This is a session for building resilience in their societies after COVID-19. We are very pleased to introduce our respective speakers, Dr. Dieter Sebesbuck, the Deputy Director of the UNU AEHS, and Dr. Maikunishi, is a research fellow at UNUIS. I'm myself, Ken Tukushi. I'm also from UNUIS, their academic director as a program, academic program officer. I'm very delighted to give a chance to organize a session in their respectable wider annual conference here. This modality of the session is a little bit not really familiar. However, this new platform really enables us to bring everybody together in the same place. With that delay, I'd like to explain the organization of this session. We will have three talks from each speaker started by me on their resilience, sustainability, and monitoring urban health metabolism by me. Dr. Nishi Maiko is talked about by Dr. Sebesbuck. Dr. Dieter will talk about disaster prevention all related to COVID-19. Let me start my presentation first. We're going to welcome their question and answer after a talk of three people. You can put your question in Q1 chat box, or you can lively ask questions to us. Let me start. Okay. It starts with a very classical definition, not really classical. It is defined by Kaupoke 2010 in sustainability and resilience relationship. The sustainability is basically managing the resources in a way that guarantee welfare and promotes equity in the current and future generations. It's important to see the resilience. Important things is retain essentiality, the same function, structure, and feedbacks. We have something to retain. What do we want to retain? Let's say the society, actually society at large, not only human, but also including the planet. In order to have society, the society is supported by various things. Economy is a very typical one. Economy, good economy supports society. And economy is also supported with various issues. And I listed here three things here, landscape, biodiversity, disaster risk reduction. And these things are also supported with their natural and human resources, as well as their technology and social systems. And these economy, natural human resources, or the other system is subject to receive external forces, climate change, natural disaster, migration of people, other things, but we won't focus on COVID-19 here. And these kind of external forces is going to disturb their system. However, it is very important to retain their function of the society. We call resilience. Our prosperity, current prosperity, is based on the stable climate for the last 20 or 15,000 years. This stability created agriculture. And current prosperity of the people is really based on their assumption that the climate is stable. However, in also pro-theme, we observe our activity, human activity is really changing the earth system, or earth itself, our environment. The carbon dioxide concentration, population cell, GDP, water use consumption, what these things is really putting pressure to their earth system. Then now we are really seeing the boundary of the planet. COVID-19 is one of the greatest pressure external forces that we experienced in the last 100 years. And still we don't know when this pressure is going to finish. This is one of the issues that I'm proposing here, is to utilize wastewater to monitor urban metabolism for health risks. Wastewater includes various things, but the very important things is wastewater has feces. Feces is a very good indicator in order to reflect the condition of the health, as well as how people are getting infected with their pathogenic microorganisms or non-pathogenic microorganisms. This is an indicator of health on urban residents, or even animal as well. And our recent rapid development of molecular biological technique has really tremendously improved the detection and enumeration of pathogenic microorganisms. And we know that wastewater flows very quickly and it takes less than one day from the very upper stream of their city to the downstream. Usually the wastewater treatment plant is located in the very most downstream of their entire sewer network system. So it takes only one day or less. In the case of Tokyo, it takes almost half a day. And since the wastewater is mixed and combined, and finally it detects sampling in their wastewater treatment plant, and then privacy is secured. As we also know, privacy is very important for under this COVID-19. We have observed a lot of discrimination based on these infectious stages. Because of these things, the real infection may happen, you can see in the bottom figure. However, the reports from the hospital usually delay like two weeks, because it takes some time people visit the hospital. It takes some time. The hospital reports to the authority. And it takes some time. Authorities organize and gather and report to the public. It is getting better, it's getting better, but it takes several days to several weeks. However, in the detection of the wastewater, the detection of pathogenic wastewater, we really don't need to collect the data from hospital. We just need to take samples from water and then just send to lab. And in a few hours, we have answers from the machine. The technique that we use the PCL polymerized chain reaction that we are using for detecting our infection status of the people. Preparation for the preventing outbreak. As I explained, like wastewater detection, we need to have real-time data for the infectious risk. But at the same time, we need a very basic data for social information, economic information, in order to assess the vulnerability. By knowing this, we know the intonation, how to precaution behavior, or masks, or vaccination, etc. Then having this action, then we can prepare a hospital for Dr. Ness's vaccination. We can prepare the society for lockdown and lifestyle changes. And finally, the result will bring the rest number of patients, or zero number of patients, or no outbreak. So, I would like to propose that the monitoring people is or urban environment for health risk is very important. Okay, I'll stop my presentation here. Thank you. And I'd like to invite Dr. Maiko Nishi.  Hello, everyone. My name is Maiko Nishi, a research fellow of UNU Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability, IAS. Within UNU IAS, our program, Biodiversity and Society, has been engaged in policy-oriented research and capacity development on the issues of sustainable human-nature interactions. We have been also hosting the Secretariat of International Partnership for the Satoyama Initiative called EPC. This is a global platform to facilitate collaboration on the management of production landscape and seascapes, helping to meet the twin goals of conservation and development. Today, I'd like to share some thoughts about local communities and biodiversity in the COVID-19 societies based on our studies and experiences, particularly working with the BPC partners. The ongoing pandemic has demonstrated the cascading effects of complex human-nature interactions on human health and well-being. COVID-19 is said to be a zoonotic disease, or an emerging infectious disease of probable animal origin. So currently more than 70% of emerging diseases like Ebola, Zika, and almost all known pandemics have animal origin. So in this regard, Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, IPES, convened a workshop last year on the links between biodiversity and pandemics. The report from this workshop says pandemics originate in diverse microbes carried by animal reservoirs, but the emergence is caused by human activities like long-distance change, agriculture expansion, and intensification, and also wildlife trade and consumption. So these drivers bring wildlife, livestock, and people into closer contact and allow animal microbes to move into people, resulting in infections and sometimes outbreaks. Global pandemics are rare relative to small-scale outbreaks, but have been increasing under the exponential rise in consumption and trade, demographic pressure, and climate change. So human impacts on nature drive the emergence of diseases, but nature essentially support our life and well-being. So ecosystem services or nature's contributions to people support human well-being in many ways, like food, water, timber, regulating climate, and also providing cultural values, and all of them are underpinned by biodiversity. And millennium ecosystem assessment identify five major aspects of human well-being, including security, material needs, health, good social relations, and also freedom of choice and action. And among them, our human health, inclusive of physical, mental, and social well-being, is a central component of all these well-being constituents, because health is affected by not only ecosystem change, but also the changes to the other aspects of well-being, like security and good social relations. And importantly, as Constanza and others pointed out, ecosystem services can be provided by nature alone without human involvement, because people, community, and built empowerment help nature to have meaning and values to humans. So in this context, to ensure and enhance sustainable human nature interactions, we have been promoting the Stadium Initiative, and this is a global effort to realize societies in harmony with nature. And this initiative is developed based on the concept of sociological production landscape and seascapes called sepals. Sepals are defined as areas where production activities like agriculture and forestry contribute not only well-being of local communities, but also biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services. And in order to implement the concept in practice, the International Partnership for the Stadium Initiative, IFC, was launched during the 10th conference of the party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, CBD Cup 10, held in Japan in 2010. So this is a platform to globally promote networking and also collaboration in managing sepals, particularly for sustainable use of biodiversity. And having started with 51 founding member organizations, this partnership now consists of about 280 organizations, including national and local governments, NGOs, private sector, academia, and ingenious peoples and local communities who are dedicated to work together to foster synergies in the implementation of their activities. So in order to facilitate the sepals management, we have been promoting the landscape approaches which are multi-stakeholder collaborative processes to balance diverse needs in a given area. This approach provides a useful framework of space-based strategies attending to specific local conditions and also the knowledge of local actors. In particular, it takes a realistic view to reconcile competing demands and needs among different stakeholders. So this allows for minimizing trade-offs and maximizing synergies for more ethical and equitable decision-making. And this approach also entails iterative learning processes involving diverse stakeholders. So it also facilitates resource mobilization and capacity development and also helps to adapt to changes and deal with uncertainties. So serving as the secretariat of IPC, we have been collecting the case studies of sepals management from the member organizations. So far we have collected 245 case studies and among them agriculture and forest ecosystems are dominant, but we also have cases on inland water, grassland and coastal ecosystems. And to share an argument practical knowledge on the sepals management, we have been archiving these case studies in our website. And since 2015 we have been publishing an annual series of case study compilation on certain topics like transformative change and multiple values. And synthesize experiences lessons learned from the on-the-brand management