What's up everybody it's your boy Ian and I am here today to do it to put my ego out on the line And answer the big question of literature Who is the greatest living author and I think there is only one You know, I think one stands far above the pack One author But we are going to get to that answer first of all through setting an objective system of standardization And then applying that system of standardization to a group of the generally thought best living authors and I am a Lover of the history of literature and literature in general and all my goods reads accounts. I have good reads account I have over 450 books under the tag That I've read under the tag of literary fiction and they are living authors I modified this over the past week and I looked down the list I thought of everyone I could I looked at all the online lists and I feel like Once again that there was only there was one that rises above everyone else And anyone who I hadn't read yet anyone on a list I would go check out some of the work and read a couple pages Read what people thought And you know, honestly people a lot of these people were absolute garbage Hi, and so let's let's hop into the system of standardization. So I don't you know So you guys can get on the same page of me So first of all this author must transcend They transcend style genre time and horizontal limitations. Let's break those down one by one style they In most of the time if we're looking at really good authors, they are A stepping stone.  Maybe they're a a falcherian or a Blake in whoever and they have taken that style to the next level and they've also made it their own their writing style just the objective writing style is unique and is Separates them from the rest of the pack separates them from every other author You could read a story by them and not know it was them And you would know it was them right if their page was their name wasn't on it Or do you be like why is this why is this person writing like this this author? Genre most of the best authors transcend genre. They're not just a science fiction author. They are not just A literary fiction or western author They transcend all of it because their ability to across their whole catalog write really great works they Can't really be pinpointed into a certain style or genre because they have Totally transcended that which isn't that hard with the amount of verses if you put enough work into a book if you you Care for and love your work and edit it and revise it and spend a you know Have a ton of life experiences and read and write a lot you could create a unique piece of art That's pretty easy right you can create a whole new style and genre Especially with something like literary fiction where you have 600 pages of text To expand to make that flow, you know when someone when an artist does the canvas piece They only have that the canvas but 600 pages of writing is a long time and you know how many words is that that's a ton of space to Create your own genre in your own style But a lot of people fail at this a lot of these authors that we're going to be looking at on the list Are comparable to a lot of other you know a lot of other authors they maybe are a little bit better They have a unique style, but their style isn't their own They are still stuck in genres. They still could be categorized time So they transcend their current time period So a good author is way ahead of their time or way behind their time They are tapped into something that isn't that is outside of them outside of their society And that's what horizontal limitations means when someone has a horizontal limitation It's that it's when they are looking just around them They're looking at everyone else around them who was writing and saying how can I be better than them? What are they doing? But someone who is thinking vertically they are thinking of And this also is a metaphor. They are thinking In the conscious and the unconscious light and dark as a lot of authors. I mean even someone like a Margaret Margaret Atwood right who I think is a very great author who's probably in the top 25 greatest living authors for sure Maybe top 10 maybe top five for some people a Margaret Atwood I feel like Has trouble with vertical thinking at times, you know even She who you know in books like orcs and craig and the handmaid's tale There's a ton of vertical thinking in there But if you actually think about the origins of those stories this you know these two dystopian novels They're actually just reactions to what's happening around her You know with abortion and men's rights group men's rights groups and environmental disasters A good author can transcend all that and then that enables them to tap into Symbolic metaphorical and subconscious connections in their writing a good author can make And without effort just because they are writing from a place of flow in there They can tap into you know The creative ether their work is almost automatically Symbolic metaphorical and has an aspect of the subconscious within it And they are such good revisions though that they can expand that that probably in their first draft or one of their First drafts they could you know, they get some of these symbols down But then in the revision stages they help expand and connect that connect these threads And sometimes these threads can connect through their whole body of work A good author, I feel has these threads almost connecting through their whole Through a whole their whole body of work Why is this important? Why is all the you know, why are why Why isn't this important though writing or and reading is we are tapping in to the mind Into people, you know Unlike a movie you can books are the only medium where you can see what is happening through written the written word What's happening in somebody's mind and that's such a crazy concept because if you are going to allow someone in your mind What are you going to give them? I want to give people something beautiful something eternal something timeless But when you get caught in the rut of trying to push a worldview or show us About a certain cause and that's what your that's what your main focus is your main That's as high as you get on the scale, you know Or as far as you can see horizontally about what's happening in the world right now instead of the internal levels That you can access Then that work is not going to hold up works like that if you even read back 100 years are garbage The works that are in the canon of you know, the 20th century canon our works that at least the early 20th century canon Our works that tap in To that subconscious that's why rilka is a much better poet now And you know as we can read a lot better than William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound and T. S. Elliott because they were literally just looking at objects and being very horizontal They weren't focusing on this vertical thinking so And I don't feel like an artist A real artist. I don't want to you know, it's kind of sketchy sometimes to define what a real artist is But artists who are taking the work seriously and spending time alone and in solitude and really developing that If you are doing that and you're not trying you're not like hack riding your way up to the top and just getting really good at making stories And characters and plots you are going to develop and if you live a life a spiritual life no matter what your faith is You will develop the symbolic metaphorical and subconscious connections that and you know