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God's leadership over our lives takes us through peaks and valleys. It takes us through rivers, deserts, and over rickety wooden bridges. But whatever the terrain and the altitude, He simply asks that we trust Him implicitly. Conceptually, this idea of “trusting God” doesn't seem like it should be a difficult task. But, come to find out, spiritual staying-power and soul loyalty is something that demands God's assistance. The enemy will hit us from every side to try and take us off God's directed course. However, the simple believer that is willing to follow through storm, wind, hail, and hell's bluster, will find that God is ALWAYS faithful and true to His Word.
Conceptually, approaching behavior cases with a welfare-first approach makes sense. But what should we do when the dog's welfare is being affected by multiple factors? Is there a “right” place to start when the behavior bingo card is basically blacked out? https://sarahstremming.com/tennis-racquets-and-doubles-partners/ Sign up for courses and join the membership here: sarahstremming.com Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cogdogradio Music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay
Guest Stars: Robert Alice (Artist) & Marlène Corbun (Head of Curation at LaCollection.io)Episode Theme: Babel II – Art, Time, and Blockchain at La Monnaie de ParisIntroduction:In this special episode, John and Rem reunite with two major forces behind one of the most impactful crypto art exhibitions in France: Robert Alice and Marlène Corbun from LaCollection.io. Their collaboration, initially launched at La Monnaie de Paris in 2023, returns for a second act.Exhibition Part 1 Recap: The Blueprint SeriesThe original exhibition explored the symbolic and historical relationship between money, decentralization, and trust. Inspired by La Monnaie's archives, Robert Alice created a series of physical and digital cyanotypes — blueprints combining institutional machinery diagrams with decentralized, blockchain-based themes.One of the works, Garden City, was recently acquired by the Centre Pompidou, marking a significant milestone not only for the artist but for institutional recognition of Web3-native art. Notably, this acquisition was made through purchase — a rare move, as most institutional NFT holdings are donations.Babel II: The New Series — Stasis FieldsReturning to La Monnaie de Paris, Robert Alice introduces a new body of work titled Stasis Fields, launching March 27th. Conceptually, these pieces dive even deeper into blockchain's relationship with time, drawing from cosmology and the physics of black holes.The centerpiece of the new series is a set of hybrid artworks: physical prints paired with dynamic NFTs. The NFTs evolve in real time, synchronizing with Bitcoin or Ethereum block heights. As new blocks are minted, a generative black hole grows, collapses into a white hole, and regenerates — embodying the perpetual cycle of time and data.Philosophy, Science & Art InterwovenRobert Alice discusses how his work departs from fast-paced crypto trends, looking instead to historical, scientific, and philosophical frameworks. From Kant and Einstein to Borges and AI, he positions blockchain not just as a technical tool, but as a cultural and temporal landmark — the printing press of our era.Exhibition DetailsExhibition Title: Babel IIVenue: La Monnaie de ParisVernissage: March 27, 6–9PM CETPublic Exhibition Dates: March 27 – April 21, 2025Phrase of the Episode :“If the blockchain is a library, then each block is a page in the infinite book of time.” — Robert AliceThis poetic line encapsulates Robert Alice's unique vision of blockchain technology — not as a cold, digital ledger, but as a living, evolving archive. It positions each block as a narrative unit within a limitless, decentralized library, continuously writing the story of our digital civilization.Useful LinksRobert AliceWebsite: robertalice.comTwitter: @https://x.com/robertalice_21LaCollection.ioWebsite: lacollection.ioTwitter: @LaCollectionOffMarlène CorbunLinkedIn: Marlène CorbunTwitter: MarleneCorbunReplay Video of the Episode here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nftmorning.com
Today we are talking about Single Directory Components, How best to work with them, and their future with Drupal with guest Brian Perry. We'll also cover Embedded Content as our module of the week. For show notes visit: https://www.talkingDrupal.com/487 Topics What are Single Directory Components (SDC) Why the switch to SDCs What is there in common between decoupled and SDCs Can you give us an overview of your workflow Common pitfalls How should someone get started working with SDCs Does it work with Paragraphs and Blocks? Does it need to be all at once How do you think SDCs will evolve Do you see this leading to more Decoupled front ends What contrib modules make working with SDCs easier Resources My Single Directory Components Workflow Pico CSS Open Props Twig Tweak No Markup SDC Styleguide Radix Theme SDC Block UI Patterns 2.x Astro TAC Guests Brian Perry - brianperry.dev brianperry Hosts Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Scott Weston - scott-weston MOTW Correspondent Jacob Rockowitz - jrockowitz.com jrockowitz Embedded Content Brief description: The Embedded Content module allows site builders to select, create, and update content embedded within HTML inside CKEditor. For developers, the EmbeddedContent plugin is like a Block plugin without context. There is a demo on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxOn-P3Q5Gg There is support embedding of single directory component in progress. Conceptually, this is already possible, the same way one would render a single directory component in Block plugin. Brief history The concept and code started as the CKEditor5 Embedded Content module, created in August 2022. In October 2023, CKEditor5 Embedded Content was renamed to Embedded Content. Versions available: 2.0.3 - January 22nd, 2025 Works with Drupal: ^9 ^10 ^11 Maintainership Actively maintained? yes Security coverage? Yes Test coverage? Yes Documentation? Video and an example module Number of open issues: All issues: 6 open, 17 total Bug report: 6 open, 15 total Usage stats: 509 sites report using this module 1,263 sites report using this module (using old version) Maintainer(s): Teun van Veggel (nuez) https://www.drupal.org/u/nuez Module features and usage Insert themed content in Ckeditor5 using Drupal plugins without having to write rich HTML and CSS Render these results directly in the CKEditor Create 'inline' embedded content that sits inline with the text, like footnotes. Provides Embedded Content plugin CKeditor 5 plugin. Ecosystem Embedded Content: Examples for examples of how to build your own plugins. Embedded Content: Entity for embedding content entities Embedded Content: SDC for single directory components (under development) Potential Challenges Example of the embedded content tag. Translations via TMS (data is serialized via an attribute)
Whether waiting for the train or planning the future city, infrastructure orders—and depends on—multiple urban temporalities. This agenda-setting volume disrupts conventional notions of time through a robust examination of the relations between temporality, infrastructure, and urban society. Conceptually rich and empirically detailed, its interdisciplinary dialogue encompasses infrastructural systems including transportation, energy, and water to bridge often-siloed technical, political-economic and lived perspectives. With global coverage of diverse cities and regions from Berlin to Jayapura, this book is an essential provocation to re-evaluate urban theory, politics, and practice and better account for the temporal complexities that shape our infrastructured worlds.
This week on "Streaming Without A Paddle" hosts Andrew and Ted take a final dive into the Halloween releases with Hulu's original "Carved". Conceptually stemming from a 2021 Huluween short "Carved" is about a pumpkin patch that has been exposed to some sort of toxin thus allowing the plant fruit to become ALIVE and seek murderous revenge on those who carve pumpkins during Halloween. It's a story concept that goes deep and so do Andrew and Ted with their thoughts. Tune in to see what Andrew and Ted thought about this Halloween fright.
NEW! Click here to text Monique directly with any thoughts, feels or feedback ... seriously, it goes directly to herThis episode is a delightful reflection on Monique's recent family trip to Australia and the valuable lessons she learned about balancing ambition with rest. Monique takes us through her journey of stepping away from her solopreneur business to embrace a much-needed break, all while maintaining the essence of her work and personal life. She shares insights on how to create space in your life for rest and recovery, even when you're running a business that thrives on personal connections.Monique also dives into the practices that have enabled her to take extended breaks without compromising her business. She discusses the importance of viewing rest as an asset, studying your own rhythms, setting a vision and plan, and getting the right support. For anyone contemplating a sabbatical, a big trip, or simply more spaciousness in their daily life, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration.Press play now to discover how to integrate rest into your entrepreneurial journey and emerge with renewed energy and clarity. MENTIONED42 | Committing To Success That Heals You With Marla TeyoliaGEMS DROPPED“You have to decide that rest is an asset and not a liability.”“We have to acknowledge that something is not congruent and that we actually have to step into a true valuing of rest, of space, not with the deep undercurrent of guilt that comes along with not constantly being productive. We have to see the relationship, like, truly feel the relationship between rest and productivity as one that is harmonious.”“Conceptually, it's easy to understand that rest is good for you, but my behaviors over time are not necessarily lining up with that understanding. So I want to shift us from understanding to belief.”“We are wrapped up in so many systems that tell us that if we ever stop moving, that we will be overtaken and destitute and just out of the game, that we will be fighting for our lives to feed ourselves and to be relevant. No matter how much money you have that track can be running in the background still pushing you to do more than what you need to be doing. And so I don't mean to in any way make light of this, but we have to kind of get real with how ridiculous it actually is and that it is not a narrative of our making. It is a narrative driven purely out of capitalism.”“I'd given myself over to this season of rest, and it gave me the proof after going through that, that abundance can be possible for you when you treat yourself abundantly.When you treat yourself with scarcity, you cannot be surprised when your results are scarce.““We cannot always be sowing seeds. Sometimes we need time for the stuff to grow. Sometimes we need time for the stuff to wilt and die so that it has the energy to regrow in a new season. You cannot always be on, you cannot always be doing, you cannot always be giving because you're going to reap really weak crops or it'll be the wrong crop.”STAY IN TOUCHCome and follow me on Instagram @moniquershields and I would love your feedback so send an email to ambition@moniquershields.com.
Send us a textMichi Barall streamed into Playwright's Spotlight this week days before her new play Drawing Lessons leaps into rehearsal at Children's Theatre Company. Conceptually complex, Michi shares the concept of translating a graphic novel for the stage, the concept of live drawing on stage and simultaneously performing, putting the concept on the page, the process of casting, and her struggles breaking down virtual art. We also discuss the impact of the New York and Minneapolis markets and organizations on the play and the changes from each as well as collaborating with multiple artists and the Deadline Draft. We touch on her journey from actor to playwright, the lessons from Greek playwrights, learning the rules and overcoming obstacles, the importance of Theatre History, and conquering Imposter Syndrome. It's a very educational episode that explores the possibilities of theatre and what can be achieved. As always, Enjoy!Michi Barall is a New York City-based actor, playwright, and academic. Her dance-theatre piece, Rescue Me, was produced at the Ohio Theatre by Ma-Yi in 2010. Her music-theatre adaptation of Peer Gynt - Peer Gynt and The Norwegian Hapa Band, premiered in 2107 at the ART/NY Theatre. She holds degrees from Stanford University, NYU with an M.F.A. in Acting) and Columbia with a PhD in Theatre/English & Comparative Literature. She has taught at Columbia, NYU, and MIT and is currently on the faculty at Purchase College. Drawing Lessons opens at Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota October 8th through November 10th, 2024. For tickets, visit - https://childrenstheatre.org/whats-on/drawing-lessons/To watch the video format of this episode, visit -https://youtu.be/w1gHrCcEN5MLinks to resources mentioned in this episode -Children's Theatre Company -https://childrenstheatre.orgWebsites and socials for James Elden, PMP, and Playwright's Spotlight -Punk Monkey Productions - www.punkmonkeyproductions.comPLAY Noir -www.playnoir.comPLAY Noir Anthology –www.punkmonkeyproductions.com/contact.htmlJames Elden -Twitter - @jameseldensauerIG - @alakardrakeFB - fb.com/jameseldensauerPunk Monkey Productions and PLAY Noir - Twitter - @punkmonkeyprods - @playnoirla IG - @punkmonkeyprods - @playnoir_la FB - fb.com/playnoir - fb.com/punkmonkeyproductionsPlaywright's Spotlight -Twitter - @wrightlightpod IG - @playwrights_spotlightPlaywriting services through Los Angeles Collegiate Playwrights Festivalwww.losangelescollegiateplaywrightsfestival.com/services.htmlSupport the show
In this episode I'm lucky enough to chat again with the ever enthusiastic and entertaining Cat Green. We have lots of laughs as always! Cat's a folk herbalist and grassroots community herbal organiser and educator. She's passionate about making it easy -and normal - for people to make simple, effective herbal remedies at home. Through Everyday Empowered, she offers a wide range of practical ways for people to learn about herbs. During this wide reaching conversation, we explore how we can deepen our understanding of self care to encompass both community care and earth care. Because we know that health doesn't happen in a vacuum, it's a product of our interactions and interconnections with the world around us. But, when we're already overloaded and busy and distracted, it can quickly feel overwhelming to think about becoming activists to change the bigger structures around workplaces and the environment. Conceptually we might understand what's required, but on a practical level, what do we do about that? Cat and I agree, the first step is having conversations like these- in our community's our families and our workplaces. Without these conversations as a starting point, it's impossible to change the cultural expectations in our workplaces to begin creating new social norms. Moving away from the idea of self worth being tied to productivity which can be a fast track to burn out. We agree that feeling a part of and connected to the natural world encourages a sense of awe and a desire to protect and conserve and helps us understand how taking action can be a form self care. Cat makes a really lovely point that we're so quick to believe that the smallest thing can hurt us, one drink or one cigarette, but we're so quick to dismiss that small positive, consistent positive actions will have a cumulative benefit. We definitely don't have all the answers, but together, we offer some gentle, practical suggestions for building community connection and to care for and build connection with the earth to begin to deepen our practice of self care. So grab a cup of your favourite herbal cuppa, find a comfy nook in the sun and settle in to this inspiring episode… *SHOW NOTES* You can learn more about Cat, her upcoming offerings, check out her blog posts and blearn more about her upcoming Herbal Tea course here. Or follow Cat on Instagram and Facebook to keep up to date with all of her offerings. Cat refers to Slow Productivity by Cal Newport which you can access here. If you'd like to hear more from Cat on the Elder Tree Podcast, you can listen in here: Episode 81: Subtropical Herbalism and Herb Fest: Cat Green on Herbal Education Episode 48: Self Care as a Dynamic, Seasonal, Everyday Practice: Cat Green on Self Care with Herbs You can connect with Jess via instagram and facebook here and here, and join her newsletter community here. To find out more about The Elder Tree visit the website at www.theeldertree.org and donate to the crowdfunding campaign here. You can also follow The Elder Tree on Facebook and Instagram and sign up to the newsletter. Find out more about this podcast and the presenters here. Get in touch with The Elder Tree at: asktheeldertree@gmail.com The intro and outro song is "Sing for the Earth" and was kindly donated by Chad Wilkins. You can find Chad's music here and here.
It's no secret that a business owner should be working ON their business, not IN it. Conceptually, this makes sense, and most can recite what it means. However, when it comes to actually executing the day-to-day actions required to work on the business, many business owners still find themselves working IN it. So, what is the problem? They want to work on it, they understand it's essential, and they would love the outcomes and future growth if they did—but they don't. In this episode, we peel apart the differences between knowing and doing, offering step-by-step insights that provide a clear understanding of what you need to do and how to do it. This episode is packed with immediate, practical nuggets that will help you transition from technician to owner in no time! Level Up + Live Website (Business Coaching and Mastermind Group): Level Up + Live (levelupandlive.com) Additional FREE Resources: Make it happen in 2024: Get your FREE New Year's resolution planner now! Link below! Free Resources — Level Up + Live (levelupandlive.com)
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On deck for today's premiere is an analog trip from Estonian artist, Taevalaotus off of their forthcoming vinyl album titled ‘Ringlus'. Conceptually the release is rooted in field recordings and an ethos of self reliance as stated by the label, ‘wanders along the path of its creator's fantasy, with no Third-party samples used, and the music's fabric woven from original, natural sounds such as analog oscillators, vibrations of bass guitar strings, sonic echoes of nature, and cracking of the ice recorded underwater.' Phobia evokes a few emotions during its run time as the beginning is pensive, and withdrawn. The melancholic pads, and frenetic drum machine work, add a sense of chaos to the mix. Just as things begin to coalesce, there's a change of pace and the second half switches to a bubblier atmosphere, gone are the scattered percussion sequences and in their place, bright synths, and comforting melodies. Phobia, and in turn the rest of the ‘Ringlus' album will be out both on vinyl and digitally, September 1st. Digital available via Bandcamp taevasrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ringlus @taevalaotus Follow us on social media: @itsdelayed linktr.ee/delayed www.itsdelayed.com www.facebook.com/itsdelayed www.instagram.com/_____delayed www.youtube.com/@_____delayed
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: When Are Results from Computational Complexity Not Too Coarse?, published by Dalcy on July 4, 2024 on LessWrong. Tl;dr, While an algorithm's computational complexity may be exponential in general (worst-case), it is often possible to stratify its input via some dimension k that makes it polynomial for a fixed k, and only exponential in k. Conceptually, this quantity captures the core aspect of a problem's structure that makes specific instances of it 'harder' than others, often with intuitive interpretations. Example: Bayesian Inference and Treewidth One can easily prove exact inference (decision problem of: "is P(X)>0?") is NP-hard by encoding SAT-3 as a Bayes Net. Showing that it's NP is easy too. Therefore, inference is NP-complete, implying that algorithms are worst-case exponential. But this can't be the typical case! Let's examine the example of a Bayes Net whose structure is a chain ABCD, and say you want to compute the marginals P(D). The Naive Algorithm for marginalization would be to literally multiply all the conditional probability distribution (CPD) tables for each of the Bayes Net's nodes, and sum over all the variables other than X. If we assume each variable has at most v values, then the computational complexity is exponential in the number of variables n. P(D)=ABCP(A,B,C,D), which is O(vn). But because of the factorization P(A,B,C,D)=P(A)P(B|A)P(C|B)P(D|C) due to the chain structure, we can shift the order of the sum around like this: P(D)=CP(D|C)BP(C|B)AP(A)P(B|A) and now the sum can be done in O(nv2). Why? Notice AP(A)P(B|A) is P(B), and to compute P(B=b) we need to multiply v times and sum v1 times, overall O(v). This needs to be done for every b, so O(v2). Now we have cached P(B), and we move on to BP(C|B)P(B), where the same analysis applies. This is basically dynamic programming. So, at least for chains, inference can be done in linear time in input size. The earlier NP-completeness result, remember, is a worst-case analysis that applies to all possible Bayes Nets, ignoring the possible structure in each instance that may make some easier to solve than the other. Let's attempt a more fine complexity analysis by taking into account the structure of the Bayes Net provided, based on the chain example. Intuitively, the relevant structure of the Bayes Net that determines the difficulty of marginalization is the 'degree of interaction' among the variables, since the complexity is exponential in the "maximum number of factors ever seen within a sum," which was 2 in the case of a chain. How do we generalize this quantity to graphs other than chains? Since we could've shuffled the order of the sums and products differently (which would still yield O(nv2) for chains, but for general graphs the exponent may change significantly), for a given graph we want to find the sum-shuffling-order that minimizes the number of factors ever seen within a sum, and call that number k, an invariant of the graph that captures the difficulty of inference - O(mvk)[1] This is a graphical quantity of your graph called treewidth[2][3]. So, to sum up: We've parameterized the possible input Bayes Nets using some quantity k. Where k stratifies the inference problem in terms of their inherent difficulty, i.e. computational complexity is exponential in k, but linear under fixed or bounded k. We see that k is actually a graphical quantity known as treewidth, which intuitively corresponds to the notion of 'degree of interaction' among variables. General Lesson While I was studying basic computational complexity theory, I found myself skeptical of the value of various complexity classes, especially due to the classes being too coarse and not particularly exploiting the structures specific to the problem instance: The motif of proving NP-hardness by finding a clever way to encode 3-SA...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Transformers Represent Belief State Geometry in their Residual Stream, published by Adam Shai on April 16, 2024 on The AI Alignment Forum. Produced while being an affiliate at PIBBSS[1]. The work was done initially with funding from a Lightspeed Grant, and then continued while at PIBBSS. Work done in collaboration with @Paul Riechers, @Lucas Teixeira, @Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel, and Sarah Marzen. Paul was a MATS scholar during some portion of this work. Thanks to Paul, Lucas, Alexander, Sarah, and @Guillaume Corlouer for suggestions on this writeup. Introduction What computational structure are we building into LLMs when we train them on next-token prediction? In this post we present evidence that this structure is given by the meta-dynamics of belief updating over hidden states of the data-generating process. We'll explain exactly what this means in the post. We are excited by these results because We have a formalism that relates training data to internal structures in LLMs. Conceptually, our results mean that LLMs synchronize to their internal world model as they move through the context window. The computation associated with synchronization can be formalized with a framework called Computational Mechanics. In the parlance of Computational Mechanics, we say that LLMs represent the Mixed-State Presentation of the data generating process. The structure of synchronization is, in general, richer than the world model itself. In this sense, LLMs learn more than a world model. We have increased hope that Computational Mechanics can be leveraged for interpretability and AI Safety more generally. There's just something inherently cool about making a non-trivial prediction - in this case that the transformer will represent a specific fractal structure - and then verifying that the prediction is true. Concretely, we are able to use Computational Mechanics to make an a priori and specific theoretical prediction about the geometry of residual stream activations (below on the left), and then show that this prediction holds true empirically (below on the right). Theoretical Framework In this post we will operationalize training data as being generated by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)[2]. An HMM has a set of hidden states and transitions between them. The transitions are labeled with a probability and a token that it emits. Here are some example HMMs and data they generate. Consider the relation a transformer has to an HMM that produced the data it was trained on. This is general - any dataset consisting of sequences of tokens can be represented as having been generated from an HMM. Through the discussion of the theoretical framework, let's assume a simple HMM with the following structure, which we will call the Z1R process[3] (for "zero one random"). The Z1R process has 3 hidden states, S0,S1, and SR. Arrows of the form Sxa:p%Sy denote P(Sy,a|Sx)=p%, that the probability of moving to state Sy and emitting the token a, given that the process is in state Sx, is p%. In this way, taking transitions between the states stochastically generates binary strings of the form ...01R01R... where R is a random 50/50 sample from { 0, 1}. The HMM structure is not directly given by the data it produces. Think of the difference between the list of strings this HMM emits (along with their probabilities) and the hidden structure itself[4]. Since the transformer only has access to the strings of emissions from this HMM, and not any information about the hidden states directly, if the transformer learns anything to do with the hidden structure, then it has to do the work of inferring it from the training data. What we will show is that when they predict the next token well, transformers are doing even more computational work than inferring the hidden data generating process! Do Transformers Learn ...