What's shaking? My name's Cam. Welcome back to another video. Settle in, sweetheart, because today is like pretty much every other time I upload on this channel. It's just a very casual chat, writer to writer. So if you're not a writer, get out of here! Nah, you can hang out if you want. I want to chat about a topic that can be pretty scary for writers or creative people in general, people who are pursuing maybe your career in the creative industry.  Doesn't matter if that's the type of professional lifestyle you're seeking. This is a conversation that I feel like you're probably going to be able to relate to pretty well.  You know, leave a comment or even make a video of your own, maybe as a response to this one. I would just love to hear your thoughts. See if you are on the same page as myself. Maybe you have a completely different outlook on it. Any and all feedback is welcome. I'm going to blow your mind right now ready just with one sentence.  As hard as a breast enthusiast at a strip club, you get the point. I'm in this weird kind of limbo at the moment where I know exactly what I should be writing.  Those things that I want to be writing right now being a horror short story collection or putting the finishing touches on that. And the first book in a new fantasy series that I'm working on. I want to be writing those things, but I'm just not. But that's my problem. And procrastination is a thing that I've been complaining about as long as I've had this channel longer. So here's the thing. If you'd asked me 10 years ago or even one year ago, I would have told you that being an author is what I'm going to do. It's not just what I want to do. That's my end game.  That's my dream career. And that weird limbo I talked about is that that is still true for me. That's still the case. That's still what I want to do. That's still my end game. But I think if you asked me now, I would probably approach the question with a bit more hesitation only because I've been kind of confronted by just how difficult it really is to make a living in this industry, especially when you're writing stuff that most traditional publishers won't touch like, you know, most horror or serialized fantasy. Even a lot of very successful authors, traditionally published authors still talk about how they have to have a job on the side just to make ends meet, which is kind of depressing when you think about it. Thing is I don't really care a whole lot about being rich or famous. I don't never really cared about that. Like don't get me wrong. It would be nice if someone offered me a Tesla full of cash. I'm not going to turn it away. But I think I would be genuinely content or at least satisfied making just enough money off of my writing to live comfortably, maybe as comfortably as I do right now. If I could live exactly the same way I do right now, except instead of my full-time job that I have, I could just be writing and making videos instead. I think I would be happy. I know that rationally that is possible. If I try hard enough, if I actually do the writing for a start, it's not promised. Maybe it's even unlikely, but it's possible. Sure, that's something I've been thinking a lot about this year, especially every day when I clock in for my nine to five job. I've been telling myself for years that this job is just a means to an end. That's what I've always convinced myself of. And for some reason, this year's just felt a bit different. It's felt a lot more like, is this it? What if this is my career? What if this is it? What if this job is it? I'm still going to be writing books. But what if I never make enough money from my books to do that as my career? Don't get me wrong. My real job is perfectly fine. I feel bad even complaining about it because I don't hate it. I know I'm lucky to have it. It pays pretty well. And as far as jobs go, it's pretty easy, I guess. But I'd still rather not be doing it. It's most certainly not what I want to do with my life. I'm not passionate about it. It's not writing. It's not even creative, really. I know it seems like I'm just rambling. But I guess the big question of this video is, is wanting that career and writing enough? I've been at this for years now. And it's hard for me to say that I'm any closer to that dream coming true or not. But it's also pretty hard for me to say that I've actually been trying my best to make that happen. I know I've been kind of coasting and just assuming that it'll happen one day. I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that simply wanting it is not enough and I'm actually going to have to try harder than I am now. I'm not saying I'm not trying because I really am. But I think as creatives and as writers, we have this kind of weird thing where we're always told and we're always telling ourselves, like, you just got to hustle, you got to try as hard as you can. And one day it's going to happen. But we never really think about it and ask ourselves, are we actually trying as hard as we can? Like, truthfully, I know I haven't. Here's my dream scenario, right? Here's my dream career. This is what I want on an attainable level, something that I think is within reach. I'm not saying I know I can do it, but I feel like it's a bit more within reach rather than me being like rich and famous, you know, like a branded Sanderson or something. My dream scenario is that I would be making just enough money from my YouTube videos and my books to quit the job I have now and be making at least close to the same amount of money to be able to live with the same level of comfort that I have now. Enough money to have a roof over my head, food on the table, maybe a bit of money in my savings, maybe enough money to one day have a family of my own. Saying it out loud, it seems like I'm shooting kind of low, but realistically, I don't think I am. To be able to live with that level of comfort just off of creative stuff like YouTube and writing is really hard. What's your dream scenario? Is being rich and famous your end game is like, is that the level of success that you would have to reach to know that you've made it, that you've been successful as a writer? That's the kind of question I would love to hear you respond with in the comments or on your own video. Is that the level of success that you're chasing or are you just writing for the love of it? I know a lot of people don't even write with the goal of it being a career. Is it just a side hustle? Is it just something you do for fun? Talking about money when it comes to anything creative, like writing always just feels a little bit icky, especially when it's coming from someone like myself that has this platform because that's when people start getting suspicious. I mean, you watching this video right now might be a little bit suspicious. Like, what is this guy about to try and sell me? Is he asking for money? Is this a cry for sympathy? I can tell you that it's none of those things, but in order for you to believe that, you'd have to trust me. And it's kind of weird, right? Because it always seems to come back to the topic or the dispute of self-publishing versus traditional publishing. We know that there are self-publishing success stories, but to be taken seriously, do I have to break through to the traditional publishing side of things? Is that the only way that I could realistically make enough money to live with that level of comfort that I was talking about? The type of stories and books that I write aren't very commonly published, so would that mean I would have to change up what I write and how I write? I would actually love to be really selling short stories through Kindle Vella right now because I think that's a brilliant idea. I have tons of ideas for stories that I would love to be posting there that I think people would really enjoy. But as of right now, it's still only available to people in the US as a writer and a reader. And that was okay at first, but I'm a little confused. Like, it's been a year now.  Just release it. We know it works. We know people like it. Let the rest of the world have a whack at it. I think I'm making this video really for two reasons.  That's what this channel is for. You know, it's not just for me to hop on here and tell you how to write and how not to write. It's primarily for me to kind of sit down and just talk about being a writer and documenting my journey to hopefully that career that I keep talking about. And secondly, I think I'm making this video because I'm telling myself that I finally need to start taking this more seriously. Not that I've never taken it seriously, but I think I just need to take a very real look at how much I'm putting into this and where I'm setting my expectations. I want this career, but wanting it doesn't seem to be enough. I can't keep telling myself, ah, it'll happen one day. I've always known that it's something I need to make it happen, but I've never really understood it, I think. And all of this starts with me actually writing. So that's a goal I'm setting for myself first off this year is that I'm doing a lot more writing. I've always had a very blasé approach to it, which I think is still fine. I don't like the idea that people need to pressure themselves into writing this much on this many days. But I do need to start setting some kind of rules for myself. And also, I need to start trying to learn how to market my books more because that's always been my weakest point I do next in no marketing whatsoever. And as a self-published author, that's just not feasible for the end game that I have. But hey, what about you, mate? How's your writing going? Here's a question. How optimistic are you for your goals?  I don't know if you will. I don't know if I will. I hope so, but it's not going to happen for everyone. But the people that it does happen for are always going to have one thing in common and that's that they gave it their best shot. So I know most of you are only here to talk about writing, not particularly for my writing specifically. But I do just want to give you a quick update. I will be publishing my very first and very own collection of horror short stories in just a couple of months, I think in early May. So that's really exciting. I've been working on this for a while and I'm really proud of the stories. I'll have plenty more updates on that as we go, including a cover reveal, maybe some arc reader reviews. Also planning for the next anthology is happening very soon. It'll be the next anthology in the series that we did, We Are Not Home, which is a collection of short stories from different YouTubers who write horror. I'll be making more announcements in the next one in that series pretty soon. And one of the authors included in that anthology could be you. So stick around. As of right now, though, what I'm actively writing as we speak, I am hard at work on the very first in an ambitious new fantasy series. I'm really, really trying and promising myself that this isn't going to be another book like the other ones I've done where I'm talking about it for years before it finally happens. I'm very excited about this book. It's kind of a very different approach to fantasy storytelling and I'm going to be releasing it in a very different way as well, which could be a terrible idea, but I think it works for the type of story that I'll be telling anyway. But that's it. That's that's all I really wanted to talk about today. Again, I would love to hear your thoughts on anything that I've chatted about. Otherwise, best of luck with your writing. I really do wish you the best and hopefully I'll see you in the next video. Catch ya.


