Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today, we're joined by Zoe from People's Dispatch, who's on the ground in Bolivia as part of a Code Pink Electoral Observation delegation. The delegation has been going around various places where voting was happening yesterday. And the news after yesterday's polling, the polls that came out by various private actors show that the MA is a movement towards socialism. Its ticket of Luis Arce and David Chagavanka are expected to win the election in the first round itself, which means they may not need a second round. Now, of course, these are exit polls, but these exit polls, one of the exit polls is also from a very right-wing agency. And there has been a wide acceptance both in the country and outside. Zoe, thank you so much again for joining us. So could you first tell us what's right now, the mood on the ground, what is the latest news regarding the results and as well as the pollster results that have come out? Yeah, thank you so much for having me Prashant. It was a very emotionally charged day. I think throughout the course of the day, people were peaceful, very going about the voting in a very peaceful and democratic way, but there was a certain sense of tension because of really uncertainty of what was going to happen. There was a strong sense that the mass was going to win, but of course, there's always room for some manipulation to be happening. So I think finally after hours from when the polls closed and finally the exit polls were released, it was a huge sigh of relief. I was staying in a hotel in the center and I could hear fireworks going off for hours. People really, really feeling a lot of confidence and feeling proud that their vote was respected, feeling proud that their vote is reflecting kind of the will of the Bolivian people. And as you said, while the final tally has not been finished, and it's as of now only 16.41% of the tally sheets, which is the sheets that are used to have the official results have been processed, the exit polls indicate an overwhelming victory for the mass ticket, over 52%. And so we've seen figures from Alberto Fernandez, the president of Argentina recognizing the victory to even Luis Almagro, the secretary general of the Organization of American States. As we know in the last elections in Bolivia, the OAS was one of the key players in calling out the supposed fraud and calling for a second round. So this is actually one of the biggest milestones, I think. And even though we're still waiting on the final results, it seems like it's an irreversible trend. Also to mention there, Jeanine Agnes, the de facto president of the coup regime, also recognized the victory of Luis Arte, David Choquihonca last night itself. So I think at this point, people are in a celebratory mood, still waiting to see what happens with the final tally. But in general, it seems like the will of the Bolivian people has been respected. This is, of course, due to massive, massive mobilization, massive struggle, over the past year since the coup, the people have suffered massacres. They've suffered political persecution. There are hundreds of activists who are in jail just for being mass sympathizers or being trade union activists. And so this victory is not only the result of one day of voting, but it's the result of an entire year of being in the streets, being in every possible location, whether they're in exile and rallying, calling for the return to democracy. Aval's in Argentina and has been continuing to play a really important role in calling for the democracy to be respected. So I think that also has to be considered in this historic, historic victory. Absolutely. So Zoe, you talked about the final count, which is still in its very early stages. And could you just take us to maybe the process of how this counting takes place and what are the concerns regarding it right now? Yeah, definitely. The final count is essentially taking all of the tally sheets from across the country that come from each of the different polling locations and from those different polling locations, each of the polling booths. So each polling booth will tally up the number of votes that were cast for each party. And we got to see them yesterday to these big sheets and they do a bunch of different checks and say and tally up the number of votes that were cast for the party. And so all of these tally sheets are brought to the central computing location. And then workers from the TSE, which is the Supreme Court essentially do a processing of these tally sheets. And that's what's reflected on the website, which has the final count. As of this point, as I mentioned before, only 16% of the votes have been processed. And so right now, if you go to the website, it's reflecting a Mesa, Carlos Mesa Ciudad, community of Ciudad in the lead. But as I said, only 16% of the votes have been processed. And I think, for example, a lot of the rural areas of the actas from the rural areas have not been brought in. So I think people are still remaining cautious with this because we know anything can happen. But at this point, with the amount of recognitions that have come in from the OAS, from all of these high level officials, it's likely that the final count will reflect the exit polls and that it will in a couple of days, it could be two days, three days, the final results will reflect a victory for the mass. Absolutely, right. And finally, after talking to activists, after talking to people, observers, so are there any areas of concern? Are there issues people are watching out for?  Yeah, I think in general, in La Paz, for example, it's been quite calm. I think some of the areas where people might have some concern about violent backlash from the right wing, we might be talking about Santa Cruz where the base of Camacho is located. And we know there's been very strong mobilizations by paramilitary groups. And so at this point, people are remaining cautious and knowing that that's a possibility because the right wing backlash happens last year and it could happen again. As of now, it seems to be in a moment of calm. But of course, people looking out for that and being ready to denounce that when it happens. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Zoe, for speaking to us. We'll be staying in touch with you as the final tally gets calculated further and the results hopefully come out in a few days. Thank you so much for having me, Prashan.


