text:
Fuuuuuuuuuck! This seriously was not happening. Just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, apparently the universe didn't just hate me. It fucking despised me. Not only was I stuck working forty hours a week at this shithole, but now I had the worst blast from my past standing before me. Avery Fucking Prescott.
In every "manwhore with seemingly no soul's" world, there is one girl he regrets. One girl he thinks about from time to time. One girl he measures all the other ones against. One girl he even cries about when he's shitfaced.
Mine was Avery Fucking Prescott.
I couldn't help noticing that the Avery standing in front of me didn't seem the same. Sure, she still had the same long, dark hair that she swept back in one of those ponytail things. Gone were the glasses, which made it a lot easier to see her green eyes that had flecks of gold in them. Of course, today there was pure and unadulterated hate burning in them directed at me where back in the day, there had been love.
But I had managed to kill that love by being a prick. Yeah, I'm sure you're thinking that isn't all too shocking based on the pure stupidity you've seen me exhibit so far. The thing is that Avery brought out the good that was buried deep down inside me. The good that you needed a fucking bulldozer to unearth.
While there were slight differences in her appearance, her entire personality seemed different, and no, I don't mean just about how she hated me with a fiery passion. She wasn't the wide-eyed, innocent farm girl who seemed so out of place at Harlington Prep. It was like she'd had a personality transplant. It reminded of me of what happened to my older sister, Catherine, the summer she turned fifteen, and my mother sent her off to some glamour school shit to detox the awkward out of her. When she came back a month later, it was like she had become a Stepford Kid. Catherine no longer took the time to play with me. She had "more important" things to do like contouring her brows or preparing for cotillions. Things were never the same between us after that.
My ego couldn't help wondering if what had happened between us had caused the seismic shift in Avery. Like I'd broken the Old Avery with my actions, and this was what had been rebuilt in its place. But another voice rationalized that unlike me, Avery had probably gotten her shit together in the last three years. College had matured her.
After a few moments of a silent standoff, Avery said, "Hello again, Cade." Her words might have been polite, but her voice was strained. I could tell it was taking everything within her not to go off on me.
"Oh, you two know each other?" Tammy or Theresa, or whatever the hell her name was, questioned.
Do we know each other? Oh yeah, we know each other. Like in the biblical sense. I can even tell you about the heart-shaped birthmark on the inside of her right thigh.
But I knew I would mortify the hell out of Avery if I said anything like that in front of her boss. So instead, I cocked my brows at Avery for her to take the lead on how she wanted us to respond to that question.
"A little. We went to high school together," she replied diplomatically. The wounded look that momentarily flashed in her eyes told an entirely different story—the story where I played the villain.
But Tammy didn't seem to pick up on it. "Well, isn't it a small world?" she mused.
"Yeah," Avery and I said in unison.
Tammy smiled at me. "I was just about to sing all of Avery's praises to you, but since you know her, I don't need to waste my breath, right?"
"Right," I muttered.
"Well, then. I'll leave you two alone to catch up, and for Avery to show you the ropes."
"Thank you, Tamar," Avery said politely.
Oh it was Tamar. Shit, I needed to remember that. "Yeah, thanks, Tamar."
Tamar started out of the door and then stopped. She threw a grin over her shoulder. "Now, Avery, just because you know Cade, you can't go easy on him. He has a debt to pay to Georgia Tech's athletic department."
Avery glared at me before flashing a fake smile at Tamar. "Oh, I promise to make him earn his keep."
Apparently Tamar wasn't picking up on the heavy tension between us. "Unfuckingbeliveable," I muttered under my breath.
"Excuse me?" Avery demanded.
I held up my hands. "Nothing."
Avery crossed her arms over her chest. "I never thought I'd have to see you again." She shook her head at me, which caused her ponytail to swish back and forth like a whip. "Yet here you are standing before me. I guess, I must've done something epic to piss the universe off this much to put you back in my path."
Whoa, that was sure as hell not what I was expecting. "I could say the same."
Her green eyes narrowed to fury-filled slits. "Excuse me? You have some nerve to stand here in front of me and say that considering what you did."
She was right. Only an epic tool would not immediately apologize for what I did to her. It should have been the first words out of my mouth. And not just to make things run smoothly here at The Ark, but because it was the right thing to do. After all, she had truly been an innocent in the whole fucked up situation of me being an emotionally crippled bastard. I'd let her be tortured by a psychotic chick who thought she belonged to me. I'd humiliated her with my deceptive words and cruel actions. But the greatest of my crimes was I had broken her heart.
But in this instance, I was being King Epic Tool because I couldn't get those words to come out of my mouth. It wasn't something I struggled with today. I'd had three years to stay those two words. Hell, I'd started off a hundred texts, but I'd never sent them. I'd even done a few stalkerish drives by her house to say how sorry I was in person, but being an emotional pansy ass, I had never gotten out of the car.
So instead of taking the emotional high road, I went slumming. "It's been three years, Prescott. You really need to get over that."
Sports + Bad Boy + Second Chance
The Hard Way by Katie Ashley Releases on August 31st!
Add to your TBR at:
Cade Hall has always been the golden boy of the gridiron. Because of his talent at football, coupled with his father's wealth, he's always gotten his way. But when a night of drunken debauchery lands him in hot water with the college athletic board, neither his influential father nor his charming grin can save him. He finds it a total buzz kill when he is sentenced to community service with troubled youth at an inner-city shelter. But his nightmare is only beginning when his greatest high school regret is the very one in charge of the program, and she has him by the balls in more ways than one.
For Avery Prescott, senior year was a nightmare of epic proportions, and Cade Hall played the lead villain. After she fled her small town for college in the bright lights of Atlanta, she thought she had escaped the painful memories of her past. She never could have imagined Cade would waltz through the door of the outreach program she presided over. But Avery has news for Cade--she isn't the same shy, doormat of a girl she was in high school. Since she holds Cade's football future in her hands, she's more than ready to make payback a real bitch.
Will the two stay in the defensive zone or discover that sometimes life's greatest lessons are learned the hard way?
About the Author
Katie Ashley is a New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon Best-Selling author. She lives outside of Atlanta, Georgia with her daughter, Olivia, and her two very spoiled dogs. She has a slight obsession with Pinterest, The Golden Girls, Harry Potter, Shakespeare, Supernatural, Designing Women, and Scooby-Doo.
With a BA in English, a BS in Secondary English Education, and a Masters in Adolescent English Education, she spent 11 1/2 years educating the Youth of America aka teaching MS and HS English until she left to write full time in December 2012.


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Is this for real? Well, here are some facts. You decide.
Let's start with the info posted with the YouTube video. The website listed is chaptersworld.tv and the executive producer is listed as Christopher A. Jackson.
Interesting search tags. Anyway, let's check out chaptersworld.tv. There are many curious things about this website, but a quick search of the address on the contact page reveals that it's a Mailboxes & Things.
Here is the whois data for the "rapper's" website chaptersworld.tv. CIA Records' site has a similar whois with email@example.com as the contact.
"CJ" is most likely the Christopher A. Jackson listed proudly several times in the video info on YouTube and the in the video credits.
Mr. Jackson is also the administrative contact for another website – along with Seekers International, INC as the registrant company.
Kroque.com appears to be a military contractor of apparel based in California.
And if you click on the team page, you will see Chris Jackson listed as the EVP and Chief Business Development Officer, with the same business address as CIA Records.
The main question: why did a top executive of a military contractor write, produce, and fund "It's Free Swipe Yo EBT" ? Maybe he loves rap.
There are plenty of other questions left to explore regarding this video. Happy Hunting Internet.

subset: commoncrawl


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Managing Director & Senior Partner
By Antoine Gourévitch, Massimo Portincaso, Arnaud de la Tour, Nicolas Goeldel, and Usman Chaudhry
This is the first of three pieces that build on our 2019 report, The Dawn of the Deep Tech Ecosystem. It is based on the new report, Deep Tech: The Great Wave of Innovation.
Get ready for the great wave—the next big surge of innovation powered by emerging technologies and the approach of deep tech entrepreneurs. Its economic, business, and social impact will be felt everywhere because deep tech ventures aim to solve many of our most complex problems.
The great wave encompasses artificial intelligence (AI), synthetic biology, nanotechnologies, and quantum computing, among other advanced technologies. But even more significant are the convergences of technologies and of approaches that will accelerate and redefine innovation for decades to come.
As technological advances move from the lab to the marketplace, and as companies form to pursue commercial applications, we see a number of similarities in how and why they are being developed—and a powerful ecosystem is taking shape to drive their development. We witnessed the power of that ecosystem in the year just ended, as Moderna and the team of BioNTech and Pfizer separately took two COVID-19 vaccines from genomic sequence to market in less than a year. Although these companies did remarkable work at unheard-of speed, they benefited from the work of many others, including governments, academia, venture capital, and big business. All of these are critical players in the coming wave.
