14. minister. Q1, from Jackson Carlaw. Thank you. Can I ask the First Minister which plan delivers public spending in real terms over the coming years higher—the UK Government's budget plan or the Scottish National Party's growth commission? First minister? Let me be very clear that as a result of the budget on Monday, the UK Government budget,�ro fel Volksdeingell, in real terms by almost £2 billion per anniosiant between the Tories coming to office in 2010 and end of this decade, highlighting that austerity under the Tories is far from over. They continue to deliver tax cuts for the richest, and cuts for everybody else. By contrast, the growth commission recommends on the real terms growing in spending to protect our vital public services? Jackson Carlaw. Well, if that's austerity, the First Minister's going to have to think of a new word to describe life under her miserable plans, because that's quite something. And whatever else that was, whatever else that was, it wasn't an answer to the simple question that I ask. On Sunday, Derek Mackay swaggered round the TV studios saying, show me the money. Well, on Monday the Chancellor did. And what the First Minister won't admit is that the UK budget has now set a course for public spending to increase within the UK at 1.4 per cent a year in real terms up to 2023-24, whereas the SNP's growth commission, the Evangelical Bible of Economic Misery, forecast public spending in an independent Scotland to increase by just half a per cent. First Minister, those are the facts, so I ask you again, which plan proposes to increase spending by more in Scotland? The UK Government's bold proposals are the SNP's miserable growth commission. First Minister. Appendence and control of our own resources, we can ensure real terms increase in public spending, that is the price of independence. However, let's go back to the budget and the reality of the UK Government Tory budget announced on Monday. That will result in, cut to the Scottish Government budget of £2 billion over the decade that the Tories have been in power. Most of the consequentials in next year, of course, are earmarked for the national health service. When that is taken out, we will pass it on to the national health service. I should say, as an aside, that the Tories have even managed to short changes on that. We were meant to get £600 million in consequentials next year, and we are only seeing £550 million of that delivered next year. If that shortfall continues over the planning period, that will see the Tories short change the Scottish people to the tune of more than a quarter of a billion pounds. That is absolutely shameful. However, if Jackson Carlaw does not want to take my word for it, perhaps he can listen to the think tanks and the experts of all had their say on the budget over the past few days. The resolution foundation is not the end of austerity. Existing promises of extra spending in some areas mean that the chancellor's numbers imply on-going cuts in other day-to-day public services. We know what the Tories stand for. The mask has well and truly slipped. It slipped before we even got to Halloween this year. Tax cuts for the wealthiest and cuts for everybody else are the reality of the Tories, and this Government stands for something very different indeed. Jackson Carlaw. How miserably predictable. Here is the reality. The Scottish Government will receive an extra £0.5 billion more in real terms next year. That is what the independent Scottish parliamentary researcher Spice has declared. Yet the SNP is so focused on finding the cloud in every silver lining that it cannot even bring itself to welcome a single penny of that money, let alone £0.5 billion of it. Worse still, the finance secretary has also indicated that he will refuse to pass on tax cuts that will benefit middle-income families elsewhere in the UK. Will the First Minister give any hope of tax relief to people like senior teachers, nurses and police officers who, without it, face paying a bill of £1,000 extra in income tax compared to those who are doing exactly the same job elsewhere in the UK? Will she? However, Jackson Carlaw tries to spin it. The reality is cuts to this Government's budget as a result of decisions taken by the Tory Chancellor. I have got the figures here. £2 billion over the decade is a real-terms cut in the budget of this Government. That amounts to almost 7 per cent in real terms. The Tories should be utterly ashamed of that. We are seeing the true colours of the Tories really highlighted today. When we set our budget on 12 December, the decisions that we take will be driven by our determination to protect our national health service and our other public services, to tackle poverty and low pay, and to ensure that those who earn the most in our society make a fair and reasonable contribution to our public services. It will be a balanced, progressive and fair budget, and it will stand in stark contrast to the one that we saw on Monday. Let me look at tax in more detail. I am really surprised that Jackson Carlaw is prepared to defend the reality of this. Again, let me cite the resolution foundation. Those are not Scottish Government figures. 84 per cent of the benefit from the Tory tax cut for the richest goes to the top half of the income spectrum. 37 per cent of that goes to the top 10 per cent of income earners. I am quoting the resolution foundation here. The overall impact of tax and benefit policies, put in place by the Tory Government since 2015, will, on average, make richer households better off by £390 a year and the poorest fifth of households £400 a year worse off. That is absolutely damming and shameful. I would be really interested to hear if Jackson Carlaw is prepared to stand up and defend that. Jackson Carlaw. I will tell you something. Audit Scotland is not very impressed with your efforts to protect the NHS, because it thinks that its current forecast is completely unsustainable. What we get from the First Minister is the usual basket of cliches. That was a budget that froze fuel duty and delivered a tax cut of £132 to the record number of Scots in work. It delivered a freeze on the duty in whiskey, welcomed by the industry, helped for the oil and gas sector, welcomed by those in it, more than £0.5 billion for Scotland's NHS, helped for our high streets, investment in our roads and the SNP response, an all too predictable whinge. How tired, lackluster and miserable. They wanted a freeze in whiskey duty, they got it, they wanted support for oil and gas, they got it, they wanted to see the money, they got £950 million worth of it. If ever Scotland wanted evidence that this is a grudge in grievance government led by a grudge in grievance, First Minister, this was it. Why can't she for once, just once, First Minister, welcome it? Well, isn't it interesting and isn't it very, very illuminating that when I quoted the resolution foundation about how the Tories are cutting tax for the richest in our society while continuing to punish the poor? I asked Jackson Carlaw to have a go at defending that. He just changed the subject. I think that lots of people will have listened to Jackson Carlaw today and realised that he is completely unable to defend the policies of his own party at Westminster. Let's turn back to the NHS in tax. First, let us not forget that, as a result of our budget decisions last year, 55 per cent of taxpayers in Scotland right now pay less tax than counterparts across the UK because of our new starter rate, not helping those at the top, helping those at the bottom of the income scale. That's a progressive change. When it comes to the NHS for weeks now, the Tories have been challenging the Scottish Government to say what we're going to do with the £600 million of consequentials that we're going to get in this budget for the health service. We will pass on every penny of consequentials for the health service to the health service. Interestingly, it's not £600 million that's been delivered, it's only £550 million, and that will cost Scottish people more than a quarter of £1 billion over the period. My final point, Presiding Officer, and the Tories might want to listen to this, because that figure of £550 million has another significance, does it not, because that's also the figure that would have been taken out of the Scottish budget if we'd followed Tory calls to cut tax for the riches in this financial year. That would have been the equivalent of taking 13,000 nurses out of our health service. The Government stands for public services, it stands for helping the poorest in our society, it stands for fairness and progressive principles. What we've seen today is that the Tories stand for tax cuts for the rich and just cuts for everybody else, and Jackson Carlaw can't even try to defend it. Utterly shameful. The First Minister once pledged that in government the SNP, and I quote, will not force students into deeper and deeper debt, and would further meet the debt repayments of Scottish graduates living in Scotland. When the First Minister made that promise, the average debt for a Scottish graduate was £6,070. First Minister, what is the average debt today? First Minister. Debt for students in Scotland is at the lowest level of any country in the UK. It is significantly lower than in England, it is significantly lower than in Northern Ireland, and it's also significantly lower than in Labour-run Wales. That's because we don't have tuition fees, we're protecting students from having to pay tuition fees, and we've got one of the best student support systems anywhere in the UK. Of course, in recent months, we've announced increases to the support that we give students, so we will continue to give Scottish students the best deal anywhere in the UK, and we will continue to be proud to do so. Let me give the chamber, which the First Minister did not, new figures published this week show that the average debt for a Scottish graduate now stands at £13,200. That's more than double. Yet Nicola Sturgeon not only promised Scottish students that they would not be forced into deeper debt, she promised them that their debts would be written off, they would be cancelled. Let me quote an SNP election leaflet from the time, which said that we will write off the accumulated debt still owed to the student loans company by Scottish domicile students. Now we know, now we know, Presiding Officer, that Nicola Sturgeon did not dump the debt, she dumped the promise, because this week it was also confirmed by the student awards agency for Scotland that the SNP has cut student grants and bursaries by a third since 2012, and it has increased student loans by a staggering 182 per cent over the last decade. The First Minister was not prepared to tell us what the average student debt is, but can she tell us what the total value of student debt in Scotland is? Student debt in Scotland is lower than student debt in any other part of the UK because of the policies of this Government. Richard Leonard cites the figure in Scotland of £13,230. In England, average student debt is £34,800. In Northern Ireland it is £22,440. In Wales, where Labour is in Government, student debt is not the £13,000 that it is in Scotland, it is £21,500. Yet another example of Labour telling us to do as they say, not as they do. Richard Leonard cites figures published this week, so let me share with him some of the figures that were published this week