Okay. The recording has started. You're muted. Okay. Good afternoon. My name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Remind Canada's control board. Today is Wednesday, March 27th, 2024. And I call this meeting to order a few opening remarks before we turn to the agenda run the cusp of April 1st, which is the date that the board voted to indefinitely close the application window for all new tier three cultivation licenses and mixed tier two and anyone seeking to renew at those tiers or new or seeking to renew at those tiers. Starting a draft application or having an incomplete application in the licensing portal is not enough to satisfy this deadline and have your application considered for licensure. If you're seeking one of these license types, you must have submitted or resubmitted a complete application that includes all answers, information and supporting documents, including certificates of occupancy, certificates of good standing and all the other requirements in rule two before midnight on March 31st, 2024. You still have a few days. If you're working on this, please get in touch with the licensing team to get these documents in before this window closes. We've also onboarded a few new people since our last meeting. I'd like to first welcome our new education and outreach manager, Patrick Crowley. This is the role that Nellie Marvel used to fill. Patrick is a prolific writer and journalist. I've always been so impressed with how accessible and informative his work is and his writing is. Patrick has been putting a fresh set of eyes on all of our networking events, our guidance documents, social media and general communications and his finding ways to make the ever important job of communicating what's happening at the board more effective and efficient. I'd also like to introduce our new director of compliance, David Rubin. David has held a number of important roles within the Vermont State Department as part of our system, which put him at the epicenter of systems building, record keeping and compliance. Much like Patrick, David is putting a fresh set of eyes on all of our internal compliance processes and looking ways they can be improved or reimagined all together. I speak for the board when I extend a heartfelt welcome to both of you. I'm sure you guys will be familiar faces with our licensees, but I hope that you could just pop on the video, Patrick first and say a quick hello. Hi, everyone, really happy to be here and continue to meet everyone and speak with you. Thanks. Thanks, Patrick. And then David is in the room.  Step in front of the camera for a sec. Hi, everyone. Dave Rubin, just like Patrick, I'm thrilled to be here and thrilled to roll up my sleeves and get to work. All right. Thank you very much. I also wanted to mention briefly, particularly for the benefit of our medical patients. So I'm really happy to be here and continue to meet everyone and speak with you. Thanks. Thanks, Patrick. And then David is in the room. Step in front of the camera for a sec. I'm sure you guys will be familiar with the name of our medical patients that oftentimes come visit us in person. That we have officially moved into our new office. It's the same location 89 main street in Montpelier, but we're back on the third floor. I think all the signage is correct at this point. This move is the culmination of a, at least a 15 month three dimensional chess game that our director of operations Olga is so definitely navigated. You hold guys so much for the endless meetings and walkthroughs, the thousands of decisions that fell to you. And for keeping all the various agencies involved on track. And somehow you did it with a smile and at least I haven't seen any polls in the walls. You know, and you punched along the way. I also want to thank all the staff for being so flexible throughout this process and piling on top of each other. For about four months in a space that was previously being used as a storage closet. And a special thanks to Priya and Isabel, our tireless medical team for spending more time in that storage room than anyone else and making it such a welcoming place. So other than that, just need to approve the minutes from our last regular meeting on February 28, 2024. Is that a chance to look at those? Yes. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Seconded. All in favor. Aye. Through the agenda here, Brennan jumping right to the executive director report. Okay. So here's your report for the month of March. We'll start out with a summary of our public engagement sessions. So this is a summary of what happened last month. For our monthly educational events that we host for our current and prospective cannabis establishment licensees. And as a reminder, the goal of these events is really to allow licensees, the opportunity to connect with each other, share their knowledge, and also learn from board staff and, and or industry professionals on a variety of topics. And these are all recorded sessions. So you don't have to attend live. You can check out the YouTube link, which I've included in this report. Hi, Brennan. Sorry to interrupt. This is Patrick, I can't see your, your presentation. If we can just pause for a moment. Let's, let's try and figure out how to make sure we can all see that for a second. Sorry for the delay folks. Presenting. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. You can send it. I just sent. Okay. We can do that. A second. I think it's a presenter that we can share our screen. I don't know if that's achievable. You should be good now. Okay. Everybody see that. See it now? Yeah. Thanks a lot, Bren. We got it. All right. Thank you. Okay. So summary of our. Monthly educational events. So last, this month of March, we hosted a cultivation challenges with Pungal organisms. Educational session that our own Chris, Monica hosted and. And. And spoke about. And then upcoming in the next couple of weeks, we'll have a review of our updated advertising guidance. So as. Cannabis licensees have explored new ways to reach their customers. Our original advertising guidance. Really sort of fell out of date and became less useful. For us as we were reviewing novel. Submissions for advertisements. So this new document is going to provide really a comprehensive. Business. So we have a lot of helpful advice. We also have a lot of helpful advice. So, so we have a lot of guidance about advertising, which includes promotions. Sponsorships. Directory submissions. Partnerships with third parties. Social media. And what happens with businesses websites. It also is going to set expectations for what happens after. An applicant submits and advertising submission. So we've created a new process. By which advertisement reviews are going to be submitted and process is really designed to reduce the inbox overwhelm that our staff are experiencing and funnel all advertising submissions into an orderly process for review and a secondary review if and when the result of the initial review is challenged by the person who submits it. So all licensees that do any advertising should tune into this session where our very own general counsel will be doing a walkthrough of our new advertising guides. And then a summary of our hiring activity since the beginning of the new year. The chair spoke about this in his opening remarks, but we have onboarded a few new staff including Patrick Crowley, our new outreach and education manager, onboarded in February, David Rubin, our new director of compliance and enforcement who is onboarded in mid March, and then most recently just last week, we did onboard a data manager, Liz Love, who you will meet at another board meeting. Meet yourself there. Okay, so with that, I'm going to move on to the adult use program licensing data. And I will start with our numbers of total active licensees. So we always start with a few slides that are really a snapshot of all issued licenses. And so these include renewals, this includes this really a point in time of all active licenses at the moment. So we've got 120 indoor cultivation licenses at the moment, 119 mixed and 156 outdoor. You can see the breakdown by tier there. And then here are other types of licenses. And we've got the total number of active licenses down at the bottom. We're at 560 total active licenses as of this week. And then the next slide here is a breakdown of licensees by their priority status. So we're going to, in the next few slides, we're going to look at a breakdown of all licensees by type and tier according to the business's priority status. This is a distillation of that information into sort of the total breakdown of all of our licensees by priority status. So standard is the Kelly green, social equity is that teal green, and then economic empowerment is that black. It looks dark green here. And then now we've got the raw numbers of all licensees by their type and tier according to their priority status. And then the next slide sort of is what you just saw but distilled down into the license type with the priority status represented as a percentage of the total licensees. So these are our cultivation licensees. So you can see the difference between the indoor outdoor and mixed cultivation licensees, what portion of them are standard licensees, economic empowerment and social equity. And again, social equity is the teal, economic empowerment is the black or dark green for appears to you. This is great. Thank you. Almost in depth. And then the next slide is for manufacturing and retail. Same breakdown, but for this different license types. Before so the next series of slides is really about renewals before we get into renewals. Just a brief look at license relinquishments. So this is showing license relinquishment by priority status. And that number, that total of 55 is the total number of licensees that have relinquished their license since the outset of our time issuing licenses. So it's not a monthly number, it's a total number over time. So the slide really demonstrates based on the last few slides you looked at that the proportion of licensees that are relinquishing their license, roughly, so by their priority status roughly matches the proportion of total licensees we have by priority status. So the number of economic empowerment licensees that are relinquishing their license is a little bit higher than the total number of licensees that we have in the economic empowerment category. But given that this total number of 55 is so low, it really probably does not indicate a trend at this point, but we'll continue to look at that over time. And I just wanted to point out on this slide that there's been a slight change in how we're doing this reporting for license relinquishments, which has resulted in a very slight shift in the total numbers by priority status here. The total relinquishments have really only have only increased by one since last month. But the breakdown reflects that there are three more economic empowerment licensees that have relinquished their license and two less standard licensees that have relinquished their license. And these numbers, as opposed to those numbers from last month, are really a more accurate representation of who have actually relinquished their license. The reporting last month was really based on who was report, which businesses were reporting to staff that they planned to relinquish their license. And these numbers are an actual representation