This article looks at how the great wave in deep tech is taking shape. Subsequent articles will examine how the revolution in nature co-design is taking shape and how the funding of emerging technologies will underpin their future. Along the way, we will answer some key questions:
Fasten your seatbelt and get ready to take a ride in the equivalent of a flying car (no fewer than seven are now under development).
Deep tech companies are a disparate group. A few, like Moderna, are already household names. Some, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, have captured the public imagination. Others deal in what was once pure science fiction (such as those flying cars). Still others work in fields that few people can describe—synthetic biology and quantum computing are two—where long-term solutions to diseases, climate change, and other problems are in active development.
Successful deep tech ventures bring together multiple talents (including scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs) to solve a problem. Often they develop brand-new technologies because no existing technology fully solves the problem at hand. In some instances, though, success depends on developing new applications for established technologies. For example, Boom Supersonic is working on a supersonic plane using only technologies with known certification paths and proven safety records. And Seaborg Technologies is working on building modular floating nuclear power plants powered by compact molten salt reactors, a decades-old technology.
Successful deep tech ventures tend to have four complementary attributes:
Despite representing a small minority of startups, deep tech ventures have an outsize impact because they attack large-scale issues and because their work is both futuristic and practical. Deep tech ventures reside in what Donald Stokes termed "Pasteur's Quadrant," combining a quest for fundamental understanding with applied
Despite the inherent risks of failure, businesses and investors have shown increasing interest in deep tech. According to our preliminary estimates, investment in deep tech (including private investments, minority stakes, mergers and acquisitions, and IPOs) more than quadrupled over a five-year period, from $15 billion in 2016 to more than $60 billion in 2020. The average disclosed amount per private investment event for startups and scale-ups rose from $13 million in 2016 to $44 million in 2020. For early-stage startups, the most recent survey by Hello Tomorrow found that the amount per investment event increased from $36,000 to $2 million between 2016 and 2019.
And funding sources are expanding. While information and communications technology (ICT) and biopharma companies continue to invest substantially in deep tech, more traditional large enterprises are becoming increasingly active. For example, Sumitomo Chemical has signed a multiyear partnership with Zymergen to bring new specialty materials to the electronics products market, and Eni has invested $50 million in Commonwealth Fusion Systems and joined its board of directors. Bayer has joined forces with Ginkgo Bioworks to reduce agriculture's reliance on carbon-intensive nitrogen fertilizers. The resulting venture, Joyn Bio uses synthetic biology to engineer nitrogen-fixing microbes that enable cereal crops to extract nitrogen from the air in a usable form. Sovereign wealth funds are playing too. Singapore's Temasek Holdings invested in JUST (plant-based egg alternatives), Commonwealth Fusion Systems (commercial fusion energy), and Memphis Meats (animal-cell-based meat).
More and more mainstream companies and institutions are recognizing that solutions to big problems—and the future of innovation—lie in deep tech.
The first wave of modern business innovation started in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with breakthroughs such as the Bessemer process for manufacturing steel and the Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia.
Following World War II, the second wave of modern business innovation—the information revolution—gave birth to large-company R&D, particularly in the ICT and pharma sectors. Bell Labs, IBM, and Xerox PARC became household names and Nobel Prize workshops. Merck alone launched seven major new drugs during the 1980s.
In the third wave, the digital revolution, two guys in a garage (or a Harvard dorm room) led the innovation charge, which resulted in the rise of Silicon Valley and, later, China's Gold Coast as global centers of computing and communications technology and economic growth. At the same time, the new field of biotech, also driven by entrepreneurs, fueled much of the innovation in pharmaceuticals.
The wave now taking shape as older barriers to innovation crumble embraces a new model and promises to radically broaden and deepen innovation in every business sector. The increasing power and falling cost of computing and the rise of technology platforms are the most important contributors. Cloud computing is steadily improving performance and expanding breadth of use. Biofoundries are becoming for synthetic biology what cloud computing already is for computation. Similar platforms are emerging in advanced materials (Kebotix and VSPARTICLE are two examples).
Meanwhile, costs continue to fall, including those related to equipment, technology, and access to infrastructure. Increasing use of standards, toolkits, and an open approach to innovation, paired with the ever-increasing availability of information and data, plays an important role as well.
Successful deep tech ventures rely on a threefold approach (see Exhibit 1):
Problem Orientation. By addressing complex and fundamental problems, deep tech ventures target high-impact opportunities. Rather than relying on known or established solutions, they draw their inspiration from design thinking. Ventures then find the best technologies to solve such problems.
Problem orientation also serves a technical purpose in a deep tech venture, shaping the venture's operations, organization, and market strategy. It helps the venture remain purpose driven and outcome oriented and enables it to develop the right operating system, which can be crucial for scaling. Setting purpose through problem orientation helps ensure talent retention, global momentum, and a coherent dialogue among multidisciplinary teams.
Converging Approaches. The convergence of approaches is another prerequisite for deep tech and a key enabler for companies combining a quest for fundamental understanding with applied research. (See Exhibit 2.)
It starts with design, or problem solving, through interdisciplinary context analysis, problem finding and framing, and idea generation. Advanced science provides the theory that underpins the solution. Engineering ensures technical and commercial (or at least economic) feasibility. But what sounds like a linear process actually happens in parallel, and therein lies much of the challenge of deep tech innovation. Science and engineering must be at the table from the very beginning of the problem solving. Their depth and competence powerfully influence the solutions that emerge.
A good example of converging approaches is Cellino, which brings together a clear problem orientation (making regenerative medicine possible), science (stem cell research), and engineering (turning adult cells into stem cells). Another example is Ginkgo Bioworks, which applies a strong scientific capability to its work in organism design. The company looks for problems in areas where the science has high potential and builds businesses around them. It often works in partnership with investors or corporations to overcome engineering and operational hurdles. In addition to its joint venture with Bayer in microbial fertilizers, Ginkgo has created a company to develop food ingredients (Motif), and it has partnered with Batelle and other strategic investors in bioremediation (Allonnia).
Converging Technologies. Computation and cognition are shaping the world and, in combination with sensing and motion, have led to such advances as autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things, and robotics. Now, advances in gene sequencing, editing, and writing, as well as in nanotechnology, are clearing a new path for innovation. Researchers are starting to develop tools to design and produce inventions at nanoscopic scale (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter—the size at which fluctuations in individual particles can affect the behavior of systems), enabling companies to leverage nature for product design. This capability has deep implications on its own—but when added to technological capabilities in matter and energy, computation and cognition, and sensors and motion, it allows innovative companies to address previously unsolvable problem sets. (See Exhibit 3.) This is also a defining attribute of deep tech.
Consider the implications in just one field: biology. The ability to use AI and bioprinting to predict the folding of proteins will revolutionize drug discovery and medicine. Ginkgo Bioworks and other biofoundries, which sit at the intersection of the three dimensions, use AI to design genetic constructs and then rely on robotic process automation to build and test them, leading to incredible advances in organism programming. Similarly, Zymergen uses biofabrication techniques that involve advanced AI, automation, and biological engineering to create never-before-seen materials. And Cellino is combining stem cell biology, laser physics, and machine learning in its work on scaling the transformation of adult cells into stem cells.
In the field of physics, where matter and energy join the innovation equation, Commonwealth Fusion Systems aims to accelerate the path to commercial net-gain fusion energy by confining fusion-grade plasmas with strong magnetic fields, unlocking the potential for limitless, clean energy.
The consequences of technological convergence are very different for startups and more-established players. Deep tech startups use their problem-solving orientation to combine emerging technologies in ways that make the previously impossible possible, often at an exponential pace. Established players often struggle with this dynamic—for example, in embracing digital technologies, let alone dealing with the convergence between computing and cognition and sensing and motion. Adding another converging technology to the mix is often more confounding than clarifying in terms of setting a future direction for R&D.
Design-Build-Test-Learn. If converging approaches and technologies inform the deep tech approach, the design-build-test-learn (DBTL) engineering cycle is the engine that drives it. DBTL provides the bridge between the problem to be addressed and the science and technologies to be put in place. In fact, the problem orientation is a prerequisite for DBTL, since every iteration in the DBTL cycle involves measuring its contribution toward solving the problem at hand.
The benefits of DBTL are similar to those that the lean build-measure-learn loop provides (such as speed and agility), but DBTL introduces several major advances. First, deep tech's impact on process speed is massive—often orders of magnitude more. Whereas the build-measure-learn loop occurs in the world of bits (that is, software), the DBTL cycle happens in the world of bits and atoms. It includes technologies such AI, quantum-inspired algorithms, advanced sensing, robotics, and additive manufacturing. Bringing together these technologies leads to step changes in capability. For example, in early demonstrations of its tech platform, Kebotix, an advanced materials and robotics company, reduced the development time for OLED (organic light-emitting diode) materials from 7 years to 1.5 years.
