Hey, you guys girl. This is gonna be a chit chat all over the place. I know you got thinking Vivian, what else is new my new business? That's what's new. Yeah, I got attitude problem Organizing some of these hair stuff on my Girl See who been back here and my stuff Girl, what is that? Oh y'all have to excuse the sun rays Let me put the thing on me. So y'all I'm gonna try to make this as short as possible because I have a feeling JB's gonna come in here in about 30 minutes I don't want this video to be about 30 minutes long. Let me take this off some I still got these wooden beads and bachal They started falling out like I could hear them. I was somewhere Oh, the other day was swim lessons with JB and I can hear them falling on the bleachers JB started laughing What in the seven deadly sense is going on here? So yeah, they're yeah, see that just slipped off um Hair still looking good now my at my scalp is itchy So I'm gonna have to put some more oil on my scalp and massage it and girl Maybe some tea tree up a little bit of tea tree oil in my arm mixture and massaging and um I have a list of things here that I want to discuss But y'all I have an idea for my birthday. First of all, I don't have any plans for my birthday. I Don't I'm turning 41 August 11th. Shout out to the Leo's But I don't have any plans for my birthday But I do have an idea as far as a video like I want to vlog the entire week because I think it's a blessing to be able to celebrate your birthday and I am one of those annoying ass people that celebrate their birthday all Month long I buy myself presents. I let everyone know it's my birthday How you doing girl? It's my birthday. Thank you No, but So this is the idea I have for a video on my birthday week. So I'm thinking about doing like Queen Queen look Queen makeup look at authentic But I guess my point is is that I want to do three looks three three queen status looks Okay, but I want to be careful because I don't want to offend anyone So I don't want it to come off as oh, this is me being an Egyptian or this mean me being a Habasha Or excuse me me being a Eat the open what I'm saying. Let me know what y'all think but anyway girl.  So you guys um Speaking of Ethiopian I had Went to an Ethiopian spice shop. They know me up in there because Yeah, they know they know me because I've been going there for like six years. So I need to go tell this child to be quiet. So anyway, um, I know the owner I know the children and all then the children are are a little bit younger than me. So, um So I go there to get the injera to get the flat bread because I'm I made the food two weeks ago, right?  I was looking around and sure enough girl I saw the job board Vatica or double vatica products and girl. I saw both of them the black seed oil And he has a natural hair the owners. Um, oh, yeah, he was telling me how he also uses these products and how they're really good for his hair I'm good for you.  This is 13 ounces and I also got the black seed Conditioner. Okay, so yes, I will be reviewing those in the meantime Um, I have the wild cactus deep conditioner. Can you see that? Yeah, wild cactus deep conditioner and I have the tropical coconut an arian. You are right girl coconut really isn't in this product. There's something that's coconut me but Coconut oil isn't in this product Um, also picked up some fenugreek seeds because I'm gonna get back on my fenugreek oil kick Yeah, I've got some fenugreek seeds and um I was looking through my cabinet y'all and I found fenugreek powder. I forgot all about this So I think I'm gonna make a hair paste and I will be capturing that on cam too Okay, so y'all what? Again going on the personal life or whatever girl. What is going on? Oh girl. Yes, the color is looking better now Actually y'all let me get into this. So personal life is going well My husband is off all week And he's been in a good mood. You guys I think he's been in a good mood because I've been in a good mood And he knows that I am excited about moving back to Texas. And so we were looking at houses Um last oil yesterday. It's just all week really looking at houses and heath Like I say at forney chile even started looking at houses houses and tyler And ironically I call one of my classmates from long view yesterday. It's just like y'all should move to tyler That's actually some nice communities. Uh that they're starting to build out there. I girl. I don't want to live in tyler I really don't I know I I have a couple of y'all that live by me sex. I don't want to live in tyler Fight me in the comments. Tell me why I should live in tyler I want to live in forney um I don't know We're still open and we can still look around. I'm so yeah, I've been looking at the houses girl my My things that I have to have in a house y'all I have to have a kitchen that is open I need to have a cabinet space. I need that because The one room that I spend the most time in is in my kitchen um, we need to have four bedrooms and I don't really care about backyard size and all that because we're actually going to keep the pool here I'm going to go ahead and take the My husband's like we need to sell the trampoline. Everyone has a trampoline out here. Honestly a lot of people have trampolines So we're going to take the trampoline Because the backyard would be a good size. Um, so yeah, just you know going through and talking about it and you know What we plan on doing but I I need to really have a discussion. I'm trying not to really bother him about it I need to have a discussion with my husband. What are his goals? I know that he wants to invest and get into investment opportunities. What type of investment, you know, you You can be able to street pharmacist like what are you trying to do? Y'all that's going on Let's talk about some of this stuff y'all Portia and tank. I know two totally different spectrums. Unfortunately y'all if you follow the r&b singer tank You know that he's had some Health conditions or health issues to come up in the past. Has it been a couple of months now? um He was apparently going deaf in both ears Had vertigo And I feel for him He's he's visited an ent and I saw a little bit of the last clip that he posted on instagram And he was giving his ears cleaned out And the vertigo is subsided y'all have no idea how You having let me back up I have several different issues that you know affected my ears Um tinnitus and vertigo that I get every now and then so I go to the ent to get my ears cleaned out A couple of years ago. I had bppv and that's basically where I had crystals that were loose in my ear and I had horrible vertigo for like two weeks straight And that's not the first time I've had vertigo. Um the specialist or whoever tilted my head back on this table She jerked my head around and she said my eyes were moving like this That's how they knew I had bppv But once she took my head and adjusted my neck and all of that that broke up the That broke up the crystals and my vertigo vertigo went away Then recently like last year I started getting tinnitus in one ear and then we'll go over to the next Um went to the ent she cleaned my ears still had it started smoking weed For multiple reasons Anxiety, but ironically the tinnitus went away too. Isn't that amazing? So I haven't had any issues with my ears since but Back to tank tank apparently Was losing his hearing. I don't know if his hearing has came back And as a singer you got to have your your hearing y'all and then he was getting tinnitus And I'm sorry. He was getting vertigo and vertigo is horrible to have so prayers out to him Yeah, Portia Those of you who followed the real household the real housewives of atlanta the fraud room slip I really did. I didn't mean to say that the real housewives that is rude I'm gonna I'm gonna bleep that out the real housewives of atlanta Portia Williams who was on the cast and y'all mind you I haven't seen one episode of this since like season the one where claudia was on there and um And nini had that horrible blonde wig Yeah, that's the last time that's I stopped watching the real housewives of atlanta back then because it doesn't make any sense for 40 plus year old women to be on tv acting this acting plon folk wise girl. Why is it zooming in? Isn't this the first is this the first time that someone has stolen? I don't even want to say stolen Is this the first time that another housewife has Literally gotten with another housewives x This is this is just girl cold broken Ratchet ratchet ratchet nothing good. It's gonna come out of this a part of me feels like She's doing this for a storyline not that I think she really needed it But again, I don't watch the show so i'm not sure but I don't know y'all I think it's a little I think Portia I want I don't say that I lost our respect for her, but I'm not surprised by this.  I'm I'm gaining a little bit more weight. Hey, hey I'm all the way So I'm gonna take the next seven weeks to really really really y'all. I know I keep saying this So I don't eat breakfast. I skip breakfast. So now for breakfast. I'm gonna make sure that I have fruit um drink a lot more water And I'm gonna give myself seven weeks six seven weeks to really really kick in this a gear and get back to Working out jb. They can hear that too. Turn it down Get back to working out Um consistently working out. Okay Just so I can feel better and you know have a little bit more energy. What else is going on Child girl, what is all up with all these people acting crazy on the planes y'all Like it's like we already know people were crazy But it seems like there's more and more people just acting up plumb full. Look, I'm not getting on nobody's plane We probably won't even get on a plane to next year when we visit texas to look at some of these houses I'm not getting on nobody plane anytime soon. So people don't want to wear their mask People are all those people that do wear their mask and they're still just acting crazy on the planes And for when I understand now The airlines is going to be what is it basically going to be? What do you call it like a fine?  