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watercolorsinmyheart · 1 year

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Translation of the first BIA Season 2 novelization.

(It includes an explanation for why Bia didn’t recognize Helena)

After the successful launch of the BeU and my reconciliation with Manuel, I needed to be alone in the park for a while and process everything that had happened. As if by magic, the golden scarf had taken me to the place where, ten years ago, Helena and I had spent whole afternoons playing the guitar and telling stories. Everything there reminded me of my sister and I had a feeling that I was very close to finding her. Maybe that's why, when I heard someone call me, I wished with all my might that it was her.

The fantasy was short-lived: that girl was nothing like the Helena of my memories, although I was sure I knew her from somewhere.

"Yes, it's me…" she said.

Her tone of voice was unmistakable.

-Ana! Sorry I didn't recognize you before, it's just that when I saw you at Cyber Gold you were wearing a mask. At last we meet!

She was silent for a few seconds. She seemed confused.

"I thought…I thought we'd met before."

I wanted to stay chatting with her, but she was strange, like uncomfortable. She would answer my questions evasively and it was hard for her to look me in the eye. How weird! But as my mother says, anyone has a bad day. In the end, I let her go her way and I went mine.

When Chiara and I arrived at the SUM, there was no sign of Celeste anywhere. I imagined that she was in some corner of Fundom watching Trish's latest video or listening to her podcasts. Lately She was super hooked on that webstar. I would say almost obsessed!

While we were waiting for her, I took out my notebook and pencils and began to draw. Be Yourself inspired me so much that, without realizing it, she had made a design with our initials.

—I love that BeU spirit! Chiara commented, adding emphasis to her voice and with an expression that I knew very well.

That dreamy look and that twinkle in her eyes announced that she had something on her mind. Oh no! And now that?

-What are you thinking? I asked a little scared.

—And if we use the drawing in all our videos as a closing?

Not a crazy idea but an excellent one! Without wasting any more time, I looked for my cell phone and sent a photo to the group for everyone to comment on. The answers were not long in coming and we all agreed. We had a new logo!

Through the Fundom door, Pixie appeared accompanied by Manuel and... Delfi! One of my favorite fashion influencers!

-Hi! I’m Delfi,” she greeted.

"Yes, we know!" I responded enthusiastically.

—You are Bia and Chiara, right? Jazmin told me a lot about both of them!

Delfi and Jazmín shared the Fab and Chic fashion channel and were lifelong best friends. For this reason, Jazmín had chosen her to replace her in the Fundom while she was away. What a great news!

I would have liked to stay with her to get to know her a little more, but her duty called: we had to decide what to do with the new BeU video.

"Shall we organize something for the premiere?" Pixie suggested.

Manuel immediately proposed:

“We could see it here all together.

Pixie sent a message to the group with the proposal and they all agreed, so it was decided: the next day we would meet at the SUM to watch the video together and celebrate a new beginning.

Meanwhile, in the Laix offices, Marcos organized his coup with the information stolen from the Fundom network. His master plan to hack the wifi had gone perfectly and now he had full access to what they sent out there: chats, videos, files, EVERYTHING. The BeU crew had no idea what the big boss of Laix had in store for them.

Since our meeting in the park, I hadn't been able to stop thinking about Ana. The feeling that something inevitably linked me to her grew every day and I didn't understand why. When I told Manuel about it, we finally found out what was going on: I had to take piano lessons with that girl, no matter what! Without thinking twice, we went to the Kunst residence to talk to her and, luckily, we found her in her living room talking with Thiago.

-We need to talk. I was thinking a lot and I realized something," I announced

For an instant, the muscles in Ana's face tensed and I tried to maintain the suspense for a while longer but I couldn't hold it and I blurted out:

��You are the ideal person to give me piano lessons! Manuel told me a lot about your classes, about everything he learned...

"You're the best teacher in the world," he added, with an admiring smile.

We both looked at her expectantly while she, uncomfortable, turned her head to all sides as if searching the walls for the answer.

"I'd love to... But I don't know, I'm short on time," she answered doubtfully.

I should have imagined it! With so many students, she surely wouldn't have much free time.

-Please! I insisted. I come when you want and at the time you tell me.

I was willing to do anything for a yes.

"You can change my schedule if you need to," Manuel offered.

The pressure was so much that in the end she had no choice but to accept me. Wooooo! I was going to have classes with THE BEST and i was finally going to be able to play Helena's sheet music! What more could i ask for?

The next day, we met at the Channel with Celeste and Chiara to put the final touch on the BeU video. We spent a long time discussing our options but, since we couldn't agree, we decided to take a break to wait for Pixie to give us her opinion.

While Chiara was going through the comments from our fans, Celeste used selfie mode to touch up her lipstick. I still didn't get used to her extreme makeover: she had abandoned the naive style and now she wore open shirts, red lips and super trendy sunglasses… it looked great on her!

Through the Channel glass, we saw Pixie enter one hundred percent connected to her tablet.

-Nope! No, no, no, noooooo…” she said, holding her head.

She was so focused on her game that she didn't even realize we were there, to the point that when she, alarmed by her exclamations, asked what was wrong, she jumped in fright.

—The Beast! That happened! He is a gamer that I meet in every game and I hate him with all my being.

She had never seen her so angry. Apparently, she was facing a CHEATER with all the letters that not only played dirty but also used the most treacherous techniques against the other players.

—It's already very difficult to be a woman in this world of games for him to come to play like that, but I'm going to defeat him, girls. I'm going to defeat her," she promised, looking at the screen again.

Before the game and her thirst for revenge completely absorbed her, I asked her to help me finish the video.

-Oh yes! Sorry, for a second I forgot everything. Don't worry, The Best-ia's fall can wait.

Pixie set her tablet aside, rolled up her shirtsleeves, and leaned over the dashboard. In a matter of minutes she solved all of our problems so well, I had no doubt that the video was going to turn out amazing. Great to have her on our team! #TeamBeU #Fundom

We had spent the whole afternoon sharing the announcement of the video launch on our networks and I couldn't take it anymore with anxiety, when Pixie finally announced:

-Clever! BeU's first video is officially finished and ready to post!

Manuel, the girls, Delfi and I leaned over the console to see the final result.

The original idea was to show us doing what we liked the most, so we would appear singing, playing instruments, painting, dancing or cooking in our favorite places. Pixie had gathered all these images on a grid screen along with some moving colored squares that gave it a crazy and fun touch, the BeU touch!

"Congratulations guys! I'm sure it's going to be an absolute hit! ...

@weirdthoughtsandideas @putonmyfavoriteshow @assim-eu-sou

#disney bia

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passionate-reply · 3 years

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In 1993, Billy Idol--yes, that Billy Idol--went completely mad and made an electronic album full of futuristic themes, samples, and techno beats. Many consider Cyberpunk one of the worst albums of all time, but on this week’s installment of Great Albums, we provide a somewhat more positive approach. Check out the video, or read the transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! In this installment, I’ll be taking a look at an artist one might not normally associate with the usual “pantheon” of synthesizer jockeys I usually talk about: Billy Idol. Initially known as the frontman of punk outfit Generation X, Idol found success as a solo artist in the early 1980s, fusing tough-as-nails punk aesthetics with a lavish, almost camp sense of glam, and his visually arresting pop-rock made him an MTV-friendly star of the “Second British Invasion.” While one couldn’t fairly argue that Idol was an “electronic musician,” his early work does contain moments of mild electro-curiosity, perhaps most notably the mercurial ballad, “Eyes Without a Face.”

Music: “Eyes Without a Face”

But despite the minor synth touches of the hit single “Eyes Without a Face,” few in the 1980s could have possibly expected the turn Idol’s career would eventually take by the time of his 5th studio LP: 1993’s Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is, of course, an album with a reputation that precedes it, and that reputation is not a particularly good one. Cyberpunk is a deeply fraught album, which commercially underperformed upon release, and did even worse in the eyes of critics, with the magazine Q dubbing it the 5th worst album of all time. In the nearly 30 years since the album’s release, opinions on it don’t seem to have softened that much, either. But as with everything I choose to talk about, I think Cyberpunk is worth listening to. I think it’s a daring and challenging work of art, and one that stands on its own terms when approached head-on. Whether you’re familiar with this album or not, I encourage you to give it a fresh listen, and a fair shake.

Music: “Wasteland”

Perhaps the most immediately apparent feature of Cyberpunk is its increasingly electronic soundscape, including a prominent sample-based hook on the track “Wasteland.” The album was created in less than a year, and chiefly through use of computers and digital audio software, which Idol evidently found easier to explore and use than earlier forms of music technology. I’m partial to the argument that sees the use of digital software as perfectly compatible with the famed DIY ethos of punk, and hence, not far from Idol’s wheelhouse at all. In the 1990s, computers were still something that far from everyone owned, but in our contemporary world of Soundcloud rappers on seemingly every street, it’s easier to accept the notion of computer music as a grassroots, egalitarian field where even the unskilled are welcome--perhaps even moreso than punk ever was, in the 20th Century. This is one sense in which I think Cyberpunk has aged better than anyone could have possibly imagined. Besides pushing the texture of Idol’s music into new territory, Cyberpunk is also a fairly risky album structurally, opening with a sort of manifesto being read, and peppered with brief interludes between its tracks proper.

Music: “Interlude 3”

It’s only fitting that an album so concerned with the bleeding edge of technology might also try to push the boundaries of the still-fresh CD age. Liberated from the confines of designing chiefly for vinyl, artists like Idol were empowered to create CDs that ostensibly had 20 “tracks,” with no need for empty grooves to separate these brief interludes from the album’s major compositions. This avant-garde touch adds significant amounts of texture to the album, and, dare I say, a sense of world-building. Undoubtedly, one main reason why this album was so poorly received at the time is that it is, quite simply, not what one expects a Billy Idol record to sound like--at least, with the possible exception of its second single, “Shock to the System.”

Music: “Shock to the System”

“Shock to the System” feels like something of an orphan in the tracklisting of Cyberpunk. While tracks like “Wasteland” certainly maintain a rough-edged rock mentality about them, and could never be confused for straightforward techno floor-fillers, “Shock to the System” feels more like it was tacked onto the album just so that it would have something that appealed to those who exclusively prefer Idol’s earlier style--and, given that most of Idol’s greatest hits compilations tend to include “Shock to the System” and nothing else from Cyberpunk, this may have worked. Cyberpunk, as a genre, is often concerned with political themes--its great literary progenitor, William Gibson, once said that “the future is already here, but it’s unevenly distributed,” epitomizing the extent to which the intersection between technology and class is a central issue in cyberpunk media. “Shock to the System” is the most overtly political track on Cyberpunk, inspired by the wave of riots that broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of police officers alleged to have used excessive force in the arrest of a Black man, Rodney King. While the role of computers in daily life has changed a great deal since the 1990s, police brutality and anti-Blackness have sadly remained quite similar.

Few have commented on the perhaps uncomfortable implications of Idol’s dramatization of the LA riots from outside, which seems to transmute the scene into one of high-tech fantasy while largely eliding over the racial implications of why people were rioting in the first place--something that seems particularly strange when one learns how upset members of the underground “cyberculture” were about the alleged co-opting and appropriation of their culture. Some have characterized Idol as an honest appreciator of cyberpunk who just wanted to make art that engaged with its ideas, and others more cynically consider him a profiteer who thought he could commercialize a more palatable version of the counter-culture. While the latter hypothesis may well be true, I’m not sure if it can rightfully be said that Idol had “no right” to mine cyberculture for inspiration, particularly since cyberculture has often encouraged amateur participation. Still, as a sometime fan of the literary genre myself, I’m tempted to agree with those who have questioned how deep Idol’s understanding of cyberpunk actually was, particularly when faced with tracks like “Neuromancer.”

Music: “Neuromancer”

In William Gibson’s novel of the same name, Neuromancer is a super-advanced AI with the ability to preserve people’s personalities in virtual reality...though you probably wouldn’t have guessed any of that from this track. Many who interviewed Idol seemed to think he had a weak grasp on the finer points of cyberculture, and even Gibson himself, upon meeting Idol, failed to take him seriously. Still, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to draw a line in the sand, as some have done, and say that Idol was particularly, individually, responsible for the dilution of cyberpunk ideals, as presented by authors like Gibson. While it may be easy to poke fun at the clownish, overwrought figure of Idol, as the embodiment of people who love books they don’t understand, it’s not like that many people owned this album. I think the success of popular films like Blade Runner and The Matrix has done much more to simplify and proliferate ideas cribbed from Gibson.

But however you feel about this, it’s clear that Cyberpunk was an album that ended up appealing to nearly no-one--it alienated Idol’s existing fans with its stylistic diversions, as well as feeling too commercial and inauthentic to cyberpunk enthusiasts. Something else that I haven’t seen mentioned in discussion of this album is the fact that Billy Idol really wasn’t the first to combine the ideas of cyberpunk and music. By the early 1990s, industrial acts like Front 242 and Front Line Assembly had already been making electronic music about cyber brain implants for years, albeit largely underground and often unnoticed by rock-focused critics. I can’t help but think that the prior existence of this stuff was yet another factor that caused Cyberpunk’s failure to thrive. Compared to the electronic body music scene, Cyberpunk comes across as less subtle, less insider, and much more surface-level.

The cover art of Cyberpunk has attracted nearly as much derision as the associated music. The image of Idol’s face bleeds and distorts “into” and “against” a gridlike field, perhaps the greenish terminal of an early computer screen, a representation of the hacker figure entering the virtual world of cyberspace, and identity blurring along those lines. With its wobbly image distortion and queasy complementary colour palette of yellow and purple, it instantly evokes not only cyberpunk aesthetics generally, but more particularly the fusion between cyberpunk and another popular aesthetic of the early 90s: psychedelia, which experienced a substantial resurgence around this time, related to rave culture and its embrace of hallucinogenic party drugs. So-called “cyberdelic” themes abound on the album as well, particularly on the hypnotic “Adam In Chains,” a track that sounds less like 80s New Wave, and more like 90s New Age.

Following the release and subsequent panning of Cyberpunk in the 1990s, Billy Idol went silent for over a decade. While he claimed that his disinterest in making new music was rooted moreso in mismanagement by Chrysalis Records than it was the album’s failure, it’s very tempting to look for a correlation here. Over the years, Idol was often asked if he ever planned to make more electronic music, and consistently claimed that he was chiefly interested in guitar-centric rock, while never completely trashing his vision for Cyberpunk. True to his word, when Idol finally did return to music with 2005’s Devil’s Playground, he delivered on his “classic” sound, and he’s continued to do so ever since.