activities and provide policy recommendation relevant to the international processes and also global goals. So we are still trying to learn more from the IPC case studies about how the local communities are coping with the pandemic impacts. But one case from the Philippines for instance suggests the community's capacity which has been strengthened through the sepals management has also helped to deal with the pandemic challenges. So here in the rural coastal community, Mangrove Restoration Project has developed since 2009. It is a multi-stakeholder effort by a locally-based farmers association, a local government unit and also the national department of environment and natural resources. And this effort has been building climate change resilience by supporting livelihoods through the provision of food and fibers from mangroves creating buffer zones minimizing the risk of flooding and also empowering the community. And after the COVID-19 outbreak it was reported that the pandemic impacts were felt minimum by local people. So here the health in mangroves continuously provided food and livelihood resources. And Oatsavings Program developed through this initiative allowed people to manage their financial resources within the community even with their travel. Also the high degree of cooperation has helped to adhere to the protocols and orders by the government to prevent disease spread. So the local community with high capacity of landscape and seascape management may better address new environmental and socio-economic challenges. But we can't really guarantee that these communities can continuously sustain such a capacity and also overcome emerging challenges because the climate change impacts may be amplified and also pandemic will occur more frequently if the current trends continue. So it should be important to keep monitoring and evaluating the community's capacity to reduce vulnerability and also strengthen the resilience. In this regard the indicators of resilience in sepals would be a useful tool to have local communities better prepared for the future challenges. And this is a set of 20 indicators developed in cooperation with some of the EPC members to capture multiple dimensions of landscape and seascapes and also help communities to assess the resilience capacity on their own and develop community-based strategies in a participatory manner. And one of the 20 indicators also capture our health dimension and this would help to build the resilience of society after Covid-19 particularly from the local level. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you Michael. I'm very happy now to invite Dr. Zeter Sibisbury for the third and final talk for this session. Now Flova, if you're with Zeter. Thank you very much. So welcome to everyone. I have a pleasure to talk today about Covid-19 and impacts and solutions in the context of disaster risk. And in fact we just today launched a new report which is called disaster risk in an interconnected world. This was launched today in the morning hours and reaching now a lot of media attention. We are very proud to have the opportunity to be here also today at the wider conference and share with you our thinking around compounding disaster risks. So what we did we looked back at 2020-2021 and selected 10 events including Covid-19 which are emblematic so to say for a certain type of disasters in that year. So as you see we selected different ones like the Amazon wildfires. 2021 has really large wildfire years a lot of wildfires going on. There was a heat wave in the Arctic. You might remember the byroad explosion the blast happened in August 2020. The flooding in Central Vietnam where just within seven weeks nine storms and cyclones hit the Vietnamese coast. Then the Chinese powder fish was declared extinct in 2020. That was a beautiful huge fish of seven meter length which is not with us anymore. It was older than the dinosaurs. We also had the Covid-19 pandemic. Cyclone Amphan which hit the border area between Bangladesh and India. There was a desert locust outbreak in which impacted 23 countries mainly in eastern Africa but also in the Arabian peninsula and behind. There was a mass beaching event in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and finally in February 2021 there was a huge cold week which impacted the US state access. So our idea was to look at these events because more and more events are happening. They are coming every day. You hear them, you read them in the media, you watch them on the television and even for people like us who are actually working in the field of disaster risk reduction is getting more and more challenging to keep space with all these changes and the next disaster. So you just catch up on one and the next day the next one is happening like we just had the flash floods in New York and then now there's an earthquake in Mexico and who knows what is happening tomorrow. So the idea was to select 10 events and look at them. How are they interconnected? What are underlying patterns and what we can learn for better solutions? So for this session I would like to highlight specifically the COVID-19 and how the pandemics actually interacted with almost all other disasters which happened in 2020-2021. So some of the disasters led to spiking numbers of COVID-19 incidents such as the Texas Cold Wave, the viral explosion and also Cyclone Amphan in Bangladesh and India. For example, for the Texas Cold Wave, there was a power cut which impacted millions of people and some of the hospitals were already full before the cold wave came because of the pandemics. So those people have been sent home with plug-in breathing instruments and then the power cut came due to the cold wave. So many people actually suffered adverse health impacts or even lost their lives. But there are also impacts other way around. So because of the pandemics, many people suffered increased financial vulnerability and then when the disasters strike, they were harder impacted or there was a reduced effectiveness of disaster response because of the pandemic situation or a disruption of supply chains for necessary goods and I will give you now some examples so that you can better understand. So for example, increased financial vulnerability, I would like to give you the example of Cyclone Amphan which hit in May 2020 this border area between West Bengal, India and Bangladesh. So people were already struggling with the impacts of COVID with the lockdown. Many people lost their livelihoods in the cities and then came back to this more rural area and they were actually quarantining in cyclone shelters. So at the time the cyclone hit the shelters were already full altogether around four million people have been evacuated from their homes and there was not enough capacity left in the cyclone shelters to house them. One example for how actually the pandemics contributed to reduced effectiveness of disaster response is the Texas cold wave where basically the hospital capacities were not enough so to say to cope with these two different impacts. More than 200 people died because of the cold waves, mainly because of hypertherma but also because of insufficient air supply due to power cuts. In other cases such as in the desert locust outbreak, basically the COVID pandemics and the lockdown contributed for experts not being able to go to the infected area or they arrived too late but also necessary goods such as pesticides which could not be supplied because due to the lockdowns the supply chains were interrupted. So this shows that actually there was a lot of interaction between COVID and other disasters and the interaction was mutual so some of the disasters led to spiking COVID numbers and on the other hand COVID made some of the disasters more severe and their impacts more lasting. So when we are talking about solutions we are using basically in this report the interconnectivity we are showing between the disasters to our advantage and here there's a lot of similarity actually between this thinking and this presentation and between the presentation you heard before from colleagues from IES. So if we look at the emerging crisis or it's actually more than emerging we do have the climate crisis we do have the biodiversity crisis and we have increasing changes in terms of reducing disaster risk. We do see actions which aim to reduce the adverse impacts in one sphere such as applying for example a large amount of pesticides to combat the desert locust outbreak. However those kind of pesticides really harm biodiversity non-target species but also livestock and also impact human health. So what we are saying is that there are actually opportunities to combat the desert locust in a way that we are not harming biodiversity if we do actions much earlier at the time the local swarms are not that large yet and also using pesticides which is more environmentally friendly. The second example on the right hand side you see we show that also some of the actions we are taking may be beneficial to two out of three of these swares by still impacting negatively the third one. So for example in the case of paddlefish the Chinese paddlefish went extinct mainly because of dam construction on the Yangtze river. So with dam construction we do contribute to tackling the climate crisis because it's renewable energy. Dams also contribute to disaster risk reduction in terms of flood risk reduction but also drought reduction. But of course the fragment rivers separate fishes from their pooling grounds from their habitats and in this case it's even led to the extinction of a species. So what we are showing in the report that there are actually also solutions which are more integrative which pay attention so to say to the other swares and do no harm and one of those are nature-based solutions which with nature-based solutions we mean action which restore or protect nature in order to help people to adapt the adverse impacts of climate change or to reduce disaster risk. For example here I'm using the example of Cyclone Amphan. The Shundurban which is the world's largest mangrove forest in that very area where the Amphan Cyclone hit provides protection kind of a shield for communities behind the forest. While it's breaking the wind speed it's breaking waves and help to minimize the impacts to mean that the impacts of storms and cyclones. However we are losing the Shundurban due to for example coastal erosion but also land conversion. So protecting and also reforesting the Shundurban similar ecosystems worldwide could help us to not only tackle disaster risk but also save biodiversity and address the climate crisis as the forest still sequester carbon. And finally a last example for an integrative solution also called adaptive social protection solutions. Social protection systems are usually designed in a way that they help to reduce individual risk so people who suffer unemployment, sickness or disability or death in the family through risk pooling adaptive social systems can help to increase resilience. However these social protection systems are not designed in a way that they could also address the impacts of disasters or the adverse impacts of climate change. If you imagine an area where a flood flooding is happening and for example there's a factory which is impacted the employees cannot come to work because the factory might have had to stop working due to the flooding. So just imagine a social protection system which is specifically designed to tackle those kind of challenges and to provide temporary help for people who cannot continue working due to flooding. So with that I would like to close and I am looking forward to the discussion. Thank you Dieter. Now we finish this representation then we can have 10 minutes left and we can proceed for the