Podcasts about Damocles

“This is Fate, the force of destiny, which ever prevents our pursuit of happiness from reaching its goal, which jealously stands watch lest our peace and well-being be full and cloudless, which hangs like the sword of Damocles over our heads and constantly, ceaselessly poisons our souls.” With this description, Tchaikovsky gave his patron Nadezhda von Meck a rare insight into the inspiration behind what he called the “nucleus” of his 4th symphony. Despite the fact that Tchaikovsky's music is famously emotional, he usually did not like describing his programs using words. This is one of the contradiction of Tchaikovsky's music for the modern listener: we have these letters where Tchaikovsky described the programs or stories behind many of his most famous pieces, and yet Tchaikovsky himself would not have necessarily wanted us to know them. Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony is at the center of all of these contradictions. It is a symphony in the grand Romantic tradition of the symphony, with all of the technical trappings that a symphony requires. It is also a piece that reflects the growing trend at that time towards symphonic poems, especially in the massive first movement. It is also a piece that seems to be inspired directly by two events in Tchaikovsky's life, his disastrous marriage, and his unique correspondence with Nadezhda Von Meck, his patron who he corresponded with for 13 years without ever meeting her. This relationship was at its beginning when Tchaikovsky wrote this symphony, and so strong were his feelings of companionship with her that he often wrote that this 4th symphony was not “my symphony” but “our symphony.” So today we're going to go through this symphony on two levels, the technical, explaining all of what makes this symphony so tragic, powerful, exciting, and beloved, and also the historical, going into Tchaikovsky's marriage to Antonina Miliukova, and his relationship with Nadezhda von Meck. We'll also talk about the reception to this symphony, which, well, let's just say it was anything but positive. Join us!

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 - A Ruína do Leste parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida de RPG usando a mesa virtual Foundry Agora você pode ter em casa a caneca do Klank, o velho guerreiro anão em sua casa. Confira a coleção completa dos personagens da Mina Perdida de Phandelver e corra para garantir a sua com valor promocional por tempo limitado: https://www.mundofan.com.br/caneca-klank.     A espera acabou. A investida de Gusmão fez com que o Grande Mal Ancestral perdesse a contenção de seu corpo. Os heróis, após a transfiguração de Arum, seguem de volta para as terras humanas, trazendo esperanças e dores, arrependimentos e poder. A destruição de Upanishads parece ser, apenas, um prenúncio de um grande conflito que se forma. Conseguirão os heróis lidar com as consequências de seus atos? Nesses epílogos, nos preparamos para o final que se seguirá. Calendário de Damocles: Época do ano: Inverno Dia: 22 Mês: 07 Mês de Concur Ano: 1917 AB (anos de Bragança) ou 11004 CI (contagem Imperial) Calendário da aventura: Algumas semanas após os últimos acontecimentos.  Contagem dos anos: Os reinos de Damocles contam os anos de maneira diferente: Império conta os anos desde a chegada dos humanos a Damocles. A história se passa desde o ano de 10999, pela contagem Imperial Estando, agora, cinco anos depois em 11004. Bragança conta os anos desde sua independência de Império, estando hoje no ano de 1917. Upanishads conseguiu a sua independência cinco anos depois e, pelo seu calendário inicial, o ano seria o de 1912. Mas a cidade agora usa alternativamente o calendário Bragantino, o que muito irrita o xá. Referência Bibliográfica: Damocles: O início ← clique para comprar   Antes de assinar como um JOGADOR  envie um e-mail para contato@rpgnext.com.br e consulte sobre as vagas. Elas têm número limitado.  ATENÇÃO: Esse podcast é recomendado para maiores de 16 anos. Com a participação de: Vinicius Watzl; Heitor Fraga Dressler Hérica Freitas Hita Luis Beber Edição de: Luís Beber. Uma produção RPG Next. The following music was used for this media project: Music: Simplex by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4367-simplex License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Indicações Fabulosas APP das Cartas Críticas para D&D 5e APOIE NOSSA CAUSA! Nossa Campanha do PADRIM está no AR! Acesse e veja nossas Metas e Recompensas para os Padrinhos e Madrinhas. padrim.com.br/rpgnext   Se você preferir nos apoiar pelo PICPAY, acesse e veja nossas recompensas: picpay.me/rpgnext   https://rpgnext.com.br/doadores/   COMPARTILHE! Se você gostou desse Podcast de RPG, então não se esqueça de compartilhar! Nosso site é https://rpgnext.com.br, Nossa Campanha do PADRIM: https://www.padrim.com.br/rpgnext Nossa Campanha no PICPAY: https://picpay.me/rpgnext Facebook RpgNextPage, Grupo do Facebook RPGNext Group, Instagram RPG Next Oficial, Twitter @RPG_Next,  Canal do YouTube,  Vote no iTunes do Tarrasque na Bota e no iTunes do RPG Next Podcast com 5 estrelas para também ajudar na divulgação! DEIXE SEU FEEDBACK! Se quiser deixar seu feedback, nos envie um e-mail em contato@rpgnext.com.br ou faça um comentário nesse post logo abaixo. Seu comentário é muito importante para a melhoria dos próximos episódios. Beleza? Muito obrigado pelo suporte, pessoal! Links para MÚSICAS e SFX sob a licença Creative Commons Freesounds.org – https://www.freesound.org/ Tabletop Audio – http://tabletopaudio.com/ Kevin MacLeod em Incompetech – http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free Free PD - https://freepd.com/ Alexander Nakarada - https://alexandernakarada.bandcamp.com/

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 – A Ruína do Leste parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma … O post TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – A Ruina do Leste – Parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e apareceu primeiro em RPG Next.

A new research perspective was published in Oncotarget's Volume 14 on April 24, 2023, entitled, “Crossroads: the role of biomarkers in the management of lumps in the breast.” Here, Dr. Georg F. Weber from the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center discusses a long-standing issue in women's health: lumps in the breast. Women over the age of 40 years often have lumps in their breasts that are not cancerous at the time of biopsy (comprising atypias, hyperplasias, papillomas, radial scars, lobular carcinoma in situ, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)). These premalignant lesions in the breast pose a difficult decision-making problem, whether to treat proactively and accept the side effects or to engage in watchful waiting and possibly encounter a later diagnosis of invasive cancer. These patients need to make the difficult decision whether to treat the lesions proactively and accept the substantial compromise in their quality of life (from surgery, radiation, or hormone therapy: Surgery often ensues for definitive diagnosis. Radiation may follow the surgical resection of DCIS by lumpectomy. Hormone therapy can come into play as a strategy for risk reduction if the estimated 5-year risk exceeds 1.6% in the Gail model [2]) or to engage in watchful waiting and risk a later diagnosis of invasive cancer (the proverbial sword of Damocles). Currently, two forms of assessment are available to facilitate making that choice. Decades of cancer diagnosis and treatment have achieved substantial improvements. Yet, with every milestone of progress, new needs have surfaced. Breast care is privileged to have the availability of mammography and biopsy to assess the propensities of lumps. “A meaningful next step needs to entail biomarker development, pointing the way toward either preemptive treatment or watchful waiting at the crossroad.” DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.28402 Correspondence to - Georg F. Weber - georg.weber@uc.edu Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article - https://oncotarget.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Foncotarget.28402 Subscribe for free publication alerts from Oncotarget - https://www.oncotarget.com/subscribe/ Keywords - breast cancer premalignant lesion, biomarker, biopsy, mammography About Oncotarget Oncotarget is a primarily oncology-focused, peer-reviewed, open access journal. Papers are published continuously within yearly volumes in their final and complete form, and then quickly released to Pubmed. On September 15, 2022, Oncotarget was accepted again for indexing by MEDLINE. Oncotarget is now indexed by Medline/PubMed and PMC/PubMed. To learn more about Oncotarget, please visit https://www.oncotarget.com and connect with us: SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/oncotarget Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Oncotarget/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/oncotarget Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oncotargetjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@OncotargetJournal LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oncotarget Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/oncotarget/ Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/Oncotarget/ Media Contact MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM 18009220957

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 - A Tristeza do Sul parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida de RPG usando a mesa virtual Foundry Agora você pode ter em casa a caneca do Klank, o velho guerreiro anão em sua casa. Confira a coleção completa dos personagens da Mina Perdida de Phandelver e corra para garantir a sua com valor promocional por tempo limitado: https://www.mundofan.com.br/caneca-klank.     A espera acabou. A investida de Gusmão fez com que o Grande Mal Ancestral perdesse a contenção de seu corpo. Os heróis, após a transfiguração de Arum, seguem de volta para as terras humanas, trazendo esperanças e dores, arrependimentos e poder. A destruição de Upanishads parece ser, apenas, um prenúncio de um grande conflito que se forma. Conseguirão os heróis lidar com as consequências de seus atos? Nesses epílogos, nos preparamos para o final que se seguirá. Calendário de Damocles: Época do ano: Inverno Dia: 22 Mês: 07 Mês de Concur Ano: 1917 AB (anos de Bragança) ou 11004 CI (contagem Imperial) Calendário da aventura: Algumas semanas após os últimos acontecimentos.  Contagem dos anos: Os reinos de Damocles contam os anos de maneira diferente: Império conta os anos desde a chegada dos humanos a Damocles. A história se passa desde o ano de 10999, pela contagem Imperial Estando, agora, cinco anos depois em 11004. Bragança conta os anos desde sua independência de Império, estando hoje no ano de 1917. Upanishads conseguiu a sua independência cinco anos depois e, pelo seu calendário inicial, o ano seria o de 1912. Mas a cidade agora usa alternativamente o calendário Bragantino, o que muito irrita o xá. Referência Bibliográfica: Damocles: O início ← clique para comprar   Antes de assinar como um JOGADOR  envie um e-mail para contato@rpgnext.com.br e consulte sobre as vagas. Elas têm número limitado.  ATENÇÃO: Esse podcast é recomendado para maiores de 16 anos. Com a participação de: Vinicius Watzl; Lucy Ferratto; Jeferson Stankovsky. Mica Edição de: Luís Beber. Uma produção RPG Next.   Indicações Fabulosas APP das Cartas Críticas para D&D 5e APOIE NOSSA CAUSA! Nossa Campanha do PADRIM está no AR! Acesse e veja nossas Metas e Recompensas para os Padrinhos e Madrinhas. padrim.com.br/rpgnext   Se você preferir nos apoiar pelo PICPAY, acesse e veja nossas recompensas: picpay.me/rpgnext   https://rpgnext.com.br/doadores/   COMPARTILHE! Se você gostou desse Podcast de RPG, então não se esqueça de compartilhar! Nosso site é https://rpgnext.com.br, Nossa Campanha do PADRIM: https://www.padrim.com.br/rpgnext Nossa Campanha no PICPAY: https://picpay.me/rpgnext Facebook RpgNextPage, Grupo do Facebook RPGNext Group, Instagram RPG Next Oficial, Twitter @RPG_Next,  Canal do YouTube,  Vote no iTunes do Tarrasque na Bota e no iTunes do RPG Next Podcast com 5 estrelas para também ajudar na divulgação! DEIXE SEU FEEDBACK! Se quiser deixar seu feedback, nos envie um e-mail em contato@rpgnext.com.br ou faça um comentário nesse post logo abaixo. Seu comentário é muito importante para a melhoria dos próximos episódios. Beleza? Muito obrigado pelo suporte, pessoal! Links para MÚSICAS e SFX sob a licença Creative Commons Freesounds.org – https://www.freesound.org/ Tabletop Audio – http://tabletopaudio.com/ Kevin MacLeod em Incompetech – http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free Free PD - https://freepd.com/ Alexander Nakarada - https://alexandernakarada.bandcamp.com/ Free Stock Music - https://www.free-stock-music.com  Chibola Productions - https://assetstore.unity.com/publishers/6561 Impatient by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/3006-impatient License: http://creativecommons.

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 – A Tristeza do Sul parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma … O post TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – A Tristeza do Sul – Parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e apareceu primeiro em RPG Next.

