hardware #event #startups #tool #opinions #release #feature #update #vc #opensource #bigtech #api #leaders #science #major_players #scheduled

NVIDIA is hosting AI sessions at Money20/20 Europe, focusing on AI in financial services. The event will feature speakers from Mastercard, Stripe, Barclays, and others, and will cover topics such as generative AI, fraud detection, and the impact of AI on the banking customer experience. BNY Mellon has deployed an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD™ with DGX™ H100 systems, and the event will also discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities in AI for financial services in 2024 [1].
Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, has joined Anthropic as the Chief Product Officer. His expertise in building and scaling innovative products will help Anthropic expand its suite of enterprise applications and bring Claude to a wider audience [2].
Cohere, a company dedicated to scaling intelligence to serve humanity, is actively hiring. The company offers various benefits to employees, including RRSP contributions, health coverage, mental health support, remote work culture, generous time off, and support for new parents [3]. Cohere has also been featured in CNBC's Disruptor 50 list for the second consecutive year, reflecting its commitment to providing practical AI solutions that tackle real-world business challenges [4].
Andrew Ng has announced a new short course on Multi AI Agent Systems with crewAI. The course focuses on breaking down complex tasks into subtasks for multiple AI agents to execute specialized roles [5]. Groq Inc has launched a new series called GroqThoughts, with the first feature focusing on how Athena Intelligence and Groq collaborate to enable real-time use cases [6]. Groq Inc is also hosting a virtual hackathon for developers to showcase their projects built on Groq technology [9].
Langtrace AI conducted a performance analysis comparing the latencies of different language models, including Groq running Llama-3. Groq demonstrated the lowest latencies across all tests, making it the ideal choice for applications where speed is essential [11].
LanceDB, an open-source database for AI, has secured $8 million in seed funding. The company aims to empower AI teams to search over billions of vectors, process petabytes of images, and train on trillions of tokens [12]. HiPythagora, a Y Combinator W24 startup, has developed Pythagora, an open-source development tool that can build entire applications from scratch by interacting with users [13].
Google has introduced new generative media models and tools, including Veo for video generation and Imagen 3 for image generation. They have also collaborated with filmmakers and musicians to showcase the capabilities of their AI technologies [15]. Google is also enhancing the Gemini app to be more multimodal, agentive, and intelligent, serving as a personal AI assistant capable of handling complex tasks and taking actions on behalf of users [16].
NVIDIA and LangChain are hosting a Generative AI Agents Developer Contest where participants can develop text and multimodal agents using their technologies [21]. NVIDIA AI Developer shared about the implementation of single-view 3D tracking in NVIDIA DeepStream to enhance object tracking accuracy [23].
Yann LeCun emphasizes the importance of open source AI platforms for a vibrant ecosystem and to maximize the benefits of AI for society [26]. Greg Brockman acknowledges the team effort behind GPT-4 and gives credit to Pranav Dhar for leading the development of the omni model in collaboration with various teams at OpenAI over the past 18 months [27].
Google AI has announced Illuminate at Google IO, a tool that uses AI to convert research papers into audio conversations to enhance learning experiences [32]. Google AI has also introduced Med-Gemini, a new family of AI research models for medicine that builds on Gemini's advanced capabilities. The models have achieved state-of-the-art performance on various benchmarks and have unlocked novel applications in the medical domain [35].
1. NVIDIA AI @NVIDIAAI https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAI/status/1790608050727845980
2. Anthropic @anthropicai https://twitter.com/anthropicai/status/1790744375418589227
3. cohere @cohere https://twitter.com/cohere/status/1790745447327268938
4. cohere @cohere https://twitter.com/cohere/status/1790745445465039092
5. Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg https://twitter.com/AndrewYNg/status/1790769732146307308
6. Groq Inc @GroqInc https://twitter.com/GroqInc/status/1790734880235495512
7. Groq Inc @GroqInc https://twitter.com/GroqInc/status/1790774240574116203
8. Groq Inc @GroqInc https://twitter.com/GroqInc/status/1790783354960515427
9. Groq Inc @GroqInc https://twitter.com/GroqInc/status/1790794933143802365
10. Groq Inc @GroqInc https://twitter.com/GroqInc/status/1790806854009798891
11. Groq Inc @GroqInc https://twitter.com/GroqInc/status/1790851920992616504
12. Y Combinator @ycombinator https://twitter.com/ycombinatostatus/1790776813578584553
13. Y Combinator @ycombinator https://twitter.com/ycombinatostatus/1790808894207574051
14. Y Combinator @ycombinator https://twitter.com/ycombinatostatus/1790838165550563816
15. Google @google https://twitter.com/google/status/1790763743556632868
16. Google @google https://twitter.com/google/status/1790809723840651398
17. Google @google https://twitter.com/google/status/1790855212950753605
18. Sam Altman @sama https://twitter.com/sama/status/1790816449180876804
19. Sam Altman @sama https://twitter.com/sama/status/1790817315069771959
20. Sequoia Capital @sequoia https://twitter.com/sequoia/status/1790821953969996131
21. NVIDIA AI Developer @NVIDIAAIDev https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAIDev/status/1790796553566716132
22. NVIDIA AI Developer @NVIDIAAIDev https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAIDev/status/1790834544356040810
23. NVIDIA AI Developer @NVIDIAAIDev https://twitter.com/NVIDIAAIDev/status/1790849638418841919
24. Yann LeCun @ylecun https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1790708256127545804
25. Yann LeCun @ylecun https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1790839389569880330
26. Yann LeCun @ylecun https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1790895062148137470
27. Greg Brockman @gdb https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1790839201312731462
28. Greg Brockman @gdb https://twitter.com/gdb/status/1790869434174746805
29. a16z @a16z https://twitter.com/a16z/status/1790856759504244953
30. a16z @a16z https://twitter.com/a16z/status/1790856761169297598
31. a16z @a16z https://twitter.com/a16z/status/1790895186228420880
32. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790806911937560938
33. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790811954329624853
34. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790872932681699764
35. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790878322466922499
36. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790878324845076790
37. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790878326967468045
38. Google AI @googleai https://twitter.com/googleai/status/1790878329395937773

Why Cannabis Has The Best "Meme Stock"
Hello fellow regards, its 1:50 AM im high, and im ready to give my first brief DD ever into the cannabis sector. I've been studying the cannabis sector since November, and i would like to give a brief DD on my thoughts. I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL, JUST A DUDE WHOS TIRED AND REALLY LIKES WEED. This saying I might be wrong on some points and this is only my opinion at 2AM. I might try to do another post after more research with everyone's help. if you have any opinions or find any information please leave a comment and lets get high together.
2019-2021: We already know the sector has tanked since 2021 and Canada's announcement into the industry. As some like INCR might have lost momentum from terrorist attacks in Isreal, others like SNDL had a "meme" approach into the U.S Cannabis Debt (SunSteam I believe its called). The important thing is companies overproduced, lost their competitive advantages, and had horrible timing. Whatever the various reasons are, almost the entire sector has taken a hit. Now when you bring up investing to the company, everyone will say "its to risky and has no moat" and yes this is true...or is it?
2023-2024: As vaporizers have had a dominating approach into the market, cannabis "carts" are exposing the younger generations to an easier, "odorless", and convenient way to expose themselves to THC. Think as them as a gateway into the industry, and just like a Juul it exposes new audiences into the market and could create long term relationships. Not only has cannabis found new ways to be innovative, but the industry has seen an unreal amount of new consumers the past decade. And this will only keep growing as we keep removing world wide restrictions overtime like Germany.
Past 6 Months: A new wave of young investors are ready to begin their journeys, now that trading is easier then ever. More then likely they're going to consider cheap stocks as they get high *cough cannabis*. Now im being bias, but coming from this generation shit feels high and im broke. Why would I invest $10 into META right now compared to SNDL? Theirs no doubt the sector has been seeing some of its most profit in years, And as the FDA rescheduling comes into play more then likely by this summer, its only a matter of time until the sector moons.
The Future: Im not a physic but I do have some judgements and opinions about the future of the cannabis sector. Firstly, long or short term many etfs like MSOS or YOLO look incredibly great right now. It'd be safer to play ETF's in the sector for long term investments. This is because of the incredibly small amount of tradable stocks in the sector. Few if any cannabis stocks are American companies, with the majority being Canadian or in the EU. With the amount of competition in the sector, there is a possibility we could see more American cannabis stocks listed on the NASDAQ exchange. Competition is already a killing factor within the industry, a flood of American ipo's could cause more viability in the market, and potential damage or benefit certain stocks.
Final Thoughts: With all this said, I completely understand the fear and hesitance people get when considering investing into the sector. There are many many risky factors, past issues, and future threats. But do NOT let that discourage you from investing just $5 long term. The sector is comparably undervalued compared to how overvalued CGC and Aurora was in 2021. For short term people are anticipating for the FDA reschedule, this would seriously open many doors and more profitable opportunities for the sector. Now the competition needs to be controlled for federal distribution and other meanings. The sector will only gain more popularity overtime=more profit.
Best ETF's: MSOS, CNBS, YOLO, TOKE
Safest As of Rn: GTLS, MSOS, SNDL,
My Favorite: SNDL. MSOS, CGC, CRON, TLRY
Eyeball: ACB, INCR (reddit wont let me post the others to prevent "pump and dumps" but look into hair testing, Colorado, and more stocks east)
Cannabis Is The Best Meme Sector, That Will Make Our Fellow Stoner Regards Even Higher :)
Small Sources: https://flowhub.imgix.net/Resources/marijuana-usage-among-u.s.-adults-1969-2023.png
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sunstream-usa-poised-to-acquire-cannabis-assets-302134053.html
Hope I did this right!

Summary: I read alot of posts where people have been sedated for this procedure. And I am here to say, for me, It was very tolerable without it.
I am a 52 year old female who never had a single back problem until Jan 2024. I had issues on my right side with burning hip and inner thigh pain with no lower back pan (but it was determined to be a lumbar issue). That got alot better with oral steroid pack(still numb spot inner thigh, I only notice it when I shower), then a couple months later, my left side stated to hurt with all sciatica pain described in this channel (I won't bore you with details - you all have read about it and lived it)
Because of my profound closterphobia, I had had a CT Myleogram in place of an MRI about 6 weeks ago. That sucker hurt because it creates pressure on your spine with the amount of contrast they put in. It took 24 hours for that pain to wear off. There was no offer of sedation for that procedure. Summary of findings:
FINDINGS: Morphology: There is lucency along the adjacent L5 and S1 endplates. There is mild multilevel endplate spondylosis. There is multilevel facet arthrosis.
Alignment: Mild scoliotic curvature of the lumbar spine apex to the left. Mild rightward lateral listhesis of L2 on L3.
L3-L4: There is disc height loss with diffuse disc bulge and endplate spondylosis. There is bilateral facet arthrosis. There is mild right foraminal narrowing. There is no significant spinal canal or left foraminal narrowing.
L4-L5: There is diffuse disc bulge with endplate spondylosis. There is bilateral facet arthrosis. There is mild spinal canal narrowing. There is mild right greater than left foraminal stenosis.
I was told as a kid I had mild scoliosis and i remember the Dr telling my mom it was so mild no need for treatment (while sitting in his office, he was smoking and making light of the finding the school nurse told my mom). Gotta love the 70s. It's amazing how Gen X survived the early years.
Since April 15th my siatica pain has been an 8 to a 10 daily. I finally gave in and bought a cane so I could safely navigate walking without falling. I had a NCS/EMG that was normal. Then finally I was referred to pain management. Since January no doctor gave me anything more than Advil for the pain. I found lidocaine patches and they helped me sleep. I saw pain MGMT Dr. On Friday (may 10), he prescribed Diclofenac and cyclobenzaprine. That resolved the lower back pain and got my sciatica pain down to a 6-7 as of today (may 15) when I had the esi injection.
Anyhow, I provide all this information above so you can compare yourself to me and my situation to better determine if no sedation might work for you.
I decided no sedation b/c I was told it was much less pain than CT Myleogram and I could drive home after if I didn't get sedation. I thought what the heck, I survived the Myleogram, this should be cake.
It was cake. The lidocaine (local anesthesia) they injected hurt just like the CT Myleogram except this Dr. did it faster so it hurt a bit more. The needle once in place did cause a sudden pain down leg that was just a split second. Then the steroid going in was another sharp pain for 10 seconds.... And that was it. So glad I didn't do sedation.
With sedation, you are still awake when they do it, you still feel the same pain, but you are all loopy. They give you a med so you don't remember what happened during the process. To me that sounds miserable.
I was in there for a total of 1 hr and 11 minutes. I was in my bed settling in for a nap 10 minutes later (I live less than a mile from the surgery center). It was a nice nap. No pain for the first time in a month.
I am a big baby when it comes to medical procedures. I have had a lot of medical trama in the past, I usually jump on being knocked out if they will really do it. But twilight sedation, where I still am awake but won't remember, and the hangover from the meds that do that... Almost seems worse than just sucking it up and powering through it.
Tonight my pain is way less than when the day started. They told me to expect it to get worse before it gets better and in 3 days the steroids should kick in. I am praying this gives me enough relief to walk without a cane and to be able to start PT. I will post updates if anyone is interested.
Best wishes to all of you suffering from siatica, it's been the most painful and disabling health issue I have ever experienced. I don't wish this pain on my worst enemy. I pray you find pain relief sooner than later and back to your normal soon.

