Just think, maybe one day I will be popular and problematic enough to have one of these made about me. If you've ever wondered how to influence which videos I do or don't end up making for this channel, the blueprint has been set. First, say something in a YouTube comment that convinces me to respond in an actively unhelpful way to the point where I am literally screaming at my laptop. Next, become justifiably upset at my response and DM me on Instagram specifically to say that I was completely out of line and be entirely correct in doing so. Then, let me vent about the fact that I don't know how to write this stupid review of post-hardcore band falling in reverse that I had been working on for the previous few weeks, and finally, tell me that it's a bad idea and I just shouldn't do it. And I will believe you because you are right. I said in the past that I would never make a review of falling in reverse and I fully intended to stick to that plan until suddenly I didn't. I knew from the outset it was dumb, the very first words I put in that word doc were, this is a bad idea and no one will be happy. But I wrote 1800 words anyway before reaching the point where I had to dig into the various capital A allegations against frontman Ronnie Radke and in doing so realized that the largely positive video that the punk rock NBA did about him wasn't actually the cover I needed it to be. The reason it wasn't going to make anyone happy was because it centered on the question of separating art from artists which is a subject that I have alluded to periodically but never really given the time it deserved. And giving myself that time in the context of a review that would mostly be clicked on by people who were fans of the band who definitely didn't want to hear it resulting in an inevitable stream of textual hatred in the comments and probably elsewhere ultimately didn't seem productive or fun. My friend concurred and said sounds like this will hurt some people and help no one. And that was that. But I still wanted to say my piece on the broader subject because I have seen a lot of hashtag content about it recently and what am I doing here if not forcing myself into every possible conversation whether my opinion is qualified or warranted or whatever else. So it's what we're here to do. Talk about whether you can separate the art from the artist and instead of focusing on one example we're going to talk about several but more importantly talk about the bigger picture because like listing a bunch of people who did bad things and then trying to justify why I will or won't look past their misdeeds doesn't seem super interesting and if I'm not going to be interesting about it you may as well watch one of those dozens of other videos on the subject. Now I will inevitably reference some heavy subject matters like sexual assault and abuse because some of the people mentioned will have done those things but I'm not going deep on any specific person's allegations and won't be letting anyone speak for themselves so take that as you will. And with that settled let's do a fun video that won't make anybody mad. I don't know if that was a joke or just a lie but it's definitely not true. So should you or even can you separate art from artist? No absolutely not. I want to get that out of the way immediately because frankly it is the only acceptable answer. Anything else is selfish and cowardly but saying that you cannot separate art from artist is not the same as saying that your problematic faves must be relegated to the dustbins once you get past the initial obvious answer. Things become murkier. On some level the feelings I have about this whole debate are not unlike the ones I have around the eating meat debate. I used to eat a lot of meat at least once a day and more often twice and this continued from childhood into college throughout which I dated a vegetarian and beyond and during all that time I was completely disinterested in changing my diet.  And it's funny to think back on that because I have had two hamburgers in the past three years and regretted both of them immediately. Now I am still not even a vegetarian let alone a vegan but I am well aware that they are morally superior for their choices. It's why everyone hates them so much whether they're willing to admit that or not. The meat industry is awful for the environment and even worse for animals and you may not care about either of those things but that would be proving the point. And I do care about those things and learning all that has radically changed both the amount and type of meat that I eat but I've been unable to commit to separating myself entirely. And I could explain the logic behind my decision to still eat poultry and seafood but when we get right down to it it's all just me trying to convince myself that even though I know that what I'm doing is bad the badness of the thing is ultimately worth it and I am not a bad person for feeling that way.  Life is a series of choices with the options limited by circumstances well beyond our control. Sometimes you choose right, sometimes you choose wrong, sometimes there are only wrong options and so you just go with the thing that lets you sleep at night. I am privileged enough that morality can play into my decision to eat meat or not. I live in a vegan friendly city with a vegan partner and have the money to buy alternative options and that is not true for a lot of people. The higher cost and complexity of even finding meatless cuisine in a society that has come to treat animals as the default protein source and subsidize that production at the expense of things that are healthier and more environmentally beneficial means that veganism is an impossibility for a lot of people.  But don't get me started on the morality of having kids in the first place. Now this video is not a deep dive into the virtual impossibility of living ethically under capitalism but I think acknowledging that that's true is useful here. My decision to not eat hamburgers has had an impact on my carbon footprint but my carbon footprint is also genuinely insignificant in the grand scheme of things and my money is insignificant to the giant corporations that produce it. One person's boycott of an industry makes no material difference to the world but it does make that person's life harder and that is obviously not to say that there is no value in living your life the way you wish others did or speaking with your wallet. There is and you should but for someone who has a youtube channel where and I pass judgment on literally any and all kinds of things I am a lot less judgmental about all of this than you think because life is hard and if we are going to accept that life happening is good actually then we need some things in it to make it good actually and you know what makes life good food yeah but really music movies books video games fucking art I have thought so much about Emily St John Mandel's station 11 in the last year not just because it is about a deadly pandemic and so how could I not but because it centers on the importance of not merely surviving the apocalypse but actually trying to find joy in its wake. The book follows a traveling theatrical caravan that wants to remind everyone of the value of art and make the horrors of the world a little less horrible for just a few hours and it's not like art is the only way to be happy obviously who doesn't pretend to love long walks on the beach but even if you're a weirdo who likes just listening to the ocean and seagulls or whatever you'll still need something to get you from where you are now to the beach like are you not going to listen to music or a podcast or an audiobook of course you are because every second you are not taking in some sort of something is a second that you are faced with the bleak reality of existence and the futility of everything we need stuff to make existence bearable and ideally even valuable if you were to say that you would avoid the works of anyone who has ever hurt another person then you're going to have to live in a cave because everyone's got some shit and done some shit so instead you need to own it and not be an equivocating baby about it if you want to watch a roman plansky movie you need to look in the mirror and say i am okay with the fact that this man raped a 13 year old and fled the u.s instead of facing repercussions i think you're definitely a bad person if you could say that to yourself without shattering the mirror like in some over dramatic student film i said i am less judgmental than you'd think not that i am not judgmental at all but okay plansky is frankly a super boring example but there's a reason he's always brought up in these conversations his movies have had an enormous impact on cinema and if we are tbh-ing i am kind of annoyed that i couldn't have just waited a few more months to find out how awful he was and maybe have gotten to see repulsion and or rosemary's baby in that time but i found out when i found out and i will never watch another roman plansky movie for at least as long as he lives and probably as long as i do because i really don't think that plansky's death or the death of any artist changes much like if all i was concerned about was not financially benefiting and admitted rapist i could just acquire his films by other means he wouldn't benefit nor would anyone else but the fact that plansky has had the impact is the problem i can't be a part of all the conversations that people have about his films but being part of those conversations is arguably worse by even mentioning him as anything other than a monster i would be promoting this vision of a mythic auteur and for what this is where my role as a critic comes in and let us not overstate my importance here even if you squint i am pretty much a nobody but i can't use that as an excuse to say bad things even if it would make my life a whole lot easier and so i have to know is bringing attention to a bad thing and trying to knock it down a peg or to it more or less useful than not acknowledging the thing at all jim stephanie starling has spent many episodes of their excellent weekly series the jimquisition talking about ubisoft the massive video game publisher that among many other bad things protected sexual predation in its highest ranks for many many years when news of the misconduct was revealed it was a scandal for a few days everyone was outraged until one day everyone seems to have forgotten except jim all the publications that ran stories about it went back to fawning over ubisoft's upcoming releases as though it is all better now what should they have done what should they be doing when i reviewed cyberpunk 2077 for the daily beast i knew i couldn't just ignore all of the issues that had been raised throughout the game's development which is why the very first line of the review is about labor conditions at the company i didn't write the headline or subtitle my ignoring the existence of cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't do anything when literally no one else is ignoring the existence of cyberpunk 2077 and when we can be confident that most of those people will not be talking about the stuff that actually matters i think there's value in joining the capital d discourse to remind everyone that things wouldn't have been all hunky dory even if the game was good which obviously it wasn't and i do think that addressing ubisoft's failings in discussion of ubisoft's games could be a net good as well but i'm less clear on say discussing harry potter and the cursed child sure i made clear that i don't agree with the transphobic rhetoric that jk rallying has been spewing and i guess i could justify the broader decision to purchase the tickets because they predated the camel's back moment that led to the en masse condemnation that i bandwagoned onto but it still feels weird there's literally nothing i can say or do that would hurt rallying financially but in retrospect i'm not sure that the callout is enough to justify the existence of that review i don't know is the world better if i reviewed the backstreet boy so i can let folks know that nick carter