Today on Twitter, I saw that Justin Simmons that he was released from the Denver Broncos. And boy, I got to thinking, and y'all know me, y'all know me, I don't care if it's unrealistic or not. If I get to thinking about a player, when especially when it comes to him being a possibility on the Baltimore Ravens, it gets me excited. And I go back to that Ravens Broncos game from a couple of years ago, and just watching Justin Simmons, because I had never really watched him like that before, but just watching him in that game, I'm like, man, this dude is all over the field. Wherever the ball is, that's where he is too. And I just envisioned him being on the Baltimore Ravens. So then when he got cut this morning, I had tweeted, I said, come on home. Come on home, Justin Simmons. Come on to Baltimore. Just, let's just make it happen. I know that it's most likely not going to happen, but anything's a possibility to delay any possibility no more. And he ain't get signed away yet. So we'll see, but it's most likely not gonna happen. But anyway, there was some people saying, what are you talking about? We got Marcus Williams. We got Kyle Hamilton. We don't need a Justin Simmons. Why would we get a Justin Simmons? What we the point in signing Justin Simmons? And I told him like, hold up now, even though it may not be very realistic to get Justin Simmons, the Baltimore Ravens, they do use one, two, three safeties, not just the traditional two, they use three. And if you recall, the reason that they use three is because they usually have two of them drop back and this allows Kyle Hamilton to do whatever he wants because that is the best version of Kyle Hamilton. Him being free, him literally doing everything, playing everywhere because he can do everything. He can play at any position on the field. And that allows him to be the best Kyle Hamilton. And that benefits the Baltimore Ravens in a major way. So all yo, that was coming at me for saying, oh no, we don't need a third safety. Oh no, yeah, I think we do. Now, with Justin Simmons, another thing that really got me excited about the possibility was when Adam Schefter said this, since entering the league in 2016, no player in the NFL, so no player. They didn't say, he ain't say no safety, he ain't say no corner, he ain't say no defender. Well, obviously it'll be a defender, but he said no player in the NFL has had more interceptions than Justin Simmons with 30. So if that ain't get you excited about the possibility of adding the Justin Simmons to the Baltimore Ravens, even though it's unlikely, then I don't know what will. But anyway, there was more because that really got me wondering like, hmm, we may not get Justin Simmons, but this bodes well for the Baltimore Ravens to get or keep some other people. And this could be really, really, really good for the Baltimore Ravens. And we're gonna talk about exactly why. But before we do, make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel, turn your notifications on, so you do not miss not a single video. Cause I don't want y'all missing out. I don't like when y'all miss out. And leave a like on the video too, because it helps out a lot. Now, Justin Simmons is available, but so are a lot of other safeties right now. The safety market is oversaturated right now. And that bodes well for the Ravens. And these are some of the names that are out there right now. Eddie Jackson, Ray Sean Jenkins, Quandre Diggs, Kevin Byard, Jamal Adams, Jordan Poyer, Justin Simmons. And shortly before I started recording this, Steelers released Keanu Neal. And probably by the time you see this, another safety or two or three or four will probably get released and be available. And see, these are just the guys that are being added and have been added from being released from their teams to the free agent safety market. This don't even include pending free agents. So that plays a big role in this thing because the Ravens, the Baltimore Ravens, they have somebody of their own who is becoming a free agent. And that is Geno Stone. Now, I know a lot of people, they differ on how they feel about Geno Stone. Y'all know me, especially during the season when Marcus Williams went down. I just wanted there to be a way to where the Baltimore Ravens would and could keep Geno Stone, even though I knew it was gonna be very hard because of Marcus Williams' pay. And Marcus Williams was not a bad player at all. He just, unfortunately, since he got to the Ravens, he has dealt with big time injuries. He had the broken forearm two years ago. Then last year, he had the torn peck. Came back from both of them, but it just, it's been rough for him with the Baltimore Ravens health-wise. But when Geno Stone got his opportunity, he stepped in there and he showed out. Actually, I had somebody the other day. They, I was talking to them, I forgot who it was, but they were trying to discredit Geno Stone's interceptions. And I'm like, oh, okay.  He ain't know all that.  And I'm like, well, hey, is an interception not an interception? Like, cause don't interceptions get the ball back for your team? Don't they keep, like they take points completely away from the opposing team's offense.  Obviously ain't no touchdown for the opposing offense. No, they can't get any points because the ball is yours. So in my opinion, I do not feel like Geno Stone or any interception is ever overrated because if it happened, it happened. And as Ravens fans too, we have seen a lot of interceptions dropped in previous years. This year, not so much, but in previous years, we've seen a lot of interceptions dropped and ooh, it is a painful thing. So to see somebody catch what seven of them, that's how much he had, right? I don't think that's overrated at all in my opinion, but everybody got their own opinions and that's just fine. But with Geno Stone, he is somebody that I really wanted the Baltimore Ravens to keep. Do I think that they'll retain him? Well, based off of this interview, probably not. Where do you ultimately wanna be when everything comes up here the next couple of months? I think that they know Baltimore's always home, but you know, like business, business, being as late as long. I kinda, you know, you kinda said it right there. I've been through it all, especially my rookie year, but I wanna be somewhere where I'm appreciated and who wants me and for me to be a starter, whoever it may be, I want my value to be there. So Geno Stone, let us know in more ways than one, bye, pretty much. Like I ain't going back to Baltimore. I want somewhere where I can get both the opportunity to get paid because he wanna break the bank and I ain't mad at it at all, get your money. And he wants an opportunity to start. He wants an opportunity to be out there on that field consistently. So I cannot and will not ever be mad at somebody trying to get that. And he deserves it. He deserves it. He had a very interesting path with the Baltimore Ravens. He got drafted, then got cut, then got brought back, and then he was a free agent, then they brought him back again. And when he got it, more of his opportunity has certainly worked out for him. And I would just love to see him in a full-time role as a starting free safety somewhere. Where that could end up being? Well, I mean, the Seahawks, they just got rid of some safeties. So I could see both him and Patrick Queen going to Seattle really with Mike McDonald. But we'll see how things shake themselves out. But this helps the Baltimore Ravens a lot. If two ways, one, it increases their chance. If they wanna try to keep Geno Stone, this does increase their chances a bit by that. Not too much, because, again, I think he'll just wanna go somewhere else to where he can really be the guy. And I know with the Baltimore Ravens, they use a lot of three safety sets like we talked about.  That's Marcus Williams' role right now. That's not gonna be Geno Stone's. And they could, of course, interchange him on different plays and whatnot, but I think Geno Stone, he ain't gonna wanna interchange with nobody. He's gonna want that position all for himself. And I can't blame him. But another way that this market helps the Baltimore Ravens, since there are so many safeties out there right now, there are a lot of free agent safeties that, again, guys that got cut and guys that will become free agents in a couple of days, this makes signing another safety a lot cheaper for the Baltimore Ravens and for everybody else. Like, say, for instance, it was just Justin Simmons and Jordan Poyer and Kevin Byard out there. And they were the top three safeties. Justin Simmons would obviously command the most money. And I think between Kevin Byard and Jordan Poyer could be a toss-up, probably by it, but both of them could play. And I always mind if the Ravens either one of them, but that would make the market a lot more higher. And Justin Simmons could get a lot more money as opposed to if it's all these guys out there. The more guys out there on the market, the more saturated it is, unfortunately for them, a lot of times the lower the pay is gonna be because teams have so many options. It's supply and demand. If the supply is low, then the demand is high, but if the supply is high, then the demand could be low. So whether it's Geno Stone or whether it's any of these other safeties, the Ravens, they have a lot of options. And something that I have been thinking about, especially going into this off-season, especially with Geno Stone, getting ready to be a free agent, I wondered like, man, would the Baltimore Ravens, especially in the position that they're in right now, would they consider for that third safety? Cause again, you got market savings, you got Kyle Hamilton. So you said with those two, but you need one more. Would they consider maybe O'Rookie at that position? But I don't think so. I don't think they would. I think they're gonna want a veteran at that position, at the safety position because there's gonna be a lot of responsibility with that. Not to say O'Rookie can't do it, not to say O'Rookie can't handle it, but with the Baltimore Ravens being in win now mode and needing to get over the hump now mode, I don't think they're gonna put O'Rookie back there in that position. But really, only time will tell. Only time will tell. And the time will start telling in a couple of days when the new league starts and we can see the Ravens start to pick and choose who they wanna sign, who they wanna retain, who they gonna let go officially and who's gonna go on to other teams first? Again, they gotta get under the cap. They got some work to do with that. But then after that, we're gonna see what Baltimore does.


