#in that i am blogging. live. during the avs game

[preemshots]

johnny + the nomads lore

alright, i know this is a screenshots blog but i'm going to go ahead and start dropping some juicy lore tidbits as i dig them up. part of what i'm doing outside of just photo diarying is shard hunting, and BOY is there a lot the game likes to hide in those little shards for idiots like me who like to read so we can write unnecessarily accurate fanfiction! 

full disclosure, i know jack shit about the TTRPG/cyberpunk 2020 rulebook except what i read in the wikis. 

so here’s my lore roundup so far of everything i know about johnny joining the nomads

we know johnny likes to narrate v’s quest objectives. here’s the first mention where he says it himself: 

during the voodoo boys quest "transmission" there's a shard in the maglev tunnels beside the ice bath, presumably from brigitte's research into johnny in the first place:

okay, so the timeline is this: johnny joins the nomads after trying and failing to rescue alt. johnny hides out in the badlands for some years. then he and rogue come back to night city and nuke arasaka tower help alt escape the arasaka subnet by uploading liberator to their network once and for all.

this ultimately makes sense. in alt’s flashback, we meet santiago, who is a nomad/connected to nomads, joins rogue and johnny when they're trying to get alt back, and eventually becomes the leader of the aldecaldos. 

part of santiago’s TTRPG lore is that he, johnny, and rogue have to lay low in the badlands with nomads after they storm arasaka headquarters (i am aware the game takes many liberties with the original lore so who knows the full accuracy of anything from the original rulebooks)

ENDING spoilers: in the rogue+johnny storming AHQ ending, it's revealed that rogue has a son while they're prepping for the job. if you eavesdrop on her calling him while you're at the afterlife, you hear her tell her son to (paraphrasing here) "pull over and look at the stars", which immediately made my brain go to: nomad, badlands, santiago = dad? maybe. (santiago also canonically has a son according to the TTRPG lore)

this immediately reminded me of another interesting shard that i believe you can find in multiple locations around night city: “"what REALLY happened in arasaka tower?“

i love this dang shard. at first i thought it was just a cute conspiracy with some juicy gossip (and i love how 99% of the shards that mention johnny in this game are reminding us that he's not a real rebel, he's a poser) but it brings some interesting shit together

one: it tells us where johnny got his hands on the nukes! he and the nomads jumped a militech convoy and jacked some bombs! 

which is never directly explained, even as saburo arasaka is interrogating him shortly before using soulkiller. very nice of johnny to protect his homies like that. 

...or maybe he didn’t. saburo emphasizes that the dead don’t lie like the living do, and we don’t know what exactly arasaka did to johnny’s construct in mikoshi. 

it also explains why the obvious media narrative is that militech nuked arasaka, a nice neat political bow to the end of the fourth corpo wars, which is an entire section of the TTRPG lore that makes my eyes cross when i read it. 

it also makes the star/nomads ending extremely interesting, because i originally believed it was the ending where V’s journey deviates the most from rewalking johnny’s path... which also has weird implications if the johnny’s nomad era is being kept from v. 

(this also leads into my belief that the star ending/the devil ending are narratively two sides of the same coin, but that’s a WHOLE ANOTHER POST for another day.)

TWO, just straight up the fact that they turned the raid where they actually obtained the nukes into an action flick BD that pretty much ANYONE could watch. who the hell was doing that?? 

well, who else other than the guy who johnny (optionally) punched the shit out of for filming alt's death: thompson, media guy, and according to rogue, “bad luck”. because you know, recording your crimes is straight up evidence that can be used against you.

during the alt flashback we meet thompson, and just after that in cyberspace before meeting alt, johnny tells v that he has no idea what happened to him and that they never worked together again. 

oh, johnny, you lying bastard man

this is blatantly untrue, and if V even had two braincells and better memory than a goldfish they'd know this--in the first flashback sequence where johnny and rogue nuke arasaka tower, thompson is on the comms as they ride the AV towards AHQ, questioning their plans and use of violence. 

which leaves me with some questions, like where the fuck is thompson, why does johnny keep lying about this, why doesn't johnny say almost anything about how you interact with the aldecaldo clan nonstop throughout the game when he himself may have been a member of the family for some time?? is he continuing to protect the nomad clan that saved his ass? we know that a lot of his flashbacks are unreliable at best, that johnny changes shit up as desired when presenting V with his memories.

in 2077, you can also find that there’s a remake of “badlands raid” in the shard “new release braindances” that is pretty much everywhere. that shard doesn’t add much, but does mention something along the lines of “many people don’t know the ending of the original” which probably means johnny punched thompson out for filming again, or something. 

my running theories: rogue ditched santiago and the aldecaldos with johnny and thompson to nuke arasaka tower, and when johnny died she was stuck looking for (heavily implied by johnny here:) corpo sellout ways to survive.

adam smasher obviously has something to do with this since johnny/rogue's vendetta against the guy isn't entirely clear beyond the smokescreen of "he killed johnny and he sucks". i have done 0 research into this though i'm tired of typing okay

i obviously cannot be certain i have found everything related to this in the game as i’m not even done with this playthrough where i’m trying to pay attention, but i hope this is fun for someone else to dig into. 

enjoy, fellow silverhand freaks

EDIT: additional findings

ALRIGHT I HAVE DONE MORE DIGGING AND I AM BACK WITH MORE NOMAD/JOHNNY FINDINGS. these ones are kind of a bummer but VERY interesting.

there’s a shard called “excerpts from a history of the nomads by bb pires” that goes into detail about how nomads came to be

there’s an interesting quote in it: It's hard to imagine a group less inclined to wandering than farmers, but in fact they were the ones who sparked the age of nomads. Natural catastrophes, crops ravaged by bioplagues, armed conflicts and martial law allowing corporations to speculate and privatize land - all this forced them into a life on the road.

when you ask johnny why he wants to take down arasaka, he begins by referencing this himself!!

it’s a little awkward to imagine a nomad V doesn’t also know what he’s referencing, but hey, V is the fool because we are as players and that’s only one life path... so sure.

johnny also has unique dialogue during this scene about a nomad origin V, telling them that he’s been trying to understand how V thinks, and came to the conclusion that “their family was a crutch” and essentially made them stupid because they always had a safety net (lmao johnny calling v privileged basically)

BUT this also may reference why johnny would find it confusing as hell that V doesn’t immediately share the views he does when nomads, in terms of values, seem to be more aligned with johnny than V is. but once again V is the fool for a reason and this is all my own speculation so YOU KNOW.

MORE IMPORTANTLY, at the end of chippin’ in, when you ask johnny what he meant by letting down his friends... santiago is named directly

i thought this was interesting since the only glimpse of their relationship that we get is seeing johnny meeting santiago via the alt flashback for the first time.

so now it’s obvious that while johnny and rogue were with the nomads their friendship developed, and johnny went on to disappoint santiago in some way by being his normal dickhead self

but HOW? how did he disappoint santiago? is santiago even still alive?? did smasher kill santiago and is this why rogue mentions during chippin’ in that she wants smasher to “settle a score” moreso than avenge johnny??

the only additional hints i have are from this shard, which you can find at the aldecaldos camp: “nomads at ground zero”

i’m just gonna transcribe here and bold for emphasis:

It was no secret that Night Corp offered generous pay and, in some cases, free cyberware and biomonitor upgrades to anyone willing to help clean up the crater of radioactive rubble at AHQ ground zero. Some firsthand accounts recall the incessant ticking of Geiger counters, like the loud buzz of cicadas in summer. In retrospect, we can only guess how many "crater cleaners" lost their lives to radiation sickness shortly thereafter. Both the city government and Night Corp have claimed casualties were kept to a minimum, while providing no official statistics to substantiate the claim. That being said, they have never been under pressure to release such figures. After all, most rescue, engineering, and rubble cleanup teams were not local Night Citizens, but nomads. Surprised you didn't know? Don't be. It is a fact many history courses tend to overlook. The city employed hundreds of nomad mercenaries, primarily from clans in Aldecaldo nation. These nomads were hungry for gainful work and the city needed experts who were not only experienced but brave enough to knowingly put their lives on the line - all so Arasaka could one day erect another tower in its place. But history is not without its sense of irony. These nomads, who so deliberately live outside our so-called "system," came to its very rescue. Not for the first time. And not for the last.

a main theme we find in this game is the idea that the system of corps and exploitation cannot be stopped by grandiose rebellious gestures--no amount of samurai songs, assassinating mayors, or even planting nukes in towers will change things. yet johnny, his friends and mercs at atlantis in the 2020s, including rogue, chose to rebel any way they could, thinking it better than not. johnny criticizes her lack of rebellious spirit CONSTANTLY in 2077.

but ultimately, johnny, trapped in mikoshi, didn’t get to see the outcome of what detonating the AHQ nukes did to night city’s fragile ecosystem. rogue, however, did--and likely watched their former allies, the aldecaldos, be forced to take dangerous work at AHQ’s ground zero (from lack of other opportunities as detailed in this shard), then die from radiation sickness throughout the following decades, all as a result of what she and johnny did to try and fight the system. and she also watched all the former mercenaries of atlantis be hunted down by arasaka.

so rogue sees firsthand what the cost of rebellion is and johnny doesn’t. and nomads, considered the most free of any of the factions we encounter in the game, are the cost.