Hi Yameyane. Hello Audrey. Nice to meet you. Hello, I'm Audrey Tom. Good local time. We'd like to hear a lot from you. The current situation of Taiwan where the infection is contained. How do the people living right now, how are they living for the people now? Well, we still wear a mask, keep our social distance, wash our hands all the time, but otherwise life is normal. This mask is from the Pride parade. We had two of them last year. So the restaurants and the bars are operating normally and the people why and dying? That's exactly right, but by adhering to the social distance and mask wearing principles, starting from winter, there's going already a fine for people who get in the crowded places, but that do not wear a mask, but otherwise life is normal. In Wuhan, the virus was found and you, Audrey, what did you think and how did you move? In the very beginning, that's, well, in 2019, December, Dr. Lee Wenliang from Wuhan posted a social media post that said, and I quote, there were seven new SARS cases found, unquote, and that news made into the rounds in Taiwan on PTT, the Taiwanese equivalent of Reddit. And so people upvoted it a lot. So the very next day, starting January first, a year ago, that people who bought any plane that coming in from Wuhan to Taiwan, we started health inspections. So literally, I guess, Dr. Lee Wenliang saved the Taiwanese people and we thank him for it. So in the very beginning, I think the infection cases were very small. However, you, Audrey, did you feel a sense of crisis even at that time? I guess anyone who are above 30 years old in Taiwan felt a sense of crisis when we saw the acronym SARS in Dr. Lee Wenliang's message. It rings an alarm bell to everyone in Taiwan who were there, including me in 2003. So in Taiwan, you have experience of suffering SARS. So listen, learn from SARS. So you learned a lot and you leveraged on that experience. That's exactly right. For example, during SARS, masks, especially medical grade and N95 in particular, was in short supply. And so between SARS and now, there's been a lot of measures in making sure there's sufficient stockpile of medical grade masks, of making sure that not only pharmacy, but also convenience stores have the license to sell those medical grade masks. And of course, this time around, we came out with the rationing system that nowadays, anyone with their national health card can get 10 medical masks per two weeks in nearby pharmacies or convenience stores. That means 17 years ago, SARS occurred, something similar to SARS COVID-19. You started preparing for it and have been preparing for such a long time. That's right. That's exactly right. And by preparing, I mean, not only the logistics like the masks, but also the legislation, the communicable diseases act in particular, that authorize a very strict border quarantine way so that we do not have to counter SARS 2.0 or COVID-19 in the same unprepared way as we did in 2003. And from the point of a Japanese view, the team of the test team to respond to COVID-19, most of the members are, all of the members are civilians. How did you come up with this idea? I think in Taiwan, we already have a lot of good collaboration with civic technologies. The GOV-0, G-0V in Taiwan, which is like code for Japan in Japan, already participates in many disaster relief, as well as air quality, water quality measurements counter this information and things like that, because there's already a strong mutual trust between the social sector on one side and the public sector on the other. It is natural for us to trust the GOV-0 civic hackers with open API, that's real-time open data in, for example, the mask availability. So all of them, the members are civilians, but the government staff, they make requests to the task force, don't they make requests or complain to the task team? Doesn't it happen at all? Yeah, it's both ways, right? So when we first had the mask availability map invented by Howard Wu and Fijian County in Tainan City, of course, it saves time. People don't have to go to pharmacies that are already out of masks. On the other hand, the pharmacists also invented take a number system where people go to the pharmacy, hand them their national IC healthcare card in return for a number, and they can go back on the evening with that number in exchange for the mask and the codback. Now, these two social innovations individually saves time by themselves, but when they go together, they explode like Mentos plus Coca-Cola because on the mask map, for those pharmacies that hand out the numbers, it will look like they sell nothing for a while, and then during lunch break, where they process the cost, it sells everything, and so it looks very suspicious. And we resolve that by making sure anyone can call the toll-free number 1922, and there's a strong solidarity between the civic technologists and the pharmacists who brainstorm to fix the problem by first listing the opening hours for numbers, and then for masks in two different fields, and finally offering a button when the pharmacists push, they can disappear from the map as soon as the numbers run out. And so these two implemented in very quick succession fix the problem created by those two social innovations.  Yes, it's because at the time, the Vice President Dr. Chen Jianren, the author of Epidemiology and the original person that put an end to SARS in 2003, he recorded a massive online open course to teach epidemiology to everyone who wants to learn, including myself. So everybody understood as long as we can get three quarters of people in Taiwan wearing masks and washing our hands, then the R value will be below one, and the disease will be under control. So is this epidemiologically informed common value that informs the social innovators on one side and government technologists on the other? I learned about your response in TV and journal, and this team, task team, without limitation of time, had press conference, and their effort was really understood by people in Taiwan. That is exactly correct. And when the CECC does a central epidemic month sensor in post, for example, starting January 15, that's two days from now, which is recording time Wednesday, I should say that again, because we're not going to air on Thursday, right? So sorry, let me do this again. That's indeed correct. So when the CECC does a central epidemic month sensor in post any new quarantine measures, for example, starting January 15, we're tightening the quarantine measure to make sure that each person either go to a group quarantine facility or quarantine hotel, or if they quarantine at home, they must meet the requirement of one person per residence, and only nationals and people holding residence certificates can go to Taiwan now. So when these new measures are introduced, the