So, in the previous class we were, we talked about an example of pre-play communication and one of the, we actually looked at a paper of Robert Oman and we, what we saw there was that pre-play communication and or a pre-play non-binding agreement to play a particular equilibrium may not imply that the players will actually play that equilibrium, okay. So, then that effectively told us that Nash equilibrium there need not be self-enforcing, right. Now, what I will talk about today are models where an element of communication is involved during play, okay. So, communication during play, communication as part of gameplay. Now, what do I mean by communication as part of gameplay, this we need to be very, very clear about. Now, in any game obviously when there is a, when the game is dynamic, some information gets passed from one player to the next player, usually it is about the action of the player or something like that, okay. Now, that is not exactly what we mean by communication, okay. Now, what we mean by communication is communication is usually, what we mean by that is some, is some decision that a player takes which is not translating directly to its cost, okay. So, we make a distinction between two different things in games, one of what are called actions, the other are what are called signals, okay. So, decisions can be of two types, either actions or signals, okay. Now, there could be other types also which you can say, well, our contracts and so on, but we will come, I will come to that in a later state. Now, what is the distinction between actions and signals? The action, both of these are decisions, okay. Players take some decision in each of them. Action is that which appears directly in the cost, okay. It appears directly in the payoff. So, when you take an action, it actually incurs you a call. Signal does not appear directly in the payoff, at least in the simplest case. There could be cases where signaling is also costly, but that, let us leave that aside. Signals basically do not directly appear in the cost. So, what is the role of the signal if it does not affect the cost? The role of the signal is that it affects the information of the other player, alright. So, signals are decisions or some variable that a player conveys to the other player and that affects the information that the other player knows. So, through signals, a player affects the information of the other player. Through actions, also he affects the information of the other player, but he also affects his cost. So, a signal solely affects the information of the other player, alright. So, signals are therefore information carriers. And this is, these are actual actions that lead to impact the cost, alright. So, let us look at the simplest such game, which is what is called a sender receiver game, okay. And then from there we can take special cases of sender receiver games. So, sender receiver games have the following structure. There is a sender of information. He has access to some information, okay. Let us say for the moment let us just keep this, let us keep this simple. He has access to some information. Now, sender must send this information to a receiver, okay. So, this goes to a receiver. Now, receiver takes this information, uses this information to then decide what it must do, what the receiver should do, alright. So, the receiver is actually the one that takes an action, okay. So, the receiver takes an action, alright. And this action that the receiver takes determines the payoff of both sender and receiver, alright. So, this decides the cost payoff of both players. So, the sender does not have an action of its own, okay. Sender does not take any action of his own, because the sender can only do is control what the receiver gets to know, okay. Receiver on the other hand does not have any information of its own. The receiver only can take an action based on the information that it has received from the sender, okay. Let us take examples of this setting. And you will start seeing what many different variations that are possible. Now, in the economics literature, these are studied under what are called principal agent models, okay. And this goes into the domain of what is called contract theory. So, I can let us go over that for some examples from them. The simplest example is where there is no asymmetry of information, okay. So, in this case, so the simplest example, let us take game one, which is no full information. Now, what is this setting? The general setting is as follows. The general setting is that there are two players, a principal and an agent, okay. Players are principal among agent. The uninformed player, the player who does not have information is usually referred to as the principal, okay. So, this guy is your what we call the receiver. But in this case, there is going to be information will be trivial. But nonetheless, this is we can liken this guy to be the receiver. And this fellow is your sender, okay. So, this is essentially the principal is the uninformed player, uninformed player. This is an extreme case, obviously he could be less informed than the agent and all that stuff can be incorporated if necessary. The agent is the informed player, okay. Now what is the idea? The idea is here, the way the model in which we are going to study this is where the principal is committing first, okay. The principal commits its strategy first. Now, the way we should think about this is that there is a principal who is let us say a manager, okay. And the agent is a worker. The manager wants to get work done out of a worker, okay. But and so what it does is what the manager does is he announces a reward scheme. And if you do this much work, then if you put in this much effort, this is the amount I will reward you with and so on, okay. Now the nature of what the reward scheme is etc. is basically becomes the subject of or it gives you different types of models, alright. Now essentially the problem therefore is that the principal has wants to get a certain task done and it must delegate this task to an agent, okay. Because it cannot directly observe the you know the situation the environment needed to achieve that task, right. So the agent might be so if you want to take a cyber physical system type of context then the principal could be a some sort of infusion center and the agent could be sensors that are actually observing that are actually sensing the field. They are the ones that get the information. They need to send this information over to another to a higher level aggregation of center or a fusion center where this where this aggregation will be performed, okay. So the point is the problem for the principal is okay how should I be rewarding the agent in order to achieve the get this work done, okay. So let us take the simplest sort of case. What the principal will principal does is let us say offers a contract, principal offers a wage W which is a function of the effort E. So this is your wage W and this is the function of the effort E made by the agent. So the this is the order of play. So the principal offers a wage which is going to be a function of the effort that the agent that the agent will be. So what the principal is offering is actually a function, okay. The principal strategy this W is his strategy it is a function. The function which says that if you make so much effort I will give you so much money if you make so much effort I will give money etc. So okay. Now the agent has the because this is a this is a contract type of setting there is an additional condition that the agent has the in the economics literature they take what is called they put in this condition of what is called participation. Essentially the agent has the option to accept or reject the offer, okay. And if he accepts then he has to choose an optimal effort level or E star. So in the case where there is full information what is why is this a case of full information. The reason this is a case of full information is because the principal is offering a wage as a function of the effort that the agent makes. And the assumption here is that the principal can observe the actual effort that is being made. So let we will come to this in little more detail but let us think about each of these things one by one. Now suppose so let us suppose the agent makes an effort E, agent effort is E okay. And then from there that gives you know the monetary value of that to be to the principal the value of this effort to the principal is let us say Q of E. This is what the principal gets this is the value to the principal. So what the principal is the value the payoff that the principal receives the principal is a function of the effort that the value that it has received from the effort okay minus whatever it has paid the agent for the effort okay. So it has paid W of E for the effort okay. So it is a function of this alright. So this is the net payment it has received Q of E and it has paid W of E the net is the F for Q of E minus W of E and V of that is it is a function of that is it is it is the payoff that the principal receives. Now as far as the agent is concerned remember agent has two choices E for either accept or reject and if he accepts then he can talk of okay how much is the effort that he makes right. So what we can think of the way we can think of this is that the agent for the agent to make an to accept he has what is what we can say is a reservation level utility. So if he needs the utility at least of a certain level in order for him to accept accept the contract okay. So it is some base some bare minimum utility that he needs otherwise the otherwise it is the you know getting into this contract is not worth it okay. So it is some threshold level this could be derived from some whatever what the competitors are paying or whatever does not matter but some reservation level utility that he must get and this the agent gets agent utility is a function U of the effort he makes and the wage he receives okay and usually it is assumed that this in U of E comma W this is assumed that this decreases with E okay more effort means less utility and increases with W alright. So the agent utility is this and we assume that there is a reservation utility that means he must he needs some basic level of utility otherwise the whole thing is not worth it.  So now if you think about this problem now tell me how should the agent play maximize what maximize maximize this okay okay alright you maximize this okay then alright fine we so the agent maximizes you alright then how does the principal play so let us let us ask okay what is the what is the what should be the how should he find what should W the optimal W satisfy yes what else this is of course it must satisfy this reservation condition or what is called this is also called the participation constraint. So let me ask you this suppose there was no participation constraint okay suppose the agent had to participate okay the agent had no choice he had to accept the contract and what would be what would the principal pay him 0 would in fact be minus infinity.  