/LonghornNation Daily Off Topic Free Talk Thread

Today: 5/16/2024

Last Thread

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Your go-to place to talk about whatever you want. From the dumb shit aggies do on a near daily basis, to the latest whatever happening wherever. What ya got?

Here's a look at upcoming Longhorn Sporting Event(s):

1. 5/16 4:00 PM University of Texas Men's Tennis vs Tennessee
2. 5/16 6:30 PM University of Texas Baseball vs Kansas
3. 5/17 University of Texas Women's Golf vs NCAA Championships
4. 5/17 3:00 PM University of Texas Softball vs Siena
5. 5/17 6:30 PM University of Texas Baseball vs Kansas
6. 5/18 University of Texas Women's Golf vs NCAA Championships
7. 5/18 2:30 PM University of Texas Baseball vs Kansas - Senior Day

Trending on Reddit

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1. North Korean leader Kim II Sung, showing a tumor on his neck. Photographers were prohibited from photographing the right side of his face -1980s
2. TIL that DC refused to let the TV show "Harley Quinn" air a scene of Batman giving oral to Catwoman because they said "Heroes don't do that"
3. Played my last round today
4. 20%
5. Iguana cut

/CFB

1. /CFB Donates $18,000.00 to Toys For Tots & Children's Hospitals, thanks to the 8th annual Holiday Drive!
2. Dabo Swinney when asked about why Clemson didn’t sign any transfer portal players: “Every player is technically a transfer. We just signed a whole class of guys transferring from high school.”
3. Washington's Tybo Rogers, charged with rape, no longer on team
4. Will the ACC hold together or fall apart? 'The SEC and Big Ten have cut us open and they’re just watching us bleed out'
5. EA College Football standard edition cover leaked
6. It’s wild how much tougher Oklahoma’s Year 1 SEC schedule looks compared to Texas

/LonghornNation

1. [5/15/2024] Wednesday's Sports Talk Thread
2. [5/15/2024] Wednesday's Free Talk Thread
3. Texas vs. Colorado State kicks off at 2:30 PM CT on ESPN on August 31
4. Men’s Basketball to compete in 2025 Maui Invitational
5. 2024-25 Women's Basketball SEC Matchups
6. 2025 3* OL Jackson Christian commits to Texas
7. SEC announces opponents and locations for 2024-25 Men’s Basketball schedule

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As the title suggests, my experience with the Xperia 5 IV has been a mixed bag. While most discussions center around the display, I believe there are other valid concerns that also merit attention.
1) Fingerprint Sensor Issues
The fingerprint sensor was often gone missing up until the 4th generation. I'm not sure if the new phones have addressed this issue. Did they change the supplier or improve the durability of the sensor?
2) Auto Mode Processing
How effective is the current auto mode? In the Xperia 5 IV, the auto mode processing was fairly basic and somewhat inferior when compared to its peers. Will this remain an issue in the Xperia 1 VI as it competes head-to-head with Samsung and Apple at 1400€ price bracket?
3) Display Quality
Is there a potential for display issues akin to the "light sabers" effect? The Xperia 1 series has never had this issue, but I am concerned about how the 1080p resolution might recall the nightmares of the Xperia 5 II and 5 III.
4) Mobile Data Connectivity During Calls
No matter what I tried, I couldn't prevent mobile data from disconnecting during calls on my Xperia 5 IV. Will this issue persist with the Xperia 1 VI?
5) Throttling Concerns
According to GSMarena's tests, the performance did not look promising, even with the new vapor chamber cooling system.
Strengths:
1) Battery
The most significant improvement is in battery life. It is far ahead of the Xperia 1 V and better than most competitors.
2) Zoom
The zoom capability has been extended to 7.1x. Although the quality at 3.5x is superior, it is still a notable feature, especially since the video quality from GSMarena is impressive even without manual controls (I believe there are no pro controls for video yet).
3) LTPO display
The switch to an LTPO display is a welcome change, although I was disappointed by the shift from 4K to FHD as I expected it to change from 4K to QHD.
4) Improved quick settings
The new tiles have the look of Android 11 style, which is a welcome since the stock android tiles waste a lot of space and it is not so good(in my opinion). I am not sure why they didn't put the same tiles for Android 14 users V and IV series users.

Having proper flooring like tiles and marble not only provides functionality and durability but also adds aesthetic value to our homes and other spaces. An appropriate flooring lays the foundation of a beautiful and functional space. But as the debate goes on about the best option for the flooring and walls of your home, business, or commercial spaces, we will point out the advantages tiles have over marble.
1. Variety Of Styles
You can find a varied range of tile colours, sizes, and even patterns that mimic the look of marble and other natural stones or customised prints, giving you more design options to choose from. With tiles, you have endless possibilities for creativity. You can mix and match different tile shapes, sizes, and patterns to create unique designs that suit your taste. You can match the styles and designs of your spaces with different areas by picking complimenting or contrasting kitchen tiles, parking tiles, elevation tiles, wall tiles, floor tiles, etc.
2. Durability
Tiles are generally more resistant to scratches, stains, and wear and tear than marbles. They are a great choice for high-traffic areas. For example, kitchen tiles are stain—and heat-resistant to counter spills and heat in the kitchen, slip-resistant bathroom tiles for bathrooms, weatherproof for elevation tiles, and heavy-duty for parking tiles and entryways.
Tiles are more resistant to corrosion and chipping compared to marble when using harsh chemicals for cleaning or a heavy load of vehicles for parking tiles.
3. Easy Maintenance
Tiles are easy to clean and maintain compared to marble. Regular sweeping and mopping are usually enough to keep them looking good. Stains can be easily removed with appropriate cleaning products, while marble stains easily. Regular cleaning and polishing may be necessary to protect the marble and maintain its shine.
Marbles may also corrode when certain cleaning products are used on them. The kitchen tends to encounter lots of spills from food or heavy utensils. Kitchen tiles are better than marble as they are specially designed to have these characteristics. The same goes for bathroom tiles, elevation tiles, and parking tiles.
4. Cost-Effective
Tiles are often more affordable than marbles. They come in a range of price points, allowing you to find options that fit your budget without compromising on style. Marbles, on the other hand, may come with timeless elegance and charm of their own but tiles can imitate the same effects and pattern at a lower price.
This gives you the liberty and opportunity to mix and match and explore your style without compromising your wallet while getting the same or even better results. For walls, wall tiles are a better option than marble as they are cost-effective and lightweight.
5. Versatility
Tiles come in a wide variety of materials, including ceramic, porcelain, and natural stone. There is a wide range of tiles that are designed for different areas of your new home, such as renovations, business, commercial projects, etc. Tiles can be versatile in their finish, such as matte finish, glossy, or texture, according to the area and space to be installed.
There are different types of tiles, like floor tiles and wall tiles, that play a different role according to the needs of the area of spaces at your home, business, or commercial, like parking tiles to match your garden or porch, kitchen tiles bring out the homely vibe of warm meals, elevation tiles to match your outdoor aesthetic, bathroom tiles for the sophisticated and hygienic look, floor tiles, wall tiles, etc. to elevate your spaces. Tiles can mimic the look of marble, graphite, and even wood to meet your preferences.
​

The Australian Outback, often referred to as the heart of Australia, is a vast and mesmerissing landscape that captivates visitors with its rugged beauty and untamed wilderness. Spanning across millions of square kilometers, this remote region offers a unique and unforgettable experience for those seeking adventure, tranquility, and a deeper connection with nature.

1. Introduction to the Australian Outback

The australian outback experience is a term used to describe the remote and arid interior regions of Australia, characterised by its sparse population, harsh climate, and vast open spaces. It encompasses various landscapes, including deserts, grasslands, rocky ranges, and ancient gorges, each with its own distinct beauty and allure.

2. Geographical Features of the Australian Outback

I. Vastness and Diversity
One of the defining features of the Australian Outback is its sheer vastness. Stretching across the central and western parts of the country, it covers over 70% of Australia’s landmass, making it one of the most extensive arid regions on Earth. Despite its predominantly dry and barren appearance, the Outback is surprisingly diverse, with a myriad of ecosystems supporting a wide range of flora and fauna.
II. Unique Landscapes
From the iconic red sands of the Simpson Desert to the rugged terrain of the Kimberley, the Australian Outback is home to some of the world’s most breathtaking landscapes. Visitors can marvel at ancient rock formations, such as Uluru and Kata Tjuta, explore vast salt flats like Lake Eyre, or wander through lush oasis-like gorges such as Kings Canyon.

2. Flora and Fauna

I. Adaptations to Harsh Environment
The plants and animals that inhabit the Australian Outback have evolved remarkable adaptations to survive in this harsh and unforgiving environment. Drought-resistant shrubs, like spinifex and mulga, dot the arid plains, while iconic species such as kangaroos, emus, and dingoes roam the vast expanse in search of food and water.
II. Iconic Species
The Outback is also home to a wealth of unique wildlife found nowhere else on Earth. From the elusive bilby to the colorful budgerigar, these iconic species have long captured the imagination of visitors and inspired countless tales of adventure and discovery.

3. Cultural Significance

I. Indigenous Connection
For thousands of years, Indigenous Australians have called the Outback home, forging a deep and spiritual connection with the land known as the Dreamtime. Their rich cultural heritage is woven into the fabric of the Outback, with ancient rock art sites, sacred ceremonial grounds, and traditional storytelling passed down through generations.
II. Outback Lifestyle
Today, the Outback continues to be a place of significance for both Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous Australians alike. The rugged simplicity of Outback life, with its emphasis on self-reliance, resilience, and community spirit, offers a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of modern urban living.

4. Tourism in the Australian Outback

I. Popular Destinations
Each year, thousands of adventurers from around the world flock to the Australian Outback in search of adventure and discovery. Popular destinations include the iconic Red Centre, home to Uluru and Alice Springs, as well as the remote Kimberley region, known for its stunning gorges, waterfalls, and ancient aboriginal rock art.
II. Activities and Experiences
From camel treks across the Simpson Desert to scenic flights over the Bungle Bungle Range, the outback experiences offers a wide range of activities and experiences for visitors of all ages and interests. Whether it’s camping under the stars, hiking through rugged wilderness, or learning about Indigenous culture and history, there’s something for everyone to enjoy.

5. Challenges and Conservation Efforts

I. Environmental Threats
Despite its remote and seemingly untouched appearance, the Australian Outback faces numerous environmental threats, including habitat loss, invasive species, and climate change. These challenges pose a significant risk to the fragile ecosystems and iconic wildlife that call the Outback home.
II. Conservation Initiatives
To address these threats, various conservation organisations and government agencies are working tirelessly to protect and preserve the unique biodiversity of the travel outback australia. From land management practices to habitat restoration projects, these efforts are crucial for ensuring the long-term sustainability of this iconic landscape.
Conclusion
The Australian Outback is a place of unparalleled beauty, adventure, and cultural significance. From its vast and diverse landscapes to its unique flora and fauna, it continues to captivate the hearts and minds of adventurers from around the world. By embracing sustainable tourism practices and supporting conservation efforts, we can help protect and preserve this iconic landscape for generations to come.

