#Japanese Government Bonds

[notayesmanseconomics]

The Bank of Japan cracks meaning the Widowmaker springs to life

The Bank of Japan cracks meaning the Widowmaker springs to life

This morning has brought some pretty significant economic news out of Nihon or Japan. It started in an area I mentioned in a reply to yesterday’s comments because bond yields had pushed higher making me suspicious. Overnight if we stay with that theme we saw this. JAPAN BOND FUTURES TRADING HALTED: OSAKA EXCHANGE That takes me back to my days out in Tokyo, but in the modern era that did not…

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#Bank of Japan #bond yields #business #economy #Finance #Governor Kuroda #Interest Rates #Japan #Japanese Government Bonds #Japanese Yen #Nikkei 225 equity index #QE #QQE #The Tokyo Whale #Topix

[siliconpalms]

Investing Across Borders: A Guide to the Most Stable and Liquid Bonds for Offshore Investors

Investing in bonds can be a strategic move for offshore investors seeking stability and liquidity. In this blog post, we’ll explore what makes a bond stable and liquid, and highlight some of the most promising options for offshore investment. Understanding Stability and Liquidity in Bonds Before diving into specific bonds, it’s crucial to understand what makes a bond stable and…

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#Bonds #German Bunds #Japanese Government Bonds #Singapore Government Securities #Treasury Bonds #U.S. Treasury Bonds #UK Gilts

[eastsidemags]

Agent Blakk Signing

Anthony Anozier is a local comic creator and we’re stoked to be able to host him and his graphic novel - Agent Blakk!

About the book: Nonstop action horror comic, spy espionage meets brutal mutant zombies as an elite team of mercenaries are sent on a classified mission just to discover the horrors of government experiments gone awry. Dive into this thrilling tale of pain and revenge and discover the story of Agent Blakk.

This graphic novel is Action/Horror - think a mashup between James Bond and Resident Evil - and is heavily inspired by Japanese manga art. It is rated PG-13 with mature themes and cartooned violence.

About the creator: Story written by Anthony Anozier & Adrian Agramonte. Both Elizabeth New Jersey Natives striving to share diverse and dynamic stories through their growing independent brand Voltage comics. Free of the confines of mainstream comic book media Anozier brings mature stories to life with over the top art influenced by Japanese manga art. Dive into Voltage Comics for immersive relatable stories with standout characters and worlds. 

Join us from 2pm-5pm as Anthony will be here signing copies of his book, talking about his inspiration and drive to do big things in the comics industry. He’ll also have some cool additional items with him like hooodies, etc.

#Anthony Anozier #comic #creator #graphic novel #Agent Blakk #nonstop action #horror #spy espionage #mutant zombies #elite team #mercenaries #horrors #government #thrilling #pain #revenge #mashup #James Bond #Resident Evil #Japanese #manga #art #PG-13 #mature themes #cartooned violence #signing #inspiration #industry

[stellas-and-tonitruses]

Everything we know about Project Apple (and, by extension, Anya's past) thus far

thought i'd compile all of that now while endo's on break Just In Case the next chapter happens to start anya's backstory (i don't Think it will but endo likes surprising us LSDFKLFS)

important disclaimer that project apple and the organization in charge of anya's experiments have not been confirmed to be related! there's evidence that they have things in common, in particular employees, but that's our only real connection between the two thus far. still! worth looking into

more under the cut!

so, starting very strongly with the very first mention of anything related to the project: anya's introduction in chapter 1

despite her being a main character, we know very little about her past at the moment, and this little blurb at the beginning makes up a very big portion of what we know.

things to note here:

as an experiment, her name was "Test Subject 007". important to note that the notation differs between her and bond: she was Test Subject 007, bond was Subject 8, no zeroes in there;

she had been made thus by accident, the phrasing itself implying quite heavily that she was just a normal child before said accident (but this is the translation! i don't know japanese so i can't cross-reference with the raws to clarify if the phrasing changes anything, but the fanbook uses the word "gained" to describe her powers too);

because her mind-reading is an unintended consequence, that means the scientists were presumably not, at least initially, trying to achieve cognitive enhancements in humans, and were instead trying to achieve something else, whatever that might've been;

she escaped from the facility and then moved from institution to institution, looking for a family.

so, crucially, through this little introduction we learn that there is an organization, government-funded or otherwise, that is or was conducting human experiments for unknown purposes. we also learn that whatever family anya had prior to being involved in the experiments is more than likely unreachable, at least as far as she knows, and so she has settled for finding a new family to take care of her instead.

in terms of the facility itself, here we see they clearly drilled it into her that she can't ever reveal her secret (and the darn plush is there too -- in the anime it's even more emphasized, as you can see in the gif i made)

through her reminiscing though, we get our very first look at the scientists that were in charge of her! they're in the gif above but here they are in the manga too. it's so interesting that the anime actually shows their eyes behind the glasses though, fascinating choice.

the insistence on world peace is important, as it explains her own personal obsession with it and shows that it's not just because of twilight's own focus on preserving the peace. i also don't think twilight ever really talks about "world peace," only about "preserving the current peace between westalis and ostania" -- anya seems to be the only one talking about WORLD peace (even in the very first scene where either of them mention it in proximity to each other in ch 1, loid says "understanding the other party is the first step towards peace" and anya's interpretation is "understanding me makes world peace?") but take this with a grain of salt because i might be wrong! going through every single mention of peace in the story just to fact check this one little trivia fact is a bit much i think so i'm not doing it JSDFKLSD

but yes

remember mr hair strand and baldy, we'll see them again. not her though, ig she wasn't in charge of bond

now, fast-forwarding to chapter 19, we finally get a name and a premise for the experiments:

"but oana," you might say, "this is talking about animals only! how do we know it's the same project as anya's, which involved human experimentation?"

i don't think it is, is the thing! i think it's related to the experiments anya was a part of, which is evidenced by the same scientists being featured in project apple too, but there's more going on that we don't know about. there wouldn't be such adamancy on keeping the two separate in every official mention of them if they were just the same thing, imo!

back to the evidence, we learn that the project, conducted and funded by the previous ostanian regime (meaning donovan's related to it one way or another, since he was prime minister), was marked by franticness and desperation -- a prime place for accidents like anya's telepathy and bond's future vision.

we also learn that the project was sacked by the new administration and that the former test subjects ended up on the black market.

(this makes it very important, imo, to learn when anya escaped the facility vs. when the project was sacked. it's clearly no longer in function, but while we've heard nothing from them thus far, i'm willing to bet the shady dealings around the desmond group are NOT related to the war, as W.I.S.E. has been led to believe, but rather to reignite project apple. that is speculation however so i'm going to refrain from theorising much on why the desmond group is focused on acquiring pharmaceutical companies!!)

ok speculation tangent over, back on track

so, that's already a decent amount of info! but moving to chapter 22, when bond is finally home, and we finally see some familiar faces

behold! baldy and mr hair strand!

and 2 other guys we don't know but will see again in another bond flashback!

that's 2 out of the 3 scientists we've seen thus far from anya's own time as subject 007, confirming that there IS a connection between anya and bond's experiments, regardless of whatever the project anya was a part of might've been named.

this is also the chapter in which we learn that bond himself was subject 8 (or, if we take it from the fanbook, subject #8. still, diff notation from anya!)

in chapter 31, we learn an interesting tiny piece of trivia. we don't get any further info on it, but it IS mentioned as something that is known by W.I.S.E.:

ostania is rumoured to have done human experimentation! and W.I.S.E., and by extension loid, are aware of that.

do i know how them knowing may be important later? not really!

the next droplet of info we get is in chapter 40. we see that project apple had collaborators that are still functioning unhindered.

of course, born industries is only rumoured to have been involved with project apple, but regardless of whether or not they actually were, the rumour itself implies that the project likely pulled scientists from various other companies' R&D departments.

(this makes the desmond group's acquisition of glooman pharmaceuticals shadier, but anyway)

as a side note, twilight is emoting so much at just his wrong assumption that bond is seeking revenge against the scientists. imagine how he's going to react when he finds out about anya JKSDFKLFSD

and now aaaaall the way in chapter 58, we see the bald guy who anya also knows, the two scientists from bond's previous flashback, and one whole new guy!

and thus ends our current knowledge of it all!

the only other thing worth discussing is anya's knowledge of classical language

but plenty people have already discussed these scenes, especially recently, so here are some links: 1 | 2 | 3

the only thing i can add is that i'm fairly certain that classical language is a lot more likely to be latin than old english, because it's a very common language to learn in school (in europe at least, and ostania is based on east germany so it makes sense to me. i learned mandatory latin in school for a few good years too, even if i wasn't that good at it lol) and because one of the most common modern usages of latin are in medicine and science, it would make sense that she'd be better at it due to exposure.

a possibility is also that the scientists would think in latin to conceal their thoughts from her, and that's how she ended up learning so much. she's not fluent in latin, she's just well acquainted and that cicumstance would explain the how.

BUT THAT'S SPECULATIONNN

also i don't think "ANIA" is an acronym, nor do i think anya's been misspelling her own name out of lack of knowledge. "ania" is a polish diminutive of anna and an alternate transcription of Аня, so i think it's far more likely that anya isn't ostanian or westalian than it is that her name comes from an acronym.

now,

TL;DR!

what we know about project apple (and the "mysterious organization"):

project apple was funded and conducted by what appears to have been donovan's regime and, from what W.I.S.E. knows, aimed to create highly intelligent animals for military purposes;

W.I.S.E. is aware that ostania is at the very least rumoured to have dabbled in human experimentation;

the project is presumably no longer on-going, though it is likely there are efforts behind the scenes to revive it;

it is rumoured but not confirmed that project apple had collaborating companies that are still functioning perfectly fine;

the same scientists who were in charge of bond were also in charge of anya, signalling that there is a very significant connection between project apple and the "mysterious organization;"

based on what they were telling anya, they were/are very focused on "world peace";

their experimentation methods include but likely aren't limited to electrocution.

and what we (vaguely) know about anya that relates to this:

she is at the youngest, 4 years old, and at the oldest, 5 nearing 6. we don't know her real age, all we know is she definitely lied about being 6;

she is very fixated on specifically world peace while twilight is focused on peace between ostania and westalis. the scientists are the very first we see talking about this, so it's likely their fault;

she is unreasonably well acquainted with classical language;

she has escaped the facility at LEAST 1 year ago;

and, one tidbit from the fanbook (page 29): "Anya has been reading minds for as long as she can remember," implying that her memory of a life before the lab is muddy at best and absent at worst.

that's all we know that i know of!!

if you got this far, thank you for reading :D hope any of this was interesting or sparked any theories >:] have a good day!

#sxf #spy x family #manga spoilers #project apple #anya forger #bond forger #sxf manga #spy x family manga #sxf manga spoilers #spy x family manga spoilers #analysis #meta #I DIDN'T OWN THE FANBOOK WHEN I FIRST MADE THE DRAFT FOR THIS BUT THEN I BOUGHT IT well my brother bought it for me #bless his heart #AND SO I WANTED TO READ THE ENTIRE THING BEFORE CONTINUING ON!!! didn't find much out in relation to this post specifically but #there's quite a lot to infer on how anya's powers work #and there's a distinction between what she reads (internal voices vs mind reading which would be digging into someone's subconscious) #so that would be super interesting to talk about but uh not in this post KLSDFJSDKL since it has little bearing on the project itself

[seat-safety-switch]

I am not the kind of person who would become a chicken farmer. Don't get me wrong: I can certainly understand the reasons why you would. There's a lot of different makes and models of chickens, and they help keep bugs out of your property. Plus, they make eggs. There is, however, one big downside: you don't have to buy a special vehicle for them.

One of the greatest things about agriculture is that it gives you an excuse to buy a specialized automobile or automobile accessory. Cows? Need a cattle trailer. Horses? Horse trailer. Big trucks in either regard. Chickens are small, so you can throw them in the back of your regular ol' Subaru wagon, and take them to the chicken vet whenever you want. It's an easy lifestyle, but as Socrates once said, the life where you don't buy a cool niche automobile is hardly a life at all.

Don't worry, shareholders. I am fully aware of the spending power and spare capital of chicken-lovers all over the country. There is a non-solution from Switch Industries to this non-problem. We simply give the chickens each their own little cars. They can drive themselves to the vet, or to the feed store, and sleep in their cars rather than rely on the construction of old-fashioned, expensive (and increasingly costly) chicken coops.

Many haters are speaking out against this project, and I address those haters now. You might think that this is excessive. You might think that this is impossible. You might think that this is illegal. Self-driving car technology has come a long way from the early days of "tie a rope to it." With modern Japanese technology (i.e. batteries stolen from floor models of Makita power drills at Home Depot,) a small chicken-operated electric car, built out of a repurposed Power Wheels®, can easily reach highway speeds.

As for illegality, it turns out that the current government will write whatever law we tell them to do, as long as we grow our chicken-driving industry to a size that is awkward to legislate before those lawmakers wake up to the threat. It is for this reason that I've partnered with some only-slightly-arrested junk bond kings in the tri-state areas to fuel this development.

So if you have a bunch of chickens on your property, easy access to the highway, and a lack of legal representation, call Switch Industries as soon as possible. We'll get you hooked up with your own fleet of NuggetRides® as soon as possible. You won't regret it, or at least we won't.

[emblemxeno]

FE Fates Localization: Ending Changes

Wanted to put together what I find to be noteworthy and/or bothersome changes that were made to character endings in Fates from Japanese to English. 

It’s important to note that some changes/cuts are almost certainly because of space limitations; Japanese as a language is able to fit more information in sentences than English can, evident in this game where one English letter is the equivalent to one Japanese character in terms of spacing. So I don’t have major grievances with all of them, as cutting something in order to fit the most important parts was most likely unavoidable.

Credit to @aphonicdreams for the JP ending translations.

Corrin (BR/CQ) - Crux of Fate (Eng)/The One Who Chooses the Future (JP)

Eng: While no official records remain, tales of a hero spread across generations in songs and folktales. And while the stories varied, they all spoke of the hero's critical decision that led to peace.

JP:  After the war, many legends were left behind in every land about the Hero of Salvation. But strangely enough there are no official records that remain. The only certainty is that he chose one path and connected it to peace.

-No issues with this other than “Hero of Salvation” is a banger folk name and I wish it was kept.

Corrin (Revelation) - King of Valla/The New Touma King (***???)  (新たなる透魔王)

Eng: After the war, the portal to the bottomless canyon was sealed forever-as was Anankos's body. Corrin was crowned King of Valla, and the three rulers forged a new era of peace.

JP: After the war, he governed the country as the King of Touma. Closed at the bottom of the Infinite Chasm, the former land of Touma and the corpse of Hydra became sealed together for eternity. Touma, Nohr, and Hoshido were bound by a solid bond and an age of peaceful dawn continued for a long time.

-I knew of the implication that Valla/Touma was given land by Hoshido and Nohr in Rev’s ending but I never found like, concrete lines about it? Is this what this is? Cuz I never knew about this, holy shit. Specifically saying ‘the former land of Touma’ means that Corrin isn’t governing empty floating islands, but is taking the few remaining Vallites to the surface to establish a new kingdom. Cuz how the fuck would anyone get to old Valla if the Bottomless Canyon was shut and only Azura and Corrin can travel through water to get there? This makes more sense than what I always thought of Rev. I highlighted Corrin’s title change as well cuz I don’t speak or read Japanese, and I was wondering if the original sentence means like “The New King of Touma” or “The King of New Touma” since those sentences imply different things, with the latter further supporting how old Touma was left behind.

Silas - Loyal Knight/Knight of Friendship (*)

Eng: Silas returned to Nohr to serve in the castle guard. His honest and dedicated nature earned him the title of lead knight. Records show Corrin and Silas remained friends for all their days.

JP: He returned to being a royal knight and served the Nohr Kingdom. That earnest personality changed the minds of his companions and, in his last years, he was entrusted to be the leader of the knights. Many younger knights adored him. It is said that he continued his close friendship with Kamui for his entire life.

-JP ending mentions younger knights adoring Silas. This was removed in English.

Kaze - Easygoing Ninja/Ninja of the Cool Breeze (*)

Eng: Few records of Kaze exist. Numerous poems of the time say he worked for his homeland and for Corrin from the shadows. His gentle yet mysterious nature made him a legend among ladies.

JP: Not many records are left of him after the war. There are many stories on the streets of his appearances, but he assisted Kamui and his country as a shadow. It is said that his unassuming kindness seduced the hearts of many women in his lifetime.

-No problem with his ending, but Kaze’s title has the wind attribute removed; I mention this now because it’s applicable to other ending titles having a little color or flair replaced or removed. If you see a * next to the titles, it means I think the change is, IMO, interesting to note. This one is inoffensive objectively, but I like element theming, it’s cool.

Mozu - Rural Power/The Country Girl

Eng: Mozu returned to her village and began rebuilding all by herself. Inspired by her efforts, nearby villages began their own rebuilding efforts. Mozu was eventually hailed as a local hero and humanitarian.

JP: She returned to her home town and started rebuilding her destroyed village alone. Soon, people from neighboring villages could be seen helping her, and her home town slowly and steadily regained its former appearance.

-Eng ending has Mozu’s work inspire other to rebuild their own villages. JP ending has people help rebuild her village. Odd change, don’t know why it was done.

Shura - Righteous Rebel/The Bandit Who Discarded His Name (*)

Eng: With the help of the Hoshidan royal family, Shura began the difficult task of rebuilding the kingdom of Kohga. Putting his outlaw past behind him, he eventually ran for office and was elected governor.

JP: He stepped into rebuilding the Principality of Kouga with the assistance of the new King of Hoshido. The people, who had scattered to every land, also returned and the country returned to its former appearance. He refused any condolences for his past as a thief but he became the ruler with the support of the people.

-JP ending mentions other Kohga remnants coming back during Shura’s rebuilding efforts, Eng ending removes this. It can kind of be considered obvious that they came back through implication, but it’s still worth mentioning. Shura’s ending title also is an odd change, because Righeteous Rebel doesn’t really... make sense. Maybe the term ‘rebel’ is more abstract than I think, but he isn’t really rebelling against anything, he’s trying to line his purse to rebuild his kingdom. His JP title is much more fitting, IMO.

Izana - Lord of Leisure/Official Ruler of Izumo (*)

Eng: Izana certainly suffered the ravages of war—he was never able to win another "Best Hair" contest. He tried to make up for it with lavish dinner parties and vacations, but he felt hollow inside.

JP: He went back to the Principality of Izumo and returned to his previous life. By his great efforts in the war, his popularity among his citizens became steadfast. But it is said that there was no difference in his lifelong divine appearance and teasing personality, and those who came to visit him were surprised.

-Endings are pretty much completely different. The trope of ‘ruler/boss being overly casual and friendly to the point of hilarity’ in Japanese is a tough thing to translate to an English equivalent, so Izana being kooky and using funny words in English I think was a good way to do it. That said, I think the ending being drastically changed was a bridge too far, cuz why would the side comment of the Best Hair Contest take priority over him being beloved by his citizens in despite his zany personality?

Ryoma - Peerless Samurai/The Samurai of Hoshido

Eng: Upon ascending the throne, Ryoma ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity throughout the world. Generations later, scholars would praise him for surpassing even King Sumeragi's great legacy.

JP: He was crowned as King of the Hoshido Kingdom. His preciseness in forming a fair and impartial government gave the people, who suffered from the ravages of war, courage, and the kingdom soon finished a dramatic revival. In the future, scholars would so comment on him: “He is someone who will exceed even the greatness of his father King Sumeragi”.

-JP ending mentions Ryoma implementing a fair and impartial government and giving people courage after the war. This is cut in the Eng version.

Hinoka - Warrior Princess/The Warrior Princess of Crimson

Eng: Hinoka became general of the Hoshidan army. While her official portraits depict a gentle princess, she was known to personally go on solo missions to destroy the remaining Faceless.

JP: For the sake of the country’s reconstruction she created an army for self-defense and controlled the Hoshido Kingdom’s forces. Although she became somewhat more princess-like during the war, occasionally she would aimlessly leave to defeat the remnants of the Nosferatu; her characteristic excitement had not changed.

-JP version mentions that Hinoka personally created a self defense army for Hoshido’s reconstruction. Eng version cuts this.

Takumi - Wild Card/Master of the God Bow (*)

Eng: After celebrating Ryoma's coronation, Takumi struck out on his own—volunteering to help rebuild war-torn villages. Over the years, he grew into a wise and patient leader.

JP: He assisted in the restoration of the Hoshido Kingdom, which had been desolated due to the ravages of war. All the human kindness he had seen suppressed the shadow, he was recognized throughout the country as a skilled leader, and he became someone who could be relied on.

-JP version details Takumi’s dark side being suppressed due to the human kindness he witnesses. Eng version cuts this.

Sakura - Loving Priestess/Priestess of Love

Eng: After Ryoma ascended the throne, Sakura led recovery efforts to heal the bodies and hearts of war-torn Hoshidans. She was known far and wide for her compassion and the strength of her resolve.

JP: Even after Ryouma was enthroned, she remained in the royal palace and supported the government of the king as a royal. Sakura, who matured, became a woman who gave off the impression of the former Queen Mikoto, and it is said that she captured the hearts of her subjects wounded by the war and was someone for those hearts to rely on.

-JP version mentions Sakura supporting Ryoma’s government plans and becoming a woman just like Mikoto. Eng version cuts this.

Saizo - Angry Ninja/Explosive Flame User (*)

Eng: While no official records of Saizo the Fifth exist from after the war, later scholars agreed that he most likely stayed in Hoshido, working covertly for the Hoshidan royal family. What else would he do?

JP: His figure disappeared from the official records. But in the future, the opinion of scholars all agree that he did not leave to another country but once again dove into the darkness to work for the sake of the Hoshido royal family.

-Nothing was cut here, but why was “What else would he do?” added in the English version, that’s mean :/

Azama - Calm Philosopher/The Aloof Priest (*)

Eng: After the war, Hinoka assigned Azama to a remote post on the very fringe of the kingdom. Despite initially clashing with the locals, he gained a cult following--and ultimately founded a new religion.

JP: He went around on a trip to every land of the Hoshido Kingdom. Without leaving his post as Hinoka’s subordinate, he contributed to the reconstruction of the country by skillfully guiding the areas that were difficult for the royal family to oversee. It is said that he was surprisingly loved by many with the success of his personality that was unattached to anything.

-WOW, okay this one is fucking weird. JP version has Azama willingly go around to help people and that his personality actually won people over and helped them out. And he’s still in Hinoka’s employ. Eng version has Hinoka kick Azama to the curb, he acts like a dick to the locals, he gets a few troll followers and starts a new religion despite not really liking religion himself. Nuts.

Hana - Focused Samurai/Tomboy Samurai (*)

Eng: After the war, Hana was entrusted with her own division, where she enforced her own training regimen. She remained close friends with Sakura, and trained every day to protect her and Hoshido.

JP: She entered the forces of the kingdom, and was entrusted with the whole army. It appears that after that she involved her subordinates into her own training without reserve. She continued her friendship with her master, Sakura, through her whole life and it is said that she improved her swordsmanship for Sakura and for Hoshido.

