We have two products and another currently in development

FireWork

firework

Golden Celestial Ratio (GCR): A Comprehensive Guide to the Divine Ecosystem

গোল্ডেন সেলেস্টিয়াল রেশিও (GCR): ডিভাইন ইকোসিস্টেমের একটি ব্যাপক নির্দেশিকা

Golden Celestial Ratio (GCR): Ein umfassender Leitfaden zum göttlichen Ökosystem

Proporción áurea celestial (GCR): una guía completa del ecosistema divino

Ratio Céleste Doré (GCR) : Un guide complet de l'écosystème divin

स्वर्णिम आकाशीय अनुपात (जीसीआर): दिव्य पारिस्थितिकी तंत्र के लिए एक व्यापक मार्गदर्शिका

黄金比（GCR）：神の生態系への総合ガイド

황금 천체 비율(GCR): 신성한 생태계에 대한 종합 가이드

Proporção Celestial Áurea (GCR): Um Guia Abrangente para o Ecossistema Divino

Золотое небесное сечение (GCR): подробное руководство по божественной экосистеме

Altın Gök Oranı (GCR): İlahi Ekosistem İçin Kapsamlı Bir Kılavuz

Tỷ lệ thiên thể vàng (GCR): Hướng dẫn toàn diện về hệ sinh thái thần thánh

黄金天体比例（GCR）：神圣生态系统的综合指南

HDR or SDR? A Study of Scaled and Compressed Videos: Details of Subjective Study

Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. The dollar-yen exchange rate is the most important macroeconomic indicator. In my last essay, “The Easy Button,” I wrote that something must be done to strengthen the yen. The solution I proposed was that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) could swap unlimited amounts of freshly printed dollars with the Bank of Japan (BOJ) for yen. This would allow the BOJ to give unlimited dollar firepower to the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MOF), with which they could purchase the yen in the global forex markets. While I still believe in the validity of that solution, it appears that the central banking charlatans in charge of the Group of Fools, a.k.a. the Group of Seven (G7), have chosen to convince the market that the interest rate differential between the yen and the dollar, euro, pound, and maple syrup (Canadian) dollar will narrow over time. If the market believes in this future state, it will buy yen and sell everything else. Mission accomplished! For this magic trick to work, the G7 central banks (the Fed, European Central Bank “ECB,” Bank of Canada “BOC,” and Bank of England “BOE”) with “high” policy interest rates must cut them. The critical thing to note is that the BOJ’s policy rate (green) is 0.1%, whereas everyone else is 4-5%. The interest rate differential between the home and foreign currency fundamentally drives exchange rates. From March 2020 until early 2022, errbody played the same game. Free money for all as long as you stay inside with the flu and shoot up that mRNA heroin. When inflation showed in such a big way that the elites could not ignore the pain and suffering of their plebes, the G7 central banks – with the exception of the BOJ – all raised rates aggressively. The BOJ could not raise rates because it owns over 50% of the Japanese Government Bond (JGB) market. JGB prices pumped as rates dumped, making the BOJ appear solvent. However, the highly levered central bank would suffer catastrophic losses if the JGBs it held declined because the BOJ allowed rates to rise. I did some scary maths for readers in “The Easy Button.” This is why if the decision by Bad Gurl Yellen, who calls the shots at the G7, is to reduce the interest rate differential, the only option is for the central banks with “high” policy rates to reduce them. In orthodox central bank thought, cutting rates is good if inflation is below target. What’s the target? For some reason, and I don’t know why, the inflation target for every G7 central bank is 2%, irrespective of differences in culture, growth, debt, demographics, etc. Is the current inflation rate hurtling through 2%? Each colored line represents a different G7 central bank’s inflation target. The horizontal line is at 2%. No G7 country’s manipulated and dishonest government-published inflation statistic is below target. Putting on my technical analysis hat, it appears that G7 inflation is forming a local bottom in the 2-3% range before exploding higher. Taking that chart into consideration, an orthodox central banker would not cut rates at their current levels. However, this week, the BOC and ECB cut rates while inflation was above target. This is strange. Is there some financial disturbance that demands cheaper money? Nope. The BOC cut its policy rate (yellow) while inflation (white) is above the target (red). The ECB cut its policy rate (yellow) while inflation (white) is above the target (red). The problem is the weak yen. I believe Bad Gurl Yellen stopped the rate hike Kabuki theatre performance. It is time to get down to the business of preserving the Pax Americana-led global financial system. If the yen isn’t strengthened, the big bad pinko commie Chinamen will unleash the dragon of a devalued yuan to match their chief export competitor Japan’s super duper cheap yen. In the process, US Treasuries will get sold, and that will be game, set, and match for Pax Americana if it occurs. Next Up The G7 meets in a week. The communique released after the meeting will greatly interest the market. Will they announce some sort of coordinated currency or bond market manipulation exercise to strengthen the yen? Or will they stay quiet but agree that everyone except the BOJ should begin cutting rates? Stay tuned! The big question is whether the Fed will start cutting rates this close to the November US presidential election. Typically, the Fed doesn’t change course this close to an election. However, typically, the favored presidential candidate is not staring down a potential prison sentence, so I’m ready to be flexible in my thinking. If the Fed were to cut at its upcoming June meeting whilst their favored doctored measure of inflation was above target, the dollar-yen would gap lower bigly, which means the yen would strengthen. I don’t believe the Fed is ready to cut rates, given that Slow Joe Biden is getting skewered in the polls over rising prices. American plebes understandably care more that the vegetables they eat are more expensive than the cognitive ability of the vegetable running for reelection. To be fair, Trump is also a vegetable because he loves munching McDonald’s fries and watching Shark Week while doin’ his thang. I still think it’s political suicide to cut rates. My base case is the Fed holds. By the time the dilettantes sit down for a sumptuous meal paid for by their tax-paying subjects on June 13th, the Fed and BOJ will have conducted their June policy meetings. As I said before, I expect no changes to monetary policy from the Fed or the BOJ. The BOE meets shortly after the G7, and while the consensus is they hold their policy rate steady, I think we are in for a surprise to the downside, given the BOC and ECB cuts. The BOE has nothing to lose. The conservative party is going to get their ass handed to them at the next election, so there is no reason to disobey orders from the rulers of their former colony in order to keep a lid on inflation. Exit the Choppa Zone The June central banking fireworks kicked off this week by the BOC and ECB rate cuts will catapult crypto out of the northern hemispheric summer doldrums. This was not my expected base case. I thought the fireworks would start in August, right around when the Fed hosts its Jackson Hole symposium. That is typically the venue where abrupt policy changes are announced going into autumn. The trend is clear. Central banks at the margin are starting easing cycles. We know how to play this game. It’s the same fucking game we have been playing since 2009 when our Lord and Saviour Satoshi gave us the weapon to defeat the TradFi devil. Go long Bitcoin and subsequently shitcoins. The macro landscape has changed vs. my baseline. Therefore, my strategy shall change as well. For the Maelstrom portfolio projects, who asked for my opinion on whether to launch their tokens now or later. I say, Let’s Fucking Go! For my excess liquid crypto synthetic-dollar cash, a.k.a. Ethena’s USD (USDe) that’s earning some phat APYs, it is time to deploy it again on conviction shitcoins. Of course, I’ll tell readers what those are after I have purchased them. But suffice it to say, the crypto bull is reawakening and is about to gore the hides of profligate central bankers. Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. Any views expressed in the below are the personal views of the author and should not form the basis for making investment decisions, nor be construed as a recommendation or advice to engage in investment transactions. The dollar-yen exchange rate is the most important macroeconomic indicator. In my last essay, “ The Easy Button ,” I wrote that something must be done to strengthen the yen. The solution I proposed was that the US Federal Reserve (Fed) could swap unlimited amounts of freshly printed dollars with the Bank of Japan (BOJ) for yen. This would allow the BOJ to give unlimited dollar firepower to the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MOF), with which they could purchase the yen in the global forex markets. The Easy Button The Easy Button While I still believe in the validity of that solution, it appears that the central banking charlatans in charge of the Group of Fools, a.k.a. the Group of Seven (G7), have chosen to convince the market that the interest rate differential between the yen and the dollar, euro, pound, and maple syrup (Canadian) dollar will narrow over time. If the market believes in this future state, it will buy yen and sell everything else. Mission accomplished! For this magic trick to work, the G7 central banks (the Fed, European Central Bank “ECB,” Bank of Canada “BOC,” and Bank of England “BOE”) with “high” policy interest rates must cut them. The critical thing to note is that the BOJ’s policy rate (green) is 0.1%, whereas everyone else is 4-5%. The interest rate differential between the home and foreign currency fundamentally drives exchange rates. From March 2020 until early 2022, errbody played the same game. Free money for all as long as you stay inside with the flu and shoot up that mRNA heroin. When inflation showed in such a big way that the elites could not ignore the pain and suffering of their plebes, the G7 central banks – with the exception of the BOJ – all raised rates aggressively. The BOJ could not raise rates because it owns over 50% of the Japanese Government Bond (JGB) market. JGB prices pumped as rates dumped, making the BOJ appear solvent. However, the highly levered central bank would suffer catastrophic losses if the JGBs it held declined because the BOJ allowed rates to rise. I did some scary maths for readers in “ The Easy Button .” The Easy Button The Easy Button This is why if the decision by Bad Gurl Yellen, who calls the shots at the G7, is to reduce the interest rate differential, the only option is for the central banks with “high” policy rates to reduce them. In orthodox central bank thought, cutting rates is good if inflation is below target. What’s the target? For some reason, and I don’t know why, the inflation target for every G7 central bank is 2%, irrespective of differences in culture, growth, debt, demographics, etc. Is the current inflation rate hurtling through 2%? Each colored line represents a different G7 central bank’s inflation target. The horizontal line is at 2%. No G7 country’s manipulated and dishonest government-published inflation statistic is below target. Putting on my technical analysis hat, it appears that G7 inflation is forming a local bottom in the 2-3% range before exploding higher. Taking that chart into consideration, an orthodox central banker would not cut rates at their current levels. However, this week, the BOC and ECB cut rates while inflation was above target. This is strange. Is there some financial disturbance that demands cheaper money? Nope. The BOC cut its policy rate (yellow) while inflation (white) is above the target (red). The BOC cut its policy rate (yellow) while inflation (white) is above the target (red). The ECB cut its policy rate (yellow) while inflation (white) is above the target (red). The ECB cut its policy rate (yellow) while inflation (white) is above the target (red). The problem is the weak yen. I believe Bad Gurl Yellen stopped the rate hike Kabuki theatre performance. It is time to get down to the business of preserving the Pax Americana-led global financial system. If the yen isn’t strengthened, the big bad pinko commie Chinamen will unleash the dragon of a devalued yuan to match their chief export competitor Japan’s super duper cheap yen. In the process, US Treasuries will get sold, and that will be game, set, and match for Pax Americana if it occurs. Next Up The G7 meets in a week. The communique released after the meeting will greatly interest the market. Will they announce some sort of coordinated currency or bond market manipulation exercise to strengthen the yen? Or will they stay quiet but agree that everyone except the BOJ should begin cutting rates? Stay tuned! The big question is whether the Fed will start cutting rates this close to the November US presidential election. Typically, the Fed doesn’t change course this close to an election. However, typically, the favored presidential candidate is not staring down a potential prison sentence, so I’m ready to be flexible in my thinking. If the Fed were to cut at its upcoming June meeting whilst their favored doctored measure of inflation was above target, the dollar-yen would gap lower bigly, which means the yen would strengthen. I don’t believe the Fed is ready to cut rates, given that Slow Joe Biden is getting skewered in the polls over rising prices. American plebes understandably care more that the vegetables they eat are more expensive than the cognitive ability of the vegetable running for reelection. To be fair, Trump is also a vegetable because he loves munching McDonald’s fries and watching Shark Week while doin’ his thang. I still think it’s political suicide to cut rates. My base case is the Fed holds. By the time the dilettantes sit down for a sumptuous meal paid for by their tax-paying subjects on June 13th, the Fed and BOJ will have conducted their June policy meetings. As I said before, I expect no changes to monetary policy from the Fed or the BOJ. The BOE meets shortly after the G7, and while the consensus is they hold their policy rate steady, I think we are in for a surprise to the downside, given the BOC and ECB cuts. The BOE has nothing to lose. The conservative party is going to get their ass handed to them at the next election, so there is no reason to disobey orders from the rulers of their former colony in order to keep a lid on inflation. Exit the Choppa Zone The June central banking fireworks kicked off this week by the BOC and ECB rate cuts will catapult crypto out of the northern hemispheric summer doldrums. This was not my expected base case. I thought the fireworks would start in August, right around when the Fed hosts its Jackson Hole symposium. That is typically the venue where abrupt policy changes are announced going into autumn. The trend is clear. Central banks at the margin are starting easing cycles. We know how to play this game. It’s the same fucking game we have been playing since 2009 when our Lord and Saviour Satoshi gave us the weapon to defeat the TradFi devil. Go long Bitcoin and subsequently shitcoins. The macro landscape has changed vs. my baseline. Therefore, my strategy shall change as well. For the Maelstrom portfolio projects, who asked for my opinion on whether to launch their tokens now or later. I say, Let’s Fucking Go! For my excess liquid crypto synthetic-dollar cash, a.k.a. Ethena’s USD (USDe) that’s earning some phat APYs, it is time to deploy it again on conviction shitcoins. Of course, I’ll tell readers what those are after I have purchased them. But suffice it to say, the crypto bull is reawakening and is about to gore the hides of profligate central bankers.

