Nordic country on the Baltic Sea
POPULARITY
Categories
Iida Turpeinen is a literary scholar writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature. Her short stories exploring the relationship between humans and animals won the J. H. Erkko Young Writers' Competition in 2014. Her 2023 debut novel, Beasts of the Sea (Little, Brown, 2025), was published in Finland to wide acclaim, won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for best debut novel, and was a finalist for Finland's biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize. Translation rights have been sold in twenty-six territories to date. Iida is currently writer in residence at the Helsinki Natural History Museum writing her second novel not far from the skeleton of sea cow. Turpeinen lives in Helsinki, Finland. Recommended Books: Marlene Haushofer, The Wall Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This is the second of two lectures I delivered in Finland on Christian apologetics. This second part discusses how Christianity answers the fundamental questions and struggles of human life.
Send us a textAs if the fourth in a horror film series, this week TGTPTU goes to space! In Season 16, Ep 4 of Gray Matter (working title), Ken, Thomas, and Ryan discuss writer-director James Gray's AD ASTRA (2019) as their unpatented pincer movement continues along the auteur's eight-movie filmography. Cowritten with a television writer of meager IMDB credits, Gray's highest budget film to date sends astronaut and resting heart rate champion Roy Richard McBride (Brad Pitt) to the furthest reaches of the explored solar system in order to present him jump scares and (un)excusable homicides on his journey in a near future to retrieve his father played by Tommy Lee Jones who apparently can't get enough being in outer space (see Season 2, Ep 8 for our Space Cowboys coverage). Because this is a Gray joint, you know daddy and son are gonna have some emotional reckoning. What you might not be expecting are a moon car chase, falling from near orbit to Earth, or kickflipping a shuttle's flotsam while grinding a wicked rail of an asteroid belt (at least one of these happens, no further spoilers). Like last week's ep, Gray did not have final cut (i.e., the film rights; he might have had the professional, high-performance video editing software designed by Apple for macOS and iPadOS, although there is a strong possibility he had neither), which allowed for surprise research revelations by Ken, Tom, and Ryan and a wish for a hard media release of the Director's Cut audio track. Chris Nolan's late-career cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (listen back to Season 12 for more on the lenser so nice they named him twice) shoots this beautiful film. Ad Astra garnered Gray's first and to date only Academy nomination for Best Sound Mixing, which host Ken is in real time appalled by what films received Academy noms for Best Special Effects to the exclusion of this film's many practical VFX. Also, Ken struggles to name Robert McKee to really land a movie reference despite covering Adaptation in both the pod's Nicolas Cage (Season 3) and Meryl Streep (Season 8) coverage; Ryan has galaxy brain generational conflict ideas about the movie's themes; and Tom tries placing the flick among the good space movies of the past decade. Factoid: The film was released in France under the tile “Ad Astra,” which means “to the stars” in Latin and in Finland as “Ad Astra,” which also means “to the stars” in Latin. THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.comFacebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTUInstagram: https://instagram.com/thegoodthepodandtheugly?igshid=um92md09kjg0Bluesky: @goodpodugly.bsky.socialYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6mI2plrgJu-TB95bbJCW-gLetterboxd (follow us!):Podcast: goodpoduglyKen: Ken KoralRyan: Ryan Tobias
Minnesota's Attorney General tells us about his push to end the federal immigration crackdown there -- and about the dozens of other lawsuits his state has launched against the Trump administration. The families of two Trinidadian men killed when the U.S. bombed their boat near Venezuela mount their own legal fight against the Trump administration -- saying their loved ones had nothing to do with drug cartels. A farmer on the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire tells us he's thrilled by a landmark court ruling that orders the government to make a plan to protect him and his neighbours from the ever-present effects of climate change. We'll talk to a record collector who's been on a mission to find, and promote, the band whose old, beat-up album he found in a thrift store. A Kenyan climate activist tells us why she hugged a palm tree for three full days and nights. And also -- since we're all wondering -- how. After learning Pamela Anderson's grandfather was from Finland, our Scandinavian so-called allies risk an international incident -- by starting an ad campaign aimed exclusively at luring her there.As It Happens, the Wednesday Edition. Radio that urges Ms. Anderson not to cross the Finnish line.
On this Salcedo Storm Podcast: Zack Smith is a Senior Legal Fellow and Manager of the Supreme Court and Appellate Advocacy Program at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served for several years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Florida.
This week the episode is a vlog, and it's up on Youtube, all about my trip to Finland!! Check it out here This was my first real vacation in two years—no work, no laptop, just pure adventure—and I couldn't have picked a better place than Finland
Why Finland Is the World's Happiest Country - And What Kenya Can Learn by Capital FM
Happy Spooky Wednesday! Question: can you name one fun fact about Finland? No? Maybe it's because Finland… doesn't exist? At least that's what some people have come to believe, thanks to a conspiracy theory that spread on the internet. So if Finland isn't real, what's going on up there in Northern Europe? I guess you'll have to listen and find out!
In this episode, Divya chats with Pallavi Sethi, a Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment at the London School of Economics, where she works on climate misinformation and disinformation. Pallavi brings a unique perspective to this work, shaped by her background in advertising and media studies, as well as her experience in the fact-checking department for a large social media company. It was through these experiences that she began thinking more deeply about climate narratives and its influence on public perception. At the beginning of their conversation, they discuss some fundamental questions, such as what is climate misinformation and disinformation, what fact-checking is and how it intersects with debates around free speech, and, lastly, who bears responsibility for the information we see and share. A central thread in Pallavi's work is her commitment to empowering the public — not just by calling for stronger platform governance, but by building media literacy and awareness so people can better recognize and challenge misleading climate narratives themselves. Pallavi has done extensive work in this area and brings sharp and thoughtful insights to an incredibly complex issue. But what is truly commendable about her work is that it does not stop at diagnosis; it also points to meaningful responses, such as the media literacy programs for kids in Finland and the efforts of a climate coalition called Climate Action Against Disinformation. Pallavi discussed the role of Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a coalition of over 90 organizations working to make the information sphere safer regarding climate information. She explained that CAAD's collective efforts have been instrumental in putting climate disinformation on the global agenda, with information integrity appearing on the provisional agenda at COP30 for the first time. She highlighted that CAAD's strength lies in its ability to bring together diverse voices, making it harder for governments to ignore their demands. Sources: Information on Pallavi's bio & background: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/profile/pallavi-sethi/ Sethi, P (2024). Kemi Badenoch's climate scepticism: a growing problem for the Conservative Party and its voters in LSE Blogs. Sethi, P., & Ward, B. (2024) Reform UK's climate denial undermines democracy in LSE Blogs. Sethi, P (2024). Why countering climate misinformation must be a priority in Global Government Forum. Sethi, P. (2025). The myth of Meta's free speech places democracy at risk in LSE Blogs. Sethi, P (2025). Strategic Obstruction: How Europe's Far-Right Parties Are Blocking Urgent Climate Action. https://hopenothate.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/state-of-hate-2025.pdf Sethi, P (2025). Inside Trump's campaign to censor climate science. LSE Blogs
This is a talk I delivered at an apologetics conference in Finland in 2025 on the meaning crisis and how Christians can and should respond.
Alex Newman is an award-winning international freelance journalist, author, researcher, educator and consultant. He is senior editor for The New American as well as co-author of Crimes of the Educators, author of Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes and author of, Indoctrinating Our Children to Death. He's founder & CEO of Liberty Sentinel and a national syndicator of radio and TV programs including Behind the Deep State which airs on WVCY television & vcy.tv Last week, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum was held in Davos, Switzerland. The theme was "The Spirit of Dialogue" as a large number of world, political and executive leaders, as well as investors, attended the event. As you can imagine, the discussion points were many. So join Alex as he comments on new leadership at the World Economic Forum, the Board of Peace, Javier Milei of Argentina, the multi-polar vs. unipolar world order and more. Other discussion points were highlighted by audio clips from individuals such as President Trump who commented on Greenland and Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his mention of a "new world order," Finland's President Alexander Stubb on whether Finland/Europe can defend itself without help from the U.S., Al Gore on incentivizing farmers in the "right" direction and Yuval Noah Harari on artificial intelligence taking over religion. Callers wrapped up the broadcast as they presented their views on this critical issue.
Inside the Front‑Line of Resistance: Photojournalist Stephanie Keith on Visual Anthropology, ICE Protests & the Power of Community Observers
<目次>(0:00) Intro(0:34) Welcoming Peter Levin from Griffin GP(1:44) Griffin GP's crazy office(3:51) Finding gaps in the gaming market(6:50) Investing in both games and non-games(8:41) Arrested development and engagment in games(11:29) MMA and Japan(14:39) Going to In-N-Out with Akebono(15:57) Baseball has helped open Japanese representation(17:17) Disney's golden era and Michael Eisner's role(20:56) Mickey Mouse chatting with Mario without permission(21:59) Investing in repeat founders in gaming(25:54) Why are we seeing more gaming related movies?(35:08) Original versus sequels in gaming(38:20) How game evolves alongside fan interactivity(41:28) Finland's unique gaming ecosystem(45:01) Other talent hotspots and Japan's special market(48:58) What Japanese product would Peter sell in the US?(51:28) What game does Peter keep coming back to?Griffin Gaming Partners | Griffin is one of the world's leading venture funds focused exclusively on gaming, with $1.5 billion under management — investing at the intersection of content, social platforms, and software infrastructure.https://griffingp.com/Peter Levinhttps://griffingp.com/ggp-team/<About Off Topic>Podcast:Apple - https://apple.co/2UZCQwzSpotify - https://spoti.fi/2JakzKmOff Topic Clubhttps://note.com/offtopic/membershipX - https://twitter.com/OffTopicJP草野ミキ:https://twitter.com/mikikusanohttps://www.instagram.com/mikikusano宮武テツロー: https://twitter.com/tmiyatake1
In this week's episode, we digest a heavy couple of weeks of news, including the latest killing by ICE agents in Minneapolis. We ask how long can Reform in the UK continue to get away with their references to America, connections with the Trump administration, and leaning on the sort of DOGE style of efficiencies in government as their big offer in the Scottish elections? We look at Lesley's column and discussion of whether Scotland should have boycotted the World Cup if Trump had gone further with Greenland threats. We also look at Andy'King of the North' Burnham's knockback from standing, in the forthcoming by-election that would have let him jump in as a replacement Labour leader. Will it all just be brushed under the carpet? How successful will that be? Scottish Labour seems to have got a new tactic of ‘mandamification' of Anas Sarwar. We digest the attempts to ape the social media style of the New York Mayor with groovy videos, the walking, talking, jazzy music, and jumping camera shots. Will that work?Edinburgh Cameo screening of the Finland filmUnfortunately the Cameo double booked themselves. The February 20th screening of the Finland film HAS MOVED to Sunday March 22nd 5.15pm. TTicket-holders for the original date will be refunded but must buy a new ticket for the March date. Sorry about that. A new booking link for March 22nd will be online soon at https://lesleyriddoch.com/events.LinksScottish Labour is a party stuck in long-term declinehttps://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25789020.scottish-labour-party-stuck-long-term-decline/Gavin Newsome World Economic Forum Davoshttps://www.youtube.com/live/ObkKhPt1QM0?si=lzSpDW8FWWTrWB_UDeacon Blue 'appalled' after Malcolm Offord quotes Dignityhttps://www.thenational.scot/news/25800409.deacon-blue-appalled-malcolm-offord-quotes-dignity/ ★ Support this podcast ★
Alex Newman is an award-winning international freelance journalist, author, researcher, educator and consultant. He is senior editor for The New American as well as co-author of Crimes of the Educators, author of Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes and author of, Indoctrinating Our Children to Death. He's founder & CEO of Liberty Sentinel and a national syndicator of radio and TV programs including Behind the Deep State which airs on WVCY television & vcy.tv Last week, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum was held in Davos, Switzerland. The theme was "The Spirit of Dialogue" as a large number of world, political and executive leaders, as well as investors, attended the event. As you can imagine, the discussion points were many. So join Alex as he comments on new leadership at the World Economic Forum, the Board of Peace, Javier Milei of Argentina, the multi-polar vs. unipolar world order and more. Other discussion points were highlighted by audio clips from individuals such as President Trump who commented on Greenland and Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his mention of a "new world order," Finland's President Alexander Stubb on whether Finland/Europe can defend itself without help from the U.S., Al Gore on incentivizing farmers in the "right" direction and Yuval Noah Harari on artificial intelligence taking over religion. Callers wrapped up the broadcast as they presented their views on this critical issue.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has met with Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo in Beijing, calling for deeper cooperation in energy transition, agriculture, forestry, and innovation between the two countries.