CECC took plenty of time to pre-announce it and explain the scientific criteria and make sure that anyone can call the toll free number 1922 to get a full explanation of why this measure is taken during the height of the winter in anticipation of the holiday, as well as the variants of the virus now being disseminated across the world. So there's plenty of time to understand, absorb the scientific premise of any new measure. I think I saw it on TV. More than 100 days, they made press confidence. And then the people will believe it. Is that true? Yes. And every day at 2 p.m., the press conference is such that any journalist can keep asking questions, and the press conference doesn't stop until all the questions are answered. So how many days are required to pass away the people? I would say it's an ongoing process. You can never stop. If we stop the CECC press conference altogether, then whenever a new measure comes up or whenever a new development in the situation comes up, then there's no way for the trustworthiness previously earned to cover for this new situation. So the answer is indefinitely. It has to run either every day or every week, but there need to be a predictable temple for answering all the questions from the journalistic community. We must also include humor in addressing the situation. I hear you said that. Yes, it's called humor over rumor. We made sure that the CECC measures are explained in terms of a very cute Spokes dog. Song Chai is the name. And the dog shares, for example, when you're indoor, keep three Shiba Inus away. When you're outdoor, keep two Shiba Inus away. Or, for example, wear a mask to protect your own face against your own unwashed hands. When I say this, you may remember, but when the Spokes dog say it, you will not only remember, but also laugh about it and share it with other people. How do you think the government formed trust? Taiwan also has a severe penalty. Well, in the case of Japan, it's hard to do that because of the restriction on private rights. While you have very severe penalty, how did you form the trust between people and government? Because we took a hard look at everything that went wrong in 2003. The constitutional court in Taiwan in 2004 said to the legislature that the kind of chaotic response during 2003 is barely constitutional, referring to the locking down of the Hoping hospital. And so it charged the legislature during the post-SARS time when the memory is still fresh to draw up new laws and regulations that will set up the Central Epidemic Command Center, as well as imbue it with the kind of rights and duties to find to a very high degree people who are not collaborating with the medical officers in like quarantine and isolation measures. So I would suggest any jurisdiction to basically after vaccination, when the memory is still fresh, do something similar. Also, while you have penalty, the government also should trust people like the restaurants and operators and so on. Yes, in Taiwan, the nightlife district, the business owners for like the host and hostess bots are also part of our counter pandemic effort. Not only do they work with the same mosque and physical distance rules, but also they maintain the so-called real contact system that asks for the patrons to register maybe under a pseudonym, but always with a working SIM card number. It can be a prepaid SIM card or an email that could reach them and verify it on the spot. Now, if nothing happens for 28 days in that institution, of course, this is shredded. So we are not asking for them to identify themselves or report to the CECC. However, if there is a local outbreak, then we can finish the contact tracing very quickly by contacting the people that needs to be contacted. And so this is a balance between the privacy requirements for the nightlife district and the need for the contact tracers. I see. That means in Japan, we request shortening hours of operations for restaurants because it is said that the infection is likely to occur there and those people are suffering. Of course, there's a risk. However, in Taiwan, those people who are involved in this kind of industry should be considered a member who tries to contain the infection. I think the Taiwan case is because we have really a very strict border quarantine measure. Now, I'm happy to learn that Japan has also tightened up the border measure for admitting travelers to Japan. And in Taiwan, because we do believe that quarantining at the borders is preferable to basically softening at the borders and let the virus run free in many of the self-imposed quarantines, we are really quite tight in that. But we also make sure people are paid a fair stipend every day. They earn USD maybe $33 for their effort working with the quarantine for the 14 days. And no employer can fire an employee for going into a necessary quarantine or isolation and so on. And so there is an equity-based measure being implemented here. So much so that people will understand as long as there's no community spread, then of course the boss, the restaurants, the hostess boss are part of the defense. On the other hand, Japan is in the second phase of emergency situation. Every day, we mark the 2,000 new cases. So from a point of view, how do you see Japanese current situation? I think wearing a mask, washing one's hands, staying at home, telework and so on. This may sound really basic, but if people understand the scientific reason for doing so and trust each other, then these measures can be implemented in a consistent fashion, which will all together bring the R value to be under one. In the case of Japan, of course people wear masks and people wash hands. However, it's very hard to contain the infection and we see the surge of infection on the other hand. I hear you, but in Taiwan what we are saying is that if we tighten up the border quarantine and keep our value to be under one, then individual local transmissions are not likely to become large local outbreaks. Large auto outbreaks in the communities, for example, you mentioned restaurants and bars and so on, are only possible if a pocket of people somehow do not understand the measures or remind each other to keep a strict adherence to the measures like mask wearing and hand sanitation. This is why we imposed a fine to refusing to wear a mask after being reminded in crowded spaces during the winter, even though we actually had to know local spread, but the individual local transmissions may always become a local spread unless people keep adhering to those different measures that altogether bring down the R value. The people in Taiwan they listen to what you say very carefully and loyally and adhere to the instructions. That has led to this containment. This is the other way around in February for a while, like 48 hours. The Central