by the Students Awards Agency Scotland. Total student support is up by 4.5 per cent to £882.7 million last year. Average HE student support in Scotland was up 1.4 per cent since 2016-17. More full-time higher education students than ever before are receiving support up 3.1 per cent since 2016-17. We paid out more in grants and bursaries last year, up 8.9 per cent, and the number of students receiving a grant or bursary increased by 2.8 per cent to 53,620 from the year before. As I have already said, of course, student loans companies statistics show that students in Scotland continue to have the lowest debt in the UK. My final point is that we do not just have the lowest debt for students in the UK, but that gap is growing year on year. That is our record on student support. It is one to be proud of, and we will continue to support students as best we possibly can. Richard Leonard If the First Minister had read further into that report, she would have found the answer to the question that I asked, which is that the total student debt in Scotland is now almost £5 billion. So the SNP in office has presided over a 169 per cent increase in that debt, and let us be clear, it is the poorest students who end up racking up the highest debts by taking out the biggest loans. That is not just my view, that is the view of the National Union of Students in Scotland, who this week said, and I quote, that students in the lowest household income bracket still finish their course with the most debt. Even by the standards of this government, promising to scrap student debt and then increasing it by 169 per cent, is nothing short of shameful. A generation of students have started high school and gone to university since the SNP made and then surreptitiously dropped their promise on student debt. That is a generation of students burdened with debt repayments that the SNP promised that they would write off. As a result, these current and former students may still owe a debt to the government, but this government owes them an unreserved apology. So will the First Minister today do the right thing, and will she apologise for her £5 billion broken promise? Presiding Officer, I think that there are students in Scotland who have started and finished degrees in the time it took Richard Leonard to ask that question. Anyway, when I was pointing out the fact that students in Labour-run Wales have significantly higher debt than students in SNP-governed Scotland, there were those in the Labour benches who were saying that that was not relevant. Well, let me tell you what certainly is relevant. Richard Leonard is the representative of a party that, when they were in power, supported charging students tuition fees. He stands here now and has the gall to mourn about student debt. Not only do we have the lowest debt for students in the UK, not only are, according to all those statistics published this week, increasing the amount that we pay to support students. We set out further plans. Over £21 million will be invested every year by the end of this Parliament to improve the support available to students at university and college. Next year we will invest £16 million to increase and expand access to further and higher education. Bursaries for students from the lowest income families. We will increase the higher education, bursary income threshold. We will increase bursary support for the poorest young students in higher education. We will increase bursaries for the poorest independent students in higher education. Of course, we will be paying a bursary equivalent to the real living wage to all care-experienced students in higher and further education. Not only do we have a proud record, we have the best plans of any party in this chamber for supporting students in the future. We will continue to get on with the job and leave labour to the various contortions that they managed to get themselves into. The number of constituency supplementaries is three. In fact, first from Tavish Scott and Maurice Golden. Last week, Highlands Islands airport is limited, confirmed that they will impose car parking charges on islanders travelling from Sumbra airport in Shetland. There has been no consultation, no island impact assessment and no new public transport links between Sumbra and Laowick, which is 25 miles away. Could the First Minister explain what happened to island proofing? Highlands Islands airports have to take decisions that they think are balanced and allow them to support and to invest in the airport facilities that are there. Of course, they should do proper island proofing. Tavish Scott is absolutely right about that, and they should make sure that they consult. I will ensure that the transport secretary discusses the issue with Hyal and corresponds with the member once he is done so. Maurice Golden Cameron Barclay, a six-year pupil from Renfrewshire, is trying to study for his advanced hires. I say trying because he must attend three separate schools and because Renfrewshire Council refused to help him with taxi costs, he must make a 45-minute cycle journey between them that sees and misses both class time and lunches every week. Does the First Minister think that that is acceptable? I do not know the individual circumstances of young Cameron Barclay, but I am more than happy to look into that. However, one of the things that we have tried to do—I have had exchanges with Ruth Davidson on the issue at previous sessions of First Minister's Questions—is to ensure that young people have as broad a range of qualifications that they can access. Some schools in different clusters will provide different qualifications and young people will go to different schools to access them. That is the part of how we deliver qualifications. As I say, I am more than happy to ask the Deputy First Minister to look into the specific case that the member is raising. However, the principle is that we want to ensure that young people get access to as broad a range of qualifications as it is possible to do. The First Minister is only too aware of the impact of two fires on Suckie Hall Street in Glasgow, where those businesses have been closed for months on ends. Some are still struggling, and sadly some will probably not make it. Does the First Minister agree that Glasgow deserves the same treatment as Belfast, who in the budget were awarded £2 million for their equally tragic circumstances of the pre-marked fire fallout? Does the First Minister agree that this is appalling that Glasgow's needs were ignored? I know that she has been helpful to the businesses in Suckie Hall Street, for which I am very grateful. Will the First Minister meet people of Suckie Hall Street businesses to discuss what further help can be given to the city of Glasgow? The finance secretary has already met businesses that are affected by those two fires, and he intends to continue to do that and to engage with them in the run-up to our own budget in December and beyond. The Scottish Government has already provided financial support, both in business rates relief and the £5 million fund that we set up to allow businesses to access financial support, and a number of businesses have taken advantage of that. I certainly do not regret the fact that Belfast got support. I think that that was right and proper, but I regret the fact that that was given to Belfast and that there was not the same consideration by the UK Government to the situation in Glasgow. Of course, the responsibility of the Scottish Government through our own financial decisions is to make sure that we are taking all appropriate steps to help businesses affected, and I can assure the member that we will continue to do exactly that. Later today, Parliament will debate the treatment of asylum seekers in our society in view of the continued threat of an imminent wave of mass evictions and mass destitution in Glasgow. I hope that the vast majority of us will unite in revulsion of the UK Government's brutal policies and in determination to take action to support asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants. People like Abdul, who was refused asylum and has been destitute in Glasgow now for two years, has serious epilepsy as well as mental health issues stemming from his persecution in Afghanistan, as well as from his homelessness here. This summer, he was discharged from an emergency hospital appointment to a shelter that did not have space for him. As I speak, Abdul is facing destitution again tonight. He will spend yet another unsafe night on the streets with literally nowhere to go. Only once he has short-term, safe emergency accommodation staffed by professionals who can meet his health needs, can he start making choices in his life again rather than being forced to make the grimmest survival decisions night after night. That provision does not yet exist and, with winter coming, it is needed now. Can the First Minister tell us, five months after the Scottish Government accepted the recommendation that there must be funding for emergency accommodation for those at immediate risk? What progress is being made and when will that provision be available? The recommendations that were made by the homelessness and rough sleeping task force, the initial recommendations that were made in the run-up to last winter, were accepted in full and funding was made available. That funding was used to very good effect to help many of those who were facing rough sleeping and those working on the front line, who helped to shape those recommendations. Those that I have spoken to are very positive about the impact that they have. As Patrick Harvie knows, further streams of recommendations have been made by that task force. They have now published their final recommendations and we are working through the implementation of all of those and it is an on-going process. In terms of asylum seekers, there are circumstances of the individual that Patrick Harvie has mentioned today. Often with asylum seekers there are issues around recourse to public funds, which complicates some of the provision that the Scottish Government would want to see provided. I abhor the way in which the UK system often exacerbates the trauma that asylum seekers have experienced and the trauma that has brought them to this country. I want to make sure that we do everything that we can to help them in the situations that they face, but also that our actions to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness are not just about helping asylum seekers, but are helping everybody who faces that circumstance. In terms of the detail, there are a large number of recommendations made by the homelessness task force. In terms of the detail of where all of them are in progress of being implemented, I am more than happy to get the cabinet secretary and Kevin Stewart, the housing minister, rather, to write to Patrick Harvie and set out the progress against each and every one of them. Patrick Harvie. Thank you. I appreciate the tone of the First Minister's answer. I do believe that the Scottish Government wants to get this right. We in Scotland should reject the wider hostile environment policy on migration in general that comes from the UK Government, but also reject the idea that asylum seekers are a burden. To be asked for asylum is to be in a privileged position. To be able to offer asylum to those who need it is to be privileged. To have to ask, that is what it is to