How do you see the role of debt changing in a society with the advent of cryptocurrencies? That's a really interesting question, Kenny. When you first get involved in this space, you may not initially notice, but bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies like it... are not debt instruments. When you hold bitcoin, nobody owes bitcoin to anyone. It is an asset. Most other systems we have that we use for money are actually debt instruments. They are created through credit. When you hold a dollar, somebody owes somebody for that dollar, and somebody holds a debt. That means it is a very different system than traditional currencies. The other big difference is that in traditional currencies, lending is done by what is called... fractional reserve banking, meaning that banks can effectively create money out of nothing, by lending $9 for every $1 they have in deposits. That mechanism allows them to expand the availability of credit in the economy, essentially to inflate the economy... by producing more credit. If that credit is properly invested, it is great, it might increase productivity, create returns, and that's fine. If it's not properly invested, it creates bubbles and inflation... in the underlying currency, and that's not fine. How does that change with cryptocurrencies? We don't know yet, but one thing we do know is that... you can't do fractional reserve banking with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. You can't give out bitcoin that doesn't exist, or that you don't hold. You can't give out more than already exists, so you can't issue a debt in bitcoin, not directly at least. However, one of the interesting phenomena that has occurred is the emergence of all of these other blockchains. While some of them are differentiating in terms of capabilities and features, and creating technology innovation, many, perhaps, are not doing much else other than creating another pool of currency that they're injecting into the system. In a way, that's inflating the supply of money, and that's one of the ways that you effectively get credit. We see this particularly in the case of so-called airdrops, where you have a fork. A good example would be the recent bitcoin gold, but there might be many others. This fork isn't so much aiming to differentiate on features. I don't want to disparage bitcoin gold, but that's not the point. The point is that when a fork like that occurs, it creates a new supply of money. For every bitcoin you held before, now you have the original bitcoin plus some new currency that's been created out of that fork. If the price of bitcoin doesn't drop, and the price of the new coin is greater than zero, then the sum of them is greater than you had before, so they've effectively increased the supply of currency. One way we might see the expansion of credit is through the so-called airdrop forks. Not necessarily a good thing, because that also creates inflation. It doesn't create inflation in bitcoin, which continues to be constrained, but it does create inflation in those airdropped currencies. The corner asks, why is the Japanese government pushing adoption in bitcoin, and legalizing it in such positive ways, and the Chinese government made ICOs and exchanges illegal? I'll make one assumption, and this is a very difficult question to answer. I don't want to go into this, because I have very little insight into the thinking of the Japanese and Chinese governments, for obvious reasons. I don't live there. I haven't visited Japan for a long time, and I haven't been to Mainland China at all. Actually, I've been to Hong Kong a few times. To claim to know what they're thinking would be hubristic. One of the big differences between what's happening in Japan and China is the following. China has this very big issue of growth and development, which is underlined by this enormous amount of debt, and a very, very big real estate construction and manufacturing. I don't know if I should call it a bubble, but certainly a lot of people are worried that there might be a very big overinvestment and malinvestment, capital misallocation, and a lot of these massive projects that are pumped by government funds, by printing currency. Underneath this, you can imagine there's a great deal of fear about inflation. If you think there is a lot of debt and a lot of malinvestment, then obviously, as the government prints more and more money, this is going to lead to inflation, maybe not right away, but eventually. When you have growth rates of 6%, 8%, 10% a year, the possibility of inflation suddenly getting out of control is very, very high. As a result, if you're a Chinese investor, if you're someone who has money in China, and you have this fear of inflation, what do you do? One thing you can do is get your money out of the Chinese yuan and try to invest it outside of the markets that you feel are bubbly and outside of the currency that you might feel may be inflated. That leads to the capital flight. Capital flight is a big problem for the Chinese government. This capital flight, which is happening quite a lot and has been happening, found that one of its avenues found Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. One of the reasons we saw all of these billions of dollars flowing into cryptocurrencies was because Chinese people were trying to get their money out of the country. I don't think it could coincidence that the Chinese government made ICOs, exchanges, and trading to fiat illegal, or at least shut them down. They didn't make them illegal, they just passed some policy rules. It's not like they wrote a law. A lot of this happens at a regulator state agency policy basis. They blocked those because of the capital flight. It's not a coincidence that this happened right when the five-year National Congress of the ruling Communist Party was happening. The leader was laying out the latest five-year plan, a plan that, among other things, had a lot of comments about money, investment, currency, national imperatives, and things like that. Meanwhile, what's happening in Japan is they have the opposite problem. They're not worried about inflation. In fact, the biggest problem they have is they're on the tail end of a 20-year deflationary spiral that has continued to affect their currency. They have a problem with demand and underinvestment. They have a problem with the fact that their economy is not overheated. It's frozen, and it's been frozen for 25 years in this deflationary trap with near-negative interest rates and an inability to really stimulate the economy. For them, something bubbly, a bit ICO-related, a surge of investment, people spending their money instead of hoarding it, spending the money even if they're spending it to move into cryptos. Obviously, you can see the incentives are adopted, so that's one of the reasons why you might be seeing a difference in policy. I'm trying to not make strict pronouncements here, because I'm not sure. I hope that was useful. Next question is really interesting. It comes from Pierre, money supply and deflation. Pierre asks, restricted money supply in Bitcoin is virtuous to create trust in the system and avoid inflation. Most economists, however, advocate for a flexible money supply so that it matches economic conditions and need for credit. If the current fiat system enables inflates endless bubbles through cheap credit, doesn't Bitcoin have the exact opposite problem? Two problems come to mind. One, future prices are unpredictable and do not match productivity, and two, too much deflation might discourage investment. In summary, if Bitcoin is its own central bank, how do you know that its monetary policy deeply embedded in the system was a good one in the first place? Any advice on good readings about this issue? I think this is part of a broader issue, and that broader issue is this assumption that there will be one money, and that one money is the mandatory money that everyone has to use. You see, central bankers have to get it right, because they're forcing everyone to use their system, and if they get it wrong, they force everyone to get it wrong with them. Bitcoin may not be the right monetary policy, but it's an opt-in voluntary system. If you don't like its monetary policy, don't use it. In fact, in a world where that choice exists, where all of the choices exist, where you could pick monetary policy by picking the currency you want to use on a day-to-day basis, where you can't be locked into a system, where you can't be taken hostage, where you always have an exit, is a world in which there is no wrong monetary system, because there is no permanent monetary system, there is no unchangeable monetary system. Bitcoin's monetary system is unchangeable within Bitcoin, but you don't have to stay with it. You can leave if you don't think it's right. The problem with the monetary policy of nations is that not only do they change the whim of bureaucrats, but you can't leave. It's easy to look at that and say, we wouldn't want Bitcoin to replace all central banks with a deflationary monetary system that is imposed on everyone. Guess what? I don't want Bitcoin to replace all central banks with a monetary system that is imposed on anyone. That's not what it's about. It's about choice. Once you have choice, then your choice of monetary system is the right one for you, because you chose it. If nobody else chooses it, that's their problem.


