the differences between Formula One and IndyCar. I've got that question all the time. I thought it was cool just to go a little bit more into details. If I start with what you need to adapt as a driver going to Formula One, from Formula One to IndyCar, the first thing I would say is no power steering when in IndyCar. So muscle mass is very different, muscle demand is very different. Formula One is all about the G-forces and your neck. IndyCar, less G-forces because less downforce on the car, but a very, very heavy steering wheel. You need really to work on your shoulders, on your grip strengths, on your forearms, biceps, triceps, lats to be able to turn the wheel. So that's a huge difference. Definitely a very, very heavy wheel in IndyCar. One of the first thing I realized is that the grip on the steering wheel has to be perfect for you to be able to hold it correctly and drive it the way you want to drive it. The car itself, IndyCar is very simplistic technology whereas compared to Formula One. We've got still wishbones and uprights and kind of a simple gearbox and no hybrid system so far. Everyone's got the same aerodynamic. It's not the most developed aerodynamic for performance but it's developed for racing and the racing is really cool. You can follow other cars pretty easily. There's a lot of mechanical grip on the car. The dampers is the only part of the car that we can, the teams can change, right? They can build their own dampers. There's a lot of setup you can do on the car but everyone's got the same options of setup. The dampers though are specific to every team. So that's why we put a lot of energy and effort into it. But the mechanical grip of an IndyCar into the low-speed corner or on the bumps is very impressive. High-speed corners, as I said, the dampers is very little so you've got much less than Formula One but pretty sure on the Nairpin, an IndyCar will be faster than a Formula One car on the high-speed corners, completely the opposite. So yeah, very simple car in IndyCar. Everyone's got the same. So that's a huge difference. As I said, dampers can be developed. Then we can change the roll centers, the lengths of the wheel bays and so many setups of obviously springs and roll bars and so on. But that's a big one. The other big, big difference. In Formula One, you can control your differential and your brake shape through your steering wheel. In IndyCar, we don't have that. An IndyCar steering wheel is very simplistic. There's the radio button, there's the white jacket on the wheels and then inside the cockpit, we've got the front and the rear on the roll bars. So we can actually change the position of our roll bars inside the cockpit. So on the wheels, you use that a lot. It can be, you know, every straight, you change your position because of the windows and so on on the racetrack, more normal racetrack, depending, you know, your tire degradation and so on. You can actually change the balance of the car, mechanical balance of the car from inside the cockpit, which is pretty cool. If there's a fast section of the track, maybe you want to have a stiff platform, but then you go into a more tricky section, you want a soft platform. So you can play with the bar inside the car, which is pretty cool. Helped you to get on top of, you know, all your tire degradation and so on. So then you're gonna tell me yes, but one of the big difference in IndyCar is the arrow screen versus the halo. Yes, yes, I agree. I mean, it's the same principle, but on IndyCar, we've got the protection from the arrow screen. I believe the arrow screen is a very good solution on Orville's because you don't want any debris flying towards the pallet or the driver. On road course and street course, the arrow screen is absolutely fine in terms of visibility. The only downside I would say that sometimes it gets really dirty and you need a piece of stuff to remove the tear-offs and it gets super hot in the car, but it's more protection. So it's a tough one, maybe, maybe, and it's only a maybe. I would do halo on street course and road course and arrow screen on Orville's. Then the race track. We have street course, we have road course, and we have Orville's. And within the Orville's, we've got the super speedway, the big Orville's, and the tiny one, the short Orville's. So there's a lot of adaptation. Street course and road course, very similar to Formula One. The street course are really a bit more bumpy. The road course are quite old-style the way I love it. In the Orville's, for me, it's just like riding a bicycle, a road bike versus riding a mountain bike, you know? You kind of do the same thing, but they're very different. And that's the best way I would describe Orville's. And then within the Orville's, I'd say. The short Orville's that I love. I love the short Orville's. There's two, three lanes. It's a lot of really good racing and then the super speedway. When you have a good car, you feel like you are the king out there. And when the car is not that great, it's a very long day. So yeah, I learned the hard way at the Indy 500 when your car is not that good. Don't try to compensate for it. It won't go to the end, which it didn't. So I learned my lesson that way. But yes, that's a huge difference between the two.  I think it's more to the discretion of the stewards to judge the racing. It is a bit of a tougher racing. I believe sometimes it's gone a little bit too far. You know, I think my pass on Jimmy Johnson at Corkscrew in 2021 was definitely not... I mean, it was good for TV, but it wasn't the best cleanest overtaking ever made. I'm still really hangry at Joseph Newgarden crashing into me in Nashville, while I was having a brilliant race and not having a penalty just because we were side by side. So sometimes, you know, I think we're a little bit too soft on some of the rules, whereas Formula One is far too hard on the rules. In terms of driver skills, obviously you've got some very talented drivers on both sides. Formula One being the pinnacle of motorsport, but look at Alex Palou when he went to do the FP1 in Austin. On the same tires as London Norris, he was only two tenths off, which was very impressive. So I think the level in IndyCar, some of the drivers, the top drivers, very, very fast drivers. There's one thing though in IndyCar is that the car behaves in a way that, I understand some drivers just can't go around it. The car is very free, very loose, very oversteer in the entry of the corner and understeer in the mid corner. And then the exit is pretty good actually. But if you struggle with a car that kind of moves a lot like that, under braking, you're gonna struggle in IndyCar. It's just the way it is. Fast car, always oversteer, we used to say back in Formula 3, talking about 15 years ago, well it's definitely the case in IndyCar. As soon as you start picking up understeer, you'll pay its drops. So you have to accept that the car is loose, the car slides and that's the way you drive an IndyCar. So I understand that some drivers really struggle with it. I love it, it's personally my driving style type. But yes, it's a different skill in that aspect while it's in Formula 1, you need to be very smooth and not slide the tire. In IndyCar, you actually keep pushing, hammer the tire, keep sliding and if you try to be smooth and proper, it just doesn't really pay off. So it's all about attacking all the time, which is great. Then mental task. So IndyCar is much less bottom, much less to think about batteries and so on. But you think about your fuel. Your fuel is very key in the race and which tire you're gonna put them when. And the thing in IndyCar is that the soft tires, we run them for three fall ups in free practice, one we run them in qualifying, then in the race. But we never really do a long run on the soft tires because we don't have any. So it's hard to know the degradation going into the race. So you need to adapt yourself very quickly to how it's gonna go and how much you can push on each tire. In Formula 1, everything is more calculated. You know your pit stop, you've got plan A, plan B, plan C and more for some teams. But basically, long way you have three plan going into the race and you can't work around that. In IndyCar, it's much more on the go, depending when there's a yellow flag coming, when depending when the pits are open or closed, depending the tires, depending, you know, how much you fuel burn. So that's the difference. As I say, in IndyCar, push to pass in the race. In that aspect, it's a very different type of driving. Which one I prefer? That's the other question I have all the time. Well, imagine you have a boy and a girl, which one you prefer? You got both, you don't need to choose. I was very lucky in my life to be able to do Formula 1 for 10 years and know to do IndyCar and loving it. And I love both. I think they came to a different time of my life. They came at a right time and I'm just really enjoying my time right now. I'm very proud of my car in Formula 1. Happy to be alive and happy to be racing.


