Never 168 Never Stop

Dada Gunamuktananda | TEDxNoosa 2014

2021-02-16T02:57:00.002-08:00

Dada Gunamuktananda: Yogi and Meditation Teacher

Bio: Dada Gunamuktananda has trained in meditation, yoga and natural health sciences in Australia, the Philippines and India. He has been a meditation teacher of Ananda Marga since 1995 and has taught and lectured on meditation in New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East.

Title: Consciousness: The Final Frontier

Synopsis: The exploration of inner space, our own consciousness, is ultimately connected to our discovery of outer space. Just as the world becomes a smaller place with increase in communication and transport technology, so the universe becomes a smaller place with the increase in meditation technology!

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

I must say I’m very impressed with the way Mary pronounced my name. I couldn’t have said it better myself. About 25 years ago, I was in my final year of medical school, but I’d been doubting my career choice for quite some time.

Then one day, I went to take blood from a sweet little old lady. I struck an artery instead of a vein. I still don’t know how I did that. As blood spurted out all over the place, I said to myself, Yep, you’re definitely in the wrong profession here.

So in the interests of all concerned, I dropped out and became a yogi instead.

Hence my unconventional appearance.

Actually, it’s not the only reason for my unconventional appearance. One of many shall we say. So I’d like to share with you the yogic concept of space, our inner space, what we experience within ourselves - I’m redefining the terms a bit here - and outer space, everything outside ourselves. We live in a vast Universe.

To give you some idea of its size, if we took the universe to be the size of our planet Earth, then our planet Earth would be about a billionth the size of a pin head in comparison. A billionth the size of one of those. I’m holding up a pin, in case you can’t see it. It’s my prop. There you go. It’s the same one. It actually is the same one. A billionth the size of one of those compared to one of those. By the way, a billionth of size of a pinhead is about a millionth the size of a grain of sand, or about the average size of an atom, so take your pick.

In any case, the idea is that it’s really, really, really small compared to the size of the Universe. So does that help put it in perspective? I think that gives us some idea of the size of our Universe. An incredibly vast and complex Universe which we’ve been expected to believe, according to modern science, appeared out of nothing without any intention behind it.

That’s actually like expecting us to believe that our phones and laptops just fell into place without anyone designing them or putting them together. According to biologist Rupert Sheldrake Modern science is based on the principle, Give us one free miracle and well explain the rest. And the one free miracle is the appearance of all the matter and energy of the universe and all the laws that govern it from nothing, in a single instant.

But modern science is just now coming around to the conclusions held by yogic science for millennia, to an explanation of our Universe that is going to take our understanding to a whole new level, and that is that both the substance and the intention of the Universe come from a deeper reality than the material one we normally perceive with our minds and senses. And that reality is consciousness. an all-pervading, blissful awareness, inherent in everybody and everything.

Just as your own consciousness is the essence of your own mind, cosmic consciousness is the essence of the entire Universe. It exists within everything, and everything exists within it. Essentially, everybody and everything is part of and full of consciousness. Imagine that.

However, we, for reasons I won’t go into now, have largely given up on the idea of a higher consciousness in our modern world view. In the last 100 years or so, modern science has come to a very mechanistic take on reality. What if though mind, matter, and space were all full of consciousness? What if the possibility of consciousness as a higher reality were every bit as real as any of our current constructs of reality? And what if it could give us, if only we were open to it, some very real advantages in understanding our world and where we fit into it, compared to some very serious disadvantages of a materialist world view?

In a materialist world view of an arbitrary, mechanistic, unfeeling Universe, there is every reason to feel alienated, lonely, fearful, and depressed. And if we don’t feel it ourselves, we all too often see it in others, and in the malaise of our society. Materialism doesn’t engender optimism in people or society. On the other hand, in a blissfully conscious Universe, there is every reason to feel inherently connected to people and to the world, to feel loved, hopeful, happy, and at peace with oneself and others.

In the words of my guru Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars guides you, too. So rather than trying to validate a worldview which makes us sad and fearful of the future, I believe, we should be trying to validate a worldview which gives us fulfillment and hope for the future, not just as individuals but as a society. The benefits of a conscious world view are immense. And it’s potentially no less valid than any of our constructs of material reality.

This is not just wishful thinking. In fact, the essence of the Universe is consciousness is just as valid a premise as the essence of the Universe is matter. The only difference is that one can be sensed and the other cant. We can perceive matter with our minds and with scientific measurement, but we can only experience consciousness internally. We must find it within ourselves. There was once a Sufi mystic called Nasr Utem. I actually stayed in his hometown in Turkey for a few days once. And there are many stories about how he used to teach in eccentric and humorous ways. One of the stories goes that he lost the key to his house, and that he was looking for it one night outside under a streetlamp. A passerby asked him, what he was doing. I’m looking for the key to my house. Where did you lose it?, she asked.

Somewhere inside my house. Then naturally she said: Well, if you lost inside your house, why are you looking for it outside? Because its dark inside, he replied. We need to look for what we’re looking for in the right place. Even if it’s hard to look for it there. It’s easy to look outside, not so easy to look within. According to yoga teachings, consciousness lies within, and so we must look for it there. But here’s the catch, not intellectually. It’s not something we can comprehend with the mind. Take the case of a light bulb, for example. A light bulb is capable of shining light on the room around it but not on the power which illuminates it. In the same way, were capable of comprehending the world around us but not the consciousness which animates us. It’s beyond the normal functioning of the mind, beyond words, beyond even though itself. The core of our being is not something that can even be spoken about let alone thought of.

I think, were all familiar with the saying by Descartes, I think, therefore I am. But this is what yogic philosophy says, When I stop thinking then I really am. Just because we can’t think of something, just because we can’t prove something scientifically, doesn’t mean it’s not there. We can’t prove a mothers love for her child but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s a matter of the heart, and matters of the heart cannot be fathomed by the mind. So material science can never get to the heart of what it really means to be human. We can only validate the essence of our existence through the deepest internal experience of awareness within us. About now, you might be thinking that this is all a bit airy-fairy and New Age. Even I’m starting to think to myself.

So I want to give you a few brief examples of scientists that have also acknowledged the likelihood of consciousness as a higher reality. There aren’t many of them. But those that there are, are quite distinguished. I won’t spend too much time on this, in fact Ill to try to finish before I begin. Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, considered consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.

Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing postulates consciousness, this from the pioneer of quantum theory. A bit later, the physicist James Jeans wrote:

The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. And I better throw in something from Einstein here just to give it a bit more umph. The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is at the root of all true science. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe is my idea of God. Finally, I want to give you an example of a contemporary scientist who actually experienced higher consciousness first hand. Dr. Eben Alexander is a neuroscientist who had like many of his colleagues bought into the idea that the brain creates its own consciousness.

Then, quite ironically, he contracted a very rare brain infection which put him in a coma for a week during which he experienced the heightened and enlightened state of awareness, despite the fact that he was clinically brain dead at the time. He said: During my seven days of coma, I not only remained fully conscious but journeyed to a stunning world of beauty and peace and unconditional love. I underwent the most staggering experience of my life, my consciousness traveling to another level. Dr. Alexander is now on a mission to convince the brain science community to, as he puts it, graduate from kindergarten and move on from the idea that the brain creates its own reality. Now, fortunately for you and I, apart from examples such as these, there just so happens to be a systematic and scientific method of validating consciousness personally in our everyday lives.

I think you won’t be surprised to hear me say that that’s going to be meditation. Meditation is intuitional science where consciousness is substantiated by purely first-hand internal experience. Through meditation, it’s entirely possible to experience higher consciousness as every bit as real as you and I sitting in this room right now. Once I had a particularly illuminating meditation experience where I felt the whole room was full of a field of consciousness vibrating with awareness and with bliss. It was so intense, so tangible. The feeling I had at the time that I could cut it with a knife. It was undeniably real then and I still have no doubt about it to this day. Through meditation, one has many such experiences that ultimately lead to the realization of one’s consciousness.

Why don’t we go ahead right now and try to experience higher consciousness through meditation? Shall we give it a try? It might not have occurred to you when you woke up this morning that you’d be meditating today, but there you go, anything is possible. So I invite you to the close your eyes for a minute or so. Remember to breathe, and try not to fall asleep, I know, it has been a long day. And start off by the centering yourself. Focus on your sense of self. Feel the center of yourself. Now feel that you are completely at peace. Feel peace and happiness all around you. Feel infinite happiness all around you. Now feel that you are merging into that infinite happiness. Feel that your own sense of awareness is merging into the infinite awareness around you. Feel that your own consciousness is merging into the infinite consciousness all around you. Feel yourself becoming one with it. Feel that you are one with it. Feel that you are it, and continue like that for a few more seconds. Now, doesn’t that feel better?

Dada Gunamuktananda: Yes? Anyway, you might have gotten a glimpse just now into the possibility that your own consciousness is one with the consciousness of the whole Universe. That its within you as well as all around you. That its real, and that you can feel it, if you really try. And not only feel it but know it is at the core of your being. This is not just an abstract concept, it’s about the essence of us all. It’s about discovering the greater consciousness within our own consciousness, realizing our own inner reality is the greater universal reality. And the more we expand our sense of reality, our sense of being, the more connected we feel to all beings. The happier we are, the less fearful, the less lonely because we realize that all is a part of us, and that we are a part of all. The inner quest facilitates the embracing of all within ourselves, all people, animals, plants...The planet.

People, animals, and plants on other planets - yes, it’s a no brainer- the whole Universe. What I like to say is that just as the world becomes a smaller place with the development of communication and transport technology so will the Universe become a smaller place with the development of meditation technology. Cosmic Consciousness abides in ones sense of existence; in ones very heart’s desire. Shrii Shrii Anandamurti

Thank you.

Basic Economics

Basic Economics

2021-02-16T02:27:00.002-08:00

Buy your domain before its gone for 10% off by going to hover.com/Wendover. Imagine a $2,000 car… or a $100 laptop… or a $70 iPhone… or imagine any product ten times cheaper than it was. Imagine the fundamental market change that would bring. Imagine the amount of demand there would be for that $2,000 car or $100 laptop or $70 iPhone. That’s what Elon Musk imagined 15 years ago when he sat on a pile of $165 million dollars. Elon Musk’s businesses are all centered around some the most basic principles of economics out there.

When he starts a business, he’s not necessarily trying to do something new, he’s trying to do something right. Musk made most of his early fortune through his involvement with PayPal. In 1999 he founded a company called X.com which was quickly bought by Concinnity—the creators of PayPal—so when PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002, Musk’s 11.7% ownership of the company translated to $165 million dollars. Elon Musk has always been deeply passionate about space exploration and, as anyone knows, public interest in space has been falling since the Apollo era.

Therefore, Musk’s plan with his newfound fortune was to launch a rocket to mars carrying a small greenhouse that would grow plants on the surface of the red planet. Basically, he wanted to take all his money and put it into a big publicity stunt for space exploration. But he had a problem—it was too expensive. The cost of launches was absolutely immense and, even when Musk tried to buy decommissioned Russian ICBM’s, he couldn’t find a way to pull off the project, but he had discovered something. The space launch industry was ripe for disruption. Here’s Joseph, the economics expert from Real Life Lore to explain why. “The rocket development and space-launch companies before Space were essentially aggregators.

They bought engines and guidance systems and all the other various components from other companies to cobble together one completed rocket. But all the different component suppliers also had their own component suppliers to make their product. The suppliers of the suppliers not only had to cover their development and manufacturing costs, they had to sell their components at a markup in order to make a profit, and then the next component manufacturer had to do the same which means that by the time the component gets to the company assembling the rocket, it’s expensive. Not only that, but the assembly company also has to pay for employees that work to actually figure out how to make all of the different pieces work together. Space however, works differently. It makes 85% of the components it uses itself, which allows it to make cheaper parts.

For example, if Space had bought their radios externally they would be paying $50,000-100,000 dollars each, but since they develop them internally they only cost $5,000 each to build, a dramatic improvement in reducing cost.” Joseph from Real Life Lore has a brand new book which includes two fantastic chapters explaining simple economic concepts like this that I’ll link in the description, but let’s talk Tesla. Tesla’s economic strategy is fairly similar to Space’s. Tesla themselves makes about 80% of the 5,300 parts in a Tesla car, but for the most part they don’t make these, the batteries, at least yet. Batteries are very difficult to make at a competitive price so very few companies do.

The largest three manufacturers—Panasonic, BYD, and LG Chem—make a combined 63% of the world’s batteries. Tesla, therefore, has historically just bought batteries from Panasonic at a cost of about $200 per kWh. But that means that Tesla’s smallest battery pack, the 50 kWh version, costs $10,000 dollars just in components. When you’re trying to sell a $35,000 dollar car and make a profit, that’s a significant cost that can be reduced.

Therefore, Tesla is attempting to reduce the cost of their batteries by 30% by building their own factory in a joint-venture with Panasonic. Their long-term goal, however, is to drop the battery price below $100 dollars per kWh which would either double the range or halve the price of that 50 kWh battery pack. But the vertical integration of Tesla and Space isn’t all useful. The companies basically have to learn and perfect each step in the manufacturing process and, if one step isn’t working, no cars get made.

For example, the Tesla Model 3, the low-cost Tesla, is built using steel instead of aluminum like the Model S and X. With this change, the manufacturer is having troubles properly welding the vehicle bodies together and so the entire production line is slowed down massively. But there’s something else unique about Space and Tesla’s production lines—they’re in the US. Now this probably seems counterintuitive—why would you put the production lines of two companies working to make the least expensive products on the market in one of the most expensive labor markets in the world?

Almost every US company has relocated their production lines to cheaper labor markets in Asia and Africa but Musk has always had his in the US. Believe it or not, this isn’t a PR move. It actually makes sense for the two companies. Tesla and Space’s production processes are constantly being tweaked and optimized as the companies learn to make their products.

While China might be able to build Tesla cars at the same price by using cheaper human labor, Tesla’s US factory is just miles away from its headquarters in Palo Alto meaning that the executive, development, and production staff are all heavily integrated and can make changes fast. Space even takes this a step further. It’s offices and manufacturing lines are all under one roof.

The Tesla factory in particular is also heavily automatized and the US excels in production line automation with its abundance of highly skilled workers, but just how much is Musk

dropping the price on his products?

The United Launch Alliance, which historically has won most of the highly lucrative US government launch contracts, is believed to charge more than $400 million dollars all-in for a military satellite launch while Space charges about $80 million dollars. So, Space is already at a fifth of the price, but as mentioned, Elon Musk wants that to fall to a tenth. Here’s the key for that—the fuel used in the Falcon 9 rocket only costs about $200,000 dollars per launch—it’s practically a non-factor in the launch price. The real cost is of the rockets themselves, so that’s why Space is making them reusable.

The first stage of the rocket is now being designed to land back on earth and be put back into service with dozens more launches. Once this system becomes reliable, it’s believed that the cost savings will drop the launch price to $40 million dollars—a full 10 times cheaper than United Launch Alliance’s military launch price. Space’s long-term goal is to get the launch price down to about $10 million dollars per launch.

While the company has already made a significant impact on the space industry, a launch price as low as this would fundamentally change what’s possible in space. Real space tourism would become feasible, commercial satellites would become downright commonplace, and Space would become closer than it’s ever been. But Space does have a bit of a problem—people aren’t really buying more rocket launches even though prices are down. It’s what’s known as a price inelastic market. That’s the opposite of Tesla and the electric vehicle market where lower prices lead to huge increases in sales. The problem with the space launch market is that it is not a consumer market—normal people don’t buy rocket launches.

Governments buy rocket launches and they don’t care about price nearly as much as people since it’s not the decision makers’ money. The US Air Force, for example, decides they need to launch a certain number of satellites each year for the national security reasons and they’ll pay whatever it takes. But Elon Musk’s life goal is to get humanity to Mars—that’s why Space exists—and he needs money to do it. Lots of money. So, Space is getting into the internet business.

The company is actively developing a satellite constellation that would provide high-speed internet to anywhere on earth. Thousands of small satellites would be put into low earth orbit and then anyone worldwide could hook into the network using an inexpensive ground receiver.

If Space got just 50 million users out of the 7 billion in its proposed service area, this business could bring in $30 billion dollars a year. Since Space would be building and launching the satellites themselves, costs would be dramatically lower than the competition’s. The whole commercial aspect of Space essentially exists to fund Musk’s future space exploration projects. For that reason, Space is not a public company like Tesla. Elon Musk does not want to make money with Space, he wants to get to Mars. He does not want to be beholden to shareholders and profitability. Musk has therefore publicly said that Space will not go public until the company achieves regular flights to and from mars and thanks to the entrepreneur’s understanding of basic economics, that might not be too far off.

If you’re looking to start a company, you’ll need not only an understanding of basic economics but also a domain. However makes finding and purchasing your domain super simple. They have over 400 domain extensions that let you create unique domains like mine—Wendover. Productions. It literally takes minutes to find and buy your domain, but if you do ever have an issue they have amazing, best-in-class customer support that will help you with anything and everything. If you have a name you want to use for your business, your YouTube channel, or anything else you should buy the domain now before it’s gone. You can also set up custom, professional email addresses using those domains for very reasonable prices and what’s best is that you can do all of this for 10% off by heading over to hover.com/Wendover and you’ll be supporting the channel while you’re at it. However is what I use for my domains since it just works and you should too by heading over to Hover.com/Wendover.

The Economy of Spain

The Economy of Spain

2021-02-16T02:09:00.007-08:00

The Spanish Economy is one of extremes. At one point a focus of the Eurozone Crisis, at another the largest contributor of growth, and more recently, suffering the greatest economic hit of any Advanced Economy in 2020.

Spain’s Economic problems are often confused. In the years leading up to the Great Recession it posted consistent budget surpluses.

However, a huge real estate bubble was lying in wait.

The question ... is why?

Why did Spain go from a seemingly safe level of debt to one larger than its Economy?

How was the housing bubble encouraged?

And since then, has Spain’s Economy ever truly recovered? Or in what ways?

This is Spain The Spanish economy is one of extremes. As one point a focus of the Eurozone crisis. At another the largest contributor of growth. and more recently the worst performing advanced economy in 2020. Spain’s economic problems are often misunderstood. In the years leading up to the Great Recession its government expenditure was relatively stable. However, a huge real estate bubble was lying in wait. The question... is why?

Why did Spain go from a seemingly safe level of debt to one larger than its economy? How was the real estate bubble supported? and since then, has Spain’s economy ever truly recovered? Or in what ways? To explore all of this it’s worth taking a brief look at the economic history. But first feel free to check out our new Discord server to interact with our growing community!

The link to which is in the description below. Now back to the video. At the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939 the nation lay in ruins. Seeing the emergence of an incredibly isolated Spain. A far cry from the country today, which routinely ranks second in the world for tourist arrivals. Because of isolation and poor policies under the early years of General Franco’s Dictatorship. Recovery and development was slow.

For example, the nation was excluded from the USs Marshall Plan for European recovery. Not reaching its pre-civil war peak in GDP per capita until 1955, Five years after most other Western economies did despite World War 2. In general, the economic policies under Franco’s rule weren’t fixed, but varied during his time in power.

However, there was a trend from self-reliance to liberalization. A key trigger of this change was a dire shortage of foreign exchange reserves by the late 1950s. A consequence of failed self-reliance and isolationism. Being a large factor in Spain’s pivot to adopting pro market policies. Through the so called plan of stabilization and liberalization Creative I know (dry humor XD) What followed was termed the Spanish economic miracle. Creating a sort of Iberian economic tiger

Costa Del Sol style!

Though make no mistake Spain was a dictatorship without the freedoms it enjoys today. An estimated three million people or about 10% of the population moved to urban areas in the 1960s With many moving abroad. Often providing valuable remittances in return. This wave of liberalization coincided with Spain joining international organizations like the GATT A predecessor of the WTO. Economic progress continued to gain pace after Franco With well-known Spanish brands starting to gain international attention . The transition to democracy also paved the way for Spain to join the EU. Or European Economic Community as it was called then in 1986.

However, it’s important to note that despite the great growth Spain’s official unemployment rate was stubbornly high in the 80s and 90s.. Now despite only joining the EU in the mid-80s Spain decided to take the plunge and be amongst the first to adopt the euro in 1999. Intending to demonstrate to the entire world not only how far it had come but how integrated and open the economy had to be. Or so people thought!

Adopting the euro was a trade-off. On the one hand, it traded in its monetary sovereignty, the ability to devalue its currency and set its own interest rate. On the other hand, trade with its neighbors became a lot easier as did paying for imports through a stronger currency. And most importantly perhaps, it gained access to cheaper credit. Whilst this was a time of great change there were a couple of striking things about this period. The flow of goods, services and the transfer of money otherwise known as the current account, took a downturn. Notably, the country already had a negative current account before adopting the euro. Though this worsened. Reaching its lowest level just before the Great Recession. Something which isn’t unusual as recessions often cause imports to drop and international credit to dry up. The massive buildup of credit was a fundamental part of Spain’s economic bubble. You see, credit became cheaper Adopting the euro led many investors to believe that the likes of Spain, Greece and Italy’s credit was as good as Germanys. With increasing demand causing interest rate differences to narrow.

However, there is a common misconception that Spain’s central government was the one doing the borrowing. This was certainly true for Greece but for Spain, this really wasn’t the case at all. Spain’s debt was low and even posted budget surpluses in the lead up to the crisis. Begging the question, who was borrowing?

Well, this was largely done by firms especially ones in construction. But, who lent them money? A large portion came from Spain’s regional savings banks through the international market. Regional economics plays a large role in Spain The country is split into 17 regions with a very high level of fiscal decentralization.

For example, a lot of tax collection, education and health expenditure, is dealt with by local and regional authorities. Likewise, Spain possessed some 45 regional savings banks before the crisis. A lot of whom had gone all in on lending money to speculative real estate. To be fair though, Spain kind of anticipated some type of debt problem when they joined the euro.

According to the EUs own official report they were the first country in the world to require banks to set aside additional money for non-performing loans in the good times. Which may sound strange in a post financial crisis world. But remember this was pre crisis Setting aside an estimated 35 billion euros something we found surprising.

So check out the link in the description below for some light bedtime reading.

However as were about to find out the money saved up was far from sufficient In the early part of the 2000s the average house price sky rocketed. Which to be fair, was a common trend in many economies But the dependency in construction led growth really set Spain apart.

For example, credit for the real estate sector far outstripped credit for the economy overall By the time the crisis hit, triggered across the Atlantic by rising mortgage defaults, Spain’s real estate debts equated to almost half of GDP. And make no mistake. Spain was heavily reliant on construction related employment. In 2007, more than 1/8 workers were employed in construction. Delivering more housing starts than Germany, France, the UK and Italy combined.

This can be attributed to three core factors The first being the cheaper credit we mentioned earlier. The second being the tax breaks and investment incentives the government gave to the real estate sector. Whilst the third, was the general economic growth model. The model favored construction activity because of the sectors labor intensive nature. Helping to drive down unemployment. Politically speaking, pro real estate policies also helped spur on higher prices.

Great news for the 80% of Spanish voters who were home owners at the time. However, just like all bubbles at some point it had to burst! From their peak, average house prices declined by 45%. Pushing many, way into negative equity. Where the value of their asset was worth less than the debt. Now as the credit dried up and panic took over the world, people started to realize that building all these houses assuming ever higher prices just didn’t make much sense.

Speculative developers who borrowed heavily quickly turned into non-performing loans. On a scale, which far exceeded the provisions we mentioned earlier. And remember, if you borrow a hundred thousand from the bank and cant repay then you have a problem but borrow a hundred million and cant repay and then the bank has a problem. And Spain’s lenders certainly did. Spain’s response can be split into two periods: the first part, involved the country trying to send its way out spending more as a percentage of GDP on stimulus than any country in Europe. Not a problem, given their low debt.

However, as the Greek crisis evolved attention quickly turned to who was next. Sure Spain started with low debt but its economic model was fundamentally flawed. Real concerns were raised over whether Spain would be able to borrow enough for long enough to get its house in order. Ultimately this led to the bailout of Spain’s banks and massive reform. With only two of the forty five savings banks we mentioned earlier escaping the crisis unchanged.

