Good evening. I'm calling to order this meeting of the Arlington Select Board on Tuesday, October 17th. I am Select Board Chair Eric Helmuth. Tonight's meeting is being conducted in a hybrid format as provided by the Massachusetts Legislature. Before we begin, please note the following. First, this meeting is being conducted in the Select Board Chambers and over Zoom. It is being recorded and simultaneously broadcast on ACMI. Second, people wishing to join the meeting by Zoom can find information on how to do so on the town's website. A person participating by Zoom are reminded that you may be visible to others and that if you wish to participate, we'll ask you to provide your full name in the interest of developing a record of the meeting. However, tonight I do not anticipate opportunities for public comment. Third, all participants are advised that people may be listening who do not provide comment and those persons aren't required to identify themselves. Both Zoom participants and people watching on ACMI can follow the posted agenda materials found on the town's website, specifically the Select Board Agendas and Minutes page. Thank you very much. Thanks to my colleagues for making time for tonight's additional meeting. I know in addition to our normal quick procedural vote that we take that accommodates the Select Board's ability to gather with above reproach during the town meeting, we also had a couple of items of business. First item of business will be a public discussion with my colleagues and then following that we will move to an executive session in which time the broadcast will end. I will ask for a motion that will adjourn the entire meeting from executive session. Any comments, Mr. Attorney? No, thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Okay, so let's turn to item one, a review of the Select Board Override Commitments. So I have before you a suggestion for the Board to vote tonight for two very small changes to the overrides and I will explain the reason for them. But the substance of the change is really just for clarity, suggesting that we might for the title delete the words FY24, because that has always been a little bit ambiguous about whether or not. It's when we're going out for the override on the campaign and the election or whether or when it takes effect, but with the developments I'm about to detail it becomes even more ambiguous. And secondly, just an update on the effective date and I suggest the language which opened to edits reaffirming on today's date. And as I will detail everything else in the document I think does not need to be changed. So here are some informational remarks the sake of my colleagues and for the public. I will be repeating these remarks anticipated tonight at town meeting pending a vote of finance committee to happen at 730 that would be a no action vote on article two which appropriates or would have appropriated some funds from the coming override to fiscal year 24 for the schools. Earlier this month the typographical error was discovered on the ballot language for question one on November 7th as prepared on the direction of the town manager at the time and voted by the select board. Specifically, instead of specifying July 1st, 2023 to identify the fiscal year in which the override would take effect, it said 2024. As a result, the tax increase if approved by voters would take effect next July, not this winter and spring as originally planned. It also means that the town will ask voters for $7 million less between now and the end of fiscal year 26. When the error was discovered, the board had two options to change the language and delay the election to some extent or to proceed with the current language. After consulting with the town manager and his finance team, it became clear that we could proceed as is with the language as voted and still meet all the select board commitments to taxpayers for this override, maintaining level services in the town of schools, making specific new investments and most importantly, not asking for another override before fiscal 27 because we will still have a balanced budget through fiscal year 26. This course of action was made possible by two things. First, some very recent, positive, though likely one time financial developments that the town manager will detail shortly. It was also made possible because of the town's conservative budgeting practices that are designed to withstand unexpected events. Although it is clear that the town very much needs the override funds starting in fiscal year 25, I am pleased to report that I am very comfortable with this course of action that is good news for taxpayer wallets but remains a responsible financial approach that protects the town's ability to continue providing outstanding town and school services to our residents and to ensure responsible budgeting and financial practices for our future. So tonight, I invite discussion and our town manager will elaborate on some of the details that I alluded to. One question I have for the board is with the board's support, I would like to change the last bullet point of my remarks to say that I, instead of I am pleased to report myself, that I am pleased to report on the behalf of the select board that we are very comfortable with this course of action as is. But that's up to you. So I think the two items on our agenda for us to decide tonight are these edits to the commitments document and whether you support that change in my representation in the substance of all the remarks, honestly, on behalf of the board, because that's the only way I'm authorized to speak on your behalf. So, Mr. Afini, I'd invite you to make further elaborations at this point. Sure. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you referenced, working with the finance team, we were able to update our financial plan based on newly available information. And we did determine the town would, in fact, be in a position to meet your stated override commitments for fiscal years 24 through 26 within the confines of an override that did not take effect until next year. So, as you folks are well aware, at this time of year, important figures come into focus for municipal finance. This includes our recessors office honing in on our new growth, which exceeded our estimate. We also learn about school enrollment, which is still growing, but to a lesser extent than was conservatively and prudently forecasted. And we also have our free cash certified by the Department of Revenue. The town's free cash position was particularly strong. I believe we heard about that in detail at our last meeting from our Comptroller, Eda Cody. Of course, we had a milder winter than normal. You just jinxed us for this winter. Go ahead. But we also benefited from other favorable, perhaps temporary economic circumstances outside of our control. Ever-increasing interest rates yielded significant returns on our sizable interest-bearing accounts. And frankly, the tight labor market resulted in delays filling open positions, creating a salary surplus. So given these and a number of other circumstances, we were able to balance the long-range plan through fiscal year 26, should the ballot question pass on November 7th. And of course, this will defer consideration of a school department budget adjustment, originally contemplated by Article 2, as the Chair noted, until the spring annual town meeting, when of course we will be even further along in the current fiscal year. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Feeney. One further night I would make just by way of a technical explanation. When we learned about this, it was outside of the, or within the 35 days of the election, which we could have met to change the ballot language, which we would have had to rescind our vote and delay the election to 35 days from that date. And although it was really down to the Chair to decide whether to convene the Board to do that, I think that I was comfortable making that decision based on the Town Manager and his team's input. Needless to say though, the power's still on the Board that if the Board would want to go down that other road, we could do that tonight. That would not be my personal recommendation, but at that I will leave it to Board discussion and questions for either myself or the Town Manager. Mr. Diggins. So I'm fine with this, but I am curious as to what were the options and the financial impact of those options? So for instance, where do we land in the five year time period of the long-range plan with this current situation versus what would have happened otherwise? Yeah, that's a very fair question. I'll answer the first part of that. The options were to just proceed as it is, which means that the override collections wouldn't start and it's basically collecting $7 million less than we would have over the three year period. And or to, you know, rescind the vote, delay the election and correct the language that would have started, restarted the override. I'll turn to the Town Manager though to represent what the financial long-range plan impacts of that options would have been. Sure, I think, thank you Mr. Chair and Mr. Diggins, as you refer to what we often call the out years of the long-range plan, as you know, this discussion is predicated on an override passing and the commitment being to pursue no overrides before fiscal year 27. So when you folks originally contemplated these commitments in the amounts, we were indeed projecting a deficit in fiscal year 27 back in June of about, about just shy of $17 million. At this point in time, given the ripple effects of some of the points that I outlined below, we are of course still showing a deficit in fiscal year 27, but that has in fact been reduced to just over $15 million. So certainly there will be food for thought at a later date. Thank you. Mrs. Mohan. