The U.S. has placed itself in charge over which nations get to eat. The globally influential propaganda multiplier news agencies AP and AFP have both informed their readers that a fugitive has been extradited to the United States. Fugitive businessmen close to Venezuela's Maduro extradited to U.S. reads the AFP headline. Alex Saab, a top fugitive close to Venezuela's socialist government, has been put on a plane to the U.S. to face money laundering charges, AP announced on Twitter. You'd be forgiven for wondering what specifically makes this man a fugitive, and what that status has to do with his extradition to a foreign government whose laws should have no bearing on him or his life. The Colombian-born Venezuelan citizen, Alex Saab, as it happens, is a fugitive from the U.S. government's self-appointed authority to decide which populations on our planet are permitted to have ready access to food. His crime is working to circumvent the crushing U.S. sanctions which have been starving Venezuelan civilians to death by the tens of thousands. Saab is being extradited from the African nation of Cabo Verde, where he has been imprisoned since last year under pressure from the U.S. government. In an article published this past May titled, Alex Saab vs. the Empire, How the U.S. Is Using Lawfare to Punish a Venezuelan Diplomat, Roger D. Harris explains how the U.S. used its domination of the international financial system to crush nations which disobey it and outlines the real reasons for Saab's imprisonment, which has included torture and draconian living conditions. Harris writes, quote, Special envoy and ambassador to the African Union for Venezuela, Alex Saab, was on a humanitarian mission flying from Caracas to Iran to procure food and gasoline for the Venezuelan CLAP food assistance program. Saab was detained on a refueling stop in the African nation of Cabo Verde and has been held in custody ever since June 12, 2020. Saab's crime, according to the U.S. government, which ordered the imprisonment, was money laundering. That is, Saab conducted perfectly legal international trade. Still, his circumventing of the U.S. sanctions, which are designed to prevent relief to the Venezuelans, is considered by Washington to be money laundering. After a two-year investigation into Saab's transactions with Swiss banks, the Swiss government concluded on March 25 that there was no money laundering. Saab is being prosecuted because he is serving his country's interests, rather than that of the U.S., end quote. News agencies like AP and AFP are well aware that Saab is being extradited not for breaking any actual law, but for daring to transgress Washington's unilateral sanctions. As fair as Joe Emersberger wrote back in July, quote, Reuters has casually reported that Saab faces extradition to the United States, which accuses him of violating U.S. sanctions, and that he has been repeatedly named by the U.S. State Department as an operator who helps Maduro arrange trade deals that Washington is seeking to block through sanctions. A Reuters article about Saab's case in 2020 mentioned in passing that the United States this month seized four cargos of Iranian fuel bound for Venezuela, where fuel shortages are once again worsening, end quote. Critics of the U.S. empire have had harsh words for the extradition. Journalist Aaron Matei tweets, quote, Biden, picking up Trump's baton, has kidnapped Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab for the crime of trying to feed Venezuelans in defiance of U.S. sanctions designed to prevent that. Venezuelans aren't allowed to eat so long as the D.C. mafia has marked their government for a regime change, end quote. Yes, indeed, the U.S. government has appointed itself the authority to unilaterally decide which of the world's populations get to eat and which do not, and to imprison anyone who tries to facilitate unauthorized eating in a U.S.-sanctioned nation. Journalist Anya Parampil says, quote, the extradition of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab is a clear signal the Biden administration has made no break with Trump's all-out assault on international law. Also a worrying sign for the case of Julian Assange, another foreign citizen the U.S. has essentially kidnapped and held hostage, end quote. That is true. It would seem that the primary difference between Assange's case and Saab's is that the U.S. empire is working to extradite Assange because he transgressed its self-appointed authority over the world's access to information, whereas Saab transgressed its self-appointed authority over the world's access to food. Journalist Ben Norton tweeted as follows, quote, the U.S. rogue state just ripped up every international law after imprisoning and now extraditing Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. Diplomatic immunity is dead. The U.S. empire killed it. Now all foreign diplomats are fair game to be kidnapped and imprisoned, if Washington wants to. The U.S. accusations of money laundering are absurd and politically motivated. The U.S. claims anyone who violates its illegal sanctions is a criminal, end quote. Indeed, money laundering is a vague charge which basically just means trying to conceal the source or destination of money that is deemed to have been obtained illegally. And since the U.S. government considers itself the arbiter of what financial transactions are lawful in nations it is sanctioning, it can apply that claim to anyone who tries to get around U.S. sanctions financially. The U.S. government does not deny that its sanctions hurt Venezuelans by attacking the economy they rely on to feed themselves. In fact, it has openly admitted that, quote, sanctions, particularly on the state oil company in 2019, likely contributed to the steeper decline of the Venezuelan economy, end quote. The U.S. government also does not deny that the starvation sanctions it has inflicted upon Iran are directed at its civilian population, with then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo openly admitting in 2019 that Washington's economic warfare against that nation is designed to pressure Iranian civilians to change the government, i.e. make them so miserable that they wage a domestic uprising to topple Tehran. The U.S. government also does not deny that the starvation sanctions it has inflicted upon Syria are designed to hurt its civilian population, with current Secretary of State Tony Blinken reaffirming just this past Wednesday that it is the Biden administration's policy to oppose the reconstruction of Syria as long as Assad remains in power. In other words, the U.S. will not allow Syria the funds to help rebuild itself from the devastating regime-changed proxy war the U.S. and its allies waged against it, even as the U.N. reports that 60% of the nation's population is close to starvation. And of course there's the U.S. power alliance's horrific blockade in Yemen, which is murdering people by the hundreds of thousands via starvation and disease, with the U.N. reporting that a further 16 million people are marching towards starvation. Starvation is the only kind of warfare where, because of the continual reframing of mass media propaganda, it is considered perfectly normal and acceptable to deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force. The U.S. empire is entirely open about the fact that it sees itself as the gatekeeper of the world's food supply. If a population disobeys the empire, its people will starve, and anyone who tries to obtain food for them will be arrested by U.S. proxies and extradited to a U.S. jail cell. This is the imperialist's vision of heaven on earth.  A world where the PR nightmares of bombed civilians and destroyed nations are a thing of the past, where disobedient nations can simply be squeezed to death by modern siege warfare tactics while imperial propaganda firms like AP and AFP blame their starvation on their nation's leaders. That's ultimate power right there. That's total control. Having the world so bent to the will of the almighty dollar and the massive military force with which it is inextricably intertwined, to such an extent that disobedience becomes impossible. That's what's being fought for in the slow-motion Third World War that the empire is waging against unobserved governments like Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and China. And that's why those unobserved governments are fast at work moving away from the dollar in response. It should really go without saying, but a power structure that would openly starve civilians to death to ensure global domination is not the sort of power structure that humanity should want dominating the globe. The willingness to do such monstrous things exposes a depravity and a lack of wisdom which has no business determining what direction our world should take into the future.