By simplifying things a lot numerous banks were merged to create one giant bad bank. Using financial wizardry to separate the bad apples from whatever was left. It’s important to highlight just how much the crisis impacted Spain’s economy. A point w discussed in much more detail in our video on Greece. A big problem, is that by being tied to the euro Spain couldn’t just depreciate its exchange rate.

It had to undertake painful structural reforms to raise competitiveness. A tough love approach which saw unemployment rise to an eye-watering one in four and millions leave in a brain drain of epic proportions. So, it’s fair to ask Well, yes and no. If you were to look at the pure stats in isolation Spain’s GDP overtook its pre-crisis peak in 2017 Not only that, but in recent years pre-2020 at least it has become an engine room of the Eurozone economy. At times accounting for more than its fair share of overall growth. A lot of this growth has been on increases in its exports. Which has grown as a share of GDP. One reason for this, is that after a decade of painful reforms average labor costs either declined or were typically lower than other larger European economies.

Though to be fair, productivity still lags some way behind. On a more positive but related note, its current account entered a surplus in 2016 for the first time since 1986. And consistently has been there since. Pointing towards a more sustainable growth trajectory. Yet at the same time it’s only fair to point out that the nation has lingering issues. Which make a full recovery less likely. One is its stubbornly high unemployment.

Which is related to how expensive it can be to hire workers. Redundancy costs are extremely high. This has led to a large number of short term temporary contracts Possessing much less job security. Because of this Spain’s historically high unemployment has been suggested to be slightly misleading. Some of the officially unemployed work or at least did before 2020 in the black market to avoid the red tape. Now, Spain’s persistent unemployment issue is also a product in part of having the highest rate of in the whole of Europe from education and training.

Helping to shine a light on its notoriously high youth unemployment. With all of these points coming to haunt the nation during the Great Lockdown. Which according to the IMF Saw Spain record the highest contraction of any advanced economy. Much of this can be of course linked to the hit to tourism. Though this loses a little bit of weight when you consider France; the most visited nation on earth. Experienced less of an impact. Crucially as mentioned earlier Spain has the highest proportion of temporary workers.

Comprising over a quarter of the work force. Whereas in France, they account for roughly sixteen percent. With the layoff of these short term workers helping to understand at least some of the difference between the two nations. What this also highlights is that the Spanish economy is still grappling with the legacy of its economic bubble and most likely will for years to come We’ve seen that Spain made incredible progress from a dictatorship to one of the largest economies in Europe. Its entry to the euro was controversial in more ways than one. Which undoubtedly influenced its housing bubble. Unlike other Mediterranean countries though Spain’s government debt was surprisingly low before the crisis.

However, its economic growth model one based on rising current account deficits and a disproportionate reliance on construction, was not. Private debts quickly became a public issue. But since undertaking reforms, its economy has improved. In some cases dramatically, yet in others not so much. We can’t help but think that Spain’s poor performance during the Great Lockdown, was at least in part a result of its unresolved problems.

The real question is whether they’re likely to be solved anytime soon. And now it’s over to you Do you think Spain suffered the world’s greatest housing bubble? Or do you think that title belongs somewhere else? To a country like Ireland which has done considerably better in recent years. What do you think lies in Spain’s future? A population crisis? Given its incredibly low fertility rate? Something we mentioned in soon many other videos.

Most Likely To Make You A Millionaire

2021-02-16T01:58:00.001-08:00

Dan Lok is a Chinese-Canadian business magnate and global educator known for being the founder and chairman of Closers.com - the world’s # 1 virtual-closers network, Copywriters.com, and SalesCalls.com. Beyond his businesses, Mr. Lok has led several global movements to redefine modern education where he has taught individuals from 150+ countries to develop high income skills and financial confidence.

Beyond his success in business, he was also a two time TEDx opening speaker. An international best-selling author of 12+ books. A member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO) - a private group of global chief executives whose companies employ 22 million people and generate 9-trillion USD in annual revenues. He also hosts The Dan Lok Show - a series on elite business tycoons and world-leading entrepreneurs.

Today, Mr. Lok continues to be featured in thousands of media channels and publications every year and is widely seen as one of the top business leaders by millions around the world.

When I was a little kid, when I was about 10 years old, my dad and I, we would go fishing. And my dad would always get on this little boat and we would kind of take the boat to about 30 minutes away from the city, this was in Hong Kong and we would fish in that area. And as a little kid, I’ll ask my Dad, Dad, why do I have to get on a boat and go to this area? Why couldn’t we just fish where we are? Why would you have to make this trip?

And my dad would say to me, Well, son, that’s where the fish is. And I always remember the lesson, just like the reporter asked a famous bank robber, like why did you rob in the bank? Cause that’s where the money is. Right, is the same idea. As an entrepreneur, choosing the right industry is very, very critical. And there are many industries that we could get into, right?

And sometimes I think we are overconfident as an entrepreneur, and we say we could go into any industry, sell any product, offer any service and provide solution and we could be very successful in doing that. I think that’s simply not true.

So today I’m gonna share with you nine industries that are most likely to make you a millionaire. And if that’s your goal, there are many industries that you can get into. Now, I’m not talking about, like, gimmicks and tricks like crypt currency or winning the lottery, I’m talking about the legitimate, proven industries, that have created millionaires and billionaires.

Industry number one, that is most likely that will make you a millionaire and that is financial services. Now, when I say financial services, I’m talking about the management of money, money lending or management of assets. We’re talking about the loan associations, banks, financial companies, insurance companies, brokerage.

A lot of those firms are very, very wealthy because there’s a lot of money in money. One of the things I learned from one of my mentors, he said to me, Dan, don’t ever forget, the money is in the money. There’s a lot of money to be made just by managing, handling, investing money. Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, became a billionaire by providing financial data to the financial industry.

Industry number two, technology. Now, you know the Google, the Facebook, the Apple, but were talking beyond that. Think about traditional industries that you could go into, maybe by using technology, what you could do to disrupt that industry. And you can see that a lot. Now we call that disruptors, right?

How you could use technology to make things more efficient? We’re talking about robotics, were talking about AI, we’re talking about automation, we’re talking about manufacture of these technology products or even providing technology as service. Billions and billions and billions dollars’ worth of value are gonna be created in this particular sector. So, are you a technology entrepreneur?

Industry number three, health care. My mentor Dan Pena, the $50 billion man, talks about this a lot, health care, because people are willing to spend a lot of money to live longer. So health care, I’m referring to, could be assisted living, senior homes, pharmaceutical, any products or services that’ll help people to live longer life and stay healthier, that’s very, very good industry to get into.

Industry number four, real estate and construction. United Nations forecast predicts, by 2025, the world’s population will increase to almost eight billion people, eight billion people, by 2050, it would be almost 10 billion people. That’s 10 million people on this little planet by 2050. Now, what does that mean? Where’s the opportunity? We all need a place to sleep in, to play in, to entertain, to go to, to shop. Real estate and construction.

Industry number five, education. With all the changes, all the technological changes that are happening, knowledge becomes very, very critical. People want to learn, they want to equip themselves with skill sets, and that’s the space that I am in, the education and software space, because I can see the opportunity happening right now in front of us to connect individuals, people, professionals, to 21st century skills and job opportunities.

Now, within education, you could also have products and services and software that helps people in many different ways. So we have traditional education, but we also have alternative education, education outside of the school systems, right? And it doesn’t always have to be academic, it could be other types of education that can help people to lead a better life. Education, huge business.

Industry number six, entertainment and recreation. Beyond than just education, people want to be entertained. In fact people demand entertainment. You look at all these big companies are getting into the entertainment industry. Now, what am I talking about? Movies, animations, productions, special effects. There’s so many companies going into that industry. Amazon Prime, of course, you have Netflix, Disney Plus, I could go on and on and on.

Why? Because this is where we are going. Now on the other hand, thinking about industries who help and facilitate this particular industry, but also we talking about influencers, You Tubers, Instagrammers, right? Now for the first time, you have people in that industry. Standup comedians could make millions doing that, before you couldn’t, most of time they struggle, but now we are in this age of people want entertainment. So, if you can find a way to create a product or service or company around this to service this particular industry or to service this demand, you could also make millions.

Industry number seven, transportation. Now, human beings we like to travel. As now with the internet, the more we see the more...We don’t want always want to be stuck in a house, we want to go out there and see things. So air transportation, aerospace, huge opportunities. But also think about now people buying online and shopping online.

Where do you think the opportunity could be? Handling shipping packages. I’m not just talking about FedEx or UPS or DHL. Think of something like Uber Eats. People like stuff being delivered to them, as now people are shopping more and more online. This is a huge industry. Just by being able to provide service or product. It could be as simple as providing software to help these companies to manage the inventory better, right? Or the shipping handling better. That could be easily a multimillion dollar business.

Industry number eight, energy, especially renewable energy. So, going beyond than just oil and gas, now were talking about solar or wind, right? So, with billions and billions of people, we all need power, we need more power to power up our devices and our technology. So that’s huge industry. If you could come up with creative solutions that could solve this problem, not just millions, it could be billions of dollars. But you need to have certain team, you need to have an understanding of how this whole thing works, and you need to be able to work with government to how to execute this properly, but there’s definitely a lot of money to be made in energy.

Industry number nine, food. Now, with billions of people, not only we need power, right? We need a place to live in and we also need to eat. So in the food industry, that’s not gonna go away. With so many people on the planet, we need more cost effective, more efficient way to produce, create food, right? To produce food to feed so many people. So, what do we need to do? Again, maybe you can come up with solutions that could go into these certain industries.

And I’m not just talking about fast food, because with so many options, people want healthier choices as well. And to me supplements, health type products, are all those products fall into this category. If people are eating it and taking it to want to have a healthier life, yes, that falls into this as well. So, those are the nine industries that I believe that are most likely to make you a millionaire. But you need to also combine that with your skills, your background and your know-how.

Getting into the right industry is one thing, but you also need to be the right person in the right industry in order to make it big. Does that make sense? If this is the first time you’re watching my video, make sure you hit the subscribe button below and turn on your notification and hit that button. Every single day I upload a video on entrepreneurship, on business, on wealth creation. Comment below.

My philosophy for a happy life | Sam Berns

My philosophy for a happy life | Sam Berns

2021-02-16T01:47:00.006-08:00

Just before his passing on January 10, 2014, Sam Berns was a Junior at Foxboro High School in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where he achieved highest honors and was a percussion section leader in the high school marching band. He also achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. Sam was diagnosed with Progeria, a rare, rapid aging disease, at the age of 2. He is featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Life According to Sam, which premiered on HBO on October 21, 2013, 2 days before his 17th birthday. .

Transcriber: Bob Prottas Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo

Hello everyone. I’m Sam, and I just turned 17. A few years ago, before my freshman year in High School, I wanted to play snare drum in the Foxboro High School Marching Band, and it was a dream that I just had to accomplish. But each snare drum and harness weighed about 40 pounds each, and I have a disease called Progeria. So just to give you an idea, I weigh only about 50 pounds. So, logistically, I really couldn’t carry a regular sized snare drum, and because of this the band director assigned me to play pit percussion during the halftime show. Now pit percussion was fun. It involved some really cool auxiliary percussion instruments, like the bongos, timpani, and timbales, and cowbell. So it was fun, but it involved no marching, and I was just so devastated.

However, nothing was going to stop me from playing snare drum with the marching band in the halftime show. So my family and I worked with an engineer to design a snare drum harness that would be lighter, and easier for me to carry.

So after continuous work, we made a snare drum apparatus that weighs only about 6 pounds. I just want to give you some more information about Progeria. It affects only about 350 kids today, worldwide. So it’s pretty rare, and the effects of Progeria include: tight skin, lack of weight gain, stunted growth, and heart disease. Last year my Mom and her team of scientists published the first successful Progeria Treatment Study, and because of this I was interviewed on NPR, and John Hamilton asked me the question:

What is the most important thing that people should know about you? And my answer was simply that I have a very happy life. So even though there are many obstacles in my life, with a lot of them being created by Progeria, I don’t want people to feel bad for me. I don’t think about these obstacles all the time, and I’m able to overcome most of them anyway. So I’m here today, to share with you my philosophy for a happy life. So, for me, there are 3 aspects to this philosophy. So this is a quote from the famous Ferris Bueller. The first aspect to my philosophy is that I’m okay with what I ultimately can’t do because there is so much I can do. Now people sometimes ask me questions like, isn’t it hard living with Progeria? Or What daily challenges of Progeria do you face?

And I’d like to say that, even though I have Progeria, most of my time is spent thinking about things that have nothing to do with Progeria at all. Now this doesn’t mean that I ignore the negative aspects of these obstacles. When I can’t do something like run a long distance, or go on an intense roller coaster, I know what I’m missing out on. But instead, I choose to focus on the activities that I can do through things that I’m passionate about, like scouting, or music, or comic books, or any of my favorite Boston sports teams.

Yeah, so However, sometimes I need to find a different way to do something by making adjustments, and I want to put those things in the can do category. Kind of like you saw with the drum earlier. So here’s a clip with me playing Spider-Man with the Foxboro High School Marching Band at halftime a couple of years ago.

All right, all right, so -- That was pretty cool, and so I was able to accomplish my dream of playing snare drum with the marching band, as I believe I can do for all of my dreams. So hopefully, you can accomplish your dreams as well, with this outlook. The next aspect to my philosophy is that I surround myself with people I want to be with, people of high quality. I’m extremely lucky to have an amazing family, who have always supported me throughout my entire life.

And I’m also really fortunate to have a really close group of friends at school. Now we’re kind of goofy, a lot of us are band geeks, but we really enjoy each other’s company, and we help each other out when we need to. We see each other for who we are on the inside. So this is us goofing off a little bit. So we’re juniors in High School now, and we can now mentor younger band members, as a single collective unit.

What I love about being in a group like the band, is that the music that we make together, is true, is genuine, and it supersedes Progeria. So I don’t have to worry about that when I’m feeling so good about making music. But even having made a documentary, going on TV a couple of times, I feel like I’m at my highest point when I’m with the people that surround me every day. They provide the real positive influences in my life, as I hope I can provide a positive influence in theirs as well. Thank you.

So the bottom line here, is that I hope you appreciate and love your family, love your friends, for you guys, love you Bro’s and acknowledge your mentors, and your community, because they are a very real aspect of everyday life, they can make a truly significant, positive impact.

The third aspect to the philosophy is, Keep moving forward. Here’s a quote by a man you may know, named Walt Disney, and it’s one of my favorite quotes. I always try to have something to look forward to. Something to strive for to make my life richer. It doesn’t have to be big. It could be anything from looking forward to the next comic book to come out, or going on a large family vacation, or hanging out with my friends, to going to the next High School football game.

However, all of these things keep me focused, and know that there’s a bright future ahead, and may get me through some difficult times that I may be having. Now this mentality includes staying in a forward thinking state of mind.

I try hard not to waste energy feeling badly for myself, because when I do, I get stuck in a paradox, where there’s no room for any happiness or any other emotion. Now, it’s not that I ignore when I’m feeling badly, I kind of accept it, I let it in, so that I can acknowledge it, and do what I need to do to move past it. When I was younger, I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to be an inventor, who would catapult the world into a better future. Maybe this came from my love of Legos, and the freedom of expression that I felt when I was building with them. And this was also derived from my family and my mentors, who always make me feel whole, and good about myself.

Now today my ambitions have changed a little bit, I’d like to go into the field of Biology, maybe cell biology, or genetics, or biochemistry, or really anything. This is a friend of mine, who I look up to, Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, and this is us at TEDMED last year, chatting away. I feel that no matter what I choose to become, I believe that I can change the world. And as I’m striving to change the world, I will be happy. About four years ago, HBO began to film a documentary about my family and me called “Life According to Sam”. That was a pretty great experience, but it was also four years ago. And like anyone, my views on many things have changed, and hopefully matured, like my potential career choice.

However, some things have stayed the same throughout that time. Like my mentality, and philosophy towards life. So I would like to show you a clip of my younger self from the film, that I feel embodies that philosophy. I know more about it genetically. So it’s less of an embodiment now. It used to be like this thing that prevents me from doing all this stuff, that causes other kids to die, that causes everybody to be stressed, and now it’s a protein that is abnormal, that weakens the structure of cells. So, and it takes a burden off of me because now I don’t have to think about Progeria as an entity. Okay, pretty good, huh? Thank you.

So, as you can see I’ve been thinking this way for many years. But I’d never really had to apply all of these aspects of my philosophy to the test at one time, until last January. I was pretty sick, I had a chest cold, and I was in the hospital for a few days, and I was secluded from all of the aspects of my life that I felt made me, me, that kind of gave me my identity. But knowing that I was going to get better, and looking forward to a time that I would feel good again, helped me to keep moving forward.

And sometimes I had to be brave, and it wasn’t always easy. Sometimes I faltered, I had bad days, but I realized that being brave isn’t supposed to be easy. And for me, I feel it’s the key way to keep moving forward. So, all in all, I don’t waste energy feeling bad for myself. I surround myself with people that I want to be with, and I keep moving forward. So with this philosophy, I hope that all of you, regardless of your obstacles, can have a very happy life as well.

Oh, wait, hang on a second, one more piece of advice –- Never miss a party if you can help it. My school’s homecoming dance is tomorrow night, and I will be there.

Thank you very much.

The prison of your mind | TEDxIronwoodStatePrison

2021-02-15T04:15:00.004-08:00

Transcriber: Phuong Cao Reviewer: Denise RQ I’m trying to compose my blog post for tonight, and I’m thinking it sounds really believable that I went to prison and hugged a bunch of really nice prisoners, while a DJ busy, threw on some records, and Richard Branson told me where I can score some free heroin. Lesson number one: never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you. When I was born, the doctors told my parents that I would be dead within the first 24 hours of my life. 35 years later, all those doctors are dead and I am the only doctor that remains. Never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you. How many predictions have been thrown at you your whole life?

If you believe predictions that do not empower you, you will wither away and die, either physically die or your spirit will die as you just walk around the world like a carcass that is just following the masses. You’ll be given a lot of titles in your life, you’ll be told so many different things. You must only listen to that which empowers you. I have a belief that has served me in my life, and that is that everyone is rooting from me to win, even those that do not know it. And I’m not here today to tell you that I’ve had adversity in my life and therefore, I know what you are going through. I don’t have a clue what any of you are going through in your lives. I did not grow up in your neighborhoods more than likely. I did not have your set of parents, nor do I live in your body. I’ve not had the events that you’ve had happened to you. I can tell you I am only an expert on one thing, and that’s how to be me, and I do it well.

But it’s not come easily, I’ve gone through things that I don’t wish upon anyone in this room. I’ve had metal rods pulled out of bone marrow while I was awake, vie had jaw infections where teeth had to be extracted and I can no longer chew my own food. I have to get up every day, and be showered and cared for physically by another human being; fortunately, she’s a gorgeous woman that I married. I get stared at everywhere I go, and the moment people meet me, if they don’t know a thing about my résumé, they automatically, just by the human nature, think to themselves:

Oh, it must be so difficult to be that man! If somebody pities me, they’re wasting their time, because I have chosen a life of strength, I am here to help you choose a life of strength, but I’m going to tell you, we’ve talked about drugs here.

You know what the worst drug that ever hit the human race is? Pity. The moment you feel sorry for another person or the moment you feel sorry for yourself, you’re hosed. you’re totally, completely frozen in potential. We cannot pity ourselves, we cannot pity you. Yes, I get to go home today, yes, I get to have what many would call freedom, but I’m going to talk to you about freedom about what I really choose to see freedom as, because like I said, you cannot believe predictions that do not empower you!. The second lesson today is you are not your condition. you’re not. I’m not disabled! Sure, I’ll take the handicapped parking privileges but that does not define me as a man. Not able?

I’ve been looked at and treated my whole life as if I am not able. I have had to rise above and show people that the only disability is ones refusal to adapt. You have to adapt to whatever environment you’re in, even if its prison. And what does adaption look like? I think it looks like celebration. Because when you meet people that are celebrating their life, you want to be around them, you want to learn from them, you want to do business with them, you want to hire them.

Look! If you do not want to be seen as a prisoner or a convict when you get out of this, or even while you’re in this, there is an attitude, it is a belief in yourself that you bring value to the human race, no matter what your current condition, title, or stature is.

Because if I believe that I am disabled, I would wither up, I would be shy, I would be insecure, I would be afraid, I would act like I need your help. And the rest of humanity would be OK with that, but I choose something else, I choose to be strong, I choose to be a leader, I choose to have words to move this planet, I’ll tell you why I was born. And I hope it inspires you to find out why you were born. I was born to rid this world of insecurity. Because when a human being is insecure, they do stupid stuff. When we feel like were not enough, we chase external validation, and external objects to try to tell us were enough. Thank you.

You are enough. I’ll tell you I’ve made a pledge of the therapist to love all human beings, no matter what they’ve done. Because deep down inside, I found that every human being just wants to be loved, even if they’re tough, even if they’re scary, even if they’re vicious. You get them in the right position, at the right time, they’ll tell you the truth. They just want to be loved. Do you know whom they want the love from the most?

Not their moms, not their dads, not their wardens. None of these people. They want to be able to look in the mirror and love themselves. And if you can figure that out, then you’re going somewhere. But you cannot feel sorry for yourself.

When you feel sorry for yourself, you will wither. But there’s a contradiction to feeling sorry for yourself, it’s the opposite extreme, it’s what I call bullying yourself, beating yourself up, being your own enemy and telling yourself that all those predictions, those negative opinions that they’re true, they’re right, you’re washed up, failure. you’re not going to amount to anything.

Bullying yourself is the most dangerous thing that you could do. You cannot afford to pity yourself, you cannot afford to bully yourself, you have to love yourself, because the last lesson that I’m going to share with you today that is I’m going to teach you what the real prison is, it’s not surrounded by bar, wire, or electrical fences, the real prisons do not have guards, the real prisons up here.

Limitless Energy & the Pyramids of Egypt

And we all got it, we all have a mind that chatters, so often won’t stop chattering. Do you know where your salvation is? It’s not outside these walls. I’ve met so many people that are so extremely successful and famous, that are in prison, because they’re stuck in their minds, bullying themselves, pitying themselves. True freedom is dropping down out of that mind. And what my wife has taught me is to drop into your hearts. in the mastering this beating thing that is more than just sending blood to the extremities. What is it doing?

Its sending emotional possibilities, infinite possibilities of choice in our behavior, in our life, in our attitude. When you love yourself, whether you’re sleeping on a prison cot, or in a mansion, whether you have food in your belly, or you don’t know when your next meal is coming, when you love yourself, when you learn to master your emotions, then and only then are you free. I love you, each and every one of you, and I wish you freedom within these walls. God bless.

The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio

2021-02-15T04:02:00.002-08:00

Created by Ray Dalio this simple but not simplistic and easy to follow 30 minute, animated video answers the question, "How does the economy really work?" Based on Dalio's practical template for understanding the economy, which he developed over the course of his career, the video breaks down economic concepts like credit, deficits and interest rates, allowing viewers to learn the basic driving forces behind the economy, how economic policies work. and why economic cycles occur.

Henry Ford once said:

It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. I quote this because it encapsulates the fact that the contents of this video may be unsettling compared to the videos that I normally make. because I’ve been exploring the financial world for the last four years and it has definitely given me a more complete view of the world. I want to share some of what I’ve come across with you guys I’m also going to do a video about crypto-currencies like Bitcoin in the future and to understand why Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies may continue to rise, it’s critical that you understand the contents of this video. I hope that you find this topic interesting and that it inspires you to do your own research afterwards. Now, with that said, let’s begin. So who controls all of our money? It’s a simple question!

We all know that you and I don’t control it. Our employees don’t control it. The companies that they work for don’t control it. So who does? Where does it even come from in the first place? I’ll give you a hint...

Money does NOT come from the government It’s a seemingly obvious question that’s never asked or taught in schools for some reason. Unfortunately, most people’s lives are basically dedicated to money. It’s all people ever worry about or talk about. We go to school to learn basically how to go to university, to learn the skills to get a good job so that we can trade hours of our lives all for this thing called money. So why wouldn’t you want to know where money comes from and who issues it?