Ginger has been used in India and China to treat illnesses for thousands of years. But they also used mercury, so that doesn't really tell you much. That's what we have science for. But when you see titles like this in the medical literature on the beneficial effects of ginger on obesity, for example, you may not be aware they're talking about the beneficial effects of ginger on fat rats. Wait, why don't they just do human clinical studies? The lack of clinical studies may be attributed to, for example, ethical issues and limited commercial support. Limited commercial support, I can see. I mean, ginger is dirt cheap, who's going to pay for the study. But ethical issues? We're talking about feeding people some ginger. Studies like this are relatively cheap and easy to do cross-sectional studies, where you take a snapshot in time of ginger consumption and body weight, and you do see that people who are obese tend to eat significantly less ginger, and so they suggest this demonstrates that the use of ginger could have relevance for weight management. But maybe ginger consumption is just a marker of a more traditional, less westernized junk food diet. I mean, you don't know until you put it to the test. A randomized controlled trial to assess the effects of a hot ginger beverage, by which they just meant two grams of ginger powder in a cup of hot water. So about one teaspoon of ground ginger stirred into a teacup of hot water. That's about five cents worth of ginger. And after the ginger, the participants reported feeling significantly less hungry. In response to the question, how much do you think you could eat? Describe lower perspective food intake. Now, the control was just hot water alone, so the participants knew when they were getting the ginger, so there could have been a placebo effect. They considered just stuffing the ginger into capsules to do a double-blinded study, but they think part of the effect of ginger may actually be through taste receptors on the tongue, so they didn't want to interfere with that. Not all the effects were just subjective, though. I mean, four hours after drinking, the metabolic rate in the ginger group was elevated compared to control. Though in a previous study, when fresh ginger was added to a meal, there was no bump in metabolic rate. The researchers suggest that this may be due to the different method of ginger administration, giving fresh instead of dried, and there are dehydration products that form when you dry ginger that may have unique properties. Now, although satiety and fullness were greater with ginger compared to control, the researchers didn't then follow the participants out to see if they actually ate less for lunch. The problem is there's never been a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study of that much ginger and weight loss until now. 12 weeks, that same teaspoon of ginger powder of day, but this time hidden in capsules and consumption of ginger for 12 weeks significantly reduced body mass index. Check it out, no change in the placebo group, but a drop in the ginger group. Though body fat estimates didn't really change, which is kind of the whole point. What if I was using ginger to pull fat out of specific organs, like the liver? Evidently, treatment with ginger ameliorates fructose-induced fatty liver in rats. You know what else would have worked? Not feeding him so much sugar in the first place. But there's never been a human, where this is going, until now. Ginger supplementation in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease are randomized, double-blind, civil-controlled study, a teaspoon of ginger a day or placebo for 12 weeks. They were all told to limit their dietary cholesterol intake. I've got a video on why that's important, and get more fiber and exercise, so even the placebo group should improve. But did the ginger group do any better? Yes, daily consumption of just that teaspoon of ground ginger a day resulted in a significant decrease in inflammatory marker levels and improvements in liver function tests and a drop in liver fat, all for five cents worth of ginger powder a day. And what are the side effects? A few gingery burps? I searched for downsides and didn't find any, other than, of course, ginger paralysis. What? In 1930, thousands of Americans were poisoned by a ginger extract. First of all, who drinks ginger extract? Oh, 1930, it was prohibition, so they bought ginger extract as a legal way to get their hands on alcohol. Little did he realize that the bootleggers had been taking advantage of the demand, swapped in a cheaper ginger substitute, a varnish compound, in order to make greater profits. The moral of the story being, don't drink varnish.


Hello, beautiful artists, and welcome to Monet Cafe Studio. This video is a winter study series that I'm providing over on my Patreon page, but I wanted to share the painting process here on the Monet Cafe YouTube channel. This is painting one of a series of four, and in each painting, I use only one small set of pastels. Very great news for beginners. I also loved the reference image that I got from unsplash.com, and I also love the fact that I worked on unsanded pastel paper. This is Canson Métonce pastel paper. I will have links to these products in the description of the video. The set that I'm using for this tutorial is the Diane Townsend Landscape A set. I only used this set of pastels and just a couple more pastels for sketching. I'll show you in just a minute. I love this set of pastels. It's beautiful. And I just used for sketching kind of a brown Prismacolor new pastel and a dark blue. It's called Spruce Blue. And I'm going to just let you guys watch this to music. It is the holiday season. I thought I'd add a little Christmas music and just let you guys enjoy the painting process. Now, if you would like the full tutorial, you might want to consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. It's easy. It's only $5 a month. You unlock hundreds of tutorials. You'll not only get to see this tutorial with all of my commentary, all the extra goodies, my color notes and more. But you'll get the next three that are coming soon in this series. And again, I want to stress how great these four paintings are in this series for beginners, affordable products, lots of commentary and a lot of fun. So enjoy this to some Christmas music. And I'll be back at the end with some more comments on the final. Well, that was some jazzy fun Christmas music, right? I enjoyed that. I hope you enjoyed this. And again, only one set of pastels. Diane Townsend Landscape A set. I love these pastels. And just actually only two Prismacolor pastels for the sketching. So again, a great way for beginners to get started. There'll be three more on the way. I'll have product links in the description of this video. If you'd like the full tutorial, consider becoming a patron of mine on my Patreon page. And I hope it blesses you during this Christmas season. All right, everyone, God bless and happy painting.


The way we define structs and go is just like how we define them in GoPigeon, except with slightly different syntax. We start with the reserved word type, then the name of the struct we're defining, then you put the word struct after, and then curly braces, and then each line is the field. This first field is called name, and it's a string. The second is called age, and it's an int, and the third is called weight, and it's a float32. And so here's how we work with structs down here in main. We're creating a variable x of type cat, and we want to assign to x a cat value, and the way you create cat values is with the syntax. We have the struct name followed by curly braces, and then you put the values for that struct in the curly braces, separated by commas, and you do so in the order as they're defined in the struct. So we have the string for name first, int age second, and then float32 weight. So we have Oscar, 14, that's the age, and 15.2, that's the weight. We can leave the curly braces empty, in which case the fields all default to their default value, what Go calls the zero value for a variable, its default value is called the zero value. And for a string that's going to be an empty string, for an int that's going to be zero, and for float32 that's going to be zero. And also what we can do in the curly braces is we can specify the fields and their values by name, in which case we don't have to write them in the same order. So here we're specifying the age field has the value 14 and the name field is the value Oscar. And we didn't specify a weight field in which case it'll default to zero. So when you use this syntax with the named fields, you don't have to provide every value, whereas in this form where you don't name the fields, you have to provide every value in order. And lastly in this example, same deal except we're specifying the weight explicitly and saying it's 15.2. And here we're creating another cat variable we call y and we're signing the value of x to y. And when you assign one struct to another, what you're really doing is you're copying all the respective fields from one to the other. So now x and y all of the fields now match. That's really what an assignment always does you have some value and you're copying that value to the target variable. And also we can use an equality test on two structs. So this is testing if x and y are equal. So it's going through all the respective fields and comparing them. So tests if name of x is equal to name of y, if age of x is equal to age of y, if weight of x is equal to weight of y. And if all of those are equal and only if all of them are equal, is this condition true? Otherwise, if any one of them is different, then it's false. In this case, we know they're true because we just assigned x to y. So this is going to be printed out. It's going to say that x and y are equal. And the way we access the fields of our structs is with the dot operator, which is confusing because as we saw earlier, dot is also used to access the elements of imported packages and also to access methods when we call them. This is a third use of dot. And so here we're taking the struct x and we're accessing its name. And that is then being assigned to this new variable s of type string. We're then printing it out. And so we're going to see Oscar print it out. And to set the field of a struct, we use the same dot syntax as the target of assignment. So this is assigning the string snowball six to the name field of x. And this is assigning 4.3 to the weight field of x. So we don't have getting set instead we just have dot and we use for setting, we use the dot expression as a target of an assignment. Here in this main function, we're creating at the top a variable a, which is an array of four integers. And you denote arrays by preceding the base type. The thing which is this is an array of, it's an array of ints in this case. You proceed it with square brackets and you put the size of the array inside. So this is how you do an array type. Whereas to create a slice down here, we're creating a slice of ints and you don't put any number inside. You put nothing inside and that makes it a slice. And understand when you create arrays, when you specify array types, you have to have a constant expression in here, meaning it has to be a number constant or some expression like you can actually have like four plus two, something like that. This is an expression which the compiler can figure out at compile time. It doesn't have to use any of your variables or your functions. It can be fully figured out at compile time. Because the compiler needs to know at compile time how big every array is. Anyway, on the next line, we're signing to a an array of four ints with these values, seven, two, four, five. And when you sign to an array, you're, it's expecting you to provide an array. And so it's like we're copying this array to a. And now a will have all of these same values that will have the value seven, two, four, and five in that order. If you leave the curly braces empty, then all four values default to their zero value, which for an int would be the value zero, of course. And if you specify a number of values, which is less than the size of the array, then the remaining values default to their zero value. So here this would be an array of the value seven, two, and then zero and zero. For a slice, the notation is almost exactly the same, except we don't have a number inside the square brackets. I'd be very clear about what exactly this is really doing. This expression, the compiler considers this to be an in slice expression. It has an in slice value, but it also is implicitly creating an array with these four values in this order. And the slice value here is referencing that array. And that slice will have a length of four and a capacity of four, or actually might have a capacity of something larger, but it'll be at least four. And also be clear, you can put as many values as you want in here, whatever you want, right? Or you can leave it