And welcome back to the Independent Investor Channel all for the loyal subscribers to the message. I appreciate you. Thank you so much for being part of this community and continuing to footstomp the message on what I consider to be a very frequent product that I put out every week. You know, in the eyes of the stock market, we really need to focus and have perspective on how frequent a weekly upload is for a company like this that is evolving in its mission to be a leader in electrified powertrain solutions. I cover highly on it is my favorite company to cover. There's a few others that have been introduced into the fold. I am a value investor at heart. I do dabble in some speculative investing and consider this to be just that. With that said, they have ample funding to see their business plan through until commercialization, which in all estimates is expected to come to fruition the end of 2023 going into 2024. I'm interested in the prospects of the OEMs being able to handle at least those initial orders that have come through. I do not have any clarity on that front to report to you guys. I do apologize. I've been off the cuff a little bit with some professional engagements. So I'm coming back in the pocket a little lean on information. I did in fact pull in with the Discord group about 10 minutes ago and asked them to give me some ideas about some of what they expect. Now, we are in quiet period right now. Earnings Call are expected here November 9th going into Earnings Call this week. So I'm happy to report to you guys to keep your ears open for any new developments along the timeline. I will ask you to mute your expectations going into this Earnings Call. I know I'll say that tongue-in-cheek and people will get emotional no matter what and lose their marbles and start pissing their pants. When Hylian comes out and reports $458,000 worth of earnings for this quarter, anything less than a half a million bucks is probably expected. Anything over will be a pleasant surprise. You remember quarters past, they discussed Q4 as probably being at time when most of the earnings will be made up. I'm not really sure what data they're pulling that from. We're just in an ice age right now with the company. We are evolving along a timeline that Thomas Healy has laid out for investors to understand. And quite frankly, I actually think the timing of it is just fine. It's allowing ample time for Hylian to continue along their fleet validation through not only the Innovation Council but some of the private companies as well that have placed orders with Hylian. And it's important that once things soften up a little bit, I'm speaking specifically about the supply chain issues. I think Hylian is going to be well positioned to benefit from a shift in sentiment. I think the space in and of itself has a very interesting tailwind behind it. And that I think that the movement toward lowering carbon emissions and environmental stewardship for these companies that are interested is not going anywhere. I think the initiative is here to stay. I think companies like Hylian and a few others will benefit from the paradigm shift in a massive $1 trillion industry here. I'm speaking specifically about the Class 8 trucking space. And I think that Hylian is well positioned here both financially as well as progressing along their timeline to finalize their product, get it through its final certification stages. Each of the different companies that are boasting solutions now are really trying to get to that end stage and get their product into the hands of fleets to be either engaged in their respective operations and or Hylian is taking a little bit different approach in that they want to have those fleet validations prior to the ramp up of commercialization. Fantastic. I have to defer to their expertise in this and trust that by spending that extra time and validation is the smart approach. And I actually concur with that approach. I think it's a good one. I think it's prudent. I don't think there's any real reason to rush to market now. The sentiment in the market in 2022 has just been a wash. Sentiment is horrible. The VIX is remaining very low right now. And I think perhaps maybe we're shaping up to enter into more of a getting worse before it can get better stage. And I think that will be time that's well deserved and will be able to be capitalized on by Hylian to make sure that they can enter into the back half of 2023 with all of the checkboxes here marked. Okay. A couple of things I want to talk about here. This would be a shorter video this week. I don't have a whole lot and I'm not going to be long winded about the content that I want to release. But just a few things to highlight. We've talked about earnings this week. I want to talk about the importance of independent thought in your application. It's amazing the amount of scrutiny that we want to award to people who are taking a strategic shot on an opportunity. I want you to understand a little bit my independent thought. I'm going to give you some insights. Perhaps maybe there's investors out there who are overlevered to the position. Perhaps maybe feeling a little bit down because it seems that the stock can't go up. Now we've got some pretty good reprieve over the last couple of weeks in Hylian. If you haven't noticed, you know, but the stock being down 90% plus, you know, from its highs just two years ago, it almost seems like a slight give back and less of a sucker punch to see the stock kind of recover here. I don't know if it'll enter into a tailspin. Anything that is not absolutely over the moon, specific to earnings is not received well in the eyes of these markets. They have been extremely bad markets. And if you're not really beaten on the top and bottom line and really have bullish projections for the future, which a lot of companies are having struggles with that expecting that 2023 is going to be a real struggle going forward with margin compression for a lot of businesses and consumers losing confidence in what it is that they're doing and inflation riding at a fairly high clip compared to what it's been over the last decade which has been really, really low and manufactured low, I might add. We just don't know where we're going to end up. And so there's a lot of unknowns right here, but I just want to stress to you guys to understand how important it is to have independent thought understand and always revisit why it is that you got involved with the opportunity. And there's a lot of exciting things to understand about this young company. And I just want to break it down in a couple of ways that are going to help you understand my thought process when evaluating not only Hylian, but other companies that have a wonderful idea and or have the finances to see that through. And it's very important to have both and very few companies have both when they're in the early stages like Hylian and find themselves in this predicament with a recessed stock price and looking to either deploy capital to gain awareness on their company so that they can attract new investors, attract new customers, share the word, make their products performance known to the fleets that they're looking to serve. And I really want you to understand that Hylian's cash position right now, which will get more color on this week with regard to their current cash burn where we are, they are fully funded through their projected business plan and then some I do not see them running out of cash before they are able to execute along their business plan. And I look at that as getting them through mid 2024 at the very, very least. And it's not to be underscored the importance of that cash hoard that they have. It's extremely important. I do cover the micro cap space with relative frequency. And it's amazing to me how a lot of companies out there might have a market cap of $40 or $50 million and they've got $3 or $4 million in the bank. Okay. A lot of what Hylian is being valued out right now is based against that cash hoard. And I don't know how much value is really being put on their technology, their product development, any orders that have been placed on the order book of backlog and the reservations that come with the business. I would presume since in this exacerbated sell off, not only with Hylian, but the grander market itself, Hylian has suffered and I don't think they would have gone anywhere but south no matter what they did. I really think it's been that bad of markets. And what I mean by that is on the onset, there was a lot of hype around their ability to garner reservations. I know there's been a lot of heartache with the agility order, which we've heard nothing on since that I have no reason to believe that that order still isn't pending. And on the books, I do believe that agility still has that opportunity, but it's way, way premature and it's safe to understand why these companies are not making this commitment to this early on in the game. On the flip side of that, there are a lot of companies, both private and public, that are part of the Innovation Council that are placing these binding orders with Hylian and feel comfortable doing so. And I think you have to provide some level of credence toward that. Now, I think Mr. Market is probably awarding very little value to that side of the business because it is generating such anemic returns as far as the top end revenues go zero profit up to this point. They're going to have to reach a breaking point here in Catalyst where they're turning in some predictable numbers quarter over quarter before the market even gives them some credit. And they haven't turned that yet. They really haven't. But in comparison, I want you to look at the market cap of Hylian at around $450 million of market cap with their $500 million in cash hoard and ask yourself how much value you put on their ability to enter into a 2023-2024 time frame and start to generate some real revenues. That's the real question for me. And that is really the bullish thesis that I have is to suggest that they will. There's no guarantee of that. There's no guarantee that we don't get to 2023 and Hylian does what they've done for the last couple of years. And that is unfortunately, I might suggest that they've disappointed in their ability to garner over the moon interest in their product. Now, they may have that interest on the back and they may just have that brewing behind the scenes and ready to announce because they're not made official or some of the fleets right now want to keep their competitive interest a secret, which is what I would want to do. I wouldn't want to openly admit to looking at this technology because then my competition is going to understand where I'm sniffing around. So I think a lot is going to change. I think once the certification achieved, I think that's going to be one of many notches on the Hylian belt and specific to the timeline that's been laid out on previous quarters in understanding what timeline we need to walk. And I think that's going to be a big one. I think the continued fleet trials is really going to add to that product category that I talk about. So I want you guys to understand my thought process and evaluating this company and understand does Hylian has ample funding to get it to that commercialization stage that we are inevitably walking toward? Yes. Does Hylian have the product development? Remember, some companies have testing and validation and proof of concept, but they don't actually have a real product and they need funding to make sure that that idea that they have comes to fruition at some point in their future. And that's the real dilemma with microcap investing is you have to go through those deliberations and assign a value or a margin of safety that you may have in the probability of those companies that you're looking at deploying said capital to reach that end. And if they never reach the end, the company ceases to exist and it goes away or it gets gobbled up by the majors and their intellectual property that comes with it. So when I look at Hylian and I look at those two fronts with their current cash position in and of itself, healthy, you have to suggest that it's healthy at this point. The bears would suggest that they're going to burn through all of their capital and they're going to have to do a capital raise at some point into the future. Fine.  