It's very disruptive because a lot of the times look When you're doing that, you're holding up the plane You're holding up flights and that has an effect on other flights I don't think people realize that maybe they doing they just don't care. So Girl, it is what it is So yeah, people acting crazy on the planes. Look, I want to say this too before we start talking about what I've been watching on YouTube and all this I want to say this things are slowly going back to normal. We see that praise god I honestly, um, the numbers are slowly going down One don't get comfortable.  That's okay I'm here to tell you it is okay To still not be okay because trust and believe I still have my mom is where I'm like I feel like I'm living in a Alternate reality. Is this real world? Yeah, is this is our life right now? Yes, it is so Just just wanted to say that you're not alone. Okay So y'all what I'm watching on youtube girl nothing. I'm really not watching hardly anything Um, I was watching some of ashley miller's reviews Uh, she's the light-skinned girl. Did she live in Atlanta in Atlanta? I'm not sure y'all. Um girl looking at gordon Gordon Ramsay Um kitchen nightmares. I like to look at some of the old episodes of kitchen nightmares girl. These restaurants are discussing I'm not really watching a lot of hair stuff and all that Um, I do need to call my girl angel aka nazi naps. Um, she wants to collab Hopefully on on we have some ideas. I still am going to do the collab Um, I'm gonna put busby in one of my videos. Um, I'm going to do girl I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it sis. I'm gonna do the flexi rots set I'm gonna use her video how to get the best flexi rots set. I'm gonna embed that in my video Um, she knows all about it. Um, all about it. Excuse me. She was giving me tips. I'm like, girl She gave me tips like six months ago and I still have another video Well, I'm watching on tv Girl everything so back to watching good girls. Look, I'm starting over with season one of good girls Good girls is good. Good girls is on netflix and hulu if you don't have it Handmaid's tail kind of slowing down Mmm I'm not sure if I'm feeling this season y'all, but May I will say this season is not as traumatic as the other seasons and episodes have been and I know it's a bit much If you can't get into it and it is it's a bit much.  There's been people that say, you know They deserved it because apparently they dragged it Dan was a what was he a lawyer and a doctor and betty actually helped to put him through school Both times that's so 10 years Um, they had four children actually five one was was um one child died um four eleven Dan actually wrote out I think her name is lee one of the children out of the wheel That's cold. That's cold. I understand you got problems with your wife your ex-wife But to leave out you one of your children out of the wheel is cold Apparently the girl had drug problems and all that um So the the family is split on how they even think about betty Two of the children are on her side. Two of them are on the father's side But y'all we don't know what what happens, you know, there's Everyone's making assumptions and but the only people who really knew what happened Is dan who unfortunately is in with us and betty who is still in prison. She went to prison She's out in california. Well, she I think 1989 is when the murders happen She was in her 40s.  She is up for parole again She'll be like 84 years old and from what I understand She shows no she is cold y'all She shows no remorse for killing that man and his his wife Dan in my opinion was a Classic narcissistic Um, but I think that betty was also a social path from what I understand and reading You know documents and even reading people who are apparently friends with with dan and betty Dan had a lot of friends in california a lot of friends and they basically a lot of lawyer friends Um, they wouldn't even help her even her own family like turned up like one of her friends I saw posted on on YouTube one of the friends said that she never even met betty's Um parents and she was really surprised by that like they were almost like ghosts betty rarely talked about them And y'all see yeah, like I said, you never know what's going on Child I was thinking about writing miss betty and you know and talking I got her I got her a prison information child.  It's really good. I'm watching that on Is it on netflix dirty junk season two Started to watch you y'all and I tried I tried I'm on episode two. I just can't do it I can't do it. I really can't you again. It's also on netflix girl. I rewatch one of my favorite favorite movies Um by quentin tarantino jackie brown. I love jackie brown. I love me some pam girl She was cold in that movie y'all. She was in her 40s when she was in that movie.  Is his name robert foster? He passed away. I believe in 2019. Bless his heart.  I don't even know why Why didn't bridget fonda kick her out when she noticed that something was wrong? She should kick her out like after two months, but Good movie really really good movie bridget fonda doesn't make any movies and she doesn't have to she comes from an acting family They have the money, but she doesn't make movies anymore. I wonder why but anyway, um The conjuring part three the devil made me do it. Let me tell you something We started watching the first We started watching it After the first I literally was clutching jb. I was so scared Y'all I like scary movies, but I don't I don't have to be that scared And especially when it comes to demonic possession and all that so The conjuring the devil made me do it again is based off of a true story spoilers it starts off with the Um extra system of a child which is very dangerous to do in my opinion. Um poster guys and spirits like to Grab on to children because because children are open As some children have everything open they even have their third eye open That's a whole nother discussion. They have a lot of things open.  He can feel things. He could when we walked over I'm gonna get back to it When we walked over to her over here to this neighborhood where the husband killed his entire family JB said that it felt like ice He said like he said that he felt dry ice on his neck. I could feel that too. You could feel the evilness. You could feel something almost How do you explain it almost like fog like fog right JB? It's almost like fog That's what it feels like. It feels like uh And it was my back It was your back, but and for me it was fog.   They were living in a house and God yeah, I'm all over the place The person who owns the house basically he that's who he murdered but anyway The girlfriend said that absolutely she believed that he was also possessed But now his family sitting down. He wasn't possessed. They're just doing this for monies and coins or whatever, but baby Yeah, I think happen though. There is a spirit spirit spirit world out there no matter what you believe it in um The spirit world is is real and it can be dangerous if you're not careful. So That's what we watched child. We also started watching Child anyway Child we even started to watch the beginning of the of labyrinth when david bowie came David bowie flew into that girl's bedroom JP was like, no So we stopped watching it. So y'all that is it. This is all over the place Thank y'all so much for watching. Please be on the lookout. I am going to be having more hair videos out there. So that is it Thank you so much for watching. Take care. Bye


Hello and welcome to this tutorial on pre-processing 10x single cell RNA-seq data. I am your host, Wendy Bacon from the European Molecular Biology Lab in the European Bioinformatics Institute, or the EMBL EBI, rolls right off the tongue. So we're going to go to transcriptomics, single cell RNA-seq, and then pre-processing of 10x datasets. Okay, and then we're going to start with uploading our data. Copy that, upload data, and we want even more data. Click it again, and here we go. I'm going to be honest, that step can sometimes take quite a long time, so you're very welcome to just import the history that I've already shared. Okay, next up we're going to run RNA star solo. There we go. Okay, so yes, that has our GTF, length 110x, and then we want to select both read 1s, both read 2s. We'll want the whitelist, cell ranger, chemistry version 3, cell ranger 3, and I'm also going to change this to pre-processing 10x datasets. All right, that took a not insignificant amount of time, so now we're going to do, so you can investigate these to your heart's delight. I'm going to go into the multi-QC, that's right, sometimes it doesn't show up when you search for it, so if I go to FSQC quality control, then I can click it, just sometimes things don't search that well. Okay, so we want star, star output log, we want the log, and then you can look at the web page and check out all sorts of worldly things, and now we're going to look at just the star solo output, the log, and lots of things from that. We go down to exponential parameters. All right, and then we can move on to producing a quality count matrix, so we want bundled, and we want barcodes, genes, oh sorry, count, genes, barcodes. All right, and so then we get our lovely new count matrix, which has a mere 272 cells, and then we can go back and we can look at this statistic summary, and we can look at the total number of cells there, and see this 6100. Now we're going to do rank these barcodes, so if I go to droplet QTELS again, okay, format same, same, same, same, the number of rank barcodes, we'll see what happens there, and then we can inspect our lovely new plot and learn lots about this, look at inflection points, etc. Okay, and then now we're going to do filtering, so drop to these cells again, bundled again, and this time we're going to filter for barcodes, but we're going to use what we learned from that plot, empty drops, lower bound we're going to go to 200, tabular, and that brings us to the end of this tutorial, so I hope you have fun.