bear a burden. But we do need more than just that firm sentiment and the commitments to act. We need that action to be immediate, especially as the nights grow colder. We need an urgent timetable for the implementation of that recommendation on emergency accommodation provision and integrated service that includes support services as well. We know that there is not a legal barrier to funding those services, even for those people that the UK Government has abandoned with the label no recourse to public funds. If the First Minister agrees that no one should be made destitute in 21st century Scotland, will she give a clear commitment that the Scottish Government will take the action necessary to prevent this humanitarian crisis on our own doorstep? First Minister. Yes, I will give that commitment. As I said in my previous answer, we are in the process of implementing all the recommendations of the homelessness and rough sleeping task force. We learned a lot from the winter initiatives that were taken last year, and those lessons will be applied. This year, we are committing significant funding to that. Out of the ending homelessness fund, we have allocated more than £23 million to get on with implementing those recommendations. We have also recently announced additional funding for the housing first approach. I absolutely agree. I would say that the sentiment that I am expressing here in terms of the detail of what we are doing to tackle rough sleeping and homelessness is backed up by the practical action that we are taking. More generally, I do not think that we should ever see those who seek asylum as a burden. We are undertaking our moral responsibility in offering asylum to people here. Given the nature of the constituency that I represent, I make representations regularly on the part of a large number of asylum seekers. What we often find with people who come here seeking asylum is that they are highly skilled, highly educated people. One of the things that I believe very strongly is that they should be allowed, as so many of them want to do, to work and make a contribution while they are here. I would hope that this Parliament, on all of those issues, can unite and call on the UK Government to change the rules that are causing and exacerbating so much of the misery that asylum seekers are facing, but to get behind the work that we are doing around tackling homelessness and rough sleeping, not just for asylum seekers but for everybody who faces that situation. A couple of further supplementaries, first from Bill Kidd. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Does the First Minister share my concern that this week's UK budget was a missed opportunity to end the roll-out of universal credit? The Chancellor's proclamation that universal credit is here to stay risk-driving more children into poverty and forcing families to defend food banks as the five food banks in Glasgow Annesland. The extra money that was announced for universal credit and the changes to the work allowances within universal credit were welcome, but I do not think that it goes nearly far enough. Universal credit is still going to adversely affect many people and lead many people into rent arrears and debt that would be completely avoidable. I still take the view that universal credit should not be tinkered with, but that universal credit should be halted. I hope that this Parliament continues to call on the UK Government to do exactly that. Interestingly, I quoted the Resolution Foundation a couple of times already today, but the point that it made about how the income tax threshold increases and increases to the universal credit work allowances is that those changes do not offset the impact of the benefits freeze for lowering from households. It is not just about universal credit, it is about the overall impact of the welfare cuts that we are seeing, which, as I said earlier on, is leading to a situation in which the richest in society are going to end up better off and the poorest in society are going to end up worse off. That, as we saw from Jackson Carlaw earlier on, is literally indefensible. I hope that this Parliament continues to stand up against it. Alison Johnstone Thank you. The Scottish Government's consultation on the protection of wild mammals act ended in January, closed in January. Analysis of the responses was published in July. The vast majority of the 20,000 respondents want to see a real ban on hunting with dogs. The fox hunting season begins again on Saturday, yet the Government still has to publish a response. Does the First Minister believe that the Scottish Government has done enough to ensure that foxes are not hunted with hounds when the season begins this weekend? The Scottish Government's response on this is due to be published imminently. I do not have the date for that in front of me right now. I know that Cabinet is due to discuss it very soon. I will ask Roseanna Cunningham to write to the member to give her more detail on the timing of that. I think that we have done enough. I think that we have done the right thing. We asked Lord Bonomy to review the provisions. He has published a report. It is right that we carefully consider the way forward. That is exactly what we are doing, taking full account of the consultation responses that we have received and, as I say, we will set out our response in due course and as soon as possible. John Mason To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking in response to the reported rise in antisemitism. The First Minister Well, there is absolutely no place in Scotland or anywhere else for any form of antisemitism or religious hatred. Last week, of course, we learned of the tragic attack on the tree of life synagogue in Pittsburgh and my thoughts, and I am sure that the thoughts of the whole chamber are with all of those affected. We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community across the world. I was reminded of the importance of tolerance, compassion and respect during my visit to Auschwitz earlier this week with school children from across Scotland. I certainly will never forget what I saw there, and none of us should ever forget the horrors of genocides around the world. There is a stark reminder of the inhumanity and violence that bigotry and intolerance can cause. We are committed to tackling hate crime and prejudice. We recently launched the letters from Scotland campaign, which aims to encourage witnesses and victims to report hate crime and help to create a society where hate crime and prejudice of any form is not tolerated. John Mason I thank the First Minister for that answer and I certainly share her sympathies with those affected by the attack in Pittsburgh. I have to say that I also found the visit to Auschwitz incredibly moving, especially when I saw the railway there. Would the First Minister agree that both the words and the tone that politicians use are extremely important and can have a big impact on the people that hear them? We all need to be wary and careful of the tone that we use, including President Trump about Mexico and other people about Israel and about the Jewish communities. The First Minister Yes, I absolutely agree with that. I think that it is incumbent on all of us to consider carefully the words and the language that we use and the tone that we use as well. Words do matter, and all of us are aware of the damaging impact that can be inflicted upon individuals and communities through the irresponsible use of language. Everybody in public life is a duty to be aware of that and to understand the importance of the messages, tone and language that we use. It is important that we acknowledge and take time to consider the impact that our words can have on people, on their families. Of course, that includes personalised attacks and violent language. Personalised attacks and violent language debases all of us and all of us, each and every single one of us, have a part to play in challenging and confronting that. Adam Tomkins Thank you. The First Minister has referred to her visit this week to Auschwitz. In reflecting on her visit, as I have reflected on my own visits to Holocaust memorials such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, does the First Minister agree with me that, above all else, the principle lesson of the Holocaust is that none of us can ever afford to look the other way in the face of anti-Semitism? Even in a country as otherwise welcoming and civilised as Scotland, as Efraim Borowski of the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities has recently said, Jewish people remain 30 times more likely than others to be targeted for their religion. Is that not the call, First Minister, not merely for words but for action? The First Minister Yes, and I think that all of us have to look carefully not just at what we say, but at how we apply those words in the actions that we take. I, as the First Minister and as leader of my party, take that responsibility very seriously, and I hope that that goes for others across the chamber. For anybody who has not yet had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, if you get that opportunity, I would thoroughly recommend taking it. It is a profoundly unsettling experience but an incredibly important one. As I said when I was there on Tuesday, it is important to remember all those who suffered and were murdered there and to pay tribute to that suffering. However, it is really important that we do not just see what happened there in a historical context. It is not just a history lesson. The Holocaust did not start in Auschwitz or Birkenau or any of the concentration camps. The Holocaust started in the everyday antisemitism and discrimination, the othering and dehumanising of Jews. That is the lesson that we must learn and apply in our modern lives. That is why I was so pleased to be there with 200 Scottish school students and the Scottish Government. As many members in the chamber, I know how to support the work of the Holocaust education trust to make sure that as many young people get that experience as possible. It had a profound impact on me, but I know how to watch the reactions of the young people that I was with. It had a deeply profound impact on them as well, but that can only be to the good as we do everything that we can to make sure that those horrors cannot be allowed to happen again. Neil Findlay I fully support the First Minister's words, but this week, the acting leader of West Lothian's SNP councillors and one of his colleagues shared and then defended sharing an article attacking a young female Jewish trade union leader for her work representing low-paid workers. The article cited Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. The author of the article was rightly suspended by the First Minister's party. Will the First Minister now take further action and suspend both elected councillors and others who spread such offensive, hateful material and attack and abuse people for simply doing their job? The First Minister Can I respond really seriously in a very heartfelt way to that legitimate question? It is important that all of us reflect to follow-up in Adam Tomkins' question, not just on what we say but on what we do. The author of that blog was suspended from SNP membership earlier this week. Obviously, there will now be due process that has to be gone through, so I will not say any more about that