Shoes, please. Yeah, it's like this weird like spidey tingly sense that you get where you just like I don't want to Mad cringy, dude.  David and Andrew here. David. We got a list for the people today Yeah, it was based off a reddit thread that was going crazy. So many people were contributing different things They felt like identified you as Asian without needing to tell somebody that you were Asian And I love these lists because it's just like a really great way to remember all the commonalities that we have Amongst being like eastern cultures, whether it's like a specific Asian or not, you know, because there are differences But I feel like a lot of these things kind of unite us. Yeah, I mean you could look at the score you get You know zero to eight low eight to 16 16 to 25 we came up with 50 points We broke it into two lists of 25. Let's get into number one All right, guys, if you guys are excited about that list Please hit that like button check out other episodes of hot pop boys and look out for part two coming soon All right, David number one number one you take off your shoes Anytime you are in a place of personal dwelling. So that includes air b&b's andrew and it even includes hotel rooms Yeah, man, I don't even care where I'm at even if I paid money to rent the room I cannot sit on a bed with my shoes on for more than like two seconds.  No, no, no, no, no guys, that's like going to singapore and trying to break the laws there Don't do that when you come into my household Number it is tough though. It is tough to tell your friend. No, it's true It's true because because western people they have like a thing about feet that Asians don't have because Asians I guess like western people find feet more sexual Apparently which is goes with the only fans and the feet picks and everything like that Whereas Asians are just like Yo, just take your shoes off because they were outside.   Yeah, it's almost like this weird like spidey tingly sense that you get where you're just like I don't want to say cringey, dude Point number two. Andrew, you have to value minivans over monster suv's or at least crossover suv's like a crv mdx, you know, etc, etc Hey, man, I feel like it kind of goes along with asian culture because Asians they look at minivans are like Oh, it's just as effective, but it's not as aggressive as the suburban or the tahoe So i'm going for the minivan. Yeah, a lot of Asians do not get the escalade as their daily whip Um, I will say this andrew the only american brand that I see Asians heavily buy for their family is teslas And especially the model y obviously with the uh, you know seagull doors number three andrew You might be asian if you use the fingertip method before you cook rice Okay, first of all, you might be asian if you're cooking rice at home Okay, first of all and second of all man, I you know, we don't really cook in our house right now that often But if if we were to cook rice, I would still definitely use the fingertip method No measuring cups in this house. Oh point number four and we're staying on the topic of rice You have access to a modern rice cooker, but the older generation might prefer using an older style one I don't really get this one though I thought it made me laugh because Our parents, you know, we bought them. Uh, we're actually we got it for a brand deal We got a cuckoo and we got a zojirushi But sometimes I think that you know for them the the the 50 dollar one is just as good as the 250 dollar one You mean the joint with just like one button. It's just like cook rice. Boom. Not the one that goes Do you want your rice done in 30 minutes? They're like, you know, they say it in chinese and stuff like with the ai and the leds and the And the little twist top and the Well, I'll say this especially for the older older generation that can get a little too complicated No, it's true. It's true. Sometimes cooking rice. You just want to keep it simple, man Point number five andrew you always crave something soupy when hung over or just in general you crave soups and stews Um, yeah, so obviously in western culture, they do have soups and stews But I definitely don't hear american people Want those beef stews as bad as we would say yo, I need fuh.  I love goulash David, you know what white people say when they got a hangover? Dude, I need another beer I think that uh, uh Asian noodle soups and stews are probably almost like the thing that outpaces Other cultures by the largest margin, you know, and I'm talking about everything from the Himalayas They got tuk pa to everything lao isan. They got some crazy good noodle soups. Obviously up to east asia beef noodle soup gamjatangs or Sobas and things like that point number six andrew liking gross fermented foods that people in the west would be turned off by such as Dairy and jackfruit spam squid jerky dried crab and choveys natto from japan Some people even said the civet poof coffee the pork floss kupi mayo and baked items Yeah, man. I mean, I think those are all acquired tastes for the most part I do see dried jackfruit being sold at like target now from like american brands But everything else I would say like definitely looks still pretty foreign to people But I do I do see more and more westerners like opening up to that Maybe they've been to asian bakery or had you know, some asian food before and now durian Is reaching the mainstream as a mainstream weird thing. Yeah, I knew because uh, you know, shout out to our friend dr Rubenstein he started posting That himself eating jackfruit and durian and like sour sops and stuff like that and I always remember going Oh, so interesting But andrew it also says that you must not like USA grocery store cakes because they're too sweet and also obviously in asia They do not have a lot of shops andrew similar to sweet factory Where it's just like pure candy coated with like more candy Yeah, think of how weird that is to certain people where you're like, yeah Guys, you know, I don't like stuff that's too sweet You know, um, and I just like this weird funky fermented fruit And then and then and then everybody else is just got to be like Yeah, you're so asian man. Like this is just weird Oh, are that white like toffee with the nuts in it. That's like really not that sweet either.  All right. What about those italian uh, pantone cakes moving on number seven andrew Still on the topic of food You have to be surprised that fear factor had contestants pick between eating scorpions and thousand year old eggs Man, this was crazy when I first saw this clip because I remember people had to eat the pedon Like the thousand year old egg the one that we put in kanji all the time and they were like And I was just like dude, it's just literally like fermented with some salt Yo, one time on fear factor This lady had to eat one extra belute for another $10,000 and she would not do it Oh, but david if I was on that show I would be a millionaire No, I would eat belute too bad belute. It's it's good. I wouldn't say belute is great I wouldn't choose to eat it a bunch, but it's not that bad point number eight andrew You never really watched saturday morning cartoons because you either had mother language school or violin lessons Or potentially extra schoolwork. All right, dav. I gotta say I gotta admit something You know for me clearly I was not going to the language school on the weekends growing up. Oh, you did though Oh For a few times for like half a year. I barely remember it. Um, but yeah, obviously this is a huge part of growing up asian And particularly I would say especially for languages such as chinese or korean, uh, you know And a lot of the chinese schools were ran by timonese people Yeah, there's just a gigantic economy around like I guess learning the mother language.  I don't remember getting hit with anything, but I do remember dad yanking our ears Yeah, so we did get punished, but but maybe not with like a ruler or anything like that Yeah, I mean like I said, I always like to rank things on like zero one two three four five I would say in terms of like physical violence on the kids to you know get them to behave right We probably got like a 1.5 or a two But I definitely knew kids andrew especially if the parents came from more like military mandatory service type countries Sometimes those kids man if you messed up You might get Beat up. I feel bad for the man. I heard some really bad stories. I just hope it was all for the better I just hope that I just hope that they had got something to show for it Hey, but you know what the key is if you're asian even if you know somebody at your church or like a friend of a friend That's getting beat by their parents. Obviously. You don't tell anybody. That's just what it is That's the culture point number 10 andrew having some sort of shrine inside the house to the ancestors Something that is buddhist or daoist or something that you would burn Any type of thing that indicates some sort of like, you know photos of the grandparents with some sort of reverence? Yeah, I mean, uh, obviously there are a lot of like christian asians or catholic asians But I will say if you got the shrine the buddhist shrine that that's that's extra points right there And you know, uh, definitely knew a lot of friends growing up like that every restaurant we'd go into You know, you'd have like the oranges out with the candle and everything like that so You see it all the time it was levels it was levels But if you growing up in your asian even if you didn't have any house you saw it number 11 andrew You can speak more than one language because for the most part in america you can assume if somebody speaks more than one language They are second generation immigrant and their parents are probably either from asian Countries or latin countries. Yeah, well, I do think uh a lot of your ability to speak another language depends on your parents inability to speak english oftentimes growing up in america So if they don't speak english, you're definitely speaking your mother tongue often, right? So you're gonna be good at it Um, so yeah, I mean, obviously if your parents speak less english, you're probably less americanized and less westernized Yeah, I mean if you tell me that you speak english and like Language x and those are the only two languages you speak I'm gonna assume obviously with a high probability not a hundred percent probability that you belong to Group x point number 12 andrew your parents have a drawer filled with plastic bags Man, you know how I know this is true Is because in our apartment right now we have a drawer filled with plastic bags I feel like I definitely tried to like stop doing it as much as I got older though Because at some point you really only need like five or six bags. You don't need like 60 of them No, no, no, you're right. You're right. I try to limit it. You know, we have them under the sink But we still I still use the plastic bags here and there and plus, you know, you want to reuse plastic bags You don't want to just throw them away because you know, that's just more waste point number 13 andrew a b plus was unacceptable And an a minus was barely acceptable to your parents standard Yo, did anybody say that getting a b plus in english class was more acceptable than getting a b plus in math though I feel like for a lot of kids like maybe some parents might give them a little okay You got to be in english More because you're saying the parents are also not necessarily that good at english themselves I I feel like some parents did Um, I was trying to think about this one And it really depends on how tough your parents are with grades Um, I definitely know that up until a certain point, maybe like my junior or senior year My parents really really did not like to see bees come home Yo, I'll tell you this man If your parents are the ones that are out protesting the harvard admissions and like the elite high school admissions Uh, good luck.  