special occasion for Sheboygan County. You are the lucky 180, might be 182 now. We even have some seats up here. There are many many others on the waiting list for this event. I am Betsy Alice and it is my privilege to serve as the Sheboygan County Chamber's executive director. I'd like to ask the Chamber's executive committee members to stand. These are really the folks who guide the chamber through all of its major decisions and lay the plans to create in our county a wonderful business climate and fabulous communities.  Terry Lillisand, Steve Harrison, Neil Larson, and Louis Gentine, all vice presidents. Jim Maxson is our immediate past president. Mike Brookens, our treasurer, is in Germany today doing global business and President-elect George Bruganthes and our 2011 president, Matt Quasius. David Gass is the chair of our business advocacy committee. A big applause for these folks. A few others with us today and pardon me, if I didn't see you come in. So I just looked at the list that we had. We have Mayor Ryan from the city of Sheboygan, Mayor Pullman from Plymouth, Patrick Drinan from the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corp.  Adam Payne, our county administrator, and Mike Vanderstien, who may or may not stand up. There he is waving. Are you have our chamber director, Lisa Hurley from Plymouth? And she was at that table. Okay. Governor Walker, welcome to Sheboygan. The spirit on the lake located in the most beautiful and vibrant county in Wisconsin. I tend to get breathless when I talk about it, so bear with me. I am a newcomer here. I'll always be a newcomer here from what I understand. So I'm careful. In this place, you can jump into the excitement of waterfront sailing, surfing, swimming, sand beaches, boardwalk, charter fishing. You can brace yourself for the thrills of road America racing. Experience the creativity that John Michael Kohler Art Museum, the Above and Beyond Children's Museum, and our beautiful Wiles Center. You can step back in time at the state's Wade House Museum, which is going to be expanding and our own county historical museum. You can feel the exhilaration of bicycling or running our top rated trails, walking our beaches, kayaking our incredible rivers. You can accept the challenge of playing 5-5 count them of the top 100 golf courses in the country in one county. Yes, according to golf digest. From PGA to LPGA championships to the NASCAR race to the nation's cup this fall. And indeed, this is the first nation's cup in our entire country. Sheboygan County is the place to be. The strength of our business community is unrivaled and represented well here today in all of its diversity. Entrepreneurs, retailers, professional services, healthcare, financial services, and a very long list of global and national brands. From Sargento and Kohler to Johnsonville Acuity and others, our chamber has 830 company members, and I can't possibly name them all right now. Or you wouldn't get to talk. Above all, ours is a county full of friendly people who care deeply about each other and about the quality of life that we have here. Just last week, business week, named Sheboygan, Wisconsin's best place to raise a family, due in part to the strength and leadership of the educational offerings here from preschool to postgraduate degrees. So you are in wonderful company here, Governor, and we hope you will visit us often when you have more time to Sheboygan with us. It's the new verb. Governor Walker will share his remarks with us today and will allow plenty of time to welcome any questions you may have. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce the governor of the state of Wisconsin, Scott Walker. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be back, not only in Sheboygan and Sheboygan County, but in this hall. The first time I was here, I had dinner many, many moons ago with Mike Mooth overlooking the lake front, and he introduced me to the great view that you have here. Like Mike, there have been plenty of great champions for Sheboygan and Sheboygan County throughout the years, probably none greater than Mike was, but I certainly appreciate the chance to come back. And to be, you acknowledged all the folks here, I want to acknowledge someone who shares a little bit of time with us in the Capitol too, Mike Ensley, who's been a great new addition to the state legislature. Mike, we appreciate your presence. I used to serve in the state assembly, so I know the job there. And actually, one of the guys I sat near and was very fond of back then is your state senator, Joe Leibem, another great leader from this county and really from this state. In fact, I'm going to be up in the northern half of this district after this, visiting a business in Manitowoc. It's one of those short days. I started out in Maple Bluff in Madison, went to Racine in Milwaukee, was just over across the way at the Blue Harbor, not going down a slide. I've done that before with my kids, but over at the Charter School Association and then spend the day from here to Manitowoc to Green Bay, then back to Wauwatosa before taking it off tomorrow morning at five o'clock for our next great venture. But it's an exciting time. And it's an honor to be with you all today. I was talking a little bit with Mayor Ryan before about some economic development projects that we're hoping to stake and partner with here in Sheboygan County. And I'm pleased that the mayor is here, both from Sheboygan and from Plymouth. I'm pleased the county board chairs here and my former colleague. Many of you don't know there's an association of county executives and county administrators. And you may not know this, but your own leader here in Sheboygan County has actually been the leader of that association for all the county executives and administrators. And we appreciate your leadership there, too, as well, Adam. In fact, it's a county well after my heart because what has it been? Three or four of the last four or five years, you've had no property tax levy increase. I gotta love a county like that. That's a place to do business in. And I think of all the great businesses. You did great. I mean, talk about a Chamber of Commerce introduction. You covered the basis. That was perfect. But I think of all the great businesses. I'll be back probably later in the summer. I don't really get time to vacation, but when I'm up here, I'll probably come up to Whistling Straits to spend a little time. And as others might say, to Vacationville, right? Does that kind of take off the Johnsonville Vacationville for a little bit, at least for a day? Although I would give you one little tip. When you think about the great food and the great attractions here. Last year, when I was in Plymouth with Lou, the one mistake I made was on the way out. I hadn't eaten the whole day. I came in for a tour of the factory. And I got so excited, I took a big plate full of cheese, and I ate it all the way over to Tomah that night. Which is great cheese, but little tip advice, eat something more than just cheese for dinner. Or the next day you're not, I know Lou likes to eat a lot of cheese, but you should mix a few other things. And so that's my only, my only tip along the way. But you've got some of the best cheese and some of the best products in the country, right here on the great shores of Lake Michigan. I want to share just a few minutes. And then as was mentioned, I'll take some questions. But it's hard to believe it's been about five months since there was election for governor, Mike's election and others out there. I remember the night the other day I was over at the country springs in Pewaukee in Waukesha County. That's the place where I had my victory party that night. And I said, there's days when it seems like not five months, but it seems like about five years. And other times when it seems like it was just five days ago. But that particular night, you know, after a long campaign of about a year and a half of running, people asked me in my campaign, what do you want on the podium? In fact, it almost on cue. I don't have this at every speech. But they asked, do you want to sign like the one is in the back over there? I got a kick out of that. He actually brought one along. You want a Scott Walker sign? Or they said, maybe you want a brown bag sign?  I had signs about that. And I said, no. I said, from November 2nd on, it's not about me. It's not about my name. It's about the future of the state where we're going together. So I didn't put a sign in the podium. It's a little bit like this bumper sticker. And it says, Wisconsin is open for business. And the reason I, you can clap for that. And I said that the reason I put that up was I wanted to send a message as clear and as concisely as possible early on, even before we took the oath of office, something had changed. Something was different in the state of Wisconsin. And so we put that message out. And then the two months from through November and December leading up to the inauguration, and we tried to make sure we were in the best position possible, the best position possible to send a message that Wisconsin was indeed open for business, not just an assemblism in terms of a project or talking about something that was just about a sign or a banner or sticker, but ultimately to show that the work that we were doing that we showed that substance had taken the place of symbolism when we were moving to state four. And so starting on January 3rd, we didn't wait for a year or six months or even a month down the road. We took action right away. And literally right after taking the oath of office, I called the legislature into a special session. We brought people in that next morning. We started working on it. And I challenged the members of the legislature. Mike knows this well. I said in the first 30 to 45 days, I'm calling on you to pass our jobs agenda, part of our special session on jobs. Little did I know the legislature would trump that. They had it passed essentially in the first month. And I think that and the great news about it, you don't see it much in the media, but all but one of those bills that were passed in that special session were passed with Republican, independent and Democrat votes alike. They were passed on a bipartisan basis. And that's important because we need to get back to that. We need to get focused on that. The one thing in this state that can unite this more than anything else is getting this economy going yet, because jobs aren't about Republican jobs or Democrat jobs or about Wisconsin jobs. And the sooner we get more people back to work, the sooner it helps us take on just about every other challenge we have out there. What we did in those first days and are continuing to do now, because we're not, you know, we started out well, but we're not finished yet. We've got a lot more work to do. But we changed the business climate by lowering the tax burden, putting incentives in for job creators, particularly small businesses. We changed the climate when it comes to regulation and litigation costs in the state. We repealed the state tax when it comes to health savings accounts so that small businesses, sole proprietors, family farms, others could have access to affordable health care without the state imposing the tax, one of the last remaining states in the country to still do that. We even did something as simple as change the Department of Commerce. Our Department of Commerce right now, which is headed up by a great former Chamber of Commerce director, Paul Jayden, who used to be the head of the Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce, is now my Secretary of Commerce. We helped with Paul's assistance, put together something that will start July 1st, where we go from an entity that in the past has been in part about promoting commerce, but also about regulating commerce. That's the current Department of Commerce into something that is solely, solely about promoting economic development in the state of Wisconsin. It's the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. It's really taken a model that's worked well in counties like this and other across the state. We take a public-private partnership. We take the benefit of support from the county, cities, villages, others coming together, but also the private sector, the chambers and the private sector in itself has had a great benefit here in Sheboygan County and others. We're going to do the same thing when it comes to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. All those things happen right off the bat. Excuse me, and I remember about a month in in February, I had a reporter from the Associated Press said to me, he came in my office and he actually asked a pretty good question, which doesn't always happen in these interviews, and he said, you know, I won't go any further than that. But he was writing a story for national publication and he said, he said, why are you acting so quickly? You know, most lawmakers have barely moved in. A lot of governors don't even know where the bathroom is in the Capitol. And here you pass some of the most aggressive, pro-job economic development legislation in the country, and it's only a month then. Why is that? So it's real simple. You see, I spent about 18 months in a job interview. I interviewed to be the CEO of your state government. I traveled from one into the state together. I did parades and sat down with interviews and toured factories and did all those things and talked to the people of Wisconsin about my vision to face the two big challenges we face, which is an economic crisis and a fiscal crisis. So here's what I'm going to do. I laid it right out there. Like it or not, I laid it right out. And I said, you know, like any CEO who takes over a company, you don't wait a year or six months or even a month until after the time that you said you're going to take action, you do it right away. You take action immediately. Because when you face a crisis, any of you who have taken over companies who are in crisis, big or small, know exactly that's what it takes. And so we acted on it immediately. Immediately. And again, we haven't stopped. I mean, that's something that even with all the attention and the protesters and others like the friends behind me and around the area here, which I'm used to a lot in the way, you know, I point out that they have every right to protest. That's what America is all about. But the voices of tens of thousands of protesters is not going to take out and smother out the voices of the millions of taxpayers across the state who know to get the economy going in the state, we've got to be serious about the economy and we've got to be serious about controlling spending as well. That's what we're all about. That's what's about moving the state forward. Now, for us, we're going to continue to do more things that put more venture capital into combination between what the public sector can do with the private sector to help more startup companies. We're going to do more to help businesses like the ones we talked about before this meeting here in Sheboygan County to enhance the lakefront here and off the quarter off I-43. We're going to help other businesses across the state because we know that the more we can get people to work the better off we are. And I know it's already having a positive impact. Last week I was in Rock County which a year ago had an 18% unemployment rate. This morning I was in Racine County which still has about a 12% unemployment. We know we have our challenges here in Sheboygan County as well but we also have seen signs of progress. We've seen real signs of progress and we see it across the state of Wisconsin. In the first two months of this year about a week March numbers will come out but in January and February of this year the private sector created 13,000 13,000 new jobs here in the state of Wisconsin. 8,200 of those were in manufacture. When's the last time you heard that? 8,200 more in manufacture. See that's that's important to have those statistics at your fingertips because I'm convinced as much as I toured the the state for about a year and a half as a candidate for governor and I saw plenty of people were heard no doubt about it. Plenty of people were hurting plenty of businesses particularly small businesses that were hurting. I also heard from a lot of employers who told me you know what we're in a position where we could hire more people. We could put more people to work here but we're just kind of waiting. You know about a year ago it was waiting to see what was going to happen with the federal health care mandate. You know in the past year it's been they knew that like nearly every other state across the country Wisconsin was facing a record deficit and a lot of employers said you know I'm going to wait and see what happens next and probably rightfully so because you look earlier this year down in Illinois which faces similar budget deficit what do they do to balance or at least attempt to balance their budget. They raised taxes on individuals and employers. They didn't really solve the crisis they've got a pension system that's only half funded which means a year from now they're probably going to be back doing the same thing again. Ours is a hundred percent funded in the Wisconsin retirement system but they raised taxes and for a lot of employers I get it they look at what happened in Illinois and they think my gosh I'm not going to go out in a limb and hire more people if suddenly it's going to be more to you know it's going to be more costly for me to operate in this state. Well we wanted to send an immediate and aggressive message both in the transition and now even more so since taking office this is an affordable place to do business and we are heading the right direction and the great news is even on that contrast with Illinois the last couple of weeks we've announced company after company in rock county and Kenosha county in particular where companies have come up from Illinois precisely because of that difference because all of you as employers know you make decisions not based on today but on tomorrow. You want to decide not only where where's this state or this community headed today but where's it had in the future. Illinois is headed towards more problems. They've got higher taxes more regulations and they're going to be back because they didn't have the courage to solve their problems. We're heading the right direction not only with what we've done when it comes to the economy but the other great challenge we face is making sure we control government spending. You know we looked around the country there are 45 states including Wisconsin that have budget deficits for this year. They only the handful that don't are states that by and large have fuel supplies or natural gas or other things that allow them to offset but everybody else because of the economy and in part at least in Wisconsin's case not only because of the economic meltdown but because of years and years and years of politicians of both political parties deferring tough decisions of rating the tobacco endowment fund of rating the patient compensation fund of taking money out of the transportation fund or two years ago what my predecessor in the legislature did was take more than a billion dollars of one-time federal stimulus aid and they use it to plug the Medicaid and the school aid deficit. Was anybody who's got you know gone through high school math knows probably actually junior high math or even elementary school math you can't do all that and then have the economy meltdown and not pay for that that's why today we face a 3.6 billion dollar deficit 3.6 billion dollars well in this budget and in the reforms we passed in anticipation of this budget we said it's not enough to do what other states are doing all those other states on bench are cutting aid to schools to local governments and their universities. But what they're doing there is not giving them any tools. What we did in our budget reforms was say you know what if you do that one of two things will happen either you push that off the local governments and in turn they're going to have to lay off in massive numbers employees in school districts and local governments across the state or which is happening elsewhere or you pass that off to local governments and they're going to have to have massive property tax increases one of the two is going to happen. I looked at them said either those two options is unacceptable either those two is unacceptable. We can't have any more people laid off a public or private I don't care at this point the last thing I want is massive numbers of people on an employment estate we need more people working that less. And I also know in this tough economic time not only for those of us personally as property taxpayers but for everyone in the small businesses in the state that's struggling the last thing a small business needs is a massive jump in property taxes as we're just starting to recover from the economic recession we face. So I said let's be progressive in the best sense of the word. Let's be truly progressive and find a different option and what we did was said let's give our local governments the tools not just for today not just to pass the buck for a year or two but the tools so that long term state and local governments here and across Wisconsin can actually manage our budgets. Let's actually give them the tools to look ahead into the future. For us for that and what we're doing in the final budget the legislature is taking up right now is what we simply did was say let's make a commitment to the future. So our children don't face more dire consequences than what we face today. That's what this is really all about and I think in a way it's working if you look and there's also I don't know if there's any accounts here but I think CPAs would appreciate this as much as anybody else out there but if you look at our budget the final budget for the next two years that starts July one of this year we have a budget that lowers not only bounces the 3.6 billion dollar deficit we lower the structural deficit by more than 2 billion dollars a 90% reduction in the structural deficit that's the lowest it has been in the past 16 years that's the 16 years it's probably lower than even before that but it's only been 16 years that they've tracked the structural deficit here in the state of Wisconsin and that means I'm not just picking on my predecessor that's the lowest it's been in 16 years of democrat and republican governors alike. The reason for that is I looked at what was happening in my state and our state and I said in the last two years since the economy melted down in the fall of 2008 what I have not seen are businesses and particularly families saying you know what I'm gonna go out and get a new credit card and I'm gonna run up $100,000 debt and then I'm gonna hand it off to my kids I don't see people doing that instead what I've seen all across the state are people who've said you know what this was probably a good thing it made me realize I was spending beyond my needs and so people have made they put their priorities