Thank you very much Peter. Thank you all for coming out this morning. It's a real pleasure to be here I'm going to be speaking quickly because there's so much I'd like to say in these next 20 minutes before I pass the stage on I have to start with the fact that my beloved wife Deb who I met at age 18 We got married at 21 and Oxford. We both got back from Shanghai about 30 hours ago And she is really feeling the effects right now. So she's here in spirit, but not in person I will try to represent her as best best I can What I'm going to do is talk about what we've been the way we've been spending the last year and a half of our working life Because I think it's from my point of view. I'm going to explain it because it's the most interesting thing I think I've ever done even including living in China which we thought we stay there as long as we did because every single day We told ourselves it's more interesting than horrible and that kept us there This has been a much more interesting and much less horrible Prospect and it is directly connected to many of the developments you've heard about yesterday from various new America fellows and Friends about kinds of recovery and resilience across the country. So that's what I'm going to tell you about I'm gonna spend about a minute giving you the setup for a project two or three minutes giving you a little brief slide show I hardly ever do this But just to give you some orientation of what it's like to see these places in Mississippi in Maine and Arizona and all the rest And then I'm going to get to the payoff of the points We've discovered that are related to what new America is doing and what we're discussing during this conference. So About two years ago when we came back from China and I'd finished number of some political pieces and defense pieces and all the rest We decided that we would like to try to apply to the United States The the policy that Deb and I had done in so many countries around the world in Japan and Malaysia and China and elsewhere Which is just trying to see the fabric of the small parts of the country to not the big cities And so in China we've done that on buses and trains We thought this fit in the American tradition of the road trip narrative from Lewis and Clark onward We also we started this at a time when the Central American narrative was that of decline The financial crisis was not that far behind us There are very few signs of manufacturing other things coming back So we wanted to see what would look like to go to places off the grid Considering them not as curiosities just because there'd been some grain elevator explosion or something like that But reporting on them as real places and see what we would find We had two criteria for the places we wanted to go These are the places where we've flown to and spent at least a week over the last while One we wanted them to be small ish and let me explain that We've been to places as big as Columbus, Ohio Which is a very large city But the standard is a place that most people who are stylish or van or graduating from fancy universities would think of as The sticks they would think of well, you're going to New York. You're going to Seattle But I'm going to ho Arizona or Greenville, South Carolina or Sioux Falls or the rest Also, we wanted to have places that had suffered a challenge of some kind Economic demographic natural or whatever and it founds to see how they were covered. I put a note on the Atlantic's website We got more than a thousand essays back people saying you'd need to know this about this town of Louisiana This town in Texas this town in South Dakota God willing we could spend the next hundred years doing this but we're trying to see as much as we can Let me just give you a sort of an idea of the kinds of places. We've seen I'm going to give you a few seconds apiece per these various slept Snapshots. This is the plane itself. There is Deb not absent today getting in the plane taking our provisions That's what it looks like inside the plane. We're crossing the Missouri River in one of the Dakotas I think from East River to West West River. This is how you can see how the landscape was like laid out We love flying at low altitude this way across the landscape It's a unique view of what is interesting and beautiful and sometimes less sightly about America You notice number one how many prisons there are and number two how many rock quarries This is the famous parachute for the plane. This is not our plane, but this was the test of concept We're flying very safely only daytime no bad weather, but there is also the parachute should the need arise We went to Holland, Michigan a little manufacturing town on Lake Michigan Which is beautiful and which has maintained manufacturing of supremacy in lots of ways you have this kind of scene It's a recycling plant and you can read all about it This is city fathers in Holland where they get a hundred inches of snow per year They volunteered their own money to build a sidewalk heating plan So there's never snow on the streets or sidewalk of Holland's the way the city has kept going This is Sioux Falls, South Dakota with the eponymous falls downtown and which has recovered made itself a big tech place This is part of the downtown movement, which I'll say more about This is Deb is not here today, but she's there with a giant Sioux Falls tractor The reason I mentioned this is that Sioux Falls is an international leader in GPS directed agriculture That tractor is driven by GPS It plants a seed and a precise location puts a drop of fertilizer on that location comes back a week later to water that location It's a huge industry around the world that we've been to the black hills of South Dakota and a rapid city Rapid city has statues of all the presidents life-size ones. That is Bill Clinton downtown We've been this is some some of the oil territory of Wyoming. We saw the man camps there So we're coming in for landing Burlington, Vermont famously nice place a lake Champlain, etc Side note if you want to see if there's a city on the rise look for a craft brewery No joke. This is a proxy for a city that has entrepreneurs a young sort of creative class clientele Deb has an embarrassing collection of photos of me like that. It's right after the airport. That's someplace in Michigan I think happier than I generally look Who knows about hetty topper beer anybody who knows beer? This is beer porn This is by all accounts the best beer in the world. You can get it only in this part of Vermont only get four cans at a time That's what it looks like. That's like looking at Fort Knox for people in the business This went to Eastport, Maine a city of 1,300 people which has a good news bad news plan for the future Good news when the Canadian Arctic melt, there'll be the closest Atlantic seaport to China That's that's their that's their glass half empty glass half folder on the Bay of Fundy They're using tidal energy from the bay to have become a title in it. That's downtown Eastport Redlands, California my hometown. I once worked in this orange packing plant We went there to see how they're coping with drought and all the rest That's with our marketplace partners out with orange groves Try to see what they're doing about the blight that's removed destroying the citrus industry South Carolina a public Residential high school that teaches ballet and the arts in South Carolina school innovation has been important South Carolina Elementary school of engineering something you don't see every day in the poorest part of town This is st. Mary's Georgia trying to rebuild itself This is a high school in st. Mary's which I won't even give you a description about but in addition to being the state a pretty all-state champion in football they train people coming out to go either to college or to have high-end skilled technical jobs in Construction in auto repair and computer in robotics and all the rest a very impressive school This is Fresno, California. We've been recently Fresno is a hard-pressed place that is trying hard to come back Welcome to Fresno This is at Fresno has a theory that it can become the next American bohemia Because the real estate is so cheap and that you can start your your drama troop You can become a fire blower or whatever else Those are walnuts bound for China. We've been in Winters, California