So, the last principle that we're going to look at has to do with the idea that memory systems and attention systems in the brain are vital to learning. So there were several groupings of questions, again a lot about the research, but also several questions that had to do with how does the combination of attention and memory work to lead to learning. So what are the different ways that they interact in the brain? So we're going to get to that in a second. And other people who asked questions that had to do with this idea of, you know, is this really true? Because is it safe to say that without memory you're always starting from the beginning? Basically, the way your brain takes in information, sensory perception, and then reviewing information first. What do I already know about this topic before deciding to spend the energy to do new learning does indeed mean that if you don't have anything to latch on to as a reference point for new information, an old memory that actually serves to help you learn something new, then your brain will have to actually start from scratch. So it is very much as you're saying that unless there is something that we already know about the topic, unless we do find a memory that we can hook onto, it is starting from scratch. So this is why it's key in educational settings to help students to trigger or to stimulate that recognition of prior memories or prior experiences that are related to the new concepts. There were also a small group of questions that had to do with what are the differences between this whole learning process between genders, doing age, and right and left brain functions? First of all, there is no difference between genders. The memory processing systems and attention systems in the brain are very similar given the natural uniqueness of all brains. But there is no difference between genders based on attention systems and memory systems in the brain. Similarly, the main difference by age has a lot more to do with the level of experience. So we know that novice brains look like they're very active compared to expert brains. So brains that have rehearsed something a long time use a lot less energy for that same task. So over time, with age, if something was learned correctly, then there's less energy used in the brain. But the memory systems and attention systems are identical. And then this last point about differences between right and left brain functions, we really don't make that distinction anymore because the neural imaging we have now is really so precise that it shows us there's really nothing that is just isolated to one hemisphere of the brain. We're always talking about complex neural networks that cross the hemispheres and that have key hubs. So we're not talking about localizationalism. So there's not a specific functions that happen in left brain or right brain. You have one brain, and it's not like you're logical and creative. Those things are myths. Could be that you have key nodes, key areas of the brain that are important in one hemisphere or another. But it's not that they're different functions, complete functions. For example, even something, for example, like language that we thought was very much a left hemisphere function. We now see that humor interpretation intonation, far greater nodes located in the right hemisphere. But it's a total network process, not just in a single location. OK? So this first person really taps into a very important point about understanding risk and protective factors. What are the barriers to attention? And what are the barriers to processing long-term memory? And it might sound like a cop-out, but the truth of the matter is almost all questions and education can be answered with, it depends. It depends on the individual. It depends on how well-developed those attentional networks are already. It depends on his prior experiences. So the barriers depend on the individual. At a more global level, you can say the fight for attention.  It can pay to different things. So a barrier to attention could be distractions, for example. But what distracts one person doesn't necessarily distract another. OK? Also, barriers to processing long-term memory. We may have mentioned before, and I think it's really worth emphasizing again, that memory gets from short to long term really based on three global criteria. It can get into from short to long term really fast, like even just one experience with a concept can get into your brain really fast if it has survival values. So if you stick your fork into a light socket, you know, you learn really quickly that that's not something you should do, right? So survival value is one thing. The second thing that we rely on mostly in schools has to do with association. So if something new, for example, if I'm going to teach you subtraction and you already know addition, then if it's easily easy to associate the new idea with the old idea, then that facilitates movement from short term to long term, right? Or finally, the third point and something that we don't use enough in school is taking advantage of the emotional pull. If you are interested, you learn really quickly. If there's something that really draws your attention, you learn really quickly. So those three criteria are things that actually can be barriers or they can be facilitators of getting information into long term memory. The second question has to do with how do these two systems interact? When we understand the subsystems of memory, right? Short, working long, the subsystems of attention, alerting, orienting, sustaining, executive decisions. When we understand these subsystems, what's really important to note is that many, many times working memory as well as the alerting and sustaining systems are often confused. They seem very similar in behavioral things. So when somebody seems to be lost with a concept, you really have to ask yourself, is this a question of memory or is this a question of attention? Without knowing exactly the precise subsystem that's weak, it's very hard to remediate that. And this last person mentions, you know, okay, memory and attention are two main requirements for learning, but what about experiencing? And this is a really great observation. So anything that you experience in your world, the key idea here is it's automatically impaired with prior knowledge. You know, what do I already know about this? But your experience is also you pay attention only to a fraction of everything that's going on in your life, right? So experiences are very heavily connected to this idea of memory and attention. So very good observation there. The second person here also taps into another very important relationship, and that has to do with motivation. This person writes, I'm very interested in this topic, would be interested in having more conversations around attention and motivation. So motivation is an extremely important factor in learning, but one of the most difficult things to study because what motivates one individual doesn't necessarily motivate other individuals, and that's what's really difficult. We do know that there's a direct correlation, though, between high levels of motivation. You do pay attention to that, obviously, but then you also spend more time rehearsing whatever that skill set is, which means that it enhances memory as well. So motivation is directly connected to memory and attention and does play a huge role in learning. So this teacher, and I think it looks like a group of teachers have just really taken the time to identify that there's a specific student that has some difficulties with attention and with working memory difficulties. So this is phenomenal. If this group of teachers has really reached this level of diagnosis of understanding specifically that there are working memory difficulties that need to be attended to and specific types of attention problems, fantastic, because diagnosis is half of the solution. Once you know what types of problems need remediation, then you can make very specific recommendations. Some research that I was doing for a book that I'm writing has to do with these things of brain training or cognitive interventions. Do these really work? There are many types of brain training that work on subsystems of memory and subsystems of attention. For example, this particular intervention works only on working memory. That's great. It doesn't help general cognition, it helps working memory. But since working memory, since memory itself is important for learning, this is an element of learning. This one does inhibitory control. This one focuses on kids with ADHD and other one on decision making. So there are different types of interventions for different subset problems of memory and attention. So this group is phenomenal. If you can really have a clear diagnosis that that's exactly what the difficulty is, then there are very specific recommendations for what that kid can do to enhance working memory, for example. A key here though is that oftentimes there can be a misdiagnosis. For example, we know that some physiological states, for example, not sleeping well, can make you look like you have attention and working memory problems. So it's really, really important to hone in to make sure that the diagnosis is clear before suggesting an intervention. Again, here the teacher seemed to note that it's attention and working memory, but it could be one or the other. So it's really important to figure out what the kid really needs because you can assign different types of interventions for that kid, but it can also be frustrating for the child because one thing might not serve him at all because that isn't addressing his real key problems. So understanding what subsystem of memory or what subsystem of attention is actually causing the problem with the learning is really key to deciding what types of interventions are gonna be most effective. This teacher is called attention, what's the difference between needing memory and rejecting memorization? That is a wonderful observation because we have this real difficulty right now where a lot of us are against this idea of general rote memorization. Why make kids memorize, for example, the multiplication tables if he has no idea what that means? That is a really good observation and we know that general criticisms of memoristic work are clear and justified. It doesn't mean a lot that the kid can just pair it back information. So we are not for rote memorization in that sense. However, having said that, you do need to memorize things to be able to discuss them further. For example, if you don't know all the amendments to the Constitution, it's really hard to make reference and talk about the content there. Or to memorize that multiplication table. Without knowing that, it's very difficult to then to go into deeper learning. So I think the main idea is to reject general rote memorization as an end in itself, but to appreciate it as a means to getting to deeper learning. His last two teachers targeted that there's a student that has some difficulties with attention and or with memory networks. And the key here is to understand which of these attention networks is causing the difficulty. And there are many people who are saying, give me some actual research. What is really happening in the field in these areas? I'd like to highly recommend, for those of you with an interest for more clearly understanding attentional networks, Michael Posner is probably the God of attentional networks. He's written more than 200 articles and only focuses on this particular question. And most recently, he looked and made past judgment on certain brain training structures. Can you actually enhance? How do you enhance attentional networks in the brain? Step number one is to understand these different attentional networks, the alerting and orienting system.  