That's what the man said to me. His eyes suddenly clear and sharp as he regarded me over the table. I had met him two hours before when he offered to buy me a drink, and over that time I had grown to like him. He looked to be a few years older than me, but with the good preservation and polished sheen that you see on those that have the means to stay relaxed and well groomed almost all of the time with minimal personal effort. Normally, I would have found that off-putting, but this man didn't seem soft or overly pampered. Instead, he was worldly and wise with an endless fount of interesting stories that somehow didn't seem like bragging coming from him, but rather just an expression of his intense desire for you to know him better. In short, he was a really cool dude. But that didn't change the fact that I was taken aback by his request. I would have chalked it up to the alcohol, but he hadn't seen that drunk before, and he certainly didn't now. And I've seen enough to know you can never tell what's going on with people. Not really. This guy looked like he was riding the world on a golden saddle, but that didn't mean much if he wasn't happy. And looking into his eyes now, he was clearly anything but. You're a good man, I can tell. And I believe you are smart enough to listen to what I have to tell you, and believe what I'll show you. I can only hope that after that you will be strong enough to do this for me. I pushed back from the table. I was drunk, but not that drunk. Dude, I don't know if this is, but let's dial it down a notch, okay?  He reached forward and gripped my arm. I'm not kidding. I'm just asking for a few minutes of your time. Listen to what I have to say, let me show you proof of it, and then you can make your decision. Fair? I pulled my arm back. No, man. Sorry, I just don't. Here's roughly $5,000. Take it. It's yours. All I ask is that you hear me out. I look down from his feverish expression to the wad of cash he had taken out of his pocket. We were far from America, but those were U.S. dollars, and I had never seen that much money at once in my life. Swallowing, I grabbed the money and gave a nod. Okay, I'll listen, but I'm telling you it won't make a difference.  A look of relief spread across his face. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I'll be brief. He paused for a moment as though weighing how best to begin. Finally, he looked up at me with a narrow gaze. How old do you think I am? I frown. Uh, I don't know, man. Maybe like 45? 50? He smiled. I appreciate the compliment, but I am over 400 years old. I went to stand up again, but I remembered the bulge of new money in my front pocket. Okay, so you're 400. You must take a lot of vitamins. He shook his head and began. I know it sounds insane, but please bear with me. I first came to this island as a sailor back in 1698. I was on an exploratory ship that sank in a storm. Unbeknownst to any of us, we were only three miles from this island at the time. Myself and the first mate, his name was Sullivan. We're the only survivors, at least as far as I ever knew. For certain, we were the only ones the currents carried to the shore. The first few days, we had hope of being rescued in time. We weren't that far off an established trade route, and there were several expeditions to fully chart this area underway by different European powers. Our theory was that if we could just sustain ourselves, just survive a few weeks or months, we would be saved. But this island was much different back then. There were no people or resorts, obviously. But there was little to no animal life on the island either. The feral pigs and chickens you see on those tours all imported in the 1800s. The snakes they warned you about in the jungles. Their ancestors were all accidentally brought over in the landing gear compartments of the first planes that came to this place 50 years ago. When Sullivan and I searched this place, we quickly learned that it was a lush wasteland. No insects under logs, no fish in the water, even the handful of things that could be considered fruits or nuts were sparse and would make you sick to your stomach. We tried to subsist on bark and leaves, but that was a losing proposition from the start. By the end of the second week, we were wasting down to nothing. This terrible wasting bred a kind of insanity in us. We became paranoid and at some points delusional. I began to suspect Sullivan was hiding food from me somehow, despite the fact he looked just as bad as I did. I took to following him everywhere, telling him I only wanted to help if he found us any food. And then one day, he did. We were traveling under the jungle's wide canopy when he suddenly fell upon something. I was only a few steps behind, but by the time I made it to him, he was already sucking in the last of a wriggling black tail as he chewed with a mixture of guilt and triumph on his face.  He was shook by the blow, but not shaken. He said he was sorry, but it was just a small worm and in his hunger he had been greedy. He would, he promised, help me find another. But there was no other to be found. We searched for as long as the sun allowed, but there was no sign of any other creature aside from the two of us and the thing that lay inside Sullivan's belly.  Over the next few days, my plan was only stopped by growing weakness and Sullivan's growing strength. By the second day, he looked as well as when we landed. By the third, he looked stronger and more vital than I had ever seen him in 10 years of sailing together. He stayed with me most of the time, but every day he would journey back out into the jungle, promising he would find me a worm of my own. While it was never spoken, it was clear he understood the miraculous nature of the changes he was undergoing and this only deepened his guilt that he had denied me the same boon. I say that now with a rational man's understanding. At the time, I was anything but rational. I was convinced that he had found a hidden trove of food and secreted it away for himself. That his hunting trips were nothing more than a thin lie to cover his daily visits to gorge himself while I lay there, dying. So I mustered my strength, a strength born purely out of madness and ill will, and I followed him one day. He appeared to be hunting for food, but I decided it was just another sign of the lengths he was willing to go in order to deceive me.  I caught him unaware with a rock and bashed his head in.  I only stopped when I did because of the movement I saw from within that gory mass.  It pushed its way out of the red meat at the top of Sullivan's neck and seemed to regard me. What it might have done, I could not say, because I immediately picked it up and consumed it whole. It was nearly two years later when a trade ship went off course and found me on the island. I had not eaten anything for all that time, and yet I was more fit and strong than the men who rescued me. It was another 10 years before I began to suspect I truly wasn't aging, 10 more before I knew for certain that it must be true, and in those 20 years I had encountered two events that should have killed me. Instead, I was wholly unharmed. I didn't get sick, I rarely even cut myself shaving, and if I did, the cut was healed before I had time to wash away the blood. I had become immortal. I have spent hundreds of years sampling all this life has to offer. At first, it was such a miracle, such a gift. But over time, I have lost so many friends and loved ones, I have seen so much pain and suffering, and I am so very, very wary. I understand how this sounds to one who has lived so short a time, but I need to die, to rest, to move on to whatever comes next. People are not meant to live like this. Endless time is endlessly cruel, you see. It strips away all that is good and leaves you with the repetition of countless losses and miseries. But I cannot kill myself. Believe me, I have tried, but nothing I do works. Yet it is in my failures that I think the answer lies. The one thing I haven't tried, I cannot try, is to destroy the worm in my chest. I know that is where it lies, for it stops me if I try to do myself harm in the area of my heart. I have tried totally obliterating myself with explosives and heavy machinery, but the thing inside me can somehow cause such implements to fail if it senses its own impending doom. But my hope is that another person, particularly back in this place, will be able to do what I cannot, end my miserable life and that of the thing inside me. Please, help me find peace at last.  I like the pirate thing, or whatever you were, you had me going at first.  I laughed nervously as I drained my glass. But good gag, dude. He just sat staring at me silently as I finished. Look, it's getting late and I stopped as I saw the man had pulled a knife from his pocket. Recoiling, I stumbled away from the table as he brought it across his own neck and slit his throat wide open. I started to scream and looked up to get help, but there was no one else left in the bar. Looking back down, I saw he was still staring at me. His neck, while bloody, had already healed. This is what I'm talking about. I cannot die by my own hand, perhaps not by yours either, but I'm desperate to try.  I know all this is fantastic, but I assure you it is all very real and you are my best hope to finally be free. And as a reward, I will leave you $50 million in my will, along with a certified affidavit that this was an assisted suicide done at my behest. There's no way. The man sighed as he wiped at his neck absently. Mr. Fairy, I did not come upon you randomly. I have been planning this for years now. The paperwork, all the arrangements, have been in place for several months just waiting for the right person. Just waiting for you, as it turned out. I already texted my attorney an hour ago. Your name has been added to my will and the aforementioned affidavit. It is all done except for the deed itself, and of course for you to live a long and wealthy life as a reward for freeing me from my own. I took another step back. This is all insane. I can't do this. Rolling his eyes, he fished his phone out of his jacket pocket. 91 Cascule Lane. Does that sound familiar to you? How about Apartment 16B at Smithfield Apartment? Ah, you're starting to understand. The man stood up as he put his phone away. I own this island now, at least in the legal sense of the word. You were on our radar as soon as you booked a room at one of my hotels, utilizing various projected models of behavior, online spending and social media profiles. You were selected as one of our three potential candidates on the island this week. You weren't my people's first choice, but I, well, I just had a good feeling about you. What are you going to do to them? He raised an eyebrow to your mother and sister. Nothing if you do as I ask. If you don't, then tomorrow I will send their names and addresses to a very skilled professional killer. And by the time you arrive back home, you will have two funerals to attend.  