Hello everybody. Welcome. You know for the next hour and a half or so we're gonna be here together. We're gonna talk about Vermont's electricity policy. We might be getting a little bit into the weeds but hopefully not too much. But most importantly we're all here gathered together because we care about the same issue and we want to know what to do about it. Looking around the room I see familiar faces. I see new faces. This might be a completely new topic or issue to you. This might be something that you've studied and thought about for hours and hours and so I'm hoping that today will be a space where we can all like learn together and ask our questions together. And I think most importantly the energy and the intention of this room is not leaving when we walk out the door. What's most important is what we do with this information after we leave and that's where we're gonna be making our impact and that's what we what Vermont really needs is a strong climate movement to be making a much larger impact than we already are. So thanks for being here. I'm gonna have Marcy come up and do a short land acknowledgement. Natalie Braun who's here is gonna speak just shortly to the 350 Burlington Node and why it's like the coolest group of people ever. And then we're gonna get things rolling. So yeah. And then this is the microphone for anybody. Hi everybody. I'm so glad to see everybody. Fabulous. So here's my long land acknowledgement. If you'll indulge me. I met with Judy Dow last week in Abinacke Wise Woman to talk about how to do a land acknowledgement. She told me that this practice began in 2015 as one response to a truth and reconciliation commission which addressed Canada's long and horrible history of indigenous residential schools. I understood Judy to say that a land acknowledgement is owning our relationship to the land we are living on. What is the nature of this land? 18,000 years ago, I think we think thereabouts. The land below and surrounding us here was weighted down under miles of glacial ice 400 feet below sea level, which is 500 feet lower than it is today. Over time, the glacier retreated north and opened up a passageway to the Atlantic Ocean, causing saltwater to rush in to form the Champlain Sea. As this land was freed from the immense weight of the glacier, it began to rise up and throw the saltwater back into the ocean, making way for the freshwater of Lake Champlain. And here we sit today in the presence of that lake with gratitude and reverence for it. And we honor the Abenaki people who have cared for this land before us. In that spirit, here's some wisdom from Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Native American botanist and teacher. In the Western tradition, she says, in the Western tradition, there is a recognized hierarchy of beings with, of course, the human being on top, the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of creation and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as, quote, the younger brothers of creation. We say that humans, we Native Americans say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn. We must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been and have had time to figure things out. And here's another quote.  To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground, whether far or near. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children's future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all of our relatives depend on it because they do. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marcy. That was beautiful. Got it. Natalie, do you want to come up and speak briefly to the 350 Burlington node? Thank you. And this is a little slip to put on for audio. Okay. Does it need, may I just eat this microphone and will that be good? Yeah, that's for somebody's individual. Oh, I see. Okay. Great. Could I just hold it? All right. I'm just holding it.  I'm going to let you put this on my scarf just where it should be. If you would. Excellent. Thank you. So my name is Natalie Braun and I am the sometimes facilitator and frequent email sender from the 350 Burlington node. And I am so delighted to see all of you today. If you want to get an idea of what we're capable of in the 350 Burlington node, look at that table back there of all that good looking food. And I want a special thanks to Marcy and for handling the majority and all of our other node members for stepping in today. So currently, you know, we go, we go primarily in terms of what 350 Vermont because they have great wisdom in their campaigns. And right now we are supporting those campaigns around the renewable energy standard, obviously, and then some very significant things around some ordinances in Burlington as well as the McNeil plant. However, there is space for any, everyone's gifts in the Burlington node, even though that sounds kind of very legislative. And I just want you to know, we meet every twice monthly. There's an online option. In person has been wonderful over the past six or eight months.  She has no idea I'm doing this. Okay. And me, if you are interested, if you're not already on our Google group and listserv, just in terms of, even if you never show up or can't, I think we have some pretty good information coming out around what is happening. The meeting notes are very concise. And just in terms of keeping your finger on the pulse of what 350 Burlington and to a larger degree 350 Vermont are doing. So Campbell or me after, whenever you have an opportunity, we will happily take your information, pop you onto that listserv, and you will be exceedingly well informed from there. So thanks very much. Awesome. Thank you, Natalie. So I'll speak just a little bit to 350 Vermont. My name is Connor Wertz. I'm a community organizer. You see him pronouns, and I've been organizing here in Burlington and a couple other parts in the state for a little bit over a year. 350 Vermont is building a people-powered and people-led climate justice movement in Vermont for a just and thriving world. And what that means is that it's our mission here on staff and all of our leaders, our volunteer leaders, to empower you to take the action that you need in order to like really like try to address this climate crisis at the roots.  It's we need as many leaders in this in this climate movement as possible and we need intersections and like to be addressing all of the oppressions out there in order to really dig into the roots of the climate crisis. So we have teams all across the state and we focus on both local and statewide action and policy. Do you want to talk about the agenda really quick? Okay, so for a little bit next for the next like hour or so we're going to go into introductions and just kind of get to know each other briefly in small groups. Rebecca is going to give a short presentation kind of info download on electricity in Vermont where it comes from, why it matters, and what's going on right now that we can do to make it better. There'll be a Q&A so you can kind of answer or get any clarifying things out of the way that you're confused about and then finally we'll kind of lean in towards that like well what's next? What are we going to do about it? So hopefully you'll leave today feeling empowered and with a couple of things to do so that we can be making a difference as soon as possible. We're going to do a pair share for probably just like five minutes or less so just a couple minutes and find so many that you don't know and answer these questions what brought you here to this workshop. What do you think the connection is between electricity and climate change and if you want something silly talk about your favorite pasta shape because I think that tells you about a person. Y'all let you and we're going to just have a halfway through and find some of you don't know and get to know them. I'm Rebecca Galdin and she's her program and I'm a TV organizer at 350 Vermont. I am specifically organizing around electricity in our state. So we're going to talk a ton about electricity. I just want to say that when we talk about the problems with what we have and what we do want to see this is representative of a lot of volunteers and folks just like you coming together and asking hard questions and doing tons of research and really thinking through this. So I just want people to keep that in mind. We're going to start with a quiz. So I'm curious what percentage of Vermont's total electricity use do you think comes from solar or wind? So if you think it's from 60% raise your hand. Okay no takers 40% no how about less than 20? How about 5% so less than 20% pretty right on how about how much of Vermont's electricity would you like to have come from solar and wind and we can just shout it out like as loud as you want 100 I think I heard like complete consensus for 100 which is yeah with a little small hydro in there awesome so that is kind of what we want to see ultimately so we're going to delve into why electricity is so important for climate change a lot of you probably already know but also where it comes from and a little more details on what we want to see before we start we're going to try something called the sticky note chat room so we've got a bunch of sticky notes I'm going to pass this around and people can just rip off like a couple I'm also going to pass around some pens in case anyone doesn't have a pen um so while I'm doing this presentation you'll you will most likely have a lot of questions and most likely at some point be confused which is totally fine and if you have any questions you can write them down on your sticky note we're going to have a chance to pass them up and Ben is our residence electricity expert and he's going to answer some of them but if we don't get to all of them if you can put your name or and contact info on there so we can make sure to get back to you um next week um that way we can make sure everyone's questions get answered so before um diving into all the details I just want to frame the conversation a little bit um so when we talk um so one important thing to remember as we talk about electricity and its issues is that there's no 100% electricity generation generation solution which means ultimately we also need to talk about how as a community and as a culture how are we also thinking about using less so an example of this is like there's a lot of talk about electrifying vehicles which is certainly way better than fossil fuel cars but what about things like walking and biking and carpooling and transportation that works for a rural state and all of those kind of things so I just want people to hold that piece as well um in that vein as there being no perfect solution um we're definitely going to need solar to meet our energy needs um but it's important to think about how solar is done in a couple of different ways um so one thing um to just remember is that both solar and wind technology at least currently um need certain minerals in order to work and um so you can see on this chart one of the minerals those things really need is copper and 89 percent of our copper reserves are either on or 30 or within 35 miles of federal indian reservations which means that and the as you imagine if you can imagine the impact of mining these minerals is really significant really hard on communities um and often there's no kind of prior or informed consent so that's just another piece of this to hold um I do want to mention there's some federal work on the federal hopefully federal level hopefully coming down the line about how do we recycle those minerals so that we're not having to continually mine them oh yeah sure so operating means like it's happening they're taking minerals out of the earth um pre-production scoping means the actual mining isn't happening yet but they're either looking into it or they're like starting to set up the mine process um and I also just want to mention I will send out all these slides to everyone and um there's lots of clickable links so you'll be able to click the links as well okay any question that is asked without a microphone is not on the tape so that's why I suggest that somebody hold it and