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 - O Frio do Norte parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida de RPG usando a mesa virtual Foundry Você que curtiu as aventuras do Klank, Vern, Rha'El, Erevan e Sandoval, sabia que as origens deles estão no livro Crônicas esquecidas? Eles estão à venda no site da editora CHA. Garanta já o seu com o cupom de desconto: rpgparca Agora você pode ter em casa a caneca do Klank, o velho guerreiro anão em sua casa. Confira a coleção completa dos personagens da Mina Perdida de Phandelver e corra para garantir a sua com valor promocional por tempo limitado: https://www.mundofan.com.br/caneca-klank.     A espera acabou. A investida de Gusmão fez com que o Grande Mal Ancestral perdesse a contenção de seu corpo. Os heróis, após a transfiguração de Arum, seguem de volta para as terras humanas, trazendo esperanças e dores, arrependimentos e poder. A destruição de Upanishads parece ser, apenas, um prenúncio de um grande conflito que se forma. Conseguirão os heróis lidar com as consequências de seus atos? Nesses epílogos, nos preparamos para o final que se seguirá. Calendário de Damocles: Época do ano: Inverno Dia: 22 Mês: 07 Mês de Concur Ano: 1917 AB (anos de Bragança) ou 11004 CI (contagem Imperial) Calendário da aventura: Algumas semanas após os últimos acontecimentos.  Contagem dos anos: Os reinos de Damocles contam os anos de maneira diferente: Império conta os anos desde a chegada dos humanos a Damocles. A história se passa desde o ano de 10999, pela contagem Imperial Estando, agora, cinco anos depois em 11004. Bragança conta os anos desde sua independência de Império, estando hoje no ano de 1917. Upanishads conseguiu a sua independência cinco anos depois e, pelo seu calendário inicial, o ano seria o de 1912. Mas a cidade agora usa alternativamente o calendário Bragantino, o que muito irrita o xá. Referência Bibliográfica: Damocles: O início ← clique para comprar   Antes de assinar como um JOGADOR  envie um e-mail para contato@rpgnext.com.br e consulte sobre as vagas. Elas têm número limitado.  ATENÇÃO: Esse podcast é recomendado para maiores de 16 anos. Com a participação de: Vinicius Watzl; Lucy Ferratto; Jeferson Stankovsky. Mica Edição de: Luís Beber. Uma produção RPG Next.   Indicações Fabulosas APP das Cartas Críticas para D&D 5e APOIE NOSSA CAUSA! Nossa Campanha do PADRIM está no AR! Acesse e veja nossas Metas e Recompensas para os Padrinhos e Madrinhas. padrim.com.br/rpgnext   Se você preferir nos apoiar pelo PICPAY, acesse e veja nossas recompensas: picpay.me/rpgnext   https://rpgnext.com.br/doadores/   COMPARTILHE! Se você gostou desse Podcast de RPG, então não se esqueça de compartilhar! Nosso site é https://rpgnext.com.br, Nossa Campanha do PADRIM: https://www.padrim.com.br/rpgnext Nossa Campanha no PICPAY: https://picpay.me/rpgnext Facebook RpgNextPage, Grupo do Facebook RPGNext Group, Instagram RPG Next Oficial, Twitter @RPG_Next,  Canal do YouTube,  Vote no iTunes do Tarrasque na Bota e no iTunes do RPG Next Podcast com 5 estrelas para também ajudar na divulgação! DEIXE SEU FEEDBACK! Se quiser deixar seu feedback, nos envie um e-mail em contato@rpgnext.com.br ou faça um comentário nesse post logo abaixo. Seu comentário é muito importante para a melhoria dos próximos episódios. Beleza? Muito obrigado pelo suporte, pessoal! Links para MÚSICAS e SFX sob a licença Creative Commons Freesounds.org – https://www.freesound.org/ Tabletop Audio – http://tabletopaudio.com/ Kevin MacLeod em Incompetech – http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free Free PD - https://freepd.com/ Alexander Nakarada - https://alexandernakarada.bandcamp.com/

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – O Frio do Norte parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma … O post TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – O Frio do Norte – Parte 2 | RPG GURPS 4e apareceu primeiro em RPG Next.

This episode is sponsored by EY and Brave. On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren dive right into Gary Gensler's response to a question of law by Rep. Patrick McHenry during the House oversight hearing of Gensler's Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week. Sheila and Michael discuss partisanship, climate disclosures, and the role of the SEC.A reshaping is taking place of what powers administrative agencies are allowed and the defined responsibilities of Congress and the courts.In this episode Michael and Sheila discuss:Gensler's response to a question of law by Rep. Patrick McHenryPartisanship, climate disclosures and the role of the SECThe role of government How crypto is getting politicizedThe role of regulators in the futureRegulation by enforcement after the fact The second time in the crypto industry that unscrupulous actors are engaging in activities that hurt peoplePro-regulatory stance on regulationThe progressive pro-regulator stance on this issueThe shadow of the threatResponsible actors: good and badNo accommodation for innovationThe sword of Damocles hanging over U.S. partnersThe CFTC action against BinanceRegulation and innovationRecognizing the pain that people felt in CaliforniaThe need for regulation and innovationLet open-source, permissionless innovation happen in a constructive way.Crypto is a proxy for other issues.Inter-agency territorialityInter-agency territorial conflict between SEC and CFTCImportance of context in these conversationsEarly warning sign with ICOs in 2017Regulation needs to differentiate between good and bad actorsRegulation of digital assets and licensingBermuda's strict licensing requirementsThe massive erosion of trust after FTXJoint responsibility of regulators and the industry Crypto is not as partisan as it seems. The problem with simplistic black-and-white solutions.Nuance always gets lost, and that's part of the problem. See Also:YouTube - Hearing Entitled: Oversight of the Securities and Exchange CommissionFrom our sponsors: EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.comBrave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.-Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.Join the most important conversation in crypto and Web3 at Consensus 2023, happening April 26-28 in Austin, Texas. Come and immerse yourself in all that Web3, crypto, blockchain and the metaverse have to offer. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED to get 15% off your pass. Visit coindesk.com/consensus.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We often take data storage for granted, but the rise of centralised storing facilities (i.e. AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.) hangs over like Damocles' sword. When it comes to blockchains, full nodes store that network's complete data history. Even if storage costs are set to decrease as technology evolves, so do blockchains accumulate more data over time. An interesting solution would be to create a decentralised backup for blockchain data and Arweave is a prime candidate for it. There is but a missing link represented by uploading and validating different blockchains' data. This is where KYVE steps in, offering a decentralised validating solution to verify uploaded blockchain data and even retrieve it from Arweave, on demand. This also extends to off-chain data, opening new possibilities for data availability and scalability.We were joined by John Letey, founder and CTO of KYVE Network, to discuss the challenges and use cases of decentralised data storage and how blockchain interoperability could benefit from it.Topics covered in this episode:John's backgroundWhy KYVE migrated to a Cosmos app-chainHigh-level explanation of KYVEKYVE's data pools and data streamsHow KYVE connects to ArweaveValidating uploaded blockchain dataHow Arweave worksKYVE v.2How slashing is handledKYVE use casesFuture roadmapEpisode links: John Letey on TwitterKYVE Network on TwitterKYVE NetworkArweaveThis episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Felix Lutsch. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/492

This episode is sponsored by EY and Brave. On this episode of “Money Reimagined,” Michael Casey and Sheila Warren dive right into Gary Gensler's response to a question of law by Rep. Patrick McHenry during the House oversight hearing of Gensler's Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week. Sheila and Michael discuss partisanship, climate disclosures, and the role of the SEC.A reshaping is taking place of what powers administrative agencies are allowed and the defined responsibilities of Congress and the courts.In this episode Michael and Sheila discuss:Gensler's response to a question of law by Rep. Patrick McHenryPartisanship, climate disclosures and the role of the SECThe role of government How crypto is getting politicizedThe role of regulators in the futureRegulation by enforcement after the fact The second time in the crypto industry that unscrupulous actors are engaging in activities that hurt peoplePro-regulatory stance on regulationThe progressive pro-regulator stance on this issueThe shadow of the threatResponsible actors: good and badNo accommodation for innovationThe sword of Damocles hanging over U.S. partnersThe CFTC action against BinanceRegulation and innovationRecognizing the pain that people felt in CaliforniaThe need for regulation and innovationLet open-source, permissionless innovation happen in a constructive way.Crypto is a proxy for other issues.Inter-agency territorialityInter-agency territorial conflict between SEC and CFTCImportance of context in these conversationsEarly warning sign with ICOs in 2017Regulation needs to differentiate between good and bad actorsRegulation of digital assets and licensingBermuda's strict licensing requirementsThe massive erosion of trust after FTXJoint responsibility of regulators and the industry Crypto is not as partisan as it seems. The problem with simplistic black-and-white solutions.Nuance always gets lost, and that's part of the problem. See Also:YouTube - Hearing Entitled: Oversight of the Securities and Exchange CommissionFrom our sponsors: EY blockchain solutions can transform the business lifecycle for digital ecosystems, by promoting trust, transparency, privacy and efficiency. EY: Helping you build a better working world. Find out more at blockchain.ey.comBrave is the privacy browser used by almost 60 million people worldwide. The built-in Brave Wallet is your secure passport to Web3. It supports over 100 chains, fiat purchases, swaps, NFTs, and even connects with other wallets and DApps. All right in your browser. No risky extensions, no spoofing. Learn more at brave.com/wallet.-Money Reimagined has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “AITA” by Neon Beach.Join the most important conversation in crypto and Web3 at Consensus 2023, happening April 26-28 in Austin, Texas. Come and immerse yourself in all that Web3, crypto, blockchain and the metaverse have to offer. Use code MONEYREIMAGINED to get 15% off your pass. Visit coindesk.com/consensus.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 - A Ruína do Leste parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida de RPG usando a mesa virtual Foundry Você que curtiu as aventuras do Klank, Vern, Rha'El, Erevan e Sandoval, sabia que as origens deles estão no livro Crônicas esquecidas? Eles estão à venda no site da editora CHA. Garanta já o seu com o cupom de desconto: rpgparca Agora você pode ter em casa a caneca do Klank, o velho guerreiro anão em sua casa. Confira a coleção completa dos personagens da Mina Perdida de Phandelver e corra para garantir a sua com valor promocional por tempo limitado: https://www.mundofan.com.br/caneca-klank.     A espera acabou. A investida de Gusmão fez com que o Grande Mal Ancestral perdesse a contenção de seu corpo. Os heróis, após a transfiguração de Arum, seguem de volta para as terras humanas, trazendo esperanças e dores, arrependimentos e poder. A destruição de Upanishads parece ser, apenas, um prenúncio de um grande conflito que se forma. Conseguirão os heróis lidar com as consequências de seus atos? Nesses epílogos, nos preparamos para o final que se seguirá. Calendário de Damocles: Época do ano: Inverno Dia: 22 Mês: 07 Mês de Concur Ano: 1917 AB (anos de Bragança) ou 11004 CI (contagem Imperial) Calendário da aventura: Algumas semanas após os últimos acontecimentos.  Contagem dos anos: Os reinos de Damocles contam os anos de maneira diferente: Império conta os anos desde a chegada dos humanos a Damocles. A história se passa desde o ano de 10999, pela contagem Imperial Estando, agora, cinco anos depois em 11004. Bragança conta os anos desde sua independência de Império, estando hoje no ano de 1917. Upanishads conseguiu a sua independência cinco anos depois e, pelo seu calendário inicial, o ano seria o de 1912. Mas a cidade agora usa alternativamente o calendário Bragantino, o que muito irrita o xá. Referência Bibliográfica: Damocles: O início ← clique para comprar   Antes de assinar como um JOGADOR  envie um e-mail para contato@rpgnext.com.br e consulte sobre as vagas. Elas têm número limitado.  ATENÇÃO: Esse podcast é recomendado para maiores de 16 anos. Com a participação de: Vinicius Watzl; Heitor Fraga Dressler Hérica Freitas Hita Luis Beber Edição de: Luís Beber. Uma produção RPG Next. The following music was used for this media project: Music: Simplex by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/4367-simplex License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license   Indicações Fabulosas APP das Cartas Críticas para D&D 5e APOIE NOSSA CAUSA! Nossa Campanha do PADRIM está no AR! Acesse e veja nossas Metas e Recompensas para os Padrinhos e Madrinhas. padrim.com.br/rpgnext   Se você preferir nos apoiar pelo PICPAY, acesse e veja nossas recompensas: picpay.me/rpgnext   https://rpgnext.com.br/doadores/   COMPARTILHE! Se você gostou desse Podcast de RPG, então não se esqueça de compartilhar! Nosso site é https://rpgnext.com.br, Nossa Campanha do PADRIM: https://www.padrim.com.br/rpgnext Nossa Campanha no PICPAY: https://picpay.me/rpgnext Facebook RpgNextPage, Grupo do Facebook RPGNext Group, Instagram RPG Next Oficial, Twitter @RPG_Next,  Canal do YouTube,  Vote no iTunes do Tarrasque na Bota e no iTunes do RPG Next Podcast com 5 estrelas para também ajudar na divulgação! DEIXE SEU FEEDBACK! Se quiser deixar seu feedback, nos envie um e-mail em contato@rpgnext.com.br ou faça um comentário nesse post logo abaixo. Seu comentário é muito importante para a melhoria dos próximos episódios. Beleza? Muito obrigado pelo suporte, pessoal! Links para MÚSICAS e SFX sob a licença Creative Commons Freesounds.org – https://www.freesound.org/

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 – A Ruína do Leste parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma … O post TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – A Ruína do Leste – Parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e apareceu primeiro em RPG Next.

