Gigple

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Where is Your Finish Line? Colin McIntosh, CEO of , began his company with rather modest hopes. In his own words, Sheets & Giggles “I wanted to make $3000 a month, so I could pay my rent, eat pasta, tell everybody else to *bleep* off, and be independent.” Before he realized what happened, the company was seeing seven-figure sales monthly. In 2020, Sheets & Giggles was one of six small businesses recognized by for meeting customer needs during the pandemic. On Black Friday of that same year, it was featured on and placed 309 on INC. 5000 list in 2022. Amazon Good Morning America Through McIntosh’s leadership, it is clear that Sheets & Giggles has vastly exceeded his initial expectations. Despite completely blowing his fledgling measure of success out of the water, his one recommendation to fellow entrepreneurs is to revisit their initial goals throughout their careers. As your business grows and as the world changes, remembering why you’re in business will often make the path clear. Incorporating new advantages and unforeseen obstacles into those goals will have them shift accordingly, without sacrificing the spirit of your venture. In McIntosh’s case, aside from the boss-free, pasta-rich world he sought, he wanted his company to genuinely give customers a fantastic experience while embracing humanity and intuition in place of strict adherence to data and automation. What Can Bend Without Breaking? Establishing sober, realistic goals are crucial for providing much-needed clarity in murky situations. Currently, the world market is in turmoil. Two years of supply chain problems have crunched the margins with price escalation. Interest rate increases are strangling investments. Unforeseen lockdowns, wars, and other disasters are causing second, third, and fourth-tier disruptions. DTC and e-commerce businesses aren’t the only ones being clobbered, with big-name retailers feeling the pinch of a recession that is hitting everyone. Companies are buying six months of material to avoid shipping delays, straining the already weakened supply chain. People are projecting less spending for the rest of the year, despite many businesses needing a lucrative holiday season in Q4. It is nearly impossible to anticipate every contingency. As McIntosh says, “All you can do is map out your game theory matrix and choose your dominant strategies and put your company in the best position, no matter what the outside factors are.” Due to this volatile environment, a short-term adjustment that McIntosh and his team implemented was a focus shift from growth to profitability for Sheets & Giggles, reducing gross spending and eliminating activities with low ROI. Long-term goals can help define what it means to be successful, whether it’s to make a ton of money, increase profitability, educate people, or change the world for the better. The underlying definition of success will cut through the noise and hype and can form the enduring identity of your company, such as branding and customer base. The Customer Comes First “Just because you emailed somebody back right away; A list of your FAQs, you didn’t actually email that person! You didn’t actually listen to what they had to say, you didn’t actually help them, you just brushed them off and hoped they’d go away.” McIntosh’s quote captures the necessity for genuine interaction with customers, to establish a loyal base of repeat purchases. Unfortunately, when businesses grow, it is easy to relegate clients to mere numbers. Technology and data can’t account for that emotional connection, and it is a difficult thing to index. People quickly realize when they are simply factors in a math equation, and it makes it very easy to turn away. “A lot of people try to automate away their whole payroll, and you just can’t do it.” These words, from McIntosh, further show he understands that the only source of humanity that can be harnessed is  humans. He made it a top priority to hire a premier public relations expert, to be the living voice for the company. Their humor-based outreach specifically targeted like-minded consumers, where those like-minded consumers congregate. Through advertising on comedic social media pages, podcasts, and websites, Sheets & Giggles has successfully connected with countless people, through the power of laughter. This gives the fantastic impression that the company is operated by living, breathing people, who want to offer an experience, not just a product. “LOGIC IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM, NOT THE END.” - MR. SPOCK Just as good customer interaction is a product of embracing a little humanity and valuing intuition over strict, soulless dedication to data is another goal that has enabled McIntosh to guide Sheets & Giggles to success. Not to throw caution and logic to the wind, some of the works of Malcolm Gladwell are evidence that intuition has tangible value, although it is difficult to quantify. Gladwell quotes like, “Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But they knew!” and “We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.” encapsulate the value which McIntosh has used. He states that hiring good people, who are A Players, will exceed the returns from simply investing in software or technology. People will be able to adapt and learn in ways that inanimate assets cannot. Software can be a great tool to analyze trends and customer habits, generating useful data. However, data can be replicated, making it difficult to stand out in a field of rigid, unimaginative competitors. Data can cause tunnel vision when observers don’t account for the intangibles and simply look for correlations. It was intuition and experimentation that created the successful, customer outreach program mentioned earlier. They initially tried more orthodox approaches, like spending $50K on direct mail before they realized it didn’t work. The harsh lessons from trial and error failures encouraged his trust in his gut feeling, and not blindly following data or established norms. Ask Yourself, And Then Ask Again McIntosh says to take a sober look at what you want to achieve and stick to those goals. Frequently, reviewing your plans is key to keeping your business’s development on track, whether times are good or tough. Some goals should be unwavering, such as ideals and the ultimate definition of success. Some goals should be fluid, such as corrective courses of action or capitalizing on unexpected opportunities. By continuously asking himself what it was he wanted to achieve, McIntosh was able to establish, lifelong, ideological objectives for Sheets & Giggles. He wanted a company that valued excellent customer experiences while ensuring that intuition and humanity are not sacrificed for the sake of hard data. These concepts have guided him and his team through the day-to-day, as well as year-to-year issues that plague every business. It has enabled them to navigate both calm and choppy waters, without losing sight of what Sheets & Giggles is intended to be.

Building a Successful Business; It's Not All Sheets and Giggles

How to Waste $5000 on Personal Growth

Circa. 2100 CE A silicon-littered Web 2.5 world. You now have a mobile/handheld server. You no longer just carry a smartphone. Don’t know if it is a “good” future, but it is more powerful and useful for everyone. In this future, there is a digital social contract, and governments are the ones who have to play by the rules. Else, we wring the financial arm. What Bitcoin Did I know you hardly want to serve anybody. You want to be served. Great content at that. But have you ever stopped to think that our decision to forever choose to be clients and never servers, is probably why there is gross income inequality on this planet? 3 people own more money than 3 billion people, while 1 billion are starving, and this is poised to get worse now that the Transformer AIs are in town. However, the future in 2100 will see this wealth inequality solved by more equalized ownership of internet hardware. And once you solve gross wealth inequality, you supercharge civilization for greatness. I’ll explain. First, let’s hack back to Bitcoin - foundational technology to everything Web 2.5. Before Bitcoin existed, you would only build your server to host your website in-house. Or in your garage. It was a risky business move because you likely do not have a big fat CISCO networking certification in your back pocket nor a lot of money buried in your backyard. It had to take something profitable enough to prompt you to start running your server locally. Clunky software downloading skills and all. A genius website idea. But what? Satoshi Nakamoto, that guy again, came around and told you you could run a special server called a ‘Bitcoin node miner’ and voila, make bank. You did, you got a nice profit. Your friends heard about it, got aboard and they too got a nice profit. Now in 2023, over 1 million people are running servers/money printers. Serving the Web 2.5 world with scarce bitcoins while they make a nice profit. It is a stretch, calling a Bitcoin node miner a server. But given the many devices relying on and relaying with these miners to run all sorts of  Layer 2 applications including the Lightning Network, Ordinal NFTs, and all sorts of DApps e.g. BitVM, these are servers. The future power lies in digital self-sovereignty Recall my story on what it would mean , and . if governments had been orange-pilled first the one on financial implications Those stories are a smaller piece of a greater narrative. Imagine the people of the world had been server-pilled first, instead of desktop-pc-pilled. Server-pilled means more Gen Y being more like Steve Wozniak. Active users of computers, and not passive users sitting in the comfort of their desks. Moving around a mouse. Exploring the genius of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to only improve their financial data with a spreadsheet. and builders Don’t get me wrong. MS Excel is awesome. The desktop computer, and its successor, the smartphone, have exponentially grown the world economy and given me a world that my great-grandparents wouldn’t have recognized. A great world. But there is an exponential, then there is an eXPONENTIAL! N^2 is a good mode. 2^N is god mode. Server-pill the world, and orange-pilling governments no longer sounds like big mind game theory gymnastics. Server-pill the world, and you effectively behead the Hydra that is central banks running inflationary money servers with all sorts of projects for the rest of us, their clients. Hence the 2008 financial crash doesn’t happen, we’d smell it a mile away. Our powers of smelling from afar oppressive digital technologies would be impressive. As things stand today, we are easy prey for scammers like Theranos, FTX, anybody who can put together a juicy-sounding business deal with the right buzzwords, gets our heads spinning. Like teenage girls, giggling and falling for the guy in the fancy sports car, pockets full of cash, flashing a big sexy smile. Except he borrowed it all from his cousin, who is out of town for the weekend. Meanwhile, we get used and dumped like a shitty coin after its cheap bull run is over. But we never learn. We cannot learn. It is the world we grew up in. Like silly teenage girls who giggle and fall for boys that flash cars and cash. Server-pilling the world is the that should have elevated the individual as well as centralized computer systems did for his social contract. novus actus interveniens The Social Contract To cap our retro-futurist journey, let’s dial back to the beginning. The first time governments, Kingdoms, and any such political entity were encapsulated within the pages of a theoretical dispensation. What can be clear is that we are in the 18th century no more, and what we, you and I, would call an Age of Enlightenment is one where the classical definitions of the social contract were expanded to take into account our digital reality today. A digital social contract must give the individual powers to rival government surveillance technologies today. Writing as many articles as possible will not stop surveillance technology, the government needs it to ‘stop terrorists’. Speaking against the fraud of big banks will not stop them from engineering financial instruments so sweet you can’t help investing all your chips and being a slave to signal watching. Like a cat chasing a laser light spot. If human beings cannot stop themselves from betting on the lottery, they have no hope against the sophistication of financial market engineers. Oops, there is also AI financial engineers. Bitcoin has already happened, and it is pushing us there one block at a time. What will happen by 2100 though, to put us in an entirely new age, will be something to make everyone own a server. It could be climate change. It could be a reboot of Bitcoin as version 2.0. I don’t know. It may be because quantum computers have mercilessly hacked everything and we have to start over. It could be that all our transistors have been fried by a magnetic storm from a massive solar flare. It could be a good thing too. We finally invent nuclear fusion, we invent a carbon capture and storage miracle, we invent a battery miracle, we become buddies with an alien from a UFO that finally lands. I just know people will run servers and be retro-futurist hardware heads, with millions tinkering with MRI scans and 5G boosters and rocket launch pads and whatever. It will be the dawn of a digital social contract, and the governments that will emerge in this world will respect the individual. Politicians of this future will be the children tinkering with Bitcoin, Ethereum, DApps, quantum computing, climate change science, data science, AI, today. They’ll actually know something. They’ll know what it means to own your own server farm, or how hard it is to deal with externalities that your ancestors swept under the rug. Owning a personal farm has always been crucial to maintaining a responsible, growing civilization. Can’t keep trusting to be fed well by people from the other side of the world. Be it real food or digital food.