up there and they funded their priorities they found out not just with money but in life in general for a lot of people it's been a good thing because they've realized the most important thing in their life wasn't how much wealth they acquired it was their family and their friends and their community and people have made adjustments so that they could continue to live within their means even as the economy changed around them the only place that hasn't done that is government or at least some government somehow but in large part state government and many of our local governments across the state have not made those sorts of changes what we've said in this budget is for us to be able to sustain the kind of quality of life the kind of public safety the other things that are part of a priority of what state and local governments provide we've got to have the tools and we've got the courage to make the tough but important long-term decisions to make sure as I said our children don't face even more dire consequences in the future and again it's working we've lowered the structural deficit in fact I know the mayors and the county officials that appreciate this Moody's you know in local governments we always look anytime there's a bond issue you look immediately at what the national bond rating agency's put out when Moody's looked at our budget it's been presented a month ago and they called it credit positive when's the last time you heard anything called credit positive about a government budget at least at the state level it hasn't happened in fact if anything the last several years we've saw on our credit rating go down it's because they recognize that what we're doing is ultimately having the courage to do what they're not doing in Illinois what they're not doing in California what they're not doing in other places across the country which means two years from now in the next budget we're not going to face those tough decisions other states are going to see it only get worse it compounded and for us ultimately that goes back to my first point that's better for the economy because for employers who are here and others who wish to come to the state of Wisconsin what's the one thing that investors look at the most it's stability I remember about a month ago at the height of all this debate in the Capitol I had protesters 100,000 probably around the Capitol bike you remember those days it's kind of I said it's so quiet now it's actually kind of nice to have a few protesters because the past week well seriously so I've got two high school sons who play football and during the summer my wife and I when they go to football camp at UW Whitewater they're gone for a couple weeks and we said we don't know what to do with ourselves because it's so quiet around the house I said for the last couple weeks it's been so quiet in the Capitol I didn't know what to do myself but I'll take it believe me but as I look at that and I was there one day and I talked mainly did interviews with local newspapers from Wisconsin and TV stations and radio stations but every in some while obviously picked up a little more interest than just Wisconsin I do these interviews and one day I sat down with the guys from Reuters and the reporter from Reuters was very fair very first forthright and he said to me and I look at all these people around and he said what do you say to investors out there you know investors don't like chaos now they want stability he said how can you make the case that this is a good place to do you know to invest in and I I leaned over very nicely but I kind of got in his face and I said you know what because of what we're doing because of the courage we're exhibiting to do what we need to do on a long-term basis this will actually be one of the best places in the world to invest in because while nearly every other government in every other part of the state of every other part of the country and for that matter in many countries across the globe are failing to do what we need to do failing to do what many of you have been doing since the economic recession in the private sector and is making sure that your your companies are stable enough to survive the recession and ultimately achieve and succeed after that government hasn't been doing that we're doing that here in Wisconsin that makes us a more stable a more trustworthy a better place to ultimately do business on now and into the future so that's really at the forefront I'll tell you last two quick things and I'll take a couple of questions before we head off the man at the lot one is you know as much as people and it's quieted down a little bit although there'll be peaks and valleys along the way as much as people look at the the economic numbers and again you know we've had some good numbers the first couple of months there may be times not as good hopefully there'll be continued to be times where we see you know 10, 12, 15,000 new employees in the private sector each of the next couple of months forthgoing we'll know we're on our way solidly not just on getting out of the recession but leading the country when it comes to numbers of getting out of recession I believe we can be there and the reason I believe that is not based on blind hope the reason I believe that is because we've done that before in Wisconsin you know I'm from Wauwatosa but I grew up down in Deleven town about 7, 8,000 people in Walworth County near the state line back about this time 25 years ago we faced almost identical circumstances in this state think about 1986 we were coming out of a national recession the Wisconsin was far beyond where the United States was coming out of the recession we had a major budget crisis in state government and there was a lot of what Jimmy Carter had called back in the 70s malaise kind of feeling like we were stuck here in Wisconsin and then a friend of mine from clear on the other side of the state and Elroy by the name of Tommy Thompson came along and in his first term he talked about changing the business climate in the state in fact he didn't just talk about he acted on it and the things that he did to put in place changes in state government that made it easier to do business in Wisconsin got a lot of grief at the time in fact a lot of people who defend the status quo said you can't do that you can't touch that you can't change things they gave him a lot of pushback but ultimately those policies by the end of his first term in 1990 had helped the people not the government the people of Wisconsin create 258,000 new jobs I talked about a goal all throughout my campaign of helping the people of the state create 250,000 new jobs by the end of my first term some of the cynics in the media said you can't do that would you pull that number out they come out of thin air I said no it came out of the history books it came out of a generation ago we not just had a governor but we had people in the state who put their faith not in the government but in the people and employers in the state who empowered the private sector to put more people to work and in turn the people responded by putting 258,000 people to work in that first term if we did it a generation ago not only can we do it I know we will do it I know we will do it and if I know for no other reason simply on a personal basis I for one am not going to concede that my two sons Matt and Alex don't get to grow up in a state at least at least as great as the state I grew up in that's my commitment to you now the last thing is an assignment before I take some questions as I look around this room as I often do at chamber commerce functions and others out there talking to business leaders people probably going to appreciate what I'm saying more than anybody else out there I see a lot of nodding heads I see a lot of smiles a lot of people affirming what I'm saying up here and maybe someone reporting this would look and say you know what you know you're preaching the choir it's the chamber commerce right well my father when I was growing up was a minister he's long since retired but he was a minister and one of his his colleagues another minister another church was asked once pastor why do you preach to the choir since real simple I want the choir to sing so my question today is simply this when you go back to work when you go to church on Sunday when you go to rotary or Kiwanis or any other function you're at when you go around the state or around the country I need you to sing because I can put all the bumper stickers out I can put billboards up on the state line I could put ads out all across this country but the most effective way to get people to reinvest in Wisconsin or hear or encourage others to come to the state Wisconsin invest in the first place is right in this room you're the choir you are the people who can tell others that you know what something has changed in Wisconsin something has changed in Sheboygan County something is more dynamic and more exciting than ever before we have the tools we have the resources we have the employees and we have the entrepreneurs to make this a great state again and we are but the best people to tell that story are the people not just at this podium but the people here in this room so simply put I'm asking you to sing now somebody I know so you don't literally have to sing because I've heard you sing before Bob I don't know how your voice is on that but I don't know if you're a good singer or not I haven't sat next to you at church but but whether it's singing or just telling the story what I need you to do is help tell the story about how Wisconsin truly is open for business with that I'll take some questions if you like sir can you discuss voter ID and same day registration and I'm going to be going with that well you have a great champion in your center to hear Joel Ibum actually has been the author of the bill that I was the author on more than a decade ago to acquire photo identification for voting Wisconsin my hope is now more than ever that that'll get passed through both the assembly and the senate the hang-up is not that the legislature doesn't want to act on it it's a question of there are some in the legislature who just want to pass photo ID and some that want a larger more comprehensive package I think for a lot of election clerks particularly for those who are now going to have to go through a recount local election clerks as much as anybody will tell you that what a challenge it is to do same day voter voter registration particularly in presidential elections and that's not a partisan issue it's just a simple fact of a matter I remember years ago as in the legislature I talked to clerks from one in the state together and not just for the clerks but for most of our poll workers because most of our poll workers got help them our retirees they have to work 13-hour days and about 5-6 o'clock at night coming in on the presidential election suddenly 500 people show up at the polling location and half of them want to register that day it's pretty difficult so just logistically I think it would be wise if nothing else to move registration back to the Friday before people say a spur of the moment well the campaign's pretty it's pretty obvious what's going on by the Friday before so I mean to me if you can't decide to go by Friday the week before you have to wait till the day of I don't have a whole lot of empathy because I think it's pretty clear unless you haven't been paying attention to which some of us might question why you should vote if you haven't been paying attention you know I think it makes sense