-Nothing to mention here other than the ending title. Fates was released back in the era of gaming and Internet where feminism was in its loud 'Not Like Other Girls’ stage, as opposed to now where nuanced and leftist feminist points are seen more. So any mention of gender roles/dynamics and descriptors in this era were changed or altered in Fates and it really shows its age. In this case, Tomboy was replaced with Focused, even though Hana is a Tomboy and the term itself is very inoffensive nowadays. This also applies to her personal skill, where the name was changed from Tomboy to Fearsome Blow. This is the first of several instances.

Camilla - Bewitching Beauty/The Bewitching Flower (or Beauty? *)

Eng: After her brother ascended the throne, Camilla largely withdrew from royal affairs. She focused instead on humanitarian efforts, eventually adopting as many as 11 children by some accounts.

JP: After ensuring Marx’s enthronement, she removed her status as a royal of the Nohr Kingdom. Thereafter she left behind legends in every land and, guessing from her tracks, she walked on as someone who somehow watched over Kamui secretly.

-JP version has Camilla continue to watch over Corrin, Eng version has her adopt lots of kids. Again, in 2015/2016 this was probably seen as an “aww she’s grown and changed and is helpful now” moment, but in 2023, all I think of is “wow the woman with an abusive childhood was written to just become a mom to solve her problems.” Not a fan of this change.

Laslow - Dancing Duelist/Blooming Smile (*)

Eng: Laslow disappeared shortly after the war, but his unique dance style grew in popularity and paved the way for future generations of dancers. They say his dance has the strange ability to rally spirits...

JP: His figure disappeared after the war for a short while. But the dances that he danced remained in the hearts of the girls he met, and were inherited as the foundation of later dancers. It is said that those dances had the strange ability to make their watchers smile and feel energized.

-JP version mentions girls Laslow courted remembered his dances, English version replaces it by saying his dances grew in popularity. Technically the same meaning, but not as much specificity. And idk, I like the idea of a guy indirectly teaching women dances in a usually women oriented field, it’s cute. 

Selena - Cutting Wit/Concealed Aspirations (*)

Eng: Not much is known of Selena's postwar activities, Depending on who you believe, she became one of the world's best seamstresses, metalsmiths, actors, and/or mercenaries.

JP: After the war, her whereabouts immediately became unknown. There is nothing certain that is known about what became of her, but appreciation was high towards the woman who make any effort to achieve her goal, and she was praised in the future by people as a “true genius”.

-JP ending remarks Selena as a genius, Eng version replaces it with a list of things she might have been the best at. I don’t think the latter is worse per se, but I really like how she’s called a genius like her mother was. Same deal with her ending title, which is the same/a similar ending title to her Awakening one, which was neat.

Niles - Cruel to be Kind/The Habitual Sadist (*)

Eng: Niles continued to support Lord Leo throughout his royal career, handling some of the unsavory tasks a royal must assign. As a result, he wasn't popular- except among Leo's staff.

JP: After the war he devoted his abilities to expanding the Nohr Kingdom as Leon’s subordinate. At times he supported the kingdom as part of the shadow and stained his hands in dirty jobs. There were many people who detested him but it is said that he continued to be a priceless treasure in his lifetime for Leon.

-They’re pretty much the same, but the JP version has Niles being called a priceless treasure to Leo and that’s 🥺🥺🥺. Also big L for removing any mention of Niles being a sadist, I shake my fist at thee.

Effie - Army of One/Knight of Superhuman Strength

Eng: Without the need for as much brute strength after the war, Effie reluctantly turned her attention to teaching. Traveling far and wide, she helped promote fitness throughout Nohr.

JP: She helped the revival of every land after the war for a while. Her physical strength was a great blessing to the reconstruction of the Nohr Kingdom. After returning to the castle, she continued to work as Elise’s subordinate, and it is said that the friendship between the two continued for life.

-LMAOOOOO. I don’t remember if it was @ezralahm​ or @agoddamn​ who said Effie invented Jazzercise in the English version, but it’s really fucking funny. Effie remaning by Elise’s side like, y’know, a retainer would was apparently not interesting enough to keep, so they scrapped all of it and made a gag ending. Like, it was written right there that her strength was a great boon to reconstruction, and then it was changed to being useless??? What!?

Charlotte - Wily Warrior/Women’s True Nature (*)

Eng: Charlotte returned to the castle guard and took her duty quite seriously. She never married, but she never stopped appearing at royal balls, bewitching the hearts of eligible young men.

JP: She returned to being a royal soldier, as per her desire. After that, she learned from her past failure, and worked seriously on her duties as a soldier. But her passion for marrying rich did not disappear and it is said that she lead astray many male hearts as a beauty of high society.

-Lol, okay Charlotte’s title is one I can more understand why it was changed. The implication that all women are two faced, while kinda funny in satire, is still pretty yikes. Wily Warrior was a good alternative, it keeps a similar meaning without the negative connotation, and alliteration makes my brain feel good.

Benny - Gentle Giant/Heavy Knight of the Scary Face

Eng: Benny returned to his hometown village and was assigned to train new soldiers in combat. He never reported for duty. Instead, he lived out his days in the forest, frolicking with his animal friends.

JP: He returned to his home village at the borders of the country. He taught the next generation for a little while but soon took his leave of that as well and disappeared. After that there are no official records which talk about him but, according to stories, it is said that he happily spent his remaining years in the forest together with animals.

-JP version has him train recruits for a bit before taking leave, Eng version has him never bother in the first place.

Sophie - Clumsy Knight/Scatterbrain

Eng: Sophie became a knight of Nohr so talented that many of her records are yet to be beaten. In particular, young squires study her life to learn how to become better masters of their horses.

JP: She entered the knight forces of the Nohr Kingdom. Thereafter she bloomed the talent handed down by her father and was remembered as an excellent knight. Her particular ability on horseback surpassed the rest and her model of “one horse one rider” became something to be handed down.

-JP version mentions “one horse one rider” which I believe is a Japanese phrase of a technique relevant to horseback archery? This same phrase is used by the Japanese car company, Mazda, so one could assume non-Japanese people might know it, but meh. 

Midori - Reliable Chemist/Of the Reliable

Eng: Midori developed a number of new medicines after the war, healing wounds and curing illnesses. It is widely accepted by scholars that she saved more lives through her work than anyone in history.

JP: She worked hard at developing new medicines for the people who were injured from the war. Her medicines saved many lives and cured their injuries and illnesses. Due to inheriting her father’s blood, it appears that when she grew up she captured the hearts of many men.

-JP version mentions that due to Kaze’s genetics of being irresistable to women, Midori after growing up, became loved by many men. This was cut in the Eng version.

Mitama - Starry-Eyed Poet/Tanka Composing Priestess (*) (Tanka is 31 syllable poetry)

Eng: After resting at home for a time, Mitama was inspired to travel the world. She wrote a number of poems while visiting famous sites and ruins. Generations of poets would later retrace her steps.

JP: After returning to her residence and sleeping for a little while, she went to travel around the world to take it in. She visited every famous and historic place in each land and composed verses, but soon it appeared that her trip focused on visiting famous locations and set aside the creation of verses.

-JP version has Mitama become less focused on her poetry and more keen on experiencing the world around her, Eng version changes this.

Hisame - Pickle Pro/The Calm and Collected Samurai (*)

Eng: After the war, Hisame retired from combat and turned to research and teaching. Hinata was disappointed, but Hisame went on to become one of the most respected professors of his era.

JP: He placed his sword aside and devoted his strength to the reconstruction of the Hoshido Kingdom as a civil official. His father Hinata was disappointed but, in the end, respected the decision of the son he doted on. His calm and prudent nature was a blessed ability to him as a government official.

-JP version mentions that Hinata respected Hisame’s decision despite initial disappointment, Eng version cuts the respect part. Also lol at Pickle Pro.

Forrest - Fashion Forward/Adorable Prince (*)

Eng: Forrest began a career in clerical work alongside his father and uncle in Nohr. Soon, however, his fashion designs and artwork led to worldwide acclaim - and a second career in the art world.

JP: He remained by his uncle and father, and contributed to the development of the Nohr Kingdom. Although he exhibited capability in government affairs, he surpassed everyone inside and outside the country in fashion sense and fascinated many, and he contributed greatly to developing the culture of the royal palace.

-JP version mentions Forrest’s capability in government and contributing to palace culture, Eng version loses a bit of specificity. 

Soleil - Adorable Adorer/Girl Lover (*)

Eng: Soleil left one day never to return. There is no record of her travels, but numerous bards sing of a traveling heroine whose skill with a blade was surpassed only by her skill at seducing young women.

JP: One day she went on an aimless journey. It is said that her goal was the formation of a mercenary group and that she became a dancer who trained very hard, but the official records are uncertain. This resulting gossip can be considered to have come from the many women she mingled with.

-JP version mentions Soleil might have become a dancer, Eng version cuts this.

Nina - Eye Spy/Perverse Fantasies (*)

Eng: Nina put her snooping skills to good use after the war, forming an undercover vigilante group focused on keeping the streets safe at night. She also continued snooping as a personal hobby.

JP: She stopped being a chivalrous thief and formed a vigilante group. She protected the weak and punished her enemies as well as the rich who stole from the poor. According to legends, her vigilante group consisted of many handsome men. It appears that her tastes never changed throughout her life.

-JP version had Nina create a Yaoi Squad LMAOOO.

Percy - Luck’s Sidekick/Lucky Hero

Eng: Percy joined Nohr's army and led a squad of wyvern knights. His luck never failed him, and he didn't lose a single battle over a long and distinguished career. Ace went on to lead a squad of wyverns.

JP: He entered the national forces of the Nohr Kingdom and commanded the Wyvern Riders. His good luck never changed and no matter what adversities he faced he never lost somehow. On the other hand, he didn’t exactly win either and, as their strange commander, he earned the name “Not Invincible but Unbeatable”.

-JP version treats Percy’s luck as something that doesn’t really help him win, just he can’t lose. Kind of confusing, so I guess that’s why the Eng version changed it.

M!Corrin/Niles (CQ)

Eng: After helping restore Hoshido and Nohr, Corrin and Niles traveled the world together. The two were celebrated for their humanitarian work, inspiring songs, folktales, and poems worldwide.

JP: Kamui, after helping the reconstruction of both Nohr and Hoshido countries, traveled the world. By his side was the constant presence of Zero. It is said that the two of them left stories in every land. In their later years, they opened a small orphanage for children who were not blessed and lived their lives quietly

-JP version mentioned that Niles and Corrin opened up an orphanage 🥺🥺🥺 Eng version cuts this sadly.

M!Corrin/Niles (Rev)

Eng: Corrin and Niles ruled over the Kingdom of Valla together, ushering in a new era of peace. Some years later, they adopted two orphaned children and raised them as successors to the throne.

JP:  Kamui governed the country as the King of Touma and, while being supported by his spouse Zero, created an era of a long and peaceful dawn. In their later years, the two adopted a child. One bright and innocent child and one other child, who was said to have a unique sense.

-JP version has the adopted children noted to resemble F!Kana (bright and innocent) and Nina (unique sense), respectively. Eng version cuts this.

F!Corrin/Rhajat (Rev)

Eng: Corrin and Rhajat ruled over the Kingdom of Valla together, ushering in a new era of peace. Some years later, they adopted two orphaned children and raised them as successors to the throne.

JP: Kamui governed the country as the Queen of Touma and, while being supported by her spouse Shara, created an era of a long and peaceful dawn. In their later years, the two of them welcomed an adopted child. It is said that the child was as pure as Kamui and was as devoted as Syalla.

-For some reason, the Eng version basically copy pasted the Eng version of M!Corrin/Niles (Rev) where they adopt two children instead of adopting one. (JP version alludes to this being a pseudo M!Kana)

Felicia Paired Ending

Eng: Felicia gave up her career in the service industry for the military, ultimately becoming a commander.

JP: Felicia, who became a wife, endeavored valiantly to be of help to her husband, and matured from breaking three sets of tableware to one.

-JP version has Felicia continue to be a maid and become better at it over time, Eng version has her give up maid work and become a commander. This is despite the fact that Felicia repeatedly states that she loves her job and prefers housework to fighting. But again, in 2015/2016, it didn’t matter it the woman in question liked her work, she had to be written into the “more useful” field anyway. :/ Times have changed, thankfully, where nuance around this is more common.

Hinoka Paired Ending

Eng: His wife, Hinoka, became general of the Hoshidan royal army, and the two remained together always.

JP: Hinoka, who became a wife, retired from her post of supervising the armies of the Hoshido Kingdom, and chose to walk the path of life together with her husband.

-JP version has Hinoka retire, Eng version has her become a general. A bit of a different discussion here compared to Felicia, cuz Hinoka retiring to life with her husband makes sense in the greater scheme of following Hoshido’s more patriarchal setting. But, since said patriarchal aspects of Hoshido were cut or underplayed in the English version and again, this was a weird era for feminist politics in western gaming, the ending was changed. 

Azama Paired Ending with Corrin (Rev)

Eng: Azama decided to use his talents to inspire and heal people—rather than taunt them.

JP: Husband Asama was often absent but he traveled to every land of the Touma Kingdom and guided the people as a royal.

-JP version has Azama do his duties as befitting royalty, Eng version meanwhile is more or less a copy paste of his basic married endings.

Peri Standard Paired Ending

Eng: Peri eventually learned the difference between right and wrong. It took a while.

JP: Pieri became a loving and devoted wife but her emotional and crybaby side was unchanged and it appears that her husband was often at a loss.

-JP version details how difficult Peri’s husband found it to keep track of her emotional side, Eng version has her develop better morals.

Peri Paired Ending with Odin or Laslow

Eng: Records of his wife end around the same time, as does a curious string of missing-persons cases.

JP: Wife Pieri’s records, at the same time, also came to an end at the borders but, according to rumors, it appears that she became a good wife beyond recognition and lovingly supported her husband.

-JP version details Peri as becoming a wife beyond recognition, Eng version implies she became a serial killer.

Beruka Paired Ending

Eng: Beruka was torn about leaving Camilla but enjoyed having enough emotions for them to conflict.

JP: Belka, who became a wife, was lost after leaving Camilla’s side but, after being persuaded by Camilla, moved together with her husband.

-JP version has Camilla encourage Beruka to follow her new life, Eng version instead makes comments on her developing emotions, which should already have been implied to have happened since she is getting married.

Charlotte Paired Ending with Odin or Laslow

Eng: His wife, Charlotte, went with him, but scholars note they sent their daughter an allowance every year.

JP: Wife Charlotte, lived happily together wherever her husband was, and it appears that no matter where she was she would always send money to her family.

-JP version says Charlotte is sending money to her family (most likely her poor parents), Eng version has her sending money to her daughter, which... doesn’t make as much sense since unless Ophelia/Soleil is also married, why wouldn’t they all just go together? Especially since the daughters’ solo endings imply they disappear in a similar way as it is. 

F!Kana Paired Ending

Eng: Scholars believe Kana traveled the world doing good. Most stories of dragons were based on her deeds.

JP: Wife Kanna was always together with her husband. It is said that when they occasionally got separated she would feel very lonely.

-Eng version copy pasted M!Kana’s paired ending onto F!Kana. JP version is different and deals more with her semi-unique tendency to cry/get upset over loneliness often.

Soleil Paired Ending

Eng: Historians disagree about Soleil's final fate but agree she was an inspiration to everyone she met.

JP: Wife Soleil acted cheerfully and firmly, without shrinking from any adversity, and from the beginning encouraged her husband and the people around him.

-Eng version is basically an entirely new ending, most likely part of Treehouse’s attempt to sell Soleil as a lesbian instead of bisexual, even though Laslow implies she’s bisexual in the English version of her paralogue. Soleil in the English version is a mess of contradictions and poor fixes in general, so this isn’t surprising.

----

Final note is that the Paired Endings for the Awakening Trio in the English version can cause contradiction issues for Xander, Leo, and/or Corrin; basically the Eng version has both husband and wife leave public eye, which is really odd for two countries’ crown royals and Leo being an important policy maker to do. The JP version of these paired endings don’t have these issues. Camilla and Elise also leave in both versions, but since Camilla doesn’t like being royalty it makes sense, and Elise doesn’t really have any contradictions in her case.

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem #fire emblem if #fe14 #corrin fire emblem #meta #storytelling #treehouse localization

[yamameta-inc]

the thing is. why was shouyou in jail for so long before being executed. i mean it doesn't really matter. in the end the set-up is what it is in order to force gintoki to make that choice on the cliff that day because it's what the entire story is based around. and the details aren't really important enough to dedicate time to.

but theoretically. if you were to think about it. the only logical answer is that he was being kept as a normal political prisoner. oboro was there, guarded him, exchanged words with him. a tendoushuu member was on the cliff that day. it seems very odd on the surface. to make sense of it, what must have been the case is that oboro and the naraku were there simply because the naraku by definition serves the tendoushuu, and the tendoushuu were simply the main representatives of amanto power influencing the japanese government. so oboro, presumably, just didn't tell the rest of the naraku who yoshida shouyou really was.

that kid in takasugi's flashback told his dad about shouka sonjuku to get back at takasugi for humiliating him. there were already rumours about shouyou spreading seditious ideas. the authorities were going to arrest shouyou for political reasons.

oboro saw shouyou living happily with his juniors and got so jealous he burned the school down.

in truth, these two facts may be two interpretations of the same event, simultaneously true despite being completely different. but if you had to arrange the two as separate events on a timeline, the first one must have happened, well, first. shouyou says to takasugi at the end of that flashback: welcome to shouka sonjuku. perhaps they weren't actually chased away that time, or perhaps they moved elsewhere and moved into a new building. gintoki is the only character who ever appears in the flashbacks where shouyou is being led away, where the school is burning, but we don't have details about that because we don't need to.

shouyou's willing to come quietly as long as his students aren't hurt--he's willing to sit in a prison cell for years, and he's willing to be executed on that cliff for the same reason. it probably chafed at oboro more than anything, knowing how strong shouyou really was but seeing him just sit docilely in his cell. "i believed he would come back to me." but shouyou had been right in front of him for literal years, fully willing to talk to him if he wanted to talk. instead oboro had waited until shouyou died. until it was a "clean slate", until there would be no complications. the exact same trick they tried to pull years ago. did he cling to that, convincing himself it was right because of the echo it provoked in him? it worked the first time, right? (though the result of that first time was him being left out.)

oboro could've, at any moment, simply betrayed the naraku. on that cliff, who would've stopped him if he cut zura and takasugi's bonds and freed his sensei? but that would've meant gintoki winning, and he wanted to see gintoki lose.

the tendoushuu would've had no idea there was anything extraordinary about the execution taking place. they didn't know about shouyou's immortality, about the history of the naraku--the naraku themselves didn't know their founders had been one person. literally no one knew anything except for oboro, and he kept his silence. he kept silent to the people who threatened his sensei, but he also kept silent to his sensei himself, and he kept silent to his juniors for all those years. oboro is a character who suffers in silence to a truly ridiculous degree, all his best and worst intentions a secret to the rest of the world.

and then utsuro walked out of his funeral pyre and was immediately like... lmao. let's reveal myself to the tendoushuu. also i'm going to join the naraku as the leader again. you don't mind right

#gintama

[ckerouac]

Too many books came in at the same time from my library queue, so @redheadgleek suggests a poll and yes, let’s poll! Y’all can see my… varied reading interests lol

What should I read next?

Daughter from the Dark: Late one night, fate brings together DJ Aspirin and ten-year-old Alyona. After he tries to save her from imminent danger, she ends up at his apartment. But in the morning sinister doubts set in. Who is Alyona? A young con artist? A plant for a nefarious blackmailer? Or perhaps a long-lost daughter Aspirin never knew existed? Whoever this mysterious girl is, she now refuses to leave.

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett: Wanting to organize an assisted death on her own terms, world-weary octogenarian Eudora Honeysett forges an unexpected bond with exuberant ten-year-old Rose, who drags her to tea parties, shopping sprees, and other social excursions.

Flesh and Bone and Water: André is a listless Brazilian teenager and the son of a successful plastic surgeon who lives a life of wealth and privilege, shuttling between the hot sands of Ipanema beach and his family's luxurious penthouse apartment. In 1985, when he is just 16, André's mother is killed in a car accident. Clouded with grief, André's father loses himself in his work while André spends his evenings in the family apartment with Luana, the beautiful daughter of the family's maid. Three decades later, and now a successful surgeon himself, André is a middle-aged father, living in London, and recently separated. One day he receives an unexpected letter from Luana, which begins to reveal the other side of their story, a story André has long repressed.

Geek Love: The Binewskis are a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out-- with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes-- to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There is Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan. Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins. Albino hunchback Oly. And the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious-- and dangerous-- asset. As they set out across the U.S., family values will never be the same.

Same Bed Different Dreams: March 1919. Far-flung Korean patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This government-in-exile proves mostly symbolic, its petitions ignored by heads of state as Korea's nationhood is erased. After Japan's defeat in World War II, the KPG dissolves and civil war erupts, resulting in the North-South split that remains today. But what if the KPG still existed now, today-working toward a unified Korea, secretly harnessing the might of a giant tech company to further its aims?

Unholy: why white evangelicals worship at the altar of Donald Trump: Fueled by an anti-democratic impulse, and united by this narrative of reverse victimization, the religious right and the alt-right support a common agenda--and are actively using the erosion of democratic norms to roll back civil rights advances, stock the judiciary with hard-right judges, defang and deregulate federal agencies, and undermine the credibility of the free press. Increasingly, this formidable bloc is also forging ties with European far right groups, giving momentum to a truly global movement forecasted to last long after the Trump era.

Comemadre: In the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, a doctor becomes involved in a misguided experiment that investigates the threshold between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object.

I Who Have Never Known Men: A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

Road of Bones: Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Felix Teigland, or "Teig," is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he's stumbled upon untapped potential. Accompanied by his camera operator, Teig hires a local Yakut guide to take them to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. Teig is fascinated by the culture along the Road of Bones, and encounters strange characters on the way to the Oymyakon, but when the team arrives, they find the village mysteriously abandoned apart from a mysterious nine-year-old girl. Then, chaos ensues.

#reading poll #this doesn’t count my audiobooks #but we’re gonna go with murderbot 2 for that

[transhawks]

I have brainrot in the middle of the night, what name do you think Hawks has on his citizenship? I re-read chapter 299 and Tomie's home named by Ukai, which I assume her maiden name, but Dabi still called Hawks Takami Keigo. Hawks also said that by erasing Takami name he severed his bond with his mother, meaning that he didn't follow her mother's surname. The thing is, I don't think Thief Takami in hiding would register his unwanted son with Takami name, so before Thief was captured highly possible that Hawks is an unregistered kid, especially since he was forbidden to go outside at all. He could go by false name, but that doesn't explain why he didn't just use his false name on public and why Dabi can track Tomie. And since he never went to school before HPSC unlike Lady Nagant, he was never in situation where he needed to put his name on non-HPSC record. At this point, I even assumed that Hawks didn't have citizenship, just HPSC's hero license, and Dabi tracked Tomie by looking at where Hawks' money income went to. Which is suck because if that's the case legally he can't apply for any other job except hero, so if post-canon he was fired/retired from being a hero, it will be difficult for him to get a job without citizenship and school certificates.

