Munchh is a Food Technology Company that strives to terraform the dining landscape on two fronts:\n\nDrowned out by the sheer number of eateries available out there, Munchh seeks to simplify the dining process for the end consumer

Munchh

Let me start off honestly. Until June 2021, I never quite understood NFTs. In fact, I avoided any conversation about NFTs like a plague. I was amongst the people who thought this was some ridiculous crypto joke. Like who would want to pay millions for an ape image? You gotta be kidding me. But that viewpoint changed. On a trip to the US, I was seated next to someone drawing away on their iPads. Obviously, curious & intrigued, I had to ask. The next hour was a profound discussion with Adam Rattigan, the artist of on the challenges of being a young-age artist, finding opportunities, and getting involved in NFTs. MunchiesNFT The artist explained how he had always had these unique ideas to merge traditional artworks into digital spaces but never really tried it because it was usually frowned upon. Based in London, he was at the time a Creative Manager for a digital agency and like many other fine art grads, he thought he had no career in producing actual art, until he began exploring the world of NFTs. He went on to tell me how NFTs were not only frowned upon but also loathed by artists in the community. Artists failed to understand why anyone would get paid in millions for a computer-generated zoo animal while the painting they spent 1,000 hours working on does not even get acknowledged. So why did he decide to launch an NFT project if there were so many challenges was my main question to him? And what he told me was food for thought that prompted me to think differently. The answer was very obvious - NFTs are an open technology for anyone to be able to showcase their work to a global audience, get attention, build a community, and attract collectors. In fact, NFTs had enabled so many artists from across the world to share their artworks and make a fortune! Take, for example, the Iranian American artist Ali Sabet who has become a global phenomenon with his unique portrayal of beautiful & confident women. Or of Beeple who’s collage is the highest sold NFTs. Truly, the art world has been redefined by NFTs, and the more we resist, the more we limit talent and potential to rise and shine. NFTs limited the barriers to entry. And while problems like scams, cheapstakes etc. still continue, it doesn’t take away the opportunities that would never have been available for artists. At the end of the flight, I promised to follow the artist on Twitter, and I decided to keep an open mind about NFTs. Just a week ago, they launched. MunchiesNFT promised a fusion of traditional art with a digital platform like NFTs. That was bound to create ripples. But before I talk about the effect, let’s talk about the fusion. Here’s addressing some concerns. Is it even legit? Fusing traditional art with NFTs? Ask an artist, and that answer might be a big NO. But according to Adam, who is a fine art graduate from the De Montfort University, artists seek or take inspiration from other artists all the time. So when he’s fusing a work of Basquiat by presenting it on a plate with forks and knives, he’s making traditional art accessible and unique for everyone. You want a PFP of Basquiat; you’ve got one now! Art on a plate? How does that work! Art is generally subjective. For instance, take a look at abstract art. There was a time when people would question the meaning and purpose of abstract art pieces. Color blocks on a canvas? Angry strokes covering up each other? Yet, abstract art became a sensation, and it held a different meaning to the eyes of different beholders. It’s the same with NFT art. What may be a ridiculous ape picture to one may be a super cool art piece to another. In the case of MunchiesNFT, Adam fused his love for traditional