[everydayhybridity]

The last couple of months seem to have been a renaissance for ‘older’ skateboarders. Having published research on this topic before and being a greying skater in his mid-forties, the topic is far from new to me. However some changes seem to be afoot that can be described as somewhat typical responses to our collective plight during 2020. On various social media platforms it seems I have encountered growing numbers of videos from older skaters either trying out for the first time because of the lockdown, or returning to skateboarding after a protracted gap sometimes trailing back to their teenage years.

This is all good news and older skaters have been around... well, for a long time.

When I first started investigating older skateboarders I was partly drawn to the fact that older skaters remained quite visible in the professional circuit. Take Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero as examples, but also consider AVE who was awarded SOTY  at the age of 35. Mark Gonzales at 52 still inspires and recently had a video part with the 2018 SOTY Tyshawn Jones. This was  aptly captured in their ages at the time which were used as the title to the video 20|50.  Gonzales has also just released a new book, remaining influential in a sport typically associated with youth. Influential beyond the niche world of core skateboarding, Tony Hawk re-released his iconic THPS video game which has no doubt inspired people to touch base with their long forgotten boards. Similarly the Tony Alva documentary released by Vans is another slice of nostalgia that is set to fan the flames of a certain demographic of older skater. Poignantly the Alva story is narrated by Jeff Grosso, the unofficial statesman of old school skate nostalgia and sadly one of skateboarding’s greatest losses this year.

In one of Grosso’s final videos he also touches upon another important part of the ‘older skateboarder’ revival, or most recent transformation. Interviewing LGBTQ skaters we see that over the last few years the inclusivity of skateboarding has expanded further. Many of the skateboarders who have come out and made space for LGBTQ skaters are some of the old guard. So it is not just that older guys are finding skateboarding, or re-visiting it. Now the older skater can be literally anyone, no longer typically the white male, but also people of colour, trans, disabled, you name it.

One enjoyable blog post from Josh Sutton involves a discussion with Esther Sayers. Josh started skateboarding in his early 50s and Esther started skateboarding in her late 40s. It is an enjoyable discussion and highlights how we don’t need the validation of professional skateboarders or the latest SOTY to prove that you can skate at any age. I remember being struck by what Esther said at the Pushing Boarders conference, where she noted that at a certain age women become somewhat invisible . By skateboarding we redefine the notions of age and challenge them. We start to claw back control and shape the narrative about our own abilities and competencies. Some fantastic research has been performed in this area of lifestyle sports. Belinda Wheaton has really provided some first class contributions on surfing and also my colleague Indigo Willing, herself a convert to skateboarding in her forties, has written about the Tired video and also the Bones Brigade documentary.

In my own research (which you can download here or email me for a copy), I spoke to a variety of skateboarders both male and female who skate into and beyond their forties. One of the elements that I came across repeatedly was the sense of community and meaning that older people get from skateboarding. What is remarkable about this, is the fact that as you get older, friends, community, and meaning seem to be harder to establish or hold on to. I think this helped me turn my research focus to skateboarding and religion. After a lifetime of skateboarding many of the people I interviewed had developed some kind of spiritual attachment to the activity. But then again these ideas were not absent in youth. Similarly my friend Sophie Friedel taps into this soothing potential of skateboarding and wellbeing and explores how skateboarding can be part of therapy for all ages.

The other really important thing about older skateboarders is their roles as receptacles of history. Indeed the explosion in skateboarding podcasts has been a great way to delve into the stories of pros and compile an oral history. I am no fan of mawkish nostalgia stealing the limelight from the current state of skateboarding, but I do think having a dialogue with the past is valuable. I recently read the doctoral thesis of Neftalie Williams in his exploration of race in skateboarding. One of the fascinating parts of his research is the history of skaters of colour (SOC). He does an important job of compiling a history that in an even handed way highlights that skateboarding has historically been far from the toxic and exclusive culture some have argued it to be. Through an exploration of the experiences of older SOC and a deep delve in skateboard media, Neftalie highlights that skateboarding in the USA has historically been more progressive about race than many others sports and elements of popular culture. 

The very best thing about being an older skater is that you don’t have to live in the past. You get to be there and participate in how skateboarding continues to evolve and continues to be a space for all.

[placesiputpoems]

4/19/20 - Adina

Mom blog format again. Mom blogs and friend blogs are all I have right now. Also, Rachel, YES re: the book. I actually recommend it to everyone -- it’s sort of like exactly what you want a novel to be. 

DOING: Last night we had a FOUR AND A HALF HOUR-LONG Zoom with Ryan’s brother and sister-in-law and our friends Jonathan and Alia and ... I do not recommend that length of Zoom for anyone. Everyone is either a lawyer or ten years older than us so they were all sitting around talking about how they’re going to buy used cars and Ryan and I were sort of like ... we purchased a plant today.

HEARING: Well, it’s 8am on a Sunday which means my downstairs neighbors SHOULD be blasting techno music in a way that denotes either sex or lifting weights -- it’s impossible to tell -- and yet it’s silent, so I’m worried that something has happened to them. Also, the new Fiona Apple album over and over again (I keep saying things to Ryan like, “Who do you think Fiona Apple’s best friend is?” and he’s like ... Adina please leave me alone) and a new-to-me angry woman band called Sass. Also, LeeLee, the other day I made an executive decision to include Blink-182 on my angry women Spotify playlist and I thought of you and Coby.

DRINKING: Ryan realized that his beer is going to be ready to bottle this Monday, rather than next like he initially thought, which meant that we need to drink two six packs this weekend so he has enough empty bottles in which to store the homemade stuff ... this has been alarmingly easy. Also, my ginger bug finished fermenting and I used it to make a homemade ginger beer that’s bubbling away in our closet!

BUYING: MORE PLANTS. We tried to get these from the great plant place on 116th and 5th Ave but the corn plants there were $140 to Home Depot’s $35 ... I’m sorry, small businesses. Here’s our new bookshelf ivy and corner corn plant. 

Two highlights for the above photo: 

#1 Those are some blackout curtains on top that I sewed for our apartment! (So we can watch “Unorthodox” during the day time -- there was too much light coming in from that porch door to use the projector). I know it will haunt me at some point that the lower curtains are navy and the top ones are black but I was working with what I had.

#2 You may be wondering, why is there a bedside table in your living room, Adina? THIS THING IS LITERALLY MY NEMESIS. Ryan got it for $10 on Craigslist for his old solo-man apartment. Then we moved here and had no place for it and it has literally been floating around our apartment for MONTHS now. I keep suggesting places we can put it if Ryan truly wants to keep it and none of them are satisfactory. I even put it in the hall outside our apartment at one point and Ryan ... moved it back in. Anyway, when I eventually do lose it (to the extent that I haven’t already), know that it was because of this table.

EATING + COOKING: I made these kind of weird but perfectly chewy cookies as my first post-Pesach bake. 

Also, we have a cookbook from this lady and I adore it -- the other day I made a ratatouille-type thing but with allspice and cardamom -- highly recommend.

LOOKING: At our plant growth! They’re doing so good! C’mon bell pepper!

DECIDING: What we’re going to make for dinner this week, in advance of today’s trip to the farmer’s market. What have you guys been having for meals? We’ve been on a heavy rotation of lentils + fried rice + matzah ball soup.

ENJOYING: Over on the other friend blog, Mariana has been doing hour-by-hour drawings of her days and whenever she posts one it’s always the highlight of my day (gentle suggestion for Dr. Vais to do this with watercolors). I love “10am: Time to start work, I guess. Answering emails and sighing.”

WATCHING: The other night Ryan and I watched this documentary and it was so, so wonderful. I really recommend it to everyone here. Particularly nice for a time like this when you want to get out of your head and be reassured about the world but in a way that feels non-cheesy. This director really artfully highlights the meatiness of life in both its awfulness and glory.

READING: Let’s see if my quarantine mush brain can handle this book by Tisa Bryant. Also, Ryan’s only mail that he’s sent during the pandemic, to his sister Sarah’s pet rat:

WEARING: Our new masks, which I sewed out of dog-themed fabric so that strangers know what’s important to us.

PLANNING: When we’re going to tackle our latest home improvement/craft project: painting our living room closet door with chalkboard paint! I’m excited to be able to see our dinner menus and movie list from pretty much anywhere in the apartment.

PLAYING: Wingspan, that bird game I mentioned in the other post, but with Ryan’s sister over Zoom. It was actually really fun. I’m sort of tired of Zooming just to chat because it feels so draining and I hate staring at a screen extra when I don’t have to, but I am pro Zoom-ing with a purpose.

CRAVING: The return of normal life.

LOVING: My friends, obviously.

SAVORING: Ryan and my morning schedule, which is that I wake up an hour before Ryan and have alone time in our living room while he gets to roll over and spend an extra hour by himself in bed, as stretched out as possible. I think this is how we will all survive the apocalypse (alone time and stretching).

I love you!

Adina

[weshallneverrevolt]

B&C Behind the Scenes: Retro Video Capture On a Budget

People who follow Bread and Circuses know that the blog is dedicated almost entirely to pop culture analysis. But people who are my friends also know that I’m a huge geek for computer hardware. So today, you’ll get you a man who can do both. This is my first behind the scenes feature, where I talk about crazy learning experiences in being a small-time YouTuber. This piece will be very technical, so I don’t blame you for skipping it.

The next project for Bread and Circuses is a full documentary and retrospective on Final Fantasy IX (2000, PlayStation), maybe the most important game in my life and one of the best RPGs ever made. Due to the scope of the video, I’m replaying all the original Final Fantasy games for the original PlayStation to jog my memory and give context for the less researchy parts. I am doing this on original hardware and a tube TV, without resorting to emulation or the re-releases. And I’ll be recording the entire game.