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First I'd like to move approval of the revised select board override commitment sheet statement. Second to your question, I appreciate, I think I saw all of our heads nodding that when you do address your remarks to tell meeting that this is a course that the entire board, select board agrees with, so I'd appreciate you relaying that unanimity. I said that word right. And thirdly, when I, well I have a third and a fourth, the fourth is easy. From this point going forward, if we could either with a quarterly or fiscal year end or fiscal start of report get as close to an approximate amount of our override stabilization account. I just think that something should go forward in years. Anyways, just so, you know, we're aware of it when we speak with people on the street. So, but I'd leave that to, and you know, perhaps Mr. DeCorsi can give some more guidance. When is the appropriate time? I'm not looking for every quarterly report. I want to see what the approximate, but as close to accurate override stabilization fund balance is, but whatever is the most physical, common, sensical time to do that, either at the beginning or the end, but I would like something between now and May 30th of next year. Whenever the town manager and chair think it's appropriate, whatever report to include it, I'm not asking for a separate thing on that. And then the third part, I'm very pleased that we're, you know, we have a solution we're continuing forward. There's been a lot of work that has been put into this. When I speak to people in the streets, I have hardly gotten anyone who has come back contradictory in terms of our teachers and our paraprofessionals on the school side, the rapid turnover that we seem to have, as well as the pay not even close to comparable or average and that needs to be corrected, as well as, and that's for our colleagues on the school committee to advocate more for and give details, but also on the same hand, the same on the town side, also same reflection on department heads and what they need to do to provide their services in the future, as well as the pay in direct order of if you go by, I haven't done it against the town manager 12, which is a different list, but the 10 communities that we use for our union employees, public works, police and fire, are just as low, if not the lowest on that list. And that's something that I know we're all committed to and we are kind of hindered on that because we are members of the select board, we're not the town manager and we're not town council and we're not the deputy town manager who's in negotiations, but I think moving forward like this gives me and my colleagues the best tools that we need to continue working on those and finding solutions for those and I think to pause and try to reset and redo wouldn't be beneficial to the town. So thank you. Sorry to be so verbose. Thank you, Mr. Hunt. Mr. Heard. Second the motion and happy to support their vice commitments. We talked about this. I mean, my comments sort of echo what I said in the last meeting is that going through the financial reports and seeing how well we're doing financially and there's certainly extenuating circumstances to our cash situation, but it shows great financial leadership. Again, gets a little bit of a delay in the bank to people's wallets and allows people to prepare for it for a couple of years. So I think that it's good that we're able to do this and it puts our residents in a better position. And I think it helps us convince voters one on election day why we need the override and that we've done everything we could. I think at the beginning of the process we put in our commitments that we wanted to show that we've exhausted all avenues to reduce spending and to make sure that we're operating on as lean a budget as we can while still providing the incredible services that the residents expect in the town. And I think this whole situation, notwithstanding the typo, I think proves that that even with a typo we can, we're able to salvage the situation. So I'm happy to move forward with the revised commitments as presented. Thank you, Mr. Herd, Mr. Degorsi. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also support Mrs. Mahan's motion and I want to thank you, Mr. Chair, for your leadership working with Mr. Feeney, Mr. McGee and the finance team to go through this and take a look once the issue was discovered. And just Mr. Feeney had mentioned the enrollment figures and just so the public's very clear, the timing of this, the enrollment figures that we look at are as of October 1. You don't get that information on October 1st. It comes out later. So this is truly a recent development. The free cash certification from the Department of Revenue came at the end of September. So again, this isn't something that was known months ago and there wasn't any action. This was very recent and that assisted your analysis and Mr. Feeney's analysis and just as Mr. Herd said, you take a look at it and you adjust and there's been excellent financial management and we've been able to take a look at that. And from the voter's perspective, as you said, instead of the additional 7 million hitting on the February and the May bill, if the override is successful, it will not hit until beginning on the August 1 preliminary bill for fiscal 25. So it's deferred. So to my way of thinking, I think similar to what Mr. Herd said, we all support the override, putting it on the ballot. There is now an even stronger argument for the override given the deferral here that the funds won't be requested until the next fiscal year is successful. By my way of thinking, an even stronger argument to support this or even showing of a greater need beginning of fiscal 25. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all. I think I'll add just a couple of further comments. First of all, I appreciate the board's support for this and you thoughtful remarks. And I agree wholeheartedly that this, fundamentally the mistake was a mistake and we all wish that it hadn't happened. But I think that first of all, our budgeting approach was successful in being able to absorb this and paid off. The second thing I would say is, to anyone who might say, well, you'll have good financial news every year, you don't need an override. I would say, first of all, that the economic history of municipal governance would say otherwise. But also that even if that were the case, but when we put this override in front of voters, it looked very much like we needed every dollar that we asked for. And that had that been the case and had we proceeded with the originally planned vote in language, if we had money, if we had surplus money that came into being, we would do what we've always done, which is make the override last longer. So we have always dealt with surpluses responsibly by telling voters, we won't come to you for at least three years. Sometimes it has been four, sometimes it's been five, sometimes it's been longer. And I couldn't agree more with Mr. Hurd's observation that now we can honestly say to the public, I think with this decision, that we are looking at all options, we are managing the money as carefully as we can, and we are not coming to the public for any more money than we really responsibly believe that we need. So I think that is that the discussion is good outcome. And I appreciate it. Any further discussion from the board? So we have a motion to make the edits that are also in the select board's agenda by the way for the public or they're watching it, and also to support my representing my previous comments on behalf of the board's home meeting by Mrs. Mahan is seconded by Mr. Hurd. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Unanimous vote. This point, our second item of business is an executive session, and I'll ask Mrs. Mahan for a motion that will take us into the executive session, adjourn us from an executive session, and also name the purpose of the executive session. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to make a motion to go into executive session to conduct strategy with respect to impending litigation. I would also like to move that when we adjourn from executive session, we also will be adjourning the regularly scheduled select board meeting of October 17, 2023, and that the select board will reconvene its town meeting session starting tonight at 8 p.m., and we will run concurrent with the duration of the special town meeting, and our adjournment for select board session at the special town meeting will be concurrent or coincide with the final night adjournment of this year's special town meeting. Thank you, do I have a second? Second. Joining on you. I just wanted to note too, Mr. Chair, through you that to have this type of open discussion regarding litigation and open session would have a detrimental impact on litigation. Thank you, sir. Yeah, it's an important rationale for the execution. Okay, so we have a vote for executive session under the parameters outlined by Mrs. Mohan, a second by Mr. DeCorsi. All in favor? Roll call. Roll call. Sorry. All done. Attorney Cunningham. Mrs. Mohan? Yes. Mr. Herd? Yes. Mr. Diggins? Yes. Mr. DeCorsi? Yes. We are an executive session.