(Am I overthinking things? This brain cannot stop the Hawks angst train)

So, let's talk about registries. Japanese citizenship is complex because it runs on the koseki system. Meaning Japanese people have to register births themselves in the personal family register and then notify the government of changes.

Usually translated as household or family register, it constitutes the most important document for Japanese citizens. It is the only proof of Japanese nationality and the basis for all other forms of documentation in Japan. Contrary to most other countries, the fundamental unit of the register is the family, rather than the individual. It serves as proof of kinship ties: marriages, divorces, births, adoptions are all registered on the koseki. 

There's one thing - we don't know if Ukai is her maiden name. It might be a fake name, actually, even if she kept Tomie. This will have a lot of complications, we can talk about that later.

I agree that Hawks was probably not a registered kid until the HPSC found him. Let's see what that means:

Those who through no fault of their own find themselves with no koseki registration are in essence denied their rights as Japanese citizens.  Koseki registration is limited to Japanese citizens. (Marriages to non-Japanese spouses are recorded as marginal notations but not officially registered.) This means that anyone with such a registration can easily prove that he or she is of Japanese parentage and therefore entitled to all the rights of a Japanese citizen.  Koseki registration is not, strictly speaking, a requirement for citizenship; anyone born in Japan to either a Japanese mother or a Japanese father may claim Japanese nationality. That said, establishing proof of parentage can be exceedingly difficult if one is not registered on a parent’s koseki.

The upshot is that in Japan, without proof of koseki registration (either an official copy of the document or an official extract)—one cannot obtain a passport so as to travel abroad, be legally married, or claim one’s legal rights as an heir. In essence, one is deprived of one’s rights as a citizen.

The unit of registration in this system is not the individual but the nuclear family, with each family registered under a single surname. Under Japanese law, the husband and wife must take the same surname, and in 96% of cases, they take the husband’s. Thus, in actual practice, the koseki is the husband’s, with the wife and children added on as household members.

So right off the bat there's several issues. One, if he wasn't registered, he essentially has no passport. Either they registered him with the Takami koseki or faked it OR hero licenses are now a fundamental replacement for a passport (interesting to think about). It also uhh might speak to how much control they have over him. Two, Tomie and Keigo would have been under Thief's koseki and registered with him as a family unit if registered at all. Unlikely, dude was on the run. What I think might have actually happened is the HPSC did register Keigo with his father's koseki, because I think it might have made it easier to deal with legalities, but then classified it and made sure no one can really look up the Takami family register. Tomie was likely kept off it and has no legal link to Keigo or Thief. Essentially the "protection" from Thief's legacy was given to Tomie first and foremost but required her cutting off all links to her son too. Something to understand that women are essentially are in their parents' registry unless they get married - then they are in their husband's registery. And then the Koseki itself can only list two current generations. So it can only list a nuclear family of a father mother and their children. If Ukai is her family name, her actual name, then she's likely on her parent's koseki. Even if they are deceased.

Two, until recently, illegitimacy was listed on koseki. No, really, and I think it's still registered on the birth notice itself. And it gives a lot of stigma. Did you know there's no joint custody in Japan? That's important - it's seen as all or nothing, and the non custodial parent is discouraged from interacting with the kid and the mother? Why? Because (in the presumption it's the mother who got custody which it usually is) a divorced father in the life of a mother and kid discourages the mother to find a new spouse. No, really, the system and courts have that in mind. Okay, let's go back to Tomie. The HPSC are promising her a new start, disconnected from Takami thief? You know what would show up in her koseki if she had Keigo on it? The fact she had a kid out of wedlock. That would follow both of them forever since she didn't have a husband listed.

That's not a fresh start. She got to walk off, essentially. Then, with Thief likely in prison for decades if not life, the HSPC just registered Keigo in his koseki, likely putting some placeholder for his mom, and then laws for koseki would make it hard for just anyone to access the Takami one. In this way, they managed to get around the issues of him being Mukosekisha (Unregistered) which would fuck up his citizenship rights.

That's what I think happened. However if he doesn't have citizenship and the hero license functions as a passport that let him leave Japan, yeah he's fucked. It's the one job he can do because the HPSC just did his paperwork. He can't get state aid (Mukosekisha can't get welfare), his employment is limited...

Interesting how bureaucracy can genuinely turn a person's life into a nightmare.

#asks #takami keigo #hawks

[kaurwreck]

I'm reading a collection of tales recounting the early days of the Yokohama Foreign Settlement (Suribachi City, in bsd-verse), and the sheer amount of shenanigans deserves a list but I don't even know where to begin.

The noodle-makers' dispute over flour that led to the Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture committing seppuku? The Japanese-government sponsored brothel with a moat? The two-sword wielding assassins in the swamp who kept killing foreigners? That the foreigners still went bird hunting in the swamp filled with two-sword wielding assassins? The Japanese soldiers quartered nearby bonding with the troops England sent to do something about the two-sword wielding assassins? The English merchant who had his American assistant illegally arrested resulting in a lawsuit against the English merchant in the English court that had to be litigated by the American Consul since he was the only American lawyer in Yokohama, during the course of which the salty editor of an English newspaper decided to settle a personal vendetta by publishing remarks about the American assistant so scathing that the American assistant then hid in wait only to pop out and horsewhip the editor in front of God and everyone, resulting in another trial, but this time in the American court, which meant the American Consul became the judge, a position which he used to imply the English lawyer, the now-judge's former opposing counsel, was worth a sum of 6 1/4 cents, with such insinuation sparking community-wide protests? Blood Town?

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #yokohama #bsd meta #this book was written by an Australian occupation soldier in 1958 who collected tales and histories of the japanese foreign settlements #so take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt #this isnt even all of it #i just dont know how to succinctly explain the chit system or the racket with chinese smugglers #or the caste system developed when they finally filled the swamp #presumably after dealing with the assassin infestation??? unclear. #there may have been assassins in the suburbs #this was JUST in yokohama #the europeans and americans were. acting unwise.

[hopeymchope]

True confessions from an RE:Zero convert

This might be more of a ramble than my better-organized reviews, but I have a lot to get off my chest.

Personal Backstory: The stuff you skip when reading a recipe

For a long time, I avoided isekai stories. They were so pervasive in anime/manga that I found them quite annoying.

When I first caved, it was only for comedies. I figured that, hey, they're taking the piss out of the genre; that sounds up my alley. So I felt it was safe to enjoy Konosuba. After that, I fell in love with Trapped in a Dating Sim... and to my surprise, it wasn't solely engaging for its overarching comedy. There was more characterization and interpersonal relationship stuff that grabbed me in that one.

That's probably what made me feel more receptive when I saw a couple of people call out Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion as an underappreciated anime highlight of 2023. I gave it a shot one afternoon with only mild expectations for it, and guess what? I adored it.

Yet despite ALL THAT? My expectations for RE:Zero were close to the floor. Raeliana had opened the floodgates, leading me to try some other isekai stories... yet I repeatedly found the ones I tried quite lacking. Furthermore, almost everything I'd read about RE:Zero over the years had been resoundingly negative in spite of its seeming popularity — a real "Sword Art Online" situation, basically.

But eventually, I was curious enough about why some people are invested in these characters that I started giving it a watch. These low expectations left me perfectly disarmed when it began to weave its spell over me.

Storytelling and Worldbuilding: Returning by death

You can neatly divide the show into story arcs, each representing a unique event/hurdle that the protagonist has to get past using his unique power.

The first arc of the story is mostly just setup for some of the important characters and the basic conceit. Our freshly isekai'd Japanese protagonist, Subaru, meets and bonds with a half-elf girl named Emilia, only to soon get tragically murdered. However, he just restarts his life from roughly one day earlier. He can go back in time by dying, giving him a new chance to take new approaches to situations and to accumulate knowledge via loops. Eventually, his "save point" advances to a new point in time... but what causes that to happen is left unknown for now. Making matters even worse is that if he tries to tell anyone about this superpower/curse, he feels intense chest pain as though he's about to be killed... so he has to keep this under wraps. (Though I still wish he'd try to tell people that he can't tell them. We never see if that'd work.)

With Subaru and Emilia established, the second arc introduces the most important supporting characters — Beatrice, Roswaal, Rem and Ram — and also puts one of them through a significant stretch of development. And finally, the third arc takes up the bulk of the series' first season, dealing with... frankly, a LOT. There's a lot crammed into it. You could even argue that it's got multiple smaller arcs stacked inside of it, and that would make complete sense. The third arc definitely does the bulk of the world-building/stage-setting for the future of the series, but there are details and background provided all throughout to get you up to speed on how people think here, how the government works, some of the existing races, etc.

I was initially taken aback by now blasé Subaru is about being transported to another world. This isn't a "death and reincarnation" thing like I've seen in most isekai stories; Subaru just blinks, rubs his eyes, and suddenly he's in a fantasy world just like that. And he... is completely unconcerned and unimpressed by that? It's a weird choice. Combine that with a point late in the first arc where he literally talks to the camera, and I thought maybe we were getting some kind of Deadpool-esque comedic commentary on isekai conventions.

It's the severity of the violence and related agony that makes me take it more seriously than that. I still find animated blood and gore extremely affecting — moreso than fake blood in live-action. That's probably because I was raised on Western animation that contained little to no sign of such violence, whereas Western movies and TV are full of corn syrup and other blood stand-ins. I'm just saying that when the deaths/kills come around in RE:Zero, they hit hard and often quite intensely. They're not showing entrails hanging out (even if they talk about it), but you can expect to see snapping bones and arterial spray. It's still a minority of the time, though; this is NOT a gorefest, and it's better off for that fact. When you suddenly get two minutes of ultraviolence after four episodes of relative peace, that makes it feel all the more effective.

It's not lookin' good there, chief.

I'm an easy mark for this stuff. Some of my primary entry points into anime were horror anime, so playing up this kind of horror gets me to sit up and take notice. It's not going to be anywhere near enough to keep my attention, though. I've certainly watched AWFUL horror anime that had nothing to boast about beyond their gore levels. That's where the quality of RE:Zero's character writing really saves the day.

What's really important to understand is that, through the strength of its gradual buildup of intensity helped along by showing the repeated consequences of failure Re:Zero manages to make some of the big anime shōnen  battles EXTREMELY hype! And yet, thanks to the great characterization? One of my favorite episodes in the whole show is an ep where two characters are just talking the entire time from a single location. THAT is the mark of something I love: If two characters holding a discussion for nearly half an hour has me COMPLETELY GLUED to it.

I've glossed over season two here because, although it still has some excellent moments, it's just not as good as the first. A big part of that is because it's just one giant-huge arc that covers all 26 episodes... and that's a LOT of time to spend on a single ongoing challenge/hurdle. It not only becomes exhausting and kind of boring to be confined to this problem/situation for so goddamn long, but it also makes it extremely obvious when Subaru is going to reach his final time loop and succeed. So once you piece together that the entire season is going to be stuck on this one arc, you realize you're stuck just waiting for him to get close enough to the season's end to finally achieve real progress. Once he does, though? It weirdly manages to feel like it's too soon -- like he didn't do enough to prepare all the problems at hand and somehow just won this time around because he tried super duper hard. There's also the fact that my favorite character from the first season is entirely sidelined (and apparently won't be in season 3 EITHER) — and nobody new manages to step into any similar shoes to pick up the slack.

Sounds like a good time to talk about that that character... as well as the rest.

Characters: The value of growth and change

One of the reasons I got into this so much is because the characters have flaws, go through changes, grow and develop. Rem is an early standout of this. As is apparently a common opinion, she quickly became my favorite character. Her shift from being suspicious and disdainful of Subaru to being 1000% supportive of him is EXTREMELY well-handled, and her sympathetic backstory is also one that we get before most other characters share their own. But when you get down to brass tacks, the main reason I think she's great is because she flips out and goes into violent combat mode whenever anyone she cares about is threatened. :D That's always a favorite archetype of mine. I love me a bloodstained hero or heroine who will march through hell and take any measure of punishment to save someone. Honestly, it makes it hard to understand why he'd so hooked on Emilia when Rem is so peak. And as I mentioned above, a big downside of season 2 is that Rem is completely absent past the first episode. In fact, she won't even be in the upcoming season 3!!! Alas, there is no "person who absolutely tears shit up and covers themselves in the enemy's blood to protect the ones they care about" character who steps in and picks up the slack, so I'm missing my favorite archetype after the first season. TSK.

She's not a princess (a lot of anger in it). Not your cutie girlfriend, oh no, don't you know?

I find it literally depressing that, to date, Rem is STILL not truly back in the cast of the source light novels - not in any way that matters. She makes her cameos via illusions or flashbacks or what-have-you, but she's not really there until she's physically AND mentally present once again. So until she returns to the team with all her memories (and therefore, her all-important character development) intact, I must legitimately ask: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, NAGATSUKI?!

Enough about Rem: We need to talk about the lead protagonist. Subaru is pretty brave throughout all this but really has to grow over the course of the first season and learn to be less self-serving and invest a lot harder into self-improvement. It's nice to see someone who clearly has blatant personal flaws but also is never a detestable person. I actually first saw him when I watched a few episodes of Isekai Quartet a couple years back, and frankly? I found him pretty loathesome over there. I was fully prepared for him to be a shitheel that I was inexplicably expected to like. I'm so glad that this isn't the case. In fact, I love having a character who wears his heart on his sleeve. He's not too manly to weep openly, and he's not afraid to act like a total doofus... or maybe he’s not smart enough sometimes to realize when he does. And although he may be frequently selfish and kind of stupid on multiple occasions, he never becomes one of those perverted male characters or too egotistical. Well... he gets a bit egotistical at times. Too much for someone like me, but... still not overmuch compared to many, many anime protags.

Panic! After Repeated Trauma

And yet... he does get a bit exasperating by the end of season two, imo. Partly because he doesn't grow too much in season two. At least he gets to confront his bottled-up feelings over leaving his homeworld behind, so that's nice. But otherwise, he's pretty much treated as this perfect man whose only major remaining flaw is a lack of combat skill. By the time you've got him convincing yet ANOTHER long-lived character to never give up and put all their faith into him personally just like he's done multiple times before, and it yet AGAIN works? The swelling music and the emotional reaction of the characters to him speechifying about how he'll always be there for them and needs them... that lands well maybe two times, but by this point — when he's talking to a character who has mostly treated him with disdain/avoidance and whom he's only hung out with maybe five or six times — it's pretty hard to swallow, honestly. But I'll try not to hold that against Subaru... I just want him to show some more flaws in future stories that go beyond just "He's not good at fighting." I want him to lose more arguments again. Besides, one of the best things in season two is when his mind starts to crack under the stress and pain of all the deaths he's endured. I think we should dig deeper into that.

I honestly love seeing a hero begin to crack under the pressure.

I kinda cheated by talking about Rem before Emilia. Emilia's the main female lead, after all, whereas Rem is a supporting player. The thing about Emilia, though, is that she's good and noble and pure-hearted from the start. She doesn't grow at all during season one, though at least she does show us a different side of herself when she questions Subaru's behavior during their argument. Season two sees her face her past and gain new inner strength, but she still undergoes far less change than Subaru or Rem in even just the first season. I'm glad they took the time to show her failing and then needing to learn in order to move forward, but Emilia's maybe just a little too perfect, y'know? One thing that garners her a lot of sympathy is that most everyone who meets her dislikes her just for being born a silver-haired half-elf. So many people associate that with one of the gravest threats to ever exist in this world that Emilia has to endure a lot of racism, and honestly? Confronting that racism is when the character is most engaging. So while Emilia is clearly likable and not totally uninteresting, she's not as interesting as a lot of the other players in the story. Most of the characters run deeper than her or have more mysterious goals. Compared to them, Emilia is an open book who rarely changes. The author of the books has said that Emilia is his favorite character, and maybe that's why he never sees much need to develop her. I think it does her a disservice.

On top of being beautiful and kind and intelligent, Emilia is also a powerful combatant. Because of course she is.

Her relationship with Subaru is a major focus, but it seems sort of hollow at first. Subaru admires her kindness/helpfulness and thinks she's beautiful, so he follows her around and dotes on her as much as he can. It's easy to see why he'd admire someone so good-hearted, but it starts to become a little cringe just how obsessively he dotes on her... and that cringiness peaks right around the moment when the two have a big argument and a falling out. It's an important scene that helps both characters, because it shows us Subaru's flaws on full display and also makes him confront just how cringey his devotion to Emilia can come off. Emilia, meanwhile, walks away to spend time without him for a while... though she never really rejects him, either. She really struggles with being independent. She keeps thinking about him and wishing he'd come back and make up with her. Clearly, she's gotten addicted to having a Hype Man around... and goddamn, I can't even blame her. Subaru looks at Emilia the way Stilgar looks at Paul Atreides. Who doesn't want that level of positive reinforcement available 24/7? By the end of season two, although both of them have grown, Subaru's still relentlessly hyping her up. He did criticize her (softly) in one major season two moment, but despite his claims otherwise, he still acts like she's an angel on Earth. And so, although he pool of their romance has grown deeper, it still feels like we've stepped out of the kiddie pool and into the shallow end. It means a lot more to see a character and their feelings grow and change over time, y'know? I suppose part of why we don't see that happening much is because Emilia is treated as so flawless to begin with.

Something I love in a long-running story is when a minor background character slowly starts to appear more frequently until - surprise! - they become a major cast member and full-time supporting player. Season two does this very successfully, and I love the character they expanded and brought into the cast. I feel like I shouldn't say too much about them for anyone who's a newcomer, because the gradual increase in their presence is so enjoyable. But it's a character who first appears in season one and has to wait numerous episodes of season two before they become important enough to get a front-row seat. It's very satisfying to watch them shift slowly from "fifth-tier supporting character who shows up for two scenes" into "major player."

Other characters? Ram is Rem's sister, and she's... not exactly a wealth of depth. Not yet, at least. She's mostly there to act tsundere. Her exact relationship with Roswaal remains hazy by the end of season 2, but she's clearly devoted to him and he's clearly doing... something for her? Roswaal and Beatrice both get by on acting mysterious. We learn a lot more about them in season two, and what we learn makes it hard to tear your eyes off Roswaal especially — he's a fascinating and weird bastard. Puck is a cat-like spirit with a lot of power and a very mischievious attitude. There's a surprising darkness lurking within him that keeps him from being some cute mascot-type. Season 2 also brings us some new characters whose long-term presence among the cast is still in question, but Echidna (not an Australian monotreme) is a standout. She really made me question everything I thought I understood about the moral good-and-evil situation in this reality.

Get those eyebrows under control. We ARE on television, y'know.

Serial Killin'

The series a whole is SO serialized and SO intense that it's really hard to watch it with gaps in-between episodes. Even taking one day off from the show mid-viewing proved too agonizing for me, so I was really grateful I could tear through seasons 1 and 2 in a rapid binge. I say this because... yeah, I don't see myself watching season 3 as it airs. Maybe I'll do a binge for each story arc it contains when they wrap up, or maybe I'll just wait for the whole season to conclude. But either way? This is something that demands to be binged in rapid succession.

I guess you get my point by now. I'm pretty hype about this series in spite of it holding some noteworthy flaws. I'm surprised I can still get so invested in something that dates back as far as 2016 that I haven't seen yet... and that gives me hope for what else I might discover going forward with my anime viewing.

#re:zero #re: zero #rezero #anime reviews #anime #isekai

[ganglands-marseillais]

Croupier Comptable: Game Theory for The Venetian Macao, China (Trapping Aesthetic for Volleyball) 14K

BIO

My Name is Adrian Blake-Trotman. I am Indo-Mediterranean Caribbean Born in Toronto but From Barbados and Haiti. I am a Beta-arbitrage Mergers & Acquisitions Banker that Specializes in Commodities. I have Understanding Financial Markets by Université de Genève and Monetary Policy in the Asian-Pacific by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology with No Gr. 12 Math or Intro to Linear Algebra; I built a mathematical learning style by using Japanese Candlesticks Bullish Engulfing Discounted Cash Flow Charts for Poker. I Operate TAX AVOIDANCE through Freelance Mergers & Acquisitions through an Enterprise Foundation and Investment Trust. My background is Agriculture Working Class, I've worked in Kitchens and Grocery Stores. My goal is to connect the Democratic Republic of the Congo to two tax havens; Haiti & Seychelles to stabilize the Diamond Trade and more Important the Commodities Market. Through Mercantilism Agriculture Hedge Fund as a Central Bank, Options Volatility Exchange, Lab Grown Re-sale Market, Decentralized Currency and Fiat Money, Hospitality & Gaming. Also To form a Socioeconomic Status Agriculture Working Class; Blue, Pink, and White Collar Jobs. I am Modelling my Cartel off of Wall Street for De Beers but is owned and operated by the Société des Bains de Mer (SBM); The Casino de Monte-Carlo is owned and operated by the Société des Bains de Mer (SBM), a public company in which the government of Monaco and the ruling princely family have a majority interest. The company also owns the principal hotels, sports clubs, food service establishments, and nightclubs throughout the Principality. The Société des Bains de Mer operates in the accommodation, dining, entertainment, and gambling services. SBM manages and owns casinos, hotels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, spas, beach clubs, and golf clubs. Fifty-two of their fifty-eight properties are located in Monaco. The concept of state-corporate crime refers to crimes that result from the relationship between the policies of the state and the policies and practices of commercially motivated corporations. The term was coined by Kramer and Michalowski in 1990.

THE ARNAULT MODEL: BALANCING FINANCIAL DISCIPLINE AND CREATIVITY

Over the next three decades, as he brought the best luxury brands in fashion, cosmetics, and beverages under the LVMH umbrella, Arnault proceeded to make “a series of brilliant business decisions” that “can only be called masterful.” Even his critics were impressed by “his ability to manage creativity for the sake of profit and growth.” Industry observers frequently credit his outstanding success in a highly competitive industry to the fact that—unlike other global CEOs—Arnault understands both the creative and the financial aspects of running a luxury business

Financed through Real Estate and Convertible Bonds

The Creation of Star Brands

In a 2001 Harvard Business Review interview, Arnault explained his famous business process, which—unlike the traditional fashion industry—requires financial discipline as well as creativity. The entire focus of Arnault's teams is the creation of “star brands” that must meet a high bar for four artistic and financial criteria: LVMH brands must be “timeless, modern, fast-growing, and highly profitable.” In practice, “profitable creativity” means that “star brands are born only when a company manages to make products that ‘speak to the ages’ but feel ‘intensely modern’ and ‘sell fast and furiously, all while raking in profits

Although the LVMH process begins with "radical innovation—an unpredictable, messy, highly emotional activity” on the creative end, as soon as “it comes to getting creativity onto shelves—chaos is banished,” and the company imposes "strict discipline on manufacturing processes, meticulously planning all 1,000 tasks in the construction of one purse.”