Today, in this very special video, you’re about to find out the answers to the question of Who controls all of our money? People today can tell something isn’t quite right with our financial system, but they just can’t put their finger on it. Some people think it’s the failure of government, others think that it’s the failure of the capitalism itself This video should clarify a few things. The year is 1694 and England had just suffered through 50 years of war. Exhausted, the English government needed loans to fund their political means. Brainchild of Scottish banker William Paterson, it was decided that a privately owned bank that could issue the money to the government out of thin air was to be the solution.

This was the very first modern central banking system in the world. Central banking is more influential than laws, governments and politicians, but strangely not the focus of the general public. Fast forward to the early 20th century, and after two failed attempts a group of bankers wanted to put a central bank in the United States of America.

It was December of 1910 and senator Nelson Aldrich boarded a private train car in New York with six others. The six were not to be spotted by any news reporters to avoid questions. Their destination: Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia.

The meeting went for nine days and from that they created the Federal Reserve System. This is all documented and a matter of public record. Some of them went on to write about the meetings in their personal biographies. Here is a quote from Frank Vander lip, president of the National City Bank of New York February 9th 1935 in the Saturday Evening Post:

I was as secretive - indeed, as furtive - as any conspirator. Discovery, we knew, simply must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted If it were to be exposed that our particular group had got together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress. The six men that Nelson Aldrich brought together included the head of banks, branches of government such as the Treasury and some of the richest people on Earth at the time. To give you an idea of how rich they were in 1910 these six men represented a quarter of the world’s worth. The bankers told the American public that the purpose of the system was to stabilize the economy and to stop the grip of the Wall Street banks over America. The problem was the guys that wrote the bill were the very same people they said they’d stop. If they succeeded, it would give a small group of men the ability to create money from nothing and loan it to the American government with interest. So why was it done in secret?

Because the American people didn’t want a central bank. Back then, unlike today, people knew what central banks were and understood them very well. Everywhere a central bank went, there would be wealth inequality, wild swings between economic booms and busts and after each bust, those in the top of society mysteriously came out richer, while everyone else got poorer. Europe was a running example of this at the time. The Federal Reserve was originally drafted as the Aldrich bill, but when it came into Congress, they recognized Senator Aldrich’s name and smelled a rat. The bankers needed better cover. They decided to send two millionaire friends to carry the bill to quell the suspicions of Congress and renamed it The Federal Reserve Act. Next in this textbook lesson of deceit the bankers set out to fool the American people through disinformation.

In the newspapers of the day the bankers screamed and protested against the new Federal Reserve bill. It would ruin the banks! they exclaimed. The average person read the protesting articles of the bankers and thought to themselves:

If the bankers hate it, it must be good and then they ended up unknowingly supporting a Trojan horse. The bankers also fooled Congress by putting clauses in the bill that limited their power only to remove them once the bill was passed.

A double head fake of the public and Congress - was all it took. The bill was passed on December 23rd 1913 while most of Congress was out on holiday. And with that, a small group had complete monopoly over the issuing and creation of American money. Today the Federal Reserve is the most powerful entity in the United States and they’re not ashamed to admit it either. Here is former Fed Chairman, Alan Greenspan. What should be the proper relationship between the chairman of the Fed and a President of the United States?

Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency and that means basically that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take. What the relationships are don’t frankly matter. In addition to this, it seems that the Fed can’t even be touched by investigating parties. So I’m asking you if your agency has in fact, according to Bloomberg, extended nine trillion dollars in credit, which, by the way, works out to 30,000 dollars to every single man woman and child in this country. I’d like to know: if you’re not responsible for investigating that, who is?

We actually have responsibility for the Federal Reserve’s programs and operations to conduct audits and investigations in that area. In terms of who’s responsible for investigating ...Would you mind repeating the question one more time?

Mr. Chairman my time is up, but I have to tell you honestly I am shocked to find out that nobody at the Federal Reserve, including Inspector General is keeping track of this. So what does all of this have to do with me? you might be asking.

I don’t even live in the US Well, two reasons. Number one: the central banking model from the Bank of England and the United States has now been put in all countries and even consolidated power in parts of Europe as the European Central Bank or ECB This unites separate countries under one economic policy. The only places in the world that don’t have central banks are North Korea, Iran and Cuba. In 2000 this list suspiciously included Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. And number two: since the end of World War II, the US dollar has been the reserve currency of the world.

This means that all central banks hold US dollars in their reserves. In other words all other currencies are backed by the US dollar. This directly links to your country to the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy in America. More on this later. When the post- World War II monetary system, called the Bretton Woods system, was created, all US dollars were backed by and exchangeable for gold. A byproduct of this was that currencies used to be very stable in relation to each other. For that, all the countries, the exchange rates were fixed and year after year you could predict what prices were going to be. You could start a business elsewhere, you could calculate profits, business was much easier before floating exchange rates. Unfortunately, in 1971, due to a falling US dollar, international capital flows into gold and the funding of the Vietnam War, President Nixon took the US dollar off the gold standard.

I have directed secretary Connelly to suspend temporarily the convertibility of the dollar into gold or other reserve assets. Now the dollar was floating and backed by nothing and has been ever since. So let’s think a little: if the US dollar is backed by nothing but the world reserves are backed by the US dollar intrinsically since 1971, doesn’t this mean that all currencies are now backed by nothing tangible, only trust in the American government? Well, this is correct! Money backed by nothing is known as fiat currency. Fiat in Latin means let it be done. In other words, the government says it is money, so it is. A consequence to having money backed by nothing is that whenever the Federal Reserve creates money it dilutes the currency supply of all other nations because their reserves are backed by the US dollar.

All countries reserves are worth less each time money is created. In the past few years the Federal Reserve has printed trillions of dollars and countries like Russia and China have noticed this. As a reaction to the money printing, these countries have been selling US dollar reserves and buying gold over the same period. But wait a second!

Some of you clever thinkers out there may have asked yourselves: If every currency on Earth is backed by nothing, how am i able to pay for things? Well, as it turns out, the whole economic system today is running because it is backed by faith. Faith that you can exchange your unit of currency for goods or services. In a way, part of that faith comes from the fact that not many people actually know where money comes from. Were about to find that out in this video. A central bank is essentially the entity that manages a nation’s money supply and it can loan money to the government with interest. In the United States and most other countries it works like this:

When the government needs more money than they received from taxes they ask the Treasury Department for money. The Treasury then receives an IOU or bond from the government. The Treasury, through the banks, gives this IOU to the Federal Reserve. The Fed then writes a check for this IOU and hands it to the banks. At this exchange at the banks, money is created and it can be used to pay government bills. So hang on! Where does the Fed get the money to be able to write this check?

They get this money from nowhere! They literally just invent it. Here’s a quote from the Boston Federal Reserve: When you or I write a check there must be sufficient funds in our account to cover the check. But when the Federal Reserve writes a check, there is no bank deposit on which that check is drawn. When the Federal Reserve writes a check, it is creating money. So, in essence, they’re writing a check and creating money from an account that has no money in it. The money the Federal Reserve creates can be used as legal tender to buy things and eventually makes its way into the real economy. If you and I did that, we would go to jail for fraud, but they can do it because they invented the system. This is the same system used throughout the world today Another part of this money creation happens at the commercial bank side. Every time you take out a loan to buy a house, car or TV, banks create money out of nowhere to give you this loan and you still have to pay interest on it.

And don’t just believe me when I say that. Hear it for yourself from the horse’s mouth, the people running the system, Graham Towers, former governor of the Central Bank of Canada states: Each and every time a bank makes a loan, new credit is created. New deposits. Brand new money. Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England: Banks extend credit by simply increasing the borrowing customers current account. So what they’re basically saying is that each time the bank makes a loan, the bank doesn’t use other peoples deposited money and give it to you. It creates new money. In modern times this means typing digits into a computer. 97% of all money is digitally created like this. Only 3% is the physical cash and coins that we carry. Another crazy thing that commercial banks can do is lend out 10 times more money than they actually have in reserves. This is called fractional reserve lending. So who wrote this ridiculous system into law?

For the United States, it was part of the Federal Reserve System drafted in 1913. And again, this is the same system used throughout the world. So what’s the issue? Why should I even care? Well there’s consequences. When more loans are given out more money is created and the rest of the money in circulation is worth less and less as the years go on. This is known as inflation. In a way, inflation is basically a tax that we all pay for the fraud of money printing. Easy money now in exchange for tax on our future generations.

It’s also why in 1950 a house used to cost $7,000 and a car $2000. Obviously, this is no longer the same today. Things will always keep getting more expensive as long as this system is in place. This was actually kind of OK because wages grew in relation to inflation until about 2008. Why this stopped happening is a story for another day. So things are already pretty crazy, but they get even crazier. The more you look into it, the stranger things become. So remember we were talking about how central banks and commercial banks can create money out of nothing . This procedure actually does create something. It creates debt. Let me explain: When you take out a loan, its written down as an asset in the bank as a negative form, kind of like a negative value of money, or otherwise known as debt.

Under this system, debt is actually money. And again, don’t just listen to me. Mariner Ecclesia, former Governor of the Federal Reserve states: If there are no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money. So, in essence, instead of gold being the backbone of our economy, it is now debt. The system were under now is sometimes referred to as the debt based monetary system. It requires that debt always grows. Countries and people must become deeper in debt so that there’s more money in the system, because, remember, debt is money. If people and governments stopped borrowing money and paper clones, the debt doesn’t grow, the money supply shrinks and the system falters. It truly is bizarre, but we all live in this system each and every day.

The Federal Reserve and other central banks control money by adjusting its supply and how much it costs to borrow money, otherwise known as the interest rate. With these tools and as a consequence of human group psychology, central banks create booms and busts in the economy at will and also to stall and derail an economy by messing with it. Let’s take a quick case study. In the year 2000, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cut interest rates to 1%. He did this to try and fight off the recession from the dot-com bubble and encourage people to borrow money.

When interest rates are low, if you’re borrowing money you save a whole lot on repaying mortgages. Since the 1% interest rate hadn’t been seen at the time since the 1950s it was a pretty good deal. Green spans idea was that he could create a wealth effect. People would start to buy houses, the prices would go up and the people would feel wealthier and spend more money in the economy and stimulated. Green spans sure succeeded in getting people to borrow money to buy houses.

But they borrowed too much and the results was the 2008 housing bubble. This is a prime example of what can go wrong when central banks mess with an economy. Yes, corrupt bankers have a lot to answer for on their role in the 2008 crisis. But the Fed has a far bigger long-term impact. Even crazier things are happening in Japan. Their central bank is buying so many stocks that they were the number one buyer of Japanese stocks in 2016 so they have part ownership of companies with money that they created from nothing. So, in essence, it is the central banks that control our economy and the central and commercial banking system together that control all of our money. The difference is central banks can create money at will while commercial banks need loans to create money. To give you an idea of people’s views of central banking when people actually knew what central banks were, here’s a couple of examples.

In 1881 then, President of the United States, James Garfield states: Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce and when you realize that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate. Benjamin Franklin, in his autobiography, stated that the prime reason for the American War of Independence was a battle over who actually controlled and issued the money of the new colonies. Moving on to more modern times, Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman states: The Federal Reserve definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.

So, with all this being said, some would argue that central banks are not inherently a bad thing. They just need to be part of the government and not privately-owned. The government should be able to issue its own money for the benefit of the people and shouldn’t have to pay a massive interest on its own debt. This was tried at least once in the United States by President Lincoln. He stated this:

The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credit needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Abraham Lincoln then issued his own government money. It was called the greenback. No further comments on that story. So I think well end the video there. There’s so much more that I could cover about what central banking decisions led to what revolutions around the world. Pretty much when you look at it, all revolutions and all wars, when you dig through everything,

it all boils down to money. I could also have talked about the new global movement of those who are rejecting the debt based economic system.

People are starting to move their currency into gold, silver and crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That’s a whole another story for another day. Anyways, if you’ve watched the whole way through this video, congratulations! You’re one of the few who have found out the hidden truths about who controls all of our money. I think I’ve only met about four people in real life that have been aware of the debt-based economic system.

Its strangely unknown, but it’s as true as anything. I haven’t showed you all the quotes of the bankers and the former heads of the Federal Reserve telling you from their own mouths how the system actually works. If this is your first time hearing all of this, I encourage you, as I said before, to do your own research and then you’ll start to see the bigger picture and the world today will make a whole lot more sense. If you want some good starting resources, I recommend Mike Maloney’s Hidden Secrets of Money series.

It’s here on YouTube and I’ll leave a link below. Mike is a very knowledgeable guy and I’ve had some great long conversations with him about the economy. If you’re into reading and you want to know more about the history of the Federal Reserve, I recommend the book by G. Edward Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island. So anyway, I think I’ll stop talking now.

From Proconsul to Homo heidelbergensis

Rise And Fall Of Subway

2021-02-15T03:05:00.003-08:00

With thousands of store closures in the last three years and petitions against Subway from its franchise owners, the fast-food chain with the most locations globally seems to be on the rocks. We unpack what's going on and where Subway's headed from here.

With more than 42,000 restaurants in over 100 countries, Subway has the most locations of any fast-food chain on the planet. And at first, that sounds like a sign of a thriving sub giant.

However, Subway is anything but. Subways closed thousands of stores in the last three years and saw a 25% fall in business from 2012 to 2017. So what happened?

The chain began as Petes Super Submarines in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1965. Three years later, cofounders Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck rebranded it to simply Subway. Announcer: Subways famous giant foot-long sandwiches are made right before your eyes, the way you want em. Len Van Pope ring: What was so compelling then and still is today about Subway is really an open-kitchen format. In many ways, they really pioneered that and the ability to customize your sandwich

Narrator: The brand redefined fast food with fresh ingredients that customers could see. Compared to other fast-food chains at the time, it felt healthy. And it worked. By 1981, there were 200 locations across the US, and soon after, Subway went international. Joel Libava: In the late 70s, and in the 80s, and in the 90s, everyone knew about Subway. I mean, they were everywhere. They’re still everywhere.

Narrator: That’s Joel Libava, an expert in franchising. While each store looks and smells the same, they’re all independently owned franchises.

Libava: The format is pretty simple. You buy a franchise, you get trained, they help you secure a location. They help with a grand opening, and you’re open. You’re open for business. Follow the several-hundred-page operating manual, do the advertising, and customers will come in.

Narrator: Not only were Subway franchises successful, they were, and still are, one of the cheapest chains to franchise. It costs between $116,000 and $263,000 to open a Subway franchise. Compare that to opening a McDonalds, which costs up to $2.2 million. Because Subways were easy to open, the number of stores skyrocketed. Between 1990 and 1998, store locations rose from 5,000 to 13,200. And in that same period of time, gross sales rose by about $2.1 billion. Subways success continued into the early 2000s. At a time when obesity was rising rapidly in America, Subway continued to market itself as a healthy alternative to fast food.

Kate Taylor: One of their biggest successes for sure was the Jared Fogle story. Everyone remembers those ads, where its him in those huge pants where he’s showing how he lost all of this weight. And that just made them so much money, and it really made people think about Subway as a really great health brand. It was one of the biggest advertising wins that any chains had in recent decades. So that was a huge, huge part of their brand.

Narrator: Subway carried Fogles success story for nearly a decade. But by 2008, the world was suffering from the effects of the Great Recession. And for many Americans, hunting for deals replaced the obsession with weight loss. So Subway changed up its message. In March 2008, it introduced a new promotion that would come to define the chain.

Narrator: By August 2009, as other restaurant chains were struggling through the Recession, the $5 foot long had pulled in $3.8 billion in sales for Subway, a 17% jump in US sales from the year before. But even the best deals run their course.

Narrator: Starting in 2014, Subways sales began steadily dropping. Behind the scenes, many of the reasons for Subways success had turned on them. Quiznos was once Subways main competition, but tons of sub chains, like Jimmy Johns, Firehouse, Potbelly, and Jersey Mikes, and fast-casual chains like Panera, we’re offering seemingly fresher and healthier options. And they started stealing market share.

Taylor: They were competing against people who bring in fresh produce every day. A lot of Subway locations only bring in fresh produce once or twice a week.

Narrator: On top of that, fast-food chains that had been around as long as Subway we’re coming up with healthy alternatives of their own and getting creative with new menus.

Taylor: More and more fast-food chains really want to have that innovation pipeline where they’re bringing something out new almost every month. Fast-food places are looking for ways to bring in new customers, drive traffic, and Subway has not tried to do that in the same way other places have.

Narrator: But other fast-food chains weren’t the only competition for Subway franchises. With Subways franchising model making it so easy to open locations, stores inevitably started opening up around the corner from each other in lucrative markets. Take downtown Manhattan, for example. Within a 15-minute walk in less than half a square mile, there are 10 Subway locations. And these locations in close proximity began cannibalizing each other’s sales.

Libava: The Subway franchise agreement, the contract, it says they can open anywhere. There is no protected territory. So franchisees really have no say-so in where the other franchisees are going to open. It’s a problem.

Narrator: And Subway corporate wasn’t stopping it, because the company benefited from a high number of locations. More locations meant more franchising fees and high royalties to Subway corporate, which diminished the effect of falling sales from a single location.

Taylor: When franchisees sales are kind of slipping, as long as they’re staying open, it doesn’t necessarily hurt Subway as much as it would some other chains. If everyone’s kind of, like, chugging along, like, opening new locations, then they can kind of keep on keeping on, and it’s not gonna be the end of the world for the corporate office.

Narrator: Franchise owners, on the other hand, took the hit. In 2012, each Subway franchise generated an average of $482,000 a year. Four years later, that number had slipped to $422,000 a year. For comparison, the average annual revenue of a McDonalds franchise in 2016 was $2.6 million. And to make matters worse,

Subway would lose the face of its company. In 2015, the man who had embodied Subway seat fresh mission was charged with possession of child pornography and having sex with minors. Subway cut ties with Fogle, and he was sentenced to 15 1/2 years in federal prison.

Taylor: And the Jared Fogle thing kind of basically went from a huge positive to huge liability. Like, the worst things possible that your brand could be associated with.

Narrator: All of these things created the perfect storm for Subway. And soon, locations started to close. In 2016, Subway closed 359 stores in the US. It was the first year the chain closed more locations than it opened. In 2017, that number was over 800, and by the end of 2018, over 1,000 locations had closed. With all these sour ingredients, it’s hard to imagine Subway could bounce back. But the chain is certainly trying. In 2017, Subway launched its Fresh Forward program,

starting with remodeled stores. The revamped locations featured new menu boards, WiFi, USB ports, updated furniture, and music.

Libava: I will give Subway credit. They’re doing something interesting. They are offering grants where, if a franchisee applies and everything’s in line, they can get up to $10,000 towards remodeling.

Narrator: By the end of 2020, over 10,000 locations will have this new restaurant design. But Subway says food is its next priority, and its backing it up with an $80 million investment in updated menu items. Subways partnered with the media company Taste made to develop hundreds of new menu ideas, like the Green Goddess Tuna Melt and the Southern Style French Dip.

In 2018, the chain introduced its cheesy garlic bread, its most successful promotion in the last five years. And in 2019, a line of ciabatta sandwiches and Halo Top milkshakes hit stores. Van Pope ring: Historically, Subway would evaluate

about six or seven new menu items per month, but we’ve set up a process and invested in capabilities where were literally testing at least 100 new menu items every month.

Narrator: As for whether or not all these menu items and revamped designs will stop shuttering stores and dropping business, only time will tell.

Taylor: They need to figure out who they want their customer to be. I think it’s really an uphill battle for them. But if they kind of go back to the basics, think about what people want, ask people what they want and think about it a little bit more innovation, that’s kind of going to be a good start for them.

From Proconsul to Homo heidelbergensis

2021-02-15T02:52:00.004-08:00

For Millions of years, our planet has been floating in space. Millions of creatures have lived on its surface. Many a quaint being was among them, but they affected only our, human imagination, for in the evolutionary struggle we are the only ones who have obtained the advantage of reason. Reaching it was far from easy. Its origin dates back twenty million years to those fruit-eating creatures that lived in African trees called Proconsuls. They romped about in trees, far above terrestrial dangers, feeding on fruit and leaves. Depending on the species, they varied in size from the marmoset to the gorilla. They hardly cared about the world below. Proconsuls climbed about the branches on all fours and almost exactly resembled the modern-day macaque.

Their upper and lower limbs were the same size. They moved leaning on open palms instead of bended fingers. Quite a few fossils of Proconsuls have been found in East Africa. The skull was primitive; the brain small and rather simple, yet the comparatively small size of their muzzle and canine teeth suggests non-aggressiveness – one of the major features that led to reason. But 10 million years ago, a drop in temperature made the African jungle sparse, which rendered it impossible to move from tree to tree via branches. Forced to leave the trees, the descendant of Proconsul – Ardipithecus – began moving on their rear limbs. Their feet were still prehensile, but with special arches that allowed bipedalism.

The nearly complete skeleton of an Ardipithecus named Audi proves that these creatures were able to walk, albeit not as easily as we do.

The arms of Ardipithecus were knee-length, and the hands were half human and half apelike. The first steps were taken to climb the next tree. Ardipithecus didn’t want to leave tree crowns, their habitual homes. They were indeed the intermediate between humans and apes, as all of Audi’s features mediate entirely apelike and entirely human features. But life moved on. Trees became sparse and Africa turned into a boundless savanna. 4 million years ago new creatures paced in the savanna – grackle austral piths. They were well adjusted to their new home: their way of walking on two legs was not so different from ours. They gathered and ate everything and were able to walk miles on end. They formed cohesive groups which allowed them to repel any danger.

Moreover, they were curious. Their skull was still apelike: with an obtrusive muzzle, and receding forehead. At first glance it is hard to detect our features, but the head was held on the upright neck, the canine teeth got smaller and the brain bigger. 3 million years ago Australopithecus afarensis of East Africa evolved into the first humans. 2.5 million years ago our ancestors crossed the Rubicon of brain size – 700 grams. The first representative of our genus – Homo habilis (‘handy man’). He got his name for a reason – it was Homo habilis who was the first to make stone tools. These primitive choppers made from pebble with a few blows were still real tools for carving meat, whittling wood, defending from predators and killing prey. Man was now armed.

Life in the trees was left for good and the savanna promoted forward movement. Perhaps, our love for travel and exploration dates back to those times. The world was perilous, but intelligence made it possible to overcome difficulties.

It was not power or aggression but intelligence that protected the first humans. The skull of Homo habilis is very much like that of Australopithecus, yet the brain size was 600-800 grams now, one and a half times as much as its predecessor’s. The face became smaller. Around 1.5 million years ago a new species appeared – Homo ergaster (‘working man’).

They became the terror of the African savanna. Spears and stone tools were an unprecedented phenomenon. Even the fiercest animals weren’t safe from harm now. Man became a hunter. Skeletons of antelopes and even elephants surrounded by stone tools have been found in East Africa. Cut marks on animal bones are visible evidence of a new stage of our evolution. Possibly, this is around the same time humans first discovered fire, albeit the evidence of that is rare and unreliable. Quite a few fossils of the first humans have remained in East Africa.

The apelike legacy in the skull was now in the past, but their jaws were still large and their brains twice as small as ours. Their height and build were exactly like that of modern humans’, their bodies, except for their heads, were hardly any different from ours.

They settled all over Africa and were the first to move beyond. The last step was to colonize the planet. So they took that step and the vast expanses of the planet were conquered by new masters. Not right away, though. The planet didn’t give man a hearty welcome. Nature should not be underestimated. At all times, life was no bed of roses.

Human remains with marks of predators’ teeth bear witness to that. Yet it was hardship that engendered and fostered reason. Homo heidelbergensis were the first prehistoric humans whose brain size was equal to what we have now.

Although their faces were still savage, their eyes shone with the renewed light of reason. They built shelters, buried their dead and created the first objects of art, crude as they were. Man has gone through a long and difficult path of evolution. What does the future have in store? Reason makes us responsible for ourselves. Now, Everything depends on us.

Limitless Energy & the Pyramids of Egypt

Limitless Energy & the Pyramids of Egypt

2021-02-15T02:45:00.001-08:00

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Tesla held over 300 patents and is responsible for inventing the laser, x-ray, radio, Tesla coil, Tesla turbine, neon signs, induction motor, remote control and many more. Tesla was a brilliant mind, but did not focus his energy on monetizing his inventions and had difficulty socializing. He died alone in a small hotel in New York.