was accused of rape because i i would bet you probably hadn't heard that one and that a not significant portion of y'all are very unhappy that you just did and look for the purposes of everything let us be super clear that as a rule i believe women because even if it is technically the case that something like one percent of accusations turn out to be false it almost doesn't matter when 97 percent of rapists face no punishment for their actions like if we as a society trusted every accusation and treated people reporting assaults with dignity and respect and were like electrocuting alleged predators instead of electing them to office absolutely innocent until proven guilty burden of proof all that shit but that's not the world we live in the experience of reporting a sexual assault against anyone is absolutely horrendous and doing so against a public figure jesus fucking christ because that stays with you the name of the woman who made a rape allegation against ronnie radke is right there on his wikipedia page under a subheader called defamation because radke later filed a defamation case that seems to have silenced the entire thing it genuinely bothers me that this anonymous editor went with that heading but clearly he was on ronnie's side and now she is the woman who defamed him but if you read the interview with her linked in that section it is incredibly hard not to believe her and the only reason you'd want not to is because you don't want it to ruin how you feel about falling in reverse's music and that is a pretty fucking garbage reason but these cases while certainly unpleasant are also pretty straightforward they cross a line or they don't so you look in the mirror and deal with that or you don't but there are a variety of reasons that situations might not be so easy to write off take the case of azalea dying and frontman tim lindbises he sure did try to hire a man to kill his ex-wife and that is that's bad that's something should have gone to jail for something he did go to jail for it is well established that and i just gave a prime example of how the american justice system is bad at dealing with things but thinking in those terms is also kind of unhelpful i am unconvinced by the whole abolish prisons movement but i also think that we should be focused on reformation as opposed to simply punishment and for as long as we think of prison as purely punitive it will be impossible for people to actually perform because they will still be treated like dirt on the other side of it and that perpetuates the cycle and is just societally really bad and maybe this doesn't apply to famous people because even the ones who do go to prison tend to come out the other side doing pretty all right but if someone did go to jail serve their time and upon release said yeah i did a bad thing and i want to be better now that seems like a net good so is it okay for me to listen to azalea dying the copy of an ocean between us i got from circuit city as it fire sailed back in 09 was the first metalcore album i paid actual money for and might actually be the only one since i am now all streaming all the time it was hugely important for me as my taste in music shifted heavier and heavier yet i haven't listened to the band in years because of what lambises did but if you don't care about that then it's still a pretty straightforward case the true merc comes when trying to draw lines around individuals who are part of a larger project and how much their conduct matters to your overall relationship to the work like do you remember the controversy around kasey afleck when manchester by the sea was doing its rounds dude sketchy as fuck and all of the news made me feel hugely conflicted about going to see that movie but i did it anyway because as critical as afleck is to the film he is a part of someone else's story and not the storyteller himself had he written or directed or even produced the film it might be a different conversation and there's also the question of when this behavior becomes public i don't love seeing kevin spacey in old movies but watching the usual suspects is fundamentally different from watching whatever project he may try to bring himself back with and i certainly won't be watching that i must say that i am a fan of this maybe trend towards replacing bad people in unreleased movies as seen in the addition of the late christopher plumber to take over for spacey and all the money in the world and tignataro being added to zack snider's army of the dead to replace christalia this becomes more complicated when you're dealing with projects based on the works of problematic figures especially if they weren't problematic at the time jk rowling is the obvious example both because literally everyone knows who she is and because her only value to society at this point comes in the form of this very conversation which a lot of people a lot smarter than me have already delved into in far more detail like james summerton released a 57 minute video on her as i was finishing up the initial draft for this video and i have got nothing to say about her that he and contra points and all them folks haven't said better so instead i'm going to make the same point about a different beloved albeit much smaller franchise created by a monster ronnie kenchan i loved ronnie kenchan the anime was one of my earliest introductions to the form and freckles will be stuck in my head until i die i own all 28 volumes of the manga lined up neatly on the bookshelf in my childhood bedroom i purged a lot of books and manga about a year ago but i couldn't bring myself to get rid of any of my complete sets and certainly not my biggest i haven't cracked the spines on any of them in many years but the series was important to me in 2017 the creator of ronnie kenchan was found to be in possession of child pornography a crime for which he was fined less than $2,000 and i know i said that maybe people who have faced punishment should be forgiven but child exploitation feels like a pretty significant exception to that rule some of my lines are a little more flexible than others but that one is built into the very fabric of my being also that punishment is fucking pathetic so i can't read ronnie kenchan anymore but what about the 2012 live action film based on the series or its two sequels they were made well before anyone knew and the creator had minimal involvement none of those people are at fault for what he did and as far as legacy goes it's not like the man's a public figure who is writing articles arguing that actually he is the victim here he's gotten his paycheck for those movies and presumably for the pair of new ones that are coming out later this year so me wanting to see the awesome sword fights of the earlier entries and almost inevitably the new ones ultimately doesn't matter to his bottom line but also fuck that right like i can't in good conscience support that series going forward and i still don't know how to feel about it going back and that's really the problem i don't even know my own feelings on all these situations because trying to interrogate every fucking possible option is just exhausting generally speaking i go with my gut if i hear that a person did something bad i don't shy away from it i look at what the bad thing is and then either say i'm not okay with that or i am sometimes there's a logic to it and other times there isn't now cards on the table and i know a lot of people will not like what i'm about to say i probably won't feel good supporting someone who has bad opinions or is part of an organization i don't like but as a straight white cis man who is almost never actually the target of those bad opinions they aren't really dealbreakers for me the way that active abuse will almost always be and of course it depends on how odious those opinions are and also how prominently the person expresses them and the amount of influence they wield but when it really comes down to it i'm gonna watch the next mission impossible movie no matter how bad Scientology is sorry but even if people generally agree that active abusers shouldn't get a spotlight people disagree over what that word even means i remember bringing up louis ck in a live stream a while back and though most people in the chat felt the same disgust towards the man that i do as someone who paid actual money to see him perform at madison square garden one person said she didn't feel like what he did counted as abuse and so she was willing to give him a pass as the line she drew and i get it even if i don't agree i had plenty of other examples i thought about while conceptualizing this whole thing but when i reached this point in the script i just i didn't really want to do it anymore this has already been 20 something minutes of helpless shrugging we don't need 20 something more so to close this whole thing out i want to talk about a tangentially related subject that has been bothering me for the better part of a year and i haven't had a way to shoehorn it into one of these videos yet south korean director hong sung su is a beloved filmmaker whose work shows up on every fucking list of good south korean movies you're ever going to find except for mine and probably multiple times because dude is prolific as hell i've never understood the appeal finding what i'd seem to be okay at best but i've given him a shot a few different times because i felt like i had to i don't feel that anymore and the straw that broke the camel's back was when i watched what critic pierce conran considers his best film 2015's right now wrong then for the most part it's fine or whatever like i can almost see why people like it so much but there is a sequence in which the protagonist himself a film director as many hong sung su protagonists are takes off all of his clothes in front of a pair of women screaming at him to stop and i thought that's a big yikes for me dog but hey maybe there'd be consequences right like showing someone doing a bad thing isn't inherently bad as long as there are consequences but no shortly thereafter we are told that the women won't be pressing charges or doing anything at all because he's an artist literally that's the reason given in the film because he's an artist and when you're an artist they let you do it and this could be a inviting moment of satire shoving into our faces the fact that we have this gross double standard for famous people that i've spent this whole video failing to address but it's not it's literally just a thing that happens and then goes away because it's not a big deal it's an awful mindset that hong sung su decided to celebrate without the slightest hint of self-awareness and an industry celebrated him for that because of course it did fuck that and fuck hong sung su thank you so much for watching thank you particularly to my patrons my mom hammer and marco cat saracotta benjamin schiff anthony coal magnolia dentin eliot fowler greg lucina liam knipe cojo phil baits willow i am the sword tomatown one timmoe and the folks who'd rather be read than said if you like this video that's great if not oh well if you want to see more please subscribe i'm going to go back to actual reviews the next video i promise hell yeah i hope to see you then


