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Hyderabad, known for its vibrant cosmopolitan culture and robust IT infrastructure, has cemented its position alongside Bangalore as a leading startup hub in India. Investors are increasingly recognizing Hyderabad as the next big destination for emerging startups. For 25 years, TiE Hyderabad has been at the forefront of nurturing entrepreneurial talent in the city. It has strengthened the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, ensuring it remains at the forefront of innovation. To date, TiE Hyderabad has supported over 6,000 startups, helping them refine their business models, access mentorship, and secure funding. Through focused initiatives like TiE Women, the chapter has empowered more than 500 women entrepreneurs, enabling them to overcome challenges and achieve their entrepreneurial goals. TiE Hyderabad’s influence extends to youth and student entrepreneurship as well. The TiE Grad program, launched in 2017, has reached over 13,500 students, equipping them with the skills and mindset to build successful venture. TiE Hyderabad’s success is intricately tied to the city’s growth as a global startup destination. Known for its cosmopolitan culture, world-class infrastructure, and investor-friendly environment, Hyderabad attracts diverse talent and serves as a launchpad for ambitious ventures. Speaking at the event, Mr. Sri Jishnu Dev Varma, Hon’ble Governor, Govt. of Telangana, said, “ s.” TiE Hyderabad significantly contributed to Telangana’s Startup Policy 2024 by offering strategic insights to foster an innovation-driven ecosystem. It played a key role in establishing T-Hub which is the largest incubator, Research & Innovation Circle of Hyderabad (RICH), facilitating collaboration in research and entrepreneurship, and in forming Hyderabad Angels, a vital investment network for early-stage startups. These efforts have strengthened Telangana's position as a leading hub for startups and innovation. Speaking on the occasion Srini Chandupatla, President of TiE Hyderabad, remarked, “ .” Madan Padaki, President of TiE Bangalore and Chair of TGS24, shared, Murali Bukkapatnam, Vice Chairman, Global Board of Trustees, TiE, added, TGS24 will feature a dynamic lineup of programs, including the TGS100 Showcase spotlighting the world’s top startups, the Futurepreneurs Conclave engaging young entrepreneurs, and Big Bang Discussions exploring transformative topics like AI, Quantum Computing, and Climate Tech. Adding to the grandeur are inspiring speakers such as Andre Agassi, Vijay Amritraj, Dr. Deepak Chopra, President Stephen Spinelli (Babson), Vidya Balan, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Arvind Swami, Farhan Akhtar, who will share unique insights on leadership, creativity, and resilience. As TiE Hyderabad celebrates its 25-year legacy and sets the stage for the at TGS24, it continues to reaffirm its position as a global leader in mentoring and empowering entrepreneurs. Through its worldwide network of 65 chapters with over 1000+ charter Members, TiE remains steadfast in its mission to drive innovation, collaboration, and impact across the entrepreneurial landscape.
As shopping experts, we’ve learned to shop slowly and to carefully discern if a sale offers the most bang for our buck when we buy anything. From everyday essentials to larger splurges, knowing the exact moment to spring for a deal is our superpower. It’s great for our personal budgeting but also handy for you. Not every shiny percent sign is really what it seems, after all. So trust us when we say that the below deals are the best finds on Amazon for Boxing Day! You’ll find loads of actually good deals including up to 51% off industry-leading noise-canceling headphones , discounts on beloved Apple essentials , up to 50% off home items and more — all for your Boxing Day rack-up! Drop what you need in your cart ASAP before the coupons, markdowns and exclusive Prime member savings disappear. The Real Deal: We use deal trackers and commerce experience to sift through “fake” hike-and-drop deals and other deceptive sales tactics. Products will usually be rated at least 4 stars with a minimum 15% discount (and when there’s an exception, we’ll tell you why). HuffPost and its publishing partners may receive a commission from some purchases made via links on this page. Prices and availability are subject to change. Upgrade your workout, daily commute and general podcast listening with a pair of second-generation AirPods Pros . With active noise cancellation and transparency mode, these AirPods can let you get totally absorbed in your music or let some noise through so you can be safe while out and about. They're water- and sweat-resistant so you can wear them in the rain or during a high-intensity jog. Best of all, they come with four different-sized silicone tips, only take an hour to charge and have up to six hours of playtime with active noise canceling. Get 24% off list price today. With Christmas over, it's time to finally put away those supplies for safekeeping until the next birthday or holiday. This $20 organizer is the way to go with endless, easy-to-see compartments and straps for holding wrapping paper. in place and handles for grabbing easily next time you need it. Its compact design will fit snugly underneath the bed or in a closet. Today, it's 43% off list price! If we had to recommend one walking pad for you to nab this year, it'd be this sleek, under-desk bestselling treadmill by Yagud . It's a HuffPost reader favorite and shoppers on Amazon love it for its compact design and ease of use. It's been in high demand since the end of the summer