All right, very well. So art, technology, and language are built upon rationality and proportion. All three utilize logic, technique, and interpretation as methods of making their point and transmitting their ideas. Anthropomorphism is applied and expressed in each of these realms, and in fact the phenomenon can serve to tie them together. When we see images such as this, they look ridiculous, kind of absurd. I think it's important to recognize that they help us to examine our beliefs and our perceptions. The greater part of art is comprised of completed works. Unfinished elements are in the interpreter's minds. With the exception of works that are in progress, I think this generally holds true. And anthropomorphization intensifies the effect of art. Some animals are anthropomorphized and seem quite friendly and helpful. Others seem terrifying. It's this confluence of the unknown with the known that I think inspires these varied experiences. The self and other being unified through interiority. We see these images and they incite an interior experience. Of course, with anthropomorphic art, a greater variety of influences are drawn from. And greater expressive range is possible both for the viewer and the artist. The greater part of science is never complete. It is always in a state of verisimilitude. The models that are used are true for the moment, for the state of knowledge as it exists. It is always in a state of development. Now technology is crafted by interpreting scientific principles and the regularities known as laws into useful forms. I think this illustrates very well that art and technology are inextricably bound. Technology again being needed to interpret the present state of knowledge. The self and other are unified through exteriority. We use a piece of technology and it mediates our experience with the external world. Transforming materials and energy as needed is something that all biological units do. But humans have a special way of doing it. A unique way of transforming materials and energies, we can enter into social relationships with anthropomorphized forms. And anthropomorphism then becomes an aspect of our power as humans. An excellent example is the Tamburma House. This is a well-known example. You see the mounds outside of the house. They are used, they're called soul mounds, and they are used to make changes both in and around the structure that will then affect the people who live in the structure. It seems that they have their own interpretation and understanding of this transaction that takes place between the exterior and the internal worlds. That making a change in the exterior world makes a change in the interior. Each architectural element not only looks to be designed to emulate biological human anatomical forms, but also is labeled as such. Very interestingly, this gives this symbolic value to the building as well as its technological value. So when one enters through the front portal, one enters the house, also enters the body of the house. People sometimes will, you know, they'll greet. Well, regularly they will greet through the mouth of the house, greeting the house first before the occupants. Sometimes they'll drink beer with the house by pouring it through the portal. Anthropomorphic art results in an image that implies a combination of human and animal abilities. There is an imagining that occurs with anthropomorphic art that I think is a very important component of technological development. Ideas are first put forth sometimes in art. This is a regular occurrence in our modern world. It can be difficult though, I think, to see it in more ancient forms. Images such as these, I think, are communicating technological development, even in its most nascent form. By imagining powers that are superhuman, it is the beginning of the process of development. Because again, to absorb the power of some non-human entity, the path is through technology. Solving problems for humans is done through building tools, yes? The ultimate human power is to process and rework the material world to manifest ideas. The immaterial becomes material. This idea, realization, is a very powerful process where the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. Extending the hands that were once used for digging, becoming shovels, becoming even more advanced equipment. This is a very important point because the advancement is the result, I believe, of this transaction, this iterative process of building and refining use and design. You'll see here on the right, the Lowen-Mensch figurine, the oldest known example of anthropomorphic art, at least to date. I think, again, implicit here is the idea that there is a combination of powers, the lion and the human. And our path to that power is through technological development and scientific exploration. Self-awareness is increased through the development and use of technology. Unknown aspects of the human body are explored through the use of technology. There's an old question, how does the tongue taste itself? How does the eye see itself? Well, part of that answer is technological. A very simple path. We come to know our thoughts through technology and our bodies. But ultimately, humans can only know their own experience of the world. To reduce uncertainty and increase predictability, people anthropomorphize. We are, in a sense, trapped within the world of our own senses. We cannot know what other animals think and feel. But to anthropomorphize is not a weakness or necessarily engaging in false beliefs. It is an attempt to engage our social competence, which is an important part of realizing our ideas through technology and development of the material world, its transformation. People actually are very good at engaging socially, communicating and entering social contracts. I submit that anthropomorphism may have contributed to the development of language. If we think about language as having been developed through technology, which some people believe as subscribed to the technological pedagogy hypothesis, and in old one tool making people had to gesture and perform pantomime to translate and transmit the information about tool making, I think that anthropomorphism may have helped in this process a shared experience. We both have bodies, we both have these feelings, can then be possibly transmitted conceptually to other animals and then help us in communicating about third parties and communicate with each other about our shared experiences. So I see anthropomorphism as a process of testing, extending and exceeding human abilities, expressed through art initially, and then continued on through the process of technological development. Again, a process that is wedded with artistic expression and interpretation. As a component of language development, it would be based in shared experience and a form of teleological thinking in itself. After all, when we indicate humans and humanity, we're indicating teleological thinking. Everything for humans is means to an end. Projection of the human form more fully into technology is what we're looking at for the future. This resulting technology can be practical and socially relatable, robots that serve humans and help them in many ways, and this approach brings new moral and ethical challenges. It's not simply a matter of applying old moral ideas and ethical principles but developing new ones for new variables. Inducing the phenomenon of anthropomorphism is used as a design feature. And I think this opens up the way for the production of robots that reinforce human relationships, encourage social exchange, and advance ethical practices. Anthropomorphic patterning is necessary to solve the problems of humanity, but anthropomorphism may be replaced by a new pattern when artificial intelligence is applied to problems outside of the human realm, when artificial intelligence applies problems to itself, or perhaps to extra planetary problems. Ultimately, the anthropomorphic form must be rendered obsolete for some problems. So we'll be able to anthropomorphize mentally these physical forms that don't look human, but the human form may be rendered obsolete as a useful tool. Thank you very much.