Speaking of evolution, to go from a primeval ape to a human being takes trillions of transitional forms, trillions of mutations in transitional forms. To go from a dinosaur to a bird, a whale to a cow. Trillions, it's interesting Darwin and the Origin of Species in 1863 says we're going to find them eventually, we're going to dig up the earth, we're going to find all these trillions of transitional forms from ape to human being. What have we found? What is the fossil record show? Trillions? No. Millions? No. Millions? Yeah, no. Thousands? No. Hundreds? Come on, 100? No. A dozen? No. Six or seven? Maybe. And they're probably extinct apes that they say, oh, these are the trillions of transitional forms. Okay, interesting.


Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's Product School webinar. Thanks for joining us today. Just in case you didn't know, Product School teaches product management, coding, data analytics, digital marketing, and blockchain courses online and at our 15 campuses worldwide. On top of that, every week we offer some amazing local product management events and host online webinars, live streams, and ask me anything sessions. Head over to productschool.com after this webinar to check them out. Hello everyone, my name is Casey Phillips and thank you for joining me for this product school webinar on increasing chatbot user engagement with personalization. A little bit about me before we dive into the webinar. I'm currently at the chatbot product owner at Intuit. I've been working in the chatbot space for the last couple of years and I'm an avid blogger in my free time on chatbots and Alphins AI for chatbots magazine and the startup. So first let's start off with explaining what exactly user engagement means for a chatbot. The easy answer for that is it means everything. Although user engagement chatbots provide absolutely no value, think of a chatbot that introduces itself as a welcome message that's allowed to the user. The user does nothing. They don't message the chatbot back, they don't click a response button if the chatbot has one, but they don't take any form action that the chatbot provides. In these instances where there's no user engagement, there's no opportunity for the chatbot to provide any meaningful value to the user. The chatbot is not going to cut it in the long run. Generally you'll see higher quality, higher forms of user engagement. Usually deeper in the conversation, the deeper you go, the more likely it is that the user is actually getting the answer to the problem that they need or the user is actually getting the value that the people are using. For example, it's looking to use the chatbot to order pizza. The further the user is able to get into the conversation, the more likely they are to actually be able to order that pizza and get that value. Unless of course the user is stuck in an endless loop. It always says always something that you want to avoid when creating or designing a chatbot.  That would obviously get them further to the conversation, in terms of conversation steps, but certainly not a high quality of user engagement or any value being provided there. So definitely an exception to that rule. Right now this is a general negative connotation of chatbots that can definitely mean optical to their user engagement. The current public perception is chatbots is mixed at best, I would say. A lot of this is due to struggles of early chatbots. They create a lot of preconceived notions and just a lot of pessimism from users that can be very hard to overcome. There's a lot of users that lack confidence in the capabilities of chatbots now because of that. So chatbots really need to show their abilities early and often and wow users to really prove it to them that the chatbot can provide value and that it is worth the user's time and that it's better than the user picking up the phone and calling a human or whatever the user did before this chatbot existed. So moving on, what exactly is personalization when it comes to the chatbot? Really it just involves customizing the conversations and creating customers intimate conversations that appear tailored to each individual user and the situation. It helps boost confidence that users have in the chatbot, which leads to ultimately increased user engagement, a shortened path to value for the user. So we're talking about what that is, having the user, requiring the user to go through fewer conversation steps and back and forth with the chatbot so they get their answer or get the value that they're looking for. One thing that you will know is frequently with users depending on the space that the chatbot is in or exactly what the chatbot is doing or supporting. Users are kind of very infuses as to how much time and effort they're willing to spend on the chatbot until they get the value that they're looking for before they're going to get frustrated and try an alternative method of getting the value that they're looking for. So if you're making them go through too many conversation steps, you may back and forth with the chatbot or it's just taking too long in overall time duration, you definitely run a risk of the user's fuse running out and they'll either pick up the phone and call someone or find some other way outside of the chatbot getting the answer or value that they're looking for. So ultimately we're really trying to create an optimized chat experience for the user with personalization and really help to increase user engagement, just create overall a better chatbot and a better experience. So there's a few different types of chatbot personalization that I want to highlight and then they kind of start on the lower end in terms of how much influence and impact they can have and kind of increases to go through them. So the first most basic form of personalization that I think are kind of the wow factor stuff that would include addressing the user by their name or perhaps mentioning the weather. If the chatbot is able to know where the user is tagged from, where they're located, also just even changing the green based on the time of day so the chatbot knows what the time, what time of day this for that user, what their time zone is. So you know, good morning in the morning, good afternoon, good night, and etc. You can also randomly customize the way responses are phrased. So if you have to welcome us to areas of how it's phrased a little bit differently, you know, when the chatbots acknowledge the user don't always say okay, they can say for sure sometimes say they got it. Just customize it can say that so the user, so it doesn't just start to feel repetitive and dull the user. And it helps to read definitely forward with the chatbot in the conversation. But outside of kind of like helping with the initial user impression, it really does not provide a lot of value to the user. But it definitely is important. And especially early on the chatbot conversation in the chatbot's initial message like that welcome message, it can really help to get the user over the cliff and to commit to responding and interacting with the chatbot and going down the path of having a conversation with it. There's also historical user activity personalization. So this is most customizing the conversation based on any past activity of the user. Like past activity could be the chatbot or the product or perhaps a website that the chatbot supports. An example of this would be if you had a chatbot that helped you to order pizzas. When