But until we reach that end, it is safe to say that Hylian as it stands right now is in a cash healthy position. They are in a cash rich position, at least to get them to where they suggested that cash would take them. And no, no further. Okay. At some point, this dream has to stop burning cash at 125 to 135 million dollars per quarter of cash burn, excuse me, per year of cash burn. Every quarter is about 30 million, 35 million of cash burn, around 30 million is what they're looking at right now. 35 million or so they've revised down just to touch for their yearly cash burn, which is ample cash to take them to the final stages of commercialization. And they've picked up some acquisition along the way, the Carnot generator, et cetera, et cetera. That's plenty enough time to generate whatever necessary churn. Thomas Healy, the board and the executive team thought was going to be there in way of interest that they've heard from the fleets in understanding what the fleets want on the back end in way of a product. So the question becomes where is Healy on in their product development? And do they have the necessary cash infusion to make that progression along that timeline in an efficient manner? And when I look at those two fronts, when I evaluate Healy on, I think they're very healthy on both fronts. A lot of people will say, well, why isn't Healy on selling products right now? That's kind of a futile argument. Again, everybody's entitled to their opinion to come and voice their frustration about blah, blah, where the company is and why they're not selling millions of millions of dollars worth of product right now. But it's safer and much more prudent to suggest that it's ill time to make those observations now in accordance with what the company is communicating to shareholders and customers alike as to when that expectation can be made known. So very, very important. I just want to earmark the fleet trials that are occurring, specifically highlight Wegmans here in New York, Green Path Logistics up in Canada, as well as Detmore just saw a post to see the ERX down in the Permian Basin, which is all the majors are there. So it's a great advertising. It's great to see the ERX. I was a little surprised. I wasn't sure that the ERX was quite the right application for the Permian Basin because I thought that that would have been more of a prudent application for the hybrid EX product to provide that additional horsepower for those heavy loads. But evidently, the use case has been evaluated or is currently being evaluated by Detmore Logistics. Remember, they've put in a large order backed order backed by deposits for the hyper truck ERX. And they're probably interested in that data collection initiative as a company to make sure that the ERX is going to fit into their fleets. But look at that geographic diversity amongst the Hylian community right now. And that's just three players in the space. Now, GPL is in bed with a lot of players out there. GPL is 100% run on alternative fuel solutions. So what a fantastic advocate. When you take and you multiply that factor by the many companies out there that Hylian has put out there in the public domain for public consumption, it becomes very, very safe to say that is it fair to give Hylian a zero value multiple for all of these relationships that they're establishing. Perhaps maybe if your thesis is such that those relationships will not materialize into something and that all of those customers will opt for a different product and move away from Hylian and their opportunity and the products that they bring to bear altogether. Again, entitled to your opinion, I would like to suggest that these are only the building blocks to a foundation to a future that is going to probably involve at least a good majority, if not all of these customers. Now, I'm a little biased on the product because I think Hylian has far and away the best product on the market. I believe that they do the best job in eliminating barriers for would be customers rather than actually creating barriers to entry to the BEV fleets as well as the hydrogen technology right now. I actually think that they give the most practical solution to fleets right now to enter into a lower carbon future, one that is less dependent on diesel future and in the hyper truck ERX's case, full electric and meet those demands of our largest cities here to go carbon free and be able to make those deliveries within the cities and to do that right now. So I think it's very, very exciting when we're looking at the continued fleet trials. I think all of the research and development that's gone into the learnings that are being extrapolated right now from the fleet trials by Hylian is absolutely going to pay dividends down the line and hopefully these fleets are finding out that this is indeed a very viable solution for them and they can start to really articulate what it could mean for their fleets. Look, there are still a lot of unknowns out there with regard to that give back from the fleets. That is going to be really the substantiating factor when we're evaluating the potential of Hylian based on how much interest they're able to garner and so we can start to articulate how much follow on business that could be garnered and how willing these fleets are to partner with Hylian long term and really start to understand those fleets that are putting in those initial orders. Could there be a follow on order? Will those orders increase in size and magnitude? Will it amplify and once you start to see that type of activity as a domino effect within each of the respective fleets that's when we can understand and articulate that it's not about the 10 orders backed by deposits rather the follow on order for let's say a fleet that is boasted like NFI for example of 4500 trucks to suggest that look they feel confident in making X number of orders I wouldn't suggest maybe 50 or 100 which represents a tiny portion or percentage of their fleet dare I would suggest that 25% of the NFI fleet which is imaginable if the OEMs could actually take on that order load and provide that back to the fleets now I don't know who NFI's OEM is I don't know if it's Peterbilt or Volvo or international and I don't know all of these fleets that Hylian is boasting an OEM agnostic solution for the fleets that they're not all run through Peterbilt okay now Peterbilt is going to get the first iteration but by creating that churn within the industry and their respective customers that they're looking to serve should feel for that backfill and pressure against the OEMs to actually deliver not only a truck that is boasted by Freightliner but also a truck that's that's backed by Freightliner with the Hylian solution attached to it now the real question for me is the step up into mass scale how is that going to happen what is that going to look like I'm baking in a little bit of trust in my thesis here guys and I think there's a lot of investors that have the same questions as me with regard to what this is going to look like on the back end as we approach into 2023 and 2024 are we going to be you know uh disappointed again with continued orders of five to ten that's not going to keep the lights on at Hylian Hylian needs at least 30 million in revenue per quarter to get to that break even now I think once we start to get to that 25 to 50 million dollars which represents a pretty good swath or a pretty good chunk let's just call it about you know one third of the projected cash burn that they'll incur every single year at least on the onset I expect that cash burn to increase incrementally but once we start to get to those projections and those trajectories for sales are moving north and to the to the right then we can start to put together an expected timeline for future earnings and revenue and the market is having a very difficult time and understanding of Hylian quarter over quarter is turning out revenue of a few hundred thousand dollars that's immaterial and they're not going to give it they're not going to get any credit for that because the gap between those projected earnings and what they need as a as a break even figure are so far apart and it appears on the surface that Hylian is going to run out of cash if if their trajectory cannot be presumed that the EX sales are going to garner an increase in sales or that the interest in the hypertrek ERX is such to project that the fleets are going to be overjoyed and and and provide such a level of interest that is going to allow Hylian to really scale up scale up in their commercialization efforts then this story will die on the vine okay and Hylian is not the first company that is against the wire I would suggest just like any other company okay now that cash that they have buys them time yes but the time is now to continue on building that baseline toward that commercialization and I believe that they're doing that I absolutely do they're building their team they're building their reach they're bringing on everything that they need to expand their research and development imagine the research and development that's going on right now with the Carnot generator so really pursuing a lot of different fronts right here with the ability to put the ERX into service under the fueling envelope of CNG and RNG is just fantastic I mean if they had massive scale up capability right now they could put those trucks over the road right now minus the fact that they don't have certification yet that's why I think that's going to be one of those barriers that's going to be a nice catalyst going forward for the company when they're able to achieve those certifications and I expect those certifications to come through early in 2023 the last thing I'll mention here in the weekly update to the Hylian video is the technology performance is something that does not get discussed very often they've kind of revamped this section of the Hylian.com website where they talk about the kind of the cutting edge and how the technology separates the battery management system the onboard co-pilot the predictive maintenance and the algorithmic data that is continually being updated and sent to the cloud to basically build a smarter truck and hopefully provide the logistics and data points that would perhaps maybe even prevent those down times due to breakdown and I think that this is a big value proposition for Hylian I think it's another skew of their business and in way of making an additional stream of revenue and I believe that based on our previous discussion about where I think the value is being added it's kind of hard to ignore the cash hoard that they have and I think that's what makes up a big big swath of their value now as the cash burns down the business has to pick up on that value proposition otherwise this company as they lose cash and their inability to make revenue that is you know noticeable I'm talking about tens of millions of revenue guys dare I suggest that they need to get this revenue up into the hundred million dollar category so that they can start to supplement that cash burn with top and bottom line revenues and dare I say the potential to mark march towards some inevitable profit on the bottom line I don't think the company needs to be profitable here for for many years I don't what they need to provide is the ability to garner top-end revenue and and start to really separate on some of those margins that they had projected earlier on in some of their early projections to allow some market analysts to have some comfort around Hylian's ability to scale their business it's really just that simple it's not difficult at all and whether or not these value propositions like the technology are going to be acknowledged by those companies out there that are using and enjoying the technology and might I suggest actually enter into maybe a subscription model with Hylian it'd be awesome to see these number of units out on the road at times x number of subscription