Second, the multidimensional design phase of the DBTL cycle is a source of competitive advantage. Each step in the design cycle has its own peculiarities, and the supporting technologies evolve swiftly. Frequently, processes that work in the lab do not work at scale, so deep tech ventures must allocate time and resources to ensure that the minimum viable product (MVP) that they design extracts the maximum value out of the cycle and can advance at the maximum viable speed. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, for example, chose to use high-temperature superconducting magnets rather than plasma physics for its MVP because plasma physics was unsuitable for fast and reliable application of the DBTL cycle and would have held back overall advancement.
Third, DBTL in deep tech, as in software design, plays a de-risking role—but in deep tech, the de-risking goes far beyond market risk to apply to the entire venture. In each iteration of the product, starting with the initial MVP, the deep tech DBTL cycle serves as the main de-risking instrument, and each new version must carry a certification of the retired risk. Every successful iteration through the DBTL cycle thus represents a milestone in the development of the venture and is relevant not only for management but for investors and all other stakeholders involved.
Here's how each stage of DBTL works in a deep tech context.
The core of the innovation process is the design stage, where much of the value is created. Here, faster access to information and cheaper and more powerful computing equipment accelerate a hypothesis-driven process. In the past ten years, a massive increase in available information, combined with faster and more open-source access, has fostered collaboration and open innovation. Faster, more affordable, and more specialized computing equipment simplifies the task of designing models. Engineers can scan prototypes and equip them with sensors to provide real-time performance data that loops back into the design process, enabling the object to co-design itself.
For example, Airbus relied on generative design techniques using Autodesk software, advances in material science, and 3D printers to design an airplane partition panel that is twice as light as previous designs, reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
Similarly, designers can use augmented and virtual reality tools to devise a product without having to physically build it, reducing the number of physical prototypes needed and increasing the precision of each iteration. This approach simultaneously lowers building costs and improves product design. As advanced technologies become more accessible, more people will be able to participate in the design phase, even if they do not have extensive scientific backgrounds.
In the future, quantum computers will possess vast calculation capabilities, processing enormous amounts of information and executing some algorithms exponentially faster than classical machines. This will open up new possibilities for computation-based endeavors. Quantum computing is likely to have a major impact in such fields as biopharma, chemicals, materials design, and fluid dynamics. Its power is already at work in the form of quantum-inspired algorithms. The French startup Aqemia claims that its quantum-inspired algorithm enables it to identify the most suitable binding molecule for drug development 10,000 times faster than is possible through conventional approaches. Similarly, London-based startup Rahko is building a quantum chemistry platform that can simulate materials to discover and develop new molecules with unparalleled speed and accuracy—and at greatly reduced cost.
During the build and test stages, companies can achieve huge economies of scale, high speed and throughput, and much improved precision, thanks to advances in platforms and robotic process automation and a continuing decline in costs. Large communities of users harness and contribute to emerging platforms in multiple deep tech fields, giving even small startups scale and access capabilities that would be too costly, time consuming, or technologically challenging to develop in-house. Companies can use cloud computing platforms, synthetic biology materials platforms, and shared spaces to build and test designs. Robotics process automation transfers the testing process from humans to bots and automates it. Testing runs 24-7, produces fewer errors, and can incorporate multitasking elements, leading to a big increase in the number of tests conducted and, in turn, to faster achievement of a better-performing solution. For instance, enEvolv (which Zymergen acquired in 2020) creates chemicals, enzymes, and small molecules on the basis of an automated process that builds and tests billions of unique designs from many modifications of one DNA molecule.
AI and other advanced technologies speed up the learning stage, too. Companies compete on learning, and those that learn best and quickest win. With AI, companies can run huge volumes of data through machine learning algorithms that learn from the characteristics of the developed product and the test results. The algorithms can ascertain which type of product is opportune and which types are not, and can automatically return the results to the design stage via feedback loops. The rate of learning increases exponentially, with time scales plummeting from weeks or months to hours or even minutes.
Kebotix combines machine learning algorithms that model molecular structures with an autonomous robotics lab that synthesizes, tests, and feeds back the results to the algorithms. By applying heuristics, the algorithms adapt to the results from the lab, creating a closed loop for fast learning and simulation.
The US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has produced major technological innovations (the internet and GPS are two) by thinking big and taking chances. But how does it decide which potential advances are worth pursuing, given the inherent risks of the effort?
Former DARPA director George Heilmeier assembled a series of questions known as the "Heilmeier Catechism" to help agency officials evaluate proposed research programs. Among the questions included: What are the limits of current practice? What is new in your approach, and why do you think it will be successful? If you are successful, what difference will it make? What are the risks? How much will it cost? How long will it take?
In a similar vein, deep tech ventures take shape across four moments of truth that occur in parallel, each posing a critical question (see Exhibit 4):
Each of these four general questions requires restatement in the context of the specific venture under consideration to determine whether solving the problem through the deep tech approach is probable, possible, real, and profitable. For example, Moderna, the first company to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus and the second to bring it to market, faced these four moments of truth:
Moderna was successful because it found affirmative answers to each of these big questions. It also benefited from having a balanced mix of founders who possessed relevant scientific, engineering, and business skills. Moderna's team included a venture capitalist, academic experts in stem cell research and regenerative biology and bioengineering, and a former biotech CEO. In addition, it tapped into a full ecosystem of investors, partners, and supporters, including the US government (DARPA and BARDA), big pharma (AstraZeneca, Merck, and Vertex), academia (Karolinska Institutet and Institut Pasteur), and foundations (Gates).
The challenge in dealing with the four moments of truth is that all of them must be addressed early on, more or less at the same time. The relevance of the question associated with each moment of truth will vary over time, but addressing all of them is essential to de-risking the endeavor by anticipating difficulties and adapting strategy and execution as needed.
Anticipating trouble is not specific to deep tech ventures, of course, but it is a key factor in successful deep tech ventures. The importance of addressing the four moments of truth from the outset is evident in the case of Seaborg Technologies, which is developing a new type of nuclear reactor—a compact molten salt reactor (CMSR)—that promises to function as a scalable, inherently safe, cheaper-than-coal, dispatchable power source by 2025. CMSRs address a major safety concern of nuclear power generation. Because they use molten salt (a fluid) as a fuel, instead of traditional solid fuel, their reactor cannot melt down or explode. Any breach of the reactor will result in leakage of the liquid fuel, which will then solidify without harmful release of radioactive gases to air or water. Seaborg delivers its CMSR in modular floating power plants, nuclear power barges, where the reactor can operate for 12 years without refueling. This permits deployment of the CMSRs with minimal focus on logistics and not-in-my-backyard concerns.
Seaborg addressed the fourth moment of truth—what it must do to change reality and enable CMSRs to become the new normal—from the get-go. By building floating power plants, Seaborg introduced a completely new approach to regulatory approval. A molten salt nuclear reactor embedded in a concrete power plant would take years to get regulatory approval. And in countries with limited expertise in the field, finding a local competent regulator (a regulatory requirement) would have entailed an equally lengthy process.
Historically, these regulatory issues have been a big hurdle to delivering nuclear energy in some areas of the world, including Southeast Asia (a region where solar and wind energy also face challenges). Seaborg's nuclear power barge follows the regulatory framework of the American Bureau of Shipping's New Technology Qualification process, a five-phase process that aligns with product development phases. The power barge can be built in a country with competent regulators, approved there, and then shipped to a location overseas.
Seaborg is still engaged in resolving its the third moment of truth. It identified the problem and framed the paradigm, finding a way to make safe, cheap, and clean nuclear energy possible. Now, it is addressing the question of building it today. Its unique approach to regulatory approval already supplies a big part of the answer: Seaborg's power barge can become a new normal because it provides safe, cheap, and clean nuclear energy without having regulatory constraints limit the places and the speed at which it can be deployed.
The example of Seaborg's CMSR barge highlights another important element of deep tech ventures. The fission physics underlying molten salt reactors is well established, and Seaborg is not innovating on that path. Instead, it is innovating through the convergence of different disciplines and technologies, combining neutronics and fuel dynamics with computational advances, looking at advanced materials to overcome corrosion and radioactivity resistance, and addressing the regulatory approval process in a novel way. Seaborg's approach focuses on putting all of the pieces together to achieve its goal and, through this problem-oriented approach, adopting a new perspective to come up with innovative responses to the challenge it faces.
Despite its potential, deep tech must overcome multiple challenges in order to reach its full potential. Four challenges in particular stand out, with implications not only for deep tech ventures but also for all participants in the ecosystem:
The Need for Reimagination. People are not always quick to see how science and technology can reshape processes or solve problems. It took businesses 20 years to rethink the factory floor after electric engines replaced steam.
For deep tech ventures, which are often based on applying a technological breakthrough to solve a problem, finding the right business framework can be a major challenge. Many struggle to identify a compelling value proposition through a clear reimagination of value chains and business models.