then pass it so somebody says they want to ask a question and pass it to them if you're comfortable with not having any of the questions on the tape that's fine I'm just saying maybe perhaps the person was answering the question to repeat the question yeah that's a great idea we can we can do that and if for some reason you're not having you're not comfortable with your question being on the tape I'm happy to either put it on your post-it or I'm also happy to talk after the presentation um and so um this is a bunch of further reading around mining and indigenous lands and also thinking about like um thinking about post extra uh like what it looks like to not have such an extractive world um so a bunch of more resources around that people can look at afterwards um the other thing I want to mention is the solar siting question um which even among people who really care about climate change can be hard it's a really hard thing to talk about and there's lots of different opinions and lots of different different perspectives so I just want to name that that is something that comes up and um something that like we all need to talk about and listen about um and I think ultimately what it comes down to is thinking about where our power will come from and whose backyard it's going to be in um so we can hold that as well if we talk about this okay now we're going to dive in so um a lot of our proposed climate solutions so things like cold climate heat pumps um transportation are going to dramatically increase our electricity use and this is one of the sort of solutions that's put forth a lot for climate change but electrifying so shifting from fossil fuels to electricity is only going to reduce our emissions if those electricity sources are actually um low emission sources has anyone heard about the renewable energy standard I hadn't heard about it until last year so awesome this is great um so the renewable energy standard which is often abbreviated as the REZ um is a law that was passed in 2015 that said okay electric utilities you have to provide 75 percent of your energy from renewable sources by 2032 and 10 percent of that needs to come from in-state sources so like I don't know what do people think does that sound good decent kind of not too bad and I was like that's go vermont maybe could be more but um but it's it's it's actually pretty deceiving um and there's some real problems with their renewable energy standard we're going to talk about all of these um but just as a quick overview um so problem one is what is considered renewable so in its definition of renewable energy standard or sorry renewable energy um the standard includes large-scale hydropower from things like hydroquebec um and it also includes biomass and these are pretty problematic sources of electricity um number two is that it actually allows utilities to meet their renewable energy obligations so to get towards that 75 percent goal by purchasing these things called renewable energy credits while still providing non-renewable energy um which sounds like impossible but we're going to talk about how that happens the last thing is that um the REZ actually makes it really hard for new solar and wind both in our state and regionally which without that we don't really have a good way to get fossil fuels off our grid okay so we're going to go back first and talk about the problems with what the renewable energy standard considers renewable so we're large i'm sorry oh yeah i i missed the last point oh yeah um the last one i'll just repeat it again and we'll we'll we'll take a deeper dive into it but just that number three number three yeah i can go back to the screen too just that um the renewable energy standard standard makes it hard for solar and wind to be built regionally both regionally and here in vermont um so large hydro um electric and biomass are considered renewable so what is wrong with us first let's start with large hydro um so the way um like hydroquobec basically what is able to get so much generate so much power um is during the 70s they flooded a huge amount of land 3.8 million acres um of forest to meet to create dams in order to have enough um power to generate electricity um there's a number of problems with this so first of all this when all those all that organic matter is flooded and it's sitting underwater it starts decomposing and when it decomposes it emits methane which is a really potent greenhouse gas we when we say oh okay large hydro you're renewable um you're bringing us closer to our climate goals there's nowhere where we count all those methane emissions and also um displaces indigenous communities and poison food supplies and ecosystems with mercury um again very little conversation very little consent around this um we're also losing that 3.8 million acres of forest which is a carbon sink um for taking carbon out of the atmosphere um and on top of that we're losing biodiversity um and it's causing a pretty big amount of ecological destruction so um this is um James Papatier he's a member of the Kecia Keek tribe um uh First Nations tribe up north and um this is this is what he says about the flooding no one ever consulted or come no one was ever consulted or compensated the dams destroyed our way of life our original village was flooded our resources and our trapping territories are flooded we've been dispossessed of our territory for those who buy energy from Hydro-Quebec they need to realize that it destroys cultures the environment so this is one way we're when we think about hydro and if we think about new hydro um it would be uh exporting basically the harms of our energy use to their communities we're the only state in New England that says large hydro can be considered renewable for our renewable energy standard other states call it the renewable portfolio standard but it's the same thing the other thing I want to touch on is biomass um which I know is close to the heart of a lot of folks here in Burlington just as anyone involved with McNeil and trying to stop their expansion awesome um so folks are probably pretty familiar um with a lot of the problems with biomass um I'm just going to say this one quote because I think it illustrates really well um so for each kilowatt hour of heat produced using wood initially is likely to add two to three times as much carbon to the air as using fossil fuels um in our 2021 annual power mix for for Vermont um seven and a half percent of it came from biomass so that's also something we really don't want to see considered as a renewable energy yeah um so in 2020 our 2021 annual power mix in Vermont seven and a half percent of our electricity came from biomass just like to add that uh New York state and Massachusetts don't recognize biomass as renewable um and I'm just going to repeat that um so 20 percent uh not from McNeil but seven and a half percent comes from um by from biomass and sorry do you mind saying what you just said again um maybe into that microphone if you want New York state and Massachusetts don't recognize biomass as a renewable energy source over Vermont does that one just goes that's just for the recording it doesn't actually amplify it but it the means the video can hear it awesome thank you um so problem number two is these things called wrecks and specifically um unbundled wrecks so what on earth is a wreck this stands for renewable energy credit um and they're really confusing um so it's basically a certificate that every megawatt hour of renewable energy that enters our grade receives and these wrecks basically like these stickers they can be bought and sold separate from the actual electricity electrons that they're associated with and when that happens it's called unbundled so this is a way that we can essentially greenwash our electricity this is a screenshot of green mountain powers um webpage where they explain what their annual energy mix is so what where does electricity that they're selling to their customers come from and just to be clear this is this is not intended to pick on green mountain power this is what the state says is telling them to do um and this is what the renewable energy standard is telling them to do and this and why it's problematic so they say gmp supply is 100 carbon free and more than 78 percent renewable so that 22 percent that's considered carbon free but not renewable is from nuclear um the 78 percent renewable portion looks like this so um you can so this is specifically again green mountain power um so you can see that they have the 21.1 percent nuclear and then um 28.6 percent is from uh other new renewables um only 21.1 percent actually came from solar and wind you can see that the majority of it came from large hydro and that that other renewable section is kind of broken out into um wood a little bit of methane and not a whole lot of wind and solar what's the dark purple thing to do the dark uh existing vermont hydro so that would be like small hydro projects which are fine we just don't have a ton of capacity to expand those further um so the rest of that so remember on their their web page they said we're 78 percent renewable um and so and there's like a little like around 20 percent that's from solar and wind where does that extra 56.9 percent of renewable come from these are all the sources if you don't want to read all the percentages that's fine but all the little frowny faces are saying like this is not something that we should be thinking of as renewable either because it's not actually low emissions or because it's not really a just form of electricity or both um and I'm just going to mention here I know I keep using the word renewable and folks have brought this up in the past it's it's a rather unfortunate semantics um issue and that like our state is looking at is looking to increase our renewable energy but renewable doesn't always mean low emissions or just so just I'm going to use the same language as the state is using but just to keep in mind so seven percent of what this renewal of what um green mountain power considers renewable is actually coming from natural gas and then as you can see a lot a huge chunk of it is large hydro um and also you can see the wood in there from biomass um and also a couple other not so awesome things um okay so how is it possible that natural gas can be called renewable um people have a lot of strong feelings about this slide they either really like it either makes so much sense to them or it makes no sense so I'm just going to explain it this way take it or leave it um we'll we'll try a couple other ways to explain this so the renewable energy credit so the sticker that you can move around to say electricity is renewable or not um it's like if you had an organic tomato that had a sticker on it that has the usd or a organic sticker on it and you had a conventional tomato and you could take the sticker off of the organic tomato and put it on the conventional tomato and then say okay this tomato is now organic because it has a sticker that says it's organic this is basically what how the unbundled is a simplification of how the unbundled renewable energy credits work so in this analogy the organic tomato maybe it's solar power and the sticker is the wreck and so that solar power comes with a sticker that says renewable let's say the conventional tomato is um maybe our iso new england grid mix so this is like a soup of electrons that's in this big grid in new england and for example in this green mountain power um in 2021 got 15 of their electricity from that half of that soup is from natural gas so in this situation green mountain power can take that sticker from the solar flop it on that natural gas and say we bought the right to say that this is organic that this is renewable um and that's how unbundled renewable energy credits work i want to take a quick temperature uh check because wrecks just don't really make any sense um so if folks can raise their hand like how confused are you one i'm totally confused two confused three halfway there four almost there i'm like maybe a four um five got it so i'm gonna try just one other way of explaining it um and again feel free to