The HP Elite Dragonfly laptops represent HP's highest class of business devices, and we've seen some really good offers for its G3 variant. Sadly, it's no longer a convertible, however, it still retains its touchscreen functionality, making it optional. How does that affect its use? Stick with us to find out. While no longer having a 360 degree hinge, the laptop Dragonfly G3 still has the metal build, using an aluminum magnesium alloy to keep it light and thin, with a weight of only 990 grams and a profile of 16.4 mm. The weight is very well balanced, so the laptop feels even lighter in hand. The edges of the chassis and lid are rounded, which gives the impression of an even thinner device. On the other hand, they also make the lid harder to open with one hand. Once opened, the lid can lay completely flat, showing off thin bezels and a glass cover over the display. The top one houses an HD webcam with an IR sensor and a proximity sensor, locking the laptop the moment you step away from it, as well as unlocking it as soon as you show your pretty face. Lastly, there's an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness depending on the conditions. On the base, we have a long horizontal grille that serves as an exhaust vent, a keyboard, and an enormous touchpad. The keyboard has pretty large keycaps with long, key travel and clicky feedback. It has a separate button for the fingerprint reader. The touchpad, with its large and smooth surface, provides an excellent experience, being plenty responsive and accurate. The input output on the sides is a bit scarce. The left side has an HDMI 2.0 port, a SIM card slot, and a Thunderbolt 4 port. On the right, there's one more Thunderbolt 4 port, one USB Type-A 3.2 Generation 1 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. HP is in a unique position, offering a 3-2 IPS touchscreen display with an FHD plus resolution. It's even taller than 16-10 displays, which means extra pixels that a multitasker such as yourself can find a use for. The touchscreen functionality doesn't find a lot of use, so why would you use it when you've got a whole touchpad and keyboard, which are more precise? Still, the display is good, with a peak brightness of 361 nits and 96% sRGB coverage. The display also gets very accurate colors with our design and gaming profile, which lowers the Delta E value to 1.0, which is exceptional. We'll leave links to all of our profiles in the description below. The Bang and Olufsen setup of the Elite Dragonfly G3 delivers loud audio with great quality and no significant deviations across the entire frequency range. All in all, props to HP and their audio partner. If you decide to just start following us, we'll be able to reinvest more in our laboratory, thus making even more helpful videos for you. Thank you, you're awesome! The laptop has several Alder Lake U-Series processors, including some V Pro variants which are tailored for enterprise use with better stability and security. Here we have the Core i7-1255U, which doesn't score as well as we hoped it would, at benchmarks at least. We still had a great experience using it, as the 10 cores offer snappy performance, loading apps, and projects quickly. The benchmark scores are quite surprising, especially since the cooling setup looks to be able to handle more with two fans and one bulky heat pipe. During our stress test, the CPU shows good results in short loads, going up to 42 watts in the first 10 seconds of the test while relaxing a bit in longer runs. As for comfort, the two fans aren't as noisy as we had expected, while the base remained slightly warm, but nothing uncomfortable, with a hot spot of only 40 degrees Celsius. Keep in mind that this is with the CPU running at 100%, so most of the time the laptop will be running even cooler. The efficiency of the chip isn't put into question, as the 68.4 watt-hours battery pack lasts for 14 hours and 27 minutes of web browsing, or 13 hours and 6 minutes of video playback. Lastly, the memory on the Elite Dragonfly is once again soldered to the motherboard, offering no options for upgrades. You can get up to 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM while the storage is accessible through one M2 PCIe slot for generation 4 SSDs. Here's our teardown video which shows how to access the single SSD slot. The HP Elite Dragonfly G3 made the controversial switch from a 2-in-1 to a clamshell design, while still offering a touchscreen display. Unfortunately, finding usability for the touchscreen is a bit difficult, so we'd recommend skipping it. We believe the laptop should have stayed a convertible, but even as a clamshell laptop, it is really good and can stand up to the XPS and ThinkPad X1 series with no problem. So if you're already in the market for one of them, taking a look at the Dragonfly G3 might not be a bad option after all. If you need more convincing about buying the Dragonfly G3, we'll leave our written review in the description.


Thank you so much. Good morning everyone. Good morning. I'm Candice Tall, executive vice president and political director here at 32BJ and I would just like to welcome you all into this space. We're here today with union leaders and advocates to talk about the earn income and child tax credit. I'm listening folks out of poverty and these are two initiatives that will do just that. It's about making sure people can stay and live in the city that we all love. And so we're here to support it and we're here to tell Albany to get this done this year. And so up first is my president from 32BJ. Mr. Manny Pastridge. Thank you Candice. Welcome everyone to 32BJ. And welcome mayor. Thank you for being here. Welcome to my fellow labor brothers and sisters, DC 37, local 95, the hotel trades council. Thanks for being here Rich. You know, in my work, there's good days and there's bad days. And when I need to dig down deep and think about what motivates me on a day to day, there's lots of good things that we do. Respect on the job, fighting for wages and benefits, making changes in our communities. But honestly what motivates me on a given day is the conversations that I have with our members. And if there's one theme that's common to those, it is I want to make a difference for my kids. I'm working to make a better life for my kids and their future. I am proud of what 32BJ has done to lift workers and families out of poverty. Especially our efforts this year to push for legislation that has proven to reduce child poverty, including tax credits, which we're talking about today, including raising the minimum wage. But us alone is not enough. The labor movement alone is not enough to come together to fight to ensure our children's future, to ensure that our children are taken care of. That's why I am excited to join with our mayor and this powerful group of leaders to reiterate 32BJ's enthusiastic support for making permanent the New York State supplemental child tax credit and expanding the earned income tax credit. Yeah. When the federal government expanded the child tax credit in 2021, some 120,000 New York children were lifted out of poverty. 120,000 in New York City alone. That program ended in 2022, but New York State did the right thing and stepped up to continue the gains in the momentum that we had. We have something that has proven to work. We have something that ensures children come out of poverty. Ensures our future. It is our collective investment in our future and the children who will lead us in this state one day. We have the momentum and the support to make this permanent. Let's do it. Now is the time to get over the finish line. So thank you again, Mayor Adams. Thank you for your leadership on this critical fight. Thank you to the state senators, Guernardis, CUNY, Bailey, and Chu. Thank you to the assembly person's Hevesi, Raj Kumar, and all the elected officials who are making this a priority. And thank you to my labor family. And my last thanks is to all the community organizations, elected officials who are coming together. This is a powerful group of labor leaders, community, public officials, and we can get this done. So are we going to get this done? All right. So next, let me turn it back over to our Candice Tull. Next we're going to hear from Linda McPherson, Vice President of District Council 37 and President of Local 95 Head Start Employees. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. It is the weather's nice. My name is Linda McPherson. I'm the President of DC 37 Local 95. I'm here alongside my brother, Robert Ramos, DC 37 Local 205 President. We represent thousands of daycare workers in community-based organizations and head start programs across New York City. Charke represents an essential aspect of our city's economy by providing a safe and educational space for our city's children, oftentimes outside of the traditional work hours. We give parents and caretakers the peace of mind they need while earning a living to support their families. Albany has extended tax credits. Albany must, sorry, must extend tax credits for working families to keep thousands of New York City's children out of poverty while providing the financial stability their parents need to succeed. Expanding eligibility for childcare assistance would allow more than 100,000 children to become eligible. By making New York City's supplemental child tax credit permanent, our childcare programs could aim to cover all working families. This year's state budget must include proposals to extend and expand childcare and tax benefits that support lower-income families, middle-class families. Without these programs, we are endangering our children while making New York's economy and communities more vulnerable. We simply cannot afford to ignore this reality. Let's support this tax credit. Thank you. We're going to keep this Labor Party going, and next we're going to hear from Rich Morocco, president of the Hotel Trades Council. Good morning, everyone. I'm Rich Morocco. I'm the president of the Hotel Trades Council, the union that represents almost 40,000 hotel and gaming workers throughout New York State. And look, the vast majority of our 40,000 members have families to support, and they work hard every day to provide for those families to make sure that they have roofs over their head, to make sure that there's food on the table, to make sure that they have medicine when they get sick, and to make sure that their kids have a good education. And I'm here to tell you that those families need help. Look, inflation is a universal problem. It affects all of us, but it has hit working families particularly hard. Take childcare, for example, which is an expense that is almost unique to working families. You know, for many parents, going to work isn't an option, which means that childcare