Hey guys it's Julia and welcome back to my channel and for today's video I'm going to be talking about some beautiful book covers or covers that I think are really really nice.  Really pretty book covers that I personally really like. Definitely let me know in the comments like some of your favorite book covers ever. Let me know or like elements that you really like on book covers. Like first up here I have The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is one of my favorite books. This is the UK edition and the thing I like about this one is like the tree with the trunks. It just has a lot of significance to the story and it's also like shiny the tree with the trunks. So I think it's like a perfect cover for this book. I have a few like manga graphic novel ones but like one of them is the Dream and Sun series.  So that's volume one and then volume two is like this and then I think volume three has my favorite cover. Look how cute. I also have I really like dark book covers too. This guy has horns and black and white and there's a bit of gold in it. It's called The Girl from the Other Side. I really really like this one. It's a really good manga actually as well. It's the arts really pretty and simplistic. It's very very interesting. I really like this one and then I also really like this is an art copy but this is Teen Titans Raven and this is a graphic novel by Candy Garcia. So I love the art style in this. It has like a really nice purple, blue, mostly purple and black. Purple and black color palette is what we're going with here but I really love it. I love the illustrations of Raven and this was just such a good graphic novel as well but I love that color theme of like black and purple and then it just worked so well throughout the whole graphic novel. I have some like YA books here too so like Wild Beauty. This is one that I haven't read but like this cover looks phenomenal. I know this is like a magical realism kind of book but the cover it has just like a lot of beautiful flowers on it and it's so pretty. It's so pretty. I was gonna see what the naked book looks like but it's just dark green. I think this cover is absolutely stunning. I know a lot of people really like this one. Another one is Tyler Johnson was here. I'm usually not a big fan of books with faces on them but like in the last few years they've come out with some really really good ones. So this is one of them. Same with like Elizabeth Acevedo's books too. Those those book covers are all phenomenal but like Tyler Johnson was here is an amazing cover. Just the dude is glowing first off and the art, the flowers, the text like it doesn't get lost in the in the art. It doesn't get lost in the background. Like it just looks so good. So clean. Next up I have Wilder Girls. I've been meaning to read this one for a while but I really love this cover and how weird it looks.  I just think this is really cool and I've been meaning to read it for a little while now. Oh I actually have stuff in here. What? Oh right right right. I think I got got this in a book box a while back so like I have a postcard in here and this stuff and I think this is a thing by the author in here too. This one's really nice. This is probably one of my favorite covers like ever. It's called Retribution Rails. This is by Erin Bowman. It's actually the sequel to another book. It's called Vengeance Road but these are young adult Western novels that explore like revenge and then obviously a tape place in like an awesome Western setting.  Like I don't know who did this art, the cover art for this for this series but they did a phenomenal job. Like there's so much detail in it and the art is so perfect and even the spine like look at the font it's perfect. It's perfect. Like look we even got the noose up here, got the skull, cactuses, like trees, railroads, the bird, like they just got everything here and I think it's a great cover. I have a lot of agrarian po copies but one of my favorites is this one, the Complete Tales and Poems of Agrarian Po. This is Barnes and Noble Exclusive Edition so you can only get it there. This one has the bird and this is Nevermore on it. Very nice and then the back says Quoth the Raven Nevermore. We got Silver Edges and then we also have a, oh nice. We have a ribbon in here and this has all his, oh look at the end pages. This book has all his tales and poems and it's really really good. If you haven't read any Poe, I highly recommend it but I have a whole video just talking about like all the Poe editions that I own from a few years ago so if you want to check that out I'll have that linked but I really love Poe and this is like one of my favorite copies of him that I own, of his work that I own. I wanted to talk about a few that like I couldn't find on my shelf at the moment. One is Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. I love this cover. This is like, this was a thriller that came out a few years ago and I remember I was like, I didn't read The Girl on the Train so I was kind of like hmm about this book that came out but I read it and it wasn't my favorite but the thing that I did like about it was how atmospheric it was and like a lot of the elements I did really enjoy but it wasn't like my favorite overall but yeah the cover is beautiful. I really like covers with like water on them and like again with the first time she drowned, this one with the beautiful, like this book explores a lot of tough issues but like it looks so beautiful the cover with like the silhouette with the water in it. Stunning. Another one is the ocean at the end of the lake. Definitely if you guys know of a book cover that's cool that has water on it let me know because apparently I found a lot but I really like this cover. It looks so enchanting and captivating at the same time. Like it looks like oh what's that about you know? Like I would definitely if I saw it the cover in the store I'd definitely go up to it and be like oh what's that? So there you guys have it. Those are some of my favorite book covers or just some covers that I saw that I really really like that are on my shelves. Let me know some of yours. There's definitely so many so I probably forgot so many so if like I could do another video like this in the future you guys would be interested. I also want to do a quick announcement here late October like early November. I'm gonna be starting a little buddy read and we haven't done one in a while but I did have a Goodreads group and we all read If It Bleeds Together which was great but I think I'm gonna host this book club in my Discord server so I'll have that linked below. You have to like agree to the rules before you join and you'll have to react to a specific channel. Like I'll give instructions but like you have to react to a specific channel to have access to the book club so then it's not everybody getting spanned with notifications. It's only certain people who want to participate in the book club but if that sounds interesting to you let me know and I'll set it up. But we would be reading Billy's Summers. So I haven't read this one yet. I don't know what it's about to be honest. I really don't know. I just know it's the new king. Billy's Summers is a man in a room with the gun. He's the killer for hire and the best in the business. He'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. Oh it's about a hitman and now Billy wants out. First there's one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world. Decorated Iraq WarVet. Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything? This fataculously riveting novel is part war story, part love story to small town America and the people who live there and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in king fiction who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinary evil man. Billy's Summers is about love, luck, fate, a complex hero with one last shot of redemption. You won't put this story down. You won't forget Billy. So this sounds amazing. So if you guys want to read this with me let me know and I'll set up a book club and we can do it. Just definitely let me know what you think because if no one wants to read it with me I can read about myself and I'll just pose the review. But if anyone wants to read along please let me know. So there you guys have it. That is my video for today. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for your support. I'm uploading on every Tuesdays but if you'd like to catch me anywhere else I stream on Twitch three days a week. I have a Discord server. I have other social media that's all down below if you'd be interested in checking any of that out. But I'm excited to produce more videos for you guys and it feels really nice to be back. I just got to get back more into my reading swing but baby steps because there's lots going on and life is busy so it's okay. But I'll see you guys soon with a new video. Bye.


Hey y'all so got another product here Dustin Schaefer the keto pro and this is our unleashed kind of a black label It's super cool What I'm gonna do is if you haven't watched the foundational video keto now I'm gonna have a link in it somewhere here go watch that That's the real thing about ketones and the benefits of elevating ketones, but what this is this is the next level This is a little bit more caffeine. It's only comes in caffeine. It's a little bit more ketones So pre-workout if you are somebody that's really a go-getter and type a personality I want to crush everything and go that's me by the way I drink this in the morning. It just takes it a little bit higher all the way to another level So this is our performance tool Anybody can use it, but I would say this is our performance tool. So Love this product. It's it's got a cool ingredient It's a couple new ingredients in this that are gonna help improve and enhance the experience of getting into ketosis Therapeutic level and performing better than you ever you ever perform So if you want to take it to a little higher level try the unleash This is also good for people that are like really addicted to like monsters and red bulls and energy drinks Not that it has that much caffeine in it to be honest it doesn't have that much in it It's just with the combination of the caffeine we use the little extra than what's in the keto nap and The more ketones that are in it and with the formulation of other products You're gonna see a huge shift in performance. So this is my pre-workout This is my start today workout drink and it's absolutely delicious. We have multiple flavors and enjoy it So if you guys know if whoever invited you to follow me and you want to try this get back to them They can hook you up get you all set up and try this out But if you haven't checked out the first video keto nap definitely check that out It is the foundation of everything we do is based on pure therapeutic ketones And this is the number one therapeutic ketone supplement company in the entire world. So commit. See y'all. Cheers You