It was an impressive opening day for Bemidji Boy's tennis last week. A pair of shutout wins over Grand Rapids and Crookston and on match day number two, guess who's in town? The same two teams again. The Jacks still stuck inside of VSU, starting with the match against the Thunderhawks this morning. Let's start at two doubles. The Thunderhawks, Reed Cotke and Mohamed Tseguge looking to keep it close. The volley winner at the net here, that's for the point for Bemidji's Ben Hesse and Kolden Mikalichek just had the answer. Hesse, the backhand winner up front here. They cruise in straight set 6-3-6-1. Two doubles, Rapids Cameron, Gradjian and Noah Lane battling. Look at the hustle play here, just over the net for the point. Nicely done for the Jacks pair of Cody Hendricks and Nick Palmer. I'll battle them. Palmer with the rocket ace. They went in straight set 6-2-6-1. The singles, Quincy Wilson number two, taking on Dominic Nolan. Wilson the crosshand forehand winner here. He wins cross court forehand winner here 6-2-6-4. Finally singles, Nick Bufu versus Jack Webb and Al Bufu in this one. That's just tough to stop. He cruises in straight set 6-1 each. Thunderhawks do get a win at four singles. Bemidji goes on to win that match six to one.


Welcome to All Hands Up Date, I'm Petty Officer Matthew Hawes with your headlines from around the fleet. USS Stache derived January 20th to the 4th Fleet Area of Responsibility for a scheduled six-month deployment to conduct Operation Martillo. That just Korean-embarked Coast Guard law enforcement detachment team will conduct counter-transnational organized crime operations designed to improve maritime stability within the region. The DOD website for military children has new features to help parents and educators explain the military lifestyle to children. Some of the new features include lesson plans and graphic novels about military life written by military children. The website uses innovative ways to help military kids cope with the stress of frequent moves, the deployment of parents and other topics. Log on to the website at militarykidsconnect.org. You can read more about these stories at navy.mil. From All Hands Up Date, thanks for watching.


Gran Turismo is a 2023 American biographical sports drama film directed by Neil Blumkamp and it tells a true story of Jan Mardenborough, a teenage Gran Turismo player who became a professional racing car driver. The film stars Archie Medeque as Mardenborough alongside David Harbour and Orlando Bloom. Gran Turismo premiered at the Circuit de Spa Franka Champs in Belgium on July 30th, 2023 and was theatrically released in the United States on August 25th, 2023 by Sony Pictures Releasing and received mixed reviews from critics who praised Blumkamp's direction in racing sequences but criticized its writing. The film generated controversy for its usage of Mardenborough's 2015 crash, but we'll get to that later before we talk about what the movie got wrong. Let's talk about the events in the movie. In the thrilling world of motorsports, Nissan's Nismo Division introduced an innovative game changer, the GT Academy. This audacious project sought to bridge the gap between the virtual and the real, aiming to unearth the hidden talents among skilled players of the renowned racing simulator Gran Turismo and catapult them onto the actual racetracks. At the heart of our tale is Jan Mardenborough, a teenager with an insatiable passion for racing. Despite the disapproval of his father, former footballer Steve Mardenborough, Jan's opportunity to prove himself arrives when he sets a record in a qualification race, earning him a coveted spot at the GT Academy. But just before the defining race, Jan embarks on an unforgettable adventure that sets the stage for the roller coaster ride of his life. The night prior to the qualification race, Jan joins his brother Kobe for a lively party, inadvertently setting off a wild chain of events. The party gets disrupted by the arrival of the police, prompting a daring escapade in their father's car. This escapade doesn't go unnoticed, and their father, Steve, decides to impart a stern life lesson. However, Jan's determination to follow his dream surpasses his father's intentions. He leaves his father's workplace and dashes to the qualification event, clinching a remarkable victory that seals his destiny as a GT Academy recruit. The GT Academy camp is no cakewalk. Under the watchful eye of mentor Jack Salter, the aspirants are put through a grueling series of tests, gradually whittling down the initial pool of 10 contestants to a final five. One of the most electrifying moments of the camp occurs when Jan finds himself in a heart-stopping crash with Jack in the passenger seat. Despite initial skepticism, Jan's claim of brake issues is ultimately confirmed by a thorough analysis, much to everyone's astonishment. The five remaining contenders engage in a thrilling showdown to determine Nissan's representative. In a neck-and-neck race, Jan narrowly emerges as the victor against his American rival, Maddie Davis. Nevertheless, the decision is not straightforward as Danny, the marketing executive, believes that Maddie's commercial appeal makes him the more favorable choice. A tense standoff unfolds, and Jack's unwavering insistence ultimately leads to Jan's selection as the representative. With the title comes a promise. Jan must secure at least fourth place in a series of professional races to earn a pro-license and a contract with the Nissan. His initial foray into professional racing in Austria proves catastrophic as Nicolas Kappa forces Jan into a spin, culminating in a humbling last-place finish. Despite this setback, Jan perseveres, slowly but surely making strides in subsequent races. He falls short in the penultimate race in Spain, but his tenacity leads him to the final qualification race in Dubai. During the climactic Dubai race, Nicolas pushes the envelope too far, leading to a heart-pounding crash. Despite a cracked windshield from the debris, Jan manages to secure a fourth-place finish, thereby clenching his sought-after license. With his dream inching closer to reality, Jan embarks on a journey to Tokyo, where he, alongside Danny and Jack, signs the official contract. Jan also uses his signing bonus to bring Audrey, the young woman he met during his wild night out to Tokyo, initiating a romantic chapter in his life. Jan's debut as an official Nissan driver unfolds at the legendary Nurburgring Nordschleife. He starts the race on a promising note, maintaining a strong position. However, disaster strikes when his car unexpectedly