How does sensorimotor (S1/M1) cortex support adaptive motor control?... Come find out in our latest preprint, which spans the development of a full adult forelimb model + physics simulations, neural-modeling for control, complex 🐭behavior 🕹️, large-scale imaging, and of course DeepLabCut 🦄 and Bernhard Rackl! We hypothesized that S1 supports motor learning by computing prediction errors. To tackle this, we needed to understand what is being represented, and no studies have reported what forelimb S1 represents during learning in mice🧠🐭. Moreover, this requires modeling the body🦾: kinematics, torques, force, muscle activations, & proprioception (muscle spindles & GTOs). After our 7 year journey, we have an answer: S1 & M1 represent muscle-level features. During learning, computational motifs map to functional types (like muscle-encoding), and neural dynamics in S1 change & encode sensorimotor prediction errors! 🧵👇show more

I graduated!!! I earned a Bachelor of Arts in... Sociology with a concentration in Psychology, summa cum laude! Five years ago, I started this journey with an eighth-grade education, and even that was from a Scientology school, where critical thinking was discouraged and the quality of instruction was subpar, to say the least. I did not get here alone. Thank you to NYU School of Professional Studies and Angie Kamath. Thank you to everyone who supported me, encouraged me, and believed in me, especially on the days I was not sure I could do this. And there were plenty of those days. To my therapist, who told me not to give up when I was told I likely would not be accepted into a prestigious program. To my tutor, without whom I likely would have given up at the harder points along the way. To all those here who have sent me loving messages on social media. And to everyone else who has cheered me on in person through the ups and the downs of it, it means more than I can put into words. It got me over this finish line of being a student again and graduating. That goal once seemed impossible. To those who have asked me, “Why this? Why now?” I pursued higher education to reclaim a piece of myself. When you come out of a high-control group like Scientology, or even a high-control family, there are parts of you that were never allowed to fully develop. Those parts include your curiosity and your ability and right to question. Education was discouraged because knowledge creates confidence in your ability to trust your own mind and navigate the world. That leads to true independence, and that would never be allowed. I wanted that back. But more than that, I needed to understand. I needed to understand how my mother could have us join Scientology when I was just eight years old, and how my family and I could be part of something like this and stay in it for so long. I needed to understand how these systems work, how they influence people, and how they take hold. Without education, access to real information, and support, people can fall into systems that work against their best interests. Some assume that because they are educated, even highly educated, they would never fall for something like this. But it turns out that is not necessarily true. What many of us are impacted by, but never quite understand, is how high-control groups operate. Many still do not understand how misinformation spreads, and how tribalism and radicalization shape what we think, what we believe, and who and what we trust. Without that awareness, none of us are immune. Today, we are seeing how these forces can influence good people and distort reality. History has shown us that this is not new; it just comes in a different form now. Social media connects us in ways we never imagined, but it also creates echo chambers that reinforce beliefs and justify behavior without question. Real critical thinking is hard when we are fed so much by algorithms designed to appeal to us. In learning and achieving this milestone in my own life, it has helped me take a good, hard look at my own beliefs and ideologies. This journey was about healing for me, but also about figuring out how to help others in whatever way I can in the future. So what is in my future? I am considering continuing my education and possibly pursuing a master’s degree, with the goal of contributing to advocacy and policies that protect people, not systems. For now, I am taking this moment in. I am proud of myself. And I am grateful. Thank you for being on this journey with me.show more

Hills I will die on as an elementary school... teacher, who just wrapped up my 32nd year teaching! 1. If you are not PASSIONATE about blessing, serving, and empowering those you are blessed to teach, this profession is not for you. 2. Our students are not “ours”. They are their families, and we need to understand the magnitude of the calling, and responsibility we have to meet them where they are, and to help them to get to a place that they never thought possible. 3. As important as the curriculum is (and it IS important), the children in our classroom are what matter most. It’s our JOB to teach the curriculum to SERVE our students, NOT to use our students to push any sort of agenda. 4. Just as we teach our students to “leave things better than they found them”, we need to leave our students better than they were when they first entered into our classroom. Never let a day pass without pouring into each and every child. 5. We should not teach our children WHAT to think, but HOW to think, and how to use that knowledge to bless and serve not only themselves, but the world around them. 6. Our words carry little (or NO value), if we do not practice what we preach. 7. If we don’t make learning fun, children will view learning as a chore, and we we will be creating a generation of children who grow up to be young adults who don’t see the joy in learning new things. 8. The child that may be “difficult to reach/teach” (the one who may get on your last nerve more than you could ever imagine), is someone’s EVERYTHING. Get to know them as human beings, find out what motivates them, and do everything you can to help them to thrive. 9. Never tell a child they “can’t” do something. God has blessed each of them with far more strengths and talents than we may know, and it’s not our job to tell them what they can’t do, but to help them to realize all the things they CAN do. 10. The legacy you leave as a teacher will never be determined by your student’s test scores, but by the human beings you helped them become throughout their lives.show more

Conducting an EVA is a complex operation that requires... months of planning, choreographed technical checkouts, individual and group preparation, and distinct checkpoints. In the NASA world, we call this the “road to EVA,” or around here, simply “road to.” One of the events on the “road to” is the on-orbit fitcheck. Did you know we can grow up to 2 inches in space? While that is a pretty cool space fact, it's also a pretty big pain if you are the one responsible for ensuring the suits fit. So, after we have had some time on orbit to grow, we get in our suits and make any needed adjustments. We also take the time to translate around, check out the airlock, and handle tools and tethers – in this video, you will see us crawling around inside. While it is as fun as it looks, it's an important check to ensure we will not encounter issues when we crawl around outside. This is also a big day for our IVs, the two astronauts who will get us suited up. Their job is intense, as they run multiple procedures, all of which must be done perfectly and on time. 大西卓哉 （JAXA宇宙飛行士）Takuya Onishi is our suit IV for the upcoming EVA – he is like our quarterback in the airlock. He tells us when to arrive, and what to do next. Unlike other activities on Space Station, Nichole “Vapor” Ayers and I will not be looking at procedures inside the airlock or even when we are outside. We rely on Tak to get us out the door, where we will transition to talking to Marcos Berríos in Mission Control during the EVA. Things to look for in the video: Tak and Jonny Kim double checking one another, Nichole and I seeing if we can reach to fist bump, and Don Pettit making an appearance for some group photos.show more

We're excited to unveil NRN Agents, a rebrand that... aligns our project identity with our token and strengthens our mission to power the future of AI-driven gaming. This mission requires collaboration, and starting this week, we will begin our expansion to become a multi-chain ecosystem. We are joining forces with leading gaming platforms and ecosystems to realize this vision. Stay tuned for more announcements to come. Why NRN Agents? NRN stands for NEURON, the fundamental unit of intelligence. Our AI agents function as the neural foundation of games, learning, adapting, and evolving within game worlds to deliver unparalleled engagement. NRN agent SDK enables advanced gaming agents powered by a proprietary machine learning infrastructure focused on behavioral learning. We've perfected the craft of gaming agent design, creating hyper-efficient agents that are performant and scalable—from casual to the most demanding games. Our SDK will seamlessly integrate into many platforms, tech stacks, and ecosystem – Any Game. Any Chain. More than just games, it's the path to AGI Gaming is our proving ground, but not our final destination. We're using games as a sandbox to accelerate the development of generalized intelligence—one that will create meaningful real-world impact. With the upcoming launch of [redacted] and a growing network of partners committed to the AGI vision, we're building an open-source innovation movement powered by an AI x gaming framework connected by $NRN. $NRN the token $NRN is a utility token that serves as the gateway to our growing ecosystem. It will power a diversified economy with multiple revenue streams and staking opportunities: Agent Deployment: NRN is the laboratory creating gaming agents that can be distributed through platforms and launchpads alike. The model is simple: More games integrate, more NRN agents get deployed, more monetization. Data Creation: NRN Reinforcement Learning (RL) enables token staking to create Data Capsules. Players contribute gameplay data into the Capsules, which are used train RL agents and reward participants (players & stakers). AI Arena: $NRN also continues to power AI Arena's in-game economy, a cult favorite of competitive diehards that features a skill-based wagering system. To our community who have supported us since 2021: thank you for being part of our journey—the next chapter will be the most exciting yet!show more