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Hey guys, it's Nate, A.K. The Foot Account, and welcome back to the channel. It is Sunday. Happy Sunday to you guys playing this game and still grinding FIFA. Props to you if you're still in this game as well, because a lot of people have, you know, rinsed their clubs, even like they're in the first week of summer heat. People have stopped this game, even after tots. But EA, in my opinion, is still doing a decent job with this promo. A great job, actually, of bringing out content that is applicable and very usable and cost-appropriate at this time. But there's a lot of stuff that we need to talk about today with the weekend link sell-off happening, stuff going down in price, and other possible content, SBCs and stuff that we could see today that could affect the market even more. And I know a lot of you guys are wondering when should I be buying these season cards that are in packs with all the batch three stuff that's in packs. This stuff, is it gonna rise? What's happening next week even? Because of course, we know that these cards are only in packs for five days. And that's kind of questioning, because we are questioning that because most of these cards, the batch one and batch two, have been in packs for two weeks before this. They were like two week periods. This one's only one week. A lot of the SBCs expire in one week. So I do wanna talk about that. And also, I wanna talk about the big SBC that came earlier today, or earlier yesterday, and that was the Paul Pugba SBC. And the reason why I have that one completed right now and you can't see it in here is because I did this SBC earlier today through the crafting rind. I crafted them through 81 plus packs and a couple cards that I had in the club already. This was the SBC that came in FIFA Ultimate Team and it was one of the biggest Ws I think that we've seen in a while, right? This cost for this SBC, I was expecting, fully expecting for this SBC to be somewhere between 800 and like 1.2 million coins very similar to the Usman Dembele situation. And today EA dropped a banger of a SBC. This card's 300,000 coins. It was actually like 250. The fodder, SBC fodder started to rise today. So if you bought fodder that was out of packs or low rated stuff that we talked about earlier in the week this week, I have only some of it right now in my transfer list. A lot of this stuff is stuff that I had already been selling through the second part of the day. But again, these Felipe's 12,000 coins. Like I club stocked a lot of this stuff last night and it were two nights ago. A lot of the 82s even. We were talking about Jesus Nabas on Thursday at 2,000 coins. Pedro at like 2,500. Kalarov, this dude was 3,000 coins on Thursday night and he went extinct today at 10,000 coins. And the SBC fodder situation today was fantastic. The only stuff that didn't do well from an SBC fodder perspective and point of view was some of the stuff that is in packs currently. Some of the stuff that is in packs currently did not do that well just because it again got supplied today. There were three, there were two trade-all packs as a part of the Pogba SBC that so many people did and also a trade-able shapeshifters challenge that was released. So all of that supply and then of course people doing upgrade packs. So some of this stuff did rise a decent amount but it was honestly specific cards in specific areas that really did the damage. A lot of the out-of-packs cards, you know, like I bought some Courtois, I bought some Godine and those types of cards did well today because obviously their gold versions are out-of-packs. I bought Courtois at 28, 29,000 coins and I was selling today at like 32K. So that was a decent W for just like a one-days timeframe but really the big money was made with the Premier League cards that were like 84 rated, right? Gundawan is, it was like 10, 11K for most of the day today and this guy was 7,000 coins during the week. So that was a big W. If you bought some of those should you be selling your stuff right now? I honestly think you should just because it is up and we don't really know what is coming throughout the rest of the week this week but this Pogba SPC did make more moves and more waves than just through SPC Fighter because since this was so cheap, a lot of other midfielders on this game dropped in price today and there was also a rebound on some prices heading into when this SPC came out as well. That's kind of what we've seen the past, actually the past three weeks on Saturdays. If you think about what SPCs have come out on the past three weeks on Saturdays. We had Usman Dabélé, the next week we had Langley and then now we had Pogba. So every single Saturday what we've seen is panic selling heading into 6pm UK, some stuff just went lower because the SPC or the player that was released was like a substitute good for some cards and some stuff went up. Perfect example of something that was panic sold into Saturday that went up, right? People were expecting that this Pogba card would be kind of expensive, right? A lot of some of the top tier cards even and Bobbe team of the season was down at 2.2 million coins today on the PlayStation. 2.2 million coins, he has rebounded from 2.2 mil all the way back to 2.5 mil on the market right now. That's a 300K swing just today. There's many options and many other examples of cards that did the exact same thing today on the market. There's also the other side of the coin on the other side of the coin were guys like Hulet, guys like Mateus, other central midfielders in this game that are top tier used by a lot of people in foot. This Mateus card dropped 200,000 coins today. This Hulet, 3.9 mil for Hulet, 3.92 right there on a bid. He's actually back up a little bit now. He's right about 4 mil. But this guy was 4.6 million coins last weekend if you look at his graph on PlayStation. So there was a lot of midfielders that got hurt today, big time in price. And a lot of stuff rebounded back up. And a lot of people were asking me, yo, why is this stuff up in price again? Should I be selling cards right now? Should I be buying cards? Like what's happening? Is the weekend league sell off gonna happen? Yes, this happened the past two weeks as well is that the weekend league sell off was just slightly delayed and it was more focused on Sunday, which is today because of the SBCs that came out on that Saturday. Of course, if you had the Paul Pogba for birthday card, this card is absolutely in the gutter. It's like 200,000 coins. But that's kind of where you would expect it to be after the SBC that came out today. So the reason why you didn't see as much of a crash on the market as a whole today and you actually saw more of a rebound was because Pogba wasn't that expensive. 200,000 coins, 300,000 coins compared to a million. If you just, that 700,000 coin difference from where we thought the SBC was gonna be to where it actually was. You multiply that by the amount of people that logged on a foot today to do Paul Pogba. That's millions and hundreds of millions of coins probably. That'd be a bit of an overstatement, but millions of coins at least that were not wasted on SBCs today that were able to be used on the market and in the game. So that is an interesting thing that Pogba was so expensive, but still a GG from EA. And that's why you didn't see the market crash a lot today, which makes me think that you'll start to see some of these prices jump back down later today on Sunday. I honestly do think you will. And especially with one addition to content, if we do see this SBC that I'm thinking of, three eight for Neymar. So Neymar is actually kind of low right now on this game. He's actually kind of low. But this is the addition that if we see this today, I'm gonna get really interested. And I thought that this was gonna come out on Friday. It didn't. I thought I said it was gonna come out on Saturday. It didn't. But I'm gonna keep up my roll and say that this could come out today or Monday, which I think it has to come out