The genius of Arnault’s process is that, although the "front end of a star brand—the innovation…the creative process, the advertising—is very, very expensive,” the “back end of the process in the atelier (the factory)” is a place of "amazing discipline and rigor” that drives “high profitability behind the scenes.” Brands with “unbelievably high quality” require “unbelievably high productivity,” so “every single motion, every step of every process is carefully planned with the most modern and complete engineering technology.”

For example, when Arnault automated production at Vuitton, he drove that venerable old brand to the top spot on Fashionista’s list of the world's best-selling luxury brands in 2011, with a value of $24.3 billion—more than twice the amount of its nearest competitor.

As he spent “lavishly” on advertising, Arnault "rigorously" controlled costs by leveraging every possible synergy across the group: Kenzo manufactured a Christian Lacroix line; Givenchy manufactured a Kenzo perfume, and Guerlain created the first Vuitton perfume.

Creative Talent Management

As Arnault built LVMH into the world's largest luxury conglomerate, he hired new design talent for star brands that “speak to the ages” but “feel intensely modern”: from Céline, Kenzo, Guerlain, and Givenchy to Loewe, Thomas Pink, Fendi, and DKNY.

Because his model requires that “the counterbalance to creativity must be commerce,” Arnault “never hesitated to reign in, or outright terminate, creative executives who did not produce.” Since the early days at Dior, he has often replaced creative executives with non-traditional talent and then shuffled them across his brands to help him identify opportunities to drive profit—no matter how unpopular.

For example, at Givenchy in 1995, Arnault brought in a “fashion industry darling” and “notorious wild child,” British designer John Galliano, to replace Hubert de Givenchy, the industry icon “credited with defining simple elegance for an entire generation of women, (including) Audrey Hepburn, Jacqueline Kennedy, and the Duchess of Windsor.”

Within a year, Arnault moved Galliano, the first British designer in French haute couture, from Givenchy to Christian Dior to replace Gianfranco Ferré, the Italian couturier who had led Dior design since the late 1980s. Other non-traditional Arnault hires included installing 27-year-old Alexander McQueen (another British designer) at Givenchy and Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton, where he gave the American designer a mandate to challenge LVMH’s competitors, Prada and Gucci.

Although those iconoclastic designers later left LVMH, they had served Arnault’s purpose: interest in his traditional fashion houses had been jumpstarted by the early 21st century.

HOW TO STABILIZE THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO, SEYCHELLOIS, AND HAITIAN CURRENCY (INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE BUT FOR MMA & COMMODITIES NOT CRICKET & TECHNOLOGY MODEL)

Bioeconomy Agriculture Central Hedge Fund with Agriculture Bulge Brackets Oligopolistic System Hyper Inflation Vehicle Fiat Currency: Strict Negative Interest Rates for Investments; Debt/Equity Business Loan Period and Construction Loan/Tax Benefits Programs, Investment Trusts & Enterprise Foundations are Common Corporate Tax Avoidance Practices, and Raise Denominator of Currency & Print Currency for Insurance Companies for Building Process

Combat Sport as National Sport: Free Internet with Corporate Sponsor Purse Bid System Mixed Martial Arts Camps, Orphanages, Polytheist Churches, Gaming-Hospitality; and +EV Gambling

Mercantilism Fiat Currency Pegging: Foreign Exchange Rate to Diamond Peg Currency

Market Extension Vertical Integration Mergers Lottery

Industries: Mergers & Acquisitions Agriculture Industry, Decentralized Finance, Real Estate Finance and Economics, Capital Gains Tax Haven, Corporate Tax Haven, Inheritance Tax Haven, Art Ports, and Gaming-Hospitality

Blockchain Diamond-Metal Exchange Modelled Off of CBOE Volatility Index (VIX). Founded in 1973, the CBOE Options Exchange is the world's largest options exchange with contracts focusing on individual equities, indexes, and interest rates. Credit Spread Options and Blockchain the Commodities Market.

Business Capital is a Collaborative Environment through Generalized Education (STEM AND M & A)

Socioeconomic Status Agriculture Working Class Immigrants

XYY or Triple X Syndrome, ACTN3 Gene, MSTN Gene, and Mercury-Venus Births

A ROUND OF PAR GAME THEORY NETWORK

Beta Arbitrage with Convertible Bonds Compounding

Key Ingredients 

Player's: Futures Exchange and Investor

Actions: Issue payments under any circumstances 

Payoffs: Exchange - Larger Market Volume, Investor - Larger Assets Under Management  or Profits

Representation

Extensive Form includes timing of moves. Player's move sequentially, represented as a tree (timing). Chess: the white player moves, then the black player can see White's move and react

Theory

There's a common expression of higher the risk, higher the reward; but in finance it should be higher reward, higher risk because people's savings are involved. This is why I created The Round of Par Games Theory Network where the intended score should always be 0. Nobody wins and nobody loses between investor and stock exchange, just a nice friendly draw. The Investors assets under management grows and the Exchange's Market Volume Grows.

Let's break down the Components:

Beta Arbitrage

Investor: Beta Arbitrage involves longing in one market and shorting in a DIFFERENT market. The example is longing Company A in the stock market but then going to Company A in the options market and placing a put/short option. Either way the Investor earns a profit.

Exchange: The Futures Exchange benefits because now not only is equity on the stock market is being bought but the options market has a larger volume.

Convertible Bond Compounding

Investor: By compounding through Convertible Bonds not only are you going to be paid back your money because creditors are first on the company's bankruptcy list unlike investors, but it's an easier way to buy more shares for growth investing while not diving head first.

Exchange: The Futures Exchange benefits because now not only is equity on the stock market is being bought, but the bond market has a larger volume.

LANGUAGES

Mandarin

Latin

INDUSTRY WORTH FOR COMMODITIES (AGRICULTURE WORKING CLASS)

In 2012, Forbes reported that $21 trillion was Off-Shored

In 2017 the equivalent of at least 10% of the world’s GDP is in offshore banks, and that number is probably higher due to the opaqueness of the world’s global tax havens, according to a research report release this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The estimated amount of money laundered globally in one year is 2 - 5% of global GDP, or $800 billion - $2 trillion in current US dollars.

Taxes in the US – The federal government collected revenues of $3.5 trillion in 2019—equal to about 16.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (figure 2). Over the past 50 years, federal revenue has averaged 17.4 percent of GDP, ranging from 20.0 percent (in 2000) to 14.6 percent (most recently in 2009 and 2010).

The foreign exchange or forex market is the largest financial market in the world – larger even than the stock market, with a daily volume of $6.6 trillion, according to the 2019 Triennial Central Bank Survey of FX and OTC derivatives markets.

In 2019, for example, the sales value of rough diamonds amounted to some 13.9 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. After polishing, the value increased by nearly double to 26.7 billion U.S. dollars. In 2019, the global diamond jewelry market value was approximately 79 billion U.S. dollars.

Global Cut Flowers Market to Reach $41. 1 Billion by 2027.

The global coffee market was valued at USD 102.02 billion in 2020,

Global Vanilla Market Is Expected to be worth Around USD 735 Million By 2026 

According to the report published by Allied Market Research, the global cocoa market generated $12.8 billion in 2019, and is projected to reach $15.5 billion by 2027, witnessing a CAGR of 4.3% from 2021 to 2027

The global water and wastewater market was valued at 263.07 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. The market is projected to reach a value almost 500 billion U.S. dollars by 2028 at a CAGR of 7.3 percent in the 2021 to 2028 period.

The global tobacco market size was estimated at USD 932.11 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 949.82 billion in 2021.

For the year 2020, Worldwide Cotton Market was US$ 38.54 Billion. Global Cotton Market is expected to reach US$ 46.56 Billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 2.74% from 2020 to 2027.

The global waste management market size was valued at $1,612.0 billion in 2020, and is expected to reach $2,483.0 billion by 2030, registering a CAGR of 3.4% from 2021 to 2030

According to Brandessence Market Research, the Energy Drink market size reached USD 61.23 billion in 2020 and expected to reach USD 99.62 Billion by 2027.

LEGAL DEFENSE

Smurfing: Reverse Onus, Challenge Mens Rea and Actus Rea, Press Malicious Prosecution Charges, Financial Settlement

RICO Legal Disputes Trademark (30 for 30 Court): Undisclosed Settlement; 1 large sum ($30 million) broken into a 3-part settlement, Not going to trial settlement (guaranteed payment for being brought into court), Case being unsealed settlement (if the case gets reopened), and Testimony settlement (in court testimony in reopened case). The non-disclosure agreement (NDA); Agreement to 10 years jail time for every broken NDA, NDA on Case, NDA on Testifying, and NDA on Settlement. Sealed Federal Cases: Have legal matters sealed by the court to prevent leaked information to media and Precedence for RICO

CRIME COLLAR

White-Blue collar crime is a subgroup of white-collar crime White Collar Crime, a term reportedly first coined in 1939, is synonymous with the full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals. Blue-collar crime is a term used to describe crimes that are committed primarily by people who are from a lower social class. This is in contrast to white-collar crime, which refers to crime that is usually committed by people from a higher social class.

SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

Agriculture Working Class Immigrants Socioeconomic Status Focused Key Players in Commodities Market*

Polytheism (Zeus, Poseidon, and Ogou-Athena)*

Births: Mercury-Venus, MSTN Gene, ACTN3 Gene, XYY Syndrome, or Triple X Syndrome

Māori All Blacks Sports Culture and Volleyball is National Sport*

Jumping for Cardio*

Poker Brain*

REITs/Real Estate ETF Investors with Index Credit or Debit Spreads Options Trading*

Mergers and Acquisitions Exploratory School System*

Sand-Based Calisthenics  kallos sthenos (beautiful strength) Interval Training: Isometric-Plyometric, Circuit Training: Isometric-Isotonic, and Isometric-Mobility

Tofu is Protein of Choice

Fish/Seafood is Meat of Choice

Blueberry is consumed at every breakfast

Mineral Water instead of Spring Water

Coconut Syrup as Sugar Replacement

Business News is a part of The Cigar Culture

Sports Gambling for Extra Revenue Stream instead of Lottery Tickets when in Working Class

Hydrolyzed Collagen-Leucine is the Main Sports Medicine

Brokerage Accounts with First 10 Investments as Bond Funds and REITs

VAMMMBRGC LIFESTYLE BRAND RACKET

Volleyball (Trampoline)

Acting (Short Film Series: Aesthetic Taxi Game, Character: Expansive Mood Villain)

Modeling (Brand Activation Models)

Music (Psychedelic Festival Trap)

Martial Arts

Ballet (Females Only)

Rings Gymnastics (Males Only)

Graffiti (Art)

Cooking (Endorsements)

LVMH-Lacoste Collaboration Company For Tax Mergers Law; Market-extension merger: Two companies that sell the same products in different markets. 4.2.2 Corporate Taxation At the corporate level, the tax treatment of a merger or acquisition depends on whether the acquiring firm elects to treat the acquired firm as being absorbed into the parent with its tax attributes intact, or first being liquidated and then received in the form of its component assets.

What Is Vertical Integration? Vertical integration is a strategy that allows a company to streamline its operations by taking direct ownership of various stages of its production process rather than relying on external contractors or suppliers. A company may achieve vertical integration by acquiring or establishing its own suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, or retail locations rather than outsourcing them. However, vertical integration may be considered risky potential disadvantages due to the significant initial capital investment required.

Analysis Discounted Cash Flow (DCF): A key valuation tool in M&A, a discounted cash flow (DFC) analysis determines a company's current value, according to its estimated future cash flows. Forecasted free cash flows (net income + depreciation/amortization (capital expenditures) change in working capital) are discounted to a present value using the company's weighted average cost of capital (WACC). Admittedly, DCF is tricky to get right, but few tools can rival this valuation method.

VŒUX DE CHAMPAGNE SOGNI CAVIALI

Description: Beta-arbitrage Mergers & Acquisitions Cartel that commits Mediterranean-Caribbean and Afro-Mediterranean Socioeconomic Status Development Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (CPR) Unit Charities, Protection Racket, Paramilitary Financing, Lobbyist-Investment Trust, Commodities Management, Gambling & Diamond Trafficking, Rolex Re-sale Market, Real Estate Brokerage, Graffiti Art Port, Smurfing, Nike Sports & Fashion Corporate Espionage and Larceny Business Model Reengineering, and VAMMMBRGC Contract Racketeering Through Enterprise Foundations

Activities: Executive Council for Mayor, Culinary Arts, Grey Market Fashion, Trap Shooting Gambling Tournaments, Volleyball Tournaments, Corporate Sponsor EdTech, Grocery Insurance & Electronic Financial Data Interchange, Diamond Encrusted Accessories Collaboration with LVMH, OTC Beta-arbitrage Branch Bracket, OTC Exchange (Commodities, Sports Betting Investment Trust, Real Estate Investment Trust, Cuisine Real Estate Investment Trust, Forex Pairs Contract for Difference, Retail/Hospitality Real Estate Investment Trust, Credit Swap Options Endorsement Index), VAMMMBRGC Youtube Distribution Channel (Gambling News Network, Noir Short Film Series [Shakespearean Crime], Cooking Channel, Sports Resort Real Estate, Sports/Modelling/Acting Business Case Study Video Essay, Brand Activation Modelling, Combat Sports, Calisthenics Workout Class, Sports Science Lessons, Graffiti Tourism, Music Videos, Natural Resources Documentaries, Hype Beast Re-Sale Market, Rolex Business Case Study Video Essays, Business Conferences).

DIAMOND TRAFFICKING

The WFDB Trade And Business Committee

The Trade and Business Committee makes recommendations to the Executive Committee concerning industry relations with financial institutions worldwide, lab-grown diamonds, Know Your Customer and the System of Warranties.

Idea 1: Luxury Goods Encrusted Items Investment Service and Auction. Example: Hermès Bag, Investment System: Masterworks, Auction System: Information Catwalks with models then bidding in a separate room with Video Replay for YouTube.

Idea 2: A sightholder is a company on the De Beers Global Sightholder Sales's (DBGSS) list of authorized bulk purchasers of rough diamonds. De Beers Group made this list, the second largest miner of diamonds. DBGSS was previously known as DTC (Diamond Trading Company). In May 2006, DTC released a list of the 93 sightholders on its website. High Fashion Accessories Aggregator Business Model with Auction and Re-sale.

Business Model 

The London Metal Exchange (LME) which is based in Hong Kong is a commodities exchange that deals in metals futures and options. It is the largest exchange for options and futures contracts for base metals, which include aluminum, zinc, lead, copper, and nickel. The exchange also facilitates trading of precious metals like gold and silver.

Originally known as the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), the exchange changed its name in 2017 as part of a rebranding effort by its holding company, CBOE Global Markets. Traders refer to the exchange as the CBOE ("see-bo"). CBOE is also the originator of the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), the most widely used and recognized proxy for market volatility.

ABC Exchange (Alumina, Beryllium, Carbon): There are four types of precious stones: diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Each type has its own specific chemical and physical properties. Diamonds are made from carbon, rubies and sapphires from alumina and emeralds from beryllium.

Diamond Monopoly 

What Is Vertical Integration? Vertical integration is a strategy that allows a company to streamline its operations by taking direct ownership of various stages of its production process rather than relying on external contractors or suppliers. A company may achieve vertical integration by acquiring or establishing its own suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, or retail locations rather than outsourcing them. However, vertical integration may be considered risky potential disadvantages due to the significant initial capital investment required.

My Vertical Integration Mergers: Company’s Diamond Mines, Merger Manufacturers, Company’s Distribution, and Merger Hospitality and Gaming Diamond Exchange

The Diamond Standard 

Influence: Agricultural Bank of China is active in commercial banking, investment banking, and insurance services.

Mercantilism was a form of economic nationalism that sought to increase the prosperity and power of a nation through restrictive trade practices. Its goal was to increase the supply of a state's gold and silver with exports rather than to deplete it through imports. It also sought to support domestic employment.

The bio-economy is defined as the economic activity associated with the invention, development, production; and use of primarily bio-based products, bio-based production processes, and/or biotechnology-based intellectual property.

Industries Association; Hospitality and Gaming: Daily and Monthly Revenue Streams, Capital Gains Taxing: Create Offshore revenue through trading and Blockchain is a volatile market for good liquidity. FOREX Vehicle Currency: Low Interest Rates means currency will be traded against other currencies, Shorting own currency to get foreign currency and exchanging returns to domestic currency stabilize exchange rate and Currency Basket 

Interest Rate Pegging: Environmental alternative to gold, Surplus item during Quantitative Easing, and Low Interest Rates lead to spending and loans for investment which means buying and trading diamonds will balloon 

Mine Options: Credit spreads and debit spreads are different spread strategies that can be used when investing in options. Both are vertical spreads or positions that are made up entirely of calls or entirely of puts with long and short options at different strikes. They both require buying and selling options (with the same security) with the same expiration date but different strike prices.

Diamond Mine Investment Group: Mines can create private Investment Groups. Items within Group: diamond retail, diamond trading, industrial diamond manufacturing sectors

Lab-created diamonds are grown in controlled laboratory environments using advanced technology that replicates the conditions under which diamonds naturally develop beneath the Earth's crust. These lab-grown diamonds consist almost entirely of carbon atoms and are arranged in a diamond crystal structure.

DIAMOND ROLEX INVESTMENT TRUST (EXAMPLE)

Description

Watch Listing Through Discounted Cash Flow for Rolex Drop Culture or Re-Sale Market

Underwriting Products

$50,000 in value

Collector's Edition

Less than 20 models made

Masterwork Investing Platform (reference)

Masterworks is making the world of art a little less exclusive by offering everyday investors the chance to own a fraction of these high-priced investments with a much smaller amount of money.

Through the fine art investing platform, users can purchase (and trade) shares in what the company has defined as "blue-chip" art: masterpieces from artists like Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Andy Warhol, Banksy, Kaws, Jean-Michel Basquiat and more.

How Masterworks functions (reference)

Masterworks provides an affordable way to invest in art. What was once an option reserved exclusively for wealthy investors is now accessible to investors of all types. Here's how the platform works:

Masterworks will purchase a painting and file it with the SEC as a public offering, or IPO, similar to how a company goes public. Shares of the painting are then made available for purchase on the Masterworks website for as little as $20 per share. The company says it launches about one new painting every four to five days.

The platform stands out, especially for using propriety data to determine which artist markets have the most momentum, focusing on the very high-end segment of the art market that has predictable returns, the company says. Meanwhile, its research team works in the background to calculate appreciation rates, correlation, and loss rates.

Masterworks even recently added a secondary market, too, where investors can trade shares in paintings. Plus, Masterworks lets you invest your IRA earnings into their fine art through its partnership with Alto IRA, an alternative asset investing platform.

Industrial Embassy 

Business Model: Insurance companies base their business models around assuming and diversifying risk. The essential insurance model involves pooling risk from individual payers and redistributing it across a larger portfolio. Most insurance companies generate revenue in two ways: Charging premiums in exchange for insurance coverage, then reinvesting those premiums into other interest-generating assets. Like all private businesses, insurance companies try to market effectively and minimize administrative costs. Types of Insurance: Mining, Manufacturing, Retail, Logistics 

Financing is the process of providing funds for business activities, making purchases, or investing. Financial institutions, such as banks, are in the business of providing capital to businesses, consumers, and investors to help them achieve their goals. The use of financing is vital in any economic system, as it allows companies to purchase products out of their immediate reach. Equity financing is the process of raising capital through the sale of shares. Companies raise money because they might have a short-term need to pay bills or have a long-term goal and require funds to invest in their growth. By selling shares, a company is effectively selling ownership in their company in return for cash. Advantages of Equity Financing; Funding your business through investors has several advantages, including the following: The biggest advantage is that you do not have to pay back the money. If your business enters bankruptcy, your investor or investors are not creditors. They are part-owners in your company, and because of that, their money is lost along with your company. You do not have to make monthly payments, so there is often more cash on hand for operating expenses. Investors understand that it takes time to build a business. You will get the money you need without the pressure of having to see your product or business thriving within a short amount of time. 

Planning Permission and Building Regulations Courses: Planning permission assesses whether the development fits in with local and national policies and whether it would cause unacceptable harm, for example, to neighbours' quality of life. Whereas building control covers the structural aspects of development and progress throughout the construction

AFRO-MEDITERRANEAN PARAMILITARY FINANCING

Military Payments

Sercurity Operations (SercOps) Payment: $150,000 yearly salary: Receives $100,000 salary; other $50,000 is used for branch-managed investment portfolio and investment trust

Discharge Payment: $75,000 yearly salary for Armoured Car Guard and Driver, Receives $50,000 salary; other $25,000 is used for branch-managed investment portfolio and investment trust

Military Funding: Central Hedge Fund Equity Given

Payment is in Fixed Currency

AFRO-MEDITERRANEAN SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS DEVELOPMENT CONFLICT PREVENTION AND RECONSTRUCTION (CPR) UNIT CENTERS

Corporate Sponsor: M & A Schools (Mergers and Acquisitions) & Retirement-preparatory School

Cross-Curriculum

STEM education is the cross-curricular study of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the application of those subjects in real-world contexts.

Studying Style

I use Interleaving Studying for Generalist Kinaesthetic Learners.

Transition to Interleaving Studying: Online PowerPoint Presentation, Video Essays, Case Studies & Meta-analyses over Books to present Information as a country, Less Paper Use, Courses on Different PowerPoint Studying Styles, Make country a Business & Finance Culture and Technological Advanced, Overview at Beginning; Program Learning Concept Check During Quizzes at the End for Courses, Spaced Learning on concept checks before exiting the course.

A great example of when to use interleaving is sports, for instance, tennis. Instead of just practicing backhands in one session, you can interleave backhands, forehands, and volleys to get increased results. Another great example can be found in science classes, where interleaving math, physics, and chemistry, for example, can provide you with an advanced understanding of all 3 fields. 

Spaced learning is a learning method in which highly condensed learning content is repeated three times, with two 10-minute breaks during which distractor activities such as physical activities are performed by the students. It is based on the temporal pattern of stimuli for creating long-term memories reported by R. Douglas Fields in Scientific American in 2005.

Spacing boosts learning by spreading lessons and retrieval opportunities out over time so learning is not crammed all at once. By returning to content every so often, students' knowledge has had time to rest and be refreshed.

The two concepts are similar but essentially spacing is revision throughout the course, whereas interleaving is switching between ideas while you study. Although interleaving and spacing are different interventions, the two are linked because interleaving inherently introduces spacing. These two concepts will create student-athletes

The best part about interleaving is that it is almost a universal aid in learning

Evidence suggests that spaced practice is more effective for long-term retrieval.

Interleaving Studying forces the brain to continually retrieve because each practice attempt is different from the last, so rote responses pulled from short-term memory won’t work. 

Multiple choice test is an example of measuring retrieval by A. reconstruction. B. recognition.