The choice for original hardware came for a few reasons. For one, the newer ports of Final Fantasy games are…mixed, at best. IX’s updated ports feature higher quality models and cutscenes, but the backgrounds are blurry, the new fonts and interface are hideous, and the overall “feel” of the original game is somewhat lost. As inspiration for writing the script, I also want the nostalgic experience of how I first experienced the game.

With that being said, I had a major hurdle to overcome: how do I record 50+ hours of gameplay from a 1995 console?

Step 1: Capture Setup

Most game capture these days is done in two ways: via the device playing the game, or via a capture card. The first method is quite easy on PC: you just fire up Open Broadcaster Suite, use a quick setup guide and you’re good to go. This is what I’ve done for all my videos thus far.

For modern consoles, you can use an HDMI capture card like the Elgato HD60. The cards aren’t exactly cheap, but they’re affordable enough for most streamers and let’s players.

But there’s one problem: both the original PlayStation and PlayStation 2 do not have HDMI output. The early model PS3s can play PS1 games and have native HDMI, but they are rare, expensive, and often break.

While you can buy HDMI adapters for the OG PlayStation, they are spotty in quality and present yet another challenge: such adapters often introduce noticeable input lag. Though FFIX is not a fast-paced game, the lag is still bothersome. They also don’t work with my tube TV, which is critical for my desired creative process.

That leaves me with two capture options: composite or S-Video. Composite video is the little yellow guy you used to plug into your tube TV. It looks decent on those, but when captured digitally, the blurriness and drab colors are immediately apparent. It’s for this reason that I purchased S-video cables; without going into boring technical detail, S-Video delivers far richer colors. Because the adapter includes both, I can output to my TV and computer at the same time with no additional equipment!

Speaking of adapters, the PS2 also has the option to output component video, arguably the best analog video available. While capture solutions exist for component video, my tube TV does not accept it. So to use component, I would need a system of complicated adapters and converters to both record on my computer and play on my TV at the same time. It’s too much hassle for not enough results.

So instead, I did some research and bought this little guy: the Hauppauge USB Live-2. There are many adapters like it, but Hauppauge has brand recognition in this area. This adapter also uses 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, meaning that it sacrifices very little in color depth compared to some cheaper models. It plugs into any USB port.

My tube TV only supports mono sound, which means it only needs one audio cable. I hooked up the left channel (white cable) to my TV, and the right channel (red cable) to my capture card. When outputting FFIX in mono mode, both devices receive the same sounds, and the music doesn’t suffer from missing stereo effects. Perfection.

Step 2: PS1 or PS2?

So as most people know, the PlayStation 2 is backwards compatible with original PlayStation games. The method by which this is done, however, differs based on the model.

Early PS2s have an actual PS1 processor on their motherboard. For the PS2 it’s used for sound and input/output, but when playing a PS1 game this CPU is instead, providing nearly perfect PS1 support. Sony actually did the same thing with the first PS3, but soon realized it was very expensive and scrapped it.

For later models of the PS2 – the slimlines – Sony switched to software emulation to save costs and space. The software emulation works very well, but it is just that: emulation. It is very rare for emulators to be literally perfect replications of the original experience, and Sony’s for the PS2 – called POPS – is not 100% accurate. I also don’t have a slim, so there’s that.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I first dug out my old PlayStation 1, purchased new in 1998. While the system itself still works shockingly well (despite some skipping during movies), I quickly ran into a problem: the PS1 outputs at 240p. For the uninitiated, video nomenclature like 240p refers to the number of lines in the image along with the scan type. So 240p means there are 240 lines of pixels in the image, and they are updated progressively, meaning all at once.

Older tube TVs can accept 240p input, but output it in interlaced form. This means that the TV quickly updates every other line of the image, rather than the entire image at once. It works pretty good for this type of TV, but on a modern monitor introduces some problems…which I’ll get to in a bit.

Image from dummies.com. Fitting.

However, this was a problem for me because my new capture card did not accept 240p input. I tried countless times to get it to accept PS1 video, and it just didn’t work. However, I noticed that my PS2 did. That’s because the PS2 outputs by default at 480i, an interlaced mode that my capture card accepted.

So I opted to use my “fat” PS2 instead, which is a SCPH-30001 model, purchased new in 2001. It includes the original PlayStation chip, and – to my enormous surprise – read my original Final Fantasy IX CDs perfectly. Because the PS2 accepts PS1 controllers and PS1 memory cards, it was an almost flawless version of the original PS1 experience. Awesome!

Step 3: Recording

With setup out of the way, I got to the final step of the project: actually recording digital video.

I use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for all my video and streaming projects. It’s free, powerful, and pretty fast. My capture device was immediately detected by OBS, but there was one immediate problem.

Remember the interlacing I mentioned earlier? When you display interlaced video on a progressive screen – AKA any modern flat-panel monitor – you get a horribly ugly effect where the video seems to be ripping itself apart. This is called combing, and it sucks. Thankfully, OBS supports native deinterlacing, so I was able to fix it right up.

That being said, let’s break down the different parts of recording with OBS:

Resolution: the PS2 outputs in 720x480 pixels, but my videos are at 1920x1080. However, recording at 1080p requires more hardware power, so I get more definition at the expense of less overall quality. I chose instead to record at 720p, which is closer to the PS2’s native resolution and allows me to capture better colors with less blur.

Framerate: this is where things got interesting. I master all of my videos at 60 frames per second. Very, very few PS1/2 games (FFIX included) hit 60fps, because the hardware of the time just wasn’t capable of rendering graphics that fast. However, they do output at a 60 hertz refresh rate, meaning that the image updates 60 times per second even if the console doesn’t actually produce new frames that fast. So if you record at under 60fps, you get noticeable judder in your footage. That being said, 60fps was a requirement.

Encoding: I wanted to get the highest possible quality picture. My computer has a Ryzen 5 1600 processor – a capable mid-range CPU – and is excellent at software video encoding. I used the OBS x264 encoder running at medium quality. Any higher than medium and I started experiencing skipping footage as my CPU went to 100% utilization. I gotta admit, it’s pretty cool hearing my computer fans kick into overdrive as the CPU is pushed to its limits.

Bitrate: I’m recording a lot of footage here, so while I needed high quality, I also have to keep storage limitations in mind. I did some experimenting and decided on a bitrate of 9000kbps, still above YouTube quality while also saving space. This also means that each hour of footage is about 4GB; given that FFIX is about 40 hours long, that means roughly 160GB of footage for the game. Not bad, considering.

Deinterlacing: OBS presents a slew of options for deinterlacing your footage, and the differences can be tough to spot. The only option that gave me zero trouble – no juddering or excessive blur – was Yasif 2x. I also increased the brightness and saturation to make up for some of the analog video deficiencies.

I’ve included sample footage below, along with pictures of my setup. If you’re an aspiring retro YouTuber or streamer, feel free to PM me with any questions. This stuff was kinda intimidating to figure out and I’m happy to help!

Until then, I’ll be in Gaia. Or Terra, once I hit Disc 3.

Jon

Full Setup

Cable Routing Detail

The TV inputs run through this old AV hub I dug up from my teenage bedroom. This lets me run the cables behind my desk to keep things a bit neater. I say a bit because you can still see the cables back there, but that’s showbiz, baby.

Sample Footage

[davidfostercomedyblog]

Memories Of Pops (M.O.P.)

My Dad loved going to sleep to the sound of the rain, which he ensured I’d never forget, as he said it almost every time it was raining at bedtime. Who knew his repetition would be such a blessing, as I am reminded of my pops on each night that it rains (good thing I moved back from L.A.)?

 My father loved Neil Diamond. I think that’s one of my earliest memories, being “dragged” to a “Neil” concert at Madison Square Garden, and I couldn’t have been a day older than seven. I put dragged in quotes because Dad didn’t have to drag me anywhere. He was my hero; I would have followed him any place. I put Neil in quotes because once Dad liked someone enough for long enough they were on a first name basis. After that they’d graduate to some affectionate nickname, including for my sister, Jenny, he’d always greet with: “Ferman!” as in “Jenni-ferman.”

Cracklin Rosie and I Am, I Said, those were Dad’s jams, and although he would have gladly donated his limbs to divide amongst all of his kids, he would equally quickly shush any and all conversation whenever one of his jams came on. The volume was up, windows down, shades on, and my elder father, the self-proclaimed “Fossil,” was instantly and consistently 30 years old again.

We’d arrive at our destination and always knew so once we heard one of Dad’s signature exclamations: “Throw out the hook!” That meant get out of the car.

My father shared a birthday with Biggie Smalls, and maybe it was no coincidence that he so enjoyed word play and linguistics. Some of it was Italian or Yiddish, the latter borrowed from Mom’s side of the fam, but other regularly used words or expressions neither my brother nor I have heard anywhere else: 

1.     Gudalia (phonetic sp?), basically meant any kind of leftover scrap, or maybe most literally translated as “thing.” Eg. He’d point to the corner of your lip during dinner: “Ya got a little gudalia there on the side of your mouth.”

2.     Schmendrick: Term of endearment for anyone he feels needs to be reminded of their carelessness or stupidity.

3.     Weirdly: My brother.

4.     Fossil: Himself.

5.     Gavalt! Shit!

6.     Foccacta: Fuckin’

Dad was a chef, great on the barbeque, but most famous for Sunday night spaghetti bolognese and garlic bread, a recipe passed down from his mom, and rejoiced over by all extended family as well; and he’d bottle up extra sauce to give to loved ones each week. 