So you basically take all you take all his money essentially that those are separate that is a separate matter even if it is bounded below you get that bound but that is the point right so essentially without the participation constraint this problem is actually ill-posed because it effectively mean that you can extract as much money as you want from an agent because he is bound to you can give there is a there is a trivial there is a trivial maximizing contract in which the agent pays you to work to make him work no no no whatever it is I mean it is there is always this trivial contract right because we so we will be V is the payoff it will keep increasing with with with this with this argument so I can keep making W as large as I want no even if it is even if it does the point is if see the if you make V W W can be made as large as you want the matter is over I can even make W a constant minus infinity you are charged minus infinity to be in this to be to do even if you do 0 effort you have to still pay me minus infinity right so this so without this that is the answer is actually trivial ok. Now now you can ask yourself ok well then if there is if this is the important constraint here then watch how should this how should the how should the W be determined well you so the principle will not pay will not may cannot charge minus infinity but what he what would he do then well he will charge him the bare minimum to make sure that he is in the contract he accepts the contract right so so the W W star the optimal wage would be such that this is always equal to identically right so effectively you can solve for this this this equation here and get W star as a function of it ok you want this to be identically equal to equal to you by it is the bare it is the minimum value of it is the minimum wage such minimum wage as a function of the effort that makes this equal yeah for all because we are allowing it to be a function of it all right now having done this essentially the what has happened is that the agent has nothing to optimize because his utility is now constant he is always going to get the U bar itself right because the wage has been fixed in such a way that U of U of this is equal to equal to U bar there is nothing for him to optimize so any effort is any effort gives him the same amount of utility right ok so so then effectively what what we can say is well what the maximum value that or payoff that the principle can receive is then maximum of of this because they all the efforts are give the agent the same utility so the maximum that the age that the principle can receive is this ok now there are more more variations one can make on this and you can dive deeper into this but that is that is not the that is not the direction I want to go in the thing I want you to appreciate here is see what is the way this contract is based ok the what is the information that the principle has the information that the principle has is that he can actually observe the effort that the agent makes ok which means so suppose this this agent has been told to go and you know survey survey a certain area ok it is some drone you have to survey a certain area you can actually observe with that the he is gone to this is gone to that etc etc now you may think this is some kind of a silly thing but it is actually a very very important thing you know today in fact sales agents that come to your home you know maybe LIC or you know whatever sales agents that come go from door to door they have to keep their they have they have usually an app installed and they have to keep that app on because they are the company monitors whether these guys are actually going to the in fact to the said locations or not ok they have to keep that app on and it keep reporting GPS location that is what because they want to the company wants to monitor if these guys have in fact visited these locations. The reason this because this is becomes important is because now what happens if you if the principle cannot observe E ok so the effort that the agent makes is not observable is not observable by the principle then you start getting into all sorts of problems yeah yeah yeah this is this is this is the best he can get yeah nothing that is why this is this is a kind of degenerate problem because of this reason because no so firstly we are we are in a sequential setting ok so we have to so we will have to solve this in a stackable bug sense so there is a declared contract and then there is a response yeah yeah so this is yes so that is that is also true ok so it is true that the agent can make essentially any effort and then that is that is that right so that is so that is also true so this is this is the maximum he can get it is also the minimum he can get you can also find sorry you can also compute some correspondingly the minimum that he can get ok alright so now let us look at a different version of the of this thing now let us suppose you have another another case where the where the principle cannot observe the effort ok now so what are the two things that the principle could observe here one here we are assuming that the principle could observe the effort alright the what is the other thing that the principle could observe that is known but as a during gameplay what is what can you observe so here is here is here is a here is a possible possible alternative think about the objective of the principle the principle cares about q of e minus w of e ok w is what he decides q of e is the value that he gets out of the effort now you might ask ok why does the principle want to know what the actual effort is what he cares about is the value right so long as the principle is so long as the agent is going and doing enough sales for you why do you care if he is gone to this house or the undone how much spent time he spent talking to the customer whether he is visited every house etcetera etcetera what matters is that he is gotten he is sold enough items right so q of e is the value that of the effort that that the principle gets out of the efforts of the agent principle does not get money from effort itself does not give him money what he get effort results in this in q of e and that results in benefit to the so you may say well then another approach is that I can that the principle could base is the wage on what on q of e rather than ok so that is another type of model so there now the contract is not a function of of the effort because not a function of the effort but a function of the output ok so that results in another type of problem ok but let us take of extreme case first before we come to that let us let us take an extreme case where the principle can observe neither effort nor output ok.


So some of the stuff I've told you today might be fundamental research questions and everything, but just to drive home the message that there are some very direct pharmaceutical applications here I'm going to show you two maybe even 2.5. Viruses in general are sadly very much on topic right now. Viruses is a very simple organism. I won't take you through the entire class on them, but briefly a virus works by somehow delivering its internal genetic material to my cells so that my cells produce more viruses and for that to happen they need to find my cells anchor to them and somehow create the delivery. This particular virus it's the COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2 internal it looks something like this schematically you have these red spike proteins that are the anchors that find my receptors then you're having some sort of coat a lipid environment here and then you have the internal interior where they have the RNA which is very fragile and that the virus wants to protect. The way this protein attaches to my cells the COVID protein in particular is by attaching the so called ACE2 receptors that are common in lugs heart blood vessels again I won't go into the pharmaceutical details here and the process works by first literally anchoring the protein there it will undergo a sequence of changes to somehow deliver its genetic material into the host cell the exact sequence of these events will depend a bit from virus to virus but schematically it's roughly the same for all of them so first you need to anchor yourself to the host otherwise you will diffuse away and then on average you would never refuse because it takes a while for fusion to happen. Second when you're anchored we have to tighten that anchor so we push away the water and really have full opposition the membranes should be right next to each other ideally you would somehow like to kick the host door open a bit maybe perturb the structure of the cellular membrane a bit because normally the cellular membrane would be self-repairing right they would not use but if they're a bit perturbed at some point they might start to heal against each other so that these two become one membrane that's deliberately a bit fussy wait until the next slide when this happens under some conditions first you will have the outer layer of each membrane fused with each other and that means we have something called a hemifused state it's now highly curved and everything and it's the interiors are not yet in contact but this is an intermediate state that is somewhat unstable so usually a short while later we have full fusion and then we're in the lower right here and at the full fusion situation i can deliver my RNA if i'm a virus to the host cell interior the way this hand waving part in the middle works is usually by having some sort of method to increase the probabilities of the membranes fusing i'll show you that in a second but first i'm going to show a schematic movie that a former postdoc actually at the time peter kassen who's now a professor at the university of virginia did some 15 years ago so this is a gigantic simulation of two full vesicles it's roughly one million atoms both lipids of water here two full layers and then a similar three-dimensional vesicle here also one million atoms it's too expensive to include all the proteins and everything here but what peter came up with he's adding a small chemical linker with roughly 10 bonds or so to force them to stay together and when i hit the play button here you will see quickly that they push the water away the head groups are interacting and then you're going to see that the first two layers fusing and the short while after that you saw the inner layers fusing too it was a bit fast but you probably agreed that it followed all the mechanical steps that i hinted it would follow i can't i've kind of seen the movie already the way the two membranes are actually encouraged to fuse we don't know that exactly but we somehow know that there are certain proteins hemagglutinin if it's flu that contains small segments of amino acids that are semi hydrophilic semi hydrophobic they seem to prefer to go into the membrane but they're not really transmembrane helices and it appears that these drill down in lack of a better word and the host cells membrane and then they perturb that structure a bit we again we don't know exactly what the structure is these are based on nmr experiments guesses what the structure might be but when these are drilling down here are my normal lipids pointing down if i'm perturbing the structure at some point i might have a lipid or two pointing sideways and if i have the same type of perturbation in my viral membrane here at some point the hydrophobic parts here will start to get in touch and that is really going to be the part that initiates the actual fusion so this fusion peptides are exceptionally important for the virus why do we care well if you want to create antiviral drugs which is a whole topic right now not vaccines but drug that's specifically bind to a compound on the virus and would inhibit its function first you could try to find something that might inhibit the fusion peptides but even if you do manage to find something which might not be that hard viruses mutate so far so they will likely very quickly have a new strain that is no longer sensitive to that one but the trick with targeting the most important functional regions of the virus is that if the virus the virus is exceptionally dependent on the sequence in the fusion peptides for fusion to happen so the virus does not have so much freedom to mutate away and change this to anything it wants well it can change them but then it's no longer going to be as infectious so targeting regions of viral fusion proteins that are important for the fusion itself is likely a very good strategy to develop new antiviral drugs


