Hello from the legendary state of North Dakota. You're watching Trucker Josh Vlogs Peace enjoy the show. Another new day is here I'm at the rest area just inside of Ontario I have to go pick up a load of lumber in a town called Ear Falls. It's nearby here That load is going to a town called Isanti, Minnesota. It's near Minneapolis We're gonna get that taken care of today probably deliver it tomorrow morning And then I have a load already waiting for me down there coming back up home had a little bit of a Unfortunate meeting with a black bear last night In Manitoba on the way here into Ontario He he hit me. I didn't hit him. He hit me. He ran into my truck on the driver's side here Hit my steer tire ran right into it came out of nowhere It just it looked like a shadow running on to the road and Terrified me at first that it was a dog. It was a young bear. It wasn't a fully grown bear Luckily old blue suffered no damage The only damage was three of these lug nut covers were missing and This bumper is Slightly slightly bent.  I didn't hit it. It hit me So I doubled back. I did a u-turn. I went back and wanted to go check on it Make sure it wasn't suffering. I didn't seem like I hated very hard So I didn't even know if I like fully if it just bumped me or grazed me Well at that speed I was going highway speed 100 100 kilometers an hour 60 mile an hour Even just grazing it and having to run into my steer tire like it did I found it and It was definitely dead instantly. It was a black bear. It wasn't a cub But it wasn't a full-grown black bear either. It was like a teenager or a young adult black bear and I pulled over Safely beside it. I want like I said make sure that it wasn't suffering. I Don't like animals to suffer And don't get me confused for those crazy animal rights activists or anything or I Like a good steak. I like to eat my meat But I don't like to unnecessarily allow animals to suffer regardless of if they're food animals or pets or wildlife I Don't like to see life suffering. I think all life is Special so I wanted to make sure that you know It wasn't sitting there Struggling but no, it was definitely it would definitely I won't go into details of how I Definitely knew that on YouTube here because there's a little bit gory but It was definitely gone instantly So I guess that's the best circumstance we could ask for for the bear. I mean Shouldn't have been crossing the road and jaywalking in the middle of the night Oh Poor guy poor guy. Well, I guess my seer axles are gonna need an alignment now I'm gonna run run with it the rest of this trip just to make sure I checked everything I stopped I pulled over I checked everything The bear didn't get underneath the truck at all so it didn't touch any of my lines or anything underneath there literally just grazed the outside of the truck here and I don't know if it was just in my head But after that on the way here, I felt like the truck was slightly pulling to the right as if like it hit this and sort of bump the alignment out just a little bit So when we get back I'm gonna bring the truck in get a steer axle alignment and wheel balancing in the front Just make sure everything is In its proper place Yeah That was my story from last night on the way here. I didn't film yesterday This is starting the trip here Like I said, we're going to Ear Falls, Ontario picking up some lumber bringing it down to a Santti, Minnesota and then we're Coming back up here. You can probably hear my engine heater in here You might say I don't need to use it in the summertime It warms up the fluids in my truck It's a nice day Before I turn over my my motor Since I have this option I like to get the fluids moving and warmed up a little bit before the engine starts turning and then let the engine warm up itself For about 15 minutes and then I start going It's just a habit. I've gotten into I guess but All right, that's my story Let's get truckin You see before I even turn over the motor now. I haven't turned it over yet. It's already sitting at 150 degrees Water temperature on this dirty gauge. I don't know. Uh, I feel better about turning it over this way See I'm gonna go with the key in here. So let's get going. Shall we? Race at our tripometer. I guess we turn this on Okay, let's get rolling. Shall we? Diesel's not with us again today. He's spending time with his family at home enjoying his semi-retirement I've been here for 10 consecutive hours now Which means that after I pick up my load I'm legal to cross into the United States on my hours of service If you haven't watched me before when you're on US soil You got to follow the rules of the US when you're on Canadian soil You got to follow the rules of Canada hours of service are similar between the two countries similar But not the same welcome to Ontario Thank you. Thank you very much So nice of you to welcome me so kindly with such a beautiful big sign I wonder what they do. No, I bet you they're twinning this. I bet you they're making it four lane They're taking charge of advice Our turn first thing in the morning. My shifts aren't always the smoothest. It's frustrating sometimes. It's always Bad gear Wasn't too bad It's very different shifting in a truck when you're fully loaded, you know at a gross weight of 95,000 pounds and when you're empty That's no excuse. I should be better than that 250 kilometers to earfalls and they should be able to load me up right away It'll be on our way. This is highway 105 northbound and so So different. So there are only 80 kilometers an hour Expected that how to go down to get to our load Well three kilometers down this gravel road, okay two miles times Here comes a logger truck brings the logs in manufacture them and they Cut them into a bunch of two-by-four two-by-sixes that might come in and I haul them out of here as a finished product teamwork So I had to run into their their office here Shipping office real quick just to figure out what I'm supposed to do This is I haven't been here in a while or I don't think I've actually been to this one Don't remind there. I think He was looking at me like he thought he knew me and then all of a sudden Hey, bud, if you're watching the video say hi to you here Hey, so I'm gonna go around the corner up here and I guess I'll do the responsible thing Buckle myself in so I don't fall out rolling across the parking lot To avoid those comments Bunch of new content onto this channel these vlogs are going to stay the feature of my channel This is the main Main thing that I do these daily vlogs. I want to add a couple of other shows and spinoffs on here as well I'm gonna separate them all into playlists that they're easy to Differentiating stuff, but I really want to up the amount of content. I'm posting on here So I'm just gonna throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks I'll talk to you more about it in a separate video. You probably already watched it It'll help you understand more what's going on because you'll see a bunch of different content all all surrounding trucking and stuff And like my life just from different angles I'd like to do a silent vlog where it's like a second take of the same day like today and then a second take of the day With no words. Maybe not even music. I might add some music because sometimes you got to add something It's like a silent vlog. Just the story of my life in silence So those of you who hate listening to my voice and don't like my face that much. That's cool I'm gonna make a video for you. I don't know if I'd call it a vlog then Because a vlog is a video blog. It's talking. That's what a vlog is. You got to be talking Sharing your experiences verbally with your audience. I don't know what I'd call it if it's a silent vlog Just sharing Like the sounds of the truck the sounds of the highway the sounds of nature the sounds around me Giving you the story of my day without talking We'll see what happens.  So if you're subscribed here just for this content Don't worry. You'll still have a video I was told to come over here and Park by the sign that says truck parking And also let these guys know that I am loading well actually I'm not loading cargo yet. I'm just sitting here, but I In here Then they want me to fill out some paperwork here Shut this thing off No need to waste any fuel sitting here doing nothing We will not load you if you don't have proper PPE Number one you need a hard hat check Number two you need glass I'm assuming they mean Glasses not just glass mine are made of plastic. I'm hoping that'll be okay check gloves Check Put them on when I go outside workboats check The PPE should be on While you're strapping especially Okay, time in 2 p.m. The vehicle number The date today when I'm filming this August 9th 2022 Mandatory to sign the next page. Okay. Well, it's not mandatory sign this page manager I'm gonna sign this page to There you go, there's my autograph You're welcome Where else this guy here? Carrier guess I should wait till they actually load it till I sign it But whatever I trust them that they're gonna put the right stuff on I'll make sure I'll make sure we're picking up two by four by sevens 84 inch studs huh I'm being loaded right now as we speak. I've been instructed I must stay in my truck like a good boy. I Have to stay in here until they're done and until they've given me the the all clear to go out and tie it down I kind of like this way better because then I don't have to worry about them accidentally running me over and they Don't have to worry about where I'm at. They can just load up my trailer as quick as they can and then I can go and do my stuff It's like a typical load to by force I'm hoping my tarps won't be in their way But if they are like I said, they'll come and tell me to get out and move them if I have them tied down to the Trailer at the front Sometimes they want to put their lumber right up to the front of the trailer and then I have to put the tarp somewhere else I'll show you I'll show you a little later All right, so we've moved forward just a bit There's the load I'm gonna quickly Tie this down here real quick We'll be out of here Do you remember when we were talking about how sometimes these Fly up like this they come undone. I'm gonna show you how I fix these now See I've got my stapler. I've got a piece Rubber anything works cardboard rubber Just put this right on here like this and staple it on That'll hold I got that and it'll hold on Put another one back here and that should be good. Actually, I should probably put another one up here It's gonna want to rip this there. You see Yeah, that's how you fix that problem first thing Monday morning Six miles down gravel road. This is Tuesday. It's Tuesday.  