But then there's the sustaining system. So basically, how do you pay attention for a long period of time? For example, to be able to read a chapter in a book, that is sustained attention. But he also described something called the executive network, which is making that decision that even though I have something calling on my alerting system in the window, the kids playing outside, I can make a decision that I'm going to pay attention to what I'm reading, for example. So what he has measured and shown that these are very different systems in the brain, they are traveling different neural networks. And so teachers need to understand that when they think the class is being unruly and they clap their hands or they flick the light switch on and off, they're actually enhancing the alerting system. The kids will now, their alerting system is on high, they'll pay attention for that moment. But that doesn't mean that they're going to sustain that attention for the length of the class lesson. So he talks about different ways to enhance that and I'd really like to motivate you to look into his research here. He has quite a lot of scholarly articles, especially this one summary article that was written looking at this. He's been studying this for more than 25 years now about attentional networks in the brain and has really been a pioneer in this area. So if you're interested in some concrete research about attentional systems, I highly recommend you look at Michael Posner's work. Similarly, if you're interested in understanding neural networks of the brain related to memory systems, especially in childhood, some real geniuses in the field, you know, Larry Squire is phenomenal. The work by Klingburg is excellent. So Brian Butterworth has spent a lot of time looking at working memory systems for mathematical interventions. So depending on which memory system, depending on the information, the basic information that you're looking for, what types of memory system, there are different authors that would be recommended. One of the most challenging questions here is, you know, what is the research that backs up this point? But the point is multiple and I guess that's the real difficulty in citing specific people to look at because it depends on which aspect of the statement we're looking at. As we mentioned in the general observations, these short statements, they're useful because they're easy to memorize but they can be really troublesome because once they're really unpacked, there's so many pieces to them that it really is difficult to respond to a request for what's a good activity for enhancing memory. Again, the answer is it depends. It depends on what the prior knowledge is of that individual, what kind of memory system you want to enhance, what is the subject area at hand. So there's many different angles to this. So depending on that individual that we're talking about though, there's gonna be different answers. So for the global answer about how does the brain process memory and attention and how does that lead to learning, please look at those initial videos that I mentioned to you about neuroanatomy and also about plasticity that will give you a global overview and then we can begin to refine the questions about what specific elements or sub elements of memory and attention we wanna focus on. Then it would be easier to show you the specific evidence based on the specific angle. For example, if you're saying, I know that this kid has working memory problems and I suspect he has dyscalculia, I'll say genius in this field, Brian Butterworth, Shashank Varma, read their work. So the more precise the question, the easier it is to find a specific author because most of the work in neuroscience is really, really refined to extremely specific questions. For example, how and to what extent is the sustaining attention network in the brain enhanced by daily reading practice? Something really clear like that, we have answers to that. But saying how do you enhance attention is a lot more difficult as a question. So I'd like to motivate you to please look at the global overview videos that have been shared with you now and then we can talk about specific memory strategies for a particular case. Then it's far easier to show you the concrete evidence for that particular question. Another person asked about the role of homework. Does homework really enhance these systems or enhance learning? Homework can be a really controversial topic, but homework is really useful for those kids who need to repeat specific information. This means for a kid who might have gaps in prior knowledge, homework can really help to fill in those gaps. However, if a kid has an attention problem, homework is not likely going to contribute to that. So depending on which angle of learning that we're looking at, is it memory, is it attention? Then we can decide whether or not more homework would be a key contributor to his success or not. And again, we have several questions more generally. What kind of attention techniques work? What kind of memory exercises work? It's very hard to address them more globally, but I can highly recommend. Doug Fisher has done a great job in this new book, just came out a couple months ago that focuses on using the information from John Hattie's work related to attentional systems as well and keeping kids engaged. What does that mean? So what are some specific techniques that keep students engaged, which is directly related to attention networks? And a lot of these also have to do with personalizing this learning experience. Getting attention means kids are actually motivated to learn, but they're motivated to learn because they're engaged in the topic or they want to learn. So his whole take on this is on the development of learning environments more than anything habituated practices within classrooms that actually enhance the probability of that engagement which in turn leads to better attention, which because of the amount of time on task enhances memory systems, so learning is enhanced. So these are things that I could recommend generally, but as I said previously, to get more specific literature, especially from the neurosciences, if we can hone in on precisely which memory systems and which attention systems, then it's easier to recommend the literature. This first feature is pointing out something that's really wonderful and deep reflection. I especially want to learn about how to coach students to improve their ability to attend to a subject or activity that they don't find as inherently interesting as the things that give them pleasure. So there's some things that kids are naturally gravitated to that they enjoy and other things that they just have to learn, right? And this teacher reflects, is this really just building willpower? Is willpower like a muscle? Should I just strengthen this? And the teacher ends by saying a lot of my work is in coaching students with an executive function weaknesses. So I'm interested in attention within that context. A wonderful identification when you say executive function weaknesses, executive functions on the global level are just three things, right? That's working memory, inhibitory control, which is attention, right? Deciding on what to pay attention to and cognitive flexibility. Good executive functioning systems will lead to other things like problem solving skills and all the rest of that. But these three are the measurable networks in the brain that we can say, okay, this can be enhanced with executive function training, right? So you're talking about one of those three things, which is memory and attention basically. Anyways, this question gets down to, I think that there's two big reflections here. One is that from an angle, you can philosophically tell your kids, you love what you do or you learn from it. And if you're lucky, you can do both. I think that that's a great motto to sort of live with. You're gonna love what you do or you're gonna learn from it. And sometimes there are things that you have to do and learn that might not be as fun. That's one way to go about doing this, but it could be even more efficient if we look at, again, going back to the motivational systems. I think we've talked about this a couple times before. Motivation is extremely complex and it's most limited stage. We can express things as sort of saying there's two key pairs of motivators, right? You're either intrinsically motivated or extrinsically motivated. Do you wanna do things because you wanna do them or because other people are forcing you to do that? Okay. And on the other side, there's positive motivation or negative motivation. The difficulty with going to this idea of we're gonna have to just develop this willpower. Something you just have to work all the way through and you'll get to the other side of it. That is possible, but it can be taken by some kids as being extrinsic and negative as a motivator. Having said that, there are real benefits to learning that life isn't always about just what you find fun, right? Building up resiliency, building up the ability to bounce back or to take on challenges that you weren't always crazy about or the possibility of celebrating failure and then moving on.  So there are benefits to getting kids to pay attention to things that they might not always find fun and just life lessons there. That's great. But there are also benefits in implicitly grabbing onto their own attention systems by finding a way that the new information actually is something of interest to them. So it might sound sort of sneaky, but getting to one objective through a secondary source is not always all bad. I remember that when my kids were little, I wanted them to read more in German for pleasure. They normally would choose books in English for pleasure, but I was able to find something that they already liked, which was the Guinness Book of World Records. They love that. But I brought it home in German and they said, can I brought the Guinness Book of World Records? Yay, and it's like, it's in German. We don't care, just give us the book, right? So we know that there's other ways that you can also hook students into things that they don't necessarily inherently find pleasing or easy to do by linking it to something that they already like or want to do. Obviously this changes with every single context, every single individual kid. So it's really hard to sort of blanketly respond to this, but you're definitely onto something. This could definitely work. Building a willpower is definitely one way to go about doing this. Another way might be to try to find other benefits of learning that information that the kid values that might not be the subject matter itself, but what he can gain or she can gain through the actual learning as well. So multiple ways of getting to the school. By getting to the second part of this question, which talks about helping kids with executive function weaknesses, the main key thing here is that you cannot measure executive function in the brain, like generically. When you look at studies in neuroscience about executive function measurement, key to remember is that you can't really measure executive functions in the brain. You have to be looking at one of these sub-network systems. For example, this one measures executive function as it relates to inhibitory control. This other study just looks at how executive functions relate to working memory. So basically all studies that look at executive functions with the exception of bilingual studies, bilingual studies actually show that all three elements, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility are enhanced. But otherwise, in general, most studies that you'll find when you look at executive functions will cover only one of these sub-areas. So when we talk about enhancing or improving executive function weaknesses, as we mentioned before, one of the best things is to really break the standard to its smaller parts. Which element of the executive functions, the memory function or attention function, does it have to do with working memory? Does it have to do with inhibitory control? Or is it this cognitive flexibility which has to do with this combination of both these? But which of these are you trying to improve in that student? And then when we know that, then it's really a lot easier to make recommendations of specific literature or concrete studies that document that in growing brains depending on the age of the individual as well, right? This last teacher points to a really common problem. I've been frustrated by the lack of memory my students have from one year to the next, they don't remember core concepts. I'd like to use a sample that I put in a previous video that had to do with this spiral reflection, this idea of returning to core concepts multiple times over the lifespan of a kid in learning contexts. This works beautifully when you have mastery learning goals that go through, you know, kindergarten through 12th grade. We have a very coherent vision of this and everybody is reinforcing those key elements all the time so that we're building off of core concepts but also reinforcing them. It's down to this core concept of neuroconstructivism, you know how you reinforce learning from one base level to a higher level order. Combined with Ruer's work back in the 70s and 80s where he basically said there's a spiral curriculum. If we can work in a way that we can reinforce core concepts over time, then their retrieval is going to be easier. But why, if you look at this from a neuroscientific perspective, it's because you are increasing, enhancing this smiling teeth around these links so that the speed of retrieval is much faster. The difficulty comes in as this teacher is pointing out, you know, why can't they remember core concepts is oftentimes they're not rehearsed enough. We do tend in our educational systems to have a chapter on algebra then we move right on to geometry. We don't link the ideas. So one way that we can aid teachers and reduce the level of frustration on all parts is that to enhance this level of repetition and also the authentic learning that is attached to this. So students pay attention to things that have an impact in their real life and then they memorize things.  