of who has relinquished their license. So these are actual expiring licensees at this point. Any questions about that? So I'm going to move on to our renewal digging into the renewal slides. So this slide looks at the proportion of renewals in which cultivators and manufacturers are changing something about their license. So we've got no change at 82%. And this the percentages here all around are roughly staying stable. There was a slight increase this month in no change up from 80% last month, and a slight decrease in tear change down from 12% from last month. So mostly staying the same here. And then looking more closely at cultivators, the changes in cultivation type. These proportions are shifting slightly, with about a 6% increase in the mixed to outdoor change, and a 6% decrease in indoor to mixed. The outdoor to mixed is staying stable. And then cultivators and manufacturers looking at them together, how they're changing their tear when they renew. There's no change to this from last month. Most folks are increasing. And five have decreased. And then looking again at just the raw numbers of how people are changing as they renew. This slide really looks much the same as it did last month for the raw numbers and how folks are changing. Obviously, the green arrow is who is increasing the black arrow from left to right is who's staying the same, but changing their type of cultivation. And then the the orange arrow is who is decreasing their tear size. But this slide is looks at our larger sized cultivation tiers. And we've got a few more changes here of people moving up or down. Same number of folks increasing tier as decreasing tier among the bigger sized cultivation. On the last one, there was I think I saw one indoor to mixed. Is the is the general trend like indoor to more outdoor growing mixed or outdoor? Or is that just a one? It seemed like in the last last month, there were more moving from indoor to mixed or outdoor. So this let's see. This is our sort of overall nobody is moving to indoor. Yeah, yeah, yep. The trend tends to be towards outdoor or mixed. Any other questions about those or I'll move on to our canopy capacity. Okay. So these numbers are looking the same this month. Indoor and outdoor license canopy is static. The numbers there are static square footage is the same this month as it was last month. The board did approve around 25,000 square feet of indoor canopy at the last board meeting. But those approved businesses have not yet had their licenses issued yet. So that indoor number is likely to grow soon, probably at the next board meeting. But you don't see that reflected here, because those licenses haven't yet issued. And then here's our capacity versus utilization slide. As a reminder, the total number of licensees that are surveyed for their utilization percentage is around 15% for licensees. So that utilize canopy, the dark green bar is reflective of a subset of our license growers. That utilization rate is is again relatively stable. For both indoor and outdoor, it stayed the same since December. So no real dramatic for real shift at all in our utilization rate. So far this year. Okay, I'll move on to retail areas of density questions. And here is the these next couple of slides show our areas of density around the state where we have two or more retail businesses or retail applicants. And there have been no changes in this list since the last meeting. So nothing new for you to see here. And so next I'll move on to product registration. So this is a snapshot of all registered products. And it's just a comparison here between our retrospective of 2023, what 2023 look like with respect to registered products, and then 2024 so far. So you can see that mostly it's looking the same, although there is a little bit of growth in the extract category. And the other category, a little bit of growth, and a little bit of a reduction in the number of registrations that are for flower. So any questions about that? Okay, so I'll move on to our pre qualification application. So this is a summary. This is just sort of a snapshot of all applications that have been received since we've instituted the pre qualification process. So a total of 120 pre qualification applications. And you can see the status there, the breakdown according to status. You'll see that there are two in the denied status category. Those are both for presumptively disqualifying offense. A denial of pre qualification doesn't prohibit the applicant from continuing on to a full license application. It just is an indication that they are not approved for pre qualification. The dismissed category is is a category where it's really initiated by board staff. So CCB initiates a dismissal, whereas a withdrawal is initiated by the applicant. So those 16 dismissals are really reflective of staff dismissing application if the applicants submitted for either a closed tier of cultivation or closed some kind of closed license application category. So if the problem is a curable problem with the pre qualification application, it doesn't get dismissed. It goes to incomplete or some other status. So it's really only dismissed if there's some incurable problem with the application. We're four months into this new process. That's right. Yes. And how's it going? Because it are people finding it more efficient? Is it helpful? Yes, we're getting a lot of really good feedback from our applicants about the process. I think they're feeling very supported by the amount of sort of one on one between the applicant and our staff. We have a whole host of our staff that join for these pre qualification meeting sessions that include licensing staff and compliance staff. And not only are applicants getting a lot of their questions answered, but they're also getting sort of a complete picture of what the application process looks like, both from like a paperwork perspective and a site visit perspective. And so I think it's leading, it's also leading to some better outcomes. Much of many fewer complete applications are being submitted. It's the biggest quantifiable, quantifiable the right. Yes. Yeah, on both ends, I would imagine, for both the applicant and staff that would speed up the process. Yeah. So once it's been in place for a little bit longer, the plan is for staff to pull some reports on our sort of the timing of how long it takes us to review an application. So we can and we can do a comparison between how long it was taking us prior to instituting prequel to how long is it taking us now that we're doing prequel. So we're going to give it a little bit more time to allow for some applicants to move all the way through the process. And then we'll do that reporting. I've asked this before, I can't remember the answer. Is there a fee for pre qualifications at that $500 that we had set in statute?  So there's no separate fee to pre qualify. Okay, so of those pre qualification applications, this is a picture of who has moved on to their full application. So of those 120 pre qualification applicants 20 have finished their pre qualification process and moved into their full application. So and that's the breakdown of who those what those businesses are applying for type of license. And then the next couple of slides, we're just looking at our tier three cultivation and tier two mixed cultivation renewals. So these are the folks that are seeking to renew with these levels. And these are the folks that are in process right now to renew it either a tier three, or a mixed tier two cultivation. And so these are the tiers for which the application window is going to close on April 1. So we've got nine people in the pipeline to renew those levels. And we have two new tier three cultivation applications in the queue. There's no way we reach out to those people about April first. Yes, they've all received a lot of contact from us. So unless there are any questions, I'll move on to the compliance data. Alright, so summary of our compliance work. These are inspections and investigations just over the last month. Gives you a picture of where our field staff have been what they've been doing. 38 total inspections over the last 28 days or so. 11 investigations. Are the inspections like just are they those are planned or scheduled or they are? Yes, they are. And then digging into the other work of the compliance team, we've gotten six new complaints since the last board meeting, and undertaken seven new investigations on the following categories there pesticide misuse, advertising, on site consumption, unlicensed establishment, inventory tracking record keeping in general compliance. Since the last board meeting, we've issued three notices of violation. And sort of the rationale for those notices of violation is listed there. No corrective action plans have been issued since the last board meeting or letters of warning, but we have observed product destruction in four instances. Any questions about that? We'll move on to our medical program data. And this is just one slide. This month to just show our numbers. We've had a loss of 149 patients since last month. I think a small bump in caregivers, we've got one additional caregiver since last month. So the trend continues. And that is your report for this month. So before we go on to the recommendations for licensure, I would recommend that the board come to a second session so we can discuss social equity advocate to social equity app. Yeah, thank you for that, Fran. I don't think I've ever thanked you for doing it all this time. But I just I know how much work goes into this from the entire staff. It's really it's hard for us to kind of just take it all in. But and have in depth questions. But it is really tremendous amount of information and work that goes. And I think the staff for all of their hard work to get it done every month. So yes, executive session is next, as Brent mentioned, we've been kind of given some information that we have two recommended denials for social equity status. And we just want to go into the executive session here from our general council and our executive director. But more detail about those two and I think it'll take very long. So I think it's technically a deliberative session for a session. Okay. Do you have a motion for that? I do. I move that the board entered deliberative session for the purpose of non public consultation with its legal counsel and for the purpose of deliberating upon two applications pertaining to personal documents relating to applicants for social equity status that are exempt from public disclosure under Vermont public records one VSA 317 C7. That looks like on favor. Hi. Okay. It was 131 right now. I mean, why don't we give ourselves 20 minutes? Okay, so we'll be back at 150 right around there. L. C. or Patrick we have, would you mind putting up that just a way message essentially? Okay. So just to reset, James Pepper check in his control board Wednesday, March 27. It's 158 p.m. And we're exiting executive session and rejoining our regular scheduled meeting. And Brian, I think you are going to review recommendations. And everybody can see this again? Yes, we can. Great. Okay. So here are the staff recommendations for licensure this month. So as always, the applicants on the following slides have demonstrated their compliance with all requirements for their license contained in board rule and in statute. So first, we'll talk about staff recommendations on social equity status. And this month we have two recommendations to make to the board on social equity status. The first is an approval for submission number 5196. Is that applicant has met all the criteria for social equity business applicant was defined in board rule. The second is a recommendation for social equity status denial and that is submission number 7608. As that applicant has not met the criteria for social equity business applicant has defined in board rule. And then the next couple of slides are staff recommendations for licensure. The first is for initial licensure. So this month we have strange clouds applying for a tier three cultivation indoor cultivation license. 