You're crazy. Shrugging. He walked over to the bar. Perhaps. But how does that really change anything? He gestured around the empty room. Do you doubt I am who I say? Do you doubt that I'm in control? Leaning over the bar, he pulled out a pump shotgun as a man in a dark suit entered the room. This is Mr. Leipold, my attorney. He is happy to show you the will and affidavit before we begin. The man strode towards me with a dispassionate look on his face. First, the will. If you look at the marked and highlighted portion of page 24, you have been identified as the beneficiary of a lump sum payment of $50 million U.S. currency payable upon the death of my client. I glanced at it, my hand shaking. I didn't care about the money, not anymore. But I needed to play along so he didn't hurt my family. Next is the affidavit, signed and witnessed by two others. This specifies that you are killing my client at his behest and with his full permission, and that he is of sound mind and under no duress in making this request. As he may have mentioned, this island falls under the legal jurisdiction of a nation that has no criminal or civil penalty for suicide or assisted suicide. There are no ramifications for you other than becoming a very wealthy man. I looked over the affidavit and they were right. It said everything they claimed in my name and date of birth were right there in it. When I handed the paper back to him, the attorney gave my host a small nod before leaving the bar without another word. I watched him go and when I looked back at the supposed immortal, he was holding out the shotgun. Take it, shoot me in the chest, right here. He tapped the left side of his chest as I took the shotgun. One shot should do, but you've got five shells if you need them. Pausing, he gave a laugh. You do know how to use a shotgun, don't you? I never thought to ask. Gritting my teeth, I stuck it to his chest and pulled the trigger. The sound was surprisingly muffled, but the effect was profound. The man flew back several feet before crumpling onto the floor and when I rolled him over with my foot, I saw a large chunk of his chest was gone all the way through to his back. I sat there staring at the wound for what felt like several minutes, my mind skittering this way and mad. Was what he said possible? Or was he just some rich nutjob? And if it was true, why didn't he just hire an assassin to kill him instead of an innocent bystander?  Because I didn't like Sullivan as much as I did him. Or you. The voice thundered in my head as I saw something small and dark wriggling out of the ragged hole in the man's chest.  So I ran. I ran for help, but I couldn't find anyone. It was as though everyone had vanished. I considered going to my room, but I hated the idea of being trapped there if that small and terrible thing came for me. So instead, I went up to the main road. I was only a couple of miles from the airport and I knew there was a police station there as well. Surely, I could find someone to help me there. I went up to the road as fast as I could, the last of the alcohol burning away as I pounded my way up the midnight road. I rounded the last corner and saw lights burning at the police station, almost crying with relief. I raced to the front door and beat on it until a sleepy and irritated officer opened it and asked me what was wrong. I told him that I needed help, that someone was after me. Notting, he asked my name. When I told him, I saw a slight change in his expression before his gaze shifted to someone behind me. Then everything went black. I woke up, strapped to a gurney in the back room of a small island's clinic. They had woken me up so I could see when they fed the worm to me. The creature was silent for the moment but I could still feel its gaze on me as they pried open my mouth and began to stuff it inside. I gagged as it began pulling its bulk across my tongue and down my throat and when the nurses let go of me, I tried chewing on the last of it, trying to kill it. It didn't complain and I felt sure it couldn't really be hurt. Just like me now. That was three years ago. I was released the next morning and by that afternoon I was on a plane back home with the necessary information to access my new bank account. I was now a millionaire many times over. True to his word, my family was never hurt and I've never heard from any of the dead man's people again. I suppose in many ways he was honest with me but not in all of them because what he omitted was the nature of the worm itself, how it talks to you, how it constantly, endlessly talks to you. Perhaps it knows it's torturing me or maybe it is only bored and lonely but the only thing keeping me from going insane is that it won't let me go insane. Instead, I find myself trapped with another on the island of my mind unable to leave or die or escape and all the while even now it keeps telling me so many terrible, terrible things.  I used to argue with it then for a while I would cry, beg. Now, I just nod along with the incessant rhythm of its chatter not because I've grown accustomed to it, you understand. No, it's because with this, as with everything else it says, I know it's telling me the truth.


I try to make a very quick one because for this thing, this is the ESP32, 31 actually. It's the beta version of ESP32 I just received from Expressive.  So I just set it up and I put a CD screen on that. I'm not sure whether the demo works, sometimes it works, sometimes it's not. I'm not sure it's the whole problem but what happens is now is I'm doing one small little web socket server and for this web page, actually what it does is grab all the video, then it's streamed to the LCD screen. So yeah, it's screened but sometimes it works, sometimes it's not working very well. I'm not sure it's an SDK. It's okay because it's. It always works. It's stuck somewhere. I'm not sure it's their firmware problem or the hardware problem or it's my web server problem or my web browser problem. I have absolutely no clue until they have a proper debugger for the chip. Currently we only rely on the serial port to get some data and the data is not very clear. So would this be more difficult than the old one? They have RTOS SDK, which is a free RTOS. To me it is much easier because there's RTOS and there's a LWIP stack so that many of those are existing jobs based on LWIP. Even the HDB server, which is coming with LWIP to contribute libraries, I can compile it into the server without any code change. Just take the C file, compile and put in. It becomes an HDB server. Actually I'm using the USB open RTOS which is different variant which is more free. The web server code I wrote to work on my laptop first and then I just compile it and it works on the USB. So that's the same benefit eventually. But you have the same code everywhere you can run it. It's not working. Sometimes it's working. I spent about two days to write the firmware before this JavaScript thing. It's about 20 minutes. I know nothing about JavaScript. I just googled a type in. I said grab video frame JavaScript thing. Some people already did that. So you receive it and then you send it back also? No. Oh, sorry. What happens is the left side, this is a video. It's a fixed video. Then the left side is actually a camera. Then you draw to the camera and I change this to 16 bit color because original was 32 bit and I reduce it to 32 bit color. For this screen it's 160 by 120 or 28. So I can roughly calculate it's about 40 kilobyte per second. Sorry, per frame. So I'm running about 10 frames per second. So it's about 400 kilobyte per second stream to the screen. It looks like it works and actually it can go faster. Probably somebody could write and take the code or something. Definitely. What we know is that this is a dual-core processor. There's one processor for the Wi-Fi and another processor is an application processor. But for the SDK that gives us, there's only one processor being used. And that's why we have plenty of RAM because another processor is not underutilized. It gives us a lot of RAM. The SDK is the Wi-Fi one. Sorry? The one that is used in SDK is the Wi-Fi one. It is the Wi-Fi one. So the other one there, there's currently no way to use it. Currently there's no way to use it. And it's supposed to have Bluetooth and currently the SDK doesn't open that port. But it is continuously evolving. Are the two cores similar or is it different cores? I suppose there's one low-energy core and one full-power core. So that you can sleep the high-power core all the time. Sure, sure. This is what we know now. But this time the documentation and everything is much, much better. Of course. They learn a lot. So how much RAM does it have when you install it? Okay, this is a very confusing topic now. The claim says there's 400 kilobytes of RAM. What we know is it has to be divided by two processors. So you have half. But when we have SDK, we try to get the heap size. It's about 17K. Okay. And they claim that this is beta testing. So they guarantee that in the end we will see about three times of the free RAM, 200K of RAM. So that's what we know now. But this thing is still evolving. And this is not the final product yet. We don't know. Then it gets them to be a very nice size for doing live programming. I asked them to send one to me too. So I'm waiting for one to win. Alright. So this is the one. Is there any indication of the price? No. When will it be in a few months? Supposed to be the first quarter of 2016. Nothing. Alright. So once again leave the demos off. I leave it here. Ten like.


Welcome to The Anxious Morning. Every weekday morning, we'll take a few minutes to go over some important lessons that you can use in your anxiety recovery journey. Away from the endless noisy scroll of social media, The Anxious Morning brings you support, education, inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment. For more, visit us at TheAnxiousMorning.com Overachiever Perfectionist Warrior Problem Solver These are common labels we see self-applied in our community. They're not the only labels, but they are among the most common. People often label themselves with certain traits that tend to drive anxiety, then wonder why they find themselves anxious most or all of the time. This is an odd thing when we see it. An anxious overachiever knows that the drive to achieve is not really healthy, but will still wear that label as a badge of honor or accomplishment. The chronic warrior will tell us that they are being driven to extremes because they can't stop worrying, but they will also often confess that they take pride in their worry because they see it as a sign of being a loving or caring person. The anxious problem solver finds themselves mentally exhausted by their problem-seeking and solving habit, but will still happily and proudly tell anyone that will listen that they are the one who keeps things on track. Human beings are labeling machines. We love to name things, categorize them, evaluate them, and know about them. We do this as a matter of course. It's quite a useful trait for us to have as it comes in handy quite often, but like all traits and habits, it can get a bit twisted, especially when we bring the skill to bear on ourselves. We label ourselves as a way to show the world who we are. More importantly, we label ourselves to try to convince ourselves that we are who we hope to be. We use self-applied labels to gain acceptance, understanding, and validation. We sometimes use our labels to gain accommodation, permission, or forgiveness. Our labels can become identifiers, shields, and weapons all at the same time. We use them for so many purposes that they become prized possessions for us. We love them, even when we hate them for what they describe. Self-labeling is going to happen. We can't avoid it. But we can avoid is the trap of thinking that the labels we stick on ourselves are unchangeable, immutable, and forever in nature. In most cases, they are not. More accurately, the traits and habits they describe are not. You may not want to be a warrior or an overachiever anymore. The good thing is that those things can be changed with work over time. The bad news is that changing means that you may have to abandon the labels you've seen as so precious for so long. That can be scary, and it can shake our sense of who we really are. That's okay. Everyone has to find themselves again once in a while. It's not a crime to abandon your labels, and it's not a disaster to have to do some work on yourself as part of the process. We'll talk more about labels, traits, and habits down the road. But today, I will leave you with one question. Are you clinging to labels that you would rather not cling to? Tomorrow, we'll talk about how recovery is possible, no matter how long you've struggled. Hey, if you're enjoying the podcast and you'd like to get a copy of it delivered every morning into your email inbox, including a full text transcription, head on over to theanxiousmorning.email and sign up for the newsletter. And if you're listening on iTunes or Spotify or someplace where you can leave us a rating or a review, take a moment and rate the podcast and maybe write a small review. It really helps us out. Or just tell a friend about us. Thanks a lot.


