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French authorities report multiple entities targeted by access brokers. A ransomware group extorts a German hunger charity. AT&T combats SIM swapping and account takeover attacks. A Missouri physician group suffers a cyber attack. Qantas doesn't crash, but their computers do. Researchers uncover multiple critical vulnerabilities in Agorum Core Open. A student loan administrator in Virginia gets hit by the Akira ransomware group. The Feds sanction a Russian bulletproof hosting service. Johnson Controls notifies individuals of a major ransomware attack dating back to 2023. Will Markow, CEO of FourOne Insights and N2K CyberWire Senior Workforce Analyst shares the latest technology workforce trends. The ICEBlock app warms up to users. Remember to leave us a 5-star rating and review in your favorite podcast app. Miss an episode? Sign-up for our daily intelligence roundup, Daily Briefing, and you'll never miss a beat. And be sure to follow CyberWire Daily on LinkedIn. CyberWire Guest Our guest is Will Markow, CEO of FourOne Insights and N2K CyberWire Senior Workforce Analyst, sharing the latest workforce technology trends. Will recently appeared on our CISO Perspectives podcast with host Kim Jones in the “What's the “correct” path for entering cyber?” episode. If you are not already an N2K Pro member, you can learn more about that here. Got cybersecurity, IT, or project management certification goals? For the past 25 years, N2K's practice tests have helped more than half a million professionals reach certification success. Grow your career and reach your goals faster with N2K's full exam prep of practice tests, labs, and training courses for Microsoft, CompTIA, PMI, Amazon, and more at n2k.com/certify. Selected Reading French cybersecurity agency confirms government affected by Ivanti hacks (The Record) Ransomware gang attacks German charity that feeds starving children (The Record) AT&T deploys new account lock feature to counter SIM swapping (CyberScoop) Cyberattack in Missouri healthcare provider Esse Health exposes data of over 263,000 patients (Beyond Machines) Australia's Qantas says 6 million customer accounts accessed in cyber hack (Reuters) Security Advisories on Agorum Core Open (usd) Virginia student loan administrator Southwood Financial hit by ransomware attack (Beyond Machines) Russian bulletproof hosting service Aeza Group sanctioned by US for ransomware work (The Record) Johnson Controls starts notifying people affected by 2023 breach (Bleeping Computers) ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings, goes viral overnight after Bondi criticism (TechCrunch) Audience Survey Complete our annual audience survey before August 31. Want to hear your company in the show? You too can reach the most influential leaders and operators in the industry. Here's our media kit. Contact us at cyberwire@n2k.com to request more info. The CyberWire is a production of N2K Networks, your source for strategic workforce intelligence. © N2K Networks, Inc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support my work on Patreon (https://patreon.com/realdavejackson) As a lifelong Indiana Jones agnostic, there was no way that MachineGames would make an Indiana Jones game I would care about, right? Right? Well, it certainly looked that way when the first gameplay trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle dropped. But then I started hearing my activation phrases start to bounce around- "this is like Hitman", "this is like Dishonored", so I knew I had to give it a try. And boy am I glad that I did! Guest info: Dan of The Greatest Story Ever Played * Check out the podcast https://linktr.ee/thegreateststoryeverplayed * Follow Dan on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/storyeverpod.bsky.social TIMESTAMPS * 0:00 Title Card * 0:36 Intros * 3:33 Personal Histories with Indiana Jones and The Great Circle * 7:55 Opening Thoughts * 11:33 Story Setup and Troy Baker as Indiana Jones * 16:35 A Great Villain and Supporting Cast * 24:54 Music and Visual Presentation * 34:36 Combat and Stealth * 48:28 Side Quests, Exploration and Level Design * 1:04:19 Final Thoughts/Recommendations * 1:08:24 The Greatest Story Ever Played Plugs * 1:13:07 SPOILER WALL/Patron Thank-Yous * 1:14:46 Spoiler Section Music used in the episode is credited to Gordy Haab. Tracks used: The Great Circle, A New Adventure Awaits, Where Are We, Gina's Theme, Signs of the Stones, Until the Next Adventure Join the Tales from the Backlog Discord server! (https://discord.gg/bptGyEWbk7) Buy me a coffee on Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/realdavejackson)! Social Media: BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/tftblpod.bsky.social) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/talesfromthebacklog/) Cover art by Jack Allen- find him at https://linktr.ee/JackAllenCaricatures Listen to A Top 3 Podcast on Apple (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-top-3-podcast/id1555269504), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/2euGp3pWi7Hy1c6fmY526O?si=0ebcb770618c460c) and other podcast platforms (atop3podcast.fireside.fm)!
In this week's episode, we take a look at five obstacles that can impact your writing, and offer tips and tricks for dealing with them. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Dragons, Book #1 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store: DRAGONAUDIO50 The coupon code is valid through July 21, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 257 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 27th, 2025, and today we are looking at mindset obstacles to writing. Before we get to that, we'll have Coupon of the Week, an update at my current writing progress, and then we will do Question of the Week. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Dragons, Book Number One in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store. That is DRAGONAUDIO50. And as always, the coupon code and the links to the store will be included in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through July the 21st, 2025, so if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered. Now let's have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. The rough draft of Shield of Power, the sixth and final book in the Shield War series, is done and I'm editing it. As of this recording, I am about 68% of the way through the first pass of editing. I had hoped to be a bit further along than I actually was, but there was a lot to do this week and because of that, I think it's going to slip to early July for the release date. I'd hoped to have it out in June, but I don't think that's going to happen, but it should be not too much longer once we get to July. Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, I'm 114,000 words into that. So I am very much hoping that will come out very quickly once Shield of Power is out. And I'm also 14,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which would be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. So it sounds like my Super Summer of Finishing Things is well underway and making good progress. Hopefully I can continue that. In audiobook news, Shield of Battle and Ghost in the Corruption are both essentially done in audio and just have to get through processing. Shield of Battle was narrated by Brad Wills and Ghost in the Corruption was narrated by Hollis McCarthy. They both did an excellent job and I'm looking forward to being able to share those audiobooks with you in July. So it looks like July is going to be a big month for releases with Shield of Power, Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, and then the audiobooks of Ghost in the Corruption and Shield of Battle. So lots to look forward to in July. 00:02:20 Question of the Week Now it's time for Question of the Week, which is intended to inspire interesting discussions of enjoyable topics. This week's question: how do you pass the time when you find yourself compelled to spend a good chunk of time waiting away from home or work (such as in the hospital waiting room, in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or waiting in your car to pick up someone from sports practice, a sort of situation like that)? And as you can expect, we had a range of answers. Justin says: Reading your books. Mary says: Reading. David says: Reading or listening to books is my default. Sometimes email. Keith says: I pace around mulling on problems that I otherwise have no time to think about. Gary says: A variety of things. I do think it is good practice to teach yourself to wait an hour or more without something external to occupy your mind. My own opinion is that our constant need for distraction hinders us in many ways. Mandy says: Reading. If I know I'm going to be waiting (or suspect it), I bring a book or my Kindle and I read. I almost always have a book in my car, too. Mike says: I read books by Jonathan Moeller. John says: I bring my tablet and read. Juana says: I read. Catriona says: Read a book or play a game on my phone. When I worked, I'd do emails, but I am retired now. Tom says: Usually I read a book on my Kindle app on my phone. Often it's one of yours. Bonnie says: Usually I scroll through Facebook or do one of the games on my phone or tablet. Don't usually read because I get focused and have a hard time tearing back to reality. And Jesse says: Reading ebooks or thinking through Work problems for later. If I know up front it'll be an hour or more, I'll bring a laptop and tether it. For myself, the answer is easy. I bring my laptop and work on my current book. The inspiration for this question was that I had to bring my car in for some maintenance, so I spent the time working on Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest and got a thousand words more into it. I've been doing that for a long time. I think most of my books for the last 10 years, or at least a majority of them, I had a session where I worked in a waiting room on them. I think the earliest I can recall working in a book in a waiting room would be Soul of Skulls way back in 2013, possibly 2012. 00:04:22 Handling Obstacles as a Writer Now onto our main topic of this week, obstacles. We're going to do a series of a couple mindset obstacles that get in the way of writers. The first one we're going to talk about is obstacles because no writer works without obstacles. Some of them are internal, like mental or physical illness, self-doubt, and perfectionism. Others are external, like having your fence collapse in a storm or being interrupted every five minutes by a toddler who needs something. There is a false belief that time is the biggest obstacle, and if only a writer could write full-time, they would finally be able to start writing or finish a draft. The sea of full-time writers with unfinished books would easily prove this wrong, as would the wide variety of traditionally published authors with full-time day jobs. I would argue that the biggest obstacle you'll face is how well you handle any kind of obstacle and develop mental flexibility and resilience. In previous series, I've talked about some of the practical ways to help with distractions, procrastination, and managing time wasters. In this series, I'm going to focus on things that derail writers from a mindset perspective. In this episode, we're going to focus on five examples of obstacles that writers face and how to mentally shift your perspective on them. #1: Getting started. The perfect is the enemy of the possible. I say this often, and I say it often because it's true. Many people don't want to write until they have perfect conditions and feel like they're creatively inspired. Those days I'm afraid, are quite few. It's more productive to work consistently within your limitations than to wait for inspiration and motivation to magically find you. It's generally easier to edit than it is to write, so just get something done on the page without editing as you go. Activation energy is also the enemy of many. Essentially, some people struggle with transitions and starting something because it takes a lot of mental energy for them to get going or to switch gears. Routines remove the decision making that takes up a lot of that energy. Making the process of starting as easy and pleasant as possible also makes it less daunting. How can I make this easy? It is a great question to ask yourself. Start with a block of time that is so small it feels ridiculously easy, such as one minute. Write without stopping for one minute each day without making any edits, and you'll end up with paragraphs sooner rather than later. #2: Short amounts of time with purpose add up over the long run. For example, our transcriptionist started writing 300 to 500 words each weekday for 15 minutes as a part of our November Writing Challenge. Even with taking time off for the holidays and real life stuff, she hit 50,000 words on her rough draft in May just by committing to the short burst of focused work as part of her daily routine. For myself, I mentioned earlier that I'm 114,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, and I started that back in October 2024, and I've been scratching away at it for 500 words a day for that entire time, which as you can clearly see, adds up. More time doesn't necessarily mean more productivity. A small liberal arts college was once concerned that students with a work study award (meaning a part time job on campus offered to those under a certain family income) didn't have as much time to study as their more privileged peers. What they found after looking into the matter was that students with work study awards were getting better grades, so they set out to interview them to find out why. Those they interviewed had schedules and routines for studying that the more affluent students hadn't developed. Even if you don't have the privilege of having a whole day free to do whatever you want, spending your day purposefully is far more important. Finally, be honest about how you're actually spending your time. For example, the American Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the average person surveyed spent 2.7 hours per day watching television, to say nothing of wasting time on social media or other forms of entertainment. By taking an honest look at how you're spending your time, you might find time that you can take from other less useful or even less enjoyable activities. My mindset about managing my time is that I do try to be pretty disciplined about it. When I'm writing new material, I use the Pomodoro method and try to hit a minimum of 6,000 words a day of new stuff. When I'm editing, I have a number in mind of words I want to edit per day. Usually I try to get around 18,000 to 25,000. Though with that, it can depend very strongly on how much needs to be moved or changed or deleted in the section that I'm editing. I do have things that I spend time on that aren't necessarily productive, of course. I did probably spend about 50 minutes last night playing Oblivion Remaster on Xbox. I do go to the gym for an hour every morning, though I really think at my age that's more necessary maintenance than an indulgent hobby. But it's always good to be honest about what you're spending time on and where you can improve it and maybe rearrange things to be a bit better. #3: Number three is interruptions. Interruptions are inevitable and unavoidable. There will never be a day in your life when you're not interrupted by family members, friends, domestic tasks, chores, and even the occasional genuine emergency. Accepting that no perfect day exists and interruptions will be part of your writing routine is the first step in helping yourself manage them. Focus on the interruptions you can control. If you can pick where you write, pick a spot where it's harder for people to pass by and interrupt you. If you can wake up a bit earlier than the rest of your household to squeeze out a quick hundred words with your first cup of coffee, then choose that time, even if it's a smaller block of time than after when the kids go to bed. Plan what you'll do when interruptions come and how you'll need to be flexible with your routine in order to get writing done. Here are some examples. Your computer breaks down or you're stuck in a hospital waiting room during your writing time. The solution is to keep a pocket notebook somewhere convenient or to use a notes app on your phone so you at least get some words down in either of these situations. You have a long commute and find that when you get home, your kids come to see you every five minutes while you're trying to write. Where is there time in your day you can control? Maybe you could squeeze out five minutes writing on your lunch break. Maybe you could find a way to dictate your writing on the way home, provided your local laws allow for hands-free device use and it doesn't impair your attentiveness while driving. You have a whole day planned to write and a storm hits, and sometimes you just have to accept that getting something done is better than trying to get the whole goal in the event that something comes up. Like for example, I've recently had to spend a good deal of time doing fence repair due to storm damage, and on those days I didn't get as much writing done as I wanted, but I did get some writing done, and as I do frequently say, one slice of pizza is better than no pizza at all. So when you do have days like that, it's better just to grab the one slice of pizza and get a little bit of writing done than to beat yourself up over how you didn't get to the writing goal that was in your head. #4: Number four is distractions. Distractions like social media and doom scrolling are a huge obstacle, even though they feel more like a treat or a break than a problem. Treating them like a problem instead of a solution to not wanting to work is an important mindset shift. If such things like social media and doom scrolling are keeping you from beating your goals, distractions have to be managed like any other obstacle we're talking about. I've talked about practical ways to manage distractions in my November Writing Challenge series. I recommend you check that out for practical tips. #5: And finally, number five, motivation. Consistency over passion or motivation wins the day. Slogging through when you don't feel motivated doesn't mean that you're not creative or a good writer. In fact, every good writer will admit that they do that more often than you might think. Removing your ideal of what you should be as a writer and focusing instead on your actual daily behaviors is important. It's easier to keep a routine going (even imperfectly or badly) than it is to keep having to start it over and over again. There's a theory that was popularized on Reddit called No Zero Days that essentially says that you must do something (however small) each day in order to further your goal. For example, instead of having the goal of writing 1,000 words each day, the goal is to write every single day. Even getting one single word on the page each day helps keeps the routine or habit going. It makes it easier to start the next day and helps with any guilt associated with a bad day or difficulties getting started. In conclusion, obstacles are inevitable, but many of the ones we discussed today, especially distractions, are largely within your control. Even when you're not in control of an obstacle, you're fully in control of how you react to it and how quickly you can regroup and keep going. So those five tips, hopefully they will help you navigate your way around any obstacles to your writing goals. So that is it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
Its Top Gun meets Chat GPT!