empty, but what that means is that the array being created will then be that size. So like here now with the curly braces empty, the array referenced by the slice will have no values, it'll be empty. On the next line, a common trick is that we want to get a slice referencing the entirety of some existing array. So we have our int array of size four called a and we want to get a slice of it ranging from index zero up to the whole length of the array. And so we use the slice operator on a and we specify that we're starting at index zero and we were going up to but not including index four. And this effectively is giving us back a slice representing that whole array and it'll have a length of four and a capacity of four or greater. But as shorthand, when we use the slice operator before the colon, if you leave that blank, it defaults to zero. And after the colon, if you leave that blank, it defaults to the length of the slice or array which we're using the slice operator on. So in this case, we're using it on this array a and so implicitly after the colon, it's Len a. Lastly here, we're using the make operator or they don't call them operators. They call them built in functions because when you call them, they look like function calls, but they're not really functions being called. They're really just built in operations. Anyway, so this make operation, you specify the type of thing you want to create. In this case, we want to create a slice events. And so this make operation will return the slice events. And when you create a slice events, the second argument is specifying what the length is. And the third argument is specifying what the capacity of that slice is going to be. So this is creating a new array of ints of size 40 and giving us back a slice events referencing the start of that array with a length of 20. So it's giving us back a slice, which is referencing only the first half of this newly created array of 40 ints. Lastly down here, we're creating a variable C, which is an array of five ints. And if we then try and assign C to a, we get a compile error because they're different sizes. The really central thing to keep in mind about arrays is that the size of the arrays considered integral to the type, such that say an array of four ints is not the same thing as an array of five ints. You can't substitute one for the other. You can't assign an array of five ints to an array of four ints or vice versa. They're just different things as far as the compiler is concerned. So we can't use assignment to copy values from one array to another if they're different sizes. We do, though, have actually the copy operator or built-in function as they call it. And it's actually defined to copy values from one slice to another. So if I have two slices, well, we do have slices here. So we've got a slice of everything in A and B. And the first one is the destination, and the second argument is the source. So this is going to copy everything from B to A. And right now, B is defined to be a slice of 20 values, 20 ints. And A, if we got a slice of the whole of A, well, A is only four ints in size. And the number of elements copied is the length of the smaller slice. So in this case, A is smaller. It's four. The first four elements of B are going to be copied to the four elements of A, in this case. So using this operator, if I wanted to copy elements from one array to another if they're different sizes, instead of using assignment, I would use copy. And let's see, I want to copy, let's say, everything from A to C. So C is our destination. And let's just get a slice of it, and we'll get a slice of A as well. We can't use C and A directly. Copy is expecting slices. So we have to get slices of our arrays, but that's easily done enough. And here, because A is smaller, A is a length of four, only four elements are going to be copied instead of five. So we're effectively copying all four elements of A to the first four elements of C, leaving the fifth element of C, the last element of C untouched by this copy operation. Something we can do and go, which we couldn't do and go pigeon, is create what are called named types. Like here, if I create a type foo, which is defined to be an array of three ints. Well, when I create a variable of type foo, what it really is is just an array of three ints. Likewise, here I'm creating type bar, which is really just a boolean. And here I'm creating a type act, which is a slice of slice of booleans. There would be the same thing in terms of what the data are. A foo would be the same thing as an array of three ints. But they're not really aliases because the compiler would not consider them to be the same type. If you recall back up here, the built-in base types of the language, we have these integer types. And we have byte, which is just an alias of uint8. And we have rune, which is just an alias of int32. And those are entirely equivalent. If you use the name rune in your code instead of int32, it's just a stylistic thing the compiler considers them to be exactly the same. Whereas when you create named types, like foo, which is an array of three ints. Yes, every foo you create is an array of three ints. But the compiler doesn't consider them to be the same thing. It wouldn't accept values of type foo to be arrays of three ints or vice versa. So if I have a variable of type foo, I couldn't assign to an array of three ints or vice versa. If I had a variable which is an array of three ints, I couldn't assign to it a value of type foo. Even though in terms of what they are in terms of data are exactly the same thing. Having to find this type bar, which is a boolean, what can we do with it? Well, looking here, I'm creating variables of type bar x, y, and z. And I'm assigning, these are boolean values, yes, but they're considered constants. These things actually don't really have type. They're not specifically the booleans, they're just values which are valid boolean values. I can equally assign them to a named type which is defined to be a boolean, because given this type bar which is defined to be a boolean, I can do all the same operations and things with this type that I can do with a boolean. It's just not considered to be the same thing as a boolean. So down here, if I create a variable b, first off, very simply, now I have x, y, and z which are bars and b which is a bool, I can't do this. This is a compiler because b and x are not considered to be the same thing. If I want to assign b to x, I would have to cast it, which is what we call a conversion operation. So you just use the name of the type you want to cast to, and then inside you specify the value you're casting. And this will take the boolean value b, and you get back a bar value which is, let's see, the boolean is currently false, and it's going to get us a bar value which is false. So it's the same value. The data is not changing in any way with this kind of conversion, but we're making the compiler happy because the compiler is expecting, for values assigned to x, it's expecting a bar value. b itself is not a bar value. We would have to get the bar equivalent of b using the syntax. And be clear, the compiler allows this kind of conversion because it knows that bars and booleans are really the same thing. You can't just cast values of one type into any other type necessarily. It depends on what type you're casting from and what you're casting to. Like say, the compiler, if I had an infable here, I couldn't just take my bar value and arbitrarily cast it to an end because what even would that be? The compiler doesn't know what to do there, so it just allows that. So that's an error. Anyway, so let me get rid of that. And so here on the next line, we have our bar variable z, and we're assigning to it the end of x and y. This is an end operation on x and y. And because x and y, they're bar values, but a bar is known to be a boolean by the compiler. So it knows you can perform the end operation on these things just like you can on booleans. But what we get back from this operation, because both operands are bar values, we get back a bar value, not a boolean. And so this is an acceptable assignment because z is expecting a boolean. Whereas here, this is a compile error because b was a boolean variable. This expression is giving us back a bar. So we're getting back the wrong type. If we want to take the result of this operation and assign it to b, then we need to cast. We need to take the result of this operation and cast it into boolean and now it's an acceptable assignment. And then down here, we're trying to end b and x, but this is a compile error because and is expecting operands of the same type. Yes, they're both ultimately booleans in terms of data, but the compiler considers them to be different types. Because we want to assign to z here, we want the operation to return a bar, so we're going to take b and make it a bar. And now the operation, the sand operation, both of its inputs are bar values and it's going to return a bar value, which we assigned to z. So you're surely wondering what's the point of having these name types. They seem a little silly. They're not even really aliases of existing types. They're not just syntactical conveniences. They're creating types that are considered distinct by the compiler. What's the point of that? Well, here's an example of where that conceivable might be useful. We're creating a type weight, which is really just a float 64. And this can be useful because in our code, you know, float 64 is they're just numbers. They could be used to represent all kinds of things, units of measurement, mass, distance, money, all sorts of things, right? And generally, you wouldn't want to accidentally mix those things together. So having created this name type weight, we could have all of our weight values kept distinct from other float 64 values in our code, such that here, if we create a variable f of type float 64 and a variable w of type weight, well, first off, notice that number constants, again, have no particular type. And so the compiler here accepts this assignment because it says, OK, a weight is really just a float 64. And the value 64.72, that number constant is a valid value for float 64. So it accepts this assignment. But here, when we're trying to assign w to f or f to w, those are compile errors because f and w are different types. They're really float 64s behind the scenes, but the compiler considers them to be different things. And so if I really want to assign w to f or f to w, I would need to convert. And so this is taking my w value, getting that same value as a float 64, and this is taking my float value f and getting its equivalent as weight. And there's no distortion in the value. It's still the same exact value because they're both really just float 64s. But this is satisfying the compiler and now it accepts this assignment because w here needs to have a weight value as the value assigned to it. And then say we have this function foo, which is expecting a weight as input. Well, you can call foo and pass in w, and that's good. But if we try and pass in f or any other float 64 or anything that's not a weight, then we get an error. And this conceivably will help us catch our own mistakes where we have a bunch of different float 64 values and some of them are weights, some of them are different kinds of things. And we don't want to accidentally use just any old number when we expect specifically a weight. And so yeah, we can trivially get around this by instead of passing f itself, we convert it to a weight and then the compiler is okay with this call. But at least now we have to explicitly acknowledge that we really know what we're doing. It's much less likely that you're going to accidentally take your random float value and pass it as a weight if you have to explicitly say that you're passing a weight. So it's really just sort of a guards rail mechanism to make sure you're using values as you intend to. And lastly down here, if we take w and add 4 to and assign the result to w, again, this is a shorthand for w equals w plus 4. Well, the rule as I said with arithmetic is that if we do an arithmetic operation with a typed value and a constant, the result is going to have that same type. So because w here is a weight value, the result of the addition is also a weight value which is valid to assign to w. So that's all good. And again, I'll just put it back to the more convenient syntax. Same thing, just different syntax. And here say if we had some float value that we wanted to add to a number and then assign to w, you could either just convert f to weight first and then add that to 4, or you can add f and 4 together first and then convert the result of that to weight. I'd probably do this first form here, but it's just a stylistic thing. You get exactly the same result in the end here. These types weight and float 64 again are in terms of data exactly the same thing. And we have to use these conversions to tell the compiler that, yeah, yeah, I know what I'm doing here.


