This is a lot bigger crowd than I was expecting, so thank you all so much for coming. So my name's Heather Burns, and this morning I'm going to talk about making your voice heard, how to win friends, and influence policy. And this talk actually is Morton's fault. Morton, where are you? Blame him if you don't like this, because this talk all started with a question that he asked Matt Mullenweg at the State of the Word address in December last year. And the question he asked was considering it's 27% of the web, WordPress is in a position of influence over how the web works and how the web evolves. It begs the question if WordPress as an entity should now play an active role in the bodies which govern the web. And Matt gave a very diplomatic answer where he said, you know, it's not a matter for automatic or WordPress to get involved in, but if members of the WordPress community as individuals wish to get involved with the processes of internet governance, please go right ahead, it would be great to have representation there, because these entities do have a huge influence. And Matt went on to say as an example of getting involved in internet governance, that he had a friend who actually lobbied for the dumpling emoji to be in the Unicode. No disrespect intended to Matt or Matt's friend, but as an industry, as professionals, we have some slightly bigger issues to deal with than the dumpling emojis in the Unicode. In fact, what we're facing right now is the shaking of the foundations of the open web. Here's what we've all had to come to terms with just since we last gathered together last year in Vienna. For those of us from the UK, Brexit is spelling the end of the freedom of movement for tech talent, whether that's the right to go work in a European country, or even to just hop on a plane to a conference like this. It's going to spell the withdrawal from the European data protection system, which could end international data flows overnight. It means a withdrawal from the digital single market legislative framework, which is the strategy that aims to create one single trading block for all of Europe, trading on one set of digital rules for everything ranging from vat to copyright. And Brexit is being done against a current of authoritarian, nationalist, and occasionally openly racist tendencies, which have included a push towards mass surveillance and backdoors in hardware. That's those of us in the UK. For those of you from the US, under the Trump administration, we've seen the threat to the end of freedom of movement, as we saw it so horrifically in February with the Muslim travel ban. We have seen the stripping away from what little already weak privacy and data protection legislation there is in the United States. We're seeing the threats to the end of net neutrality, which is the requirement for all internet service providers to treat all data the same, and to not prioritize some data over others, whether that's a Netflix stream or WordPress.com blogs. And all of that is being done against a push towards stripping away policies and regulation in favor of turning these things over to corporation and the markets, which in other words means letting Facebook decide what privacy law should look like. And all of that is being done against a current of authoritarian, nationalist, and openly racist tendencies, which include a push for mass surveillance and backdoors in hardware. There will come a time when we will all sit back and laugh about this over dumplings. But for now, we have work to do. And if you still think politics and these issues are far away things that don't really impact you, those of us in the UK have also had to wrap our heads around this. On the 26th of March this year, the UK Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, publicly linked WordPress.com to the spread of terrorism. This was part of a major media campaign on the Sunday, largely done through the right-wing press. And one of those media mentions was this apps that let extremists plot in secret. Terrorists are using encrypted apps to swap messages in which they plot atrocities, atrocities, and groom youngsters in secret. And these apps include WhatsApp, just pasted, Telegram, and WordPress. Another article in this media push said, why is WordPress linked to terror? It's low cost, ease of use, and anonymous interface mean terror groups are as likely as the average website owner to create their sites using WordPress.com for propaganda, radicalization, or publicity. It is possible to secure an encrypted WordPress site server so content cannot be hacked, and to share an encryption key with others so content can be shared privately. That same article took it a bit further and asked this question, who runs it? The WordPress project was co-founded in 2003 by two developers, American Map Mullenweg and Britain Mike Little. Mullenweg's company, Automatic, owns WordPress.com, which acts as a host for the majority of smaller WordPress sites. Automatic was valued at over a billion in its latest funding round. Do you understand what they're doing there? They're implying that Automatic and Mike and Matt personally are knowingly financially profiting from deliberately spreading terrorism. If you want to radicalize me, why don't you accuse one of my personal friends of spreading terrorism? The WordPress project is all about democratizing publishing, giving everyone a voice, and it is a shame that a tiny, tiny fraction of those people chose to disrespect that. But that has made WordPress a target. So in a world that's got all these very scary and confusing political currents, which are closing on us very fast, it's worth remembering something else that Matt said, which was at the word camp Europe last year, which is that we are the 1%. Those of us who gather together at word camp Europe are the 1% of the 27%. And as I've said before, I feel that you are people of enormous power and influence over how the web works. So at a time when our very platform is under threat, much less the open web that we work on, what better way to give our platform the respect and authority it deserves than for you to find your voices in the processes of internet governance. So today we're going to discuss how the web is governed, how you can have a voice in those processes, how to work with the system, how to create a position of influence, and as I've already touched on why this matters now more than ever. And let's be clear, this is not about what automatic should do or WordPress should do. I don't work for them and it's not my job to tell them how to do theirs. This is about you. This is about individuals as talented professionals, as representatives of your own communities, finding your voices and participating in the processes of internet governance. But before we can get into the mechanics of that, we've got to talk a little bit about why we don't do that. And if you're in Petia's talk this morning at the end, this question was even asked right then. Why don't we get involved in these processes? Why don't we get involved in the politics of the web? Here's a quote I really like, it's from the founder of Pinboard whose name I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce. But he said, tech workers trust their founders, find labor organizing distasteful, and are happy to leave larger ethical questions to management. A workplace free of politics is just one of the many perks the tech industry offers its pampered employees. So our one chance to enact meaningful change is slipping away. And I really like this quote because it's so representative of my experience in writing and speaking with people about the politics of the web. People in this industry and in this community don't want to talk about politics.  Politics is even approached from a position of contempt and spite by some of the more libertarian corners of our community. Politics is something we shouldn't even have to worry about because we work in cyberspace, right? It's this imaginary place where laws and borders and policies don't apply. But to believe so is to do so from a position of privilege. And that is not a privilege that the users of your services and products have. When people do tend to overcome their biases against getting involved in internet governance, all too often they go the wrong way. They go for something called digital solutionism.  We can fix this with an app. But the problem to quote a colleague of mine in Scotland is that if you apply digital to a thing that is broken, you will have a broken digital thing. The problem is our perspective. The problem is our attitudes towards engagement and governance. The way to fix it is through digital responsibility. We can fix this by showing up. Showing up emotionally, showing up mentally, and yes, showing up physically. I know you know how to build websites and apps. Today I want to teach you about digital responsibility, which is about building relationships. So how do these processes of internet governance actually work? Here's a quick whistle stop tour of how these things happen. How is the web governed? Well, it's governed in three ways, and you're actually familiar with all of them, even if you don't realize it. The first is through web standards. These are projects like open data, open source file formats. Accessibility is probably the example you can all think of where these expert groups come together to plan these standards, and yes, dumpling emojis in the Unicode. Beyond web standards, you then go into national and regional policy, which are the rules of the road in the countries where you work concerning things like privacy and copyright and accessibility law, e-commerce law, data protection, things like that. And beyond national and regional policy, you have what we would call global internet regulation. Things like net neutrality laws, intermediary liability laws, which is the so important concept that says a platform, whether it's Facebook or WordPress.com, is not legally liable for the content that its members post to it. And the laws that enable international data floats between countries, between systems are also a function of internet regulation. If you were to take the view that the internet is a series of tubes, web standards determine the ingredients of what goes in the tubes, national and regional policy determines what's in the tubes, and internet regulation determines the tubes. It's as simple as that. So once you have those three governance processes in place, how is the web actually regulated? Again, there's three ways. The first is through industry self-regulation, and this is characterized by the American approach to privacy, which is by state or sector or industry. The ad choices icon you see in banner ads, which is an industry self-regulatory program of privacy standards, is an example of that. Reporting abuse on social media is also a form of industry self-regulation, and that's in the news so much lately where you see Facebook agrees to crack down on content, Twitter agrees to crack down on content, but they're not doing so because a law is making them.  