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 - A Tristeza do Sul parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida de RPG usando a mesa virtual Foundry Você que curtiu as aventuras do Klank, Vern, Rha'El, Erevan e Sandoval, sabia que as origens deles estão no livro Crônicas esquecidas? Eles estão à venda no site da editora CHA. Garanta já o seu com o cupom de desconto: rpgparca Agora você pode ter em casa a caneca do Klank, o velho guerreiro anão em sua casa. Confira a coleção completa dos personagens da Mina Perdida de Phandelver e corra para garantir a sua com valor promocional por tempo limitado: https://www.mundofan.com.br/caneca-klank.     A espera acabou. A investida de Gusmão fez com que o Grande Mal Ancestral perdesse a contenção de seu corpo. Os heróis, após a transfiguração de Arum, seguem de volta para as terras humanas, trazendo esperanças e dores, arrependimentos e poder. A destruição de Upanishads parece ser, apenas, um prenúncio de um grande conflito que se forma. Conseguirão os heróis lidar com as consequências de seus atos? Nesses epílogos, nos preparamos para o final que se seguirá. Calendário de Damocles: Época do ano: Inverno Dia: 22 Mês: 07 Mês de Concur Ano: 1917 AB (anos de Bragança) ou 11004 CI (contagem Imperial) Calendário da aventura: Algumas semanas após os últimos acontecimentos.  Contagem dos anos: Os reinos de Damocles contam os anos de maneira diferente: Império conta os anos desde a chegada dos humanos a Damocles. A história se passa desde o ano de 10999, pela contagem Imperial Estando, agora, cinco anos depois em 11004. Bragança conta os anos desde sua independência de Império, estando hoje no ano de 1917. Upanishads conseguiu a sua independência cinco anos depois e, pelo seu calendário inicial, o ano seria o de 1912. Mas a cidade agora usa alternativamente o calendário Bragantino, o que muito irrita o xá. Referência Bibliográfica: Damocles: O início ← clique para comprar   Antes de assinar como um JOGADOR  envie um e-mail para contato@rpgnext.com.br e consulte sobre as vagas. Elas têm número limitado.  ATENÇÃO: Esse podcast é recomendado para maiores de 16 anos. Com a participação de: Vinicius Watzl; Lucy Ferratto; Jeferson Stankovsky. Mica Edição de: Luís Beber. Uma produção RPG Next.   Indicações Fabulosas APP das Cartas Críticas para D&D 5e APOIE NOSSA CAUSA! Nossa Campanha do PADRIM está no AR! Acesse e veja nossas Metas e Recompensas para os Padrinhos e Madrinhas. padrim.com.br/rpgnext   Se você preferir nos apoiar pelo PICPAY, acesse e veja nossas recompensas: picpay.me/rpgnext   https://rpgnext.com.br/doadores/   COMPARTILHE! Se você gostou desse Podcast de RPG, então não se esqueça de compartilhar! Nosso site é https://rpgnext.com.br, Nossa Campanha do PADRIM: https://www.padrim.com.br/rpgnext Nossa Campanha no PICPAY: https://picpay.me/rpgnext Facebook RpgNextPage, Grupo do Facebook RPGNext Group, Instagram RPG Next Oficial, Twitter @RPG_Next,  Canal do YouTube,  Vote no iTunes do Tarrasque na Bota e no iTunes do RPG Next Podcast com 5 estrelas para também ajudar na divulgação! DEIXE SEU FEEDBACK! Se quiser deixar seu feedback, nos envie um e-mail em contato@rpgnext.com.br ou faça um comentário nesse post logo abaixo. Seu comentário é muito importante para a melhoria dos próximos episódios. Beleza? Muito obrigado pelo suporte, pessoal! Links para MÚSICAS e SFX sob a licença Creative Commons Freesounds.org – https://www.freesound.org/ Tabletop Audio – http://tabletopaudio.com/ Kevin MacLeod em Incompetech – http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free Free PD - https://freepd.com/ Alexander Nakarada - https://alexandernakarada.bandcamp.com/

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequências Epílogos 2023 – A Tristeza do Sul parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida … O post TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – A Tristeza do Sul – Parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e apareceu primeiro em RPG Next.

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 - O Frio do Norte parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma partida de RPG usando a mesa virtual Foundry Você que curtiu as aventuras do Klank, Vern, Rha'El, Erevan e Sandoval, sabia que as origens deles estão no livro Crônicas esquecidas? Eles estão à venda no site da editora CHA. Garanta já o seu com o cupom de desconto: rpgparca Agora você pode ter em casa a caneca do Klank, o velho guerreiro anão em sua casa. Confira a coleção completa dos personagens da Mina Perdida de Phandelver e corra para garantir a sua com valor promocional por tempo limitado: https://www.mundofan.com.br/caneca-klank.     A espera acabou. A investida de Gusmão fez com que o Grande Mal Ancestral perdesse a contenção de seu corpo. Os heróis, após a transfiguração de Arum, seguem de volta para as terras humanas, trazendo esperanças e dores, arrependimentos e poder. A destruição de Upanishads parece ser, apenas, um prenúncio de um grande conflito que se forma. Conseguirão os heróis lidar com as consequências de seus atos? Nesses epílogos, nos preparamos para o final que se seguirá. Calendário de Damocles: Época do ano: Inverno Dia: 22 Mês: 07 Mês de Concur Ano: 1917 AB (anos de Bragança) ou 11004 CI (contagem Imperial) Calendário da aventura: Algumas semanas após os últimos acontecimentos.  Contagem dos anos: Os reinos de Damocles contam os anos de maneira diferente: Império conta os anos desde a chegada dos humanos a Damocles. A história se passa desde o ano de 10999, pela contagem Imperial Estando, agora, cinco anos depois em 11004. Bragança conta os anos desde sua independência de Império, estando hoje no ano de 1917. Upanishads conseguiu a sua independência cinco anos depois e, pelo seu calendário inicial, o ano seria o de 1912. Mas a cidade agora usa alternativamente o calendário Bragantino, o que muito irrita o xá. Referência Bibliográfica: Damocles: O início ← clique para comprar   Antes de assinar como um JOGADOR  envie um e-mail para contato@rpgnext.com.br e consulte sobre as vagas. Elas têm número limitado.  ATENÇÃO: Esse podcast é recomendado para maiores de 16 anos. Com a participação de: Vinicius Watzl; Lucy Ferratto; Jeferson Stankovsky. Mica Edição de: Luís Beber. Uma produção RPG Next.   Indicações Fabulosas APP das Cartas Críticas para D&D 5e APOIE NOSSA CAUSA! Nossa Campanha do PADRIM está no AR! Acesse e veja nossas Metas e Recompensas para os Padrinhos e Madrinhas. padrim.com.br/rpgnext   Se você preferir nos apoiar pelo PICPAY, acesse e veja nossas recompensas: picpay.me/rpgnext   https://rpgnext.com.br/doadores/   COMPARTILHE! Se você gostou desse Podcast de RPG, então não se esqueça de compartilhar! Nosso site é https://rpgnext.com.br, Nossa Campanha do PADRIM: https://www.padrim.com.br/rpgnext Nossa Campanha no PICPAY: https://picpay.me/rpgnext Facebook RpgNextPage, Grupo do Facebook RPGNext Group, Instagram RPG Next Oficial, Twitter @RPG_Next,  Canal do YouTube,  Vote no iTunes do Tarrasque na Bota e no iTunes do RPG Next Podcast com 5 estrelas para também ajudar na divulgação! DEIXE SEU FEEDBACK! Se quiser deixar seu feedback, nos envie um e-mail em contato@rpgnext.com.br ou faça um comentário nesse post logo abaixo. Seu comentário é muito importante para a melhoria dos próximos episódios. Beleza? Muito obrigado pelo suporte, pessoal! Links para MÚSICAS e SFX sob a licença Creative Commons Freesounds.org – https://www.freesound.org/ Tabletop Audio – http://tabletopaudio.com/ Kevin MacLeod em Incompetech – http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free Free PD - https://freepd.com/ Alexander Nakarada - https://alexandernakarada.bandcamp.com/

Tarrasque na Bota apresenta: TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – O Frio do Norte parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e Aqui você encontra mais uma gravação sonorizada de uma … O post TnB Especial: Damocles Consequencias Epílogos 2023 – O Frio do Norte parte 1 | RPG GURPS 4e apareceu primeiro em RPG Next.

We made it to 3 entire digits! And to celebrate...we're talking about the history of the hydrogen bomb. Because what says celebration like the explosive power of 500 Super Walmarts stacked 6ft high with TNT, hanging like the sword of Damocles over our heads each and every day? When most people think of nuclear weapons they think of the bombs dropped at the end of WWII, and while most are aware that the weapons humanity has now make the atomic bomb look like a water balloon, we're not sure most people really feel what that means. The hydrogen bomb is, more or less, on a scale incomprehensible to the human mind. It is a device of true cosmic horror that changed the world and continues to warp reality through its mere being. And this week we're looking at the decisions (or lack thereof) after the second World War that led to the development of the thermonuclear bomb, the characters involved like Edward Teller the most hateable man in physics, what exactly happened when we set a couple of those suckers off (like right next to where a whole bunch of people lived who had no idea what was going to happen), and we try to answer the question of why exactly this monster was developed. Did it need to be? Could it have been avoided? Or was it inevitable?   Your support keeps The Nonsense Bazaar ad-free and allows us to keep doin' what we do. If you want to help the show, sign up for our Patreon and get access to bonus episodes and our supporter Discord server. https://patreon.com/thenonsensebazaar  

Movie Meltdown - Episode 599 The Meltdown Horror Club returns to ask - what's your favorite scary movie... franchise? Listen as we discuss Scream 6 directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett. And as we discuss Jenna Ortega's plans for world domination, we also address… Resurrection, The Pyjama Girl Case, Return of the Living Dead: Part 2, visiting Cocaine Bear, Samara Weaving, ghost dad hallucinations, the Greenwich Village Halloween parade, Melissa Barrera, not being a therapist, Murder Party shout out, being a ruined by the internet, being really annoyed at Gale, got Julius Caesar-ed, Giallo, Hayden Panettiere, shopping at Hot Topic, Stab: The Musical, The Core Four, hero or psychopath, Wednesday Addams, movie neighbors, pausing the movie, a no Ghost Face policy, Courteney Cox, girl in a box, quit sword of Damocles-ing me, a Scream museum, medical rules don't apply, just pause your movie, Sammy Davis Jr. and our new Ghost Face cartoon series. Spoiler Alert: Full spoilers for “Scream 6” (and the whole series) so go watch the movie(s) before you listen.  “Scream is its own universe.”

Liam Donovan, a principal at Bracewell PRG, is a regular presence on cable news, in print, and on twitter as an expert explainer of what's going on in Congress and in the Republican Party. With a background both in GOP campaign politics and government relations, Liam's expertise on the intersection of politics and policy gives him tremendous insight to distill what really matters in Washington from the rest of the Beltway din. In this conversation, we talk Liam's path to politics, his time in GOP campaigns, his shift to government relations, and get his insights into the chaos of last week's (eventual) ascent of Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker...what to expect from Congress over the next two years...and his early takes on Trump vs. DeSantis '24 & the future of the Republican Party. IN THIS EPISODELiam's upbringing as a Navy Brat who went to high school in DC…Liam's stint working in GOP politics and at the NRSC…The iconic GOP Senator Liam served as an aide to at the Senate committee…Liam's shift to government relations and lobbying…Liam's initial take on the chaotic House GOP process to anoint Kevin McCarthy as Speaker…Liam on why it was probably inevitable for McCarthy to cave to the hard-right members…Liam unpacks how McCarthy peeled off the different factions to earn the Speaker's gavel…Why the GOP center-right members never wavered for McCarthy…Liam on why there was never a real chance of a few Republicans working with  Democrats to elect a coalition Speaker…Liam's thoughts on the risk McCarthy could be deposed mid-term…The Trump impact on the Speaker's race and the Trump-McCarthy relationship…Liam analyzes the CLF / Freedom Caucus “truce”…Liam's insight on what to expect on the debt ceiling…Liam's early handicapping of Trump vs DeSantis 2024…The origin story of Liam's unusual twitter profile photo…Liam shouts out one of his favorite twitter accounts… AND AOL IM, almost congresspersons, Justin Amash, beating the previous question, Bill Bennett, Joe Biden, Lauren Boebert, John Boehner, John Bolton, Bracewell PRG, Scott Brown, Al Bundy, Alex Burns, George W. Bush, the CLF, Liz Cheney, Chris Christie, John Cornyn, Tom Cotton, Eli Crane, Ted Cruz, determined rumps, David Dewhurst, discharge petitions, Empower America, John Ensign, Al Franken, the Freedom Caucus, frozen budgets, Matt Gaetz, Georgetown, getting your teeth kicked in, Bob Good, Al Gore, Maggie Haberman, Nikki Haley, Andy Harris, Orrin Hatch, hot mic moments, Amo Houghton, Wesley Hunt, Hakeem Jeffries, Jim Jordan, Jack Kemp, kissing the ring, Mike Lee, letter-writing campaigns, Morgan Luttrell, Joe Manchin, Mar-a-Lago, Jonathan Martin, max-out donors, Ted McGinley, Mark Meadows, the meaty middle, Mitch McConnell, Tim Miller, non-privileged motions, Nancy Pelosi, Scott Peters, Scott Perry, Politico Pro, Mike Pompeo, the precipice of failure, Punchbowl, Ringwiss, Mike Rogers, Chip Roy, Paul Ryan, Rick Santelli, Pete Sessions, shoe-leather lobbying, shooting down the rule, the side of chaos, Aaron Sorkin, Arlen Specter, the Sword of Damocles, Marjorie Taylor Greene, turning the screws, the Trevor Project, Truth Social, trust deficits, the Uniparty, Fred Upton, West Wing story arcs & more!