the user interacts with the chatbot, if you know that every Sunday there's like a game day special and the user always orders that and they and you know their delivery address, you know their payment information, instead of requiring the user to enter all of that every single time. If that user chats with their chatbot, it's Sunday, you know that game day special is going and you know that the user's maybe ordered that like four of the last five times on Sunday. The chatbot could say, hey, we've got our game day special going on. I see that you freaking or order this today. Is this what you'd like to order? No, the users are might of that special and now all they have to do is respond yes. And they've got their initial order, their initial order going just like that. The user doesn't have to type everything that they're looking for. They don't have to type all their toppings, like what drinks they want. Just one quick response and they're moving on. You could do the same thing with their delivery address. If you know the address that they get delivered to, then the chatbot can say, hey, I see that we have your delivery address as such and such. Is this where you want the pizza delivered to? The user says yes, they're moving forward. Same with their payment information. So in this case, now we're really providing a lot of value in addition to just wowing the user. So ultimately, the value we're trying to provide is to provide just a quicker, more seamless and easier experience for the user to order pizzas. Then they could order them online on the website or over the phone with a human by remembering what the user likes to order. We're making a lot easier for them. It's a lot quicker. The user doesn't have to type everything out. So we're just really creating that seamless experience that's faster for them. If the user had to type everything out, they would honestly probably be easier for them to just place the order online or to go ahead and just call someone over the phone. I also have to keep in mind if the user is on a mobile device and they're just trying to interact with the chatbot through an app or on their phone, then making them type all that out would really become or something. So we're really providing even more value for mobile users in this example. So again, we're impressing the users. We're going to be ultimately providing them with a lot of value that hopefully cause them to go from being a new user to being a frequent, recurrent user of the chatbot. The last type of personalization I like to talk about, the one that is my favorite and really the most powerful is the real-time user activity personalization. What this is all about is customizing the conversation based on the real-time activity of the user that's interacting with the product or the website that the chatbot supports or could even be based on the user's actual community customer based on the real-time conversation with the chatbot as well. A great example, this would be a support chatbot that lives in a product or lives in a website and it supports that. If you know, for example, that users are in a certain section of your product, if there's an overwhelming FAQ that users always seem to have, this is like a really frequent issue that always seems to apply to users at this part. In this certain part of section of your product, you can have the chatbot actually present that to the user early in the conversation and say, hey, I see that you're working on this such and such part. The product, is this the problem that you're having? Do you need help with this? So now not only are we allowing the user and we're really impressing them, but we're also overcoming one of the hardest things about chatbots and that's how do you handle when the user asks something in a way that the chatbot is not prepared for. In this case, we've been proactive and we've actually gotten ahead of that. So we don't have to worry about the user asking this question or how they could potentially try to ask this question or phrase it. We're presenting it directly to the user and if the user is having the issue, then they can just respond yes to the chatbot and you can start down the troubleshooting path. Another example of this would be, a very example would be a sales chatbot that could potentially change its sales recommendations or product recommendations and the options that present based on what the user is currently shopping for or looking for. So for example, if the user is currently looking for a certain type of hat and it opens the pop-up, the chat pop-up, then the chatbot early on the conversation could present relative content related to the hats that the user is looking for and not only does that show a lot of confidence to the user that the chatbot actually is able to provide value to them, but it also hopefully leads to better sales conversions for the chatbot as well. So to cast some of the real-time user utility personalization, it really creates a lot of value for the user and it really helps shorten the path to the answer. So the chatbot already has an idea what users want and need without needing to ask. So it really is great, especially cutting out a lot of the early steps in the conversation that will have to happen for the chatbot to get an idea for the user situation and what they're looking for. Instead, right when this conversation starts, the chatbot already has an idea what users are looking for and the conversation begins already tailored to that. So it's really great for impressing users, great in the wild factor, but also just really provides a lot of high value to the user that should create a great chatbot conversation experience and keep these users coming back for more. So in summary, there's really no such thing as too much personalization when it comes to chatbots. I definitely recommend mixing and matching the different types of personalization that I've mentioned in this webinar to really find the perfect fit to get your chatbot users engaged. There's really no perfect formula, something that you probably got to play with and see what would resonate to most of users and what really gets them to engage more and what really kind of makes or breaks their conversations and cause them to get the most value. I definitely don't fret if your chatbot is only capable of the basic wild factor personalization that could just be used by their name, mentioning the weather, customized breeding, you know, good morning, good afternoon, based on time of the day, stuff like that. If that's all your chatbots capable of doing, that's still fine. That's better than nothing. Just really try to do as much as you can, especially early on the conversation and that welcome message to really get users over the cliff and get them to commit to actually engaging with your chatbot and having a conversation. I definitely recommend those things a longer term goal of getting your chatbot to the point where it is capable of driving value through the activity based personalization that we talked about. So the historical user activity and then just even more importantly and even bear the real-time user activity if you can get to that point. Remember though about user engagement, chatbot really has no value. It all begins with user engagement. If the users don't engage with your chatbot, there's nothing. You don't have any opportunity on any chance to provide any value and to keep that user coming back for more. So user engagement is incredibly