I'm going to call the meeting to order at 5 o'clock. Are there any amendments to the agenda? I believe there's one. The executive session should be amended to, I forget the language is, but not personnel matters. Correct. OK. So that is an amendment to the agenda. I have three potential items under other business. Paul has been approached by Jesus Peter, the park, the beach. Right field beach. Yes, asking us to grade the road which apparently we have done in the past, which I was not aware of. I asked him that question, and he said yes, we've graded it in the past. But now he's asking us whether we want it. I don't know how much time it take. He responded, but he didn't tell me it's going to be eight hours, a greater time, or four hours, or whatever. But that's one item. We have outstanding the question of music licensing for the concerts. And I thought Elliott was going to be here, but maybe he isn't. I don't know. Hopefully he will be. And then we've got an interesting response from the state of Vermont. And you have the letters in your packet with regard to the traffic and speeding issues in Putnamville. And so I just want to talk about that for a minute. The interesting thing in that, they clearly said in that that we were responsible for speed enforcement on the State Highway, which isn't my understanding of the way it works. Maybe because it's in Middlesex? No. It's in our town. We don't just speed enforcement out of here on Route 2. They can. We used to, and then any money they collected went to a state. You're saying that's correct. But they're saying, but he's saying in his letter that it is absolutely our responsibility and they have no responsibility, which I think is incorrect. So anyway, just quickly, those three things, we do have one guest, Mike, why don't you introduce yourself? OK. I might grew up. I'm just here so you don't know I'm hiding behind a computer somewhere. OK. And we should introduce ours. I don't have that letter. No, we don't. She was going to get it, and I guess she forgot. I think I have it to pass out about degree. I'm Mary Skinner, select board member. Phil Hayek. Steve Martin. Linda Cole, Treasurer. Peter Hood, select board member and chairman. And Liz Scherke. And Cindy is our acting select board assistant tonight, taking the minutes, Sarah, out of town. So with that, the first item on the agenda is the executive session to discuss a matter of public safety, a concern about public safety. Is there a motion to go into executive session for that purpose? So moved. And is there a second? Second. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? OK, so we are now in executive session, so. Now here, did he leave? No. I think he left. No, he left. He had to go. Oh, OK. He wanted you to know that he left. Oh, OK. Thank you. So what I will do is reach out to him and say I'm sorry our executive session was so long. If you would like to appear before the select board, let me know and I'll get you on the agenda. Does that make sense? Yes. I'm sorry, Peter, I missed that. Peter, I missed that. Yeah, I wonder if you sound like he'll reach out. I'm going to reach out to Mike and just tell him, I'm sorry the executive session went so long if you wish to appear before the select board, please let me know or let Sarah know and we'll get you on the agenda. Yeah, I just want to say that he mentioned that he would appreciate hearing back. Yeah, no, no, no. It's only this candy. All right, you got one. I'm going to hold on to this right here. Let's see what this is. It's a iteration of obtaining licenses so that the copyrighted music may be played advanced summer concerts. Yeah. I'm Mary Skinner. I don't think I've met you. Ron Sweet. Hi, Ron. Nice to meet you. Ron is on the bandstand committee with me. OK. Phil Hegg. David Martin, select board. Brenda Carl-Troeger. Peter Hoed, select board. Ron. Liz Sharp, select board. Could I say a couple of things? I mean, I'm hoping you're going to say a couple of things. OK, at least two. So I may have created a misunderstanding here in a conversation I had with you, Peter, on the phone. And that is that Ron got an email that he then forwarded to members of the bandstand committee. And I received that. And I read it as a demand for payment, which is what I think I characterize it as to you. From somebody named John Bondi. And it was a strange email. It talked about the need for musical licenses under ASCAP and BMI and a third copyright organization called CSEC. And I looked at it and I read it as a demand. This guy was sort of speaking or purporting to speak for the three copyright organizations was saying that middle sex had to pay a licensing fee for each of them. That's not what it was. It wasn't a demand. It was an informational email from a friend of Ron's. I mean, John Bondi to Ron saying, heads up, musical licenses may be necessary. So there has been no demand. ASCAP, BMI, CSEC have not focused on middle sex in any way. So that's good to know because my understanding was that they had the bullseye on us. Oh, boy, OK. They don't. No, they don't. And one of the things that I did when I saw the email and mistakenly thought it was a demand was to try to figure out, first of all, how much would this cost if it's $25 or something? That's the big deal. And for ASCAP and BMI, there are form licensing contracts available online that you can look at. Phil, you may be familiar with this your own music. And each of us do have fee schedules. So for a town our size, I think up to 50,000 people, if it's a town, the total of fees for BMI and ASCAP is a little bit above $700. It's like roughly $350 each. CSEC apparently is higher than that. CSEC represents a smaller number of artists. So if you're not familiar with ASCAP, BMI, and CSEC, they hold the rights to songs that have been written by various artists. CSEC has, I don't know, Frank Zappa and some others. Smaller, stable, but apparently a higher fee. So we could be talking about somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500 may be higher a year. And that's something that the bandstand committee doesn't have the money to pay. So I was concerned about this. That's why I called you, Peter, and said, oh, we've got a demand, which we don't have. And it seems to me that, and we talked about this, it seems to me that the likelihood that any of these organizations would focus in on a small town, and they're apparently close to 40,000 cities and towns in the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of restaurants and clubs, all of which, theoretically, you're supposed to have licenses. The likelihood that they would focus on middle sex is incredibly small, and maybe it's near zero, especially since this ended up not being a demand. So, you know, I wanted to. Well, that sounds a lot better than what we were thinking it was. We thought the bullseye was on the side of the town hall here, and they were ready to open fire. Yeah, that's nervous. Yeah. So interestingly enough, both Phil and Durin to have experience with this issue. So they filled this in a little bit. I guess, you know, and I went online and looked at the stuff, and I saw that 50,000, and then I thought, geez, here we are. We have four or five concerts a year with a few people. What do we do? Do we restrict artists to only play their own music? Do we, you know, I wasn't sure what my response was gonna be, but that was my initial response, was that, you know, we can't be paying 1,500 or 2,200 or whatever it is. Right. It just doesn't work, and we don't want it to, you know, we don't, you don't, we don't, I think, wanna charge for people to go to those bandstand concerts.  What's the risk for a musician who does this? Can they go after the musician? So the, my understanding is that the, is that the responsibility falls on the venue, not on the musician. These are annual fees. Right. I would imagine that if someday they develop to central database, so that the musician would then input, they go to a cloud, and they actually enter all the cover songs that they've, Yeah, look at the reporting obligation. That was, that was daunting. Yeah, although it's no more complicated than credit card, you know, credit card transactions. Yeah, if it's all automated. Yeah, it's not a real big deal, technically. So that if such a system were in place, then if I were a musician going to play somewhere, it could then be incumbent upon me to enter all the cover songs I'm gonna do, and maybe the venue will get charged 10 cents or 20 cents for a play of a song instead of this amorphous formula that these unregulated PROs, they're pulling numbers out of the air. What's PRO? PRO is performing rights organization, and that's these three organizations. So do the musicians actually make any money? Mm-hmm, a lot of money. Eat? They do. Well, some do. Some do. Like if you're playing the beat, well, the Beatles are dead. Back end, back end. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, rights are far from dead. But based on a paper that a Grammy-winning instrumental guitarist out of New Hampshire, he did some research and put this together because he was concerned. Back in 2015 anyways, I don't know what's happened in the last two years, but I believe it was ASCAP, their method for deciding how much I as a musician, a member of them would get paid a year. They recorded, by their own methodology that they didn't publish because they're not regulated, they recorded $60,000 of radio and $30,000 of television. And based on the percentage of that $90,000 that my songs were played, that would determine how much money I got. So if I'm an independent songwriter, I'm not getting anything. Right. Because they're not paid. When a song is performed live or it's on an album or on a TV show or in a movie, you've got line items specifically for each instance of the song being used. But when you're playing bandstands and open mics and small venues, you don't have a playlist. So these three organizations, by their own secret formulas, come up with how much per year a flat fee that the venue pays. And because it's a flat fee, there's no way that each musician knows how much to contribute to that flat fee if they were responsible for paying. That was a quick lesson. And the other piece is that there are plenty of venues who are just, like you said, stay at, you know, just don't respond, just stay under the, to the threats. It just seems, as you said earlier, it just seems so unlikely to me that they would pick out our four, I mean, first of all, it's no money. I mean, they can't even afford to write us a demand letter to say we need to have these licenses. I guess if we got the demand letter, we might have to do something. You know, there are places that occasionally do get voicemails left. They've actually been pretty aggressive in this area in the past couple of years. Yeah, but I think it was about, according to, when I spoke to Lauren Parker, she said that about the time that letter went out from the state, they pulled back. Oh, interesting. Yeah, apparently there were some demands that were directed at a couple of local venues and I'm feeling really small. Oh, like North Branch? North Branch, and they went to the AGE's office. And I remember this for my last days in the AGE's office. And there was an informational demand, which was essentially a subpoena that apparently went out from the Attorney General's office to the PROs. And that pushback, that may have been what caused the demands to evaporate. You know, suddenly there is no more pressure. There's an article put out by the Vermont League of City Towns in their most recent newsletter that they are coming down on small parks and things like that. It's in this month's newsletter. Oh, okay. Yeah, I understood that. I talked to Susan Sinning at the League of City and she's the attorney who wrote that. And it was my understanding that this was sort of a general article on, you know, here's what the law is and under the copyright law, you know, everybody's responsible for paying these fees. But I didn't think it identified any particular push in the direction of Vermont or cities and towns in Vermont. I mean, you know, the financial reality is that, you know, in addition to the unlikelihood that we would be picked out, ultimately their remedy is to file a lawsuit in federal court.  Or would they give you a fine? It's not a fine. It's they would sue, to collect their fees. Yeah, with that, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, the retainer to the law firm to represent ASCAP or BMO or CSAC would so far exceed what they could possibly recover. So it's not, you know, it was a theoretical matter. It's not impossible. But it seems to me that there are lots of venues. Small claims for federal court. Yeah.  