lifts into the air at the treacherous Flugplatz corner, leading to a heart-stopping crash that hurls the car into a crowded spectator area. The aftermath is dire, as Jan is airlifted to the Nurburgring Medical Center. In a gut-wrenching moment, he learns that a spectator lost their life in the crash, plunging him into an abyss of guilt and self-doubt. At this critical juncture, Jack unveils a haunting chapter from his own racing past. He discloses his involvement in a fatal accident at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an incident that led to the death of a fellow driver and his subsequent retirement from racing. Even though an official inquiry exonerates Jan from any wrongdoing, the professional racing world begins to cast a skeptical eye on Sim drivers. In response, Danny hatches a daring plan to demonstrate their legitimacy on one of the grandest stages in motorsports. Danny assembles a formidable team, comprising of Jan, Maddie, and another GT Academy participant, Antonio Cruz, for the prestigious Le Mans race. The race day unfolds with heart-stopping moments, including a fiery crash and an unfortunate pitstop incident. Antonio is called in early from his last session due to cramps, and a wrenching wheel net mishap during the pitstop sees Jan plummeting down the leaderboard. Desperate to regain his lost positions, Jan resorts to unconventional racing tactics, deviating from the recommended lines he had honed through countless hours of Gran Turismo gameplay. In a breathtaking display of skill and determination, he not only reclaims his lost positions, but also obliterates the competition's lap record. The final lap finds Jan locked in an intense battle with none other than Nicholas. In a heart-pounding sprint, Jan edges out his rival, crossing the finish line just ahead to secure a remarkable third-place finish, marking a triumphant moment for Nissan. The story doesn't conclude with the victory at Le Mans, it's merely the beginning of an incredible journey. In the epilogue, we glimpse the real Jan Mardenborough, who has gone on to compete in over 200 races and even served as his own stunt double in the film. But was much of the movie actually true? While the movie brilliantly captures the essence of Jan Mardenborough's remarkable journey, there are a few aspects where the filmmakers took creative liberties. Let's examine what the movie got wrong, and how these deviations from reality played out on the big screen. The racing sequences and bloomcombs direction, especially during the climactic 24-hour race in France, were praised by most critics, who noted that, while transitioning from its video game origins to a standard race car film, Gran Turismo also serves as a cautionary example of adapting source material that may not align with the cohesive narrative. Is Jack Salter a real person? Gran Turismo changes Mardenborough's story to make the film more thrilling. A lot of the characters were made up for the movie, too. One character, whose real existence isn't quite clear, is Mardenborough's mentor, Jack Salter. Before agreeing to coach the young members of the GT Academy, Jack had no faith in the concept, hated what motorsports had become, and was haunted by his own past as a racer at Le Mans. Harbour's portrayal of the character is captivating, and Jack and Jan's partnership is endearing, even if much of it is not actually based on reality. While Jack Salter has a huge influence on Jan and the Gran Turismo movie, the character is entirely fictional. However, Jack is still an imperative part of Jan's movie story, and Jack's backstory about the crash in Le Mans gives Jan the motivation he needs at the ending of Gran Turismo. Although the character might come off as the typical reluctant mentor archetype, Harbour gives the most powerful performance of the movie as Jack. Despite not being based on a real person, there's no denying how hard felt the connection between the former racer and Jan feels. Harbour's Jack Salter might be a fictional addition to Gran Turismo, but the character could be inspired by a real-life person, or even several of them. Ricardo de Villa is Martinborough's real mentor, and Jack could be loosely based on the Brazilian motorsports designer. The race car driver partook in several different motorsports, including Formula One, and he guided Martinborough at the start of his career. Based on what Martinborough said about his former mentor, de Villa is very likely the source of inspiration for Jack.  There was so much media, and Ricardo was someone very straight down the line. That sounds a lot like Harbour's character in the film. The only difference is that de Villa was never in a major crash like Jack was. Jack could also have been inspired by Gavin Goff, a performance coach who Martinborough also saw as something of a mentor. Martinborough wrote on Twitter about how inspirational Goff was during his time at the Academy, so it's possible that Jack Salter could be an amalgam of two real people in Gran Turismo. A somewhat understandable change to Jan Martinborough's real life in Gran Turismo comes with the drivers he races against. Whether it is at GT Academy, or once he becomes a professional driver, all the other racers Jan competes with are fictional people. Everyone from Mattie Davis and Antonio Cruz to Nicholas Kappa and Frederick Shulin are characters invented for the video game movie story. By changing the names of people Jan races against, Gran Turismo's cast avoids further complicating its true story accuracy. One more example of how Gran Turismo changes Jan Martinborough's true story comes with his entrance into GT Academy. The movie establishes that Jan is such a well-known racer in the simulator that he's automatically selected by GT Academy to participate in an entry race against 19 other competitors from his area. The winner of the race is automatically awarded a spot in GT Academy, and Jan wins after racing to a local video game spot to get in his seat right as the race begins. The real-life account of Jan getting into GT Academy is a bit more complicated. Jan had six weeks to post a great time on an assigned track and climbed the lap rankings to make the cut. It took Jan until the last night of qualifications to post his best time. He then moved on to additional rounds of qualifying before officially earning a spot in GT Academy. Gran Turismo speeds up the entire process to help move the story along and makes Jan's admittance to GT Academy a bit more thrilling. A rather big change to Gran Turismo's true story comes with Jan Martinborough's place as the first winner of GT