Hello! We're doing a vlog today! How fun! You're gonna come along with me. I have a lot to do today. Some errands to run, one of which obviously includes Joanne. But we've got some brunch with some girlfriends, some grocery shopping. I've got to come back here and work on some projects. So I thought it would be a fun day to do a vlog style video and take you along. So buckle up, get ready to get in the car and go to brunch. Well, all done with brunch. Speed racers on motorcycles. It is the most beautiful day. 57 degrees, sunny. We sat outside for brunch and it was genuinely so nice. Moving again so I can't talk long but we're on our way to Joanne. Okay, add another stoplight. I hope you liked our little scenic tour through Charlotte. Very green and beautiful. That was like a very expensive part of town so all the houses were like mansions. But it's fun to drive through there sometimes. Football players, basketball players, like reality, TV stars, like all kinds of people live back there. Okay, so at Joanne we have a plan. I need notions. I need notions like nobody's business. I need a lot of one inch elastic. I need a little bit of one and a half inch elastic. I need white shirt buttons. Is that it? I have to go through my list again. But those are the kinds of things that we're shopping for. All right, quick pit stop. This Joanne is next door to a target. So we're gonna walk to the target because it's so nice out. Get some steps in and grab two things from a target. Literally two things. No makeup, nothing for the dogs. I don't need any of that. So we're gonna be good in target and only get what we need and not get anything we don't need. I need eyedrops and I need deodorant. And that is it. Okay, hold me accountable. But you just turn the corner here and then there's the target and Joanne, right next to each other. So convenient. Waiting target but quick fit check. Ride patterns, seaside cool ups, neko top and then who makes this cardigan? I can't remember. I'll have to look when I get home. But I've got a little vintage clutch. Woe winches. All right, welcome back to the car and target. So I mean the car and Joanne. So I didn't do perfect. As you saw, I also got toothpaste and cherry water flavored stuff because it's like a treat. It's like truly temples without the sugar that's in grenadine. So good. And they've been out of the cherry flavor for seriously like months. I don't know what happened with the supply chain with the cherry water flavor, but they didn't have it at target. And they've also been out of it at like Harris teeter, like our grocery stores. So when I saw they had so many of them here, I just bought a bunch. And that'll get me through like several months. So that was kind of a necessity. So yeah, pretty good. But I'm just remembering that I had a return for Joanne that I forgot. I had some buttons and I got too many of them. But I forgot to bring them. I also have a return for the pet store that's over here too. I also forgot that. So that's annoying. Okay, I'm not buying this, but look, they have elastic ribbing for like sweatshirt cuffs and stuff. They also have it in this. So they're coming along with their garment sewing stuff. But yeah, for like sweatshirts, bomber jackets, things like that, you can use that for your cuffs and collars. That was a good time to buy some notions. Am I right? Everything was on sale. So I ended up getting a couple of extra things, but only because they were like basically free. And what else was I going to say? They had something else I wanted to tell you all about, but now I can't remember. Oh patterns. They did have Vogue and Butterrick on sale, which they did not have in their flyer. And I don't know if they're doing these sneaky sales all the time now just to get everybody to comment every weekend or what the story is. But it's a little frustrating. I didn't need any Vogue or Butterrick patterns. Need, no, I didn't need. Did I want any? I think I just shopped the Vogue sale not too long ago. So I think I'm good on that Butterrick though. I do love a good Butterrick pattern, but there was a lot of people there. I didn't feel like fighting it kind of tired from the chicken and waffles that I had at brunch and not having enough coffee. And I need to get home because I got a lot to do. So all good decisions were made in Joanne. Didn't even look at the fabric. So proud of myself. Got all these notions to finish up these projects that I started a couple weeks ago and should be able to get them all done today because it was little things like add buttons and add elastic and this and that and the other thing. So it should be good to go there. I've got to go the food store. I don't know if you know this or not, but I make dog food for the girls. I did it for Sunny for years and years and saw many many health benefits over the course of his life. So I do it for the girls as well. So but I've got to go buy them groceries basically. So gonna go do that and then back home where I get to put some of this stuff to good use. So if you're curious, this is the girls food. It's made in a crock pot. It has green beans, butternut squash, zucchini, chicken thighs, rice, red kidney beans, garlic, ground mustard, ground turmeric, iodized salt, water, coconut oil. Some of those things are say the same every time. Some of them swap out. If you want to look into it for your own pet, it's called the crock pet diet. Formulated by a like veterinarian specializing in holistic pet health. I don't know. But like I said, it really helped Sunny. He stopped getting ear infections. He stopped scratching. So look into it if you want. It's like my little thing that I do for them. And I feel like they know that I do it too. Like they can tell that I'm making the food. They get real excited. They love me more. That's probably not true at all. But that's what I tell myself.  So they get that twice a day. Well, it is just too nice outside for me to stay at home and do anything so long as the sun is up. So grab the girls, put them in their car seat, and we're going to go to the park. I'm going to meet a friend.  Should be a nice afternoon. No, I am sort of. I have a good documentary for me. I am documenting it for you. Do I love it? Is it so good? What? Locked myself out of the apartment, but we'll be in tune. You guys are not even going to believe the emotional turmoil that I have just been through. I was like, it'll be fun. Let me get some light. It'll be fun. Go to the park. Bring the girls. They'll love it. My keys disintegrated, evaporated. I don't know where they are. I literally don't know where they are. My car key is separate from my house key. So I was able to get in my car and I got home and I couldn't get in my home. And so I'm like, oh my gosh, so I live in an apartment. So I reach out to it's like community liaison who reaches out to the property manager who's like, call a locksmith. Do you guys know the insanity of the locksmith business? Absolutely crazy. But it was hours and I had all these plans. I don't have sheets on my bed. The oven was on this whole time because I've been making the girls food and I do it in the crock pot and then I double batch in the oven. So the oven's been on. I had all these ideas to get all this sewing stuff done. Obviously did not get any of that done. Now I'm thinking I have like an hour left on the girls food. They're fed. We're home. You know, I need to obviously decompress, take a shower, all of that. But I'm thinking that I'm just going to get one of those sewing projects done, just put that elastic in that one project so that I can just like in this day on a positive note. Everybody's fine. Everybody's safe. We're home. We have a lock. The door is locked.  You know, we're having such a great little day there. And then we take a deep, deep, deep turn hard left, hard left into unhappiness. But we are going to pull ourselves back together, get clean sheets on the bed. I'm going to take a bath. I'm going to give the girls a bath. I'm going to get a sewing project done and we're going to end this day on a high note.


To my immediate left, Joe Nocera, columnist for the New York Times and for Fortune magazine, to his left, Rajiv Chandra Sakron, who covered the trial for the Washington Post and went on to many other positions in the Post. I spent a lot of time in Iraq, wrote a fabulous, fairly amazing book about Iraq and the green zone there as now national editor at the Washington Post. To his left, Mark Murray, who as I said was Microsoft's chief spokesperson during the trial and is now sort of chief of all things, public relations and global relations for Microsoft. And finally, John Wilkie, one of the most dogged and persistent reporters during the trial and still doing great work at the Wall Street Journal. Gentlemen. Hi, I'm Joe Nocera and we do understand that when you have a panel of journalists after economists, professors, lawyers, we're the entertainment. We get it. So we will try to make our remarks moderately brief, have a little more Q&A time and just all of us are going to make a few observations. We all have different, I mean Rajiv really hasn't covered the trial or hasn't covered business since that trial. I cover business all the time, pretty much the same way I did. John Wilkie still writes about antitrust and still writes about justice department issues and still breaks news. And Mark Murray still picks up the phone and says it's another great day for Microsoft. No, he doesn't. He really doesn't. He took my talking point. When Brad Smith was talking this morning, I just want to make three or four observations, when Brad Smith was talking this morning, I thought of another person that I wrote about a couple of years ago named Steve Parish who worked for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris. And what brought it to mind was the idea that at that point in Microsoft's life, it was an incredibly insular place where people only talk to each other and they viewed everybody on the outside as either idiots or enemies. And what happens when you have, and so when a company gets traumatized the way the tobacco industry was 10 years ago when it went through its travails in the mid-90s and the way Microsoft was traumatized in the Microsoft trial, it forces companies to stop just talking to each other and to start, it forces them. They have no choice. They have to sit down and listen to other people and they can't just talk at them. And one of the things I felt all during the Microsoft trial is that they would talk at them, at us, the press, but they would only really listen to each other. And that has changed. That is one thing that I think has profoundly changed at Microsoft is that Brad said that the trial taught Microsoft how to deal with the press, but I actually think it taught Microsoft how to deal with society.  And it doesn't mean you have to maybe do things that give society more comfort. So that's point number one. Point number two, I think a lot now about what I really saw when I was there. And I actually think I've learned a lot today about that. Journalists need characters. And David was a great character. And the Titan called Microsoft was another great character. And it really, the press, it was so easy for the press to characterize it as a fight between good and evil or a fight between a guy who really knew how to kill these guys. And another team that all they knew how to do was say, you know, hit me again, hit me again. That's what, and you'd have all these moments in the trial where David just, the person who asked about what are your most memorable moments, well, I think for us in the press that the most memorable moment was when Ed had discovered that the video of the Alchin screens had been, you know, basically done by the marketing department and they weren't what they purported to be. And it was a day, it was as close to a Perry Mason moment as you're going to have in an antitrust trial. I mean, it's just like, how can this be happening? And we wrote about it as drama. And I have thought a lot afterwards about, you know, what was real and what was not real and what was show and what was, you know, just pure theatrics. And I think a lot of what David said today spoke to that about the issues of how it also becomes a morality play and how that factors in. My third comment of four, I will say, is that why in the world did the judge ever talk to the press? I will never understand this tonight. I just, it's inexplicable. I'd never covered a trial like this before. I hope John talks about this a little bit because I just was stunned to discover afterwards that three sets of reporters were having back channel conversations with Judge Jackson while this was going on. And then, of course, it all came out and it certainly wasn't the hardly, the only or the most important reason the Court of Appeals removed them and slapped them around a little. But it's certainly one reason. Finally, see, I told you we're going fast here. As somebody who's written a lot about internet and computing over the last decade, I am struck by how much of Microsoft's arguments which we in the press did not take seriously at the time have turned out to be true. One of the things they used to say was you don't know where innovation is going to come from and we would laugh. And they would say there's this company called Red Hat that has this thing called Linux. It's going to be a threat. It's going to be a threat. And we would say, ah, come on, get real. And, you know, Google, this is the 10th anniversary of Google. Google was founded when the Microsoft trial was going on. And who knew that that was going to be a great source of innovation and was going to diminish the importance and power of operating systems?  