#Quixotic Charter

[quixoticcharters]

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[miniaturethingdestiny-blog]

So this post is just me Limbus Company X Werewolf the Apocalypse headcanons on what tribes and auspace each of the 12 sinners would be if they're garous and what they war form would look like.

Take Heathcliff as an example. To start He's obviosity a Ahroun, I picture that he's currently a Ronin though he was adopted into a sliver fang family as a orphaned kinfolk. Infract he's treated surprisingly well by Mr. Earnshaw the head of said family, better then his biological son Hindley. Unfortunately Mr. Earnshaw died long before he can witness Heathcliff's first change and Heathcliff ran away shortly after said first change.

Heathcliff's war from would obviosity be modeled after the van helsing were wolf. Just different fur color and scars across his body.

The there's Rodion is defiantly a Black Fury Philodox or maybe Ahroun, Like even in canon Rodion has a strong sense of justice (alongside the desire to prove that she's special ) that will drive her to acts of extreme acts of violence if she deems it necessary (a prime example of that would be the murder of a tax collector in her backstory), so she would fit right in with the Furies and I suspect that she would really enjoy raising her renown stat.

Rodion's war form actually looks like the wolf design from the early draft of Cursed. Seriously, the resemblance is uncanny.

Finally Don Quixote, who despite acting like a caricature of a Galliard of some unconfirmed tribe (she tends to go on a tangent when asked about her tribe) she's actually a Theurge for uh spoiler reason I'll say that much. Don has a extremely idealistic view of being a garou of being valiant heroes and protectors of Gaia and this belief tends to color here perception of other garous and possibly how she view reality which leads her to act in ways that some might describe as dangerously naive. (please note this is pre canto 7 don whose quite literally a completely different charter to post canto 7 Don)

Don's war form is inspired by released version of Cursed. She would insist it's as fearsome as any other crinos but between, the forms relatively demutive size and her instance on Dedicating her "Steed" (worn out running shoes) Rocinante on her form pants a different picture…

[horizoneffect]

(dnd setting idea I had and couldn't not write an overview for)

"The afterworld is a big place. Well, the word "afterworld" is a misnomer. It's called the Beyond, and it's less one world, more a patchwork of worlds. Gods, powerful fey and fiends, unknowable eldritch beings, and all sorts of extraordinarily powerful entities have stitched together the vacuous reaches of the Beyond with demiplanes of their own making, populated by the souls of mortals who have passed on.

"It's a popular myth among the mortal sort that travel to the Beyond is instant, almost automatic, free from frustration, nuisance or pain. That couldn't be less true. When a mortal dies and its soul becomes untethered from its body, sure, sometimes it will automatically be whisked away to its proper afterlife. Some gods reward their true believers with chartered air-carriages to their private villas in the clouds. People who have made pacts with devils get pressed onto the black prison-ships of the lower planes and are made to swab the deck. But loose souls, souls who are unclaimed by any of the powers that be, get sent…

"to me. Me and my train, the Twilight Express. Any soul, any race, any final resting place. Anyone with a ticket, me and my crew'll take you to where you need to go. But not for free.

"When you mortals finally give up the ghost, death is but an instant, and then you'll find yourself in Nowhere, the City of Horizons. Loud and noisy, filled with the clamor of countless shopkeepers searching for souls to sell to. What are they selling, you ask? Tickets -- tickets to the afterlife. Their own precious little part of the afterlife, that is.

"Some of them will give you a ticket for free. I say don't listen to them -- it's a scam, unless you were really someone in life, and then everyone will be after your soul. Some will offer you a ticket to their afterlife if you promise to serve their god, or entertain their legions of souls, or work in their manor's kitchen, or accomplish some heroic task in one of the countless planes. You need a ticket to ride the train, though, and the merchants in Nowhere know. Picture the gleeful servant of some pit fiend, offering you passage to the Lava Pits of Czsnerzbeogh, if only you'll work for their master for twenty thousand years of eternity… But if they're offering a ticket, take it. Believe me. You don't want to be stuck in Nowhere without a ticket. The most hellish tortures are preferable to the unconscionable horrors the City of Horizons can unveil, horrors that make even me shudder… And you really don't want to be stuck in Nowhere after the train leaves… and it gets dark.

"Once you're on the train, though, watch your back. Regardless of destination, every soul gets the same ride. Scary as some of the particularly damned souls may be, don't panic: it's a really bad idea to cross our security. They're the finest forces in the infinity of the planes, making sure every soul only gets off where their ticket says they can, and keeping out the freeloaders and the riffraff. Out the window you'll be awed by the full grandeur of the Beyond: the breathtaking spires of the Green Palm Palaces, the bleak austerity of the Xulo Nara Lava Oceans, the quixotic unreality of the Thousand Lotus Fields… And between the afterworlds, the expanses of the Great Grey West, where lone fey rangers camp by lone fires, where packs of crest-wolves and fractal-horn deer stampede across the landscape… It'll make you feel alive again. So to speak.

"As soon as you make it to your stop on the Twilight Express, you'll get off, and then you get to enjoy your afterlife, whatever that may be. You might even be allowed to travel around the Beyond and explore other afterlives, or you can stay put and be content with a nice, quiet undeath. But things are always changing in the Beyond. We're always laying down new railways, paving into the west… There are those who wish to escape their assigned afterlife and wreak havoc across the planes… And there are those who wish to conquer the Beyond and the world of the mortal planes, along with those who wish to keep the Beyond ever wild…

"Don't be a stranger, mortal. Be courageous, be cautious, and always watch your back.

Talk to you soon.

- Death The Renowned Sir R. "Death" Nevermore Proprietor and Conductor of the Twilight Express

[man-and-atom]

What is good in life? (wrong answers only) — oaths of fealty, and the question of how far self–interest actually predicts human motivations — immigration, and what it has to do with Don Quixote. And the Preamble and Chapter I of the Charter of the United Nations, for those requiring a refresher.

Direct link to archive recording [192 kbps MP3, 40 MB]

Supplementary Shows

2024–11–12 Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen ; the Preamble and Chapter I of the Charter of the United Nations ; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ; and some material from a US Government publication entitled The Treaty of Versailles and After, including the resolution of 18 April 1946 for the dissolution of the League of Nations.

2024–11–15 More from the annotated Treaty of Versailles, specifically the Covenant of the League of Nations.

[talesofpassingtime]

Come now; band, not of officers, but of thieves; footpads with the licence of the Holy Brotherhood; tell me who was the ignoramus who signed a warrant of arrest against such a knight as I am? Who was he that did not know that knights-errant are independent of all jurisdictions, that their law is their sword, their charter their prowess, and their edicts their will?

— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote  

[sailluna]

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[infamousbrad]

Ever since I saw the 2003 documentary The Corporation, I've looked for opportunities to promote what may be my most quixotic issue.

When the Limited Liability Corporation was first created, centuries ago, the law said that a company or a partnership were only entitled to incorporate if their primary purpose was to serve the public interest. A couple of centuries ago, starting in the US, states' Secretaries of State loosened that requirement, but the law remains on the book in almost every state that if a corporation's primary purpose to make money for the shareholders, the Secretary of State in the state where they incorporated is legally allowed to yank their corporate charter, making the company's owners and shareholders liable for the company's debts and chargeable for its crimes.

In the early 1980s, within my lifetime, the US Chamber of Commerce promoted a propaganda campaign that corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder return, but only one case has been litigated and the Supreme Court ruled against the fiduciary standard. But because of the propaganda campaign, most Americans think that corporations are legally required to (as Dilbert joked back when he was still relatively sane) "kill us in our sleep and harvest our organs if the return on investment is high enough." When, in fact, the law requires the exact opposite. "Stakeholder capitalism" isn't a radical legal theory, it's the plain language of the law.

My most quixotic campaign is to get even one state's Secretary of State to revoke the corporate charter of even one corporation for acting contrary to the public interest. Even if it only happens once, it'd be a wakeup call.

Companies are no longer grounded in reality.

My roommate recently came home pale-faced, like he’d seen a ghost. More like witnessed a massacre. Mass-firings were just done at his company. His job, he’d been assured, was safe. All of his coworkers weren’t so safe, and he had to get texts and phone calls from his work-friends, people he’d worked alongside for years, people he‘d gone out to have drinks with, learn they were no longer employed. To say he had survivor’s guilt would not be hyperbole.

Was this because the company had fallen on hard times? The pandemic has been rough for a lot of industries. No, actually, the company had turned a very nice profit both last year and previous, even in such a troublesome market.

The problem was, you see, the company’s stock price hadn’t risen quite as high as had been projected. They’d made money, sure. Quite a lot of money, in fact. But too many people had projected, i.e., bet the company would do better.

How did the company offset this “loss”? Easy: fire people. Quickest and easiest way to pad the numbers.

No but you don’t understand stock had fallen a percentage point! There was no other way!

We see it all the time. Hugely successful companies reporting ‘record-breaking’ profits then fire huge segments of their workforce - the very people responsible for those record-breaking profits. Why? The money “saved” on personnel costs can boost the stocks even higher!

If your company is struggling, not turning a profit, losing money, people expect layoffs. But to work hard, be successful, your company churning along strong and healthy, and you still lose your job? For what? Because half a percentage point that was dictated by speculation, guessing, by gambling that things would go up or down a certain amount on a graph of rich-people feelings?

I wonder how next year’s speculations will be affected with the information that the company laid off a lot of the people responsible for last year’s profits? Probably not much because the workers are just the components at the company; it’s the leadership that drives the ship, that makes the successes. Those leaders whose bonuses are coincidentally decided by, among other things, the stock price.