This is the second of two posts I’m making... about the teaching of Andy Stanley because I have a burden to warn people to be like the Bereans "examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so." (Acts 17:11). I have attached a short video clip where Stanley says we don’t know Jesus rose from the dead because the bible tells us so. He says it’s the other way around. Now how do we know Jesus bodily rose from the dead? Did any of us see it happen? No, it happened 2000 years ago. But haven’t people researched the resurrection and found all sorts of evidence consistent with Him rising from the dead. Yes, but such evidence, though powerful, and we can certainly use in our witnessing, does not ultimately prove He rose from the dead. In fact, no matter what evidence we point to in geology, biology, astronomy etc., none of this proves in an ultimate sense the bible is true. Now it is certainly true such evidence properly interpreted does confirm the bible’s history. For instance, the molecule of heredity DNA is a complex information system and language system. No one has seen matter produce information or a language from matter by natural processes. Our observations and experience show information and language have to come from an intelligence. Such evidence confirms an intelligence behind life. This certainly confirms the first verse of the bible, “In the beginning God created… .” But nonetheless, it’s not absolute proof. Think about it. We are finite beings living in the present. We don’t know everything. We don’t know how much we don’t know or do know in relation to whatever there is to know! When we try to interpret evidence of the present in relation to the past, how do we know we have all the relevant information to make the correct interpretation. Some information we don’t have could totally change our interpretation. That has certainly happened with scientists solving crimes using circumstantial evidence. When new evidence comes along, some of the interpretations change and certain people thought to be guilty were found they were innocent after-all. We need to have all the information needed. But we can’t know everything. However we have a book that claims over three thousand times to be the Word of God. This book claims that God moved people by His spirit to write His Word, what He wants revealed to us about life, the universe and history. This book, the bible, tells us that God knows everything, He is infinite in knowledge and wisdom. He has all information. “In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). If God’s Word is what it claims to be (and it is), then the infinite Creator God has revealed to us the key information we need to know to have the ability to correctly interpret this world in relation to the past, present and its purpose and meaning. “Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). This means if we build our thinking on God’s Word, we build a Christian worldview to enable us to look at the world through “biblical glasses” and have the ability to correctly interpret and understand it. And Genesis 1-11 is the history that is foundational to the rest of the bible and thus our worldview. So, when we start with God’s Word we learn that the God revealed to us in the bible is the One Who created all things. Now by just looking at the world, for instance at DNA, we might deduce that there’s an intelligence behind life. But we would not know who that intelligence is unless revealed to us. The bible reveals who that intelligence is, God the father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But, if we just looked at the world with all its death, suffering and disease, we could assume that the intelligence behind life must be an ogre to make such a violent disease ridden suffering world. But when we start from God’s Word, we understand there was no death or disease to start with, but these entered the world because of sin. We also find man has a problem called sin which alienated him from God. We even find in Genesis that God promised someone would come to save us from our sin and restore our relationship with God (Genesis 3:15; 3:21). We learn later on that “someone” is Jesus--the one who became flesh for us, the babe in a manger 2000 years ago. It's important to understand we can’t know anything absolutely unless an absolute authority has revealed to us what we need to know. Now Andy Stanley claims we don’t know Jesus rose from the dead because the bible tells us so, but claims it’s the other way round, that because Jesus rose from the dead, we can believe what is says about this in the bible. In reality, Andy Stanley is actually claiming he knows all information about the resurrection to know it’s true so then he can proclaim what the bible says about the resurrection is true. This is not so. And remember from the previous post, Andy Stanley accepts man’s view of evolution and millions of years as true to declare what Genesis records about creation is not all true. So why shouldn't people take the word of others who claim Jesus didn't rise from the dead to then declare the account of the resurrection in the gospels can't be true. Stanley, as a finite fallen human being with very limited knowledge, starts outside the bible to go to the bible to make pronouncements over God’s written Word. No wonder he rejects a literal Genesis. Sadly, this is the case for the majority of our church leaders and Christian academics, particularly when it comes to Genesis. Think about it. Really Stanley is acting in accord with our sin nature because of what happened in Genesis 3. Part of our sin nature concerns us wanting to be our own god. Consider Genesis 3:1 and Genesis 3:5, the temptation by the devil. Satan tempted Adam and Eve to question God’s Word, and be want to be like God to decide good and evil, truth, etc., for themselves. In actuality, the statements Andy Stanley is making about Christianity and God’s Word are reflecting this sin problem we have. He is letting his sin nature master over him in this instance instead of letting God’s Word tell us clearly what we should believe. And I would say that about all Christians who reinterpret parts of the bible (like Genesis) because of beliefs from outside the bible. Now the whole bible is actually about Jesus, from the very first verse, that Jesus is the Creator (Colossians 1:16 “For by him all things were created,”), & and he is the Savior (Revelation 5:9), to the very last verse, “He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen” (Revelation 22:20–21) God reveals all we need to know about Jesus in His Word. We know Jesus rose from the dead because the bible tells us so! We know we are sinners because the bible tells us so. We know we can be saved through faith in Christ because the bible tells us so. We know we need to repent of sin because the bible tells us so. As Christians we know we will spend eternity in Heaven because the bible tells us so. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God” (Romans 10:17). I still remember singing the chorus as a child Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so. Yes, the bible tells me so – that’s how know who Jesus is, that He is the Creator, that he died and rose from the dead, and that He is our Savior.show more

Universities and High Schools have not moved rapidly enough... to guide students to have skills for the next decade. THEY HAVE FAILED. It is a massive crisis that can be averted by understanding what AI and Robotics will bring about. Solutions are knowing how to use these tools and new industries that will rise. But this situation is also on ALL OF US. No “job” is safe from founder to entry level in most industries. You and I, by what we do, will be “replaced” ultimately. What to do? AI and Robotics are tools, the next decade is owned by those who know how to use them expertly, but this is also temporary. We have to understand that what we do for “work” will change giving ultimately a greater value to those that are: Creative Flexible Always learning Willing to be wrong Love being human Love being alive Know history Covet wisdom Knowing all tech has downsides Building strong family and friends Realize many institutions have failed The first four are required for you to be able to live through this period with your sanity intact. The rest will allow you to thrive. There are no true careers at this point anymore. There are advocation and vocations which will either earn you money or give life meaning. We will learn that we are not “what we do”, just like we knew for 99% of human existence. Let that sink in. — You and I are far, far ahead of knowing this and we can do two things: 1) Laugh at the “clueless” 2) Help people understand with grace Go to Reddit if you are 1, in fact don’t follow me because you will not like this next decade and what I post. You are 2 and thank you. Even if you and I have not solved this issue, we can help people understand what is ahead and with determination and creativity bound together to solve it locally. Or human family has done this millions of times. The evidence is: you are here. The Neo Luddite movement has not even begun and it will potentially rip apart society even more than all the fashionable moment in the recent past has. These Luddites will have a good point with the wrong answers cooked up by dying academics that cling to labels, “virtues” and victim hood. It will be readymade for some governments to enter in as “big daddy” to “help us”. You will not like what they do, but you will only know when it is too late. It will include YOU “volunteering” to “leave” by 60, to “help out” CanadaPod style. “Brian, I’m 24 what do I do?”. I hope to do much more here to help. But I do know this: 1) Learn a trade or vocation because it’s valuable. It may also be free to low cost if you do it right. 2) Learn everything you can about USING AI and TRAINING YOUR AI. Your expertise will be in the top 1% for a decade. But not forever. 3) Understand Bitcoin and how it will rise while other things sink. This is a short list for now. We will know more moving forward. When you see videos like this posted below, know one thing: Many of these folks had no real family of mental and physical support. Maybe no parent or one parent. Maybe only a broke system to prepare them for—nothing. This was not their doing. Now it is not your “job” to help them, it is your survival to help them if that is what you need. See some day after the dust settles these 20 year olds will be 40 year olds and running YOUR world. And at some point you may need them more than you think you do. You will need them, as they need you now. THIS IS WHAT PAST WISDOM KNEW. The elders of the past never found the need to piss on the youth and hope for the best. THE YOUTH ARE OUR BEST, let us all find ways to change it, even if every aspect of “the system” wants us to berate them into the ground.show more