But sometimes, and especially in the sciences, there are oftentimes concepts that are intangible and very difficult for students to have a real life experience with. So unless we use things like analogies to show links between concepts and unless we reinforce those over time multiple times, the students won't be able to draw on that information. But there are school systems that do an excellent job of this to a German school system, which to this date, I think that my kids could tell you any math concept they ever learned because they did use this repetitive spiral learning in which they oftentimes return to the concept over and over and over again so that it became second nature. They used that same math concept so many times in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, 10th grade, that it was really cemented there into their brain. But this has to do with looking, having a longer term vision of our entire curriculum and how we reinforce concepts within classroom settings. If you're interested in looking at this idea of mastery concepts, especially in science, please do send me an email and I'll give you some specific literature related to that. And this first teacher here, I love this positive nature here. It's like, I'd love to learn strategies or scaffolding to help students to maintain and sustain their sustenance and strengthen their ability to remember skills and concepts so that they can continually build and connect to others and expand their knowledge. And this could be life changing, having a variety of strategies could allow more students to feel empowered and self-managed and self-monitoring and to add this to their own toolkit and to develop this overall general can do mindset. So what are these things that we can do as a habituated practice within our classroom settings that help students first think to themselves, okay, what do I already know about this subject? Okay, now what do I want to know about this subject to help maintain the attention is caught there? Okay, so once you've focused on what you already know about the information and why it's important to you to learn, that's the combination for a great motivation to continue on to learning. I admire this goal here, it's a wonderful observation and I think it connects back to several points made in earlier videos. And that is, it really does help if the students understand this, if they understand how important it is to have enough repetition to establish, if they can have the right attitude towards their own learning, how all of that will facilitate their learning. It also helps for them to reflect on the general risk and protective factors that they might have as if they've just locked down, I've never liked art, I've never been good at it and I never will be that kind of a mindset, that very fixed and closed mindset. If they learn how that actually is a self-fulfilling prophecy, if they learn that they've just set up their own circumstances for failure, maybe they can take steps towards remediating that. So helping kids understand how these systems work in their own brains is also a big step towards helping them take control of their own learning. This teacher had a long and deep reflection about the time that we spend in our class with the students is really valuable time and there's a lot of things we spend time on, for example, memorizing formulas with the kids or doing things that are Google-able knowledge. I think that the recommendation here is that can we, front-load information, dates, facts, figures, formulas, things that are just factual-based and have that sent to the student before they come to the actual face-to-face class so that when we're together, we can actually pull that apart, we can actually use that information, we can make it into usable knowledge that they actually see the direct application within their own context. So the idea here is to not get rid of general memorization or learning of facts, that's vital to learning, right? The idea is that how do we proportion out the time that we have face-to-face with those students? Could our face-to-face time be best used, doing certain things, and then could homework time or online learning time be used in another way? So can you leverage, for example, the technology to say, here's a quick quiz, here are the basic vocabulary words. Do this quiz until you get 100 and then come to class. Then you in the class and the students themselves, we can say, okay, we all share this fundamental definitions and then now we can build on that. So we're not spending time in the class going through certain core concepts, but we're using them in the class so we get to deeper knowledge. And that in and of itself is a way to keep the students' attention and to make sure that they have memorized the core concepts necessary off of which we can build new ideas or deeper ideas when we're together. Again, there are requests for more specific information. How does this really work in a high school teaching? Again, I go back and I'm gonna tell you it depends. It depends on what your class is and what you think the difficulty is. Is it memory problems, is it attention problems? For example, if you think it has to do with authentic learning, the kids aren't paying attention because they don't see the utility of information, or you might look at some of the studies by Yeager, that's very important. If you wanna look at the impacts of things that are external to, for example, sleep times, the policy that your school has about what time you start school, there's a lot of great research being done by Carcasson, also by Walts from other people. Or if you wanna look at the neural networks of attention, for example, I mentioned that Michael Posner has done some wonderful work. His research on attending to learn school subjects and high school students is fascinating. Or if you wanna look at specific modalities of learning, what is the attention level when you integrate video instruction into your general class? So some people look at modalities, other people look at things like the fascinating research that's being done around the world to look at how brains actually are getting in sync with each other depending on different teaching techniques. There's wonderful research being done in Queensland Brain Institute, for example, in which they have actual science classrooms for middle and high school students. They keep them there for six, seven weeks where they do their classes, but they're totally wired up. And so they see what types of interactions have what effects on the general stress levels of students in the classroom. But it really, really depends on the age group, the topic, whether or not we're talking about memory or whether or not we're talking about attention. So finally, I wanna see how the emerging research intersects with long-standing practices in arts education. If you're talking about using arts to facilitate the learning of other domain area, for example, using arts and learn math, or if you're talking about teaching arts within school, and what does that have to do with memory and attention? The first one, like using arts integration into other subject areas, Mary-Elle Hardiman is really a wonderful expert in this. She also runs the mind brain and teaching program at Johns Hopkins University, and her whole focus is on creativity, the arts, and what this does to the changing and maturing brain. So I would really recommend that. If it's more on specific aspects of arts education, it'd be good to know which sub-element. So is it music education or is it painting? Because there are different studies that exist that can be recommended. So if you can give me some more details about that, I'd be very happy to try to recommend some additional readings. The second question about helping a student who has ADHD learn Chinese, important to know that basically learning, Chinese are learning any other foreign language. I'm not sure though if this is somebody who is a native Chinese speaker who's needing to improve Chinese, or if this is an English speaker going into Chinese, but there are multiple suggestions about using technology to support interventions with students with learning disabilities. There are specific studies on ADHD and language learning in general. There are other studies that are culturally bound talking about Chinese teacher expectations of American students. So it sort of depends on the angle of the question. So if you have the chance to clarify that a bit more, I'll be very happy to suggest some other specific research in this area. ADHD and the brain and studies in general are fascinating. Really point to the idea that we are over diagnosing a lot of things that tend to look like attentional problems, but they may be other types of behavioral problems, things related to sleep and other things like that. But kids who really do have ADHD, there is a lot of research going on now about what is this slightly different rewiring and what can we do about this? So if you're interested in more the ADHD angle to it, that's great. Or if you wanna know more about the language angle, please let me know so that I can be more specific in the literature that I'm recommending. There's another question from the language department about whether mechanical drills, and I'd like to extend this beyond the language department, do mechanical drills in learning have a place in today's teaching? Again, the answer is it depends. What is your objective?  