Because my first care job was primarily with adults with autism, so a lot of it was based around autism. I've done other various types of training, such as epilepsy and pet feeding. Lots of physical intervention training, but safe physical interventions and how to manage challenging behaviour.


Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second day of our program. We have many wonderful sessions prepared for you today, starting with the Henry Havlitt Memorial Lecture, sponsored by Harvey and Mel Allison. Allen Mendenhold is Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Soros College of Business at Troy University, where he also directs the manual age Johnson Center for Political Economy. His books include Literature and Liberty, essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism, The Three P's of Liberty, Pragmatism, Pluralism, and Polycentricity, try saying that fast. And most recently, shouting softly, you like alliteration here, essays on law, literature, and culture. His novel A Glooming Peace This Morning is scheduled for release in 2023. His academic writing has appeared numerous peer-reviewed journals and law reviews, including The Journal of Jurisprudence, The Independent Review, Libertarian Papers, Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and The British Journal of American Legal Studies. He's edited or he edited a Southern Literary Review for over a decade. Dr. Mendenhold holds a BA in English from Furman University, MA in English from West Virginia University, JD from West Virginia University College of Law, LLM in Transnational Law from Temple University, and PhD in English from Auburn University. Before joining Troy University, he was Associate Dean and Founding Executive Director of the Blackstone and Burke Center for Law and Liberty at Faulkner University, Thomas Good-Jones School of Law. His popular writing has appeared in Newsweek, Fox News, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, among many, many other media outlets. His topic today is ESG Enroute to Etautism. Well, thank you, Dr. Salerno. I remember being a graduate student at Auburn and seeing all the different luminaries who would come up to the mic at Mises Institute events and being somewhat in awe of those people. And so it's an honor to be here. I wanna thank Harvey and May Allison for making this lecture possible and for the wonderful dinner we had last evening. As Dr. Salerno mentioned, I'm a lawyer with a PhD in English. So the world of capital markets was not something that was familiar to me until recent years. Somehow I managed to find my way into a business school despite my background, but it wasn't so long ago when I couldn't explain the difference between a mutual fund, an index fund, and an exchange traded fund, and all that kind of stuff. So I've sort of had to learn this world of ESG. I originally thought as a graduate student that I would be teaching Robert Frost or something like that, but I've solely drifted in different directions. So what is ESG? ESG is an acronym that stands for environmental, social, and governance. It's notoriously difficult to define because of its different applications and different contexts, but you can understand it in sort of two ways. First, as a framework or strategy, the individual corporations undertake internally. And second, as the non-financial standards, metrics or factors that asset management firms, financial institutions, and institutional investors, among others, consider when they allocate capital or assess risk. So the first I'd like to call micro ESG, and the second I'd like to call macro ESG. These are not the official nomenclature. These are just terms that I think help us ease understanding. So macro ESG consists of governments, central banks, NGOs, asset management firms, finance ministries, financial institutions, sovereign wealth funds, and a global consortium of institutional investors that collaborate to operationalize ESG at the micro level among different private companies and particular publicly traded companies. So the combined entities comprising macro ESG exert enormous pressure on the private sector. And these entities manage assets and financial instruments from currency and loans to stocks and bonds. So they sort of control capital flow throughout the world. Everybody and every company seeks to bank and seeks to invest. So we're talking about the control of investment and banking. Macro ESG involves the use of finance to exert pressures on companies at the micro level to institute ESG. And micro ESG consists of numerous corporations from all industries responding to major incentives and changes at the macro level. Both forms of ESG micro and macro attempt to repurpose corporations according to alleged social obligations rather than profit maximization. So ESG sort of began in this 2004, the first sort of clear articulation of it was in 2004 there was a conference called Who Cares Wins? Sponsored by the United Nations, the International Finance Corporation which is an arm of the World Bank and Switzerland's Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. And this conference sought to mainstream ESG and to integrate ESG value factors in financial market research analysis and investment. Subsequent to this conference, a report was issued. It was funded by grants from the governments of Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway. So this to me does not sound like an initiative of entrepreneurs seeking private solutions to problems. And initially ESG didn't quite catch on but we had this 2008 financial crisis, right? The banking crisis and we had the trouble asset relief program and all these bank bailouts and banks were looking for good PR. They were the bad guys after this risky behavior and people were calling for executives to be put in jail and no one was and so ESG became a really convenient PR technique for these financial services institutions. There was this perception that absence shareholders, shareholders that didn't engage in sufficient oversight or engagement with corporate boards and governments contributed to this financial crisis. And so after the financial crisis you see a lot of foreign governments coming up with stewardship regulations. The United Kingdom instituted a stewardship code in 2010 for asset managers and others who invest capital on behalf of beneficiaries. So ESG constraints on investments, they're not moral, they're not good. There's little verifiable data showing that they accomplish the goals they purport to pursue. Their alleged benefits to society are immeasurable and they may not be effective at all except at excluding certain political and religious views from corporate culture. Nor do they steward money according to traditional principles of fiduciary duty. ESG makes certain CEOs feel pretty good about themselves as they get rich but it doesn't achieve in practice the objectives it promotes in theory. Economic shows us that the private public distinction collapses as powerful corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups wield the apparatus of government in the name of ESG to gain competitive advantages through laws and regulations because corporations seek subsidies and privileges, tax breaks and incentives, barriers to entry and all the rest, they will continue to advocate new government ESG regulations to dominate an industry or reduce competition. Meanwhile, the government's going to try to pick winners and losers favoring certain industries or companies over others, certain industries that are ESG friendly over others. So the E is pretty easy, environmental. What are we talking about here? Factors like greenhouse gas emissions, conservation, biodiversity, water consumption, solar power, climate change disclosures. The S, we're talking about social causes whether they're pro-abortion policies, LGBTQ rights, diversity, equity inclusion, transgenderism, critical race theory, black lives matter and the G, we're talking about this shift principally from the shareholder to stakeholder model. The governance piece of it has some things that are actually not so bad, like we think it's okay for corporations to have more transparency and things like that but really what this is about is the shift from the shareholder to the stakeholder model. Milton Freeman wrote a famous essay in the 70s in the New York Times about how the purpose of corporations is chiefly to maximize profits for shareholders and that if corporations maximize profits for shareholders they indirectly benefit society at large and that's how corporations do good. They don't need all these other social causes. The business round table which my friend Scott Shepard refers to as a lunch club for CEOs in 2019 came up with a new definition for corporations where they sort of tried to repurpose corporations to align them with social good and vague terms like societal impact. Well, what is a stakeholder versus a shareholder? Some stakeholders it's easy to say, well, your customers, your employees, your suppliers, those are stakeholders that are easy to identify but what people are now trying to define as stakeholders is society at large or the public interest. These terms are vague enough that they give executives a lot of wiggle room to get away with bad behavior. For example, if the purpose of your corporation is to maximize profits for shareholders, well, it's pretty easy to see whether you're doing a good job at the end of the year. It's a matter of accounting. You look and see, well, did our revenues exceed our expenses? Yes, oh great, we're doing the right thing but if your purpose is to maximize social well-being, how do you measure that? You can't measure that. So corporations that may not be doing as well can then say, well, our profits were down this year but we instituted diversity quotas in our executive board. We have new board members who represent all types of ethnic diversity and so we're accomplishing our goals but if you think about it, what does it mean? It's sort of a shift in power from the stockholders, from the owners of the company to these managers because if you're talking about stakeholders being in control of the company, who's gonna set your board meetings and who's going to determine what the agenda for a board meeting is, if it's some vague society thing? I mean, it doesn't even really make a lot of sense but that's chiefly what this G prong of ESG is about is the shift from a shareholder to stakeholder. So I wanna talk about asset management firms because they are central to this narrative of ESG. About a third of the private wealth in the world is in investment management. We're talking about the few hundred largest asset management firms having assets under management that exceed well over $100 trillion. The big three are BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard and they together have over $20 trillion of assets under management. BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager. It has a little over $10 trillion dollars in assets under management. BlackRock and State Street are among the top 10 shareholders and 90% of the FTSE, the Financial Times, Stock Exchange, 100 companies and BlackRock is the largest shareholder in almost half of those companies. Before the pandemic, BlackRock was attracting about a hundred billion new client money every day and the big three, again, BlackRock, State Street, Vanguard own roughly 20% of the shares in the S&P 500. They're the largest shareholder and 90% of those companies in which they own shares. So what these asset management firms are doing is influencing the culture in two ways. You talk about why are companies going woke? This is one way that they're going woke is first, the investment strategy. So they're investing in, for example, exchange traded funds in which resources are pooled into companies that favor, typically leftist political causes and they're excluding politically disfavored groups and these exchange traded funds. So that's one way. The second is by their shareholder voting and proposals. So when these asset management firms go out and buy large amounts of shares in publicly traded companies, they then engage. So if a company's doing things they don't like, like historically, if people own stocks in a company and companies didn't do things you liked, you just divested.  