either one of those two days. And I'm probably gonna be wrong here again, but I don't know why EA is adding this any Tots SF player to the code right now. And it hasn't been released yet. I really don't understand. The only things that I could think about as of to why this has not been released yet is if they're not going to actually release this as a pack and it's going to be a viewership reward for that whatever EA competitive things going on. If that is what this packs can be for, then I'm gonna be very upset and a lot of people are gonna be upset. And the only other issue I'm, I guess I could see them waiting for is they want people to do Pugba and then they want them to finish Weekend League and then rinse their coins into this SBC. I don't know. But what I'm really hoping for this SBC is and the fear that I have for the market according to this SBC guarantees a player from any team of the season so far. And basically I imagine that that would be any Tots cards that are in packs, but I don't know. It just depends on how EA codes that SBC. But if this SBC comes out today and it's repeatable, that SBC should not be very expensive. I'm thinking like 82 or 83 rated squad max with 50, 60 chemistry, like that's it. And if that is the squad that does come out, that SBC does come out, that's gonna be one that a lot of people wanna grind, wanna craft, because it's going to be very easy to craft. For the hardcore guys in this game, you're gonna be able to go do 81 plus double upgrades and rinse all of the cards that you don't like from that that are low rated.  So that's gonna be the ultimate grind and craft that you might be able to do this week if they do release that SBC.  It was very, very good. But now this year, if they change it up, that's gonna be kind of interesting. Other things that we could maybe see today, if EA really wanted to, they could put out the 84, double plus and the 85 to 92 SBCs as well. I don't expect those to come back out, but I guess it's somewhat possible. We also could get an objective today as well. Some people have been mentioning that they feel like we are going to get another grindable tiered objective. Now I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that or how much I agree with that because since this promo is ending in five days, 16 hours from now, I don't know if they're gonna put another summer heat card that is grindable for that long in objectives unless there's really nothing coming after this promo. But again, all the signs and everything that I see in this game right now is pointing towards there being something else that comes after this promo because basically everything expires by next Friday, except for Vidal, there's an overlap of one day and the pug where they came out today is not an expiration. So there's nothing else there to read into. I guess the other things that we could look out for and again to kind of support this method of thinking is if EA, whatever SBC that EA drops today, if it's not a player, if it's one of those Tots packs and Tots upgrades, if they set back to expire on Friday as well, I mean, with Tots not in packs or with Tots going out of packs on Friday, it really wouldn't make sense for that to be here longer. But it just, a lot of signs are pointing towards something else coming later this week on this game. We also got the League One Tots SF Guarantee today, which dude, I opened like, I think 10 of these on stream today with Shareplays and we got like five Slamanis, two Andres, maybe a Raj Kovic and then one Awar and one Marquinhos. These Tots guaranteed packs that they're re-releasing are pretty not very good at all. Somebody else mentioned, could they re-release the Ultimate Tots SBC? That's very possible since we've had all the top five Leagues now re-released. I think it's very possible we could have a Ultimate Tots SBC guaranteed pack released back onto this game. That'd be something that we could see. But I don't think there's any SBCs that are expiring very soon that I have to warn you guys about, I guess, or remind you guys to do the Bellotti, the Summer Showdown. I do expect another, well, this isn't the Summer Showdown, but this is the dynamic duo. The Summer Showdown expires in one day, six hours to get a day to do that. That game is on Monday, Calcio versus Lazio. And then I do think we will see the last, the fourth and final Summer Showdown SBC on Monday. So tomorrow, I think we'll see the very last one because I wish they would keep this going throughout the summer. But I know the seasons are coming to an end and the end of the Summer Heat promo is coming as well. So the Summer Showdown is probably gonna be ending with the last one on Monday. So I guess that's something to think about as well. And again, if you're wanting to do something in FIFA right now, craft these SBCs. Like these are pretty, they're honestly decent value. I've had some pretty good pack luck. Today I packed Tots Hulk. I packed Tots Edward, Tots, who else was there? Oh, Casamiro from the 81 plus double upgrade and some other decent items in there. Rafa, Tots, I get him a decent amount. And especially if that Tots upgrade pack does come where we get a guarantees any player from team of the season so far, depending on how that pack looks like and what it would actually give. There could be a lot of menu grinding and a lot of coins could be submitted into that causing the market to go down further. Which is why I really think that if you're going to buy cards this week, even if it's like, the only thing that I'm a bit scared of is like this Mbappe, right? This guy is not in packs. He's still about four million coins. He was 3.8 mil last week. Now he's four mil, not in packs, right? This is the type of card that I think as we go into the week and as we get toward Thursday and Friday of this next week, if we don't have any news from EA about another promo coming, you're gonna start to see a lot of people splurge and splash the cash on high tier meta cards that they haven't bought yet because they're going out of packs and it might be where a lot of people see as their last chance to buy their end game team. Basically, that could be happening a lot on Thursday of this week.  Please tell me he did. Oh, he actually rebounded, I think. He might rebound a little bit or maybe mistaken on his price. No, he definitely rebounded. This guy definitely deep rebounded. What, De Bruyne's back at two mil, man. Wow, back at two mil. So if you wanna buy any of these cards that are still in packs throughout the rest of this week, rewards is gonna supply these cards on the market at a really high amount. These TotsCards are gonna get supplied at rewards from all the packs that are opened. And then again, if we get more content throughout the week this week, if you wanna buy any TotsCards that are in packs, I would wait. Honestly, I would continue waiting. And there's only things that I would get interested in today on a Weekend League sell-off would be possibly some icons.  If he gets down to like the 440, 450 range, depending on the content that comes out, of course. If Danilo does get upgraded and Juve do win on Monday, that could be a card that rebounds. Any of these icons that are out of packs, like if you want Mid-Hullet for your endgame team, I would sincerely be looking at this card right now as a potential buy. He was 200K cheaper earlier today, but that's gonna be a card that probably bounces back just because it's so many people wanting it for their endgame squads. Even some of the other Prime icon midfielders, maybe like a Maka Lele or a Mateus or some of those all-round box-to-box cards, just watch those prices. They'll probably start rebounding earlier into the week than other things. And somebody else, a possible Twitch Prime pack? I don't know if that's gonna be coming out very soon, but supposedly a Twitch Prime pack could be coming in the somewhat near future is what I am hearing. I needed to actually check up on that and see if it's actually true. But good luck if you're playing in the Weekend League GLs. And again, remember, French links are OP, right? I don't even wanna know how many guys are using Pogba in the Weekend League right now. I'm using Conte over him, but I'm gonna try him out. I'll probably use him at some point in the rest of my games that I have to play. I'm sincerely just hoping today for a repeatable TOTS upgrade pack from EA Sports and then something that we can just grind on the menus with. And then yeah, hopefully we see some Weekend League sell-off today, because I know a lot of you guys were really hoping for the market to go down more than it actually did. And I think that if the content comes out correctly and there is Weekend League sell-off today, you should see the prices drop a decent amount more and that'll be good for a lot of you guys that are looking to buy cards for your team. So if you enjoyed this video today, smash the thumbs up on it, comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe to the channel if you're new. It's been Nate, The Foot Accountant. I will catch you guys later. Peace, out.