Reference Source: NPR Code Switch: Dispatches from the living memory of trans people of colorIdentity, Stealth, and Staying Submarine When the Wolves Come OutI heard a line on Code Switch that stuck with me: “I'm staying in my lane. I can't speak for you.”This is my lane. I'm not your hero or blueprint. I'm just a man with a few stories — potatoes in a rock soup — about how identity can be sanctuary, then trap, then survival trick when the world turns mean.I first learned what I call the vampire door in Norwich, England, 1990. By day it was farmers and muddy boots. By night some of those same men slipped through the door of the town's lone gay disco. A pint in hand, glitter on the collar, nod to the bouncer. An orbit under Donna Summer. Then cloak back up before sunrise.It was a door you stepped through when you needed to be seen — and stepped back out when you needed to be safe. I carried that logic home with me: the door always swings both ways.But I'd felt that door long before England. At GW in 1988, I was living blocks from Dupont Circle — one of the loudest, bravest queer neighborhoods in America. Back then D.C. was neon and sweat: drag races on 17th, basement bars, whole blocks that felt like portals. My friends and I — queer, straight, shape-shifters — learned fast: the bar at seven is family, the bar at eleven is the pack. If you don't feel the shift, you don't make it home.Later I saw the same logic online. The WELL, The MetaNetwork — early “walled gardens” that needed a password, a vouch. Small. Sacred. Not because they hid treasure, but because meaning leaks when the wrong eyes peek in. That's why I still love my Freemason lodge. Anyone can see the charity dinner — but when the doors close, there's a man with a sword. Context is fragile. Leak the lodge, salt the garden.People hear stealth and think it's fear. Sometimes stealth is just strategy. Like a concealed-carry instructor once told me: “The best weapon is the one nobody knows you have.” Same for your identity. Don't print it on a flag when you know the street outside is still 1950. Sometimes staying submarine is how you get to YAWP again tomorrow.Walt Whitman's YAWP is America's big queer shout — but this country loves it embalmed. The living version it fears. The louder you glow, the more antibodies you summon. You become uranium: radiant, potent, and a perfect fuel for the machine that'll spin you up and point you back at yourself.That's how the pack does it now. Not clubs or chains, but money and legal twists. Look at Skrmetti: SCOTUS upholds Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Or Planned Parenthood: the Court says states can block Medicaid for everything — contraception, cancer checks, not just abortion. Sanctions turned inward. The message is simple: amputate the piece that makes us squirm, or starve.The bar at seven is your found family. The bar at eleven is the werewolves. And the pack is bigger than a club — it's donors, lawyers, ghost rules from 1950 still sitting in the court. You can't extrapolate the sweaty Pride float to the rest of the country. The vibe shift is real. The pack is always circling.So here's my lane. I was never the hero. I was the shape-shifter who knew when to slip back through the vampire door before the vibe turned. Pretty enough to drink your Absolut — smart enough to leave before you asked me to explain.I'm not telling you to hide forever. I'm telling you: visibility is power if you understand how the pack moves. Stealth is not shame — it's strategy. Context is a garden. Spill it for clout, and you salt the soil. Your YAWP is holy. So is your cloak.Stay submarine when you need to.Always gone before eleven.
What if your next job title was “AI Taste Director”—or you were the last human left in your department?This week, Isar Meitis takes a sharp and provocative look at the future of jobs in the AI era. With headlines touting 70% of job skills changing by 2030, and executive surveys showing rising AI adoption—but lagging implementation—it's time to separate the hype from the real ROI.Spoiler: creativity isn't going anywhere—but how it's used (and who gets paid for it) is changing fast.Whether you're a founder, C-suite exec, or strategist building future-ready teams, this deep dive cuts through the noise to give you data-backed insights, plus frameworks to upskill yourself and your org—before the automation tidal wave hits.In this session, you'll discover:What three categories of future jobs are emerging—and why “taste” is your new superpowerThe myth vs. reality behind AI "creating more jobs than it kills"Why AI auditors and integrators are transitional—not permanent—rolesHow one visionary can now replace an entire creative or ops departmentThe truth about “proactive, context-aware AI assistants” and what Sam Altman envisions nextShocking findings from Harvard Business Review and MIT on AI's ROI and wage collapse predictionsWhat 68% of professionals are using AI for right now—and why many execs are still guessingWhy emotional intelligence and strategic thinking may be the last defensible human skillsTools, courses, and training every business leader needs to stay relevantAbout Leveraging AI The Ultimate AI Course for Business People: https://multiplai.ai/ai-course/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Multiplai_AI/ Connect with Isar Meitis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isarmeitis/ Join our Live Sessions, AI Hangouts and newsletter: https://services.multiplai.ai/events If you've enjoyed or benefited from some of the insights of this episode, leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform, and let us know what you learned, found helpful, or liked most about this show!
Joining us on this episode of the Mobility Management podcast is Filipe Correia, Latin America and Europe Business Development Manager of Stealth Products. Filipe lives in Portugal, and shares with us what the mobility landscape looks like in Europe compared to North America, with lessons that American care providers can learn from their European counterparts. He discusses how U.S. clinicians might benefit from European strategies around muscle support, and the similarities and differences in reimbursement challenges from the U.S. to Europe.
Missouri US Congressman Mark Alford represents the district Whiteman Air Force Base is located in. Whiteman Air Force Base is where those B2 stealth bombers flew out of to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Congressman Alford joined NewsTalk KZRG to discuss the event and whether or not it was effective. Join Ted, Steve, and Lucas for the KZRG Morning Newswatch!
Stealth takes us straight into the Cold War cockpit on a Navy E-2 Hawkeye as he stood the watch during some of America's most tense moments. From scrambling on alert after Reagan was shot, to deploying over the North Atlantic in DEFCON 2, to narrowly avoiding catastrophe when a 'friendly' dropped a bomb on a U.S. cruiser—this episode is packed with edge-of-your-seat stories. Stealth shares what it was like controlling the airspace above the fleet, even spotting submarines that were 'never there' from 15,000 feet, and managing chaos (and comedy) from the radar station. It's a mix of Cold War intensity, humor, and reverent remembrance for shipmates lost. Don't miss this look into the flying saucer dome of naval aviation.
John Maytham speaks to Prof. Dilip Menon, Professor of History in the International Relations Department at Wits University, about: an Indian astronaut in space; a B2 Stealth bomber and an Indian spy; and US Tariffs and Indian agriculture. Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit is a podcast of the CapeTalk breakfast show. This programme is your authentic Cape Town wake-up call. Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit is informative, enlightening and accessible. The team’s ability to spot & share relevant and unusual stories make the programme inclusive and thought-provoking. Don’t miss the popular World View feature at 7:45am daily. Listen out for #LesterInYourLounge which is an outside broadcast – from the home of a listener in a different part of Cape Town - on the first Wednesday of every month. This show introduces you to interesting Capetonians as well as their favourite communities, habits, local personalities and neighbourhood news. Thank you for listening to a podcast from Good Morning Cape Town with Lester Kiewit. Listen live on Primedia+ weekdays between 06:00 and 09:00 (SA Time) to Good Morning CapeTalk with Lester Kiewit broadcast on CapeTalk https://buff.ly/NnFM3Nk For more from the show go to https://buff.ly/xGkqLbT or find all the catch-up podcasts here https://buff.ly/f9Eeb7i Subscribe to the CapeTalk Daily and Weekly Newsletters https://buff.ly/sbvVZD5 Follow us on social media CapeTalk on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@capetalk CapeTalk on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ CapeTalk on X: https://x.com/CapeTalk CapeTalk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CapeTalk567See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Pro Investor David Erfle believes “gold stock weakness should be bought.” David shares his top three performing gold and silver junior mining stocks in this MSE episode. He also provides commentary on recent precious metals and miner price action and discusses how he has managed his portfolio over the past month. David Erfle is a self-taught mining sector investor. He stumbled upon the mining space in 2003 as he was looking to invest into a growing sector of the market. After researching the gains made from the 2001 bottom in the tiny gold and silver complex, he became fascinated with this niche market. So much so that in 2005 he decided to sell his home and invest the entire proceeds from the sale into junior mining companies. When his account had tripled by September, 2007, he decided to quit his job as the Telecommunications Equipment Buyer at UCLA and make investing in this sector his full-time job. David founded the Junior Miner Junky subscription-based newsletter in April, 2017 and writes a weekly column for precious metals news service Kitco.com, whose website attracts nearly a million visits every day. 0:00 Introduction 0:50 Gold and silver price action 6:25 Junior mining laggards 13:00 Developer “sweet spot” 17:20 Biggest gainer 21:15 Second winner 25:03 Third winner 27:01 SpinCo wisdom 30:00 Stealth gold bull David's website: https://juniorminerjunky.com/ Sign up for our free newsletter and receive interview transcripts, stock profiles and investment ideas: http://eepurl.com/cHxJ39 Mining Stock Education (MSE) offers informational content based on available data but it does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. It may not be appropriate for all situations or objectives. Readers and listeners should seek professional advice, make independent investigations and assessments before investing. MSE does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of its content and should not be solely relied upon for investment decisions. MSE and its owner may hold financial interests in the companies discussed and can trade such securities without notice. If you buy stock in a company featured on MSE, for your own protection, you should assume that it is MSE's owner personally selling you that stock. MSE is biased towards its advertising sponsors which make this platform possible. MSE is not liable for representations, warranties, or omissions in its content. By accessing MSE content, users agree that MSE and its affiliates bear no liability related to the information provided or the investment decisions you make. Full disclaimer: https://www.miningstockeducation.com/disclaimer/
Dan is filled with pride as an American to have a President such as Donald Trump ready, willing, and able to rise to the occasion with the gravity of a decision to send B2 stealth bombers into Iran in order to neutralize and decimate the country's nuclear capabilities and ambitions. Will it lead to a lasting peace, free from the threat of a nuclear sponsor of terror?
SKID flew A-10s, the F-117, T-38s, and was a liaison for Air Force One in the 90s. Three experienced pilots breaking down the week in aviation—insightful commentary, a bit of debate, and just enough facts to keep it grounded. Definitely not the news!Go here to support the channel. https://www.themoverandgonkyshow.comUsually, Monday at 8PM ET, Mover (F-16, F/A-18, T-38, 737, helicopter pilot, author, cop, and wanna be race car driver) and Gonky (F/A-18, T-38, A320, dirt bike racer, author, and awesome dad) discuss everything from aviation to racing to life and anything in between. More About Mover:Mover's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CWLemoineLooking for a good book? https://www.cwlemoine.comMore About Gonky:Gonky's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@therealgonkyKids Coloring and Activity Books! https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0CDS4C68Y*The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. Views presented are our own or our guests and do not represent the views of DoD or its Components.*
Guest Suggestion Form: https://forms.gle/bnaeY3FpoFU9ZjA47Disclaimer: This video is intended solely for educational purposes and opinions shared by the guest are his personal views. We do not intent to defame or harm any person/ brand/ product/ country/ profession mentioned in the video. Our goal is to provide information to help audience make informed choices.Order 'Build, Don't Talk' (in English) here: https://amzn.eu/d/eCfijRuOrder 'Build Don't Talk' (in Hindi) here: https://amzn.eu/d/4wZISO0Follow Our Whatsapp Channel: https://www.whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaokF5x0bIdi3Qn9ef2J(00:00) - Intro(01:58) - How Nucl*ar B*mb Works(04:35) - M.O.P – Father of All B*mbs(06:35) - Stealth Fighter Jet & the U.S.(09:18) - Countries & Their W*apons(11:58) - India & Retaliation(13:20) - Can We Stop Nuclear B*mbing?(15:58) - Impact of Nuclear B*mbs & Operation Sindoor(19:45) - Iran vs Israel & M*ssiles(24:35) - How World War 3 Will Start(25:40) - Stages of War(27:19) - Iran vs Israel Explained(34:09) - U.S. Demand to Stop M*ssiles(35:32) - Conflicts Between Countries & the Global Power Shift(37:43) - U.S. Influence in Iran-Israel War Dynamics(39:03) - Which Country Is Safest During a Nuclear War?(40:27) - India vs China: Weapons & Military Mindset(42:27) - India's Most Powerful Weapons(43:21) - Weaknesses in China's Military(44:22) - How Bomb Diffusers in Army Are Trained(44:36) - How a Bomb Suit Is Made(47:30) - How a Grenade & B*mb Jacket Blast(51:31) - How Army Officers Practice B*mb Defusal(53:22) - The Mindset Required to Defuse a B*mb(1:10:59) - Terro* Group Analysis(1:13:15) - Strengths & Weaknesses of Iran(1:14:36) - Strengths & Weaknesses of Israel(1:18:19) - Most Dangerous Border(1:18:35) - Defensive & Tactical Driving(1:24:00) - OutroIn today's episode, we have Lt Col Narender Singh Thakur, NSG Commando, Indian Army Logistics Expert, and Bomb Disposal & Post Blast Analysis Specialist. He talks about the realities of modern warfare, the technology behind advanced weapons, and what a nuclear conflict would mean for the world today.He breaks down different types of bombs, including nuclear, ballistic, stealth, and ground-penetrating explosives and which countries currently lead in military technology. He also covers the destructive impact of a nuclear blast, India's nuclear doctrine, and whether any defence is possible once a missile is launched. Geopolitical questions around Iran, Israel, China, Russia, and the US are discussed along with India's tested military strength and evolving global role.In the final segment, Lt Col Thakur explains the precision, training, and risk behind bomb detection and disposal. He walks through how bomb suits work, how defusing is practised, and what happens when dealing with real explosives in life-or-death situations. He also gives insights into defence driving, bomb detectors, and what truly makes a soldier stay calm under pressure. Subscribe for more such conversations!Follow Narendra Thakur On:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lt_col_naren_thakur/LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/lt-col-narinder-singh-lssgbYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ColNarenderThakur_OfficialAbout Raj ShamaniRaj Shamani is an Entrepreneur at heart that explains his expertise in Business Content Creation & Public Speaking. He has delivered 200+ speeches in 26+ countries. Besides that, Raj is also an Angel Investor interested in crazy minds who are creating a sensation in the Fintech, FMCG, & passion economy space.To Know More,Follow Raj Shamani On ⤵︎Instagram @RajShamanihttps://www.instagram.com/rajshamani/Twitter @RajShamanihttps://twitter.com/rajshamaniFacebook @ShamaniRajhttps://www.facebook.com/shamanirajLinkedIn - Raj Shamanihttps://www.linkedin.com/in/rajshamani/• • •#Podcast #FiguringOut #RajShamani #army #armypodcast #podcastclips #narendrasinghthakur #india