Often the principal challenge for large corporations that want to expand their innovation programs by engaging with deep tech is to imagine products and processes that come from a very different source or process. In previous decades, 77% of industry-leading companies were still leading five years later, but today, in a more dynamic market where continuous innovation and reinvention are the keys to success, this figure has almost halved to 44%.
In this regard, big companies may face the toughest challenge of any participants in the deep tech ecosystem. Apart from needing to understand the applications and use cases of emerging technologies in order to fully engage deep tech, big companies must leverage counterfactual as well as factual skills, cultivate playfulness, encourage cognitive diversity, and ensure that senior people are regularly exposed to the unknown.
The Need to Push Science Boundaries. Although science has made enormous progress in many fields, in many areas researchers are still only scratching the surface of understanding what is possible. In biology, for example, the complexity of nature is far from fully understood. And in chemistry, the complexity of nanoparticles as multicomponent 3D structures, for example, remains a big challenge for design and engineering.
Despite increasing interest in soft robotics (building robots from materials similar to those in living organisms), researchers have developed relatively few prototypes. The behavior of soft materials is difficult to comprehend and therefore hard to control and activate. Quantum computing has enormous potential, but multiple technical challenges hinder progress. Scientists have made enormous strides in AI and machine learning, but many issues are still unresolved.
Governments, universities, and startups can all work to push the boundaries of science and to translate technological capabilities into business applications.
Difficulties in Scaling Up. Deep tech companies develop fundamental innovations that often yield new physical products, but they may lack relevant scale-up experience.
Scaling up a deep tech physical product—and a related manufacturing process—can be complex and costly. In addition to establishing suitable physical facilities, ventures must overcome engineering challenges in a way that meets design-to-cost parameters. Corporations and governments can help—the former by lending expertise in engineering and manufacturing at scale, and the latter by serving as early test customers for the new product.
Difficulties in Accessing Funding. Investment in deep tech has risen in recent years, but the current investment model remains a hindrance. In particular, today's widely followed venture capital model is insufficient in scope and unevenly weighted toward certain technologies such as AI and ML and life sciences.
Making things more challenging is the difficulty in deep tech of shifting from the laboratory stage (which tends to be grant- or subsidy-funded) to investment-based venture funding. Many private equity and venture capital funds are structurally constrained (by lifetime, size, and incentive limits) from investing in deep tech. Most do not have the talent to fully understand the science and technology risks. Moreover, many venture capital funds have lost their original "venture" mindset and instead follow the lead of others or make safer bets on more-established and better-understood technologies.
For all the harm it has done, the COVID-19 pandemic has also shined a spotlight on deep tech's ability to solve a human problem of historic proportions—and to do it speedily, efficiently, and at relatively low cost. In its essence, the coming great wave brings a new approach to innovation by seeking to solve fundamental and complex problems.
Deep tech draws together three approaches (advanced science, engineering, and design) to master problem complexity and three technology domains (matter and energy, computation and motion, and sense and motion) to leverage their combined solving potential. Powering and accelerating this new innovation paradigm are the DBTL cycle and continuous learning.
The world faces other big problems, too, starting with climate change. Deep tech's potential for disruption is unprecedented, and the breadth of problems it could address remains for us to uncover.
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With a Little Help is my first serious experiment in self-publishing. I've published many novels, short story collections, books of essays and so on with publishers, and it's all been very good and satisfying and educational and so on, but it seems like it's time to try something new.
You see, I've always released my work under open licenses from the Creative Commons project, so that my readers could share and remix my works. A good number of these readers wanted to know why I didn't distribute the physical book as well, and see what a writer working on his own could do.
So here we have it. With a Little Help, consists of 12 stories, all reprints except for "Epoch," which was commissioned by the Ubuntu project's Mark Shuttleworth for $10,000 (this being the most expensive option for buying the book — don't worry, there are cheaper editions). The book is available in many forms:
Paperback, on demand from Lulu.com: $12.60.
Available in four covers, with art by Frank Wu, Rick Lieder, Rudy Rucker, and Pablo Defendini (who also did the book's design, working from John Berry's wonderful typography). Every month, I add a new appendix to this edition, detailing my balance sheet for the project, as a service to others contemplating a similar venture.
250 super-limited hardcovers: $275.
These are hand-bound at the Wyvern Bindery in Clerkenwell, London, and printed by Oldacres of Hatton Garden. Each book has original paper ephemera (see Flickr set) donated by various writer friends to the project, and comes with a SD card bearing the full text of the book as well as the full audiobook.
Audiobook: Pay what you want.
I tapped many voice actor friends (Neil Gaiman, Mur Lafferty, Wil Wheaton, Leo Laporte, Emily Hurson, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Hugh AD Spencer, Mary Robinette Kowal, JC Hutchins, Roy Trumbull, Jonathan Coulton, Spider Robinson, Jesse Brown, and Russell Galen) to record the stories in this volume, and their recordings were mastered by John Taylor Williams, who also masters my podcast. (Podcasters, see here)
Electronic editions: Name your price.
The full text of all the stories in this collection is available name-your-price downloads under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, meaning that you can copy them and make your own versions, but you can't make money off them and you have to let others remix your creations. The audiobooks are likewise available as name-your-price downloads on the same terms.


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Kohana 3.0 comes with a robust module for working with databases. By default, the database module supports drivers for MySQL and PDO, but new drivers can be made for other database servers.
The database module is included with the Kohana 3.0 install, but needs to be enabled before you can use it. To enable, open your application/bootstrap.php
file and modify the call to [Kohana::modules] by including the database module like so:
'database' => MODPATH.'database',
Next, you will then need to configure the database module to connect to your database.
Once that is done then you can make queries and use the results.
The database module also provides a config driver (for storing configuration in the database) and a session driver.


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Music Theory is like every other aspect of music, you need to work at it from the ground up and you will only get the benefit of it if you use it in what you play! In this video I will talk a bit about what the very fundamental things are that you need to know well and why you need to know that part of Music Theory. I will also talk about why you should apply it and how it will benefit your playing.
0:00 Intro
0:37 The Foundation You Need to know
0:42 The Backdoor Dominant example
0:55 Get the basics down – What you need to know (in all keys)!
1:29 Putting The Theory into Practice – What is Music Theory
2:00 Apply Music Theory to Music
2:34 Study the theory that fits the music you play.
2:51 Enter Sandman does not have an Augmented 6th Chord
3:13 Recognize the stages of Having a skill – The Blues
4:07 Recognize the stages of Having a skill – The Secondary Dom7th
5:26 Learn a lot of music! Something to understand the theory with!
6:07 Some examples of Songs with IV IVm
6:27 Some Songs that modulate a major 3rd up
6:41 Use Theory to understand styles.
6:48 Go beyond your own genre and try to understand the music
7:40 How do you use or study Theory?
8:02 Quick Analysis of Creep – comparing it to a few other songs
9:13 Like the video? Check out My Patreon Page!


text:
Naughts & Crosses on Pink Silk Self-Tie Bow Tie
Naughts & Crosses on Pink Silk Self-Tie Bow Tie
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text:
Because we as a culture can mistakenly equate beauty with shallowness, it's taken time for some to realize what a great actor Colin Farrell is. He's always been a charismatic screen presence, though in recent years he's revealed striking new emotional depths as a leading man in movies like The Lobster and this year's After Yang. He's also proved willing to bury his good looks under mounds of prosthetics as the villainous Penguin in The Batman.
Farrell gives what may be his strongest performance yet in The Banshees of Inisherin, and one of the reasons he's so good in it is that he's playing a character who, perhaps like Farrell himself, is used to being underestimated. His character, Pádraic, is a sweet-souled farmer who's spent his entire life on Inisherin, a small, fictional island off the coast of Ireland.
It's 1923, and life here is simple and repetitive, which is why it sends off small shockwaves one day when Colm, Pádraic's older best friend, refuses to join him for their usual afternoon pint down at the pub. He soon learns that Colm, who's played by Brendan Gleeson, has decided to end their decades-long friendship with nary a word of explanation.
In time, the truth comes out: Colm finds Pádraic dull, and is tired of listening to the younger man's endless yammering — especially since it keeps Colm from pursuing his passion: playing and composing violin music.
Gleeson is terrific at showing you the tenderness beneath his outward stoicism, and what's heartbreaking is that Colm does still like Pádraic — but he also knows that their friendship is draining him. But Pádraic can't accept Colm's decision. He tries cajoling his former friend, then pleading with him, then badgering him.
At one point, Colm becomes so irritated that he threatens to physically harm himself if Pádraic doesn't leave him alone. And since this is a movie written and directed by Martin McDonagh, the British Irish playwright and filmmaker with a taste for baroque comic violence, you know it isn't an idle threat.