take it or leave it so um just another example of why the problem with unbundled wrecks so if you buy if if you're green mountain power and you buy 100 megawatt hours of power from a natural gas plant you can claim to be using renewable power as long as you also buy 100 wrecks those stickers from a solar farm from a solar farm or even like or from hydro kebec i'm sort of using as a shorthand for these renewable energy credits which is really they're not actually stickers they're like a certain they're like a piece of paper a certificate um and so um when wrecks are sold like this so separately from the power they generate that is when we call them unbundled the problem with this um in this example that natural gas plant it's not burning any less gas and it's not putting any less carbon emissions into the atmosphere the energy the utility is selling isn't actually coming from renewable sources it just looks like it is on paper because of that label because of that sticker the solar energy the farm is generating is already being used somewhere and that natural gas is still being burned meanwhile this is another way that we can export the harms of our energy use um so this is a natural gas plant um in kinetic it um and under our renewable energy standard using the um renewable energy credits this can be called renewable um i just want to mention earlier we talked about how um in that pie chart seven percent of the renewable was coming from natural gas i know that doesn't seem like a lot but as we do the electrification we need so as we install cool climate heat pumps in our homes as we electrify our transportation where is our energy going to come from um we can't we don't want to we don't want to draw more energy from nuclear um small and large hydro is pretty at capacity we certainly don't want to see large hydro expanded because that's like we're going to mean more flooding um which leads us to that system mix remember like the electron soup from the iso new england grid um that's almost half natural gas so we don't want to see that seven percent we don't want to see it there at all but we certainly don't want to see it expand um and that's if we don't change things that's where our electricity is going to come from so um the on the right again that's a picture of that same um natural gas plant in connecticut i mentioned earlier it's right next to a school um it's footprints about 64 acres um the map on the left there is is downtown burlington that's what it would look like um if that gas plant was here that's how much space it would take up um i didn't so i i for whatever reason i hadn't thought about it this way but um in new england there's 81 gas and oil plants well here in vermont we have zero we do have mcneil which is not great and we do have riot gate um but that means that when we're not when we're not seeing our electricity when we're not seeing solar panels here it means that we're putting the harms of our electricity used in someone else's backyard okay so what are the problem with unbundled wrecks again they allow utilities to meet the renewable energy obligations that that law that says you have to have 75% of your electricity come from renewables by buying wrecks will still providing that in part um non-renewable energy and exporting our harms uh of energy elsewhere okay problem two um particularly with these unbundled hydroquebec wrecks this is one of the ways that um it's made harder for solar and wind to be built both here in vermont and also in our new england region how does this happen so this is what the current renewable energy standard looks like um so you can see there's big hydro here we are in vermont's here is great like whoever green not power other electric utilities buying wrecks from large hydro here's also maybe some solar in vermont um other states have obligations to meet for their renewable energy but remember they're they can't buy those renewable energy credits from the big hydro they're not it's not they're not allowed to consider that renewable um so they so vermont who are utilities in vermont these are only about ten dollars a piece the ones from large hydro so we buy those cheap ones the solar ones are maybe about 35 dollars piece um these other states can't buy those ones so they have to buy these more effective ones um where does that leave us um in that previous picture we saw um solar being bought out of state and that going to other states for them to fulfill their renewable energy credits they're still not they're still i'm going to go back to that other slide for a minute they're still those other states are still buying power from natural gas plants too and then doing the same thing sticking the solar credit on it but what would happen if vermont said okay new new plan we're going to change the law to say no more unbundled hydro kebec wrecks so vermont utilities you can no longer buy those stickers from hydro kebec and stick them on other power and what if we also said that our utilities needed um their electricity to come from 30 new in-state wind and solar okay so three things would happen the first is that those utilities so those utilities can no longer buy those inexpensive wrecks from hydro kebec um now they need to buy in-state solar and wind as demand for electricity grows we're going to need to meet those new demands by building new solar and wind so rather than buying natural gas from out of state and then buying a hydro kebec sticker to say okay this is renewable we can't do that anymore so this is if we were to say no more unbundled hydro kebec wrecks instead of the picture on the left which is the initial slide we looked at we would have what's on the right where we have more solar and wind in-state and that's what our electric utilities are buying to supplies with electricity so how would the rest of new england meet its renewable energy credit requirements now so remember they were buying some of that solar from vermont now vermont utilities need to use that solar so it's no longer available for new hampshire and main and massachusetts and rhoda island and connecticut to buy what are they going to have to do they're also going to have to build more wind and solar so by us changing our requirements we're actually helping there to be more regional in state our regional solar and wind which again is what we need to kick fossil fuels off the ground um so just another way to think about it every time we put up a new solar panel we're pushing natural gas off the grid and reducing emissions okay we're almost there i know this is a lot of petty stuff last problem um our current renewable energy standard only requires 10 percent of renewables to be in state again we're the worst uh we have the worst requirement for new renewables in the entire region a quick overview again of like all the problems with the reds problem one what is considered renewable energy that large-scale hydro and biomass are considered renewable problem two those pesky unbundled recs say allow utilities to meet their renewable energy obligations will still providing non-renewable energy yeah what do all the states that do with their recs are they a lot of unbundled recs let's we're going to do a Q&A in just a second so we'll get to that it's a good question um um problem three um both so both because of those unbundled recs and the cap of only 10 percent in state renewables by 2035 both of those make it really hard for us to build new solar and wind both in state and regionally um the last problem which we actually which we talked about when we talked about hydro cobec is that the renewal there's nowhere where those out of state greenhouse gas emissions from the production of energy like with large hydro and methane um there's nowhere where those emissions are taken into account so that was a whole bunch about what we don't want to see um what do we want to see we want to see our legislature change the renewable energy standard and when they change it we want them to say no new hydropower and biomass to be used to meet our renewable energy goals we want them to say no unbundled recs we want them to incentivize and prioritize solar and wind new solar and wind in state and regionally um and we want them to stop exporting the negative impacts of our energy so the graph on the left was that one from the beginning from beam out in power the one on the right is is what we're proposing to the state so that would be 30 new in state renewables 30 new out of state renewables and then 40 pre 2010 renewables um and this would likely still include hydrocubec because we have a contract with them until 2038 but we certainly don't want to see them put new hydro into our grid the policy stuff on this and the details can get super complicated and confusing and it's really it's okay to not understand all of them the real takeaway is that we need to and we can do better on this and in 2035 we our electricity could come from 60 new solar and wind if we lay the foundation by changing our renewable energy standard to allow us to be able to do that we're almost there um i just want to mention rates briefly um because this is this is an important question and 350 vermont is a climate justice organization which means that the justice piece and how this is going to affect people is really important um so it's important to keep in mind that oil and natural gas how much the rates how much they cost change a lot with based on what's happening in the rest of the world and right now the way it's looking is that fossil fuel costs keep going up well renewable costs keep going down and this is um a bar a bar graph showing um the blue is natural gas and the orange is standard offer solar and you can see in this instance the standard offer solar solar stayed about the same whereas the natural gas is going up up and down in cost um if rates were to go up that does not mean that we have to bear the burden of that um one thing we'd really like to see happen is for a rate payer protection act to be passed and there's actually a bill um sitting in the house environment and energy committee right now to that effect and what a rate payer protection act would do is it would say based on income there is a maximum amount a rate payer would have to pay on their electricity bill the other thing um is that these additional costs could be um unburdened from us from the rate payers and they could be covered by um the general fund which is something that the state does a lot for other other programs and there's no reason why that couldn't happen that was a ton of info and it's okay if you don't understand um part of the problem with the renewable energy standard is that it's a really complicated um so if folks have questions i'm gonna ask them to pass them this way to ben um and then um oh yes and see this here too so we've got two electricity experts um and i think we have like seven to ten minutes and whatever we don't get through will um we'll try we'll follow up with some folks okay great and if you want to put your email down on your sticky note that way if you don't get to the question we'll email you a follow-up and make sure that you run your services okay this one is amplification and that's recording you can sit over there if you want to read the folks want to that's just grabbing a drink of water but the folks want to pass their questions up this way or you can also pass them to see who's in the black vest and if other questions come up after this um that's great too and um we have lots to do oh that's a field one this is the death one i guess i'm assuming you know we're well mic'd up thank you who's only gonna answer two or two okay is everyone not is everyone ready to is there anyone your last last questions i guess we'll um how much time do i have then rebecca i'll get to like five ish minutes so we still have time to put this on the top okay the best i can do is just the way they the order they came in and then we can um if we if somehow we knew your email address you know or to be honest we could just answer the question to get sent out to everybody right that's probably the best bet so okay um okay reading glasses on so the first