models to the fleet time will tell whether or not they're able to leverage that technology and and and draw some revenue to help supplement the the top line there as we approach those metrics again I feel like Hylian right now is kind of in the ice age I think we're kind of in a in a interesting period right now where the information we have not had an order for for quite some time and and you know to solidify that that order book is something that I've called upon as being important I don't know if it'll accelerate into this year the end of this year I don't know if it'll accelerate into next year as fleets feel more comfortable that Hylian is progressing toward that ability to make good on those orders and furthermore that the OEMs will be able to handle you know a few thousand orders that could be projected to come through I mean Hylian's got to do five thousand orders if the OEM is not going to honor but more than a hundred orders you know per quarter this story will be acquired it will dissolve away Hylian has to make orders to make this thing work it's just that simple the bowls of the company understand that I'm one to profess and throw it out there you know a lot of bowls approach the story with a little bit of naive trust I'm here to tell you the the the the the the obvious case in Hylian is such that they have to improve upon that order book is it worrisome at this point that they have not built upon that order book for the last oh six eight weeks since the last order was was announced sure you know they were they were garnering some pretty good orders what's happening right now are they making orders are they not I you know it's it's an interesting period right now that we enter into a phase of you know very little transparency on what's going on and you know the presumptions start to stretch out on feeling very very confident in what's going on or feeling like is because we're not getting those orders because there's a lack of fleet interest yeah I don't know I think Thomas Healy needs to do the best job he can and continuing to provide that transparency to the very investor class that quite quite honestly are holding on right now to a thread the stock has not gone up since it's been a public stock let's be real and it has not gone up it has gone nothing but down insiders have done nothing but sell shares institutions are acquiring those shares but the confidence from the management I just reviewed a micro cap company that I'm going to be covering within the next couple of days that is 50 percent owned by the insiders it's a 40 million dollar market cap and narya will you find any type of insider selling of the company it just speaks to the conviction of the product and when you have that many stock sales that are registered to the ledger it you cannot help but to understand and to watch the continued downturn of the stock to understand that those people who sold actually made the right move right and these stock sales coming from the insiders unfortunately have not been backed up by insider buying they're not buying at these low prices why is it so out of the blue for the bear case to understand that we may end up going lower if the insiders are continually communicating that the interest behind the hyper trucker rx is just over the moon and that industry is just falling all over themselves to find this then why aren't they buying shares of the company on the inside fair question to ask only time will tell I haven't seen a lot of selling from the top man and I think that's good I think that's well timed perhaps maybe the exhausted selling perhaps maybe is has run its course and selling here at three dollars a share probably isn't in his best interest perhaps maybe exercising the right to hold is the prudent move as we march forward but guys as we approach this earnings week I would uh caution each and every investor out there to have some muted expectations mine are on a scale of one to ten my expectations are zero just being fair when we enter into these phases and if highly on does what it is that they are projected to do my confidence in what I expect from earnings call will improve right now it's zero I expect nothing I expect nothing I expect five hundred thousand dollars of revenue I don't expect anything more than that I expect that they'll have to rush to make up this ex revenue they're doing in in shop installs and how much are they making on that stuff 40 50 thousand a pop that's that's not going to keep the lights on and that's not going to pay the salaries of the employees for the inevitable future if highly on expects to have a future we'll be looking for color around progress along the timeline that is what is more important than the than the projected revenues for q3 as we waltz into the final quarter of what has been a dismal quarter all the way around for not only highly on highly a year it's been a dismal year for not only financial markets but highly on but we'll be looking at that progress we'll be looking at any alibis tomas ealy usually does a really good job of providing some nuggets of progress and the progress is multifaceted they're working on a ton of different initiatives with the carno and building the team working with their new team out of Cincinnati you know there's a lot of things going on that he can report on and and I expect to have some color on those things during the call and also it will be john pancer's opportunity to provide his first earnings delivery on an earnings call I will be pleasantly awaiting his delivery and and and hearing his command over the financials in the company and listening for any details or any insights that he may provide in addition to what sherry baker has provided over the previous years in service as the cfo and that'll be an interesting kind of a refreshing shift in listening to what john brings to the table and delivering his financial remarks so that's what I've got for this week guys coming into earnings call good luck to everybody I would expect you to pay attention sit through those earnings calls and the earnings presentations the investor presentations tomas has done a pretty good job of of addressing shareholders over the last six months the the information has been acceptable I think the pressure that he's been putting on the marketplace has been appropriate and that's appreciated from a would be sherry wolder a singular voice in the company that's long on the company and believes that their best days are in front of them that's for sure I appreciate you guys tuning in to this weekly highly on video and update if you do appreciate content like this I would invite you to subscribe to the channel I'm pretty forthcoming with my message I have no motives or intention here to somehow hype the stock I am aimed at producing some education over a company that I feel like has fallen victim to a pretty too much a tumultuous market here and I do believe that the future is bright for the company I believe that the tailwinds in this specific industry is very real I think the paradigm shift is one that is slow going but it is very real and I think highly on stands to profit from it and I think they're in the driver's seat with regard to producing and providing a product to industry that really solves a lot of the industry heartache and a lot of the industry problems right now and I think highly on unlike a lot of the other companies or one company that actually listens to their customers and it's one of many bullish reasons why I'm a bullish shareholder in the company and looking to provide that transparency from my perspective through social media on a weekly basis guys thank you so much for tuning in to the message and good luck in your investment future


Being in the classroom, being a teacher is tough work. It's really hard work and, you know, I don't know any teacher who went into education that didn't want to change more for their kids. They wouldn't do everything in their power to give them access to anything they need to be successful and to thrive. And I think the personal joy from this is like I get to see some of those little moments and be a part of it. It's a small part, it's a small part, but to have a hand in a part of a day that a student will go home and a child will go home and tell their parents about and remember it and still think about it when they go to fourth grade and fifth grade. I think that's not a small contribution and it means a lot to me because those are the contributions that I know made a difference in my life and I guarantee you some of the teachers I had don't remember that because it didn't seem significant to them. It was really game-changing for me. It was a five-minute conversation I still remember with a teacher in high school who really, really changed kind of my outlook on the world and what I could achieve and, again, I'm sure she doesn't remember it, but I remember it. And I hope that more of those moments can happen and we can talk about them and we can work together to create more of them for kids. It is vital that we connect across all different kinds of difference, all different lines of difference, and those lines can be community, neighborhood, country, state, color, race, socioeconomic status, grade level, background. And it's vital. It's vital that we see each other as people and we see each other as human. And the mission of I'm not to go is just starting with younger kids. Right now we're working with ages 7 to 11 that we really believe in it and research shows that if you give kids an opportunity to meet other kids that are different than them, amazing things happen. Simple things, but like, you know, simple things and amazing things that I could change the world. Yeah, we thought about what to name this tool, this organization, and we named it Empateco, which is empathy, Spanish, because that's the whole point. I mean, when we thought about it, what's the answer to why? Why build a technology platform and why build content that allows kids to connect to each other? And the reason is to increase things like curiosity and perspective and exposure to other people and other places in the world and all of that are the really important ingredients that can lead to a very big thing like empathy. This sounds silly, but sometimes on our team we talk about, you know, we ask each other, do you remember a time, a little moment when the world just suddenly became bigger for you? And it's interesting, if you ask adults that from all backgrounds, almost everyone, I mean, everyone I've asked has that moment. I have sort of a ridiculous one, but to your point of, you know, beyond subject matter, I remember the first time that I realized green beans weren't mushy. I actually, the fresh ones are actually crunchy and delicious, but I just had ones in cans. And all of a sudden the world of food and what food meant in my culture and my family was just like blown up. And I was like, oh my gosh, what else don't I know? And therein lies the curiosity and started asking questions. I mean, we have, we see students connect across in Bajiko who are, you know, blown away that some, what is snow? Like, you've heard about it in theory, but like, what is it really like? What do you do with it? You know, there's questions we've had, you know, students connect between one of my favorite ones that I still remember is one between Kansas and Mexico, two classrooms in Kansas, one in Mexico, one in Kansas.  What happens? Do you outside? Do you shovel it? Do you throw it? And those little moments beyond subject matters, beyond like the textbook, are the all. And I know this is a former teacher. You live for those moments, you live for the moments where like, that's the teachable moments where kids come alive and be like, okay, there's a window. There's that window of curiosity. If we can grab it, we can learn about a whole host of subjects.


Luckily, the side. Boom! Good? Yeah, I'm sorry. No, I'm all right. Thank you. Oh, my God. How brutal is it being an umpire sometimes?  This is probably, might not even be the first time it happened to him this month. Bam!  I'm not doing that. I'm getting tired. Especially with all that gear on? Ugh.


