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

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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

পাইথন এবং ভিক্টর ব্যবহার করে কীভাবে একটি স্টিল বেস প্লেট ডিজাইন ওয়েব অ্যাপ তৈরি করবেন

So erstellen Sie mit Python und Viktor eine Web-App zum Entwerfen von Stahlgrundplatten

Cómo crear una aplicación web de diseño de placa base de acero usando Python y Viktor

Comment créer une application Web de conception de plaques de base en acier à l'aide de Python et Viktor

पायथन और विक्टर का उपयोग करके स्टील बेस प्लेट डिज़ाइन वेब ऐप कैसे बनाएं

Python と Viktor を使用してスチールベースプレート設計 Web アプリを作成する方法

Python과 Viktor를 사용하여 강철 베이스 플레이트 디자인 웹 앱을 만드는 방법

Como criar um aplicativo Web de design de placa de base de aço usando Python e Viktor

Как создать веб-приложение для проектирования стальной опорной пластины с помощью Python и Viktor

Python ve Viktor'u Kullanarak Çelik Taban Plaka Tasarımı Web Uygulaması Nasıl Oluşturulur

Cách tạo ứng dụng web thiết kế tấm đế thép bằng Python và Viktor

如何使用 Python 和 Viktor 创建钢底板设计 Web 应用程序

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.

Crypto Market Update: Litecoin Soars Like a Rocket While Cryptoland Sleeps 

Expression

অভিব্যক্তি

Ausdruck

Expresión

अभिव्यक्ति

表現

표현

Expressão

Выражение

İfade

Sự biểu lộ

表达

98 Stories To Learn About Netflix

HOLLINGFORD GOSSIPS.