isn't an option. And as fast as inflation is rising, and it's rising pretty fast, the cost of childcare is rising even faster. So that today, the cost of childcare almost is equal to the cost of tuition at a four-year college. The cost of childcare is approaching the cost of housing. And look, on housing, the cost of housing for families is increasing as fast as the cost for childcare. We've seen double-digit increases in rents. And while that makes housing expensive for all of us, it makes it almost unaffordable when you need housing for a family. And when you take the increased cost in housing and the increased cost in childcare and you combine it with the rising cost of food and clothes and gas, it's squeezing working families to the breaking point, which is why I'm here to support Mayor Adams' initiative to provide relief for working families. Because tax credits for working families are desperately needed. And they're proven to work. They are proven not only to help working families make ends meet, but they have a real intangible effect on child poverty and all of the harmful effects that go along with it. So I want to thank Mayor Adams for your advocacy. I want to thank all of the other elected leaders that are here. And of course, my union brothers and sisters for their focusing in on this issue. And thank you again for your support for working people. Thank you. Okay. And now we're going to hear from the man of the hour. He's been championing this issue. He brought all of us here together today. Our Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams. Thanks so much, Manny, Rich, Candace. And thank you. And we should be really clear about the movement for it of our city. I cannot thank our Albany lawmakers enough and the city council representatives who are here. They heard the broken people agenda. And they were clear last year when we delivered on some of the most significant things that would impact broken people so much. And when we say broken people, we're talking about HCC, 32BJ, DC37, so many more of our local men and women, TWU. I could go on and on and on. And even those who are in the private sector industry. You are fighting for right now, and this is the beauty of it. You're saying, yes, this is going to impact my membership. But it's also going to impact those outside your membership. People get lost sometimes on the fights that you have that goes beyond just your membership. Your battle to increase the minimum wage had nothing to do only with your memberships. It helped everyone who was involved. And we are here once again, earn income tax credit and child tax credit. What is unique about both of them? Tax.  We should not be asking people their social security number for those benefits that are coming from their tax dollars. That's what this fight is about. Albany knew that when we went to Albany to increase the earned income tax credit the first time in 20 years. They knew that when Senator Granada's pushed forward the red light cameras because if a child is struck by a car, it doesn't matter what their documentation was. We knew that when we increase the child care dollars, billions of dollars for Albany. Give it up to them again, man. Good job. Good job. We knew it in the city council when we put money into the fair futures for those who are in foster care. We knew it when we put money into those children who needed to go to college that were foster care children. We knew it when we pushed forward all of these agendas. We are clear that when you're talking about working people, it shouldn't matter what union member you are part of or if you're in a union or not. We're all part of one union that's working class people because working class people built and run this city and that's what this battle is about. And we are unified around this issue. So here we are again on our way to Albany, two important significant things as rich raise. It is clear that the earned income tax credit helps lift children out of poverty. So we can either pay now a small amount or pay later a larger amount. The goal is to lift families out of poverty.  Y'all know what I'm talking about. If she would have had that help, if she would have had the earned income tax credit, the tax credit, if she would have had the childcare of dollars, if she would have had the support that she needed, if she would have had all of those things, we would have been on a different path. If we would have done more, we would not be filling Rikers Island right now. So match with our goal of closing the building, we want to close the pipeline that feeds the building. And this is one of the ways of closing the pipeline that feeds the building. So we are unified on these two important issues among others. But I don't think we should ever lose focus on what Rich stated. The facts are here. This raises people out of poverty. For many, and Rich, and Henry, and all of our union members to come together and say, here's some particular things we could do to lift people out of poverty, just as you are laser focused on increasing the minimum wage, laser focused on those things that create poverty in the first place. This is so important. And I have this unified body of city and state and union and broken people focused on a broken people agenda. That's the way we save this city. You help bring in a broken people mayor. That's why we have a broken people agenda. And this is an important moment for us in Albany and the city council. We must be unified around lifting broken people out of poverty, building affordable housing, improving our educational system, making sure our city is safe because broken people are dealing with the violence in our city. And broken people are dealing with those systems that prevent people not to go on a pathway of violence. So it's broken people that must have an agenda that must be pushed forward in all of our chambers, in the city council, and in Albany. And that is why we're here today. I'm proud to be with my Albany and city council colleagues that are saying clearly we won't agree on everything, but we agree on enough to lift broken people out of poverty. That's why we're here today. So let's be clear on our message. We know we can't stop inflation, but inflation should not control our destination. And as long as we focus on those items, we can move broken people out of poverty. That's in our control. We don't control things outside of that. But we can control, earn income tax credit, child tax credit, and making sure we build more affordable housing so people can have a place to live and raise healthy children and families in a broken people city. Thank you, unions. Let's make it happen. Before we move forward, and we're going to hear from some of our elected officials here, I want to acknowledge our first deputy Mayor Sheena Wright. And then I also want to acknowledge the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections Commissioner, Bill DeVere and Mayaga. Okay, and next we're going to hear from Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar. 32. BJ. 32. BJ. 32. BJ. I'm Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar, and I have a question for you. New York State has one of the highest rates of child poverty in the entire country. Is that acceptable to you? No. 70% of low income families in this city are just one crisis away from complete ruin. Is that acceptable to you? No. One million women in this city live in poverty. Is that acceptable to you? No. Well, we are here to do something about it. We're here to turn it around. The state budget is due in seven days. And this is personal to me. Poverty in this city has a woman's face. I know it's personal to the Mayor, whose mom worked three jobs to take care of six kids. Last year, my colleagues and Albany and I expanded the earned income tax credit in the state budget. We fought for an expansion that hadn't happened in 20 years, and we got it done. And what we saw is that it works. Nationally, the tax credit increased the income of nine million women of color, and it increased women's workforce participation. And across our state, it expanded and has lifted children out of poverty. So thank you to Mayor Adams for being a champion of the issue and expanding this tax credit to ensure that 800,000 families in the city benefit. And not only pushing for it to happen, but the Mayor and his team are making sure that people in all corners of our city know how to actually access the benefit. So many families in the city are eligible for benefits that they fail to access, whether it be EITC, SNAP, or WIC. And the Mayor is going into all corners of the city, including my district in South Queens, and uplifting the immigrant families like mine, telling them how to access these critical benefits. So thank you to the Mayor and the team for that, and my colleagues in Albany as well. And let's talk about the child tax credit too. We had the opportunity to expand it in this year's state budget. 120,000 children in our state, and we know that the child tax credit works. When the federal government had a temporary expansion of it, it lifted 3 million people out of poverty, and it's good for our economy. So we can do it. We have seven days. We need to make sure that the earned income tax credit is now made permanent, permanent for our working families. We can support women in the workforce. We can lift children out of poverty. We can help families put food on the table. Are you with me? Yeah! Let's get it done. Thank you. And now we're going to hear from State Senator Andrew Garnardis. Thank you, Candace. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. You know, in Albany, there are very few issues that are black and white. A lot of in the gray. A lot of compromise. A lot of things that, you know, maybe we don't have one right answer for. But the EITC and the child tax credit are not gray issues. The EITC and the child tax credit ending poverty is a black and white issue, because there is a proven formula for how we can do this. It is an indisputable fact. You give working people money, they are able to lift themselves out of poverty. No complicated formulas, no maybe, hypotheticals. It is a proven indisputable fact. Giving families money to pay for their necessities, to put food on their table, to pay off a utility bill, to buy school supplies, or even, God forbid, take a day with the family to go to the zoo, or the aquarium, or the amusement park, or do something as a family. It lifts families up. It lifts families up. I am so proud to be the author of the proposed New York State Working Families Tax Credit, which would, if enacted, cut our poverty rate by 20% in the state of New York. And we have, when we have one of the highest rates of child poverty in the country, cutting it by 20% like that is a game changer for every working family from Brooklyn to Buffalo and everywhere in between. That's what we are here calling for. That's what we are here fighting for. And this child tax credit, this Working Families Tax Credit, our proposal that we're fighting for in the budget right now, does a couple of really critical things. As Assemblywoman just said, when the federal government passed the expanded child tax credit through the American Rescue Plan, we cut the poverty rate in this country by 50%. That's the type of bold, transformational, anti-poverty initiative we need to see right here in New York. In 2006, New York was the first state in the country to adopt a state-based version of the child tax credit. It was transformational then. But for some reason, not going to guess why, but we can all guess why, it left out children zero to three. So if you have a two-year-old, if you have a one-year-old, if you have a six-month-old, you don't get the child tax credit in New York. You don't get the state child tax credit in New York. It's not right. It's not right. So what we're calling for in this final budget is to expand the state child tax credit so that every child in this state can get the full benefit of that credit. What we're also calling for through the expansion of the EITC is to allow ITEN filers to also be able to claim the EITC, because they also need the boost because they are also working families and they've been shut out and they've been excluded. And that ain't right either. And while we're at it, let's do another thing. Let's change the regressive income requirements that says that those families that earn the least cannot get the full benefit of the credit. Does that make any sense to anybody? No. Does not. It doesn't. So here we are. We have seven days to go to get to a timely budget. Governor's budget proposed $227 billion with a B, billion dollars for the state of New York, second largest budget in the country, the seventh largest budget in the world. I can think of 227 billion ways we can lift people out of poverty in this state if we have the will to do it. So what we need to do is we need to take the energy of everyone here on the stage and everyone here in the audience and all the members and all the families that are represented here, and we need to fight like hell for the next seven days to make sure that we don't come home until we expand the EITC and the child tax credit. And what the hell? Let's raise the minimum wage while we're at it as well. Because that's how we're going. That's how we are going to lift families up. And when we lift families up, we create safe, stable communities. And that is how we can all thrive. Thank you very much, everyone. Okay. And next we're going to hear from assembly member Tony Simone. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Tony Simone on the new assembly member for this district. I love that labor is in the house and that I house many of the amazing unions of this great city and state. Look, I ran for office not for a fancy title, but to make this a more livable, safer, equitable New York for everyone. And how do you do that by investing in our families and children? We can afford to give tax breaks for big stadiums. We can afford to fully fund the EITC at $25 million and then child care tax credit. When I ran, I heard from so many constituents, moms, who said they were going to move out of this city and state because they could not afford child care. That is a crime. I agree with the mayor. All the unions here are fighting hard for this to stay in the house as we hope for an almost on time budget to fund to help our families. But unions aren't just working for their members. They're working with the great leadership of Senator Granades and others and Jennifer Rajkumar to ensure that this is a permanent tax credit for our families.  Thank you. Okay. I also want to acknowledge some folks that are here. Councilwoman Alexa Aviles. She has a resolution, Resolution 500 in the council right now that's in support of what we're trying to do in Albany. Next up, we're going to hear from Councilman Shawn Abreu. Thank you, Candace. Give it up to Labor in the House. I am so ecstatic to be here today and supporting our brothers and sisters in labor, making sure that we're fighting for what's right. We need to fight for the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, and to raise the wage this year. It is the fight for working class families as the chair of the state and federal legislation committee at the city council. It is an honor to be working with our state elected officials and labor to get this to the finish line. Let's get it done. Okay. Before we hear from our last speaker, I want to acknowledge Councilmember Eric Bacha, my homie in the background. Okay. And next up, we're going to hear from Councilman Chiose. Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm New York City Councilmember Chiose, representing Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights, a community that would greatly benefit from all of the things that we are fighting for on this stage. New Yorkers are one paycheck away from poverty. Many New Yorkers are one crisis away from homelessness. So many families in the city and in the state are one healthcare crisis away from death. So we stand here today advocating for a life-saving initiative and bill passing within the state budget that would save so many New Yorkers' lives and benefit the people that I represent. I'll keep it short. I know a lot of politicians have a lot of things to say, but thank you so much to my labor family. Thank you. And so we just want to thank you all for being here today. Remember, if you have not yet, make sure you call your senator, your assembly person, tell them that this is a priority and we want to see this done in the next seven days. In the next seven days. Thank you all.


Oh, the community, I need your help or Blender add-ons need your help so 3.1 Blender 3.1 is around the corner is less than two weeks for it to be out and there are some add-ons that might don't make it into the final release unless we do something about it. Okay, long story short for there's a new add-ons policy in the add-ons that ship with Blender the external add-ons don't nothing has changed but the ones that ship with Blender that comes when you download Blender from Blender.org they have so for 3.0 there was a the main policy change was that the add-ons that ship with Blender should not connect to servers outside of Blender.org for security reasons so the user knows that whatever downloads if it connects it hits under Blender.org so it's secure and it's under control so that affected a few items they were removed from 3.0 and in 3.1 some of the add-ons like there's no add-ons that connects outside of Blender.org I think the Blender ID only connects to Blender ID but the there is also documentation this is the second topic documentation should always be in a place where the inside of the Blender manual basically so it should come should be all in one place Blender manual there are a few add-ons that do not comply with that yet how can I know which add-ons well go to the Blender weekend the 3.1 release notes the bottom you're gonna find add-ons inside of add-ons at the very bottom you're gonna find the ones that are not complying with the requirements those are Amaranth, Tiny Cat, Tissue and Real Snow so these add-ons need to have their documentation moved into Blender documentation the Blender manual this actually touches me personally because the Amaranth add-on is one that I made many years ago and I have its documentation in my own crappy website with Comic Sans 2.7 it's been so long but I never bothered into moving it into the actual since this add-on wasn't part of Blender back then I made a documentation my own website but now I have to move it so I have to I have to now in like this weekend is gonna be my project to move it my my task to move it homework so how do you move it where to go well if you look into the documentation project you're gonna have all the links and in the developer the Blender.org documentation project you can just search for documentation here and you're gonna go to the project this page so here you can get everything how to install it build it build again everything it's also in the manual itself if you go to Blender.org slash manual in the manual there is a section about how to contribute to the manual itself so you can go here contribute and it's just the same it's not a big deal but yeah you need to know a little bit how to install dependencies SVN is used for this so it might take a little bit and then he has to go through review and then put into the actual manual that everybody can can access so yes there is some homework but these add-ons need their help because need your help because some of the developers that have been involved in these add-ons are no longer in in yeah in touch with Blender development or maybe they're not working on this add-on anymore so it's always a good thing to go to the task and see what is the status of this so precision drawing tools I think this was changed it's not mentioned here but all the other ones are and yeah how do you know where is the documentation well in the in the add-ons themselves so let's go to tissue and the tissue I don't I think and most of them are on github yeah so documentation URL is on github so you go here and it's a matter mainly of copy-pacing this however what is the license of this of this documentation you know you have to get in touch with the developers or you can write new documentation that is not limit by the license because you could copy paste this but you know in a way you are yeah preaching the the the license of the documentation so can you help please otherwise these add-ons are gonna be disabled from the Blender 3.1 release and it's a pity because a lot of people use these add-ons I'm gonna do my own part with my own add-on with Amaranth and hope to see you involved in the other one the other add-ons how do you get involved again this is the place in the manual or you can if you want to chat as well you can go into blender.chat there is a Blender.chat there should be a link to the documentation it's if you look for the documentation channel document or docs thing and docs yeah docs so yeah here you can just ask around and you're gonna get help by the community that's it let's let's do it let's not get these add-ons removed I think you everybody understand that it's for a good cause right that every documentation should be in one place here what everybody can access it because you don't know if my own website will go down which happened in the past then the documentation for these add-ons will be will be will disappear you know it's not good so it's for the future preservation okay that's it thanks for watching and see you on the Blender.chat


