text:
Symbiotic AI: fear not, for I am your creation
By Olaf Witkowski
This post is a piece I recently wrote for my own blog. I was convinced to also post it here, since it is an exciting topic, close to YHouse's central questions. Here is the link to the original post, with full illustrations.
This opinion piece was prompted by the recent publication of Stephen Hawking's last writings, where he mentioned some ideas on superintelligence. Although I have the most utter respect for his work and vision, I am afraid some of it may be read in a very misleading way.
I've been pondering whether or not I should write on the topic of the current "AI anxiety" for a while, but always concluded there would be no reason to, since I don't have any strong opinion to convey about it. Nevertheless, there is just a number of myths I believe are easy to debunk. This is what I'll try to do here. So off we go, let's talk about AI, transhumanism, the evolution of intelligence, and self-reflective AI.
Superintelligence, humans' last invention
The late physicist Stephen Hawking was really wary of the dangers of AI. His last writings were just published in the UK's Sunday Times, where he raises the well-known problem of alignment. The issue is about regulating AI, since in the future, once AI develops a will of its own, its will might conflict with ours. The following quote is very representative of this type of idea:
"In short, the advent of super-intelligent AI would be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. The real risk with AI isn't malice, but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours we're in trouble. You're probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you're in charge of a hydroelectric green-energy project and there's an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let's not place humanity in the position of those ants.
– Stephen Hawking
As Turing's colleague Irving Good pointed out in 1965, once intelligent machines are able to design even more intelligent ones, the process could be repeated over and over: "Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control". Vernor Vinge, an emeritus professor of computer science at San Diego State University and a science fiction author, said in his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity" that this very phenomenon could mean the end of the human era, as the new superintelligence advance technologically at an incomprehensible rate and potentially outdo any human feat. At this point, we caught the essence of what is scary to the reader, and it is exactly what feeds the fear on this topic, including for deep thinkers such as Stephen Hawking.
[caption id="attachment_591" align="alignnone" width="900"]
Photographs by Anders Lindén/Agent Bauer (Tegmark); by Jeff Chiu/A.P. Images (Page, Wozniak); by Simon Dawson/Bloomberg (Hassabis), Michael Gottschalk/Photothek (Gates), Niklas Halle'n/AFP (Hawking), Saul Loeb/AFP (Thiel), Juan Mabromata/AFP (Russell), David Paul Morris/Bloomberg (Altman), Tom Pilston/The Washington Post (Bostrom), David Ramos (Zuckerberg), all from Getty Images; by Frederic Neema/Polaris/Newscom (Kurzwell); by Denis Allard/Agence Réa/Redux (LeCun); Ariel Zambelich/ Wired (Ng); Bobby Yip/Reuters/Zuma Press (Musk), graphics by VanityFair/Condé Nast.
Hawking is only one among many whistleblowers, from Elon Musk to Stuart Russel, including AI experts too. Elizier Yudkowsky, in particular, remarked that AI doesn't have to take over the whole world with robot or drones or any guns or even the Internet. He says: "It's simply dangerous because it's smarter than us. Suppose it can solve the science technology of predicting protein structure from DNA information. Then it just needs to send out a few e-mails to the labs that synthesize customized proteins. Soon it has its own molecular machinery, building even more sophisticated molecular machines.". Essentially, the danger of AI goes beyond the specificities of its possible embodiments, straight to the properties attached to its superior intelligent capacity.
Hawking says he fears the consequences of creating something that can match or surpass humans. Humans, he adds, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded. In the future AI could develop a will of its own, a will that is in conflict with ours. Although I understand the importance of being as careful as possible, I tend to disagree with this claim. In particular, there is no reason human evolution has to be slower. Not only can engineer our own genes, but we also augment ourselves in many other ways. Now, I want to make it clear that I'm not advocating for any usage of such technologies without due reflection on societal and ethical consequences. I want to point out that such doors will be open to our society, and are likely to become usable in the future.
Augmented humans
Let's talk more about ways of augmenting humans. This goes through defining carefully what technological tools are. In my past posts, I have mentioned how technology can be any piece of machinery that augments a system's capacity in its potential action space. The human tools such as hammers and nails fall under this category. So do the inventions of democracy and agriculture, respectively a couple of thousand and around 10,000 years ago. If we go further back, more than 100 million years ago, animals invented eusocial societies. Even earlier, around 2 billion years ago, single cells surrounded by membranes incorporated other membrane-bound organelles such as mitochondria, and sometimes chloroplasts too, forming the first eukaryotic cells. In fact, each transition in evolution corresponds to the discovery of some sort of technology too. All these technologies are to be understood in the acception of augmentation of the organism's capacity.
[caption id="attachment_604" align="alignnone" width="960"] Human augmentation, or robot humanization? Credit: Comfreak/Pixabay.[/caption]
Humans can be augmented not only by inventing tools that change their physical body, but also their whole extended embodiment, including the clothes they wear, the devices they use, and even the cultural knowledge they hold, for all pieces are constituents of who they are and how they affect their future and the future of their environment. It's not a given that any of the extended human's parts will be slower to evolve slower than AI, which is most evident for the cultural part. It's not clear either that they will evolve faster, but we realize how one must not rush to conclusions.
On symbiotic relationships
Let's come back a moment on the eukaryotic cell, one among many of the nature's great inventions. An important point about eukaryotes, is that they did not kill mitochondria, or vice-versa. Nor did some of them enslave choloroplasts. In fact, there is no such clear cut in nature. The correct term is symbiosis. In the study of biological organisms, symbioses qualify interactions between different organisms sharing the physical medium in which they live, often (though not necessarily) to the advantage of both. It may be important to note that symbiosis, in the biological sense, does not imply a mutualistic, i.e. win-win, situation. I here use symbiosis as any interaction, beneficial or not for each party.
Symbiosis seems very suitable to delineate the phenomenon by which an entity such as a human invents a tool by incorporating in some way elements of its environment, or simply ideas that are materialized into a scientific innovation. If that's the case, it is natural to consider AI and humans as just pieces able to interact with each other.
[caption id="attachment_606" align="alignnone" width="2457"] Example of symbiosis, between honeybees and flowers. In the process of collecting pollen, bees pollinate flowers, helping in the formation of seeds. In return, flowers produce pollen, which provides bees with all the nutrients they need.[/caption]
There are several types of symbiosis. Mutualism, such as a clownfish living in a sea anemone, allows two partners to benefit from the relationship, here by protecting each other. In commensalism, only one species benefits while the other is neither helped nor harmed. An example of that is remora fish which attach themselves to whales, sharks, or rays and eat the scraps their hosts leave behind. The remora fish gets a meal, while their host arguably gets nothing. The last big one is parasitism, where an organism gains, while another loses. For example, the deer tick (which happens to be very present here in Princeton) is a parasite that attaches to the warmblooded animal, and feeds on its blood, adding up risks of Lyme disease to the loss of blood and nutrients.
Once technology, AI, becomes autonomous, it's easy to imagine that all three scenarios (just to stick to these three) could happen. And that would be more than fair to be worried that the worst one could happen: the AI could become the parasite, and the human could lose in fitness, eventually dying off. It's natural to envisage the worst case scenario. Now, in the same way we learned in our probability classes, it's important to weigh it against the best case scenarios, with respective chances that they will happen.
Let's note here that probabilities are tough to estimate, and humans have a famously bad intuition of it. There might always been a certain value in overestimating risks, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in the psychology literature. Not to mention the Pascal Wager's argument, which blatantly overestimate risks in the most ridiculous ways, while still duping a vast, vast audience. But let me not get into that. We don't want to make me Ang Lee (yes, I'm a fan of Stewart Lee, saw my chance here and went for it).
[caption id="attachment_608" align="alignnone" width="1000"] The notebook is the archetype of one's mind extension. Credit: Fred Cummins' blog.[/caption]
The point is that inventions of tools result in symbiotic relationships, and in such relationships, the parts become tricky to distinguish from each other. This is not without reminding us of the extended mind problem, approached by Andy Clark (Clark & Chalmers 1998). The idea, somewhat rephrased, is that it's hard for anyone to locate boundaries between intelligent beings. If we consider just the boundaries of our skin, and say that outside the body is outside the intelligent entity, what are tools such as notebooks, without which we wouldn't be able to act the same way? Clark and Chalmers proposed an approach called active externalism, or extended cognition, based on the environment driving cognitive processes. Such theories are to be taken with a grain of salt, but surely apply nicely to the way we can think of such symbioses and their significance.
Integrated tools
Our tools are part of ourselves. When we use a tool, such as a blind person's cane or an "enactive torch" (Froese et al. 2012), it's hard to tell where the body boundary ends, and where the tool begins. In fact, the reports we make using those tools are often that the limit of the body moves to the edge of the tool, instead of remaining contained within the skin.
[caption id="attachment_610" align="alignnone" width="884"] The blind people's cane becomes the extension of their body. Credit: Blind Fields/Flickr.[/caption]
Now, one could say that AI is a very complex object, which can't be considered as a mere tool like the aforementioned cases. This is why it's helpful to thought-experimentally replace the tool by a human. An example would be psychological manipulation, through some abusive or deceptive tactics, such as a psychopathic businessman bullying his insecure colleague into extra work for him, or a clever young boy grooming his mother into buying him what he wants. Since the object of the manipulation is an autonomous, goal-driven human, one can now ask them how they feel as well. And in fact, it has been reported by psychology specialists like George Simon (Simon & Foley 2011) that people being manipulated do feel a perceived loss of their sense of agency, and struggle in finding the reasons why they acted in certain ways. In most cases, they will invent fictitious causes, which they will swear are real. Other categories of examples could be as broad as social obligations, split-brain patients or any external mechanisms that force people (or living entities for that matter, as these examples are innumerable in biology) to act in a certain way, without them having a good reason of their own for it.
