It's a great pleasure to be with you today here in Pisa. The future is already here. We just haven't paid enough attention. Not totally, yes. This is technology, right? It's an amazing tool. Is this technology going to replace those two people back there? Not anytime soon. You can use this and in ten years it'll be infinitely better. And we can use it like a tool. We can speak through it. There's now a company developing a headset that I wear and I can speak and it comes out on the other side without using the phone. But will this really replace translators? How important are things are not being said? A translator would understand the meaning of what I'm trying to say, but I haven't actually said it. It knows the objective. Does a machine know the objective? I think it knows the job. So I think in 30 years maybe it's possible the machine does what the translator does. I'm here to talk to you about this topic, technology, amenity. I wrote a book three years ago. It's now out in Italian. I wrote the book because everywhere I speak people say, well, technology is great, but what's going to happen to people? Because technology is everywhere now.  And these days a lot of people are worried about the future. I don't know about you, but in Europe many places I go to they say the future is bad.  So this whole debate led me to write this book and I'm going to start right from the beginning by saying I think the future could be heaven or it could be hell. It could be heaven if we can use technology to solve major problems. Food, water, climate, energy. Technology will not solve social problems. It will make them worse. Do we have more equality because of technology? Some people would argue probably not. Do we have better democracy because of technology? Some would argue yes. Many would argue not. To make it heaven, not hell, we don't need more technology. We need more humans. We need more thinkers, more philosophers, more people who are interested in the future. The word renaissance, looking up the whole area around here, in the 1500s we talked about renaissance. Now I talk about renazimento, a new renaissance of humans that use technology but don't become technology. So this is a very important topic in my work. I think generally speaking we have two large issues. I'll touch on this today because it's a real big topic these days. Our first challenge is now climate change. You've noticed the last three months has exploded. We're going to see a lot of activity on this and that's not the topic of my speech so I'll just sort of give the framework here. Looking at these numbers, the entire southern part of the world in 50 years could be so hot that Europe will be looking at 200 million climate refugees. And that is Italy. As you know, the first instance of climate migration. That's just one of the side effects of what we're going to see. The entire lower part of the world would be too hot to grow anything in. Everybody would want to leave. Looking at these stats you can see that our energy use is up, our GDP is up, our sea level is up, our surface temperature is up. So you can say one thing for certain, we're making a lot of money but everything else is being ruined. And what we have found the last couple of weeks, this is no longer going to be an option. And it has a lot to do with technology that's why I'm talking about it. So we're going to see in the next five years mandatory CO2 charges for airplanes. Get ready for that. Prohibition of cruise ships. Starting with Venice. That would be a relief to a lot of people, but also a burden. Bending cars in cities. Prohibiting the use of old-fashioned cars. Changing the way that we eat meat. Reduced forced reduction of meat production already happened in Holland two weeks ago. The government says you have to make less meat. I mean this is a major driver of economic change. And here's the second thing that's really interesting. The World Economic Forum says our biggest challenge right now is climate change and extreme weather. And the second big challenge is, you guessed it, technology. Those are our two big challenges. But there are also two big opportunities. For example people are estimating we'll have over 100 million new jobs in renewable energy. 100 million. And how many jobs do we have in technology? There's 20 million people working in social media today. That job didn't exist 10 years ago. So as far as jobs are concerned, of course I share your concern on this, but this is a much bigger concern, right? It's not climate change, it's human change. The way that we use our devices is this is our second brain. And for some of our kids it's the first brain. And this device is going to go here and here and then it will go here. Marshall McLuhan said every time we expand ourselves, we make new things, we also amputate. Every time we do something new we leave something else behind. What do we leave behind when the main part of our life is in the sky, in the cloud? Do we only gain things? Technology is now a religion. It's nice to say that in a church. On a Sunday morning no less. I mean basically many of us have more relationships with the screen than we have with people. We laugh about that, but then we also have of course addiction, right? Social media addiction. I don't know, none of you would ever think about that of course, right? But, you know, wake up at 2 in the morning. And really what's happening, of course, now we notice technology is essentially making a mockery of democracy, right? Facebook is gunning for our democracy. And the story of Facebook is really interesting because Facebook used to be a fantastic tool for us to reach each other. And now Facebook has become an engine to manipulate. It has become the opposite. It's like any drug really, a little bit is sometimes okay but too much is a problem. And then we have the entire community around the world and technology believes in data, right? That's called dataism. It's like Judaism or, you know, it's the religion. This is what one of the CEOs of the big tech company says. Big business decisions will be made not by experts or intuition, but by big data and predictive analytics. The future politician will be in an AI. And if you get a pension or a job will be up to a machine. Is that the future we want? I mean, I believe in technology, right? I'm a total optimist. I love technology. I love geeky stuff, right? But should it be my spirit to technology? Here's a great example of a U.S. company that's embodying that kind of thinking. Some nice people at Stanford University demonstrated the chatting to Wobot for two weeks led to significant improvement in mood. Every day he asks how your day is going, how you're feeling, and what you're up to. He builds an emotional model of you over time and it can help you see patterns in your mood. As he learns about you, he'll teach you things. This is a machine that is a therapist. The machine learns about you, gives you answers. This is a serious project. This is not a joke, right? I mean, for us here in Europe would say, yeah, it's a joke. But this is a serious proposal. We're going to talk to a machine so that we can get mentally well. And I would say if you have a mental problem, like autism, that's maybe a good thing, right? But otherwise, don't we have people for this? I mean, don't we have other things that we can do with this? So many people are saying because of technology, this is what happens to us. It's a big theme in a Harawari's book, if you've had no Harawari's book, great book to read. Are we becoming useless because technology can do the standard work, it can communicate for us, it can find our way, tell us where to eat? I don't think that's true. I think what becomes useless is our routine. The things that we have to do because the machine can't yet do it. I mean, take the example you may have seen in some fancy houses, they have a lawnmower, electric lawnmower that's driving itself, right? You've seen that. If you have a lawnmower like this, would you stand there and watch the lawnmower, you know, mow the lawn, or would you do something else more meaningful? The answer is, well, you're going to do something more meaningful. So that's, I think, where we're going in the future. The key question is this, you know, technology in 10 years will be capable of connecting us directly. I mean, we are at this point here, right? And we're going to wear a brain-computer interface. In 10 years, this could be normal, right? Using virtuality. Imagine what's up from your head. You don't type, you don't take it out, you just think and send. I mean, this is not too far-fetched. We're living in the biggest technological transformation in human history. This is especially important because of the Rinichamento, right? The Renaissance, which happened here, right? I mean, we're living in a world where everything that used to be science fiction is about to become reality. Robotics, speaking machines, blockchain. And here is what we have to do here. To simply do whatever technology allows us is a very bad plan. Because the answer is, it will allow us anything. I mean, today we have lots of limitations. Artificial intelligence is not really working like it should. The translation is not really working like it should. The self-driving car isn't ready.  