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Transformers Represent Belief State Geometry in their Residual Stream, published by Adam Shai on April 16, 2024 on LessWrong. Produced while being an affiliate at PIBBSS[1]. The work was done initially with funding from a Lightspeed Grant, and then continued while at PIBBSS. Work done in collaboration with @Paul Riechers, @Lucas Teixeira, @Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel, and Sarah Marzen. Paul was a MATS scholar during some portion of this work. Thanks to Paul, Lucas, Alexander, and @Guillaume Corlouer for suggestions on this writeup. Introduction What computational structure are we building into LLMs when we train them on next-token prediction? In this post we present evidence that this structure is given by the meta-dynamics of belief updating over hidden states of the data-generating process. We'll explain exactly what this means in the post. We are excited by these results because We have a formalism that relates training data to internal structures in LLMs. Conceptually, our results mean that LLMs synchronize to their internal world model as they move through the context window. The computation associated with synchronization can be formalized with a framework called Computational Mechanics. In the parlance of Computational Mechanics, we say that LLMs represent the Mixed-State Presentation of the data generating process. The structure of synchronization is, in general, richer than the world model itself. In this sense, LLMs learn more than a world model. We have increased hope that Computational Mechanics can be leveraged for interpretability and AI Safety more generally. There's just something inherently cool about making a non-trivial prediction - in this case that the transformer will represent a specific fractal structure - and then verifying that the prediction is true. Concretely, we are able to use Computational Mechanics to make an a priori and specific theoretical prediction about the geometry of residual stream activations (below on the left), and then show that this prediction holds true empirically (below on the right). Theoretical Framework In this post we will operationalize training data as being generated by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)[2]. An HMM has a set of hidden states and transitions between them. The transitions are labeled with a probability and a token that it emits. Here are some example HMMs and data they generate. Consider the relation a transformer has to an HMM that produced the data it was trained on. This is general - any dataset consisting of sequences of tokens can be represented as having been generated from an HMM. Through the discussion of the theoretical framework, let's assume a simple HMM with the following structure, which we will call the Z1R process[3] (for "zero one random"). The Z1R process has 3 hidden states, S0,S1, and SR. Arrows of the form Sxa:p%Sy denote P(Sy,a|Sx)=p%, that the probability of moving to state Sy and emitting the token a, given that the process is in state Sx, is p%. In this way, taking transitions between the states stochastically generates binary strings of the form ...01R01R... where R is a random 50/50 sample from { 0, 1}. The HMM structure is not directly given by the data it produces. Think of the difference between the list of strings this HMM emits (along with their probabilities) and the hidden structure itself[4]. Since the transformer only has access to the strings of emissions from this HMM, and not any information about the hidden states directly, if the transformer learns anything to do with the hidden structure, then it has to do the work of inferring it from the training data. What we will show is that when they predict the next token well, transformers are doing even more computational work than inferring the hidden data generating process! Do Transformers Learn a Model of the World...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How We Picture Bayesian Agents, published by johnswentworth on April 8, 2024 on The AI Alignment Forum. I think that when most people picture a Bayesian agent, they imagine a system which: Enumerates every possible state/trajectory of "the world", and assigns a probability to each. When new observations come in, loops over every state/trajectory, checks the probability of the observations conditional on each, and then updates via Bayes rule. To select actions, computes the utility which each action will yield under each state/trajectory, then averages over state/trajectory weighted by probability, and picks the action with the largest weighted-average utility. Typically, we define Bayesian agents as agents which behaviorally match that picture. But that's not really the picture David and I typically have in mind, when we picture Bayesian agents. Yes, behaviorally they act that way. But I think people get overly-anchored imagining the internals of the agent that way, and then mistakenly imagine that a Bayesian model of agency is incompatible with various features of real-world agents (e.g. humans) which a Bayesian framework can in fact handle quite well. So this post is about our prototypical mental picture of a "Bayesian agent", and how it diverges from the basic behavioral picture. Causal Models and Submodels Probably you've heard of causal diagrams or Bayes nets by now. If our Bayesian agent's world model is represented via a big causal diagram, then that already looks quite different from the original "enumerate all states/trajectories" picture. Assuming reasonable sparsity, the data structures representing the causal model (i.e. graph + conditional probabilities on each node) take up an amount of space which grows linearly with the size of the world, rather than exponentially. It's still too big for an agent embedded in the world to store in its head directly, but much smaller than the brute-force version. (Also, a realistic agent would want to explicitly represent more than just one causal diagram, in order to have uncertainty over causal structure. But that will largely be subsumed by our next point anyway.) Much more efficiency can be achieved by representing causal models like we represent programs. For instance, this little "program": … is in fact a recursively-defined causal model. It compactly represents an infinite causal diagram, corresponding to the unrolled computation. (See the linked post for more details on how this works.) Conceptually, this sort of representation involves lots of causal "submodels" which "call" each other - or, to put it differently, lots of little diagram-pieces which can be wired together and reused in the full world-model. Reuse means that such models can represent worlds which are "bigger than" the memory available to the agent itself, so long as those worlds have lots of compressible structure - e.g. the factorial example above, which represents an infinite causal diagram using a finite representation. (Aside: those familiar with probabilistic programming could view this world-model representation as simply a probabilistic program.) Updates So we have a style of model which can compactly represent quite large worlds, so long as those worlds have lots of compressible structure. But there's still the problem of updates on that structure. Here, we typically imagine some kind of message-passing, though it's an open problem exactly what such an algorithm looks like for big/complex models. The key idea here is that most observations are not directly relevant to our submodels of most of the world. I see a bird flying by my office, and that tells me nothing at all about the price of gasoline[1]. So we expect that, the vast majority of the time, message-passing updates of a similar flavor to those used on Bayes nets (though not exactl...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How We Picture Bayesian Agents, published by johnswentworth on April 8, 2024 on LessWrong. I think that when most people picture a Bayesian agent, they imagine a system which: Enumerates every possible state/trajectory of "the world", and assigns a probability to each. When new observations come in, loops over every state/trajectory, checks the probability of the observations conditional on each, and then updates via Bayes rule. To select actions, computes the utility which each action will yield under each state/trajectory, then averages over state/trajectory weighted by probability, and picks the action with the largest weighted-average utility. Typically, we define Bayesian agents as agents which behaviorally match that picture. But that's not really the picture David and I typically have in mind, when we picture Bayesian agents. Yes, behaviorally they act that way. But I think people get overly-anchored imagining the internals of the agent that way, and then mistakenly imagine that a Bayesian model of agency is incompatible with various features of real-world agents (e.g. humans) which a Bayesian framework can in fact handle quite well. So this post is about our prototypical mental picture of a "Bayesian agent", and how it diverges from the basic behavioral picture. Causal Models and Submodels Probably you've heard of causal diagrams or Bayes nets by now. If our Bayesian agent's world model is represented via a big causal diagram, then that already looks quite different from the original "enumerate all states/trajectories" picture. Assuming reasonable sparsity, the data structures representing the causal model (i.e. graph + conditional probabilities on each node) take up an amount of space which grows linearly with the size of the world, rather than exponentially. It's still too big for an agent embedded in the world to store in its head directly, but much smaller than the brute-force version. (Also, a realistic agent would want to explicitly represent more than just one causal diagram, in order to have uncertainty over causal structure. But that will largely be subsumed by our next point anyway.) Much more efficiency can be achieved by representing causal models like we represent programs. For instance, this little "program": … is in fact a recursively-defined causal model. It compactly represents an infinite causal diagram, corresponding to the unrolled computation. (See the linked post for more details on how this works.) Conceptually, this sort of representation involves lots of causal "submodels" which "call" each other - or, to put it differently, lots of little diagram-pieces which can be wired together and reused in the full world-model. Reuse means that such models can represent worlds which are "bigger than" the memory available to the agent itself, so long as those worlds have lots of compressible structure - e.g. the factorial example above, which represents an infinite causal diagram using a finite representation. (Aside: those familiar with probabilistic programming could view this world-model representation as simply a probabilistic program.) Updates So we have a style of model which can compactly represent quite large worlds, so long as those worlds have lots of compressible structure. But there's still the problem of updates on that structure. Here, we typically imagine some kind of message-passing, though it's an open problem exactly what such an algorithm looks like for big/complex models. The key idea here is that most observations are not directly relevant to our submodels of most of the world. I see a bird flying by my office, and that tells me nothing at all about the price of gasoline[1]. So we expect that, the vast majority of the time, message-passing updates of a similar flavor to those used on Bayes nets (though not exactly the same) w...
pWotD Episode 2524: Cowboy Carter Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.With 172,652 views on Saturday, 30 March 2024 our article of the day is Cowboy Carter.Cowboy Carter (also referred to as Act II: Cowboy Carter) is the eighth studio album by the American singer Beyoncé. Released on March 29, 2024, via Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records, the album is the second installment of Beyoncé's trilogy project conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic, following Renaissance (2022). Mostly labeled a country, western and R&B album, Cowboy Carter contains elements of pop, opera, house, Jersey club, classic rock, hip hop, blues, soul, rock, rhythm and blues and folk. Conceptually, Cowboy Carter is presented as a broadcast by a fictional radio station (called KNTRY Radio) in Texas, with country singers Dolly Parton, Linda Martell and Willie Nelson acting as radio DJs. The album also features lesser known country artists such as Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, Reyna Roberts, Shaboozey and Willie Jones, alongside collaborations with musicians Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Rhiannon Giddens, Stevie Wonder, Nile Rodgers, Raye, Ryan Beatty and Jon Batiste. Two co-lead singles supported the album—"Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages".Upon release, Cowboy Carter was met with critical acclaim for Beyoncé's embrace of country music in context of celebrating the genre's Black roots with emphasis on the vocal performance and lyrics. Publications opined that Cowboy Carter highlighted Black musicians' place within country music, causing the listenership of Black country artists on streaming platforms and country radio to increase.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 03:13 UTC on Sunday, 31 March 2024.For the full current version of the article, see Cowboy Carter on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm Ayanda Neural.
Derek Healy was born in Ireland where he grew up, went to school and, as he would point out, learned a lot about life. After college he entered the world of finance by selling credit card serves for Bank Of America in Ireland. He honestly talks about his mindset and inner attitudes which, as you will hear, were not so good for some time. He later sold other financial products. After the world financial collapse, as he calls it, of 2008 he traveled around Europe for a bit until he finally decided to make a bold move in 2010. Derek moved to Australia where his brother was living. Again, he worked in finance. Now, he owns his own businesses and has started the hummingbird sales academy. He teaches not only sales, but he also teaches mental attitudes and he shows/leads his clients and students by example to develop better mindsets and life perceptions. Derek also is the creator of the S.T.O.I.C code, a transformative framework, empowering individuals and entrepreneurs, to achieve unparalleled success. You will get to learn all about both the academy and this innovative code by the time our time ends. By any standard, Derek is unstoppable, and he will tell you why this is so. My time with Derek flew by, for me, surprisingly fast. I hope you will treasure Derek's words and lessons as much as I. About the Guest: Derek Healy is a business development expert, investor, speaking and coach. Derek is an Irish Australian immigrant, who has travelled the world trying to find his purpose, He is the founder of the hummingbird sales academy and creator of the S.T.O.I.C code, a transformative framework, empowering individuals and entrepreneurs, to achieve unparalleled success. He is involved in many exciting start ups and is soon to be wed. Derek philosophy centres around core values of integrity, empathy, neuroscience, stoicism and a commitment to lifelong learning. His message if infused with inspiring stories, positivity, gratitude and overcoming adversity Ways to connect with Derek: Instagram: d_real_derekhealy Website: hummingbirdsalesacademy.com About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes **Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. **Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to chat with Derek Healy. Derek has an interesting story to tell a wicked sense of humor. But if we were to really talk about there, he's a business development expert, investor, speaker and coach, my gosh, yeah. But you know, I don't know what he does in his spare time. We're really glad to have him though to be with us today. He's got I know a lot of interesting and relevant things to talk about. So we're gonna get to all of it. So let me just say, Derek, welcome to unstoppable mindset. How are you? **Derek Healy ** 01:57 I am wonderful, Michael. And thank you very much. What a warm introduction. And I really appreciate your time looking forward to having a conversation. Me **Michael Hingson ** 02:06 to will tell me a little bit about maybe the early. Derek, let's start out and get the early part out of the way so we can find out all your early secrets. Absolutely. **Derek Healy ** 02:15 Well, I'll try and keep this as clean as possible. I know that I want to keep this kid friendly. So I will. What Irish, Irish originally, I'm not you can I'm sure you can hear that in the accent. I've been over here in Australia for 1314 years. And as the locks are fading, it seems the accent is getting slightly, slightly stronger again. But started off in Ireland. Relative relatively simple Irish upbringing, surrounded by sport, surrounded by humor, surrounded by bad weather. And then obviously, a pint or two in between. And it brought me over to this wonderful land traveled all over the world. Of course, like most Irish, like most Irish, we invade many countries, but we do it with a sleeping bag and a lunchbox. **Michael Hingson ** 03:08 Did the bad weather get better when you had a pint? Say again? Say again? Did the bad weather get better when you had a pint? **Derek Healy ** 03:17 Well, I think I honestly think that's nearly Irish. The Irish are known for the weather, and they're known for their drink. And I think if it weren't disappeared, Ireland would disappear. They come hand in hand. It's a package deal. So yeah, it's a package deal. But one of my first football teams is down that down the country football teams. And our dressing room was in the back of a pub. It was the old storehouse of a pub. So that's how integrated alcohol and into the Irish community if you like, **Michael Hingson ** 03:51 understand, I've been to Ireland. I've only been once but I was there for about 12 days. As I recall, we were promoting my book vendor dog. And so I was invited over by the Irish guide dog school. And so we did a number of speeches that they had planned for us thoroughly enjoyed the time love the music, of course. Needless to say, as we talked about earlier on the way over on our flight, I was tuning around the various airplane music channels and I heard this Irish music and I was listening to it and heard it was a group called the Mary plough boys. And I learned about them they performed at the castle rockin we were in Dublin a bit and I was hoping to go hear them but unfortunately the one night we had available they weren't performing that that night so I didn't get to go hear them so I have to contend myself with my CDs. **Derek Healy ** 04:45 There you go. What I'm sure that it the door is not closed, the door is not closed, it will be open and they will present themselves soon enough I presume. One **Michael Hingson ** 04:55 way or another we will definitely work it out. So II. So you you were in Ireland, Ireland for a long time. When did you leave Ireland? I **Derek Healy ** 05:05 left Ireland. It. It must have been around it actually it was it was around the global financial crisis, the global financial crisis. And that hit everyone, as you know. And it's interesting. When I look back at it the similarities to now, if you like, from an economic standpoint, and especially in Australia, right now, there's a lot of how would you say, there's a lot of talk in the corridors about how bad things are. And if I think back in Ireland, I don't even think the global financial crisis was as bad for everyone. I think it was more. Everyone was saying it. So people would just get on board and say, yeah, things really are bad. Like, so **Michael Hingson ** 05:46 what mindset what year was that? **Derek Healy ** 05:48 That was 2008 to 2010. So we were we were in Ireland, and the usual stuff, a lot of employers would make their would use that, that opportunity to get rid of a lot of people called Cass. But then obviously, at the same time, a lot of those people would increase the crisis price of living. So things were different things were relatively hard on the surface for a lot of Irish people. But to be honest with you, that that year, that two years that are all that was happening, myself and my friends have never traveled as much we traveled all over Europe. Again, none of us were working. But we found a way to do it. So as you can sort of adjust to the way of life even though things are tough. You actually can do more, when you have less than when you have more than you're doing appreciate us. **Michael Hingson ** 06:36 Yeah. There. There are, of course, lots of hostels and other things around Europe that made it a little bit easier for people who didn't have a lot of money to be able to travel hostels, **Derek Healy ** 06:46 and we weren't quite one thing about the Irish, we're able to talk our way into trouble and out of it at the same time, there you go. So there was times that we were over there traveling Europe, we weren't going to stay, we had no money, myself and a friend of mine, we were nearly going to have to sleep at a train station in Romania somewhere. And then we found these two ladies. And they said right, you can come back with us. And they they let us stay with them for a while like it was it was just an adventure. It was beautiful. But all all all good things must come to an end. So I needed to get my foot down and start earning some money, build a bit of a life. And here Australia opened the opportunity for me. How did **Michael Hingson ** 07:24 that happen? So what brought you to Australia? What made that all happen? **Derek Healy ** 07:28 It's interesting. I've never really been in my younger years, I was never really a planner. Like I never looked at a book and said, I'm interested in going here, here, here, here here. I suppose if I if I take a back step, I think one of the worst things that you can have is almost talent. Because if you're talented, it doesn't push you to the next level, you sort of rest on your laurels a bit. And that was the same with all my travel adventures. I've traveled all over the world. And it was never worth planning. It was always worth let's see where this takes me. And with Australia was much the same. I had a brother out here. And he was doing quite well. That was all the invitation I needed. And I said I wasn't going out necessarily to be with him. But I said, Australia that will do. It was like Tron it was like throwing a dart at a dartboard. And I said, Australia, but I could have very well ended up in Arizona or Nevada, or even California and I could be having this live with you if the if the if the star is aligned differently. But I'm in Australia, **Michael Hingson ** 08:26 what were you doing before you encountered the world financial crisis in 2008? Well, **Derek Healy ** 08:34 funnily enough, I was in the financial industry. So I was with my first ever, how would you say a job out of college was with Bank of America, which was an amazing learning experience water company to work for, I have to say, I don't know what it's like now. But when I was there in Ireland, it was an amazing adventure. Sober was always corporate sales, whether it be property recruitment, or even the financial side of things. **Michael Hingson ** 09:04 Right. Right. **Derek Healy ** 09:05 So a good solid background in corporate selling, if you like, How long were you there? In Bank of America. It was my fault. That was my first. That was my first real job if you like, and it was I accom I had just left college. And through a number of bad decisions in college, I had my mind almost went snap and that was from drug or alcohol or just over enjoyment. So about three or four years of just over enjoying oneself. My mind had gone snap so I was suffering from a little bit of depression. And my mother, I remember my mother had promised the interview and I was driving across country. This is only about 20 years old. 1920 years old. I was driving across country 7am Ice called winter's morning in Ireland. And I pulled up I didn't even know what Bank of America was I pulled up to this complex housing nearly 1000 people. And it was quite intimidating. But look before it before I was about to leave the car I was there, I looked back at her looking for some sympathy, please don't make me come in here, I got the raise of an Irish mother's hand was like, Get get in there. So I went. So I went, I went in, had initial training with the guys. It was my first you're in this environment, you're coming from college and Bank of America is very corporate, you've got the suit, you've got the tie, you've got all of that. So I learned from that, even dressing up. It's like getting into it getting ready for a football game, you get in you get involved, you get ready. And it's like gore time. So even that was a beautiful learning experience. For me just even entering that building for the first time. What year was that? That would have been maybe 2004 2005 something. So **Michael Hingson ** 11:03 yeah, I understand exactly what you're saying it's a whole different environment, then we're, you know, we tend to be used to when we're students, and suddenly you're, you're thrown into this whole different thing that unfortunately, college doesn't help prepare you for necessarily. **Derek Healy ** 11:22 No, it doesn't. It doesn't, it doesn't. And it's it's folly. If you look at leadership's the beauty of mentorship or leadership is you're being mentored or you're being led by people that have done it before. And they can give you real life examples of what to look out for and what to expect. And perhaps the people in certain universities, they're training you for something that isn't real, if that makes sense in training you from from books or from other people's experiences, and they're not able to articulate it or paint the picture correctly. And that, that opens up a lot of uncertainty when people enter the working world. So yeah, it is quite a big culture shock. I'm yet to find someone actually, that can say that college or university prepared them for the real world, I'm yet to meet someone, I'm not sure if you can actually introduce me to someone that can that can attest that. Well, I **Michael Hingson ** 12:22 think something a little different. I think with light here, I went to the University of California at Irvine, which is a research institution, it was a it was a new campus at the time when I went there, but one of the things that generally, we were told was that the junior college or community colleges, and even the Cal State system, which were four year colleges tended to be much more teaching oriented, and I think tended to probably have more people who were a little bit closer to what you would find in a lot of industry and so on. And some of the people came from there, as opposed to most people at the universities, and it isn't a criticism, it's a different world. But most people from the universities are in a much more theoretical world, or maybe in a scientific environment experimental but still, you're right. They don't come from an environment where they think about teaching people to be prepared with for what comes outside of the university, and all those other kinds of things. **Derek Healy ** 13:40 And I think, again, I'm not sure of the university systems right now. But there's a lot of talk about, like safe places, if you like or even even censoring the way people talk or the way people debate. And I think debate is such a beautiful, beautiful thing. And in the years that I've worked 20 years in the corporate space, and I've trained and mentored hundreds of people. But the one thing I've learned with the people that are unsuccessful is the people that are unable to deal with adversity, and they're unable to