Morning everyone. I think kudos to Deepak for a real Dilsey presentation and I think fabulously setting the context for today I think at this summit or by E4M. I think it's really great to see that you know how a brand purpose can really be at the center of creating an idea which actually becomes you know consumers movement in terms of being more healthy and technology enabling it. You know so at some point of time I really felt that you know there is a wellness session happening here because you could so much resonate with it and you could really feel that the brand is really doing its best in terms of bringing technology in terms of addressing the pain points.  So from healthy bodies to healthy vehicles to healthy tyres to healthy mobility to a healthier environment around us. You know that's what I am here today on behalf of Apollo tyres to talk to you about building a responsible and sustainable business. Someone mentioned or spoke to me a little while before that what is sustainable business and I said you know it lies in the answer the word itself sustainability is what will make a business sustainable. So the entire presentation today is actually about giving you a glimpse of Apollo tyres over its last 50 years how technology has been enabled into its product into us believing that we are contributing back to the environment plus the role that you as individuals as consumers as customers can play and how Apollo tyres as over the period of time moved out from just selling technology-driven tyres to solutions and services that is going to enable a much faster greener mobility world out there. But before that I thought the very fact that responsibility starts from within I just want to share a small story from my side in terms of you know I moved to Gurgaon maybe around 10 months back but one thing that I realized you know I use BlueSmart and I just happened to check my app this morning in terms of you know what is it that I have maybe contributed back to the environment and this is a picture from this morning itself you know while coming here I looked at the BlueSmart app I've taken 352 writes which are zero emission writes as per BlueSmart contributed 430 kilograms of carbon dioxide saved from emitting into the environment and of course you know more than 600 litres of fuel saved now there is a bit of pride that I have within myself as a consumer of contributing back to the environment and I think that story when I take forward to look at from what is happening in the auto world especially in the tire industry world it becomes immensely important for us to see what is it that is happening around us I am told that the largest tire dump yard can be seen from the sky you know so would you call it a seventh wonder or eighth wonder or would you call something else that is you know waiting for us to solve as a society as an industry zeroing it back into India more than 33 crore vehicles on the road almost 18 crore tires do we even know what happens to those tires once you know you are done with it and you replace with it I think that's a thought I want to leave in your mind in terms of what we can do together to see that we can make a much better sustainable business going forward Apollo tires has already taken on this mantle of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 our honorable Prime Minister has spoken about country being carbon zero by 2070 but Apollo tires is working very hard in terms of the circular economy in terms of sustainable resourcing of raw materials in terms of working with partners in terms of ensuring that how are manufacturing everything is more renewable in terms of energy in terms of using the latest technology whether it is IOT whether it is machine learning all of that will contribute towards making us carbon neutral by 2050 we already have actually developed tires on the farm tractor side as well as on the passenger vehicle side which are 75% sustainable material built it uses repurpose rubber it uses recycled metal it uses the recycled bead all of that that goes into the making of the tire to renew the material into making a much more sustainable tires and that's the promise that we want to do is without compromising on the performance how can we bring sustainability right in the center of what we sell which is tires and you know make the mobility a much greener mobility just for your information the lifecycle of a tire from birth to death if it is contributing and making an impact on the environment 90% of it happens when we use those tires which is when we use it on our vehicles right which is including the common emissions that we do with the fuels that this cars are running with and the other 10% is in the procurement of those tires whether it is in terms of the raw material whether it is in terms of moving the finished goods or in terms of disposing of the tires Apollo tires is well geared in terms of ensuring that there is an intervention that we are doing at every stage of the life cycle of a tire for example our Andhra Pradesh plant is today run on 100% biomass fuel we today have AI and ML industrial 4.0 being deployed in all our plants to bring down the wastage improve the efficiency by 10 to 15% which is a direct correlation to saving of of energy which is again you know better for the environment to ensuring that across 150 centers or delivery centers that we have across the country we are working on making the last mile mobility being run on electric vehicles to see that we can contribute back to the environment and of course I'm going to talk a little more in that 90% cycle stage where there's a lot of innovation that has happened in the world of tires whether it's energy efficient EV tires or light weighting and last but not the least is about recycling the end-of-life tires taking it back into the raw material through the sustainable source we are working with partners like Tyromur to see that we are as extended producer's responsibility ensuring that you know every tire that goes out there can be more sustainable than the one that you know last we produced a glimpse of therefore you know what Apollo tires has done now this is also technology which has been driven over a several decades here is an example of a product called andurace LD more than 1 crore tires have been sold in the market so far you know it has resulted into significant amount of saving whether we talk about the fuel that it saves you know the numbers speaks for themselves but also in terms of the material that goes behind in the making of these tires that makes it exceedingly important for us to say that sustainability has been at the center of everything that we have been doing like I said it's part of our vision we have been radializing the tire industry over the last several decades you all would know there is a bias tire and there is a radial tire and the difference between the two tires is that radial tires are 20% more low on rolling resistance which means almost up to 5% better fuel efficiency and longer life of the tires here is an example of a product called Apollo energy which is one of the leading fuel efficient tires that we have developed and just a simple maths if one truck runs a year which is a 12 wheeler truck running almost 120,000 kilometers it is almost equivalent to planting 51 trees that's the amount of saving that you do on the carbon dioxide and that really talks about driving sustainability at the core of what we offer to our consumers still continuing on the journey of the product offering we all have heard of the eviization that is happening in the mobility space maybe a show of hands how many of us are today driving an electric vehicle anyone in this room wow so these are some of the people who are you know moving ahead of times in terms of adopting greener options we have as Apollo tires tires for you you know we were amongst the first to develop four two wheelers and four wheelers electric vehicle dedicated tires we also have internationally one of our European brand Fred Stein is the first SUV electric dedicated tires which is an all season tire all of you know electric vehicles are silent electric vehicles because they don't have the IC combustion engine they have much faster traction because of the acceleration so there is a traction need and because of the range anxiety it needs to be far more efficient in terms of giving longer mileage for every battery charge happy to say that we've been able to deliver on all the three parameters across our products ensuring lower noise levels by three to five DB levels to five percent extra range that you could get in the same charge and of course a better traction so you get the same confidence that you can get in any other car when you when you are in your EV vehicles I'm sure the people who are in the audience who are driving the EV vehicles they can feel that the vehicle picks up in lesser than half the time that your regular IC vehicles does to reach 60 kilometer per hour or any other at the same time it needs therefore stronger grip and Apollo