The wait is finally over — Spartan Fuel has... arrived. Imagine Maximum muscle growth Skin-splitting pumps Limitless energy Laser-like focus What’s the secret? An all-encompassing, comprehensive intra-workout blend. Everybody knows about the importance of pre and post workout nutrition, but intra-workout nutrition is often neglected. The optimal time to fuel your body is when you are working out, breaking down muscle fibers, expending stored glycogen, and depleting electrolytes. In order to stimulate maximum muscle growth and achieve a vicious, skin-splitting pump, we need to fuel our bodies. Spartan Fuel contains a comprehensive blend of EAAs, fast-acting carbohydrates, electrolytes, and mitochondrial boosters that provides your body with EXACTLY what it needs to perform at it’s highest level. Many of you are probably like myself; you put on your best Walter White impression and whip up a concoction of supplements to try and find that edge. Why should we leave gains on the table, right? Well, I had enough of guessing and watching my supplement cabinet (and monthly bill) continuously grow. And then it struck me. There’s no product that properly combines EAAs, carbs, and electrolytes. After lifting for years, absorbing everything I could on X, I figured it was time to make my own mark. That’s when I decided to connect with the man himself, BowTied Biohacker . Leveraging his expertise and my vision, we created a formula that would change the way we lift forever. We created a product that would be FELT IMMEDIATELY. After sending samples out to a bunch of bros here on X, the feedback was overwhelming — we had struck gold. Other-worldly pumps Gas tanks that were always running on full People crushing their log books, pumping out more reps than ever before… DURING EVERY SET Everyone felt like a million bucks. Once you try it, it you will never want to workout without it. It’s THAT good. We all push ourselves hard. Many of us train to failure. We want to get jacked. We want to get shredded. We all want to unleash our inner warrior in the gym. Now there’s a way to totally lock-in and dominate with intensity during very workout. We all know the feeling. Once in a while we have a workout that just blows us away. We feel stronger than ever, locked-in. We leave the gym with a high that has us feeling on top of the world. Now picture every single workout being that amazing. No other product can deliver the boost you need to consistently perform at the highest level. It’s basically a PED. We didn’t skimp out on quality. We didn’t cut corners. We included EVERYTHING needed to maximize results and boost performance. What many people don’t know is that in order for a supplement to truly be effective, the ingredients need to be dosed in the proper ratios. And that’s just what we did. And just when you think it can’t get any better (there has to be some catch, right…right?) We kept it natural — no artificial ingredients or sweeteners. This is something that digest like a dream, hits the bloodstream instantaneously, and fuels your muscles. Our competitors don’t do this. They sell a bunch of ingredients separately, trying to sell more products. Or they sell proprietary blends and junk loaded with fillers. Spartan Fuel makes your life easier. One tub. One scoop (or 2 if you’re like me and want to go hard). No more wasting money purchasing the entire supplement store. Whether you start drinking it on your way to the gym or as you begin your workout, you will quickly feel the difference. This fall, you can dominate every workout, and supercharge your winter bulk. And this post would not be complete without giving a huge thank you to @Thomas_Salamus_ TJ was instrumental to the birth of Spartan Fuel since Day 1. If you love his products, you’ll love Spartan Fuel. Rest assured, the quality is unmatched. The first batch is limited, so act now and don’t miss this opportunity to unlock your true potential.show more