I'm here with a CTN member highlight for Winter Kids, and I'm here with the executive director, Julie Mulkern, to talk about their upcoming fundraiser, ski fundraiser, around Mount Abrams. What is it called? It's called the Downhill 24. It's the second annual. We actually switched it. The first inaugural event was called the Downhill Derby, which was fun, but we thought the Downhill 24 was more indicative of the actual race and what we were doing, because it is a 24-hour ski challenge. Yeah, and what's involved with it? How do people raise money by doing this? And what is it actually? Individuals can sign up either by themselves or as a team. The teams can be up to 12 members. We have both corporate teams and regular individual teams. It's a $100 entry fee, and that entry fee gets you 24 hours of skiing, hopefully in beautiful weather. A t-shirt, a race bib, lots of entertainment and food throughout the 24 hours. And in addition to the entry fee, each individual can set up a fundraising page. So a personal or a team fundraising page, and their friends and family can donate in honor of their 24-hour ski challenge, and all of the money goes to winter kids. So the idea of it is that each team, somebody on each team skis consistently for 23 hours, because it's during the time change. Yes, we like that part of it. You know, the t-shirts last year said, I participated in the Downhill Derby, and I skied for 24 hours in just 23, ask me how. So the event is always during daylight savings, which is a nice little twist to the event. But teams can participate in any way that they like. It is, people were much more competitive last year than we thought they would be, which made it fun. But it doesn't need to be a competition. It's a friendly race. It really is about raising money for winter kids programs. But people can configure their team however they want. So some people will ski for three hours straight, and then someone else takes a shift through the night, or the early morning hours, whoever that lucky person happens to be. Or as long as there's a team member on the mountain, one team person on the mountain at a time, that's all that really matters. We're pretty flexible with the rules. How many years have you been doing this? This is only year two. So in year one, we weren't sure, you know, undertaking a 24-hour race is a huge thing. It's the only event of its kind in Maine in the winter. And other states have done it. And it was really the brainchild of a couple of our board members, one being the former general manager of Mount Abram. So that's really how this event came about. And we weren't sure how it would go in year one, but it surpassed all of our expectations, and we raised $45,000 for winter kids. $45,000, that's excellent. I anticipate probably doubling that this year. Oh, really? It's wonderful. Because the other people will be coming back. Absolutely. This, of course, will get more people to come out. What role does Mount Abram's play in it? What are they? They've been wonderful as an event host. They are donating all of the lift tickets in kind for the 24 hours. We anticipate having about 300 participants this year. So it's a huge undertaking for them. We offer 24 hours of staff and volunteer support, but the Mount Abram crew is there for the 24 hours running the mountain, both for event participants and people outside of the event that are just there to ski for the week. Also, other things are going on that same weekend. Absolutely. There's two, you know, they're running their tubing park still, which we encourage kids of participants to do while they're there with their families, and there are other skiers enjoying the mountain. I imagine the hardest part of it is the overnight time when there's nobody, no ski lines, and you have to get it up and come down and you're tired. It was, last year was unbelievable. Again, not having done it before, the first time was really interesting to see what would happen, and people were real troopers. There were people skiing throughout the night. There were people sleeping on tables in the lodge. People tented out in March. It was fun to see, and we have lots of things to keep them happy, including live music, and we have a card reader, a caricature artist, movies, late night movies in the lodge, so people have a lot of things going on. So, $45,000? $45,000. Wow. Winter kids, what do they do with that money? What is Winter Kids all about, just so people know in case they don't? Winter Kids is really about all about getting kids outside and active in the winter and really year round. Winter is certainly our brand, but we'd like kids to be active 365 days a year. It's all about reaching kids at the youngest age possible, so they're building these habits, healthy habits of being outdoor and active. You know, as well as I do, that there are a lot of competing priorities now with kids being outside, screen time, video games, stranger danger, many things.  Kids are really much more sedentary, and particularly in the winter, and we're trying to make sure they're getting outside. If people want to have more information about this or sign up or whatever, what do they do where they go? They can just go to winterkids.org and all the information's on our site. They can learn much more about all of our programs and head straight to the downhill 24 page if they are brave enough to ski for 24 hours straight. Great. Well, thanks a lot. Sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks.


All right, lady, what is this? Hey, well, I'm doing some more floppy hacking tonight, cause it's so cold out. And, you know, I've got that three and a half inch drive working, but I also got a five and a quarter drive that I'd like to hook up. And actually only have Commodore 64 disks right now. And Commodore 64 is an MFM format, and it's a different format. And so if I wanna read these diskettes, I wanna use a piece of software called Flux Engine. And Flux Engine is a very similar to Grease Weasel, in fact it has Grease Weasel compatibility mode, but it's written in much more low level C and it supports a lot more formats. And it couldn't quite figure out that Grease Weasel supports Commodore 64. So what I'm doing is like slowly but surely figuring out how to get Flux Weasel to recognize, you know, this port and send data back and forth. I'm learning a lot about low level Windows 32 file system access and comports, but I'm making slow and steady progress.


Okay, so let's keep moving on with our grass clump here and I'm going to name this wrangle node here to ramp adder All right, just so I can find it easily Okay, so Let's go and let's take care of our directions now and let's get some scattering going on So what I want to do is in my attribute wrangle node here. I'm going to get rid of the power Stuff because I'm not going to use that one Now that'll leave behind this spare parameter. At least that's what they call them, right?  I don't need that anymore. I'm gonna hit accept There we go. We're just going to use this fall off here for now All right, so I'm just gonna kind of do something like this may pull that in a little bit more. That's good cool all right, so Instead of assigning this to the color, I'm actually going to assign this to a built-in Attribute that Houdini specifically looks for and especially when you're looking when you're trying to scatter points and that's called at density And there we go spell correctly All right, so what I want to do is just assign that ramp value to my density value Cool, so now the color has gone away That's just because we're not assigning color anymore, but we are assigning to this density value And this is great because I'm going to drop down a scatter node now like so and Turn this on here and we have this scattering of points on our particular Rematch so we're we're getting rid of the geometry. All right, which we can utilize later, but for this particular Exercise I just want the grass clump itself just the grass blades. So this is going to work out perfectly All right, and they all have normals on them, which is fine It's cool. Yeah, what I want to do is I want to create directions So we need those radial normals back. All right, and I also want to start to utilize that density value So I'm going to select the scatter node here and we want to make sure that we are generating them by density And then we want to utilize that density attribute that's built into Houdini here So you can see that our density now is being driven All right, so let's just actually template our remesh node here But our density is being driven now by our ramp So now we can clump together the grass blades in a very custom way. So we can allow the user to adjust this stuff Very cool All right, so we're not going to need that many points I mean you can use that many points if you want it's currently set to a thousand. So well, I'm going to put down something like 30 Okay, and we can pull that in even more Like so, so we just pull this guy in a little more there like that Maybe we do something like that Looks good for now Cool. So now what I want to do is I want to create those normals again All right, and we're also going to create a couple other directions. So we're going to call this our scatter directions Scatterders as I usually like to call them All right, so the first thing I want to do is I want to get the center again Okay, so In this case, I want to get the center from the remesh node So what we can do is we can drop down an object merge node and I'm going to say get remesh or get clump mesh All right, and what I'm doing is I'm actually just importing the mesh from that step in the network So I'm going to get that remesh node there And except and you can see that I have the remesh in there and I'm just doing that so I can pump it into The first input there or the second input But it has an index of one I can use that now and I can say my vector Center is equal to the get baby box center, but from input one Or the second input on the attribute wrangle node there So now I'm getting the center and that I want to do that because the center isn't necessarily world center anymore Because the shape has been offset by the noise All right, so let's go and now Create our radial normal. All right, so we're going to say at n is equal to our at p minus our center All right, you can see they all radiate out now from the center But you can see that the guys in the the middle here are really small the normals aren't actually Normalized and so what we can do is we can just put this into a normalized function like so There we go. So now they're all the the same length The next thing I want is I want the ability to Define the right direction and the