If that's your objective that they can respond, then go for it. But most people have higher order objectives that don't have to do with just regurgitating information. So depending on the objective that you have, you can say there's a place or not for mechanical drills. We know that there is a place for memory. So we know that sometimes memory can be enhanced through mechanical drills, but not at the high level we want. You can memorize the multiplication tables, but we need to get together to understand the conceptual understanding. You can memorize the poem, but we need to get together and discuss whether or not you can analyze that poem, right? So the quick answer is it depends on what your objectives are, but then you have this counterargument that doing things mechanically does not enhance attention. So you might be in increasing memory systems, but you definitely like getting them to pay attention when it's mechanistic. And so we have to think about this question in a more global way. It depends on your objective. You can achieve things through mechanical drills, but I would say that we have much higher expectations of students in schools now than just to pair it back the information that's been given to them. This last person is mentioning a similar challenge that the physics teacher had a couple of questions ago which had to do with long-term attention of information. And I go back to this idea of this spiral learning. If it's not used, it won't be remembered. So use it or lose it, right? So part of the difficulty is that information can be hunkered down somewhere in these neural connections, but unless they were rehearsed frequently, retrieval is slowed. So unless the information is used with a certain frequency, it won't be recalled easily. This first question is languages learned passively and for the most part, not intentionally, how do we foster students in language class where language learning is very intentional and also requires a lot of attention and also a lot of use of memory? So this gets to an interesting split between what is explicit instruction, what is implicit instruction and what is a passive understanding of information versus an active use of that information, right? And so that's a really fascinating question, but it gets to the very first point we had about memory and attention and that's that there are multiple subsystems. It's not just memory and attention. It's that there are multiple subsystems within each of these and they're stimulated by different types of activities in the classroom. So fluid use of language might not necessarily seem like it's based on an explicit instruction, but it is definitely based on memory systems so that that person has those certain sentence patterns rehearsed in their minds so that they can easily and fluidly use that information. And to pay attention to what is the subject matter, be able to respond is definitely something that is incorporated, whether it's passive or active use of the language, right? Really beautiful and subtle observation there, but if we expand the definitions of what we mean by memory and attention, I think you'll see that it's the not contradictory ideas, passive learning versus intentionality and learning. Language is so important as it mediates everything that we do, all learning that we do is mediated by this understanding of language. So your point is really important and I think it's important to recognize that passive use or being able to use language fluidly without necessarily reaching this level of expertise that you can incorporate things that were learned passively into your active use of language is not contradictory to intentional learning objectives in language classrooms. And this last point gets to asking about current research on effective scaffolding and online interactions. This is key to another point that we mentioned earlier about using perhaps your online Canvas platform to differentiate homework where you can have the reinforcement, the strengthening of memory done there and also you can do it in even gaming formats. Gamification of learning is one of the biggest growing industries right now and so there's plenty of gaming apps that can be used to enhance memory and attention subsystems that can be embedded into your Canvas course and can be used as homework if you like, if you think that students are in need of rehearsal of different attentional networks or memory systems. But again, the key is to understand and on your part know, what do I need to suggest to the student to do? Which sub-element of memory or attention needs rehearsing? And I think this feeds in really naturally and importantly to this idea of learning differences. We all have learning differences and there's gonna be some people who are far ahead and some people who are far behind on certain topics throughout the year. I think it would be a phenomenal option to be able to differentiate the homework that they get and to be able to remediate skillsets as well as memory systems and attention systems by using an online platform. I think the main point to remember here about students with learning challenges, especially with memory and attention, is celebrate the idea that everything can improve. Your brain adapts to what it does most. So rehearsal of memory systems or attention systems does lead to improvement in that. When we talked about these cognitive enhancers, these brain training activities, it's shown that with a certain level of repetition, all of them show improvements in the sub-area that they look at. They don't all improve cognition or executive functions. They improve working memory specifically or they improve sustained attention specifically or peripheral attention specifically. But there's no doubt that with rehearsal, your brain adapts to that. So there are interventions we can do for all levels of learners. Those struggling, those with per working memory with per attention systems can improve with rehearsal. It doesn't always have to be in online systems. I'm just sort of connecting this to the last point that we could leverage technology a bit better that would allow the student to be more satisfied with their own learning experiences and the time on task, as well as also free up the teacher's time within a class setting to be able to focus on the group needs and then differentiate homework individually through the online platform. So then the flip side of this is this other question we had about, are attention spans really getting worse due to tech and screens and all the rest of this? The main idea is that your brain adapts to what it does most. So if it's only spending time doing video games with quick changes or whatever or you're passively watching TV, obviously that affects attention systems in the brain. On the flip side though, you can extend your memory systems and attention systems through online activities, gamification of certain educational objectives that do actually take advantage of attention systems. A concrete example is the best selling game in history is Mario, right? And Mario has multiple levels of advancement, but it also has this incredibly intelligent algorithm that more or less you achieve about 70%. If you start to go below 70%, the program actually lowers the level of difficulty. And if you actually achieve higher than the 70%, it makes the task slightly more difficult. Why? Because it wants to keep you hooked on the game. So the longer you play it, the better. So what's the idea here is that gaming technology right now is leveraging the same algorithm, these same ideas to keep kids hooked on learning academic content. This keeps you hooked. It keeps your attention focused, but the repetition is so much that your memory is enhanced. So you've got memory and attention, therefore you're gonna have better learning. Okay, with that, that's the last of the questions. I offer my apologies if some of these responses were too short, but I do invite you to write to me with more specifics. If you say, listen, I don't feel like your answer to this question was adequate. Can you give me some more information? Or I wanna offer some more details because I'd like to know who the go-to people are and the research right now on this specific area of study. Please let me know. I do wanna support you. And the more specific the questions, the better. So I'm looking forward to staying in touch and to growing with you with these principles. Thanks a lot.


The next thing I would also encourage you to do is to slowly progress your mileage to a 40 mile per run week goal. Your bones can only handle 10% more than they were doing the week before. So when you come here to Bud's, you will be running at least 40 miles per week. So it should be a good goal for you to slowly over time progress your mileage to at least 40 miles per week running. And as I mentioned before, with the unstable sand here, it's also a good idea that at least 30% of your training mileage should occur on some kind of unstable terrain. Whether that's trail running in a local park or running at the beach like we have here in sand or some country dirt road, I don't really have a preference. I just really recommend that you make sure that 30% of your training mileage occurs on some type of unstable terrain. Also I would say that in terms of progressing your mileage, you should never run more than 10% more than you did the week before. A slow 10% progression each week from a very comfortable familiar mileage to start from is how you should progress. So if you're comfortably running 20 miles a week, we're only talking about a 2 mile increase every couple weeks until you are getting up to some decent mileage. So you should really strive to a 40 mile run week and you should make a slow, steady effort no more than 10% more than you were doing the week before.


4, 5, 2, 2, 2, 6, 8, 1, 3, 4. Let me know when they're moving mate. Yeah we'll just start moving then.


I have a very personal relationship with Fluff. So growing up in Boston, Fluffer Nutter sandwiches were the treat that I got when I went on field trips. So I feel very honored to be here as a Fluffer Ed today. We love Fluff. Enjoy the rest of the festival.


I want to show the latest version of my Oledom tool. This new version here is able to handle XML file that contain embedded OLE objects. So previously I've shown how we can analyze XML files that contain VBA macros. And this time I'm going to show XML files that contains OLE objects. So I have a sample here. It's actually the same sample as I showed in a previous video. But there we analyze the sample manually and here we are going to do with Oledom. Okay, so you see this time Oledom detects in the XML file an Oledata.mso file. And this file contains one stream. It's not too big. So let's have a look to see inside the stream and have an ID, what we can expect. Let's do a hex dump. Okay. So here you have 0, 0, 16, 0, 0, 0. Okay. And here 7, 8. Now 7, 8 here, that's interesting. Because this can be the start of a ZLIP compressed data stream. The 8 can indicate that it is compressed with a deflate method. And the 7 indicates a 32K window that was used for the compression. So 78 is a value that you will often find with ZLIP compressed streams. So I added a new feature to Oledom that will search for possible compression inside the stream and then try to decompress it. So here this decompress option will make that we will search for that 78 byte and then decompress the stream that starts there. So let's try this. And indeed we have success. The content is decompressed and when you see this sequence of bytes here, you recognize doc file. So the file that is embedded here is an OLE file. So since that's the case, we can pipe it into a second version of Oledom. But now we don't want Xdump, but we want the raw data, so we're going to dump it. Okay, and this embedded OLE file, it contains another embedded object. We can see that here with OLE01 native. So let's select this stream and look at the information. Okay, so it is a file with extension VBS, so it's most likely a VBS script. The size is not too big. Let's extract it and have a look. And indeed it is VBS script. This is, it looks like base64. And the function name here, base64 decode, is a strong indication that it is indeed base64. So let's try to decode this. So first I need to select the line. So I'm going to do that with PCR regrep. And I'm going to select the string like this. So I want to start with double-quote, then any sequence of characters and a closing double-quote, like this. Okay, so this gives me the strings. I'm only interested in the first string. So let's do ahead. Okay, this is the first string. Now we cannot yet pipe this into base64 to decode this because we have the double quotes. Let's remove them with translate, like this. Okay, and now I can pipe this into base64 to have it decoded. Okay, and we can see that once more a command line is started that launches PowerShell. That downloads a file from here, saves it as a cap file, expands it as an XA, and then executes it.