to change it I think it would be easier for clerks it would make for all the questions that some have allegations that some have made about improprieties or irregularities and that those sorts of things would be altered or would be corrected I think if clerks had enough time to check the polling lists to make sure people were registered it would deal with felons voting double counting things of that nature one more okay sure what in Madison and the rest of the state sure yeah the person asked me about the election and I said why I'm really focused about jobs and of course as the media often is they then proceeded to ask me three more times about the election and they said well what's your reaction I said well it's it's it's clearly divided state is it this is as close to a 50-50 ties you can get one and a half million votes and you have 204 votes that's before the canvas the canvas as many of us know I haven't looked at elections before it could easily change a couple hundred votes either way just on the canvas let alone the recomb but you've got you know about a 50-50 tie but you break it down and look it's because you had unbelievably large turnout Madison and almost all of it went for one candidate and I just said it's one of those where if you look at it's not that the state's divided it's that you've got largely an overwhelming vote in Madison versus most of the rest of the state and that's a reality I'm not suggesting that Madison isn't a part of Wisconsin it is but although although there are days when Governor Dreyfus was a great friend of mine and and and I remember back in in uh I don't remember him saying I was never hearing this because I wasn't quite old enough to be paying attention to Governor Dreyfus at that time but when Governor Dreyfus ran for governor in 78 he was behind in one of the polls and his only Governor Dreyfus could say he was asking Milwaukee he said what do you think about the polls and he said the only polls I care about are the ones who vote in the south side of Milwaukee but the Polish neighborhood but the but the other but the other line he said that I love is he said I don't know if I got the miles right but he said that Madison is 30 square miles surrounded by reality and I think Tuesday might have reaffirmed that which is why when people ask me about my days I say my best days are when I'm out of the cap I know you said one more but you have one more quick and I'll take it be quicker and then get out the factual thing and how many of you said that we're we're going to be getting the structural deficit reduced too big could you define a little bit what do you mean by the structure sure yeah actually that's an excellent question structural deficit or we're in the past governors and legislators put things in the budget but they don't pay for them all at once so they push them off they push off things like school aid payments for years and again both parties unfortunately did that some more than others but they push off the school aid payments the buying and begins on July 1st so they take school aid payments from the the last buy in and they push them off till July 1st instead of paying them in June so that would be hundreds of millions of dollars that really should have been paid the previous two years so I go that push off to the future they take money out of accounts or for example what Governor Doyle did two years ago we had the largest structural deficit ever is he took all this federal stimulus and all of it he took a good chunk of the federal stimulus aid and instead of using it on roads and bridges and infrastructure which is most people I think thought that's what it was for which you can agree or disagree with it but at least it's a one-time infrastructure cost he plugged it into the Medicaid and the school aid deficit now it looked to him looked pretty good at the time the problem is if you got a couple billion dollars in that now I'm stuck with a budget that has the big hole that wasn't filled two years ago plus growth in programs like Medicaid but I don't have any of that federal money which is what I wore in two years ago so all those things are what's part of what's called a structural deficit we haven't eliminated it entirely but we've got it again 90 percent reduced and my hope is two years from now we'll have it completely gone but that's one of those things where from a bond rating agency which ultimately saves us money in operating because you if you have a better bond rating you get cost you less to borrow and easier to pay off past borrowing out but also just in terms of stability in the future hopefully all of our economic growth is upwards but if you ever got point words down again not having a structural deficit means you're not going to run into trouble again okay thanks very much for your time


Good morning, you guys. Today is honestly so gloomy outside.  It's been better ever since I got my IUD in because that's why I got my IUD because I suffer from endometriosis. But still with my IUD in, I've had my IUD for almost a year now. Still with it in, my periods are pretty shitty. Like right now I feel like my hormones are going crazy. I have like a couple of huge pimples which usually my skin is like really good. My Xema squaring right now, I have pimples and I'm just like not feeling the best. My skin doesn't feel the best. My stomach doesn't feel the best. And you know when it's just like one of those days where you just don't really feel good? That's today. Like I'm not feeling myself today at all. And I just wanted to film on a day where I'm not feeling 100% because I feel like when I film I'm all showing my best self and the best version of myself. And I just want to also show this side of myself where it's like not always realistic to be 100% on it all of the time. Like this morning I slept in, let my body sleep in until round eight. And usually I wake up pretty early like around five. So that's like just having grace for your body and knowing when you need that extra rest. But anyways, I'm just trying to romanticize today. Even though I feel like shit, the weather is so gloomy. And I feel like it's especially important on days like this to romanticize your life and do things that make you feel really good and make you feel really happy because these are the days where you need to do that the most.   Like instead of driving to the gym this morning I just went to my apartment gym and just did cardio workout instead of like forcing my body to lift because there's no way I could have done that today and felt good. It's just kind of like switching around your schedule for your body sometimes. That just needs to be done. But yeah, so that is today. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer but I also just wanted to be realistic on here. And every day isn't an amazing day. And even though I strive to make every day an amazing day, there's harder days to do that. You know what I mean? Sometimes I'm wake up and I'm just in a really good mood which is most of the time. But these like this, I kind of have to do extra things to make me feel better.    I'm still gonna do my makeup just because I know it makes me feel better after it's done and more confident. So by the way guys, I picked up some new stuff from the drugstore that I really want to show you guys. So I got this NYX concealer serum. It is like the best concealer I've ever tried in general with my hind concealers and my drugstore concealers. I just love the formula so much. It blends like a dream. I've been applying it with the ELF Ultimate Blending Brush and these two together. I will link them down below for you guys on Amazon but obsessed like dream team right here. And then I just went in with my ELF Putty Blush. I love this so much. This is in the shade, I think it's Bora Bora. Their Putty Blush is so good and the shade is so pretty. And it's only like $6 and how can you go wrong? And then I also picked up the ELF Brow Lift and I've been using this every single day since I got it. It's so good. It's a dupe for the Anastasia Brow Lift. If you guys were thinking of getting that one, definitely go for this because it's the exact same thing and it's only like around $6 as well. I didn't apply this today but I also got the Alpalo Glow which is supposed to be a dupe for the Charlotte Tilbury. And I tried this the other day and I loved it. Honestly, looked and felt the exact same as the Charlotte Tilbury. I didn't notice a difference. Let me know if you guys like these get ready with means that I've been doing because I feel like they've been so popular on TikTok. Oh my God, I'm literally having such a bad cramp right now.  Then I go to the bathroom and I'm like, makes a lot of sense. I feel like having a period and being on your cycle is so underrated. How is there not like a program in place where if you have really painful periods, you can take a couple of days off of work? Like if men had periods, there'd be like a whole dedicated week each month where they got to take it off. But because it's women, they're like, eh, periods actually affect some women so much. I'm fortunate enough to be able to work around my own schedule but I know there's some people that obviously can't do that. And so it's like, it just makes me mad because I'm like, you should at least like at minimum get one payday off for your period a month. I've been using this makeup by Mario Skin Enhancer in the shade Light Media. It's my favorite thing in the whole entire world. I will probably be repurchasing this forever because I love it that much. I also got the Maybelline Sky High Mascara and I've been loving this as well. It doesn't make my lashes clumpy at all and it just separates them really nicely which is a huge problem usually when I use mascara. My God, period crumbs are just the worst. Like I just can't, you would never be able to describe them to somebody who's never felt them before but they're just so bad. These Morphe lip liners are so good. I don't know if they make them anymore. This is in the shade Baxi Love and it's honestly a dupe for the Charlotte Tilbury. So good. Just blow-dried my hair and finished my makeup and I feel a lot better. Still having period crumbs but sometimes getting yourself together on the outside makes you feel a lot better on the inside and obviously you're gonna have those days where you just can't get ready and you just need to sit on the couch and that's fine too. I have those days as well. But today was one of those days where like I just needed to get ready to make myself feel better especially just cause it's a Monday and I have like a lot to do. So anyways, I feel so much better right now that I got ready. Yeah, it just feels good, feels good. So I just actually put the Tower 28 gloss on in the shade Pistachio but I'm just gonna spray some perfume because that always makes me feel better too. Weirdly enough, like putting some sort of fragrance on me makes me feel a lot better in terms of like just smelling good and feeling clean. It just adds to my mood. It just boosts my mood. So I've been accumulating some PR boxes that I've been wanting to show you guys. I'm so freaking grateful for the companies that send me products and stuff but I thought that I would do a little bit of an unboxing because I've never done a PR unboxing on my channel before. So I'm just gonna open the boxes and quickly show you guys. The first package I got is from Verst. They sent me a few skincare items. I kind of already opened things but I put them back in the package. So they sent me this brightening eye gel which I'm so excited to try because I don't know, I just love little serums like this. Moisturizing cream. Then we have their brightening serum and then their gel cleanser which I think got a little botched. I've never actually tried a gel cleanser before so I'm really excited. And then they also sent me their SPF which I've actually been using every single day and I love it. So thank you so much to Verst. The next package I got is from Charlotte Tilbury.  