And companies will make a lot of money with that. But the other hand, to not use technology because of fear, that's also a very bad strategy. I mean, artificial intelligence, data science, the Internet of Things, those are the keys to solutions for us. Can we afford to say, no, we're worried? We have to be worried, but what do we do about this? Here's the key question. Today we're sitting here with saying, can technology do it? How much does it cost? Does it make money? But these are the questions of the future that you have to ask. Especially if you're not already 60 or 70 years old in terms of your own duration of your life. The question is, why are we doing this? What are we trying to reach? And who is doing it? Is it some company in Silicon Valley or in China? Do I trust them? This is our future, right? Humanity is merging with technology. I mean, this is already happening here, right? This is already right here. This is my second brain. This is my additional power. But how far do we go in this constant debate about this? So we need a new humanist, Rini Cermanto. We need a new way of saying we use technology. But we don't become technology. So in other words, we can't afford to say no, because saying no means we don't exist basically, right? We have nothing to say. We have no power. But here is the challenge. As I'm sure you know, technology doesn't have ethics. If I tell the computer to make paper clips out of you today, if the computer has the power, and the objective will make paper clips out of you instantly, right? Because if that's the command, right, this is what machines do. Apart from the law of robotics, of course. But technology does not understand feelings, emotions, values, beliefs, consciousness, existence. This is why, for example, it's so hard for technology to understand the joke. Next time you go to America, never make a joke about America.  Because of the joke. And what is ethics? Ethics is no the difference between what you have a right to do and what is the right thing to do. There is a difference. Facebook. Facebook has every right to do whatever they want with our stuff because you signed the user agreement.  It's just totally unethical. Facebook is not criminal, it's unethical. And this is something we have to think about. What do we do about things that are unethical? Can we bring down the volume just a little bit more? I think it's a little bit too hard. Elon Musk says we should compete with technology and to compete we need to connect. So he has invented this ingenious project called the Neuralace, which is this, right?  You can watch that on YouTube. Is this a good idea? He says if we don't become stronger as humans, if we don't go beyond our limitations, we're not going to survive. And I say if we don't find back to who we are, we will not survive. I think upgrading ourselves is really going to be a downgrade. I'm not talking about cholesterol pills or statins or medication. I'm talking about fundamentally messing, programming ourselves. I think if you're sick, I can see that being good. If you're quadriplegic, you use that, you can walk. So that's a good thing. That's of course a huge philosophical debate. So this is the world we're living in today. We're getting tremendous benefit from technology. We're getting convenience, commerce, content, communication for free. We get a huge amount of things and it's provided by these companies. The digital factories, whether they're US or Chinese, that are essentially running the world. The richest companies in the world. Many of them are my clients. So I know how that works. But on the other hand of this wonder, we have pollution. We have addiction. We have tax avoidance. We have surveillance. We have manipulation. But the principle is really quite simple. Too much of a good thing is a very bad thing. And this is something we have to pay attention to because guess what, today on a scale to 100, we're only at 3. In the next 100 years, 10 years, we're going to go to 100 here. We're going to a different place. This is about trust. It's about accountability, responsibility.   This is the cheapest possible excuse you can think of. If you're making a smart city, then you are responsible for the consequence of a smart city, which is surveillance. I mean Reed Snowden's book. You get all about this. So, a comment from Mark Benioff from the CEO of Salesforce. He talks about this very problem. Mark is a really smart guy and this was a recent interview. Facebook is the new cigarettes. It's not good for you. It's addictive. You don't know who's trying to convince you to use it or misuse it. The government has to step in and regulate it. And Facebook has proven that to us, even since I said it over nine months ago, over and over and over again, they need to be regulated because they're not self-regulating. They need to be regulated because they're not self-regulating. When something is so powerful as technology is today, we have two choices. We either say, you help us find the human value and protect us or we're going to make you protect us. And I'm not for regulation in general. I'm against it. I'm for the free market. But this, I mean, this is a company of 2.6 billion users. And Mark owns 62% of this company. He cannot be fired. He can decide he's the most powerful man in the world. And you guys are all probably on Facebook, you know, feeding him information. So, I've suggested in my book, we need a digital ethics council. Going back to ancient Greece, and of course, Italy as well, we had wise people, Socrates, Aristoteles, who were not politicians really. They were not CEOs. They were just people who could think. Let's find the top 10 people in Italy. The thinkers. And have them think about how we can solve this problem, how we can use technology without becoming a slave of technology. What are the limitations? I mean, in 10 years, we're going to be able to take the human genome and change it. Well, we already tried that today. So, I have proposed this in my book, and I think we should have this on a city level, a regional level, a national level and a global level. And they should not be people who decide, you know, necessarily on practical things, but who put out information that we can decide on.  I know many of us don't like the idea, but I mean, this is kind of like, this is where we're going with this, because our lives are going into the cloud. And this is not science fiction. This is happening now.  Right? Because the cloud is superior. Better, faster, more efficient. If your healthcare is in the cloud, you're going to live longer. It's as simple as that. But the more we connect, the more we must protect. It sounds like an oxymoron, like a contradiction. But we can not just connect without putting the human back inside, without having rules about how we connect and who is in charge. If we're going to leave this to companies who make money with our connection, we're in deep trouble. Look what happened to media and journalism. 40% of the kids around the world get their news from Facebook. Can you imagine? If you go to India, people think that Facebook is the Internet, because that's all they use. They search on Facebook, they think they search the Internet. If we want the future, we're going to have to invest in more humanity to put that inside.  