He was insensitive to individual sleep requirements, subsequently famous for shouting up from the bottom of the stairs at whatsoever hour he finished making breakfast: “Motion! Motion, you guys! I wanna hear motion up there!” An ex-girlfriend of mine once slept over and was so scared and confused that she just started shuffling her legs back and forth in place. “What’s happening?” she asked. “Why motion?” Breakfast is ready.

Dad was a dad. He loved his scotch and beer, and later on wine by the liter when Mom disallowed the former. He loved sports and Playboy magazine, and I was always grateful that issues of the latter were never disallowed. I recall my first experiences of comfort having a beer with my father on our back deck. However socially pathological, it felt good to be acknowledged as a man, accepted as a peer, subtly welcomed into the next stage of life. 

Dad loved his BMW’s, and although we weren’t wealthy (wealth is relative), he ensured during my first 13 or 14 years that the “company car” lease was a “Beemer.” My vague memories are of the red 3-series, but later on, assumedly with promotions, he graduated to the 735i. I recall my friends being impressed, and I was so proud.

Everyone everywhere truly loved him. I think it was partially for this reason that it made it all the more sadder later in life when his faculties waned to the point of compromising his capacity for interaction. What has life done with my father? I would think, typically alternating between frustration and acceptance. 

I don’t know if we were spoiled, nor do I necessarily know if spoiled is necessarily wrong, so long as your kids understand they have to work. But Dad surely spoiled us in the sense of doing anything in the world for his kids, and I hope I some day get to pay forward his selflessness with even half as much heart. 

I have few memories of playing a little league baseball or soccer game without Dad there, cheering me on. Maybe he’d occasionally show up late from his morning golf outing, of which I was always curious to know his score, and I knew it wasn’t as good when his response was: “I hit some nice shots.” That meant over 90. Yikes.

Some of my favorite childhood memories were of our trips together to Giants Stadium, usually about five per year, as my younger brother was too young and older brother too old, plus lived separately with Dad’s first wife. I used to get so excited once I started recognizing the navigation to the game, then even more excited for the hot dogs and soda and hot chocolate, and reminders: “Just one more. Don’t tell your mother.”

In my rebellious years when I’d get arrested for shoplifting or graffiti Dad was always the one to come and pick me up, as Mom wanted to leave me in the holding cell for as long as possible. He never yelled, never hit or berated me for my actions, instead just shook his head and tried talking to me like an adult. The next day I’d find a nice letter from him on my bed, gently inquiring what was wrong, offering his help, reminding me that he loved me. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to hear you, Pop.

When I grew up and started doing comedy Dad was my biggest fan, an inversion of roles I’ve come to believe indicates success, and most of our trips to Giants games were spent eagerly discussing my shows from the week. Incidentally it was originally his idea to begin this blog, or “diary” as he called it, to document my journey.

Dad was a great writer. He looked forward to writing cards and letters to his old friends, mostly his fellow alumni, fellow fossils from Colgate University and Trinity Pawling Boarding School, where his own mom had sent him in response to his own juvenile mischief. He loved to read, mostly biographies on political or sports figures he admired, loved the written word and it loved him back. When phone conversation became more difficult in his final years, we’d exchange emails, at least one per week and I try not to beat myself up for not being more consistent.  

Though I begged to stay in New York, Mom forced me to go to college in D.C., mostly because I’d gotten into a great school that she insisted I try. When I promptly returned after my one-semester “try” my GPA was uncharacteristically low, and I wasn’t even accepted into City University. Dad immediately drove into Manhattan with my high school transcript and SAT scores, and made a logical plea to the dean of students to just give his son a shot. They agreed, and four years later I graduated with Honors from Baruch College. Unfortunately, because of the extra time we had to spend in the admissions office Dad’s car was towed to the 12th Ave. impound, thereby bumping the price of that first semester tuition up another $100.

What can I say, but I loved my father? Apparently he loved me, all of his children quite a bit, and I’m just so grateful, so fortunate and blessed to have had one of the good ones - one of the great ones. I can’t think of any more appropriate way to close than with one of my favorite spiritual mantras for interpersonal closure: I’m sorry, I forgive you, I thank you, I love you.

Love,

David  

[aja154ever]

The Magic of Hosoya Yoshimasa’s Singing Voice

I stumbled upon a new Hosoyan song (which is not really new, but I just happened to hear it for the first time) which left me so impressed that my feelings just went overflowing that I found the need to write this post. :D

Note: This post is very personal. These are my own thoughts and opinions so people may actually disagree but at least to me, these are facts. Now whaatt

Hosoyan may not get as much spotlight as the others, but I am proudly claiming that his singing voice is one of the best in the seiyuu business. And I said one of, because Taniyama Kishou produces the best sound in the planet while Miyano Mamoru’s singing voice is the definition of a beautiful voice. Now back to Hosoyan (lol sorry I needed to point those two out), he may not be at par with the likes of the two, but Hosoyan’s voice is special in his own way. At least for me, his voice has the power to make any song sound good. More often than not, whenever I discover a song sang by Hosoyan, I get to like it by the first time I heard it; at times even just by hearing the first few lines of the song (and I am not exaggerating). This is the magic that not even Kiiyan and Mamo can do to me, even though I know that those two’s singing voices are more beautiful. And anyway, this does not only apply to Hosoyan’s solo songs; he can actually influence duets and group songs too. 

I actually learned about Hosoyan first when I first heard Yamazaki Sousuke’s character song in FREE! I was not a Sousuke fan, but when I heard his song, I immediately searched for his seiyuu. The moment was like, Oh my gosh he actually sounds this good when he sings??? Ok wait who is this person I need to know who is he google tell me! And that’s when this loop of falling in love over and over again began.

While most of Hosoyan’s songs are really damn good, these are my personal favorites: (The titles lead to links of the songs)

Just Wanna Know - Yamazaki Sousuke (FREE!)

While Ashita e no Last Race was the first Hosoyan song I heard and introduced me to Hosoyan, I give Just Wanna Know the credit for being the root of everything. It was a first time for me to have only one song played on repeat for the whole day. That’s how much I loved it. That’s how much I love his voice. And the lyrics were a good bonus because I was able to understand Sousuke’s character better. I really, highly recommend this song.

Kimi, Mai Oriru - Uduki Arata (Tsukiuta)

This is one of the songs that I loved just by hearing the first line for the first time. Like, Oh my gosh? Does anyone still have doubts about Hosoyan’s singing voice? Even after a long time of knowing this song, hearing the first line just feels like the first time again. And I get reminded of the blessing called Hosoyan’s voice. This is the song I want to sing to Hosoyan if ever I meet him face to face. I actually watched the anime because of this song.

Maverick - Kira Rintarou (Kenka Banchou Otome)

Again, one of those songs I get to love from the first line. As soon as the instrumental intro starts, the song is releasing such happy vibes and ofc Hosoyan’s voice soon delivers that. Again, I am currently supporting the anime because of this.

Angel Lost - Tengenji Kakeru (Starmyu)

It took me some time before knowing that this song actually has a full version - meaning I fell in love with just the 30-second clip from the anime I chanced upon on Youtube. This actually led me to watching the whole anime series. Oh Tavian

Boku ni Totte - Knife of Day (Digimon Adventure Tri)

This sounds a bit different from the aforementioned as this seems to be a band song and Hosoyan commendably pulls it off, of course. And ofc, the last line *wink wink*

Sekai o Teki ni Mawashitemo - Seiya Moroboshi (I Doll U)

I swear, even if the world becomes my enemy, I’ll never get tired of saying that Hosoyan’s voice is really one of the best.

Song For You - Shiraishi Kuranosuke (The Prince of Tennis)

This is my all-time favorite Hosoyan song, no, let me rephrase that. This is my favorite song of all time. The most played song on my playlist, the one on repeat during the nights I can’t sleep, the one that can calm me down when I’m irritated, the song I sought after whether I’m feeling happy or sad. I don’t know why, I really don’t know why out of all of Hosoyan’s songs, Song For You takes this spot in my heart. It feels like it’s digging me inside, healing my soul. Important note: While the link leads to the song’s album version, the better and the best version is the live version, which is what I have on my playlist. It was the live version that made me love this song to this extent so please, please, listen to the live version which is on the following link at 47:40:

Shiraishi Kuranosuke Live

It is said that Shiraishi paved the way for Hosoyan’s name to be known in the business. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch Tenipuri as a child and it’s hard for me to keep up now, but I am aware of how big this franchise is. And also, this special live event is an enough indication of how big Shiraishi is. Shiraishi is not the main character, he’s not even in the protagonist’s team but he, of all the characters, held his own live in Fukuoka, Osaka, and Tokyo. I am totally jealous of the people who were able to come to this live. This is 2 hours of Hosoyan singing live. I cried just by watching it on the screen, what more if I were there? I am just so proud of this precious child.

Personal favorites from Shiraishi’s live: Song for You (duh ofc), Get Started, Go on, Prayer, Bible, Ashiato, Speed Star, Like Bored Days, No Muda Life, ok let me stop now before I include everything in the list

I’ve never heard Hosoyan sing live, and I don’t know if I will ever have that opportunity because unlike other seiyuus, he is technically not a singer who host live concerts. And even seiyuu events rarely have a singing segment or some sort. But based from some clips and that Shiraishi live I have watched and heard, I do believe that Hosoyan sounds better live. I don’t want the softwares doing some editing stuff on his voice; I want it raw and natural together with the flats or whatever flaws he does. 

