What's up, YouTube? If you are applying to USC this cycle, these are updated reflections and intel on the supplements that you have. Thank you for joining me on my channel. Please take a second to subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss a video on college essays and how to best approach these topics. So USC is throwing out a ton of questions and they're asking you to kind of be brief, be short, be kind of, you know, expressive and so they ask a ton. So let's break it down and get through it one by one. Hi, my name is Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. Thank you so much for joining me as a university faculty member for 13 years and college essay expert. I know what they're looking for and now it's your turn. Stick around. So here we go with the USC props. First, responding to three of these. The first one, USC believes that one learns best when interacting with people of different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. Tell us about a time you were exposed to a new idea or when your beliefs were challenged by another point of view. So first thing you want to establish the difference. Honestly, too many students kind of go for the racial difference. And while those responses could be thoughtful, there are other kind of differences that you can kind of think through, right? Age, generational language barriers. So think about kind of differences that you've engaged with that you've kind of bridged in a way that would be kind of authentic to you and your story, right? And so 250 words, you have basically kind of space for two paragraphs. You can start with kind of an emblematic story showing you kind of navigating this difference and then you can reflect on that. I would stay away from any political divides. The cost benefit analysis of you getting super political and alienating an admissions officer with competing political views is just not worth it. Those are my two cents. You can do whatever you like. But yeah, I think that there are other ways that you can accomplish a task that you need basically in front of you that you have in front of you without kind of costing goodwill with kind of a dicey topic. Toward the end, never forget to reflect. So reflect on what you learned on whether or not you do something different next time on how you would kind of initiate bridging that type of difference on campus, kind of lesson learned, but then also how you paved the way for a new conversation to happen. I think that that's kind of most interesting in this response. Number two, USC faculty plays an emphasis on interdisciplinary academic opportunities. Describe something outside of your intended academic focus about which you are interested in learning. So one kind of concern that I always hear about in kind of previous cycles, especially is if I mentioned something here, will they make me want to study it if I get accepted? Not necessarily. This is an interesting one like Brown's open curriculum, like Tufts Love of Learning. You kind of want to show intellectual curiosity or kind of interest outside of you can show reflect what you are going to kind of choose to study it, but then you can also pick something that's outside the scope of your intended major too. They want to see authentic curiosity. They want to see how you nurture an intellectual or kind of a passion of yours, how you foster knowledge, how you kind of take initiative to zoom in and go deeper into a concept or a skill. It is kind of implied that you would probably be able to study this topic that you choose in any capacity that you'd like if as a Trojan right at USC, but you could even pair it with a course or student organization. And that may be of interest in a way that kind of shows beyond brand name. They have such a kind of driving force of a brand that you really want to show kind of your authentic case for best fit, right? It's not just their name brand. So pairing it with a course or student organization may be interesting and kind of giving them a Y USC, at least a taste of that at the end of this essay. And then the third option is what is something about yourself that is essential to understanding you. This is one of those freebie essays. And if the student selects this essay, what I would say is pause, take a step back and strategically think, what are they learning about you in your main essay? What are they learning about you in the other kind of questions because USC is asking you to kind of deliver a ton of content? And so what hole do you need to plug to kind of give them a multifaceted multi-dimensional candidacy? Do they have cultural heritage? Do they have kind of peculiar intellectual or social interests? Do they have community service? Are you someone that brings people together? Do you show leadership? Anything that is underrepresented that you want to kind of show, this would be that freebie type essay where you can kind of really develop that further. The next one is describe how you plan to pursue your academic interests at USC. Please feel free to address your first and second major selections. This is your why us. It's 250 words. If you want very specific kind of roadmap on how to do this, what to research, where to place information. Also always making it your own, but kind of that roadmap. I definitely have my template in the description below. You should definitely check that out. But it's that kind of why us and you want to do your research, pick a course, name the major exactly how USC names it, right? Cause sometimes schools kind of tend to name their major slightly different. A research opportunity, a student organization. So how do you see yourself living and learning as a USC Trojan? And this is all about that kind of information. If you have a volunteer kind of experience, it's pretty central to your extracurricular activities. And maybe they have that kind of college type activity college version on their campus. Maybe you connect that there. And so that you aspire to continue that work there beyond the classroom.  The next prompt is describe yourself in three words. You have 25 characters. Some students write a question in three words. Others would use kind of different languages, right? If they speak different languages, others will use just very kind of convoluted and complex questions. What I would say is don't try to swing for the fences and be random just for being random. Allow this to be another entry into who you are in some way. If it's cultural, if it's intellectual interest, if it's funny, have it kind of strategically placed so it advances them getting to know you. Sometimes students want to just kind of have that shock and awe, but it's empty behind it. It doesn't really advance who they are in a memorable way. So the following prompts are 100 character limit. So again, being so brief, you want to make sure that you are thinking strategy over kind of a splash. So you want them to know you culturally, geographically, where you're coming from, upbringing, experiences, traits, abilities. So answer the questions in an informed way. Yes, you could be honest, but you want to be honest in a way that kind of gives more to your candidacy, right? Always. They ask you, what's your favorite snack? I wouldn't just say Doritos. I would say enchiladas if you are from Texas, let's say, and you love Tex-Mex or croquettes, croquetas de jamón if you are Cuban-American, right?  So here are the questions, and I would think about these for all of them. So what's your favorite snack? I covered that. Best movie of all time. You want to impress, yes, but you want to kind of be honest too. I would avoid any Disney movies. I would avoid any movies that you think adults would love. So you want to be able to kind of relate to it in some way, but these are adults, probably late 20s to like early 50s reading this. So you want to kind of culturally, like demographically think about that and be strategic. So what is a movie that you enjoy that you can kind of connect with an older generation? That may be of interest. Dream job. So here it's a way to kind of connect to your major, but you have 100 characters. So you can be very sensorial, right? Instead of saying, I want to be a civil engineer, you can kind of start with description about the kind of interconnected maze that is a beautiful highway. I don't know, something that is kind of sensorial in nature descriptive that kind of lends a visual landscape to your major, whatever that will be, to a future career, whatever that would be. If your life had a theme song, what would that be? Think about this one. If you want to think about messaging, subtext, you want to make sure that someone who doesn't know the song can Google it and look at the lyrics and not be offended. If they read it in a vacuum, do you want to be cautious? Sometimes I see a lot of songs that may be authentically real important to students. But when read in a vacuum, when an admissions officer doesn't know your experience or connection to that song and just reads the lyrics, they're like, why? Or offensive. So you want to think about the subtext, that is super important. Dream trip. Again, an opportunity to kind of have a cultural dimension if you haven't really kind of developed that, that would be something here that you can talk about. What TV show will you binge next? Something similar to like the lyrics, like in a vacuum, you want to think about, will this be offensive anyway? If not, go for it. Which well-known person or fictional character would be your ideal roommate? Interesting. I've seen people go into fictional characters a lot with this one. And so you want to think about someone that is not too obscure and then not too kind of commonplace that, that it doesn't really show a specific set of traits, right? So I had a student a couple years ago write about Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, which is one of my favorite shows. So I was like, perfect. But I know her kind of personality trait. She's a reader. She loves writing. She loves the written word. She has a banter with her mom. She's very independent. So you want to think about kind of what the character says about you basically. I love this one. This is my favorite. If you can teach a class any topic, what would it be? So here, pick something that is an interest of yours. It doesn't have to be part of your major. If you could be studying engineering, we could have an interest in kind of hip hop or an interest in McCarthyism, philosophy, history, video games, coding. So think about another kind of social or intellectual interest that they would kind of find value in knowing about you. For example, I've had a student kind of write about Rosalia, the Spanish singer. And so her collaboration with like hip hop artists. And so a sample would be portrait of the artist Rosalia, the history of flamenco meets hip hop. And so you want to think about the name as kind of giving information, but then also adding kind of a twist, an argument of sorts that is embedded in the topic. So they kind of know where that course would potentially go. I hope you found this helpful. If you did, give us a like, please comment below. If you have any questions on any of these, if you want to brainstorm any of these supplements, definitely give me a comment below. I'd love to help you out whenever possible. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.