Shortly before a final paper with pre-assigned topics was due for one of my last courses at Columbia University, our professor sent us an email telling us to forego the previous parameters of the essay, and to instead write about the events that had occurred not even forty-eight hours earlier, as well as our reflections on them, to be done in any manner we chose. Here is a very lightly revised version of what I submitted: read it, ignore it, upvote it, downvote it, hate it, love it.
I am prefacing this essay by stating that it is the culmination of several intense emotions that I have been dealing with over the last few weeks, more specifically, the last several days. It is a free-form expression of the many things occupying my mind, and, as such, it may seem overwhelming or disjointed. Nevertheless, I will do my best to convey my feelings into something representative of my beliefs, and my time at this institution.
My time at Columbia University has been bookended in an almost comically bad way; it started with Zoom classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now it ends with Zoom final exams due to the lockdown of Columbia’s campus after protests regarding the Israel – Palestine conflict reached a fever pitch not just within Morningside Campus, but the international stage. My classmates and I missed in-person orientation, and now, given recent developments, we will not have a University Commencement, a fact I found out not from Columbia, but a New York Times alert, somehow lowering my opinion of this administration’s handling of recent events even more. While the circumstances around my time at Columbia have now both begun and finished in the same manner, I am proud to say that I have not. I do not mean that Columbia has simply made me a better writer, a more critical thinker, or more well read, although it certainly has done those things, sometimes forcing me to when I was not particularly in the mood to do so, but those improvements pale in comparison to the maturity and empathy my time at this university has given me.
When the decision to transition to remote learning during the Spring 2020 semester was made, occurring only a short time after I had received my acceptance letter (email), my first thought was how the pandemic would affect my transfer from community college to Columbia in September. Admittedly, this was a selfish perspective, considering the tremendous challenges that many would endure during the ensuing lockdowns and other upheavals of life. My concerns were solely focused on myself because I was on a simple track to graduate, place my degree on my resumé, and continue my trajectory of military service to college to employment, leaving little else to consideration, to include other people who were not in my immediate circle. Sitting here now, two weeks from graduation, with a job at a Fortune 500 company lined up, I should be happy, with the plans I had made years ago coming to fruition. Yet I cannot help feeling a sense of sadness and concern for the school I have spent years of my life at, and for the world as a whole.
James Hatch, a former member of the United States’s elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU, for short, more commonly known by its nickname, Seal Team Six, famous for its involvement in the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the rescue of the Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips from pirates, amongst other things, spent over twenty years in the military. After being wounded on a mission to rescue American serviceman sergeant Bowe Bergdahl from enemy forces, he was medically discharged, and would eventually attend Yale University. While there, he wrote a piece titled My Semester with the Snowflakes (please give this a read, it will help people who have never been in the military understand its culture, along with some of the challenges veterans face when transitioning to college), where he details his initial discomfort with being in a vastly different environment than the military, surrounded by individuals who possessed opinions and beliefs contrary to the ones he was accustomed to. He recalls witnessing a student protest the country he spent over two decades serving by coating her hand in red paint, and leaving a palm print on an American flag, and details his shock when a classmate of his explained to him what a “safe space” was, as well as his pride when he began to understand the nuances of life both inside and outside of the nation he dedicated twenty-six years to.
I can relate to Mr. Hatch, (despite my service paling in comparison to his, as well as the fact that Columbia is far superior to Yale), because, like his friends who make fun of him for attending college with a bunch of “snowflakes,” mine do the same. More significantly, however, his personal growth during his time at school is something that I have experienced myself. When I started at Columbia, I did not even know which major I would choose, and was largely lost in a world very different than the one I had come from. Despite this, I made the decision to avoid communities such as MilVets and the students who made it very clear that they came from a military background, with their style of dress and demeanor, not because those organizations and individuals are a detriment; I know for a fact that MilVets has helped countless students succeed at Columbia and beyond, and the veterans that I have relationships with are all phenomenal people, but because I wanted to pressure myself into being exposed to something different. I was uncomfortable at first, but this turned out to be the right decision. I learned as much from simply talking to people whom I would normally never converse with about topics and ideas that I had never encountered as I did during classes about great works of art, polar and Cartesian coordinates, literature, astronomy, the list goes on.
If the protests about the Israel – Palestine conflict had occurred when I first started at Columbia, I would have been frustrated by the students taking up space, forcing us to be funneled on to campus by restricted access points and identification checks. Likely irritated by the disturbance of the quiet during finals season, I would have agreed with the people who called for students to simply focus on their assignments and stop inconveniencing others by shouting about something occurring on the other side of the world. Instead, I decided to learn about the conflict, educating myself about both sides of a war that has roots extending back millennia. While Columbia University did not agree to the demands of the protestors, they achieved something else they surely desired, reaching a goal they did not state to President Shafik and her advisors: they brought attention to their cause by educating at least one additional person about it.
After reading, talking to people, listening to input from students within various classes, and understanding that things such as the intertwined nature of financial workings, as well as conflicts not just in the Middle East, but all over the world, are a level of complexity that baffles some of the most brilliant minds of ours and previous generations, I will leave my thoughts about Israel and Palestine separate from this paper. I recognize that it is important to choose a side, as remaining impartial helps no one. However, when every news agency, group and individual makes their voice heard, satirical sources such as The Onion make these kind of posts, or Adult Swim’s Rick, the nihilistic, narcissistic, psychopathic, misanthropic lead character from the series Rick and Morty, addresses the conflict in this manner, I feel that it is better to relegate myself to a much smaller part of this debate, namely the occurrences on Columbia University’s Morningside Campus.
During basic training for the United States Army, a sense of brotherhood and camaraderie is hammered into recruits’ identities. When you graduate and are assigned to a unit, one where you could be thousands of miles from home on the opposite side of the country, or even in a completely different country, serving on one of the international bases, approaching someone who you have never met before is easy. Talking to them about shared experiences and stories you have in common, and the bonding that occurs, is the product of an indoctrination process and lifestyle that has existed longer than any of us have been alive, and is proof of its effectiveness. This sense of familiarity tends to continue even when one leaves the military. The Veterans of Foreign Wars community is a place for prior servicemembers of all conflicts to share a drink, a laugh, and sometimes a tear. When I go to the Veterans Administration Hospital for periodic check-ups or the occasional injury, men and woman wearing hats commemorating their service during Vietnam waiting for their appointments greet me with a smile and a handshake, as if we have known each other for years. While working at a golf club’s greens department before I transferred to Columbia from community college, a coworker of mine who had served in the Gulf War had heard from our supervisor that I had been in the Army, and he introduced himself to me on my first day, before anyone else, telling me that if I needed anything, I only had to ask. This camaraderie has expanded to encompass not just veterans, but first responders such as firemen, EMT’s, and the police as well.
Underneath the picture on my driver’s license, the word “veteran” is emblazoned next to a star, written in bright red text and all capital letters. I know for a fact that this one-and-a-half-inch indicator has helped me during interactions with law enforcement on multiple occasions. Only earlier this semester, during Presidents’ Day weekend, I went upstate to spend time with my family. While driving back, in an effort to make the seven-hour trip at a reasonable time, I was stopped for going twenty miles-per-hour over the speed limit. The officer who pulled me over, initially reserved, became noticeably more friendly when I handed him my license and registration. Ultimately, he gave me what amounted to a parking ticket for my actions, rather than the point-incurring, heavily fined moving violation he could have charged me with.
The ‘Thin Blue Line,’ as it is known, is a reference to the idea that the police are the barrier between law abiding citizens and criminals, order and chaos. The most common representation of this concept is a black-and-white American flag, with a single blue line in the place where a red or white stripe would normally be. This style has been expanded to include numerous other colors representing other first-responders: green for the military, red and white no longer to be interpreted as the traditional stripes of the American flag, but instead meant to represent the fire department and paramedics, and even grey for corrections officers. Seeing the appropriation of one of the most iconic symbols in the world, one that flies above the White House, schools, homes, national and international events, and even the Moon, I can say, as someone who has been unwillingly entangled within that appropriation, is nothing short of terrifying.
The fact that these entities and their supporters have literally sewn themselves into the fabric of the symbol of our nation makes one think that there is little room for the countless other occupations, aspects and people that make up this country. The idea of the police being the sole protectors of our society is patently absurd, and all one must do is point out the many instances of police brutality occurring over the years to refute it. I find myself thinking of how much power the officer who stopped me just three months ago had over me. Initially, I was happy that I had received a slap on the wrist, but recently I have found myself wondering what if my license did not state that I was a veteran, would he have charged me with a ticket that would have had much more serious implications? What if he was simply having a bad day, and he decided he did not like the look of me, or the color of my car, and I was the one who he ultimately decided to vent his frustrations on? This traffic infraction, an incredibly small incident compared to all the turmoil in the world, one that involves two strangers, supposedly bonded by our professions, on the side of a quiet, New York highway, serves as a metaphor to me, reminding me of the power structures at play on a much larger scale.
On April 22^nd, 2024, I received this email, one of the many Clery Crime Alerts that students are automatically sent. An affiliate of Columbia University had their car stolen at gunpoint by two masked men on Claremont Avenue, not even a five-minute walk from campus. I skimmed the report, and almost immediately forgot about it, recognizing that crime is an inevitability in major cities, and that I needed to start my commute to school. Days later, on the night of April 30^th, 2024, I received another email from Columbia, containing one of the most ominous messages I had ever seen, one that put the kind of fear in my heart that not even the alert of an armed carjacking could. Columbia’s Emergency Management Operations Team, offering no explanations, specifications, or even a greeting or sign-off, wrote in bold letters these three sentences: “Shelter in place for your safety due to heightened activity on the Morningside campus. Non-compliance may result in disciplinary action. Avoid the area until further notice.” Due to the protests on campus during recent weeks, President Shafik testifying before Congress, Columbia’s role as one of the main catalysts for student protests around the country, and the occupation of Hamilton Hall occurring in the earlier hours of that day, it was not hard to figure out what the email was referencing. Over the next several hours, I followed news agencies, remained glued to the Columbia subreddit, and listened to WKCR, in awe of these eighteen- to twenty-two-year-old students putting themselves at risk to deliver on the ground, accurate, unbiased coverage of one of the most significant events in the school’s history.
While tracking the events from multiple perspectives, to include the social media accounts of those near and on campus live streaming them, I held out hope that the university would make good on their promise from several days earlier to not invite the NYPD back, but a frightening picture began to unfold, one that I was intimately familiar with. One WKCR reporter stated that 114^th street had so many officers on it that he could not see the asphalt of the road beneath them, and I knew that the staging area the NYPD had chosen was one of the best routes for moving towards what the military, and presumably law enforcement, would call an ‘objective.’ The officers cleared the smaller ‘objective,’ the largely unoccupied tents in front of Butler, and then moved towards Hamilton Hall, ordering even those not associated with its occupation to disperse, raising my stress levels and likely those of others, as it is rarely a good sign when police do not want their actions recorded and archived. After the initial entry to campus and clearing of areas and people in the immediate vicinity of Hamilton Hall, came the Long-Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a device that makes a megaphone sound like a whisper, and one known for its crowd-control potential, capable of producing sounds loud enough to cause damage to ear-drums, nausea, and headaches, ordering individuals to clear away. The NYPD began its execution of tactics in a way that my fellow soldiers and I used to rehearse, tactics I never dreamed that I would witness outside of the military, and certainly not by police officers who vastly outnumbered unarmed students on their own campus. The NYPD created a perimeter, or a ‘second layer of security’ to both provide reinforcements for the officers entering the building, and to prevent the fleeing of what are called ‘squirters,’ or individuals who attempt to escape the building after the raid begins. While the ‘breach’ team moved towards the front doors, using tools from a ‘hooligan kit,’ such as bolt cutters, hand-held battering rams and crowbars, a siege machine was brought in to allow access from a window; when taking over a building, the idea is to overwhelm it from as many different directions as possible to better disorient and overwhelm its occupants. Flash-bang grenades, described as non-lethal, but known to have harmful effects, were thrown inside, presumably before entering any room, hallway, or otherwise enclosed area to minimize the resistance of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of what can only be described as an assault on the visual and auditory senses. According to the Manhattan District Attorney, one of the officers inside Hamilton Hall had what is called in the military a “negligent discharge,” meaning his firearm went off unintentionally. While no one was hurt, the question remains why at least one, and more likely, numerous other officers were carrying guns loaded with live ammunition in the first place, when they so drastically outmatched the protestors in numbers and equipment. Additionally, a negligent discharge is an act of incompetence that would result in an active-duty soldier facing serious consequences, and derision from his peers. So far, the officer remains defended by his coworkers, and unpunished by his superiors.
As all this unfolded, I communicated with my friends from the past and present. My friends from the military checked on me to ensure that I was okay, as did my friends from school. The difference in how they viewed these events highlights what I believe is the change in myself that I stated I am most proud of at the beginning of this paper. My friends from the military were commenting that the assertion of order and control by way of militarized tactics was necessary, not concerning themselves with the human toll and destruction of trust that came along with it. Conversely, my schoolmates lamented the brutality and overstepping of boundaries that the NYPD and Columbia’s administration committed, one that turned a place meant to be a beacon of free speech, expression, and ideas, into what is now a police-state with strict control over who enters it.
My education inside and outside the classroom at this institution has challenged, thrilled, and changed me. Sitting here now, at the end of this paper, the end of the semester, and the end of my time at Columbia University, I am left feeling confused and sad regarding recent events, but also hopeful for the future. I know from experience that the students, teachers, and culture of this school have the power to encourage critical thinking and initiate personal growth. If it did those things for me, surely it can do the same for others

Bold lines in the tables are new since the previous update.
Olympic Peninsula & Northwest Wash.
https://imgur.com/iZGkJzI

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Jefferson	PT	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 590%
Mason	Biobot	(4)	May-11	UP	+ 380%
Skagit	ANA	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 60%
Skagit	MV	(1)	May-09	DOWN	- 30%
Whatcom	LYN	(1)	May-09	DOWN	- 30%

North Puget Sound [1 of 2]
https://imgur.com/cDJ99FP

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Island	COUP	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 10%
Island	OH	(1)	May-10	DOWN	- 20%
Snohomish	APP	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 150%
Snohomish	ARL	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 60%
Snohomish	EVR	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 20%
Snohomish	STAN	(1)	May-08	DOWN	- 40%
Snohomish	256	(3)	May-10	UP	+ 100%

North Puget Sound [2 of 2]
https://imgur.com/bRLEzmt

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
King	BWT	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 30%
King	KCS	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 20%
King	WSPT	(1)	May-07	UP	+ 30%

South Puget Sound & Southwest
http:

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Clark	MRPK	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 30%
Clark	SNCK	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 110%
Clark	VWS	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 190%
Lewis	Biobot	(4)	May-04	DOWN	- 20%
Pierce	CC	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 60%
Pierce	PUY	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 320%
Thurston	LOTT	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 80%

North & South Central Wash.
https://imgur.com/PYK6D0q

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Benton	WRCH	(1)	May-07	DOWN	- 30%
Chelan	WEN	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 130%
Grant	EPH	(1)	May-08	DOWN	- 50%
Kittitas	ELL	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 260%
Okanogan	BRW	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 30%
Yakima	YAK	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 40%

Northeast & Southeast Wash.
https://imgur.com/91j9m3y

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Franklin	PAS	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 30%
Spokane	RP	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 90%
Spokane	SPK	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 60%
Walla Walla	WALLA	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 80%
Whitman	PLM	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 10%

Notes:

Solid lines on charts are generated from data provided either by the Washington State Department of Health (WADoH Ref. (1) ), WastewaterSCAN (Verily/WWS (Ref. (3) ), or Biobot (Ref. (4) ).
White diamond dots are from most recent CDC/NWSS (Ref. (2) ) data scaled to supplement missing or out-dated data when available.
Because each of these four agencies use different normalization methods, different smoothing methods, and different averaging/location identifiers, the concentration of virus is not comparable between locations. See reference links at the bottom of this post for more details.
There are 33 sewersheds distributed across 6 charts initially grouped by geographic region then alphabetized by county and sewershed. The data shown is a compilation from WADoH (1), NWSS (2), WWS (3), and Biobot (4). Tables include sewershed ID, Reference ID, Date last sampled, Trend (based on the change between the averages of the two most recent weeks), and 14-Day Change (approx. amount which the trend has increased or decreased).
All data presented are smoothed in some degree to even out inconsistent sampling dates and extreme highs and lows. Most sewersheds are sampled 1-3 times a week and are published within a week. Some locations are "late" reporting by 10 days or more so be sure to note your sewershed's "Date" in the table or graph. Locations that are more than two weeks old will have "n/a" listed under Trend to indicate there it is out of date.
For further information on the many variables that affect virus concentrations in WADoH generated data please refer to the "Learn More" link on the Washington State Department of Health Wastewater Dashboard.

References with links to details on y-axis units, normalization protocols, data limitations, and sampling methods:

• (1) WADoH and click "Learn More"
• (2) CDC/NWSS
• (3) Verily/WWS and here
• (4) Biobot

Bold lines in the tables are new since the previous update.
Olympic Peninsula & Northwest Wash.
https://imgur.com/iZGkJzI

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Jefferson	PT	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 590%
Mason	Biobot	(4)	May-11	UP	+ 380%
Skagit	ANA	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 60%
Skagit	MV	(1)	May-09	DOWN	- 30%
Whatcom	LYN	(1)	May-09	DOWN	- 30%

North Puget Sound [1 of 2]
https://imgur.com/cDJ99FP

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Island	COUP	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 10%
Island	OH	(1)	May-10	DOWN	- 20%
Snohomish	APP	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 150%
Snohomish	ARL	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 60%
Snohomish	EVR	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 20%
Snohomish	STAN	(1)	May-08	DOWN	- 40%
Snohomish	256	(3)	May-10	UP	+ 100%

North Puget Sound [2 of 2]
https://imgur.com/bRLEzmt

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
King	BWT	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 30%
King	KCS	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 20%
King	WSPT	(1)	May-07	UP	+ 30%

South Puget Sound & Southwest
http:

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Clark	MRPK	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 30%
Clark	SNCK	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 110%
Clark	VWS	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 190%
Lewis	Biobot	(4)	May-04	DOWN	- 20%
Pierce	CC	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 60%
Pierce	PUY	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 320%
Thurston	LOTT	(1)	May-08	UP	+ 80%

North & South Central Wash.
https://imgur.com/PYK6D0q

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Benton	WRCH	(1)	May-07	DOWN	- 30%
Chelan	WEN	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 130%
Grant	EPH	(1)	May-08	DOWN	- 50%
Kittitas	ELL	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 260%
Okanogan	BRW	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 30%
Yakima	YAK	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 40%

Northeast & Southeast Wash.
https://imgur.com/91j9m3y

County	ID	Ref.	Date	Trending	14-Day Change
Franklin	PAS	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 30%
Spokane	RP	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 90%
Spokane	SPK	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 60%
Walla Walla	WALLA	(1)	May-09	UP	+ 80%
Whitman	PLM	(1)	May-10	UP	+ 10%

Notes:

Solid lines on charts are generated from data provided either by the Washington State Department of Health (WADoH Ref. (1) ), WastewaterSCAN (Verily/WWS (Ref. (3) ), or Biobot (Ref. (4) ).
White diamond dots are from most recent CDC/NWSS (Ref. (2) ) data scaled to supplement missing or out-dated data when available.
Because each of these four agencies use different normalization methods, different smoothing methods, and different averaging/location identifiers, the concentration of virus is not comparable between locations. See reference links at the bottom of this post for more details.
There are 33 sewersheds distributed across 6 charts initially grouped by geographic region then alphabetized by county and sewershed. The data shown is a compilation from WADoH (1), NWSS (2), WWS (3), and Biobot (4). Tables include sewershed ID, Reference ID, Date last sampled, Trend (based on the change between the averages of the two most recent weeks), and 14-Day Change (approx. amount which the trend has increased or decreased).
All data presented are smoothed in some degree to even out inconsistent sampling dates and extreme highs and lows. Most sewersheds are sampled 1-3 times a week and are published within a week. Some locations are "late" reporting by 10 days or more so be sure to note your sewershed's "Date" in the table or graph. Locations that are more than two weeks old will have "n/a" listed under Trend to indicate there it is out of date.
For further information on the many variables that affect virus concentrations in WADoH generated data please refer to the "Learn More" link on the Washington State Department of Health Wastewater Dashboard.

References with links to details on y-axis units, normalization protocols, data limitations, and sampling methods:

• (1) WADoH and click "Learn More"
• (2) CDC/NWSS
• (3) Verily/WWS and here
• (4) Biobot

Successor : u/Intel81994
Hi,
I first found this subreddit and Neville's works in 2018 so I thought I'd share my success/experiences.
I've never posted here, only lurked... daily. I often see people post tiny wins in here like manifesting a test result or a few hundred dollars. I don't see many huge wins except occasionally, or multi-year life changing creations.
Well, I'm not where I want to be bc my goals have gotten a lot bigger, but I've come a long way and finding this work in 2018 changed my life so I want to share with you how.
Not to discourage, but small wins are nothing compared to the deep life changes and incredible abundance you can create in knowing who you really are - just think - there are people out there, several, who own $10M+ houses, multi-millionaires, many came from nothing.
I'm not saying that's the only thing worth striving for or even the source of joy, of course. But my point is anything you want, someone else out there has done it, they are just humans like myself and you.
So here's how my life turned around since 2018 and what I created. The HOW I did so is no different than what you already read on this sub every day.
Neville has been my favorite teacher and this is the MAIN sub I have read over the last few years. I own all of his books and have read them several times.
I regard his methods as most influential for me. This may come off as some motivational story but truth is I use Neville's methods daily and always try to understand and control my beliefs to grow.
Here is how my life changed completely after DOING the work:

• MONEY/TRAVEL : I went from -50k in debt running my own online fitness coaching business at my lowest point not knowing how I would pay rent (long story but I was young and not skilled enough in business at this time to really build a team and 7 figure business like I wanted),

to acquiring amazing skills being an intrapreneur working in a small startup online with a terrific mentor (I manifested this exact position with SATS), traveled the world a crazy amount in the exact places I had wanted to and met a ton of cool people (SATS), over 27 countries now, and grew my net worth to over 250k from 2018-2021.
To my current goals, this is really nothing now and I now surround myself with people doing a ton more than me. So I'm not preaching here, it's just levels to the game right.
I now work professionally in the crypto industry, but also have skills and knowledge to a few types of online businesses in the consulting & marketing space, as well as make money from markets/trading, which is a great vehicle because there are effectively no limits.
I can live anywhere I want, have plenty of cushion and money to live mostly how I want (have larger goals now), have time freedom as well, and most of all, love growth and feel great striving for more. I did SATS to get my current gig.
I've also been trading the last 2 years and no it's not easy, in fact you're competing against algorithms and the best minds in the world so the learning curve is quite steep.
Trading is not easy money, but the potential is there. Besides, trading is just one vehicle, it's not value-additive to the market like businesses are, so I believe it's best used in conjunction with a business/job, and investing longer term is better.
Anyway I turned <40k into ~350K in crypto, and a separate stock portfolio last year.
And yes a lot of that crypto growth was market timing and luck with everything going on, monetary policy and all, and I know people who turned less into several million and also plenty who got liquidated and lost millions. I still spent a lot of time and skill to create that, point is I created all of it in various forms.

• FITNESS/HEALTH: I achieved a more fit and better body than 98% of men have. This was a result of hard work plus these methods and was in 2018 when I decided to undergo a bodybuilding prep for a photoshoot. Great size, leanness, abs, I had been lifting for years but never gotten this in shape.

It was not easy, but I looked incredible, and the exact city/water background scene I had visualized for the photos happened. You can scroll to my IG posts from early 2018 for pics proof.
My health is impeccable and I've for sure made other physical changes, and I think I somehow changed my gf's looks to become better over time too. She was always quite cute though. I'm still very much in shape but now do yoga daily for last few years, as well as lifting.

• LOCATION/LIVING: I manifested the EXACT view I used to visualize in the center of my major city, with a gorgeous view of the ocean and city both, for a great price and have lived here for last 3 years now. In a luxury high rise. I can see ships and yachts right outside my balcony every day. It's literally grander than I even knew to imagine just 5 years ago.
  
• MORE FINANCE: Over the last 2 years my investments and more were doing so well sometimes - not always - that I often was able to have some months making 20-40k, point is I was not worried about work.
  

I also believe parallel realities are real and I used to visualize Bitcoin going to 50k back in 2019 when it had stayed below <10k for 2 years. This was not all due to bitcoin, but rather all sorts of investments, but yes crypto as well.
Some was luck, some was skill and work. All was my creation. I also got quite decent at trading and managing a portfolio that I not only managed to publicly call the exact day of the market TOP in november 2021 but also sniped the bottom in July. Intuition plus knowledge.
So I kept this money, it is not bleeding out in my portfolio with the market. I've devoted a LOT into mastering this craft but again, self concept and Neville helped.
I got hacked for 60k-70k a few months back and chose to give it new meaning and manifested a career change to crypto industry, landing a position making over 10k per month (I'm not happy with this at my current standards of income, but I'm grateful), that I am growing to 20k per month of active income now with other streams.
What's interesting in my recent career manifestation is I decided I want a position that basically pays me to do what I already do (I was independently researching and managing a multi-6 figure crypto portfolio... over a quarter million dollars combined money that I was managing. )
I now get paid a full time 6 fig salary to do nothing extra from what I was already doing and barely work on the actual job with plenty of time for other stuff.
I just decided it was done and that's it. Also of course it's remote... knowing what I know, I will only consider remote jobs (never worked in a physical office and I've actually never had a w2 job before this, always doing sales and stuff or my own thing).
I have been working on increasing my standard to 25k per month minimum of active income generation. Had a lot of ideas come through. I’m just not the type to have a job I think but I have to figure out what I can build again.
Compared to who I want to be at a later date that’s also nothing much. Again, levels to the game.
Now also working on growing a business in this space. This hack event was pretty traumatic but I now see how I 100% manifested it. And I can choose to also create something far greater out of the event now.
With every job I've ever had, I've never worked in an office. I've only ever been remote or online because this is the only thing I was willing to accept. Being a digital nomad has been my norm since I graduated college.
Be specific in what you want and do not settle.
I went to a top 5 US public university and even manifested myself to lead a large pre-med club on campus (I was a pre med student) before I knew Neville. I'm now very glad I chose to go my own route instead of medicine for several reasons beyond scope of this post but anyway.

• SP: Manifested my SP (gf) back in 2018 and we have a great relationship going on 6 years now (together since 2016). I focus more on self love and feeling I AM God rather than seeking it externally. My consciousness and inner connection is my source of sustenance.
  
• Honestly there are so many other crazy little things I can't possibly keep track. Every day I have synchronicities like crazy still. I don't give them much meaning but just take it to mean that I am aligned.
  

My best mental model/tips

• Delude yourself into knowing that imagination is MORE real than the 3d. The 3d is 'old news.' Meaning it's a shadow world. The real creation is happening in your imagination, and there is a time lag in this physical world.

Live in your imagination and tune out anything that does not serve keeping you in an optimal state where you feel in control. The more you focus on things that are meant to distract you or displease you, which state do you create from?

• I do SATS during the day, works fine for me, I don't think it matters much if day/night, but you need to do it. Follow a guided hypnosis session to get deeper into trance first if it helps.
  
• Act and trust deeply that life is leading you to what you want, and the meaning you give to events is literally what molds your future. Choose empowering meanings. Stop being a victim.
  

Make a resolve to never think of yourself as a victim of forces out there, the economy, evil people, whatever it is. You want to control your reality then act like it internally.