The Great Pyramid of Giza (also known as the Pyramid of Khufu or the Pyramid of Cheops) is the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex bordering present-day El Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact. Correction: In the video I draw a line pointing to the middle pyramid as The Great Pyramid. The Great Pyramid is actually the northern most pyramid of the 3.

The Egyptian pyramids are without a doubt the most mysterious structures on planet Earth We do not know when they were built how they were built who built them and most importantly why they were built the Great Pyramid weighs nearly six million tonnes and consists of 2.3 million stones that are cut and fit together with laser precision Many of these massive stones which weigh as much as 80 tons had to be transported from vast distances of more than 500 miles away. For thousands of years it stood as the tallest unnatural structure in the world. Certainly, there must have been a good reason to go to all this trouble to construct such a wondrous monument And we now know that it certainly was not a tomb Nikola Tesla who is perhaps the greatest inventor of all time had a particular infatuation with the pyramids.

He believed they served a higher purpose and throughout his career. He attempted to unravel their mystery his idea has been dismissed and forgotten over the last century but considering that Tesla is directly responsible for 80% of the technology we use today. Perhaps we should view his theories with the more open mind. Today’s episode is a brilliant showcase from the original Gaia series ancient civilizations. We chose this episode because it opens the gate to new possibilities and new perspectives surrounding the pyramids. We ask you to suspend your disbelief and take a journey down the rabbit hole through this insightful presentation.

In 1905 physics genius Nikola Tesla submitted his US patent 78741 - which was titled the art of transmitting electrical energy through the natural medium. It included designs for a series of worldwide generators Tesla realized that the ionosphere was sparkling with electrical energy which could easily be tapped. Planet Earth according to Tesla was a gigantic electrical. Generator spinning around two magnetic poles from which limitless energy can be harnessed using the right medium or shape his device was later referred to as Teslas.

Electromagnetic pyramid based on his design looking like a triangle shape Tussle a tapping into the actual shape of the pyramid. I believe was something that that just came round about through his. Investigation into the location of the pyramids because what appears to have happened was that he realized that it wasn’t. The actual shape of the pyramid so much although pyramids. Exhibit fractal energy much more efficiently than other types of designs but what he discovered was it was the location of the pyramids that created the power and when he bent he built his facility here in Colorado Springs and.

Then on the east coast he did so according to the laws of where the Pyramids at Giza. Were constructed and it had to do with the elliptical orbit of the earth and on those sites relationship to the actual equator that there was an actual construction somehow taking place between those very specific sites and the overall energy field of the earth and. Because of that he believed he could transmit power wirelessly Teslas discovery and device disappeared after his mysterious death in 1943. But what he was trying to tap into might have just scratched the surface of understanding.

The power of something much more ancient. According to Nikola Tesla 369 is a key to a universe Tesla became so obsessed with his 369 that he would drive around a building three times before going inside of it. He cleaned his plates with 18 napkins lived in hotel rooms only with the number divisible by three he made calculations about things in their immediate environment just to make sure the result was conceivable by three and he based his choices on the results. He did everything in sets of three. What is Nikola Tesla trying to make us understand?

We must understand that we did not create mathematics. We discovered them. It is the universal language and law no matter where in the universe you are. One plus two will always equal three. Everything in the universe obeys this law. These forms are in nature, but the ancients emulated these forms in construction. If Nikola Teslas obsession was with these numbers and his goal was to define his location and time in space. Could it be possible that ancient humans created monuments like the great pyramids to remind us of these truths in?

Sumerian tradition and in the surviving texts, there is a very strong and intriguing reference to what are called the seven antediluvian. Sages the seven sages who came before the flood and their leader is a figure called. Hannes we find that he is Depicted as a man, but curiously he’s wearing a sort of fish garb or a fish costume Archaeologists often refer to him as a fish garbed figure and the other seven sages are also dressed in this fish costume So you see the legs of a human being and the face and features a bearded human being but then he’s wearing on his head The head of a fish and the body of a fish hangs down his back. It’s a very is a very curious idea. Really?

And he and all of them hold in their a curious little bag Which I tend to refer to as a man bag. I see them as a kind of badge over office a Recognizable symbol where perhaps members of a Brotherhood would be able to recognize one another by their carrying of the symbol It’s curious that we see it figure holding the same bag that we see on the Sumerian Reliefs and holding it in exactly the same way and not only that but those same bags Turn up on top of pillar 43 in enclosure D at gobekli tepe Where we know that there at least eleven thousand six hundred years old. The tradition is clearly rooted before the flood then comes the flood the cataclysm wipes everything out but that Brotherhood persists through the flood and After the flood they are again Offering the gifts of civilization to mankind Could Hannes and his sages have reemerged after the cataclysmic flood to teach the knowledge of the universe in?

Sumerian cuneiform Zenki is sometimes depicted as a bearded man wearing a fish costume and sometimes carrying a bag Interesting to note that in the Egyptian depictions of gods they are not holding a bag but an important symbol called the ankh The ankh depicts immortality and life. It is also connected with Isis and the planet Venus Could these carrying devices be transmitting the same kind of energy?

Anton parks research has traced the re-emergence of Enki to egypt and as a byproduct of his death the building of the Great Pyramid Yummy japones, I declare poor warfare in my view the Great Pyramid was built by Isis I believe it was created to reincarnate Osiris and Horus It is quite complicated Though Syrian the so-called aquatic temple dedicated to Osiris in Abydos a Jew an Egyptian means it is located in the city, which is According to Egyptian history the first city of Osiris yet to be able to find seashells on a temple Located in the middle of the desert. You have to go back thousands of years at least ten thousand years Why would he have made such a temple with aquatic features?

Because of Cyrus who is also inky. They’re the same person had amphibian genes Osiris inky was killed by his nemesis set who is in fact an allele during one of their many battles It took place in Abydos Which also corresponds to the Sumerian OPSEU where Osiris is aquatic temple can be found The texts clearly state that all of those Cyrus servants were slaughtered during a battle as well as Osiris himself Who was crucified on a tree this is how he died?

Isis is quite a character She can’t really be found in a Mesopotamian literature. Although she could be considered the goddess. She is the woman who lives in the great deep underground. I Think that these underground passageways could correspond to the ones we can find under the Giza Plateau We know that the Giza Plateau is full of underground passages.

I believe that the clan of Osiris lived there As far as the resurrection of Osiris and Horus is concerned Isis organizes it the texts are very clear about that And we understand that she used Osiris genetic code to create Horus She created the Great Pyramid in order to accomplish this task The Great Pyramid allowed Isis to find Osiris his soul again We don’t really know how but she would have put horses genetic code in the pyramid She would have been able to create another body using Osiris his genetic code the so called UF in Egyptian, buddy And thanks to the coding of the Great Pyramid. She reached Osiris his soul so it could come into the new body of Horus.

Although the dating of the Great Pyramid has been argued by different scientists There is evidence that below the monument something existed there. That was much older When we look at the Great Pyramid the second pyramid third pyramid, there’s no doubt in my mind that they were being Reused should we say partially?

Reconstructed built upon during dynastic times just like this Finks itself was being repaired during dynastic times But I’m also convinced that at least the core of those pyramids particularly the Great Pyramid and the second pyramid goes back to a much earlier period so for instance The Great Pyramid is actually built on what I would call a sacred mound and this is acknowledged even by the Egyptologist Now they say it all goes back to the Fourth Dynasty. Circa You know 26-point 500 BC but my analysis is that at least the core?

The original portions for instance of descending passage the subterranean chamber Go back to a much earlier period then it was built over and I think some of that building over it goes back to prior to dynastic times could this be proof of the clan of Osiris and their knowledge and Could this group have harnessed the powers of the universe to bring back a God?

Some experts point to the fact that the Great Pyramid itself has always been connected with the afterlife What you’ll find inside those pyramids is acres and acres and acres of texts deeply inscribed into the walls They belong to the same vast body of literature to which belongs the famous ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead When the ultimate moment In your journey through the do art is your entry into the judgment Hall of Osiris the Hall of Martin where you will be asked To account for everything they that you’ve done with your life so it seems to me very clear that that the Great Pyramid is part of a an attempt to create a three-dimensional model of the afterlife realm If the ancient texts from both Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian books suggest the Great Pyramid as a place to resurrect the dead Could there be another hidden message?

There is an ancient code to be found within the Great Pyramid. It’s within the Geometry not just of the pyramid itself But its relationship to the other two main pyramids of the Giza Plateau Having studied this for a number of years It seems to be related very much to do with the idea of the music of the spheres the idea that there is some kind of connection between the primal tones of the universe itself and their relationship to the creation of form and structure in the physical world and That to somehow attune and enhance this connection that certain proportions have to be constructed into the design of the pyramid and also the Geometry of the landscape itself and these think to reflect the musical intervals in particular Those which are known as the perfect fourth Which has a ratio of 4:3 and those known as the perfect fifth as a ratio of 3 to 2 One of which is an inverse form of the other If the Great Pyramid is indeed a construction to harmonize creation Wherein lies the code to such a great power Many people don’t know this but in fact, it’s a lot of foresight that a bit It has a very slight concavity on each side Making it an eight sided pen without the minute to do this. We not only complicate the design Tremendously, but it produces another bizarre geometry so This geometry when we analyze it produces numbers keep popping out Numbers that shouldn’t be there things like a universal constant that has been gone for over a hundred years.

Defy constant the golden ratio, but we have now strange numbers like Eulers number coming up in the design Could this geometry produce a message? the Great Pyramid is situated within a whisker of latitude 30 it seems like that the latitude choice was derived from Astronomy.

Because there’s a lens effect of the atmosphere of the earth and when you take that into account the tiny error Shy of latitude 30 goes away They were on astronomical latitude 30 if you like seems like a very deliberate choice because it’s not a random latitude It’s one third of the way between the equator and the North Pole This is just one of the many ways I feel in which the Great Pyramid deliberately and purposively Speaks to our planet the next way it does that.

Is that it is aligned? but if you take upon yourself the project of building a pyramid and aligning it to true north south east and west You wouldn’t make any error at all There is an error in the Great Pyramid. Its tiny its three sixtieths of a single degree of true north This is almost eerie precision because the scale of the monument is so huge this thing is 481 feet high it has a footprint of 13 slightly more than 13 acres it weighs.

Six million tons, it consists of two and a half million individual blocks of stone You’re taking that whole gigantic mountain of stone and you are aligning it within just 360th of a single degree of true north We’re not talking about magnetic north which varies were talking about astronomical north the true north of this planet It’s a very remarkable thing and that’s the north of this planet. Once again, the Great Pyramid is speaking to the earth Could the pyramid be revealing something else about our planet? Then you find something else as you go deeper Start measuring the Great Pyramid measure it very precisely measure its base perimeter and then measure its height and Scale those numbers up What you find is that at a scale of one to? forty three thousand two hundred and I’ll explain why that’s not a random scale in a moment on a scale of one to 43,200.

The dimensions of the pyramid give you the dimensions of this planet in other words if you measure the base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply it by forty three thousand two hundred you get the equatorial circumference of the earth And if you measure the height of the Great Pyramid and multiply it by forty three thousand two hundred You get the polar radius of the earth So in all those centuries of millennia when our ancestors went through the dark ages and didn’t even know that They were living on a planet let alone the dimensions of the planet All they ever had to do Was go accurately measure the Great Pyramid multiply those numbers by forty three thousand two hundred and they have the dimensions of our planet Could this be the evidence to suggest that Ancient places like the Great Pyramid are here to always show us our place in the stars Egyptologists are aware of this but they say it’s a total coincidence No significance to it whatsoever. As far as Egypt colleges are concerned and you know if the scale were something different if it were one to 57,000 or 1 to 42,000 even they could be right The reason they’re not right is that the scale is not random.

The scale is defined by a key motion of the earth itself Our earth as well as spinning on its own axis has a wobble on its axis that’s called precession Rather the effect that you get have you set a spinning top spinning As it begins to slow down it begins to wobble and the top of the top begins to transcribe a circle the earth does that If you take the extended North Pole of the earth and extend it out into the heavens You’ll find that today in our time.

Its pointing at a star we called Polaris That’s our pole star But it hasn’t always pointed at Polaris and it won’t always point at Polaris in the future Sometimes it point at empty space. Sometimes it pointed and will point at other stars There was a time when sub an in Draco was the pole star That’s because of the processional wobble on the Earth’s axis the extended North Pole of the earth isn’t always pointing at the same place over a cycle of 25,920 years it’s doing that that’s why the pole star change at the same time on the horizon and We know that ancient cultures had a great interest in particular moments of the year particularly the equinoxes When night and day are of equal length.

It was an obsession of ancient cultures. What was the constellation that lay in the place on the horizon? Where the Sun rose on the spring equinox, what was the constellation that housed the Sun? This is familiar language in astrology Was the constellation that housed the Sun on the spring equinox in our epoch. It’s the constellation of Pisces we live in the Age of Pisces near the end of it as a matter of It’s not an accident that the early Christians.

Used the fish as their symbol because Christianity began at very near the beginning of the Age of Pisces each one of these zodiacal ages lasts for 2160 years and then the Sun transits out of on the equinoxes transits out of one constellation and into another so we Indeed do live in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius Because of the processional motion of the earth because of this change this wobble on the Earth’s axis the constellation that houses the Sun on the equinoxes shifting out of Pisces and into Aquarius that shift will be complete within the next hundred or 150 years what we have here is a process that operates at the rate of one degree every 72 years.

We allocate 30 degrees to each of the 12 constellations of the zodiac Multiplied 72 by 30 and you get 2,000 160. That’s as a rhetorical age Take the whole cycle of the zodiac the whole twelve constellations each with two thousand one hundred and sixty years Housing the Sun on the spring equinox and you get what the ancients called the great year when everything cycles back to the beginning and the whole process starts again, do you follow That’s twenty-five thousand nine hundred and twenty years It’s the heartbeat is one degree every 72 years.

It is defined by a key motion of our planet that number Forty-three thousand two hundred is a multiple of seventy-two Its directly related to that number and It’s not as though were confined to Giza and the Great Pyramid. Those numbers are found all over the world They’re found in ancient mythology Osiris after all was killed by Seth and his 72 Conspirators the number occurs in the ancient Egyptian texts, it occurs in the number of syllables in the Rig Veda In in India, it occurs in North myth Norse mythology. It’s found its found all around the world There’s an intense focus on this system of numbers.

So it can’t be an accident That the same system of numbers crops up in the Great Pyramid and that not only does the Great Pyramid Give us the dimensions of the earth, but that it does so on a scale defined by the earth itself That’s an incredibly clever piece of work that were that were looking at there Could the ancient builders have given us a monument to decode our human existence?

Interestingly enough. The numbers Tesla was obsessed with show up in the equations of the Great Pyramid The numbers Graham has concluded from his research on the pyramid are7243,2006,30 25,920 and 2160 and all of those numbers either equal 3 6 or 9 Then let’s give you one more example Let’s track east from Giza. Let’s go off to Cambodia to Angkor in Cambodia an amazing sight again Very much devoted to the investigation of the mystery of death The very word Angkor actually has a meaning in the ancient Egyptian language.

It means life to the Horus and Lo and behold it turns that at that Angkor with its pyramidal monuments and Cora lies exactly 72 degrees of longitude east of Giza. I do not believe that that is an accident or a coincidence I think there’s a deep and ancient connection and what we’re looking at in Angkor because that site was Continuously used by many later cultures both Hindu and Buddhist. What we’re looking at in Angkor is the latest incarnation Of a much more ancient site which just like Giza goes back into remote prehistory Could these precise calculations be spread across the globe and communicating a code?

Is it possible this is what Nikola Tesla tapped into Robert Bauval predicts this is the language of the future The way we read the universe is through mathematics and through its geometry through its mathematics and geometry. We need to know Slowly through our evolution. We begin to work out how triangles work circles ellipses Various shapes and now work out. The numbers have the produce numbers. So having said this the language that We as human beings will be communicating sounds a bit.

It sounds a bit too science fiction, but I don’t think we’d be talking English or Chinese in the next three centuries Already, were using a different language using computers. I think we’ll be talking about the Mattocks in the sense that to get a pure idea out to get a Pure thought out and to structure it so that you understand exactly What I’m talking about the shape the size that I mentioned the weights the speed I’ll have to number it and have to put mathematics.

The Great Pyramid is speaking the language. Its transmitting that language It’s a silent language. If you like that needs to be read. We don’t need a geologist. We don’t need experts in hieroglyphs It doesn’t have high rollers. We need mathematicians. Were mathematicians to read it And that’s one of the goals is to tempt them to get into this We’ve moved in a direction when we rely on external External knowledge. We seem to think that the answer is out there and we look for it.

Well, the answer may be inside us. I’ve truly believe this and therefore we need to re reach ange that how we See ourselves and how we educate ourselves. I think what’s interesting now is that This science is beginning to sort of touch the frontiers of what you would call in general turn spirituality We begin to realize that the universe is mental It is a mental universe and we need to think in different forms. Not just purely classical science If indeed the purpose of the Great Pyramid was to educate humans on our place in time and space Could it also be a device to help change our consciousness? I?

Have for a long while argued that the central concept of Certainly the pyramids of Egypt at night I think the case is true all over the world was to do with the transformation of human consciousness Whatever else the Great Pyramid is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt or whatever else it is It is for sure an instrument that works upon human consciousness Could the Great Pyramid be a monument that was built to withstand all catastrophes So that humanity could always have the codes to the universe Standing near the pyramid is another monument that has baffled experts for ages.

In the 1990s when I first starts dying the Sphinx what I determined is that it must go back to earlier climatic period when I initially Calibrate these I knew that had to be at least five to seven thousand BC since then I’ve continued my studies and I’m convinced at this point that we have to go back to at least around 10,000 BC Up next the code left behind by the Sphinx We hope you enjoyed this insightful presentation from Gaia After school subscribers can join Gaia and watch two complete seasons of ancient civilizations Absolutely free. Just click the link in the description but act fast this offer is only available for a limited time.

Cambodian Food ,Trapeang Thloeng Market Morning Scenes In Phnom Penh

2021-02-13T06:49:00.002-08:00

Cambodian Food Market Morning Scenes, Trapeang Thloeng Market Morning Scenes In Phnom Penh

Who needs love when you can eat all the chocolate in the world.

I feel like stripping whenever I see good food.

There is no love more sincere than my love for food.

If you’re hungry and you want thousands of something, then eat rice!

Who needs inspirational quotes when you can just drink coffee?

Most people eat to live. On the contrary, I live to eat.

Calories don’t count during the weekends.

There’s absolutely no need for me to go to the gym. The name of the cashier at the Mcdonald’s I frequent is Jim, so same thing!

I love Instagram because it allows me to maintain a record of every meal I partake.

Eating spaghetti requires so much attention. That’s why you can never feel lonely while eating it.

Take food as your medicine before you take medicine as your food.

If it’s made of chocolate, then I’m going to eat it!

First, we eat breakfast. Then, we change the world.

Good food is the foundation of happiness.

Food is always more satisfying after a day’s hard work.

Magic happens in the kitchen during lunch time and dinner time.

I have hunger management issues.

Amazing Tuol Tumpoung & Olympic Market Morning Scenes

2021-02-13T06:37:00.001-08:00

Amazing Phnom Penh Local Market Morning Scenes, Tuol Tumpoung & Olympic Market Morning Scenes

In the mood for noods.

Eat today, live another day.

I’m never giving up on chocolate! I’m not a quitter!

I am on a seafood diet. I see food, I eat it.

A day is best started on a full stomach.

Dine well and you’ll be able to think well, sleep well, and live well.

Cupcakes are muffins that are believed in miracles.

For some reason, food tastes better when it’s somebody’s treat.

Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti.

It’s not true that money can’t buy happiness. I mean, have you tried buying ice cream? It’s the same thing!

Dinner is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

There is no “we” in fries. Remember that!

There’s nothing more romantic than Italian food.

I’m on a 30-day diet. So far, I’ve lost 15 days.

Where there is good food, there is happiness.

Let’s eat some diet food while we wait for the steak to cook.

Amazing Phnom Penh Central Market Morning Scenes

Amazing Phnom Penh Central Market Morning Scenes

2021-02-13T06:29:00.002-08:00

Amazing Phnom Penh Central Market Morning Scenes, Cambodian Market Morning Scenes

I’d hate to lie on my deathbed and think: “I could have eaten that!”

One does not need silver cutlery to eat delectable food.

Food shared is happiness multiplied.

Eat, drink and live free. There’s no telling what might happen tomorrow.

Oh, did you say exercise? I thought you said extra fries!

It’s essential for every party to have cake. If there’s no cake, then it’s only a meeting.

9 out of 10 people love chocolate. And the 10th person is always lying.

The chief ingredient in yummy food is love.

There is no better reward for hard work than good food.

They told me to follow my heart. Guess where it led me? To the fridge.

When you immerse yourself in the culinary culture of Khmer

To live a full life, you have to fill your stomach first.

Carbs might be my soulmate.

All I want for Christmas is ... food.

Never eat more than you can lift.

The most essential part of a well-balanced diet is — food!

Dear diet, things just aren’t looking good for both of us. It’s not me, it’s you. You’re too much work. You’re boring and I can’t stop cheating on you.

Hunger is a good cook.

A little slice of heaven.

Good food never fail in bringing people together.

Eat right, exercise, die anyway.

Eating DELICIOUS Fresh Spring Rolls, Cambodian Street Food

2021-02-13T06:06:00.000-08:00

A Walk Through Prek Tauch Market, Eating DELICIOUS Fresh Spring Rolls, Cambodian Street Food

My Father was an engineer in the Army, before he was executed.

The three had their ankles chained together to a machine gun for the battle.

Soldiers of the camp were executed by the Khmer Rouge just after Phnom Penh fell.

My Mother told me do not tell others about our family background. I also pretended to be illiterate.

They killed him by throwing him into the well and dropping stones on him.

In 1975, my third Brother died as we did not have medicine or food. He was injured by a fish and got an infection.

If I could not do this, I would die, and my bones would be left in the nearby fields.

The Khmer Rouge cadre looked at her and told her harshly that they were all children of Angkar, and they could kill them anytime.

We all have to work to serve Angkar, be committed to Angkar, and to report our parents ’stories to Angkar.

We were skin and bones. I could only just stand up in the rice fields and tried hard not to fall down.

The village chief was sorry for the young children; he said that they were all probably going to die.

If the Khmer Rouge could see the photos of our family, we would have been killed by them.

I had serious diarrhea and bleeding, and I was left untreated because there was no medicine. I also had no food.

looked at them, and thought that they could not survive long, because they could not walk properly.

As I walked, I thought that if I met a wolf, I would climb a tree.

Ten families lived near my Mother. Everyone died.

People were forced to move dead bodies from the village, to bury them in the fields near the village.

Two medical doctor’s families were killed by the Khmer Rouge, because when their babies died, they ate them.

I decided not to tell Akeo that his Mother had passed away. I was afraid he would report me to the Khmer Rouge.

When you immerse yourself in the culinary culture of Khmer Street

2021-02-13T06:05:00.001-08:00

Cambodia Street Food- Find delightful and cheap street food of Cambodia. ... When you immerse yourself in the culinary culture of Khmer Street,

Then they took us to an area quite a distance from the camp, where the pond was to be dug.

Because of the hardship and suffering, the smell of dead bodies in the ponds was not really bad.

Khmer Rouge soldiers planted landmines after they left.

We stayed a month at the gas station, looking for food in the forest, trying not to step on landmines.

Most of the food was burnt by the Khmer Rouge before they had fled into the forest.

Six people in all were arrested and questioned. One was beaten until he died because he said ‘no’ to all questions.

One of the injured patients had a broken backbone, from which he would surely die as there was no specialized treatment available for him.

A boy boss stood up and asked a question. Who has collected more cow shit this morning?

A boy said to the class: we all have to report our parent’s stories to the organization.

My youngest Brother was about three years old. Mother placed his body in the rice field next to our village.

Eating DELICIOUS Fresh Spring Rolls, Cambodian Street Food

Nouvelle Cuisine, roughly translated, means: I can not believe I paid ninety-six dollars and I'm still hungry.