a lot of authors do a lot of authors on this list That we're going to see doing a lot honestly don't um So then last but not least they honor the creative muse and what I mean by that is that they Live out their creativity that this author Is that that whatever they are doing they are living and they are honoring it and they are not degrading it they are not Selling out to these ideas in their personal life in their writing They follow threads and they refine those threads and those threads are them those threads are A huge beautiful expression of their soul instead of writing for we you know Other reasons and they are very good at that if if you know this creative muse is like a Signal they have the strongest wi-fi router and then they are letting that flow accepting it and putting on it onto the page and publishing it And not publishing anything less than something that honors that creative muse So those are the three standards. I think that I came up with pretty easy. They have a transcendent style genre And you know time and they transcend their time period and they look vertically instead of looking horizontally. They're looking um To rise above you know the people that came before them or also to praise them and pull from them and also in their own consciousness with contrast they use dreams symbolic thinking metaphors and the subconscious to Display their work through characters and through the plot and through the setting And they also honor their creative muse. So the list that we're going to look at is the 2021 noble prize of literature bookie odds Which is for betting so you could bet this is what the bookies made the odds and first of all, of course the no The Nobel prize in literature is a joke because It is one very bias as we've seen with all the wars that because it's you know a Scandinavian Um, the you know the Nobel prize it comes a lot of Scandinavian judges as you've seen there there has been so many Random Scandinavian author picks throughout the last, you know, however long a lot of the great a lot of great authors have been Missed along the way and now, you know with they you know with diversity quotes and stuff the whole their whole um merit as a Oh, uh, their whole their whole merit as a group that gives award Awards out to the people with the best writing merit is been has been diminished But they have a pretty good list in terms of what the modern public consciousness is. So if I'm looking at the first For looking at this first list of individuals and I'll pull it up full screen Do you guys see anybody That stands out. Who do you guys actually know? Let's just let's start there because like I said, I I've researched everyone on this list and read something from them Who do you guys actually know here? Do you know number one andi urnax urnax? And the person that won this I don't even think it's even on this list That the person who won this everybody has sold only a couple thousand books in the english language I think that if I remember correctly, um, that's a different story So who do you guys know, uh, mr. Wathiyango, I've read two books from him I've I've read books from hiruki mirikami and karson margaret atwood Don de lilo And kanju down there if that's how you say her name Who have you read books by and I like I said, I've been analyzing everyone and we can look at the next list too So let's look at page number two Who do you guys know here? Do you guys know who Edna o brian is? Ivan vladysh flock Maybe you guys know carlo ove nosgard But him being on this list carlo ove is the biggest joke of all time I don't even know how this guy is on this list when we see like the actual when the actual heavyweights out there In terms of writing and literary art So We have millen kundra, steven king, salman rushdie, kormack mccarthy. All right. Here is the list of people everybody So who do you guys think? Who do you guys think here's the list? What are your guys thoughts if maybe someone else like I said comment down below who you think the greatest living author is but I think That it comes down to basically three people and you know It is unfashionable. Maybe not to me because I don't care that all three of these guys. I think are men They are all men right now. Um Maybe even the top five But we'll we'll say the top three the first and the first two runners up are I think first of all is Hiruki mirakami right here coming in at a 10 to 1 odds I think that and we'll talk about that in a second. I think hiruki mirakami in second third Then I think don dalilo don dalilo in second in terms of a literary fiction author that meets all the standards We just talked about then last but not least on the second page Someone who will never win the nobo prize in literature because of we'll talk about that in second On this page and the winner Who I think the greatest living author is everybody here it is Cormac McCarthy everybody Notable works satri. Oh, there's only supposed to be two E's in there blood meridian all the pretty horses the crossing Cities of the plains and no country for old ben. I think that cormac McCarthy by far from anyone who has ever Like I said tapped into something outside of the city into nature and to their own consciousness and spirituality There's no other choice and first of all, okay, let's This is why I think he won in general before I even go to the standards. The reason why he is the best easily is He has walked the walk in terms of being an artist that he Basically his whole life outside, you know after he got out He never he went to college for a year or two dropped out worked some odd jobs And basically he lived off of writing and he lived in shacks his wife left him His his wife and his kids were starving as he was trying to make money being a writer They were living in a shack in the middle of Tennessee and all this time He's reading and writing for eight to ten hours a day at least from things that he said before and his interviews are very sporadic Cormac McCarthy only has one interview out there On the screen and that's what's opera and it's like five minutes five or six minutes long And he's barely given any print interviews either. So cormac McCarthy is this very elusive figure in general and he has so He's not he doesn't spend any time on So the other reason I think he is is because he's never Had to confront real media. He isn't a fan of tv. He isn't fan of the internet He isn't a fan of technology in general He enjoys science and scientific technology and he has it I think a hobby interest in that and like, you know It's very interesting that's like a personal pursuit but in terms of like technology in his life He doesn't live it from what he said that writers should not do that That writer should shut the computer down and focus on reading and writing and that's all that they can do And he's been doing this because he's I think in his mid to late 80s now if we if I can look that he's been Chugging along since the 30s. So since the 30s. We have a guy who Dedicated his life. Okay, that's not enough though. There's a lot of authors who've done that right A lot of people out there have dedicated their life Kormak McCarthy also dedicated himself to nature for a lot of his books He not only lived in the places that he was writing about but for instance blood meridian He spent years traveling on horseback and sleeping on the trail that the trails and the areas that he was talking about Wrap your head around that while he was writing a book Writing the books that he was writing. He