Chess

Increasing Intelligence: Fluid and crystallized intelligence are constructs originally conceptualized by Raymond Cattell. The concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence were further developed by Cattell and his former student John L. Horn. Crystallized intelligence. This refers to your vocabulary, knowledge, and skills. Crystallized intelligence typically increases as you get older. Fluid intelligence, also known as fluid reasoning, fluid intelligence is your ability to reason and think abstractly. Fluid intelligence refers to basic processes of reasoning and other mental activities that depend only minimally on prior learning (such as formal and informal education) and acculturation. Horn notes that it is formless, and can "flow into" a wide variety of cognitive activities Tasks measuring fluid reasoning require the ability to solve abstract reasoning problems. Examples of tasks that measure fluid intelligence include figure classifications, figural analyses, number and letter series, matrices, and paired associates. Crystallized intelligence refers to learned procedures and knowledge. It reflects the effects of experience and acculturation. Horn notes that crystallized ability is a "precipitate out of experience," resulting from the prior application of fluid ability that has been combined with the intelligence of culture. Examples of tasks that measure crystallized intelligence are vocabulary, general information, abstract word analogies, and the mechanics of language.

Bullet Chess: The rules for bullet chess aren't different from those of a regular chess game. Bullet chess refers to games played with time controls that are faster than 3 minutes per player. The most popular forms of bullet chess are 1|0 (one minute with no increment per player) or 2|1 (two minutes with a one-second increment per player). Increment (also known as bonus and Fischer since former World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer patented this timing method)—a specified amount of time is added to the players main time each move, unless the player's main time ran out before they completed their move.

Chess Benefits: It has been suggested by different scientists that chess involves, and possibly boosts, cognitive abilities such as working memory, fluid intelligence, and concentration capacity. Besides, chess may be beneficial for mathematical ability and, more widely, academic achievement by enhancing concentration and problem-solving skills.

Life-History Strategy

Life history theory posits that behavioral adaptation to various environmental (ecological and/or social) conditions encountered during childhood is regulated by a wide variety of different traits resulting in various behavioral strategies. Unpredictable and harsh conditions tend to produce fast life history strategies, characterized by early maturation, a higher number of sexual partners to whom one is less attached, and less parenting of offspring. Unpredictability and harshness not only affects dispositional social and emotional functioning, but may also promote the development of personality traits linked to higher rates of instability in social relationships or more self-interested behavior. Similarly, detrimental childhood experiences, such as poor parental care or high parent-child conflict, affect personality development and may create a more distrustful, malicious interpersonal style. The aim of this brief review is to survey and summarize findings on the impact of negative early-life experiences on the development of personality and fast life history strategies. By demonstrating that there are parallels in adaptations to adversity in these two domains, we hope to lend weight to current and future attempts to provide a comprehensive insight of personality traits and functions at the ultimate and proximate levels.

The Savant Skills Curriculum

Savant gifts, or splinter skills, may be exhibited in the following skill areas or domains: memory, hyperlexia (ie, the exceptional ability to read, spell and write), art, music, mechanical or spatial skill, calendar calculation, mathematical calculation, sensory sensitivity, athletic performance, and computer ability. These skills may be remarkable in contrast to the disability of autism, or may be in fact prodigious when viewed in relation to the non-disabled person.

Learning Centers

Enrichment centers require you to be aware of your students' learning styles (Kinesthetic) as well as their knowledge about a topic. The enrichment center can provide individual students with varied activities or combination of activities that differ from those pursued by other students. As such, the center becomes an individualized approach to the promotion of the topic.

Skill Centers Skill centers are typically used at the elementary level, more so than at the secondary level. Students may work on math facts, phonics elements, or other tasks requiring memorization and/or repetition.

Interest and Exploratory Centers: Interest and exploratory centers differ from enrichment and skill development centers in that they are designed to capitalize on the interests of students. They may not necessarily match the content of the textbook or the curriculum; instead they provide students with hands-on experiences they can pursue at their own pace and level of curiosity. These types of centers can be set up throughout the classroom, with students engaging in their own selection of activities during free time, upon arrival in the morning, as a “free-choice” activity during the day, or just prior to dismissal. These centers allow students to engage in meaningful discoveries that match their individual interests.

Programmed Learning

The way a teaching machine works is: It asks you a question. If you give the right answer, it goes on to the next question. If you give the wrong answer, it tells you why the answer is wrong and tells you to go back and try again. This is called "programmed learning". 

Programmed learning, educational technique characterized by self-paced, self-administered instruction presented in logical sequence and with much repetition of concepts. Programmed learning received its major impetus from the work done in the mid-1950s by the American behavioral psychologist B.F.

Exploratory Learning (Singapore Field Trips)

The Choice Theory Culture:

Is an expected way of being or living

Encourages positive choices which lead to healthy relationships

Is relationship based and collaborative

Is not about controlling behavior, rather promoting personal responsibility

Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset Theory

Growth Mindset: “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. With a growth mindset, students continually work to improve their skills, leading to greater growth and ultimately, success. The key is to get students to tune into that growth mindset.

Dweck writes, “In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful,” (Dweck, 2015).

Poker as Intro to Portfolio Building

Famous Fund Managers who played Poker 

Steven A. Cohen (born June 11, 1956) is an American hedge fund manager and owner of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball since September 14, 2020, owning roughly 97.2% of the team. He is the founder of hedge fund Point72 Asset Management and now-closed S.A.C. Capital Advisors, both based in Stamford, Connecticut. Cohen grew up in Great Neck, New York, where his father was a dress manufacturer in Manhattan's garment district, and his mother was a piano teacher. He is the third of seven brothers and sisters. He took a liking to poker as a high school student, often betting his own money in tournaments, and credits the game with teaching him "how to take risks." Cohen graduated from John L. Miller Great Neck North High School in 1974, where he played on the school's soccer team. Cohen received an economics degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. While in school, Cohen was initiated as a brother of Zeta Beta Tau fraternity's Theta chapter where he served as treasurer. While in school, a friend helped him open a brokerage account with $1,000 of his tuition money.

Carl Icahn is one of the most recognisable and successful investors in the world, having far outperformed the market on an annualised basis since 1968; at a rate which, by some measures, has him ahead of Warren Buffett. Carl Icahn was born on the 16th February 1936 in Queens, New York. It was a beach neighbourhood and a poor area. His mother was a pianist, but dropped her dreams of pursuing it as a career and instead chose a more stable job as a school teacher. His father also became a substitute teacher. As you may expect with both parents involved in education, Carl was extremely studious. At high school, he didn’t involve himself in many activities such as sports and clubs, instead he had set himself the big goal of making it to an Ivy League university; something most people in his area had no chance of doing. His teacher didn’t even think it was worth him applying, but this made him even more determined to be different. He had a mind-set that he wanted to be the best at everything. Icahn’s parents said they would only pay for university if he got into one of the top Ivy League universities. Although no one thought he stood a chance, he managed to enrol at Princeton University and studied philosophy as his major. His parents fulfilled their promise and paid for his Princeton fees but couldn’t stretch to anything else such as his accommodation or food. Instead, Carl got himself a summer job at a Cabana club in his neighbourhood to fund his living costs. It was at the Cabana club that he learnt how to play poker and joined in the games regularly. He says at the start he didn’t know how to play, but then he read 3 poker books in 2 weeks and became the best player there, taking home huge winning each summer. He says: “To me, it was a big game, big stakes. Every summer I won about $2,000, which was like $50,000 back in the ‘50s”

Brain Training: How Regular Poker Play Could Help Soccer Stars Succeed: An athlete’s brain is their most vital organ. It controls how the body functions, and it needs to be cultivated and disciplined just like the muscles do. Those in the industry are constantly searching for new ways to help soccer players get their heads in the game, and it turns out that poker can help immensely. By sharpening cognitive function, increasing social awareness, and improving mental endurance, poker enables athletes to rise to the occasion for peak performance on the field.

Conflict Prevention & Reconstruction Unit Psychology

Reintegration of child soldiers should emphasize three components: family reunification, psychosocial support and education, and economic opportunity. Family reunification—or, where that is not possible, foster placement or support for independent living—is crucial to successful reintegration.

Children are reintegrated into community life through the provision of psychosocial support, life skills classes and basic vocational training. At the end of the program, participants are provided with small grants to start businesses.

Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains this kind of transformation following trauma. It was developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, and holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward. Post-traumatic growth often happens naturally, Tedeschi says, but it can be facilitated in five ways: through education (rethinking ourselves, our world, and our future), emotional regulation (managing our negative emotions and reflecting on successes and possibilities), disclosure (articulating what is happening and its effects), narrative development (shaping the story of a trauma and deriving hope from famous stories of crucible leadership), and service (finding work that benefits others).

People who have experienced posttraumatic growth report changes in the following 5 factors: Appreciation of life; Relating to others; Personal strength; New possibilities; and Spiritual, existential or philosophical changes

Although posttraumatic growth often happens naturally, without psychotherapy or other formal intervention, it can be facilitated in five ways: through education, emotional regulation, disclosure, narrative development, and service.

Forgeard found that the form of cognitive processing was critical in explaining growth after trauma. Intrusive forms of rumination caused a decline in multiple areas of growth, whereas deliberate rumination led to an increase in five domains of posttraumatic growth. Deliberate rumination involves perceiving multilateral sides of the stressful experience including value, meaning, and significance (Calhoun et al., 2000; Cann et al., 2011), and may also decrease the discrepancy between global and situational meanings, as it promote finding meaning. Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) & Compassion-focused therapy (CFT) is a recommended psychotherapy

The two psychological traits which indicate a higher likelihood of experiencing post-traumatic growth are openness to experience and extraversion. Novelty seeking is positively associated with the Big Five personality trait of "extraversion," and to a lesser extent “openness to experience,” but is inversely associated with "conscientiousness." Online poker players are high sensation seekers who gamble to experience strong feelings and arousal, whereas impulsivity plays an important role in developing and maintaining pathological gambling.

CORPORATE SPONSOR: BETA-ARBITRAGE M & A EXAM

Poker Contest: Bankroll Budget*

Math Contest: Linear Algebra Contest, Probability and Ratios

Investment Management Contest: Decentralized Portfolio Building Simulation

Latin and Mandarin Technical Analysis Settings Fair: Year-Long Competition 

Blues Ocean Strategy Game Theory Network Mergers & Acquisitions Contest: Macau Game Theory - The course includes modules in areas such as: Essentials of M&A, Due diligence training, Business valuation training, post-merger integration planning

Machine Learning Contest: Quantitative Aptitude 

Winners Get a Full Ride to Internships (Licenes Courses I'm Gonna Make with Established Schools and Banks) Freshman Class is made of the contest winners: Mergers & Acquisitions Generalization with Corporate Sponsor; Understanding Capital Markets, Game Theory, Investment Model & Analysis, Quantitative Aptitude, Hedging Techniques, Foreign Language, Business Engineering, Business Models & Reengineering, Offshore Law, Blue Ocean Strategy, Investment Management with Python (Machine Learning)

Ages: 10, 12, 14, 17, 18, 20

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS DEVELOPMENT CENTRES

Socioeconomic status is the social standing or class of an individual or group. It is often measured as a combination of education, income, and occupation.

EdTech

 Business Model: Grants, corporate sponsorships, and recruiting business FutureLearn is another MOOC heavyweight with 210+ partners that include universities, humanitarian foundations, and large businesses. Some startups even rely on corporate sponsorship as their main business model

Generalist Education

VAMMMBRGC: Volleyball, Acting, Modelling, Music, Martial Arts, Ballet (Female), Rings Gymnastics (Male), Graffiti (Art), Cooking (Gastronomy)

STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics

M&A: Merger, Acquasitions

Welfare Investment Program 

Fund through Rental Properties: Bond Funds, REITs

Credit Building Program: Line of Credit Deposit Program

Job Placement for Agriculture Working Class

Agricultural Industry means an industrial activity involving the processing, cleaning, packing or storage of the results from agricultural production. The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also "Designation of workers by collar colour") include blue-collar jobs, and most pink-collar jobs. Members of the working class rely exclusively upon earnings from wage labour; thus, according to more inclusive definitions, the category can include almost all of the working population of industrialized economies, as well as those employed in the urban areas (cities, towns, villages) of non-industrialized economies or in the rural workforce.

As with many terms describing social class, working class is defined and used in many different ways. The most general definition, used by many socialists, is that the working class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labour. These people used to be referred to as the proletariat. In that sense, the working class today includes both white and blue-collar workers, manual and menial workers of all types, excluding only individuals who derive their livelihood from business ownership and the labour of others. The term, which is primarily used to evoke images of laborers suffering "class disadvantage in spite of their individual effort," can also have racial connotations. These racial connotations imply diverse themes of poverty that imply whether one is deserving of aid.

COMMODITIES REAL ESTATE

Insurance Premium, Financial Electronic Data Interchange, Royalties, Lease, & Gross Sale Payments for Restaurant Clientele Grocery Stores and Delivery Food Courts:

A lease payment is the equivalent of the monthly rent, which is formally dictated under a contract between two parties, granting one participant the legal right to use the other individual's real estate holdings, manufacturing equipment, computers, software, or other fixed assets, for a specified amount of time.

Gross sales refer to the grand total of all sales transactions over a given time period. This doesn't include the cost-of-sales or deductions (like returns or allowance). To calculate a company's gross sales, add up the total sales revenue for a specified period of time—monthly, quarterly, or annually. 

A franchise (or franchising) is a method of distributing products or services involving a franchisor, who establishes the brand's trademark or trade name and a business system, and a franchisee, who pays a royalty and often an initial fee for the right to do business under the franchisor's name and system. Royalties is the amount someone pays you to use your property, after you subtract the expenses you have for the property.

CONFLUENCE FOREX & COMMODITIES BETA-ARBITRAGE FORMULA

Trading Psychology: Play Defense, Focus on preserving capital instead of gaining capital

Position Trading: Currency being used, Shorting Low-Interest Currency against High-Value Currency Or Currency Being used, Shorting Low Interest/High-Value Currency against High-Interest Currency. Examples: Carry-Roll Down Bonds, CFD Forex Gold

Swing Trading: Use mt4/mt5 With Heiken Ashi Charts, Setting at 14 or 21 Momentum Indicator above 0 as Divergence Oscillator and VSA as Reversal Oscillator and Trade when bullish candlesticks above 200 exponential moving average and/or 20 exponential moving average (EMA) on H1 (Hourly) Time Frame; use H4 (4 Hours) and D1 (1 Day) as reference. Works for Oil & Gold Commodities

Master Supply and Demand (S&D) Zones (banks use this)

Candlestick Patterns for Momentum: Bearish Engulfing, Hanging Man, Shooting Star Three Crows, Evening Star, (Short). Bullish Engulfing, The Bearish Inverted Hammer or Regular Hammer (Regardless of Colour), Morning Star, and Piercing Line (Long) are extremely Important

Candlestick Patterns for VSA When Volume Spikes Down and Price is Up Bearish: Shooting Star, Doji, Hanging Man, Doji-Star

Candlestick Patterns for VSA When Volume Spikes Up and Price is Down Bullish: Hammer, Inverted Hammer, Doji, Doji-Star

S&D Reversal Patterns: The Drop-Base-Rally is a bullish reversal pattern, The Rally-Base-Drop is a bearish reversal pattern

S&D Continuation patterns: The Rally-Base-Rally is a bullish continuation pattern, The Drop-Base-Rally is a bearish continuation pattern

Swing Trading Time Frame H1 (Hourly) Reference D1 and H4 to locate supply and demand zones Pivot Points and VSA

Heiken Ashi Candlesticks Much easier to read candlestick charts and analyze market trends

Using Pivot Points for Prediction A pivot point is a technical analysis indicator, or calculations, used to determine the overall trend of the market over different time frames Works for commodities

Exponential Moving Average (EMA) 200 Day 20 Day

Momentum Indicator Settings 14 or 21

Volume Spread Analysis (VSA Trading) Entry 4 Steps: Identify the trend, Identify the sign of weakness in an existing uptrend, Wait to test the weakness for confirmation for the continuation of the uptrend, Look for any bullish reversal candlestick pattern for entry.

Relative Strength Index (RSI) Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a momentum indicator. It is a single line ranging from 0 to 100 which indicates when the stock is overbought or oversold in the market. If the reading is above 70, it indicates an overbought market and if the reading is below 30, it is an oversold market. RSI is also used to estimate the trend of the market, if RSI is above 50, the market is an uptrend and if the RSI is below 50, the market is a downtrend.

Commodity Channel Index Commodity Channel Index identifies new trends in the market. It has values of 0, +100, and -100. If the value is positive, it indicates uptrend, if the CCI is negative, it indicates that the market is in the downtrend. CCI is coupled with RSI to obtain information about overbought and oversold stocks.

What is Cash-and-Carry-Arbitrage? Cash-and-carry-arbitrage is a market-neutral strategy combining the purchase of a long position in an asset such as a stock or commodity, and the sale (short) of a position in a futures contract on that same underlying asset. A cash-secured put is an income options strategy that involves writing a put option on a stock or ETF and simultaneously putting aside the capital to buy the stock if you are assigned.

What are Gold CFD? A contract for difference (CFD) is a popular type of derivative that allows you to trade on margin, providing you with greater exposure to the gold market. Instead of purchasing gold itself, you buy or sell units for a given financial instrument depending on whether you think the underlying price will rise or fall.

What is Quanto Option? The Quanto option is a cash-settled, cross-currency derivative in which the underlying asset has a payoff in one country, but the payoff is converted to another currency in which the option is settled.

Hedging Strategies: Forex and Commodities CFD, Crude Oil Cash-secured Put Options (Binary Options)

TURF ACCOUNTANT

Beta-Arbitrage (PROFITS FOR BOOKMAKER)

+EV (Investment)

Live Betting (Balance Sheets)

BRANCH BRACKET DISCOUNTED CASH FLOW PORTFOLIO BET SLIP

+EV Round Robin instead of WACC Portfolio

$5 Units

GAME THEORY OPTIMAL POKER WITH LOOSE AGGRESSIVE & GROWTH INVESTING

Growth Investing Strategy & Game Theory

Japanese Candlestick Charts: Bullish Engulfing

Discounted Cash Flow Model: EV (Expected Value replaces WACC)

Mixed Strategy 

Fold Equity 

Community Cards

Companies Charts and Historical Financials

Royal Flush

Straight Flush

4 of a Kind

Full House

Flush

Hands

FCF of Companies

Strategy

Every chart starts with a green candlestick

Depending on your hand the second candlestick is either green or red

Green for the top 5 hands: Listed above

Red for the bottom 5 hands

If it's green invest by betting

If it's red fold

The third candlestick depends on the Flop

The fourth candlestick depends on The Turn 

As more money gets betted the Green candlestick gets larger

After The Flop risk-assessment and probability needs to be accounted for

After The Flop, The Turn, and The River it is possible for a red candlestick to appear because of a fold or a better hand because you lost money. Judge how much money you lost by the size of the candlesticks growth

Tony Dunst Tips

Learn to think in Big Blinds, Opponents are Effective Big Blinds 

Identify Player Types then Adjust

Study Big Blind Defense Frequency (Hand Ranges)

Work on Bubble and Final Table Play (Independent Chip Model)

Build 3 Betting Ranges

AFRO-MEDITERRANEAN SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS VOLLEYBALL SPORTS PERFORMANCE FOR KINAESTHETIC LEARNERS

Volleyball Physiological Age System for Both Genders: Plyometric High-Intensity Interval Training Through Cross Training, Wingspan Through Cross Training, Unstable Surface Muscle Recruitment Contrast Training, Isometric-Plyometric-Sprint-or-Vertical Jump Contrast Conditioning, Intermittent Hypoxic Training (IHT) Weighted Jump Rope Respiratory Conditioning, Functional Threshold Power (FTP) Cycling, Fascia and Central Pattern Generator Skill Development, Stretch-Reflex Elastic Strength Training, Running-Based Anaerobic Sprint Test (RAST), Stimulus-Fatigue-Recovery-Adaptation for Supercompensation, Autophagy Recovery, High Fat and High Carb with Lipolysis Supplement Nutrition: 3 Fuels of Energy in Oxygen, Fat, and Glucose, Convert Hybrid Muscle Fibers

Stretch Goal of Having a Physiological Age of 25

Volleyball is an aerobic sport with additional anaerobic demands. This will require volleyball players to work both energy systems, making cardiorespiratory conditioning very important. The aerobic, or lower intensity training, will help build a strong cardio base that is needed for a long match. A study done on college athletes showed that gymnasts and volleyball players had significantly higher bone mineral density than swimmers, which is considered a low-impact sport.

Collagen Athletes: Researchers found that a year of daily collagen peptides supplementation measurably increased bone mineral density in the lumbar spine and in the upper femur. The women also had higher levels of a blood biomarker that indicates bone formation. Collagen provides resistance to tension and stretch, which commonly occur in fascial tissues, such as ligaments, tendons, sheaths, muscular fascia and deeper fascial sub-layers. Julio Jones and Cam Newton do Fascia Beach Workouts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unm5dvlcqL4

Offensive Systems 5-1 System Rotation 1: Setter Starts in Right Back, Rotation Offense to Middle Front, Run One Man or Two Man Routes, Call out Formations

Defensive Systems Middle Back Systems: The Set is important to determine if there’s enough time for one man, two man, or three man block. Shots to Plan for: Dink, Off-speed, and Angle. Setting Blocks: Mix Sequencing of Jump Two Man and Three Man Back

Anta Sports Fashion Collab Circuits (Graffiti Beachwear Fashion Week and Trade Show): Key City Tournaments

Planned Pregnancy: Mercury-Venus Cusp, MSTN Gene, ACTN3 Gene, and XYY Syndrome or Triple X Syndrome

CARTEL THEORY

HSBC Bank Holding Company Equity Financing

What Is a Bank Holding Company? A bank holding company is a corporation that owns a controlling interest in one or more banks but does not itself offer banking services. Holding companies do not run the day-to-day operations of the banks they own. However, they exercise control over management and company policies. They can hire and fire managers, set and evaluate strategies, and monitor the performance of subsidiaries’ businesses.

What Is Equity Financing? Equity financing is the process of raising capital through the sale of shares. Companies raise money because they might have a short-term need to pay bills or have a long-term goal and require funds to invest in their growth. By selling shares, a company is effectively selling ownership in their company in return for cash. Equity financing comes from many sources: for example, an entrepreneur's friends and family, investors, or an initial public offering (IPO). An IPO is a process that private companies undergo to offer shares of their business to the public in a new stock issuance. Public share issuance allows a company to raise capital from public investors. 

Palmiers Noirs Rivals

United Kingdom

Jews

Luxembourg (EU Blacklist Creator)

Latin Kings

Sinaloa Cartel

Sonora Cartel

Colombian Cartels

Neymar

Banker Title

Croupier Comptable: An investment banker who has experienced decadence through Casino Capitalism 

Palmiers Noirs Structure

Clandestine Cell System

A clandestine cell system is a method for organizing a group of people (such as resistance fighters, sleeper agents, mobsters, or terrorists) such that such people can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization (such as law enforcement or military units).

In a cell structure, each of the small group of people in the cell know the identities of the people only in their own cell. Thus any cell member who is apprehended and interrogated (or who is a mole) will not likely know the identities of the higher-ranking individuals in the organization.