Hey guys, it's Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. Foot22 versus is here. Today, inside of FIFA 22 Ultimate Team, the brand new promo of Foot Freeze versus, right, is coming out today. We have this loading screen. I want to talk about these cards that are here. And it's going to be an insane day of content, right? We learned a little bit about this promo yesterday. I want to talk you through what those cards and what those upgrades and how this whole versus promo is going to look like for this next week. I want to talk about that. But we have some other things to talk about today, market-related. Prime icons could be dropping on the game today, as well as icon swaps. There were some packs added to the code today. I want to talk about that. And how EA did this last year during Foot Freeze is they dropped prime icons and icon swaps, both on the first day. So it could be an insane day of content today. And also talk about some insane player of the months that we're still waiting on with the Venetius Junior player of the month that is almost expected to be dropped today on this game as well as the Premier League player of the month. We will talk about all of that in this video. So if you're enjoying the videos on the channel, make sure to hit a thumbs up and of course, subscribe if you're new. But let's talk about the cards that are at hand. The brand new cards that are coming today. The loading screen showcased a few of the cards we already kind of knew were coming because of the leaks. But EA dropped us some information yesterday telling us how this promo was going to work. Choose your side. Fire versus ice. Foot versus arrives today in FIFA 22. And they showed Pulisic. Now obviously Pulisic might be in SBC today. That was the leak.  But let's talk about, right? Foot versus fire versus ice. So how is this gonna work? Well today, there are going to be 11 players released into packs with this fire card design. The versus fire cards are gonna be released first. Today into packs, there's gonna be 11 players. We know who they are. They are leaked. Of course, I will show you those. And all of those cards, the fire item is going to represent a five star weak foot boost. So every single card that is in packs today is going to have a five star weak foot boost on their item. And these cards are going to be in packs from Friday today until Monday. Friday until Monday, these foot versus cards are gonna be in packs. And then, this is where the ice part comes in, the foot versus ice cards are all going to have five star skill upgrades. So it's basically the same 11 players in packs from Friday to Monday and then from Monday to Friday. So team one as it shows here and team two are exactly the same as far as we know it. As it says up here, there are 11 players in the foot versus squad. They will line up with two contrasting play styles, right? A five star weak foot upgrade and a five star skill upgrade. So the same cards that come into packs today on Friday that will all have five star weak foot will have five star skills with maybe a different dynamic image and the five star skills added to their card on Monday. So I don't know if they're gonna mess with the stats or anything like that, but that's how it's gonna work, right? There's the ice cards that are on Monday and the fire cards that are gonna be today. Now it says a lot of this is about the biggest rivalries, right? Clashing on the pitch. So I'm interested to see what kind of SBCs and other content they come up with this week. If it's all about rivalries, this seems like it's going to be a one week promo. Again, as it's kind of laid it out here, this foot versus, which looks to be a part of the foot freeze promo. We might actually have the legit foot freeze promo after this, but foot versus is it's like own standalone part of foot freeze, if you will, as it sounds right now. And those are gonna be the cards that are impacts today. Now let's talk about the loading screen, right? What cards are we getting today impacts? From the leaks that we had earlier this week that seem to be spot on, the items here that are shown going from left to right, Nico Scholes is a leaked card and this fits his description. The 86 rated one with 87 defense, we're not entirely sure. My guess is it's Kunde or Joe Gomez, because those are both gonna be impacts today as part of the leaked team. And then this is Angel Correa with 89 shooting. Now again, these are the promo cards that we will see Claude Maurice, Correa, Gomez, that's Joe Gomez by the way, Gabriel Jesus, Kunde and Babu, Pereta, Rashford, Scholes, Adama Treore and Valverde. So it's an insane cast of characters getting promo cards today. And supposedly from the leaked stats as well, this promo team is gonna be insane. And if you think about it as well, I mean, there is going to be a market that is dropping off because this is a huge, huge thing. These are the first mass updates to skill moves and weak foot this year inside of FIBA 22. Now they've done a couple of skill move and weak foot upgrades occasionally so far, but this is gonna be insane because these are huge big name players. And again, the leaked card stats of these items, these cards look nuts, right? They look absolutely insane with some huge boosts on these cards. So let's just talk about how this is gonna affect the market a little bit today along with the rest of this content that's gonna be coming out. There's already been a lot of panic selling and if you take a look at some prices on this market, you've already seen some cards start to drop off. Even yesterday, as people figured out what this promo was looking like, the inclusion of prime icons, supposedly being added to packs. We'll talk about that. Icon swap packs have been added to the code. We have to talk about that as well. Vinny Player of the Month, there's just so much going on in this game today. Renato Sanchez was 750 earlier. Right now he's 780K.  And if you look at the rest of the market, icons are falling big, right? A lot of people are starting to sell cards, even like Mbappe's gold card. Mbappe Gold was 1.38, 1.39 on Thursday. And I believe right now he's like 1.33, 1.34. So there's a lot of panic selling going across this whole entire market. Ginola is another one. Ginola was like 1.7 mil to start the day around rewards time yesterday. And I believe, yeah, right now he's 1.57. So a lot of these cards have dropped off because again, you think about five star week foot, five star skill upgrades. That's massive. That is incredibly, incredibly massive.  Just a little bit ago, I was taking a look at some icons. As you can see here in the transfer market search section, prime icons are starting to show up in the store. That makes me think that we're gonna see at least some of them in packs today. Look at this Zidane. This Zidane was just 2.4 mil. He's now back up to 2.55. But these card, like he was 2.8 yesterday, the insane. Just the amount of drop offs on this market right now is absolutely crazy. I think it's gonna continue though, because of all the insane content that we are gonna be seeing today. Now, speaking of content once again, we're getting those 11 players in packs. I think the SBC for today is gonna be a foot versus Christian Pulisic item. Of course, that was the card that EA tweeted out. That was a leak from earlier this week. Is that Pulisic is going to get a foot versus fire or ice player pick SBC, I would imagine.  What do you value more, the skills or the weak foot? I think a lot of people this year value that weak foot. And not as much the skills as they did last year, but you still have the option which I think is really, really cool. I'm interested to see if they have different stats. Like this Christian, or not Christian Eriksson. Christian Pulisic with a five star weak foot have more shooting stats. And with the five star skills, does he have more dribbling stats? Or will the stats be the same? Different dynamic images and just the five star weak footer skills. That's what I'm curious to see. Now that's the SBC we're expecting, I think, today. And the objective we're expecting today, we talked about this yesterday in the video as well, is A, man by the name of left back, Eric DeVizzi, I'm blanking on his name at the moment, Tagli Fico. Tagli Fico is the objective card. It'll be a player pick between his fire version or his ice version. So again, the weak foot or the skills, whichever you would like to choose. Probably I would imagine the weak foot for Tagli Fico. He can whip in a cross or play right back or left back in game. I feel like that would be very helpful for an outside back. But that's gonna be the objective content today on this game. So that's all about foot versus. Now, it also depends on how, you know, packable these cards are. That's gonna impact the market as well. We're gonna have to go in here and check today at 6pm when these are dropped. Remember, the team of the tournament, team of group stage cards had a very low pack weight. 2% from a 50K pack is pretty low. So it seems like EA wants to bring this market down with all the content that's gonna be coming out very soon. The panic selling has already started, like we talked about. I think they might have a higher pack weight today. But again, we're just gonna have to wait and see what EA sports do with that side of things on the market today. Now, speaking of other big SBCs, the Venetius Junior Player of the Month, this content might start free 6pm today. Free 6pm today or at, right at 6pm, I'm expecting the Venetius Junior 87 rated player of the month SBC to be dropped in this game. I think it could be dropped like an hour or two earlier. So just be watching out for that. That's gonna impact the market as well because before the whole promo starts, everybody's gonna get started on this Venetius Junior. Everybody's been waiting. Left mids, left wings, left-sided attacking players have been panic sold already. Gold Neymar is down like 40,000 coins from where he was. A lot of left wings in this game are down. Icons as well, preparing for this Venetius Junior Player of the Month. Now again, the last words I have to say about this are the team of the group stage, Venetius Card is in form. All of this stuff is down. I think I just used the wrong item here. Boom, team of tournament, Vinny. I mean, he's like 550,000 coins right now. At the moment, this is probably gonna drop even more into the day today. It all depends on the price of the SBC as to whether this card bounces back and whether the in form bounces back or if it goes lower, right? Because fodder's not super expensive, but we're gonna have to see since this Player of the Month will probably be available for at least 20 days, I think is not many Player of the Months have been super duper good value for like the big name players this year. I wouldn't expect this Venetius Junior SBC to be anything less than 800,000 coins, but I think that's in a range where a lot of people might start to craft it. So just watch out for that SBC. That's gonna make some big movements on the market today as well. And then a Premier League Player of the Month SBC too, the Salah POTM is ending. The voting for that has ended too. So I think we're looking at either a Jota Cancelo or the favorite I believe is Trent Alexander Arnold. That should be another Player of the Month SBC that we should be getting today as well. Dude, it's literally an overwhelming day of content today on Friday. Let's get into some other things. We haven't even broken the surface yet on some of these cards. Again, as we mentioned, Prime icons are searchable on the transfer market last year as a part of the Foot Freeze promo. They dropped icons into packs. Prime icons, they didn't do them all at once. They did like two different teams if you will. And I think I even have a picture to show this from last year. They posted just some of the cards in packs. I don't know if they actually tweeted out a picture. Actually, I don't. I have a picture of icon swaps. But they might even post a graphic of all the Prime icons that they put in packs today. I would imagine that it would be either a half or one-third of all the Primes coming into packs today. And that is, again, what's causing some insane panic right now. Like on this mid Zidane, who is down like 300,000, 400,000 coins from where he was, 245 right now at the moment. That's down literally 400K from where this Zidane was. These Primes are gonna be very expensive today. Any Prime that comes on the market, whether it's, again, this cantana. These guys are not on the market right now, but you can search them. And these were the updates that EA was adding the past couple of days.  So I do think you will see some bounce backs on some of these icons. Like Rooney. Rooney Prime might be in the game today, right? Raul Prime, Ben Nistoroi, Rivaldo, like Robin Van Persie, his Prime card in the game. So you can see his brand new Prime cards that we have not actually seen yet in FIFA, potentially released today as well. Is this the final? Can you search, or is this the final? Can you actually search him? You can't. So he's not in the game yet, but that's an icon that's expected to come soon. Prime icons are gonna be very expensive.  