Group of Fools

বোকাদের দল

Gruppe von Narren

grupo de tontos

Groupe de fous

मूर्खों का समूह

愚か者の集団

바보들의 그룹

Grupo de tolos

Группа дураков

Aptallar Grubu

Nhóm ngu ngốc

一群傻瓜

Authors: (1) Renato P. dos Santos, CIAGE – Centre for Generative Artificial Intelligence in Cognition and Education. Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Materials And Methods Results and Analyses Prompts and generated texts Conceptualizing chemical reactions Deepening on understanding of chemical reactions Question about combustion Question about a graph of gases turning into water over time Question about the difference between atoms, molecules, and moles Deepening on the concept of mole Question about changing of state Question about an animated representation of water molecules undergoing phase changes Question about plasma, a state of matter Question about chemical bondings Question about illustration of chemical bonds Question about the essence of the type of chemical bonding Further analysis Conclusions Limitations of the study and possible future studies Author Contributions, Conflicts of interest, Acknowledgements, and References Deepening understanding of chemical reactions P1: Yeah, but that sounds like my teacher talking. I don't even understand this chemical reaction business. What’s the use of an example of a business I don't understand? : ChatGPT I apologize for jumping ahead. Let's step back and approach this from a foundational perspective. Imagine you're baking cookies. You have a recipe that calls for 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 cup of chocolate chips. Once you combine these ingredients and bake them, you get 12 cookies. You can't suddenly have more flour, sugar, or chocolate chips than you started with, right? Similarly, you can't end up with less than you put in. This is a basic principle of conservation—what you put in is what you get out. Chemical reactions are like recipes. You start with certain ingredients (called reactants) and end up with a product (or products). Just like you can't suddenly have more flour or less sugar in your cookies, in a chemical reaction, you can't have more of one type of atom at the end than you started with or less of another. So when we talk about balancing chemical reactions, we're making sure our "recipe" (the chemical equation) doesn't magically create or lose any atoms. We're ensuring everything is accounted for. Does this analogy make sense in understanding the concept of chemical reactions and the need for balance? : BingChat I’m sorry if I sounded like your teacher. I was trying to explain the concept of chemical reactions and balance in a clear and simple way. But I understand that sometimes it can be hard to grasp abstract concepts without seeing them in action. That’s why I suggested some online tools that can help you visualize and practice balancing chemical equations. But maybe you are wondering why you need to learn about chemical reactions and balance in the first place. What’s the use of knowing how atoms and molecules interact and rearrange during a chemical reaction? Well, let me tell you that chemical reactions are everywhere in our world, and they affect many aspects of our lives. Here are some examples of how chemical reactions are important and useful: • Chemical reactions are essential for life. All living organisms, including humans, plants, and animals, rely on chemical reactions to perform vital functions such as metabolism, respiration, photosynthesis, digestion, growth, and reproduction. For example, when you eat food, your body breaks down the molecules in the food into smaller units that can be used for energy or building blocks. This process involves many chemical reactions that are carefully regulated by enzymes. • Chemical reactions are involved in many everyday phenomena. Some examples are cooking, baking, cleaning, rusting, burning, fireworks, batteries, and fermentation. For example, when you bake a cake, you mix different ingredients that react with each other to produce carbon dioxide gas. This gas makes the cake rise and become fluffy. The heat from the oven also causes chemical reactions that change the color, flavor, and texture of the cake. • Chemical reactions are important for many industries and technologies. Some examples are medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, energy, and environmental protection. For example, in medicine, chemical reactions are used to synthesize drugs that can treat diseases or relieve pain. In agriculture, chemical reactions are used to produce fertilizers that can enhance crop growth and yield. In manufacturing, chemical reactions are used to create materials such as plastics, metals, ceramics, and textiles. As you can see, chemical reactions and balance are not just boring topics that you have to learn in school. They are actually very relevant and interesting topics that can help you understand how the world works and how you can make it better. I hope this helps you appreciate the importance and usefulness of learning about chemical reactions and balance. : Bard I apologize for my previous response, which was too formal and technical. Let's try to approach this from a different angle. Imagine you are running a bakery. You want to make a batch of cookies, so you gather up your ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking soda. You mix all of the ingredients together, and then you put the dough in the oven. When the cookies are finished baking, you have a new product: cookies! But how did this happen? What happened to the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking soda? They didn't just disappear. Instead, they reacted with each other to form new substances: cookies. This is what a chemical reaction is. It is a process in which two or more substances (the reactants) are converted into one or more different substances (the products). The reactants and products have different properties, which means that they have different chemical compositions. In the case of the cookie dough, the reactants are the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking soda. The products are the cookies. Chemical reactions happen all around us, all the time. When you light a match, the wood reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water. When you cook food, the food reacts with heat to produce new substances. When your body digests food, the food reacts with enzymes to produce nutrients. Chemical reactions are essential for life. They are also used in many different industries, such as food processing, medicine, and manufacturing. I hope this analogy helps you to understand the basics of chemical reactions. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. Here is another analogy: Imagine you are playing with Lego bricks. You can build all sorts of different things with Lego bricks: cars, houses, airplanes, and more. But what happens if you take the Lego bricks apart and put them together in a different way? You will create a new structure. Chemical reactions are similar to playing with Lego bricks. The atoms in the reactants are like the Lego bricks. When the reactants react, the atoms are rearranged to form new substances (the products). I hope this analogy helps you to understand the concept of chemical reactions a little better. : Claude You're right, jumping straight into balancing equations without a solid grasp of chemical reactions themselves is putting the cart before the horse. Let's back up and make sure you have a good foundation first. Chemical reactions are processes where the molecular structure of substances changes. Atoms within molecules get rearranged, broken apart, or joined together. This results in entirely new substances being formed with different properties. A simple everyday example is cooking an egg. When you heat an egg, the protein and fat molecules unravel and form new bonds. This changes the egg from a liquid to a solid. A chemical reaction has occurred! Reactions also happen around us all the time - in car engines, inside batteries, and even within ourbodies. Understanding them allows chemists to develop new materials, medicines, fuels, and all kinds of useful products. The key takeaway is that chemical reactions transform starting compounds (reactants) into different ending compounds (products). Balancing the equations comes later to represent what's happening at the atomic level. Does this help explain the basic idea and purpose of chemical reactions? I'm happy to use examples more relevant to your interests if that's more engaging. The goal is to make sure the foundation makes sense before going into the specifics. response use of the terms "foundational perspective," "Imagine," and "basic principle of conservation" correspond with the category of while "chemical reactions are like recipes," and "analogy" point to the categories , and . The casual tone, personalised feel, and the use of a question at the end add to the category. * goes into expansive detail with phrases like "seeing them in action," "online tools," and "examples of how chemical reactions are important," which hit the and categories. The emoji at the end provides a . use of two distinct analogies — a bakery and Lego bricks —aligns with the Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations category. Phrases like "I apologize," "different angle," and "please feel free to ask" contribute to the category . response, acknowledging "You're right" and "The goal is to make sure the foundation makes sense," emphasises the category. The egg example and references to daily life situations align with the ChatGPT’s Instructional Strategies, Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations Meta-discussion & Perspective Framing Personalization & Personable Touch BingChat Detail Depth & Content Recommendation Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations Personable Touch Bard's Personalization & Personable Touch Claude’s Personalization & Personable Touch Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations. This paper is under CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

GenAIbots' Strategies for Explaining Chemical Reactions to Students 

The Tech Company News Brief is Changing! Starting soon, you’ll receive a new (and revamped!) version of HackerNoon’s editorial driven, once-weekly newsletter. Keep your eyes peeled! What happens when the world's richest man gets caught in the crosshairs of one of the oldest and most reputable news organizations in the world? Fireworks 🎆 It was only recently that Reuters caused panic amongst Tesla investors by reporting that Elon Musk's crown jewel was scrapping plans to produce a cheaper version of the company's electric car, causing all hell to break loose, albeit briefly. The news report prompted a decline in Tesla's stock price (~6% or so), before Elon Musk jumped in and addressed the article, reversing the downward slide. Musk's response? Fake news. According to Reuters, the reason why Tesla (allegedly) is no longer producing a cheaper electric vehicle is because it can't compete with Chinese companies that are flooding the market with their own battery-powered cars. And to drive that point home, you need look no further than Xiaomi. You see, the world's third-largest seller of smartphones is also now doubling down as an electric vehicle manufacturer, in what Chief Executive Lei Jun calls the "last major entrepreneurship project" of his life. And boy, Lei has reason to be proud and die peacefully, because the company's very first electric car, the SU7, has already garnered more than 100,000 orders. The SU7 would retail at under $30,000, below Tesla's Model 3 in China. Tesla could have competed with the car with its now-scrapped cheaper version, the Model 2 electric vehicle, which was supposedly going to retail at about $25,000. But that would have just been the tip of the iceberg since some Chinese cars go for as low as $10,000 and Musk's company certainly cannot compete at THAT price point. But all that's beside the point; the real reason why everyone wanted Tesla to produce an inexpensive model was because the company's growth depends so heavily on it. In corporate America, if number not going up, it going down. And at Tesla, number definitely going down, leaving everyone very, very unhappy. Teslas aren't cheap, and everyone knows it. And given that some of the higher-end models of the car are woefully out of the average consumer's reach, it makes sense for the company to focus on bringing its prices down. Abandoning plans for a cheaper Tesla would also serve as a reversal of Musk's vision for the company, since the eccentric billionaire had always planned on creating a low-cost family car after using profits from luxury vehicles. Anyway, news at Tesla hasn't been all that positive ever since Reuters reported the company was (allegedly) no longer going to produce a cheaper electric car. Ironically, Reuters has once again been at the forefront of all the crazy stuff going down at Tesla: Worryingly still, for Tesla at least, the company's stock has lost 35% of its value since the start of the yearandis still one of the most shorted stocks in American history. Meanwhile, Musk's just sharing memes: Tesla ranked #5 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week. 👋 You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. It's a Bad Time to be an Alexa Developer😒 Were you one of the developers on Amazon's payroll to create apps for Alexa? Well, we've got bad news for you. Amazon recently announced that it will stop paying developers to build apps for its Alexa voice-activated digital assistant at the end of June. The company will also no longer offer free credits that Alexa developers could use to power their programs with Amazon Web Services. "These older programs have simply run their course, so we decided to sunset them," an Amazon spokesperson was quoted as saying by media outlets. Apps created for Alexa were called "skills" and saw some developers make hundreds if not thousands of dollars every month. The $100 monthly credit to Amazon Web Services was the icing on top. But as with all things corporate America, Amazon saw that there really wasn't enough interest in its program and certainly not enough of a return to justify paying peanuts from the billions it makes every year. Oh well. Amazon ranked #14 on HackerNoon's __Tech Company Rankings__this week. Spotify, Create a Playlist for HackerNoon!🎵 Ooh boy. I guess it was a matter of time before Spotify jumped in on the generative AI craze. Well, the company's take on generative AI is certainly more unique than others. If you're a premium user in the UK and Australia, you can now access a feature that can let youj create music playlists using prompts. That's right, anything from places, animals, genres or mood, can be used to create a playlist. So something like, a playlist for cats or tigers or for rainy days or the Eiffel Tower are all game! The tool will not produce results for non-music-related prompts, like current events or specific brands, however. So if you wanted a playlist for Louis Vuitton or Prada, you're out of luck. In Other News.. 📰 Bitcoin Could Surge to $120K on 'Doomsday Rally,' Trader Says — via CoinDesk
Elon Musk plans to charge new X users to enable posting — via TechCrunch
Facebook and Instagram’s response to deepfake porn is under review by oversight board  — via CNN
Baidu says AI chatbot 'Ernie Bot' has attracted 200 million users — via Reuters
"Top secret" is no longer the key to good intel in an AI world: report — via Axios
AMD rolls out its latest chips for AI PCs as competition with Nvidia and Intel heats up — via CNBC And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. The Tech Company News Brief is Changing! Starting soon, you’ll receive a new (and revamped!) version of HackerNoon’s editorial driven, once-weekly newsletter. Keep your eyes peeled! The Tech Company News Brief is Changing! Starting soon, you’ll receive a new (and revamped!) version of HackerNoon’s editorial driven, once-weekly newsletter. Keep your eyes peeled! What happens when the world's richest man gets caught in the crosshairs of one of the oldest and most reputable news organizations in the world? Fireworks 🎆 It was only recently that Reuters caused panic amongst Tesla investors by reporting that Elon Musk's crown jewel was scrapping plans to produce a cheaper version of the company's electric car, causing all hell to break loose, albeit briefly. caused panic caused panic The news report prompted a decline in Tesla's stock price (~6% or so), before Elon Musk jumped in and addressed the article, reversing the downward slide. Musk's response? Fake news . Fake news Fake news According to Reuters, the reason why Tesla (allegedly) is no longer producing a cheaper electric vehicle is because it can't compete with Chinese companies that are flooding the market with their own battery-powered cars. And to drive that point home, you need look no further than Xiaomi. You see, the world's third-largest seller of smartphones is also now doubling down as an electric vehicle manufacturer, in what Chief Executive Lei Jun calls the " last major entrepreneurship project " of his life. And boy, Lei has reason to be proud and die peacefully, because the company's very first electric car, the SU7, has already garnered more than 100,000 orders. last major entrepreneurship project last major entrepreneurship project The SU7 would retail at under $30,000, below Tesla's Model 3 in China. Tesla could have competed with the car with its now-scrapped cheaper version, the Model 2 electric vehicle, which was supposedly going to retail at about $25,000. But that would have just been the tip of the iceberg since some Chinese cars go for as low as $10,000 and Musk's company certainly cannot compete at THAT price point. could certainly But all that's beside the point; the real reason why everyone wanted Tesla to produce an inexpensive model was because the company's growth depends so heavily on it. In corporate America, if number not going up, it going down. And at Tesla, number definitely going down, leaving everyone very, very unhappy. real Teslas aren't cheap , and everyone knows it. And given that some of the higher-end models of the car are woefully out of the average consumer's reach, it makes sense for the company to focus on bringing its prices down. aren't cheap aren't cheap Abandoning plans for a cheaper Tesla would also serve as a reversal of Musk's vision for the company, since the eccentric billionaire had always planned on creating a low-cost family car after using profits from luxury vehicles. planned planned Anyway, news at Tesla hasn't been all that positive ever since Reuters reported the company was (allegedly) no longer going to produce a cheaper electric car. Ironically, Reuters has once again been at the forefront of all the crazy stuff going down at Tesla: Worryingly still, for Tesla at least, the company's stock has lost 35% of its value since the start of the year and is still one of the most shorted stocks in American history. and Meanwhile, Musk's just sharing memes: Tesla ranked #5 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week. Tesla Tesla HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings 👋 You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. 👋 You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief, a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. You’re reading HackerNoon's Tech Company News Brief , a weekly collection of tech goodness that combines HackerNoon's proprietary data with internet trends to determine which companies are rising and falling in the public consciousness. Subscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. Tech Company News Brief Tech Company News Brief here complete It's a Bad Time to be an Alexa Developer 😒 It's a Bad Time to be an Alexa Developer Were you one of the developers on Amazon 's payroll to create apps for Alexa? Well, we've got bad news for you. Amazon Amazon Amazon recently announced that it will stop paying developers to build apps for its Alexa voice-activated digital assistant at the end of June. The company will also no longer offer free credits that Alexa developers could use to power their programs with Amazon Web Services. recently announced recently announced "These older programs have simply run their course, so we decided to sunset them," an Amazon spokesperson was quoted as saying by media outlets . media outlets media outlets Apps created for Alexa were called "skills" and saw some developers make hundreds if not thousands of dollars every month. The $100 monthly credit to Amazon Web Services was the icing on top. But as with all things corporate America, Amazon saw that there really wasn't enough interest in its program and certainly not enough of a return to justify paying peanuts from the billions it makes every year. Oh well. Amazon ranked #14 on HackerNoon's __ Tech Company Rankings __this week. Tech Company Rankings Spotify, Create a Playlist for HackerNoon!🎵 Ooh boy. I guess it was a matter of time before Spotify jumped in on the generative AI craze. Spotify Spotify Well, the company's take on generative AI is certainly more unique than others. If you're a premium user in the UK and Australia, you can now access a feature that can let youj create music playlists using prompts. That's right, anything from places, animals, genres or mood, can be used to create a playlist. So something like, a playlist for cats or tigers or for rainy days or the Eiffel Tower are all game! The tool will not produce results for non-music-related prompts, like current events or specific brands, however. So if you wanted a playlist for Louis Vuitton or Prada, you're out of luck. In Other News.. 📰 In Other News.. 📰 Bitcoin Could Surge to $120K on 'Doomsday Rally,' Trader Says — via CoinDesk Elon Musk plans to charge new X users to enable posting — via TechCrunch Facebook and Instagram’s response to deepfake porn is under review by oversight board  — via CNN Baidu says AI chatbot 'Ernie Bot' has attracted 200 million users — via Reuters "Top secret" is no longer the key to good intel in an AI world: report — via Axios AMD rolls out its latest chips for AI PCs as competition with Nvidia and Intel heats up — via CNBC Bitcoin Could Surge to $120K on 'Doomsday Rally,' Trader Says — via CoinDesk CoinDesk CoinDesk Elon Musk plans to charge new X users to enable posting — via TechCrunch TechCrunch TechCrunch Facebook and Instagram’s response to deepfake porn is under review by oversight board  — via CNN CNN CNN Baidu says AI chatbot 'Ernie Bot' has attracted 200 million users — via Reuters Reuters Reuters "Top secret" is no longer the key to good intel in an AI world: report — via Axios Axios Axios AMD rolls out its latest chips for AI PCs as competition with Nvidia and Intel heats up — via CNBC CNBC CNBC And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️ — Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. *All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page. Tech Company Rankings Tech Company Rankings