important with your chatbot and you've got to be innovative and you've got to be creative and find ways to really help drive it. Ultimately it comes down just really impressing and impressing and winning over those users that I mentioned that are a lot of them pessimistic towards chatbots and have doubts and have concerns. I think this is a waste, this chatbot is a waste of my time. It doesn't know the answers that I'm looking for. This chatbot can't help my personal situation. There's a million negative thoughts and connotations that go through a lot of users' minds when it comes to chatbots and again as I mentioned before a lot of it is definitely earned and it's definitely justified and it's based on a lot of past struggles from early chatbots that came out that just did not have a lot going on underneath the hood and chatbots that just really provide bad user experiences. But over the years chatbots are evolving especially right now. Chatbots are evolving at such a fast pace and chatbots right now have a lot of great capabilities. A lot of users don't know that and they're not aware of that and a lot of times they're very hesitant to commit and put forth their time to actually be able to realize and see that value. So you've got to impress them. You've got to impress them early. You've got to impress them often especially in that initial welcome message from the chatbot and you've really got to prove it to the user that your chatbot is worth it and that's going to be able to provide the value that the user is looking for. If you're not able to do that the user is just going to pick up the phone, call a human or find some other alternative to the chatbot to get the value that they're looking for. That concludes my webinar today on increasing chatbot user engagement with personalization. Thank you all so much for watching this webinar. I hope it was very valuable for all the chatbot builders out there and I hope that you're all able to take some lessons from this and some things that you can use as you build and design your own chatbots. I definitely encourage anyone if you'd like to connect with me on either Medium or LinkedIn. I love connecting with people in the chatbot space, sharing ideas, talking about chatbots, something that I'm very passionate about. It's a very exciting space right now that's moving at the speed of light and it's very exciting time to open a space. So definitely welcome anyone to connect with me and if you have any additional questions on the road or like to just talk a little chatbot. We definitely appreciate it. Thanks so much to CROC School for providing the opportunity to present with this online webinar. Thanks everyone. Have a great day.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to our pre-owned vehicles of the week. I'm Gabrielle and I'm here at Oxmer Toyota. So you guys, this week we are going to highlight three luxury brand vehicles. You guys, I want to go ahead and start with this Audi right here. So the first vehicle is a 2020 Audi A4 40 premium. Now the exterior color is in a floret silver metallic. You have the 17 inch 10 spoke forged wheels. There is going to be a moonroof heated leather seats. There's a clean car fax with one owner and there's very low miles.  Mileage is 7,383 and the price is 31,618. Our second vehicle is a 2019 Mercedes Benz SL 450. The exterior color is in a diamond white metallic.  This is a convertible. You're going to have the Herman Kardon premium sound system. There's heated seating, apple car plate and you're going to have wood grain accents. Now the interior is in a porcelain napple leather. Mileage is 37,853 and the price is 57,995. And for our last one we have a rare vehicle that I have never seen before. This is a 2019 Lexus LC 500. Now the exterior color is in the ultra white. So you have 21 inch forged wheels. This does have the carbon fiber roof with moonroof. There's the performance package. You have the all weather package. This has a clean car fax and it was locally owned. Now that interior color is the black and can tear a leather. The mileage is 20,666 and the price is 78,995. All right you all if you have any questions on these three luxury vehicles let us know. All of our contact info is listed right here. Thanks you guys for watching and I'll see you soon. Bye.


Well, I think we should take a look at Johnny Cage. Oh, the Cage?  So while Stephanie's setting up Johnny Cage here, I want to talk quickly, while Stephanie was walking me through Johnny Cage, I was, every single character I see in this game, I'm like, I'm going to do that character. Yeah, I'll play that character. You do that every game. I know I do. You do it every game and you start with them all. Except for like one, maybe two. Wow. Your bane was good. That was all right. Johnny is a different level, though. Johnny, there's something to Johnny that I'm just super excited about and you'll see it here in a moment. We're getting it all set up. Yep. So let's talk about Johnny Cage. Goofy as always. Yes. So one of the main things about Johnny Cage is he is a mix-up and pop-up combo starter machine. Yep. Like... We're not showing it yet. Are we showing it? Okay, let's go to it. All right. A ton of his moves pop up for a combo. And one thing that you'll notice quickly is he doesn't have like his traditional Johnny Cage energy, right? Right. Like, you know, he could manipulate energy when he was doing his kicks or he would throw the force balls and things like that, right? Like he doesn't use this as a more of a grounded character but still has those same attacks, right? Right.  In the new era, Liu Kang has reshaped the world and Johnny Cage is strictly anti-zoning. He hates it. He can't stand it. But...  No magic. Yeah. To make up for that, he has excellent rushdown and unique ways to get in. So one of the new moves we'd like to show is this command dash. He quickly goes in. You can use it to cover space. And if you're close, he can actually go through the opponent. Who's that? He can also do it twice. Which helps you close in pressure, of course, too. Exactly. You know, is he vulnerable during that time? He is. Okay. Gotcha. Another new thing he has, which I think is one of the neatest things about him, is the hype meter. I got to hype it up. This is it. This is the thing. This is what sold you. So in the corner, you can see the little star. As he does special moves and certain taunts, he'll start to build it up. So what are the taunts? Well, if you hold L2 after doing some of his special moves, he will hold a pose and look really cool. And notice the star is filling up. Yes. Yeah. I'll do some other stuff so you can see. So for example, he has his nut punch, but he can actually hold it and do a taunt version. Then once it's full, you're fully charged, and when you're ready, you activate it. So this gives you the ability to special cancel special moves and other special moves. That's a lot of special and canceling. Oh, so you do double nut punch. That's right. Yeah. And can't you do like multiple kicks in a row and just be like, bling bling bling bling. Now if that's not the top of fun, I don't know what is. This is what excited me the most. And also like, I think we talked about it, some of the information we got out during our event in Los Angeles that you have, if you go down, down, down, down, it's a taunt now. That will also give you height meter. So there's something else the height meter does that's really neat. It allows him to get an EX