Protect Your Retirement W/ a PHYSICAL Gold IRA https://www.sgtreportgold.com/ CALL( 877) 646-5347 - Noble Gold is Who I Trust Bix Weir is back to discuss the silver stealth bull market and the incredibly bullish supply demand metrics which will propel the silver price far, far higher in the years to come. Thanks for tuning in! BUY Your PHYSICAL Silver HERE: https://sdbullion.com/gold-silver-ira?utm_source=sgtreport Road to Roota: https://www.roadtoroota.com/ https://rumble.com/embed/v6swivh/?pub=2peuz
Lt. General David Deptula joins Michael to unpack the jaw-dropping U.S. air mission that stunned Iran—and the world. From deception tactics to 37-hour bomber flights, Deptula reveals why this flawless operation is a “holy cow” moment for American military capability. Michael also gets audience reaction to the mission, and its implications for global adversaries and future force readiness. David A. Deptula is the Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Power Studies, and a senior scholar at the U.S. Air Force Academy's Institute for Future Conflict. He transitioned from the U.S. Air Force in 2010 at the rank of Lieutenant General after more than 34 years of service. Original air date 23 June 2025
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President Cyril Ramaphosa sê Suid-Afrika is senuweeagtig oor die VSA se toetrede tot die Israel-Iran-oorlog. Amerika het oor die naweek drie belangrike kernfasiliteite in Iran aangeval. Die operasie het 125 Amerikaanse militêre vliegtuie betrek, insluitend sewe B-2-Stealth-bomwerpers. Ramaphosa se woordvoerder, Vincent Magwenya, sê Suid-Afrika het gehoop president Donald Trump gebruik sy invloed om die partye te oortuig om dialoog te voer oor hul geskilpunte:
In this week's episode, I take a look at the frozen pizzas that I enjoyed in 2025, and give my recommendations for the best frozen pizzas. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store: WARDEN25 The coupon code is valid through July 14, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 256 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 20th, 2025 and today we are looking at my favorite frozen pizzas from Winter and Spring 2025. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing progress, and then we will do Question of the Week this week. First up, let's do Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebooks in the Dragontiarna series at my Payhip store, and that coupon is WARDEN25. This coupon code is valid through July 14th, 2025. So if you need a new series of really long ebooks to read for this summer, we have got you covered and as always, the links to the store and the coupon code will be included in the show notes. Now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. As I mentioned before, I want Summer 2025 to be my Super Summer of Finishing Things because I want to finish The Shield War, Stealth and Spells, and Ghost Armor series this summer before I start on new things. I'm pleased to report that I have reached a milestone of that. The rough draft of Shield of Power is done at 101,000 words. This will be the sixth and final book in the Shield War series. I am currently writing A Consort of Darkness, which will be a short story that newsletter subscribers will get a free copy of in ebook form when Shield of Power comes out. I am also 109,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest and hopefully that will come out very quickly after Shield The Power is out. I'm also 10,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will likewise be the sixth and final book in the Ghost Armor series. In audiobook news, recording is still underway for Ghost in the Corruption, which will be narrated by Hollis McCarthy and Shield of Battle, which will be narrated by Brad Wills. Hopefully we will have some more updates on that soon and I don't think it'll be too much longer before both audiobooks are out and available. 00:02:02 Question of the Week Now let's go to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is intended to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics. This week's question: when was the last time you went to an actual movie theater to see a movie? No wrong answers, including “I don't go to movie theaters.” As you can guess, we had a range of responses on this one. Justin says: Last month we saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail (fifty year release) in the theater. Yes, we have the DVD. David says: I guess Dune Two is the last time I went to a theater. For the price of going to the theater, I can wait and stream it later. If I don't like the price, I can even wait a few years. I'm not so quick to give them my money. Haven't gone to the theater yet in 2025. Nothing called out to me. William says: Except for 2020-2021, I've been going to the movies frequently every year since the Hobbit movies first came out. It's not that my habits has changed, just that they started making the kind of movies I wanted to watch like Star Wars, Jurassic World, the Disney remakes, and so on. Before 2012, the last time I went was in 2006 for the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It probably helps that it's only two tickets each time and not four or five for a whole family. Randy says: Top Gun: Maverick. It was a throwback to the days when movies were fun to watch. Everything doesn't have to have a deeper meaning and make us think. Just have an unlikely crew of misfits take out the bad guys. Bonnie says: Last one was Mary Poppins Returns with granddaughter in Spring 2019. I can't see spending the price for a one time deal. Cheryl says: The last time I went to the cinema…when did American Beauty come out? That's how long ago it was and the movie was disappointing. Jenny says: Thunderbolts! I wish movies weren't so pricey. Elizabeth says: Last time I went to the movie theater was to see Jumanji 2 with my now husband as our first date because both of us are terrible at first date ideas. I don't know- if Elizabeth's first date with her now husband was Jumanji 2, it seems like that was a very successful first date. John says: War of the Rohirrim, December of last year. A different John says: Dune Two and A Complete Unknown are the only two I've seen in the theater in the last two years. In both cases it was because A: the movie deserved to be experienced completely, and B: there was someone I wanted to share it with. Otherwise, modern tech in the home works just fine. Michael says: Last movie I saw in an actual cinema was Avengers Infinity War, so that's going back a bit. I think the COVID lockdown just killed any desire to do so and haven't been back since. Michael [A different Michael than the one listed above] says: It has been years. For myself, the answer is quite simple. I went on May 31st to see Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning. The inspiration for this question was technological change. I only went to the theater twice in 2024, for Dune Part Two and The Fall Guy. In 2025, I've been to the theater twice so far, for Thunderbolts and Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, but a long time ago when I was much younger and had far fewer demands in my time, I would usually go to the movies on Saturday afternoons if I saw something that looked at all interesting. I'd always go in the afternoons because afternoon matinees were cheaper and I usually preferred to spend Saturday night playing computer games anyway. Nowadays, like I said above, I only went twice in 2024 and twice in 2025 so far. I am not sure what changed. The obvious one is that I'm old enough to have enough to do week to week that giving up three hours on a Saturday afternoon can often be a problem. The other obvious answer is technological change in the form of streaming, which makes it a lot easier to see things at home and perhaps one's taste change as one gets older. For example, there is no way I would go to the theater to see the Minecraft movie, though I would probably watch it on streaming when it rolls around (and I did in fact watch it in streaming last week and thought it was pretty good. It'll be in my next Movie Roundup.) So that is it for Question of the Week. 00:05:52 Main Topic: Winter/Spring/Summer 2025 Frozen Pizza Roundup Now onto our main topic this week, my Spring/Summer 2025 Frozen Pizza Roundup (though I suppose I've been working on this long enough that it should be the Winter/ Spring/Summer 2025 Frozen Pizza Roundup). I suppose it is a bit odd to talk about frozen pizza on a podcast ostensibly dedicated to indie publishing and indie writing, but I like frozen pizza and it's my podcast, so if I want to talk about frozen pizza, I'm going to talk about frozen pizza. Besides my previous pizza review roundup episode was pretty popular, so that's why I decided to do another one. Unlike a movie roundup, the pizza reviews will be in chronological order based on when I ate them. The grades are, as always, totally subjective and based on my own opinions. I'll also be rating the pizza by eating it hot and eating it cold, since cold pizza is a different experience than hot pizza. Cold pizza for lunch the next day is something to look forward to, especially during a busy day. I should also mention that I purchased each pizza myself with my own money. No one sent me any free stuff, so while my opinion may be subjective, it is nonetheless unbiased. Additionally, I exactly follow the preparation directions for each pizza since I wanted to avoid the phenomenon you sometimes see on recipe blogs where a commenter complains that a recipe didn't work and then admits that they took out the butter, cut the sugar in half, replaced the flour with corn starch, and substituted canola oil for frosting. So with those disclaimers, disclosures, and caveats out of the way, on to the pizzas. The first one is Orv's Ultimate Rizer Three Meat Pizza, which I had on February 28th, 2025. Orv's is a pizza brand owned by Minnesota based pizza maker Bernatello's. In the last pizza roundup, I mistakenly said Bernatello's was based in Wisconsin (though they do in fact have numerous Wisconsin facilities) and Bernatello's also owns many different pizza brands I have mentioned the last roundup. I had never tried Orv's before, so I thought I would give it a try. Eaten hot, the sausage, Canadian bacon, and pepperoni are quite good, as are the cheese and sauce. However, the crust really is quite bready and kind of overwhelmed the other tastes. This is a thick crust pizza and to be honest, I really prefer thin crust because it's generally less caloric and the crust has a greater chance to work in harmony with the other flavors and not overpower them. Eaten cold, it's pretty much the same experience. This is definitely a pizza that would benefit from a bit of added oregano, garlic salt, or perhaps other spices. Overall, I do think I strongly prefer Bernatello's Brew Pub Lotzza Motzza pizza instead of Orv's, though I should mention that Orv's is in fact quite a bit cheaper. Overall Grade: C+ The next pizza is the Red Baron Four Meat Classic Crust Pizza, which I ate on March 7th, 2025. Red Baron is a frozen pizza brand that started in 1976 by the Schwan's Frozen Food Company of Minnesota. Currently, Schwan's is owned by a large Korean conglomerate. Whatever one might think of large corporate consolidation, the fact that the stylized World War I fighter pilot mascot of a Minnesota company is now owned by a Korean conglomerate is kind of hilarious in an absurdist sort of way. Anyway, the pizza! Eaten hot, I liked the crust. It was a bit thicker than usual for thin crust pizza, but it was crisp and didn't get bready. The sauce was a bit sweeter than usual, but I still liked it. The various meats and the cheese were good as well. Eaten cold, it's still pretty good. The cheese and sauce set well and remained flavorful. Overall Grade: B+ Our next pizza is Good and Gather Pepperoni Pizza, which I had on March 14th, 2025. Store brand foods can be hit or miss, like if you go to a big box grocery store and they have their own store brand of essentials like coffee and cereal and bread and so forth. And as I said, those can be really hit or miss since it depends on the company that is actually supplying the food to the store. That said, I've had good results with Good and Gather, which is the store brand of Target, which is a major big box retailer in the United States. So I thought I'd give the Good and Gather Pepperoni Pizza a try. Eaten hot, I was pleasantly surprised. The crust was crisp, the cheese and sauce were good (if not outstanding), and the pepperoni was flavorful. A good workman like frozen pizza. Eaten cold, it still tastes quite good. An important detail is that this is a good deal cheaper than many of the more premium pizza brands I have mentioned in these pizza roundups. So I would say this is a good solid option for the budget minded consumer. Overall Grade: B Next up we have Bellatoria's Ultra Thin Crust Meat Trio Pizza, which I ate on March the 21st, 2025. Bellatoria's is yet another brand of the Bernatello's Frozen Pizza Company, a frequent entry in these pizza roundups and it is a seems to be more of a premium brand compared to Orv's. It also has a less heavy load topping compared to Lotzza Motzza, which is another Bernatello's brand. Despite that, I quite like this one. Eaten hot, the crust was crisp and just a bit flaky in a good way and the cheese, sauce, and meat toppings were all good. Sometimes on a pizza you can't taste the crust. Other times you taste it too much, like with thick crust pizza, but I think this was a good crust that complemented the toppings, which were all flavorful. Eaten cold, it fares well. The thin crust doesn't get soggy and the meat and cheese remain flavorful. A very good pizza. I prefer a thin crust to a thick crust, but this was an excellent thin crust. Overall Grade: A Our next pizza is the Totino's Party Pizza Triple Meat, which I ate March 26th, 2025. Totino's was famously one of the first companies to make frozen pizza and it was later acquired by General Mills. These days, Totino's is mostly known for its pizza rolls, but they still put out small individual pizzas and for the sake of historical continuity, I decided to give it a try. It was okay. It definitely tasted like pizza, but it didn't compare to the stronger ones I've tried like Heggie's or Pothole Pizza. You do need to cook it for a long time for the crust to be adequately crispy and not soggy. I didn't bother to try it cold since I didn't think it would be improved, and this is definitely a pizza where you might want to add some oregano or garlic salt. Its biggest advantage is that it's quite inexpensive, a cheap meal, but don't expect too much. Overall Grade: C+ Next up is Authentic Motor City Pizza Company Three Meat Pizza, which I had on March 28th, 2025. Authentic Motor Pizza Company is owned by the Ilitch billionaire family of Michigan who are the original founders of Little Caesar's Pizza. This pizza is a Detroit style pizza, which is essentially a square pizza cooked in a square pan with a thick crust and lots of cheese. The square shape comes from the fact that Detroit style pizza was originally cooked in a car oil drip pan since the commercially available pans at the time weren't suitable for the pizza. There is some dispute about what actually happened, but it seems Detroit style pizza