Epidemic Command Center experts were saying maybe we should save the masks for the care workers and maybe in well-ventilated places like the metro, maybe healthy people do not need to wear a mask. But even though it's said like that, the people all wore a mask and criticized the CECC by saying the masks are not sufficient for everybody, people are saying maybe you should make more masks. And so in 48 hours, we took a U-turn and said, yeah, wear a mask after all. And we will work to rent out the production from under 2 million a day to now over 20 million a day. And so I think this is not a case of a very top-down measure. This is the people after SARS having a collective memory insisting that the government need to provide plenty of medical great masks to everybody. So, so-called SARS experience, SARS left some people raised the voice and the government responding to it quickly and changed the course. That's exactly right. So I think all the society have their first encounter with SARS, right? We had our first encounter in 2003. Now many countries are having their first experience with what I call SARS 2.0, but we can always work on institutional and logistic and technological preparations for SARS 3.0, which will come just we don't know whether it's next year or 10 years from now. The people in Taiwan don't they have any dissatisfaction over the severe penalty or something like that? Any other buzz? Well, any penalty have people who feel it's not strong enough and the people who feel that it's maybe too strong. And I would say that CECC is striking a very good balance on both explaining the scientific reason for those measures as well as making sure that those penalties are enforced with equity with no exceptions. So by having heard your story, so daily every day you come up with data and if you find any mistakes or errors, you change it very quickly. Yes, we very quickly admit our mistake. For example, I mentioned about the pharmacist taking a number system and a mass availability map. We apologized almost immediately to the pharmacist and instead of saying, hey, our way is right. Your way is wrong. We say, no, of course you are right because they are the pharmacists trusted by the community and we didn't anticipate this interaction. So we went to WAC and roll out a fix the very next week. And so as soon as those fixes are rolled out, people get the signal that the government really trusts the citizen in the here and now in a very timely fashion. I see. So having heard what you say, the people raised voice and the government analyzed and when they agree, they quickly change the course and admit or approve what people want. Yes, this is what we call a all of society approach. This is another story I heard. You have universal health care with the relationship with Japan and Taiwan. I hear that the Taiwanese government learned from the system from Japan in the beginning. Is that right? Yes, we learned a lot from our relationship with Japan, especially around disaster relief and countering earthquake and typhoons after mass, right? Both of our country have a lot of experience with earthquakes and typhoon. So for example, our advanced earthquake warnings and flood warnings. We learned about by actually looking at the Japanese system. And this time around, we also modified the system for SMS based earthquake and flood warnings so that a sense of warning, for example, when someone breaks the quarantine by tracing their phone using cell phone tower signal. So it's not GPS or Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but just cell phone strength tower for the telecoms to send the SMS when the phone breaks out of the quarantine and so on. That's called the digital fence and we learned that from the earthquake and typhoon warning systems. Japan is suffering to figure out how to make economy and infection response both available. How do you do this? How do you see this? In Taiwan, we made sure that when the small and medium enterprises, especially the catering and the face-to-face community were being kind of substituted by the online like e-commerce during the height of the pandemic, we wrote out the relief funds for them. And later on, we also wrote out stimulus vouchers so that only for face-to-face consumption, when you spend 3,000 NT dollars, we refund two-thirds of it back to your account. And so because of this measure, people are more willing to go out and shop. But that's because we put the R-value and Taiwan and the spread of the disease under control so that we move from the relief phase to the stimulus phase. So may I ask one fundamental question? Why Taiwan was able to contain the infection?  So, well, I see that we only have two minutes to go, so I will be brief. So I think the main factor is that back in 2004, we institutionalized the collective memory of SARS. And then as part of that institution is a responsive governing mechanism that makes sure the best ideas from the civil society are amplified regularly and predictably. And the small-scale pilots such as the national IC card for health, which was a very small-scale pilot at a time of 2003, only on the Penghu Islands, quickly scaled out to the entire country. So this time around, more than 99.99% of citizens, but also some residents use the national health IC card from everything to the mask purchasing to stimulus voucher purchasing and things like that all on the national IC card for health care. So now time is limited. I have only two questions. Taiwan, there's no second wave occurring. And one, the other is that will you give message to people in Japan who are suffering now? So the first answer is that so far, we are keeping the R value below one. So and this depends not on any single measure, but a combination of mask wearing, hand sanitation, social distancing, stay at home and things like that. And when people do go out to the private parade and so on, they all wear a mask and trust each other to remind each other to wear the mask and keep social distance. And so this is the first part of my answer. And my message is exactly the same, right? Keep to those basic measures, remind each other to keep to those measures and until the vaccination rolls out, just keep doing so and so that we can all live long and prosper. Well, until such a time that a vaccination become generally available, of course, everyone is better off with the physical vaccine, which protects not only SARS, but also COVID-19 and all the future variations as long as it's a respiratory disease, the physical vaccine always works. So keep doing so and stay strong. I understand. Thank you for sparing your precious time. Thank you very much. We truly appreciate it. Thank you for your interpretation work and for the moderation. Arigatou gozaimashita. Arigatou gozaimashita. Thank you very much.