That's why they call it dust Most of it will blow off once I get up to highway speed Still kind of annoying world where absolutely every single road is paved Don't you think that's a world we could all live in? It's right Karen. Yeah, we're taking highway 105 back down to highway 17 And we're gonna be crossing into the united states at international falls minnesota from fort francis, ontario Kicking up a lot of dust back there Finally got that windshield Cleaned it's been dirty all day. They're driving me nuts And you really notice it the most when you're traveling directly into the sun So I had enough pulled over here and dried and I believe this is highway 502 right here I haven't actually traveled down this highway before so I'm kind of looking forward to something new That right there is the dried and paper plant. It stinks Very much very much Stinks And I would take you down here into this beautiful dandelion park But apparently it's private property Well, mr. Domtar, I will respect your sign and your rope. It's a very nice rope That is your park And your river Look at that the house the other side of the river over there how the backyard comes right down to the river that is beautiful Man, that's my favorite thing about traveling around Is seeing all the different amazing Homes and properties and the way people landscape their yards Really gets me excited about our build One day one day we're gonna keep making videos one day This is pretty much the main industry here in dryden I'm pretty sure that would be the The first plant the old one and then The newer one and then the newest biggest one. I don't know for sure. Don't quote me on that. I'm not from here But kind of looks like the progression of time It's right here on the river here And it's time to go explore this highway Another highway that I haven't been down before I don't I don't See that that often that doesn't happen that often Time to go This load here is sitting at about 77,780 pounds gross Legally, I'm allowed 80,000 pounds gross in the u.s. But From the the loads I've been used to pulling the last couple of weeks across the prairies in canada on the tri axle This feels like a piece of cake. It feels light as a feather And this is pretty much my max weights close to my max weights for the us on a tandem trailer No tri axle for us this trip A little bit of a break for old blue You've been working hard Deserve a little break only pulling 80,000 Okay, let's go So I had marked this stop down as a load check as checking my straps I'm not too worried about lumber loads. Usually they don't go anywhere in the straps so you can crank them down pretty tight And it's pretty good. We have a long way to go today yet We're going to cross the border in a couple of hours Nobody coming there seats through my window back in my mirror Oh, yep. See now there's a pickup coming another good reason to have this window on your sleeper It really opens up your blind side. So it's not so blind right after this SUV we're going Paper plant really stinks these residents here deal with it all the time. I took this bottom Cover off here for now. I was rattling after replace it. I just put it to the bottom I'm a window still not totally clean See that So hard to get a windshield clean.  I don't even see it from here or not, but it's a little ways over that way We gotta go this way and then go across the bridge and go that way We're going to America Stopped here to make sure all my paperwork was in order that everything was good to go Order and talk to the good custom agent now I hope they like me Promise I'll be real good. I'm way too nice. I should have gone There's a car coming. He's out there somewhere. He's coming Here he comes my niceness. That's all I got left Got a little bit more left, but I'm saving that for the for the border guards. Gotta be super nice to them in the us side I'm just trying to make sure we Get out of here the right way So here at international falls crossing into fort francis. So crossing into canada. There's a toll I'm not too sure how much the toll is But crossing into the us there's no toll. So it only costs you money to leave the us. It doesn't cost you any money to come in Miles an hour Not kilometers an hour Welcome to america everybody play of flags here. You got the us flag the canada flag The minnesota flag the ontario flag And i'm not sure what the other ones are minnesota welcomes you. Thank you good people of minnesota So nice to be welcomed by your lovely sign I will be very good. Oh, why did they put this thing here? Oh in the world Oh no, why did they put that there? but That's very much in the way I needed that space to make my turn I guess I could have taken it wider, but I didn't I didn't really expect them to put a little sign right there That's okay. We made it work. We made it work No chickens were harmed south us 53 this way Flashing yellow light here means that uh, I can turn left, but They're not going to stop Here again, it's 30 miles an hour Canadians when we come to the us miles an hour is the small numbers on your speedometer on the inside The smaller numbers those are miles an hour If you're from the us then the smaller numbers would be kilometers an hour And there she is lurking in the dark A little bit of a dark lot That's the only one I could find I know you probably can't see me right now This is the carlton travel center in carlton minnesota. It's very dark here. Everything's closed up But just across the street over here Is a quick trip Gotta look both ways make sure we don't Get a run over That would ruin my visit to the states The parking here at this truck stop Was all full of course because this is the one with the 24-hour store that's open So everyone's all parked up here and there's a gravel lot Across the street over there That's pretty much completely empty. I'm like the fourth truck that's parking there. You could probably fit about 20 trucks in there Everything's closed up there. So I'm just walking across the street I'm gonna grab some food here Grab something for breakfast too, so I don't got a run over here in the morning That'll be it. I only had 17 minutes left on my elog


This book was all done. No, if you're gonna write about assassinating, better get assassinating. She even uses the word non-plus correctly. Perhaps not even gray, just morally black things. At long, long last, I finished Jade War by fondly. This book was all done. Oh my God. It took me way longer to read than I wanted it to take me and way longer than it should have. If I didn't have a channel and had no obligations in my life, I would have read this, finished it much, much sooner. But anyway, I finally managed to finish it. And it's so good. It's very, very hard to talk about that in spoilers. So I'm gonna do a very brief non-spoiler section here in the beginning. So you can stick around for a little bit longer if you've not read this. But then I'm gonna need to dive into spoilers because one, it's the second book in a series. And two, it itself has just so much to unpack about what goes on in it that it would be so, so, so, to say anything meaningful or useful or interesting without talking about some of those specifics. So is it worth the hype? Yes, a thousand times, yes. Jade City was worth the hype. And everyone said Jade War is even better and Jade Legacy will blow your mind. So like, I am still, I have not yet read Jade Legacy. I am ready for it to blow my mind. My heart is not ready for it to be broken, but that's going to happen, I'm sure. But Jade War was so good. It built so well on top of what Jade City did. It expanded and developed and furthered character arcs, plot lines, the world, the magic, the politics, the physical world, not just like knowing more complexly what's going on in the world, but sort of expanding the scope of like where this is taking place, spreading out the characters across the sort of landscape so that we are not just sort of in one place anymore that it's expanded in every way. It did such a good job with those things. It did an amazing job of staying true to characters while allowing them also to grow and change. Some years past during the course of this book and you can see those characters changing over time, not in a way where they're like completely different from who they were before, but they aren't static. They grow, they change. They are shaped by what happens to them, shaped by the decisions that they make, shaped by who they are in the company of, where they are sent, where they go, who they see, what they experience. This has an effect on them. This has an effect on how they continue then to react to things or how they shift their approach to life or the world or their own views on things. It's done so, so well. It also does an amazing job continuing to keep you on your toes. You know this is a series where characters can die, where it's like reading Game of Thrones. You know, like no one is safe, things can go awry and therefore every scene does feel more intense because unlike a book where everyone has plot armor galore, you do feel more anxiety because you know that this author is capable of doing away with characters, is capable of making terrible things happen to these characters and is also capable of making these characters do terrible things, which is its own kind of, it's not plot armor necessarily that prevents that in other books, but other authors are hesitant to have characters that are central characters or well-liked characters do things that might make you hate them and fondly is not afraid of that at all. Characters in this book will do things that have you questioning why you're reading about them or should you continue to root for them. And when you're writing about such morally great characters in this morally great world, it would be a terrible choice in my opinion as a writer to shy away from doing that because if you too much kind of like whitewash and give kind motivations to seemingly violent behavior to all of your main characters, it's then it has the window dressing of a morally gray story without actually being one and what makes a morally gray story interesting for those who enjoy those kind of stories is that the characters actually do things that are deeply questionable. If they're not going to, then it's one of the, a lot of YA will do this where like the character is an assassin, but they don't actually assassinate anybody or if they do it's always because that person is like basically like fantasy Hitler and you're like, okay, but like assassins are a morally gray interesting thing because they go around killing people for money and your character that you're telling me is an assassin, maybe they did that off screen, maybe, but really they're not, you know, you're afraid that we wouldn't like them if they actually assassinated people because like that's bad. No, if you're gonna write about an assassin, they better be assassinating. So here, well, what they do is condone to buy the law and nevertheless the setup and feel of these books is that it's about gangsters, that it's about mob, it's about the mafia, it's about Yakuza-esque setups. Even though like, I mean, in this world, it is sanctioned by the government what they do, but they operate the way that you'll see Peaky Blinders, the godfather, sons of anarchy. To shy away from having those characters do morally gray things would be a mistake and it is not a mistake that Fonda Lee makes. She makes the characters make tough calls and do difficult things and it makes it such a rich book with so much for you as the reader to experience and feel because when something's happening, bad to a character that you're rooting for, you know, your heart studying because you know that this could end badly, there is very little plot armor. And if a character that you like is doing something bad, your heart is studying because you're like, oh, are they really gonna do that? Oh my God, they're really gonna do that? Oh, that's, I don't know how I feel about that. So the, it is a rich emotional experience reading these books because she gives it all to you. Stuff that's tragic, stuff that's tough, stuff that's horrifying, stuff that's exciting and thrilling, stuff that's good as well. Sometimes good things happen and that's exciting as well. So overall, just I can't say enough great things about it. I can't think of a single criticism for it. She even uses the word non-plus correctly, which if you know me at all, that's something that irritates the biz out of me and people use non-plus incorrectly. So basically, like I said, I can't think of a single bad negative thing to say about this. The only negatives about it would be things like, if this is not to your taste, this is the kind of book where there's some books where I'm like, I find it difficult to believe that there are many people that wouldn't like this because it has such broad mass appeal. This isn't like that. I mean, if you're, it is really morally right, it is quite violent, it's highly political.  