tires has developed that technology to make really EV ready vehicles just a glimpse of what rolling resistance technology can offer back to the environment this is for the work that we have done over the last four to five years where we've been able to really deliver much more energy efficient tires saved more than 204 lakh liters of fuel per year and which amounts to almost 650 to lack kg of carbon dioxide per year that's a lot of savings in the form of for the environment and obviously for your pockets as well government is obviously looking at what more can be done the new energy efficient norms by the Bureau of Energy is coming by 2024 January we all buy appliances you buy refrigerators you buy AC and you are always looking for the star rating on them very soon those star ratings are also going to be there on your tires which is going to give the power in your hand to make and buy more energy efficient tires glad to share that Apollo tires actually have already developed five-star tires and it's available across a range of PV vehicles light duty truck vehicles and that is again another commitment from Apollo tires to which they ahead of the time in terms of what we can do with our product and the technology with the purpose of providing sustainability at the center of everything that we do we also are partnering with the EV ecosystem so the largest 100% electric cab aggregators that are there in the India whether it is blue smart whether it is lithium they run on Apollo tires whether it is the OEMs which are leading in terms of bringing the latest EV vehicles out some of the pictures tell would definitely resonate with you in terms of Mahindra and Tata products they are also running on Apollo tires so we been able to get technology well ahead of time and partner with them to evise the market going forward one of the other things that as part of sustainable business is apart from reduce reuse I think it is about re-treading and renewing the tires if all our commercial truck customers out there whose running of their business and their fleet depends a lot on the cost of the vehicle and it's running at Apollo tires we today have more than 48 re-tread zones where you can actually it's almost like giving new life back to your tires up to 80% of the original which makes a lot of sense for them in terms of cost and in terms of giving back again to the environment the cost can be as less as 25% of an original tire we do more than 1.2 lakh tires for our customers and they are extremely happy and satisfied in terms of the performance that it gives them gives it back to them idea is to take it back across the Bharat mala you know that exists in the country to see that all the fleet customers get their services as promptly as possible having said that in terms of what we are doing for our commercial truck customers and in terms of what we offer in the EV world I also want to talk about the fact that you know all of us are today discovering products well early before even we buy them at Apollo tires we also have an e-commerce platform of buy online and fit offline which is tailor-made for you to discover the right product the right fitment of the tire which is a very very important thing that you get the right tire fitted for your cars as an organization we ensure that there is algorithm there is machine learning which proposes you and suggests and recommends you the right tire at the right dealer directs you takes an appointment for your vehicle at the same time triggers at the back end to the supply chain to ensure that the tire is available at the dealer so that their experience is seamless from online to offline with more than 3 million people coming on our platform on a monthly basis we've got almost 50 to 60 thousand consumers today engaging through this platform in buying their tires and in this journey they are being recommended the right tires which often they may not get when they reach out in in a regular environment in an open market so you are taking informed choices when you are actually joining Apollo tires early in this journey I think one of the biggest innovation that we are seeing happening is digitization of the tire records that exists we have launched a digital app called evolve it offers an end to end tire management services for our fleet customers imagine a large fleet customer with more than 100 trucks which might be carrying your essential medicines to to your loved durables that you would want at your home or for that matter the fresh vegetables that might be moving from the farms into the cities now how do they ensure that they optimize these trucks so that they don't fail at the wrong time their uptime is always up there is a lot of dependence on the performance of the tires today at Apollo through evolve we are able to generate more than 50 data points for a tire in terms of its health in terms of where it is in terms of where in the vehicle it is fitted what is its tire pressure what is its temperature what is its tread wear length everything to ensure that it gives predictive analysis to see that the life of the tire when is right time for it to be switched at the same time being extended which has given almost 10 to 15% operational efficiencies to our fleet customers and they are able to therefore keep the uptime of the trucks much higher resulting into delivering for their customers in much faster and in lesser cost this is an innovation where we have worked significantly with with our knowledge partners who have brought in the whole understanding of how can we use data analytics how can we use performance in terms of understanding the machine learning and hence offer that to our customers in a big way our ambition is to take it to all the large fleet customers in the country and then slowly take it to the smaller and the medium-sized fleet customers and there's been a encouraging response on the same last but not the least I also want to talk about the fact that Apollo tires is also repurposing tires for the new generation let me show you how we dare to dream overcome the odds believe in ourselves and hope to change the world we don't need a reason to play we trust need opportunities to unleash our potential and achieve our goals every year around one billion tires and their purpose and artist carded and in the right hands these tires can help save the environment to make the world a better place so we had an idea we decided to use rubber from old tires to make crumbs to create sustainable football pitches giving us access to sport while bringing people closer together together we can go the distance lay the grounds for a better future yes that tires to turf journey we have started it with almost 20 pitches that exist across three countries we plan to take it to hundred pitches at least apart from the playgrounds that we have invested wherever our plants are and this has been a very very exciting journey for us because it allows us to also make tires relevant and the brand relevant to the young consumers and as we all know football is one of the growing sport and one of the passion that all the kids want to really explore so it allows the brand to give back to the society in a way where the kids also connect and relate back to the brand and that's something that we will continue working on going forward now having said that in terms of you know how purpose is in the center of driving our product strategy our service strategy our consumer engagement strategy I think I would also use this opportunity to say that what can be your part in terms of contributing back to the environment what can you do you know P which is pressure many of us today are driving tires sorry driving vehicles which have got tire pressure monitoring system right for those who don't I think it's very important to check tire pressure a for alignment wheel alignment is not only important for your tire life it's extremely important for your vehicle maintenance as well as for your vehicle longevity and for the performance that you get out of it rotation is a very important part of ensuring that the tire is rotated periodically and last but not the least tread wear indicator I'm sure many of us in the room may or may not know how to look for the tread wear I will not bore you here on that there is enough on the YouTube to see but it's a very important piece for us to see that you know while bold people can be in fashion but bold tires can't be so please watch out for that tread wear indicator on your vehicle and if you do and play your part as suggested here I can tell you that you can get 30 to 50% more life out of your vehicle's tire and as a result it only not only contributes back to the environment but it is also lighter on your pocket so it really makes sense for you to see that tire which is the most critical part between you and the road in terms of safety and performance is also taken care and you look at the health of the tire today with the same level that you would see any other performance that you want from your vehicle and in the end