The sauna is one of the most powerful, research-backed tools for improving cardiovascular health, brain function, athletic performance, and longevity.In this episode, Andrew breaks down the science behind sauna use, including why regular sauna sessions can reduce cardiovascular mortality by up to 50%, improve blood pressure and cholesterol, boost endurance performance, enhance recovery, and support long-term brain health.We also explore how heat exposure triggers heat shock proteins, growth hormone release, increased red blood cell production, and improved detoxification—plus why sauna works best after your workouts, not before.Whether you're an athlete, someone focused on longevity, or just curious about adding sauna use to your routine, this episode gives you clear, evidence-based guidance on how to use sauna safely and effectively.Chapters00:00 Saunas in the Winter01:57 Sauna history: Finland, Russia, Rome06:30 Sauna Boom in the US09:00 Cardiovascular Health12:39 Performance benefits: endurance, blood volume, RBCs + EPO22:00 Heat acclimation + cardio-respiratory fitness + recovery27:30 Muscle preservation: heat shock proteins + sarcopenia31:30 Brain & mental health: dementia risk, mood, BDNF + learning38:00 Cellular repair, detox, pain reliefThe Co-Movement Gym Podcast is supported by Native Path Supplements and Lombardi Chiropractic.
Make sure you're in a sterile environment, because it's Probin' Time! That's right. We at the Pit love to learn about things we grew up with but never knew or understood the origins of. So this week, based on the suggestion of the one and only Troy from the Outsider's Social Club, we are about to crack one open and sing our hearts out to some karaoke!Besides learning about the origins, we also travel the world, learning about the effects of this globetrotting trend. Everything from the karaoke world championships in Finland, back to the US to meet Bob & Bev, then all the way into the Philippines to look at the “My Way” killings. All that, and more!And if you enjoy what we are doing here at the Pit and would like to support us further, please check us out our patreon, where we have exclusive extended episodes! Today, we discuss the legend of Ringo's hog as well as Snoop Dogg's greatest song ever. EtsyLinktreeYoutubeAralesssong at end of episode: Vanna White - Wizdumb & Hash AdamsInstagram:@ruining_your.childhood@feral_williams@aralessbmn@blackmagicnoize206@strangeloopanimation
FILE 2. THE PURGE OF LITVINOV AND THE MOSCOW PACT. GUEST AUTHOR SEAN MCMEEKIN. On May 3, 1939, Stalin ordered the arrest of Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov and his Jewish staff, replacing him with Molotov to signal a diplomatic shift toward Nazi Germany,. This maneuver paved the way for the Moscow Pact, allowing Stalin to opportunistically seize territory in Poland, Finland, and the Baltics while Western powers remained passive,.1928
FILE 3. THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT AND TERRITORIAL AMBITION. GUEST AUTHOR SEAN MCMEEKIN. McMeekin explains that the 1939 appointment of Molotov signaled Stalin's shift toward collaboration with Hitler, leading to the Moscow Pact. Stalin used this alliance opportunistically to reclaim imperial Russian territories in Poland, Finland, and the Baltics, while British leadership, including Churchill, largely accepted these aggressive moves as a necessary buffer against Germany,.1943 TEHRAN
FILE 7. SPHERES OF INFLUENCE AND FAILED NEGOTIATIONS. GUEST AUTHOR SEAN MCMEEKIN. During 1940 negotiations in Berlin, Hitler attempted to align the Soviets with the Axis powers, but talks failed due to Stalin's insistence on expanding influence into Finland and the Balkans. Consequently, Hitler decided to invade Russia to break their economic stranglehold, while Soviet leadership simultaneously began preparing their own military deployments for a future war with Germany,.1931
In a social media post after his arrival in Beijing, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said his official visit to China aims to explore business opportunities and further promote Finnish exports to Asian markets.
SISU During the last days of World War II, a solitary prospector crosses paths with Nazis on a scorched-earth retreat in northern Finland. When the soldiers decide to steal his gold, they quickly discover they just tangled with no ordinary miner. Craig, Elisabeth and Cary Gordon discuss revenge fantasies, adaptable anti-heroes, heavy metal cruises and the movie “Sisu” on this week's Matinee Heroes! Show Notes 0:47 Craig, Elisabeth and guest Cary Gordon talk about heavy metal cruising. 7:01 Craig, Elisabeth and Cary discuss "Sisu". 28:05 Recasting 46:10 Double Feature 50:05 Final Thoughts 56:11 A preview of next week's episode "The Sound of Music." F#@K Nazis month end with a song or two with "The Sound of Music".
Lionel dives into a "surreal" broadcasting memory where he hosted a live show via car phone from a McDonald's drive-thru while a caravan of listeners honked behind him. The hour shifts to current events as callers dissect the NYC Mayor's praise for the "warmth of collectivism" and why the city votes the way it does. Plus, Lionel explores new scientific proof that humans—not glaciers—moved the stones at Stonehenge, and debates the purpose of NATO with a caller from Finland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The chairs were set. The bill was small. And Europe didn't show.
President Donald Trump says the United States needs to purchase Greenland for national security purposes and has threatened military action to take over the Arctic island. The people of Greenland say their country is not for sale. European allies are pushing back and have increased their military presence on the island. In response, Trump threatened to impose 10% tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland starting Feb. 1 and rising to 25% on June 1 if no deal is reached. He says the tariffs will stay in effect until the U.S. takes control of Greenland. Are these actions the beginning of the end of NATO? Will the president's actions destroy relationships with our allies? How will China and Russia take advantage of the looming divide? Political and legal analyst Dr. Eric Claville provides perspective on the U.S. role in world politics.
Donald Trump flew to Davos this morning, where he dissed Europe, before he embraced it, called NATO deadbeat before saying he was 100% behind it, and doubled down on his push to take Greenland. But to a collective sigh of relief, the US president said he would not use force to get it. Finland's President Alexander Stubb was in the front row for Trump's speech. Also on today's show: Former White House Trade Adviser Kelly Ann Shaw; Atlantic Staff Writer Charlie Warzel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
It's Wednesday, January 21st, A.D. 2026. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark and Adam McManus Nigerian Muslims kidnapped 160 people, many of whom are Christians Armed bandits raided three church services in Nigeria on Sunday. The suspected Fulani Muslim militants kidnapped over 160 people in Kaduna State. Morning Star News reports it could be the largest mass kidnapping of Christian farmers in the area. Rev. Joseph John Hayab is the chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria for the country's north. He told media outlets, “The terrorists invaded the churches while worship services were on. They held the worshippers hostage and marched them out into the bushes.” An eyewitness told TruthNigeria, “It was around 10 a.m. on Sunday. I was in our Evangelical Church Winning All church when we suddenly heard gunshots everywhere. The gunmen were shouting that everyone should lie down or be killed.” In addition, he said some of the assailants wore black robes with black head turbans, and others were outfitted with “shabby-looking Nigerian Army camouflage uniforms.” The man and his 10-year-old son escaped through a window while the Muslim assailants were forcing the congregation out. Sadly, local police are acting as if nothing happened. Psalm 14:4 asks, “Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up My people as they eat bread, and do not call on the LORD?” UK court: Men not allowed in female changing room A court in the United Kingdom ruled against a hospital's transgender policy last week. The landmark ruling said that Darlington Memorial Hospital discriminated against eight female nurses. The nurses simply objected to a man, pretending to be a woman, from using their changing room. The Christian Legal Centre supported the nurses in the case. Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of the Christian Legal Centre, commented, “The [National Health System] and the government should now give up their sabotage of clear judicial decisions and abide by the law which acknowledges that men are men and women are women.” Britain tracks new Christian songs Britain's Official Charts Company is launching a new official singles chart for Christian music this month. AStepFWD, the organization behind the U.K. Christian Charts, has partnered with the Official Charts Company to introduce the Official Christian & Gospel Singles Chart. Christian Today reports the chart will “formally recognize the growing impact of faith-based music within the wider U.K. music landscape.” 10,000 Christians gather in France's March for Life Around 10,000 people gathered in Paris on Sunday for France's annual March for Life. AUDIO: (Marchers chanting for life in French.) The event highlighted opposition to legislation that would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide. Listen to this testimony from a French marcher through a translator. POST-ABORTIVE WOMAN: “I had an abortion under circumstances where my fiancé forced me to do it so that we could get married, and it literally broke me. But God saved me. God healed me and helped me rebuild my life and turned the worst event of my life into a source of greater strength.” Marie-Lys Pellissier is the spokeswoman for the March for Life in France. The 24-year-old said, “Going out into the street seems essential to us. It is the only moment in the year when we can publicly express our opposition to abortion and euthanasia and propose concrete solutions. The rest of the time, the media never give us the floor.” Trump announces tariffs against goods from Denmark On Saturday, President Donald Trump announced tariffs on all goods from Denmark. President Trump said the tariff will be in force “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.” The 10% tariff will also apply to all goods from Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. 70% of Americans diagnosed with cancer survive More Americans are surviving cancer, according to new findings from the American Cancer Society. The report found the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined reached 70% for people diagnosed during 2015-2021. That's up from about 50% in the 1970s. The survival rates for people diagnosed with more fatal cancers is up significantly as well from the 1990s. Gallup poll: Americans trust nurses, not telemarketers Gallup released their latest Honesty and Ethics Survey of the professions that Americans trust the most. U.S. adults have the most trust in nurses, military veterans, medical doctors, and pharmacists. They have the least trust in members of Congress and telemarketers. Only 27% of Americans have high levels of trust in clergy, down from 64% in 2001. Hoosier quarterback gives glory to God And finally, the Indiana Hoosiers won their first college football national championship on Monday. ANNOUNCER: “He's gonna take off and run. Mendoza weaves his way first and diving toward the end zone. Touchdown! A century of futility is forgotten. The Indiana Hoosiers are the kings of college football. The 2026 college football national champions: Coach Curt Cignetti and the Indiana Hoosiers!” The Hoosiers beat the Miami Hurricanes 27 to 21 to cap off an undefeated season. The team's historic victory represents a turnaround led by head coach Curt Cignetti over the past two years. For decades, the Hoosiers were known as the “losingest team” in college football. Members of the tight-knit team are now known for sharing their faith. Quarterback Fernando Mendoza is an outspoken Christian who also won the Heisman Trophy last year, college football's top individual award. Listen to his comments after the championship victory. MENDOZA: “This victory is so sweet for everybody, for the entire Hoosier nation, but also it's super sweet for myself. I was a two-star recruit coming out of high school. I got declined to walk on offer to the University of Miami. Full circle moment here. Playing in Miami for all the friends and family. I can't thank Coach [Curt] Cignetti enough, and Coach [Chandler] Whitmer and Coach [Ola] Adams for taking a chance on me. I just give all the glory to God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31 says, "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Close And that's The Worldview on this Wednesday, January 21st, in the year of our Lord 2026. Follow us on X or subscribe for free by Spotify, Amazon Music, or by iTunes or email to our unique Christian newscast at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.
In this episode, we explore The Fountainhead, book collections, thrifting, director's cuts, Johnny Appleseed, Thomas Kinkade, Tom of Finland, Noise, and we predict what 2026 has in store.Listen to the Jortscenter Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ioAsKKw7AhdJ0cCrasqfH?si=6c2cef121c3a4a9aJoin our Peloton! https://www.patreon.com/JortsCenterFacebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/342135897580300Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/jortscenterFollow us on Twitter:@JortsCenterPod Will is @wapplehouse Josh is @otherjrobbins Ryan is @ryhanbeard Vic is @DokktorvikktorZack is @ZackVanNus
Whether you’re a seasoned team member or preparing for your first trip, short-term mission trips have the potential to make a meaningful global impact. In this conversation, we’ll highlight five key principles that help ensure our efforts contribute to lasting, sustainable change in the communities we serve.
Ari Huusela is an aircraft mechanic and commercial airline pilot from Helsinki, Finland. He did not start sailing until the age of 24, but went on to become the first person from the Nordic countries to have finished the brutal Vendee globe round the world race. During the race he became known as the Super happy sailor thanks to his positive energy and optimism. He joins August remotely from the Norwegian Arctic, where he is skiing out of his Campervan. -- Support the podcast & become a member of The Quarterdeck, where Andy, August & Mia dive deep on the art of seam'nship. Nerd out with us on our members-only forum and talk boats, gear, safety-at-sea, meet like-minded sailors, find crew, and more. Check it out on quarterdeck.59-north.com. See you there! -- This season of ON THE WIND is supported by our friends at Offshore Passage Opportunities and Rutgerson Marin. Support the show by supporting our sponsors!
