Hello and welcome to today's episode of the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the top stories from around the world. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Cuba hosts 20th Summit of Alba TCP. Over 60 killed in fuel tank explosion in Haiti. A report finds 2021 to be the deadliest year for Palestinian children. And UAE suspense talks on arms deal with the United States. In our first story, the 20th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America, People's Trade Treaty or Alba TCP was held in Cuba on December 14th. Leaders from the 10 member countries including Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and St. Lucia signed a 44-point declaration on Tuesday. The texts ratified Alba TCP's commitment to Latin American and Caribbean integration against imperialist domination. The bloc rejected unilateral coercive measures imposed against Venezuela, arguing that it constituted a form of collective punishment. It also condemned the genocidal and illegal blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba. The final text also denounced the use of unconventional warfare strategies and destabilization attempts against the region's progressive governments. The bloc also reaffirmed support for Caribbean countries seeking reparations for the genocide of indigenous peoples and slavery. The final text also welcomed the cooperation among Alba members during the pandemic. This included a humanitarian air bridge using Venezuela's Conviasa airline and the Bank of Alba. Leaders have also highlighted the need to strengthen the community of Latin American and Caribbean states as a mechanism for cooperation and coordination. The final agreement also addressed issues including climate change, debt relief and economic recovery with a sustainable approach. The Latin American and Caribbean region were severely hit by the pandemic's economic fallout with a 7.7% decline in the GDP in 2020. During the summit on Tuesday, member countries also approved a post-pandemic working plan for 2022. Next we go to Haiti, where casualties are rising following a devastating fuel tank explosion. A truck carrying gasoline overturned and exploded just after midnight on December 14th in the city of Cape Hachel. With rescue efforts still underway, the deaths of at least 62 people have been confirmed so far. The city's deputy mayor stated that the truck's driver lost control after it swerved to avoid a motorcycle taxi. The tanker overturned and fuel started spilling on the road after which nearby people rushed to try and collected. The explosion injured at least 100 people and burned around 20 homes. The disaster in Cape Hachel took place as Haiti is witnessing a serious fuel crisis. Critical shortages were reported in October after armed gangs blocked oil terminals in Port-au-Prince. The month was marked by protests and strikes by transport unions who stated that petrol truck drivers had been abducted for ransom. The shortages hit portable water services, telecommunications and critical medical services. The fuel crisis hit just as Haiti was recovering from a devastating earthquake which left many people with complex injuries and a need of care. While the supply resumed to some extent in November, people were still struggling to secure fuel as prices spiralled. The government of Ariel Henry also announced an end to fuel subsidies on December 7th. According to figures quoted by Haiti Libre, the price of kerosene grew by 115% diesel by 108% and gasoline by 24.3%. After the adjustments took effect on December 10th, protests were held in several areas on December 13th. People took to the streets in Port-au-Prince and other provincial towns including Saint-Marc and Mirabelle. In our next story, we find that 2021 has been the deadliest year on record for Palestinian children since 2014. According to Defence for Children Palestine, 86 children have been killed in the occupied Palestinian territories since January. Israeli forces were responsible for 61 deaths in Gaza and 15 in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Armed Israeli civilians also killed two children in the West Bank. Among them was a 15-year-old Mohammad Nidal Yunus Musa who was shot by a private security guard on December 6th. 17 Palestinian children were shot and killed by live ammunition including 15 in the West Bank. At least 9 were killed in the context of demonstrations or confrontations with the occupation forces. By international law standards, the intentional use of lethal force in such non-threatening circumstances is illegal. Investigations conducted by the DCIP regularly suggest that use of lethal force by Israel may amount to extrajudicial or willful killings. During the 11-day bombardment of Gaza, Israeli forces used tank-fired shells, live ammunition and missiles dropped from the drones, US source warplanes and Apache helicopters. Israel targeted densely populated civilian areas leading to the killings of 60 Palestinian children. DCIP has argued that the international community's lack of political will guarantees that Israeli soldiers will continue to unlawfully kill Palestinian children with impunity. According to the organization's records, 2,198 Palestinian children have been killed as a result of Israeli military and settler presence since 2000. And for our final story, we look at a $23 billion arms deal between the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The Emirati Embassy in the United States had stated on Tuesday that it would be suspending negotiations on the sale. An official cited technical requirements, sovereign operational restrictions and cause-benefit analysis behind the move in a statement to Reuters. The sale which was approved under the Trump administration includes F-35 fighter jets, Reaper drones and other munitions. It was related to the normalization of ties between Israel and UAE under the Abraham Accords. The deal was widely condemned by activists who argued that the weapons could be used in the Yemen war. Attempts to block the sale also failed in the US Senate. The Biden administration proceeded with the sale despite pledging to end US support for offensive operations in Yemen. The US is the largest arms supplier to West Asian countries with an increase of 28% in exports between 2016 and 2020. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal with UAE had hit a deadlock over conditions set by the US to make sure that the F-35s would not be susceptible to, suppose, a Chinese espionage. This is related to US's broader concerns about China's economic involvement in the region through its Belt and Road Initiative. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated on Wednesday that the US was still ready to proceed with the sale to UAE. Emirati and American officials are set to hold meetings at the Pentagon this week.


Hey there friends, how's it going? My name is Kevin and today we're playing BitLife. And for those of you that don't know, before I started YouTube for the second time, I worked retail. And there were so many Karen's that just took so much joy out of being Karen. And I want to know what that feels like. So the only way to do it is by playing BitLife as Karen. Ah! Looking at my previous people whenever I start these videos is always hilarious because I've kind of forgotten what happened. And it's just so confusing. My daughter, you, gave birth to a girl. After serving 26 years out of a 36-year sentence, I took a flying lesson. I died in an airplane accident. Oh, I'm looking at the ground. Continue as you. Continue as you. That would be an interesting video. BitLife, but I'm you. Last name demands. I don't know, it just came to me. Karen demands to speak to the manager. If only they could be that long. Start Destiny's life. No, it's Karen. My destiny is to be Karen. Already crying. I want to speak to your higher-up mom. I'm suffering from the flu. Oh, no, I'm only two years old. I thought I died.  He's going straight to the manager upstairs. Glashknock. For vaccination, what do I do? Throw a tantrum, of course. Like I will for everything else in my life. I'm depressed. I'm five years old. My eyesight is degrading. Oh my God, what is this eye exam? Start the test and tap the letter number that's different. Okay. Wait, I legit, do I actually need glasses? Oh God, they tricked me. I thought it'd be a number. I'm being bullied. Of course reporters are the principal. Family vacation. Complain, if I go. All right, finally. That actually made me a little bit happy. You know, Karen doesn't want to admit it. Like I was miserable. Oh, thank God. It actually cured my depression. Where did we go? I'd like to know. Your parents just had a baby boy. Oh, Mary demands. You can't demand anything. Karen's in control here. Difficulty sleeping. You've been feeling extremely drained because you're unable to get a good night's sleep. Oh, search the web. Find an MLM that's selling essential oils that'll help me out. You researched your symptoms on the web and I suspect you've restless leg syndrome. What will you do? Take some aspirin? I don't know. Now I'm confused. I mean, I am pretty confused. You suspect you have dementia? I'm 10. Hope it goes away. Go to the doctor. Chug some water. Another person reported to the principal. Awesome report filed. Another win for Karen. What's a good Karen job? I might have to Google this. What is a good Karen job? I don't think it's going to come up with this. I had found a red tray that's going to help me. So we got receptionist, office manager, pyramid scheme, supply and ferrying people around from one side to another, whatever that means. I think I'll skip to the degree. Thank you. I want a job. Retail salesperson. That kind of works. But no, then she'd kind of understand how retail people feel when she berates them. So no, we don't want that actually. Insurance agent. What element do you identify with the most?  I mean, Karen would definitely say fire, but I'm going to go with air. You were not after. I should have picked fire. I don't want her to understand what it's like to be the one being complained at. What about a junior insurance agent? Why should we hire you? How will you respond? Um, I'll provide great value to you. Yes. Oh, goodbye. Ah, when you're so unlikable, even your equipment tries to escape your company. Please stop. Your friends are all joining Instagram. Oh, definitely. The highlights of the year. South Africa has officially declared war in Japan and I signed up for an Instagram account. How do I get a mini van? Can I take my driver's test driving license? Take the test. What does this sign mean? Right Lane ends or it could be chair ahead. That is a weird looking chair though. I'm going to go with right lane ends. Oh, a Honda Odyssey. Oh, I can almost afford it. Wait, what is a GMC Yukon? That's pretty cheap. No, it's definitely the Honda Odyssey.   