about how the nut industry is dealing with drought This is someplace where it says this is Mississippi I say some place because so many nice downtowns like this are coming up around the world This is the Mississippi school for math of science math and science so touching a public Residential high school for poor people from Mississippi that sending kids to Harvard it's sending them to Claremont, McKenna This was a dramatization of this city's civil war past which just was tremendously evocative and wonderful wonderful kids there This is Duluth, Minnesota the rise of minor league ball in Duluth This is Duluth with a monument to the most northerly lynching in American history Which happened in Duluth and they've made a big effort to remember it Allentown, Pennsylvania the mayor there the mayor who has rebuilt single-handedly downtown of Allentown in a tech space Where young people are going to live over the top of the tech company. They're building Charleston, West Virginia downtown Revitalization this is in the Christo Ray schools in Columbus, Ohio Which have had a sort of public-private partnership to deal with people who are going to fall behind the cracks This is a how a town in pit a house in Pittsburgh covered with Chinese characters You can go to our site and read about it to explain why that is the case Aho, Arizona a city of about a thousand people right on the southern border border, which is using the arts as a tool for Bring itself back. It's also using the successor to the WPA These are kids from the N triple C the new sort of AmeriCorps staff who were there trying to rebuild the town again It's touching a thing as you might see Riverside, California trying to rebuild us downtown The first McDonald's anywhere in history in the most troubled town We've seen San Bernardino, California, and that's a close also to where I grew up As we've this is just to give you an idea of the kinds of things we have seen as we've been on the road Let me now sort of rapid-fire fashion go through Lessons we have learned that I think are directly relevant to what a new America is doing and so many of the cooperative efforts We have lesson number one the generally positive Impression you would have of America if you ignored national politics there national politics We know as being severely troubled and everybody here has has has insights on that and we know about all of the various imbalances and inequities and all the rest if you Didn't know about any of that and you were exploring this country for the first time in the way that we have done Other countries you would think this is a place where things are going on where people care about their communities where they have Some confidence in the future where they're able to work with people of different Backgrounds and all the rest so number one We started this when the American narrative was much more negative than it is now We are as aware of the problems of this country as any of you are but just the fabric city by city Region by region you would think there's a place where people believe things are going well What one one illustration from Fresno Fresno who's been there Fresno is not seen as one of California's chic towns I was interviewing a tech entrepreneur there who moved there from the East Coast saying he'd grown up there saying We're just sick and tired of being told this is a place for losers You know our parents can say that I'm 28 years old I want to make something happen here and he's making it happen So number one the generally positive tone in a non Just cutesy way you get by traveling traveling around Impression number two the functionality of politics again when you move below the paralyzed national level We find in our national level politics and inability to compromise a zero-sum outlook a difficulty to look in the long run All the other things you're familiar with we have found the opposite of that most of the places not all but most of the places We have gone. Here's the clearest illustration. I can give you Greenville, South Carolina is a very right-wing town Jim DeMint was their congressman Bob Jones University is there Romney carried it by 30 points It was the last county in the last state to observe Martin Luther King's birthday as a holiday Burlington, Vermont is the other extreme the two parties there and local politics are the Democrats and the socialists Bernie Sanders was a socialist mayor there Obama carried it by 30 points over Romney If you didn't know that you were you would think they were the same town The mayor works with the universities with the businesses with the schools with community groups and they have a very similar look and feel They're both have beautiful downtown though both have universities That is a shorthand for a kind of thing we've seen lots of places again Not every place San Bernardino, which I'm about to write about next week is in trouble because it almost uniquely still has National style broken politics for reasons. I'll explain Third lesson that we found a surprising talent dispersal property If you talk to young people getting out of fancy schools You will assume that if they want to make it they need to go essentially to six metro areas Boston, New York DC Seattle San Francisco LA with some polite Acknowledgment of San Diego and Chicago and Atlanta and all the rest we know all these Concentrating trends what's interesting is also an offsetting trend of people deciding that they can make a first-rate life for themselves Doing agricultural technology in Sioux Falls or in Fresno doing design work in Greenville, South Carolina Which out of Bob Jones has a great design department can do things in in lots of in Burlington and many other places in Duluth a Subcategory here is the crucially Important factor of real estate prices in the six big cities I mentioned everything is distorted by the crushing burden of real estate and the rest of America real estate is cheap You can buy a house for a couple hundred thousand dollars not a couple million dollars You can start a dance troupe or a company or all the rest and that opportunity for America We found dispersed through the magic of both people recognizing that and having the advantage of real estate Fourth thing we have observed the power of immigration goes on Immigration in the DC perspective is something that is a polarizing issue It's a problem in the in the Republican Party is especially etc. etc Most of the places we have gone if you were a foreigner looking them you would be you would remark on how Thoroughly this process is still happening partly involves refugees Sioux Falls and Sioux Falls They have one of the world's biggest pig slaughter houses that's now owned by the Chinese It's a long story most the people working there are female refugees from Somalia the Sudan Cameroon some other places who are making money slaughtering pigs wearing their often a Muslim headgear So they can send their kids to school the leader of ROTC in the Sioux Falls High School is a the child daughter of a Somalia Refugee of that sort immigration historically is always disruptive We have been impressed by the ways in which it is being absorbed the Midwest is largely Latino now You know Dodge City, Kansas is a majority Latino City, but if you compare this with any other part of the world I think you're impressed that this is continuing to happen number five observation the rise of Downtowns is real there is enough left over good-looking real building from the 1800s in the early 1900s that hasn't been torn down in enough places the cities in every corner of the country are finding this a way They can revive the downtowns. They can attract younger people to live there There's a whole metric for this involving river walks and downtown residential and all the rest Deb wrote an article about how you have a river walk without a river which a number of cities have done But we've we've been very very impressed by in every scale of city. You see this downtown revival in different stages number six the manufacturing Renaissance not say full-stale recovery, but but a dispersed Renaissance in manufacturing also is real We've seen companies in Duluth that it sort of spun off from the Aviation Center there with Cirrus that are now exporting their products around the World also in Mississippi or there's a giant helicopter