Like this is an actual dream come true. So they gave me their magic cream which I'm so excited to try out because apparently this is really good. Their magic serum. And then they gave me their Piltock mascara which I've actually already tried and I love it so much. Piltock lip liner and then their Piltock lipstick. Piltock chic to chic. It's like a highlighter and blush combined but yeah, obsessed. This is from Good Molecules. I've actually never tried any of their things before so I'm really excited about this. They got me their discoloration correcting serum. They're overnight. It's full-eating treatment. Nice and a mind-binding toner and then their ultra-hydrating facial oil. So excited to try these out. Thank you so much Good Molecules. This one you guys, I absolutely geeked out about. This is from Drunk Elephant. Like are you kidding me? They gave me a huge bag.  This is honestly a dream. I'm so incredibly grateful. And then the last package is actually from the Intelligent Change. If you guys don't know, they're the creators of the five minute journal that I use every single morning and have been using it for years but they're so kind enough to send me some other pieces that they have. But yeah, thank you so much to the Intelligent Change for sending me all this and for all the companies, I'm so grateful. I will definitely be updating you after I try all these products, what I like and stuff. So stay tuned. I've also been thinking of what kind of direction I wanna take my channel in going forward. I feel like I really like the content I've been making so far. I've gotten really good feedback about how it's really motivational and stuff so I'm definitely gonna continue down that route and no matter where life takes me, my content might be a little bit different but at the end of the day, it's always gonna be the same thing. If that makes sense, just because YouTube is not so much about the content that somebody makes, I think that it's more about the person you're watching. Even if I'm in a different apartment or a different place, I'm still gonna be creating my content which would be kind of the same as if I'm here, even though it's gonna look a little different but I'm really just happy where my content is now and where it's gonna go and I love creating motivational videos and whatever I'm doing in my life, I feel like that's where my channel's gonna go but I hope you guys are liking my content this year so far and just know that wherever I go, still gonna be the same cause it's gonna be me but it just might look a little different, you know? Yeah, I just love you guys so much and I can't even explain how grateful I am for you watching my video right now. It just feels like I have so many friends no matter where you are in the world and I love you guys so much. So I just got one of these headbands and I'm obsessed. I got it in pink and black from Amazon. It's like a knockoff of the first one because I wanted it so bad. I wear it every single day. I wear it doing my skincare, wear it doing my makeup and it's honestly the best thing ever just because like those other headbands that I use are just sometimes inconvenient and since these ones are like a cloth-like material, it's fine if you get them wet and I don't know, I just love them so much but anyways, I'm just applying, I just got ready, it's my sister's birthday today. I'm just applying the Power 28 lip gloss in this shape pistachio. This is the one that went viral on TikTok and it finally came back in stock so I had to try it. It's a lot darker than I expected. It looks so light on some people but I still like it anyways. So I wanted to thank Kastify for sponsoring this video. I just got a brand new phone. It's iPhone 14 Pro Max, I love it so much but they sent me cases for it and I also got a cute little phone charm. It's like so aesthetic, I'm obsessed. But if you guys didn't know, Kastify is actually the world's largest tech accessory brand. So one thing I love about Kastify is they're constantly working to reduce their impact on the environment, to be more sustainable. What they do is they upcycle old cases and then they reuse the plastic from that to make brand new cases, which is so cool and they do this using recastify technology and by doing that, they're reducing the amount of virgin plastic that they use. So it's so much better for the environment. So far they've recycled more than 160,000 cases but they have the best protection. They have up to a 21.3 foot drop protection. They have such trendy and you can customize so many of their cases. They have over 2,000 prints that you can choose from from their website. They have so many. Now all of their cases, including their impact, bounce series, as well as their essential watch bands are made from recycled materials. Their cases also comes in 100% recycled packaging. Let me show you guys the other two cases that I got. They're so freaking cute. So I got this one in green. Kind of reminds me of the planet earth that we're protecting but it says better things are coming and it's so cute. And then I also just got a plain black one. But this one's my ultimate favorite with my initials here in my phone term. It's so cute. But yeah, so if you guys want to shop them, you can click the link in my description to get yourself 15% off. I would 10 out of 10 recommend. I'm gonna be rocking these cases probably forever now because they have just such good production, so worth the price and they're so sustainable. Yeah, thank you so much to Casify for sponsoring this video. And thank you guys. I think I'm just gonna wear my Ugg slippers because these are just the comfiest things ever and they're just easy. And then I just have the sweatsuit on from Garage. I'll have it linked down below. But anyways, I'm gonna take you guys along. So I just got to Whole Foods. I'm here with Brittany. We're just gonna grocery shop. We're gonna grab a coffee before because Whole Foods is right beside Starbucks and then there's also food in Whole Foods.  I wanna eat at Whole Foods. I also wanna coffee. Oh yeah, well let's go to Starbucks first. Okay, let's go to Starbucks. And then let's go to Whole Foods after. Don't they have a cafe in Whole Foods? You could order like a full bowl. I thought it was a juice bar. Oh no, let's go in Whole Foods. We'll scope it out. And then we can also just leave and then come back. Okay, deal. Anyways. So we just finished grocery shopping. It's currently two o'clock and we're just gonna head home. I'm so filled. Where's my coffee? I got such a good coffee at Whole Foods. I didn't even know that they had a coffee bar there. Apparently they have a burrito bar, they have sushi and I never noticed. It's cause I usually just grocery shop there so pretty big and they have so much. Like they have a whole burrito bar, a whole sushi bar, whole sandwich bar, whole hot food section. I didn't even notice they had a coffee thing but it's so good. Then I'll show you guys grocery haul when we get home. Here is my overview grocery haul. You guys can just take a look at it. I've been obsessed with this smoked salmon recently. I just get it from Whole Foods and I put this on like avocado and like a bagel. It would also be good with cream cheese but holy crap, it's so good. And I'm just obsessed with like smoked salmon benes and I made my own the other day and it was so delicious. But anyways, yeah, this is a little grocery haul. I'm probably just gonna have a kombucha right now cause I'm obsessed. This is my favorite kombucha brown by the way. All their flavors are just so good. It always hits and nothing compares to them for me. It's just so good. Before I put away my groceries, this just kind of came to the top of my mind and I wanted to talk about it. I'm trying to live my life more so more like I'm on a vacation every day. When you're on vacation, you're usually the happiest because you can de-stress, you don't have much to worry about and it's just like fun, it's a new experience.  Like why is it only when we're on vacation? And I heard somebody say this and I'm like, that is so true. Like that's one of my new goals for 2023 is living my life more so like I'm on a vacation. Let's say during the middle of the day, I feel like reading for an hour because that de-stresses me. Usually if I did something like that, I'd feel really kind of bad about it and I'd be like, I just wasted an hour and I wasn't really productive. I was just relaxing. But it's like, no, like that's okay. Like that made me happy. That made me enjoy life and it de-stressed me. Why would I feel guilty about that? Like at the end of the day, I love being productive and all but it's good to have a balance especially when it comes to your stress levels. Like you need to do things throughout your day that are just for you. And you need to put aside time that's just for you and not feel guilty about it. During the hours of like nine to five, if I do something that's quote unquote not productive, I always end up making myself feel guilty for doing that.  And almost living your life, like you're on vacation every day, I feel like in really help. And that's the mindset that I've been trying to have this week. So it's like, okay, if I just wanna sit down on the couch and read for an hour during the middle of the day and I have the ability to do that, then I'm gonna do that.  I feel like we almost sometimes just take life too seriously and it's like, we don't need to be productive machines 24 seven. And I know I do a lot of productivity videos and motivational videos because don't get me wrong, I like to be productive and have motivation and that's all amazing. But like I said, everything has to be balanced as well.  And it's also really important to just enjoy life in general. So that's what I've been trying to do recently. And it's been helping my stress levels a lot. This morning I woke up at like seven o'clock. I just kind of let my body naturally wake up instead of having my alarm set for five. And sometimes it's really crucial for me to have that structure and like set my alarm and stuff like that, like on certain days. But also it's also important to have that balance where it's like, okay, if I'm not feeling like waking up super early one morning I can let my body rest and that is okay as well. I just wanted to say that because yeah, like I said, I preach a lot of productivity and stuff but you also have to take into account your mental wellbeing and what makes you feel good. And at the end of the day it's all about having balance and finding what works for you.  We're here to enjoy our lives and to do things that make us happy. And sometimes I just have to chill and I just have to realize that it's like got to enjoy my life too while having a mix of that like structure and balance. And I'm just kind of finding exactly what works for me through trial and error, finding what makes my body feel the best and stuff and being intuitive with it. I just wanted to say that because that has been on my mind. So yeah, anyways, I'm going to unload the groceries. It's pouring rain right now. It's almost like hailing. It's so weird. But let's put these groceries away.


