You're welcome back to the breakfast on Plus TV Africa. We're still continuing our conversation regarding security in Nigeria. Good news we heard yesterday that the 27 students of the Federal College of First Room Mechanisation in Afakha, Kaduna State, you know, were successfully released from bandits captivity and that, you know, they had met with their parents briefly. They had gone to the hospital for medical treatment. And, you know, we spoke to the father of one of the one of two students, you know, that were abducted. He was Mr. Friday, Sani. He was on the breakfast yesterday to shed more light on how they were released. But we now have a representative of the Kaduna State government. He is Samuel Aruan, the Commissioner for Internal Security in Kaduna State. Good morning, Mr. Aruan. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. All right. So first of all, congratulations to the whole of Kaduna State. It's great to see that after all the protests, all the agitation, finally, the girls are back home and are safe. But we just need to get into the details of their release. We spoke to one of the fathers of two of the students who were abducted, Mr. Friday, Sani. And he he gave us some details as to how they were released, but when very clear, according to him, no ransom was paid for their release. You know, they protested at the National Assembly, traveled all the way from Kaduna to Abuja. Great to know that the girls were released. But news reports reaching us confirmed that, you know, the Kaduna State government had allegedly paid ransom to the bandits. This was a month ago, but they did not release them until yesterday. So what really is the truth? When the government is saying they were not going to pay ransom and we're hearing news that they actually paid ransom. So what exactly is the fact, Mr. Aruan? The fact is very simple. The students of Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, they are out. They are mostly female and male students. They are out. And like we keep on saying, security issues are not issues that you play to the gallery just to achieve temporary goals. As a government, we are taking a stand. And our stand is based out of deep reflection and reality that we have found ourselves today. So I will not go into details. But what I want to know is we are conscious of our responsibility as a government. Security agencies are equally doing their best. Critical stakeholders are also complimenting government and security agencies effort. We wouldn't want to say something that would jeopardize or undermine efforts that are being put in place in order to secure other students, especially a student of Greenfield University, who are still in captivity and other cities. What I think is important is the students back the day before yesterday, that is Wednesday, we were to hand them over to the institution onward to their parents yesterday, Thursday. But unfortunately, they are still undergoing the medical checkups by the special support. Do that today. Mr. Arawan, unfortunately, the details regarding the release are very important for Nigerians who really need to know what exactly transpired. You know, because there's so much conflict and information regarding how the girls were released. Like I mentioned, News Reaching Us confirms that. Mr. Arawan, I need to ask you this because News confirms that one of the bandits was released in exchange for the 27 girls who were kidnapped. So we need to know did that happen or not? Well, I think there are so many people who are out there with several narratives. And you confirm to me that you actually spoke to one of the parents. Yes, we did. And I have equally explained to you here that some issues about security, considering human lives, considering the sensitivity of those issues, you don't come out and make statements that will undermine what. All right, Mr. Arawan, Mr. Arawan, don't you think? So in a nutshell, what I want to tell you is I will not give you exact details. So don't you think the people as far as community concern, what is important is the students are back? The students are back, we agree. And then the people need to know that they are safe over time, you know, in their schools, in their homes, in their farms as well. But then again, what are you doing differently to ensure that recurrences like this, you know, we don't get to see them again in a Keduna state, specifically in our schools, you know, in public and private schools, so that the students can actually go to school and, you know, get educated, which is the main reason for schooling in the first place. So what are you doing? You have in talks with your education commissioner with your security apparatus in the state. What exactly is being done right now in as much as this student, you know, from Afarka, have been, you know, released? Well, immediately after the incident in neighboring states, we are hundreds of students were abducted from their schools. Keduna state government along with security agencies carried out vulnerability assessment of schools. Especially schools that are situated in flashpoint locations. And immediately students from a flashpoint were redistributed to schools that are situated in locations that we consider to be more safe. This is one of the decisions that the government took. Alongside with security agencies. Furthermore, we also raise the consciousness of communities where schools are located at the need for them to be vigilant. And there are other measures that government and security agencies took that I wouldn't want to talk about in here. But you wish to know that there were attempts that were filed in some locations across the state, which was a byproduct of the security consciousness or response team that government puts on the ground. Mr. Arawan, I need to ask you, Mr. Arawan. Apologies to interject, Mr. Arawan. I need to ask this very important question. What value or how much value does the Keduna state government place on the lives of her citizens, especially its students? The primary responsibility of any government, including Keduna state government, is security of life and property. And when you see what we are doing on the ground, that's clearly answer your question. If you take a look at what is happening along the Keduna region, you look at the Benongali belt. You also look at the ongoing operations by the military and police. It's a clear demonstration that a Keduna state government is committed to protecting the citizens. It is not even the question that the usual ask, because government is here to ensure security and to also ensure law and order. But I think part of the problem is the fact that you are looking at this thing within the context of what is happening now. You have to look at these issues beyond now. You have to look at origin. You have to look at the immediate and remote causes and other factors that have come into play. Accumulated factors that have made things to be the way they are. OK, Mr. Arawan. So certainly we place a lot of premium on the human life. OK, so Mr. Arawan, if as the Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs in Keduna state, you say that the Keduna state government places a premium on the lives of Nigerians. Could you please explain to me the statement made by Erufei, the governor of Keduna state. He says that we were going to attack them and by them he means the bandits. The bandits that had captured the students at the Federal College of First Re-Mechanisation in Keduna since March 11th. He said we are going to attack them. We would lose a few students, but we will kill all the bandits and recover some of our students. That was our plan. Nassim Erufei went to say we know it's risky. We will lose some of the students, but the students will be collateral damage in war and will not pay money. So how do you explain the plan? Where did the governor, what is his thoughts? He made this statement on Thursday during a webinar of African leadership. This was a webinar of the African leadership group that Erufei attended yesterday, Thursday. So he mentioned that. I remember in Tuaigodalo yesterday. Yes, he mentioned that they were going to bombard the terrorists and hide out. Some students would die, but that this would just collateral damage. So how do we explain the premium place on their lives with the government, you know, bargaining that they would die, but that's collateral damage as long as we rescue some other students? Whether you see your question, your question and from your post, revolves around what we consider politicisation of security challenge or issue. It's not politics. Mr. Arawan, it's the statement he made. I'm presenting to you. That's what it is, simply. I am listening to you. OK, go ahead. Go ahead. We can hear you. You should also listen to me. Your question is basically what I consider politicisation of security challenge that we are battling with. I take exception to you challenging the position of Kuduna State's government with doubting that the government does not place a premium. No, it's a question, Mr. Arawan. This was, Mr. Arawan, not talking. Mr. Arawan, this was a class statement. This was a class statement by the governor yesterday.  OK, but how is it political now? Excuse me, I have listened to you. I have listened to you. You should allow. You should also be polite enough to listen to me. OK, sorry about that. Go ahead. You should not listen to me. What I am trying to tell you is this. What do you say, what do you credit to the governor to have said? Does that undermine the sanctity of human life that Kuduna State government plays? No. In situation like this, if the military or police carry out an action like this, definitely, you know, there's going to be a collateral. Certainly, it's there. But then, when you are taking action, you also govern, also consider the lives that are involved. This is what I want you to know. And if you see what we are doing from January 1st to March to March 2021, military and police neutralize 64 bandits on the ground, apart from multiple spots of bandits that were neutralized via air interdictions. 36 EK47 raffles were equally recovered by security agencies. And almost 2,000 rounds of life ammunition were also recovered. You also have to look at dozens of citizens that were equally rescued. And again, there are a series of bandit camps that were destroyed by military and the police. So all these things are demonstrations that a government plays premium on the human life. And I have argued here that the very existence of raffles is to ensure security and also ensure that there is law and order. All right. All right, Mr. Aruan, I just need to get an update concerning the issue with the Greenfield. What's the position right now? What is government doing specifically to ensure their safe release? Is government going to follow the same style from what we read as regards the AFACA? It was done with extra-governmental interventions of the former president, Alusia Babasunjo and Sheikh Gumi. Are we going to follow that particular route this time around for the Greenfield students? Well, Karuna State government is on its feet, trying all that it can. And I'm not going to sit down here and give you this blow-by-blow to give you an account of what government is doing or what security agencies are doing. What I can tell you is government and security agencies are on their feet. All right, thank you, Mr. Samuel Aruan. So, Mr. Samuel Aruan, it's unfortunate that we're having a representative from Karuna State who Nigerians are listening and expecting to get details of the Karuna kidnap. But it's unfortunate that you refuse to tell us if ransom was paid and if a bandits was released in exchange for the kidnapping. You should be kind to Karuna State government. You want news. We want to save lives. But can you answer the question that the Karuna State government pay ransom? Excuse me, I can just speak to you here and undermine what we want to save lives. But could you tell us yes or no? Mr. Aruan, yes or no? That the government pay ransom? That the government release a bandits? I have clearly told you that we are happy that the students are back and we're ready for... All right, thank you, Mr. Samuel Aruan, for your time. All right, thank you so much, Mr. Samuel Aruan. Thank you so much for your time. We do appreciate all that you have said so far. We've been looking at the release of the Afarka student which happened on Wednesday and we were joined by the State Commissioner for Security and Internal Affairs. Thank you so much. All right, so we'll go on the show, break now our return to continue this conversation regarding abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria and what the government is doing about it. Do stay with us.