167 Stories To Learn About Vpn

Hi All! Here is my weekly wrap up email. If you love this content (please share it), but also… Check out my , connect with me on / , and Podcast YouTube Twitter Subscribe to my weekly newsletter Join our free slack community What’s in today’s newsletter? Bikeshedding Idea: Paralysis Triggers Question: Latticework Thinking Quote: Podcast: Renée Mauborgne, Researcher & Author of the Blue Ocean Strategy Jairek Robbins, Author, Coach & Speaker 7 Steps To Become A Millionaire Article: Idea: Bikeshedding Have you ever been in a meeting where the for the break room sparked a passionate hour-long debate? Meanwhile, the – the real reason you're all there – barely got a nod. choice of coffee business strategy for the next quarter That's Parkinson's Law of Triviality, or . bikeshedding Cyril Northcote Parkinson showed us this with an example of a committee assigned to build a nuclear plant. On the grounds of the proposed nuclear power plant was a proposed bike shed for employees of the plant to store their bikes while they worked. Meeting after meeting, the employees spent more time discussing details of the simple bike shed issue and at the complex nuclear reactor plans. barely glanced Why? Maybe fear, maybe confusion. Here’s a possible explanation, complexity is like . deep water We stick to the small things because they're . It's like floating in the shallow end. easy In the boardroom, on something like logo fonts. It's simple, it's subjective, it’s the safe zone. everyone’s a critic But ask about the ? You could hear a pin drop. ROI on a big project We lose ourselves in minor details and miss the . Like obsessing over a font when you should be crafting a winning strategy. major issues But you can conquer bikeshedding. Try this: . Stick to it like glue. Each topic gets just enough time, no more. Set a laser-focused agenda . Address the big stuff while brains are fresh. Dive into the deep end first . Less people, less noise, more action. Small team, big thinking . Ideas are team sport, decisions are not. Appoint a decider. One voice to rule them all is just step one. on it, that's the leap. Knowing about bikeshedding Acting So, at your next meeting, . prioritize Are you talking about the shed's color while your project's own nuclear reactor gets sidelined? It’s not about the shed. It's about the . journey ahead , not the distractions. Focus on the destination That's the key. That's what pushes you . forward This idea is from my short, daily newsletter. Read it here. Question: Paralysis Triggers Here’s a question on what’s stopping you from taking action: What are the that keep you from moving forward in your life? “paralysis triggers” As you pursue your goals and dreams in your life, there will be situations, events, thoughts, and emotions that trigger a sense of paralysis in you. These are your “paralysis triggers” in your life. You have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, but these “paralysis triggers” make you , , or . freeze procrastinate give up They prevent you from taking the necessary actions to make your vision a reality. Some examples of “paralysis triggers” are: that overwhelm you with too many choices, options, or possibilities. You feel confused, indecisive, or stuck. You don’t know where to start or what to do next. Situations that challenge your beliefs, assumptions, or expectations. You feel threatened, insecure, or doubtful. You question your abilities, your worth, or your purpose. Events that fill your mind with negative, limiting, or self-defeating messages. You feel anxious, fearful, or hopeless. You focus on the worst-case scenarios, the potential failures, or the reasons why you can’t. Thoughts that consume your energy, motivation, or enthusiasm. You feel angry, sad, or depressed. You lose interest, passion, or joy in what you do. Emotions It's easy to get stuck in paralysis if you don't take time to: your personal triggers Recognize where they come from Understand with them effectively Deal But this paralysis doesn't have to be permanent - you have the power to overcome it. This week, carve out some quiet time for self-reflection. Ask yourself: What specific situations, thoughts, or emotions tend to paralyze me? Trace these back to their roots. Did something happen that led you to develop these patterns? What beliefs or assumptions fuel the paralysis? Once you have more clarity, make an action plan. How can you respond differently to defuse your triggers when they arise? What affirmations or mantras can you use to stay motivated? Who can you turn to for support? Small steps add up. Regaining momentum is a process of patient persistence and with some critical thought, compassion for yourself and commitment to moving forward, you can break through those paralysis triggers so they don’t freeze you in your tracks. Quote: Latticework Thinking “The first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts... If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form." - Charlie Munger It's about the links between the facts. Business giants don’t just amass information. They construct frameworks to use it. Isolated facts? Useless. A single bee isn't a problem. A swarm? That’s a different story. Consider Elon Musk. His companies might look unrelated at first glance. But look closer. Energy. Efficiency. Innovation. These aren't just sectors. They're principles. They're the framework. Mental models are the new currency in the knowledge economy. Education rewards memorization. Real-world rewards those who synthesize. Are you just collecting facts? Or are you crafting a lens to view them through? It’s not about knowing more. It's about understanding better. . Look for Step back patterns, systems, connections. A fact is a single point. Knowledge is seeing the grid. Wisdom is navigating the map. When you wake up today, think: Are you simply gathering? Or are you truly linking? Because after all, Knowledge is only potential power. The true power is in the connections you make. Podcast: 1. Renée Mauborgne - Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute | | YouTube Spotify Apple Renée Mauborgne is a prominent figure in the world of business and strategy, known for her groundbreaking work in the field. She is an INSEAD Distinguished Fellow and a professor of strategy at INSEAD, one of the world's leading business schools. Renée is also the Co-Director of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute, a center dedicated to exploring and promoting innovative strategies that create uncontested market spaces. Her most notable work, "Blue Ocean Strategy," published in 2005, has become an international sensation, selling over two million copies and translated into 42 languages. 2. Jairek Robbins - Speaker, Author & Business Performance Coach | | YouTube Spotify Apple Jairek Robbins is a celebrated speaker, author, and business coach dedicated to aiding entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners in achieving both personal and professional success while enjoying a balanced life. He promotes the philosophy of owning your business instead of being owned by it, empowering individuals to unleash their full potential. Jairek insists that true success is incomplete without fulfillment and values meaningful relationships as its bedrock. Article: 7 Steps To Become A Millionaire In this article, the Benjamin Hardy shares — what works. the core fundamentals of money really Along the way, you will also learn: How to change your mind to become compatible with far more money How to implement the systems that will make you rich How to begin thinking and wealthy, in the moment, today feeling Read it here. Sponsors (Most Have Special Offers) Hubspot — https://hubspot.com/ Greenlight — https://greenlight.com/success Kajabi — kajabi.com/success ButcherBox — (Code: success) https://butcherbox.com/success Justin Wine — (Code: success) https://justinwine.com/ Indeed — https://indeed.com/clary The Goal Digger Podcast — https://www.youtube.com/@jenna.kutcher/ DeleteMe — (Code: success) https://joindeleteme.com/success NetSuite — https://netsuite.com/scottclary/ Factor — (Code: successpod50) https://factormeals.com/successpod50 HelloFresh — (Code: 50succespod) https://hellofresh.com/50successpod Munch — (Code: success) https://www.getmunch.com/ ZBiotics — (Code: success) https://zbiotics.com/success My Links Success Story (Top 10 Business Podcast) Newsletter (310k Subs) Social Media Also published . here

Are You Spending Time on Trivial Issues?