Welcome to INSIGHT, produced in partnership with Lakeland Public Television, serving North Central Minnesota. Today we are chatting with Nancy Vesquetchol of the Northwest Minnesota Foundation. Nancy has generously agreed to share some of her experience with us. I'd like to thank you, Nancy, for joining us today. Thank you. So talk about the work of the foundation serving such a geographically dispersed area and providing for so many different needs. Your programs are quite diverse and quite fascinating. So talk first about the structure of the work that you actually do for Northwest Minnesota. Well, that's a very interesting question. You know, it's one of the things we say at our office, if there's cars in the parking lot, we're not doing our job. We serve over 14,400 square miles and we serve it, a lot of it we serve face to face, getting out and meeting with people, finding out the needs that they have and trying to develop programming that meets those needs. And we really break it down into a couple of kind of big buckets, if you will. Some is the work that we do directly, the programs that we serve, and then work that we do by supporting others, by supporting other non-profits in the region, by supporting communities in the work that they do within their communities. So we're very unique. We're one of the Minnesota of only six initiative foundations in Minnesota, nothing like us in the rest of the country. We have lending programs. We're one of very few that actually have IRS designation of lending as a charitable purpose. So we have hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that go out in loans to businesses throughout the region, through a multitude of different lending programs, SBA, small lending programs. What people know as microloans in other countries of $100 or a few $100 in Africa or Asia, here it takes $35,000 to $50,000 to be a microloan, a different scale, but we do have those for starting entrepreneurs, to gap lending programs where we're working with banks or other lenders to meet the needs where a loan just won't come together because there is that gap to make that deal actually work. So a big loan that needs to be syndicated and a number of lenders come together to make that loan work. So we have lending that occurs throughout the 12 counties of Northwest Minnesota. Every day our lenders are out in the region pulling these loans together and working with communities to make these deals happen. So you have a number of different competencies all in the organization. So let's take these areas one at a time. Let's start off with the first area that you mentioned, the programs that you administered. Describe those programs. So I talked about the lending a bit. We do run the lending programs. And one thing I would add to that, you talked about the hard-nosed lending. We do the hard-nosed lending, but in addition to that, we offer technical assistance, which is a very important part of that. These are advisory services. Advisory services. We actually house a small business development center for the region. So you can connect with business advisors at no cost. We've worked with trainings related to Parent Aware, which is a big program in Minnesota for upping the quality of child care that's provided through the region or through the state and ties into programs on the state level for scholarship dollars that are available. Our coalitions have worked with providing different trainings for child care providers so that they can keep up the hours that they need for their certifications. We've also provided facilitation in communities who are looking at what their child care needs are. So do they need to build a center? Do they need to bring more home-based child care into their mix? Right now, we're about a thousand spots of child care short within the region. And what's the mix to meet that? So we work with resources to facilitate finding that mix and those resources for child care. How many grants, or what is the total dollar value of grants that you generally make annually? Our discretionary grants run from about 400 to 500,000 a year. And then our grants through our component and community funds, they can range up into the millions. And oftentimes we're able to pair grants so we're able to identify areas that are of particular need and then go back to our funds and say, this is something that looks like it would be of interest to you and make them aware of things that are available that they could support. And we really look at ourselves very much as being matchmakers. So oftentimes this will occur, especially in areas like arts and things that support youth and children. Many of our funds and our donor advice funds specifically have very specific interests in those areas, so we're able to direct opportunities to them in those areas. In terms of the third area, which is the lending area, how does that function? If you are a lender of a sort of last resort for people who need that type of help, you are actually the person or the group that people come to after they've exhausted other options. So how does that work? How do you protect the asset base that you lend out with the expectation that you'll receive at least a preponderance of those funds back and can rotate them back into the community later on for another tranche of lending? It would seem like that would be the case, but in reality, our losses are not particularly higher than what a bank might see. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we are very diligent in our loan reviews and we do bring other resources to our loans. Oftentimes banks bring us loans because they know that we will make the overall quality of the loan better. So they will come to us and say, this loan has need and we would like you to come into this loan, not because it's necessarily a bad loan, but there is a weakness that we think through the resources you bring, it will definitely strengthen the overall loan because you will bring additional technical resources to it. Because we have a more patient attitude and we have more technical resources, basically we are in it for a different reason. So an example might be someone who a bank feels is a good credit risk provided they receive additional counseling to help them achieve their vision that necessitates the loan in the first place. The bank is not necessarily a capacity building organization, they are in the business of loaning money and receiving a profit from that loan. So they are coming to you and they are saying, we would do this, except this person needs additional help. We can't provide it. Would you be interested in providing it? And that's where you get involved. That is exactly right. And that's something that works so well and where we have such a good relationship and such a good opportunity to serve. So we're not in competition with our local banks. It's a very symbiotic relationship, if you will, because they know exactly where our sweet spot is to serve and how they can bring business to us that ultimately serves their need. Plus, the strength here for the community is that as you help your clients to evolve their own expertise, the next time that client might need a loan, they may be in a different circumstance, a different place with different expertise. They can go back to the bank and the bank could perhaps at that point make the loan without the need of those additional services. So you're creating a market for the banks for the future by providing this training that only experience can afford. That's absolutely right. In fact, the best success story is when someone comes in for a small SBA loan and then they move up to the GAP loan program and then ultimately they outgrow us and they go to the bank and they don't need us anymore. And then ultimately they become a donor back because they have amassed wealth. That's the perfect circle and that's the circle we like to see. What kind of people come to you for loans and for what type of purposes? We have one area that we do always keep a focus on and that is what we call essential services. Our small towns are very important within the region and we want to make sure that we always keep our eye on having that hardware store or that grocery store or gas station or those things that are so absolutely critical to the population of those towns. And so on the retail side, those are where we do focus some of our energies as well. Nancy Fisketchel, thank you so much for sharing the work of the Northwest Minnesota Foundation and thank you so much for your insights.


The work in the research stream on justice borders and rights addresses real life problems and has an impact on real people. One example of that is the research on how refugees have used smartphones and digital media on their journeys. This has resulted in the European Commission deciding to fund a project and a website where reliable information is produced for people who are migrating to Europe and for those who've already arrived. Another example of the impact of the work that we're doing within this research stream is a collaboration where we have been for the past three years organizing a multi-platform event together with Tate Modern's interactive arm, if you will, the Tate Exchange, and bringing debates within academia between academics, artists and activists around issues of migration, participation and belonging to a wider audience. So these events have prompted new engagements with young people, migrants, refugees on issues that affect us all. So one example is that we've been able to discuss the outcomes of ongoing research on climate change and migration in Cuba, for example, or working conditions of precariousness and how that affects people within the arts but also outside the arts sector. And of course also how families survive and are challenged by the often difficult journeys of migration. Many of these debates have also been translated into open access learning resources and that is one way in which we make a difference by bringing cutting edge research about issues that affect us all to a wide range of people through these learning resources and education. An important part of the work that we're doing within this research stream is to explore notions of borders, how people claim rights, but also bringing into being perhaps new and challenging understandings of what social justice is and should be.


This is Teacher Appreciation Week, which made us wonder what qualities do teachers and peace builders have in common. We are adaptable. We are creative. We are dedicated. We are optimistic. We are resilient. We believe that peace is possible. And we can teach our students the knowledge and skills they need to resolve conflicts and build peace. In our communities and in our world. When we teach about peace, our students develop empathy and a sense of their global community, two things that are so important right now. It is more important than ever to teach students peace-building skills such as active listening and cooperation to help students navigate this new normal. Teaching about peace-building provides our students with hope and equips them with the skills necessary to help make a better world once this is all over. All of us at the U.S. Institute of Peace offer our deep appreciation to teachers everywhere for their continued commitment to educating their students during this pandemic. In turn, remain dedicated to providing teachers and other peace builders with the tools and resources they need to build a better future for all of us.