That's not what these asset management firms are doing. They are engaging, which is their strong alarming and bullying these boards of corporations to do whatever they want them to do to move these companies to the left. Historically, the goal of asset management was really to maximize your value on investment while mitigating risk. Now risk has been redefined under ESG to include things like climate change. So you might say that, okay, long-term investment. You'll notice that when people talk about ESG investments, they always emphasize long-term. While it's important for the long-term to take into account climate change, they'll say, well, available resources will diminish over time because of climate change or will have weather changes. Our supply chains will be affected by hurricanes or whatever. Well, the reason I think that people emphasize that long-term is not actually because they are really looking at the long-term. If they were looking at the long-term, they would look backwards as well as forwards to a future that is unknown. But they emphasize long-term because in a year, or in two years, or in three years, when circumstances haven't manifested the way they predicted, they can say, well, it just hasn't happened yet. This is long-term. Things still haven't occurred. You just be patient.  The other thing is these asset management firms emphasize regulatory risk. And they'll say, well, there's all this potential regulatory risk involving climate change that will be coming down the pipeline. Meanwhile, they're lobbying for regulations. So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They're like, watch out for these regulations that might come away. And by the way, we're paying all these people to try to get these regulations in place. Now, there was a study published by researchers at Columbia University in London School of Economics, not exactly home for a lot of great free market thinking. But they found that these ESG portfolios had companies that had really terrible track records with the environment and that these companies, this is from kind of a leftist perspective, these companies don't treat their employees well. They're environmentally bad companies and all these kinds of things. And that's just sort of interesting because on the investment side, these asset management firms are assuring investors that these are the best companies there are. ESG ratings are these private ratings agencies out there. And some of them employ artificial intelligence. And what they do is they issue scores for publicly traded companies, ESG scores. And they'll say, typically they're in quartiles. Like if you're 0 to 25, you're not doing very well. If you're 50 to 75, you're OK. If you're 75 to 100, you're great. There's one CEO of a ESG rating company that said, look, we need these private ESG ratings to save capitalism because if private industry doesn't start doing this ESG rating, then it's going to fall to government. Governments are going to start doing it. And in fact, these ESG ratings agencies are kind of all over the map. And there's no consistency among them. And there are accusations of greenwashing and woke washing, which are when companies that are reporting their data to these private ratings agency, they're giving false or misleading information about their dedication to either woken the social causes, whatever, or to environmental causes. The other thing that's kind of interesting about these ESG ratings, and first of all, I love fast food. I love Diet Coke. I love all these things. But if you look at Coke and Pepsi products, I mean, I think it's pretty safe to say they contribute to diabetes, obesity, heart disease, things like that. But they earn really high ESG ratings. I'm pretty sure Coke and Pepsi aren't just changing the world for the better by our consumption of that product. Mandela is international. It's a food and beverage confectionary. Its portfolio includes Oreo, Ritz, Chips Ahoy, Tang, Cadbury, and others. I'm pretty sure those products, the consumption, the fact that we're eating a bunch of chocolate and things, is not really changing the world for the better. But they have really high ESG ratings. They do really well. The SEC had a report analyzing these different ratings agencies. And the SEC sort of said, look, they're all over the place. And the left is looking at that saying, this is why we need the Securities Exchange Commission to now make uniform standards. Now we need the SEC to step in and have its own ratings agency. So we have one standard that everyone has to comply with. And it's clear. And it's government mandated. And so the left is trying to push that. A lot of people will say, well, ESG doesn't. It seems harmless. It seems like a lot of private companies just wanting to do what they want. Why don't we just let companies, if companies want to do DEI and if companies want to do all these things that are harmful to their business, why don't we just let them do it and fail? Well, I would encourage those people to look at an executive order from President Joe Biden from May 20, 2021, in which he ordered basically all federal agencies to figure out how to institute ESG within federal agencies. And that included environmental stuff, net carbon emissions by 2050, diversity, equity, inclusion measures. So this is just a little list, a short list. It's just a sample of some of the people that are affected. The National Economic Council is supposed to do this. The National Climate Advisor is supposed to do this. How many of you even knew there was a National Climate Advisor? The Secretary of the Treasury, the Department of the Treasury, the Chair of Financial Stability Oversight Council, the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Insurance Office, the Secretary of Labor and the Department of Labor, the Federal Attirement Thrift Investment Board, the Secretary of Agriculture and the Department of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and HUD, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and Department of Veterans Affairs. The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, the Office of Management and Budget, all these different federal agencies are directed under this executive order to figure out how to institute ESG. Well, what's like, how does that work? Well, the Federal Reserve Board has partnered with six of our biggest banks, Bank of America, City Group, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo to monitor and measure climate-related risks. So you have this weird sort of private public partnership here. And why would the president seek to institute these, to encode these elite preferences in federal agencies? Well, we all know that traditionally, government was supposed to be three branches in the United States.  But we have this thing called the administrative state that is sort of arisen as a fourth branch of government. And within it, it has three branches of government that are unaccountable to our legislative processes, right? These administrative agencies have administrative law judges. They're your judicial branch. They promulgate rules and regulations. There's your legislative branch. And they have executive agency heads. There's your executive branch. And those executive heads enforce the laws. So you've got an entire administrative state that's rising up that has as much power as the other three branches combined. And there's no accountability. So if you can encode elite preferences into that, if you can start instituting ESG into the administrative state, well, then it's embedded in the system and it's here to stay. What's so interesting about ESG is if we already have a Clean Air Act, a Clean Water Act, Title VII, Title IX and Civil Rights Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, Wall Street Reform, Consumer Protection Act, you name it, we've got all these things. And banks already require hurricane and flood insurance and other forms of insurance related to weather. Why is all this other stuff necessary? You really shouldn't need all this stuff being embedded in federal agencies. Well, it's being embedded in federal agencies because they want that power. This is really concentrating the power in a few select banks, a few select asset management firms that are basically revolving doors. You can look at BlackRock and see the executives that jump out of BlackRock into the Biden administration and jump back in. It's very nefarious. Now, another way that you're seeing ESG being instituted is through this phenomenon called debanking. So you may have heard people saying that one day you may go to the bank and the bank, you may be seeking a loan and the bank may say, well, what's your ESG rating? And you say, well, I don't have an ESG rating. You know, I'm a family-owned company. Well, sorry, your ESG rating doesn't qualify you for a loan with us. You have to go somewhere else. And some people think that this is just a scare tactic. The left will say, oh, that's just a scare tactic. That's not something that's actually going to happen. Well, go ask a Canadian trucker what he thinks about this. And we have examples of this stuff happening here in the United States. J.P. Morgan Chase closed the account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom. Chase Bank terminated the accounts of some activists and some proud boys members. And whatever you think about those groups, you can say it's probably not going to stop there. It's going to continue to spread as the definition of whatever is politically undesirable expands. The Bank of America refuses to fund some oil and gas companies. The Citibank has restricted credit for gun manufacturers, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo. They've taken measures to undermine the firearms industry, which we all know the firearms industry is fiscally responsible and credit worthy. And it's like the most heavily regulated industry already. But nevertheless, Visa MasterCard, American Express, they've created new merchant category codes for firearms, gun shop sales. So they're no longer in the general merchandise. They're now going to have their own category so that people can track who is buying and selling guns. PayPal has closed the accounts of individuals associated with the January 6th capital riot, as well as groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center deems hateful. The Alliance Defending Freedom, for example, is somebody that has been targeted by PayPal. So the trend is to characterize debanking as eliminating risk as financial institutions purport to disassociate from groups or ideas that could harm their reputation, but it's actually far more nefarious than this. Now, you'll see a lot of big companies, big banks, asset management firms, but also a lot of big publicly traded companies coming out and supporting ESG. Why would big business support ESG government mandates? Why would they say, yeah, we actually think we should have these SEC regs, we should have these new Department of Labor regs, we should have all these things? Well, the first reason is that small businesses can't afford to comply with complex ESG regulations. It's costly. Large corporations can absorb the cost of ESG regulation while gaining advantages over smaller competitors and local business that can't afford regulatory compliance. The wealthier the business, the more it can lobby politicians capturing rents and legalizing anti-competitive measures, and in this way, corporate executives re-gains for their companies at the expense of wider society. Another reason is that the threat of government coercion incentivizes businesses to support positions that are otherwise against their interests. So although ESG would not make them better off, businesses might embrace or pursue it if the consequences of non-compliance with government mandates or regulation would make them even worse off. So in other words, government distorts incentives for businesses anticipating future regulations or complying with current regulations. Another reason why big businesses may support this is that ESG has empowered special interest groups, namely among doctors and lawyers who have developed a veritable cottage industry regarding compliance with new or potential regulatory requirements. There's also an entire industry of high-powered consultants