factory near this Mississippi School of Math and Sciences I just will not give you any more details But again the trend is factories on the small scale beginning to open again rather than just close in the way they were before a Seventh observation we have seen and maybe signaled in shorthand by some of the school photos I gave is experimentation in public schools when we began this process we assumed as you would from national media that Most of the country was regarding itself as the object of big historic forces Whereas in fact most people regard themselves as active shapers of their lives the public schools were a disaster etc. etc Every place we have been we found people experimenting with the public schools and finding ways to adapt them to the local needs and take advantage of the local strengths Deb has written about this extensively. It's what she would have been talking about if she were here But in Central Valley, California you have schools training migrant workers children for jobs in sort of high-tech Agriculture in Coastal Maine you have them training for maritime Careers including that Northwest Passage you find this sort of Adaptability all around the country and that's something we've been impressed by Number eight observation has been the to me entirely unexpected crucial emphasis of community colleges We all know that research universities are part of America's arsenal that no one else can match I hadn't appreciated how much community colleges are the connective fiber for people who are not going to Berkeley or Stanford or Yale or Arizona State or other big research universities But once some job other than working in Walmart or working in a food service industry Community colleges are the connectors. I've written a lot about one called East, Mississippi Mississippi Community College in the so-called Golden Triangle of Mississippi. Who knows what cities are in the Golden Triangle? You have to read our site to find out. I won't tell you here But one of them is the home of Mississippi State University, but this East Mississippi Community College for a large tire factory the Oklahoma tire and a large diesel engine factory there is training people who were on welfare We're on food stamps. We're in prison training these people for high-wage Manufacturing jobs and for robotic repair type jobs community colleges are what make this this happen The ninth thing we have seen is what I would describe as the thickness of the social fabric Everyone here has either read or heard of the bowling alone hypothesis by by Robert Putnam We recognize all the things that fragment America sprawl suburbs and sprawl Metropolis is our bad and contributed to that But it's been surprisingly easy to find signs of dense social fabric Deb has also written a lot about the rule that libraries play here libraries are in a way the sort of fastest Rebounding institutions we've seen they are workspaces. They are training people and languages and all the rest Deb has pointed out that when Andrew Carnegie founded his libraries He thought they would be social centers his original libraries had bowling alleys. They had swimming pools They had bars it's sort of coming back to that tradition with some of the libraries We have seen as part of this sense of it's a proxy for the thickness of fabric. We've seen a lot of places and number 10 the last observation is the narrative we have heard in a lot of these places is Not meant as a challenge to the national narrative of paralysis gridlock hopelessness nothing you can do But just ignores it, you know, that is unfortunate because it would be good to have a national politics that functioned But in the absence of that for this stage of history It's impressive how the tale many of these cities are telling themselves is we can make this downtown better We can bring this factory back. We can attract our children to come here We can have places that look better 10 years from now that than they do now To conclude in my final 15 seconds by the clock We went around China and Japan and Southeast Asia looking for the impression you would get from the fabric of the country That's what we've been doing for the past year We plan to do it for another year or so then do a book in video series the actual feeling of this country is More positive than you would think from the the discourse we mainly have in our national politics this I think is worth being aware of and helping to give a Name to the reforms and improvements that are going on So people who are doing them in one state can know they're doing it in another state And we can have a different sort of national narrative of what their responses that the country is making So that's why I was so happy to hear the the the projects underway yesterday And I turn the stage over now to hear even more


It looks like there's trouble on the horizon for crypto exchange Huobi, but in all honesty, it really comes down to, does it really matter if you just would have done this one thing? So there's an ongoing story. This is about Huobi, the crypto exchange. It looks like there reserves are down 30% amid reports of the top executives being arrested by the Chinese government. And it looks like they have withdrawn or people have withdrawn almost 45 million stable coins during the last week. And of course, this is going to happen as people, they hear negative news, they don't like that news, they start to have a run on the bank as it were, they start to withdraw most of their funds. And this whole article just talks about that in, in excess of how much there actually is.  And then one of these things that you're always going to always hear about is, well, if this is really true, is it true? Or is somebody just spreading FUD like Rob at Digital Asset News? And in all honesty, I took a look at the piece, the article, this is from Tech Hub News, and I believe in Mandarin, and I had to translate it. And it says pretty much the exact same thing. This article states over on this one, and where it's just like this guy knows a guy, who knows a guy, who heard that these executives got arrested. That's not really that great of information. However, if we do look over at Twitter, you start to see some patterns. This is Justin Sun. He's one of the big advisors over there at Hulobi. Also for Tron fame, he says, ignore the FUD, keep building. Tron and Hulbi will thrive through continuous development, trust in our vision and community efforts for a stronger future, which sounds very compelling, quite honestly. And then of course, Hulbi puts out this article, but don't worry about it. There's no FUD, there's no problems. And of course, we've seen this before. Have we not? We've heard about this from the exchange, from the people in charge of the exchanges, and we're like, we don't believe you. And with pretty good rationales. However, I need to ask you just one question. What does it matter? What does it matter if these crypto exchanges do fold up? Because there's these rules, I think we should all have learned by now, right? The rules that are underneath my big, enormous head, where it says, number one, it's all gone, don't invest more, and you can afford to lose 100% scams, everything's a scam until otherwise, don't leave any 10 exchanges. Period. Because there are pronous things like this. And of course, don't use leverage.  You can do what you want to do and take profits along the way.  