Companies are no longer grounded in reality.

[kindlecomparedinfo]

In the Accelerator over the Sea

In our oceans the scale of disasters is measured in millions, billions, and trillions, while solutions amount to single digits: individuals or institutions working to impact a chosen issue with approaches often both brilliant and quixotic. Putting such individuals in close contact with both whales and billionaires is the strange alchemy being attempted by the Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s Accelerator at Sea.

I and a few other reporters were invited to observe said program, a five-day excursion in Alaska that put recent college graduates, aspiring entrepreneurs, legends of the sea, and soft-spoken financial titans on the same footing: spotting whales from Zodiacs in the morning, learning from one another in the afternoon, and drinking whiskey good and bad under the Northern lights in the pre-dawn dark.

The boat — no, not that big one, or that other big one… yes, that one.

In that time I got to know the dozen or so companies in the accelerator, the second batch from the SOA but the first to experience this oddly effective enterprise. And I also gathered from conversations among the group the many challenges facing conservation-focused startups.

(By way of disclosure, I should say that I was among four press offered a spot on the chartered boat; Those invited, from penniless students to deep-pocketed investors, could join provided they got themselves to Juneau for embarkation.)

The picture painted by just about everyone was one of impending doom from a multiplicity of interlinked trends, and as many different approaches to averting or mitigating that doom as people discussing it.

What’s the problem?

In Silicon Valley one grows so used to seeing enormous sums of money expended on things barely categorizable as irritations, let alone serious problems, that it is a bit bewildering to be presented with the opposite: existential problems being addressed on shoestring budgets by founders actually passionate about their domain.

Throughout the trip, the discussions had at almost every occasion, be it looking for bear prints in a tidal flat or visiting a local salmon hatchery, were about the imminent collapse of natural ecosystems and the far-reaching consequences thereof.

Overfishing, rising water temperatures, deforestation, pollution, strip mining, microplastics — everywhere we looked is a man-made threat that has been allowed to go too far. Not a single industry or species is unaffected.

It’s enough to make you want to throw your hands up and go home, which is in fact what some have advised. But the people on this boat are not them. They were selected for their dedication to conservation and ingenuity in pursuing solutions.

Of course, there’s no “solution” to the million of tons of plastic and oil in the oceans poisoning fish and creating enormous dead zones. There’s no “solution” to climate change. No one expects or promises a miracle cure for nature’s centuries of abuse at human hands.

But there are mitigations, choices we can make and technologies we can opt for where a small change can propagate meaningfully and, if not undo the damage we’ve done, reduce it going forward and make people aware of the difference they can make.

Small fish in a big, scary pond

The trip came right at the beginning of the accelerator, a choice that meant they were only getting started in the program and in fact had never met one another. It also meant in many cases their pitches and business models were less than polished. This is for the most part an early-stage program, and early in the program at that.

That said, the companies may be young but the ideas and technologies are sound. I expect to follow up with many as they perfect their hardware, raise money, and complete pilot projects, but I think it’s important to highlight each one of them, if only briefly. The accelerator’s demo day is actually today, and I wish I could attend to see how the companies and founders have evolved.

Some accelerators are so big and so general-purpose that it was refreshing to have a manageable number of companies all clustered around interlinked issues and united by a common concern. If young entrepreneurs trying to change the world isn’t TechCrunch business, I don’t know what is.

The problems may be multifarious, but I managed to group the startups under two general umbrellas: waste reduction and aquatic intelligence.

But before that I want to mention one that doesn’t fit into either category and for other reasons deserves a shout out.

Coral Vita grows corals at many times their normal rate and implants them in dying reefs.

Coral Vita is working on a special method of fast-tracking coral growth and simultaneously selecting for organisms resistant to bleaching and other threats. The founder, Gator Halpern, impressed the importance of the coral systems on us over the trip, as did filmmaker Jeff Orlowski, who directed the harrowing documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral. (He gave a workshop on storytelling — important when you’re pitching a film or a startup.)

Gator is using a special method to grow corals at 50 times normal rates and hopefully resuscitate reefs around the world, which is awesome, but I wanted to put Coral Vita first because of a horribly apropos coincidence: Hurricane Dorian, the latest in a historically long unbroken line of storms, struck his home and lab in the Bahamas while we were at sea.

It was literally battering the islands while he was supposed to pitch investors, and he used his time instead to ask us to help the victims of the storm. That’s heart. And it serves as a reminder that these are not armchair solutions to invented problems.

If you can spare a buck, you can support Coral Vita and victims of Dorian in the Bahamas here.

Waste reduction

The other companies were addressing problems equally as destructive, if not quite so immediately so.

Humans produce a lot of waste, and a lot of that waste ends up in the ocean, either as whole plastic bags scooping up fish, microplastics poisoning them, or heavier trash cluttering the sea floor. These startups focused on reducing humanity’s deleterious effects on ocean ecosystems.

Cruz Foam is looking to replace one of my least favorite substances, Styrofoam, which I see broken up and mixed in with beach soil and sand all the time. The company has created a process that uses an incredibly abundant and strong material called chitin to create a lightweight, biodegradable packing foam. Chitin is what a lot of invertebrates use to form their shells and exoskeletons, and there’s tons of it out there — but the company has been careful to find ethical sourcing for the volume it need.

Cruz Foam’s chitin-based product, left, and Biocellection’s plastic reduction process.

Biocellection is coming from the other direction, having created a process to break down polyethylenes (i.e. plastics) into smaller molecules that are useful in existing chemical processes. It’s actually upcycling waste plastic rather than repurposing it as a lower grade product.

Loliware was in SOA’s first batch, and creates single-use straws out of kelp material — a timely endeavor, as evidenced by the $6M round A they just pulled in, and backlog of millions of units ordered. Their challenge now is not finding a market but supplying it.

Dispatch Goods and Muuse are taking complementary approaches to reducing single-use items for take-out. Dispatch follows a model in use elsewhere in the world where durable containers are used rather than disposable ones for delivery items, then picked up, washed, and reused. Kind of obvious when you think about it, which is it’s common in other places.

Muuse (formerly Revolv) takes a more tech-centric approach, partnering with coffee shops to issue reusable cups rather than disposable ones. You can keep the cup if you want, or drop it off at a smart collection point and get a refund; RFID tags keep track of the items. Founder Forrest Carroll talked about early successes with this model on semi-closed environments like airports and college campuses.

Repurpose is aiming to create a way to go “plastic neutral” the way people try to go “carbon neutral.” Companies and individuals can sponsor individual landfills where their plastics go, subsidizing the direct removal and handling costs of a given quantity of trash.

Finless Foods hopes to indirectly reduce the huge amount of cost and waste created by fishing (“sustainable” really isn’t) by creating lab-grown tuna tissue that’s indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s a work in progress, but they’ve got a ton of money so you can probably count on it.

Intelligence and automation

The technology used in the maritime and fishing industries tends toward the “sturdy legacy” type rather than “cutting edge.” That’s changing as costs drop and the benefits of things like autonomous vehicles and IoT become evident.

Ellipsis represents perhaps the most advanced, yet direct, application of the latest tech. The company uses camera-equipped drones using computer vision to inspect rivers and bodies of water for plastics, helping cleanup and response crews characterize and prioritize them. This kind of low-level data is largely missing from cleanup efforts, which gave rise to the name, which refers to both the peripatetic founder Ellie and the symbol indicating missing or omitted information

Ellipsis uses computer vision to find plastic waste in water systems.

For larger-scale inspection, autonomous boats like Saildrone are an increasingly valuable tool — but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and have their own limitations.

EcoDrone is a lower-cost, smaller, customizable autonomous sailboat that costs more like $2,500. Plenty of missions would prefer to deploy a fleet of smaller, cheaper boats than put all their hopes into one vessel.

Sea Proven is going the other direction, with a much larger autonomous ship: 20 meters long with a full ton of payload space. That opens up entirely new mission profiles that use sophisticated, large-scale equipment and require long-term presence at sea. The company has two ships now embarking on a mission to track whales in the Mediterranean.

Nets and traps are notoriously dumb, producing a huge amount of “bycatch,” animals caught up in them that aren’t what the fishing vessel was aiming (or licensed) to collect. Smart Catch equips these huge nets with a camera that tracks and characterizes the fish that enter, allowing the owner to watch and monitor them remotely and respond if necessary.

Meanwhile “dumb” traps can still be smarter in other ways. Stationary traps in stormy seas are often lost, dragged along the sea bed to an unknown location, there to sit attracting hapless crab and fish until they fall apart centuries from now. Blue Ocean Gear makes GPS-equipped buoys that can be tracked easily, reducing the risk of losing expensive fishing kit and line, and preventing “ghost fishing.”

Connectivity at sea can be problematic, with satellite often the only real option. Sure, Starlink and others are on their way, but why wait? A system of interconnected floating hubs from ONet could serve as hotspots for ships carrying valuable and voluminous data that would otherwise need to be processed at sea or uploaded at great cost.

And integrating all that data with other datasets like those provided by universities, ports, municipalities, NGOs… good luck getting it all in one place. But that’s the goal of SINAY, which is assembling a huge ocean-centric meta-database where users can cross-reference without having to sort or process it locally. Clouds come from oceans, right? So why shouldn’t the ocean be in the cloud?

