Hello everyone, welcome to the next International Relations Capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. Today our topic is Cuba, a distant land in Latin America but very well known in India and the world, much beyond its size and importance for more than half a century. Viral Castro survived for 50 years in spite of all the opposition he had from the strongest power in the neighborhood. So it has been a story of exceptional courage and fortune that he was able to build that country almost as a counter to the United States. But very recently, after Viral Castro has passed away and his brother also has handed over power, now Castro is, Cuba is without a Castro. It has faced very many problems after the end of the Cold War. Till then they had the support and the subsidy of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union collapsed because everybody thought that Cuba was surviving because of the Soviet Union and everyone felt that the end of the Soviet Union, Cuba will also collapse but Cuba survived that crisis also partly because of the strength of their own economy and its resilience and also Castro's very positive image among the people. So they were put up with difficulties in spite of the problems, economic crisis that Cuba faced at that time. Then with some help from the Chinese and some friends around in Latin America, Cuba just managed to survive. But last year with the advent of the pandemic and exceptional problems of poverty, hunger and shortages, Cuba was heading towards a crisis and there was no Castro to give the charismatic leadership to the people. And this year just a few days ago, on the 11th of July, there were unprecedented historic and spontaneous protests on the streets of Havana, the capital city and other 40 Cuban towns. This has been seen by the world as a turning point, a watershed moment for the communist regime in Cuba. For Cuba, which had overcome many challenges in the 60 years of revolution, mostly under Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, the popular protests came as a shock to its new president, Miguel Díaz Canary. This was not the first time that Cuba had crushing economic difficulties, food shortages and a sense of insecurity. But this was the first time that the people demanded reforms, political and economic reforms against the backdrop of the pandemic and shortage of food and medicine which had ravaged the nation. Interesting thing about these protests is that it was not called by the opposition, but a number of activists unnamed who got together through the internet. They were just activists who were fed up of the situation and they were guided more by their economic requirements than by any particular ideology. But the protesters held placards which demanded we want change in what commas and down with dictatorship. This had not been seen in Cuba before. And interestingly, side by side with those placards were pictures of Fidel Castro showing him in a positive light. So the people were not really protesting against the system established by Castro, but the sheer anger that the country is not going in the right direction. Even though Cuba was never a prosperous country, it had a very rigid economic system, of course a political system too, and that some specialties like the health development of health, medicine, education, etc. were very good in Cuba. I used to go there very regularly from say 1979 at the time of the Non-Aligned Summit in Havana and then the three years that they were chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement. And one saw that it was not a prosperous country, buildings were kind of deteriorating and the skyline was not very clean, but friendly people, fun loving people, enjoying the weather, the warm weather and the beaches and enjoying themselves. So it was a kind of sense of security, though there was no prosperity. When the protest started, naturally the president was taken aback and he asked his supporters to fight the protests while taking part of the blame himself for the situation. He did say that, yes, we have made mistakes, but this is also a pandemic and an economic collapse of the whole world and there was nothing much that he could do himself, but he promised that he will do his best in order to make the life of the people better. Of course, he also attributed the situation to the United States and economic embargo, which was reimposed by President Trump, rejecting the agreement reached at the time of President Barack Obama. Remember that in 2014 Barack Obama paid a historic visit to Havana and he reached an agreement with the Cuban government to forget the past and to develop a new relationship. But after Trump had rejected it, the situation had gone back to the same old embargo. Every the air, the United Nations General Assembly used to approve a resolution demanding that the embargo should be ended, but the United States continued with it. So it was right in saying that even though there was this little interact when the situation was moving towards normalcy from say 2014 to 2017, the situation had gone back to the old days. And so while admitting that there were mistakes, the protests were put down with an iron hat, particularly by deactivating the internet, which denied them a platform. So the protesters could not communicate very much among themselves and therefore it was possibly put down the same day itself, even though one cannot say that it is over. But support from President Joe Biden and the Cuban exiles in the US might ignite the rage of the people to demand fundamental reforms again. The government has already hinted that they were willing to make some concessions like allowing opposition candidates to participate in the election process. Not to open out the election, it's a one-party government, but like in Iran where there is a one-party government, but opposition can also participate. There is no question of their winning, but participation is possible. But what is the chemistry between US and Cuba? About a million Cubans have migrated to the United States since the revolution. Most of them were enemies of Castro, but Castro instead of putting them in jail or oppressing them gave them the opportunity to travel to the United States. That's how he resolved that problem of strong protests. Many of course went on their own boats and perished in the scene, but he closed his eyes to the people going away from Cuba to Miami, which was a kind of promised land for the Cuban exiles and the enemies of Castro. So they are all accumulated in the United States and these 1 million people have been the main drivers of the US policy towards Cuba since 1959. They came in different waves. Some as political asylum seekers soon after the Cuban Revolution and others seeking economic benefits and the policy of the United States was to allow them to come. The Cuban government allowed them to leave and the Americans accorded to them a welcome as part of their strategy to destabilize Cuba. So the American plan was that those enemies of Castro who had come to Miami and spread and grew and that community will give the basis of the nucleus of an opposition to Castro in the future and that was the strategy that the Americans used. The emotional baggage of the Cuban exiles was a factor that successive American administration had to contend with the formulation of the Cuban policy because some of them, some of the Cubans had even become senators and congressmen and thus they started exerting such an influence on the US government that they could not make any concessions either on the embargo or on any other political matter. So the policy was really not independent and not entirely guided by consideration of mutual benefit. Some of these exiles who rose in the political hierarchy of the US actively campaigned against any softening towards Castro. Several political organizations sprang up in the areas where Cuban exiles were concentrated and they became a political force in American politics in the Florida area. Apart from protecting the interests of the migrants, these organizations were also concerned that any normalization with Cuba would result in the loss of the refugee status that the new arrivals enjoyed in the US. The peculiar situation was that as long as the United States and Cuba were estranged, these arrivals from Cuba got refugee status but if the relationship becomes better, then according to the refugee convention, these people are supposed to go back to their homes and therefore while they would have liked to destroy the Cuban communist government, they were dependent on it because they were hostile to the United States where the refugees had gone and therefore the refugees had the status they got and they were able to amalgamate themselves into the US politics. So it was more of the instinct of self-preservation and the need for them to remain in the United States that they kept pressurizing the United States government not to normalize relations with Cuba. This was a very peculiar situation. Of course, it should go to Barack Obama's credit that he was able to overcome the fears about the reaction of the Cuban community by making a trip to Havana in 2014. He was under pressure from the international community to normalize relations with Cuba and just like he took his initiatives with the Arabs on the new fear question, etc. He changed because Barack Obama's slogan was changed and on many situations he took new initiatives ending the Cold War and developing a historic relationship with many of them but none of them really materialized because the situation changed. But Barack Obama was very keen that you should make this historic change and there were reports that Pope Francis had also exerted, Pope Francis is from Latin America and he had an interest and he exerted pressure on Barack Obama to take a friendly position towards Cuba. In fact, somebody had predicted some historian and predicted that when a Latin American becomes a Pope and a black man becomes the President of the United States, that is when the normalization is going to take place. And as predicted, there is an Argentinian Pope and a black President of the United States and therefore historically the situation developed in such a way that President Obama could normalize relations with Cuba and when he went there, he went beyond the requirements of the occasion to characterize his visit as historic and in his speech he said, I quote, I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. So it does not simply a normalization or political relationship but also a rethinking on the relationship itself and that is how Obama visualized the new relationship. Of course, he devoted a considerable part of his speech to the travels of the Cuban exiles. He did not want to show that he was forgetting them and just making friendship with Cuba. He relayed the fears about the US compromising the dictatorship and he even said that every people should choose their paths themselves. So he was really balancing between the compulsion of the Cuban exiles to oppose normalization with Cuba and at the same time the resolutions of the UN General Assembly by a vast majority demanding that United States should end its embargo. In Cuba, he sent the record straight on human rights and authoritarianism. He criticized the