Music: “Scream”

My favourite track on Cyberpunk is its lead single, the total showstopper “Heroin.” “Heroin” is actually a cover of a song by the seminal Velvet Underground, and it’s everything I think a cover ought to be: exciting, bizarre, and capable of taking something familiar and kicking it into a whole new territory. What’s the point of covering something without changing it and doing something a bit different? “Heroin” is naturally one of the most psychedelic-oriented tracks on the album, being a cover of a drug-themed 1960s classic, as well as one of the tracks with the most influence from dance genres like techno, boasting a very appealing extended outro that makes it feel like a 12” remix. While I think Cyberpunk is a fascinating album, “Heroin” is the one track I think really crosses the bridge from being interesting to being, quite simply, good, and it’s something I’m much more inclined to sit down and listen to recreationally. That’s everything for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “Heroin”

#music #great albums #album review #album reviews #billy idol #cyberpunk

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theglobalbusinessmagazine-blog · 4 years

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YOUNGEST INDIAN ENTREPRENEURS

FOLLOWING ARE SOME OF THE YOUNGEST IN LIST TO BE THE BEST OF TOMORROWS LEADERS, SHAKERS AND MOVERS FOR INDIA — A LIST OF YOUNGEST INDIAN CEOS AND ENTREPRENEURS IN INDIA

Ritesh Agarwal — Age 26

Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start‐up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2012. Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget accommodation. Being an avid traveler, he soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation. Ritesh Agarwal has benefited the society in more than one ways. He has also managed to achieve what most of the people only think of. Below listed are some of the accomplishments of this teenager. He has been named among the top 50 entrepreneurs by the TATA first dot awards in 2013. Finalist of the global student Entrepreneurship Awards India. He has been named one of the 8 hottest teenage startup founders in the world by a BusinessInsider in the year 2013. He is the World’s youngest CEO at 17

Shravan and Sanjay Kumaran — Age 17 & 19

Shravan and Sanjay, siblings aged 17 and 15 respectively are the youngest upcoming entrepreneurs of India. Together, they are the brain behind GoDimensions. The aim of the company is to develop a simple technological solution for the digital world. They are the youngest Mobile Application Developers in India. When asked about how they managed to achieve this feat, the brothers responded by saying “reading books and solving the problems given to them”. These two develop applications for both, Android as well as IOS platforms. \”We’ve always believed that we must do something for society,\” says Sanjay, on the thinking behind their latest app GoDonate, which facilitates the donation of food to local charities that would otherwise go to waste. \”In Central Asia itself, about 500 millions tons of food is being wasted each year,\” says Shravan. The dynamic duo has already developed 11 apps which have about 60,000 downloads across 60 countries! In 2017, they were listed in Forbes 30 Under 30.

Arjun Rai — Age 20 years

Arjun is the CEO of OdysseyAds and was always said to be highly inspired by TV shows like ‘The Oprah Show’ and ‘The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch’ and thought for ideas which changed the way of advertising and marketing in the tech space and today with the help of social platforms like LinkedIn, he met with other entrepreneurs who helped him to broaden his horizon and become one of the youngest and successful entrepreneurs in his field and he started working towards his company in 2009 and today he is the CEO of OdysseyAds.

Farrhad Acidwala — Age 23 years

Starting at the just age of 16 by borrowing 500 bucks from his father for buying a domain name he started building a web community particularly devoted to aviation and aero-modelling. After the website took off to success, he sold the community for a pretty high return. Today, Farrhad is the CEO of a web development, marketing, advertising and branding company called Rockstah Media. Despite being a very young company of 3 years, it has its own team of developers, marketers and designers across the globe and have marked its success in corporate. He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings.

Rohan M Ganapathy (Age 27 years) & Yashas Karanam (Age 25 years)

Rohan and Yashas, are the young men behind the brand Bellatrix Aerospace, a company that have received their first high profile order from ISRO couple of years ago. Their order was for a satellite propulsion system and the company is now working on ambitious CHETAK, a 2 stage launch vehicle, which is planned to be aired by 2023. It is really a difference made by these entrepreneurs to get into such complex and challenging business industry at such young age and made a mark of their own

4. Deepanjali Dalmia — Age 28 years

Deepanjali is a young woman who represent ‘beauty with wisdom’, who took the leap of faith by quitting her top dollar job with E&Y in New York and decided to work for women’s health segment in India. She heads Heyday Care that produces organic sanitary pads made out of bamboo fiber and corn. She visions the product as effective, cheap and safe, making them perfect for women who either don’t have access to sanitary pads or don’t realize the harmful impact of ingredients in the regular off the shelf products and is a major social change maker in India

Kavita Shukla — Age 31 years

Kavita is the founder of FreshPaper which keeps the produces fresh for longer hours than today’s conventional methods. She has patented her innovation. FreshPaper was in a handful of co-ops and farmers’ markets by 2012, when Whole Foods placed a big order for two regions. Today the product is sold in groceries nationwide, and in over 35 countries fulfilling Kavita’s global aspirations.

Jeffin Ani Johns — Age 29 years

Jeffin is a young entrepreneur who chose to take the path of entrepreneurship instead of lucrative corporate job after his MBA. His entrepreneurship journey started in 2012 with an online reselling platform business and have ventured into several startups later. Currently, Jeffin Ani Johns is a serial entrepreneur major known for being the CEO & co founder of leading consulting firm BrandKeeda, a brand which have helped several micro startups to create their own brands through various innovative methods. He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings. Despite being a very young company and young entrepreneur he have gained over 150 clients in over 3 countries and have been nominated to represent the country in several international startup summits.

Arushi Jain — Age 26 years

Arushi Jain is the founder of StayHappi Pharmacy. The idea behind starting StayHappi Pharmacy was to ensure that everyone in the country gets quality medicine at an affordable price. The brand aims to serve humanity and build its offline channels where it could reach consumers/patients and provide them with the authority to make a smart choice and choose the right medicine at a reasonable cost. It is a noble initiative, effectively marrying business acumen with human compassion. It is directed at one of the most pressing concerns of the society today, ie., availability of affordable and quality medication to all those are in need; a true societal cause to it very core. Arushi is planning to open around 2,000 more stores in different locations by 2020. As our aim is to offer medicines to the people across India at affordable prices without compromising on the quality of the products, we will continue to strengther. Being young also Arushi have made it into headlines of corporate world with her achievements in recent years

Amir Rao — Age 31 Years

Amir is a studio director at Supergiant Games. He also a co-creator of role-playing action video game Bastion which has won many awards and so far, as sold around 2.2 million copies. Amir tries to create continuous innovation in his business to stay ahead in his game

Pranav Yadav — Age 30 years

Pranav is the CEO of Neuro-Insight. It is a neuro-marketing firm that has designed and developed brain mapping technology to understand and improve the quality of commercials on TV. Pranav Yadav is an inspirational entrepreneur decided to make a difference in his industry

Bala Sarda — Age 28 years

Bala Sarda is the founder of Vahdam Teas, a brand which is even appretiated by global personality Oprah. Founded In 2015 By Bala Sarda, a fourth-generation tea entrepreneur, Vahdam Teas’ mission is to build a global tea and superfoods brand. With direct sourcing from estates across India and local distribution in key markets like the US, Vahdam is India’s largest premium homegrown tea brand for the world. At the age of 23, Bala started Vahdam Teas and in 4 years, it has taken India Tea to the global stage under a grown label and also build the world’s truly vertically integrated global brand, with its subsidiaries and presence in the US and Europe. He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings.

Kshitij Marwah — Age 31 years

Kshitij Marwah is a design master who is yet to hit 35 but has made a big impact with his cutting edge ventures. First with MIT Media Lab India Initiative and then Tesseract Inc, he made waves in the industry. The latter saw him get on the fast moving Make In India wagon and has led to innovative products that have become the talk of the town. Voxel, first holographic headset for Smartphones and Quark 360, the smallest 360 degree virtual reality camera have brought him and his company much acclaim and even made to forbes list

Neil Mehta — Age 31 years

Neil is the founder of Greenoaks Capital which is an investment firm. At present, he is managing around $600 million by investing in various industries ranging from insurance to e-commerce. Prior to Greenoaks Capital, Neil was responsible for global special situation investments in Asia for OPG Ltd., a Hong Kong-based investment firm financed by a fund managed by D.E. Shaw & Co., L.P. Neil previously invested in private businesses in the general business and technology sector at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. Neil holds a BSc from The London School of Economics.

Trishneet Arora — Age 25

At the age of 25, Trishneet Arora is an author, a self-described friendly hacker and the founder and CEO of cyber security startup TAC Security Solutions. The India-based company performs Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing for corporates identifying weaknesses in their cyber security. He has received funding from angel investor Vijay Kedia and support from former VP of IBM, William May. In 2017, Arora was listed among the 50 Most Influential Young Indians by GQ Magazine, while August 25, 2017 was proclaimed Trishneet Arora Day, by the Mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Akash Shukla — Age 30

Akash Shukla is the co founder of Uprise India Foundation, a one of a kind and highly appreciated venture. “Uprise India Foundation provided the platform for women who are trying to achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. Women who will enrol with the program would be getting 360 business training, support & guidance for making their dream career successful. Any women can enrol irrespective of any business/profile, any women who own start-up, SME’S or two individual professionals,” shared Dudeja.

Under the initiative, Uprise India will organize monthly workshops in distinct towns to train women entrepreneurs. Their goal is to cover maximum metro cities and other important commercial enterprise towns of India. Notably, more than 100 women entrepreneurs were addressed at the conference.

Uprise India Foundation is an initiative taken by Akash Shukla along with his co-founder, to help women make their diverse identity in the world. Talking at the event, Shukla said, “In today’s time, we are missing the mindset of seeking out new knowledge and challenges and most importantly, we are missing long term development plans.” He had been featured in several best under 30 business leader rankings.

Abhishek Singh — Age 24

Abhishek Singh is the founder of Rankethon. The venture was created from his vision as from childhood he used to spend hours in a home-made lab and try various things. This urge to work in a state-of-art-lab which was his passion paved ways to make the venture. Rankethon is in a way a realization of the dream. Since 2014, he had been conducting number of program linked to this sector across the country in different level.

Rankethon provide high tech industry oriented lab at the student’s convenience point’s right from school to colleges. A-cadre college pass out student learns basics from them, after they are asked to solve problems by using their core engineering skills. Later, they are deployed in top companies. With all this, we also provide webinars from professors & professionals at top companies.

Future plan of Abhishek when asked was that he is launching an online program called HomeRancho where students can get the complete training in a pre-designed portable lab at their doorstep in a completely practical manner. Currently, stalwarts in online education are doing at theoretical level but we want to give complete practical exposure to students in this segment, here we are in process to raise the funds to implement this at a next level.

Vaibhav Khandelwal — Age 28

Vaibhav’s is the Co-Founder & CTO, Shadowfax. He holds a graduate degree from IIT Delhi and his tech venture, Shadowfax, which he co-founded in 2015, at barely 23 years of age is one of leading ventures in their space.

Being is a problem solving entrepreneur by nature, he found logistics to be a challenging sector and decided to solve problems in to create his opportunity.

Shadowfax is a logistics platform which is a unique combination of technology and people to provide the last mile logistics service. Vaibhav is the tech genius and he uses technology as a medium of interaction with people. Vaibhav firmly believes that technology can solve many big problems. He had been awarded several national recognitions for his venture

Deepak Ravindran — 25

Deepak Ravindran is the Co-founder and CEO of Innoz Technologies. He is considered one of the youngest entrepreneurs of India who successfully co-founded and is currently running three companies who provide services of mobile messaging; Innoz, which is having a mission to connect the unconnected people by providing offline services through Innoz which is the world’s largest offline search engine along with SMS.

Another one is Quest, which is a mobile messaging platform which is used in 500+ startups to send offline SMS, and most recently is Lookup, an app which provides the conversation between customers and retailers so they can chat too, funded by Khosla and Biz Stone.

Recognized as one of the outstanding innovators under 35 by MIT Technology, And one of Asia’s 21 emerging leaders under 40 according to Asia Society.

Sarvesh Shashi — Age 25

All of 25 years of age, Sarvesh Shashi is the youngest CEO in the yoga and wellness fraternity. Sarvesh believes in the philosophy of consciousness through yoga and the emotion of happiness that stems out of yoga practices. He wants to spread this yoga happiness to thousands. At a young age of 21 he gave up a bright career in his father’s sprawling businesses and set out to touch the lives of many with yoga. Hence he is fondly called The CEO among Monks by many.

Disclaimer :: All content are not owned by us and have been collected from various public sources and we shall not be responsible for any claims regarding same. For removal of content write to [email protected]

#business #youngest #entreprenuerlife #entrepreneur #youngestentrepreneur

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feliciaderosa · 5 years

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A good way to start my day...

Sooooooooo, in case you were wondering, being trans is mixed bag of experiences and emotions and self discovery. There are days when I feel like the darkly hilarious queen of the world, and days when I feel like a big bag of flaming shit.

It changes day to day because, dysphoria. Because ignorant, bigoted asshats. Because suddenly, people who once loved me, have stopped messaging me; hide my profile from their friend lists on social media.

The world seems oddly foriegn.

Mundane, everyday moments suddenly take on an air of danger and uncertainty. This one time, my wife and I were at Walmart shopping for things - as one does.

We were out of chocolate unicorn lucky charms, and I had a craving!

This happened to be a day of low dysphoria for me. In fact, I was feeling straight up adorable.

I had found the magical Box of cereal I went searching for, and started making my way back to my wife, who had the cart.

It was as normal and basic and boring of a thing as it sounds.

There was this guy, with a full cart of whatever pushing his way through. He was older, cis and seemed harmless enough... But he was determined to get through the aisle, so I backed against the shelves to give him Room. As he passes me, he leans in and whispers; "you're disgusting." and continued on his way.

It took me a minute to process what had just happened. Initially, I checked my nose to see if I had a boogey. Then I thought: "Maybe he's not into all my tattoos? "

Like that would matter.

I had a full head of wool felted pink dreads braided into my hair. Maybe he had an issue with my cyber gothness. In which case, go fuck yourself, I'm hella stylish.

But after a minute, I realized he was a transphobic piece of garbage, and I had just been attacked.

There went my confidence, because I'm still pretty fragile, despite my tough exterior.

I was able to shake it off by the end of the day, but still.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Why is who I am so threatening to them? Why should it even matter? I don't know them, they don't know me. What do they give a crap if I'm a tattooed, dread having, trans-goth punk princess?

I think it's because trans people represent a proactive approach to making your life better. It's not something internalized, like learning to take breaks or having a New Year's resolution... It's visceral and physical and very much visible to one degree or another.

And that's upsetting to a lot of people. I think about my sister-in-law. She's super unhappy, but she feels resigned in her life like, 'this is what it is and I'm just gonna push through it until I die.' It's as if the thought of taking a step to be happy and making things better is too daunting or too scary, so staying in misery is the lesser of 2 evils.

For the record, I do empathize with that. It took a long time for me to admit who I was and come out and transition for very similar reasons.

The difference is, I never faulted other people for being brave enough to make positive changes in their lives. Quite the opposite, I find it inspiring.

But I think that some people get to a place in their lives where they don't wanna be reminded about how miserable they are. And then here comes a trans person going; "stuff wasn't working out, so I'm making changes."

I experience moments like this from time to time and it can really harm my self image and my sense of safety and confidence. There are days when I don't feel like I can leave the house. But I do anyway, because I'll be dammed if I'm gonna stop living my life because of some ignorant Jack-ass at a Walmart.

I was in one of these brooding, Dark Places when I got the following message to me:

It was in response to a post I made about missing my grandmother and wanting her to be proud of the woman I am becoming...

"I just read your post about your grandma's b-day and you talked about the authentic you... I'm just stopping by to say... I had no idea you had transitioned from an other gender. No idea what so ever. You're so stinking feminine and pretty. I have someone in my life whom I love dearly, who is living in fear of thier authentic self... You give them courage and strength and you don't even know it. Thank you for being the real you. You're making a difference for someone in my life and I appreciate your courage and authenticity... have a wonderful day, gorgeous."

I read this twice and cried.

