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History That Doesn't Suck

10:39 min | Last week

"paris" Discussed on History That Doesn't Suck

"Late that night, Woodrow calls for his wife, Edith. Sitting in a chair, he says that the headache is back. It's excruciating. He coughs, complains that the walls are closing in. His face twitches. His ever-faithful presidential physician, Dr. Grayson, is soon there, insisting that they cancel the rest of the tour. But Woodrow can't. He must speak to the people. He insists that he must save the League of Nations. When the doctor tries to talk Woodrow out of continuing the tour again in the morning, the president fires back. Don't you see that if you cancel this trip, Senator Lodge and his friends will say that I am a quitter and the treaty will be lost. But even Woodrow's iron will can't overcome the frailties of being a mere mortal. Something is wrong. And finally, he relents to his wife, doctor, and others. They return to the White House, but it won't be long before things get worse. It's about 8 45 a.m. October 2, 1919. We're at the White House in Washington, D.C., where Edith Wilson's just waking up. Again, the First Lady's had a rather restless night, getting up every hour or two to check on her husband over and over. Then again, it's been like that for a while. Edith thinks of last month's national tour as one long nightmare. But as she walks toward Woodrow's room this morning, she's comforted that things have been a touch better in the few days since they returned to the Executive Mansion. Last night, Woodrow even managed to play billiards, watch a movie, and read some scripture. He did forget his watch going to bed, which was unusual for him, but Edith laughed it off. He's always forgetting things. But now, stepping into her husband's room, Edith is utterly unprepared for what she sees. Seated at the edge of the bed, Woodrow is desperately attempting to grab a water bottle. His left hand is completely limp. Helpless, Woodrow addresses his wife, I have no feeling in that hand. Will you rub it? But first, help me to the bathroom. Edith dutifully supports her husband as he staggers. Tara grips the First Lady as she can feel Woodrow's body spasming in pain with every step. Reaching the presidential bathroom, Edith guides, then stabilizes Woodrow. She asks him if he can handle her stepping away long enough to call for their tireless doctor and friend, Dr. Cary Grayson. Woodrow says he can. But Edith can't use the phone in the nearby bedroom. She's heard rumors that people eavesdrop on that line, and Woodrow would never want the public to know about his current condition. With this in mind, the First Lady dashes down the hall to a private phone, answered by the presidential couple's longtime usher, Ike Hoover. Ike picks up, and Edith softly but firmly instructs him, please get Dr. Grayson. The president is very sick. But before she can even hang up, Edith hears something from the bathroom. She rushes back to find her husband, the esteemed Princeton professor turned President of the United States, unconscious on the bathroom floor. Woodrow survives the stroke. It does, however, leave the president paralyzed on his left side and confined to his room. More than that, he's not the man he was before. Dr. Grayson and Edith decide to keep the full extent of his illness to themselves. With Woodrow out of the public scene, though, the Senate is able to make changes to the treaty. The idealistic president recovers enough to push back by November, and answers that he will not accept any of the Senate's amendments to the treaty. In the weeks following, Woodrow learns that, as the author of the Fourteen Points and founder of the League of Nations, he's won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919. Yet, ironically, it becomes clear in falling months, in March of 1920, that the U.S. Senate will not be ratifying the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, the U.S. will work out separate treaties with Germany as well as with Austria and Hungary. That's right. After all that work to create and promote it, Woodrow will not see his own nation join his beloved League of Nations. Coming to the end of our tale, let's reflect and take in the big picture. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 faced a truly onerous task. How do some 30 nations from across the globe create a peace after the most destructive, unparalleled war in human history? That's a tall order. Perhaps we should be surprised that the Big Three managed to produce anything at all, especially with the bad blood between Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. Georges did not like Woodrow. In case I failed to convey Georges' distaste for Woodrow, let me quote the tiger on the American president in his Fourteen Points. Ooh, biting, as was the peace conference chairman's jab at both Woodrow and David Lloyd George that made all of Paris chuckle. I find myself between Jesus Christ on the one hand and Napoleon Bonaparte on the other. As for David Lloyd George, he had his witticisms too, saying of Georges Clemenceau that he loved France but hated Frenchmen. Yet, somehow, between Woodrow's idealism, Georges' drive to safeguard France from another German attack and make the Germans pay, and all the complications of the British government's contradictory implications and promises in the Middle East, and the Welsh wizard somehow pragmatically riding the space between them, they produced a treaty. But a highly problematic treaty. Further conferences and other treaties will shape the post-Ottoman Middle East, but as we saw, the Treaty of Versailles Article 22 planted its seeds with the League of Nations mandate system. From the Middle East to Africa and the Pacific, these mandates will function less as the tutoring and developmental system of which Woodrow dreamed, and more as the latest iteration of imperialism. Then we come to the heart of the treaty's focus. Germany. When I think about the soul-crushing terms that the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany in 1919, my mind always goes back to the last time war-torn Europe made peace at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. I told you about this brilliant peacemaking in episode 128. Let's recall that, at Vienna, the other four great powers of Europe chose not to punish the French for Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest, nor overly fear a resurgent France. Instead, they dealt rather generously with France and established a concert system that brought the continent relative peace for a century. The Treaty of Versailles does the opposite. Frankly, between the 1918 Armistice signing and Marshal Ferdinand Foch's train carriage and this treaty's signing in the Hall of Mirrors, the Germans felt every intentional humiliation, not the least of which was the Versailles Treaty's Article 231 war guilt clause. It's hard not to wonder to what extent these harsh conditions and insults added to the sense of betrayal Germans felt toward their own government with the war's sudden reversal and end, as we saw in today's opening, helped pave the sinister path down which young corporal Adolf Hitler will soon drag the world. Politicians, policy wonks, historians, and more will long debate the failures of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. For some in the 21st century, it will become the explanation for many of the worst events in the 20th century and even our present, ranging from World War II to wars and conflicts in the Middle East. But for all the treaty's failures, I have to agree with Professor Margaret MacMillan, the brilliant author of the book Paris 1919. After acknowledging all these same failings, she reminds us that none of the 20th century's evils, even Hitler, was guaranteed or foreordained by the Treaty of Versailles. And finally, well, to quote her directly, if they could have done much better, they certainly could have done much worse. They tried, even cynical old Clemenceau, to build a better order. They could not foresee the future and they certainly could not control it. That was up to their successors. htbspodcast.com htbspodcast.com htbspodcast.com Join me in two weeks, where I'd like to tell you a story.

Masters in Business

00:05 min | 3 hrs ago

Fresh update on "paris" discussed on Masters in Business

"Learn as much as I could as fast as I could and get a B .A. and then become an accountant and a lawyer because then then I figure I could always be employed either managing the numbers or doing law and get those two degrees. That that's not the direction you ended up going though. What what was it that made you say hey this finance thing looks like it's fun and interesting. Well it's you know like life it's a serendipitous series of things. I met a terrific man at Dartmouth named John Hennessy Jr. He was the ex -dean of the Tuck School business school at Dartmouth College and he became a mentor and he once asked me what you just just asked me and I explained to him get the CPA get the law degree I'd always be employable and he kind of said him aim higher have you thought about an MBA so in between Dartmouth and Stanford you work for Goldman Sachs doing M &A early 80s how is that how did that help prepare your path to private equity back then in 1983 the analyst entire program of Goldman Sachs was 25 people and that was a big expansion from the prior year year before and it had only been in existence for two years so Wall Street was so much smaller right Barry you remember back in 1983 Goldman Sachs had about 30 ,000 total employees 15 they were private partnership they weren't even public very different world and the entire merger department of Goldman Sachs in 1983 was 32 people that's amazing and I like to say none were lower to the ground than than me a first -year analyst which meant I was below ground and how did you end up at Bain and Company in Paris what was what was that like well in the time that I was working at Goldman Sachs in mergers there were a bunch of big public companies who are on we were on M a &A retainer they call it so the public company is looking to buy lots of acquisitions and they would have us running the numbers with people their for them as they would have Bain and Company in two of these situations doing the strategic work alongside their management team so I got to know the work and we would jointly make presentations to the senior management their team or board if a deal went far and I got to see firsthand what Bain was doing in strategic consulting and understand their view of business separate from the numbers and so when I did go out to Stanford I wanted to spend my summer learning that better and in Paris and was Bain kind enough to offer me a job to facilitate. I have to imagine that Paris in the mid -80s was just delightful. It was not tough duty. I was very lucky to be there and grateful all summer. So you come out of Stanford, you enter the LBO world, what we now call essentially private credit and private equity. What was it like in the late 90s had to be the Wild West. It really wasn't a mature industry the way it is today. Well, Barry, again like Wall Street, it was all so much smaller. In 1983, by my reckoning, the entire global institutional private equity business was less than a billion dollars of committed capital. That's unbelievable. That's nothing. The largest fund then was KKR with $175 million. So you're doing LBO, you're doing M &A. How did those experiences lead to a in career private equity? There was almost no M &A activity. There was no M &A departments in any investment bank really until the very late 70s. Today where we talk about return on equity, your margins, what's your stock price, back then if you were in business in the real world, they said, how many people work for you? started And if you your career on a line, became a line manager or foreman, became a plant manager, maybe, or a division manager, so on up the line. If people ask you how many people work for you and you say, well, I sold a business, I had a thousand, but now I'm at 800. Barry, you're not a good manager? I thought you were a manager. So literally nobody sold in and the only things that got sold were bankruptcies. So when I was at Goldman Sachs doing M &A from 83 to 85, there came to be in certain situations, buyers that were bootstrap buyers, that were then leveraged buyout financiers and now we call it the private equity industry. And so I came to see some of these entities at very the early stages, KKR would be one, but there were others and a lot of entrepreneurs trying to do the same thing wealthy because families were often these bootstrap buyers. Honestly, it was almost like a religious war between two it's the best way to get the best views of the world. EPS, Earnings Per Share, that all public companies would look at to evaluate mergers and cash flow, EBITDA, which didn't exist as a term, believe it or not, back then. But EBITDA cash flow was how how these bootstrap buyers would look at it. And this seemed kind of interesting and new and different and I became interested in how they did what they did and how they valued it and the So in 1994 you and your co -founder Chuck Klein launched what is the present version of American Securities. What was the catalyst for launching the firm then, what kind of business were you hoping to build? Chuck was then the senior financial advisor to the William Rosenwald family. And the William Rosenwald family, Julius was the genius in Sears Roebuck. And so they had largess from the Rosenwald fortune. We would call that today a family office. It absolutely was. It was called WRFA, William Rosenwald Family Associates. Julius Rosenwald, Bill was his youngest son. Bill separated his money from that of his siblings came and to New York and right after World War II set up his family office modeled in the lines of the Rockefeller family. And he's founded the name, he registered the name American Securities Corporation. And that family office had done what were then called bootstraps, all sorts of investments, not just the stocks and bonds common of wealthy families of the day, but actually buying businesses, some very, very successful But businesses. Chuck was their senior financial advisor, so he's buying selling stocks. And Chuck and I hit it off on our first breakfast on the Upper East Side here in New York. And he kindly asked me if I would come join him.