Mike Kalin

I always cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.

W.C. Fields

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

Oscar Wilde

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

Orson Welles

The Largest Star in the Universe

2021-02-13T02:04:00.002-08:00

What is the largest star in the universe and why is it that large? And what are stars anyway?

Things That Would Like To Be Stars We begin our journey with Earth. Not to learn anything, just to get a vague sense of scale. The smallest things that have some star-like properties are large gas giants, or sub-brown dwarfs. Like Jupiter, the most massive planet in the solar system. Eleven times larger and 317 times more massive than Earth, and more or less, made of the same stuff as our Sun. Just much, much less of it. The transition towards stars begins with brown dwarfs, failed stars, that are a huge disappointment to their moms. They have between 13 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter. So even if we took 90 Jupiter’s and threw them at each other, although fun to watch, it wouldn’t be enough to create a star. Interestingly, adding lots of mass to a brown dwarf doesn’t make it much bigger, just its insides denser.

This increases the pressure in the core enough to make certain nuclear fusion reactions happen slowly, and the object glow a little. So brown dwarfs are a sort of blowy gas giant, that don’t fit into any category very well. But we want to talk about stars, not failed wannabe stars, so let’s move on. Main Sequence Stars.

Once large gas balls pass a certain mass threshold, their cores become hot and dense enough to ignite. Hydrogen is fused to helium in their cores, releasing tremendous amounts of energy. Stars that do that are called main sequence stars.

The more massive a main sequence star is, the hotter and brighter it burns, and the shorter its life is. Once the hydrogen-burning phase is over stars grow up to hundreds of thousands of times their original size. But these giant phases only last for a fraction of their lifespan. So well be comparing stars at drastically different stages in their lives. This doesn’t make them less impressive, but maybe it’s good to keep in mind that well be comparing babies to adults. Now back to the beginning. The smallest real stars are red dwarfs.

About 100 times the mass of Jupiter; barely massive enough to fuse hydrogen to helium. Because they are not very massive they are small, not very hot, and shine pretty dimly. They are the only stars in the main sequence that don’t grow once they die but sort of fizzle out. Red dwarfs are by far the most abundant type in the universe. Because they burn their fuel so slowly, it lasts them up to ten trillion years - a thousand times the current age of the universe.

For example, one of the closest stars to Earth is a red dwarf star, Barnyards Star, but it shines too dimly to be seen without a telescope. We made a whole video on red dwarfs if you want to learn more. The next stage are stars like our Sun.

To say the Sun dominates the solar system is not doing it justice since it makes up 99.86% of all its mass. It burns far hotter and brighter than red dwarfs, which reduces its lifetime to about 10 billion years. The Sun is 7 times more massive than Barnyards Star, but that makes it nearly 300 times brighter with twice its surface temperature. Let’s go bigger!

Small changes in mass produce enormous changes in a main sequence stars brightness. The brightest star in the night sky, Sirius, is 2 solar masses with a radius 1.7 times that of the Sun, but its surface is nearly 10,000°C, making it shine 25 times brighter. Burning THAT hot reduces its total lifespan by 4 times to 2.5 billion years. Stars close to 10 times the mass of our sun have surface temperatures near 25,000°C. Beta Centauri contains two of these massive stars, each shining with about 20,000 times the power of the Sun. That’s a lot of power coming from something only 13 times larger, but they’ll only burn for about 20 million years. Entire generations of the blue stars die in the time it takes for the Sun to orbit the galaxy once. So is this the formula?

The more massive, the larger the star. The most massive star that we know is R136a1. It has 315 solar masses and is nearly 9 million times brighter than the Sun. And yet, despite its tremendous mass and power, its barely 30 times the size of the Sun!

The star is so extreme and barely held together by gravity that is loses 321 thousand billion tons of material through its stellar wind every single second. Stars of this sort are extremely rare because they break the rules of star formation a tiny bit. When supermassive stars are born they burn extremely hot and bright and this blows away any extra gas that could make them more massive. So the mass limit for such a star is around 150 times the Sun.

Stars like R136a1 are probably formed through the merger of several high mass stars in dense star-forming regions and burn their core hydrogen in only a few million years. So this means they are rare and short lived. From here the trick to going bigger isn’t adding more mass. To make the biggest stars we have to kill them. Red Giants When main sequence stars begin to exhaust the hydrogen in their core it contracts making it hotter and denser. This leads to hotter and faster fusion which pushes back against gravity and makes the outer layers swell in a giant phase. And these stars become truly giant indeed.

For example, GA crux. Only 30% more massive than the Sun, it has swollen to about 84 times its radius. Still, when the Sun enters the last stage of its life, it will swell and become even bigger; 200 times its current radius!

In this final phase of its life it will swallow the inner planets. And if you think THATS impressive let’s finally introduce the largest stars in the universe: Hyper giants

Hyper giants are the giant phase of the most massive stars in the universe. They have an enormous surface area that can radiate an insane amount of light. Being so large they’re basically blowing themselves apart as gravity at the surface is too weak to hold on to the hot mass which is lifted away in powerful stellar winds. Pistol Star is 25 solar masses but 300 times the radius of the sun; a blue hyper giant aptly named for its energetic blue starlight It’s hard to say exactly how long Pistol Star will live but probably just a few million years. Even larger than the blue hyper giants are the yellow hyper giants.

The most well studied is Rho Cassiopeia; a star so bright it can be seen with the naked eye although its thousands of light-years from Earth. At 40 solar masses, this star is around 500 times the radius of the Sun, and 500,000 times brighter.

If the Earth were as close to Rho Cassiopeia as it is to the Sun it’d be inside it and you would be very dead. Yellow hyper giants are very rare though. Only 15 are known. This means they’re likely just a short-lived intermediate state as a star grows or shrinks between other phases of hypergiantness. With red hyper giants we reach the largest stars known to us. Probably the largest stars even possible! So who’s the winner of this insane contest?

Well the truth is we don’t know. Red hyper giants are extremely bright and far away which means the even tiny uncertainties in our measurements can give us a huge margin of error for their size. Worse still are solar system sized behemoths that are blowing themselves apart which makes them harder to measure. As we do more science and our instruments improve whatever the largest star is will change. The star that is currently thought to be among the largest we’ve found is Stephenson 2-18. It was probably as a main sequence star a few tens of times the mass of the sun and has likely lost about half its mass by now. While typical red hyper giants are 1500 times the size of the Sun, the largest rough estimate places Stephenson 2-18 at 2150 solar radii, and shining with almost half a million times the power of the Sun!

By comparison the Sun seems like a grain of dust. Our brains don’t really have a way of grasping this kind of scale. Even at light speed it would take you 8.7 hours to travel around it once. The fastest plane on Earth would take around 500 years! Dropped on the Sun it would fill Saturn’s orbit!

As it evolves it would probably shed even more mass and shrink down into another hotter hyper giant phase, accumulate heavy elements in its core, before finally exploding in a core collapse supernova, giving its gas back to the galaxy.

This gas will then go on to form another generation of stars of all sizes. Starting the cycle of birth and death again to light up our universe. Let’s make this journey again but this time without the talking. The universe is BIG. There are many large things in it. If you want to play a bit more with size stuff we have good news!

We’ve crated our first app, Universe In A Nutshell, together with Tim Urban, the brain behind Wait But Why. You can seamlessly travel from the smallest things in existence, past the coronavirus, human cells and dinosaurs, all the way to the largest stars and galaxies, and marvel at the whole observable universe!

You can learn more about each object, or simply enjoy the sheer scale of it all. The app is inspired by the Scale Of The Universe website by the Huang twins, that we spent a lot of time with when it came out years ago, and felt that it was finally time to create a Wait But Why and Kurzgesagt version. You can get it in your app store, there are no in-app purchases, and no ads. All future updates are included. And since this is our first app we’d love to hear your feedback so we can improve it over time. If this sounds good to you download the Universe In A Nutshell app now and leave us a 5-star review if you want to support it.

The Man Who Knew Infinity & the Akashic Records

Who is Mona Lisa

2021-02-13T01:44:00.006-08:00

Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" is probably the world’s most famous painting. But whose portrait actually is it? There are two clues to the identity of the mysterious young woman, but they are mutually exclusive. Can the riddle ever be solved?

Every year, millions of visitors view the portrait exhibited in the legendary Louvre in Paris. But what makes the "Mona Lisa" so special? Who is hidden behind this smiling and yet sad face? Who was Leonardo's model? Or is she even the imaginary image of an ideal beauty? Experts have been wrestling with this question for centuries. There seems to be evidence for two explanations. Both variants have been handed down in writing, but they are not compatible.

The most recognized theory goes back to the biographer Giorgio Vasari. According to him, the portrait is of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant who had commissioned the work from Leonardo in 1503. But this is contradicted by a note of the chronicler Antonio de Beatis dating back to 1517, in which da Vinci states that he produced the painting at the request of Giuliano de 'Medici. The artist said it was an imaginary representation of 'Medici's mistress Pacifica Brandani, with whom de'Medici had an illegitimate son. Within the community researching Leonardo today, both theories have their supporters. Using elaborate reconstructions, original locations and scientific methodology, this documentary delves deep into the time of Leonardo da Vinci.

When all these parts are combined ... the truth is revealed. Years ago, a man drew a picture. It’s an unusual, full of secrets. It was just a picture back then. But today it is much more than that; Mona Lisa.

Who is this Mona Lisa?

In what age did he live?

What was hidden under your mysterious smile?

Weil come to this, but to exaggerate Mona Lisa ... could be unnecessary?

Some look at the painting and say, It’s just a woman. Some of them; He thinks that painting is not only a woman painting, but an art. Because Mona Lisa moved to different studios and ... with fine details, Completed in 16 years, made using golden ratio ... and a picture that was stolen twice in 500 years and once destroyed with acid.

These features make him unique. It’s not just what makes him unique. Mona Lisa, the model. This painting was the greatest summary of Leonardo’s skill as a painter. With less than 20 paintings in his life, Da Vinci ... as in the last dinner table here, it is said to have kept some secrets. What makes us think, encryption used in notebooks and works. Leonardo would write his writings in reverse so that they would not be stolen and difficult to read. He also arranges some of his very important notes in a mixed way, He arranged the places and the parts he would merge only in his own way.

It would have made a simple encryption. Looking at all this, you might call him Paranoid. But maybe he had to do it. Pascal Cottee wants to go deep into the Mona Lisa painting ... and do this in a reconstructed scanning environment ... with a resolution of 240 million pixels, recording 13 light wavelengths.

Thus, the four layers of the table were unearthed with today’s technology. Leonardo’s preparatory work is on the top right with infrared reflection... the thinness of the paint layer and the traces of the canvas on which it is fixed ... X with radiography on the lower left ... consecutive layers of paint and accidents during drawing; bottom right with ultraviolet fluorescent light and the final version of the table, i.e. the present state, appears at the top left. You can review them at the end of the video link.

But as a result of previous examinations ... some details have been noticed. Now it’s time to reveal the secrets stored in the details!

Researcher Stevenson and his team; they made an ultra-resolution copy of the table and studied for days. As a result, one day, they noticed something just under the bridge on the right. When they clarified a bit, they saw it was a figure.

Number 7 and 2. The team that continues to investigate... when they approached Mona Lisas eyes faintly standing lines. When they look more clearly the letter L in the right eye, in the left eye S clearly found that the letter appears.

The number L, S and 72. To find out what they mean ... the view behind the Mona Lisa whether they are real or not They find a small town called Bobbio.

It is clearly known that Leonardo has been here before. From a medieval castle ... the sides of the painting are very similar. Curling river, high hills and stone bridge located on our right side by us. Don’t be surprised that the bridge is similar because ... because it looks upright, its drawn horizontally to make it look more comfortable. At least when we try to look through Leonardo’s eyes, is thought to have done this way. As things start to get interesting ... in the flood of the bridge in 1472 ... as a result of heavy destruction of the big belt information that the bridge has been restored ... makes the number 72 meaningful.

This is exactly Leonardo’s era. I wonder if Leonardo intentionally set this number, Or was it just a coincidence?

It is not known why he added this, but Leonardo Deviancy, it is known to have meaning in everything he draws or adds. What did the L and S letters mean in your eyes?

L; It could mean Leonardo, but the letter S?

To find out, we had to do some research on Leonardo’s life. Leonardo; part of your life ... the child of a poor family he took with him when he was 10 ... young Gian Giacomo Oreno, Due to his mischief and misbehavior later in life ... Salai by Leonardo Da Vinci; that is to say, Little Devil. According to most people Salai, The inspiration for Da Vinci’s drawings was his apprentice, lover, maybe three. Leonardo reflects Salai in several paintings Could he be in a relationship with him?

For example, this picture with them. The purpose of the plot is unknown. But this one-on-one portrait of Salai may contain interesting secrets. And it was as though. Compared to Mona Lisas painting ... nose, chin, facial features and smile were incredibly similar. Could that be a coincidence?

We never heard of Leonardo ... and someone named Mona Lisa, whose family we don’t know for sure with what and why?

When I asked this question, it was clear that the answer was actually very close. Actually, the secret was exactly, Although Leonardo didn’t care about his apprentice at first ... later he realized the harmony between them, and later they became lovers. Knowing that would have cost them their lives. Because the homosexual relationship was executed at that time. Leonardo and Salai had to keep it for life, and so did it. But Salai wants Leonardo to show that he’s the only one worth knowing ... maybe Leonardo wanted it. He wasn’t able to do it, but only one way. To make Salai alive with another name and face in the most perfect way. So he could show him the value he gave. To this end, he carried the painting constantly and secretly continued drawing in many studios for 16 years.

It had to be perfect. Nose, facial features ... They should all look alike, but they shouldn’t be recognized. He made changes in some places and succeeded in completing this painting, which he worked diligently. His name couldn’t be Salai. Many knew his nickname. Instead, he encoded the name Mon Salai, meaning My little devil .... Mona Lisa. Mon: It meant me. Leonardo, the great secret that will cost you his life; That’s how Mona Lisa concealed her painting. And the letter S inside his eye ... so it made sense.

Although this may seem like a conspiracy theory ... when the pieces are combined, the truth seems to be that. It wasn’t just the secrets thought to be hidden in the painting. In my video Secrets from the last supper table I made before ... Leonardo’s mirroring method ... and that’s how you added confidential messages. With your guidance, I would like to show you some of the points that I have deliberately omitted.

For example, when the breads and hands in the Last Supper Table match with a note ... a melody whose meaning has not yet been solved. Other than that, where we think Leonardo is hiding himself ... with his own hand it was one of the parts you wanted me to show you. But illuminati was an organization founded in the 18th century. Da Vinci lived in the 15th century. But the one eye sign is not only illuminate, Known since the Torah and thought to be served by the Illuminati ... represents the Antichrist.

Da Vinci, who is said to be irreligious and has satanic analogies ... is likely to point to the Dajjal. If we reverse the Mona Lisa painting in the same way and move it closer ... that the painting has gained three dimensions and that Mona Lisa is looking at us. When we mirror the painting from the edge ... as if we have a strange entity that reflects leadership. As I said before: we are not the ones who created or thought about it, it is Leonardo. What we do here; just trying to find out what Leonardo has hidden from different angles. Paintings such as Mona Lisa, Last Supper ... Leonardo Da Vinci, who showed us that this is not just a painting; with its intelligence, mathematics and philosophy, always aiming for perfection ... has proven to be a genius. Are there any secrets he’s hiding, or just our fictions?

To recognize and interpret this way ... reminds us that sometimes in life we have to push our limits. Who knows, maybe there are other secrets to come up with.

What do you see when you look at the Mona Lisa painting?

Can I Draw Mona Lisa With Only CRAYONS

The Man Who Knew Infinity & the Akashic Records

2021-02-13T01:41:00.001-08:00

On December 22, 1887, a child was born in Madras, India, one of many in a country of, at the time, nearly 300 million people. He was given the name Ramanujan - meaning ‘the brother of Rama,’ a Hindu deity. But this was not just any child.

Before he hit puberty, Ramanujan had become a mathematical prodigy almost totally by accident. By the age of 11, he had exhausted and surpassed the knowledge of two college students who happened to be boarding with his family. At 13, he mastered advanced trigonometry without a teacher, alone, from a book someone had lent him, and began creating his own theorems. At 16, he stumbled by chance across a copy of G.S. Carr’s seminal work A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics and began to work through its 5000 theorems. The next year, Ramanujan independently developed and investigated the Bernoulli numbers and calculated the Euler-Mascheroni constant to fifteen decimal places, completing as a teenager and without mentorship what the world’s greatest mathematical minds had painstakingly accomplished over centuries.

In January of 1913, famed British mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy received an unusual letter in the mail. It began, Dear Sir, I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. It then presented seemingly outrageous claims that its author had made startling progress on a theory of divergent series in mathematics and had solved a well-established problem of the distribution of prime numbers. As a prominent mathematician, it was not rare for Hardy to receive letters from fanatics and crackpots, making ridiculous claims and wild assertions.

At first glance, this appeared to fit the bill. Yet, as Hardy began to look more closely, he quickly realized that this letter was something completely different. Over ten pages, the letter contained 120 advanced mathematical theorems;

some, Hardy realized, seemed to be independent rediscoveries of concepts already proven, while others appeared entirely groundbreaking, baffling even the great Hardy. After showing the letter to his colleague, John Edensor Littlewoods,

Hardy concluded the results must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have had the imagination to invent them.

Immediately, he surmised the letter must have been written by a mathematician of the highest ability, some sort of genius like Euler or Jacobi. Only one question remained: Who was this mystery man, this Indian clerk making £20 a year?

How was it possible that this total unknown had reached and even surpassed the greatest mathematical minds in the world?

On December 22, 1887, a child was born in Madras, India, one of many in a country of, at the time, nearly 300 million people. He was given the name Ramanujan meaning, the brother of Rama, a Hindu deity. But this was not just any child. Before he hit puberty, Srinivasa Ramanujan had become a mathematical prodigy almost totally by accident. By the age of 11, he had exhausted and surpassed the knowledge of two college students who happened to be boarding with his family. At 13, he mastered advanced trigonometry without a teacher, alone, from a book someone had lent him, and began creating his own theorems. At 16, he stumbled by chance across a copy of George Shoo bridge Carr’s seminal work A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics and began to work through its 5000 theorems.

The next year, Ramanujan independently developed and investigated the Bernoulli numbers and calculated the Euler-Mascheroni constant to fifteen decimal places, completing as a teenager and without mentorship what the world’s greatest mathematical minds had painstakingly accomplished over centuries. His peers and schoolmates said they rarely understood him, and that rather they simply stood in respectful awe. The headmaster of his school, while presenting him with a mathematics award, said Ramanujan deserved a score higher than the maximum. In recognition of his obvious ability, Ramanujan received a scholarship when he completed high school to study at the prestigious Government Arts College, Kumbakonam.

But once he was there, he could focus on nothing but math, failing most of his other courses in the process and seeing his scholarship revoked. He would leave school then return, then leave again, before taking a job as a low-level government clerk. Through it all, he pursued independent mathematical research at every opportunity, often living in poverty and on the brink of starvation, sustained only by his inherent brilliance. It may have been that this was where the story of Ramanujan ended, unknown and undiscovered in some dusty office buried under a clerks minutiae. It may have been this way, were it not for a letter he wrote in 1913 to G.H. Hardy. It was Hardy, having rescued Ramanujans letter from the literal and figurative dustbin of history, who was thankfully open-minded enough to recognize he had discovered something incredible in its author.

In a burst of excitement which comes when the proficient recognize virtuosity, he immediately set about attempting to bring Ramanujan to England to join him at the University of Cambridge. After some initial resistance, Ramanujan agreed and set out on the arduous journey through the Suez Canal, from the jewel of empire to its heart. Upon arrival in England, Ramanujan amazed Hardy with his natural ability. Here was an untrained mathematician with an eccentric style nobody had ever seen before and a talent which felt limitless. Through their collaboration, Hardy provided the training Ramanujan had previously lacked, metaphorically polishing the diamond as best he could. Soon, Ramanujan was astounding seasoned mathematicians with theorems that had gone unsolved for centuries, and ideas never before considered. In short order, he became an almost mythical figure in the math community, a sensation with seemingly impossible ability.

He was named one of the youngest ever Fellows of the Royal Society at 31, then became the first Indian ever elected a Fellow of Trinity College. The child prodigy had become a phenomenon as an adult. Then, as quickly as he came, he was gone. At the conclusion of World War 1, suffering from ill health brought about by wartime deprivation on his religious vegetarian diet, Ramanujan would return home to India. Shortly thereafter, he would die at the age of 32. Years after Ramanujans death, Hardy was asked to rate prominent mathematicians on the basis of pure talent using a scale of 1-100. He gave himself a 25, his colleague and friend Littlewoods, a 30; he gave legendary German mathematician David Hilbert one of the most influential minds of the 19th century an 80. To Ramanujan, he gave a score of 100. Having worked closer than anybody with Ramanujan, Hardy memorialized his unique ability in the following statement:

He combined a power of generalization, a feeling for form, and a capacity for rapid modification of his hypotheses, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own peculiar field, without a rival in his day. The limitations of his knowledge were as startling as its profundity. Here was a man who could work out modular equations and theorems to orders unheard of, whose mastery of continued fractions was beyond that of any mathematician in the world, who had found for himself the functional equation of the zeta function and the dominant terms of many of the most famous problems in the analytic theory of numbers; and yet he had never heard of a doubly periodic function or of Cauchy’s theorem, and had indeed but the vaguest idea of what a function of a complex variable was.

In short, Ramanujan was able to surpass even the greatest of mathematicians while lacking knowledge of the basic tools they employed. He did not build his work on the work of others, but rather seemed to just invent it for himself.

All told, Ramanujan compiled some 3900 mathematical results during his lifetime. Since his death, nearly all of his claims have been proved to be correct, opening up entirely new areas of study and inspiring much further research. In fact, his influence on the field was so prominent that The Ramanujan Journal was created as a scientific publication devoted solely to work in areas of math influenced by Ramanujan. But as decades have passed, something even more mind-blowing has emerged, another layer in the legend of Ramanujan.

As science and math have developed and evolved, Ramanujans work has become relevant to avenues of study which didn’t even exist when he was alive in areas like computer science, electrical engineering, and the study of black holes.

Consider, for example, that in his time, nobody knew black holes were something to study, yet Ramanujan had already developed a formula which would be used to describe their properties generations later. As mathematician Ken Ono of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia recently described: Ramanujans formulas have offered glimpses of theories that Ramanujan probably wouldn’t have been able to articulate himself, theories that nobody needed until they needed them.

How is this possible?

How could Ramanujan have known about things which did not exist?

so far beyond what was understood in his time?

Of this, Ono said, It is inconceivable he had this intuition, but he must have, while fellow mathematician Freeman Dyson, of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, proclaimed Ramanujan had some sort of magic tricks that we don’t understand. Perhaps Dyson was onto something. Perhaps there was a factor we don’t understand at work; not magic, but something else. Ramanujan was known as a deeply religious Hindu. Many times, he credited his mathematical ability to his family goddess, Namagiri, asserting that an equation for me has no meaning unless it represents a thought of God. He described dreaming of blood drops, which symbolized this goddess, and how after these dreams, he would receive visions of complex mathematical formula on scrolls unfolding before his eyes.

It may sound hard to believe, or perhaps like Ramanujan had given in to his eccentricity, but curiously, it is not a unique story among high-level thinkers. The creator of the periodic table, Russian chemist Dmitri Medvedev, said that it came to him in a dream, that all of the elements, including some that were not even discovered yet, simply fell into place before him. Albert Einstein was famous for his thought experiments, in which he would sit in quiet solitude and imagine the results of theoretical concepts. It was during one of these thought experiments that he came up with the famous equation E = mc². Even Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was said to have received the inspiration for the iPhone in a daydream. There are many stories like this among humanity’s most legendary thinkers, tales of random inspiration pulled seemingly out of thin air. But there is an explanation, one which goes beyond magic or serendipity. The explanation is something called the Akashic Records.