was living in the areas not just Um Like oh, I live in I write about new york city. I live in new york city No, kormak. McCarthy is you know, he's has transcended city stories and is out in nature And he is living in the nature and studying and spending years and not just years because a lot of authors and writers Say they're spending years writing, right? They have this idea and actually if you look at the top three Haruki mere economy writes every single day from 4 a.m. To 12 p.m 365 days a year don dalil dalilo similar schedule He writes from like seven or eight to two or three in the afternoon. Both of them actually are runners. They actually have the same routine they basically Work for about eight hours and then go for a big run and then read and hang out with their family for the rest of the Rest of the night So what separates kormak and karthi from all the other writers who just write is that he is the prodigal torch bearer of Herman melville of falkner of hemmingway And he has taken literally a quantum leap like what we think has happened with technology with writing in his work With his characters from those guys if you compare his work to hemmingway falkner melville You can feel it. You could see what he's doing, but he is Feels like he's you know lsd it. That's how like different it is He has expanded it and brought it into the modern consciousness And he is the last person who will ever be able to do this because he is he did not get This was pretty technology almost all of his works were before I mean, you know before the 2000s. I think the last one was read maybe in 1994 1995, so He wasn't exposed to any of this and he had spent, you know, a good 60 years at that point Practicing practicing writing and you know when you're in your 50s and 60s when he wrote all of his best books he had had Decades of being the suffering artists the Artists who is writing because he knows that he is great and he lived this out He didn't you know, this was this isn't a sad story So let's check out some of his some quotes from some of his books and then compare it to some of um to things in the presentation and why um How he fits into the the standardization and the rubric because this is so important everybody that we have authors that are separate from society They have transcended society and are writing from a different point of view from nature from god from all these different things And then add an eloquent style in after you know from four four decades of writing Every single day for hours a day alone without influence without influence from publishers and from people and that's where I think margaret atwood And a lot of authors on this lift have even haruki mirakami and don de leo if we look and even cormac mccarthy If we look at cormac mccarthy's work post Technology right um once technology hit he did no country for old men, but that was in the early 2000s I think he had probably been working on that before the you know 9 11 and technology really took over and then if you look at the road his 2008 book That's his worst book by far the road by cormac mccarthy. Hopefully you've made it this far so you don't read that one Is his worst book Probably I for sure of that era, you know from any any book from blood meridian to no country for old men The road really is a step down from all of those But and still a lot better than a lot of dystopian novels though he does not And if we look at don de leo and margaret atwood and haruki mirakami They've been releasing flops for a couple years now for at least five or six years now so having and you know Being able to maintain artistic integrity over decades and produce very good works is important and I think that's When you become too inundated with the world, which I think don de leo and especially margaret atwood did they you lose some of some of that tenacity So let us now hop into Some quotes So the truth about the world The truth about the world he said is that anything is possible? Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it's of it bled it of its strangeness It would appear to you for what it is a hat trick in a medicine show A fever dream a trance be populated with chimeras having neither analog nor precedent an itirant itirant carnival a migratory Ten show whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable And clematius beyond reckoning. I mean dude look at the contrast in the depth and the layers in that sentence with that metaphor With the subconscious with symbols You know, we're just reading one random paragraph from this guy And then when you hear that he was living out there and Take my word for it if you haven't read cormac mccarthy the stories the characters they come alive It's there everything you need is there. I mean They were watching out there past men's knowing where stars are drowning and wales wales ferry their vassals through the black Dreamless and seamless sea the man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever and head in live in mystery and fear Superstition will drag him down the rain will erode the deeds of his life But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry Will buy the decision alone have taken charge of the world And it is only by taking such charge that he will affect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate So this is really good as you guys can see. I mean wow. I mean if we want to look at a couple more Nor does god whisper through the trees His voice is not to be mistaken when men hear it. They fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to him And there's no fear, but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing I mean everything in here is He thought that he thought in the beauty of the world were hit a secret He thought that the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of A diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower I mean, are you kidding me, man? I mean, this is it this this is Writing like I said from the old world from something that a lot of us don't have anymore We're our prefrontal cortexes our desires our work ethic have been demolished our idea of what art should be with post-modernism and all these different things Has taken us further away from the human human experience even if our writing is really good And that is an unfortunate thing and we may never get that back We may never have characters and people who are free of The constraints of society and influence and trying to be a writer now and having to market or get on instagram and go on Speaking towards all that has an effect and cormac mccarthy did none of that ever And you know, I like I said, I think the actions, you know in retrospect Have a lot to do with why His success and what he is doing. So let's look at the presentation and let's just go over a couple of the the ideas That um, I laid out in the text Or excuse me in the stand in the standardization. So he transcends style cormac mccarthy, for instance, doesn't use Doesn't use Quotation marks he believes that You don't need quotation marks if you have set up the dialogue in the correct way. We should know who is speaking Why do you need quotation marks and dialogue tags if there is a conversation happening? We should have be able by now to identify people's voices That's a pretty crazy concept his use as we've seen of this biblical voice this melvillian this falcherian this Hem hem hemmingway in voice that is elevated But it is more epic and it is in tune with nature in the coming world the post world