Accelerator at Sea

The idea of commencing this accelerator program with a trip to southeast Alaska is a fanciful one, no doubt. But an influx of support for the accelerator’s parent organization, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, made it possible. The SOA raised millions from the mysterious Pine and not-so-mysterious Benioffs, but it also made a deep impression on the founder of Lindblad Expeditions, Sven Lindblad, who offered not just to host the event but to attend and speak at it.

He joined several other experts and interesting people in doing so: Former head of Google X Tom Chi, Value Act’s Jeff Ubben, Gigi Brisson and her Ocean Elders, including Captain (ret.) Don Walsh, the first man to reach the bottom of the Challenger Depths in the Marianas Trench. He’s hilarious, by the way.

I met SOA founder Daniela Fernandez at a TechCrunch event a few years ago when all this was just one of many twinkles in her twinkly eyes, and it’s been rewarding to watch her grow a community around these issues, which have passionate supporters around the globe if you’re willing to look for them and validate their purpose. It’s not a surprise to me at all that she has collected such an impressive group.

The boat, departing from Juneau, made a number of stops at local places of interest, where we would meet locals in the fishing industry, whale researchers, and others, or hear about the local economy ecology from one of the boat’s designated naturalists. In between these expeditions we did team-building exercises, honed pitches, and heard talks from the people mentioned above on hiring practices, investment trends, history.

These people weren’t just plucked from from the void — they are all part of the extended community that the SOA and Fernandez have built over the last few years. The organization was built with the idea of putting young, motivated people together with older, more experienced ones, and that’s just what was happening.

In a way it was what you might expect out of an accelerator program: Connecting startups with industry veterans and investors (of which there were several present) and getting them the advice and exposure they need. There was a pitch competition — the “Otter Sanctuary” (you had to be there).

But there was something very different about doing it this way — on a boat, I mean. In Alaska. With bears, whales, and the northern lights present at every turn.

“For the first time ever, we brought together a community of ocean entrepreneurs from all around the world and allowed them to become fully immersed in the environment that they have been working so hard to protect,” said Craig Dudenhoffer, who runs the accelerator program. “It was amazing to see the entrepreneurs establishing lifelong relationships with each other and with members of the SOA community. It might seem counter-intuitive for a technology entrepreneur, but sometimes you have to disconnect from technology in order to reconnect with your mission.”

In a normal startup accelerator, and in fact for the remainder of this one, aspiring entrepreneurs are living on their own somewhere, coming into a shared office space, attending office hours, meeting VCs in their offices or at demo days. That’s just fine, and indeed what many a startup needs — a peer group, a focal point in space and time, goals and advice.

On the boat, however, these things were present, but secondary to the experience of, say, standing next to someone under the aurora. I’m aware of how that sounds — “it was an experience, man!” — but there’s something fundamentally different about it.

In an office in the Bay Area, there is an established power structure and hierarchy. Schedules are adjusted around meetings, priorities are split, time and attention are devoted in formal 15-minute increments. On the boat there was no hierarchy, or rather the artificial one to which we would cleave in the city was flattened by the scale of what we were learning and experiencing.

You’d be in a zodiac or pressed against the railing with your binoculars, talking about whales and the threat of microplastics with whoever’s next to you in a normal fashion, only to find out they’re a billionaire who you’d never be able to meet directly with at all, let alone on equal terms.

Sitting at breakfast one day the guy next to me started talking about hydrogen-powered trucking — I figured I’d indulge this harmless idealist. In fact it was Jeff Ubben and Value Act was investing millions in an ecosystem they fully expect to take over the west coast. This sort of encounter was happening constantly as people engaged naturally, acting outside the established hierarchies and power structures.

Part of that was the gravity of the issues the startups were facing, and which we were reminded of repeatedly by the impending hurricane, the hatchery warning of salmon apocalypse, the visibly collapsing ecosystems, and perhaps most poignantly by the changes seen personally by Don and Sven, who were been on the seas professionally long before I was even born.

“It’s like salmon eggs”

On the last night of the trip, I shared a glass of wine with Sven to talk about why he was supporting this endeavor, which was undoubtedly expensive and certainly unusual.

“From a business perspective, I depend on the ocean — but there’s a personal connection as well. I’m constantly looking for ways to protect what we depend on,” he began. “We have a fund that generates a couple million dollars a year, and we find different people that we believe in — that have an idea, a passion, intelligence. You meet someone like Daniela, you want to go to bat for them.”

“When you’re 21 or whatever, you have all these idealistic thoughts about making a difference in the world. They need support in a variety of ways — advice, finance, mentorship, all these things are part of the puzzle,” he said. “What SOA has done is recognize people that have a good idea. Left to their own devices most of them would probably fail. But we can provide some support, and it’s like with salmon eggs – maybe instead of one in a million surviving, maybe two, or five survive, you know?”

“Tech is a valuable tool, but it has to serve to support an idea. It isn’t the idea. Eliminating plastics and bycatch, making data more useful, putting sonar sensors on robotic boats, all very interesting. We need solutions, actions, ideas, as fast as we can, to accelerate the change in behavior as fast as we can.”

His earnest replies soon became emotional, however, as his core concern for the ocean and planet in general took over.

“We’re fucked,” he said simply. “We are literally destroying the next generation’s future. I’ve been with colleagues and we’ve wept over glasses of wine over what we’re doing.”

“I have two personalities,” he explained. “And most of my friends, associates, scientists have these dual personalities, too. One is when they look in the mirror and talk to themselves — that tends to be more pessimistic. But the other is the external personality, where being pessimistic is not helpful.”

“Something like this really activates that optimism,” he said. “At the end of the day young people have to grab their future, because we sure haven’t done a great job of it. They have to get out there, they have to vote, they have to take control. Because if the system really starts to collapse… I don’t think anyone even begins to understand the magnitude of it. It’s unfathomable.”

The Accelerator at Sea program was a fascinating experience and I’m glad to have taken part. I feel sure it was valuable for the startups as well, and not just because of the $25,000 they were each spontaneously awarded from the investors on board, who in closing remarks emphasized how important it is that startups like these and the people behind them are supported by gatekeepers like venture firms and press.

The combination of good times in nature, stimulating experts and talks, and a group of highly motivated young entrepreneurs was a powerful mixture, and unfortunately one that is difficult to describe even in 3,000 words. But I’m glad it exists and I look forward to following the progress of these companies and the people behind them. You can keep up with the SOA at its website.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8176395 https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/16/in-the-accelerator-over-the-sea/ via http://www.kindlecompared.com/kindle-comparison/

[un-enfant-immature]

In the Accelerator over the Sea

In our oceans the scale of disasters is measured in millions, billions, and trillions, while solutions amount to single digits: individuals or institutions working to impact a chosen issue with approaches often both brilliant and quixotic. Putting such individuals in close contact with both whales and billionaires is the strange alchemy being attempted by the Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s Accelerator at Sea.

I and a few other reporters were invited to observe said program, a five-day excursion in Alaska that put recent college graduates, aspiring entrepreneurs, legends of the sea, and soft-spoken financial titans on the same footing: spotting whales from Zodiacs in the morning, learning from one another in the afternoon, and drinking whiskey good and bad under the Northern lights in the pre-dawn dark.

The boat — no, not that big one, or that other big one… yes, that one.

In that time I got to know the dozen or so companies in the accelerator, the second batch from the SOA but the first to experience this oddly effective enterprise. And I also gathered from conversations among the group the many challenges facing conservation-focused startups.

(By way of disclosure, I should say that I was among four press offered a spot on the chartered boat; Those invited, from penniless students to deep-pocketed investors, could join provided they got themselves to Juneau for embarkation.)

The picture painted by just about everyone was one of impending doom from a multiplicity of interlinked trends, and as many different approaches to averting or mitigating that doom as people discussing it.

What’s the problem?

In Silicon Valley one grows so used to seeing enormous sums of money expended on things barely categorizable as irritations, let alone serious problems, that it is a bit bewildering to be presented with the opposite: existential problems being addressed on shoestring budgets by founders actually passionate about their domain.

Throughout the trip, the discussions had at almost every occasion, be it looking for bear prints in a tidal flat or visiting a local salmon hatchery, were about the imminent collapse of natural ecosystems and the far-reaching consequences thereof.

Overfishing, rising water temperatures, deforestation, pollution, strip mining, microplastics — everywhere we looked is a man-made threat that has been allowed to go too far. Not a single industry or species is unaffected.

It’s enough to make you want to throw your hands up and go home, which is in fact what some have advised. But the people on this boat are not them. They were selected for their dedication to conservation and ingenuity in pursuing solutions.

Of course, there’s no “solution” to the million of tons of plastic and oil in the oceans poisoning fish and creating enormous dead zones. There’s no “solution” to climate change. No one expects or promises a miracle cure for nature’s centuries of abuse at human hands.

But there are mitigations, choices we can make and technologies we can opt for where a small change can propagate meaningfully and, if not undo the damage we’ve done, reduce it going forward and make people aware of the difference they can make.

Small fish in a big, scary pond

The trip came right at the beginning of the accelerator, a choice that meant they were only getting started in the program and in fact had never met one another. It also meant in many cases their pitches and business models were less than polished. This is for the most part an early-stage program, and early in the program at that.

That said, the companies may be young but the ideas and technologies are sound. I expect to follow up with many as they perfect their hardware, raise money, and complete pilot projects, but I think it’s important to highlight each one of them, if only briefly. The accelerator’s demo day is actually today, and I wish I could attend to see how the companies and founders have evolved.