question is how do other new england states handle their recs renewable energy credits do they are they bundled or unbundled that's a good question i think the key thing is that um the key thing about recs as you saw is what the states consider renewable to get a rec so other states seem to be better at at giving thing only things that are clean electricity of renewable energy credit and um and the renewable energy credit device you could call it started like maybe 15 or more years ago mostly in cali some other renewable so and the idea was that they would keep ramping up the requirements for the utilities to get more and more solar and wind and and then if they didn't get them the right amount of recs they would have a penalty and then they use that penalty to add to also i believe incentivize more renewable energy and um so that's how it worked and they were allowed to use um they were allowed to use unbundled recs i believe because before 2017 vermont had nothing no kind of idea of recs and some of those recs came from projects in vermont because for people who wanted to build solar projects could get an extra incentive by selling the recs to states that had a rec program so um i know that makes it even more confusing sorry i could add to that that you could also say that the big problem with our unbundled recs is where they come from so ours come from hyde in kovac at the same time let's say a utility is importing natural gas power electricity from the regional grid you can claim a rec from hydro kebek to satisfy the requirement but that doesn't put the greenhouse gas back in the stack somewhere else where it was burned so that's that's the key thing is that that uh you can't it doesn't we don't have a system for accounting for uh out-of-state carbon emissions we just pretend that these out-of-state recs the hydro kebek recs in particular um and another aspect of those those hydro kebek recs is how old they are a lot of the talk is about uh the concept of additionality which means new stuff uh and and you know if you think of the uh un and ipcc reports and the paris agreement everything that talked about needing to move the needle on climate change they took a snapshot and said right now uh here's business as usual we're in deep trouble we have to get down to 1.5 degrees maximum temperature increase and and they developed pathways for reduction of carbon emissions well if you're just using something that was built 40 years ago and claim that then that's not a reduction in carbon emissions that's just moving the pieces around the deck chair some of the titanic or something you know it's not new so um those you know uh that's what uh when rebecca described that 30 in-state 30 regional new renewables that's the idea there is to just to move the needle i don't know if that directly answered your question have nothing yet it's not just hydro kebek recs that are a problem burlington electric for example buys recs from other old hydro projects in new england some of which are over a hundred years old that's correct and as to green mount green mount power gets it's whoops gets it's a hydro large hydro recs from about a dozen different places mostly hybrid mostly haven't go back yeah well these there's two that i think i can get through pretty quickly so this one is this was a small part of the present that's the nature in releases mercury and it gets into the rivers and then the fish that um the indigenous folks last question why is small hydro better than large um the small large hydro tends to be what they call store and release they have a big dam they store the water behind the dam and when they need the power they release it and generate electricity small hydro tends to be what's called run of the river like the one on the bridge over to a nusky um it if there's lots of you know rain and a huge amounts of water um the water flows over the dam and doesn't generate electricity it generates electricity depending on how much water there is it's not storing the water to generate electricity whenever it wants the storing and the releasing is what causes a lot of the methane emissions so the there there's also a low impact hydro institute that certifies hydro projects as being low impact so that's another way of looking at good versus bad hydro another way to look at the large hydro is that um uh hydrocobac has flooded an area total among you know dozen pro dozens of projects an area the size of the state of vermont plus another like 15 percent and their plan for the future includes five more new large areas of flooding so it's ecosystem destruction it's destroying an ecosystem that has been the home of indigenous communities forever and and so those people are now forced off of their traditional lands into you know modern villages that are built by by the power company for them to live in and it's it's uh you know changed their entire culture so and and uh you know some of the tribes have been accommodated with funds and and so on but some have not some never have so it's a real mix of that score but um it's certainly a vast ecosystem destruction thank you both um here i'm going to announce for next slide so let me grab that quick let me get out great well thank you everybody for getting through um a lot of that large part of the content piece and it sounds like it can be a little like sad um but we're we're going to dig in very soon about what you can do about it so but for now for the next five minutes would love you would love to do another quick pair share so find a different person or then the person you met the first time and just spend five minutes and just say like what what are your feelings right now your questions after hearing all of this information are you surprised are you angry are you like yeah i kind of expected that um would love yeah so just share your feelings and um if you want to get some food this is a great time to like grab some snacks stand up recharge while you're chatting and we're going to come back together to talk about what to do about this in five minutes okay break we can actually do about this um and i'm actually just in case folks are um in case anyone that ends up leaving early i'm going to pass around this sign-up sheet if folks can make sure they sign in that would be so appreciated um connor's gonna hand it out and um we have a real opportunity this fall to change the renewable energy standard um and that's part of why we're going around and doing these events um and the reason we have this opportunity is because so many folks like yourselves have kind of made us think about it and said this is not okay what we have and we need to we need to make it better um so that because right now we can't we leak electricity companies legally cannot do what we need them to do in order to change things um so that's why we need to change what the renewable energy standard looks like um so just a little background um last legislative session there was basically sort of a a better renewable energy standard introduced and that said um that pie chart we showed earlier that said we want 30 percent new in-state 30 percent new regional and 40 percent from old sources um and that went to this committee called the and called the house environment and energy committee um and what happened was that they decided to create a legislative working group so this is a group that meets outside of the session they're actually meeting right now um there's both legislators on the in the group there's um people from electric utilities representing electric utilities in the group and there's also um environmental organizations in the group 350 Vermont is not part of that group but we um our allies some of our allies are in that group asking for what we talked about today um and that working group is going to come out with recommendations in early December of what a reform renewable energy standard could look like and so it's really important that um we're making it clear now even before the legislative session starts in January what we want to see um so how do we do that um one way is contacting your representative um it certainly doesn't hurt it never hurts to build a relationship with your representative and talk with them about what you care about um so i would encourage anyone to do that whoever your representative is um for this bill the representatives right now that have the most power are those people who are on that committee the house energy and environment committee where this bill is going to be talked about and debated and basically it's going to have to get through there before it can go on to becoming a law um so this is the list list of folks um who are sit on that committee um particularly for Burlington folks i'm curious if anyone is from the south end or knows people in the south end awesome cool um so that is a really um that for folks who live in this area that's a really important um district because your rep sits on that committee um so um another uh so particularly where we would love to talk with people from the south end if you have family or friends or community in the south end um and are open to talking to them about um talking to them about this or introducing us to them and connecting that would be awesome we also actually have another event very similar to this um in two weeks happening here same place slightly different time um and it's going to be geared towards families so it will be a little bit longer there'll be free child care also food um and so especially anyone's welcome to come especially if you know people with family in the south end yeah family friendly um what ages any yeah so you know it's like there might be babies crying in the middle that's fine a toddler might come in and either parent that's fine yeah um we really want to be open to everyone um what else can you do um so in addition to connecting us with those key districts which when you get this slide deck you'll you'll be able to look through those um making a public comment to the legislative working group um it's a lot less scary than it sounds so they meet every other week um and making a public comment means it's done virtually you let their assistant know you want to make a comment she sends you a link and then it's like two or three sentences of what you want to see um and the group can't there's no back and forth so you're not going to be like grilled on what you said you just say it and then it's that's it it's done um and it's great for them to hear that people are watching and what the public wants to see um there's also spreading the word about this in your community so this could be writing a letter to the editor or putting a post on front porch forum um and then in january we're also going to have a big rally at the state camps so that is another way folks can get involved um what we're going to do now is just take a few minutes to do fill out some next steps forms um so this is a way for you to say what you might want to do and also what support you might need from us um there's a few different documents on that back table um about doing some of these next steps but um we all we also have a lot of materials we can send you um for first is that if there's specific things you're interested in doing um also this time just to mention there's a I also printed off um an article about hydrocobac on the back table that might answer a lot of the hydrocobac questions if people are interested um so i'll give folks um maybe five minutes to fill out those next steps forms and then we'll come back together and we will close here to that right great itself from middlebury maybe thank you yeah no it's good yeah uh that legislative committee they're meeting this wednesday and they they started out every other week but now they're beginning to end and in holidays they've shifted it up so that the next wednesday then the following Wednesday which is the first and then every other week uh for a couple of weeks and then the 6th of December so it's a it's an awkward schedule that they have but you can find out thanks for that stave and also in our follow-up email i'll send a um like a how to make a public comment and i'll put those