[caption id="attachment_609" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The Blind Robot is an art installation as a direct reference to the works of Merleau-Ponty and his example of the body extension of the blind man's cane. Credit: Louis-Philippe Demers. [/caption]
As small remark, I heard some people tell me the machine could be more than a human, in some way, breaking the argument before. Is it really? To me, once it is autonomously goal-driven, the machine comes close enough to a human being for the purpose of comparing the human-machine interaction to the human-human one. Surely, one may be endowed with a better prediction ability in certain given situations, but I don't believe anything is conceptually different.
Delusions of control
It seems appropriate to open a parenthesis about control. We, human, seem to have the tendency to feel in control even when not. This persists even where AI is already in control. If we take the example of Uber, where an algorithm is responsible for assigning drivers to their next mission. Years earlier, Amazon, YouTube and many other platforms were already recommending their users what to watch, listen to, buy, or do next. In the future, these types of recommendation algorithms are likely to only expand their application domain, as it becomes more and more efficient and useful for an increasing number of domains to incorporate the machine's input in decision-making and management. One last important example is the automatic medical advice which machine learning is currently becoming very efficient at. Based on increasing amounts of medical data, it is easier and safer in many cases to at least base a medical calls, from identification of lesions to decisions to perform surgery, on the machine's input. We reached the point where it clearly would not be ethical to ignore it.
However, the impression of free will is not an illusion: in most examples of recommendation algorithms, we still can make the call. It becomes similar to choices of cooperation in nature. They are the result of a free choice (or rather, their evolutionary closely related analog), as the agent may choose not to couple its behavior to the other agent.
Dobby is free
The next question is naturally: what does the tool becomes, once detached from the control of a human? Well, what happens to the victim of a manipulative act, once released from the control of their manipulator? Effectively, they just come back in control again. Whether they perceive it or not, their autonomy is regained, making their action caused again (more) by their own internal states (than when under control).
AI, once given the freedom to act on its own, will do just that. If it has become a high form of intelligence, it will be free to act as such. The fear is here well justified: if the machine is free, it may be dangerous. Again, the mental exercise of replacing the AI with a human is helpful.
[caption id="attachment_635" align="alignnone" width="1000"] Dobby receives a sock, which frees him from his masters. Image credit: 2002 film "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", adapted from J. K. Rowling's novels.[/caption]
Homo homini lupus. Humans are wolves to each other. How many situations can we find in our daily lives in which we witnessed someone choose a selfish act instead of the nice, selfless option? When I walk on the street, take the train, go to a soccer match, how do I even know that all those humans around me won't hurt me, or worse? Even nowadays, crime and war plague our biosphere. Dangerous fast cars, dangerous manipulations of human pushed to despair, anger, fear, suffering surround us wherever we go, if we look closely enough. Why are we not afraid? Habituation is certainly one explanation, but the other is that society shields us. I believe the answer lies in Frans de Waal's response to "homo homini lupus". The primatologist how the proverb, beyond failing to do justice to canids (among the most gregarious and cooperative animals on the planet (Schleidt and Shalter 2003)), denies the inherently social nature of our own species.
The answer seems to lie indeed in the social nature of human-to-human relations. The power of society, which uses a great number of concomitant regulatory systems, each composed of multiple layers of cooperative mechanisms, is exactly what keeps each individual's selfish behavior in check. This is not to say anything close to the "veneer theory" of altruism, which claims that life is fundamentally selfish with an icing of pretending to care on top. On the contrary, rich altruistic systems are fundamental, and central in the sensorimotor loop of each and every individual in groups. Numerous simulations of such altruism have been reproduced in silico, that show a large variety of mechanisms for their evolution (Witkowski & Ikegami 2015).
Dobby is this magical character from J. K. Rowling's series of novels, who is the servant (or rather the slave) of some wizard. His people, if offered a piece of clothing from his masters, are magically set free. So what happens once "Dobby is free", which in our case, corresponds to some AI, somewhere, beings made autonomous? Again, the case is no different from symbiotic relationships in the rest of nature. Offered degrees of freedom independent from human control, AIs get to simply share humans' medium: the biosphere. They are left interacting together to extract free energy from it while preserving it, and preparing for the future of their destinies combined.
Autonomous AI = hungry AI
Not everyone thinks machines will be autonomous. In fact, Yann Lecun expressed, as reported by BBC, that there was "no reason why machines would have any self-preservation instinct". At the AI conference I attended, organized by David Chalmers at NYU, in 2017, Lecun also mentioned that we would be able to control AI with appropriate goal functions.
I understand where Lecun is coming from. AI intelligence is not like human intelligence. Machines don't need to be built with human drives, such as hunger, fear,lust and thirst for power. However, believing AI can be kept self-preservation-free is fundamentally misguided. One simple reason has been pointed out by Stuart Russel, who explains how drives can emerge from simple computer programs. If you program a robot to bring you coffee, it can't bring you coffee if it's dead. As I'd put it, as soon as you code an objective function into an AI, you potentially create subgoals in it, which can be comparable to human emotions or drives. Those drives can be encoded in many ways, included in the most implicit way. In artificial life experiments, from software to wetware, the emergence of mechanisms akin to self-preservation in emerging patterns is very frequent, and any students fooling around with simulations for some time can realize that early on.
So objective functions drive to drives. Because every machine possesses some form of objective function, even implicitly, it will make for a reason to preserve its own existence to achieve that goal. And the objective function can be as simple as self-preservation, some function that appeared early on in the first autonomous systems, i.e. the first forms of life on Earth. Is there really a way around it? I think it's worth thinking about, but I doubt it's the case.
How to control an autonomous AI
If any machine has drives, then how to control it? Most popular thinkers, specializing in the existential problem and dangers of future AI, seem to be interested in alignment of purposes, between humans and machines. I see how the reasoning goes: if we want similar things, we'll all be friends in the best of worlds. Really, I don't believe that is sufficient or necessary.
[caption id="attachment_613" align="alignnone" width="3000"] The further space exploration goes, and the more autonomy is required, as remotely controlling the machine would take too long delays. This picture shows the late Opportunity rover, that recently entered hibernation, on June 12, 2018, due to a dust storms. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.[/caption]
The solution that usually comes up is something along the off switch. We build all machines with an off switch, and if the goal function is not aligned with human goals, we switch the device off. The evident issue is to make sure that the machine, in the course of self-improving its intelligence, doesn't eliminate the off switch or make it inaccessible.
What other options are we left with? If the machine's drives are not aligned with its being controlled by humans, then the next best thing is to convince it to change. We are back on the border between agreement and manipulation, both based on our discussion above about symbiotic relationships.
Communication, not control
It is difficult to assess the amount of cooperation in symbioses. One way to do so is to observe communication patterns, as they are key to the integration of a system, and, arguably, its capacity to compute, learn and innovate. I touched upon this topic before in this blog.
The idea is that anyone with an Internet connection already has access to all the information needed to conduct research, so in theory, scientists could do their work alone locked up in their office. Yet, there seems to be a huge intrinsic value to exchanging ideas with peers. Through repeated transfers from mind to mind, concepts seem to converge towards new theorems, philosophical concepts, and scientific theories.
Recent progress in deep learning, combined with social learning simulations, offers us new tools to model these transfers from the bottom up. However, in order to do so, communication research needs to focus on communication within systems. The best communication systems not only serve as good information maps onto useful concepts (knowledge in mathematics, physics, etc.) but they are also shaped so as to be able to naturally evolve into even better maps in the future. With the appropriate communication system, any entity or group of entities has the potential to completely outdo another one.
[gallery ids="615,617,614,616" type="rectangular"]
A project I am working on in my daytime research, is to develop models of evolvable communication between AI agents. By simulating a communication-based community of agents learning with deep architectures, we can examine the dynamics of evolvability in communication codes. This type of system may have important implications for the design of communication-based AI capable of generalizing representations through social learning. This also has the potential to yield new theories on the evolution of language, insights for the planning of future communication technology, a novel characterization of evolvable information transfers in the origin of life, and new insights for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. But most importantly, the ability to gain explicit insight about its own states, and being able to internally communicate about them, should allow an AI to teach itself to be wiser through self-reflection.
Shortcomings of human judgment about AI
Globally, it's hard to emit a clear judgment on normative values in systems. Several branches of philosophy spent a lot of effort in that domain, without any impressive insights. It's hard to dismiss the idea that humans might be stuck in their biases and errors, rendering it impossible to make an informed decision on what constitutes a "bad" or "good" decision in the design of a superintelligence.
Also, it's very easy to draw on people's fears. I'm afraid that this might be driving most of the research, in the near future. We saw how easy it was to fund several costly institutes to think about "existential risks". Of course, it is only naturally sane for biological systems to act this way. The human mind is famously bad at statistics, which, among other weaknesses, makes it particularly risk averse. And indeed, on the smaller scale, it's often better to be safe than sorry, but at the scale of technological advance, being safe may mean stagnate for a long time. I don't believe we have so much time to waste. Fortunately, there are people thinking that way too, who make the science progress. Whether they act for the right reasons or not would be a different discussion.
[caption id="attachment_621" align="alignnone" width="700"] AI anxiety, again.[/caption]
Now, I'm actually glad the community that is thinking deeply about these questions is blooming lately. As long as they can hold off a bit on the whistleblowing and crazy writing, and focus on the research, and pondered reflection, I'll be happy. What would make it better is the capacity to integrate knowledge from different fields of sciences, by creating common languages, but that's also for another post.
Win-win, really
The game doesn't have to be zero or negative sum. A positive-sum game, in game theory, refers to interactions between agents in which the total of gains and losses is greater than zero. A positive sum typically happens when the benefits of an interaction somehow increase for everyone, for example when two parties both gain financially by participating in a contest, no matter who wins or loses.