The structure of a clandestine cell system can range from a strict hierarchy to an extremely distributed organization, depending on the group's ideology, its operational area, the communications technologies available, and the nature of the mission.

Criminal organizations, undercover operations, and unconventional warfare units led by special forces may also use this sort of organizational structure.

Infrastructure cells

Any clandestine or covert service, especially a non-national one, needs a variety of technical and administrative functions, such as: Recruitment/training, Forged documents/counterfeit currency, Finance/Fundraising, Communications, Transportation/Logistics, Safehouses, Reconnaissance/Counter-surveillance, Operational planning, Arms and ammunition, and Psychological operations

A national intelligence service has a support organization to deal with services like finance, logistics, facilities (e.g., safehouses), information technology, communications, training, weapons and explosives, medical services, etc. Transportation alone is a huge function, including the need to buy tickets without drawing suspicion, and, where appropriate, using private vehicles. Finance includes the need to transfer money without coming to the attention of financial security organizations.

Cartel Definition

Cartel is an ambiguous concept, which usually refers to a combination or agreement between rivals, but – derived from this – also designates organized crime. The main use of ‘cartel’ is that of an anticompetitive association in the economy. 

Price cartels engage in price fixing, normally to raise prices for a commodity above the competitive price level.

Cartel Theory

Cartel theory is usually understood as the doctrine of economic cartels. However, since the concept of 'cartel' does not have to be limited to the field of the economy, doctrines on non-economic cartels are conceivable in principle. Such exist already in the form of the state cartel theory and the cartel party theory. For the pre-modern cartels, which existed as rules for tournaments, duels and court games or in the form of inter-state fairness agreements, there was no scientific theory. Such has developed since the 1880s for the scope of the economy, driven by the need to understand and classify the mass emergence of entrepreneurial cartels. Within the economic cartel theory, one can distinguish a classical and a modern phase. The break between the two was set through the enforcement of a general cartel ban after the Second World War by the US government.

Constituent characteristics and exclusion criteria for cartels

Constituent criteria for cartels would be the following: The members are, at the same time, partners as well as competitors (so do e.g. enterprises, states, parties, duelists, tournament knights).  These members can be individual persons or organizations. The members of a cartel are independent of each other, negotiating their interests with each other and against each other. So there have to be at least two participants and they determine their interests autonomously. The members of a cartel know each other; they have a direct relationship, in particular they communicate with each other.

Exclusion criteria for cartels would be the following: There is a "hierarchical" or other strong "dependency relationship among the participants": a drug mafia that is organized hierarchically and managed by a single boss can't be a drug cartel in the sense of a real "cartel". KLikewise, a business corporation can't be a "cartel" due to its central management, which controls its subsidiaries. Furthermore, an OPEC, in which all adherents would be dependent on the largest member (since long: Saudi Arabia) would no longer be a "cartel". Similarly, colonial empires from a motherland and colonies do not constitute a "state cartel". The union of competitors, in their entirety or via important members of its association, is dependent on an outside power. A strict, state-mandated compulsory cartel without freedom of choice between the partners would not be a (real) cartel. A suitable example is the "Deutsche Wagenbau-Vereinigung" (German Railway Cars Association), which was organized in the 1920s by the "Deutsche Reichsbahn" (German Imperial Railways) – its "market opponent". The combination takes place between actors of different levels. Thus, the concerted actions of employers’ associations and trade unions in some industrialized countries was not a cartel, because the allies there were no homogenous competitors. The alleged members of a suspected cartel do not know each other, but only randomly show a parallel behavior: “Cartels of the godless”, “cartels of maintenance deniers” or “silent cartels” are therefore usually no real cartels, but pure verbal abuse formulas.

MACAU ECONOMICS

Science

Science of Aesthetics

Nutritional Biochemistry

Vertical-Rotational Force Kinetic Chain

Biomechanics

Sports Medicine

Technology

Biotechnology

FinTeach

RealTeach

Merger & Acquisition EdTech

Engineering

Business Engineering (Tribes Organism and Keynesian Macroeconomics)

Construction Management

Business Model Reengineering

Mathematics (Decentralized Central Banking)

Investment Management

Monetary Policy & Central Banking

Wolf Packs are Generalist

David Epstein examined the world’s most successful athletes, artists, musicians, inventors, forecasters and scientists. He discovered that in most fields—especially those that are complex and unpredictable—generalists, not specialists, are primed to excel. Generalists often find their path late, and they juggle many interests rather than focusing on one. They’re also more creative, more agile, and able to make connections their more specialized peers can’t see.

Wolves are habitat “generalists,” meaning they can adapt to living in many kinds of habitat. They basically need two things to thrive: abundant prey and human tolerance.

Trophic Cascade, an ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition or removal of top predators and involving reciprocal changes in the relative populations of predator and prey through a food chain, which often results in dramatic changes in ecosystem structure and nutrient cycling. (Trillwave in Macau)

A keystone species is an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem. Without its keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether. Keystone species have low functional redundancy. (Trillwave in Macau)

Unpredictable and harsh conditions tend to produce fast life history strategies, characterized by early maturation, a higher number of sexual partners to whom one is less attached, and less parenting of offspring.

BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY BY RENÉE MAUBORGNE AND W. CHAN KIM (COURTESY OF BLINKIST)

What’s in it for me? Conquer uncontested market space.

Every business asks themselves the same question: how can we beat out the competition? And almost every business comes up with the same answer: we need to become bigger, better, and faster to outperform our rivals.

But what if your business didn’t have to beat the competition because there wasn’t any? What if you could enjoy unlimited growth without worrying about limited demand? This isn’t some idle fantasy but a strategic approach that a handful of successful businesses have already made reality. How did they do it? And how can your business do the same? This short Blink will give you a taste.

Escape your competition by setting sail to a blue ocean.

When you establish a new business, competition can be brutal. Whether you’re selling wine, audio books, or life insurance, the market for a product can only get so big. So you’re left to fight with hundreds of other companies for your share of a limited demand. No surprise that America’s most popular business TV show is called Shark Tank! Markets today are like oceans, swarming with hungry companies ready to kill each other. There’s so much blood in the water, we can call these markets red oceans. 

But every once in a while, a company emerges that seems to sail past all the competition. These are businesses that rise fast, grow uncontested, and seem to play by their own rules. What are they doing differently?

Well, instead of fighting over scraps in red oceans, these businesses navigate uncharted territory: blue oceans. You can think of blue oceans as all the markets we haven’t yet discovered, for products and services that don’t yet exist. Demand isn’t limited because demand isn’t there – it has to be created. But this isn’t a handicap, it’s an opportunity. Because if the size of your market isn’t limited, neither are your growth and profits.

In blue oceans, the water isn’t bloodied by cut-throat competition. It’s deep, clear, and full of undiscovered potential. The blue ocean strategy gives you the methodology and tools to conquer such uncontested markets. The basic tenet is this: It’s true that the space in a certain industry might be limited. But who’s to say that a business can’t create an entirely new industry?

Let’s look at an example of this in action: famous Canadian circus company Cirque du Soleil. With its extraordinary variety shows, Cirque du Soleil has entertained millions of people worldwide. On top of that, it’s made record profits. Not something you would expect from a circus company! How did the company do it?

Well, Cirque du Soleil did two interesting things. First, it got rid of the old circus staple of animal acts. Then, it supplemented its human acts with live music and compelling storylines. The first move reduced costs while the second introduced exciting new elements into the world of circus. In effect, Cirque du Soleil created a blue ocean: it carved out an entirely new market for artistic theater experiences. And people love it.

Lower your costs and differentiate yourself.

Perhaps you find the example of a circus company a bit too eclectic? No problem. There are thousands of other businesses that have successfully implemented a blue ocean strategy. Companies like Ford, Nintendo, Netflix, Nespresso, Yellow Tail, Southwest Airlines, and even The Body Shop. In this section, we’ll take a closer look at how they succeeded.

But first, a few more words about red oceans. In red oceans – industries that are already established – everyone plays by agreed rules. Not so long ago, these rules might have looked something like this: “Movies can be bought or rented.” “Wine needs to have an air of sophistication.” “Air travel is expensive.” But in blue oceans, none of these rules apply. Blue oceans are actively shaped by the actions of the industry players who create them.

Let’s be clear – you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to establish a blue ocean. Often, a few little tweaks are enough to set a product apart from its competitors and create a new market. It’s really quite simple: Take a close look at your industry as it is right now. Then think about which factors you can Raise, Eliminate, Reduce, and Create. Let’s go through these points step-by-step with examples.

Raise. Think about how you can elevate the product quality, price point, or service standards of your industry. Southwest Airlines did this when it became the first US airline to make domestic flights quick, easy, and affordable for everyone.

Eliminate. Consider which aspects of your product or service can be cut completely. Remember how Cirque du Soleil got rid of costly and unethical animal acts? Every industry has some outdated practice they’d be better off abandoning.

Reduce. Look at which production processes, product features or service offers you can reduce. Australian wine brand Yellow Tail, for instance, decided to reduce its focus on prestigious vineyards and the aging process in favor of affordable wines with broad appeal.

Create. Brainstorm what new features you can offer your customers. Netflix is a premium example of this that barely needs an explanation: it was the first company to offer on-demand streaming for movies and TV shows.

Ideally, considering these questions will help you do two things: lower your costs and differentiate your business from the competition. And that’s really all you need to create a blue ocean. Even more so, if your company keeps addressing these four factors – that’s raise, eliminate, reduce, and create –, it will stay one step ahead of the competition at all times.

Final summary

In this short Blink, you’ve learned about the difference between red and blue oceans. Rather than competing for limited market space, successful businesses often capture new markets with unlimited potential. They’re discovered by raising, eliminating, reducing, and creating industry factors in a way that lowers costs and sets your business apart from the competition.

RANGE BY DAVID EPSTEIN (COURTESY OF BLINKIST)

What’s in it for me? Learn why taking a wide-ranging approach to life will pay off.

In our complex and cutthroat world, there’s a lot of pressure to get a head start and specialize early. Many successful people, such as Tiger Woods, start to focus on one path early in life. But delve a little deeper, and it becomes clear that it’s generalists, not specialists, who are primed to excel.

Generalists may take a little longer to find their path in life, but they are more creative, can make connections between diverse fields that specialists cannot. This makes them more innovative and, ultimately, more impactful.

Drawing on examples from medicine to academia to sport, these blinks explore how breadth and range are far more powerful than specialized expertise. They also show that experts often judge their own fields more narrowly than open-minded, intellectually curious amateurs do.

In these blinks, you’ll learn; what comic books have to tell us about the ingredients of success, how the complexity of modern life has changed the way we think, and why you should be a Roger; not a Tiger.

Starting early and specializing is fashionable, but has dubious merit.

At the age of ten months old, Tiger Woods picked up his first miniature golf club. At two, he showed off his golf drive on national television. Later that same year, he entered and won his first tournament in the under ten category. Tiger Woods embodies a now popular idea that the key to success in life is to specialize, get a head start and practice intensively.

This trend toward specialization doesn’t only show up in the sports world. In fact, it’s also true of academia, our complex financial system and medicine. Oncologists, for example, now rarely focus on cancer alone. Rather, they specialize in cancer of a particular organ. The writer and surgeon Atul Gawande notes that when doctors joke about right-ear surgeons, we shouldn’t be so quick to assume they don’t actually exist.

But is specializing really the way to go? Simply put, no. In many walks of life, building up experience in just one field doesn’t help performance. In a 2009 paper, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein explored the connection between experience and performance.

Klein shows that experience counts in certain fields. For firefighters, for example, years of focused experience trains them to recognize patterns in the behavior of flames, which enables them to make 80 percent of their on-the-job decisions instinctively in seconds.

But Kahneman found that in other areas, experience counted for nothing. Studying the assessment of officer candidates in the Israeli Defence Forces, he found that recruiters’ predictions of a recruit’s future performance, based on physical and mental abilities, were no more reliable than guesswork. Crucially, as the recruiters received more and more feedback after multiple recruitment rounds, they didn’t get any better at making predictions. Kahneman concluded that there was a complete disconnect between experience and performance.

Some fields of life resemble golf or firefighting. While not necessarily easy, they offer recurring patterns or simple rules that govern decision-making. But there are many more fields of life, like army recruitment, that are much more nebulous and require the creativity and flexibility that generalization offers.

Experimentation is as reliable a route to expertise as early specialization.

In 2006, a now 31-year-old Tiger Woods watched Roger Federer win the US Open final for the third year in a row. Both were at the peak of their powers. As they sipped champagne together in the locker room afterward, Federer felt he had never connected with someone who understood his feeling of invincibility so well. They became firm friends. But, as Roger later told a biographer, his story was very different from Tiger’s.

Roger’s mom was a tennis coach, but if she ever felt tempted to coach him, she resisted it. As a young boy, he dabbled in squash, skiing, wrestling, skateboarding, basketball, tennis and badminton. Later, he gave credit to this range of sports experience for helping his hand-eye coordination and athleticism.

Over time, he found that he liked sports with balls. He moved toward tennis as a teenager, but not intensively. In fact, when his instructors recognized his talent and tried to move him to a group of older players, he asked to stay in the group with his friends. Roger Federer’s winding path to tennis success points to the fact that sampling, rather than specialization, can often be the best route to eventual success.  

And plenty of evidence across multiple disciplines supports this. This is true even in an area like music, where plenty of outstanding musicians do specialize young. World-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, for instance, started playing music at a very young age. But what many people don’t know is that Ma first tried violin and piano, and only moved to the cello because he didn’t like the first two.

Yo-Yo Ma isn’t alone in this. In a study of students at a British boarding school, music psychologist John Sloboda found that every one of the students who attended structured music lessons early in their development was categorized by the school as “average,” while not one was “exceptional.” In contrast, those children identified as exceptional were those who had tried out three instruments.

So, if you haven’t yet found your calling, experiment. You could take Vincent van Gogh as inspiration. He tried everything from working in bookstores to teaching and art dealing to preaching before finding his calling as an artist who changed painting forever.

Let’s find out how this works.

Living in a complex world has increased the average person’s IQ and ability to think abstractly.

In 1981, James Flynn, a professor of political studies from the beautiful hilly town of Dunedin in New Zealand, changed the way we think about thinking.

Flynn stumbled upon reports of IQ test scores of American troops that showed dramatic improvement between the two World Wars. The same score that placed a World War I soldier in the 50th percentile would only land him in the 22nd percentile of World War II troops. Intrigued, Flynn asked researchers in other countries for data. He received IQ test results from the Netherlands that showed similarly huge leaps from generation to generation. He then compiled data from 14 other nations.

In what’s now known as the Flynn effect, this research reveals an average three-point increase in IQ every decade in over 30 countries. But what causes this rapid rise? The work of a Russian psychologist, Alexander Luria, gives us an idea.

In 1931, the Soviet Union was changing rapidly. Remote, essentially premodern villages operating in ways unchanged for centuries were converted to collective farms with industrialized development, planned production and division of labor.

Luria capitalized on this rate of change to conduct unique studies. In one experiment, he asked villagers to sort wools into groups. In more modern villages, people would happily group similar pieces of wool, like those in different shades of blue. But in the remote, still premodern villages, participants simply refused to do so. According to them, each piece of wool was different – it was an impossible task!

Other questions involving conceptual thinking got a similar response. One villager, named Rakmat, was shown a picture of three adults and one child and asked which person did not belong. But Rakmat didn’t think about the question abstractly, as we would, and identify the child as different. Instead, he insisted that the boy must stay with the adults and help them with their work.

Luria’s findings were clear. The more exposure to modernization, the greater the ability to make conceptual connections between objects or abstract notions. Today, our minds are constantly dealing with abstract concepts. We glance at a download progress bar on our computer, for example, and instantly understand its meaning. Our minds are better at understanding a breadth of topics and making connections between ideas than ever before.

And yet, we continue to narrow our conceptual focus.

If you want it to stick, learning should be slow and hard, not quick and easy.

The teachers you liked the most in your educational career might be the ones who taught you the least. A study of teaching at the US Air Force Academy tracked the progress of thousands of students working with hundreds of different professors, starting with Calculus I classes. It found that the professors whose students’ got better grades on the exam were also highly rated in student evaluations. The professors whose students did not receive good grades received harsher student feedback.

But when the economists conducting the study looked at long-term results, there was a twist. The professors who received positive feedback had a net negative effect on their students in the long run. In contrast, those professors who received worse feedback actually inspired better student performance later on.

Rather than teaching to the test, these professors appeared to be facilitating a deeper understanding of underlying math concepts. It made their classes frustrating and difficult, hence the poor grades and student evaluations. But it paid off in the long run. Those professors were using desirable difficulties – harder, but ultimately more rewarding, ways to learn.

There are certain techniques we can all use that embrace desirable difficulties. One such technique is spacing, which means leaving time between learning something and practicing it. Consider a 1987 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. This study separated Spanish students into two groups, testing one group on vocabulary that they had learned the same day, and the other group weeks later. Eight years later, and with no further study in the interim, the two groups were tested again. The results showed that the latter group could remember over 200 percent more words.

Even short-term spacing is effective. In a 1972 study, researchers at Iowa State University read people a series of words. The first group of participants was asked to recite the words straight away. Another group was asked to recite them after being distracted for fifteen seconds by some simple math problems.

The first group did considerably better than the group that was distracted. But later the same day, the participants were asked to write down each word they could recall. This time, the group that previously performed worse did the best. The process of working hard to recall the information in the first instance had helped them move it from short-term to long-term memory.

So, don’t get too excited by quick progress when you learn. Embrace hard, slow learning. It will pay off in the long run.

A narrow focus is unhelpful, and a remedy for this is to think outside the box.

In some environments, dealing with specialists is desirable. If you need an operation, you probably want a doctor who specializes in the procedure and has done it many times before. However, as we benefit from more reflection and thinking, this narrow focus can be unhelpful.

For example, cardiologists use stents – metal tubes that hold blood vessels open – to treat chest pain so often that they often do so reflexively, even in situations that may be dangerous or inappropriate. This explains a 2015 study by Dr. Anupam Jena of Harvard Medical School. The study found that patients with cardiac arrest or heart failure were actually less likely to die if they were admitted to hospital while top cardiologists were away.

Other fields also point to the benefits of looking at problems with an outside view, rather than the inside view dictated by your own particular specialty.

In a study by University of Sydney professor Dan Lovallo, private equity investors were asked to provide a detailed assessment of businesses they were considering investing in, including their estimated return on investment. The investors were then asked to write notes about some other projects with broad similarities, like another tech start-up or an infrastructure project.

It turned out that the investors’ estimates of returns for the businesses they were actually planning to invest in were around 50 percent higher than for those alternative projects they had identified but not looked at in detail. The investors were shocked to discover the differences, and quickly slashed their estimated profit for their original potential investments.

As further psychological research has repeatedly shown, the more details we consider about something, the more extreme our judgments become. In one example, students rated a university higher when told that only certain science departments, rather than all science departments, were ranked in the national top ten.

Clearly, failing to see things from a broad perspective can lead to some bad calls.

A breadth of experience and interest drives innovation.

Comic books can tell us a surprising amount about range and success. When Dartmouth business professor Alva Taylor and Henrik Greve from the Norwegian School of Management decided to examine the impact of individual breadth on creative impact, they chose to study comics.

Tracking the careers of comic creators and the commercial success of thousands of comic books from 1971 onward, they made some predictions about what would boost the average value of a comic. They predicted that the more comics a creator made, the better the comics would be. Further, they thought that the more resources a publisher had, the higher quality and more successful its product would be.

All these assumptions were wrong. Neither experience nor financial resources bred success. What did drive success was the breadth of a comic creator’s experience across comic genres. Of 22 genres, the more a creator had worked in, from comedy to crime, fantasy to non-fiction, the more successful they were. But this link between breadth and success isn’t just the case in creative or artistic worlds.

Andy Ouderkirk, an inventor at the multinational company 3M, was named Innovator of the Year in 2013 and has been named on 170 patents, a proxy for creative success. He became fascinated with what generates successful and inventive teams, so he started to do some research. He found that the inventors who were most likely to succeed within 3M and win the company’s Carlton Award, which recognized innovation, were not specialists. They were polymaths, people with one area of depth, but a great deal of expertise in other areas as well.

These polymaths tended to have many patents in their area of focus, but also repeatedly took expertise gathered in one area and applied it to another. A study of prestigious scientists led by Robert Root Bernstein, a Professor of Psychology at Michigan State University, confirm Ouderkirk’s findings. Comparing Nobel prize-winning scientists to other scientists, the figures show that Nobel laureates are a full 22 times more likely to be an amateur actor, magician, dancer or performer.

So, for any hiring managers out there looking for fresh talent, here’s a plea. Don’t just look for people who fit into your clearly-defined slots. Make some space for those who don’t fit so clearly into any one category. Their breadth of experience might be invaluable.

The experts and pundits that our society listens to are usually hopeless at making predictions.

During 20 years of the Cold War, world-renowned forecasting expert Philip Tetlock collected and assessed the predictions of 284 experts. He concluded that experts are absolutely terrible at making predictions about anything.

Tetlock found that an expert’s years of experience, academic degree and even ability to access classified information made no difference. When experts said that some potential event was impossible, it happened in 15 percent of cases. Events declared to be an absolute sure thing failed to occur 25 percent of the time.

And worryingly for anyone who listens to cable news, Tetlock found that there was a perverse and inverse relationship between fame and accuracy. The more an expert appeared in the news, the more likely they were to be wrong, or as Tetlock famously put it, “roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.”

One of the problems was that many of the experts’ focus was too narrow. Having spent entire careers studying a single issue – say, US-Soviet relations – they tended to have explicit theories about how it worked. So, what makes a better forecaster of future events? Well, researchers like psychologist Jonathan Baron point to active open-mindedness – a willingness to question your own beliefs. Most of us fail at this, and can’t override our strong instinct to cherry-pick evidence that confirms our existing beliefs.

Consider a study run by Yale professor Dan Kahan. Pro and anti-Brexit voters were first tasked with interpreting a set of statistics about the effectiveness of a skin cream. Most participants completed the task successfully. But when presented with the same numbers framed as the link between crime and immigration, many of the participants misinterpreted the statistics according to their political beliefs. The same study has yielded similar results in the US on the topic of gun control.

So, how exactly can we combat our tendency to stick to our existing beliefs, despite the evidence? Kahan argues that one personality feature is important if we want to stay open-minded and think clearly about the world around us. Instead of scientific knowledge – how much you know – emphasize scientific curiosity – a desire to learn more, willingness to look at new evidence and ability to think with a genuinely open mind.

Now, let’s consider how we can embrace this kind of curiosity.

To be more of a generalist, you need to change your attitude toward learning and success.

See if you can answer this question correctly. Disease X has a prevalence of one in 1,000 people. The test for the disease has a false positive rate of five percent. What is the chance that someone receiving a positive test result has the disease?