This movie isn't as grisly as some of McDonagh's earlier stage and screen works — I still have fond memories of seeing his blood-soaked play The Lieutenant of Inishmore years ago, and somewhat less fond memories of his Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Compared with that movie's wildly uneven mix of comedy and tragedy, The Banshees of Inisherin is a quieter, gentler work, but its melancholy also cuts much deeper. McDonagh opens the story with gorgeous, postcard-worthy images of Inisherin, all lush green landscapes and even a rainbow in the sky. But by the end, he has quashed any sweet or sentimental thoughts we might harbor toward this isolated community, where people can be spiteful and small-minded and mock those who want to leave or strive for something better.
Few people know this as well as Pádraic's bookish sister, Siobhan, played by a terrific Kerry Condon. She loves her brother dearly, flaws and all. She's also one of the few people in town who can connect with Colm intellectually, and she understands why he wants to be left alone.
There are other colorful supporting characters, too: a nasty policeman, a doom-prophesying old woman and an annoying young man played, with marvelous pathos, by Barry Keoghan. And I haven't even mentioned the animal cast: Two of the movie's most important characters are Colm's pet collie and Pádraic's pet donkey, noble creatures who put the pettiness and stupidity of humans to shame.
There's something a little glib about that idea — and also about the way The Banshees of Inisherin uses the Irish Civil War, raging in the background of the story, as a counterpoint to the conflict between Pádraic and Colm. But there's nothing glib about how these two characters are written. To watch Farrell and Gleeson rage against each other is to better understand what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. It's been a while since a movie extracted this much drama from the end of a beautiful friendship.
Copyright 2022 Fresh Air. To see more, visit Fresh Air.


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Bronchostop® Syrup & Bronchostop® Solution contain the pure herbal active ingredients thyme & marshmallow.
Raspberry juice
The raspberry juice gives Bronchostop® its pleasant taste, which is loved by young and old
Thyme herb extract and Marshmallow root extract
Thyme is known for centuries as an expectorant, thus facilitating the coughing up of mucus. Marshmallow root has shown to be effective in the relief of dry cough by putting a protective layer on the irritated mucosa reducing the urge to cough


text:
Title: Stricken
Series: The War Scrolls Series #1
By: A.K. Morgen
Publication Date: March 8, 2016
Publisher: Limitless Publishing
Genre: NA Urban Fantasy/PNR
Tour Schedule
Amazon US - http://amzn.to/25pHliJ
Amazon UK - http://goo.gl/sPlgGR
Amazon CA - https://goo.gl/UtYBfD
Killian stepped forward, forcing her to tilt her head back to look up at him. He still seemed so big to her. He still overwhelmed her. But he didn't frighten her anymore.
"You look tired." She fought the urge to lift her hand to touch his gorgeous face.
"I am," he said, the corner of his lips turning up in a half smile.
He stared down at her, his half smile slipping. A dizzying parade of emotions swirled through his eyes. She couldn't read them all, but she understood enough. He felt as torn as she did.
"Will I remember you three years from now?" she whispered, her heart aching with the fear that she would forget him as she had so much else…and with fear that she would remember him. That she would survive this nightmare and he would haunt her for the rest of her days like so much else did.
"Do you want to remember me?" He took another step in her direction.
"I don't know." She frowned, confused. "You make me feel like maybe the world isn't so bad. Like maybe I'm safe with you. I don't think I want to forget that."
Killian tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and cupped her cheek gently in one big hand. "You are safe with me. I won't let anyone hurt you, Aubrey."
She stared at him for a long, silent moment. He'd promised before that he wouldn't hurt her, but even then an unspoken fear had stood between them like a wall. A little voice whispered that if she got too close, he would hurt her as badly as the things in her past hurt. That voice had stopped whispering when he'd kissed her today, and wasn't that odd?
"You hurt me today."
He bowed his head, letting his hand fall away from her face. "I'm sorry."
Her heart ached a little at the agonized way he said it. As if it shamed him to know he'd hurt her. As if, maybe, he cared more than he should too.
"Why did you?" she asked, not accusing, but curious. She wanted to understand him. No, she needed to understand him on some level she couldn't even explain to herself. "You wanted me, didn't you?"
His gaze sought hers, honesty shining from his angel-bright eyes. "More than you know."
Aubrey took a deep breath, letting her lungs fill with air even as her heart filled with his confession. And just as quickly, the buoyant feeling vanished. "It doesn't change anything, though, does it?" she whispered.
"Do you want it to?"
She hesitated for a long moment, unsure. And then her shoulders slumped, the breath she'd taken expelling in a long sigh. "I'm sorry."
Killian gave her a sad smile and reached for her again. He swept a finger beneath her eye, collecting the teardrop she hadn't even realized had fallen. "No apologies," he whispered, bringing his finger to his mouth. He stuck out the tip of his tongue and lapped that single bead of moisture from his fingertip. "You owe me nothing."
If that was true, why did she feel like crying?
Social Media Links


text:
There's much more information at DaveGorman.com
Friday, July 31, 2009
Hello Ardlui... is anyone there?
I know I'm going to be exhausted but I want to try and perform a show every night because in some ways I think it's easier to maintain momentum that way. A night off can be like letting the elastic out of the system and it gets harder to wind yourself up to top gear the next day.
Organising the shows has been a far more complicated affair than normal. With a normal tour you go wherever theatres want you. You play when they're available... which is why on most tours you see people going from Southampton to Glasgow to Portsmouth to Newcastle or whatever. If that's when the theatre is available, you fit it in. But with the cycling tour that obviously isn't possible. Every venue has to be within range of the last and the minute one gig was firmed up in the diary all of the others had to fall into place. The only sensible date for a gig in Preston was the day after the Manchester gig and so on. There have been one or two venues along the way who've bent over backwards to accommodate the peculiar circumstances - and I'm hugely grateful to them for that.
In the long stretch after Exeter travelling out east to Lowestoft then north as far as Lancaster the country is well populated and there are so many good sized towns dotted around the place that if we couldn't find a venue available on a given day we were able to look elsewhere and take a slightly different route instead.
But after Glasgow there really isn't that much versatility available. The route takes me out to Ardnamurchan - the most westerly point of the mainland - and then back across the country heading north and east and it's not exactly overflowing with people or towns which is why some of the venues are a little more improvised. I'm not complaining about that, I really like the fact that doing a tour in this unconventional way has led me to play in such a wide variety of venues. There can't be many tours that take in halls ranging from 30 to 2000 seats.
One of the trickiest to arrange has been Ardlui. There isn't really another town in range that day and they don't have a community centre or village hall or similar. In fact we were told they were trying to raise the money to build one. So we suggested that if we could find a makeshift venue for the evening we'd donate the money raised to the fund. I thought we'd found a solution - and we probably have - but the trail seems to have gone a little cold.
While the local paper seems to have confirmed that the show is welcome at the Ardlui Hotel, we're finding it rather difficult to actually speak to anyone from the hotel itself. I reckon it's just us fussy London media types panicking unnecessarily but I'm told that a lot of phone messages have been left and e-mails sent without reply and it's really difficult to trust that the show is definitely happening without actually speaking to someone to confirm it. Fingers crossed.
And if you're in Ardlui, could you tap on the window as you pass by and let them know we're coming.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Not Just Wrong...
If you want to write a piece saying that comedy has got more fey/offensive/sweary/scientific/pious/surreal/real/personal/abstract/aggressive/passive/passive-aggressive/stupid/intelligent/subtle/unsubtle/satirical/knowing/gag-based/anecdotal or any other adjective you care to mention it would be easy to find five comedians whose material you could use to support your hypothesis. As the vast majority of people never go to see live comedy in any form your readers will accept your chosen sample as being representative and therefore accept your hypothesis.
To those of us who feel we know better this is annoying. Most of the time any such annoyance is wasted. The articles aren't of much import. They distract a few people during their lunch hour. The fact that a few thousand people read a piece arguing that comedy has recently gone all fey won't do anything to change the comic landscape. The fey comedians quoted will go down just as well that night as they did the night before and the unfey comics will carry on regardless. Pfft.
But yesterday's Guardian piece (and indeed most of the rest of their "comedy special") seemed to go beyond this normal annoyance. It wasn't just wrong, it seemed to be malignly, dangerously so.
It's titled, The New Offenders Of Stand Up Comedy and the idea seems to be that comedy has thrown off the shackles of political correctness and is now setting out to offend. Like I say, it would be easy to find five comedians and use their material to make this - or any - case.
So what's odd about this article - what makes it quite so annoying - is that it takes the material of comedians who are quite deliberately not doing that instead. By cherry picking words and removing all context it steamrollers through facts and makes its argument anyway.