Elon Musk vs. Mainstream Media

What a crazy blessing. Ending in absolute fireworks, 2023 was a year of cleansing and rebirth. After the calamities of 2022, the year started off shaky and uncertain, full of political intrigue, regulatory contortions, institutional backflips, and Gary Gensler. In spite of the ravaging negative headlines, waning retail spirits, and eerie price action throughout the year, so much fundamental progress was made that market forces couldn't resist the alluring call of a maturing giga-industry, and crypto came back to life. New projects were launched, new technologies were discovered, regulators were challenged, companies held layoffs, hackathons took place, and life-changing money was made. It would be foolish (if not impossible) to cover everything that took place in a single attempt, but ultimately, the most important takeaway is that sentiments have shifted. We have begun to thaw from a prolonged bear winter and transitioned into colloquial "Crypto Spring." To celebrate our transition and prepare ourselves for the upcoming year, let's recap some of the most notable events that took place: * These are in no specific order. Political Progress Due to its boardless, digital nature, when talking politics in crypto, the conversations must always turn global. Traditionally, countries tend to structure their legislation following the example set by America. However, the constant ambivalent, opaque, monotonous attitude of the US has pushed innovation offshore and given an opportunity for other countries, including the likes of Singapore, the UK, and the UAE, among other, to take matters into their own hands and become leaders on the regulatory front. SEC gets Humbled Losing almost (if not every) major battle of the year, most notably Ripple, the Securities and Exchange Commission has become a laughing stock, largely considered incapable of conducting its duties at protecting anything (besides the interests of insiders). Now synonymous with the sneaky, sleazy, two-faced persona of Gary Gensler, it seems that in order to regain its reputation moving forward, the agency will have to rethink its policies and pivot into a more friendly, embracing position. Tornado Cash Sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and its founders were arrested. The privacy-preserving mixer has been deemed a threat to national security because it violates KYC/AML policies. Thus the technology has been blacklisted and banned from the US, and any crypto address interacting with it becomes an enemy of the state. LBRY Decides not to Appeal Losing its case against the SEC in 2022, in which the ruling claimed that LBC digital tokens were, in fact, securities and that the entity behind LBRY failed to register the assets as such, the project has decided not to appeal the decision. The company has gone into receivership, but the network continues to operate. It is very possible that the company's assets are acquired by another crypto company, and the infrastructure that was built out, alongside its active community, merge into something greater than ever before. NFT Projects are Met with Regulatory Enforcement NFTs continue to be an asset archetype that has not been formally defined by the legal system. Nevertheless, 2023 saw the first round of action against NFT projects, including Cool Cats and Impact Theory. Both cases have been resolved without prison time and with multi-million dollar settlements, things that will set the precedent moving forward as to what the industry can expect. Purging the Demons and Serving up Justice The froth of the last cycle brought about lasting economic impacts; scar tissue in the form of fraud, manipulation, and poor protocol design lingers in the not-to-distant memories of the market. FTX, Sam Bankman Fried, Alameda, Genesis, Gemini, BlockFi, Terra Luna, Celcius, 3AC, and the gaggle of crooks have become a sore for the industry. The exhausting mental resources allocated to discussing the issues that transpired, finding who to blame, and pointing fingers has begun to subside. A lot of cleansing has taken place, but there are still a few loose ends that need to be squared off. Crypto is much more exciting than the processes taking place in courtrooms; hopefully, we can move past this sooner than later. Binance and the SEC After settling with the SEC for over $2 Billion USD for its slew of legal infractions, Binance was forced to change its leadership and mark the end of the CZ era. From humble beginnings as a crypto-to-crypto exchange to the single largest entity for payments, trading, investments, NFTs, and everything else, Binance has become the most recognized brand around the world. Countless millions of users, hundreds of billions of dollars, and hundreds of countries; the amount of positive value that this single company brought is impossible to quantify. Introducing Generation 5 Technologies 2023 marked a year of incredible technological innovation manifesting itself in horizontal expansion (new project launches). Scalability, Interoperability, and Privacy continued to be the core tenets of new discoveries. Arriving in many form factors, including alt L1s, Optimistic rollups, ZeroKnowledge Rollups, mult-sigs, and DEFI applications, the list of new projects powered by new technological primitives, with new go-to-market mechanisms and glorious airdrop campaigns have given rise to the next generation of blockchains. (Depending on how you count or who you ask, this would be the 5th generation of public blockchain tech). Alternative Networks and Rollups SUI, SEI, Aptos, Manta Pacific, Stargaze, Kujira, Astar, Blast, the list of new blockchain-based networks is ever-expanding. Each of these networks is running some kind of action-based incentive program and attracting TVL into their ecosystems. Each chain demands its own applications, teams, communities, launch, and operational capital, but that hasn't seemed to slow anybody down. Rollups Becoming the de-facto scaling tech for EVM, Rollups have attracted the attention of some of the industry's most notable entities, including Coinbase and Binance. Proving their value by facilitating multiple times more transactions than legacy base layer ETH, it seems as though Rollups will become the interfaces for applications to conduct activity. Moreover, it seems as tho this is the tech that has caught the majority of mindshare. Interoperability A MultiChain future has only become all the more likely. Interchain operations with solutions from Cosmos's IBC, Polkadot's XCM, and, of course, LayerZero are facilitating more transfers than ever before. Bridges, including Wormhole, Orbiter, Stargate, Symbiosis, et al. are exploding in TVL. This is a trend that simply cannot, will not revert. Bitcoin Ecosystem and Inscriptions Being the oldest and largest crypto network of all, Bitcoin was for many years considered to be a somewhat stale technology that has long discovered its use case, and interest in it has peeked. Not so fast. With the introduction of smart contracts and inscriptions on Bitcoin, a new caliber of ultra-wealthy users that can now do something with the coins they have just been sitting on flooded the ecosystem. This has resulted in divisions amongst crypto maxis and brought massive transactional revenue bonuses to miners. Price action of Q4 If you like Bitcoin at $20,000; your going love it at $44,000. The apes, degens, and bulls are waking up and looking for somewhere to throw their capital in opposition to tradfi. The last quarter of 2023 brought mind-melting, eye-water gains to holders of crypto across the board. Memapaoloosa Reinvigorated internet culture is starting to do its thing. Obscure meme coins like WIF, PEPE, BONK, and COQ are posting gains north of 1000%. Even though memes do not carry inherent value and tend to enter pronounced death spirals, their presence highlights the early stages of a recovering market. If memes are popping off, then one of two things is likely: either there is excess capital in the system, or OGs are preparing for an influx of retail. Either way, even if you don't make money on the memecoins, the wealth effect will inevitably spill over into other cryptos. Solana's Rising From the Ashes Beatin into oblivion from the FTX saga, Solana has broken all mainstream beliefs and become the underdog and best performer of the year. Beyond just the token's meteoric bounce from lows around ~$8 to over $120, the ecosystem has seen an influx of new users, glorious new applications, and functional improvements to the tune of an order of magnitude. Hosting one of the tightest, most resilient communities, Solana has become a platform for realizing sophisticated real-world applications and emerging market segments such as DEPIN. After a world-class Aidrop from the Jito MEV/liquid staking protocol, a pipeline of projects primed to release their tokens through a powerful network of distribution (The Solana Mobile phone); there seems to be no more talk of its death, just questions on how to best take advantage of the technology. Spot Bitcoin ETF It would be remiss if this is not mentioned. Perhaps the single most talked about crypto event of the year, many of the world's largest institutions, including the megalodon BlackRock, have filled for a spot in Bitcoin ETF. Unlocking the gates to institutions, a Spot Bitcoin ETF is in the cards for approval in 2024. However, as it stands, these ETFs will likely still be forced to settle in cash, which is a net positive but not as fundamentally impactful as having to settle in BTC. The industry has mixed opinions on what is to be expected from this; on the one hand, there are those who want to buy into the happening, while others approach with more caution, implying it is a "sell the news" event. After the rumors began circulating and people started to front-running one another, the price responded with tremendous strength. Given the cash settlements, pent-up demand, confluence of macro events, and pre-committed capital that is already penned for inflows greater than $200,000,000 USD; the only thing that seems guaranteed is that no matter what, it is a matter of time before the instrument is live. The Narrative Cycle During the re-stabilization period, crypto was looking for narratives that would supercharge it. Throughout the year, narratives have been shuffled around from AI to RWA, to Alt L1s, Rollups, DEPIN, ETFs, and so on. Stablecoins continued to blossom; DEFI took a beating in TVL but has become much more secure, being the year with the least total amount of hacks. NFTs are starting to make waves again, arguably led by Pudgy Penguins and new Trump Card mints. An influx of new major market participants and an increase in participation from existing ones, including Google, Franklin Templeton, VanEck, and others further confirm the growth of crypto. In short, 2023 was the best time to accumulate. Those brave enough to shut out the noise and lead by investment have already been rewarded for their diamond hands. Many people are getting disappointed, thinking they have missed their chance; friends, the entire market cap of our industry is ~1.6 Trillion… The game has just begun. History may not always repeat, but damn… It sure does tend to rhyme. Excited to be on this journey with you all; I hope you have reaped the rewards of Crypto's past & that your bags are ready to grow to the future. See you all in 2024.