On December 7th 2017, a user by the name of DumpsterDug tweeted two images with the following caption. Okay, so I was playing in my Minecraft survival world, and I see this guy who has like a million clones. Is this some kind of texture glitch or something? The two images shows the default Steve skin, but heavily distorted to have a large portion of the skin covered in pitch black, obscuring its left eye, half of its torso, and a section of its left leg. The entity is seen staring at the player in both images, the only difference is that it is seen alone in the first image, while it is surrounded by several other entities with its likeness, thus the clones mentioned by the original poster. Since then, the tweet has been deleted, but it still prompts several questions regarding the abnormality of the scenario. Other than that, there's been no updates regarding the topic so far until August 19th 2019, when a user named, Miner Steve, a real-life close friend of DumpsterDug tweeted, Guys, DumpsterDug is missing. The police are already searching for him. If you know anything, please call me or his family using this number. Four months later, Miner Steve received a private message from a user named, RMJPZW5K. The message said, you'll never see him again. The message then was repeated several times by the user before they went silent. The case would go silent until February 28th 2020, when they found DumpsterDug's body in the woods outside of his home in Pennsylvania. Although DumpsterDug's Minecraft tweet and his disappearance had not much correlation with each other, Jeremy B Bellamy, an investigator working for the cyber police, tracked down the user RMJPZW5K and revealed him to be redacted, a former computer programmer. Redacted used a special software to modify specific Minecraft seeds, and allowed data to be uploaded and downloaded without the user's knowledge, which is how he got DumpsterDug's location. That aside, he confessed to torturing and dismembering Douglas scenes, DumpsterDug's real name, on March 25th 2020. He shortly died later in the same year after he was beaten to death in a federal prison. Despite redacted's arrest, numerous cases of disappearances have spiked in the last few months. Police recording, February 28th 2020. Detective Redacted reporting here. It's currently 4.32 am here in Redacted, Pennsylvania. We were called here after a woman contacted us after finding a body. Victim appears to be a male somewhere near his mid to late teen years. Both the right arm and the left leg are dismembered. Cause of death seems to be strangulation. I theorize suspect must have strangled the victim before dismembering him. Surgical tools were found near the scene, possibly were used for torture. Coroner thinks the victim must have been tortured on a routine basis, judging from the age of the victim's bruises and cuts. Further investigation is needed.


Section 16 of short stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN 1.  Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it. They are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me, and indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth, and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth. But they won't understand that. No. They won't understand it. In the old days I used to be miserable at seeming ridiculous. Not seeming but being. I have always been ridiculous and I have known it perhaps from the hour I was born. Perhaps from the time I was seven years old I knew I was ridiculous. Afterwards I went to school, studied at the university, and, do you know, the more I learned, the more thoroughly I understood that I was ridiculous. So that it seemed in the end as though all the sciences I studied at the university existed only to prove, and make evident to me as I went more deeply into them that I was ridiculous. It was the same with life as it was with science, with every year the same consciousness of the ridiculous figure I cut and every relation grew and strengthened. Everyone always laughed at me. But not one of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on earth who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd. It was myself. And what I resented most of all was that they did not know that. But that was my own fault.  This pride grew in me with the years, and if it had happened that I allowed myself to confess to anyone that I was ridiculous, I believe that I should have blown out my brains the same evening. How I suffered in my early youth from the fear that I might give way and confess it to my school fellows. But since I grew to manhood I have for some unknown reason become calmer, though I realized my awful characteristic more fully every year. I say unknown, for to this day I cannot tell why it was. Perhaps it was owing to the terrible misery that was growing in my soul, through something which was of more consequence than anything else about me. That something was the conviction that had come upon me that nothing in the world mattered. I had long had an inkling of it, but the full realization came last year almost suddenly. I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all. I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed, this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles. I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street, and not so much from being lost in thought. What had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time. Nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems. I had not settled one of them and how many there were, but I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found the truth. I learned the truth last November, on the third of November to be precise, and I remember every instant since. It was a gloomy evening, one of the gloomiest possible evenings. I was going home at about eleven o'clock, and I remember that I thought that the evening could not be gloomier, even physically. Rain had been falling all day, and it had been a cold, gloomy, almost menacing rain, with, I remember, an unmistakable spite against mankind. Suddenly, between ten and eleven, it had stopped, and was followed by a horrible dampness, colder and damper than the rain, and a sort of steam was rising from everywhere, from every stone in the street, and from every by lane, if one looked down at as far as one could. A thought suddenly occurred to me that if all the street lamps had been put out, it would have been less cheerless, that the gas made one's heart sadder, because it lighted it all up. I had had scarcely any dinner that day, and had been spending the evening with an engineer, and two other friends had been there also. I sat silent. I fancy I bored them. They talked of something rousing, and suddenly they got excited over it. But they did not really care, I could see that, and only made a show of being excited. I suddenly said as much to them, my friends, I said, you really do not care one way or the other. They were not offended, but they all laughed at me. That was because I spoke without any note of reproach, simply because it did not matter to me. They saw it did not, and it amused them. As I was thinking about the gas lamps in the street I looked up at the sky. The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star gave me an idea.  I had firmly determined to do so two months before, and poor as I was, I bought a splendid revolver that very day and loaded it. But two months had passed, and it was still lying in my drawer. I was so utterly indifferent that I wanted to seize a moment when I would not be so indifferent. Why, I don't know. And so for two months every night that I came home I thought I would shoot myself. I kept waiting for the right moment, and so now this star gave me a thought. I made up my mind that it should certainly be that night. And why the star gave me the thought? I don't know. And just as I was looking at the sky this little girl took me by the elbow. The street was empty, and there was scarcely anyone to be seen. A cab man was sleeping in the distance in his cab.  But I noticed particularly her wet broken shoes, and I recall them now. They caught my eye particularly. She suddenly pulled me by the elbow and called me. She was not weeping, but was spasmodically crying out some words which she could not utter properly, because she was shivering and shuddering all over. She was in terror about something, and kept crying, Mammy, Mammy. I turned facing her. I did not say a word and went on. But she ran, pulling at me, and there was that note in her voice which in frightened children means to spare. I know that sound. Though she did not articulate the words I understood that her mother was dying, or that something of the sort was happening to them, and that she had run out to call someone, to find something to help her mother. I did not go with her. On the contrary, I had an impulse to drive her away. I told her first to go to a policeman, but clasping her hands she ran beside me, sobbing and gasping, and would not leave me. Then I stamped my foot and shouted at her. She called out, Sir, Sir, but suddenly abandoned me and rushed headlong across the road. Some other passerby appeared there, and she evidently flew from me to him. I mounted up to my fifth story. I have a room in a flat where there are other lodgers. My room is small and poor, with a garret window in the shape of a semi-circle. I have a sofa covered with American leather, a table with books on it, two chairs, and a comfortable arm chair, as old as can be, but of the good old-fashioned shape. I sat down, lighted the candle, and began thinking. In the room next to mine, through the partition wall, a perfect bedlam was going on. It had been going on for the last three days.  The night before there had been a fight, and I know that two of them had been for a long time engaged in dragging each other about by the hair. The landlady wanted to complain, but she was in abject terror of the captain. There was only one other lodger in the flat.  