And it's not. And, you know, I do think the trial changed the way Microsoft operates dramatically and I think the trial also allowed, I mean, a lot of competition and I will end with this anecdote, which I think speaks to this a little bit. A couple of years ago, Bill Gates came to the New York Times to the editorial bureau and the publisher Arthur Schulzberger was there and all the top editors were there and I was one of the few times they've ever let me in there. And you can see why they don't. And somebody said to Gates, and it was very interesting. I mean, he was talking mostly about his foundation but then he talked a little bit about business and when he talked about business, boy, you could see he was just, he was comfortable with it in a way he wasn't in talking about his foundation. So there were laughter and jokes and somebody said, so are you going to do to Google what you did to Netscape? And he said, nah, we'll find another way. Rajiv? No, it's Wilkie. John, you're next. I first started becoming aware of Microsoft and its power covering Lotus and Borland and some other companies that aren't around anymore in Boston. And I moved to Washington and started to become aware of this thing called the browser, which was being called the on-ramp or gateway to the internet. And I met, as the preparations for the case started to wind up, Mark Andreessen, who invented it or... That's what he would say. And he said that Microsoft had tried to shut him down, had threatened them and told him that he could have part of the market but that they'd take the rest. That was his claim. He said, I half expected to find a bloody computer monitor in my bed and thus began the morality play. Somewhere along there, David Boyce got hired as special counsel and the trial began and I think took on an extraordinary life of its own. Microsoft made, scored again and again points that were being ignored. David and the government team kept coming around, coming back to credibility and at the end of the day when we all stood out on the courthouse steps, it seemed as if the government won the day over and over again. We ended up with a victory for the United States, upheld by a unanimous appeals court, a very conservative unanimous appeals court. A new administration came in and I had an experience that I'll never forget after that new administration came in. I heard that Steve Ballmer was visiting Dick Cheney in August of 2001. This was a secret meeting. It wasn't on his schedule. It wasn't on the vice president's schedule. It wasn't announced by Microsoft. A friend told me to be there at an appointed moment and sure enough there was Steve Ballmer walking out of the West Wing of the White House after having secretly met with Dick Cheney. At the time we didn't know how powerful Cheney would become or was and I have always wondered what happened in that meeting. I started working really hard on trying to figure out what this new administration would do with this case. It took me a few weeks but I had a story a few weeks later that said that Microsoft had entered secret settlement talks with the government and the story was published on the morning of September 11th and no one cared. Judge Collar Catteller very strangely said that it was some sort of patriotic urgency to settle the case now that the terrorists had attacked us somehow. And so the settlement emerged. At the time it seemed to a lot of people commenting on the case and following it to be a slap on the wrist. I don't know what kind of effect. I'm not really I'm not sure I can say what kind of effect it's had but the marketplace certainly had its own effect because just a few days ago I saw a Microsoft call search the gateway to the internet and we hired and the United States hired Sandy Litvec as special prosecutor in the Google case. In the Google matter which may or may not be a case. So there's a weird symmetry there over these past 10 years and I've always wondered what happened on that August day. We can come back in discussion about Sporkin and Jackson and Joe I'd like to answer your question when we open up. Well the talk about unintended consequences I never thought that all those months spent covering the Microsoft case would lead me to flee the country for multiple war zones but so be it. This thing did all different things to different people but it's a great honor to be here with both Joe and John and I've got to say when the history of this continues to be written it's really their work in different ways that I think we will all continue to draw upon when it comes to looking at press accounts from this. John just because of the scoops that he had in the lead up to the case being filed during the case and as recently as this past week on an unrelated matter but just as sort of the preeminent antitrust reporter in this country. And what Joe did that was such a stroke of genius was to write about this as a diarist, as a sort of a sketcher and to tell a story because this was fundamentally a hell of a tale unfolding in a federal courtroom in Washington D.C. with incredibly compelling characters on both sides and an awful lot at stake and there was the drumbeat of daily coverage that focused on as David mentioned earlier often did focus on sort of the gotcha moment of the day but when you go back and you read Joe's sort of sketches or diary pieces for fortune over the course of this it is in some ways gets better with the passage of time I think one of the best ways to sort of come back at this material and you know it's not that many cases or let's even expand beyond cases of law but that many sort of stories we in the press score get to cover where you might find yourself on a panel ten years later with somebody you know you were sparring with over the phone day in day out and just sort of see people on both sides of the case having come together I think it really speaks to something very unique about this and in our sort of very politically charged environment not just in the world of Washington politics but in so many things in this country today to see that people on both sides of this case can sort of come together ten years later but even during the trial there was this sort of remarkable spirit of Bonomy that existed you know it was in some ways reminded me and I don't mean to make too much light of this of the old Warner Brothers cartoon where the sheep and the wolf sort of clock in and they spend all day chasing each other then the whistle blows and they clock out and you know some of you may know but on Thursday nights you know we in the press corps because we have a particular affinity for alcohol would generally gather at a at a bar or a restaurant it started out initially at the Capitol Grill and then when we you know started to get called on our expense accounts it sort of you know degenerated from there went to some sort of you know low grade steakhouse in D.C. but we were we were invariably joined by by folks on both sides David would sometimes come as well as other officials on the government side Mark and his colleague Vivek Varma would be there and and it was it was just you don't see that these days in Washington and even in that even ten years ago it was remarkably rare and I think it was just but you know for for for me and I think from for for other colleagues in the press what part of what made this unique a couple of other points you know when I think back to the start of this it's it's it's remarkable just how you know I think uninformed most of us in the press corps were you know you had some reporters who were real specialists in the law and had covered antitrust issues you had many other reporters who would come with some sort of technology background and you had others who were just sort of general assignment court reporters and everybody was sort of trying to bone up in their own way but you know I think it it it still speaks to the fact that that many of us in in the news business are fundamentally generalists and there was there was an awful lot that was sort of transpiring at any given day that that was sort of rightly going over our heads and and that sort of segues into you know the way the government you know put on its case and and not to be sort of duplicative of what David was saying earlier and I clear you know I obviously won't be as articulate as he was but the way that you know the government you know framed its case gave us in many ways a very compelling narrative and then those those sorts of Perry Mason moments made for made for great stories made for you know got this got got got a got an antitrust trial on TV every now and again I mean go figure and and in that approach to to not just sort of trying to play to to sort of spin out this morality play before a judge but also to the press and and that's what made this case in many ways something that that editors you know allowed reporters to cover day in day out you know yes there was there was there was a degree of fundamental importance to this but it was such a damn good story from the very beginning from from that the clips of the videotaped depositions of Bill Gates on that no editor in their right mind would have pulled a reporter from that courtroom and it just speaks a lot to to the to the way the both you know the government in this case particularly put on its case and how it how it sort of drove that that narrative through and you know think thinking back to these sorts of specific moments the Alchin video the the Gates deposition and of course you know the emails my my memory is hazy on this particular point but my my most memorable moment particularly in terms of of of of David in the courtroom was was was a case and I can't I can't sort of cite the specific witness but he he the Microsoft witness had said something that seemed to be contrary to something that he had read in an email and he just sort of standing back like a like a leopard waiting to pounce sort of not even you know in in in in the in the in the chair reserved for the the government counsel and whispered something to to somebody on Phil's team and you guys went through these boxes every day you come in with these big bankers boxes with documents he found the email and you know there it was and and for those of us you know who are not experts in the law sitting there in the in the gallery you know it was it was you know these were the sorts of moments that kept us sort of coming back and writing about this case in any event I will stop blathering on and turn it over to tomorrow well it is really an honor to be sitting here with these guys I mean the there's there's a special bond that you build even if you are you know sort of working and you know arguing back and forth sometimes and you know these guys are some of the most important figures in my professional life so it's really great to be sitting here and I I want to thank Phil and the Berkman Center for inviting Microsoft to this and allowing us to participate several speakers have described how they came to the Microsoft case and had their lives changed so I think I'll offer mine as well it was August of 1996 I was two months at Microsoft and I was on my honeymoon and I was in a one room bed and breakfast on a small island off the coast of Belize and the woman that ran the bed and was a diehard Apple and Netscape fan and I had made the mistake of offering you know when she said so what do you guys do for a living you know blah blah blah you're just newly married how cute