We are a year into US President Trump's second term. He says he will tell European leaders "we have to have" Greenland at this week's forum in Davos, Switzerland and impose tariffs if they oppose him. Trump regularly hailed himself as the anti-war president on the campaign trail - and he's described himself since as the "president of peace" - but there are some who accuse him of waging a "war on women" since taking office. So, after a year back in the White House, how have the policies of President Trump's administration impacted women? Nuala McGovern is joined by Anne McElvoy, an executive editor at Politico and Jennifer Ewing, Spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK. Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, the eldest son of the Beckhams, has said that he is not in touch with his family and does not want to reconcile with them. We don't all live our family lives on social media, but most of us do have moments when we question whether our relationships with them are good for us. How do you know when you've reached the point when the right thing to do could be to walk away? Eilidh Dorgan and psychotherapist Dr Sara Young discuss. More than 90% of medicines have never been tested in pregnancy, leaving millions of women worldwide facing an impossible choice, go without treatment, or take medication you're not certain is safe for your baby. The World Health Organisation is preparing to work with scientists, doctors and drug developers on what could be the biggest shift in decades, rethinking whether pregnant women should take part in drugs trials. Nuala talks to Martina Penazzato from the Science for Health Department at the World Health Organization (WHO) and Dr Teesta Dey, Maternal Technical Consultant at the World Health Organization and a Maternal Health Researcher at the University of Liverpool.Caroline Mitchell spent almost 10 years working for the police, including as a detective in the Criminal Investigation Department, before becoming a full-time writer. Her latest novel, The Ice Angels, has tinges of the Nordic-noir genre and is the first of a series featuring Elea, a Finnish detective whose daughter went missing 10-years earlier. She tells Nuala about the importance of writing for her and why the cityscape of Lincoln and Finland feeds into her work. This programme has been edited since broadcast.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Andrea Kidd
According to Finnish legend, a peasant farmer named Lalli murdered the Christian missionary Bishop Henry on the ice of lake Köyliönjärvi on January 20, 1156, dispatching him with an axe blow to the head. It is fair to say things didn't go terribly well for Lalli after that. He met a gruesome fate that takes various forms depending on the tale you read, but in general Lalli takes the bishop's mitre to wear and when he tries to remove it, it tears his scalp off. The bishop, meanwhile, fared rather better posthumously, going on to become Saint Henry. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly discuss which bits of the tale are true; explain why the real villain of the story is Lalli's wife; and discover that the 11th greatest Finn was a four-time Olympic gold medalist, who is also known for his later ill-advised careers as a singer and stripper. Further Reading: • ‘The axe of Lalli and the cap of St. Henry – a view from Finland' (Routledge, 2020): https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429053726-3_26/axe-lalli-cap-st-henry-view-finland-miikka-tamminen • ‘The Murder of Saint Henry, Crusader Bishop of Finland' (Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2016): https://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/33154?lang=en#:~:text=The%20so%2Dcalled%20'First%20Finnish,and%20its%20motive%20was%20revenge • ‘Murdering Bishop Henry – Finland's First Martyr' (Finnish Mythology with Antti Palosaari, 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDJrsEvwmHI #Medieval #Strange #Finland Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Gideon speaks to Finland's president about how to resolve the stand-off between Europe and the US over Greenland. Alexander Stubb describes the dispute as the "most difficult issue he has faced since taking office", arguing that discreet “back office” diplomacy, rather than public grandstanding, is the best way forward. He also touches on Ukraine, applauding the transatlantic alliance's achievements so far but cautioning that the Greenland row is beginning to sap momentum from efforts to advance peace talks.. Clips: DWS; BBCFree links to read more on this topic:Greenland is ground zero for Arctic ‘Great Game'How the Greenland deployment of a few European troops enraged Donald TrumpTrump's Arctic ambitions torch the most important US asset Russia knocks out power, heating and water to Ukraine's freezing capitalSubscribe to The Rachman Review wherever you get your podcasts - please listen, rate and subscribePresented by Gideon Rachman. Produced by Fiona Symon. Sound design is by Breen Turner and the executive producer is Flo Phillips.Follow Gideon on Bluesky or X @gideonrachman.bsky.social, @gideonrachmanRead a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
**Discussion of Finland coffee facts begins at 6:27****Discussion of conspiracy theory begins at 10:00**What if I told you one of the world's happiest, most peaceful countries… doesn't actually exist? I'm talking about the happiest country on earth, Finland. Land of saunas, coffee, Nokia phones, and endless lakes and forests. But what if this so-called nation was nothing more than a convenient illusion created to fuel Japan's love of Sushi and avoid any regulatory oversight? Today, we're diving into one of the internet's strangest conspiracy theories, the claim that Finland… isn't real. The land mass we see on maps? Not even real, that's just open Baltic ocean. And the people who claim to be Finnish? They're just residents of eastern Sweden or Norther Estonia led to believe they reside in Finland. We'll trace how this theory started, who supposedly benefits from it, and why thousands of people online actually believe it. Join us on another deep dive as we try to find out if Finland really exists.Send us a textSupport the showTheme song by INDA
Morse code transcription: vvv vvv Cancer patients warned for years about hospital water infections Why the US is buying icebreakers from Finland Teachers on supply list for years or leaving country due to job shortages Vicky Williamson Team GB cyclist on horrific crash and new life Andrew Rosindell quits Tories and defects to Reform UK Alzheimers finger prick blood test could transform diagnosis, experts say Credit score company encouraged me to borrow again when I was nearly debt free Newspaper headlines EU weighs 93bn retaliation to Trump and Raducanu makes fine start US believes its power matters more than international law, UN chief Ant nio Guterres tells BBC How crypto criminals stole 713 million
"I always know porn when I see it. I've NEVER been confused." A 'forever night' for Miami is on the horizon and Mike simply does not care what anyone else thinks. He's so locked in for tonight's game that he's leaving early for reasons no one on the show can actually understand. IT'S NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME DAY, BABY. Today's cast: Dan, Zaslow, Chris, Dave Dameshek, Jeremy, Lucy, and Mike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In this explosive episode, Charlie and I react to President Trump's stunning message to Norway's Prime Minister: because Norway “decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 wars,” he no longer feels “an obligation to think purely of Peace” — and now demands “Complete and Total Control of Greenland” from Denmark.From petty whining about the Nobel snub to threatening 10% tariffs (rising to 25%) on eight European allies (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, UK) unless they hand over Greenland — this is peak Trump chaos.We also discuss:-- Trump's childish, un-American pettiness-- Parallels to appeasement and loss of U.S. moral authority-- Hypotheticals: What if Trump actually invades Greenland?-- Domestic fallout: Minnesota ICE brutality, Insurrection Act threats, and normalizing cruelty-- Why appeasing authoritarians (at home or abroad) never works-- And MUCH more!Is America becoming the “ugly American”? Are we losing our exceptionalism? Watch as two NeverTrump conservatives grapple with the reality of Trump 2.0.Subscribe to Matt Lewis on Substack: https://mattklewis.substack.com/Support Matt Lewis at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattlewisFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/MattLewisDCTwitter: https://twitter.com/mattklewisInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattlewisreels/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVhSMpjOzydlnxm5TDcYn0A– Who is Matt Lewis? –Matt K. Lewis is a political commentator and the author of Filthy Rich Politicians.Buy Matt's books: FILTHY RICH POLITICIANS: https://www.amazon.com/Filthy-Rich-Politicians-Creatures-Ruling-Class/dp/1546004416TOO DUMB TO FAIL: https://www.amazon.com/Too-Dumb-Fail-Revolution-Conservative/dp/0316383937Copyright © 2026, BBL & BWL, LLC
Good morning 6 o'clockers! Welcome to 2026!! Today on the show, we're off to a strong start. We had Prime Minister Albo call through, Kyle told us about his trip to Santa's village in Finland, and one team member decided today was their last day on the show. It was our first Tradie Vs. Lady of the year, clean slate! Jackie also failed her New Year's challenge. See you again tomorrow! ☺️See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger Picture The EU/Germans are starting to see that the direction of the world has changed, they are now trapped in destroying the power infrastructure. Trump placed tariffs on EU, the EU thinks they can fight back, they already lost. The Fed is panicking, they keep repeating independence, in the end there will be no Fed. The [DS] is trying to keep their agenda on track and they are trying to maintain the old guard power structure. Trump is the process of dismantling the old guard power structure and the [DS] cannot stop it. Everything is at stake, the people must take back the power. Trump is leading the [DS] down the path to have an insurrection against the people of this country, trap set. Hold the line justice is coming, Trump is getting all the leverage. Economy German Chancellor Merz Admits Shutting Down Nuclear Energy Production Was a “Severe Strategic Mistake” Germany has a severe electricity shortage and cost problem, and it's getting worse. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently made the admission that shutting down the German nuclear power reactors was a “severe strategic mistake.” “To have acceptable market prices for energy production again, we would have to permanently subsidize energy prices from the federal budget,” Merz said, adding: “We can't do this in the long run.” “So, we are now undertaking the most expensive energy transition in the entire world,” Merz said with pronounced frustration. “I know of no other country that makes things so expensive and difficult as Germany.” Keep in mind, Germany represents the largest contributing economy in the European Union. The German industrial sector is the backbone of the European economic model. Source: theconservativetreehouse.com (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); very successfully, at that! Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land, especially since the National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake. On top of everything else, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question. Starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above mentioned Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland), will be charged a 10% Tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1st, 2026, the Tariff will be increased to 25%. This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland. The United States has been trying to do this transaction for over 150 years. Many Presidents have tried, and for good reason, but Denmark has always refused. Now, because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars are currently being spent on Security Programs having to do with “The Dome,” including for the possible protection of Canada, and this very brilliant, but highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency, because of angles, metes, and bounds, if this Land is included in it. The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them, including maximum protection, over so many decades. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2012565207730545125?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2012634968556523924?s=20 https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2012875286702899711?s=20 restrict US access to the EU market, potentially blocking US banks from EU procurement and targeting US tech giants. This trade weapon has never been used before. In short, yes—a potential trade war triggered by these actions would likely inflict more economic pain on the EU than the U.S., though both sides would suffer. The asymmetry stems from trade dependencies, market sizes, and broader leverage. Trump will counter the EU Raise the threatened tariffs beyond 25% (e.g., to 50-60% on key EU goods like autos, steel, or agriculture) to force concessions. He’s already signaled willingness to go higher if no Greenland deal materializes. Impose sanctions on specific EU sectors or companies, such as luxury goods (hurting France) or tech imports, while exempting allies who break ranks (e.g., if Italy or Eastern Europe hesitate on ACI). Broader Leverage: Link trade to NATO or security, threatening to reduce U.S. troop presence in Europe or cut funding unless EU backs off. He could also accelerate “Buy American” policies to boost domestic alternatives. Publicly dismiss the ACI as “weak” or “all talk” via X or statements, then push for bilateral deals with individual EU countries to divide the bloc (e.g., deals with the UK post-Brexit). If ACI activates, pursue WTO challenges or rally non-EU allies (e.g., Canada, Japan) against EU measures, while advancing U.S. Arctic strategy independently. https://twitter.com/FUDdaily/status/2012668421612183897?s=20 on stolen IP with fraudulent certification, and made with slave labour, while plundering the world’s oceans and polluting the planet like no other. Then as Europe deindustrialises and offshores its manufacturing to China (along with the knowledge economy that goes with it), it passively allows China to subvert its customs enforcement and tariff regime, and rolls out the red carpet for industrial scale data theft. Make no mistake. China IS at war with the West. This is an economic war that’s been going on for thirty years or more. But Western liberals would rather align with China because Orange man bad. That’s the mentality we’re dealing with here. For sure, China isn’t planning on invading the West, but they don’t need to – because we’re already handing over everything of value without a fight. https://twitter.com/OpenSourceZone/status/2012615143331352606?s=20 https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2012140279965401446?s=20 U.S. Economy Best Served by Independent Federal Reserve, Fed's Kashkari Says Kashkari says that the Fed's policy committee is focused on its economic goals as it deals with a complex scenario of a cooling labor market and inflation The U.S. economy is best served by having an independent Federal Reserve that executes monetary-policy decisions based only on data and analysis, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said in a virtual conversation with the Wisconsin Bankers Association. With a new Fed chair on the horizon, and increased pressure on the committee after it received subpoenas from the Justice Department late last week relating to Chair Jerome Powell's testimony about renovations of the central bank's headquarters in Washington, Kashkari said Wednesday that the Fed's policy committee is focused on its economic goals as it deals with a complex scenario of a cooling labor market and inflation that has remained above its 2% target. Source: wsj.com Journal call me to ask whether or not such an offer was made? I would have very quickly told them, “NO,” and that would have been the end of the story. Also, one was led to believe that I offered Jamie Dimon the job of Secretary of the Treasury, but that would be one that he would be very interested in. The problem is, I have Scott Bessent doing a fantastic job, A SUPERSTAR — Why would I give it to Jamie? No such offer was made there, or even thought of, either. The Wall Street Journal ought to do better “fact checking,” or its already strained credibility will continue to DIVE. Thank you for your attention to this matter! Political/Rights Order securing an EXCLUSIVE 4 hour Broadcast window, so this National Event stands above Commercial Postseason Games. No other Game or Team can violate this Time Slot!!! On the field, they are rivals, but on the battlefield they are America's unstoppable Patriots, defending our Country with tremendous Strength and Heart. We must protect the Tradition, and the Players, who protect us. Please let this serve as Notice to ALL Television Networks, Stations, and Outlets. God Bless America, and God Bless our great Army-Navy Game!!! President Donald J. Trump