Like, let me check Pushgas. Pushgas9092, right? This car was very low yesterday. He's up right now. I just think you're gonna see so much more panic selling on the market today as these Primes are rumored to be coming out. And I don't think we're gonna get all of them, but we're gonna get some of them, and that's gonna create people to panic sell. Now let's talk about the other thing. Wow, this Eto is getting cheap, 1.4 mil. That is low, so he's dropping a lot. Let's talk about the other thing that is very, very popular right now that is gonna impact the market as well. We have icon swap codes. We have icon swap packs in the code. Now these packs don't look that insane, and I'm really wondering after seeing this, number one, is icon swaps going to be to date, because last year they dropped it on Friday, but I also think that they could maybe wait to release this until later on. I feel like we're still missing the 83 times 25, the 84 times 25, or the 84 times 10, whatever packs they were going to release that are like the 81 times 25, that sort of stuff. Those are not included with this pack code update, which really makes me wonder, is EA taking that stuff out of icon swaps this year? And are they just making icon swaps solely about icon players or icon packs? And it kinda looks like, I mean, you look at these codes that have been added, guaranteed mid icon upgrade pack, mid or prime upgrade pack, 89 plus mid pack, right? Contains one base or mid icon as a pack that has been added to the store. This screams icon swaps right here. So last year on basically the day before the Big Foot Freeze promo on Friday, which would be like this year for FIFA 22, they added icon swaps and they added the packs to the code the night before and then icon swaps dropped the next day. So that's why it's very possible that we might see, this is the graphic from last year, it's very possible we might see icon swaps in FIFA today. It's very possible that we would see that. And again, as I'm talking about all these things, prime icons, Vinny Player of the Month, icon swaps, an insane set of promo cards coming into the game today. It really just does not make any sense that the market would stay high as it has been. Even this Joao Felix, like I know he's going to link to the Anhel Correa, but if the new cards have a high promo pack weight today, there's icon swaps, prime icons, and a Vinny Player of the Month that is out, this card is so high from where he was, he was 600K. And this card is almost 800,000 coins. I think there's a lot of this market that is going to drop off. The team of the group stage cards, they're going to get caught up in this drop off as well. Even some of them are still down right now. I just don't really see how a ton of this stuff, there's going to be some panic selling, there's going to be some rebounding, of course, during the day, right? Benyeter is already down a decent amount. Atal is up because of his links to Claude Maurice. Yerente is down, Ruben Diaz is down a little bit. But I think there's going to be more panic selling today heading into 6pm. Everybody is going to get scared about all the contents that's going to come. And five star weak foot and five star skill players though, that's hype, that's really, really insane. So what I would really keep an eye out for today are maybe some of your out of packs cards. Even like this Bomba, Bomba 102, that's a pretty decent panic sell right there. That's down like a little over 10,000 coins from where he was. Keep an eye on some of these most meta cards that people are very hyped to use, right? Even if it's some of the team of the group stage cards, if you look at the leaked team, right? Do we have a right wing? I don't know what position Jesus is going to be. We've got a Dama Treore, so that does not bode well. But you've got guys like Mbabu, you've got guys like Correa that so many people are going to want to try, Claude Maurice, so many people are going to want to try out. The Schultz card even, people are going to want to try him out. So like for Schultz, I'd be worried about the Davies, right? Everybody's using Alfonso Davies right now to link to their brand new upgraded Suley showdown item. If a Schultz card comes out today, which it looks like it is, of course, because of the promo screen here, with literally Schultz is on the promo screen, I would expect Davies to have a pretty solid drop off today because that's an item that is 290K. This Schultz card might come on the market at 100K, still have 90 plus pace. I know it's not Alfonso Davies, but it would be a brand new card with a five star weak foot or five star weak foot today and a five star skill moves on Monday that people might want to go and try out. So I really think that the market drop off that we saw last year in early December and then continued during the freeze promo, I think it's starting today. I really think that it is. I mean, of course, like we said, some cards have been down since yesterday, but I really think you're going to see some panic selling today and it's going to get ugly again. You're going to see a lot of prices dropping and it could get even worse if the pack supply and the pack weight on these versus cards is very, very high. So again, I don't know about preview packs. I don't know about the lightning rounds. I'll actually know what I do know something about lightning rounds. Expect lightning rounds literally all day because they're even running lightning rounds yesterday. I remember in last night's video, I was buying team of the group stage cards to try to flip after rewards. Yeah, I lost coins doing that. Thank you very much EA for dropping lightning rounds during rewards. Like two hours after rewards, they dropped, what was it, 100 and 125K lightning rounds. So I bought Kiesa's at like 215K and he went nowhere. He actually ended up going lower after marquee matchups. So we lost some coins yesterday. We made some coins yesterday. It was a mixed bag, traded with some icons that were getting panic sold like crazy. Like I bought this SCN at 809, sold it at 867. I bought this at 530, sold it at 536, sold at 587, bought this Owen at 323. A lot of these are like break evens or a slight loss. And then these Vinny's, of course, I bought all of these at like 318 to 315. So a little bit of profit there, which is nice. But it's just been up and down. And I think it's gonna be a lot more down today as well. People are gonna wake up today and see the prime icons are searchable on the market, Maldini, Pelé. Again, I don't think all of these are gonna be put into packs today. And there's still a possibility that EA would not do prime icons or icon swaps today. And they might save that for later on or maybe they do prime icons today and they wait for swaps. But all of this stuff is potentially gonna be coming today.  There's gonna be a lot to cover and a lot to watch. But that's the video for today, boys. Foot versus and foot freeze. And this whole promo with everything that's supposed to be coming out is gonna be crazy. The last thing I will say is the Etienne Cappu SBC, which actually I have to go to my team to show you this card. Cause I did the Cappu SBC yesterday, known already as the Walmart Vieira and the cheap Vieira. This dude got an insane, insane stat boost on his card. He looks really decent, 60,000 coins. This card alone crashed a lot of midfielders yesterday in the game, especially like icon midfielders. People sold like the likes of Maca Lele and the Etienne. That's why I was flipping Etienne cause he was down a lot. This card is a really good value. If you have a little bit of fodder in the club, if you need something to craft and he fits your team, he links to Benzema, links to Fakir. It's just, it's a fun card is what it is, right?  So Gigi's the EA for dropping a pretty cool SBC and making that card very, very usable, dropping that yesterday on the game. So that's the video for today, boys. Friday's gonna be crazy. I'm excited to get on the game and watch and see what happens, especially on the market as we see prices move. We'll of course make some coins, but it's gonna be a wild one. It's gonna be a very, very crazy day today. A lot of fluctuations. So make sure you get in the Twitch stream. We're gonna be making some coins there and trading and watching the content unfold around the content drop. So make sure you get involved there. That link is in the description. If you enjoyed this one, smash a thumbs up on it and subscribe if you're new. It is Nate's Foot Account and I'll catch you guys later. Peace out.


It says we're live. Oh you're live. Yeah. We are live. Hey everybody, I am Dr. Kiki and who are you? Hi Clark. Hi. I'm Dr. Kiki's son. That's right. I'm just hopping online right now to let you know that oh yep good my microphone is on that is always a positive thing. Yeah I'm popping on the air right now to let you all know that we will be live tomorrow night at 6 30 p.m. pacific time. So we are not doing a live show as we normally do this Wednesday tonight but we will be live hopefully able to broadcast. I'm going to bring my Mivo so don't expect amazing sound quality because we're not going to have IT, AV people helping us out and making sure the audio is amazing but I will try and do a Mivo stream or something in that nature a peristope periscope stream or something. I'm going to try and do our Mivo stream like we've done before to YouTube but the show tomorrow is at 6 30 p.m. pacific time. We are going to be live at the Cal Academy of Sciences in San Francisco for SF sketch fest 2018. We're really looking forward to the show. We have a big surprise well a lot of big surprise but just we've got some fun in store for everyone fun like what it might be shocking oh you get it yeah Kai gets it you all will find out tomorrow um and so in Calo in um San Francisco in San Francisco yeah hopefully I'll be online maybe you can watch it tomorrow evening yeah because you might be home in time to watch it so you could watch even yeah yeah all right everybody I'm gonna go I'm sorry I'm not looking at the chat or anything like that right now I'm just um just pushing things out and not not conversing at the moment but because it's time for bed for this one and I'm gonna get my my story time in live tomorrow yes live tomorrow it's story time right now and I'm gonna get my last story and before I go on this trip to San Francisco for a few days so Kai you're being very odd uh-huh my nose isn't she all right everyone I hope you have mine has got itchy it comes I hope everyone has a wonderful evening and that we will see you tomorrow at the academy bye everyone have a good night


Honoured winners, distinguished guests, participants, ladies and gentlemen, it's pleasure galore and privilege as well to address you briefly by way of this video link. First and foremost a very good evening to all of you and then let me render my profuse apology for not being able to attend the prestigious Asia corporate excellence and sustainability awards 2014 for reasons absolutely beyond my control. Hence I had to invoke force major clause to seek excuse from the organizers. I'm stuck in London for an important and serious legal matter but nonetheless it's needless to mention that the loss is absolutely mine with regard to not attending this event. Let me congratulate all of you who have emerged as the winners of the prestigious Asia corporate excellence and sustainability awards. Any kind of growth is meaningless without excellence and sustainability and all of you winners and nominees are the icons of corporate excellence and sustainability who are working for the better future. As I had mentioned in the literature the competition for the awards was extremely tough and nominations were received from all across Asia. All the nominees were highly deserving acting as as as the jury chairman has also been another great journey for me to serve my responsibilities independently and impartially. I deeply acknowledge the invaluable contribution made by other members of the jury of ACES awards. As promised by the organizers I'm sure all of you are experiencing a great entertaining evening at the awards ceremony. I virtually joined the celebrations of the elite group of top entrepreneurs and sustainability champions. Good luck. God bless you. Have a great evening. Thank you so much.