History That Doesn't Suck

27:54 min | Last week

"paris" Discussed on History That Doesn't Suck

"Other nations are feeling stepped on as well. Even the big four is Italy. On April 23, 1919, with only days until the Germans are set to arrive and receive this still-not-finished peace treaty, Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau find common ground, opposing Italy taking the territory of Fiume. Italy's Vittorio Orlando is sick of this American's hypocrisy. The Italian leader announces that he's leaving and further complains that. Now President Wilson, after ignoring and violating his own 14 points, wants to restore their virginity by applying them vigorously where they refer to Italy. And if we're honest, he's right. Woodrow stands firm on self-determination when it comes to Fiume or the Yugoslavs, but is willing to compromise on an independent Arab nation, Germany's former colonies, or other issues important to his closest allies. Indeed, Woodrow is firmly beside David Lloyd George in ignoring pleas from India and Ireland to cast off British rule and become independent nations. Why is that? Perhaps the answer is best illustrated by Woodrow's question to Ray Baker amid concerns that Japan might leave. If Italy remains and Japan goes home, what becomes of the League of Nations? Ah, yes. For Woodrow, this whole conference boils down to the League. As he sees it, any failures on nationalities or borders made now, the League of Nations can sort out in the future. The League's creation then is paramount, even if the idealistic president has to roll in the mud to get it. The text of the treaty comes together much like my students' term papers, just hours before the deadline. I'll give you an overview, but not just yet. We'll let this conference present it to the Germans first. But I warn you, this isn't a pleasant experience. It's 3 p.m., May 7, 1919. We're 10 miles west of Paris, in Versailles, France, at the Trianon Palace Hotel. The peace conference's more than 200 delegates are taking their seats at tables arranged in the same U-shaped layout used at the first session back in January. But this time, there are six new faces among them. Six German faces. They're seated in the room's center, just below the Big Three. Foremost among them is Germany's toothbrush, mustache-wearing Minister of Foreign Affairs, Count Ulrich Brockdorf-Ronsau. The Count shuffles two speeches in his hands. The first is a short, non-committal response to whatever is said here today. The other is longer, mildly defiant. He still hasn't decided which one he'll use. That will depend on how things go. The gavel strikes. Georges Clemenceau opens the meeting by addressing the Germans in a cold tone. The 413-page volume makes a dull thud as it lands on the Germans' table. Georges lays out its colonies, some European territory, reparation payments, as well as an explicit assertion that Germany is entirely at fault for the war, and tells them they have 15 days to submit any questions in writing. With that, he asks if anyone present would like to speak. The Count raises his hand. Georges accepts. The distinguished German picks up his long speech. Defiant it is, then, and it feels all the more defiant as the Count refuses to stand and delivers the message in his gravelly voice. A peace which cannot be defended in the name of justice before the whole world would continually call forth fresh resistance. We will examine the documents submitted to us with all goodwill and in the hope that the final result of our meeting can be subscribed by us all. David Lloyd George snaps his ivory paper knife into fuming. Georges swings down the gavel once more, meeting adjourned. As they walk out, Woodrow turns to David and says, this is the most tactless speech I have ever heard. The Germans are really a stupid people. They always do the wrong thing. The Welsh wizard answers in agreement. It was deplorable that we let him talk. At this same moment, the German Count is stepping outside. He lights up a cigarette on strength and defiance. It is only the people close by that can see. His lips are trembling. With no time to lose, the Germans dive into the treaty. They are appalled at what they find in page tome. It opens with the Covenant creating Woodrow Wilson's pride and joy, the League of Nations, which Germany is not allowed to join. Germany is also to surrender about 10% of its population and territory. Those losses include the Saar Basin and the port city of Danzig, both of which the League of Nations will watch over. West Prussia and Pozen going to a reconstituted and independent Poland. Further territory is going to Belgium, Denmark, and the state of Czechoslovakia, and of course, Alsace-Lorraine, which France has longed to take back since losing the region five decades ago in the Franco-Prussian War. Also, Germany's overseas colonies are becoming League of Nations mandates. As for reparations, Germany will pay. A commission will yet calculate the cost, but that will come to the equivalent of 33 billion US dollars. It's an astronomical figure for the era, one that any experts worth their salt know that Germany can't pay without upsetting the global economy itself. Georges Clemenceau wanted Germany's military neutered. He got it. Germany's navy may not exceed 15,000 sailors and no submarines. The army may not exceed 100,000 men. Various arms are forbidden and Germany may not send its own military into its French bordering Rhineland, which the Allies will also occupy temporarily. Then there's the insult to injury. One is where this treaty is being signed, the Palace of Versailles. As we know from episode 128, this is where the Germans proclaimed the Second Reich. The Germans insulted France by creating their empire in this symbolic place of French power, and now France will debase the Germans in the same place. I mean, karma? But damn. The other deep cut is Article 231, dubbed the responsibility for starting the war. Period. The German delegates are floored. Reading through this and more in the 413-page treaty, Count Ulrich Bockdorff-Ransau declares, this fat volume was quite unnecessary. They could have expressed the whole thing more simply in one clause. Germany surrenders odd claims to its existence. The Count and his colleagues prepare their objections and counter proposals by the end of May. In brief, they denounce the treaty as a violation of the 14 points. While the French are happy to say, sucks to suck, there are many who agree with the Germans. These include the American Relief Administrator, Herbert Hoover, and Secretary of State, Robert Lansing. All the same, the big three only allow small changes. And by June 16th, 1919, the Germans are told they have three days to sign or resume the war. They're then given three extra days until 7 p.m. on the 23rd to get authorization from the German government. Germany's Armistice Commissioner, Matthias Ötzberger, whom we met in the last episode as he tearfully signed the Armistice in the Compiègne Forest, favors signing. He fears Germany won't survive if war resumes. All but broken, the German army feels the same way. Given that, Germany's National Assembly ascents. The Assembly's despondent chairman declares, We commend our unhappy country to the care of a merciful God. At 5.40 p.m., just over an hour until the deadline, the big four receives a note declaring that Germany will sign. Relief fills the room as Georges Clemenceau sends word to Marshal Ferdinand Foch not to resume hostilities on Germany. The war really is over, and it will become official with German signatures in just five days. It's about three in the afternoon, June 28th, 1919. Five years to the day since the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As symbolic as the date is our location. The Palace of Versailles, Galerie des Glaces, or Hall of Mirrors. Nearly 50 years ago, German princes came here to Louis XIV's palace, this shrine to France's glory, and in this very 80-yard-long hall proclaimed Wilhelm as emperor of a second German Reich, and days later pressed a humiliating peace upon the French, taking Alsace La Raine. It's a wound the French have never forgotten, but today, as plenipotentiaries make their way through the throngs of reporters and hundreds of chatting guests to reach the horseshoe table in the middle, the shoe is on the other foot. Today, the French celebrate victory at Versailles. The Germans shall play the role of the vanquished. Our French prime minister and peace conference chairman, Georges, the Tiger Clemenceau, glances about as America's Woodrow Wilson and Britain's David Lloyd George take their seats. Ushers then hush the crowd, which goes silent. Standing at the door with Marshal Splendour, the Gardere Publicain place their swords into scabbards with a loud click. The Tiger now roars out his order for the Germans to enter. Accompanied by two escorts, two Germans, Foreign Minister Hermann Müller and Colonial Minister Johann Bell, slowly walk the thin slice of the hall's parquet floor not covered by savonary carpets. The sound of their feet shuffling sends a haunting echo through the room. Thousands of eyes stare at the deathly pale men. Many wonder, how can these defeated souls represent Germany's brutal militarism? They look so human. Georges Clemenceau now opens the meeting. He adds a few more remarks. The escorts then, once more, lead the Germans forward. With the vacant eyes of condemned convicts approaching a guillotine, they advance to a small table on which lies the treaty. Silence and tension fill the room as the Germans stare painfully at the parchment before them. Each takes up a pen. As they sign, every stroke fills them with the weight of crushing national debt, lost lands, and a humiliating acceptance of blame. But now, it's done, and delegates representing this conference's 30-odd nations form a line to add their signatures. From outside, the sound of cannon fire fills the mostly quiet hall. It's a celebratory salute announcing that the Germans have indeed signed the Treaty of Versailles. And then, with surprising rapidity, the last delegate signs, it's all over. As Georges Clemenceau walks out, a man stops him to congratulate him. With tears streaming, the tiger announces joyfully, But as British diplomat Harold Nicholson watches this exchange, he doubts if this is, in fact, a beautiful day. He shares this concern with Marie Murat as she stands by his side. Marie doubts it too. The contrast and frankly foreshadowing captured in that last exchange is so powerful and terrifying. Here we have a relieved Georges Clemenceau who looks at the Treaty of Versailles as justice and righteousness. In his mind, 50 years of wrong is being set a right as France recovers Alsace-Lorraine as those German brutes lose their military might and eat both the blame and cost of this most recent devastating war. But is he right? Or are Harold and Marie right as they look on, wondering if this evisceration of Germany hasn't gone too far? We'll hold that thought. We'll dig deeper here. But first, let's find out if, after all of Woodrow Wilson's work, the U.S. Senate will ratify this treaty. The Republican-leaning Senate has seen notable developments as Woodrow has been working to build his idea of a better world at this six-month peace conference. Perhaps most notable is an event that occurred after Woodrow arrived in Paris but before the first session. On January 6, 1919, the great Rough Rider himself, the former president and likely 1920 presidential candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, passed away in his sleep. We'll bid TR farewell properly in a later episode, but for today's tale, we will only note that he died opposing Woodrow's League of Nations, and his dear friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, has carried that torch in his stead. Meanwhile, the League for the Preservation of American Independence has been questioning how the League of Nations doesn't run contrary to the wisdom of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom warned against permanent or entangling alliances. Indeed, as Woodrow puts this treaty before the Senate, concerns over American sovereignty are paramount in his opponents' minds. They ask what implications this League might have over the century-old Monroe doctrine. How might the League impact the United States' ability to make military decisions? For few senators called irreconcilables, no amount of assurances can overcome their concerns. Those deemed mild reservationists, though, are open to it if Woodrow can shore up concerns over American sovereignty. With minor revisions, then, perhaps the president can win them over, as well as the dozens of other senators who remain undecided. True to form, the idealist president will not entertain any revisions. This treaty must be ratified as is, and he will not see the League of Nations watered down. Months pass as the Senate battles, but still, Woodrow holds his ground. He decides to take the fight out of the halls of the Capitol and into the hearts of the American people. In September 1919, Woodrow boards his seven-car presidential train, called the Mayflower, and embarks on a national tour. He stops as often as possible, sometimes giving two or three speeches a day, and, well, you know our professorial president. None of these addresses are short. He's not feeling physically well, but it's working. Giving some 40 speeches over 21 days, he's winning over the nation's citizenry. On September 25th, Woodrow stands firm in his unwillingness to revise the treaty's League of Nations Covenant, telling a crowd of 3,000 in Pueblo, Colorado, we have got to adopt it or reject it. Woodrow returns to his train car with a terrible headache. He has a lot of those these days. Dr. Cary Grayson recommends a walk, so the train stops about 20 miles outside of Pueblo, while Woodrow strolls through the Colorado countryside. Along the road, he encounters a veteran doughboy and his family on their porch. It's a nice visit. Woodrow returns to his train, and they continue down the tracks. Late that night, Woodrow calls for his wife, Edith. Sitting in a chair, he says that the headache is back. It's excruciating. He coughs, complains that the walls are closing in. His face twitches. His ever-faithful presidential physician, Dr. Grayson, is soon there, insisting that they cancel the rest of the tour. But Woodrow can't. He must speak to the people. He insists that he must save the League of Nations. When the doctor tries to talk Woodrow out of continuing the tour again in the morning, the president fires back. Don't you see that if you cancel this trip, Senator Lodge and his friends will say that I am a quitter and the treaty will be lost. But even Woodrow's iron will can't overcome the frailties of being a mere mortal. Something is wrong. And finally, he relents to his wife, doctor, and others. They return to the White House, but it won't be long before things get worse. It's about 8 45 a.m. October 2, 1919. We're at the White House in Washington, D.C., where Edith Wilson's just waking up. Again, the First Lady's had a rather restless night, getting up every hour or two to check on her husband over and over. Then again, it's been like that for a while. Edith thinks of last month's national tour as one long nightmare. But as she walks toward Woodrow's room this morning, she's comforted that things have been a touch better in the few days since they returned to the Executive Mansion. Last night, Woodrow even managed to play billiards, watch a movie, and read some scripture. He did forget his watch going to bed, which was unusual for him, but Edith laughed it off. He's always forgetting things. But now, stepping into her husband's room, Edith is utterly unprepared for what she sees. Seated at the edge of the bed, Woodrow is desperately attempting to grab a water bottle. His left hand is completely limp. Helpless, Woodrow addresses his wife, I have no feeling in that hand. Will you rub it? But first, help me to the bathroom. Edith dutifully supports her husband as he staggers. Tara grips the First Lady as she can feel Woodrow's body spasming in pain with every step. Reaching the presidential bathroom, Edith guides, then stabilizes Woodrow. She asks him if he can handle her stepping away long enough to call for their tireless doctor and friend, Dr. Cary Grayson. Woodrow says he can. But Edith can't use the phone in the nearby bedroom. She's heard rumors that people eavesdrop on that line, and Woodrow would never want the public to know about his current condition. With this in mind, the First Lady dashes down the hall to a private phone, answered by the presidential couple's longtime usher, Ike Hoover. Ike picks up, and Edith softly but firmly instructs him, please get Dr. Grayson. The president is very sick. But before she can even hang up, Edith hears something from the bathroom. She rushes back to find her husband, the esteemed Princeton professor turned President of the United States, unconscious on the bathroom floor. Woodrow survives the stroke. It does, however, leave the president paralyzed on his left side and confined to his room. More than that, he's not the man he was before. Dr. Grayson and Edith decide to keep the full extent of his illness to themselves. With Woodrow out of the public scene, though, the Senate is able to make changes to the treaty. The idealistic president recovers enough to push back by November, and answers that he will not accept any of the Senate's amendments to the treaty. In the weeks following, Woodrow learns that, as the author of the Fourteen Points and founder of the League of Nations, he's won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1919. Yet, ironically, it becomes clear in falling months, in March of 1920, that the U.S. Senate will not be ratifying the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, the U.S. will work out separate treaties with Germany as well as with Austria and Hungary. That's right. After all that work to create and promote it, Woodrow will not see his own nation join his beloved League of Nations. Coming to the end of our tale, let's reflect and take in the big picture. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 faced a truly onerous task. How do some 30 nations from across the globe create a peace after the most destructive, unparalleled war in human history? That's a tall order. Perhaps we should be surprised that the Big Three managed to produce anything at all, especially with the bad blood between Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson. Georges did not like Woodrow. In case I failed to convey Georges' distaste for Woodrow, let me quote the tiger on the American president in his Fourteen Points. Ooh, biting, as was the peace conference chairman's jab at both Woodrow and David Lloyd George that made all of Paris chuckle. I find myself between Jesus Christ on the one hand and Napoleon Bonaparte on the other. As for David Lloyd George, he had his witticisms too, saying of Georges Clemenceau that he loved France but hated Frenchmen. Yet, somehow, between Woodrow's idealism, Georges' drive to safeguard France from another German attack and make the Germans pay, and all the complications of the British government's contradictory implications and promises in the Middle East, and the Welsh wizard somehow pragmatically riding the space between them, they produced a treaty. But a highly problematic treaty. Further conferences and other treaties will shape the post-Ottoman Middle East, but as we saw, the Treaty of Versailles Article 22 planted its seeds with the League of Nations mandate system. From the Middle East to Africa and the Pacific, these mandates will function less as the tutoring and developmental system of which Woodrow dreamed, and more as the latest iteration of imperialism. Then we come to the heart of the treaty's focus. Germany. When I think about the soul-crushing terms that the Treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany in 1919, my mind always goes back to the last time war-torn Europe made peace at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. I told you about this brilliant peacemaking in episode 128. Let's recall that, at Vienna, the other four great powers of Europe chose not to punish the French for Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest, nor overly fear a resurgent France. Instead, they dealt rather generously with France and established a concert system that brought the continent relative peace for a century. The Treaty of Versailles does the opposite. Frankly, between the 1918 Armistice signing and Marshal Ferdinand Foch's train carriage and this treaty's signing in the Hall of Mirrors, the Germans felt every intentional humiliation, not the least of which was the Versailles Treaty's Article 231 war guilt clause. It's hard not to wonder to what extent these harsh conditions and insults added to the sense of betrayal Germans felt toward their own government with the war's sudden reversal and end, as we saw in today's opening, helped pave the sinister path down which young corporal Adolf Hitler will soon drag the world. Politicians, policy wonks, historians, and more will long debate the failures of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. For some in the 21st century, it will become the explanation for many of the worst events in the 20th century and even our present, ranging from World War II to wars and conflicts in the Middle East. But for all the treaty's failures, I have to agree with Professor Margaret MacMillan, the brilliant author of the book Paris 1919. After acknowledging all these same failings, she reminds us that none of the 20th century's evils, even Hitler, was guaranteed or foreordained by the Treaty of Versailles. And finally, well, to quote her directly, if they could have done much better, they certainly could have done much worse. They tried, even cynical old Clemenceau, to build a better order. They could not foresee the future and they certainly could not control it. That was up to their successors. htbspodcast.com htbspodcast.com htbspodcast.com Join me in two weeks, where I'd like to tell you a story.

History That Doesn't Suck

04:51 min | Last week

"paris" Discussed on History That Doesn't Suck

"History That Doesn't Suck is a bi-weekly podcast delivering a legit, seriously researched, hard-hitting survey of American history through entertaining stories. If you'd like to support HTDS or enjoy bonus content, please consider giving at patreon.com forward slash history that doesn't suck. It's a dark, cold night, October 13th, 1918. The 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry is currently holding a line of trenches amid the fields and hills of Flanders that lie 10 miles or so to the southeast of Ypres, not far from Verfik, Belgium. What each of the soldiers are doing, I can't say. But this is a seasoned unit, filled with several men who've seen plenty of death and multiple battles. Many are likely smoking. Perhaps a few are catching a little shut-eye. Some are likely chatting. Do they long for home? Maybe they're discussing the recent setbacks in the war. However they're passing the time, it's interrupted around midnight by the sound of allied artillery. And soon after the first shell strikes, a sweet yet spicy scent and yellow cloud descends upon them. Throughout the line, the call goes out, gas! Immediately, gray-clad men drop to the ground, fumbling in the dark for their masks. Once secured and sealed on their heads, they breathe in hot, uncomfortable, but filtered air. Hours pass. The British mustard gas is unrelenting. Yet, despite the ongoing bombardment, one of the regiment's more recent arrivals has hit his breaking point. The young German rips off his mask, desperate for the cool night's air, and inhales. His screams turn to gags as the yellow gas burns his eyes, blisters his skin, then fills his lungs. Soon enough, he succumbs and dies. The bombardment breaks around 7 a.m. The men tear off their masks and gulp down the morning's clean air. But they only get a taste before their British foe renews the attack. Already exhausted from the last seven hours, some fail to get their masks back on time. They cough, leave, and die. Yet, even those who succeeded at remasking are blinded by this point. And so, one soldier, with some remaining if faint eyesight, calls for the others to form a human chain. Each blind man clings to the coat in front of him as their almost blind comrade stumbles along, leading them backward through the trenches to a first aid station. A short while later, the gassed soldiers are on a hospital train traveling east, away from the deadly western front, back toward the safety of Germany. It's a train full of bloated faces and red, swollen, blinded eyes. Nurses tend to the suffering soldiers as best they can, but many turn these caregivers away. The doctors claim that this blindness is temporary, but the men refuse to believe them. Just more lies. God, how this army has lied to them. Many welcome the thought of death, but they're wrong to disbelieve. Relief is coming in the form of a medical hospital in the East German town of Passerbyck. Days pass. As they do, the swelling in the soldiers' faces and eyes recedes. Bit by bit, light, shapes, and colors return. The improvement is slow, but certain. Days become weeks. October turns to November. During this time, the recuperating soldiers hear talk of some kind of revolt. Perhaps a revolution, even. Who knows? The details are vague, and after all, rumors are just that. Rumors. It's now November 10th. Several of the recovering troops have gathered in a small meeting room. They're here to listen to a local pastor speak. Walking in, this aging man can't hide the hurt he's feeling inside from showing on his face. Somberly, the pro-Kaiser pastor announces to the gathered soldiers that Imperial Germany is no more. That the second hike has fallen, and a republic has risen in its place. Tears well up in the eyes of the many Kaiser loyal soldiers as they listen to this news. Meanwhile, the pastor continues on, expressing his gratitude to the royal house of Hohenzollern and all it did for Prussian and larger German people. But then, the clergyman's expression turns even more crestfallen as he shares the other hard piece of news. Germany has lost the war. The army is surrendering, effective tomorrow. And with that, the pastor hits his breaking point. He begins to weep. So do the soldiers.

Crypto Banter

03:23 min | 3 weeks ago

A highlight from The BEST Performing Altcoin For This Bull Run! (FOMO Imminent!!)