And I literally went I think we do And then I went to go open the dishwasher for like the second time since we moved in because I forgot we had it Yeah, I mean It just goes to show you that old habits.  I think so number 16 andrew There's Tupperware with all types of exotic herbs and spices deep in the pantry from anywhere from three to 15 years ago Dude, it's crazy, man If you were to look back into your pantry of your if your parents house And you'll see like bottles where like the label is like crusty and it's faded And then like all the sediment or like the the stuff has like Fall into the bottom whatever stuff is in the sauce and then you're just like what is this Oh, also nothing will be necessarily in the corresponding container It might be like a box full of cookies filled with like a box full of herbs or something like that Dude, my whole rule is now that I grow up, man If you haven't used it for like two years, you got to toss it, man If you haven't even looked at something you're not being with the old ways I'm not that traditional man Number 17 andrew you buy rice Anywhere in the volume of 15 to 50 pounds at a time Dude the memories of climbing up bags of rice at The chinese supermarket when we were younger So we're good memories, man But yeah, obviously nowadays obviously especially if you living in a small apartment in new york You don't have space for a 50 pound bag, but of course I remember that at home Yeah, I think it's pretty common I think at the end of the day because people ate so much rice growing up David, do you think that nowadays Families are eating like a little less rice or families are still probably eating a lot of rice But just like people our age maybe are eating less. I don't know Yeah, for sure. I mean if you want to talk about second generations where obviously we grew up And rice was pretty much available like all times of the day I mean, uh, I don't have rice ready to go right now because obviously just living a more western lifestyle And it's as it turns out andrew and room. I hate to break it to people white jasmine rice is not that healthy for you Number 18 andrew you enjoy fresh squeezed sugarcane juice all around asia from southeast asia to east asia People just love a good freshly squeezed sugarcane drink Yeah, I think this is a funny one because it kind of goes back to asians not liking things too sweet But sometimes that fresh sugarcane can be hella sweet, but it's a different type of sweet. It's not a processed sugar Okay, it is tastes more like rock sugar Asians do use rock sugar. I remember we always had rock sugar at home Asians do love rock sugar number 19 eating pasta Salad cheetos chips, but with chopsticks Yeah, I even saw man. There was like this commercial for this Japanese tool that was like There were like chip pinchers like specifically for chips Like designed for that and I thought that was pretty interesting But yeah, obviously I seen people do this, you know, I never did this But I made sure to eat chips with only two fingers I don't understand my friends and they were non-asian who would use all five fingers to grab chips Unless you're grabbing a bunch of popcorn. Why would you get all your fingers greasy just for one chip? Um, also andrew there is a famous photo of a chinese guy eating pizza with chopsticks Oh, also beating eggs with chopsticks when you're trying to beat eggs for a recipe So you don't need a whisk I still beat eggs with chopsticks to this day number 20 andrew the ability to do a deep asian squat Hell yeah, man mobility flexibility very much valued in the asian culture, man Actually in asia for a while. I mean, I think it's different now They did not always have like all western toilets You had to squat to use the restroom sometimes to go number two, but actually andrew physiologically That's a much more efficient way to poop Yeah, but uh, it's also just like uh, I guess more Throwback way. I don't know. It's old school. It's old school, but it is technically healthier for you though I used to do it in china once you did it once you've done it out and like One of those little outhouses over in like a remote part off the highway in china, man You just i'm down to squat anywhere now. Yeah, when you have a diarrhea though, it's a little crazy Yeah, yeah, also you gotta watch out for your pants, man by your ankles. You got to like sit backward. I don't know Sitting down is more comfortable. I've shit on my pants before Number 21 you do bowing of some type Obviously some asians bow a lot more than others Japanese and koreans probably do it every day Other people might do it during special special ceremonies or if they're meeting somebody really important Where they're seeing their grandparents or great grandparents, but there is bowing Yeah, obviously I think when it comes to like the when you're seeing like, you know a grave Obviously a lot of people still bow whether or not that is like part of your religion or not like that But I will say this man when I go to like certain Japanese and Korean spots I feel I bow a little bit like I'm not like a full bow, but just like a a little Yeah, I mean you want to adapt to this how they do things. Hi. No the classic. Hi Hi, thank you. Thank you. Like I literally do that still nowadays number 22 and or kids made fun of your lunch at school And uh, I do know some kids who went through this I personally never went through this because I would just eat the school lunch But I will say that there were certain times where like I just knew mom wasn't gonna pack like a normal field trip lunch Like if it was one of those field trips where they didn't provide lunch for you I just like asked for the lunchable because I was the one time where mom would buy it because she thought they were too expensive But otherwise it was just going to be Some not necessarily that appealing All right, man So there was this kid Gary Yao and he would always bring these fire Chinese lunches in a tin that where it was still hot, right?  Don't don't eat the school lunch. I'll pack your dumplings And then I opened up my dumpling pack one time and the soy sauce had spilled everywhere and spread everywhere And it was just a huge mess and then after that I was kind of like, oh man, mom, I don't know This isn't really work out Number 23 You became aware of asian medicines whether they were traditional or stuff like tiger balm before you were Even aware of american products Yeah, man tiger balm for everything if you were in a traditional household Obviously nowadays with modern medicine. I don't know. I mean, I think some parents are still going to tiger balm number one or number two At least yeah, and uh, ander salon past patches roto eye drops a lot of stuff from japan You know some parents and they still use just like the products from asia Like I know some uh people that are like still using like their their favorite shampoos and stuff are just like the ones from asia Andrew, I know it like at nelson's house all the shampoos and hand soaps are the ones from hong kong Yeah, the ones you can get at like watsons In hong kong except you just get them here. Andrew number 24. You know your asian if You told your other asian friends that your mom just wanted you to be happy in life And that your other asian friends were shocked when you said that dude I don't know if this is like a millennial asian thing. I don't know how different the parents are today You know that are raising like an 18 year old asian person But man Parents did not think about the word happy a lot because they just figured anything that made you happy was frivolous growing up All that fun frivolous hanging out with girls frivolous getting tattoos frivolous hanging out frivolous Oh, man getting tattoos to our at least our parents. That's worse than frivolous. Yeah, that's uh, that's a death note Yeah, you're just being a bad person in the society You're being even you're being a drug you turn into a drug lord if you get a tattoo in my house Yeah, um number 25 ear wax digger spoons Dude The classic man I still see this on the street sometimes like last time we went into china Maybe more in the neighborhood area where someone's turned over on a person's lap and like they're picking it out I think you can pay them to do it Yeah, no depending on how rule of area in I saw people get it done just like at mcdonald's dude I don't know if I would trust a stranger with my eardrum But I did hear because I was always wondering I was like, yo How easy is it to puncture a eardrum while doing that and I heard from some people They're like, it's not as easy as you think you'd have to really jam it in there So basically every time that you think it hurts It's not like that close to damaging you and I think that you need the spoons because a lot of asians Not all asians have like very dry brittle almost like uh Booger crumbs looking like ear wax. So it's like really hard to dig it out I actually believe andrew it's because a lot of asians.  Andrew. Did you know that this is actually what like western people's ear wax looks like? It looks more like Welted melted wax Yeah, I didn't really know why uh They call the ear wax when my stuff was flaky because wax is like gooey and stuff like that and flowy But yeah, I apparently it is soft and liquidy sometimes Aren't you guys that does it for list number one? That was one through 25 We got 25 through 50 coming up later. Let us know where you scored 816 or 25 low middle high I mean andrew that's just kind of like a fun trip down memory lane Yeah, it's also a fun thing to do to kind of Realize how Americanized or how westernized you are versus like the traditional I'm not saying it's bad to not be traditional because I would I wouldn't expect a lot of people like us to to be even 25 out of 25 maybe I am purposely not gonna continue some of these I don't think that it's like Purposely a hundred out of a hundred like the way you were raised was like absolutely the best method You don't know like you cherish it you cherish it because that's real to your upbringing But you don't have to continue it forever a respect it But you don't have to be defined by it right now All right, but anyways, let us know down below what your score is or what your kid's score is Maybe if you have kids, but anyways, it's fun. Let us know Um, yeah, hit that like button and check out other episodes of the hot pop boys Part two is coming up soon 26 to 50. Let's go