Hi, this is Senator Bernie Sanders. I need your help. One of the reasons our campaign is doing so well is that we are discussing the real issues facing the American people, something that most politicians and the media just don't do. In fact, one of the great concerns I have had for many, many years is that the corporate media looks at elections as if they were a baseball game in terms of who's winning or losing or how much money a candidate is raising or even a soap opera.  But in my view, what this election should be about, what our democracy should be about is a debate concerning the enormous problems facing our people and in fact our entire planet. And that's what I intend to be focusing on throughout this campaign. Now today, I'm going to be talking about the incredibly important issue of income and wealth inequality and I very much would appreciate your help in getting this video out to your friends and to your family. The economic reality for most Americans is pretty clear. For the last 40 years, the American middle class has been disappearing and more Americans are living in poverty than almost any point in our nation's history. Today, real median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999. Today, the typical male worker is making $783 less last year than he did 42 years ago after adjusting for inflation. The typical female worker is making $1,337 less than she did in 2007. Despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act, 35 million Americans continue to have no health insurance and even more are underinsured. And today, embarrassingly, the United States of America has by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major industrialized country on earth. And while the middle class continues to disappear over the last two years, just as an example, the wealthiest 15 Americans in this country, 15 people. And that includes Bill Gates, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and a bunch of others. These guys have seen their wealth increase by $170 billion. That's just an increase in what they previously had in a two-year period. To put this in perspective, that increase in wealth for the top 15 Americans is more wealth than is owned by the bottom 40 percent of our people, and it is doubled what this country spends on nutrition programs to feed over 40 million Americans. Meanwhile, since 2005, the typical middle class family has seen its wealth go down by more than 36 percent from $130,000 in 2005 to just $81,000 today. We have witnessed an enormous transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to multimillionaires and billionaires. Since 1985, the share of our nation's wealth owned by the bottom 90 percent, 90 percent, has plummeted from 36 percent to just 23 percent. Now what does this mean? It means that if the bottom 90 percent, the vast majority of our people, had simply maintained the same share of wealth they had 30 years ago, they would have over $10 trillion more today than they in fact do have. Now where did that wealth go? Well, about $8 trillion of it has gone to a tiny, tiny sliver of the wealthiest people in our country. Over the past 30 years, the top 1 tenth of 1 percent, not 1 percent, 1 tenth of 1 percent has seen its share of our nation's wealth more than double from 10 percent to 22 percent. The very, very rich are getting incredibly richer. The middle class is disappearing and the poor are getting poorer. That is the tragic reality of our economy today. This is the Robert Hood principle in reverse. We are taking from the poor and working families and seeing that wealth go to a handful of the richest people in this country. That is wrong, that is unacceptable and that is not what the American economy should be about. The concentration of wealth at the very top is more than bad economics. It is immoral and it is unsustainable. Instead of growing an economy with good wages where anyone can unlock their useful potential, we are undermining our middle class, undermining the needs of our kids, undermining the heart of our democracy. Now, if we are serious about reversing income in wealth inequality, what are some of the things that we need to do? First, we have got to make sure that anybody in America who works 40 hours a week is not living in poverty and that means that over a period of a few years we have got to increase the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour. Furthermore, we need to make certain that we have pay equity for women work is absurd, that women continue to make 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. Second of all, we have to put the American people back to work and that means a trillion dollar job program to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure which will result in up to 13 million decent paying jobs. Third, we need a tax system which is fair and among other things. We need to put a tax on Wall Street speculation so that every American regardless of income can go to college tuition free. Now, as many of you know, seven years ago, the taxpayers of this country as a result of the greed and recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, our country, our middle class bailed them out. Well, now it is Wall Street's turn to make sure that they help the middle class of this country and that all of our people regardless of income can get to college. In my view, a society in which so many have so little while so few have so much is not what the United States of America is supposed to be about. If you agree, please make sure to share this video and the facts in this video with your friends and your neighbors, but also with your Republican co-workers and the Republicans that you know. To my mind, it is a very sad state of affairs that we have too many working class Republicans who continue to vote against their own best interest. And my hope is that by engaging in a good, honest, straightforward dialogue with our Republican friends, we can win them over so that they can help us create a government which works for all of the people and not just the Koch brothers and a handful of billionaires. So once again, thank you very much for listening and thanks for your help in getting this video out. Take care.


Looks like we're about ready to go. Now I cannot promise cartoon raccoons, but I can promise cartoon lemurs, and I swear they're just as good and just as fun. So just because this is a magic talk, and I enjoy a little bit of theatricality magic, we brought ourselves a magic book along. Now you might wonder what the magic book happens to be for. Well, you see, every time I turn one of these slides, the slide happens to turn. So, who exactly am I? My name's Brandon Weaver. I am an artist. I ended up becoming a programmer. How that happened was a series of unfortunate accidents, which started with getting into web design, which, yes, a little bit of HTML, CSS, it makes you more marketable. Okay. A little bit of JavaScript. You just add a little bit of animation here and there, sparkle a little bit of this. Okay, that seems insane. Now you need a back and wait a second. I know where this is going. I don't like this anymore. And the next thing I know, I'm doing systems engineering. So that is the thing. And currently, I'm doing that over here at Square, where I am an infrastructure services engineer on the platforming team, amusingly working on the same code that Jack Danger happened to mention in his talk. But that's a little bit of fun. So, as far as social networks or anything else, you can find me on Twitter, GitHub, Medium, IRC. Yes, people still use IRC. I know, right? And Ruby.social, which is one of the new mastodon instances. And you will notice that I left tags to my Twitter on the bottom of a lot of these slides, so you will be able to find it later. And I will go back over this at the end of the talk. So shall we get started then? This is Red. You see, Red is a magical lemur, and he loves to reduce things, just absolutely adores it. And he could take stacks of numbers all day long and he just loves it and reducing them into sums. And to him, it's the most amazing thing ever. So let's take a look real quick into how Reduce works. So, Reduce is taking a list of numbers like, let's say, one, two, and three, well, for this example, we'll get into more later, and reducing it into the number of six. And what this might look like is something like that, but that is a bit hard to read. And especially if you don't know what entirely it's doing. I know I certainly didn't for multiple years, and I probably still don't in some case, but we will ignore that part. So let's take a look into what it's actually doing here. Reduce starts with an accumulator, which you'll see in red and underlined there for the color blind or otherwise. And an accumulator is often an empty value. If you add anything to zero, you're going to get back that number, one plus zero, one, zero plus one, one, one, one, well, that one's easy. That means that if we have an empty list, we actually have something we can return as kind of the same defaults. Next, we have the actual list, which you'll see here in, what do you call that, kyan or more of teal? No, honestly, I'm not sure. We'll go with teal. I like teal. And that's going to be present throughout this talk as V. And then the last, and potentially most important, is how do we join the accumulator and that value together, which we'll have in green as our way of joining things together. So basically, number plus number is going to give you back a number. So it ends up looking something like this, zero plus the list of one, two, and three, or in a little bit more common parlance, something kind of like that. So let's take a look into what this is doing step by step. So we start out with an accumulator of zero. And with that, we add the value one, and that's going to give us back a new accumulator of one. So every step of reduce, the accumulator carries over and becomes the accumulator for the next step. So if we go to the next step, the accumulator is now one, and we add to that the next value in our list, which would be two. And that's going to give us back the value three. Which means our last time around, we have three plus our last value, which is three, which means we ran out of values. Which means reduce now knows it's done and it can return that accumulator, which is six. So of course, by now, this means that we have a list of many things and we reduce it into one thing using an initial, often empty accumulator value, such as zero, and a way to join two values together. Of course, this makes us masters of functional programming. We figured out everything there is to do here. There's no point really learning much of anything else. We know this, we've already got it down. Well, the problem is, except Ruby 2.4 came out with this interesting little function, which I know some of you are definitely thinking about as I did this. That function would be some. So I guess my talk's kind of pointless now, isn't it? Well, Ray's question is, reduce unnecessary? So I wouldn't say it's the end of the story because red decides to do something, he decides to ask his master, does some kill reduce? And then something magical happens. Red gets back a letter, and in that letter he found his master had replied to him and said, come visit if you wish to learn. So it looks like we're going on a little bit of an adventure to find the true powers of reduce from Red's master, Scarlet. So Red journeyed over the rolling hills through the grassy plains until he saw a castle upon the horizon, and that castle was nestled between the mountains where the clouds reached the sky. And there is where he found the great and wise master of reduce master