war two isolated consciousness That is what cormac mccarthy is to tapping into that a lot of these others didn't have the opportunity to this self isolated consciousness But he has touched it pre technology if we look at Don de lilo's becks books haruki mirakami's becks books. They were pre technology Which it's crazy. It's really crazy. I don de lilo for instance is you know pre underworld Books, you know underworld and all the books before that have a totally different feel than when technology kind of came into play And you know if you look at his life when like kids and stuff kind of became a burden Cormac mccarthy because I think he only had one kid and three wives and was in and out Much like we talked about with realka yesterday. He had That artistic Tenacity to not let people bring him down. It is very hard to maintain an eight to ten hour a day schedule for decades No matter who's in your life no matter what's going on if you have kids and a wife There's everyone's going to want you to be doing something else There's going to be a million fights But if you are trying to be the best if you were trying to you know transcend style genre time and horizontal limitations More so than the people of the past and stand on the shoulders of Melville Hemingway Falkner for Cormac then that means you have to work harder and be better than all of them combined You cannot have like Cormac said he doesn't drink because writers shouldn't Being a good right, you know, if you want to be really good, you can't drink Well, that's a lot different than Falkner and Hemingway, you know, I don't that Melville was just more of a kind of a Random recluse. I don't know what his relationship with alcohol was But I mean, you know, and that's why if you look at the Melville mccarthy analysis, which is kind of like one of the big Contrasts is that Melville lived the life Moby Dick. He was a Whale fisherman. He lived on the boats and hunted whales and then wrote about it A lot of people now write from these very odd perspectives and it's like they're flexing their writing ability, right? like I can write from all these imaginative perspectives, but Something is lost in translation when you aren't being honest, especially when that gets stretched too far If you're going to do something like I said if we look at Cormac McCarthy's only failed work is a dystopian novel Because that got a little bit outside of at his wheelhouse even though it was the world He had to now reconcile a whole new reality and you know, I think there was a lot of other failures that he missed in that one, but So genre if we look at like all these books like what the hell is blood meridian is What it is like the best book of all time that was written in third third third person, um omnipotent this weird, um, you know Biblical style like that you can't put that into a genre other than like literary fiction But it could be literary fiction. It could also be environmental literature. It could be a coming of age story It could be a western it could you know every single one of his his books has in a lot of great books Transcend their genre. They also transcend their time when you read for instance his the border trilogy the all the pretty horses the crossing and cities of the plains You don't know what time period is. I remember reading it for the first time I remember reading the whole series when I was like in high school and I was like, oh shit and or the first two books maybe And I didn't know that like I thought it was like the 1800s And then suddenly I realized like, oh my god, this is post-world war two people just still ride around on horses in Mexico still Um, you know, this is still a thing like people live this life and don't have technology Don't have TVs don't maybe even have electricity and they um write on horses everywhere They will ride on horses for hundreds of miles That's insane.  I'm that's bringing the memory Back to me of the book ceremony by leslie mark and marmin soko and they talk about how the the longest They're like they take the longest donkey ride for alcohol They like ride for you know hours to go to the local bar and it's kind of this She's kind of making you know playing on the native american trope of you know Them getting drunk all the time and they're they they care so much that they'll ride a donkey for you know five or six hours to go to the bar um, anyway, but you know, that's what i'm saying is like there's this These ideas and this time transcendence that happens in the book especially with you know, like I said leslie mark and Leslie marmin soko's ceremony that is one of the best books of all time also and that one You know, it's sad that she really didn't write more books or put that much effort into books again To some of her other books, but that one transcended time. It was You know another post-world war two book, but you wouldn't really know you wouldn't you know a lot of it took place without technology And then the horizontal limitations There's literally I don't think in any of the books that kormack mccarthy writes any of this viewing it Him trying to change the change the direct world or talk about socioeconomic status or diversity or all these different things But it happens organically if you read the border trilogy for instance instance There's a ton of dialogue that is in spanish is a english written book and there's no translations in the back or anywhere there's you know pages of just Um conversations happening in spanish because kormack mccarthy has lived in you know lived in texas and new mexico and Would ride across the border into mexico on his horses for these books and you know Learn to speak fluent spanish and he's not going to have a bunch of characters in spain And you know, um like most books you read like there's It's kind of weird. Do you think about like authentically a lot of books that take place in foreign countries? Everyone's speaking english like an english author is writing a book Let's say about characters in southeast asian. They're all speaking english. Well, okay. You're like, well, what about translation? But it's kind of weird that kormack mccarthy there is no translation for that dialogue He said we are keeping the spanish dialogue in here That's insane because that is real life that is when you go to mexico Everyone's going to be speaking spanish to you So small little decisions like these are why kormack really shines in all these areas How he can transcend style with his use of nature as a character in genre that's blowing this melvillian blowing up of consciousness Time in transcending his time period and the horizontal limitations that are happening. So Let's check out the next second section. So symbolic metaphorical and subconscious connections. So All of kormack's books, especially though from blood meridian to no country for old men have dream sequences They have weird stories for instance where a character will be in the middle of the woods and meet a band of gypsies and they'll tell him a symbolic story about a plane crash and if you know how plane crash and the character Has this weird reaction to it and you know kormack's books are very objective But these subjective elements that he sprinkles in are like this really good form of magical realism Unlike mario akami or other magical realism. It's all still an objective reality But the stories and the symbols and the dreams all give room for Explocation. He isn't telling us. He isn't you know doing the social justice You know, this is what