discussion. Just one comment from the director of IAS to the Dieter. Talking about both nature best solution and adaptive social protection is very important. She agreed with that. And we wait for the Q&A from our question. Let's see the solution requires. The question from Dr. Imaguchi is there at the same time that this solution requires intensive awareness raising. Do you have any opinion on this? This is I think question to Dieter. Do you want to have a quick answer for this? Yeah, thank you very much. I very much share that opinion and this is why we set out at UNHS to design a science-based media report to raise awareness for this interconnectivity and to highlight that we actually can make this interconnectivity. It can work with this interconnectivity to our advantage. So seeing the interconnectivity as one means to design better solutions. And the idea is to publish this report every year and the idea is to write it in a very accessible way so that the general public and also media can understand and take up the messages we would like to convey. And it comes with scientific technical backup documentation. So for each and every event we do have also a technical report which can be downloaded. Thank you. I have one question to Michael-san that your presentation having a kind of their biological issue and climate kind of their interaction and of course the disaster, I mean their infection and their biodiversity. And in the previously several upcoming diseases like SARS or Mars or AIDS or their COVID-19 itself, is there having not really scientific proven yet, but it has some interrelationship between human and then natural animals, you know, and they're wild animals. And in a way the Satoyama is a kind of front-trying the interface between their nature and human. And what do you think, I'm changing question in the past, but what do you think in their proper relationship with the human and their biological system in there a little bit more wild? Yeah, thank you very much for the question. I think it's really critical question and I think it hasn't been scientifically actually proved. And of course I think so for the landscape approach and landscape people are looking at them how the positive aspects like benefits are writing from the human nature interaction, but I think particularly the COVID-19 and pandemic show that kind of very critical nexus trade-offs we have in having or suffering from the or kind of our interaction with nature. And so to that extent how and also how we should actually interact with nature is actually a big question. And for example, in order to kind of protect the biodiversity, like a protected area is a mainstay of the kind of a policy tool. And of course there are also arguments like we should really reserve some kind of our area for biodiversity conservation, but at the same time we need to also think about the livelihoods so we can really kind of dedicate as much as lands only for the nature conservation. So I think there should be some balance and also in that way I think we need to kind of consider multiple needs and also demands for the natural resources, but at the same time we need some or scientific evidence or empirical evidence and also scientific reasoning, but also at the same time we need to have some local wisdom. So such kind of an interaction and communication probably will be the key to kind of a device as a strategies to wisely manage the landscape and also the nature. All right. Thank you very much. I want to question to Zita. Actually, this is kind of their echoing their question from the Yumeya Maguchi that you have mentioned about a lot of interrelationship, interconnectivity of the various different sectors from the viewpoint of their disaster, but these each sector having a different language in other words. So how do you have any idea in order to encourage communication of different sectors like financial sector or governmental sector or their vulnerable people in the Bangladesh? I mean, they have to work together in order to have a synergistic effect. You analyze it, but the intervention have to be done at the same time with their all stakeholders. How we can kind of stimulate their discussion with their with different stakeholders? Do you have any, I mean, their experience or idea for this? You can take one example in there. You have four examples, three examples that you have shown. Yes. Well, I think I mean, the report was more an analysis and such as for solutions. But of course, in other type of work, we are also involved in we do have a lot of experience with bringing together different stakeholders. And I think the most important is to try to find joint objectives. So what could be, so to say, joint benefits of those different sectors of those different stakeholders and why they should come together in first place, right? And once we manage to to get the right people to get coming from different angle and really working out together, what is the joint goal they can contribute from their specific angle? It's hard work, I agree with you, but I feel we do not have too much of a choice at this stage, because we are, yeah, the clock is ticking. I think the sixth IPCC assessment report is also a strong reminder. And what is currently ongoing in the CBD process also shows us that there's not much time to lose. And the sense of urgency, I think more and more people actually understand the sense of urgency for our action. True. Actually, I was also thinking the same way that COP26, how are these IPCC assessment reports six in front of their discussion or stimulate in the COP16 at 26? As you said, it's giving us kind of same objective, kind of same kind of view. So it will probably stimulate the discussion in COP26. Let's see what's happening in COP26. Unfortunately, COP15 is the best one. So we can see that discussion in next year. It's time is over. We have only one minute. Do you have any final statement, 30 second statement, Dr. Nishi? Yeah, thank you very much. I think we are still working on the like synthesizing the findings from the local cases. So I hope to kind of also share our kind of finding from the local kind of the case studies, how the local communities are coping with the pandemic. So we are looking forward to sharing more with you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. How about you, Dieter? Yeah, maybe I would like to highlight because there's a new nature publication highlighting the success of the Montreal Protocol for the benefit of our own layers, so to say. And I think it's important to highlight success stories because that was a story where international cooperation and agreements actually made a real difference. And this recent nature paper calculates how much temperature increase we actually would have got if we do not set up the Montreal Protocol. And the outcome of that paper is that we would be now at 2.5 degrees Celsius global warming. So I think highlighting that we really read something there and that it's possible to do it again would be my closing remark. Thank you very much. I think through this session, we really saw having found that in academia is actually easier. We represent sometimes in the different sectors, but in academia we have much easier discussion. So I would like to propose that academic people would be the kind of glue or stimulator or catalyst, you know, in order to stimulate the discussion in the among different sectors. I'm sorry to say we have one minute past, but I confirmed it from the organizers, you know, they don't force to close the session. So we'd like to officially thank, close this session by thanking to all speakers and audiences. Thank you very much.


The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday, September... What is it? 5th? 5th? September 5th. I hope everybody had a fantastic long weekend. You all had a great Labor Day and the weekend before that. So everybody's ready to get back to being productive. Summer's over. We're back to the fall. Lots to do. Everybody's busy, which is great. All right, let's see a few things. One, please continue to comment on the sound quality. I keep tweaking. I keep changing settings. So let me know how this compares to the way it was yesterday before we're trying to get it right. So anything you can contribute to this to help me get it right is greatly appreciated. So thanks. Just let me know if it sounds good, better, worse, same, can't tell any difference. Better today. All right, that's good. Okay, never change it, Diego says. Never change it. All right, cool. All right, second, I'm getting a lot of things from PayPal saying that, you know, they try to charge credit cards and they're not successful. And it just seems to be a flurry of them last, I'd say a couple of months. I don't know if it's an issue with PayPal. I don't know if just a bunch of you have credit cards that are expiring or something. Unless you intend to cancel your subscription, which is fine if you do, then the easiest thing is just to cancel it. I'd appreciate it if those of you who are subscribed was on PayPal, just check to see if the subscription is going through. They just seem, just over the last, I'd say a month and a half, there's just been a lot of these. We tried to charge the card and was successful. And some of that I think is just like an expiration date or something going on. Say if you still want to support the show on PayPal, please just check to make sure that it's actually working and it's actually going through as you intend. All right. Third comment and then we'll get to the topics. We're going to cover Biden. Well, you've got the title. You know what we're going to cover. I mentioned this yesterday. I'll be mentioning in the next few shows just to see if there was any interest out there. But I will be, I've got a free day in London in October and I'm thinking of putting on a seminar on public speaking. So if you're interested in improving your public speaking, if you're interested in being a public speaker, this is relevant for both the kind of public speaking I do, but also relevant for corporate presentations. Well, anytime you're going to be on stage, anytime you're going to be in front of a people in a boardroom or anything like that, you want to be as good of a public speaker as you can be. And I'll be offering a seminar for about 10 people. So it's small, intimate. You'll have lots of time to present and for me to critique and get tips and insights into how to be better if you're going to use PowerPoint, how to use PowerPoint effectively, but primarily how to just be up there and speak and how to do that well. It's, you know, I don't know exactly how much it's going to cost yet. It'll be several hundred dollars for the day, maybe up to a thousand dollars, something like that. But, you know, if you go to a public speaking coach for a day like this, easily three to five thousand dollars. So I think it's a good deal and you're getting, you know, insight from somebody who's pretty good at this and has lots of experience at it, which is me. So if you would like that, spend a day with me talking about public speaking and getting insight and getting feedback. Then email me. Email me at uran at uranbrookshow.com. Just email that you're interested. You're not committing. You can't commit until you know the exact date, time and exact location. It is in London. So this is primarily for the Brits out there and for the Europeans, but maybe also for some Americans who are interested in coming. It's a small group. So the sooner you express interest, the more likely it is that you will get in. So uran at uranbrookshow.com. Just drop an email saying, I'm interested. And then I will get back to you with details as we move forward. All right, let's jump in to our news roundup for September 5th. So this is just such a bizarre story. So it turns out that when Biden was vice president, he had several pseudonym accounts, accounts running off of his government computer. I guess. So his computers did just be using pseudonyms. Now, as vice president, all your emails are supposed to be preserved. They all go into the archives. They're all accessible ultimately. And all these pseudonym pseudo named accounts are all available.  