Welcome to Experiments in Digital Storytelling with LaMama and Culture Hub. Good afternoon. This is Maddie. I'm here in Brooklyn. And today we are bringing you a program that is working with emerging technologies to explore what we can do with emerging technologies to create dynamic and meaningful storytelling experiences using the internet. This was supposed to be an in-person series based in the downstairs at LaMama, but of course that is not possible. So we've brought the entire program online. And today we're doing multiple technical feats in that we are exploring this new world of VR Theatre with Double-I Studios and we're doing that while all being remotely distributed across various states and boroughs. So today there are a lot of different levels of experimentation happening. We're working today supporting Double-I Studios, which is a group that's exploring VR Theatre which is really actors working in a virtual world that's been designed and working with writers who are writing specifically for this virtual context. So our goal is really to create a space for this type of experimentation and there's really not much precedent here. There aren't plenty of people who have decided, okay great I want to make a play in VR. So Kira Benzing who's the director and her whole team at Double-I are really building pipelines and really forging out into the unknown to say both technically what is possible, how can we do this both in real spaces and distributed and artistically through the acting, the directing and the writing. So they have to make a lot of different choices and today you're going to see some of those choices happen live and some things that they're trying today they might not have ever tried before. So it's exciting and there might be differences between the two shows because this we've got a show at 1 p.m. which you're watching, welcome and we'll have another show at 6 p.m. In this program they'll show 20 minutes of Pandora X which is a new production they're developing based on the Greek myth and we'll see where it takes us. This program, we have them on stage with Le Mame and Quilterhub in April with their open rehearsal process and so this is a continuation of that rehearsal process. Experiment and digital storytelling is also working with Dream Adoption Society which will have another work of VR theater the last weekend of May with Kristof Grabarczewski who's developing and directing in Poland. So great, yes this is Le Mame and Quilterhub and now we are welcoming Double Eye Studios and Kira Benzing. Thank you Maddie, it is so nice to be here with all of you gathered virtually and digitally across all of these spaces and we are really excited to bring you something new today. Just as Maddie was explaining we are testing things, we are running something new for you. This is new work, we have not put this in front of an audience before and we will be trying out some different ideas. We've been doing this parallel structure that we've been exploring for the last bit of time, something that we've premiered at the Venice Film Festival production called Love Seat where we ran in front of a live audience and simultaneously in virtual reality and we would have done that of course in New York City with many of you watching live, gathered in the Le Mame Downstairs space in partnership with Quilterhub but instead you were here with us live and the digital streams of Facebook and the social media realms and then we also have some of you now joining us in our Greek chorus in virtual reality, we've built this world of Mount Olympus and I want to take you back to do a little recap of what we did in the first round of experiments and digital storytelling at Quilterhub last month. We ran this experiment with live audiences and together we generated these word clouds and they were these kinds of collages from people's dreams and people's aspirations and so this evolved in real time and so I'm going to play a little video from that and also the new collage that we generated based on photographs that many of you submitted to us online and here goes this video now about these video collages stand by. So this was a word cloud that was generated by one of our audiences in April last month and you can see how people were generating all kinds of aspirations and goals and the main one that came up was flying so stay tuned for that, that was a superpower that they wished on and this is a collage where we reached out in social media to gather collective images around these important themes and these first set of images came from the theme of wisdom so thank you to those of you who submitted these photos to us so we could bring this together and the second theme that you're seeing came from the theme of love which is yet another important theme and people were taking walks finding these images in nature out in the real world right now and bringing these to us I know that some of these images also came from some really quiet times and moments people were reflecting on hikes this third image comes from courage and I want you digital audience to pay attention to this because you may be seeing some of these things later going from a two-dimensional form into a three-dimensional form and our final theme is hope and this theme is particularly important for this production because this is what Pandora preserved in the box and all of these other themes that you have seen were blessings that the gods had endowed hope in so keep your eyes peeled for these because they are offerings that you contributed from the digital world and they will be made as offerings to the gods in the virtual world so that was really one of our very first experiments and our actors are getting ready backstage right now they are taking their places in the virtual land of Mount Olympus our Greek chorus is practicing something special they've just been let through a portal and as that is happening right now I'm going to take you into one other really neat tool that was painted by our till brush artist Sarah Finn Huntley there are all of these really interesting things that we can play with going from traditional theatrical formats traditional cinematic formats and the double eye we're trying to combine all of those things into a kind of new inventive pipeline and so we've been playing with the ability to sketch and draw in a three-dimensional way and Sarah Finn Huntley has brought this drawing of Pandora to life for us so we're going to play some of that and then right from there we're going to take you straight into the world of Mount Olympus virtually where you will get to see what our actors have cooked up for you in this new myth that we are retelling and so now we will take you into till brush straight into Mount Olympus I will see you there look I got a cube see these these cubes go ahead and bring those cubes back to the fire four cubes the right and left awesome and let's go ahead and put them right here on the fire these are the offerings the magical offerings that we'll be making oops that we'll be making to to the gods one of them represents wisdom one represents hope one of them represents love start bringing the cubes across we've gotten them we look like we're missing one cube oh it's over there let me go grab it you want me to go grab it we're moving the cubes Alyssa Alyssa okay no no come back come back Chris come back bring back the cube bring back the cube Chris cool he's gone right okay well I guess this means we've started so you all know what to do you know what your lines are everybody grab a cube have we started oh the I lost it guys everybody grab a cube say your lines say your lines and let's go to the stage ready I hope to return what are these murmurs these wild rumors flying your cube on the left one over there. Can it be? Has my chance come again? Answer me! I, the Great Zeus, do so command! Hear the Great Zeus, please! He is command! At last! Pandora is dead! Long live Pandora! Make an offering to the gods, and hope shall return! Hope shall return! At last! My friends, hope shall be returned to us! Here, where it belongs, on Mount Olympus, and as for the mortals, my vengeance will finally be complete! Down! Down mankind shall fall! Down! Down and punished one and all! That is my will! That is my vow! Come, and gather round me now! Satars and mints of the forest and streams! Roses of Greece, who give glory through song! Goddesses, gods! Awake from your dreams! Come hither! Come nigh, and join the throne! Are you here? Yes, I feel you near. Lend me your ears and eyes, my friends and allies! For the time has come to strike again, to shatter with fear the hearts of all men! Oh, wow! I wonder that. Mithius! Did you think my vengeance forgotten? That your act, misbegotten and exceedingly ambitious, would be lost on Mount Olympus! Do you not recall the destruction and danger? A thunder, the fearsome bolts of anger which from this, my very hand, rained down upon the heads of men? A plague upon you for stealing fire? A plague on all men who embrace their desire? And by that beloved object shall know a fate most abject. Living in fear, bereft without a shred of hope left. Did you think my vengeance was forgotten? That the passage of time would have face it somehow? Nothing is forgotten! My friends, my friends, if you recall how we shaped the most beautiful maid of all, like an immortal goddess in face, fashioned with all conceivable grace. Yay! With our talents we designed a shameless nature, a curious mind, a singular spirit strong and proud became her well, the all endowed Pandora! To wreak my vengeance, sharp and swift, I sent with you a poisoned gift, a vessel of inconceivable worth filled with the evils of the earth, your fate to wed a mortal man. And by this, your lovely hand to unleash destruction on the land obedient to my command. That was my will. That was my vow. Yet, where are we now? Pandora, I have not forgotten! Nothing is forgotten!  What are you doing? Nothing. You weren't rhyming? Rhyming? Of course not. Really? But I lied to you, my dear. What do you? About the time you said you had no idea why Hercules was so strong when you knew he was your son. Well, I... All about the time you sent Hades to kidnap Persephone so I wouldn't realize she was one of your many conquests. I did... That's how I kept finding feathers in your hair, even though you swore you weren't seeing Leda anymore. Now, honey, we've talked about this many times, but... Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Don't you now, honey me. You're up to something. And if you're rhyming, it can mean it's no good.  It's Pandora again, isn't it? The old one has passed on and her successor has inherited the box of hope. Am I right? How should I know if Pandora's alive or dead? Oh, you think I don't know about your dalliance with the original Pandora's granddaughter? I can read you like a book. You hope to go back to the mortal world and seduce the latest in a long line of Pandora's, hoping she'll be all just so enamored that she'll hand the box of hope over to you. She's what your great, great, great, a thousand times great-granddaughter. You should be ashamed of yourself. Now, sweetling, you know the portal from Mount Olympus to Earth has been lost for ages. I've been looking for it for five centuries. I mean, it's driving me crazy. Oh, boo-hoo. Yes, well, at any case, Pandora is the farthest thing from my mind. I don't care about her anymore. Perhaps that was the case before, and quite likely it was not. The past is long-forgot. Aha! You rhymed. I knew it. You only do that when there's a new Pandora and you're catching a dastardly plot to get the box of hope out of her hands and into your own clutches. Look, my dear, my dear, my dear, my dear. That is a silly presumption. Now, look, my friends and I are having a meeting and you very rudely interrupted, so if you would... Ah, yes, your friends, your friends, right, mere shadows of their former selves, I see. My friends and I, their power and might like my own remains undiminished. Right, right, right. Whatever you have to tell yourself. Ah, be gone, woman! Enough of your chatter! Oh, my dear, I fear your is mad as a hatter. Guys, how is it God supposed to think around here? Ah, where was I? Ah, ah, right, Pandora. Well, we all know the story. I sent her down to Earth with a box full of evils, and I told her, don't open the box. But she, unable to resist, lifted the lid and released plagues, etc., etc., etc., all according to my plan. But what I didn't know was that that crafty creature, that sly little minx, had played on us the most devious of tricks. Only later did we discover the theft that she had sold in all hope before she left. Listen, what? Do you say the fault was mine? That I should have something, something divine?  How was I supposed to know that Pandora believed me when I sent her down to Earth, when I said it was a gift for mankind, and that she thought that I'd accidentally forgotten to include hope. So she slipped it into the box, and then trapped it in the box, when she realized I'd actually sent her to Earth with a multitude of plagues. And you moved people away from me just because I had to throw the photo in a moment. Right, right. You're right. You're all right. That's all in the past. I must look to the future and come up with a plan, a plan, something new, something dig the box back here where it belongs. But what? I mean, I tried everything. You know, fear, seduction, pain, torture, chocolate, and she has resisted it all.  