Wagner soldiers captured three blocks of Bakhmut, new forces cannot enter the city, Russia. More than 80% of the territory of Ukrainian Bakhmut, including all administrative centres, is now under the Russian forces control, Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozin reported. The largest part of Bakhmut, that is, over 80%, including all administrative centres, factories, plants, the city administration is under our control. Prigozin said, according to the video answer, to a media question posted on his social networks. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov earlier reported that Russian forces focused their major efforts on Artyomovsk in the Donetsk area. According to him, the assault teams of the Wagner Private Military Company continued fighting for residential areas in the city's central part, edging out enemy forces to western outskirts. The top brass added that on the flanks, the assault teams were supported by airborne force units. All administrative buildings in Bakhmut are controlled by Russian forces. Head of the Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin said, all administrative buildings are already controlled by our forces. He said in an interview with Russia's TV channel one, Pushilin stressed that he had been to Bakhmut to see it with his own eyes, adding that he hardly saw any building not seriously damaged there, which could be slightly reconstructed and used in the future. Russia says the Wagner assault detachments have captured three city blocks in Bakhmut, strikes by operational tactical aviation, missile troops and artillery fire from the southern unit, hit Ukrainian reserves that tried to break into Bakhmut from the direction of the settlements of Chassivya and Bodanivka. Besides units of the 28th Merchandise Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of the settlement of Kostyantinivka of the Donetsk, Ukrainian ground forces commander Colonel General Oleksandr Sirsky has accused Russian troops of using scorched earth tactics in Bakhmut. He also stated that Ukrainian forces have exhausted Wagner forces so much that the Russian military command has had to send special forces and Russian airborne forces elements to Bakhmut.


Instead he came back like I never left cooking up content like a chef shooting videos like I'm Steph Curry So hurry up to scrub cuz it's time for us to Throw them seas up Make sure you throw them seas up in the comment section if you're part of triple C's if you're not a part of triple C's And you would like to be make sure you smash the scrub button and throw them seas up in the comment section I have one for the history books for you guys today, baby So we had an order that was two hundred dollars to end up turning into Four hundred and seventy dollars. It is one crazy story now this low is picking up from I'm telling you guys We're picking up from the first place. It was supposed to be picking up from a place called Bensonville, Illinois We were supposed to drive 47 empty mouths 59 loaded mouths a hundred and six mouths all together for two hundred dollars You guys would not believe what happened.  Let's go Now I'm going to give you guys a little bit more details about this low I'm going to give you guys a full breakdown. The payout is two hundred dollars The pickup place is in Bensonville, Illinois, which is about three miles away from the airport The pickup time is 3 p.m. On a Sunday Sunday was yesterday And we're going to drive 47 deadhead miles 59 loaded mouths or a hundred and six miles all together for two hundred dollars So I put the bid in on this at 10 28 a.m.  So I'm still in the video Guinness right right then they called me around 1115 to 1130 and let me know the pickup location has changed from Bensonville, Illinois to the actual airport instead So I'm like, oh, no, no, no and look and hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait Don't forget this part and the pickup time has changed from 3 p.m.. To 7 p.m.. And the drop-off time is now 9 p.m. Instead of 5 p.m.. So I'm like look man if I knew this was gonna be picked up from the airport I would have never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever Put a bid in on it for two hundred dollars. I would have put the bid for 350 So I let him know look hey, I want the bid to be 350 I know that I said 200 but I did not know it was gonna be changed of location from the pickup area I know that was gonna be picking up from the airport If I knew I was going to pick up from the airport I would have put the bid in for like 350 dollars to say well we can't really change it now this this net The most we can do is give you the $8 for detention Now detention is when you go to a pickup location and you have to wait a long time to be loaded For this particular company that I'm working with you get $40 an hour after the first two hours So if you have to wait two hours, that's free anything after that you will be paid $40 an hour So since the pickup time changed from 3 p.m. To 7 p.m. That's four hours altogether So we skip the first two hours. So we're going to get paid for two hours at $40 an hour So instead of $200 we are now going to receive $280 for that order So honestly me and the dispatcher we went back and forth for a whole bunch of messages Because I was I was highly afraid about this because I kind of feel like y'all finessed I kind of feel like they finessed and they they wouldn't honest in the first place They were trying to act like it was another place to pick up from when it was the airport the whole time And the reason why I'm going to say this is because this is one of the key things he said That I need to have my paperwork in hand when I go to the pickup location And I'm also going to be using a thing called macro point macro point It's pretty much a tracking device where the customers can find out exactly where you were with the load Now this is the reason how I know you was finessed. This is how I knew he's finessed I knew he's finessed him because if you're saying if you already put that in the nose when the load was sent out to people How is it now that it went from Bensonville to the airport? Bensonville and airport are not the same thing Bensonville is three miles away from the airport and if I knew that it was in Chicago I probably would have thought it was the airport by the wording in the notes But you didn't say airport pickup you switched it from Bensonville to to the airport after I already accepted the order So that's the reason why I think you finessed now This is the reason why you guys have to pay attention to everything that's going on with these apps With these carrier servers with the shippers with the receivers where everybody and always always always always Do what's best for you because they're always going to do what's