802 joint ventures applying for a tier two manufacturing license. Antler Ridge applying for a tier one indoor cultivation license, Ben T辦法 tier one indoor cultivation license, Dr. Dank applying for an indoor tier one cultivation license. Champlain craft cultivators applying for a tier one outdoor cultivation license, brought product creations, applying for a tier one outdoor cultivation license and felony farms applying for an indoor tier one cultivation license. That is at your new applicants recommended for approval this month. And then the next couple of slides or our recommendations for license renewal. So these are our folks that have a license and are being recommended recommended to the board for renewal. So I'll leave this up for a couple of moments. Excellent. And last. And there you have it. This report will be posted on the website by the end of the day. So folks can take a look. See if there renewal application is recommended for approval. Any questions for brand about any of this? No, just to clarify those two social equity one approval one denial. Those of the two we discussed in executive session. I think I said that they're both denials, but one was an open recommendation and decided to approve. Well, you will decide to approve on it. Are you ready for a motion? Yes. I'm going to accept the recommendations for approval and denial as presented to us by staff in this meeting. Oh, second. Any further discussion? Nope. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. All right. Why don't we move to the last item on our agenda, which is public comment? Do we need to take a vote on the record? The remaining recommendations? I think that we thought that we just did it all. I thought that was all of it. Okay. I think that was just the social equity one. Sorry, I thought you were asking to approve all of the recommendations. That's well, let's just make sure we get it right. Okay. So we just voted for the social equity approval. And denial to accept those recommendations. And now we should do the remainder of licenses. Just the remaining record staff recommendations. I move to accept the remaining staff recommendations as made to us by staff in this meeting. Oh, second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. All right. Now let's move to public comment. We're in the meeting room. Yeah, I know. Erin is all flustered. Okay. Same way that we always do. If you join this meeting via the video link and would like to comment, please raise your virtual hands and we'll try our best to call on you in the order that you raise your hands. All right. First hand up is Dave. Thanks all. Appreciate the good work. Thinking always about market saturation and kind of how things are shaping up. And I don't know what data you guys are seeing certainly from my perspective, you know, working with various cultivators and also running a retailer. We're seeing a lot of supply far exceeding demand. And we're seeing prices slipping with a lot of growers having a lot of having a very hard time getting rid of inventory at any price. And then looking at that in the context of the 47% utilization rate of indoor canopy and the boards move so far to limit new licenses, you know, it seems like limiting new licenses won't be enough where you have an oversupply and potentially twice as much indoor canopy already licensed. And so I don't know that I have a recommendation and I don't think this is an easy problem to solve, but it just occurs to me this 47% number really stunned me today and made me think that we're in for a lot of hurt without something more than what's been done so far. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you very much. Yep. Thanks, Dave. Next hand up is Andrew. I don't see a last name. Yeah. Hi. Thank you. I know it's not a question and answer session. I was just wondering about an update on the propagation licenses. And I don't know if at some point there might be some more information about when those licenses would be available. Yep. Thanks, Andrew. Next hand up, Russ. Hey, everyone. I was hoping that just take a minute to talk about the product renewal process. We're about a year out from the product registration process and many products are coming up for renewal. Currently, as far as I know, the process is essentially 30 days ahead of time. You are able to apply for renewal maybe more than 30 days ahead. But what we're finding is instead of having the product number for an existing product extended, there's a brand new product number that comes up, a brand new product registration number that comes up. So essentially, it's really no different than a brand new product registration from practical use. I think it's creating a lot of issues, and it's going to continue to have issues for all retailers, manufacturers, anyone that's registering product in a couple ways. So first is for every product that folks expect to renew, that means every single retailer that is carrying that product will have to manually go into their duchy system or whatever system they use to change that product every single year on an ongoing basis. Versus if it were the same product registration number, that could just stay evergreen and there's not that double handling and coordination. Second, there's really no visibility for retailers to know if and when products they are carrying are either going to be renewed or when they're about to expire. And the problem that we're seeing is once the product registration lapses, the old number doesn't work any longer at all, and that's not really realized until it is put into someone's basket, that order is picked, and the customer is about to pay and then finds out that they're not able to buy the product that's right in front of their hands. That creates a lot of, a ton of scrambling between the retailer and whoever licensed the item and it causes frustrated customers. And finally, if like a manufacturer or a grower doesn't want to re-register a product, let's say they don't want to make it anymore, they don't have a lot of visibility to if some of that product is left at a dispensary and may still need to sell through, so they may not register something or look to renew that registration and they're going to find at the retailer that it wasn't, they're not able to sell it and they're stuck with this inventory that they can't move. So I wanted to propose a few recommendations. First, that we get this figured out. I think the right solution would be to allow us to continue to have those product registration numbers that were initially provided for those products. My understanding now is that there's no real good fix right now. If an auto fix is impossible, I propose a few things. One, I know we can extend these manually. It may be worth just having some office hours and taking time with those registrators to go through the products, confirm whether packaging or changes, give new COAs, whatever it takes. So I could meet with someone for an hour and go through every product that we intend to renew for the rest of the year. I also would like to see that we publish expiration dates on the public document that shows all the product registration. So retailers do have that visibility if they're buying product that are, you know, basically up to expire soon. It also be great to kind of have some sort of coordination between existing product numbers and the new ones when those registrations do go through. And then I'd ask that like once a product has started the renewal process, if using the same number isn't possible, that we allow some sort of grace period so that both numbers can be used in the duchy system so that we don't have these issues where retailers are getting all the way to the last part of the transactions and end up disappointing customers. And, you know, the person either managing the dispensary just doesn't have that visibility. So I hope you'll consider some of those things and happy to talk through it offline at any time. Thanks. No, thank you, Russ. I mean, the more detailed you can get with us, the better, honestly, on some of these things doesn't have to be in a public comment session and can certainly be over email or on the phone. But those are very helpful suggestions. Thanks, Russ. Next name we have Bridget Connery. Should be able to unmute yourself. Bridget, you still with us? All right. Why don't we go to the next name? I see Bridget. If you come back, please raise your hand again. Tito Byrne, go ahead. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Excellent. So I just want to thank you for all your hard work as always and thank you for renewing our license. We're very excited for another year. I do want to just reiterate though how great it would be to streamline the process of renewal. So it doesn't really feel like a reapplication and instead a renewal that maybe is a little less burdensome time-wise for the applicants. And then secondly, I just want to say I agree with Russ very much. We've been talking a lot about this internally about the changing registration numbers causes a lot of confusion and unnecessary work. That's it. You guys are having a great day. Thank you. Thanks, Tito. Next up, James Lang. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Yep. Super. Yeah, I just wanted to piggyback off of Russ's comments here. I think we came to the same idea, having the expiration date for those product registrations on that CCB product registration document, that would be the only way that I could think of is to get ahead of these issues. And I think that we were all under the impression that the expired product registration number would still go through at point of sale and it is not. It is getting hit with a error 400. Other than that, I am working with Dutchie, with a couple of my retailers, the incoming transfers and receives integration into Dutchie. That's still a thing that's still coming. It's probably two to three months out for transfers and a little bit longer for receives. And just a quick FYI for everybody tracking harvest lot and process lot in their Dutchie. It sounds like the right place for that to go is going to be the batch name and cultivation batches that's following the strain all throughout Dutchie. That's all. Thanks, James. Eli, go ahead. Thank you very much. I would like to also reiterate the product renewal and also just add for cultivators. I had a renewal that I just saw was denied for more information and it said it needed a fresh pesticide test. This is a flower product that's been rolled up in a pre-roll and out to my dispensaries for months and months. So within even that registration on the grower side, having an updated pathogen makes sense. If it's appropriate, I had mine tested in November having an updated potency. But if this stuff is inventory that's already out there at our, and I would say specifically the pesticide does not seem like it's necessary, nobody's added pesticides in the year since it was registered and it's a finished product. The pesticide half-life, it wouldn't show up anyways unless it was freshly applied. So pesticides don't seem important to that at all. And then guess I just wanted to also note sort of the legislative process and just tune people into the bills that are out there and what's being proposed and what's not. I feel like a lot of these topics that we discuss here in the CCB meetings don't make it into the legislation that we see being discussed. And I don't know if we're only looking at one bill per year and our only shot to do all of these things at once. But when I hear the issues that we discuss and that people talk about grassroots and a number of us bringing up the same things and then I see what makes it into the statute, it seems like there's a big disconnect. And so I think a lot of us support the CCB and see you guys out there advocating for reducing or eliminating the caps, the event permits, some of these. But it's very frustrating not to see this stuff make it into the legislation and puts us all in a tough spot where we have to decide should we oppose this legislation because it is imperfect or missing things or will actually damage us as cultivators or is there another approach, is there a way to take this bit by bit, is there a way to talk with the CCB in no kind of before the legislative session sort of what the roadmap looks like. So I just want to express my frustration with that legislative process and say I think within this meeting and CCB and cultivators and licensees, a lot of us are on the same page but there's a huge disconnect with the legislature and right now I think we'd all like to see the CCB be more empowered to get the things we're talking about into the actual laws being proposed. And I'll just conclude by saying if anybody was down at the Boston Necan, the prices in Massachusetts are our best case for what's going to happen in a few years, anybody that went through CBD. So this idea of oversupply or the correct amount of supply, this is an artificial temporary market, things are going to change when federal prohibition happens. And so I think people need to dramatically change their expectations or take a hard look at other states around us for what prices are coming and be a little bit more realistic because the government is not going to, there's no policy that's going to end capitalism or end the inevitable. And a lot of people who went through CBD should know better and should be prepared for a similar process with THC. So thank you all. Yeah, thanks Eli. Brigitte, you've had your hand up for a while. You've jumped to the bottom of the queue, I think, because of technical difficulties.  We can hear you very faintly, Brigitte. Faintly, yeah. I don't know if there's something covering your microphone or something. Yeah, there's not. You know what? I'll put it in as written comment. Okay. The herb closet, go ahead. Hello. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Yep. Awesome. Again, saying thank you to you guys for the hard work that you guys are doing, kind of following up on what Tito said. And I never thought I would say like DMV does a great job, but in the style of trying to renew your license, instead of having to go start from scratch, it might be beneficial to just have questions saying, you know, has anything changed? So it could be abuse. And we don't have to, like I own a barbershop too. And in the barbershop renewal, it's more like has anything changed? But you know, it's a more, it's an easier process. And it'll save you guys a lot of time to do new business, instead of being staggered with old things. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for the comment. No problem. Thank you again. Thanks. Next hand up, Ben W. Go ahead. Hello. Thanks for taking my comment. This is Ben Wilcox from Off-Peace Farm, and I've been meaning to make a comment for a while. I just haven't gotten to a meeting. And it's about the cutoff date of May 1st for artificial, for supplemental lighting to be used for sungrown cultivars. I think that's a little too early in this year, and a lot of strains that if you don't give them a little extra light early in the morning or in the evening after sunset at that time of year, we'll go into flower. And yeah, I don't know. I think it's a little too early. Should be pushed back to June 1st or sometime in June. That's it. Thank you. Thanks, Ben. That's all the hands I see at the moment from the virtual meeting. Okay. And if you join by phone, you can hit star six to unmute yourself. So we'll just give it a second there. Last call. Okay. I'll close the public comment window. Thank you to everyone who commented and who sat through the whole meeting. I think there's a lot of great suggestions that I heard. To Eli's point, the legislative process point, right now there's four cannabis bills that are floating out there. One of them just happens to be primarily the things that the CCB asked for. And other bills are getting kind of pushed into it when there's consensus. So really it takes kind of some advocacy on the ground to really push that consensus amongst your representatives and your senators. But I think, you know, Ben's point, we can certainly look at that when we reopen our rules. I think that is in rule right now at May 1st deadline. And I think that we have some information we're putting together on the propagation license. I think that's one of our upcoming last meeting. We touched on it briefly for an update on it. I think it says before July 1st. And I know we'll have it up and running before July 1st. Right. I think one of the topic of one are upcoming networking events. So there is more information coming up. No, notwithstanding Eli's comments about no matter what government does, it's capitalism, which is a fair perspective to never no matter if it's cannabis or not. To Dave's point about unused canopy, you know, these bills are far from across the finish line, but there is language in 612 about the board's ability to kind of look at canopy that's not being utilized and proposed taking back or re-tearing somebody based off of unused canopy. So that's not a perfect circle or a perfect way to go about, you know, that potential issue if it does come to the forefront over the next couple of months, years, but it's another tool that we could have to kind of make sure that because it messes up our data on the back end to kind of understand who's how much is being used and how much isn't. So 612 is on the notice calendar right for the House or did they already vote on it? I think they voted on it third reading today. Okay. Yeah, I got a notice. Okay. So I think that's on its way to the Senate. Okay. Any other comments from anyone? All right. And I will adjourn the meeting. Thanks, everyone.


Welcome to Ancestral Health Today. Evolutionary insights into modern health. Welcome everybody. We are so excited to have you here today. This is the Ancestral Health Today podcast. The official podcast of the Ancestral Health Society. And I am your co-host, Isabelle Burnett. And I'm your other co-host, Todd Becker. And Todd, can we tell the audience how we got into Ancestral Health? Sure, Isabelle. My first experience was attending the 2012 Ancestral Health Symposium at Harvard. That was the second one. I missed the first one, but I've been to every conference ever since. I've spoken at many of them. And now I'm excited to join you as co-host of this podcast. Absolutely. And I had been implementing Ancestral Health Principles since 2018 and found the Ancestral Health Symposium in 2021. And I have attended the symposiums after and have been involved as well because this has been so beneficial for my own health and it's rooted in scientific information with amazing guests. That's right. And we'll talk a little bit about some of the guests that we've already recorded episodes with. Now, a lot of people come to AHS and Ancestral Health through their own health challenges. Some people are more interested in just optimizing their health or they're interested in the basic science. So we've recorded episodes with experts in their field, academics, people who are health coaches, and even ordinary practitioners who have applied some of these principles to their lives. So far, I can tell you a few of the exciting episodes that I've recorded. One of them is with James Nestor, who's an expert on breathing. I have another episode with Michael Rose, who's an evolutionary biologist who talks about how evolution can give us insight into longevity. And another great episode with Stefan Guyana, who talked about the brain's role in regulating eating and appetite. And a really interesting one, the Terry Walls, who spoke at actually the 2012 AHS on multiple sclerosis and how to overcome that through dietary practices. And she's really advanced the science and the practice since then. And then we just did a joint interview with another luminary in the ancestral health field. Do you want to talk about that one, Isabelle? Yes, absolutely. So our first episode will be a two-part episode with Daryl Edwards, and he will be talking about movement and play, as well as the 12 pillars of health. So you do not want to miss that episode. We also have guests such as Dr. Alessio Fosano, and Dr. Alessio Fosano is an expert and pioneer in working on the microbiome. Also Katie Bowman, who will be talking about movement, and Jen Brea, who will be talking to us about ME-CFS. The podcast launches September 5th, and you will have an opportunity to listen to an episode every Tuesday afternoon. That's great. We also have a launch party, a live launch party scheduled on October 1st, where we'll have some of our guests dropping in, and you'll have an opportunity live to join us and take part in the conversation. You mentioned the subscriptions on Substack. Isabelle, can you tell our audience what benefits come with being a subscriber? Yes, absolutely. So the podcast will be released through Substack, and you can follow and subscribe on there to see when each episode is coming out and to get information on every guest. But if you also support us on Substack, you'll be able to get bonus episodes. You'll be able to have live interviews with guests and also sending questions that we can ask guests ahead of time and answer whatever you want to know. Great. So Ancestral Health Society has been around for more than a decade. We've had the conference, we have a journal, and now we've got Ancestral Health Today, this great new podcast. We hope you can join us as part of the conversation. We look forward to seeing you on the podcast. Yes, absolutely. We'll be glad to be in your ears every single week and to bring you amazing scientific information that will help you with your health journey and to get to know Ancestral Health a little bit more and apply it to your life today. Thank you for being here today. We will have the links in the show notes, and we look forward to listening to your feedback as well. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Ancestral Health Today. We hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform modern health practices. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch future episodes.