Both she and her children were in mortal fear of the captain, and lay trembling in crossing themselves all night, and the youngest child had a sort of fit from fright. That captain, I know for a fact, sometimes stops people in the Nevsky Prospect and begs. They won't take him into the service. But strange to say—that's why I'm telling this—all this month that the captain has been here, his behavior has caused me no annoyance. I have, of course, tried to avoid his acquaintance from the very beginning, and he too was bored with me from the first. But I never care how much they shout the other side of the partition, nor how many of them there are in there. I sit up all night and forget them so completely, that I do not even hear them. I stay awake till daybreak, and have been going on like that for the last year. I sit up all night in my armchair at the table, doing nothing. I only read by day. I sit, don't even think. Ideas of a sort wander through my mind, and I let them come and go as they will. A whole candle is burnt every night. I sat down quietly at the table, took out the revolver, and put it down before me. When I had put it down, I asked myself, I remember. Is that so? And answered with complete conviction, it is. That is, I shall shoot myself. I knew that I should shoot myself that night for certain, but how much longer I should go on sitting at the table, I did not know. And no doubt I should have shot myself if it had not been for that little girl. Too. You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If anyone had struck me, it would have hurt me. It was the same morally. If anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to do in old days, when there were things in life that did matter to me. I had felt pity that evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why, then, had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that occurred to me at the time. When she was calling and pulling at me, a question suddenly arose before me, and I could not settle it. The question was an idle one, but I was vexed. I was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have mattered to me. Why was it that all at once I did not feel that nothing mattered, and was sorry for the little girl? I remember that I was very sorry for her. So much so that I felt a strange pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really, I do not know better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the moment, but the sensation persisted at home when I was sitting at the table, and I was very much irritated as I had not been for a long time past. One reflection followed another. I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being and not nothingness, I was alive, and so could suffer, be angry, and feel shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill myself in two hours, say, what is the little girl to me, and what have I to do with shame or with anything else in the world, I shall turn into nothing, absolutely nothing. And can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall completely cease to exist immediately, and so everything else will cease to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling of pity for the child, nor the feeling of shame after a contemptible action? I stamped and shouted at the unhappy child, as though to say, not only I feel no pity, but even if I behave inhumanely and contemptibly, I am free to, for in another two hours, everything will be extinguished. Do you believe that that was why I shouted that? I am almost convinced of it now. It seemed clear to me that life in the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone. If I shot myself, the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished, the whole world will vanish too, and become void like a phantom, as a mere pertinence of my consciousness for possibly all this world and all these people are only me, myself. I remember that as I sat and reflected. I turned all these new questions that swarmed one after another quite the other way, and thought of something quite new. For instance, a strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on the moon or on Mars, and there had committed the most disgraceful and dishonorable action, and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as one can only conceive and realize in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never, under any circumstances, return there. Then, looking from the earth to the moon, should I care or not? Should I feel shame for that action or not? These were idleness and superfluous questions for the revolver was already lying before me, and I knew in every fiber of my being that it would happen for certain. But they excited me, and I raged. I could not die now without having first settled something. In short, the child had saved me, for I put off my pistol shot for the sake of these questions. Meanwhile, the clamor had begun to subside in the captain's room. They had finished their game, were settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling and languidly winding up their quarrels. At that point I suddenly fell asleep in my chair at the table, a thing which had never happened to me before. I dropped asleep, quite unawares. Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things. Some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewelry, while others one gallops through as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happened to it. My brother died five years ago, for instance. I sometimes dream of him. He takes part in my affairs, we are very much interested, and yet all through my dream I quite know and remember that my brother is dead and buried. How is it that I am not surprised that, though he is dead, he is here beside me and working with me? Why, it is that my reason fully accepts it? But enough. I will begin about my dream. Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November.  But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth, and that there is no other and there cannot be. Whether you are asleep or awake, let it be a dream, so be it. But the real life of which you make so much, I am meant to extinguish by suicide.  Listen, three, I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even seemed to be still reflecting on the same subjects.  After aiming at my chest, I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger. In dreams, you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless perhaps you really bruised yourself against the bedstead. Then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken, and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded and benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back. I saw nothing and could not make the slightest movement. People were walking and shouting around me. The captain bawled, the landlady shrieked, and suddenly another break and I was being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt how the coffin was shaking and reflected upon it, and for the first time the idea struck me that I was dead, utterly dead. I knew it and had no doubt of it. I could neither see nor move, and yet I was feeling and reflecting. But I was soon reconciled to the position and as when usually does in a dream, accepted the facts without disputing them. And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away. I was left alone, utterly alone. I did not move. Whenever before I had imagined being buried the one sensation I associated with the grave was that of damp and cold. So now I felt that I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but I felt nothing else. I lay still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting without dispute that a dead man had nothing to expect. But it was damp. I don't know how long a time passed, whether an hour or several days or many days, but all at once a drop of water fell on my closed left eye, making its way through a coffin lid. It was followed a minute later by a second, then a minute later by a third, and so on, regularly every minute. There was a sudden glow of profound indignation in my heart, and I suddenly felt in it a pang of physical pain. That's my wound, I thought. That's the bullet.  Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more rational than what is happening here as possible, suffer it to be here now.  I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full minute of unbroken silence, and again another drop fell. But I knew with infinite unshakable certainty that everything would change immediately. And behold, my grave suddenly was rent a sunder. That is, I don't know whether it was opened or dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and unknown being, and we found ourselves in space. I suddenly regained my sight. It was the dead of night, and never, never had there been such darkness. We were flying through space far away from the earth. I did not question the being who was talking to me. I was proud and waited. I assured myself that I was not afraid and was thrilled with ecstasy at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not know how long we were flying. I cannot imagine. It happened as it always does in dreams when you skip over space and time, and the laws of thought and existence, and only pause upon the points for which the heart yearns. I remember that I suddenly saw in the darkness a star. Is that serious? I asked impulsively, though I had not meant to ask any questions. No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you were coming home. The being who was carrying me replied.  Strange to say I did not like that being. In fact, I felt an intense aversion for it.  And here I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course, but yet living, existing. And so there is life beyond the grave. I thought with the strange frivolity one has in dreams, but in its inmost depth my heart remained unchanged. And if I have got to exist again, I thought, and live once more under the control of some irresistible power, I won't be vanquished and humiliated. You know that I am afraid of you and despise me for that. I said suddenly to my companion, unable to refrain from the humiliating question which implied a confession, and feeling my humiliation stab my heart as with a pin. He did not answer my question, but all at once I felt that he was not even despising me. But was laughing at me and had no compassion for me, and that our journey had an unknown and mysterious object that concerned me only. Fear was growing in my heart. Something was mutely and painfully communicated to me from my silent companion, and permeated my whole being. We were flying through dark, unknown space. I had for some time lost sight of the constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were stars in the heavenly spaces, the light of which took thousands or millions of years to reach the earth. Perhaps we were already flying through those spaces. I expected something with a terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And suddenly I was thrilled by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the depths. I suddenly caught sight of our sun. I knew that it could not be our sun, that gave life to our earth, and that we were in infinite distance from our sun. But for some reason I knew in my whole being that it was a sun exactly like ours, a duplicate of it. A sweet, thrilling