But if it is your cup of tea, if that's the type of story that you like, then this is some of the best there is out there. So if you like a gangster story, if you like a morally great story, if you like a highly political story, this is fantastic, this is about as good as it gets. So definitely, definitely recommend the series so far and I can't imagine Jay Legacy will fumble the landing after everything that I've heard about it. So spoilers, this is your final warning. If you've not read Jade War, we're doing spoilers now. So for me, I read this book kind of half and half, I read a good 50% of it a couple of months ago and now I read the other half of it basically. So it does feel to me like I read two books, like some of the beginning of it, like I forget, like it doesn't feel like that happened in the same book. And when I realized and I reminded myself that no, that all took place in Jade War, there's so much that happens in Jade War. So one of the most morally great things that happens probably in the entire book. I don't know, you know, mileage may vary, you might think something else is worse, but one of the most morally gray things, perhaps not even gray, just morally black things that happens in this book is Hilo, the fan favorite, killing his dead brother's wife and taking the child, taking his nephew. I had a really long conversation about this with Hilary from Book Born, she was ahead of me, we were ostensibly buddy reading it and then, you know, she finished it and I didn't. This scene happens, I believe it's chapter 21, but let's say, if it's not, let's say that it is. It's somewhere thereabouts. So she was like, have you gotten to chapter 21 yet? And I was like, no, I haven't. And then I made some progress, she's like, have you read chapter 21 and not told me? I was like, you will be the first to know when I've read chapter 21. So I did finally read chapter 21. And I was like, well, so that was a lot. I could see why you were like, have you read this chapter? Because of the way that that happens and because of the way that I found myself, I basically victim blaming, because I wanna be clear, I was not defending Hilo's behavior, I was not defending what Hilo chose to do, if we can even say chose to, because it was pretty reactive and instinctual what he did, like I don't think that if he had like sat down to plan what he was gonna do, I don't think he planned to do that, but nevertheless, he did do it. But that said, like reading that scene and everything that leads up to it, I was like, you know, not to victim blame, but I am about to victim blame. There's so many choices made by his sister-in-law, who he kills, that I'm like, lady, like it's not, what Hilo does is not fine. Absolutely upfront, we agree, what Hilo does is not fine. That is a crime, both like morally and legally, like that's in no way is that okay that he did that. But that being said, you kind of a little bit brought this upon yourself, because it's not like she doesn't know what Hilo's like. It's not like she doesn't know what green bones are like. It's not like she doesn't know what the no-peak clan is like. She knows exactly what Hilo is like, and she knows what the clan is like. She knows what green bone life is like. She has said that this is the very reason that she wants to keep herself and her son away from all of that. So that being the case, her knowing full well how they behave, how they think and how they react to things, the fact that she specifically thinks that Hilo is worse than all of them, that like this lifestyle in general is bad, but that Hilo, more than most, is just like a violent monster that reacts with violence at all times. And the things that she does to seemingly intentionally provoke him. I'm like, it's not like you didn't know he was like this. You're telling us that that's why you don't like him.  So why are you provoking him?  You don't deserve to die. What he did is wrong, it is wrong 100%.  Like you know you're kind of asking for it, right? Like you shouldn't be dead, that's wrong and Hilo is wrong to have done that. I was like, what did you expect? Like what did you think was gonna happen when you did that? When you, you know what I'm saying? So like again, to be absolutely 1000% clear, Hilo killing her is wrong. She should not be dead. But she didn't help herself any in all of the things that she was saying to him, that she was disclosing, that she, the way that she was reacting and behaving. I was like, this really could only have ended that way. And even you yourself should have seen that coming from what you said he's like, like you know this. Like why are you doing this? Like they're gonna, it's been a minute now because I did read the first half longer ago. But I believe they agree to have dinner to discuss, you know, some kind of like arrangement where the kid can visit with his family in Keckon. And she agrees to do a dinner like that. But so before the dinner happens, she's now gonna like run away with the kid before that dinner is even able to happen. And I'm like, why? Why would you do that? You know he's gonna come looking for you.   It's not his right to have the kid. It's not his right to have the kid visit. But you know that he feels that it is and you have agreed to have dinner with him. So just go have dinner, do the dinner. And then after the dinner, you can agree to whatever. You can say, yeah, sure, we'll do visitation. We'll work it out. And after you've worked it out, then leave. You don't need to leave before the dinner happens.   You're asking for him to lash out. And then when he does find out, everything that she says to him when he shows up and he's like, what the heck? Everything that she says.  But like she's just like provoking him.  Like this is a terrible idea. What are you doing? Stop it. What are you doing? Like anyway, so yeah. What Kilo does makes it very hard to continue to root for Kilo. But you know what she signed up for. So it is what it is.  And for the kid himself, like I'm guessing there's going, it's like, you know, that's Chekhov's family drama right there. Like, you know, the kid is gonna find out what Kilo did and how that all went down. It's gonna come back to bite him. There's no way that doesn't. But for now, Kilo is a good dad to him and he's raising the kid. Perhaps, you know, the mom didn't want him raised in the Green Boat Life. But if he is to be raised in the Green Boat Life, he's being raised very well with a lot of care and a lot of love and a lot of family around. The kid is okay, all things considered. But anyway, that was quite an opener. Not actual opener, obviously. It's not like the first chapter, but quite a way to start Jade War. And then many moral great, morally great decisions later, when we have the end where I was ready to be mad and then I wasn't. But I was upset. This is a very weird state of emotions. This book just makes you feel kind of weird things. So at the end, when Wynne, the stone eye, is able to get the revenge that she wanted on the person that killed her brother. She was not willing to wait. She was impatient and she wasn't gonna let this chance slip by. So she's gonna take the vengeance that she's able to take. And she succeeds, she kills the guy. And then when they're ambushed by these other criminals and they're all getting like suffocated and choked and killed, I was like, so this is, I'm guessing Wynne's gonna die because this is her sort of the, she got her revenge, she did it, but this is the punishment for having been impatient, for just taking the revenge instead of waiting when there was maybe a better opportunity.  She's gonna die now. She doesn't die.  Like that's not something that I was expecting to see from Fonda Lee, but that scene forced Ann to use Jade again, which I knew at some point, something like that would have to happen. So I liked the way that that happened and the way that he was like, I'd used Jade to kill before, but experiencing what it's like to use it to heal makes me want to use it again. So I liked that.   So I was, it's a weird thing to say, I was relieved that she had brain damage. But you know what I mean? I was like, okay, I'm relieved that Fonda Lee made it, you know, realistic in a world with magical rocks that make you have superpowers. But yeah, there are consequences. It's not like you can be basically clinically dead. And then for several minutes and be revived and not have, and then be like totally fine. She does have brain damage.  I'm guessing there will be, that will be found out and it will cause problems. I'm guessing the fact that Hilo's own son is a stonai will cause problems. Not for Hilo personally and how he views his son, but this will create problems, it will. The fact that Wen is now paralyzed, at least as far as we know that she's paralyzed, that how this is going to affect her and Hilo's relationship and affect her ability to help the clan and her place in the clan and in being back is gonna create both opportunities and problems. There's just, there's just so much. She's like continued to complicate all these threads that she put in place before. And there's just so much to resolve and also so many different ways this can go and so many new, so many fresh horrors can be visited upon the characters and by extension the readers. It's so well done, it's so well done. And I am hyped to read Jade Legacy and be broken. So let me know in the comments down below. Hopefully you hear at this point in the video you've read Jade War. Maybe you've read Jade Legacy, you know spoilers. We can talk spoilers about the Jade Legacy when I finish it. But yeah, let me know your thoughts about Jade City, Jade War, Green Bone in general. Whatever you want me to know. I post videos on Saturdays. Other random times I'll upload on Saturdays so like and subscribe. Join my Patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see.