at this stage. What I will say is that the IRA definitions around antisemitism will be used in the consideration of that disciplinary complaint. On the SNP councillor, I should say that the councillor in question has written to the young woman who mentioned an unreserved apology today, fully recognising that he made a significant error of judgment and that that error of judgment arose out of a lack of understanding and knowledge. There are two things that I want to say about this, and I was discussing those things in general terms with some of the members of the Jewish community that I was with on Tuesday. Where people do get things wrong through lack of understanding or knowledge, it is sometimes important that we give them a chance to learn, because education and learning is an important part of combating antisemitism and tolerance and racism of all forms. The SNP is responsible for the decisions that we take on those things and are answerable for those decisions, but we, in all of those matters and have done so this week, have consulted Scogec, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities, about the appropriate response to this particular situation. My final point is equally important. I could stand here right now, and I am not going to run through a whole list of alleged failures of Labour or other parties to take those things seriously and, indeed, to act as seriously as we have done this week. However, I am not going to do that, because, yes, in a democracy, it is really important that we hold each other to account, that we check each other's behaviour and call out unacceptable behaviour. That is a vital part of our democratic process. I think that it is equally important—we are all guilty of this sometimes—that we do not rush to weaponise those things against each other for petty party political reasons. On the fundamentals of this, it is important that we stand united to say that antisemitism, racism, bigotry and intolerance in any form is completely unacceptable. The SNP will continue to treat it in that way, and we will continue to be answerable for the decisions that we make. Ultimately, on those issues, I think that there is a lot more that unites all of us than divides us. I think that we would probably do a greater service to the memory of those that we have just been discussing, but also to future generations if we actually took the time to stand in solidarity on those issues as much as we choose to defyde. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that there is mental health support for college and university students. First Minister, every student should have access to emotional and mental health and wellbeing support. That is why our programme for government includes a commitment to provide more than 80 additional councillors in colleges and universities over the next four years with an investment of around £20 million. We are also supporting NUS Scotland's think positive project, which aims to find ways to support students experiencing mental health, tackle stigma and discrimination and promote wellbeing. We will continue to work closely with the university and college sectors, NUS Scotland and other partners, on the implementation of the additional councillors and to ensure an integrated and wraparound approach to student wellbeing in both higher and further education. She will be aware that the number of university students in Scotland seeking support for mental health issues has increased by two thirds over five years. Information from universities across Scotland for the number of students seeking some form of support found that 11,700 students asked for help in 1670 compared to 7,000 in 1213. Cases ranged from anxiety to depression, gender-based violence and body dysmorphia. Therefore, can I ask the First Minister how she plans to ensure that mental health funding is split across colleges and universities fairly? When, as she has just indicated, there is some implementation going on, can the students expect to see more councillors on the campuses? The short answer to that important question is yes. The announcement that we made in the programme for government—and obviously there will be more details of this around our budget in a few weeks' time—is that we are going to invest significantly in putting additional councillors into schools and also into colleges and universities, and that will have an impact on campuses across the country. Rachel Hamilton talked about the increase in students coming forward for support, and she is absolutely right to do so. That reflects an increase across society in people coming forward for support with mental health issues. As I have said many times before, that in some ways is something that we should welcome because it is a sign that the stigma associated with mental health is reducing, but it puts our responsibility on government shoulders to ensure that the services are there. As well as investing more, we need to reconfigure the way in which mental health services are delivered, having much more preventative support, much more support in places like schools, colleges and universities, in police stations, for example, and in GP services. That is exactly what we are trying to do. Perhaps one of the most important things that we are going to be doing as we implement those plans is developing the community mental wellbeing service, which will cater for everybody in the five to 24-year-old age group. So there is a whole range of things that it is important that we take forward, and we are committed to continuing to do so. 6. David Stewart Thank you, Presiding Officer. To ask the First Minister what recent discussions the Scottish Government has had with the European Commission regarding the Highlands Islands exemption from the air departure tax. The First Minister We want to protect the existing Highlands Islands exemption from the air departure tax. We have written to the UK Government asking them to notify the exemption for approval to the European Commission, and I have had on-going discussions with them on this matter. As the EU member states, only the UK Government can engage with the European Commission to pursue that notification. However, as has previously been set out, notification is only one avenue. We are also continuing to explore a range of different options to try to find the best possible solution to the Highlands and Islands exemption issue. Of course, that needs to be resolved before EDT can be introduced in Scotland. David Stewart I thank the First Minister for her answer. The First Minister will be well aware of the calls from some quarters of the aviation industry south of the Highland line to kill off the exemption with potential damaging consequences for businesses and communities across my region. Can the First Minister give Parliament an absolute assurance today that she will resist the misguided demands and protect the interests of the Highlands Islands by preserving this vitally important exemption? The First Minister It is not just that I can give an assurance of that. The actions that we have taken to date demonstrate that we are absolutely determined to protect the Highlands and Islands exemption. We have taken the decision that the EDT cannot be introduced and some of the policy changes that we want to make cannot therefore happen until we have resolved the exemption. We continue to take steps to try to get the UK Government to come up with the solutions to the issue. I do not know exactly who David Stewart is quoting, but I certainly would not support anybody who wanted to kill off the exemption. We understand that that exemption is important for the economy and connectivity of the Highlands and Islands, and that is why we are taking the action that we are to try to protect it. Question 7, Mike Rumbles. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking in light of ScotRail's performance falling to its lowest level since the current franchise began. First Minister I am fully aware of the performance issues that ScotRail requires to address. However, the most recent punctualities statistics were impacted significantly by the severe weather that is seen during Storm Alley. That included damage to overhead power lines and trees falling on to tracks. Notwithstanding those issues, we continue to impress upon senior management of network rail, the need for a renewed focus on maintaining the network infrastructure in Scotland, and that will help ScotRail to meet its challenging but achievable targets. Michael Matheson is due to meet Sir Peter Hendy, chair of Network Rail, and the ScotRail alliance separately over the next week, and he will be making it clear that it is absolutely imperative that performance improves swiftly and effectively to the standards that are expected by passengers. Of course, the process would be helped by the full devolution of Network Rail, a move that would allow the appropriate parliamentary oversight to be put on the whole of the rail infrastructure in Scotland, rather than just on part of it.  Now that has been taken to an all-too-literal level. This week, we learned that ScotRail will be dumping human waste on tracks thanks to the roll-out of trains at first-ended service in the 1970s. ScotRail calls those trains classic. Is that the description that the First Minister would use, and does she think that this practice is acceptable in a 21st century rail system? The First Minister It is not a practice that we support, and ScotRail has also said that it is not one that they want to see continue. It is an interim measure, and it is regrettable, and ScotRail is working to mitigate the issue as soon as possible. The Scottish Government, of course, has directly funded previous installation programmes to eradicate that practice across ScotRail fleets. It will be necessary to introduce some unreforbished high-speed trains into the service for an interim period, but it is important that ScotRail works to resolve that as quickly as possible. In terms of the wider performance issues, it is important—notwithstanding what I said in my initial answer—to stress that nearly 90 out of 100 trains arrive within the recognised punctuality measure. The latest figures show that ScotRail's public performance measure is at 87.7 per cent, which is above the GP average of 85.8 per cent. The figures in the last period were affected, as I said, by Storm Alley and the severe weather that came with that. My final point is again the one that I made. More than half of the delays on ScotRail trains are to do with network rail infrastructure. We continue to work hard with network rail to try to resolve that. We fund network rail's operations in Scotland, but it would help if we got the whole chamber to get behind the calls for network rail to be properly devolved so that we could ensure that scrutiny and oversight of the whole of the rail infrastructure. I hope that something that Mike Rumbles will support. Thank you very much. That concludes First Minister's questions. I would just note that there is a large number of members who wanted to ask supplementaries who did not get in today. I would just again call on members and ministers for short questions and short answers. We are now going to move to members' business in the name of Ruth Maguire, but before we do so we will have a short suspension to allow the gallery to clear and for new guests to arrive and for the ministers to change seats.