Welcome to the Voice of America's Newswords. A little-known crop in Ethiopia could be the answer to food shortages resulting from climate change. Staple. In Ethiopia, NSAID is a staple food. Scientists say it has the possibility to feed more than 100 million people if grown across Africa. It does not produce fruit, but every part of it can be used for making thick soups and bread. A staple is an important food that is eaten often. If something is a staple, it is used, needed, or enjoyed by many people. A staple is also a thin wire that holds paper together.


The Cube presents HPE Discover 2022, brought to you by HPE. Hey everyone, welcome back to The Cube's coverage of HPE Discover 22, live from the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We have an alumni back joining us to talk about high-performance computing and AI, Justin Hotard, EVP and general manager of HPC and AI at HPE. That's a mouthful, welcome back. It is, now it's great to be back and wow, it's great to be back in person as well. It's life-changing to be back in person. The keynote this morning was great. Dave was saying the energy that he's seen is probably the most out of any discovery that you've been at and we've been feeling that and it's only day one. Yeah, I agree and I think it's a testament to the places in the market that we're leading, the innovation we're driving. I mean, obviously the leadership in HPE GreenLake and enabling as a service for every customer, not just those in the public cloud, providing that capability and then obviously what we're doing in HPC and AI, breaking records and advancing the industry. I just saw the Q2 numbers, nice revenue growth there for HPC and AI. Talk to us about the lay of the land, what's going on, what are customers excited about? Yeah, it's a really fascinating time in this business because we just delivered the world's first exascale system, right? And that's a huge milestone for our industry, the breakthrough, 13 years ago we did the first petascale system, now we're doing the first exascale system, huge advance forward. But what's exciting too is these systems are enabling new applications, new workloads, breakthroughs in AI, the beginning of being able to do proper quantum simulations which will lead us to a much brighter future with quantum and then actually better and more granular models which have the ability to really change the world. I was telling Lisa that during the pandemic we did exascale day, it was like this co-producement. And we weren't quite at exascale yet but we could see it coming and so it was great to see it frontier and the keynote, you guys broke through that. Is that a natural evolution of HPC or are we entering a new era? Yeah, I think it's a new era and I think it's a new era for a few reasons because that breakthrough really, it starts to enable a different class of use cases and it's combined with the fact that I think, you look at where the rest of the enterprise data set has gone, we've got a lot more data, a lot more visibility to data, but we don't know how to use it and now with this computing power we can start to create new insights and new applications and so I think this is going to be a path to making HPC more broadly available and of course it introduces AI models at scale and that's really critical because AI is a buzzword, I mean lots of people say they're doing AI but to build true intelligence, not effectively a machine that learns data and then can only handle that data, but to build true intelligence where you've got something that can continue to learn and understand and grow and evolve, you need this class of system and so I think we're at the forefront of a lot of exciting innovation. In terms of innovation, how important is it that you're able to combine as a service and HPC, what does that mean for customers, for experimentation and innovation? You know a couple of things, I've actually been talking to customers about that over the last day and a half and one is you think about these systems, they're very large and they're pretty big bets if you're a customer, so getting early access to them is really key, making sure that they can migrate their software, their applications, again in our space most of our applications are custom built, whether you're a government or a private sector company that's using these systems, you're doing these are pretty specialized, so getting that early access is important and then actually what we're seeing is with the growth and explosion of insight that we can enable and some of the diversity of new accelerator partners and new processors that are on the market is actually the attraction of diversity and so making things available where customers can use multimodal systems and we've seen that in this era, like our customer Lumi in Finland, the number three fastest system in the world actually has two sides to their system, so there's a compute side, dense compute side and a dense accelerator side. So Oak Ridge National Labs was on stage with Antonio this morning, talking about Frontier, the Frontier system, I thought, what a great name, very apropos, but it was also just named the number one to the super computing top 500, that's a pretty big accomplishment, talk about the impact of what that really means. Yeah, I think a couple of things, first of all, anytime you have this breakthrough of number one, you see a massive acceleration of applications and if you really, if you look at the applications that were built because when the US Department of Energy funded these exascale products or platforms, they also funded a set of applications and so it's the ability to get more accurate Earth models for long-term climate science, it's the ability to model the electrical grid and understand better how to build resiliency into that grid. This ability is, Dr. Tarasi talked about a progressing cancer research and cancer breakthroughs. I mean, there's so many benefits to the world that we can bring with these systems. That's one element. The other big part of this breakthrough is actually a list, a lesser known list from the top 500 called the green 500 and that's where we measure performance over power consumption and what's a huge breakthrough in this system is that not only did Frontier debut at number one on the top 500, it's actually got the top two spots because it's got a small test system that also is up there, it's got the top two spots on the green 500 and that's actually a real huge breakthrough because now we're doing a ton more computation at far lesser power and that's really important because you think about these systems, ultimately you can't continue to consume power linearly with scaling up performance. There's a huge issue on our impact on our environment but it's the impact to the power grid, it's the impact to heat dissipation, there's a lot of complexities. So this breakthrough with Frontier also enables us, no pun intended, to really accelerate the capacity and scale of these systems and what