember how our basement, you know, we had like, our basement was like the black history library.  But you know, but my dad was, he wrote a lot of material on the black family.  Always acknowledge your ancestors and everything you do. Always, I understood that since I was a little kid, but I didn't really understand it. You know, you hear it, but you don't really get it. So basically, when I went through that whole experience of my father, like, hipping me to the images and the comics when I was younger, and I burned my collection when I hit seventh grade, when I realized like, I was saving all my lunch money for images that are self-destructive. I was like, wait, I'm starving myself for this. I threw them in the fire. And my dad was like, I didn't tell you to do that, but he just emphasized, it's your decision. But to me, I said, these books, in my mind, they didn't need to even exist. Like, I could have gave them to my neighbor, but I was like, no, they don't even need to exist. That's how I felt. So I burned them. That means a lot to me when I say somebody comes on board, if they're coming aboard a big city entertainment, big city entertainment is not like some old whatever. I said, this is the re-evolution of my people. You see what I'm saying? Through the form of entertainment. I said, when you look around, everything's about self-destruction, especially when it deals with black people. Everything's about the whole debased worst part of our self is projected around the world for everybody to dance to, laugh to, party to. So it's like, well, where's the companies like Pixar DreamWorks, that are of the highest caliber, but it's for kids like me. Kids around the world will love it too, but it is thrusted on the stars. The kids that are going all around, they're traveling different planets. They're doing all kinds of crazy stuff. Not crazy, crazy, but the incredible, the fantastic, but they look like me. What company is doing it? That's what big city entertainment is. Big city is us. It's like, big, it's thinking beyond the norm. So when I met Brian, I remember, I saw his work when we were turning, and I was like, oh man, I got to work with that brother. But you know how you're thinking it, but you don't know that he's thinking the same thing? So then when we connected, like one day we sit down, we kind of just bumped into each other. It's not like anybody introduced us. And then once we realized we wanted to connect, it's like the floodgates open. And with us, it wasn't just about, and see the thing, the cool thing about Brian, we don't just talk about, we don't talk about comic books. Hey, did you get the latest issue of, hey, you get the latest issue of Hulk, man. Now I'm putting it down. I'm just saying we don't talk about that. We talk about the plight of our people. We talk about the content in the context of productions that are made. How we represent it in there. Then we talk about technique, studying technique, being excellence. We talk about our birthright. We talk about who are we as a people. We talk about our ancestors. All of that is what is in here through the form of entertainment and fun. And that's why to me, I can't just bring anybody in just because they're dope, they're a dope artist, but their mind is not, their mind is not, it's detrimental. It's detrimental if somebody's good, but they don't understand your mission. You see what I'm saying? So as we started, that's why Brian said it took years because it wasn't like, hey, just come on in and we'll just work on the next book. This book evolved, it was eight years. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it was an eight year process, but you know. Like David said, we've met extremely talented people that wanted to apply their talents to what we're doing, but it's not just talent. It's understanding the mythos, the history of big city, the type of thinking that we've created. We've created a sort of a micro culture in this book. So when you open the pages, it's a real place. It's like your mind is transported to a different place, different world, but it's not. One of the things about this book is that it's a fantasy, but you'll be able to see yourself in it. You're not gonna see any characters wearing Jordans. You'll see characters wearing something else that's similar to what they, you know, familiar to them, but it's very specific. The style of the drawings, the style of the homes, the, I mean, they're all, they're all, they all reflect some part of our reality, but they're not our reality. A lot of people will ask questions like, well, like what was that? The costume you're saying? Just anything that has to do with what they already think they understand about it. A lot of people just look at the cover and they assume so many things about it, but no, it's not that. You gotta read it. You gotta look into it. You gotta find out what it's all about. It's very easy to talk to someone and understand where their mind is as far as if they understand it. I think that might be part of it. Also, yeah, because when you look at pop culture, pop culture tells us who we are. Pop culture tells us how other people should see us. So then when this comes along, brother man, oh, isn't that like, you know, and you just name something out there? You know, it's just kind of like some nonsense, whatever there, because we've come up in so much of that people can't process or, or what do you call it? They wouldn't imagine it to be something else. And I tell people, I said, man, this is kind of borderline science fiction.  I said, nope. I said, I mean, it could fall into that category if you want, if you want to, you know, it falls in the category of hip hop. It falls in the category of, I put it like this, when Brother Man came out, it was one of the few books, well, actually it was the first book that could sit on the shelf next to Superman and was also in the black bookstore next to autobiography of Malcolm X. Barbershop. Exactly, it was in the barbershop. It was written up in Source Magazine, Vibe Magazine, but it was also in parenting. And USA Today. You see what I mean?  After that, we're in the suburbs. I don't even see a black face, line going out the door. Because what we, even what we talk about now, it's about excellence. When you have excellence, it transcends, it transcends color barrier. It takes people, like we're taking people to another world. We're pulling them into this universe, this microcosm. So that's the thing about it is that, cause you know, when you look at like a lot of other productions and things of that nature, I may not see myself in it, but I appreciate it because it's done so well. And the characters I can identify with because they represent heroism. So that's what we're doing in here. We said, well, let's create this character who will inspire others. I think also like popular culture, I've always assumed, you know, I just kind of thought that popular culture was the B side of religion, right? Because it really, you know, all of the dogma without the, you know, the inquisitions, right? But the thing is though, but there's a default mechanism in popular culture and religion where the default is white.  There's a lot of rich white guys in superheroism. But that's the default, right? You read Science Fishing, people are quoting Asimov and everything, but they're not seeing that.  So the thing is like, how do we, I know Brother John Jennings, Marjorie Luke, key child couple folks on a panel a couple days ago about, you know, hashtag was redefined the default, right? So how do we do that with our students? Because like you have like, you know, say you have, you have an anime manga culture that's worldwide. People are learning Japanese, they're learning how to sew, just to be a part of that culture. So my question is, where's like the African diaspora, quote unquote, manga, anime? Like where's our default in that, or is it like, because we had milestone, a lot of things were coming up, but then milestone went away, and then, you know, you guys came up, but y'all made us hold our breath for 20-some-odd years, and now we can breathe again. Yeah, I'm not saying you can breathe now, brother. You can breathe. But I mean like question is like, so how do we become, how do we institute that default? Or is it even a worthy goal to do that? No, no, you can, you can redefine it, and that's what we're working on. That's why I say, I tell people, what I do is not about me. I said, this is about a movement. This is about that redefinition of what you're saying. You're welcome.  