I'm not familiar with the material of all those quoted - and at least one of the comics referred to is really not to my taste - but I have seen a fair bit of Richard Herring's work in the last couple of years. If I hadn't I would have assumed from yesterday's Guardian that Richard was a racist comedian. Or at best, a comedian doing some borderline material about race under a cloak of irony. He's not. His material is explicitly anti-racist. So, the article says:
This year, veteran comic Richard Herring is sporting a Hitler moustache for his show, Hitler Moustache, in which he argues "that racists have a point".
Then there's a new sentence. About another comic. So the summation of what Richard's new show is about is, according to The Guardian, "that racists have a point." What an amazing charge to level at someone.
My understanding of the show is that by attempting to reclaim the toothbrush moustache from fascism (Hitler) for comedy (Chaplin) it opens up a broader discussion about the issues. (I've made it sound dry and pious now... which I'm sure it isn't.)
Rather than arguing that "racists have a point", Richard says, "let's assume they have a point and see where it takes us" and then follows the logical argument through to its farcical conclusions... thus demonstrating that if they have a point it's a horribly flawed one. That's probably not the conclusion you'd draw from the sentence, in which he argues "that racists have a point."
Later in the article it says:
In another routine, he claims to support the BNP's policy to deport all black people from the UK.Again it's hard to imagine a reader unfamiliar with Richard reaching anything other than the wrong conclusion. I mean... it's pretty clear isn't it.
Only I've seen the routine in question and it does no such thing. The journalist responsible has seen it too. I generally hate it when I see material quoted because not only does it generally work worse on the page, it also robs the comedian in question of the ability to surprise some of his/her audience. So with apologies to Richard, I'll tell you how I think that routine works.
It starts with Richard suggesting that anyone who votes for the BNP should have their right to vote taken away from them. In a lot of clubs this suggestion gets a cheer from the largely liberal crowd. But then Richard points out that taking away their right to vote would be a form of fascism in itself. And he follows the logic through a series of well-if-I-think-that-then-this-must-be-true-and-if-that's-true-I-must-think-this-too contortions with each new revelation being more ridiculous and comic than the last. By following this rat-run of (flawed) logic through he ends up in a confused place where his right-on desire to remove the right to vote from BNP voters means that he also supports their views and so wants to remove his own right to vote as well. It's a ridiculous, circular piece of playing with ideas, of starting somewhere well-intentioned but ending up somewhere ludicrous and the only conclusion any sensible audience member could draw from it is that if you want to defeat the BNP you can't do it by lowering yourself to their level.
Which is quite different to, "In another routine, he claims to support the BNP's policy to deport all black people from the UK."
Like I say, normally articles like this are best shrugged off. But I went to bed thinking about this one last night and I woke up still thinking about it this morning. It's got nothing to do with me. Richard and I do know each other, we're friends but we aren't bosom buddies. But that really isn't important. This isn't the fleeting ire one feels at seeing a friend get an undeservedly bad review. This particular article goes beyond being just plain wrong. Not only does it brand someone as racist it knowingly ignores plenty of facts in order to do so.
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Blackberry Crumble Tumble
I'd forgotten how good that patch is for blackberry picking. I reckon we must have passed 20 or more people out there scavenging in the brambles. I picked some last year and they were ace - any fruit you pick yourself in the wild will always taste better than the stuff you pay for, it's the rules. So on Sunday, we decided to return... only this time we brought tupperware.
The camera was still mounted on the helmet and I decided it was more trouble than it was worth to unstrap it so I plugged it in and filmed once more. Here's the video:
I've used the music I used on my first cycling video from a few weeks back when I was trying out the not-quite-up-to-snuff GoPro Hero camera. It's by Misty's Big Adventure who I've mentioned in this parish before now. They're ace.
Anyway... as you can see I took a bit of a fall on the way back. It felt horribly dramatic at the time - I was pretty sure I was going to land on my chin but managed to get my hands out in time to break my fall. My gloves got pretty torn up... which makes me very glad I was wearing them. I was wearing a helmet too although I'm pleased to say it wasn't necessary.
I cycled home slowly, not really able to fully grip the handlebars as the heels of both palms were starting to swell up. Once home I had a cup of hot, sweet tea and put my hands on ice but was aware that I couldn't get the full range of movement out of either thumb. The pain - and the swelling - reminded me of the time I fractured a bone in my toe a few years ago and I was getting worried that I'd done something similar in one, or both, hands.
So I took a trip to my local A&E. I've got nothing but good things to say about the Royal London. They were ace. Polite, caring, charming and quick. If you're going to visit your local A&E I can recommend early Sunday evening. If you can hurt yourself before the drunks come out to play you really shouldn't be waiting long so, y'know, try and do it then. Or not at all obviously. Yeah... not at all is probably best.
Anyway... no bones were broken. Painkillers were administered and the swelling is going down. My biggest worry was that I'd have done something that would make cycling in September impossible. What would happen to the tour then? Tickets have been sold... I'd have to show up. But if the bike-ride that's become a bike-ride-tour was to become just-a-tour before it had even started I think I'd pretty glum about it.
There was nobody else involved. Just a wet iron plate under a bridge that made my wheel slide away from under me.
Still, the blackberry and apple crumble was divine. Normally I'd have it with custard or ice cream. But ibuprofen seemed to be just as good.
The camera I've been experimenting with for cycling videos has a big drawback: the amount it can record in one stretch.
I have no purpose in mind for filming the ride - indeed I've turned down the opportunity to make a documentary about this autumn's tour - but as I've never done anything on that scale before I feel like I ought to film what I can of it. But if I have to stop every hour or so to change a memory card then it's more disruptive than anything else and it would change the experience rather than record it.
So I've upgraded to a new cycling camera - the POV1.5 from VIO - which can, in theory, record for a much longer stretch. The above video is my first test for it.
I've always been quite guarded about my private life in these parts (I figure there's been enough honesty to go round on stage without spooning any more in here) but for what it's worth the girl who cycles ahead of me at times is my girlfriend, the delightful B.
I reckon 3 or 4 minutes is about the limit for these kind of things and it's going to be impossible to get a whole day of riding down to that kind of time without making it impossibly jerky. This is about 60 minutes sped up and condensed and it's quite nauseating as it is. I certainly won't be able to edit videos as I go on the tour so all that's going to happen is I'm going to finish my 1500 miles of cycling and have hundreds of hours of footage backed up somewhere. But, hey, I might think of something for it and it's better to have the option than not.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Chain Reaction
On Tuesday night, feeling kind of jet-lagged from Latitude, I took part in the Radio 4 show Chain Reaction.
To their credit, Diana Ross doesn't sing the theme tune.
Each show is an interview but that episode's interviewee becomes the next ep's interviewer with a new interviewee and so on. So I become a link in the chain between Robert Llewellyn and Frank Skinner and it worked out that it was convenient to record both those episodes on the same night.
It was only when I got to the venue that I started to feel the unusual pressure of that situation. You can't really prepare for being interviewed so there's no way of feeling in control. But if the audience didn't enjoy me being quizzed by Robert... well then it would be really uncomfortable stepping on stage to ask questions of Frank after the interval. And feeling a bit spaced and jet-laggy didn't help.
I needn't have worried. The audience were fab and Robert was a warm, charming and witty host, which made the first half easy. And that meant I felt really relaxed stepping out for the second half. The truth - I suspect - is that it was never going to be a hard task to interview Frank. It's not exactly a difficult job to get him talking... and if he's talking he's funny.
I don't know how the chain ends but I think it starts with Robert-me-Frank and then goes to Eddie Izzard and then, perhaps more oddly, Alastair Campbell and beyond.
I'm not sure when they'll be broadcast but I think it'll be sometime in September. Ish.
Thanks to all who came along. It was a really fun night.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Latitude Gratitude
Here I am feeling all heroic after erecting my tent on the Friday.
The festival tries to encourage everyone to be green and to use public transport wherever possible but after a nightmarish journey home last year - which started with a minibus from the performer's campsite to the back of a 5000 person queue for a bus to a train station I decided I couldn't face it this time and so arranged a hire car instead. Taking 4 hours to leave the site was just too unpleasant.
For a short while I thought the fates were punishing me for this ungreen decision as my well thought out plan threatened to fall apart before I'd even left home.
I was meant to be picking up the car on July 17. I'd paid for it on June 24. On July 16 - at around 4pm I got a call from Budget telling me that they might not be able to honour the booking. I asked them why and they told me that the car was currently hired by someone who'd taken it to Paris and wasn't able to return it in time. So when they said they "might not be able to" what they really mean was "definitely won't be able to."
I'm sure this sort of thing happens all the time - whoever had that car can't have been the first person to bring a vehicle back late - but it seemed really odd the way they told me this as though it was now my problem and nothing more to do with them. Surely they have some kind of procedure for dealing with the situation? If they did, the local office who were responsible didn't seem to know about it. So I called the national phone line and asked them for help. I was told there was nothing they could do.