And it does, it based on, so when I first moved here in 2014, I ran an open mic at the North Branch. And it was several months after I started that, that the North Branch and Capital Grounds and Nutty Steffs, they were all getting bothered by at least some of the PROs and they stopped doing live music. And then Lauren Parker, who's a real go-getter, she organized 10 or 12 venues, plus me, to go to the Attorney General's office and just testify as to the harassment that was being, what's that? I said that's interesting. Yeah, yeah. So it seems like their method of operation is to first make a bunch of calls and send emails out to demand money. Some of the debt collectors. They're kind of like, it feels like organized crime, actually, the strong-arming, trying to strong-arm people. And I'm a full advocate of musicians getting paid for there. As am I.   Yeah. So people should be paid. I'm willing to pay a little. I just don't want to pay a lot. Yeah, exactly. What they're asking for sounds like a lot for the whole tiny town. It's a huge amount. And the amount they ask for venues far outweighs the number of seats that they have in their establishments. It's not reasonable. Well, and it's too bad because as you just said, I was ready to say, I was ready to say, if we're going to continue the bandstand concerts, we can only have people play their own music. That doesn't actually solve the problem when it comes to the- It doesn't? Well, it doesn't always. It doesn't always, but there was a case that I read about where a musician was the only musician in this venue. I believe it was in New Hampshire. This was like years ago, like four or five years ago now. And he only played original material, but because he had joined one of these kids. Oh, a member. He's a member.  Right, that's right. Jesus. It's really twisty. So you mentioned they're not a member of PRR, so they're playing their own music. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. Anyway, what do you think? We think. We're glad that you told us that. We don't have to do anything. Let's just wait till next time.  Excellent. Yeah, let's not advertise our concerts too broadly. Yeah, right. So I just want to say I did some research, as you did, Peter, to try to find, when I thought that John Bondi was demanding, to like, who is John Bondi? So I found a website called johnbondi.com. I found a website. You did? And he posts pictures that you can't really see here, but pictures of undersea creatures, cuttlefish, and sea anemones. And he has other business, but this is like the big thing on his website. He's your friend. It's hilarious. I'm not here to say it. I'm not here to say it. Who in the hell is this guy? So this John Bondi guy. He's got a cardboard fish fin. And it's funny. Bandstand members are constantly emailing each other, updating each other, and just staying on the same page. And this one just kind of slipped through. Well, in all seriousness, I guess what I would suggest is that we restrict the promotion of our concerts. To the local area, what makes sense? Not be up. I don't know why we'd be doing it. That's the only thing we do except for maybe seven days. So I think the only statewide, I think so. Anyway, I mean, maybe consider stopping the seven days then. I don't know, which is fly below the radar and keep our fingers crossed, I guess is what I'm saying.  So if they really want to find us, they'll find us. Right. And the concert series this year begins on July 10th with Myra Flynn.  And so should we be telling musicians that we are not doing this? I don't think there's any use to it. I don't think anything has to be said at all. I just think I can continue on. And as a musician, you don't expect when you play at a venue for this issue even to come up. Well, I am a musician. No, I know you are. Yeah, and no, as far as being a musician, whether it's just or not, the responsibility doesn't fall in my shoulders and the risk doesn't fall in my shoulders for playing cover tunes in a venue. It's totally up to the venue. And because their method of operation seems to be to first make multiple calls and send multiple emails, if we haven't gotten any calls or any emails, then we'll see that. I was afraid that's what we were getting. There's no action. Yeah. Well, that's where Elliot thought this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, well, anyway, well, thank you. Is everybody comfortable with that approach? Excellent. Welcome. Thank you for coming down. Yes. Yeah. Have a good meeting. That was much better news than we did. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. May all your news team be exactly the same. That's important. I know this is a little strange, and I know we're learning out of time, but I just want to go back into executive session for a quick minute, if someone would make that motion, for a public safety concern. Second. All in favor? All right.  I haven't done it yet. Two back in April. Penalty, yeah. Well, you know, I have an appointment next Monday for getting my car inspected and expired at the end of April. You have an excuse. I do have an excuse, but I didn't even notice it until I was on my way to Maine. I didn't even notice it was before. Oh, I'm not. No torture report. I mean, it's just you've got a copy of the budget as of. And $70,000 short, right? No, that's actually, you know, we have $70,000. But I have to ask Patty, because the one I got on the 20th of the month was we only had $50,000. Now we have $70,000, but it looks like she did something with deferred revenue. So I'm going to find out on that. But how can the revenue? Because if she deferred receiving it or something, I don't know if it's revenue, if it's revenue. So this has to be, it went from $50,000 to $70,000. So this was deferred revenue, which she's now been able to take as real revenue, so it's increased the balance that we have available. Why was it deferred in the first place, though? Because there's always deferred revenue. Meaning what? It's income that, because where we haven't been made yet. No, we accrue our monies. It's just like if we pay our bills for insurance for a whole year, and you just appropriate it, you already have each month or something like that. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Oh, yeah, me too. Well, I've been asked that. About the income part, because our whole budget is based on, OK, we're going to spend this on money. Well, that's where. And we're spending, spending, spending, and our balances are going down. Well, that counts for 10,000 of it, so. Well, that's what I'm saying. How do you add income into this balance sheet? So ignoring that, well, this isn't a balance sheet. Well, OK. This is an income statement. But it still begs the question of what exactly is the deferred revenue? Where does it come from? I understand what it is, but I don't understand where it is for us. That's what I don't understand, either. Is it because we have a calendar year payment, and it's in two different fiscal years? And that's why it's deferred? I guess it's a revenue. It's not. It's not an expense. It's not a deferred expense. It's revenue. I don't know. Well, maybe. Well, we've got to get the answer. It's the first I've noticed of this, so I'll thank you. So assuming per-entry is correct. And I'm sure she'll think it's correct, whether we think it's correct or not. What's our projection for year end? OK. What? Tahi. Well, I know it's Tahi.  But those bills are included in this or not? That's my first question. That would be no. Because those are all needed. These are dated June 4th. And this is through June 6th, so. 531. Yeah. So that's only 531. So we have a whole month to go, right? Yeah. They start voting 112. And that's about 100 grand. Yeah, so we're going to. So we're about 30, I would tell you we're about 30,000 in the hall. Potentially, just quick and dirty. Does that make sense to you, Duranda? Look at something. Because she might have approved the bills back to May, so that's what I want to look at. I can tell from this. That maintenance bill was $30,000 on the equipment. So no, that would be 521. 531, no. So that did not change. So that does not include these checks. I'm pretty safe in this. Yeah, and I mean, I'm just doing a straight, which isn't, of course, the slime dog way to do it. But if a million two is the total, that's 100,000 a month. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I do my financials at home, too. Simple.  Got checks in the checkbook. And that does not include the transmission repair. Yeah. That power divider, no, that doesn't include that. And then you've got $30,000 there to Du Bois construction. Yeah. Payroll for two, right? Yeah, well, those two things. So there's whatever it is, $40,000, which is not in the mail. Not in the million two, unbudgeted. Because we've already spent our repair budget, correct? Oh, yeah, well-spent. Well-spent. Yeah. Wow. Roughly. So Du Bois was, what, $30,000? $30,000. And then what do you figure in the truck repair? Under 10, not in 9,500. OK, well, we'll call it that. So our fund balance is under $88,000. So getting back to what we were talking about before during that, I agree, we have money. We have money. It's not like we're going to run out of money. I don't think we need to short-term borrow, at least as of this week. So here's a question, though. And I don't know the answer. I know the question. The question is, would we rather pay those bills in June and overspend our budget big time, or start out our brand new fiscal year big time in the hall? Because these are basically unbudgeted items. Our budget for next year is not going to cover these items in any way, manner, shape, or form. So it's going to be unbudgeted this year or unbudgeted next year. Well, your budget isn't going to, your number isn't going to change, because it's still going to be accrued to this fiscal year, even if you go out and even if you don't write the check till July. That's because the expenditure occurred. It's all the expenditure that's occurred in this month. So I think that's the case. That's the case we're getting at all this month anyway. You're going to, yeah, it is what it is. That's the new way, you know? OK. Sad but true. But it was a terrible winter. It was a terrible winter. I mean, that's what's making us over in this. The washout thing is in that water. And I'll find out on that. When was, what was the date of the washout? June 2nd, I think. What was that? No, I mean it was the Sunday night of Memorial Day weekend. It was like April, 19th, 20th, or something like that. Oh, April? April? Yeah. I thought it was May, which is happening. What's the date on that, Du Bois? But in the 24th to 24th, that was Sunday, right? It was a Sunday night. So that Du Bois one day, it was before the 28th. It was either the 19th or the 26th. No, I think it's this one. Yeah, either the 19th or the 26th. But I can't remember which one. Oh, here it is. It might have been the 19th. That's right. 529, and then what did this, they don't have a date? 529? Well, I was the day of the Reagan's Waste. That's when they did the work. No, they, they, look at the, they got the sheets. These things? 