Hi, I'm Shane, and welcome to Gamedev Academy. In today's quick class, we'll take a look at how you can use 3D modelling software such as Maya to create some awesome and retro-looking 2D sprites in the style of games such as Donkey Kong Country. Here's the sprite we'll be making, a very nasty-looking spiky ball obstacle, but first let's take a quick look at the history of sprites created in this way. In the early 90s, as the 16-bit era consoles really reached maturity, developers were looking for a way to bring a more 3D look to their 2D sprites. One way to achieve this was to use pre-rendered 3D graphics created using very high-end and very expensive workstations from Silicon Graphics. This was the same technology used to create the mind-blowing liquid metal effects in Terminator 2. A few different development studios were also using this technology, such as Traveller's Tales, but we'll focus on Donkey Kong Country from Rare as our case study. In order to create the remarkable visuals for the game, the developers first created, textured and animated 3D models. These were then rendered out to 2D images, which could then have the resolution and colour palette reduced, giving the final, now iconic result. If you want to emulate this once-cutting-edge approach to creating 3D-looking sprites, it's now much easier not to mention cheaper than it was back when Rare were pioneering the technique. So rather than having to spend $70,000 on specialist hardware and software, we can use Maya and pretty much any PC to get the same look. Back to our spiky ball, then. In Maya, then, we'll start by getting the basic 3D model that we'll need. And to do that, I'm going to take a sphere and a cone. The cone, of course, is going to be the spiky bit of this spiky ball. And then I'm going to switch to the front orthographic view, since I'm going to be getting a 2D graphic out of this, a 2D view is perfect for this. And then I'm just going to size up my spike and then duplicate it around until I've got enough spikes and I'm happy with the overall look. Next up, I want to get this retro-looking metallic effect on it. So I'll need to go into the hypershade. And I'm just going to use the Stingray PBS, because that gives me quite nice reflections on the metal. So I'm going to create a light metal material and apply that to the sphere. And then I'm going to duplicate that and I'm going to assign that to the spikes. And I'm going to get this look that we can see here. I also want to get a highlight on the top right hand side of the main metallic spiky ball. So I'm just going to add a point light and put that in position to put a little highlight where I want it. With that done, I now need to create the animation frames to get this ball spinning so that it's ready to be put into a 2D level. And to do that, first of all, I put everything into a group so that I could rotate them all together. And then I set a keyframe on frame one. I then moved to frame seven. I rotated it by 90 degrees and then set another keyframe. Then I'm just going to set the animation curve to linear to make sure that it goes at a constant pace. And I'm only going to use frames one to six out of the seven to make sure that we get a good loop on this. And the reason that I've done it by 90 degrees is so that I know that if I keep looping those six frames, it's going to look like it's spinning forever, which is the look that we're going for. And it kind of means that we're using fewer frames, which also keeps in with that retro look and feel. Now I'm getting ready to render this out. So I'm going to choose my render as hardware 2.0. I'm also going to keep the color transform so that it looks as I expect it. I'm going to make sure that I'm set up to render animation frames and I'm going to choose frames one to six. I need to make sure that I'm rendering my front camera and then I need to set the resolution, which in this case is going to be 32 by 32 pixels. I also need to make sure that anti aliasing is turned off to make sure I get that hard edged look that pixel art is known for. Next up, I want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of the space from my sprite, so I'm going to turn on the resolution gate on the camera, send to my spiky ball within the space and then I'm going to zoom in to make sure that it fills as much of the renderable space as possible. Here you can see the render view, which I've just docked over to one side of the screen. I couldn't find a way in Maya, or in this version of Maya anyway, to stop the preview from being ridiculously blurry, but I still found I was able to work that I needed to make sure that I zoomed in enough that the spikes went right up to the edge. It won't look this blurry when we get it out of Maya. This is just how the render view is choosing to show it off. And now that everything is finally set up, I can choose to batch render those six frames, which will give us all the different parts that we need for our sprite sheet, which we can then put together in Photoshop. Here we are in Photoshop then, and I need to create a sprite sheet that will contain all six of the frames. So as these are 32 by 32, and there are six of them, the document I create is going to be 64 pixels wide by 96 pixels tall, and that will allow me to contain all six frames within the one image. To make it a little easier to line up, I'm also just going to bring in some ruler guides so that I make sure that I'm putting all of the different frames in the right place. Now it's just a case of opening each of the individual frames and then copying and pasting over that sprite into the main sprite sheet and putting it in order. So I do the top row first, then the middle row, then the bottom row.  So you can choose to desaturate it to reduce the amount of colors in the image or you can use a selective color palette to reduce the colors down as far as you want. So here on screen, you can see that I'm reducing it down to just eight colors and I'm also using dithering to make it look like I'm trying to emulate more colors just as you would have got on the 16 bit era consoles. And then I can save that sprite sheet out from Photoshop. I'm going to save it as a PNG file and then that's ready to be imported into the 2D game engine of your choice. Or in this case, I'm going to upload it to an online app called Pisco so that I can preview my animation there. Now that I've got it into Pisco and I'm playing it back, I can see that there's a little bit of an inconsistency with one of the pixels turning on and off. So I'm just going to make sure that's the same on all six frames. And now when I play it back, I'm pretty happy with the overall look. Although I think I do prefer the one that is in color rather than the one where I've desaturated it. So I brought in the colored one and you can see that this now looks nice and high end, but still very 16 bit. That should be everything you need to know then to be able to create 3D looking 2D sprites just like they did in the 90s. If you found this video useful, then maybe you'd like to subscribe to Game Dev Academy. Here on Game Dev Academy, I try to put out weekly game development and game art tutorials using different tools such as Maya, Unreal Engine, Photoshop, Substance Painter, all kinds of crazy stuff. If you want more information about how the art for Donkey Kong Country was created, I'll also put a link to that in the description. There's a very good video on that from Digital Foundry that's worth a watch if that's interesting to you. I'll sign off the video by thanking my wonderful Patreon community. You guys helped me to keep doing this and I appreciate each and every one of you. And then I'd like to thank everyone for watching and hopefully I'll see you all for the video next week.


Hi again, in this lesson, we're going to talk about that how to iterate through the alphabet in Python programming language. We can iterate through the lower case or through the upper case alphabet letters in Python programming language. First, let's make one example with simple iteration using lower case letters. Let's import lower case letters from string module. So we'll say from string import ascii lower case. And let's make one loop and let's use i in our loop to iterate through all the ascii lower case letters. So we'll want to iterate all our alphabet lower case letters. And let's do some simple thing. For example, let's print all those letters. You can use this iteration through the alphabet to do some other things into your program. But I'll make simple example with just printing that letters. Let's print those letters and we will iterate it through the lower case alphabet letters. Let's do the same but with upper case letters. So our code will be same except that we'll import ascii upper case. And we'll also use same for loop and we will change lower case to upper case. And let's again, let's just print those letters. You can do with that iteration something else. It doesn't matter for now. And that's it. That's all for this lesson. Thanks for watching. Happy coding!