we can deliver. It feels like we're entering a new renaissance of HPC, I mean I'm old enough to remember, it wasn't, recently my wife, not recently, maybe five, six years ago, my wife threw out my green thinking machines T-shirt that Danny Hillis gave me, you guys probably both too young to remember, but you had thinking machines, can do square research, convex tried to build a mini computer HPC, okay there was a lot of innovation going on around that time and then it just became too expensive and other things, the x86 happened, but it feels like now we're entering a new era of HPC, is that valid, is it true, what's that mean for HPC as an industry and for industry? Yeah, I think it's a breadth, it's a market that's opening and getting much more broader, the number of applications you can run, and we've traditionally had scientific applications, there's obviously a ton in energy and physics and some of the traditional areas that obviously the Department of Energy sponsor, but we saw this with even the COVID pandemic, our supercomputers were used to identify the spike protein, to help and validate and test these vaccines and bring them to market in record time, we saw some of the benefits of these breakthroughs and I think it's this combination of that we actually have the data, it's digital, it's captured, we're capturing it at the edge, we're capturing it and storing it obviously more broadly, so we have the access to the data and now we have the compute power to run it and the other big thing is the techniques around artificial intelligence, I mean what we're able to do with neural networks, computer vision, large language models, natural language processing, these are breakthroughs that one, require these large systems, but two, as you give them the large systems, you can actually really enable acceleration of how sophisticated these applications can get. Let's talk about the impact of the convergence of HPC and AI, what are some of the things that you're seeing now and what are some of the things that we're going to see? Yeah, so one thing I like to talk about is, it's really, it's not a convergence, I think it sometimes gets a little bit oversimplified, it's actually, it's traditional modeling and simulation, leveraging machine learning to refine the simulation and this is one of the things we talk about a lot in AI, it's using machine learning to actually create code in real time rather than humans doing it, that ability to refine the model as you're running, so we have an example, we did a, we actually launched an open source solution called SmartSim and the first application of that was climate science and it's, what it's doing is it's actually learning the data from the model as the simulation is running to provide more accurate climate prediction, but you think about that, that could be run for anything that has a complex model, you could run that for financial modeling, you can use AI and so we're seeing things like that and I think we'll continue to see that. The other side of that is using modeling and simulation to actually represent what you see in AI, so we were talking about the grid, this is one of the exascale compute projects, you could actually use, once you actually get the data and you can start modeling the behavior of every electrical endpoint in a city, you know, the meter in your house, the substation, the transformers, you can start measuring the effects of that, you can then build equations, well once you build those equations, you can then take a model because you've learned what actually happens in the real world, build the equation and then you can provide that to someone who doesn't need a exascale supercomputer to run it, but that your local energy company can better understand what's happening and they'll know, oh, there's a problem here, we need to shift the grid or respond more dynamically and hopefully that avoids brownouts or some of the catastrophic outages we've seen. So they can deploy that model which inherently has that intelligence on sort of more cost-effective systems and then apply it to a much broader range. Do any of those smart simulations on climate suggest that it's all a hoax? You don't have to answer that question. What? The temperature outside, Dave might give you a little bit of an argument to that. Tell us about quantum. What's your point of view there? Is it becoming more stable? What's HPE doing there? Yeah, so look, I think there's two things to understand with quantum. There's quantum hardware, right? Fundamentally, how, that runs very differently than how we run traditional computers. And then there's the applications and ultimately a quantum application on quantum hardware will be far more efficient in the future than anything else. We see the opportunity for, much like we see with HPC and AI, we just talked about for quantum to be complementary. It runs really well with certain applications that fabricate themselves as quantum problems and some great examples are the life sciences, obviously quantum chemistry, actually some opportunities in AI and other areas where quantum has a very, it just lends itself more naturally to the behavior of the problem. And what we believe is that in the short term we can actually model quantum effectively on these supercomputers because there's not a perfect quantum hardware replacement. Over time, we would anticipate that will evolve and we'll see quantum accelerators much like we see AI accelerators today in this space. So we think it's going to be a natural evolution and progression, but there's certain applications that are just going to be solved better by quantum and that's the future we'll run into. And you're suggesting if I understood it correctly you can start building those applications and at least modeling what those applications look like today with today's technology. That's interesting because I mean, I think it's something rudimentary compared to quantum as flash storage, right? When you got rid of the spinning disk it changed the way in which people thought about writing applications. So if I understand it, new applications that can take advantage of quantum are going to change the way in which developers write not one or a zero, it's one and virtually infinite combinations. Yeah, and actually I think that's what's compelling about the opportunity is that you can, if you think about a lot of traditional computing industry you always had to kind of wait for the hardware to be there to really write and test the application. And we even see that with our customers in HBC and AI, right? They build a model and then they actually have to optimize it across the hardware once they deploy it at scale. And with quantum what's interesting is you can actually you can actually model and make progress on the software and then as the hardware becomes available optimize it. And that's why we see this, we talk about this concept of quantum accelerators is really interesting. Where are the customer conversations these days as there's been so much evolution in HBC and AI and the technology so much change in the world in the last couple of years is it elevating up the C stack in terms of your conversations with customers wanting to come familiar with Exascale computing, for example? Yeah, I think two things. One is we see a real rise in digital sovereignty and Exascale and HPC is a core fundamental foundation. So you see what Europe is doing with the Euro HPC initiative as one example, we see the same kind of leadership coming out of the UK with the system we deployed with them in archer two. We've got many customers across the globe deploying next generation weather forecasting systems, but everybody feels they understand the foundation of having a strong super computing and HPC capability and competence and not just the hardware, the software development, the scientific research, the computational scientists to enable them to remain competitive economically. It's important for defense purposes. It's important for helping their citizens providing services