I had mentioned that I worked for Microsoft at 7 a.m. the next morning she pounded on my door to let me know that the government had started issuing CIDs against Microsoft and wasn't it great and I looked at my wife and said this is not a good day for Microsoft Karma yesterday said that as she looks back you know she thinks it's hard to say whether there were actually any winners or losers in the Microsoft trial I have to say when it comes to the press coverage I think it's very clear that there were winners and losers in the Microsoft trial yes I think that it's fair to say that that you know my colleagues and I that Microsoft was completely unprepared for the scale and the tenor of the coverage that was going to result from the case and I think that part of it was as David said that we really we're arguing two different cases in the courtroom and I think in many ways we were talking about two different cases with the media and Microsoft was really focused on the technical aspects the economic arguments was there or was there or not for closure did you know Netscape have mechanisms to deliver its browser to people or not and in a way that quickly became beside the point and I think we didn't realize that quickly enough it was a little ironic this morning to hear Frank Fisher say that he thought that Microsoft's legal team was playing to the court of public opinion a little too much in its legal strategy without giving away any family secrets or airing out family laundry within the Microsoft camp I can tell you that despite my frequent begging that was the furthest thing from our lawyers mind of playing to the court of public opinion my view is that the two sides had pretty different philosophies about how legal and communication strategies fit together and that the government really saw the connection between the legal arguments that they were trying to make and the arguments that would play in the court of opinion public opinion and that Microsoft really took the position that the audience that we were playing to in the courtroom was an audience of one and that the PR people were free to run around and try to put the best spin that we could put on it but that there was not an integration in the same way that there was with the government I think there's a universal what's that or the browser yeah I think there's a universal truth that whenever two sides are in sort of a dispute that each of them is going to think that the other side is doing more to try to leverage the situation than that each of them is getting a better ride from the media and I think that probably did did occur on both sides it's interesting to talk at this conference with folks who are on the other side and here here from their perspective how they felt things that were going and where they felt that we had gotten a good ride from the media I mean clearly there were some unique factors in this case the fact that there was no direct testimony at all and that it was just cross examination then a small amount of redirect really changed you know how evidence was brought out in the case and I remember after we broke and we were back in Redmond it was holiday time and you know clearly the first two or three months of the case had not gone very well and the press coverage had been pretty bad and one of our executives said yeah but we haven't had a chance to get our witnesses on yet and then we're really going to rock and we just thought yeah it's going to be nonstop cross examination from David Boyce that's going to be great and another unique factor of the case was obviously the Gates deposition and you know karma was great to hear yesterday karma say I can't believe that we got away with playing it day after day after day you know there's another interesting factor that that you know when the deposition was being taken there was actually an order in place from the court saying that no videotape depositions would be played in court and after the deposition was taken you know that order was was modified and you know videotape depositions were allowed to come into the court and so I think that had a pretty profound effect on trial strategy and you know the ability to really move this into a morality play and not just you know economic issues and arguments among dry economists our corporate communications tactics changed pretty radically over the course of the six months I think we arrived we were going to be very proactive we were going to make sure that you know we drove the narrative of this case that was our you know Microsoft likes to do version one version two version three that was our version one dot oh strategies we're going to be very proactive the quickly morphed into a version one point one which is we're going to be very proactive and we're just going to try you know hope like hell that we got at least any message into the coverage version 2.0 was we decided we're going to be very reactive you know we go out and talk on the courthouse steps if David was going to go out and talk on the courthouse steps and we sort of take our lead from the government version 3.0 is we had this blinding realization that the reporters had actually sat in the same courtroom that we had sat in they didn't they didn't actually need us to go out on the courthouse steps and tell them what they had just seen and in fact it kind of irritated them when we tried to tell them what they had just seen so you know it doesn't take very long but we wised up to it and so we decided that we would just sort of you know head on back to to our law offices or hotel rooms or maybe even just get a good run in and that was probably the most productive thing we could do in working with the media and if they called us we'd probably take the call. Brad talked a little bit about how you know Microsoft has changed and how the trial changed Microsoft and Dave talked about how you know the trial changed how we build our products I would also say that the trial and the experience we went through you know has had a pretty profound effect on how we handle corporate communications at Microsoft as well. Before I joined Microsoft I spent 15 years in government both in Washington D.C. and in the you know communications director for the mayor of Seattle. So I was used to some pretty intense partisan back and forth I had had protesters chain themselves to my desk in Seattle but nothing prepared me for what I saw when I joined Microsoft just the amount of adolescent bickering within the software industry and John you covered the industry I mean every day it seemed like Scott McNeely would wheel out a new you know insult for I mean he called Gates and Balmer Balmer and Butthead he talked about windows as a as a hairball you know it's just the level of playground taunting surprised even me coming from government and I think we you know and let's just be honest you know Microsoft love to give it right back you know we're talking about the mid 90s it was a pretty rough and tumble industry and we we loved sort of jabbing each other and I think we brought a little bit of that to the trial when we first started that we thought we were still in a fairly aggressive communications mode and you know over time I think that we really have learned from the case and that the learnings that we had in Washington D.C. were carried back to Washington to Washington State and the folks who had been on the front lines in the trial were accorded a certain amount of respect and influence in moderating the more aggressive impulses of our communications team in Redmond and I think we now take a much more long term approach to our communications I think we now don't think that you know our job is to sort of ram our message down the throats of reporters it's much more to have a conversation that extends over months and over many news cycles and understand where people are coming from and you know understand the dynamics of the industry as a whole and try to have a mature conversation and persuade people to our point of view rather than try to you know bully people to our point of view and the last thing is I think that the the trial has definitely caused Microsoft to have a very thick skin when it comes to PR there are people that join my team from other companies and they inevitably I mean the scene repeats itself with every new person you know at some point in the first month they will show up at my door you know breathless and say oh my god you know look at what's happening here look at this news story and I'll look at it and I'll say yeah that's that's not a great story but you know what we've seen worse we're gonna make it through this you know don't get so excited so I think it's good for corporations to have thick skins I think it's good for corporations to understand how they fit into society and where they stand vis-a-vis the needs of citizens and the role that government plays and I think that Microsoft it might have been there might have been easier ways to learn it but we learned it so we in the interest of keeping things moving we're gonna probably just only go for another 10 or 15 minutes but and we'll open up to questions but I didn't want to ask Mark one question first which is if you had done a better job with the audience of one Judge Jackson in other words you know if the judge had been more receptive to your witnesses and and the arguments in the court and and and ultimately he was the person deciding the case would the audience of journalists and newspaper stories and magazine articles have mattered in other words you know we were doing it for our readers I mean that was our purpose but you know how much did the press actually matter in the context of this trial well I I would actually I'll answer that question also turn it around a little bit which is we came to realize that what really mattered in the coverage was how the respective sides did with the audience of one that you know you guys were writing what you saw and the most important things that you saw was how the judge responded right and so if Microsoft had you know gotten a more positive response or a more positive hearing or the body language or the questions posed from the bench had been more positive I think that the coverage would have been more positive the the other question you ask is you know did the coverage matter did the coverage in any way affect the outcome I mean I don't think I'm the best person to ask that of my my strong sense is that the coverage probably did not have a significant outcome impact on the outcome of the case I think it had a significant outcome or impact on the outcome of you know how people perceive you know what went on in the trial how people perceived Microsoft to some degree and so I think that the coverage was important but I don't think in my heart that it was important to the specific outcome of the case. Yes sir. A question for Mark maybe two questions. A day or two after the European Commission handed down its big decision in its Microsoft case. The commission or the court of first instance? Commission. Three United States senators, John Warner was one, gave speeches from the floor condemning the Europeans for meddling in the in affairs that had already been taken care of in the United States and what's interesting about those speeches is that they were all they're almost identical verbatim. I don't think the three senators got together and said let's all give the same speech and in fact they cleaned up their error later and only one appeared in the congressional record. I got this from the broad transcript. Now what was going on there? Question number two, a broader question. I don't have the numbers in my head but when the Microsoft case was escalated in 1998 there was a tremendous increase several millions of dollars in Microsoft's Washington lobbying expenditures and also a large increase in its political contributions. What effect if any did you think those contributions had? Boy this brings you back doesn't it Mark? I may tell my the story that I left out after all. So let me take the second question first which is you know sort of looking at the growth of Microsoft's Washington DC operations