Oh man, look, yo, look what I can draw. You know, oh man, I'll blow that out. You know what I'm saying? Everything's about blowing somebody out. You know what I'm saying? Now on a personal level of excellence, that's good because you're building up yourself esteem. But in terms of, well, what's the bigger picture? All right, you're making these dope paintings and stuff. What's that doing for those babies coming up? What are you building for the next generation? And those babies, when you get past, all right, you're dope, but how does this benefit my child? How does this benefit them? We see them, our kids getting shot on the streets and all this stuff. And if they're not getting shot by their own, they're getting shot by others because of how the people sees them and how they have a lack of security. You see what I'm saying? So as the artists, we need to go back to how the ancients, the art and the scribes, like my brother Guy said, he's the writer of Brother Man. And he told me a long time ago, he said he don't remember saying that. I said, yo, you said this, man. He said, yo, man, I'm the writer. I'm like the scribe. And he said, you're the artist, man. You don't want to chisel us on the walls. He says, so I'm the eyes of God. You're the mouth of God. I mean, I'm the mouth of God. You're the eyes of God. And I always remembered that.   And that's what the significance of the arts. Yeah, yeah, I was like, cosine. Did you get that? No, because up here, you don't see it. All of a sudden, like this little like one single crystal and it's all up here. And I had like, give it to you guys and buy us aura real quick. Sorry about that. I was gonna mention that we also make music. And a lot of the music that we make is influenced and inspired by our ideas of the story. I've had friends, you know, cousin family members or rappers that want to put something down on it and they'll write some lyrics like, brother man in your hood, no. Because he's not in your hood. He's in your mind. He's in your heart. He's not clapping guns. They don't clap guns in big city. They don't do that. And I mean, it's not. The whole point is to break away from the paradigm and create a new one. Don't drag that stuff into here. I think one thing, especially at the time when it happened because this came out quote unquote in the golden age of hip hop. It came out at the same time where there was a diversity of black experience. And so when it came out, it fit into that. It was, you could be, you could go high row native tongues and appreciate that. You could go in WA, appreciate that. But there's a continuum. I think I'm seeing that. I'm seeing it kind of come back now with how we're approaching art. There's a continuum that started back in those, 89, 99, 192, let's say 96. So now, and so how do you place brothermen in that continuum? Like not just in comics, but in the scope of black popular culture that's coming at the time. Oh, how would I place it in the, you're saying in the... Like that black artistic continuum, like say that from like 89 to 96 when we had a lot of stuff on TV. We had a lot of stuff, multiple magazines, British magazines, something from the Jamaica coming out.  It's not as so narrow as it is now, right? So how would you place brothermen in that? Well, that's just it. I don't really place it anywhere. It's like, it's like it is. You know what I mean? It is what it is. And think about like, everybody in here has an individual self. We can say, how do I fit into the, how do I fit into this world? How do I fit into 2016?  You're here. You know, like what category am I in?   And I think a lot of times we create things with the intent of, as opposed to let your creativity drive itself, I'm trying to make something that'll fit on this shelf. I'm trying to make something, well everybody's got iPhones now. So I think brothermen should have an iPhone. But it wasn't even about that. In what book did brothermen have an iPhone? You see what I'm saying? So I don't think about current events. I think now one thing I'll just say is brotherman is, if I was to describe it, I'd say it's the confluence or the fusion of classic soul fantasy family, community, ancestral energy. What else would you say? Because people say, I remember somebody say, brotherman is funny. It was never a funny book to us. It was never like, you know, we were young when we first, I mean I was 24 at the time. I'm 50 now. So that's a 25 year gap. So at the time we first came out, it had to evolve. But it was never a comedy. It was like the humor was really in the way that people actually are, but we wanted to put them into this realm. So I think of big city like a microcosm. Like when people say, where is big city? Where is brotherman? It has its own map. It has its own universe. They have their own currency. But think of it as. So the map is on the interior. Yeah, we have a map of the book. And it goes to the back as well. Yeah, it's a subway map. And these are all parts of the city that. Show them the currency. They refer to stories in the original. Yeah, and they have their own money too. So right there. There we go. All that. Yeah. And each of the people on the money has a back story. Right, it's an astonishing feat of world building. I mean, absolutely incredible world building. Because every story will be able to rent a route off into another section. And that world building, like I'm saying, it's not like, it's not modeled after, you know, I saw a Lord of the Rings. Let me go black, Lord of the Rings. You know what I mean? Because what you're doing is, you're not creating from the Asili, which is the sea, your core. You're creating from, like cultures, the purpose of culture is to project. You're supposed to practice a certain way and you project it to the world. And then what we do is we receive. So anime comes out. And I'm impacted, I'm affected by it. But I'm not supposed to be absorbed by it while I lose myself. I'm supposed to look into my culture, my history, and project it out the same way that Japan projects theirs, their culture. I should be projecting my ancestral energy and my stories and my people of the same quality and caliber. And see, and what makes that when you talk about people working together globally, to work globally together is to appreciate what each culture has to offer. It's not that, well, how come I'm not in, all the age in movies I used to watch coming up? I wasn't worried about not having my image. We all wanted to be Bruce Lee. He didn't look like me, but he had the attributes of a hero. So you do the same thing. So if Antonio Valla has the attribute of the hero, there's gonna be people of all nationalities who wanna be like him because of what he personifies. You see what I'm saying? So that's why I said there's so many levels to this in the opening because I really can't put that in once. I'm working on it. But you know. No, I appreciate it. First of all, I wanna thank you both for your time. This has been enlightening and amazing. Please support the book. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. What I wanna do now is open it up for questions. So those of you who have questions, please pass your questions to your left. And we'll collect them and we'll answer the questions. If you have questions, actually, did you write one down? So we've written one down, pass them to your left. Thank you. Appreciate that. So this one question comes out from initials DH. What about the times we are living in that compelled you to bring back big city and also how long until the next installment? The time was self, how do I say it? The time wasn't planned. The time just was. I mean, if it was really up to me, the book would have been out, what, 18 years ago. But I didn't, like I said, this has been a spiritual journey. If I really ran down all the things that happened within the time of that book coming out, the death in the family of my parents. And actually when I met Brian in like 2009, when we first relaunched the Brother Man book and we came out with the tray of paperback, you know, that's the collected books. And me and Brian first started on the graphic novel. We thought it was gonna come out in 2010. So we started the Brother Man art exhibitions where I put the original artwork on display. So there've been six shows so far. And it was unique because it was like the first black, like solo black superhero art show that had the original artwork. I mean, it was, it went over really well from Atlanta, we did one in Harlem, one at Virginia Tech. And the thing is, right during that time when we were working on the book, then my brother died, my oldest brother died. And I was saying like my last conversation with my brother, I wanted to tell him what was gonna happen in Revelation because at the time, you know, because Revelation, this is just the first part of a three-part trilogy telling his origin. So it's really epic, like a cinematic film. And my brother said on the phone, he said, man, don't tell me what happens. He said, make it. And I was like, Mike, it's like 300 pages. He said, make it. And then he died like about a week or so later. And so for me, I was, sorry about that, y'all. No, don't be sorry, don't have your moment, brother. I'm