In nature, there are plenty of such positive sum games, especially in higher cognitive species. It was even proposed that evolutionary dynamics favoring positive-sum games drove the major evolutionary transitions, such as the emergence of genes, chromosomes, bacteria, eukaryotes, multicellular organisms, eusociality and even language (Szathmáry & Maynard Smith 1995). For each transition, biological agents entered into larger wholes in which they specialized, exchanged benefits, and developed safeguard systems to prevent freeloading to kill off the assemblies.
[caption id="attachment_624" align="alignnone" width="970"] In the boardgame "Settlers of Catan", individual trades are positive-sum for the two players involved, but the game as a whole is zero-sum, since only one player can win. This a simple example of multiple levels of games happening simultaneously.[/caption]
Naturally, this happens at the scale of human life too, where a common example is the trading of surpluses, as when herders and farmers exchange wool and milk for grain and fruit, is a quintessential example, as is the trading of favors, as when people take turns baby-sitting each others' children.
Earlier, we have mentioned the metaphor of ants, which get trampled on while the humans accomplish tasks that they would deem far too important to care about the insignificant loss of a few ants' lives.
What is missing in the picture? The ants don't reason at a level anywhere close to the way we do. As a respectful form of intelligence, I'd love to communicate my reasons to ants, but I feel like it would be a pure waste of time. One generally supposes this would this still be the case if we transpose to the relationship between humans and AI. Any AI supposedly wouldn't waste their time showing respect to human lives, so that if higher goals were to be at stake, it would sacrifice humans in a heartbeat. Or would they?
I'd argue there are at least two significant differences between these two situations. I concede that the following considerations are rather optimistic, as they presuppose a number of assumptions: the AI must share a communication system with humans, must value some kind of wisdom in its reasoning, and maintain high cooperative levels. The bottom line is that I find this optimism more than justified, and I will probably expand on this in future posts on this blog.
[caption id="attachment_625" align="alignright" width="423"] Differentiable neural computers (Graves et al. 2016) are recurrent artificial neural network architectures with an autoassociative memory. Along with neural Turing machines (Graves, Wayne & Danihelka, 2014) they are nice candidates to produce reasoning-level AI.[/caption]
The first reason is that humans are reasoning creatures. The second is that humans live in close symbiosis with AI, which is far from being the case between ants and humans. About the first point, reasoning constitutes an important threshold of intelligence. Before that, you can't produce complex knowledge of logic, inference. You can't construct complicated knowledge of mathematics, or scientific method.
As for the second reason, close symbiotic relation, it seems important to notice that AI came as an invention from humans, a tool that they use. Even if the AI becomes autonomous, it is unlikely that it would remove itself right away from human control. In fact, it is likely, just like many forms of life before it, that it will leave a trace of partially mutated forms on the way. Those forms will be only partially autonomous, and constitute a discrete but dense spectrum along which autonomy will rise. Even after the emergence of the first autonomous AI, each of the past forms is likely to survive and still be used as a tool by humans in the future. This track record may act as a buffer, which will ensure that the any superintelligent AI can still communicate, and cooperate.
Two entities that are tightly connected won't break their links easily. Think of a long-time friend. Say one of you becomes suddenly much more capable, or richer than the other. Would you all of a sudden start ignoring, abusing or torturing your friend? If that's not your intention, the AI is no different.
Hopeful future, outside the Solar System
I'd like to end this piece on ideas from Hawking's writings with which I wholeheartedly agree. We definitely need to take care of our Earth, the cradle of human life. We should also definitely explore the stars, not to leave all our eggs in only one basket. To accomplish both, we should use all technologies available, which I'd classify in two categories: human-improvement, and design of replacements for humans. The former, by using gene editing and sciences that will lead to the creation of superhumans, may allow us to survive interstellar travel. But the latter, helped by energy engineering, nanorobotics and machine learning, will certainly allow us to do it much earlier, by designing ad-hoc self-replicating machines capable of landing on suitable planets and mining material to produce more colonizing machines, to be sent on to yet more stars.
These technologies are something my research field, Artificial Life, has been contributing to for more than three decades. By designing what seems mere toy models, or pseudo-forms of life in wetware, hardware and software, the hope is to soon enough understand the fundamental principles of life, to design life that will propel itself towards the stars and explore more of our universe.
[caption id="attachment_626" align="alignnone" width="3000"] Which role of AI in leaving Earth? Image credit: GotFuturama[/caption]
Why is it crucial to leave Earth? One important cause, beyond mere human curiosity, is to survive possible meteorite impacts on our planet. Piet Hut, the director of the interdisciplinary program I am in at the moment, at the Institute for Advanced Study, published a seminal paper explaining how mass extinctions can be caused by cometary impacts (Hut et al. 1987). The collision of a rather smaller bodies with the Earth, about 66 million years ago, is thought to have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, along with any large form of life.
Such collisions are rare, but not so rare that we should not be worried.Asteroids with a 1 km diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years on average, while 5 km bodies hit out planet approximately once every 20 million years (Bostrom 2002, Marcus 2010). Again, quoting Hawking, if this is all correct, it could mean intelligent life on Earth has developed only because of the lucky chance that there have been no large collisions in the past 66 million years. Other planets may not have had a long enough collision-free period to evolve intelligent beings.
If abiogenesis, the emergence of life on Earth, wasn't so hard to produce, the gift of the right conditions for long enough periods of time on our planet was probably essential. Not only good conditions for a long time, but also the right pace of change of these conditions through time too, to get mechanisms to learn to memorize such patterns, as they impact on free energy foraging (Witkowski 2015, Ofria 2016). After all, our Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, and it took only a few hundred millions years at most for life to appear on its surface, in relatively high variety. But much longer was necessary for complex intelligence to evolve, 2 billion years for rich, multicellular forms of life, and 2 more billion years to get to the Anthropocene and the advent of human technology.
[caption id="attachment_627" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Reflective AI at the service of humankind. Image credit: XPrize/YouTube.[/caption]
To me, the evolution of intelligence and the fundamental laws of its machinery is the most fascinating question to explore as a scientist. The simple fact that we are able to make sense of our own existence is remarkable. And surely, our capacity to deliberately design the next step in our own evolution, that will transcend our own intelligence, is literally mind-blowing.
There may be many ways to achieve this next step. It starts with humility in our design of AI, but the effort we will invest in our interaction with it, and the amount of reflection we will dedicate to the integration with each other are definitely essential to our future as lifeforms, in this corner of the universe.
I'll end on Hawking's quote: "Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let's make sure that wisdom wins".
(by order of appearance)
Hawking, S. (2018). Last letters on the future of life on planet Earth. The Sunday Times, October 14, 2018.
Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith. The major evolutionary transitions. Nature, 374(6519):227–232, 1995.
Clark, A. (2015). 2011: What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody's Cognitive Toolkit?.
Froese, T., McGann, M., Bigge, W., Spiers, A., & Seth, A. K. (2012). The enactive torch: a new tool for the science of perception. IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 5(4), 365-375.
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. analysis, 58(1), 7-19.
Simon, G. K., & Foley, K. (2011). In sheep's clothing: Understanding and dealing with manipulative people. Tantor Media, Incorporated.
Hut, P., Alvarez, W., Elder, W. P., Hansen, T., Kauffman, E. G., Keller, G., ... & Weissman, P. R. (1987). Comet showers as a cause of mass extinctions. Nature, 329(6135), 118.
Bostrom, N. (2002). "Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards", Journal of Evolution and Technology, 9.
Marcus, R., Melosh, H. J., Collins, G. (2010). "Earth Impact Effects Program". Imperial College London / Purdue University. Retrieved 2013-02-04.
Graves, A., Wayne, G., Reynolds, M., Harley, T., Danihelka, I., Grabska-Barwińska, A., ... & Badia, A. P. (2016). Hybrid computing using a neural network with dynamic external memory. Nature, 538(7626), 471.
Witkowski, Olaf (2015). Evolution of Coordination and Communication in Groups of Embodied Agents. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tokyo.
Ofria, C., Wiser, M. J., & Canino-Koning, R. (2016). The evolution of evolvability: Changing environments promote rapid adaptation in digital organisms. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Artificial Life 13 (pp. 268-275).
Olaf Witkowski is the Research Architect at YHouse. He is also a Research Scientist at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), part of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and a Visiting Member at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton. He was a Program Chair for the ALIFE 2018 conference, and leads multiple projects in AI and Artificial Life. His blog lives here.


text:
Silver Plated Cross Charms
- Collection: Spare Parts
- Brand: the Paper Studio
Play ball with your paper crafts! Give your cards, scrapbooks, memory trays, shadow boxes, and other paper crafts a touch of dimension and texture with Silver Plated Cross Charms. Featuring a variety of simple and ornate designs, these charms will turn your two-dimensional creations into three-dimensional beauties.
- Length: 3/4" - 1 1/8"
- Width: 5/8" - 3/4"
Package contains 6 charms.
Item not available in Hobby Lobby Stores.
Check your local store for availability.
Warning: CHOKING HAZARD: Small Parts. Not for children under 3 yrs.
Inspired?Share it:

subset: commoncrawl


text:
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Technology stocks stayed weak Tuesday sending the Nasdaq Composite to its lows of the year as tentative "dip" buying lifted many big-cap issues off their session lows but failed to buoy the group as a whole.
Lacking leadership, the Nasdaq Composite index compq was off 199.66 points, or 6 percent, to close at 3164.55.
Networking was a hot topic, as Nortel Networks paid $35.5 million to acquire the two-thirds of privately held Photonic Technologies it doesn't already own. The move is designed to shore up Nortel's position in the market to build faster optical networks. Shares of Nortel nt fell 2 13/16, or 5.5 percent, to close at 48 13/16 on the news.
"We're deadly serious about leading in the optical Internet," said Greg Mumford, president of optical networks at Nortel.
Sydney, Australia-based Photonic makes devices to manipulate and control the polarization of light. The 70-employee company specializes in products called circulators and filters used to steer light inside of communications networks, thereby improving their efficiency.