What's up everyone, Lee Lowell here from smartopsincell.com. Today is Saturday, February 18th, 2023. Moving on here and the dates. We're back for another free YouTube option trading strategy video. I do these just about every Saturday, taking my 30 plus years in the options trading business and making these free videos to help you become a smarter and more profitable options trader. I hear from a lot of you and I get a lot of requests for making certain videos. So today, as you can see on your screen right here, the smart option seller guide to covered calls. What is it? What's it all about? How do you do it? Why do you do it? So today, what we're gonna talk about is selling covered calls. And some of the best ways to do it, some of the strike prices to choose, the expirations to choose and actually how to go about doing it. So for those of you who are here or I should say watched last week's video, which was all about the wheel strategy. And the wheel strategy is when you sell a mostly at the money put option and in the hopes of getting assigned the shares, which would mean you would actually actually have to buy the shares. And then the next step in the wheel strategy is selling covered calls. So we kind of touched on the covered calls strategy a little bit last week, but in this week, we're gonna go a little bit deeper. And I'm actually gonna show you an example of a relative of my family who was able to capture $54,000 by selling covered calls. Now this is income that this person didn't know would exist or didn't know that they could actually do this. And so I'm gonna share with you a little story of how my relative was able to bank $54,000. That's a good chunk of money. So as we get towards more of the end here, I'm gonna share that story with you. So as I said, last week, we touched on this a little bit, but we always talk about selling put options for the most part, because that's what we do at the smart option seller. And before we actually dive right in, I wanna make sure we do this every week that everybody gets a free copy of our put selling basics ebook, okay? You go to our website, smartopsonseller.com, click on the put selling basics header right here, and you'll see the put selling basics ebook right in front of you, scroll down a little bit, put your name and email address right in here, and we will send you an email that contains a link for the free ebook. So please, everyone, go do this before doing anything else, get the free ebook. All right, let's go back to our topic of today, which is selling covered calls. We're gonna talk a little bit about what they are and why you wanna do it, and then we'll go into how you do it, and then we'll talk about the $54,000 payday. Now, selling covered calls is something that you can do as a stock holder, okay? As you read along here, for every 100 shares of stock that you may have in your account, you can sell what's called a covered call option. What is that? Well, as we know, all call options, whether they're put options or call options, consist of 100 shares of stock. And as long as you own in your account, 100 shares of stock, you can sell. We're not gonna buy, we're selling one call option contract, okay? So basically, you have 100 shares that you've bought, and this call option contract that you're gonna sell also has 100 shares in it, okay? So one will offset the other. And that's a way to make sure that you're not exposing yourself to unlimited risk. If you have 50 shares of stock and you try to sell a covered call, you're gonna be 50 shares exposed to unlimited upside risk.  You don't wanna do that. So, and a lot of brokers might not let you sell a covered call, depending on your approval level at the broker. So you have to have 100 shares of stock in order to execute this strategy. Now, down here, we talk about something that's called a buy-right strategy. So if you don't own 100 shares in your account at the moment, you can execute what's called a buy-right. That means you're gonna buy the 100 shares and sell that one single call option contract all within the same transaction. That's called a buy-right. So you buy the shares and you write the calls. Whenever you sell an option, a putter or a call, it's called writing the option. That's why it's called a buy-right, okay? So it's a very simple strategy. And I'm gonna move myself over here as we scroll down in the, as we scroll down here. So for every 100 shares you have, whether it's through a buy-right or shares of stock that you already have in your account, you can sell one covered call option contract. What does that do for you? Why would you even wanna sell a covered call? Well, number one, it brings an immediate cash into your account. Cash that you didn't have yesterday and cash that you may never know that could even exist.  They're gonna pay you for that call option contract. And why would they pay you to sell in that call option contract? Well, basically what you're doing is you're obligating yourself to potentially sell your shares of that stock to the call option buyer. If it's profitable for them to exercise the option. And we're gonna talk about why that, where and why that would be, okay? So just so you know, selling options can bring in, will always bring in immediate cash into your account. So right here, the sale of the call option provides immediate income and also sets a potential sale price for your shares. It obligates you to sell your shares.   Let's just say you bought shares at 100 and you wanna sell them at $120 a share. Well, you're just gonna sit there and wait for the stock hopefully to get up to $120 a share and then you can sell your shares. But in this case, by selling the 120 strike call option contract, you're using your time and money more efficiently. You're basically saying, okay, I'll sell my shares at 100. So I'll sell a call contract to somebody at that 120 strike. They'll pay me for it. So instead of just sitting there doing nothing with your shares, hoping that the stock will get up to 120, which you know it may never get there because the stock could actually drop. At least you're being proactive with your time and selling a call option contract to somebody else and getting money for it. You know, you're still gonna sell the shares at 120 if the stock gets up there. You might as well let someone pay you some money for it in the meantime, okay? So let's scroll down here. Now as we know, we're talking about you have 100 shares of stock and now you have a call option contract that you want to sell or that you're going to sell and you're gonna get money for it. Two things that you have to think about at this point is what strike price of the call option am I going to choose and which expiration should I use, right? So if you bought the stock at 100, do you wanna sell the 105 call, the 110 call, the 120 call, the 150 call, you have to decide and as we know, all options have an expiration date. So you have to choose the expiration. So as we scroll down here, you know, which strike price should you pick? And that's always a personal preference. It really comes down to what price would you be comfortable relinquishing your shares if the stock actually got up to that price level? So once again, if you bought the stock at 100, where would you be okay letting go of the shares? Because if you let go of the shares at 120, the stock could keep going up to $150, $200, you never know. So you have to be comfortable with taking a profit. It will always be a profit. If you bought the stock at 100 and you sell at 120, that's a $20 profit, right? So you have to decide where would you be okay relinquishing your shares? Now some people never want to relinquish their shares. They want to keep holding the stock, but yet they want to sell the call options to get the income. So in that case, you have to make sure you sell or choose a call option strike that the stock really has no way or there's not a big chance for the stock to get to that level. So you'd have to relinquish your shares. In that case, you can use a probability calculator to give you an idea of, you know, what's the chances of the stock moving from 100 all the way up to, you know, 150, let's say, and I'll show you the probability calculator in a second. So basically, once again, you have to figure out what price you'd be okay relinquishing your shares. And if you don't want to relinquish your shares, then you have to choose a more out-of-the-money strike. Okay, out-of-the-money strike means that the stock has to travel further to get up to that level. And let me see if I have this written down here. Okay, so which expiration to choose? Well, number one, the further out in time you go, the more money you will get for that option. And we're going to look at an option chain. I'm going to show you some option prices. But the longer out in time you go, you're getting more money for that option. But at the same time, you're giving the stock more time to potentially get up to your strike price, whether you want that to happen or not. If you don't want that to happen, you may not want to choose a very long dated option because now you're giving the stock more time to rally up to the strike price, okay? So here, let's see, right up here, the further out-of-the-money strikes have a less chance of being hit, but they provide less income, right? The further out in the strike prices you go, meaning that the stock has to travel more, the less money someone's going to pay you. So you have to find that tipping point, that balance point where you're okay with the amount of money you get. You're okay with the potential price of relinquishing your shares versus how much time you're willing to give, okay? It's sort of a balancing act, and we'll look at the option chain. Let's go through our list here a little bit more. So the other thing is that, let's just say you sold the call option contract, I'm right down here on this one, and all of a sudden the stock starts driving higher and higher and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I really want to relinquish my shares. What can I do? Well, with any option contract, whether they're puts or calls, you can always purchase that option contract back at any point in time. If you're not comfortable holding on to this covered call anymore, you