Med detta rekordlånga jubileumsavsnitt önskar Pippipodden alla lyssnare God Jul och Gott Nytt År! Vi har nått 50 avsnitt! Detta firar vi med att prata om den helt nya fågelart för landet som dök upp nu i december - baltimoretrupial. Under hösten sågs stora mängder större korsnäbbar och gnagaråret har varit gott, så vi drömmer om fjällugglor i södra Sverige igen. Widde har intervjuat Magnus Ullman om hur fåglarna får sina färger. Gullet bidrar med tre betraktelser - en handlar om århundradets fågel, den andra om en ismås tankar i Arktis och en tredje om bl.a. en godispåse Palle Kuling. Vi hoppas såklart på fler roliga fågelbordsfåglar till 2023! Pippipodden publiceras med stöd från Studiefrämjandet. Musik av Blue dot sessions, Kai Engel och Chris Zabriskie via Free Music Archive, samt en kort bit av låten Sword of Damocles av Lou Reed. Fågelläten är hämtade från Xeno-Canto www.xeno-canto.org/

The Sword of Damocles by Anna Katharine Green audiobook. Anna Katharine Green is best known as one of the first women detective writers, and The Sword of Damocles, first published in 1881, does indeed include several mysteries. There is a very brief appearance by her famous detective, Mr Gryce, but at the heart of the book, which is subtitled A Story of New York Life, are a number of very different love stories. 

In today's episode:More 'dark money' efforts to thwart GOP investigations of the illegitimate regimeThe Trump reinstatement Twitter pollArizona's election fraud is right out frontThe meltdown over restoring Trump's Twitter accountTwitter's former head of "trust and safety" freaks out in the NYTConnect with Be Reasonable: https://linktr.ee/imyourmoderatorHear the show when it's released. Become a paid subscriber at imyourmoderator.substack.comOther ways to support the work:ko-fi.com/imyourmoderatorbtc via coinbase: 3MEh9J5sRvMfkWd4EWczrFr1iP3DBMcKk5Merch site:https://cancelcouture.myspreadshop.com/Follow the podcast info stream: t.me/imyourmoderatorOther social platforms: Truth Social, Gab, Rumble, Bitchute, Odysee, DLive or Gettr - @imyourmoderator Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/be-reasonable-with-your-moderator-chris-paul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode:More 'dark money' efforts to thwart GOP investigations of the illegitimate regimeThe Trump reinstatement Twitter pollArizona's election fraud is right out frontThe meltdown over restoring Trump's Twitter accountTwitter's former head of "trust and safety" freaks out in the NYTConnect with Be Reasonable: https://linktr.ee/imyourmoderatorHear the show when it's released. Become a paid subscriber at imyourmoderator.substack.comOther ways to support the work:ko-fi.com/imyourmoderatorbtc via coinbase: 3MEh9J5sRvMfkWd4EWczrFr1iP3DBMcKk5Merch site:https://cancelcouture.myspreadshop.com/Follow the podcast info stream: t.me/imyourmoderatorOther social platforms: Truth Social, Gab, Rumble, Bitchute, Odysee, DLive or Gettr - @imyourmoderator Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/be-reasonable-with-your-moderator-chris-paul. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

La nómina pública aumentó un 14% en los últimos 12 meses según los datos de la Tesorería de la seguridad social. Hasta agosto de 2021 la nómina contaba con 630,727 empleados, para agosto de este 2022, cuando se actualizó el conteo de la nómina, había escalado hasta 721,448 para una diferencia de 90,721 o lo que es igual a un incremento de un 14 %. En Julio el ministerio de administración pública emitió una resolución que restringía el acceso y los nombramientos de personal pero los números dicen otra cosa. En enero el ministro de administración pública explicaba que “esta gestión encontró irregularidades en las nóminas que se han ido corrigiendo y que quizás por eso es que al comparar los registros de empleados actuales con los del gobierno pasado se pueden visualizar incrementos” Si en enero se había “sincerizado” la nómina todo lo que viene después son nuevos empleados. El costo promedio de cada asalariado gubernamental en un año para los contribuyentes fue de unos 470,678 pesos, sin calcular el pago de la seguridad social de cada trabajador. Y eso hay que reiterarlo porque el dominicano promedio no acaba de entender que el gasto publico sale de sus costillas y que el gobierno de turno cual que sea solo administra el sudor de los contribuyentes. Ayer el economista Miguel Collado del Centro Regional de Estrategias Económicas Sostenibles dio a conocer un estudio que da cuenta que el presupuesto del 2023 proyecta un aumento de la nomina pública en mas de 40 mil millones de pesos El economista dijo en una entrevista en Diario Libre que tomando en cuenta el incremento de la nómina pública a agosto de este 2022, más de cinco millones de habitantes se benefician del erario y se estima que ese número de dependientes aumente paulatinamente durante el 2023. Eso es más o menos un millón de empleos y si yo fuera oposición política pensaría que tiene que ver con un proyecto reeleccionista. Como solo soy periodista debo decir a ustedes que ese aumento de 40 mil millones de pesos para remuneraciones sale de nuestras costillas. Hay que reconocer que el presidente Luis Abinader ha vadeado las crisis que le han tocado sin que la economía dominicana disminuya su ritmo de crecimiento en momentos en que toda la región advierte problemas. Pero no todo el crecimiento económico es saludable. El endeudamiento aumenta rápidamente y aunque se justifica ante la imposibilidad de una reforma fiscal largamente pospuesta no deja de estar ahí latente como espada de Damocles ni deja de estar pasando. Los efectos económicos de las experiencias reeleccionistas en nuestra historia reciente son dolorosos. Aunque olvidamos rápido el déficit del 2008 se extendió hasta que Dios quiso. No tengo que explicarle el costo de la reelección de Danilo porque anda en los expedientes de asfalto y contratos de todo tipo ahora conocidos. LA administración necesita del ojo avizor de los ciudadanos porque aquí no hay manera de que aquí ningún político coge cabeza.

La desembocadura del río Ebro constituye un extraordinario acontecimiento natural. Después de recorrer más de mil kilómetros por el noreste de España, sus aguas se funden en un abrazo lleno de vida con el mar Mediterráneo. Su delta, en el sur de la provincia de Tarragona, es un descomunal territorio creado por la acumulación de sedimentos fluviales a lo largo de milenios. Hoy, pese a vivir bajo la espada de Damocles del cambio climático y las agresiones humanas, sigue siendo un entorno con una flora y fauna únicas que alterna marismas, playas, sistemas dunares, lagunas, bahías y vistosas extensiones de cultivo de arroz. Hoy nos acercamos a este entorno, en parte declarado parque natural, en compañía de dos exploradores de su poética: el escritor Joan Todó, autor de la ˈGuia sentimental del Delta de l'Ebreˈ, y el cantautor Joan Rovira, que interpreta en directo ˈLo meu riuˈ (mi río), una suerte de himno no oficial de la zona de Terres de lˈEbre . Además contamos con el responsable de la empresa de turismo rural Paradise Ebro, Eric Callau; el guía de naturaleza y activista de la cultura tradicional del delta, Josep Bertomeu, Polet; la gerente del restaurante Ida Can Machino, Maria del Mar Calvet; y el experto en deportes náuticos Jordi Balagué, autor de ˈDescubre el delta del Ebro en paddle surfˈ. Escuchar audio

In this, episode 057 of Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick, I revisit my so-called Big Plan from two years past, and discuss why it didn't work... and what does. This episode is expanded upon in a companion Scribtotum article. Read it to get the whole story! Links and Topics Mentioned in This Episode There are new words written on Shadow of the Outsider, the follow up to my previous novel Light of the Outsider and the novelette "The Perfumed Air at Kwaanantag Bay." Huzzah! The companion article to this episode is linked above. History / full context buffs can also read the original article about the Big Plan, and listen to its companion podcast episode. I mention the storyworlds in which I have future stories to write: The Shaper's World, the Sovereign Era, Daikaiju Universe, and the Protector Cycle. Check out what I've released so far. My latest non-fiction book is Indie Author Marketing Infrastructure, a distillation of some of what I teach when I coach new writers considering self-publishing. Hazy Days and Cloudy Nights: "How It All Got Started" is my fiction serial set in the 1980s and delivered weekly, for free, to subscribers. Get in on it and start at the beginning! I mention Lester Dent and his method for writing pulp fiction. The fantasy genre is a crowded field these days, what with popular sub-sub-sub-genres like LitRPG, Reverse Harem, and Cultivation mucking things up... In case you're not familiar with the myth of Sisyphus... The "How's That Big Plan Going" Sonitotum episode. In case you're not familiar with the sword of Damocles... and yeah, I don't quite utilize the metaphor appropriately in this episode. Stephen Pressfield wrote The War of Art, in which he includes his ritual of invoking the Muse (as in the first verse of The Illiad or The Odyssey), not Pallas Athena as I wrongly say in the episode. My patron community receives the uncut, unedited version of every episode. For this episode, they're privy to about thirteen minutes of extra content! Want in on that? Become a patron for at least $5.00 per month (cancel any time) and get a bunch of other perks and special access, too. Around thirty people listen to each new episode of this show during the first week it's released. If most of the listeners became Exceptional patrons ($5.00 per month), patron revenue would surpass $100 per month, and I could begin donating 10% every month to 826 National in support of literacy and creative writing advocacy for children. Let's go! Oh, and speaking of patronage: This episode was made possible in part by the patronage of listeners like you, including J. C.  Hutchins and Ted Leonhardt. Want to support the show and be listed in the credits, plus get lots of other goodies, perks, and exclusive access? Become a patron with a $3, $5, $10, or $20 monthly pledge! Love Sonitotum with Matthew Wayne Selznick and would like to make a one-time donation in support of the show? Donate via PayPal or leave a tip via Ko-Fi, with my grateful thanks.

Margarita Cedeño oficializó ayer su resignación en un acto en el que pidió a sus coordinadores sumarse de campaña la candidatura presidencial de Abel Martínez. Doña Margot no tiene plan B, su derrota indica que no pudo crear una estructura propia en el partido morado y hacia afuera solo puede mirar hacia la fupu donde no parece ser bienvenida. Mis fuentes me indican que el acto fue forzado por la dirigencia del PLD que instó a doña Margot a dejar la malcriadeza porque ahora más que nunca el partido morado tiene que proyectar una imagen de unidad. Para el PLD este proceso electoral más que la búsqueda del poder es una lucha por su supervivencia. Ojalá que hoy día de San Rafael no le anuncien el juicio final, porque los juicios presentes y por venir son su espada de Damocles. Disminuido por la escisión de las primarias del 19 y sangrado constantemente por la migración a la fupu el PLD es ya la tercera fuerza en el congreso y eso es una simple operación de suma y al propio tiempo un diagnóstico. Leonel no tiene que luchar contra nadie pues hizo su propio partido y para que quede claro que es suyo le puso su nombre. En el PRM el acto de ayer solo sirve para dejar claro que Abinader encabeza un PRM unificado. Si alguien lo duda piense en que los organizadores y voceros vienen del litoral de Hipólito. El ex presidente Mejía y su hija Carolina son los únicos con fuerza propia aparte de Abinader. Las aspiraciones de Guido y Ramón Alburquerque por ahora están en el aire. David Collado sigue siendo un producto mediático. Mientras la JCE mira para otro lado, esta debe ser la campaña electoral que inició más temprano. Esta semana los tres partidos grandes realizaron actos en el que congregaron personas y los distintos cenáculos reformistas hicieron algo de ruido. El PLD inició la campaña con su consulta, que es una primaria disfrazada, porque está urgido a movilizar sus huestes y los demás no se quedan atrás. Pero, doblarle el brazo a Doña Margot no significa unidad más allá de lo formal. Un 15% que significa la señora Cedeño era insignificante en otro momento pero ahora no lo es.

Finale Time!! The world ends yet again?! Who could have seen this coming?? Plus all our friends take a huge nap and the saddest moment in the show occurs.  Support the Show! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Gofloatpod Insta: https://bit.ly/2IHgNIt Twitter: https://bit.ly/2H337qu Theme song: Severe Tire Damage by Kevin MacLeod: https://bit.ly/2ICU0h2  Logo Design by Tori Russell: https://torirussell.com/

We're building to the finale folks! Clarke wins mom of the year, Octavia and Bellamy play the blame game, and Murph is bad at guns. Support the Show! Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Gofloatpod Insta: https://bit.ly/2IHgNIt Twitter: https://bit.ly/2H337qu Theme song: Severe Tire Damage by Kevin MacLeod: https://bit.ly/2ICU0h2  Logo Design by Tori Russell: https://torirussell.com/

El siglo XXI es un tiempo en el que nosotros mismos subimos el listón de nuestro rendimiento en la vida. Queremos ser buenos trabajadores, buenos padres, buenas madres, buenos jefes, buenos deportistas… la autoexigencia es nuestra propia espada de Damocles.