Look, there shouldn't be any FUD, there shouldn't be any issues, because in all honesty, you shouldn't leave anything on exchanges. And we all know that. Do we not? Anyhow, let me just think about that in the comments section. Also, I find this an amusing story, and kind of good, kind of bad. Curve. Sir, Curve had a hack last week, Curve Finance. They have over $3 billion in liquidity and assets, and they are offering almost $2 million reward to identify the hacker. I find this very odd, because the hacker's already given back roughly 73% of everything that was taken. So I don't understand why they're offering $1.85 million, other than the fact that I guess this person, this guy, this lady, this group, they only gave back 73% when they said, hey, we'll give it all back, or we'll just keep the bounty and they just didn't do it. So according to Peck Shield, 73% of stolen funds worth about $2 million have been returned as of today. And this is where it gets interesting. Following the incident, the attacker issued an on-chain message, maintaining that their decision to return the stolen assets was motivated by a desire not to inflict additional damage on the involved projects. Well, that's nice, a hacker with a heart. And this is what he states, I saw some ridiculous views. So I want to clarify that I'm refunding you, not because you can find me, it's because I don't want to ruin your project. Kind of a little late, but whatever. Maybe it's a lot of money for a lot of people, but not for me. I'm smarter than all of you. And I got to tell you, that's a pretty ballsy statement for a guy who's got a 2 million bounty on his head, but we'll see how it all plays out. I find this interesting and this is just how it's going to be moving forward. We're going to see more hacks and more issues as we stumble forward into mass adoption and DeFi is no exception. However, there's also some other good news on the horizon, which is the story that pretty much everybody and their mothers talking about today, which is PayPal. So PayPal just came out and said, Hey, we're going to do a stable coin. It's called PayPal USD or P Y USD. And we're going to open this up in the American markets. Now, they don't have any listings on exchanges because it just started today. You'll probably be able to use this on on DeFi protocols, but no exchanges that I know of right now have been used. And this is again, only in America. But I found this very interesting that here's the contract address zero X E one seven B, then it ends in one 126 E. And it was started about 10 and a half hours ago. This is one that actually was created. All right, good job, PayPal. And then it looks like up they put this another transaction here. And they tried to transfer from one wallet into the actual contract zero XC 126 E. And unfortunately, they were out of gas. So I don't know if PayPal is aware of just how expensive Ethereum gas fees are, but welcome to Ethereum and the wonderful world that it is PayPal.  And then also I found this interesting as well. This is a nice little piece because I thought, well, if PayPal is going to do this and they have their own stable coin, and they have B USD and you have tether, how's it going to affect all these different stable coins and even like circle with USDC. So this is an article from the block. And this is from Paolo Ardoño nailed it. He is the CTO of tethering says we don't expect any impact on USDT because PayPal has been launched in US where tether does not serve. I found this interesting. Maybe I'm not understanding the context, but I've bought tether many a time on Coinbase. I bought it on Kraken. And I'm an American citizen. I'm not using some crazy wacky VPN. And I can still use tether and use it every other place. So I'm not for sure what that is alluding to. But I can just tell you that as an American citizen, I can buy tether on American exchanges. And it goes on a further state. It's interesting. Another stable coin in the US. It could lead to the erosion of revenues for payments that have been mainly fueling MasterCard and Visa. Let me tell you something. They are correct. I wholeheartedly hope that actually happens. MasterCard and Visa have a stranglehold in all of us, especially for my businesses, for all the different transactions I have to do. And that is very true. Unfortunately, the problem with that is that MasterCard and Visa are still low in transaction fees. Unfortunately, this ERC-20 token for PayPal, it's on Ethereum. And if we go to bidinputcharts.com, I'll link in the description. I'm just going to look at the last six months, not over the last bullmark. We can see that just in March, I mean, we had an average transaction fee of $1.72 for Bitcoin. That's pretty good. Ethereum, almost $16. Now coming down here, not too bad. $5, $4. That's pretty good. $3.54. And then back up to $5.00 and $6.00. Somewhere around here, it's going to hit $7.00 or so. $5.00, $6.00, $7.00, $8.00. $16.00. Then we go up to here, part $27.00 for an Ethereum average transaction fee. Yeah, that's right. So right now, I mean, it's a nice dream for Ethereum to do that. I think layer two solutions would be just fine. XRP would be a pretty good option in that case, also as well. And of course, Bitcoin Lightning and every other crypto that's out there that you hold that I didn't mention is going to be awesome. But as far as like Ethereum layer one, I just don't see that happening for transaction fees. Anyhow, let me just think about that in the comments and then to finish up, I'm feeling pretty good lately about the market itself. This is Ben Sight. He's a lot. And I like this part here where it just gives you like a summary of price metrics, on-chain and social. You can take a look at total market cap risk, Bitcoin risk, fear and greed index. The on-chain metrics looks at the MVRBZ score, 12 multiple transaction fees, and then social is all like YouTube views and Twitter followers. And it just kind of condenses it into one summary. And right now, it's relatively safe-ish if you're investing into a crypto market that is the most volatile market in existence so far. So when I see this, I'm like, this is not a bad time to dollar cost average. And actually, I just added another image from early in Ohio. This is in the four-year cycle risk bands. Link in the description. You can find this piece here. And it lays it out very nicely actually. And you can see that the bear markets are two years prior to the having. Or actually, it's actually just one year after the all-time high. Of course, 2010 doesn't exist. So 2010, 11, 12 was a having, 13. And they break it down by bear, free bull and first, bull and second. It's all the same things we know. I just thought it was an interesting way to look at things. Right now, look at 2011, 15 and 19. I like to look at this because you can see like towards the end of the year, it kind of starts to go up a little bit. 2019, it's still, it goes down a little, but it's still looking pretty good and flat into 2020 having and really, really drove down unfortunately because of COVID, but then it really took on a rip and a tear. Same thing in 2016. Same thing in 2012 and the bear market. So right now, I think it's a pretty good time. Is there a recession in the cards? Yeah, maybe. Who knows? But remember, recessions don't last forever. Bear markets don't last forever. Neither do bull markets. So I take a look at this. I'm feeling reasonably good about what's happening in our crypto space. I feel like the time is coming soon, we will say. And one of the things I need to talk to you and try to get in your head is that this is that the next bull run, I think Bitcoin will do great. L1s will do fine. L2s will do really great. But I'm really, really under the impression that we're going to do a lot of play to earn or the gaming aspect and that'll lead a lot of things. And you don't have to invest into, of course, the actual projects that are out there, but just pay attention to where all the different gaming play to earn, play to win, play to whatever are actually being built on what rails. Are they building everything on Avalanche? Are they building everything on Near? Are they building everything on Polygon or Ethereum? Just take a look at that because you don't have to decide all those things and say, well, all these rails are being built on one thing. And there was a great Twitter Spaces. I'll link it in the description. It was with Animoka Brands co-founder Yatsu. They talked about crypto gaming heating up and it was a really good talk about where things are going and why it's going to do pretty well. Also, I had Yat on the show almost two weeks ago now. And he did probably the best breakdown I've ever heard of Web 3 digital property and why it's going to be so huge. So I'll link that in the description. You can check it out. This would be the one to check and, of course, the Twitter Spaces. But I think that will be big, but we'll see. And that's it for today. So look, if you like today's video, give it a thumbs up. Consider subscribing. Everything we talk about is time-sensitive, especially as we go into the Bitcoin halving, which we got about eight and a half months or so. That's it for today. Thanks so much for stopping by. I do appreciate you and I'll see you on the next one.