2023 Was the Best Time to Accumulate Crypto

2023 ক্রিপ্টো জমা করার সেরা সময় ছিল

2023 war die beste Zeit, Krypto anzuhäufen

2023 fue el mejor momento para acumular criptomonedas

2023 était le meilleur moment pour accumuler de la crypto

2023 क्रिप्टो जमा करने का सबसे अच्छा समय था

2023 年は仮想通貨を貯めるのに最適な時期だった

2023년은 암호화폐를 축적하기에 가장 좋은 시기였습니다

2023 foi o melhor momento para acumular criptografia

2023 год был лучшим временем для накопления криптовалюты

2023 Kripto Biriktirmenin En İyi Zamanıydı

Năm 2023 là thời điểm tốt nhất để tích lũy tiền điện tử

2023年是积累加密货币的最佳时机

North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . CHAPTER XLVIII. here CHAPTER XLVIII. “NE’ER TO BE FOUND AGAIN.” “My own, my father’s friend! I cannot part with thee! I ne’er have shown, thou ne’er hast known, How dear thou art to me.” Anon. The elements of the dinner-parties which Mrs. Lennox gave, were these; her friends contributed the beauty, Captain Lennox the easy knowledge of the subjects of the day; and Mr. Henry Lennox, and the sprinkling of rising men who were received as his friends, brought the wit, the cleverness, the keen and extensive knowledge of which they knew well enough how to avail themselves without seeming pedantic, or burdening the rapid flow of conversation. These dinners were delightful; but even here Margaret’s dissatisfaction found her out. Every talent, every feeling, every acquirement; nay, even every tendency towards virtue, was used up as materials for fireworks; the hidden, sacred fire, exhausted itself in sparkle and crackle. They talked about art in a merely sensuous way, dwelling on outside effects, instead of allowing themselves to learn what it has to teach. They lashed themselves up into an enthusiasm about high subjects in company, and never thought about them when they were alone; they squandered their capabilities of appreciation into a mere flow of appropriate words. One day, after the gentlemen had come up into the drawing-room, Mr. Lennox drew near to Margaret, and addressed her in almost the first voluntary words he had spoken to her since she had returned to live in Harley Street. “You did not look pleased at what Shirley was saying at dinner.” “Didn’t I? My face must be very expressive,” replied Margaret. “It always was. It has not lost the trick of being eloquent.” “I did not like,” said Margaret, hastily, “his way of advocating what he knew to be wrong—so glaringly wrong—even in jest.” “But it was very clever. How every word told! Did you remember the happy epithets?” “Yes.” “And despise them, you would like to add. Pray don’t scruple, though he is my friend.” “There! that is the exact tone in you, that”—she stopped short. He listened for a moment to see if she would finish her sentence; but she only reddened, and turned away; before she did so, however, she heard him say, in a very low, clear voice,— “If my tones, or modes of thought, are what you dislike, will you do me the justice to tell me so, and so give me the chance of learning to please you.” All these weeks there was no intelligence of Mr. Bell’s going to Milton. He had spoken of it at Helstone as of a journey which he might have to take in a very short time from then; but he must have transacted his business by writing. Margaret thought, ere now, and she knew that if he could, he would avoid going to a place which he disliked, and moreover would little understand the secret importance which she affixed to the explanation that could only be given by word of mouth. She knew that he would feel that it was necessary that it should be done; but whether in summer, autumn, or winter, it would signify very little. It was now August, and there had been no mention of the Spanish journey to which he had alluded to Edith, and Margaret tried to reconcile herself to the fading away of this illusion. But one morning she received a letter, saying that next week he meant to come up to town; he wanted to see her about a plan which he had in his head; and, moreover, he intended to treat himself to a little doctoring, as he had begun to come round to her opinion, that it would be pleasanter to think that his health was more in fault than he, when he found himself irritable and cross. There was altogether a tone of forced cheerfulness in the letter, as Margaret noticed afterwards; but at the time her attention was taken up by Edith’s exclamations. “Coming up to town! Oh dear! and I am so worn out by the heat that I don’t believe I have strength enough in me for another dinner. Besides, everybody has left but our dear stupid selves, who can’t settle where to go to. There would be nobody to meet him.” “I’m sure he would much rather come and dine with us quite alone than with the most agreeable strangers you could pick up. Besides, if he is not well he won’t wish for invitations. I am glad he has owned it at last. I was sure he was ill from the whole tone of his letters, and yet he would not answer me when I asked him, and I had no third person to whom I could apply for news.” “Oh! he is not very ill, or he would not think of Spain.” “He never mentions Spain.” “No! but his plan that is to be proposed evidently relates to that. But would you really go in such weather as this?” “Oh, it will get cooler every day. Yes! Think of it. I am only afraid I have thought and wished too much—in that absorbing wilful way which is sure to be disappointed—or else gratified, to the letter, while in the spirit it gives no pleasure.” “But that’s superstitious, I’m sure, Margaret.” “No, I don’t think it is. Only it ought to warn me, and check me from giving way to such passionate wishes. It is a sort of ‘Give me children, or else I die.’ I’m afraid my cry is, ‘Let me go to Cadiz, or else I die.’” “My dear Margaret! You’ll be persuaded to stay there; and then what shall I do? Oh! I wish I could find somebody for you to marry here, that I could be sure of you!” “I shall never marry.” “Nonsense, and double nonsense! Why, as Sholto says, you’re such an attraction to the house, that he knows ever so many men who will be glad to visit here next year for your sake.” Margaret drew herself up haughtily. “Do you know, Edith, I sometimes think your Corfu life has taught you——” “Well!” “Just a shade or two of coarseness.” Edith began to sob so bitterly, and to declare so vehemently that Margaret had lost all love for her, and no longer looked upon her as a friend, that Margaret came to think that she had expressed too harsh an opinion for the relief of her own wounded pride, and ended by being Edith’s slave for the rest of the day; while that little lady, overcome by wounded feeling, lay like a victim on the sofa, heaving occasionally a profound sigh, till at last she fell asleep. Mr. Bell did not make his appearance even on the day to which he had for a second time deferred his visit. The next morning there came a letter from Wallis, his servant, stating that his master had not been feeling well for some time, which had been the true reason of his putting off his journey; and that at the very time when he should have set out for London, he had been seized with an apoplectic fit; it was, indeed, Wallis added, the opinion of the medical men—that he could not survive the night; and more than probable, that by the time Miss Hale received this letter his poor master would be no more. Margaret received this letter at breakfast-time, and turned very pale as she read it; then, silently putting into Edith’s hands, she left the room. Edith was terribly shocked as she read it, and cried in a sobbing, frightened, childish way, much to her husband’s distress. Mrs. Shaw was breakfasting in her own room, and upon him devolved the task of reconciling his wife to the near contact into which she seemed to be brought with death, for the first time that she could remember in her life. Here was a man who was to have dined with them to-day lying dead or dying instead! It was some time before she could think of Margaret. Then she started up, and followed her upstairs into her room. Dixon was packing up a few toilette articles, and Margaret was hastily putting on her bonnet, shedding tears all the time, and her hands trembling so that she could hardly tie the strings. “Oh, dear Margaret! how shocking! What are you doing? Are you going out? Sholto would telegraph or do anything you like.” “I am going to Oxford. There is a train in half-an-hour. Dixon has offered to go with me, but I could have gone by myself. I must see him again. Besides, he may be better, and want some care. He has been like a father to me. Don’t stop me, Edith.” “But I must. Mamma won’t like it at all. Come and ask her about it, Margaret. You don’t know where you’re going. I should not mind if he had a house of his own; but in his Fellow’s rooms! Come to mamma, and do ask her before you go. It will not take a minute.” Margaret yielded, and lost her train. In the suddenness of the event, Mrs. Shaw became bewildered and hysterical, and so the precious time slipped by. But there was another train in a couple of hours; and after various discussions on propriety and impropriety, it was decided that Captain Lennox should accompany Margaret, as the one thing to which she was constant was her resolution to go, alone or otherwise, by the next train, whatever might be said of the propriety or impropriety of the step. Her father’s friend, her own friend, was lying at the point of death; and the thought of this came upon her with such vividness, that she was surprised herself at the firmness with which she asserted something of her right to independence of action; and five minutes before the time of starting, she found herself sitting in a railway carriage opposite to Captain Lennox. It was always a comfort to her to think that she had gone, though it was only to hear that he had died in the night. She saw the rooms that he had occupied, and associated them ever after most fondly in her memory with the idea of her father, and his one cherished and faithful friend. They had promised Edith before starting, that if all had ended as they feared, they would return to dinner; so that long, lingering look around the room in which her father had died, had to be interrupted, and a quiet farewell taken of the kind old face that had so often come out with pleasant words, and merry quips and cranks. Captain Lennox fell asleep on their journey home; and Margaret could cry at leisure, and bethink her of this fatal year, and all the woes it had brought to her. No sooner was she fully aware of one loss than another came—not to supersede her grief for the one before, but to re-open wounds and feelings scarcely healed. But at the sound of the tender voices of her aunt and Edith, of merry little Sholto’s glee at her arrival, and at the sight of the well-lighted rooms, with their mistress, pretty in her paleness and her eager sorrowful interest, Margaret roused herself from her heavy trance of almost superstitious hopelessness, and began to feel that even around her joy and gladness might gather. She had Edith’s place on the sofa; Sholto was taught to carry Aunt Margaret’s cup of tea very carefully to her; and by the time she went up to dress, she could thank God for having spared her dear old friend a long or a painful illness. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (2003). North and South. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4276/pg4276-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

“NE’ER TO BE FOUND AGAIN.”

Mark Twain's Speeches by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE DAY WE CELEBRATE here THE DAY WE CELEBRATE ADDRESS AT THE FOURTH-OF-JULY DINNER OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY,
          LONDON, 1899. I noticed in Ambassador Choate’s speech that he said: “You may be Americans or Englishmen, but you cannot be both at the same time.” You responded by applause. Consider the effect of a short residence here. I find the Ambassador rises first to speak to a toast, followed by a Senator, and I come third. What a subtle tribute that to monarchial influence of the country when you place rank above respectability! I was born modest, and if I had not been things like this would force it upon me. I understand it quite well. I am here to see that between them they do justice to the day we celebrate, and in case they do not I must do it myself. But I notice they have considered this day merely from one side—its sentimental, patriotic, poetic side. But it has another side. It has a commercial, a business side that needs reforming. It has a historical side. I do not say “an” historical side, because I am speaking the American language. I do not see why our cousins should continue to say “an” hospital, “an” historical fact, “an” horse. It seems to me the Congress of Women, now in session, should look to it. I think “an” is having a little too much to do with it. It comes of habit, which accounts for many things. Yesterday, for example, I was at a luncheon party. At the end of the party a great dignitary of the English Established Church went away half an hour before anybody else and carried off my hat. Now, that was an innocent act on his part. He went out first, and of course had the choice of hats. As a rule I try to get out first myself. But I hold that it was an innocent, unconscious act, due, perhaps, to heredity. He was thinking about ecclesiastical matters, and when a man is in that condition of mind he will take anybody’s hat. The result was that the whole afternoon I was under the influence of his clerical hat and could not tell a lie. Of course, he was hard at it. It is a compliment to both of us. His hat fitted me exactly; my hat fitted him exactly. So I judge I was born to rise to high dignity in the Church some how or other, but I do not know what he was born for. That is an illustration of the influence of habit, and it is perceptible here when they say “an” hospital, “an” European, “an” historical. The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance offices—and they are working it for all it is worth. I am pleased to see that we have a cessation of war for the time. This coming from me, a soldier, you will appreciate. I was a soldier in the Southern war for two weeks, and when gentlemen get up to speak of the great deeds our army and navy have recently done, why, it goes all through me and fires up the old war spirit. I had in my first engagement three horses shot under me. The next ones went over my head, the next hit me in the back. Then I retired to meet an engagement. I thank you, gentlemen, for making even a slight reference to the war profession, in which I distinguished myself, short as my career was. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Mark Twain (2004). Mark Twain's Speeches. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3188/pg3188-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE DAY WE CELEBRATE

I discovered the total revolution that the disasters of Raymond

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Afterword by Andrew "bunnie" Huang, Xbox Hacker here Afterword by Andrew "bunnie" Huang, Xbox Hacker Hackers are explorers, digital pioneers. It's in a hacker's nature to question conventions and be tempted by intricate problems. Any complex system is sport for a hacker; a side effect of this is the hacker's natural affinity for problems involving security. Society is a large and complex system, and is certainly not off limits to a little hacking. As a result, hackers are often stereotyped as iconoclasts and social misfits, people who defy social norms for the sake of defiance. When I hacked the Xbox in 2002 while at MIT, I wasn’t doing it to rebel or to cause harm; I was just following a natural impulse, the same impulse that leads to fixing a broken iPod or exploring the roofs and tunnels at MIT. Unfortunately, the combination of not complying with social norms and knowing “threatening” things like how to read the arphid on your credit card or how to pick locks causes some people to fear hackers. However, the motivations of a hacker are typically as simple as “I’m an engineer because I like to design things.” People often ask me, “Why did you hack the Xbox security system?” And my answer is simple: First, I own the things that I buy. If someone can tell me what I can and can’t run on my hardware, then I don’t own it. Second, because it’s there. It’s a system of sufficient complexity to make good sport. It was a great diversion from the late nights working on my PhD. I was lucky. The fact that I was a graduate student at MIT when I hacked the Xbox legitimized the activity in the eyes of the right people. However, the right to hack shouldn’t only be extended to academics. I got my start on hacking when I was just a boy in elementary school, taking apart every electronic appliance I could get my hands on, much to my parents’ chagrin. My reading collection included books on model rocketry, artillery, nuclear weaponry and explosives manufacture -- books that I borrowed from my school library (I think the Cold War influenced the reading selection in public schools). I also played with my fair share of ad-hoc fireworks and roamed the open construction sites of houses being raised in my Midwestern neighborhood. While not the wisest of things to do, these were important experiences in my coming of age and I grew up to be a free thinker because of the social tolerance and trust of my community. Current events have not been so kind to aspiring hackers. Little Brother shows how we can get from where we are today to a world where social tolerance for new and different thoughts dies altogether. A recent event highlights exactly how close we are to crossing the line into the world of Little Brother. I had the fortune of reading an early draft of Little Brother back in November 2006. Fast forward two months to the end of January 2007, when Boston police found suspected explosive devices and shut down the city for a day. These devices turned out to be nothing more than circuit boards with flashing LEDs, promoting a show for the Cartoon Network. The artists who placed this urban graffiti were taken in as suspected terrorists and ultimately charged with felony; the network producers had to shell out a $2 million settlement, and the head of the Cartoon Network resigned over the fallout. Have the terrorists already won? Have we given in to fear, such that artists, hobbyists, hackers, iconoclasts, or perhaps an unassuming group of kids playing Harajuku Fun Madness, could be so trivially implicated as terrorists? There is a term for this dysfunction -- it is called an autoimmune disease, where an organism's defense system goes into overdrive so much that it fails to recognize itself and attacks its own cells. Ultimately, the organism self-destructs. Right now, America is on the verge of going into anaphylactic shock over its own freedoms, and we need to inoculate ourselves against this. Technology is no cure for this paranoia; in fact, it may enhance the paranoia: it turns us into prisoners of our own device. Coercing millions of people to strip off their outer garments and walk barefoot through metal detectors every day is no solution either. It only serves to remind the population every day that they have a reason to be afraid, while in practice providing only a flimsy barrier to a determined adversary. The truth is that we can't count on someone else to make us feel free, and M1k3y won’t come and save us the day our freedoms are lost to paranoia. That's because M1k3y is in you and in me--Little Brother is a reminder that no matter how unpredictable the future may be, we don't win freedom through security systems, cryptography, interrogations and spot searches. We win freedom by having the courage and the conviction to live every day freely and to act as a free society, no matter how great the threats are on the horizon. Be like M1k3y: step out the door and dare to be free. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Cory Doctorow (2009). Little Brother. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30142/pg30142-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Afterword by Andrew "bunnie" Huang, Xbox Hacker