It's all searchable. It's all available. And ultimately the press or Congress is going to get their hands on it. There's no way in which Biden can actually prevent that from happening unless he claims it's national security. But then it's bizarre that it's under pseudonyms. So slowly, but surely this is going to come out. And it's not just one pseudonym. It's several pseudonyms. Who knows what he was doing here? Who knows what he was engaged in?  The guy's not exactly smart. He's certainly not off the charts. The other possibility, which I think is even more likely, is that he's just arrogant. The arrogant of power. The arrogance of power. They can't touch me. They can't get to me. I can do whatever I want. Nobody's ever going to look at these. Nobody's ever going to find them. And yeah, well, I mean, his brilliant son, his intelligence runs in the family, I guess. His brilliant son actually deposited his laptop to be repaired and never went back to pick it up. So yeah, that's how they're getting to all these pseudo-accounts is through the laptop. Who knows what's going to come of this? Who knows if Biden's super corrupt, if he was hiring prostitutes as he was traveling around the world and using a White House-provided pseudo-name in order to solicit them? Who knows? I mean, anything goes. Clearly, Biden or anybody like that, they're not good people, right? They're not good people. So they're doing all kinds of weird stuff. But yeah, it's going to be interesting to get insight into this given how sloppy, stupid, arrogant clearly Biden was, is, and all this is out there available. Of course, if it does come out and if it's really, really bad, then it's also going to be interesting to see how the Democratic Party responds to it and what happens in terms of the 2024 election. Maybe, maybe, maybe the Democrats nominate somebody different than Joe Biden. That would be interesting. But yeah, a story to follow. Nobody knows. I mean, the emails are not available yet. A few were released and they were redacted. But there's both a Freedom of Information Act request by the media to get the emails and there's a request by the government to get them. So exactly what they're all going to be discovering is interesting. There's also some argument that, well, there's also, you know, some questions about Hunter Biden's use of Air Force Two and Marine Two. These are the airplanes and helicopters of the vice president during their time. How many times did he travel with his father overseas? What happened in those trips? So they're slowly gaining actual factual information about the potential real corruption of the Bidens. As I've said from the beginning, the fact that the Bidens are corrupt is not a surprise and should not be a surprise to anybody. It is my strongly held belief that pretty much everybody in Washington is corrupt to some degree or another. Some of them get caught. Most of them do not. And as I've said, you know, maybe a highlight, one of the obvious ways in which it's corrupt is these kind of deals that they make before and after leaving office. And of course, every administration is filled with this, including Trump and Trump's son-in-law. All right, let's see. So that's kind of Biden's emails, something to watch. Nothing to get too excited about yet, but something clearly to watch. The Belt and Road Initiative, which is a Chinese initiative to build infrastructure basically from China all the way into Europe, all the way really to Western Europe, part of the Belt and Road Initiative was Italy. With the idea of building a primarily transportation infrastructure, but infrastructure more broadly, so that Chinese goods can be exported easily and cheaply all over South Asia and ultimately into Europe and the rest of the world. It also was a way for China to gain influence in places like Africa and some less developed areas in Asia and in Europe. You know, a lot of being written about the Belt and Road Initiative and a lot of panic and I think exaggeration of being applied to it. This is a way for the Chinese to get everybody in debt and then they all owe money to China, but then they won't be able to pay it, but then they'll be in China's debt forever. And then China will be able to control them all. And this is a way for China to gain more influence around the world. I mean, yes, and a big no to all of that. No question that this enhances China's, China is lending all this money all over the world. And this is the Chinese government. It's all funneled through Chinese state enterprises. It's very in through state banks. It's none of this is really private companies. This is all Chinese state. There's no question that this has enhanced the reputation, enhanced the influence of China all over the world. And indeed it has. It has worked in that sense. But it has also been a massive failure. And a massive failure is exactly this issue around the debt and the fact that the fact that the that this debt could not be ultimately paid back. That many of these projects were non economical. Many of these projects were dreams that were unrealistic. Many of the projects involve projections about the future that had no relation to reality. Not all of them. Some of them turned out to be very profitable and very good. Like like the the the the ports in Greece, which the Chinese built, which turned out to be incredibly profitable. But much of this has turned out to be bad and there's a lot mountains of bad debt out there and it's only going to increase. There's only going to be more of this bad debt in the in the I'd say years and decades to come from all the debt that these countries have taken on from China. But this idea that this this debt is good for China is just plain wrong. They're lending these countries real money and they're not getting paid back. You know, and it's not like there are assets everywhere that are worthy of taking control in instead of this debt in some places they are, but in many places they are not. And it's not like Chinese leverage over these countries is that valuable. It's not. Many of these countries have very little to offer China ultimately. This is a much more complicated game and it's ultimately a lose lose game. China is losing and China in its current economic situation cannot afford suddenly to have lend so much money out and not be able to recoup much of it. Now, the funny thing about all of this is that many of these countries are turning to the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, to ask for a bailout. Now, much of the money that the IMF is going to provide in order to bail these countries out comes from places like the United States. And then it's given to these countries who then going to use it to pay off Chinese debt. Well, the IMF is bulking at this, of course. The IMF doesn't want its funds to be used to pay off the debt of China without China taking a significant haircut off of this money, off of these debts. China is a member of the IMF. It sits on the board of the IMF. So there's a slight conflict of interest there. But it is, you know, the IMF is going to now have a lot of leverage over China in terms of which debts get repaid and which debts don't, under what terms they get paid. And this is going to be something that the IMF and the United States in particular are going to have to do because the United States is the largest member of the IMF. And it's a lot of US money that is being devoted to this. Now, look, I don't believe the IMF should exist. I don't believe countries state should be giving loans to anybody. I don't think that the state should be in the business of lending money. I don't think the United States should be bailing other countries out. Never mind. It shouldn't even be bailing US banks out. Never mind other countries. So none of this should even exist. But the great irony is that it appears that the United States is going to be bailing out China through the IMF. Now, this is not a good scenario for anybody. It's ultimately not good for China. China is going to be squeezed and China is not going to get its money back. And China is not going to have the kind of leverage that some people thought it had over these countries because that leverage is going to shift to the IMF. The IMF will have that leverage. But it's not good for the IMF to bail out the Chinese even partially. So the United States is really going to have to figure out what role it wants to play and how much it wants to support the IMF in what it's going to be doing and is already starting to do. How tough it wants to be with China. How many of these projects does it want to see collapse? And one of the great tragedies here is that many of these countries are very poor countries. Many of these countries should have never, never devoted the resources to the kind of projects that China is funding. But instead should have been devoting these resources to building property rights infrastructure, to building legal infrastructure, to building a market economy. Instead they're building railroads all over the place, they're building ports, they're building all kinds of things and yet there's very little to transport.  So the real tragedy is you're going to get half-built railroads in countries that can't really afford anything. That in countries that can't afford to build these things, they can't afford the debt payments, they can't afford. And what these countries should be doing is investing heavily, maybe in education arguably, if the government is going to invest in anything. But certainly in the infrastructure to sustain, to create and sustain a market economy. And now you're going to get poor countries in Africa primarily becoming poorer, or places like Sri Lanka becoming poorer. Argentina owes a lot of money to China. It's not like China is going to get any real leverage over Argentina. Maybe because of all this debt we'll get a libertarian president of Argentina and that'll be fun to watch. Montenegro in Europe owes a lot of money. Why? Because the Chinese built a highway from which I drove on actually drove on this highway. Or maybe I drove on the Albanian version of the highway. But there's a magnificent highway that goes from a port in Montenegro towards into Serbia. This has increased debt. Montenegro's I'm going to be in Montenegro soon. But this is going to increase the debt of the Montenegro government by gazillions of dollars. For what? Exactly. What is the benefit? Exactly. I'll be in Montenegro. I'll ask them when I'm there. I'm giving a talk in Montenegro in October. Anyway, again, something to watch could have profound impact on the global economy as this debt collapses. As these economies go into recession, well, worst of the recession, depressions, maybe they're already, in a sense, these economies are already depressed. They get worse, puts a lot of pressure on their own populations, increases migration pressure, but also just decreases economic growth in the world. A lot of this debt doesn't get paid back to China. That is more negative impact on the Chinese economy. China is already weak, going to get weaker. If IMF starts lending money here, that brings in the West into this crisis. The West is already part of it. A lot is going to have to happen with this debt crisis that China has instigated by lending money to projects that cannot sustain the debt. There's a whole domino effect here, and