Some accelerators are so big and so general-purpose that it was refreshing to have a manageable number of companies all clustered around interlinked issues and united by a common concern. If young entrepreneurs trying to change the world isn’t TechCrunch business, I don’t know what is.

The problems may be multifarious, but I managed to group the startups under two general umbrellas: waste reduction and aquatic intelligence.

But before that I want to mention one that doesn’t fit into either category and for other reasons deserves a shout out.

Coral Vita grows corals at many times their normal rate and implants them in dying reefs.

Coral Vita is working on a special method of fast-tracking coral growth and simultaneously selecting for organisms resistant to bleaching and other threats. The founder, Gator Halpern, impressed the importance of the coral systems on us over the trip, as did filmmaker Jeff Orlowski, who directed the harrowing documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral. (He gave a workshop on storytelling — important when you’re pitching a film or a startup.)

Gator is using a special method to grow corals at 50 times normal rates and hopefully resuscitate reefs around the world, which is awesome, but I wanted to put Coral Vita first because of a horribly apropos coincidence: Hurricane Dorian, the latest in a historically long unbroken line of storms, struck his home and lab in the Bahamas while we were at sea.

It was literally battering the islands while he was supposed to pitch investors, and he used his time instead to ask us to help the victims of the storm. That’s heart. And it serves as a reminder that these are not armchair solutions to invented problems.

If you can spare a buck, you can support Coral Vita and victims of Dorian in the Bahamas here.

Waste reduction

The other companies were addressing problems equally as destructive, if not quite so immediately so.

Humans produce a lot of waste, and a lot of that waste ends up in the ocean, either as whole plastic bags scooping up fish, microplastics poisoning them, or heavier trash cluttering the sea floor. These startups focused on reducing humanity’s deleterious effects on ocean ecosystems.

Cruz Foam is looking to replace one of my least favorite substances, Styrofoam, which I see broken up and mixed in with beach soil and sand all the time. The company has created a process that uses an incredibly abundant and strong material called chitin to create a lightweight, biodegradable packing foam. Chitin is what a lot of invertebrates use to form their shells and exoskeletons, and there’s tons of it out there — but the company has been careful to find ethical sourcing for the volume it need.

Cruz Foam’s chitin-based product, left, and Biocellection’s plastic reduction process.

Biocellection is coming from the other direction, having created a process to break down polyethylenes (i.e. plastics) into smaller molecules that are useful in existing chemical processes. It’s actually upcycling waste plastic rather than repurposing it as a lower grade product.

Loliware was in SOA’s first batch, and creates single-use straws out of kelp material — a timely endeavor, as evidenced by the $6M round A they just pulled in, and backlog of millions of units ordered. Their challenge now is not finding a market but supplying it.

Dispatch Goods and Muuse are taking complementary approaches to reducing single-use items for take-out. Dispatch follows a model in use elsewhere in the world where durable containers are used rather than disposable ones for delivery items, then picked up, washed, and reused. Kind of obvious when you think about it, which is it’s common in other places.

Muuse (formerly Revolv) takes a more tech-centric approach, partnering with coffee shops to issue reusable cups rather than disposable ones. You can keep the cup if you want, or drop it off at a smart collection point and get a refund; RFID tags keep track of the items. Founder Forrest Carroll talked about early successes with this model on semi-closed environments like airports and college campuses.

Repurpose is aiming to create a way to go “plastic neutral” the way people try to go “carbon neutral.” Companies and individuals can sponsor individual landfills where their plastics go, subsidizing the direct removal and handling costs of a given quantity of trash.

Finless Foods hopes to indirectly reduce the huge amount of cost and waste created by fishing (“sustainable” really isn’t) by creating lab-grown tuna tissue that’s indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s a work in progress, but they’ve got a ton of money so you can probably count on it.

Intelligence and automation

The technology used in the maritime and fishing industries tends toward the “sturdy legacy” type rather than “cutting edge.” That’s changing as costs drop and the benefits of things like autonomous vehicles and IoT become evident.

Ellipsis represents perhaps the most advanced, yet direct, application of the latest tech. The company uses camera-equipped drones using computer vision to inspect rivers and bodies of water for plastics, helping cleanup and response crews characterize and prioritize them. This kind of low-level data is largely missing from cleanup efforts, which gave rise to the name, which refers to both the peripatetic founder Ellie and the symbol indicating missing or omitted information

Ellipsis uses computer vision to find plastic waste in water systems.

For larger-scale inspection, autonomous boats like Saildrone are an increasingly valuable tool — but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and have their own limitations.

EcoDrone is a lower-cost, smaller, customizable autonomous sailboat that costs more like $2,500. Plenty of missions would prefer to deploy a fleet of smaller, cheaper boats than put all their hopes into one vessel.

Sea Proven is going the other direction, with a much larger autonomous ship: 20 meters long with a full ton of payload space. That opens up entirely new mission profiles that use sophisticated, large-scale equipment and require long-term presence at sea. The company has two ships now embarking on a mission to track whales in the Mediterranean.

Nets and traps are notoriously dumb, producing a huge amount of “bycatch,” animals caught up in them that aren’t what the fishing vessel was aiming (or licensed) to collect. Smart Catch equips these huge nets with a camera that tracks and characterizes the fish that enter, allowing the owner to watch and monitor them remotely and respond if necessary.

Meanwhile “dumb” traps can still be smarter in other ways. Stationary traps in stormy seas are often lost, dragged along the sea bed to an unknown location, there to sit attracting hapless crab and fish until they fall apart centuries from now. Blue Ocean Gear makes GPS-equipped buoys that can be tracked easily, reducing the risk of losing expensive fishing kit and line, and preventing “ghost fishing.”

Connectivity at sea can be problematic, with satellite often the only real option. Sure, Starlink and others are on their way, but why wait? A system of interconnected floating hubs from ONet could serve as hotspots for ships carrying valuable and voluminous data that would otherwise need to be processed at sea or uploaded at great cost.

And integrating all that data with other datasets like those provided by universities, ports, municipalities, NGOs… good luck getting it all in one place. But that’s the goal of SINAY, which is assembling a huge ocean-centric meta-database where users can cross-reference without having to sort or process it locally. Clouds come from oceans, right? So why shouldn’t the ocean be in the cloud?

Accelerator at Sea

The idea of commencing this accelerator program with a trip to southeast Alaska is a fanciful one, no doubt. But an influx of support for the accelerator’s parent organization, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, made it possible. The SOA raised millions from the mysterious Pine and not-so-mysterious Benioffs, but it also made a deep impression on the founder of Lindblad Expeditions, Sven Lindblad, who offered not just to host the event but to attend and speak at it.

He joined several other experts and interesting people in doing so: Former head of Google X Tom Chi, Value Act’s Jeff Ubben, Gigi Brisson and her Ocean Elders, including Captain (ret.) Don Walsh, the first man to reach the bottom of the Challenger Depths in the Marianas Trench. He’s hilarious, by the way.

I met SOA founder Daniela Fernandez at a TechCrunch event a few years ago when all this was just one of many twinkles in her twinkly eyes, and it’s been rewarding to watch her grow a community around these issues, which have passionate supporters around the globe if you’re willing to look for them and validate their purpose. It’s not a surprise to me at all that she has collected such an impressive group.

The boat, departing from Juneau, made a number of stops at local places of interest, where we would meet locals in the fishing industry, whale researchers, and others, or hear about the local economy ecology from one of the boat’s designated naturalists. In between these expeditions we did team-building exercises, honed pitches, and heard talks from the people mentioned above on hiring practices, investment trends, history.

These people weren’t just plucked from from the void — they are all part of the extended community that the SOA and Fernandez have built over the last few years. The organization was built with the idea of putting young, motivated people together with older, more experienced ones, and that’s just what was happening.

In a way it was what you might expect out of an accelerator program: Connecting startups with industry veterans and investors (of which there were several present) and getting them the advice and exposure they need. There was a pitch competition — the “Otter Sanctuary” (you had to be there).

But there was something very different about doing it this way — on a boat, I mean. In Alaska. With bears, whales, and the northern lights present at every turn.

“For the first time ever, we brought together a community of ocean entrepreneurs from all around the world and allowed them to become fully immersed in the environment that they have been working so hard to protect,” said Craig Dudenhoffer, who runs the accelerator program. “It was amazing to see the entrepreneurs establishing lifelong relationships with each other and with members of the SOA community. It might seem counter-intuitive for a technology entrepreneur, but sometimes you have to disconnect from technology in order to reconnect with your mission.”

In a normal startup accelerator, and in fact for the remainder of this one, aspiring entrepreneurs are living on their own somewhere, coming into a shared office space, attending office hours, meeting VCs in their offices or at demo days. That’s just fine, and indeed what many a startup needs — a peer group, a focal point in space and time, goals and advice.

On the boat, however, these things were present, but secondary to the experience of, say, standing next to someone under the aurora. I’m aware of how that sounds — “it was an experience, man!” — but there’s something fundamentally different about it.

In an office in the Bay Area, there is an established power structure and hierarchy. Schedules are adjusted around meetings, priorities are split, time and attention are devoted in formal 15-minute increments. On the boat there was no hierarchy, or rather the artificial one to which we would cleave in the city was flattened by the scale of what we were learning and experiencing.

You’d be in a zodiac or pressed against the railing with your binoculars, talking about whales and the threat of microplastics with whoever’s next to you in a normal fashion, only to find out they’re a billionaire who you’d never be able to meet directly with at all, let alone on equal terms.