I just want to reinforce as to what all Apollo tires has been doing over the last several years and how we are ready for the future from my side and let's together go green go the distance thank you so much mr. Vikram Garga for your wonderful wonderful insights and especially how you brought the sustainability angle we just celebrated the world environment day around 10 days back and it was beautiful to see what you're doing I also love the name evolve it very similar to evolve and I am sure it has been taken from there and it also brought the lessons of physics you know the rotation and you know the way you are sharing I'm sure most of us would relate to that so thank you so much one question I have for you if marketers had the ability to control one social media platform for a day which platform would you choose and why for a day yes I think today people's life is taken over by social media right and often the trend setting happens though at Twitter if I could use that word because people pick up news people pick up events people pick up information on Twitter and often look for authenticity and credibility of that information coming from that source I would say that maybe if it's a very very important event if it's a very important milestone it's something that one is really looking for credibility maybe Twitter is the place to go for but I would want to also mention that the new age consumers are also very very information hungry on other social media platforms and Instagram for example is really picking up and today I think Instagram is not only entertaining people it is not only engaging them in terms of information and knowledge but it is also allowing them to actually share their point of view in a very very interesting and engaging manner so I see there's a lot of engagement that happens on the Instagram so if it is about you know two-way engagement and it is about giving someone the the power of reaching out even if you are a common man sometimes I find Instagram does that job better whereas on Twitter you need big followers and then you follow them so I think I'll have to make two choices and not one choice for this thank you thank you


Well, my dear students, the course is Labour Policy Pakistan and the topic in hand is the 18th Amendment and Pakistan's political transition. My dear students, you would be enlightened to know that the 18th Amendment gives the parliament, the prime minister, the judiciary and the provincial governments greater autonomy under the constitution. My dear students, as a matter of fact, the 18th Amendment and acts more than 100 changes, both large and small to Pakistan's constitution. My dear students, us be shamil hai, removing presidential powers to circumvent the normal legislative process and limiting the amount of time the president may consider bills passed by parliament before approving them under Article 75 of the Constitution of Pakistan 1973. The next change is removing the infamous, very infamous Article 58 to be which granted the power to unilaterally dismiss parliament under vague emergency provisions. Neither president nor prime minister will have a direct role in judicial appointments under the 18th Amendment. My dear students, the appointments will instead be handled by a two-tire system that is a judicial commission. A judicial commission, my dear students, will propose nominees and a special parliamentary committee split evenly between the government and the opposition will confirm them. This is under Article 175A of the Constitution of Pakistan 1973. My dear students, the seven-member judicial commission will be chaired by the Chief Justice who will effectively control four of the seven seats with the remaining three comprising the federal law minister, the attorney general and a senior lawyer of the Pakistan Bar Council. My dear students, you would be delighted to know that the 18th Amendment eliminates the concurrent legislative list and enumeration of areas. My dear students, the concurrent legislative list is an enumeration of areas where both federal and provincial governments may legislate but federal law prevails. My dear students, you would be delighted to know that the laws governing marriage, contracts, firearms, possession, labour, educational, curriculums, environmental pollution, bankruptcy and 40 other diverse areas will now devolve to the provinces. After the 18th Amendment, the 40 areas with which the provinces have been legislated by its students, the reformers who have introduced the 18th Amendment say that the reformers have considered this my year as a necessary shift for a more federal system. But there are some concerns about the ability of provincial governments to assume effective regulatory authority in these areas which have been vested now in the province. Hope you have understood the topic and as a matter of fact, my dear students, if you are interested in knowing what exactly in detail is the 18th Amendment, you may consult or Google or consult the Constitution of Pakistan 1973. Hope you have understood the topic. Thank you very much indeed.


Hey guys, Shea Bear 1000 here. Today I'm going to show you how to make easy homemade bread. You don't even have to touch it and I'll even show you that. Stay tuned. We have our ingredients here. We have three cups of bread flour. We've got 12 ounces of warm water, there which is a cup and a half. We have one teaspoon of instant yeast. And we have one to one and a half teaspoons of salt. So what we're going to do, first we're going to start off. We're going to pour in our water into the bowl, just like that. And our salt, love the smell of that. Now we're just going to stir this up a little bit. I'm just using the end of a spoon. I'm just going to let that dissolve in the warm water I've also warmed my pan up. I just let it set out and let it get room temperature away from the air conditioner. So that way my water doesn't get cold. It doesn't have to be hot water, just warm water. Okay, we're going to take our flour, three cups. I'm just going to kind of put it in there so it doesn't splash. We're going to take the end of our spoon and we're just going to mix this up, incorporate it. I guess this is, this would be a mixture. So we're just going to go like this, scrape the sides of the bowl down. I just got this little rubber, people want to say poof every time I do this. Which is just a fancy term for letting it rise. You're going to want it hefter. So if you've got your air on like I had my air going to take 90 minutes, an hour and a half. Okay, so there we've got this. Now you can use saran wrap. I happen to have this nice lid for this bowl, I'm just going to set it right on top like that. Now I'm going to set it in the oven for 90 minutes, about 80 degrees. So I'm going to set the, and then we should be able to, once we take it out, it should double in size. And then I'll show you the next step. Now while we're waiting on this to rise, I want to tell you this is not my recipe. I've got, I got this off of a gentleman on YouTube. He goes by Artisan Bread with Steve. And he does stuff like this on there. That's who I got this from, this idea, recipe, whatever. And it was the easiest one I have ever found. But this is the first time I'm trying it. So you guys will be trying it with me. So you know, really three ingredients, four if you count water, but you're just going to need your bread flour. You can use regular flour, it just doesn't rise as much. You can use self rising flour or yeah, self rising flour, but he used bread flour. That's what I'm using. So you're going to need flour, your yeast and your salt. Like I said, a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half or half teaspoon. You can also put honey in this. You can have honey bread if you're going to be baking buns out of it or whatnot. So let's let this do its thing for 90 minutes and then I'll show you the next step. In 90 minutes, we're going to take this out of the oven, set this up here. It should have doubled in size and it did. So what we're going to do, monkey just went and got these, I'm going to use those aluminum pans.  