bounce back from disappointment, or they're unwilling to push themselves into uncomfortable states situations and stay there. That's the difference between success and failure. I think and, unfortunately, what seems to me the trend is universities are sheltering people specifically from those areas of growth. **Michael Hingson ** 14:36 And even there's probably some merit to that. Yeah. **Derek Healy ** 14:40 Which is, so it'll be interesting to see. It's all a big experiment. It's all a big game. So we'll see in 1015 years, what the what the results are, **Michael Hingson ** 14:48 and whether anyone makes a real change. Or the other side of it is the universities do what they do and that's okay. For one one group of people, but still I hear what you We're saying that If college is really supposed to prepare us for life, then there are certainly other things that need to be brought into the curriculum somehow **Derek Healy ** 15:09 into it. That's so true. That's so true. But another thing actually did Jesus on the university side of things. In Ireland, we've got relatively free education system, which is an amazing that we are doing that because education is so so important. But the problem with that is it becomes it, whether it be an industry or not. The problem with that is, when you're unsure of what to do, you're nearly pushed towards University. So even when a lot of my friends were going to university, no one knew what they wanted to do, and very few are doing what they went to university for. But it seems like it's like the next logical step to go towards. And that's not always right, either. It's more following. I don't think university should be going where you don't know what you want to do, you should you should, you should need to have a vision you should need to have because as we know, if you make a decision, whether it be right or wrong, at least you've made a decision. So when you make a bad decision, you can recollect and then turn that into a good decision. And that's even a learning process. But if you're just literally going to university, because everyone else is I don't think that's necessarily your decision. And therefore I don't think the results can be achieved. **Michael Hingson ** 16:21 I think, I think there are too many people probably who, putting it in quotes, go to find themselves. And that's unfortunate if they really feel that they have to do that. They haven't been prepared or maybe haven't gotten what they need from their parents. And I will say there are some who do find themselves. But there are a lot of people who still come out with with a lot of challenges. And it's very unfortunate that it isn't just the academic knowledge, I would like to see people get from college university, but rather some of the other life knowledge that people could bring. And I wish there were more of that. I think you're right. **Derek Healy ** 17:03 I think so too. I think so. But the problem is, though, Michael, if you are lost, you might, you're going to find yourself. But sometimes someone might find you and then you are literally, they'll find you before you find yourself and then you just become their train of thoughts. We're all programmed at the end of the day, but we need to make sure the programming is correct. And it's in our best interest. **Michael Hingson ** 17:26 I know that when I went to university, I wanted to be a teacher, I always wanted to teach, I wanted to do something in the science world. But the other side of all of this discussion is that something happened along the way that caused me to need to shift well not need to but shift exactly what I was doing instead of going toward teaching and I had a secondary teaching credential. But I had been offered an opportunity to work to help make a new piece of technology available to blind people. And I was hired to coordinate a project for 18 months where literally, we put product around the country for people to use. So I was the person who would literally live out of suitcases in hotels for 18 months writing curriculum, writing procedures, teaching people to use the technology and eventually writing a final report. And I suppose you could say that as a result of that like writing training curriculum, I really did start to teach, although it was a little different than what I thought. And then it's and then I went to work for that same company. And after about eight months, I instead of doing the kind of work that I had been doing, was told that I had to be laid off because I wasn't a revenue producer, unless I was willing to go into sales. And what I what I learned, so you'll appreciate this. What I learned though, I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and what I learned and still believe absolutely firmly today that the best real salespeople are teachers. You're teaching people about your product, you don't you, you can't force somebody to buy unless they really want to, and you might be able to break down their will. But that isn't the best way to sell. The best way to sell is to teach advice and counsel. And when you do that, it will reward you in so many ways. And I saw so many examples of that over time. So I ended up teaching anyway. **Derek Healy ** 19:30 That was Wow. Wow. And you hit the nail on the head the best. When I went into leadership first similar story it was it forced me I was always able to do bring in generate revenue. But when I had to teach people how to generate revenue, it made me a better revenue generator. Yep. Because you need to articulate in a different way you need to influence the people that you're surrounded by. It's a different cell if you like it But yeah, Michael, I hit the data, you are in sales. In the end, you are in sales. You so there you go. Well, **Michael Hingson ** 20:07 the other. The other side of it is that the more you teach people, and you leave it open for them to be able to ask questions and explore with you, the more you're forced to learn, because invariably, they're going to ask you questions you hadn't thought of Exactly. Which is so much fun. And I learned early on when I was getting my teaching credential, that when people ask you questions that you don't know the answer to, don't try to fake them out. Be honest, be honest answer. I don't know. And then go find the answer. I had that happen to me when I was teaching a freshman algebra class, and there was an eighth grader who was accelerated and he was in the class. And he asked the question, I don't even remember what it was. But it was a simple question. I just couldn't think of the answer. And I thought for a second, I said, you know, Marty, I don't know. But I'm gonna go find out and we will get the answer all up on the board tomorrow, and you're gonna write it on the blackboard? Well, when I came in, and he came in, he said, Mr. Hanson, I got the answer. I said, I do too. Let's compare notes. And we did. And he wrote it up on the board. And, and 10 years later, I met him at a fair, and his, now he wasn't an eighth grader anymore. He had this deep bass voice. And he said, Hey, Mr. Harrison, do you know me? And I said, No, I'm Marty, that guy with the question. 810 years ago, this just amazing. But isn't that amazing? It's such a lesson. **Derek Healy ** 21:42 Wow, that that's it's amazing. The things that make such a big difference is small things that, yeah, it's the small things, but it makes a big difference. **Michael Hingson ** 21:51 They make such a big difference. And after I did that, and told him, I didn't know my master teacher, who was also the football coach for the high school came up and Mr. Redmond said, you know, you told him Do you didn't know. And that was the best thing you could do. Because if you tried to blow smoke, they would have caught you. They would never have respect for you, you're gonna have their respect from now on. And you know, that was so true. And it's the only way to do it. **Derek Healy ** 22:17 Absolutely. But I think apart from the fact that you went on the journey with him to find the answer, and you, you didn't, as you said, try and blow smoke, but you're shown vulnerability. And by showing some sort of vulnerability, we can nearly make a connection to that. Even it was funny, I was in a meeting there recently with a another friend, a business partner of mine, if you like, and we bought at the meeting. And I came in, had the meeting. And in my opinion, everything was perfect. Like the appearance was perfect. The way I spoke, nothing was out a turn, every answer was given perfectly coherently, etc. And my friend, his body language was a little bit off, he was slightly slumped. He wasn't looking at the person I was looking dead in the eyes. He was when I observed what he was doing. It didn't look perfect. But before the end of the meeting, the two guys that were sitting across the room, the question came up like what what's your thoughts? The guys directed to my friend? And they said, I'm feeling exactly he's, it's like he's inside my mind. They totally resonated with him. And I had to assess it. At the end of it. I was there. I was perfect in that meeting. Why were they why did they resonate with my friend who wasn't perfect, and they resonated with it, that didn't resonate with me. And I assessed it was that the guys we were talking to Warren perfect. And the fact that I was trying to be perfect, it not annuity alienated them. And they connected on an emotional level with my friend because he wasn't trying to be perfect. Nothing about him was perfect, but they resonated better with them. So sometimes, when we try to be that perfect individual, it's almost create a suspicion to the counterpart. And Shawn vulnerability is more human. **Michael Hingson ** 24:08 And it shows you for what you really are not trying to be something that you're not necessarily at all. I when I speak. I love to speak in person when I can, I will speak virtually, but when I speak in person, I get to hear the audience. And I know there there are a lot of people who say, Well, you can't see the audience. I don't need see the audience. I can hear the audience. And one of the things that I have learned to do when I speak is to put different phrases or different things in sometimes a joke, sometimes just a comment, or sometimes a question that I want people to just somehow respond to. And I listened for the reactions and that has taught me over the years and now tells me how well I'm doing really connecting with the audience. And if I decide that I'm not really connecting, I will change something to connect, because I want to be with them. And I want them to be with me. I believe that as a speaker, I never talk to an audience, I talk with an audience. And it has to be that way, for the best speeches. And so I don't read speeches I customize. And sometimes I've had to do it as I go, I've got great stories about that. But the bottom line is that it's all about connecting. And when you can connect, it makes a whole huge difference. **Derek Healy ** 25:36 That's amazing. So you're putting out little feelers if you like, just get the energy from the audience. And you, you can almost gauge that what type of audience you are going to be speaking to just by the prompts that you put out, if you're like, oh, **Michael Hingson ** 25:51 absolutely can Yes, that's it. Now, having said that, they're all going to try to fool me from now on, but nevertheless, you know, **Derek Healy ** 26:00 the, I recently heard a story, something about I can't remember that term, but it's you may have even heard of us. It was many, about 100 years ago, there used to be a horse, and it was a job as a German trainer, and he had a horse. And he used to go around to fairs. And the whole thing was that he claimed that the horse could speak could understand language. So he used to bring the horse into the fair, and they'd be surrounded by people. And then he would, he would get the horse to spell out certain names, certain words. So he'd asked the question to the audience. And the question could be, what color is this apple, and then the horse would go over and eat spell out red apple, like going over to the thing, he was able to do multiplication tables, he was able to do division. He was it was world famous this horse. So then a couple of scientists came over and they were they're trying to find obviously, some holes in the story. And they wanted to see if it was, if the horse could actually do that. So they went to the guy, they got the guy out of the room, so that they thought that was it. They whispered to the horse, what they need, what they need, what they go to multiply seven by seven as an example. And all the stadium was there, the guy would whisper into his ear, and then the horse, walk over and do 49. But then, by the end of it, they were there. How could it be? So what they did is they got rid of the audience. And then the horse was no longer able to spell multiply or divide. And it turned out that the horse when that question was presented to the audience, and the horse would be going over to the number or the letter, the audience anticipation, the horse would feel the anticipation, the horse would anticipate, he would anticipate, and it was by the feeling that the audience was given that the horse was able to hone in on this. So Michael, you are that horse? So you are a bit better than that is that is what you're doing. You're and you're getting the full feeling from the audience. **Michael Hingson ** 28:05 Yeah, I hear a lot of information which makes which makes it amazing. That is amazing. So what was your first job with Bank of America? What did you start doing? **Derek Healy ** 28:16 Oh, my word. So we went in no **Michael Hingson ** 28:18 keeping besides being a closed model. **Derek Healy ** 28:20 Yeah. The keep in mind, when I got my first job in Bank of America, I was I was leaving college and I was suffering severely from depression severity from depression. Now, if anyone is whether it be yourself or anyone else that knows anything about depression, it doesn't just remove all of your confidence, but it literally shakes you to the core. It's it's a terrible affliction, or anyone. And my first job was actually working in Bank of America in the credit card division. So when I had just finished my train, and I walked into that sales floor, there was about 300 Absolute lunatics. There was I walked in there, the energy in that place. There was over on the left hand side when I walked in, there was two girls running down the full length of the corridor having an egg and spoon race for money. There was someone over the other side throwing darts at balloons that were filled with money like it was, this place was just insanity. It was it was craziness. And there was so much confidence in the place and that was my first job with those and I remember being brought straight to my cubicle. And just so I didn't have to make eye contact with anyone and speak to anyone over straight on the phone, making making cold calls cold call cold call and push that as pushed out as literally banging out 100 Maybe 150 calls a day and that's no joke. This is I hear you 15 years ago is a lot different than it is now in terms of outposts in terms of whatever on a dialer. But as I started as the skill started developing, and as the conversations I started having with these individually was every conversation every sale I made. It was like it was rebuilding a stone wall of confidence that I had knocked down through the years before. And it was an amazing just almost metamorphosis of someone that came in with the most own confidence on the shell, I probably looked okay. But internally, I was broken. But through that through dealing with that adversity, and through learning those new skills, it, it changed who I was, it changed who I was. And I still have those same skills today. But and learned a lot from that experience. But call center finance, called credit card, the hardest thing you could ever do in the situation I was in, and I loved every second of it, loved every second of it, **Michael Hingson ** 30:48 I worked my first job. Well wasn't my first job. But in late 1980s into 1990, I went to work for a company. And they're the ones that eventually asked me to go to New York to open an office because I was selling from the west coast to the financial markets, Wall Street. And we were doing it all by phone. So I think my record was about 120 calls a day. Normally, it wasn't that high because I spent time with customers explaining things about products. So for me, when I had 120 calls a day, I knew that in some senses, maybe I planted seeds, but wasn't as productive at getting sales as I was when I had fewer calls because fewer calls meant I was actually interacting more with customers, which is the way I looked at it. Our bosses wanted as many calls a day as possible. And that wasn't as practical as it should have been. But we over achieve goals. So it was okay. **Derek Healy ** 31:47 Yeah, and I think that, that that is a train of thought in sales is it's a numbers game. And to a certain extent that is true, but it's about the value you're having with the customers. That's where the true change can happen. Yeah, **Michael Hingson ** 32:02 a lot of people didn't have anywhere near the number of calls, even on a good day, if you will, from a sales standpoint. Because people tended to be way too distracted. spend too much time talking and, and not on the phone. And I love being on the phone. It was a lot of fun. Yep, exactly, **Derek Healy ** 32:21 exactly. I wonder. You say that's a lot of fun, you can easily convince yourself that it's a lot of fun. And that's that's the trick as well, you need to it's a lot of people avoid getting on the phone, because they're, I don't know, it's it's their mindset of I don't want to get on the phone. So I **Michael Hingson ** 32:39 don't want to talk to people, I'm afraid to talk to people, they might ask me something to show me up, which is of course getting back then to our whole discussion. From before, it's okay, if you get a question you don't know. And that happened to me a number of times, which also helped me learn a lot, technically. But when people ask questions, if I didn't know, I would just say, Look, you know, I am not sure. Let's finish this conversation and with other things that we have to do. Tell me when I can call you back, I'll have an answer. And I worked always to have an answer that was so important. And I do that today. **Derek Healy ** 33:16 I like yeah, it's important. **Michael Hingson ** 33:20 So how long would you do credit card stuff, **Derek Healy ** 33:24 did it for two years, you know, a year, give or take, give or take, give or take two years, which is it can be a long time. But I found while I was there. Obviously you've you've I went from severely depressed, a broken individual to be one of the top performing executives right across Europe for Bank of America in terms of the outputs and the close rate, revenue I was generating. So I was riding high. But I always wanted that success. But I didn't even know what what really was successful. What I found during that whole, I suppose year and a half, two years that I was doing that I was still displaying the same sort of habits that brought me Depression years before, the only difference was, now I had a lot more money to partake in certain things. So you've you've you've still got the same How would you put them internal behaviors that bring you back down. And even though used on a on a on a conscious or an intellectual level, you may want that success, so to speak. But on an emotional level, you begin and continue to display behaviors that just brings you straight back down. You're not so Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that's another thing I suppose in universities what they could teach you. They teach you skills, they teach you skills, but they don't teach you correct habits. And if a day to day and a life style in a lifetime, in a day to day, and even in an hour, your life is just made up of tiny little miniscule habits and thoughts. And people focus on the big things, I'm gonna have this house, or I'm gonna have this money, or I'm gonna have this life, but they take their eye off the ball on the tiny little miniscule things. And that's what makes all the difference. And I did that for two years. But again, all my tiny little decisions were combinated to poor outcomes. Whereas, and I think that's, that's something I learned, it took me a long time to implement certain changes that removed bad habits. Because again, talent sometimes is, is a man or a woman's biggest curse. And you can learn that no matter how bad things are, I can bounce back from us. And that nearly is one of your worst enemies. Whereas if you focus on just the small things you can control and the small habits, it allows for long lasting success. **Michael Hingson ** 36:01 So what did you do after credit cards, property, **Derek Healy ** 36:04 there's a bit of property. It was, this was pre GFC. So property was all the rage, and it was all where the revenue was. That was fun as well. That's when I first moved to the fine city of Dublin, Ireland. So I spent a number of years up there. And we were selling property in Spain. So it was all golf course, beautiful properties. I don't think many of them survived the global financial crisis. So there's a lot of green open land over there. I don't think many survived. But it's, yeah, it's funny. There's, there's always, if you want to go, if you want to make money, just just that money is raining everywhere. And if you want to make it, you just have to go and stand under where it's raining most. And at that time, it was property. But the rain eventually stops. So you need to know when to get out. So yeah, it was it was an interesting, great learning experience there as well. **Michael Hingson ** 37:08 Well, you have, but you have been doing work in the financial industry. And yeah, I'd love to hear more of the other things that you've done since but you've been in this business for almost 20 years. How? Let's say you've dealt with chinzy, you've done with millennials and Gen X and even baby boomers. What are the different groups? Like? How are how is how's all that evolved? And has it evolved in a good way from Boomers to Gen Zers? **Derek Healy ** 37:37 Yeah, wow. The like, in Australia now, when we first came to Australia, how we integrated so well, was our commitment to just and it wasn't even our commitment, how we generate, how we integrated so well, much like most immigrants, you just get stuck in, you just try and do your best. Sometimes it's just a poor food on your table. So you've got that mindset of pushing, pushing forward, that allows you immediately just one of the laws of the universe by pushing forward and doing your very best as much as you can, you're gonna get certain results from it. And we're, we were greeted with open arms by the Australians, what seems to happen with a lot of the younger generation that's coming through, they don't have that hunger to succeed, it's more of a they're entering a safe place. And it's, they're not prepared to step outside that safe place to to succeed. That's why I do I do believe travel does implement certain behaviors that can be so valuable to people. As long as you're not supported by your parents on your trip, you need to be there needs to be an opportunity for you to go very, very hungry. And that's going to be a lot of learning from that. So with that with a lot of the Gen z's. For the last 10 years, when I've been working in this industry in Australia, the feedback from the market is these people are a jellyfish generation, there's not as much they just no one just wants to get stuck in no one wants to do this. And I've heard that so often. But why doesn't someone do something about it then? Like why do we accept those certain things by people? Or why do we? Why? Yeah, why do we accept those certain behaviors from individuals? And a lot of times people will. People will do what they see. I think as leaders, we're leading Gen Z if you like, we need to be living a life that inspires those individuals that they want to follow. So if you've got a lot of people that aren't, you know, will say that jellyfish generation Gen Z's aren't, they don't want to make us well perhaps that we need to as leaders, we need to be living lives that they want to emulate. They want to follow because there is a lot of people that they just don't dare look, no one wants To do nothing, people want to be inspired, once they're inspired, they will push true. And I think what's lacking with Gen Z is inspiration, there is not enough people to inspire them to on a path that they want to follow, or they need to follow. So with Gen z's, I've worked a lot with them. It is challenging, because as I said, a lot of them don't want to step outside their comfort zone. And what I found to help them with that was for me to live from, from a leader and from a mentor, to live the best possible life I can with the best possible habits with the best possible mindset. And, and, but And of course, by leading from the front, and if you can do all of those things, no, you're not going to get 100% of the Gen Z's if you like. But what you are going to get, you're going to get the people that want to change, and you can't change people that don't want to change. But when you've got the opportunity to inspire certain individuals, you need to do it right. So do you think that **Michael Hingson ** 40:59 a lot of them feel more entitled, or they want to feel that they're entitled as opposed to have to earn? **Derek Healy ** 41:07 Well, there is that of course, like, yes, there's a certain level of entitlement that is a really entitlement, because again, a lot of times, they'll want to fool, okay, well, this is what it is to change yourself. Okay. So as an example, from a diet standpoint, it's not hard to have the perfect physique. To eat perfect to do things as close to perfect as you can. That's not hard. Conceptually, that's not hard. But to implement that, and to actually stand by your diet, to stand by your exercise routine, something as simple as this. It's a lot easier to not do that. The simple things are easy to do. But the simple things are easy not to do. That's the problem. And it's a lot easier to focus on external matters, as opposed to internal matters. And I think that's what it is, a lot of the Gen Z's if you like, it's easier to focus on things that are outside their control, and focus all their attention on that or even use that as a leverage than it is to focus on the simple things of the internal because that's, that's the easiest to do. And it's the easiest to not to do. And I think that's where the thing is, but I think that comes back to inspiration. When I've worked with individuals. They see the work ethic, they see the true desire to help these individuals. And that can inspire people. So I think as leaders, I think the Gen Z's yes, there might be entitled, but what about the leaders? What are the leaders do about that? **Michael Hingson ** 42:43 So course always the question, Well, what about the millennials and the Gen X's? **Derek Healy ** 42:49 The millennials, the Gen X's? Yeah. But again, they're the leaders that came before. They're the leaders that came before. And if I hear a lot of them, like I speak with them, I hope none of them are gonna listen to this after but I speak to them every day from a consultancy standpoint. And a lot of those individuals will complain about the people that are in their organization. But what are they doing about it? And exactly? What are they doing about it? How are you making a difference, you can ask, push people to change, you need to lead people to