Business English: A Practice Book by Rose Buhlig is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . INTERESTING WORDS here INTERESTING WORDS Business English is the expression of our commercial life in English. It is not synonymous with letter writing. To be sure, business letters are important, but they form only a part of one of the two large divisions into which the subject naturally falls. First, there is , important because so many of our business transactions are conducted personally. Thousands of salesmen daily move from place to place over the entire country, earning their salaries by talking convincingly of the goods that they have to sell. A still greater number of clerks, salesmen, managers, and officials orally transact business in our shops, stores, offices, and banks. Complaints are adjusted; difficulties are disentangled; and affairs of magnitude are consummated in personal interviews, the matter under discussion often being thought too important to be entrusted to correspondence. In every business oral English is essential. oral expression Second, there is . This takes account of the writing of advertisements, circulars, booklets, and prospectuses, as well as of letters. And in the preparation of these oral English is fundamental. It precedes and practically includes the written expression. For example, we say colloquially that a good advertisement "talks." We mean that the writer has so fully realized the buyer's point of view that the words of the advertisement seem to speak directly to the reader, arousing his interest or perhaps answering his objection. Oral English is fundamental, too, in the writing of letters, for most letters are dictated and not written. The correspondent dictates them to his stenographer or to a recording machine in the same tone, probably, that he would use if the customer were sitting before him. written expression But in taking this point of view, we should not minimize the importance of written business English. In a way, it is more difficult to write well than it is to talk well. In talking we are not troubled with the problems of correct spelling, proper punctuation, and good paragraphing. We may even repeat somewhat, if only we are persuasive. But in writing we are confronted with the necessity of putting the best thoughts into the clearest, most concise language, at the same time obeying all the rules of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The business man must be sure of these details in order to know that his letters and advertising matter are correct. The stenographer, especially, must be thoroughly familiar with them, so that she may correctly transcribe what has been dictated. Business English is much the same as any other English. It consists in expression by means of words, sentences, and paragraphs. Moreover, they are much the same kind of words, sentences, and paragraphs that appear in any book that is written in what is commonly called the literary style. In a business letter the words are largely those of every day use, and but few are technical. It is the manner in which the words are put together, the idea back of the sentence, that makes the only difference. We shall begin the study of business English with a study of words, for in all expression, whether oral or written, a knowledge of words, of their meaning and suggestive power, is fundamental. On the choice of words depends not only the correctness but also the effectiveness of expression—the courtesy of a letter, the appeal of an advertisement, the persuasiveness of a salesman's talk. A mastery of words cannot be gained at once. Every time one speaks, he must consider what words will best convey his idea. In this chapter only the barest beginning of such study can be made. The exercises show the value of the subject. The study of words is interesting because words themselves are interesting. Sometimes the interest consists in the story of the derivation. As an example, consider the word . Many words in this book are written in italic to draw attention to them. Literally the word means "relating to Italy or its people." It is now applied to a kind of type in which the letters slope toward the right. The type was called italic because it was dedicated to the states of Italy by the inventor, Manutius, about the year 1500. An unabridged dictionary will tell all about the word. italic The word tells a curious story. It is derived from a Latin word, , meaning "salt money." It was the name of the money that was given to the Roman soldiers for salt, which was a part of their pay. Finally, instead of signifying only the salt money, it came to mean the total pay. salary salarium Practically all of this information a good dictionary gives. In other words, a dictionary is a story book containing not one, but hundreds of thousands of stories. Whenever possible it tells what language a word came from, how it got its different meanings, and how those meanings have changed in the course of time. For it is natural that words should change just as styles change, names of ancient things