SIX WEEKS AT HEPPENHEIM

Christian Science by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . “THE” here “THE” I uncover to that imperial word. And to the mind, too, that conceived the idea of seizing and monopolizing it as a title. I believe it is Mrs. Eddy's dazzlingest invention. For show, and style, and grandeur, and thunder and lightning and fireworks it outclasses all the previous inventions of man, and raises the limit on the Pope. He can never put his avid hand on that word of words—it is pre-empted. And copyrighted, of course. It lifts the Mother-Church away up in the sky, and fellowships it with the rare and select and exclusive little company of the THE's of deathless glory—persons and things whereof history and the ages could furnish only single examples, not two: the Saviour, the Virgin, the Milky Way, the Bible, the Earth, the Equator, the Devil, the Missing Link—and now The First Church, Scientist. And by clamor of edict and By-law Mrs. Eddy gives personal notice to all branch Scientist Churches on this planet to leave that THE alone. She has demonstrated over it and made it sacred to the Mother-Church: “The article 'The' must not be used before the titles of branch Churches— “Nor written on applications for membership in naming such churches.” Those are the terms. There can and will be a million First Churches of Christ, Scientist, scattered over the world, in a million towns and villages and hamlets and cities, and each may call itself (suppressing the article), “First Church of Christ. Scientist”—it is permissible, and no harm; but there is only one The Church of Christ, Scientist, and there will never be another. And whether that great word fall in the middle of a sentence or at the beginning of it, it must always have its capital T. I do not suppose that a juvenile passion for fussy little worldly shows and vanities can furnish a match to this, anywhere in the history of the nursery. Mrs. Eddy does seem to be a shade fonder of little special distinctions and pomps than is usual with human beings. She instituted that immodest “The” with her own hand; she did not wait for somebody else to think of it. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Mark Twain (2004). Christian Science. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3187/pg3187-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

I UNCOVER TO THAT IMPERIAL WORD

Dedicated to Forbidden Planet

a SWOT analysis is an evaluation of the fundamental, operational, technical, social, economic, and even to some degree administrative elements of a project. This is not a model to be used for trading purposes. (NFA, DYOR) Note: Composed of four elements, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, a SWOT analysis framework provides excellent insight for establishing a high-level understanding of the state of a project's well-being through the lens of a birds-eye view. It can help formulate decisions around which areas require more attention, set performance goals, and organize a foundational understanding of where a project is headed. Rarely (if ever) used in crypto, it is time to apply this timeless method of evaluation to the digital asset space. Today, , the sharded, interoperable multi-chain blockchain network and layer-0 protocol, will get a SWOT. Polkadot (DOT) 💪 Strengths (Internal) (Helpful) 1) Parachain Architecture Polkadot's mechanism for creating a multi-chain environment is based on the concept of Parachains, which are independent layer-1 blockchain networks with their own tokens, governance models, and functionality that are connected to the Polkadot Relay Chain. By having all Parachains connect to the Relay Chain, the entire ecosystem shares security primitives and is able to seamlessly transfer any arbitrary data between one another (including tokens). As is the case with almost everything in crypto/Web3, this is a novelty that must still prove itself over the test of time; however, the fact that these Parachains are established through token bonding (similar to staking) and have a two-year expiry which then forces the chain operators to bid and compete for their Parachain slot again. 2) XCM V3 Polkadot has developed its own cross-chain messaging protocol, as its interoperability solutions allow for the transference of data between different chains in the Polkadot ecosystem. While there has already been a fair share of brilliant interchain solutions, such as IBC from cosmos, already released into the crypto space, this specific version update to V3 of XCM introduces a significant improvement over any alternatives. Given that the trajectory of the overall crypto industry is headed into a multi-chain world, the presence of XCM positions Polkadot as a leading choice for new and evolving projects. 3) Developer Activity Easily one of the most active projects in terms of full-time (750) and total (2,000) developers that are working on it. These numbers put it in second place only behind Ethereum; the next contender would be Comsos with around 500 full-time devs. When considering the complexity of Polkadot and (relatively) less infrastructure to work with, it is incredible how much attention they have been able to attract. 4) Launched OpenGov Governance is a constant bottleneck when it comes to the speed of iteration around community-led proposals for decentralized environments. OpenGov has introduced a few interesting adjustments, namely its "no-referendum queue," which allows for multiple processes to take place in parallel; in turn, speeding up considerations and allowing users to prioritize what they want rather than being forced to wait for prior ideas to pass. Another worthwhile modulation that must be paid homage to is the leveling of hierarchy, namely by displacing the council and technical committee structure with a Fellowship. There are other improvements such as the gestation and implementation periods but these are incremental, while the first two can potentially have exponential impacts. The crypto industry has long suffered from Vaporware, technology that promised solutions with grand visions that never actually materialized. That said, Polkadot's teams and technical reputation give their extremely ambitious claims credence; while in recent history the network has been processing at approximately a 1,000 TPS level, the team plans on scaling it to the 1,000,000 TPS mark. Achieving such a lofty goal would certainly turn Polkadot into a momento of crypto history and give it a permanent legacy. 5) Insane Scalability *promises 6) Forkless Upgrades Forks are a contentious issue within the blockchain space, causing community fractures, technical delays, and economic shenanigans (duplicate networks with fake tokens). Polkadot is designed with a sophisticated adaption of the substrate framework that is resilient to forks, in turn helping to keep a high level of moral alignment between all of its ecosystem members. 7) DOT not required to pay Chain Fees This is both a weakness and a strength. On the side of the strength, this frees up the team and networks that are trying to build their own projects without forcing end users to jump through too many hoops. By simplifying the process for projects to cater to their end users, adoption becomes inevitable. 😞 Weaknesses (Internal) (Harmful) 1) Technical Complexity Polkadot's intelligent engineering designs and complexity might ultimately be an Achillies heel for it. Parachains, Parathreads, NPOS (Nominated Proof-of-Stake), XCMP, Collators, Fisherman, the amount of terminology, and novel design concepts that require developers and entrepreneurs to reframe their thinking around value creation, make Polkadot unappealing to many potential projects. 2) Non-EVM Compatible The entire open blockchain industry has arguably been impacted the most with the advent of the EVM (not including blockchain tech itself). With an already wildly varied amount of projects arriving in a multitude of layers (L0, L1, L2) and in both EVM and Non-EVM network structures, those that have native compatibility with the EVM (especially those with interoperability at their core) tap into the most robust execution environment and smart contract system that has nothing remotely close to it in terms of adoption or tooling. Polkadot, as you might have already been able to deduce from the long intro in this section, is Non-EVM compatible. 3) Uncapped max supply Inflation is the silent thief of economic opportunity. While there is always an argument to be made on the logical merits of inflationary systems that expand to invite more potential users into an ecosystem, the economic impact of it on the unit value and, in turn, unwary retail investors is measurable. Polkadot's DOT token has a perpetual inflation policy that is distributed as a reward to stakes and allocated to the treasury. 4) DOT not required to pay Chain Fees This is both a weakness and a strength. On the side of the weakness, this renders the DOT token incapable of capturing the value from transactional velocity. Somewhat counter-intuitive that a multi-chain ecosystem wouldn't try to pin its token to the gas-related activities of each individual chain. 🧐 Opportunities (External) (Helpful) 1) Reputable Foundings Polkadot has a founding team equipped with the industry's quintessential knowledge and capabilities. The brainchild of Gavin Wood, a technical co-founder of Ethereum and leading developer of the Solidity smart contract programming language; Gavin published the original Polkadot whitepaper in late 2016 and has since been able to build a team and rally many technical experts around his vision. Having such a strong intellectual foundation gives Polkadot a genuine opportunity to contend against the industry’s largest players with confidence. 2) Avoided SEC Scrutiny Yes, according to the SEC, DOT is not a security. In the recent regulatory kerfuffle, Polkadot has somehow been able to avoid having its DOT token targeted by the SEC. The reasoning behind this, as explained by the Web3 Foundation, is that after long conversations directly with the SEC, they have been able to convince them that the maturation of the project and the evolution of its asset into a compliant archetype satisfies design principles sufficiently enough to not be considered a security. This gives the project an enormous superiority (at least in the frameworks of legality) to operate within every jurisdiction. 😳 Threats (External) (Harmful) 1) Free Market Forces Opt Out Free market forces are the ultimate judge and jury when it comes to technology; adoption is everything. The Interoperability sector has been one that has seen the most genuine innovations, which (ironically) do not inter-operate with one another. Polkadot's solution is competing with a slew of other scalable, interoperable Layer 0 protocols, including AVAX, Cosmos, Layer Zero, and others; if, for any reason, the market forces prefer one of or all others except Polkadot, then the project is effectively unnecessary. 2) Not Delivering on its Vision While there is an abundance of scams, rugs, and shitcoin that build their projects around intentionally hurting others, sometimes there are natural, technological hurdles that impede a project's development; human psychology, physics, regulatory, and other unanticipated occurrences. Polkadot's lofty goals and advanced technologies leave it exposed to underdelivering, which can cause a domino effect to spiral out of control where investors leave, liquidity leaves, and more investors leave until, ultimately, everything dries out. Takeaway: The crypto industry has long suffered from Vaporware, technology that promised solutions with grand visions that never actually materialized. That said, Polkadot's teams and technical reputation is difficult to rebuke. Polkadot is definitely a chain that is geared more towards technically inclined, intelligent audiences, likely those with application solutions that are fit for enterprise-grade problems; this is not a degen chain. The threats facing Polkadot are externalities that are prevalent throughout all crypto projects; however, given their glorious background, technical capability, and the monstrous amount of capital in their ecosystem, they should be held to a high standard and accountable for their words. Conclusion: Complex… but promising. Polkadot is one of the more silent, focused projects without the all-to-common obscene marketing tactics and wannabe influencers plaguing their ecosystem. There is a very technically intensive roadmap/direction of development in the pipeline that would turn this simple SWOT into a multi-page micro thesis, for the sake of brevity, Polkadot is without a doubt one of the heavyweights. The elegance that the project approaches its brand and marketing is somewhat reminiscent to giga-brain Web2 tech giants. There feels to be underlying politics going on (yes, definitely between Polkadot and the government) but also between the genesis group of techno-anarchists that birthed the crypto industry, we know today. Gavin is easily on the same frequency as Vitalik Buterin, Vlad Zamfir, Charles Hoskinson, and a select few others. Of course, the only question most of us care about… Would I invest in this bish? Absolutely. I am very bullish on the surrounding ecosystem of networks building around it, especially Moonbeam (GLMR). I am very bullish on interoperability as a sector. I super appreciate the calm, level-headed aura of the project. Only one thing though, tokenomics are kinda weak, but I have a crawling feeling inside of me that Polkadot will address this at some point. If/When it does, fireworks baby. If you know something that I don't or feel as though I might have missed anything worth noting, please do share, I would tremendously appreciate some feedback. Thank you so much for reading, I hope this serves you well on your journey. Live long and prosper 🥂 Also published here.