I'll show you. So she decided we'll just go ahead and get those. I'm going to make so we can have them. So the first thing we're going to want to do, now I'm doing this. If you watch a guy's video, I'm doing it exactly the way he did. I'm not copying off of him. I just want this to turn out good. And his channel, now we're going to spray these. His channel is Artisan Bread with Steve. So check him out. Just want to, we're going to coat it with spray. This is all I've got here. I guess any spray will work. I don't know if you can use oil, I'm sure you can. So what we're doing, he called it a poor man's dutch oven, which I've done this before. Okay, so that's going to be our bottom. Now our top, we're just going to have to get around the edges. What I want to do is flour this. So you're just going to sprinkle a little flour on here. This right here, we've got these little clips, these binders or whatever you want to call them. Now we're going to set this aside and let it prove for another 30 more minutes. While we're doing that, we're going to preheat the oven to 400 degrees. So let's go ahead and set this aside. I want to set. Now we're going to let this heat up 30 minutes and then I'll be back with you and we'll put the bread in. 400 degrees, this has proved for another 30 minutes. Now we're going to put this into the oven, 35 minutes. I'll see you guys in 35 minutes. Well actually for you guys, it'll just be a second, but for me it'll be 35 minutes. I'll be back with you and then I'll show you what we're going to do next. We're almost done with this process. Okay guys, it's been 35 minutes. Let's open this up. Now what we're going to have to do is we're going to take the top off of here. Then we're going to bake it for 5 to 10 more minutes to brown to finish the crust. So let's see what we've got. Now I'm going to keep it on. I'm going to put it back in. You guys see that? Now you can see it. Now I'm going to put it back in and for 5 to 10 more minutes I'm just going to keep an eye on it through the window and then I've got monkeys sneaking around here. Oh you're good. Good again. Yay. Okay so let's get it back. That is another video. Alright, I'm doing two videos at the same time here. So let's put this in there. I'm going to give it 5 minutes and then we'll check on it and I'll bring it out and show you when it's done what we have. Take this out and see how it looks. It smells spectacular. This is what I used to do. I've made homemade bread hundreds of times but never like this so I would like to thank Mr. Artisan Bread with Steve for this. He's got recipes online as well so we're going to let this cool and then we're going to try a bite of it. So let's let it cool a little bit, let that butter get nice melted on there, then we're going to try it. A taste tester, her name is Monkey right here beside me. Let's cut into this. You can tell. Look at the steam. Where do you want butter on it? Yes. I'm going to cover this up so she's going to get some butter. I'm going to give this a shot. Okay Monkey, ready to try your bread? Yep. Give it a shot. Let's see what you think of it. How good is it? Oh a hundred percent. Bring me off a piece of it that way. You're never buying bread again. You like bake it all the time now. Nice and piping hot. Nice. Mmm. Oh my gosh. Isn't that good? And you can put honey in it, make your honey bread. Yeah. Good idea honey. You said you won't make your bread today. Forget to check out Artisan Bread with Steve. He's where I got this from. It's not my recipe unfortunately, but it's very, very good isn't it. You know a couple hours of your time and you can make more than one loaf at a time. So, there you go. What do you think? Very nice. Very nice. Okay. You ready for a steak? Cooker steak. Thanks for watching guys. Appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Shea Bear. I'm gone for now. That's it for now. Bye y'all. Alright. Meet the man of legends. We'll see you soon. Bye bye guys.


Okay, we're back here live at the Velocity Conference. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We go out to the events to check the signal from the noise. I'm here with Kate Matsudaira, who is the founder and CTO of PopForms, which is leadership software. But you're also involved with O'Reilly Media, who runs this event in a lot of different capacities. One is this new Cultivate project. Welcome to theCUBE. Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be here. We love to have folks who are doing a couple different things. One is you're doing a startup, your own. You've a tech geek, and you're working on an event, which means you've got to have some savvy around content programming. You've got to read the tea leaves. Kate got to do what we do at SiliconANGLE, try to figure out what's going to be relevant. That takes a lot of work. And it sounds trivial, but it's not that easy. Well, I'm definitely really opinionated on these things around technology and leadership. I started my career as an engineer, and really had struggled my way through management. And so I've been blogging about it and things like that. So I, and for them, it's the content's easy, because I know all the things I wish someone would tell me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Get to the point, will ya? And it's fun too. Now, what's exciting about us, I mean, SiliconANGLE's only four years old, and our research side, Wikibon, and we love working with O'Reilly, because they're like such big pros, is that we, the word's already out there. There's a lot of content already online. And so the content business has changed, but there's also a need for in-depth, a little bit more, but not to the community levels, but it's more like, okay, I want to think. I call it thinking content, right? Like just enough collaboration. That sparks a lot of creativity. So with that is, what's the focus of Cultivate? What's your thinking around Cultivate? Well, so for Cultivate, we really wanted to create a conference for software and technology leaders, or aspiring leaders. So all the things that you kind of have to really think about and care about from technology trends to the culture, there's this big trend right now to flatter organizations. I talk about it as leaders everywhere. Everybody is a leader in their own way, and how do you empower them? But also, how do you harness all that? Because great ideas don't just come from the top, right? Like great ideas come from everywhere. So if your company can leverage that, it gives you a big advantage. You know, one of the things, first of all, we talk about this all the time, is mostly on the IT enterprise space, which is going through a lot of massive transformation to just basic business. I mean, one of the themes here at Velocity that's interesting is that things like e-commerce. Because this performance web thing hits a lot of the main world, the real world, retail, commerce, healthcare, not just the web firms, but those guys with the leaders. So I think there's a real leadership need for, okay, how do I think about reconstructing my value chains? Because big data changes that. Okay, great. Well, what about cloud? Well, now you have an elastic resource. That's a resource. So the resource changing dynamics are causing business folks to go, wait a minute, I can measure things and I can get business value? Why aren't I running IT? So there's a mindset around that versus I got my laptop, it was issued to me by the company, here's my forms, here's my BI, here's my data warehousing. Well, and I also feel like. What do you see? Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. And I think there's a trend too. Like, they say that this is the first time where there's really like these three concurrent generations in the workforce. And with the millennials, you know, they kind of have different values, different trends. And so what worked previously doesn't work anymore. And so, yeah, so what we're trying to do with the conference is just create a really great forum for people to talk about this. So, you know, technology and technical topics are really great, but there's a lot of people doing really cool and interesting things, right? And velocity is great because they have a lot of culture and process. But with Cultivate what we're trying to do is make it even a higher level. So CEOs and, you know, VP of Engineering, CTOs, CIOs, like it's the conference for them to talk about their jobs. And what are you seeing as the critical success factors for them in terms of CTOs? Is it scheduling? Is it human resource issues? Is it all the above? It's always human, it's always people. You, like, always talk about how technology problems, like people will hire me as a consultant to come help with the technology problem and it's always a people problem. And what's the biggest problem you've seen? The biggest problem, I mean, well. Not being collaborative? It's a difficult collaboration, organization. You know, a lot of it is learning how, you know, being able to really understand yourself and understand those around you and work together. I don't know, it's hard to say. No, it's no wonder. Hiring, a lot of people will tell you. Hiring wrong, yeah. So let's talk about some concepts we talked about in theCUBE earlier. So, velocity, velocity is not just a cloud, it's not just performance and UX. But the UI teams are usually different. I got a UI team over here, I got a backend team over here, and they were siloed before. So, you know, breaking down the silos. Okay, that's great. We'll break down the silos. But what does that mean? How do you organize that? How does that change someone's job? Is what people want to know. They want to know, am I going to lose my job? How do I build my career path so that I can, you know, take some risks but not worry about getting fought? You know, these are little things that are big, right? Yeah, I know. Well, I know from my own personal experience, right? Like I started my career and you wanted to build like deep technical skills. Like that's what you wanted. And then when you came in the manager, you're like, oh, I need some people skills, right?  