From the Sanskrit word Akash, which refers to the essence of all things in the material world, what Plato and Aristotle called the quint-essence, the Akashic Records are a universal database of all human knowledge and experience. This database is said to be located on a higher plane of existence and available to be accessed by anyone at any time. Proponents of the concept point out that even Christian tradition seems to hint at the existence of this database. In Revelation 20:12, the Apostle John writes:

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. Is this book of life just another name for the Akashic Records?

Perhaps when Ramanujan received visions of complex math formulas, or when Medvedev dreamed the periodic table, or Einstein conducted thought experiments, or Steve Jobs saw the iPhone in a daydream, what they were really doing was accessing the Akashic Records. Perhaps the most fervent supporter of the existence of the Akashic Records is none other than Nikola Tesla. In his book, Mans Greatest Achievement published in 1907, Tesla said that: All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or equity beyond conception, filling all space, the a kasha or aluminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena. Another well-known quote from Nikola Tesla, is this:

My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists. Could this explain how these individuals were so far ahead of their contemporaries?

Could they have accessed the Akashic Records, where all human knowledge and experience is stored?

It may also explain child prodigies like Mozart, who should not have been able to obtain their achieved level of proficiency at such a young age, or why historic inventions like the telephone, airplane, and theory of evolution were developed not just by Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers and Charles Darwin, but independently by others at near exactly the same time. Perhaps these were individuals who had independently accessed the knowledge contained within the Akashic Records. For Ramanujan, this begs an important question. Seemingly every year, his work provides new revelations, new relevant applications, whether on black holes or otherwise.

Already it has been speculated that in the future, Ramanujans work may have crucial relevance to next-level concepts like time travel, antigravity, and limitless energy. The question is, if Ramanujan did indeed access the Akashic records, this universal database of all human knowledge, how much did he learn?

What insights might he have left for us, which we have not yet discovered?

The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa

The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa

2021-02-13T01:18:00.007-08:00

The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa - Female Documentary Narrator

The Mona Lisa…..one of the most famous works of art in the world… painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1506. The painting is actually smaller than most people realize…..only 30 inches by 21 inches and painted on a wood poplar panel. The painting has survived for more than 500 years. It was, at some time during its history, removed from its original frame and efforts have been made ever since to help keep the panel from warping. Although the painting has had many different frames in its history, the frame added in 1909 has remained, with support modifications, until this day. The painting has been subjected to several extensive cleanings, re-varnishing’s, and touch-ups. Before its 1962-1963 tour, the painting was assessed, for insurance purposes, as valued at $100 million (about $720 million in today’s dollars) and hangs at The Louvre. The Louvre, located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement in Paris, was opened as a museum on August 10, 1793.

The Louvre, the world, and indeed Paris in 1911 were not as they are today. There were no elaborate security measures in place, no alarms, and very few guards. Painters specializing in copying works of art would set up their easels right next to a masterpiece and paint. The Mona Lisa was not displayed as it is today, set apart as a central piece. It was merely hung on the wall, sandwiched between two other masterpieces…Correggio’s Mystical Marriage and Titan’s Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos. The main concern of the museum at this time was vandalism and not theft as there had been several acts of vandalism carried out against works of art hanging in the museum.

Because of this, the museum had on staff a number of workers, handymen and tradesmen who constructed glass cases for some of the art work including the Mona Lisa. They cleaned, touched up and revarnished paintings. The workers would remove paintings from the walls to repair or construct frames. Paintings in the Louvre were often removed from the walls because the museum’s photographers were allowed to take them to their studios without having to sign them out.

One such worker was named Vincenzo Perugia, an Italian immigrant cabinet craftsman who worked at the Louvre from 1908-1911. On the morning of August 21, 1911, Vincenzo either slipped into the Louvre dressed as a worker in the traditional white artist’s smock, or as some think, he hid in a cabinet and emerged the next morning. He quickly made his way to the Salon Care gallery where Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was hanging. He lifted the glass case from the wall, walked past a sleeping guard and made his way to a stairway removing the painting from the case. He removed a knob from a door and calmly walked out of the museum. He then got on a bus and took the painting to his apartment a short distance away where he kept it for the next 2 years.

None of the Louvre’s employees noticed that the painting was missing. In fact, 12 hours after the theft, a caretaker reported that everything in the museum was in order. The next day a painter, Louis Beroud, arrived at the Louvre to sketch the Mona Lisa. All he found were 4 metal hooks on the wall where the painting usually hung. He assumed that one of the photographers had taken the painting. Fully 24 hours later Mr. Beroud asked as to when the photographer would be returning the painting. It was then that the museum realized that the Mona Lisa had been stolen. No one had any idea who could have stolen the painting. The Louvre was closed for a week as police covered the crime scene. When it reopened, there was a massive line waiting to see the spot where the Mona Lisa used to hang.

Thousands of people came to view the empty place on the wall with only the 4 iron pegs….thousands more visitors than when the painting was there. An anonymous visitor even left a bouquet of flowers. Overnight the Mona Lisa became an internationally famous painting. After bringing the painting to his apartment, Vincenzo put it in a closet for safekeeping. He then kept it under a stove in the kitchen and finally in a false bottom trunk. He would take it out occasionally and set it on his kitchen table so he could admire it while eating his meal. Questioning all museum employees, the police searched Perugia’s apartment but failed to find anything. He had hidden the masterpiece this time under a tabletop.

French police were frantically looking for a suspect. What they didn’t know was that Vincenzo Perugia held a deep resentment against France, believing that all of the museum’s Italian renaissance masterpieces, including the Mona Lisa had been stolen from Italy’s museums and galleries during Napoleon’s invasion. It turned out he was wrong, at least about the Mona Lisa. It seems that Leonardo da Vinci himself sold the painting to France’s King Francois I after its completion. One early suspect was none other than Pablo Picasso.

It was discovered that Picasso was using statuettes stolen from the Louvre, given to him by an acquaintance, as models for his paintings. He was intensely questioned by police but when nothing came of it he was released and allowed to go free. Two years had gone by and officials were beginning to think that they would never see the Mona Lisa again. It was in December 1913 that Vincenzo decided to go to Italy and sell the Mona Lisa, thereby returning it to Italy where it properly belonged and providing a nice fortune for his family.

In November 1913 he contacted a Florentine antique dealer named Alfredo Geri via a cryptic letter which said: “The stolen work of Leonardo da Vinci is in my possession. It seems to belong to Italy since its painter was an Italian”. The letter was signed ‘Leonardo’. Geri eventually met with ‘Leonardo” and Perugia allowed Geri to have the painting authenticated. Perugino asked for a half million lire for the painting and that it be hung at the Uffizi and never given back to France. A director of the Uffizi Museum in Florence was called in and authenticated the painting. Perruggia was arrested and tried in Florence.

The Mona Lisa was exhibited all over Italy and returned to the Louvre in 1913. The public went wild at the news of finding the Mona Lisa. Perugia’s defense was his patriotism in that his sole motive for stealing the picture was to return her to Italy. Perruggia was hailed as a national hero in Italy. Perugia’s trial was a spectacle. He jumped and interrupted the Court. He argued with the judge who kept banging the gavel and telling him to be quiet. He argued with his lawyer.

He argued with the prosecutors. Perruggia let loose with emotional outbursts and indignant rage, claiming that Mona Lisa’s beauty had bewitched him, and that his only thought was to rescue her from France. He told the story of how he had fallen in love with a girl who was the exact double of the Mona Lisa, after he had saved her from being attacked by a man with a knife. The young woman’s name was Mat Hilde. When she died, Perruggia, obsessed with grief, planned to steal the Mona Lisa which, to him, was like a portrait of his love. Perruggia contradicted himself many times during his trial. He claimed to have worked alone, then he later incriminated two Italian friends in the theft. The spectators would cheer when he said something and howl when the prosecution tried to make a point.

He was in jail but he got love letters. People sent him bottles of wine. Women baked cakes for him. Eventually, the defense called a psychiatrist who testified that Perruggia was “intellectually deficient” and the sympathetic Italian tribunal, considering him a harmless fool, gave him a reduced sentence of seven months. Since by that time, he had been in jail for nearly eight months, Perruggia was released. Years later rumors began to circulate that Perugia not only had accomplices as he claimed at his trial, but that the whole plan was hatched by a master international con artist named Eduardo de Valfiero.

It was said that Valfiero’s plan was to produce exact fake copies of the real Mona Lisa and sell them. Although some in the art world have pushed the Louvre to do testing to determine the Mona Lisa’s authenticity, museum officials have not responded. Perugia served in the Italian army during World War 1. After the war he married and returned to France, under an assumed name, where he opened a paint store. According to his daughter Celestina, he died at age 44 of a heart attack in 1925. In 1974 the Mona Lisa was moved to the museum’s Salle des Etats where more than 7 million people view her each year.

The biggest winner in the whole story was the Louvre. It now found itself with a world famous painting to hang on its walls. It is said that if it had not been for the Mona Lisas theft that she would never have reached such heights of notoriety that she enjoys today. Perugia’s extraordinary theft had turned the Mona Lisa from a moderately well-known painting into an internationally recognized masterpiece.

The Search For D. B.

The Search For D. B.

2021-02-13T01:15:00.007-08:00

A daring parachute escape from a flying 727 somewhere between Reno...A search was made of the plane immediately...We don’t know who he was, where he came from, or where he went. I expect that well keep looking until we find him or find out what happened.

In the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a middle-aged man carrying a briefcase walked into Portland International Airport and purchased a one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington. The man identified himself as Dan Cooper and, along with 36 other passengers and a crew of 6, he soon boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 305. Once aboard, Cooper made himself comfortable in the middle of the last row of seats on the right side of the cabin. He ordered a drink and had a smoke because this was the 70s. Once the flight was cleared for departure, Cooper turned around and handed an envelope to flight attendant Florence Schaffer.

Inside the envelope was a note featuring a handwritten message stating he had a bomb. Schaffer reluctantly sat down beside him and glimpsed what appeared to be eight sticks of dynamite inside his briefcase. Coopers demands were quite simple. He wanted $200,000 in cash and four parachutes. He also demanded a fuel truck to stand ready to refuel the aircraft once they landed in Seattle. Should they fail to comply with his demands, he threatened to do the job. Once the flight was airborne, Schaffer went to inform the cockpit crew, while another flight attendant, by the name of Tina Muck low, remained by Coopers side. By using a telephone in the rear of the cabin, Muck low acted as an intermediary between Cooper and the rest of the flight crew for the remainder of the hijacking. For the next hour and a half, Flight 305 maintained a holding pattern near Seattle while local and federal authorities scrambled to procure the ransom as well as the four parachutes.

10,000 $20 bills were collected from a local bank while the owner of a nearby skydiving school supplied the chutes. At 5:45 P.M., more than two hours past its scheduled arrival, Flight 305 finally touched down in Seattle. By this point, it was well after sunset, and the aircraft was brought to a remote section of the tarmac. Once the flight came to a stop, both the ransom and the parachutes were handed over to Muck low, who then brought them back aboard. In exchange, Cooper permitted two of the flight attendants as well as all the passengers to disembark. Many of whom had not yet realized the flight had been hijacked. With the ransom paid and only four crew members remaining onboard, Cooper told Muck low to inform the Captain that he wanted to fly to Mexico City.

They were to fly with the landing gear down, the flaps at 15 degrees, and below 10,000 feet. The lights in the cabin were to be switched off, and the aft stairway, which opens from the underbelly of the fuselage, was to remain extended. Two of Coopers demands could not be satisfied. First of all, the flight configuration held requested would not allow for a non-stop flight to Mexico City. As such, Cooper proposed a refueling stop in Phoenix, Yuma, or Sacramento before they all agreed on Reno, Nevada. Second of all, it was not possible to depart with the ventral staircase extended. Cooper agreed to retract the stairs on the condition that Muck low remained by his side and taught him how to extend them once the plane was airborne. Parked for nearly two hours due to complications with refueling, Flight 305 was back in the air by 7:36 P.M.

Less than five minutes after takeoff, Cooper told Muck low to head for the cockpit and that, from this point onwards, he was not to be disturbed. The last time she saw Cooper, he was standing in the middle of the aisle as if though he was preparing to jump. Muck low joined the rest of the crew, locked the cockpit door behind her, and some three hours later, Flight 305 safely landed in Reno. Once the flight came to a stop, the crew carefully ventured into the rear of the cabin, but there was no sign of Cooper nor the bomb. The aft stairway had been extended mid-flight and was slightly damaged upon landing. It seemed, there was only one explanation for the hijackers absence. At some point, between Seattle and Reno, Cooper had strapped on a parachute, walked down the stairs, and leaped into the dark of night.

As soon as it became clear that Cooper was no longer on board, dozens of FBI agents converged upon the aircraft, only to discover a disappointing amount of physical evidence. A black clip-on tie......eight cigarette butts......and two of the four parachutes were all that Cooper left behind. Evidently, he brought the ransom and briefcase along with him. In interviews conducted on the night of the hijacking, Cooper was described by the crew and passengers as a white male with brown eyes and dark hair. He appeared to be in his mid-forties and wore a dark trench coat, a dark suit, a white shirt, a black tie, and dark shoes. Soon after boarding, held also donned a pair of sunglasses. Based on this description, the FBI produced the first of several composite sketches. Before they could mount a search, however, the FBI had to figure out when Cooper abandoned ship. But that was easier said than done. None of the four crew members witnessed Cooper jumping from the plane nor did the pilots of two fighter jets, which escorted the flight between Seattle and Reno. Which is not all too surprising given it was the middle of the night.

Although, the flight crew did report something odd. The last communication with the hijacker occurred at approximately 8:05 P.M. when the crew used the intercom to offer assistance, which Cooper declined. Within the next 10 minutes, the crew experienced what they described as an oscillation or vibration of the aircraft. At the time, the crew suspected it might have been produced by Coopers jump, and a subsequent recreation of the hijacking supported that conclusion. Okay, so that took care of the when, but what about the where?

While Cooper was very explicit about the flights configuration and destination, he never specified any kind of route. In fact, Cooper grew so impatient with the slow refueling in Seattle that he dismissed the Captains request to file a flight plan and simply told him to get the show on the road. As such, the Captain chose to fly along an airway known as Victor 23 without any input from Cooper. By using Victor 23 as a guide, authorities estimated the most probable location of the flight at the approximated time of the jump was about 40 kilometers north of Portland. And so, at the break of dawn, the FBI mounted an impressive search operation using helicopters, airplanes, and ground troops. The problem was, even if the estimated bailout point was accurate, Coopers eventual landing- or drop zone was far more difficult to pinpoint. The loosely defined search area covered a vast stretch of mountainous wilderness occluded by a dense forest, so it was truly like finding a needle in a haystack.

Apart from the difficult terrain, the search was further complicated by low temperatures and inclement weather which persisted for days. Despite their best efforts, authorities never managed to find a single trace of Cooper nor the items held brought along with him. Having made little to no progress by early December, the FBI turned their attention to the $200,000 ransom. The money had been collected from the Seattle-First National Bank, which maintained a ransom package of $250,000 just for such an occasion. Because of this, the serial numbers of the 10,000 $20 banknotes given to Cooper had been documented in advance. A complete list of which were quickly made available to financial institutions, government agencies, and the general public. The intention was to make it as difficult as possible for Cooper to spend his money. Northwest Airlines and several newspapers even began to offer rewards to anyone who could find a note with a matching serial number. In spite of these efforts, no one ever did. That is until nearly a decade later.

In early 1980, a young boy, named Brian Ingram, was building a campfire on a small beach in southern Washington. As he was digging into the sand, Ingram discovered three bundles of cash totaling $5,880. Having heard about the infamous skyjacking, Ingrams parents brought the severely degraded bundles to the FBI. The notes were promptly inspected, and sure enough, the serial numbers matched those of the ransom. Once the excitement subsided, however, the money managed to raise far more questions than it answered. The most significant of which was how?

How did the money end up so far away from the drop zone? Looking at this map, it might be tempting to think that Cooper simply dropped some of the money, which then fell into the Lewis River. The bundles could then have been carried further downstream by the Columbia River before finally being washed ashore at Tina Bar, which is the name of the beach. Tina Muck low. Tina Bar. Coincidence!?

Yeah, coincidence. Anyway, the problem with this idea is that the Columbia River flows in the opposite direction. This has led some, including members of the FBI, to reevaluate the initial drop zone assessment. For instance, if the drop zone was much further southeast, close to a river called the Washougal River, it is conceivable, albeit improbable, that the money floated all the way down to Tina Bar. Alternatively, the bundles may have simply landed on the beach if the flight path was further to the west. Even so, natural explanations struggle to explain how three independent, potentially free-falling and/or free-floating, bundles of cash ended up at the exact same place on the same beach.

To complicate matters, sediment from the riverbed was excavated and dumped onto Tina Bar as part of a dredging operation in 1974. And, according to one analysis, the money was discovered above this layer of sediment. If true, that would mean the money came to rest at Tina Bar sometime after 1974. But a reexamination of that analysis found that what was believed to be a layer of deposited sediment might actually have been a perfectly natural layer of clay. Not only that, but the sediment was clearly dumped some distance away from where the money was discovered.

Furthermore, when Ingram discovered the bundles, the rubber bands which held them together were still intact. This is significant because experiments conducted in 2009 revealed that this brand of rubber bands could not withstand exposure to open-air or water for more than a year. So unless the bundles where somehow protected from the elements, they must have become buried at Tina Bar within a year of the hijacking. The most probable explanation, therefore, seems to be that Cooper or someone else deliberately buried the money. Did Cooper survive and bury the money himself?

Did someone else bury the money after stumbling upon Coopers remains?

If there is an explanation which does not require human intervention, its managed to elude investigators for decades. Suffice it to say this is a mystery within a mystery. Since Ingrams discovery in 1980, both Tina Bar and the grounds around the Washougal River have been subjected to numerous searches. But, to date, there’s been no sign of Cooper nor the rest of the money. From the very beginning, it was assumed by many that Cooper did not survive his daring escape. It would not make for a very thrilling conclusion to this story, but that’s the thing about stories, they’re usually far more exciting than reality. While there is no hard evidence for nor against Coopers survival, the assumption that he fell to his death is not without merit. When Cooper leaped into the darkness, Flight 305 was plowing through a frigid rainstorm at roughly 170 knots, 10,000 feet above southern Washington.

The wind was so violent that it ripped out a placard from the aft stairway, which was later recovered in 1978 almost directly below the estimated flight path. To say that Cooper was not dressed for the occasion would be an understatement. The ground beneath him, meanwhile, was obscured by multiple layers of clouds, which likely means that Cooper jumped without knowing his precise location. Even if he could see the ground and had a specific drop zone in mind, the parachute he selected was non-steerable. Meaning, he would not have been able to steer his descent towards a specific landing spot.

Thus, precluding any potential coordination with an accomplice stationed on the ground. While Cooper expressed some familiarity with parachutes, his actual competence level is up for debate. It’s widely believed that Cooper demanded two pairs of parachutes, two primary and two reserves, to make the authorities believe that he intended to take a hostage. That is precisely what happened as the FBI contemplated but eventually decided against sabotaging the chutes as they did not want to risk the life of an innocent civilian. But in their haste to obtain them, they unintentionally provided Cooper with a nonfunctional dummy-chute intended for training purposes. This mishap seems to have gone unnoticed by Cooper because that dummy-chute was one of the two missing from the plane. Not only that, but Cooper chose the older and technically inferior parachute out of the two primary chutes provided. So, in both cases, it seems like Cooper made the worst possible choice. But there are other ways to interpret this information. For instance, it’s possible that Cooper used the dummy-chute, not as a reserve, but as a means to secure the bag of money.

In fact, that is precisely what Cooper tried to do with the functional reserve chute. First, he tried to place the money in the chutes canopy before removing some of the suspension lines and wrapped them around the bag. Perhaps he used the dummy-chute for a similar purpose?

And Coopers decision to use the older primary chute is not necessarily an indication of inexperience. It could also be a sign of familiarity because the chute he left behind was a civilian luxury chute while the one he used was a military chute. The argument is that Cooper might have been trained as, say, a paratrooper, and chose the older military chute because that’s the one with which he was most familiar. And there is at least one other reason to suspect that Cooper had a military background. While the flight was in a holding pattern near Seattle, Cooper mentioned that the McChord Air Force base was only 20 minutes away from the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

At the time, that was an accurate assessment and might suggest a military background. Apart from the potential military connections, Cooper may even have had links to the Central Intelligence Agency. You see, the type of aircraft which Cooper chose to hijack, a Boeing 727, was also used by the CIA to covertly drop agents and supplies during the Vietnam War. A task for which the Boeing 727 was uniquely qualified due to its distinctive aft stairway. So it’s fairly safe to assume that Cooper chose to hijack a Boeing 727 specifically because it provided a relatively safe means of escape. Whether he learned of this from the CIA or came to that conclusion independently is another question.

However, the fact that Cooper chose to hijack a flight operated by Northwest Airlines was apparently random chance. When Tina Muck low asked Cooper about his motives, he responded:

It’s not because I have a grudge towards your airline, it’s just because I have a grudge.

He further clarified that Flight 305 happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Even so, it’s clear that Cooper came prepared.

He seemed to know a great deal about aircraft and aviation.

He appeared to be familiar with the local terrain.

He maintained a low profile to avoid a panic.

He covered his eyes with a pair of glasses to conceal his identity.

He left very little evidence behind.

And he demanded four parachutes to force the assumption that he was taking a hostage. He was even cunning enough to reclaim the note which held initially given to Florence Schaffer. Apart from the name he wrote on his plane ticket, there are no other samples of Coopers handwriting. But for all his planning and cunning, it seems Cooper did not give enough thought to his eventual escape. Not only did he fail to specify a route, but he was forced to make a last-minute destination change from Mexico City to Reno. He could have demanded more appropriate parachuting equipment like a pair of boots, a helmet, or jumpsuit. He could even have specified the ransom to be delivered in large denominations to make it lighter and less cumbersome to carry. Presuming he did survive the fall and made it safely to the ground, he may then have had to make his way through a dense, partially snow-covered forest in nothing but loafers and a trench coat in late November. I get the distinct impression that Coopers escape was much more of a leap of faith than a carefully executed jump. On the other hand, authorities never received a missing persons report matching the description of Cooper in the wake of the hijacking. This might suggest that he did survive and that he swiftly and quietly resumed his normal routine.

Furthermore, other hijackers have performed similar stunts, and many of them did survive, even if they were quickly apprehended. Finally, the simplest explanation for how three bundles of cash ended up at Tina Bar is human intervention. At the end of the day, most of this is based on nothing but supposition. Without any concrete evidence of Coopers demise, it leaves the door wide open to the far more exciting proposition that he did, in fact, survive.

By the time the press got wind of the hijacking, the FBI had already begun to investigate a few potential suspects. Among them was a man in Portland with the initials D. B. and surname Cooper. This Cooper was quickly eliminated as a suspect but, due to a mix up by the press, the name Dan Cooper was confused for D. B. Cooper, and the rest is history. While Dan Cooper is most likely a pseudonym, there is a comic book series of the same name. The comic is written in French and centers around a Canadian pilot named Dan Cooper. While the comic was not translated into English nor sold in the United States before 1971, it was available in Canada, which has a large French-speaking population. Given that American and Canadian accents can be difficult to distinguish, it’s possible that Cooper, who was described as having no discernible accent, was a bilingual Canadian.

This might even be supported by something that Cooper might have said. You see, when the Captain relayed Coopers demands to Air Traffic Control, he used the phrase negotiable American currency. It seems doubtful that an American citizen would specify American currency, so perhaps Cooper was not American. The problem is, we don’t know if this is a direct quote from Cooper or paraphrasing by the Captain. For instance, notes taken by the crew during the hijacking merely contain the phrase negotiable currency. While testimonies provided by the crew after the hijacking include phrases like $200,000 in cash and circulated US currency. So Cooper might have been Canadian, and he might have taken his name from the Dan Cooper comics, just as he might have been American, and might have taken his name from something or someone else.

Nearly half a century has gone by since the hijacking took place, and, in that time, thousands of suspects have been questioned and investigated. It would obviously be impossible to cover all of them here, but let’s take a look at some of the people that, at some point or another, have been suspected of being D. B. Cooper.

Robert Rack straw first became a suspect in 1978, and, on the surface, he seems like a solid candidate.