520, 521? Yeah. OK. So it was the 19th. 19th, and then they were, yeah. Yeah, 521. You should write that down so we don't forget. I'm pretty sure that's not in here then. That was me too. OK, so I'm going to, I'm going to do a little speed management in here, but Interrupt Me and Stephen Mary were at the Welch Park meeting. But for the benefit of Liz and Phil, we did have the Welch Park meeting at 4 o'clock. Carl was here, and the way the Benderson represented up on the phone couldn't have been a nicer gentleman. What we agreed to do, Benderson, Benderson is basically willing to take over the Welch and pay the entire cost of. Which is $30,000. Which is $30,000. Estimated to be $30,000. Carl is not certain, and we are not certain whether we want to give up our rights to that Welch. Our share of that $30,000 bill would be 15%. So it's really not much. But we all, so it really isn't much. But we did find out tonight that our well is the most productive well on that whole property, and it's the most shallow, which we didn't know. Our well produces six gallons a minute. This well that we would be part of only produces six gallons a minute. I thought you said a four for us. Whatever it is. It doesn't matter. But anyway. I think it is four, Mary. I stand corrected. But anyway, we have a very productive good well at our fire station. So does it make sense to be part of this? Who knows. What we agreed is Benderson is going to send out some kind of a little letter of agreement for us potentially to sign, saying that they're going to go ahead at their cost and their risk and do these repairs. And they're going to give us until September 1 to decide whether we want to be in or out, which is pretty nice of them. If we're out, we're out. We don't pay anything. And if we're in, we're in because they're questions with regard to we have conflicting information from Bernie Chinette. And he was not available tonight about what our potential use of that well could be. I really don't think we need that well. But we just have some homework to do before we make a recommendation to you guys about what we should do. Did he seem eager to want the well? Like, is there any care? He didn't care. He doesn't really care. He just said, we're willing to take over responsibility for the whole thing. Pretty nice of him. But it isn't a big deal for Carl. But they also have their tenant pay on these things. It's a bigger deal for Carl because Carl has the potential for more development and more employees on his lot. And he has one of his own wells, which might be inadequate for that. So he's in a little different position than we are. Why couldn't it just be Carl and? Could be. Could be. The other one is. Oh, no. And then the question comes up. And the other question that came up, which I think has, we're not going to be able to decide that quickly, is whether the whole well park thing should just be given up entirely. And part of the problem with that is we don't know who would be the owner of the assets of Wells Park. You can't just have it disappear. And we have some lots that are used for the septic and for the fire fund. Correct. And the road. So we have some more work to do. What we're going to try and organize on the 12th of June is a conference call with the same cast of characters but with Bernie Chenette on the call to straighten out this issue of potential. Because Bernie was very clear with us when we met with him before, saying that we were never going to get to use any of that water anyway. Because there wasn't enough capacity. There wasn't enough capacity. But now, apparently, something has changed, which none of us understand. So we, first of all, kind of get to the issue of what could we have and what's the potential benefit? And the only, we don't need to talk about this much longer. But the one thing that I wonder is, suppose all of a sudden that wasn't a fire department anymore and it was some kind of small manufacturing plant or who knows what it was, would access to that water be beneficial, it might be. And do I really think we're going to fold up the firehouse? I really don't. But you've got to think ahead and you've got to, we want to be smart before we give up our rights to these things. The other thing I believe is, and this is just my memory, is that the leech field that we have the right to use as part of Welch Park is our backup leech field for our permit at the bottom. So we've got to get to the bottom of that. Well, we've got to get the permit out before I look at it. So we've got questions before we're ready to say anything. But it looks like we're going to have until September 1, at least, to work our way through these issues. So the pressing issue is, right now, the consolidated building has a temporary water situation. And the state has rescinded their nasty gram saying we are in violation, which is good. But they only gave us, none of us could remember in fact, but it's like 30 or 60 days to get this problem fixed. So we've got to be careful we don't go past that. So anyway, the pot's boiling. So that water supply that the consolidated building is using, which is that Menderson owns, I thought they were using all of the capacity. That's what we were told. But now we're saying there's 2,000 gallons of capacity that isn't being used. So anyway, we've got to get to the bottom of those issues before we can make a rational decision. So that's that. We have a motion to approve the May 21 select board. Second. All in favor? Aye. Discussion up to take with discussions with RB Tech, sir? Yeah, I'll give you a quick. It doesn't get any better. After chatting with Ruben and having him go back and have Holland put together everything, he sent me the list. So the only computer we have that's running Windows 10 is Sarah's. They think that the one that Merica is using may have a Windows 10 license, for some reason, that was downgraded to Windows 7. But they've got to check, because that's ACS. Is that who's that service that does the licenses? Well, that runs on that. The NEMRIC, you mean? No, not NEMRIC. No, the Merica stuff. I don't know, whatever. The program. Oh, for that, that does all the deed stuff? Yeah. ACS, OK. So essentially, that's their computer, although we use it. So that may be fine. We may have to just buy a license to upgrade that. Everything else, including Paul's, which they didn't even know about, is running Windows 7. And I was wrong as far as I was thinking it was July 1 that it was running out of support, but it's actually going to January 1. I think it's when you told us it was January. OK. Some reason I had in my mind, it was July. But yeah, it's January. So we got a few months. So we got to sit down and really think about what we're going to. Because it's not in the budget. What we're going to do. Of course not. What is in the budget? Whatever is in the budget. Jesus. Well, who knew when we were doing this? I didn't know. I mean, you didn't know that we were going to get rid of? The support. No. I mean, the irony is, the Windows 7 functions pretty well. But they just don't want to support it. Exactly. As soon as they stop patching it, then we'll have problems. So we have more work to do. Coin drop. Coin drop. Yeah. Yeah. I'm ready. I'm going to get breakfast. I'll take my. But pancake, breakfast, and coin drop. I could cook up a wicked load of pancakes. Ask people to donate their used laptops. It's probably better than the equipment we have. Right. There are so many people on Windows 7, including me at home. I mean, I'm in the same mess. Right. Our organization is all Windows 7. I've got a laptop and a desktop, which are on Windows 7. So I'm looking forward to some kind of. And I don't think. Perhaps it might be even before that. And I don't think that. I don't think that. I'll speak to that a lot. Yeah. I think we have it that way. Anyway. Yeah. I mean, it's a massive upgrade issue. That's right. Everybody here. Discussion on June 28th, Middlesex Town School District meeting on whether to brand an easement to the town for certain uses of Rummy Efter becomes a WCUUSD property. No action. You've just got to copy the warning here. Yeah. There are a number of towns that are doing this. Initially, I didn't I didn't understand this. But once I had a chance to read it, you know, part of me says it goes back to the old thing. I've had the opportunity over the years to use U32 for all kinds of different things. I've never been to U32. So this fear that all of a sudden our school is going to be closed off to us may or may not be a legitimate fear. But is this a bad idea to do this? Sad. Ready? Who came up with this idea? What? Who came up with this idea? I think it was Callis that came up with it first. Yeah. But then it spread like wildfire. Wasn't did they do all that work on their building? Well, everybody's done work on their building's merry. I mean, it's just the current. You've got to remember, this is the current board doing this, not the new board. They are freaked out thinking and thinking we should also be freaked out that we may be happy to go to this combined board to get permission to use what we perceive to be our own school. Are they really going to deny us the ability to have town meeting there on the building that we bought and paid for? I don't think so. But if this step is a good step to make people comfortable, I guess it's fine with me. So anyway, it's happening. All right. OK. So there's nothing for us to do. This isn't a town issue, except that the easement is going to the town. So it does seem a little strange. So we're not voting for any money on this day either, or at least no. No. Well, there's so many votes. So yeah, that is. We haven't voted for the full budget yet, have we? That's the budget vote day, I believe. Yeah, it's the same day. It's the same day. It's on that day. It's just a separate. No, no, no, they changed it. This is a different day. This is a week later. They moved this a week later. So there's another one? Yeah, there's one on the 20th. Because otherwise it would be an article. So just to start out with, they improperly warned us. But they warned it for the 20th. And they warned it. The other issue, which I don't understand, is they're saying it's going to be a real meeting, not an Australian ballot vote. And I called up and said, hey, Chris McVeigh, lawyer, person, ever since we voted, whatever it was, that the school meetings were going to be Australian ballot, everything to do with the school has been an Australian ballot. And he said, well, we have a legal opinion, which says if it pertains to land rights, it has to be an open meeting. It's on them. They're doing this. It isn't on us. But they were going to have, listen to this, we were going to be having an Australian ballot budget vote at the town hall on that day. And having a live school meeting at the Romney School on this issue on the same day. You think that was going to cause some confusion and misunderstanding? Yes. Oh my god. So now? Anyway, at least it's a week later. It's the 28th instead of the 20th. Is it going to be an Australian ballot, or is it a live meeting? It's a live meeting. For the vote? No, it's an Australian. I thought I read something today, Australian ballot. Or no. Is that a live meeting? Not involving the Australian ballot. To act on the following business, not involving the Australian ballot. So it's going to be the first school meeting we've had in 20 years. And I'm not sure that's even legal. But I guess I'm not going to worry about it. They got a legal opinion saying it's OK. But I was sitting here. Sarah was telling me all this stuff I was going. But the budget vote's going to be by Australian ballot. Correct. And that's on the 20th. At 5.30, how many people you think are going to come out for that? Yeah, right. You would think that something to do with land rights and easements would have to be by Australian ballot. Well, the other thing is, wouldn't you think? Now, don't get me wrong. But this easement is going to the town of Middlesex. That's us. Wouldn't you think they might have mentioned this to us? Well, they've never been in touch with us. What if we say, we don't care. We don't want that. I'll give it back to you. Well, what if we don't let anyone use it, even though we don't have it? Well, whatever. We wouldn't do that. Whatever. It's just a little. The whole thing is more than a little bizarre. But anyway. OK. Waters are signed. OK. Now you're three issues. Quickly my three issues. So the park, the beach, has a request to approach Paul about grading the road there. And apparently we've done it in the past, which I didn't know. It seems a little bizarre to me. That's pretty long. I mean, I don't think that's work. I think that's half a day to grade that thing, isn't it? Yeah, well, I doubt.  