And she worked multiple jobs to give me the best of everything, education, anything that she could. And I would carry a deck of cards everywhere that I went. She had given it to me when I was about five years old. And for me, this deck of cards, it just felt, it wasn't like a toy. It felt like something incredible, like something that only parents would use or grownups. And I would carry it everywhere that I went. And one day, while I was waiting for her to finish work, I was at the New York Public Library. And in the library, this librarian just said, oh, we got this little book of self-working card tricks. Do you want to try to learn one? And I was like, yeah. You were how old? I was like five or something like that. And so she walked me through this very simple mathematical trick. And when my mother showed up to come get me, I did it to her.  So it was not amazing, but I believed it was amazing. So I wanted to continue to impress her, so I would just try to learn more and more magic. And then I started just, if I would be at her restaurant that she was working at, I would stand up on the chair and I would perform to everybody. So, you know, I just started to get that love and the impulse of just always trying to perform. I didn't realize at the point in time that that's just repetition, which is practice. So it's not that, you know, I'm good at what I do necessarily by default. It's like I've spent a lot of time practicing performing. How much time? Exact. You can assume every day for about, you know, almost 39 years, probably hours a day. The last 20 years, probably most of the time like six hours a day with a deck of cards. Or even just thinking, now at the same time, I would go to the YMCA and sometimes I'd wait for her to pick me up there. And I was on the swim team and I did karate. And on the swim team, because I was born with my feet turned in, I couldn't swim like the other kids.  So what I started to do is while I was swimming, I realized that if I didn't have to turn my head to breathe, I could actually swim further and faster. So I was able to keep up with the fastest of them. The coach would say, stop doing that, but I just didn't listen. I just keep going and doing laps. And then what started to happen was people were like, whoa, he just did three laps without breathing. And then, no, and then what would happen is the older kids would come to watch. And then I would compete against the older kids not doing laps. I would just go underwater all by breath and they would hold with me. But then they'd go up and down, up and down like five times while I held them one breath. I didn't even realize at the time that by staying still and not doing anything, that's way more effective than going up quickly, taking a breath and coming back down. So that was the beginning of my first experience with what I call endurance. The ability to use your mind to control your body. And then I had a karate teacher named Prince at the YMCA around the same time. And in the winter, in the snow, he would make us run barefoot. And all the kids hated doing it because it was so like, ah, this is too much. I don't want to do this, but I loved it because it made me a kid with the legs turned in. I felt like tougher than the circumstance. So that was the beginning of me loving to do these things where I used my mind to override the body and what it says. And I realized it's pretty effective that way. You can really do things that scientists and doctors would normally say, oh, that's not possible. So when did you first think actually I want to make a living out of magic? What started the magic? I haven't thought about that yet and that's why this is a weird place for me to be. I'm not good at that part of it. When do you start, you think actually instead of focusing on the magician, I want to do street magic and focus on the reactions of the people? No, that was a constant because I used to always love doing magic to my mother and her friends. And back in the late 70s, my mother was like macrobiotic and a health nut. We had seaweed in the cabinets and stuff like that, which was weird. So her friends were obviously really into that whole health nutrition or they say health nut back then. So they were all very spiritual and things like that. So when a five-year-old is doing magic to them, it seems like I'm doing something real.  But it really was just a card trick so I realized it was all how you present it. Okay, so remind me or tell me what your first favorite stint was, your first endurance. Your first or your favorite actually? Okay, well I'll tell you what my first one was, my first public one. I started fasting when I was younger. I read Sid Artha and he talks about standing, fasting, waiting and how that's so important to override your body and all that stuff. So I read that at age 11 or something. So I started to just see how long I could go with just water and things like that. So I was already curious about that. Then my first public stunt was 1999 and I buried myself alive in a coffin for seven days and seven nights. It was a stunt that Houdini wanted to do but he had died before he had the chance to do it. Although he I think was going to do a version that was a short version, not a long version. I started to think the Indian fakirs that would do it would go underground. You wouldn't be able to see them and then they get pulled out of the coffin about a month later and suddenly they re-emerged but they had secretly hidden away. So I thought well why not just really do it? Like why not just laying in a coffin for a week it seems very doable. And you were never scared? Well what I did is I put a coffin in my living room at the house I was staying at and I would just practice sleeping. And staying in it and not getting out of it so eventually I got up to like four days. I learned that if you fast and you don't need the toilet and things like that. And I would use a trucker's tube meaning you urinate into a little bag or what not to talk about that. And then what happened was I said oh well then yeah if I could do four days I'm certain I can do seven. So usually I don't go to the full distance I usually estimate just over half. And then once I get to the halfway mark I count backwards and push to the end.  Yeah everybody. And you just block them out or you say no no I can do this. Do you reassure them? I listened to all the doctors all my friends and then just try to override their theories on why it can't be done. Which is very easy to do. I have a friend that was a physiologist up at NASA and he would look into records of how long people survive starvation. How long people could survive without oxygen.  I was underwater my heart rate dropped to eight beats per minute and they freaked out and pulled me up. I could have kept going by the way. Yeah but so I look into what has been done and then I realized oh if you breathe pure oxygen first you flush out the CO2. The reason that we have to breathe is not because of the O2 deprivations because of the CO2 buildup in the bloodstream which makes the pain. So if you can override the pain then you can actually push yourself and not black out. But what's the process. So you think you're at dinner and you think actually you know what I really want to do for my next endurance or what's the process. Well okay so the process on that specific one was I remembered I always loved holding my breath and I used to win bets when I was like a teenager. I would do like seven laps in a pool and collect hundreds of dollars and stuff like that. So I was thinking like why not do something where I hold my breath. But I didn't understand what it was so I just I think I started just fantasizing about the water tank. And I started thinking well what if I made a sphere shaped water tank like a marble and then put it in the middle of New York City like Lincoln Center which is where we ended up putting it. And then that marble was there and then I could live there for as long as possible. Then I found out the longest a human was submerged completely under water was five days and five nights. So I said okay I'm going to go seven days and seven nights. And I spoke to him and he told me all about it and what you have to do which is just mental preparation. And I remained there for a week which actually allowed me to get familiar with the situation. And then at the end I went for the world record hold of my breath and failed but it was still fun. Is it always fun how much so from the moment you think about it to your moment you actually realize it. Is it years is it months. Yeah usually it's years yeah. Okay is there one stunt that you would do again. I would do them all again except for the one in London where I did 44 days in a box with just water. And the reason I wouldn't do that again is because I started to have like minor organ problems so failure. Not complete failure which is like stuff started worrying and I lost 33 percent of my B.M. my bone mass index and everything had shrunk. And I think I was very close to going past the threshold where there would be no return. And I think if I did that one again I don't know if the body would survive that. So therefore I wouldn't do it again but that was my favorite one to do. Because you saw the audience. No the reason it was my favorite one to do is because when you remove everything like all temptations taste any impulse that you have to fulfill some sort of endorphin in the brain. Anything when you take all the dopamine's out I think you build the serotonin level in the brain which is very meditative and incredible. So while I was there I started to look around and I was like whoa I noticed how beautiful the color blue was which they say during starvate fasting you see colors differently. And then I would it's like I got I would watch the sun go up and down the entire day for almost 44 days and there's nothing equal to that. So it was like ironically by doing something so extreme it was one of the most beautiful experiences that I've ever had other than everything related to my daughter. Do people believe you. I mean do they think it's I think there's a lot of people that think because I'm a magician that there must be a trick to it. And that makes sense because if I saw a magician do any of these things I'd like OK like I wouldn't believe any of it. But I think it's actually ironically it's actually easier to do it than to fake it. So it's it's it's the real version of it is is more more plausible in most cases. And also at the end of it if you fake it it doesn't feel right. It feels like you pulled an illusion over the over the audience. So I like to really do things. And then what I do for my own personal and I don't really put this out there but we had like an article published in the New England Journal Medicine where they explain the effects of fasting on prolonged fasting which is called the refeeding syndrome of people even