There's a secret code for dealing with these situations, a magic incantation that often gets results. I crossed my fingers and uttered the words, "can I speak to your supervisor". Quite why so many companies operate this system of customer-services is beyond me... a raft of people who's job seems to be answering the phone and denying that the company have any responsibility but who will - if you're lucky - hand you over to someone who will help if you ask them to. I don't know anyone who doesn't know the can-I-speak-to-your-supervisor spell so surely everyone just says that and they gain nothing by their stonewalling except more annoyed customers? Wouldn't it be easier to just employ more people who can actually help?
So the supervisor managed to make an alternative booking through a different company - Avis - and promised that, while this new booking was more expensive I would be refunded the difference. Something which didn't happen at the time and that they now seem to be quibbling over...
Of course, if I'd cancelled on them at less than 24 hours notice they would have charged me 50% of the rental plus a £20 administration fee so it seems a little unfair that they can cancel on me and offer nothing except a more-expensive-alternative. I think I should be entitled to the same 50% +£20... that would just about cover the extra costs I've incurred. (I'll let you know how I go with that.)
But more importantly, my Latitude plans were back on track... in the shape of a Chevrolet Matiz. A shape so small that could just about cope with a tent, two bags and one passenger but nothing more.
I was expecting horribly heavy traffic and a long journey through rain drenched roads but apart from a small snarl up near Ipswich it was easy going and as we got closer to the site the sun came out in a glorious fashion. I was just glad it was still light and dry as I erected the tent.
There really isn't time to detail every performance I saw but as is often the case with festivals how much I enjoyed a gig seemed to bear little relation to how likely I am to own an artist's CDs. Some of the people you wouldn't think about buying a ticket for can really surprise you... and often it's about the venue and the atmosphere and so on as much as it is the performance. I think almost any gig would be better with a roof on it but Grace Jones was simply amazing at playing such a big arena and managed to make the atmosphere reach all the way to the back. The Gossip - a band I've not paid much attention to before now - were ace live. The good songs all sound a bit like that one really big hit they had, but Beth Ditto works the crowd brilliantly and has one hell of a pair of lungs on her. Live, she's thrilling and charismatic to watch. Showmanship. Good.
The only disappointment musically was that First Aid Kit had cancelled. The stage they were due to play on - in a small copse in the woods - would have been perfect for them. Oh well.
But Latitude is as much about spoken word as it is about music and my favourite performance of the weekend was a one-man play called Coelacanth by the brilliant Ben Moor. I love Ben's work but had never seen this show before. The setting was perfect. The writing and performance too. I had a tear rolling down my cheek at the end but I laughed a lot along the way. Even as I type this I feel a small tingle of excitement at the memory. Watching Ben perform is like being hugged. His one-man shows have been collected together as prose stories in a book. He's lyrical, brilliant and his alternative universe is a bit like this one only sweeter. I highly recommend it... it's here.
Last year I did a book reading in the Literature Tent. I loved it. I think it might have been the beginning of me thinking about returning to stand-up. It took me a while to get round to it but I think the seed was planted there. It seems counter-intuitive but in a way a book-reading has more in common with stand-up than my story-telling shows do. So I was very happy to come along this year and do some stand-up.
I had a really nice gig but I think I was lucky because a large crowd had turned up and they were focussed enough to ignore the sound of the main stage that was way, way too intrusive. When the crowd weren't as focussed it was really detrimental to the show. It wasn't like that last year and the technicians who were working on that tent were on their walkie-talkies desperately trying to get the mainstage to turn things down a bit but with no joy. It might have been a nice gig but it meant it was an environment that only suited certain types of comedy and that's a real shame and a bad change from the Comedy Tent of last year. Unless they can do something to improve that situation I think a lot of people will choose not to do it again next year.
As well as my stand-up set I also sang in the Cabaret Tent with Ward And White's Karaoke Circus. I say 'sang'... that's really not the word for my performance. Did I sing Daydream Believer? No. Ruined it? Yep. But I rescued it with a stage-dive at the end. Thanks to everyone who caught me.
There was a really lovely atmosphere for the whole of that show and singing ability wasn't really what it was about. It was just lovely, inclusive, silly fun. And I was stupidly excited to be "singing" because the lead guitarist in the band is Foz from the excellent David Devant & His Spirit Wife. I'm a fan. Now I've sung with their lead guitarist. Life is daft.
I also did a small something at the final Book Club in the Literature Tent. Robin Ince is surely the hardest working man in showbiz... I'm pretty sure he was doing 4 or 5 shows most days. His hosting of The Book Club is always hilarious and his organising of it, heroic. I will be scarred for life by the contribution of Pappy's Fun Club that night. Their stylophone based sketch is stunning. Just properly, gasping-for-breath funny. There is no need for them to do it naked. No need. Scarred. For life. Naked.
It was a great way for the festival to end.
And I was very glad that I had a car for the journey home. Tired - especially as some twonk thought it would be nice to play the guitar until 5 in the morning in the middle of a campsite - because, y'know, tents are really well sound-proofed aren't they? - we ambled our way back, taking a nice detour to Aldeburgh for some chips on the beach. Perfect.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Mr Bar
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The upcoming tour offers two quite distinct challenges. There's the bike ride - which is far and away the most physical thing I've ever done and then there are the the gigs: every night. I've done gigs before, obviously, but it's a long time since I've done straight stand-up and while doing a gig every night is one thing, doing them while dealing with the physical effects of cycling each day is another.
I find my concern oscillates from one to the other. There's no point doing the thing if the show isn't up to snuff and there's no point having a great show if the physical effort involved in getting there breaks me.
Luckily both concerns seem to be being well looked after. Having completed the 120 mile ride to Brighton and back I reckon my training has paid off. I've lost a chunk of weight and seem to have picked up some stamina along the way. So without stopping training completely I feel free to focus on the show.
I've done two previews recently. One in Leamington on the 6th and the other in Cheltenham on the 10th. (I wonder if something I said was misheard by my agent and he thinks I insisted on Spa towns?)
Anyway... when the show tours properly it will be something like 90mins+ in most venues but for these previews the intention has just been to see if I can put together a decent hour.
They both had nice full rooms and they both went well - very encouraging. I had to glance at notes only four or five times and I forgot a chunk in Leamington and another smaller bit in Cheltenham but they both ran to an hour and ten and left me some material to spare.
One of the things that fascinates me with stand-up is that it's not just how a particular piece of material is written or performed it's how it's placed in the greater scheme of things. A new routine that stormed in Leamington felt lacklustre a few nights later when I was doing a short set in London and then in Cheltenham it suddenly packed a real punch again. Same words. Same ideas being traded. Odd. And really interesting to observe and learn from. (Hmm... maybe it is the Spa town thing?)
In August I'll be doing fuller previews - there are three nights in Porthcawl and a further three in Andover (see the main site for details) - where I'll be adding more elements and reshuffling the jigsaw to try and find the best blend. I'm looking forward to them. Especially now it feels like the show has strong foundations.
I didn't cycle to the previews. I thought about it for the Cheltenham gig. I reckon it was just about in range. But the point of these gigs is to sort out the content and I had stuff to do the next day that made a long ride home a bit more problematic. So I hired a car for each of them.
It's ages since I've driven a car. It's horrible isn't it? Especially in London traffic. On the way to Leamington there had been an accident on the M40. It was on the other carriageway but rubbernecking meant that those of us heading North were crawling too. That combined with the normal slow route across London meant that it took me two and a half hours to travel the first 60 miles.
The drive to Cheltenham was worse. A road in East London had been blocked by the police which gridlocked a whole load of roads. By the time I'd weedled my way around it all - effectively getting me one mile into my journey - an hour had already gone. It took another hour to actually get across London and then I got snarled up in the Friday rush hour around Oxford too. All in all, the 90 mile journey took just over four hours.
So not only did the gigs give me confidence in the show's content, they also left me feeling very glad that I'm going to be cycling.
Friday, July 10, 2009
118 800
In September last year I received a text message from a stranger that said, "Oh my God! I can't believe this is Dave Gorman's phone number!" (Only with poor spelling and grammar) I ignored it. It was possible that it was a friend with a new number trying to wind me up... and if it wasn't and some genuine stranger had actually happened upon my number, I guessed they'd probably go away if ignored. I didn't blog about it at the time because when someone's trying to get a reaction out of you, it's really best not to give them one.
But they didn't go away. They called me at 8, 9, midnight and 3am. I ignored all the calls. But being an idiot they didn't think to hide their number, so on an off chance I googled it. Unusually, it turned up. I found the name of the person responsible. he was 19. He was at Surrey University. He played in a horribly disappointing rock band, used to play in a jazz orchestra and had a depressingly illiterate myspace page.
The next day there was silence. But then the next day there were more nuisance calls. I screened all calls that came from unknown or hidden numbers. There were many. Mostly from hidden numbers.