We've talked about how important sustainable creativity is for the production music composer, but what happens when you got nothing or a deadline hangs over you like the sword of Damocles? On this week's episode, I'm going to give you 4 ways that I jumpstart my own creative process when time is short or energy is low.Plus I'll be joined by Jeff Hargrove  (https://soundcloud.com/user-195099370) whose cue, “No Place for Merry Gentlemen,” was voted as the winning submission for our July 52 Cues Production Derby challenge where participants had just 48 hours to write an epic hip-hop Christmas cue!Watch this episode on YouTube!https://youtu.be/9f6b5mIJCiE00:00 - Intro & Welcome02:40 - Overview04:20 - 1. Recycle Sounds from a Previous Cue15:04 - 2. Referencing (and Modeling)23:55 - 3. Clear Your Head27:46 - 4. Just. Play!34:12 - Join the 52 Cues Community!35:25 - No Place for Merry Gentlemen" by Jeff Hargrove01:11:54 - Outro & How You Can Support 52 Cues!"The Creative Quest" by Questlove - https://amzn.to/3xs45U6Join the 52 Cues Community for FREE! – Post your own cues for feedback from the community, network with other composers, participate in community discussions, provide feedback on other composers' cues, and ask questions about the industry! – https://52cues.comBecome a 52 Cues FRIEND – Join in on Monthly Interactive Zoom Workshops featuring a range of topics and guests from around the music industry, and you'll have access to the Weekly Music Production Livestreams! – https://my.52cues.com/plans/202568?bundle_token=b037583a957a0bb48afafd3b1cae414eBecome a 52 Cues FAMILY Member – Get all the benefits listed above, plus catch up with Dave during weekly live Zoom Office Hours, and have your cues reviewed each week during the live Weekly Interactive Feedback and Critique Sessions – https://my.52cues.com/plans/195865?bundle_token=c974232cc2996186825ad469af103969Or you can support the channel on Patreon and get access to my weekly music production live streams. – https://www.patreon.com/davekropfLessons, critiques, and 1-on-1 coaching are available! – http://52cues.com/coaching.#productionmusic #podcastNote: Links posted here may be affiliate links which help us out by generating a small commission at no extra cost to you!Join our 12-week Mastermind with built-in private lessons, small group accountability and feedback sessions that give you focused, personalized mentorship. So If you're seriously ready to supercharge you career in production music, then head over to 52cues.com/mastermind22 and sign up today! Registration ends September 29, and seats are limited!Support the show