Hello. Hi, everyone. Very nice to see you all here today. This is my second edition of Slush, and I have to say it was even better than last year. Pardon my voice. I might have ended at a party yesterday night, and it kind of did that to my voice. I also got a cold, so I could be more local and fit with helping weather. And since we're going to talk about international expansion and localization, I guess that's actually relevant. So just to give you a bit of background on why I'm talking to you about international expansion today and what as French tech to do is international expansion. So prior to joining French tech, and I'll tell you a bit more about what is French tech and how we go international, I got the chance to work kind of all over the world in different startups, where there was one common theme, was how can we accelerate, go beyond our markets, go international, and make sure that the innovations that you would build in Thailand, in Singapore, in the US, in the UK, or in France can go way beyond their borders. This has been a very strong theme throughout my career, and I hope I can share a few tips and also maybe give you some ideas on how you could expand to France, because this is also what I'm doing today. I'm the director of Mission French Tech, which is an administration of the French government looking at expanding and growing the French tech ecosystem. So all the startups, investors, supporting our tech ecosystem. Some of you might know, France might not have been that central to tech a few years ago, but we now have a very booming, exciting, amazing startup ecosystem, and this had a lot to do with our entrepreneurs, investors, completely understanding that France is a very great market, 60 million people, but if we want to create unicorns, if we want to create big tech companies, we have to take those innovations beyond our borders. So I'll also talk about how French tech companies do that. So what is La French Tech? La French Tech is a bunch of 20,000 startups innovating in B2B, B2C, basically everything tech you can think of, all the stuff you have in your smartphone, but also industrial tech, I'll say biotech, I'll say quantum, AI, cloud, basically all the technologies we can think of. And we try and support those organizations so they can build those innovation for the greatest number of people in the world. Our administration was created almost 10 years ago with this goal to support this ecosystem and help all the startups becoming bigger and bigger and facilitate everything has to do with the state, everything that has to do with attracting talents, attracting investment, and just making sure that entrepreneurs can focus on building those great companies. So the first question I think I was trying to think, why can I teach you on going international? Probably the first question I asked myself when I was responsible for international expansion at a company called List that is based in the UK was when and why should we go international? And I'd start with why I touched on it, but we're very, very fortunate to be born in Europe for most of the European people in this room, for me as an individual, and Europe is a great place to start businesses, but we're all part of pretty small markets, especially when we compare it to markets like the US or some markets in Asia.  So this is why it's very important, and I think that's what really made the biggest difference in the last 10 years with French startups, to think that if you go big, if you wanna go big, if you wanna be one of the big tech companies in the world, you have to think international from the get-go. You have to think how do I not build the best product from my French customers or my German customers or my Spanish customers, but how do I build the best product for global customers? Because we're not lucky to be born and to build startups in a country where you have 300 million people who can buy your solution from day one. So this is a bit of a hassle. This is something that we don't have from the get-go, but this is actually a huge opportunity, and I think the Nordics have understood it better than anyone else. When you're coming from a small market, you can build companies with this international mindset from the very get-go. That was probably one of the challenges we saw in France is 60 million market, 60 million people. It's not that small. So a lot of companies in the first years of French tech spend a lot of time building the perfect product for French people. But once you have the perfect product for French people, it doesn't mean it's perfect for everyone else in the world. So this is since our companies understood that, understood that in the first years of their existence, they need to think globally. And very concretely, like it means I'm building the code of my app. I'm not gonna build and embed everything in French. I'm gonna build it with international translation tools, embed it from the get-go, so I don't have to do all this really tedious work going back to my code, changing all the wording and translating all the wording. So really from day one, thinking, okay, France is not big enough, or Germany is not big enough, or Spain is not big enough. So I need to build a product that will be easily translatable, easily adaptable to all my market. I think that has been one of the biggest transformation.  So that's definitely something that I think I've seen in all the experiences I've been in. The earliest you think about those things, the earliest you think about the fact that you have global ambitions, you're gonna embed this international mindset from the get-go. Embed it in your product, I talked about it, embed it in your teams. That I think is probably the biggest barrier we see also in France is when you're building teams with only French people, the first foreigner that is gonna come into this team is honestly not gonna have a very fun time. Because even if you're gonna try and force your company to move to English language at the coffee machine, at lunchtime, when you go out for having drinks with your colleagues, everyone is gonna speak French again because we are not that comfortable with English that space it. So one thing we're really seeing entrepreneurs changing nowadays is from the very beginning, their management teams, they bring on people from all around the world. And we've tried and made this as easy for them as possible and I took a bit more about how we do that in a minute. But I think that's also one very, very important advice because if you bring this international team from the very beginning, it means that you're not gonna be a French company anymore, you're not gonna be a German company anymore, you're not gonna be a Finnish company anymore, you're gonna be an international company and this is gonna be much, much easier for you to think about all the different perspectives, for you to understand that things are not made the same way in all the markets and for you to basically go international much, much, much faster. So we talked a bit about the reason to expand internationally. I think beyond market opportunity, which is probably a reason no one can really challenge, it's also a question of sovereignty. And the prime minister of Finland talked about it yesterday. Why do we all, I think it's 80% of French startups rely on infrastructure tools that come from the US? Because all those companies, not only they had big markets when they started, but they also expanded very, very fast to Europe and to all global markets. So if we wanna build this digital sovereignty, tech sovereignty that everyone is thinking about, it means that we need to support our companies and that's what we try to do is French tech to not only be a great solution, innovations for their local customers, but also brings us innovation abroad. Brings them abroad so they can transform the life of their customers everywhere in the world and not just in their own domestic market. And I think this is becoming extremely important in a world where everyone is realizing that the context is evolving. You are really wondering what are the different types of shortages that are affecting my business? How can we really build our own capabilities? And this is definitely one of the objectives of Mission French Tech is helping companies understand that they have this potential to not only build international client base, but also build international recognizable solutions that will help our sovereignty. So we talked a little bit about good timing. So of course, if everything goes right, you'd have an international team from the get go, you'd have an internationalizable product from the get go, and you'd be thinking international on day two. But I'm sure a lot of you have worked in startups or be founders in this room, and there's already so much to do when you start a company. It's not that easy to spend so much time on maybe new opportunities for revenue, but I'm not gonna materialize tomorrow because it's a lot of work to open international. So I don't think I'm able to say when is a good timing. The good timing is a good timing for your business, but definitely being prepared very early, the earliest on possible, will help you get ready and move faster when the good timing comes for you. So if you have this international mindset, it will help you the days that you're ready to go attack a market, to go after this market, and to not have to completely change your culture, completely change the way you work, completely change your habits, your working language to go after this market. So I think the most important is this preparation phase. Understand that this day will come and by the time it comes, you need to have thought through way, way, way before so you're ready to go after international expansion because otherwise it will be much harder to transform a very local company in a very global company. That being said, I mean, there's opportunities and what we're seeing with French tech companies that we are particularly excited about at the moment is some companies might not have had this very international mindset at first, but there are also opportunities to accelerate internationally in different ways. Opening your own subsidiary, creating your own team is the route that most of the people think of, but you can also catch up and gain a lot of time when you think about international acquisition, especially in this context. So I'm sure a lot of you in the room are thinking, okay, financing is getting more difficult, my investors are pushing me towards profitability, but it also means that a lot of companies are getting cheaper. So if you've always thought about a market, let's say for example, Dr. Lee, which is one of the biggest unicorn in France looking at facilitating appointments with doctors, Dr. Lee probably always wanted to expand internationally. Guess what? Because the context is moving, there are potential acquisition targets in a lot of different markets in the world. So this is also a good timing to do that. Maybe not the traditional route, building your team, localizing your product, basically changing everything, going there on the ground, sending a funder, but looking at all the different companies out there who have their own local journey and looking at which one could be a good target to expand in a market to bring you new capabilities because this will make the route much faster, so much riskier because probably some of you know and have been through it, acquisition and especially integration can be a lot harder, but it is an opportunity that I think we often underestimate in this market context. So it's not only a good market for VCs to make cheap deals, it's also a good markets for companies who want to go international, acquire competitors and go with this route to international expansion. Where to go international? So I'm gonna try not to start by come to France, so that's kind of what I'm paid to do for. So I'm obviously very biased, but I think this has been something that I've worked a lot during my time as an entrepreneur is try and understand where should we go first? Like let's say at least we were a British company very easy for us to expand in the US because it's the same language, but the US is also a very wide, competitive, expensive market when it comes to marketing. So maybe there would be opportunities to go somewhere else, even if the bar to go there would be higher because it would mean translation, it would mean localization, it would mean understanding all the culture. So some of the things I've seen in my previous job that I've worked, but then I also say to the extent of which it has worked is kind of try and understand what are the business opportunities? Where is your product gonna have the best market fit to go international? But with a combination of how much effort is it gonna take me to go international? I take a very concrete example. When I worked at Vestir Collective, Korea was one of the markets we really, really wanted to go after because for some of you who might be interested in fashion, if you make it in Korea as a fashion company, you basically make it everywhere in Asia because Korea is kind of pushing the trend of fashion there. This is where it's the most forward. But Korea is very hard. It's very hard because the very simple stuff, the