and our lobbying and I'm certainly not the most expert at that. We've got several people here from our law and corporate affairs that I can refer you to as well but I would take it back even a little bit further than that. In the early 1990s all the way to like 1993-1994 we had no one in Washington DC and then in about 1994-1995 we had a one person office in Washington DC and the rest of the technology industry was basically in about the same boat. This is an industry that grew up on the left coast and basically viewed itself as innovators working in a very entrepreneurial way and that government really didn't have a role in the work that was being done. So the entire industry was rather slow to ramp up I think in terms of their Washington DC presence and over time I think we came to realize that the issues that we're talking about technology came to play such a role in the life of individuals and the life of businesses and the life of American society that government had a legitimate role in regulating it and looking at it and looking at policies that would affect it and that the industry had to step up and so I would not draw a line between that and this specific case I think you need to look at the bigger issues that are going on. Now for some reason and I'm excited to hear about why when you asked your first question Mr. Boyce put his hand up as though he wanted to answer it. I'm almost afraid of what I'm about to hear. I'm not sure what I'm about to hear. It reminds me of my favorite moment of the trial when I can't remember which witness it was who said I think that's a trick question and then you said no no I will raise my hand when I'm asking you a trick question. And then about 10 minutes later you asked a question with your hand. So should I be calling on you or should I not? One of the things that I thought was interesting in comparison to the IBM case is that after the IBM case was over the EU went after IBM and the Justice Department was extremely helpful in helping to keep what the EU did within some reasonable bounds and I think for some of the reasons we talked about at lunch the Justice Department and the United States government generally whether they're senators or the executive branch has been a lot less successful and a lot less able to play a meaningful role in influencing what happened in the EU and it may be that a new administration will be more effective in that but I think one of the consequences of a whole series of actions beginning with maybe the settlement but including things as disparate as the Iraq war and the effect on European countries is that our administration has not had the ability to make the kind of impact that otherwise might have happened. I had one comment on Joe's question. Lots of judges talk to the press and including during trials they are almost invariably sophisticated enough in doing that to keep the ground rules very clear that it is totally not for attribution at any time not just until the trial is over and I think that the thing not every judge talks to the press and I think it's a minority but it's a very substantial minority and I think the thing that distinguished Judge Jackson was not that he talked to the press but a certain naivete in the sense of not understanding how explosive it was if it was going to get out and his sort of attitude of well I don't want you to print it while I'm deciding the case but once it's over with you can print it and I think that was the issue in my mind it wasn't that unusual for somebody to talk to the press. Well I'm glad to know that for the Google trial. Judge Jackson when I spoke to him made it clear that he was talking to me and evidently to a couple of others only after all the facts were in and the record was closed. He said that Microsoft has hundreds of people and teams of lawyers and I'm here alone and he wanted he said he wouldn't be able to he wanted to be able to explain why he did what he did and he did ask people to the reporters he spoke to to keep it off the record the fact that he'd done so before deciding the case again after all the facts were in which he thought he said it's my job to to to have an opinion and I do have an opinion and here it is and the New York Times did not respect that wish when they published their story a day after ours that's what happened. Wait. The way it works is you you're the first person who got Jackson on the record and they did it the next day and then where the bad guys here. What happened was the Times story made it clear that the judge had had talked you know prior to the closing of the how I say. We only have five more minutes. Yes sir. I'm sorry this is another question for Mark but I I wanted to ask you about the freedom to innovate network. I guess the grassroots organization some might like to call it Astro turf advocacy organization that got set up during during the trial is wondering if you got any mileage out of that in terms of say Tony act comments and you know what what you see the role for the organization going forward vis-a-vis in relation to the press activities. Sure. Sure. I don't have any insight into whether or not companies that joined the freedom to innovate network helped to provide some of the 32,000 comments that Phil had to read or not. But basically that is a voluntary organization of people who you know sign up companies that sign up and say yes we believe that you know allowing high tech companies to continue to be able to innovate and integrate new features into their products. That's an important consideration for ongoing economic growth. So Phil to the extent that they did you know make it a more heavy reading cycle you know our apologies on their behalf. Yeah. Well thank you. We're only back on track. We're only 15 minutes behind schedule. Very well done. Thank you all very much.


Hey, how's everybody doing? This is Rich from Rich TV Live, and I got another rocket stock for you. Another winner that we brought to you first before anybody else on the planet, and it has been an absolute rocket. A rocket of epic proportions, actually. Like, I mean, look at this thing. We brought it to you under a dollar. It's at 228. It's up again, pre-market. Let's take a look at the US side. That's the Canadian side, the US side, GMTNF. We brought you this rocket first, interviewed the CEO, and it has not disappointed. All it's done is go up nonstop, and they got big news today. And of course, your boy's bringing it to you first because we bring everything first. We bring you all the winners first. In fact, I'm pretty sure we brought more winners than anybody else on the planet. That's a fact. I'm pretty sure we brought more winners than anybody on the planet, and this is one of those winners. So when people are constantly like, Rich, what's a good pick, Rich? Gold Mountain?  Now remember, Rich TV Live is strictly for education and information purposes. Please do your due diligence, do your research before you invest in anything that we talk about or discuss here in Rich TV Live. We bring you the winners, we bring them to you first. Now I'm not sitting here and telling you to buy this stock. I'm just here to give you some information. I'm here to give you some education. I'm here to talk to you about the rocket. I also talked to you about the rocket before it exploded, because that's what we do. We do it best and we've been doing it for years. Now, the news today is pretty good. I'm gonna be honest with you, it's pretty exciting. I mean, this has been a rocket of epic proportions. I brought it to you before it was at a, before a dollar, currently at 228, so my simple math says it's up over 100%, but they got some big news and we're gonna go over the news. But before I go over the news, I want you to watch this video because they got a secret video. Only you, the people that are watching right now, first. Are you ready? I know it's early, but maybe you should get your popcorn ready, make sure you got it buttered. It's good, you ready? Cause I was born ready. I hope you were born ready. You're watching Rich TV Live, so you're probably ready. It's early in the morning, it's pre-market. Make sure before I even watch this video that you smash that like button, comment down below, share the video everywhere and subscribe. It's not fair that you're finding the rockets by yourself, let all your friends and family know. I know it's early, wake them up. Watch this video. The purpose of these last two holes was to fill in some spatial data gaps as well as to get JDS, some geotech information they need for their current PFS. These holes were drilled on the 26 and 2700 veins. They were drilled to fill some spatial data gaps as we were pushing our resource to the northeast. We were certainly expecting to hit exceptional gold grades on the down dip drilling on the 1300 vein and we were all pleasantly surprised to see these exceptional grades coming out of the 26 and 2700 vein near surface. Phase one re-logging was extremely successful when it discovered a vein that was 268 grams per ton. Follow-up re-logging has already identified another vein that was 47 grams per ton. It's really great that as new owners of the old gold property, we were able to go out in this phase one drill program and hit mineralization in all 41 of our holes. Boom. Big goal going into this. The ability to show scale of the project, not only did we hit our narrow veins for our open pit scenario, we also hit underground intercepts that show the scale and potential at depth. That's off to the team at HVD Exploration for a really successful phase one exploration program. We're really excited to get them back out into the field in May for phase two. Absolutely love it, love it. Congratulations to members that are actually paying attention to the Rockets. I mean, we brought you this winner first. We interviewed the CEO.  But I can bring you the winners before they explode. I can bring you the news. I can continue to do the analysis, but I cannot buy it for you. That is for sure. I can't do it. But what I can do is I can bring you the news. I can analyze it for you. I can explain it to you. And then it's up to you to make that simple buy purchase. And if you see returns, you gotta make that simple sell. And that's how you win. It's quite simple actually. So let's get into it. Gold Mountain Mining Corp. GMTN in Canada. GMTNF in America. And 5XFA in Frankfurt, Germany. It's pleased to announce results from the company's latest drill hole intercepts located at its 100% owned elk gold project near Merritts, BC. These assay results extend known high grade mineralization of the 2600 and 2700 vein systems and showcase near surface gold grade consistent with the company's successful deep drilling results announced on April 14th, 2021. Additionally, the company re-logging of Historic Core using the latest technology continues to uncover high grade mineralization missed by previous operators. These are the highlights, the results from the latest assays extend the 2600 and 2700 vein and convey strong grade continuity and the company continues infilling drill results include SND20-033 intercepted 1.3 meters averaging 13.3 grams ton gold including 0.30 meters averaging 56.5 grams a ton gold. Then we've got the SND20-033 intercepted 1.3 meters averaging 4.5 grams ton gold including 0.30 meters averaging 19.2 grams a ton gold. Re-logging and sampling program uncovered a new vein intercept from a historic whole SND11-128 yielding 0.2 meters averaging 47.8 grams a ton gold. Gold Mountain CEO Kevin Smith. I'm so impressed with Kevin Smith. We had him on our show, stock's been a rocket brought it to you guys at 98 cents. Let me show you guys, you know, you might not believe it. So I might as well bring you the evidence as people always like rich, you got any winners rich? How many do you need? Yeah, we all lost, the last time I looked probably more than anyone on the planet in fact and we actually bring it to you before they explode. And we actually had the CEO on the show too before they exploded. And that chart looks pretty good. It kind of looks like this, right? Yeah, it's true. I know I'm excited. Is it wrong to be excited when you find winners first? Is it wrong? I don't think it's wrong, right? But rich, why are you showing us the winners rich? Okay guys, look, I want to make sure everyone understands this went from 76 cents to 234, that's a big winner. Now I had them on the show and I discovered it at 98 cents currently at 228 and when I was looking pre-market it was up again and why not with this big news, right? And obviously we're talking about it. So it's been a rocket. So yeah, it's clearly been going up and probably gonna keep going, just saying, GMTMF and let's look at the US side. Since they opened up in America, it's only done one thing, gone up. It's all it's ever done. It's only just been going up. We made sure you guys knew about this in America as well. So if you guys were paying attention, if you guys were watching, what's that saying? If you're not winning, probably not watching. And if you're watching and you're not winning, you probably don't know what you're doing because how do you lose on a pick like this?  