The new Pandora is young, innocent, untried. I have a thought. A strongman passes. The new one perforce learns the ways of power in due course. But for now, weak as a babe in arms, how will she resist an old lady's charms? Oh, my dear, you don't know me, but I was a great friend of your grandmother's. Oh, God rest her soul. Do you need some help going through her things? Oh, no, no, no. You don't need to thank me. I'm just happy to help. Oh, well, if you insist, then a little keepsake would be nice. Mmm, perhaps this little box to remember her by. Wait, what? What, what? What say you? Wait, the temple of Artemis? Oh, but the temple of Artemis, I've scoured it from top to bottom. There is no portal there. And wait, what? Oh, did I look behind the throne? Did I look? Did I not? Again, all is forgot. Well, there is nothing for it. I will have to search again. I will return, my friend. That's all move just over here, you guys. A little bit away, child princess, please come over here. My poor, deluded husband. Well, search and scour till your heart's content, for the portal has been in my power these past 500 years. Ah, as fast as my son. Thank you for creating the means for me to enter the mortal world through my ends and my ends alone. This part always makes me feel so silly. You do have a sense of humor, my son. From Mount Olympus to the mortal shore, I command you up here. Oh, portal door. One more. Now, let's have done with this Pandora business once and for all. Hey, my gosh, you guys, you were awesome. Let's gather in a circle right here. Come and gather in a circle. So now, hi. What we're going to do is we are going to express the audience members online are all expressing a wish for humanity and we are all also going to express a wish for humanity. It can be something like what, um, what, uh, Pandora, we asked everyone what was the super power that they most wish that they could have and the answer was flying. So today we are going to give that gift to all of you and we are all going to learn how to fly and explore different video feeds. So far we haven't broken, but that may still happen today. Chris, are they ready? Something that's happening in the virtual world right now that we wanted to do with you in the real world and in the additional world is to have you express your wish for humanity. And so for those of you that might be watching through social media, whether that is commenting with us on Twitter or commenting on Facebook or for those of you who are just at home and might have tuned in and have a chance or you're even coming to this later in time because this is a live event and maybe you've discovered this and time of course is non-linear. So this could be at any point. We would love for you to express your wish for humanity. That could be like one of the wishes and blessings that was given to Pandora in one of those themes like wisdom or courage or of course hope. But if you have another one that you want to share, feel free to express that with us. And we thought this would be a nice moment to do that. And that's something that's happening simultaneously right now in the virtual world. The audience and the rechorus are getting together and they are expressing their wish for humanity. So we thought that we would try to bring these worlds together in this moment of hope. So just take a moment to reflect now and share that. And we thank you all for being here and we're going to move into a Q&A. Our actors are coming down from Mount Olympus. They're taking off their virtual gear and turning back into their human selves and they're going to join us in a Q&A in a bit. And we're going to start actually with our dear colleague, Yara Espanolik Bharti, who's joining us. She's a professor of phenomenology and Milan, an individual artist. And she's going to be joining us in just a moment for the Q&A. There's one other thing that I just wanted to thank you for, digital audience. For those of you that were so amazing to be a part of our first experiment in April as in this series with Culture Hub, we asked you to express the superpower that you wanted and you asked for the ability to fly. And so that is a wish that has now been granted in virtual reality for the virtual audience. So just in a moment now, all of those virtual audience members are going to be given this gift and learn how to fly in our world of Mount Olympus. So thank you so much for sharing that with us so we could give that to them. So that is your gift that you have sent into the virtual world. So now we're going to welcome Yara Espanolik Bharti to the stage, along with Mark Sternberg, my technical producer and tech lead on this production. Hello. Hello to you both. Hello to the entire team. And congratulations for working miracles one after the next. And for making Greece come true. So since Kira mentioned the wish of flying, I would actually start right away with the two of you, discussing how that came about from a technical perspective and also the creative point of view. Creative point of view is pretty simple. I mean, I think regularly I champion the ability to fly in all virtual worlds. I mean, of course, it doesn't make sense for all narratives, but we're in the land of Greek mythology where people have magic powers. So of course, they should fly. That fits our narrative really well. So hats off to the digital audience that wanted that superpower. And absolutely. And we've been very excited to be exploring this new release called Udon, which Mark can talk more about, that got implemented really quickly. And a shout out to the VR chat founders, Jesse and Graham and our new colleague, Jason over there. They have been incredibly helpful. And we are so excited to be able to implement flying in about four weeks. And that's also, you know, a major salute to Mark for pulling that off because it's been a lot of development implementation to do that from where we were just in April, four weeks later, to where we are right now. So Mark, do you want to? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, as Kira mentioned, the release for VR chat added a lot more freedom to what you can do in their software. You know, a lot of the things that you see in the world right now are thanks to Udon specifically, especially the flying, which, you know, one of the users, Peptron One, provided for the community. And we just implemented it in this world. You know, it took a little bit of tweaking, but we got it there. And, you know, you can also see a lot of other great things that we're able to implement because so many people in the larger VR and program and community have provided them. You know, you see some great Tilt Brush art by Sara from Huntley. That was implemented because, you know, Tilt Brush not only provided, you know, great platform, but also the ability to bring it into unity. As again mentioned, some of you may have heard of that is sort of provides a basis for all of the our chat. Okay, well, thank you for that insight. I must say, your team is also very good in unveiling the themes of our era. Last time we saw love scenes for the love dynamics of the contemporary world. And now Pandora is spot on. It's very serendipitous that it came out right now that we're living obviously a similar situation with the pandemic. I was also very impressed with your initiative of encouraging people to send photos about things such as wisdom, courage, love and hope. And they were all related to nature. So, Kira, how does that connect with the times we are living in in terms of wanting to really engage with the world outside and also in seeing how our planet has benefited from us staying indoors? We're in such an amazing time in history. And I think that we're all going to look back at this moment and remember our strength as as a human race and hopefully the best of our abilities and that we have discovered new things as a human race. There's something kind of regular to the the work that I do with Alyssa Landry, our lead writer on this production, who will join us on the second part of the Q&A. Alyssa and I regularly like to do these kinds of collective audience moments where people generate a piece of themselves and then we bring that into the work. So as we can see, we did these collective collages that started with these word clouds in the first experiment. Now this is turned into something more tangible that Mark was actually able to 3D model and turn into something that we could bring into the virtual world. So we are, you know, taking these kind of collective elements and something that I see that I feel like is coming from the collective unconscious is this reconnection to nature. Everyone is taking these walks. People are getting very self-reflective and journaling. They're showing these sharing these beautiful images of nature to their social media feeds or even in personal groups. Things that really touch them and I felt really touched by that. And I thought if we're bestowing the greatest of gifts to Pandora and therefore also to humanity, then what can we pull? And I thought, you know, even though we're living, we're spending all of the time creating this new reality and performance in a virtual world, it would be beautiful to bring something from the natural world that we really cherish. So that felt like a special something we could do as an offering to the gods. Yeah, and it was definitely really fun incorporating things from the real world. You know, we have the photos in there. We have some shadows that are sitting on the rocks near the front of the stage. So there's a lot of fun things from the real world that we were able to bring to the virtual. And how are you inspired? And also if you can tell us technically how you managed to create Mount Olympus in a virtual reality and give this very spectacular and futuristic aspect to it? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of 3D modeling work that goes into this. We also did some tweaking on the 3D models of even the avatars themselves and almost made them completely new models, some of them.  And then, you know, again, Tilt Brush, some of the stuff is just made in Tilt Brush. And then, you know, all these things then go into Unity, which, you know, the name, as the name says, it unifies with everything. So it's, it's a great program to work in. And it gives you a lot of freedom and allows us to create great things like this, a world that is really supernatural and certainly awesome to look at and fly around in for extended periods of time. Well, it's fantastic. And I was so fascinated by the use of shadows, and I have a question for Gira in those regards, because it somehow evoked to me the allegory of the cave of Plato, where prisoners are chained to a cave and see nothing but shadows on the wall, and they start to believe that those shadows are the realities. And when one of the prisoners escapes, and he goes back to tell his fellow prisoners that what they were seeing was actually the perception of real world, they didn't believe him. They thought he was lying. So I was wondering, how does virtual reality and the worlds we create and the shadows somehow you create portray this idea of human perception related to the environment you're elaborating in?  And, and again, there's something kind of really magical, I think, about the human form and the human body, and, and, you know, how can we bring those pieces into a virtual world? So, you know, we're trying to like mix the worlds in, in both directions and see where they meet. And there's something that we wanted to do on a theatrical stage that dealt with shadows, which we didn't get to do because we, we can't be in the theater in New York right now. So we took this concept, you know, and not also came from a brainstorm session that we were having as a team. And I want to attribute some of the shadows concept to Chris Tepino, who's in the Suzanna Tech team and is teaching people how to fly in the virtual world right now. And that, you know, this felt like another way that we could integrate them. So I thought if we're bringing these elements of the natural world in through images, what if we do that with people's shadows? So actually, the shadows that, and I don't know that the, that the live stream audience has been able to see any of this, but certainly the virtual audience can, and they also have to pay attention to the detail. It's not in your face. It's kind of subtle. And they're, you know, appearing on these rocks in the environment, kind of like you're saying, going back to the cave, perhaps, you know, all the way back, we only go forward by remembering where we came from. Well, thank you. I believe we, we can also expand the conversation with the rest of the team. So, we can evolve more shadows from this beautiful reality we have created. Definitely. So we will be joined by the, our actress, Jen and Jonathan, our writer, Alyssa. And I think we're saying goodbye to Mark, for just for the time being. Thank you. We'll see you next time. I'll see you guys in VR flying around. Well, I guess we could just say to anyone who's watching, you know, Levi, if you have any technical questions for us, feel free to leave them in the comments and we'll do our best to get back to those. Absolutely. Please do. Sounds good. Bye guys. I'll see you later. See you in the virtual world. Wonderful. With all the creative team, hello to New York, here with us of course. I'd like to jump in the writing right away with Alyssa, because this is the first time I saw a Greek chorus in VR. And I know you have an extensive experience in musical theater that actually has acquired this narrative tool way back. But this, as I said, this is the first time I was seeing it in VR. So I want you to know how it was for you to apply it to this new media. Well, it was very interesting because, of course, everyone has a little bit of difficulty hearing each other. And there's a little bit of a time lag, depending on where everyone in the virtual audience is. So very quickly we had to let go of the idea that everyone was going to be speaking in rhythm together and just created this murmur. And we just thought if everybody just kind of whispers it and says it and in whatever rhythm they want to, then we're still getting the message of cross of the Greek chorus. They're not reciting