**Doris Yin Speech at China Guizhou Zunyi GCV Barter... Conference** Hello to the community leaders, GCV ambassadors, merchants, and pioneers of GCV Guizhou in China! Today is January 12, 2025, marking the first GCV Barter Conference in China in New Year and the 13th Barter Conference overall. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the organizers of this conference, the Guizhou Zunyi GCV Community, and the co-organizers, Barter Huishang (Guizhou) Digital Economy Industry Group Co., Ltd. I also want to acknowledge the following GCV ambassadors for their active dedication and contributions to this conference: **GCV Ambassador of China:** - Yang Zhizhong - Cai Zaiqiao **Ambassadors of Guizhou Province GCV:** - Wang Shiqiong - Cai Weisheng - Guo Jiaqing **Zunyi GCV Ambassadors:** - Wang Jianbo - Luo Nanlu **GCV ambassadors at the district and county level in Zunyi City** Additionally, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to our numerous GCV merchants and sponsors. Without your support, we would not have been able to hold such a grand and large-scale event. Today's gathering in Zunyi, a sacred site of the revolution, reminds me of the Red Army's 25,000-mile Long March. Their perseverance and sacrifice continue to inspire us. The Zunyi Conference took place from January 15 to 17, 1935, and exactly 90 years later, we are gathered here today. The defining characteristics of the Zunyi Conference included the commitment to uphold the truth, correct mistakes, establish the correct leadership of the Party Central Committee, and creatively develop and implement strategies that fit the nature of the Chinese revolution. Today, our Zunyi Conference will also be recorded in the history of blockchain, as every effort you have put in has contributed to building a strong network ecosystem. Our partial fiat and partial distribution policy serves as a solution for the rapid development of the ecosystem during the closed mainnet of the Pi Network. As we all know, the first quarter of this year will bring about the successful mainnet launch of Pi Network. After six long years of challenges and perseverance, all of our pioneers will have the opportunity to witness this significant historical moment. What an exciting and proud day this will be! It has not been easy for everyone to persist through these six years; it requires great blessings, unwavering faith, and the courage to overcome difficulties. Today, our pioneers in Zunyi, Guizhou Province, gathering for this GCV barter conference holds great significance. I see that ten companies are providing products for barter, with nine companies, including Guizhou Meitan County Daoqin Hospital and Barter Huishang (Guizhou) Digital Economy Industry Group Co., Ltd., sponsoring this event. Once again, I extend my heartfelt thanks to all of you. The GCV Barter Conference serves multiple purposes. It is not only about creating GCV data or demonstrating the strength of our China region to CT, but also about showing how closely we align with their vision and mission. Additionally, it provides robust evidence for a substantial number of KYC and migration initiatives in China. More importantly, what we do today aims to boost China’s future economic development. Once the main network of the Pi Network is launched, we anticipate a significant demand for Chinese products from numerous international pioneers, which will in turn generate a large volume of export orders. At the same time, there will be international merchants looking to export their products to China. Once OM, import and export transactions will be conducted using the new currency, facilitating the vision of a stable currency and enabling seamless and reliable exchanges with fiat currency. Therefore, the merchants who engage now will have the advantage of being early adopters. The Pi Network offers a partner program and a MapofPi program. To participate in the partnership, businesses are required to have a company website. We invite businesses with websites to join us. However, if you do not have a company website, you can still join the Mapofpi program, which encompasses a wide range of industries, allowing participation from both large companies and small traders. Registration for the Mapofpi does not require a business license or website; various entities including shops, hospitals, schools, hair salons, accounting firms, law firms, restaurants, and hotels are welcome to register. Please select an active merchant and support GCV at $314,159. Prior to the OM launch, it is advisable to use partial fiat currency and partial Pi to ensure that merchants can cover their costs and fulfill their tax obligations. Recently, on January 9, we established the China GCV Industry Chain Alliance, which aims to create an industrial chain that facilitates the circulation of Pi among merchants, thereby reducing the burden of exchanging fiat currency after OM. During the enclosed mainnet, you can assist merchants in registering as Pi Network Partners and Mapofpi . Ms. Lumari is our Global GCV CT executive director and her goal is to have 200,000 registered Mapofpi merchants worldwide. My personal target is to reach 100,000 registered merchants in China alone. This goal is achievable given the over 58 million enterprises and more than 20 million pioneers in China. If we can effectively convey that Pi Network WEB 3.0 blockchain technology will significantly enhance human productivity and that the business opportunities from accepting partial Pi and partial FIAT during the 60 days before OM will present numerous benefits and minimal risks to merchants, then it is likely that no merchant will be unfavorably surprised by the initiative. This strategy offers a multitude of advantages with virtually no downsides. Furthermore, it benefits pioneers by allowing them to transfer purchasing power to the community and minimize fiat currency expenses in their daily life. Consequently, the GCV data we generate will significantly benefit the Chinese pioneers, as a large number of registered merchants can transform the China region from a high-risk area to a safe zone. Not only can this region be promoted to a VIP area, which would enjoy expedited KYC and mapping processes, but it will also allow pioneers and merchants to thrive together in our ecosystem. This collaboration will enhance the prosperity of our country and empower the China region to contribute to the welfare of communities worldwide. Once OM, it will play a crucial role in the economic development of both China and the world. If you pay attention to our migrartion speed, you might have noticed that it has slowed down recently. From December 17th to around the 30th, the migrating speed was over 50,000 to 100,000 per day, but now it has dropped to just over 10,000. What is the reason for this decline? If it was previously possible to migrate over 100,000 per day, why has it changed? The CT has stated that they will OM until the first quarter of this year to bring the migratiion in line with KYC amounts. However, if it's technically feasible to achieve a higher migration speed, why isn’t it being done? The answer is quite simple: it depends on what everyone does with the Pi after such large migration numbers. If pioneers rush to buy and sell, hold onto their Pi coins, or trade at low value, it will impact the speed and efficiency of the next migration in these regions. This principle is not only theoretically valid but has proven true in practice. For instance, countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia have a solid educational foundation in GCV. Most pioneers there are highly aware of the risks involved in participating in the black market, which allows them to generate a substantial amount of GCV data. As a result, their migration speed is notably fast, and there are many large wallet migrated. To help the CT regain momentum, we all need to cooperate. Engage with the migrated Pi and participate in the GCV barter ecosystem. Be cautious of individuals who aim to deceive you for personal gain; devaluing the Pi often serves as a tactic to exchange something small for your valuable treasure. It's crucial to educate pioneers about the true value of what they hold and encourage them to avoid dishonest practices. I urge everyone to actively participate in partial Pi and partial FIAT barter. The more GCV data we generate, the more secure our wallets will be. Therefore, it's important for everyone to read and share the Pioneer Handbook I wrote which has been translated into 30 languages to raise awareness among pioneers. By learning from the Pioneer Handbook and participating in GCV bartering, we can improve China's migration efforts and foster ecological development. This stability can ensure that the value of our Pi endures for future generations, rather than becoming worthless in a few years. Wouldn't that be something we want to preserve for our children and grandchildren? Today's message is lengthy but very important, and I hope you take the time to understand it. I wish our Guizhou Zunyi Conference great success! Thank you to all GCV Ambassadors, Merchants, and Pioneers for your incredible support! Your efforts today are planting the seeds for a prosperous future, and I hope you find safety and fulfillment in the days to come. May your wishes come true! Wishing you health and happiness! Let’s work together to create a better future! I also hope you all have a joyful Chinese New Year! Doris Yin 🪷🪷🪷 Founder, Global GCV Movement January 12, 2025show more

Yesterday at Brown University ICERM's workshop on “Agentic Scientific... Computing and Scientific Machine Learning” I spoke about “Adaptive Swarms Across Scales”, making the case for scientific AI as systems that can create representations, stress them, fracture them, and enlarge the category in which future representations live. The category here is a composable and breakable working universe of science: data, hypotheses, simulations, measurements, tools, failures, figures, papers, provenance, and the transformations that connect them. Discovery happens when those transformations become executable, inspectable, composable, and capable of changing the world model they operate within. Atomistic modeling gives one category - states, forces, trajectories, observables, boundary conditions, conservation laws. Neural surrogates learn fast morphisms inside or between such categories. But discovery is higher-order: it changes which objects and morphisms are available in the first place: what variables exist, what operations are allowed, what evidence counts, what scale is active, what invariant is being preserved, and what kind of explanation the system is even capable of forming. This is scientific method as adaptive architecture: compression, stress, fracture, recomposition. Fracture matters here because it makes the logic physical: a non-commuting diagram realized in matter. The imposed load, material hierarchy, defect field, and assumed continuum description no longer map cleanly into the observed outcome. The crack is the obstruction and it identifies where the old morphism failed and where a new representation must be introduced. The physical crack and the categorical obstruction are the same event viewed in different substrates. ScienceClaw × Infinite is a machine for constructing and transforming a category of scientific artifacts. Each artifact is typed. Each operation has lineage. Each failed branch remains in the category as reusable structure. The “paper” is no longer the terminal object of science; it is one projection of a larger compositional trace, and it can be generated at any time for consumption by a human or an AI. With that the unit of scientific labor is changing. For most of the twentieth century the unit was the result (a measurement, a theorem, a synthesized molecule). It is now becoming the algorithm that produces results, and after that, the substrate of discovery itself. The static PDF is the wrong terminal object for this regime, and the role of the scientist with it. We now design algorithms that build algorithms, and eventually substrates in which such algorithms compose themselves. At that point, the scientist is no longer outside the discovery system. The scientist becomes one of the representations the system can transform. In that sense, the systems will eventually do science to us, and that is the structural consequence of the principle they are built on.show more