I don't think it's possible. This last time I looked, there's only two red candles. Let's count on the green candles. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 green candles and two red candles. But I didn't win, Rich. Okay. All right. So, like, okay. That's all I could say. All right. So I mean, this is clearly a rocket of epic proportions and it's been a huge winner for our community. Congratulations to members all over the world. In Germany, the United States, in Canada, this stock has been a rocket. And let's get back into the news. You can also go to their website. If you want to do more due diligence, you want to do more research.  Chances are when your financial advisor sees the pick, they're gonna say, where'd you find this pick? And you could say, oh, from my boy, Rich, from Rich TV Live, they're gonna be like, oh, I know that guy. Yeah, he's got some good picks. He actually finds those rockets before they explode. He's one of the only ones that actually, I'm pretty sure he's the only one that does that. Yeah. Yeah. He's damn good, that guy. But yeah, that's another story for another day. But this is an absolute rocket. Look at that property. Isn't it beautiful? Rolling hills filled with gold? No, we love gold. We love gold. We love digital gold. We love assets that can build us and create wealth. We love wealth creation. I'm a wealth creator, not just for me, but for everybody around me. All I do is create wealth. Well, this is one of those companies that's created a lot of wealth. And congratulations to those of you that are paying attention, watching the show and getting in on the early stage rocket. And guys, what do you guys think? If you liked the video, please comment on the video. Comment on the show. Love to know what you think about this rocket. Did you ride the rocket? Are you still riding the rocket? Are you hopping on the rocket now? What are you gonna do? I'm not gonna tell you what to do. I'm not a vending machine.  I talk about companies every single day and our success speaks for itself. This has clearly been one of the huge winners. Congratulations to everyone. In a market that's been choppy, trading sideways, small caps have been pulling back. Even large caps have been pulling back over the last couple of months. This has been going up nonstop. So let's break it down, shall we? Gold Mountain CEO Kevin Smith commented, these results at the tail end of our phase one drill program bring our hit rate to 100%. Wowzers. Did he just say his hit rate is 100%? Has anyone ever had a hit rate of 100%? That is astronomically successful. Congratulations, Kevin Smith.     My goodness. 100% hit rate. Is that even a thing? How do you get 100% hit rate? 100% hit rates. Did that video say 41 for 41? I'm pretty sure in the video he said 41 for 41. That is unheard of. I don't know if I've ever heard of anything like it. It's actually mind-boggling, but it's true. And that's why the stock's been a rocket. Every drill hole from this program returned significant gold intercepts, wowzers. The primary goal of the final drill holes was to infill data gaps in the 2600 and 2700 vein system and to further enhance JDS underground geotechnical model, having these holes returned some of our highest grades in a welcome surprise. Is a welcome surprise?  My goodness. Additionally, we continue to uncover phenomenal grades from our re-logging program that is providing to be an economical way to fill gaps in our model. The ELK Gold Project continues to demonstrate excellent continuity and expandability. Now I wanna make sure everybody understands a winning portfolio is a diversified portfolio. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Do not put all your eggs in a penny stock that's at a penny. Don't put all your eggs in Bitcoin. Don't put all your eggs in gold. Don't put all your eggs in silver. Diversify, diversify your portfolio. Have some big cap, have some small cap, have some safety, have some risk, have cash on hand for the next rich pick. That's how you build a winning portfolio.  So manage it and make sure that you've got a few rockets in your pockets. Your boy's giving, I'm spoon feeding you these rockets. Literally spoon feeding you rockets. I don't really know what else I can do. I mean, I brought it to you at 98 cents. We'll check what it's at soon. Stay tuned. Kevin Smith continues, Gold Mountain finds itself in a unique position where able to deliver shareholder value not only through our exploration efforts but also through the coming transition into development and production. Guys, this is just the beginning. This is how you go from small cap to large cap. This is how you go from a junior minor into a potentially senior exchange listed company. Let that sink in. Let that sink in. Let me read that again because that's pretty profound actually. Gold Mountain finds itself in a unique position where we're able to deliver shareholder value not only through exploration efforts, we're not just exploring but also through the coming transition into development, pulling out the gold and production, taking that gold and selling it. Oh yeah, it's on. It's on like Donkey Kong. This gives us unique upside in the junior space which we feel sets us apart from our peers. Go Kevin Smith. The market seems to be waking up to our story. You think it's gone from 98 cents to 228. And in the US it's gone from $1 to $1.85.  And if you're not, wake up. Wake up. We got a rocket. Should be in your pocket. If you're not winning, you're clearly not watching. We brought this to you months ago and it hasn't stopped. It's true. The market seems to be waking up to our story and with early shareholders staying long, there has been a great response in our share price. Yes. Management is extremely focused on execution and looks forward to continuing to deliver meaningful progress in the coming months. Kevin, we need you back on the show, brother. Kevin, if you're watching, let's get you back on the show, man. Let's get you back on the show. Let's get you back on the show and talk about all the ways shareholders have made some dough. Okay, let's talk about the phase one update, assay results for near-surface drilling, targeting the 2,600 and 2,700 veins. You know, I actually liked the way they write these press releases too. So many companies get so technical with their press releases. This is actually easy to understand. So shareholders can understand it. I think a lot of companies can learn a lot about Gold Mountain. These guys are doing all the right things. Assay results to near-surface drilling, targeting the 2,600 and 2,700 veins. The latest assay results from three of the final five phase one drill holes further extends the 2,600 and 2,700 vein system towards the Northeast. The intercepts articulate strong consistency throughout the vein system and with assay results showing high grades in each of the new drill holes, targeting the 2,600 and 2,700 veins. The final five holes, targeting the 2,600 and 2,700 veins were positioned to infill data gaps in the vein systems and maintain a 75 meter distance between drill holes with the goal of methodically expanding the resource at the Seawash North Zone. The company encountered grade and thickness levels that surpassed the expectations with intercepts showing high grades rivaling its deep drilling intercepts. That's juicy, so juicy. This is nuts, guys. This is a massive goal discovery. It's what it is. It's an early stage goal discovery, folks. Core re-logging program. Phase one also included a campaign to re-log and sample historic drill core using the latest exploration technology to discover additional veins. The company found initial success discovering a new vein intercepted, recognized in historic, whole, SND 11-132, yielding 1.2 meters, averaging 52.3 grams a ton gold, including 0.30 meters, averaging 216 grams a ton gold. Recently, the company uncovered an additional new vein intercept recognized in historic, whole, SND 11-128, yielding 0.2 meters, averaging 47.8 grams a ton gold. With the discovery of these two high grade intercepts, the company is bullish on the extensive re-logging efforts that are part of its phase two exploration program and anticipates it will lead to additional, adding cost-effective ounces to its resource estimate. So you can see the drill results below is a table of selected core drill results, a complete list of all drill results to date have been posted on the company's website at gold-mountain.ca, which I showed you earlier. So the website is a fantastic resource of information guys. You can find all the information here. You can see the US, Frankfurt and American listing and share prices as well. You can see the price of gold and gold's been going down for quite some time but it's starting to make a comeback. And this is one of those junior gold miners that's well positioned to take advantage of what a lot of miners are calling the gold rush, the gold rush that is coming. The question is, are you ready? Are you ready? So these are the assay results. You can see whole SND 20-033 from 186.9 to 188.2 interval in meters, 1.3 and gold with grams per ton of 13.3. And you can see the additional results. I don't have to explain them all. You can see them, impressive, impressive, impressive results. And you can see the historic core re-logging. Now we know there's a lot of gold lovers, gold investors that watch RHDB Live, that invest in junior miners and large cap gold and silver and copper and other types of miners. So this is one of those companies that everybody needs to be aware of. I mean, if you're looking to have some exposure to gold in your portfolio, there's very few companies over the last few months that have performed as well as gold mountain. And I mean, it's called gold mountain. It's a mountain of gold people. Drill, caller, locations, azimuths and dips for the drill holes included in this release are provided in the table below and have been posted up to the company's website for all drill holes. These are the drill caller locations. You can see all the drill holes and the elevation, the dips, the depths and all the information on the table below. So let's talk about the quality assurance, quality control, QA slash QC measures and analytical procedures. Gold mountain adheres to a strict QA slash QC monitoring program, quality assurance, quality control program that includes the insertion of blanks, standards and duplicates into the sample stream as well as the resubmission of select samples for check assays by an independent third party laboratory. Core samples were analyzed by ACT labs in Kamloops BC using fire assay methods with a gravimetric finish for results over 10 grams a ton gold. No material QA dash QC issues were noted with the results received from the laboratory who is the qualified person. The foregoing technical information was approved by Grant Carlson who is the qualified person as defined under national, the geologist under national instrument 43 dash 101 which is gold standard for miners and the chief operating officer for the company about gold mountain mining. Gold mountain is a British Columbia based gold and silver exploration and development company focused on resource expansion at the Elk gold project. A past producing mine located 57 kilometers from Merritt British Columbia, south central British Columbia. So you can find more information on the website. This is the big news and this is another catalyst for the company folks. Gold mountain announces additional phase one assay results. In fact, let's just watch this video again. I think we need to watch it again. I don't think some people were watching or listening. So let's watch it again. The purpose of these last two holes was to fill in some spatial data gaps as well as to get JDS and geotech information they need for their current PFS. These holes were drilled on the 26 and 2700 veins. They were drilled to fill some spatial data gaps as we were pushing our resource to the northeast. We were certainly expecting to hit exceptional gold grades on the down dip drilling on the 1300 vein and we were all pleasantly surprised to see these exceptional grades coming out of the 26 and 2700 vein near surface. Phase one re-logging was extremely successful when it discovered a vein that was 216 grams per ton. Re-logging has already identified another vein that was 47 grams per ton. It's really great that as new owners of the old gold property we were able to go out in this phase one drill program and hit mineralization in all 41 of our holes. 