Sitting at breakfast one day the guy next to me started talking about hydrogen-powered trucking — I figured I’d indulge this harmless idealist. In fact it was Jeff Ubben and Value Act was investing millions in an ecosystem they fully expect to take over the west coast. This sort of encounter was happening constantly as people engaged naturally, acting outside the established hierarchies and power structures.

Part of that was the gravity of the issues the startups were facing, and which we were reminded of repeatedly by the impending hurricane, the hatchery warning of salmon apocalypse, the visibly collapsing ecosystems, and perhaps most poignantly by the changes seen personally by Don and Sven, who were been on the seas professionally long before I was even born.

“It’s like salmon eggs”

On the last night of the trip, I shared a glass of wine with Sven to talk about why he was supporting this endeavor, which was undoubtedly expensive and certainly unusual.

“From a business perspective, I depend on the ocean — but there’s a personal connection as well. I’m constantly looking for ways to protect what we depend on,” he began. “We have a fund that generates a couple million dollars a year, and we find different people that we believe in — that have an idea, a passion, intelligence. You meet someone like Daniela, you want to go to bat for them.”

“When you’re 21 or whatever, you have all these idealistic thoughts about making a difference in the world. They need support in a variety of ways — advice, finance, mentorship, all these things are part of the puzzle,” he said. “What SOA has done is recognize people that have a good idea. Left to their own devices most of them would probably fail. But we can provide some support, and it’s like with salmon eggs – maybe instead of one in a million surviving, maybe two, or five survive, you know?”

“Tech is a valuable tool, but it has to serve to support an idea. It isn’t the idea. Eliminating plastics and bycatch, making data more useful, putting sonar sensors on robotic boats, all very interesting. We need solutions, actions, ideas, as fast as we can, to accelerate the change in behavior as fast as we can.”

His earnest replies soon became emotional, however, as his core concern for the ocean and planet in general took over.

“We’re fucked,” he said simply. “We are literally destroying the next generation’s future. I’ve been with colleagues and we’ve wept over glasses of wine over what we’re doing.”

“I have two personalities,” he explained. “And most of my friends, associates, scientists have these dual personalities, too. One is when they look in the mirror and talk to themselves — that tends to be more pessimistic. But the other is the external personality, where being pessimistic is not helpful.”

“Something like this really activates that optimism,” he said. “At the end of the day young people have to grab their future, because we sure haven’t done a great job of it. They have to get out there, they have to vote, they have to take control. Because if the system really starts to collapse… I don’t think anyone even begins to understand the magnitude of it. It’s unfathomable.”

The Accelerator at Sea program was a fascinating experience and I’m glad to have taken part. I feel sure it was valuable for the startups as well, and not just because of the $25,000 they were each spontaneously awarded from the investors on board, who in closing remarks emphasized how important it is that startups like these and the people behind them are supported by gatekeepers like venture firms and press.

The combination of good times in nature, stimulating experts and talks, and a group of highly motivated young entrepreneurs was a powerful mixture, and unfortunately one that is difficult to describe even in 3,000 words. But I’m glad it exists and I look forward to following the progress of these companies and the people behind them. You can keep up with the SOA at its website.

[quixoticcharters]

Memorable Experience with Quixotic Charter

Quixotic Yacht Charter Catamaran Fiji

We had an amazing experience with Sasha, Jenny and Thomas aboard the beautiful 43ft Quixotic this week.

Our family of 11 people departed the Denarau Marina with outstanding weather, service and local knowledge of the Fijian waters.

We anchored at our destination and enjoyed an unforgettable day of swimming, snorkelling, relaxing and eating meals prepared by Jenny.

If you are looking for a memorable experience hosted by a professional friendly team in a safe environment, this is the one to book. We will be back.

[thefabulousfulcrum]

You Are Not a Rebel

via The Baffler

by Laurie Penny

IN REAL LIFE, nobody has the decency to realize that they’re the bad guy until it’s too late. The worst thing about the historical record is that it is usually written after the fact. Just think, if we could only get our hands on advance copies of tomorrow’s historical bestsellers, we could work out once and for all how we fit into this cruel and anxious age we’re living through, and get a sneak peek at the ending to see who ends up dead, decked out with medals, or living incognito in South America. Sadly, that would hardly help those of us who are most dangerously confused. The people who most urgently need to consider which side of the moral ledger their story will be written on tend to read few books in which they are not the hero.

It’s hard realizing that you’re the bad guy, because then you have to do something about it. That’s why the most aggressive players on the gory stage of political melodrama act in such bad faith, hanging on to their own sense of persecution, mouthing the plagiarized playbook of an oppression they don’t comprehend because they don’t care to. These people have a way of fumbling through their self-set roles till the bloody final act, but if we can flip the script, we might yet stop the show.

Let us remember, then, that in the violent psychodrama going on in their own minds, modern reactionaries, almost to a man, think that they are the hero. They think they’re the plucky underdog. They continue to think this even with their tiny-fingered mascot bellowing over the White House lawns and their agenda ascendant around the world, and I know, I know it makes no sense. But dogma doesn’t have to. And one of the articles of faith uniting all our modern proto-fascists, crypto-fascists, baby-fascists, whining 4chan fascists, and the growing number of fascists for whom any sort of prefix is redundant is that they all think they are rebels. 

The new far right has recognized the enduring appeal of adventurism and appropriated its rhetoric for reactionary ends.  Propaganda hubs like The Rebel repackage far right ideas as edgy and avant-garde, reassuring recruits that they are hip outsiders in a mass of squares and normies. This is a time-worn trick. As George Orwell observed in a review of Mein Kampf, “whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger, and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.” 

This is what happens when we fetishize the romance of rebellion while making actual social change impossible.

Fighting for people who are less privileged than you to become even less privileged than you is hardly a revolutionary mission. CEOs do it all the time. Last year I was interviewed for a Vicedocumentary about the relationship between Gamergate and the new far right. I remember that to get the shot at the right level, I had to half-sit and half-stand on a fancy sideboard. While I was engaging my core muscles trying to balance, the affable hipster doing the interview asked, “But aren’t the guys a bit underground? Aren’t they a bit counter-culture?” I was so flabbergasted that I fell off my perch. Yes, I told him, they are underground, a bit. But even Vice magazine, which is woke enough as long as woke sells ads—another Viceeditor told me authoritatively a few years ago that “it’s not cool to be stupid anymore”—even they can surely see that simply being “underground” does not make something fit to dredge up. A lot of things run underground that would be better off staying there. Sewers, for instance.

This is what happens when we equate “anti-social” with “anti-establishment.” The far right think they’re the resistance. They think they’re Mel Gibson in Braveheart, when they’re actually just regular old Mel Gibson, screaming about bitches and whores and Jews and then wondering why no one answers their phone calls anymore. Well played, Rob Roy. 

The Shitler Youth come in many flavors of plausible deniability, but none are quite so woefully iconic as everyone’s favorite ship of fools: the fake pirates of Defend Europe. 

In case you hadn’t heard, a few months ago some white supremacists decided that the rescue boats trying to save desperate people from drowning in the Mediterranean were a threat to “European” way of life. (I will not dignify them with the term “activists,” because activists have meetings and have read things that aren’t spittle-flecked sexually paranoid internet retro-rants about white people being bred out of existence.) They decided to solve the problem by pursuing a merry life of adventure on the high seas. No, really. These rudderless twits went ahead and chartered a boat, with the initial, unabashedly evil intention of impeding the rescue ships, a plan which was quickly changed to “monitoring” said ships, as apparently nobody had any idea how to do actual sea battle, because whatever the copyright people told us, downloading a lot of free porn does not, by itself, make you a pirate.

They got a lot of press, of course, which was part of the idea—there’s no point being a rebel if you can’t get your picture in the paper. They even got Katie Hopkins, Britain’s own dollar-store Eva Braun, to come along for part of the ride, presumably as some sort of totem against shipwreck, because any self-respecting god of the ocean would spit Hopkins right back out again. Deliciously, before they had even managed to embark on their main voyage, they accidentally smuggled twenty-one Sri Lankan asylum seekers into Europe. Then their boat stalled in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. The founder of the Sea-Eye, the NGO ship that was sent to offer aid—the pouting stalwarts refused help—told the public that “to help a ship in distress is the duty of anyone who is at sea, without distinction to their origin, color, religion, or beliefs.” Hopefully the Sea-Eye was also stocked with burn cream.[*] 

The very worst part about this entire episode is that an actual rescue ship was diverted to help these cretins, a rescue ship that could have been saving people who are really fleeing for their lives, rather than simply fleeing reality. I’m not going to permit myself to wish the baby-fascists had fucking drowned, but I do hope the stalled vessel gave these quisling Quixotes time to check out their own reflection in the surface of the sea and wonder whether being “underground” was quite so much fun anymore. I also hope that when they make the movie of this, every single one of them is played by Nicolas Cage in a variety of unconvincing wigs.

Claiming that anti-fascists are morally equivalent to fascists is a little like claiming that, as both take a toll on the body, cancer and chemotherapy are basically the same.

In the United States, radicalized extremists on the far right are also due for a rebrand, having been embarrassed on the international stage in Charlottesville by fellow travelers who took the street-fighting-Nazi live-action roleplay too far, marched around screaming about being replaced by Jews, and murdered someone. The Shitler Youth are now going through desperate conniptions trying to claim that anti-fascists are morally equivalent to fascists, that “all sides” are aggressive and forthright, which is a little like claiming that, as both take a toll on the body, cancer and chemotherapy are basically the same.