change. And I'll be speaking to these business owners, these millionaire business owners, they'll be able to shape their business will be rolling to a certain extent. But there'll be big holes in their business and in their own personal life. If that's the case, how are you meant to be inspired these individuals? So a lot of people even with from a business owner, they were looked at the Gen Z's or the or the Gen Y's or they looked at other individuals and say they are not doing what they're supposed to be doing. But that's deflecting from themselves. Are they truly doing what they are supposed to do to inspire? **Michael Hingson ** 43:53 Yeah, a lot of it has to absolutely do with inspiration, because people are going to relate to people they can look up to or that they can admire. And if leaders aren't doing that, then that's a problem. And one of the things that I've said many times is that bosses are not necessarily leaders and leaders are not necessarily bosses. One of the things that I did whenever I hired a salesperson, in our initial meetings after they joined, I would say, let me explain what are our roles here are, you're here to sell. I'm not here to tell you how to sell because I hired you assuming that assuming that you know how to sell. What you and I need to figure out is what I can best do to help you and add value to what you do to make you as successful as possible. And that's going to be different for every single person who I hire because they all have different talents and the people who got that leveraged me in many different ways and it worked out really well the people who didn't do Just plodding along as they usually do. And they didn't last very long. But the people who got it really put it to use. And we talked about, like what I thought I could add in a way of value to what they do in terms of being a sales guy, but also being technical and a physicist and being blind, I learned to listen very well, most of the time, my wife didn't always agree, but when, anyway, but but the bottom line is that the fact is, I would be able to add value to them. And they took great advantage of it, which I loved. Because they were more successful. That just we worked as a team, we created a team and it worked. **Derek Healy ** 45:44 That is it. We are very aligned with our concepts there. We are very, very, very aligned with our concepts. And yeah, I think, yeah, that too much of it's too much, too many people are being pushed from the back, as opposed to being led from the front. And you as a leader did the right thing there by finding how can I make you better, that's all I'm here to do is make you better. So that's beautiful. And look, **Michael Hingson ** 46:11 if we made mistakes along the way, admit it and fix it. There you go. But most of the time, it's easy. I think that's **Derek Healy ** 46:20 what a lot of times, that's an interesting one actually. Even getting back to school, like in school. I even remember for myself, you get asked a question. And sometimes you'd be afraid to try and answer the question because you could be wrong. So you nearly get this PTSD of being wrong. And perfection shouldn't. When you're afraid of being wrong, then you're afraid of making decisions. And if you're afraid of making decisions, you're going to welcome procrastination. making the wrong decision is in theory, it can be the right decision. Because once you make a wrong decision, it's easy to rectify your path and get on the right course. But you just need to make a decision, you need to make a choice. Yeah. So if you if you can harbor, that environment, where mistakes are good, as long as you rectify them very, very fast. Decisions are good. If you can, if you can harbor that type of environment. That's an environment where people are willing to learn. And that's that's where I've had success, I suppose in any of the any of the roles that I've been in. **Michael Hingson ** 47:31 Yeah. And I think it's important that we always learn. The best teachers are also good learners. **Derek Healy ** 47:38 Yes, yes. Some of the best, some of the mesh, which makes a **Michael Hingson ** 47:43 lot of sense. How do you measure your impact or the impact of what you do? **Derek Healy ** 47:49 The Well, look, if even if you just look at it from a from a sales standpoint, it's always numbers, you'll always just chase. KPIs are numbers, but it was funny. achieving certain numbers has never been, it's never been a hard thing. And you will achieve certain numbers, get achieve certain goals, but it gets to the stage where even those certain things there's not as much not adrenaline, but not enough dopamine that comes from achieving the goals. And I think when I assessed I assessed that a while back, why did I not feel? Okay, were after achieving this amazing goal, why do I not feel happy, it's just like you've achieved that now move on. And it wasn't till I started till I was mentored by actually, it was a former prisoner. And he introduced me to so much philosophy and learnings. And it wasn't about achieving these bigger goals or measuring certain success. We took a backer step, and we just focused on our internal so we, when I look at measuring success, I don't look at the bigger picture, I look at the smaller little things. So to build confidence. That's where success success is meant to give you give you confidence. But I like to do it the other way. I like to build confidence to gain success. So I'll start off by trying to be a measure of success and myself. Now what I mean by that is, I'll be up at 4am I'll be up at 4am I'll drink two liters of water. After two liters of water, I'll do a small bit of stretching and I'll read and I'll journal a small bit, then I'll go into a hard workout. Then I'll go in and I'll have a coffee after that. Then I'll go in and I'll try and inch out ensure that I've got no negative thoughts during that whole two hour process. So by the time that 630 comes or seven, I'll have achieved six to seven things that very very few people will have achieved. I will consider that success. I will consider and that will that success that I got by within two hours. Most people want to achieve in most people won't even achieve that simple thing in a week. By achieving that success, I'll consider that success. So I suppose if I, if I take it back, where I used to always go wrong, where a lot of people go wrong, they'll look at this big goal as a measure of success. And then when they don't achieve us, they feel inferior, or they feel whatever. Whereas I'll take it back. And I'll look at every moment of my day as an opportunity to be successful. And that pushes me forward, like a Concorde plane throughout the entire day. And then the bigger things don't matter, because I've achieved all the smaller things, and then just happened so that the bigger things present themselves, **Michael Hingson ** 50:46 and you've cleared your mind **Derek Healy ** 50:48 completely, completely. **Michael Hingson ** 50:50 So what is it you do today? What work do you do now? **Derek Healy ** 50:54 I do a number of different things. I'm involved in a number of different startups, Mike, well, one of the things that I've always I suppose nowadays, you'd call it ADHD, or you could call it something, but I love looking at shiny things. And I'm always over, over stimulated by opportunities. So I work with a number of different startups in the AI space. I coach people, I mentor people. And I'm one of the founding directors of the hummingbird sales Academy, which is a sales Academy specifically to instill confidence, values, and ambition in in individuals. So it's, it's sales, yes. And sales is something that we focus on and skills and communication that we focus on. But really, our sales Academy is focused on habits, and instilling mindset and habits and individual. And that's where we're getting success from our academy. **Michael Hingson ** 51:54 So is it a virtual academy? Or is it in person or? **Derek Healy ** 52:02 Right now? It's, it's, it's how would you call a blended learning if you like? So what we find is, obviously, if you go to a sales training or any sort, of course, immediately you come back from it, you're highly motivated. And this is the problem. Motivation can dip. So what we find is, even during our two day bootcamp, there's huge growth, huge motivation. There's people nearly doing push ups at the end of it, you don't I mean, just You're, you're ready for action, and that motivation can wane. Yeah, so we blend it in with with weekly coaching calls and conversations to go through things. We we have regular meetups. And of course, then there's the online training, and you need to follow the code for our coaching to work. It's all about mindset. So there is a lot of fitness that's blended in those diets that's blended in those, how would you put it, some people would look at it, and they'd say, Well, that doesn't sound too enjoyable. But the idea is you need to change your mindset and focus on things that aren't that enjoyable. Because once you focus on them, and you master them, and you trick your mind into thinking this isn't that enjoyable. But then you trick your mind into thinking, I love this. This is the best thing ever, exactly what I do on the phone, Michael, you totally enjoyed being on the phone. There's people that don't enjoy something as simple as that. But when you trick your mind, and you consistently do it in your mind tells you eventually that you love this. That's what our program is about. It's about looking at things that you that may not be enjoyable on paper. And it's doing them to a level that suddenly you begin to love the uncomfortable if you like. **Michael Hingson ** 53:43 And of course, a lot of the times that we don't enjoy something or we think it's not enjoyable. There's usually fear or something behind it, that we have to break through and recognize maybe it's not really what we thought. So **Derek Healy ** 53:56 well. There's two voices, there's two voices in our heads, the king and the queen. I could use other other terms, but we'll just use the king and the queen for the moment. And the king or the king wants to do was conquer. You know the king wants to do is conquer. He wants to go out there. He wants to eat only when he needs to eat. He wants to conquer. He wants to build he wants to grow. He wants to mentor. And then there's the Queen, and the Queen wants to relax. The Queen wants to lounge the Queen wants to enjoy the spoils of war, enjoy the spoils of the day. And every single morning, every single hour almost, you're encountered with the king and the queen. And you get to listen, who do you choose to listen to? And that's going to define your day. So when I'm up at 4am and it's pitch dark out and it's raining, and I'm doing pull ups, or I'm doing certain things that and I know there's very few people up. I'm listening to the king. But as soon as that alarm goes off at 4am and I I want to go back to sleep and live beside my beautiful lady. That's the Queen telling me to just sit back, relax, you, you've been working out, you've been doing it too hard, relax, have a little break. So you get to choose to listen to the two voices. So part of our academy is identifying those voices, and working on strategies on how to only listen to the person that's congruent with where you want to end up. **Michael Hingson ** 55:24 At any given time, at any given time, and get the two of them to communicate with each other, the King and Queen should be communicating. But you know, what do you do? That's **Derek Healy ** 55:32 it. And, and our idea was, I went on a couple of years ago, I went to Cambodia and I did a retreat, a silent retreat and meditations and all the rest of it. And it was one of the guys that I worked with. She had said, Derek, you're too Yang. You need to find your Yeah, your your find your Yang, man, your your your to Yang. So you're right, the king and the queen need to speak together. Maybe I don't listen enough. And that's that's also a detriment. So you're right. Maybe there needs to be the two of them need to speak together as well. **Michael Hingson ** 56:04 Yeah. Well, tell me what is you invented the STOIC code? Tell me about that. Yeah, 56:04 the STOIC code as I said, What am I one of my mentors, and even one of my mindset coaches to this day, he was an individual that spent over 10 years in the penitentiary system in America. And he, he identified he, he spoke so much on removing your future self, and purely focusing on your, your, your this very moment in time, and only focusing on this very moment in time. And when I, when I reflected on the success I've had and what pushed me back, I realized there was never really any framework, I had all the skills in the world. But there wasn't really a framework that I followed. Everything was pushing forward, but there wasn't enough. How would you say, the foundation I was building foundations, I was building beautiful, beautiful houses, beautiful lives, but on a foundation of sand. So the story, the story code, it's, it's a framework, it's a framework for communication, it's a framework for influence. And that influence is also on yourself. But it's essentially it's a, it's a it's a way to sell, it's a way to communicate, and it's a way to influence yourself. So the STOIC code, it's built on five principles of story tenacity, objective integrity, and community, our communication sorry. So we've all got a story to tell. And as humans, we only resonate with story. We don't resonate with facts, we don't resonate with features, we don't resonate with benefits, we resonate with story. So when we're communicating with our clients or with ourselves, we need to have a relevant story that is going to be able to have that metaphor that people can connect with. So in our framework, we work a lot on our own internal stories, and being able to identify our clients, external or internal stories that will help influence the communication channels, if you like, the tenacity and our framework is purely centered on unfortunately, it's it's hard work, it's welcoming, uncomfortable. Our objective in the story is understanding this, and this is where a lot of people fall down, they focus too much on the outcome, they will from a sales standpoint, they'll focus too much on closing the deal or reaching their commission or they focus too much on on getting the deal if you like and that certain behavior, that mindset is going to it's going to protect you from a position of weakness in my opinion. So the objective in our in our framework is you only focus on what you can achieve. Now you can focus on your activity, your mindset, your attitude, and you remove yourself from the end outcome of the of the deal if you like and it's fully even put in and then of course integrity goes without saying and the communication side of things is purely based on the communication standpoint your your body language or tone and everything every form of communication that's that's centered around influence. **Michael Hingson ** 59:28 Wow. And it's an incredible code and it makes perfect sense all the way around. Well, I have to ask one thing, there's a rumor about a wedding coming up. Hmm. **Derek Healy ** 59:41 I can't believe you got the invitation already. I only sent that out here the other day. You got it in the post. **Michael Hingson ** 59:49 I haven't gotten to it yet. But I heard a rumor from from a little hummingbird. **Derek Healy ** 59:53 Oh yeah. Yeah, I am. I am to be weird. This coming in this coming December I'm actually to be read. So yeah, it's it's going to be an exciting one. So we're doing it doing it in Malaysia. We're based in Australia here, but my partner is she's originally from Malaysia. So we'll do it on on home soil. In the olden days, perhaps we do a Home and Away leg. Boris? Well, I think I'll settle just for the home leg in Malaysia for this one. So, yeah, so it should be it should be an interest in an affair. It's my first wedding. And I can guarantee you, Michael, it'll be my last **Michael Hingson ** 1:00:36 one in my life. And it lasted 40 years, my wife passed away last November, which you're sad about. But I've got 40 years of marriage, and she's monitoring me from somewhere. So if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. **Derek Healy ** 1:00:49 And keep in mind, she is monitoring you. I've no doubt about it. There is no doubt about it. She's monitoring. Yes. So yeah. Well, **Michael Hingson ** 1:00:56 if people want to reach out to you learn more about the the hummingbird sales academy or just maybe seek your counsel and advice or just learn about you. How do they do that? 1:01:08 Absolutely. So you'll be able to get us at the hummingbirdsalesacademy.com Get us at the website, you'll get me on socials, we'll leave them in the links in description. Whether this be from a business standpoint and advice standpoint or just to connect, reach out, we can share a lot of value with each other. And I think connections making a human connection is so important. So anytime, if you're if you're listening to this, feel free to reach out and connect. Laughter. **Michael Hingson ** 1:01:37 Cool. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate you. And I really appreciate the time that you have spent it's early in the day there. So it's what now about 10 o'clock in the morning. 1:01:49 It's just 10 o'clock. And I've it's been a pleasure sharing a coffee with you, Michael. I'm sorry. I couldn't put the kettle on for you here. My coffee with you. It's been a pleasure. Well, **Michael Hingson ** 1:01:59 I've enjoyed it very much. I hope that you've enjoyed it listening to us. To to Derek and we talk. We'd love to hear your comments. Please feel free to reach out to me Michaelhi at accessiBe A c c e s s i b e.com Or go to our podcast page www dot MichaelHingson m i c h a el h i n g s o n.com/podcast. Love to hear your thoughts love to hear your opinions. I know that Derek would love it if you'd reach out to him. And wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value those very highly. And we hope that you'll be kind enough to give us a rating like that. And one last time. Derek, I really appreciate you being here. And this has been a lot of fun. **Derek Healy ** 1:02:44 Absolutely, Michael, absolute pleasure. Enjoy. Thank you again and speak to you very very soon. **Michael Hingson ** 1:02:54 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.
Identification, Micro-segmentation, and Continuous Monitoring. Zero Trust is maturing. We have gone from “What is Zero Trust” to “Now that I understand it, how can I afford Zero Trust for my agency? Today's interview is with Brian Dennis from Akamai, a well-known expert on the deployment of Zero Trust. He will give the listener an overview of the most economical way to deploy Zero Trust. Conceptually, Zero Trust is not a sole product; it is a group of products that work together. This is the main reason careful budgeting must be applied to several specific expenditures in this area. Brian's advice to get the most “bang for your buck” you need to get Identity Access Management under control, apply micro-segmentation, and include continuous monitoring in your grouping of products. All federal initiatives directed at Zero Trust begin with identity management. This is the linchpin, and the solution must provide correct identification before anything else happens. Divide and conquer is a military concept that can be applied to computer networks. The concept of micro-segmentation was known years ago, but systems have gotten too large to segment manually. Today, we have automated systems that allow permissions to be assigned to each limited area. Ransomware is up; we see new variations of attacks every day. This means that any reasonable budget must include continuous inspection. Focusing on these three areas will enable your systems to use a Zero Trust approach. Of course, there are exceptions, like MRI machines. However, these examples of systems that cannot be upgraded can be isolated with proper security system techniques.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Discussion: Challenges with Unsupervised LLM Knowledge Discovery, published by Seb Farquhar on December 18, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. TL;DR: Contrast-consistent search (CCS) seemed exciting to us and we were keen to apply it. At this point, we think it is unlikely to be directly helpful for implementations of alignment strategies (>95%). Instead of finding knowledge, it seems to find the most prominent feature. We are less sure about the wider category of unsupervised consistency-based methods, but tend to think they won't be directly helpful either (70%). We've written a paper about some of our detailed experiences with it. Paper authors: Sebastian Farquhar*, Vikrant Varma*, Zac Kenton*, Johannes Gasteiger, Vlad Mikulik, and Rohin Shah. *Equal contribution, order randomised. Credences are based on a poll of Seb, Vikrant, Zac, Johannes, Rohin and show single values where we mostly agree and ranges where we disagreed. What does CCS try to do? To us, CCS represents a family of possible algorithms aiming at solving an ELK-style problem that have the steps: Knowledge-like property: write down a property that points at an LLM feature which represents the model's knowledge (or a small number of features that includes the model-knowledge-feature). Formalisation: make that property mathematically precise so you can search for features with that property in an unsupervised way. Search: find it (e.g., by optimising a formalised loss). In the case of CCS, the knowledge-like property is negation-consistency, the formalisation is a specific loss function, and the search is unsupervised learning with gradient descent on a linear + sigmoid function taking LLM activations as inputs. We were pretty excited about this. We especially liked that the approach is not supervised. Conceptually, supervising ELK seems really hard: it is too easy to confuse what you know, what you think the model knows, and what it actually knows. Avoiding the need to write down what-the-model-knows labels seems like a great goal. Why we think CCS isn't working We spent a lot of time playing with CCS and trying to make it work well enough to build a deception detector by measuring the difference between elicited model's knowledge and stated claims.[1] Having done this, we are now not very optimistic about CCS or things like it. Partly, this is because the loss itself doesn't give much reason to think that it would be able to find a knowledge-like property and empirically it seems to find whatever feature in the dataset happens to be most prominent, which is very prompt-sensitive. Maybe something building off it could work in the future, but we don't think anything about CCS provides evidence that it would be likely to. As a result, we have basically returned to our priors about the difficulty of ELK, which are something between "very very difficult" and "approximately impossible" for a full solution, while mostly agreeing that partial solutions are "hard but possible". What does the CCS loss say? The CCS approach is motivated like this: we don't know that much about the model's knowledge, but probably it follows basic consistency properties. For example, it probably has something like Bayesian credences and when it believes A with some probability PA, it ought to believe A with probability 1PA.[2] So if we search in the LLM's feature space for features that satisfy this consistency property, the model's knowledge is going to be one of the things that satisfies it. Moreover, they hypothesise, there probably aren't that many things that satisfy this property, so we can easily check the handful that we get and find the one representing the model's knowledge. When we dig into the CCS loss, it isn't clear that it really checks for what it's supposed to. In particular, we prove that arbitrary features, not jus...
Community Focused Cuisine, Conceptually Social E40 In this episode, Thomas Barr interviews Kyu and Brianna, founder and CEO of Conceptually Social, delving into their journey, philosophy, and community involvement in the Phoenix-based restaurant and catering company. The conversation highlights the company’s roots in downtown Phoenix, Brianna’s transition from corporate America, and the challenges of operating […] The post Community Focused Cuisine, Conceptually Social E40 appeared first on Business RadioX ®.
Conceptually, we probably all know that being open to a variety of perspectives is important. But our brains can have a different idea. Being very intentional about leading with an open mind is when we, and our teams, really experience the benefits. Take a listen to hear a new perspective on perspective.... Enjoy! Links + Ways to Connect: Show Notes: Episode 99 Show Notes Angie Robinson Coaching Website Schedule a free Discovery Call Angie Robinson LinkedIn Angie Robinson Coaching Instagram Angie Robinson Coaching Facebook Relevant Links: Episode 13: The Magic of Curiosity [in Leadership] Me and the Magic Episode 117
The Language of Play - Kids that Listen, Speech Therapy, Language Development, Early Intervention
Hey Friends, HAPPY THANKSGIVING from The Language of Play! There are so many holiday stories available to read to our children! They all have a different focus. Some silly, some academic, some religious... any focus you can think of! When My kids were small, I wanted a story that helped them understand gratitude in the presence of struggle. I wanted a Christian book that showed God's goodness. I found “Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving.” This book became the story my family read every Thanksgiving! As they grew, our conversations grew! I decided to share it with you here, with permission from the author. Maybe your kiddos will give you a little space to cook while listening. Conceptually, older kids will enjoy it, and the little ones will also enjoy the sounds of a story read, even as they don't understand the history. Happy Listening and Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you and your kids enjoy it! To re-listen, you'll find the story about 7min, 15 seconds. Always cheering you on! Dinalynn CONTACT DINALYNN: hello@thelanguageofplay.com Amazon link to book read today: "Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving" The Language of Play Resources: Let's meet on a 15 min zoom Discovery Session to discuss where you are at and what you are dealing with. Sign up for my Newsletter! (link broken - email me "Newsletter") Join my new FREE Facebook Community HERE! to join a new community where you are free to ask questions, make friends, and we learn from each other! CELEBRATION SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL: "Why Won't The Kids Listen?" is $97 and found on Amazing Parents Network with Dr. L. Lesson Titles: Introduction, Our Parenting Foundation, What Stops Compliance, Expectations and Assumptions, Bribe, Beg, and Bargain, Parental Leadership "Getting Kids To Listen Better!" is $97 and found on Amazing Parents Network with Dr. L. Lesson Titles: Your Child's Brain, The Map to Independence Starts Early, Eliminating Repeating – Some of it, How to Know What Your Child is Learning, Chores: What Should I Expect?, Confidence Building with Skills When you purchase BOTH courses, you get a 1:1, 1-hour, personal coaching session on zoom with Dinalynn!! Let me answer your questions on a 15 min zoom Discovery Session! ("Let's Meet Session") Related or Mentioned Episodes: 93 Teaching Kids To Express Gratitude In 2 Easy Steps! 95 Do You Have A Picky Eater? Have a Holiday Plan! Join For A Success Story with Everyday Parent, Kristi! 94 Teaching Kids To Be Independently Helpful - And Enjoying The Process!