I'm sure there's dozens of you. The car looks grand. I would drive a Honda Odyssey, but it just suits her personality. Okay. Not saying you have her personality. I'm going to stop now. Okay. How can we get like $200 fast shoplifting? Fruitcake? No, we need something. I wonder I should t-shirt a yoga mat anti-aging cream. Yes. The pawn shop gave me 13 bucks. Okay. Maybe this isn't the best way to afford a Honda Odyssey. Sperm donor. Perfect. Oh, wait. No, that's that's to buy sperm. Sorry. I forgot my gender. I'll be going now. But before I go, I want to speak to your manager. You sexist baby sitter for 10 bucks an hour. Yes. 290. Is that enough time for mama to get a family carrier? Scroll way down. Way down. Keep going. There we go. Buy it with cash. I didn't even know. Caroline was an option. Yes. 15 year old all of Honda Odyssey. The dream on your way to the shooting range. You witness a bouncer streaking naked. Why is it specifically a bouncer? How do I know that? How do I identify a bouncer if they have no clothes on? Either way, I'm calling the police. You have a giant bulging bump on your big toe that seems to be growing fast. Search the web. You suspect you have bunions. Take some aspirin. Aspirin cures all. Oh, Karen's looking really like a Karen now. But also kind of friendly. We need more Botox is what we need. Hopefully it goes wrong just so I can sue them. Botox. Cheap one. Yes, it was successful. I didn't know surgery was so affordable. I'll get more. Brazilian butt lift. Well, it was botched. Oh my God, the damage it did. My health just plummeted. It must be that bunion on my toe that's done that. Not the botched Brazilian butt lift. Oh, that's a lot of damage. Oh, now I'm getting toe pain. Just search the web and joke some water. She thinks she has gout. Well, let's sue that person. How much damages should I pick for this? 30K, is that fair? That seems fair. Like he's almost killed me to be fair. And I can afford an OK lawyer. So there we go.  I get 30 grand. You know what? I'm going to invest that in surgery. Dr. Riviera, I used to see you. I wonder why it's like as we walk out on court. Hey, you want to do some more surgery on me, by the way? I'm free now. If you were. Yay, surgery. My health is so bad. Oh my God, it keeps going down. I got a promotion though. So that's nice. You get a call from a spa with an offer for a free floatation therapy session in a zero gravity sensory deprivation flow pod. I'm sure. Okay, that helped floating around for a few hours. It's just cured all my problems. Maybe she started chugging some of the water and acquaintances offered you 18,000 to take a suitcase to Hungary. If they ask me on Facebook or if this was just an ad on Facebook, I think she'd do it. I got arrested. Oh man. Do I still get the money? I found not guilty. Oh, that's handy. I didn't get the money though. Can't believe Facebook lied to me. All right, Karen. It's time for love. I think named Jim Pickens on how fitting while at the gym, you met a guy from Zimbabwe named Jim. He rejected me. He tells you that he's experiencing some depression right now. Hey, would you like to go on a date? Oh, I'd love to, but I'm like experiencing some depression right now. So I'm busy. Keep finding a date. I want to find a manager. Is anyone a manager? You're unable to find anyone to love. That's depressing. Oh, yes. I got a Twitter account now. I can just tweet that I want love. Pick your celebrity, chance the rapper, pick your strategy, insult them. Your music is very inappropriate.  Someone just slapped my booty. I'll have you know that is a botched surgery and that hurts reporting to my supervisor. She says she looked into it. No fire him. Oh, she met this guy who's a captain. That's kind of the manager at the fire department. He looks great and he is absolutely insane. I ask you on a date. How's the Honda Odyssey holding up? Oh, not good. Let's get some maintenance done on it. It doesn't need any. I mean, it really looks like it does. I'm gonna start trolling my mother on social media. My mom did not like that. Our relationship just plummeted from one tweet. A lifetime of bonding is destroyed. And I asked her for money which she gave to me. I'm pregnant. What? Just gonna name the baby baby. So it's baby demands. Your boyfriend is arguing you because you didn't use his surname. Well, I have a better name than argue back. Oh, my car is breaking down. Repair it. Want more babies. I found happiness as a mother. Propose pick your ring. None. Pick your setting. Friends waiting. That is such a Karen move. I might actually buy a ring to really make this a Karen move. Shopper fake jewelry. Yeah, let's do that. This one's 58 bucks. That'll do. You rejected your marriage proposal. And that way a friend probably despises me. But oh well, all I care about is my surgery. I'm gonna get some more time to fix that butt. Yay. I got an achievement for it. Is there anyone I could sue? I'd like to sue someone.  Birth control. No, argue. You are pregnant. Break up. He says that health is a priority. I mean, he can't be with someone who has bunions. Attack him. Roundhouse kick his throat.  Then you bopped his booty, leaving him bitter. He attacked me. Wait, I'm facing prison, but he fought back. Why isn't he going to prison? Please stop running away from me. It's only a year. I can do that. Now let me sue someone.  Hold on. I'll call you prison. So I remember who you were. And I'll name it after the other guy, even though he broke up. The prison crooker. All right, can I sue him now? Oh, I can't sue him for fighting back. He sent me a naked bathroom mirror selfie. Why? Now sue him. Can I sue him now?  I thought this was America. You can sue everyone. It's time to vaccinate your daughter, prison. No, I'm against vaccination. Your little brother, O'Marrie, has asked you to take him to watch Venus with a high-powered telescope. Agu with him.  I am running out of money fast. Oh, that's because I lost my job because of the whole prison thing. I got to get another job before my Honda Odyssey fails me. Cat behavior consultant. That sounds good for Karen. What are who inspires you? What are these options? Uh, Martin Luther King's dream? Oh, yes, I got it. Very relevant to dealing with cats. My mother hates me, but why? I'm going to start trolling my mother on social media. Why am I running out of money? Why does a cat behavior consultant not pay well? Client at work is asking you what the ideal amount of cats is for one home. What will you say? There's no limit. Infinite cats. Mistake giving everyone in the office key chains. Oh, no, I can't afford it because I'm in the negative. You just woke up to your daughter, prison. Blast me in the face with pepper spray. No, you can't do that. You don't work in a prison.  Can I give her away? You do one thing wrong. You're being put up for adoption. She's six. You probably didn't even know what the pepper spray was, but have a good life. The dad's going to be furious. I'm depressed and I'm losing money every year. How am I losing so much money? I'm going to start rumors about my co-workers. Hopefully they'll get fired and there'll be more money for me. She attacked me. Loss of time. Wait, come on. What? You can't attack me just because I started a rumor about you. Report to HR. Yeah, Mavis. File a report. HR said they would look into it. Wait, who's that? Connor Demence? Well, he's dead. Oh my God. He died at the age of four by a poisonous spider. Skip the funeral. I'm busy. Honda Odyssey needs a new thermostat. I don't have enough money to fix it. Why am I going to negative? I think I would have to do some crime. Porch pirate. Perfect. Uh, mansion. It contained a human skull. Okay. I got $1,500 for it. My niece, what age is she? Eight. You got some cash, right? Give me that piggy bank. My Honda Odyssey is 36 years old. It's almost as old as me. Post a thirst trap on Twitter. It got zero likes. Okay. Well, that's not how I'm going to get money. Someone replied to me saying I'm ugly. That's going to mean you're in person.  Coward. I'm just applying for every single job that pays more because I'm just losing money constantly. Road killer remover. Come on. I can do that. I've no cash. I have a beautiful Honda Odyssey. I got rejected for literally everything until I got back down to cat behavior consultant. My son just asked for some money to buy a hat. I don't have enough money to give my son a hat. I'm almost in the plus. Okay. Love might be the answer. I got to do a bit of gold digging here. Oh, have we found the one? He has everything. Ask him on a date. I said he was neat. Karen's not used to giving compliments. Proposed to him. Oh, where would he like? Where's cheaper? A cemetery perhaps. He rejected it.  Oh my God. I finally have some money. Oh, thank God. I think I was actually losing money because of my Honda Odyssey because it's cost me 150 a month. You have a client at work who feeds her cat by chewing up cat food and spitting it into the cat's mouth like a bird. What will you do? Record it and post it to YouTube. Could I get some cheap surgery so that that guy might like me and we could marry and then I could kill him and get all his money? Her boyfriend doesn't want to make love. He wants to play Pokemon instead. Your mother has died at the age of 77. Well, she didn't like me anyway. Skip the funeral.  Karen, what if I buy a better ring? Maybe then he'll love me. Yeah, the ring is the problem, I'm sure. The problem is, I don't think he really likes me. Yeah, rejected. While I'm for a walk, a junkie offers you crack cocaine. Ah, sure. I'm now addicted to crack cocaine. Please make a baby. I died.  A crack cocaine overdose? That hobo didn't warn me that was a possibility. Ribbon mediocre. Continuous baby. My late mother, Karen Demands died for a crack cocaine overdose. She left behind Honda Odyssey, two jewels and cash assets of foreground. I am depressed. Probably because I have to take control of the Honda Odyssey now. I attacked my co-worker for starting a rumor and now I'm getting arrested. Wait, baby, how do you have so much money? You were asking me for like a hat and you were holding 100K? Not guilty.  Oh, he's not there. But it's his fault that Karen got addicted to crack cocaine. That's a bit of a stretch. But he wouldn't marry her. She wouldn't have done crack cocaine if she got married. I've been laid off. I got too many complaints about my flatulence. Can I sue for that? Oh wait, I got red spots on my body. Search the web just like mama used to do. I have ringworm. Just drink a smoothie. Anyway, can I sue them for letting me go for flatulence? Like, you can't help it. Pick your damages. 100 grand and get the most expensive lawyer. What? You lost your lawsuit. What? Oh no, blood and stabbing pains. Better Google this one. Oh no, that's not good. Heartburn. Oh my God. I'm losing weight and I just choked some water. I think the baby's about to die. I'm gone. I'm taking my father with me. Poisoned him. He saw you and secretly switched your iced teas. Oh my God. He was always one step ahead, wasn't he? First, he disconnected and had nothing to do with me and then he kills my baby. He ended the Karen line of the family. I can't believe that. I just realized that it may have been Karen's fault that baby was getting so ill because we didn't get baby a vaccination. So that could have been Karen's fault. She gets her revenge from the grave. I think she deserved revenge because he kept asking for like a hat. Meanwhile, he had 100 grand on him the whole time. Baby got what he deserved. But yeah, other than that, I just hope you enjoyed and I hope to see you next time. Bye for now.