Okay, we're back inside the Cube live in San Francisco, California at Node Summit here. Day two, Node Jam, all the startups are out there talking to the investors in the crowd, showing them their apps built on Node. I'm John Furrier, founder of SiliconANGLE.com, SiliconANGLE.tv, and this is the Cube. This is where we broadcast live. I'm here with Ben Lowenstein and Robert Daphouse.  Played with the Sharks game from Canada, as you said earlier. Okay, and what's your company name? So we are Colingo. Colingo, not to be confused with Colinga, which is the town on Route 101. No, that would definitely be unfortunate. Okay, so welcome to the Cube, guys. So what's the vibe here? Tell us what you guys are doing here and your product and company. Absolutely. So we are Colingo and we are solving the problem of intermediate English learners worldwide. And this is a problem that's not well understood here in the US, but this is not like you or I who needs to go and learn the basics of French because we want to go out to a nice dinner and impress someone. Or we want to know a little bit of Italian for the trip that we have to Italy. We're dealing with people who need English because it makes the difference of getting the job or not getting the job. But being able to seize opportunities or not seizing opportunities. And so we have a real time online tutoring marketplace where learners can come and we match them up with tutors for very advanced, very focused language tutoring sessions that get straight to the bottom of the problems that prevent them from being fluent. So honestly, we're huge. We have a project we're working on called Silicon Academy, which is kind of like our open source projects just getting off the ground. We know about Khan Academy. We hear about Code Academy, just good funding. So online learning is changing. This isn't just like online course where it's a different paradigm of learning. So is that where you guys are going in here and how does the product work? Do people opt in? Is it crowdsourced? How is your platform working? Absolutely. So we're really focused on how we can take someone from the United States, an average American who has one thing that really matters to learners abroad, which is the intuitive ability to listen and to help someone practice their English and matching them with our tool set and our technology that enables them to become a really great language tutor and to be able from the comfort of their home with basically no experience to be an awesome tutor that can really help a learner get to the very specific problems that prevent them from fluency. So it's a marketplace? So that's the primary business model. So you have to match buyers and sellers, all that good stuff, kind of like match.com for English. But so there's some tech involved, right? You're dealing with video, dealing with audio. Yeah, we're actually dealing with audio and Robert can talk more about that, our director of engineering. Yes, and Node was an obvious choice for this project because it's a very real-time base. There's a lot of interaction going on. When that learner is on the system with the tutor, there's a lot of information going back and forth. Node was an obvious choice for that. And we're also dependent on some third-party APIs such as Twilio, so Node is really good for kind of sitting in the middle of all this stuff going on in real-time. So what about video? Is there video involved? Not at the moment, there's not no. Just audio? Yes. So is it a window with chat and video? Yeah, so actually we also leveraged Skype in this because Skype is a great communications channel. So the learner and the tutor are actually connected over Skype. But once that happens, that just kind of sits in the background and then they go over to their browsers and the actual lesson, the actual conversation itself, all that value happens in the browser. So we had Voxer on earlier. They're doing a lot of that, the instant messaging with the voice. We asked about Skype and so what does it work, what does it mean to work with Skype? To my knowledge, Skype doesn't really deal with Node. Or Skype just wrapping around Skype. How do you handle in the Skype thing? Exactly, we're doing what you just said. We wrap around Skype so Skype has released. It's in a beta phase, essentially a runtime where you can build your own UI around Skype and we are leveraging that in our system. And it was just a natural choice. Like I said, use Skype because they do have some great features in their network that we don't really have to worry about. They just deliver a good call. Great, so where are you guys now? Tell us about the company status. Funded, angel funded, not funded, looking for funding. How many people? Sure. Where are you guys at? So we're three people right now. My co-founder Lee Jacobs, myself and Robert. Full time, we're looking to hire one more. That's actually why we're here at Node Conference. And if there's anyone in this audience that is a Node developer and would like to come work on some awesome, awesome challenges, please get in touch with us. So we were talking last night about this person you're trying to hire. It's a tough hire, right? It's a JavaScript person. Just describe the person you're looking for. So we're really looking for someone who has the ability to think in an architectural sense about Node, who wants to take Node from kind of a basic hacking on it. We can make something work application to an application that's really well structured, well tested, something that's very smooth, very robust, and can link in with a lot of the external APIs such as Skype that we're working with. So where are you guys at with the product now? Is it actually working with some folks using it or is it still being developed? Yeah, absolutely. So we're in a private beta right now and we actually have people who are using the product coming back every day, loving the experience. We're keeping things very small at the moment. We're gradually scaling them up as we fine tune the core interactions and the core principles involved. How many people are using it in the private beta? So it's pretty small right now. I'd have to check the exact numbers as of today because we just launched two weeks ago. Hundreds, tens, hundreds, thousands. In the smaller range of that. Smaller range, okay, so you're controlled beta. We're in a controlled beta, but one of the exciting things is thinking about distribution and thinking about how easy it is to scale a solution when you have all the core components of this right. So there's VCs here, so obviously Charles is running around, checking everyone out. Insuk Ray is here from Rembrandt. Have you guys talked to some investors at all and what's the feeling from investors? Yeah, Charles is a great guy. I had a lot of good conversations with him so far. And in general, yeah, we are in execution mode at the moment and we are really looking to go ahead and prove out a lot of the key concepts that we're working on. And you're based here? Yeah, we're based here in San Francisco. And you're looking for someone that person to be in San Francisco? That's right. So anyone in San Francisco Bay Area, you want to come join these guys. It's a great app and I got to say the whole learning transformation paradigm is completely up in the air right now. It's a great environment to innovate. I'm a huge fan of Khan Academy, a huge fan of Code Academy. We have a Silicon Academy project which is just now getting up online, not really online, but going. We're getting some support for it, but it's huge and it's changing the game. And the learning environment will be, as Mark Hopkins and I talk about, very Xbox-like, where there's going to be a lot of interaction, a lot of real-time data, very gamification-oriented, cool, things like that. So I think you guys got a good opportunity. I hope you can find that person. Yeah, I mean, myself as well. And it's really the opportunity to take code, to take node and make something that's going to work for the two billion people that are learning English over the next 10 years. The numbers are just staggering. Get that product out the door. Ben, thank you very much. Thank you.


Thanks for checking out this movie review video. This is for the 1980 horror classic Maniac. Yes, this is available for streaming on Shutter on the Shutter streaming service when I'm recording this video I don't actually know when I'm putting this review out, but you know, so I sat down I'm just give you a backstory on why I chose maniac at the moment I sat down and I was like, oh what movie do I want to review today? And I had some in mind, but I turned on shutter and every time I turn on shutter I like to see what they're running on their channels their live channels So it just happens that maniac was on and I was just like, oh, it's maniac And then I found myself not being able to leave it and I just watched like I don't know 10 minutes of it And then I just there's just like snap out of it get out of the film I was like, I'm just gonna review this because I already started like have ideas pop up in my head And I'm like I'm doing maniac then so it just kind of happened. So thank you shudder So anyway, let's talk maniac Written by and starring Joe Spinnell now this individual you would probably know from Godfather one and Godfather two He had a bigger role in Godfather two. He's CC But he's in Godfather one as well He's kind of more like in the background, but you may also know him from taxi driver now I've seen the first two Godfather films. I have not seen taxi driver I know there's some people right now with a lot of things I say like that It would be like, oh my god, you haven't seen taxi driver. It's on my list. Don't worry I'll get to it at some point, but I go hard on the horror. So but it was also written by CA Rosenberg so Spinnell and Rosenberg work together on the script and story Directed by William Lustig who also ended up doing the maniac cop series there were three of those that was after maniac and Prior to that William Lustig actually was a porn director and so yeah I guess he used proceeds from his porn film hot, honey To film maniac so very good and to that and to that the budget actually was a very low $350,000 but get this how much it made in the box office 10 million dollars on a $350,000 budget that's awesome That's huge and it's really interesting considering that they never like initially they didn't submit it for Rating to the MPAA so it was just an unrated film. It just immediately gets like an NC 17 adults only They're ended up being other cuts of it that were distributed after that at an R rating But I don't even know they'd have to cut a decent amount of stuff out to get it down to an R in my opinion But I thought it was interesting. They decided like this is so raw It's so like disturbing and gruesome that we're just not even gonna get it rated at first and just put it out But they made 10 million in the box office. So that's crazy And this was in 1980 the film was not listed as one of the video nasties in the UK But it actually ended up being seized by police in a few areas of the country just because of the Reputation of the film because you know reputations of films like that kind of make it Overseas so Lustig already said that the lust just lustig uses proceeds from that porn The film was shot gorilla style because they actually could not afford Filming permits for New York City. And yes, that's where it's shot is New York City So if you if you watch this film just think whenever they're out on the street doing things No permits. So that's a dicey situation because you can get some very hefty fines if you get caught I know one film director in particular who's very famous for like always doing pretty much a gorilla film making is John Waters who you know, I'm from the Baltimore-ish area. So he's a hometown hero here. Nice guy So, yeah, all gorilla style done because it was such a low budget now That takes us to one of the most risky scenes to do gorilla style Which is the shotgun blast to the head of the boyfriend in the car scene where they're getting it on and then Frank Zito Joe Spinole's character comes up and just like steps up on the top on the hood and just With the shotgun just blows his head open Which that's a crazy scene in the film like it's in amazingly gory It's really well done. It looks good and one of the main reasons being that Tom Savini did it We all know Tom Savini. He's wonderful and actually I'm just gonna plug this real quick I did a review video for the new time the Tom Savini Documentary which is also streaming on shutter called.  