Boom. What's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are still on site at IndieBio's demo day, number eight. We are now going to be talking with Michelle Zew. Hello. Hi there. Thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. No problem. Really excited. She's the CEO of Tintorium. All right. So teach us about what you were just pitching on stage. Yeah. So here at Tintorium, we are making more sustainable indigo dye for the denim industry. So in a nutshell, we basically have created a completely nature-based process to combat what we like to call two-part problem with indigo. So problem number one, if I can get into it already, if you don't mind. Please. A chemical synthesis process. Indigo is heavily petroleum reliant. So to make it, it requires over 100 kilograms of indigo for every kilogram, sorry, 100 kilograms of petroleum for every kilogram of indigo produced. But on top of that, that chemical synthesis process also involves other toxic chemicals like formaldehyde and cyanide, like literally known poisons going into the production of this core ingredient for making your genes. So that's one problem. And then the second problem is indigo is kind of a unique dye. So it crystallizes really quickly in the presence of air and that makes it not water soluble. And so to actually apply it as a dye, you have to add in equal parts a water-polluting chemical reducing agent. And that stuff ends up in, you know, the waste streams polluting water sources all over Asia and it's really bad for the environment. So our solution basically addresses. You're about to get into the solution where there's so much to sell and pack with the problem. We're wearing genes right now. And like, I, we don't know about these things. I don't know about these things. These are really, we got to dig into the supply chain of things. Whoa. Okay. So how is it 100 kilograms of petroleum for a kilogram of indigo? Yeah. What? It's insane. So the key kind of, the key chemical in producing the indigo is this petroleum derivative called aniline. And it's kind of a inefficient process, right? So you need a lot of petroleum in order to make this aniline compound. And in fact, it's, you know, the petroleum reliance, right? Like non-renewable sources, that's part of it. And then also this aniline compound is known to be potentially carcinogenic. So it's just like all sorts of problems that goes into this chemical production process. And then the, what do we, so what are we doing with this indigo? So we get a kilogram of this indigo and then there's some, you said we're polluting water systems as well because we can't, because we have to get it on the actual gene material. Right. Are these, like, how do we dye the fabric? Is the fabric just like not dyed indigo when we I mean, it certainly is. So actually, I guess when you make your genes, let's take a look, a deeper dive into the supply chain, right?  Not at all. But I think what actually makes denim such a polluting and potentially problematic kind of area of fashion is the fact that its supply chain is so complex. So you need to take these cotton threads in the thread form and dye it at that form in order to form this kind of like ring dye effect. And then you weave these, you know, indigo dyed threads together in order to form the fabric. And then after you form the fabric, you can kind of like wash down the fabric in order to create kind of the faded effect. And because it has that kind of white core, you can fade it down and then it'll create the lighter blues, you know, kind of what it brings out the white, you know, colors in the inside of the thread. So that's, that's kind of taking you through how it happens. But of course, because you're kind of going through that complex production line now, you have a lot of indigo that's wasted. You have a lot of kind of the runoff from the, you know, both the water pollution in the, in the dye process as well as sort of the washing process afterwards. And where are we making most of the blue jeans in the world right now? Most of it is made in Asia. Yeah, most of it is made in Asia. There's actually no more dye mills here in the United States. No more dye mills in the world. Yeah, yeah, then it's it's pretty rough. I think a more interesting question actually is, where are we making most of the indigo in the world? Okay, yes. Where is that? And that is primarily in China. So over 90% of the world's indigo supply is made in China. And over 50% is made by just one producer alone. So it's a really consolidated market. So oligopoly. One is 50%. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so of course they can go, you know, very much like not environmentally regulated, right?  Yeah. Of course it's called wonderful chemicals. Ironically, it's called. Wow, that's like the happy meal. This is ridiculous to get away with this kind of stuff. All right, okay, continue this. No, I mean, I yeah, the only other thing to add is just it's like even China, right, is like cracking down on environmental regulation. And so then the convenient move is like push over the border to Mongolia to make the production. Oh, yeah. Well, so wonderful chemicals are just like moving countries as the regulations get. Damn, this is crazy. Okay, so this is what's wrong. All right. So what is what are you doing that is right and sustainable and the future of blue jeans? Let's give it a go. Yeah. So our process, like I said, is is nature inspired. So we basically mimic a process that happens in plants. We are using bacteria, so completely sustainable sources and completely renewable sources, having bacteria feeding them with sugar and literally having those bacteria grow and secrete and indigo precursor. And then we apply this enzymatic treatment that then also bypasses the need for the reducing agent. And that's how we kind of apply our dye. Yeah. It's a little simplistic, but yeah. It's a little simplistic. It's just complex biology. So, okay, so bacteria seem like so many people have now sat down here and just been like, yeah, we, you know, add genes to bacteria and make them produce different things. And I'm just like, wow, bacteria. But this is like, these are billions of years old.  And it's just so interesting thinking about like what aspects of evolution we have yet to understand can help us live a more sustainable future, especially with bacteria and stuff. All right, so let's break this down. So what specific bacteria is it and whatever you can share with us? Yeah, sure. Well, it's E. Coli. It's very common kind of string of bacteria. Okay. And then what do you, is this in a bioreactor? Where are you doing this? Yep. So, yeah, we grow it in, you know, any sort of like range of scale of bioreactor. So in the last four months at IndieBio, we've actually, we started at like a 10 liter, which is about the equivalent of a large lab scale bioreactor size. And we actually ran our solution through a 300 liter bioreactor size. And so really scaled up our process in order to actually make the dyed threads and actually test our technology on an, on a real industrial machine. Yeah. Okay. And then what's going on in the bioreactors with the E. Coli bacteria? So what are you at? Like, how do you tell us about this process? Yeah, well, we actually even have a time lapse that you can see on our Instagram page of kind of the whole thing being performed. But perfect. I'll embed that right here for people to watch right now. No, totally. So, you know, you can basically watch it happen. The, the, you know, bacteria, they grow, right? And then they, as they grow, they just secrete this indigo precursor. Actually, some, you know, normal indigo also comes out. And then you can kind of see the blue color form before your eyes. And how do you find the specific E. Coli that can secrete indigo precursors? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that was based on a lot of the kind of existing literature. So I will say here, I'm not the, the scientists, the brilliant scientific mind behind this. I'm actually the, the business background. You speak so well about it. Yes, please. Thank you. My co founder, Tammy, is actually the, the one who invented it. So she invented. She just like found this E. Coli that can secrete indigo precursors. Well, she found the specific enzyme in the indigo plant that is actually the kind of like for the, the key sort of core of our technological innovation here in the metabolic pathway. Yeah. There's an enzyme in the indigo plant. And then that is what, how does that enzyme get used in the bioreactor with the E. Coli? So we basically combine the enzyme into, or we bring the enzyme into the E. Coli. And then that allows the, the bacteria to actually create the blue color. Create the blue color. Whoa. Okay. And then what is the process like with the secreting an indigo precursor?  And then, yeah, tell us about that process. Yeah. So we, we take it that we, there's actually a good amount of purification work and concentration work that needs to be done in order to actually apply that sort of product as a dye. I will say I, we, that's one of the key areas that we still want to do a little bit more of, right? So when you get it out of the bioreactor, it's, you know, you have the precursor, but you also have some media in the, you know, in the, in the broth. And so it's funny, we didn't do a whole lot of purification. That's actually a major milestone of kind of like an work stream of work that we plan to do in the next couple months. We actually made our first hire over, yeah, yeah, who joined us about a week ago, and he brings industry experience in downstream processing. So he's going to be huge for helping us do that. But we didn't do a whole lot of purification work. We instead just like took it straight to the machine and, you know, applied or enzymatic treatment and then, you know, sort of like ran that process. And so what happened was because we had some media still in the, in the genes, our, our, our, our blue jeans, our prototype kind of like the red samples are actually slightly too green. So we are literally baking genes that are greener for the, for the world. They're not actually super green, but you know, there's like a slight tinge for anybody who's like super familiar with the denim industry. But that's why the downstream processing is going to be a major kind of work stream for us. Okay. So there's a broth that comes out and then you have to purify the broth for just indigo. Exactly. And then you can take that and then how does then that get applied to G? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So actually, so when we purify it out, we would purify our indigo precursor. Okay. And then that's what we would combine with our enzyme, which would basically form this solution for dyeing, which is called luco indigo. And so that's what you kind of put into the machine. And then as the machine runs, the indigo kind of forms onto the dye. Oh, okay. Okay. And then, then it's the similar process of the thread that then you thread together. And then that's how you make the actual exactly. So yeah, what comes out of that process would be all of the blue threads that you would need to make a denim fabric. Now I should also say that one of the one of the interesting things about the denim production too is that, you know, you need blue threads, but you also need white threads and you kind of crosshatch that together. And that's why when you yeah, when you let cut into your jeans, for example, some of the threads are white that are showing up. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of otherwise it'd be that just solid blue. Exactly. And you can see the white as well, the other colors in here. Right. Wow, just awareness level about yeah, understanding jeans in general is really important when you're, you know, at the store, really think in the supply chain about where the materials are sourced from how they're actually made, all this type of stuff. And then how about are you looking to just sell indigo is your thing or are you looking to literally make like a gene product line? That's a great question. So our business model is actually going to be in phases. So one of the key things that we are, you know, sure of right now is consumers don't know a lot about this. And, you know, we can't, we can't just rely on brands to tell the story, right? We have to also be able to tell the story ourselves and really start to raise that awareness and build the consumer demand. So to do that, we're going to start actually by launching our own very limited line of jeans. And that's going to kind of get the conversation going about sustainable denim, right? High B star betrash, right? 