sorry. Because he's here, Michael's here. When we finished this book, it meant more to me than a comic book. It was my life and the life of our children. So, I'm good, y'all. I'm good, man. This is real, man. That's what I'm feeling. I mean, I think it kind of leads into, I'm sorry to you. No, it's deep because it's all connected to the family. This question here is, how does the lack of black characters in most superhero comics affect self-esteem for young African-Americans? And do Africans-African-Americans need different comics? The fact that we call it ourselves African-Americans is part of the, I mean, I know I hear some reactions already, like we don't really have our own culture. We're basically recreating our culture from the loss of so much. We're still rebuilding. And part of that is seeing ourselves in a positive light. And rather than waiting for other people to show us who we are, we feel that we need to take the reins and do it ourselves. I love black comics. I love the fact that there's so many young and talented people who are creating in this new genre. I would like to see more people creating it within their own paradigm rather than taking what exists and just putting a black face on it. Aw. My whole heart just stopped. I don't know what happened. Can you hear me back there? Okay. Yeah, so I mean, I think it's critical. I think if you don't see yourself in the imagery, you don't see yourself in films and representing who you are, the way you are, then that does something to your psychology. We're coming up on our last little bit, so this will be the last question because we're at 201 right now. We'll make sure to have time for the panel to set up. So the question I wanna ask is, we'll go through this one. What is your process for world building? Easy question for last.  You know, artists really should be held up much higher than they are, you know. People should celebrate artists. If you're dating an artist, you gotta give them extra love. You know what I'm saying? Extra space. Yeah, you gotta just, you gotta cultivate them. Think of it, it's like, come on, you got a flower bed, right? And you're not watering it. Right, there you go. And you're wondering why you don't have any flowers. We'll talk. You see what I'm saying? Yes, sir. So that's what the artist is, the artist is that flower that you're not watering. But if you water it, then you get this garden. And what's the garden do? It provides life, sustenance. Oxygen. Oxygen. Right, so that, because artists, the thing is when you think about a lot of people who complain about what's going on, what's the problem, oh man, they always see us. Every time I walk in the store, I got a hoodie on. And they always talk about me, because how I look. And I said, you know why? It's because of how, I mean, it's very complex. But part of it is because of how media has created that look of the brother with the hoodie on. Powerful. But if you see the brother with the hoodie, where he's like, like I said, like a Bruce Lee character. If you have a character who represents all those things, but the world sees him as greatness, it would redefine seeing a brother on the street. You'd want to be, I want to be down with you when you see him. So all that comes from image. It all starts with image, it all starts with how we project ourselves. Because if we look at the images in the media of young black men and women, we don't see families. We don't see loving of families. Or that's considered what, weak? If you're loving, or if a brother likes a girl, oh man, you soft, man. You see what I'm saying? Where did that come from? When did we become like robots and machines that we don't love? You see what I'm saying? So that has to be projected in the music. It has to be projected in the art. And that shifts the world. That's paradigm shifting. So the kids, they come up repeating that which they absorb. So if you're sitting in the car and you blast and all the stuff that's talk about take, take this blankety blank out.  They're talking about take out somebody who looks like me. That's teaching that young mind, hmm, when I see somebody look like me, I'm taking them out. You see what I mean? So that that's right, it's conditioning and art can redefine that condition. So thank you both, Brother Dawood. Ryan. Ryan. Oh, first, I mean, you're launching, right?  Please support and thank you all for coming out. We'll have about a 10 minute break. Please go into the exhibit room and thank you for all for showing up. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.  See if Nate can get a good name. Nate.


G'day. How are you going? Welcome to Bootlossophy. If you haven't been here before, my name is Tech and I'm coming to you from Wajik Country, Nungabuja in Western Australia. Now, today I'm going to do an unboxing and an initial impressions review of a pair of Helm Zind boots. So this is the box that the Helm boots come in. It's a very plain sort of dark grey box. It came in a bigger shipping box of course and it says clearly this is a pair of Helm so we know what it is. Inside the box what comes with it is a spare pair of laces, a boot bag and on the boot bag is printed this is a pair of Helm just in case you didn't know. Lots of paper wrapping and nicely protected on the inside are the Helm Zind boots. They're nicely packaged I must say both of them. Just put that to one side and inside each boot they're stuffed with paper just to protect the shape I guess during delivery. So we'll take a look at these boots in greater detail. So out of the box let's take a look at these Zind boots in some detail. It's obviously a kind of service boot, dress boot type pattern quite simple I think in its design. Just a quarter panel here, quarter panel there and the vamp. This stitching here actually stitches the inside heel cover, heel counter cover so that's not a panel that's just a stitching on the quarter panel and then there's a single strip backstay with a pull loop. The leather, the immediate feel of the leather feels really good. You can see that, oh I hope you can see in this camera that it's a it's foregrain you can see all the pores and hair holes and things. I think it's ever so slightly corrected because I can't see particular scars and things so it's just been nicely dressed. Really nice. It feels good underhand, it feels soft. It's not pull-up, it doesn't feel waxy like chrome excel but definitely soft. The stitching on the uppers including this little box stitch here is very nicely done, very neat. Double stitch there, double stitch there, single stitch up the backstay, little box stitch there, single stitch along the collar and there is a little, I don't know if the camera can pick this up but there is a little pattern there which I think is deliberate. I don't think it's wheeling anything because it seems to go through. It's fully lined and the tongue is fully lined as well. The tongue is semi-gusted up to, what is it, 1, 2, 3, sort of somewhere around the fourth, between the third and the fourth eyelet so it's up to there so I think you can splash for a puddle and you'll be fine up to there and it's also really good in stopping the tongue from slipping from side to side which often happens with me.  It's a very slim last. It looks sleek from the side. It looks very sleek from the top, the almond shaped toe. It's a very narrow last so it looks sleek shall I say. Let's see if it's narrow when I put them on my feet. I'm a little concerned because my feet doesn't like these sort of sharply turned in toes but we'll see. It feels solid. There's a solid, I'm guessing, it wouldn't be leather at this price. I'm guessing there's a celastic sort of counter in there. The toe is structured. I'm guessing again celastic. Nicely put together. What would you say these are brass or slightly darkened chrome? The chrome on the inside, they have washers so that stops you scratching your tongue over time. So that's always a good touch. Always a good touch. I like that. Fully lined I think I've said. Fully lined in the vamp as well, yes. So vamping up the shaft. If you go down to the sole construction, it's a Blake rapid stitch construction which I'll talk about in a minute. But if you look at the layers in the sole and this is a really interesting thing that I'll talk about in a minute as well. If you look at the layers in the sole, there is a leather, I believe that's a welt, which is interesting for a Blake rapid stitch shoe using a welt. Then there is a rubber midsole and that's the famous white line that you see in all helm boots. It's kind of a signatureity. Some people don't like it. I do. It makes it quite iconic. It has a leather sole which you can see running full slip leather sole all the way to the heel and then the heel is built up with one, two I think possibly three stacks of leather. I'm assuming this is real leather. Then there's that rubber