Well dear students, the course is Labour Policy Pakistan and the topic is scope of constitutional law with reference to objective resolution Pakistan. My dear students, the constitution guarantees. How much love is there? Guarantees. The constitution has been guaranteed? For whom? For citizens. The constitution guarantees inter alia the following fundamental rights. Inter alia means among other things. All these fundamental rights are not written here. For that you must read the constitution of Pakistan 1973. Fundamental rights are written here that prohibition against slavery cannot be here. Prohibition means banned by the constitution, banned by the law. Forced labour cannot be here. You cannot give any labourer any assignment or work without his permission. And traffic in human beings. Traffic in human beings means that the buying and selling of human beings cannot be traded. Human beings are not products. They are human beings with fundamental rights. Apart from this, the next fundamental right is inviolability of dignity of man. Respect. We pay respect to every citizen of Pakistan. Next right is freedom of association. We are studying Labour Policy Pakistan dear students. And freedom of association is the fundamental right that is written in our constitution. And by exercising this, political parties and trade unions and associations are formed. Societies and so on. International labour organization also has conventions and Pakistan is its secretariat. After this, freedom of trade is also fundamental right. Freedom of business is also fundamental right. Freedom of profession is also fundamental right. Freedom of speech. You can talk, dialogue, give a dissenting view. Freedom of expression. If you want to write, then write. And press. Freedom of press. So seriously, all these are related to Labour. Labour Policy with Pakistan. And very good rights. Apart from this, Constitution Protection of Property rights is also dealt with. And it also tells us about it. So here, we have to understand that private property can also be kept. So the interaction, the factors of production are all around them. The scope of constitution of Pakistan can be understood through objective resolution. The preamble of the constitution is its integral part. The first purpose of objective resolution is that the sovereignty belongs to Allah Almighty. That the sovereignty belongs only to Allah Almighty. The second part of objective resolution is that people of Pakistan will choose their minds. And Allah Almighty will use sovereignty power as a delegated power. Dear students, the third purpose of objective resolution is normative. Normative means standard or standard of behavior. This gives a standard of behavior that people should have this quality. The third is its normative feature according to which the norms, the goals and the ideals of state have to be spelled out with particularity for their achievement in the constitution. So, ladies and gentlemen, the glaring goals are prohibition against slavery, forced labor and traffic in human beings, inviolability of dignity of man, freedom of association, freedom of trade, business or profession, freedom of speech, expression and press, protection of property rights, etc. Here, Barista Rajeev Chaudhary Sahib said that the role of objective resolution is considered to be a beacon light for constitution makers. Barista Rajeev Chaudhary Sahib said that the constitution makers are like a beacon light for objective resolution. Hope you have understood the topic.


Artificial intelligence AI has revolutionized healthcare, making remarkable contributions to science and engineering domains. In this paper, we demonstrate an AI approach using heterogeneous machine learning, ML, and deep learning, DL, classifiers, to predict pros among fertile patients. We used an open source dataset of 541 patients from Kerala, India. Among all the classifiers, the final multi-stack of ML models performed best with accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score of 98%, 97%, 98%, and 98%. Explanatory AI, XAI, techniques make model predictions understandable, interpretable, and trustworthy. To this end, we have utilized XAI techniques such as SHAP, Shapley Additive Values, LIME, local interpretable model explainer, ELI-5, CLADIS, and feature importance with random forest for explaining tree. This article was authored by Virata Vivekana, Krishna Raj Chatalga, Niranjana Sampathila, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Run. The rusted metal stretches for as far as can be seen. The runner does not care that this is only a few feet in front of himself. As far as he is concerned, the claustrophobic corridor stretches on forever, and it does. But not for him. Don't stop. A woman slams against a steel door, pressed steam and shining in the darkness of the hold. Just flakes from the floor she throws herself against a steel, panting heavily. Her fingernails crack as they scrabble against a smooth face of the door, frantically searching for something to turn. They will never stop looking. Not like this.   A human elbow rapidly pumps in a nearby machine, forcing an unidentifiable chunk of something in and out. A pair of empty eye sockets stare into him. He will never look away. Make it stop. A man sprints into a dead-end room, stopping to stare at the wall. He screams and turns, a cry of rage and confusion and hurt, only to see the door slam shut behind him. He will never leave, until his flashlight dies. The pain. Deep within the rusted hulk, a woman screams. She has been screaming for seconds, for years. She does not know the difference. She only knows that she should never have entered this place of death and steel and meat. She will never correct her mistake. No escape. A man stands atop a rusted deck, gaunt and pale from his day spent in the darkness, searching for an exit. A spotlight wades over him, a boat is set and a crew arrives to rescue him. The man, overjoyed, moves to jump. He does not hit the water. Stay with us. In the heart of the ship, a thousand voices scream in agony. All are lost, many for hundreds of years, some for days. All are screaming the same soul-wrenching scream that only the dying know, and they will never stop. The team was lost after reporting entry to central navigation. Rescue team lost after reporting the investigation of screaming in a cargo section.


Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in our Palo Alto studios. The conference season is just about ready to take off. So we still have some time to get some cube conversations in before we hit the road and spend the next several days and weeks and months in Las Vegas, Orlando, and points on the compass. So we're excited to have our next guest. She's Lynn Lucas, CUBE alumni, CMO of Cohesity. Lynn, great to see you again. Jeff, super to be here for the first time in Palo Alto. Yeah, how do you like the studio? I love it. It's a little different than the vibe at the conferences, quieter than the conferences, but I like it. Good, good, well welcome. So you have a relatively recently joined a new company, Cohesity. So congratulations on that. And just curious, one, give us just a quick overview on Cohesity, but more importantly, what did you see that attracted you to get you to join? Great, yeah. So Cohesity just joined at the beginning of January, having a blast. And really what I saw that attracted me to Cohesity was three things. It's an incredible founder, Mohit Aaron, who was formerly the CTO and co-founder of Nutanix, called the father of hyperconvergence. And before that, the lead developer at Google File System. And he really is doing what a lot of Silicon Valley is known for, which is he took a step back and is looking at this space in the data center that we call secondary data, backup, archive, replication, test dev, analytics, and said, you know what, the world doesn't need a better point solution, need to take a step back and really look at how this goldmine of data can be used in a much more efficient way, because data is, after all, what's powering the world's businesses and their differentiation. So the technology, Mohit himself is a founder, and then it's just an incredible startup culture. It's fast growing, we're having fun every day, I love going to work. It's amazing, I'm just doing some background, you guys have raised $160 million. The list of leadership and board and advisory is pretty amazing, it's like a who's who from this industry.  He really has, and you know, Carl Echenbach, former COO of VMware is on our board. Cube alumni, Patrick Rogers, Rob Sammon, who is the, yes, NetApp, Dan Wormenhoven, Google Ventures has invested, Sequoia, I think Sequoia said we're the fastest growing company in their portfolio. We grew 600% year over year last year, 40, 50% growth in new customers every quarter, because there's just such a pent up demand to really solve some of the problems that haven't been addressed over the last really couple of decades for the inefficiencies and how all of this data for these secondary workloads is managed. Right, so you got an interesting graphic on the website talking about secondary data, and that it's really the ugly part of the iceberg below the water, significantly bigger, heavier, and more expensive to manage than the primary data. So I wonder if you can take us into that a little bit deeper, how did it get to be such a problem, and why is this new approach a better way to attack that problem? Sure, and an iceberg is really kind of a good metaphor when you think about the data center. You know, we've got our production applications, primary storage, and that's what's floating above the water, and we see that 20%, but below is another 80%. And according to most industry analysts, IDC, Gartner, that represents not just 80% of the data, but 80% of the cost. On average, IDC says every organization has 12 to 14 copies of each piece of data. And that happens because what's grown up over time is point solutions for all the various workloads. You've got one set of hardware and software for backup, you've got yet another set for test dev, you've got another set for analytics, there's been no sharing of the data, there's no single infrastructure, knowing even, or operations, knowing what you have and being able to tell you where the inefficiencies are. And so you think about a developer in a retail or a bank organization, they're requesting a copy of data to develop the new applications, that copy gets instantiated, they do their work, never gets erased, just like in our consumer life, they ever erase photos off your phone? I can't tell you how many copies and copies and copies, because it's often, it figures it's easy just to make another copy just in case, right? Exactly, so then that never goes away and then you've got yet another copy for the next