The Polkadot (DOT) SWOT Analysis

A Floating City and The Blockade Runners by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Chapter II here CHAPTER II. The deck was still nothing but an immense timber-yard given up to an army of workmen. I could not believe I was on board a ship. Several thousand men—workmen, crew, engineers, officers, mechanics, lookers-on—mingled and jostled together without the least concern, some on deck, others in the engine-room; here pacing the upper decks, there scattered in the rigging, all in an indescribable pell-mell. Here fly-wheel cranes were raising enormous pieces of cast-iron, there heavy joists were hoisted by steam-windlasses; above the engine-rooms an iron cylinder, a metal shaft in fact, was balanced. At the bows, the yards creaked as the sails were hoisted; at the stern rose a scaffolding which, doubtless, concealed some building in construction. Building, fixing, carpentering, rigging, and painting, were going on in the midst of the greatest disorder. My luggage was already on board. I asked to see Captain Anderson, and was told that he had not yet arrived; but one of the stewards undertook to install me, and had my packages carried to one of the aft-cabins. “My good fellow,” said I to him, “the ‘Great Eastern’ was announced to sail on the 20th of March, but is it possible that we can be ready in twenty-four hours? Can you tell me when we may expect to leave Liverpool?” But in this respect the steward knew no more than I did, and he left me to myself. I then made up my mind to visit all the ins and outs of this immense ant-hill, and began my walk like a tourist in a foreign town. A black mire—that British mud which is so rarely absent from the pavement of English towns—covered the deck of the steam-ship; dirty gutters wound here and there. One might have thought oneself in the worst part of Upper Thames Street, near London Bridge. I walked on, following the upper decks towards the stern. Stretching on either side were two wide streets, or rather boulevards, filled with a compact crowd; thus walking, I came to the centre of the steam-ship between the paddles, united by a double set of bridges. Here opened the pit containing the machinery of the paddle-wheels, and I had an opportunity of looking at this admirable locomotive engine. About fifty workmen were scattered on the metallic skylights, some clinging to the long suction-pumps fixing the eccentric wheels, others hanging on the cranks riveting iron wedges with enormous wrenches. After having cast a rapid glance over these fitting works, I continued my walk till I reached the bows, where the carpenters were finishing the decoration of a large saloon called the “smoking-room,” a magnificent apartment with fourteen windows; the ceiling white and gold, and wainscoted with lemon-coloured panels. Then, after having crossed a small triangular space at the bows, I reached the stem, which descends perpendicularly into the water. Turning round from this extreme point, through an opening in the mists, I saw the stern of the “Great Eastern” at a distance of more than two hundred yards. I returned by the boulevards on the starboard side, avoiding contact with the swaying pulleys and the ropes of the rigging, lashed in all directions by the wind; now keeping out of the way, here of the blows of a fly-wheel crane, and further on, of the flaming scoria which were showering from a forge like a display of fireworks. I could hardly see the tops of the masts, two hundred feet in height, which lost themselves in the mist, increased by the black smoke from the tenders and colliers. After having passed the great hatchway of the engine-rooms, I observed a “small hotel” on my left, and then the spacious side walls of a palace surmounted by a terrace, the railings of which were being varnished. At last I reached the stern of the steam-ship, and the place I had already noticed where the scaffolding was erected. Here between the last small deck cabin and the enormous gratings of the hatchways, above which rose the four wheels of the rudder, some engineers had just finished placing a steam-engine. The engine was composed of two horizontal cylinders, and presented a system of pinions, levers, and blocks which seemed to me very complicated. I did not understand at first for what it was intended, but it appeared that here, as everywhere else, the preparations were far from complete. And now, why all these delays? Why so many new arrangements on board the “Great Eastern,” a comparatively new ship? The reason may be explained in a few words. After twenty passages from England to America, one of which was marked by very serious disasters, the use of the “Great Eastern” was temporarily abandoned, and this immense ship, arranged to accommodate passengers, seemed no longer good for anything. When the first attempt to lay the Atlantic cable had failed,—partly because the number of ships which carried it was insufficient—engineers thought of the “Great Eastern.” She alone could store on board the 2100 miles of metallic wire, weighing 4500 tons. She alone, thanks to her perfect indifference to the sea, could unroll and immerse this immense cable. But special arrangements were necessary for storing away the cable in the ship’s hold. Two out of six boilers were removed, and one chimney out of three belonging to the screw engine; in their places large tanks were placed for the cable, which was immersed in water to preserve it from the effects of variation of the atmosphere; the wire thus passed from these tanks of water into the sea without suffering the least contact with the air. The laying of the cable having been successfully accomplished, and the object in view attained, the “Great Eastern” was once more left in her costly idleness. A French company, called the “Great Eastern Company, Limited,” was floated with a capital of 2,000,000 francs, with the intention of employing the immense ship for the conveyance of passengers across the Atlantic. Thus the reason for rearranging the ship to this purpose, and the consequent necessity of filling up the tanks and replacing the boilers, of enlarging the saloons in which so many people were to live during the voyage, and of building extra dining saloons, finally the arrangement of a thousand berths in the sides of the gigantic hull. The “Great Eastern” was freighted to the amount of 25,000 francs a month. Two contracts were arranged with G. Forrester and Co., of Liverpool, the first to the amount of 538,750 francs, for making new boilers for the screw; the second to the amount of 662,500 francs for general repairs, and fixings on board. Before entering upon the last undertaking, the Board of Trade required that the ship’s hull should undergo a strict examination. This costly operation accomplished, a long crack in her exterior plates was carefully repaired at a great expense, and the next proceeding was to fix the new boilers; the driving main-shaft of the wheels, which had been damaged during the last voyage, had to be replaced by a shaft, provided with two eccentric wheels, which insured the solidity of this important part. And now for the first time the “Great Eastern” was to be steered by steam. It was for this delicate operation that the engineers intended the engine which they had placed at the stern. The steersman standing on the bridge between the signal apparatus of the wheels and the screw, has before his eyes a dial provided with a moving needle, which tells him every moment the position of his rudder. In order to modify it, he has only to press his hand lightly on a small wheel, measuring hardly a foot in diameter, and placed within his reach. Immediately the valves open, the steam from the boilers rushes along the conducting tubes into the two cylinders of the small engine, the pistons move rapidly, and the rudder instantly obeys. If this plan succeeds, a man will be able to direct the gigantic body of the “Great Eastern” with one finger. For five days operations continued with distracting activity. These delays considerably affected the enterprise of the freighters, but the contractors could do no more. The day for setting sail was irrevocably settled for the 26th of March. The 25th still saw the deck strewn with all kinds of tools. During this last day, however, little by little the gangways were cleared, the scaffoldings were taken down, the fly-wheel cranes disappeared, the fixing of the engines was accomplished, the last screws and nails were driven in, the reservoirs filled with oil, and the last slab rested on its metal mortise. This day the chief engineer tried the boilers. The engine-rooms were full of steam; leaning over the hatchway, enveloped in a hot mist, I could see nothing, but I heard the long pistons groaning, and the huge cylinders noisily swaying to and fro on their solid swing blocks. The muddy waters of the Mersey were lashed into foam by the slowly revolving paddle-wheels; at the stern, the screw beat the waves with its four blades; the two engines, entirely independent of each other, were in complete working order. Towards five o’clock a small steamer, intended as a shore-boat for the “Great Eastern,” came alongside. Her movable engine was first hoisted on board by means of windlasses, but as for the steamer herself, she could not be embarked. Her steel hull was so heavy that the davits to which it was attached bent under the weight, undoubtedly this would not have occurred had they supported them with lifts. Therefore they were obliged to abandon the steamer, but there still remained on the “Great Eastern” a string of sixteen boats hanging to the davits. Everything was finished by evening; not a trace of mud was visible on the well-swept boulevards, for an army of sweepers had been at work. There was a full cargo; provisions, goods, and coal filled the stewards’ room, the store, and the coal houses. However, the steamer had not yet sunk to the load water-line, and did not draw the necessary thirty-three feet. It was an inconvenient position for the wheels, for the paddles not being sufficiently immersed, caused a great diminution in the speed. Nevertheless it was possible to set sail, and I went to bed with the hope of starting next day. I was not disappointed, for at break of dawn I saw the English, French, and American flags floating from the masts. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2022). A Floating City and The Blockade Runners. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/67829/67829-h/67829-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

The deck was still nothing but an immense timber-yard

Abandoned by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . CHAPTER IV here CHAPTER IV Journey to the Coast—Troops of Monkeys—A new River—The Reason the Tide was not felt—A woody Shore—Reptile Promontory—Herbert envies Gideon Spilett—Explosion of Bamboos. It was six o'clock in the morning when the settlers, after a hasty breakfast, set out to reach by the shortest way the western coast of the island. And how long would it take to do this? Cyrus Harding had said two hours, but of course that depended on the nature of the obstacles they might meet with. As it was probable that they would have to cut a path through the grass, shrubs, and creepers, they marched axe in hand, and with guns also ready, wisely taking warning from the cries of the wild beasts heard in the night. The exact position of the encampment could be determined by the bearing of Mount Franklin, and as the volcano arose in the north at a distance of less than three miles, they had only to go straight towards the south-west to reach the western coast. They set out, having first carefully secured the canoe. Pencroft and Neb carried sufficient provisions for the little band for at least two days. It would not thus be necessary to hunt. The engineer advised his companions to refrain from firing, that their presence might not be betrayed to any one near the shore. The first hatchet blows were given among the brushwood in the midst of some mastick-trees, a little above the cascade; and his compass in his hand, Cyrus Harding led the way. The forest here was composed for the most part of trees which had already been met with near the lake and on Prospect Heights. There were deodars, Douglas firs, casuarinas, gum-trees, eucalypti, hibiscus, cedars, and other trees, generally of a moderate size, for their number prevented their growth. Since their departure, the settlers had descended the slopes which constituted the mountain system of the island, on to a dry soil, but the luxuriant vegetation of which indicated it to be watered either by some subterranean marsh or by some stream. However, Cyrus Harding did not remember to have seen, at the time of his excursion to the crater, any other watercourses but the Red Creek and the Mercy. During the first part of their excursion, they saw numerous troops of monkeys who exhibited great astonishment at the sight of men, whose appearance was so new to them. Gideon Spilett jokingly asked whether these active and merry quadrupeds did not consider him and his companions as degenerate brothers. And certainly, pedestrians, hindered at each step by bushes, caught by creepers, barred by trunks of trees, did not shine beside those supple animals, who, bounding from branch to branch, were hindered by nothing on their course. The monkeys were numerous, but happily they did not manifest any hostile disposition. Several pigs, agoutis, kangaroos, and other rodents were seen, also two or three kaolas, at which Pencroft longed to have a shot. "But," said he, "you may jump and play just now; we shall have one or two words to say to you on our way back!" At half-past nine the way was suddenly found to be barred by an unknown stream, from thirty to forty feet broad, whose rapid current dashed foaming over the numerous rocks which interrupted its course. This creek was deep and clear, but it was absolutely unnavigable. "We are cut off!" cried Neb. "No," replied Herbert, "it is only a stream, and we can easily swim over." "What would be the use of that?" returned Harding. "This creek evidently runs to the sea. Let us remain on this side and follow the bank, and I shall be much astonished if it does not lead us very quickly to the coast. Forward!" "One minute," said the reporter. "The name of this creek, my friends? Do not let us leave our geography incomplete." "All right!" said Pencroft. "Name it, my boy," said the engineer, addressing the lad. "Will it not be better to wait until we have explored it to its mouth?" answered Herbert. "Very well," replied Cyrus Harding. "Let us follow it as fast as we can without stopping." "Still another minute!" said Pencroft. "What's the matter?" asked the reporter. "Though hunting is forbidden, fishing is allowed, I suppose," said the sailor. "We have no time to lose," replied the engineer. "Oh! five minutes!" replied Pencroft, "I only ask for five minutes to use in the interest of our breakfast!" And Pencroft, lying down on the bank, plunged his arm into the water, and soon pulled up several dozen of fine crayfish from among the stores. "These will be good!" cried Neb, going to the sailor's aid. "As I said, there is everything in this island, except tobacco!" muttered Pencroft with a sigh. The fishing did not take five minutes for the crayfish were swarming in the creek. A bag was filled with the crustaceæ, whose shells were of a cobalt blue. The settlers then pushed on. They advanced more rapidly and easily along the bank of the river than in the forest. From time to time they came upon the traces of animals of a large size who had come to quench their thirst at the stream but none were actually seen and it was evidently not in this part of the forest that the peccary had received the bullet which had cost Pencroft a grinder. In the meanwhile, considering the rapid current Harding was led to suppose that he and his companions were much farther from the western coast than they had at first supposed. In fact, at this hour, the rising tide would have turned back the current of the creek if its mouth had only been a few miles distant. Now, this effect was not produced, and the water pursued its natural course. The engineer was much astonished at this, and frequently consulted his compass to assure himself that some turn of the river was not leading them again into the Far West. However, the creek gradually widened and its waters became less tumultuous. The trees on the right bank were as close together as on the left bank, and it was impossible to distinguish anything beyond them, but these masses of wood were evidently uninhabited, for Top did not bark, and the intelligent animal would not have failed to signal the presence of any stranger in the neighbourhood. At half past ten, to the great surprise of Cyrus Harding, Herbert, who was a little in front, suddenly stopped and exclaimed— "The sea!" In a few minutes more, the whole western shore of the island lay extended before the eyes of the settlers. But what a contrast between this and the eastern coast, upon which chance had first thrown them. No granite cliff, no rocks, not even a sandy beach. The forest reached the shore, and the tall trees bending over the water were beaten by the waves. It was not such a shore as is usually formed by nature, either by extending a vast carpet of sand, or by grouping masses of rock, but a beautiful border consisting of the most splendid trees. The bank was raised a little above the level of the sea, and on this luxuriant soil supported by a granite base, the fine forest trees seemed to be as firmly planted as in the interior of the island. The colonists were then on the shore of an unimportant little harbour, which would scarcely have contained even two or three fishing boats. It served as a neck to the new creek of which the curious thing was that its waters, instead of joining the sea by a gentle slope, fell from a height of more than forty feet, which explained why the rising tide was not felt up the stream. In fact, the tides of the Pacific, even at their maximum of elevation, could never reach the level of the river, and, doubtless millions of years would pass before the water would have worn away the granite and hollowed a practicable mouth. It was settled that the name of Falls River should be given to this stream. Beyond, towards the north, the forest border was prolonged for a space of nearly two miles, then the trees became scarcer, and beyond that again the picturesque heights described a nearly straight line which ran north and south. On the contrary, all the part of the shore between Falls River and Reptile End was a mass of wood, magnificent trees, some straight, others bent, so that the long sea swell bathed their roots. Now, it was this coast, that is, all the Serpentine peninsula, that was to be explored, [Pg 39]for this part of the shore offered a refuge to castaways, which the other wild and barren side must have refused. The weather was fine and clear, and from the height of a hillock on which Neb and Pencroft had arranged breakfast, a wide view was obtained. There was, however, not a sail in sight; nothing could be seen along the shore as far as the eye could reach. But the engineer would take nothing for granted until he had explored the coast to the very extremity of the Serpentine peninsula. Breakfast was soon despatched, and at half-past eleven the captain gave the signal for departure. Instead of proceeding over the summit of a cliff or along a sandy beach, the settlers were obliged to remain under cover of the trees so that they might continue on the shore. The distance which separated Falls River from Reptile End was about twelve miles. It would have taken the settlers four hours to do this, on a clear ground and without hurrying themselves; but as it was they needed double the time, for what with trees to go round, bushes to cut down, and creepers to chop away, they were impeded at every step, these obstacles greatly lengthening their journey. There was, however, nothing to show that a shipwreck had taken place recently. It is true that, as Gideon Spilett observed, any remains of it might have drifted out to sea, and they must not take it for granted that because they could find no traces of it, a ship had not been cast away on the coast. The reporter's argument was just, and besides, the incident of the bullet proved that a shot must have been fired in Lincoln Island within three months. It was already five o'clock, and there were still two miles between the settlers and the extremity of the Serpentine peninsula. It was evident that after having reached Reptile End, Harding and his companions would not have time to return before dark to their encampment near the source of the Mercy. It would therefore be necessary to pass the night on the promontory. But they had no lack of provisions, which was lucky, for there were no animals on the shore, though birds, on the contrary, abounded—jacamars, couroucoos, tragopans, grouse, lories, parrots, cockatoos, pheasants, pigeons, and a hundred others. There was not a tree without a nest, and not a nest which was not full of flapping wings. Towards seven o'clock the weary explorers arrived at Reptile End. Here the seaside forest ended, and the shore resumed the customary appearance of a coast, with rocks, reefs, and sands. It was possible that something might be found here, but darkness came on, and the further exploration had to be put off to the next day. Pencroft and Herbert hastened on to find a suitable place for their camp. Amongst the last trees of the forest of the Far West, the boy found several thick clumps of bamboos. "Good," said he; "this is a valuable discovery." "Valuable?" returned Pencroft. "Certainly," replied Herbert. "I may say, Pencroft, that the bark of the bamboo cut into flexible laths, is used for making baskets; that this bark, mashed into a paste, is used for the manufacture of Chinese paper; that the stalks furnish, according to their size, canes and pipes, and are used for conducting water; that large bamboos make excellent material for building, being light and strong, and being never attacked by insects. I will add that by sawing the bamboo in two at the joint, keeping for the bottom the part of the transverse film which forms the joint, useful cups are obtained, which are much in use among the Chinese. No! you don't care for that. But—" "But what?" "But I can tell you, if you are ignorant of it, that in India these bamboos are eaten like asparagus." "Asparagus thirty feet high!" exclaimed the sailor. "And are they good?" "Excellent," replied Herbert. "Only it is not the stems of thirty feet high which are eaten, but the young shoots." "Perfect, my boy, perfect!" replied Pencroft. "I will also add that the pith of the young stalks, preserved in vinegar, makes a good pickle." "Better and better, Herbert!" "And lastly, that the bamboos exude a sweet liquor which can be made into a very agreeable drink." "Is that all?" asked the sailor. "That is all!" "And they don't happen to do for smoking?" "No, my poor Pencroft." Herbert and the sailor had not to look long for a place in which to pass the night. The rocks, which must have been violently beaten by the sea under the influence of the winds of the south west, presented many cavities in which shelter could be found against the night air. But just as they were about to enter one of these caves a loud roaring arrested them. "Back!" cried Pencroft. "Our guns are only loaded with small shot, and beasts which can roar as loud as that would care no more for it than for grams of salt!". And the sailor, seizing Herbert by the arm, dragged him behind a rock, just as a magnificent animal showed itself at the entrance of the cavern. It was a jaguar of a size at least equal to its Asiatic congeners, that is to say, it measured five feet from the extremity of its head to the beginning of its tail. The yellow colour of its hair was relieved by streaks and regular oblong spots of black, which contrasted with the white of its chest. Herbert recognised it as the ferocious rival of the tiger, as formidable as the puma, which is the rival of the largest wolf! The jaguar advanced and gazed around him with blazing eyes, his hair bristling as if this was not the first time he had scented man. At this moment the reporter appeared round a rock, and Herbert, thinking that he had not seen the jaguar, was about to rush towards him, when Gideon Spilett signed to him to remain where he was. This was not his first tiger, and advancing to within ten feet of the animal he remained motionless, his gun to his shoulder, without moving a muscle. The jaguar collected itself for a spring, but at that moment a shot struck it in the eyes, and it fell dead. Herbert and Pencroft rushed towards the jaguar. Neb and Harding also ran up, and they remained for some instants contemplating the animal as it lay stretched on the ground, thinking that its magnificent skin would be a great ornament to the hall at Granite House. "Oh, Mr. Spilett, how I admire and envy you!" cried Herbert, in a fit of very natural enthusiasm. "Well, my boy," replied the reporter, "you could have done the same." "I! with such coolness!—" "Imagine to yourself, Herbert, that the jaguar is only a hare, and you would fire as quietly as possible." "That is," rejoined Pencroft, "it is not more dangerous than a hare!" "And now," said Gideon Spilett, "since the jaguar has left its abode, I do not see, my friends, why we should not take possession of it for the night." "But others may come," said Pencroft. "It will be enough to light a fire at the entrance of the cavern," said the reporter, "and no wild beasts will dare to cross the threshold." "Into the jaguar's house, then!" replied the sailor, dragging after him the body of the animal. Whilst Neb skinned the jaguar, his companions collected an abundant supply of dry wood from the forest, which they heaped up at the cave. Cyrus Harding, seeing the clump of bamboos, cut a quantity, which he mingled with the other fuel. This done, they entered the grotto, of which the floor was strewn with bones, the guns were carefully loaded, in case of a sudden attack, they had supper, and then just before they lay down to rest, the heap of wood piled at the entrance was set fire to. Immediately, a regular explosion, or rather, a series of reports, broke the silence! The noise was caused, by the bamboos, which, as the flames reached them, exploded like fireworks. The noise was enough to terrify even the boldest of wild beasts. It was not the engineer who had invented this way of causing loud explosions, for, according to Marco Polo, the Tartars have employed it for many centuries to drive away from their encampments the formidable wild beasts of Central Asia. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2010). Abandoned. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/33516/pg33516-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Cyrus Harding had said two hours, but of course that depended on the nature

Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Chapter XIX here CHAPTER NINETEENTH. The Nile.—The Trembling Mountain.—A Remembrance of the Country.—The Narratives of the Arabs.—The Nyam-Nyams.—Joe’s Shrewd Cogitations.—The Balloon runs the Gantlet.—Aerostatic Ascensions.—Madame Blanchard. “Which way do we head?” asked Kennedy, as he saw his friend consulting the compass. “North-northeast.” “The deuce! but that’s not the north?” “No, Dick; and I’m afraid that we shall have some trouble in getting to Gondokoro. I am sorry for it; but, at last, we have succeeded in connecting the explorations from the east with those from the north; and we must not complain.” The balloon was now receding gradually from the Nile. “One last look,” said the doctor, “at this impassable latitude, beyond which the most intrepid travellers could not make their way. There are those intractable tribes, of whom Petherick, Arnaud, Miuni, and the young traveller Lejean, to whom we are indebted for the best work on the Upper Nile, have spoken.” “Thus, then,” added Kennedy, inquiringly, “our discoveries agree with the speculations of science.” “Absolutely so. The sources of the White Nile, of the Bahr-el-Abiad, are immersed in a lake as large as a sea; it is there that it takes its rise. Poesy, undoubtedly, loses something thereby. People were fond of ascribing a celestial origin to this king of rivers. The ancients gave it the name of an ocean, and were not far from believing that it flowed directly from the sun; but we must come down from these flights from time to time, and accept what science teaches us. There will not always be scientific men, perhaps; but there always will be poets.” “We can still see cataracts,” said Joe. “Those are the cataracts of Makedo, in the third degree of latitude. Nothing could be more accurate. Oh, if we could only have followed the course of the Nile for a few hours!” “And down yonder, below us, I see the top of a mountain,” said the hunter. “That is Mount Longwek, the of the Arabs. This whole country was visited by Debono, who went through it under the name of Latif-Effendi. The tribes living near the Nile are hostile to each other, and are continually waging a war of extermination. You may form some idea, then, of the difficulties he had to encounter.” Trembling Mountain The wind was carrying the balloon toward the northwest, and, in order to avoid Mount Longwek, it was necessary to seek a more slanting current. “My friends,” said the doctor, “here is where passage of the African Continent really commences; up to this time we have been following the traces of our predecessors. Henceforth we are to launch ourselves upon the unknown. We shall not lack the courage, shall we?” our “Never!” said Dick and Joe together, almost in a shout. “Onward, then, and may we have the help of Heaven!” At ten o’clock at night, after passing over ravines, forests, and scattered villages, the aëronauts reached the side of the Trembling Mountain, along whose gentle slopes they went quietly gliding. In that memorable day, the 23d of April, they had, in fifteen hours, impelled by a rapid breeze, traversed a distance of more than three hundred and fifteen miles. But this latter part of the journey had left them in dull spirits, and complete silence reigned in the car. Was Dr. Ferguson absorbed in the thought of his discoveries? Were his two companions thinking of their trip through those unknown regions? There were, no doubt, mingled with these reflections, the keenest reminiscences of home and distant friends. Joe alone continued to manifest the same careless philosophy, finding it that home should not be there, from the moment that he left it; but he respected the silent mood of his friends, the doctor and Kennedy. quite natural About ten the balloon anchored on the side of the Trembling Mountain, so called, because, in Arab tradition, it is said to tremble the instant that a Mussulman sets foot upon it. The travellers then partook of a substantial meal, and all quietly passed the night as usual, keeping the regular watches. On awaking the next morning, they all had pleasanter feelings. The weather was fine, and the wind was blowing from the right quarter; so that a good breakfast, seasoned with Joe’s merry pranks, put them in high good-humor. The region they were now crossing is very extensive. It borders on the Mountains of the Moon on one side, and those of Darfur on the other—a space about as broad as Europe. “We are, no doubt, crossing what is supposed to be the kingdom of Usoga. Geographers have pretended that there existed, in the centre of Africa, a vast depression, an immense central lake. We shall see whether there is any truth in that idea,” said the doctor. “But how did they come to think so?” asked Kennedy. “From the recitals of the Arabs. Those fellows are great narrators—too much so, probably. Some travellers, who had got as far as Kazeh, or the great lakes, saw slaves that had been brought from this region; interrogated them concerning it, and, from their different narratives, made up a jumble of notions, and deduced systems from them. Down at the bottom of it all there is some appearance of truth; and you see that they were right about the sources of the Nile.” “Nothing could be more correct,” said Kennedy. “It was by the aid of these documents that some attempts at maps were made, and so I am going to try to follow our route by one of them, rectifying it when need be.” “Is all this region inhabited?” asked Joe. “Undoubtedly; and disagreeably inhabited, too.” “I thought so.” “These scattered tribes come, one and all, under the title of Nyam-Nyams, and this compound word is only a sort of nickname. It imitates the sound of chewing.” “That’s it! Excellent!” said Joe, champing his teeth as though he were eating; “Nyam-Nyam.” “My good Joe, if you were the immediate object of this chewing, you wouldn’t find it so excellent.” “Why, what’s the reason, sir?” “These tribes are considered man-eaters.” “Is that really the case?” “Not a doubt of it! It has also been asserted that these natives had tails, like mere quadrupeds; but it was soon discovered that these appendages belonged to the skins of animals that they wore for clothing.” “More’s the pity! a tail’s a nice thing to chase away mosquitoes.” “That may be, Joe; but we must consign the story to the domain of fable, like the dogs’ heads which the traveller, Brun-Rollet, attributed to other tribes.” “Dogs’ heads, eh? Quite convenient for barking, and even for man-eating!” “But one thing that has been, unfortunately, proven true, is, the ferocity of these tribes, who are really very fond of human flesh, and devour it with avidity.” “I only hope that they won’t take such a particular fancy to mine!” said Joe, with comic solemnity. “See that!” said Kennedy. “Yes, indeed, sir; if I have to be eaten, in a moment of famine, I want it to be for your benefit and my master’s; but the idea of feeding those black fellows—gracious! I’d die of shame!” “Well, then, Joe,” said Kennedy, “that’s understood; we count upon you in case of need!” “At your service, gentlemen!” “Joe talks in this way so as to make us take good care of him, and fatten him up.” “Maybe so!” said Joe. “Every man for himself.” In the afternoon, the sky became covered with a warm mist, that oozed from the soil; the brownish vapor scarcely allowed the beholder to distinguish objects, and so, fearing collision with some unexpected mountain-peak, the doctor, about five o’clock, gave the signal to halt. The night passed without accident, but in such profound obscurity, that it was necessary to use redoubled vigilance. The monsoon blew with extreme violence during all the next morning. The wind buried itself in the lower cavities of the balloon and shook the appendage by which the dilating-pipes entered the main apparatus. They had, at last, to be tied up with cords, Joe acquitting himself very skilfully in performing that operation. He had occasion to observe, at the same time, that the orifice of the balloon still remained hermetically sealed. “That is a matter of double importance for us,” said the doctor; “in the first place, we avoid the escape of precious gas, and then, again, we do not leave behind us an inflammable train, which we should at last inevitably set fire to, and so be consumed.” “That would be a disagreeable travelling incident!” said Joe. “Should we be hurled to the ground?” asked Kennedy. “Hurled! No, not quite that. The gas would burn quietly, and we should descend little by little. A similar accident happened to a French aëronaut, Madame Blanchard. She ignited her balloon while sending off fireworks, but she did not fall, and she would not have been killed, probably, had not her car dashed against a chimney and precipitated her to the ground.” “Let us hope that nothing of the kind may happen to us,” said the hunter. “Up to this time our trip has not seemed to me very dangerous, and I can see nothing to prevent us reaching our destination.” “Nor can I either, my dear Dick; accidents are generally caused by the imprudence of the aëronauts, or the defective construction of their apparatus. However, in thousands of aërial ascensions, there have not been twenty fatal accidents. Usually, the danger is in the moment of leaving the ground, or of alighting, and therefore at those junctures we should never omit the utmost precaution.” “It’s breakfast-time,” said Joe; “we’ll have to put up with preserved meat and coffee until Mr. Kennedy has had another chance to get us a good slice of venison.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2002). Five Weeks in a Balloon. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3526/pg3526-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