language, even like the characters of the language are different, so it means completely changing the website infrastructure, the website navigation. It's not just pure translation. And actually someone yesterday told me, oh, I think the biggest mistake founders make when they go international is thinking international equal translation. This would be way too simple. It's not just about translation. It's about adapting your product to the local environment, the local way people navigate the internet in this case for Vestir Collective, but also obviously the local culture, the local consumer habits. And turns out, secondhand in Korea, three, four, five years ago, was still very nascent and still not well regarded. Still a little bit like, am I really gonna wear this secondhand bag? So it would have required us a lot of effort to go there, even though it was so important for us. So what we did is we built this task force internally, bringing people from basically all the dimensions of the company, product people, tech people, local people who know the culture and the market very well, marketing people, and kind of trying to assess beyond the numbers of, oh, Korea is that big for fashion. It's that important from an inspiration perspective towards the rest of the region. How much effort is it gonna take? And we kind of built this simple matrix in like, okay, what are the countries where I'm gonna have the most potential but also the most effort to win? And who are the countries that are maybe not on the extreme of this graph? But in the middle, with potential enough to have learnings, like, is my product gonna really fit in a new market? But maybe not as risky a Korea in this example so that I can start to have quick learnings and quick feedback from market in international expansion. And maybe once I get a little bit more confident looking at other markets, I'll come back to my Korea example. So in the case of Easter Collective, that's exactly what we did. We reopened, relaunched in markets like the US before going after Korea. And I'll totally be more about what we did there to make it successful. And then from this experience, we were much more ready from a tech perspective because we built the infrastructure to localize and make the product much more agile and flexible. And we were much more ready as an organization because we already had this experience of going to an international market that is as difficult as going to the US, but also simply from just all the piece of the company putting together and working together towards a challenge so that they are ready for the next challenge. So that would be probably the way I would encourage you to think about what market you can go in. One part I'm very excited about, I think we often think about, oh, what are the big opportunities to go abroad? Let's go to the US because it's the biggest market. Let's go to Asia. We are very, very fortunate to live in Europe where there are also 300 million-plus people. And this is something that I've seen all the French tech companies thinking more and more is, before thinking about the word, shouldn't we think first about Europe? So this is where first I'm gonna share a bit about in Europe why France is a great place for you to expand, but also why we think Europe has great opportunity and why as a French administration we want to support this movement towards Europe. So first, France. I mean, France is quite a big market, so I think a lot of companies, and I'm seeing this more and more with European companies coming to France, are thinking nowadays, okay, how can I expand to this market? We've tried to make it as easy as possible for everyone with the launch of, for example, a French tech visa for people to come and launch and join tech startups in France to make it easy for talents to come and be on the ground. We've tried to make all the legislation around startups much easier when it comes to stock option taxation, when it comes to facilitating the way of doing business with the administration. So basically making sure that as a French entrepreneur setting a business in France, our foreign company wanted to open an office of subsidiary in France. We can ease everything that you would have to think of so that we make your life easier and you can focus on the stuff I was talking before, that it's much more difficult to crack, how to get the right product to the right customer at the right time. Europe is a great opportunity because first, going to the US is not that easy. It's very expensive because there's a lot of competition. There are companies who raise much more monies than European companies usually that are spending this money on marketing avenues and say to get your product well known in the US is not going to be very cheap. Whereas Europe, you have all those customers, potential customers that are probably also a bit closer from us when it comes to culture and when it comes to product usability. And so the idea that was launched by President Emmanuel Macron now two years ago was to say, why don't we unite as a tech nations, European tech nation globally and think together what can we do to create a movement that will help our scale up, scale up in Europe first. How can we address this European market better? And a few themes came out of those discussion. Fund raising was a big one. How do we make sure that we have the financing capabilities so that the scale up in Europe can finance themselves without always depending on American or Asian funds coming to Europe to help them scale? So there was a big fund of fund launched earlier in the year with 4 billion euro and we raised 10 billion euros to fund those companies so that we can have the capability to move faster in Europe altogether. So there's a lot of work done at European level on talent. How do we build a common talent desk so that when we attract the people we need in our companies and when we have to move them from France to Germany, from Germany to Spain or from Germany to Finland, we have very simple procedures so that we can really adapt and go after all those markets and really build those through European companies. So there's a lot of effort put at local and European level to make this possible and I think it's an amazing opportunity because only together we will create those scale ups and there's so much to do. Going back to what are kind of the steps to expand internationally, so we talked about setting the right team, we talked about choosing the right country. I think one thing I've seen in my last previous life, not as part of the government but more in my entrepreneurial life is that oftentimes we tend to be a bit impatient when it comes to go international so we kind of spend months building this perfect website for Spain customers and it's adapted to the local market, it's in the right language, we have all the infrastructure and we launch it and then we don't really have orders for a while and we think, oh, Spain is not for us. No, I do think that as much as it was hard for us to build our own companies in our local markets, it's not necessarily easier to go after a new market and so in the step to expand what I've seen a lot in my previous life is try and look at how can we build some kind of different steps so that we can try and test a lot of the different aspects of our product. Do we get those first customers? What do we learn from them? Do we need to adapt further our product because it's not only about translation? How do we make sure that, for example, when you go to the US with a French fashion website, you show US brands to the customers? So it's, yeah, the website is gonna be in English but if you're gonna show only French brands, this is not really gonna work so how do you understand what people like? What are the main differences? How do you make sure that the products that your customers are looking for are here and you have a local assortment for your customer in the case of Vista Collective or at least, these are all the steps that we had to really think about carefully because otherwise we kind of went at it with very global picture and not really taking the time to understand those local differences. I'll give you a very concrete example. So when I worked at this French website, most of the American brands, maybe you know them, Coach or Mulberry or this type of brands, we actually thought in French it was not very cool. So what we did is we rejected the products when customers were trying to sell them or if we accepted it, we kind of hide it in like the very, very bottom of the site. Guess what? When you look at Google, what are the most searched fashion brands in the US? Turns out it's Coach, Mulberry and all those guys. So obviously when we launched, relaunched in the US and we didn't even show one single product of those brands to our customers, it didn't turn very well. So it was very important for us to take the time to understand what are the local market specificities. And it means rebuilding a lot because in this case, it means having different boosting algorithm in France, in US, in Japan, in all the different markets we're in, which was not really the way the website was structured before. And that's why the preparation and the earlier you think about this preparation the easier it's gonna be because all those little things will make a difference in the performance. In terms of how you can know those little things, so you can learn by experience, that's probably what I did for most of my career, but you can also take advantage of the systems that are in place in all those countries and that's what I'm discovering now I'm part of the government. So let's say for example, for France, we have amazing teams called Business France or actually our French tech local communities who are helping entrepreneurs navigate everywhere they wanna go and launch a business. You have a community of entrepreneurs, you have a community of business professionals who are gonna be here to first help you understand the market, create those connections, help you attract the first talents because without local people it's pretty hard to crack a market. And this is the time you need to invest in my opinion to really make sure you know what's going on in this market. You're connected to the right people and you have all what you need on your side to make it a success. Because if you just go on your own with your own perception of what the market looks like, oftentimes this perception is very wrong. Maybe it's built by what you saw as a tourist which is not necessarily what it is as a business professional. Maybe it's built about what you heard competitors or friends or other entrepreneurs or investors say about the market. But this little example I shared about coach and Mulberry, no one could ever told me that even American people could not tell me because they would not think of this difference. So I think you need to really take the time to find the right partners, find the right communities that are gonna give you the direct access to those insights. How do you find the right contacts? So if you wanna come to France, you know where to find us. But if you don't wanna come to France and wanna expand to other markets, I think there's a lot more networks we see developing. I talked about the French tech communities all around the world for our communities. But we also obviously see at events like that how people kind of catch up and meet and discuss together and exchange ideas. So yesterday on the French tech booths there were entrepreneurs from Germany, from Spain, all sharing their experiences on what they've seen in Europe at the moment, how they can help each other. And the truth is that most of the time people love to help and I've always encouraged everyone to just reach out and link them to people that they find can be interesting, can be helpful. When I did international expansion I think I probably contacted all the VP of international I could think of in scale ups all around Europe. I wouldn't say 100% of them answered but probably a good 30, 40%. And the amount of insights I got from those contacts was so helpful because they've been through these thinking, they've been through the mistakes, they've been through the successes and they love to share. I think we're very lucky that we're an ecosystem where everyone loves working together, sharing knowledge and we just need to take more and more advantage of it. So to finish on the expansion strategy I think I talked about it. The first thing you can think of is how you go directly international yourself, building the right team, going with the right product, localize your product. I really want to insist because I think it's so important in this context. You can also go abroad looking at acquiring competitors and we're not doing this enough in Europe but there are so many opportunities to consolidate, work together, find the right partners in our respective markets. And I really, really hope that in this context which might be more difficult there's actually a lot of opportunities and we can all take advantage of it. I'm happy to answer questions. After this talk I think there's kind of a Q&A setup in another room over there and if anyone wants to discuss and talk more and share your experience don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you.