best for them You need to make sure that you're doing the best thing for you Don't let them finesse you and tell you oh, yeah, but this and this will be trying to a lot of times They be lying because I know when they change the pickup location. I'm positive They got some extra money if the customer changed it from this place to this place I'm sure that they don't do nothing for free whether it's three miles two miles A half a mile it doesn't matter you changing the pickup location Which means my driver may not be in position to get that low So I got to charge you more for that and I know that they got some more money for that And they only want to give me an eight dollars for detention So hey, we about to pull up to the airport and it's money. We ain't missing. Let's go Just like that. We are here at the airport to do this pickup. Hopefully we don't have any hiccups Maybe I'll hope this joint is ready. We are early too We supposed to be here seven like six six thirty five or something How you doing sir? I'm have a load to pick up Fifteen minutes later Um, you have to give her about 10 minutes to give her a take That way some guy named Mike will respond because there's no clearance Oh, okay. So wait two more minutes. So stay here come back Sit down have a seat. Okay. Relax. All right. Thank you This the reason why I like coming to the airport so that the order I it wasn't even supposed to be picking up from here It's supposed to be picking up from Bensonville some adjacent Bensonville, which is not here Okay, you be us problem So then they changed the time was supposed to be I was supposed to pick it up at three And they changed it to pick up at seven. Okay And then they said you're not going to Bensonville no more.  Mm-hmm. You would have been going already. So it's the paperwork. It's the paperwork It's not clear. There's no there's no one seat.  No, I'm not There you go, let me get away with that one. Don't do that.  Not right talking about it. You gotta wait See, I ain't know this. Okay. I know but I have to throw us under the bus No, I ain't don't look look. Hey, it's all about learning. It's all about learning Learning earn so when you learn why you earn but yeah, we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens when they clear We'll have a one seat which means customs clear paperwork is like that Okay You would have been done Now look like that face you just made it and look like it was a good fake No, I told him I was gonna refuse you because of the clearance and he said please don't I'm working on it now So just letting him know you're contacting your dispatch and if they don't want to hold you here this weekend with you Okay, I'll let her know we can give you a Paper where we had to refuse you and you'd be gone So we she was going to she was gonna go that round But they asked her to keep you here Okay, so I'm gonna talk to them and then I'm gonna talk to you and then we're gonna figure it out A few moments later How many how many minutes I say I said you're gonna come in three years like maybe more like 13 I was almost there Yeah, many game coach I'm good to go appreciate you boy. What's your name? Princeton. Princeton my guy prints All right boss. You have a good one stay up. Yes, sir My guy about to give me right, baby So super small The smaller the better the lighter the better Uh, yeah a little bit more quick The guard here you're gonna grind and shout you're gonna keep on coming to the top. We're gonna never stop. Let's go So we just waited at the airport for another hour. So we went from 280 We got an extra 40 dollars for waiting for an hour. So we're gonna be at 320 is back to getting this money. Let's go And just like that we are here at the drop-off location receiving hours money through friday 6 a.m to 2 30 p.m I'm in that bill This joint might be closed. It looks like ain't nobody in this job.    Y'all see what's going on there. This is looking like something, but it's looking ugly. I don't see no movement Like zero movement at y'all I can't make this up, baby. I can't make this up As you guys just saw the drop-off location was closed. So guess what? I reached out to the dispatcher. Let him know a the drop-off location closed. What do you want me do now? We literally said that for dude. We sat there for one whole hour. No Two whole no, I was lying. It wasn't one. It was two whole hours. We got there like a 9 15 and we left at about 11 o'clock. So an hour and 45 minutes We sat there to fit them to figure out everything. They say that was reached out to different people Charles to get somebody to come get the load. The place was closed They had to call these different concepts they have in the building because the building is huge And see if somebody can come pick up the load all in all what end up happening We actually had a layover. What is a layover? A layover is when you get to the drop-off location and nobody can load you or unload you so Then you're going to receive with this company. You're going to receive an extra $150. It's a good thing that I live kind of close to drop-off location because I would have had to drop all the way home It's for us to go hard and get it on. So now we're about to go home I'm about to give me some z's and tomorrow we're going to get back to this cheese. Let's go the next day And just like that it is 6 a.m. The next morning, baby. We are here to this order to get in order How you doing boss? I have a drop-off for you guys I'm about to get us together right on time. Hope you're here for us. How you doing, boss? So that's what happened in this store story time that's what happened in this story time baby It was one crazy day But I do want to tell you guys this with this crazy day for that $407 receive all together We made 745 or 745 with the Gucci interior today. We made 745 dollars I'm going to spread the videos out We did this one order right here and then we have two more loads We went to go do and that will be in tomorrow's video So make sure you lock in tomorrow because it's going back down because we can plan around because 2023 is big Bag season we'll keep on giving reason. I'll see you guys on the next one We're going before you already know the DDK and I'm on my way.  I'll see you guys on the next one


Howdy everybody. I'm here to tell you about something I feel is very important. It is called the Texas inaugural DAV 5k run walk, roll and motorcycle ride. It's taking place Saturday, November the 4th at the Alamo Brewery in San Antonio, Texas. You can find out more about it at DAV5k.org or TexasMentors at DAVTexas.org Get involved today if you will and let them know you're coming and go support this wonderful organization. We think that you'll have a great time and you'll be supporting our men and women that have served and sacrificed for this country.