• Make a daily routine checklist and stick to it so you internally feel in control of your reality. Mine is: SATS or revision, meditate or breathwork, EFT or writing, cold shower, no phone in the morning, wake at 6am, and of course I exercise daily in some form. I use a spreadsheet to make sure I hit my routines for the day so I don't be a victim but rather stay in control. This is critical for me.
  
• As long as you occupy the realms of consciousness that you want, the result WILL come via downloads and hunches and thoughts, and insane physical things will happen that will 'seem like it would have happened anyway' so don't worry about the how.
  

Random Musings
The thing with manifesting is we sometimes take a passive route and wait for things to happen to us (and sure this is fine and still works), but think- if you don't grow your mental, emotional, skills container to deal with large amounts of money, or a team, or skills to sell and market and manage money... if you suddenly get 500K or 1M, how are you going to hold on to it?
If you lack personal power and execution skills, say you suddenly win 5M from the lottery, do you have the skills to keep it and make decisions at a level that can fluctuate several millions? It's stressful and requires thinking completely differently.
You have to 'stress test' your consciousness and expand your container.
I know that because I got hacked (stolen) ~70k it means nothing because the version of me who makes multi-7 figures a year deals with fluctuations of multi-6 figures in his portfolio all the time, it's part of the game. and I HAVE dealt with 6 figure fluctuations in my portfolio before this hack so it wasn't super new in that sense.
You know time is not real, it's all happening now, Creation is already finished, so you should also know that the way to 'hack' time is making decisions from a place of the future version of yourself you already are.
Make a commitment to stop playing small and settling for crumbs. Why would you get hung up on the one limited way your ego thinks that abundance has to manifest in your life, or love, instead of just feeling the emotions themselves, knowing it's done, and letting your life color it in in grander ways than you could have imagined.
Funny little manifestations and things happen literally every day that I just take it as reflections of me being in my creative power.
Something crazy/funny that happened was on our last trip, I told my girlfriend 'hey, how funny and weird would it be to see a parrot meowing?' - then next day we sit at a cafe and there is a parrot in a cage outside, meowing loudly. The most bizarre manifestation, I didn't even intend for it, just asked hey would it not be funny. Things like this happen so often, I can't keep track.
There is nothing new to learn. Just do the techniques and do self care rituals and get lost in your work. Feel the feeling of utter abundance and freedom now and it will happen.
We live in an advanced economy with the internet, it has never been easier to start or fund a business compared to even 50 years ago (see interest rates), distribution has never been easier, so if you know these tools, why would you not create the biggest dream you can imagine? Why settle for a free $200?
I realize there are levels people go through however so I don't mean to belittle, but now that I have been through so much and grown, I know there is nothing separating myself from multi millions and VC's and creators of large companies except belief, work, and time in this reality.
I have the knowledge, belief, and skills to not need a job if I don't want one. I can instead offer something to the market and be independent.
I'm telling you this stuff works and is sustainable. You can be as specific as you want and get whatever you want, and trust that with the turns life takes you through, it is a BRIDGE meant to turn you into the person to get and sustain what you say you want. Decide it and it is so.
I am someone who is a first generation American immigrant, my parents moved to the US from India when I was 5 and we had very little here. I grew up 'lower' middle class, and didn't have the best money programming from parents, but I always did well in school.
I KNOW I am going to be the first multi millionaire in my family. It's all in how you think about yourself/self concept and the work you do from that mindset. Do actions and shift your environment in accordance with who you want to be.
I always splurge on self care now and do things like fly business class or pay more for a better room because that's who I internally am. Just find a way to produce more and let it flow instead of shrinking yourself to be someone you’re not in your 4D
I don't try to scrimp and penny pinch, I let money flow. Even though getting stolen 70k was traumatic, oh well, I chose to give it a better, empowering meaning and my reality shifted.
That's all I have to say. Do the work. Stop procrastinating with learning. All the teachers, scripture, it's all the same Truth at the core. Learning is fine because you learn different mental models at different points of your life but you need to do the work.
I've been fortunate to not only have explored TONS of teachers and books in this realm, you name it I've probably read it or have a copy, I've also HAD mentors and WORKED directly under multi millionaires older and more experienced than me who know this work very well and knew Neville specifically, and it's the real deal. I did sales for someone in the online coaching space was was very well off and had decades of success and spoke of Neville very often, it was really cool.
Proof of the Law
I don't know what more proof you need that the Law is real. All religions throughout eternity have known this, Neville just distilled the same Truth through his own methods that work really well in my opinion and I personally love his interpretation of scripture.
The most successful people in the world are usually consciously (and some unconsciously) doing these same actions. Just do the work and focus on it coming from a good place of knowing that it's done. You don't need to know HOW but you just need to know the plane is going to somehow land one day.
I just come back to Neville every time, because his methods are simple and philosophies work well for how I think. I've done tons of psychedelic mushrooms over the years which luckily made me very open to this sort of thinking, before that I was very rigid and too '3d scientific' minded in my thinking. Keep in mind there is actually nothing 'unscientific' about the Law... modern science has its own limitations in that we cannot measure many things.
What used to be called magic in years past is now under the realm of science right? I'm not saying I don't value logic and science... I have a science degree from a top 5 university.
I'm just saying your ego mind which wants to keep you stuck and surviving uses the excuse of logic and science when that's actually not the full scope of how reality works, we are incredibly limited in our conscious understanding of reality.... we don't even know what we're doing here on a floating rock in infinite space and we can hardly see much of the light spectrum as it is.
So remember that when your ego tries to believe in your limitations and the 3d reality only. You being here is magic that even the most advanced science does not know the answer to. Do scientists know fundamentally why there is something at all instead of nothing?
Anyway, one more thing is I've never been shy of making relatively bold and fast decisions, investing in a mentor (for business) and just generally betting on myself.
Because getting around people who think bigger than you and don't settle is a hack and it's worth every penny. There is a reason millionaires hang with other millionaires.
I'm not saying to cut people out of your life (unless toxic) but rather to seek proximity and get around winners or pay to join some mastermind in business or whatever you need to do to network in your realm.
Just last week I invested 7.5k for get into a network of high performing young male entrepreneurs just because I want a better network in real life and work on business tactics and execution. When I was 23 I invested 25k that I did not have at the time (I made it happen and earned it back) to get a business mentor. So I use all of this in combo with Neville's methods primarily. I really like revision method as well.
The act of DECISION literally creates a parallel reality and becomes the new bridge to your manifestation.

I feel so bad for Sarah Newlin and I’m sick of people defending how the writers treated her and the fate they gave her as Pam and Eric’s slave. So here's an essay deconstructing some common talking points against her.
The Sarah Newlin-Hitler argument doesn’t hold up:

• I’ve seen people compare Sarah to Hitler due to her ambitions of genocide towards vampires and placing of them in a prison-camp. Here’s the thing; You can not compare the Vampires of True Blood to a real-life oppressed class because Vampires are inherently and legitimately harmful to humans; They literally have to feed on people to survive. Couple this aspect of their nature with the fact that we consistently see that many of them can’t or won’t control their urges and blatantly disregard the value of human life, or in fact, enjoy harming human life, and it is completely reasonable for people like Sarah to fear or dehumanize Vampires. If pigs could imprison us in a camp for slaughtering and eating them, would it be fair for us to villainize the pigs? No, because we as a species make them into fuckin' bacon, pork, and sausage everyday. The show tries to push a vague allegory about how anti-Vampire discrimination is supposedly akin to racism, homophobia, etc. but this simply does not work. No real life minority inherently harms empowered classes like Vampires do Humans.

Other characters are anti-vampire and don’t suffer like Sarah does:

• Hitler argument aside, it’s also important to note that Sarah didn’t even start the campaign to exterminate vampires, Governor Burrell did. Yet, Burrell dies fairly quickly by Bill’s hands. Contrastingly, Sarah is tortured for the rest of her natural life.
• Steve Newlin, who led the Church of the Sun until he got turned into a vampire, also gets a painful but quick death, even rubbing his gayness for Jason in Sarah's face as a last laugh. Despite Eric killing him, Steve still has some sort of agency over his ending and it’s even portrayed as a triumphant moment because he uses his final words to insult and get back at his “evil” ex-wife, even though he was literally just as, if not more, “evil” and actively anti-Vampire as her before being turned.
• Shit, let’s even look at Jason. In Season 2, he indoctrinates himself into the Church of the Sun and wants to exterminate vampires just like Sarah does. He also consistently swings back and forth between empathizing with vampires and wanting to destroy their species throughout the overall course of the series, like when he goes full vampire-hunter in Season 5 and 6. The only difference between Sarah and Jason is that she actually had the means to enact her anti-vampire plans through being the wife of Steve Newlin and side-ho of Governor Burrell.
  • Both Jason and Sarah are impressionable people with underdeveloped moral compasses. But, because Jason’s the main character’s brother, and apparently just too lovably dumb to think for himself, the show gives him a pass and allows him opportunities to learn from his mistakes without serious consequences.

Sarah's fate is cruel in the greater context of her arc:

• The writers allow Sarah to escape retribution when the Vampires overthrow Burrell’s camp in season 6, just to extend her torture into the next season.
  • Sarah goes into hiding and finds peace and growth after assuming her false-identity of Noomi, only for her new life to be brutally uprooted when the Yakonomo Corporation, along with Eric and Pam, come after her. Sarah has her new boyfriend and later her entire fucking family killed at a point in her life where she is shown to be a genuinely changed person who regrets her past.
  • Sarah visits Amber, her estranged vampire sister who’s infected with Hep V, apologizes for disowning her, and heals her with her cure-infused blood. When Eric tracks Amber down, she even insists that Sarah is a good person at heart and begs him to not hurt her only to be staked and killed by him.
• Sarah is humanized for so much of Season 6 and is given multiple hope spots, only for her to be subjected to a cruel and torturous fate.
  • Eric and Pam secretly keep Sarah prisoner at Fangtasia, where vampires pay to feed on her, while also managing a wildly successful, lucrative, and legitimate corporation that distributes synthetic versions of Sarah’s blood as a cure to the Hep V pandemic. They replace the Yakonomo Corporation and the True Blood product itself, and live happily ever after as Sarah is doomed to rot in their club’s basement for the rest of her natural life, long forgotten by the world. Slowly going insane, Sarah is haunted by visions of Steve (as if to imply that she wronged him when the reality was that he was an abusive and cruel husband to her before he became a vampire that she imprisoned at her camp), and when her hallucination of him tauntingly asks her what she’s thankful for on Thanksgiving, she replies “nothing,” before bursting into tears. Sarah is truly broken and miserable, meanwhile we see shots of all the other characters living happy lives and communing for Thanksgiving dinner as peaceful music plays in the background.
  • Pam’s actress said in an interview, “[Eric and Pam] are gazillionaires, Sarah Newlin is being tortured. It was like the Old West: the bad guy gets it, and the good guy gets away with the girl and everything.” We’re not meant to feel bad for Sarah, but to revel in her pain and feel fuckin' righteous about her torment. We’re supposed to feel like Eric and Pam are part of the “good guy” group while Sarah, the “baddie” gets punished. But that simply isn’t accurate.
    • Pam and Eric, despite being part of the protagonists in the show, are evil, sadistic vampires. They enjoy causing pain to humans and satiating their blood lust by slaughtering innocent people. They’re disgusting rapist-murderers, and have been for over a century. The least malicious relationship they have with a human is with their Fangtasia bartender, Ginger, who they have emotionally manipulated and abused for decades. They are not “good” people, or “heroes” despite the narrative expecting us to disregard their vile nature that's been explicitly shown and alluded to time and time again. So, where’s their comeuppance? Where’s their torture? Why is Karma only reserved for Sarah Newlin, a religiously indoctrinated woman who has been around bad influences her entire life?