August is hot and so are the savings at Appalachian Wireless, where all smartphones are 50% off. Even the 64, 128, and 256-gauge models, two-year agreement required. Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless and East Kentucky Network Company. To many, heroes wear capes and sometimes soar through the sky, but for one Pike County teenager, her hero wears gray and drives a police cruiser. The first thing I wanted to do was just hug him. As Taylor Sowers was driving along U.S. 23 in door in Tuesday, she says a state police trooper stopped a vehicle from hitting her head on. Any time that I would slow down or speed up a little bit, he'd come right back up beside me and I was just wondering, you know, what he was doing. I had no idea and I wasn't going to pass a call. A man was driving north in the southbound lanes at a high rate of speed. Trooper Brad Hamilton received a call of the man and was trying to find him. Taylor says he saved her life in the process. The next thing I know, he's over in the median and a car is coming straight at us going the opposite way and I swerved over and he swerved over and he just went after him and ended up catching him. You don't really understand until your life is spared and I just don't think that I ever did anything to deserve that and it's just truly amazing that we have officers around here that are willing to do that for us. Saturday is Taylor's 19th birthday. Today, Taylor and her mom were able to meet their hero. I cannot thank him enough. No gift would ever be enough. No amount of praise would ever be enough because he saved my daughter's life. Trooper Hamilton was thankful to meet the Sourds. He says any one of his colleagues would have done the same thing and he was simply doing his job. Taylor says otherwise. He spared my life and I'm here today because of him. In Pikeville, Shelby Still, EKB News.


The following is a presentation of TFNN, the Tiger Technician Hour with your host, Hazel Chapman, call now toll-free at 1-877-927-6648. How's it going? We're looking at the top 65 at 38,338. When you think of what happened yesterday, this is really not that great, but most importantly, I did have a high Tringage Reading, Chapman with Tringage Reading, this is Richard Alms Tringage, but I just used two particular numbers on it, and it said that the S&P futures should have a rally within, I used to say two days, I'm now changing that off to all these decades to say it's within one, within one day. That's overnight and into the next day, there should be a rally in the S&P futures which should help the general market. We've already seen that. So what's really important about this is that the high of 38,927 took out, with the slide yesterday, it took out essentially one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, almost 13 sessions in one. So the statement I made for subscribers to my opening call this morning was, was that it? Basically a three-in-one consolidation in one session, a one off, and then I went on to say, if the semiconductors hold well, then yes, a good chunk has been achieved for now. And that's just for this very moment. Those round numbers they keep appearing, and to me this is something that I cannot ignore. I've never ignored it before. I don't see why I should, and now the numbers are even greater than ever. I don't see why I should ignore it now. They are telling me that people who are going in and going out are so determined to do it right now, that they have got the, that's when you see the round numbers. And that just says to me there's a degree of hysteria. It isn't well thought out. It's not a plan that was, it was mitigated by the vicissitudes of the market. And therefore you've got to take it very seriously. As if to say, what happens to someone who bought, well in this particular case, they could be looking just great. Let's go to ARM, which is a stock I've focused on for quite some time. Arm holdings, PLC and semis, I've given you licensing. They're in a sweet spot. In about seven sessions, they've gone from the 70s to a high of 164.00, a round number high. And that's really interesting. Why? Because they tumbled within two days, yesterday had a low in the 119 teams. I mean that 50 something points, that's a big, that's a big decline. And now they're up 13 and 133.34. So whoever sold at 164.00, what do you think they did today and yesterday? They got their hands off the steering wheel, patting themselves on the back, looks great. What about the people who bought at 164.00? I should have done that. Oh, I didn't think of it. I should have followed the ticks. I would have had the exact volume. I suppose I could go back and do it. I don't want to do it right now. And they're looking at, they paid 164.00. Yesterday it was, a day later it was down to 118.00. And right now it's at 133.00. Well, that could in fact, it's a peak E. It could go higher. And it's a leg E in the weekly chart. It's only a leg A. I believe it's an A. Let me just move this messy stuff around here. No, is that an A or a B? Let me just double check. Yeah, it's a leg A in the monthly chart. And that just says, looking out over the period of 2024, going into 2025, this should still get, on a monthly basis, should still get a peak A. We haven't made a peak yet. You have to wait a whole month with a candle, a whole new candle with a lower height. We're able to call it a peak. And then it should go to a peak B, higher, and then a higher peak C, and then at least a peak D. So for 2024, this is looking great on a short-term basis. It's a little bit toppy. Well, that's had a pretty good consolidation when you're looking at it visually, not the weekly, but the daily. All right, enough with that. Let's get to our numbers. Wait a minute. I did this for the update. Did I do it now? I'll just do it. Let's just do it real quickly. The Dow right now is up $48, not acting all that well at $38,300. I should mention for subscribers. We are short on a short-term trading position. Still got our call-ons from way back. So short-term there. We've got the S&P doing not too badly today. The S&P is actually trading up 26 points, but after the dropping it took yesterday, this is not great, but it's certainly better than going because that would have been a Chapman Wave, a very small one yesterday, so at any point today, if this S&P was trading for 60 minutes or more, below $49.44, it's way up. It's at $49.80 right now. That's going to say you're going to test yesterday's low. But in the meantime, it's holding pretty nicely. I should mention we have a short position. Looking at the IWM, the Russell 2000, trading up 2.63 at $197.20. It did go to a peak C, but that peak C was under that peak D, so that could fail right here. The stochastic is only a 72% the manganese positive, but barely. 9% is over the 14%. So this is a work in progress right now. What happens next? I think it's just trapped in a rectangle formation. Looking at the, I want you to go to, I said I'd go to the semiconductors, up $4 at $203.30. All-time high, $204.20. I need to just double check here. $207.12. I forgot to update that. $207.12. So that was a pretty big pullback, giving back three sessions. And now it's going right back up again. So until the semis are done, there is going to be internal strength, and I would not ignore that internal strength. Within that context, what I am looking at here is, I want to look at NVIDIA. NVIDIA, there we go. Oops, don't type it there. Type it here. NVIDIA. NVIDIA.  It was 746.11 high three sessions ago. It had a 726 high and a 704 low, I believe. Let me just double check that for yesterday. I mean, these round numbers are just amazing. 734.50 was the high. It opened at 704.00. And what happened? 726. Oh, that was the day before. It opened the day before at 726. Let's go to these round numbers. No round numbers yet today. It went 730.06. 6 cents higher for the low of the day. It did open at 732.02. And it's trading right now at 738.34. You can see the internal strength of the semiconductors. We did not. We wanted to get a short position yesterday. It had to be under certain conditions. Those conditions were not met. And if they were met, it would have been good. If they weren't met, fine. We didn't go into that. I'll be right back. As we came to the break, I just wanted to show you gold. Gold is down eight. If you're looking for potential trading setups in the stock market, then Rocket Equities & Options Report is a newsletter you should try. Tommy O'Brien delivers options and equity trades when the markets present them using a combination of fundamentals and technicals. Sign up for Rocket Equities & Options Report today with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. For all the details and to start your subscription today, visit the front page of the video. I'm Tommy O'Brien. For all the details and to start your subscription today, visit the front page of TFNN.com. TFNN Educating Investors. Everything in the universe is governed by the Fibonacci sequence. This mathematical principle is responsible for everything from the most aesthetically pleasing artwork to patterns in the stock market. To stay on top of stock patterns you can take advantage of, sign up for the Fibonacci 24-7 newsletter at TFNN.com. When you subscribe, you'll get a weekly report from Veteran Day Trader Larry Pesavento on stocks you need to pay attention to. And you can trust Larry's analysis. After all, he's got 45 years' experience as a day trader. Larry will also provide daily charts, videos, and data on the key markets that he's tracking. 