Academy. The movie shows Danny Moore create the program and makes Jan the first person to graduate as the winner. It makes for a great story, but the reality is that Jan was the third GT Academy winner in real life. The program existed for two years before Jan competed in it, meaning the idea of a gamer becoming a racer had already been done twice before. Lucas Ordonez won the first GT Academy in real life, with Jordan Tressen becoming the second winner before Jan's entry. Gran Turismo also changes Jan Martinborough's first professional race by making it a completely different challenge. In the movie, Jan's first race after winning GT Academy is at the Red Bull Ring racetrack in Austria. He finishes in 27th place after moving up as high as fourth place before Kappa spins him out. Jan Martinborough's first race in real life actually took place at 24 hours of Dubai where he competed in a team with other GT Academy winners and he finished third in his class. Due to the other changes previously discussed, a different first race had to factor into the movie's version of Jan's life. One of the biggest inaccuracies was the nerve-wracking crash that offed one spectator and injured others. The crash is very realistic compared to what happened to Jan in real life, but the timing of it in his racing career is very different. The Nurburgring race takes place after signing with Nissan and getting his FIA license, but the crash makes it the last race Jan competes in before doing the 24-hour of Le Mans. The real story flips the order of events substantially. Jan Martinborough's crash at Nurburgring happened in 2015 in real life. The crash occurred on March 28, 2015, which was four years into Jan's professional racing career. This also means that it happened two years after Jan's breakthrough moment at Le Mans. He finished third at the 24-hour of Le Mans in 2013. Instead of keeping the order of events accurate for the movie, Gran Turismo twists the chronology to try to make Jan's story more inspiring. The changes to Jan Martinborough's crash in Gran Turismo extend to how he returns to racing. In the movie, Jack takes Jan back to Nurburgring in the sight of the crash so he can encourage the traumatized driver to get back behind the wheel. The scene includes Jack telling Jan that if he doesn't start driving again now, he never will. Not only is Jack Salter not a real person, but Jan made the decision to return to racing on his own in real life. He motivated himself to do a 20-lap warm-up one week after the crash to get the feel of racing again, but he ended up doing 110 laps. There's also a noticeable change to Jan Martinborough's true story in Gran Turismo that makes his 24-hour Le Mans performance much more impressive. It's true that Jan finished third and got the podium at the race in real life. However, Gran Turismo has Jan Martinborough break the Le Mans lap record during his final leg of the race, which didn't happen. The movie gives him a lap record timed below three minutes and 15 seconds. This is over two seconds faster than the current Le Mans lap record, and three seconds faster than the established record when Jan raced Le Mans in real life. While the movie streaks heavily off of what really happened a decade ago, it still showcases the hardships a professional racer faces in his career, and the use of overdramatizing events is nothing new for Hollywood. It's a fun watch, but if you want the real story, now you know it.


Hey everyone, as you can tell by our festive clothing. This is Coffee Crypto Holiday Edition. My name is Jackson. I'm a video journalist at Cointelegraph. And I'm Maxwell. I'm the head of copy editing. What are we going to be talking about today, Max? We've got a lot on the agenda. We'll see how much we get through. But the main things we want to talk about to the end of the year, a lot happened this year. So we're going to try to cover as much as we can. We're going to talk about the decade as a whole so that we can come up with holistically. And neither of us are really like, you know, beat reporters. We're not specific into one side of the industry. So we're going to take a more holistic approach, view the, you know, do you use holistic? So we're going to cover, we're going to cover various things. We're going to talk about the corporatization of crypto. We're going to talk about the year and we're going to talk about the decade. And we're going to make some predictions and maybe play a game or two. Yeah. And that's about it. It's going to be some good shite. And with coffee, of course. To crypto in 2020 and beyond. There's no alcohol in this, by the way. Well, let's start first with kind of the most obvious how the year started. It was the winter. It was the crypto winter. And we have since come out of the crypto winter. Because people had a lot of big expectations for 2019, especially in terms of Bitcoin, you know, they thought this was going to be the bull run year, the year to make it past the 20k mark to up and beyond the moon, et cetera, all that. And it didn't really live up to those expectations. But it is still doing a lot better than it was at the start of the year. Yeah. And I would also say that, I mean, I think the crypto winter was quite long. And so, I mean, at some point too, I mean, I was hired actually kind of right at the start of the crypto winter. And as it was progressing, I was kind of just like, hmm, I wonder about the job security here. You know, what if the, you know, what if this whole industry goes down? And I mean, I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't hoping for it. But I think that in some ways that, you know, bull run in the summer, the beginning of the crypto spring, I guess, was actually quite, I don't know, quite a statement for the industry and kind of its, you know, longevity. How do you feel about crypto not breaking that 20K mark? I mean, it made it up to 13K. But how do you see that playing out? I don't. For me personally, I don't see that like a certain price point being like, we have to break through this. You know, the people that I've talked to in the industry have saw what happened in 2017 and that kind of like massive bubble. And it kind of was outpacing the actual fundamental technology. So I think the price can, you know, eventually might break through. It could be a matter of debate. And if anyone has any interest in chiming in on this, leave a comment, we'll check it out. All right. So let's go on. Right now, I think our producers told us that we have some sort of game to play. Okay. Festive. All right. Why not? Sure. I mean, all of the family get-togethers have like the worst Christmas games, right? Yeah. So we're going to try and top that. Yeah. All right. All right. So our producers, they sent us a list of questions, I think. And we're going to try to answer them. And we can work together and come up with the answers. And then they'll tell us if we got them right or not. And the winner gets to have another cup of delicious coffee. Bitcoin pizzas. Back in 2011, Laszlo Haniek bought two pizzas for Bitcoin. Do you remember how much he paid? Do you? I know the answer. You know the answer? I know what he paid in dollars. But I don't know. Hold on. Let me think. So the options are one Bitcoin, obviously not, 1,000 Bitcoins, I don't think so, 10,000 or 100,000. I know it's worth today. It's worth 80 million. So that is quite a bit of money. So I edited it. The original article had 800 million, which I thought was just a little too much. So I think I did look it up. Is it 10,000? 