The Dawn of a New Digital Social Contract 

To think that it could have ended any other way. Sam Altman is back at OpenAI, along with co founder Greg Brockman, capping what was perhaps one of the most tumultuous periods in the generative AI company's history (Yes, even more so than the public split with Elon Musk, who co-founded the venture.) But this whole saga wasn't without its sh*ts and giggles. To begin, it took less than a week for Altman to return as CEO of what is perhaps one of the most important (and likely also the most successful) AI companies in the world. The board that fired him is no longer there (except for one member), replaced by an individual who has ties to Washington (Larry Summers), and another who's a big name in the world of business technology (Bret Taylor). This means Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley had to step down, largely due to pressure from both outside and within. Sutskever's exit was particularly unceremonious, since he had a change of heart after firing Altman, joining the chorus in demanding Altman's return following the CEO's exit. Unfortunately for Sutskever, that wasn't enough for him to remain with the company since he had to leave after Altman's return. Sutskever wasn't the only loser in this circus show (as one analyst put it), which had its fair share of winners and losers. Altman and Brockman definitely came out on top, and so did the countless employees that backed the OpenAI founders by threatening to quit the company if the board did not resign. Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella played the referee in this entire situation, swooping in to hire Altman and Brockman soon after their split from OpenAI in what media described as an opportunity for Microsoft to become even more entrenched in the AI scene. Had Altman stayed at Microsoft, he would have led an entire AI team of his own for research and product development purposes. But, as we all know, Altman is now safely back at OpenAI, and everyone now knows who Microsoft would back were such a situation to arise again. But regardless of what you think of the entire situation, one thing has become abundantly clear: OpenAI cannot, will not, shall not continue without Altman. OpenAI is quite literally Sam Altman, and Sam Altman is quite literally OpenAI, and this whole saga has only strengthened the idea that this symbiotic relationship cannot survive without the other. Which brings us to the biggest loser in the entire situation: humanity as a whole. While it is unclear as to why the OpenAI board fired Altman in the first place, whispers on the internet give us a glimpse into what may have caused that decision and it all has to do with the contradiction between OpenAI's stated mission (create AI that benefits humanity) and its actions (to beat everyone to artificial general intelligence, even if it comes at the cost of enhanced risk to humanity as a whole). Altman is said to fall in the latter group, where he wants to beat everyone else, even if it means giving rise to an AI that could either wipe humanity or subject it to its whims (not to be naysayers, but enough people in the academia space have raised concerns with AI to take the risk of such a thing with more seriousness). And with Altman back at the helm, humanity could see an AI with its guardrails off, if only because OpenAI's most prolific founder is in a race to beat everyone else to artificial general intelligence, so much so, that a letter supposedly from former OpenAI employees warned the board of a breakthrough that could hurt humanity as a whole (Altman was fired a little after the letter was sent, apparently). Does AGI exist? Are we already there? We don't know for sure, but OpenAI has thrown its weight behind giving rise to the technology and is now accelerating progress under Altman's leadership. Time will tell what happens next. OpenAI backer Microsoft ranked #7 on HackerNoon's tech company rankings this week. 👋 You’re readingHackerNoon'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. Meta Too Wants to Develop an AI Without Guardrails 🤖 It looks like OpenAI's Sam Altman is not the only one racing to get to artificial general intelligence as soon as possible. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to be making moves that are eerily similar to the ones at Microsoft, and by extension, OpenAI. A new report indicates that Meta has disbanded its Responsible AI team, which would have been responsible for, ya know.. Making sure the company doesn't end up giving rise to a completely bonkers AI that is devoid of human values. Earlier this year, Microsoft too let go of its entire ethics and society team which was tasked with ensuring the company's responsible AI principles are reflected in the design of the products that it ships. "Our job was to show them and to create rules in areas where there were none," as one former Microsoft employee put it. All of this to say: big tech seems to be steaming ahead to be the first to develop artificial general intelligence, and that might mean doing so without teaching it what it's like to be.. Human. Meta ranked #37 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings. Amazon's iRobot Acquisition? Not So Fast 🇪🇺 Amazon's proposed $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot hit a snag recently after the European Commission warned that such a purchase could limit competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners. Among the objections raised by the European Commission was the fact that Amazon may be incentivized to push out iRobot's rivals from its platform once the acquisition goes through (not a stretch btw.) or limit their access to the ecommerce website so consumers can't find alternatives. While the objection is by no means an indication the deal will fall through, it is still a preliminary step in the regulatory review process of the acquisition and could complicate Amazon's efforts if the bloc does not approve it. Amazon has now time to address the objections, while the European Commission plans to give a final decision on the purchase by Feb. 14. Amazon ranked #8 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings. In Other News.. 📰 Apple shares the most popular podcasts of 2023 — via Apple
AWS is experimenting with a chip that can solve key quantum computing problems — via The Verge.
Google, Symphony unveil AI JV to help banks manage voice calls compliance risk — via Reuters.
Apple partner Foxconn to invest $1.5 billion in India — via TechCrunch.
Elon Musk wants to be a world leader. His own behavior is holding him back — via CNN.
The technology behind ChatGPT is evolving insanely fast — via Axios.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao ordered by judge to stay in U.S. ahead of prison sentencing — 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. To think that it could have ended any other way. Sam Altman is back at OpenAI, along with co founder Greg Brockman, capping what was perhaps one of the most tumultuous periods in the generative AI company's history (Yes, even more so than the public split with Elon Musk, who co-founded the venture.) back back tumultuous periods tumultuous periods public split public split But this whole saga wasn't without its sh*ts and giggles. To begin, it took less than a week for Altman to return as CEO of what is perhaps one of the most important (and likely also the most successful) AI companies in the world. The board that fired him is no longer there (except for one member), replaced by an individual who has ties to Washington (Larry Summers), and another who's a big name in the world of business technology (Bret Taylor). return return replaced replaced This means Ilya Sutskever, Helen Toner, and Tasha McCauley had to step down , largely due to pressure from both outside and within. Sutskever's exit was particularly unceremonious, since he had a change of heart after firing Altman, joining the chorus in demanding Altman's return following the CEO's exit. Unfortunately for Sutskever, that wasn't enough for him to remain with the company since he had to leave after Altman's return. step down step down after Sutskever wasn't the only loser in this circus show (as one analyst put it), which had its fair share of winners and losers. Altman and Brockman definitely came out on top, and so did the countless employees that backed the OpenAI founders by threatening to quit the company if the board did not resign. Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella played the referee in this entire situation, swooping in to hire Altman and Brockman soon after their split from OpenAI in what media described as an opportunity for Microsoft to become even more entrenched in the AI scene. hire hire Had Altman stayed at Microsoft, he would have led an entire AI team of his own for research and product development purposes. But, as we all know, Altman is now safely back at OpenAI, and everyone now knows who Microsoft would back were such a situation to arise again. But regardless of what you think of the entire situation, one thing has become abundantly clear: OpenAI cannot, will not, shall not continue without Altman . OpenAI is quite literally Sam Altman, and Sam Altman is quite literally OpenAI, and this whole saga has only strengthened the idea that this symbiotic relationship cannot survive without the other. without Altman without Altman Which brings us to the biggest loser in the entire situation: humanity as a whole . humanity as a whole humanity as a whole While it is unclear as to why the OpenAI board fired Altman in the first place, whispers on the internet give us a glimpse into what may have caused that decision and it all has to do with the contradiction between OpenAI's stated mission (create AI that benefits humanity) and its actions (to beat everyone to artificial general intelligence, even if it comes at the cost of enhanced risk to humanity as a whole). why glimpse glimpse Altman is said to fall in the latter group , where he wants to beat everyone else, even if it means giving rise to an AI that could either wipe humanity or subject it to its whims (not to be naysayers, but enough people in the academia space have raised concerns with AI to take the risk of such a thing with more seriousness). latter group latter group And with Altman back at the helm, humanity could see an AI with its guardrails off, if only because OpenAI's most prolific founder is in a race to beat everyone else to artificial general intelligence, so much so, that a letter supposedly from former OpenAI employees warned the board of a breakthrough that could hurt humanity as a whole (Altman was fired a little after the letter was sent, apparently). letter letter Does AGI exist? Are we already there? We don't know for sure, but OpenAI has thrown its weight behind giving rise to the technology and is now accelerating progress under Altman's leadership. Time will tell what happens next. OpenAI backer Microsoft ranked #7 on HackerNoon's tech company rankings this week. 👋 You’re readingHackerNoon'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 readingHackerNoon'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 readingHackerNoon'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. S ubscribe here to receive the complete newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday. S here complete Meta Too Wants to Develop an AI Without Guardrails 🤖 Meta Too Wants to Develop an AI Without Guardrails 🤖 It looks like OpenAI's Sam Altman is not the only one racing to get to artificial general intelligence as soon as possible. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to be making moves that are eerily similar to the ones at Microsoft , and by extension, OpenAI. Meta Meta Microsoft Microsoft A new report indicates that Meta has disbanded its Responsible AI team, which would have been responsible for, ya know.. Making sure the company doesn't end up giving rise to a completely bonkers AI that is devoid of human values. disbanded disbanded Earlier this year, Microsoft too let go of its entire ethics and society team which was tasked with ensuring the company's responsible AI principles are reflected in the design of the products that it ships. "Our job was to show them and to create rules in areas where there were none," as one former Microsoft employee put it. let go let go All of this to say: big tech seems to be steaming ahead to be the first to develop artificial general intelligence, and that might mean doing so without teaching it what it's like to be.. Human. Meta ranked #37 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings. Amazon's iRobot Acquisition? Not So Fast 🇪🇺 Amazon's iRobot Acquisition? Not So Fast Amazon 's proposed $1.7 billion acquisition of iRobot hit a snag recently after the European Commission warned that such a purchase could limit competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners. Amazon Amazon Among the objections raised by the European Commission was the fact that Amazon may be incentivized to push out iRobot's rivals from its platform once the acquisition goes through (not a stretch btw.) or limit their access to the ecommerce website so consumers can't find alternatives. raised raised While the objection is by no means an indication the deal will fall through, it is still a preliminary step in the regulatory review process of the acquisition and could complicate Amazon's efforts if the bloc does not approve it. Amazon has now time to address the objections, while the European Commission plans to give a final decision on the purchase by Feb. 14. Amazon ranked #8 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings. In Other News.. 📰 In Other News.. 📰 Apple shares the most popular podcasts of 2023 — via Apple AWS is experimenting with a chip that can solve key quantum computing problems — via The Verge. Google, Symphony unveil AI JV to help banks manage voice calls compliance risk — via Reuters. Apple partner Foxconn to invest $1.5 billion in India — via TechCrunch. Elon Musk wants to be a world leader. His own behavior is holding him back — via CNN. The technology behind ChatGPT is evolving insanely fast — via Axios. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao ordered by judge to stay in U.S. ahead of prison sentencing — via CNBC. Apple shares the most popular podcasts of 2023 — via Apple Apple Apple AWS is experimenting with a chip that can solve key quantum computing problems — via The Verge . The Verge The Verge Google, Symphony unveil AI JV to help banks manage voice calls compliance risk — via Reuters . Reuters Reuters Apple partner Foxconn to invest $1.5 billion in India — via TechCrunch . TechCrunch TechCrunch Elon Musk wants to be a world leader. His own behavior is holding him back — via CNN . CNN CNN The technology behind ChatGPT is evolving insanely fast — via Axios . Axios Axios Binance founder Changpeng Zhao ordered by judge to stay in U.S. ahead of prison sentencing — 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