feeling resounded with ecstasy in my heart, the kindred power of the same light which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and awakened it. And I had a sensation of life, the old life of the past for the first time since I had been in the grave. But if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our sun, I cried, where is the earth? And my companion pointed to a star twinkling in the distance with an emerald light. We were flying straight toward it. And are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be the law of nature? And if that is an earth there, can it be just the same earth as ours, just the same as poor as unhappy but precious and beloved forever, arousing in the most ungrateful of her children the same poignant love for her that we feel for our earth? I cried out shaken by irresistible ecstatic love for the old familiar earth which I had left. The image of the poor child whom I had repulsed flashed through my mind. You shall see it all, answered my companion, and there was a note of sorrow in his voice. But we were rapidly approaching the planet. It was growing before my eyes. I could already distinguish the ocean, the outline of Europe, and suddenly a feeling of a great and holy jealousy glowed in my heart. How can it be repeated? And what for? I love and can love only that earth which I have left stained with my blood, when in my ingratitude I quenched my life with a bullet in my heart. But I have never, never ceased to love that earth, and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I loved it more than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want it. I won't accept life on any other. But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite without noticing how, found myself on this other earth, in the bright light of a sunny day fair as paradise. I believe I was standing on one of the islands that make up, on our globe, the Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland facing that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us. Only everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the splendor of some great holy triumph attained at last. The caressing sea, green as emerald, splashed softly upon the shore and kissed it with manifest, almost conscious love. The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their blossom, and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with their soft caressing rustle, and seemed to articulate words of love. The grass glowed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks in the air and perched fearlessly on my shoulders and arms, and joyfully struck me with their darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the people of this happy land. They came to me of themselves. They surrounded me. Kissed me. The children of the sun. The children of their sun. Oh, how beautiful they were. Never had I seen on our own earth such beauty in mankind. Only, perhaps in our children in their earliest years one might find some remote, faint reflection of this beauty. The eyes of these happy people shone with a clear brightness. Their faces were radiant with the light of reason and fullness of a serenity that comes of perfect understanding.  In their words and voices there was a note of childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first glance at them, I understood it all. It was the earth untarnished by the fall. On it lived people who had not sinned. They lived it just in such a paradise as that in which, according to all the legends of mankind, our first parents lived before they sinned. The only difference was that all this earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing joyfully, thronged round me and caressed me, they took me home with them, and each of them tried to reassure me. Oh, they asked me no questions, but they seemed, I fancied, to know everything without asking, and they wanted to make haste and smooth away the signs of suffering from my face. Four. And do you know what? Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet the sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful people has remained with me forever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to me from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and been convinced. I loved them. I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at all. As an up-to-date Russian progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it struck me as inexplicable that knowing so much they had, for instance, no science like ours. But I soon realized that their knowledge was gained and fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at peace. They did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and deeper than ours. For our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to understand it in order to teach others how to live, while they, without science, knew how to live, and that I understood. But I could not understand their knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them. It was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all nature like that, at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in thought but by some living channel. Oh, these people did not persist in trying to make me understand them. They loved me without that. But I knew that they would never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about our earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which they lived and mutely worshiped them themselves, and they saw that and let me worship them without being abashed at my adoration, for they, themselves, loved much. They were not unhappy on my account when, at times, I kissed their feet with tears, joyfully conscious of the love with which they would respond to mine. At times I asked myself with wonder how it was they were able never to offend a creature like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of jealousy or envy in me. Often I wondered how it could be that boastful and untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what I knew, of which, of course, they had no notion, that I was never tempted to do so by a desire to astonish or even to benefit them.  They wandered about their lovely woods and copses, they sang their lovely songs, their fair was light, the fruits of their trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the animals who loved them. The work they did for food and raiment was brief and not laborious. They loved and begot children, but I never noticed in them the impulse of that cruel sensuality which overcomes almost every man on this earth, all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of mankind on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new beings to share their happiness. There was no quarreling, no jealousy among them, and they did not even know what the words meant. Their children were the children of all, for they all made up one family. There was scarcely any illness among them, though there was death. But their old people died peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings and smiles to those who surrounded them to take their last farewell with bright and loving smiles. I never saw grief or tears on those occasions, but only love, which reached the point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy made perfect and contemplative. One might think that they were still in contact with the departed after death, and that their earthly union was not cut short by death. They scarcely understood me when I questioned them about immortality, but evidently they were so convinced of it without reasoning that it was not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe. They had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another. In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in musical and harmonious chorus. In those songs they expressed all the sensations that the parting day had given them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another and praised each other like children. They were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but in all embracing, universal feeling. Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely understood it all. Though I understood the words, I could never fathom their full significance. It remained as it were beyond the grasp of my mind. Yet my heart unconsciously absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had a presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had come to me on our earth in the form of a yearning melancholy, that at times approached insufferable sorrow, that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of their glory in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind, that often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without tears, that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was always a yearning anguish. Why could I not hate them without loving them? Why could I not help forgiving them, and in my love for them there was a yearning grief? Why could I not love them without hating them? They listened to me, and I saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but I did not regret that I had spoken to them of it. I knew that they understood the intensity of my yearning anguish over those whom I had left.  