just buy the option back and that'll close out the trade, that'll close out your obligation. And depending on the price of the option at that time, if you buy it back, it may or may not lock in a profit or loss. Let's just say you sold that call option contract for $5 a contract. And then the stock starts going up, that call option value is going to go up as well. The call option prices fluctuate as well. It's all based on how the stock moves. So the call option price that you see today is gonna be completely different than tomorrow. And the call option value can go up and the call option value can go down. It all depends on which way the stock is moving. So if the stock starts to rise, that call option value is gonna get more expensive as well. And you think to yourself, oh, if I had waited, I could have sold this call option and gotten more money for it. Or you may be saying, oh, I don't really wanna relinquish my shares anymore. I need to get out of this obligation. What do I do? Well, you can just buy the option back. And like I said, depending on where the stock is, we'll determine where that option price is at the time that you go to buy it back. Now, if the option price is cheaper and you buy it back, you can lock in a gain on that call option contract. See, the call option contracts can be bought and sold as well. So you can just trade the call option contracts if you want. Or you hold it until expiration to see if you have to fulfill your obligation. So lots of things that you can do. Now, if the call option contract is higher in price and you have to buy it back, well, then you're going to lock in a loss. But you have to make sure that, if the stock's gonna keep going up, you have to be sure that if you buy the call option back that the stock's going to keep rising because if the stock falls again, then you're like, oh, I shouldn't have bought the call option back, because now the call option would be making money for you. The key here is that when you sell a call option, you actually want that call option value to go down over time. And this is the basis of the $54,000 that I'm going to show you that my relative is about to lock in, okay? So in this case, let's just say, the stock was at 100 and you sold a $150 call and the stock never went anywhere. It didn't get up to $150 in price. That call option will expire worthless. You'll keep all the money that you were given on day one from the call option buyer. That's money that you've banked. That is money in your pocket. The only way that you will have to relinquish your shares is if the stock moves up to the strike price at expiration. If it does, then your broker will have to, will sell your shares to the call option buyer and you won't have those shares of stock anymore in your account. But you will make money on it because if you bought the stock at 100 and now you sold them at 150, you've locked in a $50 per share game. It's not a bad deal, okay? But now you just don't have those shares anymore. And if the stock keeps traveling up higher and higher, you may be kicking yourself that you had to sell your shares, but that's part of the process. That's part of the game. Like I said, if you want to give your call option contracts less chance of being hit, then you have to choose a higher strike price. Okay, and we'll look at some option examples here. So like I said, if the call option expires worthless, your obligation is over and the process can be repeated. So now you'll sell another call option and get more money so we can keep repeating the process over the course of the year where you sell the call option, hopefully it'll expire, you get the money and then you sell another call option, it expires, you get the money and you keep repeating this process. Okay, so that's really why people like to sell covered calls. They don't really want to relinquish the shares. They just want to get the income. They want to get the cash, okay? So right here, where are we? If the call expires worthless, the process can be repeated. Now, what's the best time to sell covered calls? Is there a certain market environment that makes call options selling better? Well, yes, if you have a flat to rising stock market, it's better for call option selling because you can keep selling higher and higher strike prices and hopefully the stock won't get there. In a declining market like we've been in in 2022, if you bought the stock at 100 and the stock starts going down, down, down, you're not gonna be able to sell the proper strike prices to bring in the money because these call options will be worth less and less over time as the stock keeps dropping. And what you'll end up having to do is you're gonna have to sell strike prices that are lower and lower that at some point could potentially take you out or you'll have to sell your shares at a price that's lower than your cost basis. Okay, so I just, before we look at the actual example, I wanna show you this last thing here, very important. When you sell a covered call, when you pick a strike price for your covered call, you need to make sure that the strike price that you choose is above your original stock purchase price, your cost basis. Let's just say you bought the stock for $100 a share and now that stock is dropping. It's dropping, it's $80 a share now. So you're already $20 in the hole on your share purchase. Let's just say you wanted to sell a covered call now because you wanna get some income and offset some of that paper loss that you're holding. Well, if the stocks drop from $100 to $80 and you sell a $90 call strike and then all of a sudden the stock starts to go back up, you're gonna be obligated to sell your shares at $90 a share. You bought them at $100. Now you have to fulfill an obligation to sell your shares at $90. You don't wanna do that because you're locking in an automatic loss on the shares that you bought at $100. Now you have to sell at $90. So you always make sure if you bought the stock at $100 you always wanna choose a covered call strike that's above your cost basis. Okay, it's very important. All right, so let's go to our example here. Now this is the example is actually true. Okay, so I have a family member who owned 6,000 shares of Adobe stock. Okay, here's the symbol Adobe. Had 6,000 shares of Adobe stock just sitting in his account and we were talking one day about what we're doing in the market. And I asked him, I said, are you selling covered calls on your Adobe shares? And he's like, well, what's that? What's covered calls? And I said, you could be making a ton of income just for the fact that you own shares of stock. And he's like, I don't understand. I said, you can sell what's called covered call option contracts. You own 6,000 shares of Adobe. You can sell 60 call option contracts and get a lot of money into your account for people that are wanting to take your shares away from you. And he said to me, well, I'm not sure I want to sell my shares. I said, okay, well, that's fine. I said, let's talk about a strike price that would really make it almost impossible for Adobe to rise up to in the time allotted for you to have to sell your shares. And I said, but in case you do have to sell your shares, what price of Adobe would you be okay selling your shares? Now, at the time of the trade, I think Adobe was maybe $400, $425 a share. We'll look at a chart. He said, you know what? If I had to sell Adobe, I'd be okay selling them at $650 a share. So it was roughly 200 to $250 higher than where Adobe was currently trading. Okay, so here's the trade and we're gonna look at it. In June of 2022, my relatives sold 60 contracts of the January 2024. So, you know, now a little over a year, a little less than a year from now, but at the time in June 22 is about a year and a half into the future, the expiration date, about 18 months into the future, he sold 60 of these 650 covered calls for $10 per contract. $10 is $1,000 in the option multiplier. You have to multiply each option contract price by 100. So $10 of contracts is actually $1,000. He sold 60 of them. So the immediate infusion into his account was $60,000. So by selling those 60 call option contracts, he was paid $60,000 into his account free and clear. $60,000 that he didn't have yesterday.  I said, yes, that's how it works. I said, this is what I tell people. If you have any shares, at least 100 shares in your account, someone will pay you money. So he said, I got $60,000 now, what do I have to do? I said, well, now you have to wait until January 2024 to see whether Adobe's gonna go from its current price near 400 or 450, wherever it was, all the way up to 650. I said, if Adobe gets up to 650, you'll have to relinquish your shares at 650. And if he bought them at 400 or 450, whatever price he bought them at, he'd be locking in a $200 per share gain in addition to the $60,000 that he was paid. Now, the way that the trade is actually working out is that Adobe stock hasn't really gone anywhere. It's gone down a little bit, which means these call option contracts have been decreasing in value as well. So Adobe, these 650 strike call options are now worth $1 per contract. As of yesterday, Friday, February 17th, 2023, the Adobe call option contracts went from $10 per contract all the way down to a dollar. So we came to a decision that he's going to buy back all 60, or he's going to try to buy back all 60 of these call option contracts for $1 per contract. And if he gets filled, and I think a couple of them got filled yesterday, that would be $6,000 to buy them back. All 60 would cost $6,000. So if he got $60,000 at the beginning and now he's paying $6,000 to buy them back, that's a net profit of $54,000. Okay, so if he gets filled all 60 contracts at a dollar per contract, he's going to lock in $54,000 since this past June. So six, eight-ish months, he's made $54,000, $54,000 that he didn't have prior to this trade. And now once he buys back all these contracts, the obligation is over. He'll never have to sell his shares at $6,50. He still has his shares of Adobe. So now what he can do is, once he buys back all 60 of these contracts, he can sell another 60 contracts for maybe another year out in time and get more money. So even though Adobe stock's been going down in price since he entered the transaction, selling these covered calls is offsetting some of that price drop in the stock. That's why people sell covered calls also because they wanna buffer some of the loss on a stock that may be going down. So let's go to the chart here for a second. We're going to look at Adobe stock and I'm gonna pull up the stock price, the stock chart here. So this is a stock chart of Adobe. Here's the symbol right up here, ADBE Adobe, the daily chart. And you can see back in December of 2021, before we had the huge drop all of 2022, Adobe was trading for $700 a share and you can see it's come all the way