Bonus:

Kagirinaku Toumei ni Chikai Kuro - Giran & Yurian (Black Wolves Saga)

Ultimate dream duet Taniyama Kishou and Hosoya Yoshimasa!!!! I literally screamed when I found out that such a song exists! I’ve heard Kiiyan and Mamo sing duet a few times but it just seems that their voices do not blend that well together, maybe because of too much beauty and power? But with Hosoyan, even a duet with Kiiyan is something he can do well and results to a good song.

Here We Go! - Hyuuga Junpei & Kiyoshi Teppei (Kuroko no Basuke)

Hosoyan can rap! OMG with that voice, with that personality lolol, he can rap! I’m really so proud of youuuu!!

Rebellion Star - Trickstar (Ensemble Stars)

Again, I fell in love from the first line. This is a group song and again, it has been decided that I will be watching this anime and Hokuto will be my bias. But wait Hokuto’s seiyuu was replaced in the game, what will happen to the anime huhuhu

This YT AV edit is such a blessing: Yoshimasa Hosoya - Song Compilation Roles

Hosoyan is currently taking a rest from work due to medical problems. As much as it hurts me that I won’t be hearing him for the next one or two anime seasons, I am praying for his good health more than anything else. Oh my, this guy has been working too much. I understand that he needs this time very much, so please do come back when you have fully rested. Continue doing what you love - be it acting, singing, or anything - we’ll always be here to support you. *hugs*

For similar original features, metas, headcanons, translations, edits, you may follow me or track the #my works tag on my blog.

[babbleuk]

A Conversation with Brett Hurt

Brett Hurt Bio

Brett is a General Partner at Hurt+Harbach, a seed-stage venture capital firm. Prior to Hurt+Harbach, Brett worked at Austin Ventures from November of 2012 to August of 2013 and focused on early-stage software investing. Prior to AV, Brett founded Bazaarvoice (NASDAQ: BV) and served as CEO and President for seven years, leading the company from bootstrapped concept to almost 2,000 clients worldwide and through its successful IPO. He subsequently guided the company through a successful follow-on offering, and two acquisitions, PowerReviews and Longboard Media. Brett continues to actively support Bazaarvoice as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. Prior to Bazaarvoice, Brett founded Coremetrics and helped grow the company into a global, leading marketing analytics solution for the eCommerce industry before its acquisition by IBM. Brett holds an MBA in High-Tech Entrepreneurship from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Texas at Austin. He served three terms on the Board of Directors of Shop.org, the leading non-profit industry association for retailers online and a division of the National Retail Federation, the largest trade organization for retailers. He also serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Wharton School. Brett established the Bazaarvoice Foundation and is very active in the philanthropic arena. He received the Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation’s Community Leadership Award in 2012.

Interview

Byron Reese: So, you have a new book out called The Entrepreneur’s Essentials.

Brett Hurt: I do.

You were kind enough to publish for free for everybody. Why did you write the book, and why did you decide to distribute it that way?

Yeah. So. You know, as you know, I started a blog in 2012 after I “retired” from Bazaarvoice. I did that because I realized that I’d just gone through an incredible journey as an entrepreneur, culminating in an IPO over a billion-dollar evaluation, six years from inception of the company. On my 40th birthday – I actually turned 40 on our IPO roadshow – and I just thought, “How lucky am I to just have this experience?” I needed to capture, really, what I learned for my children, for myself, and for anybody interested, in a way that forces me to reflect on it.

The beautiful thing about writing that I learned from that initial desire to do that when I started my blog, is that you’re on a journey, too, as the writer. I know you’ve written books that I love. I love your books. When you start writing, you literally are on a journey. You don’t always know where you’re going. You know? You can have a thesis about what you’re writing, but these creative forces just kind of come in.

There’s this great book called The War of Art. Have you read that book, Byron?

No.

It’s written by the guy who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. This is his only non-profit book. He didn’t come into his own as an author until he was in his fifties, but he talks about that process of writing and how these muses come to your aid and give you all types of creative insight. That’s how I viewed writing. It’s been this really amazing journey.

So, I really just loved that I was getting to learn more by writing. You know, to attempt to teach is actually to learn yourself. I named my blog, as I think you know, “Lucky Seven” as a tribute to my mom, who, unfortunately, passed away seven years ago now. She passed away, unfortunately, very young, after my father passed away. She was just an incredible force in my life. I mean, she bought me my first computer when I was seven years old. I was the kid who was trying to take the Pong machine apart when I was four. So, I wasn’t just satisfied with playing Pong; I was trying to see how it worked. She thought that was weird.

I have memories of playing Pong. I don’t have memories of trying to take apart the machine at four, but I do have memories of playing it. But she thought that was very strange, in a good way, and she bought me my first computer when I was seven when she read an article about the first Atari coming out, and the fact that there was an option where you could get the basic cartridge with the plugin, keypad that plugs into the joystick ports, and program. She learned how to program with me. I became completely infatuated with that, and I did it over forty hours a week, from age 7 to 21. I went through the whole Atari line. The 400, the 800, the 1200, the XL, and the ST. I think they even had a 2400 before the XL. But, anyways, I digress.

Then, I ran through PCs, and then I eventually got on Macs. But I just became so passionate about that, and I realized that I was so lucky in several ways. One, for growing up in Austin, which was one of the few cities that would have supported that habit starting when I started, in 1979. What I mean by that is, my mom was able to drop me off at user group meetings when I was 10, and I’d get to learn from people like the Bitmap Brothers—you know, who became very famous video game creators later on in life, but they were much older than me.

It was just so cool that Austin had that kind of culture. I didn’t realize it as a kid that that was so lucky, but in hindsight, as an adult, I realize that.

The main thing that I realized, in terms of my luck, is that I’d found my passion at age seven, and I had a mom who would fight all the societal forces – including some of my teachers, who were telling her, her child was completely unbalanced and had no future, because all he talked about was computers. My extended family would say that during Thanksgiving. My third-grade teacher pulled my mom aside and said, “Your son’s going to be a loser in life. All he talks about is computers.” She was very offended. She didn’t tell me that until I was successful as an adult.

So, that’s why I named my blog “Lucky Seven” as a tribute to her – as a tribute to a superhuman person who believed in me from that age.

So, I started to write on my blog, and that lead me to this place of writing more and more things that I’ve learned, and being able to share more and more things in fiscal conversations. So, I started to invest in startups, and today my wife and I are investors in 77 startups, and 21 VC funds. [Editor note – Full disclosure, GigaOm is one of the 77 startups Brett has invested in]

So, you know. Here I was, making startup investments and trying to help entrepreneurs. I found that my writing was a great way to do it, because I would get asked questions like, “How did Bazaarvoice become the number one place to work in Austin?” You know, how did I create a culture like that?

I would say, “Well, it starts with hiring.” I said, “If there’s anything that made a massive impact in the Bazaarvoice culture is the way we hired,” and I would describe our hiring process.

Then, I thought to myself, “Well, why not I just write that down, since I keep answering that question over and over again? I’ll spend four to six hours writing it down in a much better way than kind of off-the-cuff talking about it.” Because, you know, sometimes you have good days and bad days, in terms of all the things you remember about that. So, I’m like, I’m going to really concentrate, write the best answer I possibly can—the most complete answer I possibly can for them—and then I would give shorter answers when I was asked that question inevitably again, and direct them to the blog post after the conversation. I’d say, “Here, just check it out on Lucky Seven. I spent five hours writing this, and it’s the best complete answer to your question.” They would come back and thank me.

So, I did that more and more over the years. It was our daughter, who – at age 13 – came out with her first book. Her dream, since age seven, was to be a writer. It’s kind of a cool story. She saved up to write a book since she was age seven. She saved up by selling jewelry—like, handmade jewelry that she made—at coffee shops. She accumulated enough money were, by the time she was thirteen and she decided she was going to come out with her own book, she was able to give 100% of her savings. She literally gave 100% of her savings to the illustrator of her book. He was an award-winning illustrator and has illustrated 80 children’s books. The illustrations in her book are just beautiful. It’s called “Guardians of the Forest.” You can only buy it via her website, which is guardiansoftheforestbook.com.

But, anyways, she achieved that. I thought to myself, “Okay. My daughter has achieved this goal and really inspired me and inspired others. She’s giving lots of public speeches about it. And here I am, with this blog that has a lot of utility to entrepreneurs.”

By the way, I had already gotten back into the arena to start data.world after trying on retirement for three years, but it was a very active form of retirement. It was very actively engaged with startups and the rest.

I thought, “I’m going to start packaging up the best of these posts—the ones that I know have gotten the most inquiry, have gotten the most comments, the ones that VCs and entrepreneurs alike have told me are the most important. I’m going to start to package these up in a book, and since I’m a couple of years into data.world, I’m going to force myself to reflect on how I’ve applied this to data.world and whether or not I’ve done a good job of it. I’m going to do it in a way where the whole team at data.world can follow along, where it’s a way of me teaching, as a CEO, on things that I wrote in terms of the best plays I ran at Bazaarvoice, and core metrics before, and judge myself in a way—very publicly—on whether or not I actually lived up to these at data.world.” I think that that recalls all good types of cultural conversations and company.

So, that was another forced reflection exercise. The reason I decided to make it free is very simple. When I read The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin—it was the first book he ever came out with—he gave it away for free. He gave it away for free as a gift to entrepreneurs, because he had become a successful entrepreneur, and he felt like all entrepreneurs should have access to it. Money should not be the gating factor—the deciding factor—to buy it.