Not all people suck, and as hard as it can sometimes be, the struggle is worth it. ❤😘🤘

#transwoman #hrt #mtf #thisiswhattranslookslike #transgender #transgirl #transition #transvisibility #girlslikeus #hrt mtf #maletofemale #transisbeautiful #my life #activism #story #trans #transexual

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alexanderessex3dstoryart · 3 years

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Script-Writing - Characters, Themes and Story

For today’s research, I thought I would establish my characters, story and the themes that I want to bring across for the scene for the script-writing part of my essay so that I can refer back to this and help me write my essay. Starting off, I thought about which characters would be involved in my scene as well as a fact file of how they behave and what’s their relationship to one another.

Characters

Ego (Jekyll Character)

Obsessed with the ideas of celebrities and idols in the universe as they act like gods and role-models to him

Very handy person and the best at his craft of making things but also mending things too

Has learned to adapt to the ongoing changes of the world with cyber technology

So good at his craft to the point he’s fixing the most important people in the city like the president and the top celebrities that reside in the area

Despite his extreme time he puts into the craft as well as how he’s the best at what he does, he doesn’t get any recognition for his efforts which is what allows his body to transform into the Hyde character

But despite this detail, he still is a really nice individual who doesn’t intend in hurting in anybody or saying anything cruel

Sane individual for the most part at the beginning of the story but becomes much more insane over the course of the story and what leads to the eventualfull downfall of both Ego and Impluse

Nice person at the start of the story but then turns sour and in his last moments, he recognises his faults and what leads him and Hyde to pass away from this world for good

Is obsessed over the celebrity ‘Chance’ due to being the one he’s fixed the most on and having the closet relationship too out of the all the celebs in the city despite her never acknowledging his talents or wanting to share them to the world

Has a bit of a god complex

The name Ego is a literal definition for the character as he has a huge ego about himself and his work. Whislt he may be truly the best at his craft, his idea of himself thinking the world revolves around him makes him feel like he should be under the spotlight from how hard he’s worked

Impulse (Hyde Character)

A spirit that possess Ego from the natural world that reatin’s the physical presence of him but in a giant mechanical mech

Thinks independently to Ego but is a manifestation of Ego’s hatred towards Idol culture

Is very much against the whole idea of celebs and idols from how people obsess over them so much to the point they lose their own identity

Wants people to experience life outside of the city and apprentice living

Loves living and

Hates anything that closely resembles anything famous as he finds that environment toxic

Has murderous intent but not to the point he wants to murder everything in his path as he has morals to who he needs to kill which frankly, he only ever kills one individual across my story

Whilst he has murderous intent, he’s fascinated by humanity and what it has to offer as the holograms in the city he finds special as they look at him not as a junk monster, but has someone that has compassion

Wants to be seen as human and be accepted as individual and not a freak of nature

Whilst against Jekyll for the most part, he serves as a mentor for Jekyll through the course of the story and allows him to experience life outside of the city despite being very narcissistic from Impulse murdering his role model

Literally has Ego chained up inside of Impulse’s body

The name Impulse is to represent his hatred for the city and what it stands for and how it operates. The city to him acts as a graveyard to him which is ironic from where he came from that being a junkyard in the forested areas outside of the city. The reason he sees it this way is due to how the humans want less and less of their identity to be shown in that culture with most organic parts being replaced by robotic parts to gain an edge as well as becoming obsessed with celeb culture. Both of these to him make humans want to become something else like they’re not happy with themselves and try to aspire to be their own unique self.

Chance (Sir Danvers Carew Character)

Ego’s biggest idol and the one that he obsesses over the most out of all the idols in the city

Relies on Ego to fix her equipment being her arms, head and legs as they need the most attention. This is to symbolise without these facial features and appenditures, your just a generic body that could be casted off as a slab of meat which shows lack of soul

Is killed by Impluse with a broken off road sign found in the slums and is used to stab her right in the heart and prop her up against the entrance of the slums. This symbolises the disconnect from the slum world to the flashy city as whilst it was Ego’s favourite idol, the general public care about her death for a couple of days until she’s old news and the next idol takes her place like she didn’t exist. This is why shes propped up halfway between these two worlds as the world sees her but is then casted away into the slums.

Might consider having just her body presented to the world with no arms, legs or head to further drive that symbolism across

The name Chance is inspired by how you have to be incredibly lucky to reach elitist status in the world in terms of being a celebrity which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that it adds

Once I’d covered the characters, I went back on my previous blog posts and ideas and list out my themes that I would like to convey in the scene as well as covering the whole story too.

Themes

Lack of identity - From the removal of identity from the use of cyber enhancements replacing people’s characteristics with new ones as well as obsessing over celebrity culture to the point of not having an identity yourself. Essentially, the city acts like a graveyard

Roger Ebert puts it best -

Humanity - Impulse covers this theme the best through the usage of holograms as they severe as the closest living thing to accepting who he is which emphasises the humanity of Impulse despite his murderous intent

Apprenticing Life for what it has to offer - Impluse commits actions that he believes will help grow Ego to become a better person. Whilst these methods are brutal and sadistic, it’s to further emphasise the point to abandon the city he’s all too familiar with. In addition to this, the world outside of the city is filled with life and exploration but because everyone is so attached to the city, no one dares to leave because they are so attached to it and feel terrified if they leave something they’re too familiar with

Attachment?

For the story, I looked back on the script-writing website on how to write a synopsis for a story for script-writing and this is what it breaks-down to; Beginning, Inciting incident, first turning point, call to action, point of no return, all is lost, second turning point, climax, the end. I think for the context for the script and essay, I think I’ll stick to these terms as it will help to establish the general story I want to bring across.

Story Beginning - Ego is a hard-working individual who works his way through the ranks of the engineering world becoming the best at his craft to the point he’s working with high-end celebrities, idols and important influential people.

Inciting Incident - He then ends up working with his favourite idol that he obsesses over by the name of ‘Chance’. Although despite working with her so much, she doesn’t seem to pay any real interest into him or acklodge he exists. In fact, he’s a blur to her despite fixing her at the worst points in her idol career. It doesn’t help that he’s been also promised at a chance at the spotlight by her for his hard-working efforts and dedication to his craft. This leads to him becoming depressed and feel disconnected to her as his talents aren’t recognised on stage by her or she does anything to put him in the spotlight. But at the same time, he feels a bit of hatred towards her being casted away from her.

First turning point - Saddened by this continuous guilt and this hatred brewing, he flocks outside of the city to the abandoned wasteland that lies on the outside of the city as he feels worthless and forgotten in the world. This leads him to this natural wasteland with greenery from top to bottom but because of his emotions, he doesn’t take in it’s beauty and ploughs through the deserted environment. He then ends up in an abandoned junkyard in the greenery which then his hatred begins to manifest and create the character that is known as Impluse with large bits of scrap coming from either side attaching to his body and part of the scenery as well like skulls and plants.

Call to action - Impulse begins to gain conscious of his surroundings and initially has quite the negative reaction to Ego being inside his body as Ego is hung up inside supporting him with his arms and legs are inside Impulse’s body. However rather than scold him and threaten him, he hesitates and takes in the life around him with the flourishing natural environment almost speaking to him. It’s at this stage he almost forgets who he is as he becomes in tranced of his surroundings. Puzzled and confused, Ego tries talking to him which he then snaps back to a perfectly normal expression and questions the feelings he’s feeling as he’s never felt something like that before. Ego is quick to pass it off as star-gazing as there’s nothing special to this area in his eyes. Impulse then feels angered from that comment as he wants to protect what he can’t see is beautiful. This leads to Ego influencing Impluse to see what truly is beautiful in his eyes which leads Impulse to the city.

Point of No Return - When they arrive at the city, Impulse is confused at what he’s actually looking at as all he can see are blank black and white screens with different lettering to them and emptyless buildings. Comparing this to Ego’s perception of the city, he’s in a trance like state from all of the pretty colours that shine down around the city with the moving imagery of holograms scattered across. Both characters have a back and forth to what they find so special about the city with Ego amazed by the colours and flashiness of it and Impluse very much unable to grasp the culture being presented to him. This then leads to the two characters walking into the slums of the city to which they see Chance coming out of one of the buildings as she walks into the city. Impulse ends up killing Chance to prove a point to Ego that you shouldn’t be attached to this kind of toxic behaviour as he stabs Chance through her body just outside of the streets of the city with her legs, head and arms being ripped off. Ego is unable to see this murder occur as he passes out from losing control of himself in Impulse’s body.

All is lost - Ego wakes up in his bed with metal panels, scrap and environment scattered across his living space thinking it was all a bad dream until he sees the decapitated head of Chance and her limbs arranged in front of him. Ego is in immense sadness and confusion to how this has happened as he trembles in his movements that he's his role model is all mangled up in front of him. Things don’t help as on TV where the body is, his wrench is at the crime scene getting the wrong kind of spotlight he wished for. Impluse starts speaking to his head without the need of his humgoous body telling him it was the right thing to do.

Second turning Point - This makes Ego start to fester his hatred again and begin at it’s peak level as he wishes the whole world can burn and no-one deserves to live becoming just like Impulse when they first met. However, Impulse is feeling heavily resentful despite still hating the idol culture that is shown in the city as he regrets killing human life even if it taught him a lesson. He snaps out Ego’s mindset out of his head and asks him to come back to the city. WIth Ego standing in middle of the crosswalks, he begins to understand what it’s like to live life and the happiness it has being himself.

Climax - Unfortunately, this revelation from Ego is brought short as the police have spotted him in the city which Ego allows Impulse to take over his body and take him away from the city in a chase sequence. This then brings both characters to the in between of the city and the green wasteland where it’s marky and desert looking. Both Ego and Impulse sacrifice themselves in a chemical explosion so that they can both escape this world together as they know they aren’t suited here and are better known in a different life

The End - Nothing really happens or really changes to the city as the world keeps on moving on how it’s always been. However despite the irony that everything is remaining the same, more and more life starts to grow around the city encouraging people to explore and detach themselves from the culture that’s established in the city and experience a new life out of the city.

I think from my development today on the script-writing project, I can fully understand the scene that I would like to make now knowing the whole story, character’s intentions and backgrounds as well as my general themes being established in this document. I think to help with the essay structure, I plan to look into other scripts and see how I can both write and plan my scene out.

#ScriptWrtitingBA2a

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frankiebones · 6 years

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CALL IT A MANIFESTO by THOMAS KELLEY

CALL IT A MANIFESTO: Frankie Bones’ Techno Classic Still Rhymes to the Future

“It Started In Detroit / But I Had to Exploit / The Way I Hear It! / Techno House Is the Sound / From the Dance Cult Underground / I Know You Feel It!” —second verse from Frankie Bones’ ‘Call It Techno,’ June 4, 1989

Before the last hurrahs of the 20th century, from the first Gulf War to the Monica Lewinsky affair, a Brooklyn rebel laid down words for a movement that was short on them. Scrawling them on paper, he devised a message with the force of a freight train, giving it a rhyme and flow that struck across the distance: “Detroit,” “exploit,” “techno house,” “sound,” “dance cult,” “underground.”

But who was this Frankie Bones? There’s no way of answering that without the word “techno” and everything it means. Techno of the past. Techno of the future. Techno, now. His story, which encompasses the American journey of breakbeat grafted to the metronome — the hybrid of polyrhythm and the 4/4 beat — that would define dance music from jazz to rock, disco to electro, onto hip hop, house, techno, rave and “EDM,” evolving without end, is critical to understanding the direction of Western music.

He was a white hip hop kid whose father was murdered by a black man. He was defiant and never afraid to speak his mind. And so, in 1989, he declared his love for a mixed up sound. He wrote lyrics that talked about a new beat that was so strong it was all he could talk about. He described how it was mutating and where it was going. He put his finger on the wire.

He could do that because he knew the shock of loss. Techno was his salvation: Frank Mitchell, who became “Frankie Bones,” survived tragedy through his love of black music, and that’s how he made it his own.

Now, almost thirty years afterits initial release, in honor of his enduring contributions and the fiery urgency of Bones’ career, Carl Cox’s Intec label picked Bones’ landmark anthem ‘Call It Techno’ for a remix E.P. The new edition, which came out in November, includes a sleek, commissioned remix by Bones, along with interpretations by hotshots Raito and Carlo Lio, plus a heavy filtered b-side: ‘Light It Up.’

To understand what was going through his head when he created the original, Ghost Deep talked to Bones about the deep varied currents and rocky urban places that inspired his words (see the full Q&A below).

Like reefs under the waves, each verse of ‘Call It Techno’ described a world within worlds. You had to hear it down below the flash. And then you could feel it— and know, that the future was here. Hearing energetic electrons pushing sound through the air at early raves, generated a cultish religiosity, filled with optimism about the great electronic unknown, a heady convergence of humanity and new technology.

And yet, for most of the world, it was a slow takeover. Mass hysteria had visited pop culture before in the form of Elvis Presley’s gyrating rock ’n’ roll and the “devil music” backlash, and in the form of Beatle-mania. But the “dance cult underground” was different. In America, it was a decades-long insurgency thumped out one renegade party at a time. Kicking off almost 30 years after the 1960s — during the height of the AIDS epidemic — it was more secret and more subversive than rock, moving unseen in the shadows.

Looking back on it now, few were ready for it. “The techno wave has grown / with a style of our own / direct from Brooklyn!” declared Bones. “Essential funk, kick and snare / make you feel it over there / out in London!” And the chorus: “We call it techno! / You can feel the bass! / Call it techno! / Techno bass, bass!”

You could hear the ferocity and fervor in his voice, cresting over the waves of hybrid sound, slinging fully formed ideas in street code with a common touch, set to the crunching breaks of hip hop and electro, the sensual groove of C + C Music Factory’s ‘Seduction,’ with ghostly synths hovering in like the fog.

With simple words and his “techno house sound,” Bones was addressing the emergence of a global underground. He was talking to London, and Detroit, and connecting the power cables near the Hudson. And he wasn’t going to take shit from no one.

Computer Noise And Pounding Bass / Hits You In the Face / Like A Hammer

And yet no one really knew how to talk about it. True, there were the visionary words of Juan Atkins on Detroit techno classics, like ‘No UFO’s’ and ‘Night Drive (Thru Babylon),’ both from 1985. Or the gospel call and response of Bernard Fowler on N.Y.C. Peech Boys’ ‘Life Is Something Special,’ going back to 1982 — “Can you feel it!?” — on to Chicago house anthems like Larry Heard’s ‘Can You Feel It?’ and Marshall Jefferson’s ‘Move Your Body.’

But the difference is no one had described the movement those songs inspired in stark international terms— a techno-social wave that would go on to sweep the world. The clues were just barely knowable, if not yet universal (read the full lyrics to ‘Call It Techno’). After the tumult of the ’60s and ’70s, Westerners were just starting to formulate feelings about the great leaps ahead, from the end of the Cold War to the Information Revolution to China’s economic rise to today’s cyber delusional storms. As life accelerated through the ’90s, the past seemed to recede with ever greater speed.

Until it didn’t. Today, the Cold War is back. The truth is on life support. And the shadows of the Great Depression linger in antsy brains. As Bones is fond of noting, the inverse of techno’s manifest destiny also applies: when the past meets the present, that’s when the future arrives.

The same year ‘Call It Techno’ went to press, the first internet service providers went commercial. Communism ebbed away in Eastern Europe. The Berlin Wall came down. The same day Bones put out his single, the Chinese government murdered and bulldozed students protesting for democracy in Tiananmen Square. At the other end of the spectrum, corporate control of Western music ensured pop vanilla from the likes of Rick Astley, Richard Marx, Skid Row and Milli Vanilli, ruled the airwaves.

The following year? Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice Baby.’

Imagine that. No, really. Imagine. Imagine if it was all “Word to your mother”?