Scarlet's. So Red told his master of what he had learned of something list together of using addition and all the amazing things he had done, but he still had that nagging question on the tip of his tongue, so he just had to ask, does some make reduce useless? I read to consider for a moment perhaps that you can do more than just something with reduce. What if we use subtraction, multiplication, division? What if we didn't use numbers at all? Perhaps instead we have an empty array and we push to add elements to it. What could one do with this, I suppose? I know just the thing for you. You'll find three masters in land of enumerable. Go out and learn from them about their functions and see if you can figure out ways to do the same with reduce. And with that Scarlet left Red with much to think on, a map to help him on his way. So with that he was off to the corners of the map to find from the masters how their functions work and how he might use them with reduce. And now a special guest star, a convenient cup of water. Thank you, you're a good friend. The first master he was to visit was the master of mapping. So he journeyed through the forest of transformation deep into the groves where the mushrooms bloomed and creeks ran a sparkling blue. There he found a path and the end of the path was a house. And outside that house he found the first master he was to meet, the master chartreuse of map. Welcome Red, I've heard so much about you and your journey from master Scarlet. Why master? Can you tell me how map works so that I may implement it with reduce? Let me show you young one, the ways of mapping. To map is to apply a function to every element of a list to get back a new list. So then chartreuse began to explain map. So we take a look such that we have a list of one, two and three. We wish to multiply every element by two. That is our function. So each element is doubled. One multiplied by two is two, two by two is four and three by two is six. Giving us back an entirely new list of two, four and six. So Red began to wonder, how would you apply this to reduce? His new list was empty and his joining function was pushed. So how might we use this? Well, you see what we start with is we push on a new element to the list for every step that we go about. But before we do that, we call a function to transform that element into what we want it to be. So taking a look at this all together, it might look something like this. But that's a lot of code and personally I find it very unsettling as well. Yes, I agree. So let's dig into it and find out what exactly this is doing. You see, we have our old familiar list, which is going in as an argument here. And for each value, it comes across as V. And then we have our accumulator, which is now an empty array. And that is going to be there as A. And next we have our joining function, which to this case is push. If you use push on an array, that means that you add a new element to that array. But before we add it, we happen to call the function that we were given with the value, effectively transform it before we do anything to it. So the idea here is that we're pushing onto our accumulator the result of calling a function on a value, which is a bit of a mouthful. I do agree, but we'll take a look at what exactly that's doing. So something like that might be called like this. Now you'll notice that instead of innumerable methods, this is called using a list. And the function, which is a block of Ruby, is still on the outside, much the same. And we still get back the result to four and six, but how exactly is that working? So let's take and break that up real quick. So we start with an accumulator that's an empty array, and we push to that the result of one applied to our function, which is basically the same thing, call or multiplied by two. Which gives us back a new list of two. And now we start with the list of two, and we push onto that the result of two multiplied by two, which gives us a list of two and four. And finally, a list of two and four, to which we push the result of three multiplied by two, which gives us back our final list of two, four, and six. So to map is to apply a function to every element to list to create a new list. To map with reduce is to apply a function before appending an element to list in the first place. With less since he learned from map, it was time to visit the next master, select, and see what there was to learn. But on his way, he found a very peculiar tree, and he was starting to get lost as things seem to go backwards, forwards, and he had no idea which way was up anymore. And on the ground, he found a hat. Now you see with the lemurs, hats meant that there was a master somewhere in the area, I mean only masters wore hats, surely. So Red picked up the hat and wondered aloud, is there a magician? Is he here? And then the tree reached down a branch and said, hello there, would you be so kind as to give me my hat? Are you a master? Well, yes I am, I'm master branch. You see, I get blame the cat for knocking it off again. It was probably trying to cherry pick and couldn't commit to it.  It was about at this point that Red had noticed the hastily scrolled off beware tree sign. Now with the less since he learned from map, it was time to actually go to the master's select and hopefully not find any other oddities. But unfortunately for Red, the master's select was nothing but oddities. He journeyed through towns and villages looking for the master's select. But as he got closer, things kept on getting stranger and stranger until there were eventually nothing but absurdities all around him. And there at the end, he found a house and in that house he found the master of select. And when he found Indigo, the master of select, he found him to be quite eccentric. Select had him with a collection of various ruby arts and toys. But Red had noticed something peculiar in both the tree and around select. There was a cat, so he asked Indigo, is that a Cheshire cat? No, no, no, no, we're not in Wonderland. We don't call him a Cheshire cat, we call him an Esher cat here. So Red, obviously a little bit disturbed by this, decided to keep on going with what he was normally going to do. How do you find anything in this collection? Ah, why was select? You see, I can find all the rubies in the entire room like this. I just had to zoom around and there, we're done. So Red decided to ask, why is master, how may I implement select using reduce? So then Indigo decided to show him. Let me show you a magic trick. I take a number in and a function, and if the function isn't true, well poof, it's gone. Never to be seen again. So Indigo began to explain, let's take a look real quick. Select uses a function to decide which element should go into our new list. Such that we have our favorite old list, one, two, and three, we wish to only get the evening elements. That is our function. For one, it's not even, so we don't want that, we get rid of it. No. For two, it does happen to me, even so we keep this element. It's exactly the type we're looking for. And for three, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that won't do it all. Which means that we get back simply just a list of two. So Red decided to take a look into this and see how he might implement select using reduce. So like map, we use a function, but instead we're using the function whenever we decide to push an element onto a list, we only do that if the function happens to return the truthy value. Which gives us something like this, but you might notice something odd here. We have to return the accumulator after this. And that's because if you happen to use if and that returns nil, well, reduce doesn't like nil. No one really likes nil. I don't like nil, nil gives me nightmares. But one might say also, you should use each with object. Well, each with object does not fit on slide. So here we are. So essentially what we're doing is we're pushing a value onto the list if it happens to return true when given to that function. And then in any case, we're returning that list. Which means we have a function like this, which might be called a bit like this. And this looks very similar to our map example from earlier, where we have a list of one, two, and three, and we're selecting even numbers, which gives us back a list of two. So let's take a look into how that's working real quick. We start with an empty array as our accumulator and we push onto it the value one, if it happens to be even. In our case, this function is checking if numbers even. And since it's not, we get back an empty list. In our next case, we take an empty list and we push onto it the value of two, if that happens to be even. And since it is, we get back a list containing two. Now, we start with a list of two and we push onto it the last element, three, only if that happens to be even, which means that we only get back a list of two. Which means that select is to use a function to decide which elements belong in a new list. And to select with reduce is to use a function to decide whether or not to add the element to the list in the first place. And with that, we're headed on our way to our final destination, find. But find is quite a way. I mean, just look at that map. That's a bit excessive to walk, don't you think? We're not gonna be mean to read. We're not gonna be nearly that mean. So we drew a train for him. For some reason, the train had taken on the name the Ruby on Rails and he had no idea why that was. But in any case, it was a train and it was quite comfortable. So with that, Red was on his way to the master of find. And as he journeyed along, he eventually saw the city of find violet, the master. He had constructed all these amazing things with all the research and all the things that she had found and a conspicuously placed teapot because I have horrible humor. So he left the railway and went into the town and he found an academy and on his grounds, we found a vast library stretching for what seemed like miles and miles and inside that library, the deepest of Alcove's, he found his next master, find. And inside that Alcove was violet, the master of find. And she was looking for a very specific book as she entered. Ah, so you must be Red. Oh, I've heard so much about you. Come in, come in. I'm just looking for a particular book at the moment. So you look through all the books in the entire library just to find one book. I know how silly would that be that I keep on looking for a book after I've already found it. That's precisely the use of find. Could you show me how find works, wise master? Well, of course. Find works much like select but once we find what we're looking for, we stop looking. If we don't find anything, well, we found nothing. Now there are ways to have a default in this but we won't worry about them today. So then violet began to explain find. Should we take a look? Find uses a function much like select. Find of an element happens to be in a list. Such that we have a list of one, two, and three and we wish to find the first even number. That is our function. So for each element, we check if it's even. If it's not, we keep looking. And if it is, we stop, meaning that we don't even ask three if it happens to be even and we stop iteration. Do you know what a break is, young one? So that gives us back the value of two. So red had to think about this for a while because this was a very strange thing to do with reduce, isn't it?  