So, I did it because he did it. I did it because I had had a role model who had done it before, and had helped me unknowingly – I don’t actually know Seth Godin – I thought, “What a cool way to do it.” It’s all available online, on Medium, as you know, and you can provide a link to the table of contents. The Foreword is written by John Mackey, who’s an incredible entrepreneur. The founder and CEO of Whole Foods, and someone who’s been kind enough to mentor me for the past decade. The afterward is written by Bob Campbell, who was actually my first boss outside of working for my parents. I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, so I worked for them growing up. Someone who I always thought should either be the President of the U.S., or at bare minimum the governor of Texas, and is just an absolutely amazing leader. One of the most professional, ethical people I’ve ever met. He wrote the afterward, which was a nice bookend to my career today because it’s literally how I started my career.

So, it’s all out there for free. The next step is to turn it into a print book. The only reason I’m going to turn it into a print book is because a lot of people have asked me to do so. They want to have a physical copy to be able to take with them. I actually think that the online book is a better product than the print book will be because the online book has lots of hyperlinks and videos and is much more of a Wikipedia-style resource than a print book will be. But I’m happy to turn it into a print book and do that for people if they would like it.

So, I’m proud that it’s out there, and I get a real high—a real helper’s high, that is—on people telling me how much they appreciate it, and someone like John Mackey actually reading it and then writing the forward and saying he wished he’d had it at the beginning of Whole Foods means a tremendous amount to me.

So, it’s a gift to hopefully help lots of entrepreneurs, not unlike I’ve tried to help them by investing in them and mentoring when they would like mentorship. When they would ask for help, I try to be a coach that really is a coach, not trying to run things for them. I’ve had bad mentors and good mentors. I learned from my bad mentors, so I try to be a good mentor or always couch things. I’m not running your company. This is just my opinion. Based on my experience, I’ve learned that there’s a lot of gray in life. There’s not much black or white. This is one man’s opinion, but it’s one I feel pretty strongly about, given my experiences. But, you know, I’m not going to judge you based on whatever you decide. I’m just here to help.

So, I always try to couch my advice in that way when I’m giving advice to an entrepreneur. As you know, being a CEO is hard work. Being a founder/CEO is very, very hard work. You need people that will believe in you and not be so judgmental when you talk with them.

So, that’s why I put The Entrepreneur’s Essentials out there.

My next question is how normative do you think the advice that you give is? Do you think it is your formula, or a kind of universal formula? I’m curious to what extent you tried to write a book which was about your journey, or were you trying to write a book that other people that apply, in general ways, to everybody else’s journey?

Well, it’s definitely a bit of both, but I do think the way we hire and the way we hired at Bazaarvoice and the way we hire at data.world can be applied to all companies. There are many right answers, but I have not heard of a better way yet to hire. I’ve talked with John Mackey, I’ve talked with many people that I respect, that have built best place to work-type of culture, high-performing cultures, and achieved great financial success.

One thing I write in the book is how to check references on board members and executives. One of the things I’m very transparent about in the book is that it took me learning from Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, to really figure out the best way to do that. I mean, when he spoke on that, we were both speaking at a conference: the First Round Capital CEO Summit. When he talked about the secret to checking references on board members and executive team members, I thought, “Oh my gosh. Why did I not know that?” You know? Why did I not know that? I made so many mistakes!

So, the reason I wrote that is that, if you hire a board member that isn’t a great fit for you, or really has a bad background but you just didn’t know it because the headlines looked really good, or you hire an executive—they can do a lot more damage than a junior engineer is. But, the strange thing is, at almost all companies, the junior engineers’ references will be checked much more thoroughly than someone who comes in with a lot of panache and a lot of public fame. I mean, I’ve had some horrific board members in my past, and I can tell you that they get hired over and over again, and nobody calls me about them to check their reference. I’m just shocked. These people actually I know! I’m like, I can’t believe they didn’t give me a ring. How can they not give me a call? I’m not offended by it at all – not like I have some personal vendetta or something – but it’s just, like, it’s very common. The more panache an executive has in their background or a board member has, the less they will be vetted. Strangely enough, it’s true. Strange, but true.

So, I wrote that chapter because that can have a really big impact on your company, and Scott Cook ultimately gave the answer.

You know, part of the reason you put a book out there—and I’m sure you feel the same way to a large extent—is you actually want people to challenge you. I love on Medium when people comment on an aspect of the book and challenge something I said because I want to learn. I don’t feel like I have all the answers. I feel like I have some good answers to things that people struggle with a lot—that entrepreneurs struggle with a lot—and so I put it out there. But if someone has a better answer, I want to learn, because I want to apply that at data.world.

You know, I wrote a chapter of the book about how to form your company values. Here I am on my sixth business, and it’s the first one where I applied a technique that I learned about at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit, and I think it’s the best technique to form your company values that I’ve ever come across. But it took me six companies to figure that out, and I didn’t figure it out in a vacuum. I figured it out because a CEO was speaking at the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit and was kind enough to share an idea—that provocative idea. I thought, “Oh my gosh! That’s it! That’s so smart.” I tried it out at data.world. It was experimental, and it worked incredibly well, and that’s how we codified our values.

So, I’m on a journey like everybody else. I don’t feel like I have all the answers, but I do feel like I’ve got some good answers that have been beaten up through data, that have been AB tested through multiple startups, and through startups that I’ve funded—that I’ve seen them apply things and seen how they’ve worked out. So, that’s all I wanted to share. I don’t feel like I have all the answers. I feel like I’ve got some good answers.

You know, humans have these cognitive biases that are well documented. They’re ways our reasoning is demonstrably false. Yeah. There’s a couple hundred of them. I think most of them, even though they are wrong for individuals, if you think about it they’re right for society. So, these cognitive biases actually confer a survival benefit to the group, I think. I wonder if entrepreneurship’s not like that, because most people are going to fail. Yet, most people who do it think, “Yeah. Most people fail, but I won’t.” So, collectively, they’re mostly wrong. So, I’m wondering: A, do you agree that entrepreneurs wouldn’t do it, by and large, if they really understood their chances of success, and B, who do you think should or shouldn’t be an entrepreneur?

So, the first part is, I actually wrote a chapter to address that. It’s called The Paralyzing Fear of Getting Started. You can kind of pair that with the chapter that’s on the fallacy of risk in entrepreneurship. So, a couple of things there. The most successful entrepreneurs I’ve met in my limited data set, but I’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time, are people that are very playful, that don’t metaphorically just jump off the cliff and build the wings on the way down. I think that’s bullshit. That kind of plot things out and think things through before they actually even start. But, I wanted to pair that with this paralyzing fear of getting started, because I wanted to share with the world, as part of my journey, that I was paralyzed with fear in the first couple of months of data.world. I wanted to share that because the people that know me, know what I’ve achieved as an entrepreneur. They wouldn’t believe that unless I shared it with them. Like, I could easily hide behind in a way of my success, and not share things like that. You know, that could be something I only share with my wife or my closest friends.

I wanted to share it, because I wanted to say, “Look. I actually think this is the natural condition of most human beings that start businesses.” It really resonated with people. I mean, that really, really resonated with people. I think, in a way, the more you’ve achieved as an entrepreneur, the more you have to lose because there’s even…

Every time you start a business, you’re putting your ego out there. The more of public figure you are, the more you have to lose psychologically if your business fails. You know, everybody’s going to look at what Meg Whitman does next. Right now, you may know that she’s engaged in a streaming media venture that is going to face an enormous amount of competition when she launches. You know, from Netflix and Disney’s new streaming service, and on, and on, and on. But yet, she’s out there. She’s brave enough to do it. She’s brave enough to start it up from the beginning. But, she’s out there. Right? You’ve got to applaud that.

But I guarantee you that even Meg Whitman—I don’t know this for a fact, but I would be willing to bet money on it: that she has had some paralyzing moments of fear in starting that, because of how high-profile she was. She came into eBay and just turned it into an absolutely juggernaut, alongside a great team. So, you know, that’s the first part.

The second part, who shouldn’t be an entrepreneur, I am in no position to judge that. One thing that I learned at the Wharton school, when I was earning my MBA there. I was trying to get up my own gumption to be an entrepreneur. I attended every entrepreneurial presentation you could think of. I worked until three, four in the morning almost every single night on my businesses while I was in school to prove to myself that I could do it, and to try to find the big idea. That big idea ultimately turned into Core Metrics. That was a company that I launched when I was 26 and eventually sold for $300 million to IBM. That business, I wouldn’t have started, I don’t think if it wasn’t for all of the kind entrepreneurs who took time out of their schedule to fly into Philadelphia and speak to us about starting a business. I mean, it was many. It was many, many, many people that did that.

The one thing that I was trying to figure out when I saw them speak was, I was like, “What do they have in common?” Like, “What do they have in common?”

One looks like a school teacher. The other, you know, is Hispanic. This one is African American. This one is fat, this one is skinny, this one looks like a nerd, this one looks like a jock. Okay. So, what is it? They talk so differently. What do they have in common?

The only thing I could derive is that they were incredibly passionate and persistent. That’s the only thing that they had in common that I could figure out. One could be dumb—appear to be dumb—and one could appear to be very smart. Now, the dumb one might be a genius. I don’t know. But they talked in a way where I thought they were not very smart. But, they all were very successful and that was the only thing I was able to derive.