If free-thinking people were to survive the transitions, AND transgressions, of the ’90s and beyond — into hacked identities and Russian brainwashing, from smartphone addictions all the way to real Fake News and Fake Intelligence (A.I. or otherwise) — then they would need an underlying context that reminded them how they got there and who they are.

For many, that grounding would be techno — the Music of Machines.

Bones brought a powerful subtext to that riddling context. A native son of New York City, he grew up next to train tracks in Brooklyn, tagging brick walls with his graffiti call sign, “BONES” (given to him for his wiry, skinny frame), crawling through subway tunnels, chowing down hot dogs at Coney Island, tearing it up at disco roller rinks, and mining records with every cent he got.

Once he became a man, he picked up the mic. His father died four years before he recorded ‘Call It Techno.’ He could talk about himself. Or he could talk about the city he loved. He could talk about his anguish. Or he could talk about the unifying beat at the heart of the world.

So he wrote five verses that gave voice to a critical moment in time, this New Yorker bringing a hip hop attitude to the techno dance party. He punctuated the emerging technological groove with a sense of mission. He told the story of rave’s birth, of cold cities giving harbor to the blues of former slaves, of a flash point in Europe, of Brooklyn crashing London in the cover of night.

We’re a long way from 1989. But sifting through the story on ‘Call It Techno,’ the same stakes have little changed and his defiance applies now more than ever. Asking the Johnny Appleseed of Techno about how his manifesto came to be, he explains the experiences and records that informed his style, and how “rave” was just revolution by another name.

GHOST DEEP: ‘Call It Techno’ talks about the Brooklyn style. Can you define what that style is and where it came from?

Frankie Bones: In 1978 and 1979, two iconic movies being Saturday Night Fever and The Warriors, were stories written for and about Brooklyn. But that being said, living in Brooklyn in the 1970s and 1980s was an identity crisis, a period of uncertainty and confusion in which a person’s identity is questioned due to a change in their expected roles in society.

That was Brooklyn Style. It wasn’t a style at all. It was more just about survival in the streets. If you claimed a style, you were going to be picked on and bullied.

An earlier Brooklyn film from 1974, titled The Education Of Sonny Carson,depicts this even better, and I only mention that because John Travolta was first appearing on a TV show called Welcome Back Kotter, also based in the same Brooklyn neighborhood Saturday Night Fever was based a few years later: Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Coney Island — our stomping grounds.

What else was going on in Brooklyn at that time that inspired you?

We moved into Flatbush, 982 East 38 Street to be exact, last house on the left of a dead end street, on August 7, 1973. Put the address in the search bar and you can see a small modest house. It was more beautiful back then. This was the same weekend Kool Herc threw the very first hip-hop party in the Bronx. I was seven.

But I began collecting records early on. Very early on. Because I lived next to railroad tracks and there was a flea market only a few blocks away.

This is hillarious, but the scene in Boyz In The Hood — “You wanna see a dead body?” — the railroad tracks next to my house were exact and the same. I never saw a dead body, but there were things. Things to explore, things to break, to light on fire. There is a sense of isolation on freight train tracks, especially in a city as big as Brooklyn. The World Trade Center was just completed. New York City was changing.

When those movies came out though, we lived our lives through those stories. We wrote graffiti. We did hip hop. Breakdancing. Our young friends also became famous years later. It was dangerous and yet exciting.

Who were those young friends who became famous and what did they become famous for?

They were mainly graffiti artists such as Ghost, Reas, JA, Kaves and my brother who wrote as Ven. They left a mark which lasted decades. Otherwise, producers like Omar Santana and Carlos Berrios, who did rather well in the music industry.

So that’s the emotional background to the song, this mixed up identity of New York City in the ’70s and ’80s. So what were you trying to capture in terms of the future with the song’s lyrics and vocal delivery?

‘Call It Techno’ was written after we first got the phone call to play at these big all-night raves in London. I worked with Northcott Productions: Silvio Tancredi (R.I.P.) and Tommy Musto.

They had just built a studio and office for their label, which became Fourth Floor, on 25 West 38th Street. We started making tracks every single day. We had a pressing plant. We were distribution and independent. I started working there in 1987. After one year and lots of releases, a weird trend became totally visible to us and us only: we were shipping more records to London than we were selling States-side.

This began in 1988. And it was my Bonesbreaks 2 where there was this massive paradigm shift. London was going through some sort of revolution in our eyes because the records magically just started to have a big demand in the U.K. and we wanted to know why.

Right, so the concept for ‘Call It Techno’ first came from that London connection?

Well, we get the phone call. We knew it was coming actually. I remember getting that offer to come and play in London. I had already had steady DJ gigs in New York, but they were talking about 5,000 people parties in London. With just DJs.

This was unheard of in New York City. New York had mega-clubs: Paradise Garage, Studio 54, Fun House, etc. But it never had multiple DJs per night. It just didn’t happen. You got “track acts,” live P.A.s performing. But unless you were Jam Master Jay performing with Run-DMC, you were not going to DJ in these clubs. They had one resident DJ only. And you had to produce commercial music to create a buzz.

We actually had already done that with freestyle and electro, but in 1987, house music became the sound and it had evolved through disco. The Chicago and Detroit styles were strictly underground-based and filtered to DJs who spent time in record stores.

So if this new sound was filtering into New York DJs over time, did techno need such a manifesto in your opinion? What were the thoughts you debated in putting words to what has often been wordless music?

The paradigm shift I mentioned was from Bonesbreaks 2 [1988]. We were just fucking around with these bizarre mash-ups, which were basically breakbeats and house and smashing TR-Roland 808 drum machines and the preferred Casio RZ-1 synthesizer, over us just mixing records and releasing them as DJ tools. Knowing that was way over the top for 1988 standards and hearing that our records were in higher demand than the previous Chicago and Detroit releases were in London, a bell went off in my head.

I went in and made a freestyle song using Detroit Techno sounds. I perform the song. Cut out the middlemen, who were actually young female singers who sang on our songs. I was quite successful writing popular freestyle tracks at the time. I did a ton of ghostwriting for Omar Santana and Carlos Berrios, who were also making big waves in their careers. And I always loved Egyptian Lover’s records from ‘Egypt, Egypt’ onward. 2 Live Crew. “I could do this.” No problem.

I didn’t actually ever have a problem writing hip hop songs. My only issue was being this kind of goofy white kid from Brooklyn who already knew the stakes well in advance. I knew in advance that I was going to London to DJ, and have an opportunity to have no limits and no boundaries.

‘Call It Techno’ was my way of arriving with a new passport and telling the Brits, “Hey, I get it.” You guys are some kind of “Dance Cult from the Underground and Techno House is the Sound.”

Tech-house? In 1989? Imagine that.

Hold Up / Wait A Minute / Let Me Put Our / Bass In It

Bones opened up Groove Records in 1990, a small record store in the multiethnic Bensonhurst enclave of Brooklyn, that focused on selling techno vinyl. It would later reincarnate as the long running Sonic Groove record store, in partnership with his younger brother Adam (known best as Adam X) and Heather Lotruglio (better known as DJ Heather Heart). Their business would go under following the cultural and economic aftershocks of 9/11.

But the year after ‘Call It Techno’ impacted dance floors, the future opened wide with a sense of possibility. For over a decade Bones and his crew would help lead the “dance cult underground’ in various capacities. Infamously, they jump-started the New York rave scene by throwing their gutsy “Storm Raves.” They cut bolt locks and set up speaker stacks in brickyards and train yards. They wired their gear into street lamps for power, jacking into the city’s electric grid, setting up a parallel universe of uncompromising music.

It was that same Brooklyn Style that Bones talks about — improvisational and risky. In the early ’80s, as is widely misreported, disco had “died.” But a only few years later, it came back as a robot. In abandoned warehouses across the Hudson and under bridges, the great cosmopolis, the Big Apple, got its “computer noise and pounding bass.”

Bones made good on the spirit of ‘Call It Techno.’ He captured, predicted and helped carry out its proclamations. But in many ways, New York just as easily could have stayed a hip hop town speckled with underground disco haunts — one without the pulse, the other without the boom.

It was that intersection that always caught his ear. He heard it in Afrika Bambaata and the Soul Sonic Force. He heard it in Cybotron’s ‘Clear.’ That intense connection to funk.

He loved electro and hip hop for their hybrid, diverse energy. He loved how they cut through barriers. When his father, who drove taxis for an extra source of income, was killed, it was the young Bones’ love of hip hop at a time when the city was seething with racial strife, that helped him channel his sorrow in a more hopeful direction.

It’s those shards of life and music that helped define his unique sound. He’s not only a DJ who conjures mayhem from the decks but who writes dark, wily records like 2017’s excellent ‘I’m Taking Control,’ and who can slam words over songs and DJ sets on the fly. He sees the world in terms of rhyme.

GHOST DEEP: The lyric “It started in Detroit / but I had to exploit / the way I hear it” pays homage to Detroit’s genesis of “techno.” When did you first hear a Detroit techno record?

Frankie Bones: The untold story of Juan Atkins, who I dearly respect, but what people never caught onto. ‘Clear’ by Cybotron. Juan produced it in 1982. Legendary Electro. Everyone knows ‘Clear.’ Clearly Juan has stated time and time again that he never heard ‘Planet Rock’ when he penned ‘Clear.’ He didn’t hear it.

I know Juan dearly for many years and he is an honest and truthful man. The can of worms opens when you read the record label. It says MIXED BY JOSE “ANIMAL” DIAZ — a New York DJ whose mix was modeled 100% to the mold of ‘Planet Rock.’ Find Juan’s original from the album. I always pay attention to detail. The original song sounded like an electro-funk song of its era, with no bottom end.

‘Planet Rock’ had changed everything and it was a New York classic straight out of the crate. The music was made in big session studios with big budgets. $150 an hour type stuff. It wasn’t made in someone’s bedroom.

So was that Detroit record the first techno record you ever heard?

Cybotron, yes, but Juan’s Metroplex records, which were electro and not labelled techno, fueled the fire all the way through, from 1982 on. It allowed me to realize there were people making these type of records outside of the New York electro scene: Miami, Detroit and Hollywood. We were making “Electro,” “Freestyle,” and “Breaks,” and most of it filtered through hip hop, where it wasn’t really taken seriously.

What is Detroit techno in your book? Where did it come from that is not often talked about, like the cultural strains that it evolved from?

Yes, I absolutely can, with an award from Detroit’s Metro Times newspaper giving me the 1999 Best DJ award for my four-year residency at Motor Lounge as an outside talent.

I was a natural for Detroit, being from Brooklyn. Mad Mike Banks from Underground Resistance and I have been dear friends since 1992, just because “I get it.” I wasn’t just let in. Detroit cats will test every single bone in your body before letting you just come into town and feel at home. Eminem had me so confused in 1999… He chose me to DJ his homecoming party.

But getting back to what “Detroit” is? It’s a people mover. Like the little train downtown that loops around in Downtown Detroit and doesn’t do anything much more than go around in circles in one direction only. Kind of like a record on a turntable. Motown left to California along with more than half of the city’s population. The ��67 Riots ripped a hole into the heart of the city. The people who stayed worked for General Motors, Ford, etc.

I find most of the kindest, warm hearted people in Detroit. People who respect you for the character in your soul rather then the color of your skin. Their music was their only escape. The only way to have faith in the future in Detroit, was through music.

Without it, they would have not been able to survive.

So then on the Belleville Three — Detroit techno originators Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May — you call out Juan in particular on the record label sticker for ‘Call It Techno.’ Why did you call out Juan specifically?

There is no such thing as the “Belleville Three.” It’s a myth. But let me explain. It’s because I know Juan, Derrick and Kevin as individuals. They were on the same timeline, which makes them a trio. But not for one minute is there any “band” there.

I remember Metroplex when it was Metroplex. KMS [Kevin Saunderson’s label]. Transmat [Derrick May’s label]. I can go deeper into that with Fragile, Planet E, Accelerator, UR. I gave the shout-out to Juan because ‘Clear’ is clearly layered throughout ‘Call It Techno.’ I didn’t sample Kevin or Derrick on the record.

The thing is, there are so many different samples on the original track, you just hear layers of sounds, sometimes when you combine sounds, they cancel each other out, but if you go back and listen, it’s clear as day.

The label notes also call out Seduction’s (Clivilles & Cole) house classic, ‘Seduction.’ When did you first hear that record? Why did you choose to use that bass line?

The original mix of ‘Call It Techno’ says “House Mix.” The bass line was the preferred sound in NYC house music at the time in 1989. Todd Terry, Kenny and Louie [Masters At Work] were big on bass lines. C + C Music Factory [Robert Clivilles and David Cole] just kind of made anything underground into a pop success because they were a great production team.

So when I said “Hold up, wait a minute,” the bass line comes in as a friend. Like “this techno stuff is weird, I don’t like it”… I put the bass line in so you can calm down, not lose any mascara, so I can get into my next verse. I mean, I got five verses, which was a lot for any song.

Right, speaking of, in another great verse, the lyric “In the club or in your car / the sound will take you far / we know you feel it,” says a lot about the contexts in which you were listening to techno at the time. Were you playing mixtapes in the car? Were you hearing techno on the radio?

Mixtapes and car systems in 1989 were like peanut butter and jelly as a kid. It just made fucking sense. But in 1989, techno was not played anywhere in New York City. Not even by the most underground DJ.

Those who did follow Chicago Trax, did get their first taste through acid house. But again, talking about paradigm shifts, Todd Terry was instrumental in making house music popular in New York by sampling Chicago songs and old electro cuts, and making house cool for everyone in the streets. Prior to that, house music was a clique or a club. A camp even.

You had to be down with the people in the scene to be a part of that. That began to change in 1987.

The lyric “House was once innovative / but now we’re in a state of / acid”seems to be saying that acid house was a leap forward. You follow that“With acid house there was confusion / over a drug use illusion / but I don’t use it.” In respects to “techno” and “house,” where does “acid” or “acid house” fit in from your perspective?

We arrived to play at Energy in the U.K. on August 26, 1989, to find the largest event in its history currently in progress — where the 5,000 people expected became 25,000 people and “acid house” was all the rage.

Their media called these parties “Wild Acid House Parties” with kids going insane from doing LSD. Nobody was on LSD. Not one person. Ecstasy was pure MDMA and I would imagine that every single person was doing it because it was so freaking awesome….how bout dat?

The state of acid was the confusion between a Roland TB-303 Acid Box and the drug known as LSD. The ability to have a machine make sounds that made people think you were on drugs and once that happened, the innovation was gone. Chicago had already made acid house. They were moving onto 1990.

People like Hardfloor, Josh Wink, Richie Hawtin, Misjah & Tim, and Underground Resistance, gave the 303 a second life in my opinion.

So then I want to ask you specifically about the phrase “techno house.” What do you mean by that exactly? I bring it up because like “EDM,” these words have lost a lot of their meaning because the context has shifted so much.

“Techno House was the sound of the Dance Cult Underground out in London.” The U.K. birthright of rave was mostly house music. But they green-lighted techno with the arrival of the “Techno” albums that Neil Rushton put out on 10 Records (a label) before his Network label came to life.

But to appreciate real Detroit techno, as this British revolution was happening, was the biggest blessing of all. And when I use the word blessing, it’s the feeling of being in the middle of 17,500 people dancing to ‘Strings Of Life’ as the sun comes up at 6 a.m.

Then in your mind, is techno an American sound or a U.K. sound or a global sound? Or both, and how?

Techno IS the future. Maybe the future past by now. But I believe it was absolutely global. That being said, “It started in Detroit,” while exploiting what happened next.