If your answer was two percent, or 1.96 to be precise, you got it right. And in doing so, you did better than the 75 percent of physicians and students at Harvard and Boston University who got it wrong. Their most frequent answer was 95 percent.

The problem is straightforward if you know how to think about it. In a sample of 10,000 people, ten will have the disease and get a true positive. Five percent, or 500 people, will get a false positive. So out of the 510 people with a positive result, only 10, or 1.96% are ill. Sadly, many students aren’t taught to think openly about such problems. And this, according to Arturo Casadevall –  a star in the world of microbiology and immunology – has to change.

In a new role at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Casadevall is developing programs focused on an interdisciplinary understanding of topics such as philosophy, ethics, statistics and logic. One course, called “How do we Know What is True,” examines different types of evidence in various academic disciplines. “Anatomy of Scientific Error” encourages students to hunt for signs of misconduct or poor methodology in scientific research.

Casadevall hopes that, with a more rigorous grounding in reasoning and multidisciplinary thinking, students will be better prepared to make a real impact on our economy and society.

Of course, not all of us hold senior academic positions like Casadevall. What can we do to expand our range? Well, one thing is to embrace failure. Dean Keith Simonton, a creativity researcher, has shown that the more work creators produce, the more failures they produce, but they are also more likely to produce a superstar success. Thomas Edison, for instance, held over 1,000 patents, many of which were ultimately failures. But his successes, like the light bulb, were revolutionary.

Treading a wide-roaming, disorderly path of experimentation may not always bring instant results. But it may just be the best route to greatness in the end.

Final summary

The key message in these blinks: Embracing range, experimentation and breadth of experience is often a better road to success than specialization. Range demands patience, open-mindedness and scientific curiosity. If we can foster and exemplify these, the chances that we will generate major innovations and contribute significantly to our economy and society increase.

THINKING IN BETS BY ANNIE DUKES (COURTESY OF BLINKIST) CROUPIER COMPTABLE PSYCHOLOGY

Human minds tend to confuse decisions with their outcomes, which makes it hard to see mistakes clearly.

Super Bowl XLIX ended in controversy. With 26 seconds left in the game, everyone expected Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll to tell his quarterback, Russell Wilson, to hand the ball off. Instead, he told Wilson to pass. The ball was intercepted, the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl, and, by the next day, public opinion about Carroll had turned nasty. The headline in the Seattle Times read: “Seahawks Lost Because of the Worst Call in Super Bowl History”!

But it wasn’t really Carroll’s decision that was being judged. Given the circumstances, it was actually a fairly reasonable call. It was the fact that it didn’t work.

Poker players call this tendency to confuse the quality of a decision with the quality of its outcome resulting, and it’s a dangerous tendency.

A bad decision can lead to a good outcome, after all, and good decisions can lead to bad outcomes

In fact, decisions are rarely 100 percent right or wrong. Our decision-making is like poker players’ bets. We bet on future outcomes based on what we believe is most likely to occur.

So why not look at it this way? If our decisions are bets, we can start to let go of the idea that we’re 100 percent “right” or “wrong," and start to say, “I’m not sure.” This opens us up to thinking in terms of probability, which is far more useful.Volunteering at a charity poker tournament, the author once explained to the crowd that player A’s cards would win 76 percent of the time, giving the other player a 24 percent chance to win. When player B won, a spectator yelled out that she’d been wrong. But, she explained, she’d said that player B’s hand would win 24 percent of the time. She wasn’t wrong. It was just that the actual outcome fell within that 24 percent margin.

If we want to seek out truth, we have to work around our hardwired tendency to believe what we hear.

We all want to make good decisions. But saying, “I believe X to be the best option” first requires good-quality beliefs. Good-quality beliefs are ideas about X that are informed and well thought-out. But we can’t expect to form good-quality beliefs with lazy thinking. Instead, we have to be willing to do some work in the form of truth-seeking. That means we have to strive for truth and objectivity, even when something doesn’t align with the beliefs we hold.

Focusing on accuracy and acknowledging uncertainty is a lot more like truth-seeking, which gets us beyond our resistance to new information and gives us something better on which to bet.

We can learn a lot from outcomes, but it’s difficult to know which have something to teach us.

The best way to learn is often by reviewing our mistakes. Likewise, if we want to improve our future outcomes, we’ll have to do some outcome fielding. Outcome fielding is looking at outcomes to see what we can learn from them.

To become more objective about outcomes, we need to change our habits.

Habits work in neurological loops that have three parts: cue, routine and reward. As Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter Charles Duhigg points out in his book The Power of Habit, the key to changing a habit is to work with this structure, leaving the cue and reward alone but changing the routine.

We can improve our decision-making by being part of a group, but it needs to be the right kind of group.

We’ve all got blind spots, which makes truth-seeking hard. But it’s a little easier when we enlist the help of a group. After all, others can often pick out our errors more easily than we can.

But to be effective, a group dedicated to examining decisions isn’t like any other. It has to have a clear focus, a commitment to objectivity and open-mindedness, and a clear charter that all members understand.

In a decision-examining group committed to objective accuracy, this kind of change is self-reinforcing. Increasing objectivity leads to approval within the group, which then motivates us to strive for ever-greater accuracy by harnessing the deep-seated need for group approval that we all share.

To work together productively, a group needs CUDOS.

Shared commitment and clear guidelines help define a good-quality decision-examining group. But once you’ve got that group, how do you work within it?

You can start by giving each other CUDOS.

CUDOS are the brainchild of influential sociologist Merton R. Schkolnick, guidelines that he thought should shape the scientific community. And they happen also to be an ideal template for groups dedicated to truth-seeking. The C in CUDOS stands for communism. If a group is going to examine decisions together, then it’s important that each member shares all relevant information and strives to be as transparent as possible to get the best analysis. It’s only natural that we are tempted to leave out details that make us look bad, but incomplete information is a tool of our bias. U stands for universalism – using the same standards for evaluating all information, no matter where it came from. When she was starting out in poker, the author tended to discount unfamiliar strategies used by players that she’d labeled as “bad.” But she soon suspected that she was missing something and started forcing herself to identify something that every “bad” player did well. This helped her learn valuable new strategies that she might have missed and understand her opponents much more deeply. D is for disinterestedness and it’s about avoiding bias. As American physicist Richard Feynman noted, we view a situation differently if we already know the outcome. Even a hint of what happens in the end tends to bias our analysis. The author’s poker group taught her to be vigilant about this. But, teaching poker seminars for beginners, she would ask students to examine decision-making by describing specific hands that she’d played, omitting the outcome as a matter of habit. It left students on the edge of their seats, reminding them that outcomes were beside the point! “OS” is for organized skepticism, a trait that exemplifies thinking in bets. In a good group, this means collegial, non-confrontational examination of what we really do and don’t know, which keeps everyone focused on improving their reasoning. Centuries ago, the Catholic church put this into practice by hiring individuals to argue against sainthood during the canonization process – that’s where we get the phrase “devil’s advocate.”

If you know that your group is committed to CUDOS, you’ll be more accountable to these standards in the future. And the future, as we’ll see, can make us a lot smarter about our decisions.

To make better decisions, we need to spend some time in the future.

Temporal Discounting – making decisions that favor our immediate desires at the expense of our future self – is something we all do.

We can also recruit our future feelings using journalist Suzy Welch’s “10-10-10.” A 10-10-10 brings the future into the present by making us ask ourselves, at a moment of decision, how we’ll feel about it in ten minutes, ten months and ten years. We imagine being accountable for our decision in the future and motivate ourselves to avoid any potential regret we might feel.

Backcasting, imagining a future in which everything has worked out, and our goals have been achieved, and then asking, “How did we get there?" This leads to imagining the decisions that have led us to success and also recognizing when our desired outcome requires some unlikely things to happen. If that’s the case, we can either adjust our goals or figure out how to make those things more likely.

Premortems are when we imagine that we’ve failed and ask, “What went wrong?" This helps us identify the possibilities that backcasting might have missed. Over more than 20 years of research, NYU psychology professor Gabrielle Oettingen has consistently found that people who imagine the obstacles to their goals, rather than achieving those goals, are more likely to succeed.

Final summary

The key message in these blinks: You might not be a gambler, but that’s no reason not to think in bets. Whether or not there’s money involved, bets make us take a harder look at how much certainty there is in the things we believe, consider alternatives and stay open to changing our minds for the sake of accuracy. So let go of “right” and “wrong” when it’s decision time, accept that things are always somewhat uncertain and make the best bet you can.

Side Note: I think there is a link between Poker and Financial Psychopathy & Cerebral Narcissism because of the Rewiring of the Brian Benefits of Poker through Dopamine Release.

PITCH ANYTHING BY OREN KLASS (COURTESY OF BLINKIST)

PITCH ANYTHING is a fast-paced narrative packed with crystal clear examples illustrating the unique S.T.R.O.N.G. Method, which takes advantage of how the brain really works by Setting the Frame; Telling the Story; Revealing the Intrigue; Offering the Prize; Nailing the Hookpoint; and Getting a Decision.

You must tailor your pitch to the audience’s croc brains.

Everyone should learn to pitch ideas well. In every profession, from dentistry to investment banking, there comes a time when you must convince someone of something. Unfortunately, there is a gap between what we are trying to tell our audience and how they perceive it. To understand this gap and overcome it, we must look at the evolution of the human brain.

Basically, the human brain has evolved in three separate stages, resulting in three distinct parts: the primitive reptilian part, the croc brain, developed first. It’s a simple device primarily focused on survival and it can generate strong emotions, like the desire to flee a predator. Next, the midbrain developed. It allows us to understand more complex situations, such as social interactions. Finally, the sophisticated neocortex evolved, facilitating reasoning and analysis to understand complex things.

When you pitch, you use your neocortex to put into words the ideas you are trying to convey. Unfortunately, your audience doesn’t at first process these ideas with their neocortices. Instead, it is the audience’s primitive croc brains that receive the ideas and they ignore everything that is not new and exciting. Worse still, if your message seems abstract and unfathomable to the croc brain, it might perceive the message as a threat. This will make your audience want to flee to escape the situation.

This is why you must tailor your pitch to the croc brain. Since croc brains are simple, your message should be clear, concrete and focused on the big picture. You also need to ensure the croc brain sees your message as something positive and novel, which deserves to be passed on to the higher brain structures.

To secure your target’s attention, you must create desire and tension.

The one critical thing you need throughout your pitch is the attention of your target. To successfully attain this, research has shown that you must evoke two sensations in your pitch: desire and tension. Desire arises when you offer your target a reward, and tension arises when you show them they might lose something, like an opportunity, as a result of this social encounter. On a neurological level, this effectively floods your target’s brain with two neurotransmitters: dopamine and norepinephrine.

Dopamine is a chemical associated with anticipating rewards — desire. One such reward would be the pleasure of understanding something new, such as solving a puzzle. Thus, to increase the level of dopamine in your target’s brain, you must introduce novelty through a pleasant surprise, like an unexpected yet entertaining product demo.

Norepinephrine, on the other hand, is the chemical responsible for alertness and it creates tension in the target. If your pitch convinces them that there is a lot at stake here, their brains will be flooded with norepinephrine.

To create tension, you must create a bit of low level conflict with a push-pull strategy. This means first saying something to push the target away, like, “Maybe we aren’t a good match for each other.” You then counter this by pulling the target back toward you with something like, “But if we are, that would be terrific.”

This push-pull dynamic creates alertness in the target, as they sense that they might lose this opportunity. Depending on the situation, you may use very powerful push-pull statements, especially if you sense your target’s attention beginning to wane.

To control a meeting, you must first establish frame control.

Different people will see any given situation from a different perspective or point of view based on their intelligence, ethics and values. These perspectives are called frames, and they dictate how we perceive social situations such as meetings and sales pitches. Frames also determine who controls those situations.

When two people meet, their individual frames crash into each other. Only one frame can survive such an encounter — the stronger one. For example, let’s assume a cop pulls you over for speeding. He has a strong moral-authority frame and you only have a weak “I’m so sorry officer”-frame. It is clear that when your frames clash, his frame will prevail. This means he will control every aspect of the encounter: from its duration to its content and tone.

You will often face a similar clash of frames in a business environment; for example, a customer may be focused on the price of your product while you are focused on its quality. You will both try to get the other to focus on what you think is important.

If it is your frame that survives this clash, you will have frame control in the situation meaning your ideas and statements will be accepted as facts by the customer. This is a crucial advantage in any pitch. Without frame control, you are unlikely to convince anyone of anything.

You will often encounter the power frame, time frame and analyst frame, hence you must know how to counter them.

In a pitch or sales meeting you will often encounter certain archetypes of frames, and it is important you choose strong with which to counter them.

Typically, your target will use the power frame which exudes arrogance. You must not do anything that validates the other person’s power. Instead, use small acts of defiance and denial to bust the frame; for example, by yanking your presentation material away from the target if they do not seem to be taking it seriously.

Another oft-used frame is the time frame, where your customer asserts control over time: “I only have ten more minutes.” This is meant to push you off balance, but you can always counter with: “That’s fine, I only have five.”

A particularly lethal frame is the analyst frame, denoted by a fixation on details and numbers. If your opponent is in this frame, they will likely insist on drilling down into minor technical and financial details, effectively bogging down your pitch.

In such situations, give a direct but high-level answer to the question asked and get right back to your pitch. Analysis comes later. Before more questions come up, counter the analyst frame with your own intrigue frame. This basically means you tell a compelling personal story and leave it unfinished as a cliffhanger: “… so there we were, in a pitch black, falling airplane with no idea what was going to happen. Anyway, back to the pitch …" This redirects the focus of the room onto you and makes the discussion personal once again.

Use prizing to make the target seek your acceptance.

The most important frame you should be able to use is the prize frame, as it works in a variety of situations against many opposing frames.

Typically when you’re selling something or pitching an idea, your target will tend to see their money as the “prize” of the meeting, something you have to fight for. You must reframe the situation so that you are the prize and they would be lucky to do business with you.

Because people tend to want things they can’t have, prizing yourself will make your target work for your acceptance instead of the other way around. BMW does this with a special-edition M3. The company demands prospective buyers sign a contract assuring they will take proper care of the car, otherwise they cannot buy one.

In a pitching situation, never engage in behavior that makes it seem as if you are chasing the target, for example by agreeing to last minute schedule changes or trying to prematurely close the deal by saying things like, “So, what do you think so far?” Such behavior only reinforces the impression that the target is the prize. Instead, get your target to explicitly qualify themselves to you; for example, you could say, “I am very particular about with whom I work. Why should I do business with you?” This usually catches them off guard and they start trying to impress you.

Stack frames to trigger hot cognitions.

Contrary to popular belief, we are more prone to making choices instinctively than through rational analysis. In fact, we often make a decision about something before we even fully understand it and only later come up with reasons for that decision. These gut calls are called hot cognitions, whereas the decisions arrived at through rational reasoning are known as cold cognitions.

After you’ve introduced your big pitch idea, you want to trigger hot cognitions within your target. These will make him or her want what you have to offer in mere seconds, instead of analyzing your pitch for days to reach a rational, cold decision. You trigger the hot cognitions by stacking frames, meaning you introduce multiple frames in quick succession.

The first frame is the intrigue frame: you tell your target a compelling story, a personal narrative where a dilemma is solved. At the crucial juncture, you stop telling the story, leaving your target on the edge of their seat, ensuring their full attention.

Next, you pile on the prize frame, where you flip the tables on the target: instead of trying to impress them, make them qualify themselves to you. You could say something like, “This deal has so many investors after it, I have to choose who to take on board.”

After this, you stack on the time frame by adding time pressure to the pitch: “Unfortunately, this is a limited-time offer, and the train, so to speak, is leaving the station on Monday.” This will make the target feel like they are losing an opportunity, at which point they will want it even more.

By triggering all these hot cognitions in the target, you will leave them drooling for what you have to offer.

Don’t be needy – make the target chase you.

Neediness, otherwise known as validation-seeking behavior, is a sign of weakness and it can be absolutely fatal to your pitch. If you act needy, the audience will sense you are weak and their primitive croc brains will classify your proposal as a threat – to their money. This can easily push you into a vicious cycle where the audience becomes more and more distant due to your neediness, which in turn makes you anxious and even needier!

To negate neediness, you can use a simple three-step formula based on the movie The Tao of Steve, where the protagonist, Dex, follows a pseudo-Taoist philosophy to pick up women.

First, try to eliminate your desires, at least in the eyes of the target. If they have something you desperately want, this will translate as neediness in you. To negate this, make it clear to the target that you do not need them.

Second, focus on the things you do well, your strengths. Demonstrate something that showcases your excellence. Dex, for instance, was great with children and made sure the target of his affections saw this. Similarly, you must demonstrate excellence in front of your target.

Third, withdraw. At the crucial moment when your target expects you to chase them for their money, withdraw instead by saying something like, “I’m not totally convinced we’re a good match for each other.” This will make them chase you, much like the women in the Tao of Steve chased Dex.

To pitch effectively, you must attain situational alpha status.

Status plays a vital part in any social encounter. In any meeting, a dominant member known as an alpha emerges, while others take subordinate beta-positions. It is very difficult to be persuasive from a beta-position; hence, you must grab alpha status.

Though some elements of status, like your reputation or wealth, are quite stable, situational status can vary immensely; for example, while a successful surgeon has considerably higher social status than a golf teacher, the teacher is still the alpha during a golf lesson.

Often your pitch targets will lay so-called beta traps to force you into the situational beta position; for example, being made to wait in the lobby is a classic beta trap.

You must try to ignore these traps and avoid doing anything that enforces your opponent’s alpha status. Instead, use small acts of defiance and denial to grab the situational alpha status for yourself as soon as you can.

Say a customer has made you wait in the lobby. Once in the meeting room, you could begin examining some papers on the table in front of you. When the customer peeks at them, you could yank them away and say something like, “Nope, not until I’m ready.” If done in a good-natured, half-joking manner, this enforces your alpha position.

Once you have alpha status, you must then steer the discussion into a direction where you are the expert, much like the golf professional talks about golf, not heart surgery, when teaching the surgeon. To solidify your status, force your opponent to say something that reinforces your alpha position with a good-natured jest, like, “Remind me, why on earth should I work with you guys on this?”

Keep your pitch short and simple.

Before you begin any pitch, let your target know you will keep the presentation short. This will put them at ease. When Watson and Crick presented their Nobel Prize-winning idea of the DNA helix, they only needed five minutes. If you know what you are doing, you can pitch anything in twenty.

Start your pitch by introducing yourself. This does not mean rattling off your entire résumé but just outlining your greatest successes, like projects where you really did something impressive.

Most people will be tempted to jump right to the “big idea” for which they’re trying to get financing. But before you get to it, you should address one crucial concern in your target’s mind. Namely, you must explain why now is the right time to invest.

Rather than a long and complex analysis, simply outline the economic, social and technological forces which make your deal unmissable right now. Economic forces that benefit your pitch, for example, could be your target customers becoming wealthier and interest rates going down, the social forces could be the rising consumer concern for the environment, and the technological force could be the development of the electric car. You must present these forces in a way that shows a window of opportunity has recently opened but will not remain open forever.

The three forces set the stage and paint a backstory for your big idea, which should also be kept brief and simple. Use an established “recipe” for this: “For [target customers] who are dissatisfied with [current offerings on the market]. My product is a [new idea] that provides [solution to key problem] unlike [competing product]. My product has [key product features].”

That’s it. The time for details comes later.

Final summary

The key message in this book is: In any social encounter where you aim to be persuasive, it is vital that you seize control of the situation and ensure the target sees your pitch through the frame of mind you have chosen. At the same time, you must cater your pitch so that on a neurological level, the target’s brain works for you, not against you.

TRIBES BY SETH GODIN (COURTESY OF BLINKIST)

All Tribes Share 3 Components

A Group of People

A Common Cause

At least one Leader who Represents and Organizes the Tribe

The most important feature for a tribe is the shared cause.

A tribe’s shared cause leads its members to internalize the tribe’s values and ideas as their own. These internalized incentives make tribe members into driven believers instead of mere followers

Don’t engineer your ideas for the masses: make it exclusive and meaningful for a distinct group of people.

Apple set out to produce a new kind of phone that almost no one would initially like, but that a few people would really love.

With today’s technology, everyone can form and lead a tribe.

The first thing to know is that people need to be able to communicate intensely about their shared cause. This means that communication can’t just be vertical – between you (the leader) and the individual tribe members – more importantly, it must be horizontal, between tribe members.

With today’s technology, you have everything you need to facilitate both vertical and horizontal communication. Websites, blogs and social networks allow you not only to spread your cause, but also provide the room and the tools for your tribe to communicate, share ideas and organize. For example, you can use Basecamp to organize projects, and Twitter to share brief updates about developments. At the same time, these websites allow you to set ground rules for participation, and align everyone with your common vision by setting specific goals.

If you have a meaningful cause and the will to lead, people will follow.

Have you ever wondered how many people make up a movement? The answer is around 1,000: that’s the amount of true believers you need for a group to keep moving.

Creating a movement is about organizing an existing yearning into a way that tribe members can connect with each other, and form a movement under your leadership.

As former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley defines it, a movement contains three elements: A narrative that tells the story of the future you’re trying to build; a connection between the leader and the tribe and among the tribe members; and something to do – the fewer limits, the better.

When forming a tribe, don’t worry about making it grow – concentrate on tightening connections.

At least in the beginning, a tribe’s biggest advantage is not its size, but the multiple connections between the members, the leader and the outside world.

In fact, a tribe has four different directions of communication: Leader to tribe, tribe to leader, tribe members to one another and tribe member to outsider. Normal marketing pales in comparison, with communication generally only in one direction: company to market.

The most important of these directions is the communication between members. And this is where tightening a tribe comes in.

Tightening a tribe means bringing members closer together by facilitating communication and tightening their common bonds. You can do this by transforming a shared interest into one passionate goal, and by providing a platform for members to easily connect with each other.

Or you can harness the power of insiders and outsiders. To create a feeling of cohesion, you have to develop a culture of insiders – which inevitably excludes others. This allows the tribe to differentiate itself from other tribes, and create a stronger sense of internal identification.

Leadership is about stepping into a vacuum and creating motion.

For a tribe to form there has to be a particular change that people want to see made. This need for change has to come from a certain discomfort with the status quo, from a sense that there is something missing in the world. A leader steps right into this discomfort zone – the vacuum – and starts to organize so people will follow him.

Leaders do this despite the risks because of two things: they have faith in the cause and they know that innovation is always more effective the earlier it happens – so the sooner the better.

To make the world a better place, we need more heretics and less sheepwalkers.

What we need in the world are more heretics: people who question the status quo and the existing dogmas, and take action without asking for permission. Organizations need more heretics to advocate change from the inside: because if you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they will do amazing things. And tribes need heretics as leaders to break into new territory and help change the world.

ARMED ROBBERY INFLUENCE PASSING ATHLETE

Generalist Kinaesthetic Learners VAMMMBRGC

Volleyball

Acting

Modeling

Music

Martial Arts

Ballet (Female Only)

Rings Gymnastics (Male Only)

Graffiti (Art)

Cooking (Endorsements)

Characteristics

Suddenness

Speed

Intense

Aggressive Intervention for the Victim

Maximum Masking his own Contribution

Choosing the  appropriate  moment to attack and target the more vulnerable and defenseless victims.