dates on there thank you for thank you for mentioning that but this wednesday and they're online you can watch them on youtube uh or they're up they're recorded so you can watch them at double speed aren't the meetings open to the public they are in the state house and you can and you can make a comment in person there without going to zoom but uh if you're going to watch it online as an outsider you can only do it uh through youtube which means you can't participate you have to let them know then you get on your zoom so maybe another minute and then we'll come back together all right um well thanks everyone for taking some time to think about next steps and um you can either come put them up here at the end or pass them this way um we're going to do a quick closing we're going to um but before we do that i just have um we just want to make sure we can read everyone's email addresses who asked for questions um so at the end if um i think it's you hill mirf but we just want to clarify that this is the right email address so if you don't mind that's right awesome thank you so much so to close we're going to do a one word go around um maybe folks have done this before um and it can be a thought a feeling um a reflection but one word um and we'll just go around in a circle um i can start um uplifted now pass across the rooms outrage and do it one word uh motivated excited better guys disappointed and may i just interject though i think that by using one word me for instance saying disappointed you may not know what i'm disappointed in i would say kind of dumbfounded uh enraged and overwhelmed in order to see if so many people collaboration uh determined did did everyone in the back row get a i don't know if everyone in the back row that you did okay awesome um i was writing everyone's words down makes a nice poem so people want to hear what we all said together oh yeah okay uplifted outraged hopeful hopeful and outraged informed motivated hopeful community overwhelmed upset knowledgeable connected excited energized optimistic sorry something i can't read disappointed dumbfounded enraged overwhelmed heart and collaboration determined thank you so much everyone for coming i also wanted to just say a huge thank you to the 350 vermont burlington node they really all the outreach the awesome food which people should totally eat more of afterwards um thank you so much um for putting all all the work into helping make this happen um and all of you for coming out on your sunday to hang out and learn about electricity so thank you


Alright, switching into the beacons from the Hoco Recovery Sandals. I am still in recovery mode, whoops. And yes, I was sitting in there for maybe 45 minutes on a Sunday afternoon just chilling out in the recliner, raising those feet up, elevating the legs a little bit and planning out my week of training based upon a little bit, yes, a little tip of the day. I like to look at my weather app on my phone every Sunday and really study. And you gotta find the right app that works like, I tell you what, there's a lot of times when weather apps are off for me, but I like to use a local weather source. I think they just get it a little more accurate when it comes to weather. And then, based on the weather, that does impact my training to a certain extent. Like I'm not afraid to move a workout from, like today, or sorry, Thursday of this upcoming week, it's supposed to be really nice out. So that's probably going to be a bigger day of volume for me. So anyway, that's what I like to do. That's what you saw me doing inside there. And oh yeah, one last point. Even though I love walking around in the Hoka Recovery Sandal in my house, I do love to heed my brother's advice, Joseph. He is an advocate of walking around your house barefoot. So shout out to Joseph. I think that's brilliant. And sometimes, I'm in so much tight, I'm so tight or sore or just in general pain that it really helps to walk around in a sandal. However, if you, I don't know, I think it's better to be barefoot if you can walk around without too much pain after a long workout, a long run, et cetera. And today, we're just going three miles easy. Usually, I don't do back-to-back easy days like this easy. However, it was a big week last week, and I have one more big week coming up before taking a little break, a mini break before my first race in early March. So I want to make sure I'm nice and rested up for the upcoming mileage this week. It's going to be some of the more higher mileage since college. Not quite approaching the highest mileage since college, but pretty darn close. All right, let's go. Every time I wear the beacons, I ask myself, why do I not wear these beautiful shoes every single day? I love the beacons. And I haven't worn them in two or three weeks because I'm trying to save them. Version two, you may not know this, is coming out this summer. And I think it's, I heard July 1st. I might not be completely accurate on that. But I don't want to buy another pair of the version one when the version two is set to come out this summer. So I'm trying to save them, preserve them as much as possible. But oh, man, I just, the ride is amazing, Joseph. It's amazing. You want to say hello to YouTube? Hi, YouTube. All right, Sunday dinner coming right up. But first, I got to get in the foot exercises. Got to stay on top of it. Help keep me accountable. We've got boxes, YouTube family. All right, this is a brand new pair of shoes. We're not going to open these up today. We're going to wait for the live stream. However, the boys are adamant that we open up at least one box. Right, boys? All right, this is from a, these are used shoes that we're going to give away. I don't know. Probably in the next 10 days, we're going to wait, we're going to wait till four or five shoes show up. All right, here we go. Ready? These are from Michigan. Shout out to Michigan. What's in here? Oh, there's a note. Okay, these are Zoom Pegasus 35s from Nike. Thank you to Brent for sending these. I'm not going to tell you the size. We're going to wait. So we're going to give these shoes away. Like I said, in the next 10 days. Hi, Seth, it's Brent. I hope somebody can enjoy these shoes. They only have 20 miles on them. Thanks. 20 miles. You are amazing, Brent. Look at those. Oh, I love the color. I might have to keep them. No, just kidding. They are way too big for my foot. Please get it broken. Isn't that amazing? That's amazing. That's 20 miles. I mean that.  Let's just say they're a pretty big size. So if you have a bigger foot, stay tuned. I must say I'm digging this bright orange on the Pegasus 35. Thank you again, Brent. That's pretty sweet. Okay, it's Sunday evening. I'm taking it a little easier tonight as far as filming and the family's asleep. I'm out here in the studio. So we're going to keep this a little more concise. I just have a couple quick updates. I'm struggling to reply to all of your emails. It's just me filming, editing, publishing this daily vlog. And I'm always striving for the highest quality video production. I think quality is really, really important for any message that you want to communicate. And so that is my number one priority. And I think you already know that. Therefore, I don't have enough time to reply to all the emails that are coming in. Like if I want to sit down and answer every single email, it's gonna, I probably have 10 to 15 emails waiting for me. And I can't just write back one or two sentences. Like they're really good questions that you're asking me. So thank you for your patience. I just putting it out there. I may have to re-strategize the email conversations that are going to happen moving forward. But I will reply to every single email that's in my inbox right now. Just bear with me. I would say right now, the two best places to ask questions are either on Instagram, that's a great place. Keep it short, but Instagram, direct messages, or on the D'Amore Global Running Strava Group, okay? And of course, down in the comments. And we're gonna get to that in a minute of every single video. Like I really do my best to read every single comment, like it, and if I have time, reply. Therefore, moving on to the topic for today, I am going to commit. And that is the keyword, commit, because I feel like I've really got a good handle on publishing a daily video, right? And sometimes twice a day, it's kind of amazing, right? I've kind of figured out how to do that. But I have not, let's say, found that complete commitment to replying to all the emails, all the comments. But we're gonna get there. Well, I'm not giving up. It's like, we never give up, right? You don't give up. You just keep figuring out strategies and different ways to reply to the conversation. Because that's where I frankly think, I don't know, 85% of the value is really at is down in the comments where we're just getting these incredible conversations going and on the D'Amore Global Running Strava Group. Okay, with that said, the question of the day and over the next, let's say, minute or two, you're gonna see some, you're gonna see some of my shoe collection pop up on your screen and you're gonna see some specs. And basically, I wanna continue to bring you value, even though it's a Sunday night and I'm not filming a ton today, I wanna bring you some value tonight with respect to running shoes. Cause we love running shoes here. We love running shoes here. Therefore, what question of the day? What questions do you have for me about any running shoe? It would help if it was a company that I'm a little familiar with, but it doesn't have to be. I'm willing to dig in and figure out the answers for you. And so here's my commitment to you starting tonight. For this video, I'm going to reply to every single comment. I try to do that for every vlog, but it doesn't always happen. So what question do you have for me about any running shoe out there? And just to remember, I'm a big Solomon fan. I've begun to dabble in new balance. Like today on the run today, the new balance beacon. I'm also, yeah, I'm a big Nike fan. I have quite a few Nikes and I've had experience with Nike since I ran in Nike at the University of Colorado. Let's see, even trying out my first innovate shoes with micro spikes. So feel free to ask about those. Yes, and I'm even starting to learn about Ultra Zero Drop and just figuring out like what's going on with the Zero Drop movement out there. Cause there's not, Ultra is not the only company now doing Zero Drop. So that's another option for you to ask about. Of course, I actually, in the last five years, I probably have the most experience in Hoka, believe it or not. I'm not running as much these days in Hoka, but I've run in Hoka a ton in the last five years. So that's another option. And yes, maybe, now listen, Reebok, I have not tried the Float Ride Run Fast Pro, but as you know, I'm bullish on this shoe. And so feel free to dabble in there. Skechers, I know some of you are skeptical about Skechers, but I'm so far, they're treating me well. There's no other way to say it, especially this Razer 3. And of course, the online up. Still trying to figure the online up out, but that's another option. And there you go. That's most of the collection. And I tell you what, Soccany is on my radar. And who else is on my radar in 2019? Soccany, and there was one other. Well, okay, I'm just gonna tell you right now. There's a good chance I'm gonna be trying out some new Mizuno shoes in 2019. It's kind of exciting, all right? I won't get into the details about that right now, but my first pair of racing flats, my seventh grade cross-country season, they were Mizuno. It's like, I have this little connection there with Mizuno and I just love it. So anyway, feel free to ask anything. And yes, commitment is the key word because I am committed to replying to every single comment on this vlog, all right?  Sound good? All right, that's good times. Good times in the studio. Thank you for being here on a Monday and we've got a great week ahead. Oh my goodness. I guess we could talk all night, but I will cut it there. Seek beauty, work hard, love each other. See you tomorrow. Woo! Woo!