So when issues go beyond industry self-regulation, we then go into government regulation, and this is characterized by things like the European approach to privacy, where we have one overarching data protection and privacy regime, unlike the United States, the net neutrality protections we enjoy in Europe, and also things like defamation law, where you have issues that go beyond what Facebook decides they can and cannot moderate. The last way it's regulated is by co-regulation, which is when a government regulation references an industry defined standard, and again the most common example of this is accessibility. So when a government puts in a law saying all public websites in our country must be accessible to the WCHV 2.0 or double A standard, that's an example of co-regulation, really as simple as it is, how the web is governed and how the web is regulated, and all of these processes are open to any of you at any time should you choose to participate. So how does that process actually work? How is the regulation made? Whether it's defamation law, data protection, accessibility, cookies, any of the things you're familiar with in your work. This is any law really, it's not just digital. Once a group or a government feels an idea is worth legislating, they take about a year to run it through the proposal phase, where they work through, do we really need this law? And that's done in cooperation with groups, they're not doing this behind closed doors. It then goes into the draft phase which can take anything up to five years, as we've seen with the data protection overhaul, where they determine through consultations and constructive involvement with the people that the laws are going to impact what the law should look like and how it should work. Then it goes onto the books into what I call the legislative phase, which can last anything from one to 20 years. And while it is the law of the land, that law is constantly monitored through industry groups, through representative bodies, through people like you. In addition to governments complying and implementing and enforcing the law as required. When the law is no longer fit for purpose, we go into the review phase where everyone goes back and takes a look at it and says, do we need to renew this, do we need to refit it, or do we need to scrap it all together? And then we go right back to the start. And again, you can get involved in any of these processes at any time. The bottom line is that governance and regulation shape the rules which define our craft. And I'm going to be a little bit provocative here, but this needs to be said to our industry. Failing to participate in the shaping of our craft is unprofessional. It is literally unprofessional because being a professional means contributing back to your industry. It means looking out for your fellow professionals. It means having a say in the way your industry and your work fits within the world. And turning your nose up at the processes of governance because you don't like law and you don't like these policies is irresponsible. No other industry behaves that way. It's time for us to get a grip. So now that you know how the web is governed, how it's regulated, and how our regulations made, how do you actually get involved? What do you need to do? Let's run through how to engage constructively in the processes of internet governance. First thing you have to do is you have to work through groups and industry bodies. Organize groups, issue groups. You can approach the government as an individual, but unless your name is Tim Berners-Lee, your opinion is not going to count for much. This image is something somebody emailed me, and it's a full page advert from an English newspaper placed by the National Farmers Union, which is the agriculture body. And it says, with Article 50 triggered, our dedicated professionals have got you covered, and it's showcasing the seven policy professionals their body has hired just to work on Brexit. These people will do nothing but represent the agriculture and farmers industry, making sure they get the best possible deal throughout the Brexit process. Who is speaking up for you in this process? There's no one. There's no one because it's your job to make that organized group or an industry body. And yes, that means you have to organize.   It's all well and good to turn your nose up at big business work, play the victim. But you literally don't even show up to processes that govern your own craft, and then you complain about the results. You have to organize into a functional working group or industry body. And once you have the authoritative voice of your members, you have to aspire to consultative status. This means the process you go through with the government where they acknowledge you as an authority and a representative group of your members. And this picture is of two women you owe a lot of gratitude to. These were two women who were leading the EU VAT action campaign, which worked so tirelessly to get that moss fixed and sorted for you. And this picture is then heading off to Brussels to meet with the European finance ministers because they got their pressure group recognized with consultative status. That meant that any changes that the EU wanted to make to VAT moss had to go by their members. They could do it working from their kitchen tables in six months, so can you. You have to be patient. Internet governance is slow and long and tedious. Any idea you can't, you have. You're looking at at least a two-year lead-in. There's going to be months where you don't hear a word out of anybody and no one in these governance processes you're going to be working with has slack. You're going to have to deal with it because that's how it works. And you have to engage with politicians in person. No mass email your MP campaigns, no automated things.  And here's how easy it is. We have no audio. What that video was showing was my MP standing up in the House of Commons and asking a question to the minister for trade that I asked her about how Brexit is going to impact our industry. And she started off by saying, Mr. Speaker, my constituent Heather Burns works in the digital economy and is deeply concerned about these issues. She's actually not my MP anymore as of last Thursday night. But how did that come about? It came about because every couple of weeks she would do a surgery at my local library. Five minutes walk from my house. So one day I walked down the street, shook her hand, sat down with her, explained how Brexit is affecting my industry and worked with her team and she took that question directly into the House of Commons. And it was wonderful and it was ridiculous. It's ridiculous because I'm one woman working in a public library. Imagine how much more powerful and effective that question would have been if it had been the voice of dozens or hundreds of thousands rather than one person working on her own. So that's how to engage constructively in Internet governance. Here's what I don't want you to do and I'm sorry if I get a little ranty here.  Participating in Internet governance isn't about Facebook likes. It's not about counting your blog posts. It's not about, as I said, using an automated email your politician service because one of the things my MP said to me was those things literally go in the trash, a spam because that's what they are. It's also not petitions. I hate petitions with a passion. 95% of the petitions you will sign are actually list building exercises from organizations that want to build a list so they can come back later and ask you for money so they can send out more useless petitions. This is going to be hard work. You can't automate it and don't pat yourself on the back because you shared something or signed something. You've got to get off your soapbox. Politicians want facts and figures and proof. If you're going to tell them that something is affecting your work, whether it's a copyright law, whether it's Brexit, whether it's VATMOS, whether it's cookies, give them numbers and show your work, how did you come by those numbers? How many people is this going to impact? Give them a financial figure. They're not interested in your opinions. They're not interested in your ranting. They're not interested in you riding a high horse. But if you come to them with good data, they will be falling over themselves to work with you. Don't make a fool of yourself.  One of them was about this man, again, Tim Berners-Lee. There was a digital rights group that didn't like one of the recommendations he was going to make on a W3C working group that he sat on. So their way of liaising with him on that was to run a public campaign to bombard his office with calls and letters and faxes. On what planet is personally harassing the founder of the worldwide web and his office staff an effective form of political engagement?  You've got to fight your own battles. If you get involved in internet governance, people are going to try to grab you for all sorts of things. A good example of that is to go to the VATMOS campaign and the EU VAT Action Group. They got a lot of media help and publicity from certain right-wing newspapers in the UK which were really keen to exploit the VATMOS issue as leverage for why we need to leave the European Union. And then when the EU Commission agreed to put in all these changes to the VATMOS system, the campaign approached those papers which had given them publicity before. They didn't want to know. They didn't touch it, wouldn't run the story. Because they weren't interested in anything that portrayed the EU in a good light and in fact they were never interested in the VATMOS issue or the people that affected it at all. They were just looking for evidence about Brexit. You don't have to attend every argument to which you're invited. Respect to your opponents. I went on a podcast to talk about what I do and it was pre-recorded. And when it was published I saw that the interviewer had titled the podcast episode, The Law is an Ass. When I saw that my heart just sank and I felt like I'd completely wasted my time because that's not what I'm about. How do you expect to gain a position of influence for you as a digital professional? When your position from the outset is that you are asses. These are people who show up to work every day just like you and me. They're doing their jobs just like you and me. And for you to disrespect them personally and their work is going to undermine any bit of professionalism that you might have. Hate the game, not the player. So now that you know how the web is governed, how the web is regulated, how regulations are made, what to do and what not to do, where do you start? Well this is a quote from a member of the Scottish parliament, Andy Whiteman, who a group bomb involved with has been working with. And he said, you create your own legitimacy. What he meant by that is your standing in the political sphere will not be conferred on you. You've got to work for it. You don't get it by reputation, you don't get it by the amount of time you've been around. If you want success, work for it and build on it. What he said to us is, as a politician, he deals with two sorts of advocacy groups. One are the people like the people I want you to be, dedicated, hardworking industry professionals who are in it because you want to make a difference in your profession. The other sort of group he deals with is what he diplomatically called rich men's golf clubs. These are the groups that have been around forever and don't really do much and they show up in suits and throw in a lot of buzzwords and go off to a golf tournament because they think that their reputation and their political efficacy should be based on prestige alone. And as a politician, Andy said he'd much rather work with people like us than people like them. So how do you get some successes in internet governance under your belt? Where are some issues where you could start? Where do we start? Intermediary liability, which is the international concept which protects WordPress.com from having to manually pre-scan and moderate every blog post everyone makes in case they say something racist or sexist or pro-terrorism. And you don't have to pre-moderate your Facebook posts and all your Twitter posts aren't pre-moderated either. That's under threat. When you see politicians saying things like social media must do more to crack down on extremism, when Amber Rudd associates WordPress.com with terrorism, the way they're going to go after that is by attacking the concept of intermediary liability. That is one place where we need to raise our voices. GDPR, the data protection overhaul taking place next year is going to have a huge impact on all of your workflows and the ways you engage with your customers. And I know that you're all ahead of the privacy overhaul ahead of May 2018, aren't you? Of course you are. But one of the provisions of GDPR says that industry bodies can come up with their own guidance and code of conduct for their members to follow. Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot more sensible if all of us had a standardized set of rules to follow from an industry group instead of doing what we have to do which is get to grips with it personally as individuals on our own time, every single one of us? That is something that an industry body absolutely should be handling, and maybe you're the one to start that industry body. What's going to happen when Donald Trump's bombast and bluster finally destroys privacy field? Which is the agreement that allows European data to be transferred to the United States? Never mind how will you do business with your customers, how will your phone sink? It's that fundamental. We as professionals need to be prepared for how we're going to deal with the international data protection agreement collapsing. Net neutrality is under threat and there is a day of action coming up in July where many, many large profile digital organizations are going to raise their voices and stage a day of action in protecting net neutrality. And I would love for you and your businesses and your agencies to get involved with that. Back to basics, get involved in the formation of accessibility standards. WCAG 3.0 is coming. Have your say in how accessibility is going to work for the age of virtual reality. What is the UK's digital sector going to look like after Brexit? How are we going to continue to do business when we can't just hop on a plane or send our data or hire someone from abroad? All of these are issues which I know you're passionate about. So pick an issue, dedicate yourself to it, dive in and build your own legitimacy. I know we're living in really scary times and I can still barely comprehend what's happening myself. But as they say, it's time for us to take back control. I want you as representatives of this amazing community and ethos we've all come to Paris to celebrate, to act like it. It's time for the WordPress community to find your voice, fulfill your potential and lead the way as a force for good across the web. We're the one percent, so let's act like it. Let's show the world what we as a platform and a community are made of. And I'm out of time and I would have loved a lot more to talk to you more about this. But to close, I'll show you how we're actually walking the walk. I'm working with a group of professionals in the U.K. to create an independent adversarial industry body to deal with governments, representatives of the people who work on the web with all these issues that we're facing ranging from Trump to Brexit to God knows what else. So you can follow us at web-matters.uk and find us at the very heavily underscored Web Matters Twitter handle. And please come up and speak to me after the talk about how you can get involved. You can find me on Twitter at webdevlaw. Thanks for listening. Go out there and do it. That was awesome. I am so impressed by your story. I am quite sad that there are so little people here to see it. So if you see the video, it's going to be on WordPress TV. Please share because the world needs to know. This is word camp. We're 82 countries are represented this weekend. What if we're not in America or in the U.K. Can we do if we're in another country? It's the same story. It's the same story. I've just given you everything you need. Great. Roll up your sleeves and get involved. All right. Not now, Wendy. Any questions? With the caveat that I cannot see any of you. There is somebody back there. Please come to the front. There is a mic here and you can ask a question. I like that waving your phone like we're at a gig. Hi, Hannah. Oh, hi, Hannah. Hi. Thank you so much. That was so inspiring. Obviously, when we talk about issues, and you mentioned quite a few, I think sometimes it's important, especially for all of us and definitely me who have heard this for the first time, really, in this way that you've put it. Do you think or is there an issue that should be prioritized? Is there like one thing we should work on first? So, Anna's question is, are there issues that we should prioritize? Absolutely. For me, the two big ones right now are the threats to intermediary liability and net neutrality. And just since we've been here, I've seen a headline in the Times, I think it was, which was websites continue to promote extremism. Do you see how the language has changed? They're not just saying that social media sites and blogs host extremist content. They're switching the rhetoric to saying they promote extremism. See what they're doing there? We need to be very vigilant and speak out about that. Because remember, wordpress.com is a target specifically in the UK. For American viewers, I would say net neutrality. Net neutrality is the idea that all traffic flowing through an internet service provider must be treated equally. And this came about because some of the ISPs in America wanted to prioritize their content over others. So, if they were running a streaming video service, you could get their service quicker than Netflix. But let's say that things go really, really, really bad politically, and America starts looking like a horror movie. One way you could silence dissent is by throttling social media sites so that they load really slowly or not at all. So, let's say there's a global day of protest and Donald Trump doesn't like what's being said about him.  That's why you need to fight for net neutrality. We are the one present. I feel like I have to roll up my sleeves and get to work. There is one more question. Okay. I cannot see. Hi, Morten. Hi, Heather. Thank you very much. I think this is a message that needs to be heard, not just in this community, but in the wider web community as well, and it's amazing that you've put this together. Since you have this poster behind you, I think the question a lot of people, when they hear your talk, have on their mind is, how difficult is it to get started? And seeing as you've actually started something, you have some data to share on this? A lot easier than we thought. We first talked about it in February, and we're doing our legal incorporation right now. We've got a lawyer to do all those bits pro bono. So, there are certain steps you have to follow to be a legally recognized organization, and we're having our first AGM next week. So, we have to elect officers like a secretary and a treasurer. We have to have articles of association on a constitution. We have to have members. But we've got a lawyer to help us draw up all this, and once we have a bank account and members paying in dues, as articles of association said, we're ready to go. So, there's the sort of legally bit, and then there's the social bit. So, we've already spoken with the Scottish Parliament about registering as a consultative body, and then we'll move on to Westminster, and hey, maybe we'll move on to Brussels. So, it's a lot easier than you thought, and just talk to any one of us from Web Matters. Happy to walk you through it. And how do the people of the British Isles get involved with your organization? Can you say it again, more in the acoustics in this room? How do the people of the British Isles get involved with your organization as members? We've got a really hopping slack group where we've been doing everything in the open, ranging from picking the name to getting the AV. But for legal purposes, people have to join as members and pay dues. So, when we open it up at the end of the month, I'll tell you that. Thanks, Morgan. Yeah, ask your question. Hello. This is probably the most important talk of work in Europe, so thank you very much. Thank you. The question I have, how do you deal with politicians and MPs who are not very worst in technology, and they don't know why you can't have a master key for encryption? So, the question was, how do you deal with politicians who literally and genuinely don't know what they're talking about, as in Amber Rudd saying, we need people who understand the necessary hashtags to fight terrorism? You know, I stayed up until seven in the morning on election night because her seat had to be recounted over and over and over and over again, and I was like, please, please get out, Amber, please get out. But unfortunately, she kept her seat and she kept her job as Home Secretary. Something I said in an earlier talk this year is one of the tour projects principles for dealing with the internet in hostile states, which I believe we're very much in right now, and one of them is prepare informed policy commentary. When a politician comes out and says encryption is terrorism, you have to be prepared to retort that in the public sphere in an informed and educated way. You've got to get that into the public sphere within hours, so if she's on Andrew Maher on a Sunday morning, you need that press release up on your site by 10, and then you need to make an effort to get in touch with Amber Rudd or whoever you're dealing with, sit down with her in an office and explain to her why you cannot get rid of encryption and why it's not going to do a thing for terrorism. So, organize as a group, prepare informed policy commentary, get it out rapidly, and then follow up by engaging in person. Yes, there's one more question. Are you okay with one more question, Heather? I've got you already. Sorry, it's just you mentioned the open Slack group. I didn't get if it's already like alive and working, if it is, what's it called? There's a link there. Oh, well, it's in it. There's a link on the Web Matters website. Okay, hop in there. Thanks. All right. Any more questions? No one? Heather, thank you. Deep bow for you. Thank you, everybody. It was so awesome. Thank you.