move without the cost of a bar. So for example, EX, rising uppercut, combos, so let me build it up. Once you're in height, come on. You can hold the button down and get a free version of it. So once per combo, a free EX move. That's awesome. So you can use this to do simple stuff like you could do a shadow kick, they try to punish it, use special cancel in a nut punch, then special cancel into uppercut and then for free without using a bar, you can get an air combo, then bringing your cameo to extend it, maybe Jack's backbreaker and then finish your combo. So big, big damage if you've got the height thing up. And it's just fun to do. It's also incredibly fun to do and it's super fun to hear the crowd. We'll see some amazing versions of it in the fight at the end of the show today. Yes. Right. Lastly, there's one more mechanic I wanted to show. Johnny Cage is a unique mechanic where he can actually break a throw, use one bar a meter to break your arm and then disable your throws for limited time. So if you can neutral jump and do a throw, I'll show you. That was not a neutral throw. What? Oh, sorry, it was. I just missed time. Oh, good. There you go. Now I am pounding on the throw button and nothing happened and I cannot throw. Yeah. That is so cool. So it does take a bar, but it's a pretty neat mechanic. So a little bit of time. Yeah. That's awesome. That's what I love. I just I love the little just the little bits of new, yes, new energy coming into the game is super fun to see. You always got to keep them fresh. That mechanic is just super neat. Like, because I'm I love throwing and yes, my throw punishes are broken. Yeah. Yeah. So that's awesome. You don't really throw up on it. Okay. All right. We'll see. Yeah. We're good. All right. So that is Johnny Cage. Super excited. I'll take the glasses off. Yeah. No, it really can't. They have this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Two very two very different characters. Yes. Both look awesome. RumiBot has some work to do, honestly, on the stage over there. RumiBot is the real star. He really is. He really is. He's going to keep Cage's mansion clean. I'm so excited to see people like it. Again, our players love, love to show off sometimes. And it's defining the times to use those taunts. Yeah. And not get blown up by doing it. Yeah. I think you'll see in the upcoming fight that we're going to show the kind of tradeoff where you want to do the shadow kick and then hold the kick and all that. But then you open yourself up, but you did get height meters. So maybe it's worth it. Right. It's a really neat mechanic. That's awesome. Johnny Cage, definitely looking super cool. And remember. Get caged. Remember what we always say, work in progress still. Yes. Things might change.  Things might change. Some combos might not work the same launch, which... Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you. Happy to see you.


The quarter-final stage. First leg action. Liverpool, Accalanta, Uef Ropini, Thursday, April 11, 2pm, 3pm ZT on Sports Max 2 and on the app.


Well, hi guys, it's Sandy Allnach and I am excited to be part of the Series that Ellen Hudson does every year the 12 feminine tags of Christmas and I get to play with art impressions watercolor so I got out the cabins and the fir trees and the fir trees have Both branches and the tree trunks in them and I'm just gonna pick one of the houses But I'm going to use the dyes from the concertina set that I showed you recently The concertina set has three different bottoms on them the jaggedy the loopy and the single banner So you can cut them apart and have three tags or you can use them all together like I did in my previous video I'm going to stamp my main cabin image on the tag by lining it up using the center line on my lawn fond block So any kind of block that you have that has a a center point on it You can get it straight so that when you turn the stamp over you're going to get your walls straight on your building And I'm going to throw in a gray color first on everything You could just target where you're going to put your color, but I started throwing color on before I realized Oh, I should probably do something different So now I'm going to add some brown for the door for that beautiful chimney and a little bit around some windows Just a little bit of brown color and then there's snow on the building now So I need to put some snow out there So I'm coloring over top with blue and by the way, I'm doing this with the zig twin touch Markers twin tip markers twin touch. Yes by zig I'm gonna have all the links of course in the supply section in the doobly-doo and over on the blog So now I've got my block turned upside down. I've got my house positioned It's nice and straight and centered and I can start my water coloring So the water is going to actually melt out all that beautiful color from the markers And I'm gonna start with my snow So I soften that edge on the bottom So the house is standing in snow and then I'm gonna add some snow to the roof And I want my light to be coming from the upper right So I'm gonna add a little shadow along the side of that that little part peeking out of the roof and Now I'll start painting some of the other areas like that big chimney Throw in a little bit water into that that little window peeking out of the roof And then I'm gonna start working on the door now with a door like this You could just paint a big old brown door, but I wanted to have almost some some dry brush look But there wasn't enough pigment there for me to use So I scribbled some onto the block and I can just pick it up and drop it into that water and Create that almost that wood look by letting some of those areas be white Not everything has to be fully painted in it actually looks better when it's not fully painted in So do a little bit around the window And I wanted to do something really fun with the rest of the cabin Because I could have made it just normal wood slats or that sort of thing But I decided to put some more colors onto my block and Make some stones and it's really easy to make a stone wall Just by scribbling some colors onto your block to pick up a little bit of this ink a little bit of that ink and Make little blobs They can touch and run into each other the colors can mix that sort of thing doesn't really matter a whole lot and One of the things about these zig twin touch markers the same kind of thing happens with the clean color is That the color sort of changes when you do things to it So I want to show you what happens here I'm putting colors down that start to look like a bunch of green stones to me because I had a little bit of a Blue and a little bit of a brown and then when I dabbed off color look how brown everything went It just kind of all turned into that that nice brown color Which is fine because I didn't like all the green that I ended up with because that was a little bit weird So this this is one of those cases when the marker changed color when I did something to it See all that stuff that looks green right there dab it off and it goes brown I don't know why that is. It's just a science thing with the color somehow that only happens with those markers So I'm going to take some brown and I've got the the snow masked off and I'm just gonna start making tree trunks I've throw a little little tiny bits of them on the the part behind my little house my little cabin and Then take one of the little little bits of branches. They're all different