US Marines with 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division Participate in a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response Exercise During a Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, December 8, 2023 The Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation involves a range of scenarios and challenges. That tests the unit's ability to plan, coordinate and execute complex missions including offensive and defensive operations, logistics and communications. The Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation begins at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, December 8, 2023 The Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation begins at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, December 8, 2023 Sergeant Moreau, Golden Valley, Minnesota, Squad Leader for Combat Engineers, 1371 Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation, otherwise known as a McCree, is basically a big field operation that can be done all the way down at a platoon-sized company, or in this case a battalion, just to test the individual Marines' abilities to perform their tasks and work together with adjacent units. The importance of a McCree is to ensure that all the training that the Marines have done during the entire workup has been retained and that all that knowledge and information is still fresh in their minds so that when we do get deployed and get put on to a real mission, the Marines aren't confused on what to do and that everything is good to go. Marines need to be ready to deploy at all times because we don't know what's going to happen anywhere in the world and we go everywhere like we see stuff just kind of pops up and then Marines are there so we need to be always ready to fight the fight. We faced a couple of challenges from air inserts to now working with local nationals and dealing with them and doing like a humanitarian aid mission so setting up our entry control point at that end and then organizing the distribution area over here and making sure that they're getting the help they need while also ensuring the safety of our Marines by setting up wire and like other kind of wired obstacles down there. Nothing we do in the Marine Corps is easy. Everything comes down to discipline and drilling that into your Marines. If they have discipline, we can do everything that we need to do easily. So just hard work and discipline. This training contributes to the overall warfighting capabilities of Second Mardiv because we're operating at a battalion level right now and we have other adjacent units around us also from Second Mardiv. So being able to integrate with them and work in a larger AO, we've been spread out over 60 miles over the last couple of days so still being able to keep that contact and ensure that we're still working together over that distance is huge. McCree contributes to the lethality of a unit by ensuring once again that all the training that we've done up to this point is still sticking with them and also even though we've done all this training during the workup and we're still doing it now, there's still kinks that we need to work out and figure out some things that aren't working, maybe some things that are, start doing those a little more and if we have things that aren't working, what can we do to change those to make ourselves better and more of a lethal unit?


Lakeland Public Television presents Currents. Bethany Wesley, welcome. Tonight on Lakeland Currents, we will be highlighting the Minnesota Innovation Institute, a Bemidji-based organization that is dedicated to growing entrepreneurship, economic development, and educational opportunities in northwest Minnesota and beyond. The Minnesota Innovation Institute, or MI2, helps build the capacity of northern Minnesota employees and employers by developing and providing educational programs and workforce development. MI2, formed in 2013, was created by companies in northwest Minnesota and works primarily to fill needs within the manufacturing industry by providing current and future employees with the necessary technical skills to fill quality, livable wage jobs. Joining me for tonight's program is Mary Eaton, president of the IDEA Circle and Pete Obby, retired manager of the Potlatch lumber mill in Bemidji. Thanks for joining me. Thank you, Bethany. As we start talking about what exactly the Minnesota Innovation Institute is, let's set the stage a little bit. Pete, you've been in timber and logging now for a couple of decades. Tell us a little bit about what was happening in manufacturing that you saw perhaps a concern. At the turn of the century, frankly, it goes back that far that we saw the escalating technology that was brought to bear in manufacturing and the challenge for employees to acquire those skills and practice them on the job and really the concern, therefore, of competitiveness. And remaining competitiveness is the biggest challenge to manufacturers. We not only compete regionally but nationally and internationally here in our industry and so workforce development, skills, the things that people do and don't do make a difference to our competitiveness and therefore our ability to invest in our mill or in our businesses and the ability to grow and create value. So it's at the very root of what we do in manufacturing, the things that people do. And so you were hearing from other likewise employers that perhaps there was something you could do together to help find some more skills, some more trainings. Yeah, so, you know, the old way was basically to go out and find, to recruit and to compete for those skills. I can go back to 2006 going to Dunwoody down in Minneapolis and taking videos with me to show their 40 graduates what an exciting field sawmilling is. And many of them didn't know where Bemidji was, let alone they saw the sawmill running and they go, well, that's interesting. But the point is, is that we could recruit very few of them. And I think the amazing thing at the time, I asked the faculty at Dunwoody, you're graduating 40, how many jobs are there for these 40? And they told me 940. So this, the field of automation, manufacturing, technology has been in strong demand and people are very hard to find. And so there's a better way and we think we found that. So we often use this term, that skills gap term, to kind of talk kind of generally about the situation. It's not necessarily then that all your existing employees are retiring and you don't have youngers coming up as much as it was the skills. Correct. I think whether we talk about trades or manufacturing skills, we saw to reduce the availability of those skills in our society. And in fact, manufacturing has fallen a bit behind. And whether it's even here in Bemidji, I think, manufacturing represents 3% of the job base. We'd like to see that to be 15%. So how do you move that dial? And it's really going back to the mission of greater Bemidji, it's talent development. But even more important than that, Bethany, the changes in the demands of technology inside these plants never stop. And so staying current with that technology, whether it's incumbent workers or people that you recruit, how do you bring them up to speed so that they're comfortable with the demands on their intellect and abilities as well as, again, being productive, happy employees. So it's been something that's been there for a while. It's very challenging. And I think MI2 was developed with that spirit and need in mind. So it ended up becoming kind of a project of greater Bemidji, correct? So tell us a little about what exactly greater Bemidji is and kind of what it does. So greater Bemidji has been in Bemidji, you know, for I think it's 27 years it started as the Joint Economic Development Commission. It has been renamed under new leadership. It's a board of 27 folks that are stewards of the Economic Development Pitcher and Mission of Bemidji. We meet monthly and we talk about really how do we turn the dial to grow prosperity and grow development of Bemidji. And obviously a part of that, as we see, is again closing not only the skills gap, but closing the living wage gap that again create the society and the type of community we want here in northern Minnesota. And not only the city, but the entire region, because we see our mission as being regional, not just the Bemidji area. So Mary, tell me a little bit about your background and I know you are also involved with greater Bemidji, but exactly how you and the idea circle kind of fits in here. I am a board member of the greater Bemidji Economic Development Group and Pete and others approached my company. I've been doing training or workforce development for going on 25 years or so, a lot of years in the trenches and really working with companies to figure out where they're going next, whether it's new employees or a new process or new equipment, and how are they going to either upskill their current workforce or how are they going to bring in new workers that would have the skills that they're looking for. So I'm the president of the idea circle and our company is all about organizational workforce development. So Pete and a group approached and asked if we would consider looking at how do we upskill some of the incumbent workforce in our region and then that spread to other things. So let's talk a little bit about what exactly the Minnesota Innovation Institute is and how it operates. Who is it that is existing employees? Are they new employees? Tell me a little bit about how you're finding your client base. We have companies that have incumbent workforce that they want to upskill. They're very talented people, but they're facing, as Pete talked about, technology that continues to kind of go straight up and they have to know how to deal with automation, electronics, electrical, mechanical kinds of things. In addition to that, one of the things that the company started asking for too is could we create a pool? Are there, as Pete was talking about in the old days, we had the talent. We had a vocational skill base. We aren't producing that anymore. We need to bring awareness to the idea that these are very good, solid kinds of jobs and people are highly skilled. So now it's a matter of growing the talent. So they may hire someone who has all the work aptitude and attendance and those kinds of things, but may not have the skills. So we're creating probably three pipelines. The incumbents, the entry level are what we call the emerging worker and then some high schoolers. The idea of reaching into the high school as well. Whenever you see your materials or you've heard about MI2, something that's repeated often is that it's private led, private driven. That investment of the employers, the manufacturers themselves. How important is it that they have a voice in this process? Very, and maybe I'd let Pete speak to that. Well I think first of all back up a little bit in that it is private led, private driven primarily to create, you keep something moving and relevant by listening to your customers. And so whether it be students or employers, what do you need and how do we deliver that and that's part of the innovation part. I need to back up and say a lot of credit is due to Dick Hansen, the president of BSU when I went to visit Dick in February of 2013 and said, President Hansen, Bemidji State University is one of two center for manufacturing excellence in the state, the other being Mankato and we need help. And he inquired as to what kind of help we needed and he wasn't sure how to deliver that help but after probably a year or at least nine months of trying to figure out how we get this done, that's when Mary entered the scene based on her ability, proven ability to help to deliver on customized training. So I want to emphasize although private led private service is important from again being relevant to your customers the people that ultimately pay the bills this is a partnership between Greater Bemidji the manufacturers and the business people the region Bemidji State University and Northwest Tech. And that's when frankly Bemidji and Greater Bemidji shine is when we collaborate and cooperate to create something truly truly precedent