Get down into the corner. No, how do we miss that? If you're missing Bardock's auto combos, you kind of deserve to miss. Look at that. Look at the range we hit him from. Oh my Bardocking stars! How's it going everybody? Datu Dua here back with some more Dragon Ball Fighters ranked matches and today we're actually playing a viewers team. I was playing some matches with them recently in the Discord and I don't know I just kind of felt like using his team in a ranked match so let's go ahead and jump in and see how it goes. Of course we have played most of these characters on the channel before. I just don't think we've ever played them together, which is weird because Goku Blue plays pretty well with these guys. Oh, but what he doesn't play well with? Bad connection. I can't believe we just got punished by 2M. Also the fact that we ran into another Goku Blue is kind of crazy. Alright, let's see if we can't work our magic here with Bardock. Maybe Goku as well? Why not throw the whole team in there? Oh, I'm not letting him get away with anything. Oh, except for that. Except for the cross-up. He got away with that one pretty well. Alright, we'll live. We'll live. Even if he throws all three level ones at us, actually does Broly do triple S damage? Nah, we good. We good. We good. I can't believe we couldn't block it. No! I knew we should have switched. I was so I was panicking for sure. Now we gotta let Broly do his thing here real quick. That's fine, Broly. You earned it.  Oh, but look at this. This is the kind of thing you love to see. Oh, I tried to get, I tried to squeeze in as much as I could there. Ooh, nice dragon rush. Following it up nicely off the Goku Blue assist. Pretty threatening. Again, we won't, oh wait, we can die here. Actually, no, we're good. Okay, this would be a good time to switch out. One, two, three. Ah, that's fine. I got enough. Darn. Nice switch in. Yep, he's gonna switch me out for the blue health. I understand. Let's go. Get him in the corner. You know what? Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't do this, but we're limited on assist. We have a decent amount of bar. We might as well take the knockdown, try to make the most out of it on on Okie. Nice reflect into the 2M. And a big lag. Have you met my friend big lag? Okay, that's pretty expensive. Maybe he wanted, maybe he wanted Broly out or maybe he didn't trust the ghost. Either way, we're left with Goku base form. We do have Spear Bomb already charged up, so we're not completely alone. Everybody in the crowd hopefully donated a little bit to our cause here. We could also try hitting the sparking combo if we're really about it. I'm about it. I'm about it, dude. I dropped it, but you know what? That's fine. That really is fine. I didn't have to do a level 3, but I might as well, right? Might as well toss in a level 3. Okay, that's one down. Sparking's also gone for us, so not the best trade, honestly. We are definitely still in the red. It's fine. I've never been one to stay in the green for long. These 2Ms are furious today. You can level 5 us right now if he's feeling it. Nah, just a level 3. Okay, keep it standard. I can't say I fault him for that. It's going to be up to us though. How do we wake up from this situation? Just normal? I felt it, dude. I felt we could click some buttons. I knew he was going to try something crazy. Alright, why not go all the way out? Okay, maximum damage for the hard knockdown. Okie's not that great anyway. Yeah, it's really bad. We get hit by the beam. Oh no. Can you drop this? For a friend? Man, brutal. Couldn't even drop it for a friend. Just kidding, of course. That was great stuff by that guy. Hopefully, we don't get as many bad lag spots, because I'm trying to pop off here. He does have the yellow go. I don't know if he chose that or not. There we go. Hit him with a quick low. You've got to start off strong in these kind of matches. Alright, now this is where we hit him with some instant transmission stuff. Okay, he's a Goku blue player. He's seen this all before. There we go. No, we don't have a finish. No, I can't believe it. That's good enough though. That is good enough to get us a nice swap in. This is a game about momentum. What a beautiful punish. Give it up for the spacing on this guy and a nice reflect too. Down heavy? Nope, that's gonna do him in. Okay, Goku blue isn't really doing that bad on terms of health, but I don't know, should we switch him out? I can't believe he just punished that with a sweep. I probably should have gone behind him, huh? Let's go, dude. Why not get right behind him?  You know I'm all about these Volko mixups? Down in the corner. What's he gonna do? Oh, crazy. Nice vanish, actually.  Nice! Look at the range! Goku base, Chuck and Key Blast! A much stronger performance overall. Ah, but again, we get punished by that 2M and it's time to go for a ride. No down heavy punish, which is good. We were a little obvious there. We're looking for the Super Dash, honestly. That's fine. If we can get the sparking early, that is always good. Look for the Super Dash. That's what you want to keep in mind here. Take the vanish hit if you have to. Oh, we took a beam. Unfortunate. I tried jumping way too late, but that's good. We bought a lot of time there and time against the sparking opponent with seven bars. You know, that's not a bad thing to buy. Backdash? Yup. Amazing reflect. Oh, we take it, actually. You can tell I'm not used to that, but the pure surprise in my voice. Another big lag spot. Oh, crazy. Gotenks is pretty small, so it's not like we can fuzzy him or, you know, even the base Goku combo is gonna be a little harder to hit. Normally it shouldn't be, but let's be real. I'm barely hitting it consistently as is. Nice! Empty jump, dragon rush, killer. That's fine. Worst comes to worst. We just reset by coming in with a new character. Okay. So we lose Bardock here. No questions asked. Goku comes in, and this is where the game becomes make or break. All right, base Goku's in. Have to land one sweep, one super dash. There we go. That's the super dash portion. Okay. This should give us a sliding yeseree and then bada-bing times 20. Easy peasy, boys.  Why not let it rock for the damage? All right, base Goku, you're looking proud, but I can fully get behind it. You did a lot of work that game. Came in clutch. All right, we have to get another good first start, though. Oh my god. Where was the assist call? There we go. If that's the way we got to do things with a raw 2H, I will do that every day. Look at the conversion. Okay, I kind of like that. Now hopefully he down techs here. Okay, this is a gone Goku blue. We didn't really do anything too fancy. Just kind of 2H them to his death. But I'll take that every day of the week. Don't even get me wrong. What's the strat with Broly here? Does he start with Keyblast like I think he does? Oh, nice Lariat. Get down to the ground, though. I don't want to see that. No, we don't get the launcher. I've miscalculated that pretty hard. Oh, and we didn't get the conversion either. Super unfortunate. At level three, really using this triple S damage. Oh, man. That was actually a cool donut. All right, back him down. If he wants to play the Keyblast game, you got to play it with him. Oh, beautiful tech. And I missed the reflect on the donut. Who's he switching out to? Where's it? Nice. You said Keyblast. How come Broly's Keyblast is like so good? I did not expect that to be the case when he first came out. I don't think we need the bar actually, but I don't know. It made me feel cool. Let me know in the comments how you feel about spending bars to feel cool. And we did not need to let that charge up. Nice reflect again. I really got to respect that. I got to hold back a little in terms of pressure. All right, Bardock, should we be a Bardock player? Hell, yeah. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, beam. It's so fast. I can't throw Keyblast from that range. It's just too much of a risk. Check that. Get down into the corner. No, how do we miss that? If you're missing Bardock's auto combos, you kind of deserve to miss. Look at that. Look at the range we hit him from. Oh my Bardocking stars. Are you seeing this? How shameful. On me, not him.  I just let it rip. Y'all mind if I Bardock out real fast? Y'all mind if I just click some lights? This team is popping. This team is popping off right now. I did not know they have that emote in the game. What?  Well, I guess that's going to be it. Unfortunately, we didn't really get to have... I don't know. I feel like I didn't get to fully experience this team. Let me know down below in the comments if you guys want to see a run back with this team. I kind of do. I didn't get to accomplish everything I wanted to. But yeah, this team was a lot of fun and hopefully you guys enjoyed it. If you did, make sure to go down below and leave a like and subscribe to the channel. It really helps the channel out and it keeps me going on making these videos. Other than that, while you're down there, make sure to leave a comment. I'll be down there as always. And if you're looking for more videos, there should be some up on your screen right now. Other than that though, thank you so much for watching this video. I'm Dr. Doya, and I will see you in the next one.


So quick quick question for the audience. How many of you booked your travel here by going into a travel agents office? Okay, now how many of you used an online tool to book your travel? Cool. So I think that's only fitting in the world as Jonathan described yesterday where everything is on the web and powered by cloud That we get to hear from Rajiv Khanna, who's vice president of infrastructure for Expedia the world's largest online Travel agency, so come on out. Let's hear what he's gonna say Good morning How you guys doing? Let's try it again Good morning That's much better. At least I know everybody's awake So I want to talk to you about all the cool things that we're doing at Expedio with OpenStack Now how we are speeding up innovation and how we're getting faster to the market To start with a little bit more about Expedia Expedia is made up of various different brands that we that we own across the world And we are one of the largest or the largest online travel agency in the world So I'm sure you've seen some of these brands and I've used those and if you haven't I encourage you guys to go try it out Across these brands we operate 150 sites in 70 different countries in various different languages We get about 60 million unique customers that visit us on a monthly basis You can shop 365,000 hotels and over 400 airlines on our sites and we have 14,000 employees distributed across 30 countries All this is really good stuff Everybody loves numbers, but end of the day technologies at the core of all all of the things that we do Like most industries travel is a very competitive industry It's important that we are quick to the marketplace We are fast and we have to be very innovative along the way Otherwise we lose business So everybody I'm sure everybody here has been to a party and participate in conga lines You don't want to see me do this. It's not pretty So but conga lines are not that much fun when it comes to infrastructure Delivering infrastructure. I'm sure you can relate to a lot of this So here's the infrastructure conga line in the front.  Oh Don't forget to install the operating system storage as well Then you got to install the application configure it Get the firewall rules done get the load balancer rules done and on and on and on and This is pretty common problem that exists across the industry. This isn't an expedient problem This isn't conga lines exist everywhere. And as I said, they're a lot of fun at parties But not when it comes to delivering infrastructure So our goal is to actually get rid of the conga line the other thing to keep in mind so what happens when we Don't have enough things in place When we have shortage of certain assets So what's the human nature?  