Oh, everyone laughs in my face now and assures me that one cannot dream of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself when I woke up. And when I told them that perhaps it really was so, my God, how they shouted with laughter in my face and what mirth I cost! Yes, of course I was overcome by the mere sensation of my dream, and that was all that was preserved in my cruelly wounded heart, but the actual forms and images of my dreams, that is, the very ones I really saw at the very time of my dream were filled with such harmony, were so lovely and enchanting, and were so actual, that on awakening I was, of course, incapable of clothing them in our poor language so that they were bound to become blurred in my mind, and so perhaps I really was forced afterwards to make up the details, and so, of course, to distort them in my passionate desire to convey some at least of them as quickly as I could. But on the other hand, how can I help believing that it was all true? It was perhaps a thousand times brighter, happier, and more joyful than I describe it, granted that I dreamed it, yet it must have been real. You know, I will tell you a secret. Perhaps it was not a dream at all. For then something happened so awful, something so horribly true, that it could not have been imagined in my dream. My heart may have originated the dream, but would my heart alone have been capable of originating the awful event which happened to me afterwards? How could I alone have invented it, or imagined it in my dream? Could my petty heart and my fickle, trivial mind have risen to such a revelation of truth? Oh, judge for yourselves, hitherto I have concealed it, but now I will tell the truth. The fact is that I corrupted them all. Five. Yes. Yes. It ended in my corrupting them all. How could it come to pass? I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trakina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth. So happy and sinless before my coming. They learned to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps began innocently with a jest, cockatry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy, cruelty. I don't know. I don't remember, but soon, very soon, the first blood was shed. They marveled and were horrified, and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one another. Approaches, upradings, followed. They came to no shame, and shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honor sprang up, and every union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forest and became hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow. They thirsted for suffering and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked, they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept. Set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost. In fact, refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility of this happiness in the past and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but strange and wonderful to relate. Though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more, that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshiped their own idea, their own desire. Though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realized yet, they bowed down to it and adored it with tears. Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it to them again, and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered, me, we may be deceitful, wicked, and unjust, we know it, and weep over it, we grieve over it, we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful judge who will judge us and whose name we know not, but we have science, and by means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness. That is what they said, and after saying such things everyone began to love himself better than anyone else, and indeed they could not do otherwise, all became so jealous of the rights of their own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery, the weak eagerly submitted to the strong on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people weeping and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with stones, holy blood was shed on the threshold of the temples. Then there arose men who began to think how to bring all people together again, so that everybody, while still loving himself best of all, might not interfere with others, and all might live together in something like a harmonious society. Regular wars sprang up over this idea, all the combatants at the same time firmly believed that science, wisdom, and the instinct of self-preservation would force men at last to unite into a harmonious and rational society, and so meanwhile to hasten matters the wise, endeavored to exterminate as rapidly as possible all who were not wise, and did not understand their idea that the latter might not hinder its triumph. But the instinct of self-preservation grew rapidly weaker. There arose men, haughty and sensual, who demanded all or nothing. In order to obtain everything they resorted to crime, and if they did not succeed, to suicide. There arose religions with a cult of non-existence and self-destruction for the sake of the everlasting peace of annihilation. At last these people grew weary of their meaningless toil, and signs of suffering came into their faces, and then they proclaimed that suffering was a beauty, for in suffering alone was their meaning. They glorified suffering in their songs. I moved about among them, ringing my hands and weeping over them, but I loved them perhaps more than in old days when there was no suffering in their faces, and when they were innocent and so lovely. I loved the earth. They had polluted even more than when it had been a paradise, if only because sorrow had come to it. Alas, I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but only for myself. For myself, but I wept over them, pitying them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming, cursing, and despising myself. I told them that all this was my doing, mine alone, that it was I had brought them to corruption, contamination, and falsity. I besaulted them to crucify me. I taught them how to make a cross. I could not kill myself. I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at their hands. I yearned for their suffering. I longed that my blood should be drained to the last drop in these agonies, but they only laughed at me, and began at last to look upon me as crazy. They justified me. They declared that they had only got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now was could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me that I was becoming dangerous, and that they should lock me up in a mad house if I did not hold my tongue. Then such grief took possession of my soul, that my heart was wrong, and I felt as though I were dying. And then, then I awoke. It was morning. That is, it was not yet daylight, but about six o'clock. I woke up in the same armchair. My candle had burnt out. Everyone was asleep in the captain's room, and there was a stillness all around, rare in our flat. First of all, I leapt up in great amazement. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before, not even in the most trivial detail. I had never, for instance, fallen asleep like this in my armchair. While I was standing and coming to myself, I suddenly caught sight of my revolver laying loaded, ready. But instantly I thrust it away. Oh, now, life, life! I lifted up my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words, but with tears. Ecstasy, immeasurable ecstasy flooded my soul. Yes, life in spreading the good tidings. Oh, I at that moment resolved to spread the tidings, and resolved it, of course, for my whole life. I go to spread the tidings. I want to spread the tidings. Of what? Of the truth? For I have seen it. Have seen it with my own eyes. Have seen it in all its glory. And since then I have been preaching. Moreover, I love all those who laugh at me more than any of the rest. Why, that is so, I do not know and cannot explain, but so be it. I am told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and confused now, what shall I be later on? It is true indeed. I am vague and confused, and perhaps as time goes on I shall be more so. And, of course, I shall make many blunders before I find out how to preach, that is, find out what words to say, what things to do, for it is a very difficult task. I see all that as clear as daylight. But listen, who does not make mistakes? And yet you know all are making for the same goal. All are striving in the same direction anyway, from the sage to the lowest robber, only by different roads. It is an old truth, but this is what is new. I cannot go far wrong. For I have seen the truth. I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind, and it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth. It is not as though I had invented it with my mind. I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it. And so how can I go wrong? I shall make some slips no doubt, and shall perhaps talk in second-hand language, but not for long. The living image of what I saw will always be with me, and will always correct and guide me. I am full of courage and freshness, and I will go on and on if it were for a thousand years. Do you know? At first I meant to conceal the fact that I corrupted them, but that was a mistake. That was my first mistake. But truth whispered to me that I was lying, and preserved me, and corrected me. But how established paradise? I don't know, because I do not know how to put it into words. After my dream I lost command of words, all the chief words anyway, the most necessary ones. But never mind. I shall go and I shall keep talking. I won't leave off, for anyway I have seen it with my own eyes, though I cannot describe what I saw. But the scoffers do not understand that. It was a dream, they say, delirium hallucination, as though that meant so much. And they are so proud. A dream? What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass. That I understand. Yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is. In one day, in one hour, everything could be arranged at once. The chief thing is to love others like yourself. That's the great thing, and that's everything. Nothing else is wanted. You will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times. But it has not formed part of our lives. The consciousness of life is higher than life. The knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness. That is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can all be arranged at once. And I tracked out that little girl. And I shall go on and on. End of the Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Theodore Dostoevsky, reading by John Van Stan, Savannah, Georgia. End of Short Stories by Theodore Dostoevsky. Thank you for listening.


Russian research center says nuclear weapons should never be used. Nuclear weapons are a last resort and should never be used. The president of the Russian National Research Center, Kurchatov Institute, Mikhail Kovalchuk said. He said at the Russian wine making forum in Moscow, nuclear weapons will not be used by anyone, only if to destroy humanity. This type of weapon is a deterrent Kovalchuk recalled. He noted that it will never occur to anyone, except for the United States to use it. Kovalchuk stressed it is the bottom line weapon. It is a weapon that frightens but should never be used. While commenting on the global threats facing humanity, he noted that the risk of human race being destroyed by biological means was much greater. Imagine this COVID will suddenly show a 5-fold, 10-fold increase in mortality, who will survive in these conditions, only the country that has the know-how to create a vaccine. We were the first to do that. We created several vaccines. Several other countries did that too. The other countries will be doomed to extinction if nobody supplies a vaccine to them. He added that the national security and technological independence of states primarily depended on agriculture, medicines, and the biosecurity of the population as a whole.