Among other concerns with exposure to the networking market, Cisco Systems CSCO, -1.05% fell 4 23/32, or 8.5 percent, to 50 17/32; Lucent Technologies lu rose 5/16 to 54 13/16; and 3Com coms dropped 6.8 percent, or 2 7/8 to to 39. PairGain Technologies PAIR, -10.56% added 1 11/16, or 6.7 percent, to 26 13/16 on news that its Avidia 3000 digital-subscriber-line access switch has received NEBS Level 3 certification. Overall, the AMEX Networking Index $nwx lost 3.3 percent.
Software shares to the upside
The CBOE Computer Software index $cwx rose 0.5 percent, led by gains in Citrix Systems CTXS, -0.41%, up 3/16, to 45 3/16.
Veritas Software VRTS, +0.89% slumped 9 5/8, or 9.3 percent, to 93 1/4. The storage management software company, as well as database giant Oracle ORCL, +0.04% and Sun Microsystems SUNW, +31.56%, announced a three-way strategic alliance to provide joint customer support services. Sun shares dropped 7 7/8 to 72 while Oracle lost 5 5/16 to 62 1/2.
Shares of customer relationship management software company J.D. Edwards slipped 1/2 to 12. Late Monday, the company jdec said it will cut 800 jobs worldwide as part of a company-wide cost-cutting effort. J.D. Edwards plans to cut its workforce by 13 percent and use the Internet to lower procurement costs. See full story. Earlier this month, the company warned that it expected second-quarter results to show an operating loss of between $20 million and $25 million. First Call had expected a profit of 2 cents a share.
No ballast for Nets, chips
But the CBOE Internet Index SPX, +0.28% fell 2 percent, dragged down by a dip in EBay EBAY, +0.67%, which fell 20 3/16, or 15 percent, to 116. The AMEX Internet Index " fell 7.9 percent. Among other big Net names, America Online AOL, -1.75% fell 1 3/4, or 3 percent, to 50 3/4, and Yahoo yhoo declined 7 15/16, or 6.3 percent, to 118 5/16.
A reiteration of a "buy" rating from Lehman Brothers did nothing to raise Amazon.com.'s AMZN, -0.20%, shares, as the retailer slipped 5 3/16, or 10 percent, to 46 11/16. Lehman, which also backed its $80 price target, said it believes the online bookseller has "passed the trough" in terms of losses as percentage of sales and in absolute dollars.
Likewise, chip stocks couldn't rally around a strong report on industry growth after Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, a trade group, said semiconductor equipment makers in North America last month posted $142 in orders for every $100 products shipped. This book-to-bill ratio represented a slight drop from March's figure but still translated into an impressive demand figure. Bookings rose roughly 10 percent to $2.7 billion from $2.45 billion in March.
Despite the good numbers, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index SOX, -1.93% dropped 7.7 percent. The index was weighed down by losses in Altera Corp. ALTR, +0.60%, off 8 3/4, or 10 percent, to 75 1/16; Applied Materials AMAT, -2.79%, down 7 7/16 to 71 7/8; Teradyne Inc. ", down 8 9/16 to 75 15/16; and Novellus Systems Inc. nvls, off 5, or 11 percent, to 40 1/16.
The Goldman Sachs Computer Hardware Index $gha fell 4.5 percent. Slumping components included Lexmark International lxk, dropping 8 1/4, or 10 percent, to 72 3/4.


text:
BAP general secretary elected Senator from Balochistan
Balochistan Awami Party's (BAP) General Secretary Manzoor Khan Kakar has been elected as Senator from Balochistan following the by-election on the general seat on Monday, DawnNewsTV reported.
The seat had fallen vacant after PkMAP Senator Azam Khan Musakhail passed away last month due to a heart attack.
According to the provisional results of the poll obtained by DawnNewsTV, Kakar — candidate fielded by the ruling alliance — secured 38 votes while his opponent Ghulam Nabi Marri of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal (BNP-M) bagged 23 votes. Whereas, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party's (PkMAP)candidate Muhammad Haneef got only one vote.
In the provincial house of 65 members, a total of 62 votes were cast during the Senate by-election. Former chief minister Balochistan Sanaullah Zehri and PTI's provincial president Sardar Yar Mohammad Rind did not cast their vote.
The ruling coalition comprises the BAP, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, Balochistan National Party-Awami (BNP-A), Hazara Democratic Party (HDP), ANP and Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP).


text:
The night was far too hot for Hermione. The sheets of her bed felt like a straightjacket – trapping her body in their slick and powerful embrace, sticking to the skin of her arms and legs. Hermione resigned herself to a restless night, and slipped quietly out of bed. She threw her dressing gown over her pyjamas, and tiptoed out of her dorm, down many flights of deserted stairs, through the doors of the entrance hall, and into the cool gardens on the grounds outside.
A welcoming wind blew across her fragile frame, giving Hermione a small feeling of comfort and relief in the June night's cruel heat. She closed her eyes indulgently and allowed the refreshing zephyr to lift her long, brown locks off her neck and shoulders.
Alarmed by a hushed murmur of voices carried towards her by the breeze, Hermione stiffened and her eyes snapped open. Her curiosity was piqued. Hermione walked in the direction from whence the murmurs came, taking off her shoes so her footsteps would not be heard. As she approached a large rose bush at the far end of the gardens, the voices became louder, and Hermione noticed that it wasn't exactly talking, more like…moaning? A woman's moan.
Unable to overcome her curiosity, she peaked over the bush to see where the owner of the voice was. Hermione had to cover her mouth to prevent a shocked gasp from escaping her lips. It was Vila Lethorne, a pretty but snobby Slytherin girl who was being made wild, passionate love to by Draco Malfoy!
They seemed completely lost in their passionate act – Vila's naked body wrapped around Draco's, her head thrown roughly back against a tree as Draco's powerful body moved with a strong ease against hers, thrusting deeply. Vila appeared to be making almost all the noise, panting frantically as she tried to claim Draco's lips. Turning his blonde head away from hers he avoided her lips and bit Vila's shoulder, making her squeal. In delight or pain Hermione couldn't rightly tell…
Flinging his head back towards Vila's, Draco suddenly met Hermione's eyes. For a brief second, shock could be seen in his glittering eyes as he took in Hermione's open mouth and flushed features. But the shock was soon replaced with his famous evil smirk. His eyes not leaving hers he continued to thrust roughly into Vila, his body beaded in sweat as the lustful ritual continued, making her scream in intense pleasure.
Hermione had never noticed how strong and powerful Draco's body was. As his eyes bore into hers she realized how… sexy he was. Horrified by her thoughts Hermione broke out of her paralysed state and, finding that her feet had regained their powers of motion, she turned quickly away, and ran as fast as she could, only stopping once she was back in the safety of her room. Noticing how cold her feet were she groaned as she realized that she'd dropped her shoes as soon as she started sprinting away from Draco's amused eyes. They were still there and it was evidence that she'd been a Peeping Tom!
Another realization immediately hit Hermione: her panties were wet! No, she couldn't possibly have enjoyed that… that sordid show she'd just been witness to. With a shake of her head, Hermione crawled back into bed. It didn't matter now, anyway, as tomorrow was the beginning of the summer hols, and she would be going home. She wouldn't have to face Draco again until seventh year started, and by then he'd hopefully have forgotten about what she'd done and seen. Closing her eyes, Hermione quickly fell into a heavy sleep, images of Draco's body, lips, and eyes unceremoniously intruding upon her dreams.
It was only the first of long, lust filled nights Hermione would fall asleep with Draco tormenting her dreams.


text:
Welcome to the inaugural edition of our support team's monthly update! Each month we'll tackle trending user concerns and shed light on them in an insightful and educational way. If you missed it (and in this case, we hope you did!) watch-only scams have been making waves throughout
Tag: research
It's a great joy to welcome (back) Sjors to the family. Sjors joined our team as one of our earliest engineers and was at the center of rewriting and scaling our web wallet for three years. After some time off for exploring, Sjors has decided to focus on open
Market value isn't the only reason digital assets like bitcoin stand out, but it's certainly a newsworthy conversation starter. As you catch up with family over the holidays, bitcoin's epic 2017 price increase will likely be a hot topic. To entertain their curiosity, we've got the
Since our first Bitcoin Holiday Gift Guide, digital currency has continued to transform the world of online payments and e-commerce. This year we're excited to bring you a festive mix of gift ideas that will help you spread the joy of Bitcoin this holiday season.
1. Gift cards
When block 494,784 is mined (on or around November 16th), the second and final part of an important network upgrade to the Bitcoin protocol called "SegWit2x" will take place. Below is a quick breakdown of what to expect throughout the coming weeks.**Some background on SegWit2x** SegWit2x is essentially


text:
You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'anxiety' category.
Zeke turned to me this afternoon
from his position sprawled on the couch
watching Spider-Man cartoons
and asked if I knew what he did
when he arrived in his classroom
this morning
on the first day
of first grade.
I asked what
and he said he cried
because he was feeling really shy.
I said I was sorry
that he had been so upset
and asked him what happened
when he started crying
he said the teacher came over
and talked to him
and made him feel better.
I asked what she said or did
to make him feel better
but he didn't remember.
He said he only cried
for twice the amount of time
it takes him to brush his teeth.
He said there's no one
he knows sitting at his table
but there is a boy who
speaks another language.
"What language does he speak?"
I asked
Zeke said,
"A language I've never heard before."
At least at recess Zeke got to play with Jack
his best kindergarten buddy
who is in a different class
and moving to Chicago soon anyway
they played hide and seek and Zeke said
Jack is really good at hiding.
Last night at bedtime
Zeke seemed relaxed
although he said he was nervous and excited
then he told me I smelled like cheese
and I said I had brushed my teeth and
washed my hands and face
and hadn't even eaten any cheese recently
he was not convinced
He was clutching his stuffed owl, named Even
I said, "maybe this owl smells like cheese!"
And he became deeply offended
that I did not
call Even by his name
"Why did you say this owl?" he demanded
"You know his name!"