up direction for these particular normals All right, and this is useful when you really really want to have a lot of control over how your cards are facing in your grass clumps All right, so to do this. It's actually quite simple What I'm going to do is I'm going to declare a new variable called v at right And this is going to be equal to the cross product All right the cross product of at n and the world up vector Okay, and I want that because what'll happen is it'll give me a perpendicular Normal if you will or direction to each of these normals so we can actually visualize that here inside of a game I'm going to drop down a visualize node Okay, I'm just going to pump in the output of our Scattered error node there and what I want to do is I want to turn on the visualize node go to the visualizers tab there and I'm just going to give it a name of Right and a label of right and then the attribute that we want to display Is this right direction right here? So you can see in our geometry spreadsheet We have the right Normal, so if I just type in right like so and then set the type to marker and the style to Vector you can see we now have this perpendicular vector or direction to our normal for every single point All right, and so let's actually just rescale that so we can see it a little bit better Cool So what I can do now is give this a color. So I usually give the right direction a red color All right And the last thing that we want to do is just to find the the up direction in this case this one's easy because We just want to use the world up. So I'm just going to say that v at up All right or that stands for a vector And the attribute is called up and these are built in both right and up are built in Attributes for Houdini. All right, so I'm just going to sign that the world up vector And then again, we can go and visualize it So what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this node right here hold down alt on the keyboard Click and drag it and it creates a copy. That's why I don't have to set up too much More so I'm just going to say up up and then Up for the attribute and then just give it a different color Like green there we go Voila, we now have all of our colors or not colors our directions that we need in order to copy Our grass cards to each one of these points cool All right, so the last thing I really want to do is I want to give it some noise because right now All of this is a little bit Too perfect. It's a little Too radial. All right, and so what we can do in our scanner is we can create A noise attribute or vector Variable. All right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to say float noise is equal to a noise All right, and that's a function inside of vex here. All right, and it's looking for A position and a couple other attributes that we can assign it. So I'm particularly using this a noise here and what I just did is I put the mouse right over the The function a noise and I hit f1 on the keyboard and what what that'll do is it'll take you directly to that particular functions documentation All right, so you can see that we can give it just the position So the position would be something like at p our current point position But we can also give it some other attributes or or variables or functions or Parameters they're all kind of similar. So so I want to say float Turb for turbulence. So this is going to be called chf turbulence like so And then I want to do a float rough This is going to be equal to chf roughness like so And then I want to do float A 10 and this is equal to chf attenuation And I didn't spell that correctly There we go cool So what we can do is we can actually pass those in now. So we're going to pass in that turb Property or value and we could pass in the roughness and we pass in the attend And what this does it creates an offset for us We can actually declare it as a vector as well, which works out quite nice for us. So we can say vector like so Cool So I'm going to get rid of the documentation there Actually, I'm going to pull it back one second because I am getting Aha, so turbulence needs to be an int So I'm getting a little green squiggly line, which means that we're having a conversion problem All right, so to take care of that Turbulence needs to be an int There we go And this needs to be set to chi instead of chf for a integer channel And there we go. So we took care of all those problems So now I can expose these values and just give them some sort of value to start out with And now what we want to do now is we want to add that to our normal Okay So I want to add the the x and z values instead not the y so here in side of our n I can say at n Dot x plus equals our noise. So we'll say noise dot x All right, so you can see that's giving us You know some offset value and then I want to say at n dot z plus equals Our noise dot z value And you can see that that's actually put pushing everything off To the side and this is because our noise actually returns. Let's go back to our Method here actually returns a value between zero and one. So I need to remap this noise value All right, so these these particular noise values to negative one and one So what I need to do is I need to say to fit Oh one here I'm going to take the current Noise dot x value and remap it between negative one and one And that should take care of our offset problem there All right, we'll say negative one to one And there we go. So now we have a way to change noise on our particular Guys, it's just another way to give us Some extra noise. So it's not so perfect, right? I'm always looking for ways to do that We also need to after we've done that we also need to say that at n is equal to normalized Or normalized at n There we go. So we're just making sure that all of our normals are the same length there Cool And you can see that as we change Any one of our values here our perpendicular vector is working perfectly. So it's updating with it Cool All right, so that's what I'm looking for Okay, so I'm going to close out this video there All right, so that was quite a bit to take in just for One video and what we want to do next is we want to Instantiate a card or copy a card that has uh one of the grass blades on it to each one of these points Okay, thanks so much


that disruption is not in fighting the old. Disruption is in the introduction of a new idea which improves and upgrades and makes the old better than it ever could have been had we just parked up around protecting the old.


A Grain as Big as a Hen's Egg, by Leo Tolstoy. Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information and to learn how to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. One day some children found in a ravine a thing shaped like a grain of corn, with a groove down the middle, but as large as a hen's egg. A traveler passing by saw the thing, brought it from the children for a penny, and taking it to town sold it to the king as a curiosity. The king called together his wise men and told them to find out what the thing was. The wise men pondered and pondered and could not make head or tail of it, till one day, when the thing was lying on a window sill, a hen flew in and pecked at it till she made a hole in it, and every one saw that it was a grain of corn. The wise men went to the king and said, It is a grain of corn. At this the king was much surprised, and he ordered the learned men to find out when and where such a corn had grown. The learned men pondered again and searched in their books, but could find nothing about it. So they returned to the king and said, We can give you no answer. There is nothing about it in our books. You all have to ask the peasants. Perhaps some of them have heard from their fathers when and where grain grew to such a size. So the king gave orders that some very old peasant should be brought before him, and his servants found such a man and brought him to the king. Old and bent, ashy pale and toothless, he just managed with the help of two crutches to totter into the king's presence. The king showed him the grain, but the old man could hardly see it. He took it, however, and felt it with his hands. The king questioned him, saying, Can you tell us, old man, where such grain as this grew? Have you ever bought such corn or sown such in your fields? The old man was so deaf that he could hardly hear what the king said and only understood with great difficulty. No, he answered at last, I never sowed nor reaped any like it in my fields, nor did I ever buy such. When we bought corn, the grains were always as small as they are now. But you might ask my father. He may have heard where such grain grew. So the king sent for the old man's father, and he was found and brought before the king. He came walking with one crutch. The king showed him the grain, and the old peasant, who was still able to see, took a look at it, and the king asked him, Can you tell us, old man, where corn like this used to grow? Have you ever bought any like it or sown any in your fields? Though the old man was rather hard of hearing, he still heard better than the son had done. No, he said, I never sowed nor reaped any grain like this in my field. As to buying, I never bought any, for in my time money was not yet in use. Everyone grew his own corn, and when there was any need we would share with one another. I do not know where corn like this grew. Ours was larger and yielded more flour than present-day grain, but I never sowed any like this. I have, however, heard my father say that in his time the grain grew larger and yielded more flour than ours. You had better ask him. So the king sent for this old man's father, and they found him, too, and brought him before the king. He entered walking easily and without crutches. His eye was clear, his hearing good, and he spoke distinctly. The king showed him the grain, and the old grandfather looked at it and turned it about in his hand. It is long since I have seen such a fine grain, he said, and he bit a piece off and tasted it. It is the very same kind, he added. Tell me, grandfather, said the king, when and where was such corn grown? Have you ever bought any like it, or sown any in your fields? The old man replied, corn like this used to grow everywhere in my time. I lived on corn like this in my young days and fed others on it. It was grain like this that we used to sow and reap and thrash. And the king asked, tell me, grandfather, did you buy it anywhere or did you grow it yourself? The old man smiled. In my time, he answered, no one ever thought of such a sin as buying or selling bread, and we knew nothing of money. Each man had corn enough of his own. Tell me, grandfather, asked the king, where was your field? Where did you grow corn like this? And the grandfather answered, my field was God's earth. Whenever I plowed, there was my field. Land was free. It was a thing no man called his own. Labor was the only thing men called their own. Answer me two more questions, said the king. The first is, why did the earth bear such grain then and has ceased to do now? And the second is, why your grandson walks with two crutches, your son with one, and you yourself with none?  How have these things come about? And the old man answered, these things are so because men have ceased to live by their own labor and have taken to depending on the labor of others. In the old time men lived according to God's law. They had what was their own and coveted not what others produced. End of A Grain As Big As A Hen's Egg Read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake


We've got some breaking news. The police have identified the person who opened fire at Joel Osteen's mega church in Houston yesterday. William Lajanes is on this for us. William, what exactly are we learning? So we just got ahold of the search warrant and can confirm that the shooter is identified as a 36 year old, Genesee Yvonne Moreno. She had been born a man, Jeffrey Escalante from El Salvador and has a lengthy criminal record. This just happens to be the world that we live in, but more to the point, it's the world that God says that we're gonna live in. It's the world where he says that they are going to hate you. Why? Because of who you are. Remember what he says?   That's us. And so let's make no mistake about it. As our prayers grow out and it's just heartbreaking to know that this little boy, so not sure of the identity of this boy that she brought with him. I don't know what his relationship is to her. And they're saying it doesn't look like he's gonna make it. And that's the part that's just bothersome.  This man goes in who has a criminal history, multiple times, what have you. This person also has a gun. So I would presume that the gun was not purchased legally. I'm not sure. Don't know. Won't speak on that. And obviously they're not gonna speak much about this issue as far as this person being a trans, this person, their ideology towards or against the church. The person had free Palestine on, this man had free Palestine on the rifle. I don't know how much other newscasts, news agencies are gonna talk about that or mention or highlight how much this person may have had an anger or disposition towards churches. The irony is that he goes towards a church that most of us, many of us don't think it really is functioning as a true church, pretty light on scene, but this person clearly is targeting a church, but it's to be expected. Now according to the search warrant from Montgomery County, she pointed an AR-15 at the officers, off-duty officers who were in the church at the time and they fired upon her, killed her and was considered in self-defense. We're also hearing from local reports that the five-year-old who was with this woman is likely not to make it. This, the five-year-old boy has been in critical condition and according to the Houston Chronicle, it doesn't appear that that individual's gonna make it. A 57-year-old man was also shot in this altercation at Lakewood Church. They're in Houston, which of course is operated by celebrity pastor, Joel Osteen. Remember the Bible says this.  And so that's gonna happen. We are going to be attacked, vilified and scorn and even sometimes in some cases killed, shot at, what have you, threatened because of the name. And he says, blessed are we now, obviously in the moment that it's happening, we're not gonna feel that blessed, but ultimately there is a reward for those who have to suffer for the cause of Christ. But let's be clear, this is gonna happen more and more and more. We've got this person here who was born a man. I believe he is from, originally from Venezuela. I'm not sure how we got here. More and more details are gonna come out and more and more details are gonna come out about this person's background. You can pretty much guarantee yourself that the truth of it, though it'll come out, won't be pushed in the public. In other words, mainstream media is not gonna probably tell you the truth behind it. Why? Because it's the one thing that the guy of this world, Satan, doesn't want people to know that there is an intense hatred towards Christianity. Now, had this been someone going and shooting up a mosque or even a Jewish synagogue or anything like that, I could promise you that this would be front page news. There would be all this discussion about anti-Semitic attacks or anti-Palestinian attacks or what have you. But if it goes against the church, well, no harm, no foul, because after all, we all hate the church because we all hate Jesus, as he says. It's going to happen more and more and more, which is why we as Christians ought to be vigilant, ought to be proud about who we are, not back down. That's why we should never, ever give an inch an ounce or anything towards the world. We should be proud of who we serve. And remember, ultimately, even though the guy of this world is Satan, but who owns the entirety of the world, the Lord does. The Bible says that earth is the Lord's, the fullness thereof, and they're dwelling it. And so all of this belongs to him. Now, granted, it's going to hell, but long as we remember who ultimately is in charge. And so even though the information won't come out in the mainstream media the way we think it should, and an alarm should be sounded about how churches more and more, because quite as kept, more and more churches in America are being targeted and being attacked. You don't hear much about it. If it was mosque, if it were a synagogue or any other religious institution, you would hear more about it, but because it's churches, you're not going to hear very much about it because again, we are the enemy. We're the cause of all the problems. We are the anti, this, the anti, that, we are homophobic, transphobic, all these different phobics. Now what we really are is the only thing that we are, we have a fear of, we are a hellphobic, we have a fear of going to hell, and we certainly are Godphobic, meaning that we fear the Lord in a healthy way.  Then after that, sin, the body of hell. So what we'll do is, we'll continue preaching the gospel. We'll be beacons of light in this dark world. And people will still wonder why we, those that go to church for the most part, more than anyone else, and that's only that you can really measure this, those that are regular attendees, why we suffer less, why we have better mental standings, why we have greater marital status, the divorce rate amongst those that attend church regularly is lower, a lot lower than the world, suicide rates are lower, all the things that we measure socially, economically are better for those that attend church regularly, that's again, the only way we can measure who truly is a Christian, because everyone's a Christian nowadays, right? I'm a good Christian, even though I don't believe in Jesus. And so we know how the world is, and I can promise you, the truth of this will not be pushed because the God of this world doesn't want it. So in the meantime, we're gonna see this happening more and more. Unfortunately, and we've seen this, more and more people have no concern, no respect, more people become more brazen going into churches and then firing. So we have to be diligent, but we'll still be prayerful and we'll still find ourselves in heaven because those of us who love the Lord, this will not deter us. So guys, be on your knees, be praying for these churches. We pray that more and more churches would even adopt some of these security measures to keep people like this out, we've seen times in the past where certain security guards and so forth have thwarted some of these things. And so, they had a good security force there, thankfully that no one else was hurt. One person, one other person was shot in the leg and this person was taken down. I feel so bad.  I think it's a boy, five-year-old. That part I hate.  So the prayer is that more and more people will place their faith in Christ. And rather than risking the opportunity, risking the opportunity of not being with him, you get to be with him forever. Amen.


Hey guys, this week in the rundown we're looking at round two of enlisted women selected to serve aboard subs. We have some uniform updates, applications are being accepted for the new command senior chief rating, and we're answering your questions on the latest PFA changes. It's round two for the selection of enlisted women to serve aboard subs. The previous selection marked the first time enlisted females were selected to be submariners. Once again, the Navy is calling for qualified female applicants from all ratings to apply. Check out the new nav admin on NPC for the requirements. Next, the Navy plans to roll out a new cold weather parka available for purchase November 1st, as select Navy exchanges and through the NEX customer service line. Also, wear of the knit watch cap has expanded to wear by all sailors. The knit cap will be allowed when wearing a bridge coat, reefer, P coat, cold weather parka, NWU type 1 parka, or all weather coats. Sorry if you're a fan of the Eisenhower jacket, the knit cap cannot be worn with it since it's not considered cold weather outerwear. So last week we told you about the new command senior chief rating, and the Navy is now asking for applicants. The Navy is asking for highly motivated senior chiefs and master chiefs to apply to the program. The deadline to submit a package is December 7th, so be sure to get those in if you're interested. The nav admin provides the details on what you need to do and where it needs to go. Lastly, we have a couple of questions about the recent PFA policy change. Janet Tanoa wants to know, if someone wants to stay in the Navy after three PFA failures, do they have to be within standards before the next weigh-in or can they just pass the PRT? Good question. We have to be cleared by medical first to see if you're eligible to participate. If eligible, and if you pass the PRT, you will be allowed to stay in. Keith Wright asks, if you have one failure, does it stay at one if you pass the fall PRT or reset to zero? Well, the failure will remain and will not be reset to zero since all PFA failures are being reset to one. However, if you failed in Spring 2013, but passed in Spring 2016, a three-year period, then you will be reset to zero. Last question is from Keith Hoover who asks, does it also cover the reserves? Yes, the change in policy is implemented for all Navy active duty and reserve components. Well, those are some of your questions. If you have any more, email us at usnpeople at gmail.com. For the Chief of Naval Personnel, I'm MC2 L.J. Thank you for listening. Thanks for watching.