The average person will get completely destroyed by this inflation. If you want to have above-average results, then you're going to have to put above-average effort into thinking about your financial future. Arthur Hayes is among the most controversial figures in the crypto space. After founding BitMEX, the world's first crypto derivative exchange in 2014, he became the first African-American crypto-billionaire. Last year, Hayes pleaded guilty to facilitating money laundering in the U.S. Now he's running an investment fund that focuses on fixing what he considers to be the problems plaguing the crypto industry. In this interview, Hayes breaks down his investment thesis on crypto, explains how Bitcoin could reach $1 million in the current cycle, and why the catalyst is likely to come from outside the industry. I'm Giovanni. On this show, we challenge the ideas that shape the world of crypto. In each episode, we assess a crypto narrative, a macroeconomic outlook, or a potentially disruptive technology. Only the most solid ideas will make it to the other side. So Arthur, at the end of last year, your family office set up a new investment fund called Maelstrom, the goal of which is fixing the problems that have been plaguing the crypto industry. So what are those problems according to you? The concrete problem in 2022 was that we got away from what we're actually trying to build here, which are decentralized companies, well, not companies, protocols, projects, obviously infrastructure to solve financial and social and political problems. And that's hard to do. Building Bitcoin is extremely successful, but it took a very long time and it was very difficult. And it's still a project in flux, whereas it's less difficult to build a centralized company around an individual who is celebrated as very good in the respective field.  I see all these individuals, these large in-life personalities that have these companies, and people are like, oh, yes, this is crypto. I believe in this guy. I'm going to invest in their company. I'm going to use their products. They're going to keep my money safe.  They didn't actually, you know, they didn't build robust businesses that could withstand all parts of the cycle. They took a lot of leverage. Some of them are outright fraudsters. But at the end of the day, we placed our trust in these companies and these individuals, and that trust was misplaced. And a lot of people lost a lot of money as the market turned. Right. But the decentralized solution still worked. Bitcoin still worked. Ethereum still worked. Your primitives such as Uniswap, Pomp, Pound, Ivey, all worked flawlessly. And so this was, while the problem was placing trust in such-sized institutions, the solutions were right there before us. Maybe the token prices were down 95%, but that doesn't matter. This, the actual technology still worked. We still have solutions that solve these problems. And down in this, you know, protracted bear market and hopefully exiting that period, we're able to invest at very, very good prices in things that actually are doing decentralization. Okay, that's interesting. But now let's zoom out for a bit. If you had to point out at the main macro thesis that is, let's say, motivating your belief that cryptocurrencies will eventually replace or at least offer a viable alternative to the current fiat system, what that would be? At a higher level, the general concept is, if we believe that traditional financial system has too much debt and thus it must inflate away the problems, and if you're left in this system, your capital is going to get destroyed over time, but the cost of energy is a cost of energy, then this portion of crypto needs to at least preserve the cost of energy. And, you know, everybody has a different standard of living that they'd like to maintain that standard of living cost energy, places you like to eat, places you like to travel, where you like to live, all that requires a certain amount of energy and everyone has a different sort of preference, marginal utility curve energy. So my old goal with all of my investing and is to preserve capital so that I can consume the same amount of energy or whatever energy amount that I would like from now on into the future. Now, if you hold all your assets of the fiat world, you're almost guaranteed not to keep up the pace of energy. At a macro level, there's so much debt in the world that unless we find, you know, a completely new source of energy that's like, you know, multi factors times more efficient, and we deploy these new forms of energy into the entire world in like the next two years, there is no way to pay back this debt. And so the point is to find assets outside of the traditional financial system that are going to least maintain purchasing power, you know, in hydrocarbon terms, the average person will get completely destroyed by this inflation.  If you want to have above average results, then you're going to have to put above average effort into thinking about your financial future. So recently, you also said that whether a decentralized product is going to be widely adopted by the masses will depend on factors that are outside crypto. So what are these factors are you talking about? Well, I think, you know, we just had one, we had one in March in the United States, we had a bank run, the second largest bank failure in I think US financial history was the Silicon Valley Bigger signature bank, one of them.  You know, the next two banks that failed, you know, a few days later, the depositors were about to learn these lessons.  What's going to happen to my deposit? I thought the system was completely safe. Oh, now I kind of understand what some of these people were talking about, about, you know, diversifying my finances and where I should actually care about the institution, go where I put my money and understand their business model and what they're actually doing. But no, you know, the US government in its own interest decided that, okay, we let that one bank fail, let's cover these two banks in terms of, you know, depositors and, you know, guaranteed all the deposits, right? They're not really going to learn that lesson because, you know, the politicians see that this is not the best outcome for them. So they're going to get guaranteed all those deposits. Now, whether or not that currency buys the same amount of energy, that's the question that people should be asking. And very few ask themselves that really are going to actually armless, intellectually honest about their investments and whether or not they're actually generating a return that keeps their standard of living constant.  So now I would like to touch upon the regulatory situation in the US. So we have been witnessing in the last couple of months an unprecedented the crackdown on crypto in the US. What do you think is the rationale behind this sort of policy approach? Well, again, I think people need to make sure they don't take the wrong lesson from, from this. And I think right now I was focusing, oh, the US is cracking on the crypto. This politician is saying that this regulatory agent is saying that. And what they need to recognize is what is the problem that the United States financial system has? And does that problem manifest itself in other systems and other jurisdictions? Okay, what's, what's the problem of the US says they have too much debt, they have a following working age population. And, you know, they have no new forms of energy that they're sort of inventing to make things more productive. That's just about true for every major economy in the world. And so what do governments do when they have too much debt and not a way to earn it? And there's a lot of it. If you can convince the population that they don't need to own this crypto thing, that it's perfectly fine to get boiled like a frog with your capital in, in my particular jurisdiction, then you don't have a lot of capital fleeing to crypto fleeing to any other sort of asset that they can't tax via inflation. They don't want you to go anywhere. They want your capital to sit there and they'll make a very pleasant, pleasant journey to lose 20, 30, 40, 50, 60% of your purchasing power over a period of time such that the debt load is effectively lowered and the finances are healthier. So Arthur, now I would like to discuss your price predictions for Bitcoin. So you recently said that you expect the price of Bitcoin to reach $1 million in this cycle. So can you guide us through this prediction?  It doesn't really matter. What really matters is like, how is this bacon crisis in the US progressing? I think sometime in later this year, we're going to see another few banks almost by the dust, and then it's going to be explicitly clear that the entire banking system is backstopped by the Fed plus Treasury. And once they do it, then all their other sycophants at all the other central banks can now follow, right? They can now do the same thing. Oh, the Fed is in a quantitative tightening and going back to such a cutting rate. We can too, because we all have the same problems. We don't want to go through the same sort of, you know, market dislocations that they have. So now that they've done it. Oh, it's great. Powell is doing it. You know, Christian Lagar can do it. You either the BoJ can do it. PBOC can start pumping money too. Everybody's got the same problem. And now the preeminent central bank has declared an uncle and said, okay, you know what, this banking is bad. We need to lower rates to fix our banking system to, you know, get the yield curve to be normalized again, which is short jump rates lower than long term rates.  Bitcoin and crypto is going to participate. And then that's going to go, I think sometime 25, 26. Yeah, could Bitcoin go to a million? Absolutely. Right? There's how many hundreds of trillions of dollars of debt in the world, right? If you basically have said, we're going to back up all of it. And we go lower and allow the market to price what they think the long-term rate of yield should be in, you know, the major economic blocks of the world, then, you know, this guy's a limit on where Bitcoin a very, very small asset of the door is very small. Awesome. Thanks, Arthur, for talking to us. And I hope to see you soon on our show. Awesome. All right. Great.


Fresh from art school, Australian-born London-based creative Kim Garreg began her career with an art directing job at an agency mother. She quickly moved to directing. In the last five years alone, she's created award-winning work, including the This Girl Can campaign for Sport England, as well as the 2015 John Lewis Christmas spot, The Man on the Moon. Most recently, Garreg directed P&G's Moving but Controversial, The Best Man Can Be campaign. Boys will be boys. Boys will be boys. Boys will be boys. A provocative examination of masculinity born from the lets iconic tagline, The Best a Man Can Get. During Women's History Month, we honor Kim Garreg.