It's In the News, a look at the top stories and headlines from the diabetes community happening now. Top stories this week: a new CGM from Medtronic is approved in Europe, semaglutides for people newly diagnosed type 1 may make a huge difference, a look at Keto diet for kids, Apple teases non-invasive glucose monitoring and Dexcom U is back! Find out more about Moms' Night Out Please visit our Sponsors & Partners - they help make the show possible! Take Control with Afrezza Omnipod - Simplify Life Learn about Dexcom Edgepark Medical Supplies Check out VIVI Cap to protect your insulin from extreme temperatures Learn more about AG1 from Athletic Greens Drive research that matters through the T1D Exchange The best way to keep up with Stacey and the show is by signing up for our weekly newsletter: Sign up for our newsletter here Here's where to find us: Facebook (Group) Facebook (Page) Instagram Twitter Check out Stacey's books! Learn more about everything at our home page www.diabetes-connections.com Reach out with questions or comments: info@diabetes-connections.com Hello and welcome to Diabetes Connections In the News! I'm Stacey Simms and these are the top diabetes stories and headlines happening now XX In the news is brought to you by Edgepark simplify your diabetes journey with Edgepark XX Our top this story this week a new CGM from Medtronic gets approval in Europe. It's called Simplera – an all in one disposable CGM– no fingersticks and no over-tape, which is new for Medtronic. Simplera is integrated with the InPen™ smart insulin pen, which provides real-time, personalized dosing guidance to help simplify diabetes management. Medtronic will begin a phased launch at the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) 59th Annual Meeting in Hamburg, Germany on Oct. 2-6, 2023. Simplera™ is indicated for ages 2+ and compatible with iOS and Android. Simplera™ is not approved by the FDA and is limited to investigational use in the U.S. Medtronic's automated insulin delivery (AID) system integrated with this next-generation sensor is currently under review for CE Mark and is not commercially available in the U.S. or in Europe. I've reached out to Medtronic – we'll learn more soon. https://news.medtronic.com/2023-09-21-Medtronic-Diabetes-announces-CE-Mark-for-new-Simplera-TM-CGM-with-disposable-all-in-one-design XX A small study and a long way to go here, but a weekly dose of semaglutide, helped seven out of 10 patients newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes stop taking insulin after three to six months. Semaglutide is the key ingredient in Ozempic.. approved for type 2 and Wegovy, approved for weight loss. It's also thought to tamp down the inflammation that can lead to the destruction of insulin-producing cells. He noted previous research has shown that patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes still have the ability to make some of their own insulin, so the team tested semaglutide in patients within three months of their diagnosis. All ten patients were taking meal time and long acting insulin. After three months, all of them came off meal time insulin, and seven stopped basal insulin. Much more study needed here.. interestingly. Ozempic's maker, Novo Nordisk noted it didn't sponsor this study and isn't pursuing trials of semaglutide for type 1 diabetes itself, https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/semaglutide-ozempic-wagovy-type-1-diabetes-insulin-study/ XX a widely used diabetes drug that controls blood sugar can also prevent muscle atrophy and muscular fibrosis—which can help the elderly bounce back faster from injury or illness. Researchers from the University of Utah Health have found that Metformin has surprising applications on a cellular level. Their findings were published in the journal Aging Cell. “We saw two things in our study,” Drummond says. “When participants took Metformin during a bed rest, they had less muscle atrophy. During the recovery period, their muscles also had less fibrosis or excessive collagen. That build-up can make it harder for the muscle to properly function.” https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-discover-surprising-side-effect-of-common-diabetes-drug/ XX Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have created a device for people with type 1 diabetes that may help produce insulin when needed. Their findings were published on September 18 in The Proceeding of the National Academy of Science. The MIT engineers reported that the small implantable device could carry hundreds of thousands of insulin-producing islet cells. Previous devices made for the same purpose failed and stopped producing insulin because they ran out of oxygen needed to create the insulin. To combat this, the scientists created an oxygen factory on the device, allowing it to generate oxygen by splitting water vapor in the body. The researchers said the device could potentially replace insulin injections in people with type 1 diabetes. Dr. Caroline Messer, an endocrinologist at Northwell Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, not involved in the study, explained to Medical News Today: “Currently, islet cell transplant is limited to patients with a history of severe metabolic complications and consistent failure of insulin-based therapies. Long-term success rates are low, and patients require lifelong immunosuppressive therapy. Conceptually, implantable islet cells that do not require immune suppression and create their own source of oxygen is nothing short of brilliant.” MIT researchers said the device kept glucose levels stable for at least one month when implanted into mice. The device has not yet been tested in humans. Researchers hope to create a larger version of the device and test it in people with type 1 diabetes. They expect this device to be about the size of a stick of chewing gum. “We are eager to see this technology translate, but it does take time,” said Dan Anderson, PhD, the study's lead author and a professor of chemistry at MIT. “We hope to see this technology in humans within at most four years.” Although the researchers remained focused on treating diabetes, they indicate this kind of device might be able to be adapted to treat other illnesses that require repeated delivery of therapeutic proteins. “This technology allows for an improvement in the current approach to implantation of units containing cells that produce insulin in response to blood glucose levels without requiring invasive surgery,” said Dr. Eliud Sifonte, an endocrinologist at NYU Langone Medical Associates, who was not involved in the study. “Historically, this approach has been difficult to maintain due to an inability to provide a good oxygen supply to those implanted cells,” Dr. Sifonte told MNT. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-a-new-device-may-help-with-insulin-production-for-type-1-diabetes XX Weight Watchers and Abbott announce their new app for people with diabetes. This is a WW app that integrates the use of a Freestyle Libre. The app helps people with diabetes understand how food and activity impact their glucose levels. WeightWatchers had a team of nutrition and behavioral science experts designed its tailored plan. It aims to help people with type 2 diabetes form helpful habits and meet their health goals. The plan has demonstrated success in helping people with diabetes lose weight and lower their HbA1c, the company said. https://www.massdevice.com/abbott-weightwatchers-unveil-connected-diabetes-app/ XX Italy celiac XX Keto and other low carbohydrate diets have gained popularity for type 2 diabetes in adults, but there are safety concerns for young people, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) cautioned. Restricting carbohydrates in young people at risk for or with diabetes raises concerns for growth deceleration, nutritional deficiencies, poor bone health, nutritional ketosis, and disordered eating behaviors, Tamara Hannon, MD, of Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, and colleagues on the AAP Committee on Nutrition wrote in a clinical report to guide care. Based on demonstrated risks, low- and very low-carbohydrate diets were not recommended for children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes, "except under close diabetes care team supervision utilizing safety guidelines," the group wrote in Pediatricsopens in a new tab or window. Low-carb (
Solving Climate Change is Conceptually Simple by Sailesh Rao at ClimateHealers.org Original post: https://climatehealers.org/blog/solving-climate-change-is-conceptually-simple/ Video mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8QRVHJMXOw Dr. Sailesh Rao is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, a non-profit dedicated towards healing the Earth's climate. Dr. Rao is the author of two books, Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies and Carbon Yoga: The Vegan Metamorphosis, and an Executive Producer of four documentaries, The Human Experiment (2013), Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret (2014), What The Health (2017), and A Prayer for Compassion (2019). Dr. Rao is a Human, Earth and Animal Liberation (HEAL) activist, husband, dad and since 2010, a star-struck grandfather. He has promised his granddaughter, Kimaya, that the world will be largely Vegan before she turns 16 in 2026, so that people will stop eating her relatives, the animals. He has faith that humanity will transform to keep his pinky promise to Kimaya, not just for ethical reasons, but also out of sheer ecological necessity. How to support the podcast: Share with others. Recommend the podcast on your social media. Follow/subscribe to the show wherever you listen. Buy some vegan/plant based merch: https://www.plantbasedbriefing.com/shop Follow Plant Based Briefing on social media: Twitter: @PlantBasedBrief YouTube: YouTube.com/PlantBasedBriefing Facebook: Facebook.com/PlantBasedBriefing LinkedIn: Plant Based Briefing Podcast Instagram: @PlantBasedBriefing #vegan #plantbased #plantbasedbriefing #climatecrisis #climatehealers #veganworld2026 #climatechange
Nelumbo nucifera, or the sacred lotus, is a plant that grows in flood plains, rivers, and deltas. Their seeds can remain dormant for years and when floods come along, blossom into a colony of plants and flowers. Some of the oldest seeds can be found in China, where they're known to represent longevity. No surprise, given their level of nitrition and connection to the waters that irrigated crops by then. They also grow in far away lands, all the way to India and out to Australia. The flower is sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism, and further back in ancient Egypt. Padmasana is a Sanskrit term meaning lotus, or Padma, and Asana, or posture. The Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley civilization shows a diety in what's widely considered the first documented yoga pose, from around 2,500 BCE. 2,700 years later (give or take a century), the Hindu author and mystic Patanjali wrote a work referred to as the Yoga Sutras. Here he outlined the original asanas, or sitting yoga poses. The Rig Veda, from around 1,500 BCE, is the oldest currently known Vedic text. It is also the first to use the word “yoga”. It describes songs, rituals, and mantras the Brahmans of the day used - as well as the Padma. Further Vedic texts explore how the lotus grew out of Lord Vishnu with Brahma in the center. He created the Universe out of lotus petals. Lakshmi went on to grow out of a lotus from Vishnu as well. It was only natural that humans would attempt to align their own meditation practices with the beautiful meditatios of the lotus. By the 300s, art and coins showed people in the lotus position. It was described in texts that survive from the 8th century. Over the centuries contradictions in texts were clarified in a period known as Classical Yoga, then Tantra and and Hatha Yoga were developed and codified in the Post-Classical Yoga age, and as empires grew and India became a part of the British empire, Yoga began to travel to the west in the late 1800s. By 1893, Swami Vivekananda gave lectures at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. More practicioners meant more systems of yoga. Yogendra brought asanas to the United States in 1919, as more Indians migrated to the United States. Babaji's kriya yoga arrived in Boston in 1920. Then, as we've discussed in previous episodes, the United States tightened immigration in the 1920s and people had to go to India to get more training. Theos Bernard's Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience brought some of that knowledge home when he came back in 1947. Indra Devi opened a yoga studio in Hollywood and wrote books for housewives. She brought a whole system, or branch home. Walt and Magana Baptiste opened a studio in San Francisco. Swamis began to come to the US and more schools were opened. Richard Hittleman began to teach yoga in New York and began to teach on television in 1961. He was one of the first to seperate the religious aspect from the health benefits. By 1965, the immigration quotas were removed and a wave of teachers came to the US to teach yoga. The Beatles went to India in 1966 and 1968, and for many Transcendental Meditation took root, which has now grown to over a thousand training centers and over 40,000 teachers. Swamis opened meditation centers, institutes, started magazines, and even magazines. Yoga became so big that Rupert Holmes even poked fun of it in his song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” in 1979. Yoga had become part of the counter-culture, and the generation that followed represented a backlash of sorts. A common theme of the rise of personal computers is that the early pioneers were a part of that counter-culture. Mitch Kapor graduated high school in 1967, just in time to be one of the best examples of that. Kapor built his own calculator in as a kid before going to camp to get his first exposure to programming on a Bendix. His high school got one of the 1620 IBM minicomputers and he got the bug. He went off to Yale at 16 and learned to program in APL and then found Computer Lib by Ted Nelson and learned BASIC. Then he discovered the Apple II. Kapor did some programming for $5 per hour as a consultant, started the first east coast Apple User Group, and did some work around town. There are generations of people who did and do this kind of consulting, although now the rates are far higher. He met a grad student through the user group named Eric Rosenfeld who was working on his dissertation and needed some help programming, so Kapor wrote a little tool that took the idea of statistical analysis from the Time Shared Reactive Online Library, or TROLL, and ported it to the microcomputer, which he called Tiny Troll. Then he enrolled in the MBA program at MIT. He got a chance to see VisiCalc and meet Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin, who introduced him to the team at Personal Software. Personal Software was founded by Dan Fylstra and Peter Jennings when they published Microchips for the KIM-1 computer. That led to ports for the 1977 Trinity of the Commodore PET, Apple II, and TRS-80 and by then they had taken Bricklin and Franston's VisiCalc to market. VisiCalc was the killer app for those early PCs and helped make the Apple II successful. Personal Software brought Kapor on, as well as Bill Coleman of BEA Systems and Electronic Arts cofounder Rich Mellon. Today, software developers get around 70 percent royalties to publish software on app stores but at the time, fees were closer to 8 percent, a model pulled from book royalties. Much of the rest went to production of the box and disks, the sales and marketing, and support. Kapor was to write a product that could work with VisiCalc. By then Rosenfeld was off to the world of corporate finance so Kapor moved to Silicon Valley, learned how to run a startup, moved back east in 1979, and released VisiPlot and VisiTrend in 1981. He made over half a million dollars in the first six months in royalties. By then, he bought out Rosenfeld's shares in what he was doing, hired Jonathan Sachs, who had been at MIT earlier, where he wrote the STOIC programming language, and then went to work at Data General. Sachs worked on spreadsheet ideas at Data General with a manager there, John Henderson, but after they left Data General, and the partnership fell apart, he worked with Kapor instead. They knew that for software to be fast, it needed to be written in a lower level language, so they picked the Intel 8088 assembly language given that C wasn't fast enough yet. The IBM PC came in 1981 and everything changed. Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs started Lotus in 1982. Sachs got to work on what would become Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor turned out to be a great marketer and product manager. He listened to what customers said in focus groups. He pushed to make things simpler and use less jargon. They released a new spreadsheet tool in 1983 and it worked flawlessly on the IBM PC and while Microsoft had Multiplan and VisCalc was the incumbent spreadsheet program, Lotus quickly took market share from then and SuperCalc. Conceptually it looked similar to VisiCalc. They used the letter A for the first column, B for the second, etc. That has now become a standard in spreadsheets. They used the number 1 for the first row, the number 2 for the second. That too is now a standard. They added a split screen, also now a standard. They added macros, with branching if-then logic. They added different video modes, which could give color and bitmapping. They added an underlined letter so users could pull up a menu and quickly select the item they wanted once they had those orders memorized, now a standard in most menuing systems. They added the ability to add bar charts, pie charts, and line charts. One could even spread their sheet across multiple monitors like in a magazine. They refined how fields are calculated and took advantage of the larger amounts of memory to make Lotus far faster than anything else on the market. They went to Comdex towards the end of the year and introduced Lotus 1-2-3 to the world. The software could be used as a spreadsheet, but the 2 and 3 referred to graphics and database management. They did $900,000 in orders there before they went home. They couldn't even keep up with the duplication of disks. Comdex was still invitation only. It became so popular that it was used to test for IBM compatibility by clone makers and where VisiCalc became the app that helped propel the Apple II to success, Lotus 1-2-3 became the app that helped propel the IBM PC to success. Lotus was rewarded with $53 million in sales for 1983 and $156 million in 1984. Mitch Kapor found himself. They quickly scaled from less than 20 to 750 employees. They brought in Freada Klein who got her PhD to be the Head of Employee Relations and charged her with making them the most progressive employer around. After her success at Lotus, she left to start her own company and later married. Sachs left the company in 1985 and moved on to focus solely on graphics software. He still responds to requests on the phpBB forum at dl-c.com. They ran TV commercials. They released a suite of Mac apps they called Lotus Jazz. More television commercials. Jazz didn't go anywhere and only sold 20,000 copies. Meanwhile, Microsoft released Excel for the Mac, which sold ten times as many. Some blamed the lack os sales on the stringent copy protection. Others blamed the lack of memory to do cool stuff. Others blamed the high price. It was the first major setback for the young company. After a meteoric rise, Kapor left the company in 1986, at about the height of their success. He replaced himself with Jim Manzi. Manzi pushed the company into network applications. These would become the center of the market but were just catching on and didn't prove to be a profitable venture just yet. A defensive posture rather than expanding into an adjacent market would have made sense, at least if anyone knew how aggressive Microsoft was about to get it would have. Manzi was far more concerned about the millions of illegal copies of the software in the market than innovation though. As we turned the page to the 1990s, Lotus had moved to a product built in C and introduced the ability to use graphical components in the software but not wouldn't be ported to the new Windows operating system until 1991 for Windows 3. By then there were plenty of competitors, including Quattro Pro and while Microsoft Excel began on the Mac, it had been a showcase of cool new features a windowing operating system could provide an application since released for Windows in 1987. Especially what they called 3d charts and tabbed spreadsheets. There was no catching up to Microsoft by then and sales steadily declined. By then, Lotus released Lotus Agenda, an information manager that could be used for time management, project management, and as a database. Kapor was a great product manager so it stands to reason he would build a great product to manage products. Agenda never found commercial success though, so was later open sourced under a GPL license. Bill Gross wrote Magellan there before he left to found GoTo.com, which was renamed to Overture and pioneered the idea of paid search advertising, which was acquired by Yahoo!. Magellan cataloged the internal drive and so became a search engine for that. It sold half a million copies and should have been profitable but was cancelled in 1990. They also released a word processor called Manuscript in 1986, which never gained traction and that was cancelled in 1989, just when a suite of office automation apps needed to be more cohesive. Ray Ozzie had been hired at Software Arts to work on VisiCalc and then helped Lotus get Symphony out the door. Symphony shipped in 1984 and expanded from a spreadsheet to add on text with the DOC word processor, and charts with the GRAPH graphics program, FORM for a table management solution, and COM for communications. Ozzie dutifully shipped what he was hired to work on but had a deal that he could build a company when they were done that would design software that Lotus would then sell. A match made in heaven as Ozzie worked on PLATO and borrowed the ideas of PLATO Notes, a collaboration tool developed at the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana to build what he called Lotus Notes. PLATO was more more than productivity. It was a community that spanned decades and Control Data Corporation had failed to take it to the mass corporate market. Ozzie took the best parts for a company and built it in isolation from the rest of Lotus. They finally released it as Lotus Notes in 1989. It was a huge success and Lotus bought Iris in 1994. Yet they never found commercial success with other socket-based client server programs and IBM acquired Lotus in 1995. That product is now known as Domino, the name of the Notes 4 server, released in 1996. Ozzie went on to build a company called Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft, who appointed him one of their Chief Technology Officers. When Bill Gates left Microsoft, Ozzie took the position of Chief Software Architect he vacated. He and Dave Cutler went on to work on a project called Red Dog, which evolved into what we now know as Microsoft Azure. Few would have guessed that Ozzie and Kapor's handshake agreement on Notes could have become a real product. Not only could people not understand the concept of collaboration and productivity on a network in the late 1980s but the type of deal hadn't been done. But Kapor by then realized that larger companies had a hard time shipping net-new software properly. Sometimes those projects are best done in isolation. And all the better if the parties involved are financially motivated with shares like Kapor wanted in Personal Software in the 1970s before he wrote Lotus 1-2-3. VisiCalc had sold about a million copies but that would cease production the same year Excel was released. Lotus hung on longer than most who competed with Microsoft on any beachhead they blitzkrieged. Microsoft released Exchange Server in 1996 and Notes had a few good years before Exchange moved in to become the standard in that market. Excel began on the Mac but took the market from Lotus eventually, after Charles Simonyi stepped in to help make the product great. Along the way, the Lotus ecosystem created other companies, just as they were born in the Visi ecosystem. Symantec became what we now call a “portfolio” company in 1985 when they introduced NoteIt, a natural language processing tool used to annotate docs in Lotus 1-2-3. But Bill Gates mentioned Lotus by name multiple times as a competitor in his Internet Tidal Wave memo in 1995. He mentioned specific features, like how they could do secure internet browsing and that they had a web publisher tool - Microsoft's own FrontPage was released in 1995 as well. He mentioned an internet directory project with Novell and AT&T. Active Directory was released a few years later in 1999, after Jim Allchin had come in to help shepherd LAN Manager. Notes itself survived into the modern era, but by 2004 Blackberry released their Exchange connector before they released the Lotus Domino connector. That's never a good sign. Some of the history of Lotus is covered in Scott Rosenberg's 2008 book, Dreaming in Code. Others are documented here and there in other places. Still others are lost to time. Kapor went on to invest in UUNET, which became a huge early internet service provider. He invested in Real Networks, who launched the first streaming media service on the Internet. He invested in the creators of Second Life. He never seemed vindictive with Microsoft but after AOL acquired Netscape and Microsoft won the first browser war, he became the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation and so helped bring Firefox to market. By 2006, Firefox took 10 percent of the market and went on to be a dominant force in browsers. Kapor has also sat on boards and acted as an angel investor for startups ever since leaving the company he founded. He also flew to Wyoming in 1990 after he read a post on The WELL from John Perry Barlow. Barlow was one of the great thinkers of the early Internet. They worked with Sun Microsystems and GNU Debugging Cypherpunk John Gilmore to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. The EFF has since been the nonprofit who leads the fight for “digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.” So not everything is about business.
Exclusive to audio listeners today! We take a look at how we would influence the political trust or distrust with voters. Conceptually, this is easy. Practically, this is difficult. Get to the practical by making sure you understand the concept. Email us – healthyperspectives@protonmail.com Podcast home page - www.healthy-perspectives.com/podcast Sponsor/Support – https://healthy-perspectives.com/sponsor Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/c-2235930 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEXZdWuBoM6KXof4YcP9nkQ Extra documents - www.healthy-perspectives.com/podcast-documents LinkIn page - www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-guidos-915b3426 Twitter - https://twitter.com/hphonestviews Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/healthyperspectivesinc
Stress. Hormones. Metabolism. And now I've probably pulled you in, because this is an area that seems to be affecting most of us in this phase of life. Conceptually, we may try to mitigate our stress, but let's be honest…sometimes that's out of our control.Complicating matters, many of us are in that peri menopausal/menopausal stage. Need I say more? My conversation with Registered Dietician Becky Bell will help you understand how stress hormones affect appetite and metabolism, and she provides applicable ways of managing all of those. We discuss:What stress hormones areWhat they do to our appetite and metabolismRecommendations for keeping our stress hormones in checkFoods and nutrients to stabilize stress and promote healthy brainsGet Becky's free guide 5 Health Habits That are Keeping You From Losing WeightInterested in utilizing Becky to help coach you? Click here.Listen to the Intuitive Eating episode with Erin Todd in Season 12 Episode 32Grab your copy of Intuitive Eating hereListen to the magnesium episode with Natalie Jurado here in Season 15 Episode 2Buy Rooted In Magnesium Lotion hereConnect with Becky:www.rootednutritiontherapies.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/rooted.dietitiansDo you enjoy listening to the Graced Health podcast, reading the monthly newsletters, watching helpful videos on YouTube, viewing motivational posts on Instagram and more?Consider leaving a one-time tip to help offset the costs of producing this zero-cost content to you.https://witty-pioneer-2912.ck.page/products/leave-a-tipSupport the showConnect with Amy: GracedHealth.comJoin the Graced Health community on Facebook! Instagram: @GracedHealthYouTube: @AmyConnellJoin GracedHealth+ for virtual community meetups and bonus episodesLeave a one-time tip of $5Check out my book Your Worthy Body and signature online class B.COMPLETE
Your best-match clients are everywhere. They're in your Instagram following, they're on your email list, they're in your local community. The only thing that's preventing you from attracting and enrolling them is that you can't actually see them (yet). In this episode, I unpack the ‘invisible clients' concept so you can show up more powerfully on social media, creating unstoppable momentum, and continue to take action toward your big, audacious goals. Do not miss these highlights: 01:50 Kinsey is such a firm believer that there is so much abundance in your audience, in your business that you're not even aware of.01:58 When you focus just on what you can see and use that to drive your circumstances, you get yourself into trouble. 02:23 Conceptually what entrepreneurs are being called to do is to take really big risks.03:39 Every moment can be basically perceived as a risk, whether you're an entrepreneur or not. Life is fragile. 04:50 If entrepreneurship is easy, everybody would be doing it. 05:19 What you're willing to do to see your plan through will be one of those important questions you need to ask yourself. 06:02 There are all these parts working for you that you cannot see. A perfect example of this is the concept that Kinsey likes to call invisible clients.06:55 What we see now that we couldn't see before is there are these people coming out of the woodwork that we're like, where did they even come from?07:33 They're not the people that are engaging in any of your content. All of a sudden, they appear. 08:20 Kinsey has talked about this a lot in her marketing modules and other programs because it's not just about the one post you share today. 08:35 It's this collective experience, an ecosystem that you create for your people to thrive in, and grow into your best potential clients. 09:45 You need to believe that your ecosystem is growing and thriving and curating your best clients because it's just building on top of the next. 10:30 It's important to know that just because they are your invisible clients they're not there. 10:42 So how differently would you show up knowing that you have tons of invisible clients in your audience right now? 12:00 Anticipate the magic of what you can not see can bring. Believe that it can be one of the things that will create great success for your company as well. 13:00 Get out of this idea that your results come from the things that you can directly see. Start to believe that there is a lot of magic happening now for you that you just don't know. 13:30 The invisible client is the best way to anchor into this idea of my people are there, whether you see them or not, You're going to show up for them. 14:25 So go out today and start to answer these questions. Who do I want to be? Who am I writing to? Who do I want to call in?Am I committed to showing up as that person and doing those things? About the HostKinsey Machos, a Marketing Strategist, is also a recovering people pleaser, self-sabotager, and corporate hustler. She helps entrepreneurs create and execute magnetic marketing and build expert brands so that they can get known, seen, and heard online.She believes that creating a business that's 100% in alignment with SELF is one of the most important things that we can do as women — because there's an inner magic that we all have if we commit to an infinite pursuit of discovering (and re-discovering) that.As a wife and a mom of three, the family takes priority. And having a business that's run AROUND her lifestyle is a daily intention of hers.