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TFNN has been educating traders for more than 20 years with live programming hosted by a variety of professional traders during market hours, the Tiger's Den, available to all tigers and tigeresses for just $1 for the year. There's no cash or added costs when you join our community of traders. Sign up today and become a part of this educational community of traders. Just visit the front page of TFNN.com. Toll free at 1-877-927-6648. Internationally at<PHONE_NUMBER>. So I was going to get to this next, but I'm typing it in here. I haven't quite finished it, so I'll do it right now. This is a Bitcoin, Bitcoin's up $1.97. This is Bitcoin Investment Trust at 46.07. It's just gapped up to a leg D in the day to a leg F in the weekly and a leg C in the monthly. I had a question, could I do CLSK? CLSK, I have never actually, oops, CLSK type it over there. So I was just mentioning, I kind of like what I'm seeing in the market right now and that's what I said was that kind of a one-day thing and now we have to have some kind of a consolidation. The reason why I said to subscribers, we're going to be adding to a position that we've already had before. We want to add to that, take the opportunity of that slide to the downside. No other shorts that once we've got, and even there there's been tightened up quite a bit. So CLSK is called Clean Park Inc. Is that what we were looking at, Clean Park Inc? Is that a, huh, is that a Bitcoin type stock? I'll have to see, I'm going to check the name. C-D right here, talking about C's, there's your C and there's your D. Then it pulls back and has a brand new buy mode right there. A, B, it's in leg C. Yep, C in the weekly chart as well. Looking very strong. Did gap up today. So be a little careful, although it's in something that is on fire in the Bitcoin area if this is, then you've got to consider that a gap doesn't mean anything because it could gap up the following session. Those gaps right here, not this one in particular, the one from about a week ago. That might not be filled in the 11s, but the one today with a low of 17.41, certainly that could be filled and you've got yourself a doji candle. So let me just check to see if there was an answer to that. CLO, let me just see. No, so I can't, I'll do that right now. It's really important to know exactly what we've got. CLSK stock, CL, CLSK stock is question mark. Clean squawks. Yeah, it's cool. Clean squawks. So they must do something in the Bitcoin using solar watt solutions. Oh, okay. All right. So that's kind of the backbone of the mechanism. Clean spark. Okay. So with that said, to lean spark ink. Let's see what it's doing. Yeah, I like it very much. It's in the second buy mode in the last couple of months. And it's a little choppy, but that's stochastic is flat. That's great. Magdi is overextended, but that is still very strong. It means it could pull back with that green line. That's the fast moving average hasn't turned down yet. So that's very positive with a stochastic at 94.34% in the daily. That's great. The week is only 62.48. So there's a divergence between the technicals trying to play catch up. But I like this very much. And I would just say to you, you're in the long term. The 1430 to 1380 level going into the end of next week by Friday of next week. Let's see if that holds. If there's any pullback whatsoever. Okay. So within that context. Yes. Okay. So let me go back to what we were looking at. I wanted to show you. So I showed you gold gone underneath. Look deep underneath the support level right here. That was the support of the 13th. Oh. A month ago. Four or two months ago on the 13th of January. No, December. Oh, it's even more at 2. 2006. 0.7. Today's lows in the 1996 area. So yeah, that's not good. And if you're looking at silver. And the more I thought about it last night, I thought, what's going on with gold? We've not liked it for quite a while. Quite a while actually. What's going on? And my thinking here is that Bitcoin as a, that whole Middle East thing just didn't work. It worked for a couple of weeks and then that was it. And the Middle East had to, you have to consider that gold is the go-to place when there's really configuration with an oil crisis and either a banking crisis and oil crisis, mid-east crisis, money flows to gold. And they're not seeing that right now. So that's out the question in terms of an insurance, but in terms of the traders, and you can see by, by hood, I've been talking about this for some time, that I think hood is going to do really well because Robinhood, these, probably these are the players that would go into something that moves very quickly, like gold, but instead maybe now that they're going back into the, where they got burnt before, into the Bitcoin. And that's what you can see right here. So Robinhood is up. I would love to say we are long because I kept saying we're going to get long and we didn't in the, in the 10 and 11 area. Here it is a 30.28. The monthly chart says, hey, you've got plenty of time, Mr, the all-time high was an 85 round number high. These round numbers, unbelievable. August of 2021. All right. So in the meantime, that's doing well. So let me go back to gold and I'm just saying to you, until it becomes like a fashionable thing to be trading and talking about gold, it's just kind of not there. And that's all I'm looking at. It's not, I mean, the weekly chart, it's not bad. It's come down sharply, but it's in the middle of its trading range, but look at Silver. Silver has really struggled and it is trying to establish a base in the 22 area. I'll have to watch this closely because if Silver is able in the next week as a separate entity almost to gold, if Silver is able to get to the 23.20 area to 22.27, that's a whole point higher over the next, I'd even give it time, give it, let it have higher highs and higher lows instead of taking out 21.50, which will be really important support. If it takes that out, that's a problem. So let it do it slowly, but it's not doing it right now. High-grade copper, we're looking at it, not acting very well. It's down again today, 3.70, down 0.002, and now I want you to go to bonds. Now, this is going to be so important because, remember, I like to talk about this in relation to when I'm looking at markets and I talk about, I end here, I talk about dark news. So this is what I call tap and wave dark news index. I'm now calling it just the index, using the Dow daily chart. And I said, you see this rectangle? That's just telling me that there are a couple of things in the market, overall economic marketplace that says you've got higher bonds, you've got higher dollar, you've got inflation that doesn't seem to be tamed yet. So I'm putting that into the category, but it isn't yet. And this was during the day. This is when I spoke to you yesterday. It went even below the trend line that I drew. And that just says there could be kind of choppy action for a little while, and that's what I'm looking at. But in the meantime, I like the fact that within this context, there are slides that give you opportunity. Oh, I'm sorry. Larry mentioned, oh, he lost his dear friend Jim. Oh, Larry, we can visit right with you. Wow. Jim Twentynine. Well, you know, we are visitors of one mother in law used to say, we're just visitors. What can I say? I'm so sorry. $1,339. Currencies, commodities, and bond markets are as important as ever right now with how they're driving the volatility in equity markets across the globe, which is why it's a great time to try out Teddy Kegstad's Tiger Forex report. Teddy Kegstad breaks down the forex markets every Monday using his 30-plus years of experience as a trading veteran of futures, forex, stocks, and options. He releases his weekly Tiger Forex report every Monday morning with coverage of all the major currency pairs, including the dollar index, the euro dollar, pound dollar, dollar Swiss, dollar yen, as well as many more. And he also has weekly coverage of the crude oil market and the 30-year T-bonds as they both influence forex markets tremendously. 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Because when you know better, you invest better. Join us and experience the difference today. TFNN Educating Investors. Well, folks, we're back. Just want to show you the E-mini. I had a meeting, so I only got back there just a few minutes before my show. I just pulled in this look. So this is a one-minute chart. The E-mini is at peak F right now. It's pulling back at 5,000 and 5.75. This is still a leg C. I've got in the five-minute chart and a leg D in the 10-minute. When I left for the meeting at about 9-ish, I thought, well, let's see what happens here. Because the green 9-period moving average in the 10-minute chart was still very positive. And then just momentarily at about just 9, it must have been 935 or so, it slipped negative, but it didn't take out the left side. No, so finally we've got our leg D in the S&P 10-minute chart. Fascinating. So let's just go back to this. So a couple of questions that came in, I wanted to get to. So these are the bonds. So the bonds are going higher. This is the TBT. You'll see it right here. Don't tell me I typed it in the wrong place again. Okay, TBT. TBT, that's the inverse. Oh, I'm typing it. I'm typing it correctly, but I always forget. When I go to the yellow chart, I got to get back into this. There you are. TBT's in a leg. I don't know if this is an E or brand new B, this is called an E slash B. My suspicion is because of the weekly chart, this is actually a daily leg B, and a weekly leg B. That means yields are going higher. So what's fascinating about the market, for those of us who follow the market, not for years, not for decades, but for decades and decades, that's why I have this dark news index, because the market at certain points ignores the exact same news that yesterday was concerned about. It just does that. That's number one. Number two is if there is anything going on that really impacts the market, it gets used to it quite quickly, and then you've got to look for something else. So bad news, and this is really bad news, doesn't last for very long. The buoyancy of the market is quite amazing. So in this particular instance, if I go to the TNX.X, that is the 10-year treasury note. This is a leg B. Yes, very sharp move up. Could that be a D? I'm not going to ignore that. So we've got a buy signal. That went to a buy mode. Is that complete with the peak C1, C2? And this is a brand new peak A right here in the Chathamary methodology. This is where it becomes a little difficult deciding. You don't have to do anything about it just yet. Is this a D? Which it says, you've got to be a little careful. Or is it a B? Which it says, are you kidding? Every single dip you want to be buying. Well, the stochastic at 96 is really strong and holding flat. That's a positive. The MACD is strong. That's a positive. The 9 is way over the 14, but it only went fractionally to pink for a day or so on that dip early in February. And now it's back again early in the beginning of February. So I'm calling this a B for now. I've got a DB, but I had years ago said, should I put what I'm favoring first? In other words, B slash D. I just want to keep it in sequence. C goes to D. And that's the way it is for right now. I don't have to do anything. Well, first of all, we don't have bonds in our portfolio. We always follow them, but we don't necessarily always have them. It just means that I need to notate this. The rate of strength is improving. It's not great, but it's improving. So that just says the yields seem to be wanting to go even higher. With that said, I think I've covered almost everything I wanted to do. So look at this. Remember, I had a call the other day about GT. That was the tire company. I said, you know, if you've done your homework and you want to get in for the long term, you could just have a little nibble here, but I don't really like the chart. Something's not quite right with it. And look at this. This is GT, a Goodyear tire, toodling along in the 13s three days ago. It's now at 1149. It had news, it gapped down. And I have to tell you, I didn't see it in the chart other than peak APB peak C in the weekly chart. But to tell you the