down. At the time of the trade we did in roughly June, right here, June of 2022, Adobe was trading basically right where it's trading now somewhere between $350 and $400 a share. So here's where we are today, scroll back to June, 2022. So roughly the same price. So at the time of the trade, we had sold these or my relatives sold these Adobe 650 calls for $10 a contract. Now here's 650 all the way up here. Adobe would have to rally all the way back up to 650 in order for him to relinquish his shares. Right now it's $356. That's where it closed yesterday, February 17th. Now let's look at an option chain. So here's the Adobe, here's my tab up here Adobe. These are the option chains. Here's a call options on the left. For January, 2024, still have a little less than a year but let's scroll up and get to the 650 strike. So here's the 650 calls and let the prices populate here. So on Friday yesterday, these calls went out $1 bit at $1.10 and you can see the last price was $1. So my relative got filled on some of these at $1. He was able to buy back some of these for $1. He initially sold them at $10, bought them for $1. That's a $9 locked in profit. Now if he was able to buy all 60 of them that would be $54,000 profit. I have to talk to him and see if he was filled. So while at that time Adobe was roughly, between $300 and $400 a share at the time. Whenever it was last June, so eight-ish months ago these things were trading for $10. And the stock prices now is at the same price but yet these things are worth a dollar. So that's time decay. As time goes on the option prices lose value. The stock's at the same price but these option prices change. Okay, so that's how it works. Now, if you wanna choose depending on what strike if you don't wanna relinquish your shares then you need to go up to a higher strike. Let's see what's our the longest dated option here. You can go up to January of 2025. So a little less than two years from now the more, like I said, the more time you give the more money you'll get. So let's see what those 650, it actually goes up to 590 is the highest strike. So 1200 and it's probably worth about in between these two numbers here, 1240 bid, 660, 1665. It's worth about 1450 per contract. So you have to decide where would you be okay relinquishing the shares. And these things are paying a lot of money if you go to January, 2024, we'll look at the 590s see what they're worth to at an earlier expiration date. Those things are only worth $2.50 roughly versus 1400. So more time equals more money but yet you're giving the stock more of a chance to move up potentially to the strike price. Now, as I said, you can go to you can use a probability calculator to figure out what are your chances of the stock maybe getting to that price by a certain date. All right, so here's a probability calculator that we use no probability calculator will help you figure out what are the chances of the stock moving from point A to point B with an X period of time. Now I have the current price of Adobe. Here's the expiration date of these January, 2024. It's 335 days ahead. Our volatility is 35%. We wanna know what the chances of Adobe at 356 today can get up to $650 in the next 335 days. Click go and the probability calculator is telling us there's a 96.3% chance that Adobe stock will finish below 650, meaning we won't have to relinquish the shares. Conversely, there's a 3.6% chance that Adobe will get above 650. So there's a really good chance Adobe will not reach that 650 level in the next 335 days. It's not a guarantee, it's just this is an estimate because it's all based on how Adobe has been fluctuating in the past. And this is what the volatility number tells you. So based on Adobe's movements in the past, we can predict out, well, how is it gonna fluctuate in the future? And the probability calculator will tell you how high or how low, it doesn't tell you the direction, it just tells you how high or how low Adobe can move in that next 335 days. And it's telling us there's a 96% chance that it's not gonna get all the way up to 650. So you can use a probability calculator to help you figure out, you know, choosing the strike price. If you don't wanna relinquish your shares, you choose a way out of the money strike that's got a low chance of the stock getting there and choose an expiration date that gives you enough money to make you feel good about selling these things. Okay, so that's really about it, that's how you do it.  So once again, last thing, very important, make sure you choose a strike price that is above your cost basis if you have to relinquish the shares. Otherwise you're gonna sell the stock at a loss and you don't wanna do that, okay? So if you need this cheat sheet, what I'm gonna do is I'll put it in the link below. That's really about it, everybody. Your lesson today on how to sell covered calls and what they are and why you wanna do it. You can get money in your account that you didn't have yesterday or that you never thought existed. So I'm really happy for my relative. They're gonna bank $54,000. It's a good deal. And now we're gonna look at selling some more once he's filled on all 60 of these contracts. All right, that's all for our lesson today, selling covered calls. If you didn't watch the Wheel Strategy video from last week, I'll put it on the screen here and you know, give me a thumbs up. If you like this video, don't forget to subscribe. Hit that red subscribe button. Send me an email, leave me a comment. I always like to hear from you. And that's it for today. All right, I wish everyone a good weekend and a great trading week ahead. This is Lee Lowell, signing off.


Hi, everyone. Joe for jasby'scasebreaks.com coming at you with 2023 Panini Phoenix Football. Four box, pick your team at number six from jasby'scasebreaks.com, all card ship. Big thanks everybody, hang with me on a Monday. Thanks everybody here for making this happen. If you have Prism 93 next to your name, that means you won those teams in that filler. 2019 Prism Football filler pack. Eric, you got official last spot mojo with the Seahawks. You got that team last before I pull the remaining teams. Got my Lakers on in the background. They're on a big road trip because I guess the Grammys are gonna be at Staples slash crypto.com arena. So both the Clippers, the Los Angeles Kings and the Lakers go on these long extended road trips. Lakers are down about 21 points for the Rockets. I think they were down by as much as 30 but they've managed to scratch back a little bit. They're running out of time. Only a minute and 42 left in the third. They've gotta go nuts in the fourth quarter if they're gonna stand a chance. They gotta try to cut the deficit a little bit more here. Guess there was a fight for a kerfuffle. Vanderbilt got two texts and was ejected. Not sure if LeBron is playing tonight. Box 104, good luck everybody. Now just in the interest of time, cause there's a lot of numbered cards here. I'm gonna sleeve these a little bit later. But there's Jackson Smith and Jigba to 175. That'll be for Seattle. That's gonna go to Eric. We've got Tank Bigsby to 199. That'll be for Jacksonville. That's gonna go to Kevin. And we've got Roshan Johnson. It looks like a piece of the glove there. That's pretty cool. And Autograph going to the Bears. Christopher picking up Chicago straight up. And that's 71 out of 99. Nice. Got a nice Jordan Azen contours card. That's pretty cool. It's gonna go to the Vikings. That'll be for Douglas. There he is again. And there's another great receiver here. DK Metcalf to 199 for Eric in Seattle. Thunderbirds, Kenneth Walker. Hot Routes, Jerry Judy, Aqua to 150, 70 out of 150 for Denver. It's gonna be for Adam. And there's Justin Jefferson, purple to 99. Little color match there. That's pretty sharp. That's gonna go to Douglas. Another DK Metcalf Thunderbirds to 175. Thunder, thunder, thunder cats. And for my Raiders, 14 out of 35.  That's gonna be Tristan with my Raiders. One of the Raiders in the filler. Might see Josh Jacobs back with the Raiders. Especially with Antonio Pierce as the head coach. Here's MVS to 199 for the Chiefs. Kevin with the Chiefs, they're back in the Super Bowl. And there's Jaden Reed. I think he had a solid season this year too. Two color patch and autograph. And it's for Evan and the Packers. One of the Packers in the filler. 11 out of 50. It's Jalen Hertz to 175. 125, they're gonna figure things out again this off season. It's gonna go to Adam and the Eagles. Got a Jackson Smith and Jigba to 125. Nice contours for Eric and Seattle. This is Dallas Goddard, Herbert, Bijon Robinson to 25 for Tristan and the Falcons. And a Jalen Carter to 75. Going to the Eagles, that's for Adam. And there's Odell Beckham Jr. All right, nice start. Next box. Rex is saying, I just received a Bowman's Best, Gabriel Gonzalez to five and just listed on eBay a few minutes ago. Now I find he was just traded for the Marys to the Twins. Didn't you mention that trade earlier? You told us about that trade, Rex. I thought you said there was a trade. You were like, yeah, Jorge Polanco and others were traded to the Mariners. Maybe it wasn't you who mentioned that. Duncan's wondering if anyone here follows, collects piggy banks? I have no idea what that is. Oh, I see. Classic Rex. Just getting half the energy of getting the partial information. I'm gonna run this one. Here's a Jacorian Bennett to 125 for the Raiders. That'll be for Tristan. I've got Garrett Williams to 175 for Ryan and the Cardinals. And then we've got a Sam LaPorta. No, I thought it was gonna be some ink. Sam LaPorta Relic though. 65 out of 199, Lions, Evan for the Lions. There's Jalen Carter to 175. And we've got a Anthony Richardson rookie rising for the Colts. That's gonna be for Adam. Which this guy played the whole season. Injury derailing his first year. There's Mahomes and a redemption. Any guesses on the redemption? There's Quinton Johnson contours. There's Tua to 199. That'll be for Miami. That's gonna go to Chad Dahl. Jalen Carter, red 250 for Adam. Huh, limited run art cards. Base in California. All right, let's check that out. Oh, very exclusive, huh? We've got a Triple Relic. We've got Chris Carter, Randy Moss, Jordan Asson. If he joins these two, I'm sure Viking fans will be very happy about that. Douglas with the Triple Relic. Duncan's got Puka for the redemption. It's out of 150 by the way. Here's Mahomes to 125. And then there's Aaron Rodgers Green to 15. Nice low number on that. Going to Adam and his Jets. You know what just hit me? I realized that Adam had mentioned something I was gonna respond to but I forgot. There is an interesting betting market where some people are betting on Sam Darnall for Super Bowl MVP. There's Byron Young to 250. And so the narrative being, hey, what if Brock Purdy gets injured? Here's James Robinson autograph. But if Brock Purdy gets injured, Sam Darnall enters the game and wins the Super Bowl. That'd be crazy. But that'd probably get him MVP. There's James Robinson signature highlights autograph. That's a cool card here. That's the highlight. That's gonna be for Kevin in the Jaguars. I think, you know, Vegas has taken action on that. There's out of 50, Brian Branch and Deuce Vaughn to 99. Deuce will go to David and Branch will go to Evan. Right, either Donald or the Michael P. Ryan is gonna win a Super Bowl, which is kind of crazy to think about if they're gonna get a ring. All right, we got a rookie auto jersey prime blue. J-A-H, Jameer Gibbs. I feel like quite a really nice game in that playoffs. That's for Evan and the Detroit Lions. Notorious non-signer. Yeah, I think so. I did. Look at me. Pulling jersey numbers. Good little color match too. Looks pretty sharp. All right, next box. The next four box break is in a filler. So if you wanna knock that out, let's knock out the filler. I don't think the price point was too crazy. If you want to run it back, it is 35.99. And it's a 16 team giveaway. So half of that filler pack, it's a great odds too. Half of you are gonna get teams in the next break. Here we go.  