I Know I have a lot of things that sitting in my closet, which I thought I needed at some point But I only needed one but I was available only in the short supply. So guess what I went out and bought two And I have a pile of stuff sitting across In my closets that I never use So what does that look like for the enterprise? It's money. It's real money. So if you think about it in The data center you have racks and racks of equipment That's that's consuming power cooling and using up money That is either sitting idle or It's under consumed The whole intent for us is to make sure that we get the right Efficiencies and we don't want to be wasteful a Few things in your closet may not feel that bad But if you pile them up and do all the math it even adds up for you so Think about a scenario you're a developer you have this brilliant idea that's going to add millions to the bottom line and Now you want to go start developing that against that idea. Oh, but guess what? Get in the back of the conga line You'll be ready to go in about three weeks If you're lucky it may be months in some cases So asking a developer to put a ticket in is really going to kill the innovation that they want to do and slow them down And our intent is not to do that. We want to solve for that problem So when we went out and asked our developers tell us one thing What do you want the most and the response was we want fast? Not just fast way fast and Then you can add as many ways in front of the fast and it's still not good enough Because this has to be so much in instantaneous. They want it when they want to need it They want to be able to consume it immediately There's no need or there shouldn't be a need for a conga line and Then at the end of the day all of this matters because we want to be fast to the marketplace and it adds To our growth and it adds to our business So when we just started to design this Design a solution based on open stack We had we set Forward some principles that we want to live with It has to be friction-free in order for it to be friction-free. It has to be end-to-end automation It has to be self-service Once again, we are trying to get rid of those tickets But at the same time we are a pretty large consumer of public cloud It has to support both our internal private cloud as well as a public cloud And we want to avoid the vendor lock-in not just from The hardware product point of view for all the software that we consume the public cloud providers that we consume Well, we use AWS today, but we may want to change that over time So we want to have that flexibility And at the same time we want to be able to balance the needs of IT with the needs of Business it's obviously all about speed It's about getting out and being innovative and letting people do what they need to do to be innovative to help grow the business But at the same time we don't want to lose control of the entire environment So we want to find the right balance in control with openness and in in most environments You want we want to own the business from our internal customers We don't do very well when we go into a conversation about You must use this or you must use this offering The generally speaking we talk we heard about credit card consumption yesterday People swipe their credit card and they know what's possible So we have to have an offering that's competitive to the rest of the environment So here we are so when we started we started this in April of 2013 And when we got started we needed some help we needed some partners along the way we work with scaler and We work with Marantos with scaler we were able to Get integration with a lot of our internal systems. We integrated with active directory. We integrated with our IT SM suite as well as a variety of different deployment tools that we have in-house Along with some of the financial controls to be able to know who's consuming what So we can do show back and at some point we may choose to do charge back to our internal customers This is this end of the day. This isn't free And you have to be able to Figure out what the total cost is Along with that obviously open stack is in the middle of all of this With open stack we've been able to stand up an internal cloud Along with The option to be able to go to a public cloud. We have a choice. This is all about choices We have a choice to go to AWS. We can go to Rackspace We can go to Google or any of the other public providers that we may choose to use So if you look at this design We are able to pretty much We are able to address all the print design principles that we had we have choice We are we have the right level of control and we are able to consume both internal and external clouds and it's self-provisioning and As a developer as a consumer of this service you have an option to interact with this through an API through a CLI or if you really choose to you can use the GUI as well So what's the outcome? So far we have three regions stood up to two non-production and one production The the adoption of this platform has gone viral We have over 20,000 instances that have been stood up To date and they grow up and go out go up every day and the way we interact with our development community is a lot different We interact in a much different way than we did before. There's a lot less noise There's a lot less tickets that we have to deal with they are moving much faster They want to be able to move at the rate of the business and we are seeing a lot more a lot better rational behavior There isn't a lot of hoarding going on people aren't holding on to the stuff. We are seeing the true Natural consumption that we expected out of a elastic compute platform and we are seeing that people are creating machines They're giving that giving back machines Hence we've been able to grow the environment and one of the larger problems that we have at the moment It's trying to keep up with the capacity on the back end and that's a good problem for us to have and The net result of all of this is we are speeding up Deployments we are speeding up the way we do business and we obviously adding as a result of all of that We're speeding up innovation which results in better business value. So what's next? We need to stabilize the platform. We've had some issues along the way. We believe we are almost there We've done a lot of work in the US. We are a global company. We want to go global Back to choices. We want to be able to put this footprint Wherever we have presence and where it makes sense for us from a business point of view But at the same time be able to leverage the Amazon map that was shared before or on of the other public clouders as necessary Because we don't think we need to be in every location in every region and we want to be able to leverage both We want to enhance the capabilities we want to all or we want to offer up database as a service Monitoring as a service load balancing as a service firewall as a service really maturing the platform from an infrastructure as a service to a platform as a service But we have lots of old stuff legacy stuff. This is where we run our business today We have over 30,000 instances of operating system running in the environment We need to figure out what to do with that. We like all the goodness that we get from the platform We want to be able to leverage that goodness within our legacy footprint as well And our application groups have a lot of work to do they need to be able to Now we've done the I would say we've done a lot of the heavy lifting up front But they have a lot of work to do to be able to figure out how to consume this platform You have to be able to do some re-architecture work. Obviously anything that's new that's being developed is Being developed to this architecture, but we still have a lot of old applications and legacy applications that have to be redone So in closing I want to thank a few folks. I want to thank my team They've had a lot of hard work over the last several months and They've they've worked some put in some long hours to get us where we are And I want to thank them some of them are here at least one of them is here and the others are not I want to thank our partners They've been struggling with us along the way as we figure this thing out and it hasn't been always been easy And I want to thank the community a lot of this wouldn't be possible without you guys So keep going we think we just getting started we have a long ways to go and Once again, thank you very much


Once you're removed from studies on alcohol and mortality, the systematic error of misclassifying former drinkers as if they were lifelong abstainers, moderate alcohol consumption, like a glass and wine a day, does not appear to be protective after all. The immediate implication from this new research is that clinicians need to be highly skeptical about the hypothesized health benefits of alcohol consumption and should not advise their patients to drink to improve their life expectancy. This is especially important given increasing awareness of cancer risk from even moderate alcohol use. Given the cancer risk, if there's just harms and no benefits, then the ideal alcohol intake on a routine day-to-day basis should really be zero, potentially making it a red-light beverage. The problem was that many of these population types classified those that quit drinking in response to ill health as non-drinkers. This is the problem of reverse causation. Instead of abstaining leading to poor health, poor health may have led to abstaining. As like when studies show those who sit around and watch TV have worse health, is more TV leading to illness or is illness leading to more TV on the couch? That's one of the reasons why if you look at the hierarchy of evidence where higher on the period means stronger evidence, interventional trials like randomized controlled trials tend to offer better evidence than observational studies of populations which can suffer from both reverse causation and confounding factors. For example, light drinkers as a group may be more likely to drink their glass of wine with a salad than a cheeseburger, and that's why the wine appeared protective.  But now we have a new tool, Mendelian randomization. In cases where randomized controlled trials are not feasible or practical, this new tool can provide reliable evidence on the cause and effect relationship between exposures and risks of disease. It's like the HDL story. Alcohol does raise your HDL good cholesterol levels, but unfortunately it seems good cholesterol isn't any good at lowering heart disease risk after all, based in part on Mendelian randomization studies, where people who are randomly assigned higher HDL levels genetically from birth don't appear to be protected. Is there any way to study people who are randomly assigned since conception to not drink as much? Remarkably, yes. Alcohol is detoxified in the liver to carbon dioxide and water by two enzymes, but in the process a toxic intermediate metabolite is produced called acetaldehyde, which can cause unpleasant nausea and flushing sensation. So if people are born with a slow variant of this enzyme or a superfast variant of this enzyme, acetaldehyde can build up making alcohol drinking, and these people are relatively unpleasant experience throughout their lives. So they're just born less likely to drink as much. So do they have increased risk of heart disease, like the original observational studies would suggest? No, they have reduced risk of heart disease. This suggests that reduction of alcohol consumption even for light to moderate drinkers is beneficial for cardiovascular health. So this just sheds further doubt on the protective association between moderate alcohol consumption and heart disease, which was already plagued with the confounding and bias, and now the scientific pillars on which it's based increasingly shaky, leading some to suggest the leaning tower of presumed health benefits from moderate alcohol use has finally collapsed. Given the harms attributed to alcohol use, it's not surprising that reports suggesting benefits attracted enthusiasm among consumers, the media, and of course the alcohol industry, but these apparent benefits are now evaporating. What conclusion should we draw from this emerging evidence? First, in health as elsewhere, if something looks too good to be true, like butter is back, it should be treated with great caution. Secondly, health professionals should discourage drinking. Thirdly, health advice should come from health authorities, not from the alcohol industry, which will remove all misleading references to reported health benefits, which are increasingly looking more like a triumph of spin doctoring than good science. As contrived as the alleged split among scientists over climate change, advanced by the petroleum industry. As an intoxicating, addictive, toxic, carcinogenic drug, alcohol is not a great choice as a therapeutic agent, even if it did help. There are better ways to prevent heart attacks, namely diet and exercise, and drugs when necessary. In contrast to that of alcohol, effectiveness of lifestyle interventions has been demonstrated, and as a bonus, has no abuse potential. There's a reason there's no apple-holics anonymous.