Austin Vernon is an engineer working on a new method for carbon capture, and he has one of the most interesting blogs on the internet, where he writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing.We discuss how energy superabundance will change the world, how Starship can be turned into a kinetic weapon, why nuclear is overrated, blockchains, batteries, flying cars, finding alpha, & much more!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Subscribe to find out about future episodes!Follow Austin on Twitter. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton!Timestamps(0:00:00) - Intro(0:01:53) - Starship as a Weapon(0:19:24) - Software Productivity(0:41:40) - Car Manufacturing(0:57:39) - Carbon Capture(1:16:53) - Energy Superabundance(1:25:09) - Storage for Cheap Energy(1:31:25) - Travel in Future(1:33:27) - Future Cities(1:39:58) - Flying Cars(1:43:26) - Carbon Shortage(1:48:03) - Nuclear(2:12:44) - Solar(2:14:44) - Alpha & Efficient Markets(2:22:51) - ConclusionTranscriptIntroDwarkesh Patel (00:00:00):Okay! Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Austin Vernon who writes about engineering, software, economics, and investing on the internet, though not that much else is known about him. So Austin, do you want to give us a bit of info about your background? I know that the only thing the internet knows about you is this one little JPEG that you had to upload with your recent paper. But what about an identity reveal or I guess a little bit of a background reveal? Just to the extent that you're comfortable sharing.Austin Vernon (00:00:29):My degree is in chemical engineering and I've had a lifelong love for engineering as well as things like the Toyota Production System. I've also worked as a chemical engineer in a large processing facility where I've done a lot of petroleum engineering. I taught myself how to write software and now I'm working on more research and the early commercialization of CO2 electrolysis.Dwarkesh Patel (00:00:59):Okay yeah. I'm really interested in talking about all those things. The first question I have is from Alex Berger, who's the co-CEO of Open Philanthropy. When I asked on Twitter what I should ask you, he suggested that I should ask “Why so shady?” Famously you have kind of an anonymous personality, pseudonymous thing going on the internet. What's up with that?Austin Vernon (00:01:25):Yeah. I think he posted a tweet that said “I don't know who this guy is or if he's credible at all, but his stuff sure is interesting”. That really made me laugh. I thought that was hilarious. Fame just doesn't seem necessary, I think I'm fine with my ideas being well known and communicating, but I have less desire to be personally famous.Starship as a WeaponDwarkesh Patel (00:01:52):Gotcha, gotcha. I wanted to start off with a sexy topic, let's talk about using Starship as a kinetic weapon. I thought that was one of the more amusing posts you wrote. Do you want to talk more about how this would be possible?Austin Vernon (00:02:08):Well, I think the main thing with Starship is that you're taking a technology and you're making it about 100 times cheaper for cargo and 1000 times cheaper for people. When things like that happen that drastically, you're just looking at huge changes and it's really hard to anticipate what some of those can be when the change is that drastic. I think there's a lot of moon-based, Mars-based stuff that doesn't really catch the general public's eye. They also have trouble imagining some of the point-to-point travel that could be possible. But when you start talking about it as a weapon, then I think it lets people know they should be paying attention to this technology. And we certainly do not want to be second or third getting it. We should make sure that we're going to be first.Dwarkesh Patel (00:03:05):Yeah. I think you mentioned this in the post, but as recently as the '90s, the cost of sending one kilogram to space was around $20,000. More recently, SpaceX has brought it to $2,000. Lots of interesting questions pop up when you ask, “What will be possible once we get it down to $200 per kilogram to send into orbit?” One of them could be about how we might manufacture these weapons that are not conventional ballistics. Do you want to talk about why this might be an advancement over conventional ballistic weapons?Austin Vernon (00:03:37):Well, regular conventional ballistic weapons are extremely expensive. This is more like a bomb truck. But usually we think of B52 as the bomb truck and this could be even cheaper than the B52, delivering just mass on target. When you think about how expensive it is to fly a B52 from Barksdale in Louisiana all the way across the world.. you can do it from south Texas or Florida with the Starship and get more emissions per day and the fuel ends up being. When you go orbital, it takes a lot to get to orbit. But then once you're in orbit, your fuel consumption's pretty good. So over long distances, it has a lot of advantage. That's why the point-to-point works for longer distances.Austin Vernon (00:04:27):There's really a sweet spot with these weapons where you want it to be pretty accurate, but you also want it to be cheap. You're seeing that problem with Russia right now as they have some fancy parade style weapons that are really expensive, like multi-billion dollar cruise missiles, but they're missing that $5,000 guided artillery shell or that $20,000 JDM that you can just pit massive. Or the multiple launch rocket system, guided rockets. They're really short on all those because I think they had just had a limited amount of chips they could get from the US into Russia to make these advanced weapons.Austin Vernon (00:05:07):But yeah, so the Starship gives you just a platform to deliver. You could put JDMs in a shroud, or you could just have the iron unguided kinetic projectiles, and it just becomes impossible for a ship to launch missiles to intercept yours if your cost is so low, you can just overwhelm them.Dwarkesh Patel (00:05:29):Okay. There are a few terms there that neither I nor the audience might know. So what is JDM? What is shroud? And why are chips a bottleneck here? Why can't it just be any micro-controller?Austin Vernon (00:05:42):So JDM is Joint Direct Attack Munition. So what we did is we took all our Vietnam surplus bonds and we put this little fin-kit on it and it costs like $20,000, which is cheap for a weapon because the actual bond costs, I don't know, $3,000. And then it turns it into a guided weapon that, before you were probably lucky to get within 500 meters of a target, now you can get it in with two meters. So the number of missions you have to do with your planes and all that goes down by orders of magnitude. So it's an absolutely huge advantage in logistics and in just how much firepower you can put on a target. And we didn't even have to make new bombs, we just put these kits on all our old bombs.Austin Vernon (00:06:33):Let's see.. Yeah the chips are a problem. There's this organization called RUSI. I think they're in the UK, but they've been tearing down all these Russian weapons they found in Ukraine and they all have American chips in them. So technically, they're not supposed to be able to get these chips. And yet, Russia can't make a lot of its own chips. And especially not the specialized kinds you might want for guided weapons. So they've been somehow smuggling in chips from Americans to make their advanced weaponsDwarkesh Patel (00:07:03):What is special about these? As far as I'm aware, the trade with China is still going on and we get a lot of our chips manufactured from Taiwan or China. So why can't they do the same?Austin Vernon (00:07:14):It's the whole integration. It's not just the specific chip, but the board. They're more like PLCs where you almost have wired-in programming and they come with this ability to do the guidance and all that stuff. It all kind of has to work together. I think that's the way I understand it. I don't know. Maybe I don't have a really good answer for that one, but they're hard to replicate is what matters.Dwarkesh Patel (00:07:43):Okay that's interesting. Yeah, I guess that has a lot of interesting downstream effects, because for example, India buys a lot of its weapons from Russia. So if Russia doesn't have access to these, then other countries that buy from Russia won't have access to these either.Dwarkesh Patel (00:07:58):You had an interesting speculation in the post where you suggested that you could just keep these kinetic weapons in orbit, in a sort of Damocles state really, almost literally. That sounds like an incredibly scary and risky scenario where you could have orbital decay and you could have these kinetic weapons falling from the sky and destroying cities. Do you think this is what it will look like or could look like in 10 to 20 years?Austin Vernon (00:08:26):Well, yeah, so the advantage of having weapons on orbit is you can hit targets faster. So if you're launching the rocket from Florida, you're looking at maybe 30 minutes to get there and the target can move away in that time. Whereas if you're on orbit, you can have them spaced out to where you're hitting within a few minutes. So that's the advantage there.Austin Vernon (00:08:46):You really have to have a two stage system I think for most, because if you have a really aerodynamic rod that's going to give you really good performance in the low atmosphere, it'll end up going too fast and just burn up before it gets there. Tungsten's maybe the only thing that you could have that could go all the way through which is why I like the original concept of using these big tungsten rods the size of a telephone pole. But tungsten's pretty expensive. And the rod concept kind of limits what you can do.Austin Vernon (00:09:28):So a lot of these weapons will have, that's what I was talking about with the shroud, something that actually slows you down in the upper atmosphere. And then once you're at the velocity where you're not just going to melt, then you open it up and let it go. So if you actually had it fall from the sky, some may make it to the ground, but a lot would burn up. So a lot of the stuff that makes it to the ground is actually pretty light. It's stuff that can float and has a large surface area. Yeah, that's the whole thing with Starship. Or not Starship, but Starlink. All those satellites are meant to completely fall apart on de-orbit.Dwarkesh Patel (00:10:09):I see. One of the implications of that is that these may be less powerful than we might fear, because since kinetic energy is mass times velocity squared and there's an upper bound on the velocity (velocity being the component that grows the kinetic energy faster), then it suggests that you can upper bound the power these things will have. You know what I mean?Austin Vernon (00:10:32):Yeah, so even the tungsten rods. Sometimes people, they're not very good at physics, so they don't do the math. They think it's going to be a nuclear weapon, but it's really not. I think even the tungsten rod is like 10 tons of T&T or something. It's a big bomb, but it's not a super weapon.Austin Vernon (00:10:54):So I think I said in the post, it's about using advanced missiles where they're almost more defensive weapons so I can keep you from pitting your ship somewhere. Yeah I could try to bombard your cities, but I can't take ground with it. I can't even police sea lanes with it really. I'd still have to use regular ships if I had this air cover to go enforce the rules of the sea and stuff like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:11:23):Yeah. You speculated in the post, I think, that you could load this up with shrapnel and then it could explode next to an incoming missile or an incoming aircraft. Could these get that accurate? Because that was surprising speculation to me.Austin Vernon (00:11:43):I think for ships, it's pretty... I was watching videos of how fast a ship can turn and stuff. If you're going to do an initial target on a ship to try to kill their radars, you'd want to do it above the ceiling of their missiles. So it's like, how much are they going to move between your release where you stop steering and that? The answer's maybe 1000 feet. So that's pretty simple because you just shrapnel the area.Austin Vernon (00:12:12):Targeting aircraft, you would be steering all the way in. I'd say it's doable, but it'd be pretty hard. You'd actually maybe want to even go slower than you would with the ship attack. You'd need a specialized package to attack the aircraft, but if you have enough synthetic aperture radar and stuff like that, you could see these aircraft using satellites and then guide the bomb in the whole way. You could even load heat seeking missiles into a package that unfurls right next to them and launch conventional missiles too, probably. It'd be pretty hard to do some of this stuff, but they're just the things you might be able to do if you put some effort into it.Dwarkesh Patel (00:12:57):Yeah. The reason I find this kind of speculation really interesting is because when you look at the modern weaponry that's used in conflicts, it just seems directly descendant from something you would've seen in World War II or something. If you think about how much warfare changed between 1900 and 1940, it's like, yeah, they're not even the same class of weapons anymore. So it's interesting to think about possibilities like these where the entire category of weapons has changed.Austin Vernon (00:13:33):You're right and that's because our physical technology hasn't changed that much. So it really has just made more sense to put better electronics in the same tanks. We haven't learned enough about tanks to build a new physical tank that's way better, so we just keep upgrading our existing tanks with better electronics. They're much more powerful, they're more accurate. A lot of times, they have longer range weapons and better sensors. So the tank looks the same, but it maybe has several times more killing power. But the Ukraine war right now, they're using a lot of 40, 50 year old weapons so that especially looks like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:14:20):Yeah. Which kind of worries you if you think about the stockpiles our own military has. I'm not well educated on the topic, but I imagine that we don't have the newest of the new thing. We probably have maintained versions of decades old technology.Austin Vernon (00:14:35):We spend so much, we've got relatively... This kind of gets into debate about how ready our military is. For certain situations, it's more ready than others. I'd say in general, most people talking about it have the incentive to downplay our capabilities because they want more defense spending. There's lots of reasons. So I think we're probably more capable than what you might see from some editorial in The Hill or whatever. Us just sending a few weapons over to Ukraine and seeing how successful they've been at using them, I think, shows a little bit of that.Austin Vernon (00:15:18):There's so much uncertainty when it comes to fighting, especially when you're talking about a naval engagement, where we don't just don't have that many ships in general… you can have some bad luck. So I think you always want to be a little bit wary. You don't want to get overconfident.Dwarkesh Patel (00:15:37):Yeah. And if the offensive tech we sent to Ukraine is potentially better than the defensive tech, it's very possible that even a ballistic missile that China or Russia could launch would sink a battleship and then kill the 2,000 or 1,000 whatever soldiers that are on board. Or I guess, I don't know, you think this opens up avenues for defensive tech as well?Austin Vernon (00:16:03):Yeah––generally the consensus is that defensive technology has improved much more recently than offensive technology. This whole strategy China has is something they call anti-access/area denial, A2/AD. That's basically just how missiles have gotten better because the sensors on missiles have gotten better. So they can keep our ships from getting close to them but they can't really challenge us in Hawaii or something. And it really goes both ways, I think people forget that. So yeah, it's hard for us to get close to China, but Taiwan has a lot of missiles with these new sensors as well. So I think it's probably tougher for China to do it close to Taiwan than most people would say.Dwarkesh Patel (00:16:55):Oh, interesting. Yeah, can you talk more about that? Because every time I read about this, people are saying that if China wanted to, they could knock out Taiwan's defenses in a short amount of time and take it over. Yeah, so can you talk about why that's not possible?Austin Vernon (00:17:10):Well, it might be, but I think it's a guess of the uncertainty [inaudible 00:17:14]. Taiwan has actually one of the largest defense budgets in the world and they've recently been upping it. I think they spend, I don't know, $25 billion a year and they added an extra $5 billion. And they've been buying a lot of anti-ship missiles, a lot of air defense missiles.. Stuff that Ukraine could only dream of. I think Ukraine's military budget was $2 billion and they have a professional army. And then the other thing is Taiwan's an island, whereas Russia could just roll over the land border into Ukraine.Austin Vernon (00:17:44):There's just been very few successful amphibious landings in history. The most recent ones were all the Americans in World War II and Korea. So the challenge there is just... It's kind of on China to execute perfectly and do that. So if they had perfect execution, then possibly it would be feasible. But if their air defenses on their ships aren't quite as good as we think they could possibly be, then they could also end up with half their fleet underwater within 10 hours.Dwarkesh Patel (00:18:20):Interesting. And how has your view of Taiwan's defensive capabilities changed... How has the Ukraine conflict updated your opinion on what might happen?Austin Vernon (00:18:29):I didn't really know how much about it. And then I started looking at Wikipedia and stuff and all this stuff they're doing. Taiwan just has a lot of modern platforms like F16s with our anti-ship missiles. They actually have a lot of their own. They have indigenous fighter bombers, indigenous anti-ship missiles because they're worried we might not always sell them to them.Austin Vernon (00:18:54):They've even recently gotten these long range cruise missiles that could possibly target leadership in Beijing. So I think that makes it uncomfortable for the Chinese leadership. If you attack them, you're going to have to go live in a bunker. But again, I'm not a full-time military analyst or something, so there's a lot of uncertainty around what I'm saying. It's not a given that China's just going to roll over them.Software ProductivityDwarkesh Patel (00:19:22):Okay. That's comforting to hear. Let's talk about an area where I have a little bit of a point of contact. I thought your blog post about software and the inability of it to increase productivity numbers, I thought that was super fascinating. So before I ask you questions about it, do you want to lay out the thesis there?Austin Vernon (00:19:43):Yeah. So if there's one post I kind of felt like I caught lightning in a bottle on, it's that one. Everything I wanted to put in, it just fit together perfectly, which is usually not the case.Austin Vernon (00:19:55):I think the idea is that the world's so complex and we really underestimate that complexity. If you're going to digitize processes and automate them and stuff, you have to capture all that complexity basically at the bit level, and that's extremely difficult. And then you also have diminishing returns where the easily automatable stuff goes first and then it's increasing corner cases to get to the end, so you just have to go through more and more code basically. We don't see runaway productivity growth from software because we're fighting all this increasing complexity.Dwarkesh Patel (00:20:39):Yeah. Have you heard of the waterbed theory of complexity by the way?Austin Vernon (00:20:42):I don't think so.Dwarkesh Patel (00:20:44):Okay. It's something that comes up in compiler design: the idea is that there's a fixed amount of complexity in a system. If you try to reduce it, what you'll end up doing is just you'll end up migrating the complexity elsewhere. I think an example that's used of this is when they try to program languages that are not type safe, something like Python. You can say, “oh, it's a less complex language”, but really, you've added complexity when, I don't know, two different types of numbers are interacting like a float and an int. As your program grows, that complexity exponentially grows along with all the things that could go wrong when you're making two things interact in a way that you were expecting not to. So yeah, the idea is you can just choose where to have your complexity, but you can't get rid of that complexity.Austin Vernon (00:21:38):I think that's kind of an interesting thing when you start pairing it with management theory... when you add up all the factors, the most complex thing you're doing is high volume car manufacturing. And so we got a lot of innovations and organization from car manufacturers like the assembly line. Then you had Sloan at GM basically creating the way the modern corporation is run, then you have the Toyota Production System.Austin Vernon (00:22:11):But arguably now, creating software is actually the most complex thing we do. So there's all these kinds of squishy concepts that underlie things like the Toyota Production System that softwares had to learn and reimagine and adopt and you see that with Agile where, “oh, we can't have long release times. We need to be releasing every day,” which means we're limiting inventory there.Austin Vernon (00:22:42):There's a whole thing especially that's showing up in software that existed in carbon manufacturing where you're talking about reducing communication. So Jeff Bezos kind of now famously said, "I want to reduce communication," which is counterintuitive to a lot of people. This is age-old in car manufacturing where Toyota has these cards that go between workstations and they tell you what to do. So people normally think of them as limiting inventory, but it also tells the worker exactly what they're supposed to be doing at what pace, at what time. The assembly line is like that too. You just know what to do because you're standing there and there's a part here and it needs to go on there, and it comes by at the pace you're supposed to work at.Austin Vernon (00:23:29):It's so extreme that there's this famous paper, by List, Syverson and Levitt. They went to a car factory and studied how defects propagated in cars and stuff. Once a car factory gets up and running, it doesn't matter what workers you put in there, if workers are sick or you get new workers, the defect rate is the same. So all the knowledge is built into the manufacturing line.Austin Vernon (00:23:59):There's these concepts around idiot-proofing and everything that are very similar to what you'll see. You had Uncle Bob on here. So Uncle Bob says only put one input into a function and stuff like that because you'll mix them up otherwise. The Japanese call it poka-yoke. You make it where you can't mess it up. And that's another way to reduce communication, and then software, of course you have APIs.Austin Vernon (00:24:28):So I'm really interested in this overall concept of reducing communication, and reducing how much cooperation and everything we need to run the economy.Dwarkesh Patel (00:24:41):Right. Right. Speaking of the Toyota Production System, one thing they do to reduce that defect rate is if there's a problem, all the workers in that chain are forced to go to the place where the defect problem is and fix it before doing anything else. The idea there is that this will give them context to understand what the problem was and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. It also prevents a build up of inventory in a way that keeps making these defects happen or just keeps accumulating inventory before the place that can fix the defects is able to take care of them.Austin Vernon (00:25:17):Right. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.Dwarkesh Patel (00:25:19):Yeah. But I think one interesting thing about software and complexity is that software is a place where complexity is the highest in our world right now but software gives you the choice to interface with the complexity you want to interface with. I guess that's just part of specialization in general, but you could say for example that a machine learning model is really complex, but ideally, you get to a place where that's the only kind of complexity you have to deal with. You're not having to deal with the complexity of “How is this program compiled? How are the libraries that I'm using? How are they built?” You can fine tune and work on the complexity you need to work on.Dwarkesh Patel (00:26:05):It's similar to app development. Byrne Hobart has this blog post about Stripe as solid state. The basic idea is that Stripe hides all the complexity of the financial system: it charges a higher fee, but you can just treat it as an abstraction of a tithe you have to pay, and it'll just take care of that entire process so you can focus on your comparative advantage.Austin Vernon (00:26:29):It's really actually very similar in car manufacturing and the Toyota Production System if you really get into it. It's very much the same conceptual framework. There's this whole idea in Toyota Production System, everyone works at the same pace, which you kind of talked about. But also, your work content is the same. There's no room for not standardizing a way you're going to do things. So everyone gets together and they're like, “All right, we're going to do this certain part. We're going to put it together this certain way at this little micro station. And it's going to be the same way every time.” That's part of how they're reducing the defect rates. If your assembly process is longer than what your time allotment is to stay in touch with the rest of the process, then you just keep breaking it down into smaller pieces. So through this, each person only has to know a very small part of it.Austin Vernon (00:27:33):The overall engineering team has all sorts of strategies and all sorts of tools to help them break up all these processes into very small parts and make it all hold together. It's still very, very hard, but it's kind of a lot of the same ideas because you're taking away the complexity of making a $30,000 car or 30,000 part car where everyone's just focusing on their one little part and they don't care what someone else is doing.Dwarkesh Patel (00:28:06):Yeah. But the interesting thing is that it seems like you need one person who knows how everything fits together. Because from what I remember, one of the tenets of the Toyota Production System was you need to have a global view. So, in that book, was it the machine or the other one, the Toyota Production System book? But anyways, they were talking about examples where people would try to optimize for local efficiencies. I think they especially pointed to Ford and GM for trying to do this where they would try to make machines run all the time. And locally, you could say that, “oh this machine or process is super efficient. It's always outputting stuff.” But it ignores how that added inventory or that process had a bad consequence for the whole system.Dwarkesh Patel (00:28:50):And so it's interesting if you look at a company like Tesla that's able to do this really well. Tesla is run like a monarchy and this one guy has this total global view of how the entire process is supposed to run and where you have these inefficiencies.. You had some great examples of this in the blog post. I think one of the examples is this guy (the author) goes to this factory and he asks, "Is this an efficient factory?" And the guy's like, "Yeah, this is totally efficient. There's nothing we can do, adopting the Toyota way, to make this more efficient."Dwarkesh Patel (00:29:22):And so then he's like, "Okay, let me look." And he finds that they're treating steel in some way, and the main process does only take a couple of seconds, but some local manager decided that it would be more efficient to ship their parts out, to get the next stage of the process done somewhere else. So this is locally cheaper, but the result is that it takes weeks to get these parts shipped out and get them back. Which means that the actual time that the parts spend getting processed is 0.1% of the time, making the whole process super inefficient. So I don't know, it seems like the implication is you need a very monarchical structure, with one person who has a total view, in order to run such a system. Or am I getting that wrong?Austin Vernon (00:30:12):Not necessarily. I mean, you do have to make sure you're not optimizing locally, but I think it's the same. You have that same constraint in software, but I think a lot of times people are just running over it because processing has been getting so much cheaper. People are expensive, so if you could save development time, it just ends up the trade offs are different when you're talking about the tyranny of physical items and stuff like that, the constraints get a little more severe. But I think you have the same overall. You still have to fight local optimization, but the level you have to is probably different with physical goods.Austin Vernon (00:30:55):I was thinking about the smart grid situation from a software perspective, and there's this problem where, okay, I'm putting my solar farm here and it's impacting somewhere far away, and that's then creating these really high upgrade costs, that cost two or three times more than my solar farm. Well, the obvious thing would be, if you're doing software, is like you're going to break all these up into smaller sections, and then you wouldn't be impacting each other and all that, and you could work and focus on your own little thing.Austin Vernon (00:31:29):But the problem with that is if you're going to disconnect these areas of the grid, the equipment to do that is extremely expensive. It's not like I'm just going to hit a new tab and open a new file and start writing a new function. And not only that, but you still have to actually coordinate how this equipment is going to operate. So if you just let the grid flow as it does, everyone knows what's going to happen because they could just calculate the physics. If you start adding in all these checkpoints where humans are doing stuff, then you have to actually interface with the humans, and the amount of things that can happen really starts going up. So it's actually a really bad idea to try to cart all this stuff off, just because of the reality of the physical laws and the equipment you need and everything like that.Dwarkesh Patel (00:32:22):Okay. Interesting. And then I think you have a similar Coasean argument in your software post about why vertically integrating software is beneficial. Do you want to explain that thesis?Austin Vernon (00:32:34):Yeah. I think it actually gets to what we're talking about here, where it allows you to avoid the local optimization. Because a lot of times you're trying to build a software MVP, and you're tying together a few services… they don't do quite what you need, so if you try to scale that, it would just break. But if you're going to take a really complex process, like car manufacturing or retail distribution, or the home buying process or something, you really have to vertically integrate it to be able to create a decent end-to-end experience and avoid that local optimization.Austin Vernon (00:33:20):And it's just very hard otherwise, because you just can't coordinate effectively if you have 10 different vendors trying to do all the same thing. You end up in just constant vendor meetings, where you're trying to decide what the specs are or something instead of giving someone the authority, or giving a team the authority to just start building stuff. Then if you look at these companies, they have to implement these somewhat decentralized processes when they get too complex, but at least they have control over how they're interfacing with each other. Walmart, as the vendors, control their own stock. They don't tell the vendor, "We need X parts." It's just like, it's on you to make sure your shelf is stocked.Dwarkesh Patel (00:34:07):Yeah. Yeah. So what was really interesting to me about this part of the post was, I don't know, I guess I had heard of this vision of we're software setting, where everybody will have a software as a service company, and they'll all be interfacing with each other in some sort of cycle where they're all just calling each other's APIs. And yeah, basically everybody and their mother would have a SAAS company. The implication here was, from your argument, that given the necessity of integrating all those complexity vertically in a coherent way, then the winners in software should end up being a few big companies, right? They compete with each other, but still...Austin Vernon (00:34:49):I think that's especially true when you're talking about combining bits and apps. Maybe less true for pure software. The physical world is just so much more complex, and so the constraints it creates are pretty extreme, compared to like... you could maybe get away with more of everyone and their mom having an API in a pure software world.Dwarkesh Patel (00:35:14):Right. Yeah. I guess, you might think that even in the physical world, given that people really need to focus on their comparative advantage, they would just try to outsource the software parts to these APIs. But is there any scenario where the learning curve for people who are not in the firm can be fast enough that they can keep up with the complexity? Because there's huge gains for specialization and competition that go away if this is the world we're forced to live in. And then I guess we have a lot of counter examples, or I guess we have a lot of examples of what you're talking about. Like Apple is the biggest market cap in the world, right? And famously they're super vertically integrated. And yeah, obviously their thing is combining hardware and software. But yeah, is there any world in which it can keep that kind of benefit, but have it be within multiple firms?Austin Vernon (00:36:10):This is a post I've got on my list I want to write. The blockchain application, which excites me personally the most, is reimagining enterprise software. Because the things you're talking about, like hard typing and APIs are just basically built into some of these protocols. So I think it just really has a lot of exciting implications for how much you can decentralize software development. But the thing is, you can still do that within the firm. So I think I mentioned this, if the government's going to place all these rules on the edge of the firm, it makes transactions with other firms expensive. So a few internal transactions can be cheaper, because they're avoiding the government reporting and taxes and all that kind of stuff. So I think you'd have to think about how these technologies can reduce transaction costs overall and decentralize that, but also what are the costs between firms?Dwarkesh Patel (00:37:22):Yeah, it's really interesting if the costs are logistic, or if they're based on the knowledge that is housed, as you were talking about, within a factory or something. Because if it is just logistical and stuff, like you had to report any outside transactions, then it does imply that those technology blockchain could help. But if it is just that you need to be in the same office, and if you're not, then you're going to have a hard time keeping up with what the new requirements for the API are, then maybe it's that, yeah, maybe the inevitability is that you'll have these big firms that are able to vertically integrate.Austin Vernon (00:37:59):Yeah, for these big firms to survive, they have to be somewhat decentralized within them. So I think you have... you're going to the same place as just how are we viewing it, what's our perception? So even if it's a giant corporation, it's going to have very independent business units as opposed to something like a 1950s corporation.Dwarkesh Patel (00:38:29):Yeah. Byrne Hobart, by the way, has this really interesting post that you might enjoy reading while you're writing that post. It's type safe communications, and it's about that Bezos thing, about his strict style for how to communicate and how little to communicate. There's many examples in Amazon protocols where you have to... the only way you can put in this report, is in this place you had to give a number. You can't just say, "This is very likely," you had to say like, "We project X percent increase," or whatever. So it has to be a percent. And there's many other cases where they're strict about what type definition you can have in written reports or something. It has kind of the same consequence that type strict languages have, which is that you can keep track of what the value is through the entire chain of the flow of control.Austin Vernon (00:39:22):You've got to keep work content standardized.Dwarkesh Patel (00:39:26):So we've been hinting at the Coasean analysis to this. I think we just talked about it indirectly, but for the people who might not know, Coase has this paper called The Theory of Firms, and he's trying to explain why we have firms at all. Why not just have everybody compete in the open market for employment, for anything? Why do we have jobs? Why not just have... you can just hire a secretary by the day or something.Dwarkesh Patel (00:39:51):And the conclusion he comes to is that by having a firm you're reducing the transaction cost. So people will have the same knowledge about what needs to get done, obviously you're reducing the transaction cost of contracting, finding labor, blah, blah, blah. And so the conclusion it comes to is the more the transaction costs are reduced within people in a firm, as compared to the transaction cost between different firms, the bigger firms will get. So I guess that's why the implication of your argument was that there should be bigger tech firms, right?Austin Vernon (00:40:27):Yes, yes, definitely. Because they can basically decrease the transaction costs faster within, and then even at the limit, if you have large transaction costs outside the firm, between other firms that are artificially imposed, then it will make firms bigger.Dwarkesh Patel (00:40:45):What does the world look like in that scenario? So would it just be these Japanese companies, these huge conglomerates who are just... you rise through the ranks, from the age of 20 until you die? Is that what software will turn into?Austin Vernon (00:40:59):It could be. I mean, I think it will be lots of very large companies, unless there's some kind of change in inner firm transaction costs. And again, that could possibly come from blockchain like technology, but you probably also need better regulation to make that cheaper, and then you would have smaller firms. But again, in the end, it doesn't really matter. You'd be working in your little unit of the big bank of corporate, or whatever. So I don't know what that would look like on a personal level.Car ManufacturingDwarkesh Patel (00:41:40):Yeah. Okay. So speaking of these Japanese companies, let's talk about car manufacturing and everything involved there. Yeah, so we kind of hinted at a few elements of the Toyota way and production earlier, but do you want to give a brief overview of what that is, so we can compare it to potentially other systems?Austin Vernon (00:42:02):I think all these kinds of lean Toyota process systems, they do have a lot of similarities, where mostly you want to even-out your production, so you're producing very consistently, and you want to break it into small steps and you want to limit the amount of inventory you have in your system. When you do this, it makes it easy to see how the process is running and limit defects. And the ultimate is you're really trying to reduce defects, because they're very expensive. It's a little bit hard to summarize. I think that's my best shot at it there, quickly off the top of my head.Dwarkesh Patel (00:42:49):Yeah. The interesting thing about the Toyota system, so at least when the machine was released, is they talk about... that book was released I think the nineties, and they went to the history of Toyota, and one of the interesting things they talked about was there was a brief time where the company ran... I think, was this after World War II? But anyways, the company ran into some troubles. They needed to layoff people to not go bankrupt. They had much more debt on books than they had assets. So yeah, they wanted to layoff people, but obviously the people were not happy about this, so there were violent protests about this. And in fact I think the US written constitution gave strong protections to labor that they hadn't had before, which gave labor an even stronger hand here.Dwarkesh Patel (00:43:42):So anyway, Toyota came to this agreement with the unions that they'd be allowed to do this one time layoff to get the company on the right track, but afterwards they could never lay somebody off. Which would mean that a person who works at Toyota works there from the time they graduate college or high school till they die. Right? I don't know, that's super intense in a culture. I mean, in software, where you have the average tenure in a company's one year, the difference is so much.Dwarkesh Patel (00:44:13):And there's so many potential benefits here, I guess a lot of drawbacks too. But one is, obviously if you're talking in a time scale of 50 years, rather than one year, the incentives are more aligned between the company and the person. Because anything you could do in one year is not going to have a huge impact on your stock options in that amount of time. But if this company's your retirement plan, then you have a much stronger incentive to make sure that things at this company run well, which means you're probably optimizing for the company's long term cash flow yourself. And also, there's obviously benefits to having that knowledge built up in the firm from people who have been there for a long time. But yeah, that was an interesting difference. One of the interesting differences, at least.Austin Vernon (00:45:00):I mean, I think there's diminishing returns to how long your tenure's going to be. Maybe one year's too short, but there's a certain extent to where, if you grow faster than your role at the company, then it's time to switch. It's going to depend on the person, but maybe five years is a good number. And so if you're not getting promoted within the firm, then your human capital's being wasted, because you could go somewhere else and have more responsibility and perform better for them. Another interesting thing about that story, is almost all lean turnarounds, where they're like, we're going to implement something like Toyota production system, they come with no layoff promises. Because if you're going to increase productivity, that's when everyone's like, "Oh gosh, I'm going to get laid off." So instead you have to increase output and take more market