art with his love for food. The plate + other food utensils are what give the art pieces a unique, trippy art touch, making it eligible as the perfect NFT project - people can use it as their profile pictures or as a painting on the wall! Either way, they’ve got a unique spin of Basquiat, Van Gogh, Frida, Dali, and 50+ other artists on their walls. Would anyone even care? Now that’s the fun part. No one cares about an NFT project unless there’s a community built for it. This is where NFTs differ from real-world art practices. In the real world, you would have to pull strings, ask galleries for spots, and hope to get lucky if you want to display your art & have it sold. In the NFT world, you build a community; specifically, a community that gets crypto gets NFTs, and gets what NFT investment would mean for the future. That is a very niche community and one that takes a lot of effort to build. But when you are able to build that community, you will find the support you could never imagine getting from elsewhere. For Adam, his Discord community of 35k members is a source of strength & inspiration. In the future, this community will be helping him support other artists. How does the project keep the community safe? Part of the reason why NFTs have gained a bad rep is because of the endless scams that plague the space. Within a day of launch, MunchiesNFT had to battle 3 fake links on Opensea. It’s a nightmare to stay legit in a sea of scams, but that’s where the team’s moderators work so diligently on Discord. Adam and his small team of 2 take turns in moderating the community, manually removing suspicious accounts and reviewing each request to join. It’s crazy work but one that they have to do to keep the community safe. This is critical - if the community’s safety is at risk, the project fails! What’s the future for projects like MunchiesNFT? A prosperous one at best, that is if they are able to convince the community of the uniqueness of their concept. At worse, it may fail, but even in that case, it has proven to the world that traditional art forms can be integrated into digital mediums and still maintain their original power. MunchiesNFT even has a roadmap that mentions a launchpad that will other artists showcase their work and gain support from the community. Eventually, Adam will be advocating for traditional and digital art forms to peacefully co-exist, allowing for artists to sell their artworks to serious collectors and forming a community that supports a fair and transparent NFT launch. That said, the journey isn’t easy. The team has to deal with scammers, fakes, fluctuating floor prices, (fear, uncertainty, doubt), but most importantly, in building the community. FUD What Did I Learn? For one, admirers of traditional art forms need not be afraid of digital technology, but rather they should embrace it and allow for art to be accessible. Artists may feel slided for not making as much money as NFTs, but then again, the amount of effort going into building a community is more than the amount of time spent in painting a canvas. In a dynamic, super-competitive space, an NFT artist or project founder don’t just display their artwork; they have to promote, connect with influencers, learn new tools & software, manage a community and ensure they are not passed off as a spam project. After all, as I mentioned earlier, NFTs aren’t about the art itself - it’s the community! I can’t say for sure if I’ll ever invest in an NFT since I’m still new in my research, but I do know that they are here to stay. Even when all the hype’s gone, NFTs will continue to be a space for artists across the world to showcase their potential & make a fortune! I have no holding or stake in this project. Where I come from, crypto trading is banned by the government! But I’m a traditional art enthusiast, and this project came across as worth talking about. Disclaimer:

NFTs & Traditional Art - Can They Co-Exist? The Daring Venture of MunchiesNFT

Authors:
(1) Li Siyao, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University;
(2) Tianpei Gu, Lexica and Work completed at UCLA;
(3) Weiye Xiao, Southeast University;
(4) Henghui Ding, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University;
(5) Ziwei Liu, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University;
(6) Chen Change Loy, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University and a Corresponding Author. Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction Related Work
Mixamo Line Art Dataset
Our Approach
Experiment
Conclusion and References 6. Conclusion In this study, we address the practical problem of cartoon line inbetweening and propose a novel approach that treats line arts as geometrized vector graphs. Unlike previous frame interpolation tasks on raster images, our approach formulates the inbetweening task as a graph fusion problem with vertex repositioning. We present a deep learning-based framework called AnimeInbet, which shows significant gains over existing methods in terms of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation. To facilitate training and evaluation on cartoon line inbetweening, we also provide a large-scale geometrized line art dataset, MixamoLine240. Our proposed framework and dataset facilitate a wide range of applications, such as anime production and multimedia design, and have significant practical implications. Acknowledgement. This research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore under its AI Singapore Programme (AISG Award No: AISG-PhD/2021-01- 031[T]). It is also supported under the RIE2020 Industry Alignment Fund Industry Collaboration Projects (IAF-ICP) Funding Initiative, as well as cash and in-kind contribution from the industry partner(s). This study is partially supported by NTU NAP, MOE AcRF Tier 1 (2021-T1-001-088). References [1] Mixamo. https://www.mixamo.com/. 3 [2] Mikhail Belkin and Partha Niyogi. Laplacian eigenmaps for dimensionality reduction and data representation. Neural computation, 15(6):1373–1396, 2003. 5 [3] Leonardo Carvalho, Ricardo Marroquim, and Emilio Vital Brazil. Dilight: Digital light table–inbetweening for 2d animations using guidelines. Computers & Graphics, 2017. 3 [4] Evan Casey, V´ıctor Perez, and Zhuoru Li. The animation ´ transformer: Visual correspondence via segment matching. In ICCV, 2021. 1, 3 [5] Shuhong Chen and Matthias Zwicker. Improving the perceptual quality of 2d animation interpolation. In ECCV, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [6] Zhewei Huang, Tianyuan Zhang, Wen Heng, Boxin Shi, and Shuchang Zhou. Real-time intermediate flow estimation for video frame interpolation. In ECCV, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [7] Huaizu Jiang, Deqing Sun, Varun Jampani, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Erik Learned-Miller, and Jan Kautz. Super SloMo: High quality estimation of multiple intermediate frames for video interpolation. In CVPR, 2018. 2 [8] Kangyeol Kim, Sunghyun Park, Jaeseong Lee, Sunghyo Chung, Junsoo Lee, and Jaegul Choo. Animeceleb: Largescale animation celebheads dataset for head reenactment. In ECCV, 2022. 3 [9] Diederik Kingma and Jimmy Ba. Adam: A method for stochastic optimization. In ICLR, 2014. 7 [10] Johannes Kopf and Dani Lischinski. Digital reconstruction of halftoned color comics. ACM TOG, 31(6), 2012. 1, 3 [11] Xiaoyu Li, Bo Zhang, Jing Liao, and Pedro V. Sander. Deep sketch-guided cartoon video inbetweening. TVCG, 2020. 2 [12] Songtao Liu, Jin Huang, and Hao Zhang. End-to-end line drawing vectorization. In AAAI, 2022. 3, 4 [13] Ziwei Liu, Raymond A Yeh, Xiaoou Tang, Yiming Liu, and Aseem Agarwala. Video frame synthesis using deep voxel flow. In CVPR, 2017. 2 [14] Liying Lu, Ruizheng Wu, Huaijia Lin, Jiangbo Lu, and Jiaya Jia. Video frame interpolation with transformer. In CVPR, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [15] Haoran Mo, Edgar Simo-Serra, Chengying Gao, Changqing Zou, and Ruomei Wang. General virtual sketching framework for vector line art. In SIGGRAPH, 2021. 