setting. This is very unique. Have you heard of anything similar? No. In Detroit maybe in California you know a couple spots but nothing in Minnesota. I bet there's a lot of people watching now. Are they watching what you're doing now? Yes, I bet they are. There are and we haven't phoned anyone that doesn't think it's a good idea and it's worth supporting which is even more important. So you said that BSU and NTC were certainly enthusiastic and excited about trying to figure out a way to make this happen. How exactly are the classes and such delivered? What is their exact role in this? Well Northwest Tech and through President Hansen one of his gifts to the project was space and equipment. So the Blandin Foundation, the Bremer Foundation the Department of Employment and Economic Development all contributed to helping create that space and create the equipment that the people do their skills training on. We are actually located at Northwest Technical College in two of their labs and so our training all occurs out at Northwest Tech and we're working hard for that collaboration and hope to see that partnership even improve. How many students, how many clients have you had or you know people go through the program? Since 2013 about 700. We have probably 25 or 30 percent have been incumbent workforce, maybe 40 percent and then the other 60 percent are either entry level or emerging. And they've taken, you asked about how we deliver and it's one of the things and Pete's here to hold us accountable but one of the things that we really pride ourselves on working at the speed of business and one of that or one aspect of that is we have to be flexible so we have to be accountable and act flexibly we have to be cost effective and we have to be timely. So we really do work at that in the way we deliver so some of our training is occurs online so people can access it 24-7 from any location they also come into labs at the Technical College and do their skill work so we can be very flexible for those that need that flexibility for other agencies that maybe want to see the work hardening and the intendance, we can be very structured so we really have that full spectrum of ability as far as how we set up our courses. So how do you reach out to somebody who, let's talk for example, those who want to change careers I think one thing that I've read is somebody's tending bar and decides what this might not be a long-term solution for me and my family how do they hear about MI2 or do the temp agencies are different places I mean are you reaching out? How do you help direct? We have partnerships with all three of the temp agencies in the community in addition to that we've worked with rural Minnesota CEP the Constrained Employment Program we also have relationships with vendors that might and word of mouth is a big thing often times we'll get someone who comes in because their brother did this or their sister-in-law did this and we also get a fair number of referrals from our companies they'll have people come in and say I want to work here and then they'll say well first you need to get some skills built. Then come back. Have you found that you're incrementally getting more interest that each year you're finding more and more people finding? The first couple years with the incumbent workforce well we're getting deluged we haven't had to reach out as much as we've had to really look at what resources do we have to serve who we have coming at us we use the typical methods to social media great for Facebook shout out what these people do here there are many good sites where jobs are posted up and we'll post in those sites as well. You've touched, oh sorry one of the things that we just had our corporate board meeting and one of the questions I asked Mary is how big do you want to get? Because I think the numbers are remarkable I'll try to share a perspective so again I mentioned Doug Woody at 40 graduates at any institution at 40 graduates 40 graduates and we set our sites when we laid the mission forward how many could we graduate and we set 150 and people go that's impossible well we've done that and it's a different method and a different approach I also want to give some credit to others because in terms of linking we have Beltrami County who is in the workforce development and again closing the gap and we've just recently met before the county board talking about what role MI2 could play in doing this so it's truly we appreciate being here so we can share the story because getting that word out and Mary has quite a list she's very modest when I look at the number of companies that she's collaborated with over the past five years it's truly impressive there's 100 there so again it's a wide open field and we're really trying to again be innovative and what Mary says is deliver that deliver on the commitment to the student to the person that the employer I also might add that credit two goes to Jim Haas and Brian Stefanich at the high school so that one of the things as an employer is you don't necessarily want to be competing worldwide you want to grow people within your community and have people that want to stay with you and whether it's manufacturing or even the hospital you know you bring talent into this community well there's an incredible amount of talent here and there's a certain number of students that really want to do things with their hands they want to necessarily the college route is not applicable and we have been effective there's a group that graduated last year they're called themselves the Carhart Group and these are 12 remarkable students Mary got to know very well and we picked one several businesses picked one for interns and actually we're employing those they've started mechatronics and they will finish mechatronics but it's really the model that we want for people that want to live in Bemidji and have a living wage and in an exciting career of manufacturing there's opportunities and of course we want to grow the pie the manufacturing today based today is not what we wanted from now we want to create those that enterprise a greater enterprise of manufacturers in the region and Pete talked about our partners and we definitely have partners in Northwest Technical College and Bemidji State University the high school Bemidji High School but our corporate partners I couldn't say enough about those that are on our corporate council who do guide us and keep in our frame and focus what we need to be focused on and that is building and growing a talented workforce so Marvin Windows and Doors as we reach to the border Wells Technology we've got UPM and Blandon Norboard Nortec could name many many more but they have been instrumental in keeping us focused on our mission and what they are looking for and really that's the end game I mean that's what everyone the incumbents already are employed but the entry and the emerging and the high schoolers are searching they're trying to figure out what am I going to do and some of them come to this and find out it's not for them and that's okay and a lot of them come to this and think I could do more and maybe go to the construction electrician program at Northwest Tech or HVAC or go to Staples and do diesel and we like that we want to encourage them to find their niche because that ultimately will make them happy I do want to talk specifically about the high school program in just a few minutes here but before I forget I want to go back you talked about how it's flexible you talk a lot about the act it was accountability costs saving time how long I know how many students can vary but how long if I'm in a career now and I want to change careers approximately how long will it take me to do the program before I'm employable with the lumber mill ten months and we actually have a success story that I'll speak to we had a student, a young man that was headed to Hibbing he wanted to be a millwright and I offered he was an intern at Potlatch and I said how would you like to work at Potlatch and be the first graduate of Minnesota Innovation Institute and basically he on his time he worked and on his time he completed he was doing one segment one class a month and there are ten of them and he was doing the labs in the evening or when he can get away from work and he is he is our evidence that this works the key is the student it's what they do but when the students said this made a difference and this worked it was valuable of course the combination of going to school and working has their synergy there right to employ those skills immediately and Mary and her group you know there was some evidence issues perhaps in terms of math abilities or what have you and the individual attention they gave this young man to make him feel that truly he could do it and it was an AC AC electronics where the math gets a little little tricky and he did wonderful and so I again it's proof of what we how we wanted to go with that it works that again this is it's just the right combination of online training lab work hardening to get the job done I can give you an example of wells technology where they'll come for a month for a CNC training and then we'll go into an eight month apprenticeship at wells so it really depends on the person and the company but in the case Pete was talking about that person worked at potlatch so they were paid a wage and it wasn't just a training wage and yes the persons give was their time to complete it but also potlatch paid for his way so I think companies are willing to invest and have shown that and they want good workforce and you know talk about an acronym or whatever but it really is the people and it's unlocking that talent that is inside of them that we have to find how is it when you're working with your employees that the opportunities of MI2 typically comes up I mean is it something that they usually approach you is it in a review situation that you're like you could benefit from XYZ how do those conversations begin it's morphed and I think business is different but for us it was originally starting with the maintenance skills so we evaluated one of the beauties of the program is you don't start everybody at zero you assess their skill level and then you say well this is where you're strong this is where you're weak and this is where we're going to start you so we started with our maintenance group and I think there were 13 now since we've gone beyond that we actually open it up and my vision on manufacturing the future is a lot of times people see these are maintenance jobs these are manufacturing jobs and I would love to see what a plant of 100 mechatronics graduates could do to create a plant of the future and be the most competitive plant in North America so I think we're seeing opportunities so again we need to provide opportunities world-class workplaces train at about 2% a year and that's something we just have to do and MI2 is going to bear a horse to ride it's effective I want to spend our last few minutes here if we can talking about the high school program because I know that that's been super successful tell me about how that's offered are they doing it during school they do it on their own time how does that really become a piece of their education and Jennifer Volge who's now the coordinator of the academy program recruit students and then we interview each of them and they are going to take the course as one of their hours in the day often time it's first hour of the day or last hour of the day they'll do half their work at the high school so they're doing some of their e-learning at the high school and then they do their skills work at Northwest Tech it usually starts in a semester where they're at the high school a lot and toward the end of the semester we see them almost every day because they're ready to get their hands on skills and equipment and really prove that they have the skill building have you seen a certain type of student succeed that perhaps struggles in other places like do you find that this is a good fit for some of those kids that may don't have a great direction absolutely I mean we see a lot I'm an educator have been for 30 some years and there is a traditional way of educating through lecture and test and that's a good method for a lot of people but for some people who learn when they manipulate something with their hands or they're very good skill building they don't always find success so they'll come in shoulders down head down I don't know that I'm going to be very good at this and in fact one of the persons that Pete was talking about that the head last year was one of those young men did not know what he was going to do did not know what he was going to do beyond high school was very good working on his car but as he as he started thinking about I'm going to be 18 I'm going to graduate what am I going to do came to us and the confidence you know when you unlock their their own feeling of confidence then the world is their oyster they can do whatever they want closing thoughts Pete in terms of today is it solving the concerns that you had originally is it surpassing how is it doing yes MI2 has been a game changer I think one of the there's a lot of statistics on this page of paper but 88% job placement rate with with regional employer so cost effective timely you can do it at home and there's a job at the end I want to thank you guys both for joining me today and I want to thank you for tuning in hopefully you've learned a little bit more about the Minnesota Innovation Institute and its goals thank you join me next time