it's not the domino effect that China wanted. A lot of these countries resent China now. A lot of these countries view China very negatively now because China's put them in this situation, so it does not work to China's benefit at all in any dimension. But it's not, nobody's benefiting here. This is a lose, lose, lose, lose situation, as most losing transactions happen to be. The only people who benefit it would be my guess. The only people who walk away from these deals better off than they started are local politicians. And a lot of these are autocrats who funneled a lot of that Chinese money into their own pockets. That money is now sitting in Swiss or Cayman Islands or Singapore bank accounts. And yeah, the countries can't pay off the debt. Tough. They're not going to dip into that money. They've already put their share aside. And the rest of the countries themselves, they are doomed, as is the rest of the global economy in terms of dealing with this. So massive failure of Chinese central planning, Chinese central planning of country to country debt, which shouldn't exist, period. Shouldn't be lending money to other countries. China lends a lot of money to the US. But it does so in very liquid markets. It does so by buying US treasuries. The least offensive way. Pretty distorted. Pretty something again to watch in terms of global economics. All right, here's a, I don't know, a story I hesitate about, right? A story I really hesitate. Richard, thank you for the support. $100. Really, really appreciate that. That's fantastic. Ragnar. I assume that's Ragnar of the desert under a new name. Now Ragnar desert. Thank you, Ragnar desert for the sticker. Thank you, Taze and thank you, Jonathan Honing. Thanks to all you guys really appreciate the support. All right, let's see. So yeah, so this is this is a weird story. So Saudi Arabia, MBS, Muhammad, what's his name? Muhammad Bid Salaman. Is that that his name? Muhammad Bid Salaman. Yes, Muhammad Bid Salaman, who is the crown prince, but the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. He's 37 years old. He basically runs the country, runs the investment. He's building this modernist city, a long, a long city, which is weird and not very efficient. But anyway, trying to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and gas and trying to bring in other industries, but also diversifying the investment of this sovereign wealth fund. They've got this massive amount of money, gazillions of dollars sitting there to and they invest it. Well, they've just announced that they will be creating a new foundation. The foundation is called the evolution foundation, revolution, but instead of the R at the beginning of the word, it's an H. So it's evolution foundation. So they're creating this new evolution foundation and the foundation is going to be distributing. One billion dollars, billion, one billion dollars to research into anti-aging into longevity. Now this is massive. This takes the amount of money available for research into longevity. It puts it in a whole new ballpark. Today there's a lot less money spent on aging, on life extension than there is on disease research and stuff like that. And almost all the money spent today on anti-aging comes from the US. What is it? It's a government entity. It's not the National Institute for Health. I think it's the National Institute for Aging. American Federation for Aging Research. A lot of money goes from there and that comes from the US National Institute on Aging. So National Institute for Aging and they give money to the American Federation for Aging Research and it gets distributed. But we're now talking about suddenly a billion dollars available. Now this could be a game changer. And it's not like the Saudis intend to invest this money in Saudi Arabia because there is no aging research or nothing significant in Saudi Arabia. They tend to sprinkle this all around the world to labs and they already have started to different universities, to different researchers. I mean this really could change the world. I mean this is the first time I think I've ever thought of, well maybe this massive accumulation of wealth in the hands of the Saudis will turn out to have a positive impact. I don't know but there's a real chance. So first of all if you are doing aging research, if you're doing longevity research, you should look into this. Evolution foundation, Saudis are giving away money like crazy. Now it makes sense. MBS is a dictator. He's a totalitarian, not even authoritarian, a totalitarian. But he perceives himself as a benevolent dictator who wants to bring the Saudi nation into the 21st century. He wants to make the world a better place for the Saudis at least. He's modernizing and diversifying and he's got a lot of money to do it with. He engaged in a bunch of wars with Iran but has backed off of that and now is an ambassador of peace. Who knows what this guy actually wants. Yeah I mean it makes sense. He's 37 years old. He probably wants to live forever and rule Saudi Arabia forever that he would massively invest in this. The guy running the foundation is a former scientist who worked for Pepsi for over a decade. And yeah they're handing out gazillions of dollars. Gazillions of dollars and very diversified. So a lot of small bits. A few million here, a few hundred thousands here. A few tens of millions over there. And now I'm trying to think of what's the downside. Could they corner the market and all the longevity drugs go to Saudi Arabia? Probably not. Probably not able. If they make discoveries, if this money actually goes and actually leads to some major discoveries, will all of us benefit from it? Probably. So I'm curious what the downsides are. They might be some downsides. Certainly this helps legitimize one of the most brutal and horrific regimes on the planet. It helps make them appear civilized and worthwhile, which they are not. It gives them a certain sanction, which is sad. I think last week we had the story about this guy just being sentenced to death because he criticized MBS, the royal family, on Twitter. So he's being sentenced to death. I wonder what Elon Musk thinks about that. So the Saudi regime is still a brutal regime. It still sends people to death or to long sentences in jail over expressions of speech. They flogged people for being atheists.  And maybe they're doing something at the margin that we will all benefit from. It seems just horrible that this is possible. But they've got all these billions. It's better they spend it on this than the other options that they have, like buying more weapons systems from the United States, which we continuously sell to them. They've got some of the most advanced weapons systems in the world. I don't know if they know how to use them, but they have some of the most advanced weapons systems in the world. All right, oh God, I always do this. I set up too many stories. There's too much to say about them each. All right, this is a bigger story to be discussed at some point, but just an indication here. We've talked a lot about the U.S. Navy on the Iran Book Show to a large extent because I've highlighted the fact that as the United States, from a national security perspective, pivots towards the Pacific and pivots towards China, that the whole defensive mechanism of the United States, in that sense, or big chunk of it, becomes the Navy. The Navy becomes the most important branch in the military. If we're talking about the Pacific, China is far away. Any conflict with China would probably be at sea. We're unlikely to land troops on the Chinese coast, though we might land troops in Taiwan, but unlikely we'd probably be primarily supporting any kind of war with China from the sea, supporting Taiwan from the sea, which means it's a Navy. The U.S. Navy is by far the best Navy in the world. It's the most sophisticated. It has the best submarines. It's the only Navy that field vast numbers of aircraft carriers. It has massive destroyers. It has unbelievable high-tech. We have now a new generation of aircraft carriers and a new generation of submarines, both by the way, way behind in terms of the number that should be out there on the seas. The building is going very slowly. And we're building, but we are building. We're building big ships. But there is a real movement within the Navy. There's a significant portion of the Navy and thinkers within the Navy that are raising concerns that, A, can we afford to build these massive ships and maintain them and run them? They cost a fortune just to run them. And are they the best platforms from which to defend the United States, given how susceptible they are to long-range missiles coming from China and hypersonic missiles and other missile technology? They are sitting ducks in a sense. They're big. They can't hide. They're not stealth. Some of the submarines are stealth, but they're ships. So there are Navy officers and Navy strategists that are saying, wait a minute, what we really should be thinking about is a different kind of Navy. A Navy that deploys small boats. A Navy that deploys boats that are unmanned. A Navy that deploys drones and unmanned boats and small man boats. A Navy that is a lot more mobile, a lot faster, a lot more nimble, and that doesn't present a target. Doesn't present the target because of the size of the ships themselves. Such a coordinated, small boat, heavily reliant on unmanned is now being deployed in the Arabian Gulf to try to stop Iranians from hijacking ships and for Iranians to use their speedboats. So something is there. But the idea of deploying that on scale in the Pacific is still very new. And its meaning was significant resistance from conservative Navy hybrars. Kind of, there's a real aversion to risk-taking. There's a real aversion to breaking with tradition after all the tradition of the Navy, the U.S. Navy is big, aircraft carriers, that's what the U.S. Navy is known for. There is a real aversion to while we want new technology, we want big new technology and not necessarily changes in strategy. As Lawrence Selby, who just recently retired as a rear admiral and chief of naval research, 36 years in the Navy, says, the U.S. Navy is arrogant. We have an arrogance about we've got these aircraft carriers, we've got these amazing submarines. We don't know anything else. We don't need anything else. He's arguing we do and we need a shift, we need a change. But it's more than that. It's more than that. And it's the fact that we have embedded interest groups that are now committed to building big boats. The whole leadership in Congress that approves budgets, if you look at who the congressmen are, the congressmen are all from districts that have boat building facilities, Navy ports, Navy shipyards. They don't want to see small boats. They don't want to see drones. They don't want to see small unmanned boats. They don't want to see big aircraft carriers that to build them requires the employment of thousands of people. Congress doesn't even want to retire old ships that don't provide any real benefit in the battlefield. Just because those ships have to dock somewhere and the people in the Navy, if you live at one of these Navy towns, you don't want to see all that go away. I mean, tens of millions of dollars of shipbuilding profits are directed as campaign contribution to key lawmakers. And there are massive lobbying campaigns around the Navy. So our choices about how to deploy the Navy, what kind of ships to deploy, are not being made based on what is the best strategic interest of the United States. What is the best Navy to deploy in order to protect American interests on the high seas, to protect the shipping lanes, to protect free trade? No. Our budgets are being allocated, our defense budgets are being spent on the basis of