https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/2012590105265947114?s=20 enforcement are not only dangerous but also serious crimes. By putting law enforcement in danger and creating a conflagration of chaos, you are also risking your own life. https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/2012635139839520983?s=20 before protesters tried ripping him from the car to get him back on the street. “I just got stabbed by a crazie white commie leftist rioter today in Minnesota…” Lang said on X. “Plate carrier blocked it…” Horrific. https://twitter.com/JakeLang/status/2012691764251861167?s=20 https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2012583407557959872?s=20 of attention off the 18 Billion Dollar, Plus, FRAUD, that has taken place in the State! Don't worry, we're on it! DOGE https://twitter.com/RedWave_Press/status/2012640651855233169?s=20 below) Leavitt: “[Trump] said, ‘Make sure you guys don't cut the tape, make sure the interview is out in full.” Tony Dokoupil: “Yeah, we're doing it, yeah.” Leavitt: “He said, ‘If it's not out in full, we'll sue your a$$ off.'” https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2012692074336829815?s=20 Thread that reaffirm facts and separate facts from opinion. We want diversity of opinion. We don't want diversity of facts. That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government regulatory constraints… Geopolitical https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2012865218641277321?s=20 can therefore not, even symbolically, be passed on or further distributed,” they add. very successfully, at that! Nobody will touch this sacred piece of Land, especially since the National Security of the United States, and the World at large, is at stake. On top of everything else, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable. Therefore, it is imperative that, in order to protect Global Peace and Security, strong measures be taken so that this potentially perilous situation end quickly, and without question. Starting on February 1st, 2026, all of the above mentioned Countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland), will be charged a 10% Tariff on any and all goods sent to the United States of America. On June 1st, 2026, the Tariff will be increased to 25%. This Tariff will be due and payable until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland. The United States has been trying to do this transaction for over 150 years. Many Presidents have tried, and for good reason, but Denmark has always refused. Now, because of The Golden Dome, and Modern Day Weapons Systems, both Offensive and Defensive, the need to ACQUIRE is especially important. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars are currently being spent on Security Programs having to do with “The Dome,” including for the possible protection of Canada, and this very brilliant, but highly complex system can only work at its maximum potential and efficiency, because of angles, metes, and bounds, if this Land is included in it. The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them, including maximum protection, over so many decades. Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA https://twitter.com/ElectionWiz/status/2012627390527045862?s=20 no place in this context. Europeans will respond in a united and coordinated manner if they are confirmed. We will ensure respect for European sovereignty. It is in this spirit that I will speak with our European partner. https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/2012879305936621840?s=20 President Trump Announces New Tariffs Against “EU Leadership” Nations Attempting to Interfere in North American Strategic Defense and Greenland Negotiations Trump is telling the EU to quit talking and start actively being responsible for their own security. In the background Trump has bigger plans. Hans Mahncke has a solid take on the bigger picture: “The notion that America wants Greenland for its raw materials is either insanely ignorant or just engagement bait. Extracting anything in the Arctic is prohibitively expensive, and often physically impossible, with extreme cold, thick ice, equipment that won't function, and no roads, rail or ports to move anything once you have it. The real reason America needs Greenland is its immense geostrategic military value, which should be obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, especially anyone who has ever looked at a map from above, with the North Pole at the center. Sure, some tasks could be outsourced to NATO, but that alliance is on its last legs, burdened by too many countries with conflicting priorities, and has mainly served as a way for Europe to freeload on US security guarantees. Relying on it for American national security is reckless. It's far smarter to cut out the endless middlemen and take direct control.” (source) As also noted by Jim Ferguson: “Ursula von der Leyen just went on camera and declared that Greenland “belongs to Denmark and NATO” — directly rebuking President Trump. Let's translate that. This isn't about the Greenlandic people. This is about Brussels panicking because Trump is exposing the Arctic power game. Greenland controls: • the northern missile corridor • Arctic shipping lanes • and the gateway to North America That makes it one of the most important strategic territories on Earth. And Trump said the quiet part out loud: If the U.S. doesn't secure it, China or Russia will. Von der Leyen's response wasn't to protect the West, it was to protect EU control. She wrapped it in pretty words about “NATO unity” — but what she really meant was: Brussels gets a veto over American security. That's what this is about. Trump isn't breaking the alliance. he's breaking the illusion that unelected EU bureaucrats get to decide the future of the Arctic. Greenland is not a Brussels bargaining chip; it is the northern shield of the United States, and for the first time in decades, America has a president willing to say it. Ursula doesn't hate Trump because he's reckless, she hates him because he won't let Europe freeload on American security while selling the future to Beijing.” Source: theconservativetreehouse.com https://twitter.com/kadmitriev/status/2012621940402368862?s=20 War/Peace Iraq takes full control of air base after US withdrawal, defence ministry says U.S. forces have withdrawn from Iraq’s Ain al-Asad Airbase, which housed U.S.-led forces in Western Iraq, and the Iraqi army has assumed full control, the Iraqi defence ministry said on Saturday. In 2024, Washington and Baghdad reached an understanding, opens new tab on plans for the withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces from Iraq and a move towards a bilateral security relationship. Source: reuters.com As Chairman of the Board of Peace, I am backing a newly appointed Palestinian Technocratic Government, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, supported by the Board’s High Representative, to govern Gaza during its transition. These Palestinian leaders are unwaveringly committed to a PEACEFUL future! With the support of Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar, we will secure a COMPREHENSIVE Demilitarization Agreement with Hamas, including the surrender of ALL weapons, and the dismantling of EVERY tunnel. Hamas must IMMEDIATELY honor its commitments, including the return of the final body to Israel, and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization. As I have said before, they can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The people of Gaza have suffered long enough. The time is NOW. PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH. https://twitter.com/UnderSecE/status/2012860595121295443?s=20 the Union's project was unstoppable. Today, we are seeing that same spirit here: a relentless drive to push ahead with AI-scale growth and supply chain integration and investment. This is what Trump Time looks like. NONE of this would be possible without President Trump and Secretary Rubio's leadership! The work continues. Trump Appoints Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner, And Blair To Gaza ‘Board Of Peace’ The White House announced on Jan. 16 the names of members appointed to the Gaza Board of Peace, which President Donald Trump created as part of phase two of a U.S.-backed plan to end the war in Gaza. Among the “founding executive board” members are U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, presidential special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The board also includes private equity executive Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga, and U.S. national security adviser Robert Gabriel, according to a White House statement. The board, to be chaired by Trump, will oversee the Palestinian technocratic committee—also known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG)—which will be led by former Palestinian Authority official Ali Abdel Hamid Shaath. The White House said each of the members will be tasked with managing Gaza's “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization,” which it said are vital to the enclave's stability and long-term success. The administration also named Aryeh Lightstone and Josh Gruenbaum as senior advisers to manage the board's daily strategy and operations, and appointed Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat and former United Nations envoy to the Middle East, as the high representative for Gaza. Trump also tapped Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers to lead the International Stabilization Force, which will oversee security operations and the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials to Gaza. The administration also announced a separate 11-member executive board, comprising some of the founding members, which will support both the technocratic committee and Mladenov's office. In announcing the board's formation on Jan. 15, Trump said the United States will work with Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar to secure an agreement that will require Hamas to surrender all weapons and dismantle its tunnel network. “Hamas must immediately honor its commitments, including the return of the final body to Israel, and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization,” the president said. Source: zerohedge.com https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/2012227016418816311?s=20 https://twitter.com/RyanSaavedra/status/2012568999738163323?s=20 the slaughter of its people. His country is the worst place in the world to live because of failed leadership.” “The crime he has committed as the leader of a country is the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence on a scale that has never been seen before. To maintain the functioning of a country, even if that functioning is at the lowest possible level, a leader must focus on properly administering his country, as I do in the United States, rather than killing thousands of people to maintain control.” https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/2012703384986382564?s=20 Medical/False Flags [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2012657028783628755?s=20 Minnesota Governor Activates National Guard According to the Minnesota Dept of Public Safety, Governor Tim Walz has activated the national guard. However, in a statement on their X account the officials note, the guard “are not deployed to city streets at this time, but are ready to help support public safety, including protection of life, preservation of property and supporting the rights of all who assemble peacefully.” This is likely a proactive move to block President Trump from invoking the ‘insurrection act' to stop the chaos being fueled by the governor himself as well as professional leftists in the region. [SOURCE] . The Minnesota national guard are being called to duty as a chaos management operation. They are not being called up to stop the violence, merely facilitate the ongoing violent street protests. The national noticing, along with the riots and violence, continues…. Source: theconservativetreehouse.com President Trump's Plan US Ends Aid to Somalia After Locals Torch and Loot Warehouse Filled with 76 Tons of US-Donated Food The United States ended taxpayer-funded food aid to Somalia after local officials torched and looted the stockpiles of food stored in a local warehouse. The US State Department released a statement after the warehouse was destroyed. https://twitter.com/USForeignAssist/status/2008980437591355644?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2008980437591355644%7Ctwgr%5E31d6d49d23e10c7438fba10706fbb66143259707%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2026%2F01%2Fus-ends-aid-somalia-after-locals-torch-loot%2F policy for waste, theft, and diversion of life-saving assistance. Source: thegatewaypundit.com DOJ Launches a CRIMINAL Investigation into Renee Good's Widow for Her Alleged Role in ICE Self-Defense Shooting: Report The widow of Renee Good is now reportedly in legal trouble following her actions in this month's ICE self-defense shooting in Minneapolis. Department of Justice has launched a criminal investigation into Becca Good for allegedly impeding an ICE agent in the moments before her wife's death. The probe will focus on Becca's ties to far-left activist groups and her actions leading up to her wife's fatal shooting. n. NBC News reported: Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2011987701113786455?s=20 Trump Reportedly Puts OVER 1,000 Active Duty Soldiers on Standby For Deployment to Minnesota After Threatening to Invoke Insurrection Act – White House Responds As The Washington Post reported, the Trump Administration has ordered roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers to be on standby for deployment to Minnesota following the massive anti-ICE riots over the past several days. These riots have reached a new and dangerous level following the ICE self-defense shooting of leftist protester Renee Good. Here are more details on the possible deployment from The Post: Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2012873723376799902?s=20 https://twitter.com/TheStormRedux/status/2012887587396927854?s=20 of the United States. Foreign illegal aliens who broke into this country who then raped children, who committed human trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking – protected, shielded, sheltered, coddled, defended at every level by the leadership in Minnesota… Willfully aiding and abetting this violence.” Stephen Miller continued on to explain that it's all to protect their “mass migration scheme” because the illegal aliens are “the heart of the Democrat party's political power.” Deport the criminals and the D party loses their voting base. To @realDonaldTrump , pull the trigger. The American people stand behind you! https://twitter.com/WarClandestine/status/2012272658780434598?s=20 . The Military would be assisting in the deportation operation, and serving as both a physical and psychological deterrent for would-be rioters. And given that the Dems are using illegals to steal elections, this operation is literally a matter of NATSEC, so the usage of US MIL to expedite the process is more than justified. Trump will strike when the time is right. https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/2012878860732228047?s=20 Presidency but, when you think of it, neither did Joe Biden. The whole thing was RIGGED. There must be a price to pay, and it has got to be a BIG ONE! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP https://twitter.com/amuse/status/2012897466685763881?s=20 backing her challenge to Bill Cassidy and formalizing a long-simmering rift with RINO leadership in the Senate. The endorsement underscores Trump's push to remake the Senate with loyal America First fighters. The move could reshape multiple races, including in Texas, where Trump has signaled support for Ken Paxton as Sen. John Cornyn's campaign continues to falter. https://twitter.com/mattvanswol/status/2012586397442416715?s=20 https://twitter.com/AwakenedOutlaw/status/2011915642543525943?s=20 understand why he has to do what he’s doing, you will. Everyone will. https://twitter.com/Pat_Stedman/status/2012152603468034264?s=20 The emotionally incontinent on this website were screaming all year that Trump had to arrest people Day 1, not understanding this was a siege, and the route to long term political dominance lay in not only attriting the enemy before battle but developing the moral high ground to fight in the first place. The left’s choices now are lose slowly and get picked off one by one or throw it all on one last dice roll while you still have some assets to deploy. They are the ones who are desperate not Trump. And they are about to give him the political capital to deploy the military against them and destroy them utterly and completely – not just their networks, but their entire narrative. By the time it’s all over