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why Are Maximum Entropy Distributions So Ubiquitous?, published by johnswentworth on April 5, 2023 on LessWrong. If we measure the distribution of particle velocities in a thin gas, we'll find that they're roughly normally distributed. Specifically, the probability density of velocity v will be proportional to e−12mv2/(kBT) - or, written differently, e−E(v)/(kBT), where E(v) is the kinetic energy of a particle of the gas with velocity v, T is temperature, and kB is Boltzmann's constant. The latter form, e−E/(kBT), generalizes even beyond thin gasses - indeed, it generalizes even to solids, fluids, and plasmas. It applies to the concentrations of chemical species in equilibrium solutions, or the concentrations of ions around an electrode. It applies to light emitted from hot objects. Roughly speaking, it applies to microscopic states in basically any physical system in thermal equilibrium where quantum effects aren't significant. It's called the Boltzmann distribution; it's a common sub-case of a more general class of relatively-elegant distributions called maximum entropy distributions. Even more generally, maximum entropy distributions show up remarkably often. The normal distribution is another good example: you might think of normal distributions mostly showing up when we add up lots of independent things (thanks to the Central Limit Theorem), but then what about particle velocities in a gas? Sure, there's conceptually lots of little things combining together to produce gas particle velocities, but it's not literally a bunch of numbers adding together; Central Limit Theorem doesn't directly apply. Point is: normal distributions show up surprisingly often, even when we're not adding together lots of numbers. Same story with lots of other maximum entropy distributions - poisson, geometric/exponential, uniform, dirichlet. most of the usual named distributions in a statistical library are either maximum entropy distributions or near relatives. Like the normal distribution, they show up surprisingly often. What's up with that? Why this particular class of distributions? If you have a Bayesian background, there's kind of a puzzle here. Usually we think of probability distributions as epistemic states, descriptions of our own uncertainty. Probabilities live “in the mind”. But here we have a class of distributions which are out there “in the territory”: we look at the energies of individual particles in a gas or plasma or whatever, and find that they have not just any distribution, but a relatively “nice” distribution, something simple. Why? What makes a distribution like that appear, not just in our own models, but out in the territory? What Exactly Is A Maximum Entropy Distribution? Before we dive into why maximum entropy distributions are so ubiquitous, let's be explicit about what maximum entropy distributions are. Any (finite) probability distribution has some information-theoretic entropy, the “amount of information” conveyed by a sample from the distribution, given by Shannon's formula: −∑ipilog(pi) As the name suggests, a maximum entropy distribution is the distribution with the highest entropy, subject to some constraints. Different constraints yield different maximum entropy distributions. Conceptually: if a distribution has maximum entropy, then we gain the largest possible amount of information by observing a sample from the distribution. On the flip side, that means we know as little as possible about the sample before observing it. Maximum entropy = maximum uncertainty. With that in mind, you can probably guess one maximum entropy distribution: what's the maximum entropy distribution over a finite number of outcomes (e.g. heads/tails, or 1/2/3/4/5/6), without any additional constraints? (Think about that for a moment if you want.) Intuitively, the “most unce...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: $500 Bounty/Contest: Explain Infra-Bayes In The Language Of Game Theory, published by johnswentworth on March 25, 2023 on LessWrong. Here's my current best guess at how Infra-Bayes works: We want to get worst-case guarantees for an agent using a Bayesian-like framework. So, let our agent be a Bayesian which models the environment as containing an adversary which chooses worst-case values for any of the things over which we want worst-case guarantees. That's just a standard two-player zero-sum game between the agent and the adversary, so we can import all the nice intuitive stuff from game theory. ... but instead of that, we're going to express everything in the unnecessarily-abstract language of measure theory and convex sets, and rederive a bunch of game theory without mentioning that that's what we're doing. This bounty is for someone to write an intuitively-accessible infrabayes explainer in game theoretic language, and explain how the game-theoretic concepts relate to the concepts in existing presentations of infra-bayes. In short: provide a translation. Here's a sample of the sort of thing I have in mind: Conceptually, an infrabayesian agent is just an ordinary Bayesian game-theoretic agent, which models itself/its environment as a standard two-player zero-sum game. In the existing presentations of infra-bayes, the two-player game is only given implicitly. The agent's strategy π solves the problem: maxπmine∈BEπe[U] In game-theoretic terms, the "max" represents the agent's decision, while the "min" represents the adversary's. Much of the mathematical tractability stems from the fact that B is a convex set of environments (i.e. functions from policy π to probability distributions). In game-theoretic terms, the adversary's choice of strategy determines which "environment" the agent faces, and the adversary can choose from any option in B. Convexity of B follows from the adversary's ability to use mixed strategies: because the adversary can take a randomized mix of any two strategies available to it, the adversary can make the agent face any convex combination of (policy -> distribution) functions in B. Thus, B is closed under convex combinations; it's a convex set. I'd like a writeup along roughly these conceptual lines which covers as much as possible of the major high-level definitions and results in infra-bayes to date. On the other hand, I give approximately-zero shits about all the measure theory; just state the relevant high-level results in game-theoretic language, say what they mean intuitively, maybe mention whether there's some pre-existing standard game-theory theorem which can do the job or whether the infra-bayes version of the theorem is in fact the first proof of the game-theoretic equivalent, and move on. Alternatively, insofar as core parts of infrabayes differ from a two-player zero-sum game, or the general path I'm pointing to doesn't work, an explanation of how they differ and what the consequences are could also qualify for prize money. Bounty/Contest Operationalization Most of the headache in administering this sort of bounty is the risk that some well-intended person will write something which is not at all what I want, expecting to get paid, and then I will either have to explain how/why it's not what I want (which takes a lot of work), or I have to just accept it. To mitigate that failure mode, I'll run this as a contest: to submit, write up your explanation as a lesswrong post, then send me a message on lesswrong to make sure I'm aware of it. Deadline is end of April. I will distribute money among submissions based on my own highly-subjective judgement. If people write stuff up early, I might leave feedback on their posts, but no promises. I will count the "sample" above as a submission in its own right - i.e. I will imagine that three-par...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: $500 Bounty/Contest: Explain Infra-Bayes In The Language Of Game Theory, published by johnswentworth on March 25, 2023 on The AI Alignment Forum. Here's my current best guess at how Infra-Bayes works: We want to get worst-case guarantees for an agent using a Bayesian-like framework. So, let our agent be a Bayesian which models the environment as containing an adversary which chooses worst-case values for any of the things over which we want worst-case guarantees. That's just a standard two-player zero-sum game between the agent and the adversary, so we can import all the nice intuitive stuff from game theory. ... but instead of that, we're going to express everything in the unnecessarily-abstract language of measure theory and convex sets, and rederive a bunch of game theory without mentioning that that's what we're doing. This bounty is for someone to write an intuitively-accessible infrabayes explainer in game theoretic language, and explain how the game-theoretic concepts relate to the concepts in existing presentations of infra-bayes. In short: provide a translation. Here's a sample of the sort of thing I have in mind: Conceptually, an infrabayesian agent is just an ordinary Bayesian game-theoretic agent, which models itself/its environment as a standard two-player zero-sum game. In the existing presentations of infra-bayes, the two-player game is only given implicitly. The agent's strategy π solves the problem: maxπmine∈BEπe[U] In game-theoretic terms, the "max" represents the agent's decision, while the "min" represents the adversary's. Much of the mathematical tractability stems from the fact that B is a convex set of environments (i.e. functions from policy π to probability distributions). In game-theoretic terms, the adversary's choice of strategy determines which "environment" the agent faces, and the adversary can choose from any option in B. Convexity of B follows from the adversary's ability to use mixed strategies: because the adversary can take a randomized mix of any two strategies available to it, the adversary can make the agent face any convex combination of (policy -> distribution) functions in B. Thus, B is closed under convex combinations; it's a convex set. I'd like a writeup along roughly these conceptual lines which covers as much as possible of the major high-level definitions and results in infra-bayes to date. On the other hand, I give approximately-zero shits about all the measure theory; just state the relevant high-level results in game-theoretic language, say what they mean intuitively, maybe mention whether there's some pre-existing standard game-theory theorem which can do the job or whether the infra-bayes version of the theorem is in fact the first proof of the game-theoretic equivalent, and move on. Alternatively, insofar as core parts of infrabayes differ from a two-player zero-sum game, or the general path I'm pointing to doesn't work, an explanation of how they differ and what the consequences are could also qualify for prize money. Bounty/Contest Operationalization Most of the headache in administering this sort of bounty is the risk that some well-intended person will write something which is not at all what I want, expecting to get paid, and then I will either have to explain how/why it's not what I want (which takes a lot of work), or I have to just accept it. To mitigate that failure mode, I'll run this as a contest: to submit, write up your explanation as a lesswrong post, then send me a message on lesswrong to make sure I'm aware of it. Deadline is end of April. I will distribute money among submissions based on my own highly-subjective judgement. If people write stuff up early, I might leave feedback on their posts, but no promises. I will count the "sample" above as a submission in its own right - i.e. I will imagine t...
Brad Olsen, author of the esoteric book series, joins us to discuss koshikoden, or ancient and mysterious history. Arnechenologsts just announced the discover of another, this time submerged, Moai, in a dried lake bed on Easter Island. If one were to examine stele at Tiahuanaco in South America, pillars at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, Urfa man in the same region, or Moai statues on Easter Island (Rapa Nui), they would find similar depictions of hand positioning. In the same ares, along with areas all over the Middle East, one would also find characters holding containers or bags of a mysterious nature. Mix in stories from India that parallel myths from all the mentioned regions and you have something very mysterious. Similar parallels can also be found with the red coloring of hats placed on Moai heads on Rapa Nui. Red coloring was also used in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, the inner sanctum of Ġgantija on Gozo, and at the Hypogeum on Malta. In Old Japanese the word for ‘red' meant bright and pure. Conceptually the red is a symbol of blood, which is taken from the lamb to purify. The blood of Christ washes away our sins. Red is also the blood of birth. In the process of initiation into the Mystery Religions around the world red was used in the chambers mentioned above as a symbol of the womb. After days of gestation a person would be reborn as a “sun” of God. What is meant by “sun” here is that they would be bright, pure, washed clean, etc. They were a miniature sun, with a fire burning inside - the soul. The Japanese sun-goddess Amaterasu is the ‘light of heaven', and each of us is an individual expression of that light. Perhaps the hats on Moai are a sort of solar corona, as often used to depict Jesus, Horus, and countless other god-like figures.
My guest this week is Matthew Cull (@MaattCuull), a philosopher postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, with an interest in social philosophy, particularly debates around the concept of conceptual engineering. We discuss the debate between classic approaches to defining terms and conceptual engineering. We also discuss whether my pedagogy of luck counts as conceptual engineering or not.NOTE ON VIP CONTENT FOR THIS WEEK: Sadly, we had some issues with the bonus content and Matt and I decided to just cut it this week. Apologies. More next week!Matt's Website: https://matthewcull.wixsite.com/philosophyConvocation: Hilary PutnamMusic by GW RodriguezSibling Pods:Philosophers in Space: https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/Filmed Live Musicals Pod: https://www.filmedlivemusicals.com/thepodcast.htmlSupport us at Patreon.com/EmbraceTheVoidIf you enjoy the show, please Like and Review us on your pod app, especially iTunes. It really helps!Recent appearances:The only one that matters really: https://religionnews.com/2023/02/01/american-atheists-board-members-exit-dogged-by-misconduct-allegations/Next Episode: The Causes of Conspiracism with Ben Dow
It's everyone's favorite gameshow...Dead or Alive and you can play too! When our writers came up with this concept, I know that the only person worthy of taking the test was our Pop Culture correspondent...the one and only Cha Cha Choo! The game itself sounds simple...I say a name of a celebrity and Cha Cha states (with confidence?) if they are dead or alive, simple right? Conceptually, yes it does sound easy and when we came up with the list of celebrities we thought for sure he would score 100% but that is where things get interesting. So we invite you to take the test along with the Expert and see how you score. If you beat his score, let us know about it! Thanks to our writers, RIP to all the celebs on our list and thanks to Mr. Choo for playing along, we hope you all enjoy it as much as we did! #deadorliave, #game, #gameshow, #celebrities
In this episode of Architecture, Design & Photography we sit down with Scott Johnson and Bill Fain, founding partners of Johnson Fain. They discuss the 25-year transformation of Oklahoma City Oil Field Number One into First Americans Museum (FAM), which honors the state's 39 tribes. The project was highly collaborative and engaging, incorporating Native American advisors to help shape the overall design approach. Conceptually, FAM is a spiral that begins in the earth and ascends to the heavens. The museum's western arc features permanent and rotating exhibitions, and its northern arc houses theaters, retail, dining, and other services necessary in modern museums. Architect and urban designer Bill Fain, FAIA, directs master planning and urban design at Johnson Fain. He has won several national AIA and Progressive Architecture awards for projects including Mission Bay in San Francisco, Beijing's Central Business District, and the Greenways Plan for Los Angeles. Bill has received two Fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and Humanities and was the recipient of a Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. He has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from UC Berkeley and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard Graduate School of Design. Firm partner and creative lead Scott Johnson, FAIA, has designed nearly 100 built projects in the past 20 years. Further, he has taught and lectured at various universities, including directing the Master of Architecture Programs at the University of Southern California's School of Architecture. Scott is the author of Essays on the Tall Building and the City, Performative Skyscraper Tall Building Design Now, The Big Idea: Criticality and Practice in Contemporary Architecture, Tall Building: Imagining the Skyscraper, and Tectonics of Place: The Architecture of Johnson Fain. He holds a BA in Architecture from UC Berkeley and a Master in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Bill and Scott met at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1987, they acquired renowned Los Angeles firm Pereira Associates, rebranding it Johnson Fain.More from Johnson Fain:Website: https://johnsonfain.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnsonfain/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/johnsonfain/First Americans Museum: https://famok.org
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Induction heads - illustrated, published by TheMcDouglas on January 2, 2023 on LessWrong. TL;DR This is my illustrated walkthrough of induction heads. I created it in order to concisely capture all the information about how the circuit works. There are 2 versions of the walkthrough: Version 1 is the one included in this post. It's slightly shorter, and focuses more on the intuitions than the actual linear operations going on. Version 2 can be found at my personal website. It has all the same stuff as version 1, with a bit of added info about the mathematical details, and how you might go about reverse-engineering this circuit in a real model. The final image from version 1 is inline below, and depending on your level of familiarity with transformers, looking at this diagram might provide most of the value of this post. If it doesn't make sense to you, then read on for the full walkthrough, where I build up this diagram bit by bit. Introduction Induction heads are a well-studied and understood circuit in transformers. They allow a model to perform in-context learning, of a very specific form: if a sequence contains a repeated subsequence e.g. of the form A B ... A B (where A and B stand for generic tokens, e.g. the first and last name of a person who doesn't appear in any of the model's training data), then the second time this subsequence occurs the transformer will be able to predict that B follows A. Although this might seem like weirdly specific ability, it turns out that induction circuits are actually a pretty massive deal. They're present even in large models (despite being originally discovered in 2-layer models), they can be linked to macro effects like bumps in loss curves during training, and there is some evidence that induction heads might even constitute the mechanism for the actual majority of all in-context learning in large transformer models. I think induction heads can be pretty confusing unless you fully understand the internal mechanics, and it's easy to come away from them feeling like you get what's going on without actually being able to explain things down to the precise details. My hope is that these diagrams help people form a more precise understanding of what's actually going on. Prerequisites This post is aimed at people who already understand how a transformer is structured (I'd recommend Neel Nanda's tutorial for that), and the core ideas in the Mathematical Framework for Transformer Circuits paper. If you understand everything on this list, it will probably suffice: The central object in the transformer is the residual stream. Different heads in each layer can be thought of as operating independently of each other, reading and writing into the residual stream. Heads can compose to form circuits. For instance, K-composition is when the output of one head is used to generate the key vector in the attention calculations of a subsequent head. We can describe the weight matrices WQ, WK and WV as reading from (or projecting from) the residual stream, and WO as writing to (or embedding into) the residual stream. We can think of the combined operations WQ and WK in terms of a single ,ow-rank matrix WQK:=WQWTK, called the QK circuit. This matrix defines a bilinear form on the vectors in the residual stream: vTiWQKvj is the attention paid by the ith token to the jth token. Conceptually, this matrix tells us which tokens information is moved to & from in the residual stream. We can think of the combined operations WV and WO in terms of a single matrix WOV:=WVWO, called the OV circuit. This matrix defines a map from residual stream vectors to residual stream vectors: if vj is the residual stream vector at the source token, then vTjWOV is the vector that gets moved from token j to the destination token (if j is attended to). Conceptually, this matr...
Common Wealth Crush Company is a new exciting development in the Virginia Wine Industry. Ben Jordan along with his brother Tim and Jordan and Patt Eagan have opened what I term a winemaker Studio in the historic district of downtown Waynesboro, Virginia. Conceptually, it will allow small wine brands to have access to a winemaking facility without having to shell out the up-front costs of building their own winery. Common Wealth Crush hopes to be an incubator for future Virginia wine brands and as they grow they will move on being replaced by other new start up wine brands.These types of facilities are available in California and Oregon for their industry but nothing like this exists in Virginia today. This is a ground breaking, forward looking addition to help further grow the footprint for Virginia wine throughout the wine market.Ben must believe this will be successful as he left his position as winemaker at Early Mountain Vineyards in July of this year, where he had been since 2015 as was considered a leader in the growth of quality wine in the Old Dominion. His brother Tim is also a well-known viticulturalist and winemaker in Virginia. Patt Eagan their other partner in the enterprise is the business and sales manager. Between the three of them they bring the necessary experience and skill set to succeed. This is a team of entrepreneurs to keep an eye on for years to come.
A lifelong love of prairie led sculptor and former architect BILL MCBRIDE to the rolling sea of grass and sunflowers that is Matfield Green, Kansas—population 45. Serendipitous introductions to fellow environmentalist, artists and conservation enthusiasts enabled Bill to find a home for his own work and his ongoing passion project, the Prairie Art Path. Initially lacking a road map, Bill “lived conceptually,” doggedly pursued his artistic dreams, and eventually created the place he imagined. “You have to keep listening to yourself and find your models.”Find BILL:Website: www.billmcbridestudio.com Facebook: @wamcbride Instagram: @MatfieldGreenWorks Mentioned:Matfield Green, KS (learn) Matfield Station (learn)Cottonwood Falls, Kansas (visit) Tall Grass Prairie National Preserve (visit) Flint Hills, Kansas (explore) Prairie Art Path, Bill's artwork and others (discover) Riverbank Neighbors (learn) Wes Jackson, environmentalist / Land Institute in Salina, KS (learn) Friends of Chicago River (learn) Chianati Foundation, Marfa TX (visit) Donald Judd , American artist, minimalism (learn) Pioneer Bluffs, Center for Flint Hills Ranching Heritage (learn) Ton Haak, Dutch writer, designer, (learn) Tall Grass Artist Residency, residency and bunkhouses (explore)The Bank / Matfield Green Works, gallery & event space (explore) Mike Miller, sculptor (learn) Andy Goldsworthy, English sculptor, environmentalist/ land art (learn) Mark Arts Center, Wichita, KS (learn) Find Me, Kristy Darnell Battani: Website: https://www.kristybattani.com Instagram: kristybattaniart Facebook: kristybattaniart Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please take a moment to leave a rating and a comment: https://lovethepodcast.com/artishplunge Music:"Surf Guitar Madness," Alexis Messier, Licensed by PremiumBeat.comSupport the show
Megan Holston-Alexander is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund. It's the first VC fund that raised money exclusively from Black leaders — from entertainment to sports to business. The fund co-invests with a16z's other funds and has raised more than $60 million across its three funds to date.The overarching purpose of CLF is to create generational wealth opportunities for Black communities. It's a two-pronged approach. The first is getting Black dollars directly on the cap tables of high-potential startup companies. And the second is creating a pipeline for more Black talent at early-stage companies. Megan joined me on the show on the heels of hosting the first-ever Cultural Leadership Summit and announcing CLF III before then. Here's everything we covered during our conversation:[2:39] Takeaways from the Cultural Leadership Summit[5:19] Building despite economic uncertainties [7:36] High-worth individuals also affected by macro economy [9:05] How has the Cultural Leadership Fund evolved?[14:54] Difference between entertainment and executive LP's[17:16] Web3's knowledge imbalance [19:16] Megan's interest in DAO's[20:58] Will CLF's investment model change?[22:42] How CLF used relationships and trust-building to scale its operation [28:35] Megan's vetting process with LP's[36:02] How VC industry at-large can create more opportunities for black founders and talent [39:15] Has the Bay Area lost its monopoly on tech? [44:59] What CLF is focusing on in 2023Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | SoundCloud | Stitcher | Overcast | Amazon | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | RSSHost: Dan Runcie, @RuncieDan, trapital.coGuests: Megan Holston-Alexander, @meghalexander Download The Culture Report here: https://trapital.ck.page/a23b7a6a4a Sponsors:MoonPay is the leader in web3 infrastructure. They have partnered with Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, and many more. To learn more, visit moonpay.com/trapital Enjoy this podcast? Rate and review the podcast here! ratethispodcast.com/trapital Trapital is home for the business of hip-hop. Gain the latest insights from hip-hop's biggest players by reading Trapital's free weekly memo.TRANSCRIPTION[00:00:00] Megan Holston Alexander: What we hadn't considered on the executive side is, while the athletes and our kind of entertainers can partner on different things or, like, help them go into new markets, when it came down to, like, core operations or how you should run on your board, or how to think about hiring X, Y, and Z, our black executives, like, hold that information, like, in the palm of their hands. These are people who've been, you know, operators for 20 or 30 years, and so they brought kind of an additional level of skill and kind of insight to bolster what our other LPs on the more kind of athlete or entertainment side were doing. [00:00:40] Dan Runcie: Hey, welcome to The Trapital podcast. I'm your host and the founder of Trapital, Dan Runcie. This podcast is your place to gain insights from executives in music, media, entertainment, and more, who are taking hip-hop culture to the next level. [00:01:01] Dan Runcie: Today's guest is Megan Holston Alexander. She's a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, currently leading its Cultural Leadership Fund. And to date, this fund has raised over 60 million, invested in over 300 Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies, and has brought over a hundred black leaders into this space. I'm talking to Megan right after the Cultural Leadership Fund hosted its first-ever in-person summit. It was a pleasure to attend that summit myself and meet so many of the people that are friends of the fund, LPs of the fund, and really make it what it is. So this conversation, we talked a little bit about what it was like bringing that event together, especially after the pandemic. We also talked about how events like that fit within the fund's overall strategy and how that strategy has evolved over the past few years. For a little bit of background, the LPs in the Cultural Leadership Fund are all black, and it is one of the first funds to have ever done that in the VC space, and specifically, to date, a lot of the investors had been athletes and entertainers, but Megan talked a little bit about how they've expanded to bring on more black executives, what that looks like, and how that ultimately helps support the goal of the fund even more. One of the fund's other goals is to increase the amount of black talent and interest in tech. So we talk about what some of the opportunities are, what some of the challenges are, and what the VC community can do to help improve this even more. Great conversation, so many insightful points that Megan shared. I enjoyed this conversation and I know you will too, especially if you are an investor or you're a founder yourself. Here's my chat with Megan. [00:02:39] Dan Runcie: All right, today we have Megan Holston Alexander from Andreessen Horowitz Culture Leadership Fund, and first, I got to say congratulations on an amazing summit. It was a great event to be a part of and to attend. How does it feel for you now being on the heels of that and just seeing the impact of everything? [00:02:57] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah, so thank you so much for coming. It means so much that people would be interested enough and engaged enough to spend time with us away from their, you know, everyday grind. But we're really pleased with how it turned out. We were motivated because so many of our LPs had said to us, we want to get together, we want to meet each other, we want to meet the founders, we want to meet the investment team. So as an LP and kind of partner summit, I think it had the intended effect and it seemed like people really enjoyed their time, but also learned a ton. So I could not be happier. I will say I was telling myself that after it was over, I was going to have so much time to, like, get so much other stuff done, but, like, it just never, it never stopped. So, we were really proud of what we were able to put on.[00:03:38] Dan Runcie: 'Cause I'm sure an event like that makes you think about what else you could do, right? I'm sure you had a bunch of people buzzing with ideas on what other in-person events or what other things could look like, too. [00:03:48] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. And that's always the hope, right? We bring people into a room together in hopes that, like, we can help some serendipity happen. So many people in our network work on similar things or adjacent things or things that would have a really nice kind of partnership together. And so anytime we get to make those introductions, our hope is that people will be buzzing after, and have ideas for events and programs and partnerships. So we'll see what comes out of it. [00:04:12] Dan Runcie: And I imagine that a lot of this probably had been in the plans for a while. It was just a matter of timing. So much of CLFs rise and growth had happened during the pandemic as well. And it was just a matter of, okay, when can you bring people together safely to make something like this happen? [00:04:28] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah. Yeah. And when I say it was three years in the making. I am not kidding, because we were planning actually to host the first summit in 2020. So we were in process of like, you know, picking out venues and cities and where we wanted to be. And then, like, so many people when the pandemic hit that spring, it just kind of cleared everybody's calendars. And so it's nice to know that 2 and a half years after the original that the motive was still the same and the demand for what we were building was still the same that we got to put it on, I think, even better than we could have hoped in 2020.