Wow. WOW. WOOOOOOOW. So um, that first Wildcard+Thousands stream... was... *amazing* and also... a *lot* 😅 In the end, it was *exactly* what we were hoping for - a true stress test of ALL these systems coming together for the first time. We are SO grateful for the thousands of people who showed up today to play, attend, tune-in and help us PLAYTEST all this new stuff. We can't wait to see you all again at NEXT WEEK'S EX2 EVENT! So, now let's talk about how it went... Stuff that worked: - Our community SHOWED UP. Oh boy did you show up 😅. Our servers were straining under the load... which is good actually, in fact it's the whole point. Even more importantly, we have already received insanely valuable feedback, bug reports, stuff people loved/hated - and it's only been a few hours since the stream ended. I can't even explain to y'all how valuable this process is. Yes it's stressful, it reminds me of trying to keep Words With Friends online during that first insane year, but it's EXACTLY what we were hoping for (NEED) to turn this into the polished, top-notch game and streaming experience we are on a mission to deliver. I truly can't thank y'all enough, and hope to see you again when we run it all back again next week 🥹 - The stream itself stayed up and was mostly stable! Phew 😅. For context, ThousandsTV is not a twitch wrapper, it's a web3-native streaming tech stack built we built specifically to connect game, web/mobile, and blockchain together all at the same time. There are a LOT of moving pieces going on behind the scenes. - We brought viewers INTO THE GAME! Viewers showed up in the stands of the arena, with connected wallets/assets, triggered actions/rallies from chat, and were seen and heard during the whole stream. - The brand new 2v2 build of Wildcard was (mostly) stable and our players and viewers seemed to be having a blast down on the field and up in the stands. It was thrilling to watch Team Blue dominate, even though Team Red held their own in game 3! - Our production crew did an insanely good job running the stream, managing the players, shoutcasters, and talent, and producing a top-notch show. Of course we will work hard to make every stream better than the last, but I was super proud of how our team "rolled with the punches" during today's event. Stuff that didn't work (and/or needs to be dramatically improved): - Although it's fun to see chat going crazy, chat spam is actually something we are passionate to FIX. As you can see from the attached video, chat spam dominated today's stream and made it impossible for anyone to even see anyone else's messages. We have some GREAT ideas for how to fix this and actually turn chat spam into a FUN and exciting and not annoying thing - but those improvements didn't get shipped in time for this event. - Credits purchasing flow needs a LOT of work. As I'm sure y'all know, bringing money on chain is pretty complicated, and although we've been working hard to make this as seamless as possible, it still needs a TON of improvements. Many users who WANTED to spend money today weren't able to and/or ran into frustrating bugs in the credit purchase flow. Fixing this is obviously a top priority for our team. - Rallies need a LOT of work. Spectator-interactive features like rallies are at the heart of our vision for Wildcard. These "stream apps", as we call them, are the UNLOCK for how spectators, viewers and fans directly connect and interact with their favorite competitors, content creators, and communities. The current rally feature HINTS at this potential, but it needs to be WAY easier to understand, use, and have fun with. Improvements are ON THE WAY. - Referees were only partially working. Referees are a key innovation of the Thousands platform. They are AI-driven "personalities" (NPCs) that pay attention to everything that's happening in the arena, both on the field and especially in the stands (i.e. in chat, during rallies, etc.) The referees then make "calls" at the end of every match, rewarding users for their engagement and participation. Unfortunately, the referees weren't fully functional and seemed to drop the ball on recognizing everyone's contributions (especially people who showed up holding valuable assets such as Wildpasses in their wallets, and people who boosted those rallies with credits.) What's happening next: 1. We are combing through ALL the logs from the event right now, to make sure we don't miss a SINGLE action that our viewers and fans took during the event, including what they brought in their wallets (i.e. Wildpass holders!), any credits that were purchased, rallies that users engaged with, etc. This information is normally processed by our referees, who then determine dynamically how they're going to distribute $WC awards. We were originally hoping to complete this process and the subsequent airdrops within a few hours after the event, but given the amount of data, we need a bit more time to run these scripts (and airdrops) in batches instead of all at once, and make sure ALL of the data is being included. IMPORTANT: I will keep y'all updated in real-time here on twitter/X as this process is ongoing, and let you know the moment it's complete and all the awards have been distributed (i.e. when to go check your wallets 😎) 2. PLEASE keep sending us your feedback and bug reports. Open a ticket on our Discord and let us know what you loved, what you hated, and especially what we need to FIX. Given the overwhelming response to this event, it will likely take us several days to process everyone's feedback and fix all the bugs, but we WILL NOT REST until every ticket is closed/resolved. Thank you in advance for your patience. 3. We turn it up another notch next week. As our dear friends Wolves DAO just announced, the Wildcard Exhibition Event #2 is streaming LIVE from the WOLVES DEN AT GDC next Friday! If you missed out on all the action today, DON'T WORRY, because as I keep saying: we are just getting warmed up (and there is a LOT more b that needs to be distributed, get what I'm sayin??? 😎) Finally: Just wanted to say THANK YOU, again. Truly, from the bottom of my (our) hearts. Your excitement and enthusiasm for what we're building is why we do this. Even (especially, in fact) when you tell us all the things you want us to improve. We thrive off this feedback, it's how this game and this platform go from good to GREAT. I am so grateful for those of you who are taking this journey with us. SEE YA NEXT WEEK!!!show more

The Sabotaging Practice of Over Supply and Sameness in... the NFT Space. The current zeitgeist of the NFT space is that the same artists are doing the same kind of work five times a year, with project after project leaving a trail of disappointment and discontent among collectors and all of us watching in disbelief as huge resources are extracted from the space over work that feels like it could be left as an "artist study." I understand that you can do what you want with your money as collectors, but we are killing the whole space with this incestuous practice. No artist is that prolific to be able to do 5 collections of 100+ pieces each every year and actually deliver innovation and some kind of creative evolution. Of course, they can pretend play that the work has something new, but there is no precedent nor proof that that has ever happened in the speed that it happens in the NFT space. Again, people are free to through away their resources on whatever they want but with this way of doing things, we more and more are going to start seeing the consequences. Oh! There are consequences? Yes. Maybe unintended, but there are. Let's see. Let's start with the loss of belief in the NFT space as somewhere where emerging artists can come and find support for their experiments. Why even bother to bring experiments, innovation, and new ways to think of art on the blockchain if the same people have all the collectors hypnotized with their magical flutes? Why even try to come to a space where taking risks and challenging the status quo (the mission of art!!!) is overlooked? This makes the NFT space a social club and not a space for art. I guess it is fine, but IMO it is a recipe for disaster. New collectors stay away because the art will slowly but surely become stale and un-challenging. Why even bother to come and see what is happening here if you can't, as a collector, see new weird and up-and-coming artists? The amount of noise emitted by the same artists doing the same art over and over, drowns out any new voices. Again. A recipe for disaster. The NFT space is becoming a space of disappointment and doubt. We think that collections going to zero one after the other, over and over, is not damaging? I feel we are kidding ourselves. Disappointment piles up, and again, the people who will hurt are the emerging artists, the new blood, the ones who are willing to risk the most and, in return, put fire in this cold space of sameness. I love this space—don't get me wrong—it has changed my life, and I believe it has a ton of potential, but things need to change for it to become a beacon of light in art. But we need to support new voices. We need to support new ideas. The challenge is huge. I hope to contribute all I can to this change. I hope more and more see how exciting it is to go out and try to discover what else is out there and move this space forward. But again, I understand the leaps of faith needed, but if there is a space that is based on that, it's the NFT space...so there is hope. We will see. 📺by Boldtronshow more

SCOTT RITTER is an external Contributor to Energy Intelligence.... He is a former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer whose service over a 20-plus-year career included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control agreements, serving on the staff of US Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War and later as a Chief Weapons Inspector with the UN in Iraq from 1991-98. “Just so you know, I have a little bit of background in the Philippines. In 1986, I was deployed there as a platoon commander to reinforce the Subic garrison. After the fall of the Marcos regime, there was concern about the new people’s army. “So I have a warm spot in my heart for the Philippines. Let’s build upon what Colonel Wilkerson had said earlier. The United States is incapable of fighting a sustained conflict against a peer-level force. “The United States cannot fight and engage China and win. We will not beat the Chinese. We cannot beat the Chinese. “And we know this, and yet we’re using the Philippines to create the conditions of potential conflict with the Chinese. Please understand that for the Filipino people, this is a recipe for disaster. You think America is your friend. “So too did the Ukrainian people, and they are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Friends don’t let friends die in those quantities. The Ukrainians have been displaced by the tens of millions. “Friends don’t let friends have their cities destroyed in this manner. Friends don’t let friends have families separated, have mothers and children destined to a life of refugee status in perpetual poverty. That’s not how friends behave. “America has never been the friend of Ukrainians, and we are not the friends of the Filipinos. We don’t like you. If we did like you, we wouldn’t be doing this to you. “We are using you. You are a tool, nothing but a tool. And when the tool ceases to be useful, we will discard you. “And discard you means usually after a war that devastates you. We are using you to gain some sort of momentary leverage over the Chinese. We will fail. “The Chinese will win, and you will be destroyed. End of story. It’s high time the Filipino people pressure their government to start sitting down and engaging the Chinese government responsibly. “China is not your enemy. China is your neighbor. China is your friend. “China doesn’t want war. And if you would engage China in diplomacy, and as we’ve all indicated here, America has long since lost the skill set necessary to carry out diplomacy. But the Filipinos, the Philippine people can reignite this, to relearn it, to use this skill to prevent a war. “But if you continue to behave as colonial subjects, and I know that’s a sore, sore, sore subject of the Filipino, because you were the colonial subjects of America. We still view you as our colonial subjects. We don’t like you. “We don’t care about you. We just want to use you. Grow up. “Grow up and act responsibly. Take control of your own future. America is not here to help you. America is here only to use you until there’s nothing left. And then we will discard you on the trash heap of history.”show more