"Solana has exploded over a hundred percent in the past two weeks and today I'm going to show you why I think this run is just getting started. I'm going to show you what caused the run. I'm going to speak to the founders, the OGs. I'm going to show you who's building on the chain and then I'm going to show you why Solana can easily do another 10x in the coming bull market. We're here in Amsterdam and we're here for Solana breakpoint 2023. Last year we were in Lisbon and at the end of Solana breakpoint FTX collapsed and all hell broke loose. The big question is, has Solana recovered and what's the vibe? That's what we're going to find out today. Let's go! What's the vibe? The vibe, resurrection. What that direction is, is one giant global state machine that unifies the entire world at the speed of light, as fast as it can allow. Post FTX, Solana was nearly the key data. But here we are, a year on, a big test for Solana, its developers and its community. And what's here? More people, more quality and higher caliber. Less retail, less tourists and a whole lot more brain power. This reminds me of brain power that I've only ever seen once before and that was at E -DEBCON in Prague in 2018. The two so similar. Also declared dead at 75 in the 2018 bear market. Ethereum made a remarkable recovery and also rose from the ashes. Remember, there's no other channel in crypto that brings you direct access like this so quickly. From the industry's leading movements, builders and brains. From Bitcoin in Miami to Ethereum and Vitalik to CZ and Binance in Paris. We're here to speak to CZ. And now here we are in Amsterdam talking all things Solana. And if you're enjoying this coverage, hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. Anyway, let's get on with the show. Let me tell you why we are so bullish on Solana. Remember when we came here, we came here neutral. Now we're bullish. Why? We have over 300 talks, over 3 ,000 people across core engineers, app developers and creators. It seems that the typical retail investor was worried about price and the overhang of the FTX tokens. But the builders, well, they just kept their head down and just kept building. Why on Solana? Because this is only possible in Solana. Building what, you ask? Well, firstly, they built significant network upgrades. The most significant being FireDancer, a re -engineering of the Solana validator client from the ground up going live on testnet. FireDancer is the first brand new full re -implementation of a validator for Solana optimized at every level for maximum performance, maximum speed and network reliability. Think about it. Solana was criticized for its downtime. But it's been up and running for about 10 months straight. And as Anatoli says, they solved this problem with a very clever piece of engineering. At last break point, we finally shipped this major upgrade that implemented local fee markets that isolated how applications generate fees and hotspots between each other. Anatoli also says they've taken the final step in making Solana truly decentralized. And it's the last step before Solana goes off beta.

Last Year Prague Amsterdam Lisbon Solana Paris Today Miami 2018 Over 3 ,000 People Over 300 Talks First Over A Hundred Percent TWO 75 About 10 Months CZ 10X Firstly Past Two Weeks

C.G.Jung Helpdesk

12:34 min | 3 weeks ago

A highlight from 022 - Movie Analysis: Fight Club

"Hi, my name is Markus and this is a companion podcast for the C .G. Jung Help Desk Meetup Group. I host live events on Zoom every two weeks about the concepts and ideas of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Every event I give a presentation about Jungian concept, so have fun with this event's topic. So we will start and this will be a little bit of a rerun because I've done this event a little bit over a year ago already when the group was way smaller, but I wanted to do it again for one reason because I did not have a recording for a podcast and for the other reason because my opinions changed a little bit and the things I found in the movie became a little bit more. So with time ideally the understanding gets deeper and that can be applied to more places. So this is actually how I want to use the movie. I'm not saying it's a Jungian movie, I'm just saying it's a little bit of a weird coincidence that there are a lot of things in there that can be seen through Jungian lens and that it can be used to really make good explanations and give examples what Jung meant with specific phenomena and experiences. And yeah, this is why I wanted to talk about the movie and it's a pretty famous movie to see through a psychological lens and for the beginning I want to establish like three key concepts about Jung just to help to jumpstart a little bit the interpretation and analysis. So Jung had this idea that the psyche is an energetic system so that there's energy being exchanged and moving and causing things and he called that libido which comes out of psychoanalysis. He was pretty close with Freud and Freud coined this term and Freud gave it a very sexual direction and Jung saw it really as okay this is just a basic energy that is moving around things in the psyche. He does not say that this energy really exists, it's rather he uses it as explanation as a metaphor to explain certain behavior of the psyche and for him libido is neutral and his explanation is even using it like money because money can be anything, right? When you have money you can buy a car, you can go on a vacation, you do work, you get money so it can be exchanged for different things and this means it can on one side is pretty neutral but like you can do good things with it or you can do bad things with it and it's swirling around in the psyche causing things and a lot of those things are unconscious. So the most things happening that use up libido or use libido are in the unconscious part of our psyche, a little bit like the body, right? The body does a lot of things by itself without us consciously doing it like breathing, digesting, pumping blood through the body and the psyche is a little bit like that. What makes consciousness special and especially human consciousness is that we have libido to use it to do specific things so when we exert willpower we aim for something and we materialize something, a thought, an action, a creative product for example where libido is spent like money and when we concentrate a lot and we work a lot we feel also tired that there's a loss of libido, we cannot do so much anymore and for him there's this barrier between consciousness and the unconscious and things in the unconscious they have libido, they work and so on but the question whether something traverses over in the conscious realm has to do with how much energy it has. So how much libido is there? He says there are a lot of things happening in the background that we don't notice, that we don't realize until the point where they start acting up. So like normally we don't notice our digestion but when we have trouble there because we're ill or we have eaten really a lot then we notice it. When it processes barrier we become way more aware of that and he uses a French term for that because he also studied a little bit in Paris to learn about psychology and it's called abissimo de nouveau mental which means there's a lowering of consciousness. This means things can easily or more easily get from the unconscious to consciousness. For example when people do awareness training and meditate and start focusing on their body that already gives them a different feeling of the body. They might notice that there are certain parts aching or that certain parts are feeling good, something that were below the threshold before. But when people for example are sleeping they become very aware of the unconscious processes or when people get sick, ill, drunk or deprived of sleep they can start to hallucinate and to be more aware of certain thoughts. So for example when you don't sleep for three days you will basically will have hallucinations till your body stops functioning correctly. So the body really needs sleep. That's the first concept. The second concept has to do with perception and perception is for Jung very subjective. This means we don't see the external world as it really is but it rather is always painted by subjective experience and subjective personality. It gets filtered through us what we see, what we experience. So we are kind of limited by our consciousness. We're limited recognizing the things we can recognize. For example when there's a foreign language to us it's just weird noises or strange letters and we can't make it out. But if we get proficient in the language then we can pick out this information. Before it was just a jumbled mess and then it can become poem or like analysis on a movie in Jungian terms when we are proficient in the thing. Consciousness forms what we can see, what we cannot see. You also thought there's not so much a big difference between inner experience and outer experiences. Outer experiences from the outside world those are of course very dominant as for example the sun or somebody hitting one. This is something outside but we also have inside experiences. Extremon would be like a phobia or a trauma but also dreams that come from the inside. And Jung treats those things pretty similarly because he says what is real is what causes something. Your reaction on fear or hope or love which comes from inside has a reaction on you the same as it would happen outside. When you're afraid of a dog then it doesn't need to be a dog around for you already to be afraid. And this means that Jung was very open for this psychic realm and said okay this psyche has a huge influence and this is why he looked into it because he saw there was a huge influence. And the same way how we can see things through consciousness we are also able to be blind because of consciousness because we do not focus on something and we cannot recognize something. There's always a limitation to that similar to the eye. We think the world around us is high definition but we don't see this world in high definition. It's only a very small spot actually that can put in a lot of information. Everything around it is basically guessed right and if you stretch out your arm and look at your thumb the size of your thumbnail that is the part that you see with high accuracy and high resolution. And the rest is basically your brain stitching all the things together and just saying yeah everything looks very clear very sharp but actually you only see a very small spot and the rest is like generated by AI we would say today. The third concept is consciousness is blind and we have a complete psyche so our psyche is in many parts smarter than we are because our psyche is the human nature that has been with humans for millions of years. So it's been formed through evolutionary processes through experiences to be already ready for certain situations. So consciousness while and you as an individual person have to learn certain things the body already knows a lot of things. It's more a rediscovery and the development of consciousness is to become bigger and larger and to encompass more functions and experiences of the psyche. And the way how the psyche does this is by compensation. So when you run too far into one direction with your consciousness there will be a counterbalance created in the unconscious to bring you back in this position. And Jung even talked about that when people have depression or neurosis that this is a healing function. This is a psyche trying to heal itself to push certain contents into consciousness so that consciousness pays attention to them, tries to incorporate them. And similar as fever is the reaction on a for example virus infection. The fever is not the illness. The illness is the virus and the same for him neurosis or depression is not the illnesses is a reaction to something. It's for fever the body trying to kill the virus or the bacteria with higher temperature and in the case of neurosis and complexes to force consciousness to pay attention to it which is also psychoanalytic term. This can cause an extreme case a split in the psyche as consciousness is so stiff and so unadapted that there has to be a big big force trying to move it from its very sturdy position. So for people who have seen the movie which I guess everybody of you already did you might have picked up already some things I'm trying to get at in the later analysis. But just to bring everybody up to speed if it's been a longer time since you have been seen the movie and make a short summary and I've written it down to keep it really really short and on point because I will mention some things that will be important. So summary of Fight Club the movie. The nameless narrator which is called Jack colloquially can't sleep. He is severely depressed and discovers self -help groups that he doesn't share the problems with but can find emotional release. This goes on until a woman joins that plays the same game called Marla Singer. She pushes Jack back into his depression because he becomes aware that he is a fraud. At this moment he makes acquaintance with Tyler Durden a soap salesman. After Jack's apartment burns down he moves in with Tyler and goes into a spiritual journey which makes him question society and its rules. Things spiral out of control when others join the journey causing mayhem in the real world. Jack has his doubts investigates Tyler and comes to the realization that Tyler is himself and a split off part of his psyche. When the group wants to demolish skyscrapers in the middle of the city Jack confronts Tyler to the point that Jack shoots himself to stop Tyler. The movie ends with Jack holding hands with Marla watching the buildings collapse. And that's Fight Club a little bit over to our movie. And this is also my disclaimer I will mainly talk about the movie but that because that's what most people are familiar with. I also read the book many years ago but the movie does something very well and it makes it even more tighter and clearer the whole narrative and certain topics it fleshes us out. So the movie is really an improvement over the book and even the author of Chuck Paul Nowick said the same. So the book itself is based on a short story that Chuck wrote which is still in the book if you're interested and you're reading the book there's a chapter about Fight Club explaining the rules. This is basically unchanged the short story and later Chuck fleshed all this out to make a complete book. And this caught the attention of David Fincher who wanted to make a movie out of it with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt and he actually did. And the movie was released and it pretty much bombed. Nobody wanted to see it in the cinema. It was a missile. So for the star power that was there somehow people wanted really interested. It wasn't late until the movie came out on DVD that it really found a cult following especially with the soap bar which are also used as a logo for the event and the posters it became a cult classic spread and now it's a very famous movie and it's very high on the list of the most impressive the best movies IMDb.

Chuck Brad Pitt Tyler David Fincher Carl Gustav Jung Chuck Paul Nowick Tyler Durden Edward Norton Jung Paris Marla Singer Marla Second Concept Three Days First Concept Jack Third Concept Imdb Fight Club One Reason

The Voicebot Podcast

09:19 min | Last month

A highlight from Generative AI News - Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, ChatGPT, Bard, and Many More - Voicebot Podcast 354

"And maybe with Gemini, it gets even better. But I think it's like really competent right now. And so people don't talk about BARD as much. I think they have more of a perception issue than they do a capability issue at this point. As long as Google avoids social media, they're pretty good at what they do. OK. So hey, everyone, this is Game, the generator of AI News Rundown. We do this every week. We've done this every week since February of this year, just to like run down the top stories. Eric and I are writing a lot about these. We talk about things that we don't write about, all sorts of different things. But we try to give you a little bit of the story behind the story. If you're on LinkedIn or you are on YouTube, just give us a like if you haven't already. We appreciate that. If you're on YouTube, like follow us, like do a subscribe as well. We do this plus a lot of other things on there. So we try to try to bring more info to the market, things you don't see generally. OK. Oh, and we're going to do, we'll do winners and losers of the week towards the end. So if you're thinking of like who the winners and losers of generator of AI this week are, put them in the chat or just tell us you're here. All the all the other stuff, like get engaged. We love that. All right. You want to talk about Meta? You mentioned it very briefly. And like, yeah, it's pretty wild. Tell me about what's going on there. Yeah. I mean, essentially, I mean, you know, Meta has played around with this before, as I mentioned in the article, and it didn't necessarily go very well. But now they have essentially their own version of a chat GPT style assistant chat bot that's accessible through so many of their through their various Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and including their the Ray -Bans smart glasses that they have and their new the Quest 3 VR headset. And yeah, much like chat GPT, it's supposed to just be a conversational assistant that can answer your questions and handle everything from planning trips and doing recipes and things like that. But and it is good and useful, including, in fact, some generative AI images, image generation and other elements that are sort of tossed in there as well. But beyond that, they're looking ahead to this is what is Meta good at or what does it have a lot of its as influencers, it has social media. And so they're also putting a bunch of generative AI chat bots that are celebrity backed and, you know, they're making fake bios for them and everything. But the idea is that they're sort of domain limited in the sense of they each have a thing that they're good at, but they have the personality of a celebrity behind it in terms of not just their the image, but also the the character and, you know, everything from talking about sports with a Tom Brady created character named Brew or talking about lifestyle with a vlogger named Billy who's played by Kendall Jenner and my personal favorite, a choose your own adventure story guide. If you ever want to play that, it's his name is Dungeon Master and he's played by Snoop Dogg. You know, these are this is where Meta has an edge on in terms of consumer facing generative AI their for sort of parasocial interaction. Yes, it is. And this makes that parasocial interaction interactive, actually. And not all of them have all the features yet of the main meta AI system, but they will at some point have more. And I do think this is going to be the introduction to generative AI for younger people that has not been around quite, you know, the teenagers who are trying to write their papers for school, this is going to be the thing they do for fun rather than the thing they're doing. Exactly. I think that's that is an excellent analysis. I love it that you broke that down. You and I had not talked about this before right now. We've been too busy and we haven't talked to each other. I really like that breakdown. And I if we look at chat GPT, we look at Bard. I mean, these are productivity applications. There's like a business skew. It's not that you can't use them for your own for personal, but there is that business skew to it. And that's OK. People are doing that. When Dave Lamp talked about Alexa LLM, he said, hey, we're talking about like creation, not consumption, right? Everyone's talking chat GPT. It's all about like for creation, like doing images, writing reports, those types of things. And it was a really good way to frame it and say, you know, Alexa is really about consumption. It's about people using it in the home to do tasks and to consume media and stuff like that. And so we're taking this different tack. And although Facebook from time to time has flirted with being a productivity business tool, all these other things and objectively failed time and time again, they have a really big audience on the consumption consumer media area. And you and I talked about this. The next big growth in this space, we've already got huge growth, like on the productivity side, it's going to be these companions. It's going to be the entertainment use cases with LLMs, which are so much better. And that has got tremendous distribution. Like who's got better distribution than them? I mean, so in a role, it just seems perfect celebrity. Well, yeah, of course. Like they have that as well. But like it just seems like their properties really lend itself well to like not just having a great solution, but having distribution like immediately. And what's nice about this is they're not exactly just copying something and trying to repurpose it. They're trying to put it in their ecosystem. They're creating these new capabilities. Not that other people weren't doing it, but like there's been these other types of things where they just like surely just copy something that they see is going on. This is something we've seen some examples, ADOP in South Korea. Some people might say, hey, Brett, they're just really copying Character AI. OK, yeah, fair. But like if they're not, Character AI wasn't like in their ecosystem as much. They're on the web. So I think that like this is a good move by them. And it's not just that the it's sort of a quietly mentioned, but it's not just that they're paying these celebrities for their look or for their, you know, for something about how to create this character. I mean, by getting the input from these celebrities, you know, Paris Hilton wanted a whodunit solving. Yeah, yeah. She's like the Nancy Drew of this era. But because it's guess what? Now they're investing in it. They're going to be promoting it. They're going to be encouraging people to use it. And if people try one and they like it, suddenly they're going to try the other. Suddenly they're using meta AI system and now they're buying Ray -Ban smart glasses. Exactly. It's for the consumer. It's like shopping assistant, all these other types of things. I think it's like it's really good to get people addicted to things. And this is going to be the next one. That might be a core competency of the company. Elias Parker said AI21 was holding them back from being one of the biggest guys right now. Or are they? And I think the answer is it sort of depends on what you think AI21 is. So first of all, they are one of the biggest guys. Like the biggest players on the block. They're in Bedrock. They're in Vertex too, I think. Someone can correct me on that. So they have availability. Like the cloud providers pay attention to them. They have users and then they also have a very popular app, WordTune, which is something of a Grammarly competitor. I think they would say it's more than Grammarly. And I think that's fair because it's more like this cross between an assistant and Grammarly. But any thoughts on that? I think they are a big player, but I think like domain specific. They're moving into this domain specific focus with their application, but also with their APIs and some other things. And they just raised money at $1 .4 billion, I think. I think they have a very bright future, but they're not going to be open AI. Yeah. I mean, they have a $1 .4 billion valuation. They just raised $155 million. Yeah, they're part of Vertex. WordTune now is offering enterprise solutions. They've created their own LLMs. They've created their own APIs. They have a platform for building apps that the companies can use. They have a lot of products and a lot of solutions that are both for consumers and for the enterprise space. And I think that they're not open AI, obviously, but they are very much an alternative for those who don't want to go with an American tech giant as their provider. And they also have a lot of connections with not just with Google, but with Apple there. They were one of the first to make a Siri controllable mobile app. Yeah. I think that they're not going anywhere for a while, I would say. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up Apple. I mean, I think that that's one of the things that might happen.