When we talk about the upbringing of the children, we basically go with this famous statement of the Prophet, where the time of upbringing is divided into three segments of seven, seven, seven years each. Where the first seven years, you have to be easy with your child. They are just children.  But from seven to fourteen, you have to bring in this discipline. And then, from seventeen to twenty-one, we are told, consider him to be like your friend. Provide him guidance, you know, give him the knowledge so that and help him to make right decisions by himself. And if he makes a mistake, or she makes a mistake, guide them. And so during the last seven years, from fourteen to twenty-one, that is a very crucial time. But what I want to talk about it tonight is the issue of the mutual impact. It's not only the parents who have the impact on the character building of the children, but once the children grow up and become teenagers and, you know, young adults, sometimes the impact is the other way around also. It could be positive. It could be negative. Just as even from parents to children, it could be positive or it could be negative. And this is where we have to realize that, you know, if they have a negative impact on their own parents, then the parents have to have that strong foundation to resist. Not give in because of the love that they have for their children. That is the fitnah. When Allah says, اَمْوَالُكُمْ وَأَوْلَادُكُمْ فِتْتَنَاءَ That is the moment of test and trial. Is the love for them more powerful? Or is the issue of pleasing Allah SWT more powerful?  You can still keep the doors open, still be, you know, kind to them.  Let us look at another example from the history of the Ahlul Bayt. The example of Zubair bin Abouam. Who was Zubair? From the mother's side, he is the first cousin of the Prophet and Ali. The mother of Zubair, Safiya, is sister of Abu Talib. From his father's side, Al-Awam, he is a brother of Khadija. So from both sides, you know, he is related to the Prophet and Amir al-Mu'mineen. He was among the early, you know, Muslims who accepted the message of Islam, supported the Prophet, he was there in all the battles with Rasulullah, supporting him. And even after the wafaaat of the Prophet, he was among those few who refused to do the bayat to Abu Bakr. And he was in the house of Fatima, as a protest against that. And so he is with Ali, even in the chaotic situation of the days of Uthman. He was among the leaders of the opposition at the time. And he was among the instigator who ended up killing the third Khalifa. And this is where then they come to Amir al-Mu'mineen, and to say, we want you to become our Khalifa and our leader. At that time, the first individuals to do bayat, pledge allegiance on the hands of Amir al-Mu'mineen was Talha and Zubair. And what happened after that? Remember the relationship. And remember the outcome. What is the aqibah? What is the end of it? When they realize Ali is not going to appoint them as governors of the areas that they wanted, and he did not even continue the extra privileges given to them during the second Khalifa from the bayat al-Mu'mineen, they rebelled. They went to him and they said, you know, we want permission to go for Umrah and Amir al-Mu'mineen responded by saying, Ma tur-i-dan al-Umrah, bal tur-i-dan al-Qadrah. You are not going out there to Makkah with the intention of Umrah. You are actually going with the intention of treachery. And they went there. They incorporated Aisha into their plot, which ended up in what is known as the Battle of Jamal. Now when we look at the example of Zubair, closely related to the Ahlul Bayt and the Prophet, yes, there were problems of greed of position and wealth in his decision. But there is one more very important element which influenced him against Ali, which was not only the issue of greed for wealth and position, it was his own adult son, Abdullah. Abdullah's mother is the daughter of Abu Bakr, sister of Aisha. And he was basically very close to Aisha, his own khala. And whatever was the temperament or the character or the like and dislike of Aisha was on Abdullah bin Zubair's, including this dislike for Banu Hashim, especially towards Amir al-Mu'mineen. And this is where we see, I don't want to go into the story of Jamal. I just recited it previously. But at the end, even in the Battle of Jamal, Amir al-Mu'mineen tried to advise Zubair, even one to one. And he to a moment changed his position. But when he went back to the campsite, it was his son, Abdullah, who put him to shame. Or you are afraid of the Hashimid swords? What will history say?  But Zubair said, well, I did a Qasam. In the presence on that day and even previously, that I have not fight with Ali.  And this is where you have the son, an adult son, influencing the father, and the father is being influenced. And this is where we have to realize that, you know, these are not only stories for stories. These are examples of real challenges that people can face in their own life, even within the family relationships. And so we have to know what is our path? Are we on the Salat al-Mustakhi ma-na'at? Whether it is the father or the mother or the brother or sister or son or daughter, if they are having any negative impact, we have to resist that.  But do not allow the negative impact on your religion be, you know, influenced.


Aaron, what did you think of the way that Brent Gardner battled in that ninth inning at bat? Excuse me. Terrific. He had a great night.  Special stolen base right there in third considering the matchup. Guy that's quick to the plate left-handed hitter. Really good throwing catcher. Martin Jock, you know, so, you know, Gardie willing to take one there with two strikes changing the approach, obviously bringing the infield in there and then just fought off some pitches and got enough of one. But it was a really good at bat and really good, just really good team offense there in that final inning to grab it back. You mentioned just how huge is that stolen base to get to third to change the complexity of that inning? Yeah, and I can't stress enough that how tough a matchup to steal right there was, you know. You know, that's that guy's about as quick as you're going to get and a good throwing catcher with the lefty and and Martin, like I said, Jock, you know, I mean, that's it's a great job.  It was just really, really special and set us up perfectly. You clearly need all the wins we can get right now. You typically do not use relievers three consecutive days. Was there any hesitation at all to go to Chap and there at the night? No, Chappy was good to go today all the way. So if we're in a safe situation, I was going Chappy tonight from the time we got here at, you know, two o'clock. And with Cortez, what stood out to you about the way he just had to go down that Orioles offense? I thought his stuff was really good. His cutter was terrific. You know, as good a cutter as he's had probably all year. I thought he had really good life on his fastball.  I thought I thought he flashed a better change up tonight as well. I thought overall, you know, it was just my view. I thought it was as good a stuff as he's had, you know, and that's probably saying something. But I thought it stuff wise, it was special tonight. You can take it as the next question. But Eric Holdt. Aaron, what makes Gardner such a difficult matchup for the opposition, particularly late in games? Even if he doesn't have the batting average, it seems like he grinds out an awful lot of it bats. Yeah, I mean, he's not afraid to go deep in the count.  And look, he's a different guy at the plate now in the second half of the season. You know, he's been a much, much better offensive player, much in a much better place in the box in the second half.  And especially in the tightest moments of games when, you know, there's a little bit of tension out there. You know, by and large, he's going to control the strike zone and work the count and, you know, give himself a chance and give the pitcher a chance to get himself in trouble. Good advance by him all night, really.


Hello and welcome to the chart of the week video with me at David Madden. Today's date is Wednesday the 13th of February 2019 and the time has just gone 1225 gnt. This week's chart of the week is the dollar yen and if you take a look How the currency pair performed over the past 12 months we could see the broadly speaking is in a fairly decent upward trend At the back end of last year in December We saw a move to the downside for a decent correction granted There was a sharp sell-off in early January and that was on the back of the the flash crash that was seen Across the FX markets. It was coincided with an apple warned about declining sales coming out of China but since then We've seen the market push higher and we this could be a sign that the market is Continuing the wider upward trend that has been in place for over a year So as you can see here in in recent weeks in the last couple of months, basically, we've seen the dollar yen makes a nice Moving direction of a nice upward trend a classic example of a higher high higher low and yet again another higher And we've actually managed to push above and trade above this blue line here The fifth the moving average comes into play at 110 is about 37 Another indication that that moving at the market is is pushing higher if you take a look at the MACD indicator We can see here as the markets been pushing higher. It's been a steady increase in positive momentum So the upward move in the online market is be confirmed by the steady increase in positive momentum And if you take a look at this chart here the dollar yen, we can see that's been pushing higher for the last Four weeks it also coincides with the with the with the broadening strength of the US dollar against the euro The British pound and also the Australian dollar for example, and this is because the Federal Reserve may have Changed their language from being the hawkish side to be being a bit more neutral But we've also seen all the central banks around the world actually moved towards more double stance So even though you could argue that the Fed is a bit more dovish now than there were a few months ago It's just we now have the case where central banks like the Bank of Japan have not become more dovish in the Fed The Bank of England obviously uncertain in relation to Brexit and we've heard some potentially going to dovish comments from the European Central Bank So keep an eye out for central bankers comments if you trade in the dollar yen As you can see the market has been pushing higher for the last number of weeks If we do manage to push on higher from here We could look your target of the the 112 region and a move beyond that could take the mid-December high of One one 13 spot 17 to play and then if you go beyond that you could be looking at targeting the 114 region if you do manage to turn lower We could find support coming to play in around the 110 or 109 spot 55 region And if we do see a break below this area here 108 spot 50 that that region that could be a sign They were heading back down towards the 106 area Now if you are going to be trading the dollar yen, please keep in mind that later today we have US CPI and At 1150 p.m 2350 GMT We do have growth figures preliminary growth figures from Japan So please keep an eye out for that if you are to be trading the dollar yen One last thing if you have any comments to make on this video or any of the other videos We've made here at CMC Marcus. Please feel free to do a review on Google view. Thank you very much