[00:05:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I agree. And then looking at, now, you, of course, get to have it on the tail end of your announcement for fund three. You've now raised over $60 million for this fund. What was it like raising in this climate though, just given where things are with the market and how things have been so far in 2022? [00:05:19] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah, totally. Totally. So when it comes to like the market environment, you just never know what's going to happen and unintentionally, you know, I actually got to raise ahead of kind of the market changing earlier in the spring. And that was actually because I was expecting and planning to be a new mom. And the firm was really supportive of that. And they said, okay, kind of up to you. Do you want to do it before mat leaves? Do you want to wait until the fall when you come back? And me being like, I don't want to think about this while I'm trying to raise a baby. I was like, Let's knock it out early. So lucky enough, you know, I was able to close that out before people really started tightening their belts. But, you know, as a firm, we really believe that, you know, no matter what the economy looks like, what the macro, you know, face of the world looks like, builders are always building. And even more so, during times when they can be home and spend time thinking about the problems that they want to solve. And so our hope is that, you know, even in moments like that, we can still really rely on founders to keep, you know, pushing great, great companies out. [00:06:17] Dan Runcie: Yeah, and I like to think of these moments as well as when you do start to filter out some of the companies or ideas that maybe were a bit more fleeting, and you can focus on the real things happening, you look at the last economic downturn that we had, and all of the companies that came from that timeframe, too. So I feel like the call to action for so many fund managers like yourself, you mentioned the LPs or even to others is, like you just said, people are still building, and if anything, it's the real companies that are going to come out of this timeframe.[00:06:46] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. And then a piece that I would add onto that is in these moments, while we know that like great companies will be built, we don't truly know what they are because people do build for the time and you don't know what kind of instances will be, like, permanent behavior changes or what things are like, just for now, it seems like it's a, you know, a really good idea, but in six months people won't behave the same way. And so the hope is that you just always try to lean in the things that you think will have kind of staying power. But you just try to do risk reduction. [00:07:15] Dan Runcie: Right, Right. And I assume, too, from a fundraising perspective with you and this fund specifically, because a lot of the LPs are high net worth individuals, some of their willingness to invest in funds hasn't necessarily changed as much as some of the more institutional investing in things that we've seen in the past year or so.[00:07:36] Megan Holston Alexander: Yeah. So actually I might argue the opposite. So when you're dealing with individuals, right, in their personal wealth and people who are really new to venture, right? That's a really, really scary moment because venture is a long-term play, right? It's not like you put your money in and then two or three weeks later, you can be like, Hey, Megan, where are my dollars? And so making a long-term commitment like that during a period of economic uncertainty is actually more difficult for an individual than it would be for an institution because one, it's not any particular individual's capital, but also institutions have much kind of more thorough game plans, right? They know what percentage they're putting into venture versus private equity versus, you know, bonds or whatever the case may be. So they're kind of more consistent and they understand that the market kind of goes up and down and that there will be moments like this, and it's actually a little bit more difficult when it comes to individuals to kind of get them over that hump.[00:08:30] Dan Runcie: Yeah, that's fair. Because I do think that even in some conversations I've had with folks, things like the price of Bitcoin or the price of Ethereum having a pretty impactful influence on what their net worth is and their own willingness to invest in particular things. [00:08:46] Megan Holston Alexander: For sure. [00:08:47] Dan Runcie: And for you with this fund, specifically, now fund three, but the fund itself has been around for a few years now. Do you feel like the vision for the fund has evolved at all in that time? I mean, I feel like the core mission is the same, but have any of the ways that you've either talked or pitched the fund evolved in that timeframe? [00:09:05] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So I think you're right. We've kept our two kind of core missions the same, but what we do understand now is there are a number of different ways to execute on it. So if you will bear with me, I'm happy to share kind of two, you know, how that looks on both missions. So on the first mission of connecting the world's greatest cultural leaders to the best new technology companies. You know, historically we set, you know, athletes and entertainers and musicians, people who, from, you know, a large scale of consumerism have contributed to cultural change. But over time we've realized black executives also have like a really, really huge impact on this space. So people who are in leadership roles at Fortune 100 companies, or even at startup companies, they can have a huge impact on culture and consumer behavior more generally. And so we wanted to be sure that we really leaned into bringing in more black executives into the fund than we ever had before. And that has proven to be really helpful for the firm because they end up being, you know, equally if not more useful to the portfolio than the musicians and the singers, and the actors, et cetera. And so we have really enjoyed kind of expanding and involving that side of the network. And then on the second side of getting more young African Americans in tech, you know, fo fund one, we committed all of our management fees and carried to, like, one set of organizations. We picked them in the beginning and wanted to support them through the life of the fund. But what we realized by fund two was like, well, that doesn't really give us an opportunity to invest in new non-profits that are kind of on the cutting edge of technology, right? As things are growing and changing, we want folks who are being innovative on the non-profit side as well. And so what we did for fund two and now for fund three is we opened up kind of the spectrum of what we would support from a non-profit perspective to kind of match where we thought the technology world was going. So for fund one, you see a supporting kind of big well-known organizations that have proven over time if they are directly putting black folks into the pipeline for technology. But now we're saying like, okay, how do we add to this? Well, Web 3.0 is a huge thing, not only as a space for investment for the firm, but also generally of wanting to be sure that black folks don't get left behind in this Web 3.0 revolution. So we support organizations like crypto tutors that is meant to do just that, and that's not something we would've had insight into in that first fund. Gaming is also a new, huge area in technology. It is now, I think, you know, people play games more than they watch TV based on current research. And so how do we ensure that black folks are being supported in the gaming industry? So now we support black and gaming. We support the Black Collegiate Gaming Association. So just ensuring that our philanthropic efforts can support and are aligned with what we're doing as a firm and where technology is going overall. [00:11:51] Dan Runcie: I actually want to talk about each of those two things separately. Let me go back to the first one. [00:11:55] Megan Holston Alexander: Let's do it. [00:11:56] Dan Runcie: I think it was really interesting what you said about athletes and that sector around sports in general, if I heard you correctly, them being but not even more influential or helpful for the fund overall, but maybe relative to some of the other folks, whether it's your LP such as your musicians or entertainers. Did I catch that right? [00:12:16] Megan Holston Alexander: If I'm hearing what you're saying, you're saying that I said that the athletes are not as useful?[00:12:20] Dan Runcie: Oh, the other way around. Like, more useful than, like, some of the others that work with the fund?[00:12:24] Megan Holston Alexander: Well, I was saying, from the executive side, did I say athletes and not executives?[00:12:28] Dan Runcie: I think it was athletes.[00:12:29] Megan Holston Alexander: Maybe I misspoke. But what I was essentially trying to say is from a cultural leadership perspective, historically, it has very much been athletes and entertainers and we wanted to involve, we wanted to evolve our kind of mission overall to include more black executives.[00:12:45] Dan Runcie: That was helpful. Yeah, 'cause I was curious to tap into more about like, why that is and how that's impacted the fund so far. [00:12:52] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. Because I feel like, everybody thinks that when you bring on like just a celebrity, everything skyrockets, right? That it's just like, ooh, if you put this name on there, things just grow. And that's not always necessarily the case. We've, you know, really supported our companies in being thoughtful and strategic around the ways in which you use a celebrity. And we've also been, you know, in deep conversations with our kind of LP network and our network at large about wanting to be more than like a disengaged kind of passive investor. And so they love partnering with the portfolio companies, et cetera. But what we hadn't considered on the executive side is, while the athletes and our kind of entertainers can partner on different things or like help them go into new markets or help them with the launch of a new product, when it came down to like core operations or how you should run on your board, or how to think about hiring X, Y, and Z, like, our black executives, like hold that information like in the palm of their hands. These are people who've been, you know, operators for 20 or 30 years, and so they brought kind of an additional level of skill and kind of insight to bolster what our other LPs on the more kind of athlete or entertainment side were doing. So now we have this really robust group of black cultural leaders who can help in a number of different areas.[00:14:07] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. Yeah, I mean, we see the influence, we see how influential they are in all of these sectors, and if you're thinking about just like how your fund is structured, I know that you do have different folks on the team focused in sports, focused in entertainment more broadly, and I feel like eventually having, you know, whether it's even more of those or just being able find the best ways to lock in on talent, because I think we're seeing this more and more. I think a lot about like, let's say like 10-plus years ago when we saw the era of a lot of artists being named as creative directors for particular companies. And some of those turned into, you know, really flourishing partnerships, and some of them necessarily didn't. But now, and I feel like your fund was timing this. You captured this moment where we're seeing more than that. [00:14:54] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep, absolutely. And it's not just because you know, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And it's not just because, and not only because, you know, athletes and kind of other entertainment folks want to be more engaged, but quite frankly startups are requiring it. They don't want you to just let your name on something and then you disappear and like, you know, take the money and run or whatever the case may be. And so what we're trying to do is really build up to kind of core groups of people who are interested in each other and want to work together. And so there should be an equal expectation when we bring our LPs in and on our startup side that the startups want to work with these LPs and they've been thoughtful about how they want to engage with them, right? So if you want a particular person, why, right? Why is this person the best fit for your company? And so we really challenge our companies on that, where it's not just like, you want to get the biggest name, but the person who will actually be most influential for the product that you're building. And on our LP side, we say like, okay, what is it about this company that makes you most interested that you want to bring to the table? So it really is about working together. We are trying very hard not to make it where it's just like, kind of one-off, really transactional doesn't make a lot of sense 'cause those tend to be the things that don't work out. We try to be thoughtful on all fronts. [00:16:11] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. 'Cause it's like, otherwise, then it would just be like an Instagram ad or something like that, being like, oh, hey, go sponsor this product. And like, that's not what this is about. [00:16:21] Megan Holston Alexander: And it doesn't make sense. Like, make it make sense. That's the most important thing for us because those are what can be fruitful. And then say it's something that, everything doesn't always work out, but if you went into it with the right intentions and everybody did their best, like, that's all you can hope for. And then those people usually want to work together again, even if it didn't work out. So we really do take this long view on relationships, not just as a firm, but as a fund and the way in which we interact with people and hope that they'll interact with each other. [00:16:47] Dan Runcie: Right. And then at the second piece of what you were talking about, you talked about investing in companies that are ultimately helping to either further access or knowledge. Web 3.0 was an example and wanting to make sure that black talent doesn't get left behind in this space or in other spaces that may emerge. Where do you feel like things are right now? Do you feel like folks are on board? Do you feel like there's still a huge opportunity specifically with when it comes to Web 3.0 and black talent? [00:17:16] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. I think until we get to a place where we feel like we have like, peer across the board equity, there's always work to be done. And being like an HBCU grad being from, you know, born and raised in Alabama, I have a very core sense of like what inequity looks like and how, what are the ways in which we can try to approach solutions to that problem. And so I think I'm lucky enough to have you know, that, sort of background where I can bring an interesting perspective into how we solve those problems. But I am finding that Web 3.0 overall has a lot of opportunity. One, because, like, nobody's an expert, right? Nobody's been doing Web 3.0 for 30 years. It is relatively new, right? There's people who've been doing it for the last 10 ish years, and there are a few people who are just really hardcore, but there is so many of our Web 3.0 companies, because there is just like a lack of, expertise in the space, they're just excited to get people who are interested and passionate about Web 3.0, right? So you kind of get to jump over this need for a long period of time having worked in X, Y, and Z or Web 3.0 in this case where you get to just work off of passion and start building the product. So that's one of the things I love about Web 3.0. The hard part is that there's a knowledge imbalance, right? It takes a lot of reading. It takes a lot of listening to podcasts and going through the a16z canon that a lot of people just don't have, right? The information is there, but everybody doesn't have time to read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages on Web 3.0. And so the kind of that asynchronous ability to get information, I think, is where we have to fill in the gap. What is the answer to that? I'm not completely sure, but organizations like crypto tutors that I mentioned earlier, are making content easy, accessible, fun, really big on entertainment. And so while I think the opportunities are there for the roles, I do think we need to fill in the knowledge gap in terms of who gets the knowledge.[00:19:09] Dan Runcie: Agreed. And for you specifically, which areas of Web 3.0 are exciting you the most as an investor? [00:19:16] Megan Holston Alexander: Whoa, well, you know, with CLF being a co-investment vehicle inside of the fund, I feel like I get lucky enough where I get to see all the cool stuff, but I don't have to make the strenuous, anxiety-ridden decisions about, you know, which ones to pick. I just get the benefit of spending time with them all after the fact. And so for me, I am most excited about and I'll just say the one piece that I've been looking into a lot lately is like, DAOs. I love this concept of like governance and people getting to vote on what they do with capital and making decisions of that, like, things to buy and things to sell. I think the way in which communities are being built around kind of DAOs and that type of governance is really interesting. [00:20:00] Dan Runcie: Yeah, for sure. I think some of these conversations, whether it's DAOs buying sports teams or Dows trying to get involved with different things, we'll see. I think, like anything, we're in the early days and some of these things will come to fruition but there's definitely something there. Just looking at how decentralized so many things are becoming then I think a lot of those things do need to. [00:20:20] Megan Holston Alexander: Agreed and I think there's pros and cons of everything, and I think that's one of the things that, you know, gets missed in the hype cycle. There are things that will be really great about web 3.0 and there will be things that don't work out in the way that we hope, but in the end, we hope we shake out with the best kind of the pack. [00:20:38] Dan Runcie: Right. And then you mentioned it earlier about just the way that CLF invests and you co-invest. So you do get to see all the things that come through and you're not necessarily picking or, you know, making them the investments yourself. But do you think that's something that may change with either the vision or the evolution of the fund itself, where you would be making those investments? [00:20:58] Megan Holston Alexander: You know, we, at the firm, we never say never. We don't know what the future holds, but I think right now, the way that we've structured it, you know, we've got two really core goals at CLF, and the first is like getting black dollars onto the cap tables in Andreessen Horowitz companies and the more that I can do that, whether it's through co-investing or otherwise, I think that the structure that we have right now is one that works and that I'm I'm really pleased with. And then in that second mission or actually still the first mission, but the second way that we execute on it, right, so CLF has a fund and dollars out of that fund go into kind of the deals across a number of the funds inside of the firm. Not all of them, but most of them. But then the second thing that I get to do and spend a lot of time on, because I don't have to do, you know, a ton of that behind the scenes like diligence work, et cetera, is get additional strategic rounds for our portfolio companies. So not only is our LP base as a whole represented on the cap table, but anytime that there is a really thoughtful or smart partnership or somebody wants to add an additional strategic capital, we now can give even more black people on the cap table. And so I really enjoy spending my time doing that and I want to keep at it, but the firms, we never say never to stuff. Who knows? If it ever makes sense, we'll see. [00:22:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah, definitely. And then I think too, you mentioned this a few times just in terms of how the firm is structured in terms of building and investing in relationships. And I think this is something that I know you've talked about in other interviews, something that rings true with a16z overall. Can you talk a little bit about the way that you have the divisions or the way that you have the different verticals for, whether it's entertainment or sports and some of the events that you attend as well, and how that helps the overall mission? [00:22:42] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So for CLF, you know, historically when probably two years ago when it was just me and Chris the two of us, we did everything right and we realized that if we really wanted CLF to scale and to grow and to really have an impact on the communities and generational wealth, we needed to scale what we were doing. We need to get more cultural leaders involved. We needed to be able to make more kind of partnership introductions, et cetera. And so the way that, you know, made sense was, okay, we've got these cultural leaders. How do we bring together the best at what they do in order to help manage these networks? So we brought in folks like Derek who have been on the management and agency side for a number of years to manage the entertainment vertical, right? So when you have one thing to focus on and it's only entertainers, you can make much more kind of clear and thoughtful decisions around who to introduce to whom or who to bring into this company, or when a portfolio company says, I need this type of person, you can make a quicker decision. We brought in Deb on the athlete side. She was a manager at Rock Nation Sports for a number of years, so she really just has the depth of knowledge. And not only that, they both have this really interesting knowledge just about who players are, but how we can structure deals with them, right? This is what they're used to, and now we're bringing in this tech side, how do we make those deal structures match, or how do we make it more, you know, favorable to everybody involved? And so they brought another level of rigor to the deals and the strategic rounds that we were putting together that we needed a lot. And then both Julie and I work on the executive side, which I said is burgeoning. And so we really try to specialize. One as a firm, right? We've got a crypto fund and a bio fund, and people who are specialized. We do the same thing inside of CLF. We try to have people focus on a swim lane. And it's proven to be successful. So far, we're really pleased with that decision. [00:24:29] Dan Runcie: Yeah, I think it's effective and I think the names that you've been able to have as LPs in each of the rounds speaks to that too. And at the end of the day, especially in these industries, of course, I know relationships drive everything, but I think it's more so in these industries because especially with some of these high net worth individuals in entertainment, there's so many people from coming out of the woodwork who are trying to swindle them out of stuff or trying to propose them the most horrible deals and investment opportunities. So I think that's where the value add is here, as opposed to, or even more so than someone else who, you know, isn't in these fields. So they're not necessarily getting as much of the crap, if you will, from the proposals. So being able to sift through the good ones.[00:25:12] Megan Holston Alexander: I think you brought up a really good point. And I think that point is trust, right? So when you have people coming out of the woodwork, like you said, with investment opportunities, I got a good investment opportunity for you. But that person has no real background to be able to speak to like kind of whatever that item is or whatever that company is. We try to really mitigate the risk for our LPs and, and kind of partners that we bring into rounds for CLF, like, we never bring deals to people that we haven't invested in ourselves, right? We feel like how can we tell you like, you should invest in this, but like we didn't do it. And so people know that anytime we bring something to them, it is fully invested through Andreessen Horowitz, like, process, deal team, GP, et cetera. And so we try to, you know, really eliminate risk for them. And obviously, we always have them, you know, do your own research. Here is the information you make the decision for yourself. But we just pride ourselves on building trust with people because if we mishandle people and we swindle people, like that gets around and then that doesn't benefit us, right? If it goes around like, oh, those. sneakers over there, a16z are doing that. But we feel like we have really put forth a concerted effort that people know that they can trust us and they share with their friends that they can trust us. And that really is I think how we try to maintain and engage with our network. And so far, you know, that network has been able to grow and we always say, you know, we're not going to sacrifice a relationship for a quick buck that's just not our style. That's not what we do. I hope that that is kind of what's making the rounds. But so far it feels like people really have built a lot of trust in us and we don't take that lightly.[00:26:53] Dan Runcie: And I do think that information and understanding of these things has just gotten better in decades overall. And couple that with the fact that this is venture capital. Of course, it's a risk. Most of the companies that we're investing in probably aren't going to take off, but the ones that do are going to hit. And you're doing it with a firm that has a track record in this. So I feel like there's so much transparency. [00:27:16] Megan Holston Alexander: Well, I don't think I'm allowed to agree with that, so I'm just going to say okay.[00:27:20] Dan Runcie: Fair enough. Fair enough. And I think the difference there though is that I think about so many of these athletes, whether it's you get pitched on like opening restaurants with their name and all these other things that you know are just dated things. Of course, those things can still work. We've seen them be effective. But we've come a long way. [00:27:39] Megan Holston Alexander: And then one of the other things is, you know, we tell people, you know, that invest in our fund to please consider us a resource when things like that come up, right? We say we're a VC firm in your back pocket, right? So if something comes your way and you want us to, like you have questions about it, you know, obviously we can't tell you what to do, but we can help you figure out what are the right questions to ask when these opportunities come in front of you. And so that education piece that we do, I think is really valued by a lot of the folks who trust us with their capital.[00:28:10] Dan Runcie: And then with your LP specifically, is there anything that you're specifically looking for from a vetting process? Like, not necessarily talking about like commitment levels or anything like that, but more so things that you're looking for 'cause earlier we're talking about, of course, we've come a long way from the celebrity investors slapping their name on things. But I'm sure there are probably still some out there that may want to do that. And you're making sure that that's not who you're attracting. [00:28:35] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. I'm trying to tell you all my secrets. You know, the most important thing for us is that we have LPs who want to engage. We want people who are willing to like, you know, hop on a call with us and share their interests or if, you know, you join the fund and you are entered in particular deals or we, you know, come across a company that would be a really great fit for you to talk to, maybe just have a 15-minute conversation with the CEO. There are people who love opportunities like that. So people who want to engage and want to learn and spend time with us and spend time with our LPs is who we try to really, really lean into because it's a symbiotic relationship, We want to support them. But at the end of the day, like our largest goal is to support our portfolio companies and whether it's the a16z team, whether it's our LPs, like it's all hands on deck. And so I love people who come in and have a genuine curiosity and they're excited about technology and innovation and they want to play a role in things that are being built. And so, we love those conversations and you can kind of really tell, like I've had people who you would never think, people who you would think would be super disengaged. Like, that person is interested in tech who are, have gone down like the Web 3.0 rabbit hole and they're like, ooh, and I'm going to do like a token that has this, and then I'm going to give it to my whole community back in Texas or whatever. Like, really is just a really, really thoughtful people. You don't have to be an expert. Like, that's not what we're looking for, but we just look, want people who want to be involved. [00:30:04] Dan Runcie: That makes sense. That makes sense. Shifting gears a bit on the talent side of things. We talked about it a little bit about how important it is to the fund to be able to just help develop this space and obviously your fund's doing its part. We talked about some of the areas that you're looking to invest in, how you're looking to just elevate this space overall, what do you think the rest of the VC community and landscape needs to be able to do to ultimately get things to where it should be. [00:30:31] Megan Holston Alexander: Sorry, when you say get things to where they should be, you mean in terms of like talent as an employee of companies? You mean talent in what way? [00:30:40] Dan Runcie: So I'm talking about talent in terms of whether it's black founders who are leading companies or black talent that are just interested in the space that are either going on to get jobs in the space or to work for other established companies, overall investing and then just being able to grow and see more black talent in tech.[00:30:59] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So I'll start by saying there's no one way to do it. I think there are a number of different approaches that people can take. But I usually divide it up at least of this industry into three things. One, funds can, or you know, firms can support black founders, right, by putting capital directly into their hands so that they can build their companies. Two, they can help more black talent get into early stage companies, right? So, employee 10, employee 15, employee 20, because we know that early employee equity can really change a life, right, when a company has a liquidity event, whether it's an IPO or a sale that now that person has capital to start a company or to angel invest in companies and kind of create some generational wealth for themselves. And then the third thing is getting more black dollars on cap tables, right? So ownership stakes, not just monetizing on a platform, right, for all of the amazing things that we're creating, but actually having its ownership in the platform to create generational wealth. And CLF focuses on those last two, but there are a lot of firms, again, focused on, you know, funding black founders. I think kind of focusing on those three core areas can really create economic, you know, extreme economic kind of opportunities for the black community. And so, you know, with CLF focusing on those last two, I think we've got a really special niche that we get to support in a number of ways, which I mentioned before.