time they need an updated set. And so this has been multiplying and it creates just an incredible expense to maintain and operate. And it also creates a lot of risk these days for organizations because of new regulations like GDPR. Where are all those copies of personal information from EU citizens? People don't even know anymore. And then there's two other big factors that have come into play in recent years in a software defined and public cloud. Two really big, huge tidal waves of change that were not accommodated in prior architecture. So you guys obviously saw that opportunity glommed on and are now offering something that can take care of the different types of needs based on what type of infrastructure you need. Really not at a company level, but really at the application or the workload level, right? Yeah, so I think it's a great point and I won't claim any credit for this. This is Mohit and his team of developers. And really as you pointed out, what do we see organizations looking for now? They now realize that, hey, if I can get a software defined platform, a lot of commodity hardware does a really good job for me and I want to have that flexibility to choose what vendor I might be using. So Mohit developed a software defined platform that addresses how do you bring all of these data and these workloads together in one platform? So I can have a consistent set of infrastructure and a consistent operational model and because of his heritage working at Google, being one of the lead developers for Google file system, it comes with this cloud first mentality. So this is not a bolt on with a gateway to get to Amazon or get to Azure. This is a software platform that natively understands and spans both your private cloud and your on-premises data center and the public cloud. So it gives an IT organization the flexibility to choose how do I want to use the public cloud with my private data center and not have to think really about kind of that plumbing below the waterline anymore. Because there is no either or, right? It's really workload specific where that particular workload is and the storage that supports that workload. So let me be specific about what Cohesity offers. It's software defined and we offer a appliance so that it's very easy for an organization to go in and say, you know what data protection backup, frankly, legacy architectures built 20 years ago before the advent of the cloud, biggest pain point that we see right now can move in a Cohesity hyperconverged appliance and solve that problem and gain massive business benefits right away. We offer global deduplication, very advanced compression, erasure coding. And we have customers that are telling us that they're seeing eight to one, 10 to one, even 14 to one ratios that really then give them a 14 to one ratio and a reduction of capacity to store the same amount of stuff. Versus from some of the current customer or current vendors that they have been using from what I would call these legacy architectures. Right, right, that's pretty significant. So they're getting an amazing storage efficiency. And then they often next say, wow, I'd like to give my developers the flexibility of spinning this up in the cloud. So we offer a cloud edition that allows them to choose whether they want to operate on Azure, on Amazon, on Google Cloud and be able to move that data into the cloud, use it for a test dev instance. But again, all under the same software interface all looks like one operating system, no bolt-on gateway to manage. And then, and I was going to say in the third part is many organizations obviously have remote offices, branch offices, so there's a virtual edition too. So I'm just curious on the cloud side. So Andy Jassy's been on a ton of times, great guy. You know, one of the promises of cloud is spin up what you need and spin down when you don't. As you just said, nobody ever spins anything down. So are you seeing customers have the same type of economic impact in managing their storage that's in the public clouds because now they're actually spinning down what they don't need or consolidating more efficiently? Yeah, so I think that we've seen in general in the industry that if you likened the data center and been maybe kind of a messy garage where there was a lot of things in the garage and weren't really sure what it was. A lot of folks, I would say five plus years ago, I kind of ran to the cloud because it was clean and new and it was like that new shiny storage box, you know, that you see parked on people's driveways sometimes and then realized that there can be a lot of expense because you're really replicating in the cloud some of these same silos if you're not careful. We're going to help customers avoid that. I think customers are much more sophisticated now than say five years ago and they're now looking at what's the best way for me to incorporate public cloud. So really common use case right now would be what I mentioned before, test dev, let's move something there, get the benefit of the compute, do some analytics on it, build some new application, maybe get spun down after that. But another really common use case is a lot of organizations worried about disaster recovery, bringing the cloud in as their second site because that's a very efficient way for them to do that and not build yet another on-premises data center.  What, you know, again, why did they bring you in and what are you going to bring to the table and what are your priorities for the rest of 2018 and be honest, I still can't believe we're a quarter of the way through 2018. We're going to be at those shows pretty soon. I know they're coming. They are. So I'm here really to build on the good work that the team has done and I'm just really thrilled to be at the company. I think what my charter is, is to continue the company's expansion. So they've seen tremendous growth and in fact, we've just really launched into Asia. So we now have a large sales presence in Australia, New Zealand and we're going to continue to expand into the rest of Asia. Significantly expanded in Europe as well recently. So part of my charter is to bring the marketing programs to all of these new regions and in general to up our awareness level. I think Cohesity has an incredible opportunity to really be one of those companies that changes the data center landscape. And I want to make sure the world knows about the incredible benefits the customers are seeing already with us and do that in a way that really features the customer voice. I've been on theCUBE before and I talked about that. For me, that is all about ensuring that the customer voice is really front and center and so hopefully we'll bring a Cohesity customer here. Good. Well, I just want to ask you kind of from a marketing professional and B2B business, it's a really challenging time in terms of the scarcity now is not information which it used to be, now the scarcity is in attention and people can get a lot of information before they ever make it to your website within peer groups and hopefully watching some CUBE interviews, et cetera. So I'm just curious to get your perspective from a chief marketing officer. How are you kind of looking at the challenges of getting the message out? It's a really different world than it was years and years ago. People aren't reading white paper so much and you know, it's a different challenge. Yeah, and it's part of the fun actually in being in marketing and being in marketing in tech because a lot of that cool technology for marketing is invented right here in the valley too. So, you know, I think that word of mouth still actually plays an incredible role and it is that customer voice but bringing that out in ways that are accessible for customers. You and I know we're all very ADD, very time-sliced and so those small moments on social media where you can feature bits of information that get people's attention. In fact, we're running something right now which I think has a lot of legs because at the end of the day, I'm selling to a human, right? So we've got B2B monikers but at the end of the day folks are, you know, people that laugh, they cry, they want to have fun. So we're running a break up with your legacy backup campaign right now and I encourage the audience to go check it out. It's pinned on our Twitter feed at Cohesity but it pokes a little bit of fun at how you might break up with your older vendor and that's a moment that we think captures folks' attention and gets them interested so that maybe they do want to move down and read the white paper and so forth. So I look to do that through combinations of just, you know, bringing out Cohesity's incredible voice, our customer voice and then sharing it on social because that's the way people really get their information these days. It is really interesting because I think the voice of the customer or the trusted referral is actually probably more valuable now because it's just a different problem before I couldn't get information so that was a good valuable sort. Now it's really that person is my trusted filter because I have too much information I can't take it in so that continues to be that trusted filter and conduit so I could just focus on my peers and not necessarily try to read everything that comes out. Exactly, you know, so as an example, Manhattan Associates is one of Cohesity's customers and we've been super thrilled to be able to feature them, you know, through social, through our website and let them talk about the benefits of moving to the platform and what they've seen. And you know, I hate to say it but Gartner as well continues to be an incredible influence on most organizations but we're pleased to say that our customers chose Cohesity and we won the Gartner Peer Insights for Data Center backup software just about a month ago. So that again is another example of customers looking at the options that they have in voting with their voice and we'll continue to drive that message out in the variety of ways and hopefully get people engaged so that they can see that there really is a completely different way of managing your secondary data and getting a lot better efficiencies and a lot lower costs. Yeah, good, good, exciting times, challenging times, the old marketing mantra, right? Half of my marketing budgets wasted, I just don't know which half, so. You know, you got to cover all your bases from the old school Gartner to the new school, having some fun and some comedy. Well then, really fun to sit down and spend a few minutes and get deeper into that Cohesity story. Likewise, thank you and I'll be seeing you in Orlando, Vegas and those other points on the campus. She's Lynn Lucas, I'm Jeff Rick. You're watching theCUBE from the Palo Alto studios. Great to see you, we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.