So how exactly does this work? Really, we don't even care about joining or accumulating or anything. We just care if the function happens to return true. So in this case, what we do is we break with a value if a function happens to return true, much like select. Now break for those not familiar is a keyword that allows you to break out of a loop and return a value. But even the example looks nothing like we've seen before using reduce. What is this madness? You see, we're producing a denial. We don't even care about the accumulator. You mean to tell me that we're basically using reduce like in each loop? Well, yes, essentially, there's no rule against it, though I will probably get dinged on code reviews for it. We'll ignore that. So we have a way to break out of our function of reduce with a value, but only if a function call happens to return true, which gives us a function that looks a bit like this. I mean, if we never decide to take a break, we're never gonna get anything back. I suppose in the trend of things, that's another metaphor for software development, isn't it? So much like our previous example, fine takes in a list as an argument and a function. And in this case, we return the value two. But let's take a look at what exactly that's doing. We start with a value of one, and we break only if that happens to be even. It's not, so we keep going. Next, we decide to break with the value of two. If that happens to be even, and since it is, that means that we return the value of two, and we don't even bother with three. So to find is to use a function to locate a single element to list, and then stop looking. To find with reduce, just reducing to nothing until an element matches the function, then to break out with that value, which is quite a mouthful, I could do the same as so. So with his journey now done, Red was going back to see his master. But on the way, he ran into another set of lemurs, a particularly odd set, Cerulean, Saffron, and Vermillion. Cerulean was clapping on his tambourines, behind him two other lemurs, Saffron and Vermillion, were singing along, merely. Red was naturally curious about this and decided to ask what was going on. What's with the other two lemurs back there? Ah, that would be Saffron and Vermillion. You see, there are my C extensions. They make every trip go a bit faster, but the problem is, they never listen to anything you say, unless you happen to play a fiddle. And I have not figured this out yet, but as it were, at least they do listen to that. So why the journey to see Master Scarlet? Well, that's because I'm on a journey to establish a new school of innumerable, Tally-Buy. We've heard from the Council of 2.6 that it might be coming eventually, and Grandmaster Nobu may well have ordained the code already. Would you be willing to show me what Count-Buy does? Rather Tally-Buy because I changed the slides. Tally-Buy works like a map, and that it applies a function to a value, but different in that it uses the return of value as a key to keep a Tally or counts of something. In this case, true or false. In other cases, maybe the first letter of a word or something else entirely. So then Cerulean began to explain Tally-Buy. Shall we take a look? Such that we have the elements one, two and three, and we decide whether or not they're even. One is not, so we now have one count of false. Two is, so we now have one count of true. Three is not, so now we have two counts of false and one count of true, which gives us back a hash of true, count one, and false, count two. But that doesn't look like an array. I'll need something new altogether, won't I? So instead of reducing into an array, perhaps we could reduce into a hash. And for those not familiar that zero there basically means any key it doesn't know about is going to have a default value of zero, which means we can add to it as much as we want. And then if we want to keep the same style as we did before, we might end up with something that looks like this. Whoopsie, going back. Now, that terrifies me. I want to never see that code again, so we will make it go away because I'm pretty sure it scares the rest of you too. So we'll cheat a little bit. Ruby is not technically fully a functional language, so we can get away with a few things we're not supposed to. In this case, what we're doing is we're calling a function on a value to get back a key. And then with our accumulator hash, what we're doing is we're taking that key and we're adding one to the count of that. Now we can take a look at our tally buy function, but as always, this is a bit complicated, so let's break it up. So remembering back, we first find our key, which is kind of like map, we're applying a function to a value to get back a new value. And with that, we're taking our new hash and we're adding one to the counts of that key, so it could be something like word.first or rather word zero because we're in Ruby. And all together, our function might look a little bit like this, but that is still very dense, so let's take a look into what exactly it's doing. So like much of the other functions, it takes in a list and then takes a function and with this function, it tries to decide the counts of elements.  We're going to have no counts to start with and then we're going to have the value one, which is not even, so it's false, which means we add to the counts of false one, which gives us back new counts of one element of false, which means the next loop around, we start with the count of false of one and we have element two, which is true, which means that we add one to the count of true, which means we have one count of false and one count of true. And then finally, we have one count of false and one count of true and our last element happens to be false whenever the function is applied to it, which means that we get one more count of false, giving us back a final count of two and one. So tally-by is counting the elements of a list after you apply a function to them, kind of like math. The tally-by would reduce as using a hash to keep counts of values transformed by a function. After saying farewell to Cerulean, wishing him luck on his meeting with the council of 2.6, Red found himself back where it all began, back where it all started. So Red told Scarlett of all the things he had learned and seen over the time he spent in the land of innumerable and all the adventures he'd had. Just look at all the new functions I've learned to make, and I still have to ask, even after all of that, I've only re-implemented functions which already exist, haven't I? Does this mean I should use reduce for everything now or just reduce unnecessary? There yet so many fascinating lessons is out there to learn, Red, but this was but the beginning of a grand journey for you, a grand journey of knowledge. Consider with me for a moment, would you use an axe to trim a bonsai tree? Well, no, that wouldn't make much sense at all. And would you use a pair of hedge trimmers to cut a mighty redwood? No, does this mean I get pruned? Quiet you. The challenge, Red, is knowing the difference between the two and knowing when to use each one wisely. So too are the ways of reduce. It has its uses when simple functions won't do, but that doesn't quite answer your question, so let's take a look into some of the power of reduce that might be beyond what you've seen already. And there is true power here, young one, but power we must learn to use properly before we're able to use it correctly. There are parts of composition, currying, closures, transducers, category theories and more beyond your wildest imaginations. That's precisely what makes reduce so much fun to learn and use. Consider with me that we might be able to take a function that reduces a list and combines actions of selecting and mapping to where if a function returns any value except false or nil, that result is pushed on to the new array after transforming it. So too you could transform and combine any function that can be implemented in reduce into a grand art known as transducers, but that red is a story for another day. For you've learned much and you've had a long journey. There were merely first steps on your journey to knowledge my apprentice, one you will soon be walking. But again, these are lessons for another day. You've traveled far and learned much, and my time here is drawn to a close, I'm afraid. We shall talk again soon, and with that day comes, I look forward to seeing everything you've done and everything you've learned. And with that red journey back home, I had much to think on from this, realizing how little he actually knew of reduce and all the things that he spent so much time learning already and how much more there was to learn in the world. And that to him was a beautiful, beautiful thing. And all the time he had spent adventuring, there was still so much more to learn out there. So many more beautiful things to find, friends to me, people to greet, friends to laugh with, cry with, everything else it could be. And to him, that was the most valuable part of this entire journey. Perhaps this is the end of red story, or perhaps it's just the beginning of an entirely new one altogether. So to wrap up, all the illustrations in this talk were actually my own work, over about 50 illustrations, 200 hours, and, okay, 140 slides, I suppose. Good, he gives me a count, can you believe that? And you will find tested examples that will give you more information here in the repo, and I will pin this, and I will tweet this out later. And again, who I am, you can find me on various social media platforms, and I will be tweeting out various things as we go along. So just credits, because you might have noticed, I hid some strange things in this talk every now and then, and I did get permission, mind you. There were some very odd reactions whenever I asked for permission, but I did get permission nonetheless. So the foxes were a homage to why the lucky stiff. Okay, good, the slides are back, okay. Because why was my first foray into Ruby, and he may have been in a lot of yours too. And that's just to say that whimsy, silliness, and fun are still very much appreciated in the Ruby community. Otherwise it wouldn't be up here speaking, they'd probably throw me out. And then you'll notice that Matt's was hiding in one of the slides as himself. The bundler tape gun was present as itself, and DHH happened to show up as a conductor of the Ruby on Rails. Now, we have decided to have some amount of fun. You might have seen a variety of colorful lemur stickers wandering around the halls, and yes, there is actually a point. I'm not completely insane. Not yet, my doctor has told me so. So we have a scavenger hunt, and you might find the tag lemurs of RubyConf being thrown around. If you search that, you will find all the people who happened to have lemur stickers here. Now, if the people with the lemur stickers would please stand up, so that people might see who you are. Okay, take a good look around and know that these are the people with the lemur stickers you seek. Now, people with the lemur stickers please move towards the back of the room. I hope you all are fast because they're actually very fast as well. And I'm a very mean person. But I will say that that is not quite all we have because you might wonder, what is going to happen next? What is Red exactly up to, and where is he going from here? Well, you see, and if you were paying attention, you might have caught a very subtle little clue hidden in one of the slides. IJTR is not an acronym I've ever seen on a Ruby book before, but it will be in 2019, as Red's lemur will return in a book published by No Starch Press called An Illustrated Guide to Ruby. So that's all the time I have here today. There's not an angry light blinking at me, so we do have some time at the end for various questions and other stuff up here on front of the stage. But I hope you all enjoyed your experience and journey into the land of innumerable. Thank you.