who some of them own stock in the very companies that they're advising and they're making a lot of money on ESG. If you think about it, in a competitive market, private companies that self-impose ESG regulations would fall behind their competitors that remained apolitical and sought purely to maximize profits for shareholders because those companies would be alienating half the... If you say that half the country's conservative socially and half the country's on the left socially or whatever, well, you would automatically be alienating half the country. Well, so how do you make up for that? You have to basically get systemic buy-in because if everybody starts buying into it and everybody starts valuing portfolios based on ESG, then all of a sudden, that becomes the system and then it does contain value. So the more you can exclude the anti-ESG crowd from capital markets, the more you can push people out, the more you can control the flow of capital through financial institutions, the more you can dominate as a big company. One last point about these asset management firms not only is there a problem with fiduciary duties because what they're doing is, let's say in a state, you've got state retirement systems that are investing their pension money through asset management firms. So these asset management funds are getting very wealthy off state pension money. That's what they're investing. They're investing state pension money. They're investing university endowments. It's not just like high-network individuals. They don't care about even wealthy individuals. Your money's so insignificant. They're looking for these big institutional investors and they're investing that money. But when they invest state pension money and they're putting them in funds on the basis of non-financial factors, on ESG factors, they are supporting political causes with which those beneficiaries may disagree. So that's a flagrant breach of fiduciary duty. I don't know how many public school teachers might be Christian conservatives and they're unaware that they may be supporting Planned Parenthood indirectly because their pension money is going into funds that support Planned Parenthood. Also, these asset management firms, I mentioned that they own shares in all these publicly traded companies. Well, they sometimes own shares in competitors. And so they're getting proprietary information about different competitors and exercising their proxy voting power and pushing companies in one direction or other with all this insider knowledge about the internal workings of these different companies. And that's also a flagrant conflict of interest. So you've got all kinds of serious legal problems with these entities. So I began with this reference to Robert Frost. I joked about how I thought one day I would just probably be teaching Robert Frost. So I'll actually end in probably with Robert Frost. So you have to picture the narrator of this poem. He's an old man, sort of an avuncular figure, maybe a white bearded man in the woods and he's walking around somewhere in snowy, no England and narrating this poem. And the poem goes like this. Whose woods these are, I think I know. His house is in the village though. He will not see me stopping here or watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer to stop without a farmhouse near between the woods and frozen lake, the darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake to ask if there is some mistake. The only other sounds the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep. It's a beautiful poem, but sometimes people like us in this room, we tend to despair, we tend to feel angst, we tend to think that we are stuck in the darkness and sometimes it would just be easier to give up and withdrawal and just stay in the woods. But we have miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep.


If you have to make only one new year resolution, make it this, get rid of a fake friend. I just did. I will not pretend that it has been easy. I'm mourning, of course, I'm sad, but I also feel so healed. Getting rid, discarding this fake friend, it was like exercising some dark entity, a pregnant cloud dissipated. Why? How come? Here's why. Fake friends are not your friends. They're your enemies. They're enablers.  They're envious of you. They are your haters.  Fake friends are always parasitic. They are inferior to you in some way or many ways.  And disinferiority drives them to the point of madness, disintegration, disregulation. As they fake empathy, as they feign love for you, they constantly conspire.  But always keep falling short. They are pale wannabe imitations of you. Their lives are in disarray. The personality is short. They are opportunistic, selfish predators on the prowl. You don't see fake friends coming. They are covert. They are snakes in the grass. They have no moral compass. They have no loyalty. They don't have even a rudimentary grasp of morality. They are feral, savage, antisocial, psychopathic and narcissistic. And yes, often masquerading as empathic saints, which they never are.  And the best thing you can do for yourself this coming new year is to rid yourself of their presence. But Sam, you would ask, how can I tell a fake friend from a true one? A true friend will never take advantage of your moment of weakness or your vulnerability. A true friend will contact you to ask if everything is okay and whether he can be of help when he witnesses a moment of distress or your total meltdown. A fake friend will pounce on your every misstep. A fake friend will capitalize on every mistake.  He will poach your loved ones. A fake friend will leverage your lapses and relapses. He will rejoice in your downfall or hurt. That's what a fake friend does for you. A true friend roots for you. A true friend takes pride in your accomplishments, but a fake friend will set you up for failure, give you bad advice, collude with your self-destructive behaviors, introduce you to the wrong people, bend mouth you to others in order to aggrandize himself, for example, as a savior. A fake friend will envy you virulently, ceaselessly. A true friend supports you only when he believes that you are doing the right thing in your own self-interest and welfare. A fake friend supports you always, no matter what you do. A true friend respects you only when you have earned respect and when you've acted respectively.  A true friend trusts you only as long as you prove yourself trustworthy, only while you do not put his trust to the test too often and only on certain issues. A fake friend trusts you with everything and always, at least verbally. A true friend puts to you a mirror in which you see reality and the truth. He calibrates you.  A true friend is there for you. A fake friend puts to you a mirror in which you see your own reflection, yourself and nothing else besides, because the fake friend is an apparition, a hollow void and nothingness, rafied in absence. A true friend loves you in this friendship. He loves you even without your friendship. He always provides you with what you need, closure, for example, good advice, a shoulder to cry on. A fake friend loves himself in your so-called friendship, or he loves the friendship itself because it brings him benefits, but he never loves you. He doesn't care about your emotional needs or your well-being. With a true friend, you need never ask what is he getting out of this relationship, because loving you is its own reward. With a fake friend, you must always ask, why is he still in this relationship? What's in it for him?  He is dead inside. One example of fake friends are enablers. Enablers are often mistaken for friends when in reality they're your worst enemies. Enablers encourage your self-destructive behaviors. Enablers aid and abit your suffering. Enablers amplify your self-harm. A true friend would never hand you a loaded gun knowing that you may be suicidal, and enabler would do it with a smile gleefully.   An enabler would encourage a shopaholic to shop, a walkaholic to work. An enabler would go on retail therapy sprees with a shopaholic. An enabler would induct you into bed in juries company knowing full well what is going to happen. Beware the enabler. Charming, smiling, solicitous, there's snakes in your grass.  A marriage among men, among women. The fakery of friendship shatters your trust, destroys your perception of the world as a just and beautiful world.  A fake friend hurts you to the quick. And he does this with the worst intentions in mind. It's an enemy. Treat him as such. Finally, the last type of fake friends. The weak people pleases. I must confess that weak people terrify me. Weakness of character is indistinguishable from evil. Fake friends are evil. The weak are suggestible, malleable, mutable. And therefore, the weak are highly unstable. They're unreliable. They're not trustworthy. People pleasing and an inability to say no even to the most degrading offers to the most immoral propositions and demands. Such inability leads the weak to reckless, disgraceful, anti-social acts and to betrayal. It leads them to betrayal. Weak people are enablers in the worst sense of the word. They aid and abet the self-destructiveness of others. And gradually, to survive their own racking guilt, their shame, their self-loathing, they evolve. They develop into narcissists and psychopaths. They mistake defiance for boundary assertiveness because weak people have no boundaries. Weak people betray their loved ones and their friends. They breach their own fragile and permeable boundaries time and again just in order to fit in. In order to be liked. In order to be considered a savior. In order to buttress their own grandiose infimage as a good person. In order to counter loneliness and boredom. But weak people, people-pleasers are not good people. They're bad people. They're evil people. They're fake.  They suffer from, I don't know, borderline dependent personality disorder. But others have been conditioned by needy and selfish parents or absent parents to become subservient and self-deny. Rescuer, savior, fixer types are attracted to weak mates. They crave the omnipotence that comes with the territory but also the drama, ups and downs, pain, sweet reconciliations of the tumultuous fights, intermittent reinforcement and trauma bonding. If you have a weak people-pleaser as a fake friend, he would not say no if your wife were to propose to him. He would not say no if someone were to ask him to collaborate in your betrayal.  He would not say no ever regardless of the cost to you, regardless of the pain and the hurt that you're going to suffer, that you're going to go through. Some intimate partners of the week mistake the people-pleaser for an empathic, kind, loving, altruistic, saintly sort. They appear this way, they appear this way in public as well, in YouTube videos, in a variety of other settings. They appear to be kind-hearted, loving, compassionate, affectionate, empathetic, altruistic. They're anything but, of course, they are weak people-pleasers because they are terrified of people and they hate people.  And people who fall for weak people-pleasers, they're in for a rude awakening because the weak people-pleaser pivots. He cheats, he lies, he betrays just in order to gain the approval and the continued presence of others. Many weak people misbehave consistently, all the time.  They poach the mates of their best friends, they act recklessly. These are all forms of self-harming, of course. Weak people-pleasers end badly, very, very badly in due time. Some high-functioning patients compartmentalize their mental illness, others cannot. Do not try to make sense of the choices and actions of miscreants and misfeeds, masquerading as your fake friends. Just move on with your life, forget about them, leave them behind because they are their own biggest punishments. They have to live with themselves forever and I cannot think of a worse penalty.  Your remote sympathy and pity are more than sufficient offerings.  Remove such toxic poisonous people from your life, post-haste, regardless of how agonizing such a breakup may be to you. No contact. As always been and still is the only solution, do not be a rescuer or a savior or a fixer, do not forgive and do not forget, lest you end up being in need of rescuing, saving and fixing yourself.