you need to feel. This is what we were talking about. This is the cause that we are targeting It is the hemmingway iceberg. It is the talking therapy huge um the talking therapy idea where we have so much that we can We can go through our own life and our own healing journey through talking about these books because there are so many different angles that you can take The kormack mccarthy literary criticism world is huge Unlike any other the ideas and the people and the dedication and the depth that they go to and you know, it's funny though, you know, there is no marxist or Foucaultian analysis most of the time of Kormack mccarthy work, which is great. They aren't being deconstructed They don't get deconstructed by postmodernists. They are synergized and shown with some of the best elements of society through nature through love through The isolated um coming of age story, you know, there are a ton of great books. There's one called shreds of matter this really great book on um Literary criticism texts about kormack mccarthy's works and is one of the most mind-blowing books I've ever read and it was just talking about his books and the connections and how deep um and their relation to nature So being able to use symbolic metaphorical and subconscious connections Really like as we talked about earlier give an eternal nature some depth to a work But those do not just come out of nowhere. You cannot fabricate this you have to live this you have to feel this These come from the authors subconscious through time on the page through living this life through understanding and trusting in their work and in their art Most authors today don't do that and if they do it's for one book It's not through a string of books over a couple decades that are all landmark texts on their own If we like I said if we look back at that list all those authors are pretty good Some of those authors who I didn't mention have a good book or two out there But do they have five or six books that really capitalize on these concepts and really like I said keep building upon What they were doing before and the people the people who shoulders they are standing upon because a lot of authors if I'm looking at like And you know a person who won the nobel peace prize or not peace prize Nobel prize in literature a couple years ago cashwell isha guru I'm looking at him and if we look at the we look at this it's like cashwell isha grew Has a style of the unreliable narrator. He's taken that to a level that no one has ever known before Um of genre very transcendent of genres in that and you know in time You know with dystopian and like he has books from all eras all places and they have Symbolic metaphorical and subconscious connections because of the aspect of the unrival reliable narrators The only way we can feel and understand sometimes that these unreliable narrators is through the symbology that isha grew places inside the stories and I actually didn't mention Isha grew in that list but I would probably put isha grew in the top five lists too He deserved that nobel prize in literature, but his work is more appealing the nobel, you know The the people who vote on the nobel peace prize do not want to give the award to a reclusive White american male writing about nature and connecting with nature and the end of journey of individuation and Our types and you know and this is all like this elevated biblical and melvillean language They that serves no agenda that serves no quota. That doesn't um And that's what's sad about all this and a lot of people will never read cormat mccarthy's work And it's they're not going to be told and it's like people need to if you can't understand And dive into some of these works that we've talked about isha guru leslie marman silco cormat mccarthy perukimirakami if you margaret atwood and carcin You know and a bunch of other people are now dead Why are you worried about causes? Why are you worried about trying to change the world and feel these things or getting into these weird diversity love stories That is all good and that's all good writing. I love stories like that. There's nothing wrong with that But trying to ascend into high literary art You you can't stay down at that level authors or have to pull themselves out of that like Haruki marikami does a great job at that if you look at like octavia butler's book parable of the sower she does that there is a lot of Deep analysis and thinking and that and that's why she you know pushed african-american science fiction to the next level because she did not Sit and she did not get she was not constrained like you read that book that book was written in the 90s I think or early early 2000 2000s it still stands as one of the best dystopian books out there today like authors tap need to be able to tap into this And we need to give them credit for that But in a world where book publishing companies are trying to push books for sales And they have programmed the reading base to want books that like push causes instead of symbolic metaphors and subconscious Threads because people can't understand that it takes Understand these threads it takes a certain level of literacy and life knowledge and Being tuned into the artistic flow yourself to understand these things that you know these things that I've laid out here Without that you will think it's just garbage woo woo boring And instead you'll revert to something easy something that tells you what to think We I don't want my art to tell me what to think I want it to Show me the way and then along the way I can do crazy side quests and be expanding it and flowing with it the whole way and I don't understand why you would ever release something that doesn't do that every single video on this channel I'm trying to find an idea and expand it into something that's actionable and deep and add some symbol Symbology and metaphors into that Hopefully through my unconscious as I'm talking these threads that I'm trying to find Cormac McCarthy does a great job of that and finally he honors the creative muse and we've kind of talked about this all already But someone who lives the life walks to walk doesn't do cash grabs doesn't do like his wife Was one of his ex-wives back in the day when they were literally starving. They didn't have toothpaste They didn't have food. They were living just like on elk meat and forged, you know vegetables She'd be like, you know They're beginning authors she the beginning offers in the mail for thousands of dollars And this was back in the day and so I'm sure that was tens of thousands of dollars now to come speak at a writing conference Or to do a workshop over the weekend at a writing conference He said no, I'm not doing that. I'm not I'm a writer. I don't need like I'm a writer. I write I don't I don't do workshops.  