insert for the grip here and then a leather top lift. If you turn your attention to the sole, this is very interesting. Most leather shoes, you have to put on a sort of sole protector. But this has one built in so you can see the leather sole and you can see it goes all the way through. They cut a little insert out to put this patch of leather on which I really like. It means it gives you the grip while giving you also the flexibility and breathability of a leather sole. Leather heel top lift you can see is nailed in with some brass tacks. It's a Blake rapid stitch so let me talk about that. It's a Blake rapid stitch but from what I can see it includes a welt. Now normally a Blake rapid stitch means you have your uppers that are turned in. The inside of the uppers are sewn directly to the midsole and then the outside of the midsole is sewn through to the outsole. That's the normal Blake rapid stitch and what that means is similar to Goodyear welting you don't have this outside stitch going inside the boot like a Blake stitch construction boot is where this is sewn directly through everything into the inside of the uppers. In this case there's a welt involved so I think what they do is they turn the uppers in they sew the uppers to the welt and the midsole and then they run a stitch all the way through the sole. It looks like 360 degrees no it looks probably 270 degrees up to there and that stitch goes through the outside of the welt so it doesn't interfere with the uppers at all. Blake rapid stitch is apparently just as recraftable and re-sollable as Goodyear welt. There's a lot of snobbery about Goodyear welt at shoes but Blake rapid stitch as far as I'm aware you can change the outsole once that wears off shouldn't be a problem. So really I mean I'm quite impressed that's a really well put together boot for US $295. So let's talk a bit about Helm before I put these on feet. Helm is quite a newish company starting in 2009. They first made their boots in Turkey then moved production to the US and now the range of boots are made in the US and in Brazil. Helm is based in Austin, Texas and have the flagship brick and mortar store in Austin. Other than this flagship store and about a half a dozen stockists across the US you can check their website where they are. Their main sales model is through their website. I'll leave a link below to the website. I've reviewed their Johnson boot before a model they sadly no longer make but currently they have eight different models from service boots to work boots and dress boots and chuckers and each model has four or five different letters available sourced from Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Helm stated goals to create a boot that's versatile, timeless and functional and able to be worn in the workshop or boardroom. I'd say in the ZIN the goal is achieved although maybe more boredom than workshop but anyway time to get these on foot and see how they fit and feel. So this is proof of concept let's see how they fit. The toe looks quite narrow so I'm interested in oh hello that slipped in quite nicely it's a fully lined boot so I'm not even sure I need the pull loop no slips in really nicely. What was I saying oh yes the slimness of the toe made me a little worried but my feet slipped in very easily and you know I don't feel any pressure there at all. I wear a US 8.5D in my true to size boots that's what my Brannock measurement is 8.5D in the US Brannock machine and but in most of my other boots most of my American heritage boots and you know if you are a regular in my channel I wear US 8D I size a half size down. This is no different in the helm these are 8D in helm boots. When I looked at the last or the shape of the last coming out of the box I was a little concerned because it's quite a sharp almond shaped toe and usually when that happens the outside edge of my little toe gets a bit cramped. I don't feel that at all. It curves around the ball of my foot quite well I expected it to be quite tight but it's not so the slim look is quite deceiving which actually is quite nice because if I'm wearing these with a suit it looks sleek and I'm not in pain. Size-wise in an 8D I think that's perfect for my feet. I'm just a little under a thumbs width away from the tip. The ball of my feet fit quite well and from what I can see where I bend my feet is about where the boot is designed to bend as well so shouldn't be a lot of heel slip and there isn't although yes there is a little bit of heel slip but I think that's because the sole construction is actually quite thick. I mean we saw the thickness of the outsole there. I think that needs to be broken in a little bit and interesting as I bend you know if you don't have really good leather when you're bending your vamp creases and rolls obviously this creases as I bend it but it's giving me very fine crystalline cracks rather than big creases and rolls. You know on foot this feels very similar to chrome XL it's not it's not as oily and waxy but the feel of it is really nice full grain leather the feel on foot is as good as the feel underhand as I took it out of the box I'm very impressed the underfoot the foam or poron sort of insole padding makes it immediately comfortable I'm not feeling any like you know this is a very hard insole and I've got to break this in as I stand on it this is immediately comfortable some people don't like it because it breaks down a lot faster but you know I prefer to be able to walk in my boots then to suffer for three weeks and then eventually walking them yeah I like them fit is good comfort is good definitely two thumbs up well done so there you have it the unboxing and my initial impressions I don't think I remember to say that these cost on their website 295 US dollars let's look at the value on that just just from these first impressions and I might update this when I do my further review but for now I think of that price you want to compare them with boots like Thursday's made in USA Vanguard those self I think about US $265 under that $300 level you also get boots like Huckbury's house brand the Rhodes boots they have a couple of different models and then you want to look at say the Farragut Mocktoe and maybe the Redwing Mocktoe both of us are sort of skirting the $200 level look I think these compare really well with the Huckbury Rhodes boots in in their various models the leathers compare very nicely I think the construction and the stitching and the tightness of it all compares rather well the Thursday Vanguard's are I suppose you might call it a sort of more tougher boot it's a more of a field boot so they're different in the sense that they're not as finely finished but I think both are in that same category of good value for money so overall I'd say 295 US this is fair value this is a very versatile boot and I think for that price you're doing pretty well I'm going to leave a link below to the Helm website so you're going to have to take a look at these boots and and play around with the website and see what you think don't forget though before you go press the like button and make sure you subscribe if you haven't already so that's it guys take care and I've got other videos coming so until then look after yourselves


Welcome to the Highline College CTC Link how-to video series. In this session, we will cover how to change your password or reset a forgotten password. First, go to the CTC Link login page. You can access this login page by going to a web browser and typing gateway.ctclink.us. Once you've arrived to the login page, select the password help link under the next button. Then select the reset password link. Enter your CTC Link ID number and then choose one of your reset options. Based on the reset option selected, you will receive a text, voice call, or email with details to reset your password. If you reset your password via text or voice call, you will receive an automated text message or voice message at the number provided when you activated your account with a verification code. Enter the code in the box provided, then click the verify button. Follow the password requirements and enter the new password in each box provided. Press the reset password button to complete the process. Now let's look at an example of resetting your password by email. If you select the reset via email selection, it will send an email to the email account you used on your account activation page. The email will come from Okta. Open the email and click the reset password button in the email. After clicking the button, the reset password page will open in your browser. Follow the password requirements and enter the new password in each box provided. Press the reset password button to complete the process. The My Apps dashboard will display. Go ahead and click the CTC Link tile to log into CTC Link. Congratulations, you have successfully reset your password.