[00:32:26] Dan Runcie: Yeah. I feel like the closer that, or at least the more people, whether it's in this generation or in, you know, people that are a little bit older that are still trying to do it, being able to just get more focus on building generational. And just the knowledge and the mindset of it. I think all those things help. I think we're seeing more podcasts, more shows, more content from black folks that are specifically focused on this, which is great. I think, you know, there's never too much of it. So personally I think that I would love to be able to see more dollars and more hiring that happens in these places too 'cause I think we saw, especially in the past couple years, there was so many press releases that came from particular companies, and I think I saw recently there was a big tech founder that just announced, you know, a $400 million fund to invest.[00:33:16] Megan Holston Alexander: 400 million. Yeah, yeah. [00:33:17] Dan Runcie: But like, wanted to be able to actually see the results from those and being able to see the impact and being able to see people, you know, become their own Robert Smiths that can then, you know, pay for, you know, tuition for a future class. The more of those we see, and it's not just the one, you know, few names we already know would be great and I think those things will happen, but ultimately I think that's what so many of us want to see in this space. [00:33:39] Megan Holston Alexander: And there's so much embedded in this conversation, right? And I'll go on a little bit of an aside because I think one, we have to understand that like when we think about the future and black equity and empowerment, some people still don't care. Like, there are a lot of people who just do not care. It's not their problem. They don't want to help solve it. And then you have people who kind of commit to things but have no follow-through. And that's what we saw a lot of over the last couple of years. Like, after the murder of George Floyd, all these companies were like, yes, we're going to give this, we're going to do this. And then the follow-through two and a half years later is just not there. And then you have the people who are really, really committed but don't understand the expanse of the black community and think of it as a small sliver, like, really high, like, accelerators that they would want to support who still go to like a very specific set of schools, right, the talented tenth of the black people and are willing to support that. But then there is this holistic perspective around, like, non-monolithic blackness and how do we encourage economic empowerment and growth across the community as a whole? And that's what I want to get to. When we think about HBCUs, there's over a hundred of them, right? And how do we support more of them as opposed to like the same ones that get, you know, a ton of shine. Mind you, when it comes to HBCUs, like, they don't work outside of the community, be like, we depend on each other and we rely on each other. So, you know, I want to get to a more comprehensive perspective on, like, what supporting black economic empowerment looks like from a long-term perspective. So I think we'll get there, but there's a long way to go. [00:35:25] Dan Runcie: What you just said reminds me of, there was one of the tech companies that announced that they were going to have a black board member and that someone was going to take their seat away and they were going to make the opportunity for a black board member. And people were very curious, okay, who should it be? And to the point that you're making, who can we elevate to that point? Who could we provide an opportunity for? And I think they ended up choosing one of the most successful and high-profile black founders in this space. And while it is great to see that person in that role, that wasn't creating a necessarily a new opportunity in that same type of way, and it goes back to the talented tenth thing. [00:36:02] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. We're here. And you know, I think you bring up a good point when, and now we're about to get into black history, but that's okay 'cause this is for the people. Conceptually, when you think about the talented tenth that's, you know, W. E. B. Du Bois and, like, his concept from a sociological perspective, and you think about who he was at tension with the most, Booker T. Washington and this concept of the Atlanta Compromise. Two very powerful black men, the founder of Tuskegee University versus, like, the first black man to get a PhD at Harvard. Conceptually thinking there are multiple ways in which the black race can succeed. And I think that's still very much the case, right? So, you know, W. E. B. Du Bois is very much like, we should be going to college. We should be getting these advanced degrees. Like we can have these like high power jobs, et cetera, and be in government, but Booker T. Washington is like, our people down here, don't even have running water, right? We should be focused on trying to get like basic level of education, jobs that provide us, like, a source of income that's steady, et cetera. So my point is, you know, reasonable people can disagree to what the solution is. And, again, I think there's multiple approaches and so I think if we can, you know, not just go one route, right? It can't always be about only the talented tenth, but kind of like also bring up a pathway where in Booker T. Washington space, right? That's why we'll have all the like, black agricultural people. Tuskegee is, like, the best university for, like, mechanical engineering and industrial engineering. And that's all like thematically with Booker T. Washington. So there's room for both. We just have a habit of focusing on one. Ali went there and went into a total black history tangent. [00:37:38] Dan Runcie: We could do a whole episode on that. But I'm glad you brought that up 'cause I do think that analogy and just, it ties so much of this together and ultimately the purpose of the fund and what you're trying to do. When I think about the nuance of all these conversations and the comprehensiveness of it what people need to hear so thank you for that.[00:37:56] Megan Holston Alexander: Fun fact. I'm actually a sociologist by trade. It was my undergrad. My undergrad degree, I got a Master's in it. I went to get a PhD, dropped out 'cause I hated it, moved to California, and got into tech and my dog is actually named after W. E. B. Du Bois. So fun fact for the people out there.[00:38:14] Dan Runcie: Still fresh, I mean for some of that, you know, I'm sure the sociology degree may have been, you know, some time ago, but still fresh. You still got it. [00:38:21] Megan Holston Alexander: It's good stuff. I love social interaction and studying how people engage with each other. So it's my secret passion. I'm a sociology capitalist, I guess so. [00:38:32] Dan Runcie: Of course, no, I think that there's some term there. But shifting gears a bit though, this is also somewhat on a sociology perspective, especially among VCs, the concept of where to live and where people are investing in has just been a bigger discussion ever since the pandemic had started and you are someone that lived in the Bay, you've recently moved to Alabama. And it'll be great to hear two parts. One, not just why you made the move, but also what is your take right now on the Bay Area, on San Francisco, because it is such a polarizing discussion point, especially from whether it was even people I talked to when I was at the summit or in so many conversations, for me as someone that still lives here.[00:39:15] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. So it's polarizing for a lot of people, but my feeling is clear and I've always felt that, like, talent is truly, truly all over. So I moved to Alabama because, you know, I got two little babies and, you know, my parents are getting older, and I wanted to be able to have my kids spend time with them and to go to Mimi's house, and Mimi to be able to come to their school stuff. And so, you know, the pandemic really allowed us the opportunity to do that because as you know, Andreessen Horowitz moved to the cloud. Prior to the pandemic, we were very much a, you know, in office culture as most firms were. But you know, much to the credit of our leadership, they saw how much flexibility people had while still being productive and wanted to be sure that, you know, people were able to maintain that. So I'm really grateful for it. But, you know, my stance has been the same. I've always felt like people, smart people come from everywhere and they can be everywhere. I used to get really offended, actually. So I went to an HBCU undergrad. I went to Clark Atlanta, but ultimately got an MBA at Stanford. And somehow after I went to Stanford, everybody starts, like, picking up the phone for you, right? And then they'll, like, respond to your emails when they, you know, see a certain thing there. But people are like, oh, I see you went to Stanford. Like, you must be smart. And I'm like, I was smart before I went to Stanford. I was smart in Alabama, you know what I mean? And so I've always conceptually believe that, you know, yes, people get these extra markers, but that doesn't necessarily determine, like, I didn't go to Stanford and get smart. I didn't go to Stanford and get some magical thing that makes me, you know, smarter than everybody else. And so I've just always been a believer in, you know, talent being everywhere. As far as like the Bay, in particular, I do think, you know, something special happens when you can kind of create some serendipity and put people in the same place. It's not that like, oh, you know, everybody was just born there. They're very smart. It's like, no, like, people were actively coming there to join companies, et cetera. So you did get this great critical mass of people living in one place, especially when offices were in office culture. But now kind of that disbursement has happened and I think it just shows people that like, yeah, people who are interested in tech and building things. Also, they desire to live outside of the Bay Area for whatever reason, whether it's family or friends or I want to live near Warm Beach. Whatever the case is, I just think, and again, have always believed that you can live anywhere and be smart and productive and happy.[00:41:38] Dan Runcie: And I think a lot of this was inevitable. We knew that as technology got better and better, the power of conglomeration, especially from a physical location perspective, was only going to lessen. I don't think it necessarily goes down to zero. There, of course, is benefit and why people live in particular places, but I do think that what we saw the past 15 years up until maybe the past two years was at least like the last wave. And you saw it before, whether it was with, you know, the auto industry or the Midwest of all these other places. Like, we've seen this happen time and time again. But what's different now is that things are so fragmented and it makes me think a lot of things we see in music as well. We saw so many areas that were just such culture beds for where the new hot sound was coming from, where the hottest music was. And I think we still see a lot of that. But we're starting to see even that spread out of it too. So this is happening across the board. [00:42:31] Megan Holston Alexander: Yep. I agree. And, you know, I think as long as companies support their employees' needs in whatever it is to be productive, I think we'll get to the right answer. So for example, our firm allows you, if you want to go to the office, you can. There's, like, no office that exists, so, like, you can't get interaction if you desire it. But not requiring it allows both types of people to be happy. And quite frankly, like, most people don't even know I live in Alabama. Like, I'll be on the phone with somebody from work and I'll like, no, I'm in Alabama. And they're like, oh, how long you visiting for? And I'm like, no, I live here. And like, everybody's eyes bug out and they're like, what? You can be equally as productive and no one have no, you know, no idea where you are.[00:43:14] Dan Runcie: Yeah. And I think that, and it's interesting, I've heard, you know, from some founders that are trying to go back in the office, some founders that are, you know, doing things remotely a hundred percent. And part of it is all that works for you, but the fact is we have options now and that's basically it.[00:43:30] Megan Holston Alexander: And I appreciate, again, the flexibility of so many companies to, like, actively buck against what the normal used to be, because I think it would've been really easy or conceptually easy to say, like, we're going back into the office. Like, that's what it is, and, you know, that's the end. But for all the companies that are like, hey, the world is changing, let me adapt. I and I know so many other people are really grateful for that. And me as a new mom, the flexibility it's given me is just huge. [00:44:00] Dan Runcie: Right. And to tie it all in too, it just allows the greatness and the genius to come from so many other areas that aren't filtered by all of the other things that let people pick from the pools of talent that existed before.[00:44:13] Megan Holston Alexander: Agreed. The CLF team, at this point, I don't think anybody's in the Bay.[00:44:17] Dan Runcie: Makes sense. [00:44:18] Megan Holston Alexander: I knew we've got New York and Miami and LA. Okay, wait, no, we do have one person in the Bay. But the fact is that this team, CLF as it is now, could not have existed if we could only be in Menlo Park. [00:44:31] Dan Runcie: Right, right. No, that's a good point. That's a good point. All right. Well, Megan, this is great. Covered a bunch. We got a deeper look behind the fund. Everything that goes behind the work you're doing.[00:44:41] Megan Holston Alexander: Wait, we're not done, are we? [00:44:43] Dan Runcie: We're getting to the tail end. We're going to the tail end. Oh, you got more? [00:44:46] Megan Holston Alexander: You couldn't convince me that that wasn't only 20 minutes.[00:44:50] Dan Runcie: No, we definitely, we definitely had some good deep dives in here. This was good. But no, before we let you go though, what's one big thing that you're excited for 2023? [00:44:59] Megan Holston Alexander: One thing I'm excited for 2023 for the fund, I am really excited to continue to, like, bring people together. In the last two and a half years, we haven't been able to do that, but CLF as a fund and as a network really relies on putting interesting people in a room together so magic can happen. And you probably heard me saying it's all around like the summit a few weeks ago. Like, my favorite part of my job is when, like, I know somebody and I know somebody else and I see them and I'm like, ooh, they need to talk. And I'll bring them together and I'll say, like, I don't know what's going to happen here, but y'all need to talk and whatever happens, give me my credit. And then I walk off. And then there's like all this like zhooshing and this magic that happens. I love those moments. So hopefully I can get to create more of those in 2023 with the awesome team that we've built at CLF.[00:45:50] Dan Runcie: Well, we'll definitely be looking out for that for sure. Megan, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for coming on. [00:45:56] Megan Holston Alexander: You as well. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're doing something very amazing with Trapital, and I mean, I just feel honored that you wouldn't let me be on your platform. [00:46:04] Dan Runcie: Of course, these are the conversations you want to have. Thank you. Appreciate that. [00:46:08] Dan Runcie: If you enjoyed this podcast, go ahead and share it with a friend. Copy the link, text it to a friend, post it in your group chat, post it in your Slack groups, wherever you and your people talk, spread the word. That's how Trapital continues to grow and continues to reach the right people. And while you're at it, if you use Apple podcast, go ahead, rate the podcast. Give it a high rating and leave a review. Tell people why you liked the podcast. That helps more people discover the show. Thank you in advance. Talk to you next week.
With this multispecies study of animals as instrumentalities of the colonial state in Nigeria, Saheed Aderinto argues that animals, like humans, were colonial subjects in Africa. Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Ohio UP, 2022) in Africa broadens the historiography of animal studies by putting a diverse array of species (dogs, horses, livestock, and wildlife) into a single analytical framework for understanding colonialism in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. From his study of animals with unequal political, economic, social, and intellectual capabilities, Aderinto establishes that the core dichotomies of human colonial subjecthood—indispensable yet disposable, good and bad, violent but peaceful, saintly and lawless—were also embedded in the identities of Nigeria's animal inhabitants. If class, religion, ethnicity, location, and attitude toward imperialism determined the pattern of relations between human Nigerians and the colonial government, then species, habitat, material value, threat, and biological and psychological characteristics (among other traits) shaped imperial perspectives on animal Nigerians. Conceptually sophisticated and intellectually engaging, Aderinto's thesis challenges readers to rethink what constitutes history and to recognize that human agency and narrative are not the only makers of the past. Saheed Aderinto is a professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at Florida International University. He is the author of Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria: Firearms, Culture, and Public Order and When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958. Sara Katz is a Postdoctoral Associate in the History Department at Duke University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
With this multispecies study of animals as instrumentalities of the colonial state in Nigeria, Saheed Aderinto argues that animals, like humans, were colonial subjects in Africa. Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria (Ohio UP, 2022) in Africa broadens the historiography of animal studies by putting a diverse array of species (dogs, horses, livestock, and wildlife) into a single analytical framework for understanding colonialism in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. From his study of animals with unequal political, economic, social, and intellectual capabilities, Aderinto establishes that the core dichotomies of human colonial subjecthood—indispensable yet disposable, good and bad, violent but peaceful, saintly and lawless—were also embedded in the identities of Nigeria's animal inhabitants. If class, religion, ethnicity, location, and attitude toward imperialism determined the pattern of relations between human Nigerians and the colonial government, then species, habitat, material value, threat, and biological and psychological characteristics (among other traits) shaped imperial perspectives on animal Nigerians. Conceptually sophisticated and intellectually engaging, Aderinto's thesis challenges readers to rethink what constitutes history and to recognize that human agency and narrative are not the only makers of the past. Saheed Aderinto is a professor of history and African and African diaspora studies at Florida International University. He is the author of Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria: Firearms, Culture, and Public Order and When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958. Sara Katz is a Postdoctoral Associate in the History Department at Duke University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history
F-Stop Collaborate and Listen - A Landscape Photography Podcast
This week on the podcast I had a wonderful conversation with Valda Bailey. Valda is a UK photographer specializing in intentional camera movement (ICM) and multiple exposure work, which she often combines as part of her workflow. It was great to hear about her creative process and techniques, which we covered extensively in this episode of the F-Stop Collaborate and Listen podcast! On this week's episode, we discuss: Valda's journey as a photographer and why she has gravitated towards ICM and double/multiple exposure image-making, The role of abstraction in her photography, Lots of practical advice on the techniques of ICM and multiple exposure, including equipment choice, How to choose what to include and exclude in this type of work, Conceptually-driven work, Formalism in photographic art, And a lot more! Other topics/links discussed on the podcast this week: My article on NPN about Nature Photography as Art. Valda's Book, "We May as Well Dance." Join me over on Nature Photographer's Network. Support the podcast on Patreon. Here is who Valda recommended on the podcast this week: Doug Chinnery. Chris Friel. Graham Cooke. If you enjoyed our conversation this week, you can listen to our bonus episode over Patreon on where we discuss conceptually-based workshop learning vs. location-based workshop learning. I love hearing from the podcast listeners! Reach out to me via Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter if you'd like to be on the podcast or if you have an idea of a topic we can talk about. We also have an Instagram page, a Facebook Page, and a Facebook Group - so don't be shy! Did you also know we have listener after-parties on Twitter Spaces? This is a great opportunity to interact with other listeners, guests, and the host (when I can) regarding your thoughts on the episode. We also have a searchable transcript of every episode! Thanks for stopping in, collaborating with us, and listening. See you next week. P.S. you can also support the podcast by purchasing items through our B+H affiliate link. Visit our show notes to see Valda's work!
Episode 74 - On this episode, Michele talks about push energy, what it really means, and how we can learn to identify it and actually transcend it. "If you've been following Twin Flame concepts then you're familiar with the push/pull dynamic that Twin Flames experience. For those of you new to this concept it refers to the push energy that keeps Twin Flames apart and also the pull energy that pulls them back together. Conceptually, we can all understand that what push and pull energy means. It's pretty straightforward. But learning to recognize it personally and how it relates to our Twin Flame—can be super challenging. So often this push energy is hidden in our unconscious behaviors and conditioned beliefs around love. We may push and not even realize we are in pushing. What I've discovered—is that push energy—plain and simple—is a pursuit of love. Most often this pursuit of love is unconscious and comes from a wounded place and we may not even consciously realize we are doing this. Push energy is also fear energy. We push out of pure survival. We need love to survive and we think (consciously or not) our Twin Flame is the answer. That's why it's so hard to identify. We may think we aren't pushing them—but our relentless thoughts and wants and obsessions and needs about them creates push energy. We are unconsciously and sneakily figuring out ways to get them back in our lives. We have to remember that we are already with them—in union—at a soul level. They love us at a soul level. We resonate at the same frequency as them at a soul level. I invite you to feel into that. They love you at a soul level. No question. Join me as I dive deeper into this topic and uncover more ways this push energy shows up. Thanks for listening!" Listener Support: https://anchor.fm/michele-lynch/support Website: MicheleLynchHealing.com Articles: mlynchnyny.medium.com Instagram: @puttingdreamsonyourfeet --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/michele-lynch/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/michele-lynch/support
Scott Young is an expert on rapid, effective learning. This ep will help you learn new skills effectively and quickly amidst the chaos of real life.-----You can also read this episode here.Sign up here to get upcoming audio essays emailed to youFollow the MTTM journey on Twitter or LinkedIn!If you haven't already would you do me a favor and take ~40 seconds to rate/review the show on Apple Podcasts ? It really helps. (Scroll to bottom of page for rate/review links.)Links & resources mentionedSend episode feedback on Twitter @askotzko , or via emailScott Young: website, TwitterBook: UltralearningScott's podcastCourse: Top PerformerPrevious challengesThe MIT ChallengeThe Year Without EnglishRelated episodes#54 David Kadavy: Creative self-actualizationPeople & orgsCal NewportBenny LewisSteve PavlinaJames ClearBooksDeep WorkFluent in 3 MonthsFour Thousand Weeks: Time Management for MortalsAtomic HabitsFluent ForeverPolarity ManagementOther resources mentionedDesirable Difficulties: When Harder is Better for Learning - Scott H YoungThe Human Brain | Brain and Cognitive Sciences | MIT OpenCourseWareThinking on the margin - Definition and examples — Conceptually.)Anki
Some industries think they have it tough – and then there is retail. From constantly shifting consumer demand and intense competition to razor thin margins and a huge workforce, succeeding as a retail executive requires courage and conviction. Scott Luton recently spoke with Marie Hurst, Vice President of Operations and Logistics with Bunzl Retail Services, a division of Bunzl Distribution North America. She has deep retail experience in transportation, process improvement, supply chain, and reverse logistics. In this conversation, Marie and Scott talk about: • How the high cost of labor is changing the way they manage their operations and even lay out facilities • The tight margins in the retail supply chain that force companies to be thoughtful about their margins • Ways ambitious professionals can position themselves for consideration as supply chain executives Additional Links & Resources: Learn more about Supply Chain Now:https://supplychainnow.com/program/supply-chain-now ( https://supplychainnow.com/program/supply-chain-now) Subscribe to Supply Chain Now and all other Supply Chain Now programs:https://supplychainnow.com/subscribe ( https://supplychainnow.com/subscribe) Leveraging Logistics and Supply Chain for Ukraine: https://vectorgl.com/stand-with-ukraine/ (https://vectorgl.com/stand-with-ukraine/) WEBINAR- The 10 Best Competencies of Best in Class Warehouses: https://bit.ly/3vh3MLd (https://bit.ly/3vh3MLd) WEBINAR- Can AI be the Unexpected Ally for Demand Planners? https://bit.ly/3sJ4GOO (https://bit.ly/3sJ4GOO) WEBINAR- Preparing for the Rise of Sovereign Supply Chains: https://bit.ly/3NmCIAC (https://bit.ly/3NmCIAC) 2022 Q1 U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index:https://bit.ly/3pwmWKC ( https://bit.ly/3pwmWKC) This episode is hosted by Scott Luton. For additional information, please visit our dedicated show page at: https://supplychainnow.com/conceptually-counterintuitive-priorities-retail-905
Dan and Nick dive into an interesting Day 2 of the 2022 NFL Draft for the Giants. They talk about Joe Schoen's plan and execution to trade back, other key concepts he applied, how each pick fits the new systems on both sides of the ball and then full breakdowns on all three picks -- WR Wan'Dale Robinson, OL Joshua Ezeudu and CB Cordale Flott Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In Part I of our conversation with Jovan Buha of The Athletic, we covered the LeBron James and Anthony Davis core, how viable it is, and what the Lakers might do to improve the supporting cast around them this summer. Central to that is the future of Russell Westbrook. Part II starts there. First and foremost, Jovan doesn't think the Lakers can bring Westbrook back, at least in a basketball playing capacity. If he's on the roster, the Lakers pay him to stay away. So that leaves a trade.What is realistic? Could the Lakers get Indiana to trade Malcolm Brogdon and Buddy Hield to LA? Would that cost them both of their available first round picks? Would that be worth it?What about the head coach? Whatever identity the team forges moving forward will come, at least in part, from the influence of the guy on the sidelines. Could the Lakers land a big fish like Nick Nurse? What about Quin Snyder or Doc Rivers if either becomes available? Mark Jackson? Would the Lakers take a shot on a coach with no experience as a head man?What about Mike Brown? He's an interesting story from the "retread" category. Would he be more appealing than a name brand like Rivers or Jackson?HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky (Guest: Jovan Buha of The Athletic)SEGMENT 1: What to do with Russ. Is a really good trade out there? How about kinda good?SEGMENT 2: Who does Jovan believe the Lakers will target for their next head coach?SEGMENT 3: Conceptually, what would you like to see for the Lakers next year. Pitches for Sam Cassell and Mike Brown.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!PrizePicksCheck out PrizePicks.com and use promo code: “NBA” or go to your app store and download the app today. PrizePicks is daily fantasy made easy!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order.BetOnlineBetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts!Rock AutoAmazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you.Shady RaysEXCLUSIVELY FOR OUR LISTENERS, HEAD TO SHADYRAYS.COM AND USE CODE LOCKEDON TO GET FIFTY PERCENT OFF TWO OR MORE PAIRS OF POLARIZED SUNGLASSES.Athletic GreensTo make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/NBANETWORK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In Part I of our conversation with Jovan Buha of The Athletic, we covered the LeBron James and Anthony Davis core, how viable it is, and what the Lakers might do to improve the supporting cast around them this summer. Central to that is the future of Russell Westbrook. Part II starts there. First and foremost, Jovan doesn't think the Lakers can bring Westbrook back, at least in a basketball playing capacity. If he's on the roster, the Lakers pay him to stay away. So that leaves a trade. What is realistic? Could the Lakers get Indiana to trade Malcolm Brogdon and Buddy Hield to LA? Would that cost them both of their available first round picks? Would that be worth it? What about the head coach? Whatever identity the team forges moving forward will come, at least in part, from the influence of the guy on the sidelines. Could the Lakers land a big fish like Nick Nurse? What about Quin Snyder or Doc Rivers if either becomes available? Mark Jackson? Would the Lakers take a shot on a coach with no experience as a head man? What about Mike Brown? He's an interesting story from the "retread" category. Would he be more appealing than a name brand like Rivers or Jackson? HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky (Guest: Jovan Buha of The Athletic) SEGMENT 1: What to do with Russ. Is a really good trade out there? How about kinda good? SEGMENT 2: Who does Jovan believe the Lakers will target for their next head coach? SEGMENT 3: Conceptually, what would you like to see for the Lakers next year. Pitches for Sam Cassell and Mike Brown. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! PrizePicks Check out PrizePicks.com and use promo code: “NBA” or go to your app store and download the app today. PrizePicks is daily fantasy made easy! Built Bar Built Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKED15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order. BetOnline BetOnline.net has you covered this season with more props, odds and lines than ever before. BetOnline – Where The Game Starts! Rock Auto Amazing selection. Reliably low prices. All the parts your car will ever need. Visit RockAuto.com and tell them Locked On sent you. Shady Rays EXCLUSIVELY FOR OUR LISTENERS, HEAD TO SHADYRAYS.COM AND USE CODE LOCKEDON TO GET FIFTY PERCENT OFF TWO OR MORE PAIRS OF POLARIZED SUNGLASSES. Athletic Greens To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/NBANETWORK Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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