And then you're like, I need sales and marketing skills. And it becomes like you really need to kind of be more well-rounded and you need to have more of this. And I think to lead technology, it's not just enough to be a great technologist anymore. So talk about pop forms and your keynote here at Velocity because obviously, we can talk more about the culture of the economy. I want to just find out what you thought about your keynote and how it was positioned in context to the alpha geeks that were here. Yeah, so, well, platforms were about building leadership software. So a lot of what I'm talking about, but the keynote was really about influencing without authority. So I think that no matter what your role is here, that there's probably ways that you can be more influential, more helpful. And at the end of the day, people in success are really tightly intertwined. And so if you don't learn that piece of it, I don't think that you can really be as successful as maybe your potential would allow you to be. What's the biggest thing that you've learned that you can share with folks around? Is this some of the challenges that people are facing today that really are going to be more important in the future but that they can start changing now? Because change is hard, right? It changes like, you know, people fear change, but it's also like, if you take your medicine early or you do something early, it will pay dividends versus the unwinding of bad behavior or bad practices. What do you think people should be focusing on now that will pay dividends that might not be that obvious? I think, you know, really understanding what your strengths and weaknesses are and like in a company, like what you're good at, what you're not good at. So you kind of can think about hiring for that or just even being aware of your blind spots. I think that's one of the things they always talk about. Another thing I would even say is just, you know, you can be really great at your job, but your job is also making sure everyone else knows what you're doing. And so building that trust and having those communication lines so that you can share that with the world. So give the folks some URLs to the Cultivate or your coordinates if they want to contact you with any questions. So the Cultivate conference is CultivateCon.com. And if you should come, it's in New York, it'll be awesome. And then my company is PopForms.com and you know, I'm Kate Matz on Twitter. I think we'll be there with theCUBE. Kate, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate you coming on. I think what you're doing is amazing. On a personal note, I just think that we are at the beginning of a massive explosion of, I won't say reeducation and whenever you have a redistribution of wealth during these major inflection points, you have opportunities for entrepreneurs, but there's a bigger picture and that is the DBA might be the data scientist. There's all kinds of changes that are happening in the technology business. So it's an opportunity. So thank you for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. This is Silicon Angles Coverage of Velocity. We'll be right back after this short break. Day two, Walter Walt Coverage live. I think we have 16 interviews today, 17 yesterday. Go to siliconangle.com to see all the blog coverage. Go to youtube.com slash siliconangle. See all the videos on demand. They go live from here, right to YouTube. And of course, go to wikibond.org for free research. We'll be right back after this short break.


This is Dr. Russo, I'm here with Zanada, who has done great with graves and twisted her arm to get her to sit down and chat today. We've been working together now a little over two years, I believe. Yes, since 2016. Yeah. So, and you first came in with graves. There's a mild case of graves, and you had responded really well to my thymosal, which is one of the frontline medications that's used. But you wanted to see what else you could do not to need the medication and to kind of manage the graves. And she had done a great job with research on her own, looking into the paleo diet, autoimmune paleo diet. So, the autoimmune paleo diet was a diet that we used. We also found some dysbiosis in the gut, namely yeast. And we also used some of the natural compounds that can help with thyroid autoimmunity, which underlies and causes the graves, hyperthyroidism, and also some natural agents that can help to calm down the high levels of thyroid hormones. And you responded beautifully. Yeah, it was a process in its own. Before I met you, I did a lot of research, obviously. And just wanting to find a more holistic, functional way to treat things, rather than the conventional side of things. True. Which I think makes sense, right? Because thymosal, I think, is a fairly good drug. But it begs the question, what else could we do besides the thymosal to mitigate the need for the thymosal? And you've been off the thymosal now for, what, about six months? Yeah, six months. Six months? Yeah. So now she's been off the thymosal for about six months, and also weaned off a good amount of the items in our natural program, and expanded her diet. And that was one of the things you talked about today, was not being afraid of food, and not getting freaked out about the stuff you've done on the internet, and finding your own tolerance to these different foods based upon your reintroduction. Gluten seems to be the one food, thankfully out of all of them. The only food that you're really reactive to is gluten, so you're avoiding that. And are there anything else there that you think is not worthy? I think the big thing is, just, with this whole process, just kind of knowing and being more attentive to your body, and just planning out the next steps on whether you're reacting to something or how you're feeling, because that's huge. Just being more mindful and knowing what is the things that we are reacting to, figuring out how to make you feel better. And that was the biggest process of this whole journey. Definitely there's some things that I'm working on, like sleep and hair, obviously. But definitely this whole journey taught me how to eat better. It's given me better habits on just living life and changing my lifestyle. And you make a lot of great points. I think it is, just like you said, important to listen to your body, because if you don't listen to your body, then you listen to everyone else. And there's all these dietary restrictions recommended. And so you can just get pulled further and further into dietary restrictions, rather than like you're doing now, which is broadening your diet and figuring out the broadest diet possible. So, yeah, I think listening to your body is really key. And then also just keeping in mind that with time, your body will heal.  And in your case, there's, I think, one simple thing. And we talked about adrenal testing and a lot of things that I think are putting in the car before the horse. But right now, the final tweak, at least in my mind, and we'll know this better probably in about three or four weeks, is your carbon take may be a little bit too low. And that may be what's driving your only two lingering complaints, which are getting better with time, but they're not fully kind of getting better, which are waking up early and hair thinning. And that can be caused by graves, but it can also be caused by being too low carb for too long.  And now that we're seeing those symptoms lagging, and we discussed today, bringing her carbs up to about 175 to 200 grams a day and have a good feeling that that's going to totally sort out your sleep and your hair, and I think you're going to do really well. Yeah, it's definitely the art of fine-tuning. Yeah, fortunately. There's the fine-tuning phase, which is great. Definitely. Definitely it was this, you know, things don't happen overnight.  Yeah. And, you know, the positive side of things is that you'll know yourself better. Just by all the things that you're observing, and you'll feel better too. Yeah. And just as one thing, this is a point in which I know the audience knows this, we did some testing, right? Yeah. But would you say we did a lot of testing? We didn't. Yeah. And we didn't need to, right? Yeah. You use testing to kind of get a lay of the land and figure out what some of the key aspects are. And that's it. I don't need to, you know, I didn't need to beat you over the head with this constant repeat testing, and a lot of this stuff is just good clinical horse sense staring the ship. And yeah, you've done great. She's got a beautiful family. They were all in here just three months ago. And I'm super happy with how you did. And a couple other things we'll tweak now, but I think in a few weeks you'll be pretty much at like 99% and I'm really happy for you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for taking the time to share this. Definitely.