being lost and names for new things being made. As the objects themselves have gone out of use, their names have also gone. When a word has gone entirely out of use, it is marked in the dictionary. On the other hand, new inventions must be named. Thus new words are constantly being added to the language and the dictionary because they are needed. obsolete There is a large class of words that we shall not have time to consider. They are called . Every profession, business, or trade has its distinctive words. The technical words that a printer would use are entirely different from those which a dentist, a bookkeeper, or a lawyer would use. You will learn the technical terms of your business most thoroughly after you enter it and see the use for such terms. technical None of the words, therefore, that you will be asked to search out in the dictionary are, strictly speaking, technical. It is evident that it will do you no good to search out the words in the dictionary, unless you learn them—unless you use them correctly in speaking and writing. There is pleasure in thus employing new material, as everybody knows. Use your eyes and ears. When you hear a new word, or read one, focus the mind upon it for a moment until you can retain a mental picture of its spelling and of its pronunciation. Then as soon as possible look it up in the dictionary to fix its spelling, pronunciation, and definition. Do this regularly, and you will have reason to be proud of your vocabulary. An excellent way to increase the number of words that you know is to read the right kind of books. The careful study of the words used in the speeches and addresses of noted men is good practice. The conditions that called forth the speech were probably important, and the speech itself interesting, or it would not be preserved. When a man has an interesting or important message to give, he usually gives it in clear, exact, simple language. Therefore the vocabulary that he uses is worth copying. As for stories, there is a kind that furnishes a wealth of material that modern authors are constantly using or referring to, and this is found in stories of the Bible, stories of Greek and Northern gods and goddesses, stories of the , the , the , stories of chivalry—all old stories. Every one should know them well, because they are the basis of many allusions in which a single word oftentimes suggests a whole story. The meaning of the word , for instance, is missed if you do not know the story of Hercules and know that he was famous for his strength. Iliad Odyssey Æneid herculean Exercise 1 is an interesting word. Originally it was the name of a Greek god, who carried the world on his shoulders. Then it is supposed that in the sixteenth century the famous geographer Mercator prefixed his collection of maps with the picture of Atlas supporting the world. Thus a collection of maps in a volume came to be called an . Consult an unabridged dictionary for the origin of each of the following: Atlas atlas rival fortune cereal boycott dollar finance china derrick bankrupt milliner java mercury cash pullman cashmere colossal mint grocer macadam turbine Exercise 2 The days of the week and the months of the year are interesting in their derivation. Monday, for example, represents the day sacred to the Moon as a deity. Explain the origin of each of the following: Sunday Saturday May October Tuesday January June November Wednesday February July December Thursday March August Friday April September Exercise 3 Look up the derivation of the following: cancel bead ambition hospital pecuniary paper influence pavilion cheat book virtue mackintosh speculation bayonet peevish chapel phaëton tawdry disaster omnibus Exercise 4 Explain the origin of each of the following: curfew tulip turquoise good-bye pompadour aster amethyst dismal hyacinth dunce tantalize titanic dandelion humor umbrella volcano dahlia villain sandwich tangle begonia echo lunatic babble Exercise 5 Name the image that each of the following suggests to you: howl sputter rasping munch skim prance clatter trickle squeal click wheeze shuffle moan thud trudge bulge squeak patter chuckle gobble squawk spatter toddling swish Exercise 6 Bring to class a list of words which, because they are the names of modern inventions, have come into the language in modern time. Exercise 7 How many words can you name which might be called the technical terms of school life, words which always carry with them a suggestion of the school room? Bring in a list of twenty such words. Exercise 8 How many words can you name which are used only in the business world? Bring in a list of twenty such words. Exercise 9 How many words can you name which apply particularly to money and the payment or non-payment of money? Bring in a list of twenty or more such words. 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. Rose Buhlig (2011). Business English: A Practice Book. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38046/pg38046-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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CALF-LOVE.