political expediency, on the basis of whose pocket we can line. And how much and what kind of influence can they have in Congress? And that's the reality. The reality is that our congressmen, senators, presidents are not interested in what's good for America. They're interested in lining their pockets. They're interested in increasing their power. They're interested in helping their friends and buddies wherever they may be. I mean, one of the great tragedies in America is how corrupt and how rich we are. And of course, the richer we become, the more money there is to corrupt. And we're seeing that all over the place. And the Navy, I mean, how tragic is this, right? This is the Navy to a large extent won us World War II. Certainly in the Pacific, but also made it possible to win in the Atlantic. This Navy is now corrupt by politicians who have no foresight, no strategy, no forward thinking about what's really in the best interest of the United States. And returning Donald Trump to the presidency is not going to solve that problem. It's not like he's a strategic thinker. God help us. All right, this one I'll just do very quickly. But this is a headline in the Financial Times that struck me as, wow, people are starting to say things that I've been saying for the last 20 years. That's pretty cool. Here's the title from the Financial Times. In other words, the world is starting to panic. The title says the world will need to stop piggybacking on U.S. farmer. Basically, the story says, look, Americans have been paying these massive amounts of money for drugs two to three times more than Europeans and others. But by doing so, they're basically subsidizing R&D. They're basically subsidizing the rest of the world. I've been saying that forever. You can find me in debates talking about this. The United States has subsidized drug development for the rest of the world, healthcare generally for the rest of the world. And the Financial Times now is running scared. Why? Because Biden now, by letting Medicare squeeze drug companies, is going to stop that subsidy. Basically, what's going to happen is drug companies are not going to have the money to do the R&D. They're not going to have the money to buy biotech startups to distribute and do trials on their drugs. The whole industry is going to shrink in terms of future prospects. And the drug companies won't be able to cut a suite of deals with Europe because they'll be cutting suite deals with Medicare. And suddenly, the Financial Times are realizing, hey, maybe we should have paid more of our share towards drug company profitability so that we weren't as dependent on the United States that we want as parasitic, not dependent parasitic on the U.S. But yes, one of the reasons the United States has the highest cost of healthcare in the world is because we basically subsidize healthcare for the rest of the world. Well over two-thirds of innovation in healthcare, drugs, and other innovation happening in the United States. It's because we still have a little bit of private property applied to healthcare in the U.S. The rest of the world is just parasitic over our healthcare system. All right, did that quickly? Let's jump to the questions. Oh, we've already reached our target. Thank you guys. In particular, Richard, thank you. We got some stickers from Stephen, from no one, from Shelley. Yes, great. All right, let's jump in. Jeffrey says, maybe a connection between pragmatism and the likelihood of being corrupted. I think pragmatism is something our politicians have in common. Yeah, pragmatism is. It corrupts people in business, but it also corrupts people in politics. Pragmatism basically says that there are no principles or morality. You can't have a principle.  And what happens both in politics and in business is that if you want to be moral, then you're told to be altruistic.  Nobody wants to be altruistic. And indeed, you cannot run a business on the principles of altruism. If you want a business on the principle of altruism, you'll run it into the ground. So what happens is you reject morality completely, completely. And instead of that, what happens is you adopt pragmatism. If I can get away with it, then it's good. And that's true. Unfortunately, if you look at all the cases of business fraud, it's almost always from the perspective not of somebody scheming to try to steal, but somebody trying to get away, trying to cut corners. Because hey, it's a little bit better. And we can get away with this. It's no big deal. And most of the corruption in politics is the same way. And it's the same thing. Pragmatism will always lead to corruption because it abandons any kind of principle. And the only way you can hold on to morality is with principles. It's way too complicated to try to hold on to morality without moral principles. Applejack says the best analysis on the interweb was. I don't understand what that question or answer or what that is. Sorry, Applejack. Maybe you're saying this is the best. I don't know. Maybe this is the best analysis on the web, something like that. I don't have no idea. All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Applejack. Ryan Milkat says, Carthage was history's first naval superpower. And then Rome happened.  Yeah, but Carthage was more than just a naval power, right? Because Hannibal could actually deploy an army and actually attack Rome and almost destroyed Rome. It almost was the Carthaginian Empire, not the Roman Empire. So I don't know that it was the arrogance around only having a navy, which actually got them. I don't know enough history, but I do know that they had a mighty military army force. But when I look at China, it's primarily, if we're going to defend ourselves, what we really need is a superior military, sorry, navy, that's the emphasis has to be there. All right. Paul says, what kind of missile defense do these aircraft carriers have? And do you think we should have a naval base in the Taiwan Straits? They have the equivalent, I think, of Patriot missiles. They have very, the most sophisticated Patriot missiles in Ukraine have shown that they could hit supersonic, or at least the Russian supersonic. We know that the navy is developing or working on a laser system. Laser systems are difficult to deploy. They require huge amounts of energy. Now, luckily, a lot of these ships have nuclear power plants on them, so they can use that. But it's not going to be simple, and the laser technology is not done yet. There's still a lot of work. Israel has now designed and is selling a anti-missile system that can shoot down the hypersonic missiles. They've just announced it recently, and I think they were showing it off at the Paris Air Show. So that's available. So there are systems available. But there's a lot of new technology out there that is not clear how you deal with. There's something called drone swarms, where your ship is swarmed by explosive, by suicide drones. It's hard to shoot them all down. A hypersonic, maybe, can shoot some of them down? Can you shoot all of them down? If they shoot a barrage at you in large numbers, the Chinese are investing heavily in land to see hypersonic missiles. And with a range, I can't remember if that's 1,000 miles, I think, so they want to be able to protect 1,000 miles out, which is a big chunk of the Pacific. And we need to get close because we need to be able to launch aircraft. We need to be able to actually get close to Taiwan and to the shore. Should we have a naval base in Taiwan Straits? I mean, that would be pretty provocative. But we have naval bases in Japan, which is not that far. We have naval bases, I think, in South Korea, which is not that far, in the Philippines, which is not that far. I don't think we literally need to be there. What we should be doing on a massive scale right now, we are doing a little bit of this. The Biden administration is doing some of this, but we should be doing even more, is supplying weapons systems to the Taiwanese. That is, we should be selling sophisticated, advanced weapons systems to the Taiwanese for them to be able to defend themselves. The better the weapons the Taiwanese have, the more robust the weapons they have, the more expensive the Chinese believe they will be to invade Taiwan, the less likely a war is. Don't wait for the war to start to give the weapons. It might be too late at that point. Give them the weapons in advance. Give them the most advanced and most sophisticated weapons to destroy ships that are coming in from China, to destroy missile launching pads in China, so weapons that can reach China. Give them the capacity to make a war over Taiwan so costly for the Chinese that they would never think of doing it, and therefore the United States never has to be involved. This is the whole point about giving weapons to Ukraine. If Ukraine can defeat Russia, then NATO won't have to. And as long as we're a member of NATO, we don't want NATO to get involved, because that would require American kids. So let the Ukrainians do the fighting. If we can defeat Russia through Ukraine, that is a massive advantage over emboldening Putin, and that would lead to go after NATO itself. Michael says, if we don't have enough capitalism today, capitalism can't solve the problem. True. We need more capitalism. Michael says, in what ways does Singapore nudge people? What kind of ways? I don't know. I can't remember offhand. They incentivize, for example, they want people to eat healthy. So they are subsidizing food stalls in food courts to both provide healthy alternatives and to have signage that says healthy food available here. So to bring to consciousness the idea of healthy food and to emphasize that. But, yeah, I mean, so, or things like that, right? They incentivize healthy behavior. So if you engage in healthy behavior, the government taxes you less, let's say, or you get to keep more of your money. Those are the kind of nudges that they do. So it's not like penalizing you if you don't. It is, in a sense. It's more rewarding you if you do. Rewarding positive behavior. And Mirkat says, Honeywell did not get reinforcement due to politically fighting at home. Marla, the story, don't sell America to the Russians or Chinese to own the Libs. Don't sell America to the Russians. No, don't sell America to the Russians. All right. Or Chinese to own the Libs. I'm not sure who the Chinese and the Libs are. But anyway, yes, don't, you know, the problem in the United States is we have the infighting independent of Russia and China. So it's likely we have infighting here no matter what. Michael says, do people evade because they're weak? They can't handle unpleasant emotions. That's part of it. But part of it is the flip side. They just don't engage in the kind of energy expenditure and the kind of focus that is required in order to, you know, in order to do the positive, which is to focus, to think, to use your own mind. So they have a quite energy. They have a quite focus. They have a quite initiation. And it doesn't happen. Why doesn't it happen? We don't really know. We just know it doesn't happen. Some of it is fear. Some of it is laziness. Some of it is just choice. Pure choice that you can't really, you can't really find a predecessor cause because choice is the cause. All right, everybody. Thank you. We made our target again today. That's fantastic. Thank you for everybody who listens. Don't forget, if you're interested in my public speaking course, live 10 people small in London in October, then please drop me an email. You're on at your on BigShow.com. And I'll keep you updated about that. Thanks everybody. I'll see you all tonight. Not sure what the topic is going to be, but 8 p.m. East Coast time. 8 p.m. East Coast time tonight. I will be doing my regular Tuesday evening show. Bye everybody.


Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel La Modelist, today I will demonstrate how to properly apply the 9 contour guidelines for the basic bodice. Contour guidelines are applied to the basic bodice to eliminate gapings and allowances resulting in the perfect fit for our designs. And there are 9 contouring principles that can help us achieve the correct way of fitting the bodice. Furthermore, I will demonstrate 4 different kinds of necklines and how to apply the contouring principles to each one. You will find all of these necklines included in this tutorial, so let's dive in.


Good morning, everyone, and I welcome members to the 19th meeting in 2017 of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Agenda item 1 is instrument subject to affirmative procedure and no points have been raised by our legal advisers on the draft land and buildings transaction tax additional amount second homes main residence relief Scotland order 2017. No points have been raised on the draft registration of independent schools prescribed person Scotland regulation 2017. Is the committee content with these instruments? Agenda item 2 is instrument subject to negative procedure and again no points have been raised by our legal advisers on the education authority annual planning period Scotland regulations 2017, SSI 2017 number 165 or the requirements for teachers Scotland amendment regulations 2017, SSI 2017 number 170. Accordingly is the committee content with these instruments. Agenda item 3 is instruments not subject to any parliamentary procedure and again no points have been raised by our legal advisers on the education Scotland Act 2016, commencement number 3, regulations 2017, SSI 2017 number 164 or the act of sederant sheriff court rules amendment European small claims procedure and European order for payment procedure 2017, SSI 2017 number 169. Is the committee content with these instruments? Many thanks and with that I close the meeting.


Hey, I'm chilling right? Do my thing. I hop on Twitter and the impossible happens. I ain't think I ever see the day. Ladies and gentlemen, NBA 2K just apologized. We all have that one friend of mine is named Lee that doesn't know how to say he did something wrong. And especially in the business world, it's almost like you're not even supposed to. Like NBA Live only apologized about how bad NBA Live 14 was when 15 was about to come out because that was their selling point on apology. So that's the kind of people we're dealing with right now. Unbeknownst to me, I've been caught off guard when the situation I didn't even think was that big 2K just apologized for. Let me fill you in. Hey, so if you haven't been paying attention, 2K caught a lot of flak from industry media for including unskippable ads in their 2K TV episode that started before the games, right? And the important part here is unskippable. The fact that they would add that into a game that already exists $60 is mind blowing. But if you've been playing 2K, that's not nothing new to you because you could hop into the neighborhood where that's also an unskippable ad. Why do you think they don't add draw distance settings or an ability to just blur out the background when you're playing on the park? It's because people pay to be on those billboards. And so if those were blurred out, then that'd be a lot less impressions, a lot less sales. We haven't forgotten about NBA 2K18 and how they just stuffed in all those Reese's ads in the cutscenes and they wouldn't let you skip them regardless of how many times you played it. And remember that year, everybody was furious about the fact that we had to sit through a micro we already played because we made another character just so we could see more ads. That's crazy. Every one thing if 2K was free to play, but the fact that it's a $60 game is the reason why people were getting furious. And in NBA 2K18, we saw them take steps backwards and give people the ability to skip cutscenes after the first time they play a micro to the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. They don't have to watch them no more. Same thing happened with haircuts in 2K18. We got like a mini apology about that, like a my bad, we got a my bad about the haircut prices. But this is like a real, like they put out a whole statement. They say 2K community as many are aware in recent years ads have been integrated into 2KTV segments. Yesterday's 2KTV ad placement impacted our players experience in a way we didn't intend, as these ads are not meant to run as part of the pregame introduction. This will be fixed in future episodes. Thank you for your continued feedback. So after you just heard me say what I said and then you read what 2K just said, you be like agent, the stuff you talked about about the billboards and the stuff that happened in 2K18 was way worse than 2KTV ad placements before you play a game. So I got to thinking, why did 2K apologize for this of all things? I'm curious. Keep in mind, remember who's talking here. I'm a guy who spent thousands of dollars on cameos so celebrities can say things to 2K that I wanted in the game because they don't listen to me or other content creators that listen to a celebrity though. But that didn't work. Man, I got Kareem to ask for some stuff. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I mean, if Kareem don't work, then I don't know what will. But it seems like today on this very fine afternoon evening, night, morning, whenever you're watching this, I got my answer. Industry. Guys, industry would solve the problem. You guys had to think about how this gaming ecosystem works. For me to get invited to like, for example, let's say I want to go to E3 and I want to get invited, it's hard to do that on your own. To be able to do that, you have to reach out to an agent who's more industry, right? But more than likely, you probably have a connection to a brand. And so the one time I went to E3 where I did get an invite to the Sony press conference was through a company called World Gaming that's owned by Cineplex. Industry. It seems like to be connected in the business world, you have to know people in the industry. And so regardless of how much outrage there was in 2K18 about haircut prices or a beef fresh and unscapable Reese's cut scenes, regardless of all of that stuff, the fact that it was coming from gamers or online content creators meant that it just carried less weight. That's what I'm coming to realize. Mike Wang even said the reason that there's six eight point guards in 2K right now is because Damien Lillard asked for it. And so that's a celebrity right there. But the most effective way to get something done is to have Polygon drop an article about it. So think about how this goes. The only reason all of this stuff got attention is because a few people fought something and then it wasn't those thoughts that created nothing. It was the articles that dropped as a result of those thoughts. So the first article I seen was from Polygon and the title was unscapable advertising returns to NBA 2K fans angry. And it just talks about what we just talked about. They actually even have an in game example. I kind of want to see it. So this is the ad that they're referring to. And I've seen this ad on Twitch before. So 2K is really just using their pregame as an opportunity to sell things. Hey, to me, this is not even remotely the worst thing 2K has done in the last six months alone. So for this to be the thing they apologize for catches me off guard. There was another article that dropped from another industry website, Eurogamer 2K under fire for adding unscapable in game ads to the full price NBA 2K 21 one month after release. I could tell just based on the title they was talking. 2K pulled a similar trick with last year's game, a move that was similarly criticized by fans. So that's why I can't take this apology seriously because if you've been paying attention, they did it last year. And last year, the only reason it was brought attention to it was because of a Reddit post saying unscapable ads in a $60 game 2K and has 15,000 upvotes. Ladies and gentlemen, look at the date of this article, October 28, 2019, and it's people complaining about the same thing. So they did it last year. People didn't like it and they removed it and they did it again this year, had the same result and was like, sorry, it had, and I quote, unintended consequences. How, how, how could you? That's what the f***.  But we knew it was going to be very painful regardless of whether or not the result was death because I've shot you in the knee before and you were screaming in agony. So I don't, I refuse to believe that this is a real situation. I've been to a few NBA 2K community day events before and you know what's crazy is when you go to those events as a content creator, you almost expect the whole event to be other content creators, but it's not. It was like a quarter of content creators, a quarter was like Instagram models that really had no business there. They were just bored and wanted Instagram photos. And then the last group of people was 50% industry. And you know who those people were just based on how they dress. Hey, how you doing? What do you do? Oh, I work for this company. We do blogs or we do videos or we write articles or we do game reviews. That is like a huge focus for a lot of like these gaming companies. They want to be on the good side so that polygon isn't talking, Eurogamer isn't talking. 