Wel, yn yrwch i'n trffi gefnodd ar gyfer y fideo ymlaen, mae'n fawr o ddechrau o'r ffordd yw'r ffordd. Mae'n bwysig sut mae'n ddigonio'n gyd yn ymddangos o'r drafodaeth, i ddiwylliannol, stat ac sgwmp. Mae'n gwybod ar y dyfodol o'i ddano. Felly mae'n gweithio'r link ar y dyfodol. Everton haf tystio'n gyd yn ymdain o'r ddweud y ddau i sefosti'r cyst wisdomu phobl. The Danish club have said it's with one eye crying that he leaves the club and joins Everton in the summer. The 16-year-old player can play in midfield or defence and he's thought to be identified by Marcel Brans. He will obviously go in to the academy when he gets over here in the summer, so being a bit of confusion, I think, over whether Everton had a transfer of ban or not, apparently it's just for English players under the age of 18. We can still sign players from your or players older than 18. So that's just to clear that up, but the first bit of transfer news to come out of the club is that we've signed a new player. So there you go. Henry on Ykuiru has revealed he turned down a move to Paris. Sands your man before he joined Everton, the Nigerian forward who's currently on loan at Galatasaray. I said he'd agreed a deal to go to Paris, but he spoke to his mum over a weekend and decided to pull the plug on the Monday and said he wouldn't be joining. He also took advice on whether to join him and what it'd be like for him playing in France, but his big dream has been to play in the Premier League and he said that is still the aim. He said the reason I signed for Everton and the reason I went out on loan was because I knew he wouldn't get a work payment and playing in Belgium for Anderlecht and then Galatasaray strengthened his position. He's expected to go to the AFCOM in the summer and then those caps there will probably strengthen his work payment application. He will then be able to come over here and be assessed by Marko Silver and that's what he wants to do. So, you know, it's certainly a player who could help Everton. He can play anywhere across the front three and it'd be good I suppose for Silver just to have a look at him and see whether he thinks he's at a level that could help us. He's very quick or good feet. So, we'll have to wait and see. He's got 12 goals this season, so it's an interest on one. A Joe Go, the Portuguese news outlet, are reporting that Javaginia will be promoted to the Everton first team squad for next season. Vaginia, who has played an integral role in Everton under 23s Premier League 2 championship winning escapades this season. They had nine clean cheats in 12 games. Only can see that six goals and four of them were in a game against Manchester City. So, he's been very, very good this season and the Portuguese outlet now saying that he's going to be promoted. He's been in the Everton squads all season because Everton obviously have three goalkeepers in their matchday squad. So, he's had that experience of being with the first team and of course trains on a daily basis. So, it's interesting to see whether Stechlenberg stays or whether Vaginia just becomes the number two. There you go. Marco Silva has been praising with Charleston again. He said he loves working with the 21-year-old. He said he's got 12 goals and he feels like he should have a lot more this season and will get better and better. So, he works hard every single day and he wants to improve. He's got a desire to get better and better and he thinks that he can become a massive player for Everton. He's become an important player for us already and has forced his way into the Brazil national side but he can do even better. So, let's hope he is right. What have we got here? We've got David Neraz as apparently favouring a move to England. The Ajax winger, the Brazilian Ajax winger, has been linked heavily with Everton over the last two weeks. Also thought to be attracting Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool Arsenal, which you would do. He looks like a very exciting prospect. Apparently, him and his girlfriend want to move to England and that he wants to play in the Premier League. So, we'll have to wait and see where his destination is. Obviously, him scoring goals against Juventus and progressing to the semi-finals is probably knocking up his price tag week by week. So, we'll have to see whether Everton are interested in him truly in the summer, I suppose. Michy Batchewaig continues to be linked with Everton. Spoke about that yesterday on the news daily. Again, linked with the Blues today. But again, Chelsea links are just... We don't know what's happening with Chelsea, so by these links keep popping up. I don't know where to just report them, what is in the press today. And Lluca Dean is apparently the best left-back in the Premier League, something we knew anyway. But Mark O Silver has agreed with that said he likes Andy Robertson and Liverpool said he's fantastic. He'd work with Robertson when he was a whole, but he thinks Lluca Dean is better. And the reason this has come about is statistically Lluca Dean is the best left-back in the Premier League at the moment. He's certainly, for me, been Everton's player of the season, so he's another one I think can get even better. That is it. If you haven't subscribed, please do so. It takes a sec. If you want more videos, get over and join us on Patreon. We've just done an hour live, a daily extra live, and that'll be available to watch on our repeat as well. But get over to Patreon, join us there. Thanks for watching. See you later.


Good afternoon, folks. This is a continuation of the House Appropriations Committee on a beautiful Friday afternoon February. May 14th and we are convened here to hear testimony on S-25. Thank you very much colleagues for joining us. Rep Ganon, Rep Beck and Miss Childs is here to help us understand the bill as well as Mr. Campbell, although I have been told it's casual Friday so everybody's going by their first name instead. So with that, John, what we generally look forward to, high level overview and then take us down to the appropriations sections and we'll try to focus on that which is within our jurisdiction. So John, we'll turn to you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative John Ganon from Wilmington for the record. I will go through the bill very quickly. Section 1 deals with towns opting into retail sales. The change we made there was the Senate put in a date certain by which towns would have had a vote and if they did not vote they would have been deemed to have agreed to have cannabis retail. We struck that out of the language and retained the house position that was in Act 164. The Cannabis Control Advisory Committee and this is something appropriations will be interested in is we did add two positions to the advisory committee and one of them is the chair of the Cannabis for Symptom Relief Oversight Committee or designee and the second position is one member appointed by the Vermont Cannabis Trade Association. The Vermont Cannabis Trade Association is the trade association of medical dispensaries. So there's two additional positions on the advisory committee of the Cannabis Control Board. And we did modify another position, but this was not a new position. We had one member with expertise in substance misuse prevention. We just changed that to the chair of the substance misuse prevention oversight and advisory council or designee. Then, you know, we, in section four and four eight talks about the reporting obligations of the Cannabis Control Board. We went into the timing of when the Cannabis Control Board was appointed. They were supposed to be confirmed by the Senate by January 15 of this year. They were not. They weren't appointed appointed until March of 2021. So there had to be changes in the way that their recommendations which were on April 1 had to go so they had to recommend the fees for the Cannabis Control Board which means all the licensing fees, and things like that. So there were modifications there, but I'll let, when we get to, when you want more detail on that, I think representative Beck is probably the best person to give you detail because that was an amendment and house ways of means to how we go about setting those fees. Then, and other areas that will be important to you in section four B we just had two additional reporting requirements. I won't go into detail about that, but then section four C is an important section for appropriation because it creates two new positions, a general council position and administrative assistant position. It's my understanding from the testimony of the chair of the Cannabis Control Board is that they have the funds that were appropriated to them already that can cover these positions. Then sections five through nine deal with advertising. As you may recall when the conference committee met the compromise we reach is that the Cannabis Control Board and the AG's office would come back to the General Assembly with a recommendation on April 1. With respect to advertising. Again, because of the delay in the Cannabis Control Board being set up that couldn't happen. So what the Senate proposed and what we in house gov ops agreed to is to put back in the language on advertising that was in the bill as it left the house government operations and that's biennium.  You know, the Attorney General's office testified about the constitutionality of what is in the bill now and they support what's in the bill they do not support a absolute ban on advertising. All the sections through section nine. Section 10 is just it amends section eight of act 164 and requires that small cultivated that cannabis dispensaries, those are the, the medical dispensaries when they get an integrated license have to have 25% of flower come from small cultivators. That was just to reach out to small cultivators. Then we get into section 11 through 14 of the bill which deal with the social equity section of the bill. And this is an important section for appropriations. What the social equity program is, it sets up a social equity grant and loan program that will be administered by a CCD. It will be funded through two sources in a House Ways and Means Amendment $50,000 from each integrated licensee, plus an appropriation of $500,000. That will be used primarily for grants and loans to social equity applicants, which will be defined by the Cannabis Control Board, ACCD, the executive director of the racial equity panel, and the advisory board to the Cannabis Control Board. Then let's go on. Section 15 just talks about the transfer of the medical cannabis registry, which is the dispensaries from under the agency or yeah, the Department of Public Safety to the Cannabis Control Board. Originally in Act 164, they were supposed to move over on March of 2022. The Senate moved that up to January 1, 2021. In testimony from the chair of the Cannabis Control Board, it was recommended that we move that back to March 1 of 2022, and that's what we did in that section. And that also applies to section 16. And then finally, the effective dates are in section 20. So that is a quick run through the bill. And I think there's one other section I should talk to you about. Section 17, which deals with a ride training. And so to give you a little background on this, the Senate proposed getting a report on the costs of a ride training. We talked to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council about this issue. And it, what we learned is that it would cost somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 to get every law enforcement officer trained by December 31, 2021. What you saw, you see in the bill is that we move that data out to 2025 because they said they could get everybody trained at no cost by 2025. But we are still working with them with respect to some information. For example, right now, anybody who's been is a level three certified officer as of 2015 has to get a ride training within 36 months of leaving the police academy. So they're automatically going to get it. The level three officers who will not get it are people who are certified before 2015. So those are the ones that are the focus of getting them trained on a ride. So that's part of the issue then the questions that have come up from the Vermont Criminal Justice Council are should level to law enforcement officers receive a ride training. And secondly, they don't even get DUI training, which is a precursor to getting a ride training. So that's an open question with respect to that. The other question that the Vermont Criminal Justice Council had is there are many level three officers who don't do traffic stops and a perfect example is like the Office of Professional Regulation investigators, or the attorney general investigators. So there's a question of whether they should receive the training, or that they could even be qualified to get the training because in order to take a right went training. There's a process that you have to go through at the beginning of the training to, to that you have the sufficient expertise to make a traffic stop. And the concern of the Vermont Criminal Justice Council is those folks wouldn't even be able to pass that initial test before they get their a ride certification. I think what we're going to propose is an amendment to do a further study around this issue because we still haven't got all the information we need from the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. And I think the only other thing in there is section 18, which talks about the substance misuse prevention funding and Michelle correct me if I'm wrong but I think all this section does is put into stat statute. The $10 million of funding for the, the substance misuse prevention. 