There are many different things that affect the ability of women to get involved in paid employment, not just the fact that they have to engage in all the unpaid labour. There are legal, social, cultural and other constraints as well. But it's also something that drives the ability to move up in your chosen occupation. And this affects women across all different kinds of activities. This is a circular process. It is that also women then assume that they are really meant only for these activities or they only look for jobs in these activities because that's where women are. So that the idea that you could be in unconventional work or in the non-traditional types of employment is very difficult for a lot of not just young women but even their employers to accept. And it's not just the women themselves or the employers but it's the entire social structure around you. It is the family, it is the community, it's the availability of transport to and from the workplace. It is the public systems that enable certain kinds of work or employment. And all of that is geared to pushing women into particular activities which once they're clustered into them, they become low wage occupations and then the wage penalty exists even for the male workers. All over the world occupational segregation has increased over time, over the last few decades. It hasn't gone down, it has increased. And this occupational segmentation, within that you might find that the gender wage gaps within a particular occupation have reduced but overall they haven't. And what's even more striking is that education does not reduce it. Some of this has to do with the constraints of housework as well. Claudia Golden has done studies which show that even within occupations those who can work longer hours and certain hours in particular are much more likely to be higher paid and more valued by the employers. Whereas once you have household responsibilities and care responsibilities you need to be home at a certain time, you cannot be available for extra work, you can't do things that some of the men can. There are many other reasons why there's this famous glass ceiling that is talked about so much. It's not just the ability to do certain kinds of work which then get you more valued by employers. It's also that there's male resentment. Women are much less likely to be bosses because a lot of men will say we don't want to be bossed around by a woman. We don't want to have to report to a woman, say in finance and consultancy and so on. But also it's not just these social and cultural features. There's a lot of legal discrimination. There's still the case in most parts of the world that there are activities that women are simply barred from, forbidden. And they are not related only to physical characteristics. In fact, if you look at the map of the world you will find that the majority of the countries are still places which forbid women from engaging in particular occupations or activities. And when you go deep down into it you will find it's not about the physical characteristics. Sometimes it's supposedly out of concern for the physical security of women. But instead of saying we will ensure physical security, we will make sure that there are street lights everywhere. We will make sure that there are adequate patrols. You say, well, don't go into those things because that's a risk to you. And so because we care about your personal safety we are going to forbid you. When jobs are more difficult, more arduous, more strenuous, it's usually the job of women. It's not necessarily the physical characteristic of the job. But it's also the case that since women are more likely to be in informal work they have to do a whole range of things that are extremely arduous in which there is zero protection provided. As we find that there's more and more informal work across the world there's less and less legal and social protection for women. In large parts of the world that was always the case that women were dominantly in informal work and so they never had legal or social protection and they also had much less access to social security. And one of the reasons for that is because also they dominate in part-time work which has less likelihood of being covered by all of these benefits. Again, women choose part-time work because of all those household responsibilities or the care work that they are required to perform. And as a result they end up with more irregular working hours. Sometimes even longer working hours even in the paid work. And then of course have to do the unpaid work back home. Now this in turn has very, very specific implications for the ability for upward mobility. Because a lot of the jobs that women do don't really have that inherent tendency towards either learning by doing or improvement in conditions over time. And so seniority is not seen as an advantage. Seniority is seen as a disadvantage. And one of the classic examples of this is in the healthcare sector. Approximately 70% of all healthcare workers are women. But here's the thing, even in the health sector, they are mostly at the low wage end. They are at the front line. They are nurses, midwives, community health workers. We are looking to testing at least 2,000 people today. So in India we have an extraordinary concept of public health workers called ASHA. ASHA is an acronym for Accredited Social Health Activist. Okay, not a worker, an activist, but accredited. And the word ASHA means hope in Hindi. So it's a cruel acronym because these ASHAs are not considered as workers. In some cases, they don't even get any official wage. They get rewarded according to the specific duties they perform, like if they encourage people to get inoculated or if they take babies for their checkups. But as a result, they are getting approximately one-tenth of what the lowest paid male public worker would get. So the state itself is not recognizing them as workers. Now, what's happened across the world during this pandemic is that the ones who are most at risk are front-line workers. And in many countries, not only India, these front-line workers are not seen as public employees. They don't seem to get any of the benefits. Forget the social protection. They don't even get legal protection. They haven't during the pandemic even got the basic protection that you would require to prevent getting ill yourself. Because there have been in large parts of the developing world significant cuts in public spending. Many workers have not even been paid for several months. It's extraordinary that in a health crisis, health workers are not getting a due. And why is that? It's because they are seen as not really expendable, but generally available. If it's not done by this woman, you will find another woman who is available to do it, not only because there's so much unemployment, but because that's what women do. Women look after others. Women do the caring. And so it's all right to exploit to the maximum possible because they will be available for their families, their communities, and so on. As capitalism relies on the fact that there will be some people willing to make some sacrifices for the care of others and therefore implement certain accumulation strategies. So also our societies have grown inured to this fact. And we even get outraged when they don't deliver, when they're not available 24-7 in periods of crisis because of the assumption that this is essentially what women will do.  Again, this is not really only the result of medical education because increasingly you're getting more and more women going in for specialized medical education as well. It's just that despite that you end up with this very top-heavy presence of men at the top of the ladder and a disproportionate presence of women at the bottom of the ladder. There's a lot of economic analysis devoted to trying to understand why there are gender wage gaps. And the typical thing to do is to decompose the wage gap into what is called the explained part and the unexplained part. So the explained part is what they call attributes, okay? Age, experience, skill, education. The idea is that, well, workers will be paid more according to when they're older, they tend to get more wages. If they have more experience, if they have a high level of education, if they have a particular skill, then they will be paid more. So those will be attributes. And then the unexplained part, which you can't explain with these attributes, that's the part which they call discrimination. And across the world, it's found on average the two are kind of equal, that there's an equal significance of both. But if anything, the discrimination part, which used to be around half of the difference, it's been coming down a bit. I think that's the wrong way of looking at it. I think the distinction between the two is analytically flawed. Surely the fact that women have less skill or less education is an aspect of discrimination. So I don't believe that we can really say gender wage gaps, the discrimination part has come down, because that's only if you take a very, very narrow view of discrimination. When you say that it's only precisely for that job that this employer is discriminating against this woman versus another, a man. The older you get, the more likely you are to actually have a lower wage as a woman than an equivalent man worker. This works largely because of what has been called the motherhood penalty. Women take on average a decade more time out of the workforce. That's going to impact.  