Roles: The Bosses

**The Mastermind: The leader, who found the target, calls the shots, and thought up the plan. Usually the most experienced in the business as well, and very respected by their crew otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep all these amoral people in line. Compare The Chessmaster (Bullet Chess), The Captain, the Big Bad. May or may not have been the one to put the team together

**The Partner In Crime: The leader's second-in-command, who assists The Mastermind in plan-making and usually almost equally as experienced. Depending on the nature of the crew, he might be the only one besides The Mastermind who actually knows what's going on. May overlap with other roles. Compare The Lancer, The Dragon, the Number Two.

**The Backer: The Client who is paying for everything. Sometimes he has a deadline or is fussy in some other way that influences the crew's actions. Usually only The Mastermind and his Partner interact much with him. There isn't always a backer though, sometimes the crew front the money themselves and fence it hoping to make back enough for a profit.

Business Equity Heist

Scatter Site Shares Appreciation Rights Social Club

Bullet Chess Influenced Robbery

Preparation: The first step in creating such a good repertoire is to understand that memorization comes in a distant second to an appreciation of the ideas behind your opening moves

Prophylaxis*: In the game of chess, prophylaxis or a prophylactic move is a move that stops the opponent from taking action in a certain area for fear of some type of reprisal. Prophylactic moves are aimed at not just improving one's position, but preventing the opponent from improving their own. 

Pre-Move: This is when you make your move *before* the opponent has taken their turn. Helps with Time and Creates psychological pressure.

Tactical Vision: Tactics are maneuvers that take advantage of short-term opportunities. They can support your strategy and/or destroy your opponent's plan and ideas. Tactical and combinational themes must be mastered.

Opening Game: A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. In addition to referring to specific move sequences, the opening is the first phase of a chess game, 

Middle Game: The middlegame in chess is the portion of the game in between the opening and the endgame, though there is no clear line between the opening and middlegame or between the middlegame and endgame. Theory on the middlegame is less developed than the opening or endgames.

Development: It is important to develop your whole Army. Note the word whole. Some players get a few pieces out and launch an attack. The necessity for quick development depends on the type of Center that exists. For example, if the center is closed, development is not necessarily a priority because the enemy pieces won't be able to break into your position. However, if the center is open, development takes on a great significance

Initiative**: The side that forces it's ideas on a reacting opponent and Are making believable threats or responding to threats.

Dynamic Advantage: A dynamic Advantage centers around temporary items like development, the initiative, and more active pieces. Make sure you make use of this Dynamic plus before the opponent catches up in development, initiative runs dry, or you're active pieces are exchanged

Compensation: If you give up something (space, structural weakness, squares, material) and get nothing in return you are in trouble. However if you give up the same imbalances (space, structural weakness, squares, material) in exchange for different types of imbalance you are said to have compensation for whatever it is you gave up

Material Advantage: A material advantage goes to the player who has more and/or stronger pieces.

End Game: In chess and chess-like games, the endgame is the stage of the game when few pieces are left on the board. The line between middlegame and endgame is often not clear, and may occur gradually or with the quick exchange of a few pairs of pieces.

KEY MOTIFS

Mr. & Mrs Smith, Physical Fitness, Force-Velocity Curve Stimulus-Fatigue-Recovery-Adaptation Performance Training, Circuits, Networking, Chaárms or Athena Venus-Mercury Cusp Births, Triple Decker Projects with Sand Volleyball Courts, Brand Activation Modelling, Sports Larceny & Contract Racketeering, Sports for Orphans Charities, Short Film Series Acting, Polyglot, Industrial-Organizational Psychologist and Mergers & Acquisitions Bankers Advisory Team

KEY VALUES

Brass Knuckles as Weapons, Decadence, Socratic Methods Game Theory, Poker Country Clubs with Sports Betting Investment Trust, Red Bull Music Festivals, Athletic excellence, Sports Performance Centers, Med Spas, Patchwork Tattoos, Pastel Goth, Pastel Wavy Hair, Video Games, Real Estate Investment Groups, Scatter-site Share Appreciation Rights Social Club, Art House and Management Companies, Business Incubators and Startups Accelerators Collaboration Holding Company, Syncretism of Athena through Occult Magic to Warrior Spirits, Law Education EdTech Sponsor and Provider, Armed Robbery Sports Playbooks, Force-Velocity Curve Physique, Smurfing, Sports Betting, Poker Tournaments, Enterprise Foundations, Rental Properties, and Overview of the Nevada Economy: The top three sectors by total employment are Real Estate and Rental and Leasing, Accommodation and Food Services, Retail Trade, while the unemployment rate across the state in 2022 was 4.8%.

AESTHETIC THEORIES

Subjective

Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions

Precarious Balance

Precariously: If something is happening or positioned precariously, it's in danger. A glass could be precariously balanced on the edge of a table. If something is on the verge of danger, then the word precariously fits.

Semblance

Semblance is generally used to suggest a contrast between outward appearance and inner reality.

Phantasmagorical

Having a fantastic or deceptive appearance

adjective. having a fantastic or deceptive appearance, as something in a dream or created by the imagination. having the appearance of an optical illusion, especially one produced by a magic lantern.

Law of Polarity in Relationships

In any successful relationship that has an intimate connection and sexual attraction, there is polarity. What does this mean exactly? Polarity in relationships is the spark that occurs between two opposing energies: masculine and feminine. Gender does not affect whether you have masculine or feminine energy.

Second Reflection

Burden Aesthetics with Intentions

The Second Reflection lays hold of the Technical Procedures

CRIMINOLOGY THEORIES

Choice Theory: The belief that individuals choose to commit a crime, looking at the opportunities before them, weighing the benefit versus the punishment, and deciding whether to proceed or not.

Classical Theory: Similar to the choice theory, this theory ascertains that people think before they proceed with criminal actions; that when one commits a crime, it is because the individual decided that it was advantageous to commit the crime.

Critical Theory: Critical theory upholds the belief that a small few, the elite of the society, decide laws and the definition of crime; those who commit crimes disagree with the laws that were created to keep control of them.

Labeling Theory: Those who follow the labeling theory of criminology ascribe to the fact that an individual will become what he is labeled or what others expect him to become; the danger comes from calling a crime a crime and a criminal a criminal.

Life Course Theory: The theory that a person’s “course” in life is determined by short (transitory) and long (trajectory) events in his life, and crime can result when a transitory event causes stress in a person’s life causing him to commit a crime against society.

Positivist Theory: The positivist rejects the idea that each individual makes a conscious, rational choice to commit a crime; rather, some individuals are abnormal in intelligence, social acceptance, or some other way, and that causes them to commit crime.

Rational Choice Theory: Reasons that an individual thinks through each action, deciding on whether it would be worth the risk of committing a crime to reap the benefits of that crime, whether the goal be financial, pleasure, or some other beneficial result.

Routine Activity Theory: Followers of the routine activity theory believe that crime is inevitable, and that if the target is attractive enough, crime will happen; effective measures must be in place to deter crime from happening.

Social Learning Theory: Social learning indicates that individuals learn from those around them; they base their morals and activities on what they see others in their social environment doing.

Strain Theory: The theory holds that individuals will turn to a life of crime when they are strained, or when they are unable to achieve the goals of the society, whether power, finance, or some other desirable goal.

Trait Theory: Those who follow the trait theory believe that individuals have certain traits that will contribute to whether or not they are capable of committing a crime when pushed in a certain direction, or when they are in duress.

Consensual or Victimless Crime: Consensual crime refers to crimes that do not directly harm other individuals or property. Rather, individuals choose to participate in risky behaviors that may be considered against the law. This includes indulging in drug use, prostitution, or obscenity.

CROUPIER ACCOUNTING

[argumate]

you hear people talk about US dollar supremacy and the dollar as the world's reserve currency as if this was a clever plot concocted by America and carried out by military force, when that doesn't really describe the current situation at all.

(America does kick around little countries occasionally and sometimes that has financial implications, but it's usually doing that for a variety of other reasons anyway; toppling Saddam was not a vital step in propping up the dollar).

a bunch of countries run persistent trade surpluses for "structural reasons", namely because they want to (for certain values of "they").

this means they sell more stuff than they buy, and if you keep selling more than you buy then you will accumulate... money? what kind of money? not your own money obviously, you already have that, you're the one who prints it to begin with! so other people's money, or government bonds or shares in their companies or deeds to their real estate or stuff like that, financial assets denominated in their currency.

America is a big customer of everyone else so you're going to accumulate a lot of dollars, and even if you accumulate other currencies you might end up exchanging them for dollars anyway because America is big and has big financial markets that you can safely park trillions of dollars in whereas other countries are small and have shaky financial markets that might meltdown if you do that, or they simply won't let you trade in those volumes while America says sure go ahead.

now it sounds weird to say that America is doing China and Japan and Germany a favour by buying stuff from them in dollars but they are not obliged to sell stuff to America and in fact remember Donald Trump's whole trade war thing? he was yelling at them to stop! stop selling so much stuff to America and taking all those dollars! buy some stuff for a change and give the dollars back! and so he levied a bunch of stupid tariffs that were useless as they didn't affect any of the facts that make America a tempting place to stash your savings or any of the structural factors that make those countries export more than they import.

now, if the exporters finally fixed their shit and stopped exporting so much and accumulating so many dollars, would the dollar collapse? well, why would you expect it to? why doesn't the renminbi collapse, given that it's a currency hardly anyone outside of China uses -- or is even allowed to use?

if global trade was more balanced it would be good for almost everyone: the Chinese people, the German people, the Japanese people, the Greek people, the Spanish people, and yes the American people, although Wall Street would suffer a slight reduction in the fees they are able to extract from capital flows which I'm sure is very sad for them.

the end of dollar supremacy would probably be a good thing and America could do it with sufficiently wise political leadership but then again so could China and Japan and Germany if they had sufficiently wise political leadership, there's quite a leadership wisdom vacuum to go around at the moment.

and the end of dollar supremacy won't destroy the US, it might ideally make it richer, along with everyone else.

[mariacallous]

For the past 25 years, Japan’s central bank and government have found common cause in trying to end deflationary pressures that have been seen as a drag on economic growth. Now that they are succeeding, the verdict is in: People don’t like it.

Under standard economic theory, high levels of deficit spending coupled with ultra-low interest rates should almost inevitably lead to higher rates of inflation—usually a problematic outcome for most economies. But Japan has become the poster child for the risks of the opposite problem, persistent price and wage deflation.

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was a strong advocate of action by the Bank of Japan (BOJ). “Addressing the deflation problem would bring substantial real and psychological benefits to the Japanese economy, and ending deflation would make solving the other problems that Japan faces only that much easier,” he said in an address to the Japan Society of Monetary Economics in May 2003, when he was still just a member of the Fed board. At stake, he said, was not just the economic health of Japan “but also, to a significant degree, the prosperity of the rest of the world.” His worries of a similar deflationary trap in the United States were one of the reasons he would later propose as Fed chairman the massive quantitative easing, or QE, program following the 2007-08 global financial crisis.

To achieve this, the BOJ first tried ultra-low interest rates and, when that failed, zero interest rates and finally negative interest rates. In addition, there were various programs to encourage lending, including special funding to banks that lend to smaller companies with growth potential and to banks that increased their lending by a certain amount. The lending initiatives ran into two primary obstacles: Japanese banks only want to lend money to companies that don’t need it (big companies in Japan sit on massive cash holdings), and with such low rates, the cost of initiating and servicing the loans outweighed the profits in terms of interest payments.

The ultimate plan to defeat all this came from the affable Haruhiko Kuroda, appointed in 2013 by newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the head of the BOJ. Kuroda, a former Finance Ministry official who was therefore an outsider within the central bank, threw caution to the wind. He would, he promised, create 2 percent inflation in two years by doubling the BOJ’s balance sheet.

Moving beyond the Fed’s QE, Japan would have QQE, adding in the idea of qualitative to quantitative easing, meaning that the bank would not buy just government bonds but also riskier assets. The result was indeed a massive expansion in the balance sheet, in effect monetizing the government’s steady diet of fiscal overspending equal to around 30 percent of the total budget each year. Even though the balance sheet more than quadrupled over Kuroda’s 10-year term, the idea of a “virtuous cycle” of higher wages driving higher prices remained elusive for almost all of his tenure, with the consumer price index stuck around zero.

This was to change but not because of any central bank policy. Instead, it was due mainly to the world’s recent No. 1 game-changer: COVID-19. With higher import costs and supply chain disruptions, higher prices, albeit at a modest level by global standards, became visible in virtually every sector of the economy. By January 2023, the consumer price index jumped to 4 percent, the highest level since 1981 and well over the 2 percent target set by the BOJ. Within this, hotel prices have surged, rising 63 percent as foreign tourists again pack central Tokyo and Kyoto. For Japanese shoppers, much of the impact has been in the form of “shrinkflation” as food producers try to hide the higher costs. A bag of coffee in central Tokyo can still be found for around $4—it’s just that the same package now holds 40 percent less coffee. No wonder major food packaging companies saw their earnings jump 33 percent last year.

As a result, stagnant wages finally have started to show signs of movement as a shrinking workforce, good economic growth, and skills shortages have bid up salaries. Wages in October 2023 were up 1.5 percent year-on-year, and union workers logged average increases of 3.6 percent in their spring round of labor negotiations.

So why isn’t everyone happy? The reality is that the two growth lines have resulted in a steady decline in real wages adjusted for inflation. According to government figures, real wages fell for 20 consecutive months up to November 2023, registering a 3 percent decline year-on-year.

“People are not stupid,” said Jesper Koll, a global ambassador for the Monex Group and one of Japan’s best-known economists. “The 30 years of deflation have come to an end, but are the Japanese people getting the kind of inflation they want?”

Indeed, while deflation has had policymakers gnashing their teeth as Japan became relatively poorer (some tech jobs pay better in Vietnam than in Japan today), it was good for salaried workers who saw their pay rise modestly while prices would fall around 1 percent annually. The new scenario is more complex. As workers in any inflationary economy can attest, wages almost always rise more slowly than retail prices. One BOJ official in the pre-Kuroda days in 2012 said privately that their surveys showed people preferred deflation even as the central bank was trying to stamp it out.

The sticker shock of rising prices has been an unwanted blow to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is facing a crisis in confidence for no clear reason—except that people don’t seem to like his administration. Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden could no doubt commiserate on that front.

Last fall, when the government’s approval ratings fell below the “danger zone” of 30 percent—the figure that often heralds a party search for a fresh face as prime minister—Kishida started handing out cash that the government didn’t have, offering subsidies to limit the impact of higher prices in energy and utilities. Even this backfired badly, raising allegations that he was trying to buy his way back to popularity.

“What people are frustrated with is that he increases spending all the time but has no program to pay for it. The Japanese people are rational with their money—they don’t go out on spending sprees,” Koll said.

Kishida, who took office in October 2021, now has support of just above 20 percent by most polls, with two-thirds of respondents saying they disapprove of his administration. This would normally make him ripe for removal by the party elders who effectively control the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). That has been the model ever since the party was founded in 1955 and helped the LDP to remain in power for all but six years since then.

But Kishida may well survive for a while. The latest in a string of scandals also involves other senior figures in the LDP over potentially illegal fundraising, which has had the effect of shrinking the pool of potential successors. There is also no clear replacement for Kishida who would satisfy both the more liberal and hawkish wings of the party, part of the reason he got the job in the first place.

Another open question is whether Kishida—or a successor—will get to actually see an end to the 25 years of deflationary pressures. The latest inflation figures show a softening in price increases, with core inflation (without fresh food prices) rising just 2.5 percent in November 2023, its lowest in 16 months. That may be good news for consumers, but it has some economists skeptical over whether the economy has really turned the corner toward self-sustaining wage-price increases or if the new figures point to a consumer slowdown that would lead to a downturn. The focus will be on this spring’s union wage negotiations, where both the workers and the government are hopeful that increases will finally put workers ahead of inflation, at least for now. The companies that would have to pay for this have shown less enthusiasm.

But some economists remain skeptical. “I would venture that the wage hike to come during next spring’s negotiations won’t quite reach the level expected,” Takahide Kiuchi, an economist at the Nomura Research Institute and a former BOJ board member, wrote in a November report. He said this may prompt the BOJ to hold off on any changes to its negative rates. Japan remains the only country to maintain ultra-low rates as other advanced economies have switched to tighter money policies as inflation surged.

At the same time, Kiuchi noted, delaying for too long means the bank’s balance sheet will continue to grow as it buys bonds to keep yields at zero or below. This will increase the risks to its own financial position if interest rates rise in the future, since the massive holdings would plummet in value. With the balance sheet now larger than Japan’s annual GDP, the implications could be severe, a polite way of saying that it would face insolvency. If that happened, the government would be forced to bail it out. But the government is already using the BOJ to pay for its own financial excesses.

It’s all enough to leave the average Japanese yearning for the good old days of deflation.

[zkoh001]

I had a glorious dream, in the world of Percy Jackson, and despite noone asking or caring, I feel the need to share it.

Meet Akira. Akira is Japanese-American demigod, son of Momos, and resident chaos magnet. Also, probably has broken a law or two in the past week.

His godly parent was surprisingly present thorough his childhood, because one: noone really cares what Momos does. Two: He goes between mortals quite often anyways. Three: They can't tell him what to do anyways. So he has a whole two parents, but Momos acts more like a cool drunkle, so he's not much help in behaving him. Alas it mostly falls on his mom.

His godly ability is basically Vicious mockery from D&D, and noone is even sure if it's an actual power, or he's just that good. His other skill, is an ability that allows him to skew with other people's powers, tho he can't exactly control it.

The second floozey is Lucretius, alias Luca, alias Lucy if you are feeling bold, or if you are a certain aforementioned child of Momos. "Son of Juno", tho technically he is neither a demigod, nor her actual child. He was a statue (not sure if he was turned into one by Zeus in ancient times, or was just one originally) that got given life by the fertility goddess with powers similar to what I think her demigod children can have.

Technically speaking he is a monster, with grey blood, and immune to regular weapons, but since Juno claimed him, noone dares defy her, even if they don't really like her. He has a peacock simbol over his SPQR tattoo, and three lines. He acts similarly to satyrs, and his job is to get Roman demigods safely to Camp Jupiter. But for gods' sake, this kid is testing his patience.

He has the ability to bond things (like the bond of marriage, yknow). For example, he can slow down an enemy by binding them to something heavy, or even for them to stay in a certain radius, as well as binding people together (you can imagine how well that meshes with Akira's powers). He can commit to an action, which makes him immune to most forms of enchantment, and charm speak, and can stare witheringly (how much of it is Juno's influence is unclear). As the Sky Goddess' "descendant", he should probably be able to somewhat control weather if Jupiter wasn't a petty bitch. Alas, he would rather not try, he's already so done with dear old mom.

Basically the entire dream was mission "Get Akira to Camp Jupiter without getting myself, or him killed", which proves to be quite a challenge, since while his blood makes monsters drawn to him, his stellar personality attracts all other types of troubles. Through their travels, they encounter Baba Yaga, who moved to America for some good for saken reason, a kid with a long nose, and his head on backwards, who claimed to be born form a white horse, and was looking for someone to turn his head around, a golden cat, with a key in her neck, but with sticky fur... Also, that was a selkie that wanted to snatch them into the ocean, and the solution was throwing molotov at it. From the less magical beings, they got into conflict with a local gang, security officers, and the government (kind of). Luca misses the days his biggest worry was which pigeon shits on him next.

By the end they got into New Rome, looking like actual shit, Akira gets immediately claimedby his father Momos, and Luca is like "Of course". And then I woke up.

#pjo #pjo hoo toa #dream #percy jackson #also a bunch of folktales for good measure #oc #i guess #hoo #juno #hera #momos

[dullahandyke]

Ok hi no more constantly spamming u w liveblogs. Heres one big dgs liveblog

God this game fucking loves the rumble controller. It's so so constant I'm thinking of turning it off... I'm a ds girlie I'm not used to this terror

[ID: Ryuunosuke Naruhodou's blank face.]

^ help me when he went from supremely nervous to still waters when he realised he didnt know your mans name... not a single brain cell in there

Also I'm playing w the jp voices because duh (asougi would NEVER be british) and I love ryuus 'HAI' so much... hes so intense

Asougi hates the British it's awesome <3 go king criticise the government for caving to pressure in order to appease global superpowers

Also I cant help it whenever the asougi dating sim image (you know the one) comes up I Cannot take it seriously.... bro I remember the gimmick blog it's over at that point

Also asougi literally calling ryuu 'partner'... usually I'm not one for 'theyve been dating the whole time' but truly asoryuu boyfriends is the realest... they have a bond found only between 2 gay people from before the stonewall inn was even a twinkle in the mob's eye

THE READING SPRITE WHERE RYUU IS JUST SHUFFLING PAPERS TOGETHER... he is such a mess I love him

HOSONAGA ALERT!!!! HOSONAGA IS HERE!!! now to attempt to disentangle him from my minds main impression of him, from a bad imagines post where hes a catboy maid mewling into the bedsheets

Also I love that the first witness we get is straight up dying of tuberculosis. 'This is what the olden days were like, right. Everyone coughing up blood'

Oh boooo the 'pun' Japanese names... I'll kill u dead his is khura'in all over again

AUCHI LITERSLLY CALLS ASOUGI A BOY NEXT DOOR???? Literal homosexuals...

Also you just know asougi would love unionising. Yes boy exercise every right you are given regardless of the pushback from those for whom it is inconvenient

God ryuu is so nervous and sweaty... when he slams his hands on the bench and they make an audible splat becsuee of how sweaty he is and he nervously looks at them to make sure hes not fucked up...

Also I love how hes always raising his hand... hes so proper

I dont think any of these guys know what a beef cutlet is. Tho nosa giving ryuu food recs for after prison is fun

HOLY FUCK I GOT AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR LRESSING A STSTEMENT LETS GO!!!!!!!!! so hyped for this

God I love ryuus default fact he has the gentle and loving eyes of a cow

SAMURAI WITH A MISSION PLAYING YESYEYEYSYEYSYEYSYESYS WHOPOOOOPOOOOOOOWOOOOOOHOO ASOUGI ILY

OH FUCK OFFFFFF NOT HOTTA CLINIC.... WE NEED 2 GET AWAY FROM THAT FUCK !!!!! *sprays hotti w bug spray*

Help me examining the medical card is so funny... ryuu vc I Hate Doctors I Havent Been Sick Since I Was 5 I Am Immune To Every Disease

Also bubbles is lying down near me shes so cute sleeping... conked out

Also elaborating on the gayness of rhe 'partner' thing, it's mostly bcos of the little pause asougi always does before saying it... its novel and risque innit

Ok I just got up to the first trial break and according to this YouTube video that's only like halfway thru the trial... its nearly midnight I am Not continuing until tomorrow... see u fucks then <3

#the gaelic athletic attorney