10,000. 10,000? That's our answer. Yeah. All right. Nice. Okay. Next one. This is a yes-no question. And I'm going to read names.  Actually, that's going to be kind of hard. This is going to be difficult. Okay. So I don't know the answers to this either, but the first one is garlic coin. Garlic coin. Is that a crypto? Garlic coin. Mmm. Garlic coin. What would that use case be? What would garlic coin be? Actually... I think it is. You think it is? Yeah, I think it is. What do you think it is, though? Like what does it do? Man, it tokenizes garlic. Yeah. It's backed by garlic. It's tied to the value of garlic. One coin. One garlic coin equals one clove of garlic. Yeah. A garlic's clove. It's beautiful. Yeah. A clove of garlic. I say no. You say yes? Who is correct? It is a coin. Yay! Let's go! Okay. All right. Well, this is not an endorsement, but I'm going to go look up garlic coin. I'm going to see what they do. I, you know, coming to the end of this year, I've been asking a lot of my friends a question. And I guess I'll ask the audience, too, and then I'll ask you. What do you think the 2010s will be remembered as? What's going to be the defining, you know, developments in this decade? So leave a comment and tell us what you think the 2010s will be marked by. Jackson, what do you think? You don't have to say crypto. I mean, that's... I'm not going to say crypto. You don't think that it will be. No, I think it will be something bigger than crypto. I think it will be the loss of our digital privacy. Anyway, my question for you, and also for the audience, is what was the single biggest crypto event in the past decade? The one that will define the future. What do you think? Crypto. Not just Bitcoin. We talked a lot about Bitcoin. We want to not be so Bitcoin-centric as much as we can be. Corporate power is really starting to test the bounds of more traditional government power. And so I think in the last year, or in the last 10 years, what could be the biggest defining moment would be something like Libra imagining that in a maybe hypothetical future, that Libra actually becomes a global currency that we've then seated our control of our monetary supply, usually, you know, that's always traditionally ever since the beginning of money, you know, that's been something regulated by the government versus now we're seating that to a, you know, private corporation. So, I mean, I think that sounds a little dystopian, but... That's a good thing hasn't happened yet. Right. Right. And I know people are thinking about this too. I mean, obviously the regulators and, you know, the U.S. Congress had quite a few questions for Mark Zuckerberg and David Marcus about this. I'm sure the audience might not be too happy to hear it, but let us know what you think about Libra and its possible significance. Okay. We're going to now make some very expert and truthful predictions about what's going to happen in the future because, you know, we're savants. So... Yes.  And that's the thing that we don't have to base on. Yeah. The model job. Yeah. So let's see. Bitcoin price, but in the 2020. I mean, are we going with like the kind of the way that everyone makes a prediction is say like some... They think, hmm, where's my hat? Yeah, just... I think that Bitcoin will break 2020 in, will break 20,000 in 2020 briefly and very slightly.  I don't think it will happen. No? No. You think it will break 15? No. Do you think that the price of Bitcoin at the end of like December 31st, 2020 will be worth more or less than it is January 1st, 2020? We're seeing this. Hmm. All scrunch action. Okay. I can see that, but I also see, you know, lots of potential pushes. I mean, look at everything that happened this year. The fruits of those might actually start to bear, you know.  Yeah. If anyone has a prediction of their own, write it in the comments. Let's say price, what's it going to be January 1st, 2021? If we were to create a cryptocurrency right now, we can choose its name, but like it has to be centered around Christmas. We have to find some Christmas... Why Christmas? Why can't we be inclusive? So we have to have a holiday themed cryptocurrency, and we need to come up with a concept for the white paper. Well, let's think.  So start with the name. And the logo, you know, I'm thinking like... Well, we're not going to launch this, or if it's already launched, we are not endorsing this. Yeah, there's no way, but hypothetically, what could... We'll give ourselves... A minute. All right, so one minute speed round. When we fail to come up with any ideas, you guys will get bored. Okay, I got one. I got one. How about a token blockchain that rewards you every day for keeping your New Year's Resolution? And when you fail it, like, you stake tokens, right?  Every day that you don't do it, you're minus a token. And those plus and minuses go to throughout the community. What do you think? I don't know. I don't know about this. Sounds like a scam. What if there's a Santa coin? A Santa coin? I don't think it exists. Don't tell your kids. I'm thinking, like, redeem for presents at one time of the year, I don't know. Only spendable on, like... On Christmas Day. On Christmas Day. Yeah.   All right. Cool. Well, we're going to find out our predictions over the next year. And until then, I think we deserve a well-deserved break, so Jackson? Coffee break. Coffee break. Well, thank you everyone for watching. We appreciate it. This has been Coffee and Crypto Holiday Edition. I'm Jackson. I'm Maxwell. And I always remember to like, subscribe, and huddle. And of course, the dad joke, see you in a year. Or is it, see you next year. Yeah. Point Telegraph. Like, subscribe, and huddle.