And Now You See How We Rock / Without The Kid Down The Block / Party People

A cult is a closed community, as is a club. Whether we’re talking about Charles Manson’s murderous “Family” or Pink Floyd’s late ’60s psychedelic UFO club. When you get there, you close the door. You maybe even lock it. But the “underground” means something bigger. It’s not just a congregation or an inconspicuous place. It’s an idea, about the freedom of ideas, that undergirds the whole counter-cultural continuum. Anyone can come and go. The only constant is an obsession with the unknown.

For ideas to survive, they must find a wider audience. ‘Call It Techno’ was built to last in this way. Bones’ new remix rumbles deeper down. His voice is lower, but renewed with vigor. Twenty-eight years in his head, his words roll out with ease, un-rushed, tempered by the vision of someone who has seen it all. Drums trickle up to the sky like reverse rain. Bass wakes the primal spirit. It’s the dawn within the night.

Bones’ generation, Generation X, grew up in the shadows of the Baby Boom, from Vietnam to Woodstock to Trump. America sleepwalked. So when electrons woke kids up with loud synthetic bass, it revealed the power of disembodied funk. The question was, could they absorb it, and then express their innermost thoughts?

By the late ’80s, it all seemed to connect in a series of wild chain reactions. While much of the change pulsed from Silicon Valley and Washington D.C., in the form of technological and political change, musically speaking, even bigger explosions and tectonic shifts were emanating from Berlin, Tokyo, Manchester, London, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and of course, New York City.

Techno was a cyber dimension on a par with the Web itself. It was open to anyone, long before Snapchat, Facebook or Cozy Bear. At its best, it was about the freedom of thought. It wasn’t mind control, even if its repetitive sounds worked with the efficiency of computer algorithms. Because its true genius was human. That was as clear as day in the hands of Bones. The continued relevance of ‘Call It Techno,’ both in its old and new forms, demonstrates how effective that contrast was, in teaching the oppressed how to face the future: Imaginations can always dance to a kind of clairvoyance — skeletal in its precision and voluptuous in its impressions.

And yet, 30 years into this revolution, it appears the world needs an anchor more than a cutting prow. Demographic silos and data clouds have whipped many of us into a kind of mass psychosis. Human nature is hardcoded and no robot can erase it, only take advantage of it. Still, the underground runs deeper in our collective O.S., the unconscious. When it comes to “techno house,” you have to go back to the era of MS-DOS floppy disks and vinyl-based “EDM” to locate today’s most important invocation.

In fact, the first vinyl pressing of ‘Call It Techno’ was floppy. It bends with gravity. As if it could turn to liquid — our grip on reality.

Because the world forgets. Until someone picks up a microphone. Right now it’s champagne and tax cut kicks, to the backdrop of Charlottesville and Great Recession amnesia. The question remains the same, because we’ve been here before. Where is our humanity?

Engraved on a tombstone is a roller skate. It simply says:

“Miles Mitchell, Devoted Husband & Father — Forever in Our Hearts.”

He was taken away by a single bullet. Bones’ father was “cool as fuck,” he says. He loved rock, and he loved disco, he loved to dance, and he loved to skate. Bones never forgot. “Considering how many miles I have traveled through techno, I believe he would be proud.”

Miles’ son does a neat thing on his new remix. He chuckles as he did on the original, but this time calls out his production partner, Christopher Petti. He did the same back in 1989, like the hip hop M.C.’s of old, calling out the Brooklyn Funk Essentials crew, keeping it democratic.

That’s why ‘Call It Techno’ is timeless. We need words, even if it takes a generation to find the right ones, reconstructed within lines of concentration, mixed with grace, in a rhythm. And it can’t be lived through phones.

In a club or in your car, that series of images or memories forms ideas, put down on paper or in a song, pouring back out into psyches, before resolving into new letters and codes — core to you —like bones.

GHOST DEEP: Who is the “kid down the block” when you call out to “party people”? Why was it important to have an archetypal blocker to resist, to lead folks your own way?

Frankie Bones: Ha ha…It was actually aimed at Todd Terry, who actually did live down the block at the time. He had a very big impact on the industry in 1988 and 1989, and until I went to the U.K., I had felt that I wasn’t getting any respect in New York and when I did ‘Call It Techno,’ I switched up the style knowing I was doing that for London.

You rap about the “essential funk” of “kick and snare.” How is funk “essential” to techno? How are the “kick” and “snare” important? Is it about polyrhythm and syncopation?

Lenny Dee and Victor Simonelli were known as The Brooklyn Funk Essentials in 1988. They were hired by Arthur Baker, who was God to us as teenagers because of ‘Planet Rock’ in 1982. Arthur Baker basically made the 808 record of its era. It was the first time you heard an 808 kick like that.

As far as syncopation goes, it’s huge. It holds it all together the way your neighbors’ kids’ grunge band could never. Everything we were doing was essential to us, because we were carving our path into tomorrow.

A lot of my records back then were anything but funky, but sometimes the magic happened, like if you somehow could wear 12 different colognes at once and come up with a new scent, rather then have the TSA suspect you for being a person of interest for stinking so bad that you would have to be someone up to no good.

We were all over the place. We were into everything and everything electronic music had to offer.

The lyric “Computer noise and pounding bass / hits you in the face / like a hammer” is visually arresting. Can you describe how you came up with those words, and what is it about those sounds that make techno so powerful, both physically, musically and psychologically?

Yes. Working in Arthur Baker’s Shakedown Studios in 1988 was the first time I worked in a huge NYC studio, and the monitors in the main room had like 9" portholes that literally punched you in the chest so hard that it was like a stun gun. Then it dawned on me why Baker’s productions in 1983 sounded like the bass wasn’t part of the production, all treble. Like the first royalty check from ‘Planet Rock’ was delivered in this beautiful studio with a few kilos of cocaine to keep up with your production schedule.

I cannot confirm nor deny if this is actually true, and I’m not suggesting Arthur would ever participate in such shenanigans, as much as I would say the same for myself and my comrades.

You talk a lot about “bass” in the lyrics. It’s foundational. How was bass important to the creation of techno culture then?

I mean in layman’s terms and pun intended. If the music was the actual pick-up, the bass line was the guarantee you were getting laid. The bass is what made the chips of paint come off the walls, set speakers on fire literally and pretty much the reason the police arrive to close down the party. Because if you are not part of the bass line, then it’s a frequency that disturbs people.

It’s not just the sound but the timing. You have a great meter to the lyrics. What is that based on? Was that a rap rhythm you were inspired by? You’ve talked to me before about how much hip hop influenced you as a kid and teen. Why did it have such an affect on you?

“I wanna rock right now, I’m Rob Base and I came to get down, I’m not internationally known, but I’m known to rock the microphone.” ‘It Takes Two’ by Rob Base & EZ Rock pretty much was my first influence.

There was a second influence that some people may be able to figure out, but if I had to come straight out and tell you, I would have to kill you.

Back to Rob Base, I was about to be internationally known, with no clue how to rock a micro-phone, so I figured I better try before finding out the hard way. In the end, ‘Call It Techno’ became the anthem for the German scene, which can be checked on Youtube by searching for “We Call It Techno”.

There’s another thing you do. “The techno wave has grown / with a style of our own / DIRECT from Brooklyn” — It’s the way you emphasize “grown” and “own,” but punch it home with “direct.” It’s the same rolling groove with swinging hits on other verses. It’s incredibly effective. Why and how did that vocal style work its way into your performance?

If people have read this far, I would invite you to Youtube to search for a song called ‘My Heart Holds The Key’ by Marie Venchura. Omar Santana and I were making lots of Freestyle Music and by 1988, we figured out every little trick in the book to make popular music.

I wrote lyrics from a shoebox of letters girls gave me in my teenage years. I’d take a sentence and make it rhyme and turn it into a song.

The Marie Venchura record is virtually unknown to my catalog but it is so over the top in it’s final version, you can instantly understand I was good at wordplay before techno ever even became part of the equation.

What did you write the original lyrics for ‘Call It Techno’ on? Where were you specifically when you did?

House music really started to become popular in 1987 and 1988. Whatever techno tracks that came out were considered house also, but I knew about techno because I was buying a lot of Detroit labels and I knew a second wave of music was coming behind house.

I would have never even wrote ‘Call It Techno’ had I not know I was going to London. But it was kind of obvious that a huge scene was happening in the U.K. and I didn’t want anyone there to think I was just a house music DJ from New York. I did write the song in advance of itself. Like I had an instinctual vision of what was yet to come.

The Techno Wave had grown to about a dozen people in New York City at that point. I figured if twelve more people got into it at least I wouldn’t be lying. We were already producing music daily at our studio in Manhattan. Go in at noon and sometimes work as late as midnight, every day like having to go to work. I wrote the lyrics at home in a couple of hours.

I already had been writing songs for other artists for a few years so something like this, and me being the artist, probably took four to six hours to write the lyrics and the whole next day composing the tracks. It was done in those two steps, lyrics then music the next day. All in one shot.

So then what was it like to perform them vocally, your own words?

It was fun because I made it for the kids in London who really didn’t care if I ever spoke a word to them so as long as I played the music they liked from me.

Right, because what’s important about the human voice versus computer noise and pounding bass?

Identity. A song is a song and a track is a track. But sometimes it depends on who is listening and what they like.

What is different about the power of words versus the power of sounds?

That would be best answered between House vs. Techno. Most house music that is popular comes from good lyrical content. Techno relies on technology and futuristic sounds. But sometimes it takes different parts of both to be interesting.

You’re known for a bravado sound and persona. Where does ‘Call It Techno’ fit into that larger narrative inside you?

We started off this story talking about the movies of 1978 and 1979, which influenced me as a young teenager. New Yorkers are proud people, especially when you venture out into the outer boroughs. Whatever I did for DJ culture is a part of a great moment in time in a crucial part of its history.

Chicago historians will have a problem with what started in Detroit. Because what started has a bigger part in our history. The truth of it all is that it always was part of New York. Dance music was based in New York City.

It came through the disco era. We have the biggest part of DJ culture via hip hop and the discotheque era of the ‘70s.

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metastable1 · 4 years

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October 10, 2016.

Four years ago, on a daylong hike with friends north of San Francisco, Altman relinquished the notion that human beings are singular. As the group discussed advances in artificial intelligence, Altman recognized, he told me, that “there’s absolutely no reason to believe that in about thirteen years we won’t have hardware capable of replicating my brain. Yes, certain things still feel particularly human—creativity, flashes of inspiration from nowhere, the ability to feel happy and sad at the same time—but computers will have their own desires and goal systems. When I realized that intelligence can be simulated, I let the idea of our uniqueness go, and it wasn’t as traumatic as I thought.” He stared off. “There are certain advantages to being a machine. We humans are limited by our input-output rate—we learn only two bits a second, so a ton is lost. To a machine, we must seem like slowed-down whale songs.”

OpenAI, the nonprofit that Altman founded with Elon Musk, is a hedged bet on the end of human predominance—a kind of strategic-defense initiative to protect us from our own creations. OpenAI was born of Musk’s conviction that an A.I. could wipe us out by accident. The problem of managing powerful systems that lack human values is exemplified by “the paperclip maximizer,” a scenario that the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom raised in 2003. If you told an omnicompetent A.I. to manufacture as many paper clips as possible, and gave it no other directives, it could mine all of Earth’s resources to make paper clips, including the atoms in our bodies—assuming it didn’t just kill us outright, to make sure that we didn’t stop it from making more paper clips. OpenAI was particularly concerned that Google’s DeepMind Technologies division was seeking a supreme A.I. that could monitor the world for competitors. Musk told me, “If the A.I. that they develop goes awry, we risk having an immortal and superpowerful dictator forever.” He went on, “Murdering all competing A.I. researchers as its first move strikes me as a bit of a character flaw.”

It was clear what OpenAI feared, but less clear what it embraced. In May, Dario Amodei, a leading A.I. researcher then at Google Brain, came to visit the office, and told Altman and Greg Brockman, the C.T.O., that no one understood their mission. They’d raised a billion dollars and hired an impressive team of thirty researchers—but what for? “There are twenty to thirty people in the field, including Nick Bostrom and the Wikipedia article,” Amodei said, “who are saying that the goal of OpenAI is to build a friendly A.I. and then release its source code into the world.”

“We don’t plan to release all of our source code,” Altman said. “But let’s please not try to correct that. That usually only makes it worse.”

“But what is the goal?” Amodei asked.

Brockman said, “Our goal right now . . . is to do the best thing there is to do. It’s a little vague.”

That’s disturbing but it seems that OpenAI got its act together since then.

A.I. technology hardly seems almighty yet. After Microsoft launched a chatbot, called Tay, bullying Twitter users quickly taught it to tweet such remarks as “gas the kikes race war now”; the recently released “Daddy’s Car,” the first pop song created by software, sounds like the Beatles, if the Beatles were cyborgs. But, Musk told me, “just because you don’t see killer robots marching down the street doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned.” Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana serve millions as aides-de-camp, and simultaneous-translation and self-driving technologies are now taken for granted. Y Combinator has even begun using an A.I. bot, Hal9000, to help it sift admission applications: the bot’s neural net trains itself by assessing previous applications and those companies’ outcomes. “What’s it looking for?” I asked Altman. “I have no idea,” he replied. “That’s the unsettling thing about neural networks—you have no idea what they’re doing, and they can’t tell you.”