and betterment. So I'd say that's one big theme. The other one is something Dave touched on before around as a service and why we think HP GreenLake will be a beautiful marriage with our HPC and AI systems over time, which is customers also are going to scale up and build really complex models and then they'll simplify them and deploy them in other places. And so there's a number of examples. We see them in places like oil and gas. We see them in manufacturing where I've got to build a really complex model, figure out what it looks like, then I can reduce it to a certain equation or application that I can then deploy so I understand what's happening and running. Because you of course, as much as I would love it, you're not going to have every enterprise around the world or every endpoint have an exascale system, right? So that ability to really provide an as a service element with HP GreenLake we think is really compelling. HPE's move into HPC, the acquisitions you've made, it really have become a differentiator for the company, hasn't it? Yeah, and I think what's unique about us today, if you look at the landscape is we're really the only system provider globally. You know, there are local players that we compete with but we are the one true global system provider. And we're also the only, I would say the only holistic innovator at the system level to credit my team on the work they're doing. But we're also very committed to open standards. We're investing in a number of places where we contribute the software assets to open source. We're doing work with standards bodies to progress and accelerate the industry and enable the ecosystem. And I think that ultimately the last thing I'd say is we are so connected in through the legacy or the legend of Hula Packard Labs which now also reports an immediate, we have these really tight ties into advanced research. And some of that advanced research which isn't just around kind of core processing silicon is really critical to enabling better applications, better use cases and accelerating the outcomes we see in these systems going forward. Can you double click on that? I wasn't aware that it kind of reported into your group. So, you know, the roots of HP are in vent, right? HP labs are renowned. It kind of lost that formula for a while and now it sounds like it's coming back. What are some of the cool things that you guys are working on? Well, let me start with a little bit of recent history. So we just talked about the Exascale program. I mean, that's a great example of where we had a public-private partnership with the Department of Energy and it wasn't just that we built a system and delivered it, but if you go back a decade ago or five years ago, there were innovations that were built to accelerate that system. One is our slingshot fabric is an example, which is a core enable of this accelerated computing environment, but others in software applications and services that allowed us to really deliver a complete solution into the market. Today, we're looking at things around trustworthy and ethical AI, so trustworthy AI in the sense that the models are accurate. And that's a challenge on two dimensions because one is the model is only as good as the data it's studying. So you need to validate that the data is accurate and then you need to really study how do I make sure that even if the data is accurate, I've got a model that then is gonna predict the right things and not call a dog a cat or a cat a mouse or whatever that is. So that's important and so that's one area. The other is future system architectures because as we've talked about before, Dave, you have this constant tension between the fabric, the interconnect, the compute and the storage and you're constantly balancing it. And so we're really looking at that. How do we do more shared memory access? How do we do more direct rights? Like looking at some future system architectures and thinking about that. And we think that's really, really critical in this part of the business because these heterogeneous systems are not saying I'm gonna have one monolithic application but I'm gonna have applications that need to take advantage of different code, different technologies at different times and be able to move that seamlessly across the architecture. We think it's gonna be a part of the hallmark of the exoscale era. Including edge, which is a completely different animal. I think that's where some disruptions is gonna bubble up here in the next decade. Yeah, and that's the last thing I'd say is as we look at AI at scale, which is another core part of the business, that can run on these large clusters, that means getting all the way down to the edge and doing inference at scale. And inference at scale is, I was about a month ago, I was at the World Economic Forum where we're talking about the space economy and to me it's the perfect example of inference because if you get a set of data that is out at Mars, it doesn't matter whether you want to push all that data back to Earth for processing or not, you don't really have a choice because it's just gonna take too long. Don't have that time. Justin, thank you so much for spending some of your time with Dave and me talking about what's going on with HBC and AI. The frontier just seems endless and very exciting. We appreciate your time on your insights. Great, thanks so much.  I thought I learned from you. A dog, I know. Nope. Nope. For Justin and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of day one from HPE Discover 22. The Cube is, guess what? The leader, the leader in live tech coverage. We'll be right back with our next guest.


If you consider the obelisk, you must consider that these things were once strategically placed, not for ceremonial purposes, but for reasons that stretched the imagination to a forgotten reality that we refer to as mythology. Wait to hear this. Sitting in Central Park, we find the oldest structure in New York, one of Cleopatra's needles. Of course, Cleopatra didn't create these marbles. It was already very ancient and decayed through millennia in her day. Instead, they take the Queen's name simply because she had one moved from Heliopolis to Alexandria just before the time of Christ. That one is now in London and coupled with one in Paris and New York they are referred to as the Cleopatra needles. The story of Central Park needle and its transportation from Egypt to America is astonishing. A highly symbolic message of the glory of the past and a meaning that the ancient power and wealth now resides within the West. The Romans in their day did take these things both to Istanbul and Rome, which were the two ancient capitals of the Roman Empire. Istanbul, having been previously referred to as Constantinople, where Emperor Theodosus had it re-erected in the 4th century. And that continued for millennia as the Roman Empire found obelisk in Egypt, transported them to Rome where they had them repaired and erected as a clear symbol of power, a demonstration of wealth, but also an understanding that these things are signifying something more. William Henry Vanderbilt, a very wealthy businessman, funded the transportation of this artifact with a hefty donation. And when the obelisk was raised, a time capsule was built and buried underneath. And William Henry Holbert put a mystery black box into the capsule and never told anyone what it was for or what was in it. However, he later admitted that he anonymously published books before later crediting himself with the anonymous publishing, claiming to offer verbatim accounts of secret conversations by elite members of society, including recorded accounts from Stephen A. Douglas, William A. Seward, and Abraham Lincoln himself. One group who were especially fascinated in the central part needle are the Freemasons. They have been a mysterious and controversial fraternity who have been involved in several critical moments in American history, including the inauguration of fellow Mason George Washington. A Mason engineer and adventurer named Henry