200 pairs. It's all you get per city. Good, good. Yeah, yeah. People are like, I got them. Look at my Instagram. Exactly. You can have the, you know, exclusive edition of Tintorium jeans. I'm a sustainable person. I support sustainable clothing. He's marketing strategies. Okay, cool. So that's gonna be the first phase. But then of course, right now, you know, we've already gotten really overwhelming response from the denim industry, I think brands are already pretty eager to partner with us. So then our next move would be co branding lines with jeans, you know, with existing denim manufacturers, starting in kind of the premium segment, where, you know, we can really start to incorporate that technology and start to tell that story. But of course, in the long term, our vision is, yeah, we want our technology in this way of, you know, making and applying denim indigo dye to happen for every single pair of jeans out there. So you're going to obsolete wonderful chemicals out of business. Absolutely. If they can get 50% market share, we can get 50% market share. Yeah, we're running through a new future. It's that we have to start paying attention to these sorts of environmental concerns. Now we have to do things differently.  Whoa. I wonder, this is the similar concept, more and more young people being born into the world that become more and more aware of the supply chain processes about how to make things more sustainable. And then just unleashing more biotech that we still haven't really picked an uncovered like this indigo enzyme added to E. Coli and like, what, you know, and so do you think like cost wise, are we talking like right now it might be, you know, pretty expensive compared to what, you know, wonderful chemicals are doing. But yeah, down the line, like in terms of just price over time, you're you're thinking like, obviously, you don't need 100 kilograms of petroleum. Yeah. Yeah. So these are the this because that costs a lot of money to like extract that. Yeah, that's true. I mean, the chemical process is cheap. That's the only way they're able to do what they're, you know, currently doing at such at such large scales. Right. Yeah, I mean, I think what I would say is the dye, you know, process or at least just sort of the dyeing component in terms of the cogs of making a pair of jeans is actually, you know, really small. And so there's a good amount of we think sensitivity, you know, or or desensitivity into, you know, in terms of your willingness to to pay more for some more sustainable ingredients. Right. And when you're talking about like the core ingredient, most visible ingredient in your jeans, if we scaled up our process right now, we would actually, we could actually be making our our indigo dye for $3 more per pair of jeans. That's it. And so it's like, you know, yeah, sure, current, you know, indigo production process is probably something like a couple cents per pair of jeans. And that's what we would aim for more in the long term. But I think the point we're trying to make here is that right in consumers eyes, if we're really not that bad. Exactly. We were really just, you know, especially if you're talking about $50 pairs of jeans, $200 pairs of jeans, right? Like who wouldn't want to pay a couple of dollars more for a better made pair of jeans? So we're sensitive to the ecological factor. And I think we're, yeah, I think we'd be desensitive to the $3 price increase if the price of jeans was already like $50 or $100. Exactly. Whatever. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And the second phase too, I see the partnerships and stuff. This is cool stuff. And then where, okay, so where are you, so you just did first hire. So what else do you, are you looking for right now? You're raising around leaving IndieBio as well. So what's the round? What are you looking to do with it? Yeah. Yeah. So we're raising a two and a half million dollar seed round. We are, primarily, that's going to get us about a year and a half or two years of runway in order to launch our first line of jeans. That's kind of the big goal. To do that, we're going to need some strain engineering purification work, of course, like I talked about. I think that strain engineering work is going to be very much ongoing. The purification work is going to be sort of like a, you know, a deep dive first development so that we can then, first priority so that we can then prototype a lot of different fabric concepts with shades that are, you know, established and standard in the indigo and denim industry. And then, you know, scale up to 10,000 liters with that process so that we can then release our first line of jeans. Nice. Okay. Yeah. You have the roadmap down. I love it. Yeah. I love it. That's what, that's what we need. I love it. Okay. Cool. I think we did a, yeah, I think we did a good job covering like Tinctorium. Good job. Like there's a lot of good stuff that you guys are doing. I'm very proud of you. Thanks for coming on, Michelle. Thanks so much. Thank you. Huge shout out to all you guys for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. Love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode. Also, do check out the links below to Tinctorium. Check out the links below to IndieBio as well support the artists, the entrepreneurs, the organizations around the world that you believe in support simulations so you can keep doing cool things like coming on site to IndieBio for interviews. And also, share more content like this with your friends, your family, coworkers, people online on social media. Talk more about these things, the supply chains around all the products that we buy every single day. Really think about it deeply and inspire children to think about it deeply and change the systems for a better ecological future. Go and build the future, everyone. Manifest your dreams into all we love you very much. We'll see you soon. Peace.


transparency makes a lot of sense. I wanna take the last minute that we have available to give Secretary Benson an opportunity just to give us the quick minute on what's happening with the Independent Districting Commission. My heart, yeah, I mean, gosh, go to michiganredistricting.org to find out everything that's happening. But essentially we are deep now in the third phase and the final phase of the process. We have through a selection process that was random and went through nearly 10,000 applicants, selected 13 commissioners who have now begun the process of educating themselves and building out the commission, learning everything they need to do to once that census data is available next year, draw the next generation of districts in our state. We can have an income back and, you know, actually Secretary LaRose can both talk about redistricting in our states as well, but I can say I have enormous confidence in this commission and our members because each one of them, regardless of their party affiliation, is truly just committed to ensuring independent fair districting that's citizen led and we're going to have a transparent process. And again, I encourage everyone to go to michiganredistricting.org to stay in touch and get a breath of the process because we will need your input. They will need your input submitting maps, submitting suggestions, drawing your community in what districts you'd like to be in. And they'll take that data and that voter input and, you know, draw, I believe, very fair and competitive maps throughout our state.


What's going on guys?  I am talking about the paper fortune that's obtained from the gifts within the tower but before we get into that if you guys want to be in with a chance of winning this resurrectionist emblem hit that like button and tell me in the comments section what your paper fortune reads as winner will be picked in a few days with a YouTube direct message ok so this paper fortune it has a lot of people talking with to be honest no real indication of what it's for what it is or what it even means so when the weekly reset drop today head to that tower open up your presents and you will notice a paper fortune will pop up on your screen also giving you green miles to go with it now upon checking in your inventory you should have a message now I do believe there are over 50 messages all of which will be revealed over the coming week I'm guessing mine reads you will complete an impressive number of bounties which to be honest I already do now most already know but some don't there was over 80 I believe things added to the database and I think they all had the description which read all will be revealed in time young paddle one blatant Star Wars reference so yeah I'm guessing it's safe to say that these are the things added to the database but what does this mean what are they for why are they here personally after reading a lot of the messages that people are getting it seems to me like it's kind of a bridge between destiny one and destiny two could this be the first actual defining message or messages that's indicating what destiny two is all about now I will add messages I have seen to the video description if you guys want to read through them and come to your own conclusion but to me I think these might be the start of what lies ahead for us within the destiny universe of course I could be jumping to conclusions but after reading some of the messages people are getting it's like they are stating things to come your future is full of glimmer engram strange coins and legendary marks you will achieve your aim through cunning and stealth you will not be forgotten you will destroy to rebuild when all is lost you will still be a guardian and you will still be enough that to me screams what could be destiny two and we're still the same guardians but it's a fresh start but like I said I could be jumping through conclusions but to me though the amount of wills that are in these messages indicate it's of upcoming events what that is at the moment I have no idea could also just be bungee teasing us getting a little hype flowing through the community who knows but what did your message say let me know down below in that comment section hope you guys enjoyed the video do smash that like button to appreciate the support subscribe for daily destiny turn on the notification so you don't miss a video and I'll catch you on that next one