Eric Dave Lamp Brett Kendall Jenner Tom Brady $1 .4 Billion Billy Paris Hilton South Korea Apple $155 Million Elias Parker Google Nancy Drew Siri Ray -Ban Brew Ai21 Both Meta

The Voicebot Podcast

01:37 min | Last month

A highlight from Generative AI News - Anthropic, Amazon, OpenAI, ChatGPT, Bard, and Many More - Voicebot Podcast 355

"This is episode 355 of the Voicebot podcast and the 35th edition of the Generative AI News Rundown. Today, we have new deepfake scams targeting MrBeast and Tom Hanks, the rise of digital assistance, new product features from Cohere and LinkedIn, and a whole lot more. Welcome back, Voicebot Nation and all of you synthetians out there. I'm Brett Kinsella, and I've been your host of the Voicebot podcast for over six years and now, the last 35 weeks, your guide to the top stories in generative AI. In this episode of the Generative AI News Rundown, we have a lot of things to discuss about the rise, fall, and rise again of digital assistance, and meta of all companies has a really interesting approach to the next phase in the market. Eric Schwartz, my colleague from voicebot .ai, joins me to break down the week's top stories, including deepfake scams are getting more frequent and some of them are pretty good. Zuckerberg introduced a new AI assistant. He couldn't have seemed less interested and met his new competitor to chat GPT and Bard. Instead, he wanted to talk about new AI characters based on Paris Hilton, Tom Brady, Snoop Dogg, and a few others. We connect that story with Bard coming to Google Assistant and you have a new paradigm emerging across the digital assistant landscape. Also this week, our stories from Cohere, LinkedIn, Tinder's ex -CEO, he has a new startup, Instagram's ex -founders add generative AI to their app that no one seems to care about. Visa is investing $100 million in generative AI startups and a bit more. The generative AI winners and losers of the week capped the show. Next up, generative AI and entertainment companions, Google's strange product portfolio decisions, deepfakes on the rise, and more. Let's get started.

Eric Schwartz Brett Kinsella Zuckerberg $100 Million Bard Tom Brady Tom Hanks Paris Hilton Google GPT Today Instagram Linkedin Snoop Dogg This Week Tinder Over Six Years Generative Ai News Rundown Cohere Voicebot Nation

CoinDesk Podcast Network

11:58 min | Last month

A highlight from GEN C: From VR to AI, Mattels Vision for the Future of Play

"This episode of Gen -C is sponsored by Chainalysis. Gen -C is the generation of the new internet. In Gen -C, the C stands for crypto, but it also stands for creators, the connected consumer and collectibles, both digital and physical with on -chain provenance. It stands for culture and characters, the ones we play in games and the companion ones that AI is building alongside us. It stands for community and digital citizenship and the new set of transparent and trustless tools being built to govern them. These are the people who were raised on a different philosophy on how they look at money, how they look at identity, how they look at privacy and how they look at the hybrid, digital and physical spaces being built all around us. And finally, how they reimagine their relationships with the communities and companies they interact with. We focus on how brands large and small are building for these audiences. Welcome to Gen -C. Sam, so nice to see you. Avery, how is everything? Where in the world are you? I think we're matching color -wise today, which I really like. What's going on? Gen -C in neutrals. Yes, we are. I'm live from Hudson Yards. How about you? I'm live from Flatiron. We're like a stone's throw from each other. We should have done this live. Neighbors, we really need to do more live episodes. That should be one of our goals. We should do that coming up for our Basel. Are you going to be there, Sam? I'm going to be at our Basel. I would love that. Let's figure it out. Maybe we can do some Gen -C merch all in Off -White or maybe an A -Crew might be nice. A little touch of Gen -C neutrals. Maybe a little hint of green, though, to nod towards our branding. Always up. Avery, I think we're going to deep dive in this intro into the immersive worlds that is immersive worlds. So I've sort of collected a bunch of things to talk about that I want your opinions on, that I want us to mix it up about. The first is, and I think I shared this with you, was reading a report on virtual brand environments from, I don't know if they're pronounced G -I -Q or Geek. It's Geek. Charles' company Geek. Yes, Charles' company Geek. I saw the report on virtual brand experiences, which was really interesting, but the thing that sort of stuck out to me most was when you measure the properties that under -25s are spending most of their time in. Number one is Roblox, something you've been talking about forever. Number two, TikTok. Three, YouTube. Number four, Minecraft. So you think about that, it's two virtual worlds and two really entertainment -focused social platforms. And so I wanted to sort of get your thoughts on this as a reality, really for the marketers in the room, because I've been having a lot of conversations, as I'm sure you have in the last couple of weeks, on how we should be thinking really future, right? Like 12 months, 36 months, about the rise of these virtual environments, both VR, AR, and gameplay, as well as video. And what is a brand to do with these spaces? How do you guys approach bringing brands into these environments? Yeah, it's a good question, Sam, and I think it's one that's very blurry because if you ask 10 different people, you're going to get 10 different definitions of what is an immersive experience versus a game versus a metaverse versus a virtual world. And what I've observed working with a lot of these platforms directly is they all characterize them a little bit differently. Some of them like to lean into gaming, some like to learn into metaverse, cough meta, some like to lean into immersive experiences, some like to lean into immersive social. Like Roblox very clearly does not identify themselves as being a gaming company, though a lot of their players actually identify as gamers and as people who are playing in a game. And the way that we think about it is, one, it's like social, where there's not just one way to show up on social. There's X, there's meta, there's TikTok, and there's always a new thing. Just this week, like Flip has been trending and has been everywhere. So I think the same is probably true of these immersive worlds and immersive experiences. Some of them are a destination, some of them are a platform, some of them are communities, and one thing's for sure, there will continue to be more and more of these built because people want to engage and interact virtually. And as we know very well, people want to own things online, they want to bring their digital items with them across different realms. There's a lot that people are trying to crack in terms of interoperability, but balancing interoperability with scalability I think has been a challenge. But the way that we think about it for brands is consumers are looking for these ownable, immersive, personalized experiences. There is no question about that. There is no question about where they're showing up, and we have a lot of data to back that up. Geek, of course, has put out these fantastic reports. They have their own self -service platform as well, where you can see what they have access to data -wise, so you can sort of validate that people are there. And the way to show up, from my perspective, is very similar to how brands try to experiment with any new place. It's authentically connect with those communities, authentically partner with the leaders in that space, with creators in that space, and learn before you go all in on launching something that's fully brand -owned. What stands out to me from what you're saying is three different things. One is it actually reminds me of the beginning of when Experiential was becoming a thing. Yes. Because in the beginning of Experiential, which was really like when I was really building most of my career, every company had a different name for what Experiential was, right? Some were events companies, some were PR companies, some were doing activations, some were doing stunts. No one could align on what the language was even, so it was actually very hard to be an agency in that time because you're selling five different things to five different people in ways that you're hoping to get a little bit of a budget from someone who had to take it from somewhere else. And then at some point, Experiential just became the accepted category, and it feels like now virtual or persistent experiences feel like there's a moment happening around that. The second thing that I want to digest from what you said, which is the hypothesis we've talked about a little bit, but I've been just going and battle -testing it with other folks in the space, is this idea that the evolution of experience design is going to these immersive worlds. And so in speaking to a digital marketer, a large brand, this past weekend, I kind of asked their opinion about this, and the thing they said, which I thought was really interesting, was it costs the same for them to build an experience in a virtual world than it does for them to create one pop -up event experience in a major city, right? So if you really break that down, it's like you can do your influencer event in Tokyo or in Paris, and you're going to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to do it, or you can build something in a Roblox, in a Minecraft, in a Fortnite, in a Zapeta or Spatial, and you can have tens of thousands of people go through it versus 500 in a single evening. So they were looking at a little bit like kind of this analogy of if we're going to be doing five events this year, maybe one of them actually is a virtual space that ends up being our always -on 24 -7 experience, and then the other four are IRL, and they kind of feed into each other. Oh, you didn't get to make it to our event? Go enjoy it in whatever world it might be. So I thought that was also an interesting framing of experiential as a stepping stone. Now it's going to be live events, augmented hybrid events, and then fully immersive events. Any thoughts on that? I love that, and I think theoretically it makes sense. Practically, event space designers, like the environment design, inherently has to be so different, even between Roblox and Zapeta. That's the reality. It can be the same sort of broad concept of, hey, we're going to show up in this type of a way, but it's not like you can just take your renders from Art Basel and put them in Roblox and it's going to work. So I think it still has to be fit for context. The same way it has to be fit for context in different cities and in different pop -up experiences, it also has to be fit for context and fit for format in these different worlds. And I think what you just explained is the way a lot of brands would think about it. It's like, well, I have this pop -up, and I'm now going to just virtually pop up. If you do that, if you build it, they won't come unless it's good, is my two cents. Of course. Well, two things. One, I think we're not there yet, but I know there's a bunch of people who are working in this space, that we are entering a place where the tools you use to design your 3D, your fabrication, and your event design for a pop -up are going to be able to output into game -ready assets that you could import into a Unity, that you could import into an Unreal. And this is something I've spoken to a fair amount of people in the architecture space about, that as they're designing spaces now, it's getting easier and easier. It's not a one -to -one solution, yet there needs to be some middleware. But I do think that if you were designing the flagship Gucci store in Venice, and you wanted to create that version in Roblox or in Spatial, it wouldn't be as hard today as it would. No. I think it's getting easier and easier, and I think theoretically it makes all the sense in the world. And we haven't seen that many people doing it yet. I think it's really smart, and I think people who really understand experiential should gravitate to scaling this out. And then I wouldn't be a vain right if I didn't say it's not only about the event and the experience, it's not only about bringing it to these places, it's about capturing those experiences, both in person and virtually, to scale on social. I think we have this big theory that events can be a huge content generator if done properly, and I think virtual events can as well. I think this allows us to go to the next step, which is also part of the conversations I've been asking people, and I think that you've probably been focusing on, is this idea of immersive commerce. That we're starting to get to a point where we know Roblox is building out a ton of Shopify -like features into what they're doing. We know that Fortnite and Unreal are doing the same thing. We're seeing it in a lot of the blockchain -based virtual worlds. But the idea that you can be buying virtual items and also that your immersive worlds can be storefronts for IRL items, which I think is a really interesting place at Advertising Week last week. I was on a session with Super League, but also with the executive producer of Hamilton, and what she and Maggie were saying was when people come to the show, there are limited -edition t -shirts you can only get when you go to a Hamilton performance, and so people buy those as badges to be there. She's like, we're starting to do those to come into our Roblox experience, the Hamilton experience they have in Roblox. But then we were talking about, oh, but what if you could also only buy a specific shirt by visiting or going through a specific experience in Roblox, but that we send you the actual shirt? And it becomes kind of a more front -end shopping experience in an immersive world. I was just reading about this group 3DM, which is doing a lot of AR, VR. We love 3DM, yes! Yeah, exactly. But the thing that was just really interesting to me was they just did a big raise, and the lead investor on the big raise wasn't like an A16Z, it was Interpublic Group. And I was like, oh, so interesting that it's an ad -holding company that's coming in to help create immersive commerce because that's where the ad companies also see there's going to be an opportunity in the future. Are you guys working at all on the idea of in -world commerce as a scalable technology? I would say we're experimenting with it, and I think we're trying to advise our brands to not be too greedy because you can make some money, but it's very small. It's very, very small, and I think that the earned media potential is actually greater than that if you do it correctly. I've seen a lot of these agencies buy up rights to monetize digitally, this thing that we saw with NFTs, and we've kind of tried to caution away from that too much. I think it's okay for pilots, it's okay for very limited things, but I would way rather have 100 ,000 people claim a free digital item and be wearing it around Roblox than to sell 1 ,000 of them for $100 each just because the math doesn't math on those things. I wonder a little bit about the stock Xs of the world, the Supremes of the world. That's why I said the very limited edition, yes, but if you're just a normal brand t -shirt, why don't we just give those away and then have them be walking billboards? Versus if you're like, great, there's only 100 of these that are super exclusive and awesome and done with this cool designer and unlocked this cool thing. That, I think the premiumization, 100%. I think the mass though, it doesn't make sense for brands to be too greedy yet because it's still a building economy.

Tokyo Paris Venice TWO Interpublic Group 100% 100 ,000 People 36 Months Gucci SAM 12 Months Maggie Five Events First This Year Today Last Week Charles' Avery Five Different People

Discerning Hearts - Catholic Podcasts

11:27 min | Last month

A highlight from LST7 The Personality of St. Therese The Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux with Fr. Timothy Gallagher Discerning Hearts Podcast