Going to the bills, going to Chad Dahl. Buffalo! Buffalo! And that is 55 out of 199. We got Lamar Jackson to 175. Back to the drawing board for the Ravens. And another redemption. And he guesses on that one for bragging rights. Got Kyler Murray, Thunderbirds to Ryan. That's to 199, 172 out of 199. Got Derek Henry, 18 out of 175. Titans, that's from Mark. And behind Taint Dell is Josh Downs. Piece of the jersey for the Colts. That's gonna be for Adam. Let's see if we could find the guy that throws in the ball, 113 to 199. Jalen Hurts to 125. Eagles for Adam. Gibbs again, yeah, I mean, it's possible. There's AJ Brown to 50 for Adam and the Eagles. That's why I do that, that's why I flip it around. And there's Gervon Dexter, senior to 250 for Chicago. That's for Christopher. And we got some signature highlights. Autograph, these are cool cards. Miles Sanders as an Eagle. It's Adam with the Eagles. Five Eagles, five. Talking about that game right there. That's pretty good. Clayton Tune to 75, that's for Ryan. My leg is making a comeback now, they're still down by a lot. Got Cam Eggers to 125, Vikings, that'll be for Douglas. That's Bennett to 125 for the Rams, that's for David. And Sidney Brown to 175, 16 point game, all right. Six minutes left in the fourth. They got to start. All right, are the McAulay NBA Hobby Boxes in that case? In which case? All right, we got a rookie auto dual jersey and it's T this time. Tank, Tank Dell. It's gonna go to Houston, that'll be for Michael. The case break on the site, yes, what about it? Sorry, not understanding. So that's Michael with the Texans. And the fourth and final box, the pre-order for Wednesday is a five box case break. Are they Hobby Boxes or something different? They're Hobby Boxes. Yeah, if there was something different, we would say that, we would put that in the title. Like if it was first off the line or if it was, for a McAulay, there really aren't, there's only the Hobby version and then first off the line. I think that's about all they have. No McAulay Blaster Boxes just yet. That's gonna be a really nice break. That McAulay is in that flawless national treasures family. They're cousins, they share similar design elements, really nice stuff, the higher end of the spectrum. All right, fourth and final box. Good luck. Got CD-Lam, sacking up blanks again. To 75, there's JK Dobbins, that's a nice little stiff arm that's happening right there.  And we got Jonathan Mingo, rookie jersey and autograph for Matt K. and Carolina. It's 11 out of 2.99. There you go, Matt. We got a rookie rising CJ Stroud. That'll be for Michael and the Texans. Got Ze Flowers to 250. That's gonna be for Nancy and the Ravens. Here's Bijan Robinson playing with fire. There's a T. Higgins little color match, 26 out of 99. Hot Routes for Chad and Cincinnati. There is a gold Zach Pickens. 44 out of 75. That will be for the Bears. Christopher with that one. Tony Pollard is to 10. Nice low number on that. That's gonna be for David and Dallas. Eight out of 10. Nice, it's a sharp-looking card. And behind Ze Flowers is Devon A. Shane.  Najee Harris to 75. For the Steelers. That will be for Michael and his Steelers. There's Jameer Gibbs. Contours, that's a really cool design. Lions, that's gonna go to Evan. Then, behind Nick Chubb fired up is Michael Mayer. Jersey and autograph. Silver and Blackpatch. Nice auto. Tristan got my Raiders in the filler. The Notre Dame tight end. I feel like had improved with each game last year. 58 out of 75. You can always catch. It's a good receiver of the ball, but blocking is also very important for a tight end. He's gotten a lot better at that. So, consequently, a little more playing time. Adam's saying there are a few Bears players in this you've never heard of before. And he made them, he made them up. Here's Amon Ross St. Brown to 150. Yeah, they probably AI generated some players to put in this set. Here's a CJ Stroud, 70 out of 199. Flame throwers, insert. Look this up. Michael in the Texans, you might be surprised. How well-numbered parallels of his cells on the secondary market. There's Gino Smith to 199. They got a new coach. Well, they got a new quarterback. And the last bits here, we got an A.J. Brown. Silver, a Tua to 175. And of course, Travis Kelsey in the back there. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. That was a four box break of a Panini Phoenix football picker team number six. Like I said, picker team seven's in a filler, so let's knock that out. Let's do another four boxes tonight. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye bye.


On the Internet, I'm Sailor H.G., and I recently made a switch from being a full-time developer to focusing on computer science education. I care a lot about the ways computer science is related to other subjects, and specifically the intersection of technology and art, and that's why today I'm going to talk to you about the mathematics of origami. In particular, the mathematics behind one of my favorite origami theorems. So a little bit of background. When I was in college studying CS, I had to take a class that fulfilled an advanced algorithm's requirement, and instead of taking the class called advanced algorithms, I opted to take a class called paper folding algorithms, which fulfilled the same requirement. And that meant we spent every day in the classroom proving and talking about different theorems about origami, and this one was my favorite. So it's called the fold and cut theorem, and it states that you can generate any polygonal shape from a single piece of paper with just one cut. Any polygonal shape and just one cut, and that's a really big claim, but it was proved by the professor who taught the class, along with Martin DeMaine of MIT, and professor Anna Lovive of the University of Waterloo.  So I'll show you the unfolded piece of paper is a swan.  So this is actually a pretty old puzzle. The first reference to it is in a Japanese puzzle book in 1721, and it challenges the reader, can you cut out a shime, a lightning shape said to guard against evil spirits, from a single piece of paper with just one cut? And to iterate, to reiterate this theorem again in cartoon form, you can generate any polygonal shape from a piece of paper with a single cut. You might just need to fold the paper a lot of times before you make the cut. So then the question becomes, assuming that this is true, how and where do we fold the paper before we make the single cut to make this possible? And there are a couple ways of thinking about this conceptually. So we can think of it as we want to fold a piece of paper so that everything that's part of this cat is above a line and everything that's not cat is below the line. And then we cut at that line. Another way of thinking about it, we want to fold the piece of paper so that the outline of the cat, which is exactly what we want to cut, is all aligned on the same line. And this will turn out to be the way of thinking about it that will be helpful for coming up with an algorithm that will tell us the folds necessary before the one cut. So let's think of simple examples of how we can get lines to align up with each other on a piece of paper. For example, if you want the top and the side of a piece of paper to be aligned, you would fold at the 45-degree angle between them, and then you'd have the top and the side aligned. If you had two lines randomly drawn on a piece of paper and you wanted to align them, you'd fold somewhere in between them to line them up. And if you extended those lines until they met somewhere off of the piece of paper, you would see that specifically we're folding along the angle bisector of those two lines. Folding along the angle bisector is how we get lines to line up. So how do we generalize this for getting all the edges of a polygon to line up? For example, what happens if we have a complicated polygon and some of the angle bisectors intersect with one another? So we would calculate what mathematicians call a straight skeleton. And it is called a straight skeleton because when you calculate it, it ends up looking like it could be the actual skeletal support structure for that object. So how do you calculate it? You shrink the original shape while maintaining constant perpendicular distance from the original edges, and the path of the vertices as the shape shrinks is the straight skeleton. And you'll see so far that this path is consistent with our idea that the angle bisectors of a shape are an important component of calculating how to align the sides. And as you're shrinking the shape, you might encounter three types of edge cases. As you shrink a shape, it might get so small that it becomes a point. If this happens, you stop because once the shape is a point, it can't shrink anymore. And the simple skeleton is a path from the original vertices to that single point. And it's indicated in this figure in bold. Here's another edge case you might run into. Two edges might merge into a single edge, just like the top and bottom of this rectangle do. And what does this mean for calculating the straight skeleton? So you include that merged edge in the straight skeleton along with the path of the vertices to that merged edge. And again, it's shown in the bold lines here. Lastly, as you shrink a shape, you might find that it separates into two disjoint shapes, and that's totally fine. You just apply the algorithm to both shapes recursively. So after reading a lot of research papers, I found that most robust implementations of a simple skeleton solver were the subject of PhD theses. The kinds of things that people documented that they found difficult were input polygons with extreme concave sections, polygons with a spiral