So here's my suggestion to politics. Every public official should have a driver's license for the future. A test. I want every mayor and every candidate and every president to be tested if they're fit for the future. Thank you. If they are fit for the future. Do they understand the future? I live in Switzerland. Who cares? We're going to have human refines. Can we think about that? Copyright law is like, yeah, it's an interesting debate. We've got to think about the future of work. How are we going to work when machines do everything? What's going to mean for us? So I'm proposing three new digital human rights in the book. It's five, but you can get the three here. First, we need the right to disconnect. We need the right to say, I am not going to always connect because it makes you sick. It's like you're saying, I'm always going to eat.  There's more people dying from obesity than from hunger. That's a sad statistic. We can't always connect. That's not who we are. The right to inefficiency. Mystery. There's cheating. Serendipity. Discovery. It may be a romantic idea, but the free will. This is Italy. Comes from Italy, the whole idea. And lastly, the right to refuse augmentation. We should not be forced to connect with augmented reality, virtual reality, or even the smartphone just to have a job. And that is the future. Believe me, you'll see it coming. The augmented reality test if you want a job. You have to put this thing on, you pretend you're at work and then they're going to measure you with what you do. That to me should be illegal. I know it's a good tool, but we're going to use that instead of talking to people because in the bottom line it really is this. There's no such thing as a download for happiness. Trust isn't digital. Relationships can be expressed, a code, and some downloads can make you happy. But this is a human factor. This is not something that machines do. Philosophers have said technology is not what we seek, but how we seek. It's a tool. And a tool can be great or it can be terrible. I could take a hammer if I'm a carpenter and kill somebody. But what is the purpose of our lives which is not technology? Generally speaking, that's usually happiness or self-realization, contentment, whatever you want to call it. But it's not technology itself. So here's an important question when we talk about our future, especially in Italy. Who is mission control? Are you guys actually controlling your future? Where's our future control today? Take a wild guess. In Silicon Valley and increasingly in China, 95% of all technology, servers and infrastructure is at home in California. We are living under the emergency law of the United States of September 11th. That is the law that's binding on the internet. Isn't it time that we think about what we want? And what do we want in Europe? I think generally speaking, I'm just kidding. What do we want in Europe? We want human happiness. And we're humanists in Europe, you could say. Not that Americans aren't humanists, but there's the issue of money that comes in between. And that brings up an important question. What is our future role in Europe? I mean, if we all come together, we're building people. I think this is our future. No matter what difficulty that brings, I'm a great believer in the United States of Europe. This is how we're going to solve problems of cybersecurity, of water, food, energy, together. Because the problem is if we're not together, then it's the Americans and the Chinese who basically decide what is going to happen. And you know what Americans want to do is as much as I like it there, this is about corporate benefit, corporate profit, and progress at all costs. You know what China is deciding, right? Same thing, except that it's a state that gets the money, right? Not the public markets. So I think we could become a global leader in digital ethics in the right use of technology. And the European Commission is doing a great job, the GDPR, right? Great example. Nobody likes it. Is it the right approach? Absolutely. We're going to opt in, not opt out. That is the right approach. It's painful. So that's, I think, a great position for us to have. Let me finally talk about paradigm shift and then it's time to get further here. We have a new economic logic coming up. You can hear that every day. And it's funny. This year is the year where that's all exploding. This is the new economic logic. I call this quadruple bottom line. I'm going to publish the slides later, by the way, on my website. But these are the four things, right? People, planet, purpose, prosperity. What we have today on the stock market is only one thing, right? Prosperity. This is going to kill us. First, with climate change. Second, with technology. In other words, if we don't solve the economic paradigm of how we make a living, we have 40 years left. 50. Until we become machines. And the machines will all live in the northern part of the world, right? So, Robert F. Kennedy said already in the 60s that GDP, GMP, measures everything except what makes life worthwhile. That was in the 60s. Is it enough if we make money? If we progress? If we have jobs? Yeah. Four weeks ago, the U.S. Round Table of CEOs said that it's no longer enough to have shareholder value to make money for your stocks. It is now going to what's called stakeholder value. Again, Mark Benioff, said the idea of how we make money and what we do in the future, right? So, not shareholder return, but stakeholder return. Stakeholders are we. Humans. Public benefit. And this is what technology allows us to do if we have the political world, of course. So we're going to this future. I call this sustainable capitalism. Again, it sounds like a contradiction. We've tried other forms of sustainability like socialism. This is not socialism. This is a wider view of what we can do in the market. Holistic business models benefit to people, circular economy, sustainability and human benefit. And to get to that point, what kind of people do we need? Do we need more scientists and engineers? Well, we always need those, right? We always need for that. But what do we really need? Why is people, philosophers and ethics, artists and people who think larger? We need to train our kids to understand this new paradigm. Everything we know is going to be robotized. The factory is the cars, the accounting. Do we need an automation tax? Do we need a universal basic income? I mean, somehow, we're going to have to give the money back. It does all the things. Where does the money go? Well, right now, the answer is simple. It goes to the companies who make the robots. We need to come back to us, to the wider public, not just to some of us. This balance is the key to our future, especially in Italy, because in Italy you're going to face this scenario of automation even more than other countries for certain reasons. But this is the crucial handshake. On one hand, we want privacy. We want security. We want autonomy. And on the other hand, we want progress. Would it be wrong to choose a side? You can't just say, well, I just want privacy and you don't want anything of this. That's going to be very difficult unless you live in the mountains in New Zealand, maybe. I don't know, but we're going to have to find a compromise. So, here's the principle of the future. You can be pulled into the future and do nothing. That's what we've been doing in Europe for a long time. Our best researchers, they leave our universities, they go to America and they go to China. Now it's time for us to create our own future by action. To say we want technology, but we wanted to a point to actually help us be human. This is the final word in my book. That's the main theme of my book. We have to embrace technology but not become technology. The only way we can solve this is by doing it together. Let me remind you, I'm an optimist. I think that technology has the key for us to solve most problems. But then all we have to do is to solve the problem of technology and that is the decision that we have to make together. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you.