"Discerninghearts .com in cooperation with the Oblates of the Virgin Mary presents the letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux with Father Timothy Gallagher. Father Gallagher is a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary a religious community dedicated to retreats and spiritual direction according to the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. He is featured on several series found on the eternal word television network. He is also author of numerous books on the spiritual teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the venerable Bruno Lanteri founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary as well as other works focused on aspects of the spiritual life. The letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux with Father Timothy Gallagher. I'm your host, Chris McGregor. This is now Bishop Guy Gaucher. Anything that he's written is well worth reading. He is just a very very fine scholar of Therese. The bishop goes on, we have here an inexhaustible source of study. She whom we customarily call Saint Therese of the Virgin Mary was able to say at the moment of her death that the foundation of her whole piety was nourished on the text of Isaiah chapter 53 concerning the suffering servant. When we mutilate her name we mutilate her message to say nothing of her entire life and so when you give her the name that she wanted and keep in that name Therese of the Child Jesus of the Holy Face and our whole conception of Therese changes and the suffering that's a thread through everything that we're speaking about here is understood. Wow. Mutilate her name. I won't be doing that anymore. Yes, that said rather strongly, isn't it? Wow, it really is. It's so true. We don't have to over exaggerate that either. To speak of Therese of the Child Jesus captures a real deep truth about who she is and I don't think we need always to feel literally obliged to give the entirety of the name. But to recognize that there is another piece in the name and it is a foundational even the central piece helps us keep Therese in perspective. The childlike element without the suffering would risk remaining sentimental. When you put the two together as they were so profoundly put together in Therese anything sentimental disappears. I don't mean the warmth, the spontaneity, the delight, the joy, all of that which goes with a childlike spirit you know and Jesus says that to enter the kingdom we need to be like children. All of that remains but it is rooted in a very profoundly lived way of the cross you know that that gives it depth and maturity. If we rely on the testimony of Mother Agnes, that's her sister Pauline, given at the beatification process we have good reason to call her sister Therese of the Holy Face. Mother Agnes stated, Devotion to the Holy Face was the servant of God's, she was not yet venerable at this point, was the servant of God's special attraction, devotion to the Holy Face. As tender as was her devotion to the Child Jesus it cannot be compared to her devotion to the Holy Face. So all of that underlies what we've seen. I cannot tell you all I would like. My soul is powerless. If only I could but no this is not in my power. Why be sad? Do you not always think what I am thinking? I can't share everything with you the way I would wish to but don't let that be a sadness. I know that you already know everything in my heart. When they were younger girls together there was a time when they would go up in the call it the attic room of their home at Les Buissonné and together they would look out the window. The home was on a raised kind of a hill and so there was a broad panorama before them of the city and then off into the distance and they would sit there for hours just speaking about spiritual things and that was probably the moment when they were closest together. Therese compares those conversations to that conversation that Augustine has with his mother, remember at Ostia, before their death when time just disappears and they even touch eternity in some way as they speak. They were so deeply united in this at that time. She says I know that you know everything I'm thinking. Thus all I do not tell you you divine you understand. Jesus makes you feel it in your heart. Has he not moreover set up his abode there to console himself for the crimes of sinners? Yes it is there in the intimate retreat of the soul that he instructs us together and one day he will show us the day which will no longer have any setting. Happy feast. How sweet it will be one day for your Therese to wish it to you in heaven. As I said that perspective is is always there in Therese. This next is a brief selection from a description of Therese written by her novice mistress who was a Sister Marie of the Angels and Therese at this point is 20 years old and it's kind of classic you'll find it quoted often in writing on Therese. Sister Therese of the child Jesus 20 years old novice and jewel of the Carmel. It's dear Benjamin. Office of painting. So that's what Therese is doing at this time. She would decorate stoles or they had her do different things in the chapel and so on. Therese never had any training in painting. At one point her sister Selene who was the most gifted in this of all the sisters her Pauline also painted and wrote poetry and did some plays and things but Selene was the best of them as a painter and the first images of Therese really all come from paintings of Selene that Selene did of her. At one point she did a painting of Our Lady and she brought it to their father to see and it's really pretty remarkable for somebody that age and with the limited training that she'd had and he was so impressed by it that he proposed to Selene that she go to Paris and take lessons from an accomplished artist in painting and Selene said no to that because she already had it in mind that she wanted to enter the Carmel but as a sideline on that while this conversation was going on their father turned to Therese and said would you also like instruction in painting which Therese would have wanted in the worst way. You know for somebody who had no training in painting other than a certain amount that Selene showed her she does pretty well. I mean she's not a great painter but with training probably could have become as good as Selene perhaps. That's just a guess but certainly better than she was and she would have given anything for it. Her sister Marie I mentioned earlier could be blunt and sometimes didn't always see things well and she just spoke up quickly before Therese could even answer and just said no she doesn't have the same talent as Selene it would just be a waste of time and resources to do that and Therese didn't say anything and she just bore it you know she didn't speak up for herself so she never had the training in the painting that Selene had and that was Therese. She simply bore it but nonetheless at this point she is painting in the Carmel. She never had tasks which would involve heavy physical expenditures of energy you know heavy lifting and those kinds of things she just wouldn't have had the health for that sort of thing. She did help with the haying and those kinds of things. Office of painting in which she excels without having had other lessons than those of seeing our Reverend Mother her dear sister at work so Pauline actually. Tall Therese was I've seen five three five four but she was the tallest of the sisters. Tall and strong with the appearance of a child a tone of voice and expression hiding within her a wisdom of perfection a perspicacity of a 50 year old. In fact some of the sisters said that if it weren't for her age they would have willingly seen her as prioress of the Carmel just in terms of her maturity. Also the fact that she was one of a group of four sisters which was divisive within the community that was not an easy thing for the remainder of the community to have this block of family members like this. Soul always calm and in perfect possession of itself in all things and with everybody. Little innocent thing to whom one would give God without confession to receive communion there'd be no need for confession. But one whose head is full of mischief to play on anyone she pleases and these are the lines which are all often quoted mystic comic everything she can make you weep with devotion and just as easily split your sides with laughter during our recreations. After a lunch and supper there was a time when they would break silence and they would just sit together in the common space and they might be sewing or doing different things but in free conversation together. And they would say when Therese would not be there they'd say we are not going to laugh today. You know she was a mimic she could split people's sides with laughter with her imitations of people. For example she imitated their guide on that pilgrimage in Italy. Different things like that always kindly you know they always immediately say never in a but she could do this so well that she'd have them all just splitting their sides with laughter puns too. We lose these in English but in some of her sayings she'll respond lightning quick to something with a pun that once you uncover it and see what she's saying you just laugh you know. Maybe we're spoiled by all the pictorial representations of all the pictures of her but I have yet to see a picture of Saint Therese smiling. A full smile teeth laughing they're always the very serious very almost sedate nature of a picture of her. Well there is one reason at least for that and that is if you look at the photographs we're really blessed that Celine when she entered Celine was sort of into things like this you know painting and so on and she also got into photography and was allowed to bring her camera into the Carmel which is why we have the photographs of Therese that we have. But the way pictures were taken at the time it was a nine -second exposure so you will always see people very rigid and unmoving and their faces sort of immobile in all of these pictures and that's why in none of them do you see the smile which was the habitual expression on Therese face as the various witnesses all testify.

Chris Mcgregor Selene Bruno Lanteri Pauline Augustine Italy Paris Benjamin TWO Guy Gaucher Therese First Images Saint One Reason Discerninghearts .Com Saint Therese Of Lisieux Today Isaiah Four Sisters 20 Years Old

Audio

06:01 min | Last month

A highlight from LST10-p

"Discerninghearts .com in cooperation with the Oblates of the Virgin Mary presents The Letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux with Father Timothy Gallagher. Father Gallagher is a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, a religious community dedicated to retreats and spiritual direction according to the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. He is featured on several series found on the Eternal Word television network. He is also author of numerous books on the spiritual teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the venerable Bruno Lanteri, founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, as well as other works focused on aspects of the spiritual life. The Letters of Saint Therese of Lisieux with Father Timothy Gallagher. I'm your host, Chris McGregor. Let me read one more citation with regards to the Little Way, and this is from a letter written by Sister Marie of the Trinity. Sister Marie of the Trinity was one of those five novices that Therese assisted during her last years. A friendship developed between them. When Marie entered, she was three years younger than Therese. For the first time, Therese was not the youngest in the monastery anymore. Marie had entered a Carmel in Paris. It had not worked out. She had returned home and was now making a second try in the Carmel at Lisieux. And she was not an entirely easy character. She's a wonderful woman. You get to like her as you get to know her, but she could be rambunctious, difficult in this time in Carmel, and without Therese, hell probably would not have. And Marie developed a great love for Therese, was one of the witnesses to her life. And at this point, it's years after Therese's death, and she's writing to another sister. And in the letter, she refers to the Little Way of Therese. You see, the way to be happy on the Little Way of Therese is to abandon yourself to God and to think of yourself as little as possible, not even to seek keeping an account of whether you make progress or not. Am I doing better? Don't worry about any of that. That's not our business. Here is the practical. This is where the Little Way leads in terms of how we live our life. What do we need to do then to live the Little Way? Well, we can almost predict at this point, given what we've already said about heroism in the small daily things, we have only to try to perform all the little acts of daily life with the greatest possible love. And there it is. And that's why I say the Little Way, far from being a settling for less, is a freeing of the heart to be heroic in what God has given most of us every day of our lives, and that's the small daily things that we're called to do. And to do these with the greatest possible love. Actually, it was Sister Marie of the Trinity, when she was a novice, who at one point was sort of languidly walking across the courtyard from one place to another, to whatever her next task was, and Therese saw it. She said to her, no. Is that the way we take care of our children? Go with energy to the next task. Spiritual children, she meant it, for whom their lives are meant to be a sacrifice and to bless through their prayer and their sacrifice. We have only to perform all the little acts of daily love with the greatest possible love. To recognize humbly, but without sadness, our thousand imperfections, which are always resurfacing. I missed it again. There was a child who asked my help, and I just was impatient and didn't have time, or whatever it might be, which are always resurfacing. And to ask God with confidence, with confidence, ask God grace to transform them into love. I'm going to read that again because I think that that one sentence is about as good a description of the little way in practice as we will ever find. We have only, so we have only to try to perform all the little acts of daily life with the greatest possible love. To recognize humbly, so the little way is humble, we recognize our limitations. But without sadness, our thousand imperfections, and sometimes that's the way it feels, you know, again and again, and this and that, our thousand imperfections, which are always resurfacing, and they are. And to ask God, so it's his strength, not ours, to ask God with confidence to transform those imperfections into love. So that's the little way, or that's what she's referring to, you know, in this letter to Father Rulong when he's in China, and it's obviously very central and very deep to the entirety of her message. So the little way in some regards, we've talked in previous conversations, Father Gallagher, about the big three, be aware, understand, take action. Really the little way is the little three, straight, short, and new, straight, short, and new, and that is a practice that we all can undertake every single day. So often we want to dive more into knowing God, like you said, the desires. We might have a desire to undertake Bible studies and to enter into parish programs and missions, I'm going to pray more, I'm going to fast more, I'm going to do all those things, and those in themselves are not necessarily a bad thing. But sometimes when we take on too much, it can be discouraging.

Bruno Lanteri Chris Mcgregor Marie Paris China Rulong Therese Three Years Carmel ONE Five Novices First Time One Sentence Gallagher Timothy Gallagher Bible Discerninghearts .Com Second Try Lisieux Eternal Word

Cloud Security Podcast by Google

06:45 min | Last month

A highlight from EP144 LLMs: A Double-Edged Sword for Cloud Security? Weighing the Benefits and Risks of Large Language Models

"Hi there. Welcome to the Cloud Security Podcast by Google. Thanks for joining us today. Your hosts here are myself, Tim Peacock, the Senior PM for Threat Detection here at Google Cloud and Anton Chevakin, a reformed analyst and senior staff in Google Cloud's Office of the CISO. You can find and subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts, as well as at our website, cloud .google .com slash podcasts. If you enjoy our content and want it delivered to you piping hot every Monday, please do hit that subscribe button, ring the bell, hit the like, whatever it is in your podcasting app of choice. You can follow the show, argue with us and the rest of our Cloud Security Podcast listeners on our LinkedIn page. Anton, we are talking about LLMs today, and I have to say at the end of the episode, you had what I think is indeed an epiphany and not a hallucination. That's correct. And I think that this episode is also a really good balance of depth and lightness. Like it's both fun and deep, which is really... At the same time. Yes, at the same time. And it's actually quite difficult to get that. And I think with our guests, we did get that. It's useful. It's fun. It does go in really deep. Two acronyms we both had to look up. Yes. Yes. We all learned a lot during this episode, which I think, you know, for you and me to learn things is definitely a mark of a good episode. And for it to be so fun, it's also a mark of a good episode. So maybe without any further ado, I couldn't be happier about this week's guest. Let's turn things over. Today is an incredibly special day for me as a podcast host because I finally get to welcome to the show the person who said, yeah, sure, go for it. What's the worst that could happen? When I asked, hey, do you mind if I start a podcast? Today, I'm delighted to introduce Katherine Chee, my former manager. Today, a group product manager and the LLM I'm so happy to have you here. I've heard a lot about these LLM things. I've heard they can do just about anything or everything, which makes me think they can do nothing. So what is an LLM and what can they actually do? Before she answers, I think I want to have the more funny slash scary way, which I actually tested on some people on Twitter. When I think about LLM based chatbots, are we more in the baby AGI camp or more in the glorified doctor complete camp? Please don't say in between. I am curious how much you tested on people versus other LLMs on Twitter, but we can get to that. I think if you force me to pick a side, which I will deeply resent, I think they are probably closer to glorified autocomplete. Like I do not think that there is true general intelligence inside an LLM. However, I think the nuance is that there are probably a great many tasks that we assume require intelligence and they maybe just require advanced pattern matching and the correct set of abstractions. So LLMs can do all sorts of tasks like that. I think people have seen examples of ask an LLM how to stack five objects with different properties and different degrees of like squishiness and the LLM can actually do it. The thing I would argue is that this is maybe an example of a task where you don't actually need AGI. You need the correct abstractions and some very basic kind of autocomplete functionality, but the abstractions are nuanced and hard and so it ends up seeming quite intelligent, perhaps more so than it actually is. So wait, Anton derailed us with his tricky question. I want the basic question. What is an LLM anyway? So an LLM, I mean, it literally stands for a large language model. It is kind of a new hotness, I guess, in technology, but it is basically a very, very, very, very complicated statistical model where you can put language in and it can give you linguistically reasonable responses out. So you can ask an LLM to tell you about Paris and it will tell you that this is a city in France with these characteristics and maybe it has the Eiffel Tower and people like to go there on vacation. I can do that for a range of more specialized tasks as well. So it's just statistics that take input and then predict some output that seems reasonable given the input and everything it knows? At a very, very high level, I think that is a reasonable description. I would also point out that at some point, I don't know, quantum mechanics might also just be statistics. Anton's the PhD in that. Yeah, I think we are veering into dangerous territory. I think that I feel like you're underselling it a little bit, but also I feel like you're right about the tasks that I mean today, long and short and somewhat funny story from today, the recording, I needed to, somebody said, we're doing this research report, blah, blah, blah, and we want to interview you. Can you suggest the questions? So my first reaction was to say, Bard, here's the report, write me questions. And then I got the questions and I sent them to the person. And that person is like, wow, these are great. How much time do you spend creating them? And I'm like, Bard did that. And here's the prompt I used. And there was no real interactive prompt. And it was just like, this is the prompt, whoosh, result. I think coming out of the, you know, this may be just very, very, very fancy statistics, but there's a bunch of interesting properties that do flow out of LLMs. And people talk about this being emergent behaviors. So one of the trends you'll hear is - What does that mean? Well, one sec. So one of the trends you'll hear is that LLMs have sizes measured in parameters. So a smaller LLM may be order of magnitude five to 10 billion parameters, and then bigger ones may be hundreds of billions. And the trend is that as the number of parameters increases, LLM start to demonstrate what people call emergent behaviors. There's actually a debate about the extent to which these behaviors are truly emergent, and we could get into that. But basically, if you ask a very large model for things like basic arithmetic, or reasoning tasks, or kind of summarization that appears to require a semantic understanding of the data being summarized, models can do a surprisingly good job at those things. And that starts to get to the excitement around it, which is that there's all of these tasks, particularly ones that require semantic understanding, language skills, or kind of merging, and again, appearing to understand disparate data sources that LLMs, especially large ones, are surprisingly good at. And that's driven tons of the market excitement we now see. Hmm. So it does sound like some profound truth is hiding behind this. And then I think that - Or people want to see profound truth hiding behind it, and the grass is just moving in a way that's just a leopard, but there's no leopard today. That's underselling it, yeah. But I think that a super short summary of this is it's not like the machines are smart, it's people are stupid. Yeah. I think people are stupid. So I'm going to just take the middle ground. You've got both conditions.