OpenAI is Sam Altman; Sam Altman is OpenAI

ওপেনএআই হলেন স্যাম অল্টম্যান; স্যাম অল্টম্যান হলেন ওপেনএআই

OpenAI ist Sam Altman; Sam Altman ist OpenAI

OpenAI es Sam Altman; Sam Altman es OpenAI

OpenAI, c'est Sam Altman ; Sam Altman est OpenAI

ओपनएआई सैम ऑल्टमैन है; सैम अल्टमैन ओपनएआई हैं

OpenAI はサム アルトマンです。サム・アルトマンはOpenAIです

OpenAI는 Sam Altman입니다. 샘 알트만(Sam Altman)은 OpenAI입니다

OpenAI é Sam Altman; Sam Altman é OpenAI

OpenAI — это Сэм Альтман; Сэм Альтман — OpenAI

OpenAI, Sam Altman'dır; Sam Altman OpenAI'dir

OpenAI là Sam Altman; Sam Altman là OpenAI

OpenAI 是 Sam Altman； Sam Altman 是 OpenAI

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE NEW MAMMA. here CHAPTER XV. THE NEW MAMMA. On Tuesday afternoon Molly returned home—to the home which was already strange, and what Warwickshire people would call "unked," to her. New paint, new paper, new colours; grim servants dressed in their best, and objecting to every change—from their master's marriage to the new oilcloth in the hall, "which tripped 'em up, and threw 'em down, and was cold to the feet, and smelt just abominable." All these complaints Molly had to listen to, and it was not a cheerful preparation for the reception which she already felt to be so formidable. The sound of their carriage-wheels was heard at last, and Molly went to the front door to meet them. Her father got out first, and took her hand and held it while he helped his bride to alight. Then he kissed her fondly, and passed her on to his wife; but her veil was so securely (and becomingly) fastened down, that it was some time before Mrs. Gibson could get her lips clear to greet her new daughter. Then there was luggage to be seen about; and both the travellers were occupied in this, while Molly stood by trembling with excitement, unable to help, and only conscious of Betty's rather cross looks, as heavy box after heavy box jammed up the passage. "Molly, my dear, show—your mamma to her room!" Mr. Gibson had hesitated, because the question of the name by which Molly was to call her new relation had never occurred to him before. The colour flashed into Molly's face. Was she to call her "mamma?"—the name long appropriated in her mind to some one else—to her own dead mother. The rebellious heart rose against it, but she said nothing. She led the way upstairs, Mrs. Gibson turning round, from time to time, with some fresh direction as to which bag or trunk she needed most. She hardly spoke to Molly till they were both in the newly-furnished bedroom, where a small fire had been lighted by Molly's orders. "Now, my love, we can embrace each other in peace. O dear, how tired I am!"—(after the embrace had been accomplished). "My spirits are so easily affected with fatigue; but your dear papa has been kindness itself. Dear! what an old-fashioned bed! And what a— But it doesn't signify. By-and-by we'll renovate the house—won't we, my dear? And you'll be my little maid to-night, and help me to arrange a few things, for I'm just worn out with the day's journey." "I've ordered a sort of tea-dinner to be ready for you," said Molly. "Shall I go and tell them to send it in?" "I'm not sure if I can go down again to-night. It would be very comfortable to have a little table brought in here, and sit in my dressing-gown by this cheerful fire. But, to be sure, there's your dear papa? I really don't think he would eat anything if I were not there. One must not think about oneself, you know. Yes, I'll come down in a quarter of an hour." But Mr. Gibson had found a note awaiting him, with an immediate summons to an old patient, dangerously ill; and, snatching a mouthful of food while his horse was being saddled, he had to resume at once his old habits of attention to his profession above everything. As soon as Mrs. Gibson found that he was not likely to miss her presence—he had eaten a very tolerable lunch of bread and cold meat in solitude, so her fears about his appetite in her absence were not well founded—she desired to have her meal upstairs in her own room; and poor Molly, not daring to tell the servants of this whim, had to carry up first a table, which, however small, was too heavy for her; and afterwards all the choice portions of the meal, which she had taken great pains to arrange on the table, as she had seen such things done at Hamley, intermixed with fruit and flowers that had that morning been sent in from various great houses where Mr. Gibson was respected and valued. How pretty Molly had thought her handiwork an hour or two before! How dreary it seemed as, at last released from Mrs. Gibson's conversation, she sate down in solitude to cold tea and the drumsticks of the chicken! No one to look at her preparations, and admire her deft-handedness and taste! She had thought that her father would be gratified by it, and then he had never seen it. She had meant her cares as an offering of good-will to her stepmother, who even now was ringing her bell to have the tray taken away, and Miss Gibson summoned to her bedroom. Molly hastily finished her meal, and went upstairs again. "I feel so lonely, darling, in this strange house; do come and be with me, and help me to unpack. I think your dear papa might have put off his visit to Mr. Craven Smith for just this one evening." "Mr. Craven Smith couldn't put off his dying," said Molly, bluntly. "You droll girl!" said Mrs. Gibson, with a faint laugh. "But if this Mr. Smith is dying, as you say, what's the use of your father's going off to him in such a hurry? Does he expect any legacy, or anything of that kind?" Molly bit her lips to prevent herself from saying something disagreeable. She only answered,— "I don't quite know that he is dying. The man said so; and papa can sometimes do something to make the last struggle easier. At any rate, it's always a comfort to the family to have him." "What dreary knowledge of death you have learned for a girl of your age! Really, if I had heard all these details of your father's profession, I doubt if I could have brought myself to have him!" "He doesn't make the illness or the death; he does his best against them. I call it a very fine thing to think of what he does or tries to do. And you will think so, too, when you see how he is watched for, and how people welcome him!" "Well, don't let us talk any more of such gloomy things, to-night! I think I shall go to bed at once, I am so tired, if you will only sit by me till I get sleepy, darling. If you will talk to me, the sound of your voice will soon send me off." Molly got a book, and read her stepmother to sleep, preferring that to the harder task of keeping up a continual murmur of speech. Then she stole down and went into the dining-room, where the fire was gone out; purposely neglected by the servants, to mark their displeasure at their new mistress's having had her tea in her own room. Molly managed to light it, however, before her father came home, and collected and re-arranged some comfortable food for him. Then she knelt down again on the hearth-rug, gazing into the fire in a dreamy reverie, which had enough of sadness about it to cause the tears to drop unnoticed from her eyes. But she jumped up, and shook herself into brightness at the sound of her father's step. "How is Mr. Craven Smith?" said she. "Dead. He just recognized me. He was one of my first patients on coming to Hollingford." Mr. Gibson sate down in the arm-chair made ready for him, and warmed his hands at the fire, seeming neither to need food nor talk, as he went over a train of recollections. Then he roused himself from his sadness, and looking round the room, he said briskly enough,— "And where's the new mamma?" "She was tired, and went to bed early. Oh, papa! must I call her 'mamma?'" "I should like it," replied he, with a slight contraction of the brows. Molly was silent. She put a cup of tea near him; he stirred it, and sipped it, and then he recurred to the subject. "Why shouldn't you call her 'mamma?' I'm sure she means to do the duty of a mother to you. We all may make mistakes, and her ways may not be quite all at once our ways; but at any rate let us start with a family bond between us." What would Roger say was right?—that was the question that rose to Molly's mind. She had always spoken of her father's new wife as Mrs. Gibson, and had once burst out at Miss Brownings with a protestation that she never would call her "mamma." She did not feel drawn to her new relation by their intercourse that evening. She kept silence, though she knew her father was expecting an answer. At last he gave up his expectation, and turned to another subject; told about their journey, questioned her as to the Hamleys, the Brownings, Lady Harriet, and the afternoon they had passed together at the Manor-house. But there was a certain hardness and constraint in his manner, and in hers a heaviness and absence of mind. All at once she said,— "Papa, I will call her 'mamma!'" He took her hand, and grasped it tight; but for an instant or two he did not speak. Then he said,— "You won't be sorry for it, Molly, when you come to lie as poor Craven Smith did to-night." For some time the murmurs and grumblings of the two elder servants were confined to Molly's ears, then they spread to her father's, who, to Molly's dismay, made summary work with them. "You don't like Mrs. Gibson's ringing her bell so often, don't you? You've been spoilt, I'm afraid; but if you don't conform to my wife's desires, you have the remedy in your own hands, you know." What servant ever resisted the temptation to give warning after such a speech as that? Betty told Molly she was going to leave, in as indifferent a manner as she could possibly assume towards the girl whom she had tended and been about for the last sixteen years. Molly had hitherto considered her former nurse as a fixture in the house; she would almost as soon have thought of her father's proposing to sever the relationship between them; and here was Betty coolly talking over whether her next place should be in town or country. But a great deal of this was assumed hardness. In a week or two Betty was in floods of tears at the prospect of leaving her nursling, and would fain have stayed and answered all the bells in the house once every quarter of an hour. Even Mr. Gibson's masculine heart was touched by the sorrow of the old servant, which made itself obvious to him every time he came across her by her broken voice and her swollen eyes. One day he said to Molly, "I wish you'd ask your mamma if Betty might not stay, if she made a proper apology, and all that sort of thing." "I don't much think it will be of any use," said Molly, in a mournful voice. "I know she is writing, or has written, about some under-housemaid at the Towers." "Well!