truth, falling under the 200 period moving average in the weekly chart, the monthly chart wasn't that bad, but it was said sideways at best. I have to tell you now, looking at GT, if you've done your homework and you had that nibble, the decision is, what should I do now? Because remember, we said if you haven't got the tight, I said you should still have a fairly tight stuff. So what I'm looking at this, and I'm saying, is this now where you should start making your decision on GT? Either just out, you're not interested at all, or is this where you want to start finding some kind of support? Why? Well, if you're looking at Toyota motors, Toyota motors went to a new all-time high yesterday that's trading now at 225.75 down to 575. But look what happened yesterday when the general market was just abysmal. It went to 232.56. Remember the 202 round number that I was talking about two or three weeks ago? That lasted just a little bit. It just spiraled right out of it and went above it. So I'm pointing this out because it's automobiles like general motors holding towards the higher part of the three, four-month range. It went to a leg, it hasn't quite gone to a leg D in the weekly, but it's on the 200 p.m. living average. Look at HMC, which is Honda Motor Company. HMC up towards the higher part of its range. D brand new PQABC, yep. Look at this, right there. It had 35, it went to 35.18 yesterday, it's trading down a little bit today, down 32 and 33.74. And the weekly chart is still pretty good. So that means that, yes, money is going into automobiles, very expensive. I mean, the average cost is over 48,000 now. That's quite a bit of money. The one I'm missing is Ford. Ford is acting quite nicely. Went to peak ABCD. Let me just show you right here. Above the 200 p.m. moving average gap and is holding the gap. So this is your A. That's your B. Never find the lowest loan. Count each success of the high peak. Up a case on the way up. D is your objective for a buy mode. Then other things can happen. So we can recycle, get a whole brand new buy mode, whatever it is. So that's holding very nicely. So this is where I want you to do your homework. I don't know if I'll have time to do it. I'll try to do a little homework to see whether or not we're looking at, after the bad news, maybe all the bad news is out, whether on chart pattern or loan. Maybe the homework in terms of looking at tire supply and all that stuff. I'm looking at the chart and saying, will it hold 11 or will it take it out? And that'll be a real problem. Because that takes it down to the 10s very quickly. But that was GT. The next thing I want to look at was TGLS. Why did I put that in TGLS last night? Looking at it. Oh, $49.93. This is called a glass ink. I've always looked at the names. This is like that glass. What was that glass? What was it called? What was the symbol? Is it still around? G L W? That was that glass. Remember that was the gorilla glass or something? Corning ink. Yeah, so corning ink. So I guess the glass, those particular that formative glass is holding quite well. I guess that's the reason why I want to look at it. And I'll be right back. That was a 537. It's a piece of 53. And yes, I will be talking about uranium in a moment. I'll do that. The gold report. As a precious metal, gold is still king. It continues to hold the most effective safe haven and hedging properties across the global major trading hubs the U.S. futures market and the Shanghai Gold Exchange. The gold report. Tom O'Brien publishes his weekly gold report every Monday morning for subscribers consisting of coverage of the XAU, HUI, GDX, The Dollar, Bonds, the South African RAND as well as 25 different mining equities with specific buy-sell recommendations. The gold report. New subscribers get a 30-day money back guarantee so you have nothing to risk. Subscribe to Tom O'Brien's Gold Report newsletter now at TFNN.com with updates when warranted. Stay ahead of the game with Tom's real-time analysis and trade recommendations delivered straight to your inbox.  Ready to join the ranks of successful traders? Head over to TFNN.com and subscribe to Market Insights today. Don't miss out on this opportunity to supercharge your trading results. 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An investment in the funds is subject to risk, including the possible loss of principal. The funds are designed to be utilized only by sophisticated investors such as traders and active investors. Distributor, 4-Side Fund Services, LLC. Trading at 52.30 down up 51 cents. It did make a peak D in the dating and the technical start to fade and just yesterday on that slight red candle, the 9-period moving average flipped to negative and it is a peak D in the weekly chart but it's only a leg C in the monthly. I could call that an E but everything about it thus far says I should call it a leg C. That's just the way it is. So the question is and I'd say that there's a chance that this is an instrument that could be telling us about something much longer term more towards months rather than weeks and the way I'm looking at it, I think there's something going on in uranium that is a positive the number of times over the last two weeks that I've seen all of a sudden it mentioned in whatever it is either through interviews or through comments in the financial press about suddenly uranium has become the thing to talk about tells me that you've got to watch out we've got ourselves a little slide coming and yes we've got a slide but I think the 9-period moving over the weekly says that in 52 unless it traded at 47 in the next week or two to give a really sharp downside reaction I think it's as far as I'm concerned it's holding really well so if that was the question yes URNM yes we have UEC it's still holding very nicely it is pulling back even the daily 9-period moving average thus far it's green but I think it's in a 10-pink and we're going to consolidation but this is Uranium Energy Corporation trading at 758 down 6 cents but the URNM is telling me that so far it's still very appealing to buyers based on the 9-period moving average in the weekly chart question came in could I look at MSOS I discussed this the other day this is an old advisor shares pure US cannabis sector ETF trading at 843 down 15 cents just as we're talking this 9-period moving average has turned pink the days young anything can happen but so far it's the first time it's turned pink since it's rallied back in late December from the 650 area went all the way into the 1050 also range so yes the question is can we please discuss an entry well I wanted to see how it because it held quite nicely yesterday I wanted to see how it held today we have MJ and MJ we asked the long we took a little bit of profits I'm trying as best as possible to use this chat with inside track propellant zone there's some kind of a liftoff area it's acting a little bit you know even look percentage wise is down minus 2% today this is the alternative harvest ETF cannabis sector if you go to MSOS so this is down 2% that's down 1.6 so it seems to have a slightly better action and I'm not sure about the volume I should have checked it out I was worried about volume recently then I saw that it actually has pretty good volume MJ trading right now yeah it has good volume in fact it's double MJ and the price is a little bit more than double MJ so the question is on MSOS where would you this is if you're looking longer term I think because of the politics that's involved now and the administration I think is going to go to every length to try to to build a portfolio of a wide range of audience that is potential voters and therefore there's this area so if there's something that can be done in the whole financial aspect that really helps the cannabis sector you know this is really a part of banking issue as well I think it will help them I'm trying to get us through this saying I believe MSOS trading at 849 it could drop to 550 but I think over a period of 2024 the whole year I wouldn't be surprised if this is up in the 12s and 13s at some point so that's based not on fact it's based on presumptions so all I'm going to say to you if you want to get in I would do this I would just start a small position at 852 I think you might be in lower down but if you're looking at brand new position only looking out longer term I would have a small position at 852 I'd split that into two one part of it I'd have a stock probably at about 820 maybe 8 dollars even give it a little bit of room and the other one I'd say what will I do if it hits 750 that's the 200 period moving average but I do think getting your foot in the door is not a bad thing that's the only way I'm looking at it foot in the door I'm not saying I'm going there I'm saying the first big deal would be to get to 11 or to break to 1050 so it can make a new multi-year high or a yearly high and it hasn't done that so we'll just step in just a small position I know you like to take longer I saw my last and added a small year at 840 probably we're on the same page and a question came in BLK BL this is in the this is Blink is a charging company ages ago we looked at it we looked at it I don't think we ever bought it something is weird about it it does everything it looks fantastic and then kaplop even if it has good news something goes wrong and it just makes lower lows and lower highs look at that monthly chart look at the weekly chart for the first time it's trying to find a base so with that said trading at BLNK trading at $3.31 wow up 23% up 63 cents this is the way it works so if you aren't in it already it's really tough to get into something that has a knack of giving back very quickly it almost looks like a biotech doesn't it look like a biotech to give it weekly now what I'm going to say to the question is fits your EV battery fits your group as we discussed it's your last live workshop today earnings very solid forecast for EBITDA EBITDA I always read it it's one of the first times I've ever said it this is earnings before this is part of your the vernacular for your bookkeeping profits by end of 2024 in my opinion this is a solid entry level long term so I'm going to say because you look at long term and you are able to use options and all sorts of things to at least ameliorate those sudden declines I'm going to say it's a different category altogether of personnel for you I'm going to say the way it looks right now the $3.50s looks like a target on the upside today's high is $3.38 it handles a pullback not the rallies how it handles 3 is support to $2.90s if it takes that $2.90 over the next week that's a real problem that's number one number two is before we go to the break I'm going to say for anyone who's interested in this whole category battery EVs etc I would nibble not $3.32 right now if you have patients I prefer a $3.10 and give it if you want to give it a stop I have to give it almost a $.30 stop