Have you been dreaming Scratch Cloud variant? Probably not. But hey, you might want to use them in your next Scratch project. I'm going to go through what they are, a few gotchas, and how to store text in the cloud. Hint, we'll encode and decode the music numbers. Promise, it's not as hard as it sounds. All this coming your way. Hello world, Surfing Scratcher here, teacher-surfer programmer, and on this channel I make how-to coding videos for curious learners and educators. If you dig in this content, then consider hitting that subscribe button to stay in the loop. And hey, if you're an educator and you want user resources sent straight to your inbox, consider joining the mailing list linked below in the description. But hey, let's get stuck in the cloud variables. Alright, I'm just on the Scratch info page, and the frequently asked questions about cloud data just to go over a couple of key things. What are they? Cloud variables can be saved and shared with other people in the Scratch community. The data associated with your interactions can be stored along with your username and others can view it. I've just got an example of some cloud variables that I've got in a project of mine. You can see here where I've been setting the variables and where I've been renaming it or creating it. You can access that data page that you just saw on the project page where you see cloud variables and hitting see data. Okay, let's jump back over to the facts. This is a crucial sentence. Only numbers can be stored in cloud variables. Yep, that means no text. Only numbers. And the last point I want to mention here is if you're a new Scratcher, then you won't be able to access cloud data. It's only available to accounts that have the status of Scratcher. Where can you find that out? Head over to your profile page, and in the top left corner, you'll see your status. Here, I've got a teacher account, which makes me a Scratcher. I'll leave a link in the description where you can suss out these facts and also the Scratch Wiki on cloud data. Very useful resource. Okay, let's start making some cloud variables. I'm here in the Scratch project editor. If you're wondering about this project, I've got a card in the top corner that will show you the video that made it. Otherwise, you can grab the starter project in the description.  In this game, we press the green flag, and we've got a race against the clock to complete the end of this sentence. We've put some errors that we can log in there as well. And once we finish our time, we'll stop. Now, what we'd like to do with our cloud variables is store this time as well as the username in the cloud so that we can keep score and so multiple people complete this game and maybe even build a leaderboard in the future. First thing we'll do is create this cloud variable to store the time. So we're going to head over to make a variable. We're going to check the cloud variable box. And the name that we'll call this is rank one time. Okay, it gives us a little reminder that cloud variables only support numbers. Okay, so I've created the cloud variable rank one time. I'm just set it to a default value of 100 using the slider. Now, I'm the owner of this project, and I'm the only one who can change this. If you remix this project, you'll create a copy of this variable and you will not be able to manipulate it directly. Okay, so I've just got some logic here in a new statement. If the current time plus the errors, we're just going to add the errors onto the time is less than the current rank one time. Well, then we want to set the rank one time to what we have here. So to set our cloud variable, it's just as simple as grabbing a set block and setting it to what we want it to be. If I click this, we'll set rank one time to 11.423 seconds plus two, which is 13.423 seconds. Then if I go to the project page of this project and we click down here, see data, the cloud variables, you'll see that we've created that variable eight minutes ago and then we just set it. Let's head back into the project. Okay, just for those of you who are following through this project, I'm just going to grab that if and else block now. I've just created an if and else block and I'm just going to connect it to the end of the start game function. Story number, piece of cake, right? What about storing your username? That's a little bit trickier because your username is made up of characters and we can't store characters in the cloud. What do we do? We need a way to encode our username to turn it into numbers so then we can store it in the cloud and then when we boot up the project, we need to decode it so then we can print the text values again. I suggest we create a couple of blocks. Let's create our first one. We're going to call this one encode username and we're going to have an input there of username. The reason I'm using an input here is so I can test it so I can bring this out and put in anything that I want just to make sure it's working. But for now, I'll put my username in there. Okay, the next thing that we're going to need to do is to create a list.  