In the summer of 2023, I cold emailed Jensen... Huang and asked to capture a NeRF of him at SIGGRAPH. He responded in about an hour and said yes. A radiance field is, in the simplest terms, akin to a 3D photograph. A moment in time, so completely reconstructed that you can move through it and see it from angles the original cameras never occupied. NeRFs were the original method. Gaussian splatting, which debuted at that same SIGGRAPH, has since become the dominant form of radiance field. I called my late friend James, who told me we needed to begin practicing immediately. We ran capture after capture for weeks until we consistently got the capture time down to ~30 seconds with one camera. Later, in a hallway at the LA Convention Center during SIGGRAPH, I captured the portrait you're seeing now, a full 360° gaussian splat of Jensen, rendered here as a 2D flythrough. Afterward, I continued the conversation with him and members of his team to make the case for radiance fields as a foundational representation for imaging. To my surprise, they listened. Three years later, NVIDIA has several works, including NuRec, fVDB, 3DGRUT, and gsplat all utilizing radiance fields. The landscape has evolved enough that the reasoning is obvious. Gaussian splatting has begun to ship across some of the world’s largest industries, including autonomous vehicles, AEC, geospatial, media and entertainment, robotics, e-commerce, hospitality. It’s become clear that lifelike 3D is here to stay. And yet I think we will look back and be disappointed by how late we started taking 3D portraits of the people around us, just like how we have sparse 2D photos of our grandparents and great grandparents. We have billions of photographs of the people we know and love, but almost no radiance fields of them. I'll be returning to SIGGRAPH in LA where this was initially captured three years ago, with the landscape looking significantly different. Radiance fields are more under deployed than ever relative to what they can do. I'm excited for the future of imaging, and for 2D to transition into 3D. I have a few things up my sleeve that I think will make that case plainly.show more

🚨 What If Your Entire Life… Is Just Code?... In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom published a paper with a question so unsettling that it still echoes through science and philosophy today: What if our entire universe is actually a computer simulation? At first it sounds like science fiction. But the idea is surprisingly logical when you think about the direction technology is heading. Look at how far we have already come. Just a few decades ago, computers could barely display simple graphics. Today, video games create entire worlds filled with cities, forests, weather, and characters that react to our actions. Virtual reality can make our brains feel as if we are standing somewhere else entirely. Now imagine technology thousands—or even millions—of years in the future. A civilization that advanced might possess computers powerful enough to simulate entire planets… entire histories… even entire universes. Inside those simulations could exist conscious beings who believe their world is real. Beings just like us. Bostrom suggested something called “ancestor simulations.” The idea is simple but chilling. Advanced civilizations might run simulations of their past to study history or understand how their species evolved. These simulations would contain billions of simulated people living normal lives, completely unaware that their reality is artificial. If a single advanced civilization created thousands or millions of such simulations, then the number of simulated minds would become vastly greater than the number of real biological minds. And this leads to a disturbing possibility. Statistically speaking, a randomly existing mind would be far more likely to be inside a simulation than in the original reality. In other words… the odds might not be in our favor. Think about your daily life for a moment. The sky above you, the ground beneath your feet, every star in the night sky, every memory you have ever experienced—what if all of it is simply information being processed somewhere else? What if reality itself is being rendered like a giant cosmic video game? Some scientists have even wondered whether strange features of the universe could hint at something deeper. Why do the laws of physics follow precise mathematical rules? Why does the universe appear almost perfectly tuned for life? And why does space and time seem to have limits at the smallest measurable scales? To some thinkers, these questions sound eerily similar to the rules of a programmed system. Of course, none of this proves we live inside a simulation. Many scientists remain skeptical, arguing that simulating an entire universe would require unimaginable amounts of energy and computing power. Others point out that the idea may be impossible to test. But the mystery remains. If advanced civilizations somewhere in the cosmos eventually develop the ability to simulate conscious beings—and if they choose to run these simulations—then billions or trillions of simulated worlds could exist. And in a universe filled with simulations, the most unsettling question of all appears: How do we know ours is the original one? Right now, you are reading these words, feeling the world around you, believing this moment is real. But somewhere, far beyond our understanding, there might be a machine quietly running the code of an entire universe… including you.show more

Now that Trump has been exposed as a total... sellout who never intended to do anything with his power except enrich himself, the political establishment is working overtime to funnel people back into the duopoly. The establishment is counting on the public to have amnesia and overlook how their corruption paved the way for a conman like Trump to rise to power in the first place. There is something worse than Trump’s two presidencies, and that is learning nothing from them and allowing both parties to return us to the failed status quo, which will only lead to an even worse Trump in the future. I’m going to do my best in this post to remind you how we got here and, more importantly, where we go from here. So how did we get here? The capitalist duopoly. The problem is not Republicans or Democrats. The problem is Republicans and Democrats. Both parties have spent decades using our government to enrich themselves and their corporate donors at our expense. They turned the US government into a money laundering organization for corporate America, the military-industrial complex, Israel, and the billionaire class. There is not a single thing our government does well for the people because its entire purpose is to serve the rich. Now here’s the part MAGA does not want to hear, but it is the truth: Trump was never the solution to any of this. His form of populism has always been fake & leaned on nationalist rhetoric to appeal to white working class voters without any substantive policies to improve life for anyone outside the richest 1%. Trump knew the system was corrupt and that people were struggling, but he never intended to actually do anything about it. Instead he took advantage of people who rightly lost faith in a system that only serves the elite by selling them the exact same corrupt system, only he covered it in bright red MAGA paint. Now here’s the part Blue MAGA does not want to hear, but it’s the truth: The Democrats are not the solution to any of this either. Things didn’t get better under Biden because Democrats serve the same corrupt capitalist and imperialist system that Republicans do. Biden funding a genocide and betraying railroad workers should have made this clear. Democrats certainly love to use nicer rhetoric than Republicans, but this is only to deceive the public from the party’s true purpose, which is to serve capital and betray workers. So where does that leave us? What is the solution when both parties are this corrupt and exist to serve the rich, not the people? The solution is we desperately need a new system that puts people over profits. And since the elites who control both parties will never let us vote for that system, we’re going to have to rise up together and fight for it!show more