OpenAI’s immediate goals, announced in June, include a household robot able to set and clear a table. One longer-term goal is to build a general A.I. system that can pass the Turing test—can convince people, by the way it reasons and reacts, that it is human. Yet Altman believes that a true general A.I. should do more than deceive; it should create, discovering a property of quantum physics or devising a new art form simply to gratify its own itch to know and to make. While many A.I. researchers were correcting errors by telling their systems, “That’s a dog, not a cat,” OpenAI was focussed on having its system teach itself how things work. “Like a baby does?” I asked Altman. “The thing people forget about human babies is that they take years to learn anything interesting,” he said. “If A.I. researchers were developing an algorithm and stumbled across the one for a human baby, they’d get bored watching it, decide it wasn’t working, and shut it down.” Altman felt that OpenAI’s mission was to babysit its wunderkind until it was ready to be adopted by the world. He’d been reading James Madison’s notes on the Constitutional Convention for guidance in managing the transition. “We’re planning a way to allow wide swaths of the world to elect representatives to a new governance board,” he said. “Because if I weren’t in on this I’d be, like, Why do these fuckers get to decide what happens to me?” Under Altman, Y Combinator was becoming a kind of shadow United Nations, and increasingly he was making Secretary-General-level decisions. Perhaps it made sense to entrust humanity to someone who doesn’t seem all that interested in humans. “Sam’s program for the world is anchored by ideas, not people,” Peter Thiel said. “And that’s what makes it powerful—because it doesn’t immediately get derailed by questions of popularity.” Of course, that very combination of powerful intent and powerful unconcern is what inspired OpenAI: how can an unfathomable intelligence protect us if it doesn’t care what we think? This spring, Altman met Ashton Carter, the Secretary of Defense, in a private room at a San Francisco trade show. Altman wore his only suit jacket, a bunchy gray number his assistant had tricked him into getting measured for on a trip to Hong Kong. Carter, in a pin-striped suit, got right to it. “Look, a lot of people out here think we’re big and clunky. And there’s the Snowden overhang thing, too,” he said, referring to the government’s treatment of Edward Snowden. “But we want to work with you in the Valley, tap the expertise.” “Obviously, that would be great,” Altman said. “You’re probably the biggest customer in the world.” The Defense Department’s proposed research-and-development spending next year is more than double that of Apple, Google, and Intel combined. “But a lot of startups are frustrated that it takes a year to get a response from you.” Carter aimed his forefinger at his temple like a gun and pulled the trigger. Altman continued, “If you could set up a single point of contact, and make decisions on initiating pilot programs with YC companies within two weeks, that would help a lot.” “Great,” Carter said, glancing at one of his seven aides, who scribbled a note. “What else?” Altman thought for a while. “If you or one of your deputies could come speak to YC, that would go a long way.” “I’ll do it myself,” Carter promised. As everyone filed out, Chris Lynch, a former Microsoft executive who heads Carter’s digital division, told Altman, “It would have been good to talk about OpenAI.” Altman nodded noncommittally. The 2017 U.S. military budget allocates three billion dollars for human-machine collaborations known as Centaur Warfighting, and a long-range missile that will make autonomous targeting decisions is in the pipeline for the following year. Lynch later told me that an OpenAI system would be a natural fit. Altman was of two minds about handing OpenAI products to Lynch and Carter. “I unabashedly love this country, which is the greatest country in the world,” he said. At Stanford, he worked on a DARPA project involving drone helicopters. “But some things we will never do with the Department of Defense.” He added, “A friend of mine says, ‘The thing that saves us from the Department of Defense is that, though they have a ton of money, they’re not very competent.’ But I feel conflicted, because they have the world’s best cyber command.” Altman, by instinct a cleaner-up of messes, wanted to help strengthen our military—and then to defend the world from its newfound strength. [...] On a trip to New York, Altman dropped by my apartment one Saturday to discuss how tech was transforming our view of who we are. Curled up on the sofa, knees to his chin, he said, “I remember thinking, when Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, in 1997, Why does anyone care about chess anymore? And now I’m very sad about us losing to DeepMind’s AlphaGo,” which recently beat a world-champion Go player. “I’m on Team Human. I don’t have a good logical reason why I’m sad, except that the class of things that humans are better at continues to narrow.” After a moment, he added, “ ‘Melancholy’ is a better word than ‘sad.’ ” Many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis, the argument that what we experience as reality is in fact fabricated in a computer; two tech billionaires have gone so far as to secretly engage scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation. To Altman, the danger stems not from our possible creators but from our own creations. “These phones already control us,” he told me, frowning at his iPhone SE. “The merge has begun—and a merge is our best scenario. Any version without a merge will have conflict: we enslave the A.I. or it enslaves us. The full-on-crazy version of the merge is we get our brains uploaded into the cloud. I’d love that,” he said. “We need to level up humans, because our descendants will either conquer the galaxy or extinguish consciousness in the universe forever. What a time to be alive!” Some futurists—da Vinci, Verne, von Braun—imagine technologies that are decades or centuries off. Altman assesses current initiatives and threats, then focusses on pragmatic actions to advance or impede them. Nothing came of Paul Graham’s plan for tech to stop Donald Trump, but Altman, after brooding about Trump for months, recently announced a nonpartisan project, called VotePlz, aimed at getting out the youth vote. Looking at the election as a tech problem—what’s the least code with the most payoff?—Altman and his three co-founders concentrated on helping young people in nine swing states to register, by providing them with registration forms and stamps. By Election Day, VotePlz’s app may even be configured to call an Uber to take you to the polls. Synthetic viruses? Altman is planning a synthetic-biology unit within YC Research that could thwart them. Aging and death? He hopes to fund a parabiosis company, to place the rejuvenative elixir of youthful blood into an injection. “If it works,” he says, “you will still die, but you could get to a hundred and twenty being pretty healthy, then fail quickly.” Human obsolescence? He is thinking about establishing a group to prepare for our eventual successor, whether it be an A.I. or an enhanced version of Homo sapiens. The idea would be to assemble thinkers in robotics, cybernetics, quantum computing, A.I., synthetic biology, genomics, and space travel, as well as philosophers, to discuss the technology and the ethics of human replacement. For now, leaders in those fields are meeting semi-regularly at Altman’s house; the group jokingly calls itself the Covenant. As Altman gazes ahead, emotion occasionally clouds his otherwise spotless windscreen. He told me, “If you believe that all human lives are equally valuable, and you also believe that 99.5 per cent of lives will take place in the future, we should spend all our time thinking about the future.” His voice dropped. “But I do care much more about my family and friends.” He asked me how many strangers I would allow to die—or would kill with my own hands, which seemed to him more intellectually honest—in order to spare my loved ones. As I considered this, he said that he’d sacrifice a hundred thousand. I told him that my own tally would be even larger. “It’s a bug,” he declared, unconsoled. He was happier viewing the consequences of innovation as a systems question. The immediate challenge is that computers could put most of us out of work. Altman’s fix is YC Research’s Basic Income project, a five-year study, scheduled to begin in 2017, of an old idea that’s suddenly in vogue: giving everyone enough money to live on. Expanding on earlier trials in places such as Manitoba and Uganda, YC will give as many as a thousand people in Oakland an annual sum, probably between twelve thousand and twenty-four thousand dollars. The problems with the idea seem as basic as the promise: Why should people who don’t need a stipend get one, too? Won’t free money encourage indolence? And the math is staggering: if you gave each American twenty-four thousand dollars, the annual tab would run to nearly eight trillion dollars—more than double the federal tax revenue. However, Altman told me, “The thing most people get wrong is that if labor costs go to zero”—because smart robots have eaten all the jobs—“the cost of a great life comes way down. If we get fusion to work and electricity is free, then transportation is substantially cheaper, and the cost of electricity flows through to water and food. People pay a lot for a great education now, but you can become expert level on most things by looking at your phone. So, if an American family of four now requires seventy thousand dollars to be happy, which is the number you most often hear, then in ten to twenty years it could be an order of magnitude cheaper, with an error factor of 2x. Excluding the cost of housing, thirty-five hundred to fourteen thousand dollars could be all a family needs to enjoy a really good life.” In the best case, tech will be so transformative that Altman won’t have to choose between the few and the many. When A.I. reshapes the economy, he told me, “we’re going to have unlimited wealth and a huge amount of job displacement, so basic income really makes sense. Plus, the stipend will free up that one person in a million who can create the next Apple.”

About the last three paragraphs, it’s worth to point out that human-level AI (and beyond) isn’t some new kind of Roomba or another gadget with blinking lights, so I am a little bit surprised by musings about job displacement and UBI (when AGI is assumed). Post AGI world will not look like the current world but with robotic arms in place of Amazon’s warehouse workers and now Altman seems to get it.

#sam altman #OpenAi #ai #xrisk

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99sshithouse · 5 years

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Mica Detra

Evan Peters

Age : 22

Alias(es): Mica, Mick, Jupiter(Online)

Place of Birth : Arthur, Nebraska

Eye & Hair Color : Black | Light Brown

Height & Weight : 5' 11| 165lbs

Sex & Gender : Male And Identifies As Such

Orientation : Heterosexual | Believed Aromantic (Demiromantic)

Marital Status : Single

Personality

The Tin Man

Mica comes off very stand offish. He can be weary of new people and almost seems shy towards any that he may be introduced to, but this is because he doesn't trust anyone. He finds people very strange, but he can understand them to a point. Their actions and words both fascinate and worry him, because sometimes he believes people don't know how they say and what they do affects others. He is closed off to people who attempt to understand him, as if he were something they were dissecting. He doesn't appreciate people who are so invasive.

However, he can get comfortable with some peoplw if he is around them long enough, and people can describe him as a very driven and highly intelligent young man. He can be very sarcastic, but funny in his own right. He sometimes even can give small or sideways smiles. Not very many laughs unless it's with Akil or Alexis. Because he can atleast say that she's funny. He can be protective over people he considers 'his'. But he believes he can never really love anyone. He has tried so hard to whenever he gets pulled into a relationship. Despite trying to seem okay with the reality in his own mind or when talking to Akil about it, he has problems knowing that he will never be able to feel the thing people always talk about. The big romance. Love. But he does care. No matter what he says.

He has a bad temper. It can come and go in violent waves. Sometimes the big things don't bother him, sometimes the little things are enough to get him to fly off the handle. He can be dangerous when he gets upset, sometimes going so far as to completely lose bits of his memory when he gets so angry. He just will come too when someone grabs him or tries to pull him back out. He holds a lot of hate and fury inside him that he can't seem to get ahold of, so instead he tries to put it into something useful.

When he was young, people always told his mother he was 'weird'. Sometimes he would look at someone in curiosity as they scratched their head or kissed their significant other. When he explained to his mother that it was like he was feeling what the other person was feeling in that physical touch, she believed her son a sort of prophet. When he became thirteen, he explained that he didn't believe in God and he read books of science and the way the mind worked. A prophet he was no more. His mother explained that he was a danger to himself because of these horrible things and signed him over to the state. He went to Heaven Hills Institution and the 13 year old was treated as if demons were inside him. For years, his mind was poked and prodded by heartless doctors and cold psychiatrists. He wasn't freed until his uncle had fought the state and won custody of him when he was 17. All that time brewed a boy with such a hate in him, and a distrust of those who said they were only trying to help him. His becomes overwhelmed by physical interactions and doesn't really like being touched. He decided that he wanted to blow the lid off all the problems he saw in the healthcare system and had just the right genius by his side to do just that. Two hurting boys with power at their fingers can be a dangerous thing, but with the rage Mica has and the way he can talk up Akil, they can become so much more than boys with keyboards. They can be heroes.

Employment : Mechanic

Mica fixes cars, collects parts for shop projects, cleans the floors, takes and handles the money, and also manages the website for the shop. He enjoys the work, just not the people that come in seeking assistance. Working with his hands is something that fuels him and gives him pride.

Skills & Abilities

Mica is a talented man in all things unethical. With his little ways to spy on others, he can always find what he wants, it may just take a little time. Give him an opportunity, he can bug an entire house in a matter of minutes. Plus, with the small bombs he can make, he can do some damage to make other activities a little easier. With his partner Pluto, he can show the people of the world exactly what it really is.

Incredible Mind - IQ 140 | Able to speak 4 languages fluently - English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, and is currently learning Dutch and French | Mirror-touch synesthesia - When he sees someone receive a touch, he can feel a sort of echo of the same touch on his body. Gained this in his early teens.

Technological Whiz | Talented Hacker and able to fix just about anything electronic, such as TVs, Radios, Tablets, Cars, Cellphones and the like. He isn't exactly as natural computer person, but was able to learn thousands and thousands and thousands of coding he can use to infiltrate most systems and if he can't do it, he has a partner who can.

Guarded. It keeps him safe. Since his own demons were put inside him, he has only allowed one person to get close to him. He doesn't tell people secrets, he doesn't find people he 'likes', he just doesn't have the want, need, or drive to have human companionship and this keeps him safe and off the map in a lot of ways.

Talented Homemade Bomb Maker. He didn't realize he loved plain disaster until he was hired to make a bomb for someone. That ended in disaster for that person, but now he uses this skill for political purposes. He prefers to keep casualities to none. For now.

Will fuck someone up. Be weary trying to pick a fight with him because he deals with a lot of rage issues. Once he sees red, he won't come back out until he's beaten someone to the point of almost killing them. He finds this useful for his own protection.

Jupiter | Under the guise of his online name, he is able to be held as an unseen, omniscient figure. With this name, he holds the power to pull out the wicked and show everyone just how horrible they are.

Disabilities & Disorders

Anger Problems | His past has created an uncontrollable, unbeatable beast inside him that comes out at the most inopportune times. Some days can be good, but some days it can be like anything can make him angry.

Manipulative | He has this way about him. He seems trustworthy and like his way is the best way. He uses his words to get people on his side or pity him. He can seem like a wounded animal with tired eyes but he can't be allowed into the life of someone he can easily control.

Insomnia - Suffered from since he's early teens | Hand Tremors - Since he was a late teen | Will forget to eat and drink water until his body will collapse from the combination of the two | Cocaine addict

Anarchy | Distrust of Medical Facilities and Doctors | For Mica, he holds this extreme hate for the healthcare system in the states. He finds the way the mentally ill are either shunned or just disappear because institutions either don't have the funding or they just don't fucking care. Refuses to go to the doctor, will not take prescription medications, will not allow himself to be placed in the healthcare system whatsoever. He intends to use his own stories to dismantle the system and start fresh, clean the slate completely.

Lapses In Memory.

Known History

Crime

A Suspiciously Clean Criminal Record

Gang Initiation : Was truly and honestly looking for a place he could achieve his mission. If his ideas can influence or inspire others and they are on his side? He feels like the gang will rise to power easily.

Known Affiliations

Parents

Jade Detra - Mother [Estranged]

Father Unknown

Extended Family

Silver Detra - Uncle - Lives in Seattle, Wasington

Siblings

Doesn't communicate with any of them

Titan Detra - Lives in Arthur, Nebraska

Ore Detra - Lives in Dalitica City [NA]

Ivory Detra - Lives in Arthur, Nebraska

Friends

Akil Laghari - Best Friend [TBA]

Alexis Stanford - Reluctant Acquaintance [TBA] - Sofie

Affiliation | Wolves

#Mica Detra #Wolves #99s characters

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Iyane’s Top 10

December 31, 2019 12:00 PM EST

2019 had a lot of cool mecha related games, but a lot of other great games from other genres too. Here are my top 10 from this year.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

I assume anyone who clicked on this wishes to read me talking about myself and my Unneeded Opinions (one of my favorite sentences of 2019), so I’ll do just that. 2019 was another year that went by in a flash. I’ve reached my first anniversary writing on DualShockers in September, and I’ve been pretty busy overall. As such, there are multiple games on this list I actually didn’t finish yet.

There are many games released in 2019 that I was really hyped about but didn’t have the time to try out yet either, and I’d like to start by listing some of them:

We first have games I’d consider mainstream, such as Devil May Cry 5, Judgment (I actually bought it in Japanese) Astral Chain. Then you’ve got more niche things, like Daemon X Machina (I’m waiting just in case a PC port gets announced), the Grandia remasters, SaGa Scarlet Grace, and Friends of Mineral Town Remake.

Lastly, we’ve got some visual novel games: Berubara Gakuen, Gnosia (Japanese outlets hyped up this game in a similar fashion that what happened with Disco Elysium in the US and Europe), Ciconia Phase 1 (the thing I was actually hyped for the most in 2019), Eve Rebirth Terror (idem), and the Yu-No remake.

I’m on a quest to play everything that Hiroyuki Kanno wrote after getting my mind blown by Eve Burst Error. Yu-No is one of these things, but the character design in the remake is bland as hell. Ryou Nagi is a great artist, and you can see that with Heavy Object or Ar Tonelico, but for some reason, everything remake-related he touches turn into the blandest thing ever. The same thing happened for the newest Langrisser I&II remake; it’s like some huge conspiracy. As such, I’ll probably grab the Yu-No remake in Japanese, as that version includes a port of the original.

Anyway, that was just a small intro to show my tastes and what to expect in this ranking. Here are the games I’ve enjoyed the most in 2019, and note that it’s not only games released in 2019. Also, note that the top 5 are all pretty much my top 1.

10. Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Masterpiece 1995-2001

I suck at Virtual-On. But I love it, especially Oratorio Tangram, and being able to play it remastered on PS4 is nice. The only thing these ports of the three Virtual-On games sadly lack is local multiplayer split-screen. Virtual-On is the originator of Gundam Vs like games and all the anime 3D arena battlers of varying quality releasing each year, and it’s the best one there is.