30% it puts into statute 30% of revenues raised by the cannabis excise tax, not to exceed $10 million per fiscal year is now in statute under this bill. Quickly. Okay, thank you. I thought we already had that in statute that the last bit about substance misuse prevention. Ms. Childs. It was in session law enact once before there's also the what's new is subsections be and see be being a provision that the balance there's a carry forward and see being that any carry forward is in addition to revenues that are allocated for substance misuse prevention it's not a it's not a substitute. Would you say that again place. In addition see is that any appropriation carry any balance that's carry forward is in addition to the revenues that are allocated by the General Assembly for substance misuse prevention of so that it's so on the 30% so it's so it doesn't count towards that 30% of those funds go in there and if there is carry forward, you don't then have a smaller amount coming through for that next year. I'm sorry, I'm from not exactly. I got that so in fact, you know, they, it could be carried forward carried for there could be in fact a lot of money building up into that fund without I mean we normally sweep funds at the end of a fiscal year if they're if they're not expended. These are special funds Maria. Are you there. Can, can you. Yeah, I am. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know you're doing 20 other things. Can, can you help us understand and Michelle if you'll explain again what this does and Maria, I'm just curious if this is a common way to handle it. Okay, so, so can you just, I'm sorry, Michelle, I should focus. So, so you might want to look at the language in section 18. So, so subsection a language was in session law and act 164 last year. And so this is reenacting about putting it in statute and title 32. Subsections B and C are new. So B is saying that there's going to be carry forward. If there's any balance left at the end of the fiscal year and subsection C is that that carry forward is in addition to revenues that are allocated pursuant to subsection a. And I have to admit, this is something that came along through other people to me so I don't have I, I wasn't part of the anti it was the one who was working on it and then and Stephanie and in the Senate approach. So I'm sorry I don't have much. Okay. All right, so. Okay, so just when I went to the Senate, it was in the same format. This, it was drafted the same way. Okay, I believe what this is saying is that. So you're appropriate in session long in 18 a and anything that's not spent, according to some be gets carried forward and what you're saying is just like an other departments where they have carried for funds. Those carry forward funds are in addition to what's appropriated in the in the subsequent year. Correct. So, yeah. Okay, so it's not like an additional appropriation it's a carry forward so you're using part of the prior year's appropriation that wasn't fully expanded. Yeah. There's nothing peculiar about this this is a common practice. Yeah, I think that what they're just stating is that this in this fund that the funds can carry forward and you know they're making that that's what they're saying. So that okay. Yeah, we see that in other departments as well, you know, if they are allowed to carry forward it's the same setup. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Sorry guys I maybe I'm being slow and we I'm distracted like everybody is Robin. Yeah, thank you. The 500,000 in section 14 that it says from the general fund to ACCD for the social equity grants is this actually. Money that we are spending in anticipation of receipts. So I'm not seeing anything about the cannabis special fund, not the misuse the prevention stuff but the cannabis special fund running a deficit which is I know, you know the old fiscal note from last biennium we ran a deficit for a few years and then we filled the coffers so is this separate from that, John or. It is separate. It is new. Okay, that's 25. And so there was no loan or grant. No social equity loan or grant program in act 164 so this is a brand new fund. Okay, that was created. And we'll have two funding sources one is an appropriation of $500,000. And the other is fifth. And the change that they made but basically $50,000 from each each integrated licensee. And that'll be the two sources of funding for this. So, basically a social equity fund. Okay, so we're, we're seating it with half a million dollars basically once, and then the ongoing would be the 50,000 from various integrated licenses. And then we'll have the full picture of the bill and then we'll come back to questions. All right, thank you. I'll try to be brief because I know one of the things it's all standing between you and a weekend. So. Yeah, once they obtain a license they would have to contribute $50,000 to this fund. Okay. Just once. How about we let Scott explain describe the amendment. All right, thank you. I'll try to be brief because I know one of the things it's all standing between you and a weekend. So, basically, what we've done with houseways and means did with this, really just surrounding the fees is, we have removed all fees in here with the exception of the $50,000 for integrated license. And the cannabis control board to come back to us by October 1 with a recommendation for all these fees and it's the intent of ways and means to hit the ground running in January and to get these things all locked up and out there to the public. And one of the things that we've done here it's in the second instance of amendment is a requirement for the cannabis control board, in addition to setting the fees to come up with a plan to take not more than 10 years to reimburse the general fund for the half million dollar seed money that they're sending over. So that change for the integrated fee in the document we got from gov ops. They had 3% of gross sales up to $50,000 for integrated license, and we chose just to make that just $50,000 for a real license. That's a big deal we figure anybody that would be applying for that would have the resources to make that. So the fifth instance of amendment, as it came over from the came over from gov ops. There was a transfer from the general fund to the transfer from the general fund to the cannabis business development fund, and then there was an appropriation over to the for the for the assistance for disadvantaged groups that representative cannon was talking about there. We didn't really feel like it was our, our job our role to make an appropriation that's, that's your own world. And so what we've done in here is we've in 22. We've done 500,000 general fund to the cannabis business development fund. And then we leave it up to you to appropriate that to the, to what represented again was discussing earlier. And then that is ongoing that would be from the candidate that would be from the cannabis business development fund as these licenses come in. So that's basically the gist of what we did with it we removed all fees except for that integrated license. We made sure that $500,000 got back to the general fund. As they stand this thing up to read to reimburse the general fund for that seed money, and we took out the appropriations language figuring that you all could could do that better than we could. Okay. Thank you. And that means we need to be amending this bill to provide for that. Yes, lovely. Yes. Do you have something ready to go for us Michelle if we decide to go there we So, so the appropriation is in the Senate government operations amendment as it came over from the Senate ways and means was looking at it the way that the Senate wanted to do the language and put it in there is they have $500,000 being transferred from the general fund into the cannabis business development fund, and then they transfer it out of that fund to a CCD to use for the loans and the grants. And, and that was the way that they and working at JFO had said to do it in the Senate. And so I defer to JFO on this because it's I don't typically do those and but then we got ways and means. They said, No, it shouldn't be that way. And I brought Becky in and we were talking about the day a CCD is designated as the entity that would be doing the loans and grants programs and it also in the, if you look at the loan language, the fund language that's in 2005 it specifies what it's for. And so we thought that you didn't need to send it to a CCD you could just have it in the special fund and it could be utilized by a CCD and so I, I leave it there I tried to get a little bit of some clarification from Stephanie but Becky and I weren't clear entirely about why they wanted it done that way so maybe Maria can help sort that out with regard to the special funds but I can show you the language is section 12 of the House Government Operations Amendment and section 987 it goes through and talks about the funds that can the monies that comprise the fund and then subsection C talks about what the fund is to be used for and then section 988 talks about a CCD administering the fund and using those that those monies. And so section 14 which is on page 25 of the House Government Operations Amendment has the transfer and appropriation. So I do have an amendment that I had done for Ways and Means and they chose not to do it, but would just do essentially strike subsection B and amend the title of 14 to just be appropriation so that an FY 22 $500,000 is transferred from general fund to the cannabis business development fund. Thank you. Maria, were you following that. It was but what I what piqued my interest is that Michelle you had mentioned that Stephanie. Because she's worked on this bill all the way through the process I just wanted to touch base with her and see if I can get her read on how she thinks it should be done and so anyway I'm trying to texture. I emailed her yesterday and she emails back an answer but we didn't we still didn't understand. Yeah, no, I get that. So sorry. No, no, no, perfectly fine I just, I just want to talk to her because we need to get this right and sure. Yeah, so, but there is an appropriation in there. It's just more about whether or not you need to move it over to a CCD. Okay, and I'm looking at it right now so let me just keep trying to get Stephanie and we'll start this up. I'm getting pretty thoroughly lost here so I hope others are trying to get this sorted. I, Robin I don't know if your hand was next but thank you. I actually wanted to ask Scott which draft of their amendment they're looking at because I heard you mentioned a fifth instance of amendment and I only see four instances on draft 2.1 of what came out of your committee so I'm a little confused. Do you know which draft you're on mute Scott which one you. Yeah, I thought I was on the most current but let me, let me double check that. So I think it might be that. So the committee ways and means committee point one they decided they didn't want to do the fifth instance of amendment and they voted on in the first through fourth instance of amendment as version 2.1 and that's voted and sent back to the committee. Okay, so that's the real one. Right so representative back might be just looking at the first one that they view. Yeah, I'm looking, I'm looking at one point one Michelle and I'm not seeing 2.1 anywhere. I can, I can email it to you I emailed it to everybody yesterday but I end it again. Okay, okay that was what was throwing throwing me was that fifth instance of amendment