kay and can i also ask um madam chair can i ask just a point of clarification two of the earlier speakers jared and i yawned did not use their full three minutes would i be allowed to use their excess please just at this hour i will try to keep the three minutes thank you thank you very much and more importantly um all i can say is for y'all to make it this long with no bathroom break and to at least appear interested is most impressive at this hour i just want to mention several things i'm part of an ad hoc group involving the realtors other community people which has attempted to work with planning commission to come up with some reasonable solutions the one thing that mr stocks failed to mention his um timeline went up through may 2018 and then abruptly stopped nothing said about what happened since then well what happened since then was our group got together with them uh came up with some reasonable content neutral time manner in place suggestions and initially initially their suggestion for temporary signs was ghost bikes will be allowed and that is not content neutral it allowed sidewalk vendor signs the downtown area where you can put signs out once again not content neutral and allowed political speech to be allowed political signs from 45 days before the open voting to 10 days after okay in response starting in may we hit carry on reasonable dialogues and um we got a response back in the latter part of of um 2000 let's see what was it was it was in spring of 2019 and we got a response that basically said we're going to reject everything you suggested but we're going to let that 45 days before elections through 10 days after be open to any signs don't ask me why that so the um we buy homes that's open season for them and those are not realtor signs by the way um the signs junk signs out there anything is allowed during that 55 day period that has that has nothing to do with this supreme court case totally contrary what I handed you is what should be being followed if you look at the very top 10 miles away from us UNC school of government in october 19 uh 2018 they've got somebody who's actually devoted a ton of time to this issue has published on the web this uh document and if you'll turn to page 4 of 5 page 4 of 5 I've tried to highlight in the middle of the area and I realize it's 10 30 and it's hard to focus but let me just mention it said a city a municipality may prohibit temporary signs which is what they've chosen to do or permit them subject to certain even handed contraintent neutral restrictions as to other district this can include limits on size location time frame and other continental aspects all we ask we ask I will thank you ma'am all I ask is that I'm against this proceeding at this time I ask that this be deferred back to the planning committee that they or the planning department that they with the recommendation that they communicate with the department school of government and interact with my body to come up with reasonable size of signs location and short duration and I thank you for your time thank you jacob anderson jacob anderson local stakeholder landowner um and just uh I think most of the interest has come from uh realtors and folks uh that are looking to put out temporary signs um I think our main focus and just quickly wanted to speak tonight about uh something michael mentioned and I think he'll address it and I just want to make sure some maybe local builders stakeholders developers are involved in those conversations but um primarily interest is in the the commercial versus non-residential signage monumentation I think the apartments and commercial monumentation were were fairly untouched in this adoption or ordinance proposed and I think the residential monumentation was drastically reduced and from about 32 square feet to about 12 and I think it it's a little bit more of a complicated issue that I would like to have time to meet with staff and express those concerns to you guys as it relates to you know larger communities master plans versus smaller communities and just the size of monumentation the different monumentations that maybe different intersections you know monumentation at thoroughfares and things like that um so we would just ask that those items be further considered thank you thank you I do not have any other individuals who've signed up to speak I do see a hand in the back if you would like to come forward and state your name and address and we will hi good evening commissioners thank you for staying staying so late I'm Shane Kirk I reside at 510 Oak Bluffs in Pittsburgh while I live in Pittsburgh I do a lot of business here I'm a realtor and I currently am a board of directors member for the Durham realtor association I'm here on behalf of my business and I think for potentially your businesses as Dan Milam so forth put it about the 55 day period for election signs if you can imagine I don't and I apologize I don't know if you're elected officials or have ambitions to be but imagine not being able to advertise your business and that's essentially what this does it effectively removes an ability for certain professions or certain businesses to advertise and earn an income and pay taxes and contribute to this fine city that we have here so I would like to see something that's put in here that is very reasonable which could be a time span for these temporary signs whether that's two three days a week something that makes sense that allows people to take part in the community to advertise for certain things help people find those communities of course a very short period wouldn't help people like yawn with new home communities so I think things need to be really taken into consideration there when we have things like this when we're trying to find and bring residents to this city to get them homes and be able to move in here and take part and like I said become those tax-paying citizens that of course any city needs so that's my thought my concerns obviously I hope that you'll kind of put that context in place in your consideration I'm against this change as it says thank you thank you Shane could you say your address again for me please yes my address is 510 oak bluffs in Pittsburgh thank you okay I do not have any okay let's see another hand please come forward my name is Lamora Willis I live at 403 swift creek crossing Durham 27713 I'm here to speak against this sign ordinance and I'm going to take you on a little bit different perspective I have been a member of the Durham Lions club for over 20 some years so I see some of the one or two of you have spoken to the Lions club one of the things that the Durham Lions club does is supports and raises money to aid people that have sight impairment and blindness for the last several years we have had a project here at the Civic Center on election day the Durham pancake jamboree and if you take this sign ordinance to the extent that what you these people are proposing we have yard signs and signs that we put out advertising the Durham Lions club pancake jamboree and you will be as I guess hurting our efforts and raising money to aid people that need help so I would ask you to consider this not only as a commercial side of it but also a civic side and people that volunteer to give their time to help raise money for people that do not have the opportunities there that but that do need help just one little aspect of the sign ordinance thank you very much thank you are there other individuals who would like to speak to this issue during the public comment period if not I'm going to close the public hearing and give our commissioners an opportunity to ask questions I'm going to start to my right are the any commissioners who would like to speak uh commissioner buzz bee thank you ma'am chair the hour is late and the fact that we have a room still pretty full tells me we need a little more time to work on this issue just my my personal perspective but the the um because I'd rather not actually vote tonight and I hear I hear individuals asking for more time the the question for staff that I had I recall one of the presentations to the joint city county planning committee which you mentioned how many communities in north carolina have adopted new sign not sign ordinances that you know of at this point due to this supreme court decision so greensboro updated their sign ordinance charlotte just updated their sign ordinance raleigh has an updated sign ordinance I don't know if it's to read specific or not the issue is that whether um it is truly read compliant or not is up to their legal determination not ours right did any of them in your understanding take the same approach that that this draft is taking or did they take a different approach similar to the the other option that was raised by one of the speakers the permitting subject to certain even-handed content neutral restrictions some ordinances even before we didn't allow anything in the right away carry is one example um some and then other ordinances carved out specific exceptions um that would either allow it into right of way or allow them on but specify it was on private property such as the direction if we're talking about the directional signs would specify allowance on private property what that would do or not I don't know but it was some sort of I guess compromise without understanding the politics or the justifications for any of those ordinances okay thank you I first of all I just should have said I appreciate the time and effort that mr stock mr otul I mean the other staff you've spent an enormous amount of time grappling with a really challenging situation I don't think there is a great path forward here so I just wanted to say all of that and um I guess my final question is so it sounds like there were conversations there were stakeholder meetings or convert opportunities for input but it didn't necessarily sound like that has changed in this draft in your estimation would a 60 or 90 day two to three cycle delay provide for additional time or input or do you believe this is what you have come up with and this is what you're recommending um I'll speak and then if Don wants to jump in also um we've had internal discussions we met specifically with the realtors association throughout the fall of um uh 2018 responding to their specific uh suggestions we pointed out the issues with them whether they're just uh enforceability issues or just not read compliant issues um we pointed out that um except for the directional sign issue that they're bringing up all the other sign issues that they're bringing up are not currently allowed in right away anyway except for political signs and what is currently being proposed is allowance of more generous allowance of any sign in the right away within a certain time period um but um I don't see at this point unless there's some new direction given to staff that there would be any significant changes um with that delay um could there be some changes as I mentioned reconsideration of the uh taking a look at the square footage allotment to the residential identification signs that we made changes to I'm sure we can take a look at that um we already promised that we would um without promising a firm action one way or the other but in terms of um our review of how we came down on the temporary signage in right away um I don't see any particular change unless we got specific direction otherwise okay thank you uh commissioner elter thank you chair so so Mike um so currently you can put a directional sign in the in the right of way right and can you put okay and so now you're proposing to not be able to put anything in the right of way except for 55 days around the election is that right or am I misreading that so currently what is being proposed and I'll go to let me get to that page for a second if I may did I had it and I apologize and I lost it so what is specifically would be allowed in the right away uh temporary signs in the right away um we're taking a look at object or marker what page is that um I'm sorry page 34 okay thank you so um an object or marker at a traffic-related fatality and it gives specific so it's oh right placement time um and yeah size um the any sign uh within that right of way and it gives time placement size um temporary signs on sidewalk it was movable signs it was more of a relocation of what was currently in the ordinance and that is zoning district specific it doesn't specify what is being said on the sign so there's time place and manner also okay so what is the I guess what because I'm looking at page number six the justification I think for them what you say is to kind of the compromise position and so what is the negative I guess implication or effect of just keeping the directional signs allowed in the right away that wouldn't be read compliant because we'd be focusing on a content-based speaker-based sign okay that's just clearly wouldn't be read that would not be compliant with no because we're favoring one type of speech over another what it's saying okay okay thank you thanks um commissioner miller so I have a lot of problems with this and they're the same problems I've had all along we currently have a sign ordinance is as a staff has pointed out