shape, and also floating point numbers. And while I didn't have time to write a PhD thesis for this talk, I did write a solver that can handle simpler input polygons like this ruby. So I used Shoes, a graphical ruby app kit, and the ruby geometry gem, which contained a lot of super helpful geometry functions. And I'll demo the Shoes app right now. But, see, I think this is draw shape. Okay. So we draw the ruby, and then when we push this button, it's going to shrink the ruby until it becomes a point and then draw the straight skeleton. Awesome. How do I get this off the screen? I can't see my mouth. So now that we have a skeleton, can we fold along it to cut out the ruby with a single cut? Almost. So it turns out the straight skeleton is most of, but not the full set of folds that we need to make to create a shape with a single cut. And why do we need more folds? Well, we need to get a little deeper into computational folding theory to answer this question. So here is a simple example of why the straight skeleton isn't fully sufficient for our purposes. This is a straight skeleton for a rectangle. What happens when we try to fold along the skeleton lines? If we tried to fold along those lines, we would see that they just don't fold into a flat shape, and we need the piece of paper to be flat before we can make our single cut. And I'll demonstrate with a piece of paper right now to show how you just can't fold this flat. Okay. So here's a piece of paper. You just like, when you try to fold along these lines, it won't fold flat. So the problem is not all sets of edges fold flat, and foldability is a whole other area in the field of computational origami, formalizing which sets of edges will fold flat, which can't fold flat, and which might be even impossible to fold. So a set of edges that we're looking for, ones that can be folded flat, are called flat foldable. For this particular shape, we would be able to fold it flat if we added perpendicular helper folder lines that extend from the inner skeleton to the edges of the rectangle. And I'll demonstrate how if we have these two additional lines, we can flat fold the rectangle. So now that we have these two lines, we can fold it flat. So how do we generalize? How do we add a few folds for the general case in order to make any straight skeleton flat foldable? First of all, we can establish that any helper folds must meet the shape edge at 90 degrees because then they're guaranteed not to interfere with a way that the edges of the shape are already lined up in a single line. So we draw perpendiculars from every vertex of the straight skeleton to the edges of the shape, and it turns out that we won't need all of them, but none of them will hurt foldability or affect one cut ability. So here's what we get if we draw perpendiculars from every straight skeleton vertex in the ruby that we generated earlier. So now for a live demo of cutting the ruby. So here is the ruby. We fold it on the simple skeleton lines and some of the perpendicular helper lines. So this project is super exciting to me because there are still plenty of ways to take it further. For example, I'd love to add in a perpendicular... I'd love to add in the perpendiculars to the ruby shoes app and on top of that to assign mountain valley foldability. Yet another part of foldability theory is you can systematically figure out whether folds go in, valley folds, or whether folds go outward, mountain folds. And also to read more feces so I can implement a program that handles more edge case shapes. So thank you so much for listening. Come find me during the break if you'd like to talk about origami or the intersection of coding and art or computer science education or if you just want some stickers. So the question is whether the shoes app is online or not. So I want to clean it up a little bit more before I put it online, but I do want to get it up. It is definitely possible. People who are super serious about origami start using thinner and thinner paper. Sorry, do I need to repeat the question? So the question was because paper has a thickness, you eventually need to fold the paper so many times that it's impossible to fold anymore. Like is it possible to generate a folding that will be physically impossible? And the answer is yes. And a lot of people who do serious complex origami even use thinner paper than just like printer paper in order to be able to make their models physically possible. So I guess one approach to that would just be using thinner and thinner paper and then eventually you wouldn't be able to. So the question is whether these algorithms are applicable to other fields. So some examples that the professor gave us, so I think that the professor mostly gave this class because he really loves origami, but he also had to justify being like, well, you can use these in real life too. So some examples that he gave us are like in satellites or space exploration robots. This can be a way that you can get the solar panels to fold up really small. You can unfold them. Well, that's like for an application of paper folding theory in general, not the one cut theorem specifically. Okay. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


What's up ladies and gentlemen welcome back to day number six where we teach you how to jump rope run in place So first guys to start off like we always have been in the series two sets of 30 seconds from what we learned yesterday Let's go. All right, ladies and gentlemen. So first we're gonna start things off with practice remember We're talking about jump rope mistakes So what I don't want you to do is get all flustered mistakes happen even to Brandon and I every single time that we jump rope guys So we're working on again just this side swipe So if you check me out here instead of wasting a little bit more time And I know it's only a little bit of time But if you mess up don't step over the rope and then get your arms back into swinging because that can mess up your rhythm What I recommend doing is exactly what I am right here Which is when I mess up all I do is do a little side swipe To my right or left and then I get right back into it So this is a good transition move because it allows you to keep spinning the rope at a fast pace So another round here we go. We're just practicing the mess up and the side swipe Look at that. Just I get right back into a little I roll my left hand over my right side and just get right back into it That's what I want to want you guys doing instead of when you mess up Stepping over the rope and getting started again. All right, ladies and gentlemen to start things off We're gonna do fake jump rope run in place meaning we're just gonna run in place But what I want you to focus on is being very conscious of when one foot hits the ground the other ones up in the air and you Swing the rope through with your imaginary hands and then switch it. All right guys We're gonna practice now the run in place with no rope So the biggest thing I want you guys to notice here is it seems very easy But actually it's not people get this rhythm very messed up. Look at how each time I move my feet I'm doing one turn with my hands That's the important part because people have a tendency to spin the rope faster than they're running So if you look at me from the side here I'll all I'm practicing is I'm kind of exaggerating and of course, but I'm going very slow and whenever I hop to a different foot I'm practicing a rotating the rope as you'll see here in a second when we use the rope But this is the motion I want you guys to get ingrained into your head ladies and gentlemen good work Now I want you to grab the rope and guys like anything. We're simply going to practice remember for this The biggest thing is that most of your form really isn't changing you're maintaining that regular bounce form from your knees up The only thing that's moving back and forth is your knees below those feet just shifting in the run in place motion Okay, now we're gonna do running in place with the rope and as you see it looks the same as without the rope We're not doing two two runs in the middle of one skip What we're doing is one skip per every single run So when you see my feet here just kind of going back and forth What I want you guys to focus on again is all the all the fundamentals of jumping ropes stay regular in my upper body My elbows are in my hands are jutting out to the sides of my hips The only thing that we're focusing more on here again is the feet look notice how little I actually move my feet There's not really a whole lot of movement. It's very similar to regular bounce The only difference is you have to get that timing down and I recommend doing that By just practicing guys All right, ladies and gentlemen, let's get into the homework We got four rounds of 30 seconds jump rope running in place All right, yo now it's time for your homework 30 seconds each four rounds and we're guys We're just practicing. Okay, so I don't care how many times you mess up I want you guys practicing this so you get this rhythm down because this is another fundamental move When it comes to being able to do tricks. Okay, so as you can see here, I'm nice and easy I'm just going one for one one spin of the rope for every time I shift my feet And the important thing here too is not to get excited people get really excited and that's what causes them to do more than one One run that you they put down both feet with every turn of the rope You don't want to do that and it's just because people get excited to jump over the rope one in reality You're landing on one foot and then slightly pausing see that slight pause here as I go about this Each time my foot hits the ground There's a split second pause and when I jump off and the rope comes under for another rotation That's the main key that I want you guys That's the major key that I want you guys to understand here My third round ladies and gentlemen my overachievers at this point I just want you to do this circuit again. Maybe repeat for another four times Which would be a total of eight times But my point here guys is just practice practice practice. I promise you will get better than do nation And the last one here we go guys Try to turn up the speed a little bit too if you find yourself Saying Dan, okay. Well, this is really easy. I can do regular bounce I can already do run in place Then speed it up go as fast as you possibly can and give it your all give it You know intensity is the only way that the body is going to change remember that Have a great one ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for tuning in on today's video We will see you on the next one All right ladies and gentlemen so in video number seven tomorrow stay tuned Make sure to check that out what we're doing is finally putting together a full workout So you guys can now be proficient in jumping rope