Alright guys, for you guys out there that think that passive investing is boring, not sure what's really so boring about making money. And that's really why I invest. I think a lot of people will invest for the euphoria or the promises of getting rich overnight. There's completely different philosophies behind investing and or gambling or trading. Okay, I think you need to make a choice about what side of the fence you want to be on.  All right, these real dollar returns in this account are very, very real. I'm going to roll these out on occasion to prove to provide some proof to you guys as to what is possible in the passive investing arena. So please enjoy the review of the sector specialty ETF portfolio. So a lot of you guys that have been with me for a while now know I've been with my in one finance experience for about two years. Beginning of 2019. This was the first account that I started here. And this has not changed. This account has been 100% passive since March 5 of 2019. And this is super important for investors to understand a couple things on this portfolio. It is a little bit of a hybrid type of strategy. What I mean by that is this is not just an S&P 500 ETF with one fund. I've strategically taken all of the sectors, all 11 major sectors in the S&P and invested them with a custom allocation using the power of M1 Finance. So it is unique. I haven't really seen a whole lot of people if anybody try to duplicate or take this strategy, it just made sense to me with the power of M1 Finance to be able to go into each of the 11 sectors and say, Hey, listen, I want, you know, the bulk of my money to go into technology and I want the least amount of money to go into materials. Right. Now the S&P is somewhat structured that way anyway, right where the bulk or the lion's share are going to be in your larger sectors, your technologies, your healthcare, financials and industrials of the world and then some of your smaller sectors, your materials of the world, your real estate, things like that. But it's all coupled into one. And I thought that this really gave an interesting level of control to the investor to go in and really fine tune this portfolio how you see fit. Now I know there's investors out there that are astute investors that don't want to put all of your life savings on GameStop. This is a passive aspect. So completely different night and day from the euphoria or the stress that can be created from, you know, some of the influences and some of the distractions that are placed over the investing arena. Now I think it's really unfortunate because if you heard what I said at the top of the this this video since March 5th of 2019, I've done nothing but make money in this now in a less conducive market. Do these fall subject to a retracement? Yes, they do. But my point is, can you make money with passive, nice, safe, diversified assets? These are killing it. And I don't know what else to say other than to continue to, you know, push these videos out, provide my successes as small as some may deem it to be over social media and really chronicle my journey investing in the manner that I am here in this passive specialty ETF portfolio. So here you can see here the top end gains real dollar return $3,490. The amount of cash flow that flows into this, I'm fairly certain I'm about a $25 every two weeks into this. So very, very passive on this. No, as a matter of fact, I do, I do most of my ad revenue flows into this account. So for you guys that have followed me for a while, you guys will know that this is kind of the secret stash of the independent investor channel. And this is kind of where that that goes. My initial goal here was to establish this account and show how we can get up to the first $10,000 mark using a passive strategy. And we did this in 15 months. So, you know, just just to prove how powerful passive investing is, hopefully that does this for you guys. And for some investors that want more of an aggressive profile, great. You just have to understand that just because you enter into an aggressive program, it doesn't mean that, you know, you're going to you're going to make an insurmountable amount more money. You may, but it requires you to take on more risk. And I think there's a lot of investors out there that would just prefer take on an investing stance. Yes, become an investor. Yes. But do so in a safe manner. And you can see here in the chart how these, this account has done really well. It really was treaching along since I started it and it really didn't move a whole lot. These were just small fund ups, just a slightly increasing to the right and probably a small fund up here. And this is the pandemic low here. So those that are, you know, looking to time the market to look at how tight that is on the chart. And then it's been a gradual upflow. This was actually a fund up right here during the pandemic low. And this is one of the strategic advantages to passive investing is all you really need to do if you want to is monitor the stock market, right? You're always invested. And if you do have an opportunity where the market corrects back on you, you know, 20, 30, maybe 40%, then you can use that as a buying opportunity. It's almost like the opposite effect of what most people do. Most people will panic out of the market at those lows. You actually just want to do the opposite of what the crowd's doing, guys. Just do the opposite. Whatever the crowd's doing, do the complete opposite. You'll end up a success in your life. Very, very simple. And this had treached up here and another fund up and just over the course of the remaining months here where we're sitting here. But we'll cruise down and we'll take a look at the holdings here. Just like I had mentioned, these are the 11 sectors, the S&P 500. These are all up nicely. I haven't looked at this account for a while. I'm actually kind of surprised at how well these are doing. Some underweight sectors, that's fine. What I mean by that is we've got the actual dollar amount and the target allocation. The target allocation within M1 Finance is denoted here with the bold 14%. So we're right on the money with technology. That's kind of cool. The power of M1 Finance allows this to happen in that new fundings will always go to the underweight holding. So for example, the next one on the line here is healthcare. Healthcare must have taken a small dip in that the actual allocation and real dollar amount is just a little less than the target allocation here. At 13%, no problem. New funds will flow into this portfolio and look to embolden this 12.6% and get it back up to this 13%. It's just an awesome, awesome way to make sure that new funds don't need to be told where to go. You've already told those funds where to go with this target allocation and then M1 Finance does the rest for you. So it's just a beautiful thing and it's specifically beautiful for those people that want exposure in a manner that may be similar to what I have here that don't have the time to sit there and manage it. And I think that's attractive to a lot of people out there looking to get invested for the first time. They want to get invested. They just don't have the time to sit there and read over balance sheets, which quite frankly, I don't have a lot of time that way either. So the bulk of my wealth is tied up in passive investments and you can see a lot of people will consider passive investing to be boring. They can continue to consider it boring. I consider it making money and I don't consider making money boring. Look here guys, look at the Vanguard's industrials up $326 of real money on just a $1,200 total. I don't know the real dollar flow into this but that's impressive. I don't know what else to say. This is why I roll these out to you guys. In a 10 minute video, you can sit back and be like, wow, this is pretty amazing how Ryan's breaking down. You know, I'm 11 for 11. There's not one sector in the red right here. Not one. I'm 11 for 11. I'm batting a thousand. This is amazing. Some of these returns are incredible. It's not surprising that technology has returned the bulk because the lion's share of the money is tied up in technology at 14%. Let's just roll down to the bottom end here. The most forgotten sector in the S&P 500, I'd be hard pressed to make people name me five companies out of materials for me off memory. Look at that. I'm up $230 off of the $800 bill. That's incredible returns, guys. These are the aspects of passive investing that do not get their due attention because everybody's focused on the top end, top 10 holdings of the S&P 500, the Amazon, the Google, companies like that of the world. And those are great companies. Don't get me wrong. But I think the beauty of passive investing exists in getting that success from places that you wouldn't normally focus on and you're being paid for being invested in some of those underappreciated aspects of the stock market. There's some great companies in materials. There's some great companies in telecom. There's some great companies in energy, which has just recently caught fire. And that catching fire has actually pushed me to a little bit overweight in this at 7.2%. Up $192 on just a $984 bill. That's pretty impressive returns. No doubt about it. And I think for a lot of new investors that are looking to get involved, this may work for you. It may not, but if nothing else, it shows the power of passive investing over, yes, a conducive market. But I think for a lot of new investors, I think a lot of new investors just need to be getting involved in the market and not messing around with stock picking. So with that, guys, we'll kick you back to YouTube and we'll conclude the video. All right, guys. So we've come out of the special ETF portfolio. Remember the $3,500 rendered here is just part of the equation. Remember, I put zero effort into this zero effort time spent in other areas of my life while this passive investing bucket is working for me. And so for a lot of you guys out there that are looking for an avenue that's safe, diversified, gets nice exposure to domestic markets and covers all the 11 sectors. This could work for you or at least give you an idea of the power of and a testimonial to how successful passive investing can be. It's no joke. It's no joke. The idea here is to take on as much risk as we possibly can to get the maximum return and also remain defensive in nature as well. Guys, if you appreciate the message, want to make sure and subscribe to the channel, leave your comments at the bottom and share the video with anybody out there that you know may benefit, may need to have some introductory information on the stock market. Bring them on to the channel would be glad to have them and begin on a wealth and building journey for them as well. Guys, thank you so much again for tuning into the message and good luck in your investment future.