Their careers get interrupted. When they re-enter the workforce, they find it much harder either to get a job again or to get a similar job. They've lost all those years of work experience when they were having the babies and looking after the children. And therefore, they're not as attractive to employers as they would have been. You know, there was a study done in Denmark between 1980 and 2013.  And they found that after the first child, there's a dramatic drop in women's earnings. And they never really recover.  So that 10-year period meant that they had lost a quarter of their earnings. Whereas for men, there was no difference at all whether they had children or not. So really, that wage penalty is a penalty for motherhood. The other really striking thing that came out from this Danish study is that between the first part of the period, 1980, and the end, the part of the gender wage gap that you could explain because of this motherhood penalty had doubled. It was 40% in 1980 and it was 80% in 2013. So in this period of, you know, greater global integration and all of these things, and supposedly greater gender awareness, women were going to suffer to a greater extent by having children in terms of what they would lose in earned income over their lifetime. The idea of the double burden, you know, really, if you do not have the ability to hire in some of those goods and services, you can buy more processed food, you can mechanize some of the housework, you can buy labor-saving equipment, you can hire people to do care work or cleaning work. If you can't afford to do any of these things, then you have to be superwomen. And the real superwomen are not the more professional, more highly paid ones who can afford to outsource some of these things. The real superwomen are the ones who cannot afford to do that and have to go back and do all of those things in addition to doing their paid work. The usual complaint is that these women are not working hard enough or they're less reliable or they're always taking days off because a child is ill or that kind of thing. So you can see how the very structure of the labor market is, first of all, designed to ensure that it's the woman who's responsible for all of the care work. And secondly, that when they do that care work, they're penalized. We often think of safety at work and in fact, I think there's now more and more awareness of the possibilities of sexual harassment, of different kinds of gender-based violence at work, and different kinds of exploitation at work. And of course, it extends, as we now know, from the Me Too movement. We know that it extends all the way from relatively unskilled and less high-profile activities to the very extremely high-profile and well-paid activities. We know that these are real and common and can dramatically affect women's work possibilities and life chances. But the commute part is much less talked about. And again, it's one of those things when you think about it, public policy doesn't bother really very much to ensure that commutes, the going from your home to your place of work and returning are safe, secure, easy and manageable for women who also have to do a double burden of work at home. How does it feel for you? I see you're traveling with your baby. Perhaps you do that quite often. How does it feel for you as a woman, traveling with your little one and the incidents that we've seen now regarding taxi rapes? As a woman and I'm going with my baby, I don't feel safe because I don't know if I will go where I'm going and be safe or arrive safe with my baby or something will happen. Commute times are becoming more and more significant, especially because there are other changes going on in economies, different kinds of zoning restrictions, different kinds of residential patterns where the rich tend to make themselves into little enclaves where they don't have to mix too much with poorer sections, which have made commuting times for work longer and longer. And often less safe for women. There's another whole aspect of work that we haven't really considered yet and that's self-employment. In developing countries, around half of all workers are self-employed and many, many women are self-employed. The difficulties are often even greater when they're self-employed. Now, why is that? Well, first, because women have less assets, there are many reasons why legal, social, cultural reasons, why women inherit less than men, why they're less able to create assets and benefit from them in their lifetime. Overall, they have less assets. They're also less able to access output markets, many constraints in terms of the ability to sell and less ability to even access input markets. There are often many government programs for specific inputs. There are often other arrangements which are very male. Officialdom also remember is very male. So dealing with all of this male officialdom or even peers, it's very complicated and it means that women are much less likely to benefit from government schemes. Then again, whether legally or culturally, they often require male permission for many activities. So you can't just say I plan to do the following thing or I plan to access the following inputs. You need male permission. So you'd have to have a man as an intermediary which in turn means you're dependent on that man which also means you would possibly lose some of your income as a cut to that man even if he's your husband or some other male member of the household. But nonetheless, you don't have that freedom on autonomy which the man does even in terms of the self-employment. That in turn means they have less ability to access credit. I can think of many developing countries. I can think of my own city of Delhi where I have gone with relatively poor women to open bank accounts and the bank managers have been completely dismissive and said, well, you can't even open a bank account. Not even asking for credit. They just want to open a bank account. They want to put money in the bank and it's very difficult because they're not taken seriously. All businesses require credit. Working capital credit at least. And if you cannot get it from a bank or an institutional credit source, you have to go to a private money lender or some informal creditor and so you end up paying much more. So your costs are already much higher than the equivalent man who can get bank credit. Microfinance was supposed to be a big solution to this and how does that work? It works through this thing called group lending. That is to say, women form groups and that group together gets a loan. And the idea is that peer pressure will make sure that everyone repays and that particular point works. Microfinance has very high rates of repayment because yes, peer pressure is very strong and all the other women in your group are going to make your life miserable if you don't repay. So yes, it does. But the terms of microfinance turn out to be extremely difficult and damaging. In most of the developing world, the interest rates are anywhere between 20% to 60% per year. 20% to 60% per year. Imagine that's the kind of interest rate you're paying and they're usually very small amounts and you have to repay within a few months. Can you imagine any of our big software entrepreneurs who've all relied on lots of venture capital to succeed? Can you imagine any of them managing on terms like this? So clearly, microfinance is not meant for productive investment. It's not designed to help women actually create viable economic activities because the terms are simply impossible. All it does, therefore, it ends up doing what is called consumption smoothing. You need to make a big expenditure for something, a health cost or a child's wedding or education or something. You need a big expenditure. You use the microfinance and