Well folks, we have the Dow Industrial trading up $100 NASDAQ up $159, S&Ps up $28, Gold contracts up $2.20, trading at $19.44 an ounce, we have Silver up $19, $23.36 an ounce, the Light Sweet Crew down $0.26, $87.25 a barrel, notes and bonds, a 10-year note, down 4 ticks trading $109.25, the 35, the 30-year, down $15 at $119.02 and $King Dollar. $King Dollar's under the magic number of $104.699, that's where you see the market hire, we're down $526 at $104.564, Euros at $107, Yens at $146, British Pounds at $125. In the S folks, I'm looking a little weird, I got bit by a bug last night and I just came back from urgent care and they gave me a shot, but man am I looking weird, it is what it is, what can I do. Anyway, sorry about that folks. Looking at the market out here, so this is what we did. On Friday what you did out here is that we went up, we went up with light volume, you couldn't hang on price, it's going to be interesting today because it looks to me like price is going to hang, meaning stay up. The volume is still only $40 million and the $40 million is going against $55, so we'll probably get $55. We take a look at the queues, we have what the queues out here, queues right now, queues have some juice, queues are up for $4.29 and they're going to have an expansion of volume from Friday at least, you know what I mean, we did $31 million, now you're going against $42, so that has a shot and it's all about right here, let's just go right to the dollar because this is, there hasn't been a magic number for a long time in the market man and you know, what I mean by magic number, nothing is magic in the marketplace, but it's a number that has been trying to get over for a long period of time, has been able to do it, took a heck of a long time to get up to it and you know, it's laying right at it. I mean, you know, we came down to it on Friday and rejected it, you know, right now we're just slightly underneath it, but it's, it's that, this number is that powerful, you're below this number, market's going higher, you're above that number, market's going, market's going lower. Sarah dear folks, come right back.


This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time, so that we may live into yours. Jimmy Carter Welcome to episode 006 of the SCP Foundation. Yes, podcast's name has changed. I googled the podcast last week and discovered that there was already one out there with the same name. So it goes. Today, though, I'm going to be answering questions submitted by the community. As always, the majority of this podcast necessarily includes my own opinions and thoughts about the SCP Foundation and the SCP Wiki. After all, there's only one real rule in the SCP universe. There is no canon. Questions and Answers This Voyager spacecraft was built in the year 42,412 A.D. By the species you come to refer to as the Glycean. We are a community of 300,000 beings and have an Inglis 445-C. This is our message to your world. Ever since we discovered radio, we have lived in your shadow. Decades were spent unraveling your signals, searching for answers among the tenuous strands of reason. Through the static and the chaos we found you. From your small, distant world we found your images, your music, your thoughts, your feelings, and your indomitable science.  It did not matter to us. We could touch the mind of another and no, we are not alone. We learned from you. The scientific revolution following our meeting was miraculous. We lived beyond our natural years and we lived well. Humans uplifted us into an Elysian state, but we could never thank you. From our far away place, we quietly deciphered your secrets and over time our technology became your equal. Together we went advancing our mastery of the universe. We shared our technology with your leaders in secret to try and repay you for all that you will do. In time came the gates. At a great expense of energy we could obtain limitless velocity. With time dilation preserved, we could fly to the universe's birth and its death. The entirety of creation was within our mutual grasp, however that would not be. Before we emerged the people who live on your planet crippled us. From the sky above in bright blue flashes our lives were ended. We do not know their reasons nor do we know why their hand was state enough to forestall our extinction. But now we live on a dying world. Our children are sick. Our water is polluted. We cannot maintain our technology. We will not go on.  Cannot be denied that this is how some of us felt we should act. We could still hear your world unknowing, uncaring. With what little power we had left, relativistic destruction could reduce your planet to ashes as it was forming. It is shaming, but we came so close. We hope you can understand why we thought what we did, but but maybe if we could change what happens, if we could destroy you, then you could save us. From the stars came Voyager, your gift. In sending your message, filled with your music and your joy, you showed such touching desperation to find another, and we fell in love all over again. We had but one chance to put things right. I do not know if you can save us. I do not know if you can change who you one day may be. You say you are trying to survive through your time, so you may live into mine.  But above all else, there is one thing you need to know, from one maker of music to another.  Excerpt from SCP-1342 by Flameshirt. Our first question is from Mario the Pumer from Reddit, who asks, is there an article that you've written that means a lot to you, either due to the writing process or the reaction it got? You know, I don't personally get too emotionally invested in my own works. I mean, I always pepper them with little details and Easter eggs that sometimes only I get, but on the whole, once something is posted, I usually stop thinking about it. Part of the process involves treating all the constituent parts of a story as easily changed. It's hard for a character to mean a lot to you when you don't know if it's going to exist tomorrow, or the things about it that you might like are going to be stripped away, because, well, I need a villain in the story now. I guess if I had to pick one, it would be SCP-2913, not because I'm particularly connected to the characters or the story, but just because it was my second article that I ever wrote, and it got a strongly positive reception, which gave me kind of a roadmap to figure out how I wanted to continue succeeding on the wiki. Now that said, I've always enjoyed pretty much every collaboration I've ever done, so I guess each of those means something different to me, which in a way dovetails into this question from the sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel, who apparently has taken a quote from Neuromancer for a name. Okay. Now they asked, you've collaborated with other authors on a few SCPs, SCP-2047, which I collaborated with Insepid Paroxym, SCP-2513, also Carthage Must Be Destroyed with Blarg Halt, SCP-2281, Backseat Driver with Rodgett, SCP-2813, Ghost Ship with Von Pincere, SCP-2706, Resurrection Forest with Dr. Atlas, SCP-2986, Outside the Box with Famine Pulse, and SCP-001-J, the Sumerian Cactus Proposal, The Broke God with DJ Cactus. Now they want me to talk a little bit about what the collaboration process is like. You know, first of all, I'd like to thank you for allowing me to read out all of those things that I have an authorship in, and eventually we'll end up linking them in the description, but you know, every body I've ever worked with is a little different, and I personally tend to be on the strong side personality-wise, so one thing I generally, during a collaboration, have to monitor is not taking over the whole project and bending it to my own vision, because that could be very problematic, especially when you're dealing with other authors who also have a strong vision, or even people who don't, but who maybe have trouble communicating to you that you're being overbearing. I guess that's my first, like first step in any collaboration is making sure that I don't do that. I try my best, I think I may have failed in some cases, and in other cases I've succeeded, and honestly though, I've recognized it, and I try to do it better next time. Although, I'm going to note here, I've never had anyone complain, no collaboration partners complain to me about this, this is just something I personally worry about. In the process, I think you want to get your primary writing done while everyone still has that initial excitement about an idea, or if you don't get it done by the first day or two, it's going to drag over a long period of time. You don't have to have a finished draft, but have a first draft, something that you can edit. I mean, editing can take an hour, it can take two weeks, it can take a month, it all depends on what you're doing, but if you plan and plan and plan and never write anything, you're never going to get a finished product out, and it'll always be this thing you were going to do with so-and-so. Now that's true for yourself, by the way, but it's also doubly true for any collaboration since that process is going to be kind of stopping go every once in a while when you want to bring your co-author into where you're at on the story. Ultimately, I think you should try to use the author's strength to your benefit and to the article's benefit. If someone else is better at writing exploration logs, don't force your way into that, let them write that. And if they are the one who is particularly inspired today, and they want to do all the primary writing because they have a clear vision, don't stop them from doing it because you feel like you're not contributing enough.  