Welcome back folks. Dow. Dow right now is up 80. Now, as it goes off, 65. S&Ps are up four and a half. Let's go over to our man, Mr. Basil Chapman. And don't forget folks, Basil is an outstanding show here every trading day, 12-to-one Eastern Standard Time. Also has a great newsletter, the opening call. Now, it's very easy to get Basil's newsletter.  You basically just hit subscribe. You can get Basil's newsletter for one month for $128. You can get it for six months for $5.95, which is a savings of $173.22%. You can get it for a year for $995, which is a savings of $541.35%. They all come with a 30-day money-back guarantee folks. Everything to gain is zero to lose. Basil Chapman, what's going on? Hi, Tom, how are you doing? I'm doing great, man, yourself? Very good, thank you. So have they opened those tennis courts up there for you yet? You know, I don't think they've even started preparing the outdoor courts, the clay courts. Not yet, okay. There's nothing, nothing happens. I don't understand it, surely. Well, what's the problem playing singles? One person's on the one side, the other person's on the other? You're certainly a long way away from each other, that's for sure. You're certainly distance, right? Anyway, they'll figure it out at some point. So what are we looking at here, Basil? I get your charts up here. So what we're looking at is, within the context of the, always trying to identify a low bar and then merely counting each successively higher peak, anticipating at least four higher peaks, going A, B, C, D, D's the fourth highest peak. Other things can happen then. Let me just show you this quickly, right here. If I can just find it, there it is. So you come down, then you try to identify the low bar. And what's really nice with this technique is that if you're able to pick almost the exact turning point, after that it gives you a really good cover for any wildness that happens because if you get close to the turning point and it moves away from that turning point, then all the corrections, unless it's going to take out that low or take out that high, should keep you in the train. And that's kind of what's happened to us because we went along the Dow via call options right on the 23rd of March. We were taking 300% and 400% gain and we've rolled it over into the May contract. And we also long from 210 in the Dow. And when you look at the chart itself, now let me just go back to the chart. So that's basically what we look for. We look for at least four higher peaks. You can see here it can go higher to EF and G or it can, it said D that other things can happen. That's my expression. So what we're looking at is that in the Dow we went to D pull back a little bit, ran up to E. Now what's really interesting, that started a trend line. You see this green line here on the left side chart. This is the daily. Actually, I'm just for the moment, I'm going to go to my, the one that I show my subscribers every day. In this case, I showed the same thing, the daily chart that's without the MACD and stochastic then the middle one has more of the technicals plus my automated Chapman wave resistance points. And this is the 120 minute bar right here of the Dow. So I give a, every day I give a kind of a synopsis of what we're looking at in all the time frames or the different levels to look at. And what I had said this level, this green line should become a resistance point. At the same time, a little higher, we've got automated resistance levels to 24,800, 24,900, but on the short-term the 120 minute chart we have a resistance at 24,486. So we went a little higher today, we went to 24,00512, now we're going sideways. So this is where a lot of things can happen. There's another thing that I talk about and I'm going to show the inversion of this. This is the, this is the narrowing wedge formation, a rising wedge formation, but it's one that narrows to an apex to the point. So this one shows the red support line, see all the different levels that have held very nicely. And this one has the resistance. So we're right on the CUSPS. I am anticipating because so many of the indices have gone to an E or an F in the data chart that we're getting ready for some kind of at least a digestive phase. It doesn't have to happen, but we're readying for that. And at the same time, you see this narrowing wedge, this exact opposite wedge that we have on a particular stock that we bought at, yeah, we go. This is called Cirrus Corporation, global blood transfusion components is the area that they end. So we were very fortunate, we got in at $4.43 on the first. And then I drew this pattern, you know, I did a webinar two weeks ago, an all-day webinar. One of the patterns we were looking at was a pattern that I like to give nicknames to these, I call it the falling ax, basically what happens is the price runs up, keeps bumping into resistance and then pulls back and has lower highs and much lower lows. And then it starts to rally. And it gets to a point where it creates a resistance level, in this case, it's right at the 200-period moving average. And then what I drew, I spent some time showing subscribers and I showed in the, we spent a little time in my webinar on this.  The whole thing about it is that the angle of the incline becomes the angle of the next incline. And in this trend line resistance, if it breaks out, this trend line then becomes support. And what I do is I draw a, the same thing, the distance from the bottom 271 to this particular level right here at the breakout, which was at about 470. And then I extend it and I had this out as a, that's where, that was the target. And look where it hit. To date when we were in a 443, it hit $6.40 cents. It's in a leg F, but, and I'm expecting it to pull back a little bit, but that's a technique. That's one of the techniques that we worked on that I show subscribers. So I like to show subscribers exactly what we're doing, what particular Chapman Wave technique we are using at the time. And this is a nice example. So I thought I'd explain that. We're all set this time, not going for very high price stocks. I'm trying to get some low price stocks because I do think we're in a very difficult phase now. I mean, what can Google say? I don't know. The advertising revenue must be just gone. Advertising, trip advisor, which I think is here. And it was in Newton where I live. It's now in Needham. They opened this brand new beautiful building and they just announced they're gonna close, I think 600, taking away 600 jobs in downtown Boston. So it's gonna be difficult. So I think we're in for a little bit of a consolidation to have a spectacular run. And what I really like about the movement in the Dow is that the weekly chart has just begun a leg B. I wanted to see that B now. It stopped right at the 14 period exponential moving average. There's black line right here. But to think under all these conditions at this stage, the Dow could have dropped from 29,500 down to the 18,200 and is now in just one, two, three, four. This is the fifth week from below and it's gone up 51 or 50%. I think that's admirable. And, but you can see all the resistance levels here. So I think we're maybe sideways for a little while, but so far we're very lucky that we've got stocks that have done very nicely. We bought a very low price stock yesterday on Friday. I'm sorry, one thing was at 185. Today it hit 240. It's pulled back a little bit. It's at 213. So it hit, it gave a quick 40% gain and now it's pulled back a little bit. I do like it. Yeah, so I'm trying to be very strategic here because I think the easier part has been done, perhaps now it comes a little bit more difficult. Folks, it's really easy to get about this newsletter. Come over to our website at TFNN. You're going to go into news there as you see the opening call right on the right-hand side. You just hit subscribe. You have a great night, safe night. Of course, we look forward to the show tomorrow at noon. Good luck for your upcoming webinar. Yeah, we're rolling there. Stay right there, folks. Come right back. Dow up 75. Nasdaq down 68. SAP is a flat. We'll come right back.