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Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Containing an Answer to the Love Letter here Containing an Answer to the Love Letter. Alice had had a week allowed to her to write her answer; but she sent it off before the full week was past. "Why should I keep him in suspense?" she said. "If it is to be so, there can be no good in not saying so at once." Then she thought, also, that if this were to be her destiny it might be well for Mr. Grey that all his doubts on the matter should be dispelled. She had treated him badly,—very badly. She had so injured him that the remembrance of the injury must always be a source of misery to her; but she owed to him above everything to let him know what were her intentions as soon as they were settled. She tried to console herself by thinking that the wound to him would be easy to cure. "He also is not passionate," she said. But in so saying she deceived herself. He was a man in whom Love could be very passionate;—and was, moreover, one in whom Love could hardly be renewed. Each morning Kate asked her whether her answer was written; and on the third day after Christmas, just before dinner, Alice said that she had written it, and that it was gone. "But it isn't post-day," said Kate;—for the post illuminated Vavasor but three days a week. "I have given a boy sixpence to take it to Shap," said Alice, blushing. "And what have you said?" asked Kate, taking hold of the other's arm. "I have kept my promise," said Alice; "and do you keep yours by asking no further questions." "My sister,—my own sister," said Kate. And then, as Alice met her embrace, there was no longer any doubt as to the nature of the reply. After this there was of course much close discussion between them as to what other steps should now be taken. Kate wanted her cousin to write immediately to Mr. Grey, and was somewhat frightened when Alice declined to do so till she had received a further letter from George. "You have not proposed any horrid stipulations to him?" exclaimed Kate. "I don't know what you may call horrid stipulations," said Alice, gravely. "My conditions have not been very hard, and I do not think you would have disapproved them." "But he!—He is so impetuous! Will he disapprove them?" "I have told him— But, Kate, this is just what I did not mean to tell you." "Why should there be secrets between us?" said Kate. "There shall be none, then. I have told him that I cannot bring myself to marry him instantly;—that he must allow me twelve months to wear off, if I can in that time, much of sadness and of self-reproach which has fallen to my lot." "Twelve months, Alice?" "Listen to me. I have said so. But I have told him also that if he wishes it still, I will at once tell papa and grandpapa that I hold myself as engaged to him, so that he may know that I bind myself to him as far as it is possible that I should do so. And I have added something else, Kate," she continued to say after a slight pause,—"something else which I can tell you, though I could tell it to no other person. I can tell you because you would do, and will do the same. I have told him that any portion of my money is at his service which may be needed for his purposes before that twelve months is over." "Oh, Alice! No;—no. You shall not do that. It is too generous." And Kate perhaps felt at the moment that her brother was a man to whom such an offer could hardly be made with safety. "But I have done it. Mercury, with sixpence in his pocket, is already posting my generosity at Shap. And, to tell the truth, Kate, it is no more than fair. He has honestly told me that while the old Squire lives he will want my money to assist him in a career of which I do much more than approve. It has been my earnest wish to see him in Parliament. It will now be the most earnest desire of my heart;—the one thing as to which I shall feel an intense anxiety. How then can I have the face to bid him wait twelve months for that which is specially needed in six months' time? It would be like the workhouses which are so long in giving bread, that in the mean time the wretches starve." "But the wretch shan't starve," said Kate. "My money, small as it is, will carry him over this bout. I have told him that he shall have it, and that I expect him to spend it. Moreover, I have no doubt that Aunt Greenow would lend me what he wants." "But I should not wish him to borrow from Aunt Greenow. She would advance him the money, as you say, upon stamped paper, and then talk of it." "He shall have mine," said Kate. "And who are you?" said Alice, laughing. "You are not going to be his wife?" "He shall not touch your money till you are his wife," said Kate, very seriously. "I wish you would consent to change your mind about this stupid tedious year, and then you might do as you pleased. I have no doubt such a settlement might be made as to the property here, when my grandfather hears of it, as would make you ultimately safe." "And do you think I care to be ultimately safe, as you call it? Kate, my dear, you do not understand me." "I suppose not. And yet I thought that I had known something about you." "It is because I do not care for the safety of which you speak that I am now going to become your brother's wife. Do you suppose that I do not see that I must run much risk?" "You prefer the excitement of London to the tranquillity, may I say, of Cambridgeshire." "Exactly;—and therefore I have told George that he shall have my money whenever he wants it." Kate was very persistent in her objection to this scheme till George's answer came. His answer to Alice was accompanied by a letter to his sister, and after that Kate said nothing more about the money question. She said no more then; but it must not therefore be supposed that she was less determined than she had been that no part of Alice's fortune should be sacrificed to her brother's wants;—at any rate before Alice should become her brother's wife. But her brother's letter for the moment stopped her mouth. It would be necessary that she should speak to him before she again spoke to Alice. In what words