It's weird So out of yeah, that stuff's rough. I feel like in those instances you should just Try to find the money to get those permits, especially in a place like New York City Very crowded city even back then so I mean obviously it's more so today, but so Do-do-do-do there was a maniac to that ended up coming out in 1986 Interesting thing 1986 was also the year that Henry portrait every serial killer came out Which I feel like took a lot of inspiration from maniac But spinel actually ended up directing maniac to I have not seen maniac to I probably will at some point Because I have a lot of respect for Joe spinel especially after I've seen maniac and this viewing when I watched it today This was not the first time I'd seen it. I saw it a few years ago so Then there was a remake in 2012 that was done by Alexander Aja and that starred Elijah Wood I've heard very good things about that remake. I just haven't gotten to it yet. Once again. It's one of those films It's on the list. It's on my list to watch I will get there eventually and I'll probably do a review of it when I get there So let's get in the actual film the opening scene sets a very disturbing and very important Stage for the film to give you an idea of what type of film it is You do find out that that's you know a dream or a nightmare kind of that that Frank Zito was having But you start immediately with this kind of like voyeuristic view of him using those it's like those touristy Binocular things you can pay for I don't think they have those anymore except like on the tops of tall buildings and in big cities but so he's like looking through that so it looks like binoculars basically and the heavy like the Disturbing heavy breathing is very effective because it tells you there's something not right about this person And that's like an immediate thing to let you know Hey the this voyeuristic gaze that you're seeing the person who's watching is Messed up in some way and you're gonna find out how and you obviously you do with very gory effect And like that kill scene is actually very crazy and disturbing how he's like lifted up and you see his feet and they're like shaking It's a very raw Disturbing film and I see why it you know got the reputation it did when it came out I mean rightfully so with the way that it was done But you know for nowadays people really look back and appreciate how it was done because it's very realistic You see how unhinged Frank is immediately with his dream and then because he wakes up from the dream He's all sweaty which that's kind of a theme is like Frank Zito is always sweaty in this film Which I feel like adds an extra level of like disturbing and grit to the film and like rawness It's just like it's gross You know like how often in films they intentionally show the actors like sweaty not very often So it gives this kind of raw authentic feel to the film. It's a small thing, but it works So when he wakes up from his dream like you then I mean first of all you had that crazy dream But then also you're seeing his room where he's got like all the dolls the mannequins All these pictures and if you'll notice some of the pictures have like the private parts kind of Scratched out of the women and that kind of goes back to his whole psychosis Well his his whole disturbing behavior that spawns from his mother and the sexuality that he saw on his mother Basically as they allude to it being like a prostitute when he was a kid. So Very very very interesting. So they have a lot of those kind of cues there Where where they give you some hints as to what's going on with his backstory But then they eventually over the course of the film actually break it down Which is one of the things I really like about this film, especially for how early it was in 1980 to go that in depth on the pathology of a serial killer like this I Feel like I was pretty groundbreaking I mean you did see some of that in the in the Hitchcock film psycho But I feel like this took it deeper and closer because it's focusing on that main character of the serial killer It's like you're inside his head basically which helps to make the film more disturbing and more uncomfortable for people So therefore more effective Frank goes out to kill the hooker because his dream kind of signified that he was like Jonesing for a kill, you know, it's part of him waking up all sweaty as he was kind of like it's like a Junkie, you know, like when they wake up and they've got the sweats and just like I just need a fix I need a fix Frank Zito just needed a kill fix and that's why he then goes out gets the hooker and does his thing Which you know, that's his that's that's his thing So the scalping scene I thought was actually pretty nasty for 1980. So you pair that up with the head explosion and some of the stabbing stuff The one with the the stabbing through the back with the bayonet And then him stabbing the girl with his switchblade and then him stabbing himself Like all those scenes very very gory very gruesome. So The inner monologue is actually a little bit weird But the line delivery and it's really good and you know that mainly just being that joe spinnell Did an excellent job in this role and it's a tough role. It's a very very tough role But he didn't in an outstanding job But yeah, like there's he's got the inner monologue going on after he killed that first hooker And he and he brings her scalp back and he's putting the mannequin together and everything. I don't feel like The inner monologue works. It's very weird He could have just been talking out loud and it would have made more sense Because that's the only time the inner monologue really happens and then they just like drop it So when you do something like that like stick with it and then people kind of get used to it Or don't do it like do it throughout or don't do it at all. So that's one of my small criticisms Then I was watching and I was like with such a low budget. How did they end up getting that? That helicopter shot of the city And I'm wondering if maybe it was like some sort of stock footage They were able to get somewhere Knew someone who had that kind of footage and they they got it. I don't know But I was assumed they would not be With such a low budget They wouldn't be able to like you know rent a helicopter and do that So frank's having relationships with the mannequins, we know But he needs the scalps in order to make them feel real So he can have the relationships with these mannequins Because you see like in his interactions with him He's treating them like real people and mainly his mother He treats all women basically like his mother when he's in that, you know more evil mindset The serial killer mindset because there are kind of two segments to him There's there's a normal a more normal him and a more evil him and the more evil him is Is signified by that kind of heavy breathing in those kind of like guttural noises that he makes like that's a very smart film choice To give that kind of auditory cue to the listeners that oh he's his brain has switched right now And you see that a few times in the film so You see him having these relationships with these mannequins But he needs those scalps because he needs something to make it feel real and I guess for him It's the actual human hair that makes that happen So it becomes apparent that he can't actually coexist with real women Because he has to have a lot of control and as you see with the relationship that he tries to have with Anna the photographer that he he can only maintain what he feels like control for so long Because he has that moment where he gets like super jealous and she's like oh you can come and see me at Uh this film shoot and he's like yeah with a bunch of other guys and she even like points it out like you're getting jealous And he's like oh no But he is like he and that signifies like his need for control over women Because when he was a child he had no control over The main woman in his life that he loved his mother and she was actually super horrible to him obviously So he can really only be in an actual relationship because of this with a Dead woman or a fake woman being the mannequins Uh the subway stalking scene is particularly well done and I feel like very very tense Also, it's a good location choice for the reasons of one It's just more of like a desolate dirty Setting that kind of like ratchets up the horror of it But also the aspect of if you're doing that guerrilla style filmmaking you can Definitely find a time where people aren't really using it as much. So it's a little bit easier to get those shots out in the public Um, so Zito's relationship with the photographer Anna seems a bit fast to me That's one of my other kind of issues Is there there should should have been a little bit more story because he comes and talks to her It's just like oh, I do paintings.  I like you now. Let's you know go out on a date And it's like that's a little bit fast and weird. It doesn't really make sense It's especially because Let's say it. Joe spinel is not a good-looking guy Therefore frank Zito is not a good-looking guy. So He is charismatic in the film when he's acting normal, but He's not a good-looking guy You get the idea frank's mom was a hooker based on the apartment break-in scene That's before you get like the confirmation that that that's what was going on And you also understand that she was putting cigarettes out on him when her johns came over So that's a very very revealing scene and therefore it's a very very important scene It's not just another one of those kills and that's the thing is a lot of the times they're using The scenes in this film not just as here's shock value. Here's something interesting They're using it to actually push the story forward and give you more of zito's back story So you understand what's really going on how he got to where he is And I feel like the writing of the script is very very good for that reason Frank tried his hardest to keep it together in front of ana But it's really hard to do that when his biggest trigger in life Is right there his his mother's headstone like I knew The first time I watched this film I knew when he was like, oh, let's go to the cemetery and see my mom. I was just like, oh, he's he is going to lose it because That's his biggest trigger and to be like in her presence Obviously just sends him over the edge and even further because you don't even you don't see him like hallucinating Until that moment until he's closest to his the biggest trigger in his life Uh, and then he's hallucinating and obviously she like jumps out of the ground and Is like I guess kind of trying to strangle him or something abuse him from beyond the grave once again so Uh, you get the idea that frank's inability to reconcile his normal side With his evil side is what kind of drives him in the end to hallucinate and then eventually kill himself At first, you don't really know what's going on You're like Did we just become like supernatural and like the ghosts of his victims are actually killing him or is this all in his head Or what's going on I expected the first time I watched it that he was um, just kind of hallucinating that and then he would You know still be fine But then you see when the police showed up that he actually stabbed himself with the bayonet But then you also see at the very very end that he opens his eyes. So maybe he's still alive. I don't know so I guess I have to see maniac too Then that'll tell me although i'm not even a hundred percent sure that that's um connected because it might not be But I'll have to see Okay, so that's it about the actual like events of the movie. So let me talk about some of the other stuff So there are moments when frank makes those guttural noises Yeah, and the heavy breathing which is meant to signify that mental change and it lets you know At those moments that he's thinking about terrible things So I think for me that one of the most important Of those moments is the one where he's at the photo shoot to see anna and it's important because Prior to that scene there was a very large portion of him acting normal And seeming like a normal guy and being charismatic and being trying