—all I want is peace and a decent quantity of cheerfulness when I come home. I see enough of tears at other people's houses. After all, Betty has been with us sixteen years—a sort of service of the antique world. But the woman may be happier elsewhere. Do as you like about asking mamma; only if she agrees, I shall be quite willing." So Molly tried her hand at making a request to that effect to Mrs. Gibson. Her instinct told her she would be unsuccessful; but surely favour was never refused in so soft a tone. "My dear girl, I should never have thought of sending an old servant away,—one who has had the charge of you from your birth, or nearly so. I could not have had the heart to do it. She might have stayed for ever for me, if she had only attended to all my wishes; and I am not unreasonable, am I? But, you see, she complained; and when your dear papa spoke to her, she gave warning; and it is quite against my principles ever to take an apology from a servant who has given warning." "She is so sorry," pleaded Molly; "she says she will do anything you wish, and attend to all your orders, if she may only stay." "But, sweet one, you seem to forget that I cannot go against my principles, however much I may be sorry for Betty. She should not have given way to ill-temper. As I said before, although I never liked her, and considered her a most inefficient servant, thoroughly spoilt by having had no mistress for so long, I should have borne with her—at least, I think I should—as long as I could. Now I have all but engaged Maria, who was under-housemaid at the Towers, so don't let me hear any more of Betty's sorrow, or anybody else's sorrow, for I'm sure, what with your dear papa's sad stories and other things, I'm getting quite low." Molly was silent for a moment or two. "Have you quite engaged Maria?" asked she. "No—I said 'all but engaged.' Sometimes one would think you did not hear things, dear Molly!" replied Mrs. Gibson, petulantly. "Maria is living in a place where they don't give her as much wages as she deserves. Perhaps they can't afford it, poor things! I'm always sorry for poverty, and would never speak hardly of those who are not rich; but I have offered her two pounds more than she gets at present, so I think she'll leave. At any rate, if they increase her wages, I shall increase my offer in proportion; so I think I'm sure to get her. Such a genteel girl!—always brings in a letter on a salver!" "Poor Betty!" said Molly, softly. "Poor old soul! I hope she'll profit by the lesson, I'm sure," sighed out Mrs. Gibson; "but it's a pity we hadn't Maria before the county families began to call." Mrs. Gibson had been highly gratified by the circumstance of so many calls "from county families." Her husband was much respected; and many ladies from various halls, courts, and houses, who had profited by his services towards themselves and their families, thought it right to pay his new wife the attention of a call when they drove into Hollingford to shop. The state of expectation into which these calls threw Mrs. Gibson rather diminished Mr. Gibson's domestic comfort. It was awkward to be carrying hot, savoury-smelling dishes from the kitchen to the dining-room at the very time when high-born ladies, with noses of aristocratic refinement, might be calling. Still more awkward was the accident which happened in consequence of clumsy Betty's haste to open the front door to a lofty footman's ran-tan, which caused her to set down the basket containing the dirty plates right in his mistress's way, as she stepped gingerly through the comparative darkness of the hall; and then the young men, leaving the dining-room quietly enough, but bursting with long-repressed giggle, or no longer restraining their tendency to practical joking, no matter who might be in the passage when they made their exit. The remedy proposed by Mrs. Gibson for all these distressing grievances was a late dinner. The luncheon for the young men, as she observed to her husband, might be sent into the surgery. A few elegant cold trifles for herself and Molly would not scent the house, and she would always take care to have some little dainty ready for him. He acceded, but unwillingly, for it was an innovation on the habits of a lifetime, and he felt as if he should never be able to arrange his rounds aright with this new-fangled notion of a six o'clock dinner. "Don't get any dainties for me, my dear; bread-and-cheese is the chief of my diet, like it was that of the old woman's." "I know nothing of your old woman," replied his wife; "but really I cannot allow cheese to come beyond the kitchen." "Then I'll eat it there," said he. "It's close to the stable-yard, and if I come in in a hurry I can get it in a moment." "Really, Mr. Gibson, it is astonishing to compare your appearance and manners with your tastes. You look such a gentleman, as dear Lady Cumnor used to say." Then the cook left; also an old servant, though not so old a one as Betty. The cook did not like the trouble of late dinners; and, being a Methodist, she objected on religious grounds to trying any of Mrs. Gibson's new receipts for French dishes. It was not scriptural, she said. There was a deal of mention of food in the Bible; but it was of sheep ready dressed, which meant mutton, and of wine, and of bread-and-milk, and figs and raisins, of fatted calves, a good well-browned fillet of veal, and such like; but it had always gone against her conscience to cook swine-flesh and make raised pork-pies, and now if she was to be set to cook heathen dishes after the fashion of the Papists, she'd sooner give it all up together. So the cook followed in Betty's track, and Mr. Gibson had to satisfy his healthy English appetite on badly-made omelettes, rissoles, vol-au-vents, croquets, and timbales; never being exactly sure what he was eating. He had made up his mind before his marriage to yield in trifles, and be firm in greater things. But the differences of opinion about trifles arose every day, and were perhaps more annoying than if they had related to things of more consequence. Molly knew her father's looks as well as she knew her alphabet; his wife did not; and being an unperceptive person, except when her own interests were dependent upon another person's humour, never found out how he was worried by all the small daily concessions which he made to her will or her whims. He never allowed himself to put any regret into shape, even in his own mind; he repeatedly reminded himself of his wife's good qualities, and comforted himself by thinking they should work together better as time rolled on; but he was very angry at a bachelor great-uncle of Mr. Coxe's, who, after taking no notice of his red-headed nephew for years, suddenly sent for him, after the old man had partially recovered from a serious attack of illness, and appointed him his heir, on condition that his great-nephew remained with him during the rest of his life. This had happened almost directly after Mr. and Mrs. Gibson's return from their wedding journey, and once or twice since that time Mr. Gibson had found himself wondering why the deuce old Benson could not have made up his mind sooner, and so have rid his house of the unwelcome presence of the young lover. To do Mr. Coxe justice, in the very last conversation he had as a pupil with Mr. Gibson he said, with hesitating awkwardness, that perhaps the new circumstances in which he should be placed might make some difference with regard to Mr. Gibson's opinion on— "Not at all," said Mr. Gibson, quickly. "You are both of you too young to know your own minds; and if my daughter was silly enough to be in love, she should never have to calculate her happiness on the chances of an old man's death. I dare say he'll disinherit you after all. He may do, and then you'd be worse off than ever. No! go away, and forget all this nonsense; and when you've done, come back and see us!" So Mr. Coxe went away, with an oath of unalterable faithfulness in his heart; and Mr. Gibson had unwillingly to fulfil an old promise made to a gentleman farmer in the neighbourhood a year or two before, and to take the second son of Mr. Browne in young Coxe's place. He was to be the last of the race of pupils, and as he was rather more than a year younger than Molly, Mr. Gibson trusted that there would be no repetition of the Coxe romance. 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). Wives and Daughters. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4274/pg4274-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 NEW MAMMA.