I don't he obviously I'm like, you know He didn't say this but he probably said something like this. Why didn't he go because that's not what he's here for He's honoring that creative muse a lot of us and a lot of ours now sell out I mean, you know, I've seen it with so many different people like for instance, neal gayman one of my favorite authors He's been afk on the novel writing scene because he's been focused on turning a lot of it adapting a lot A lot of his works to keep to television American gods was basically a flop that show has been canceled um A lot of his other other than like stardust a lot of his adaptations and his good omen What do you try to do with good omens and now it's the sand man's probably gonna turn out really good But everything he's done so far has resulted in you know, I'm not trying to bag on the guy. Um, but you know, he's Got divorced he Has written nothing. He is an author. He is known as an author not as a movie producer Not as any of these things not as a celebrity not as a talker not as a creative writing teacher He doesn't do those things. He is a writer That is what he is best at and he is a spider to that like it's it's not like since 1995 He was teaching creative writing and doing this suddenly in 2010 He was like, oh, I can you know make a bunch of money from this and that's not wrong But if we are trying to identify the best authors out there And then analyze them and see why some rise above the others in terms of the language And why some fall short This is one of the reasons that they honor the creative muse and you know Cormat McCarthy hanging out at the Santa Fe So I think it's called the Santa Fe Scientific Institute or something He hangs he he hangs out there and writes his novels He he will hang out there and write and read and hang out with scientists He hates other writers He likes talking to scientists because he loves that path of knowledge He loves learning about physics and science and um the evolution of those It's insane I mean So I mean what do you think would be more useful for a writer or a thinker going and hanging out on a Hollywood sets or going on speaking tours or teaching creative writing to randos Or pursuing something that you're really passionate about because it probably makes you a better person and a better thinker That's what Cormac You know did at the Santa Fe you know scientific institute or whatever it's called These types of things are important like I said in terms of longevity over decades in terms of how a writer is going to turn out If they lose the spark if they lose the focus if they're not around other smart people who are pushing them and not being Yes meant to them Cormac McCarthy is the dumbest guy in that building Because I mean he's going there that to a place whose Purpose is for scientific research and he's not a scientist. He's really interested in science. So but In biology and all these different things, but he's not a scientist He's like I said probably the dumbest person there, but that's why It's to be elevated. He doesn't have an ego. I mean wouldn't that be It'd be kind of weird if you like can't like Haruki mirakami was Coming like really showing up at it every day and interested in like your Martial arts club or your you know, whatever it is But you'd be like wow this guy's actually on the pursuit of knowledge He's trying to learn and he's trying to be better And he's having a beginner's mindset So I think that's why Cormac McCarthy in the long run Is the best everybody all these reasons I've laid out. Let me know what you think and if you say Let me know if you've read Cormac McCarthy too when you're commenting if you say no, I think it's blank then after that say I've never read Cormac McCarthy or I think it's blank because They are better than Cormac McCarthy as you know as an objective writer Because of this and tell me why let me know why I'm interested to see what people's responses are because like I said I'm looking at that list and no one has the prolific writing stories Style Then he does I can't imagine anyone else out there who has spent more time producing Great words and great sentences Than McCarthy. So thank you guys for being here. Thank you guys for walking and check out all these works all these works I've put on the screen the reading order. I would read I would probably do the crossing Blood meridian all the pretty horses cities of the plains and then no country for old men the The all the pretty horses the crossing and cities of the plains are a trilogy But you can read one or two in whatever order you want. They are Separate the two protagonists then come together in chapter and book number three So you can read those in whatever order you want But I would probably read the crossing first So you get the style or blood meridian one or the other then read blood meridian because then you get it That's like his magnanimous work. That's insane and then Yeah, get through the trilogy then read no country for old men or To start and then read such three lasts or if you really like the book no country for the movie no country for old men Right, just read that one. That one's really good That really is like it's way better than the movie the movie won an academy award for best picture But the book is even better. Like there's all these crazy dream sequences and um Weird synchronicities and the writing style. It's insane. It's really good. So I would go check that out Thank you guys for being here and I will see you guys later


Welcome to the Dominic Dawes show. I'm Joe Wamba with men's ice hockey head coach Dominic Dawes.  First, let's talk about that Nazareth game. We're talking a little bit before we started recording. The all-important power play was working for you. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, first with just getting on the road is always a fun thing, getting on the bus and getting away. And the guys just getting together and being able to bond a little bit more. It's always kind of an exciting time.  But Nazareth game, special teams was a big part of it. It's a big part of today's game. And for the power play to kind of click and get some confidence and get going, it was had a big impact in the victory. And this weekend would be a huge opportunity for team building. And the special teams is a major portion of the team. And then with the results that you guys get this weekend, first that win is huge, getting your first road win, and then playing Utica, not pulling it off, but still some positives to take away. Yeah, I mean, we've talked a lot about this a lot here, and we've talked about it in the locker room a lot, is we're not so concerned. Our focus isn't on winning and losing. It's about the process of us getting better, of us learning. I mean, we talked about it after the Nazareth game as a group. There's some stuff that we could improve upon in that game. I thought we defended it extremely well, but we talked about coming out and playing with energy that game, and we didn't come out in the first period and play with energy. So there's always some takeaways to kind of help us move forward. Utica was a better team. They were bigger, stronger, faster than we were on that night and completely deserved to win the game yesterday. But to our credit, we had some opportunities. We worked hard. We stuck with it. We didn't give up. We didn't get caught up in the atmosphere. So I think that's a big piece of the puzzle for us moving forward. And talking about moving forward, you guys come back and get two more home games this weekend. Talk about those. So we get to get back here. We've got Newman, Manhattanville, and Lebanon Valley left to play in the conference. So we've kind of seen half the group now. The league, if you look at our league, the standings, it's what it always is. Everybody's beating everybody. So every night is going to be a new night for us and a challenge for us. So it would be good to kind of get back here. Well, the guys will have today off to just kind of relax, freshen up, and get ready for the week. Well, coach, we wish you the best of luck, especially in that Newman game. I'm sure you guys are all looking forward to that, too. No, thank you. He's Dominic Dawson.