The leadership of the Progressive Congress in Tarabah State has commended the Supreme Court verdict that struck out the case against its governorship candidate, Senator Emmanuel Wacha. The party spokesman in the state hailed the panel of justice of the court led by Justice John Okoro. He expressed optimism that with the verdict of the Supreme Court, the road is now clear for the party's faithful to work for the victory of the presidential ambition of Senator Abola Ahmed Tanubu and that of Senator Wacha's candidature. He maintained that the ruling truncated efforts of some bad elements in the party are alleged to be working against the party's governorship candidature. I think a lot of our supporters will sleep very well today because the victory of truth and justice over falsehood and fruitless propaganda has prevailed and our people are very, very happy we have received this news with great relief, great relief because we will now go straight into the business of our own campaign. We know why these cases have been sponsored against us. I say sponsored because some of the people, the litigants supposedly are members of the APC, but we knew long time ago that they have been working for the opposition. They are sponsored by the opposition to try to derail our campaign, to try to blot the hopes of the people of Tarabah State for a new government, a new administration in the state against the fact that the PDP government in the state had failed the people in the last 80 years and we were looking for alternative you know to get out of the quagmire of bad leadership in the state and this is what this judgment represents to the people of Tarabah State.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. We are now going to cover COVID-19 issues as a part of our larger health coverage and possibly a part of our science discussions which we hold nowadays at not very regular intervals. So we have with us Professor Satish Dhrath and we're going to discuss two things of concern, two virus, COVID-19 viruses, SARS-CoV-2 virus variants of concern. One in India which has been raised by the Union Health Minister himself talking about how we should not continue with jyatras. Obviously attempt to argue that the Rahul Gandhi, Bharat, Jyotra, jyatra should be discontinued. And also what are variants of concern which have arisen in the United States? Satjit, a very strange issue really. Suddenly the health minister asking jyatra to be stopped when if you remember that we had the full election campaign in flow, full flow in Bengal at a point of time where the delta wave was pretty strong in fact peaking at that point and huge numbers of people were affected. Now if you look at the COVID-19 numbers they don't seem to be of any significance. We don't see that kind of pressure in the hospitals anywhere. And in fact with these kind of numbers it has created an unnecessary panic in the people. Suddenly say go COVID has come back when actually we don't see any signs of that. Well, absolutely. There are layers to this peculiar situation that it might be interesting for our listeners to think about. Firstly, let's consider the issue of variants. We've been saying for the past three years of the pandemic that virus variants arise and that different variants at different times become prominent in the community as they compete with each other for transmission. Because variants arise from pre-existing variants there are lineages of variants. There are families of variants and there are lineages of variants. So the current variant landscape, the world over, appears to be almost entirely descended from the so-called Omicron variant that the world began seeing about a year ago, a little over a year ago. But within those that Omicron family, now there are large numbers of variants, descendants of variants, descendants of descendants and so on and so forth. Branching continuously. Branching families of variants continuously. There are two issues that are important for us to keep in mind when we think about what variants mean for us. Firstly, variants succeed in competition with other variants because they are more transmissible. But there are two separate reasons why they may be more transmissible. The first is that the variant sticks to cells more tightly. The variant is not as easily killed off by our body enzymes and so on and so forth. This is, in a sense, a biological transmissibility. This property, this characteristic. And what we have seen over the first two and a half years of the pandemic has been selection of variants for better transmission in a generally uninfected population because the virus has been spreading amongst uninfected people. So alpha, beta, gamma, delta, Omicron, all of these were better and better transmissible as an inherent property of the virus. Over the past six months, what has begun to happen is that Omicron lineage descendant variants are now spreading. But they're spreading in communities which almost all the world over, China perhaps accepted. We will talk about China separately. But the bulk of the world over are either vaccinated with first year virus strain or infected with the first year or two of virus strains. And that means that viruses which are capable of dodging the immune response sufficiently to be transmissible will now begin to get an advantage for transmission. So rather than biologically transmissible, better transmissible variants, what we have begun to see over the past six months or so is immune evasion variants. So that's the first point that we should keep in mind. The session we struggle that we try to protect ourselves and they try to evade the virus and then has immune invasive evading capabilities. That's the evolutionary struggle that takes place. Actually, if you think about it, the evolutionary struggle is between different strains of the virus with each other for survival. And which one can do it better? Therefore, our immune system comes into play. But that brings me to a separate issue that we should keep in mind when we are thinking about these successful variants. And that is the pressure on variants in their competition with each other is for transmission. Because if they spread better, they become more prominent. It's really just straightforward. Nowhere in this is their selection for being able to cause more severe illness. And in keeping with that, over the past three years, we have not seen any major change in any of these variants in their ability to cause severe illness. Delta was the only variant which caused measurably severe illness more frequently. But other than that, there is no general trend of increasing the severity of illness at all. So we need to keep that in mind and not scare ourselves with nightmares of the virus evolving into more and more dangerous strains or anything like that. The virus, in terms of illness, does pretty much what the virus was doing a couple of years ago. It is far more transmissible and it is now beginning to be transmissible even in previously immune communities. That's what we should keep in mind. And it's on this background that we should think about the current discussion of both real variants of concern and what Eric Topol has called scariants, which is simply variants that are being used to scare people for other agendas. We'll talk about the other agent just a little later. But there are two scariants or variants which are also being talked about in the United States. Are they more scary or they are just other variants which are a little more further from the original strain of Omicron and therefore may again reinfect the same people who might have been infected by Omicron earlier. Right. So let me talk about three variants. And our listeners will forgive me for beginning to use acronyms, but beyond a point there is no helping it. So we are talking about three variants. We are talking about so-called BQ1 variants. We are talking about XBB variants and we are talking about DF7 variants. So let me break that up. So I'm not gonna keep using these names over and over again. All I'm gonna say is that the first two variants have a horizon in the United States but have a horizon quite a few months ago and they are seen the world over. They've been reported in India. In fact, a substantial proportion of the inadequate genome sequencing of