So this is the old tracker right here with four lenses is do 360 video. Yes 360 video 360 picture. Yes, and then we have both live view and Also 4k video recording and we do have 1080 video for 30fps. So right here. We are looking at the live live stream This is it with the from the four cameras on the flying This is magic a little bit now magic It's real Las Vegas magic. All right. Yeah, actually we have how does it work? I can make it stop like because I can control all by the cell phone through wireless Wi-Fi control actually so I can like make it spin faster like this You can see I was very fast and I can change this display mode like 180 180 so it's a recording and now now it's not live. Oh, no, it's life. It's live From that one right here Whoa cool, so can you power on one? Can you show power? How does it work? What is the software inside? This is an joy system Android. Yes, you run Android on there. Yeah Yeah, it's kind of like any power on yeah, I'm trying. Yeah, and what is the CPU inside you use the FPGA? You develop this? Yeah, so where you from the company Taiwan from Taiwan Taiwan you make FPGA? Yes power on and we do have a very good my lax here You can use for dash cam Yeah, so you can put it on the top of the car. Yes. Yeah, this one's on top of the car So what is the history of your company? Oh, we are the subniac company before and this is the first time we get into the Consumer product So this is consumer price. Yes. How much for about 300 dollars 300 dollar. Yeah, you get device like this It's this is an Android. Yes, Android running here. Yeah How many battery and how long have you been recalled and how many picture you can take? Where's the SD card you put where? Here there and There's a HDMI output. Yes, and here's the specs. So you record this resolution here Is 6144 time 1 7 6 0 at 6 frame per second 10 ADP at 30 FPS summer 20 at 30 FPS What is a Konec? Two four six to six four. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, and how soon is available? In one month one month. Yeah, so you work very fast. Yes. Yeah, right cool And we also got a pattern for that and right now we are have a Priner United step pattern. Yeah, so how does it work the FPGA in the future? Can you do a 4k 30 FPS? Yes, actually, yeah for our natural narration. We are doing that 4k for 30 FPS. How soon? Maybe the end of the year end of this year for sure. I Cannot say for sure. Yeah, it's a long man. It's our romance 4k 30 FPS with four lens. Yes All right, it's gonna be very popular no All right


So I'm gonna close this back out since there's only two accounts affected, let's use the register method. So I'm gonna go back and then go to the tab to the left and we're gonna go into our chart of accounts, accounting on the left hand side and chart of accounts. If you're in the business view, by the way, the chart of accounts in case you were wondering, although I'm sure you know by now if you've been following along, it's in the bookkeeping and then the chart of accounts. And then we're gonna go to the chart of accounts, close this back out. Now these are both balance sheet accounts. So I can open up either of them using the register. So I think the easy one might be the longterm because I need to bring it back to zero. So that's this one down here. So I'm gonna go into the register related to my loan and I'm just gonna reverse the journal entry I did before bringing it back to zero. So I'm gonna go drop down journal entry 030123 and we'll do this is gonna be called a reversing entry and this is gonna be a decrease for that same amount which I could find here or I can find there. I'm just gonna reverse that so it goes back to one account with the total of the 6987813. So we're gonna say, all right, this is gonna be 56769.59 decrease. And the other side going to loan, loan payable and the chase loan for the short term, current liabilities. There it is, movie B to the end. Let's go ahead and run it, running, I was running.


We shall continue with our conversation on criticisms on Islamic modes of finance. And as I said previously, these criticisms are indirectly on Islamic banking and finance as well. In this module, we shall look at a criticism with reference to the practice of Sukuk. You might have read in newspapers, in books, online, elsewhere. Many a times people, the writers, journalists, they refer to Sukuk as an Islamic bond. Because people understand this Islamic bond language, even myself. I know there are huge differences between Sukuk and a bond. But for simplicity to make the people understood, many a times I use the term Islamic bond as well. However, a Sukuk is not an Islamic bond. It is an investment certificate which might have some characteristics of debt and some characteristics of equity. Before this criticism, let me tell you an interesting story. Once I was going back from Heathrow Airport to home. I came from somewhere and this car driver, who was an English guy, white guy, he was driving me back home and we started a conversation. And he asked me, so what do you do? I said, I'm an Islamic finance expert. And he said, oh, my son is an Islamic finance expert as well. And I said, oh really? And he said, oh, he works for the law firm so and so. And he is in the Islamic finance team of the law firm. And I said, okay, what's his name? And he gave me the name and I knew the guy. And then he said, I am actually impressed that our government has issued a Sukuk. And I said, Sukuk, what is a Sukuk? And he said, actually, I thought this is the right pronunciation because before this, I thought that this was Sukuk. S-U-K-U-K. So now people, they can have a lot of perceptions, understandings of these alien words. Sukuk is an Arabic word and a lot of people, they may not know. Even the Arabs, they may not know true meaning of a Sukuk until you explain to them. Now, many people, they say that Sukuk is a big sham. It's a fraud as there is no true sale happening in the Sukuk structures. It is just a conventional bond named as Sukuk. This is a criticism which I believe is based on this word bond which has been used in the media excessively. And this bond thing, actually when Investmentdar issued a Sukuk on a transaction in UK, Financial Times actually came up with this caption, bond arrives in Islamic finance. And the reference was to James Bond 007. Now, on a serious note, let us come to this criticism. So those who criticize Sukuk on this basis, they say that as there is no recourse to the asset in case of a default, i.e. when the obligor defaults the Sukuk holders, they cannot get hold of the asset to sell it to cover their money. Because this is not possible, there is no true sale and hence, Islamic finance guys coming up with Sukuk structures, they have a fraud in the car. This is entirely wrong. This is not a true observation. This is true that most of the Sukuk do not provide full recourse to the underlying asset to the Sukuk holders in case there is a default. But this is actually a kind of expectation of the Sukuk holders. They do not want to have recourse to the asset. This is a very, very important point. This recourse to the asset becomes relevant only when there is a problem with the transaction, i.e. the obligor is not paying the due amount. Otherwise, if the transaction is honkidory, everything is fine, Sukuk holders are not interested in having recourse to the asset. So, we must look at the intentions of the parties involved. Now, this is also a big criticism of the Islamic banking. People say that the intentions are not right for the banks and their other parties involved like shareholders and so on. Now, I don't know where this conversation came from. Let us look at the intentions once again. We previously looked at intentions and we found that intentions were valid. Let us see, in this case, what are the intentions? Now, intention basically is very simple. That one party wants to provide financing to the other one and that other one is seeking financing in a Sharia-compliant way. Now, in a Sukuk structure, what happens? This party seeking finance would sell that asset to an SP. The Sukuk holders would put that money into that SPV by way of buying Sukuk. Now, this money which has come from the Sukuk investor would go to the obligor and the obligor would receive a return. This is the intention. Now, if this is an intention, then it is a valid intention. One party is seeking financing on a Sharia-compliant way by way of selling an asset to a third party. And this whole mechanism generates this financing facility. Now, according to Sharia, people who say that the sale doesn't take place. According to Sharia, the sale actually does take place in the event or in the context of Sukuk. When the price has been paid, the asset has been put into the custody of an agent, custodian appointed by the Sukuk holders. The sale has taken