to be in like a normal relationship with anna But then when he meets that Rita when he meets rita the model Then she walks away and and he's sitting by himself That's when you notice the change in the breathing and he's making like these guttural noises at the same time too And that's why that scene is particularly important because it shows the most Contrast between him being normal and making that switch like it's the best stage where you really really really notice it So really really well done They do a great job of laying out the backstory for frank's pathology His issue with losing his mother and his idea that a picture preserves a person like the picture of his mother But also like the mannequin is like a preserved person and the scalp is also a perverse preserved person So that conversation that he has with anna prior to the photo shoot where they kind of first meet like really meet um That's a really interesting really important uh dialogue between the two characters because they're talking about It gives you a more of a glimpse into his mind of like, oh well I'm preserved you know if you take this picture then they are preserved forever And then he ends up showing the picture of his mother giving you the idea that he believes his mother is kind of preserved forever in this picture But then he's also seeing his mother in other women and that is preserving her as well And then that's why he wants to get close to him because he sees his mother In them and then he needs to preserve some piece of them with the mannequin, which is the scalp Um frank has self-confidence issues So at the slightest indicator that a woman may step out on him or another guy may swoop in he goes off the deep end That was kind of A little bit of what I got out of the situation with anna where you know He it seemed like things were going well for him and he hadn't kind of like lapsed back to being a homicidal maniac But he Then eventually gets there because I feel like all the stress it the stressors that kind of hit him Of feeling like things are going well with anna and then feeling like there are a bunch of indicators that there's a lot of um Doubt in the ability to maintain the relationship or move it forward And then that's when he meets rita and then that's when his breathing changes And he just kind of goes back to being the serial killer self that he is So it really does feel like in this film. There's a bit of an opportunity for him to go away from being a serial killer And he does that for a little bit, but then he inevitably goes back. So it's kind of like The struggle like I was talking about earlier of him kind of being a junkie being addicted to drugs It's that struggle of Can he stay clean in a sense? But then he gets the the urge he gets he starts jonesing for it And he just can't get away The allure for some and repulsion for others With this film came from how up close and personal this film was with the actual killer I feel like like I was saying before you like get inside of his head But there's also a level level level Sorry level of discomfort That comes in knowing the backstory of how he got to where he is and being able to feel A level of sympathy for what happened to him in his past Because I feel like you get there and when he's a terrible person And he does the obviously terrible things that are depicted in this film You don't want to like him and you don't want to feel any sort of positive or sympathetic feeling for him But when you do because of that backstory that you find out It makes you uncomfortable because you're like i'm feeling a bit of sympathy for this person But this person's terrible And so feeling so conflicted is very very uncomfortable And I feel like that's one of the reasons that this film disturbs people to the level that it does The other aspect being the violence and the gore obviously but So henry portrait of a serial killer came six years after maniac like i was saying before And people freaked out about that movie as well saying it was like so intense and over the top and just too much But I feel like maniac is way more disturbing I I hear a lot more people talk about henry portrait of a serial killer than I hear talk about maniac in in that regard And I feel like if you're going to talk about that you should probably Mainly talk about maniac you can talk about henry portrait of serial killer as well because it is also kind of that level of disturbing but um, I feel like maniac feels even more raw and more close to the serial killer and more um Disturbing just in general To up the ante of being disturbing and gross Oh, I already talked about this the disturbing and grossed aspect being upped by Frank Zito being so sweaty all the time It's a weird choice and some people are probably more grossed out about it, but I like the choice. I do Once again spinel did an outstanding job with this role a tough role. He did a really good job Uh, I really dug his performance Too bad. He passed away in 1989 so Uh, this this film points out how much a person can be messed up When the one they love most as a child is their worst abuser And I feel like that is the core theme of this film is how parenting matters that much And you know, just like I said like how messed up a person can become because they have the trauma They have traumas in their childhood, especially when it's tied to A parent and you know, it kind of goes back to psycho The pitchcock film psycho where, you know, norman bates is so tied to his mother. So has so much love for his mother that It causes him psychological problems in his adulthood and I feel like Maniac's kind of inspired by that but it takes it to the next level and it gets way deeper On his backstory and actually gets kind of sympathetic because there is a little bit of that in psycho But I feel like in maniac. There's a lot more So anyway, this film is a good film quite a good film Um, so I'm gonna have to give it a star rating out of five Out of five stars stars with half stars in play. I'm gonna give this a four and a half. This is a very Well put together film. Uh, I dig it. I think especially with such a low budget They did an unbelievable job with the practical effects the acting the script writing was great The music was really good in it. The directing was Excuse me. The directing was quite well pulled off. Um, yeah, it really comes together and it's it's a horror classic at this point So anyway, thank you everyone for checking this out. Put some comments down there. What are your thoughts on maniac? Also, have you seen maniac 2 and have you seen the remake? Let me know if those are musts for me also maniac the maniac cop series Let me know about that. I heard good things about the first maniac cop So I'll probably just check that one out. But tell me about the other ones too So put those comments down there. You can give me a like But the big thing is repay me with a subscribe if you're not already subscribed if you already are big Thank you to you, but I keep I get motivated to keep doing these if you hit that subscribe So that'd be appreciated. But thank you so much for checking this one out and until next time keep it brutal


Okay, so in this video I'm going to be showing you some things you should do before you start a drop ship from business. Starting a business is a daunting thing. There's a lot of new things to learn, a lot of skills to develop, not to mention the time and financial investment that's at risk as well. And then when you take all of the different sources of information out there, it can be difficult to glue it all together into something that makes sense and gives you something actionable. It can often lead to you becoming overwhelmed, a bit of analysis paralysis, and not really knowing what to do. So I thought I'd put together a handy 9-10 minute video and take you through the sorts of things that you can put in order before you start a drop ship in business to make the whole process that much smoother. So we're going to be talking things about startup investment, what sort of products to sell, how to find those products, expectations, and lots and lots of other different things. And with that being said, thanks for tuning in. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Let's check out point number one. Okay, so point number one is save money. I would recommend personally, given my experience and the people I work with on a one-to-one basis, $1,000 seems to be the sweet spot. This gives you plenty of freedoms to get a very decent, well-designed and professional Shopify store made. It also gives you enough advertising budget as well to play around and find what works, find what product works, find what creative works, find what audience works, of course. There are three methods that require smaller budgets, like TikTok, Organic, those sorts of strategies. However, for the past six or seven years, my primary focus has always been using some form of paid marketing, typically social media advertising to generate those sales. If you want to go down that same route and same line and give yourself the best chances of success, having $1,000 to play with to begin with should be enough. You see a lot of videos out there start dropshipping with $0, start dropshipping with $100. It is possible. It is possible. However, it takes a lot more time to get up and running. Plus, when you're relying specifically on doing things organically, posting content, hoping it'll go viral, your business is very unpredictable. It's very inconsistent. And if you want anything from your business, you want it to be consistent and you want it to be sustainable to help you reach that end goal, whatever it may be. If you make a thousand pounds one week and then nothing for the next six weeks it's impossible to plan and budget or forecast anything. Whereas with paid ads, if you spend X on ads one day and X on ads the next day, it's definitely going to reach a similar amount of people and therefore that will translate into a similar amount of return as well. Number two is expectations. One of the biggest things people probably don't really think about when they start a dropship in business. They'll have this vague goal of I just want to make more money and make more money is different for everybody. And whether you want to make a thousand pounds extra a month or 10,000 pounds extra a month, those goals are achieved in a very different way. A business that makes four figures versus a business that makes five, six, seven figures look very, very different. The other mistake as well that I think a lot of people make is they think in terms of sales rather than profits. So they chase that number. They chase that 500 pounds per day in sales or 1,000 pounds per day in sales or 10K in sales per month. When in reality sales is, I was about to say relevant. It's not irrelevant of course, but what you should be thinking instead is profit. So instead of chasing that initial 100 pound per day, which should be your first goal, instead of chasing that think 20 pounds profit.  