Cuba's record of human rights as he always does wherever he goes. Even he praised Cuba's achievements in education and health and Fidel Castro's response was rather restraint. He was not over enthused by President Obama's visit and there was not even a photograph of both of them together. So in his heart of hearts, Fidel Castro probably felt that what he was doing was against his own free will or he was compelled by circumstances. But Castro did not object to the change and he blessed the agreement but at the same time he made two points against the United States. One was of course the US embargo and the infamous Guantanamo prison. It is actually on Cuban soil but under the control of the United States and that is where the terrorists and other criminals all over the world were dumped in a deplorable situation in the prison and the Americans are able to maintain it that way because it is not in the United States soil. So if it was in the United States then all those laws would have applied. They could not have suppressed and oppressed them the way it is. So with this peculiar situation that the Guantanamo prison is on Cuban soil but under American control gave them the opportunity to really torture and punish terrorists and other criminals from the rest of the world. But the situation was ripe for a US Cuba rapprochement because the world had changed, the winds of globalization had not left Cuba unaffected. The Cubans have always been more comfortable with the Americans than with the Russians at the personal level because by their instincts, by their habits, by their language, by their cultural instincts, the Cubans have always been more comfortable with the Americans. Miami was their promised land not Moscow. They were supported and nourished by the Soviet Union because of the huge subsidy and the huge amounts of sugar that Soviet Union used to purchase. But even at that time they're sentimentally or culturally they were more akin to the Americans. And after the Cold War the two had learned to deal with each other without intermediaries. Though they had no diplomatic relations but there was a senior Cuban diplomat stationed in Washington in order to do business. Though they officially were dealing with other countries but he was virtually the ambassador. He was my neighbor in Washington and he functioned like an ambassador in every way even though he was like an ordinary man because he didn't have diplomatic privileges etc. So it was worth seeing that they were able to work with each other and they had learned to deal with each other without American government's own support. The lifestyle and language of Cuban diplomats I noticed were more in tune with American aristocracy than with their comrades in Russia. They spoke very fluent English, very well-dressed, looked like Europeans. Of course they're hardcore communists but their language was that of civility and moderation. And there were several minor major crises occurred once a boy was kidnapped and brought to United States and that was a result and many points of crisis were resolved between them even though the relationship was not normal. So after the end of the Cold War situation has changed basically and what Barack Obama did was to make the relationship stronger and to come to compromise with Cuba so that they don't have to waste their energies containing Cuba. You know that in 1962 the Soviet Union and the United States were on the verge of a nuclear war because of Cuba because President Kennedy asked Khrushchev to remove Soviet missiles which were placed in Cuba and Khrushchev refused and an ultimatum was given that if you do not move these by such and such time the United States would launch nuclear missiles. It was a highly tense situation. Both sides were not sure what would happen but at the last moment both decided to withdraw from that position and that is how a nuclear holocaust was avoided. From that kind of a relationship to a more personal to more human relationship had already set in when Barack Obama made his historic visit to Cuba and there were these small things that the Americans enjoyed, Cuban cigars for example and Cuban rum. All these were very popular but they cannot import it directly but the Cubans would sell it to Europe or to Canada or Mexico etc and from there these were important into the United States and Cuban cigars and rum are highly valued in the United States and tourism. Many Americans went to Havana, the beaches and bars of Havana so this natural affinity between these two peoples rather than the terms of settlement which determine the future of the relations between the US and Cuba. The survival of Cuba as an independent country and its communist system for more than half a century is a miracle in world politics. Fidel Castro defied the mighty United States throughout his life and faced assassination attempts and Soviet Union and United States as I mentioned earlier Cuba became a point of contention on the basis of which or on account of which they were willing to go to war. The Castro government was characterized by the West as one of the worst for denial of human rights to its own people particularly press freedom but the country had internal peace and a fairly successful economy which even extended military and humanitarian assistance to turbulent countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. So it was a vibrant country with a friendly and fun living people but President Trump totally rejected the agreement reached, reimposed the sanctions and the situation today is such with all these affinities and all these willingness on the part to be able to compromise they are at lower heads with each other. So then you can imagine what would have happened on July 11th and how President Biden would have reacted because President Biden fully supported the Trump theory that Cuba should be converted into a democratic country until then they would not make any concessions. As I said earlier the Cuban exile is also keeping a close eye on Mr. Biden's policy towards Cuba. So on this occasion his response to the development in Cuba not only included sanctions against the government but also individuals responsible for the oppression of the protesters. They identified people who are actually oppressing the protesters and measures to bring increased internet access by force to the island. There were things like sending balloons onto Cuban air from where from the balloons the people could connect to the internet. So such unconventional treatment was given and to bring increased internet access to the island and called for more international pressure on the totalitarian government. So Biden's response was not helpful to Cuba but as I said earlier this was because of the democratic Cuban American activists who have been calling for this action and they thought that the July 11th opprisings would be the opportunity to take vengeance on Cuba. But let's see what Biden actually said about the developments. He did not say oh this is a great opportunity we'll jump in and do something. He didn't do that. He simply said and I'm quoting advancing human dignity and freedom is a top priority for my administration. And we will work closely with our partners throughout the region including the organization of American states to pressure the regime to immediately release wrongfully detained political prisoners, restore internet access and allow the Cuban people to enjoy their fundamental rights. So he didn't say I'm going to send troops into Cuba supporting the protesters. Topped by the officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also released forceful statements reiterating Biden's message that they will continue to enforce Cuba related sanctions and take action against human rights abuses. So what is the prognosis? It is quite possible that the protesters might reassemble and the protests might gather momentum and become a bigger threat to the Cuban government which does not have a cash flow halo around it anymore. But the Cuban governments have been reasonable in dealing with their exiles through a policy of operation on the one hand and giving opportunities given to them to migrate to the US. So it is possible that allowing many of these protesters to go to the United States, the Cuban government may well bring the situation under control. One can see that President Biden does not consider Cuba a central issue for the US. He has many other things to worry about starting from China to situation in Europe, Ukraine and with the Soviet with Russia. So Cuba is a rather small matter for him. So he may be willing therefore I think a compromise being worked out between the Cuban authorities and the protesters. Cuba may allow small adjustments like I said opposition parties being allowed to participate in the elections or internet connections being restored so that they can communicate with each other. And the other Latin American countries who have good relations in Cuba may also exert some pressure on the government of Cuba to make some concessions to satisfy the protesters and also to improve the economy, try to find assistance from the rest of the world. So all these are quite possible. Since the leadership is determined to ensure law and order and it has the machinery to prevent a regime change, we do not know what the future of Cuba will be. But the assessment generally of observers of Latin America for so many years is that the change is in the offing. Fundamental changes may become necessary. Whether it will be this protest gathering momentum or there will be others, we do not know but certainly the communist regime in Cuba is under threat. They may be able to resolve the problems now a little later etc. But certainly one can say that this is a watershed moment, a moment of change in Latin America particularly in Cuba. I am just saying a word about India. As you all know, we have had very cordial relations with Cuba particularly because of the non-aligned movement. Castro was one of the founders of the non-aligned movement together with Javelal Nehru, Kitto of Yugoslavia, African leaders, Latin American leaders. So in 1962 when the non-aligned movement was established, though Cuba is far away from us, we developed good relations with Cuba and also the leftist intellectuals in India had a kind of romantic relationship with Castro and the poetry, Latin American poetry, the many Latin American ambassadors who came to India were culturally inclined. So we generally had good relations with Latin America in general and particularly to Cuba. And when Cuba assumed the leadership of the non-aligned movement in 1979, I was in Havana on that day. For the next three years, we worked very closely with the Cubans and then because of the war in Iraq, Iraq could not host the next summit and therefore India was asked to take the leadership. So it was from President Castro's hand that Mrs. Gandhi received the gavel representing the chairmanship of the non-aligned movement. And Castro was a great friend and admirer of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. He called her my sister and even after the Cold War when economic difficulties arose in Cuba, we shipped a lot of rice and other materials to help Cuba out. But in the present crisis or in the present situation, India has really no hold. I