So my name is Nancy Eisen and I'm the gun family chief curator at the Barnes Foundation. Now I'm working from home today, but I'd like you to come monitor it with me to the foundation itself. And what I want to do is to take you into Gallery 20, which is a room that focuses on works on paper. So it's quite an intimate room. And as you can see, the arrangement of works is still symmetrical. You can sense that pattern of frames that Barnes created across our walls. But what I want us to do is to look very closely at two sheets, which from where we're standing now simply seem to balance out the arrangement. But when we get close, we see they have really distinct characters of their own. They're made by the Spanish artist Goya, who was born in 1746. They were produced around 1812 to 1820. That's a dating that comes from the Goya scholar, Julia Wilson Barrow. And really, they are just so, so different. Let's look closely at them straight away. This is the later of the two sheets, which Barnes actually shows us first. You can see there at the top, it has the number 75 on it, and that was a number that Goya placed on it himself. Now, Goya started to make drawings in the late 1700s. He'd been ill. He'd entered a period of convalescence. He lost his hearing. And it's quite possible that drawing offered him a way of making art that was physically manageable. These pieces are very small scale. And usually, in this album, at least, they're made with a brush. You can see this is worked up in ink. And they are things that are made for his private pleasure, we think. Unfortunately, Goya had come across censorship of his work in the past. And so this was a way of making something in private. He could explore his ideas, images. He could criticize things. He could play with different sorts of social oddities. So really, it's hard to pin down the subjects. But what we can say is that they do seem to reflect different aspects of life. Often, this album is called The Images of Spain album. And I want us just to enjoy the visuals. Now, look at this wonderful expression. One of these characters here just seems to have about two teeth. He's dancing with a woman who has no teeth at all. And in just a few strokes, Goya really manages to create such humor. I also really enjoy this older figure here who has a face that's almost bordering on the grotesque. And he's wearing hardly anything. So we can see this bony arm. We can see these wonderful knock knees, the white of the knee there, just becoming the white of the page. And again, just to just describe very, very loosely in the background of the scene, we see a woman singing and playing guitar.  Now, it might be helpful to understand that Goya lived through really troubled times in Spain. And let's look at the second of the sheets with that in mind. What does it show? It shows a single man on a mule who is being attacked at all angles. To start with, the mule he's on is bucking in fear, we imagine. And there are hounds to his feet, to his body, just really ferociously attacking him. And on top of his head, perhaps most terrifying of all, we have this cat who is hissing at one of the dogs and barring its claws. So we really get a sense of how painful this picture must be or this experience must be. And if you just look behind this grouping, you sense that this is part of something much more violent. Again, figures fighting there, just described in a few little brushstrokes and more dogs fleeing across the page in what looks like an open landscape. You can just see the suggestion of trees and some sort of woodland beyond. You'll see here too that this sheet is 39. So there's quite a number of works between this one and the one we've seen previously. Now, Goya lived through incredibly troubled times in Spain. In his lifetime, France had occupied Spain not once, but twice. And he'd also lived through the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. So he'd seen corruption coming from the church, coming from the state and really had seen the worst of human behaviors. And that, in a sense, becomes one of his subjects. What is human behavior like? Often his works border on dreams or nightmares or insanity. Really all these sort of different facets of life and behavior. There aren't set stories to these pieces. They really are, if you like, springboards to the imagination. They bring up all sorts of associations. Now, what I can say for me very happily is that these works bring really fun associations. Like many of you, I'm missing my friends. And I have some really dear friends who work on Goya. They got together in the Courtauld Institute in London a few years ago. And they made a wonderful exhibition around Goya's album D. So another of the drawings albums that Goya made and which scholars later gave these letters just to sort of try and establish a chronology. And in thinking about this talk, I've been chatting to them. I want to thank Mark McDonald, who's a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, and Edward Payne, who's a scholar at the University of Durham. And Stephanie Book, who masterminded that project, she's the deputy director of the museum's interest in these wonderful people who really opened my eyes to Goya. And I hope that I've been able to share something of the enthusiasm that they sparked in me when they helped me to discover this wonderful artist. So I really do urge you to look closely at Goya when you go to the Barnes next. And in the meantime, to think about the friends you're missing and the things that they've helped you to learn over the years. Do tune into Barnes Takeout tomorrow. We really enjoy giving you your daily serving of art. Thank you very much. Goodbye.