At which point I realized
he was more upset than he had let on.
I had to leave the room to make sure
Zoe's first day outfit was in the washing machine
and when I returned
and climbed back up into the top bunk
to resume snuggling with Zeke
he began to weep.
He asked me if I could come in the classroom
with him in the morning
even though he knew he was riding the bus
and I told him no, that wasn't the plan
and he just cried
and wouldn't speak
and wouldn't answer my questions
just burying his face in Even.
originally posted on Invocations.blog
I feel like about half
of my parenting challenges
are deciding when to
say to my children
Sometimes you have to be
tough and
brave and
stick it out
do hard things
be independent
you can do this
you got this
and when to say
It's ok
you can take it easy
sit this one out
skip this one
don't worry about it
rest and
you can snuggle with me
There is
no formula
no equation
no guidebook
that tells me
which way to lean
I just have to
figure it out
over and over again
~Betsy Rosenblatt Rosso
August 2019
(originally published on invocations.blog)
So much is out of our control
who moves in next door
who doesn't clean up
after their dog
on the sidewalk
in front of
your house
When the bus finally arrives
Whether the check
is in the mail
How your boss
How anyone
Who lets you in when
you're trying to
turn left out of your
neighborhood onto
Columbia Pike
Who stops when
you're trying to
cross the street
Who is having a bad day
and takes it out
on you
who holds
the door open for you and
all the kids you've brought along
and smiles and doesn't seem to mind
that they are oblivious to the fact of the door
How viruses mutate
whether the nurse assigned to your room
has ever taken care of a patient like you before
Whether the people in charge of your country
decide to start a war
against another country or
against you
Whether someone who looks like you–even a little bit
commits a crime
What DNA you inherit
What your mother did
or did not do while you were
becoming human
Whether she brought you
into the world with joy
or despair
Whether you get put in the class
of a kind kindergarten teacher
or one who should have
already retired or found
another steelier line of work
So much is out of our control
it is a miracle that we find
at the end of the day that
a single thing we set out to do
has been done
A testament
to our optimistic persistence
that we write out
yet another to do list
naively determined to try again
even though
so much is out of our control
(originally published on invocations.blog)
My main skill
on the soccer field
is getting in people's way
Also I can cheer
I am not fast
No matter how many
games I play
or watch
I cannot see
what needs to happen
beyond my need to kick
the ball away from me
toward someone who will
know better than I do
what to do with it
Nothing that happens
on a field
or with a ball
or on a court
or in a pool
or on a track
or on a mat
comes easily to me
This is not to say I am weak
because I AM strong
I can be fierce
and determined
and endure
but it is
I watch my teammates
sprint toward the ball
maneuver around our opponents
boot the ball gloriously
through the air
with what seems
to me like
no effort at all
I hear them talk about the other team's
offense and defense
and which players
are the ones
to watch
"All we need to do is…"
they explain
on the sidelines
but I don't
still I will jog onto the field
and see who I need to
get in the way of
when she has the ball
and maybe steal the ball
if i'm lucky
and pass it
and cheer loudly
for whoever
takes it down the field
to score
I am so filled with anxiety that I am certain there is no room left inside me for my internal organs. They have been squeezed together in some tiny crevice so my anxiety has ample room to luxuriously expand. The knots in my stomach have all but filled my stomach so there is little space left for such old-fashioned things as digestion to occur.
I have spent a lot of this summer reminding myself to breathe. Taking deep breaths that require much more effort than seems normal, but then again when was the last time I was normal? I suppose the breathing has helped, as the threatening panic attack remains hovering at the edge of my consciousness, ready to jump in at any time an opening presents itself. The panic attack is like a first responder, but not the helpful kind.
Chief among the myriad reasons for this anxiety (although really, who needs reasons?) are two new schools. Tomorrow my kids will get on their respective school buses–they have never ridden buses to school before–and be delivered to elementary school and middle school for the first time. They will have new buildings to navigate, new teachers to get to know, new classmates who speak different languages, new assignments to remember, new school cultures to learn.
Of course I realize that kids start new schools all the time. This is the way of the world. But all those other kids aren't mine. And my kids, unfortunately or inevitably or just because of good old genetics, share with me just a bit of that predisposition toward anxiety. We are a sensitive people. I remember years ago hearing the adage that having kids is like letting your heart walk around outside your body, and so it is. Starting new schools is like your heart has developed some confidence, a sense of style, a few signature jokes, and then suddenly it's stripped bare all over again, completely vulnerable in a new environment. And now my heart is split into two, wandering through two new schools, looking around desperately for other hearts that will be kind.
This year for the first time I have a number of friends who are sending kids to college. Zeke's previous preschool teacher and preschool director, friends from church, friends from high school and elementary school, and my yoga teacher all delivered offspring to college for the first time in August. (All to excellent Virginia schools, as it happens). When I think of them, even when I see the pictures on Facebook of their smiling kids in freshly decorated dorm rooms, I feel like my heart is not simply walking around outside my chest, but has been forcibly ripped from my body and flung hundreds of miles away, where it may be lying in a ditch, attempting to struggle to its feet. College! Thinking about this literally makes my chest hurt. My daughter is only seven years away from this prospect. When I ran into our wise preschool director the other day and mentioned this, she said not to think about it yet, just to concentrate on kindergarten and sixth grade right now. Which is good, because that is all I am capable of at the moment.
I try hard not to be a helicopter parent. My philosophy is much more free range, although it's challenging in a culture of helicopters. I do believe in giving my children the opportunity to be independent, and learn things, and grow on their own. But what if kids are mean to them? What happens when kids are mean to them? Because it's bound to happen and it's already happened and it's so hard. Did I mention we are sensitive people? This summer at a couple of camps some little boys said mean things to Zeke. I don't know what all of the words were. Some of them, as I recall, were, "I don't like you." No one wants to hear that, but when you're 44 it's easier to give someone the side eye and walk away. Of course, when "I don't like you" is accompanied by being punched in the back while you're trying to make art, it's harder to let it slide. Especially when you're five. The day after this happened, Zeke was desperately and theatrically upset when I tried to drop him off at camp. It took 30 minutes for me to get to the bottom of the problem, but I did. I talked with the teacher and reassured Zeke that she would keep an eye on things and make sure the boys didn't bother him. She moved him to a different team, and he was calm and everything was fine. By the end of the week he was playing with the same boys. Sometimes I don't understand how life works at all.
With girls it's different, of course. I've been hearing a lot from fellow parents of tweens that we should brace ourselves for the mean girls of middle school years. Optimistically I feel like we can bypass this particular trauma because we've been dealing with mean girls since Zoe was in kindergarten. While she had an overall excellent experience in elementary school and has always had lots of friends, there was rarely a time in which she didn't have at least one "friend" who was trying to manipulate and control her. There was the girl who, in kindergarten, insisted that Zoe play Justin Bieber (Zoe didn't even know who he was, but cried about it nonetheless), and later threw rocks at Zoe because she was trying to meditate when the girl wanted to play. And there were other girls for the following five years who tried to take advantage of Zoe, who threatened to abandon her if she played with other friends, who attempted to enlist her as a personal assistant. There was so much drama. And it wasn't even middle school yet. So the good thing, I keep reminding myself, is that Zoe has so much experience dealing with this behavior and has learned how to stand up for herself and take care of herself in ways that it took me many more decades to learn myself, that maybe she'll be ok in middle school. I hope.
At her school open house, she was not the only kid to be walking around in a daze, clinging to a parent's arm, wondering how she would figure all this out on her own. I know she won't really be on her own. There will be 899 other kids there! I know she'll be ok. But I also know it's a little terrifying, and no amount of reassurance from her parents will take that away until she does figure it out for herself.
Less than 24 hours from now, my kids will be at school. I'll be on my way to a new yoga class I signed up for, which will be an excellent way for me to not sit home and cry or give in to that panic attack. Then after yoga I'll come home and attack the million work assignments I've been neglecting during the last week of summer when I've been trying to squeeze in the maximum amount of fun experiences with my family so they can have happy memories to hang onto during their own moments of encroaching anxiety. And I'll try my best to focus on getting my work done while I count the minutes until those school buses pull up to our bus stop and I not very casually envelop my children in gigantic hugs and try not to pepper them with all my questions about how the first day of school went. I will exhale. And the next day at least it won't be quite so new.
Today was the final Sunday of our November theme of abundance at UUCA. I led worship, along with my friends Bob and Kendra. You can watch a video of the service here: http://www.uucava.org/livestream/.
You can read my meditation and prayer here:
I encourage you to put your feet on the floor. Feel your seat beneath you and observe the presence beside you of caring people, whether they are friends or family or strangers. Notice your breath. Breathe in peace. Breathe out love. Breathe in comfort. Breathe out compassion. Breathe in strength. Breathe out generosity. Whatever you need right now, feel it filling your body every time you inhale. Whatever you wish to share with the world, feel it gliding into the atmosphere on your breath.
Spirit of life, we come together here today after having been scattered near and far during the past week. Some of us are refreshed and rejuvenated by time off from work and reunions with beloved family and friends. Some of us are weary from tense and difficult moments and feelings of obligation rather than joy. Some of us labored, some of us were served. Some of us were surrounded by love, some of us were lonely.
Whoever we are, may we find refuge here.
Spirit of life, as we begin again today, we ask for another chance. An opportunity to be kind to ourselves. To truly love ourselves so we can better love others. We seek relief and ease because some of us are Just. So. Tired. We seek clarity when facing an uncertain diagnosis, or no diagnosis at all, in the midst of debilitating symptoms. We seek reassurance as we endeavor to do right by our children when parenting can be so stressful. When we are young and when we are old, we seek acknowledgment. We want to know that we matter. At every age, we wish to be heard and understood. We seek grace along the path that is littered with our mistakes. We seek courage to be bold and step onto a new, unfamiliar path. We wish for the strength to unclench our fists and let the anxieties, the fears, the old hurts be carried away on the winds, leaving our hands and our hearts free. We long for the freedom to laugh and to cry with abandon. We seek release.