place. This is also true that there is not sufficient legal protection for the buyer in this case. Legal protection comes with registering the product with a competent legal authority. That doesn't take place in case of Sukuk. Why? Because at the end of the day, the expectation is that the obligor is going to buy back this asset after some time. So, going to the land registry and spending some money at that time and then buying it back and paying the land registry fee again, this would increase the cost of issuing Sukuk. So, in the event of default, when there is no sufficient legal protection available, the case of course goes to court and this is heard by a common law judge. Most, I think 99% of the global Sukuk transactions, they are written in an English law context, which is a common law example. Now, common law is very liberal. It is said that whatever you have decided, you will decide according to that. Now, when the case goes to the court, the judge sees that the sale has taken place. This party has paid the price and the asset has gone into this SPV. So, he sees that the register has not taken place. So, he says, why didn't you register? He says that we didn't register or we didn't want to register. The judge would at best say, you silly boys, you should have got this asset registered. Now, that you haven't done it. So, it doesn't mean that the sale hasn't taken place. So, the judge would come up with a decision based on the fact that the sale has taken place. This is what happens in all the common law jurisdictions. So, even the English law says that the sale has taken place. So, the people who say that the sale is not true, they don't have the correct observation. In case of Sukuk, the sale takes place from a Sharia viewpoint. And when a judge is asked to rule on that sale, the judge would say that actually the sale has taken place. It's only that it hasn't been registered. The number of Sukuk cases that have gone to the English courts has been the judge's decision. Now, the judge says that the sale takes place. If you say that it doesn't happen, then this is your own opinion.


Thanks, everyone. I'm Dr. Regina Henry from the University of the West in these in Cave Hill Barbados. I'm an MIT-trained mechanical engineer and now working on renewable energy questions in the Caribbean. OK, so Roman Sargasum. It's a little more fun than Roman Cook, but so let's talk about it for the next seven minutes. OK, Caribbean nations pay the highest energy bills in the world because of fossil fuel dependency and the high cost of shipping fossil fuels to all of these small islands. Our team, a group of students, they all sit at any third row. We brainstorm and tested a biofuel solution this summer to the transportation and energy needs of Barbados. Our data analysis this summer kind of showed us that the decline in sugarcane industry in Barbados would not be enough to sustain a biofuel industry as a feedstock for the national energy demand. We were trying to model Brazil and scale it down to Barbados and it didn't seem to be promising, so then we deliberated. All right, so this is the group of scientists and this is some of the equipment we had on campus, brainstorming this biofuel solution for Barbados. So let me tell you a story. Well, let's start in the history of the Caribbean. Caribbean countries are unique in that most of the populations comprise of the descendants of West Africans that were brought over to the Western Hemisphere as captured slaves. So I put the triangular trait there as a reminder from history. So this triangle had three passages. The first passage took product from Europe, refined product from Europe to West Africa. The second passage, which we call the middle passage, brought captured men and women from the coast of West Africa to the Caribbean islands. And the third passage took raw agricultural product from the Caribbean to Europe to be refined and marketed for distribution around the world. All right, so thus the triangle thrived for three centuries. There was a saving grace in the story and it was rum. The rum industry grew out of waste from the sugarcane industry. And because it was waste, it stayed in the islands. But the beauty of it is the rum industry grew out of the islands and now the international rum industry is dominated by Caribbean rum. Another beauty about the rum industry is the wastewater it produces is optimal for producing biofuel because of the high chemical oxygen demand of wastewater from the rum. And every day, thousands of liters of rum distillery waste fluid is produced in the Caribbean and can be used for biofuel. Right now it's just kind of tossed into the ocean. OK, biomethane can cheaply and easily power electric grids and power vehicles. So a regular internal combustion engine car, which I think most of the people in this room drive, could be readily converted to a CNG engine using a CNG conversion kit. And thus it's able to drive fully on biomethane. And that's being done all around the world right now. Barbados has an extensive natural gas grid. So that's a second graphic. And actually, this grid can be retrofitted for biogas as Barbados transitions to 100% renewable energy by the year 2030. An aerobic digestion of any biological feedstock can be used towards methane production. It's a multi-step process, but the most important step is hydrolysis, the first step. And that takes a lot of water. Barbados and a lot of Caribbean islands are water scarce. So the rum distillery waste idea is perfect, because that's thousands of liters of wastewater produced every day on these islands. OK, so we looked at published numbers from Brazil and Barbados and made some kind of analysis to do comparisons. And you can see on the plot on the right the number. This is the sugarcane produced in Barbados compared to Brazil, scaled by production in the year 2007. And as you could see, sugarcane is only decline in Barbados. So we needed another feedstock based on the numbers. So Brittany, the student at the front right, she came up with the, she was driving home on a taxi. And she saw huge mounds of sargassum seaweed on the beach. And Koreans removing these mounds of sargassum seaweed to take them off to the landfill. And she thought, why don't we look at sargassum seaweed? So she came into the lab and said, let's try sargassum. And I said, sure, let's try sargassum. So interestingly enough, in the most poetic turn of events, let me tell you about sargassum. This is an image from NASA Earth Observatory. The sargassum seaweed is now traversing the same middle passage. It's leaving the coast of West Africa. It's coming across the Atlantic Ocean. And it's inundating the Caribbean Sea because of runoff from South and North America. There's this massive bloom right at the Caribbean Sea. So right now, sargassum maps show that it's actually producing more biomass than any, than the total of these islands, abilities to produce biomass. It's more biomass than we could produce on these tiny islands. OK. After weeks of thinking about sugarcane, though, on history and everything, when I saw this 2018 map produced by Brooks in Maryland, it reminded me of our other triangle. So I thought, what's an interesting story? And I decided to tell the story this way. All right, so what did we do in the lab? We harvested some sargassum from the south coast of Barbados. And we put it in the lab with different rum distillery fluids from rum distilleries around Barbados and looked at different conditions of producing biofuel. And so what did our results show? Well, the results are in and they're good. Combined with rum distillery waste from two of the bigger distilleries in Barbados, we found that the methane output was comparable to any standard grasses, the output that we saw in Barbados before and in other parts of the world. So this here is just the rum distilleries, sorry, this is the natural gas grid of Barbados. Right now we're seeing the yellow dots show where the rum distilleries are along the grid. Three of the four major distilleries are actually located within the LNG grid. And so we are proposing a project where we put down pilots on all of the four distilleries, produce bio-methane and test it on CNG converted cars in the next year and a half. The estimated total of our project, our future project is 94,000 US dollars. Right now, it seems like this idea touches on all the sustainable development goals. And I think it seems like mother it's reparations to these free people now, children of former slaves. It's within the writing of a historic rung and it's beginning of the end of an antagonistic journey from the coast of West Africa to the islands of the Caribbean. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much, Le Gina. And I believe that several of the students that participated are in the audience. So thank you to them too.