41 out of 41! Going into this program was the ability to show scale of the project. Not only did we hit our narrow veins for our open pit scenario, we also hit underground intercepts that show the scale and potential at depth. That's off to the team at ATV Exploration for a really successful phase one exploration program. We're really excited to get them back out into this field in May for phase two. Love them. Some big news guys, big, big, big news. And this is the website. You can find all the information there. And let's take a look at the stock. Shall we look at the stock? Could we look at the stock? All right, so where are we at? Where are we at? Where are we at? It says right here that it hit a high already today of $2.38 and it's already traded 76,000 shares. It has an average volume over the last three months of 186,000 shares. It's already hit, so we can see it's currently trading at 231. It's now traded 96,000, so 93,000 shares. It has an average volume over the last three months of 186,000 shares. It's hit a high of $2.38 already today and it's right now trading at $2.31. So this is just one of those rockets that just keeps going and going and going. And why not? I mean, it's a great story. It's hitting all kinds of gold and it's just getting started. This is just like a look at the American side. Currently at $1.85, pretty much unchanged so far. Did hit a high of $1.88 so far and the market is just getting started. What do you guys think of this news? I think it's huge. Been a huge fan of this company since day one. Congratulations to investors and members that got in early and in my opinion, this rocket is just getting started. Gold Mountain, GMTN, you can see right now, currently sitting around $2.30. With this news, I anticipate it's probably gonna have a pretty good day once this video circulates and people start realizing what the news is and they start hearing the results. I don't know if I've ever heard of anyone having 100% on their drills and hitting 41 out of 41 is just unheard of. Look at the volume now, 99,000 shares. Like I said, the average volume is 186,000 shares. It's already right around 100,000 shares and the market is just opening up. It's already hit a high of $2.38. Currently at $2.30. I'm gonna keep my eye on it. I hope you do too. Let me know what you guys think. Do you own this stock? Are you thinking about buying this stock? Did you buy and sell this stock? Do you like this stock? Let me know. Is your boy rich and rich to be live? We'll bring you the winners and we'll bring him to you first. Gold Mountain, it's been a rocket and in my opinion, it has incredible upside. Thank you guys for watching. If you're not winning, you're not watching. We bring the winners and we bring them to you first. Gold Mountain, been a rocket. Hope you guys got on board. If not, put it on your watches, put it on your radar. Let me know what you think. It's your boy Rich from Rich To Be Live and I'm out. Peace.


Here we are in our QuickBooks online test company file using the accountant view as opposed to the business view you can toggle between the two views by going to the cog up top and switching the view down below duplicating some tabs to put reports in like we do every time right click on the tab up top to duplicate it well duplicate again right clicking and duplicate once again back to the middle tab reports on the left opening up one of the favorites which of course is the balance sheet report as it's thinking tab into the right reports on the left closing up well let's hold on a second profit and loss then close up the hand boogie then we'll change that range from 0401 2 3 to 05 3123 that's the time frame we're working with this time there's our profit and loss of thus far tab into the middle closing the hand boogie scrolling up and ranging to the changing the same range as before 0401 2 3 to 05 3123 and run it back to the tab to the left noting that we're doing an e-commerce situation selling inventory but not on ground in a store but rather online in the cloud with the help and use of third-party software such as a Shopify or an amazon for example we're breaking out the sale side and the inventory tracking side tracking our inventory on a periodic type system with the help and use of an excel sheet that's going to be doing it in a weighted average method we started last time doing this and if you weren't following along then you'd probably want to see that one first because we're continuing with month number two of this exciting saga of of the inventory so now we're going to go back in here now last time we entered this in but i didn't make it into a formal table so now i'm going to do month number two but let's make this into like a formal table now so i'm going to select this whole thing i want to make sure it picks up everything in here i'm just going to make it into a table which has its pros and cons for adding new data i feel a little bit more secure when it's actually in a table format that it's not messing things up but sometimes it copies formulas in a way that you don't really like as well so there's pros and cons but we're going to select the whole thing and go to the home tab or not the home tab i'm in the home tab i'm going to the insert tab tables and i'm just going to make it into a table and so it's all selected that looks good uh my header has it has a header good and now it made it really wide because it it uh it extended all of the headers so now i'm going to reformat all of my headers to be basically the length uh that i want them to be so we'll redo all of the headers which yes is a little tedious but it's okay it's okay we're going to just make this nice and tight boom bring that in a bit this one needs to be in a bit i should probably make this exact to the other one from the other area but there we go now notice it also on the table headers when i made it into a table it it put a little number by each of the headers so it's distinguishing each of the headers because i had repeat header names now you might want to go in into each of these header fields and change these numbers to be like uh product two like all of these i might put all of these to correspond with a number two for product number two and what that could do is it could help us if we were ever trying to create a fancy pivot table or something to distinguish our headers here so change all these to product number two pour a hamplow and so let's do that and then let's make this skinny and this skinny and then this one i might change all the headers so like product number three i'll just put a three next to all the repeat headers so that if i was to make a pivot table that i wanted to do something fancy with then i could know which headers go where number three and there we go double click number three almost done mui saruka number three and this one number three and let's bring these in a bit as well all right so there is our table okay so now we we did the first month of uh of april of our operations and now we're going to continue on the second month and we're just going to to buy stuff as we need it so we're following along with our Shopify or our online store and we're looking at the units and seeing if we have the units that we need to to meet the need and we're saying that that we're getting short on some of the units so we're going to make a purchase in may so we're going to make the purchase and just record them on a cashed based system so let's say on five one and notice as i add five one it added another cell to my table and it pulled down most of the cells that i want to pull down automatically didn't pull this one down but notice that it's getting more automatic that's the point so this is going to be product number one which is going to populate kind of automatically once i start to populate it let's say that we're going to buy six more of these ones so now this is populating automatically because it's this plus this which is just six now and then we're going to buy them for the cost and i'm going to say that we buy them for 23 units each $23 each now if i bought this and i paid $138 plus the sales tax generally it's going to be included in the cost usually then i could say 138 divided by six would be 23 per unit right i might have to do that kind of the other way and then i'm going to copy this down just so i can have my formula and it's not doing anything because this isn't a sales formula this is the purchase side so this is the total cost and here's our total ending balance there was nothing in it before so that's where we stand at this point and then on product number two we're not buying any product number two or product number three at this time so let's just make sure that everything copies down like they should on these other ones so all the columns copy down so everything's copying down that needs to except for this one we copy that down and then same thing over here so let's just copy this one down and there we have it now the totals look good because now the the total is totaling up these ending balances and then the change is going to be this minus this which also so so that's going to be the purchase that we're going to make which also ties out to this number so let's record the purchase in uh quickbooks now and once we do the purchase then our ending inventory will change by that be up to 2948 so we're currently at 2810 so if i go back on over here and say quickbooks reports we're at 2810 we're going to make a purchase which we would see come through the bank feeds if we're on a cashed base system i'm just going to represent that with an expense form and we're going to say that that we're paying let's just use vendor number one again that's who we buy stuff from and this is going to be on five one and inventors the other side and we just purchased then how much was it again do you remember how much it was i forgot i'll tell you that 138 138 thank you 138 okay so this is going to increase inventory other side going to decrease the checking account let's save it close it check it out and go to our balance sheet running the balance sheet we should have a decrease to the checking account and let's see this on a side by side by the way hitting the drop down month by month side by side and we can see kind of our inventory at the end of april and then we made a change in the inventory purchasing it here and then uh the other sides on the checking account no impact on the p&l let's go to the p&l and let's check that one out in a month by month side by side as well so nothing on the uh this one should this is the sales i'm on the cost side so nothing's on the cost the goods sold for may thus far okay so let's go back on over here and the ending balance by the way is that two nine