He was a decorated Army paratrooper and helicopter pilot.

He had experience with explosives.

He had an extensive criminal record.

He had an uncle named John Cooper, who was an avid skydiver.

He was expelled from the Army only months before the hijacking, which might suggest a motive.

After all, the hijacker did say he had a grudge. When confronted by journalists and private investigators, Rack straw would neither confirm nor outright deny that he was D. B. Cooper. Instead, held say things like I could have been or I would not discount myself. On the other hand, Rack straw had light-colored eyes, which Cooper did not. More significantly, Rack straw was only 28 years of age at the time of the hijacking. This is well outside the range of ages reported by the crew and passengers. Most of whom believed Cooper was in his mid-forties. Kenneth Christiansen first became a suspect in 2003 when his brother noticed certain parallels between him and Cooper. Christiansen had briefly served as a paratrooper in World War II and, since 1953, held worked for Northwest Airlines as both a mechanic and a flight attendant. He was 45 years old at the time of the hijacking. He was left-handed, which Cooper might have been. For instance, Cooper used his left hand to interact with his briefcase, and the clip-on tie he left onboard was affixed with a tie clasp applied from the left.

Shortly before he died in 1994, Christiansen had supposedly told his brother: There is something you should know, but I cannot tell you. After his passing, his family discovered over $200,000 in his bank accounts. To top it all off, Florence Schaffer stated that photographs of Christiansen bore a strong resemblance to Cooper. On the other hand, Christiansen did not match the physical description of Cooper. He was both shorter and lighter. While Schaffer did see a strong resemblance, she remarked that Cooper had more hair, and that is supported by the composite sketches. And there was nothing suspicious about the large sums of money which held simply earned by selling land. Richard McCoy first became a suspect in 1972 when he hijacked a Boeing 727 and escaped via the aft stairway, much like D. B. Cooper.

Because of the significant overlap between the two hijackings, some believe they must have been committed by the same person. McCoy used a fake name. He used a fake hand-grenade to threaten the crew. He used handwritten notes to issue his demands. Both McCoy and Cooper used the phrase no funny stuff as a warning to the crew. McCoy demanded $500,000 in cash and four parachutes. McCoy also bailed out the back of the plane once they passed over his hometown in the state of Utah. Apart from the similar modus operandi, McCoy had also served in the Vietnam War as a demolition expert and a helicopter pilot. McCoy did actually survive the fall and managed to evade authorities for two full days before he was apprehended and sentenced to 45 years in prison. Before his death in 1974, McCoy refused to confirm or deny that he was D. B. Cooper. On the other hand, McCoy was an avid recreational skydiver and even came prepared with a skydiving helmet and jumpsuit. He gave very specific instructions about the flight path. In addition to the fake hand-grenade, McCoy also used an unloaded handgun to threaten the crew.

He failed to retrieve one of the notes held given to a flight attendant. He was only 29 years of age at the time of the hijacking. And all three flight attendants were quite certain that McCoy was not Cooper. While there are meaningful parallels between these two cases, McCoy might simply have been a copycat who’d read about D. B. Cooper in the news. Duane Weber first became a suspect in 1995 when, shortly before his death, he supposedly told his wife:

I’ve got a secret to tell you. I am Dan Cooper. Following his deathbed confession, Webber’s widow recalled a number of fascinating details. She claims to have found a bank bag resembling the one used in the hijacking. She claims Weber had sustained a knee injury after jumping out of a plane. Weber supposedly had a nightmare about leaving his fingerprints on the aft stairs. And a year before the money was discovered at Tina Bar, Weber had allegedly paid a quick visit to the same location.

In addition, Weber was a World War II veteran. He had an extensive criminal record. He matched the physical description. And he was 47 years old in 1971. On the other hand, Webbers fingerprints did not match any of the prints collected from Flight 305. Although, to be fair, there’s no way to know if any of those prints actually belong to Cooper. Furthermore, Webbers DNA did not match a DNA sample collected from the tie clasp. But, once again, there’s no way to know if the DNA on the tie clasp actually came from the hijacker and not someone else. what’s so frustrating is that the FBI likely had a much better source of DNA at one point. If you recall, eight cigarette butts were collected from the scene, and there’s a good chance they were all suffused with Coopers DNA. The problem is, that evidence was lost at some point and has not turned up since.

William Smith first became a suspect in 2018. Smith served in the Navy during World War II and likely had some experience with parachuting. He was 43 years old at the time of the hijacking. He had dark brown eyes. He matched the physical description. He shared a certain likeness with the composite sketches, especially this speculative sketch of an older D. B. Cooper. A student named Ira Daniel Cooper, who was killed in World War II, attended the same high school as Smith. Smith worked as a yardmaster for a railroad company for most of his life, but in 1970 the company filed for bankruptcy. As a consequence, Smith lost his pension, which might suggest a motive.

He could, for instance, have developed a grudge towards the airline industry for their role in bringing about the downfall of the rail transportation industry. Its further speculated that Smith could have used his knowledge of railroad networks to hop on a train and escape undetected. On the other hand, Smith spent his entire life in the northeastern United States. Given that the hijacking occurred on the other side of the country and was committed by someone who, at least, appeared to be familiar with the local terrain, Smith is not the most ideal candidate.

However, the fact that Smith worked as a yardmaster is interesting. You see, the tie that Cooper left behind was recently examined using an electron microscope which uncovered various metallic particles. Some of these particles, especially pure titanium, were quite rare in 1971. This might suggest that Cooper worked as a manager at some sort of chemical or metallurgical facility, or possibly a rail yard. If nothing else, I hope that this limited selection of suspects illustrates just how difficult it is to be certain when you have so little evidence to work with. These five individuals look nothing alike, yet any one of them could be D. B. Cooper. Was Cooper really in his mid-forties or did he simply look old for his age?

Did Cooper really serve in the military?

Which one of these sketches most closely resemble Cooper?

In 2016, the FBI had to admit defeat and officially closed down the case. Unless someone stumbles upon Coopers remains or manages to track down the rest of the money, it seems there is little hope of resolution. Did Cooper survive?

I have no idea. But as long as that possibility cannot be dismissed, the legend of D. B. Cooper will no doubt persist.

An Internet Mystery

2021-02-11T19:10:00.002-08:00

On the 4th of January, 2012, a user on 4chan posted this image to the sites infamous /b/ or random board. The anonymous author, who went by the four-digit pseudonym 3301, challenged users to uncover a message hidden within the image. Unbeknownst to those who stumbled across it, someone had just set in motion one of the most elaborate scavenger hunts the internet has ever seen. Within minutes of the image being posted someone discovered that by opening the file using a text editor an appended string of readable text could be found.

The string contained a cipher that, once deciphered, formed a link to yet another image. At first this appeared to be a dead end but using an application known as Out Guess users were able to extract hidden information embedded within the first image. The extracted information lead to a subreddit which in turn contained information about a book. The book along with a code could then be used to uncover a phone number that, when called, played this prerecorded message. By the following day, the initial image had been reposed all over the internet. A growing community of armchair detectives sought to unravel this elaborate puzzle but no one was quite sure what to make off it. What was the puzzle for?

Who was behind it?

What happens when you reach the end?

Some naturally dismissed it as an elaborate joke while others perceived its complexity as evidence against it being the work of a mere troll. Before long, rumors began to circulate that this could be the work of some secret society or intelligence agency with the intent of recruiting individuals proficient in cryptography, steganography, and other related fields. Of course, it was nothing but a rumor. The two missing numbers mentioned in the recording proved to be the dimensions of the original image. After multiplying the width and height with 3301 and using the product as a web address, users were taken to a website. The website consisted of a countdown as well as an image of a cicada. When th countdown reached zero, the page was updated with a list of coordinates. The coordinates pointed to locations around the globe. 14 locations in 5 different countries. It was now up to participants living near the specified coordinates to rise from their comfortable armchairs and venture outside.

Those who believed Cicada to be the work of an organization now felt their beliefs had been justified. In their opinion, only some international collective possessed the means and resources to create a scavenger hunt of this magnitude.

This was not the work of your average troll. No, this had to be something else. At each location was a poster with the cicada symbol and a QR code....on the bike shelter over here. See I got it... I got it right there. You can see the corners, I just kind of ripped it off. The codes linked to an image, the image contained a riddle, the riddle lead to a book, and the book lead to a website. But here, the puzzle took an unexpected turn. Only a select group of first arrivals to this website were accepted into the final stage of the puzzle. The site eventually closed down with the message: We want the best, not the followers. The finalists were also warned not to collaborate with others nor to share the details of this private stage of the puzzle.

Well, given that we know this, it’s safe to say that not everyone heeded that warning. But those who did presumably advanced through the final stages before reaching the very end of the puzzle. After nearly a month of silence an image appeared on the subreddit announcing the conclusion of the puzzle and, just like that, the hunt was over. Cicada had supposedly found the highly intelligent individuals they were looking for and whatever happened to them is a bit of a mystery but more on that in a moment. The lack of an explanation was perceived by many as confirmation that the puzzle had been nothing but a wild-goose chase intent on wasting everyone’s time. After all, questions raised by the original image remained unanswered.

What was the puzzle for?

Who was behind it?

What happens when you reach the end?

However, as it later turned out, this was only the beginning. Whomever was behind this intricate game had the foresight to include an authentication code known as a PGP signature along with every clue. This allowed users to verify that an image or message was actually from Cicada as opposed to some impostor seeking to derail or hijack the puzzle. Cicada had repeatedly warned of such false paths and insisted that any message lacking a valid PGP signature should promptly be disregarded. That’s why this image, posted exactly a year and a day after the first, provoked such a frenzy. After a year of lackluster imitations, this image finally matched the official PGP signature. Cicada was back and it was time for round two. The second puzzle was not too dissimilar from the first. The image enclosed a message, the message lead to a book, the book produced a link, and gradually the puzzle unfolded. At one point, a recording titled The Instar Emergence was uncovered. Another clue lead to a cryptic Twitter account which then lead to an image. The image proved vital to the progression of the puzzle but the inclusion of this runic alphabet would remain a mystery for quite some time. Much like the first puzzle the second swelled into the physical world when a list coordinates compelled participants to, once again, take to the streets in search of enigmatic posters.

This time it was 8 locations in 4 different countries. But eventually the trail went cold once again. Another select group of first arrivals had been accepted into a final private stage of the puzzle. Unlike the first puzzle the second did not conclude with an official message from Cicada. The trail merely went cold and Cicada vanished once more leaving us no closer to an explanation.

However, this was still not the end. At the beginning of 2014 it was time for round three. Once again the image enclosed a message, the message lead to a book, the book produced a link, and suffice it to say, it was more of the same.

Except, this time, the puzzle seemed to revolve around a strange book. The book was titled Liber Primus, meaning First Book in Latin, and was evidently written by Cicada. The runic alphabet uncovered in 2013 finally made sense as the book was primarily written in runes. Even so, the meaning of the translated pages were cryptic at best. The book consisted of various philosophical and ideological ideas and appeared to be their manifesto. Many have since compared the strange writings to that of a cult. Nevertheless, the book also comprised a myriad of clues and codes.

For example, this page advised participants to seek out a website on the deep web but the site remains undiscovered. Another page lead to a website containing yet another recording titled Interconnectedness. However, a significant portion of the book has yet to be translated. The runic text on some of the pages appear to be obfuscated by layers of encryption that has yet to be decrypted. Of the 74 pages featuring runes, only 19 have been successfully translated. As 2015 came and went without the launch of a new puzzle, many came to suspect the Liber Primus had to be completed if Cicada was to return. This was more or less confirmed at the beginning of 2016 when Cicada encouraged a reexamination of the book. More than four years have now gone by with minimal progress and near complete silence from Cicada.

Questions raised by the original image have gone ignored.

What is the purpose of these puzzles?

Who’s behind them?

What happens when you reach the end?

When the initial image appeared on 4chan back in 2012 many assumed Cicada 3301 to be an alternate reality game designed by a corporation to promote a new service or product. For example, Microsoft developed an elaborate ARG back in 2001 to promote the film Artificial Intelligence and a similar viral marketing campaign was used to promote the release of Halo 2. But the release of subsequent puzzles and the complete lack of commercialization has more or less eliminated that possibility. If we choose to believe some of the leaked information from the private end-stage of each puzzle than we do gain some insight into who this group might be. For example, at the end of the first puzzle, finalists supposedly received this email. In it, Cicada describe themselves as an international group who believe that privacy is an inalienable right. The aim of each puzzle is to recruit like-minded individuals in an effort to develop privacy-conscious solutions. The email then concludes with three questions. The PGP signature, which would have confirmed the authenticity of the email, was conveniently removed by the leaker.

If a version with a valid signature does exists online I was unable to find it. But regardless of its legitimacy, I find this question a bit odd. It reads: Do you believe that information should be free? While the idea of a secret society recruiting individuals by means of elaborate cryptographic puzzles may seem a bit absurd or even conspiratorial, it’s not entirely unfounded. Corporations and governments alike have employed similar recruitment techniques since at least the second World War.

In 2013, the British intelligence agency GCHQ launched a recruitment program known as Can You Find It?. Participants had to decrypt a number of cryptograms hidden across the internet and those who managed to solve the entire puzzle were offered a prize or a position at the agency. Google did something similar with enigmatic billboards back in 2004 and the US Navy launched a near-identical project in 2014.

Okay, but then, what about the recruits?

Why have we not heard from these chosen few?

Well, we have. It’s just that separating a legitimate finalist from an impostor is virtually impossible. In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, two alleged winners of the first puzzle chronicled the events beyond the final stage. After receiving an email from Cicada they were taken to a forum on the dark web. Here, they could communicate with some twenty some odd recruits as well as a handful of established members of Cicada. They were told that Cicada 3301 had been founded by a group of friends who shared common ideals about security, privacy, and censorship. The goal was to work as a collective to develop software applications in line with that ideology. As friends recruited friends, this secret society quickly expanded into a decentralized international organization. The recruits were then tasked with developing software that fit the ideology of the group and members of Cicada would oversee their progress. But without the allure of a puzzle to be solved, the recruits quickly lost interest. By the end of 2012 all but one had left and a few months later the site was gone.

They never heard from Cicada again. One of the two winners, named Marcus Wanner, later elaborated further in a video by YouTube Nox Populi. Furthermore, Nox Populi himself claims to be a winner of the second puzzle so I reached out to him and this is some of what he had to say. After completing the final stages of the second puzzle Nox Populi received an invitation to join Cicada 3301.

However, he was not invited to a website but was instead merely told to be patient. Then, around May of 2013, all communication with Cicada abruptly ceased. This was around the same time as when the website dedicated to the winners of the first puzzle was suddenly taken down. Nox Populi later contacted other winners of the second puzzle to compare notes and their experiences were identical. In his own words:

All the stories were the same, we were invited to join 3301, then something happened and silence followed a request for patience. Nox Populi suppose that roughly five others completed the second puzzle in contrast to the twenty-odd winners of the first. In regards to who or what Cicada is, Nox Populi believes they could be a remnant of the cypherpunk movement of the late 80s and 90s. Essentially a small group of activists advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies but he admits that there is no way to know for certain. If you want a far more comprehensive walkthrough of these puzzles as opposed to my brief overview, Nox Populi has produced a number of videos on his channel which I highly recommend.

While these accounts cannot be verified they do make for a very compelling argument as to what Cicada is. A group of anonymous developers seeking to develop privacy-conscious applications by recruiting talented individuals via cryptographic puzzles. Sure, it is not nearly as exciting as a shadow government seeking world domination or any of the more fantastical theories but it is certainly more plausible. You have to keep in mind that no part of these puzzles would have required more than one person. The posters are often pointed to as evidence that this must be the work of some international organization but I beg to differ. I mean, right now, I could use any number of services to hire random persons around the globe to install posters for me.

Although, given that no poster was located more than an hour away from an airport leads me to believe that one or multiple persons actually traveled to these locations. I mean, some of the posters were found within walking distance of an international airport. The fact is that anyone with a disposable income and enough time on their hands would be able to create the illusion of a vast secret network spanning the globe. Not saying that is the case with Cicada 3301 but it is nonetheless a possibility that cannot be discounted. With all of that being said, I personally think a loose-knit group of privacy-minded hobby-cryptographers to be the most plausible explanation. Cicada made their last public statement in April of 2017, merely warning against disinformation, but the current status of the third puzzle and the possibility of a fourth remains clouded in mystery.

Can I Draw Mona Lisa With Only CRAYONS

Can I Draw Mona Lisa With Only CRAYONS

2021-02-11T19:02:00.001-08:00

Hi, so it is currently day 18 for me in quarantine, and you know, I think it’s time to do something a little crazy, add some pizzazz in my life. Today I am going to challenge myself to recreate the most famous painting of all time, The Mona Lisa, painted by arguably the best artist of all time.

I know it’s hard to believe that it’s not me! But my boy, Leonardo da Vinci. Before we get into it, if you are bored during quarantine, you guys want to see some good trash, head on over to my TikTok. There, I have art tutorials as well as art tips.

And if you wanna see other artwork of mine, head on over to thins Instagram. And if you want to get really crazy during quarantine, you can even check out my Twitter. I would be honest here, nobody follows my Twitter so it’d be cool if you could. And yeah, without further ado, let’s get this party started. Now, when it comes to crayons, believe it or not, I don’t just have Crayola, I actually have a few other brands and varieties. So let’s go over those right now. Of course, I’m gonna be using the staple, the one, the only 48 pack of Crayola crayons. These are just like, the most classic crayons you could absolutely have, which, there are supposed to be 48 in here, but for a TikTok hack I used four of them.

Do not add glue. I repeat, do not add glue!

And the worst part was that TikTok hack didn’t even work out, so I wasted those good crayons for nothing. Now as far as like, the pigmentation goes of the Crayola’s, I would say that’s not bad at all. That’s definitely something I can work with.

Although I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I have never in my life blended two Crayola’s together so I’m curious to see how blending will work with these. Huh, okay, that’s actually not bad at all. I would say this is pretty good. The pigment, the blend ability, it passes the flag check. The next set of crayons that I’m gonna be using today, and these crayons I’ve never used before, they’re honestly just a novelty crayon that I got for Christmas that Zach gave me, and these guys are literally the coolest crayons in existence. These are Andy Warhol Campbell’s Soup crayons.

Andy Warhol is one of my favorite artists, he is a pop artist who did a whole entire series featuring the Campbell’s soup cans and every single crayon is named after like, one of his paintings, like, the theme of it. And these crayons, I don’t know if they’re gonna be any good since they’re novelty crayons, but I really wanted to use them at least one time in my life. God, this little thing is loud!

These kind of remind me of those crayons you get at Red Robin. But I don’t think I should be too hard on these because these are just a novelty crayon. Like, the Crayola will do the blend test. Oh wow. Do you see the difference in pigments? Do you see how like, dark and deep this one is, versus how light this one is? Yeah, these crayons are definitely not made for art. They’re just made for looking cute. Just like Bowie!

Oh gosh. Uh, on second thought, I don’t know if I’m gonna use these crayons because...yikes. Now these next crayons, I really debated like, should I put them in? Should I not?

But ultimately I decided to go with these because they are crayons and they are really good, and these are Caran dAche neo-color, color one, wax resistant, water-resistant, wax crayons. Now these are basically the top of the line crayons,

I did a whole video on these and let me tell you, the price was not cheap!

Boom! Look at that. Ah, it’s so beautiful. The texture is literally just crayons but man, the pigment on these is so beautiful, it’s so smooth, it doesn’t go everywhere. That, my friends, is the stuff. Ooh! She is looking so good!

Especially when you compare it to that. All right, so now that I’ve tested out everything, I have a good feel for everything, it’s time to actually start the drawing. Now, since I’m using crayons for the first time to EVER make a serious drawing, I have to be very careful with paper. Like, I don’t want it to have too much thickness to it because then it’s gonna overlap and get super waxy and I won’t be able to blend and you don’t want a super smooth paper like printer paper, because then it’s not gonna catch that much wax and you’re gonna have the exact OPPOSITE problem of the last one.

So it’s like a weird Goldilocks kind of thing, like not too hot, not too cold, just like, the perfect amount of paper and in this case, it’s a mixed media paper, which naturally it’s a, already a combination of like, watercolor paper and regular paper. I’m fully convinced it is designed for this!

Alright, so the first step of the actual drawing will be to sketch out the proportions and I’m literally just gonna go in there and sketch it out by hand because the Mona Lisa already is a very proportionate photo - not photograph, painting, so it’ll be very easy to transfer the proportions onto a piece of paper. And you’ll notice, instead of just doing the outline, I’m going in with the shadows and the highlights. The reason I’m doing that is to help me better understand the proportions because there’s so much shadows in the Mona Lisa, it’s...it can be a little tricky to find exactly where the outline is.

And I really want this, the proportions, to be perfect because that’s like 90% of the drawing is like, getting the proportions correctly. So when I was sketching this out, I beat up the paper just a little bit, just like, constantly erasing and redrawing so I’m gonna transfer this photograph onto a new piece of paper. That way we can have a nice fresh start. Now, if you don’t know how to transfer your artwork onto a new piece of paper, imma show you right now!

First, get a conté or chalk stick. It could literally be any chalk. Then, I’m gonna rub it all over the back of my drawing as so. Da, here we go, here we go. Flip that bad boy over and then you’re gonna very precisely and kind of hard, press and go over the outline of your drawing and specifically with the mechanical pencil because it’s very precise, very good, 10 out of 10, would recommend.

Okay, moment of truth. Hopefully it worked. Sometimes it doesn’t work. So, one, two, three. Hey, it worked! Okay, good. And so now, I think I’m ready to go ahead and start working with the crayons. All right, so the first thing that I’m gonna do is go in with my Crayola’s and I’m gonna start working on the most forgiving thing I can think of, the hair. And let me tell you, as someone who’s very heavy-handed, it wasn’t even six minutes in when this happened.

Now, the good thing with crayons is that there’s no drying time. The second that you put down that crayon, it’s on that piece of paper forever, you know, and I really appreciate that. So I finished the hair fairly quickly, I’m gonna go over it later with the nicer crayons, but I figured, you know, it’s the perfect time to start working on the face, which is probably the most hardest part of the whole entire drawing. So we went from really easy to the hardest part. One time, one time in my life, I was lucky enough to see a real life, in the flesh, Leonardo da Vinci painting and let me tell you, it looked so realistic, it didn’t even look like a painting. It looked like, next-level. Like, the blending was insane. And to try to get something like that on crayons, it’s gonna be tough.

All right, so I’m at a pretty good stopping point when it comes to the face, but I’m burnt out from working on it because there’s so much blending to it so I’m gonna work on the next thing, which will be her dress. And then from there go back to the background and then finish up the face. Isn’t that right, Bowie?

Now I have just mentioned when it comes to this, there is a lot of blending and during the whole entire process of me creating the face, I think I got the blending down too. I don’t want to sound cocky, but pretty good science, you know?

And it took a lot of trial and error so I’m gonna show you guys how I blend specifically with this. First, I go in with the undertone and the lightest crayon. So for example, the dress is green. I’m gonna go in with a light green, then I go in with a darker Crayola, which is the shadow, just to add a little bit more depth and then I go in and blend everything out with the nice crayons, the Caran dAche crayons, and that seemed to work really well. I rate the quality of mixing these two brands together, a 10 out of 10.

All right, so now I’m almost done. I still got the face and of course, the background which we gotta start now. And when I was sketching it, I noticed so many things that I have never seen before and I’m somebody who’s literally seen the Mona Lisa, not in person, but pictures of it, thousands and thousands of times, you know. And I never in my life noticed this little bridge. Like, where did that come from?

Well, that was fun, but now it’s time to get serious, get back to the face!

So I’m gonna go in and start sharpening all the crayons because I need to get very precise. And it can be kind of scary to like, go in there with a straight black but I need to add more shadows, more highlights, I need to get in there and make it look like a Renaissance painting and once the portions are fixed up, lastly, just gotta blend. Gotta blend, blend, blend, blend!

And finally, ladies and gentlemen, this brings me to the final product!

Well, there you go, I’m actually really happy with how it came out. If you guys want to see more art challenges, I will leave a playlist down below and yeah, stay safe guys, and I will see you next video. Bye!