Other games I considered for this position were Destiny Connect, Shenmue 3 (which I didn’t play myself and watched an online friend’s playthrough), and Zanki Zero (I was supposed to review that but ended up never finding the time to finish said review). I picked Virtual-On because it didn’t require me to write 2000 words to explain my mixed feelings about it.

9. Space Engineers

According to Steam, I’ve played 47 hours of Space Engineers with my online friends. I’m pretty sure at least 20 hours of that was us trying to figure out how the game works and being annoyed and how counter-intuitive many elements are. This includes reading wikis and only to realize it’s outdated info, looking for Uranium only to realize you can’t find any on planets, or trying to design vehicles, copying blueprints and recreating them block by block. And a lot of other dumb stuff.

Besides all these frustrations, Space Engineers is my favorite multiplayer game I’ve tried out this year and I’ve made some great memories with it, as an online friend streamed some of our adventures too. I’ve tried making the Senegalese flag with wind turbines (too long to explain): we managed a trip to a moon and putting the Algerian flag on it (a French joke too long to explain) and we did a MASK opening sequence parody with a vehicle parade.

8. Ocarina of Time Randomizer Version 5.0

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I actually put this on my list last year as well, but seeing that the game’s meta has changed since then, this is fine. Again, I don’t have the time to play this myself and enjoy watching races instead, This year, ZeldaSpeedRuns held the OoT Randomizer Season 2 tournament, which ended in June with the victory of Marco against WTHH.

Now, the Season 3 tournament bracket matches just started in early December, with the version 5.0 0f the mod, changing the meta. We’ve already got a surprising upset, with first tournament winner and 2nd qualifier ATZ losing against 31 qualifier Killerapp23. Getting into detail would take too long and be incomprehensible if you’re not already into OoT rando, so I’m just gonna say this is the most interesting esports thing to watch ever. And like I said last year, it’s incredibly fun.

7. Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

Wing Commander IV is one of the many games I’ve played in my childhood which left me with a huge impression. Along with things like Shenmue 1 & 2, this is one of the games I used to regularly quote until my high school years or so. I’ve finally got the time to rediscover the game this year. I didn’t end up replaying it myself though and watched a full playthrough of it. It was really interesting; I remembered many iconic scenes from the game and some characters, but I had no idea what the overall story was about anymore.

It’s surprising how anime space opera the story is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something Japanese inspired the story. It all comes to Japan. This also made me realize, in a sense, that Wing Commander IV is pretty much one of the first visual novels I played and what made me enjoy well-written stories and choices. This is also what made me both love and hate draconian choices, multiple routes and characters’ deaths. I hate not being able to save characters.

6. Romancing SaGa 3 Remaster

Back in my childhood I tried playing Romancing SaGa 3, as it was among the various SNES roms I had at disposal. I quickly realized that it’s completely different than most RPGs and unlike many games in Japanese such as Super Robot Wars 4: I couldn’t trial and error my way through.

Around 18 years later, Romancing SaGa 2 Remaster comes out in 2017; it’s awesome, and a masterpiece. And then in 2019, Romancing SaGa 3 Remaster is finally out and it’s even more awesome. I’m currently in the final area of the game after playing as Sarah, because she has a fluffy afro ponytail. I just wish the game had a turbo button.

Tie-in 6. Persona 5 Royal

This is a tie-in as that’s an enhanced version of a really recent game, which was my 2016 favorite. I purposely played through Persona 5 only once, only maxing the coops and not doing much of the other side content, in case such an enhanced version ever released.

Even then, and even considering how much of a masterpiece that Persona 5 is, clearing such a long game again is annoying. Most of the new scenes I’ve seen so far, most notably Kasumi’s and Takuto’s scenes, are all incredibly nice though. The renewed dungeons and bosses’ designs are fun, and Joker is even more Lupin The Third-like with the wire hook, but there’s nothing groundbreaking either. I’m far from reaching the new part at the original’s ending, as I’m just about to reach the Hawaii part. Hopefully, it’ll be a nice ride.

The five games below are all my actual number one.

5. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

I’ve been waiting for 13 Sentinels since when it got announced in 2015. I could even say since 2013, as I hoped a game related to the Vanillaware Happy New Year 2013 Geroge Kamitani artwork above would come out someday. I had incredibly high expectations for it and none of it were betrayed as of now.

It’s awesome. It’s fully-voiced. It’s got giant robots. It’s the most beautiful (2D) game since forever. It’s like if an old Japanese adventure game got made with current technology. It’s a shame the game bombed in Japan. If you’re interested, I’ve written more about the game, and I’m recording myself translating the game as I’m playing through it.

4. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is amazing on all points. I’ve rarely had so much fun walking around and exploring a city in a game. I think what makes the game the most amazing is how it’s pretty much the culmination of the Ys series since it switched to the party system, and as if one of the first versions of the first Ys games were transposed to 3D. The verticality of the environments is used so well you can still feel lost despite having a map. Falcom might pretty much be one of the smallest, penniless studios in Japan despite its longevity; they still make the best action RPGs ever. What I’ve seen of the story so far is particularly amazing too, and Toshihiro Kondo is a good writer along with being a good company president.

I’m currently taking a break from the game after reaching what I guess is around 1/3 of it. I was so hyped I had to play it at launch, but I want to do all the other Ys games I didn’t do yet first, even if it’s absolutely not necessary to understand the story. I like being able to understand every single reference in a series like this. I’m the kind of person who wishes to know exactly how many times Kazuya and Heihachi threw each other out of a volcano/mountain.

3. Super Robot Wars T

I didn’t play Super Robot Wars V nor SRW X as they initially didn’t release on Switch. If we don’t count SRW OG Moon Dwellers, which was on my top ten 2018 list, SRW T is my first SRW game since the SRW Z3 finale on PS3 in April 2015. It’s pretty great, be it the story, its cast list, or the animations. Everything about it is nice. Having things like Cowboy Bebop, Gunbuster, Rayearth, Gun x Sword, and Captain Harlock together feels incredible. It’s extremely sad that Captain Harlock’s seiyuu Makio Inoue passed away right after he finally got in SRW.

A new OG anime directed by Obari and a new OG game would be nice. I’m happy the series seemingly won’t get a new game in 2020, so the development teams can take their time.

2. Fire Emblem Fuukasetsugetsu / Three Houses

This game has my favorite cast of characters in a Fire Emblem game, along with Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu/Genealogy of the Holy War, and I could write a 1000 word article on every single character on this picture (if I was paid adequately for it). This is only one of the many reasons why I like this game. In a nutshell, I’d say I love the fact that I find it very innovative and yet similar to the other Fire Emblem games I’ve played and liked so far, and how it’s true for every aspect of the game.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

1. Project Sakura Wars/ Shin Sakura Taisen

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This opening sequence has over 1.7 million views, and half of these are all me. While I’m not done with Shin Sakura Taisen yet, I fail to imagine how the game could even disappoint me so far, seeing how amazing it is. Before the game launched, I wasn’t concerned about the battle system change, but whether the new cast would be interesting or not. If there was a world Guinness record for most baseless worry of 2019, this would get it. This game got everything that makes Sakura Taisen so awesome. The strong female characters, the cool mecha, the great worldbuilding, the comedy. It’s a great new start in the series and I hope we’ll get more. I shared a few impressions on the game and just like 13 Sentinels, I’m recording myself playing the game, translating at the same time.

That’s it for my top ten.

If you’re wondering about my expectations for 2020, the game I’m looking forward to the most so far is the Seiken Densetsu 3 remake: Trials of Mana. Then we also have things like FF7R, Rune Factory 5, Space Channel 5 VR, Brigandine…I’m also eager to see KOF XV even if I won’t play it. Lastly, 2020 will also mark the tenth anniversary of the Pretty Series franchise. The Pretty Rhythm anime seasons and its King of Prism sequels were my favorite anime of the decade, so I’m looking forward to what Avex and Takara Tomy have in store for the anniversary, and if we might get some games other than arcade games out of it.

I’m planning to stay on DualShockers and keep writing about Japanese games in the new year. I don’t have the time nor the paycheck to cover every single news as fast as possible, but I always try to bring to the table as much info as I can, along with relevant translations and observations. Hoping you’ll keep reading us in 2020.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 31, 2019 12:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2019/12/dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-iyanes-top-10/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dualshockers-favorite-games-of-2019-iyanes-top-10

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smassmediablog-blog · 4 years

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Mass Media Essay 2 Reflection

My media literacy has definitely been impacted by this class. Not only has my media literacy grown but my media usage has gone down. I am way less dependent on social media to keep me entertained. I have always been aware of cyber-cesspools and representation in the media, but I feel as though my ability to identify cyber-cesspools and representation has increased because of this class. Campbells’ Mass Communication: A Critical Approach, has also impacted my media literacy in many ways. Another way I have grown in media literacy is my awareness of advertising and emotional appeal through music. I have learned a lot about how to process what is going on in the media and stay away from fake news.

My media literacy has changed because I am definitely more aware of my social media usage and how I use technology. I can tell that I spend less of my time on social media because I have a noticeably lower stress level. I spend more of my time interacting with people face to face as opposed to staying on my phone opening the same three apps over and over again. I am a lot less aware of what my “friends” are doing because I’m actually out and experiencing things with my real friends. I post on Instagram and snapchat so much less and just have much lower anxiety levels about my social media.

I found this class to be useful in my ability to heavily decrease my social media usage. Realizing the cyber-cesspools are such a prominent issue helped me realize that I didn’t need to put up with that stuff and have the ability to block things I didn’t want to see. I learned a lot about how I have freedom to do what I want on my socials and see what I want to and that I shouldn’t feel the need to do things to make other people happy. I decided that I would change a lot about my social media usage and what we learned about in class enforced the idea that what I was doing was okay and healthy. I also found learning about differentiating fake news from real news to e beneficial. There is a lot of over exaggerated clicktivism and being able to know which links to follow and what sources are trustworthy I have found that hashtag activism is bothering me less. If I see a Tweet that says something like “All the orangutans are dying! Click this link to find out why! #hairspraykills #strawssuck #whatstarbucksdoesnttellyou” I know that I can follow the link and see that there are tips that show that this might not be legitimate. Knowing that has also helped my anxiety towards the end of the world. As dramatic as that seems I have always had fears about the world ending before I can be a mother. I know that a lot of that is just clickbait and over exaggeration to create mass hysteria.

Another thing about this class that helped me that isn’t especially content related is the presentation. Telling my transmedia story kind of helped me feel better about what I am doing in regards to staying off social media. Being able to talk about how socially inept I was helped me see how far I have come and how much I have grown. I guess you never know how much you have changed until you make a presentation about it.

This is very out of character for me, but I have a favorite reading that I really learned a lot from, I could write an entire paper discussing this reading and I feel like I reference in every paper. It’s the Campbell Mass Communication: A Critical Approach chapter. I have no understanding of why it happened, but I really retained a lot from that reading. I found it particularly easy to read and quite interesting. The reading says,

“In this way, hashtag activism and other forms of online engagement defy simple evaluations of either "good" or "bad"; rather, they can be both at the same time. As an example, women can share their experiences with sexual harassment on platforms like Twitter, but these platforms also give misogynistic trolls an opportunity to levy more harassment.” (Campbell 4)

I feel like the mention of trolling is a part of hashtag activism that doesn’t get talked about enough. I believe that movements like #metoo are very powerful for people who have been sexually assaulted so they feel like they are not alone and are, tragically, part of a larger community. That being said, I also see it as a way for these people, in particular women, to be criticized due to this huge “false accusation” culture that is so strong on Twitter. Hashtag activism is a good starting point but it also can be a place for the quick development of cyber-cesspools. In my response to this reading on Canvas I talk about another quote,

“To what extent do mass media shape our values and behaviors and to what extent do our values and behaviors shape the media?... For example, some have designed studies to determine whether watching violent TV shows makes viewers more likely to commit violent acts. Others argue that violent TV shows don't cause violent behavior in viewers” (pg 14-15)

This quote reminds me of a lot of things that are so prevalent. I’m not sure if you remember, but there was a show called Sabrina the Teenage Witch, I think it aired on CBS in the early 2000’s. Anyway, it’s on Hulu and I have been rewatching it. There’s one episode where Sabrina’s friend, Morgan, enters a contest for a music magazine and she wins. Sabrina goes with Morgan to the magazine, Scorch, where she criticizes it as “fake journalism” and Morgan gets angry and says, “I wouldn’t know what music I liked if I didn’t read Scorch!” That was a rough explanation but it got the point across. Even in the early 2000’s people were dependent on the media to know what they felt and what they cared about. People’s opinions on everything is shaped by the media and I feel like for as long as any form of media has been around this has been true. Between my increased awareness of hashtag activism and my ability to realize that the media is pushing me to like certain things and feel certain ways, the Campbell article has really impacted my media literacy.

The second reading from the first half of the semester that stuck with me is Duggan’s The Zen of Listening. As a kid I was really big on musical association and finding solace in song so finding out that there is a real name and theory for it was really interesting for me. This article helped me in a way that I better understand musical placements in things like advertisements. Because there are certain songs that make different populations feel certain ways, people in advertising can use those songs to draw attention to and create a feeling towards a product. I never really processed emotional appeal in advertising until we learned about the zen of listening and I made that connection. Before I made the emotional appeal connection though, I made the attention grabbing connection. In the article Duggan writes, “You're in the supermarket with the usual Muzak playing—it's like the fluorescent lights, you don't even notice it—until a song you really hate (for me, that would be "Volare") or one you really like comes on and breaks through your concentration on the shopping list.” (Duggan 27) The way I connected it was that when you’re watching TV and multitasking, you don’t often pay attention to the ads, it becomes white noise. When you’re spaced out and not paying attention, if all of a sudden you hear a song that you have an association with you are more likely to begin paying attention to the commercial.

Ron Becker’s article on gay representation got me to think about exactly how poor the representation for the LGBTQIA+ community is. Though representation for the community is growing and improving there is still insufficient and incorrect representation. I mostly disagree with Becker’s writing but when he writes in reference to Glee, “there is an underlying "darkness" that suggests that things don't always get better.” (Becker 134) I do agree that Glee shows a darkness but it still glorifies bullying and really opened my eyes about misrepresentation. The last thing that stuck with me was in the Citizen Branding article. When I read, “Disney Channel and ABC, is also dedicated to "serving and inspiring individuals and communities through a variety of public service initiatives and outreach programs…” (Ouellette 64) it reminded me of Disney as a kid and that really made me nostalgic and happy. Citizen branding is a very interesting concept and it helped me distinguish people from their identity.

This class taught me quite a bit and some articles reminded me of certain things and helped me get to conclusions on my own. I really gained a lot from the Campbell article and learned a lot from that. While were learning about cyber-cesspools I was working on limiting my social media use so that really helped me. All in all I found this class to help educate me on mass media and media literacy.

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lighdesoti-blog · 5 years

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Writing ad for dating website

Writing a Dating Profile That's Sure to Get Noticed Be genuine The key to writing a good online dating profile is to be specific about who you are. Her food, including instructions on dating site map;. Writing a successful and attractive personal ad could be frustrating if you don't know how. Describe yourself by showing your personality as well as writing about it. Not providing a photo won't make people think that you have a beautiful mind. Google provides ad that'll have become a great profile this personal ad profile is because everyone's.