You don't have to put your hands in and grab at everything you possibly can to try and get credit. So never feel like you're a lesser partner, although definitely don't take credit for stuff you didn't do. I mean, if you're acting in an editing and idea pitching capacity, that's your job. Don't try to do more than that. Now, your goal is to have a good finished product, not to attain personal glory. That's something that you need to keep track of in a collaboration. So let's move on. Let's answer a few quick questions from Western, and they posted this on the SEP Wiki itself. Have you ever considered doing an 001 proposal yourself besides your joke proposal? Yes, definitely have. I've got actually a couple of concepts in mind. I'm not really sure how to execute either one of them yet. I've had other ideas in the past. In fact, I had a full-blown draft one time before, but at this point it's so similar to what Collinen eventually posted that there's no reason for me to bother with that draft. But right now I'm working with two ideas. Well, it should say really one right now. I don't tend to work on more than one thing at once. The old one I'm working on is that Marshall Carter in Dark started the foundation in order to keep anomalies rare and valuable. That one I'm not really sure how I'm going to execute. But the other one I just popped in my head a couple of days ago is that the general disbelief of mankind towards anomalies is itself an anomaly, like the veil, literally the veil itself as SCP-001. I think I'm closer to figuring that out as at least how that's going to be executed than I am to any other idea that I've had so far. So that's nice.  I think it'll continue to live and probably thrive. I think it's on the cusp of becoming a very big cultural phenomenon, like more than it already is online. And I think when it happens, it's going to happen very quickly. Western also asks, what do you think is your most underrated and overrated skip? Now, underrated is sort of easy to come up with. I think SCP-2632. I feel like from a narrative standpoint, it's probably one of my best crafted works. And I mean, it's plus 130, so it's not low rated. I just feel like it should be much higher rated. A distant second to that is probably SCP-3313.  I still laugh when I read the article, but it's hovering around plus 30 after five or six months. So maybe it's only funny to me and my friends. Overrated? I'd say my first third and fifth posted SCPs. I won't actually bother saying the first or third number, so I don't have to link them. Although I should note, I'm actually neutral to slightly positive on both of them. They're just, I don't know, I don't really like them like them. But the worst among them is definitely SCP-2065. It was not only one of my earlier works, but also my first attempt at horror. And I'm not good at horror now. But I was even worse at it then. I've voted literally every other work I've posted to the wiki. But that one gets a downvote, yet it's still at plus 68. Now ToadKing07 from Reddit asks, possibly talking about the Creative Commons license and how that works, what problems have come up because of it, and what it means for project and articles, etc. I'm on the licensing team as part of my staff work, so I can't answer this. A Creative Commons license has four possible elements. Attribution, which means you have to credit the original author, and work if you redistribute or adapt the work. Share alike, which means the work has to be licensed under the same license, with exactly the same elements as the original work. No derivatives, which means you can't adapt the work and can only redistribute it. And non-commercial, which means you can't sell redistributed copies or adaptations of the work. There's a lot of misconceptions floating around about the site's version of the Creative Commons license. Chief among them is that a lot of people think the site's license barves them from making money on their project or writing, which is just completely untrue. You have to follow the licensing requirements whilst making your money, but the site is under a Creative Commons 3.0 attribution share alike unported license. Now the important elements there are attribution and share alike. You can't add a no derivatives or non-commercial element to any new works, and you can't remove the attribution or share alike elements. That's about it. Unported just means it's not limited to a specific legal jurisdiction, so it has equal weight in the US as it does in, say, Russia. And as long as you distribute your works under the Creative Commons 3.0 share alike attribution unported license and attribute the author, and originating works properly, you can do whatever you want with the work. You can sell it, you can give it away, whatever you'd like to do. The problem with big time commercial sales is that anyone else can grab your work as long as they also follow the same licensing requirements and they could give it away, or sell it themselves at a discount to put you out of business. That's going to be a big sticking point for any straight commercial adaptation of an SEP work. I mean, before someone decides to spend $10 million on an indie SEP foundation movie or video game or whatever you can think of, they need to get $10 million from somewhere and telling someone that they're investing $10 million in a creative endeavor that no one retains exclusive distribution rights to is sort of a problem. And as the budget goes up and up, that problem is going to be compounded, which is why you tend to see one man passion projects or fan projects on SEP topics. So hopefully that's a full enough answer for you. Redna Van Lee from Reddit asks, a topic you have always wanted to do an SEP about but are scared of. I don't know if you mean like literally it's too horrifying for me to write about or I'm just worried about the ramifications, but neither of those would be true. If I want to write an article about a thing, I just write about it.  Sledge Hammer Man Guy from Reddit asks, how much time do you put into the process of creating an SEP? Not as much time as you think. I mean, this is flash fiction. I mean, you still got to make it good, but I don't know. Solo works and collaborations are different beasts. I spent long periods of time waiting on other people to complete their parts of projects on collaborations, so those tend to take longer. A solo work, I figure for me, I've never taken more than two weeks and never less than 30 minutes from ideation to posting. I mean, my highest rated work took 30 minutes, so that's one thing. I mean, it depends on how easily I can get a handle on the idea. I'd say most of my works are closer to 30 minutes than they were to two weeks, but not like, not at 30 minutes, just closer to that than two weeks. I mean, probably, if you average it out across the 60 or so pages I have on the Wiki, two, three days, I'd have to be guessing, but you know. TorsionSpringHell from Reddit asks, Pineapple on a pizza? Yes or no? No. Why would you ruin a pizza with pineapple? I don't get that, I will never understand that. Asimov's rule breaker from the SEP Wiki asks, some of my favorite articles are in the mimetic and cognitohazard categories. Mind affecting SEP articles creep me out to the extreme, which is probably why I like reading them the most. What are your favorite categories and why? Less an object type and more genre, I'd say science fiction. A good science fiction article will get me excited more than a good article of almost any other kind. Asimov's rule breaker also asks, I'm currently reading the Anderson Robotics Hub, and I must say it's pretty good so far. Which of the hubs do you like the most, and obviously Straight Until Morning isn't allowed, nor any other hubs you've helped establish? I mean, I'm curious as to what level of my participation requires I exclude them. I mean, I have an article on the Anderson Robotics Hub, so there's that. And I've written for Resurrection, Straight Until Morning, TheGolf, AID, and probably some others that I'm missing. Also, do you mean the actual hub page itself or just stuff linked from the hub? I guess I'll answer both. I've had to choose a favorite hub that I didn't personally have a hand in posting. I'd go with AID, it's very sleek and cool looking, and for the content inside it, I'd say Resurrection. I love that whole canon. Asimov's rule breaker also asks, there's been a lot of talk about SCP-184, and it's being the secret 001. Where do you stand on this idea? You know, I had to reread SCP-184 in order to remember what it was, but I remember it now more that the actual object is kind of limited really to be a secret 001. It doesn't explain all anomalies. I mean, there are other ways for something to be a 001, but I think this particular one would need to be an explanation for all anomalies and not just the few that it's linked to in order to be an 001. I'd say, you know, this isn't really an answer about your question here, but rereading 184, I'm reminded of how the base article is kind of blah. But the supplement, I think, saves it from my downvote more than anything else. And finally, I had a fourth question from Asimov's rule breaker, but it was actually on my YouTube channel. Any hints on when the next podcast will be? I've listened to all four so many times, I got to memorize. This was actually from before I posted my fifth episode. I'm trying to put this on a definitive schedule. Once a month, unlike the 25th was my original thought, but at this point, I think I'm going to try for twice a month. I want to try and build the audience, and I've got a little bit of momentum, especially on the YouTube channel. I mean, I went from 60 to about 100 in a couple, in a few days. Subscribers, I know 100 subscribers isn't a lot of subscribers, but it's also nice to see that kind of growth so quickly. So I'd like to try and keep building on it. So right now, I'm aiming for the 30th, which I hope this will be out by the 30th, or at least the 31st, and the 13th, barring more sickness, which I wouldn't bet on me avoiding. I should be able to maintain that schedule for a while yet. Now, I also took questions from the DJ Cactus website. There's a form there that allows you to submit questions, and there's a dropdown that lets people send it to any podcast they want. This one was sent specifically to my podcast from an anonymous user. Hi, just wanted to leave this here since I don't have a foundation account. You completely ruined SCP-1730 this year. Okay.  I don't understand how someone who has written so much great content can be so completely blind to the colossal 11,000 word turd you dropped on an otherwise excellent story. Probably should have screened these questions before I started answering them. The prose quickly falls apart and stays at fanfiction.net levels of poor quality. Wow, this guy has some salt. It's too clunky and amateurish to seem like a mission report and yet too clinical to be interesting or compelling. You spin the first half on raw expositions of things we already know and things we don't need to know like the layout of the sewage tunnels and the second half is devoted to variations of a monster popped out. Everyone shot all their bullets at it. A foundation mission long should never at any point use the words huge sword unironically. Well, I disagree with that. We also don't need to know that the colossal, motionless, flaming, humanoid entities' wings are also flaming. Not fair.  