Hi everybody, Joe for Jasby's casebreaks.com coming at you with 2022 Panini Certified Football. Eight box pick your team number nine, the first half of this case. All card ship, a lot of great inserts and relics and autographs and memorabilia and all that lovely stuff. Big thanks to this group who made it happen. I appreciate it. On a choo-choos day, the 25th, pick your team nine. Hopefully we'll have some choo-choos in here. Dominic ended up with last spot mojo at the Panthers before we pulled the remaining team to that team random. If you got a little rooftop next to your name like Alan, that means you won that spot in that filler. All right, so thanks everybody there. Let's pop open this case. It's sort of an awkward size here, there. All right, so we've got eight boxes on the right side, eight boxes on the left side. So we'll use this die right here. One, two, three for the left side, four, five, six for the right side. Gonna get a good roll in this narrow space here. One, so we'll go left side right here. This side we'll save for a break 10. Little squiggly's there so we know if they're from the same case. In fact, that's just down to a couple teams. This could be our very next break right after this. Side of inventory here. All right, good luck everybody. So here's what we're looking for. Two autographs, two memorabilia cards per box. On average, we've got Jerry Rice and Garrett Wilson on the cover here. Are they, what are they implying? Is that, are they suggesting? And they believe that Gary Wilson could be a Jerry Rice caliber? That would be hashtag good for the hop. And now that the dust has settled on week seven, we've got the Jets on a four game winning streak. They're five and two, they're right behind the bills. Five and one. They're at Moss Breeze Hall. But they picked up James Robinson. How do we like that move? Adam Cupperman, do we like that move? If he's still in the chat, he's a Jets guy. Dolphins are four and three. They got a win behind two. Patriots fall into three and four against the Bears. Ravens and Bengals are both four and three. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are both two and five. Titans on a four game winning streak. We had a buy last week, right? They're still, they're still, they're at four and two. Colts are three, three and one, making a big change at QB. Sam Allinger, dust off your Sam Allinger. Allinger, Allinger.  Because they're playing on goal and we're the rest of the way. There's Hunter Renfro to three, 49. Unless he's just completely not effective then maybe they'll go back to Matt Ryan. There's Keontae Ingram for the Cardinals. That'll be for Allen. The Hunter Renfro will go to the Raiders. That'll be for Jeffrey. And our first hit is a Garrett Wilson Relic. 199 out of 349. New Generation Relic for the Jets. That goes to Jared who won the Jets in the filler. I upload that filler video. Yes, I did, okay. There's Nick Bonito, 94 out of 99. An all-cardship of course. And there's John Mechie, the third. Freshman Fabric, two-color patch and autograph. 180 out of 199. What I remember about Certified is a lot of times even some higher numbered cards give you some decent color, which is always cool. That'll be for the Texans. That's gonna go to Alex. There's Khalil Shakir to 275. We've got a Skymore 2022 card here. Reach for the Sky George Kittle to 275.  Going to the Jags. That'll be for Riley at the Jaguars. So I guess James Robinson for the Jaguars is going to New York. Hopefully Travis Etienne's stock goes up. That's what we're hoping. That would be a hashtag good for the hobby. Here's Devonte Wyatt, 31 out of 50. Rookie autograph for Green Bay, Nick with the Packers. Packers have to figure some things out too. All right, box one in the books. Box two. The AFC West. Did we get to the AFC South? I think we did. AFC West Chiefs, five and two. I think they'll be coming out of a buy, right? Week eight. Chargers are four and three. And my Raiders winning out of the buy. They beat the Texans. They are two and four. Broncos are two and five. My Raiders can go on a little run. They kind of have a softish schedule with the Texans. They beat them. And then they got the Saints. They're at Saints, at Jags. So a tough little back to back roadie there. But when they come back home to host the Colts at Denver, they can get another dub there. That would be great. At Seattle, another back to back roadie. So they're a little bit of a challenge there. Some softer teams, but the challenge of going on the road is definitely there. So if they do all right there, that could set up a really interesting early December matchup with this guy here, Justin Herbert. It's Mark Andrews to 199. We've got Treson Ebbner to 199.  And then we got a rookie roll call. Roll call, eight out of 25. Johan Dotson, that's for Diego with the Commanders. And I'll do a little autograph and relic recap at the end of this video. It's been a slightly longer video. We got a 14 out of 99, a seal of approval, David Montgomery for the Bears. That'll be for Nestor and a Carson Strong. Freshman fabric, jersey and autograph to 299, 212 out of 299 for the Fly Eagles Fly. That will be for Brandon. Got randomized the Eagles in the filler. There's Desmond Ritter to 325. I don't know if we'll see him in action. Brody with the Falcons. I guess Mariota's been doing pretty well. There's Malik Willis. Will we see him start some games? 247 out of 399, new generation jersey for Daniel and the Titans, not the Titans in the filler. We got CD Lamb to 149 for Dallas. That'll be for, that'll be for Emma and Cowboys. And there's Desmond Ritter for the ATL, new generation jersey, 167 out of 1 at 99. Thought it was gonna be an autograph for a second. Brody with the Falcons. The Dirty Burgs, there you go. That's to 199. And we got a Michael Pittman Jr. to 275 Colts. Super cup for the Rams of course. All right, another box down, another one to go. Raiders made a deal too. They traded Hankins, the defensive tackle to the Cowboys. Not even Hankins for some draft picks. Nothing too crazy. Not sure how active they'll be. Eagles are 6-0. Giants are 6-1, can you believe that? Four game winning streak. Giants are looking pretty good. Cowboys are five and two. They got Prescott back, Manders three and four. Minnesota on top of that, NFC North. Five and one on a four game winning streak. Packers on the three game losing streak. And going opposite directions. Bears with a win, three and four lines with another loss. Four in a row for them, they're one and five. NFC South looking a little weak here. Buccaneers and Falcons are tied for first with three and four records. Panthers are two and five, Saints are two and five. I'm gonna check out the NFC West in the next box here. This one, we got Najee Harris to 2.75. Nick Chubb to 75. We got a lion coming up, who's that gonna be? We got Aiden Hutchinson. Nice, three color patch and autographed 164 out of 199. A lot of work for the lion, still got a lot of work to do but they're starting to add some individual pieces. Detroit, Jared O'Malley, got one lion in that filler. A likely story from this guy here at 3.25. And we got Tyquan Thornton, 41 out of 349. Anyone in the New England area? Curious about what the sports talk radio buzz is today after last night's game. Is there quarterback controversy? Maybe not, maybe there is. Tyquan Thornton will go to Mark in the Patriots. He's from that area, maybe when he checks in, he'll let us know. We got Kevin Harris to 149. There's Mac Jones to 199. Metchie to 199. Metchie for the Texan, that'll be for Alex. Mac Jones Patriot, that'll be for Mark as well as the Kevin Harris. And we got Brian Robinson, 31 out of 2.99. Great comeback for him this season. That's for Diego and the Commanders. We've got Alexander Madison, mirror signature, it's 17 out of 125. That'll be for the Vikings, it's gonna go to Jared. Got Matt Ryan, GK, Gabriel Davis, and a kid reporter card. All right, next box. Second half in the store right now, jaspyscasebreaks.com, when we started this break about 15 minutes ago, there were two teams left. Now there's only one team left. The Steelers, if you're feeling spicy, grab the Steelers, 249.99, you can get them straight up. Or maybe everyone's waiting to see what happens in this half before they get the Steelers in the second half, and we'll find out. The last division that we need to check in on is the NFC West. Also, Seahawks are four and three, ladies and gentlemen, and they've put up more points than anyone in the NFC West. In most divisions, I think, they have 183 points just at a glance, that might be second in the league. Ravens have 181 points, Chiefs have scored 223 points. It's crazy. Yeah, Alex Donnelly's like Russell, who? Go Hawks, four and three on top of the NFC West. If someone told me that after seven weeks and a nice Malik Will is 26 out of 99 three-color patch and autograph, tried to trade couldn't trade Mojo for Daniel, there you go, freshman fabric. That's who you're looking for, the RPA quarterback. There you go, Daniel. But yeah, if you told me that by after week seven that the Seahawks will be four and three and on top of the division, I would've said you were, you're out of your mind. Speaking of Seahawks, there he is, 22 out of 25 mirror signatures, Jordan Brooks. That'll be for Walter in Seattle. I would've said you're crazy, I'll be honest with you. But there they are. There's Alante Taylor for the Saints. Powell Pitts for the Falcons. Yeah, the Rams are three in three. And I think they won, but I mean, they just have not looked very convincing in their wins and their losses have not been very good. Here's Trey McBride, 102 out of 249. Allen of Arizona. So they're still trying to figure things out in LA. Ham Acres isn't happy. He's on his way out. Make it, I don't know where he's gonna go trade-wise, but we'll see. Here is Brady Quinn Autograph. Yeah, Brady Quinn, 27 out of 30. Some nice penmanship there. Does some color commentary on some college football games. I think you hear him on sports radio as well. This is Brown's edition, Brody with the Browns. Cleveland, this is for you. Rock Sports Radio. This is where you'll find them. Here's a Tom Brady, it's a slightly thicker card stock here. Scoring machines insert. I don't know how common those are, but that'll go to the Buccaneers. That'll be for Dwayne. And we got another strong relic here, 247 out of 399. Carson's strong. Eagles, it'll be for Brandon. Troy Anderson to 149. Kid reporter cards. All right, we are halfway through the break. Got about another 15, 20 minutes to go. Good luck. So maybe after week eight, we'll be kind of, well, the 17 games, it's kind of hard to split the season cleanly in half, but after week eight, we're pretty much at the halfway point of the season. It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. I mean, I guess one big storyline is, can the Eagles, how far can they go? Undefeated wise. They're facing Pittsburgh this week. Steelers in Philly. And that's gotta be a win, right? They're at Houston. That's gotta be a win. Home to the commanders. That's gotta be a win. At Colts, I don't know, we'll have to see who's quarterbacking them. Maybe Sam Elger is like the second coming of Patryma Holmes or something like that. That's the case. That might be a challenge. Another Eagle, another Carson Strong, this time with his autograph. 