my doctor who is a top starvation expert one of the top guys in the world. Jeremy Peltuck but he he didn't think that I was really doing it until the end. He thought I must have been cheating somehow. But if I was cheating my body wouldn't have done what it had to do to survive. It would have kept probably burning as opposed to going into starvation mode and I would have went through everything quicker. So because I really did it it was much better but when I went to the hospital he thought they assumed I was doing something when he put the IV into me. The phosphate levels shot through the roof which is how many people have died that were in starvation mode. So then he used all that information and it was pretty you know that that's kind of like the believable part afterwards. But I think very few people get to see that. I mean so when you do one of these and you have to go to hospital to check you're OK. But also I mean you do it for medical research to get blood test always. Yeah. And I give every I give all my blood I give all the tests you're in everything so they can just see and study everything because in most cases when people push themselves to that level of an extreme. Deprivation to the body it's not usually you know it's usually like a protest or stun anti government but when I do it it's the opposite. So I let everybody have whatever they want. Would you do the same if you didn't have an audience. I would probably cheat. But do you feed off the reaction. Yeah I'm going to do 44 days and then I'll look at me now. I look like I'm doing it with 50 pounds out of the last three months which I have to lose in three months. Is there anything you're planning. Oh yeah. We can't. I have the best one that I've been dreaming of forever and it's it's I'm working on it diligently now. I think it's a good one. What can you tell us what's what city. Nope. Nope. No but you know that in this day and age it doesn't matter what city because everything is online. And I haven't done anything like that since the day of Instagram and the end you know it was all pre as a matter of fact when I was doing my first TV special. YouTube had just come out afterwards and people started to put my secrets out there and suddenly non magicians were walking up to me and doing tricks from my first show Street Magic. And I started that's when I started to think maybe I should do things that are real that are almost impossible or at least look impossible and combine that with magic because by doing that. If they do research or pass the secrets around in their right. It's actually more interesting than the trick itself so that. So I started to reverse engineer after my first TV show and that is when I buried myself alive was right after the first show because I wanted to do things that I thought looked impossible but could actually be done. Is the audience different in London to New York. Or does everyone react the same way. I you know I think the audience is the same but I think the media is very different which is interesting. So I think I think in London there's just much more media. So there I think there it's the stories are much faster. But now it's different because with Instagram and everything going viral it doesn't matter. But yeah the London media made the stunt because otherwise it's a guy doing nothing for 44 days. But because they said oh he's getting bomb this and that he's going to exit. So suddenly people would come to see all this insanity. I mean it was very rare that it happened but it made it exciting. Hypothetically talk to us about so we talked about your favorite one the one that you wouldn't do again. Is there one that you would have done different with hindsight. All of them. Yeah if I could go back and redo all of them there'd be much they'd be smaller and more difficult. Why more difficult like the box in London would have been much tighter. I don't know I just because I think I could have pushed it that much more. But do you think you'll come back to them. Not the one in London but the others. Well the breath hold I was thinking I could have gone longer and then I would have blacked out and they could have pulled me out. But that's not really good for the audience. What does the audience want. Do you know do you ever ask them. No I don't ask I usually just think about what I want to do and then try to figure out how to do it. And I think every decision that I make is usually based on just you know dreaming thinking tweaking figuring it out. But if you start asking everybody what they want then you'll never get anywhere. OK magic endurance what do you prefer. Do you ever combine them. Yeah yeah I always put the two together and I think that's kind of. I think that I think what it does is it adds to the trick because the believability goes up because they see something that they aren't sure. Like how could this be an illusion. Then when you combine it with something real I think it becomes really you know it becomes something more. More engaging to the audience. And when did you start combining them. Do you guys do you guys want to see an example of that. Yeah but like the combination. But it's a little it's a little like it's a little graphic. It's like. Are you sure. Yeah OK. A little bit scared. Maybe is it possible. Can somebody help me that hasn't seen me do anything before is there anybody in the room that hasn't seen me do anything. You've not seen anything. Do you want to help as well. Can we will you help also. Yeah. If you could if you could come up on stage and what's your name. Avantika. Nice to meet you Avantika. Great. And could I. My notes. No. Can I put this on. Can I use camera mode. Put it on video. And actually I'm going to reverse this so I can see. Oh great. And if you could hold that about here. That's perfect. So this is the this is the needle and thread trick. Come a little closer. So here's what happens. Yeah. I need exactly. I need exactly this much. Let's say. Watch your step. I just need I just need a second to clean up. Sorry. This is for TV. This part would be edited out. But it's live. A little speck of blood there. That's why I have some alcohol pads. The blood looks pretty real too. Right. Thank you. I'm not sure whether we can continue the interview. Is it okay. Yeah. Yeah. You're fine. It's fine. More alcohol pads just in case. How many times a week do you do these kind of. How much do you have to practice for something like that. Well before I flew here I actually did this illusion where. Frogs start jumping out of my mouth. I had all these frogs with me. I didn't bring them. Very. But you practice. I mean are you obsessed when you think about something new. Is it all you do all day long. Yeah. Think about it all the time. Right. Think. Play. Hang out with magicians before I was here I was with a big group of magicians that are gathering just watching these incredible geniuses. Doing these amazing acts. So. I study work with things. Alone with others.  Mind-blowing. That are just incredible artists are not. You can't really see them anywhere they're not public but they're they're just they're my favorites.  Do you exchange. Most of my best friends are magicians.  Brainstorm thing discuss old ideas look at new new concepts pamphlets lithographs from 100 200 years ago etc. You don't do this for money do you. This is like. Passion. Well it is a passion and what I do to never cloud my decisions is whenever I make a decision I always try to decide like would I do this for one dollar. So the idea is like if I'm offered some some gig or something if the answer is no then I won't do it for any amount of money. And if the answer is yes then I'll do it for whatever the deal is. So so in order to never be clouded by the wrong decision I always ask myself would I do this it was for one dollar. So that keeps my head clear it's not financially rewarding but it's it's it keeps me focused on what I want to achieve and do. Do you do magic for your daughter. She does magic to me all the time. It's way better than I'll ever be. Already she's turning eight. At cards. Yeah she's better at everything. Yeah it's crazy. Are you doing anything. So we can't know what you're doing next. Do you know when. Maybe the alcohol in the blood is all just to make you think it was real. I think I think it'll be in 2019 or 2020 or 2021 or somewhere in there.  My team is small but they're but they're incredible. Yeah my team is small but they're they're my favorite team that you could ask for some lucky. How many magic tricks do you do overall. Is there a number. Do you know like 200. I think I could go on for days nonstop. Just really. 500 way more than that. Yeah yeah and always I'm inventing them as I'm doing them quite often. So it's like all day and night I'm jamming like on the airplane coming here I'm doing magic to the people on my right my left. And then you know the whole crew and I always do that. And it's fun for me to do it but it's also practice like the more you do it the more you learn because you say oh what if I do this what if I do that. So it's always it's nonstop practice is how I look at some people say oh you don't have to work. I'm like no I'm not working. I'm doing what I love but I'm practicing continuously and it helps me become better and better which is the only thing that matters is to try to be the best that you can be what you love doing. I think. Do we need more magic. I mean the reaction was amazing actually do we need a little bit. You know is it escapism. Do you think I think magic is important. Not just in this day and age but always I think magic helps people think about things that they may think about as impossible and then suddenly think well if this is possible maybe this is possible so I think that the magicians have been historically important because of that. I know we need to wrap up because we're almost out of time. I could speak to you for another three hours but what is the one thing that you hope to give back. Is it is it is it pushing the limits. No telling people actually. No when I was a kid like I said I grew up without a dad. So like one of my heroes was Houdini. I'd look at this book of all these incredible images and designs and things that he had done the artistic interpretation of his ideas that he worked really hard on and I would dream about. Oh maybe I could like do my own version of that. So ultimately I just like the idea of like inspiring somebody to think that they can do whatever they want in whatever it is even if it's weird or outside of the box or whatever. Okay just a curiosity how many pack of cards do you own at home at any one time. Warehouses full. When I was a kid and I had one deck of cards it was so hard to use and I kept it over and over all the time for years. I was like one day I'm going to have as many cards as I need and yeah now I have that. Not much else but that I have. David Blaine thank you so much. Thank you.