3, 4, 7, 9 [16] Rei Narita, Keigo Hirakawa, and Kiyoharu Aizawa. Optical flow based line drawing frame interpolation using distance transform to support inbetweenings. In ICIP, 2019. 7 [17] Simon Niklaus and Feng Liu. Context-aware synthesis for video frame interpolation. In CVPR, 2018. 2 [18] Simon Niklaus and Feng Liu. Softmax splatting for video frame interpolation. In CVPR, 2020. 2 [19] Simon Niklaus, Long Mai, and Feng Liu. Video frame interpolation via adaptive convolution. In CVPR, 2017. 2 [20] Simon Niklaus, Long Mai, and Feng Liu. Video frame interpolation via adaptive separable convolution. In ICCV, 2017. 2 [21] Junheum Park, Keunsoo Ko, Chul Lee, and Chang-Su Kim. Bmbc: Bilateral motion estimation with bilateral cost volume for video interpolation. In ECCV, 2020. 2 [22] Yingge Qu, Tien-Tsin Wong, and Pheng-Ann Heng. Manga colorization. ACM TOG, 25(3), 2006. 1, 3 [23] Fitsum Reda, Janne Kontkanen, Eric Tabellion, Deqing Sun, Caroline Pantofaru, and Brian Curless. Film: Frame interpolation for large motion. In ECCV, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [24] Paul-Edouard Sarlin, Daniel DeTone, Tomasz Malisiewicz, and Andrew Rabinovich. Superglue: Learning feature matching with graph neural networks. In CVPR, 2020. 5 [25] Maria Shugrina, Ziheng Liang, Amlan Kar, Jiaman Li, Angad Singh, Karan Singh, and Sanja Fidler. Creative flow+ dataset. In CVPR, 2019. 3 [26] Hyeonjun Sim, Jihyong Oh, and Munchurl Kim. Xvfi: extreme video frame interpolation. In ICCV, 2021. 2 [27] Edgar Simo-Serra, Satoshi Iizuka, and Hiroshi Ishikawa. Mastering sketching: Adversarial augmentation for structured prediction. ACM TOG, 37(1), 2018. 2 [28] Edgar Simo-Serra, Satoshi Iizuka, Kazuma Sasaki, and Hiroshi Ishikawa. Learning to simplify: Fully convolutional networks for rough sketch cleanup. ACM TOG, 35(4), 2016. 2 [29] Li Siyao, Yuhang Li, Bo Li, Chao Dong, Ziwei Liu, and Chen Change Loy. Animerun: 2d animation visual correspondence from open source 3d movies. In NeurIPS, 2022. 3 [30] Li Siyao, Shiyu Zhao, Weijiang Yu, Wenxiu Sun, Dimitris Metaxas, Chen Change Loy, and Ziwei Liu. Deep animation video interpolation in the wild. In CVPR, 2021. 2 [31] Jiaming Sun, Zehong Shen, Yuang Wang, Hujun Bao, and Xiaowei Zhou. Loftr: Detector-free local feature matching with transformers. In CVPR, 2021. 5 [32] D. Sykora, J. Buri ` anek, and J. ´ Zˇ ara. Unsupervised coloriza- ´ tion of black-and-white cartoons. In Int. Symp. NPAR, 2004. 1, 3 [33] Haofei Xu, Jing Zhang, Jianfei Cai, Hamid Rezatofighi, and Dacheng Tao. Gmflow: Learning optical flow via global matching. In CVPR, 2022. 5 [34] Xiangyu Xu, Li Siyao, Wenxiu Sun, Qian Yin, and MingHsuan Yang. Quadratic video interpolation. In NeurIPS, 2019. 2 [35] Wenwu Yang. Context-aware computer aided inbetweening. IEEE TVCG, 24(2):1049–1062, 2017. 3 [36] Chih-Yuan Yao, Shih-Hsuan Hung, Guo-Wei Li, I-Yu Chen, Reza Adhitya, and Yu-Chi Lai. Manga vectorization and manipulation with procedural simple screentone. IEEE TVCG, 23(2), 2016. 3, 4 [37] Lvmin Zhang and Maneesh Agrawala. Adding conditional control to text-to-image diffusion models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.05543, 2023. 3 [38] Lvmin Zhang, Jinyue Jiang, Yi Ji, and Chunping Liu. Smartshadow: Artistic shadow drawing tool for line drawings. In ICCV, 2021. 1, 3 [39] Lvmin Zhang, Chengze Li, Tien-Tsin Wong, Yi Ji, and Chunping Liu. Two-stage sketch colorization. In SIGGRAPH, 2018. 1, 3 [40] Song-Hai Zhang, Tao Chen, Yi-Fei Zhang, Shi-Min Hu, and Ralph R. Martin. Vectorizing cartoon animations. IEEE TVCG, 15(4), 2009. 