Fashion trends 2022. All my favorite outfit ideas that are on trend but wearable at the same time. Well I could spend hours watching the fashion shows each season and often do. I think it's fair to say that what we see on the runway isn't always exactly wearable. But I try and take a look at the shows for a heavy dose of inspiration and then I interpret those trends in a way that will really work for me in my real life. So I thought you might enjoy seeing the ways that I will be styling the fashion trends for spring summer 2022 and how you could interpret them for yourself in a truly wearable kind of fashion. Love them or hate them, baggy jeans are back with a vengeance for spring summer 2022 and I'm personally really enjoying styling the trend. I think the look works particularly well in summer for that low key, laid back California kind of vibe and I must admit that I do find these looks pretty easy to put together. On the catwalks there was an added theme of being really low slung but I actually don't think that's an absolute must to be able to rock this fashion trend. Simply going a little bit oversized just gives a nod to the look. But let's start with the jeans that I'm wearing which have gone straight to the top of my favorite jeans list. Now having wrecked my previous pair of white jeans with an unfortunate blob of toothpaste, long story, I was then on the hunt for a new pair and I believe I have found the perfect ones. Now I sized up twice in these to make the fit really super slouchy and I love how it sits low on my hips. As well as wearing them quite low slung I can wear them high-waisted too. All I need to do is add a belt and cinch them right the way up to my waist and that's the benefit of going a little bit bigger whereas if you'd gone true to size it would be quite hard to do that. The quality is just gorgeous, I really love the shape and they tick this trend box perfectly. Now when something feels a little bit extreme or exaggerated like baggy jeans can often feel I then like dressing it down with really simple pieces like a vest top or a t-shirt maybe flip flops or sandals it instantly just makes the whole outfit feel much more chilled and hugely wearable at the same time. I do feel like sharp shoulders is one fashion trend that's been around for a few years albeit with different names each season. The year before last it was all about a bit of puff sleeve action. Last summer we went shoulder pad tastic and the fashion trends this season are a little bit of both. So however you want to rock this particular trend I think would tick the box. It's just nice to have some variation of it in your own wardrobe. Now I actually forgot that I had this t-shirt so it was a happy surprise when I found an extra box of summer clothes in Neatec. It's still one of their bestseller items actually so I shall link it in the description box below if you like it too. Sharp shoulders indeed but I love the fact that although the shoulder pads are quite extreme the contrast of that with it having been made in a cotton in a kind of t-shirt vibe I think brings it back into the realm of every day for me. I also particularly love this fashion trend as I think it really helps to give your body more shape. It fills the eye into thinking I have more of an hourglass shape than I actually have which I really like for certain outfit ideas. So if you're wanting to introduce this fashion trend to this season do take a look for more casual looking fabrics certainly when the shapes are a little bit more over the top. It helps make the overall look feel more casual and subtle for everyday chic. The white on white fashion trend was seen by the likes of Valentino, Chloe and The Row and while I have been introducing the trend into my everyday wardrobe I must admit that I do sometimes find it easier to deviate slightly and do a bit of beige on beige instead. I just seem to have more of that shade in my wardrobe and I'm not particularly worried if it's not exactly bright white. The overall effect is still the same. I actually really love these outfits with a whole mixture of different beige and white tones. I'd actually add even more into the mix if I didn't think I would boil in the heat. So in this first look I've gone for a little in in with my blazer. If you don't have a suit in your own wardrobe don't worry just follow that theme or variations of that lighter shade all blended together. It's one of my favorite looks. In this second outfit idea I've opted for another pair of white jeans which are new in my wardrobe. These ones are a little bit straighter a bit more of a regular fit. I've gone with a camisole underneath assuming it's a little bit warmer outside and then another shade of white with my linen blazer. Now obviously none of the whites are an exact match but altogether it feels untrend but wearable which is the desired effect of this video. Don't forget to let me know your favorite outfit idea that I'm sharing today as we go along in the comments section below. Are you going to go all out on a particular fashion trend or will you be adding subtle nods instead like me? I love having a good old chitchat with you all in the comments section below so do get in touch and let me know what you think. One of the biggest fashion trends this 2022 is of course the oversized blazer and I know this trend divides opinions so I would love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments section below. Now I've heard some people saying that they can't wait for this sloppy oversized trend to go away and others like me are huge fans. We saw it on the catwalk from the likes of Saint Laurent, Yumiou and Al Tazzara to name but a few and the high street is now well and truly full of affordable options but whether you're in the love or the hate camp I honestly think there is a way for all body shapes and all budgets to really rock this trend. It's just about finding the right one for you. And to really illustrate this point I've got a couple of different outfit ideas to share. Firstly my favorite gray blazer that I bought this year that sold out so quickly I've got my fingers crossed that it comes back in stock really soon. Now this is probably my most oversized blazer that I have in my wardrobe and I absolutely love it. I went true to size as the cut has been made oversized already so there's no need to size up and I think whether you style it with jeans or maybe go suited or over a minimalist dress it ticks that box perfectly. Now if my last blazer was too exaggerated for you you could opt for something like this instead. The tailoring is softer and more subtle and having been made from a blend of linen it's giving the look more of a summery vibe which I like. I also really love that shade in spring summer too and I do find it one of the easiest shades to mix and match in my wardrobe of neutrals. If you're wanting to make this outfit more tonal they also have a pair of shorts to match which would make a really nice look once the weather heats up a bit. The third option I wanted to share is the blazer I wear a lot so you've probably seen it before on my channel but it perfectly explains how you can do the oversized trend while still feeling very elegant and polished. It by no means has to feel too slouchy or sloppy not only do they give it a bit of a chic Parisian vibe but they also help me to feel a bit more elevated and sophisticated. So I guess it depends what you're doing and how dressed up or how dressed down you want to feel on any given day but I wouldn't discount this trend until you've tried at least 10 oversized blazers on. I really think there is a perfect one for you out there it's just a matter of finding it. The cutout trend is still going strong for another season thanks in part to the most stunning Jacquemus collections. They always do the best shows don't they? I love the locations they choose it's very simple but really effective but while I admired this look back in January when I released my big trend video I wasn't so sure that I would be taking part. I personally just couldn't see a way that I couldn't make this work in a really wearable everyday fashion that was until I found this beauty of a dress which coincidentally is also taking the white maxi dress trend at the same time. Now the reason I think I like this dress so much is that although it is particularly on trend this season with cutouts they're still really subtle I'm not exactly exposing any of my wobbly bits which I would feel very uncomfortable doing and on top of that the detail is so small that come five seasons time when cutouts are long gone this trend is just going to look like a pretty summer dress. After nearly two years of being locked in our houses I do have that feeling of trying to get the most out of all my pieces of clothing so if you have something you love and it makes you feel really nice when you wear it grab it out of the wardrobe and start playing with the styling. I'm sure there's so many more ways you could wear it for all different occasions that you might not have first thought of. Now one of the easiest and most wearable fashion trends for 2022 that we talked about in my last video would of course be stripes in every possible combination be it skinny stripes in blue bold horizontal stripes in red or even block stripes in the color of the season periwinkle such a fab color name I love that. When I buy pieces for my own wardrobe however I always try and ask myself will I be wearing it in five years time and I probably wouldn't wear periwinkle next year let alone in five so I've been playing it safe with navy the most. Here you can see I'm actually doing stripes on stripes with one of my favorite Bretton tops and just adding a cotton stripe jumper over my shoulders. I've got stripes galore it's untrend but wearable but it's also not so super trendy that I can't see myself wearing it in five years time. Now if you want to take this fashion trend a step further I found a really cool selection of dresses and some tops both from the high street and with some of the designers. I've linked some of my favorites in the description box below. Just bear in mind that whatever you do end up buying think to yourself will it transition well for next summer when stripes might