Return to Pleasure Island

Previous Chapter - The Last 3 Days (20): Cluster's F**ked All published chapters can be found here. 00:26:54 Nick burst from the back door of the house. His mother was the first to notice. “Nick!” Hearing his son’s name yanked Don’s attention from Bobby. Relief at the sight of his son, even bruised, barefoot and dirty, was enough of a distraction that Bobby was able to twist his body from under the Sergeant’s boot and jump up, ready to run. Nick had other ideas. He launched himself onto Bobby’s back and they tumbled to the grass. Bobby collapsed face down, unable to move with Nick sitting on his back. “Oh my God,” Anne cried. “You’re home!” She rushed to him and, crouching, threw her arms around him. The Sergeant, satisfied Bobby was restrained once more, said, “I’ll get a zip-tie.” “Get a bunch,” Ryan answered. He held the service revolver pointed at Becky’s head. He took note of all present and smiled. Everyone froze in place, except Jack, who ducked behind a lawn chair. Bobby pushed Nick away and regained his feet. Waving the gun towards the house, Ryan said, “Bobby, go with Sarge, make sure he doesn’t get lost.” Noticing the gun in Ryan’s hand made him hesitate. “Where’d you get the piece, Ryan?” “Lucky find. On second thought, Sarge, stay put. Bobby, you go. They’re in the belts hanging behind the office door.” Bobby obeyed. Don stepped between Ryan and his family. “Put the gun down, son.” Ryan’s self-satisfied smirk became laughter. “Put the gun down? Just when I finally feel like a real king? A king — a king has the power of life and death.” Waving the pistol for all to see, he added, “And now I do too.” Don kept his calm. “But you’re not a king.” Ryan’s head shook, defying Nick’s father. “I am, I just didn’t know it. Until Friday. Until the rock. The rock showed me I was right and you were wrong.” “How so?” Exasperation entered Ryan’s tone, as if his audience still didn’t understand the scope of his victory. “A king takes what he wants. Which is exactly what I said outside Jay’s. I was explaining how I take what I want. Then you showed up, with your ‘my job is to stop people like you.’ Look how that turned out.” Bobby pushed the Sergeant, holding a handful of zip-ties, out the back door. “Fine,” Don conceded. “You’re a king. You win. Now why don’t you just go?” Ryan’s temper built. “No. You just don’t get it. It’s not enough to have the power of life and death. You have to exercise it. And so I will. On your knees.” Don knelt on the grass. Ryan waved the gun over the rest. “All of you. In a line. Bobby, tie their hands.” “Even the women?” “Gender equality. Them too.” Jack watched Bobby systematically move down the line of captives, securing their hands behind them. Ryan paced in front, randomly aiming the pistol at individuals and mock executed them. “Now what?” Bobby asked as he finished binding Olga’s wrists. The smile was back. “Now the fun begins. But not out here.” Ryan halted in front of Becky. “I see Becky and Nick and Don and even Peter. But no Jay. Where’s Jay, Becky?” Defiant, she said nothing. Which earned her a back-handed slap from Ryan. She cried out. Olga growled, shifting her weight as if to rise, but relaxed when Ryan pressed the barrel against Becky’s forehead. “Where’s Jay?” Ryan shouted. 00:21:14 Roused by Becky’s cry, Jay heard his name shouted. With great effort, he slowly climbed slowly out of bed to look through the window. 00:21:03 “Fine. Have it your way,” Ryan said, and hauled Becky to her feet. Using her a shield, he pointed the weapon at each man in turn. “You four. Up. Inside.” Nick, Don, Peter, and the Sergeant entered the house ahead of Becky and Ryan. After a moment’s hesitation, Bobby followed. “You’re not really going to shoot them, are you?” “As a king, it is my duty.” “No, it isn’t. The cop’s right, Ryan. You won. Let’s just go.” “Stop,” Ryan ordered, and his captives halted in the open area between the stairs and the sofa. “In a line. Back on your knees. You, too,” and pushed Becky away. Turning back to Bobby, he said, “Go where? I can’t think of anywhere better than right here, right now, with the lives of my — enemies — in my hand.” Savouring his power over his captives, Ryan didn’t see Bobby back out of the room. 00:18:56 Jack used a bread knife to saw through the nylon tie binding his mother’s wrists. “Me next, Jack,” Eileen urged. “Hurry.” Jack moved on to Eileen while Anne helped Olga stand. Bobby stepped out of the house. For a moment, he stared at them, but then he turned and ran. As soon as Eileen was free, she reached for her purse. 00:18:12 Ryan’s face hovered so near to Becky’s, he looked like he might kiss her, if not for the gun barrel he pressed against her temple. “Last chance. Where is Jay?” A voice from behind him replied, “Right here, asshole. Leave her be.” Jay stood on the stairs, using the rail for support. “Jay! Welcome! You look terrible, but you made it.” He pointed the revolver at Jay. “You’re first.” Eileen stepped into the room, assumed the combat stance she learned from her husband, but could not keep her eyes open as she pulled the trigger. Bam! A window shattered. Nick hurled himself at Ryan’s legs as he pulled his trigger, ruining the shot. Click! Ryan aimed at Nick, pulled the trigger a second time. Click. Again. Click. Click. Click. His gun wasn’t loaded. Bam! Ryan’s body jerked, his gun flying across the room. Eileen opened her eyes to aim once more. Ryan studied the blood seeping from his sleeve to pool in his palm, then looked up, confused. Jay was unhurt. Bam! Once again, Eileen’s shot went wide. Ryan saw it was now or never. He darted towards the front door and through it. 00:17:02 Ryan raced straight to the Escalade, keeping low as he climbed in and started it. Cranking the steering wheel, he accelerated, and the huge tires tore up the lawns of several properties as he maneuvered towards the street. As the SUV lurched over the curb, Ryan raised his head over the steering wheel — and grazed Hunter’s Beater coming the other way. He doesn’t stop. 00:16:52 Eileen lowered her weapon and embraced her son. Jack, holding the bread knife like a sword, led Anne and Olga from the kitchen. He wasted no time, making short work of the remaining zip-ties. Don hugged Nick, Anne and Jack joining them. Olga threw her arms around Becky. Noticing Peter standing alone, she motioned him to join them. The Sergeant eased Eileen’s gun from her then collected Ryan’s, stripping them on the dining table. The front entrance darkened, inspiring a moment of terror. Behind Dean was his father, Hunter, whose arm embraced a woman. “Hi,” Dean said. “Nick invited us.” Nick untangled himself and greeted the newcomers, shaking hands with each in turn. “Come in, come in. These folks brought me home.” As Don and Anne thanked the newcomers, a scraping noise emanated from the TV. The on-screen timer on the empty news desk read 00:12:24, despite being slightly out-of-focus. Then the camera shuddered, and the desk came into focus. The Anchor entered the frame. He looked the consummate, well-groomed professional as he settled into his chair. He checked the screen on his desk for updates and then addressed the camera. “In the short time we have left, I want to thank those who called in to share their stories. These last hours spent with you have been the most poignant of my life.” 00:11:23 Tomas kept his head down and his collar up as he entered Veteran’s Park, struggling to keep his cool as he weaved through the crowd, even though those who weren’t actively praying watched the sky. He followed the curving path lined with tailored shrubs and suddenly there it was — glowing in the morning light was a statue of a small group of soldiers patrolling a steep granite ridge. It took a moment for him to realize people were watching him. Embarrassed, he turned to leave, only to come face to face with an Elderly Woman — who hugged him. “Thank you for your sacrifice.” No sooner did the Elderly Woman release him when someone else took her place. Then another and another. Others clasped his arms or shoulders, clapped his back, and he could not hold back his tears. 00:08:47 The crack had become a steaming fissure on the surface of Benevolence B7438, when suddenly it shattered. The largest pieces of the mysterious asteroid which Noah Hoag hoped would herald a new world, skipped across the upper atmosphere and continued their journey towards the sun. However, the sky was filled with smaller, yet still deadly, fragments streaking across the heavens and the air reverberated with an angry chaos of sonic booms as they passed overhead. 00:00:00 Eileen sat beside Jay, one arm draped over his shoulder. Her other hand gripped that of the Sergeant perched on the arm of the sofa. Don hugged Anne on one end of the second sofa next to Hunter and Alice, while Jack watched Dean play his handheld on the floor. Peter and Olga had pulled dining chairs between the sofas. Olga giggled as Peter whispered in her ear, but made no effort to hide the crimson flush on her cheeks. Nick and Becky stood together behind the group, oblivious to everyone else. The TV timer hit 00:00:00. On-screen, the Anchor cringed slightly, raising his eyes upwards. Nothing. He gaze upwards for a few moments, looking more and more embarrassed. Gesturing for patience, he moved out-of-frame, but a few moments later, the camera jerked and the image swirled. When next resolved into focus, the view was of people dancing in the street, the sky seemingly peaceful. 00:01:22+ All of those gathered at the Burns’ residence spilled into the back yard, scanning the sky for additional dangers. But then a solitary new light flared and split the heavens, a billowing dirty cloud trailing its descent towards the camera. A roar grew as it approached, becoming deafening as it passed overhead. As the thunder receded, it was replaced by the music of exuberant joy. 00:02:12+ The image on the huge flat screen in the empty living room faded into white noise for several moments before revealing a new, unfamiliar anchor. A dour yet beautiful young Asian woman spoke some words in a foreign language. Suddenly, horrible martial music made worse by out-of-synch public speakers accompanied camera panning an endless sea of serious faces whose attention was on a short, corpulent man standing alone on a huge stage before a microphone. The music stopped and Kim Jong-un threw his arms out as he made his announcement and his audience erupted with cheers. A tiny window blossomed in the corner of the screen — a doll-like translator repeated her leader’s words. “Today we are heroes. Today the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea assumes our rightful place as the saviours of the planet. All the world must bow to our superiority — “ 00:04:43+ The Lieutenant stood on the balcony of the hotel suite wrapped in a towel, drinking vintage champagne from the bottle. “Think we’re expected for duty, today?” she asked. “Nope. There’s still no cell service.” “That’s the answer I hoped for,” she replied. Turning her back on the morning, she dropped her towel. “I need a reason to have another soak in that giant tub.” 00:06:34+ Frantic blows from the far side of the steel doors leading to the Benevolence community bunker echoed in the fresh morning air, but the rubber stops held their ground. 00:06:57+ Ryan drove the Escalade like he’d stolen it, the tires protesting as he gained the highway. He laughed. He’d made it. Then the last piece of Benevolence B7438 landed on him. FIN Also published . here