Okay, I will try my best to squeeze this into five minutes. We have all these great technical topics here, so I decided to do this time something a little bit different and just summarize all the license questions I received during the year from community members, from employees, and just to give a short overview for everybody to maybe in the future you can answer at least some easy questions by yourself or know how to look at to find the right answers. So first question, of course some of you might ask you why should I care? Well, first point is maintainability of your whole project. We as a developer we care really much about maintainability of our code. We make sure that we can easily extend it, that we can apply tests to it and all the stuff so that we can use our code for a long time. And often we forget that also the legal side of our project need to be maintainable for a long time because also the environment around our projects can change. We can, the laws can change, technical environment can change so that at some point you might want to adapt your license to the new world you live in basically. And of course if you develop an app you want to know if a third party library is compatible with your app and you want probably to know what other people can do with your software and what they can't. And another important point for me is that a license is really also somehow on document which constitutes the community you build around your software. So it describes the basic rules, how people work together, which rules are applied to the code they create together. So it's really important to think about how your community will look like under which rules you want to work together. So just really quick, if you look at the free software and open source license you can break this down in two main categories that's everything I want to say. And one is a copy left license which protect basically your freedom to use, study, share and improve the software and the non-protecting license if you give you exactly the same rights but allow other people to do with them whatever they want. So that's really cut down to the easiest answer to how different kind of free software license exists but I think that's enough for here. So with next slide we choose the GNU-HGPL which is a strong protecting license so it makes sure that the software will always stay free. We also recommend to use any later version clause because as I said at the beginning that's exactly which allows us to keep also the legal side of the project in the long run maintainability. So if something will pop up where the license needs to be updated to make sure that we can also move to the next version of the license. We have no contributor agreement or anything else so everybody has exactly the same rights on the code. There is no differentiation. Nobody can make the code ever proprietary. Expect you can of course take your pass you write and use it in any other program you want because you always keep the copyright on your stuff. And I think that's really important to create this level playing field to grow the community with users, customers and partners all together. To still create some certainty about the legal situation of the project especially for customers. We introduced the developer certified of origin that's a thing which is done by most of the large free software projects these days like the Linux kernel, Aclips, Docker and many more and it's basically if someone commits and code it by signing his commit he just says, okay, I wrote this code by my own and I can contribute this to the project on the IGPL on the project license or if I'm employed my customer allowed me to do it or if I took the code from somewhere else I checked as good as possible that I'm allowed to give the code to you under the license. So that why it's really important to sign your comments even if I know developers often find this a little bit. Say oh I have to do it but it's really add some legal certainty to our project. When you write a next cloud app you always have to make sure that both license are compatible, your next cloud, the next cloud server and your app. We recommend to just use the same license as we use for the server, the new HGPL or later for your app but if you really wish you could also choose some of the compatible license and if you choose one of the compatible license of course the combination will be always new HGPL but you can also if you prefer to choose a different license for your app and the same goes for third party libraries if you need the library for your app and then you also have to make sure that they are compatible. So what does it mean to be compatible? That's just mean in order to combine two programs which is the app and the server you need to make sure that both developers develop of the app and develop of the server give you the rights to the same rights to do this with the software. So if both license allow you to use the software the same way then they are compatible and then you can use them together. And of course often the question came up so when does the license need to be compatible and that's always if you form a single program out of each other. So if you combine it in a way that at the end you would say it results in a single program and there are some criterias you can also look up in the FAQ from the GNU project which gives you a hint if this is the case and one is if a program is linked together with the app if it shares data structures and run in the same memory if it makes function calls to each other in both direction and if you look at NextCloud and Next.Apps you will see that that's the case in both directions so that's why both sites and it's always compatible to each other. And the good thing about GNU-A GPL v3 is that a lot of license are compatible with each other so all main license you find out there you can normally just use with your project. So GPL v3 only by GPL v2 you have to be a little bit careful this need to be GPL v2 or later GPL v2 only doesn't work but as you see all other main license like the LGPL, the Apache license Mozilla license all those things you normally see out there work. At the end some resources where I also regularly look up if people ask me some stuff is the FAQ from the GNU project is really great if you have some questions how all the stuff works. The Free Software Foundation has a great network of legal experts which has also a public mailing list where you can send questions to if you have some legal questions and there's a new project a relatively new project from the Linux Foundation spdx.org which also tries to unify a little bit away how you define copyright in your project which also makes it easier to automate this test if everything is compatible which is always a comment to use this best practice defined there. So this was a really quick run through this topic. If you have further questions just catch me on the floor I'm here the whole day and yeah thank you.


Hi, this is All Things LGBTQ, our interview show. We'd like to acknowledge that we're taping in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unseeded indigenous land. And I'd like to welcome you to the show. If you have any suggestions about who you'd like to see interviewed here, please let us know and we'd be glad to check it out. Thanks for coming and I hope you enjoy the show. I am joined by someone that Ann and Linda met last year at the Out in the Open World Summit. This is Ann's role, who is an author, organizational consultant, and probably most importantly, a beekeeper. So welcome. Thank you. I've been hearing your name for the past year. So it's an absolute delight to actually have a face to put to it. Yay. And to talk to you about the work you're doing. On your website, there is a statement that most decidedly got my attention. And it was reimagining organizational cultures based on models of cooperative power inspired by nature. And I'm making the leap of faith that this is what the bees have taught you. Could you talk a bit about how you came to develop a relationship with the bees, what you have learned, and how that's informed the rest of your work? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so I love that you said, and most importantly, a beekeeper or a bee tender. I came to the work that I do with organizations sort of at the same time that I came to the work that I do with two honeybees. I got my start beekeeping, like really got my start in Boston. I moved there about a decade ago and I moved there to work in an AmeriCorps program and then ultimately ended up going back to grad school using that funding to put me through grad school. And at the time that I moved there, I was really jazzed and fed by the urban ag movement. I'd been involved in that in New Orleans and in Miami where I have some young adult roots. And so I was able to plug in with some folks, one of whom was this gentleman named Jean-Claude Barout who was a beekeeper and an organic farmer. And I was like, I'm into this, I wanna try this. So he takes me to pick up this whiskey barrel, like one of those, you know, gosh, I don't even know how many gallons. It looks like a 55 gallon drum. So that size, we go pick up this whiskey barrel south of Boston from a gentleman who I guess had, a swarm had moved into it, which means like a half of bees had moved into this barrel and was living in it. And the gentleman had just kind of let that go for quite a few years, but then he had sort of toddler age grandchildren about. So he asked us to remove it. So my first task was loading this whiskey barrel full of bees onto a pickup truck and moving it from one part of town to the other part and then helping Jean-Claude sort of carefully cut each frame out and press it into the frames of like a hive, which what is called a Langstroth hive. That's like the standard like white boxes you probably imagine when you imagine a bee hive. Yeah, and I just remember being in this cloud of honeybees flying all over with my, you know, my fully suited up with my rubber bands around all my, it wrists and ankles and just being like, yeah, this is it. This is the thing that I wanna do. And of course I've had a parallel career at the same time, but I just remember that moment so clearly that I was just like, yep, this is the thing. This is the thing that my soul feels called to. So at the same time, I was going to school and studying social justice education and I went to Wheelock College, which is a part of Boston University and I studied at a sort of radical project-based learning school called Mission Hill School. And I looked at all the ways that we learn, how we learn cooperatively, how we learn through self-guided and project-based learning and sort of examine to the ways that people cooperated to build understanding in a classroom that was what my master's was in, looking at that in a classroom context, but over the years it's expanded to looking at that in organizations, dominantly like nonprofit institutions trying to tackle issues of how do we create more equity? How do we create more cooperation amongst our employees? How do our employees or our workers have a share of the business so that they feel empowered to be involved in making something grow? And so yeah, a lot of what I am influenced by is the Honey Bee Hive. I think about Hive as a fem run cooperative, as I like to say. They make all their decisions democratically. They communicate constantly and are constantly looking for effective ways to communicate so that they can gather food, gather water, gather resources, take care of each other and their young. And so they really have these very effective systems for cooperation that I think we can learn a lot about. And that said, at the same time, I think there are a lot of ways we are not like bees that we have to tackle and push against. We as humans in the United States in a culture that has a very dark history of colonialism and slavery and incarceration, we need to be looking at the systems that we've designed and working to dismantle them at the same time that we are learning to cooperate and be more effective learners and movement builders together. On your website, there is a bit of a narrative that talks about how most people have a perception of is the queen bee who directs totally what happens in the hive. And listening to what it is you're saying, that's a misconception. That's trying to take a natural process or a natural and nature-based relationship and superimpose a patriarchal model upon it. Which is not what you learn by working with the bees. You learn by working with the bees. Also on your website, there is a reference to a trait within your family having intuitive senses. How has that enhanced your awareness of what the bees are teaching you and then what you're able to incorporate into the work you're doing on organizational structure? That's a good question. I think honestly that all of us have intuition or intuitive capacity, but it's sort of squelched by the society, the white cis-het patriarchal society that we live in. It sort of works