The Nile

Five Weeks in a Balloon by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Chapter XVI here CHAPTER SIXTEENTH. Symptoms of a Storm.—The Country of the Moon.—The Future of the African Continent.—The Last Machine of all.—A View of the Country at Sunset.—Flora and Fauna.—The Tempest.—The Zone of Fire.—The Starry Heavens. “See,” said Joe, “what comes of playing the sons of the moon without her leave! She came near serving us an ugly trick. But say, master, did you damage your credit as a physician?” “Yes, indeed,” chimed in the sportsman. “What kind of a dignitary was this Sultan of Kazeh?” “An old half-dead sot,” replied the doctor, “whose loss will not be very severely felt. But the moral of all this is that honors are fleeting, and we must not take too great a fancy to them.” “So much the worse!” rejoined Joe. “I liked the thing—to be worshipped!—Play the god as you like! Why, what would any one ask more than that? By-the-way, the moon did come up, too, and all red, as if she was in a rage.” While the three friends went on chatting of this and other things, and Joe examined the luminary of night from an entirely novel point of view, the heavens became covered with heavy clouds to the northward, and the lowering masses assumed a most sinister and threatening look. Quite a smart breeze, found about three hundred feet from the earth, drove the balloon toward the north-northeast; and above it the blue vault was clear; but the atmosphere felt close and dull. The aëronauts found themselves, at about eight in the evening, in thirty-two degrees forty minutes east longitude, and four degrees seventeen minutes latitude. The atmospheric currents, under the influence of a tempest not far off, were driving them at the rate of from thirty to thirty-five miles an hour; the undulating and fertile plains of Mfuto were passing swiftly beneath them. The spectacle was one worthy of admiration—and admire it they did. “We are now right in the country of the Moon,” said Dr. Ferguson; “for it has retained the name that antiquity gave it, undoubtedly, because the moon has been worshipped there in all ages. It is, really, a superb country.” “It would be hard to find more splendid vegetation.” “If we found the like of it around London it would not be natural, but it would be very pleasant,” put in Joe. “Why is it that such savage countries get all these fine things?” “And who knows,” said the doctor, “that this country may not, one day, become the centre of civilization? The races of the future may repair hither, when Europe shall have become exhausted in the effort to feed her inhabitants.” “Do you think so, really?” asked Kennedy. “Undoubtedly, my dear Dick. Just note the progress of events: consider the migrations of races, and you will arrive at the same conclusion assuredly. Asia was the first nurse of the world, was she not? For about four thousand years she travailed, she grew pregnant, she produced, and then, when stones began to cover the soil where the golden harvests sung by Homer had flourished, her children abandoned her exhausted and barren bosom. You next see them precipitating themselves upon young and vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning to die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day. Those new diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those defective crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a source of help, not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In its turn, that new continent will grow old; its virgin forests will fall before the axe of industry, and its soil will become weak through having too fully produced what had been demanded of it. Where two harvests bloomed every year, hardly one will be gathered from a soil completely drained of its strength. Then, Africa will be there to offer to new races the treasures that for centuries have been accumulating in her breast. Those climates now so fatal to strangers will be purified by cultivation and by drainage of the soil, and those scattered water supplies will be gathered into one common bed to form an artery of navigation. Then this country over which we are now passing, more fertile, richer, and fuller of vitality than the rest, will become some grand realm where more astonishing discoveries than steam and electricity will be brought to light.” “Ah! sir,” said Joe, “I’d like to see all that.” “You got up too early in the morning, my boy!” “Besides,” said Kennedy, “that may prove to be a very dull period when industry will swallow up every thing for its own profit. By dint of inventing machinery, men will end in being eaten up by it! I have always fancied that the end of the earth will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up our Globe!” “And I add that the Americans,” said Joe, “will not have been the last to work at the machine!” “In fact,” assented the doctor, “they are great boiler-makers! But, without allowing ourselves to be carried away by such speculations, let us rest content with enjoying the beauties of this country of the Moon, since we have been permitted to see it.” The sun, darting his last rays beneath the masses of heaped-up cloud, adorned with a crest of gold the slightest inequalities of the ground below; gigantic trees, arborescent bushes, mosses on the even surface—all had their share of this luminous effulgence. The soil, slightly undulating, here and there rose into little conical hills; there were no mountains visible on the horizon; immense brambly palisades, impenetrable hedges of thorny jungle, separated the clearings dotted with numerous villages, and immense euphorbiae surrounded them with natural fortifications, interlacing their trunks with the coral-shaped branches of the shrubbery and undergrowth. Ere long, the Malagazeri, the chief tributary of Lake Tanganayika, was seen winding between heavy thickets of verdure, offering an asylum to many water-courses that spring from the torrents formed in the season of freshets, or from ponds hollowed in the clayey soil. To observers looking from a height, it was a chain of waterfalls thrown across the whole western face of the country. Animals with huge humps were feeding in the luxuriant prairies, and were half hidden, sometimes, in the tall grass; spreading forests in bloom redolent of spicy perfumes presented themselves to the gaze like immense bouquets; but, in these bouquets, lions, leopards, hyenas, and tigers, were then crouching for shelter from the last hot rays of the setting sun. From time to time, an elephant made the tall tops of the undergrowth sway to and fro, and you could hear the crackling of huge branches as his ponderous ivory tusks broke them in his way. “What a sporting country!” exclaimed Dick, unable longer to restrain his enthusiasm; “why, a single ball fired at random into those forests would bring down game worthy of it. Suppose we try it once!” “No, my dear Dick; the night is close at hand—a threatening night with a tempest in the background—and the storms are awful in this country, where the heated soil is like one vast electric battery.” “You are right, sir,” said Joe, “the heat has got to be enough to choke one, and the breeze has died away. One can feel that something’s coming.” “The atmosphere is saturated with electricity,” replied the doctor; “every living creature is sensible that this state of the air portends a struggle of the elements, and I confess that I never before was so full of the fluid myself.” “Well, then,” suggested Dick, “would it not be advisable to alight?” “On the contrary, Dick, I’d rather go up, only that I am afraid of being carried out of my course by these counter-currents contending in the atmosphere.” “Have you any idea, then, of abandoning the route that we have followed since we left the coast?” “If I can manage to do so,” replied the doctor, “I will turn more directly northward, by from seven to eight degrees; I shall then endeavor to ascend toward the presumed latitudes of the sources of the Nile; perhaps we may discover some traces of Captain Speke’s expedition or of M. de Heuglin’s caravan. Unless I am mistaken, we are at thirty-two degrees forty minutes east longitude, and I should like to ascend directly north of the equator.” “Look there!” exclaimed Kennedy, suddenly, “see those hippopotami sliding out of the pools—those masses of blood-colored flesh—and those crocodiles snuffing the air aloud!” “They’re choking!” ejaculated Joe. “Ah! what a fine way to travel this is; and how one can snap his fingers at all that vermin!—Doctor! Mr. Kennedy! see those packs of wild animals hurrying along close together. There are fully two hundred. Those are wolves.” “No! Joe, not wolves, but wild dogs; a famous breed that does not hesitate to attack the lion himself. They are the worst customers a traveller could meet, for they would instantly tear him to pieces.” “Well, it isn’t Joe that’ll undertake to muzzle them!” responded that amiable youth. “After all, though, if that’s the nature of the beast, we mustn’t be too hard on them for it!” Silence gradually settled down under the influence of the impending storm: the thickened air actually seemed no longer adapted to the transmission of sound; the atmosphere appeared , and, like a room hung with tapestry, lost all its sonorous reverberation. The “rover bird” so-called, the coroneted crane, the red and blue jays, the mocking-bird, the flycatcher, disappeared among the foliage of the immense trees, and all nature revealed symptoms of some approaching catastrophe. muffled At nine o’clock the hung motionless over Msene, an extensive group of villages scarcely distinguishable in the gloom. Once in a while, the reflection of a wandering ray of light in the dull water disclosed a succession of ditches regularly arranged, and, by one last gleam, the eye could make out the calm and sombre forms of palm-trees, sycamores, and gigantic euphorbiae. Victoria “I am stifling!” said the Scot, inhaling, with all the power of his lungs, as much as possible of the rarefied air. “We are not moving an inch! Let us descend!” “But the tempest!” said the doctor, with much uneasiness. “If you are afraid of being carried away by the wind, it seems to me that there is no other course to pursue.” “Perhaps the storm won’t burst to-night,” said Joe; “the clouds are very high.” “That is just the thing that makes me hesitate about going beyond them; we should have to rise still higher, lose sight of the earth, and not know all night whether we were moving forward or not, or in what direction we were going.” “Make up your mind, dear doctor, for time presses!” “It’s a pity that the wind has fallen,” said Joe, again; “it would have carried us clear of the storm.” “It is, indeed, a pity, my friends,” rejoined the doctor. “The clouds are dangerous for us; they contain opposing currents which might catch us in their eddies, and lightnings that might set on fire. Again, those perils avoided, the force of the tempest might hurl us to the ground, were we to cast our anchor in the tree-tops.” “Then what shall we do?” “Well, we must try to get the balloon into a medium zone of the atmosphere, and there keep her suspended between the perils of the heavens and those of the earth. We have enough water for the cylinder, and our two hundred pounds of ballast are untouched. In case of emergency I can use them.” “We will keep watch with you,” said the hunter. “No, my friends, put the provisions under shelter, and lie down; I will rouse you, if it becomes necessary.” “But, master, wouldn’t you do well to take some rest yourself, as there’s no danger close on us just now?” insisted poor Joe. “No, thank you, my good fellow, I prefer to keep awake. We are not moving, and should circumstances not change, we’ll find ourselves to-morrow in exactly the same place.” “Good-night, then, sir!” “Good-night, if you can only find it so!” Kennedy and Joe stretched themselves out under their blankets, and the doctor remained alone in the immensity of space. However, the huge dome of clouds visibly descended, and the darkness became profound. The black vault closed in upon the earth as if to crush it in its embrace. All at once a violent, rapid, incisive flash of lightning pierced the gloom, and the rent it made had not closed ere a frightful clap of thunder shook the celestial depths. “Up! up! turn out!” shouted Ferguson. The two sleepers, aroused by the terrible concussion, were at the doctor’s orders in a moment. “Shall we descend?” said Kennedy. “No! the balloon could not stand it. Let us go up before those clouds dissolve in water, and the wind is let loose!” and, so saying, the doctor actively stirred up the flame of the cylinder, and turned it on the spirals of the serpentine siphon. The tempests of the tropics develop with a rapidity equalled only by their violence. A second flash of lightning rent the darkness, and was followed by a score of others in quick succession. The sky was crossed and dotted, like the zebra’s hide, with electric sparks, which danced and flickered beneath the great drops of rain. “We have delayed too long,” exclaimed the doctor; “we must now pass through a zone of fire, with our balloon filled as it is with inflammable gas!” “But let us descend, then! let us descend!” urged Kennedy. “The risk of being struck would be just about even, and we should soon be torn to pieces by the branches of the trees!” “We are going up, doctor!” “Quicker, quicker still!” In this part of Africa, during the equatorial storms, it is not rare to count from thirty to thirty-five flashes of lightning per minute. The sky is literally on fire, and the crashes of thunder are continuous. The wind burst forth with frightful violence in this burning atmosphere; it twisted the blazing clouds; one might have compared it to the breath of some gigantic bellows, fanning all this conflagration. Dr. Ferguson kept his cylinder at full heat, and the balloon dilated and went up, while Kennedy, on his knees, held together the curtains of the awning. The balloon whirled round wildly enough to make their heads turn, and the aëronauts got some very alarming jolts, indeed, as their machine swung and swayed in all directions. Huge cavities would form in the silk of the balloon as the wind fiercely bent it in, and the stuff fairly cracked like a pistol as it flew back from the pressure. A sort of hail, preceded by a rumbling noise, hissed through the air and rattled on the covering of the . The latter, however, continued to ascend, while the lightning described tangents to the convexity of her circumference; but she bore on, right through the midst of the fire. Victoria “God protect us!” said Dr. Ferguson, solemnly, “we are in His hands; He alone can save us—but let us be ready for every event, even for fire—our fall could not be very rapid.” The doctor’s voice could scarcely be heard by his companions; but they could see his countenance calm as ever even amid the flashing of the lightnings; he was watching the phenomena of phosphorescence produced by the fires of St. Elmo, that were now skipping to and fro along the network of the balloon. The latter whirled and swung, but steadily ascended, and, ere the hour was over, it had passed the stormy belt. The electric display was going on below it like a vast crown of artificial fireworks suspended from the car. Then they enjoyed one of the grandest spectacles that Nature can offer to the gaze of man. Below them, the tempest; above them, the starry firmament, tranquil, mute, impassible, with the moon projecting her peaceful rays over these angry clouds. Dr. Ferguson consulted the barometer; it announced twelve thousand feet of elevation. It was then eleven o’clock at night. “Thank Heaven, all danger is past; all we have to do now, is, to keep ourselves at this height,” said the doctor. “It was frightful!” remarked Kennedy. “Oh!” said Joe, “it gives a little variety to the trip, and I’m not sorry to have seen a storm from a trifling distance up in the air. It’s a fine sight!” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2002). Five Weeks in a Balloon. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3526/pg3526-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Symptoms of a Storm

Stories, News & Mentions about FIREWORK

Firework’s Stories on HackerNoon