Winter break provides a rare three-point and a clean sheet away from home for Everett and FC Looking at the team head of this game And as I've been reporting the press and we were all expecting a better performance after what was essentially a winter break For the team in between a break of over two weeks before playing again And what have been a dreadful run beforehand for Marco Silva. There was a chance here and To put a bit of training in and do what? He was picked out as manager to do and motivate the players We've seen in years gone by and seasons gone past. We've had this point this season a number of times being out of the FA Cup being out of the Carabao Cup and Typically managers have used this as an opportunity for a warm weather training camp and being Saudi Arabia and Dubai in the last few years and Ultimately give Silva a chance and they have the players for a few weeks at Finch Farm and Surprisingly a few fans at the time give them an extra few days off and what resulted in a kind of a drastic change to the team today Silva said in his press conference ahead of this game He'd been quite short with a reporter who questioned whether radical change was needed and to get his Sides confidence and form back on track. He cited the start of the season and and the confidence and the style and what the team We're playing with in those first few months said that ultimately his style Provided that change at the start of the season and only a few tweaks would needed would be needed really to Return that conference back to the team. I ran or ironically then he changes the queen the team Quite drastically and with Jack Yelka coming in for a zoomer who was serving a suspension follower a card in the last game And Jack Yelka with his first start since the opening game of the season Dominic Calvert-Lewan comes in as a striker ahead of Towson and Surprisingly Snyderland and for a rare appearance not just this season But in the last two seasons coming ahead of Tom Davies and a defensive midfield pairing with a dress again a guy and Coleman retains his place at right back And captain of the squad ahead of John Joe Kenne who had a run on the team prior and walkout coming back in Bernard taking a place on the bench for Charleston on that left and in that first half I didn't think we started and brilliantly as I've seen a few people say on Twitter as well And we're kind of slow to start off with then you're saving our skin early on with a brilliant block in the opening few minutes And you couldn't notice some some changes to the style of play even though maybe the sharpness wasn't there in that open In half, I think you can notice more direct long balls to attack them forwards And you can notice that Jags and Snyderland were quite off the pace can't maybe understandably so with the lack of game time They've had not just the season but the season before they definitely started off the pace And and they were saved blushes a few times From a few individual errors. I thought Ghana look surprisingly assured next to Snyderland It's been said on toffee TV before and I think a lot of supporters agreed that in years gone by and Ghana looked a little bit unsure of his defensive role when paired with Snyderland in midfield You know, it was it was a while ago when people were describing that pairing and as a defensive powerhouse under Cooman and And the time in between as Snyderland and slipped it as a player and our eyes in terms of his quality You could see what times that they were being paired together together. Ghana wasn't quite sure of his role and Defensively as they were both trying to fight fires in the middle of the park I thought today the two of them worked well together though Ghana looked surprisingly assured next to Snyderland and that only continued as the game went on I think it was surprising to see Keane Coleman getting forward quite well Something that was a little bit of a difference to the style of style of player at least the play we had seen on the pitch this season Coleman typically we thought because of his age or Just as deterioration as a player after his injury That might be not why he's getting forward a few people level the fact that it might have been Marco Silva who'd initiated that may be not saying that his Coleman had the pace that he had before but in that opening half There was a couple of times you could see Coleman getting forward and Keane as well Surprisingly first time I'd really seen him play him with the ball out past his own half I thought Richard Lissom was frustrating particularly in that first half a few people level into him on Twitter as well and his decision-making difficulty watch at times when he's a player that has Unbelievable talent and quality on the ball and comparison to some of our others starting 11 Just this point that his decision-making isn't there sometimes Think then you cross delivery was amazing in that first half nothing really paid off, but it's unbelievable When you can see him with his back and to the opposition goal And he's still able to put a cross in like he did early on on that and first half first goal coming in just shortly afterwards and With Guilfe Sigurton in the 48th minute Coleman getting an assist again getting forward like we haven't seen him get forward at all this season And and Sigurton proving my criticism wrong in the last few reactions to games I thought his finish was absolutely brilliant and it continued on throughout the game eventually well That's that score line, but what just a really cool finish and really assured and again Just good to see Coleman get an assist again getting up that right wing and That was it really for the first half went in a one-null up at halftime not necessarily playing a better game and in Cardiff I think we were lucky at times, but Glad to be able to head and that second half and Richardson was getting forward. Well again his decision making wasn't there though And then you comes in with a professional foil early on in that second half getting what it is now A requisite yellow card from in every game I think the supporters will have a different view on that tackle depending on their outlook as in as an effort Supporter and funnily enough shortly afterwards that and it was just before Richardson came off for Bernard. I've seen Silva Shouting off that line, you know, I remember going to see when Moise was in charge the way that and when I was in the family Enclosure as a kid the way he could command a voice over the supporters shouting Fadi and shouting Wayne Loiter than any of the supporters even when the atmosphere was running up good at some park I was surprised at times then in the AFL Cup matches That I went to see that Martinez wasn't quite as vocal from that touch line And it was Graham Jones typically who would be the loudest voice Cooman maybe we got that back a little bit and it's up to debate whether that makes a difference to the way the team Can play on the pitch certainly makes an impression on us as fans I think to see how he animated and how vocal and Audible a manager can be from the touch line I thought interestingly then I seen a really furious angry Marco Silva that was picked up by the Microphones around them and you can see an intensity there a volume and an anger that I've not seen a Marco Silva this season before Whether he's trying to show that a little bit more to reassure the fans or whether he's starting to lose patience with some of the Play-of-his-players and what has been really an atrocious first season form and It was like a safe follow shortly after by an off-color Richardson coming off for Bernard who for me really made the difference and It was five minutes later that that second goal came with another really cool sure finish from guilty Sigarton And Bernard making the difference getting forward though That first touch that he has rivals anybody else in our team the way he just gets forward to that goal Obviously shot is blocked off the keeper and the rebound is buried by Sigarton and a really cool finish again Interestingly in the lead up to that goal You could see Sigarton hold off a little bit as it as Ghana ran past them and unable to come deeper from midfield He was able to use his vision to finish off a really really assured goal and That really took the sting out of the game when we went to him all up I thought Don came close a couple of times. I thought he was getting forward well And he looked strong in a striking position that was followed shortly afterwards by a change for Lookman coming on over Walcott in the 82nd minute Again, just good to see Coleman getting to the edge of the box getting forward again And probably was one of his better and performances this season. I thought interesting as well after being out of the team for What must be now at least a month maybe two and for John Joe Kenny and just on a side note as well That's and with Mc McCarthy coming in to the island squad taking helm for a second time and He made a comment earlier last week saying that Matt Dorday was Unrivaled and a right back position in the Premier League That's obviously got to get Coleman fired up He's captain of the team and it had been a first place starter at right back over the last number of years Maybe that fed into his performance today I certainly thought I seen a different shameless Coleman getting forward Good to see him on the edge of an opposition box for a change And he was there tracking back when he needed to be and to defend his own goal I thought pick for was commanding in those last few minutes Obviously that the clean sheet was massive for us absolutely massive and as much as the three points really and away from home as well I just thought that there was a few tweaks to the game that you could notice today We were playing more long balls. She was Coleman was getting forward more pick for was coming off his line more often Commanding his box more often than we'd seen this season and ultimately save their skin a couple of times for a clean sheet at the end I thought that we looked assured then towards the end of the game Ultimately with Sigurdsson coming off of Gomez and that 86 minute mark And it was it was just after Dominic Kelvin's goal and Coming in the 93rd minute. It was a powerful run by Dom doing well What I thought you could see him do at times during the game today and an assist from Giana getting his rewards for What was a good defensive performance, but I thought was able to get forward Well and again today going back to that parent of him and Snyderland I think maybe he struggled to get forward of the two of them Could struggle to get a balance and seasons gone by and the defensive play and their attack and play I thought the two of them worked really well together today And and what was a quite a difference and start in line-up to players that ultimately I don't think a lot of everyone fans would have expected they see play full 90 minutes again and Snyderland and Jai Gielka Help us get a truly rare clean sheet and win not only this season But in the last few seasons getting a clean sheet three goals and three points away from home has been rare It means There's big questions to be asked over the starting lineup for the derby this week Do Snyderland and Jack Gielka keep their places and what ultimately is our biggest game? For the rest of the season our last chance to make it a season to remember our last chance for Marco Silva To make a real impact on the fans and what he's able to do and what's been a per season For me, I don't think Jack Gielka will keep us place. I could be wrong But I think Zuma or after finishing a suspension or Mina coming back Hopefully after an injury would take his place It could be wrong though It just seemed that they were both a little bit off the pace The team like Liverpool with the pace and the movement that they have even though they may not be completely on form at the moment And I don't know if that could be seen as a risk to put Jack Gielka there Ultimately it was a response from Silva To the fans. They had a long winter break They had an opportunity to have the team of Finch Farm to practice On some of the finer details as Marco Silva said in his press conference That had been missing and the small margins he said that were missing in order us to kill teams and win games Ultimately he's done that and he's shown to the fans that given a bit of time with his team given a little bit of extra time to Impress on them his style to impress on them And what what he was hired for to be Someone who is able to improve players greatly and young players as well Ultimately he's come back with a win I think Jack Gielka and Sniderland maybe were the leadership that we were missing in recent weeks with what was particularly young but talented team Really really strong three points for us today Clean sheet away from home and exactly exactly what we would have wanted taken into the derby this week Let me know what you think in the comments