against intuition. And so I think it's there for all of us. I think for my family in particular, there have been several generations of the women that have come through my family have these premonition style dreams. And there is a lot of practice across the world in beekeeping of dreams, like patterns of dreaming with bees and listening to bees as sort of a dream guide. And so I think that that's an interesting intersection for me. I think intuitively, if you can enter into a beehive, so when you enter into a beehive, it's this complete sensory experience, right? It's an olfactory experience. You need to smell what's going on. You need to see to some degree. I mean, there are several very famous blind beekeepers, actually, but they had someone who was their eyes. So you need to be able to see, you need to be able to smell, you need to be able to listen to the sounds because the pitches and the tones of the bees change depending on what's going on, what time of year it is, how much food is in the hive, what the state of the brood is, et cetera. And you need to be able to feel, and that is, you feel when the bees are agitated or defensive because they sting you, but you also need to be able to feel the difference between that and like bees landing on you so that you're not sort of constantly in the state of disarray. So you need to be able to embody a lot of intuition to connect to them, I think, you know? Otherwise you're sort of in this, for a lot of humans, you're in this fear space with bees all the time. Oh, they're gonna sting me. Oh, they're gonna, they're gonna, this one's on my leg, that one's in my shirt, you know? But if you can drop below that, it's sort of like a meditative state, right? It's like, okay, my senses are in tune to this thing, this, not thing, but this creature really. And I'm paying attention to it in all of the ways that I have the capacity, which takes an enormous amount of concentration, but it's not like an intellectual concentration, it's an embodied concentration. And I think it took me a long time to get there as a beekeeper, right? Like when I started beekeeping, I was like, these creatures are incredible, but I was raised in an apartment in Queens, like I definitely grew up scared of insects and like screaming when a bug would land on me, you know? So there was a lot of unlearning that had to happen for me to be able to sit in that space of like, intuiting what's going on and a lot of practice. So I don't wanna discount that, but the intuition and the embodiment, I think is for me deeply connected to how we cooperate, how we share power, how we really get into a space where we can be vulnerable with each other. The only way that we can do that is if we're willing to drop into our bodies and out of our intellects and out of that sort of cognitive dissonance space of feeling like we wanna connect to someone but we're nervous and we're not quite sure and like, should we share this or should we share that? I think if we as humans could work to be more effectively embodied, we could operate from an intuitive place more successfully. So these are all of the things that you're going to use to how organizations evaluate, reestablish their relationships within their organization. And this might also be some of the things that we would read in your book, Radicalizing the High. Yeah, yeah, so I put together this book. I work in partnership with the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and a couple of years ago, I was teaching a course there and I got a small grant to put together this book that initially was supposed to be like a supplementary text for my students because there's this problem in sort of learning about beekeeping that it's hard to know who to learn from and who is out there. And then there's also a lack of representation. When you look at a beekeeping community, you will often find that it is dominantly white males over 60 that are running beekeeping operations. And so it was important to me that my young students who are in the 20s and teens had access to a diverse perspective on beekeeping. And so I gather stories from beekeepers all over North America. My students helped me. We interviewed folks from New Mexico and Washington and Canada and talked dominantly with folks who were women led, queer led, or black and indigenous people of color led organizations, beekeeping organizations. We talked about what they were doing, what they thought they were doing differently than the industry, what made their practice unique and then what about their practice was community centered because a lot of these folks have these practices that are really rooted in community and education in cooperation too. So they're sort of building on these ideas that I'm talking about when I'm talking about humans cooperating and they're using bees as the channel to teach other folks. So I put that together and then on top of that, I had been doing my own writing about the industry and where the beekeeping industry was at, as well as jotting down all these notes and ideas about the things we could learn from bees. And so what I ended up with was this three part book. The first part is sort of the story of my perspective on beekeeping and where the industry is and where we could stand to go as we bring new and young folks into the industry and introduce it to a wider audience. And then also a little bit about what I think we can learn from bees and tools that we can use to start some of those cooperative practices. And then of course these stories from all these different beekeepers across North America. So really breaking it down into these three sort of buckets of information for students. And then UMass agreed to publish it as an e-book for that people could access completely for free. So I was able to then create this document that was educational and told a lot of different stories and has real resources in it and share it with a wider audience for free. So that was an excellent opportunity. So you can download it on, if you go to my website theykeepbees.com, you can download a copy of the book. You enter your email and then I send you an email that's got a downloadable link. And you can also read it online through something called press books. It's an open source book. And so you get it in your browser and then you can go through the content which is sort of in the sidebar and you can read it just in your browser or download the whole thing or download sections of it. And it's meant to be this open source tool which means that people can use it. They can adapt it. They can use it to teach other people or they can share some of the stories that are in it. So again, creating this thing that isn't isn't hidden away by power structures or is accessible to people who are interested in a practice of beekeeping. So with that, I need to say thank you. If people are interested in bringing you into their organization to try and look at change, they can also access the other website which we will make sure that Zach puts up and it's prominently displayed. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I look forward to your next publication so we get to bring you back. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Take care, Keith. You too. I'd like to introduce Kay Acker to all things LGBTQ. Hi Kay, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm doing pretty well, thank you. I'm gonna start with reading a little bit about who you are. I'm looking into a little more of that later but it says here that you grew up in Northern Alabama and you now live in Southern Vermont. She and her wife played table top games with friends and enjoy the daily antics of two cats. Her first novel, Leaving's Not the Only Way to Go will be released by Bella Books in 2001. So that's very exciting. I mean, I imagine you probably are really excited to have this happen. Yeah, I'm thrilled. March, 2021 is about six months away and it feels a long way and also very close. And maybe you will be either have a vaccination or be over this pandemic and you can go far and wide reading and getting your book out there. But we're certainly gonna help you here if we can. So, and I'm just gonna read a paragraph about the book, about your book and then we'll go from there. So, Leaving's Not the Only Way to Go. Disatisfied computer program Lauren Ashburn left a promising job to help her family in Vermont take care of her dying father. Now that he's gone, Lauren has every intention of returning to her old life, the vibrant, successful one her father had always expected her to have. But she feels adrift without his strict guidance. Georgia Solomon designed homes for others but as a bisexual, autistic woman, she really feels at home herself. When her best friend died suddenly, leaving her alone with her young daughter, her little slice of happiness vanishes and Georgia finds herself struggling to navigate a world that doesn't understand her. Lauren and Georgia clash at a disastrous work meeting but Georgia's daughter Hannah pulls them together despite themselves as they discover new possibilities and priorities for the future. Can they make room for love or will they have to leave each other behind in order to move forward? Sounds really good. Thank you. So I noticed that you wrote about, you have an autistic character here. What made you decide to have an autistic character in your book? Well, I myself have ADHD and I have several friends who are autistic and in talking with them, sharing experiences, there are a lot of things that sort of overlap with autism and ADHD and a lot of things that none of us had ever really seen in media, particularly in romance novels. And it's nice to have more out there. Helen Wong wrote a wonderful couple of books about characters with autism and I wanted to add to that there are a lot of books that don't have great representation and I was excited to sort of make something for myself and my friends that was more like our reality. Yeah, it's true. You don't really see much about autism. I read a book and I can't remember the name you might remember about a woman who became an English professor or something who was autistic, but anyway, that's the only book that I remember ever hearing or reading about that the character was autistic. So that's really gonna be informative too. And also you have a fictional town here. And so I was wondering if it is Bennington or someplace else or a combination of things? It is and it isn't Bennington. There's a fountain mentioned in the book that is actually a fountain that's right outside my front door here. And the art store that Lauren's family owns is based on that later versions of it are based on the art store here in Bennington called Jays, which I went to a couple of times and actually interviewed the owner to say, how did you decide to set things up this way? And his enthusiasm for how he made the decisions and how people move through his space really inspired not only the store itself but the characters within the store and how they move through it. And I also one day took a very long trip down to Pownall to see exactly what that road looks like because there's a very significant drive down that highway. Okay, thank you. So what brought you to Vermont from, is it Alabama? Yes. Yes. So I had a doctor who was from Maine and when I started looking at colleges, she said, have you considered Bennington? It's this small college that you make up your own major and I looked into it and it really seems like the perfect fit because I didn't know at that point what I wanted to do and Bennington was a place to explore and figure that out. And so you just stayed after college? Yes. I met my current, my now life there and so I stayed when she was a year behind me and then she got a job and I got a job and we've just, we've been here for 10 years now. So you must like it. I love it. Good. And do you have any writers that have influenced you that you really liked or are a mentor or somebody who guided you or helped you or were you an English major or a writing major in college or? I went to an arts high school. I didn't study a lot of writing in college but I did read a lot and as far as for this book in particular, as I mentioned, Helen Wong, The Kiss Quotient is her first book, was a wonderful influence. I also really love a novella by Alyssa Cole called Once Ghosted, Twice Shy. A delightful little book and I went to the Golden Crown Literary Society Conference last year and met a lot of really wonderful people in person who took the time to talk about publishing with me and figure out where it was that I wanted to go and Paul Robinson who has one book out with Bella Books was wonderful and my current editor is Ann Roberts and she was a wonderful, wonderful mentor in helping me figure out how to make this book as strong as it possibly could be. And how long did it take you to write it? From the very, very beginning until I was ready to submit it to Bella was two and a half years. I'm hoping that my next book won't take quite that long because I learned so much about how to do it. But on the other hand, I've heard people say that once you've written a novel you've learned how to write that novel and the next one's different. So we'll see. And have you already have ideas and you're already willing forward with the new book? Yes, absolutely. Great and you have a publisher so that should really help you out too, you know, like get out there. What's your writing schedule like? Do you write at any times or mornings, nights, whatever you feel inspired? Oh, well with the ADHD, you can only schedule so much. But I try to balance the strictness of if this is something I want to do then I need to do it and put energy into it with the gentleness of making sure that everything counts. If I've done some research today that counts. If I've thought about it and sort of made these scenes in my mind that counts, that's still working. And I need those softer steps in order to make the hard work of actually putting words on the page happen. Now I know as a poet and I haven't written fiction but I hate revision.  