He didn't answer my question. I said, how many, you know, what's the money? What's the time? Whatever. He didn't answer my question. But Paul's looking for direction from us. Well, the question is, how long have we been doing this? Do we know? Did this start with Paul? I don't know. Apparently, I wasn't. Paul said we have done it a number of times over the years. All he gave me was a written response. Yeah. And I'm not sure. I'll have to. I didn't know. But I guess what I would do is recommend that our road commissioner deal with this question and decide if it makes sense and whether we should do it or not. I mean, if it's a little thing and we've done it in the past, that's fine. But, you know, why aren't the other towns contributing to this? Why doesn't the city of Montpelier send their grader out? Because they've got a lot more people using it than we do. Speaking of grading, can I just finish a couple of my three things? So does that make sense to everyone? Yes. Yes, absolutely. Steve Belial with Paul, and they'll figure that out. You all now did get a copy of that letter. I mean, basically, they need to do a traffic study to correct those problems. And they've committed to do it. That's the good news. The thing in there that jumped out at me that I mentioned before is they said we are responsible for speed control. And I believe what he should have said was we can, if we choose to, conduct speed patrols there at our cost and that we are not able to get reimbursed if they give any tickets because the tickets go to the state. So what we've always decided is we have, from time to time, asked our contractor to do some speed work in different places. But his statement that we are responsible just doesn't ring true to me. So that's not the way. Well, I think we have to challenge that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean. So we should maybe ask Sarah to do the letter. Yes. The music licensing that we've already dealt with, that was good news. I started reading through all that stuff when I made my headache. I can tell you that. Big time. Just a good question. Remember Warren Road, how we, we ended up keeping that as a class four. Yeah. Because it was great. Is that normal for us to grade the, I don't think, it looked like a professional grading because the grader had come by on our road and then I saw that Warren Road had been graded too. And I was like, oh, I thought we weren't doing that anymore. Yeah, we weren't. And it could be that they just, I mean, he might have hired someone, but it was right at the same time the other grader was there. He wouldn't have hired somebody. And it looks very professional. It's very wide. So you think we did it by mistake, maybe. Probably the, yeah, let me, yeah. I mean, if it was us, I didn't see the grader, but I saw the grader. I saw we kept it before, so we'd maintain the cultured form. Yeah, right, and we do do occasional grading on class four roads. Yeah, so maybe. We don't do the big spring beautification grading that it sounds like. That's exactly what's happening. Let's have graded. I know, and I was like, oh, he's like, this is great. I'm glad that we're having more than two. Let's send better than it used to be. Let's send Bill a bill. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, dear. So I am going to reach out to Mike. I mean, I don't know how we stopped the spot from boiling. Should he have told us before?  I think the only way that you're going to stop the pot from boiling is that the select board is going to have to work as closely as they can with the fire department until things get resolved. Yeah, and that's going to take some work. Yeah. Well, I almost think we need to ask them to come in here and meet with us once a month or something like that. But let's get to the bottom of the issue about do we really have control or not? Because if we don't, then the decision we have to make is do we want to continue? Because there are a number of options. We all know what the options are. Option number one is to hire the city of Montpelier or some other entity to provide our fire protection, which is likely way more expensive than what we're paying now. Option number two is to tell the 501C3, whatever their name is, that they are no longer allowed to use any of the equipment.  What we talked about the last time, I think it's having two or three. Do you remember, Mary? I don't know if you want to stay. Paying firefighters, real firefighters. And then their job is to supervise and recruit volunteers. And how that would work and what it would cost. And I mean, it would be. And do you still get mutual aid with that kind of situation? Yes, you do. Because again, as I've said over and over again, the real fire protection we get from our guys is that we have mutual aid. And they do come. And thank God they do. Because we ever got booted out of mutual aid. So I think it was your question, Mary.  That'd be interesting to know. But oh, that was Cindy. I'm sorry. But let's wait until we know whether we have control of them. Could you just ask Sarah to sort out the articles and the bylaws too? Or the 501C3? Yeah, that would be worth looking at. Thanks. OK. All righty. We're done here. Yeah. Have a good journey. Have a good journey. I'm done. Yay.


Good morning team general Holander here from the Pentagon Accompanied by our Sarge major of the finance and comptola profession Sarge major Cabell And just wanted to wish everybody a happy 246 finance core birthday I'm hoping that When I go out online a little later today, I'll see all of your greetings as well But just wishing everybody a an exceptional day and a great celebration after 246 years serving our army and our nation as financing comptola professionals, so everybody go out there and And have a great have a great celebration. Happy birthday


interact with but there are other cognitive or perceptual modules that it does not speak to but it's more isolated so that's kind of a potential way to kind of think about ways to relate the kind of neurobiological infrastructure with the kind of behavioral linguistic kind of phenomenon okay so yeah and then just to conclude the more kind of philosophical foundations of Rose are also in line with research documenting a rich array of innate capacities utilized during language acquisition in the Unix which can distinguish distinct phonemes that were boundaries, led words and so on I'm kind of really invoking a very rich kind of array of innate capacities so currently due to the lack of consensus regarding how to ground syntactic combinatorics and exhaled in the brain researchers enjoy many degrees of freedom when selecting from their preferred linguistic theory, processing theory, the algorithm and your biological framework the implantational framework so I hope that Rose basically allows us to you know in a landscape to narrow the space of likely candidate neuro-mechanisms for syntactic frequency building it's really all about figuring out what are the most likely mechanisms that we're going to find natural and rude syntax in the brain, which parts of the brain are going to be sensitive to it and which really index that process on some level and so yeah I think I guess I should probably leave it there and conclude it but yep that's pretty much the whole model thank you for the massively informative overview and the research agenda do you want to stay? happy to stay for a bit longer for sure yeah yeah I'm happy to chat alright well there's so many places to join for people who are watching live maybe we'll have a few minutes to ask a question wow yeah if you have any questions or comments or thoughts I can sit here all day and just talk forever about this stuff I probably shouldn't alright I have a handful let's do some short answers and just some general because on the evidence and on the specific brain regions and specific time scales you've made that abundantly clear so I'm going to ask some alternate questions so how do we study these densely woven cognitive phenomena without how do we hold that tension without just being simply only always to wholism or reductionism you kind of talked about that with the inside out and outside in views but how can we approach a different cognitive system maybe not the human brain and language where even the relationships amongst the different phenomena might be themselves not known okay I see you mean so if there's you mean a human specific cognitive process that is not language yeah if you want to pull out a different thing or study a different system what kind of account are we looking for how are we going to know we're on the path that's not being just massively misleading and so on no no that's a good question so I think so the Rose architecture I think is is partially applicable to lots of different cognitive domains like tension and working memory you know face perception they all involve something at the R to O level the coordination of spike timing and the realization of some kind of sensory motor transformations at the broadband gamma level the thing where we take over is really at the S level where you get the particular type of low frequency coordination that seems to be specific for language language is not the only thing that recruits low frequency oscillatory phase codes to conduct the orchestra of representations that need to be externalized or interpreted so I think it's transferable in many ways the real testable issue will be to do with whether or not these whether or not I'm correct that these different levels of linguistic structure are found only at these levels or maybe they're found across all of them so for example if effects of syntax specific responses can be found truly at the R the O the S and the E scales that I've mentioned that muddies the waters because it means that the brain at every scale across all areas cares about the most niche specific issues in syntax we might have to turn ultimately to state space architectures which I suspect will be used to sort of meant rows at least at the the S and E levels I think in terms of you'll have like different abstract states being coordinated across network nodes rather than the kind of which is similar to what I mentioned with traveling waves just a more accessible interactional process but for a very different mathematical grounding it'll have a very different mathematical grounding so but I think I don't know if I'm not sure if I'm answering a question well but I think I think in terms of transferring it to other domains that could be explored and it's really about you know trying to find trying to find a prediction of like I need to use a particular methodology I need to use a particular experimental paradigm to find effects that should only be found at this particular neural resolution and in this respect it's no different from the rest of the cognitive sciences because in working memory and attention and navigation that's exactly what these guys have done for decades linguistics as usual is you know the last person to the party and we are linguistically usually the last field in cognitive neuroscience to kind of pick up the developing tools in the field and apply them so and that's fine you know there's nothing wrong with that I think the reason is because human language is the most complex cognitive process that we have it requires a lot of the weeds to be sorted out before we have to figure out how working memory works, how attention works how vision works before we can even worry about language because all of them kind of presuppose and require that right at some level so I think it's natural for language to be saved until last right save the best to last for sure no doubt but I think it's also it makes it it's also the case that neuro linguists have not always taken the lessons that previous fields have learned as seriously and we often end up making the same mistakes so when we got scout SCALPEG for the first time or fMRI we made a lot of the same mistakes that the memory guys did or the navigation guys did and I think my own fear in writing this paper is that the reason why I wrote this is mainly because you know I see it in the last few months I see it in the last year or so cognitive neuroscientists getting their hands on very advanced recording techniques but not really knowing what to make of it again this very aggressive very but also very contemporary