Before we begin our awards ceremony today we would like to acknowledge the passing of our longtime cap board member, Mark Poetler. Mark passed away unexpectedly last weekend. His wisdom and guidance and humor were just a few of the reasons that Mark will forever leave his impression on the capboard. For those of you who were fortunate enough to see Mark present a cap award you saw his fondness and genuine compassion for our men and women in blue. We leaned on Mark for his expertise and experience and he was an invaluable member of our board. Mark was a graduate of DU Law School and some highlights of Mark's career include being the director of the Colorado organized crime strike force, a deputy district attorney for more than 28 years and most recently Mark spent 11 years as a municipal judge in Lakewood and Mountain View, Colorado. Capboard member Linda Tafoya shared this about Mark. Some people in life demand respect and others earn our respect. Mark absolutely earned our respect and we will miss him greatly. The cap board would like to ask for a moment of silence in Mark's memory. Thank you. Citizens appreciate police also known as cap honors officers of the Denver Police Department who provide service to the community above and beyond the call of duty. Formed in 1978 by Mayor Bill McNichols and district attorney Dale Tully, cap is a nonprofit organization whose intention is to promote awareness within the community of the dedication displayed regularly by members of the Denver Police Department. The mission of the cap board is to seek out and publicly acknowledge these deserving officers. The cap award consists of a plaque and a pen. This pen is the only civilian awarded pen to to allowed to be worn on a Denver police officers uniform. Presentations of these awards take place four times a year. To date, more than 550 members of the Denver Police Department have received the cap award. Thank you for those wonderful words about Mark. Even not having Mark physically here, he still will be a very hard act to follow. So please give me a little grace when I tried to live up to the standard he set for all of us. And with that, I would like to start with Officer Montoya, Anthony Montoya. If you could please join me up here, that would be terrific. Morning again. Thank you. Thank you. Hi. All right, we're thrilled to have you here. Thank you. Alrighty. So back in November of last year, Officer Montoya was working at the desk at District four when a woman came in with two children. The woman who was deaf was from Arizona and was traveling with her kids on a little mini vacation in Colorado. She was having help with from her grandmother to fund this excursion. And that help was coming in form of one of those little cards from Walmart that you supposedly can load with ease and the recipient can access it with ease and carry on with whatever they're doing. Unfortunately, on the day this woman came into the station, the Walmart card was not cooperating. She presented Officer Montoya with documentation of the numerous attempts that her mother had made trying to help get them home to Arizona and absolutely was not working. She came into the station to ask for assistance. Officer Montoya spent the time to call around district four to various churches. Oftentimes, churches are able to help with emergency funds, but you really have to work at it to scrape together enough to accomplish your goal. He was able to come up with enough information to give to this woman all the while communicating with her any more interesting way than I'm communicating with you now. She was able to read lips and he wrote notes. So you wrote things out, contact information, addresses, whom to contact. And he came up with quite a list to get her on her way back to Arizona to make her plight even more dire. She was out of gas. So she was given. Thank you very much of his own volition. He gave her $20 to fill up her tank and get her on her way to see the churches and get herself and her kids safely home to Arizona. Officer Montoya's supervisors stated that he is an exemplary officer that always goes above and beyond to help the citizens of Denver as well as fellow officers. And he does this all while maintaining a positive and energetic persona. And I can tell you from my brief interlude of working with Officer Montoya, where I gave him yes, no, yes, no kinds of things to do over a very short amount of time. He never lost his temper with me. He was always polite and was a doll to pleasure to work with. Sorry, I'm showing my age. Anyways, I am really, really happy to be able to present this award to you as well as the pin. So there you are. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Can I have Officer Hewitt come up front and hang out with me for a few moments? You as nervous as I am. So back on October 20, October seventh of 2023, District One officer Jordan Hewitt was at a convenience store in the 1400 block of North Perry Street. She encountered a woman who was visibly upset. When she spoke with the woman, the officer learned that she had recently lost her debit card and was out of gas and needed to get home to Broomfield, needing no more explanation. Officer Hewitt used her own money to buy gas for the woman so she could make it home. That's awesome because we know how expensive gas is. I wanted to read a little part of what her sergeant sent in that really touched my heart. He says Officer Hewitt is one of the most valuable team members. She consistently strives for excellence. I am fortunate to have such a valuable and compassionate team member and officer of the Denver Police Department. Sincerely, Sergeant Jason Durran. So it's my honor to present this award to you and your pin. You're welcome. Good morning. I'd like to call up Officer Armando Jaramillo, Jr. and Officer Frankie Archuleta. On September 13, 2023, District One officer Armando Jaramillo and Officer Frankie Archuleta responded to a call for service in the area of West 17th Avenue and North Sheridan Boulevard. After a young father called requesting assistance for him and his nine year old son. After learning about the father's efforts to secure other services to no avail, the officers used the district credit card to obtain a hotel room for the pair. The father also mentioned that he and his son had not eaten for an extended period of time. Upon hearing this, Officer Jaramillo used his own money to purchase dinner for the family before giving them a ride to their hotel. The father was extremely grateful for the officer's compassion and generosity. Thank you so much. And now I'd like to call up Officer Kyle Tennyson.  On October 8, 2023, District Six Officer Kyle Tennyson responded to the 500 block of East Colfax on a report of an assault. While he was there, he was flagged down by a father and his nine year old son. The father explained that he was experiencing homelessness and that he and his son were turned away from an area shelter. He went on to explain that he had an appointment in the upcoming days with Denver Human Services, but needed a safe place for him and his son to stay in the meantime. Officer Tennyson used the District Six credit card to secure a hotel room for the pair. However, the young boy was still experiencing some levels of stress due to being hungry. Officer Tennyson learned that the small family had not eaten all day. He used his own money to purchase food for both of them and then gave them a ride to the hotel. I asked Detective Alicia Martinez and Officer Christopher Velarde to come up for us. It's not your first time up here, is it? All right. On July 5 of 2023, District for then Officer Alicia Martinez and Officer Christopher Velarde responded to the 4700 block of South Wadsworth Boulevard on report of elder abuse. When Detective Martinez, an officer of Velarde arrived, they met with the caller who told them that an elderly female was trying to move into their rented apartment. The elderly female victim had been living with her adult son, but was advised that it was no longer safe to stay with him. On this evening, the son drove the elderly victim to a location and dropped her off telling the renter that she was their problem now. The elderly woman was left without money, credit cards or transportation and was now essentially stranded with no other options for housing. Due to the victim's age and medical condition, a shelter was not a viable option. Detective Martinez, an officer of Velarde made the decision to take the female victim to a hotel with funds provided by department resources. After speaking in more detail with the victim, Detective Martinez and Officer Velarde discovered that she had not eaten all day. Acting with empathy and compassion, Detective Martinez and Officer of Velarde took it upon themselves to order and pay for room service from the hotel restaurant with their own money so that she wouldn't go hungry for the evening. For this active compassion and empathy, we would like to recognize you, Detective Martinez, and you, Officer Velarde, with a cap award. Are you good? Okay. Can you go ahead and come up, please? Good morning. I have the honor to present Detective Michael Felsos this morning. And I will be reading what was presented to us a couple weeks ago. On September 17, 2023, Denver police officers received a call regarding a stolen truck that belonged to a family living out of state. When their truck was stolen, it had all the family's belongings and traveling belongings inside. Detective Felsos, he took the case, the stolen truck was recovered, but the family's belongings were not. Detective Felsos, he discovered that another vehicle was stolen around the same time as the truck and that it was recovered with several items in it that did not belong to that owner. Detective Felsos, he responded to the house where the second stolen car had been returned and with permission, entered that vehicle. Detective Felsos identified the items that belonged to the family whose truck was stolen from out of state, and he went out of his way to make sure that all the belongings were returned. Detective Felsos, these actions were so impactful that the truck owner wrote the following to Chief Ram Thomas. And I'm quoting here for the from what was said to Chief Thomas. On the last afternoon of the family get together. My pickup was stolen along with three of my kids stuff. Denver is huge along with your department.  Two of his sons are police officers. We got the pickup back and the kids computers along with two suitcases that were untouched. I bring this to your attention because I want to commend Detective Felsos who works in auto theft. Not only did he catch the bad guys, he was instrumental in retrieving my kids stuff. I was very impressed with his work ethic and professionalism and encouraged that there really are good people who care. Would ask you to help me out with honoring Detective Mike Felsos. Now I'm just putting Mike on the spot. See, nobody else did that. Okay. Yeah, thanks man. It's just an honor to work for this department, I have to say and I appreciate all of you that came today. I've been a cop for probably going on 34 years now and feels like day one. I'm not burned out. I love it. I love Denver. I've been through some things in the past through my 34 years and with the help of friends and family and the family of my blue brothers and sisters of Denver PD. I just I'm ecstatic to be here and to Mark Potler. I adore him dearly. I miss him so much. He was a great guy.  You try to do the best you can every day and you'll plug through and try to be as happy as you can and enjoy your life.  But anyway, if you come to work every day and try to be happy, and it becomes a habit. And hopefully that's what I I give to everybody and just love being here. And thank you so much. Thank you for that. See a recruiter chief. I'm ready to re enlist. Well, Christie finds the commendation. There it is. I would just like to say that these officers are absolutely remarkable. The same type of officers we see every ceremony that one of the ways I look at them is if I was a victim of a crime, I really hope somebody like them would show up. And there are hundreds of them out there fortunately. Let's see. How about young officer Kim? Could you come up? Well, Mike is coming up. I just wanted to say that we all miss Mark potler. He really was a remarkable guy. He loved the police. His family, God, not necessarily in that order. And he reminded me often at these ceremonies, one of the things these officers live is what Saint Francis of Assisi said 500 years ago, which is why you can do good. And Mark holds the distinction of being one of the few lawyers ever allowed into heaven. Hopefully you can cut that out. So we have here officer Michael Kim on December 4th, 2023 District 2 officer Michael Kim responding to a call. Officer Michael Kim on December 4th, 2023 District 2 officer Michael Kim responded to the 4400 block of East 12th on a report of a disturbance. When officers arrived on scene, they encountered a man who was refusing to leave the area. The complainants did not want to press charges and the man just asked for a ride to a different part of the city. Not only did officer Kim provide the man with a courtesy ride, during their exchange, he also learned that the man had not eaten and stopped to buy him a meal before dropping him off. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was working in District 2, my wife would give me $2 a night to eat on because the rest went to diapers and formula. And so I suspect that some of these officers that are paying for meals are eating tuna fish at night from 7-Eleven or not eating at all. So Mike, thank you very much for what you do for the department. Would you like to say a word? Have to keep it to 20 minutes. It's a tough act to follow the detective, but thank you everybody for being here. I'm going on my 20th year in law enforcement, but I've only been at DPD for about two years now and I don't regret the change whatsoever. And my wife, taking pictures of me in the back, is a captain with the Denver Sheriff's Department. So we've been kind of part of the Denver family for as long as I can remember. And I'm just happy to be here. Thank you. Well, it's my wife, Michelle. Nice to have you here. How about your sergeant? Is your sergeant, John? My sergeant is not here. Commander Aragon, my district commander, Lieutenant Curtis, Lieutenant Malo, and Lieutenant Costigan, I believe are all here. I don't know if anybody else from district two is here. Commander Aragon, really a whipcracker. Just horrible. I wouldn't put you on the spot. I get along great with myself. There's one, Carlos. Chief Thomas was not able to be here with us today, but here representing him is Deputy Chief Montoya. Would you like to come up and say a few words, please? Well, good morning. Mike, there is one guy on the job older than you. All right. But anyway, again, I want to thank everybody that came, the family, the officers command that comes out to support these things. I especially want to thank the cap board for keeping this rolling for 46 years. This is really important, this type of attention that it brings to the department. We go to award ceremony all the time where you're getting the awards for all the TV stuff, all the heroic stuff, and you pin medals on the chest. And those are great events. They really are. But these events are the ones that are untold.  Being on this job, I used to see it. I know that the compassion that the Denver police officers have put on these uniforms have, the compassion for people. And it's always been that way. That's why I'm so proud to be a member of this Denver police department. But the impacts that you made, the stories we're here today, these are the ones that resonate with people. These are the ones that stick with people. They'll always remember that moment. They'll always remember the Denver police department because of that act of kindness. And those are the important ones. Those are the ones that build the bridges and help us remain at a high status with the community as we should be. So again, I want to thank everybody. I want to thank the officers for your kindness and your generosity and the people that took the time to recognize them, the citizens, and the supervisors that take that extra step to write these up and get them recognized. So very important. And I want to thank everybody for being here. Appreciate it. All right. A quick note. A quick note, we are going to ask all of our recipients for as soon as we wrap up the ceremony, if you could please just briefly step outside. For a real quick picture, we'd like to have all of our recipients with their awards outside briefly for a picture. And then we can come right back inside. We hope as we honor our award recipients today, we also indirectly honor all the numerous untold stories of our Denver police officers who serve our community above and beyond the call of duty daily. The Cat Board would like to extend our gratitude to all our dignitaries and guests for attending today's ceremony. We congratulate all of today's nine award recipients. We sincerely appreciate your above and beyond service to our community. We would also like to acknowledge all the dedicated Denver police officers as you go about your day-to-day duties we want you to know.  We want all the men and women who as a whole that make up the Denver police department to know. We see you, we appreciate you, and we need you. From our Cat Board to all of you, thank you for your service. This concludes today's ceremony.


looking at the income tax formula we're focused in once again line one that being income remembering that the first half of the income tax formula is in essence an income statement although a strange one where we have income up top the equivalent of the expenses being the deductions getting us down to the equivalent of net income that being here taxable income our goal being the opposite of normal goals because it's taxes that being to have the taxable income as low as possible therefore when looking at line one we want to determine is something income if it is income is it something that we have to include as taxable income now we're talking about the social security benefits at this point in time quick recap on a couple things on the social security benefit program obviously there's two sides that we usually think about one being our working years where the social security taxes are bad because we have to pay them into the system and that's going to be the social security we usually kind of clump them together with social security and medicare type of payments that we're paying they're coming out of our w2s wages or and or they're coming out of our social security self-employment taxes that we might pay if we have a sole proprietor type of business and then in retirement years we might get distributions from the plan that's what we're talking about now because now money is coming in there's all this new money coming in and it's not in and we're thinking is it something that we have to include in income now just notice that social security is a little bit strange because you might think hey look i already kind of earned the income and then i paid it in to the social security program and now i'm getting it back so let's just do a quick kind of recap on the structure or how social security came about and then we'll get into the taxation applied to it and it might make a little bit more sense you might be able to kind of get a story which will help you to memorize the way the taxation is going to work so when social security was put in place it was it happened like in the 1930s in the great depression with when a lot of these laws came into play and a lot of people i think when it first came into play thought of it more as kind of a welfare program meaning we're going to be helping the people that are not able to pay for their own retirement possibly because they lived past their life expectancy or they had some type of tragedy happened and therefore when you're paying into that kind of program your general thought process is i don't expect to be benefiting from this program i expect it to be just benefiting the people that need this program it's a welfare type of program kind of system however then it seems to have morphed over time so that the taxes have going up and up and it's now kind of thought of they're kind of advertising it from the government standpoint as though it's like a government retirement plan employment and a 401k retirement plan which would then think that everybody no matter how much income you have would get benefits from it which is kind of the system that is going to be set up meaning we're putting money in and the more money you put in if it was just a normal kind of retirement plan you would think the more benefits you should get in the payout when they pay out the benefits so now we've got this kind of mix between those two objectives so the more money you put into the system during your working years which means you're going to put more in if your income is higher because it's it's you're going to have a higher tax that you're going to be paying as your income goes up then your benefits will go up in general the calculation of your benefits will take into consideration that you paid more in however it also has some welfare components meaning that the more income you put in on the higher side of things the less added benefit that you're going to get from those payments right and so you're actually so that so that's how kind of the benefit payments kind of are calculated in general and then when you get the payments they can also kind of put in play this mix between the payments being a welfare program versus a retirement program and basically saying if your income is below a certain threshold then you may not be taxed you might have an exemption of the taxation of of these payments but if your income is higher then they're going to tax more of the of the income that you got from the social security up to 85 percent I believe that's the general rule okay so we're going to be focused focus focus focus in on the social security which is down here on line six of page one of the form 1040 if you look at the actual tax software then it'll it'll give you this kind of worksheet to determine how much of the of the social security is taxable the general question that will come up is you know if I get social security how much of it is going to be taxable that's how much do I have to include as taxable income and the general rule is going to be well if you have a substantial amount of taxable income in your retirement years it's going to be up to 85 percent that's what you want to kind of keep in your mind as the general rule that you're going to be paying like at up to 85 percent of the of the the social security so and remember when you're talking about social security payments you're usually talking about people that are in of course their retirement years and they're getting the social security payment so you would expect then they wouldn't have a lot of w2 income at that point in time you would expect they're not at their peak working years in terms of earning years so you might deal with taxpayers at that point in time where the social security is there is like their main form of income or they might have other things that they're depending on to live on that aren't taxable which means you're talking about people that might have a lower tax taxable amount or you might be talking to more well-off individuals who may not have w2 income at that point but they still have a substantial amount of income coming from an out of like ira's 1099 ours and from investments in the form of dividends and interest and in that case you would expect they would be beating tax at the max of their social security benefits 85% included in income that's not the rate that's how much you'd have to include in income to then be subject to the tax rates in the progressive tax system or ordinary tax rates okay so you will pay tax on only 85% of your social security benefits based on the internal revenue service irs rules if you this is from the social security website by the way instead of the irs website i'll file a federal tax return as an individual or your combined income is between 25 000 and 34 000 you may have to pay income tax on up to 50 percent of your benefits more than 34 000 up to 85 percent of your benefits may be taxable so generally if your income is a little bit lower then you might be paying up to 50 percent but if your income is you know significant still a fairly low bar then you're going to be paying you know up to 85% included in income file a joint return uh and you and your spouse have a combined income that is now we're talking about a married filing joint between 32 000 and 44 000 you may have to pay income tax on up to 50 percent of your benefits more than 44 000 up to 85 percent of your benefits may be taxable if you're married filing separate returns you probably pay taxes remember that married filing separate that the government is often skeptical of that filing position people taking it possibly in order to try to take advantage of some of these income threshold rules so they often adjusted in an unfavorable way for those filing married filing separate so be aware okay so line 6 a 6 b and 6 c line 6 a 6 b social security benefits uh you should receive a form s s a 10 99s that's the type of form that that you're going to be receiving it's a 10 99 type form which is an indication of saying oh this might be income that i have to be reporting just like other types of 10 99s showing in box three the total social security benefits pay to you box four will show the amount of any benefits you repaid in 2022 if you received railroad retirement benefits treated as social security you should receive a form uh rrb 10 99 use the social security benefits worksheet in these instructions to see if any of your benefits are taxable so exception do not use the social security benefit worksheet in these instructions if any of the following applies you made contributions to a traditional ira for 2022 and you or your spouse were covered by a retirement plan at work or through a self-employment instead use the worksheet on publication 590 a to see if any of your social security benefits are taxable and to figure your ira deduction