then you try and repay it over time. Microfinance gives such terrible terms that it cannot serve as an alternative to normal or institutional credit. And so the very idea that we can posit that as a solution to women microentrepreneurship, that's terrible. So we find, again, this is not just in developing countries across the world. Women-run enterprises, on average, are smaller and they face higher costs. They're also much more affected by these inadequate public facilities that I've been talking about. Street trading is a classic example. It's hugely affected, for example, by street lighting, by the possibility of physical violence or harassment, not just by people around you, but by officialdom, by petty officials down on the ground, by the availability of toilets, which are easily accessible and clean and reasonably safe. UNICEF estimates that half of all rapes could be prevented if there was better access to toilets. As in so many shocking cases, Saroj, from a village in Northern India with no access to an indoor toilet, was set upon when she was forced to go outside. I think I mentioned lack of assets. A lot of that has to do with property rights structures. So there's a very strong tendency to be patriarchal in handing down property. And unless there are legal restrictions from preventing it, in other words, it's not just enough to allow women to. You have to make sure there are clear reasons why you will not inherit. Because in most societies, it's found that whenever you allow women to inherit property, it doesn't follow that they do. It's still that the male children are preferred inheritors. And this is down the line. It's not just among the rich, it's also among the poor. And that, of course, then determines all the other things that I had mentioned, the lack of assets, the less ability to access credit, less ability to start your own enterprise, all of those things. But there are other legal restrictions as well. There was a study done by the World Bank, actually, which found that across the world, women had only about 3 fourths of the rights that men had. So the ability to even get into a small enterprise to do self-employment, all of those things are affected by these legal constraints which do not allow you to benefit from things that your brother can. In general, it's been found wherever there are surveys that women earn approximately half what men do from self-employment. Again, it's not about physical attributes. It's not about skill. It's not about age. It's not about any of these things. It's all about these various constraints, legal, social, cultural and economic, which are put on women to prevent them from being able to be on a level playing field economically with men. So what does all this tell us? In a way, I think what it shows is that women are the most basic form of what Marx had called the reserve army of labor. Basically, Marx said that the reserve army of labor is this very useful thing for capitalism. It's all the workers who are not employed. And their very existence acts as a wonderful bargaining tactic for employers. In other words, capitalism needs that reserve army because it can keep workers under control. It can be a very important disciplining device for those who are employed. You can say that don't dare ask for higher wages, don't dare ask for better conditions because if you do, there are all these other workers willing to take your job. And of course, we've seen how this plays out not just nationally but internationally. Today, employers can tell their workers who are demanding better conditions and higher work that if you don't behave yourself, we will move to Mexico or Guatemala and you will lose your job. So you better not demand all these conditions and higher wages. But women are, in a sense, the quintessential available reserve army. Marx defined them as having three characteristics that it's latent.  But they can be made available to work when capitalism requires, just as they were during the war in the US, just as they were in East Asia during export-oriented industrialization. They're also, the second feature, stagnant, which is to say that they don't really have huge income opportunities themselves. They're just available. They're latent and they're stagnant and they're floating. They can float into paid work. They can be pushed back out of it. And that's a huge advantage for capitalism. Remember, I'm not saying that this was a creation of capitalism because that's what we've seen, that it predates capitalism. In fact, patriarchal divisions even predate slavery. But what it does do is enable capitalism to make use of it in a way that really benefits its own strategies for worker control and its own ability to extract more and more surplus from different kinds of productive activities. And of course, it does that through these segmented labor markets that I've mentioned. It does that from the fact that women get clustered into low-age occupations. More and more young women get sent out to work when there's more poverty among families. It does that by enabling life cycle pressures to bring women in and then push them out of the workforce as it requires. And it cements the role of women as insecure, low-paid, subordinate workers. The implicit attitude is of women who can be brought in or expelled from jobs depending on employer's requirements and that it's all right to give them worse conditions. It's all right to give them lower wages. It's all right not to promise them secure employment. Now, this works obviously within economies. It works for private employers. It works for public employers. I've already talked about how the government of India is doing it, but there are other governments in South Africa and Brazil and many other countries where this is happening. It works globally through the relocation of production and through the relocation of workers. So there are many ways in which this reserve army of labor plays out and in which globalization has added to that process because these are not just processes that make that particular activity cheaper, but they underwrite a lot of other costs. They underwrite the entire accumulation process in the advanced countries. Again, something which people don't really think about. They don't recognize it even as a major issue and certainly public policy doesn't recognize it either. And that's what I'm going to take up in the next lecture. The many ways in which public policy is not just gender blind. It's not blind, it sees it, but it uses those gender differences to its own advantage and to cheapen its own needs for public spending.


At one moment the Qur'an refers to its own revelation as Inna Anzalnahu Fi Lailatul Qadr that we have revealed it, meaning the Qur'an, on the night of Qadr. Inzal is used. Another verse in Surah Isra'ah again refers to the revelation of the Qur'an but in a different Arabic verb. It says Wa Qur'anan Faraqna Litaqrahu Alanaas that we reveal the Qur'an in portions so you can read it to the people Alaa Muqtin read it slowly read it in portions read it in degrees Nazzalnahu Tanzeela we revealed it in a Tanzeel portion meaning what? degree by degree portion by portion little bit by little bits and one area Inzal is used and one area Tanzeel is used what's the difference? Inzal is an immediate revelation all at one time Tanzeel is a gradual revelation we know there's a whole discussion in Ulumi Qur'an that talks about the idea that is the 27th Rajab, the first revelation or as the night of Qadr, the first revelation which one is it? We have just celebrated a month ago or so the suggestion of the Ba'asat of the Holy Prophet, correct? In that moment that was the revelation in the cave of Hira of the first five verses of Surah Alak, correct? We accept that in the Shia Madhab as the first revelation of the Qur'an others may not At the same time we also accept Inzalnahu Filayat al Qadr that surely the Qur'an was revealed on the night of Qadr So the kids ask which one is it? Is it Rajab? Is it the Malta Ramadhan? Whole discussion in Ulumi Qur'an Ba'at has been done pages has been written and Alama Tabata Bayrah Mutullah Ali has a very beautiful reconciliation of these two discussions He says it was both One was a Vahiri revelation one was a Ba'atini revelation One was an apparent revelation one was an internal revelation Meaning what the Prophet of Allah on the night of Qadr was revealed all the sciences and the alum and the beauty of the Qur'an in one shot Inzal Across 23 years of his prophethood he was also revealed the apparent Qur'an in a Tanzil portion My point of all this is the Qur'an itself is telling us the Qur'an has to be implemented inside