and very progressive kind of so called progressive viewpoint of data driven science where you just kind of let the data speak for itself and allow the statistics of your you know also do some kind of machine learning on your kind of on your own data and expect that to kind of feed into an explanation for language a lot of those techniques and also discourage this kind of theoretical reflection and if you look at people like Carl Friston you know he spends most of his time he's the world's most influential neuroscientist and he spends most of his time just doing theoretical neuroscience because it's that's really where we're at these days in all of these fields it's about consolidation and interpretation a lot of the I mean I was surprised when I started writing this paper I was surprised that a lot of the clues and answers to this puzzle of how syntax is inputting in the brain are kind of already out there they just haven't been very you know the dots haven't been connected the principled relations and logical relations between different findings and different you know recording methodologies and the kind of more principled relations between them haven't been established yet or haven't been figured out and I think there's often a push and a desire to just you know do an over experiment you know get funding to do more and more experiments collect more data and do more analysis that's as awfully essential I do that as my day job well outside of my day job I think it's also important to spend some time you know thinking about how to thinking more carefully about this so that you don't need to do any more experiments for a while so at least so you know that you know when you do your experiments you know the landscape better and you don't end up making the same mistakes that other people do but really it goes back to this issue of kind of cost cost benefit like you know how do you how do you kind of weigh up the pros of collecting more data with the you know the foreseeable benefits the whole notion of foreseeable benefits empirical foreseeable benefits really presupposes and needs this framework of what the benefits are likely to be if the benefits are just I'm going to just let the data speak for itself and get a bunch of different you know machine learning or LLM architecture to kind of figure out the story for me you're probably going to be disappointed whereas if you take a step back and think about a more principled architectural approach think about the brain the way an engineer would and figure out like which level is going to be best served for a different a particular cognitive process that's the basic mindset behind behind this model it's about figuring out like what you know which scale of neural operation is going to be most helpful for you great well on that kind of research program scale the compass rose it's a great model I was curious about a few other settings for speech like listening to a video or recording at a different speed than 1x or watching subtitles or just the idea of reading and whether there was some kind of a clean handoff between one sentence is heard then one is read then one is heard is it beyond the sensory modality by what stage or what elements that are extra lexemic like prosody and timing and so on play into for example speech as opposed to writing where there's formatting and italics and so on yeah no that's a great question so there's an unanswered question at the moment which is to do with the bottleneck of reading or speech processing not so much but definitely for reading we don't really know that much about the bottleneck like how fast you can read so the rose model talks about delta rhythms, it talks about theta rhythms these are very slow waves if you ever tried speed reading it becomes very clear straight away that human beings can read very quickly so if you you know code in matlab or python some kind of rsvp style a textbook where you can just like have one word flashing on the screen at a time and set it to different rates if you have 500 milliseconds away no problem it turns out you can go way faster up to like 15 20 words a second and you can still get interpretability you'd be surprised if you try it you'll be very surprised by how fast you can actually read so you might think that poses a problem for the rose architecture I don't think it does I can get to that after I've answered your question it does pose a problem at all but so that's a good question so we know that there are certain parts of the brain that do in the ventral temporal cortex which is the lower side of the temporal lobe they are responsible for transforming visual information into orthographic information the work of oscar wolno in my lab he's done the most impressive work on this by far very exquisite like intercranial recordings of how human beings in fact his whole research is on reading so you should probably definitely read his work basically about how the human brain takes visual information and then trans converts it into an orthographic space a constrained orthographic space a space in which your mind I guess will be sensitive to particular statistical configurations of shapes but you know this one's a letter this one's not a letter so that takes place in the same part of the ventral temporal cortex and then maybe somewhere around there that will due to endogenous processing and limitations probably not to do with vision probably due to some kind of next stage process to do with interpretability and because as you know we can read we can see based on such the card rates and the number of objects and things we can see in a given second is very large indeed the human brain mostly filters out most of its sensory information every second just to kind of focus on the stuff that's key to its general model it's kind of minimizing the free energy of its general model and keeping it kind of sustained not changing the status quo etc but on the reading level we know that at that stage that's when you get what I call the centrum of the transformations in high gamma activity so that's where you get that high gamma activity being responsible and sensitive to the mapping from that visual information to the linguistic information because often somehow you see words on the screen you see squiggles and lines somehow you've got to convert that into a more abstract space so that will take place in the ventral temporal cortex and then you get some interesting connectivity on top down information from being sent from frontal cortex back to ventral temporal to constrain and kind of coordinate that bottleneck at least that's one of the main theories that exists I'm not an expert on reading per se I'm not a vision scientist but because I understand that's the kind of the general framework is that there is a part of the brain that's sensitive to the statistics but also the symbology of orthographic information and we know that it takes place in very short time scales when it comes you asked a very interesting question about the the kind of the kind of dual modality like when you're watching a film you're listening it and you're also reading subtitles at the same time that's a very tricky question because on the central motor side we know that you'll get oratory cortex involvement and orthographic kind of occipital temporal involvement engagement at the same time but somehow they both have to converge on a single interpretation because we know that you can't comprehend things in parallel you can't read two books at once or at least most people can't so that means there's got to be a single kind of interpretation procedure and a single kind of semantic integration process that is being instructed in a form by different modalities but when you think about it that might sound difficult but it's actually no different from when I use hand gestures right now right so when I use hand gestures I'm providing some kind of extra modal information to you it's obviously easier because this is more hand gestures are used kind of pragmatically informative rather than explicitly propositional of course unless you speak sign language but it's still just a case of different sensory motor transformations taking place so that would still be at the old level that would still be at the old level it's still high gamut transformations that are then fed into a more uniform discrete and abstract syntactic inference being made there's only one syntactic inference being made about the meaning of the sentence but it's being informed by multiple sites now you do raise an interesting question it might be the case that this low frequency delta complex therefore has to entrain and functionally connect with multiple cortical sites it might have to speak to auditory cortex but also ventral temporal cortex if you're gleaning distinct types of if the lower level lexical representations you're getting are being sourced from auditory then orthographic so for example if I give you a sentence and I get you to hear the first word and then read the second word and then hear, read, hear, read or listen, listen, read, listen, read if you go between listening and reading but you're still integrating a single unified structure we know you can do that, human beings can do that so that tells you straight away that it can be done but the question is how it's done like I said I suspect it's through this dual kind of trade off between sensory motor instructions being sent from auditory cortex to the same unified low frequency program and then the visual information too so that's actually a kind of a nice way to separate out the distinction between sensory motor stuff from the more abstract unified kind of syntactic information that's being built and in fact you've just given me a good idea for an experiment so thank you yeah because language is so linearized it's like being pulled through a needle and then in the saccade so-called speed reading but it's not simply moving the linearization faster speed reading can leverage formatting and all these other strategies like almost thinking through other minds ways of reading and also having an off-center effect in visual system and the way that that kind of involves the orthography versus in listening you basically always want to be listening more clearly because the moment is the only time you're going to hear it the active listening component it's like you can't let it fly by but reading you can take saccade strategies and cognitive strategies that you just can't take and that's kind of this like all at once versus one at a time element there's actually there's a framework in Psychic Wisics called the now or never bottleneck so the now or never bottleneck refers to what you're saying right in reading there's no now or never you can just take it down with listening you're totally right it's now or never you have to pay attention now and integrate or your working memory is going to dissipate or your attention is going to or your phonological loop is going to decay and repeat themselves again again it's a very different performance system and it's also very different from Braille when you're using touch and you're reading Braille when you're gesturing and using style language language especially syntax truly is a modal it's completely independent of any modality the neuroscience of speech is very different from the neuroscience of language the neuroscience of gesture language is a more kind of a modal abstract system that calls upon these very various sensory motor processes which is what most people intuitively trying ground language in a sensory motor context because that's natural of course that's how we access it that's how we trigger it most of our daily language use is probably just thinking to ourselves using language maybe subconsciously using the computational capacity that language affords us in non-linguistic ways meaning to construct hierarchical structures of thought and planning and all the rest of it in some kind of subconscious way rather than explicitly saying I am saying a sentence or even I am thinking a sentence in my head because even when we think a sentence in our head that's