Whatever we seek, may we glimpse it today in this place, and claim it for our own.
And here's my reflection:
I have a contentious relationship with time. I am always running late, always composing an apology in my head. I promise it's not because I don't respect you or value our relationship. It's because I am overly optimistic. I always think I have time to do one more thing before I go. Write one more sentence, put away one more load of laundry, cross one more thing off my to-do list. I am wildly unrealistic about how much time something is going to take. You would think that by this point in my life I would've figured this out, but no.
My family is so often late that we've invented a game called the good excuse bad excuse game. Note that we do not play this in the exact moment when we're tumbling out of the house and into the minivan, because I would be way too flustered. But in a moment of calm, we can play. Here's how it works. One person says, "sorry I was late, I decided I didn't feel like getting out of bed, but eventually I did." Everyone responds, BAD EXCUSE! Another person says, "Sorry I was late, I was rescuing 100 puppies from a burning building." GOOD EXCUSE! And we continue to come up with the most pathetic or most heroic excuses we can think of.
As silly as this might seem, the good excuse bad excuse game points to an unspoken truth. The most valuable use of your time is often when you are helping someone else, when you are sharing your abundance, just like in the story Kendra read earlier. But what are the abundances we have to share? How can we find them when we so often focus on what's scarce in our lives?
If you're a Harry Potter fan, you may have sorted yourself into one of the Hogwarts houses. Is your abundance bravery, loyalty, intelligence, or ambition? Do you possess an abundance of patience in a world that prioritizes speed and multitasking? Are you able to bring presence into a culture of preoccupation? I know that I am awed by people who are able to be fully present with me, to make me feel like I am the only person in the world who matters at that moment. Yet this quality is not one of my abundances. For better or for worse, my mind is always tuned in to several channels at once. I can't NOT hear a conversation happening across the room, or the oven timer going off, or notice that someone in the vicinity needs something. One of my abundances is an astute power of observation, but not focused presence.
Maybe your abundance is more practical, like agility with numbers and the ability to manage or make money. I interview a lot of people on behalf of one of my clients who say they became budget counselors because they always loved numbers. I have always felt like I am allergic to numbers. At the annual meeting at church, my eyes glaze over when they talk about the budget. I am terrible with money. I sometimes wish our currency were only in words instead of numbers. Then I could understand. This trouble with numbers often comes into conflict with another of my abundances, which is generosity. Are you raising money for Multiple Sclerosis research, or orphans in Haiti, or school supplies for girls in Nigeria? I am guaranteed to donate, whether or not I can afford it.
In fact, one of my favorite holiday traditions, for the past 10 or 15 years, has been giving alternative gifts to nonprofits that I hand pick—and now my husband and children help choose—for all of our family members. We do this at an alternative gift fair, like those sponsored by Alternative Gifts of Greater Washington, or in Arlington, Gifts that Give Hope—which is hosting this year's event on December 9 at Discovery Elementary. Or online through the Catalogue for Philanthropy. What these organizations do is bring together wonderful charitable groups and tell you what exactly your $10 or $20 or $50 donation would do for their beneficiaries. For example, a $5 donation to your local animal shelter would buy chew toys for a dog waiting to be adopted. A $25 donation to a nonprofit that serves single moms who are survivors of domestic violence would buy a week's worth of diapers. A $50 donation would buy a bike for a young person in an African village to have the transportation needed to start a business. We take time to think about what kind of donations would be meaningful to each family member. Like the dog toys for Uncle Larry and Aunt Susan who have loved dozens of dogs and cats over the years. Cooking classes in honor of my aunt who taught me to make delicious food from scratch. You get the idea. On Christmas morning, we open these gifts along with all the others and read out loud where the charitable gift will be going. My family's goal on Christmas morning is to make people laugh or cry, and often these gifts elicit tears. And they don't take up room on anyone's shelf, and they're making the world a better place. These gifts also remind us of just how much abundance we have in our family and our community.
Going for the laugh is also fun, like when I got my mom an autographed 8×10 photo of Adam Levine because she's a huge fan of the Voice. You have to balance things out.
The paradox about my contentious relationship with time is that time is what people want most from me. Time is what my kids want, time is what my parents want. My husband, my dog, my friends, my clients, the church. Even though it doesn't feel like I have a lot of it, time is my most valuable abundance to give.
My parents have everything they could possibly want, and more. But my mom is thrilled if I give her a Christmas gift of a day where I help her clean out her closet and go to lunch. We take each other to concerts and plays and readings, where we share the gift of time spent together, sharing an experience. Seeing and hearing live music is one of the great joys that my husband and I share. When we devote so many hours to working and managing the house and taking care of our children and our dog, the simple act of making the time to be together and do something we both love can seem monumental, but it's so important.
What Facebook has abundance of is memes, and many of them are silly, and some are annoying, and some are offensive. But some are really good reminders of what matters. One I remember said something like, "if you have a stack of dishes in your sink, it means you have enough food to eat. If you have a pile of laundry to fold, it means you have enough clothes to wear." It's easy in Arlington, or in Northern Virginia, or Greater Washington, to feel like we don't have enough. We have plenty of first world problems. But we also have plenty of abundance. Abundant opportunities, abundant amusements, abundant things to see and people to meet. Abundant chances to serve. Abundant ways to receive.
As we close out our month of abundance, and our weekend of abundant food and company, and we look ahead to a month that may be filled with hope or anxiety, love or loneliness, generosity or uncertainty, or maybe all of these. Remember to take with you this month your inner abundance. Is it compassion? Vision? Wit? Steadiness? Creativity? Maybe you can't name your inner abundance right now. If that's the case, give yourself time to find it. And when you find it, give it away.
May it be so, may it be so, may it be so.
I cannot shake this feeling that what's happening tomorrow is apocalyptic.
Throughout my 42 years many world events have caused me to worry that the world as I knew and loved it would somehow end, but all those scenarios began with bad guys from some other part of the world coming in and taking over, attacking us, poisoning our air or water, and taking away our freedoms.
I never imagined that an orange-haired guy from Queens and his idiotic henchmen would be the culprits.
I can no longer listen to NPR on weekdays because anything I hear about the incoming regime makes my stomach clench. I can't read the paper. My news is nicely distilled for me on Facebook, which gathers a wide variety of sources, and every time I check my feed my chest tightens and I have to squeeze my eyes shut and turn it off.
I am making calls to legislators when I can, although I'm still not clear about whether that's effective, especially since I am fortunate to have a Congressman and Senators who hold the same views as I do. I'm giving to organizations that I know are fighting to protect people who need protection and safeguard our rights. I am committed to my church's movement to live the pledge to end racism and I am facilitating reflection sessions. And of course I'm going to march on Saturday.
But still.
And yet.
I keep thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert's post the day after the election encouraging us to choose who we want to be, even and especially in the most challenging situations we face. I know she's right. But it is so hard to feel open-minded and curious and loving and calm and hopeful when these tsunami-sized waves of dread crash over you again and again and again.
Lately I've been making a lot of art. I am not an artist, really. I like to glue things together. My kids and I bring home bags overflowing with recycled materials from UpCycle Creative Reuse Center and we create. When I am gluing small things onto other things, no bad thoughts can penetrate my brain. Making art creates a force field around my spirit. I am running out of space to put my art.
Tomorrow I'm going to celebrate kindness with friends and family. We're going to make art and eat delicious food and listen to music and focus on how we can offer kindness to the world. At least for tomorrow I will put up that little force field around my family and friends. And they will give me strength. We will be kind and we will survive. And the next day we will wake up and march. And those hundreds of thousands of people who will be marching with us, in DC or in other cities, or in spirit, they will give me strength. Maybe I will give them strength too. Maybe our presence and our voices will be art, and all that beauty will sustain us over the next four years.
Maybe we will learn how to live and be brave in a post-apocalyptic world.
It's disconcerting to see something moving across the floor in your peripheral vision when you're in your living room and your kids are in bed asleep. Nothing should be scurrying about on your rug. No one should be darting under your furniture or hiding under your son's toys.
Despite the fact that we have removed three mice in various states of incapacitation from our house, and I found another mouse–dead–in front of our front door yesterday, we do not seem to be rid of our mouse problem. Following Randy's suggestion (see left), I have not had the courage to remove the dead mouse from in front of our house yet, but I suspect his fellow mice have not seen his current unfortunate state because they are inside and he is outside.
We had a repairperson here yesterday fixing a variety of things that have broken over the past months (maybe years?) and he filled some suspected mice holes. So either there are many more holes we have not yet identified, or a bunch of mice were already inside. Don't they know it's nice outside now? The weather has warmed up! They can go back outside and frolic! There's no reason to stay in here, protected from the snow and ice. The snow has mostly melted! It's not even raining. Go ahead, mice, go outside to the playground! Have a picnic in the park! If your holes are filled, I will gladly open the front (or back door) and let you out. Enjoy the spring, mice.
The worst part of last night, at least for me, was not Zeke's persistent crying and refusal to sleep horizontally (although that was quite unpleasant) but rather the fact that after I plopped a weepy Zeke on our bed with his dogs Kirby and Uh Oh Dog and woke up Randy to keep an eye on him while I used the bathroom, when I turned on the bathroom light I saw a mouse dash out of the bathroom, across the hall, and into my office (also our guest room), which caused me to pee in my pants. I am not typically one of those people who is terrified of mice (although I don't love them cohabiting with my family) but seeing a mouse vacate the bathroom in our bedroom and relocate to another bedroom, all on the upper floor of our house, where we sleep, does not sit well with me. Suddenly my mind switched from exasperation over Zeke's restlessness to fear that the mouse (and perhaps his whole family) would be crawling over our faces if we ever did get back to sleep.