of our lives in a very stage by stage portion by portion idea It's not just about reading one Juz you do it, Alhamdulillah, that's great the law of the Qur'an is highly highly recommended in this month At the same time if you can spend a little bit of time on translation then it will be a really fruitful month I told you, Allah protect him for a very long life he has a very beautiful discussion and with this inshallah He says that when it comes to preparation of our Imam he says there are many things to do One thing that we know for sure is that the constitution of the 12th Imam will be the Qur'an No surprises there He will lead his divine governments using the Qur'an as a constitution I told you what he says very beautifully one of the most beautiful things that we could do in preparation for the Imam is that before that government applies its constitution you begin to allow the Qur'an to govern you and your family before the arrival of the Imam meaning before he brings his constitution make it already a constitution inside your life already such that when that transition happens from us and post the hood of the Imam it's a seamless transition remember we're waiting for life under the Imam not just this bang of a zuhur we're waiting for the fact that we're going to live inshallah Allah gives us life under his hukumat that requires a lot of sacrifice from us in the west a lot of change from us in the west let's begin that change now it's the month of Qur'an many of you have a beautiful habit of studying one juz of the Qur'an I've heard that people recite several Qur'ans a month it's amazing so much tawab if we can apply a little bit of the meaning and the mafum of a few verses our lives will change the lives of our family will change and slowly but surely now our four wall government inside of our home four or five of us its constitution becomes the Qur'an itself


Hey welcome back to Kids Fun Science my name is Kent and today's experiment is the Vanishing Styrofoam. So you can use any kind of Styrofoam, Styrofoam cups, packing Styrofoam but I'm going to use the Styrofoam head because I think it gives a better experiment. And then what you also need to use is acetone and so it's a nail nail polish remover so I got that here in the description I'll show you how to do that. So Styrofoam is actually a trade name that generically describes polystyrene foam right. So it's manufacturing and when it is in the manufacturing stage it's injected gases that actually is about 95 percent air that's put into it. So it's very little Styrofoam that's put in here and we'll see that with the experiment as we go forward. So like I said what you need is the Styrofoam tray underneath it the acetone I'm going to have some gloves and safety goggles when you're doing this experiment all right. So we're going to do that next and we'll have the science behind it. Please remember to click thumbs up and to subscribe. All right so here we go I've got my tray and my Styrofoam the acetone some gloves and my safety goggles and remember adult supervision is required. So basically we're just going to pour the acetone on top of it and let the magic happen. It takes it down about half the half the half the acetone there and I'll show you in just a second what we ended up with but that took down that complete head of Styrofoam which is 95 percent air and we're going to see how much Styrofoam is left in just a second but that was pretty crazy. I mean it had to be around 10 seconds and it took it completely out so we'll be right back. All right here we go you can see the Styrofoam head this is all that's left here of the head it makes it kind of a little goo here which will harden. You can make into a shape drain the acetone out which I will and then you can make it into a shape and it will become a hard structure to whatever shape you make. So there's what we got out of the Styrofoam head and here is the actual head so you can see I mean it's not very high and how much air was inside this which is pretty crazy. So it will take probably about 24 hours to dry but here's the shape I'm putting it in Kids Fun Science and then I also did a previous one about a week before and it's just a long straight piece here you can hear it's pretty solid on how hard it is so any shape you want.


The town of Sufra celebrated independence in a big way with a calendar of activities that included sporting and educational events and culminated with the independence flag-raising ceremony and fireworks display as mandated by the Ministry of Local Government. Sufra for Sejaq MP Hon. Emma Hippolit hoisted the flag at midnight and immediately after, residents were treated to over five minutes of fireworks. Flag-raising seeks to galvanize our patriotism, our collective sense of pride and purpose. It is a call to action to be the very best student, to be the very best entrepreneur, to be the very best employee, to be the very best politician, to be the very best citizen that we can be. Sufra's deputy mayor, Mr. Cletus Didi, says both the battle relay and the flag-raising and fireworks ceremony stirred great feelings of national and cultural pride among residents. He commanded the Ministry of Local Government for hosting the events and urged everyone to stay true to the independence theme, Duvah Assam won people, shaping our destiny. It is the opinion of many that Sufra is one of the most beautiful places on this planet, coupled with its pleasant people, and in my humble view, our opinion, that is the truth. But what have we done as Suferians to minimize its full potential? I believe one of the ways in which we can achieve that goal is for all Suferians to come together, no matter of political colors or other affiliations, and share ideas as to how best we can develop this beautiful place of ours. I will say again, Suferians, whether it be man, woman, child, government agencies, NGOs, and other groups in the community, must work in unison with the Council for that goal to be realized. I believe that we must work together to achieve that goal. The SRDF's Communications and Marketing Manager, Mrs. Lovely St. Amy Jozov, loaded the efforts of the youth. The Sufer Youth and Sports Councils beheaded independence activities such as a community road relay, a track championship, and an independent squeeze for which they received funding from the SRDF. We thank our partners, especially our vibrant youth movement in Sufrey. Our young men and women are taking up the mantle of volunteerism and community service. They are, as we say, taking up space and making their mark. Therefore, the SRDF is committed to supporting the strides toward developing a youth economy and will continue to make investments toward the development of the creative industries. We can travel together. The various stakeholders are now focused on plans for Sufer Creole Jazz and Sufer Carnival 2023 to be held on the 7th of May and the 17th to 26th of June, respectively. From the Sufer Original Development Foundation, I am Jean-Yves Gonzague.


I'm going to miss the one for people I met within my program and my job at WU A23. I traveled to France, hence my France flag for studying abroad. I'm going to miss my sorority sisters hence the stole, but yes I'm going to miss all the one for people I met here. It's so much. It's just a second home at this point. I followed my sister here so being able to share those experiences with her and just kind of bond over that has just been so fun and so amazing and it's just a second home that I'm really sad to leave. I think I appreciate the people I've met here the most. I made some great friends and connections that I think I'll have for a lifetime and it's like a family here and I'm really going to miss that. I learned a lot in my four years here so I'm just happy that I was able to come to this university and learn so much. Both my dad and my sister graduated from here so being able to keep on that legacy means a lot to me. I'll probably just miss going to the football games the most. Me and my friends used to do it all the time it was like our favorite thing to do in the fall so yeah that's probably what I'm missing most. I mean it's a little bittersweet I would say it was definitely the best four years of my life. It means a lot to my family all my family's here to celebrate with me so yeah I mean I love it here. It means the world to me. University of Alabama is the place where legends are made and you embrace that mantra and that mindset you believed in the potential that you had for your future. So on behalf of the university community it's my honor to be the first to congratulate you guys on this accomplishment today congratulations.