but I would nibble at this in the next week I don't know if I'm going to say I would wait though to start your position are you ready to take charge of your financial future TFNN is your gateway to the world of trading and investing whether you're starting out or scaling up TFNN empowers traders and investors of all skill levels with top-notch investing systems strategies and techniques it's time to protect and grow your money with insight and trust join us live Monday through Friday during market hours for exclusive content that moves with the markets at TFNN we bring the trading floor to you our season hosts are here to answer your calls and questions live on the air check out the Tiger's Den for just $1 and follow us on YouTube and become part of our vibrant community and remember at TFNN we're so confident in the value we provide that we offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on 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little summation you can just sum up what you're saying what I'm saying is that yesterday's decline certainly in the Dow and certainly in the S&P not the S&P, the semiconductors was something that we'd be anticipating would happen we are short those instruments the point is that I think it was a really important shot across the bell number one, just a warning look I wanted to show you something I wrote down, look at RobLux it made this perfect double top it's amazing how these double tops go within pennies but that's not the issue I thought why not just look at salesforce.com because I thought I wrote CRM but I didn't well salesforce.com hit a high of 295 295.24 it had two round numbers yesterday and today what does it do? It opens at 285 it's at 287 up 6.31 something's going on with these round numbers almost every stock you're looking at it has a round number over the last couple of days what is with that this is hysteria missing out round numbers, that's what I think I have a wonderful recipe today check out my opening poll and looking forward to show you how wonderful that sounds see you


Hey, it's a sunny day in New York City. And I have a rainbow, look at that rainbow. That's cool, woohoo. Woohoo. And it's a sunny day in New York City and it's time for watchful work. And what else do you need to know? But we're gonna get some work done together today and we're gonna talk with you after we work for 20 minutes. We're gonna talk with you about your work and your creative process and give you some encouragement. While we do not have time for you to actually share your actual work with us, we do have plenty of time to talk about process and all those good things. And if you should have a question after our 20 minute work session, why don't we, why doesn't Zoe or Amritha tell us how to get in touch? Yes, hi everyone. We're Amritha and Zoe from the New Work Development Department. Thrilled to be with you and thrilled to be with SLB. And Zoe, you wanna tell us how people can ask questions? Yes, after our quiet work session, we will open up for questions and to ask your question, please use your raise the hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen and we'll get a nice and neat cue going and when it's your turn, we will ask you to please unmute and that's what we'll do. That's fantastic. And of course we wanna thank HowlRound and we wanna thank the Public Theater for helping us get organized every Monday. And what else, am I forgetting anything? Am I remembering everything? There's a rainbow in the room. Thank you. I was sending out the vibe, let me unmute myself. Please let me unmute myself. Sorry SLP, we had a little bit of technical difficulties on our end, but we are back, we are back on. We love technology. Can we please get back into technology? Hallelujah, thank you technology because without technology, we don't have to be like in the lobby of the public theater gathered around while the people who work hard in the lobby of the public theater are changing the ice machine, which is very noisy. So we love technology. Hey, all right. So anybody have any questions? We're in the rainbow room today. That's what we'll call it, the rainbow. Kenny, we saw your hand raised earlier. Is that a, do you have a question? I just, I didn't get into school and I'm heartbroken. And I don't know where to go from here, what to do. And I'm just tired of being 62 and not having a career and being a writer with no place to go and no place to learn how to be better to get my stuff out there. So I don't really even know if I have a question. I'm just, I'm sad and I don't know. I don't know what to, I don't know where to go. I'm so sorry that you didn't get into the schools you were hoping for. I'm so sorry. Thank you. I don't have any say on admission. So I apologize for just not, way to No, and that's the other thing. I'm sad I won't get to see you and study with you too. That was a big part of it and being in New York cause New York is like my boyfriend. I love New York so much.  Where do you live Kimmy? Where do you live? I live in California now. Oh, okay. But I'm a Jersey girl. Uh-huh, okay. What part of California? Santa Barbara. Oh no, that's beautiful there. Please, anybody come visit. Wow, Santa Barbara. That's gorgeous. That's so gorgeous. Absolutely pretty. So yeah, so what do we do? What do we, what can we, what can we do? What can we do when, you know, the things we're hoping for don't work out in the way we hope for them to work out. I know, I mean, are there, you know, are there any kinds of in-person communities in your community? Is there nobody around? It's, I don't know to be honest with you. You know, there's a lot of people that act and there's theaters here, but there's already, it's just focused on acting, not playwriting. And when I did, I had a reading of a play many years ago in LA with a lot of my comedian friends. A bunch of comics got together and they read my play for me. But then I, you know, I don't know, I just feel out of touch with everybody and everything. And as a comic, it's frustrating because I've been doing this for like 12 years or more. I don't know, whenever Elliot Spitzer resigned, that was the first night. That was the first night I took stage. And I know that because I couldn't remember my material going to the open mic and I got nervous and I turned on the radio and I heard him resigning. And I, and so my first line on stage was, has there ever been a better time to be a slut from New Jersey? Like $80,000 is just, so that's why I know it was that many years ago. But I haven't been asked to, like I produced a show here in town, but it's once a month, so I don't get to home my skills and driving to LA is just a beast, you know? And I, I don't know, I'm just, I'm hitting walls and I'm feeling frustrated at 62 hitting walls and I've tried everything I could think of on my own end. And I'm just, I'm so open to whatever, you know? That's why at 62 I applied for school because I'm open to whatever. So that's why I didn't, I don't even know if I have a question because I don't know what even to ask. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, I can hear a question, maybe this is correct, you know? Like how do we keep going? Yeah. How do we keep going?   Yeah, I can do readings and stuff, but how do you get your stuff up and how, or how do I get better at being a writer? You know, like for example, I have a friend that just graduated with an MFA in Columbia. And I thought one of the things that I want to do is I wanted to learn structure. I want to learn, and she goes, Kimmy, your play already has structure. I went, oh, you know? And she says, it's really great. And she gave me notes and I, and I addressed the notes and changed it. And then I talked to a friend of mine who's a director and she says, okay, that's your first scene. So I moved stuff around. So it's not like I don't, I can't take a note. It's not like I'm not willing to, I mean, I'm malleable to the point where if there's somebody that has a great idea or has a good note, I'll take it. But it's also not, I'm not, not a wallflower that doesn't have the ability to advocate for my work either, you know? So I know I could get it read, but how do you get it up? How do you, how do you, how do you network? Like that was the other thing, career development and networking, I don't have those opportunities. Like I would have had in school. Yes, yes. And then the other thing is like, when I get stuck, I go, okay, well, go learn something. And now I can't, I didn't get into school. So how do I, you know, I don't know. I'm just, there's a wall that I've been banging my head against it. No, I hear you. And it's appropriate, I think, to be frustrated because you put a lot of work into those applications. And sometimes when you see like yet, that is exactly what would be right for me. And then it doesn't work out. You think, well, what do I do now? Exactly. I knew, I know it's right for me. And you can entertain the possibility that there's a way to get to where you wanna go without going through the door that you thought you were gonna go through. Like, if you wanna be really malleable, you know, not malleable, but flexible mind, you can start telling yourself that instead of like, I don't have a way to do it. I don't have any community. I don't know what to do. I know what to do. I have community. They're closer than I think. And there's a way to get to where I wanna go without going through the door that I thought. Okay. Yes, grad school does offer opportunities. And living in the world offers opportunities as well. Thank you. The only way, grad school is not the be all end all, take it to success. I didn't go to grad school. You know, a lot of people who are in the business right now that I work with and that I adore and respect did not go to a graduate program to get their degree in writing. You know, so you're not gonna, I mean, you can always, and you can always apply next year. Maybe you applied last year too. You know, you can keep applying if that's something you really believe in. You can keep applying. And in the meantime, you can scour your immediate universe and look around and say, who's to my left? Who's to my right? Who's around? Who's around? What people do I know? And how do you get your play up? You get your play up by working with people. I mean, how do you raise a barn? It's the same thing.  Is there a community center? You know, sometimes we get the notion that to be a successful fill-in-the-blank, you have to go to a successful fill-in-the-blank. You know, a successful program that's accredited in MFA. To be a real writer, you have to be, you know, you have to have a play on Broadway. You know, we all know that that's not true. To be a real successful novelist, you have to be published by a successful, whatever, random house or whatever. We make up these scenarios, these narratives that are not true.  