When I look at my own growth and my own learning from a spiritual emotional standpoint, I really feel that EHF has really helped space for us as fellows to really go back to our own narrative history, roots, traditions, from a really, really deep level of ancestry to phakapapai and geology and these things have really risen in our consciousness to help us really understand like who we are, where we come from and it's really so like powerful right because these are conversations we don't necessarily have back at home and with Maori and with some of the leaders like Pakaira, Tamaho, Papiana in the space who have really helped us to unpack we've really begun to understand ourselves and our own history so poignantly and powerfully and it's been such a gift and I think above all as well the friendships and relationships and the whanau and the family we've made here we know that these are bonds and ties that would take us through life. I was reflecting this morning just as we were sitting in the room across so the family actually the honouring, honouring family, honouring those around us and those who are with us and those who are not with us, I think that's been a very powerful journey for both of us in understanding our family history, our roots as Chinese people in Singapore, immigrants to Singapore as well. I think that those roots and that feeling and honouring has been one of the big things that has come up from EHF and then actually honouring the connections that we have here, the family that we have here. That is a big part of that journey as well.


Hello, everyone and welcome. I'm James Milan. I'm here with Adam chapter lane, our town manager for a, an end of the year wrap up a recap of the years we all know, unlike any that we have experienced as a collective body and certainly unlike any that our town and town hall has experienced. So Adam, you know, we're almost done with 2020 and hoping better for 2021 but, you know, as I was thinking about it before, before starting to chat with you I realized there's actually a lot to be said in the area of achievements or accomplishments. This year, despite, and it's a big despite the constraints of the pandemic. I know we at ACMI feel really good about continuing to carry on with our own mission, and I imagine that that's got to be a big hallmark of how you're feeling as you look back on the year as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think there's a lot so many different ways we could talk about 2020. I think a word that comes to mind for me as it's been a real reckoning in many different ways right reckoning around race reckoning around public health reckoning around the economy, and that list could go on and on and those things have been themes globally, nationally and here locally. But as you just suggested, I do think, you know, both town staff as well as volunteers and just town residents have a lot to be proud of, about how much we've accomplished, even in the face of all that and how we've continued to move priorities forward, even under all of these limitations and restrictions that we've rightfully been under for the past 10 months now. Yeah, and obviously there are just a whole bunch of different subject areas that we that we could cover and we will do our best to at least touch on on many of them. I would start in for no particular reason, but start with what you were just saying about reckoning around kind of racial equity and and racial justice. As we as you so correctly put it, that's been a global a national regional and a local issue. And continues to be of course. But for us here in Arlington we came into 2020 with, you know, something that we had been a reckoning that was already underway, but that really accelerated in a lot of ways. Again, pandemic or no pandemic community conversations that needed to happen have, you know, were successfully executed. And those had a lot to do with the wider issues but also local issues around Lieutenant Padrini and and things events that go back two years now. But nonetheless, really we're in a different place it feels to me now than we were in January of 2020 and if you can walk us through that a little bit that would be great. Yeah, absolutely and I, I guess I'd be proud to say that if we go back to January of 2020. It was in January of 2020 that 60 town staff department heads and other supervisory personnel spent the whole day at the sons of Italy, being trained by the National League of Cities on race and equity. January of 2020 was also the month that were actually the second month of work for Jill Harvey, our diversity equity and inclusion coordinator so we started 2020 with a commitment to race and equity, having no idea what the rest of the year would hold at that time. And I think it's that work that set us up to have some of the conversations you referenced over the course of this summer around race and equity. You know, not that we were years deep in that regard, but we weren't starting the conversation after the tragedy of George Floyd, which I think has been a part of our success in having these conversations in the manner in which we've had them in Arlington. Again, both at a staff level and a community level. You went to twine that much broader conversation with the fact that we were dealing with our own very real and concerning issue of Lieutenant Padrini. And I think you know there's, I never I don't think I ever claim there was a solution to concern around Lieutenant Padrini. But I do think working with with the chief, working with outside consultants, race, racial equity consultants. I do think we were able to provide an opportunity for the community to go face to face in this virtual world with Lieutenant Padrini and for him to do the same. And really hear community concerns at a level that I'm not actually even sure he would have been able to hear if we'd been in a room together. I think there's something about the sterility of this virtual environment that I really think makes every person's voice more clear and, you know, easy much easier rise above the din in this virtual world. So, though I'm sure concerns in the community are not gone over Lieutenant Padrini. I'm glad to say that I think we've broadened the conversation in Arlington around issues of race and equity involving policing and beyond policing. I know internally the chief has been a real leader in changing and updating policies that meet this moment. And I know the community is stepping up with town meetings vote to form a study committee to look at a civilian oversight group for policing in Arlington. So, I don't think 2020 ends this year with anything near completion on this work that we need to do around race and equity and its intersection with policing. But I think 2020 saw early on an investment in that work, and it set us up entering 2021 to really start to hopefully make some actual strides in progress on improving issues of equity in Arlington. And as you mentioned, you know, it was perhaps most fine, most the highest volume around this may have attended, you know, Lieutenant Padrini's writings, how those were reacted to and dealt with, etc. But there is so much more to the situation than simply that and also, as you said, to even to the quite the challenges around policing and our and our community, because I remember from the that series of conversations referencing here that we were talking about institutional and systemic racism across a number of institutions, you know, obviously around the country but also here in Arlington from housing to the schools, etc. And my assumption is that you're also feeling that that optimum that note of optimism you were just hitting it felt to me applies to the work that you see going forward in those other areas as well. It does and and I don't mean to suggest that the work is easy, or that solutions will be