don't think we would be involved in any process of change in Latin and in Cuba. But our effort will be certainly to see that there is reconciliation in the country. So we will maintain our friendship with Cuba, whatever the situation there is. And looking back at these 60 years, we can see that the communist Cuba is a cat with nine lives. They could have lost any one of them at any time in history. But now we do not know how many lives are left out of the nine to save Cuba from a big crisis. So we have to wait and see what happens in Cuba and how this is handled. But certainly it is true that the people are wanting change and that change may take place either peacefully through a process of reconciliation change or through protests and violence. So let us hope it will be the latter. It will be the former running, that is reconciliation and adjustments and reform of economic and political policies. Thank you very much. Well, this is what everybody expected. Everybody expected that the Cubans will just simply accept capitalism and work with the United States. That would have been perfect for them. But the personality of Castro you have to take into account. As I was mentioning 2014 when Obama went to Cuba, Castro was not so happy. He did not even have a picture with him and he questioned the American policy. So since it was a one-man government literally and he had his own way of growing some vegetables and having some cows and things like that. That kind of an approach, that development of a different kind he had and that is what he pursued and therefore that may have something to do with his psychological makeup. He was not ready to compromise with capitalism. It would go against the grain for him, even more than to the Communists. Communists were much more pragmatic. Maybe Castro brought about this situation in Cuba because of his reluctance to embrace a new system. Even Obama's compromises he did not accept fully. He allowed his government to continue with that. So if Trump had not stopped it, maybe the situation would have normalized. So that is the only explanation I can give. But nobody knows why the other thing did not happen of Cuba deciding to grow with the times and become a prosperous island. Well, I have my personal views because it has nothing to do with what we are discussing today. The choice of non-aligned was made very consciously by because it was not just an expediency. We had just come out of the hands of the West of 200 years of Western domination. And who would want to go back to it at that moment? Secondly, the Soviet Union had no great attraction for us. We were not particularly fond of Communism. There were no takers here. But we were admirers. Pandit Nehru was an admirer of the 10 years planning and when you have limited resources, how you utilize for the betterment of the people, not going for luxuries, etc. So it was a conscious decision to remain non-aligned. But Harsimarao changed all that overnight, didn't he? When he was pushed into the water, when we did not have foreign exchange, he went to survive for six weeks, he decided to reverse the whole process. So initially the choice of a particular economic program and policy. But that protected us for 50 years. It protected the Indian industry and it enabled us with Soviet help to build a base, the infrastructure. Whether that would have been possible if we had allowed Coca-Cola to come and dominate India, I'm not very sure. Many Latin American countries suffered on account of that. The Coca-Cola board is better than the house on which it is posted. So you can see those in these countries. But we didn't allow that. We protected the industry and therefore our industrial relationship grew and we didn't have unfair competition and the Soviet Union was willing to buy our consumer goods and in exchange, we had a rupee ruble arrangement in exchange by which we were able to get all these heavy machinery, equipment, technology and even joint collaboration. Also it suited us a lot. So it's a matter of history. Okay, good. Thank you very much. We'll meet again next week. Thank you.


This is Derek Shweppy and this is our proof-of-concept prototype based on a rock chip design. Let's see what it can do. Hey Mycroft, what's the weather like? Right now it's clear sky at 66 degrees or a high of 67 and a low of 49. Hey Mycroft, tell me about Neil Armstrong. Just a moment while I look at Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who was the first person to walk on the moon. He was also an able aviator, test pilot and university professor. Okay, so everything is working fairly well with this rock chip architecture. We have yet to introduce the display. Our next phase will continue to focus on audio first and as we improve the microphone and audio design and then phase three we will bring the display back into the system and work our way to a production ready mark two.


Some Bemidji property owners may be fined if they don't clear the snow from their sidewalks. Recent snowfall events have left some people calling City Hall about snowy and impassable sidewalks. The City of Bemidji wants to remind property owners that it's for their own benefit and to help your neighbors when shoveling your sidewalk. Clear walkways help people with strollers and wheelchairs as well as postal carriers. If walkways are not cleared in a timely manner, property owners could get a bill or a fine. We can either shovel it ourselves and pay and bill you for it, and if you don't pay for that bill, then we can put it on the assessment process and and assess it to your taxes. Also, we have the ability to issue an administrative citation for that violation of code, which is a $60 fine. After a snowfall event, property owners have 12 hours to clear their sidewalks. If the walkways are not cleared and the property owner receives a written warning, the office then has 24 hours to clear, the person that then has the owner has 24 hours to clear their sidewalks. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Coming up on DTN essay solution to annoying ads that interrupt your movies, Twitter buys away to compete with Facebook groups and can the blockchain save journalism? This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, October 21st, 2021 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt from Austin, Texas. I'm Justin Robert Young and I'm the show's producer, Roger Chang. We were just talking about Korean TV and Netflix and Squid Game and all that good stuff. If you want that expanded conversation, get good day internet. Become a member at patreon.com slash DTNS, where you can join our top patrons. You know, if you ever heard, be more like Paul Boyer. Why can't you be like Brad? Be more like Kevin. Well, become a patron and you will. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Razer released its Zephyr face mask. That's the one they showed off at CES with the RGB LEDs and fans on your face. It's available start on Thursday evening for 100 bucks, including the mask, a carrying case and USB-C charging cable and three N95 filters as well as a small container of anti-fog spray. There's also a package with 33 N95 filters included for 150 bucks. Or you can just buy the filters from Razer insets of 10 for $30 a set. Keep in mind, the mask is not tested against SARS-CoV-2 virus particles and is not officially considered personal protective equipment. It's officially marketed as an air purifier. It has been submitted to the FDA. That just means the FDA knows it exists. That's all. Razer also announced a much more practical line of PC components with LEDs, of course, because it's Razer. Those are liquid coolers, case fans, platinum rated ATX power supplies. You might want to check those out too. Thursday Amazon launched a merchant option called local selling. This lets shoppers on Amazon choose to pick up an item from a local store or have the store deliver it instead of having it shipped. The pickup service does not cost the customer anything and sellers use their own vehicles to deliver items, not Amazons. Sellers can offer things like installation and assembly along with delivery. Let's just have everything on Amazon. The Independent Oversight Board that reviews Facebook's moderation decisions began its own investigation into Facebook's X-Check program after it was revealed and reported by the Wall Street Journal. The board was a little put off that Facebook wasn't more forthcoming about the X-Check program. The board found that Facebook's previous description of the program was misleading. X-Check was a quality control program for actions against high profile accounts. In other words, if they were going to moderate something on somebody who was a celebrity or a high profile person, they would double check it. Some people felt that meant there were a separate set of rules. And it grew to be more than a million accounts. In a previous case, Facebook had described the program being used in a small number of decisions. Facebook considers a million a small number. They got billions of users. The Oversight Board said Facebook's ambiguous and undetailed response was, quote, unacceptable and is drafting recommendations to change the system. Facebook thanked the board for its work, saying it will strive to be clearer in our explanations going forward. We are very nice. We are nice people, said Facebook. Please remember that in the coming weeks. A couple of notable business moves by Google to tell you about, notably not being Facebook, which I'm sure they're thrilled about right now. Google has reduced the cut it takes on all subscription based apps from 30 to 15% right from the beginning. And eBooks and on-demand music streaming services will be, quote, eligible for a fee, quote, as low as 10%, unquote. And nine to five Google reports that AT&T is working with Warner Brothers to license the Google Stadia technology to offer a browser based streaming version of Batman Arkham Knight to customers on AT&T Wireless. And the Google Smart Home Developer Summit, Google announced tools to do up developers build devices with support for Matter, the interoperability smart home platform supported by Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung and others. So Stadia as a service. You know what? I think that's probably smart. Initial benchmarks are out showing the GPU on Apple's M1 Max chip, scoring 68, 870 in the Geekbench 5 metal test. That's 62% higher than the top end AMD Radeon Pro 5600M. That's the one that's offered on the previous 16-inch MacBook Pro, so it's a little older. 