David asks, how can non-tech older people adopt Bitcoin? Andreas has mentioned that cryptocurrencies are not meant for everyone, at least for now. I live in Mexico, and we have higher inflation than other countries. Our governments have already been proven not to be reliable with our currency. Older members of my family avoid any Mexican peso risks by USD. But for them, it's a way to secure a little better their hard-earned savings. What solutions can be developed so that they can protect their savings in USD, but also keep some of them in BTC or other cryptocurrency? The problem with buying USD as protection against inflation is that USD is difficult to transport, it's difficult to store, and it's difficult to divide into smaller denominations. In order to make USD very portable and easier to hide, you need high denominations. For example, you live in Venezuela, and your government has said you can't use USD. If you are found with USD, you will be arrested and put into prison. This has happened in many different countries over the years. Not happening in Mexico right now, you can buy USD. But if that USD was ever to be very, very useful because the peso really collapses in value, then you will immediately see currency controls on foreign currencies, and people being accused of hoarding foreign currencies to collude with the enemy and support foreign forces. At which point it becomes a crime to have these currencies. From conversations I've had with people who send money to Venezuela, one of the interesting things is that if they send $100 bills, which are very portable, light weight, and they can send them through the mail fairly easily without it being intercepted, then the people who receive it at the other end, who are desperate for this money, because it supports entire families, they find that it's actually difficult to exchange. Imagine if you are someone who has a USD 100 bill, and your local currency is depreciating very, very fast. That is the case with Venezuela. You want to spend $20 per week, which is enough, and you have a $100 bill. You try to exchange it for pesos. They are going to exchange the entire thing and give you the change in pesos. They are not going to give you change in USD. Now you are holding USD 100 in pesos, but you can't spend them all right away, so you have to hold them for a month, or maybe two months. Two months later, that $100 in pesos is worth $20 in pesos, or even $10 in pesos, because the currency is depreciating. One of the advantages of having Bitcoin instead is that the denomination doesn't matter. Bitcoin is transportable and easy to hide for those who are in hostile regimes. You can divide it to eight decimal places. If you want to sell a tiny bit just to get enough pesos for now, you can do that and still keep the rest in Bitcoin, so it doesn't depreciate. You don't have to get change in pesos. You can sell a tenth of a thousandth of the Bitcoin for what you need for the next few days, and then next week sell it again at, most likely, a much better exchange rate because the other currency is dropping. How can you get non-tech holder people to adopt Bitcoin? It's not meant for everyone, at least not for now. The answer is that right now, in a place like Mexico where you have inflation, and where people are trying to protect their long-term savings, the US dollar is a perfectly good alternative. Compared to the peso, it's strong. They could do the same with Swiss francs. They could do the same with a number of other currencies, but certainly the US dollar is the easiest to get in Mexico. So that makes sense. Honestly, if your relatives tried to use Bitcoin, they would probably use it with an exchange that had a custodial system. They wouldn't know how to control their own keys, and that would expose them to a much greater risk. Because those exchanges would get hacked, their money would get stolen, or the government could come in and confiscate it. Not your keys, not your coins, is a pretty big barrier for all the people to overcome, and it's not easy. You have to have a very good reason. In some countries, people have a very good reason, where it's worth learning the complicated processes needed to manage your own custody of keys and crypto, and Mexico isn't one of those places. Not yet, and hopefully not for a very long time or ever. We will make these technologies better and easier over time. We're improving education, we're improving user interfaces. All of this is getting easier. When it's easier to do than the risks of not doing it, like the currency is having a lot of trouble, then people will do it. Dietmar asks, I'm afraid we are still distant from significant adoption of cryptocurrencies. Every time we spend fiat, we reinforce the system. How could we speed up adoption of crypto payments? Well, earn and spend crypto directly. The question has already been answered by yourself. Every time we spend fiat, we reinforce the system. Spend less fiat, spend more crypto. Earn less fiat, earn more crypto. Shift more of your economic activity into the crypto economy. Now, I understand this is very difficult for people to do. It's a chicken and egg problem. In order to earn, you have to find someone who wants to spend. In order to spend, you have to find someone who wants to sell you something for crypto. This is difficult when you're bootstrapping. However, there are many opportunities in niche environments. For example, cross-border transactions where you're paying subcontractors, or various non-geographic professions like web design, graphic design, web development, programming, translation work, etc. All of those are services that I have purchased already with crypto in other countries. They are a great way to spend crypto for me. But they are also a great way for these people to earn crypto through their professional skills. Here's a theoretical question. Would it have been possible to have a fully operational Bitcoin network if it was introduced, let's say, five or ten years earlier? I am talking about the speed and reliability of the internet at the time. Was it introduced in 2008, just in time when the internet speed and capacity made it possible for such a network to exist? If the latter is the case, then it could make one think that it was more than a coincidence. No, not really. Honestly, I think Bitcoin could have operated five, ten years earlier. Even more, Bitcoin could have operated on the internet with its scale, speed, and capacity. Probably all the way back to the mid-90s or early 2000s, I was operating on the internet at the time. The web existed, DNS existed. Those things were operating at fairly robust scale. Bitcoin isn't a very bandwidth-hungry system, at least not at first, and it doesn't require a lot of CPU resources. Now, if it had been bootstrapped in 1997, let's say, and then ran continuously, I think ten years later, in 2007, the scalability problem would have been much, much worse if it had caught on earlier. But there was nothing really preventing Bitcoin from running then. Many of the peer-to-peer technologies like BitTorrent had already, I guess, launched. I remember using peer-to-peer technologies in the late 90s. I may be wrong on the timeline, but just off the top of my head, peer-to-peer technologies existed, digital signatures existed. Something very much like Bitcoin could have been done then. Does that mean it was launched because of the economic crisis? I don't think so, because the time it was launched was pretty much right on the break of the economic crisis, unless it was developed and kept secret until then. But I think that's really unlikely. I think it was mostly a coincidence and perhaps a coincidence that accelerated its deployment and development as Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever they might be, noticed that the world economy was in crisis and used that as a motivation to launch this faster, maybe before it was quite ready, or maybe they were not quite done with testing, but they launched it. Who knows? This is all speculation, of course. Nothing technical prevented Bitcoin from existing earlier, I don't think.