started at a restaurant called Buddy's Rendezvous in the 1940s, which later became the local Michigan pizza chain Buddy's Pizza. I have to admit, I was originally only vaguely aware of Detroit style pizza, but in 2019 I went to the Detroit area for a funeral and had dinner at Buddy's Pizza, which was amazing. (There was also a guy getting arrested in the parking lot at the time, but thankfully that did not affect the dining experience.) If your travels ever take you to the Detroit area, you should definitely try Buddy's Pizza. Anyway, so after all this, when I happened across a Detroit style frozen pizza, I decided I needed to give it a try. Eaten hot, it is quite good. As I've said before, I'm generally not a fan of thick crust pizza, which this is, but it's a good thick crust, crispy on the edges and bottom without being bready or chewy. The toppings are all excellent, which is helped by the fact that the sauce is good and has a good garlic flavor to it. I was curious how it would hold up when eaten cold and I actually liked it a bit better than when it was hot. The cheese sets well and then everything holds together and so it's a very substantial, very tasty cold pizza. This is good pizza, though that said, I still prefer a thinner crust because the Detroit style of pizza is delicious, but dang, is it a heavy meal. Overall grade: A Next up is Pothole Kitchen Sink Pizza, which I ate on April 4, 2025, and this is another pizza from the Midwestern convenience store chain Kwik Trip and features pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, onions, and red and green peppers. I really like this one, like the other Pothole varieties I've tried. It's quite good: good crust, good cheese, good sauce, and very flavorful toppings. This has a slight advantage over my other favorite version, the Pothole Meat Sweats Pizza, since the lesser amount of meat means it isn't as greasy. Eaten cold, it is likewise quite good. I think this ties with the Meat Sweats Pothole Pizza. They both represent excellent versions of two different pizza experiences. If you don't want mushrooms and vegetables on your pizza, get the Meat Sweats, but if you do want vegetables, go for the Kitchen Sink. Overall grade: A+ Next up is Heggie's Six Pack Pizza, which I tried on April 11th, 2025. This is another pizza from Minnesota company Heggie's, which had one of my favorite pizzas of the last roundup. Heggie's Six Pack Pizza comes with sausage, pepperoni, Canadian bacon, regular bacon, mozzarella cheese, and cheddar cheese. Let's just say if you're eating this, you probably don't have a six pack. Anyway. Eaten hot, it was quite good. I like the thin crust and all the meat was good. I would say the biggest weakness is that you can mostly taste the cheese and the Canadian bacon since they kind of drown out all the other flavors. Eaten cold, I would say it tastes better. You can taste all the individual toppings. The cheese, sauce, and crust are pleasant when cold as well. This was a good pizza, but I do like the pepperoni only version better since I think the taste is superior. Overall grade: A- Next up is the Tombstone Tavern Style Meat Crumble Pizza, which I had on May 2nd, 2025, and this is a more upgraded version of the basic model Tombstone pizza with thinner crust, slightly different cheese, and a mixture of pepperoni and crumbled pork sausage. Honestly, it tasted about the same as the standard model Tombstone. The crust and meat were slightly better, but I thought the sauce was rather watery. Eaten cold, it was better since the watery flavor of the sauce wasn't as strong. That said, I do think the standard model Tombstone pizza is a better pizza. Overall grade: B- Then we had a bit of a gap here because I had basically tried most of the pizza brands that I actually wanted to try for this review. There are some more lower cost brands out there, but I figured they'd be mostly similar to the cheaper ones I already tried. Then I came across the final pizza for this review roundup, Screamin' Sicilian Mountain of Meat, which I had on June 6th, 2025. This is another pizza from the Screamin' Sicilian line, which is part of the Palermo Pizza Company of Wisconsin. I tried an all pepperoni version for the last pizza roundup and thought it was pretty good. It got an A-. I decided to try the Mountain of Meat, which has pepperoni, sausage, ham, and bacon, and has a stone fired crust. I liked it better than the all pepperoni version. The different meats blend together well, and I think this version of the crust is quite a bit better. It's a little bit thicker, but still quite crispy. Eaten cold, it likewise holds up quite well. The spiciness of the meat remains flavorful even when cold and the cheese holds it all together. Overall grade: A So to sum up after two pizza review posts, here are my favorites. Overall favorites: Pothole Meat Sweats and Pothole Kitchen Sink. Excellent strong runners-up: Heggie's Pepperoni Pizza, Lotzza Motzza, Bellatoria, and the Screamin' Sicilian Mountain of Meat. The downside of all these choices is that they tend to be expensive, usually $10 US or above. So with that in mind, here are best my choices for the best budget options, which would be Tombstone Pepperoni & Sausage and Target's Good & Gather Pepperoni. Also, one advantage of frozen pizza is that you can add spices to flavor the taste. I found that frozen pizza in general frequently benefits from the addition of oregano or perhaps a dusting of garlic powder. So if you are looking for some frozen pizza, hopefully this will help you find one. So that is it for this week. Next week I promise we will go back to writing and publishing topics instead of pizza. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
So we now know the Americans used seven B-2 Stealth bombers to attack Iran's three nuclear sites. They used a dozen bunker-buster bombs - the first time these massive 140o KG big boys have been used in combat. They flew in the dark of night, dropping the payload just after 2 AM local time. They fired Tomahawk missiles from US Navy ships nearby. Decoys were used to throw the Iranian off the scent - some of the B-2's attacked from the US East Coast, while others flew across the Pacific. B-2 bombers that attacked flew from Missouri while a different set of B-2s flew west over the Pacific to throw off Iran They called it Operation Midnight Hammer. They claimed it was successful. But what we don't actually know is how successful and what success means. Satellite imagery doesn't show you what's happening underground. The bunker buster bombs are designed to blow stuff up around 60 metres underground. Nobody but the Iranians know exactly how deep their enrichment facilities are hidden. Nobody knows how thick the concrete is they put on top of it. It's possible the main guts of their facilities haven't been hit at all. And then you ask, what does success mean? If success is destroying Iran's nuclear capability, well that hasn't happened. Some scientists were taken out in Israel's first strikes but not all of them. Iran has very smart people with knowledge of nuclear weapons and enrichment. China has been sending them uranium. This strike will have set them back, but this is a country who's shown time and again not just how capable they are, but how determined they are to have nuclear Weapons. It doesn't mean the strike wasn't worth it it if they wouldn't negotiate, but also, success depends on how you define it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
So called Bunker Busting aircraft have been spotted over the Pacific as speculation mounts that the US is preparing for an attack on Iran Former immigration detainee charged after death of newspaper photographer Maths error blamed for IVF bungle See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
So called Bunker Busting aircraft have been spotted over the Pacific as speculation mounts that the US is preparing for an attack on Iran Former immigration detainee charged after death of newspaper photographer Maths error blamed for IVF bungle See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
S2E9: Building Your Personal CISO Brand Host: Frank Cutitta Guest: Lisa Gallagher, Cybersecurity Advisor, CHIME To stream our Station live 24/7 visit www.HealthcareNOWRadio.com or ask your Smart Device to “….Play Healthcare NOW Radio”. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen
In this episode, I discuss three key strategies for maintaining privacy and security across your physical mailbox, email, and phone. I discuss the growing Matrix community, explore alternative mailing solutions using co-working spaces, detail a four-tier email strategy, and examine the concerning spread of Flock ALPR cameras. I also share insights on anonymous eSIM options and answer listener questions about dealing with Know-Your-Customer requirements.In this week's episode:Joining the Matrix community with ElementPhysical mailbox strategies: UPS stores, virtual CMRA addresses, and co-working spacesFour-tiered email approach using ProtonMail, Fastmail, SimpleLogin, and Gmail sock puppetMobile phone privacy with Mint Mobile and anonymous eSIM optionsThe Flock ALPR camera threat and how to protect yourselfListener questions: Australian SIM card strategies with KYC requirementsCapture the Flag challenge details for June 21stMatrix Community RoomsIt seems on Element X, it doesn't list the rooms associated with the Matrix space, so you can click on each of these links to join the rooms:https://matrix.to/#/#lockdown-general:matrix.orghttps://matrix.to/#/#lockdown-podcast:matrix.orghttps://matrix.to/#/#lockdown-intro:matrix.orgShow Links:Matrix Clients - https://matrix.org/clientsMatrix Community - https://matrix.to/#/#psysecure:matrix.orgSmarty Address Lookup - https://www.smarty.com/products/single-addressExpired Domains - https://www.expireddomains.net/Stealths.net (Anonymous eSIMs) - https://stealths.net/DeFlock.me (ALPR Camera Map) - https://deflock.me/Flock Safety Privacy Policy - https://www.flocksafety.com/privacy-policyEFF Article on DeFlock - https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/anti-surveillance-mapmaker-refuses-flock-safetys-cease-and-desist-demandCTF Challenge Rules - https://psysecure.com/ctf“Imagine this situation where we have the huge electronic intercommunication so that everybody is in touch with everybody else in such a way that it reveals their inmost thoughts, and there is no longer any individuality. No privacy. Everything you are, everything you think, is revealed to everyone.”- “Future of Communications” Alan WattsOfficial Website: https://psysecure.comPodcast music: The R3cluse ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Construction workers spend hours on their hands and knees snapping chalk lines to mark where walls, plumbing and utilities should go. It's painstaking, back-breaking labor. And that's how it's been done for centuries. Tessa Lau saw an opportunity — and built a robot that does it faster, safer, and with surgical precision. In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, the Dusty Robotics founder and CEO shares some of what she's learned about transitioning from a researcher to a deep tech founder, including: How she turned past startup mistakes into a rigorous customer discovery process The structured approach Dusty used to land its first paying customer Why she says stealth mode is overrated — and how building in public gave them a head start How “cool tech” can lead you astray if you're not solving a real problem Smart ways to pivot and iterate based on actual user feedback What it takes to build a mission-driven team that scales with you If you're interested in robotics, deep tech, or why some concepts fall into the valley of death while others sail over it like a Red Bull stunt team — listen in. RUNTIME 43:10 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (3:00) “ I always thought I would be a professor someday, and that was my planned career path.” (5:39) How a home renovation project led Tessa into making construction robots (9:16) “ We thought we were going to build a vacuum cleaning robot.” (12:24) “You have to establish that someone is willing to pay for the technology and that it's doable.” (14:15) “ We needed to build something that was 10x better than the status quo in order to scale at venture speed.” (15:41) Finding a deep tech TAM is “ a hard problem, especially when you're creating a new category.” (19:16) “ You can't try to be everything for everyone.” (21:00) Their first prototype “could barely do anything,” but fast pilots helped them iterate quickly. (26:08) How Tessa figured out their pricing *before* they went to market (29:24) Why marketing and branding are table stakes for a deep-tech startup (33:11) “ As the CEO, you are the face of the company whether you like it or not.” (37:06) “ Our marketing team doesn't need to be very technically savvy.” (38:22) “ I have yet to see a good reason to be in stealth, ever.” (40:53) The one question she'd have to ask a deep tech CEO before accepting a job offer LINKS Tessa Lau Dusty Robotics Philipp Herget, CTO IBM Research Willow Garage, Wikipedia “Savioke is now Relay Robotics,” 5/2/2022, The Robot Report Crossing the Chasm, 3rd edition, Harper Books SUBSCRIBE
PREVIEW: Colleague Rebecca Grant of the Lexington Institute recounts her 3 hour flight in the copilot seat of B-2 stealth bomber. More.
In this portion of Ephesians, Paul talks about how to be better Jesus followers: Christians should live in truth and never lie Christians should look different from the world Stealth-mode Christianity is not helpful Resentment and long-term anger should not be part of the Christian's life New Discussions Episode: https://youtu.be/j5oibSkWL0A Hey! Don't leave before looking at other P40 stuff: YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnh-aqfg8rw Ko-Fi - https://ko-fi.com/p40ministries Website - https://www.p40ministries.com Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/p40ministries Contact - jenn@p40ministries.com Rumble - https://rumble.com/c/c-6493869 Books - https://www.amazon.com/Jenn-Kokal/e/B095JCRNHY/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk Merch - https://www.p40ministries.com/shop YouVersion - https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/38267-out-of-the-mire-trusting-god-in-the-middle Support babies and get quality coffee with Seven Weeks Coffee https://sevenweekscoffee.com/?ref=P40 This ministry is only made possible due to your generous support https://ko-fi.com/p40ministries
Crude cruising to its highest level in more than 2 months, as geopolitical tensions impact the oil space. Could the energy sector be about to breakout after a lackluster year? Plus A June jolt for Starbucks, as shares of the coffee chain continue a solid move higher. Why investors are sippin' on the stock, and if our traders are joining in on the java trade.Fast Money Disclaimer
The U.S. Treasury just executed the largest debt buyback in history. In this urgent update, Taylor Kenney breaks down what this means for you, your savings, your retirement and most importantly, how to protect your wealth before it's too late. Questions on Protecting Your Wealth with Gold & Silver? Schedule a Strategy Call Here ➡️ https://calendly.com/itmtrading/podcastor Call 866-349-3310
June 10, 2025 ~ Bloomberg Auto Business reporter Keith Naughton talks with Chris and Lloyd about automakers implementing stealth price increases, like decreasing incentives and raising destination charges, to offset tariff costs without significantly changes sticker prices.
We're joined by Matt Baxter to discuss what we thought was a horror film but turned out to be something quite different.Warning: This film and episode deal with suicide, murder, abortion, politics, religion, and pretty much most of the hot potato topics we generally try to eschew. Hopefully we do a decent job of discussing it.Nefarious (streaming) – Affiliate LinkMore on Blaze MediaSome reviews:7th Day Adventist reviewA Christian review with interesting commentsReddit tackles NefariousHorror Obsessive – really didn't care for the “bait & switch”Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/monstertalk--6267523/support.