together, but we thought it would give something very interesting, especially since we're imagining that Mount Olympus is not really people with real satyrs and mints and gods and goddesses, but sort of shadows of their former selves. So we were imagining that this could be just something that they were whispering and, of course, is hearing all kinds of stuff all around them. So we really had to let go of that musical, rhythmic, everybody speaking together idea and just go with something that would give atmosphere instead. Well, it definitely did convey that atmosphere. I also would like to chat with our fantastic actors that I had the chance to see live in Venice. I had the chance to see here on the Culture Hub again with Love Seed in April. And here you are again in a mythical setting. And I was fascinated by how you two always play together. It's a romantic interest. As an Italian, I saw that you could be a duo like the Sofialare and Marcello Mazzagliani of the VR. So I was wondering how the two of you are working on this different love dynamic through VR as a team of performers. Jen, do you want to jump on that one? I can't hear Jen. Well, I'll jump in really quick then. So here is referencing to Love Seed, the show that Jen and I worked on this past summer with Double Eye at Venice in LA. And that one, it's two people who are just meeting each other and do not meet cute. And so this, you know, for me, I'm sorry, I'm back over here. We're having some for some reason each other's thoughts before, yeah, they just they know each other inside and out. And, you know, it's interesting, of course, about performing in VR is that the way that you read the other person is so much about about their gesture and how they're moving since you don't have the same sort of intricacy of face. And, you know, the avatars kind of give you so much of that sense in terms of how the other person is thinking. Is Jen with us? I would like to about directing the actors. Okay, wonderful. Are you all hearing Jen? No, unfortunately, I'm not. So I would, in the meantime, I would like to know from our director's perspective how it is to direct actors in VR. And if you think, since you have a very extensive background also in live theater, stage theater in cinema, if you think that actors now they should develop their acting skills and their craft through VR, that's an additional thing that they should add to their CV. That would be cool. I think if we had more performers to be joining us in our virtual world, it would give more people for Jen and Jonathan to be playing with. And they are definitely ahead of the curve. They have gained a certain technical understanding that makes it really easy for them to work with. And of course, they're already very smart people, but, you know, they've been learning an additional skill set about how to teleport and how to fly and how to make those choices as their avatars with intention. And I think that that's something that's really special to see as a kind of evolution in their development as performers. And it would be great to see other performers try these things on. I mean, this might not be for everyone. I don't know that every performer wants to work in a virtual world and wants to, you know, wear a motion capture suit. I mean, what we were doing in Venice was a low-fi version of motion capture, which they also got really accustomed to and understanding their gear and also, you know, remembering their human body and kind of the balance between those things. But there's so much here that we're all learning and discovering together.  And, you know, we just, we just really got a number of things working to be able to present this so far. And, you know, we just want to keep going further. And I think that Jonathan and Jen and, you know, we'll be evolving even more as these VR actors. But yeah, I think it could be exciting to see other performers try and learn some of these skills. Jonathan, I mean, how do you feel as you are, you know, maybe in your kind of evolution even, Kiarra, as I pivot a question to Jonathan, you know, like, I'm curious how you feel as you've developed from working on Love Seat to now. Yeah. I think it's, I'm constantly learning. And it does feel like I'm learning a new skill that's very related to performing on stage and also to an extent performing on camera. And there are some, a lot of things that I learned in Love Seat that I'm able to apply in this show. And then because the show is different, there are a lot of new skills. Today, I've discovered what audience interaction is like in a new way because, you know, because Yes, we're having just like some technical improvisation, which makes it really exciting. And we're back. We also have Jen. So maybe Jen can tell us, hello again. So maybe you can tell us about your craft of an act and how it has evolved through virtual reality and how you can consider it in the, in the world of your colleagues. Yeah, we were, I think we're at right now in the world where large gatherings aren't available to us. Gathering in these giant different places is obviously something that we can do. And you had mentioned like, would probably be a good idea if actors could be introduced and have the equipment and the aid of people like Karen and her team to help us learn and understand this world and hear and other VR artists help making live here at theater. So we can actually have somewhere to work. We aren't going to be able, probably, to join large spaces for a while. And maybe you said, it might be a good idea for actors to have the ability and the means to learn the VR things to be able to act and just so we simply will be able to work. And it is a skill set that is very technical and very troubleshooting. And it's something I think it, for me, at least it takes a kind of patience and a and a curiosity to understand the technical elements and what people are trying to do that is theater, that is film, that is just straight up computers on computers on computers and what that layering does and being able to have some type of understanding of how virtual reality works so that we can then have a space to work and perform and eventually share with others, which is, for me, the whole point of performing. So it requires people would have actors would have to, you know, be able to have access to a headset and access to a team like double eye who can help us. But, you know, we're at the very beginning here. So it's like, there's, I don't think that there's any sort of limits as to what we can do or we can learn, we can provide for other performers. Well, definitely, it's very meaningful. And we are living in the future. We always think about these things as so far ahead. But these things are happening as also the technical team has demonstrated by granting the wish of the last month of seeing characters fly. And obviously, this wouldn't be possible without the work of you performers and the wonderful writing of people like Alyssa. And I wanted to know from Alyssa, how do you create characters that manage to weld the mythical with the contemporary? Because I was very impressed by Hera, who obviously represents the mythical image, but she also seems to be very destiny wise. So someone relatable nowadays. I was just assuming that the gods have always meddled with humankind. So I was just assuming, going on the idea that even though they weren't able to meddle anymore because of this portal that's been gone for so long, that they weren't still able to have some sort of window onto humanity, and that without even realizing it, their behavior and their patterns of speech would be influenced by current mortals. I think that we're planning, Kira and I, are planning on having this take place actually about 10 or 20 years in the future. So we were trying to bring, when Zeus is speaking in verse, that's sort of a throw back to his great grand, delicate way of speaking when he was an all-powerful Zeus. And then they fall into a more contemporary language because in spite of themselves, they have been influenced by humans throughout the centuries and the millennia that they have lived. So I wanted to give that mix. And also the fact that they are basically in quarantine, kind of the way we are, is they are driving each other a little bit crazy. And everyone else has disappeared. All the other gods have been forgotten by mortal man, except for Zeus and Hera. And they're just the two of them in that virtual Mount Olympus kind of driving each other crazy. So that was sort of the concept of the scene, this first opening scene. Well, it's very powerful. And I love the rhyme. I wish we could bring it back into today's world also, you know, on a day-to-day basis, doing the groceries and just traveling again when we will be able to do that after we find a solution to this situation we're living in. And yes, as I was saying at the very beginning, all the topics from the Double Eye Studio seem so timely. And I, this time, experiencing this performance, I felt like Hera was almost our Pandora, unveiling all the evils that have happened in this world, but giving us hope thanks to your collective effort. And I wanted to know from you, Akira, how do, because I saw an evolution in your works for the years, how do you also intertwine the theme of gender politics? Because obviously here we see the husband and wife and Pandora, this sort of love triangle. And of course, I know it's not to resonate strongly with you, considering you're a female direct navigating this new medium. And there aren't as many female directives in virtual reality. So how do you try to channel also this topic in a balanced and appropriate and not preachy way within your storytelling that obviously is universal and embraces other themes as well? I think we're at such an interesting place in history where we are acknowledging that we have not had as many stories told by women and about women. And that's something also that felt really important to Alyssa and I, that we have a female protagonist who we haven't seen yet. We're keeping her a secret right now. But obviously you know that the show will be very much about her. And she is a strong, complex woman. She's a smart woman. And you know, that's, it's been interesting to be brainstorming about her. And as Alyssa has been digging through research and sharing all these like tidbits, you know, she'll come across these great little Greek moments. And we're sort of going through this conquest and just going like, oh my gosh, this is luck with everyone. So really, what Hera has had to put up with over all these years is really fascinating. And to get to see her kind of flex her, her muscles as a goddess.  And of course, you know, there are variations on these things that were told by different writers. And something that we've also learned is, you know, Pandora really was given a jar. Maybe Alyssa wants to speak to that for a moment. Yeah, that is one of the things that really fascinated us about Pandora is that basically her story was rewritten by men. And at the beginning, she had this huge jar and in the jar were all the good things that were meant to be given to mankind.  And she would send them with these jars full of all goods. And somehow in that first official writing down of her myth way back when, it was transformed into a jar of evils that she opened. And then even later on, it was transformed actually by a Christian priest during a sermon into a small box that she opened. And so all of a sudden it became this small portable object and a woman brought all of the evils to the earth when actually originally a woman brought all that was good to the earth. So that's that's one of the things that we'd like to exploring this is, what do you do when your story has been rewritten by other people?  So we hope, which is our second theme, that we'll be able to make that clear and have people think about how can they take control of their stories? How can they build hope into their lives and create their own stories that they're living? Yeah, indeed. And I think you said something very important about how she was being accused because there's always this human tendency of trying to fix the blame, which is the big feeding of Pandora as well. And we're also experiencing it nowadays and trying to shame a population or someone specific to the horrors that we're living in. So I must, I'm very grateful, I believe also on behalf of all the audience that has been following you for bringing to us all of these very timely topics and of course, thank you to the Culture Hub and the MAMAs for hosting us and giving us a space in this digital, forced digital lockdown. So thank you very much for the great conversation. It's always inspirational to chat with you and I'll hand over to the Culture Hub team. Actually, I think they are handing it back and they've asked me to close out. So, I'll close this conversation. Thank you, Chiara, for joining us all the way from Milan and Italy. And again, our hearts from the US go out to all of you in Italy and we're all going through this together. And we will keep building a new world and maybe some of you will come fly with us. And we will be back at 6 p.m. Eastern time. So for those of you on the West Coast who are maybe just waking up from a long brunch, you can find us. For those of you in Italy or Europe that might be night owls, you can join us really late. And for those of you in New York, hopefully we will catch you at the right time. And we look forward to seeing you all back here. And you can be catching his live stream on the Culture Hub, Facebook page, on the Culture Hub Watch page, on the Double Eye Facebook page. And though I believe some people have mentioned there have been a couple of glitches, I've been getting some messages and hopefully that will all be resolved and we'll be back here ever stronger with new ideas and new innovations. Okay. Bye guys. Bye. Bye.