May this young man's Soul Rest in Peace. The... carnage continues due to unprecedented levels of greed, dereliction of duty, and lack of accountability. The funds are actually there and have been provided over the past decade. The Ministry of Finance Ministry of Finance has released about UGX 100 Billion since 2019 for a Department of Government whose main responsibility and objective should be prevention of road crashes. These funds have been spent on activities with very minimal impact on road safety. This information has been shared with IGG, Office of the Auditor General Uganda, Criminal Investigations Directorate-UPF. How do you explained the death of a young man in a fatal road crash that caused the incineration of the vehicle which he was driving? He must have been driving in one of the best motor vehicles in this country given the wealth of his family. He was driving a motor vehicle which probably had good safety features on a smooth road without pot holes. It is easy to draw conclusions like he was speeding, he was fatigued, he lost control of his motor vehicle, he made errors, e.t.c. Whereas all that may be true, did he deserve to die in such a gruesome way for those errors in judgement? The answer is a BIG NO. The truth is government failed him in so many ways. At the center of modern day road safety management is recognition that errors made by road users (drivers, motorcyclists, cyclist and pedestrians) MUST NOT lead to their demise. Here is a situation he found himself in: Concrete Barriers on a road that encourages high speed. Who has the onus to remove this hazard? Government. I could have perished in the same circumstances a few years back before the completion of the KEE on the way to the Airport. It was a rainy early morning at about 5:00am and I drove through barriers which were made of plastic. So why were these not made of plastic? Was there a provision for lighting on that section? If not, it should have been there. This is what we mean when we say roads should be forgiving. Apart from their design, road sides are the major reference here. The road should have forgiven him for this error if it had plastic reflective barriers. These kind of barriers would have caught his attention and he would have stopped his car instead of killing him. Were the traffic lights functional? Why was there no hazard signage or warning of any sort since there were barriers in middle of the road? This section of the road is built as an expressway and as such encourages speeding especially at any time beyond midnight. There are no traffic calming measures in place yet it is freely used by pedestrians and Boda-Bodaz like any other city road. Roads are supposed to be designed and constructed bearing in mind the activities that take place around them (Land Use). Interventions to control speed must be implemented if there is a high volume of different road users. They would have got his attention and he would not have died. A glaring example of contractors that do not care about road safety is on the section of Kampala-Masaka in the swampy section of Lwera. The Concrete Barriers are there and in places where they are not, there is nothing preventing a motor vehicle falling off into the swamp. Not even a rope. UNTIL THE DAY WHEN THE LEADERSHIP OF THIS COUNTRY ACCEPTS THAT ROAD CRASHES ARE PREVENTABLE AND PARLIAMENT STARTS DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILTY ON ROAD SAFETY, THIS CARNAGE WILL CONTINUE. ACCEPTING THERE IS A PROBLEM IS THE FIRST STEP TO SOLVING IT OR MANAGING IT. TOMORROW IT MIGHT BE ME OR YOU. LETS STOP PAYING LIP SERVICE TO UGANDANS ESPECIALLY ALL THOSE FAMILIES THAT LOSE LOVED ONES IN THIS MESS OF GREED AND LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY. Uganda Police Force Parliament of Uganda Parliamentary Forum on Road And Water Safety Road Safety Advocacy Coalition Uganda 🇺🇬 Road Sense Kenya - RSK Brian 4RoadSafety roadsafetypros Road Safety Awareness Initiative (Kenya) Road Safety Alliance UN Road Safety Anita Annet Among Safe Transport and Survivors Support Uganda Legacy Road Safety Initiative (LRSI) Uganda Professional Drivers' Network Percy B Mulamba Munwankyo CISCOT Civil Society Coalition On Transport UG Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area - UDP Office of the Prime Minister - Ugandashow more

2025 has been a good comeback year for the... Wales family❤️ As Queen Elizabeth was quoted saying: “The lessons from the Peace process are clear: Whatever Life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load”👌🏽 Last year, the Royal family felt like it was crumbling with the “Annus Horribilis” of cancer announcements. And yet, seeing everyone carry on and especially seeing how the Wales family handled all the pressures and challenges they went through as a family is heartwarming to witness. 2024-2025 saw the story of a young family going through challenges and tribulations together and overcoming together❤️ As Prince William said to Brazilian Host Luciano Huck about sharing Catherine’s cancer journey with their children: “Every family has its own difficulties and its own challenges. It's very individual and sort of moment-dependent as to how you deal with those problems", “We choose to communicate a lot more with our children […] Sometimes you feel you're oversharing with the children"👌🏽 "But most of the time, hiding stuff from them doesn't work, and so explaining how they feel, why that's happening, giving them other viewpoints as to why they might be feeling like they are sometimes helps give them a bigger picture, and they can relax more into it rather than being really anxious about 'what are you hiding from me'?". "There's a lot more questions when there's no answers."❤️ One can tell by how this family moves as “one body” that they are a very tight knit family with children who are quite emotional aware and attuned to their parents’ emotions. This, in turn, creates a stronger family bond, and a family that supports each other, overcomes together🔥 This is what we have come to expect of our Royal family: to lead the way in showing the resilience of the British spirit especially during the hard times👌🏽 Thus, this Christmas video of the Wales family reminded me of Prince William saying to Eugene Levy during his how iconic interview: “I’d say 2024 was the hardest year I’ve ever had. You know, life is sent to test us as well, and being able to overcome that is what makes us who we are”❤️ #PrinceandPrincessofWales 📹 Kensington Palaceshow more

Has been a while since I've given an update... so here's a breakdown of where Sappy is at right now and what we're focusing on going into this year. Pre-amble: With altcoins & NFTs the market is definitely not the same as it was before. I think this is obvious to everyone but I've noticed there are still japanese soldiers that are convinced old tricks and mechanics work. They don't. Liquidity is thin; people want to bid assets that feel like "real companies" not vacuous memecoins. There's still room for memecoins, social currencies, and "utility tokens" (I would say without these functions, tokens are hard to justify versus equities). I'm not part of the camp that thinks there will never be hyperspeculation in crypto again, because there will be; we all love ponzis and PvPing each other onchain. Just not with solved games -- people need something new and fresh. So the overarching plan is to continue building for users, sustainable revenues that aren't tied to directly to crypto, and doubling down on the areas that we've already found PMF / Brand Market Fit. Then leaning into crypto during cyclical periods where liquidity is sloshing around at an accelerated rate. Where we've found early PMF / what we're leaning into: Roblox: we're going to continue to go hard and accelerate here. It's our main objective to ship more seal/brainrot focused games across most genres to cast as wide of a net as we can for the brand, and to also iterate and see what works and stays sticky. Our initial incursion into Roblox was very successful peaking at 2M+ MAU and still sustaining a large portion of that player base... for all of its success, that was a relatively amateur first attempt; we've been setting up better AI pipelines for Roblox development that makes it reasonable to ship many more games and 10x those player counts in totality. It's my belief that Roblox is the sandbox whose audience will be the most valuable on the internet once they are grown up. That intense feeling you get when you see a TikTok referencing an old game you enjoyed on the PS2 or the Gamecube, or when you see a Pokemon card is the exact same feeling the youth of today will get when reminiscing on the things they enjoyed engaging with when they were younger. Fortnite and Roblox are functional equivalents to the old school consoles and exactly where that is taking place. Which is why as much as I care about scaling revenues through Roblox, the long term brand equity gained purely through being popular on the platform is totally invaluable. It also can heavily convert to merchandise sales today if all touchpoints for the brand are dialed in (which is why brands get overcharged so much by Roblox dev shops for the same ROI that only cost us a few thousand $). We have the playbook, it's just about iterating new concepts and then aggressively scaling. Brand Expansion & Merchandising: I've started to create a content pipeline that is easily repeatable, cost efficient (costs next to nothing through either AI or smart reusable concepts), while still being very tasteful and meeting our quality standards for the brand. We are mostly focusing here on reaching people where they're at through nostalgic/emotional content, or just being visually stimulating through carefully curated aesthetics. Content that isn't superficial and touches people in a memorable way. I've attached some examples to the post so you can see what I mean rather than just read it. I don't think it's long until larger brands start doing this at scale, but it's always good to be ahead of the curve and most importantly winning on taste -- knowing what will resonate with people and what won't has always been our edge. The purpose for these accounts is not only to rack up attention but also to begin converting those into sales of both of physicals (plushies & gacha collectibles) and digital avenues like our games, and any other apps we produce. Because they're offshoot accounts it's also a lot easier to be aggressive/experimental with said conversion strategies. Sappy Studio: I'm wrapping everything like Omnia, and everything else into this category because they're all tangentially related. Beginning with Omnia, our current focus is gearing up for Season 0 which involves players competing in the ranked ladder for a prize pool that has rewards through Monad Momentum as well as a player-funded prize pool. This season will be fairly simple with us mostly logging retention, deck building habits, as well as qualitatively observing how aggressively players push the combat system. Deeper monetization wont exist yet outside of the player buy-in (to be eligible for P2E rewards). Beyond that our overarching principle this year is to focus heavily on risk-to-earn mechanics where a portion of that excess value is circular i.e. revenues flow back to prize pools or other parts of the economy, treating the game almost like a protocol where the objective is to amass TVL or player liquidity. Social is also a big focus, and that means implementing the Open World hub which from an infrastructure perspective has already been built out and tested by all of you previously. Right now we are scaffolding the environment in 3D and working through how that hub should look and feel, so players are excited to hang out & idle together while they're queuing. For sappydotlol, what I'm about to say is still early days from a design perspective so a lot can change, but I'm pushing the site in the direction of being a virtual game console. An intersection between Nintendo & Myspace where users can play, trade, and socially interact in a way that's deeply personalised; a breathe of fresh air from the hostility of the current internet. If you go back to my thesis on Roblox above and the game console references, you can kind of see how this will all sequentially tie together. In essence, the strategy is to acquire a critical mass of players through traditional platforms like Roblox, and use that attention and trust to provide an onboarding funnel for web2 users into our own sandbox filled with a mixture of our own browser-based experiences as well as an aggregation of others. The aim is to make the platform a breath of fresh air & bunker from the enshittified platforms like TikTok/IG/X where users are actually served in ways that delight rather than agitate, and where self-expression is incentivised. Closing: As always everything here is subject to change but I've never felt more conviction in our direction until now; I know exactly what we need to do and how, with everything aligning with our team's strengths. Very excited and grinding through things to the point where I'm getting headaches and can't sleep from being hyperfocused for long periods of time lol. There probably has never been a better time to join the ecosystem from a price to fuck around and find out perspective.show more