easily had or found. But I'm optimistic that we're having the conversations that we've got a team of people internally, incredibly invested in this work. We have a core group of people that are representative of multiple departments. We have Jill as our director. We have a lens of Michelle representing her firm powerful pathways. We have our partnership with the National League of Cities race equity and leadership division. And, and I think we're ready and we're poised to really tackle this work. And again, I am not so naive is to think that the changes we will eventually have to try to propose and implement will be easy, because these are hard conversations to have and they'll continue to be hard to have. But I am optimistic that we're having them. And I think, frankly, I know we're far, far ahead of many communities not only in the state, but nationally. And the fact that we're as a community ready to have these conversations I think puts us in a great position to start the year. I know from my own feelings of discomfort, frankly, constructive discomfort that were, you know, that I had as a participant or spectator on those conversations. You know, it was a good illustration of that fact, the fact that we are pushing into necessarily uncomfortable territory and we've got a long way to go. We talked last week about the teachings that are going to be happening in January, February and in March. And certainly that is the next step to hold up as another example of what you're talking about. Moving moving to other to another topic area though. I know that constantly one of the ways in which we live in the more the grimmer parts of our conversations. And I think about these, this last year has been around the progress that we have made as a continued to make as a community as a green community as a community interested in, you know, moving forward into the future in a, in a, an environmentally responsible way for ourselves and with regard to the region. Certainly again, roadblocks could have been thrown up against the against progress in that area and yet it seems like a number of things were pushed forward through the course of 2020. Absolutely. And I think, I think there'll be a theme maybe and what we talk about now for the next few minutes of like everybody in mid March through the end of March and even a little bit into the beginning of April, much was put on pause. And we were all getting our footing and figuring out how to exist in this new world we weren't exactly sure how long, and if it would last. But I think we've been so lucky to have a team in Arlington that quickly adapted and got many efforts back up and running virtually very quickly. And the basics like select board meetings school committee meetings and other board committees and commissions, all the way towards some of our more in depth planning efforts and finding ways to engage not only with the committees that were steering those planning efforts, but engaging with the community about those planning efforts. And I'd be remiss to not mention that a huge part of all those efforts has been ACMI. And so we were doing our technical end of figuring out the laws and statutes and how to get zoom up and running. But if not for ACMI being, I mean, literally a partner from step one to make sure that we were broadcasting live on ACMI streaming on ACMI dot TV, and making sure we're putting it on Facebook live. Really, ACMI has been sort of a quiet, amazing critical indispensable partner in all of this which has been, you know, so gratifying to have a great team ACMI working with us on this. But to your immediate question, one of those efforts. We can handle that form digression. Thank you. No, but before I let you continue, I did want to say that thank you for pointing that out and it is true and hopefully more and more people in the community have come to recognize that with us stuck in our houses in the way that we are. And all the changes that needed to be made to how business is done, so to speak, that a, a, it open, it was an opportunity for a community, you know, community centered service operation like ACMI to step forward and provide what it uniquely can so we're, on our end, we really are proud to have, you know, come through as best we can. But also, you know, we're appreciative of the fact that more and more folks recognize, hey, community television community media has a an invaluable role to play in quality of life around here and, you know, that's the kind of thing that can be taken for granted so absolutely, absolutely. Anyway, now I digressed I know that's a well well deserved praise and digression about ACMI's role. So in regards to being a green community and focusing on some of these more climate focused issues. The start of this year we were planning and working on two really big planning efforts focused around sustainability and issues of energy and climate. The first being the, excuse me the creation of a net zero energy plan. The second being the creation of a sustainable transportation plan separate plans working together to achieve mutually beneficial goals. And both huge undertakings both with big representative committees, staring their work, and certainly the need to engage the community, and both picked right back up in the spring. And now both are pretty close to reporting their final plan to the community, so that we can begin working to make recommendations to town meeting for the implementations of both plans. So I think I think that's a huge credit to the staff in the planning department, who have been working on that under Jenny rates leadership on the clean energy plan can prove it our energy manager has been absolutely phenomenal on the sustainable transportation plan which we're calling connect Arlington, Dan Amstutz the senior transportation planners work has been has been tremendous and I don't mean to leave anybody out there just the key, the key staff working on those two plans. And I think you know what might end up happening is that you know when we start to make some of these proposals to town meeting to adopt various bylaws or changes or to fund certain projects that might be recommended by these plans that I think that probably some folks are going to be I think that we've been able to make so much progress this year on these important issues, but we have. And I think all those involved should be proud that again, even in the face of all these challenges we've been able to accomplish so much, and get these two important plans right on the precipice of completion. How pivot pivoting into yet yet another direction. I'm wondering how you are. And again, sorry out there there's no particular organization to the way that I'm moving through this. Some might find that I should have, you know, we should have addressed this first and foremost because coven 19 has defined so much of our experience for so long now in this year. But I'm wondering, again, what your perspective is as you look back. In terms of just how, how things have gone well but also what lessons were you've learned around dealing specifically with the pandemic in our community. Over these last nine months or so. And, yeah, let's let's talk about how the pandemic itself has played out here in Arlington going back to March and perhaps before. So I think the first thing I would say is, you know, sitting here today, looking back over the past 10 months or nine months. I feel so grateful to be working as part of what is truly a brilliant, passionate and dedicated team of professionals in Arlington, the public health team. I knew they were good, but their level of knowledge and professionalism and literally I mean 24 seven for the past nine months has just been. It's been astounding. They're, they're smart. They're resilient. They care so much about Arlington and the people of Arlington. That has just