181% higher than the base GPU on that model. The closest equivalent GPU score is the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56. That's the one you find on the iMac Pro. All right, let's start talking about music. Indeed, Tom. Starting November 3rd in the snowy hinterlands of Canada, YouTube Music will swap two features between the paid premium version and the free version of the service. So either of them used to have these features and then freaky Friday style, they're going to have the opposite features. It's not like one's getting added to both. Free users will now get background listening, but will lose access to videos. So first of all, when you say the hinterlands of Canada, it makes me think only Calgary is getting this. All of Canada is getting it. All of Canada. Sorry. Amongst the bustling sun dappled metropolises of Canada as well. Also, I just called Calgary hinterlands through them under the bus. I apologize to you Calgary, but you beat BC and I'm still upset about it. All right. Back to this story. I think swapping the features, I think this makes perfect sense to me, right? Like having background listening is day regur for the freest of the free platforms of Spotify and everything else. Like why that was in the paid version still doesn't make any sense anymore. Maybe it did when they launched it, but it doesn't now. And saying, oh, you got to pay a little if you want to get videos also makes sense to me. That's that that was weird that that was in the free version. So yeah, why not? Does it make sense? Yes. That qualified in the bizarre, twisty, turvy, emcee, Escher-like world that Google music subscription services exist in. Yes. I don't quite know. I mean, this has been the constant head scratcher, right? Like we've had so many different versions, Google music, YouTube music. They've had a problem with branding. And this is one of the only situations where I think they should have rebranded. This is, I mean, if you're going to swap features and you already have an established thing, it has a quirk to it, blow it up and do another thing. I mean, it's not like people have invested so much in the Google streaming ecosystem that they wouldn't tolerate yet another rebrand. Listen, listen, it's very simple. There's YouTube music for free and then YouTube music as part of YouTube premium, which includes things like ad free on the YouTube app, you know, the app where you can watch videos for free, music videos for free, which you can't on YouTube music unless you pay. Yeah, that simple. Hope everybody gets that. Yeah. All right, folks, speaking of confusing things, if you've used almost any free streaming platform to watch movies or TV shows, Pluto, 2B, IMDB TV, you know the pain of a dramatic scene being interrupted, sometimes mid sentence by an ad for laundry detergent or some such thing. This happens when content does not have natural ad breaks or the ad breaks aren't where the streaming company needs them. Maybe they got the show overseas and there's a different set of ad breaks, maybe only one ad break in the service once two or three, maybe a show that used to have ad break metadata lost them somewhere along the chain of custody of the file. They just didn't get copied over in protocols. Next up newsletter, Janker Rickers mentions a startup called Spots AI with zspotz.ai that uses computer vision and machine learning to solve the random ad problem. Ralph Jason was president of Verizon Digital Media Services and left that company last year to help start spots. He joins former Pluto employee Ernest Wilkerson, who co-founded spots and serves as CTO. Right now, these spots are put in by humans. Most companies hire people to mark where the ad should go or they're just kind of randomly thrown in sometimes. But that's expensive and time consuming. And not all video services have the money to do that or if they do, possibly not for the entire library. Also, humans make mistakes. They're not watching the movie or show. They're just looking for black frames. And sometimes those frames aren't actually a sensible spot for an ad. So Spots uses an algorithm to look at more than just whether there's a black frame or not. It checks audio levels, brightness, other indicators to determine if it's an actual break in the action. It's training an algorithm to look for that stuff. The service is available as an API that analyzes videos 20 to 40 times faster than regular viewing speeds. So it can do this faster than humans. Customers can tell the service how many ad breaks to look for. They can customize it with complex rules like we want fewer breaks in the first few episodes of a series. Once we get them hooked, then you can add more breaks in later, which is insidious but understandable. This is definitely an annoyance. And it's interesting to know that there's a start-up out there trying to solve this for us. Absolutely. The first thing that came to my mind when we were reviewing this story was the watching Mad Men when it was initially airing on AMC, the creator, Matthew Wiener, famously hostile to commercials, which is odd for a television producer, which is never carve out good times. And so it'd be a very jarring moment when Peggy gets something dropped out her desk that now all of a sudden you're seeing the bounty being the quicker picker upper ad. This, to me, is mostly a story validating the business model for the Pluto's, the 2Bs, the IMDB TVs. Not only are you seeing their market share continue to go up. Big ad spends for a lot of them to put this out there. The idea of free streaming content is something that is obviously caught on. It's good that this is out here, but then again, janky ads might be the cost that you're paying because you're watching all this stuff for free. Yeah, I think that's a really good point is we're seeing a lot more people wanting to get a part of this business because it's got nothing but growth. Every time I'm watching on Direct TV Stream some empty ad break where it's got a dancing bottle saying, commercial break in progress, I'm like, you are just leaving money on the table. Like, your tech needs to catch up and sell these ads because the money is out there for them. And it's going to continue to come pouring into streaming in multiple ways, including this. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and former president of a startup accelerator Y Combinator. That guy, he went and started a cryptocurrency company on Ethereum, but bear with me. This one is at least worth hearing out because Altman's behind it. And, importantly, the pitch, my friends, is weird.  No, this is not about collecting iData if that's where you're going. The Iris image is encrypted on device and becomes the code used to access your account. The original scan data is deleted and the only the code, rather, is sent off the device. Worldcoin says it does not have any biometric data in its database. Worldcoin says that it is 100,000 users worldwide adding 700 or so a week. Okay, so then what? What is Worldcoin good for? Nothing yet, like every other cryptocurrency, you can hold it in a wallet and maybe pay for something if somebody, somewhere decides to accept Worldcoin. They'd also like for developers to build on their system like every other cryptocurrency. All of those things take adoption at scale. So what Worldcoin is trying to solve first is adoption. If it can get to a billion users by its goal in 2023, they figure the businesses and developers will come and the eye-scanning part makes it attractive because it deters cheaters. Also, Altman is a big fan of universal basic income, thinks Worldcoin could, surprise, surprise, be used for UBI. Yeah, of course. Of course. This is, I don't know. If it weren't Sam Altman, I'd probably discount it a little more. Sam Altman is good at things, not everything. He paid $10,000 to scan his brain for virtual replacement later, but for him, $10,000, that's like me spending $19 on a cloth to buy my Apple products. So yeah, this is interesting because he's right that if you can get to a billion users, yeah, people will come, right? They'll see that number and be like, oh man, I can access a billion users, I will do things, right? Getting momentum, getting scale, he's right. The question I have is, can you get to a billion users just by giving people free Worldcoin that they can't do anything with yet? There's a certain number of people who are like, yeah, free to get in on a cryptocurrency that might someday be the next Bitcoin? Sure, I'm in. But how many people is that, especially when to get it, they have to give you a mailing address to have you send them a little steel ball they could scan their iris with? Well, I mean, number one, I can understand from Altman's perspective that if you look at the world of cryptocurrency right now, it is very, very swingy, right? Like you have no idea where things are going. You have influencers that are running effective pump and dump scams on some of these coins. You've got a lot of people that are in there that are spending a lot of money trying to figure out what's real. So we are in a moment of adolescence for cryptocurrency. And if you're Altman and you've got the money and you apparently have the tech to send little metal iris scanners to whoever wants them, then why not? Why not try to carve out your corner on this? If it doesn't work, all you've lost is money. Yeah, technologically, this is fascinating.  The fact that it's privacy protecting will be attractive to people. The fact that they're calling it proof of person is how you get new coins, right?  I mean, it's all very interesting, but it all hinges on the adoption, right? Yeah. So I don't know. I'm going to try to sign up. Are you going to get it? Are you going to scan your eye? I think the eyes have it, Tom. I'm going to get it, too. Hey, a spear. Oh, wait, sorry. Before it gets a spear. Yeah. No, no, no. Go ahead. Before I get the spear. Do you want to expand your Spanish tech skills? I do. And specifically, I'd like to do it with my buddy, who I hung out with, in Mexico City, Dan Campos. Dan Campos is here to help you. Hello, friends of DTNS. It is time for The Word of the Day, brought to you by Noticias de Tecnología Express. I think THANG is a group of experts that provides advice on policies reflecting and researching about relevant ideas. In Spanish, we could refer to this concept as a grupo de pensamiento, but the most accepted term is laboratorio de ideas. There are important laboratorios de ideas like the Mercator Institute for China studies. They reviewed ethical guidelines for AI recently revealed in China. You can learn this and more words by listening to Noticias de Tecnología Express, available every Friday. So, Tom, spear. See, here's the deal with spear, man. It's a group chat app focused on communities, basically an attempt to make a better Facebook group situation. It has features like self-clearing feeds, auto-archiving, tries to encourage interactive conversations around specific interests. If it sounds good to you, well, get ready for it to be incorporated into Twitter, because Twitter acquired Sphere and its 20 member team. Twitter VB of engineering, Nick Caldwell says Sphere's team will help improve communities, DMs and creator roadmaps on Twitter. Twitter launched its own invitation-only communities in September. The Sphere app will wind down over the next few months. Yeah, if Sphere sounds good to you, too bad, it's going away, but it will. It's going away, grand opening, grand closing. It will come back within Twitter, and this immediately reminded me of Review, the newsletter service that Twitter bought and is trying to integrate into this creator community side of Twitter. Twitter knows it's a bunch of journalists and influencers that use the platform, and they're trying to cater to the kinds of things that journalists and influencers and creators do. Yeah, I mean, I think this is the sub-stack reaction, sub-stack understood and Patreon, to another extent, understood that there is a place where people want to a poor time and money. The world of