The weatherman was right. It's freezing cold.  That's what I was talking about. One of the little side effects of washing your vehicles in the cold weather. But it's worth it because we're driving a clean truck. If it's a good morning, but I'm just gonna say it's gonna be a good day. Right? I'm just gonna say that. It's gonna be a good day. As long as I stay in the truck, it's nice and warm. The temperature this morning when I got going was minus 34 Celsius, which is minus 29 Fahrenheit. The brakes were frozen on the trailer. I had to come free so that we could go. They get to park these trucks indoors. I would probably not have started. This truck's parking spot indoors. I got to park my pickup there. Get groceries or when we have kids in the warm garage and walk directly into the house. The garage to the house outside in the cold. I'm gonna go check out the land again this weekend. Probably be too cold too. I'll probably pop by there sometime this week. Just check on things. But we'll wait till the weather warms up a little bit and we'll start going out there and getting stuff. We gotta bring it to the six foot by four foot skids. Call that cab over. Remember we came and took a look at it about a month or two ago and I asked, would you drive a cab over and all the Europeans laughed. Yeah, that's the place. I was wondering, why is there a big Peterbilt sign there, right? Turns out they're building a brand new Peterbilt dealership right there at the PBX. They got a Peterbilt dealership and a traffic light. Blumenort. Proud of you. At least you went with Peterbilt. There's also a new Freightliner dealership moving into Steinback just down the road from here. There's a new Peterbilt dealership here. There's a new Freightliner being built at Steinback. Volvo Steinback just bought Freightliners old building. So now there's a new Volvo building, new Volvo dealership. They upgraded. Trucking stuff going on around here. All they need is a Kenworth. You're gonna have to talk to Andy, right? Talk to Andy's home. Steinback needs a Kenworth and maybe we can get Andy to come out here and run it. You guys watch this channel? Andy the Kenworth guy. I've talked about him a couple of times already. He's a sales guy at Inland Kenworth in Winnipeg and he has a YouTube channel. He's called Andy the Kenworth guy. I think it's just called the Kenworth guy but his name's Andy. He actually makes really good videos and he's got a couple of awesome trucks that he's trying to sell. It'd be pretty cool if we had a Kenworth dealership here in town. I mean I guess the new Peterbilt might not like the competition but competition that's what the market's all about, right? That's what keeps everybody on their toes. What else do we got over here? There's no international dealership in Steinback as far as I know. Pulsest one is on the other side of Winnipeg. But long as you got a Peterbilt, I think that's all that the world needs. A little bit of Peterbilt, a little bit of Kenworth. Oh yeah, you got a Volvo in there too for the Volvo guys. There's a lot of you out there. Volvo makes good trucks, okay? You got to hand it to them. Volvo makes good trucks. It's just it's not a Peterbilt. That's the only courtesy I have of it. It's not a Peterbilt and it's not a Kenworth. My favorite truck is the Kenworth W900. Like Kenworth and Peterbilt equally. And Volvo's just beneath them in my mind, my personal opinion. I've driven lots of Volvo's. Great trucks are very comfortable, lots of space. You remember Trucks Unlimited, right? That's where I bought my moose bumper for my freight liner. When I had it the freight liner sentry, remember that? And it's also where I brought my Volvo for many repairs. It's just off here on the left. It's called Trucks Unlimited. It was the freight liner in town. They sold to Volvo. So Volvo's now going to move into that shop or they've already moved in I think in the process of it. And freight liner's going to be off in this field off to the right. All big things happen.  But you're probably a Mennonite. Chevy, what do you have to say to good people? You sit, sit. Why did I have to ask you twice?  Good boy. So today was a lovely little Monday. It was cold and it's supposed to be just as cold tomorrow. For some reason I am so tired. I got home from work and I just wanted to do absolutely nothing.  I think it's just the cold weather and I'm getting older. Not old yet though, okay? Not old yet but I'm climbing the hill and it's getting steeper. I think in your mid 30s when you all, that's when you start to feel it. You start to realize, oh, I'm not immortal. Anyways, we're going to get ready to go to bed here and we'll film another day tomorrow and hopefully we'll be able to get some more filming done here at home after work. Tonight we're just, we're too out of it. Britt had a delicious supper ready when I came home. It was a chicken Caesar salad again and a real garlic toast with real garlic and cheese. Real cheese, it was so good. Yes, it's putting me to bed. So we're supposed to possibly be seeing our fertility doctor in the next couple of days. So hopefully we'll have some good news for you soon. So far, nada. But I'll keep you, I'll keep you up to date, okay? Fingers crossed this week, okay? Keep your fingers crossed for us. We'll talk to you later.