Today we have some big news to get out to you from Nintendo, I don't even know how to describe this. We have some weird information being passed around about tears of the kingdom that I believe to be fake and we need to spend some time talking about that. We also have some stuff going on with a potential, well not a potential, we are getting a form of a Nintendo Direct tomorrow so we have to talk about that as well. There's some updates on Nintendo lawsuit related things and yes a new game trial for NSO. Before we jump into all of this I want to remind you that we are giving away a Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Special Edition Switch OLED, we're also giving away a Tears of the Kingdom Collector's Edition, also a Zelda Tears of the Kingdom Pin from PAX East and maybe more I have no idea but that's what the giveaway has right now. To enter you just have to go to the link in the pinned comment or in the description. We're also now on our road to 133,000 subscribers so I would appreciate if you would subscribe to the channel, drop a like on the video and maybe even turn that bell notification on so you can be notified of all of our videos. Alright let's get into our first story here and this is just something Nintendo announced this morning and they put it out on their Twitter and other social media platforms and said a new indie world is happening tomorrow. So it is happening at 11am central time and they state tune in for roughly 20 minutes of reveals, announcements and updates on indie games for Nintendo's Switch. Now look indie worlds generally are pretty good and I have to say that to really get the first half of 2023 going Nintendo has been hitting it out of the park. Not only do we have a full Nintendo Direct back in February and obviously a lot of marketing lately for Tears of the Kingdom and this week marketing there's a new trailer that dropped for Advance Wars 1 plus 2 reboot camp coming out this Friday. Also dropping an indie world right now is really really good as well it felt like we were probably do one at some point here and there's one particular game people think will be in this indie world and it actually makes sense this time we've been hoping for every single indie world and that is Hollow Knight Silk Song. Now why do we expect it in this Direct? Well it was announced at an Xbox event last year and Microsoft boldly stated at this event which happened in June that hey everything shown in our event is releasing within the next calendar year so that's within the next 12 months so from June to June and right now Hollow Knight Silk Song does not have a release date so people think we might get the release date in this indie world of course that's not the only game is going to be when you have roughly 20 minutes of stuff to go there's going to be a ton of games packed in here and I'm really looking forward to it maybe this indie world more than any other because I'm really trying to see what is there to fill the slate between now and Tears of the Kingdom what's coming up when I'm done with Tears of the Kingdom and maybe fill a gap between Tears of the Kingdom and Pikmin 4 if there even is a gap for me I'm just really looking forward to this indie world and I think many of you guys are as well of course we will be live stream reacting to this indie world tomorrow I'll probably go live about an hour before the indie world begins and search speculating away on on what news we can maybe here all right next up we need to talk about Tears of the Kingdom there's a piece of news floating out there I've seen it on Reddit I've seen it on Twitter I've seen it posted everywhere and it looks like it's an ad for Tears of the Kingdom a DLC outfit ad so here's the ad and it says receive a free DLC outfit for the legend of Zealot Tears of the Kingdom when you pre-order the game it includes a royal crush short shirt and the hero shorts which also the hero shorts you know based on this would confirm that there is no separate boot item what I find interesting about this ad is that it it looks fake because it probably is some people speculate this might have been AI generated I'm not sure the screenshot of Link wearing this these outfits is kind of blurry and not really a sort of shot that Nintendo would put in an ad right it would be link would be much taller much bigger much you know filling the screen with a much higher quality look at the outfit rather than what we're seeing here even the some fraying on the edges of the Nintendo switch logo and the Nintendo logo and the copyright Nintendo stuff it very much looks like this is a fake image if not made by AI made by a fan just be careful because you might see a lot of this stuff heading in the launch where you're gonna see something that looks pretty legit but probably isn't real and this is just one of those cases where this is likely fake ad I can't say like 1000% that it's fake but there's a lot of red flags to the point that there's a reason that you're not seeing this pop-up in a lot of videos there's a reason you're not seeing this reposted everywhere all the time and seeing how much a big Zelda youtuber is making a big deal out of it because it just looks fake it doesn't look like the quality of an ad Nintendo would put out so just throwing that out there I think that's not real you guys let me know what you think down in the comments below you team fake or team real now next up we need to talk about Nintendo and an update on a lawsuit that they already won so if you guys remember Nintendo brought down the hammer on Gary Bowser one of the members of team executor that was selling devices that could easily help cross pins and hack your Nintendo switch he was profiting off of it and that was really the problem here not that he was hacking switches but that he was profiting off selling devices that could help others hack their switch it's not illegal to hack your switch but you're not supposed to profit off of that kind of stuff and he was so he got busted and this was an already settled lawsuit and the thing is he was sentenced to a multiple years in jail along with ten million dollars in damages now here is the update on this because Gary Bowser has actually been released from prison so that's you know good for him he was released on good behavior and he has actually paid back about 175 dollars of what he owes that doesn't sound like much but here's the deal Nintendo can garnish his wages essentially for the rest of his life up to 25 to 30% now he was working when he was in prison and here's the thing he was actually a really upstanding citizen while he was in prison the problem is that prison wages are pretty low clearly because you're in jail so yeah he wasn't making a lot of money hence why he only paid back 175 dollars it does sound like Nintendo will be garnishing wages we have no idea if they're gonna be garnishing 25 to 30% I don't know if Nintendo ever plans to get their full 10 million out of him but clearly all of this is just occurred people from doing something similar in the future and setting an example for Gary Bowser this does suck to see 20 to 30% of his wages gone for the rest of his life but I also can't feel bad for him because he was profiting off selling devices to hack Nintendo switches which is against the law so yeah that's it's whatever there's also some other losses going on with appeals happening that Nintendo keeps winning as well we're not gonna dive too deep in to that one because it sounds like there might be another appeal being filed so we're just gonna let that play out in courts and then we'll talk about it once the appeal process is over all right and our last story today deals with the Nintendo switch online you guys know Nintendo does free game trials for Nintendo switch online just kind of here and there it's very random and now we know in our next North American free trial is coming and what the game is and that game is Star Wars Republic Commando an old game that has re-released on switch and it's actually pretty good these are one of the good old Star Wars games and they're doing a free game trial which for those of you know free game trials allow you to play the entire game and I would say for Star Wars Republic Commando you could probably beat the game in the time that this is available because it will be available the entire game from April 20th through April 26th so yeah plenty of time if you really want to buckle down you can actually beat Star Wars Republic Commando in that time frame however if you would like to just buy the game and don't care about the trial well during that time period they will be selling the game for 50% off and normally retails for $14.99 get it for about $7.50 I think it's worth the $7.50 personally and it helps support the people who ported it over and everything but yeah Star Wars Republic Commando is gonna be that next free game on Nintendo switch online the next free game trial pretty cool I would like to see some bigger games that would be cool if we got like a free Splatoon 3 weekend or something but what are you gonna do that Nintendo's already does that every once in a while anyways guys that is the big Nintendo news for the last 24 hours I'm really excited for what's coming next we'll see if we have another video later today I got a bit of a concert I need to go to for one of my children but hey you know what we'll still try to get a second video up later this afternoon you guys are awesome and I'll catch you in the next video


From Denver, Colorado, it's theCUBE. Covering Supercomputing 17, brought to you by Intel. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at Denver, Colorado, Supercomputing 2017. 12,000 people, our first trip to the show. We've been trying to come for a while. It's pretty amazing. A lot of heavy science in terms of the keynotes all about space and looking into brain mapping and it's heavy lifting, academics all around. We're excited to have our next guest who's an expert all about speed and that's John Lockwood. He's the CEO of Algalogic. First off, John, great to see you. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. Glad to be here. Absolutely. So for folks that aren't familiar with the company, give them kind of the quick overview of Algalogic. Yes, Algalogic puts algorithms into logic. So our main focus is taking things that are typically done in software and putting them into FPGAs. And by doing that, we make them go faster. So it's a pretty interesting phenomenon. We've heard a lot from some of the Intel execs about kind of the software overlay that now lets kind of, I guess, a broader ecosystem of programmers program into hardware, but then still leveraging the speed that you get in hardware. So it's a pretty interesting combination to get those latencies down, down, down. Right, right. I mean, Intel certainly made a shift to going into heterogeneous compute. And so in this heterogeneous world, we've got software running on Xeons, Xeon5s, and we've also got the need, though, to use, do compute in more than just the traditional microprocessor. And so that with the acquisition of Altera is that now Intel customers can use FPGAs in order to get the benefit and speed. And so Algor logic, we typically provide applications with software APIs so it makes it really easy for in-customers to deploy FPGAs into their data center or into their host, into their network, and start using them right away. And you said one of your big customer sets is financial services and trading desk. So low latency there is critical, millions and millions and millions if not billions of dollars. Right, so Algor logic, we have a whole product line of high frequency trading systems. And so our tick-to-trade system is unique in the fact that it has a sub-microsecond trading latency. And this means going from market data that comes in, for example, on CME for options and futures trading to the time that we can place a fixed order back out to the market, all of that happens at an FPGA, that happens at under a microsecond, so under a millionth of a second, and that beats every other system, every other software system that's being used. Right, which