Shit got real, eh? One minute you’re a nice normal boy with hobbies and internet friends, and the next, your picture’s all over the place holding a torch and doing the Nuremberg uglyface and your parents won’t talk to you because everyone thinks you’re a militant racist, and they’re right. If I may talk directly to these self-deluding subterraneans: I’m sorry to be the one to point this out, but you have been radicalized. There’s a reason people call you Vanilla ISIS. ISIS think they’re rebels, too. Have a good hard look at these Defend Europe twits with their rickety armada. These are your people. They’re your compadres. You are paddling beside them in the shallow end of political discourse, screaming when anything living nibbles your toes. 

This is what happens when we fetishize the romance of rebellion while making actual social change impossible. My guess is that the ruling class, the people whose agenda these people’s mean-spirited credulity serves, aren’t standing about with flaming torches screaming that they’re about to be replaced by Jews. They don’t spend their time harassing girls on the internet. They outsource that shit. To suckers. For free. Meanwhile, the ruling class is just writing the speeches and jerking the strings and watching gullible, self-anointed rebels make fools of themselves on television.

These are the very people whose names the Shitler Youth wear on their unbelievably ugly hats and t-shirts, which incidentally is exactly what happens when you let straight white guys who consider gold a neutral design your neo-fascist aesthetic. The one problem with calling these faux-rebels Nazis is that it suggests they know how to goddamned get dressed in the morning. The left are out-styling them as well as out-thinking them right now. The left! Some of us wear hemp! And t-shirts with weak science puns! And we let our flatmates cut our hair! And we spend half our time fighting each other over tiny ideological debates that started before we were born, and they still make us look good. They make us look good because they’ve swallowed the fake oppression story cooked up by propagandists on the right to recast their most reactionary opinions as risqué. 

So let’s be clear: getting fired because you hate women is not an equivalent hardship to getting fired because you happen to be one. People who have been disowned by their parents for being gay or transgender aren’t going to have sympathy when your mum and dad find your stash of homophobic murder fantasies and change the locks. Getting attacked for being a racist is not the same as getting attacked because you are black. The definition of oppression is not “failure to see your disgusting opinions about the relative human value of other living breathing people reflected in society at large.” Being shamed, including in public, for holding intolerant, bigoted opinions is not an infringement of your free speech. You are not fighting oppression. You are, at best, fighting criticism. If that’s the hill you really want to die on, fine, but don’t kid yourself it’s the moral high ground. I repeat: You cannot be a rebel for the status quo. It would be physically easier to go and fuck yourself, and I suggest you try.

The fact that some people—the women, people of color, immigrants and queer people you want put back in their proper place—disapprove of you does not make you edgy. A bag of cotton wool is edgier than you lot. Fighting for things to go back to the way they were twenty or thirty or fifty years ago does not constitute a bold resistance movement. It constitutes the militant arm of the Daily Mail comments section. Fighting real oppression involves risk, and before you start, I’m talking about real risk, not some girl on the internet calling you a cowardly subliterate waste of human skin, like I just did.  

This was gig-economy bigotry from the beginning, every bedroom hatemonger his own self-facilitating media node.

Of course, the fragile self-image of American nationalism has always been grounded in the idea of rebellion, in an aesthetic of protest and struggle for individual liberty powdering over the ugly worship of authoritarianism andhierarchy that was also baked in from the beginning. The United States has never truly stopped fighting its civil war, but the tropes and language of that war have been re-appropriated by net reactionaries in an effort to dress up their racism as rebellion, which by coincidence was part of what the war was about in the first place. That’s why there’s such attachment to the confederate or “rebel” flag among conservatives, even in states which fought for the Union; even in states which did not exist at the time. And this investment in maintaining a state of permanent rebellion is why net reactionaries have no idea what to do now they’re technically in power, like the confused golden retriever who finally catches that Ford Focus, except far less fluffy. 

Mewling subluminaries have, for years, approached backyard fascism as a growth industry—why stop now? These enterprising intellectual bantamweights did not wait for the mechanisms of state and party to show them how to goose-step or gather seed money—this was gig-economy bigotry from the beginning, every bedroom hatemonger his own self-facilitating media node, like a sort of fascist Nathan Barley. The millennials among them have merely done what the television told us all to do as kids: find your passion and make it your career. It’s just a shame that their passion happens to be the creation of a white ethnostate with a stack of sexually frustrated video rants as a transitional demand.

So propping up the establishment does not sit well with their sense of themselves as brave, entrepreneurial outsiders battling the forces of something-or-other. Perhaps it feels strange to be told you have won when nothing in your own actual, material life has changed. Perhaps winning didn’t taste as good as the picture on the package. They were promised thrills and spills and danger and adventure and instead they’re on the haunted teacup ride through the wreckage of civil society and they’re feeling a bit sick but they’ve given the man their money, so they can’t get off.

And in any case this is not the sort of game you just win or lose. Politics doesn’t work like that, although in fairness, the sense that it does is one of several delusions they share with the political elites they claim to despise. Playing by those rules is a great way to make sure that the house always wins. What’s changed in the world in the months since their team supposedly won? The rich are still running things, they’re just a lot less shy about it. Living standards have gone nowhere but down. The planet is still sizzling towards climate collapse, and I know they think that’s not real, but you don’t have to believe in a train to get run down by it with everyone you care about while you stand in the middle of the tracks screaming about cucks and Jews like a prize prick.

One major thing, however, has changed, and that is that an awful lot of people who happen to be foreign, or female, or members of a different race or faith from these fools are suddenly living in fear of violence, violence the Shitler Youth and their crewmates helped whip up to make themselves feel like big damn heroes. Because they wanted to feel like they were fighting the power without actually having to challenge anyone who had it.

If you’ve a niggling suspicion I might be talking about you here, it’s time to take a look at your own reflection in whatever screen you’re reading off. If you want to cosplay as a revolutionary from a made-up time before brown people and liberated women existed, go and drink mead at a Ren fair like a normal person. If you just want to be famous on the internet, go and make some porn. If you can’t get over your fetish for fake oppression, go and hang out in a club where people wear expensive black rubber and get yourself consensually flogged by someone with legitimate rage to work through. But don’t call yourself a revolutionary just because you can’t stop running in circles.

[*]  Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly suggested that the crew of the Defend Europe vessel had been rescued by the Sea-Eye. Although the Sea-Eye was temporarily diverted to travel toward the Defend Europe boat and offer aid, the latter crew refused help and the rescue ship carried on its operations. The fascists’ boat later restarted.

[jenesys-ph-blog]

Next Stop: Sendai!

by Christian and Mai

The fourth day started with the delegation having breakfast at Shinjuku Washington Hotel Annex building. After getting ready, the team were transported to a chartered bus going to Tokyo Station, where the delegation and other participants would board the Shinkansen bullet train going to the city of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. 

On the way to the train station, we were able to pass by several historical buildings significant in the institution of Japanese society and government. These edifices include the Imperial Palace Grounds of Japan. This is the official residence of the Japanese Imperial family. The gardens that are located within the palace are quite beautiful, given the variety of flowers and plants that are grown and maintained in the area. Entry inside the palace grounds may be arranged for visitors. Minami-san also emphasized the existence of two centers of power of the Japanese government during the Shogunate era. Tokyo was the center for culture and commerce while Kyoto was the administrative center of the country. The emperor resided in Kyoto until the Meiji restoration when the emperor transferred in Tokyo, making the city the center of both government and finance in Japan.

We arrived at Tokyo Station around 9:50 am. We immediately boarded car number 5, since that the train will be leaving after a few moments. Punctuality was truly an important thing in riding the Shinkansen, for the train ticket is forfeited when the passenger fails to show up on time. The entire Philippine delegation was able to ride the train on time.

Shinkansen is one of the symbols of Japanese technology and economic prosperity. It is a network of high speed trains, connecting various parts of Japan. These trains are the fastest in the world, and the delegates, with this experience of riding these trains, can attest to this fact. The trip going to Sendai only took two hours, quite short for a distance of 330 kms. The operator of the train going to Sendai is Japan Railways (JR) East. Aboard the train, the participants were able to observe various forms of settlements in Japan, be it urban or rural. These settlements are observed to be quite organized and structured , and we were able to theorize that these set-ups were only possible through strict enforcements of urban planning and land zoning.

We arrived at Sendai Station past a few minutes after 12 noon. The delegates then proceeded to a bus, which brought us to JA (Japan Agriculture) Midorino. On the way to JA Midorino, we were able to see different sceneries, giving us a glimpse of Japanese life outside the metropolitan areas. The agriculture industry may be said as quite thriving, given the wide expanse of land dedicated to farming. The existing infrastructure is also impressive

Upon arriving at JA Midorino, we were welcomed with a sumptuous lunch. The lecture proceeded afterwards. The executive director of JA Midorino gave us important insights regarding the current state of agriculture in Japan, as well as the current system of the cooperative.

Japan Agricultural Cooperatives is a nationwide cooperative that aims to protect and improve the agricultural sector and the lives of those involved and dependent on farming in Japan. The JA mainly pursues its three most important missions: (1) to increase agricultural productivity, (2) to increase agricultural income, and lastly, to develop agriculture in the community. This is done by supporting farmers in a collaborative manner, sustaining the lives of the people in the community. The mantra that the cooperatives operate on is mainly unity and cooperation, as the slogan “One for all, all for one” says.

Various differences exist between a cooperative and a corporation. Rather than pursuing profits, the cooperative aims to improve production and the lives of its members. In an cooperative, the farmers themselves are those involved in decision-making, in contrast with the investors and shareholders organizing and managing in a corporation. Those in a cooperative get to share equal voting rights, unlike those in a corporation whose power in voting depend on the number of shares they control.