Katherine Chee Tim Peacock Anton Chevakin Anton France Bard Paris Cloud Security Eiffel Tower Cloud .Google .Com Today Google Two Acronyms Both Conditions Hundreds Of Billions One Sec This Week Five Objects Both

Bankless

10:34 min | Last month

A highlight from Crypto in Hong Kong with Sandy Peng

"I think really what we're trying to get at is understanding that Hong Kong has meaningfully opened its doors to crypto. The question I have is that is Hong Kong opening its doors to crypto in spite of China or because of it? Bankless Nation, the question for today is Hong Kong warming up to crypto? What would that mean for China, for the rest of Asia, for the world? And how about for crypto? We've gone deep into crypto protocols and movements in the past. You've heard episodes like the crypto Renaissance, but now it is time to go back down the nation state rabbit hole and explore what is going on in Hong Kong. A few things we discuss on today's episode. Number one, what's the deal with Hong Kong? How about its history? How about its relationship with China? Number two, is Hong Kong turning crypto friendly? What's the evidence of this? What do things look like on the ground? Number three, is Hong Kong trying to position itself as the epicenter of crypto in Asia? Do other city states like Singapore have something to say about this? And number four, if Hong Kong goes crypto, will China follow? These are the big questions in today's episode. Why was this significant to you, David? There's a growing movement out there of just focus on city states as bastions of innovation and entrepreneurship. And this is, I would say, definitely the story of Hong Kong and also Singapore and other examples as well. People have certainly learned that just good regulation and good rulemaking can produce and generate wealth. We've seen that in Singapore. We've seen that in Hong Kong because of good relations between entrepreneurs, innovators and regulators, massive amounts of opportunity and wealth has been created. And Hong Kong is one of those few city states out in the world that is really leaning into this. And crypto, of course, is one of the few frontiers of the world that is producing a ton of wealth. And Hong Kong, like Singapore, like others, are really leaning into this. So what lessons can we learn from Hong Kong? I'm really jealous about the way that Hong Kong is treating crypto. What can the United States learn from Hong Kong? And really, how will this kind of position the physical world as crypto in the metaverse world grows? How does this impact the atoms that are floating around in the physical world? I think understanding that dynamic is always something worth paying attention to. And really, the case being made here is that Hong Kong from the crypto perspective is also worth paying attention to. So we dive into trying to get a grip and understanding around what's going on in Hong Kong here today on this episode. Good time to escape your Western bubble if you live in Europe or the U .S. and see what's going on in Asia. So we do that in today's episode. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Sandy. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible, including our number one recommended crypto exchange. That's Kraken. Go create an account. Kraken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry, the place I used to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to place a trade on Kraken Pro, you'll have access to advanced charting tools, real time market data and lightning fast trade execution all inside their spiffy new modular interface. Kraken's new customizable modular layout lets you tailor your trading experience to suit your needs. Pick and choose your favorite modules and place them anywhere you want in your screen. With Kraken Pro, you have that power. Whether you are a seasoned pro or just starting out, join thousands of traders who trust Kraken Pro for their crypto trading needs. Visit pro .kraken .com to get started today. Metamask portfolio is your one -stop shop to navigate the world of DeFi. 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Hundreds of projects have already deployed on Arbitrum 1 with flourishing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. Arbitrum Nova is quickly becoming a Web3 gaming hub and social dapps like Reddit are also calling Arbitrum home. And now Arbitrum Orbit allows you to use Arbitrum's secure scaling technology to build your own layer 3, giving you access to interoperable customizable permissions with dedicated throughput. Whether you are a developer, enterprise, or user, Arbitrum Orbit lets you take your project to new heights. All of these technologies leverage the security and decentralization of Ethereum and provide a builder experience that's intuitive, familiar, and fully EVM compatible. Faster transaction speeds and significantly lower gas fees. So visit arbitrum .io where you can join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app with Arbitrum. Experience Web3 development the way it was always meant to be. Secure, fast, cheap, and friction -free. We are very excited to introduce you to Sandy Pang. She's one of the co -founders of Scroll, which is a ZK scaling solution that's working on scaling Ethereum. Some very noble work there. And Sandy is also a long -time Hong Kong resident. She's been in Hong Kong for over 10 years. She's seen the rise of Hong Kong and its influence in the crypto sphere as an economic center as well. And more recently, crypto seems to be back on the menu in Hong Kong. Sandy, welcome to Bankless. How are you? Thanks for having me, Ryan and David. Very happy to be here. Yeah, this is a really interesting subject that, of course, David and myself are not equipped to help answer. So we're hoping you can help us today. And we've seen a lot of headlines here recently over the past few months. Headlines such as the US cracks down on crypto, Hong Kong extends a warm welcome. So bullish Hong Kong for crypto, you know, another one. Hong Kong government pressures banking giants to accept crypto clients. It seems very much the story of 2023 has been US regulatory hostility to crypto and Hong Kong maybe opening up. So that is really the question. Have you helped us answer today? Is Hong Kong warming up to crypto? What would that mean for China? What would that mean for the rest of Asia? What would that mean for the world? So we thought we'd go through a three -part maybe agenda in this episode because I think we need firstly to get some grounding on the history of Hong Kong. Educate us Western listeners on how Hong Kong came to be, how it's grown in prominence and economic power. Then give us some sense of the relationship between China and Hong Kong. If we could spend a few minutes there. And then lastly, I think we'll be equipped to talk about Hong Kong and China. Does that sound good, Sandy? Yeah, it sounds great. Looking forward to it. Okay. Give us a little history lesson here, Sandy. Hong Kong is a very unique place. It's kind of some very dominant societies and empires maybe. It has US dollars as the pegged local currency, has the highest concentration of ultra net worth individuals. It's the fourth largest financial center in the world. Give us a sense of how Hong Kong has come to dominate in these ways. Why is it doing so well? Give us some of the history here, Sandy. I think in a nutshell, Hong Kong originally was a fishing village of no particular significance. It was ceded to the British during the first opium war. So the opium wars where the Brits tried to sell opium in exchange for goods and services, while mostly goods. And then during the second opium war, Kowloon was also ceded to the British. So after about a hundred years or so of British colonization in 1997, Hong Kong was returned to China officially under the one country two system mechanism and where Hong Kong gained an independent kind of judiciary and independent kind of legislative process. Part of the government is set up in a sense that's still very similar to the way that's typical to a British colony. So Hong Kong has been a major financial center over the last couple of decades now. And the reason it's been so popular, it's kind of historically a popular place for Chinese companies to be listed overseas. And it has, you know, huge liquidity pool. And when large companies think about listing, they typically think about US or Hong Kong. So it's very interesting when an important jurisdiction such as Hong Kong starts to become more crypto friendly. So how did we get here from fishing village to bustling economic center for the world? So the opium wars was back in the 1800s, of course. And then it must be the case that Hong Kong had a booming 20th century, a booming 1900s in order to transform it from fishing village to economic hub and economic zone. How did that happen? I think the economic miracle of Hong Kong is relatively similar to that of Singapore and South Korea, and to some extent, Japan. So after the Second World War, Hong Kong very quickly became the bridge between China and the rest of the world. There was a period of time while there still is capital control in China. And Hong Kong is the place where Chinese companies get listed. And it's where US capital and international capital, for that matter, views Hong Kong as a jumping board before investing into China. And being part of the kind of the major kind of economic miracles over the last couple of decades about, you know, where hundreds of millions of people were listed out of poverty, part of that economic miracle also brought with it and kind of emergence of Hong Kong as a financial center that enabled it. Getting the ingredients as to what contributed to that economic miracle, I think is definitely one of the big conversations that we want to pull out here. But just to really put an image in listeners' minds about what it's like, what Hong Kong is like, what the city is like. Sandy, the last I saw you was in Austin at Permissionless. I've met you in New York. We've hung out in Paris at ECC. You've been over the world. You've trotted your number of cities. Can you kind of compare and contrast the cities of the world to Hong Kong just so people can kind of get an image of what Hong Kong is like? Like literally the geography, topology, kind of culture of it all. In terms of vibe, I think it probably maps both closely to New York. Everything is very closely packed together. And except there's fantastic public transport.

David Ryan Sandy Pang New York Europe Paris Austin Second World War 1997 1900S Over 10 Years U .S. Today 2023 20Th Century 1800S One Country Three -Part Hundreds Of Projects Both

Crypto Curious

02:03 min | Last month

A highlight from 100 - Crypto Curious Cracks A Ton: A Milestone Celebration

"Hey guys, this is Paige from Giggly Squad. This episode is brought to you by the new L 'Oreal Paris Bright Reveal Dark Spot Serum and Broad Spectrum SPF 50 Daily Lotion. Dark spots, game over. This visibly fades all types of dark spots and visibly reduces the look of dark spots in just one week. The Bright Reveal SPF 50 Daily UV Lotion visibly reduces the appearance of dark spots and resists sun -induced signs of aging. It also has vitamin C and E to help protect against environmental damage caused by free radicals. Visit Target online and in stores to buy yours today. Hey, Crypto Curious, congrats on the 100 episodes. You guys are crushing it. Can't wait for 2024, halving event on its way, Bitcoin going to the moon. Let's go. One of the big questions is, what is money? For practical purposes, it exists in a series of heterogeneous databases, very different databases. Do you believe in crypto? Digital currency may be an answer, but it is a highly respectable disaster. I do own Bitcoin. There is no second best. This is the Crypto Curious podcast, proudly brought to you by the Bamboo app. Welcome to what is our 100th episode of the Crypto Curious podcast. Crypto Curious is your go -to source for all things cryptocurrency, whether you're a seasoned pro or new in the world of crypto, we've got you covered. Usually we break down the top news stories of the past seven days, but today is a special episode. It's a little shy of two years that we have been talking about crypto, blockchain and all things Web3. It's been an adventure to say the least. My name is Tracey and today I'm joined by my partners of the past 100 episodes, Blake and Craig. Hey guys, and congratulations. Thanks Tracey, great to be back here. I'm celebrating this milestone.

Tracey 100 Episodes Blake Two Years 100Th Episode Giggly Squad One Week Today Craig ONE Second 2024 Vitamin C L 'Oreal E Target Bamboo Paris Bright Reveal Dark Spot Past Seven Days Paige

Tech Path Crypto

24:56 min | Last month

A highlight from Coinbase Wallet INTERVIEW | Base Growth & Massive Updates Coming!