QuickBooks Online 2022 sales tax set up get ready because it's go time with QuickBooks Online 2022. Here we are in our get great guitars practice file that we set up with a 30-day free trial holding down control scrolling up just a bit to get to that one two five percent we're currently in the home page otherwise known as the get things done page also in the business view if you wanted to change to the accounting view you can do it by going to the cog up top and scrolling down to the switch to the accounting view gonna keep it on the business view we might toggle back and forth to the sample company file just to get a look at the accounting view fairly quickly as we go through some of our navigation process we're now looking into setting up the sales tax information when you're thinking about the sales tax if you're in the United States you're talking about a tax that's not a federal tax but it's applied on the state and local level which can actually make it a little bit more difficult because that means that it's not going to be something that will be uniform across the entire country and therefore QuickBooks can't set it up just as one type of thing and it also could result in having multiple different sales tax kind of obligations if you're doing business basically in different localities so it can get quite complex but we're just going to go through the standard kind of sales tax setup for basically a one location process as you think of sales tax items you want to think about three things that you need to do one is to set up the sales tax which is the most complicated item that you need to be setting up making sure that you've got the proper percentages the proper locations and so on and so forth then you need to apply the sales tax to the items which we set up last time the last few presentations so the things that we're selling the things that we're going to be populating when we make an invoice and a sales receipt will then determine whether or not sales tax will be calculated depending on the item the inventory item or service item that we're setting up typically in the United States the inventory items will be subject to the sales tax so we just need to turn it on once we basically have set up the sales tax and then we have to think about well is there an exception to a customer meaning we could possibly have some customers that although they're purchasing something that is usually subject to sales tax is not subject to them for sales tax for whatever reason and put them as exempt from sales tax for the customer that's something you don't typically have to do all the time it depends on the particular business and certain customer relationships so to do this let's first go down to the taxes on down below so we're in our taxes tabs on down below we're looking at the sales tax we want to set up the sales tax once in here i'm going to close up the hamburger says automatically calculate sales tax rate for each sale one create an invoice or receipt number two we calculate the sales tax rate based on date location type and product or service and customer and then three we keep your sales tax updated when laws change so you stay compliant which is good so we're going to say okay let's use the automatic sales tax setup then sounds good to me quick books so it's step number one address obviously it needs the proper address so that it can apply that address and use the calculation of the sales tax based on that address again if you're doing online sales or multiple different locations and whatnot it could be a little bit more complex than that but we're going to use our address and our mock problem which is this is just a mock address of course in beaverly hills 90210 that's where our business is located so here's the address we use your physical business address to calculate your sales tax we're going to say okay let's do it tell us more about your taxes we calculate sales tax based on what you sell and so they got and and here double and i think they misspelled something that's weird and where you sell it if you sell it's multiple locations we calculate the correct sales tax for each one learn more see i'm not the only one that does funny stuff like that even into it it's huge company does stuff like that so i don't want to hear anything about any any case do you need to collect sales tax outside of california i'm going to say no this makes it a lot easier of course so we're going to say nothing outside one sales tax location for us looks like you need to pay tax to just one government office in california we call this your tax agency your tax agency is the california department of tax and fees administration sounds very bureaucratically very appropriately bureaucratic sounds right to me let's go ahead and continue on that so automatic sales taxes set up i give it a spin by creating a new first invoice boom we could test it out with the invoice right here if we want to and we could test it out and say if i put something taxable in here if it's going to apply the sales tax to it so but first i need to set up my items really but if i if i just pick an item down here and say i'm just going to pick an item pick an item and then you've got your your tax item down below based on the location so if i said based on your custom rates let's go ahead i'm going to close this out right now and i'm going to say do you want to leave i'm going to say yes let's leave this for now and let's think about this a little bit further before we apply the sales tax how often do you file sales tax you can find this this info on your sales tax business registration if you can't find it or changed check out the table to see where your business files so we got the agency california department of tax and fee administration so typically for setting up the sales tax and you got to know where who you're paying the tax to which will be dependent on your locality and what businesses you're in filing frequency so the current the general frequencies are monthly quarterly and yearly so how that would go then you can imagine what's going to happen here we're going to make sales we're going to we're going to charge what we charge and then we're going to charge the sales tax in addition to it collecting the sales tax now remember that when we do this we think of ourselves as basically just the tax collector the government has coerced us to be their tax collector so in other words the amount that we're charging for the sales tax is not really our sales number that's not part of our price in theory that's the government charging the customer the sales tax for what they purchased and we are just coerced to be the collection tool so that means that when we make a sale we're going to be collecting the sales tax on it and then we're going to have to pay it to the government in some future point in time so the question is well how often do i have to pay them and then how often do i have to basically file the form to verify that i have paid them a form similar to like a a 1040 for an individual in other words if you thought about individual income taxes in a perfect world meaning if they had a an easy like flat tax that they were applying the system is designed to kind of work like this you pay them as you go during the year so if i'm in currently the if i was in the year 2021 paying them as i go then when i filed the tax return for the year by you know april 15th of 2022 i should be having just an informational return telling them this is how much i owe you here's me recalculating it here's how much i already paid you i don't owe you any money and you don't owe me any money if it was a perfect world obviously for individual income taxes that doesn't work that way because individual income taxes are way too complex meaning we have a progressive tax system deductions are quite complicated they add all these credits that are changing every year so there's no way to get exactly correct so therefore we shoot for a little bit over and we try to get a refund in order to avoid penalties and interest when you're talking about something like a sales tax it should be very easy straightforward flat tax kind of system that means that we're going to be paying them after we collect the tax so if if we might pay them basically on a monthly basis for example after we collect the tax and then we're going to have to file and that's going to be determined on whatever the the government says so if we don't collect a lot of money it's likely that whatever place you are in whatever state and locale that you are in might say hey we just want you to file yearly for us because we're not too concerned with it and just make sure that you're giving us the money on a yearly basis but if you earn more sales tax they might say hey i would like you to file courtially or i would like to you to file monthly so that they could basically get there make sure that they're verifying your money sooner so that's going to be dependent upon your particular sales tax setup that you'll have to look at with your particular locale i'm just going to say monthly here it says california filing requirements average monthly liability if it's one to one hundred annual if it's not permitted what if it's 100 to 1200 quarterly and then if you make over the 1200 quarterly prepaid so let so we'll keep ours at then so we set that up and this is what we have thus far then we've got the sales tax due we've got the due date to start the due date to end and then the information on down below a couple shortcuts to the right hand side now the next thing we want to think about in the process is going to be the items the items we set up in the prior presentation to determine whether those items are going to be taxable or not which is something would would have been a little bit easier to do the sales tax setup first and then the items because then you might be able to do that at the same time when you import the items but we're going to go into those items here so last time we went into the get paid area which if we were in the other system the the this kind of layout with the accounting view which be in the sales area products and services and the business view it's in that get paid and the products and services closing up the hamburger now we're going to go into each of these items and determine whether it's going to be taxable now i already changed a couple of them but the diagnostics the service items we're going to imagine should not be taxable so i'm going to edit these items and then i'm going to go down and look at each one of them and say it says it says taxable here so i want this one to be not taxable so i'm going to edit this one and i'm going to say this on the still don't see i'm going to say this is going to be a non-taxable item non-taxable item and i'm going to save it as a non-taxable item and so there we have it and so i'm going to save it and close it i'm going to do that for all of the service items so that's the diagnostics i'm going to go to this this one's a good an inventory item inventory item inventory service item here edit and then i'm going to go down to where it says it's it's taxable it's saying it's the standard tax i'm going to edit and then say now you could go down and browse to what what the type of item is but i'm going to go right down to the bottom and just say this is going to be a non-taxable item non-taxable item and so there we have it as non-taxable and then i'm going to save and close that one so i'm going to keep doing this down here notice it's being a little bit kind of glitchy when i go into there because if i if