3, 4 This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Li Siyao, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University; (2) Tianpei Gu, Lexica and Work completed at UCLA; (3) Weiye Xiao, Southeast University; (4) Henghui Ding, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University; (5) Ziwei Liu, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University; (6) Chen Change Loy, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University and a Corresponding Author. Authors: Authors: (1) Li Siyao, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University; (2) Tianpei Gu, Lexica and Work completed at UCLA; (3) Weiye Xiao, Southeast University; (4) Henghui Ding, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University; (5) Ziwei Liu, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University; (6) Chen Change Loy, S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University and a Corresponding Author. Table of Links Abstract and 1. Introduction Abstract and 1. Introduction Related Work Mixamo Line Art Dataset Our Approach Experiment Conclusion and References Related Work Related Work Mixamo Line Art Dataset Mixamo Line Art Dataset Our Approach Our Approach Experiment Experiment Conclusion and References Conclusion and References 6. Conclusion In this study, we address the practical problem of cartoon line inbetweening and propose a novel approach that treats line arts as geometrized vector graphs. Unlike previous frame interpolation tasks on raster images, our approach formulates the inbetweening task as a graph fusion problem with vertex repositioning. We present a deep learning-based framework called AnimeInbet , which shows significant gains over existing methods in terms of both quantitative and qualitative evaluation. To facilitate training and evaluation on cartoon line inbetweening, we also provide a large-scale geometrized line art dataset, MixamoLine240 . Our proposed framework and dataset facilitate a wide range of applications, such as anime production and multimedia design, and have significant practical implications. AnimeInbet MixamoLine240 Acknowledgement . This research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore under its AI Singapore Programme (AISG Award No: AISG-PhD/2021-01- 031[T]). It is also supported under the RIE2020 Industry Alignment Fund Industry Collaboration Projects (IAF-ICP) Funding Initiative, as well as cash and in-kind contribution from the industry partner(s). This study is partially supported by NTU NAP, MOE AcRF Tier 1 (2021-T1-001-088). Acknowledgement References [1] Mixamo. https://www.mixamo.com/ . 3 https://www.mixamo.com/ [2] Mikhail Belkin and Partha Niyogi. Laplacian eigenmaps for dimensionality reduction and data representation. Neural computation, 15(6):1373–1396, 2003. 5 [3] Leonardo Carvalho, Ricardo Marroquim, and Emilio Vital Brazil. Dilight: Digital light table–inbetweening for 2d animations using guidelines. Computers & Graphics, 2017. 3 [4] Evan Casey, V´ıctor Perez, and Zhuoru Li. The animation ´ transformer: Visual correspondence via segment matching. In ICCV, 2021. 1, 3 [5] Shuhong Chen and Matthias Zwicker. Improving the perceptual quality of 2d animation interpolation. In ECCV, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [6] Zhewei Huang, Tianyuan Zhang, Wen Heng, Boxin Shi, and Shuchang Zhou. Real-time intermediate flow estimation for video frame interpolation. In ECCV, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [7] Huaizu Jiang, Deqing Sun, Varun Jampani, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Erik Learned-Miller, and Jan Kautz. Super SloMo: High quality estimation of multiple intermediate frames for video interpolation. In CVPR, 2018. 2 [8] Kangyeol Kim, Sunghyun Park, Jaeseong Lee, Sunghyo Chung, Junsoo Lee, and Jaegul Choo. Animeceleb: Largescale animation celebheads dataset for head reenactment. In ECCV, 2022. 3 [9] Diederik Kingma and Jimmy Ba. Adam: A method for stochastic optimization. In ICLR, 2014. 7 [10] Johannes Kopf and Dani Lischinski. Digital reconstruction of halftoned color comics. ACM TOG, 31(6), 2012. 1, 3 [11] Xiaoyu Li, Bo Zhang, Jing Liao, and Pedro V. Sander. Deep sketch-guided cartoon video inbetweening. TVCG, 2020. 2 [12] Songtao Liu, Jin Huang, and Hao Zhang. End-to-end line drawing vectorization. In AAAI, 2022. 