been an amazing part of this pandemic. The team around them police fire public works planning recreation, the deputy town manager working on finance the HR director working on all the different nuts and bolts that have kept everything together. And beyond that the school superintendent. It's really just been the public information officer I can name every employee. It's really been so gratifying to see such an incredible team, operate day in and day out as as you know we meet every day at noon to check in see where things stand and plan looking forward. So, you know, I, I always enjoyed working with these people, but looking back it's really been an incredibly gratifying experience to work with all of them and see how excellent they've been. I would say that number one and I think Arlington, if you look comparatively, we're very fortunate that we had already invested in public health at a rate probably significantly higher than most communities had. We had with our Health and Human Services Department, Christine Bargeron leading that effort Natasha Wade and as our public health director below that several health health compliance officers working under her direction. We had pretty solid infrastructure in place. I think this pandemic has had has made us add even more to that infrastructure, but I know that many communities. It's one health director. And that's it. The community is not that much smaller than us. So we've been lucky that we started with that infrastructure. I think looking forward we're going to have to consider. If even our already robust infrastructure at the start of this is enough, given the possibility of having to face down issues of issues like this in the future. So I think that's, that's both a reflection on being fortunate to start from a position of strength and then we have to look at going forward. And as a result of lessons learned, you know, I think at this point that I think there's going to be more lessons we learned when we study this, and we plan to study this. One of the co chairs of Envision Arlington had reached out to me to suggest we put together a committee to debrief how the past nine months have gone, and what we should think about going forward and we will be forming such a committee I think it's a really good idea. In the moment, I would say, I think myself and others need to focus on trying to figure out what some of our perhaps known unknowns are. So that would better prepared as a community. I mean, I've obviously I was familiar with the word pandemic and epidemic and, and so on and so forth and I knew what the World Health Organization was but I can't honestly tell you that I, I ever thought as a local government leader that we would be facing and you know I don't, I think part of my job is to not catastrophize and to interremain calm and not over expend resources unnecessarily, but I think as much as public health was ready for this. I'm not sure entirely as an organization we were ready for exactly what we've been facing. I think at some point when we have time someday sitting down and looking at what other potential, you know, maybe worst case scenarios are out there that we need to be better prepared for. I think the other thing I'd add is, if we could go back in time. I think our, our networks in the community of supporting those most vulnerable have performed very well. But I think sort of refreshing and talking more about our resource mapping, so that we know from a town point of view, exactly how well we're doing taking those vulnerable from a food insecurity point of view from health point of view from an isolation mental health point of view. I think making sure those networks are built out in the manner in which they should be built out would be an important lesson learned. And I think, I think we've done a very good job communicating throughout this pandemic, but I've definitely learned, you cannot communicate too much. In general life, I, you know, in my job I find there's times where I feel like I said that already I already told the public about that are we issued a release. Through this pandemic. That's been on on steroids right where you feel like you've communicated, either through interviews with you James or press release or a town notice or an Arlington alert, but you just can't communicate too much there's people are overwhelmed with all the information they're receiving from you know whether it's Twitter or Facebook or TV or, you know, however they get their information that you just yet you have to I think inundate people with information you want them to see to make sure that it gets in front of them. So I would say sitting here today that's another lesson I've learned that you can't over communicate. So what I hear you saying is that, you know, whether it comes to communication to taking care of vulnerable populations to just having the infrastructure in place for a proper public health response to a crisis like this, that you feel like well, and that we were well positioned to begin with, and that we have, you know, that that folks have performed really well. But in all of those areas you also recognize that there's possible to do even better. And that seems like a prudent approach coming out. Well, let's hope we're coming out. Yeah, certainly at least coming out of this year. The topic area I wanted to ask you about, though you may have something else you also would like to mention is the fact that this was a very active, and unusually so, from our ACMI perspective, active year politically here in town so in other words we had elections that contested beyond what is often the case for local offices. There were a lot of them there were a lot of candidates there and all of this happened within the pandemic as well. Then there were town meetings that had to happen in various, you know, unusual ways and accommodations to the circumstances. So much was was done on that level as well. And so I just wanted to touch on that and get your reaction. Yeah, I mean so I definitely have observed the same. I guess what I see is, I've always felt like local government is where you can have the most impact. It's why it's my chosen career path. But I think given all of these global issues that have now come home to roost, whether it's race, whether it's climate, whether it's this pandemic, whether it's income inequality, whatever it might be. They've all sort of started hitting us at the same time, you know, earlier this year late 2019. They're there right I'm not they're not new, but they've the volume has been turned up on all of them. And with you know really the total dysfunction of the federal government. The, I would say the inaccessibility of state government to some degree I don't want to say it's dysfunctional but it's hard to access local government is a place where you can both access it very easily, and you can make very positive in your community feel local government. And I what I hope is that more people have seen that because of the volume being turned up on all these issues and decided that getting involved in local government is a way they can make a positive impact, and potentially make progress on these areas that need to be addressed. So I think I hope that's what it is. And that's definitely my sense of what it is, even if people are running from viewpoints that are different from their opponents or from even even some of our current policy proposals. They're all focused on trying to make the community a better place. And if that's the goal, I'm, you know, I think that the paid staff are happy to work with anybody that's focused on improving. And it was very struck throughout all of what we just alluded to in terms of local governance and again the, the, the elections and the meetings that needed to happen, etc. Very struck by people's patience for parents and just kind of understanding