viruses in India is in fact from those variants. The third, DF7, is the scariant that seems to be a prominent virus strain in China in their current situation. Now, we should keep in mind that as lineages branch further and further, variants will undergo more and more selection. So in general, variants that arose early with fewer changes will be less successful than variants which have emerged into communities with many more changes. Okay, that's not a mathematical equation but it's a reasonable argument. Assumption. From that point of view, the so-called China prominent variant is actually an older variant with fewer changes than the American variants of concern currently which are both variants which have many more changes than the Chinese variant seems to have. All of this information is a little shaky because it's based on sequence comparisons that are not always completely perfect, but even so. And the American variants are beginning to show more and more immune evasion properties. Okay. Which means that a reasonable plausible interpretation of the present situation is that the Chinese variant is spreading in either communities which have never been exposed or were vaccinated a long time ago and vaccines have waned, vaccine effects have waned and therefore these are effectively virus-knife communities, whereas the American variants are variants which are capable of spreading in immunized vaccinated communities. Neither of these is causing more severe illness, mind you. But as far as transmission is concerned, I will leave it to our audience to decide which of these two should be the greater concern for India from an epidemiological point of view in terms of rapidly spreading in vaccinated populations. I will just conclude part of it by saying that we should really watch the numbers and depending on how the numbers rise, we'll have to take not an India-wise response but a community-wise or a more localized response which is what we have been discussing that when the numbers go up in a particular locality, we have to take more COVID-19 appropriate measures which is of course starts with masking which we should still do, particularly in enclosed spaces and larger number of people there, but essentially impose certain restrictions on ourselves depending on the numbers in that area. And it is India's too big a country to think about an India-wide situation unless we have a Delta-like wave or an Omicron-like wave, where given a week or two weeks, the whole country seems to swing in one direction. So that's broadly what we are at. And also from what you have said that we have not only vaccinated ourselves, most of us with two shots, some with booster shots, older people like you and me, but also we have also had infections. So we are relatively, we have hybrid immunization, some from the Omicron virus, almost everybody seems to have had Omicron infections and vaccinations as well. So we are not, as you said, the vaccine naive community. Now, coming to China, the figures for China, of course, depending on which source you read, is either 25 billion, 50 billion, 100 billion, whatever. But let's face it, China is a large population. If there is a peak, it's unlikely to peak in all places simultaneously. We will probably see what we have seen in India. Regions after regions, following different cycles of peaking, but closely connected to each other. Therefore, the peaks may be ahead or follow, but they will not be completely disparate. So you do expect a countrywide peak if you add everything, but that peak is really a submission, as you have said on a number of occasions, a number of independent peaks and valleys put together. The numbers in China are by all accounts high because we have different local reports of senior officials in the Chinese government saying in my region, it's one million per day. So numbers are high. So we are not going to say numbers are very low. They are 4,000, 5,000, they are not. They are in millions. So given that, we would expect that since different regional heads now are giving statements, one million, two million per day kind of figures, we would expect the figures to be really high. Probably Beijing and Shanghai was earlier than others. Other regions are now catching up. And you are likely to see peaks of the kind that we have seen both in Omicron and Delta as well as the initial peaks. China is a large country. We are just about edging them out in population numbers, but the population numbers are very big. And it's also unlike India, which went through a couple of early peaks. Then we had the Delta peak. Then we had the Omicron peak. It's a relatively vaccine-only immunity. And otherwise, what you would call an Omicron, it's a virus-nive immunity. That seems to be, I'll leave Satish to elaborate on these two issues, that we should expect a large number over there. That's expectation. But that doesn't necessarily follow because it's a well-vaccinated population, even though about the older people, there are questions. According to figures I see, there could be anything between 65 to 75% of the population, older people, have had booster doses as well. Otherwise, they seem to have been, their vaccine rates are highest among the world, in the world, probably followed by countries like India. The US is probably among the advanced countries, the lowest in terms of both the vaccinated as well as the booster dose. So given that, what is your expectation of the course of what is likely to happen in China? So the Chinese situation has three components or factors that I think we should all keep in mind. Firstly, China's zero COVID policy was based on a couple of assumptions. One, they assumed that they could do stringent testing, stringent, well-supported, local lockdowns, rolling very rapidly and that they needed to do this because their tertiary care facilities, they thought would not be able to sustain massive, sudden peaks of infection in communities. As a result of this, their zero COVID policy for two and a half years was successful, but it had therefore two consequences. Number one, the entire community barring the small minorities who haven't gotten vaccinations, but the entire community is vaccinated with first-generation vaccines, 2020 virus-strain vaccines. And their ability to control infection and transmission is vanishing legally. So the community is therefore open to transmission. There will still be protection against severe illness and death, which I suspect we will begin to see as numbers begin to be reported, curated and so on and so forth. But the fact remains that transmission is gonna happen. In the rest of the world, because strain after strain, after emerging strains did spread through communities, the combinatorial immunity of generated by vaccination and actual virus infection, what everybody refers to as hybrid immunity for some odd reason, is more likely to provide some better restraint on transmission. So China is therefore, once they lift the zero COVID policy, likely to see fairly rapid expansion. The second issue was that their zero COVID policy was predicated on the calculated transmission efficiency of the 2020 strains. And in a certain sense, the steady and rapid emergence of more and more and more transmissible strains has been an object lesson for biologists. And I suspect that the Chinese system has come to terms with the fact that as transmissibility increases, maintaining zero COVID becomes that much harder to the point where it's not sustained. Absolutely correct, yeah. Absolutely correct what you're saying that what we do seem to very large number of people getting infected because it's a sudden lifting of the zero COVID policies. They had taken a decision before the protests, a week before the protests, they had taken a decision to lift the zero COVID restrictions. Unfortunately, the public health system was slow and there is an inertia, partly because they are unwilling to face the consequences of lifting the due, that once they lift it, there will be an explosion of infections. They were just trying to postpone it to the extent that people came out of the streets. So the protests took place. The same the world over. So that is pretty much there. But the thing is that we can discuss this separately also. The number of deaths from again, all of it is now