Today in world literature, we turn to the work of the Italian writer Italo Calvino. A Cuban-born novelist and short story writer, Calvino settled in Turin after World War II. His first novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders, published in 1947, is based on his experiences in the Italian resistance during the Second World War. In the 1950s, he wrote a trilogy of novels in which he creates an allegory for the political and social situation in post-war Italy. During the 1960s, he continued his work as a fantasist. And in 1972, rather, he wrote Invisible Cities, based on the journals of Marco Polo. His 1979 novel, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, is intricate enough in casting roles for the reader in embedded stories within stories that it may be compared to the work of a later Italian novelist, Umberto Eco, and his 1981 novel, The Name of the Rose. The short story, The Adventure of a Reader, examined by Dr. David Rothenberg, is taken from a volume entitled, Difficult Loves. Broadly, The Adventure of a Reader is a romantic comedy, the kind of story in which a protagonist overcomes adversity to reach happiness. That, as we will see, that, which our protagonist must overcome, is his own fascination with literature. OK, Italo Calvino is one of the greatest and most beloved of contemporary European writers. He died in 1985, born in 1923. His writing has this unique blend of philosophy and poetry and humor and a deep, perceptive way of looking at the way the world appears. It's very visual and very sort of sensual, but in a kind of guarded and humorous manner. In this story, The Adventure of a Reader, it comes from a book of whole different short stories all titled, The Adventure of, The Adventure of, Little Adventures. Things that actually could happen, probably interesting tales, some of them I tell you, late one night at a bar somewhere, well this happened to me, and they bring up the story, and at the same time they're sort of vested with this deep reflectivity that makes them really sort of gem-like examples of great literature. Listen to the way he describes the situation of his character, Amadeo Oliver, a man obsessed with reading, but who also likes to go from the book into the real world. The coast road ran high above the cape, the sea was below a sheer drop, and on all sides as far as the hazy mountainous horizon. The sun was on all sides too, as if the sky and the sea were two glasses magnifying it. Down below against the jagged, irregular rocks of the cape, the calm water slapped without making foam. Amadeo Oliver climbed down a steep flight of steps, shouldering his bicycle, which he then left in a shady place after closing the padlock. He continued down the steps amid spills of dry yellow earth and agaves, jutting into the void, and he was already looking around for the most comfortable stretch of rock to lie down. Under his arm he had a rolled up towel, and inside the towel his bathing trunks and a book, and Amadeo is obsessed with books. Books are not so much his life, but what he wants to deal with on vacation, as many people take a book to the beach and they're out in this beautiful place and they're staring at the pages. Why? Why is Amadeo so interested in books out there in the sun by the sea? Here on page 636, for some time Amadeo had tended to reduce his participation in active life to the minimum. Not that he didn't like action, on the contrary, love of action nourished his whole character, all his tastes, and yet from one year to the next the yearning to be someone who did things declined, declined, till he wondered if he ever really harbored that yearning. His interest in action survived, however, in his pleasure in reading. His passion was always the narration of events, the stories, the tangle of human situations, 19th century novels especially, but also memoirs and biographies and so on down to thrillers and science fiction, which he didn't disdain but which gave him less satisfaction because they were so short. Amadeo loved thick tomes and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great risk, like this class, perhaps, he'd weigh these books to see how heavy they were. So here he's out there trying to read. This is risky to him. He's been dealing with life enough, you don't quite know what he did before, but now it's the book and he's got a guarded view to this whole kind of thing of reading. He's not voracious, really, but careful on the next page. Amadeo had reached the age when rereading a book for the second, third or fourth time affords more pleasure than a first reading, and yet he still had many continents to discover. Every summer the most laborious packing before his departure for the sea involved a heavy suitcase to be filled with books. Following the whims and dictates of the months of city life, each year Amadeo would choose certain famous books to reread and certain authors to essay for the first time, and there on the rock he went through them, lingering over sentences, often raising his eyes from the page to ponder, to collect his thoughts, at a certain point raising his eyes in this way. He saw that on the little pebble beach below in the cove a woman had appeared and was lying there. Distraction. She was deeply tanned, thin, not very young or particularly beautiful, but nakedness became her. She wore a very tiny two piece rolled up the edges to get as much sun as she could, and Amadeo's eye was drawn to her. He realized that as he read he was raising his eyes more and more often from the book to gaze into the air. This air was the air that lay between that woman and himself. This is classic calvino. It starts to, this obvious attractive situation he's starting to philosophize. This was the air that lay between Amadeo and the woman. And he starts describing her as if she's some sort of character, his reading. Amadeo classified the type, the independent woman, on holiday by herself, who dislikes crowded beaches and prefers the more deserted rocks and likes to lie there and become black as coal. He evaluated the amount of lazy sensuality and of chronic frustration there was in her. He thought fleetingly of the likelihood of a rapidly consummated fling, measured it against the prospect of a trite conversation, a program for the evening, probable logistic difficulties, the effort of concentration always required to become acquainted even superficially with a person. And he went on reading. Convinced this woman couldn't interest him at all. So all this calculation in his head, you know. You could imagine it. Have you done something like this at the beach, maybe? But then, you know, he's just sitting there just a little bit too long and he gets restless and he starts getting distracted from this whole reading question. Then what happens? Well, you've read the story. I don't have to tell you. Hope you've done your homework. There's some kids. They find a jellyfish and gets involved. Warren's about them being dangerous. And then, you know, then they make casual conversation. And they try and talk a bit. Amadeo wanders over there. She talks to him and says, hey, you're reading. Do you read all the time? Interesting. Yes. Enjoy yourself. Thank you. He mustn't raise his eyes again, at least not until the end of the chapter. He read it in a flash. The lady now had a cigarette in her mouth and motioned to him and she pointed to it. Amadeo had the impression that for some time she'd been trying to attract his attention. I beg your pardon. Do you have a match? Sorry. Oh, very sorry. I don't smoke. The chapter was finished. Amadeo rapidly read the first lines of the next one, which he found surprisingly attractive. He's talking about the chapter of the book, not the woman. But to begin the next chapter without anxiety, he had to resolve as quickly as possible the matter of the match. Wait, he says, and he goes and finds a match and casually warming up. She says, hey, let's go swimming. They start to get to know each other a little better and she motions him over. Hey, why are you lying there in that hard rock? Come onto the mattress, an air mattress. I'll make room for you. The invitation was polite. The mattress was comfortable. Amadeo gladly accepted. They lay there. He facing in one direction and she the other. She didn't say another word. She leafed through those illustrated pages and Amadeo managed to sink completely into his reading. Significant that she's reading a glossy women's magazine and he's reading some serious novel. The novel had reached the point where the darkest secrets of characters and plot are revealed. And you move in a familiar world, you achieve a kind of parity and ease between author and reader. You proceed together and you would like to go on forever. Now is that the moment we've reached in this story as well, do you now have this easy sense of who these characters are? And it seems like the perfect moment right here. He's not quite sure what to do. He's lying this way. She's lying that way next to each other on the mattress. Something's wrong, he asked. Don't you ever get tired of reading? She said. You could hardly be called good company. Don't you know that with women you're supposed to make conversation? Conversation, he said aloud. What kind of conversation? He extended his hand toward her.  Maybe she'll give me a slap and go away. The woman's reply consisted of a movement, first slow as if resigned and a bit ironic. She lowered her chin to one side to trap his hand, then rapid as if in a calculated, aggressive spring.  