The day after that, work took me to Austria. And on Saturday night, in Austria, I received something like 40 or 50 nuisance calls. I didn't answer them. I stopped looking at my phone. I wasn't going to spend an hour wading through my messages on an extortionate T-Mobile roaming rate just to hear a variety of prank calls from a variety of students. I knew there might be some calls from friends in amongst them but I figured they could wait til I got back home.
Not one of the prank calls was mean or abusive. There was no name calling or anything like that. It was more:
"Hi Dave, it's Gordon here from BBC3, we've got a really exciting project lined up for you, can you give me a call on the following number asap..." at which point they'd give me their mates number in the hope that I'd call that number and hilarity would ensue. That sort of thing.
(It is fascinating to discover that that's how they imagine things work. Yes, TV executives (whose voices haven't broken yet - even for BBC3 this is far fetched) are always calling me up from rowdy pubs at 10 o'clock at night and offering me great opportunities... and I'm so desperate to suckle at television's teat that I'm obviously going to call them immediately to pursue it.)
But while they weren't abusive - it felt more like I was the prop in a gag they were playing on their mate and they'd have been just as likely to do it to WH Smiths, say, as me - en masse it was becoming a huge inconvenience. But it became more than that when I went through my messages back in London. There was one message from a friend. It was important. Not in a work way, but in a personal way. It was something I shouldn't have left for a day. I really should have responded. Someone, somewhere needed to hear from me and as a friend, I should have been there for them. The details aren't important... what's important is that some students having a laugh had managed to make life quite a lot worse than it should have been. It was no longer just an inconvenience...
Oh... and on my first day back in England I received around 150 calls from unknown numbers. It was still escalating.
So I decided to do something about it. So I hid my number and called the semi-literate, Surrey University student. He seemed very surprised to hear from me. He was 19 years of age but sounded like a 12 year old who thought he was in trouble. His voice was shaking. I could almost hear his heart beating. I honestly thought he was going to cry.
I asked him how he'd got my number. He sounded flustered and pretended he couldn't really remember. I told him that he could. So he did and he told me. He'd got it from a friend. Who'd also got it from a friend... who had been in Edinburgh during the festival where he'd found a mislaid mobile phone. Being a decent sort he tried to find out who the phone belonged to by looking through the numbers it contained. Which is where he found my number. Instead of thinking, "oh look, I've heard of him", shrugging his shoulders and carrying on, he'd thought, "oh look, I've heard of him... I'm going to write that down."
But then the phone had rung and he discovered the phone's owner on the other end and he'd made arrangements to give them their phone back.
So, I asked my nearly-blubbing student for his friend's number. He said he didn't know it. I told him I knew he was lying and he nearly started hyperventilating under the pressure. I suspected he was telling the truth. But one of the things I'm good at is finding information. I had a name. And a place to start, so I soon found the next link in the chain.
He also sounded like a scared animal when confronted. I asked him how he'd got the number. He corroborated the story. I asked him for the name of the friend who'd found the number.
"Don't pretend you don't know."
"Okay. It was ????? ??????"
"Right. And do you have his number?"
"You do."
"I don't think I can access it while I'm on the phone."
"Yes you can."
"I don't think I ought to just give someone's phone number out..."
No irony. He meant it.
"I agree. And I think I'd like to tell him that too..."
"Oh... right. Yeah... it's..."
So it took me three phone calls to get through to the man who'd written my number down and started it all. He too seemed shocked and scared to be hearing from me. In fact I'm pretty sure he did start crying during the call.
But these three phone calls identified only a small handful of people who'd gotten hold of my number and the calls were coming in from different numbers every day and there was no point me trying to pursue each and every one of them. Besides, scaring 18 year old boys and making them cry wasn't making me happy.
What had happened is that the first person had found my number, gone back to his home town and given my number to four or five others. They were all about to go off to different universities. So they all did. And in the craven social atmosphere of Freshers Week they'd all done a bit of showing off... which had involved giving my number to new people who'd all done the same... and some of them had done the same and so on. First year students drinking please-like-me pints do that sort of thing.
Making nuisance phone calls is a crime. The calls kept on coming and the police did get involved warning some of the people who were making them. But as the number was being passed on to new people every day that wasn't doing anything to contain it. So, with regret I was forced into changing my number. I'd had that number for as long as I could remember. I knew that number inside out and backwards. I've had my new number for ten months now. I still don't know it. I hate that I was forced into changing my number.
Anyway... that was probably at the back of my mind when I first heard about this new 118 800 service - a directory enquiries for mobile phone numbers. The idea that anyone could dial in, try their luck and get my new number was alarming to me. There have been a number of scare stories in the media about it... like this from the BBC and this from The Register.
I find the whole idea that you can opt out offends my sensibilities. It seems to me that it's the kind of thing you should have to opt in for.
According to that Register story, Connectivity confirmed it had planned legal action to get access to operator data saying, "Exactly as all the landline directory services were entitled to request telephone number data from BT, 118800 is also legally entitled to request data from telecommunications companies."
The thing is... if I remember rightly, when I moved house and got a new landline number I think I was given the option there and then on making it ex-directory. When I was given my new mobile number I wasn't. So the comparison doesn't stack up. BT might be obliged to hand over those details to a ladline directory service... but they do so knowing that their customers have consented to being in a directory. As a mobile directory didn't exist when we were given our numbers nobody stopped to ask.
As I type this the 118800 website is currently not working. Presumably because of all the people using it to try and make their number ex-directory.
In fairness to them, I ought to point out that they don't actually give your number out to anyone. What they told me is that they call you, explain who's asking for you and then offer to patch the call through. Which is still too much intrusion for me.
Getting a call from 118800 saying "Hello... we have someone called Gordon from BBC3 on the line, do you want me to patch it through?" isn't materially different to getting a message from a student saying the same thing after all.
Because the website wasn't functioning properly yesterday I called the number and asked to be made ex-directory. The person I spoke to was very defensive about the whole thing and very keen to tell me why I shouldn't believe things I might have read in an e-mail. Which seemed odd because I didn't know anything about any e-mail.
He went to great lengths to explain that they had bought their numbers from legitimate sources and that if I'd never given my number to any company I had nothing to worry about.
But I have experiences to prove that's nonsense also. I've had compensation from two companies who have sent me spam text messages before now. Both were mainstream companies. Both had bought lists of numbers from reputable sources. On both occasions the reputable sources had got my number illegally. On both occasions I put more man hours into it than is reasonable in order to prove my case and get compensation.
I'm delighted to see the 118800 website is down. I hope it stays that way. If you haven't already, do call them and ask to be ex-directory. Let's keep them so busy removing numbers that they don't have time to actually call anyone and offer to patch them through.


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Bow-Knot Decorated Tops Layer Short Sleeve Pullover Shirt
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A Snaggers BlogHomeSnag inspectors are experts at inspecting new-build houses. This blog shares real examples to demonstrate the importance of getting your new build house or apartment snagged professionally Archives
August 2023
"I always insist that there is specific provision for snagging," says Thomas Moran, partner at law firm Speechly Bircham. "Reputable developers do this anyway, but there are all sorts in the market, some big, some small, so you need a contractual promise than within, say, a year they will come back to remedy any minor defects in the finishing." read full article here


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Each New Year's Day in Philadelphia, merrymakers from across the city converge on South Philadelphia for something that at times resembles a well-choreographed parade of highly skilled performers, and at other times is more of a sprawling, shambling mob of happy, boozy, (primarily) men in costumes. These are the Philadelphia Mummers. The event is an amalgamation of cultural traditions that has evolved in working-class neighborhoods for over 300 years. Beginning as small bands of informal revelers scattered throughout the city, today's parade includes recognized performance divisions and organized clubs that compete within those divisions. The group represented by this collection of photographs are the Wenches, a subset of the Comic division, who hew most closely to the Mummers' anarchic, free-wheeling past. The all-male Wenches don female garb, including dresses, undergarments, purses, parasols, wigs, make-up and golden shoes, in tribute to the iconic song of Mummery, Oh, Dem Golden SIippers. The Wench tradition, and often the dresses themselves, are passed down from one generation to the next, with some groups including all the male members of a family, from young boys to great grandfathers.
Like so many clubs and teams, this group embodies a male mystique, a paradox of inclusion and exclusion that fueled my attention beyond the aesthetics of the parade. As a woman and a photographer, I joined the festivities as best I could. With an 8X10" view camera, I momentarily removed the Wenches from their reverie and photographed them, isolated, feet away from the party.
All the photographs were made on January 1, 2009-2018 in South Philadelphia: a 10-day, 10-year project.
Andrea Modica


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Fri, May 19
Mythical Music Presentation & Historical Tour | May 19
The music presentation creates an innovative, interactive musical journey using mythological narration and fifteen hand-crafted wind and string instruments. The tour explores the history and singular architecture of the former winery.
Registration is closed
See other events**Our evening performances are not suggested for children under 10 years old
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