3, 4 [13] Ziwei Liu, Raymond A Yeh, Xiaoou Tang, Yiming Liu, and Aseem Agarwala. Video frame synthesis using deep voxel flow. In CVPR, 2017. 2 [14] Liying Lu, Ruizheng Wu, Huaijia Lin, Jiangbo Lu, and Jiaya Jia. Video frame interpolation with transformer. In CVPR, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [15] Haoran Mo, Edgar Simo-Serra, Chengying Gao, Changqing Zou, and Ruomei Wang. General virtual sketching framework for vector line art. In SIGGRAPH, 2021. 3, 4, 7, 9 [16] Rei Narita, Keigo Hirakawa, and Kiyoharu Aizawa. Optical flow based line drawing frame interpolation using distance transform to support inbetweenings. In ICIP, 2019. 7 [17] Simon Niklaus and Feng Liu. Context-aware synthesis for video frame interpolation. In CVPR, 2018. 2 [18] Simon Niklaus and Feng Liu. Softmax splatting for video frame interpolation. In CVPR, 2020. 2 [19] Simon Niklaus, Long Mai, and Feng Liu. Video frame interpolation via adaptive convolution. In CVPR, 2017. 2 [20] Simon Niklaus, Long Mai, and Feng Liu. Video frame interpolation via adaptive separable convolution. In ICCV, 2017. 2 [21] Junheum Park, Keunsoo Ko, Chul Lee, and Chang-Su Kim. Bmbc: Bilateral motion estimation with bilateral cost volume for video interpolation. In ECCV, 2020. 2 [22] Yingge Qu, Tien-Tsin Wong, and Pheng-Ann Heng. Manga colorization. ACM TOG, 25(3), 2006. 1, 3 [23] Fitsum Reda, Janne Kontkanen, Eric Tabellion, Deqing Sun, Caroline Pantofaru, and Brian Curless. Film: Frame interpolation for large motion. In ECCV, 2022. 1, 2, 6, 7 [24] Paul-Edouard Sarlin, Daniel DeTone, Tomasz Malisiewicz, and Andrew Rabinovich. Superglue: Learning feature matching with graph neural networks. In CVPR, 2020. 5 [25] Maria Shugrina, Ziheng Liang, Amlan Kar, Jiaman Li, Angad Singh, Karan Singh, and Sanja Fidler. Creative flow+ dataset. In CVPR, 2019. 3 [26] Hyeonjun Sim, Jihyong Oh, and Munchurl Kim. Xvfi: extreme video frame interpolation. In ICCV, 2021. 2 [27] Edgar Simo-Serra, Satoshi Iizuka, and Hiroshi Ishikawa. Mastering sketching: Adversarial augmentation for structured prediction. ACM TOG, 37(1), 2018. 2 [28] Edgar Simo-Serra, Satoshi Iizuka, Kazuma Sasaki, and Hiroshi Ishikawa. Learning to simplify: Fully convolutional networks for rough sketch cleanup. ACM TOG, 35(4), 2016. 2 [29] Li Siyao, Yuhang Li, Bo Li, Chao Dong, Ziwei Liu, and Chen Change Loy. Animerun: 2d animation visual correspondence from open source 3d movies. In NeurIPS, 2022. 3 [30] Li Siyao, Shiyu Zhao, Weijiang Yu, Wenxiu Sun, Dimitris Metaxas, Chen Change Loy, and Ziwei Liu. Deep animation video interpolation in the wild. In CVPR, 2021. 2 [31] Jiaming Sun, Zehong Shen, Yuang Wang, Hujun Bao, and Xiaowei Zhou. Loftr: Detector-free local feature matching with transformers. In CVPR, 2021. 5 [32] D. Sykora, J. Buri ` anek, and J. ´ Zˇ ara. Unsupervised coloriza- ´ tion of black-and-white cartoons. In Int. Symp. NPAR, 2004. 1, 3 [33] Haofei Xu, Jing Zhang, Jianfei Cai, Hamid Rezatofighi, and Dacheng Tao. Gmflow: Learning optical flow via global matching. In CVPR, 2022. 5 [34] Xiangyu Xu, Li Siyao, Wenxiu Sun, Qian Yin, and MingHsuan Yang. Quadratic video interpolation. In NeurIPS, 2019. 2 [35] Wenwu Yang. Context-aware computer aided inbetweening. IEEE TVCG, 24(2):1049–1062, 2017. 3 [36] Chih-Yuan Yao, Shih-Hsuan Hung, Guo-Wei Li, I-Yu Chen, Reza Adhitya, and Yu-Chi Lai. Manga vectorization and manipulation with procedural simple screentone. IEEE TVCG, 23(2), 2016. 3, 4 [37] Lvmin Zhang and Maneesh Agrawala. Adding conditional control to text-to-image diffusion models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.05543, 2023. 3 [38] Lvmin Zhang, Jinyue Jiang, Yi Ji, and Chunping Liu. Smartshadow: Artistic shadow drawing tool for line drawings. In ICCV, 2021. 1, 3 [39] Lvmin Zhang, Chengze Li, Tien-Tsin Wong, Yi Ji, and Chunping Liu. Two-stage sketch colorization. In SIGGRAPH, 2018. 1, 3 [40] Song-Hai Zhang, Tao Chen, Yi-Fei Zhang, Shi-Min Hu, and Ralph R. Martin. Vectorizing cartoon animations. IEEE TVCG, 15(4), 2009. 3, 4 This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