journalism, which we're going to get into in a second, is very chaotic right now. The money around journalism is very chaotic for a lot of different reasons, but I mean, I don't know, Tom. It's just, it's Twitter. Like I would understand if they had a coherent road map for anything, but boy, the product sure seems like the exact same thing that it was when I first got on it, every time they tried to tack something on it, usually isn't great. I have no faith that this is going to be any different. Yeah, if I were to defend Twitter, I would say the things that they have improved, you don't notice, you know, the 280 character limit, the- Okay, that was sure. Yeah. The ability to follow topics. More people use the trending stuff in different ways than they used to. I think we sort of forget how much Twitter has changed because the things that do work have worked so smoothly and the things that didn't work, you know, like, what was their little like ephemeral thing that just went away? Fleets. Yeah, fleets, those fails spectacularly. So I think there's more going on with Twitter. I think what they're doing behind the scenes with review and now Sphere and a few other acquisitions that they've made have the potential, I'm not guaranteeing it, but they have the potential to suddenly be a very compelling suite of creator-focused tools that give you more than any sub-stack, Patreon, et cetera, on their own are giving you. I think that they have a tremendous lane for it. I really do, because anybody who's on Patreon, anybody's on sub-stack, guess where they go first to let everybody know that they've got new stuff out? Guess where they go first to detail and summarize what they just did on these platforms so they might get out in front of a new audience because they're going to catch the zeitgeist for a second. Who knows whether or not it works. Who knows whether or not it's smart, but it's certainly the behavior. And if Twitter were able to make a competent suite of tools for it, I think it could be useful. Here's the problem. The problem is, is that Twitter also has a very inconsistent moderation policy. So what you're talking about is please, everybody go, my big community's on Twitter, please subscribe to me on Twitter. What's the guarantee that it's not gonna go away? What's the guarantee that the moderation tools aren't gonna be abused? What's the guarantee that it's not gonna be brigaded on some level? So I think that these are a lot of questions that Twitter has earned. These are not unreasonable fears, but I do think that that shouldn't stop them from trying to create really cool tools. Yeah, I use review, the Twitter-owned newsletter platform, but I have to say, I don't really feel like there's a thing I get from it that's like, ooh, if they weren't owned by Twitter, I wouldn't have this cool thing. But maybe I'm just not using it right. I don't know. Hey, you know that buzzword blockchain? Everybody thinks about blockchain and they're like, yeah, it's a scam. It's part of the cryptocurrency scams, right? How about an example of blockchain that doesn't support a cryptocurrency or track shipments, which is usually the other thing people talk about if they're like, yeah, it can be used for other things like tracking shipments. How about blockchain, Justin Robert Young, journalism? Finally, the main characters of the journalist. The idea of using a blockchain in journalism is that it could control the integrity of the content. So you know you're getting it from a trusted source. You can have it verified that, yeah, this is actually from the Associated Press. Also makes it more accessible. One server goes down, you don't lose access to the information. It can't get overloaded and make the content unavailable. And it's censorship resistant, because once it's there, the thing about the blockchain, go check out our No Little More episode. It's really hard to change. Not impossible, but it's almost impossible to change. And it's more transparent. If a story has changed, you could see on the blockchain how it was changed and when. So the Associated Press announced it is using the Ethereum-based Chainlink Labs smart contract system, which is a blockchain, to automate its news data distribution. Starting on November 2, the more than 15,000 outlets that use the AP will receive some AP data over a Chainlink blockchain so that they are cryptographically verified from the AP. That includes 2021 U.S. state election results, as well as economic and sports data. Think GDP, unemployment numbers, earnings numbers, and for sports, things like scores and injury reports. The AP previously partnered with Chainlink to push out its verified call of the U.S. election so that you knew it was the AP because it was done on the blockchain. That was in November 2020 using Everapedia software. So this is an expansion of that partnership to say, let's start with data, and then we might expand from there and see what it's good for. Well, I mean, this story mostly is interesting to me with the idea of revisions, although that is not in general the biggest problem that I think people have in terms of a distrust of journalism. It is a problem in a digitally editable world where unlike in a newspaper where things are printed and sent out, you can just take out a line or change something. Decorum states, ethics states that you should then put a note on what was changed and why it was changed or what was added. And so that's interesting. But Tom, allow me to bring you into a different scenario on how journalism would interact with the blockchain because what I do think is interesting, what I do think could fundamentally change not only journalism and the quality of journalism but also the way that we understand it is if the blockchain were used to track the reporting process. Who you're calling, who you talk to, you don't have to list them if they're anonymous, you can just list them as anonymous source one, anonymous source two. Blockchain is good for verifying things that are anonymous. So I could see how that could work, yeah. So you could say, look, I was on the phone for X amount of time, you could use this as part of an app or something like that where you would enter in who you're talking to, you would enter in who you're texting with, you could have these things and have tools to reveal as much or as little as you can. But what you'd be able to see in the blockchain is the process of how a story comes together. And that's something that I think has been lost because when we talk about reporting, these are the questions that get asked in a newsroom. When you bring a story to your editor, when your editor's reviewing your story, what they're asking you is who'd you talk to, why didn't you talk to X, go call Y to make sure that this is up to stuff that you think about talking to Z, right? You would now be able to see where the initial idea came from, who the initial conversations were, and then possibly who was added later into the process. Even if it's just categorizing, I talked to anonymous source one three times, I talked to anonymous source two two times and anonymous source three only once, you would at least get an idea of where this story and the information is coming from. I also think it would be a refreshing element of honesty and transparency in a field that by and large gets constantly misinterpreted, but that's my thought. Yeah, and I think you could extend that even after publication. Here's a use for an NFT that isn't collecting a crypto kitty. How about the NFT is tied to the author of the article for authorship? The idea of a non-fungible token is it, one of the ideas is it shows ownership, you could say. Justin Robert Young is the certified author by using an NFT and then if I quote your story in my story, my story can immediately acknowledge this information came from Justin or came from Nate at Bloomberg or wherever and it starts to reduce some of this copypasta we get out there where you lose track of like, I don't know, this outlet's saying the thing, but I don't know where they're getting it from. I love that idea. I love the idea because right now we're in a world where everything just gets repeated without a lot of new reporting on it because there's so many outlets and everybody just kind of wants the headline and they don't really care whether or not they add anything to the story.  I can just read the New York Times thing. I can read the Washington Post thing. I can read whatever and now you just know that and you know that like when someone adds something to it, okay, well the new information was added by this source. I think that'd be very helpful. And there's obviously a lot of systems work to be done. This is about using the technology and what it could be used for. You obviously have to get the reporters to use the system that tracks their sources. You've got to get the publications to respect each other's blockchains and show that this is where it came from. But yeah, and that's a lot of work. Don't get me wrong, but if you can get that going, get that momentum going, then it is useful for everybody. It is now the time where I snap everybody out of this bizarre hallucinogenic trance that I put you in and remind you that this will never happen.  They will find it as a different way that they can be attacked by it. It'll never happen. But for that one beautiful five minute conversation, Tom, wouldn't it be nice? Yeah, I'm not going to say it'll never happen. You just got to make it easy. The technology can't be difficult. It's too difficult to do an NFT right now. It's too difficult to operate a bunch. Love for up and coming journalists to be trained on a system like this though. I think that this would be, this would be great to just understand, hey, you're going to have to put your sources in the ether when you publish the story that that's, that is, that is part of the rigors of being able to make, make it easy to do, make it trustworthy where, where the reporter's like, I don't know if I put this in, is this source going to get outed? Like you have to, you have to build trust in the system, but it could work. Could work. Yeah. Let's check out the mailbag Tom, Roger and Sarah writes, Russell, I was in Las Vegas for a few days last week and saw a few things I thought might be interesting to pass along. One of the biggest things that struck me was the really innovative and creative use of display technology. Flat panels and micro LED displays were everywhere and used for all kinds of things from international or I'm sorry, informational to purely decorative. Too many examples to send, but I attached a couple of photos. One is of some columns in a lobby that were fully clad in panels and displayed some changing artwork. They also provided some of the lighting for the space. The other is a giant spherical display in an atrium. I had never seen this before. One of the other things that was around some of the casinos was virtual blackjack with an AI dealer did not play but observed and it was interesting as well. Thanks as always for keeping the tech news fair and balanced. Thank you, Russell. We do our best. Yeah, some of these pictures, I haven't been to Vegas in a minute. It's been a while. And it does show that display technology is just kind of infusing itself into this world. Yeah, and it makes sense. It's comparatively lightweight. It creates a magical, a surreal kind of environment because you're able to change it and make it so dynamic. I think if there is anybody, any kind of place that would do it, it is certainly the glittering desert lore that is Las Vegas. By the way, it just struck me just now that we didn't even touch on the idea of blockchain chain of custody journalism making it easy for you to decide what Google gets to use and what it doesn't in its indexing of your news. How do you mean? In other words, you set up a permission system on a blockchain that says, sure, Google, you can include our snippets. Come to an agreement with us. Mm, that'd be interesting. Yeah. Anyway, special thanks to Gabrielle Cohen, one of our top lifetime supporters for DTNS. Thank you for all the years of support. Gabrielle, really appreciate it, man. It's a big deal that we are supported by patrons. We are supported by patrons in a way that means that I don't have to think about a lot of things. I am answerable to you, the actual listener.  