In this week's episode, we look at five tips and tricks for optimal ebook pricing. This coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my Tower of Endless Worlds series at my Payhip store: TOWER25 The coupon code is valid through June 30, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 254 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is June 5, 2025, and today we are looking at ebook pricing strategies. Before we get into that, we will do Coupon of the Week and have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. First up is Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my Tower of Endless World Series at my Payhip store, and that is TOWER25. And as always, the coupon code and the links to the store will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June the 30th, 2025, so if you need a new ebook series to read this summer, we have got you covered. Now for an update on my current writing projects. As of this recording, I am 53,000 words into Shield of Power, which will be the sixth and final book of my Shield War series, and that puts me on Chapter 13 of 29. I feel like the book is going to be between about 105,000 to 110,000 words in rough draft, but we will see when I get there. I'm hoping to have it out before the end of June, but there's a good chance it may slip to July, so listen to this space and watch my website for updates. I am also 104,000 words into Stealth and Spells Online: The Final Quest, which as the name implies, will be the third and final book of the Stealth and Spells trilogy. I am right in the middle of writing the climactic scenes of the story and because of the length and how far I've gotten and I've been chipping away at this since October, it will come out very quickly after Shield of Power, possibly even in the same month. I'm also 5,000 words into Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series, and that should probably come out towards the end of summer, if all goes well. In audiobook news, Brad Wills is recording Shield of Battle and Hollis McCarthy is recording Ghost in the Corruption right now. I know they're hard at work at it because both of them sent me emails with questions about pronunciations today. Hopefully we'll have some exciting new audiobooks for you later this summer. 00:02:12 Main Topic: Ebook Pricing Strategies [Note: All Prices Referenced are USD] And now let's move right into our main topic, ebook pricing strategies, which is often a contentious topic for indie authors. We're going to go over five different ebook pricing strategies to look at when they're the most effective or why you might want to try them. I'll talk about when I have used each of them and why I chose to do so or not to do so, as the case might be. As I said, this is often a contentious topic for indie authors, especially newer indie authors who often have in their head an idea that their book is worth X amount of dollars because the amount of work they put into it, like for example, “my novel should be a minimum of $9.99 or $14.99 because of all the work I put into it. It was a year's worth of work, and if you can buy a fancy latte at Starbucks or $6 or $7 or whatever, then you should be able to pay $9.99 for this novel upon which I toiled for a year.” And that is a nice sentiment, but in reality it doesn't work that way for a couple of reasons. For one thing, people are only willing to drop that kind of money on authors that they've known for a long time, like hardcore Stephen King or James Patterson or Jack Reacher fans dropping $20 or $30 for the novel in hardcover when comes out the first time. That kind of loyalty has to be earned over the long term, and if you're brand a new indie author or a newish indie author, charging $9.99 for your ebook is something of an ask. For the second thing, an ebook is not a physical object, and there is a point where people blanch at paying a lot of money for an item that is essentially electronic and digital. If you're paying $9.99 for a paperback, at least you're getting the paperback, the physical object. Paying $9.99 for something utterly intangible like an ebook is a much harder sell. Because of that, the optimal price point for ebooks tends to be a bit lower than that. For the sake of not adding too many caveats to each point based on genre and format, let's assume for each of these strategies, the ebook we are pricing is a fantasy novel of about 90,000 words without any maps or images and is not being traditionally published by an established author. In an interview, Smashwords founder Mark Coker presented data from Smashwords that showed most indie authors selling full length fiction will see the most success setting their ebook prices at either $2.99, $3.99, or $4.99 (depending on genre). That is still the case, generally speaking. However, there are some special pricing strategies that may increase your sales, and that is what we'll be focusing on this episode. #1: The first of the five pricing strategies we will look at is permafree, and permafree means that the book is permanently set to free instead of just for a short period of time. Why does this work? People like free things. People will eagerly take something that's free while something that's even $2 or $3 will lead to hesitation on their part, especially for an unfamiliar author, and that is true of $0.99 as well. However, permafree is a strategy only makes financial sense if the book is the first book in a series and there are at least a few books in the series already published. If you have one book and make it permafree, that's fine if you want to give away the book to readers so it's read, but it will not make you any money. It makes more sense to make the first book in a series free when there are like four or five or more books in the series. Just setting a book to permafree is not enough on its own. You still need to spend money on ads and marketing, so you're relying on sales from the next several books in the series to subsidize the free book and marketing cost. Very often I will advertise the free first book in one of my series and then calculate whether the ad was successful or not based on how many copies of the rest of the books in the series that I have actually sold. There also needs to be a strong hook at the end of the first book to lure readers on to the second book to inspire readers to continue, but not an outright cliffhanger, which will annoy most readers and could hurt your reviews. If you're going to make your first book in the series free, it is a generally bad idea to end that book with a cliffhanger or to end that book with an unresolved main plot. People will get mad at you and accuse you of trying to nickel and dime them on the rest of the series. It's also a good idea to put the link to the second book right at the end of the first book in order to help the reader continue on in the series. You also need to accept that most of the attention for permafree titles often comes from so-called book hoarders. This strategy is not a great one for trying to get reviews as there is a significant segment of readers who blindly grab whatever is free and then they never get around to reading it, much less finishing it. In the same vein, you have to accept that the percentage of readers converting from the free ebook to the rest of the paid series will be much lower than the conversion from a paid book to the next paid book in the series normally would be. What kind of conversion rate am I talking about? If you have say, a conversion rate from the free first book to the paid second book of 5-10%, you are doing very well. How have I used the strategy? I've made almost all of my series starters permafree, and since I write fairly long series, it's easier for me to do that than for people with a series with only two or three books. Making books permafree has been a major part of my indie publishing efforts over the last 14 years, and I found it's pretty much the most consistent low effort thing I can do to drive sales. It's like a constant trickle, though it does work better on the non-Amazon stores than it does with Amazon today. #2: So now we will move on to our second pricing strategy, which is the $0.99 price. Some authors will temporarily set the $0.99 price at launch in order to gain some reviews and then raise the price once that has happened. Others will price the first book in the series at $0.99 and then price the subsequent books in the series higher, in a similar strategy to permafree. This strategy gets a higher percentage of the people reading the book than permafree and authors have reported a higher percentage of read through continuing to the next book as well. This price does well with BookBub deals and could be used temporarily for that. BookBub customers are extremely price sensitive and they expect steep discounts. The biggest downside of the strategy is that on sites like Amazon, you'll be paid a lower royalty rate of 35%, so any ads or marketing costs will effectively eat most of your profits. However, if your book is wide in all the stores, many of them offer better royalty rates than Amazon for books at $0.99. For myself, what I've done for long series is that I make the first book free and then the second book $0.99, and then all the books after there are full price. Obviously, you take a bit of a hit on the first few books in the series, but if you have a long series like I do, then you can definitely make up the lost costs with sales of the rest of the books. I've also used $0.99 to pretty good results with BookBub deals over the years. #3: The third pricing strategy we're going to look at is the box set. This strategy applies to a series since you're packaging multiple full length novels together and sometimes throwing in a short story or other special content. The important thing about pricing box sets is that it should be a substantial discount over buying the full length books in the sets separately. The price will be a bigger hook than adding special features. You might want to make the first box set less expensive than the subsequent ones in order to motivate readers to begin the series. This strategy is great for Kindle Unlimited (KU) since readers are getting multiple books but only have to take one of their allocated book spots in the KU Library. Longer books also lead to bigger payouts, since KU operates on pages per read system, which means that the longer the book is (and assuming someone actually reads it), you'll then get a bigger payout. This also applies somewhat in a more limited way for Kobo Plus, in the way that it calculates page reads. They use minutes read instead of page reads. How have I used this? I have many box sets, and because of the limitations of Amazon pricing, most of my box sets aren't above $9.99, but if the three novels in the box set are individually $4.99, that is a savings of 33% as opposed to buying the books individually. So I mostly did the box sets to provide a base for doing the box sets in audio, but they do also generate some income on their own because of the savings. #4: The fourth pricing strategy we're going to look at is coupons. The most common way to provide coupons in Indie Author World is either through Smashwords or a direct sales page, such as My Payhip store, which I mention frequently on this podcast. Coupons are a convenient way to make a book free to only a select group of people, such as newsletter subscribers or contest winners. It is by far the easiest and most flexible way to discount your books temporarily. For example, on Payhip, it only takes a couple minutes to set up a coupon and then it will be ready to use instantly or for whatever specific dates and times you have set the coupon to run. They are the most effective when they are short term to create a sense of urgency to buy the book, but not so short term that readers miss out on the deal. The biggest downside is that most buyers are not as familiar with using Smashwords or a direct sales page, so they may be hesitant to use a new site, especially if they have a large ebook collection on another platform like Kindle. How have I used this strategy? For years, I've used the Smashwords coupon strategy to give away a free short story when I publish a book (with Ghost in the Corruption, it was Ghost Spells, and when I finish Shield of Power, the short story for that will be called Consort of Darkness and newsletter subscribers will get a Smashwords coupon code they can use to get a free ebook copy of the short story). I also frequently do Coupon of the Week through my Payhip store, where I offer 25% off a featured ebook or series or 50% off an audiobook. Since the royalty rate on Payhip is higher than on Amazon or Audible, I'm able to offer generous sales prices without losing money on a discounted sale. So once you have a large enough catalog, coupons through direct sales can be an effective strategy. #5: And the fifth and final sales strategy we'll look at this episode is Kindle Countdown Deals. If your book is in Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited, Kindle allows you to run a limited time discount on it. Readers will see a countdown clock showing how long they have to buy it at the price. To be eligible to run a Countdown Deal, your book must have been enrolled in KDP Select for at least 30 days, and your book's list price must have been unchanged for 30 days before and 14 days after the deal runs. There are some other requirements, so read Amazon's documentation page very carefully before you decide to run a Countdown Deal. The biggest advantage of a Countdown Deal is the royalty rate for the book during the deal will be based on the book's regular price and not what it's discounted to during the sale, so this is a nice way to try a lower price for your book. For example, if the book is usually $4.99 and during the Countdown Deal it is lowered to $0.99, you'll still get 70% of the sale rate. Now granted, 70% of $0.99 is not as good as 70% of $4.99, but you may be able to make it up in sales volume. This strategy gets a lot more viewers than a coupon with Smashwords or your direct sales page would. However, it's not nearly as flexible as those options. It requires some advanced planning. This method is most effective when paired with a marketing push, such as an increase in ad spending or a newsletter notifying your newsletter subscribers about the deal. The biggest downside of this strategy is that you have to be exclusive with Amazon in order to take advantage of the deal. If your books are wide, you can't do a Kindle Countdown Deal for them. I've used this strategy intermittently with limited success, I have to admit, because generally I don't have that many books in KU at any given time. That said, when I have had books in KU, I've tried Kindle Countdown deals and had moderate success with them. Overall, I do think the other methods I've already mentioned on this episode are more effective, but if you have books in KU, it is definitely worth trying a Kindle Countdown Deal in combination with some ads and a newsletter push. So hopefully these five pricing strategies will help you make sense of the pricing of books in Indie Author World and will be helpful to you as you decide how to price your own books. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we will see you all next week.
If you take the veneer off the novelty of having Donald Trump as President, you can see that we are heading down that slippery slope where we know the Deep State has not gone away -- there was no special eradication of this separate government, only an enhancement with tools of Artificial Intelligence to make this country a stealthy, predatory surveillance apparatus. As we stand on the brink of a new technological order, the machinery of power is quietly shifting into the hands of algorithms. Listen tonight on Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis from 7-10 pm, Pacific time on groundzeroplus.com. Call in to the LIVE show: 503-225-0860. #groundzeroplus #ClydeLewis #surveillance #DeepState #AI
S2E8: Cyber Insurance for Healthcare Provider Organizations Guest host Lisa Gallagher, National Cybersecurity Advisor, CHIME Guest: Dan Bowden, CISO, McLennan Global Business To stream our Station live 24/7 visit www.HealthcareNOWRadio.com or ask your Smart Device to “….Play Healthcare NOW Radio”. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen
Something horrific is said to stalk Bray Road. Relying on Stealth, it is said over hundreds of sightings have seen this thing on Bray Road in Wisconsin. But what exactly is it? lets discuss that in todays episode! Thank you for watching Roanoke Tales and I hope you enjoy HUNDREDS Say Something BLOODTHIRSTY Is HUNTING Bray Road... Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/RoanokeTalesPatreon Merch: Roanokemerch.com #truecrimecommunity #crime #truestory
Are you a cybersecurity sales or marketing leader seeking new ways to stand out in a crowded market? Do you struggle with demonstrating real value to CISOs who have “seen it all” and are wary of generic pitches? Wondering how to engage technical buyers who know the ins and outs of your product's shortcomings? This episode with Joe Silva, co-founder and CEO of Spektion, is packed with fresh perspectives on tackling these challenges head-on.In this conversation we discuss:
What's really eating away at your Social Security check? In this live radio show, Josh breaks down how Social Security gets taxed, why so many retirees get caught off guard, and what you can do to protect your income. He explains the history of the program, the rise of stealth taxes, and how proposed policies could reshape your retirement. Along the way, callers weigh in with questions about Roth conversions, annuities, bitcoin, and more, giving Josh a chance to connect the dots between retirement strategy and real financial concerns. Can't get enough of The Financial Quarterback? Click ‘Subscribe' so you never miss a play. If you're enjoying the show, leave a 5-star rating and drop a review—it helps keep the game going!