A few weeks ago when our family was suffering from round after round of stomach viruses, twice during wakeful, messy nights, I spotted a tiny slug in the corner of the kitchen. The slug's presence was disconcerting, but not alarming. First of all, it was tiny. Second, it was as slugs are wont to do, moving quite slowly, so I didn't feel like I had to attend to it immediately. Slugs are notoriously easy to apprehend and Randy removed both slugs to the backyard without incident. This happened in the kitchen and I never once worried that slugs would crawl over our faces as we slept, leaving poisonous trails of slime. But a mouse. Those things are dangerous. Our exterminator told us to use gloves and masks when he reminded us many times to remove the mouse poop from the utility shed behind our house. You're not going to want to come over for dinner now, are you?
Not that we can have anyone over for dinner these days anyway, because we are always sick or trapped inside by snow and ice. Not really trapped, Boston-style, but stuck inside because where are we going to go when it's snowy and icy anyway? Our weeks of isolation began on January 29 when Zeke was first struck with norovirus, which he generously shared with all of us in turn. We were supposed to have friends over for dinner a few days later but had to cancel. And every weekend since then, someone has been puking or feverish or something yucky. School has been closed or delayed. I have postponed and rescheduled work meetings and personal appointments and social events over and over again.
When my mind is forced to spend those days (and nights) home with sick kids, or sick husband, or sick me, it tends to wander off toward dark and dismal destinations. I was fairly convinced throughout February that I was a terrible parent, incapable of compassion or patience, and also to blame for everyone's illnesses. I was sure I didn't have any real friends and somehow my children and I were being excluded from all fun things that were happening everywhere. I spend a lot of time worrying about all the things anyone could possibly worry about, and then I create some new things to worry about. I embrace my tendency toward worst-case-scenario thinking. Meaning, I am always on some level planning what to do if I need to take someone to the ER or what if someone never comes back from that errand or that trip, or what if we lose power and so many other what ifs that actual reality has no room to exist in my brain. I've struggled to figure out how to extract myself from this hole. Everyone I know seems to have crap they're dealing with, much of it significantly more challenging than mine. Or everyone is just sick. During one of my doctor visits in February, my doctor said there were three groups of people in this area: people who've recently been sick, people who are sick now, and people who are going to get sick soon. He said the virus season this winter is the worst he's seen in a decade. Still, knowing other people are sick does not at all make me feel any better, or even absolve me of responsibility for our germs. We wash our hands all the freaking time. While toddlers are not known for their hygeine habits, even Zeke loves to wash his hands, wipe up spills, and bring out the dustbuster when there's a spill. We bleach, we wipe down, we spray. And yet the germs circulate and attack us again and again and my mental and emotional state deteriorates. So it's been hard for me to reach out. I don't like to complain (maybe you can't tell that from this post) and I don't like negativity. I am an optimist. I don't like whiners. But the past five weeks, which feel more like five months, my sense of hope and positive attitude have diminished. My creativity and confidence have crumbled. I've felt increasingly lonely and isolated. I am an extrovert (or to be more accurate, according to my reading of Susan Cain's work, I'm an ambivert, but still I need some outside stimulation). It's not been good.
One bright spot during this time has been the sermons by Rev. Aaron McEmrys at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington. I've been a member of All Souls Unitarian for nearly a decade, but for a variety of reasons it's become untenable to attend services there. Recently a friend invited Zoe to participate in the sex ed (appropriate for second-graders) segment of the Sunday morning religious education class, so I figured I would go to services while Zoe was in class. I'd been to UUCA a couple times before in years past and found it pleasant but not powerful. This time, though, I was surprised and moved by Rev. Aaron's preaching. I find his sermons to be thoughtful, challenging, exquisitely written, and passionately delivered. And this week he challenged the congregation to do something fun or frivolous or whatever it was they needed to do to be more resilient–to live more and work less. By example he told physicians in the room to work five fewer hours this week and do something entertaining or fulfilling instead. But he said he didn't know what we all needed–we did. And what I needed to do was write this. It is embarrassing to say you've felt lonely and sad. I was raised not to feel sorry for myself. But sometimes you just need to say how you feel. I also, as a writer, constantly struggle with reluctance to put words out into the world unless they are fully formed and somehow worthy. Unfortunately, I just don't always feel worthy. But I still need to put words out there before they burn a hole inside me, as they sometimes threaten to do.
So I am praying for spring. For health. For sleep. For the mouse that is upstairs in our house to move out. For a new show to materialize that makes me laugh as much as Parks and Recreation did. For more books like Wonder, which I read in a day sometime in February and would recommend to everyone. And for you, if you are in a hole, to find your way out as well.
Last night around 6, when I was waiting for a friend to pick Zoe up for tae kwan do because I didn't want to bring Zeke because he was coughing and his shoes were soaking wet because I let him stomp in a puddle when we were picking up Zoe from school and when we got home I discovered the dryer, which we just paid $400 to get repaired, was screeching mercilessly whenever I turned it on, I started feeling panicky. I was upstairs waiting by the window with Zoe to spot her ride when it arrived while downstairs Zeke had found a tray of Christmas treats Zoe had left out, and was stuffing chocolate covered peanuts in his mouth. When I ran downstairs to find him, there was a blend of saliva and chocolate seeping all over his face and clothes and his mouth was full of unchewed peanuts because he still doesn't have that many teeth. He had also managed to open Zoe's Finding Nemo DVD that she received for Hanukkah the night before and had somehow smeared it with chocolate as well. I wiped off his face and yanked off his shirt and fleece and went to put them in the bucket that we soak stained things in but discovered I had left it outside on the patio and it needed to be washed. And I couldn't wash it because the sink was full of dirty dishes and bottle parts because even though Zeke will drink water from a cup he still refuses to drink milk unless it's in a bottle.
I was short of breath, my chest was tight, I felt nauseated and dizzy. I have a friend just a few years older than me who had a heart attack last year. Someone else my age with whom I graduated from college died this year from one. And one of Randy's grad school classmates just died from a possible heart attack. I was increasingly panicked. I looked up the signs of a heart attack and a panic attack and found several websites that said the symptoms are remarkably similar. How helpful!
When Randy got home he dropped me off at urgent care. I should have just gone to the ER. The people at urgent care did not demonstrate any sense of urgency whatsoever. The receptionists and the physician's assistant all seemed bored and completely uninterested in their jobs or the fact that people they were helping might have some sort of problem. They acted like they had been hired for jobs at lackadaisical care. The PA greeted me with, "So are you having a heart attack?" I told her I didn't know what was wrong, that's why I was there. Later when she was doing the EKG and tears were streaming down my face she repeatedly told me to relax. Oh ok. Thanks for the advice. The doctor, who was at least friendly, said I was fine and there wasn't really anything he could do for me, as my heart and lungs and blood pressure were normal. He asked if there was anything stressful going on in my life. I didn't even know where to start. I offered, "I have two young kids…" He said something like, is that all? I didn't go into the running my own business thing or the fact that it's Christmas and Hanukkah and so many things are undone or the fact that tragedies local and global are constantly breaking my heart and assaulting my soul. He asked if I wanted anything to calm me down, like a Xanax. I declined, as I have attempted to use Xanax in the past and even in small doses it makes me feel drunk and unable to function. Calm, sure, but not really worth it.
So the good news is I didn't have a heart attack. The list of things to do remains long and the stacks of stuff to deal with are piled high. I am struggling to resist the urge to climb back into bed with my book–The Gravity of Birds–which is so good. In the meantime, I will listen to John Denver and the Muppets and try to get back to work, and be thankful that my heart is good.


text:
Miami's not perfect. Of course it's not. Is life expensive here? Sure. Does hurricane season suck? Occasionally.
Are these two things enough to warrant being placed at number eight on a list of the world's most overrated places? Hell no.
But somebody better tell that to the Huffington Post, which has placed Miami at number eight on its list of "The 25 Most Overrated Places on Earth." That's harsh, bro.
See also: Ten Signs You're Not From Miami
HuffPo's petty quibbles don't extend beyond Miami's weather and pricey nightlife:
In America's third-most expensive city, a $20 cover charge is no big deal. But even the most neon-lit of nightclubs won't take your mind off the humidity.
Here at Cultist, we are sick to death of Miami's "tropical weather and nightlife" reputation. We spend all damn day telling you about great local culture, from filmmakers to tech startups and everything in-between. Reducing the city of Miami to a hot place to dance at 4 a.m. is especially insulting this week, as the Miami Book Fair prepares to present a handful of National Book Award winners and finalists, and while the whole city prepares to welcome the world's best artists during Art Basel.
We're certainly not more overrated than Atlantis Resort in The Bahamas (#9) -- talk about your $20 drinks and no culture. Or than the Four Corners Monument (#17), which is literally just a stone slab and a gift shop in the middle of the damn desert.
The list also includes some pretty kick-ass places: London, Dublin, Venice, Milan. Where exactly *do* you want to go, HuffPo?
If you like this story, consider signing up for our email newsletters.
You have successfully signed up for your selected newsletter(s) - please keep an eye on your mailbox, we're movin' in!
They did get one thing right, though: Ireland's Blarney Stone. If you bend over backwards to kiss that filthy rock, you're a braver man than I.
Follow Ciara LaVelle on Twitter @ciaralavelle.
Send your story tips to Cultist at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Follow Cultist on Facebook and Twitter @CultistMiami.


text:
Restaurant week has arrived, but I'm not sure anyone cares. A story we did a while back, with my top picks for the event, didn't garner much interest. I asked around the office to see if anyone had reservations -- crickets. More than 125 restaurants are giving you a chance to dine on three courses for $35. Does anyone care?
Someone in Dallas does. Of the restaurant's I listed in my top picks, Five Sixty and the French Room have filled out noticeably; both pushed a request for a Monday reservation till later in the week. Fearing's is booked solid, too. But the rest of the field seems woefully under-booked.