The Last 3 Days (21 & fin): Underdogs Shine 

What Is Man? and Other Essays by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . TAMING THE BICYCLE here TAMING THE BICYCLE (Written about 1893; not before published) In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a quality which does not grow old. A. B. P. I I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down and bought a barrel of Pond’s Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came home with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of privacy, and went to work. Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt—a fifty-inch, with the pedals shortened up to forty-eight—and skittish, like any other colt. The Expert explained the thing’s points briefly, then he got on its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off, myself. Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on record. He was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on top. We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact, the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably these things are constructed. We applied some Pond’s Extract, and resumed. The Expert got on the side to shove up this time, but I dismounted on that side; so the result was as before. other The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves up again, and resumed. This time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or other we landed on him again. He was full of surprised admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it was wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came to know these steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but dynamite could cripple them. Then he limped out to position, and we resumed once more. This time the Expert took up the position of short-stop, and got a man to shove up behind. We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on the instructor’s back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air between me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that broke the fall, and it was not injured. Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft. Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is better. The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side of me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the dismount. The bicycle had what is called the “wabbles,” and had them very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature. Against nature, but not against the laws of nature. That is to say, that whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of physics required that it be done in just the other way. I perceived by this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the life-long education of my body and members. They were steeped in ignorance; they knew nothing—nothing which it could profit them to know. For instance, if I found myself falling to the right, I put the tiller hard down the other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so violated a law, and kept on going down. The law required the opposite thing—the big wheel must be turned in the direction in which you are falling. It is hard to believe this, when you are told it. And not merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is opposed to all your notions. And it is just as hard to do it, after you do come to believe it. Believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does not help it: you can’t any more DO it than you could before; you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do it at first. The intellect has to come to the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to discard their old education and adopt the new. The steps of one’s progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you’ve got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No—and I see now, plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can’t fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy of it at a time, and learn it—not ease up and shirk to the next, leaving that one half learned. When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task—how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times. By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it IS a tiller; “handle-bar” is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that, and down you go again. But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. Six more attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the saddle comfortably, next time, and stay there—that is, if you can be content to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon learn to wait a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against them. And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn’t. I don’t know why it isn’t but it isn’t. Try as you may, you don’t get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time. II During the eight days I took a daily lesson of an hour and a half. At the end of this twelve working-hours’ apprenticeship I was graduated—in the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the rough. Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who imagine that the unlucky accidents of life—life’s “experiences”—are in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth anything as an education, it wouldn’t seem likely that you could trip Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more than likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it. But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time and Pond’s Extract. Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn’t any. He said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon remove it. The contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked. He wanted to test mine, so I offered my biceps—which was my best. It almost made him smile. He said, “It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding, and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag.” Perhaps this made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: “Oh, that’s all right, you needn’t worry about that; in a little while you can’t tell it from a petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice; you’re all right.” Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don’t really have to seek them—that is nothing but a phrase—they come to you. I chose a reposeful Sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about thirty yards wide between the curbstones. I knew it was not wide enough; still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space unnecessarily I could crowd through. Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no sympathetic instructor to say, “Good! now you’re doing well—good again—don’t hurry—there, now, you’re all right—brace up, go ahead.” In place of this I had some other support. This was a boy, who was perched on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar. He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that’s what he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and learn to ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he didn’t believe I could stay on a horse-car. But the next time I succeeded, and got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and occupying pretty much all of the street. My slow and lumbering gait filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, “My, but don’t he rip along!” Then he got down from his post and loafed along the sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. Presently he dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little girl passed by, balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, “Let him alone, he’s going to a funeral.” I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and acute as a spirit-level in the detecting of delicate and vanishing shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as I might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At such times the boy would say: “That’s it! take a rest—there ain’t no hurry. They can’t hold the funeral without YOU.” Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when I went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small, if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn’t help trying to do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all, for some inscrutable reason. I was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind—your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel AWAY from the curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that granite-bound inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my experience. I dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle and sat down on the curb to examine. I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer’s wagon poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. I couldn’t shout at him—a beginner can’t shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone; he must keep all his attention on his business. But in this grisly emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be grateful to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly: “To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass ’ll run over you!” The man started to do it. “No, to the right, to the right! Hold on! THAT won’t do!—to the left!—to the right!—to the LEFT—right! left—ri—Stay where you ARE, or you’re a goner!” And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a pile. I said, “Hang it! Couldn’t you SEE I was coming?” “Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn’t tell which WAY you was coming. Nobody could—now, they? You couldn’t yourself—now, you? So what could do?” could could I There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was. Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy couldn’t keep up with me. He had to go back to his gate-post, and content himself with watching me fall at long range. There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn’t run over the dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me practice. They all liked to see me practice, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved even that. I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy out one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn’t reform. Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live. 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). What Is Man? and Other Essays. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/70/pg70-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