In this week's episode, we take a look at the major self-publishing platforms that I use, and examine the pros and cons of each. This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress, Book #8 in the Dragonskull series, (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store: DOOM50 The coupon code is valid through June 24, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 253 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 30th, 2025, and today we are looking at the current major self-publishing platforms and what they offer indie authors. Before we get to our main topic, we'll have Coupon of the Week and an update on my current writing projects. So let's start with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Dragonskull: Doom of the Sorceress (book number eight in the Dragonskull series, as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) at my Payhip store. That code is DOOM50. And as always, we will have the coupon code and the links to the store in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June 24th, 2025. So if you are setting out on summer travels this summer and you need an audiobook to listen to while you're in the car or plane, we have got you covered. So now for an update on my current writing and audiobook projects. Ghost in the Corruption (as I mentioned last week) is now out and available at all the ebook stores: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and Payhip. It is selling well. So thank you all for that. Now that Ghost in the Corruption is finished, what am I working on next? Well, back in 2023, I finished the Dragonskull and The Silent Order series back to back, so I declared Summer 2023 to be my Summer of Finishing Things. Well, it looks like Summer 2025 is going to be the Super Summer of Finishing Things because I intend to finish three series back to back. First up is Shield of Power, the sixth and final book of The Shield War series. As of this publishing, I am 26,000 words into it, which puts me on Chapter 6 of 29. So I think it's going to end up being around 100,000-110,000 words long, and I am hoping it will be out in June, though it might slip to July depending on how things go. Once that is done, the next one up will be Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest, which will be the third and very definitely final book of the Stealth and Spells Online trilogy. Believe it or not, I have been working on Final Quest on the side for so long that I passed the 100,000 word mark in that book this week. In fact, it's been a side project for so long that I don't remember how long I've been working on it, and I had to look up the metadata to check that I indeed started chipping away on it on October 18th, 2024. So I am very pleased that I'm nearly done with the rough draft and because of that reason, if all goes well, it'll come out very quickly after Shield of Power, since I think the rough draft will end up at about 125,000 to 130,000 words or in that neighborhood. Once Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest is finished, I will then write Ghost in the Siege, which will be the sixth and final book of the Ghost Armor series. I am 1,500 words into that and hoping for that to come out in August or September, if all goes well. Once The Shield War, Stealth and Spells Online, and Ghost Armor are finished, I will finally be free to return to the Rivah and Nadia series. I realized that through all of 2024 and the first half of 2025, I had five unfinished series at the same time, and that was just too much for me to keep track of as a writer, and I think it may have been too much for the readers because it was too much of a wait between the different series as I worked my way through them. So five series at the same time is too much, so hence the Super Summer of Finishing Things. Going forward, I've decided that three unfinished series at the same time will be my maximum, which after the Super Summer of Finishing Things will be Cloak Mage, Half-Elven Thief, and a new epic fantasy series that I will set in the realm of Owyllain. In audiobook news, Brad Wills started working on Shield of Battle this week and Hollis McCarthy started working on Ghost in the Corruption, so hopefully before probably about July or thereabouts, we will have those audiobooks available for you to listen to. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:03:49 Main Topic of the Week: Self-Publishing Platforms for Ebooks [Note: Information in this Episode is Very Likely to Change] So now let's move on to our main topic for the week, which is the main self-publishing platforms for ebooks. Today we will do a brief overview of the self-publishing platforms I currently use: Amazon/KDP, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, and Draft2Digital/Smashwords. The reason I wanted to do this is because there are many scammy platforms for self-publishing out there, but fortunately there are also many legitimate ones. Today we'll compare several of the most popular ones for ebooks. Just to make things easier for comparison, we'll be using the term platform to discuss both retailers and aggregators and we're not going to talk about options for self-publishing print or audio formats today. We're going to focus solely on ebooks. First of all, what should you look for in a publishing platform? The first thing is to make sure you retain complete ownership of your content in all formats. Some of these scammer ones try to claim all rights to anything you try to post or sell through them, so that is definitely a red flag to watch out for. Make sure that you understand any exclusivity requirements of any programs that you sign up for such as KDP Select, such as if other formats like audio are also included in their requirements, how long exclusivity lasts, et cetera. If the platform requires exclusivity, that is definitely something to pay attention to. Make sure you do your research carefully to understand how pricing, royalties, and payments work on each individual platform. Sometimes some of them will pay quarterly, some of them pay monthly, and some of them pay you last month's royalties at the end of the month. Some of them like Amazon run like two months behind. Finally, and this is a big one, you should not have to pay any money in order to upload your work. If they are asking for money upfront, it is probably a scam. Now, there are some aggregators that don't take a percentage and instead charge you a yearly fee. I'm not talking about them in this podcast episode because I don't use them, but they are out there. One example would be Book Funnel, which does charge a yearly fee for you to use but provides a valuable service in being a backend for running your own store on like Payhip or Shopify, and there's a couple of other useful services in that way, but they're not a storefront and they don't take a percentage of any royalties. They just charge a yearly fee. So they're not the topic with this episode. All the platforms I've talked about today do not have any fees in order to upload. Reputable sites like Amazon or Kobo will instead take a percentage of each book's sale. It's also good to have a few realistic expectations before you start using self-publishing platforms, and one of them is that the platform is not a marketer. For example, many people complain that KDP doesn't showcase their books and they get lost in the millions of books available. However, none of these services are promising that you'll make the front page of their site just by publishing there. It's a common delusion among new indie authors that when you publish your first book, that's all you have to do and people will flock to it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. In fact, since Amazon makes a small fortune off book ads, it's not in their interest to give away screen space for free, and this isn't to knock on Amazon, that's just the way the retail industry works. For example, if you go into a Target or a Walmart or another big box retailer, note the products that are prominently displayed on the aisle displays or the endcaps of the aisles. They didn't just get there randomly. The manufacturers of those products paid big money to Amazon and Target and Walmart and the other big box retailers to have their products featured there. In many cases, online commerce is no different. Getting your book uploaded onto a platform is just the first step. Promoting and marketing the book is up to you and strategies for those will vary based on which ones you choose to use. For example, if you choose to make your work exclusive to just one platform, it's not a good idea to run Facebook ads in countries where that platform either doesn't exist or where it's not terribly popular. Today we're going to be just focusing on comparing the platforms, not how to best to market from them. So what are the options? #1: First up is the most common platform people use and it's the 800 pound gorilla in the self-publishing space, and that is Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. And what are the pros and cons of KDP? Pro: They are the biggest force in ebook publishing in many countries, including the United States. Some authors find that as much as 80 to 95% of their ebook sales come from Amazon, even if they are not exclusive with Amazon. For myself, it's usually about 50 to 60% of my sales on any given month are from Amazon and the rest come from the other retailers. Heavy readers are generally very familiar with the Kindle Store interface and Library setup, and many readers are kind of locked into Amazon because they own Kindle devices, subscribe to Kindle Unlimited, and have large Kindle Libraries. So those are all the pros of publishing with KDP. Cons: If you're expecting a large portion of your sales to come from the print version of your book or if print sales are very important to you, be aware that many bookstores and libraries either can't or won't buy print books from Amazon, so you should find an additional platform for the print version such as Ingram Spark or maybe Barnes & Noble's print division. One big concern about going exclusive with Amazon is that you're losing readers who don't have Kindle books in their countries, people who are boycotting Amazon for a variety of reasons, people who are locked into another platform such as Apple or Kobo, or people who want to self-archive their ebooks since Amazon doesn't allow that anymore. If you're already wide, you'll have to look carefully at what percentage of your sales are non-Amazon and if this percentage is an amount you'd be comfortable risking losing in order to be exclusive. Occasionally authors do complain about the customer service available to KDP, especially if it's urgent. For myself, I've not personally had any huge problems with KDP customer service. That said, I think you should expect a lead time of about one to two business days on anything you ask because I usually go through the email form. Does KDP offer a subscription service? Yes. Kindle Unlimited (KU) readers pay a set amount and can read an unlimited number of books each month, although they're limited as to how many they can have in their library at any one time. Promotions happen regularly, usually based around big sales like Prime Day, and it can make a subscription as cheap as $0.99 for a three month period. Some also receive free subscriptions by buying certain Amazon products such as a new Kindle or Kindle Fire. The downside of being in Kindle Unlimited is the exclusivity. You can't be in KU without being exclusive with Amazon, or at least the specific book in question has to be exclusive. Not all of your books have to be exclusive, and many authors such as myself will usually put one series in KU and then make sure everything else is wide. You must agree to be exclusive with them for ninety days and that time period is renewable. What does KDP pay in terms of royalty? For $2.99 to $9.99, they give you 70% of the sale price. Under $2.99 and above $9.99, it's 35%. So that is sort of an encouragement from Amazon to price your ebooks in the $2.99 to $9.99 range. Currently I price new novels at $4.99 and do short stories at $0.99 cents. What do I do? I have all of my titles available through KDP. I have a smaller portion of my collection exclusive through KDP Select/KU, and I have only recently increased that amount of Select titles due to the economic downturn. I suspect that KU users are likely to hold onto their subscriptions while cutting other expenses because honestly, KU is a pretty good deal for readers and the monthly subscription costs is about the same as one tradpub frontlist ebook, but with a KU subscription, they could read thousands of books for the same price. The value of KU is really very strong for frequent romance, LitRPG, science fiction, and fantasy readers. There's a strong population in the KU subscriber base often referred to as binge readers. They care more about variety, discovering new books, and the ability to read a lot over the ability to read specific authors or stories. So overall, I think if you are self-publishing and even if you don't like Amazon very much or don't plan to go exclusive, it's still in your best interest to publish your ebook with them, even if you are wide and intend to do all the other retailers just because Amazon really is the biggest ebook platform out there at the moment. #2: Now, the next self-publishing platform we're going to look at is Barnes & Noble Press, which as the name implies, belongs to Barnes & Noble. The Pros: some people are never, ever going to let go of their Nooks or they already have a large personal ebook library through the Nook so they feel locked into that platform. These readers are the majority of people buying ebooks through Barnes & Noble, but fortunately that group tends to read a lot. There's also a lot of trust in Barnes & Noble as a brand, and that inspires people to continue buying from them. In fact, for a while in the indie author space at the end of the 2010s and the start of the 2020s, it was a regular prediction that Barnes & Noble was going to go out of business soon, but then the company was bought by a private equity firm, and while private equity firms often have a deserved bad reputation for stripping a company of assets and then selling it off at a bargain basement price (such as the fate of Red Lobster), that does not seem to be the case of what happened with Barnes & Noble and the company really has been strengthening in recent years. So they may be here to stay for a while. The downsides of publishing with Barnes & Noble Press is that Barnes & Noble is relatively a minor player in the ebook market, though usually in the top four of most indie author ebook sales if they're wide. They have shifted their focus to selling print books instead of Nook devices, especially in the retail space. Do they offer a subscription service? They do not. However, nothing about Barnes & Noble requires exclusivity, which is nice, and the royalty structure is pretty good. It's 70% over all titles over $0.99. So if you want, you could price your ebook at $0.99 or $19.99 and still make 70%, which you couldn't do with those prices on Amazon. #3: The next self-publishing platform we'll look at is Kobo Writing Life, which is the ebook platform to publish on Kobo, which is owned by Rakuten. Pros: Kobo is strong in the international market and will help you to reach readers in many countries. Based on my sales data, in Canada and Australia, Kobo is significantly bigger than Amazon for ebook sales. Kobo has also had a surge of recent media attention in the US as people seek out alternatives to Amazon and Kindle devices. The Con of Kobo, and this is a fairly small one, is that their US market share is still fairly small compared to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some of the others. But as I mentioned, they're a lot stronger in Canada and Australia, and they do reach a lot of different countries, more than Amazon does. Does Kobo have a subscription service? Yes, Kobo Plus. Kobo Plus is significantly less expensive than Kindle Unlimited, and there's an additional tier that allows you to add audiobook content to the plan. The library isn't quite as extensive as KU though, though. I should note that in the years since Kobo has been introduced, I'd say about half of my revenue from Kobo (sometimes 60% of my revenue from Kobo) comes from Kobo Plus and not from direct ebook sales. So it's getting to the point where the majority of their ebook revenue I suspect, is coming from Kobo Plus and not direct Kobo sales. Do they require exclusivity? No, which is another strong selling point for Kobo Plus. For their royalty structure, ebooks over $2.99, you get 70% and any books over below $2.99, you get 45%, which is a more generous term than Amazon in terms of the royalty rate for below $2.99 and above $9.99. So what do I do? I currently use it as one of the platforms for my ebooks. It's been a pretty strong seller for me consistently over the years, and every Kobo book that I have is also available in Kobo Plus, which probably explains the revenue split I was talking about earlier. #4: The next platform we'll look at is Draft2Digital/Smashwords, which we'll do as one because Draft2Digital and Smashwords are in the process of merging. Draft2Digital is technically what's called an aggregator, where you upload your book and then they can publish on a variety of different platforms for you, and in exchange, they take a small cut of the sales. Draft2Digital is, in my opinion, probably the most effective way to get your ebooks through Apple and Smashwords. Apple does have its own direct uploading service, but I've never used it because there are a bit too many hoops to jump through. Draft2Digital does, as I mentioned, have a way to publish on multiple storefronts at once while managing uploads and sales reporting through just one interface. They're not a storefront in and of themselves, although since Draft2Digital does own Smashwords, Smashwords essentially acts as their storefront for them. Although Draft2Digital lists Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble as an option, most authors will upload to these sites separately, and in fact, that's what I do for myself. The Pros of Draft2Digital is that it's a definite time savings using Draft2Digital to publish across multiple platforms, especially with platforms like Apple that are more difficult or time consuming to learn. This is also a convenient way to make your work accessible to library platforms like Overdrive/Libby, Hoopla, and Bibliotheca, if that is important to you. Library sales have never been a huge priority of mine, but I've never been opposed to them either, so I usually just flip those switches on and then don't think about it again. The Cons for Draft2Digital are that there was a period after the Smashwords migration where they received complaints about customer service and difficulty in setting up tax information, though I think that is mostly ironed out now. One potential hazard for Draft2Digital with a very specific subset of writers is that if you are a writer of, shall we say, very hard erotica, the sort that ends up in very restricted categories on most stores, you will probably have trouble publishing through Draft2Digital. This is not, however, a problem that's unique to Draft2Digital. Amazon has what is called the “erotica dungeon”, where if you publish certain kinds of, like we said, very harsh erotica, your book isn't searchable on the Amazon store. You can link to it directly, but it will never show up on any search results. Kobo in particular has had problems with erotica. Back in the 2010s, Kobo was also distributing ebooks to some British retailers, and these British retailers suddenly got upset when they noticed that these kinds of hard erotica were showing up on their store pages, which was not a good look for the company. And so there was a kerfuffle until that was all sorted out. My frank opinion with that is if you are writing these kinds of erotica, the big stores and Draft2Digital will never be on your side, and so you are better off pursuing a sort of a Patreon/running your own store on Shopify or Payhip strategy, but that is a bit of a digression. So in terms of royalties, Draft2Digital takes 10% of the book's retail price per copy sold, which is in addition to whatever amount is taken by the specific storefront. So you are paying a bit of money in exchange for convenience for just uploading your book to Draft2Digital and having it push out the book to all the different stores for you. What I do is I use Draft2Digital for Apple mainly because for a while I was using Smashwords, but Smashwords in the 2010s was a bit more persnickety than is now, and you needed to prepare a specially formatted doc file to publish on Smashwords and sometimes getting it through the Smashwords processing onto Apple was a bit of a pain. Draft2Digital took epub files, which are much easier to work with, and after a while I switched over all my Apple publishing to Draft2Digital entirely. So that's why I use Draft2Digital for Apple and for various library services that tend to be a minor amount of sales. Because of the difficulties on publishing direct to Apple, I do find that that 10% is good trade off in terms of selling books on Apple for me. #5: Now onto Google Play's ebook self-publishing platform, which is, I think its full name is the Google Books Partner Center, which lets you publish books to the Google Play Store for sale on Android devices. The Pros are that for writers interested in the international market, Google Play is another strong choice for a platform since the international mobile device market is very Android heavy. The iPhone (Apple) tends to be concentrated mainly in the US and a few of the wealthier countries like the UK and Canada, but Android has a much more international reach in general than the iPhone. Google Play also has some interesting promotional options for ebooks, such as offering the buyer a chance to subscribe to a specific series. The cons are that some authors report that their sales reporting doesn't always consistently generate reports, and others are annoyed that it only generates a CSV file, (which isn't that much of a hardship for people who are familiar with Excel). For myself, I found that there is a bit of a reporting lag on Google Play where it will sometimes take as long as five or six days for sales to show up on the dashboard, though usually it's only a delay of two days, though sometimes during the month you'll get these bigger lags and sometimes processing new material on the Google Play Store can be slow, and it can sometimes take two to three days for things to appear, though it usually gets worked out in the end. Does Google Play have a subscription service? It does not, nor does it require exclusivity, which is another point in its favor. And the royalties, the data is quite nice here. It is 70% for all price points in the countries listed on their support page, which only excludes a handful of countries like India, South Korea, and Japan (because of currency conversion regions or other local laws). So those are the ebook publishing platforms that I currently use, and because I use them myself, I would recommend them. Hopefully that is helpful to you as you are looking for places to self-publish your book as you set out to become an indie author. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the backup episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
GOLDEN DOME Blaine Holt, retired Air Force general who served as deputy military representative to NATO, on this: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3311539/can-chinas-new-stealth-tech-challenge-trumps-golden-dome @GORDONGCHANG, GATESTONE, NEWSWEEK, THE HILL 1994
In today's short clip, constitutional scholar Stephen Vladeck explains why the Supreme Court's use of unsigned, unexplained decisions—known as the “shadow docket”—is so dangerous. He shares why this judicial behavior, even when done in good faith, undermines public trust and the Court's ability to function in our constitutional system.