I use two different fonts with relative atlases in my project (one for Japanese, one for alphabet languages).
I recently added French localization to my project, and I noticed that the font I was using was missing all the accented characters. So, I modified the font myself, put it in the project, then used the font asset creator using the modified source font file, and a character set text file containing all the characters in the project. The atlas gets generated, and it works perfectly within Unity.
The issue is, when I build the project, the font atlas gets reverted to its original state (without the additional characters). This happens before building (if I try the build it doesn’t have the additional characters).
I use PlasticSCM but I doubt that’s the source of the issue (it happens even if PlasticSCM is not open). I’m on Unity 2021.3.6f1
On a similar but unrelated note, whenever I have to add characters to the Japanese font atlas (which by the way, has no issues when built), some of the settings in the font asset always go back to their original value (specifically: scale, ascent line and baseline are the ones I need to change every time). This is more of a nuisance compared to the other issue, but I feel that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

Cigarettes and rebellion have always gone hand-in-hand, and in an age of cigarette packet-sized health warnings, now more than ever, smoking a fag says: 'I do not give a fuck.' But if Brandon Flowers is hoping to strike a seditious pose by sparking up at the start of the interview, it's not going according to plan. The Killers' frontman is on all fours rooting through the junk that carpets the anteroom at the band's rehearsal space. "Has anyone seen my lighter?" he asks, rocking back on his heels. The question hangs in the air while Brandon cocks his head, waiting for an answer like a meerkat listening for a predator. Twenty-five years old and with a delicate bone structure, there's something almost dainty about him. Receiving no response, he returns to his search. "Oh, Jeez," he sighs. "I had it just a minute ago."
It's a scene that emphatically does not suggest a rebel without a cause. The mess isn't helping. The Killers' HQ - an industrial unit sandwiched between a construction supplier and the offices of a housing development just off Dean Martin Drive in West Las Vegas - is ankle-deep in designer clothing. A Dior Homme suit lies crumpled by the door; there's a pile of shoes topped like a sundae by a pair of Marc Jacobs trainers; and anyone wishing to enter the shoebox room the band use as an office must negotiate a mountain of discarded jeans. Many items are identifiable as coming from the wardrobe of Hot Fuss, The Killers' hugely successful 2004 debut album - triple platinum in the UK with two weeks at Number One and five million sold worldwide. Look! There are the shirts, ties and suit jackets they wore when they thrilled Glastonbury 2005 with indie rock anthems Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me. That was the crowning moment of a two-and-a-half year tour that finally concluded in October of last year. It seems that after playing that final date in Miami, they returned to Vegas and shrugged off their image onto the floor of this bland white box.
Now a fine layer of dust covers the dead clothes. The Killers have no further use for white tuxedos on their second album, Sam's Town. Today, Brandon wears a black polo shirt, black pin-stripe waistcoat, black jeans and black boots. Where there used to be a layer of foundation, there is now a beard - an untrimmed beard at that. Dave Keuning (30, guitar), Mark Stoermer (29, bass) and Ronnie Vannucci (29, drums) all echo Brandon's black ensemble. Ronnie has added Aviator shades and a handlebar moustache for a dash of motorcycle cop, Dave's frizzy bubble of hair gives him a Marc Bolan-ish air, and there's something very teenage about Mark's scuffed Vans.
Short of walking around wearing sandwich boards saying, "Our new record is a bit heavier than the last one," The Killers couldn't hope to communicate that message more effectively. And they have gained some musical girth on Sam's Town. The pop hooks that made Hot Fuss so irresistible survive intact - see the ringing guitar riffs on first single When You Were Young - but there's a newfound punchiness, coupled with an epic sweep. The minor-to-major uplifts on Bones are fabulously dramatic, the coda to Why Do I Keep Counting? thrillingly intense. Comparisons to Bruce Springsteen have been made. If they overstate the case a little, they are at leaset qualitatively accurate. The Killers are back and this time it's serious - they've got the bootlace ties to prove it.
"Hey, it says here that Springsteen's headlining Glastonbury next year," shouts Ronnie, who's flicking through the NME. He nods sagely at the page without looking up.
"Really?" asks Dave, nicknamed Crazy Dave on account of his alledgedly volatile nature.
"The Boss is headlining one night, we're playing second on the bill the next night and Kylie's headlining the Sunday," says Brandon, charging like a bull through Michael Eavis' as-yet-unannounced line-up with what subsequently proves to be a characteristic gaucheness.
But that lighter is proving elusive. This being America, none of the people hurrying to-and-fro prepping the world for the release of Sam's Town smokes. Manager Robert Reynolds - Bobby Rey to the band - barks into his mobile, booking his band onto eye-wateringly demanding tours. "We're going to make a lot of money," he cackles to himself before switching calls to make a series of stern pronouncements on legal matters. Dave, Mark and Ronnie disappear for a jam session. Artwork is approved, B-sides are decided on and schedules are hammered out.
"I can't find it," Brandon says, finally. But he's not going to be denied the opportunity to underline The Killers reinvention with a puff of smoke. "Let's go to the gas station. I'll have to buy one. It's too busy to talk here anyway."
+
Brandon's black (of course) Volkswagen Touraeg four-wheel drive is barrelling down West Flamingo Road into town. "I was a bell boy there," he says, pointing out of the driver's window at the stucco facade of the Gold Coast casino. "I was working there when we were signed."
Coming from Las Vegas, it is perhaps inevitable that casinos play a big part in The Killers' story; not only is Sam's Town named after one, it was recorded in one, too.
The band began writing songs while on the road with Hot Fuss, turning up early for soundchecks to run through new ideas. On a trip home to Vegas, George Maloof, a hotelier known for cultivating famous friends, invited them to record the album in the new studio he'd built at The Palms, his flagship hotel-cum-gambling den. When the tour finished in October 2005, they returned to Vegas and spent five month finessing the songs they'd sketched out on the road. Then, in February, they decampled to the third floor studio at The Palms and recorded Sam's Town over 11 weeks.
Producer Flood (U2, Depeche Mode) encouraged them to experiment. They overdubbed, fiddled with synthesizers and played with new equipment. It took them five weeks to get the backing vocals right. The band sang the harmonies, then double-tracked them four times. The end result recalls Queen wondering, "Is this is the real life? Is this just fantasy?" When Ronnie, a trained classical percussionist, brought some kettledrums down, eyebrows were raised; but the fabulously bombastic coda on Why Do I Keep Counting? vindicates his indulgence.
"That's kind of the Ben Hur of the album," he says. He's not wrong. Sam's Town is a record on an epic scale. "Yeah, it has drama," he continues. "But, at the same time, I think it's a little more exposed than Hot Fuss. It's a little more naked. Last time it was about a lot of fictional things." By "fictional", Ronnie means that Hot Fuss wore its predominantly British influences for all to see. Brandon's taste in music is rabidly Anglophile - he constantly references The Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division - and it showed. By contrast, Sam's Town is an unequivocally American record. The lyrical imagery is pure American dream - cars, girls, wide-open spaces and escaping to a better life. "We're burning down the highway skyline/On the back of a hurricane that started turning/When you were young," sings Brandon on When You Were Young. That's the basis of the Springsteen comparisons then, though the lack of pathos more closely recalls another blue-collar rocker from New Jersey - Jon Bon Jovi.
The phrase "this town" recurs throughout the album, and it's always receding into the distance as The Killers escape to a new life. "This town was made for passing through/I never did get along with everybody else," sings Brandon on This River Is Wild. On Read My Mind he "never really gave up on breaking out of this two-star town", while on the title track he offers something of an explanation: "Nobody ever had a dream round here."
"With the first record, there was this feeling that there was this world out there that we didn't know," says Mark later in the day. Before The Killers, he studied philosophy: now he's their quiet one. "We wanted to get out and away from this and be somewhere else. We hadn't had a lot of experience - hadn't travelled much - then we were gone for three years. We didn't sit down and say that we wanted to make a record about how we're glad to be home, but that's what happened naturally."
It's not an angsty record. The Killers have already escaped with Hot Fuss, and, having done so, they view the experience fondly now they're back. There's a mistiness to Brandon's eyes as he explains how the album got it's name.
"Sam's Town is a casino on the edge of Vegas," he says. "I grew up in Henderson, which is out on the way to the Hoover Dam. My mom and dad lived in a trailer park, and my dad used to hitchhike up and down Boulder Highway, which is the only way you could get to Vegas. Sam's Town was the first thing you saw on your way in to town. So, when you're driving down Boulder Highway from Henderson, I always thought you finally knew you were getting somewhere when you saw Sam's Town. It was kind of like a beacon."
"It's not a completely American album," contines Brandon. "We still have our English influence, but we're also from the Wild West. Somehow we've managed to unify all that on this album. it's just such a perfect resemblence of what we are."
At the petrol station, Brandon rummages through the glove box looking for change to buy a lighter. "This is a great album," he says, pointing at Highway Companion, the latest from iconic American rocker Tom Petty. "I've always been a big fan of his. He's such a great American artist."
Yes, Brandon: we get the point.
+
When Brandon finally lights his cigarette, he smokes it awkwardly, like a child mimicking something he's seen the grown-ups doing. However, when he cheerfully admits that, "I feel the same mentally as I did when I was 12," it's not a knowing nod to the fact that he sometimes behaves like a loveably precocious child, but a reference to an unusually comprehensive grounding in pop music at an early age.
When Brandon sings about "this town", he doesn't mean Las Vegas. He means Nephi, Utah or Henderson, Nevada, where he spent his childhood. His parents are Mormon and he is the youngest of six children. "I was a surprise," he says. "I've got a 42-year-old sister." If he was issues about his "surprise" status, he chooses to gloss over them. "It turned out perfect because my brother was a teenager when I was a kid," he says. "He would bring home things like Rattle And Hum by U2 and I would watch it. I remember he bought Live In Dallas by Morrissey. It was always him watching these things, or his door was shut and you'd hear The Head On The Door by The Cure blasting through the house and rattling the walls."
The Killers were formed when Brandon answered an advert Dave had placed in a local paper in late 2002. Dave cited Oasis as a big influence; Brandon had seen them play recently and responded; and, as Dave has said in previous interviews: "He was the only person to reply to my ad who wasn't a complete freak." However, the band was born in Brandon's brothers bedroom.
"His room was like a shrine," enthuses Brandon. "It was a holy place. I wish I could show you a picture of it. It was covered in posters. There'd be a big picture of Elvis wearing a bow tie that just said 'The Smiths' [the artwork for The Smiths 1987 single Shoplifters Of The World Unite]. You had The Cure wearing face paint [the artwork to The Cure's 1985 single In Between Days] - all that kind of stuff. I remember Morrissey being on the cover of the NME, with the halo [from 1985] - stuff like that. You just wanted to know about these people 'cause they were so cool. My brother seemed like such a cool person. But he was a teenager, so he wasn't going to be that nice to me, a kid."
Brandon was fascinated by his brother's collection of music, magazines and posters, but he was denied access to them - officially, at least. "I would sneak in," he says. "I knew he'd be angry if he found out, but I would go in as soon as he left the house." For a long time Brandon was too scared to actually play anything. "That didn't come 'til later. I just used to go in there because I liked it. Then I got to the point where I'd actually take a tape out and put it in. It took more guts to do that."
It was a life-changing moment. "I was ten and the first song I played was Sing Your Life by Morrissey. I remember dancing about to it."
The lyrics to Sing Your Life include the lines, "Sing your life/Just walk right up to the microphone/And name all the things that you love/All the things that you loathe." It's intriguing to wonder what Morrissey makes of the neophyte he inspired with these lines.
Eventually, Brandon inherited his brother's tape collection. "It was around the same time CDs started coming out in a big way. He started buying CDs and gave me his tapes. And that was it: it took off from there. I got a hundred of the best albums - all the New Order, all the Morrissey, all The Smiths, The Beatles. I started buying posters. I went to see The Cure in concert. It was just kind of a continuation of my brother. And it was nice because, though my parents were strict, they were already used to it from him. There was no, 'My dad doesn't understand me,' or any of that kind of stuff. My mum likes The Smiths."
Brandon was 13 and his favourite band was late-'70s/early-'80s American new wavers The Cars, and particularly their jaw-droppingly catchy 1979 single Just What I Needed.
"I wouldn't exist without that song," he says. "That was the one. I remember driving around with my mum when I was 13, and we're living in Nephi - a really small town - and I felt so cool when I put that song on. Like: 'I have something that none of these kids I'm going to middle school with tomorrow have.' That excitement is what music's about, isn't it? That's why I understand the mentality of people that don't like us because we've sold so many records. I used to like it when no one else knew about a band. So I get that - I do."
+
Brandon's first band was called Blush Response. It was never going to work out. Not because he refused to move to Los Angeles with them, but because he is utterly - comically - shameless. He's given to making outrageously boastful statements like: "It's not like the '60s, '70s and '80s now. There are only a few bands around that are really good, that just do it. I mean, there's what, five or six of us?"
For the record, in Brandon's estimation, those bands are Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, of course, The Killers.
"I don't want people to think I'm lumping myself with other people just to make us sound cool," he says. Really? It sort of sounds like you are. But he just steamrolls through it. "Yeah, but you know what I mean," he says, grinning at his own cheekiness. He's so disgracefully forward you can't help but laugh along with him - Oh you are awful, Brandon! But joking aside, The Killers are the most commercially successful of all the bands he mentions.
Later, back at the rehearsal space, the band run through Sam's Town at deafening volume in preparation for the forthcoming tour - first the US, then the world. The infectious, almost contagious, chorus of When You Were Young sounds fabulous, as do the U2-like guitars and Twin Peaks synths of Read My Mind. Meanwhile, Smile Like You Mean It and Somebody Told Me benefit from the newfound harder edge.
They somewhat heavy-handedly underline the new direction by playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Get It On by T Rex. That's the thing: The Killers are not a subtle band. Their songs are like a wet kiss from a girl who's a bit too drunk. They are big and brash, and not everyone loves them for it. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me might go down as well at hip nightclubs as they do on the festival circuit, but the DJs play them with the same guilty look they wear when playing a pop record.
"I hate that," says Brandon. "Like writing a song you can hum somehow cheapens it? It makes me think of this quote by Morrissey. Everybody knows how he read Oscar Wilde, Keats and Yates when he was growing up and that he wanted to be a writer. He was talking to this journalist who asked why he hadn't become a writer, and Morrissey said: 'What I do is more powerful than what you do because I can write down these words and you get it to a melody. How can you beat that?' I'm of the same opinion. I don't understand why a good melody that's memorable is a bad thing."
Being dismissed as pop particular aggrieves Ronnie. "When we first came out we got compared to Duran Duran all the time. Jesus Christ! We got a keyboard player now all of a sudden he's Nick Rhodes! Come on!"
"The people who criticise us for being too poppy don't get it," agrees Mark. "I think that's the problem with a lot of rock music. People are afraid to write a song any more. Either that or they can't. And that attitude hurts music in general. The best bands ever have all written great songs. You can still do it and do it intelligently and it can be original. This isn't a studio creation with a producer writing these songs for us. We're not Avril Lavigne, or something like that. We're a real band writing real songs, just like a punk band would do, except that we write pop songs."
You get the impression that The Killers knack for showboating pop hooks that border on vulgar is inextricably tied up with the brazen side of Brandon's personality. But while his ebullient charisma, not to mention the songs themselves, mitigates his outrageousness, there is a less attractive side to his ego. He has a combative streak. He can't resist taking pot shots at emo bands, notably Fall Out Boy, whith whom The Killers share an A&R man.
Has he heard how many emo kids it takes to change a light bulb? "No." None. They just sit in the dark and cry. It's a full 30 seconds before he stops laughing. When he does he admits: "Yeah, we've had problems with other bands. You know, when you walk in the room it's like..." He whistles the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. "We're like gangs."
And while the other members of the band are diplomatic on the subject of Brandon, you don't have to read too deeply between the lines to conclude that there have been internal issues, too.
"Some people will think Brandon's the big genius," says Dave, visibly bridling. "There are songs, such as Why Do I Keep Counting?, where he's written every note. But there are others, like When You Were Young, that were more of a collaboration - like Mr Brightside, where I had some of the music and Brandon came up with the lyrics. We always have arguments about who wrote what. The truth is that we all help in that process."
When asked how success affected them, Ronnie says: "There were certain things that needed adjusting. When you're on tour for two years, people can get a little needy. It doesn't help that you're surrounded by yes men and everybody's working for you. At times we've had to say, 'Who do you think you are?' to people. No one wears the trousers, but some people would like to. I think if it wasn't for the people in the band kicking each other in the ass... Let's just say there was some ass-kickin'."
It doesn't take a genius to work out whose ass needed kicking most often.
+
It's the following day and The Killers are back at their rehearsal space. The topic of discussion is what to wear in the video for Bones, the second single. It's a big deal: the director is Tim Burton. "I feel like Frank Sinatra when I sing it," announces Brandon. "With maybe a little bit of Morrissey and a little bit of Elvis, too."
Of course he does. But if securing the services of Tim Burton tells you one thing, it's that The Killers are about to get even bigger, perhaps even make the leap to the same level as Coldplay et al. Already stars, they are about to become superstars. Brandon can hardly wait.
"Do you know that Rolling Stone didn't want to put us on the cover last time," he says indignantly. "They didn't think we were stars. We sold five million albums! What more do they want from a band?"
Whatever was required, Brandon would be happy to do most things. "I'll do stuff that some people don't want to do, 'cause I want people to hear the music," he says. However, even he has limits. "The Rolling Stone thing made the record label think: 'What can we do to make them stars?' If I go on vacation with my wife, do they have to send somebody to be there to take pictures of me? Is that how you become a star? I don't want that. I walked down the red carpet one time and I realised I don't like it. But you don't have to walk down the red carpet for people to hear your music. We do still have some of that indie blood running through our veins."
He heads off at a tangent: "When you walk around Liverpool, you think of The Beatles, or you go to Manchester and you think of The Smiths or Oasis. I want you to come to Las Vegas and think of Sam's Town. And I think we've started to capture that, which is a truer version of The Killers, 'cause that's where we're from."
He pauses.
"I used to live across the street from Sam's Town. Maybe it'll be like our Abbey Road where people go to take pictures."
Is that what he'd like?
"I wouldn't mind it," he says, desperately hoping it will come true.
He puts a cigarette between his lips, looks down at his trouser pockets and pats them in search of the lighter he bought yesterday.
"Hey, I don't suppose you've got one?"