The present state of agricultural cooperatives in Japan may be described as in a gradual decline. The number of employees as well as its regular members declined in the past years. On the other hand, the number of associate members (locals) rose exponentially. These changes in Japan’s agricultural sector is attributed to the dietary changes among the Japanese (shift from rice to bread, noodles). Given the decrease in the demand for rice, Japanese farmers also decrease rice production, resorting to the cultivation of other crops (and other products such as poultry, livestock) that would increase their income.

Farming, as an occupation, is also experiencing decline in interest, given that most of the youth move to the cities to look for better opportunities. This results to a higher average age of farmers in the country at 66.4 years old, a year older than the average six years ago. The high average age is also attributed to Japan’s aging society. To encourage the youth to join the sector, the cooperatives reach out its consumers through various activities such as food festivals and immersions so that they may be familiarized with agriculture and deepen their understanding of farming.

To date, cooperatives such as JA Midorino focus on improving value chains. This can be done through the strengthening of sales capacities (searching for other possible markets). They are also focused on reducing material prices through bulk purchasing. More challenges lie ahead as various conditions may affect these efforts. JA is primarily concerned on the implementation of trade agreements (such as TPP and FTA), thinking that these may endanger the competitiveness of the farming industry.

After the talk, the delegates proceeded to Ark Hotel Sendai where they will spend the next two nights. Most of the delegates spent their free time after dinner at Sendai’s Pageant of Starlight, a street lined up with trees decorated with beautiful lights. Some also went shopping at various shopping centers (such as Don Quixote). There were also delegates who went on to try the onsen (Japanese hot spring and bathing facility) inside the hotel.

[talesofpassingtime]

Come now; band, not of officers, but of thieves; footpads with the licence of the Holy Brotherhood; tell me who was the ignoramus who signed a warrant of arrest against such a knight as I am? Who was he that did not know that knights-errant are independent of all jurisdictions, that their law is their sword, their charter their prowess, and their edicts their will?

— Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

[sheminecrafts]

In the Accelerator over the Sea

In our oceans the scale of disasters is measured in millions, billions, and trillions, while solutions amount to single digits: individuals or institutions working to impact a chosen issue with approaches often both brilliant and quixotic. Putting such individuals in close contact with both whales and billionaires is the strange alchemy being attempted by the Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s Accelerator at Sea.

I and a few other reporters were invited to observe said program, a five-day excursion in Alaska that put recent college graduates, aspiring entrepreneurs, legends of the sea, and soft-spoken financial titans on the same footing: spotting whales from Zodiacs in the morning, learning from one another in the afternoon, and drinking whiskey good and bad under the Northern lights in the pre-dawn dark.

The boat — no, not that big one, or that other big one… yes, that one.

In that time I got to know the dozen or so companies in the accelerator, the second batch from the SOA but the first to experience this oddly effective enterprise. And I also gathered from conversations among the group the many challenges facing conservation-focused startups.

(By way of disclosure, I should say that I was among four press offered a spot on the chartered boat; Those invited, from penniless students to deep-pocketed investors, could join provided they got themselves to Juneau for embarkation.)

The picture painted by just about everyone was one of impending doom from a multiplicity of interlinked trends, and as many different approaches to averting or mitigating that doom as people discussing it.

What’s the problem?

In Silicon Valley one grows so used to seeing enormous sums of money expended on things barely categorizable as irritations, let alone serious problems, that it is a bit bewildering to be presented with the opposite: existential problems being addressed on shoestring budgets by founders actually passionate about their domain.

Throughout the trip, the discussions had at almost every occasion, be it looking for bear prints in a tidal flat or visiting a local salmon hatchery, were about the imminent collapse of natural ecosystems and the far-reaching consequences thereof.

Overfishing, rising water temperatures, deforestation, pollution, strip mining, microplastics — everywhere we looked is a man-made threat that has been allowed to go too far. Not a single industry or species is unaffected.

It’s enough to make you want to throw your hands up and go home, which is in fact what some have advised. But the people on this boat are not them. They were selected for their dedication to conservation and ingenuity in pursuing solutions.

Of course, there’s no “solution” to the million of tons of plastic and oil in the oceans poisoning fish and creating enormous dead zones. There’s no “solution” to climate change. No one expects or promises a miracle cure for nature’s centuries of abuse at human hands.

But there are mitigations, choices we can make and technologies we can opt for where a small change can propagate meaningfully and, if not undo the damage we’ve done, reduce it going forward and make people aware of the difference they can make.

Small fish in a big, scary pond

The trip came right at the beginning of the accelerator, a choice that meant they were only getting started in the program and in fact had never met one another. It also meant in many cases their pitches and business models were less than polished. This is for the most part an early-stage program, and early in the program at that.

That said, the companies may be young but the ideas and technologies are sound. I expect to follow up with many as they perfect their hardware, raise money, and complete pilot projects, but I think it’s important to highlight each one of them, if only briefly. The accelerator’s demo day is actually today, and I wish I could attend to see how the companies and founders have evolved.

Some accelerators are so big and so general-purpose that it was refreshing to have a manageable number of companies all clustered around interlinked issues and united by a common concern. If young entrepreneurs trying to change the world isn’t TechCrunch business, I don’t know what is.

The problems may be multifarious, but I managed to group the startups under two general umbrellas: waste reduction and aquatic intelligence.

But before that I want to mention one that doesn’t fit into either category and for other reasons deserves a shout out.

Coral Vita grows corals at many times their normal rate and implants them in dying reefs.

Coral Vita is working on a special method of fast-tracking coral growth and simultaneously selecting for organisms resistant to bleaching and other threats. The founder, Gator Halpern, impressed the importance of the coral systems on us over the trip, as did filmmaker Jeff Orlowski, who directed the harrowing documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral. (He gave a workshop on storytelling — important when you’re pitching a film or a startup.)

Gator is using a special method to grow corals at 50 times normal rates and hopefully resuscitate reefs around the world, which is awesome, but I wanted to put Coral Vita first because of a horribly apropos coincidence: Hurricane Dorian, the latest in a historically long unbroken line of storms, struck his home and lab in the Bahamas while we were at sea.

It was literally battering the islands while he was supposed to pitch investors, and he used his time instead to ask us to help the victims of the storm. That’s heart. And it serves as a reminder that these are not armchair solutions to invented problems.

If you can spare a buck, you can support Coral Vita and victims of Dorian in the Bahamas here.

Waste reduction

The other companies were addressing problems equally as destructive, if not quite so immediately so.

Humans produce a lot of waste, and a lot of that waste ends up in the ocean, either as whole plastic bags scooping up fish, microplastics poisoning them, or heavier trash cluttering the sea floor. These startups focused on reducing humanity’s deleterious effects on ocean ecosystems.

Cruz Foam is looking to replace one of my least favorite substances, Styrofoam, which I see broken up and mixed in with beach soil and sand all the time. The company has created a process that uses an incredibly abundant and strong material called chitin to create a lightweight, biodegradable packing foam. Chitin is what a lot of invertebrates use to form their shells and exoskeletons, and there’s tons of it out there — but the company has been careful to find ethical sourcing for the volume it need.

Cruz Foam’s chitin-based product, left, and Biocellection’s plastic reduction process.

Biocellection is coming from the other direction, having created a process to break down polyethylenes (i.e. plastics) into smaller molecules that are useful in existing chemical processes. It’s actually upcycling waste plastic rather than repurposing it as a lower grade product.

Loliware was in SOA’s first batch, and creates single-use straws out of kelp material — a timely endeavor, as evidenced by the $6M round A they just pulled in, and backlog of millions of units ordered. Their challenge now is not finding a market but supplying it.

Dispatch Goods and Muuse are taking complementary approaches to reducing single-use items for take-out. Dispatch follows a model in use elsewhere in the world where durable containers are used rather than disposable ones for delivery items, then picked up, washed, and reused. Kind of obvious when you think about it, which is it’s common in other places.

Muuse (formerly Revolv) takes a more tech-centric approach, partnering with coffee shops to issue reusable cups rather than disposable ones. You can keep the cup if you want, or drop it off at a smart collection point and get a refund; RFID tags keep track of the items. Founder Forrest Carroll talked about early successes with this model on semi-closed environments like airports and college campuses.

Repurpose is aiming to create a way to go “plastic neutral” the way people try to go “carbon neutral.” Companies and individuals can sponsor individual landfills where their plastics go, subsidizing the direct removal and handling costs of a given quantity of trash.

Finless Foods hopes to indirectly reduce the huge amount of cost and waste created by fishing (“sustainable” really isn’t) by creating lab-grown tuna tissue that’s indistinguishable from the real thing. It’s a work in progress, but they’ve got a ton of money so you can probably count on it.

Intelligence and automation

The technology used in the maritime and fishing industries tends toward the “sturdy legacy” type rather than “cutting edge.” That’s changing as costs drop and the benefits of things like autonomous vehicles and IoT become evident.

Ellipsis represents perhaps the most advanced, yet direct, application of the latest tech. The company uses camera-equipped drones using computer vision to inspect rivers and bodies of water for plastics, helping cleanup and response crews characterize and prioritize them. This kind of low-level data is largely missing from cleanup efforts, which gave rise to the name, which refers to both the peripatetic founder Ellie and the symbol indicating missing or omitted information

Ellipsis uses computer vision to find plastic waste in water systems.