2K does not care if I criticize them. It really does not matter to them. If I have great feedback and it helped improve the game and a dev side, then they'll pass it along. That's how it works. But if I say something bad about the game, they're like, that's agent's opinion. We don't really care about agent's opinion, but they care about Eurogamers. That's what I'm trying to say right now. They care about Eurogamer and Polygon's opinion, which is the real question you want to ask then is why? Because if I'm 2K and I wanted to get the information out about a dope feature they want to add to next gen 2K21, I hit up like Chris Moog is going to guarantee to get anywhere from 300,000 to a million views on the video. Everybody watches and trusts Chris Moog or any content creator in this space as trusted as him and you know it's going to bang and it's in a video that it's easily digestible. Text and blogs are not easily digestible. The world has been moving away from this and I don't know the exact numbers on these websites, but I can't imagine they're more than Troydan. I just can't. There's just no way. But Troydan's opinion really doesn't matter neither. So I mean I'm not saying that content creators should get like million influence points. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just perplexed as to why this warranted an apology. Well if that's the case, Polygon needs to drop a video about micro transactions tomorrow because we just got used to it, but it's still wild. The fact that I dropped $60 on the game and then $50 for every additional player and then on top of that God forbid you play my team and every time they drop a new box you got to spend a 20 or 30 on that. 2K is a business you know what I'm saying and the reality about the gaming industry is that it's very very competitive and it's very very high risk. So the benefit about 2K is 2K is one of the lowest risk games out there. You know what I'm saying when you make a new IP like Horizon Zero Dawn and you're Sony the publisher you don't know if it's gonna flop. You have no clue whether or not you're gonna get your investment on this, but when you make the 21st edition of a basketball game that's selling more and more every year that's the safest bet you could imaginably make. So the bets that they do take risks on is stuff like this. These are the risks that they take because they know it's gonna sell and it's gonna keep selling. But how do we get more on micro transactions? If you look at if you just go into their financial reports that they have to drop publicly because they're a publicly traded company you'll quickly realize they like to brag a lot about the sales that they make on micro transactions. It's a big part of why 2K was valued so high and why if it begins to stagnate and they don't find new ways to get micro transactions from people regardless of how egregious it is that their stock price is gonna drop. This is take two stock price and if we look also carefully around like 2008-2009 the company was actually about to go bankrupt. So with this coming from a game or I understand why games I mean publishers have to make money telltale games incredibly talented developers they made The Walking Dead series a whole bunch of games fantastic unfortunately out of business they couldn't find a way to monetize what they had. Take two made a change and the reason their stock price began to skyrocket is because they just found creative ways to make money outside of the initial $60 game. It's something EA has been doing for a while too but they don't see video games as like a product no more they see it as a service. PlayStation made that change when they started charging people for PlayStation plus if they wanted to play online with their friends and back in the PlayStation 3 days remember they didn't used to do that but they need that recurring income because first of all people don't cancel recurring payments some of y'all is paying for Netflix subscriptions that you haven't used in six months or gym memberships that you haven't used in two years. So these companies are smart if they want to see this continue to rise they have to find new ways this is 2k's attempt to find new ways and push the envelope to a certain extent I understand when 2k does like micro transactions is it a lot with my team yes $50 for every player is that way too much shouldn't be way lower yes because they're also making it off of like the store in the game like the aesthetic stuff that really doesn't play into the game that doesn't make the game anymore play to win than it already is but at the same time there should be limits to it if you monetizing a part of the game interferes with my ability to enjoy it then you need to stop because the whole point of your product or you want to consider a service now is to enjoy it 2k and right now 2k the fact that I can't just minimize the background so I have a higher performance so the frames aren't dropping and it's not skipping and lagging in the playground is affecting my performance so that's why it frustrates me and to me that's way more egregious the fact that there is a solve there is a fix to an ongoing performance issue in the playground is one we've all experienced over the past however long you've been playing 2k but that doesn't get fixed that doesn't get addressed that doesn't even warrant like the fact that they know it's a problem we don't even think it's an issue right now but having to add before you play the game is an issue because polygons said so so what I'm starting to realize is that these companies these industry companies these guys that are plugged out of their minds think about it for a moment they have so much influence over the way that game developers make games for example let me show you guys something I'm a huge you know I'm saying PlayStation guy I've been playing PlayStation since I was a little boy when I was four years old and I had a PlayStation one now I do this content creating stuff I have a good audience here it shouldn't be hard for me to reach out to PlayStation and get like an early copy it shouldn't be hard for me to reach out to Microsoft but it is hard you know I'm gonna get a copy of one of these consoles early guys it's gonna have to be from a company that I actively work with you know I'm saying I work with the wrappers uprising NBA 2k league they might have some copies and I know for a fact they're gonna be plugged up so it's almost like even if you're in like the content creating world or you have it doesn't matter what kind of influence you have anywhere on the planet if you don't have industry connects or like if you're not an industry person then it really doesn't matter what you have to say if a reddit post that has 15,000 upvotes wasn't enough to get an apology but Polygon's article was what are we talking about right now it's so unprecedented for 2k to actually drop a statement apologizing that is so unprecedented in the last time I remember seeing it happen was in 2k 18 with the haircut stuff I think jerry smith put out a tweet asking why the haircut price was so crazy and then people started to pick it up and I bet articles would drop hold on let me find out of course of course I don't like it I don't even these are just they're not predictions no more I just be knowing if you look carefully kataku dropped the article another video game I don't know what you consider these guys a publisher they do reviews and news and stuff NBA 2k is very sorry about charging players for their haircuts so we just have to have industry get involved when we need something change you know what I'm saying so this is a message to industry out there you talk to 2k about adding proximity chat I guarantee you is going to be a simple thing to add and it will drastically change how the game is played in infinitely more fun ways can we start taking a like a hard look on why it's impossible for 2k to fix their performance issues in their online game modes because the game be feeling smooth when you play offline you hop online boom different story can we talk about how we don't have like many more level design like when we play 3v3 prime I need to be able to play in Venice and then a Philly Park in the in the city and then a New York rooftop and then Beijing like it needs to be everywhere guys and the last thing I want to say is I already knew this to be the fact but I didn't really understand to which degree if you guys remember and you've been part of this you've been following 2k for years now there was years up until recently where 2k instead of releasing their own news like they're doing on their website now or on their Facebook they'll give it to Forbes and an article will drop on Forbes with all the news and they'll get like the exclusive first upload about some real dramatic news about the game think about how crazy that is for a moment instead of uploading it to their own website or giving it to like who's the biggest content creator in 2k space Troy Dan probably giving it to Troy Dan Troy Dan make a video or one of the most trusted people Chris move give it to Chris move they gave it to Forbes because they knew that's what people were watching or I don't know if that's I don't know what the analytics are behind those I don't know what the views are on those articles all I do know is 2k really really cares about their opinion so I think that's fascinating uh I just been I've been thinking about it ever since I've seen the apology a few hours ago hey I'm curious what y'all think about the situation drop your opinion I really asked but I'm genuinely curious in the comments down below if y'all new to the channel and you haven't already be sure to subscribe uh we drop these videos whenever I feel like it at this point hey I'm saying so don't miss out I'm gonna catch you guys in the next one I'm out peace