sizes and some are curly and some are not This is one that's not curly and I'm just using the tip of it I only put ink on the tip so that way I'm really in control of how much because this is such a tiny tag I didn't want to make it too overwhelming And I'm just using sticky notes. I didn't you know, you could actually stamp out the whole House to mask it that whole cabin and I was like, ah Let's just use a sticky and call it good, right? and then I can use my water to just create a thicker forest and Let that let that green kind of turn into a light green behind it And that this this tree wanted to be in front because of the way I stamped it So one tree is going to be partially in front of the cabin. The others are going to remain behind it And I think that actually adds more nice depth to it to have Some some in the front and some behind which is kind of nice And the brown and the green work really nicely together in making a forest Kind of figured that out as I went along which was a nice thing to find So now I want to work on the windows a little bit I've got a little bit of yellow and a little bit of green on my palette Because I wanted to show you how to make make it look like there's just a little Christmas tree inside I'm just going to put a little bit of green on one side Not painting a Christmas tree. Notice that I just threw some color in there If you were looking at a cabin from a distance all you'd see is a little haze of green through that window You're not going to see a whole lot I want to make it look like there's a little path coming from the door So I just put a few strokes of blue and then I'll watercolor that out make them really soft and the more Blue you add to one side the more white looks like it's next to it So I wanted to add a little bit more punch to that that blue area up there on the roof So I just took a real quick swipe with the marker Be careful doing that because if you do it in the dark color you could end up with a big old blob on your card I was very glad that this blue did not do that to me after I got this far in my painting And then I want to add a little bit more to my chimney paint a little bit more brown in there to make sure that That's good and brown and this whole time. I was also Very conscious of what was dry and what was wet the trees had become dry So I thought now is a good time I can add some snow while the rest of the house dries because I wanted to add a little more detail on to it so I'm just using a Signo uniball white pen to make some little snowy dots on that If you do these snowy dots while it's still wet it'll just melt in so it would actually light in color So if you have any areas that are big and dark Then throw some white pen in there while it's still wet and it'll just kind of lighten everything These zig twin touch markers have two tips to them They have the big fat brush tip and then they have a little bullet nib So I'm going to use that little bullet nib to add a little shadow just a little C shape on the bottom of each one of my Stones which gives them a little bit of dimension look how much detail is added by that but just a little tiny barely touched Just a little C mark Which kind of really helped the the cabin quite a bit And of course I had to add a middle to my window so that that looked more like a window add a little bit more strength of color to a few of the edges and If you add too much you can of course just soften that out by using a little bit of water with it. I Had the idea to make this a layered tag So I got out my vellum and the no peaking stamp set that has some sentiments in it And I wanted the from and the to and I decided to add the with love as well Stamped it onto a vellum version of this tag and tied it with a piece of ribbon And I wanted to show you what it looks like underneath a little peek-a-boo to that beautiful stamped cabin And I'm going to take some twine and add it to the beautiful ribbon that's already there So if the person wants to save this tag and hang it on their Christmas tree as an ornament They can get rid of the silly little vellum tag and keep the beautiful cabin tag as a Christmas ornament Which I think is a very sweet idea And I hope you've enjoyed this make sure you go to the Ellen Hudson blog to see Laurel's water color she's doing art in person's watercolor too and Stay tuned every one of the twelve days for more tags from Ellen and her crew and you could also stay tuned to my Blog because I've got videos for the twelve days of Christmas as well in my rush to Christmas series Go see the blog to hear more about what that is all about and I will see you guys later links to everything are in the doobly-doo Ta ta see ya


Sometimes in our communities, people imagine that when two people get married who hitherto that point and not know each other, that's arranged. No, on the contrary, you may find someone in the community who can arrange for the two of you to get to know each other. There's a difference between arranging a meeting between two people and arranging or forcing two people to get married to one another. So, following on from Prophet Muhammad, how was his marriage built or arranged with Hazrat Khadija As-Salamu Alaih? What were their relationship? He of course works with her and it's beautiful because he works for this woman who no doubt has a fundamental position in early Islamic history. She's got these wonderful names already in early Islam. She's known as Taher, the pure lady. She's known as Ameerat Quraish, the lady who was seen as the princess, for example, of Quraish. And everybody reveres her. Everyone's revered her. Father Khwailid. These are all families who are known as Hanifs. They've stayed on the Abrahamic path. They've never disobeyed in the sense that they've never worshipped an idol or ever been affected by polytheism. And he works for her. And when he works for her, he's still this young man in his mid-20s who's still humbled and awed by her presence. And at the beginning, when he's told to propose for her and when she's told about him, both of them, their answers are the answers of humility. This is sometimes you could turn around and say, who's this person to come and propose for me? Or who does this person think that they think they can have a chance at marrying me? The Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon his family, seen as the absolute embodiment of knowledge and absolute embodiment of humility. And it can be seen in these moments because he doesn't see himself as being, oh, I can marry her easily. I'll point my finger and she'll marry me. On the contrary, you find that there are matchmakers involved. There's the ladies who work alongside her. There's Abu Talib, peace be upon his side. And they don't shy away from telling each of them what you guys are waiting for. And sometimes, those matchmakers, you need them. You need their push. So with the Prophet and Sayyid al-Khadija, it wasn't the Prophet Muhammad directly going to her one day and saying, I want to propose for you. But rather, there were people who were around who begin to institute what later becomes an extremely wonderful act of piety, which brings upon Allah's mercy and that's bringing two people together. We underestimate how much reward there is in the traditions of the Ahl al-Bayt al-Masalam for those who bring two people together in marriage. From the rewards of heaven being guaranteed for them, to the rewards that Allah's mercy depends on that person, to the rewards