Today we look at President Donald Trump's plans to impose further tariffs on European countries, including the UK, because of their oppostition to the US taking over Greenland.As well as the UK, Trump announced a 10% tariff on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. They would come into force on 1 February, but could later rise to 25% - and would last until a deal was reached.Laura and Paddy are joined by chief politial correspondent Henry Zeffman and The Sun on Sunday's political editor Kate Ferguson to talk through what it all means, and what it might do to Keir Starmer's ‘the special relationship' with Trump. They also talk about why the news might be a bit awkward for Nigel Farage and his Reform Party.You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers.You can join our Newscast online community here: https://bbc.in/newscastdiscordGet in touch with Newscast by emailing newscast@bbc.co.uk or send us a WhatsApp on +44 0330 123 9480.New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/4guXgXdNewscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC.The presenters were Laura Kuenssberg and Paddy O'Connell. It was made by Chris Flynn with Jem Westgate. The social producer was Sophie Millward. The technical producer was James Piper. The weekend series producer is Chris Flynn. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Over the Christmas break, Kyle took his family all the way to Finland. They had a blast but there was definitely a few hiccups. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
IWhat is our children's future? What skills should they be developing? How should schools be adapting? What will the fully functioning citizens and workers of the future look like? A look into the landscape of the next 15 years, the future of work with human and AI interactions, the transformation of education, the safety and privacy landscapes, and a parental playbook. Navigation: Intro The Landscape: 2026–2040 The Future of Work: Human + AI The Transformation of Education The Ethics, Safety, and Privacy Landscape The Parental Playbook: Actionable Strategies Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittIntroduction Welcome to Episode 72 of Tech Deciphered, about our children’s future. What is our children’s future? What skills should they be developing? How should school be adapting to AI? What would be the functioning citizens and workers of the future look like, especially in the context of the AI revolution? Nuno, what’s your take? Maybe we start with the landscape. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe Landscape: 2026–2040 Let’s first frame it. What do people think is going to happen? Firstly, that there’s going to be a dramatic increase in productivity, and because of that dramatic increase in productivity, there are a lot of numbers that show that there’s going to be… AI will enable some labour productivity growth of 0.1 to 0.6% through 2040, which would be a figure that would be potentially rising even more depending on use of other technologies beyond generative AI, as much as 0.5 to 3.4% points annually, which would be ridiculous in terms of productivity enhancement. To be clear, we haven’t seen it yet. But if there are those dramatic increases in productivity expected by the market, then there will be job displacement. There will be people losing their jobs. There will be people that will need to be reskilled, and there will be a big shift that is similar to what happens when there’s a significant industrial revolution, like the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century into the 20th century. Other numbers quoted would say that 30% of US jobs could be automated by 2030, which is a silly number, 30%, and that another 60% would see tremendously being altered. A lot of their tasks would be altered for those jobs. There’s also views that this is obviously fundamentally a global phenomenon, that as much as 9% of jobs could be lost to AI by 2030. I think question mark if this is a net number or a gross number, so it might be 9% our loss, but then maybe there’re other jobs that will emerge. It’s very clear that the landscape we have ahead of us is if there are any significant increases in productivity, there will be job displacement. There will be job shifting. There will be the need for reskilling. Therefore, I think on the downside, you would say there’s going to be job losses. We’ll have to reevaluate whether people should still work in general 5 days a week or not. Will we actually work in 10, 20, 30 years? I think that’s the doomsday scenario and what happens on that side of the fence. I think on the positive side, there’s also a discussion around there’ll be new jobs that emerge. There’ll be new jobs that maybe we don’t understand today, new job descriptions that actually don’t even exist yet that will emerge out this brave new world of AI. Bertrand SchmittYeah. I mean, let’s not forget how we get to a growing economy. I mean, there’s a measurement of a growing economy is GDP growth. Typically, you can simplify in two elements. One is the growth of the labour force, two, the rise of the productivity of that labour force, and that’s about it. Either you grow the economy by increasing the number of people, which in most of the Western world is not really happening, or you increase productivity. I think that we should not forget that growth of productivity is a backbone of growth for our economies, and that has been what has enabled the rise in prosperity across countries. I always take that as a win, personally. That growth in productivity has happened over the past decades through all the technological revolutions, from more efficient factories to oil and gas to computers, to network computers, to internet, to mobile and all the improvement in science, usually on the back of technological improvement. Personally, I welcome any rise in improvement we can get in productivity because there is at this stage simply no other choice for a growing world in terms of growing prosperity. In terms of change, we can already have a look at the past. There are so many jobs today you could not imagine they would exist 30 years ago. Take the rise of the influencer, for instance, who could have imagined that 30 years ago. Take the rise of the small mom-and-pop e-commerce owner, who could have imagined that. Of course, all the rise of IT as a profession. I mean, how few of us were there 30 years ago compared to today. I mean, this is what it was 30 years ago. I think there is a lot of change that already happened. I think as a society, we need to welcome that. If we go back even longer, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, let’s not forget, if I take a city like Paris, we used to have tens of thousands of people transporting water manually. Before we have running water in every home, we used to have boats going to the North Pole or to the northern region to bring back ice and basically pushing ice all the way to the Western world because we didn’t have fridges at the time. I think that when we look back in time about all the jobs that got displaced, I would say, Thank you. Thank you because these were not such easy jobs. Change is coming, but change is part of the human equation, at least. Industrial revolution, the past 250 years, it’s thanks to that that we have some improvement in living conditions everywhere. AI is changing stuff, but change is a constant, and we need to adapt and adjust. At least on my side, I’m glad that AI will be able to displace some jobs that were not so interesting to do in the first place in many situations. Maybe not dangerous like in the past because we are talking about replacing white job collars, but at least repetitive jobs are definitely going to be on the chopping block. Nuno Goncalves PedroWhat happens in terms of shift? We were talking about some numbers earlier. The World Economic Forum also has some numbers that predicts that there is a gross job creation rate of 14% from 2025 to 2030 and a displacement rate of 8%, so I guess they’re being optimistic, so a net growth in employment. I think that optimism relates to this thesis that, for example, efficiency, in particular in production and industrial environments, et cetera, might reduce labour there while increasing the demand for labour elsewhere because there is a natural lower cost base. If there’s more automation in production, therefore there’s more disposable income for people to do other things and to focus more on their side activities. Maybe, as I said before, not work 5 days a week, but maybe work four or three or whatever it is. What are the jobs of the future? What are the jobs that we see increasing in the future? Obviously, there’re a lot of jobs that relate to the technology side, that relate obviously to AI, that’s a little bit self-serving, and everything that relates to information technology, computer science, computer technology, computer engineering, et cetera. More broadly in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, that might actually be more needed. Because there is a broadening of all of these elements of contact with digital, with AI over time also with robots and robotics, that those jobs will increase. There’s a thesis that actually other jobs that are a little bit more related to agriculture, education, et cetera, might not see a dramatic impact, that will still need for, I guess, teachers and the need for people working in farms, et cetera. I think this assumes that probably the AI revolution will come much before the fundamental evolution that will come from robotics afterwards. Then there’s obviously this discussion around declining roles. Anything that’s fundamentally routine, like data entry, clinical roles, paralegals, for example, routine manufacturing, anything that’s very repetitive in nature will be taken away. I have the personal thesis that there are jobs that are actually very blue-collar jobs, like HVAC installation, maintenance, et cetera, plumbing, that will be still done by humans for a very long time because there are actually, they appear to be repetitive, but they’re actually complex, and they require manual labour that cannot be easily, I think, right now done by robots and replacements of humans. Actually, I think there’re blue-collar roles that will be on the increase rather than on decrease that will demand a premium, because obviously, they are apprenticeship roles, certification roles, and that will demand a premium. Maybe we’re at the two ends. There’s an end that is very technologically driven of jobs that will need to necessarily increase, and there’s at the other end, jobs that are very menial but necessarily need to be done by humans, and therefore will also command a premium on the other end. Bertrand SchmittI think what you say make a lot of sense. If you think about AI as a stack, my guess is that for the foreseeable future, on the whole stack, and when I say stack, I mean from basic energy production because we need a lot of energy for AI, maybe to going up to all the computing infrastructure, to AI models, to AI training, to robotics. All this stack, we see an increase in expertise in workers and everything. Even if a lot of this work will benefit from AI improvement, the boom is so large that it will bring a lot of demand for anyone working on any part of the stack. Some of it is definitely blue-collar. When you have to build a data centre or energy power station, this requires a lot of blue-collar work. I would say, personally, I’m absolutely not a believer of the 3 or 4 days a week work week. I don’t believe a single second in that socialist paradise. If you want to call it that way. I think that’s not going to change. I would say today we can already see that breaking. I mean, if you take Europe, most European countries have a big issue with pension. The question is more to increase how long you are going to work because financially speaking, the equation is not there. Personally, I don’t think AI would change any of that. I agree with you in terms of some jobs from electricians to gas piping and stuff. There will still be demand and robots are not going to help soon on this job. There will be a big divergence between and all those that can be automated, done by AI and robots and becoming cheaper and cheaper and stuff that requires a lot of human work, manual work. I don’t know if it will become more expensive, but definitely, proportionally, in comparison, we look so expensive that you will have second thoughts about doing that investment to add this, to add that. I can see that when you have your own home, so many costs, some cost our product. You buy this new product, you add it to your home. It can be a water heater or something, built in a factory, relatively cheap. You see the installation cost, the maintenance cost. It’s many times the cost of the product itself. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe it’s a good time to put a caveat into our conversation. I mean, there’s a… Roy Amara was a futurist who came up with the Amara’s Law. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and overestimate the effect in the long run. I prefer my own law, which is, we tend to overestimate the speed at which we get to a technological revolution and underestimate its impact. I think it’s a little bit like that. I think everyone now is like, “Oh, my God, we’re going to be having the AI overlords taking over us, and AGI is going to happen pretty quickly,” and all of that. I mean, AGI will probably happen at some point. We’re not really sure when. I don’t think anyone can tell you. I mean, there’re obviously a lot of ranges going on. Back to your point, for example, on the shift of the work week and how we work. I mean, just to be very clear, we didn’t use to have 5 days a week and 2 days a weekend. If we go back to religions, there was definitely Sabbath back in the day, and there was one day off, the day of the Lord and the day of God. Then we went to 2 days of weekend. I remember going to Korea back in 2005, and I think Korea shifted officially to 5 days a week, working week and 2 days weekend for some of the larger business, et cetera, in 2004. Actually, it took another whatever years for it to be pervasive in society. This is South Korea, so this is a developed market. We might be at some point moving to 4 days a week. Maybe France was ahead of the game. I know Bertrand doesn’t like this, the 35-hour week. Maybe we will have another shift in what defines the working week versus not. What defines what people need to do in terms of efficiency and how they work and all of that. I think it’s probably just going to take longer than we think. I think there’re some countries already doing it. I was reading maybe Finland was already thinking about moving to 4 days a week. There’re a couple of countries already working on it. Certainly, there’re companies already doing it as well. Bertrand SchmittYeah, I don’t know. I’m just looking at the financial equation of most countries. The disaster is so big in Western Europe, in the US. So much debt is out that needs to get paid that I don’t think any country today, unless there is a complete reversal of the finance, will be able to make a big change. You could argue maybe if we are in such a situation, it might be because we went too far in benefits, in vacation, in work days versus weekends. I’m not saying we should roll back, but I feel that at this stage, the proof is in the pudding. The finance of most developed countries are broken, so I don’t see a change coming up. Potentially, the other way around, people leaving to work more, unfortunately. We will see. My point is that AI will have to be so transformational for the productivity for countries, and countries will have to go back to finding their ways in terms of financial discipline to reach a level where we can truly profit from that. I think from my perspective, we have time to think about it in 10, 20 years. Right now, it’s BS at this stage of this discussion. Nuno Goncalves PedroYeah, there’s a dependency, Bertrand, which is there needs to be dramatic increases in productivity that need to happen that create an expansion of economy. Once that expansion is captured by, let’s say, government or let’s say by the state, it needs to be willingly fed back into society, which is not a given. There’re some governments who are going to be like, “No, you need to work for a living.” Tough luck. There’re no handouts, there’s nothing. There’s going to be other governments that will be pressured as well. I mean, even in a more socialist Europe, so to speak. There’re now a lot of pressures from very far-right, even extreme positions on what people need to do for a living and how much should the state actually intervene in terms of minimum salaries, et cetera, and social security. To your point, the economies are not doing well in and of themselves. Anyway, there would need to be tremendous expansion of economy and willingness by the state to give back to its citizens, which is also not a given. Bertrand SchmittAnd good financial discipline as well. Before we reach all these three. Reaping the benefits in a tremendous way, way above trend line, good financial discipline, and then some willingness to send back. I mean, we can talk about a dream. I think that some of this discussion was, in some ways, to have a discussion so early about this. It’s like, let’s start to talk about the benefits of the aeroplane industries in 1915 or 1910, a few years after the Wright brothers flight, and let’s make a decision based on what the world will be in 30 years from now when we reap this benefit. This is just not reasonable. This is not reasonable thinking. I remember seeing companies from OpenAI and others trying to push this narrative. It was just political agenda. It was nothing else. It was, “Let’s try to make look like AI so nice and great in the future, so you don’t complain on the short term about what’s happening.” I don’t think this is a good