Whenever I’m looking to invest in an entrepreneur, I’m asking myself many questions. I have a chapter in the book on questions I’m asking myself. I’m asking myself many questions. That chapter in the book is called “The Five Key Ingredients to Build a Big Business.” But I’m asking myself, “Are they really passionate? Are they really persistent?” Because it takes so much willpower to build anything that, if they aren’t, then I’m probably…

I would say, if I know they aren’t, I’m definitely not going to invest. Right? So, that’s what separates them. It’s that person you meet who you’re like, “This person is on fire. They’re going to do something.”

I just invested in a business in Mexico City named Beek. The entrepreneur used to live here in Austin. Her name’s Pamela. She remembered me really well, because I had met with her at Capital Factor a few times.

She told me that I said this. I had forgotten that I said this, but she told me that I said this, and it sounds like something I would say. I had told her, “Pamela, I know you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur. I can tell. You’ve got the passion and you’ve got the persistence in spades. I just don’t know if it’s going to be this business.” I reconnected with her during the ACL festival, and she had pivoted the business to something that was scaling incredibly well. She said, “I’m going to allow you to invest because I always made it a goal to have you invest. I don’t even have a round open right now.” And I invested because she had finally found the model that she had remembered the kindness that I had offered her, and the advice I had given her, and the blog post I had shared with her. That type of karma comes back to you, and now, you know, I’m in her company.

So, I would say a key ingredient must be passion and persistence, but the rest, you know. If they didn’t go to college, doesn’t matter to me. If they’re not technical, it doesn’t matter to me if it’s tech business with an asterisk. So, the asterisk on that would be that I’ll never back a company where there’s not someone in the company amongst founding, or the very early team—and I’m talking the first five people. There has to be someone there that has to effectively sell the solution. Someone there that can effectively service the solution. And someone there that can effectively build the solution. If I see an entrepreneur that is not technical, but has a technical idea, and they’re off-shoring everything to India to build V1, I just run away. Because that’s not someone that’s sharing equity with people that are going to run through walls when that thing crashes. So, there are certain rules that I have on that front.

So, what kind of reception have you had? Do you have any clue how many people have read it? And the book is kind of modular, or was written that way, so are people consuming just a chapter and there?

Yeah. Actually, I found out after the fact, I didn’t realize this at the time, but, you know, this is how Mark Cuban wrote his book. He started out as a blog and then packaged up the best of his blog into a book. I didn’t realize it. Then, I undoubtedly was influenced—although I can’t say consciously, because I didn’t remember this until after I wrote the book—but one of the most important books I read as a software service entrepreneur is Mark Benioff’s book Behind the Cloud, which is written as a series of plays. Almost like you’re calling plays as a coach. It’s just an absolutely brilliant book. So, it’s kind of set up in a way that you can jump in at any point in Mark’s book and say, “Okay. Well, I want to see how they handle customer success! Or I want to see how they handle marketing! Or I want to see how they took over trade shows!” And all the “crazy stuff” they did to compete with Siebel. You know, petitioning outside of trade shows, getting people to pay attention. The end of software and the rest of it. So, it was set up in a way that’s very much a modular way.

So, undoubtedly, I was at least unconsciously influenced by that, because an entire—I got the entire executive team at Bazaarvoice to read Behind the Cloud.

There are times where I’ll introduce a book to our company here, and say it’s required reading. Then we’ll have a discussion on it. I don’t feel comfortable doing that with my own book. I feel like it’s chock-full of insights about data.world, and I shared some of that on our Slack. I recently had a Lunch & Learn a few days ago, actually. I had a Lunch & Learn on my book and the process of writing the book and why I wrote it and some of the insights in it. I made that optional. So, not everybody in the company attended it.

So, I just feel like if it’s something that I wrote that should be required. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s humility.

So, how did you know when to stop writing it? Because, presumably, not every drop of your knowledge has been squeezed out of you. So, does that mean you’re writing another one?

So, the answer on writing another one is probably. I’ll probably handle it the same way. I’ll write on my blog for the next six years, and then package that up as I help more and more startups. Probably six years from now we’ll probably be at 140 startups, instead of 77.

So, that’s the answer to that. If I feel like it’ll have high utility to help entrepreneurs, I’ll do it.

The “how did I decide on where to stop” on this one. When I started the process of writing it in September of last year, I actually created an outline for myself that I felt like had some kind of logical order. You know, I talked about earlier that when you’re writing, you’re on a journey, and you don’t really know where that journey’s going. That is true, but I felt like, from a topical standpoint, I should at least have an outline for myself, where I knew that this is kind of how I was going to structure the book.

I ultimately structured it in a very simplistic way. It’s kind of a three-part. Part one is on founding. So, it’s chapters that I feel like are essential for someone considering founding a business, to consider. There’s one in there, for example, for middle-aged people that have never started a business or never worked for an entrepreneur, to consider, and center themselves with, because it’s going to be really hard. Most of those people will not be successful, because they pick up the phone and they work for P&G, and everybody’s going to salute them on the other end of the line. But the reality is and you’re the CEO of data.world and nobody has ever heard of it, that’s not true anymore, but that was true when we first started out. It’s hard. It’s hard to get anybody to care.

Like, I write about an interruption of my book that you have to go on this journey from irrelevancy—where nobody cares, except for you—to relevancy, to where your business becomes market-relevant, to the must-have. John Mackey really lays that out well in his forward, about how Whole Foods went on that journey to irrelevancy, to relevancy, to the must-have, as it transitioned from Safer Way, which almost nobody cared about, to Whole Foods Market, which became relevant to that eventually becoming a big movement and being bought by Amazon.

So, I have that section of chapters on founding. Then, the second section is on building. This is now, you’re already in it. There’s no going back. You know? Burn the bridges. You’ve started it. So, now you’re in it, and how do you build?

Then, the final section is on helping. I only have one chapter in that section, and I probably should have more, but I decided that it would just be one, and that’s one my lessons learned in angel investing. The reason I included that section is that, if you’re lucky enough to become a successful entrepreneur, then you may feel that you have a duty to give back to other entrepreneurs in a way that so many helped you before. Because, I’ve never seen, from my own experience, an entrepreneur become successful without lots of help and lots of people that believed in them. I’ve never seen one hero entrepreneur where it’s like, you know, somehow they become successful. They could even have “against all odds,” but there’s lots of people helping them along the way. So, I think that’s also a myth that needs to be busted.

So, anyways, that’s kind of the three-party layout. Yes, I did have in my mind that from the beginning. I did have it in my mind what blog post would be incorporated. But then as I wrote the book, I found it…I waited until an idea comes to me, which typically happens through a series of lunch conversations with people we’ve invested in, or a VC meeting I’ve had where the lightbulb goes on where it led me to write a chapter that then becomes part of the book. Like, the Paralyzing Fear of Getting Started, that was not in my original outline. That was something where I was writing the book, and I thought, “I’m going to put out this blog post because most people probably have no clue that I also felt paralyzed, even though this is my sixth business. So, here’s how I worked through that. Here’s my practical advice for working through that paralysis.” Then, I’m like, “This has to be part of the book. It has to be in that chapter on founding.” I mean, that section on founding.

You mentioned that the entrepreneurs would come to Wharton and talk, and you would try to figure out what they had in common. And that got me thinking: There’s one kind of CEO that’s beloved by the people in the company, and they would walk through a wall for him or her. Then, there’s a CEO that’s a total jerk, and people are bound to that person by opportunism—which is also a powerful motivator. Right?

Right. It is. Yeah.

But nobody likes them.

Yeah.

Or is there, you think, an advantage to one of those? Is there a kindness advantage, being an entrepreneur?

I think that karma is a very real thing. You can look at karma as something that’s spiritual, or you can look at karma as the fact that we’re all just very social creatures, and we became successful human beings—homo sapiens—by the fact that we were natural collaborators. No matter how many wars we’ve had and everything else, and no matter how many horrific things have happened, the underlying motivation is one of collaboration. That doesn’t mean that you can’t also be competitive at times. Even when you are competitive, you are collaborating within a company to be competitive in a market.

So, I’m a deep believer in conscious capitalism. I served on the board of Conscious Capitalism. Data.world is a B Corporation, which is a for-profit corporation with a real strong public mission statement that is filed on record in the state of Delaware in our corporation documents, so that all of our shareholders know what we stand for and we publicly report on that.

I do agree that the Leviathan CEO can also be effective. Hobbes wrote about, the need for human beings to be controlled. It’s a very Hobbesian view to work for a jerk, where you’re just opportunistic. I don’t think that that is good for people’s psychological or physical well-being, nor do I think it’s good for the leaders. I feel like the leaders that are kind of the Al “Chainsaw” Dunlaps of the world. If you go in and just hatchet out everything and, you know, make a company much more profitable for a period of time. I mean, who talks about Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap these days? He was on the cover of Business Week and everything else in the ‘90s, I believe it was.

So, can they be successful? Yes. Is that the nature of humanity? No, in my opinion. But there are people who will take to counter that, and those people that will take the counter to that will undoubtedly take the Hobbesian-types of thinkers. They believe in the leviathan model. They look at someone like President Trump and the actions President Trump takes, and they’re like, “Yup. He’s a Leviathan leader, and that’s what we need.” I disagree. I am a leader that leads with love at my core. I’ve got that love because it was instilled in me from age seven by a mom who believed in me, against all societal forces trying to beat that out. So, it’s a big part of who I am.