How To Achieve 10x More Than Your Peers

How To Achieve 10x More Than Your Peers

2021-02-11T18:48:00.005-08:00

In this video we have three tips to achieve success and improvement as shown by Elon Musk! In five hundred years, we may look back and say, "Elon Musk was the single most influential person of our entire century." He has been able to do more in his 46 years than most of us could hope to do in ten lifetimes and yes, part of that is because Elon is incredibly smart and he works incredibly hard. ... and we're so hot up; we had just one computer so the website was up during the day and I was coding at night. ... work hard like it mean every waking hour; that's the thing I would say if your particular if you're starting a company. But working 100 hours a week still only puts you at two-and-a-half times as much as the average employee.

And most geniuses do not make the international impact that Elon has. In fact, the man with the highest IQ in the world, Chris Langan is a bouncer. So while smarts and work ethic are critical to Elon's success, in order to impact the world, you simply have to be able to influence other people; There's no way around it. That includes employees investors and the public at large and Elon Musk is unique here because on this channel, we can normally point to a leader's ability to nail a public speech.

In five hundred years, we may look back and say, Elon Musk was the single most influential person of our entire century. He has been able to do more in his 46 years than most of us could hope to do in ten lifetimes and yes, part of that is because Elon is incredibly smart and he works incredibly hard....and were so hot up; we had just one computer so the website was up during the day and I was coding at night....work hard, like, every waking hour. That’s the thing I would say if your particular if you’re starting a company. But working 100 hours a week still only puts you at two-and-a-half times as much as the average employee. And most geniuses do not make the international impact that Elon has.

In fact, the man with the highest IQ in the world, Chris Langan, is a bouncer. So while smarts and work ethic are critical to Elons success, in order to impact the world, you simply have to be able to influence other people; there’s no way around it. That includes employees investors and the public at large and Elon Musk is unique here because on this channel, we can normally point to a leaders ability to nail a public speech. For instance, take the way that Steve Jobs controls silence in this next clip....and we believe that in this world; people can change it for the best. And that those people who are crazy enough to think they could change the world are the ones that actually do. But Elon doesn’t have the same presentation ability as Jobs. While he definitely has moments of wit and humor, he often stumbles over his words or speaks without modulating his voice and he tends to use a lot of fillers like um and uh....it’s not because I wanted to, it’s because I couldn’t hire anyone.

Nobody good would join. Um, so... um, I ended up being that by default. None of this is meant as a criticism; its meant to point out how special it is that Elon is actually more famous and more sought out than most extroverted rock stars on the planet which is why, in this video, were going to break down what you can do to make that kind of impact on people so that you can achieve ten times more than your peers. And I will say though, brushing up on presentation skills is still going to be important for most people so I’m going to link to helpful videos now in the corner and in the description. First off, one thing that we just have to acknowledge is how gifted and hardworking Elon is. He was writing computer programs as a child and his work ethic has only improved since then. This next sentence is coming from a man with five children running three companies. I’m available 24/7 so as to help solve issues. Call me 3 a.m. or Sunday morning; I don’t care. But even all that brainpower and hard work isn’t enough to avoid failure. In fact, the higher that you set your sights, the more likely you are to fail repeatedly along the way which means an absolutely critical component of high achievement is dogged perseverance in the face of failure.

Take SpaceX, the first three rockets at SpaceX didn’t work as they had planned. He burned through 100 million dollars of his own money and was still going bankrupt. Or Tesla, when they IPO in 2010, Jim Cramer said this —You don’t want to own this stock; heck, you shouldn’t even rent the darn thing. I think Tesla will have the same trajectory as A123 which we told you would have a great first day pop when it came public but then it would be a dud afterwards.

In 2012, nearly 10 years after Tesla was founded, Mitt Romney who was running for president told the nation that Tesla was a loser....but don’t forget, you put 90 billion dollars — like 50 years’ worth of breaks — into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla. I’ve a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers. Have you ever spent five years of 100 hour weeks and all of your money on something and then still had it not work?Have you spent ten years on a project and then still been publicly ridiculed as a dud?

And have you persevered in spite of all of that? Most of us have not and would not. So where does Elons perseverance come from? Well, it’s because business failure would not bother him nearly as much as a failure to do something challenging, worthwhile, and exciting....and there need to be reasons to get up in the morning. You know, life can’t just be about solving problems; otherwise, what’s the point? There’s got to be things that people find inspiring to and make life worth living. When Elons talking about problems here, he means the daily things that occupy most of us like getting by at work, earning more money, making sure that other people approve our decisions...

Ask yourself — what has guided your decisions? Feeling financially comfortable, being widely respected, or doing something that inspires and excites you? There’s no wrong answers here but people who achieve at a high level almost always view not doing something impactful as a much bigger risk than financial or social failure. It’s not that they don’t care about those things; its than not feeling like they are doing deeply meaningful work is far worse to them which brings us to the second point — vision. Because without a clear vision for the future, it’s really hard to care more about inspiration than paying your rent for instance or the criticism of your entire peer group. So here was Ellens vision for SpaceX. Um, if you consider two futures — one where we are forever confined to Earth until eventually something terrible happens or another future where we are out there on many planets or maybe even going beyond the solar system —

I think that second version is incredibly exciting and inspiring...

Interestingly, this wasn’t always the vision for SpaceX even though that was Elons end goal. He just wanted to inspire other people to pursue space travel by doing one smaller project on Mars that would spark their imaginations. I came up with this small philanthropic mission which would be to send a small green house to the surface of Mars which was called Mars Oasis. Upon landing the seeds with dehydrated nutrient gel, you hydrate it upon landing and you have this little greenhouse and then the money shot would be green plants against a red background. Regardless of the specifics, a leader must be able to paint a picture of a desirable future; that’s what puts the vision in visionary and it’s how they persist through the inevitable setbacks and it’s how they encourage other people in their organization to do the same. That’s really what took us to the moon in the first place. We shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body...

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they are hard. So if you want to achieve, you need a vision; but how do you get a vision if you don’t have one? Well, you start by exploring. You travel. You say yes to activities outside of your comfort zone and, very importantly in my opinion, you read because many of the most influential people in the world point back to a specific book that shaped their vision. Just listen to Elon talk about a book that he read as a kid....like the Foundation series from Asimov is... a really... like, one of the best ever. That book by the way is about a scientist who creates a foundation for reducing human suffering and expanding human consciousness across the galaxy.

Does it sound familiar? Now, books hold a special place in my heart but your vision doesn’t have to come from reading. It can come from watching movies or listening to podcasts, playing sports, hiking in the woods, spending times with people that you love...What’s important is that you would expand your sphere of influence and frequently ask yourself, If I had a magic Genie and anything were possible, what would I like to create?

That kind of question helps you break through the yeah-but-it-would-never-work filter that so many people have and of course not everything you dream up is going to wind up working out but almost every inspiring vision feels impossible in some way. Even mine for Charisma on Command felt like a total pipe dream just a year before it became my reality. So start with wild visions that get you excited and only later ask yourself if they’re feasible. Elon actually uses a first principle analysis to determine this but that is beyond the scope of this video so look it up on Google if you’re curious for more because there is one more element that I want to touch on here that really takes Elon Musk to the next level in terms of what he’s able to achieve and how he’s able to influence others and it’s that his visions aren’t just about him. There is no Musk Industries. Tesla is named after an inventor from the 1800s. The rocket from SpaceX is named after the Millennium Falcon and the Boring Company, well, that just too silly play on words. The point is that Elon doesn’t seem as concerned with his name as Tony Stark who he’s often compared to. Even more unique, Elon Scholl isn’t just for his businesses to win — of course, he would like that — but listen to how Elon Musk talks about GM competing with Tesla.

I think if GM comes to market with a compelling electric car, that great. The goal of Tesla from the beginning has been to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport so I think if GM or any other company comes out with compelling electric cars that good for the world then well applaud them. In other words, Musks overarching vision for the future views humanity collectively. In the end, were all on the same team. That’s why in addition to just rooting for GM, he actually made Teslas patents public. Now, obviously, Elon would like Tesla to succeed as a company but he really also wants humanity to have an economically viable electric car no matter who makes it happen.

Contrast that with any number of other businesses, and I’m sure you can think of a few, that pursue profits at the expense of what would be best for society. So remember this — your vision can only be as inspiring as the amount of people that it positively impacts. Elons visions include all of humanity so he’s become a worldwide celebrity despite not being the world’s greatest public speaker. And if you want to make a bigger impact and inspire more people, you have to ask yourself,, Who would it be fulfilling to help?

Your answer can be all of humanity or kids or your local community or whoever you want but if your aim is to inspire others and to achieve more, the vision just has to go beyond your own comfort; there’s no way around it.

So to recap back-to-front since that actually the way that this stuff gets implemented in your life, first, you have to clarify your values — who do you want to help?

There’s nothing inherently wrong here with selfish motives but it does have to go beyond you in the same way because it needs to captivate the imaginations of other people if you’re going to achieve at this massive scale. Second, imagine an amazing future. Paint the picture because that what a vision is and if you need more inspiration I personally recommend reading more than just about anything. The initial vision for Charisma on Command came from The 4-Hour Workweek but I was also influenced by sci-fi novels like Enders Game that talk about strategy and leadership so you have to pursue your interests here.

As Steve Jobs said in his famous commencement speech, and much of what stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path. So check out whatever piques your interest and pursue it deeply. And if you are interested in reading more, I commend you but perhaps you don’t have that free-hands time because you’re travelling or driving, there is a link below where you can get a free audio book with a trial of Audible.

I also think it just be awesome to have more people reading or listening to books; that just an amazing thing so if you want to check that out go ahead click the link below in the description to get a trial of Audible and a free book. Third, persevere and you need to fail a whole bunch. Now, this is gonna be much easier to do when you have identified something that you care about more than social approval or money; it’s actually nearly impossible when the reverse is true. And I’ve to tell you, amongst the group of smaller entrepreneur that make up my friends, the one trait that separates those who actually live their dream from the ones who don’t is daily continuous perseverance over several years.

If this is a topic you’re more interested in, let me know; I’m happy to do another video on that but my advice is more nuanced than never give up; you don’t really have time for it right here so I’m just gonna continue on. Anyways, if you want more videos like this, go ahead and click Subscribe right now. I’m gonna be covering a lot more mindsets in the coming weeks and I have some breakdowns that I’m super excited for like a comparison of the charisma of all the different Avengers... Or not all; there’s like four or five to be fair and there’s like 30 Avengers but a comparison of the Avengers charisma and I am a total nerd for doing this so I’m excited for that.

And if you want to make sure that you don’t miss that video when it is released, hit the subscribe button and of course, the notification bell. I’m actually also in the comments whenever I release a video for the first hour after upload which is 11:00 a.m. Pacific and I guess that 2 p.m. Eastern time so if you have any questions for me, that the time to ask them and I can get back to you directly. Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoyed this video and I will see you in the next one.

Jack Ma's Ultimate Advice for Students & Young People

2021-02-11T18:31:00.002-08:00

This is Jack Ma's Ultimate Advice for Students and Young People. Now one of the richest men alive, it took him 4 years to get into college and upon graduating he applied for 30 different jobs and was rejected by all of them.

My advice to the young people 25 years old, make enough mistakes, don’t worry You fall you stand up. You fall, you stand up Enjoy it, I mean, 25 years old enjoy the show, enjoy the show. From 30 to 40 years old, you have to think very clearly Were you working for yourself if you really want to be entrepreneur.

So 40 to 50 think about, how can you focus on things that you are good at But when you are 50 to 60 years old work for the young people because young people can do better than you. So rely on them, invest on them making sure they’re good. So 25 years old Don’t worry Any mistake is an income, is a wonderful revenue for you. In the future, it’s not about the competition of knowledge. It’s the competition of creativity, it’s a competition of imagination, it’s a competition of learning, it’s a competition of independent thinking. If you think like a machine the problem will come. In the past 20 years, we make people like a machine in the next 20 years, machines will look like people. So in the future it’s not knowledge driven, it’s the wisdom driven, it’s the experience driven.

In the past it’s the knowledge driven and it’s the manufacturing driven and in the future it’s the creativity driven. I think next 30 years the world is going to change a lot. The new technology is going to change every aspect of the world So this is what we think the world should be focusing on not only the IQ, EQ but also focus on LQ the Q of Love. Because only when you care for the others, only when you care for the others that succeed and are more successful than you are you have the chance. 10 years ago internet was so good when nobody believed internet was so good. Now internet is so tough because all the smart people go to internet. So you should go to the off ground. I fail for...

Funny things like I failed in a key primary school test for two times and I failed like three times for the middle school, middle schools. No I tried, there is an examination that young people if you want to go university you have to take, take the examinations. So I failed three times. When I graduated from university, and before I, you know, for three years I tried and failed in the universities. So I apply for jobs for 30 times, got rejected. I went for police, they say “No, you’re not good” I went to even the KFC, when KFC came to China, come to our city - You applied? - 24 people went for the job 23 people were accepted, I was the only guy. And we went for the police, 5 people, 4 of them accepted. I was the only guy they’re not receiving. So to me, being turned down, rejected Oh, by the way, I told you that I applied for Harvard for 10 times, rejected. I learned so much about the Hollywood movies especially the- Forrest Gump - You love Forrest Gump? - I love Forrest Gump. Why do you like him? Simple.

Never give up. People- people thinking he’s dumb but he knows what he’s doing. And I was very depressed the day... the year 2002 or 2003 in the States I was very depressed when I could not find out a way for the internet and then I watch the movie in my friend’s home Forrest Gump when I see him I think, This the guy we should learn from. Believe in what you’re doing. Love it whether people like it or don’t like it, be simple. And like the words, Life is like a box of chocolates you never know what you can get, right?

I never knew I would be here talking to you, I never know. But today I made it. I told my people in my apartment 18, 15 years ago Guys we have to work hard not for ourselves, if we can be successful 80% of the young people in China can be successful. We don’t have a rich father, a powerful uncle, we don’t get one dollar from bank, one cent from government. Just work as a team. I worry about it today, young people, a lot of young people lose hope, lose vision and start to complain. We also have the same problem, when I got... It’s not a good feeling being rejected by so many people We also depressed but at least later we find... that the world has a lot of opportunities. How you see the world? How you catch the opportunity?

So... and Hollywood gives me a lot of inspiration. I, at the beginning I never thought... I thought when I was young I said, Everything is possible Now I know not everything is possible. When you have something you have to think about you have to consider about the others, you have to consider about the customer, society, your employees, the shareholders. There are so many things that I think if you continue to work hard there’s...there’s possibility. It’s not... if you don’t do it nothing is possible. If you try to do it at least you have the hope. Calm down, there’s always a way out. And keep yourself balanced. And meanwhile, don’t try to... because business is a compt... Competition is fun.

Business is not a battlefield, you die or I win Business... even if you die I may not win right? So it’s about, it’s about fun. - Yeah, - Tell them the story, and tell them that if Jack... I don’t think in this world a lot of people be rejected more than 30 times If we, you know, the only thing we never give up, the only thing like, we’re like Forrest Gump. We keep on fighting, we keep on changing yourself. We don’t complain. Whether you are successful or not successful. I find that when people, when they finish the job, if they make a mistake and they fail, if they always complained to others, this guy will never come back. If the guy only check himself, Yeah.

Something wrong with me here, something wrong with me there. This guy has hope. So many people I talked to at that time for AliPay, they say this is the stupidest idea you have ever got. But I say, I don’t care if it’s stupid or clever as long as people use it Now we have 800 million people using this AliPay. 1999, year 2000 and even at the Yahoo time a lot of people say, This Jack is crazy. He’s doing something that we don’t understand. And a lot of venture capitals give you money because there is such a American model already there. But they say, Alibaba we don’t see this kind of model, right?

They say Jacks crazy - yeah this is crazy guy I mean I remember my first time in Time magazine they call me crazy Jack and I, I think crazy is good we are crazy but were not stupid. We know what we are doing but if everybody agree with me, if everybody believed my- our idea is good we have no chance. So that’s... the money we raised, were very thankful. So, when our investors make a lot of money, I feel proud and honored. Everybody is made unique and different so you must have a unique and different way. A lot of people today have a lot of complaints say, I don’t have opportunity. I complained a lot when I was young And suddenly I realized complaining does not solve any problem where the opportunity always in the place where people complain there are so many, if there are so many opportunities in the world in this world because there are so many complaints.

If you can solve the complaint, one of the complaints that’s the opportunity so this is what we- we made I think young people if my advice is to be an entrepreneur don’t be scared of failure, of setbacks and don’t give up. When we start the business, we had 18 founders including me 17 of them, most of them my students and most of them...Well, today people think, these 18 people, the smartest people in China We don’t think we were smart. Honestly, we all graduate from the very poor schools. The only thing we did we were very united, we all believed in the future, we are all optimistic, and we learn through mistakes, we never give up. If you graduate from famous university please, respect the people who graduate from the poor schools.

Those people like us graduate from poor universities please respect yourself. We have chance we came today to...now We made so many mistakes people say, You are lucky Yes, we are very lucky. We took only 19 years to today’s size.

But we have gone through so many tough situations. We made so many mistakes that people cannot even imagine. In probably 19 years, you have gone through so many tough experiences and that will make you different.

Elon Musk Saved Tesla from Bankruptcy

Elon Musk Saved Tesla from Bankruptcy

2021-02-11T18:29:00.000-08:00

We are at a turning point in transportation. Although gas cars still dominate the roads, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the future of transport is electric and a lot of this excitement is because of one company. Tesla is disrupting the automotive industry by creating affordable EVs of all kinds. But it almost didn’t make it. Success was a longshot and Elon Musk knew it. When we first started Tesla and Solar City we thought they would fail. Tesla, in particular,

we thought probably we’ve maybe 10% chance of success. This is not the story of a company that nearly died many times. This is the story of a man who would not give up. This is the story of Elon Musks perseverance against all odds. In 2003, in Silicon Valley, two engineers created Tesla. Martin Bernhard and Marc Tar penning. They named it after Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. Back then, Tesla was called Tesla Motors. They saw an opportunity to create an electric car after General Motors recalled the EV1 - the first mass-produced electric car in the modern era. It’s unclear why GM did this - it could have been because of a lack of demand, high production costs, or pressure from the oil and gas industry. Either way, GM crushed the cars in a junkyard.

Elon came into the picture when the founders went looking for funding. He made millions when the financial services company he co-founded, x.com, merged with a rival and became PayPal. When eBay bought PayPal in 2002, Elon walked away with $180 million. He was very successful. But instead of calling it a career, he sunk all his winnings into new ventures. He put $100 million into SpaceX, $10 million into Solar City, and $70 million into Tesla including $6.5 million at the start, and became the chairman of the company’s board. So, all of the money just came from me personally. I didn’t want to ask people - other investors - for money if I thought we were going to die. 2006 was a big year for Tesla. The roadster made its official appearance: a good-looking, fast electric car. But there were quality issues and a lot of production problems. In the end, Bernhard was ousted as CEO before the Roadster even went into production which didn’t happen until 2008. Tesla was running out of money. The company budgeted $25 million for the development of the Roadster but it ended up costing nearly five times that. By the fall of 2008, Tesla had only $9 million left to fund the entire company. It was a tumultuous time with multiple CEOs coming and going and in the end, Elon was left in charge. He said this in an interview about the big decision he had to make: ...do I let Tesla die or do I make it live with a lot of pain and grief?

He chose to make Tesla live but it couldn’t have been more painful. One of Americas largest banks, Lehman Brothers, collapsed, sinking the world economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression. Plus, SpaceX was close to being bankrupt after three failed rocket launches. And, he was going through a divorce from his wife Justine. Elon said 2008 was the worst year of his life and he never thought he was someone capable of having a nervous breakdown but came close to it. Elon fought hard to save his companies. He cut 25% of Teslas workforce and asked friends to help cover payroll. But by December 2008, Tesla was about to die. Still, he didn’t give up. He scraped together $20 million from various sources, including the money he made investing in his cousins data center startup Ever dream which Dell had bought the year before.

Investors agreed to match what he cobbled up and in the end, Elon managed to secure a $40 million round of financing on Christmas Eve. It was the last hour of the last day that it was possible. Ashlee Vance wrote a biography about Elon Musk and there’s one dinner conversation that Elon had with a Tesla investor that really shows his tenacity. During that dinner, Elon said, I will spend my last dollar on these companies. If we have to move into Justine’s parents basement, well do it. Tesla barely pulled through in 2008 but needed more money to stay alive. That came in May 2009 when German automaker Daimler invested $15 million by taking a 10% stake in the company. Daimler and Tesla had already been working on an electric smart car. The company also received a $465 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy which had a program backing clean tech startups. The following year, Tesla found a more stable solution when it went public at $17 a share. Despite the problems with the Roadster, Tesla had achieved something no company had ever done before. It proved that electric cars could be cool and fast. But the Roadster was too expensive for most people - costing more than $100,000. So, they built another car. In 2012, Tesla stunned the world when it began shipping the Model S sedan. It took every ones breath away. The Model S could go more than 300 miles on a single charge and it was more affordable than the Roadster although still expensive. Teslas problems were still not over and nearly went bankrupt again in 2013. Even though the Model S was in high demand, customers who put down a $5,000 deposit were hesitant about going through with their purchase. There were a lot of reasons for this: complaints about the interior, kinks with the car, some of the earliest versions didn’t have parking sensors and cruise control which are common in high-end vehicles. There were also concerns about the resale value. We were operating with maybe one to two weeks of money.

When Elon found out about the problem he did three things. First, he turned every Tesla employee into a salesperson. They called everyone who put down a deposit and tried to convince them to go through with buying the car. Second, he convinced his friend Larry Page, the CEO of Google, to buy Tesla if the company actually did run out of money. Finally, Tesla shut down its factory when orders weren’t coming in fast enough but did not admit this publicly, or else it would have scared investors and sent the stock price plummeting. Instead, Tesla said it was closing down for maintenance which was technically true but not the whole story. The strategy worked. On May 8, 2013, Tesla stunned Wall Street by posting its first-ever profit as a public company. Tesla made $11 million on $562 million in sales after delivering 4,900 Model Ss in the first quarter. Elon saved Tesla from death again. But there were more hardships to come.

The company’s problems were still not over and nearly went bankrupt again in 2018. This time, it had to do with the Model 3. Elons vision from the beginning was to build an affordable electric car paid for by the more expensive cars - the Model S and also the Model X which came out a few years earlier. The Model 3 had a base price of $35,000. This is kind of crazy but I just learnt, I was just told that the total number of orders for the Model 3 in the past 24 hours has now passed 115,000. But the huge demand also meant the company had to produce the cars in time. And frankly, were gonna be in production hell. Welcome, welcome.

As the saying goes, if you’re going through hell, keep going. Tesla struggled to meet its production targets. It initially wanted to produce 5,000 Model 3s a week but in the first three months of 2018, it made just 9,800 of them. Tesla was bleeding money as it tried to increase production of the car. It lost $1 billion dollars in the first half of 2019 and scrambled to raise capital. Elon said the company was close to death within single-digit weeks. He even slept on the factory floor because he didn’t have time to go home and also because he says he wanted to suffer more than any other employee. Despite the torturous production process, Tesla managed to pull through once again. It turned a corner in the second half of 2019 by delivering over 92,000 Model 3s in the fourth quarter - that’s an increase from the same period the year before or a year-over-year of 46%. And the latest model - the Model Y - was ahead of schedule. Tesla has managed to survive. Now it’s looking ahead to many ambitious plans, including fully autonomous driving, a million-mile battery, and driverless cabs called robot axis.

Teslas stock price hovers around $1,000 a share as of the making of this video but the biggest bulls see it going up way more. Tesla has endured many near-death experiences and through it all, Elon has never ever given up. It’s hard to stay alive as a car company, honestly. Not only is Tesla alive but because of his vision, ambition, and relentless drive, its future is still being written. Thanks so much for watching, I’m Cindy Pom. If you liked what you saw, give us a like, and don’t forget to subscribe to my new channel. While you’re at it, hit that notification bell so you’ll know when I upload a new video. I hope to do a lot more stories on topics that I find super interesting. See you soon.