Alice had written her assent it will be necessary that the reader should know, in order that something may be understood of the struggle which she made upon the occasion; but they shall be given presently, when I come to speak of George Vavasor's position as he received them. George's reply was very short and apparently very frank. He deprecated the delay of twelve months, and still hoped to be able to induce her to be more lenient to him. He advised her to write to Mr. Grey at once,—and as regarded the Squire he gave her to act as she pleased. If the Squire required any kind of apology, expression of sorrow,—and asking for pardon, or such like, he, George, would, under the circumstances as they now existed, comply with the requisition most willingly. He would regard it as a simple form, made necessary by his coming marriage. As to Alice's money, he thanked her heartily for her confidence. If the nature of his coming contest at Chelsea should make it necessary, he would use her offer as frankly as it had been made. Such was his letter to Alice. What was contained in his letter to Kate, Alice never knew. carte blanche Then came the business of telling this new love tale,—the third which poor Alice had been forced to tell her father and grandfather;—and a grievous task it was. In this matter she feared her father much more than her grandfather, and therefore she resolved to tell her grandfather first;—or, rather, she determined that she would tell the Squire, and that in the mean time Kate should talk to her father. "Grandpapa," she said to him the morning after she had received her cousin's second letter.—The old man was in the habit of breakfasting alone in a closet of his own, which was called his dressing-room, but in which he kept no appurtenances for dressing, but in lieu of them a large collection of old spuds and sticks and horse's-bits. There was a broken spade here, and a hoe or two; and a small table in the corner was covered with the debris of tradesmen's bills from Penrith, and dirty scraps which he was wont to call his farm accounts.—"Grandpapa," said Alice, rushing away at once into the middle of her subject, "you told me the other day that you thought I ought to be—married." "Did I, my dear? Well, yes; so I did. And so you ought;—I mean to that Mr. Grey." "That is impossible, sir." "Then what's the use of your coming and talking to me about it?" This made Alice's task not very easy; but, nevertheless, she persevered. "I am come, grandpapa, to tell you of another engagement." "Another!" said he. And by the tone of his voice he accused his granddaughter of having a larger number of favoured suitors than ought to fall to the lot of any young lady. It was very hard upon her, but still she went on. "You know," said she, "that some years ago I was to have been married to my cousin George;"—and then she paused. "Well," said the old man. "And I remember you told me then that you were much pleased." "So I was. George was doing well then; or,—which is more likely,—had made us believe that he was doing well. Have you made it up with him again?" "Yes, sir." "And that's the meaning of your jilting Mr. Grey, is it?" Poor Alice! It is hard to explain how heavy a blow fell upon her from the open utterance of that word! Of all words in the language it was the one which she now most dreaded. She had called herself a jilt, with that inaudible voice which one uses in making self-accusations;—but hitherto no lips had pronounced the odious word to her ears. Poor Alice! She was a jilt; and perhaps it may have been well that the old man should tell her so. "Grandpapa!" she said; and there was that in the tone of her voice which somewhat softened the Squire's heart. "Well, my dear, I don't want to be ill-natured. So you are going at last to marry George, are you? I hope he'll treat you well; that's all. Does your father approve of it?" "I have told you first, sir;—because I wish to obtain your consent to seeing George again here as your grandson." "Never," said the old man, snarling;—"never!" "If he has been wrong, he will beg your pardon." "If he has been wrong! Didn't he want to squander every shilling of the property,—property which has never belonged to him;—property which I could give to Tom, Dick, or Harry to-morrow, if I liked?—If he has been wrong!" "I am not defending him, sir;—but I thought that, perhaps, on such an occasion as this—" "A Tom Fool's occasion! You've got money of your own. He'll spend all that now." "He will be less likely to do so if you will recognise him as your heir. Pray believe, sir, that he is not the sort of man that he was." "He must be a very clever sort of man, I think, when he has talked you out of such a husband as John Grey. It's astounding to me,—with that ugly mug of his! Well, my dear, if your father approves of it, and if George will ask my pardon,—but I don't think he ever will—" "He will, sir. I am his messenger for as much as that." "Oh, you are, are you? Then you may also be my messenger to him, and tell him that, for your sake, I will let him come back here. I know he'll insult me the first day; but I'll try and put up with it,—for your sake, my dear. Of course I must know what your father thinks about it." It may be imagined that Kate's success was even less than that which Alice achieved. "I knew it would be so," said John Vavasor, when his niece first told him;—and as he spoke he struck his hand upon the table. "I knew all along how it would be." "And why should it not be so, Uncle John?" "He is your brother, and I will not tell you why." "You think that he is a spendthrift?" "I think that he is as unsafe a man as ever I knew to be intrusted with the happiness of any young woman. That is all." "You are hard upon him, uncle." "Perhaps so. Tell Alice this from me,—that as I have never yet been able to get her to think anything of my opinion, I do not at all expect that I shall be able to induce her to do so now. I will not even make the attempt. As my son-in-law I will not receive George Vavasor. Tell Alice that." Alice was told her father's message; but Kate in telling it felt no deep regret. She well