I do think, if you look at the Fortune best places to work, from Raj Sisodia’s book, Firms of Endearment, which was something that he wrote either before or after he came out with Conscious Capitalism with John Mackey, but this is one of Raj’s books.

These companies dramatically outperform the stock market. Dramatically. They’re led by people who really care. You know? There’s no way you can have a great culture, be a Fortune best place to work, unless there are leaders there that really care about people—they really believe in the power of people. Firms of Endearment are about iconic leaders that really believe in the power of the people, and they’ve dramatically outperformed even the company’s listed in that book built to last.

So, that’s a strong belief I have. It is based on some data. It’s not, you know…Being the CEO of data.world, I should have the canonical dataset on this on data.world. It actually may exist. I don’t know. I need to get on there and search really quickly. Someone else may have already uploaded it. I know people upload data sets on Fortune best place to work and things like that.

But, it’s a strong belief that I have that, in the short term, if you’re a Leviathan-like leader, you can leverage fear to generate short-term results. In the long-term, it always ends up making your life miserable and their life miserable. Nobody’s going to look back on their deathbed and think that was a beloved place. They’re going to think, “I made a ton of money. I provided for my family. I did what I had to do, as a dad or mom. But, boy, that sucked.” I just think that’s a waste of life. I have a very strong view on that.

That’s a perfect ending of the interview, and our time is up. But that’s a beautiful place to end it.

from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2019/11/26/a-conversation-with-brett-hurt/

[mattyslittleworld]

East Keansburg

P: Rob Sellig 

2:48 am / Thursday morning. Im listening to this new Tsu Surf & Mozzy project, thinking about this kid I grew up around. Ive been reading he passed away, which is such a shame. We grew up playing basketball together at St. Catherines in EK, middle school, high school, alternative high schools, programs together. Troubled youth. I have this specific memory of him from years ago. I believe I wrote about it in my last blog post, about watching somebody get curb stomped. I was a lost kid, me and my friends aimless, drifting from group to group. Ended up spending a lot of late nights in EK wandering the streets. This night specifically, there were about 7 of us. A homie of mine was interested in writing graffiti, and this was before music, so graffiti was basically my identity. So we met up at his house, where my friend had a group of heads over, and they were partying, selling, and just going off. He lived with his parents, which speaks volumes, because at this time in my life, everyones parents gave up...nobody gave a fuck, except mine, but they couldn't control me. One thing leads to another, my boy wanted to go bombing. So we leave his house with our paint, and just take the streets, 5 reckless kids fallowing us on skateboards and bikes. Wasted, loud, rowdy, reckless, but as an outsider, I found a silver lining in their terror....it was a middle finger to the society that never gave them a chance. It was a brotherhood. This specific kid, at this point, was in and out of county, witnessed him fighting over and over in school, and in the streets since day 1. We were walking tall through the backroads in EK....they were spray painting cars...houses...anything. No fucks given. Wasted...they were breaking windows...kicking dents in BMW’s. Playing music off the phone...they were all they got. Another group of kids ended up on the same block....and they went off. A fight broke out....and I have this specific memory of boy ripping his shirt off, passionate, raging with anger, to protect his brotherhood, his street crew, his family. Being around him since I was a little kid, school, ball, mutual friends....I never got to know him deeper than this...but I would always see him and just salute his pride, and his will to stand on his actions, and his will to fucking fight for who and what he loves. Rest In Power fam. A lot of homies reading this from EK who follow my music...yall know who I am talking about. I never got to know this man - but I salute him for how much of HIM HE REALLY WAS. I remember in 2006, I was a freshman in high school, and my cousin ended up in a fight with a senior over a friend who passed away. My cousin was intoxicated during this time, in school, and I ended up beating the dog shit out of this senior as a young kid. These EK boys were the only ones who showed love, who stood tall behind me, making sure I was good, safe, and assuring me I was doing the right thing. Cant let your family go down like that. Rest In Peace man.

Last year, days before Tsu Surfs album Seven 25 dropped, he doubled back and we hit the studio and recorded a song called “Make You Proud”. He dropped the album very shortly after and it went #2 on iTunes in under 24 hours, and I was sure I wasn't going to see that man ever again. A year later, here we are...a day before he drops this joint project with Mozzy...that debuted at #5 on itunes, were dapping up at a film set in Queens, NY to film the music video. A YEAR LATER, this man gave a fuck enough to pull up and bless my career with this video. That meant a lot to me. I specifically remember feeling alone, hopeless, in some of the darkest moments of my life. Just listening to his tape over and over and over....running laps at the track at Mader Dei Highschool. It gave me hope, it motivated me to get over the feelings that were weighing me down. My life was changing, and this eased the pain. Nobody likes the motions of change if it includes losing people you love....losing the ability to do things you love...and going places you love. You have to find new health, new wealth, and new routines. My new found routine was coffee in the morning...spending an hour studying the industry...listening to my podcasts...then immediately running laps listening to his tape. Anything after that was subjective. Nowadays its basketball instead of running laps....but it gave me health. Mentally and physically. I could collect my thoughts. I could hear real stories....being gunned down 5 times and bouncing back...then charting. Here we are. On set....once again with Rob...my brother on the directing tip. My new lovely friend Victoria, who's a beautiful, ambitious, ride or die artist of her own. Robs pops. Mike Oliva, who is a SAVAGE photographer and film maker himself. It was a trip. Over the past year, kids at bars, hardcore shows, normals, civilians, people from all over and the world have been DMing me about simply just a teaser and a photograph of me and Surf in a studio. With Albee Al, Casanova, Cage - its all a specific group of people. Mainly mainstream music consumers...radio listeners...people who are tapped into Instagram and culture. But with Surf - Ive had the pleasure of speaking to people from all walks of life. Old hardcore friends telling me how much his movement has touched their lives...so wild. I was late to his wave...Belv actually told me to tap in and do it, and that's my brother so I made sure I did for the team. We drank hot chocolate and coffee, listened to our favorite music so loud, have such great conversations, got amazing footage that im so proud of, and just overall killed the mission. Nothing makes me more happy. This was a moment for me....because for the first time...im not in silly poppy clothes...im myself...im spitting bars on it...I feel and look like the person who was painting freights in 2007. And that is very important to me. Sometimes you can get swallowed by the wave youre riding...and I am guilty of that. It influenced so much of me...and recently I said look...fuck all this. Fuck everything except for whatever inside me still lingering before back and forth. Because if those passions, those tendencies, those people, are still here and within me...theyve been growing all this time, strong, sticking by me, and that's me. Shitty hoodie. Airmaxes or vans, shitty hat, stupid hair, cutty as fuck, smiling. dirty skateboard kid just trying be great man. I miss my old Mercer Ave skate crew. Its been years. 

Im starting to go through a new awakening where im witnessing the ones around me unfold in such a distasteful manner. Its pretty crazy to spend time with people, face to face, and have dinner, coffee, laughing with each other one on one....and in my head at the same time think...this mother fucker dead ass hates me. Wants to kill me. Wants me to fail. Fucks heavy with EVERYONE who has done wrong to me. Has talked shit behind my back. Has stabbed me in the back. And they are such fucking clowns....they don't know that I know...and they don't even comprehend that im being a bigger person and not addressing shit below me, because I don't have room for shit like that in my life. This is the time where people fuck with you one foot in, for opportunity, to hit a lick, to keep the link, to get to the people you fuck with. It is literally so easy to show love...and yet people close to you just won't. Its an interesting concept. I am fortunate in the sense that I am self made, self built, and already a black sheep. If everybody in my life turned their backs, it wouldn't touch my career. So therefore, I don't have this fuckery nature in my behavior. I don't fuck with you, I don't fuck with you. Thats it. Im learning you cannot trust people who fuck with you one foot in....because that means they're prepared to step away at any moment when you're down. They don't got your back. They are around people who drag your name through the mud, and they allow it. AT BEST...since they have one foot in....theyll tap in and say such and such said this....but why didn't you defend me? Why were they okay with these actions with you? Because your friend has their other foot with the opps. Fuck these types of people. Forever. Ive been seeing people put up with this behavior, and I figured id speak on it, because its been on my mind. You don't have to get treated like shit to fit in. Truth is, your friends are probably wack. Your friends probably hate you. Your friends don't want you to do better than them. And no, it doesn't matter how long you've known them. Most relationships stem and grow out of convenience, and lack of change, lack of ambition, lack of dreams and goals. I always thought, its actually very easy to be a good friend when they need you...in moments of tragedy and misery. Because that doesn't shake your foundation, and make you realize you aint shit. It doesn't challenge your framework. Its harder for most people to be a good friend when their friend is celebrating success, because the human nature is to compare, and sometimes that can be a mirror reflection of how you AINT SHIT. Recognize these people and cut this cancer out of your system. Or if you are this person, we all have been at one point, cone to terms with how wack you are and be a good person lmao. I want to see my plumbing friend look me in the eyes and go “im the best plumber in this area and im gunna kill this job and make a living for my family and buy a BMW”, just like I want to see my graphic designer friends believe after their hard work that they're qualified OVER SOMEONE ELSE for their job, to make a great living. Just like I want to see a musician, or rapper, talk his shit and believe in themselves, go platinum, and make a great living and buy a Range. Being around greatness inspires me, never scares me. I love being at the bottom, it amps me up. It gets me going. It gets me off. I love the fight, the grind, the game. Whether its music, or washing windows in the freezing dead of winter for commission to pay for fucking studio time to be where I am right the fuck now boiiiiiii. 

Me and Belv have some crazy shit coming. That is all. Okay bye.