Well, that's not true, is it? You know what I'm saying, right? But that was the narrative that we were all telling ourselves, right? And now it's other narratives. But do you see what I'm saying? How we hypnotize ourselves into believing something that isn't necessarily true. And keep me as hard as you work. You can work more locally and just say, okay. So I didn't get in this year. I can apply next year. And who's around who can do my plays? You sound like you know a lot of actors.   And it's fun. I enjoy it quite a bit. Okay. Self-producing is a way, if you have the financial, a little bit of financial wiggle room, self-producing is a great way to go. Doesn't have to be a huge show. It can be a modest, you know? But it's still getting your show up there. You can, yeah. But you can just look around. Don't overlook in your quest for, you know, whatever the golden fleece or the grail or whatever it is, don't overlook the person who might be sitting right next to you or the person who's sitting next to them. Cause they might be able to help you. They probably will be able to help you in some way, in some way. Just be relentless in that locally, be locally relentless. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. I love you so much. Thank you. I love you too, sweetheart. And just keep going. Come on, and then let's be part of your story. Ha-ha, that year I didn't get into that grad program. I went and did such and such, and now I am such and such. Ha, you'll be an inspiration to a lot of people. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I appreciate this community. And thank you so much for everybody's support. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Cause I didn't know even what to ask, but you always know how to zoom in there.  Ha-ha-ha. I'm wearing my Yoda t-shirt. I'm all ears. Thank you so much. You're welcome. We love you, Kimmy. We're sending you so much love. And also just wanted to share, and happy to send more of this, but another option to consider too, is there's more play development centers that are offering virtual classes, if classes are your thing. I used to work at the Playwright Center and especially kind of post pandemic, they started opening up all of their classes that playwrights teach about structure, or if you want to learn how to write for TV, or like so many, so many aspects, they're all virtual now. So it's also, they kind of recognize what you named where community building, you know, can be localized. And also they're trying to find ways to make sure that location isn't a barrier. So I'll just put it in the chat for you. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. It's a great resource. That's fantastic, I'm with you. Thank you. Of course. This was great. Love, you mean it. Thank you. And how about Tammy, would you please? Hey, Kimmy. Hey. Yeah, and Kimmy, like I've definitely, I've been there. I get it.  And I've had like seven careers since then. And so now I'm doing the self-producing thing where I've decided that I, then I mentioned this before, like I'm doing a podcast that's also, that can function as a walking tour. Yeah, right. Oh, that's great. People are saying, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm, I got really great advice a few weeks ago from Neil deGrasse Tyson, he was amazing. And so now I'm ready to sort of share it with like just friends and people who know about the town. And I would love to actually turn it into like something where I get community buy-in a little bit. So I also want to survey because I feel like, because it's not really traditional theater, so you can't really judge by applause and you can't really, you know, you can't, you can't wait for people to email you back and say how marvelous it is or even what they hated about it. So I want to send out a survey and like, you know, some of them, some of the questions are like technical questions, like, could you, could you listen to it? Did it work for you? Did you like it? Did you hate it? Like, and do you have any recommendations for other kinds of questions? Like part of me is like, did you like it? Did you think it was marvelous?  Cause I've definitely been in a situation where you're doing a workshop and you want feedback from the audience and sometimes they'll give you notes that you know maybe you're not going to take or they're not helpful or whatever. So how do I, do you have any, I don't know. Yeah, no, so do you really want their notes?  Yeah. I want to know that they're at least like relating to like the main characters and like following them.  Like, are they gonna be engaged enough? So ask, did you, so, you know, whatever Joe and Tabitha were the main characters, I don't know, you know, right? Did you find them relatable? Did you find them engaging? Ask them specific questions, you know? Are you wondering what's going to happen next with them? Are there any things that you'd like would happen next? You know, if they're confined by the history of what actually happened, is there anything, would you like them to break free of the history? And if so, how so? Ask them specific questions, kind of what we call leading questions, you know what I mean?  What was confusing? You know, did anything make you laugh?  Did anything make you wonder? Did anything sound like it wasn't historically accurate? If so, why? You know, is there anything that you wanted to hear more about? If so, what? And how much so? Yeah. Are there any peoples that you think should be included that weren't? Are there too much of certain kinds of people? You know, specific questions. And yeah, like maybe no more than like 10 or 12. Right? Right, right, like I have, I have like, you just listed like 20, right? That's what I asked. Yeah, and that's, you know what I mean? And thank them a lot for their participation and their feedback. And you can always ask more for more feedback later. Yeah.  That's just it, right? Feedback is like. Yeah, so if you ask specific questions, get them thinking about, you know, yeah. Cool. Thank you. You're welcome. Awesome. You're wonderful. Love this. Thank you so much. Rocky, would you please unmute and ask your question? Hey, bro. How you doing? Good to see you, man. Go ahead. Yeah, my name is. Oh, I want to say to Kimmy first, I just read this post that said Greta Gerwig was rejected from all of her grad schools. And obviously she had like a really, well, has been having a good decade, it seems. But anyway, my question is, let me get it. Thank you for sharing that, Rocky, while you get your question. That's very generous of you to share with all of us. Thank you. Yeah. What is your advice for organically raising the stakes? Organically raising the stakes. That's such a funny question. I mean, the way it sounds.  That's actually true. I mean, I don't know. That's like gardening, right? If you want to raise something, add a lot of fertilizer. Make stuff happen. Sometimes you're like, OK, my play, my novel, whatever's about someone just going to the store, gets very narrow very quickly. Look to the left to the right. Look over the character that you're looking at. What's going on? Get interested in your characters. What's going on with you? What's going on with her? Why are you two not talking to each other? Get really interested in your characters.  And then they might tell you things that are, oh, I had never thought of that. You know, OK? But get interested in their shit, in their stuff. And that will naturally organic. You used the word organic. And it will organically fertilize your story, your plot. Ha, ha. And then you'll have a lovely garden. And we're done with metaphors about gardening. OK, thank you. You're welcome. Good question, man. Very good question. Yeah, get interested in your characters. Always, always, always. OK. That's where your story is going to come from, regardless of what you're writing. Thank you so much, Chromky. Caitlin, will you please unmute and ask a question? Hello, I'm Caitlin. Hey. I'm a director, and I have a question about something I'm writing, which is kind of similar to Rockies. So I've discovered that I want to try my hand at genre, like horror. So I have all of these ideas that don't really connect. I've been putting them on index cards. And it's just really like themes. I'm like, OK, well, this set piece and this theme, OK, but maybe this is where the horror comes from. But they're not connecting at all. I don't really have a story. So what would you do in that case? Yeah, Caitlin, get to know your characters. Same thing. And you said, yeah, Rocky's question teed yours up. Get to know your characters. So a lot of times when we were thinking, here I'm go, get to know your characters. These are your characters. Theme. They're issues. The content. Yeah. I could keep backing up. You're not going to. What are you talking about? I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about theme. You know, what does that even mean? I don't even know.  And now the brother's coming back, you know what I'm saying? Then that's somebody. And then they have a relationship. And then what happened with them? I don't know if that's Horst or I don't write horror genre. But, you know, and scary movies make me scared. But, but, you know, if you like that kind of thing, think about your characters, right? Like, what are they up to? What are they doing? What do they want? Where are they going? Like we said last week, maybe in geometry, two points make a line, i.e. that is where your character starts and where you want them to end up. Beginning point, end point, make lines of dialogue. If it's true in geometry, it's also true in writing. Okay. I know. I'm telling geometry jokes. Y'all ain't laughing. Anyway, but you're smiling. There you go. So, okay, so get to know your characters. Don't, don't shortchange your characters. That's where the story comes from. Believe it or not, the story isn't coming from you and your ideas about what all those things you talk about, theme and such and such and whatnot. That's very impressive.  We got story to tell you, right? Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. And it's fun, right?  I welcome it. Okay. Thank you. Great question. Thank you. Thank you, Caitlin. Laurie, will you please mute yourself and ask your question? Hey, Laurie. Hey, I took your geometry class. I don't have a question this week, but I did my points on the line for every one of my characters and I put in all their obstacles. So I'll let other people have questions, but I've been using it for two weeks. Fantastic. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I'm so glad. I love it. I'm so close. That's fantastic. And, you know, yeah, for me in school, I was good in calculus and physics and all that, but geometry was always mysterious. And now I've learned how to use it. So I, I'm just relieved. Yeah. So. Cool. Thank you. I'll let other people go. I just, I love it. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you, Laurie. That looks beautiful too. I love seeing your lines and your drawings. I know, right? Right? Yeah. It's got coffee stains too. Oh, even better. Even better. Want to give a shout out to Rebecca. Rebecca, you came to our gig at Rockwood. Thank you so much. It was great to see you and give you a hug in person. I know. I miss the, you know, I do miss being at, in the balcony and in the mezzanine. But this is so much better. I get to meet people from everywhere. All right. It was so good to see you.  Oh, yeah. Because it does really, it helps me stay inspired for my work. So it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. Artist dates that I heard from, from Julia Cameron, right? The artist. Great book. Great book that is very encouraging.  Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. So I don't, I don't have a question today. Oh, no, no. I was just saying hi and thank you. You're welcome. I'm just vamping. I'll play with my capo. So you, thank you for posting the events. People should. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Because we're, you know, we're, we're out there. And it's, it's fun. I think, I think it's a lot of fun working with a band and they're really great musicians, those people. And we have a good time. We're having a good time. Making a new show. That's right. We still have time for a few more questions if anyone has a question that they want to share. Yes. We see one of, we would, can you pronounce your name for us? We'll ask you to unmute, but we want to make sure we pronounce it correctly. Hi, I'm Dastle. Dastle. Dastle is to meet you. Nice to meet you all. Wow. Hi, everybody. Hey, Dastle. What a beautiful name. Thank you. My question was about adaptation. Do you mess with that? And if so, like, how do you approach it? Cause like all the characters are there and the whole thing is there. Like it's all plotted out already. He's like, you have a map and all you got to do is follow it. And I've just taken that map and applied it like somewhere else to a different scenario. But now I seem to be freaked out by my own idea. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. Yeah, I've done a lot of adaptations. Most of them for jobs, you know, for work for hire like Native Sun or their eyes are watching God or the Gershwin's poor game best, things like that. And it's, I always, the first thing I lead with is respect. So I feel like I am walking with the original writer and respect literally as my friend, director Steve Brodnack says, literally means seeing it anew, seeing it again, respect, right? So I'm walking with the original writer, you know, hand in hand or, you know, very appreciative of the work they've done and acknowledging that they are giving me an opportunity to see the work anew. So whether it's like Native Sun, you know, originally set in the 19, I think 40s, I think, I'm not sure, or 50s, Brie brought it forward to the present day. So it's just made a contemporary. Oregon Best, we made it, as we say, habitable for everybody involved, updating it, if you will. And it's, so I don't like take a plot and like put it on my own story. I don't really do like that. I wouldn't call that an adaptation. So could you talk a little bit more about what, I mean, not specifics, but... Well, I'm taking this restoration comedy. Oh, okay. And I'm trying to apply it to the same sort of place with different, like a similar place, but with different, I'm sorry, my dog is crazy. Okay. I'm trying to apply it to like a different place with different people, like my hometown, basically. Okay. See how to make that work. And I'm like, oh my God, what have I taken on this? This is huge, like it's bigger than me. It's huge.  The whole world is bigger than you. Welcome, welcome, you know what I mean? So yeah, so again, be very great. I think what helps me is if I'm very grateful to the original writer for, you know, laying the groundwork, you know, they've laid the foundation. Be grateful and be specific and know that, yeah, they've done a huge amount of the initial work. And if you're, I find that with gratitude and with specificity, I can go scene by scene, character by character, focus on what your characters want. That doesn't go away just because you're adapting something. All the things still remain. Who are my characters? What do they want? Where do they start? Where are they going? You know, how do they end up? Do I keep the act breaks the same, especially in restoration comedy, because it might be differently structured, you know? What can the original writer teach me about the story that I wanna tell? You know, they are there to help you. Again, gratitude and respect will activate them even more. And so they are there to help you. Well, sounds like fun. Thank you so much. Great question. That sounds like fun. Thank you, Dassel. James Q, please unmute yourself. I hope I didn't put your name. Hi. Thank you so much. How's your work? How's your choreography?  Filmmaker, yes. Filmmaker, right, right, right. How's it going? It's been going well. Thank you so much. So I have a question related to the process of improvisation in the creative process of genre dialogues. So I'm curious if you use improvisation in that process and if so, if there are specific strategies of approaching improvisation that you find very effective. Wow. That's really, that's a great question, James Q. And I, yes. And see, my husband is a jazz musician. So he's all the way out there, you know, improvises all the time with the people he plays with. And I do as well writing, but it's not in the same way. I'm not improvising with my actors. I am improvising with the characters in my head. So in my experience, improvisation in dramatic writing is called your first draft. So you just let it roll.  So in jazz and music, in my experience, my understanding is you know what the chords are, right? You're gonna play over the chords and you know what the, you have the head, the major melody, right? And then you start out. So that would be for playwrights, it would be the characters or the dramatic writers, the characters and the basic story. And then you start to improvise, meaning you just let the characters say whatever they want as they are pursuing their wants and going to other goals. That would be the equivalent if you were a musician playing like piano over chords in a jazz context, right? And then you see what you got. And then what's great about writing is that you're typing it, I would type it out on the word processor, whatever, and you have a document of it. Sometimes in jazz, they just play and it's gone, you know? But if you're typing, you have a document that is your first pass at the improvised dialogue. And then you can improvise off of that or you can just hone it and file it and polish it and get it to be more specific to what you want. Does that make any sense? Yeah. A lot of people would involve actors and all that. I find that I, it's a taste thing. I like to improvise in my head. Yeah. So I found over time that I get better dialogue but that's just my, that's what happens with me. Thank you so much for sharing that. Great question though, that's really cool. Cool. Thank you. Virginia, ah! Please unmute yourself. Hey, Virginia. Oh, you're still on mute. You're still on mute. There you go. I have a load in my hand. Okay, so I have a question. I'm working on an autobiographical one person show. Well, so the thing is, so my question is there are different segments that happen in my, from my life or from the character life. Does each, so each section kind of has like a climax of what happens in that little section. So does should the whole story have that kind of a build and then like an ebb and flow also or is it just okay in each segment? The whole interest I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a cool question. I would think that it would be helpful.  And it also would be helpful as you're writing these segments to have an overarching story, if you will. Like, like, like, why am I telling you all this? Yeah. Because I want you to understand, da, da, da. The only way to help you have you understand whatever it is, you know, me or I mean, you or the speaker, whatever it is to tell you this story and this story and this story and this story. And in the end, then now you understand whatever it is that I wanted to explain to you. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. An overarching sort of reason why is really helpful. Then it will keep us in those valleys when we're going, why am I listening to this? Oh, because, because Virginia is telling us the story, we're trying to get to that fifth mountain and here's where we're still on the path. We're still on the journey with her. Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense. That really helps. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I just love it. Thank you. You're welcome. Great question. Thanks for this class, everyone. Sure, it's fun. It's Monday. Thank you, Virginia. We might have time for one more question. If anyone has a burning question, they want to ask on this beautiful Monday. No, it's a beautiful Monday. Oh, yes, Caitlin, I see your hand. Please unmute yourself. Yeah. Well, again, for the bonus question. For the bonus round. Here we go. Can you please share with us how producing your own work made you a better writer if it did? Sure. Yes, that's a wonderful question. I think it makes the writer responsible. I think it helps the writer be mindful of the bottom line. Economical. Sometimes people think, I'm only going to be successful. I have tons of money to do whatever I want and all that. Hey, uh-uh. Now, if you have $10, can you make a show with $10? If you can, then you're really happening. It also helps you reach out and make connections and broadens and enlargences. Your community.   I really enjoy it. So the test kitchen I'm doing right now in my band, we're self-producing. And I love it. Also, you're the boss. You don't have to. Which means not, which means you can do anything you want. But it means that literally the buck stops with you and you get to make all the creative decisions, which is really fun. So I think it's, I don't know, something you should definitely try if you find yourself between like, well, either I don't get produced or I self-produce if you can afford it and have a little bit of money and have a few connections or can make a few connections. Definitely try self-producing. It's nothing to be ashamed of just because a famous Broadway producer isn't inviting you into their theater. Hopefully we can let that go and embrace the reality of DIY where it's at. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Great question. It's almost 6 o'clock. Almost blowing at the clock. We crushed it. Yeah. Great. Everyone rocks. Woo-hoo. Well done. Now it's the clock. There it goes. All right. All right. It's 6 o'clock. We will see you next week on April Fool's Day, baby.