that the angels seek forgiveness on behalf of a person who brings a couple together and gets them married. So you find with the Holy Prophet, peace be upon his side, and Sayyid al-Khadija, there were a number of people around them who were involved in matchmaking and bringing them together. So in terms of matchmaking, then, how far can you go to make sure a marriage happens? Because I've heard, for example, with Qibers, obviously Haram and not recommended to do, but if someone comes and asks you about a specific person that they're interested in marrying, you can almost be an open book about them. What does Islam allow you to do with matchmaking? How far can one go in that sort of situation? Well, I don't think matchmaking is only about giving references for people. Matchmaking is also an awareness of those in the community who may be single, those who may be divorced, those who may be widowed from the male and the female side, and are looking to get married. So the first step is building a database of people in the community and a database of confidentiality that whoever's going to run the matchmaking site or the matchmaking group in the mosque has to be someone who is known to be a person who can keep the people's secrets because this is the people's private lives. They've already probably been through an extremely sensitive time, either not getting married, which for some of them is so difficult to take, understandably, or a very difficult time, for example, after a divorce, or after the loss of a husband or a wife. So the first thing is to get this database of people who can trust you, you trust them, then to get three, four members of the community who you know very well can work alongside you because they are people of very renowned social circles. That's an area which is fundamental, that we have people in our communities who don't realize just how many friends they have. They may have so many friends out there and they may know that this person's looking for a wife, that person's looking for a husband. You know what? Let's try and bring the two of them together. Now, how do you bring the two of them together? That's the third area. Maybe you pick the house of the one who has collected this database in confidentiality and maybe five, six, 10, 15 people come together. And if you, for example, click with someone, then you may mention, for example, that there may be number tags and things like this. And I know certain people laugh at these things and some people say, well, you know what? I don't need to go through this process. You may be fortunate to be part of a community where you're surrounded by people who are lovers of Ahlul Bayt, let's say. There are certain people who belong to communities made up of 10, 15, 30, 40 people. The father, for example, had to move to get a job somewhere in the middle of nowhere. They bought a few Arakes, a couple of Pakistanis, a few Iranian, Lebanese, Afghani, reverse this India. They bought them together. They made an Imam baria. They made a Hussainiyah. They made a jamiah of 40 people, 50 people. You're not going to find all of a sudden for your three daughters, three guys. If you're fortunate, Alhamdulillah, but it's very rare. So you need this database. Now, whether it's online, whether it's face-to-face, it is an act of piety, and it should be done. If there is someone out there who says, for example, why you say the traditions say that God's mercy descends on the one who brings two people together, if they say to you, okay, the Ahlul Bayt, alayhum salam, did anyone seek a matchmaker from them? It's an interesting question. If you look at the Ahlul Bayt, alayhum salam, I would say, Imam Ali Ibn Abi Ta'ab, alayhi salam, one of his marriages was a matchmaker. I would say, Aba al-Fadl al-Abbas, alayhi salam's marriage to Lubaaba was a matchmaker. I would say Imam Al-Hussain's marriage to Sharbanu was a matchmaker. Either they use the Imam present in their time, Aba al-Fadl with his brother, Imam Al-Hussain with his father, or Imam Al-Hussain uses his own brother, Aqeel. When Imam Ameer al-Mu'min, alayhi salam sees that Fatima al-Zahra has passed away and he sees, for example, that he's got these orphans at home, they're young, and he wants to marry someone. He marries a smart bint Umayz, for example. He marries Khawla bin Ja'far, she gives him Muhammad bin Al-Hanafiyah. But then he asks his brother, Aqeel. Aqeel used to know that and Saab, the genealogies, and he asks his brother, Aqeel, he says to him, find me a lady who from her ancestors, there are the bravest of warriors. I ask you, Sayyid Ja'far, Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib, alayhi salam. Could not himself just find someone? We don't believe Imam is the gate to the city of knowledge? He could, but then it wouldn't be a lesson for us to date a father. The Ahlul Bayt, every aspect of their life is a lesson for us. Aqeel satruhim, Aqeel used to place like a mat in the mosque of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon his family in Medina, and people would come and ask him about the different ancestors, and so Aqeel satruhim, he satruhim, give me a month. I'll get back to you.   He says to him, he says to him, shall I mention to you the names of some of her ancestors? Now, this is a matchmaker, there's also a matchmaker duo. A matchmaker can see someone who's looking to get married, asks them the criteria, and then after that, there's a hope that, ya Allah, bring them together. Ultimately, it's Allah's mercy when two people come together, and so you find that he says to him, Amr ibn Sa'sa'a is one of her ancestors. And Amr ibn Sa'sa'a as a hobby used to go out in the desert to look for wild animals. Me and Jew would run away from a wild animal. Amr ibn Sa'sa'a used to go, is there any more wild animals that I can go after? I don't want to mess with this guy. And I certainly don't want to mess with his descendants. They said, who else? He says, And when Amr ibn Umni hears these two names, he knows, ya, her family, not to be messed about with. And eventually she is known as who? And she gives him four of the most noble, honorable sons any human being can have. Notice how I put noble and honorable. I don't need to always talk about bravery. Ab al-Fadl, above all else noble, is a noble human being. People always say, Ab al-Fadl, sword, fight, war. There are many who achieve swords and fights. But not many can go to the Euphrates and turn around and say, how can I drink the syrup of this cold water while my brother drinks the syrup of death? So there exists in our history. And that's why when I hear in our communities that there are people who are bringing people together and you hear some people laughing, what's this nonsense, they made this app, they made this site on the country. I have full respect for those. I believe that they continue to follow the path of the Ahl al-Bayt, saying salam and trying to bring members of our communities together. And you know, the way the world of marriage works is unbelievable. As in you sometimes imagine, well, there's only one way. And that is, for example, if my mom knows someone who knows someone, then maybe something can happen. You know what? You may never have imagined that that would be your future partner. But then someone told you, did you know down the road, down the street, in this area, on this area, Allah SWT is the greatest of planners. And so let's try and incorporate more of this into our communities, inshallah.