not be so untrend. Now you could easily tie in two trends at once with this and pair your stripes with low slung or maybe baggy jeans which makes for a really easy casual but chic everyday look. Your outfits don't have to be extreme and really out there to feel untrend just adding little touches here and there can make them feel really up to date. Minimal dresses are all the rage this summer and there's certainly been a way of beautiful options across the high street of late. I like this I like this I like this and I like this and that's just what I've spotted this week. Another option for a genuinely wearable wardrobe and also thinking about the pieces that you might already have in your closet is to do some sort of variation of what's on trend. I don't really have a brilliant option on the minimal dress front right now but I do have a very minimal skirt which I absolutely love. Here you can see I've styled it with my equally clean and simple vest top and keeping that summer vibe running through my classic white Birkenstocks to finish. I feel polished and put together but it still feels really casual and effortless which I would say it's the key element for this particular trend and most importantly it's introducing this fashion trend in a really easy style for my real life. Don't try too hard just piece together the most simple items you have in your own wardrobe a t-shirt and trousers a skirt and a classic blouse and a sprinkle of delicate jewelry if you wish and voila you're good to go. Well the bike jacket was a huge hit on the catwalk for spring summer 2022. It was again going with that pretty oversized shape that we saw with the blazers. Now as I've said I love that shape however a leather jacket is of course a big investment. I really wouldn't want to spend all that money and then it goes out of fashion in season or two so I would either opt for something that's hugely affordable to tick that box maybe from the likes of H&M, Mango or River Island or you could do what I did and opt for a different tone of leather jacket instead. Adding this suede one into my spring summer wardrobe is a nod to the trend of course but the shape is really very timeless it's just a traditional biker jacket it'll last for donkey's years. Again it's thinking about ways you could interpret the fashion trends to really make them work for you and your own personal style. Try not to get too hung up on the little things. If you already have a biker jacket and you don't want to invest in another wear the one that you do have and then style it with something oversized or maybe the miniskirt or the white maxi instead. The reason I love fashion so much is because it's all really really individual. You are free to interpret what you see on the catwalk however you see fit and no one should tell you it's right or wrong because there really is no right or wrong. Invest where you want to wear what you love and what makes you feel your absolute best when you're wearing it and most importantly make sure you've got your shoulders back and your head held high while you're doing it. One column of color is always an easy way to make your outfits feel more polished and elevated but depending on what pieces you use for the look it can really feel on trend two. Now you could opt for an oversized blazer, add a cami and a pair of slouchy jeans all in some variation of blue or go with one of my favorite shades of camel maybe a nice pair of tailored trousers with a simple t-shirt and maybe a biker jacket over the top. There are so many variations I could probably make a whole video out of it but today I'm just going to share something that I actually wore the other day for a friend's barbecue going full on brown tones with my casual trousers and a simple t-shirt. Now in total this was actually a really cost-effective outfit but because it's one column of color it has that very handy knack of making those pieces look more expensive than they actually were. Now if you're feeling adventurous you could opt for this season's super untrend shade of purple though that might be slightly harder to source or just simply take a look at what you have in your wardrobe already and just opt for the shades that you see the most. That's the easiest way to do it. Now we talked in the beginning about those slouchy baggy jeans being one of the big fashion trends for 2022 so I wanted to give you another really wearable way to style this look. Now like we mentioned before you don't have to go extreme with your outfit ideas to follow the trends. Sometimes a sprinkle rather than a splash is all you need. I kept my styling very true to my own personal style and I paired it with simple top. The sandals are the perfect effortless finishing touch and this is definitely something that I personally would wear on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes just adding one trend piece into the mix with all your favorite staples is all it takes. Don't overwhelm yourself trying to do all the trends all at once in one outfit. Keep it simple, keep it classy and true to what you really love and that in turn is often the most effortless look at all. Hopefully this video has proved that there's always a really wearable way to interpret those fashion trends we see on the catwalks for your everyday looks. I personally tend to opt for subtle nods in my outfit ideas but that doesn't mean that you can't go more extravagant than me if you wish. But however you do decide to follow them this spring summer. I would just advise staying true to your own personal style. It's a bit like dripping in designer clothes. Dripping in fashion trends isn't the way to look stylish. Finding ways to interpret those trends that suit you and flatter your shape and make you feel chic but comfortable is far more stylish and always stands out for the right reasons. As the saying goes, be you because everybody else is taken. If you have any questions about how to recreate some of this season's fashion trends please do let me know in the comment section below. I'm always really happy to help if I can. If you did enjoy this video I would always appreciate a thumbs up and if you're not already subscribed it would be really lovely if you'd like to. I shall be back on Sunday with lots more outfit inspiration and styling tips so hopefully you will join me then. Have a lovely week everyone. I will see you soon.


Going on everyone Sam here with late in sports cards ripping 23 moments best baseball hobby 8 box case number 21 pick your team style Names and teams you got Aaron B with the Rangers Brett E cardinals Brian H red socks Brian So Brian HR red socks Brian H O with the blue jays Chris M Reds Christian L twins Darren B Braves Dennis V athletics Douglas W White socks Eric R Padres Mariners Jim L guardians Josh H. Marlins Kaden S Royals Leonie G Nationals Matthew W. Ray's Matthew R. Phillies Michelle W. Metz Mike K with the Pirates we've got Paul T. Rockies Rob T. Cubs Robert L. Giant Sandor K. Angel Scott F Dodger Shane C Astros Tom C. Orioles Tigers Yanks Troy S brewers in Sioux Fawn H with the Diamond Macs gonna do guess the super here everybody You will have 30 seconds to guess a player on the checklist If we pull their super you will win. I think two hundred ninety dollars of break right So let me put the super bounty up as well. So guess is Guesses start now. Good luck. Go ahead and guess everybody Seven seconds here everybody there we go. What up George? I hope we said hi. Oh George. What's going on? All right guesses are closed five four three two one There you go, please. Let's get started.  It's really sad So Paul, we're gonna count Tovar for you. You can only guess once. Yeah, so Tovar will be your guess Paul Clown slamming. I love it when you count these two. Yeah, all right moments best time. Good luck here everybody Shalact of Junior Caminero J. Rod refractor. I already forgot who I guessed Green Freddie Freeman to 99 for the Dodgers. That's Daniel Montecino going to the Padres. Congrats on that San Diego Welcome to slam Diego Already but first literally two packs in the 90s. We're already doing this. Oh, yeah, real real. Drew Jones.  Look at this. There's a bad drop right here Literally right in his hand That is a Caden Wallace base auto. Congrats on that one. Gee shorts. What's up, Shipe? Thank you. Look at Shipe man. Shipe Shipe. That's why Shipe's my guy That's why you know Shipe if the comm commanders are ever in the playoffs and like a later stage I'm on your side. That's Zack Neto and Marcelo Meyer. I'm all in on the commanders What up, Shipe? Shorts, what up? I don't know actually to be honest. Hello, George Let's go Ravens, baby Hell, yeah, shell act of Max clerk and court. I send up probably in the next couple of days I would I would guess along glider-figuero green auto to 99 for the Rangers and Bobby Witt Wave up Jackson Shurio purple Raffi Devers, it's you 50 for the Red Sox Miguel Cabrera practice Mini diamonds of Paul schemes Caleb Killian and Chris Bryant I'm a Canada god as we hit today Hunter Brown Jacob Reimer base auto for the Mets. Congrats on that and Michael Harris refractor rookie That is Felman Selliston and Zack Neto refractor as well Marchin, I'll give him that. That is a shell act rookie of Francisco Alvarez and Boba Shep Chumbo Diaz Basado Kenny Gomez nice one there Houston channel to well channel to But lobby lobby real to real of Freddie Freeman goes with Apollo That is a Ezekiel tow Valkyrie mini diamonds to 99 is hobby bias and Paul schemes refractor I'll be bad as best shortstop in tiger's history. That is a Brandon Maia to 250 congrats on that when they're at the inks on the shell act auto Lazaro Montez J for J J for J. That is Corbin Carroll masterpieces. Oh I gotta catch that James Wood and Shea Linglars just dropped a freaking pick man. I'd be better. Look at this dude.  