is a game-changer, right? That's wins or losses can be made on those time frames. It's become a must-have, is that if you're trading on Wall Street or trading in Chicago, and you're not trading with an FPGA, you're trading at a severe disadvantage. Right, right. And so we make a product that enables all the trading firms to be playing on a fair-level playing field against the big firms. Right, so it's interesting because, you know, the adoption of flash and some of these other kind of speed accelerator technologies that have been happening over the last several years, people are kind of getting accustomed to the fact that speed is better, but often it was kind of put aside these kind of high-value applications like financial services, and not really proliferating to a broader use of applications. I wonder if you're seeing that kind of change a little bit where people are seeing the benefits of real time and speed beyond kind of the classic, you know, high-value applications. Well, I think the big change that's happened is that it's become machine to machine now. And so humans, for example, in trading are not part of the loop anymore. And so it's not a matter of, am I faster than another person? Am I faster than the other person's machine? Right. So this notion of having a compute that goes fast has become suddenly dramatically much more important because everything now is going to machine versus machine. And so if you're an ad-tech advertiser, is that how quickly you can do an auction to place an ad matters? And if you can get a higher-value ad place because you're able to do a couple rounds of an auction, that's worth a lot. And so, again, with Algalogic, we make things go faster and that time benefit means that all things else being the same, you're the first to come to decision. Right, right. And then, of course, the machine to machine obviously brings up the hottest topic that everybody was talking about is autonomous vehicles and networked autonomous vehicles and just the whole IoT space with the compute moving out to the edge. So just machine to machine systems are only growing in importance and really percentage of the total compute consumption by far. That's right, yeah. So last year at Supercomputing, we demonstrated a drone, bringing in real-time data from a drone. So doing real-time data collection and doing processing with our key value store. So this year, we have a machine learning application, a Markov decision process where we show that we can teach cars how to scale out a machine learning process and teach cars how to drive in a few minutes. It's pretty, teach them how to drive in a few minutes. Right. So that's their learning. That's not your somebody programming the commands. They're actually going through a process of learning. Right, well, so the key value store is just a part of this. We're just the part of the system that makes the scale out so it runs well in a data center. Right. And so we're still running the Markov decision process and simulations and software. So we have a couple of Xeon servers that we brought with us to do the machine learning. In a data center would scale out to be dozens of racks. But even with a few machines though that for simple highway driving, what we can show is we start off with the systems untrained and that in the Markov decision process we reward the final state of not having accidents. And so at first the cars drive and they're bouncing into each other. It's like bumper cars. But within a few minutes and after about 15 million simulations which can be run that quickly is that the cars start driving better than humans. And so I think that's a really phenomenal step is the fact that you're able to get to a point where you can train a system, how to drive and give them 15, man years of experience in a matter of minutes by the scale out compute systems. Which is pretty, because then you can put in new variables, right? You can change that training and modify it over time as conditions change. Throw in snow or throw in urban environments and other things. Absolutely right. And so we're not pretending that our machine learning application we're showing here is an end-all solution. But as you bring in other factors like pedestrians, deer, other cars running different algorithms or crazy drivers is that you want to expose the system of those conditions as well. And so one of the questions that came up to us was so what machine learning application are you running? So we're showing all 25 cars running one machine learned application and that's incrementally getting better as they learn to drive. But we could also have every car running a different machine learning application and see how different AIs interact with each other. And I think that's what you're going to see on the highway as we have more self-driving cars running different algorithms. We have to make sure they all play nice with each other. But it's really a different way of looking at the world, right? Using machine learning, machine to machine versus a single person or a team of people writing a piece of software to instruct something to do something. And then you got to go back and change it. This is a much more dynamic real-time environment that we're entering into with IoT. Right, I mean the machine to human which was kind of last year and years before were how do you make interactions between the computers better than humans? But now it's about machine to machine and it's how do you make machines interact better with other machines? And that's where it gets really competitive. I mean, you can imagine with drones for example, for applications where you have drones against drones the drones that are faster are going to be the ones that win. Right, right. It's funny we were just here last week at the commercial drone show. It is pretty interesting how they're designing the drones now into a three-part platform. So there's the platform that flies around. There's the payload which can be different sensors or whatever it's carrying could be herbicide if it's an agricultural drone. And then they've opened up the SDKs both on the control side as well as the mobile side in terms of the control. So it's a very interesting way that all these things now via software can tie together but as you say, using machine learning you can train them to work together even better, quicker, faster. Right, I mean having to swarm or cluster of these machines that work with each other you can really do interesting things. Yeah, that's the whole next thing, right? Instead of one to one it's many to many. And then when swarms interact with other swarms then I think that's really fascinating. So all right, so is that what we're going to be talking about so if we connect in 2018 what are we going to be talking about? The year's almost over. What are your top priorities for next year? Our top priorities are to see, we think that FPGA is just play this important part. Is that the GPU for example has become a very, became a very big part of the super computing systems here at this conference. And so, but the other side of heterogeneous is the FPGA and the FPGA has seen almost just very minimal adoption so far. But the FPGA has the capability of providing, especially when it comes to doing network IO transactions and speeding up real time interactions. It has an ability to change the world again for HPC. And so I'm expecting that in a couple of years at this HPC conference that what we'll be talking about is the biggest, you know, top 500 supercomputers is that, you know, how big of FPGA do they have? Not how big of GPUs they have. All right, time will tell. John, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day. Stop them by. Okay, thanks Jeff. Thanks for talking to you. All right, John Lockwood, I'm Jeff Frick. Thank you from super computing 2017. Thanks for watching. Bye.


Hey Psych2Goers, welcome back to our channel! Has someone special caught your eye lately? Having a crush on someone can be enchanting and beautiful, but it can also be embarrassing and painfully awkward. If you've been having trouble talking to your crush lately, don't worry, we've all been there. And while the best advice is to just be yourself, there are still certain things you should avoid saying to them. So, here are 8 things you shouldn't say to your crush. 1. Tell them they're better than your ex. It's never a good idea to talk about your ex to your crush, and even worse to compare the two to each other. Your ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend is no longer a part of the picture, so it's better to keep it in the past. You may come off as petty, immature, and insensitive, as it only shows that you're still bitter about your past relationship and not entirely over your ex. 2. Tell them you stalk their social media. Do you creep your crush's social media? Even though it's something a lot of people do, telling them that you stalk their profile all the time may scare them off and put you on their blocked list. Even if their profiles are set up to public, where everyone can view it, you might want to refrain from telling them how much time you spend going through their posts and stories. 3. Ask them why they don't reply to you. Has your crush ever left you on red? When this happens, do you feel the need to pressure them into replying to you all the time? If so, they might start to think that you're needy. You might feel upset or disappointed by their lack of a response, but try to keep in mind that they may not have done it on purpose. They could have been busy, or they needed some time to come up with a cool response. 4. You tell them your family wants to meet them. Did you invite your crush over to meet your parents? If your relationship is still in the early stages or isn't even established yet, there's no need to introduce them to your family yet. Meeting each other's family is a big step in any relationship, so they may feel overwhelmed or think you're rushing things way too quickly. Instead, you may want to use your time to get to know each other more intimately first. 5. You ask them if they still have feelings for their ex.  Well, if you ask your crush about their ex at the early stage of your interaction, it may just make you come off as nosy or jealous. Unless you've built enough rapport and trust between each other, asking them such personal questions might make them uncomfortable and defensive, and you might end up pushing them away. 6. You note down every single detail about them. While it's normal to pay attention to your crush and notice the little things about them like the way they smile or dress, you might come off as a little intrusive and obsessive if you note down every single detail about them, like what they wore each day of the week. What might sound like a flattering compliment to you might make your crush feel uneasy. 7. You ask them if they like you more than others. Have you ever asked your crush do you think I'm better looking than them or would you rather spend time with them or me? While it can be normal to feel jealous of your crush's other relationships, you may come off as overly possessive or jealous to ask such personal questions. No matter how subtle you may phrase it, pushing your crush to compare you to other relationships may just put a strain on your relationship with them. 8. You tell them who they should or shouldn't be with. Have you ever wanted to tell your crush who they can or can't spend time with? While there may be people you don't want to see your crush with, it's not your place to decide who they get to stay friends with or not. You may come off as controlling or possessive if you keep them away from other important people in their life because you want them all for yourself, and doing so will only drive them away. Do you agree with our list? Have you ever thought about saying any of these eight things to your crush? Or has anyone said these things to you? Let us know in the comments below. If you found this video helpful, be sure to like, subscribe, and share this video with those who might benefit from it. As always, thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video.