rates very similarly to a ski lift. A few years and a few patents later, it was a natural progression of thought that would lead to the below ground endless ropeway that we are all so familiar with, the cable car. So Hallity would test the first cable car on Clay Street in August of 1873, and it was a roaring success. And it led to several other lines that would crisscross the north part of the city. Are you all fascinated by cable cars? Yeah, okay, you've got to go to the cable car museum. They do it right, and you can see cable cars in action, and it's a free museum. It's a great place to take your family when they're visiting, and afterwards, you can take the cable car down the hill and have a nice drink along the waterfront. And by the way, they have an extraordinary exhibit of old cable cars, new cable cars, and a picture exhibit of how it actually evolved. So the man in front with the stovepipe hat with the circle around him, that's Hallity himself. And the lady sitting on his right is his wife, Martha. And I suspect the guy in the middle is her father, but I'm not sure. So Andrew Hallity likely only went to a traditional school for a few years. We know he studied drafting under the tutelage of his older brother who managed the drawing office of their father's factory. He probably also attended the free lectures, scientific and technical lectures that were at the Mechanics Institutes that were within walking distance of their home. Because of this lack of formal education, Hallity loved libraries. He recognized that they were essential for a informed and democratic society, and in fact, critical for those that were interested in self-improvement. And this was especially important in the frontier environment of San Francisco because it did not have any educational facilities for adults in place yet. So in 1864, Hallity would start his first term as on the board of regents of the Mechanics Institute as vice president. He was instrumental in acquiring this plot of land and making sure that our building, which then was 31 post, was built. And due to his tremendous energy, he would be elected shortly after in 1868 as president. And his first task as president was to set the Mechanics Institute on a firm financial footing. At the time, Mechanics Institute was organized upon a stockholder system, which wasn't working the way it should. And we were in a deep financial hole. Hallity would abolish the stockholder system and make the property of the Institute a public trust. This change, along with the financial success of the 1864 fair, the Industrial Fair, would help set Mechanics on a, put them into a positive fiscal environment. And it was so positive that Hallity felt the room that he had room to dream about the future of Mechanics. So at the same time, unfortunately the 60s were tremendously busy for Hallity, at the same time in March of 1868, Governor Henry Haight signed into law the bill that outlined the criteria for the new University of California. And the bill also specified who should be on the Board of Regents. On that list was the president of the Mechanics Institute. Hallity, who had just assumed the position of president here, aptly took to the role of regent and would ultimately serve 32 years in that capacity, helping design its mechanical arts program and overseeing the university's finance. Okay, so Hallity was such an amazing regent that upon his death, the university would commission this building to honor him and it's straight through the Crocker Galleria on Sutter. This is the Hallity building designed by Willis Polk and it opened in 1917. And if you've never been there, you've got to walk by on a sunny day because it's impossible to see in this black and white photo, but it's a blue and gold building and the gold on a sunny day will dazzle you. And the curtain wall glass will too as well. All right, so the notion of a state sponsored university may have stimulated Hallity's thinking about directing public funds to libraries. The problem facing San Francisco's libraries and virtually every library in the country was that there was no mechanism in place for funding them other than the rich person model where a wealthy person gives money to help make the library happen or the membership model. So in February 1875, Hallity took a trip to the Eastern U.S. and Europe on a fact-finding study of the best practices in place at municipal libraries, mechanics institutes and universities that offered technical programs. The facilities that he visited in the U.S. included the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the New York Public Library, the Cooper's Institute and the Boston Public Library. And Hallity was particularly impressed with Boston's system because they were funded by tax dollars. Incidentally, they initially were funded by the rich person model and then that was not stable enough for them. So they set up this tax system. So Hallity saw this as a possible solution to the San Francisco's library woes and he returned to San Francisco charged with a mission to gain for its residents a free library. Scarcely a year later, Hallity and his compatriot, Senator George Rogers, would organize a community meeting on August 3rd, 1877 at Dashaway Hall with the object of drafting legislation that would help fund a free library for San Francisco. The fruit of that meeting became Senate Bill Number One, submitted on December 5th, 1877, and that was signed into law the following year by Governor William Irwin. So the Rogers Free Library Act basically granted authority to municipalities to impose a tax upon its residents for the establishment of a free public library and reading room. And this afforded many struggling libraries a stable source of income.