I've done 10, 20 K in sales. I'm making it. I'm doing really good. When in reality you work out your costs, you work out your expenses and your net profit, and if it turns out to be less or even in a negative, then all that work and as great as you think it is to hit 50K in sales, if you haven't actually made any money at the end of the day, then it's all been in vain and a bit of a waste of time. Well, not a waste of time because obviously there's lessons to be learned along the way, but it's much better off, at least in my opinion, to make 10K in sales and do 10% in profit so you at least have something to show for it, something to reinvest back into your business. What this will also do is it will force you to spend every single penny very wisely in your business. Too often I see people get carried away trying to chase a bigger and bigger number, they become rushed, they skip corners, they don't put as much time or thought into areas of the business that they should and again ultimately this leads to less than favorable results. Number three, brand vision and think long term. Again, another common pitfall I see people making is them not thinking past the next two or three months. They jump into a business, they select products they don't really care about and they try and scale it to the moon in the first few weeks and when it doesn't work out they just move on to the next thing. You need to be thinking six months down the line, a year down the line, two, five, 10 years down the line and think is this a business that I want to be getting into? Most people get into dropshipping because they want to make some extra money and extra money is great, it's brilliant. Of course, everybody needs a bit of extra money. However, it needs to be enjoyable. What you're doing needs to be enjoyable and it needs to mean something more to you than just money because if money is your soul and only focus, there will come a point in which it becomes a chore and not very enjoyable for you and when things start to become unenjoyable and a chore and you have to force yourself to get out of bed to go to work and put time and effort into your business, it's going to be so much harder. You won't be as happy and ultimately it's going to lead to you slacking. It's super, super important that you think that far ahead so that you create something that you can be proud of, that you have pride in and you're happy to be working on for the next five, 10, 20 years of your life. Number four, a really, really important point if you want to advance your knowledge and give yourself the best chances of success, research successful stores. Use Flipper.com, use tools like Droperspy or MiniL or ShopHunter to find those stores that are making 10K plus per month, that are making 100K plus per month. Look at the design of their stores, look at the setup of their product pages, what sort of content are they using, what style of ads are they running, are they user generated, are they original, is it recycled content from suppliers, is their product private labelled, is it branded, how expensive are their products, how does it come packaged, sign up to their email lists, what kind of mail, email marketing are they using, try and learn as much as possible from those businesses that are doing what you are hoping to do. Point number five, something I don't really hear many people with or anyone talking about, which is the order samples of the products that you're going to be launching as for. There's a lot of benefits to this. Number one is shipping. You get to get a accurate representation of how long it's going to take for your customers to receive the product so you can put accurate shipping times on your product pages, on your Shopify store. Number two is the quality of the products as well. You may be pleasantly surprised, it may be a very superior and high quality products that you can charge more for, it may be the other end of the spectrum, it may be a bit cheaper and not as good, you may have to charge a little bit less. It also gives you a chance to trial the product, test the product, touch it, feel it, pick it up, throw it about, get it dirty, try and break it, try and fix it, and it gives you an idea of how to develop the product and improve it so you can create something that nobody else has on the market. The other advantage as well is to have in one in front of you is you can film your own content and you can produce content and put content on your socials, content on your website that nobody else has. Original content is much more likely to get attention, it's much more likely to get eyeballs on it and attention and eyeballs is where the money is. If you can get people talking, sharing, watching your content, then you can drive them to your website to make a purchase. If you keep posting the same content people have seen before, they're going to switch off to it and that is one down for one downside to using those softwares or services that just recycle existing content online. Also, if you check the handbook of any social media platform they prefer people to produce and post original content. I won't go into too much detail now but if you do a quick Google search for Facebook ads total value one of the things that Facebook takes into account when rating the quality of your ads is whether you have original content in the ad itself and actual original content on your website. If you're using the same content as everybody else it devalues the quality of your ad which tarnishes the results. It impacts the results of your ads and therefore impacts your chances of success. Number six, arguably one of the most important points actually on this list is what is your USP? What is your unique selling point? What makes you different to the next person selling the same products as you? We're not all going to be in the financial position in which we can develop our products from scratch, spend thousands of dollars creating something unique the world has never seen before. The chances are it's going to be a product taken from AliExpress, CJ Dropship in or an agent Zendrop anybody that somebody else could pop up a Dropship until the very next day and start selling the exact same product. If it was that easy everybody would be very very successful we're making lots and lots of money unfortunately it's not. The majority of the people who have reality at anything especially business is at most businesses fail within the first few months. So to separate yourself from everybody else who's going to be selling similar products you need a USP a reason why somebody would choose you to buy products from versus somebody else. What is your offer? Do you give away something free with your product? Is it an ebook on how to use the product? Are you selling some sort of dog training device? And do you sell or give away for free along with that device the top 10 training ebook tips for your dog whatever it may be what is the incentive basically to choose you versus all the other hundreds if not thousands of Dropship and stores out there selling the same product charity this kind of links in nicely with point number three which is having a vision thinking long term starting this business purely for money is not a good idea think something above that making a difference for example when it comes to pets it's an easy one partner with a local shelter or local adoption center and for every order you get donate a pound donate a certain percentage it's an extra incentive or reason why somebody would choose to buy from you versus Amazon somebody who cares about saying rescue cats if you have a cat store and they can buy your products from you and 5% goes to a local cat shelter or they can buy the products from Amazon and Amazon just keep all the profits the person who cares about cats is going to shop with you even if they can get it cheaper because they know that some percentage goes to charity towards a good cause and cause and you're not just a business that is purely for profit then we have product so this can be you don't have to necessarily develop and create something original but you can take a proven past winning product and sell something that is a different style of it or something very similar of it because then you have taken that kind of proven concept that you know works and then sending a different style of product people haven't seen before but you know it still solves the same problem or offers the same features and benefits as that past proven winner number seven a really and crucially important point as well something that pretty much nobody does which is get feedback on your store before you start advertising I cannot stress this enough I had a I did a consultation call like an onboarding call with somebody the other day who spent $1,200 on ads and I took a look at the shop if I store and just he could have spent 10 grand he could have spent 100 grand on ads in that store and still not have made a sale because the store was just not ready it was missing so much key information and it wasn't his fault like he's a beginner he's new to this he doesn't look at things in the same way that somebody would experience would and this is why it's very very important that you get feedback on your store start with friends and family get them to be as honest as possible tell them to put themselves in the mind of a consumer to look for the certain pieces of information that a consumer would want to know shipping times quality what the product's made out of how much it is when to expect it how long the battery life is what the guarantees warranties returns information that sort of thing and then if possible try and get a feedback from people that you don't know go to Facebook groups or these communities on the different platforms and try and try and try to get some specific advice from somebody who's actually looked over your store and somebody who has experience on this sort of thing because it can literally be the difference between success and failure making a few tweaks that you otherwise wouldn't have even thought about failing that if you can't do that try and find a successful juction in the store that's selling the same product look at what they're doing and then take what they're doing and do it in your own way have the same information but rewrite it have the same images but in a different style or different setup the key thing here being of course don't just copy and paste because that'll get you in trouble point number eight before you start selling have at least five proven products lined up ready to go ready to test what do you mean by proven products? are products found using tools like Trapperspy or Minia or Shophunter these are products that are currently being advertised on Google on Facebook on TikTok on Reddit on any platform and have a proven track record every single week I do a video on these types of products and show you how to find them and how to identify them make sure you have at least five lined up because then the law of averages says that at least one of them is going to work out and be successful for you number nine is your goal and be specific as possible and put a date on it as well if you just have something generic like I want to make more money and there's no cutoff point or there's no specific amount of money then your idea of what a bit more money is going to change your idea of a bit more money might be an extra 500 pounds per month somebody else's idea of a bit more money might be five grand a month and when you get to that extra 500 then you might start thinking I want to make an extra two grand a month so be specific on your goal set a date in which you want to achieve that goal for so there's a deadline if and it forces you to be accountable and get things in line so you can achieve it what it also does is it gives you a reminder of why you're doing this in the first place this is business at the end of the day and there's going to be nights in which you go to bed stressed not knowing what to do thinking about giving it all up and just taking the easy route of continuing in the job that you're doing or finding a low stress easy job that's going to cover the bills each month but if you have a goal and a motivation for doing it that's going to remind you to keep going even through those tough phases because it will business is not what it's painted out to be on social media it's not as easy as working from a laptop 24 seven driving to the gym whenever you feel like it after you've got out of bed at 11 a.m in your Lamborghini it's not as straightforward as that it is more difficult than that so it's really important that you have your goal and your motivation and your reasons for why you're doing this and with that business guys that brings us to the end of the video before you go though a very quick message I do have some spaces open in my mentorship program as it stands as I record this video so if you would like some one-to-one guidance some hand holding through the entire process of selecting a product finding a supplier building a store and launching some ads and scaling your business to that milestone of 10k per month then check out the link in the description below what you need to do is go to this mentorship link here and click this bit.ly.link once this page loads up it's going to take you to a series of questions super quick two or three minutes it's like half a dozen questions it's an opportunity for me to get to know what your current level of experience is now and where you want to be in the next two to three months time if it's a realistic goal that I can help you achieve it'll take you through to my calendar where you can book a time and date in which we can jump on have a chat in more detail thanks for watching guys I'll talk to you soon