and rolling with the punches as, you know, you, you called town meeting I remember you know, fixing the plane while it's in the air in a sense and that applied to an awful lot of, of how things had to happen over these last number of months and it did feel from my vantage point, like people just had the right attitude about that and understood that things were going to be messy perhaps labor or time intensive in a way that they weren't, you know, it wouldn't be under normal circumstances. And again, they're just seemed like there was an overall can do attitude, which was reassuring as well as refreshing and impressive given again the kind of the inexorability of what we woke up to every day in terms of the constraints. All right, our time is getting short Adam let me ask you just to spend a few minutes looking forward. And also invite you in case we have not hit on anything of, you know, of importance that I invite you to bring that up but also just give us a sense of how you see things, what you're looking forward to. Let's put it that way in 2021. So, in terms of the anything that hasn't been brought up I would say there is a lot of budget work to be done going forward, figuring out what revenues look like in the next fiscal year both from a state level point of view and a local level point of those are going to be some hard discussions that we have to work through over the next six to eight months. And maybe beyond you know I don't know that any of us really know what the new world is going to look like so I think I would, I would only add that as sort of a public service announcement that even as we were hopefully starting to come out of this pandemic as vaccines roll out. There's still revenue issues and then potential service level issues that we have to work through as a community. So what I what I look forward to is hopefully a combination of being able to come out of this of this pandemic world, you know might take another five, six months before enough of us are vaccinated but, but once we get there. I hope that we will all be ready to be hitting our stride on all of this important work that we've talked about over the past half hour. So I have, I have a lot of hope that we've, we've maintained enough resilience and enough progress, such that, you know, we've been able to achieve what we've achieved over the past nine months through these boxes that we're talking through. I'm excited about what we'll be able to achieve and we can all get back into a room together. So, you know, from your lips, let's say, you know, to God's ears, let us hope that that is that that is indeed the case. For your own stewardship, which has not been without, you know, your share of criticism this year, which I think we need to acknowledge as as is the case for leaders were in any situation. For your stewardship, let me just commend you and say this is, you know, we always appreciate the time you take with us, of course, and therefore, or and thereby with the Arlington community. But we know that you are just like the health department and many other and the planning department and many other aspects of our local government you're working. We call 24 seven as well in a lot of ways and it's been a long, long year for all of us. But let's recognize that, you know, you it's the person at the, at the head of the pyramid here. It's been, it's been quite a taxing year we appreciate the fact that you have managed to get to this point. With what we could as far as we can tell a sense of humor intact, certainly a sense of optimism and energy moving forward into 2021, which we all of course, hope is going to be. I mean, the bar is very low. So we can feel quite good that it's going to be better than than this year just passed. And let's hope that when we get to talk 12 months from now that it is an entirely different flavor and tone to the conversation because we will have much to celebrate. I hope I hope you're right and optimistic that you are. That is my hope as well. Alright, I have been speaking with our town manager Adam chapter lane about this year gone by, which none of us will ever forget Adam thanks a lot. We've got another meeting coming up so we'll let you get to it. I'm James Milan this has been talk of the town a recap of the year with our town manager. Thanks for joining us.


What's up everybody? I'm Amivore Abbot. We're here on Torque Drift for a little mobile Monday, so we're gonna get sideways on Torque Drift So make sure you guys follow me on Instagram and Twitter, all of which are found in the description box below. Let's get to it! So we are still continuing the 4GT thing. It has expired on us. So unfortunately, we cannot continue it unless we were to pay 50 to unlock it for more. Sadly, we did not get it all the way up. We got to basically halfway done. We were in the chase challenge version of it where we had to get a 230 meter door dive, I believe.  But today we're gonna go back to a little bit of the basics because we do have a lower horsepower Mustang again that we're going to be ripping. So we're gonna try and complete this challenge right here. 671 horsepower on the Mustang. So let's see what we can do with this car. And see if we can't complete this daily challenge right away. I'm gonna kick that up in the third. There we go. So I did pick up another, basically, stock Mustang, but it now has an RB26 in it. And, you know, import suspension, stuff like that because I was like trying to complete that chase challenge of 230 millimeter door dive that had to be in a Ford. So we did pick up the Ford just to do that. But unfortunately, we weren't able to do yet. We're gonna have to unlock that again, but we are just gonna continue to drive the Ford because I've been having a lot of fun with it. But we were not able to complete the chase challenge with it right there because I don't know if that car has enough power. Or I was getting too much grip. Probably got to change up tires. So we'll bring out the M4 real quick. Complete this daily challenge, hopefully, and move on for more tandems. Here on the mobile platform. Oh, keep forgetting that he throws so much angle through this part. I've done this daily challenge before and he just throws massive amounts of angle and you have to be super ready for it. Otherwise, it does not work. George Kaye throwing serious sideways in entry. And I don't think I was able to complete it with that one either. So we're gonna forget this challenge for right now. And we're gonna go take on... We need some cash though. We're gonna go take on some random tandems in the Mustang. Gonna back out to the lobby here. See where we can go and see what kind of random tans we can get.  We have Cali Banks Irwindale. You know, we can hit Cali Banks up and see if we can't maybe do some do some stuff in the Stang. Maybe we'll pull out the M4 also, but we've been having a lot of fun. You know what? Let's change tires. Can I change tires? Let's put some less grippy tires on. Tires that we have. A lot of them with, I went too far back, rip. We have plenty of those tires. Over a thousand of those tires in my inventory. So we can smoke them as much as we want on this car. It's only got 671 horsepower. But it's just... It handles pretty well. So against 982 horsepower. S15. So in second. This car runs pretty well in third gear with the way it's set up right now. I don't even think I have full lock nowhere near close to the wall where I want it to be. Still an angle, so that's a plus. I believe I have to add, because we just added the angle kit to this, but I don't think I actually added the angle onto it in the setting. But not a horrible run. Not the best run either. But gotta give me a little bit of credit. It's almost a stock Mustang, but we did get walked on by that. So let's see if we can't get a better chase.  