So I’m writing a historical fiction set in Roman Judea and one of my characters is a Parthian slave. Having read A Wikipedia article on Zoroastrianism for the basics, I was wondering if anyone can point me to more academic sources on its theology, especially pertaining to the Parthian era. Also, it’s my understanding that there are connections between Zoroastrianism and Judaism and Christianity—at least its early stages. So some sources comparing and contrasting these would be a helpful touch.

Measuring the return on investment (ROI) of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can be challenging due to the diverse nature of CSR activities and their impact on various stakeholders. However, several methods can help businesses effectively measure the ROI of their CSR initiatives:

1. Financial Metrics: Businesses can measure the direct financial impact of CSR initiatives by calculating cost savings, revenue generation, or increased profitability resulting from the initiatives. For example, energy efficiency programs can lead to cost savings through reduced utility bills, while CSR activities that enhance brand reputation can attract more customers and increase sales.
2. Social Impact Metrics: Measuring the social impact of CSR initiatives is essential for understanding their effectiveness. This can include metrics such as the number of beneficiaries reached, improvements in community well-being, or changes in key social indicators (e.g., literacy rates, healthcare access). Surveys, interviews, and focus groups can help gather qualitative data on the social impact of CSR initiatives.
3. Environmental Impact Metrics: For CSR initiatives focused on environmental sustainability, businesses can measure the environmental impact through metrics such as carbon footprint reduction, energy and water conservation, waste diversion, and biodiversity preservation. Environmental audits and third-party certifications can provide credibility to these measurements.
4. Employee Engagement and Retention: CSR initiatives can positively impact employee morale, engagement, and retention. Businesses can measure the effects of CSR on employee satisfaction, productivity, and turnover rates through employee surveys, retention rates, and performance evaluations.
5. Brand Reputation and Customer Perception: Monitoring changes in brand reputation and customer perception can help businesses understand the impact of CSR initiatives on their brand value. Metrics such as brand sentiment analysis, customer surveys, and net promoter scores (NPS) can provide insights into how CSR activities influence consumer behavior and brand loyalty.
6. Stakeholder Feedback and Engagement: Engaging with stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, suppliers, and communities, can provide valuable feedback on the perceived impact of CSR initiatives. Surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder consultations can help businesses gather insights into stakeholder perceptions and expectations regarding CSR.
7. Comparative Analysis: Benchmarking CSR performance against industry peers or competitors can provide context and help businesses evaluate their relative performance. Comparative analysis can involve comparing key performance indicators (KPIs), industry standards, or best practices in CSR reporting and management.
8. Long-Term Value Creation: While some benefits of CSR initiatives may be difficult to quantify in the short term, businesses should consider the long-term value creation potential of CSR activities. This can include factors such as brand resilience, risk mitigation, innovation, and competitive advantage in attracting talent and investment.

By employing a combination of financial, social, environmental, and qualitative metrics, businesses can gain a comprehensive understanding of the ROI of their CSR initiatives and make informed decisions to enhance their impact and sustainability efforts.

As the title states, this is a tale of two troubles.
Trouble 1: my anxiety and my anger issues have a fun time making my actions get a little quirky.
Trouble 2: there’s a girl involved in all of this and I want to be her boyfriend but I don’t want to scare her.
Here’s the background: I’m a plain and simple guy for the most part. I do a little bit of comedy, I’m a musician, and I’m very clingy when I find someone that I can boast of how they make me feel safe/happy. In more recent times, this girl and I have been avoiding each other after we had a few falling outs. It’s hard to think about, but it’s constantly on my mind. When we first met, it was because she was doing some work for me as a thumbnail artist. We go to the same school, so I’d pay her after classes. Eventually we fell for each other and she wanted me to take her out on a date. I prepared everything, I made sure to ask friends how they did things so I could compare and contrast how things could go for me.
A day or two goes by and then we’re in a situation where we are linking arms and being goofy (it’s in our natures), I felt confident enough to share some candy with her, and so I did. She appreciated the gesture, but then later she texted me saying she didn’t want to move forward with things and so she was going to take a few days to process. She didn’t say she wanted to move backwards, but in my head and in my heart; it felt like she wanted to be as far from me as possible (I suppose that was my anxiety?). I couldn’t bear it and so I was profusely trying to revive things when I kept kicking myself about it.
Eventually, time passes and she reaches out again to try and test the waters. Things go well at first; but then something happened to my grandfather and I was constantly sitting down at random places trying to hold myself together. I guess it looked different to her because she told me one day that she felt uncomfortable with how I was acting, so I did my best to hide myself away from her. I tried being better, but my frustrations and my fears got the best of me, and so we stopped talking all together. I texted her an apology twice and even sent her an invite to go see something that I was performing in to let her know how I felt. She must’ve felt panicked and so she removed me from her contact lists and the like.
Next year, I became rather peculiar and always brought sweet treats to school. I would hand them out to all the kids, but I was very hesitant to share with her, and eventually she texted me again to say thanks, and we had a little conversation from there. I didn’t know why she bothered texting me if she didn’t feel comfortable being in contact with me, but she did and later she told me why. We had a falling out. We had two or three more falling outs, I gave out more candy and included her in the mix… to this day, she’s the first person I think of when I give out candy (my priest told me to do this as an act of penance), but we don’t talk so much… and I want to make things right between us.
TL;DR:
There’s a girl who has seriously affected my anxiety and anger issues, and I’ve been horrible too; but I want to make things right.