Thank you, Justin, Robert Young, for being with us as always. What do you got going on? I know you got good stuff coming with PX3 soon. So tomorrow's episode of the show, Friday's episode, we'll focus exclusively on not the blockchain, but the supply chain. You've heard a lot about it, a lot of conversation about worker shortages, inflation and shortages of product. Not only are we going to take a look at the latest news surrounding it politically, what Joe Biden made announcements about last week and then where we're going to go forward from it, but also we had a lot of PX3 listeners that are buyers for major retail chains or in shipping that gave us some great perspective. And then, big Jim, James Thatcher, our PX3 supply chain correspondent, gives us the full breakdown of not only why we're in this situation, what solutions in his mind will be the most helpful and we do a little forecasting and some of it is a little dire. So I would very much encourage folks, it's a very nutritious episode of PX3. If you're not normally into the back and forth and bickering of Congress or political campaigns, less of that here, much more of stuff that you're going to need to know because things might get a little hairy with this issue moving into the winter. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Big Jim. You gotta check that out, folks. I'm sorry, I was just reading Big Jim's Global Logistics Haiku's book, also available. We're fine books are sold. Hey, we are live, Monday through Friday, 4.30 p.m. Eastern, 2030 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Back tomorrow with Chris Ashley, host of the new show, Barbecue and Tech, as well as the SMR podcast. And Len Peralta will be here illustrating the show as well. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Bob, I hope you have enjoyed this brover.


Hey guys, it's Nate, A.K.A. the Foot Account, and welcome back to the channel. With the market being as mudded as it is, so many people are waiting for team of the season, myself included, to see a very low point on the market, where we have an opportunity to buy cards and maybe season prices go back up, but when is that time going to be? When is this market no longer going to be mudded? That's what I wanna talk about in today's video, especially after yesterday's team of the season Premier League voting opened and we didn't have any news about Tot's warm-up series. We don't have any market panic continuing. The market's kind of chilled out a little bit. So I wanna talk about that in today's video. What's gonna happen if we don't get team of the season this Friday and it ends up being next Friday, because that's definitely gonna impact prices probably in a positive way this week. Now, with this week maybe being a quiet week, what could Tuesday's content look like today? There could still be some spicy things in store. So we're gonna cover all that and more in today's video. If you're excited for it, drop a thumbs up and of course, subscribe. If you're new, let's do a little content overview from yesterday. We had an 80 plus player pick SBC on this game. We had the 81 pluses last week. We had the 80 pluses this week and I have to say I'm disappointed with these not because of the price, but because of the weight. Man, we were doing something on stream yesterday. I think I did a solid set of, I don't know, maybe like seven to 10 of them and guys in the chat were doing them as well and they just seem to not be very good. Of course you have your one-offs that are really good. I'm turning in rares because rares and non-rares are basically the same price. So don't at me for that. But most of these have been just so mid. I mean in 83, that's not that amazing. You're hoping for like last week we had so many 84s, 85s, 86s and such that that's just disappointing compared to the player picks that we had last week during team one. So that was a bit of a disappointment yesterday but still it's an upgrade pack player pick that is there to do. We also had another upgrade pack. We had the 84 times seven SBC if I can get all the way back here to find it and it is going to refresh every single day. It's a little expensive and I think it's turning people away for the fact that you have to turn in an 87 rated squad and in form and an 87 rated player and in form and an 85 squad to get this done. It's coming in at around a price of 75,000 coins which does seem a little bit expensive but just like the 8315 from last week is very craftable and you can rinse it into the next one. We're gonna be able to do one of those each and every day on this game. It did impact some fodder. First of all, since there was a team of the week requirement some of those team of the week cards are rising up a little bit in price.  I would not be selling these yet because that 84 times seven refreshes every single day. Look at your ease from 19K all the way to 24,000 coins for some of these 87 rated cards. 84s are approaching 4K because since you're turning in an 87 rated in the squad and you need an 85 rated squad you're gonna end up needing some 85s but also a good amount of 84s because you have that 87 rated player that's in there pushing the squad rating up. So that's why 84s to 87s are going up on this market. I would hold those and sell later on in the next couple of days because again like we said this 84 seven refreshes every 24 hours and people are doing those whether you're saving for team in season whether you're opening, trying to pack a Titans icon or a Titans hero card which I did see a couple of people packing yesterday. Those are very popular gamble upgrade pack SPCs and honestly they are pretty cheap. So that was kind of an L content they pretty quiet day yesterday. Now the biggest news was the fact that we had Premier League Tots voting also I don't know why EA rebranded this to be like pink on the website. I liked the blue but here we are with the pink. Premier League Tots voting a lot of you guys have maybe casted your vote my votes on Twitter. You know some very interesting as always interesting nominees in here and some people say well Nate where's the heya and where are all those cards that we saw on the community Tots vote those are two completely different teams. Some people are wondering where some players are especially like midfielders names that were shouted that were not included in the vote Thomas Partey. Some people thought Bruno Fernandez should have been in the vote attackers. A lot of people thought Ivan Tony should have been in the vote as well instead of somebody maybe like maybe Alvin Rowan should not have been in there Darwin Nunez or Kai Havertz. A lot of people are like why is Kai Havertz in there but again I like how EA did this vote with the Premier League Tots. There's a lot fewer players to choose from and I think that they've done a good job here of releasing a list that is pretty solid right with guys that perform pretty well during the year guys that deserve it but also you know a lot of names in there so that we have some decisions and we have some choices for some really cool cards that we could see in FIFA. So make sure you get your votes in because this is only up for two more days until the 20th and that's when this is gonna be going away. So with this vote though like we talked about in this video there were some market drops and if we take a look at our Golden Boppy like we always do just because Golden Boppy is the barometer of this market he did drop off on price yesterday you can see right he was 392 there was some panic selling on some cards yesterday heading into content some cards went up a lot of Italian and Serie A links went up a lot yesterday and are even going up even more today with the Benucci SBC being such a big hit but and Boppy went from 390 all the way to 370 he's kind of now back up at 390,000 coins but you saw that a little bit yesterday with this Tots voting it kind of got the news about team this season out a little bit more especially for some guys that were in the vote that maybe weren't expected to be in Darwin Nunez hit a low yesterday of 384 I don't know if he was expected to be in the team this season vote so that did impact some prices negatively in that manner I saw like Martinelli was another one that who I actually had on my transfer list and was trading with at the time his card dropped off a bit after content yesterday because he was in the vote right he went down to a low point of 320 he did rebound back up because the content yesterday wasn't that crazy but you did see some panic now on the other side of things there was no Van Dyke in the defense and I think that for a lot of people was not a surprise but since he was not in that vote Virgil Van Dyke his price on all of his special cards exploded 1.85 besides this undercut is the price of team of the Van Dyke right now look at his graph yesterday panic selling all the way till content he was 1.68 he exploded to 1.8 mil and he just keeps rising his other cards are going up as well this card was like 700K or 798 all the way down to 925 or all the way up rather to 950,000 coins so that's kind of like the two tails of the tape that played out yesterday is that cards that were in the voting maybe dropped off a little bit some of the rest of the market had another slight drop off heading into the day yesterday but the content and the news was rather lackluster so you actually had some cards start to go back up and as we head into today on Tuesday that's what I wanna talk about next is some of these prices are going up like some of these fantasy cards that are getting upgraded I picked up up Mcconnos a couple of them at 180,000 coins because I figured this guy might be going up with the upgrades upcoming and he is going up in fact now center backs are still down bad and they still are in the mud as we look across the market prices are in the mud right are they going to stay that way if we don't learn anything about team of the season I think my answer to that question is yeah if this week is just a quiet week and we don't learn anything about TOTS if TOTS does not end up being this Friday on this game that was a crazy low bid on this Rupindee S514K and that's very lucky where he's getting an upgrade and that's super, super low for