“They're not calling it QE, but that's exactly what it is,” says Michael Gentile, founder partner at Bastion Asset Management. He tells Daniela Cambone that the Fed's quiet purchase of $43 billion in U.S. bonds signals “how precarious the situation” has become—with rising deficits, fewer natural buyers of U.S. debt, and the Fed increasingly forced to intervene. As a result, central banks around the world are rotating out of the U.S. dollar and into physical gold, driving a multi-decade structural shift in global reserve strategy. “We're seeing a multi-year, multi-decade rotation out of U.S. dollar assets into gold,” he states. Watch the full video to discover how to better protect your wealth in these uncertain times. Even better — join Daniela Cambone and Michael live tomorrow (May 29, 2025) in Montreal, Canada for an exclusive conversation on “Building Generational Wealth.” Sign up for the event here:https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/building-generational-wealth
Kyle continues the spirit of Andy's episode by exploring the alternatives for cards that tend to get removed. Though the ceiling may be lower, do we always need to include the flashiest permanents in our EDH decks—only to see them become removal magnets? With card examples provided by Patreon supporters and Kyle, the boys explore strategic swaps for commander decks that may save you some aggravation and money. (00:00:00) - Introduction (00:00:50) - Musical Adventures for the Road (00:07:30) - Disappointment in Powerful Permanents (00:20:40) - Thesis: Theory v. Practice (00:28:35) - Tokens (00:49:10) - Pillowforts vs. Aikido (01:03:35) - Card Draw (01:18:30) - Twinning Spells (01:28:15) - Voltron (01:52:05) - Concluding Thoughts Look for links to deck lists on our lists-from-the-pod channel on Discord. ------------------- ------------------- Music Mentioned in this Podcast: ------------------- Music this episode comes courtesy of Makeup and Vanity Set. Be sure to support them by buying their music on Bandcamp! –
In this week's episode, I take a look at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Winter and Spring 2025. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook versions of my anthologies at my Payhip store: JUNE25 The coupon code is valid through June 17, 2025. So if you need a new ebook this summer, we've got you covered! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 252 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is May 23rd, 2025, and today we are looking at the movies and streaming shows I watched in Winter and Spring 2025. We missed doing an episode last week for the simple reason that the day before I wanted to record, we had a bad thunderstorm that knocked down large portions of my fence, so my recording time was instead spent on emergency fence repair. However, the situation is under control, so hopefully we'll be back to weekly episodes for the immediate future. And now before we get to our main topics, let's have Coupon of the Week and then a progress update on my current writing projects. So first up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 25% off the ebook version of all my short story anthologies at my Payhip store and that is JUNE25. As always, the coupon code and links will be available in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through June the 17th, 2025, so if you need a new ebook for this summer, we have got you covered. And now an update on my current writing projects. Ghost in the Corruption is finished. It is publishing right now. In fact, I paused the publishing process to record this and so by the time this episode goes live, hopefully Ghost in the Corruption should be available at all ebook stores. My next main project now that Ghost in the Corruption is done will be Shield of Power and as of this recording I am 15,000 words into it. My secondary projects will be Stealth and Spells Online: Final Quest and I'm 97,000 words into that, so hopefully that will come out very shortly after Shield of Power and I'll also be starting Ghost in the Siege, the final book in the Ghost Armor series as another secondary project and I'm currently zero words into that. So that is where I'm at with my current writing projects. In audiobook news, Ghost in the Assembly (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is now out and should be available at all the usual audiobook stores so you can listen to that if you are traveling for the summer. Recording of Shield of Battle (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills) is underway soon. I believe he's starting it this week, so hopefully we will have another audiobook in the Shield War series for you before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects. 00:02:17 Main Topic: Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup And now let's move on, without any further ado, to our main topic. Summer is almost upon us, which means it's time for my Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup. As usual, the movies and streaming shows are listed in order for my least favorite to my most favorite. The grades are based upon my own thoughts and opinions and are therefore wholly subjective. With all of that said, let's get to the movies and our first entry is MacGruber, which came out in 2010 and in all honesty, this might be objectively the worst movie I have ever seen. The Saturday Night Live MacGruber sketches are a parody of the old MacGyver action show from the ‘80s. And so the movie is essentially the sketch stretched out to make a parody of an ‘80s action movie. It is aggressively dumb and crude. Its only redeeming feature is that the movie knows it's quite stupid and so leans into the stupidity hard. I'll say this in its favor, MacGruber has no pretensions that is a good movie and does not take itself seriously and then runs away hard with that fact. For that he gets a plus, but nothing else. Overall grade: F+ Next up is Down Periscope, which came out in 1996. Now the fundamental question of any movie is the one Russell Crowe shouted at the audience in Gladiator: “Are you not entertained?” Sadly, I was not entertained with Down Periscope. This wanted to be a parody of Cold War era submarine thrillers like The Hunt for Red October, I say wanted because it didn't really succeed. Kelsey Grammer plays Lieutenant Commander Thomas Dodge, an unorthodox US Navy officer who wants command of his own nuclear sub, but he's alienated a few admirals, which is not traditionally a path to career advancement in the military. Dodge gets his chance in a Navy wargame where he has to command a diesel sub against nuclear subs. Sometimes parodies are so good that they become an example of the thing they are parodying (Hot Fuzz and Star Trek: Lower Decks are excellent examples of this phenomenon). The trouble is that the movie takes itself too seriously and just isn't all that funny. A few funny bits, true, but not enough of them. In the end, this was dumb funny but didn't resonate with me the way other dumb funny movies like Dodgeball and Tropic Thunder did. Overall grade: D Next up is Deadpool and Wolverine, which came out in 2024. Unlike Down Periscope, I was entertained with this movie, though both movies reside on the dumb funny spectrum. Deadpool and Wolverine is basically one long meta in-joke/love letter for the last 30 years of superhero movies. If you've seen enough of those movies, you'll find those movies funny, if occasionally rather tasteless. If you haven't seen enough of those movies, Deadpool and Wolverine will just be incomprehensible. The plot is that Wade Wilson AKA Deadpool gets pulled into some Marvel style multiverse nonsense. To save his universe from destruction, he needs to recruit a Wolverine since in his universe, Wolverine died heroically. In the process, Deadpool stumbles across the worst Wolverine in the multiverse. Together they have to overcome their mutual dislike and attempt to save Deadpool's universe from destruction at the hands of a rogue branch of the Time Variance Authority. This means the movie can bring in a lot of cameos from past Marvel films. Hugh Jackman's performance really carries the movie on its back. Like I said, this movie is essentially one very long Marvel in-joke. I thought it was funny. I definitely think it can't stand on its own without having seen a sufficient number of the other Marvel movies. Overall grade: C Our next movie is the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which came out in 2024. This is very loosely (with an emphasis on “very”) based on Operation Postmaster during World War II, when British Special Forces seized some Italian ships that had been supplying parts for German U-boats. It was entertaining to watch but it couldn't quite make up its mind tonally if it was a war thriller or a heist movie about Western desperados recruited into a crew. It kind of tried to do both at the same time, which killed the momentum. Like, the first parts of the movie where the protagonists take out a Nazi patrol boat and then free a prisoner from a base were good thriller stuff, but then the plot fused with the heist stuff and really slowed down through the middle forty percent or so. It was also oddly stylized with a lot of spaghetti western-style music that seemed out of place and some stuff just didn't make sense, like at the end after pulling off the mission, the protagonists were all arrested. That just seems bizarre since if anything, Winston Churchill and a lot of the British wartime leadership were enthusiastic about special operations and probably had too much confidence in the effectiveness of covert operations. So I did enjoy watching this, but I can see why it didn't make a lot of money at the box office. Overall Grade: C Next up is The Gorge, which came out in 2025. This was a peculiar mix of science fiction, romance, and horror. For the romance part, perhaps shooting zombies together is a good idea for a first date. Before I dig into the movie, a brief rant. In one scene, a character is using a chainsaw with no protective gear whatsoever and she's not fighting zombies or anything in a situation where she has to pick up a chainsaw without preparing first. She's trimming branches to pass time. If you're using a chainsaw, at a minimum you want protective eyewear and headphones. Ideally you'd want chainsaw pants as well to reduce the chance of serious injury if you slip and swing the saw into your leg. Since I became a homeowner, I've used a chainsaw a number of times and believe me, you definitely want good eye and ear protection. This has been your public safety announcement for this movie review. Anyway, loner former sniper Levi is approached by a high ranking intelligence officer giving him a mysterious job. He needs to guard a tower overlooking a mysterious mist-filled gorge for one year. On the other side of the gorge is another tower, guarded by an elite Lithuanian sniper named Drasa. Like Levi, Drasa has a fair bit of emotional damage and they're officially forbidden to communicate. However, they're both lonely and they soon start communicating over the gorge using telescopes and whiteboard messages. Eventually Levi gets emotionally close enough to Drasa to rig a zipline to cross the gorge and speak with her in person. Unfortunately, it turns out the gorge is full of twisted creatures that storm out and attack and the job of the two snipers is to keep them contained. If Levi and Drasa want to save their lives, they'll need to unravel the dark secret within the gorge. This movie was interesting and I enjoyed watching it, but it falls apart if you think about it too much (or at all). Like the chainsaw thing I ranted about above. The entire movie runs on that sort of logic. That said, I appreciate how the filmmakers were trying something new instead of something like Deadpool and Wolverine. Additionally, this was an Apple+ movie and it's interesting how Apple's approach to streaming is to just make a whole bunch of random stuff that's totally distinct, from Ted Lasso to Mythic Quest to Severance to The Gorge. It's like, “we have more money than most countries, so we're going to make Ted Lasso because we feel like it.” Then again, Apple+ is apparently losing a billion dollars every year, so maybe they'll eventually change their minds about that approach. Overall Grade: B- Next up is Click, which came out in 2006. Cross It's a Wonderful Life with A Christmas Carol and the comedic style of Adam Sandler and you end up with Click. Basically Sandler plays Michael Newman, a workaholic architect with a demanding boss and increasingly strained relationship with his wife and children due to his workload. In a fit of exasperation with his situation, he goes to Bed Bath and Beyond, where he encounters an eccentric employee named Morty (played entertainingly by Christopher Walken). Morty gives him a remote control that lets him fast forward through time, which Michael then uses to skip the boring and tedious parts of his life, but he overuses the remote and goes too far into the future and sees the disastrous results of his current life choices. Definitely a story used in A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life but effectively told and I was entertained (rather on the crude side, though). Overall Grade: B- Next up is Mr. Deeds, which came out in 2002. This was actually one of Adam Sandler's better movies, in my opinion. It was a remake of the ‘30s movie Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. In this new version, Sandler plays Longfellow Deeds, a popular pizzeria owner in a small New Hampshire town. Unbeknownst to Deeds, his uncle is the owner of a major media mega corporation and when he dies, Deeds is his legal heir. When the company's CEO and chief lawyer arrive at the pizzeria to inform him of this fact, Deeds goes to New York and soon finds himself involved in the CEO's sinister machinations. Yet he happens to rescue an attractive woman from a mugger, but there is more to her than meets the eye. The movie was funny and not as crude, well, not quite as crude as some of Sandler's other stuff. It had good story structure and several great lines, my favorite of which was “he was weak and cowardly and wore far too much cologne.” Sandler's movies, in a strange way, are often very medieval. Like various medieval fables had a savvy peasant outwitting pompous lords, greedy merchants, and corrupt clergymen. The best Adam Sandler protagonist tends to be a good natured everyman who defeats the modern equivalent of medieval authority figures- evil CEOs, arrogant star athletes, sinister bureaucrats and so forth. Overall Grade: B Next up is House of David, which came out in 2025 and this is basically the story of King David from the Bible told in the format of an epic fantasy TV series. Like if someone wanted to do an epic fantasy series about Conan the Barbarian, it could follow the same stylistic format as this show. And of course Conan and David followed a similar path from adventurer to king. Anyway, if one were to pick a part of the Bible from which to make a movie or TV series, the story of David would be an excellent choice because David's life was so dramatic that it would hardly require any embellishments in the adaptation. The story is in the Books of First and Second Samuel. King Saul is ruling over the Israelites around 1000 BC or so, but has grown arrogant. Consequently, God instructs the prophet Samuel to inform Saul that the kingdom will be taken away from him and given to another. God then dispatches Samuel to anoint David as the new king of Israel. David is a humble shepherd but then enters Saul's service and undertakes feats of daring, starting with defeating the giant Goliath and leading Saul's troops to victory and battle against Israel's numerous enemies. (The Iron Age Middle East was even less peaceful than it is now.) Eventually, Saul's paranoia and madness gets the best of him and he turns on David, who flees into exile. After Saul and his sons are killed in battle with the Philistines. David returns and becomes the acknowledged king after a short civil war with Saul's surviving sons and followers. If Saul's fatal flaw was his arrogance of pride, David's seems to have been women. While the story of David and Bathsheba is well known, David nonetheless had eight wives (most of them at the same time) and an unknown but undoubtedly large number of concubines. Naturally David's children from his various wives and concubines did not get along and David was almost deposed due to the conflicts between his children. Unlike Saul and later David's son Solomon, David was willing to repent when a prophet of God informed him of wrongdoing and to be fair to David, monogamy was generally not practiced among Early Iron Age Middle Eastern monarchies and dynastic struggles between brothers from different mothers to seize their father's kingdoms were quite common, but enough historical digression. Back to the show, which covered David's life up to the death of Goliath. I thought it was quite well done. Good performances, good cinematography, excellent battles, good set design and costuming, and a strong soundtrack. All the actors were good, but I really think the standout performances were Stephen Lang as Samuel, Ali Sulaman is King Saul, Ayelet Zurer as Saul's wife Queen Ahinoam, and Davood Ghadami as David's jerkish (but exasperated and well-intentioned) eldest brother Eliab. Martyn Ford just looks extremely formidable as Goliath. You definitely believe no one in their right mind want to fight this guy. Making fiction of any kind based on sacred religious texts is often tricky because no matter what you do, someone's going to get mad at you. The show has an extensive disclaimer at the beginning of each episode saying that it is fiction inspired by the Bible. That said, House of David doesn't really alter or deviate from the Biblical account, though it expands upon some things for the sake of storytelling. Queen Ahinoam is only mentioned once in the Bible as the wife of Saul, but she has an expanded role in the show and is shown as the one who essentially introduces Saul to the Witch of Endor. Goliath also gets backstory as one of the “Anakim,” a race of giants that lived in Canaan in ancient times, which is something that is only mentioned in passing in the Old Testament. Overall, I enjoyed the show and I hope it gets a second season. What's interesting, from a larger perspective, is to see how the wheel of history keeps turning. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Biblical epics were a major film genre. The 10 Commandments and Ben Hur with Charlton Heston are probably the ones best remembered today. Eventually, the genre just sort of ran out of gas, much the way superhero movies were in vogue for about 20 years and began running out of steam around 2023 or so. Like, I enjoyed Thunderbolts (which we're going to talk about in a little bit), but it's not going to make a billion dollars the way Marvel stuff often did in the 2010s. The wheel just keeps turning and perhaps has come back around to the popularity of Biblical epics once more. Overall Grade: A Next up is Chef, which came out in 2014. I actually saw this back in 2021, but I watched it again recently to refresh my memory and here are my thoughts. I quite liked it. It's about a chef named Carl Casper, who's increasingly unhappy with his work after he gets fired over a Twitter war with a writer who criticized his cooking. Carl is out of options and so he starts a food truck and has to both rediscover his love of cooking and reconnect with his ex-wife and 10-year-old son. In Storytelling: How to Write a Novel (my book about writing), I talked about different kinds of conflict. Carl's conflict is an excellent example of an entirely internal conflict. The critic is an external enemy, but he's basically the inciting incident. Carl's real enemy is his own internal conflict about art versus commerce and a strained relationship with his son. I recommend the movie. It was rated R for bad language, but there's no nudity or explicit sexual content and honestly, if you've ever worked in a restaurant kitchen or a warehouse, you've heard much worse in terms of language. The movie also has an extremely valuable lesson: stay off social media when you're angry. Overall Grade: A Next up is Thunderbolts, which came out in 2025 and I thought this was pretty good, both very dark and yet with quite a lot of humor to balance the darkness. Former assassin Yelena Belova has been working as a mercenary for the sinister director of the CIA, Valentina de Fontaine (now there's a villain name if there ever was one). Yelena has grown disillusioned with her life and career and is suffering from increasing depression since she never really dealt with the death of her sister. Valentina promises her one last job, only for Yelena to realize that Valentina decided to dispose of all her freelance contractors at once, which includes US Agent and Ghost (previously seen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Antman and the Wasp). In the process of escaping Valentina's trap, Yelena stumbles across a mysterious man who identifies himself as Bob, who has no memory of how he got there, but shows increasingly unusual abilities. Yelena wants to deal with Valentina's betrayal, but it turns out one of Valentina's science projects has gotten out of control and is threatening the world. The movie was well constructed enough that it didn't rely too heavily on previous Marvel continuity. It was there, but you probably wouldn't be lost without it. It almost feels like Marvel looked at the stuff they did the last couple of years and said, okay, a lot of this didn't work, but makes great raw material for new things. It helped that the central conflict was in the end, very human and about the characters, not stopping a generic villain from getting a generic doomsday device. Overall Grade: A Next up is The Hound of the Baskervilles, which came out in 1988. This is a movie length episode of The Return of Sherlock Holmes television series, which had Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Dr. Watson. The plot deals with Sir Henry Baskerville, the American heir to an English manor set in the Windswept moors of Dartmoor. Apparently there's an ancestral curse laid over the Baskerville estate that manifests in the form of a spectral hound. Local rumors hold that the previous holder of the manor, Sir Charles Baskerville, was killed by the ghostly hound and many of the local people fear it. The local physician, Dr. Mortimer, is so worried about the hound that he comes to Sherlock Holmes for help. Holmes, of course, is skeptical of any supernatural explanation and soon becomes worried that an extremely subtle and sinister murderer is stalking Sir Henry. Jeremy Brett's version of Holmes is, in my opinion, the best portrayal of the character and Edward Hardwicke's version of Watson is a calm, reliable man of action who sensibly takes a very large revolver with him when going into danger. Definitely worth watching, Overall grade: A Next up is Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which came out in 2024. The 2020s have been a downer of a decade in many ways, but on the plus side, between Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog, people have finally figured out how to make good video game movies, so we've got that going for us. Sonic 3 was an excellent kids movie, as were the first two in the trilogy. In this one Sonic is living with Knuckles and Tails under the care of their human friends Tom and Maddy, but then a dark secret emerges. The government has been keeping a Superpowered hedgehog named Shadow in stasis and Shadow has broken out. It's up to Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails to save the day. Meanwhile, Dr. Robotnik is in a funk after his defeat at Sonic's hands in the last movie, but then his long lost grandfather, Gerald Robotnik returns seeking the younger Dr. Robotnik's help in his own sinister plans. Keanu Reeves was great as Shadow (think John Wick if he was a superpowered space hedgehog in a kid's movie). Jim Carrey famously said he would retire from acting unless a golden script came along and apparently that golden script was playing Dr. Ivo Robotnik and his evil grandfather Gerald. To be fair, both the Robotniks were hilarious. It is amusing that Sonic only exists because in the 1990s, Sega wanted a flagship video game character that won't get them sued by either Nintendo or Disney. It is also amusing that the overall message of the Sonic movies seems to be not to trust the government. Overall Grade: A Next up is Paddington in Peru, which came out in 2024. This is also an excellent kids' movie. In this installment, Paddington has settled into London with the Brown family and officially become a UK citizen. However, he receives a letter from Peru that his Aunt Lucy has mysteriously disappeared into the jungle. Distraught, Paddington and the Browns set off for Peru at once. Adventures ensue involving mysterious lost treasure, a crazy boat captain, and an order of singing nuns who might not quite be what they appear. Anyway, it's a good kids' movie. I think Paddington 2 was only slightly better because Hugh Grant as the chief villain, crazy actor Phoenix Buchanan, was one of those lightning in the bottle things like Heath Ledger as the Joker in the Dark Knight. Overall Grade: A Now for the two best things I saw in Winter/Spring 2025. The first of them is Andor Season Two, which came out in 2025. Star Wars kind of has an age range the way Marvel stuff does now. What do I mean by that? In the Marvel comics and some of the TV series like Jessica Jones, they get into some really dark and heavy stuff, very mature themes. The MCU movies can have some darkness to them, but not as much because they're aiming at sort of escapist adventures for the general audience. Then there are kid shows like Spidey and Friends that a relative of mine just loved when he was three. You wouldn't at all feel comfortable showing a 3-year-old Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but Spidey and Friends is just fine. Star Wars now kind of has that age range to its stuff and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you want to see a dark meditation upon human nature. Sometimes you need something kid friendly to occupy the kids you're babysitting and sometimes you just want to relax and watch Mando and Baby Yoda mow down some space pirates or something. All that said, Andor Season Two is some of the darkest and the best stuff that Star Wars has ever done. It successfully shifts genres from Escapist Pulp Space Fantasy to a gritty Political/Espionage Thriller. We in the audience know that the emperor is a Sith Lord who can use Evil Space Magic and wants to make himself immortal, but that fact is totally irrelevant to the characters. Even though some of the characters are high ranking in their respective organizations, this is essentially a “ground's eye” view of the Rebellion and life under the Empire. In some ways, this is like Star Wars' version of Wolf Hall (which we're going to talk about shortly), in that we know how it ends already, but the dramatic tension comes from the harrowing emotional journey the characters undertake on the way to their inevitable destinations. Cassian Andor is now working for the nascent Rebellion under the direction of ruthless spymaster Luthen Rael. Mon Mothma is in the Imperial Senate, covertly funneling money to the Rebellion and realizing just how much the Rebellion will require of her before the end. Syril Karn, the ineffective corporate cop from Season One, has fallen in love with the ruthless secret police supervisor Dedra Meero, but he's unaware that Director Krennic has ordered Meero to manufacture a false flag incident on the planet Gorman so the planet can be strip-mined for resources to build the Death Star and Dedra has decided to use Syril to help accomplish it. All the actors do amazing jobs with their roles. Seriously, this series as actors really should get at least one Emmy. Speaking of Director Krennic, Ben Mendelson returns as Orson Krennic, who is one of my favorite least favorite characters, if you get my drift. Krennic is the oily, treacherous middle manager we've all had to deal with or work for at some point in our lives, and Mendelson plays him excellently. He's a great villain, the sort who is ruthless to his underlings and thinks he can manipulate his superiors right up until Darth Vader starts telekinetically choking him. By contrast, the villain Major Partagaz (played by Anton Lesser) is the middle manager we wish we all had - stern but entirely fair, reasonable, and prizes efficiency and good work while despising office drama. Unfortunately, he works for the Empire's secret police, so all those good qualities are in the service of evil and therefore come to naught. Finally, Episode Eight is one of the most astonishing episodes of TV I've ever seen. It successfully captures the horror of an episode of mass violence and simultaneously has several character arcs reach their tumultuous climax and manages to be shockingly graphic without showing in a lot of actual blood. Andor was originally supposed to be five seasons, but then Peak Streaming collapsed, and so the remaining four seasons were compressed down to one. I think that was actually to the show's benefit because it generates some amazing tension and there's not a wasted moment. Overall Grade: A+ Now for the second of my two favorite things I saw, and that would be Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, which came out in 2024, but I actually saw it in 2025. This is a dramatization of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall novels about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, who is King Henry VIII's chief lieutenant during the key years of the English Reformation. The first series came out in 2015, but the nine year gap between this and between the second series and the first series actually works quite well since Thomas Cromwell looks like he ages nine years in a single year (which may be what actually happened given how stressful working for someone like Henry VIII must have been). Anyway, in The Mirror and the Light, Cromwell has successfully arranged the downfall and execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry's previous queen. Though Cromwell is haunted by his actions, Henry still needs a queen to give him a male heir, so he marries Jane Seymour. Cromwell must navigate the deadly politics of the Tudor Court while trying to push his Protestant views of religion, serve his capricious master Henry, fend off rivals for the King's favor, and keep his own head attached to his shoulders in the process. Since Cromwell's mental state is deteriorating due to guilt over Anne's death and the downfall of his former master Cardinal Wolsey and Henry's a fickle and dangerous master at the best of times, this is an enterprise that is doomed to fail. Of course, if you're at all familiar with the history of Henry's reign and the English reformation, you know that Cromwell's story does not have a happy ending. Rather, Wolf Hall is a tragedy about a talented man who didn't walk away from his power until it was too late and he was trapped. Anyway, in my opinion, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light was just excellent. All the performances were superb. Mark Rylance is great as Cromwell and has some excellent “WTF/I'm SO screwed” expressions as Cromwell's situation grows worse and worse. Bernard Hill played the Duke of Norfolk in the first series, but sadly died before Series Two, so Timothy Spall steps in and he does an excellent job of channeling Hill's portrayal of the Duke as an ambitious, crude-humored thug. Damien Lewis is amazing as Henry VIII and his performance captures Henry's mixture of charisma, extreme vindictiveness, and astonishing self-absorption. The real Henry was known for being extremely charming even to the end of his life, but the charm was mixed with a volcanic temper that worsened as Henry aged and may have been exacerbated by a severe head injury. Lewis's performance can shift from that charm to the deadly fury in a heartbeat. The show rather cleverly portrays Henry's growing obesity and deteriorating health by having Lewis wear a lot of big puffy coats and limp with an impressively regal walking stick. Overall, I would say this and Andor were the best thing I saw in Winter/Spring 2025. I wouldn't say that Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light is an accurate historical reputation. In real life, Cromwell was rather more thuggish and grasping (though far more competent than his rivals and his master) and of necessity the plot simplifies historical events, but it's just a superb historical drama. Overall Grade: A+ As a final note, I should say that of all the 2024 and 2025 movies mentioned here, the only one that actually saw in the theater was Thunderbolts, and I hadn't actually planned to see it in theaters, but a family member unexpectedly bought tickets for it, so I went along. Which I suppose is the movie industry's biggest problem right now. The home viewing experience is often vastly superior to going to the theater. The theater has the big screen and snacks, but at home you can have a pretty nice setup and you can pause whatever you want, go to the bathroom, and you can get snacks for much more cheaply. That's just much more comfortable than the movie theater. Additionally, going to the theater has the same serious problem as booking a flight in that you're an enclosed space with complete strangers for several hours, which means you're potentially in a trust fall with idiots. All it takes is one person behaving badly or trying to bring their fake service dog to ruin or even cancel a flight, and the theater experience has much of the same problem, especially since the standards for acceptable public behavior have dropped so much from a combination of widespread smartphone adoption and COVID. The difference between the movie industry and the airline industry is that if you absolutely have to get from New York to Los Angeles in a single day, you have no choice but to book a flight and hope for the best. But if you want to see a movie and are willing to exercise some patience, you just have to wait a few months for it to turn up on streaming. I'm not sure how the movie industry can battle that, but sadly, it is much easier to identify problems than to solve them. So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe, stay healthy, and see you all next week.
• Listener Ryan praises Moe Dewitt's hands-on legal help and accessibility • Ross McCoy guest hosts; jokes about Moe's “minions” and Coors vs. Kirkland beer • Summer of Sips announced at Jeff's Bagel Run with flavor drops and giveaways • Blogger tip: ask “what's hot” at Jeff's; suggestion for a Krispy Kreme-style hot light • Moe segues into a donut addiction story about his dad • Science Night Live promo: May 31, adult superhero night at the Orlando Science Center • Ross and Dan text weirdness, superhero jokes including “Silverfish Man” • Tommy completes 5th grade; Tom reflects on graduation renaming and Crystal's over-the-top party bags • Gift bags include Raising Cane's lip gloss and sanitizer; Tom forgot to hide animatronic Satchmo • Tom calls it a “hunk of shit” as Crystal walks in; awkward doll display mocked • Tommy becomes “Ranch King” despite not liking ranch; classmates gift him packets and pizza • Max is dubbed “Ranch Prince”; nickname sticks post-graduation • Tom's emotional gap as a parent surfaces after missing Tommy's straight-A award • “Non-confrontation of the Week” debuts with a Jackal-made theme song • Tom runs from a dog that bites his butt mid-jog and avoids confronting the owner • Second story: Tom lets teens into Baldwin Park pool who then disrupt the lanes and flirt with moms • Dan scolds Tom for mishandling the pool key; Tom hopes pool moms intervene • Stealth camping rabbit hole: Canadian YouTuber Steve Wallis hides in pallet trailers • Wallis has a full camper inside, cooks jambalaya, checks cams, and avoids notice • Dan is obsessed with stealth life; Tom jokes about ghillie suits and fake stores • Listener brings up game show prize buyouts; old vs. new show nostalgia • Mr. Beast's prize model debated for lacking stakes; “The Running Man” joked about • Diddy/Kid Cudi drama: dog locked in bathroom, gifts opened, and a Molotov cocktail attack • Court stories reveal female DNA on the explosive; Cudi later hires an armed dog sitter • Ross calls Diddy “the Grinch”; Tom pitches “Black John Wick” starring Kid Cudi • Segment closes with Diddy allegedly trashing presents and intimidating behavior • Bull & Bush final show promoted; Ricky Reyes joins Moe Comedy Jam lineup • Memorial Day note: ACT show Monday, BDM on Tuesday ### **Social Media:** [Website](https://tomanddan.com/) | [Twitter](https://twitter.com/tomanddanlive) | [Facebook](https://facebook.com/amediocretime) | [Instagram](https://instagram.com/tomanddanlive) **Where to Find the Show:** [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-mediocre-time/id334142682) | [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2FtZWRpb2NyZXRpbWUvcG9kY2FzdC54bWw) | [TuneIn](https://tunein.com/podcasts/Comedy/A-Mediocre-Time-p364156/) **The Tom & Dan Radio Show on Real Radio 104.1:** [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-corporate-time/id975258990) | [Google Podcasts](https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL2Fjb3Jwb3JhdGV0aW1lL3BvZGNhc3QueG1s) | [TuneIn](https://tunein.com/podcasts/Comedy/A-Corporate-Time-p1038501/) **Exclusive Content:** [Join BDM](https://tomanddan.com/registration) **Merch:** [Shop Tom & Dan](https://tomanddan.myshopify.com/)
S2E7: Leveraging Technology to Improve the Patient Experience Host: Frank Cutitta Guest: Surabhi Saxena - Manager Quality, Safety, PFR at Spaulding Hospital Cambridge, Inc. To stream our Station live 24/7 visit www.HealthcareNOWRadio.com or ask your Smart Device to “….Play Healthcare NOW Radio”. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen
Just because an outage is subtle, doesn't mean it's harmless. Learn how to catch those pesky “stealth outages” that can so easily slip under the radar, and also unpack recent service disruptions at Slack, Microsoft 365, and X. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:56 Slack 08:16 Microsoft 365 11:22 X 13:26 Outage Trends: By the Numbers 16:26 Get in Touch ——— For additional insights, check out the links below: - The Five Phases of Internet Outage Recovery: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/five-phases-internet-outage-recovery-infographic?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q4_internetreport_q4fy25ep2_podcast - The Guide to Next-generation Assurance: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/guide-to-next-generation-assurance-ebook?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q4_internetreport_q4fy25ep2_podcast ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at InternetReport@thousandeyes.com. Or follow Cisco ThousandEyes on LinkedIn or X. ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what's working and what's breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes' Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report
In this episode, Jake and Michael discuss Jake's new stealth grill, his eldest son's takeover of the state finals (and metric's takeover of measurement), and Michael goes through the process of refining over 150 talk submissions down to the final Laracon AU schedule.
Damien Garros, CEO and co-founder of OpsMill is with us once again for today’s podcast. Since we last spoke with Damien, OpsMill has emerged from stealth mode and is making progress as one of the leaders in network source of truth in the field. Today, we’ll talk through the progress Infrahub has made and get... Read more »
Damien Garros, CEO and co-founder of OpsMill is with us once again for today’s podcast. Since we last spoke with Damien, OpsMill has emerged from stealth mode and is making progress as one of the leaders in network source of truth in the field. Today, we’ll talk through the progress Infrahub has made and get... Read more »