I'm a shell act James outman refractor Yes, you did miss the gas in your day. I did it blue Luis Guanipa to 150 for the Braves Wave of match off actually you think you can hear us and Trish and causes Maybe I don't know if the pens are still live or not. They have your eyes like Matt Mervis and Okay, we'll count it. All right sounds good for us. Okay, cool. Cool. Appreciate that. Got it. Thanks for a jumbo Diaz goes to channel to 299 is a manual bonilla Deon Jorge for the rocks congrats on that to Colorado and Brett baby refractor That is Brooks Lee for the twins and for nanoparties junior. All right box trace. Good luck here again, everybody Bounty's getting fat now, man. $650 super factor bounty. Yes, the super is that like almost 300 too Which is pretty good. That is shell act of mr. Yosue the follow Edward Julian to 50 I just won there for it the Twins the gold rookie as a base auto Spencer Jones That is real to real Brando Maia And they open the Gweta and as they drew Jones Nice one there base auto Braylor Guerrero for the race. That's right. We're gonna go Tampa and Spencer Go Rays Yuri Perez purple Anthony Volpe to 250 that's on that you ain't saying pulse of Montgomery Day one hour one good Lord Devin as a mini diamonds a felon in Celestin and a shell act of Los romantes on how that is Peter Lonzo to at 299 for the Mets and green Dylan head to 99 Congrats on that one there Audrey's White Langford refractor Now they really can't to be honest jaded. There's Bryce Harper wave and Anthony Rizzo because I The Texans obviously not being around for super long They don't have a fan they haven't established a fan base that travels well quite yet Yeah, Gabby Moreno and Edward Julian Julian base auto Davison Gutierrez for the Mets that's on that That's very nice and Trouty that is a Matt McLean on the Astral projections and Doof is him sup Steven Is him that's what I'm Steven. How you doing buddy? Before we get started, let's see how we're looking on the next one. We got Steve with a spot in number four Jason with two spots and flawless S Lou with a spot in number four Michael S with a spot in flawless Brad B with a spot number four Jordan a with a spot in flawless very nice Grads on that to eight to go in floss collegiate. That is not my boy. There's a Anthony Volpe Yeah, jaded and in Ben do not get together. Let's go baby. Let's get over in cornice Grads on that one to their Philly Steven. Steven's my guy. Love you, baby. Let's go 15 to go on number four. Go man.  That's a real halfway Yeah, that's that halfway on number four everybody breaking not after this, but the one after that Davis Martin rookie and Junior Camarero That is a lava. Do you also need to Paula to one 99? Nelson for the angels and Matt Wilson show you Tony Josh Young astral projections and Rafi devils practically bullied me as a child that is Elijah Green got gold lava to 75 Matt Mervis on the rookie von Grissom That was the start of Jadon's villain arc right there is getting bullied in tennis camp base auto brand in my hair grats on that yanks very nice Yanks young guys. Love me some brand wave on Grissom and Waldo Cabrera Corbyn Carroll and big baseball glove and Matt Shaw That is Jayce Bowen only on some of them shape Jayce Bowen on the prospect auto for the Pirates and Jackson Churio Yeah, it's very odd right Corbyn Carroll purple to 250 Christian Vecchero and bloody junior unlike on everything but his auto He's Brando. I believe yeah, he's Brando on real and real. He's Brando on Projections I believe and I might be it on just as a beast. He might be Brando. I Could be wrong about that though Chalact of white Langford and Jordan Walker. I'm kind of getting in for the Masters Kind of masters. Yeah I'm kind of getting ready for it Max Clark Henry bolt base auto For the A's and Luis Guanipa. I don't know to be honest yet, Stephen Maybe like one next week. We'll have one day. We'll have it real to real Mike Trout and Emmanuel Bonilla that is real-to-real Drew Jones for the D-becks and Los Andro Rodríguez Tommy Troy as well White Bull James Outman to 250 rookie for the Dodgers Justin Henry Malloy refractor auto for the Tigers and Christian Vecchero Astral projections Jordan Walker Grats on that and Jess Chisel That is a Gunnar Henderson Christian Casas on the midi diamond and Josh Young. Yeah Sold out already exactly it'd be insane. It's it's crazy. Should I Samuel Bassio On the prospect auto for the Orioles. Congrats on that to Baltimore and Christian Yelich wave of Lattie jr And Jeremy Payne Eric Perez max Muncie, I would say he's probably already considered a top five quarterback. There's not five better quarterbacks in Walmart Jackson Baker That is there needs to valve this And let me let me reface that there's not five better that not in delusional box fans Baker, I mean you ask any NFL fan bakers brother more. Yeah Riley green masterpiece Stuart Ruiz Gold lava to 75 a Kunya The Braves and Shohai that is a Adley Rushman Shalak Gunnar Henderson blue to 150 This one there and Brian Rock. Yeah, it's gold lava auto Cole Emerson to 75. There you go. Mariner. It's very nice That's on that to Medina's and Max Clark We've got mr. John P with three spots in number four Adam M with a spot in stadium club Um, Greg E with the marlins in tc black and Brad B with a spot number four as well Very nice Moving moving for sure moving very very well Appreciate you all very well. Thank you all It's fun and hustling. What are we down to like? 10 to go 11 to go Real real Kunya Raj Garyas That is a Andrew Vaughan and Gabe Gonzalez I love the Randy Johnson set dude. Yeah, so so sick 11 bass auto Michael Arroyo 11 to go in number four everybody Michael Arroyo for the Mariners congrats Mariners sweet in that mini box three Ruiz Astral projections Riley Greene Aqualava to 199 Jacob Wilson and mr. Volpe refractor rookie Hello, Todd. Oh boy boys Who's on channel two? you That is Riley Greene And Corbin Carroll refractor rookie Of course, it's you It looks for a to Purple brace Harper to 250 going to the Phillies base auto myro chendrick Martinez for the Dodgers Get your pass on bro He's not easy. He's out today He's out today, bro That is a Oswaldo Cabrera on the wave for the inks Run it Lamar Whoa Run it in Adley, ready Crawford Nice one there I don't I don't get that play ball I really don't oh boy I don't get that one at all That is a base auto chase the water going to the guardians congrats Cleveland Man Francisco at lingo lingo lindors That is masterpieces Anthony Volpe got astral projections chris from morale and many at machatu on your refractor have you seen the new intro video? Yeah, it's pretty clean, dude. I did. I saw you yesterday very clean very clean And then I Brady rookie Come on all the way Lamar I'll take the first that anytime Not the one. I like it. No, they're gonna give it to us We're gonna bust it All skeins whoa and Jackson holiday refractor Middle just parted from that and almost looked like it was on purpose Gabe Gonzalez refractor auto for the Mariners Mariners are killing it right now, man marvelous They always go they really do they're really good in this product They've got a deep deep checklist Real real if cam collier aqua lava Tommy Troy to 199 They tried goss they tried goss didn't happen If the jumbo diaz super needs some break Suzuki He's the break credit. We got you He said accounted do you come now base auto for the race? Hey commie. Tommy. Let's go No one or not He comes out a decent amount in this he does guss has 11 touchdowns from max clerk Three yards or less Michael Harris It's crazy And you want to reverse Run it Lamar Always Nelson Agalore Agalore. How about Nelson Agalore with a 2024 playoff touchdown breaking everybody's first touchdowns right there We should have put that in Vegas early. That is felon and cellist in Riley green.  Yeah four to go in tc black That is a wave of no one gorman rookie Masa poppy oshita Was romances Riley green blue green 2150 and gabby at morana Here uh tj abram's blue Elijah green nice one there for the nationals. Congrats on that mats to 150 Mookie bets that is to kill tovar and touch bradley Um, you thank everybody here dusty with the rangers and definitive carl e with two spots in number four and matt with a spot in number four So thank you all thank the three of you on that one. Galvin cook was in on that play too, by the way Um, again, everybody we've got uh Eight to go on number four eight to go score is tight Is matt mervis midi diamonds shellac of solace and Hashtag close your polls, bro What's your poll history post them? That's sure base auto bray like a raro for the uh raise again I noticed something different today with kyle and i don't know if you can notice it Oh the legwear there's no church pants legwear is is more appropriate today It may be easier when you turn on the stream on Friday Ha ha ha ha Once so we love you kyle To 50 is gunner henderson Nice one there and oswald peraza j rod Midi diamonds oscar colas and eric russ matt olson reel to reel auto yon ju vargas nice one there to 150 for the dodgers That's la Congrats la la And how was air mirrors? You said hunk Hunk wildin there's uh jackson chariot and adley ruchman. You should say that if they hit will I will easy Nick, what's up, buddy? How we doing good to see you as always nick shellac of drew jones yordan alvarez Jacob melton Oh, yeah That one. I don't know that one. I think that's actually pretty funny. Oh, yeah We got it on don't you worry. Sure. It's Logan. Oh, hoppy and kasey schmitt Sure. So you're doing uh Better today freeman nice and power out as I see that at his sister's 299 is corbin carol my bad Yeah, portland's getting smoked right now. It's in the northwest in general. It's getting smoked Montgomery devison de los santos based auto for the d-back is scratch arizona. Nice one there jacob wilson refractor That is a And jocelyn crawford. All right, everybody that is going to do it for the break do a quick recap here We've got a gold lava to 75 acuña matt mervis 250 is Jackson holiday edward julian based autos devison de los santos trailer guerrero nica poyaca grego jr kimonero chase the lauter myro schindrick martinez michael arroyo durnichy valde samuel basayo henry bolt Um, that is brandon mya. Hey nelson rada Uh, gabriel rinconis gaberson gutierrez spencer jones deon horre kaden wallis kenny gomez jacob rhymer gabriel consales jesson henry miloey braylor guerrero chase bowen jacob melton daniel montecino to 250 brandon mya The 150 o engine vargas elijah green louise guanipa to 99 glader figuero billin head and a 75 colt emerson That will do it for The break. Thank you all again for the fill coming up next is number three of our mixer number three, I think