For larger-scale inspection, autonomous boats like Saildrone are an increasingly valuable tool — but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and have their own limitations.

EcoDrone is a lower-cost, smaller, customizable autonomous sailboat that costs more like $2,500. Plenty of missions would prefer to deploy a fleet of smaller, cheaper boats than put all their hopes into one vessel.

Sea Proven is going the other direction, with a much larger autonomous ship: 20 meters long with a full ton of payload space. That opens up entirely new mission profiles that use sophisticated, large-scale equipment and require long-term presence at sea. The company has two ships now embarking on a mission to track whales in the Mediterranean.

Nets and traps are notoriously dumb, producing a huge amount of “bycatch,” animals caught up in them that aren’t what the fishing vessel was aiming (or licensed) to collect. Smart Catch equips these huge nets with a camera that tracks and characterizes the fish that enter, allowing the owner to watch and monitor them remotely and respond if necessary.

Meanwhile “dumb” traps can still be smarter in other ways. Stationary traps in stormy seas are often lost, dragged along the sea bed to an unknown location, there to sit attracting hapless crab and fish until they fall apart centuries from now. Blue Ocean Gear makes GPS-equipped buoys that can be tracked easily, reducing the risk of losing expensive fishing kit and line, and preventing “ghost fishing.”

Connectivity at sea can be problematic, with satellite often the only real option. Sure, Starlink and others are on their way, but why wait? A system of interconnected floating hubs from ONet could serve as hotspots for ships carrying valuable and voluminous data that would otherwise need to be processed at sea or uploaded at great cost.

And integrating all that data with other datasets like those provided by universities, ports, municipalities, NGOs… good luck getting it all in one place. But that’s the goal of SINAY, which is assembling a huge ocean-centric meta-database where users can cross-reference without having to sort or process it locally. Clouds come from oceans, right? So why shouldn’t the ocean be in the cloud?

Accelerator at Sea

The idea of commencing this accelerator program with a trip to southeast Alaska is a fanciful one, no doubt. But an influx of support for the accelerator’s parent organization, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance, made it possible. The SOA raised millions from the mysterious Pine and not-so-mysterious Benioffs, but it also made a deep impression on the founder of Lindblad Expeditions, Sven Lindblad, who offered not just to host the event but to attend and speak at it.

He joined several other experts and interesting people in doing so: Former head of Google X Tom Chi, Value Act’s Jeff Ubben, Gigi Brisson and her Ocean Elders, including Captain (ret.) Don Walsh, the first man to reach the bottom of the Challenger Depths in the Marianas Trench. He’s hilarious, by the way.

I met SOA founder Daniela Fernandez at a TechCrunch event a few years ago when all this was just one of many twinkles in her twinkly eyes, and it’s been rewarding to watch her grow a community around these issues, which have passionate supporters around the globe if you’re willing to look for them and validate their purpose. It’s not a surprise to me at all that she has collected such an impressive group.

The boat, departing from Juneau, made a number of stops at local places of interest, where we would meet locals in the fishing industry, whale researchers, and others, or hear about the local economy ecology from one of the boat’s designated naturalists. In between these expeditions we did team-building exercises, honed pitches, and heard talks from the people mentioned above on hiring practices, investment trends, history.

These people weren’t just plucked from from the void — they are all part of the extended community that the SOA and Fernandez have built over the last few years. The organization was built with the idea of putting young, motivated people together with older, more experienced ones, and that’s just what was happening.

In a way it was what you might expect out of an accelerator program: Connecting startups with industry veterans and investors (of which there were several present) and getting them the advice and exposure they need. There was a pitch competition — the “Otter Sanctuary” (you had to be there).

But there was something very different about doing it this way — on a boat, I mean. In Alaska. With bears, whales, and the northern lights present at every turn.

“For the first time ever, we brought together a community of ocean entrepreneurs from all around the world and allowed them to become fully immersed in the environment that they have been working so hard to protect,” said Craig Dudenhoffer, who runs the accelerator program. “It was amazing to see the entrepreneurs establishing lifelong relationships with each other and with members of the SOA community. It might seem counter-intuitive for a technology entrepreneur, but sometimes you have to disconnect from technology in order to reconnect with your mission.”

In a normal startup accelerator, and in fact for the remainder of this one, aspiring entrepreneurs are living on their own somewhere, coming into a shared office space, attending office hours, meeting VCs in their offices or at demo days. That’s just fine, and indeed what many a startup needs — a peer group, a focal point in space and time, goals and advice.

On the boat, however, these things were present, but secondary to the experience of, say, standing next to someone under the aurora. I’m aware of how that sounds — “it was an experience, man!” — but there’s something fundamentally different about it.

In an office in the Bay Area, there is an established power structure and hierarchy. Schedules are adjusted around meetings, priorities are split, time and attention are devoted in formal 15-minute increments. On the boat there was no hierarchy, or rather the artificial one to which we would cleave in the city was flattened by the scale of what we were learning and experiencing.

You’d be in a zodiac or pressed against the railing with your binoculars, talking about whales and the threat of microplastics with whoever’s next to you in a normal fashion, only to find out they’re a billionaire who you’d never be able to meet directly with at all, let alone on equal terms.

Sitting at breakfast one day the guy next to me started talking about hydrogen-powered trucking — I figured I’d indulge this harmless idealist. In fact it was Jeff Ubben and Value Act was investing millions in an ecosystem they fully expect to take over the west coast. This sort of encounter was happening constantly as people engaged naturally, acting outside the established hierarchies and power structures.

Part of that was the gravity of the issues the startups were facing, and which we were reminded of repeatedly by the impending hurricane, the hatchery warning of salmon apocalypse, the visibly collapsing ecosystems, and perhaps most poignantly by the changes seen personally by Don and Sven, who were been on the seas professionally long before I was even born.

“It’s like salmon eggs”

On the last night of the trip, I shared a glass of wine with Sven to talk about why he was supporting this endeavor, which was undoubtedly expensive and certainly unusual.

“From a business perspective, I depend on the ocean — but there’s a personal connection as well. I’m constantly looking for ways to protect what we depend on,” he began. “We have a fund that generates a couple million dollars a year, and we find different people that we believe in — that have an idea, a passion, intelligence. You meet someone like Daniela, you want to go to bat for them.”

“When you’re 21 or whatever, you have all these idealistic thoughts about making a difference in the world. They need support in a variety of ways — advice, finance, mentorship, all these things are part of the puzzle,” he said. “What SOA has done is recognize people that have a good idea. Left to their own devices most of them would probably fail. But we can provide some support, and it’s like with salmon eggs – maybe instead of one in a million surviving, maybe two, or five survive, you know?”

“Tech is a valuable tool, but it has to serve to support an idea. It isn’t the idea. Eliminating plastics and bycatch, making data more useful, putting sonar sensors on robotic boats, all very interesting. We need solutions, actions, ideas, as fast as we can, to accelerate the change in behavior as fast as we can.”

His earnest replies soon became emotional, however, as his core concern for the ocean and planet in general took over.

“We’re fucked,” he said simply. “We are literally destroying the next generation’s future. I’ve been with colleagues and we’ve wept over glasses of wine over what we’re doing.”

“I have two personalities,” he explained. “And most of my friends, associates, scientists have these dual personalities, too. One is when they look in the mirror and talk to themselves — that tends to be more pessimistic. But the other is the external personality, where being pessimistic is not helpful.”

“Something like this really activates that optimism,” he said. “At the end of the day young people have to grab their future, because we sure haven’t done a great job of it. They have to get out there, they have to vote, they have to take control. Because if the system really starts to collapse… I don’t think anyone even begins to understand the magnitude of it. It’s unfathomable.”

The Accelerator at Sea program was a fascinating experience and I’m glad to have taken part. I feel sure it was valuable for the startups as well, and not just because of the $25,000 they were each spontaneously awarded from the investors on board, who in closing remarks emphasized how important it is that startups like these and the people behind them are supported by gatekeepers like venture firms and press.

The combination of good times in nature, stimulating experts and talks, and a group of highly motivated young entrepreneurs was a powerful mixture, and unfortunately one that is difficult to describe even in 3,000 words. But I’m glad it exists and I look forward to following the progress of these companies and the people behind them. You can keep up with the SOA at its website.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2ISQUCj via IFTTT

[jaypakrhe]

56 Inches to 5 trillion Economy: Modi’s goal of a $5 trillion economy by 2025 is at risk - Motor/ Loud mouthing by Ministers at Peak.

56 Inches to 5 trillion Economy: Modi’s goal of a $5 trillion economy by 2025 is at risk – Motor/ Loud mouthing by Ministers at Peak.

via 5 trillion Economy: Modi’s goal of a $5 trillion economy by 2025 is at risk .

I am always intrigued by Mr. Modi’s quixotic choices of Ministers at times.  Earlier it was his fetish for Lawyers and “Chartered Accountants. And this . community benefitted most from the loot called advice and tax planning for GST !

He changed the . Employment and Skills Ministers 4 times.   Changed Defence…

[reformschool]

January 17, 2019 at 07:19PM

Teachers union-funded Step-up Louisiana just listened to people pour their hearts out about human rights and they’re still talking about their quixotic crusade against charters... #NOLAed pic.twitter.com/Y5ENWilD7I

— Peter C. Cook (@petercook) January 18, 2019

Teachers union-funded Step-up Louisiana just listened to people pour their hearts out about human rights and they’re still talking about their quixotic crusade against charters... #NOLAed http://bit.ly/2T89ERm