Deep Geometrized Cartoon Line Inbetweening: Conclusion and References

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

Group of Fools

বোকাদের দল

Gruppe von Narren

grupo de tontos

Groupe de fous

मूर्खों का समूह

愚か者の集団

바보들의 그룹

Grupo de tolos

Группа дураков

Aptallar Grubu

Nhóm ngu ngốc

一群傻瓜

How to Create a Steel Base Plate Design Web App Using Python and Viktor

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03/28 Crypto Market Update Let's face it: the crypto market's been about as exciting as watching paint dry lately. But then, in walks Litecoin, the rebellious teenager of the world, defying the odds and skyrocketing to a two-week high of around $99. Now, this 9.25% jump in 24 hours has us scratching our heads – what's going on here? crypto Sleeping Giants Awake (and Maybe Cause a Little Trouble First) Here's the first plot twist: a bunch of dormant Litecoin tokens worth over $60 million decided to wake up from their slumber and rejoin the party on March 5th. It was the biggest daily jump for these sleepyheads on record. Now, this reunion wasn't exactly smooth sailing. The market initially freaked out, causing a 19% price drop. But hey, maybe it was just a case of first-day jitters? Because guess what? The market quickly absorbed these revived tokens, leading to a 37.25% rebound. This whole scenario feels eerily similar to what happened before Litecoin's 2017 bull run, where a similar awakening of dormant tokens paved the way for a massive price surge. So, is history repeating itself? Buckle up, folks, it's getting interesting. Coinbase Futures: The Shiny New Toy That Might Lure the Big Guys Adding fuel to the fire is a rumor that Coinbase will launch cash-settled Litecoin futures contracts in April. Now, this might sound like financial jargon overload, but here's the gist: it could attract a whole new crowd – the big institutional investors. Remember what happened when CME launched Bitcoin futures in 2017? The market went nuts! Could this be the secret sauce for Litecoin's future success? We don't have a crystal ball (yet!), but it's definitely something to keep an eye on. Strong Foundations: Not Just About Price But it's not all about price jumps. Litecoin's network itself seems to be in tip-top shape. The hash rate, which basically measures how secure the network is, is hitting record highs. This suggests that miners, the folks who keep the whole thing running, are feeling pretty confident. Maybe it's because of the upcoming Bitcoin halving event (where the rewards for mining Bitcoin get cut in half). This often leads to a price increase for Bitcoin, and sometimes, its ripple effect reaches other cryptocurrencies like Litecoin. So, even if you're not a techie, understand this: strong network = happy miners = potentially good news for Litecoin. The Chart Whisperers and Their Predictions Now, for those who like to analyze charts and lines more than we do, here's some good news. Litecoin's recent price action suggests it might have broken free from a long downtrend. In financial speak, that's a bullish signal. Plus, there's strong support from traders (think of it like having a bunch of people cheering for Litecoin) and a positive indicator called the RSI. The bottom line? The charts seem to be whispering that Litecoin might keep climbing, potentially reaching around $127.25 by April. But hey, remember, the crypto market can be as unpredictable as a teenager's mood. There's always a chance it could retreat and test support levels at $75.50. Oh, and Don't Forget About the Rest of the Crypto Zoo While Litecoin steals the show, there's other drama unfolding in the crypto world: A judge said "no way" to Coinbase's attempt to ditch a lawsuit from the SEC. This legal battle could have a major impact on crypto exchanges and regulations. Coinbase vs. SEC: Rumors are swirling about a potential mega-merger between some big names in AI – SingularityNet, , and Ocean Protocol. This could create a $7.5 billion giant in the AI-powered blockchain space. Talk about a power couple! AI Token Merger? Fetch.ai The NFT game Munchables got hacked, resulting in a massive loss of ETH. This serves as a stark reminder that security in the NFT space is crucial. NFT Security Breach: The Final Word: Don't Be a Blind Follower Remember, the crypto market is exciting, but it's also risky. Don't just blindly follow the latest trends. Do your own research, understand the risks, and maybe consult with someone who isn't as easily swayed by shiny objects (like, ahem, some of us). This article is just a glimpse into the ever-changing world of crypto, but hopefully, it keeps you entertained (and maybe a little informed) along the way.

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