share, is what you do.Dwarkesh Patel (00:46:00):It's kind of like burning your bridges, right? So this is the only way.Austin Vernon (00:46:05):The process really requires complete buy-in, because a lot of your ideas for how you're going to standardize work content come from your line workers, because that's what they're doing every day. So if you don't have their buy-in, then it's going to fail. So that's why it's really necessary to have those kinds of clauses.Dwarkesh Patel (00:46:22):Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it was in your post where you said, if somebody makes their process more efficient, and therefore they're getting more work allotted to them, then obviously they're going to stop doing that. Right? Which means that, I don't know, do you ought to give more downtime to your best workers or something or the people who are most creative in your company?Austin Vernon (00:46:48):I was just going to say, if you're a worker at a plant, then a lot of times for that level of employee, actually small rewards work pretty well. A lot of people on drilling rigs used to give the guys that met certain targets $100 Walmart gift cards. So sometimes small, it's a reward, new ideas, stuff like that works.Austin Vernon (00:47:15):But because the whole system has to grow together, if you just improve one part of the process, it may not help you. You have to be improving all the right processes so normally it's much more collaborative. There's some engineer that's looking at it and like, "All right, this is where we're struggling," or "We have our defects here." And then you go get together with that supervisor and the workers in that area, then you all figure out what improvements could be together. Because usually the people already know. This is like, you see a problem at the top, and you're just now realizing it. Then you go talk to the people doing the work, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I tried to tell you about that two weeks ago, man." And then you figure out a better process from there.Dwarkesh Patel (00:47:58):Based on your recommendation, and Steven Malina's recommendation, I recently read The Goal. And after reading the book, I'm much more understanding of the value that consultants bring to companies, potentially. Because before you could think, “What does a 21 year old, who just graduated college, know about manufacturing? What are they going to tell this plant that they didn't already know? How could they possibly be adding value?” And afterwards, it occurred to me that there's so many abstract concepts that are necessary to understand in order to be able to increase your throughput. So now I guess I can see how somebody who's generically smart but doesn't have that much industry knowledge might be able to contribute to a plan and value consultants could be bringing.Austin Vernon (00:48:43):I think this applies to consultants or young engineers. A lot of times you put young engineers just right in the thick of it, working in production or process right on the line, where you're talking to the workers the most. And there's several advantages to that. One, the engineer learns faster, because they're actually seeing the real process, and the other is there's easy opportunities for them to still have a positive impact on the business, because there's $100 bills laying on the ground just from going up and talking to your workers and learning about stuff and figuring out problems they might be having and finding out things like that that could help you lower cost. I think there's a lot of consultants that... I don't know how the industry goes, but I would guess there's... I know Accenture has 600,000 employees. I don't know if that many, but it's just a large number, and a lot are doing more basic tasks and there are some people that are doing the more high level stuff, but it's probably a lot less.Dwarkesh Patel (00:49:51):Yeah. Yeah. There was a quote from one of those books that said, "At Toyota we don't consider you an engineer unless you need to wash your hands before you can have lunch." Yeah. Okay. So in your blog post about car manufacturing, you talk about Tesla. But what was really interesting is that in a footnote, I think you mentioned that you bought Tesla stocks in 2014, which also might be interesting to talk about again when we go to the market and alpha part. But anyways. Okay. And then you talk about Tesla using something called metal manufacturing. So first of all, how did you know in 2014 that Tesla was headed here? And what is metal manufacturing and how does it differ from the Toyota production system?Austin Vernon (00:50:42):Yeah. So yeah, I just was goofing around and made that up. Someone actually emailed me and they were like, "Hey, what is this metal manufacturing? I want to learn more about this." It's like, "Well, sorry, I just kind of made that up, because I thought it sounded funny." But yeah, I think it's really the idea that there's this guy, Dimming, and he found a lot of the same ideas that Toyota ended up implementing, and Toyota respected his ideas a lot. America never really got fully on board with this in manufacturing. Of course it's software people that are coming and implementing this and manufacturing now which is like the real American way of doing things.Austin Vernon (00:51:32):Because when you look at these manufacturing processes, the best place to save money and optimize is before you ever build the process or the plant. It's very early on. So I think if there's a criticism of Toyota, it's that they're optimizing too late and they're not creative enough in their production technology and stuff. They're very conservative, and that's why they have hydrogen cars and not battery cars, even though they came out with the Prius, which was the first large sales hybrid.Austin Vernon (00:52:12):So yeah, I think what Tesla's doing with really just making Dimming's ideas our own and really just Americanizing it with like, "Oh, well, we want to cast this, because that would be easier." Well, we can't, because we don't have an alloy. "We'll invent the alloy." I love it. It's great. Mostly, I love Tesla because they do such... I agree with their engineering principles. So I didn't know that the company would come to be so valuable. It's just, I was just always reading their stock reports and stuff so I was like, "Well, at least I need to buy some stock so that I have a justification for spending all this time reading their 10 Ks."Dwarkesh Patel (00:52:53):I want to get a little bit more in detail about the exact difference here. So lean production, I guess, is they're able to produce their cars without defects and with matching demand or whatever. But what is it about their system that prevents them from making the kinds of innovations that Tesla is able to make?Austin Vernon (00:53:16):It's just too incremental. It's so hard to get these processes working. So the faster you change things, it becomes very, very difficult to change the whole system. So one of the advantages Tesla has is, well, if you're making electric cars, you have just a lot less parts. So that makes it easier. And once you start doing the really hard work of basically digitizing stuff, like they don't have speed limit dials, you start just removing parts from the thing and you can actually then start increasing your rate of change even faster.Austin Vernon (00:53:55):It makes it harder to get behind if you have these old dinosaur processes. But I think there's a YouTube channel called The Limiting Factor, and he actually went into the detail of numbers on what it costs for Tesla to do their giga-casting, which saves tons of parts and deletes zillions of thousands of robots from their process. If you already have an existing stamping line and all that, where you're just changing the dyes based on your model, then it doesn't make sense to switch to the casting. But if you're building new factories, like Tesla is, well, then it makes sense to do the casting and you can build new factories very cheaply and comparatively and much easier. So there's a little bit of... they just have lots of technical data, I guess you could say, in a software sense.Dwarkesh Patel (00:54:47):Yeah. That's super interesting. The analogy is actually quite... it's like, Microsoft has probably tens of thousands of software engineers who are just basically servicing its technical debt and making sure that the old systems run properly, whereas a new company like Tesla doesn't have to deal with that. The thing that's super interesting about Tesla is like, Tesla's market cap is way over a trillion, right? And then Toyota's is 300 billion. And Tesla is such a new company. The fact that you have this Toyota, which is legendary for its production system, and this company that's less than two decades old is worth many times more, it's kind of funny.Austin Vernon (00:55:32):Yeah. I would say that, in that measure, I don't like market cap. You need to use enterprise value. These old car companies have so much debt, that if you look at enterprise value, it's not so jarring. Literally, I don't know, I can't remember what GM's worth, like 40 billion or something, and then they have $120 billion in debt. So their enterprise value is five times more than their market cap.Dwarkesh Patel (00:56:02):What is enterprise value?Austin Vernon (00:56:03):Enterprise value is basically what is the value of the actual company before you have any claims on it. It's the market cap plus your debt. But basically, if you're the equity holder and the company gets sold, you have to pay the debt first. So you only get the value of what's left over after the debt. So that's why market cap is... when Tesla has very little debt and a lot of market cap, and then these other guys have a lot of debt with less market cap, it skews the comparison.Dwarkesh Patel (00:56:34):Yeah, and one of the interesting things, it's similar to your post on software, is that it seems like one of the interesting themes across your work is automating processes often leads to decreased eventual throughput, because you're probably adding capacity in a place that you're deciding excess capacity, and you're also making the money part of your operation less efficient by have it interface with this automated part. It sounds like there's a similar story there with car manufacturing, right?Austin Vernon (00:57:08):Yeah. I think if we tie it back into what we were talking about earlier, automation promotes local optimization and premature optimization. So a lot of times it's better to figure out, instead of automating a process to make a really hard to make part, you should just figure out how to make that part easy to make. Then after you do that, then it may not even make sense to automate it anymore. Or get rid of it all together, then you just delete all those robots.Austin's Carbon Capture ProjectDwarkesh Patel (00:57:37):Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. So let's talk about the project that you're working on right now, the CO2 electrolysis. Do you want to explain what this is, and what your current approach is? What is going on here?Austin Vernon (00:57:55):Yeah, so I think just overall, electrofuels right now are super underrated, because you're about to get hopefully some very cheap electricity from solar, or it could be, maybe, some land. If we get really lucky, possibly some nuclear, geothermal. It'll just make sense to create liquid fuels, or natural gas, or something just from electricity and air, essentially.Austin Vernon (00:58:25):There's a whole spectrum of ways to do this, so O2 electrolysis is one of those. Basically, you take water, electricity, and CO2, and a catalyst. And then, you make more complex molecules, like carbon monoxide, or formic acid, or ethylene, or ethanol, or methane or methine. Those are all options. But it's important to point out that, right now, I think if you added up all the CO2 electrolyzers in the world, you'd be measuring their output and kilograms per day. We make millions of tons per day off of the products I just mentioned. So there's a massive scale up if it's going to have a wider impact.Austin Vernon (00:59:15):So there's some debate. I think the debate for the whole electrofuels sector is: How much are you going to do in the electrolyzer? One company whose approach I really like is Terraform Industries. They want to make methane, which is the main natural gas. But they're just making hydrogen in their electrolyzer, and then they capture the CO2 and then put it into a methanation reaction. So everything they're doing is already world scale, basically.Austin Vernon (00:59:47):We've had hydrogen electrolyzers power fertilizer plants, providing them with the Hydrogen that they need. Methanation happens in all ammonia plants and several other examples. It's well known, very old. Methanation is hydrogen CO2 combined to make water and methane. So their approach is more conservative, but if you do more in the electrolyzer, like I'm going to make the methane actually in the electrolyzer instead of adding this other process, you could potentially have a much simpler process that has less CapEx and scales downward better. Traditional chemical engineering heavily favors scaling. With the more Terraform processes, they're playing as absolutely ginormous factories. These can take a long time to build.Austin Vernon (01:00:42):So one of the things they're doing is: they're having to fight the complexity that creeps into chemical engineering every step of the way. Because if they don't, they'll end up with a plant that takes 10 years to build, and that's not their goal. It takes 10 years to build a new refinery, because they're so complex. So yeah, that's where I am. I'm more on the speculative edge, and it's not clear yet which products will be favorable for which approaches.Dwarkesh Patel (01:01:15):Okay, yeah. And you're building this out of your garage, correct?Austin Vernon (01:01:19):Yeah. So that's where electrolyzers... Everything with electric chemistry is a flat plate instead of a vessel, so it scales down. So I can have a pretty good idea of what my 100 square centimeter electrolyzer is going to do, if I make it quite a bit bigger. I have to worry about how my flow might interact in the larger one and make sure the mixing's good, but it's pretty straightforward because you're just making your flat plate a larger area. Whereas the scale, it is different from scaling a traditional chemical process.Dwarkesh Patel (01:01:56):I'm curious how cheap energy has to be before this is efficient. If you're turning it into methane or something like that, presumably for fuel, is the entire process energy positive? Or how cheap would energy, electricity you need to get before that's the case?Austin Vernon (01:02:18):The different products and different methods have different crossovers. So Terraform Industries, they're shooting for $10 a megawatt hour for electricity. But again, their process is simpler, a little less efficient than a lot of the other products. They also have better premiums, just worth more per ton than methane. So your crossover happens somewhere in between $10 and $20 a megawatt hour, which is... I mean, that's pretty... Right now, solar, it's maybe like $25. Maybe it's a little higher because payment prices have gone up in the last year, but I think the expectation is they'll come back down. And so, getting down to $15 where you start having crossovers for some of these products like ethanol or ethylene or methanol, it's not science fiction.Dwarkesh Patel (01:03:08):I think in Texas where I live, that's where it's at right? The cost of energy is 20 or something dollars per megawatt hour.Austin Vernon (01:03:16):Well, not this summer! But yeah, a lot of times in Texas, the wholesale prices are around $25 to $30.Dwarkesh Patel (01:03:26):Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of the actual details you said about how this works went over my head. So what is a flat plate? I guess before you answer that question, can you just generally describe the approach? What is it? What are you doing to convert CO2 into these other compounds?Austin Vernon (01:03:45):Well, yeah, it literally just looks like an electrolyzer. You have two sides and anode and a cathode and they're just smushed together like this because of the electrical resistance. If you put them far apart, it makes it... uses up a lot of energy. So you smush them together as close as you can. And then, you're basically just trading electrons back and forth. On one side, you're turning CO2 into a more complex molecule, and on the other side, you're taking apart water. And so, when you take apart the water, it balances out the equation, balances out your electrons and everything like that. I probably need to work on that elevator pitch there, huh?Dwarkesh Patel (01:04:31):I guess what the basic idea is, you need to put power in to convert CO2 into these other compounds.Austin Vernon (01:04:38):The inputs are electricity, water, and CO2, and the output is usually oxygen and whatever chemical you're trying to create is, along with some side reactions.Dwarkesh Patel (01:04:49):And then, these chemicals you mentioned, I think ethanol, methane, formic acid, are these all just fuels or what are the other uses for them?Austin Vernon (01:04:58):A lot of people are taking a hybrid approach with carbon monoxide. So this would be like Twelve Co… They've raised a lot of money to do this and 100 employees or something. You can take that carbon monoxide and make hydrogen, and then you have to send gas to make liquid fuels. So they want to make all sorts of chemicals, but one of the main volume ones would be like jet fuel.Austin Vernon (01:05:22):Let's see Formic acid is, it's the little fry of all these. It is an additive in a lot of things like preserving hay for animals and stuff like that. Then, ethanol there's people that want to... There's this company that makes ethylene, which goes into plastics that makes polyethylene, which is the most produced plastic. Or you can burn it in your car, although I think ethanol is a terrible vehicle fuel. But then you can also just make ethylene straight in the electrolyzer. So there's many paths. So which path wins is an interesting race to see.Dwarkesh Patel (01:06:13):The ability to produce jet fuel is really interesting, because in your energy superabundance paper, you talk about... You would think that even if we can electrify everything in solar and when it becomes super cheap, that's not going to have an impact on the prices to go to space for example. But I don't know. If a process like this is possible, then it's some way to in financial terms, add liquidity. And then turn, basically, this cheap solar and wind into jet fuel through this indirect process. So the price to send stuff to space or cheap plane flights or whatever––all of that goes down as well.Austin Vernon (01:06:52):It basically sets a price ceiling on the price of oil. Whatever you can produce this for is the ceiling now, which is maybe the way I think about it.Dwarkesh Patel (01:07:06):Yeah. So do you want to talk a little bit about how your background led into this project? This is your full-time thing, right? I don't know if I read about that, but where did you get this idea and how long have you been pursuing it? And what's the progress and so on.Austin Vernon (01:07:20):I've always loved chemical engineering, and I love working at the big processing plant because it's like being a kid in a candy store. If I had extra time, I'd just walk around and look at the plant, like it's so cool. But the plant where I worked at, their up time was 99.7%. So if you wanted to change anything or do anything new, it terrified everyone. That's how they earned their bonuses: run the plant a 100% uptime all the time. So that just wasn't a good fit for me. And also, so I always wanted my own chemical plant, but it's billions of dollars to build plants so that was a pretty big step. So I think this new technology of... there's a window where you might be able to build smaller plants until it optimizes to be hard to enter again.Dwarkesh Patel (01:08:21):And then, why will it become hard to enter again? What will happen?Austin Vernon (01:08:27):If someone figures out how to build a really cheap electrolyzer, and they just keep it as intellectual property, then it would be hard to rediscover that and compete with them.Dwarkesh Patel (01:08:38):And so, how long have you been working on this?Austin Vernon (01:08:42):Oh, not quite a year. But yeah, I actually got this idea to work on it from writing my blog. So when I wrote the heating fuel post, I didn't really know much about... There's another company in the space, Prometheus Fuels and I'm like, "Oh, this is an interesting idea." And then, I got talking to a guy named Brian Heligman, and he's like, "You should do this, but not what Prometheus is doing." And so, then I started looking at it and I liked it, so I've been working on it since.Dwarkesh Patel (01:09:08):Yeah. It's interesting because if energy does become as cheap as you suspect it might. If this process works, then yeah, this is a trillion dollar company probably, right? If you're going to get the patents and everything.Austin Vernon (01:09:22):I mean, maybe. With chemical plants, there's a certain limitation where your physical limitation is. There's only so many places that are good places for chemical plants. You start getting hit by transportation and all that. So, you can't just produce all the chemical for the entire world in Texas and transport it all around. It wouldn't work. So you're talking about a full, globe-spanning thing. At that point, if y