only anecdotal because unfortunately the Chinese system has stopped really giving figures out, partly because the whole system of reporting from all the places correctly, I think is at the moment also under crisis. We saw that in the CDC as well, the people were giving figures which had no correlation to what the figures were on the ground. So but the real crux of the issue would be whether the vaccination will produce an effect against serious illness and death, considering the Omicron variants have also been relatively lighter on people than this is the Delta wars. So let me change this issue and broaden it a little. And that is, where have we all of us? China, India, the US, the world, innocence fallen on our faces as far as the pandemic is concerned. And we've fallen on our faces in two separate factors in more one factor in some places than others, but generally we have not been systematically sampling and tracking infection. And variant emergence. Some countries, particularly rich countries, as well as countries like China have been doing it far more systematically. Our track record here in India has been nothing to be particularly pleased with. And the bulk of the global South has been even worse off for reasons of both bureaucracy and technological and resource constraints. As a result, we are not keeping as close and as nuanced an eye on the emergence of new trends in the pandemic as we should be. We've pretended that the pandemic is over. But the second problem we share globally across the world, China, India of course included, but even the wanted technologically cutting edge rich countries of the global North. And that is we have not put in place a steady pipeline of generating new generation vaccines, testing them safely, rapidly and deploying them as regular booster doses in conjunction with surveillance so that as new variants emerge, our continuing vaccination patterns should be only one step behind the emerging new variants rather than 10 steps behind the emerging new variants. And this all countries across the world have fallen short of. And it's particularly distressing because with the influenza vaccination network, we had a perfectly good model as we've discussed here earlier in past months and years of how to do this. And instead, we've just chosen the world over as communities to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the pandemic is over and therefore that there is going to be no COVID anymore. Two quick questions to you out of this, really one conclusion and one question. One quick conclusion is that we should have prepared ourselves for the new variants which are clearly emerging and we knew that and therefore done with the virus by vaccine manufacturers, what is being done routinely with the influenza vaccine and there's a global program replicating that with the vaccine manufacturers would not have been difficult. The problem of course is that a few vaccine manufacturers really my question to you, few vaccine manufacturers claim which is repeated in American mainstream articulate opinion that the mRNA vaccines are the best and China has old fashioned vaccines which had also been India has partly because of the, as you know, one of the vaccines is the same kind. But that the most advanced vaccine are the mRNA vaccines and that is what the whole world should be coming and getting from the Americans. This is the rough sum total of it. Even the adenovirus vector vaccines are sort of airbrushed out of the scenario. Though, you know, India's had also the largest number of I think Oxford vaccine as you like to call it. So which is what the serum institute has been using India. So A, question number one, are there significant differences between what each of the vaccines are when it comes to protection? Because Omicron seems to have not bothered about what vaccine you have used. But the seriousness of the illness has been only seen amongst people who have not been vaccinated largely cost no exceptions aside. So this whole argument is that this great mRNA vaccine should be only used which cost about 20 times what the other vaccines cost at least in India is that does it have any substance? And B, that what we are seeing in China for example, if that it follows what we have seen in India that you will have a very large number of infections but compared to the number of infection the number of deaths will be much lower. It doesn't mean therefore deaths will be in absolute terms low because you really talk to very large numbers and it will depend upon how the hospital system can handle it which is what we have always discussed here. The question is not the infections are more serious the question is can the hospitals take care of that? That's really the issue. Absolutely, so as far as different vaccine platform and the commercially competitive claims being made for that to a certain extent commercial there is some basis to those but it's not free of commercial interests. Let me lapse into Hindi. Brother, there is no water in the river and they are fighting with the agrarian's house. Why are we discussing vaccine platforms when what we needed was a rolling pattern of generating new vaccines with new strains? We've been doing that. It's not that nobody's been doing that. People have been doing that. People were doing VA 1.5, people were doing this, that and the other but we needed a global systematic approach with sets of rules that the world will follow and into which any vaccine platform that provides a new generation virus strain vaccine could have been seamlessly plugged in. And if that had happened, this entire argument about we have to have mRNA vaccines would have in a certain sense lost its intensity and focus. Number one, number two, okay, let's admit for the moment that the mRNA vaccine generate higher levels of antibodies and so on and so forth. Sure, these are real numbers. Has there been a global commitment to convert that technology into openly available enthusiastically transferred technology? No. So forgive us for being skeptical about the commercial components of this debate. Let me make a final point. There is an Indian mRNA vaccine. Yes. That mRNA vaccine, unlike the American and the German mRNA vaccines does not require minus 70 degrees storage. It's a licensed vaccine. It's worth asking, has the government of India placed large orders? Has the government of India talked to this small entrepreneur who's generated this vaccine with a lot of publicly funded support, be it said? To license it to more manufacturers, clearly the technology is feasible and ended here in Pune where I'm sitting. So it's not even as if the technology is some unattainable, unachievable technology for the global South. And therefore, in a sense, this entire argument about vaccine platforms feels much more like a red herring when what we should be focusing on is do we have a global systematic network and agreement to track strains, to generate vaccines in whichever platform feasible locally, to test them quickly, to have regulatory processes that will ensure safety, ensure efficacy in rapid movement and deployment of new strain, new generation vaccines into communities as we call it. For our viewers, this is already something which is done extensively every year for the influenza vaccine. So this is something as again, older people we know because we go and regularly vaccinate ourselves for each year for this flu vaccine. Thank you Satyat for being with us, taking over a very, going over a very large area because this has not been a small area that we're discussing. You're talking about evolution of viruses to evolution of vaccines and what are the likely course of action if A happens or B does not happen. So it's really a large canvas. Thank you for being with us. Well, we'll come back to you on this and other issues, but it does seem that our idea that we don't have to discuss COVID-19 anymore in this week, that we have to jettison and come back to you again and again when it becomes a global event or when it becomes again something that we'll have to address in India, not at the moment, but something still to keep our eyes on and certainly keep our eyes on what's happening in other places in the world. Thank you very much for being with us and do keep watching NewsClick and other shows as well.