II. The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time
...
Social Influences on Narcissism
Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure. In Freud’s time, hysteria and obsessional neurosis carried to extremes the personality traits associated with the capitalist order at an earlier stage in its development - acquisitiveness, fanatical devotion to work, and a fierce repression of sexuality. In our time, the preschizophrenic, borderline, or personality disorders have attracted increasing attention, along with schizophrenia itself. This “change in the form of neuroses has been observed and described since World War II by an ever-increasing number of psychiatrists.” According to Peter L. Giovacchini, “Clinicians are constantly faced with the seemingly increasing number of patients who do not fit current diagnostic categories” and who suffer not from “definitive symptoms” but from “vague, ill-defined complaints.” “When I refer to ‘this type of patient,’” he writes, “practically everyone knows to whom I am referring.” The growing prominence of “character disorders” seems to signify an underlying change in the organization of personality, from what has been called inner-direction to narcissism.
Allen Wheelis argued in 1958 that the change in the “patterns of neuroses” fell “within the personal experience of older psychoanalysts,” while younger ones “become aware of it from the discrepancy between the older descriptions of neuroses and the problems presented by the patients who come daily to their offices. The change is from symptom neuroses to character disorders.” Heinz Lichtenstein, who questioned the additional assertion that it reflected a change in personality structure, nevertheless wrote in 1963 that the “change in neurotic patterns” already constituted a “well-known fact.” In the seventies, such reports have become increasingly common. “It is not accident,” Herbert Hendin notes, “that at the present time the dominant events in psychoanalysis are the rediscovery of narcissism and the new emphasis on the psychological significance of death.” “What hysteria and the obsessive neuroses were to Freud and his early colleagues…at the beginning of this century,” writes Michael Beldoch, “the narcissistic disorders are to the workaday analyst in these last few decades before the next millennium. Today’s patients by and large do not suffer from hysterical paralyses of the legs or hand-washing compulsions; instead it is their very psychic selves that have gone numb or that they must scrub and rescrub in an exhausting and unending effort to come clean.” These patients suffer from “pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep disturbance of self-esteem.” Burness E. Moore notes that narcissistic disorders have become more and more common. According to Sheldon Bach, “You used to see people coming in with hand-washing compulsions, phobias, and familiar neuroses. Now you see mostly narcissists.” Gilbert J. Rose maintains that the psychoanalytic outlook, “inappropriately transplanted from analytic practice” to everyday life, has contributed to “global permissiveness” and the “over-domestication of instinct,” which in turn contributes to the proliferation of “narcissistic identity disorders.” According to Joel Kovel, the stimulation of infantile cravings by advertising, the usurpation of parental authority by the media and the school, and the rationalization of inner life accompanied by the false promise of personal fulfillment, have created a new type of “social individual.” “The result is not the classical neuroses where an infantile impulse is suppressed by patriarchal authority, but a modern version in which impulse is stimulated, perverted and given neither an adequate object upon which to satisfy itself nor coherent forms of control…. The entire complex, played out in a setting of alienation rather than direct control, loses the classical form of symptom - and the classical therapeutic opportunity of simply restoring an impulse to consciousness.”
The reported increase in the number of narcissistic patients does not necessarily indicate that narcissistic disorders are more common than they used to be, in the population as a whole, or that they have become more common than the classical conversion neurosis. Perhaps they simply come more quickly to psychiatric attention. Ilza Veith contends that “with the increasing awareness of conversion reactions and the popularization of psychiatric literature, the ‘old-fashioned’ somatic expressions of hysteria have become suspect among the more sophisticated classes, and hence most physicians observe that obvious conversion symptoms are now rarely encountered and, if at all, only among the uneducated.” The attention given to character disorders in recent clinical literature probably makes psychiatrists more alert to their presence. But this possibility by no means diminishes the importance of psychiatric testimony about the prevalence of narcissism, especially when this testimony appears at the same time that journalists begin to speculate about the new narcissism and the unhealthy trend toward self-absorption. The narcissist comes to the attention of psychiatrists for some of the same reasons that he rises to positions of prominence not only in awareness movements and other cults but in business corporations, political organizations, and government bureaucracies. For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations where performance now counts for less than “visibility,” “momentum,” and a winning record. As the “organization man” gives way to the bureaucratic “gamesman” - the “loyalty era” of American business to the age of the “executive success game” - the narcissist comes into his own.
In a study of 250 managers from twelve major companies, Michael Maccoby describes the new corporate leader, not altogether unsympathetically, as a person who works with people rather than with materials and who seeks not to build an empire or accumulate wealth but to experience “the exhilaration of running his team and of gaining victories.” He wants to “be known as a winner, and his deepest fear is to be labeled a loser.” Instead of pitting himself against a material task or a problem demanding solution, he puts himself against others, out of a “need to be in control.” As a recent textbook for managers puts it, success today means “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” The new executive, boyish, playful, and “seductive,” wants in Maccoby’s words “to maintain an illusion of limitless options.” He has little capacity for “personal intimacy and social commitment.” He feels little loyalty even to the company for which he works. One executive says he experiences power “as not being pushed around by the company.” In his upward climb, this man cultivates powerful customers and attempts to use them against his own company. “You need a very big customer,” according to his calculations, “who is always in trouble and demands changes from the company. That way you automatically have power in the company, and with the customer too. I like to keep my options open.” A professor of management endorses this strategy. “Overidentification” with the company, in his view, “produces a corporation with enormous power over the careers and destinies of its true believers.” The bigger the company, the more important he thinks it is for executes “to manage their careers in terms of their own…free choices” and to “maintain the widest set of options possible.”
According to Maccoby, the gamesman “is open to new ideas, but he lacks convictions.” He will do business with any regime, even if he disapproves of its principles. More independent and resourceful than the company man, he tries to use the company for his own ends, fearing that otherwise he will be “totally emasculated by the corporation.” He avoids intimacy as a trap, preferring the “exciting, sexy atmosphere” with which the modern executive surrounds himself at work, “where adoring, mini-skirted secretaries constantly flirt with him.” In all his personal relations, the gamesman depends on the admiration or fear he inspires in others to certify his credentials as a “winner.” As he gets older, he finds it more and more difficult to command the kind of attention on which he thrives. He reaches a plateau beyond which he does not advance in his job, perhaps because the very highest positions, as Maccoby notes, still go to “those able to renounce adolescent rebelliousness and become at least to some extent believers in the organization.” The job begins to lose its savor. Having little interest in craftsmanship, the new-style executive takes no pleasure in his achievements once he begins to lose the adolescent charm on which they rest. Middle age hits him with the force of a disaster: “Once his youth, vigor, and even the thrill in winning are lost, he becomes depressed and goalless, questioning the purpose of his life. No longer energized by the team struggle and unable to dedicate himself to something he believes in beyond himself, … he finds himself starkly alone.” It is not surprising, given the prevalence of this career pattern, that popular psychology returns so often to the “midlife crisis” and to ways of combating it.
In Wilfrid Sheed’s novel Office Politics, a wife asks, “There are real issues, aren’t there, between Mr. Fine and Mr. Tyler?” Her husband answers that the issues are trivial; “the jockeying of ego is the real story.” Eugene Emerson Jennings’s study of management, which celebrates the demise of the organization man and the advent of the new “era of mobility,” insists that corporate “mobility is more than mere job performance.” What counts is “style…panache…the ability to say and do almost anything without antagonizing others.” The upwardly mobile executive, according to Jennings, knows how to handle the people around him - the “shelf-sitter” who suffers from “arrested mobility” and envies success; the “fast learner”; the “mobile superior.” The “mobility-bright executive” has learned to “read” the power relations in his office and “to see the less visible and less audible side of his superiors, chiefly their standing with their peers and superiors.” He “Can infer from a minimum of cues who are the centers of power, and he seeks to have high visibility and exposure with them. He will assiduously cultivate his standing and opportunities with them and seize every opportunity to learn from them. He will utilize his opportunities in social world to size up the men who are centers of sponsorship in the corporate world.”
Constantly comparing the “executive success game” to an athletic contest or a game of chess, Jennings treats the substance of executive life as if it were just as arbitrarily and irrelevant to success as the task of kicking a ball through a net or of moving pieces over a chessboard. He never mentions the social and economic repercussions of managerial decisions or the power that managers exercise over society as a whole. For the corporate manager on the make, power consists not of money and influence but of “momentum,” a “winning image,” a reputation as a winner . Power lies in the eye of the beholder and thus has no objective reference at all.
The manager’s view of the world, as described by Jennings, Maccoby, and by the managers themselves, is that of the narcissist, who sees the world as a mirror of himself and has no interest in external events except as they throw back a reflection of his own image. The dense interpersonal environment of modern bureaucracy, in which work assumes an abstract quality almost wholly divorced from performance, by its very nature elicits and often rewards a narcissistic response. Bureaucracy, however, is only one of a number of social influences that are bringing a narcissistic type of personality organization into greater and greater prominence. Another such influence is the mechanical reproduction of culture, the proliferation of visual and audial images in the “society of the spectacle.” We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life that character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. Life presents itself as a succession of images of electronic signals, of impressions recorded and reproduced by means of photography, motion pictures, television, and sophisticated recording devices. Modern life is thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions - and our own - were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time. “Smile, you’re on candid camera!” The intrusion into everyday life of this all-seeing eye no longer takes us by surprise or catches us with our defenses down. We need no reminder to smile. A smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already known from which of several angles its photographs to best advantage.
The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. As Susan Sontag observes in her study of photography, “Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.” We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history. Bourgeois families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Sontag points out, posed for portraits in order to proclaim the family’s status, whereas today the family album of photographs verifies the individual’s existence: its documentary record of his development from infancy onward provides him with the only evidence of his life that he recognizes as altogether valid. Among the “many narcissistic uses” that Sontag attributes to the camera, “self-surveillance” ranks among the most important, not only because it provides the technical means of ceaseless self-scrutiny but because it renders the sense of selfhood dependent on the consumption of images of the self, at the same time calling into question the reality of the external world.
By preserving images of the self at various stages of development, the camera helps to weaken the older idea of development as moral education and to promote a more passive idea according to which development consists of passing through the stages of life at the right time and in the right order. Current fascination with the life cycle embodies an awareness that success in politics or business depends on reaching certain goals on schedule; but it also reflects the ease with which developments can be electronically recorded. This brings us to another cultural change that elicits a widespread narcissistic response and, in this case, gives it a philosophical sanction: the emergence of a therapeutic ideology that upholds a normative schedule of psychosocial development and thus gives further encouragement to anxious self-scrutiny. The idea of normative development creates the fear that any deviation from the norm has a pathological source. Doctors have made a cult of periodic checkup - an investigation carried out once again by means of cameras and other recording instruments - and have implanted in their clients the notion that health depends on eternal watchfulness and the early detection of symptoms, as verified by medical technology. The client no longer feels physically or psychologically secure until his X-rays confirm a “clean bill of health.”
Medicine and psychiatry - more generally, the therapeutic outlook and sensibility that pervade modern society - reinforce the pattern created by other cultural influences, in which the individual endlessly examines himself for signs of aging and ill health, for tell-tale symptoms of psychic stress, for blemishes and flaws that might diminish his attractiveness, or on the other hand for reassuring indications that his life is proceeding according to schedule. Modern medicine has conquered the plagues and epidemics that once made life so precarious, only to create new forms of insecurity. In the same way, bureaucracy has made life predictable and even boring while reviving, in a new form, the war of all against all. Our overorganized society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes managed his state of nature. Social conditions today encourage a survival mentality, expressed in its crudest form in disaster movies or in fantasies of space travel, which allow vicarious escape from a doomed planet. People no longer dream of overcoming difficulties but merely of surviving them. In business, according to Jennings, “The struggle is to survive emotionally” -to “preserve or enhance one’s identity or ego.” The normative concept of developmental stages promotes a view of life as an obstacle course: the aim is simply to get through the course with a minimum of trouble and pain. The ability to manipulate what Gail Sheehy refers to, using a medical metaphor, as “life-support systems” now appears to represent the highest form of wisdom: the knowledge that gets us through, as she puts it, without panic. Those who master Sheehy’s “no-panic approach to aging” and to the traumas of the life cycle will be able to say, in the words of one of her subjects, “I know I can survive… I don’t panic any more.” This is hardly an exalted form of satisfaction, however. “The current ideology,” Sheehy writes, “seems a mix of personal survivalism, revivalism, and cynicism”; yet her enormously popular guide to the “predictable crises of adult life,” with its superficially optimistic hymn to growth, development, and “self-actualization,” does not challenge this ideology, merely restates it in more “humanistic” form. “Growth” has become a euphemism for survival.
The World View of the Resigned
New social forms require new forms of personality, new modes of socialization, new ways of organizing experience. The concept of narcissism provides us not with a ready-made psychological determinism but with a way of understanding the psychological impact of recent social changes - assuming that we bear in mind not only its clinical origins but the continuum between pathology and normality. It provides us, in other words, with a tolerably accurate portrait of the “liberated” personality of our time, with his charm, his pseudo-awareness of his own condition, his promiscuous pansexuality, his fascination with oral sex, his fear of the castrating mother (Mrs. Portnoy), his hypochondria, his protective shallowness, his avoidance of dependence, his inability to mourn, his dread of old age and death.
Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone. These condition have also transformed the family, which in turn shapes the underlying structure of personality. A society that dears it has no future is not likely to give much attention to the needs of the next generation, and the ever-present sense of historical discontinuity - the blight of our society - falls with particularly devastating effect on the family. The modern parent’s attempt to make children feel loved and wanted does not conceal an underlying coolness - the remoteness of those who have little to pass on the next generation and who in any case give priority to their own right to self-fulfillment. The combination of emotional detachment with attempts to convince a child of his favored position in the family is a good prescription for a narcissistic personality structure.
Through the intermediary of the family, social patterns reproduce themselves in personality. Social arrangements live on in the individual, buried in the mind below the level of consciousness, even after they have become objectively undesirable and unnecessary - as many of our present arrangements are now widely acknowledged to have become. The perception of the world as a dangerous and forbidding place, though it originates in a realistic awareness of the insecurity of contemporary social life, receives reinforcement from the narcissistic projection of aggressive impulses outward. The belief that society has no future, while it rests on a certain realism about the dangers ahead, also incorporates a narcissistic inability to identify with posterity or to feel one self part of a historical stream.
The weakening of social ties, which originates in the prevailing state of social warfare, at the same time reflects a narcissistic defense against dependence. A warlike society tends to produce men and women who are at heart antisocial. It should therefore not surprise us to find that although the narcissist conforms to social norms for fear of external retribution, he often thinks of himself as an outlaw and sees others in the same way, “as basically dishonest and unreliable, or only reliable because of external pressures.” “The value systems of narcissistic personalities are generally corruptible,” writes Kernberg, “in contrast to the rigid morality of the obsessive personality.”
The ethic of self-preservation and psychic survival is rooted, then, not merely in objective conditions of economic warfare, rising rates of crime, and social chaos but in the subjective experience of emptiness and isolation. It reflects the conviction - as much a projection of inner anxieties as a perception of the way things are - that envy and exploitation dominate even the most intimate relations. The cult of personal relations, which becomes increasingly intense as the hope of political solutions recedes, conceals a thoroughgoing disenchantment with personal relations, just as the cult of sensuality implies a repudiation of sensuality in all but its most primitive forms. The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith.

57F. Nonsmoker. 5’4” 150lb. Palliative care only (stopped chemo by choice.) Diagnosed Stage 4 Breast Cancer in 2018. Mets to bone. No soft tissue involvement yet.
Blood oxygen regularly less than 90%. I feel fine. No shortness of breath. Blood pressure 120/80.
Will see MO soon. Curious your take on what could cause low blood oxygen?
Last bone scan: “Extensive osseous metastasis throughout the axial and appendicular skeleton.”
Last CT: “1. Diffuse blastic metastasis throughout the skeleton, unchanged. No pathologic fracture. 2. In the pelvis, multiple enhancing masses, largest 4.2 x 3.0 cm, compared to 4.4 x 3.1 cm on the prior study. 3. Incidental findings include: Coronary artery calcification; fatty infiltration of liver; splenectomy with residual splenules; right adnexal cyst 3.3 x 3.0 cm.”
“FINDINGS (CHEST WITH CONTRAST): Lungs: Normal. Trachea and bronchi: Normal. Heart and vessels: Coronary artery calcification. Mediastinum and hila: Normal. Esophagus: Normal. Pleura and pericardium: Normal. Chest wall and bones: No change. Diffuse blastic metastasis. No pathologic fracture.”