"You guys are always asking about wallets and today is no different. Today we're gonna do a little bit of a deep dive on a project and one that I think you've probably seen us report on a little bit before and that is Coinbase Wallet. We'll dive in deep with the project lead there. It's gonna be a fun one. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. Joining me today is Chintan Tokariya, who is the Senior Director of Engineering over at Coinbase. So great to have you, Thanks Chintan. so much, Paul. Really, really happy to be here and talk about wallets, one of my favorite subjects. Well, you know, right now it's a big topic obviously with everything from self -custody but the growing interest around how you can hold your own tokens and of course wallets have been a big part of that. Talk to me a little bit about where Coinbase is. We've had you guys on before here on the show. It's probably been about seven or eight months, maybe even a year, since our last interview. And I know you guys have come a long way. Where are you some of the big things that have happened in that period of time? Yeah, you know, we've been heads down shipping. The team's just been really focused on making the best, most simplest and reliable Web3 wallet. And really our goal here is to bring users on chain, to bring users into the crypto economy in like a really simple way. And at the end of the day, what we've been focusing on is, if we think about sort of the primitives here, it's really at the end goal is to create real utility, real use cases for crypto. And on Wallet, we've been really heads down on shipping power user features, simplifying onboarding, safety and discovery. So we're probably like the only wallet out there with such a rich set of features and we're really proud of that. We're really excited to have launched multi -wallet support where you can import multiple mnemonics and multiple addresses into your wallet and see them all in one place, all really clearly laid out, really nicely identified with labels. We've also like started pushing out things like a Web3 starter kit, how to bring someone on chain. Everyone asks like, hey, I heard you are building a wallet, what should I do with it? And we want to make that experience really simple. So what are the first few things they should do? Establish an identity. So we offer free L2 usernames, right? And so everyone can establish their decentralized identity. And then we've been also making sends really simple. So really excited to have launched in the last six months, this notion of gasless sends or sponsored sends. So Paul, you know, like if you're trying to do some basic things in crypto, like just move some USDC from your wallet to someone else's, many times you need like multiple tokens, right? You need the USDC, but also the native gas token like Ethereum. Well, we've taken care of that. Like we just take care of that behind the scenes for users. So they don't need to think about having multiple tokens. And the send is actually just free. So anyone today can just send USDC from one person to another, not worry about these native tokens. And it's just really, really simple. So we've just been proud to focus on those areas and along with safety and discovery too. I want to talk to you about OnChain Summer, because this was a huge success for Coinbase. You guys were able to really accelerate a lot of growth here. I was just looking at some of the Dune Analytics, you know, and the amount of growth that you guys saw in OnChain Summer. When you look at that, I mean, I know Brian and I know some of the team there. Would this be considered, this is a pretty easy question, do you think this was a huge success? But in a success ratio of say one to 10, how big was this for you guys? I mean, I think the data speaks for itself, right? And this is a resounding success for Coinbase, for Base, which is the new L2 protocol we just recently launched. And also, I think for the whole crypto community. And so if you're not familiar with OnChain Summer, for the audience, what was it? We launched this 30 -day campaign, this 30 -day sort of like fun Web3 OnChain program that was available to anyone out there. And what happened every single day was it was an opportunity participate to OnChain with a daily drop. It could be from an NFT artist. We had a drop from DK, who's like just this amazing artist. We also had big brands like Coca -Cola and Atari participate as well with a daily drop. So it was a really cool way to push ourselves here at Coinbase on just making our products better. Right. And we felt that throughout all of OnChain Summer, which every day the team was working really hard. These drops were all on Coinbase, and we could see users trying to onboard by funding their wallets, interacting and minting the NFT, and then taking part of what that creator community wanted, which is like, what do you do now once you have that NFT? So Parallel is this Web3 game on Base. We could mint their cards, and then people then started playing the Parallel game. And it was great because it was like this amazing distribution power that we have at Coinbase and bringing users OnChain through this OnChain Summer program. And then people are like engaging in the crypto and on -chain economy. How important is the next move for Coinbase to really draw in, you know, other major brands? And are you getting interest from other major brands to do some more activities like these? Yeah, absolutely. We are. We are. And it's exciting that major brands are seeing that there is a new audience they can reach, and they can reach this audience in a different way, in a way that rewards both innovation. And what Coke did here is really cool. Like, I'm just watching this. And it was just new, beautiful art that in this case is also like just 3D interactive, right? And so we're seeing brands come in, and brands are really excited about a few things. And we're excited to work with them. One, what they're excited about is the audience. Two, it's sort of like the left pocket, right pocket, right? So left pocket is like my fiat or my credit cards or my traditional TradFi bank accounts. My right pocket is my crypto assets. And of course, they're excited about that. But they're excited about the community that they can create with this and the loyalty and engagement they can create using on -chain technology. So for example, if I mint the Coca -Cola NFTs here, Coke can also start thinking about or another brand can also start thinking about like, what is this long -term engagement? As more people mint these NFTs, do I want to reward them in the future? How does this play out? It actually opens like a real sort of Pandora's box in a good way of different loyalty programs and different ways to bring in the community. What about something like an on -chain winter? What's going to be next step for Coinbase and Base? Yeah, so you know, what we're thinking as a group here and how to continue to engage the Web3 community and also find ways to keep providing on -chain activities, right? So one thing we're doing is just like this idea of just daily drops, right? So one example, Unlonely. Unlonely is an on -chain dating TV program where two folks are, you know, you can watch them like a reality show and you can see how that date's going on. But then you can also like, you know, there's a little chat view. You can chat about how this date's going. You can also bet on maybe the outcome like, you know, will they end up in a real date or will one person say, no, you know, this is not for me. So it's a really interesting sort of way to sort of marry and bring together stuff that people find interesting and also to put it on chain. I think Base Paint is another really interesting example. I really enjoyed it. That launched during on -chain summer. You can participate by buying a brush and then pixel artists will come together every day and this is happening in real time. They'll draw for 24 hours this art and it will be based on the theme. And then once the 24 -hour window hits, boom, anyone can then mint that piece of art. And the great, the coolest thing here is many artists came together and contributed and as users are minting that art, the royalties are paid back to the artists that contributed. On L2Beat, which is showing kind of the arbitrum, there's a optimism and then base number three right now. So with that being the case, I mean, you're not far behind possibly flipping optimism. So, and this is just beginning or at least it feels that way in the sense of what we've seen so far. What are what are the bigger grander picture, I guess, for Coinbase in general with what you guys are doing that kind of integrates all of this together? Continuing to find and highlight beyond financial use cases for crypto but utility -driven use cases. But also a bigger part of Coinbase's responsibility is how to bring users that are not into crypto, that haven't quite onboarded yet, how to bring them into the crypto economy in a much easier, simpler, and more meaningful way that goes beyond just financial use cases. Like buying a coffee, for example. How to make it just sort of really simple, like, hey, I could buy this coffee with crypto. Boom. Great. Awesome. Shinten, do you think that, I mean, when you look at what's happening in blockchain in general, we'll see a handful of projects that really take off. And then some that, you know, think we think they're going to take off and then they kind of, you know, fizzle out. You look at SocialFi. This is a good example. I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned FriendTech, but obviously SocialFi's growth is really kind of starting to compound here. And do you think social potentially is one of those use cases that could be massive in terms of growth and big opportunity in the few years? Or is there another aspect around utility that you think might emerge? So when we think about social, what's interesting about it? One, you can engage and interact with anyone that is on -chain. It's permissionless, it's borderless. It will work with anyone in the world. And that's really interesting. But then what are the other properties? Well, if people have established their identity, you can actually learn about someone's on -chain identity, what their likes, dislikes are and engage. FarCaster has done something really excellent. It's a social app that allows users to chat with each other. Right. And chat's amazing. But beyond that, the formation of groups with similar identities and likes and preferences. But all this data is on -chain. And because this data for social is on -chain, folks can build value add on top of that. If I want to message you, Paul, I could message you. Hopefully you have paulbarron .eth, but I can message you there and say, Hey, Paul, how's it going? Thanks for, you know, it was great catching up for dinner and boom, I can send you the 20 bucks I owe you for dinner, whatever it might be. And even then we should think of that as like a really simple social use case where you can connect one person to another. Tap to pay with my phone, Google Pay, Apple Pay or my credit card. It's really simple. So how do we make this exponentially better? Right. And so if I go into a coffee shop or a restaurant, like what Blackbird is doing, it's really cool. I can go into a restaurant, I can check into the restaurant and that restaurant can say, Hey, welcome back, Jintun. This is your 10th visit here. Here's a reward. Here's like a free drink on us. I've dined at the restaurant. How do I make the payment really simple? Right. How do I make the payment flexible either from my left pocket or right pocket as an analogy where I can just scan or tap and I can select USDC as an example and the payment just lands instantly. It's settled, it's gasless and it's using crypto behind the scenes. Do wallets become a type of crypto super app or an on chain super app where someone is holding their crypto assets? That's great. But then what do you do with it? And that's really the core of I think everything we're trying to do in this industry to grow adoption. What next? What's interesting? What's compelling? Payments and messaging, merchants are loving it. We actually, in the summer, we went to Paris. It was for the ECC conference and we worked with the local cafe, Cafe Saint Victor, really old established cafe. And we took over the cafe for a few days during the conference and ran the entire cafe using Coinbase wallet. And what was really cool to see here was the throughput, the number of orders that were coming through to the cafe with just something so simple as Coinbase wallet messaging and payments. We basically doubled it because the volume just went much higher because the payments were faster and getting the orders from the customer to the customer. That was kind of a captive audience, obviously, with ECC there in Paris. So there would be a lot of people that would do that. But you look at this out in the wild because this is something I get when I talk to a lot of retail industry is the complexity of them getting started on it, or at least they feel there's a complexity. What is Coinbase trying to do or doing to kind of overcome that? Because that's a hurdle I feel like really is in front of us right now. Step one is just getting a wallet. Even at that point, that's complicated. That's complicated for someone who's new into this space. What is the concept of keys? What is backing up the keys? Oh, you're saying that if I lose these keys, I lose everything. That's really frightening. And then the second step after the keys is how to fund the wallet and on -ramp. And then the third step is, wait a minute, I have to sign transactions to use crypto? This seems a bit foreign to me. Oh, you know what? Forget it, right? I'll try to quickly break down. How are we thinking about these three basic things? On the onboarding as an industry and even what we're doing in Coinbase wallet, we've simplified the onboarding drastically, where it's just one button push, you're onboarded. And we are looking at technologies like MPC, multi -party computation. And just think of it this way where your key material is split amongst different parties, right? Trusted parties. Coinbase could be a trusted party. So if you do lose your keys, for example, you can have them recovered across these trusted parties. That does make the onboarding much easier. And we can move into a world in the future of account abstracted wallets, where it's actually a smart contract powering the wallet. So then it feels like you're logging into email, but there's a wallet behind the scenes. And that I think, we're exploring that space and there's a lot of interesting tech being developed there. Onboarding. Onboarding should be just one click. I think of when I buy things on Amazon, I put in the cart, boom, one click it's done. And that's how easy onboarding needs to be. So what we're doing in wallet is basically making that whole experience down to one button push once you've gone through the KYC process. And then the last piece around merchants already have established point of sale systems. Why would they want to bring in another one? Why would they want to just go through that hassle? And I think what's important to, fees, right? So why should a merchant care? Fees, yes. Chargebacks don't become a thing anymore. And that's a big portion of merchant fraud or customer fraud towards merchants. We can't go into a merchant and say, hey, come accept crypto. That's already a little scary. I've heard only interesting things about crypto. I'm okay with my current setup. We have to tell them you'll save fees, credit card fees. You could even earn yield on that USDC, like 5 % yield, for example. And that's pretty powerful. You can even set up loyalty programs. So now that if I went into a coffee shop and paid, that merchant knows how to reach me. They can message me. They could airdrop an NFT into my wallet saying, hey, come back again for a free cup of coffee. There's really amazing loyalty plays that can happen. And it's all in the control of the merchant. And our goal here is to make that starter kit for a merchant really simple and easy, where it's just a few button clicks and they're like, oh yeah, this is cool. And this is more about the issue with these walled gardens, because I concern myself now with what's happening over at Apple. We saw MetaMask being taken down off the App Store for a short period of time. Everybody was freaking out. Everybody I knew had an Apple device and a MetaMask account, or immediately I'm going to just put it on. Hopefully you can get to an Android, if it was worst case, or sideload it in some scenarios. But my point is this is a problem within the industry, Apple and its relationship with the app makers. So are you guys worried about this? And if you are, what's a strategy? In this example you gave MetaMask, when they're gatekeeping, it creates a real challenge, right? Where if someone has stored their crypto assets in an app like MetaMask or Coinbase wallet, and it's no longer available for updates on the App Store, let alone even a new user coming in, that's really scary. And I think what we need to do is really, both along the education piece and build those good relationships, but also just continue to highlight why this technology, going on Chainway, blockchain technology is allowing for true access and freedom to use the apps you want, the technologies you want, and move value between users. There's also other good initiatives out there. For example, folks are building crypto OS's, like one for Solana, one for Ethereum, where it would be on their own hardware, right? And that's actually a really compelling future. If you are, for example, going back to merchants, if you're a shop owner in a small rural town, you should be able to set up shop by just downloading an app and creating a wallet, right? And once you have that 0x address, you can receive funds, you could even message your customers, they can message you. That is the beauty of what we're trying to build and create in this fully permissionless world. You mentioned USDC and the potential of earning yield. What is the likelihood of us seeing USDC? I look at this right here in terms of what's happened on just L2Beat. Again, this, of course, was what you guys are doing in terms of multi -chain around USDC and this idea of earning yield. Do you feel like this is going to be something that's going to be available in the wallet soon to where I could earn yield there versus just my Coinbase account? So today in our main Coinbase account, you can obviously earn 5 % yield on USDC. Exactly. And of course, we're looking at ways to make that also available in Coinbase wallet. And that's an important piece of just participating in this ecosystem. What about just the interactivity with banks? Because obviously, most people are going to say, at some point, I got to move money out of a wallet, whether it's an online or a hardware wallet, into my bank. You've got Beam, of course, who has already started to make this work. The potential of going from a Coinbase wallet via Beam directly into my bank account, just smooth interaction like that, is that also in the roadmap? Where are you guys going? Yes. So what you're describing is a cash out, right? That's an important use case that we definitely have to get right in our building for and to make that super, super easy. Even today, inside Coinbase wallet, you can very easily send funds from your wallet to your retail account and then cash out. But that's like a multi -step process, right? And so we are looking at ways to make that easier and simpler. Also looking at Phantom, their NFT shortcuts, which is something, again, as we see more NFT usage within wallets especially, I know we have a lot of our own team that we utilize a lot of NFT collection. Obviously, Solana and Phantom have been the choice here. What does that look like for Coinbase in terms of the wallet being able to integrate like that? We built out really interesting things as well, like iOS widgets, where you can put your NFTs or your friends' NFTs onto your home screen on Apple. And of course, in the future, we're looking at ways to just make interaction with those NFTs easier. Like today, for example, inside Coinbase wallet, if someone actually bids on one of your NFTs, let's say you have a Ute like you were showing in this video and I want to bid on your Ute, you'll get a push notification saying, hey, Jim then wants to bid on your Ute. This is the offer. You can tap it and actually accept that offer right then and there in the wallet. So we're really pushing for more use cases, both from a commerce perspective, as well as making the long -term benefits of NFTs clear. Folks have been looking at token gating for NFTs, applying discounts if you hold certain NFTs. All of that does work naturally inside of our wallet. With that being the case, because UX is going to be a part of that, let's talk about what that might look like for you guys. 3D and AR. Let's talk about, is that something that's coming down the pipe for Coinbase wallet? We've seen this in some wallets already. How about Coinbase wallet? If it's specific to NFTs, Coinbase wallet can support rendering of all these NFTs, to see. We're looking at the creators out there that are painting this future, and we're seeing more stuff come into 3D space, more stuff come into AR space. I think just recently I noticed a team building a Pokemon Go on -chain type of game that works right inside of our Coinbase wallet dapp browser. You actually don't even need to leave the wallet, because really what we've designed here is a way where if you want to play an on -chain game, you can through the dapp browser. If you want to view 3D NFTs inside the native experience, you can. But I think there's a new world where if I'm using hardware or at a physical experience somewhere else, maybe it's an art gallery, how might that art gallery tap into the assets I'm holding, the NFTs, for example, in my wallet? Taylor, for me, a really unique experience. If I have a Finney NFT, for example, or a Utes NFT, how might that art gallery, if I'm walking through the art exhibit, show me things that might actually be relevant towards the art I've curated in my own wallet? It's almost like this personalized experience inside of an art gallery. That's kind of like this bold new future that I'm pretty excited about too. I've been surprised at how much has been accomplished with some of these projects out here. So very impressed with the movement forward. Last up here, I just want to talk a little bit about the potential for Coinbase wallet for retail businesses. And then you step back and say, OK, what is Brian Armstrong, your CEO, thinking about when you look at all these advantages that are starting to prop up in the wallet sector versus traditional, whether it's base or what Coinbase as an exchange is doing? How does he see this? I mean, I'm sure, I don't know if you can give us that answer, but how does he see this? Because I would think I'm leaning a little bit here toward wallet because of all these monster markets that are developing for it. Coinbase, the exchange, it's where folks start their crypto journey, they onboard, they move fiat from their bank into the exchange, they buy some crypto. But then what's next? Well, how do we bring them on chain? And we can do that through wallet.

"Even though the Paris Olympics are a little less than one year away, International Olympic Committee people are already talking about the 2028 games when they come back to America and will be in Los Angeles. The other day they announced five new sports or five sports returning to the Olympics. Flag football, lacrosse, squash, cricket. The first time cricket's been played in the Olympics since 1900. And they're also bringing baseball for the men's softball for the women. What's interesting? Why do you bring back cricket? It's been gone for 120 plus years. Very simple. Because of its popularity in India, they can charge 100 million more dollars for advertising revenue. So Indian television makes more money, as does the IOC. I was surprised when they got rid of baseball a few years ago it was so popular. But flag football is the one that just leaves me with my head scratching. Now I realize American football, one of the most popular sports around the world. But flag football? Would you like to tell somebody you're an Olympian playing flag football? Just makes me shake my head sometimes. The things we do for money.

Los Angeles India America International Olympic Committe Five Sports Olympics Five New Sports IOC 120 Plus Years American Paris Olympics Indian ONE First Time Squash Lacrosse 1900 Cricket 100 Million More A Few Years Ago

Thinking Crypto News & Interviews

22:28 min | Last month

A highlight from SEC WON'T APPEAL GRAYSCALE BITCOIN ETF RULING & CALIFORNIA PASSES CRYPTO REGULATION!