that doesn't allow temporary signs in the right of way except for some exceptions carved out for certain users for certain types of signs and that's not read compliant I mean a total ban probably would be read compliant but I don't think it's what I think is right for Durham we can be read compliant I think it is important to be read compliant and right for Durham and I believe that the speakers have demonstrated even today the sign ordinance is honored in the breach especially when it comes to temporary signs in the right of way pancake sufferers and stop gun violence and all these things that Durham people do and it and house for sale with an arrow all of these things are important part of the life of the community mr. Eden said before he went home that do we have a clutter proliferation problem now I don't think we do but I'm a guy who likes to use the public property to facilitate public speech what read wants us to do is to not pick and choose among speakers or what people say I'm willing to do that and not take the risk in other words what we've done this is we've now we've got this period of time around elections when we're gonna allow all kinds of signs because practically people really want to speak politically uh at that time and I think that that's read compliant but I would like to open it up and say year round we're going to allow temporary signs in the right of way we're going to control where they can go not all the right of way not all the time it's time place and manner manner is how big the sign is is it lighted is it movable we can regulate that we can say there can be intervals between signs if there's one up here then you can't put another one up and for a certain distance we can do all of those things so that the things that even today under the current ordinance are not lawful like the pancake jamboree why can't the pancake jamboree be lawful and I realize that if we let the pancake jamboree be lawful then some crazy could put up a sign that says something that the community doesn't like I'm not afraid of that our democracy is not that fragile it is not that fragile time place and manner so this is what I would like to do and and with regard to temporary signs in the right of way is have no distinction between commercial and non-commercial speech although that actually is allowed under read but read doesn't go into it they just said we're not disturbing the distinction that the supreme court has previously recognized between commercial and non-commercial speech and that distinction actually is is saying you can regulate commercial speech to a greater degree than non-commercial speech but I don't see any point in going there when we're talking about temporary signs in the public right of way I want a self permitting process we actually have a permitting process for certain types of signs but I want a self permitting process I want one where we let people put up a sign but the condition is is you know we're going to regulate its size it can't be bigger than a certain size and of course we can set that uh that there'll be a duration it can only be up for a certain amount of time um I think there should be uh that there's a risk that a single user uh on a certain subject can't keep putting up the same thing over up you know take it down a day and then put it up a day later you can't let I think it is a legitimate government interest saying that we're not going to let somebody hog the public resource um just like we do with parking meters uh you can't keep it's actually against the rules to keep feeding the meter you gotta leave and then come back if somebody else is shot um I think that it's permissible under a self permitting process and this is what I mean is to say that on every sign that we allow in the public right of way we require the poster to put their name and their address their contact information and the date the sign goes up so that we can regulate it I think read allows that that's not content that's the same thing that we do with a with a permitted sign except for that we require them to submit a piece of paper that we keep in a file folder somewhere um so here we're gonna put it on the sign so that the inspector can go look at the sign and say oops that one's up too long if you do a permit process then you can build into the ordinance that the poster says okay the city can take it down um because permits are a little bit different than than say on on my own property where the the city can't come and take it down they can they can start proceedings to make me take it down um we can regulate like I said which part of the right of way we can distinguish between signs that are in the right of way in front of residential properties as opposed to the commercial right of way the court just clearly makes a distinction and recognizes that signs that are in proximity to residences or can be interpreted as being associated with the owner of the residence so I think that we can create an interval that says if you're going to put up your pancake jamboree or your stop gun violence sign in front of somebody's house that it's you can't do that that it's got to be a certain ways away so that the message won't necessarily be associated with the owner of that residence we can do that um and we can build into these things about violations and what have you we can finally have an ordinance that lets the community of Durham do what it wants to do without being in violation and that we can regulate it because we can regulate it sign by sign and inspector if we get if we get a proliferation of signs in a certain location and it's it gets to be a problem somebody can go out and say oops this one's too old oops this one is is too big we can do those things but it they can also say oh this one this one's complied with everything we required and it's got three more days you can leave that one we can finally actually have reasonable regulation realizing that it I suppose it could be possible that you could get a perfect storm of a lot of people putting up a lot of messages and cluttering a location and if that happens then I suppose we can get tougher but I think like Mr Eden said if we're going to air in this let's air in favor of public speech and let the people do what they do I mean my own neighborhood association collects money at this time of year for the Durham urban ministries and we do that by posting signs because it's effective we remind people this is the time to give and we put the signs in the right of way and we're in violation I put up a whole bunch of them myself I confess I violated the ordinance but it shouldn't be a violation of the ordinance let's have instead of having an ordinance that we honor by winking at the signs that we don't care we we are now we we have for years winked at the signs that we consider to be harmless and I love a community that does that but we don't have to we don't have to have selective enforcement system we can have an ordinance that's real and that apportions out the the right to put up signs reasonably and controls it and we can see how it goes I want to send this back like Mr Busby does I want the staff to consider this more open approach one that fixes not only the read problem but the problem that existed before read which is over regulation of signs um that doesn't make content distinctions and if and if it doesn't work then I'll take the blame but I do think that the supreme court in the time place manner restrictions that are allowed gives us a huge amount of leeway to address the problems incrementally as we experience them not as we anticipate them but I need to recognize some sarah young and then the city's legal advisor so I wanted to share a little bit of a tidbit fun fact if you will about our zoning enforcement and the work they do in the realm of signs because I've heard it repeatedly said tonight that we don't have a sign clutter problem and I will tell you that on average zoning enforcement in one sub district one of the three sub districts alone on average picks up 200 signs a week sometimes upwards of 350 signs a week that is somewhere between 10 and 12 thousand signs a year that are picked up that is why we don't have a sign clutter problem but if I can respond to that well let me respond to that is if we had a system that allowed signs we wouldn't have to pick them all up right now we pick them all up because they're all in violation thank you donno told the city attorney's office I just wanted to let the planning commission members know that when we the redecision was handed down in 2015 we immediately started discussions with the manager's office obviously the planning department and at city council work sessions so the manager's office and the council is fully aware of the direction that the proposed UDO changes are taking I'll add however though that pretty much everything that you said Mr. Miller is completely policy so if city council decided to change the direction that this draft is moving in that could certainly be done those are all policy issues as Sarah pointed out we already do have a huge problem with illegal signs in the right of way in the city of Durham currently and Mr. Miller to the self permitting idea the planners and I discussed that back in 2015 develop a little sticker have them readily available at DSC fill out your name phone number date it's posted and that was discussed but that would lead to pretty significant enforcement because planners would need to walk up to every sign look at the sticker figure out which signs were illegal and that has been discussed with the both the manager's office and council members but obviously again that's a policy question and if people want to present that again that can be brought forward another point that I just want to raise that I don't think has been emphasized tonight we are not shutting down non-commercial speech in the city of Durham I think if you read the temporary sign provisions on private property we there's no limitation city of Durham residents can have as many non-commercial signs on their private property as they choose and Durham residents like to do that and so there's no limitation on those signs so I don't think we're really silencing anyone and while I'm sympathetic to charities who want to put up signs in the right of way even an organization like the Lions Club the Rotary whatever if they put that that's commercial activity they're saying come buy our pancakes and so if the city were to choose to allow those signs that's commercial speech we also would need to open up the right of way to all non-commercial speech at the same time so those are those are the issues that we've been trying to balance and weigh and nothing's been said here tonight that hasn't been discussed internally and I think the manager's office and the city council is well aware of these issues and not to speak for staff but I'm not sure how referring this back to staff at this point would be of any value I think the real the case needs to be made to council and then if council wanted to direct staff to modify this draft the planners would be happy to do that consistent with their direction thank you one other comment because I wanted a motion I was I was going to say that input is helpful I don't see any need for us to move to postpone this vote and to continue this I think it's time for us to just have a motion and vote this evening and send it forward I will entertain a motion at this time comment comment I want to I appreciate commissioner Miller's comments and I second those and I'll be voting against this and sending a message to council that I'd like to go in that direction thank you thank you so I'll entertain a motion Madam Chair I would move that we send case TC 1 7 0 0 0 0 2 forward to the city council with a favorable recommendation second does it go does it does it does it go to both governing bodies yes it does thank you for the clarification thank you did I get a second yes second okay then motion by commissioner Buzbee and second by commissioner Al Turk that we send item TC 1 7 0 0 0 0 2 signs forward to the city council and the board of county commissioners with a favorable recommendation may we have a roll call vote please commissioner morgan no commissioner johnson no commissioner brine no commissioner Al Turk no commissioner Buzbee no commissioner hyman yes commissioner Miller no commissioner kinchin yes commissioner sanctiago no commissioner baker yes commissioner low yes yes commissioner macabre yes and motion fail seven five pardon me what was i'm sorry seven five five seven sorry about that seven five yes no no it failed seven that's five seven i mean five seven excuse me five you're right it's late five seven thank you miss thank you mr. Miller well i just don't hear very well any comments from staff are there any additional comments from staff before we wrap up if not we'd like to thank everyone that came was able to attend the retreat and we'll we're looking at scheduling a follow-up soon so be on the lookout for that very good thank you so much what's january light kevier light um pretty light right now two evenings and maybe one text amendment keep it light when we come back motion trying to thank you all happy holidays