This would have been the track to get a 230 door dive for sure. But unfortunately, I don't have that challenge stuff open. So we're just doing this for fun. Little bit of door love, a little bit of bumping. Not totally terrible. I think we should go adjust our angle. We did lose that. So we're gonna go adjust our angle of the Mustang suspension wise. Maybe change the grip a little bit with tire pressure, since we haven't really tuned this car much at all. Because remember, I did have a Mustang before, but it was never handling how I really wanted it to. So now we're gonna go to the front. So we're gonna go to the angle. See what we got. Yeah, we gotta go all the way up to there. And then I want to do suspension. Oh, I don't have much tuneability for suspension, but we'll leave that. Check out tire pressures. What do we got? We're gonna go down to 20 in the front. And then in the back, we're gonna go to 14 in the rear. Alright. So now let's go take us back to Cali Banks and see what we can do with it now. It's a little bit of adjustment on suspension and stuff like that. Cali Bank, one of my favorite tracks. Now, you know, it is also my worst track as well. It could be good and bad. It all depends on the day. So the wall likes me or the wall does not. Who are we gonna go against right now? Let's go find somebody. Did find somebody. Oh my. FD. Lexus. A pill challenge, I believe, but we're gonna give it a go. Gonna put our best foot forward on this one. Kick it in. Oh, clutch kick that way too much. But unfortunately, that is not a very good lead. That's very hard to chase.  Clutch kick too hard going off of that bank and kind of threw me way off. So definitely way lower. We may have to bring out the M4 just to get a solid lead so that we can actually do some good tandems in here. But apparently, yeah, right there was too much of a clutch kick. And there was just all kinds of all over the place. Did he not finish? He did. 97. Yeah, we're gonna have to bring out the M4, I feel, because, well, I clicked. Was it gonna dequeue me? Sad. Maybe not. All right, you're trying to get a chase, but we're gonna bring out the M4 next just because, well, I want to get some good leads and some good chases here for today's episode. Way too wide. The Mustang has a little bit to go to be super smooth and super competitive. So we got a little bit of work to do on it. Oh my goodness. Slowly re-growing my car collection of built cars because the M4 is probably kind of where exactly where I want it. Yeah, I know we lost that one. All right, let's see if we can't take home a win in the M4, though. M4. 1000 horsepower. Let's go. See what we can do in it. Hopefully we can actually get a good solid lead. Maybe we're on that wall, scrape a wing. If we can find somebody that we go, we did. 370Z. BMW is... Okay. Well, that's ironic that I'm driving a BMW. This man doesn't like BMWs. Well, we're about to find out if the BMW wins. Hopefully we can. In the fourth. Take it in. Right there on the wall. Other there, there we go. Yeah, much more stable of a car than that Mustang. Oh, too much of a clutch kick. Ah, we came out of that. I clutch kicked too much, so I was gonna go to the wall and I kind of bailed. But we still managed to get a 90, oh, 100,000 point run. 211. So hopefully we can chase just as close, if not closer, than him and come home with a win. So I would like to win against this guy. Because I'm in a BMW. It would be the icing on the cake, so. Trying to chase down. Fourth. Take it in. Retire on the bank. He is gonna run on my own line here, but sometimes it's better just to run your own line. We're gonna cut that angle a little bit. Trying to catch up to him. Could have been a lot closer in that inner bank section, but I think may have been able to take the win. Just a barely of a loss. Let's see if he'll let me go one more time with him. Probably not. Probably was like, nope, he bailed.  One more time. He left. He said, I don't want to do another try because he probably was gonna lose. So now we're going against a nasty GTR at 1,340 horsepower. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Sometimes the weight-weighting game is the most annoying part about all of this. So I think this might be the last run here for today's episode. More torque drift coming this week on the PC version as well as on the mobile version. Drift 21 as well coming to the channel and Assetto Corsa as always. Maybe some other stuff coming onto the channel this week as well. Oh, no. That is not what I want to do. How did we... I'm super confused how we did not lose our drift points. I'm going to take that as a good grace on the part of that not the cleanest of leads, but a lead nonetheless. We might be able to take a W here before we end the episode off. I still don't know how we didn't lose points on there. So I must have hit the wall at the right points to where it didn't recognize them as a wall hit.  It's going to look very awkward though. Oh my, he entered in there way slower than I thought he was going to. I'm going to have to try it. Oh my. Yep, all kinds of wrecking happening right now. All of us, both of us had a pretty bad run. So maybe we'll take the win. Make sure you guys follow me on Instagram and Twitter. All of which are found in the description box below. We did take the win. So that'll do it here for me today. And as always, I thank you guys for watching. I'm EvilRabbit. I'll see you guys on the track.


The long-awaited Samsung Galaxy S8 has arrived at Appalachian Wireless. Get yours for the introductory price of just $149.99 with a two-year service agreement, better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless, an East Kentucky network company. Giving thanks. We're very proud of you guys, and we appreciate all that you do. Students at Pikeville High School took time Friday to thank area first responders for their work during last weekend's White Nationalist Rally in downtown Pikeville. Police and fire officials were presented with posters signed by students and were given bags full of sweet and some healthy treats. We had a school-wide function, and everybody turned stuff in from seventh grade to teachers. Even members in the community brought stuff in, and the kids spent about an hour yesterday going through trying to sort it, making sure everybody had some of everything in their treat bags. And then we've spent the whole week signing our posters, and they were being passed around to classes, set up at lunch, and different things like that. Hundreds of people mostly from outside the area took part in last weekend's rally and counter demonstration, and saved for some yelling and screaming. The event was peaceful. Pikeville High School students took notice, and they gave thanks to those who kept the peace. Saturday was different for us all, you know, the first time I'd been involved in anything like that, but you know, considering everything, everything went great. With the weeks of preparation, we were able to look and work together. Without the community's support in it, it's not showing up, making a crowd bigger, more hostile, it would have been a popular show, at least different, so that's been the top in their groups ever since they left here. And Saturday, everything that happened Saturday, and then everything that could have happened Saturday did not happen. And so students began to text me and say, you know what, today was amazing. We need to honor everyone that was out there, keeping our town safe and keeping us safe. And I think they finally realized what kind of job law enforcement does sometimes, because a lot of times they just see them maybe giving a ticket or directing our traffic here at school, but they were able to see them in action and see what they get to do. They wanted to honor them so much, and that's how this all started. From Pikeville High School, Chris Anderson, EKB News.