still just an internalised form of externalisation so when you think about in your head that's still externalisation which is a different type of externalisation you're not externalising it with your mouth but you're still putting it out into your own phonological loop but that's still externalisation internalisation is truly the subconscious process of generating the syntactic inference which is done rapidly, reflexively intuitively often without much thought often without enough meaning attention often without much attention being directed to it and any kind of conceptual implications being made so most of language use is outside of the sensory motor space maybe I'm wrong about that but this is a point that Noam Chomsky has made a lot and I think he's right about this a lot of the daily use of the language infrastructure is like I said I mentioned the universal currency metaphor across these different conceptual spaces and it's potentially represented very predominantly across sparse neural codes as I mentioned in the Rose architecture such that it survives brain damage, it survives all sorts of different things but it's still crucial and you get a lot of people like Rosemary Barley and Federico showing work using imaging research showing that the language network is not activated during XYZ non-linguistic cognitive tasks or damage to the language network does not damage XYZ non-linguistic tasks that's all fine but that's a separate issue from whether or not the more abstract syntactic neural code that I've presented in the paper is recruited on some level by non-linguistic resources which I suspect is again, another empirical question for you but I think that's a reasonable framework to kind of assume at least one I guess reflection on that then one last question you described language human language as being a kind of psychotechnology with supporting architecture and enculturation all these different features that are totally relevant influence it that allows us to articulate like the sense making in action like when we look at figure 4.3 in the active inference textbook and we have a Bayesian graph that factorizes out through the sparsity of just how things are related like how the measurement of the thermometer is related to the temperature in the room how the temperature in the room changes fundamental concepts of place and time where preferences fit into that is about the semantics of this variable whether it's kind of like a central tendency or whether it's a variance estimator like confidence which is something that you brought up as a strongly linguistic utility so it's kind of like it has an element of just being the geometry and topology of thought and thinking and generative modeling that has ultra, mundane everyday uses because this generalized apparatus really does have utility, pragmatic value in communication so it can be used for the most referential just one bump above pointing at something and pointing at something and grunting and pointing at something and say look or look it's like you can keep going but often what's only needed is the first little bit, especially given a context and yet there's this open-ended arbitrary state space navigation element as well yet it's only I just, I think it's incredible how it's laid out and how what you described with a heavy emphasis on the neurophysiological and the computational comes into play with active inference and the generalized state spaces and all these concepts so that's just super exciting I guess my sort of closing or we can keep talking or whatever but how do you see this relating to language learning or first language and for not first language learning? Yeah, I totally agree with what you said about the active inference framework I think linguistics, semantics and well syntactic structures are a unique kind of inference that the human brain has to make I see a lot of the properties of lexical semantics in human language as being a unique type a unique contributor to the active inference framework and I think it's a surprise to me that more linguists haven't turned to active inference to think about certain properties of semantics because it seems so obvious, it seems so compatible I've tried to do it in some work and I think maybe some other people have too potentially but it's an obvious kind of well I mean I've cited the Peter Hegel paper he cites that work too a little bit but no it's a very promising way to picture it. In terms of language learning and acquisition that's a very, very good question so I mentioned that at the beginning some of the low frequency delta responses to syntax, all of that research is in adults, well all of it was until some research in the Cambridge UK a few years ago started to think okay well maybe is this how children process language too or maybe is this how is this where they process language in the same regions. It turns out if you look at teenagers and children and you do the same you know scout BG or maybe even MEG research I'm not sure I can't remember, I cited it in my book the low frequency responses change over development in terms of which ranges are sensitive to the periods of syntax so it's not necessarily you know 1.3 hertz precisely that entrains the syntax, of course not this gets back to the point I made earlier about speed reading right, it's all about the flexible coordination and packaging of representations into a given complex, again I mentioned the issue of trade off between number of representations you can chunk and the fidelity of the representations, you can have a few and what represented in gamma or a large number and only a small number of spikes per representation that's just kind of that's a very general framework that's been supported in the attention literature too, it's not just my proposal so that poses a question if children and teenagers show a different kind of low frequency phrase response how do we deal with that I don't have a clear answer to that question I think the Rose architecture can very readily be modified to that because it's not as if they'll still have the same architecture they'll still have the same R to O to X to E the particular frequency band of interest might shift over development and in fact we know from working memory and attention dynamics and alpha dynamics definitely and beta dynamics do change cross-quartically over development and these are behaviorally relevant to things like development of working memory and attentional resources that's been very clearly studied and very well studied too so it's more like there's a more abstract code that simply shifts its spatial temporal profile as the brain gets older and then changes more when we get even older so I have a paper that's going to come out fairly soon I hope to do with aging what happens when we when our brains decay and we get old there's some nascent kind of research looking at the language processing not at the behavioral level but in terms of the neuro level the neurobiology of language processing in older people and how it might also relate to breakdown of semantic information access and things like that and what are the potential correlates of that so you can imagine very clearly if you take the Rose architecture which components will be disrupted or modified based on if it's a syntactic or a conceptual or a lexical kind of deficit the isomorphism is as I said very crude so you can predict that very clearly and in fact there's some research in that space that I think is concordant of this which is what I discussed in this new paper so like I said it's a relevant architecture it's a very difficult question about how the whole brain matures over time because the certain aspects of knowledge that may not be represented in ways that we currently know how to you know detect or record and we have the four or five measures, main measures that I mentioned in the paper they're what we have right now maybe there's a particular form of neural encoding that just goes way beyond what we can physically provide in the year 2023 I don't think there's any reason to assume that we've reached the limit of the codability of neural signals and their complexity absolutely not so the learning process is a very mysterious one so yeah I think it's also a really good way to falsify a lot of this stuff by the way it's a really good way just to completely falsify and test a lot of these proposals to do with the architecture itself and then developing code over time as well so yeah it's a very relevant concern the best way to do it is to get inter-craner recordings in children that's very difficult because so there's a in Austin, Texas there's a lab there that has these recordings and uses access to children with epilepsy and they get these children to watch trailers and listen to stories and things like that and they do some interesting language research in these kids that's exceptionally rare data and very very very useful data for answering these questions I don't have access to that data and most of that research has not been forthcoming yet there's been a couple of inter-cranial papers in children and language but it's fairly sparse fairly low patient numbers and the types of analyses have been too kind of remote and departed from this framework to really test it that would be the way to test it electrodes directly inside the brains of children and potentially even younger I think the youngest I've seen is about four but even by four years old it's maybe too late to chart the actual full development of acquisition of language because by that stage they've already acquired syntax right if you could get I don't want to sound like a mad scientist but if it's possible ethical to one day get access to inter-cranial recordings in very young children then it would be possible to chart this developmental process especially if the children are in the hospital for protracted periods and in fact get some kind of I mentioned BCI implants if they have some kind of implanted device over time that would be the most direct way to test this stuff not just test my theory but just you know just just completely chart out the full developmental profile and the evolution and the development of the neurophysiological basis of speech processing and language processing so that's kind of as far as I understand that's kind of like the current landscape of where the field is right now well you can have the last word with any last thoughts but thank you for this amazing presentation and I hope that if people are interested that they can of course read the paper and learn and reach out and maybe we can have 64.2 when the time is right but anything you'd like to kind of leave it with yeah no thanks so much for having me on man it's been great you've been great I've been enjoyed it's been enjoyable just kind of outlining my own theory you read your own paper over and over again and you realise all the things that you kind of misinterpreted or misread on your face read through in terms of like phrasing and all the rest of it so it's always good to refresh these things but no absolutely if people are interested in this stuff I'm always open you can contact me via email on Twitter absolutely so yeah thank you for listening thank you for having me thank you peace peace mate


If I want to find x to ensure that those two lines L and M are parallel, I would want them to be alternate exterior angles that are congruent. So I would set them equal. I would set 3x plus 10. Set that equal to 4x minus 10. Now the reason that I want to ensure that those two angles are congruent is there is a theorem that says if alternate exterior angles are congruent, then my lines are parallel. And so if I find a value of x that satisfies the hypothesis of that statement, then the law of detachment will say the lines must be parallel. So let's solve this for x. Let's, well, let's subtract 3x first. That leaves me with 10 is equal to, well, 4 minus x minus 10. And then add 10 to both sides. Leaves me with the value of x is 20. And so if x is 20, then my alternate exterior angles will be congruent, and so the lines will therefore be parallel.