I love editing. I'm a little torn because it might just be because that's where I am in this book is doing the last final edits and that's very exciting but right now I feel like it's my favorite part because it's the interactive part where I show what I have to others and they tell me what they think and I get to learn from people and make it better. And I have particularly with the opening of this book I wrote and rewrote about five times. And it was so exciting to sift through and uncover the exact right moment. And Anne Roberts again was wonderful with that and she was very helpful with hands-on advice. She said, you know, I think these first six chapters have what you need but if you sit down and she actually told me to print the pages out and cut them up with scissors to rearrange them and I found the right moment that way by taking the moments I had and rearranging them. Interesting. So are these characters a combination of people you know and fantasy people or I mean I know you take a lot from yourself and from just people in general but and is this a love story basically or a, well I know it's probably more nuanced than that but could you tell us a little bit about because I'm gonna have you read in a few minutes from your book. So you know what is the underlying synopsis of your book? Is it a love story? Is it a story of autism, a combination of things? I, it's a love story about grief and change and I didn't set out necessarily to write a book about autism that I don't think you could but it worked very well in that one of the things that is difficult for autistic people and also for people with ADHD and similar neurotypes change is hard and finding the right people who understand you and love you without thinking that you should be different is hard and Georgia as a person who had all of that and then lost it and isn't sure she's going to find it again and Lauren is a person who has spent so much time trying to figure out who her dad wants her to be that she doesn't know who she is and when her father dies, she has, it's suddenly time to figure that out. I'm really looking forward to reading it. It sounds really just wonderful. Thanks for writing it. Okay, so we're gonna have you read for our audience a couple of minutes of your book if you don't mind and then we'll kind of wrap up. Sorry, go right. So this is just a short passage from the first chapter. The book is in a dual point of view in alternating chapters. So you hear from Lauren and Georgia. This is Lauren's perspective as she's heading into the disastrous work meeting that is described in the summary you read. Lauren scraped her boots off on the mat in front of Prizliak and associates and entered at 920 sharp, 10 minutes early. The restored colonial house the architects worked in was almost blindingly bright, all clean white paint and hardwood flooring. Receptionist behind the wide front desk signaled for Lauren to wait a moment while she wrapped up a phone call. Hello, someone else called. Are you one of the trainers? A tall woman with waves of honey blonde hair descended the stairs. The way her skirt swished allowed a glimpse of the pink bandaid on her knee before Lauren averted her eyes. The woman didn't smile or extend her hand but her voice was cheerful when she said, I'm Georgia Solomon, one of the architects, welcome. Lauren Ashburn, my co-worker's not here yet. The disgust in her voice was audible but Georgia was apparently polite enough to ignore what Lauren was too burnt out to contain. It'll take a few minutes for everyone to disengage from their work anyway, no need to worry. Georgia said with clipped but musical diction, formal word choice too. May I show you to the conference room? Lauren pointed to the clearly marked double doors just past the receptionist's desk. That conference room? Yes, Georgia said. She headed in that direction, nodding when the receptionist waved gratefully. Her stride was long, her shoulders and hips were broad and she didn't try to reduce the amount of space she took up.  Dad always said she made the worst first impressions. The conference room was paneled with natural cuts of wood and the wide gaps were filled with chunks of white marble. Lauren instantly labeled it strange, but Georgia said, most of the materials we use are reclaimed or recycled and I love the effect of the broken pieces in here. It looks like a snowy forest. Lauren gave the design a second look while she hung her coat on a stand by the door. She decided it was nice after all. Georgia pointed out a series of frames on the wall. These photos are from some of our previous projects. The pride she felt in her work shown in her eyes and the way her fingers fluttered at her sides. So Lauren looked at the photos closely. She was surprised to spot a building she recognized. You renovated first Congo, she said, tapping on the framed picture of the first congregational church. My parents got married there and my dad threw a fit when you gutted it. He came around when he saw the arched doorways though. Lauren realized too late that she'd revealed her lack of knowledge about the company's work. Again, Georgia didn't seem to notice or at least she didn't mind. I do make a good arch, she said. Then she latched on to another detail Lauren hadn't meant to admit. So you grew up in holderness? Lauren nodded and moved on to the next photo without looking at Georgia. She got enough unimpressed looks from the locals who knew her. She didn't need judgment or pity from a stranger about being stuck in her hometown. Is this the crew I'm gonna be working with? She asked, pointing at a group of photo. She could see Georgia among the people gathered around a solar panel array. For the most part, Georgia said, Bev, the interior designer is new and Kyle is not here. He got a new job, he died. That drew Lauren's eyes back to Georgia. The woman's face was blank but her fingers had strayed to the ends of her hair twirling and tugging. Lauren knew you were supposed to say something in these situations, but the usual platitudes made her roll her eyes on the best days. After a month of gritting her teeth through people's banal condolences for the recent death of her dad, she might actually gag on any kind words she tried to say now. Georgia spared her the effort by muttering. I probably shouldn't have brought that up. Lauren shrugged. I've said less appropriate things at work. At first, she thought it was the wrong thing to say because Georgia still didn't smile but her hands relaxed and drifted back to her sides. She met Lauren's eyes briefly. They stood together for a long, lovely moment.  Thank you. That was Kay Acker reading from her book. It was lovely. Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your book with us. We'll all look forward to seeing it. And when it comes out, we can have you on again and talk about your book some more. And thank you so much, Kay, for coming. We really appreciate it. And we will see you soon. Yes, thank you so much for having me. This was wonderful. And I'm happy to come back and talk more about it any time. Thank you. Thank you, Kay. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Taylor Small, who is with us for the second interview of the political season. As we all know, as the audience knows, I imagine, Taylor is the candidate for state rep from Chittenden 6-7. Welcome back. Thank you so much, Anne. I'm happy to be here. And congratulations on your primary win. Well, thank you so much. I think it may have, maybe those wonderful shirts did me a little boost there. Well, as the audience knows, if your regular viewers, Keith and I, wear them on a regular news show at every opportunity elsewhere, too. You know, before you won the primary, I thought, well, I'll wear it maybe once, but now I can wear it. And they're very attractive. I love that they're so comfortable. That's why I wear mine all the time. I know. And they're nicely fitted.  Let's review a little of your bio, if we could. Viewers probably know all this at this point, but you work as the director of health and wellness at the Pride Center of Vermont. And before that, you worked at the Howard Center and Northwest Counseling. You're on the board of outright Vermont. Your family moved here from Canada in the 1960s and you were raised in LaMoyle County. So, right so far? Right so far. You went to Colchester High School and Burlington Technical Center, and then finally got a BS from the University of Vermont in 2016. In human development and family studies with a minor in sexuality and gender identity studies.  So shout out to Emoji if she's watching.  I was able to attend one of those events who was jumping. Those kids were all excited. It was great. And then just to round out with some personal information, you live on the north end of the city with your partner Carson and your dogs, Thea Brahma and Charlie. Thea Brahma? Yeah, Thea Brahma, Theo for short. Okay, and you look forward to meeting all of us. How's it going? How's campaigning in the pandemic? What's that like? Yeah, I think it's a blessing being a first time candidate doing this because everyone is building the plane while they're flying it. And so it's a very level playing field on how we do campaigning. And it has been a rollercoaster, but I think what I love most is being able to find these creative ways of connecting with folks, whether it's doing backyard meetings, so having a socially distanced at a picnic table coming together and talking about the issues that impact folks, having Zoom calls just like this or the old fashioned pick up the phone and talk to folks that way. One thing that I really loved about the campaign was for our lit drop. So the lit drop being giving information to folks and that's the synced way. We did these beautiful neighbor envelopes that had information about me as well as a personalized note, just encouraging folks to reach out, understanding that everyone is carrying so much right now that I don't wanna add anything to their plate, but instead know what's on it and be involved in that conversation. Tell me, how has everything changed since you won the primary? It's a whole lot of press. Yeah, it's a whole lot of press now, which is amazing. I think one of the big pieces there is really holding true to focusing on the issues. Everyone is really focused on identity and I think, of course, that is an important aspect of all of this because it is a historic run. This is history making here in the state of Vermont and also recognizing that I am not the only one making history this year. Keisha Rahm is also running for state senate and if she wins her bid, we'll be the first woman of color in our senate here in the state of Vermont. Here, here. Right, there's so much magic that is happening right now and I think building those connections in the state house is really important and one of my priorities as well as continuing to reach out to my neighbors. One thing that stands out to me is I had a beautiful conversation yesterday with one of the students leading the charge at the Winooski public schools and making sure that they are tackling anti-racism and making sure that there are concrete steps that are taken to make sure that all students are supported in that school and it just really underscores the piece of youth activism in our communities and how important it is to uplift those young voices. And it's really an exciting time in many ways. Yeah, absolutely. So much change. There's so much potential for change as well as active change that's happening. Everything has kicked up since you won the primary, I'm sure. Tell us what your average day is. Oh, an average day. So still working full-time over at Pride Center Vermont which involves working with the Department of Health and navigating LGBTQ health disparities as well as doing trainings in the community. So making sure that human and healthcare providers are getting the best knowledge and supporting LGBTQ folks. But I also think that the trainings are just cultural competency overall and really respecting and honoring the ways that