him but if we don't see any team of the season loading screens or news that would suggest TOTS is this Friday the market's probably gonna start to rebound back just a little bit but again I would not say that's a low point for us to maybe look at cards to invest for a longer term through TOTS or to buy players for our teams that we really want for card prices that have gone down so much because it really for me comes down to whenever TOTS is going to be a few days before that when we get the official leaks the official information that's gonna be the crunch time where we have that last bit of panic selling that's gonna be the catalyst I think for like the best part of the market crash to really dip your coins into and buy players then so if that is not this week now it could be, we don't know right we're still looking towards that website that we looked at yesterday on the community TOTS webpage it still says come back in late April now in pink instead of blue as we looked at it yesterday but late April right to me that could be the 21st or the 28th but it's more and more likely that it could be the 28th because that does seem more like a late April type of timeframe we have no leaks we have no loading screen or anything like that so I'm still up in the air on what date it's gonna be but the 28th seems a bit more likely at the moment based on how things went yesterday so I do believe the market could chill out this week and it could bring a couple of good opportunities for trading now as we kind of saw on the weekend as well right we saw some prices do really well on the weekend there was a lot of panic in the middle of the week last week with TOTS and with the good SVC content that we had but then Friday, Saturday stuff kind of went up a little bit right now it's kind of coming back down again and we're still overall in the market low but you see I got some lazy sales here Emory Chan is like 170,000 coins this one I had listed up for 220 got a lazy sale you're seeing some nice fluctuations on the trophy Titans cards that are in packs I bought that Gerard at 310 sort of at 347 so there's been good fluctuations on the market especially after content yesterday that to me shows signs of you know not as much scared and panic feeling on the market as there maybe was a couple of days ago so as long as we don't get a big you know leak or a big loading screen today right Tuesdays are sometimes loading screen days as long as we don't get something like that today I think the market will continue to do well I'm not saying it's time to buy for a hold but it could be a time or if you wanna go try somebody out you see a low price you think okay maybe this guy is gonna start bouncing back in value because he's been so low over these past couple of days because of like you know Benucci or whatever it may be you know that could be something that you watch out for maybe it's a card you just wanna flip right trading should be pretty good and then of course if you take a look at your Serie A cards Serie A cards are like going bananas on this game right now because everybody is doing Benucci and they are linking him in their squads Raspidori is an interesting one there's kind of a two-sided tail here he's going up because of the links right to Benucci and the Serie A links but at the same time there's some big games today let's move on talking about Tuesday content today and what to expect on this game first of all we've got Champions League games back on the docket and we've got guys that are kind of relying on their team's performance today to get upgrades in FIFA Wesley Fulfana is up about 10,000 coins from where he was 184K Chelsea at home trying to do something very difficult down 2-0 to Real Madrid so watch out for that of course on the flip side Alibis price is up he's like a million coins back to a mill there's probably not going to be that much movement on a guy like Alibaba today since they're the favorites right if they were to score first his price is probably not going to go up that much now for a guy like Fulfana there's a lot more upside because if Chelsea were to score an early goal first then that might make people want to go back on the market and say hey these guys might actually do it there's a chance and you can see his price going up so that's something to watch out for today same thing with Raspidori the thing I don't like about Raspidori's card right now is that he was 120,000 coins before the Benuccio was dropped and you know I think his price is a little bit inflated right now because of the Benuccio I think we have to be careful with that noticing that of course they do have a chance to come back and win today it's not going to be easy but Napoli and Milan right I mean they've got a shot so it's a 1-0 game and they are playing at home so that's big and we'll see if they can do it today I know a lot of people are rooting for Napoli in this game but just keep an eye on that of course the Brahim Diaz on the flip side of the coin the upgrades are not for whoever wins the game it's for whoever moves on so there is a plus one and I think it might be three traits as well if you advance to the next round of Champions League so there are three traits and a plus one on the line today for these cards in this game now other live cards I mentioned the fantasies right and yesterday we had a big result and a big game for Liverpool but also for the live cards that are representing Liverpool Giota, Diogo Giota is right now a 90 rated card he scored a goal and assisted yesterday's game so he met the two goal or assist requirement over the course of these six weeks he is gonna be getting a plus two since they also won that was Liverpool's first win since this card's been released so Giota is gonna go to a 92 rated card now he was down a little bit post game at like 190k and now he is back up he's about 210,000 coins this guy getting a plus two it's gonna be pretty big he's four star, five star it's gonna look like a really really cracked card I think that the fantasy upgrades might be today on Tuesday that's when they upgraded them last week there's really not that many league games today there's only a small few I think Raschica might be the only fantasy card that has a league game today on Tuesday so with Champions League being this week I could see these cards upgraded at some point today on Tuesday I could also see it tomorrow so watch out for some price fluctuations guys like Upa guys like Rubidies Emery Chan right Emery Chan is getting a plus one he's 170,000 coins right now Giota's getting that plus two so keep a close eye on some of those cards that are getting upgraded today because they could be good movements on the market now for the rest of content today what else are we gonna see now we talked about in yesterday's video today we might see that Figo, SPC we had Carlos Alberto Pires and Raul in the past week seems like we have had a ton of icon SPCs we might be getting one more with that five star skills of Figo I don't think that would impact the market that much maybe watch out for some of your Portuguese links if there's some extra demand there but even there I wouldn't expect the demand to be that crazy since that's a Figo card that's been out in the game for a very long time and I just don't know how much hype there's gonna be for a ton of people to sprint out to the market to get his SPC done or to the SPC section to get that done right away today but I do think it might be an okay day for the market the only thing like I said is very few times but sometimes EA drop loading screens on Tuesdays and it usually is before big promos so there's a little chance today that there could be a loading screen we'll be watching for it today on the content drop stream but that is gonna be something to watch out for there and one last thing I wanna talk about with SPC fodder heading into team this season is a lot of you guys have been asking me Nate should I buy a high rated fodder? High rated fodder looks so low from where it's been right 91s, yeah we remember last week, two weeks ago these guys were like 70,000 coins plus right 80, 90K for some of these cards that were out of packs and they are down so bad the thing here with this high rated fodder is during team this season every year there are so many high rated cards released in team this season from the secondary leagues like even in community team this season and even in the main leagues as well like from the Premier League and Bundesliga the high rated fodder gets supplied so much there are so many new 90, 91, 92 rated cards that get put onto the game that all this fodder just drops in price because it's just oversupplied and it's oversaturated so if Tots is this week I do think the 89 plus rated fodder will probably end up dropping unless we get some sort of like eye compact there will be a big surprise later on in the week but if it is not this week and it's next week maybe there's one more eye compact that EA would drop like next weekend before Tots would actually start that could make some of this stuff go up for like one last rise before it would probably fall lower so in this case right now I would not invest in high rated fodder if you have it I would try to sell it to Lazies because there are a lot of great SBCs in it right now you know the hero player pick a lot of the big player the months a lot of the big player SBCs like the icons try to lazy sell it, try to get it out because I do think it can go lower but again really a lot of this still on this game the way the market is feeling and the way the content is feeling it all is really dependent upon what news we learn about team this season and guys right now we just don't know that much and that's kind of concerning but also at the same time it's kind of like okay you know a lot of times before we have these really big promos it feels like we want the promo to be here like this but EA kind of take their time and they let the game simmer down a little bit and then it just kind of in its own right I think builds the height for the next promo a little bit but it's also a little bit annoying on our part because we're like we just want the promo to be here so just kind of watch out for today on Tuesday it might be a quiet day besides Figo but we'll have to see and it might just be a really good day to trade right if you're trying to make some coins before team this season does end up happening on this game like I'm gonna try to get this Benzema on a really low bid right now hop on the bids guys bids are so OP I think a lot less people want to trade right now in this game this Benzema is right now about a million coins so if I can snag this for 900K I'll be able to flip this make some good profits and the bids are a great place to do that on this game we're gonna have a specific trading base video coming out later this week because I know a lot of you guys want to make some more coins before team this season and I want to teach you guys and talk to you guys a little bit more about how to do that as well but I'm gonna try to win this Benzema bid and I will see you guys in the Twitch stream today if you enjoyed the video, drop a thumbs up on it, comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe if you're new it's been Nathan Foot account catch you guys later, peace out.