so if I'm hearing correctly, the only actual appropriation is the $500,000 from the general fund to the cannabis control cannabis. That's correct. Okay, thank you. Okay, I'm still lost Marty. Well, I had the same concern that Robin had but I guess we got that figured out and maybe it sounds like it's going to be changed anyway. Regarding that discussion with Maria and Stephanie and Michelle perhaps but my other question is regarding this whole section 11 regarding the social equity part. And in section 13 of the bill, this is back into the bill, not the ways and means. There's a discussion about developing criteria for the loans shall be done by somebody or other I need to pull it up again here. But is there someplace to develop who are the social equity appropriate applicants. And is that to be left up to this group as well to determine who those applicants may be the identity of those persons. Yes, so there are groups, all of section 13 is for the cannabis control board in consultation with its advisory committee, a CCD executive director of racial equity to develop social equity criteria which would identify who the social equity applicants would be. Not just loan criteria, but who those actual applicants, what the criteria would be to fit into that category of a social equity applicant that is correct. And is there a deadline for determining that. Yes, October 15 2021. Thank you. Did you speak with a CCD about their capacity to administer this. Yes, we met with them and they testified before committee and the language that you see in in these sections. They, they suggested some amendments on one of their concerns was that well they are able to handle grant programs. Loans is something new. And typically they would work with Vita but because you can't handle loans to a cannabis entity. They are going to have to find a third party to do the loan servicing. There are at least one bank and one credit union in Vermont that have dealt with cannabis establishments, the dispensaries. And so they anticipate working with those. So that's why you will see section 988 which is in section 12 some language that says should the agency be unable to do so the program shall not move forward until the General Assembly appropriates the appropriate operational resources. Necessary for the agency to make loans and provide financial assistance to social equity applicants and that was language that they suggested in case they can't contract with a third party to provide the loan services. Thanks. So I had to ask what the operational resources would be. How is that being defined. Well I think what they mean there and this would be something that that would come up later if they are unable to find a third party is that they need someone to basically loan underwriting for for the social equity applicants. And they don't have the capacity to do that in their own with their proposed with finding a third party but if they cannot find that third party, then they would have to come back here and get an appropriation. If we want them to provide those services. Now it happened in a way. Right and this is not committing us to appropriating the operational resources is saying that they have to come back to the General Assembly, and we can decide if we want to or not. That's correct. Great. Thank you. Okay, I understand that Stephanie is on her way and to understand this I'm halfway tempted to switch. I'm just so aware that we urged others to come in so we because we thought we were going to go through this one quickly and anyway, I apologize to the other people who arrived early. Now we have you waiting I really regret that. Thank you. Stephanie, we are struggling to understand and please somebody describe to Stephanie what we don't understand because I don't understand it. I understand it's a little I cannot ask a question. Yeah, go for it Michelle. Sure. So Stephanie this is what Becky and I had emailed you about yesterday which is so there's the creation of the cannabis business development fund and the source of funding there. One is a $500,000 general fund appropriation and the other one is our one time contributions from integrated licensees. Yeah. So in section 14, the way that it's structured so a CCD would be administering the fund the fund is designated especially for certain uses for loans and grants to social equity applicants. A CCD would be making those loans and grants or contract if they weren't able to do that. So the way that section 14 came out of the Senate, and that y'all structured it was that in subsection a, it says that 500,000 is transferred from the general fund into the cannabis business development fund. There's a B that says then in FY 22 $500,000 is appropriated from the special fund to a CCD to make those loans and grants and so the question that we were trying to understand is why can't a CCD just access the funds directly from the special fund why do they have to be appropriated to a CCB out of the special fund. Okay, so the transfer is just the fund to fund action, moving money from the general fund to jumpstart money into the special fund. Every, every agent, every fund can only be spent if you appropriate dollars out of it. So it's the transfer is one transaction and the appropriations and other. You could directly appropriate general fund to a CCD and say use it the same way you would, you know, do the development fund, but you need to two actions because the fund really doesn't have any money in it. Yeah. So you're transferring money from the general fund into the new special fund, and you're simply giving the spending authority out of the special fund so it can only be used in a manner consistent with the things that, you know, you pay for a special fund. And so that's, it was just how you get the general fund to be spent on, because it's one time general fund is sort of the jumpstart piece, essentially. It's not the jumpstart fees. This is a totally separate pieces in it. It's about the social equity grant program. But it's the general fund. So it's, you're going to have a different source of money into this fund. I mean, you're the only source of money right now is this $500,000 from the general fund. Right. And that's done as a transfer, the way that came out of the Senate. How, once it's transferred from one fund to another, then the next step is how do you spend it out of that fund that it landed in, and that's the appropriation. So it's just the spend the appropriation is just spending authority it is saying you department X have spending authority out of this fund in this fiscal year. So there, but aren't there two things going on here. One is this creation of this new social equity grant program, which is not being funded at all by the special funds we're being asked to fund put 500,000 of general fund one time dollars to that program. It has nothing to do with the rest of, you know, of setting up the cannabis board and making this is all in the new development fund the $500,000 is only into the new development fund has nothing to do with the administration of the cannabis board. That's all done previously in the bill you passed last year. So, it's all it's in the but this is just about the development fund right right. Okay. Again, I am so fried that I am not following this well and I'm not reading the document. Are you trying to see that the, the, the, the news special grant program is separate from the development fund. I'm just stuck because I had no idea that we were going to be asked to put 500,000 of one time money into this program and all this is totally new news to me and I believe the rest of the community of the committee. I'm a little bit surprised by this, and I'm probably having a hard time getting over that and where period and now I'm not following where it's going but others are and I'm not going to torture you guys over my lack of ability to comprehend as long as other people are following it that's relying on the committee. So committee, do you have any additional questions for these poor people that I'm making suffer. And what is your pleasure. I don't see that we're having any additional questions Robin. All things I'm just wondering what the votes were out of the various committees I don't know how many committees were involved by some people from commerce and gov ops and ways and means so that's my first question. Ways and means on the amendment was 911. Okay. Just gov ops was nine to zero. Okay. Commerce way in or you're just there because you love to hang out with us. Okay. So what's the corporation is this 500,000 and it would be one time general fund money do we have the kind of floor in the Senate side of things so it's all accounted for up to date into the conference committee. It is. Yeah. Okay, and if, if we don't do this what happens. If you don't, if we don't pass the bill. Right now I guess we have to do. I guess we're going to be asked to do an amendment to actually appropriate the money is that right we actually have to do an amendment or we don't have to do an amendment. We can approve this as is and as amended by ways and means that's, that's where we are. That's where we've gotten to so at some point pretty quickly, somebody can propose that. Okay, that's what I'm trying to get to I'm working up to that I just want to be sure I understand what I'd be saying. So the only appropriation we're being asked to do is that one time half a million dollars which Stephanie you're telling us is already in. It's already accounted for it's already accounted for. So I will make a motion that we support as 25 as amended by House government operations and houseways and means. Okay, thank you. Is there a second. I'll second. Thank you. Marty. I guess we've gone on past that but my whole question was, where did this whole concept of social equity applicants come from and who discussed it and what is the, but that's the base fail I understand the concept of putting this in and why and where and $500,000 worries me of course but it's the whole basic concept of that being included in the bill. It's going to be just a brief background john. So, this conference is Senate to ushery but in when the governor chose not to sign as 54 or act 164. One of the concerns he raised was the lack of a social equity. And so I think what the Senate was doing here was trying to address one of the concerns of the governor of creating a social equity fund, so that people who have been just disproportionately impacted by the cannabis prohibition would have a source of funding to get into the cannabis industry the regulated cannabis industry. And so that's what I think the background story is with respect to the social equity fund. Thank you. Is there any further discussion committee. Are we ready to vote this. Okay, so made it you want to call the roll. Okay, so the thank you so the motion before us is to support s 25 is recommended by House government operations and further amended by House ways and means. Are we ready. Representative Fagan. No. Representative Feltas. No representative Harrison. Yes. Representative helm. Not with us representative Jessup. Yes. Representative shy. Yes. Representative squirrel. Yes. Representative Tolino. Yes. Representative Townsend. Yes. Representative Yacoboni. Yes. Representative Hooper. Yes. Are we holding this open or until we get to the end of of our meeting we have one more group one more bill to hear so we'll, we'll wrap up. We'll close it up and show up and we'll close it. Our reporter, Madam chair, our reporter on this bill. Oh, who said, well I have the cannabis control board if that but there's also other other organized people that are involved but I don't know if that matters. Anybody volunteering other than Robin. The answers no. I think you just heard. Yeah, I'm happy to pass the baton if anybody else prefer to do it. Rep Ganon and Scott if you're still here you're not Michelle. Thank you all for joining us and I beg your pardon for my frustration. It's just been a long week. Thank you. I hope I hope you understand. Have a have a great evening. Yeah. Made up. Before everyone scatters to the four wins I wanted to double check with regard to s 25 please. Am I to close the vote on this. Yes, please we're done. Okay, so then our vote so that it's formal here on s 25 was 821. Okay, thank you 821 and we know and Robin was volunteered for that. Okay, and we know where we are with. We have a plan for how we're going to figure out as 62 and we'll see everybody. Monday afternoon at 330. Okay, any, any further. Before the sun goes down folks. Thank you very, very much. Really appreciate your time. Take us off live.