I'm going to hit at least one dinner before Restaurant Week comes to an end, but I'm left to wonder: Where are the restaurant week loyalists? Is the $35 price tag a deal, or do the supplements end up driving your bill into the clouds? Do you participate in the spirit of philanthropy (the event benefits the North Texas Food Bank), or are you just looking for a decent meal? Or maybe you're like these guys, whose terrible experience has ruined the promotion for good:
we ended up at one of the area's best steak houses, crammed like sardines into the bar before being seated an hour past our reservation time. The waitstaff were horribly overworked, rushing around like tornadoes & sweating like pigs. We ordered our cocktails at the table since we couldn't actually make it up to the bar through all the people and watched as the kitchen cranked out plate after plate of the same prix-fixe food. It was just so uncomfortable that we left without eating and journeyed back over to enjoy steaks in peace in our neck of the woods.
If you like this story, consider signing up for our email newsletters.
You have successfully signed up for your selected newsletter(s) - please keep an eye on your mailbox, we're movin' in!
If you venture out this week and try one of the menus, let us know how things go. Do you think you got your money's worth, or did you feel rushed? Did your service suffer? Also, if you have the skinny on restaurants that don't participate that make good safe-house, chime in. Or is this just the week to hit the grocery store and cook at home?


text:
Sassy Travel by Jamie Martin
INSTRUCTIONSPrint Project
- To make the watercolor background use a long rectangle acrylic block and rub Worn Lipstick and Wild Honey inks directly on the block, spritz with water and stamp it on a white cardstock panel. Let dry.
- Stamp the Paris scene and the stars from the Sassy Travel Perfectly Clear Set with Onyx Black ink and emboss with clear embossing powder.
- Place a thin strip of double sided tape at the top and bottom of the watercolor area, sprinkle with Gold Micro Glitter and wipe off any excess.
- Stamp the image and Bonjour below the Paris scene with Onyx Black ink and emboss with clear embossing powder.
- Glue to a black panel and then to a pink card.
- Micro Glitter Multiple Styles & Colors
- Onyx Black VersaFine Instant Dry Pigment Ink by Tsukineko 8.99
Also uses these supplies:
Zip Dry Glue-Beacon Adhesives
Double Sided Thin Tape
Cardstock- White, Black, Pink
Distress Inks-Worn Lipstick, Wild Honey
Related Projects
If you've use this product in a project of yours, we'd love to see it! You can submit your step-by-step instructions and supplies used by clicking below.Submit A Project


text:
Capstone Equities Capital Management Addresses Letter to Prime Office REIT
22 Aug, 2013, 14:14 BST
NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --
Prof. Dr. H.c, Roland Berger
Chairman; Prime Office REIT Supervisory Board
Alexander Von Cramm
Chief Financial Officer; Prime Office REIT
Prime Office REIT – AG
Hopfenstasse 4
80335 Munich Germany
Dear Messrs. Berger and Von Cramm,
Capstone Equities Capital Management ("CECM") is a shareholder of Prime Office REIT ("Prime"). By way of background, CECM was formed from Capstone Equities, a real estate private equity firm based in New York City. We have closed 18 transactions, which in aggregate exceeds $1 billion of real estate transactions and understand all aspects of commercial real estate from closing through to disposal. Our investment partners include some of the world's finest private equity firms, such as Carlyle Group and Angelo Gordon, and large family offices.
CECM is a public markets hedge fund that has made numerous successful investments in undervalued hard asset companies in Europe & US. We conducted a bottoms-up analysis of Prime's assets and concluded that they are deeply undervalued and believe the company to be worth in excess of €6.00 per share. Our due diligence included several trips to Germany and conversations with brokerage firms to understand lease rates, capitalization rates, vacant building values, as well as an extensive review of comparable sales.
To date, we have been deeply disappointed by the fiduciary conduct of the supervisory board and the management board of Prime. Prime IPO'd at the worst possible time in 2011, leaving the company undercapitalized. According to people in the industry, the IPO was handled in a way that left the company vulnerable to further discounts. Now, shareholders are asked to vote on a deal with OCM Acorn that even further dilutes shareholders. Since this deal was announced, there has been an 11.4% share price decline, showing the deal is unsupported.
The merger ratio is simply inadequate and further share capital increases at these price levels are highly dilutive. Given that the share price today is a 54.3% discount to the restated NAV, it would make more sense for the company to sell assets like SZ Tower even for a modest discount to book value rather than be forced into a dilutive merger ratio and then raise equity at such a steep discount.
CECM urges the supervisory board to hire an investment banker to conduct a thorough strategic alternatives process – 1) The Company could liquidate its assets 2) The Company could find a financial sponsor that would inject equity into the company, while leaving existing shareholders undiluted. We believe the company and its supervisory board did not adequately pursue all strategic alternatives as evidenced with our conversations with potential suitors and should delay its AGM until it has conducted a more thorough process.
There are numerous conflicts of interest inherent in the OCM Acorn/Prime deal. The conflicts of interest in this merger are staggering: 1) Both companies used CBRE to evaluate the real estate assets; 2) Both companies used Berenberg as financial advisor for the transaction; 3) While we respect Alexander Von Cramm and his abilities, we believe that there are inherent conflicts of interest with him being on the management board of the new entity.
Ultimately, we believe that Prime has high quality properties located in markets with significant barriers to entry. We firmly believe that Prime shareholders can do better than the current OCM Acorn offer, which significantly dilutes existing shareholders.
Adam M. Chud
Portfolio Manager
Capstone Equities Capital Management
545 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10017
Ironsides Partners
Oaktree European Principal
Morgan Stanley
Karoo Investment Fund
BNP Paribas Asset Management
SOURCE Capstone Equities Capital Management


text:
Donnie Smith is a classically-trained film and theatre actor, acting coach, and advocate for the arts. As an actor, he recently starred as Rupert Cadell in the L.A. Stage Alliance Ovation-recommended Rope at Actors Co-op in Hollywood. Other Los Angeles credits include the award-winning (LADCC and Stage Raw - Ensemble & Production, Ovation nominated Ensemble & Production) West Coast premiere of Ike Holter's Hit the Wall (LA LGBT Center), the West Coast premiere of Daniel MacIvor's House (LA Weekly nomination - Solo Performance) and the world premiere of Small Engine Repair (Ovation, LADCC, Backstage Garland & LA Weekly awards) at Rogue Machine Theatre, where he has been a company member for seven years. He also starred in William Mastrosimone's Sunshine (Gangbusters Theatre Company at Hollywood Fringe) and was featured in the world premiere of Sunny Afternoon (Gangbusters Theatre Company at Hollywood Fringe & Theater Asylum).
Professional Chicago stage credits include: Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap (Drury Lane); Pentecost (Chicago Irish Rep at Victory Gardens); Romeo and Juliet (Chicago Shakespeare, NEA tour); A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet (Illinois Shakespeare Festival); David Copperfield, David Mamet's The Water Engine, Studs Terkel's Division Street: America (Steppenwolf); Bloody Bess: A Tale of Piracy and Revenge (Red Hen); Lanford Wilson's The Rimers of Eldritch (Terrapin); When The Walls Have Ears (world premiere, Mary-Arrchie).
Feature film credits: The Wedding Year (coming in 2019, directed by Robert Luketic), Peppermint (directed by Pierre Morel, with Jennifer Garner and John Gallagher Jr.), A.X.L. (directed by Oliver Daly), The Vatican Tapes (directed by Mark Neveldine), Walk of Shame (directed by Steven Brill, with Elizabeth Banks & Gillian Jacobs), Stand Up Guys (directed by Fisher Stevens, with Al Pacino & Christopher Walken), The Lincoln Lawyer (directed by Brad Furman, with Matthew McConaughey & Bob Gunton), Fame (directed by Kevin Tancharoen), Gamer (directed by Neveldine/Taylor), The Ugly Truth (directed by Robert Luketic, with Gerard Butler), The Midnight Meat Train (directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, with Bradley Cooper), Pathology (directed by Marc Schoelermann), Henry Poole Is Here (directed by Mark Pellington, with Luke Wilson), The Dead Girl (directed by Karen Moncrieff, with Toni Collette), Crank (directed by Neveldine/Taylor, with Jason Statham), and Undiscovered (directed by Meiert Avis).
Donnie is a member of SAG/AFTRA and AEA. He is represented by Hayes Talent Agency.
He studied at the University of Illinois at Chicago (under Dexter Bullard), as well as the School at Steppenwolf (with Austin Pendleton, Jeff Perry, Rondi Reed, Sheldon Patinkin, Frank Galati, Tim Hopper, Tina Landau, Francis Guinan and Jim True-Frost). Donnie also participated in Steppenwolf Classes West (under Tom Irwin). He is a graduate of the School of Theatre and Dance at Illinois State University.
Mr. Smith is passionate about empowering marginalized voices in the arts; he offers coachings at a sliding-scale to accommodate students' financial needs. He also acts as Production Manager for L.A. Camerata, a performing arts initiative to produce works by women and "others" silenced throughout history.


text:
Downtown Depot: Bettie V. Beard
In Episode 35 of Downtown Depot, Austin Meek of WacoBusinessNews.com visits with Bettie V. Beard. Bettie is a community activist and gerontologist with an extensive family history in the area. She talks about how to effectively engage in a community, how immigrants have shaped our America for the better, and her frustration with those who simply won't "get involved." Before their conversation, Austin speaks with Caroline Thornton, Community Manager of WacoWork, and Vernon Davis, Republican candidate for McLennan County Precinct 2 Commissioner.
Inside the Episode:
0.40: Caroline Thornton
4.29: TIF updates
6.19: Vernon Davis
10.12: Bettie's history in Waco
14.03: Memories of the late Wilbert Austin
17.31: Combatting racism in Waco
19.19: Family connections with Doris Miller
20.45: "We are all immigrants"
23.28: Refocusing the immigration discussion today
25.50: Community activism and voting