Anomalously fun fact, all dinosaur nuggets are made of dinosaurs. No, not because chickens are evolved from dinosaurs, that would be pedantic, I mean literally. I mean the group of interest Ambrose restaurants found a time vortex and has a trade secret agreement with every company that makes dinosaur nuggets. Dinosaurs weren't killed by a meteor, they were factory farmed to extinction. Don't believe the propaganda. So many of you tagged me in this video, and I appreciate your concern, but this is not abuse of SCP-999, this is just its weekly massage. It's the squish-squish sounds of every pat, that's how you know it's working. You're going to fight it, aren't you? Regrettably, yes, I think I may be about to do that. It's really big. I've seen bigger. Really? Are you joking? It's massive.  I don't even understand the point of- no, you don't actually have to explain. Wait, what's going on on the screen? Robert? We decided, you know what? Let's do what no one else has had the bravery to do, salt popcorn with real human tears. Well that settles it. Science has officially gone too far. I quit. I'm joining the global occult coalition. I get this, you have to exist.  That's it, mate. Get it all out. It's his own fault. I told him not to do those shots. Yeah, well he's already paying the price bill, lay off him. You all know this is fake, right? Son of a- okay, I admit, I did not believe that you could disinformation campaign a literal giant eating a roller coaster train full of people in broad daylight, but they believe it's fake. I owe you a drink. CP 5886 appeared in a bed at site 42 on October 7th, 2014. 5886 is also known as James Biggio. The entity seemingly and suddenly developed a higher perception of time. This granted the individual super speed. It is believed that 5886 left site 42 on August 18th, 2020, when the Pegasus Rising project successfully opened a wormhole for five microseconds. The stain must have felt like multiple eternities. When I mention a less commonly known SCP, a lot of people in the comments will say, hey, can you link that to me, how do I find it? And I really don't mean this rudely when I say it, but Google it. 99 out of 100 times, it'll be the first result. Just make sure you confirm that it is SCP WikiDot because that's our real site. If you see something like a Mino or Monster Wiki or Phantom Wiki, that's not us. It's probably not canon. Mimetic entities always duplicate. Whoa! Hedontic eyebrow waggle, new variant new power I see. Careful, it's a persimmon. It is, in fact, a persimmon. Who told them persimmons existed? They're not supposed to know about persimmons. It's doing gnarney opposites now. Whoa! The entity may bite, put that in the logs. This has real white women travel Instagram vibes. Spatial anomalies intact, milk necklace, all right, wrapping up the test. Don't cross the branch! When I heard that there was a new Coney Hawk variant, I had to race over to the skate park to see how my old friend was doing. But I have to admit, I was a little tentative about this whole wet floor sign gimmick. But after seeing it stunting, you know I had to respect the drip. This reminds me of an SCP, but TikTok's gonna get real mad if I tell you about it. Here's the SCP number and the title. Google the SCP number. Don't Google the title! Remember folks, if something awkward happens during one of my open duets, I was recorded. You made it weird. Toodles! Today, December 1st, 2021, is the beginning of what will be the greatest and final TikTok profile picture cult there will ever be. The SCP-096 cult. I say final because SCP-096 famously unalives any individual who sees its face. That's right, we are burning TikTok to the ground for their ultimate crime. Not verifying Dr. Blue and myself. Am I being a bit petty? Of course. But don't you want to watch this app burn just a little? Your instructions are simple. Change your profile picture to 096's face and comment on videos as you normally would. Perhaps leave the cryptic, Site 42 request that you join the SCP-096 cult. Today, we do not secure, contain or protect. We release. Let loose. Destroy. I'd like to make myself believe I'm not the one. I understand that teaching the tree to play the accordion was a marvel of scientific progress. But listen closely, if the tree isn't screaming, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING! Before I begin, allow me to preemptively apologize, because based on the tone of your response, it seems like my reply to your comment had a little more insult than I had intended. You asked me if there was any help getting into the SCP fandom and lore, and my answer of no was only slightly exaggerated. Of course me and other SCP tiktokers and youtubers act as a sort of gateway to the SCP community because we put our content where you are rather than having you come to the SCP wiki itself. But of course we're not putting out SCP stories themselves, we're putting out content based on SCP stories, and specifically the ones that we believe will get views on our platforms. Of course I do content that explains some SCPs and concepts behind, but I can't give you as much detail as actually going to the site. When I say nobody can handhold you into the SCP fandom, I mean that the same way I do for any other. If you ask someone, hey how do I get into the Harry Potter fandom? They'd say, read the books. So when you say I've already tried diving in and can't find shit, I have to ask. How many SCPs and tales did you read? What SCPs did you go in looking to read about? Some people choose to start at the beginning of the archive at SCP-002 and try and read through everything. I don't suggest that, it's not terribly interesting that way. Many follow us content creators and then if they find an SCP that we mention that's interesting, they go look it up on the wiki. Some people camp out the top rated new pages part of the site so they can see the best new SCPs that are coming out every day. Since I don't make a Site 42 YouTube video for every SCP I read, I know I've read at least 700 SCPs just myself, and I got into this fandom before the content creator boom. By day there was only Vulcan, Gimodan, and Dr. Cool. In line with the old adage, we content creators have led you to water, but we can't make you drink it. That's up to you. And just like the legend says, the Keyblade War will begin!  All right, all right, all right, you cool Josie the Half-Cat, this is DJ V, Sherm bringing you the smooth stylings of SCP-1000. Your murder isn't funny. It is when you say it like this, child moida. This is what happens when you go against my wishes. I read the theory once that the human intellect was like peacock feathers. Just an extravagant display intended to attract a maze. Just an elaborate mating ritual. Maybe it doesn't matter that we have accomplished so much for the basis of reasons. And of course the peacock can barely fly. It lives in the dirt, pecking insects out of the muck, consoling itself with its great beauty. Attention sight personnel, I regret to inform you that the SCP-049-J pajama party is currently taking place in the lounge. Universal healthcare. My baby. Yes. SCP-999. I am absolutely by no means sanctioning this test. But the documentation shows that SCP-999 smells like a different pleasing odor for any person who interacts with it. Which causes me to hypothesize that it would have a different flavor for each individual as well. Chimera! No! That's my boy. Hey there, Site-42 fam. It's come to my attention that not a lot of people know that we have a Site-42 SCP merch store. We've commissioned art from multiple artists to make SCP-related merch. And we've got stickers for the Site-42 channel. And so if you want some SCP merch, as well as helping support the Site-42 channel, teespring.com slash stores slash Site-42. Thank you in advance and cheers.