"Welcome back to the thinking crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, I want to start off by talking about the grayscale SEC Bitcoin ETF situation. Yesterday, Friday, October 13 was the deadline for the SEC to appeal the court's ruling in the grayscale case. Now, we know the three judges destroyed scumbag regulator Gary Gensler and the SEC calling their denial of the grayscale Bitcoin spot ETF as arbitrary and capricious. But what can you expect? We're dealing with a scumbag corrupt regulator that is Gary Gensler, who is on puppet strings being controlled by Elizabeth Warren and the Wall Street incumbents who want to destroy crypto startups like grayscale, Coinbase, Ripple and others so that they can come in and take over the market. So the fact that the SEC did not appeal and we're past the deadline, obviously, is a good sign. It's bullish. It means the SEC does not see a way to win this. They are pretty much kowtowing here, right, which they have to the courts are ruling here. And even the folks at Bloomberg, James Safert, who I've had on the podcast, said, look, it's being reported here and confirmed by Bloomberg News that the SEC won't ask the court to reverse its decision on the Bitcoin spot ETF as it relates to grayscale. So what's going to happen next? It's going to be the SEC and grayscale are going to have their conversation started where they're going to discuss, I guess, how they're going to approve this and what else grayscale needs to do. Obviously, we're all waiting for this Bitcoin spot ETF approval to happen. I think the SEC is going to approve multiple at the same time. If they were to approve the BlackRock ETF ahead of everybody else, you know the game is completely rigged. We have some sense it is rigged, but if they do that, it will be really blatant. So I think they're going to approve multiple at the same time. However, this is my opinion. Look, we got world conflict happening. We still got inflation. We still got the Fed raising rates. Liquidity is low. We're still in the quantitative tightening cycle. I don't think now is a good time for this ETF to be approved, honestly. I think next year when things calm down, maybe near the Bitcoin halving would be a good time. The conflict ramps down, dies down. People are not as focused on it. Just normal human life and things go back to normal to a certain degree. Maybe the Fed is ramping down rate hikes or they have paused completely. They start QE. Liquidity is blowing back in. I think that will be the ideal scenario, but we'll see what happens. Maybe I'm wrong and they approve it sometime this quarter and maybe it does well, but we'll see what happens. The one thing I want you all to expect though, there's not going to be capital flowing in overnight into these ETFs. I think they have to be fully, the groundwork has to be set up. The marketing has to be there. Once again, people essentially wouldn't want to be focused on investing. Right now, people are not really focused on investing. I'm talking about the general public. Just keep that in mind. Now, speaking of the SEC, we have an update here as it relates to Coinbase versus the SEC. Paul Grewal, chief legal officer at Coinbase given updates on their response to the third circuit and it says here the TLDR, the SEC's unilluminating update is mere bureaucratic pantomime and confirms that nothing short of mandamus will prompt the agency to take its obligations seriously. We respectfully request an order to the SEC to act on Coinbase's rulemaking petition within 30 days. We appreciate the court's careful consideration of this matter. So remember the SEC filed their response and it was a bullshit letter. It pretty much was nothing in it. It was just a delay tactic. So I appreciate Coinbase putting the pressure. That's what we got to do. And we saw the judge already in these cases with Coinbase versus SEC is calling out the SEC saying like, what are you guys doing? What's a security? What's not a security? You approved Coinbase to go public. You knew what their business was. So what are you doing now? It's not like they're charging fraud on Coinbase. They're just saying you're selling unregistered securities, yet they won't say what is a security and what's not. Even the scumbag regulator, Gary Gensler, before Congress, can't even answer what's a security and what's not. It's ridiculous. We're dealing with a government agency that is funded by our tax dollars that doesn't abide by the law, that are hypocrites and liars. Even Judge Sarah Netburn in the Ripple lawsuit said the SEC lacks a fateful allegiance to the law. It's pathetic. But we got to keep putting the pressure on this corrupt scumbag bureaucrat and he will be exposed. He lost in the Ripple case. He lost in the Grayscale case. And I believe they're going to lose here with Coinbase. So I appreciate Coinbase, you know, putting the pressure and we got to keep doing the same thing. Contact our representatives, share the facts on social media and expose these lies. Now some good news, folks. And this involves Governor Gavin Newsom out of California. Now, whether you love Gavin Newsom or you hate Gavin Newsom, that is one thing. Let's put it to the side. That's a whole other conversation. But folks, California, they passed a crypto licensing bill, which is really good, folks. Gavin Newsom signed this yesterday. So here's the headline. Governor Newsom signs crypto licensing bill in California. Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday signed into law a measure that would regulate California's crypto industry, home to nearly a quarter of the blockchain companies in North America. This is being reported by Bloomberg Law. But I'm going to jump to another article here, which gives the full details because Bloomberg wants me to pay to read, which is annoying. So according to the report by Bloomberg Law, this first law aims to establish basic regulations for crypto companies operating in California, making them obtain state licenses and meet specific requirements related to reserves, disclosures and audits. The law also covers assets backed crypto currencies like USDC and USDT, so stable coins, making it mandatory for them to keep complete reserves, which would impact algorithmic stable coins that rely on different mechanisms to maintain their pegs. This crypto regulation bill was passed in August 2023, a year after Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a prior version of the crypto bill stating that California needed a more flexible approach. So, folks, this is great, great news. It is logical, reasonable things. There's no overreach here. If you are a centralized exchange or a stable coin issuer, you have to have your reserves. You have to provide audits. You have to make sure you're abiding by the laws. We don't want any more FTX or Celsius things, no commingling, no lying, no pulling customer funds to go trade it, right? Like these idiots, Caroline Ellison and Sam Bankman Fried and even a scammer, Alex Mashinsky. No more of that nonsense. The industry needs to raise its standards. All exchanges decentralized need to be audited, whether it be monthly reporting or quarterly reporting it, sending it to the licensed agencies in the States and it's being reviewed, right? I think we can all agree with that. You can be a very pro -crypto person, very much into decentralized exchanges and defies, but we can't ignore that there's going to be centralized entities in the market. They need to abide by the law. They have to follow these best practices. We can't have what happened last year happen again. That was ridiculous, right? So this is a great move, great bill. And it's sad that the States have to do this and the federal government is not doing it, right? But the good thing here is that the States moving ahead will force the hand of the federal government because it's not just California. It's Wyoming, it's Texas, it's New York and many more are passing comprehensive regulations. So this is a really great move, really happy to hear about this. And obviously there's a lot of crypto companies in California, some like Ripple and others. So really, really big crypto regulation bill here, folks. And here's what Tim Grayson, who is an assembly member in California, tweeted out. He said, today, California is taking the necessary step to regulate a market that is volatile risky and in some cases deliberately rigged against everyday consumers. Thank you to Governor Newsom for helping ensure that our state leads in fostering responsible innovation. Folks, this is huge, huge, huge, huge. I can't, once again, I'm not endorsing Gavin Newsom here, so please, please don't get me wrong because California has a whole lot of problems and other things happening. But as it relates to crypto, this is a really great move. And I think game theory is going to play out. Other states are going to follow suit and follow the direction of California, which is one of the largest states, folks. So a move in the right direction. Now I want to highlight a great, responsible and safe exchange that is Uphold, which is a sponsor of this podcast. I've been a user of Uphold since 2018, so I can vouch for this platform. I've interviewed the CEO, the CFO and many folks over the years. They have 10 plus million users, 250 plus cryptocurrencies, and they're available in 150 countries. You can also trade 37 fiat currencies and precious metals on this platform and easily switch between crypto, fiat and precious metals. It's pretty cool. It's a unique platform. And once again, I can vouch for it because I use it. I use it for trading and much more. So if you'd like to learn more about Uphold, please visit the link in the description. Now, folks, as we're talking about crypto regulations, we know Elizabeth Warren has her anti -crypto army. She's corrupt. She's, you know, three peas in a pod with Gary Gensler and Brad Sherman. We know she's been doing all kinds of nonsense. Well, there's news coming out here. Ryan Selkis said rumor is John Donenberg, Liz Warren's COS, is heading to the White House to replace Bharat Ramamurti. Bharat responsible was for making the admins deep crypto hostility. So talking about the Biden admin, some in D .C. told me to wait and see Biden soften with Bharat gone. If Donenberg is in, that won't happen. So we'll see. Here's what Caitlin Long, who's battling the Fed right now, said. She said, yes, as Novogratz, Mike Novogratz said, Senator Warren is driving the Biden administration's bus on crypto policy. Biden cut that deal with her long ago. And that's why she gets to a place or gets to place her people at the White House in key agency positions. This was an open secret in D .C. And it's now no longer a secret. P .S., where is the press on Biden's Warren deal to let her pick White House economic staff and financial services appointees? This has been an open secret pretty much since Operation Choke Point 2 .0 began in January. And I haven't seen it reported yet. Any ideas? Ryan Selkis and Nick Carter, she said, and Novogratz, I think you said in an interview on stage at Mainnet that Warren's senior staff didn't agree with her. Let's hope John is among those you are alluding to now that he's at the White House. Folks, we shall see what happens. My hope is that Biden overall losing popularity and with different things economically and, you know, Elizabeth Warren going crazy over crypto and the industry fighting back and Gary Gensler taking losses in court, you know, take some wind out of her sales. It's Senator Elizabeth's sales here and take some power away from her. And maybe the people Biden has around him, you know, who are anti -crypto get kicked out. You know, we can see next year is a election year. So we'll see what happens. Maybe things soften up. The Bitcoin spot ETF gets approved. You know, I think we're moving maybe out of the eye of the storm with this operation choke point. We'll see. You know, I think the court law losses for Gary Gensler really help the causes here. Even with Caitlin Long, the court denied the Fed's request to throw out her lawsuit against them. So the lawsuit is proceeding. It's going to discovery. So these anti -crypto people are getting exposed. And, you know, we hope Elizabeth Warren, her corrupt ass gets exposed as well. Now, the IRS is also putting out some crypto tax rules, which the industry are trying to push back on. So here's the headline. Coinbase tax had calls on IRS to revise crypto tax rules. The IRS is proposed tax rules hinder digital asset growth by exposing restrictions that question their utility. Coinbase is VP of tax wrote Thursday. So great to see the industry is pushing back in a letter disclosed on Thursday. Lawrence Zlakten, if I'm saying that right, a Coinbase's vice president of tax criticized the proposed regulations for imposing an unprecedented, unchecked and unlimited tracking on the daily lives of Americans. In August, the IRS issued a 300 page proposal that revises the definition of a broker in accordance with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, including crypto exchanges, which provides guidelines on tax compliance for both the brokers and their clients. Now, many of you may recall the infrastructure bill situation with this, and we're still fighting this. So I'm glad the industry is pushing back. And, you know, these things are not set in stone fully yet. So we have an opportunity to push back and we're seeing more pro crypto governors and congressmen and lawmakers and so forth, even presidential candidates. So we got to keep pushing. We got to keep fighting. And, you know, where we need to rally and call up our representatives and send letters and emails and tweet and whatever we got to do, we will do that. But good to see that folks at Coinbase are pushing back. Now, we've got news here that Taurus expands crypto footprint after Deutsche Bank linked up. So the crypto infrastructure firm Taurus that partnered with Deutsche Bank last month is set to announce more large partnerships with banks soon, exec says. Now, I remember recently Deutsche Bank said they were going to launch crypto custody and they were they're doing this with Taurus. So Switzerland based Taurus, which offers infrastructure to issue custody and trade crypto tokenized assets and NFTs is opening offices in London and Paris. The firm says it expects more of the region's banks listen to this folks to wade into the crypto space as the regulatory environment becomes more clear. Folks, that's music to my ears. And they're talking about the EU here, right? Because both the EU and the UK have passed crypto regulations. Now, if only we could have that in the United States. Right. Where where are the members of Congress? Where's the federal government on this? So the expansion is part of a bid to better serve institutions that will soon have to comply with the Markets and Crypto Assets Regulation, the MICA law, the European Union Parliament passed the framework in April with implementation expected next year. So great, great news, folks. Very bullish. And let me give you some more details. So Jurgen Hoffbauer from saying that right previously towards his global head of strategic partnerships will lead the London office. He spent more than 10 years at Bank of America, where he served as head of sales for Europe and Middle East and Africa. Folks, a lot of the legacy banking TradFi folks are coming to crypto and they're helping to build out the crypto infrastructure for institutions. And of course, you know, they know there's money to be made here. They know this is the future and they're doing it. And this is why we have to be patient. This is why we dollar cost average. We study the market cycles. We look at what these big players are doing, not what they're saying, but what they're doing. And we are positioning ourselves to take profits as the value of our tokens rise. Right, folks? So we have to exercise patience. Taurus raised 65 million dollars in a February funding round led by Credit Suisse. Deutsche Bank also took part in that round and German megabank linked up with Taurus last month to build out their digital asset custody and tokenization services. Wow, folks, I hope you see what's happening here. And this thing is global. It's not specific to United States. So while Elizabeth Warren acts the fool with the clown Gary Gensler here and delaying and causing all kinds of nonsense, the rest of the world is moving forward. And the great thing about this market, it's borderless. You can be in any part of the world. I've said many times you have a smartphone, you have Internet access and you can be part of the asset class. You can buy a fraction of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, whatever it is. You can put as little as 10 bucks in each. Right. And you are part of the asset class. And that's something they cannot stop. They would love to. They would love to gate keep it like they have historically and put the borders and say, oh, you have to go through Wall Street and you have to be an accredited investor. Right. They would love to stop that so they can control it. That's why they're fighting so hard. That's why this corrupt Elizabeth Warren. This is a big thing for her. That's why Gary Gensler is doing all the things he's doing. They want to control it, but they can't. The disruption is at their doorstep. They can't stop this thing. They're going to put up roadblocks. Don't get me wrong. Like they're doing, they're slowing us down to causing a bit of confusion. But this train has left the station. They ain't going to stop it. Now, got some news here that Texas County settles lawsuit over wrongful seizure of fifteen thousand dollars from Bitcoin ATM. The lawsuit also aimed to have the court recognize Bitcoin Depot as the lawful owner of the seized money. So I've interviewed the CEO of Bitcoin Depot and this is an interesting case here. So authorities in McClellan County have settled a lawsuit with Lux Vending operating as Bitcoin Depot following the wrongful seizure of fifteen thousand dollars from one of its Bitcoin ATMs. The lawsuit was dismissed after the county acknowledged the funds were improperly confiscating following a scam that targeted an 82 year old Crawford woman. Local media reported Thursday the scam was reported by the elderly victim who was deceived into withdrawing fifteen thousand dollars in cash and depositing it into a Bitcoin machine. This reportedly followed her falling victim to a ransomware attack initiated by a malicious email link. Legal action had originally been filed against the county investigators for allegedly violating due process. They had obtained a warrant to seize the funds from Bitcoin Depot kiosk located at a court recognized Bitcoin Depot as a as the lawful owner of the of the seized money. McClellan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara, who had previously stood by his the actions of his officers, declined to comment on the lawsuit's resolution or on Judge Scott Felton's admission that the funds had been seized erroneously. KWTX News reported. So interesting case happening here. And, you know, one of the layers here I want to highlight is that crypto is becoming a big part of society in the mainstream and the average everyday things that may occur, whether it be crime, whether it be just different things in life. Right. That happens that we don't control or had nothing necessarily to do with crypto that it's popping up in cases and all forms of regulations and law now need to be developed around it. So that's a great sign of adoption. I'm not saying what happened to this lady is a great right. Obviously, that's another issue with malware and scammers and elder abuse and all these things. But in the sense of adoption and this being part of the society, just as the Internet became part of a society and there were bad things that followed that, but obviously a lot of great things. Right. Same thing is happening here. So it's pretty, pretty interesting. I like to look at these things from a psychological macro societal human behavior standpoint, because it also tells a story of the direction we're headed. And are people moving away from this or are they adopting it? Is it becoming more prominent in our daily lives? And I think we're seeing that for crypto and block chain. Now, I just want to end it here by highlighting one of the partners of the podcast that I and it's a platform I use, Merlin, which allows you to track your crypto exit strategy in a very easy and safe way. Merlin allows you to tie in all your exchanges and ledger data. It does not capture your seed phrases or anything like that. It simply just takes a snapshot of your account and allows you to set your exit strategy. Which price points? I've been doing stuff like this on spreadsheets. It's super tedious and manual. And I've always been looking for some sort of solution. And Merlin is that solution, folks. So I'll be using this for the next bull market. So let's say for my XRP or Ethereum or Bitcoin, I'll set certain price points. Hey, I want to take 30 percent of my chain link or XRP at this price and I can set it in the Apple. Let me know right away, folks, on which exchange it hit that price and I can go right away and execute accordingly. So this is something that will make your life easy and you don't have to be constantly refreshing on coin market cap or, you know, going back and forth between a spreadsheet. So this is one of the reasons I'm highlighting it as a partner, because I'm using this platform and it's great. It's easy, it's safe and that you can plug in, uphold, you can plug in ledger, Coinbase, whatever it is. It is a great platform, folks. So be sure to check out Merlin. Link will be in the description. Go check it out. You can get a 30 day free trial, see if you like it and go from there. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for your support. Hit the thumbs up button, hit the five star rating on the podcast platform and I'll talk to you all later.

Tim Grayson Alex Mashinsky Paul Grewal Jurgen Hoffbauer Gary Gensler Brad Sherman James Safert John Elizabeth Warren Lawrence Zlakten April London Novogratz Caitlin Long Ryan Selkis August August 2023 Friday Paris Donenberg

The Tennis Podcast

03:23 min | 6 months ago

"paris" Discussed on The Tennis Podcast

"And we have our first French open shout outs, Matt. We have Fiona Hanstock, who is in Gloucestershire. Like Fiona Farrow. Is she in the draw? I think she got a qualifying wild card. Right, that rings a bell, yeah. Yeah, OK. Fiona says, I fell in love with tennis watching Rod Laver, but I was inspired to pick up my sister's old school racket and play when watching Billie Jean King. Because she wore glasses, like me. She showed it was possible for glasses wearers to play sport. I'm still playing tennis regularly over 50 years later. She is, no offence Matt, you're in at number two. She is the best glasses wearer I've ever observed. Dave's distracted because someone's just walked past wearing an in the mix t -shirt. Which we love. Our next shout out, Matt? Pamela Hood from Glasgow. We know Pamela. I know this name. Yeah. Well, Pamela says, I saw Matt at Billie Jean King Cup, went to say hello and he was gone. He was probably on his way to a draw, Pamela. So she's had to pay for you to say hello. Just accelerated into the distance again. As Billie Jean King would say, don't take it personally, Pamela. Pam Shriver, of course. Absolutely, who we saw earlier today. It's hard to think of her as a Pamela, but of course. In a lovely reunion we had with Pamela. Yeah, looking forward to a few weeks with Pam. And finally, we've got Susan Officer, who is in Sydney. And Susan says that my friends Lynn, Simone and I had the pleasure of meeting Matt and Catherine at the 2022 Australian Open after the Shepparval of Zverev match. Love your work. Never miss an ep. Oh, bless. Thank you. Very lovely. Thank you, Susan. Like, Suzanne Longlen? We'll allow it. Given the surrounds, Susan, we're going to allow that. Are there not any Susan tennis players? I must say I can't think of any. Barker? Susan Barker, yeah. Okay, all right. French Open champion, 1976. Yep, okay, if anybody else can think of any others, do send them in. I think we've done pretty well there. I think Susan, look, I don't know Susan, but I think Susan's going to be okay with it. Okay, good. Thank you, Susan. Thank you to all our shout outs. Thank you for everybody who supports the tennis podcast. If you would like to become a friend of the pod and support us, but also gain access to our back catalogue of bonus episodes, which includes the four musketeers episode that we recorded this morning and though we say so ourselves is pretty special, I think, actually. If we've put this one up before that one, just wait by your phones. It's coming, folks. It's coming and it's brilliant. And if you'd like to gain access to it or get yourself an intro and a shout out, anything you like, then the link to become a friend is in our show notes. As I said, we're brought to you by On Location. I think that's it for our laundry list and we'd better save some energy because we're back with another one of these tomorrow after media day. So thanks for listening and we'll speak to you then.

The Napoleonic Quarterly

05:39 min | 2 years ago

"paris" Discussed on The Napoleonic Quarterly

"National assembly to agree and by the start of seventeen ninety four You know the the work is underway that the the national assembly is able to consider this having heard the news about what's going on all across the other side of the atlantic so this was the period a national assembly were. Were being asked to consider this question. What arguments were used to persuade them to agree to abolish slavery. Yes so they indeed needed persuading because in fact when the news of sultan axes. Abolition of slavery in sandow nine arrived back in france. It actually sparked indignation and hostility among a number of the revolutionary deputies of this radical national convention. So this always makes me smile. So so much for debate they again Gotten apply here and the other difficulty was that so many of the champions of abolition on the rights of free men of color affiliated with associated design they out which was the society of the friends of blacks modeled actually on the english society they had either fled or had met their maker under the blade of the youths hidden slow. No lafayette noble. He so no condorcet In order to support the passing of a decree by the national convention and what really transformed. This are the arguments made by the three deputies who come from santa mine at their. They're sort of a called in a jolly way that the tri-colored delegation because you have gianbattista a formerly enslaved man who had been bought in an transported from goofy of sin gallon. He is the first black. Deputy to take a seat in the convention Yes and there are beautiful portraits of the league He's just an a monumental figure. Giambattista mills is a free man of mixed race and then a retail defy. Who was a frenchman of born in paris. So these deputies arrive and and make a several arguments with different elements i They go for the ideological so they they contend that this was really the only just and true way to fulfil the core principles of the revolution but they supplement this perspective with reassurances regarding the upshot of a general of patient so they explained that the abolition of slavery would not diminish the economic productivity or prosperity of santa nine and other territory accused to right..

france three deputies english paris gianbattista atlantic first frenchman santa mine seventeen ninety four mills Giambattista sandow santa nine sin

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