i go back into this diagnostic up top and i go back down it says the edit sales tax it still says taxable standard rate when i had just changed it so it's being a little bit finicky right now you could if i was to choose for example an item up top which it would apply based on the item that we're doing just to pick one just so we can see what that would look like if i said the personal service and just let's let's just pretend it was exterminator service here and if i was to say done then it says right here the exterminator service will apply the sales tax based on the product or service location but then again if i save that and i go back into it right now it's given me a bit of a it's bit of a a problem that it's going back to attack taxable at the standard rate so it's it's not applying the tax quite properly at this point in time so we'll check it out a little bit later but i'm going to do it for the for the rest of them all the service items i would say that these are going to be items that we are going to say that we're not going to have the tax for these service items and i'm going to do that the kind of generic way down here and say it's just going to be non-taxable driven by the item so we're going to say save and close that's the number two step that we have to get done in order to basically apply the sales tax properly to an invoice or the sales receipt so the third step is to look at the customers that we're going to set up now usually you're going to set the customers up as you as you basically make sales when you make another invoice or sales receipt but for now let's take a look at the customer center just to get an idea now most customers are just going to be driven by what the item is so if the item is going to apply sales tax then the customer typically will as well so we're going to get to the get paid item this would be if you were in the other layout it would be in the sales area we're looking for the customers so here we're in the get paid area and we're going to go up to the customers and let's just add a customer here just so we can get a feel for it here i'm going to close up the hamburger and i'm going to add a customer manually and i'm just going to put the the minimum data needed which i'm going to call customer one or let's just call it test customer test customer and then for the sales tax information on it we would go to the tax info tab tax info tab and see if it was subject to sales tax or not this customer is tax exempt so if they were tax exempt we would say select this item if not we're going to keep it where it is the default of course is to keep it where it is so if i save that and now let's let's use that customer to create an invoice i'm not actually going to post it but just take a look at it to test out the sales tax we're going to hit the plus button up top and let's just make an invoice and i believe you need a customer in order for it to calculate the sales tax properly i'm going to close this out this is going to be customer one that we will use and i'm going to put the date sometime in 2022 so we'll keep that here let's choose an inventory item like an ELP guitar and quantity one so we'll have that down below and notice it's not applying the taxable it should be giving me the check box right there to say it's a taxable item automatically which is didn't do automatically right there so it's being a little bit a little bit finicky a little bit glitchy right there but there's the tax item it's going to be a taxable item and then going down below it's going to apply out the tax at that 4750 down below you can see the math if you were to click on the math here it's going to apply it out by the location and so we have the customer the location and address and then then the product the product and services and then here's the ELP and the amount now if you wanted to override which we're actually going to do for our practice problem to make it a generic basically five percent you could basically go into here and say i'm going to override the calculation notice the calculation up top is based on california but that's that's too specific really for a general problem for quickbooks it's california state california los angeles county california los angeles district that comes out to the 9.5 percent so i'm going to say down here what if i just make it the five percent or the amount so i can apply it out just for a generic problem purposes and confirm that reason because i said so quickbooks because it's a practice problem you could change it there and we're going to say close it up so now we've got the 525 so what would this do then it's going to record a transaction fairly complex transaction with an invoice now if we have inventory involved the invoice is going to increase the sales by the amount that i'm sorry it's going to increase accounts receivable by the amount including the sales tax the 525 the sales are going to increase by the 500 not including the sales tax notice that we're not making revenue go up by the 525 because in theory we didn't really earn that revenue it's basically a tax from the government to the the customer we're just the tool that they're using we're being coerced to be the collection agent so that means that the 25 isn't going to go on to our income it's going to instead go into a payable account sales tax payable type of account for the 25 on the payable that will pay later also the inventory item is driving the fact that inventory is going to go down by an amount not on the invoice but driven by the item and the cost of goods sold will also be impacted so we'll enter some invoices of course in the future as we go through the practice problem now i'm going to go back into the get paid area and just take a look at that some of these items to apply them out again so for the inventory items i'm going to try to go back in there and apply them out so i'm going to go back in and say for the inventory item it says taxable instead of just going to the default at the bottom to say it's going to be taxable down here i'm going to say it's a retail sale i'm going to call it a taxable retail item not applying the florida tax sir tax cap and pick that one and see if that will allow it to calculate the sales tax that we wanted to calculate down here so now it says taxable retail items here so it's going to will apply the sales tax based on your product or service i'm going to save it and close it so that's what i'm going to do to all of the inventory items i'm going to go into the inventory items edit them go down to the sales tax item here and it's i'm going to try to be more specific on the sales tax with the retail and pick up the retail amount and say done and then it says it's going to apply up the sales tax based on the retail so i'm going to do that for all of them note it's still being a little bit finicky here because if i go back into it it's now then if i scroll back down it's not just turning the tax on or off but it goes back to the taxable standard rate after any change i've basically made into it but it's calculating the sales tax now which is good i think what they're trying to do of course at this point in time is try to automate the sales tax by all the products and services instead of just turning it on and off which could be quite good but it gets a little bit more tricky for them to pull in all the different data in in that sense as well so in any case i'm going to close this back out i'm going to go back to the tab to the right and then let's just make another invoice and test it out so if i was to make another invoice up top and say i want to invoice and i wanted to calculate the sales tax on the inventory items for customer one so i'm going to say customer one or the test customer that we set up and i'm going to add an inventory item now an elp let's say down below and there's the sales tax is pulling in and calculating on the taxes calculated down here you can look at the math of it by selecting this item again to take a look at it so it gives you the information this is for the current area for for california again it's a very local kind of area for the sales tax because it's by location so you got the state the los angeles county and the los angeles county district now we're going to make it a kind of a generic thing in the practice problem so we'll actually override the sales tax here just to make it a standard generic five percent to have it kind of like a generic type of problem as we go through but it's calculating the sales tax so that looks good so let's say do you want to leave i'm going to say yeah let's leave now now the next thing if we were to adjust the customer let's just take a look and say well what if i had a customer that was not subject to sales tax do you want to leave i'm going to say yeah and let's go to the first tab and let's go into our customers by hitting the item up top and let's go to the get paid area once again and this time i want to go into the customer area of it and i'm going to close the hamburger back out i'm going to go into customer or test customer that we just set up and edit the detail up top and let's pretend there were not they're not subject to tax for whatever reason this particular customer i'm going to say this customer is not subject to tax and then we'll just say federal government or something like that and say yes so now this is going to say now it would be a taxable item but now the actual customer has an exception to be taxed for this particular item so let's add another invoice and see what that would do and see if it calculates the sales tax testing it out test customer closing that out we're going to say this is going to be an ELP and we can see that it's checked off as it's taxable but it's not actually calculating the sales tax on it down below here so that's going to be that could be a little bit confusing when you take a look at it like that because it looks like it's going to be a taxable item but not calculating i believe because the customer is not taxable now if i was to test it out and close this back out not record it and say let's make that customer taxable again just to check it out we're going to say edit that customer again i'm going to go into the tax information and say now they are subject to tax this would be the default setting so if it says the item says you're taxable then it should calculate a tax let's go back to the tab to the right add the plus button again and add another invoice and let's say this is going to be the test customer again test customer again and this is going to be an ELP and so there's the tax and then if i calculated it's calculating the tax once again so the three things you generally need to set up once again you got to turn the tax on it should calculate by location quickbooks is getting better and better at doing so by location although like it could be a little bit tricky because that's a lot of information that quickbooks is kind of sorting through and then instead of just turning the items on and off quickbooks is now trying to determine by the actual item you're selling whether it's subject to tax or not which again is great but it can also be a little bit finicky so they get that kind of nailed down till it's perfect and then basically you can think about the customer as to whether the customer is going to be subject to tax or not in other words is there an exception to the customer not subject to tax even though that item usually would be taxable those are the general setups once that is set up then the data input should be much easier as we enter the data into the future