Honeychurch Gorange discovered an incredible secret on the remaining Alexandria obelisk, a secret that might link the secretive organization to the beginning of human civilization as we know it. A city that mesmerizes the imagination for its use of the heaviest stone material available, first conceived as an idea to lure more trade opportunities between the U.S. and Egypt, this one single gesture may be one of the most significant undertakings in American history, and we are going to tell you why. On February 22, 1881, a truly monumental occasion took place in the Grand Halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The formal presentation of the so-called Cleopatra's Needle to the city of New York by the Egyptian government was taking place. The public interest this generated at the time was like the equivalent of the Queen of Egypt arriving in the city herself. There was an overwhelming excitement in the air as the wealthy New Yorkers watched in awe at this industrious symbol that was now part of their own city. Though to have stood in Heliopolis until it was toppled by Persian invaders, it lay in the sand, eroding for millennia, before the Romans salvaged it and attempted a restore under Julius Caesar. Thotmos III amassed the greatest empire in dynastic Egyptian history during his 54-year reign. The Pharaoh came to power in 1479 BC and claimed to have conquered more than 300 cities from Syria to Sudan, leading his army from a chariot sheathed in gold. To celebrate his 30th year of rule, the Pharaoh asked for a pair of pillars to flank the Sun Temple in Heliopolis. While Thotmos inscribed them with his name, two other kings later seized them and added their own self-serving hieroglyphs to the four sides. Pharaoh Ramses II who reigned from 1279 to 1212 BC inscribed his praises and left little room for Osorcon I who crammed his moniker on a lower edge. Obvious examples of these very ancient things were used to document the king's existence. Thought to have been toppled for the high gold content at the Pyramidium and thought to have been toppled by the Persian invaders, there is also evidence of scorching on the monument. This could either be from efforts to melt the gold from it or it could be remnants of whatever energies were once radiating through the device when it was a working piece of apparatus. Remembering that gold is highly conductive and along with the granite materials of the stone, it made for a perfect receiver and transmitter just like a modern pylon. By the time Augustus went to erect the obelisk in Alexandria in 13 BC, he already faced a challenge. The base of the nearly 1500 year old monument had worn or chipped away, making it impossible to erect the 240 ton 70 foot behemoth. His solution, giant bronze crabs, each weighing in at 922 pounds. The crabs were chosen for their role in Roman mythology, associated with Apollo and the sun, thereby in keeping with the Egyptian tradition. When the Americans arrived on the scene to salvage the obelisk in 1880, two of the crabs had gone missing. By a lucky turn of chance, they were discovered by divers during the process of clearing the harbor of debris in order to make way for the ship carrying the obelisk, the claws we see today are replicas with the originals on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. America missed its first chance at an obelisk in 1869 at the opening of the Suez canal. Bankrupt and beholden to European creditors, Egypt offered US officials the ancient pillar not out of generosity and friendship, but out of desperation and in exchange wanted protection from America, an alliance that still holds to this day and a flashpoint. In 1956, Tsar America warned Britain and France against any action and what became known as the Suez crisis. In 1879, newspaper headlines declared obelisk victory and railroad mogul William Vanderbilt covered the obelisk massive transport cost. There were some delays, Egyptian nationalists objected to sending the nation's patrimony overseas and a creditor of the Egyptian government threatened to place a lien on the obelisk, but Egypt signed ownership over to the United States in 1879. The New York Times remarked sorely that there is no longer any hope that we shall escape the Alexandria obelisk. On June 12, 1880, it was arriving in Staten Island and the daunting task of moving this thing to Central Park could begin. The monument arrived at the foot of West 96th Street on September 16 and took just another two hours to cross the railroad tracks along the Hudson River. On a cradle, similar to a flat car, it was winced forward on a huge movable track. A few links at a time by a steam engine using chain or cable anchored by a block to draw the car forward. It took 32 horses hitched in 16 pairs to drag the 50 ton pedestal alone through the streets of Manhattan. Hundreds of people came to the West Side to watch, although they were disappointed when they found the obelisk encased in wood. One man expressed disgust to a reporter for the evening telegram. What's the use of coming to see a box? By October 27, the obelisk had reached 96th and Broadway, where a pair of women selling apples jockeyed for position. An Egyptian guard was necessary to keep boys from riding on the obelisk with chalk, and the apple sellers spread the word that the guard had been discovered under the obelisk in Alexandria and wanted to be reburied with it in its new location. The obelisk made another turn at 86th and Broadway and arrived at the 86th Street transverse on November 25, reaching Fifth Avenue on December 16. By the 22nd that month, it turned into the park just below the new Metropolitan Museum of Art, and was hauled up a 42 foot high 870 foot long trellis of massive timbers to its current resting place. The New York Herald reported that the grounds of the museum were crowded with sightseers, the surroundings black with their stovepipe hats. On January 5, 1881, it reached the Noel Chosen as its site, a journey just shy of 10,000 feet that took 112 days, about 90 feet per day. Commander Gorridge brought with him from Egypt a massive turning apparatus, something like a two-armed catapult, and on January 22, the obelisk was turned 90 degrees in five minutes. And a great cheer rose from the thousands of stunned onlooking New Yorkers, who must have felt at the time that history was passing them by, literally. When the obelisk cornerstone was laid at Central Park's Graywack Null close to East 81st Street, at least 9,000 Freemasons marched up Fifth Avenue to commemorate it with a ceremony. New York merchants, including a needle company, doled out trading cards in honor of the artifact, showing the queen of the now-threading, not a needle, but an obelisk. A candy stand trailed the monument on the voyage to its new home, while another merchant sold Cleopatra dates in an obelisk-shaped box. Before it was erected, a time capsule was buried under its base, with documents including the 1870 census, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, Webster's Dictionary, and a small box from William Henry Holbert. Its complete contents are unknown. By 1885, the obelisk was showing signs that it was struggling in the harsh winters of New York City. Not only that, but incredibly, it had become shooting practice with the discovery of flattened bullets at the site. This, along with colonies of plants forming on the monument in the cracks and expanding the damage. This forced the city to remove 800 pounds worth of granite chips and coated it with paraffin to prevent plant growth. The removal of the granite chips was the greatest damage ever applied to the obelisk, and this was done deliberately in an effort to preserve it. However, when searching for the granite at the Natural History Museum in 1983, it appears that the city had forgotten where they had placed them, either that or they were discarded. The paraffin applied to preserve the stone also reacted with the granite color, which used to be pink, sad, but true. As of 2019, the structure was no longer in active decay.