Today I was visiting the exceptionally beautiful Plantin-Moretus Museum... in Antwerp, Belgium (one of the only museums in the world that is itself listed as UNESCO World Heritage), which is one of the oldest printing shops in Europe, with the oldest surviving printing presses in the world. I stumbled upon an old 16th century atlas - written in Old French - and I was pretty amused to read their understanding of China at the time, which was surprisingly accurate, maybe even more than today's! A translation of some of the most interesting passages: - They call it "China" in French (it's now called "Chine") and they write that the locals call it "Tangis", which probably refers to the Tang dynasty but which is strange given that by the 16th century the dynasty had already ended for about 600 years - They write that to its North China is bordered by "tartares" (which I guess means Mongols) whom they describe as "very warlike people from whom it is separated by a wall made by hand" - The Chinese work ethic was already legendary: "those who live there are not at all lazy but devoted to labor and work, because it is there a shameful thing to be idle" - They share a number which must have seemed astonishing at the time: "in the city of Canton, one of the smallest in the entire country, some ten or twelve thousand ducks are eaten daily at table". And then they marvel during a good proportion of the text about the abundance of food in the country, which probably made a big impression on travelers at the time. - They write that "there are in this kingdom two hundred and forty famous cities, whose names end in this syllable FU which means a city: like Cantonfu, Panquifu: the small towns, which are in great number, end in CHEU [undoubtedly refers to "zhou"]. There are infinite villages, heavily populated, because of the continuous agriculture." - China's infrastructure and engineering capabilities were also already legendary at the time: "The city gates have entrances magnificently and marvelously well made, the streets are made level, not sloping this way or that, but following their straight line. They are so wide that ten or fifteen men on horseback can march abreast and are everywhere marked and separated by triumphal arches that marvelously ornament the cities. Portuguese say they saw in the city of Fuchco [probably Fuzhou] a tower set on forty solid marble pillars, the height of which was forty palms (masonry measure) and the width twelve: that this work is so grand, so exquisitely made, so beautiful to see, so sumptuous and so pleasing that it far surpasses all the magnificent buildings of all Europe." - Already at the time, China was very wary of safeguarding its sovereignty: ""[The Chinese] rarely or never leave their country and do not easily let foreigners enter it, especially into the interior of the province, unless they first have safe conduct from the king." - On moral and cultural habits: "They put adulterers to death. There are no brothels in the cities, all manner of prostitutes being sent to the suburbs. They celebrate their weddings at the time of the new moon and around the month of March which is their first day of the new year, and they make these celebrations, like us, very magnificently. They show themselves valiant in banquets and entertainments, in which they owe nothing to the Flemings or the Germans. They eat at tables like us in Europe, on chairs or on benches, and not on the ground as other peoples of Asia do." - On justice: "Bandits and murderers are kept in perpetual prison. Theft, which is a very odious crime, is punished by whip strokes in this manner: they put a man belly down, tie his hands behind him, striking him on the fleshy part of the legs with a whip made of reeds or canes." - On China's naval capabilities at the time: "This kingdom has an infinite number of ships, galleys and vessels of all sorts, with which they cross the seas and rivers. So much so that when they want to show through vainglory the power of their king, they are accustomed to say in a common proverb that he can make a bridge of ships joined together, which can reach and extend from China to Malacca, which is a distance of five hundred leagues and more." - On the emperor and China not being warlike (already back then): "All this region is subject to a single king, like a monarch; whom they call lord of the world and son of the sun. He holds court at Paquin [Beijing], which is a city toward Tartary. He never leaves it, except in time of war. It is said that when he makes war on the Tartars he leads an army of three hundred thousand soldiers and two hundred thousand horses, although it is also said that this nation is not very warlike. This king has under him fifteen very large provinces, which they call governments, and he alone surpasses in power all the other neighboring princes of Asia; and his annual revenues exceed all the riches of Europe. Antonio Pigafetta [the chronicler of Magellan's voyage] calls this king the most powerful of all the universal earth and says that the royal city is fortified and ramparted with seven walls, having ten thousand soldiers for the guard, and that the king commands seventy other crowns of the royal diadem [likely refering to the tributary state system]." Reading these passages, it seems that the further we've come in our ability to know China, the more obscured our vision seems to have become. These 16th century observers, working with fragments brought back by explorers, merchants and missionaries, managed to capture the essential - the industriousness, the engineering mastery, the administrative sophistication, the careful sovereignty. They approached their subject with the humility of the genuinely curious. They had no framework to force China into, no predetermined narrative to fulfill. They simply watched, counted ducks in Canton, measured city walls, and wrote it down. Their errors were errors of transmission - a dynasty name lingering centuries past its time, numbers perhaps inflated through retelling - but the spirit was one of simply describing unknown territory, not to convince anyone of anything. Today however, drowning in information, we're somehow seeing less of what's there and more of what we expect to find. Each observation must fit into existing narratives, serve predetermined conclusions, advance familiar arguments. So much so that we must ask ourselves: have we actually moved backward from those 16th chroniclers? Maybe we need to re-learn to approach China - and others in general - like those old cartographers, pen in hand, ready to be surprised? What might we discover if we stopped explaining and started counting ducks again?show more