Hey, everyone, it's MJ the student's actually and in this video I want to talk about how to exploit information Cemetery's in the crypto market to make profit So quite a big topic, but it is actually a very very simple idea And we haven't got the idea from is in actual science we study traditional financial markets and in these traditional financial markets, they are Regulated and one of the ways that they're regulated is they regulate the information that is shared between The various parties and agents in the market So much so that before a company releases information It will first make an announcement that it is going to release Information and there's a whole portal where they make the sense announcements And there's a bit of a build up and people know that a big announcement is coming And the share price will either go up or down what people think is going to happen And it is only a few days later when they actually make the announcements And it's either good or it's bad that the market then corrects itself So in this part over here It is a bit of a gamble if you know the information before it is released That is a big no-no that is considered to be illegal and is known as Inside of trading they don't want anyone to have an unfair advantage when it comes to trading of financial markets So that's normal financial markets. They have got this regulation crypto markets well, they're not really regulated and there is no such regulation around the information of these various crypto currencies and One thing that I have noticed is that when a coin gets either listed on a new exchange Or let's say gets a new feature All there's going to be a fall core or something like that the price reacts Okay, the price will react to that Now in certain situations I've been lucky enough to either be on the discord group or the telegram group of these various coins and I've been able to see that information Before they posted on Twitter and before the general public becomes aware of it and this gives me an unfair Advantage in the sense that I can now make my trade before the market makes it then see that the market does You know information thing filters onto the market and then the price does react in a favorable way I can sell out and yay It's some it's an easy profit. Of course, it doesn't always work out But the chances are a lot higher when you have this information advantage Okay, so now we come to the question of how can you do it? So if we're looking at you, how can you benefit from these information asymmetries? And the thing is unless you have a lot of time to be on all the discord groups It's going to become too difficult. It's too difficult to monitor I mean, there's so many potential coins out there that one person doesn't have enough time And that's when I got thinking about creating a group or let's call it a club. In fact, I've actually called it the Cryptocurrency information Club and the whole idea of this club is to do nothing but share information From the discord groups in a more structured approach. So how the group would work is they would let's say we have Three people this person is just concerned with light coin. This person's just concerned with smart cash This person's just concerned with this new. I don't know other weird ICO coin that's just popped up And they're looking at the discord group and in these discord groups There is a lot of noise So this person will filter out the noise and just post the big announcement on the group and Then what that does is it allows these other people to also benefit from that information? So if light coin makes a big announcement that they're going to do X Y and Z This person can let the group know and these people can also benefit The reason why this person will do that is because these people are going to do the same when it comes to smart cash And and other tokens now because of this we want this group to be a little bit of an elite group Or we want to control it and make sure that everybody is participating and no one's just a free loader So what I've done what I've been working on this website called teachable I've realized that the teachable platform actually allows me to create a closed-off or a guest private group where people can subscribe have a monthly subscription fee and comment in a structured way and The idea can be that if somebody is not participating isn't posting frequently enough on their coin then they will be kicked off so that is the the idea is for us to group together and Post on teachable so I know teachable has been made as a teaching platform But we can use it to create an information club where we share information and hopefully we can all benefit From the information symmetries So what I've done is I've created this little group The first five people I mean you guys can get in for free if you use the code Founding five because as the group gets more and more members so it becomes more and more valuable And we want to kick starter so the first five people get it free then from five to ten we'll make it just five dollars a month and the code to use is Next five and then from ten to twenty that will be twenty dollars and that will be top twenty and Then once we have I mean once we have twenty members I think this group is going to be very valuable from an information point of view So after that it will be fifty dollars a month to join Which in some circumstances is quite expensive But what it does is it does just filter out the members who are serious versus the members who just want a bit of a a free lunch So it is a group where people are expected to to help one another and The great thing is about using teachable. I mean actually yeah, let me let me show you the app quickly Okay, yeah, so this is the app. You can just click on teachable and if you've enrolled in the course It'll be under my statistics by MJ course. You click on the cryptocurrency information club you'll be able to to get in and There we go You'll see there'll be the main sections where they are just some guidelines on how use the club big Announcements that each person will post if their coins being listed or a new exchange something like that General discussion and an idea is that for each coin We'll have a section where someone can only one person will make the announcements the person who champions the coin and another area for people to Have discussions and what this does is just allows the information to be in a more structured way Because I've got what's up groups I've tried discord groups and there is a lot of noise this way It does make the information cleaner and it's going to help us to react on it So there we go That is the cryptocurrency information club Feel free to join if you're into crypto trading But I just thought it was a great way to to use this new platform called teachable and just explore it and see a different use Case but as always thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in future videos. Cheers


So, in my classroom, I have some independent math stations. Now, most of my resources I've got off of teachers, whole teachers, and this is just one of them. This is called comparing components. And I have a student that is here, and we are doing some comparing. With a greater than, less than, or equal to signs. And then they put those on the floor. And as you can see, she is putting them in the right columns. And when she is finished, she's going to take a picture for me. And she's going to upload that to me on a class site that we have. And then I can grade it that way. And I can send her back her comments. So, this is just one way to do this class.