Ow, cried Amadeo. They moved apart. Is this how you make conversation? So here you have this guy who is supposed to be this very literary character. He's very comfortable with words and ideas. And here he is sitting next to this woman. He's making the moves on her. He doesn't want to talk to her. Probably because she's reading this magazine and he finds sort of distasteful. Who knows? Since she had sat up with her back propped against a rock, he sat beside her, put his arm around her shoulders, keeping his book on his knees. He turned toward her and kissed her. They moved apart, then kissed again. Then he lowered his head toward the book and resumed reading. Here's the summary of the whole philosophy of this guy, page 643. As long as he could, Amadeo wanted to continue reading. His fear was that he wouldn't be able to finish the novel. The beginning of a summer affair could be considered the end of his calm hours of solitude. For a completely different rhythm would dominate his days of vacation. And obviously, when you were completely lost in reading a book, if you have to interrupt it, then pick it up again some time later. Most of the pleasure is lost. You forget so many details. You never managed to become immersed in it as before. So picture this guy. He's got a vacation mainly to read. He wants to sit on the beach and read and go swimming occasionally. And now he's completely extrapolating. He's kissing this woman. He's imagining where it all leads. He's planning the whole thing in his mind, as people do. And while at the same time being a man of action, he also wants to get away and reflect. And he's not quite sure what's going to happen. What do you think he should do at this point? Pick up his book, run away? Or do you think he's hurtling towards something that can't be stopped at this point? And they were back to the land the evening. The sun was gradually setting behind the next promontory, and then the next and the one after that, leaving remnants of color against the light. From the little coves of the cape, all the baders had gone. Now the two of them were alone. Amadeo had his arm around the woman's shoulders. He was reading. He gave her kisses on the neck and on the ears, which seemed to him she liked. And every now and then, when she turned on the mouth, then he resumed reading. Perhaps this time he had found the ideal equilibrium. He could go on like this for 100 pages or so. But once again, it was she who wanted to change the situation. She began to stiffen almost to reject him and said, it's late. Let's go. I'm going to dress. This abrupt decision opened up quite different prospects. Amadeo was a bit disoriented, but he didn't stop to wait as the pros and cons. He had reached a climax in the book, and her dimly heard words, I'm going to dress, had in his mind immediately been translated into these others while she dresses. I'll have time to read a few pages without being disturbed. But she said, hold up the towel, please. Addressing him as two for perhaps the first time informally, rather than formally, as you have in romance, language is a difference. I don't want anyone to see me. But what does she do? Instead of dressing, she undresses behind the towel. She took off her top and her bottom, and there she was looking at him seductively. Since it has to happen, it might as well happen immediately. Amadeo thought, diving forward, book in hand, one finger between the pages. But what he read in that gaze, reproach, commiseration, dejection, as if to say, stupid, all right, we'll do it if it has to be done like this, but you don't understand a thing any more than the others. Or rather, what he did not read since he did not know how to read gazes, only words. But only vaguely sensed that, rousing him a moment of such transport toward the woman that embracing her and falling onto the mattress with her, he only slightly turned his head toward the book to make sure it didn't fall into the sea. Their love-making was a perfect match. It could perhaps have been extended a bit longer, but then hadn't everything been lightening fast in their encounter, dusk was falling, below the rocks opened out, sloping into a little harbor. Now she had gone down there, was halfway into the water. Come down, we'll have a last swim. Amadeo, biting his lips, was counting how many pages were left till the end. So what do you think? Were they ever going to see each other again? Has his vacation been ruined? I think it's been transformed, is my guess. I think that this is the beginning of the summer affair he was worried about. But how does it connect to reading? I think this is a funny story, definitely. I mean, how many times have you been sitting at the beach reading and wished instead you were conforming with someone in the air mattress or leaping into the ocean? Are we not all there reading? Because there's nothing better to do. Well, some people want to get away. But I think the pole is always there, and increasingly intensely sexualized at the beach. Definitely it's a strange place, predatory place, to be reading and trying to isolate, because you know you're not going to be left alone from distraction. And I think this story is making fun of that whole thing, as well as really examining the difference in knowledge between what you read and what you see and what you touch and what you experience. And the whole story of how he's distracted and what Amadeo finds in books, as opposed to what he's experiencing and seeing and touching and thinking about the world out there, it really is this whole examination of what it is that literature offers in connection to life. Does his reading, does his obsession with reading make it easier for him to have this sudden encounter with this woman? Does it make him a kind of more loose, less moral person? Does it make him able to understand the experience more? Or is he totally clueless, lost in this text-based world of reading everything? Is he trying to read the words as he's trying to read his encounter with this woman? It reminds me of the novelist David Lodge, British writing the satire of academic life, he describes as academic couple. And they're making love and they're described as if they're like pouring over each other like boxes of index cards. I think Calvino has a sort of lighter view of this reading here, because he is a reader. He is a writer. He really thinks literature has the sensual and seductive quality. And I would say, you've read the story, you've got some advice.  The great novelist Salman Rushdie wrote that Calvino possesses the power of seeing into the deepest recesses of human minds. And then bringing their dreams to life, reading Calvino, you're constantly assailed by the notion that he is writing down what you have already known, except that you've never thought of it before. This is a highly unnerving experience, but fortunately, you're too busy laughing to go mad. In the adventure of Orita, Calvino writes a story about that which we all know, but have never thought about, that the attachment to the depiction of things is more interesting than the things themselves. There is an old American song entitled, I'd rather have a paper doll that I could call my own than a real, live girl. This could be the theme for the young voyeur, a medio, and for the rest of us as well, who would rather contemplate life than experience it. The adventures of Orita possesses great charm. The adventure here is, well, light, as Robert Towers puts it in the New York Review of Books article on Difficult Loves in 1984. As Towers writes, Difficult Loves reveals Calvino as a classically Italian writer, a writer that is for whom clarity of outline and brilliantly lighted surfaces seem preferable to the thickness of atmosphere and the weight of social psychological documentation. In comparing Calvino to Boccaccio and Pirandello, Towers places him in good company.


JS25, well I support neither. I would rather live in a world of bricks-plus than NATO. NATO is collapsing hardcore. Like, the amount of freedom people have in Russia is way more than the freedom people have in Canada.  Way more. Way more.  In Moscow, they try to roll out injection mandates, right? For stores and stuff like this. And people rose up and they took it back. No injection mandates. Businesses can't close down. You don't need to show passport to go inside a restaurant to eat.  You couldn't even go to a restaurant to, if you ordered food for pickup, to wait inside the restaurant to pick up your food. Because I did that, right? We didn't have passport.  Are you fucking...  We ordered food. I went inside the restaurant to pick up the food. It wasn't ready yet. So I just sat in the corner and they're like, papers please.  I'm not sitting down to eat here. They said, no no no no. To be inside this establishment, you must show papers please. Otherwise, you have to go wait outside. That's the last time I ordered a restaurant by the way, right? So I said, okay. So in the rain, I want to wait it in the rain, right? Outside until my food was ready because I didn't show papers please. Where is that? What did we put on ourselves? Yellow Star?   How do you feel about that shit?  Did you show your papers so pleasantly? Am I Canadian? I'm so pleasant. I'm gonna show... Here's my papers. Can you scan me please? I can come inside the restaurant to eat. Do you realize what you did? Do you realize it now?