TAMING THE BICYCLE

Today I’m going to tell you about the Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club… Remember, in the , I promised I would write a separate piece about it? previous story about the Bored Ape Yacht Club Well, here it is! The timing seemed perfect since the trial happened last week. So let’s dive in. Origin Story From the previous issue, you already know the high-level story of the Bored Apes Yacht Club - but what the hell is Ryder Ripps Bored Ape Yacht Club (RR BAYC)? You may be wondering. Here is how it all started. In May 2022, conceptual artist Ryder Ripps took a picture of the Bored Ape that owned and used as his profile picture on Twitter and minted it as a new NFT on Foundation. He then linked his wallet to his Twitter account and used that as his new profile picture. Twitter, in its turn, showed a hexagon around the image, which proved that it’s an NFT that the account holder (Ryder) owns. j1mmy.eth NFT I could not find the exact public dialogue between j1mmy.eth and Ryder, but I recall that  j1mmy.eth was not happy at all. The conversation between them and the Twitter crowd provoked thoughts and brought up important topics such as NFTs, IP rights, ownership, provenance, etc. And within this context, below is the tweet that started it all There were many people tweeting and asking to get their RR BAYC based on their chosen Bored Ape image. Ryder Ripps himself was minting the RR BAYC apes one by one on Foundation, and soon it became a trending collection on the platform. If I am not mistaken, at one point, Yuga Labs had sent a DMCA letter requesting the Foundation to take the collection down. It was taken down for a day, but after an investigation was brought back up. Everyone who was purchasing RR BAYC had to agree to the terms below. A copycat? Many simplified the matter and, due to the same imagery used (later even the media while covering the topic), simply labeled the RR BAYC collection a copycat. As you can see from the terms, Ryder meant to for educational purposes, as protest and satirical commentary. re-conceptualize the BAYC imagery And everyone was informed that it was a new mint and not an NFT from the original Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. It is hard to deny, though, that the collection did what Ryder intended it to do. Educational You cannot copy an NFT. It would be safe to say that there were many people in the space who had the wrong perception of what an NFT actually was. Many really thought they were buying, holding, and trading the image (jpeg). This is exactly why some had that ignorant “right-click save” counter-argument. What they didn’t realize was that when they bought the NFT, they bought the token, not the image. And although RR BAYC NFT was pointing to the same image of the respective BAYC ape, it was a completely new NFT under a different smart contract. Protest Please note that the accusations about Yuga Labs being a Nazi brand had not yet gained traction, but they were already around. Ryder had launched at the beginning of 2022, and different Twitter Spaces were debating the matter. https://gordongoner.com/ So to many at this point, minting a RR BAYC was a form of protest. Appropriation Art RR BAYC may be looked at as appropriation art too. What is appropriation art? Appropriation in art and art history refers to the practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original. Appropriation art raises questions of originality, authenticity, and authorship. Below is just one example More examples are mentioned in this tweet. https://twitter.com/SirRonHale/status/1687072588692889601?s=20&embedable=true And yes, you may argue that in the RR BAYC case, it’s pointing to the same BAYC original image… but remember - the NFT is not about the image but provenance, right? Anyway, let’s see what happened next Seems that at some point, the demand became so high that Ryder could no longer mint them manually. So he teamed up with Pauly (Jeremy Cahen) and a few others to launch a website where people could buy/mint them. I already told you in the previous story that the Youtuber called BORED APE NAZI CLUB at the time the 2022 was taking place. Philion published his video NFT NYC The video blew up, and I think everyone in the NFT space watched it(+ some more since it got 2M views so far). The video mentioned the RR BAYC collection and brought the attention of more people to it. So the demand kept growing… Yuga’s move At first, the most powerful NFT company that gave birth to BAYC: Yuga Labs, ignored the matter, probably hoping that it would never gain traction and be forgotten with time. But not only the video kept gaining views, but also the crypto and mass media picked up the topic, so with each day, more and more people were coming across the accusations and the RR BAYC collection as a result. So they reached a point where ignoring it further was no longer an option. That’s when Gordon Gomer published labeling the accusations “bullshit” but addressing them nevertheless. A letter from the Founders Trying to recall those times, I don’t remember the Bored Ape community being as loyal and united, supporting the brand as Ryder Ripps and Pauly’s supporters were. The latter was way more loud, bold, and passionate compared to the Bored Ape holders. I personally think that if it was the other way around, things would die out and eventually be forgotten, and this story would simply stop here… But no… we’re still halfway there. Yuga Labs sued Ryder Ripps, Pauly (Jeremy Cahen), and DOES 1-10 in June 2022. Before, they were saying that accusations were “bullshit” and the accusers were just trolls. Now a 4 billion company was suing them. And yes, I get it - all these accusations certainly had a very negative impact on the brand's reputation… but wait - it looks like it is not a defamation case at all! If you are as ignorant in legal matters as I am, you may be wondering - who the hell is DOES 1-10? Looked into court files, and here is who else Yuga Labs is suing besides Ryder and Jeremy: Don’t wanna bore you with too many legal details, but below are just a few segments of what Yuga Labs’ complaints consist of to give you a better context, so you can follow the story along. In response to the Bored Ape Yacht Club’s popularity, Defendant Ryder Ripps, a self-proclaimed “conceptual artist,” recently began trolling Yuga Labs and scamming consumers into purchasing RR/BAYC NFTs by misusing Yuga Labs’ trademarks. He seeks to devalue the Bored Ape NFTs by flooding the NFT market with his own copycat NFT collection using the original Bored Ape Yacht Club images and calling his NFTs “RR/BAYC” NFTs. Brazenly, he promotes and sells these RR/BAYC NFTs using the very same trademarks that Yuga Labs uses to promote and sell authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. He also markets these copycat NFTs as falsely equivalent to an authentic Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT. He then goes on to use Yuga Labs’ marks to promote his coming “Ape Market” NFT marketplace, which requires a person to purchase one of his infringing NFTs to join the Ape Market. This is no mere monkey business. It is a deliberate effort to harm Yuga Labs at the expense of consumers by sowing confusion about whether these RR/BAYC NFTs are in some way sponsored, affiliated, or connected to Yuga Labs’ official Bored Ape Yacht Club, in violation of the Lanham Act and related state law. Yuga Labs brings this action against Ripps and others involved in perpetrating his scam to dispel the confusion he has caused in the marketplace, to protect the goodwill in authentic Bored Ape NFTs and the Bored Ape Yacht Club, to protect members of the NFT community from being deceived into thinking they are purchasing a highly coveted Bored Ape NFT, and to protect the general public from deceptive commercialization or use of RR/BAYC NFTs that would lead consumers to believe those NFTs are official Bored Ape NFTs. Ripps claims his actions are “satire,” yet he conveniently rakes in millions in ill-gotten profit from sales of the RR/BAYC NFTs using Yuga Labs’ marks to make those sales. Copying is not satire, it is theft. And lying to consumers is not conceptual art, it is deception. Ripps, Cahen, and Does 1-5’s website (https://rrbayc.com) claims that minting exact replicas of Yuga Labs’ Bored Ape NFTs and reselling them at a profit is “satire.” In reality, this is part of a longstanding harassment campaign against Yuga Labs and an attempt to devalue the price of authentic Bored Ape NFTs. At the same time, Ripps, Cahen, and Does 1-5 stand to make millions of dollars by tricking consumers into buying these fake Bored Ape NFTs. Indeed, on information and belief, Ripps has made well over $5 million through this scheme of pumping and dumping fake NFTs. There is also a part specifically for all those who have bought RR BAYC too… Defendants Does 6-10 have joined Ripps, Cahen, and Does 1-5 in acting to devalue authentic Bored Ape NFTs through their participation in social media in promoting the RR/BAYC NFTs while knowing them to be fake. Their specific actions will be alleged when and if their identities are ascertained. Will leave in case you’d like to dive into it deeper. the link to all public documents here There are tons of documents and evidence in there. In January 2023, Yuga filed a complaint against Thomas Lehman, focusing on his role in coding and developing the RR BAYC contract and the rrbayc.com site. In February, they reached a settlement (source: ). Coindesk I guess we won’t know what they had agreed on though. In April 2023, Yuga Labs won summary judgment. But the court decided that any damages would be calculated and determined during the trial. The trial And here we are, just a week after the trial. The trial was open to the public, and Pauly encouraged their supporters to show up in a tweet mentioning it a few times on Twitter Spaces too. https://twitter.com/Pauly0x/status/1684566734181920768?s=20&embedable=true There was a bit of citizen journalism going on, so many were following the developments in real-time, reading the tweets, and watching videos from the breaks. Here are both parties arriving at the court: When I started researching this story, I reached out to the Twitter audience to get more information and details. As a result, I personally spoke to 10+ people who were at the trial to find out more details and write this part. All of them were there to support Ryder and Jeremy. They all discovered RR BAYC at different times (from the 1st day, after following Pauly through Pepe, after watching the video, etc.), but all were united by their beliefs. People had traveled from Washington, Miami, and Arizona to be there in person and show their support. Here are just a few of them below, explaining why they decided to be there. This guy flew from Miami. And he also brought his framed RR BAYC with him to the trial. People I spoke to thought everyone from the Yuga Labs side was paid to be there - i.e., mostly from their legal team, hired experts, etc. and no one from the public came to support them. I reached out to Yuga Labs and did not get a response, so unfortunately, there will be no way of presenting their side of the story here. Most of the people I spoke with were on the same page when they were sharing their impressions and observations. I tried to summarize them below: Ryder Ripps did not get a chance to speak. He was asked 1 question only. Being the “hero of the story,” it felt strange to me… When I asked Ryder’s mother: Helene Verin, who was there too, why she thinks that was, she responded: It's obvious; Ryder was so articulate in his deposition, they didn't want him to explain his protest. Jeremy, though, was questioned for 30-40 minutes, and he was very calm and confident. Greg Solano (one of Yuga Lab's co-founders) admitted that the theme of their brand is “scatological” in nature and that Bored Ape Yacht Club is a luxury brand. Quoting one of the supporters below (a sentiment/impression I got from several in different phrasing) I was shocked that Nicole Munoiz (x CEO of Yuga Labs) didn’t even know her own company’s terms . The way certain YUGA witnessed lied on the stand and then we’re quickly reminded of their lies via their deposition was insane. I can’t believe it. It was embarrassing. They really shamed themselves that day. Yuga Labs brought around 13 boxes of printed evidence There were some laughs and giggles during Yuga Labs’ testimony Yuga Labs have spent tons of money (around $600k?) to hire experts to prove that people were confused and bought RR BAYC thinking they were buying BAYC The story is not over yet, and it’s hard to predict what would the decision about the damages be. I believe that the law will find its way. I believe that things will be reconciled. Reconciled because the main business of Yuga Labs is illegitimate. They promise you “IP” — intellectual property if you own one of these NFTs and there is no boundaries of how that intellectual property can be used. I think that’s the most fascinating thing in all of this. Yuga’s examples of IP are poop videos and penises on a bathroom wall. Everybody else, whom Yuga Labs celebrates is using their IP to make marijuana products, kids toys, clothing, pillows, socks, anything you could think of… So in what world is there a guideline? The spectrum of how you can use your IP is wide. If you want to utilize your IP to make criticisms of the company, why can’t you? (a witness from Ryder’s side at trial) _ @hWonderofWorld The rabbit hole with this story seems too deep, and this story just scratched the surface. Meanwhile, it feels like we are living at times when memes are used as “serious” evidence in court, and people keep meme-ing anyway. That was all for this week's Rebels! Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and qualified in legal matters, so all I have in this story is what I managed to research and comprehend: feel free to correct if needed. I also have not owned and don’t own RR/BAYC at the moment. Also published . here

Yuga Labs Sues Ryder Ripps, Jeremy Cahen, and DOES 1-10: This is Not Monkey Business

Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA here CHAPTER IX. MARKET PRICES IN GALLIA “All right!” said Servadac, convinced by the professor’s ill humor that the danger was past; “no doubt we are in for a two years’ excursion, but fifteen months more will take us back to the earth!” “And we shall see Montmartre again!” exclaimed Ben Zoof, in excited tones that betrayed his delight in the anticipation. To use a nautical expression, they had safely “rounded the point,” and they had to be congratulated on their successful navigation; for if, under the influence of Jupiter’s attraction, the comet had been retarded for a single hour, in that hour the earth would have already traveled 2,300,000 miles from the point where contact would ensue, and many centuries would elapse before such a coincidence would possibly again occur. On the 1st of November Gallia and Jupiter were 40,000,000 miles apart. It was little more than ten weeks to the 15th of January, when the comet would begin to re-approach the sun. Though light and heat were now reduced to a twenty-fifth part of their terrestrial intensity, so that a perpetual twilight seemed to have settled over Gallia, yet the population felt cheered even by the little that was left, and buoyed up by the hope that they should ultimately regain their proper position with regard to the great luminary, of which the temperature has been estimated as not less than 5,000,000 degrees. Of the anxiety endured during the last two months Isaac Hakkabut had known nothing. Since the day he had done his lucky stroke of business he had never left the tartan; and after Ben Zoof, on the following day, had returned the steelyard and the borrowed cash, receiving back the paper roubles deposited, all communication between the Jew and Nina’s Hive had ceased. In the course of the few minutes’ conversation which Ben Zoof had held with him, he had mentioned that he knew that the whole soil of Gallia was made of gold; but the old man, guessing that the orderly was only laughing at him as usual, paid no attention to the remark, and only meditated upon the means he could devise to get every bit of the money in the new world into his own possession. No one grieved over the life of solitude which Hakkabut persisted in leading. Ben Zoof giggled heartily, as he repeatedly observed “it was astonishing how they reconciled themselves to his absence.” The time came, however, when various circumstances prompted him to think he must renew his intercourse with the inhabitants of the Hive. Some of his goods were beginning to spoil, and he felt the necessity of turning them into money, if he would not be a loser; he hoped, moreover, that the scarcity of his commodities would secure very high prices. It happened, just about this same time, that Ben Zoof had been calling his master’s attention to the fact that some of their most necessary provisions would soon be running short, and that their stock of coffee, sugar, and tobacco would want replenishing. Servadac’s mind, of course, turned to the cargo on board the , and he resolved, according to his promise, to apply to the Jew and become a purchaser. Mutual interest and necessity thus conspired to draw Hakkabut and the captain together. Hansa Often and often had Isaac gloated in his solitude over the prospect of first selling a portion of his merchandise for all the gold and silver in the colony. His recent usurious transaction had whetted his appetite. He would next part with some more of his cargo for all the paper money they could give him; but still he should have goods left, and they would want these. Yes, they should have these, too, for promissory notes. Notes would hold good when they got back again to the earth; bills from his Excellency the governor would be good bills; anyhow there would be the sheriff. By the God of Israel! he would get good prices, and he would get fine interest! Although he did not know it, he was proposing to follow the practice of the Gauls of old, who advanced money on bills for payment in a future life. Hakkabut’s “future life,” however, was not many months in advance of the present. Still Hakkabut hesitated to make the first advance, and it was accordingly with much satisfaction that he hailed Captain Servadac’s appearance on board the . Hansa “Hakkabut,” said the captain, plunging without further preface into business, “we want some coffee, some tobacco, and other things. I have come to-day to order them, to settle the price, and to-morrow Ben Zoof shall fetch the goods away.” “Merciful, heavens!” the Jew began to whine; but Servadac cut him short. “None of that miserable howling! Business! I am come to buy your goods. I shall pay for them.” “Ah yes, your Excellency,” whispered the Jew, his voice trembling like a street beggar. “Don’t impose on me. I am poor; I am nearly ruined already.” “Cease your wretched whining!” cried Servadac. “I have told you once, I shall pay for all I buy.” “Ready money?” asked Hakkabut. “Yes, ready money. What makes you ask?” said the captain, curious to hear what the Jew would say. “Well, you see—you see, your Excellency,” stammered out the Jew, “to give credit to one wouldn’t do, unless I gave credit to another. You are solvent—I mean honorable, and his lordship the count is honorable; but maybe—maybe—” “Well?” said Servadac, waiting, but inclined to kick the old rascal out of his sight. “I shouldn’t like to give credit,” he repeated. “I have not asked you for credit. I have told you, you shall have ready money.” “Very good, your Excellency. But how will you pay me?” “Pay you? Why, we shall pay you in gold and silver and copper, while our money lasts, and when that is gone we shall pay you in bank notes.” “Oh, no paper, no paper!” groaned out the Jew, relapsing into his accustomed whine. “Nonsense, man!” cried Servadac. “No paper!” reiterated Hakkabut. “Why not? Surely you can trust the banks of England, France, and Russia.” “Ah no! I must have gold. Nothing so safe as gold.” “Well then,” said the captain, not wanting to lose his temper, “you shall have it your own way; we have plenty of gold for the present. We will leave the bank notes for by and by.” The Jew’s countenance brightened, and Servadac, repeating that he should come again the next day, was about to quit the vessel. “One moment, your Excellency,” said Hakkabut, sidling up with a hypocritical smile; “I suppose I am to fix my own prices.” “You will, of course, charge ordinary prices—proper market prices; European prices, I mean.” “Merciful heavens!” shrieked the old man, “you rob me of my rights; you defraud me of my privilege. The monopoly of the market belongs to me. It is the custom; it is my right; it is my privilege to fix my own prices.” Servadac made him understand that he had no intention of swerving from his decision. “Merciful heavens!” again howled the Jew, “it is sheer ruin. The time of monopoly is the time for profit; it is the time for speculation.” “The very thing, Hakkabut, that I am anxious to prevent. Just stop now, and think a minute. You seem to forget rights; you are forgetting that, if I please, I can confiscate all your cargo for the common use. You ought to think yourself lucky in getting any price at all. Be contented with European prices; you will get no more. I am not going to waste my breath on you. I will come again to-morrow;” and, without allowing Hakkabut time to renew his lamentations, Servadac went away. my All the rest of the day the Jew was muttering bitter curses against the thieves of Gentiles in general, and the governor of Gallia in particular, who were robbing him of his just profits, by binding him down to a maximum price for his goods, just as if it were a time of revolution in the state. But he would be even with them yet; he would have it all out of them: he would make European prices pay, after all. He had a plan—he knew how; and he chuckled to himself, and grinned maliciously. True to his word, the captain next morning arrived at the tartan. He was accompanied by Ben Zoof and two Russian sailors. “Good-morning, old Eleazar; we have come to do our little bit of friendly business with you, you know,” was Ben Zoof’s greeting. “What do you want to-day?” asked the Jew. “To-day we want coffee, and we want sugar, and we want tobacco. We must have ten kilogrammes of each. Take care they are all good; all first rate. I am commissariat officer, and I am responsible.” “I thought you were the governor’s aide-de-camp,” said Hakkabut. “So I am, on state occasions; but to-day, I tell you. I am superintendent of the commissariat department. Now, look sharp!” Hakkabut hereupon descended into the hold of the tartan, and soon returned, carrying ten packets of tobacco, each weighing one kilogramme, and securely fastened by strips of paper, labeled with the French government stamp. “Ten kilogrammes of tobacco at twelve francs a kilogramme: a hundred and twenty francs,” said the Jew. Ben Zoof was on the point of laying down the money, when Servadac stopped him. “Let us just see whether the weight is correct.” Hakkabut pointed out that the weight was duly registered on every packet, and that the packets had never been unfastened. The captain, however, had his own special object in view, and would not be diverted. The Jew fetched his steelyard, and a packet of the tobacco was suspended to it. “Merciful heavens!” screamed Isaac. The index registered only 133 grammes! “You see, Hakkabut, I was right. I was perfectly justified in having your goods put to the test,” said Servadac, quite seriously. “But—but, your Excellency—” stammered out the bewildered man. “You will, of course, make up the deficiency,” the captain continued, not noticing the interruption. “Oh, my lord, let me say—” began Isaac again. “Come, come, old Caiaphas, do you hear? You are to make up the deficiency,” exclaimed Ben Zoof. “Ah, yes, yes; but—” The unfortunate Israelite tried hard to speak, but his agitation prevented him. He understood well enough the cause of the phenomenon, but he was overpowered by the conviction that the “cursed Gentiles” wanted to cheat him. He deeply regretted that he had not a pair of common scales on board. “Come, I say, old Jedediah, you are a long while making up what’s short,” said Ben Zoof, while the Jew was still stammering on. As soon as he recovered his power of articulation, Isaac began to pour out a medley of lamentations and petitions for mercy. The captain was inexorable. “Very sorry, you know, Hakkabut. It is not my fault that the packet is short weight; but I cannot pay for a kilogramme except I have a kilogramme.” Hakkabut pleaded for some consideration. “A bargain is a bargain,” said Servadac. “You must complete your contract.” And, moaning and groaning, the miserable man was driven to make up the full weight as registered by his own steelyard. He had to repeat the process with the sugar and coffee: for every kilogramme he had to weigh seven. Ben Zoof and the Russians jeered him most unmercifully. “I say, old Mordecai, wouldn’t you rather give your goods away, than sell them at this rate? I would.” “I say, old Pilate, a monopoly isn’t always a good thing, is it?” “I say, old Sepharvaim, what a flourishing trade you’re driving!” Meanwhile seventy kilogrammes of each of the articles required were weighed, and the Jew for each seventy had to take the price of ten. All along Captain Servadac had been acting only in jest. Aware that old Isaac was an utter hypocrite, he had no compunction in turning a business transaction with him into an occasion for a bit of fun. But the joke at an end, he took care that the Jew was properly paid all his legitimate due. 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 (1998). Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1353/pg1353-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

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