From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. Welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. We are in Orlando in the NetApp booth at SAP Sapphire 2018. We are joined by a new person to theCUBE, Amit Sena, the founder and chief customer officer at Workspan. Amit, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for having me, excited to be here. So, I'm really excited to understand more about Workspan, what you guys do. Tell us a little bit about that. What opportunity you saw in the market with respect to alliances that you went, ah, why isn't it, no one's doing that. And you have this great idea. Yeah, absolutely, we have this aha moment. In this day and age of connectedness around the world, there is not a single company that goes to market alone. Right, when the reality is that we all serve the same demanding end customers, we got to align our marketing, we got to align our messaging, we need to align our innovation, and we need to sell together in order to win more. Easier said than done, right? So, that's where we saw the opportunity. Then what if there was a network of alliances that are connected with one another, and if they can truly define a joint innovation, a joint solution, take it to market, co-market it, when they co-market, they can get twice the audience at half the cost, and then co-sell, that's where they can improve their win rates, and we are truly seeing that. So, that's the opportunity we saw, to really make the life of the alliance manager, the alliance leader simpler and easier to do in this connected day and age. Well, essential because also on your website, 60 to 75% of announced alliances fail. That's enormous. So, talk to us about some of the successes that you have had, talking with companies, as you say, that nobody goes to market alone these days, did they have those aha moments as well when you came knocking on there and said, hey, look what we're developing? Absolutely. So, look at this large event here. Sapphire is one of the biggest enterprise events out here. Over 100 strategic alliances are here from SAP, and they will all make key announcements here about joint products, big go-to markets, but can you imagine, three months down the line, 70% of them will be actually catching dust on the ground. They won't be even worth the paper they were, the business cases will be written on. And that's such a wasted opportunity. The amount of due diligence that goes into kind of creating an alliance, thinking about the business case, people putting together solutions, but then once they announce it at the keynote, that's where the decline really happens. There's no operational support behind, how do you take this to market? That's where WorkSpan comes in. We provide the joint sales plan, the joint marketing plan, the joint solution plan, to really operationalize the people coming together across the partnership. In India, we say that a marriage is between families, and that's very true. Similarly, an alliance is between companies, deep in the company, it's not just the alliance manager working with another alliance manager. It's really marketeers, sales folks, alliance people. So it's a family of two companies coming together. That's what WorkSpan provides the foundation, the consistent process logic, and a data-driven argument around it. So you can take decisions on the basis of data to say, okay, where is my alliance working and where does it need help? You don't do postmortems after that. You can fix as you're going along. So let's talk about that process and data-driven nature of alliances. Alliances are complex setups. Just starting at the very beginning of saying, you know what, we're two companies, we overlap in areas of competition, but there's these outliers where we really can partner together to make that happen. You look on the show floor, you see brands that are obvious. You know, we're in the NetApp booth for, and we've talked SAP HANA an awful lot. Right across the way is the Oracle booth, and they're talking heavily SAP on Oracle. So there's this opportunity to cooperate and there's this area of competition. A lot of that is data-driven. How do you capture that data and help create the process logic to help companies identify alliances and then execute upon and manage those alliances going forward? By the way, that's an excellent question. So when you are living in a network in this interdependent world, you will partner somewhere and you will compete in some places. So for this network world, we need a new security model so that only people who are allowed to see something are able to see that thing. We call this attribute-based access control. Compare that to traditional applications which do role-based access control just because you're higher up in the organization, you get to see everything. But this newer model of security, attribute-based access control model, allows the right people to get onto the right plans so that they and they alone can see it. So you might be working for SAP on, let's say the Google relationship or the Apple relationship or the Oracle relationship or the NetApp relationship. Only those right people have those accesses. And the owners of those programs can control and secure that data. So what it allows a company to then do is, it's even more secure in this day and age. We can argue that within this day and age with GDPR and all those compliance efforts that work span is far more secure than sending spreadsheets out, which is the current mode of collaboration.  What's your private data? So on the same opportunity, you can have private data for your own company. Employees to see that is never shown to partners. So that translucency, not transparency, that translucency is really, really important when you do alliances and that we understand this model and approach. So how do you help like for alliances marketing, for example, and say there's a joint campaign, NetApp with one of their partners, for example, and they want to do some lead generation activities, events, webinars, lunch and learns, digital campaigns, and they're going to get leads that come in from that and they might say, okay, well, I don't want to give you all of that. How do you help with some of that? I mean, it kind of goes to the co-optition theme a little bit, but from a marketing standpoint, I'm just curious, how do you help either reduce or mitigate concerns that companies, alliance partners would have in that space, or do you come in and sort of help them from a strategic area to normalize some of these concerns? Yeah, so what we do is we partner with a company's marketing automation system. So let's say NetApp is working with SAP Cloud for Customer. So at this event, we announced an integration between WorkSpan and SAP Cloud for Customer. Similarly, other customers may have other marketing automation solutions, let's say on a local or a market or a Salesforce.com. So we integrate with those systems. What happens is marketers can continue their contact database and their lead machine in those systems, and we get aggregate results on WorkSpan to really see which alliances are doing well. So we don't get into what marketing automation systems do. We partner and we integrate with them. So that way what happens is we are extending the investment that a company already has made in their marketing automation stack, and we come across as the partner or the alliance automation stack. So that way the alliances move on and on. And why is this important? This is important because if you're like an Intel or a NetApp, you may be working with a whole ecosystem of providers, and they themselves have their own marketing automation systems.  So as a network you may have just 1% of the data, but your overall network is far more intelligent with all the data that you can collect. So again, whenever we get a topic like this, we have to invoke John Furrier's name and get some blockchain conversation going on. From an ideal of, basically there's this, you guys become an authority of authentication. There's reputation. There's all these fundamental infrastructure things that you have to determine. And you think through it. You scale this out beyond just alliances and obviously technology is one area. There's all the attributes in manufacturing and other companies. How does this align with or a more aggressive question? How does this supplant like the ideas of smart contracts with the likes of blockchain? Yeah, absolutely. So blockchain is a really good implementation of what we really have done in WorkSpan. So in WorkSpan, if you think about it, it's a network. There are transactions that are flowing across different parties. And these transactions are trusted like across different parties. When let's say an Intel or a NetApp says approved on our platform, the process extends to the partner and they get a contract there. So in some ways, in a living in a connected world, you need to have these kinds of smart contracts and trust in data source that is not just your own. You're living in a shared data world, right? So one of the key partners that NetApp works with is both Intel as well as SAP, right? So because SAP program funds and SAP marketing campaigns are here and so is Intel's. And they both come from trusted parties. NetApp is able to trust that data, trust that transaction and execute it. So we provide that trust foundation based on technologies. Sorry, that's kind of the trust foundation is sort of aligns to what Bill McDermott said at his keynote this morning about trust being this new currency. You guys have been attaining a lot of momentum in the Fortune 500 space. Tell us a little bit about how you're doing that. And then if there's a customer example that you, that's one of your favorites that you think really articulates your brand value. Share that too. Absolutely. So we've been very fortunate that we've been trusted by a lot of Fortune 500 companies to come on the platform. Really want to orchestrate their platform and their ecosystem. And we are seeing this need that the head of alliances is seeing their role to be very strategic at the board where they want to be data driven and numbers driven. They're no longer saying, I'm okay by saying that my alliance with such and such partner is going well. They want to be quantified. They want to say it's going well by this much. So this is where the main value prop is. We have had companies on our platform that have generated 58% more views that have reduced their marketing cost by 50%. Intel and SAP specifically, this is their third year on our platform. And year on year, they have collaborated on more number of campaigns deeper in the regions where their marketeers are working with Intel marketeers, for example. So they got a 24x return on marketing investment. Wow. Whereas they were expecting an eight to 10x return on marketing investment. So dramatically increased, for SAP that meant $100 million more in revenue at lower marketing cost. Just because the two companies can unleash their shared potential with shared customers across them. Now this happened, this is not an overnight success. This is a three year success in the making where there's deep partnership and collaboration at the regional level, at the market unit level and all rolling it up at the head of alliance. So Intel is one company, we have SAP of course is a market account, they've not only worked with hardware alliances like NetApp and Intel, but also their SI alliances are on WorkSpan, so large as many SI's that you see here, those programs are coming on WorkSpan as well. The Lenovo worldwide on WorkSpan, HPEs on WorkSpan, so that's a great example as well for Fortune 500 customers. Wow, a lot of momentum. You know, it's for companies like SAP, like WorkSpan where you've got software and you've got something under the hood that a lot of people won't know what's happening or for their jobs don't have to know or care. It's always challenging for a brand to go, how do we show the value of our private services when it's not something that we can touch or see or feel? And it's really through the validation, the best you can get is through the voice of your customer and the stats that you shared. You must be sort of salivating with, we can actually help you increase, lead you in my 58% or increase revenue opportunities by 40%. I mean, you've got some really substantial data-driven facts to show how you're transforming a business. That's got to be, it's got to make, you know, doing business a little bit easier that you know you've got such solidity. Actually, when you think of the world, it's very diverse, right? But you can see patterns from this thing. So when you work with a lot of partners and you're orchestrating them on your ecosystem, you're running different kinds of marketing campaigns or different sales opportunities. They have different traction depending on how you actually executed them, right? But when you step back and you say, hey, webinars don't really work well in Japan. Late evening events work better in Japan. But in the U.S. on the West Coast, it seems like webinars work better. Or such and such partner does a really good job of hiring client, you know, in events, but that this other partner I spend a lot of money with, it all seems to go in search or not advertising that I don't see a lot of benefit out there, right? So you can make these data-driven arguments by partner, by channel, by investment, by, you know, by any metric that you want now. So now the head of alliance is, this is exactly what the value proctor works plan is. Now you can be totally data-driven and say, this works, that doesn't work, so I should do more of this and spend less there. Fantastic. Well, I wish we had more time to keep chatting, but thanks so much for stopping by and sharing, not only who works spent as in what you do, but some of the significant impact that you can deliver to your customers. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Left talking to you. Likewise. We want to thank you for watching the Q-bye. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAP Sapphire 2018. Thanks for watching.