discussion to have for now. Let’s be realistic. Nuno Goncalves PedroJust for the sake of sharing it with our listeners, apparently there’re a couple of countries that have moved towards something a bit lower than 5 days a week. Belgium, I think, has legislated the ability for you to compress your work week into 4 days, where you could do 10 hours for 4 days, so 40 hours. UAE has some policy for government workers, 4.5 days. Iceland has some stuff around 35 to 36 hours, which is France has had that 35 hour thing. Lithuania for parents. Then just trials, it’s all over the shop. United Kingdom, my own Portugal, of course, Germany, Brazil, and South Africa, and a bunch of other countries, so interesting. There’s stuff going on. Bertrand SchmittFor sure. I mean, France managed to bankrupt itself playing the 75 hours work week since what, 2000 or something. I mean, yeah, it’s a choice of financial suicide, I would say. Nuno Goncalves PedroWonderful. The Future of Work: Human + AI Maybe moving a little bit towards the future of work and the coexistence of work of human and AI, I think the thesis that exists a little bit in the market is that the more positive thesis that leads to net employment growth and net employment creation, as we were saying, there’s shifting of professions, they’re rescaling, and there’s the new professions that will emerge, is the notion that human will need to continue working alongside with machine. I’m talking about robots, I’m also talking about software. Basically software can’t just always run on its own, and therefore, software serves as a layer of augmentation, that humans become augmented by AI, and therefore, they can be a lot more productive, and we can be a lot more productive. All of that would actually lead to a world where the efficiencies and the economic creation are incredible. We’ll have an unparalleled industrial evolution in our hands through AI. That’s one way of looking at it. We certainly at Chameleon, that’s how we think through AI and the AI layers that we’re creating with Mantis, which is our in-house platform at Chameleon, is that it’s augmenting us. Obviously, the human is still running the show at the end, making the toughest decisions, the more significant impact with entrepreneurs that we back, et cetera. AI augments us, but we run the show. Bertrand SchmittI totally agree with that perspective that first AI will bring a new approach, a human plus AI. Here in that situation, you really have two situations. Are you a knowledgeable user? Do you know your field well? Are you an expert? Are you an IT expert? Are you a medical doctor? Do you find your best way to optimise your work with AI? Are you knowledgeable enough to understand and challenge AI when you see weird output? You have to be knowledgeable in your field, but also knowledgeable in how to handle AI, because even experts might say, “Whatever AI says.” My guess is that will be the users that will benefit most from AI. Novice, I think, are in a bit tougher situation because if you use AI without truly understanding it, it’s like laying foundations on sand. Your stuff might crumble down the way, and you will have no clue what’s happening. Hopefully, you don’t put anyone in physical danger, but that’s more worrisome to me. I think some people will talk about the rise of vibe coding, for instance. I’ve seen AI so useful to improve coding in so many ways, but personally, I don’t think vibe coding is helpful. I mean, beyond doing a quick prototype or some stuff, but to put some serious foundation, I think it’s near useless if you have a pure vibe coding approach, obviously to each their own. I think the other piece of the puzzle, it’s not just to look at human plus AI. I think definitely there will be the other side as well, which is pure AI. Pure AI replacement. I think we start to see that with autonomous cars. We are close to be there. Here we’ll be in situation of maybe there is some remote control by some humans, maybe there is local control. We are talking about a huge scale replacement of some human activities. I think in some situation, let’s talk about work farms, for instance. That’s quite a special term, but basically is to describe work that is very repetitive in nature, requires a lot of humans. Today, if you do a loan approval, if you do an insurance claim analysis, you have hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are doing this job in Europe, in the US, or remotely outsourced to other countries like India. I think some of these jobs are fully at risk to be replaced. Would it be 100% replacement? Probably not. But a 9:1, 10:1 replacement? I think it’s definitely possible because these jobs have been designed, by the way, to be repetitive, to follow some very clear set of rules, to improve the rules, to remove any doubt if you are not sure. I think some of these jobs will be transformed significantly. I think we see two sides. People will become more efficient controlling an AI, being able to do the job of two people at once. On the other side, we see people who have much less control about their life, basically, and whose job will simply disappear. Nuno Goncalves PedroTwo points I would like to make. The first point is we’re talking about a state of AI that we got here, and we mentioned this in previous episodes of Tech Deciphered, through brute force, dramatically increased data availability, a lot of compute, lower network latencies, and all of that that has led us to where we are today. But it’s brute force. The key thing here is brute force. Therefore, when AI acts really well, it acts well through brute force, through seeing a bunch of things that have happened before. For example, in the case of coding, it might still outperform many humans in coding in many different scenarios, but it might miss hedge cases. It might actually not be as perfect and as great as one of these developers that has been doing it for decades who has this intuition and is a 10X developer. In some ways, I think what got us here is not maybe what’s going to get us to the next level of productivity as well, which is the unsupervised learning piece, the actually no learning piece, where you go into the world and figure stuff out. That world is emerging now, but it’s still not there in terms of AI algorithms and what’s happening. Again, a lot of what we’re seeing today is the outcome of the brute force movement that we’ve had over the last decade, decade and a half. The second point I’d like to make is to your point, Bertrand, you were going really well through, okay, if you’re a super experienced subject-matter expert, the way you can use AI is like, wow! Right? I mean, you are much more efficient, right? I was asked to do a presentation recently. When I do things in public, I don’t like to do it. If it’s a keynote, because I like to use my package stuff, there’s like six, seven presentations that I have prepackaged, and I can adapt around that. But if it’s a totally new thing, I don’t like to do it as a keynote because it requires a lot of preparation. Therefore, I’m like, I prefer to do a fire set chat or a panel or whatever. I got asked to do something, a little bit what is taking us to this topic today around what’s happening to our children and all of that is like, “God! I need to develop this from scratch.” The honest truth is if you have domain expertise around many areas, you can do it very quickly with the aid of different tools in AI. Anything from Gemini, even with Nana Banana, to ChatGPT and other tools that are out there for you and framing, how would you do that? But the problem then exists with people that are just at the beginning of their careers, people that have very little expertise and experience, and people that are maybe coming out of college where their knowledge is mostly theoretical. What happens to those people? Even in computer engineering, even in computer science, even in software development, how do those people get to the next level? I think that’s one of the interesting conversations to be had. What happens to the recent graduate or the recent undergrad? How do those people get the expertise they need to go to the next level? Can they just be replaced by AI agents today? What’s their role in terms of the workforce, and how do they fit into that workforce? Bertrand SchmittNo, I mean, that’s definitely the biggest question. I think that a lot of positions, if you are really knowledgeable, good at your job, if you are that 10X developer, I don’t think your job is at risk. Overall, you always have some exceptions, some companies going through tough times, but I don’t think it’s an issue. On the other end, that’s for sure, the recent new graduates will face some more trouble to learn on their own, start their career, and go to that 10X productivity level. But at the same time, let’s also not kid ourselves. If we take software development, this is a profession that increase in number of graduates tremendously over the past 30 years. I don’t think everyone basically has the talent to really make it. Now that you have AI, for sure, the bar to justify why you should be there, why you should join this company is getting higher and higher. Being just okay won’t be enough to get you a career in IT. You will need to show that you are great or potential to be great. That might make things tough for some jobs. At the same time, I certainly believe there will be new opportunities that were not there before. People will have to definitely adjust to that new reality, learn and understand what’s going on, what are the options, and also try to be very early on, very confident at using AI as much as they can because for sure, companies are going to only hire workers that have shown their capacity to work well with AI. Nuno Goncalves PedroMy belief is that it generates new opportunities for recent undergrads, et cetera, of building their own microbusinesses or nano businesses. To your point, maybe getting jobs because they’ll be forced to move faster within their jobs and do less menial and repetitive activities and be more focused on actual dramatic intellectual activities immediately from the get go, which is not a bad thing. Their acceleration into knowledge will be even faster. I don’t know. It feels to me maybe there’s a positivity to it. Obviously, if you’ve stayed in a big school, et cetera, that there will be some positivity coming out of that. The Transformation of Education Maybe this is a good segue to education. How does education change to adapt to a new world where AI is a given? It’s not like I can check if you’re faking it on your homework or if you’re doing a remote examination or whatever, if you’re using or not tools, it’s like you’re going to use these tools. What happens in that case, and how does education need to shift in this brave new world of AI augmentation and AI enhancements to students? Bertrand SchmittYes, I agree with you. There will be new opportunities. I think people need to be adaptable. What used to be an absolute perfect career choice might not be anymore. You need to learn what changes are happening in the industry, and you need to adjust to that, especially if you’re a new graduate. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe we’ll talk a little bit about education, Bertrand, and how education would fundamentally shift. I think one of the things that’s been really discussed is what are the core skills that need to be developed? What are the core skills that will be important in the future? I think critical thinking is probably most important than ever. The ability to actually assimilate information and discern which information is correct or incorrect and which information can lead you to a conclusion or not, for example, I think is more important than ever. The ability to assimilate a bunch of pieces of information, make a decision or have an insight or foresight out of that information is very, very critical. The ability to be analytical around how you look at information and to really distinguish what’s fact from what’s opinion, I think is probably quite important. Maybe moving away more and more from memorisation from just cramming information into your brain like we used to do it in college, you have to know every single algorithm for whatever. It’s like, “Who gives a shit? I can just go and search it.” There’s these shifts that are not simple because I think education, in particular in the last century, has maybe been too focused on knowing more and more knowledge, on learning this knowledge. Now it’s more about learning how to process the knowledge rather than learning how to apprehend it. Because the apprehension doesn’t matter as much because you can have this information at any point in time. The information is available to you at the touch of a finger or voice or whatever. But the ability to then use the information to do something with it is not. That’s maybe where you start distinguishing the different level degrees of education and how things are taught. Bertrand SchmittHonestly, what you just say or describe could apply of the changes we went through the past 30 years. Just using internet search has for sure tremendously changed how you can do any knowledge worker job. Suddenly you have the internet at your fingertips. You can search about any topics. You have direct access to a Wikipedia or something equivalent in any field. I think some of this, we already went through it, and I hope we learned the consequence of these changes. I would say what is new is the way AI itself is working, because when you use AI, you realise that it can utter to you complete bullshit in a very self-assured way of explaining something. It’s a bit more scary than it used to be, because in the past, that algorithm trying to present you the most relevant stuff based on some algorithm was not trying to present you the truth. It’s a list of links. Maybe it was more the number one link versus number 100. But ultimately, it’s for you to make your own opinion. Now you have some chatbot that’s going to tell you that for sure this is the way you should do it. Then you check more, and you realise, no, it’s totally wrong. It’s definitely a slight change in how you have to apprehend this brave new world. Also, this AI tool, the big change, especially with generative AI, is the ability for them to give you the impression they can do the job at hand by themselves when usually they cannot. Nuno Goncalves PedroIndeed. There’s definitely a lot of things happening right now that need to fundamentally shift. Honestly, I think in the education system the problem is the education system is barely adapted to the digital world. Even today, if you studied at a top school like Stanford, et cetera, there’s stuff you can do online, there’s more and more tools online. But the teaching process has been very centred on syllabus, the teachers, later on the professors, and everything that’s around it. In class presence, there’s been minor adaptations. People sometimes allow to use their laptops in the classroom, et cetera, or their mobile phones. But it’s been done the other way around. It’s like the tools came later, and they got fed into the process. Now I think there needs to be readjustments. If we did this ground up from a digital first or a mobile first perspective and an AI first perspective, how would we do it? That changes how teachers and professors should interact with the classrooms, with the role of the classroom, the role of the class itself, the role of homework. A lot of people have been debating that. What do you want out of homework? It’s just that people cram information and whatever, or do you want people to show critical thinking in a specific different manner, or some people even go one step further. It’s like, there should be no homework. People should just show up in class and homework should move to the class in some ways. Then what happens outside of the class? What are people doing at home? Are they learning tools? Are they learning something else? Are they learning to be productive in responding to teachers? But obviously, AI augmented in doing so. I mean, still very unclear what this looks like. We’re still halfway through the revolution, as we said earlier. The revolution is still in motion. It’s not realised yet. Bertrand SchmittI would quite separate higher education, university and beyond, versus lower education, teenager, kids. Because I think the core up to the point you are a teenager or so, I think the school system should still be there to guide you, discovering and learning and being with your peers. I think what is new is that, again, at some point, AI could potentially do your job, do your homework. We faced similar situation in the past with the rise of Wikipedia, online encyclopedias and the stuff. But this is quite dramatically different. Then someone could write your essays, could answer your maths work. I can see some changes where you talk about homework, it’s going to be classwork instead. No work at home because no one can trust that you did it yourself anymore going forward, but you will have to do it in the classroom, maybe spend more time at school so that we can verify that you really did your job. I think there is real value to make sure that you can still think by yourself. The same way with the rise of calculators 40 years ago, I think it was the right thing to do to say, “You know what? You still need to learn the basics of doing calculations by hand.” Yes, I remember myself a kid