I'm just going to underscore that by writing it in capital which means I'm not going to change it. I'm going to make it for all sprites and click okay. The next thing I want to do is right click and import and I've set up a text file here with all the characters that I'll need. Now in the spaces from one to nine, I've put in characters that aren't eligible for usernames because we don't actually need them. So we'll use the digits from 10 onwards and I'll explain the reason for that in a little bit. So we're going to use this list to encode the letters of our username here. So if I click my username, we'll look for the S and we'll scroll down and the letter S will be given the number 28. And we'll do that for every single character and we will create a long number as a result. We're going to create a variable and I'm going to call it 10th username. We're going to use this temporary username to both encode and decode. It'll be for all sprites. I'm going to set 10th username to an empty field. This will default to zero or one probably so make sure it's empty. Next, we want to grab this I variable. If you don't have one, just make a new variable and call it I. This is our index variable. I'm going to change that here and we want to set index to one. Now we want to repeat the length of the username. Now we want to find the item number of the characters in our username. So we need to go into the variables box. If I change our input here to s and I click this, you'll see that s is equal to 28 which aligns with what we're going for. So we can iterate over each character and we will use this I variable to do that. So we'll step up, we'll change I by one each time and we will extract this item number of the character. But instead of s, we actually want username but we don't want the whole username. We only want a letter of the username. So we want a letter of the username and what letter do we want? We want a letter that I is currently at. So we'll insert that into our block and this is what we're looking for. Next we need to find a join block and we're going to join the current value of temp username to the letter that we extract. So the current value of temp username is nothing. When we extract the first letter, we'll join the s to nothing and we'll always join the next letter to the end of this string. To round off this block, we want to set temp username to that block that we just created to change I by one. Okay, if I click this now, if we encode the username, you'll see here temp username on the screen turns into a really long number. I don't know if this has actually worked. To figure this out, we need to decode this number now. The last thing we want to do here is to create another cloud variable and we'll call this one rank one username. We want to set rank one username to the temp username. Then what I've gone ahead and done is just create another custom block, decode number to username and what I'm passing in is that rank one username as a parameter. I've just gone ahead and duplicated the code that was in the encode but we're going to tweak things slightly. So first up, we're going to be using the temp username and the I variable again. We're going to also repeat but we're not going to repeat for the length of username. We're going to be repeating for the length of the number. Now, we don't want every single number. We want to repeat for half of the total numbers here because we're actually going to be counting these numbers in twos. Remember before how I said I'd explain the importance of not using the first nine digits. Well, if we did, we wouldn't be quite sure if we need to count in twos or ones. So if we just use two digit numbers then we know we can just count in twos each time. Okay, so we're just going to get the length of number and we'll divide that number by two because that's how many times we want to repeat this. Don't need that anymore. And we're going to be changing this up slightly. Okay, this is going to seem pretty complicated but we'll just break it down step by step. So the first thing that we want to do is extract the first two digits of the temp username. To do that, we can take whatever i is equal to and then i plus one. And that will give us the first two digits and we can join those two together. So we'll get the letter of i number. So this will give us the first digit of the number. Then we can just duplicate that but instead of getting only i we need i plus one. Okay, if I click this, it won't work because nothing because number is undefined. But if we change i by two then we'll get every second digit and we're always using the current value of i as our reference point. So since this block of code is going to return the item number from our charlist, we need to go get what the value is. So this item of charlist is exactly what we'll need to return a letter value for our username. Now that we have that letter, we need to join that letter to the current value of temp username. We're going to put this inside temp username. And now with any luck, when I press this, our temp username should turn into surfing scratcher. Boom, and it does. We've just encoded and decoded our username. The last thing I've done is just add a new variable called scratcher and we're just going to set scratcher to the value of temp username after decoding the username. Then when the green flag is clicked, we can just decode the username that we have in storage in the cloud variable. And when we start the game, if we're successful, we can just encode the username if we beat the current rank one time. We'll also want to decode that number to the value of the new scratcher who won. That's how you encode and decode text to store in the cloud on scratch. Now I've just set the values for one username. I'd be interested to see you guys out there remixing this project and see if you can create a leaderboard of say the top 10 positions of people in this game. You could use 10 different cloud variables to do that. We'll see how you go storing all the usernames in one single cloud variable and you could separate that using a comma. If you manage to do that, drop your solution in the comment section below. I'll port it across and I'll post your name in the credit section of the scratch project. Alright, time for a scratchy question and I want to check your understanding. Based on this video, why couldn't you use the first nine slots in the charlist to encode and decode the text variable? Comment with your answer down below. Alright, you made it. Thanks for checking out this tutorial on scratch cloud variables. We found it useful. Hit that like button and if you want news and resources sent straight to your inbox, consider joining the surfing scratcher method link below in the description, I'll put a link to my funky red bubble tea. But until then, I'm off to go get a wave. Catch you in the next one.