Hello and welcome to the first of two e-lectures about present-day English adverbials. As you know, the adverbial differs considerably from the other elements of claw structure, most notably in terms of its formal realisation and by means of its position. Both aspects will be discussed in this e-lecture. In a follow-up e-lecture, we will look at functional aspects to define different types of adverbials and we will also look at some of the semantic roles adverbials can take over. Adverbials are the most peripheral among the elements of claw structure. They can usually be omitted and are most mobile. Let's illustrate that. Here is a very simple sentence, my mother enjoys parties where my mother is the subject, enjoys the verb and parties the object. Now let's insert the adverbial usually, which is of course an adverb and thus the head of a simple adverb phrase without any modifier. We have three options to insert this adverbial into the sentence. We can insert it here at the beginning of the sentence. Usually, my mother enjoys parties. We can insert it between the subject and the verb.  Well, if we add a comma here and insert an international break, we can also put it at the end and have a sentence such as my mother enjoys parties usually. Most adverbials are like usually both optional and mobile. However, there are also obligatory adverbials to which these criteria do not apply. Let's illustrate this and take a simple sentence. Linda put the book on the table. Now if we remove the adverbial on the table, which is of course a prepositional phrase, the sentence becomes ungrammatical. So let's put on the table back into its original position again. This obligatoriness of the adverbial is guaranteed by what in some syntactic approaches is referred to as a subcategorization frame. Here is the subcategorization frame for put, that is a structure that defines the obligatory local context of a given category. The subcategorization frame for put can be read as follows. Put is a verb and it requires a noun phrase and a prepositional phrase as its local complements. And if any of these is missing, a sentence with put becomes ungrammatical. Let's compare that with a sentence that contains the verb see. Linda saw the book on the table and again we have the adverbial on the table. So let's remove it again. The result, however, is a grammatical sentence. Linda saw the book. Well, and if we check the subcategorization frame that is associated with the verb see, we notice that see of course is a verb, but this time it only requires a noun phrase as its local complementation structure and that's it. So despite the fact that put and see have the same phrase structure, the status of the adverbials within the respective sentences is different. Obligatory for put and optional for see. Let's now look at the syntactic realization of the syntactic function adverbial. The first group of elements I would like to look at are phrasal categories. Here is a sentence fragment she worked. Let's now insert phrasal categories into this slot into the empty slot.  For example, adverb phrases that consist of an adverb here and green recently then and there. By the way, recently is an open class adverb, whereas there and then are close class adverbs. Well, and adverb phrases can be inserted here. They have optional modifiers here. The intensifiers vary just or right. So adverb phrases can realize the syntactic function adverbial. Well, and then we have noun phrases such as this year and last night. Noun phrases have a nominal head and can be pre-modified by determiners or post-modified by structures ranging from adjectives to complex relative clauses. The third phrasal element that can realize a syntactic function adverbial is the prepositional phrase such as in the evening right across the road or at night. Prepositional phrases consist of a prepositional head such as in, across or at. And they can be modified by elements such as right, just, etc., as in right across the road. And of course, they require a noun phrase complement, the evening, the road or night. Apart from these phrasal categories, adverbials can be realized by causal elements ranging from finite to verbless. Here are some examples and again we're taking our sentence fragment. This time, however, we want to insert causal structures into the empty slot. And here is the first, the finite subordinate clause such as she worked after she had seen me, she worked although she was ill. Finite subordinate clauses are introduced by a conjunction that signals the type of semantic relationship denoted by the adverbial. For example, temporal, the conjunction after is an example here, or concessive, although she was ill. Further semantic relations are causal, hypothetical, manner, purpose and so on. And then we have non-finite subordinate clauses. Non-finite clauses such as she worked hoping for a good result, thinking about her future. Non-finite clauses exhibit an untensed verb, normally in the infinitive or in the participle form. And depending on the verb or more or less complex complementation structure. Well, and the last example I would like to mention are verbless clauses.  Now verbless clauses normally exhibit a conjunction that signals the semantic relationship. Here concessive in though obviously ill or temporal in when fully pregnant. The verb itself, however, is absent. Sometimes even the conjunction can be dropped as in our last example her voice full of joy. And this gives us of course several options for semantic interpretation.  Let us now finally return to the aspect of mobility and look at some sequencing patterns of adverbials. As we already said adverbials are mobile. However, there are numerous restrictions on the sequencing of adverbials. For example, if several adverbials are clustered in the initial or in the final position of a sentence, they require specific ordering patterns. Here is an example. Julia went jogging. Of course some sort of temporal implication. Well let's associate some adverbials with this sentence. She went jogging for an hour more than once last week. Now this is a proper sequence. Julia went jogging for an hour more than once last week. Now if we have this sort of sequence, Julia went jogging for an hour last week more than once. The sentence doesn't become ungrammatical, but less acceptable than in this pattern, in this sequence, where the duration type of adverbial precedes the frequency and the position. So we have this sort of sequence duration before frequency, before position. Or take our second example. Mrs. Wade lives and now we want to express a sort of local relationship. She lives a few hundred yards further downhill in Park Road. Well let's use this, put it over here. Now if we exchange the positions and make it Mrs. Wade lives in Park Road further downhill a few hundred yards, the sentence becomes less acceptable, maybe even ungrammatical. So here we have the sequence distance before direction, before position. Such sequencing principles occur in many more examples. Take this example, Mike was hit with a stone, where with a stone is of course the instrument. Now if we want to add a manner adverbial such as violently, let's do it, let's write down violently here. We can again ask the question, where do we put it? Well, most likely it precedes the instrumental adverbial, Mike was hit violently with a stone, rather than follows Mike was hit with a stone violently. Well, you see we have sequencing patterns of adverbials in present day English. So despite their high degree of mobility, adverbials are positionally fixed somehow, especially when they are clustered. So much for the formal aspects of adverbials. In this short e-lecture, we should have learned that adverbials syntactically constitute a complex class and that they are as far as their position within sentences is concerned by a large mobile and optional. However, we also saw that there are also obligatory adverbials and that positional restrictions can be set up if we incorporate the semantic roles denoted by adverbials. The integration of these roles and the function of adverbials within sentences will be the focus of a second e-lecture on present day English adverbials. So I hope I'll see you there until then. Have a nice time. Oh, by the way, many of you have asked where they can get the materials that are produced during the recording of these e-lectures. Well, they can be accessed relatively easily. The first thing is become a member of the Virtue Linguistics Compass for free. Create your account and that's it. Then log in with your personal password and once you've logged in, you will see the e-lecture library in your personal VLC setup. The rest is self-explanatory. So once more, thanks for your attention.