thinking, “What the hell? I have a calculator. It’s working very well.” But it was still very useful because you can think in your head, you can solve complex problems in your head, you can check some output that it’s right or wrong if it’s coming from a calculator. There was a real value to still learn the basics. At the same point, it was also right to say, “You know what? Once you know the basics, yes, for sure, the calculator will take over because we’re at the point.” I think that was the right balance that was put in place with the rise of calculators. We need something similar with AI. You need to be able to write by yourself, to do stuff by yourself. At some point, you have to say, “Yeah, you know what? That long essays that we asked you to do for the sake of doing long essays? What’s the point?” At some point, yeah, that would be a true question. For higher education, I think personally, it’s totally ripe for full disruption. You talk about the traditional system trying to adapt. I think we start to be at the stage where “It should be the other way around.” It should be we should be restarted from the ground up because we simply have different tools, different ways. I think at this stage, many companies if you take, [inaudible 00:33:01] for instance, started to recruit people after high school. They say, “You know what? Don’t waste your time in universities. Don’t spend crazy shitload of money to pay for an education that’s more or less worthless.” Because it used to be a way to filter people. You go to good school, you have a stamp that say, “This guy is good enough, knows how to think.” But is it so true anymore? I mean, now that universities have increased the enrolment so many times over, and your university degree doesn’t prove much in terms of your intelligence or your capacity to work hard, quite frankly. If the universities are losing the value of their stamp and keep costing more and more and more, I think it’s a fair question to say, “Okay, maybe this is not needed anymore.” Maybe now companies can directly find the best talents out there, train them themselves, make sure that ultimately it’s a win-win situation. If kids don’t have to have big loans anymore, companies don’t have to pay them as much, and everyone is winning. I think we have reached a point of no return in terms of value of university degrees, quite frankly. Of course, there are some exceptions. Some universities have incredible programs, incredible degrees. But as a whole, I think we are reaching a point of no return. Too expensive, not enough value in the degree, not a filter anymore. Ultimately, I think there is a case to be made for companies to go back directly to the source and to high school. Nuno Goncalves PedroI’m still not ready to eliminate and just say higher education doesn’t have a role. I agree with the notion that it’s continuous education role that needs to be filled in a very different way. Going back to K-12, I think the learning of things is pretty vital that you learn, for example, how to write, that you learn cursive and all these things is important. I think the role of the teacher, and maybe actually even later on of the professors in higher education, is to teach people the critical information they need to know for the area they’re in. Basic math, advanced math, the big thinkers in philosophy, whatever is that you’re studying, and then actually teach the students how to use the tools that they need, in particular, K-12, so that they more rapidly apprehend knowledge, that they more rapidly can do exercises, that they more rapidly do things. I think we’ve had a static view on what you need to learn for a while. That’s, for example, in the US, where you have AP classes, like advanced placement classes, where you could be doing math and you could be doing AP math. You’re like, dude. In some ways, I think the role of the teacher and the interaction with the students needs to go beyond just the apprehension of knowledge. It also has to have apprehension of knowledge, but it needs to go to the apprehension of tools. Then the application of, as we discussed before, critical thinking, analytical thinking, creative thinking. We haven’t talked about creativity for all, but obviously the creativity that you need to have around certain problems and the induction of that into the process is critical. It’s particular in young kids and how they’re developing their learning skills and then actually accelerate learning. In that way, what I’m saying, I’m not sure I’m willing to say higher education is dead. I do think this mass production of higher education that we have, in particular in the US. That’s incredibly costly. A lot of people in Europe probably don’t see how costly higher education is because we’re educated in Europe, they paid some fee. A lot of the higher education in Europe is still, to a certain extent, subsidised or done by the state. There is high degree of subsidisation in it, so it’s not really as expensive as you’d see in the US. But someone spending 200-300K to go to a top school in the US to study for four years for an undergrad, that doesn’t make sense. For tuition alone, we’re talking about tuition alone. How does that work? Why is it so expensive? Even if I’m a Stanford or a Harvard or a University of Pennsylvania or whatever, whatever, Ivy League school, if I’m any of those, to command that premium, I don’t think makes much sense. To your point, maybe it is about thinking through higher education in a different way. Technical schools also make sense. Your ability to learn and learn and continue to education also makes sense. You can be certified. There are certifications all around that also makes sense. I do think there’s still a case for higher education, but it needs to be done in a different mould, and obviously the cost needs to be reassessed. Because it doesn’t make sense for you to be in debt that dramatically as you are today in the US. Bertrand SchmittI mean, for me, that’s where I’m starting when I’m saying it’s broken. You cannot justify this amount of money except in a very rare and stratified job opportunities. That means for a lot of people, the value of this equation will be negative. It’s like some new, indented class of people who owe a lot of money and have no way to get rid of this loan. Sorry. There are some ways, like join the government Task Force, work for the government, that at some point you will be forgiven your loans. Some people are going to just go after government jobs just for that reason, which is quite sad, frankly. I think we need a different approach. Education can be done, has to be done cheaper, should be done differently. Maybe it’s just regular on the job training, maybe it is on the side, long by night type of approach. I think there are different ways to think about. Also, it can be very practical. I don’t know you, but there are a lot of classes that are not really practical or not very tailored to the path you have chosen. Don’t get me wrong, there is always value to see all the stuff, to get a sense of the world around you. But this has a cost. If it was for free, different story. But nothing is free. I mean, your parents might think it’s free, but at the end of the day, it’s their taxes paying for all of this. The reality is that it’s not free. It’s costing a lot of money at the end of the day. I think we absolutely need to do a better job here. I think internet and now AI makes this a possibility. I don’t know you, but personally, I’ve learned so much through online classes, YouTube videos, and the like, that it never cease to amaze me how much you can learn, thanks to the internet, and keep up to date in so many ways on some topics. Quite frankly, there are some topics that there is not a single university that can teach you what’s going on because we’re talking about stuff that is so precise, so focused that no one is building a degree around that. There is no way. Nuno Goncalves PedroI think that makes sense. Maybe bring it back to core skills. We’ve talked about a couple of core skills, but maybe just to structure it a little bit for you, our listener. I think there’s a big belief that critical thinking will be more important than ever. We already talked a little bit about that. I think there’s a belief that analytical thinking, the ability to, again, distinguish fact from opinion, ability to distinguish elements from different data sources and make sure that you see what those elements actually are in a relatively analytical manner. Actually the ability to extract data in some ways. Active learning, proactive learning and learning strategies. I mean, the ability to proactively learn, proactively search, be curious and search for knowledge. Complex problem-solving, we also talked a little bit about it. That goes hand in hand normally with critical thinking and analysis. Creativity, we also talked about. I think originality, initiative, I think will be very important for a long time. I’m not saying AI at some point won’t be able to emulate genuine creativity. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that, but for the time being, it has tremendous difficulty doing so. Bertrand SchmittBut you can use AI in creative endeavours. Nuno Goncalves PedroOf course, no doubt. Bertrand SchmittYou can do stuff you will be unable to do, create music, create videos, create stuff that will be very difficult. I see that as an evolution of tools. It’s like now cameras are so cheap to create world-class quality videos, for instance. That if you’re a student, you want to learn cinema, you can do it truly on the cheap. But now that’s the next level. You don’t even need actors, you don’t even need the real camera. You can start to make movies. It’s amazing as a learning tool, as a creative tool. It’s for sure a new art form in a way that we have seen expanding on YouTube and other places, and the same for creating new images, new music. I think that AI can be actually a tool for expression and for creativity, even in its current form. Nuno Goncalves PedroAbsolutely. A couple of other skills that people would say maybe are soft skills, but I think are incredibly powerful and very distinctive from machines. Empathy, the ability to figure out how the other person’s feeling and why they’re feeling like that. Adaptability, openness, the flexibility, the ability to drop something and go a different route, to maybe be intellectually honest and recognise this is the wrong way and the wrong angle. Last but not the least, I think on the positive side, tech literacy. I mean, a lot of people are, oh, we don’t need to be tech literate. Actually, I think this is a moment in time where you need to be more tech literate than ever. It’s almost a given. It’s almost like table stakes, that you are at some tech literacy. What matters less? I think memorisation and just the cramming of information and using your brain as a library just for the sake of it, I think probably will matter less and less. If you are a subject or a class that’s just solely focused on cramming your information, I feel that’s probably the wrong way to go. I saw some analysis that the management of people is less and less important. I actually disagree with that. I think in the interim, because of what we were discussing earlier, that subject-matter experts at the top end can do a lot of stuff by themselves and therefore maybe need to less… They have less people working for them because they become a little bit more like superpowered individual contributors. But I feel that’s a blip rather than what’s going to happen over time. I think collaboration is going to be a key element of what needs to be done in the future. Still, I don’t see that changing, and therefore, management needs to be embedded in it. What other skills should disappear or what other skills are less important to be developed, I guess? Bertrand SchmittWorld learning, I’ve never, ever been a fan. I think that one for sure. But at the same time, I want to make sure that we still need to learn about history or geography. What we don’t want to learn is that stupid word learning. I still remember as a teenager having to learn the list of all the 100 French departments. I mean, who cared? I didn’t care about knowing the biggest cities of each French department. It was useless to me. But at the same time, geography in general, history in general, there is a lot to learn from the past from the current world. I think we need to find that right balance. The details, the long list might not be that necessary. At the same time, the long arc of history, our world where it is today, I think there is a lot of value. I think you talk about analysing data. I think this one is critical because the world is generating more and more data. We need to benefit from it. There is no way we can benefit from it if we don’t understand how data is produced, what data means. If we don’t understand the base of statistical analysis. I think some of this is definitely critical. But for stuff, we have to do less. It’s beyond world learning. I don’t know, honestly. I don’t think the core should change so much. But the tools we use to learn the core, yes, probably should definitely improve. Nuno Goncalves PedroOne final debate, maybe just to close, I think this chapter on education and skill building and all of that. There’s been a lot of discussion around specialisation versus generalisation, specialists versus generalists. I think for a very long time, the world has gone into a route that basically frames specialisation as a great thing. I think both of us have lived in Silicon Valley. I still do, but we both lived in Silicon Valley for a significant period of time. The centre of the universe in terms of specialisation, you get more and more specialised. I think we’re going into a world that becomes a little bit different. It becomes a little bit like what Amazon calls athletes, right? The T-Pi-shaped people get the most value, where you’re brought on top, you’re a very strong generalist on top, and you have a lot of great soft skills around management and empathy and all that stuff. Then you might have one or two subject matter expertise areas. Could be like business development and sales or corporate development and business development or product management and something else. I think those are the winners of the future. The young winners of the future are going to be more and more T-pi-shaped, if I had to make a guess. Specialisation matters, but maybe not as much as it matters today. It matters from the perspective that you still have to have spikes in certain areas of focus. But I’m not sure that you get more and more specialised in the area you’re in. I’m not sure that’s necessarily how humans create most value in their arena of deployment and development. Professionally, and therefore, I’m not sure education should be more and more specialised just for the sake of it. What do you think? Bertrand SchmittI think that that’s a great point. I would say I could see an argument for both. I think there is always some value in being truly an expert on a topic so that you can keep digging around, keep developing the field. You cannot develop a field without people focused on developing a field. I think that one is there to stay. At the same time, I can see how in many situations, combining knowledge of multiple fields can bring tremendous value. I think it’s very clear as well. I think it’s a balance. We still need some experts. At the same time, there is value to be quite horizontal in terms of knowledge. I think what is still very valuable is the ability to drill through whenever you need. I think that we say it’s actually much easier than before. That for me is a big difference. I can see how now you can drill through on topics that would have been very complex to go into. You will have to read a lot of books, watch a lot of videos, potentially do a new education before you grasp much about a topic. Well, now, thanks to AI, you can drill very quickly on topic of interest to you. I think that can be very valuable. Again, if you just do that blindly, that’s calling for trouble. But if you have some knowledge in the area, if you know how to deal with AI, at least today’s AI and its constraints, I think there is real value you can deliver thanks to an ability to drill through when you don’t. For me, personally, one thing I’ve seen is some people who are generalists have lost this ability. They have lost this ability to drill through on a topic, become expert on some topic very quickly. I think you need that. If you’re a VC, you need to analyse opportunity, you need to discover a new space very quickly. We say, I think some stuff can move much quicker than before. I’m always careful now when I see some pure generalists, because one thing I notice is that they don’t know how to do much anything any more. That’s a risk. We have example of very, very, very successful people. Take an Elon Musk, take a Steve Jobs. They have this ability to drill through to the very end of any topic, and that’s a real skill. Sometimes I see people, you should trust the people below. They know better on this and that, and you should not question experts and stuff. Hey, guys, how is it that they managed to build such successful companies? Is their ability to drill through and challenge hardcore experts. Yes, they will bring top people in the field, but they have an ability to learn quickly a new space and to drill through on some very technical topics and challenge people the right way. Challenge, don’t smart me. Not the, I don’t care, just do it in 10 days. No, going smartly, showing people those options, learning enough in the field to be dangerous. I think that’s a very, very important skill to have. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe switching to the dark side and talking a little bit about the bad stuff. I think a lot of people have these questions. There’s been a lot of debate around ChatGPT. I think there’s still a couple of court cases going on, a suicide case that I recently a bit privy to of a young man that killed himself, and OpenAI and ChatGPT as a tool currently really under the magnifying glass for, are people getting confused about AI and AI looks so similar to us, et cetera. The Ethics, Safety, and Privacy Landscape Maybe let’s talk about the ethics and safety and privacy landscape a little bit and what’s happening. Sadly, AI will also create the advent of a world that has still a lot of biases at scale. I mean, let’s not forget the AI is using data and data has biases. The models that are being trained on this data will have also biases that we’re seeing with AI, the ability to do things that are fake, deep fakes in video and pictures, et cetera. How do we, as a society, start dealing with that? How do we, as a society, start dealing with all the attacks that are going on? On the privacy side, the ability for these models and for these tools that we have today to actually have memory of the conversations we’ve had with them already and have context on what we said before and be able to act on that on us, and how is that information being farmed and that data being farmed? How is it being used? For what purposes is it being used? As I said, the dark side of our conversation today. I think we’ve been pretty positive until now. But in this world, I think things are going to get worse before they get better. Obviously, there’s a lot of money being thrown at rapid evolution of these tools. I don’t see moratoriums coming anytime soon or bans on tools coming anytime soon. The world will need to adapt very, very quickly. As we’ve talked in previous episodes, regulation takes a long time to adapt, except Europe, which obviously regulates maybe way too fast on technology and maybe not really on use cases and user flows. But how do we deal with this world that is clearly becoming more complex? Bertrand SchmittI mean, on the European topic, I believe Europe should focus on building versus trying to sensor and to control and to regulate. But going back to your point, I think there are some, I mean, very tough use case when you see about voice cloning, for instance. Grandparents believing that their kids are calling them, have been kidnapped when there is nothing to it, and they’re being extorted. AI generating deepfakes that enable sextortion, that stuff. I mean, it’s horrible stuff, obviously. I’m not for regulation here, to be frank. I think that we should for sure prosecute to the full extent of the law. The law has already a lot of tools to deal with this type of situation. But I can see some value to try to prevent that in some tools. If you are great at building tools to generate a fake voice, maybe you should make sure that you are not helping scammers. If you can generate easily images, you might want to make sure that you cannot easily generate tools that can be used for creating deep fakes and sex extortion. I think there are things that should be done by some providers to limit such terrible use cases. At the same time, the genie is out. There is also that part around, okay, the world will need to adapt. But yeah, you cannot trust everything that is done. What could have looked like horrible might not be true. You need to think twice about some of this, what you see, what you hear. We need to adjust how we live, how we work, but also how we prevent that. New tools, I believe, will appear. We will learn maybe to be less trustful on some stuff, but that is what it is. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe to follow up on that, I fully agree with everything you just said. We need to have these tools that will create boundary conditions around it as well. I think tech will need to fight tech in some ways, or we’ll need to find flaws in tech, but I think a lot of money needs to be put in it as well. I think my shout-out here, if people are listening to us, are entrepreneurs, et cetera, I think that’s an area that needs more and more investment, an area that needs more and more tooling platforms that are helpful to this. It’s interesting because that’s a little bit like how OpenAI was born. OpenAI was born to be a positive AI platform into the future. Then all of a sudden we’re like, “Can we have tools to control ChatGPT and all these things that are out there now?” How things have changed, I guess. But we definitely need to have, I think, a much more significant investment into these toolings and platforms than we do have today. Otherwise, I don’t see things evolving much better. There’s going to be more and more of this. There’s going to be more and more deep fakes, more and more, lack of contextualisation. There’s countries now that allow you to get married with not a human. It’s like you can get married to an algorithm or a robot or whatever. It’s like, what the hell? What’s happening now? It’s crazy. Hopefully, we’ll have more and more boundary conditions. Bertrand SchmittYeah, I think it will be a boom for cybersecurity. No question here. Tools to make sure that is there a better trust system or detecting the fake. It’s not going to be easy, but it has been the game in cybersecurity for a long time. You have some new Internet tools, some new Internet products. You need to find a difference against it and the constant war between the attackers and the defender. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe Parental Playbook: Actionable Strategies Maybe last but not the least in today’s episode, the parent playbook I’m a parent, what should I do I’ll actually let you start first. Bertrand, I’m parent-alike, but I am, sadly, not a parent, so I’ll let you start first, and then I’ll share some of my perspectives as well as a parent-like figure. Bertrand SchmittYeah, as a parent to an 8-year, I would say so far, no real difference than before. She will do some homework on an iPad. But beyond that, I cannot say I’ve seen at this stage so much difference. I think it will come up later when you have different type of homeworks when the kids start to be able to use computers on their own. What I’ve seen, however, is some interesting use cases. When my daughter is not sure about the spelling, she simply asks, Siri. “Hey, Siri, how do you spell this or this or that?” I didn’t teach her that. All of this came on her own. She’s using Siri for a few stuff for work, and I’m quite surprised in a very smart, useful way. It’s like, that’s great. She doesn’t need to ask me. She can ask by herself. She’s more autonomous. Why not? It’s a very efficient way for her to work and learn about the world. I probably feel sad when she asks Siri if she’s her friend. That does not feel right to me. But I would say so far, so good. I’ve seen only AI as a useful tool and with absolutely very limited risk. At the same time, for sure, we don’t let our kid close to any social media or the like. I think some of this stuff is for sure dangerous. I think as a parent, you have to be very careful before authorising any social media. I guess at some point you have no choice, but I think you have to be very careful, very gradual, and putting a lot of controls and safety mechanism I mean, you talk about kids committing suicide. It’s horrible. As a parent, I don’t think you can have a bigger worry than that. Suddenly your kids going crazy because someone bullied them online, because someone tried to extort them online. This person online could be someone in the same school or some scammer on the other side of the world. This is very scary. I think we need to have a lot of control on our kids’ digital life as well as being there for them on a lot of topics and keep drilling into them how a lot of this stuff online is not true, is fake, is not important, and being careful, yes, to raise them, to be critical of stuff, and to share as much as possible with our parents. I think We have to be very careful. But I would say some of the most dangerous stuff so far, I don’t think it’s really coming from AI. It’s a lot more social media in general, I would say, but definitely AI is adding another layer of risk. Nuno Goncalves PedroFrom my perspective, having helped raise three kids, having been a parent-like role today, what I would say is I would highlight against the skills that I was talking about before, and I would work on developing those skills. Skills that relate to curiosity, to analytical behaviours at the same time as being creative, allowing for both, allowing for the left brain, right brain, allowing for the discipline and structure that comes with analytical thinking to go hand in hand with doing things in a very, very different way and experimenting and failing and doing things and repeating them again. All the skills that I mentioned before, focusing on those skills. I was very fortunate to have a parental unit. My father and my mother were together all their lives: my father, sadly, passing away 5 years ago that were very, very different, my mother, more of a hacker in mindset. Someone was very curious, medical doctor, allowing me to experiment and to be curious about things around me and not simplifying interactions with me, saying it as it was with a language that was used for that particular purpose, allowing me to interact with her friends, who were obviously adults. And then on the other side, I have my father, someone who was more disciplined, someone who was more ethical, I think that becomes more important. The ability to be ethical, the ability to have moral standing. I’m Catholic. There is a religious and more overlay to how I do things. Having the ability to portray that and pass that to the next generation and sharing with them what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable, I think is pretty critical and even more critical than it was before. The ability to be structured, to say and to do what you say, not just actually say a bunch of stuff and not do it. So, I think those things don’t go out of use, but I would really spend a lot more focus on the ability to do critical thinking, analytical thinking, having creative ideas, obviously, creating a little bit of a hacker mindset, how to cut corners to get to something is actually really more and more important. The second part is with all of this, the overlay of growth mindset. I feel having a more flexible mindset rather than a fixed mindset. What I mean by that is not praising your kids or your grandchildren for being very intelligent or very beautiful, which are fixed things, they’re static things, but praising them for the effort they put into something, for the learning that they put into something, for the process, raising the
President Trump has just written (perhaps) his longest Truth Social post to date, detailing 8 countries he plans to impose tariffs on, if they don’t support the United States purchasing Greenland. Among them, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Finland and the Netherlands. Trump has given our European allies two deadlines to fall in line or face tariffs. The first, is February 1st with a 10% tariff and by June 1st those tariffs will increase to 25%. , See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
President Trump has just written (perhaps) his longest Truth Social post to date, detailing 8 countries he plans to impose tariffs on, if they don’t support the United States purchasing Greenland. Among them, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Finland and the Netherlands. Trump has given our European allies two deadlines to fall in line or face tariffs. The first, is February 1st with a 10% tariff and by June 1st those tariffs will increase to 25%. , See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
President Trump has just written (perhaps) his longest Truth Social post to date, detailing 8 countries he plans to impose tariffs on, if they don’t support the United States purchasing Greenland. Among them, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Finland and the Netherlands. Trump has given our European allies two deadlines to fall in line or face tariffs. The first, is February 1st with a 10% tariff and by June 1st those tariffs will increase to 25%. , See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Donald Trump says he'll impose 10% tariffs on eight European allies including Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands who are opposed to his plan to purchase Greenland. These would come into force from February 1st and remain in place until a deal is done on the autonomous Danish territory. Trump said the levies would go up to 25% from June 1st. The US president says the vast Arctic Island is critical to America's national security. Also in the programme: We hear from Uganda's sports minister on President Museveni's re-election; and more reaction to the appointment of a Gaza "Board of Peace."(Picture: US President, Donald Trump. Credit: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo)
2026-01-17 | UPDATES #104 | Let's start with a quote from Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. “We are now at a stage when Trump calls NATO nations putting troops on the territory of a NATO ally a threat to world peace. Actually, he calls Denmark putting troops on Denmark's own sovereign soil a threat to world peace:“Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown. This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable.”----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain----------SOURCES: Reuters (Jan 17, 2026): Trump vows tariffs on eight European nations over Greenland AP (Jan 17, 2026): Trump says 8 European countries face 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland Reuters (Jan 17, 2026): Macron says Trump tariff threat over Greenland unacceptable The Guardian (Jan 17, 2026): Starmer and UK politicians condemn Trump's Greenland tariff threat Reuters (Jan 15, 2026): NATO scramble for Arctic security ideas “and survival” amid Greenland push (Rynning, Rutte, Pothier quotes)Reuters (Jan 17, 2026): USTR Greer urges Europe to “silo” Greenland tariffs from trade deal Washington Post (Jan 17, 2026): U.S. lawmakers contradict Trump on Greenland; Murkowski “ally, not asset” Financial Times (Jan 17, 2026): Anders Fogh Rasmussen attacks Trump's “gangster” talk; calls it “weapon of mass distraction” Reuters/Ipsos (Jan 16, 2026): U.S. public opinion on Greenland acquisition and force Reuters (Jan 16, 2026): Zelenskyy warns on air-defence missile shortages; delegation heading to U.S. Reuters (Apr 2025): Why Russia was excluded from certain tariff lists (sanctions rationale)----------SILICON CURTAIN LIVE EVENTS - FUNDRAISER CAMPAIGN Events in 2025 - Advocacy for a Ukrainian victory with Silicon Curtainhttps://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extrasOur events of the first half of the year in Lviv, Kyiv and Odesa were a huge success. Now we need to maintain this momentum, and change the tide towards a Ukrainian victory. The Silicon Curtain Roadshow is an ambitious campaign to run a minimum of 12 events in 2025, and potentially many more. Any support you can provide for the fundraising campaign would be gratefully appreciated. https://buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain/extras----------
Send us a textHey campers, get away from that duffle bag and over to the fire, we got some stories to tell. This week we tell you about the infamous Lake Bodum Murders in Finland and how a strange looking man was never captured for what he did to those 4 teens. We also tell you about Gareth Williams the MI6 agent who was found dead and zipped up in a duffle bag with no explanation. Listen as David tried to unzip this mystery with his dumbass stupid fucking dog shit theories and Tobin passes out from lack of oxygen because he loves to lock himself away in his ivory tower and suffocate on his own flatulence. Nasty lil boy he is OH EW yucky yuck YUCK ;-PRing ding ding daa baaBaa aramba baa bom baa barooumbaWh-wha-what's going on-on?Ding, dingThis is the Crazy FrogDing, dingBem, bemRing ding ding ding ding dingRing ding ding ding bem bem bemRing ding ding ding ding dingRing ding ding ding baa baaRing ding ding ding ding dingRing ding ding ding bem bem bemRing ding ding ding ding dingThis is the Crazy FrogBreakdownDing, dingBr-br-break it, br-break itDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumBem, bemDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumThis is the Crazy FrogA ram me ma bra ba bra bra rim branDran drra ma mababa baabeeeaaaaaaaDing, dingThis is the Crazy FrogDing, dingDa, daRing ding ding ding ding dingRing ding ding ding bem bem bemRing ding ding ding ding dingRing ding ding ding baa baaRing ding ding ding ding dingRing ding ding ding bem bem bemRing ding ding ding ding dingThis is the Crazy FrogDing, dingBr-br-break it, br-break itDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumBem, bemDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumDum dum dumda dum dum dumThis is the Crazy FrogBem, bemYou just got Crazy frogged.