Oh, I love this guy. Why would they send three more regular MTF squads in first before sending in the invincible team? You'd think after the second team disappeared without a trace they'd use the cyborgs for more than just extraction. But who expects a foundation to make sense? It's not as if they're world-class scientific minds or anything like that, right? Good job conveniently labeling Emerson for us too. Apparently you can burn a body beyond recognition, but the right bit of fabric will survive perfect for a contrived last-second reveal.  SCP was never about that with its scientific tone and read between the lines horror.  The difference in intelligence, tone, and basic literacy are night and day between the start and end of your article. I assumed someone far less competent had tacked on those sections at the end and was surprised to find that it was all you. I only say this because I don't want you to see someone with genuinely good ideas let a minuscule amount of recognition go to their head and let them think that their farts don't smell. God.  You need an editor and you need to stop to ask yourself is this fucking... Oh, that's a word I'm not going to say.  You were so preoccupied with the concept of a God beyond gods and the layered nature of reality that you let metaphilosophical masturbation. Now that is a mouthful. Get in the way of actually trying to tell any kind of story.   That's him, not me, I didn't say that.   In short, you've contributed some brilliant articles to the foundation. I frequently read a great one then looked up into the discussion to find it was another one of yours. Bodies in the water so incredibly unsettling and it belongs in the top 10 without a doubt. You need to get over yourself though because your shotgun method of riding is starting to miss a whole lot more than it hits.   I might know your name but the majority of readers don't.  Each article does not stand on its own. It's part of a larger patchwork and as the years go by that patchwork is looking more and more like some sort of gaudy hobo tent so to get there from wildly different materials and colors. Oh man. It breaks my heart to see so much good riding get dragged down by hacky OCs and egotistical hipster another word I'm not going to use. Listen. Everything you just listed is a cactus article not a Sumerian article.  All right. After that craziness let's circle back around to Mario the Pumer from Reddit who asked what articles would you recommend to newcomers? I really like this question mainly because it's something that we should all be thinking about a little bit more and when you introduce someone to the wiki what articles would you use to introduce them? And I think I could probably think of about three, right? So you've got SCP-093 which is the Red Sea Object and that article supplements. Also SCP-1322 which is unfortunately named The Glory Hole I promise it's not about sex and SCP-1342 which is to the makers of music which I've actually been kind of including it's kind of a theme for this episode. All three tell a story but they tell it in different ways and I think it's important to realize that like093 is kind of the prototypical narrative focused SCP. It's not the first but it's a good example of what it could mean in the earlier days of the site. I know it's been rewritten like more than once. I think twice? I could be wrong I think it might just be once but it's definitely been rewritten and the core article is still just a magic item description. I mean we talk about that as a big problem with new articles and new authors they just write a magic item and go hey this is interesting and to them it is the most interesting thing in the world. Think about all of the possible stories you can tell with it but nobody else is going to do that for you and the SCP foundation has been around so long now that it's like there's nothing wrong with our oldest articles and there's nothing necessarily wrong with the simple articles that don't do anything or really tell a story because they set the tone and stage for tales that surround them. In fact, if you look at Abel or the really hard to kill lizard or the old man or one seven three they themselves are not that interesting but the stories that are told around them in the tales at the time that they were all being written make them so interesting because they develop them but if you look at just the article in isolation and you try to emulate just that you're going to fail. 093 takes a different tag. It is just a magic item but that magic item is used to tell a story through like six or seven supplements it's been a long time since I actually looked but those supplements tell a long drawn out narrative that I really really enjoyed and it kind of leads to today most articles don't do it that way they just tell the story in the article itself they don't bother with eight supplements to try and tease out the rest of their story. A little bit more modern something like 1322 which is just has a collapsible with a time-based log of how the SCP foundation essentially ended an entire other civilization and the other guys don't take it too well and accuse us of either doing it deliberately or being so careless as to still be deserting punishment and it seems unreasonable when you read it and everything in the article says otherwise we just tried to help right but it doesn't plan in you a nagging suspicion about the foundation's motives this is the foundation we're talking about after all is a genocide on that scale really beyond what they might do? A lot of articles use black's boxes and expungement to build up a mystery part of what I like about 1322 is that it doesn't do that there's one black box near the end and it just blanks out a date that basically makes you think that the incident happening there could be happening right now like today or yesterday or five years ago it doesn't matter it's sometime in after the year 2000 I don't find the black box and expungement to build up mystery concept particularly compelling it doesn't work for me and 1322 shows you how you can do it without that 1322 lays all the information out in front of you and then you ask the question yourself is this real or is it not is this the foundation being evil or is this the foundation trying to be good for once and just failing or if you don't want to read into it you can take it at face value and still find horror in the idea that there's another world out there that wants to kill us dead and finally I want to say 1342 it's one of the ending note that explains everything skips and a lot of people will be very down on that type of skip I get denigration of that style but when it works and it does work here it can be like like magic you know I mean this one doesn't try to shock you with a twist I think that's the wrong way to go about it because it doesn't lay bare the inner workings of the piece or leave nothing to the imagination because it spoils the mystery for you instead it just tries to move you as a person you get to put yourself for a moment in the shoes of some alien race that just found the Voyager golden record played it and wanted to meet the strange mournful creatures that created it thank you everyone for the questions that you ask and if you have more questions from the next q&a podcast please submit them as comments wherever you listen to this that can be on the discussion thread on the scp wiki for this podcast or on the disc or the comments below the youtube video or you can submit a question on the cactus cast website although please make sure you send it to the right to the right podcaster just gonna throw that out there uh thank you very much we'll give the credits in just a second my name is Christopher Clayton Morris though you may know me better under the pseudonym Dr. Sumerian this podcast is licensed under a creative commons 4.0 attribution share like unported license all works from the scp wiki used or referenced in this podcaster under a creative commons 3.0 attribution share like unported license including the following works scp 1342 to the makers of music by flame shirt scp 2913 a total ripoff by Dr. Sumerian scp 2047 collaboration by Dr. Sumerian and incipid paroxysm scp 2513 also carthage must be destroyed by Dr. Sumerian and Blarghalt scp 2281 backseat driver by Dr. Sumerian and rogett scp 2813 ghost ship by Dr. Sumerian and von pincere scp 2706 resurrection forest by Dr. Sumerian and Dr. Atlas scp 2986 outside the box by Dr. Sumerian and famine pulse scp 001 dash j Sumerian cactus proposal the broke god by Dr. Sumerian and dj cactus scp 2632 no fury by Dr. Sumerian scp 2065 empty inside by Dr. Sumerian please don't read that scp 3313 poor richard by Dr. Sumerian resurrection hub by the deadly moose straight on till morning hub by von pincere and Dr. Sumerian the gulf hub by kate mcteris a iad hub by alert d anderson robotics hub by jacob conwell scp 184 the architect by dr gears scp 1730 what happened to site 13 by dj cactus scp 3812 a voice behind me by dj cactus scp 093 the red sea object by an unknown author and rewritten by nico chris scp 1322 glory hole by spike brennan this podcast contained the following audio works under a variety of licenses a human being by andy g cohen off the 2016 album through the lens licensed creative commons 4.0 attribution unported the temperature of the air on the bow of the calitine by chris zebrisky off the 2013 album undercover vampire policemen licensed creative commons 3.0 attribution unported you are currently listening to dark was the night cold was the ground by blind willy johnson off the 1927 single of the same name public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less thanks for listening voyager in case it's ever encountered by extraterrestrials is carrying photos of life on earth greetings in 55 languages and a collection of music from kurgorian chants to chuckberry including dark was the night cold was the ground by 20s bluesman blind willy johnson whose stepmother blinded him when he was seven by throwing lie in his eyes after his father had beat her for being with another man and he died penniless of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down but his music just left the solar system josh lineman the west wing