identities show up in places like healthcare or in accessing any of the human services available. So that's at the forefront. I'm still doing all that work. And then adding on top of it is a lot of meetings. I think I have one pretty much every night. And then also trying to get involved in more press. I guess people really wanna talk to me. And luckily I have a whole lot of things to say. So I never turn that one down. Well, you have a national profile now. I mentioned on your Facebook that several national outlets have mentioned your candidacy with great excitement. Yes. And I think it again really highlights the piece that even nationally I have the potential of being the fifth out trans legislator in the United States. I also again wanna highlight that there is Ember Quinn who's running as a trans candidate here in the state of Vermont. So both of us could be serving and that there are trans women who are running in various parts of the state and thinking over in Kansas. Stephanie Byers is having an opportunity to win. And yes, going back to that potential for change it is amazing to see these voices that are typically left out of these conversations or not heard in these spaces. Stepping up and not just testifying for bills but actually helping in the creation of those bills. Having a seat at the table is really crucial. As it should be. And I think if not that making sure that you're bringing in a folding chair as Chisholm said. Mm-hmm. When you came on last time you talked about three of your signature issues. Housing, health care and minimum wage, sorry. No, you're fine. So let's talk about the three more if we could protecting our planet and our future defunding and reforming law enforcement and mental health and addiction if you could. So let's start with the environment. Absolutely. I think we're all recognizing the impacts of climate change. Vermont has always had weird weather but it is getting even weirder. And also thinking about the impact of a runoff that is happening. So with these extreme storms that are happening in the Burlington area we have all of this rain coming down that overwhelms our sewage systems. And we have just this antiquated system in place that combines both runoff from the streets as well as thinking that it's our actual sewage waste water that is in there as well. Which when these storms happen just dumps and overflows right into our water right in Lake Champlain which we use of course for swimming and recreation but also so many Vermonters are using that for drinking water as well. And to think that that has the potential of poisoning such water is terrible. So moving in a direction of really having climate change at the forefront but also understanding that climate change is such an intersectional issue when we think of the impact on people of color or people who hold marginalized identities or even healthcare and the health impacts that come along with having negative climate change it's so important. And again, connecting it back to the healthcare piece one thing that's really concerning that's coming up are these ideas of eco-fascism. So this notion that we as the human race are the virus that is plaguing the earth and not the actual impacts from corporations or from years of just not caring for our land that are truly what's holding us back and what's not allowing us to move forward and make the climate change that we need instead of the negative climate change that's currently happening. You are so right. I grew up in Buffalo, New York when in the era of Love Canal remember that all the people in Niagara Falls had asthma because of the corporate pollution and I was in New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina too another catastrophic effect of climate change but let's move on to law enforcement and it's a reformation it's been a heartbreaking week, hasn't it? It's been a heartbreaking week it's been a heartbreaking year and I think COVID has allowed the spotlight to stay on the Black Lives Matter movement and the impact that it directly has to people of color and more specifically Black and Indigenous folks and so when we look at our policing systems they're acting in this way of exactly that and acting laws, laws that have been historically set up against people of color or people who are impoverished and really criminalizing activities that folks are doing in order to maintain their livelihood and so when we're looking at policing I think first and foremost is getting into that education realm making sure that our police are fully educated and that training is much longer than it is right now as it currently stands it takes more hours for someone to become a hairdresser than it does for them to become an active police officer You're kidding No, and it's wild that is such a wild concept to think about the person that cuts my hair has more training than the person who is driving around with a gun and actively causing harm in the community and so when we look at that piece there's one the other is again how we hold police accountable as it currently stands police accountability is done within the network it is other police officers saying whether or not a police officer's actions were just and so in that we're not allowing for trial and jury that we typically see for every other citizen in the United States who has to go through with this when they commit an illegal act like murder they are going through trial and yet with police officers they are having this trial and jury amongst their peers which is just ineffective and typically involves police officers moving from precinct to precinct and not ever having that accountability in place You are so you can see this playing out in the national stage every day Absolutely Yes and so when we talk about defunding we're really thinking about where we can reappropriate those funds so that we're actually finding solutions to the issues rather than policing the issues so moving into the mental health and addiction how are we supporting folks who are in recovery are we just throwing them in a jail cell as it currently happens or are we moving to support our mental health programs to be able to be in there with evidence-based interventions around how we can support folks and moving in a direction away from substances and understanding that there are some basic needs that are not being met for that person and that is why they are engaging in such behavior and that is the biggest piece when we're looking at police reform it's not replacing police with social workers it's rethinking the system and moving towards transformative justice ways that we can look at the harm that is caused in community and support all who are involved because we know that the people who cause harm have also been harmed themselves it's just a vicious cycle that we're getting ourselves caught into and I think it takes creative thinking like this to move in a new direction and understand that if we want our communities to be thriving that we need to be moving away from police systems Makes sense to me in the minute we have left can you talk a little about voting? Absolutely so for the November 3rd election all voting will be mail-in ballots so you will be getting that right in your mailbox and luckily it's less confusing this time with the primaries you get so many different papers that you may or may not have to fill out and this time it's gonna be one ballot that you fill out and submit back to your town clerk a couple of notes there we had so many people turn out for the primary elections and had defective ballots so their votes weren't counted so I recommend being very careful reading the directions making sure you're signing where you need to and placing all the documents in the envelopes that need to happen and if there is anything tripping you up if you're feeling like it's a difficult process you can always bring your ballot into your town or city clerk to walk through that process with them or if you make a mistake as long as you have all the components that are in that envelope the town clerk can issue you a new ballot it's only if you mail it in with incorrect information that your ballot will not be cast you said that there were some ballots that were rejected in the primary 6,000, 6,000 ballots were rejected so 6,000 people who voted in the primary election did not have their voice heard oh my gosh that's appalling yeah well and it's so Vermont that a majority of them were because of recycling the extra papers that were in the envelopes when you have to send all of the material back to the town clerk so really great intent but the impact meant that their voice wasn't heard and that is so devastating to hear I know so it's a useful warning yes yes be mindful and definitely ask for help if you need it wonderful well Taylor thank you so much for coming in if any audience members are in Chittenden 6,7 we encourage you I'm a shameless supporter we I wish I could vote for you but if you live in Taylor's district please vote for her and we'll look for we'll be watching the results and we'll look forward to having you on again it's looking promising and we have our fingers crossed same here thank you so much Ann for having me again I you know I'm officially the number one guest who's been on if I win again then I'm really setting the record high that's right it's been four times in two of your incarnations so please come again and good luck thank you so that was our show for this week thank you for joining us and Linda and as our weekly reminder do not forget


Rafael Nadal versus Carlos Alcárez is the second semi-final for the men at Indian Wolves for 2022, and both guys have been very impressive to get to this stage. Alcárez started the tournament as the 19th seed and got a buy in the first round. His second round opponent was the local Hope McDonald and he dismissed him in straight sets 6-3, 6-3. His third round opponent was 15th seed and Spanish veteran Batista Ragu and this was one of the most impressive performances from Alcárez for the week, only dropping a few games in straight sets, winning at 6-2 and 6-1. In the fourth round he faced the number 26 seed Montfies who just came off beating the number one seed Medvedev in the previous round. And after an entertaining first set that was very close, Alcárez got through in straight sets 7-5, 6-1. In his quarter-final matchup he take on the defending champion and number 12 seed Cam Norrie and although Norrie had a very impressive week himself, Alcárez did not seem bothered taking out the champ 6-4, 6-3 to advance to the semis. Rafael Nadal entered the tournament as the number four seed and on a 15 match win streak and got a buy in the first round. His second round opponent was Seb Corder, the American and after taking the first set he was forced to play 3 and would have to fight in the third set to come back from 5-2 down but he eventually prevailed 6-2, 1-6, 7-6. His third round opponent was the 27th seed Dan Evans and after a close first set where Evans had the lead it was Rafa to come back again winning in straight sets 7-5, 6-3. In his fourth round match he take on the big serving American Riley Opelka the number 17 seed and as you'd guess Opelka playing a couple of tie breaks but Rafa getting the best of him winning both the tie breaks 7-6, 7-6. His quarter-final meeting was against the wild card Nick Kirios who he'd had some epic clashes with in the past and this was no exception. This match lived up to the hype with all the drama you expect from a Kirios Nadal matchup but it was Rafa who got the win in the end 7-6, 5-7, 6-4 to advance to the semi-finals. These two have only played the one time before that was last year in Madrid and Rafa got the win pretty easily so it wasn't quite the matchup that was built up to be with the new generation Spaniard against the veteran Spaniard or the goat Spaniard it wasn't quite that matchup but this one feels a little bit different being on a hard court. If Alcares is going to win he needs to be super aggressive early and he kind of needs Rafa to play bad because usually when Rafa is playing his best not many players outside of the greatest of all time Djokovic and Federer can beat him at his best. If Nadal is going to win he's going to play better than he has he played okay against Kirios but he played the big points the best and kept his cool when he needed to when Kirios did have a bit of a meltdown so he's going to have to absorb the power of Alcares but also play a lot better than he has for the rest of the week he's probably feeling tired the foot's probably hurting but we'll see if he can handle the heat from Alcares. This is a very interesting matchup and it's very hyped on social media as it should be but I think the experience of Rafa is going to win this one I'm going to go with Rafa in straight sets I think Alcares is about 12 months away from really testing Rafa in a matchup but it's not quite yet there I think it's going to be close but I think it's going to be Rafa in straight but let me know down in the comments below who do you think is going to win this one.