knew that Alice would not be turned back from her present intention by her father's wishes. Nor would it have been very reasonable that she should. Her father had for many years relieved himself from the burden of a father's cares, and now had hardly the right to claim a father's privileges. We will now go once again to George Vavasor's room in Cecil Street, in which he received Alice's letter. He was dressing when it was first brought to him; and when he recognised the handwriting he put it down on his toilet table unopened. He put it down, and went on brushing his hair, as though he were determined to prove to himself that he was indifferent as to the tidings which it might contain. He went on brushing his hair, and cleaning his teeth, and tying his cravat carefully over his turned-down collar, while the unopened letter lay close to his hand. Of course he was thinking of it,—of course he was anxious,—of course his eye went to it from moment to moment. But he carried it with him into the sitting-room still unopened, and so it remained until after the girl had brought him his tea and his toast. "And now," said he, as he threw himself into his arm-chair, "let us see what the girl of my heart says to me." The girl of his heart said to him as follows:— My dear George, I feel great difficulty in answering your letter. Could I have my own way, I should make no answer to it at present, but leave it for the next six months, so that then such answer might hereafter be made as circumstances should seem to require. This will be little flattering to you, but it is less flattering to myself. Whatever answer I may make, how can anything in this affair be flattering either to you or to me? We have been like children who have quarrelled over our game of play, till now, at the close of our little day of pleasure, we are fain to meet each other in tears, and acknowledge that we have looked for delights where no delights were to be found. Kate, who is here, talks to me of passionate love. There is no such passion left to me;—nor, as I think, to you either. It would not now be possible that you and I should come together on such terms as that. We could not stand up together as man and wife with any hope of a happy marriage, unless we had both agreed that such happiness might be had without passionate love. You will see from all this that I do not refuse your offer. Without passion, I have for you a warm affection, which enables me to take a livelier interest in your career than in any other of the matters which are around me. Of course, if I become your wife that interest will be still closer and dearer, and I do feel that I can take in it that concern which a wife should have in her husband's affairs. If it suits you, I will become your wife;—but it cannot be quite at once. I have suffered much from the past conflicts of my life, and there has been very much with which I must reproach myself. I know that I have behaved badly. Sometimes I have to undergo the doubly bitter self-accusation of having behaved in a manner which the world will call unfeminine. You must understand that I have not passed through this unscathed, and I must beg you to allow me some time for a cure. A perfect cure I may never expect, but I think that in twelve months from this time I may so far have recovered my usual spirit and ease of mind as to enable me to devote myself to your happiness. Dear George, if you will accept me under such circumstances, I will be your wife, and will endeavour to do my duty by you faithfully. I have said that even now, as your cousin, I take a lively interest in your career,—of course I mean your career as a politician,—and especially in your hopes of entering Parliament. I understand, accurately as I think, what you have said about my fortune, and I perfectly appreciate your truth and frankness. If I had nothing of my own you, in your circumstances, could not possibly take me as your wife. I know, moreover, that your need of assistance from my means is immediate rather than prospective. My money may be absolutely necessary to you within this year, during which, as I tell you most truly, I cannot bring myself to become a married woman. But my money shall be less cross-grained than myself. You will take it as frankly as I mean it when I say, that whatever you want for your political purposes shall be forthcoming at your slightest wish. Dear George, let me have the honour and glory of marrying a man who has gained a seat in the Parliament of Great Britain! Of all positions which a man may attain that, to me, is the grandest. I shall wait for a further letter from you before I speak either to my father or to my grandfather. If you can tell me that you accede to my views, I will at once try to bring about a reconciliation between you and the Squire. I think that that will be almost easier than inducing my father to look with favour upon our marriage. But I need hardly say that should either one or the other oppose it,—or should both do so,—that would not turn me from my purpose. I also wait for your answer to write a last line to Mr. Grey. Your affectionate cousin, Alice Vavasor. George Vavasor when he had read the letter threw it carelessly from him on to the breakfast table, and began to munch his toast. He threw it carelessly from him, as though taking a certain pride in his carelessness. "Very well," said he; "so be it. It is probably the best thing that I could do, whatever the effect may be on her." Then he took up his newspaper. But before the day was over he had made many plans,—plans made almost unconsciously,—as to the benefit which might accrue to him from the offer which she had made of her money. And before night he had written that reply to her of which we have heard the contents; and had written also to his sister Kate a letter, of which Kate had kept the contents to herself. 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. Anthony Trollope (2006). Can You Forgive Her?. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19500/pg19500-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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