51 out of 99. Bran and Craddock with the Eagles, one of them in the filler. There's Eric right here to 399. Gilo, what's going on? Then we'll see. I mean, I suppose that Green Bay matchup in late, there's a number right there, 10 out of 50. That Green Bay matchup in late November could be interesting if the Packers have figured something out. And the Eagles host Tennessee after that. At Giants, that could be a fun matchup too. At Chicago. At Dallas. Home to the Saints, home to the Giants to close things out. 88 out of 99.  Maybe a little quarterback controversy. Brody, what's going on? How are ya? So, we'll see. It's very obviously stating the obvious, but it's very difficult, especially with 17 games to go undefeated.  I feel like is what's gonna be the thing. There's Jameson Williams to 249. He might be on his way back in the next week or two. I could change the, I could change people's fantasy teams right here. I thought I'm stashed away in one of my teams or possibly Lions Fortunes. It's George Pickens, new generation rally. 11 out of 3, 99. Oh, that Tom Brady in that last box was a case hit. Nice. And looked a little different. That's for the Steelers, that'll be for Riley. It was on a heavier card stock. Top load that. The redemption, there's Nick Bonito for the Broncos. I'll go to Denver. The redemption is gonna be Traylon Burks, rookie roll call signature's Mirror Red. Traylon Burks is a Titan. Yes, confirmed, Daniel with Tennessee. All right, a few more boxes to go. Yeah, Gilo's wondering, has anyone heard any juicy NFL trade rumors? One of my favorite websites from the guys that brought you mlbtraderumors.com. There's profootballrumors.com. Let's see what rumors are out there. Ravens assigned to Sean Jackson. Not sure how old that news is or knew that is. Panthers trade, we saw that. Elijah Moore asking Jets for a trade. Jaguars trading James Robinson to the Jets. I'm not sure if there's really any other juicy tidbits here. But on October 21st, now still four days ago. So I don't know if there's anything really up to date. I'm gonna get some of the headlines here. Nathaniel Hackett not planning to concede play calling duties. I've gotta figure that out. Falcons cut Marlon Davidson. Saints placing Bradley Roby on IR. I'm sure there's really a lot of sealers unlikely to trade Chase Claypool. Now the deadline's next week. Teens apparently continue to look into the big bodied receiver per Jason Alakafora of the post, but Claypool should not be expected to move says Mark Caboldi of the Athletic. I feel like there's teams that could use a Chase Claypool. Oh, there's Amir White, freshman fabric. 155 out of 249. Hasn't really figured into too much of the Raiders action just cause Josh Jacobs isn't playing incredibly well, but as the season goes on, maybe we'll see, we'll see him kind of give Jacobs a rest here and there. This will go to Jeffrey and the Raiders. And if Amir White can get into a good groove, whoo, that Raiders rushing attack just might save their season. Once they started running the ball a lot more, this definitely, definitely balance things out for them. It's been a lot more successful. There's Darnell Mooney to 199. Bears and Arnold Obikete to 325 for the Falcons and reach for the sky. 292 out of 349, Skye Moore. That's for Kansas City, Jared O'Malley, picking up the Chiefs straight up. There's Lamar Jackson, certified stars to 249. Yeah, what's going on? Odell Beckham, Jr. Who's gonna take him? There's Deandre Swift to 75. Dark Horse's insert to 149 on Monroe St. Brown. Just Cam Taylor Britt to 275. Poor Breece Hall, feel bad for him. And then Mike All-Stott coming up. Is that an autograph? It is. Mirror signature, 16 out of 35. Mike All-Stott. That'll be for Dwayne. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers won that spot in that filler. Yeah, with Odell Beckham, Jr. I know the Rams are trying to get after him, but I don't know if they, they've got some cap issues that may not, may not really work for them. Damien Pierce, he's having a great season. 89 out of 199. Texans, it'll be for Alex. Gilo's saying Chiefs might go defense. Not sure how active my Raiders are gonna be in the trade window. Not sure really where they could, Antonio Gibson, 340. I suppose they could add to, they could keep adding to the defense, just like Gilo's Chiefs. Raiders could use, they got some guys banged up a little bit. They could use maybe some, some more secondary help, I suppose. Oh, you know what? I'm gonna start getting used to this Tuesday schedule here, ladies and gentlemen.  Well, NBA basketball got Pelicans at Mavs. I think Brandon Ingram is out. I think, I think Zion's out too. I think we're just minor injuries, but I think it's one of those, if it was the playoffs, they could play kind of injuries. I think this stage of the season, they're just being a little safe. You know, Brian Burns, that could be a name. Chris, what's going on? How are you? So after dealing Robbie Anderson, Christian McCaffrey, Chris according to profootballtraderumors.com, the Panthers seem unwilling to strip away pieces from their homegrown young core. Brian Burns' name is headlined this group, but teams have discussed the fourth year defensive end with the Panthers. They've still discussed the fourth year defensive end with the Panthers. The Panthers look to have made it known. They do not want to deal Burns, and Adam Scheffer of ESPN.com noting, the team turned down an offer of two first round picks for the Pro Bowl pass rusher. Wow. Burns would make for a lower profile addition to the exclusive club of defenders, dealt for two first round picks in recent years, Khalil McHill and Ramsey Jamal Adams. A lot of teams could use a Brian Burns, that's for sure. There's Jalen Hurts, a 349. He's looking good. The Eagles are looking good. There's Wondale Robinson, piece of the game. 75 out of 99, piece of his jersey going to Dwayne and the New York football Giants. Najee Harris, 249, Javante Williams, 99. Rashad White, Matthew Stafford, and we got Cornelius Bennett. Mirror signature is 19 out of 50. It'll be for Dwayne and the New York football Giants. Steve Birch saying, Zion is a great player, but I don't think we'll ever see his full potential. I'll always be hurt in one way or the other. Yeah, that might be the thing that nags him throughout the year, although this injury is not supposed to keep him out for more than a game. At least that's what they're saying now. There's Debo to 149. Nick, what breaks are coming up? If you click that link that nightbot just dropped, they'll take it to the schedule. It'll let you know what breaks are coming up, what breaks we've done, what breaks we're doing, and what breaks are coming up. If there's stuff sold out on the site and not on the schedule, I just need to go through orders and then add stuff to the schedule, but that's where you can see what we're doing. There's Jalen Tolbert to 99, piece of his jersey for Emma and the Cowboys. Dak Prescott will go to Emma as well. Redemption, Jalani Woods. Pelicans are already up 57-47 on Dallas. No Zion, no branding room, no problem. At least for the first half, four minutes left in the second quarter. The redemption is gonna be James Cook. Freshman fabric mirror signatures red. James Cook. No, not the British explorer, James Cook. I know him. The running back James Cook who is on the bills. And if you're wondering, yes, he is the younger brother of fellow running back, Dalvin Cook. That's right, Alex Bills. You got it too. That is for Nick Galvin who won the bills in the filler. Buffalo! According to Wikipedia, James Cook's middle name, Dalvin. So what's Dalvin Cook's middle name, James? It is. So a little trivia. Dalvin Cook's middle name is James. His brother's middle name, James Cook's middle name, Dalvin. That's according to Wikipedia, unless someone's been goofing on those pages. There you go. Yeah, you know what? Someone else mentioned that a week or two ago that someone had correlated Philly's World Series victories with economic downturns. I think they pointed to, I think they pointed to, was it the 08 housing crisis maybe? And then maybe some other year, maybe something in the early 90s. It's happened over time, even in their Philadelphia A's championship years. That's kind of funny, actually. I wonder if it's more, the Philly's not causing an economic downturn, but just economic downturns causing the Philly's to move into the other way around. Maybe they just follow the markets. There's David Bell to 99. And Bailey Zappie to 399. Quarterback controversy out there for the pages. Taekwon Thornton to 399. Mark with the Pats. But I think they've, I think they've tried to, I think they've correlated like what number one songs are with markets as well. What's my middle name? Nice try, Gilo, identity thief. There's Tyler Beatty, 50 out of 50. Their seal of approval, two out of 50, Givante Williams. Next thing, Gilo's going to be like, eh, and your social security number and your mother's maiden name. Nice try, Gilo. I wasn't born yesterday, man. We got George Pickens, Jersey and autograph, nice. 206 out of 349. That will be for the Steelers. Riley won the Steelers in that filler. And if they do trade Chase Claypool, a lot more targets for Pickens. Trayvon Walker to 275. And Brian Robinson, Jr. 146 out of 349, piece of this jersey. There's Deandre Hopkins to 349. And that, my friends, is your break. Eight box, pick your team nine in the books. I'm Joe for jaskyscasebreaks.com. Thanks for watching. Thanks for breaking with us. Let's do a quick little recap here. How is break 10 doing? No, still Steelers left. Only saw that George Pickens. Maybe Kenny Pickett on the other half. Got some Brady Quinn mixed in there as well. Nice Malik Willis. Pretty solid break. Ladies and gentlemen, Aidan Hutchinson, Dotson, John Mechie, Garrett Wilson.  I'm Joe. See you next time for the next one. Bye-bye.


Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Oracle Open World 2016. Brought to you by Oracle. Now, here's your host, John Furrier and Peter Burris. Hey, welcome back everyone. Day two of wall-to-wall coverage live broadcast on the internet. This is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE. It's our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-CEO of SiliconANGLE Media. I'm joined with Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE Media as well as the general manager of Wikibon Research. Peter, we did 12 interviews yesterday. I got a lineup today and we've got a great range of content, great editorial commentary, great guests from Oracle. Exactly asking the tough questions. We also have some great sponsored spots from slots for our supporters, but really it's about putting out that content. I think yesterday we're starting to see, and we're gonna see some guests today around philanthropy. Oracle's doing a lot of work in philanthropy and we're gonna get some great women in tech content. Something that Oracle has a great presence in, but the big story day two is Thomas Kurian was on stage. He was not on stage for Sunday nights. Larry Ellison keynote or with, I'm sorry, with Intel. And so he had a personal issue, had to mail in the video with speculation on whether he would be here. But Kurian is the guy. He's the product guy. He's running the engineering, running the product development. So we expected to hear huge announcements today. Kind of not much. I mean, as expected, infrastructure as a service. We heard about containers which was pre-announced by Larry, basically announces everything. But not a lot of big game changing news, but a lot of the blocking and tackling, a lot of the ground game for Oracle's march to the cloud. Really emphasizing on the speed of standing up a data center with the browser and APIs. Anyone can stand up to all the capabilities of Oracle with standing up a virtual data center with all the isolation at the network level, giving that customer choice, but bridge to the future. So again, this was expected, but this is a key part of Oracle's strategy. They need for the lockdown the infrastructure to make pass work well and SAS, they got to make it work well. So not a lot of surprises as expected infrastructure as a service. Well, let's be honest about what Oracle's biggest threat is with the biggest threat to Oracle. They've got this enormous presence in the applications business. As we talked about yesterday, the apps business is sticky. When companies embed their applications or embed an application of their business, they reconfigure the entire organization around. It's hard to rip that out. They are clearly number one and have been for a long time in the database marketplace. And it's not hard to pop a database out or it's not hard, it is hard to pop a database out. It's very sticky. It's very, very sticky. So hardware, it's getting a little bit easier, but the possibility that the infrastructure starts to become more public in nature starts to move up into the database space and Oracle clearly wants to ensure that it doesn't encounter longer term problems with the bottom eroded. So it needs to sustain that presence in infrastructure, continue to give people an option should they want to tie infrastructure directly or continue to tie infrastructure directly to the database and the application. And we press Juan Luisa yesterday, Senior Vice President on the development side, certainly a database guru who laid out his vision of how he sees the key elements of data center. And he said it simply, our number one priority at Oracle is to move workloads from on-prem to the cloud, seamlessly back and forth to our cloud. So we'll say cloud for now, but that's ultimately what the customers want. They want to be able to move to the cloud, ultimately have all the benefits of the operating model and the agility, but moving it back and forth again to Oracle, it's the Oracle Cloud. So on Oracle, on Oracle, job one is to make it really fricking awesome, fast, low cost on the infrastructure side, put pressure on the Amazon choice, but yet keep that there. So that's clear. I want to ask you- Well, let me pick up on that. Maybe this is what you're going to ask me, but many years ago, I've had a lot of experiences working with CIOs over the years, and many years ago I was in a staff meeting of a CIO who she was looking out across her team. And she had a way of starting the conversation with every single one of her direct reports, head of development, head of security, head of infrastructure. And she routinely would start the question just to reinforce what she wanted folks to focus on. And every staff meeting she had, she started the conversation with the head of infrastructure with. So infrastructure's doing no harm this week. And in many respects, that's becoming the message of Oracle. Infrastructure's going to do no harm.  We want to make sure that infrastructure is not a huge part of the conversation so you can stay focused on the upper levels. You know, that's a great point. You know, some people call it hardening the infrastructure. Paul Moritz in 2010 at VMworld talked about this hard and top, I mean, he talked about Intel processors and saying, hey, you know, Intel has a hard and top, but no one looks under the chip. It's totally hardened. It's proprietary code that makes stuff go fast. So I think Oracle has that same kind of mojo going on with the engineered systems and you're seeing all that stuff kind of trying to harden the top so that the infrastructure doesn't do any damage. And that brings up the point though about what I'm seeing. And Oracle, and we'll get your commentary on this in your take. I mean, look at the industry over the years. Competitive strategy is protect and fortify your core crown jewel. It's been the database. The database powers the application. So the application is certainly a lot of revenue, but the database has been the sacred cow for Oracle. And you've been seeing it, and although you haven't been overt about it, protecting the database, keeping it in the swim lane, keeping it here, letting things develop on the side, but ultimately it was all about the database. This show is interesting. You start to see that swim lane expand. You start to see Oracle recognize the fact that, hey, it's okay to be the system of record. And actually it's actually quite sticky to be the systems of record in a high performance database environment, but yet yielding territory or turf to other databases. And that's interesting because that takes the monolithic siloed mentality off the table. Question is, do you see it that way? And if so, does Oracle have to adjust its competitive strategy? So here's, you know, John, I think, first off, most importantly, you're absolutely right, Oracle, the product that is named Oracle is the Oracle RDBMS. That when people 20 years ago talked about Oracle, that's what they were talking about. Oracle has been a database company. It's its roots. It's some of the great conversations we had yesterday. We're with the database people. I don't think that's going to change. I think that they're trying to extend it out. One of the ways that they're looking at doing that is they're recognizing that as we look for the next couple of years, this increasingly it's going to be, and we talked about this a lot yesterday, how does not only the data in the Oracle Database Manager become increasingly relevant to other applications and other use cases in the business, but also how do the skills associated with that database manager become more relevant and more useful to the business as new types of data, new types of applications, and new types of business models start to become even more relevant to the industry. So I think what Oracle's- Like data value. Like data value, the value of data, how development, when we talked yesterday about maybe it was after one of the conversations about we're now entering into this world of big data and we still don't know what I call the body plans for business models are. We're in this notion where we don't know if it's going to look like a fish or it's going to look like a mollusk or it's going to look like something else. We know that it's not going to look like what the RDBMS world- It's kind of like what your spirit animal in the cloud. I mean, we don't know yet. We don't know yet. So Oracle has to be flexible as their customers have to be flexible and not presume that it's going to look exactly like it did 10 years ago. This game has not even started. There you go. And I think that's the key thing, John. I think that they're finally acknowledging that the new world is not going to look exactly like the old world. They have to be flexible. They have to facilitate their customers to be flexible so that they can rearrange things in response to new developments and innovation in the industry. You know, I was talking to some of the people at Oracle yesterday at the Accenture event, some Accenture folks. And what's coming down to is the industry's kind of spinning towards what we call the tech athlete, the smart people. So what's interesting is Oracle has always kind of kept their smartest brains behind the firewall. It's always been kind of competitive advantage to always serve customers and all that lock in and competitive advantage, drive revenue. They're highly profitable. But now you're starting to see the battle between like Amazon web services and Oracle. A couple of observations from my standpoint. One, they're putting their best technical people out front. Okay, clearly talent matters, organic growth matters. Certainly they have many things always going on. Amazon always puts their technical people out. So observation. Companies are putting their best technical people out there on the front lines. This is, we're going to compete on our people. One, two, the announcement volume, velocity here at Oracle Open World probably is the most I've seen of all Oracle Open Worlds in seven years. Very similar to AWS re-invent. There's so many announcements that are coming at re-invent this year. I think it's going to be more than last year, but even last year, it was raining. It was a tornado of announcements. It's hard to cover. In the tech press, talking to some of the folks yesterday, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNBC guys, this looks like their heads are exploding because there's just so much to cover. So all the stuff's coming at the customer. And to me, that's an observation that you say, okay, what does it mean? Well, so let's talk about two great points, John. So let's talk about the first one. One of the, on those tube yesterday, we talked, somebody said, you know, you mentioned who is, someone at Oracle saying, who is the industry's best CTO? Larry Ellison. Okay, Larry Ellison's 70 years old. Larry Ellison is not going to be the CTO of Oracle forever. So number one, we're starting to see some of that under, some of that talent start to emerge and start to become more out front because it has to. Number two, very importantly, John, talent creates and attracts talent. And I think the more that Oracle puts its talent out front in this period of significant disruption, that they are going to be more likely to attract other talent to Oracle. And that's what impacts the M&A game, too. You betcha. How to integrate in. And we talked about what's happening amongst VCs in the valley yesterday and who are going to be the entrepreneurs? We're going to hear about Oracle. You know, is Oracle going to be more aggressive at developing some of those new inventors and maybe not having them institutionally be part of Oracle? Reggie Bradford, yes, they talked specifically about that M&A. Again, talent brings talent, organically, inorganically. So putting those guys out in front is going to make Oracle a more attractive place as we go through this disruptive process. But I think the other thing that you mentioned is a really crucial point. At the end of the day, Oracle is introducing a lot of stuff. And as much as I also have ever seen, but it's coherent. I mean, one of the things that's really interesting about this conference or these sets of announcements is that they're covering everything, but it's one of the most coherent sets of announcements I've ever seen from Oracle. It's not a whole bunch of product piece parts. It's not fluffy. It's not fluffy and it's not piece parts. It's cloud. We are bringing all this stuff and we're driving into the cloud.  We're going to get really serious about this. And we have Oracle's keynote with Larry Ellison. You're going to watch it at three or one o'clock. And then we come back on theCUBE for our analysis at 3.30. We want a specific time. We're going to go into great detail on the keynote, but at one point we can't cover on here on the entrance. We got to go to our next segment. And this is where we can expand on this. You mentioned business models. The developer is critical in the business model and the data. Data and developer, those two things we will really, really unpack at 3.30. Of course, we'll analyze the heck out of Larry Ellison's keynote because, again, everyone's up front, call to arms. This is not a false alarm for Oracle. It is battle stations. And we're going to see which companies got the best technical, you know, people up front. Where's the meat on the bone from the products? Of course, we got it on theCUBE. 2017 is going to be a year where leadership matters in the tech industry. Peter Burris laying it down. I'm John Furrier. theCUBE all day covered day two of three days, 12 videos yesterday live broadcast. Again today, we'll keep pumping it out there. That's what we do. This is theCUBE. Day two, Oracle up on live in San Francisco. We'll be right back.