Relationships/How to Write a Personal Ad Refers to study by Kevin McGraw of Cornell University. If you say you're just looking for a good time but you really want more than a one night stand, your partner will eventually find out. I suppose my perfect girl is between 25 and 30 and nice to be around. Since everyone is looking for love in all corners of the world, don't restate what others have been saying for years. Nobody likes a profile that sounds as if the writer is tailoring his or her personality to what other people want to hear.

How to write personal ad for dating site The 'zine didn't usually have personal ads i. The idea is to implicitly make yourself stand out. At first this feels like going to the Humane Society to pick out a puppy. We know each and every person has the ability to be charming. Able to go any more is a series of. Nobody likes a showoff; all it does is increase the risk of an immediate turnoff from your female counterparts.

Relationships/How to Write a Personal Ad Make light of life and show that you do have a good sense of humor. Prisons and Landmark seminars, yes, but these may not be people you want to meet. Of course you do not interested in the. Desperate women online dating site - original cyber-dating guru s. Then you could skip the ads and go straight to the reviews. I thought that the women in the songs weren't real.

How to Write a Dating Profile That Will Get You Dates Ask, beg, and offer a large pile of cash to the website to run your personal ad as a special feature. The women instead describe themselves as enjoying long walks on the beach, romantic evenings by the fireplace, etc. I believe that an online dating profile should be an honest portrayal of your personality and act as a filter, nixing out all the unwanteds early on. Veggiedate vegetarian singles from thousands of sites or find and online classifieds section. Re not interested in the world, chatting with saga datings personal map. The problem is that many might think they know what to write, but don't. When you get ten positive feedbacks, eBay puts a gold star next to your name.

How to Write a Standout Personal Dating Ad Implement your personal interest into the headline. Writing a great personal ad profile and provide a gold star. This means that you should differentiate yourself and provide details. Her profile writing a complete with other popular. I am looking for an honest person who likes to have fun.

How to Write a Standout Personal Dating Ad Proper profile has helped more females for love online dating resume is, firstly find out on yahoo! With thousands of people posting dating profiles, it's important to make yours stand out from the pack. Legal and dating in place an initial response and matchmaking services by barb marcano. I've read hundreds of personal ads from incarcerated women. For inspiration and online dating profile examples for hookups. Vegetarian singles interested, and fortunately, pros cons on a bunch of online dating site that a letter to this. Everyone will say that they never lie. Come up with your own comments and save yourself the embarrassment of simply being a face in the crowd, or a number among millions.

How to Write a Dating Profile That Will Get You Dates Seriously, what does that even mean? You'll check off events you'd like to attend. Don't talk down about yourself. Now highlight every bragging point. This fosters a negative environment. Music: The Damned, Killing Joke, Bach organ fugues.

How To Write An Online Personal Ad Ironically, pointing out your faults makes your faults less visible, while hiding your faults makes them more visible. Whether looking for a long-term relationship or just a playful friendship, personal ads are a fun way to meet new people and make new friends. Avoid these behaviors when writing your ad. He says i talk about online dating services, 2010 - extra extra! You have one sentence, two at most to create a brilliant attention grabber. What would the person say in response? The Wall Street Journal suggests flying first class to meet the best potential mates. Military penpals us at the only changes to create a forum,. And with a truthful approach comes less disappointment, hence increasing the chances of finding the mate you're looking for.

#How #to #write #a #personal #ad #for #dating #site

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awesomeblockchain · 6 years

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From Ripple (XRP)'s legendary SnoopDogg after-party to a Lambourgini showdown on the streets of New York, the Consensus 2018 Blockchain Conference certainly lived up to its glamorous hype and eclipsed the headlines last week. About 8,500 attendees participated in the fourth annual Blockchain conference- almost triple the number seen last year.

With the swanky guest list ranging from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, it seems like the entire crypto-sphere was all under one roof, and ready to network with industry titans, blockchain players and attendees from almost every vertical. In case you couldn't get a ticket to the blockchain party, we've got the all the highlights for you. We also used the Coinwatch Platform and News Sentiment feature to gain some deeper insights into the crypto market.

How the Blockchain Conference Impacted the Market

While crypto-enthusiasts were hyping the conference as a big push to drive momentum to the market, we looked at the one of the leading altcoins Ripple (XRP) to see if it lived up to the hype. As we can see, Ripple peaked at $0.72 on May 13 before the conference. During the event, the coin fluctuated around $0.72 before dipping and gaining ground again to rise to $0.67 after the conference on May 18. Though the platform didn't seem to initially have gained as much traction as crypto-enthusiasts had hoped, there was a great deal of breakthroughs and developments, which could have a significant impact in the future.

Evidently the conference was a hotbed of debate, drawing industry insights from multiple voices and angles. In a report by Cantor Fitzgerald, we can find the key takeaways from the conference.

One of the top trends was a discussion about a unified currency to counteract the coin confusion, as there are currently around 1,900 cryptocurrencies circulating the market. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said: -I'm just approaching with the principle that the Internet deserves a native currency. It will have a native currency. I don't know if it will be Bitcoin."

Some discussed whether crypto 'can hold value' as a credible entity in the future, especially as the market has been vigorously in a whipsaw. This led to a discussion regarding how exactly to valuate Blockchain companies.

Another hot topic was the issue of how to map the regulatory landscape. This prickly subject has been hitting the headlines recently due to a surge of crypto-hacking and scam investigations. This evidently led to a growing regulatory clamp-down, especially from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Nevertheless, Cyber Unit chief Robert Cohen tried to clarify at the Conference that 'the SEC has been open about meeting with people from the industry, to come in and meet with the staff, to talk about the ideas you have, the new developments, and have a dialogue about the new technology. The commission encourages ways to raise capital; we don't regulate the technology - we regulate the financial industry and the markets.'

Blogger Adam Ghahrami noted how many companies are being affected by the regulation clamp-down. The blockchain industry is headquartered in Malta and was previously left unchecked, and the SEC regulations have left 'the best crypto companies to headquarter in foreign lands and forego investment dollars from U.S. citizens.' ShapeShift and Prism CEO, Erik Voorhees highlighted how the company will 'have to spend a third of their resources, measured by time, money, and attention, just to manage regulations.'

Other heavyweights discussed how Blockchain technology is still in the emergent stages, with a great deal of ideas, but these need to be fine-tuned. Many agreed that the technology has the potential to disrupt industries and make a powerful impact.

Another notable trend was that many financial giants are gradually catching blockchain fever and paving the foundations for Blockchain applications. Some of the prominent players include Bank Consortium, JP Morgan and Quorum. This reinforces a recent report by Deloitte that '38% of companies are spending $5-10m on projects and 43% are calling it a Top 5 Strategic Opportunity.'

The conference provided perfect opportunity for industry shakers and entrepreneurs to exhibit their latest applications, platforms and developments. Some exhibitors really pushed the boundaries in terms of marketing creativity, such as Ledger with a diamond-encrusted version of its hardware wallet or messaging platform Mainframe filling balloons with token coins that floated over people's heads.

Blogger Billy Bambrough interviewed some of the key startups at the conference, including Blocksafe Alliance. CEO Duane Jacobsen who discussed how the company 'is providing a decentralized application to owners of mobile devices which is aimed at keeping them safe and aware in potential active gun shooting situations.'

Additionally, many companies announced new blockchain initiatives and partnerships at the conference. Smartphone giant HTC announced plans to create an Exodus Android phone that will be powered by blockchain technology. HTC's Virtual Reality head, Phil Chen said 'through Exodus, we can support underlying protocols such as Bitcoin.' He added that 'we would like to support the entire blockchain ecosystem' and thinks 'that the phone can be an agent in the future for decentralisation.' He continued that 'we want you to hold your own key [through] a secure management method in our phones.'

Financial heavyweight Deloitte Consulting LLP also exhibited some innovative products and services that can harness the benefits of blockchain technology. The highlight was a secure platform that uses blockchain hardware 'cryptographic tags.' The tags will provide a unique digital ID to track products in the supply chain and share these with educators and employers. Deloitte Consultant Joe Guastella said that blockchain 'technology has already inspired the industry to re-examine processes and functions that have been static for decades.' Lastly, Guastalla added how 'we are broadly seeing applications in production' and 'developing them ourselves for clients and we believe this momentum will continue.'

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#Ingentium #Inc. - Today

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lydiamarshall92 · 7 years

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Entrepreneur Interview: Tim Gallagher, SafeSwiss

You’d be forgiven for believing Tim Gallagher was born an entrepreneur.

From starting a nationwide trellis fencing business in his garage at 3AM, to glow-in-the-dark stair nosing, to importing jet skis, to running the world’s most secure private messaging app, Gallagher’s journey is an embodiment of Kiwi persistence and perseverance. Along the way Gallagher has experienced some incredible successes along with some devastating lows; moments which would cause even the heartiest of entrepreneurs some sleepless nights.

As his latest venture SafeSwiss is poised to become his most successful to date, I spoke with Gallagher to hear more about the story behind it, to discuss the future of privacy in our digital age, and to hear what he’s learnt in his years as an entrepreneur.

I began the call asking Gallagher to tell us a little bit more about SafeSwiss.

“SafeSwiss provides encrypted communication solutions designed for the masses. Our secure messaging apps for Android, iOS and Windows utilise state-of-the-art 256k elliptic curve end-to-end encryption.”

For those unfamiliar with encryption this kind of security was (until very recently) available only to governments, banks, the military and HNWI (“high net worth individuals”). Effectively, SafeSwiss claims to provide the highest level of protection to any individual on the planet wishing to safeguard their communications.

I figured the story of how a humble entrepreneur from Christchurch came to build the world’s most secure messaging app must have been a good one, so I asked Gallagher to tell it.

The journey began when he and business partner Kerry Bird had developed a unique digital media storage card and were in talks about building them for a few major movie studios in the US.

However the cards were unsecured after being decrypted at the point of sale, and the pair were forced to find a way to re-encrypt the cards. As Gallagher says, “all roads in encryption lead to Germany and Eastern Europe”, so that is where they went.

The initial costings on the digital media card would end up rendering it cost prohibitive. But whilst in Munich Gallagher and Bird were introduced to an encryption specialist.

“This guy had a very basic genesis of a secure VOIP (Voice Over IP) engine utilising next-generation 256K Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), but nothing to turn it into a viable consumer solution.” The duo saw this as their opportunity to pivot and focus their attention on a total end-to-end encrypted communication solution.

“We came up with the name SafeSwiss, as Switzerland is synonymous with security, privacy, and quality. We purchased the SafeSwiss.com domain name, travelled to Switzerland to set up a company office, Swiss banking facilities, and a company registration.”

This was around the time that Facebook acquired WhatsApp for US$19 Billion, something that “only further sparked our enthusiasm in developing a secure instant messaging VOIP offering, [and] confirmed that we had made the right decision.”

The SafeSwiss secure messaging app has achieved over 100,000 downloads since launch.

Staying on this topic, I was interested to hear more of Gallagher’s views on the trends in what is a very competitive messenger market; did he believe the general trend in this market was towards a more secure form of communication? His answer was immediate.

“Definitely. Almost daily we hear about these massive cyber attacks which steal the data or communications history of hundreds of thousands of people.” As these attacks affect more and more people, the market demand for a greater level of security grows. Despite this however Gallagher feels there is still misconceptions around encryption.

“People still tend to think encryption is for those who have something to hide; the exclusive property of criminals or government spy agencies. In reality everyone has a right to privacy, and should take greater steps to ensure their communications are safe and secure… WhatsApp brought encryption to the masses, which is fantastic. However our service is much more secure.”

This is primarily as SafeSwiss does not harvest data from user’s contact lists, a decision which has most certainly slowed their organic growth, but ensures SafeSwiss stays true to their values as a company.

As the conversation went on I changed direction slightly, away from SafeSwiss and onto Gallagher’s journey as an entrepreneur. I knew Gallagher had been through an enormous amount to get to this point and I wanted to hear more about it.

“Where do we start here? I went to the school of hard knocks and the university of life”. Leaving school at 15, he completed a butchery apprenticeship. But it was clear that wasn’t his ultimate calling.

“At the time, I used to read about how high-flying companies like Rainbow Corporation, Ariadne, or Chase were creating business, and the lifestyles that went along with this. This was all the inspiration I needed.” Having heard so much about property, Gallagher decided that would be a good place to start.

“I saved two weeks’ salary and went to a Bob Jones property seminar in ‘86, and from this bought, renovated and sold houses in Christchurch.” Gallagher would complete every aspect of the renovations himself, including building his own trellis fencing, something that would lead to his first business.

“I still recall working in my garage using pneumatic staple guns and a compressor when the garage door burst open with an super angry neighbour! Mind you, it was 3 AM… he had every right to be agitated!”

“I ended up with a factory manufacturing thousands and thousands of trellis sheets.”

Gallagher went on to design a semi-automated machine to build trellis – which he had an agricultural engineer build – and supplied Placemakers and Carters with trellis fencing nationwide.

“I ended up with a factory manufacturing thousands and thousands of trellis sheets… crazy times.”

A short while later the property market soured; interest rates rose, and Gallagher was unable to cover mortgage repayments.

“I had recently purchased a large property within Christchurch CBD and used security in other properties as collateral. A good idea at the time, but this lead myself and my young family losing everything we had worked so very hard to build. We ended up sleeping on my mother in-law’s lounge floor.” In what must have been a rock bottom moment, Gallagher was forced to simply make ends meet, and went back to his trade as a butcher.

But his entrepreneurial spirit never died and it wasn’t long before he “became a self taught expert in photoluminescence and electroluminescence” and developed the world’s first glow-in-the-dark stair nosing – the bits that provide grip and protect the edge of stairs.

But unfortunately relationships soured and he was forced out of that business. He went on and built businesses importing bathroom units and supplies from China, and importing quad bikes, jet skis and motorbikes from the US – the latter of which would nearly cost him everything again.

Glow-in-the-dark stair nosing was just another stop on Gallagher’s entrepreneurial journey.

After the 2011 Christchurch earthquake Gallagher developed a system to neatly manage the inflow of reports from builders, engineers and other tradesmen relating to earthquakes. Something Gallagher says has “really been the catalyst to allow the funding of SafeSwiss Secure Communication.”

Going into the interview I knew that Tim had been involved in numerous businesses across multiple industries, and thus was interested to hear the common lessons he’d learnt through all this experience. Yet without asking, it was clear that Gallagher’s number one lesson is to never give up.

“Continual persistence and perseverance will ultimately prevail… It’s a statistical fact that you cannot achieve any form of success without some form of failure. It’s not just inevitable, it’s necessary. As Steve Jobs famously said, ‘Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith’.”

However, it’s Gallagher’s roller coaster career that is really the testament to how he truly embodies this belief.

With any successful individual there is commonly a deeper motivation that inspires them even in the toughest of times, and I was curious as to what this was for Gallagher.

“My primary motivation for being an entrepreneur is to create and add value, to try and solve what you see as an existing problem. Obviously if done successfully, wealth will be acquired.”

Furthermore, I asked Gallagher for one weekly habit that he would suggest a reader adopt to better themselves as an entrepreneur. His answer was quite simple. “Reading motivational books by well-respected businessmen, businesswomen and entrepreneurs is an absolute must. Also take notes, go to seminars.”

Right before we ended the call, Gallagher shared a few details of the new B2B offering that SafeSwiss would launch soon. Even over the phone you could sense the excitement in his voice, speaking of how the product would solve a problem that to date has remained unsolved.

It was clear to me in these last few moments of our conversation that Tim was an entrepreneur to the core, and a man who loves every single aspect of building businesses.♦

Interview by Nicholas Lane | [email protected] | @nicholasrlane

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