so we've seen the price creep up but now it's finally back on sale for under $100 if you're fast enough . Grab the Yagud walking pad while it's the cheapest on the internet! Apple's AirTags are on sale at Amazon again which means it's a perfect time to re-up or snag some as stocking stuffers. Each AirTag can ping its own location, so when it's attached to one of your belongings, you can track that item via Apple’s Find My app, which is available in the cloud and on Apple devices like iPhones, laptops and more. Through Find My, you can even tell your AirTag to play a sound so it’s easier to find. Right now, you can get a 4-pack from Amazon for 29% off, dropping them down to $69.99 , which is the cheapest price online (even compared to Wamart, which usually price matches Amazon for these). For another comparison, they're also still $99 on Apple's site . Grab the deal from Amazon while you can! This handy Airtag wallet holder is marked 37% off and will hold a single AirTag snugly in your wallet. It's smaller than a traditional credit card and it's flexible, making it a perfect fit for various wallet types. We also found it for a few dollars cheaper at Walmart ! Promising review: "I bought a different holder that proved to be too thick and rigid for my wallet. I can use that one with a different air tag for an alternate purpose. This one works better for my “back pocket” wallet. (So far, no problems with the air tag falling out)." — Ctexhowlin Clinique is the OG skin care brand our mothers and grandmothers used and it's still a fine choice for high-end beauty finds that even people with sensitive skin can indulge in. The brand's Moisture Surge hydrator is a game-changer for my skin during cooler, drier months. First launched in 1988 and revamped with an improved formula in 2021, it remains a reliable workhorse of a product. The formula hydrates, helps brighten dark spots, smoothes and preps skin for makeup and can even be used as a 15-minute mask! Grab it today for 29% off, which drops it to lower than its Black Friday price! This deal is on Amazon but Nordstrom is price-matching it too! Whether you keep your Christmas tree up through July or take it down immediately when the New Year comes, you'll need something quality to store it in. Enter this durable Christmas tree storage bag that can hold trees up to 9 feet tall. It's available in two sizes and two colors for 50% off today with a coupon if you can clip it fast enough. Just clip the coupon before adding it to your cart to get the savings. Select colors of the viral and ever-dreamy cotton muslin blankets are currently marked down 2 0% off with an on-page coupon. A dead ringer for much-loved pricier options from West Elm , Quince and Brooklinen at a fraction of the cost, these lightweight blankets are super snuggly without adding too much heat. Just remember to clip the on-page coupon before adding it to your cart to get the deal. Promising review: "I love this. It’s a very lightweight throw that I keep on the sofa and it’s just enough to keep you warm on a chilly night." — Lisa Turner Many of us are dry eye sufferers, especially in the cooler months, but not everyone has to live with red-eyed irritation. Doctors recently recommended using a heated eye mask to help moisten those eyeballs and prevent them from drying out during the day. This heated massaging mask gently compresses to massage your eyes with pillowy pads, evenly heats them for warmth relief, vibrates and features a Bluetooth connection so you can stream your favorite music. It's a slightly better deal than our alert earlier this week since there's an extra $5 off coupon on top of the 30% off. Just clip the coupon before adding this to your cart to get the full savings at checkout. Also, if you're a Walmart shopper, you'll be happy to know the rollback retailer is matching Amazon on this price . Consider this our end-of-year gift to you. Last year, these were so hard to find and the ones I did find were over $40. This trio of sturdy 24-inch wreath holders with a hard cover to protect ornaments and faux branches is $41 altogether thanks to a 30% off deal. Grab these now so you'll be ready when you remove your holiday decorations because come January, they'll be impossible to find without spending a cute coin. This windshield cover is a game-changer for protecting your vehicle from ice build-up on freezing nights and mornings but it's also meant for year-round protection from the glaring sun, dust and more! Amazon notes that it's around 20% off but, per our trackers, this handy car windshield cover typically hovers around $23.99, making it's current Boxing Day price a solid 33% off discount ! The iPad might be the most beloved device in the Apple ecosystem and this renewed 8th Generation option is only $176.99, nearly half the price of its original $319 retail tag and still $173 cheaper than the renewed price on the Apple website . The device runs on Wi-Fi, has a battery life that exceeds 80% capacity, boasts an ultra-wide front-facing camera that auto-adjusts the camera as your face moves around — perfect for FaceTimes and Zoom calls — and it's available with a 90-day return or replacement policy. Skeptical about refurbished tech? We get it! That's why we did this in-depth report on how to shop renewed tech on Amazon . Promising review: "I have always steered away from “renewed” for a purchase but decided to give it a try. The iPad is perfect and looks and works like new. This was purchased for my grandson and trust me he gives it a workout. So glad I did it!" — Mar "I saved loads on my “re”NEW“ed” iPad! I love that I was able to do my part for the earth and get an updated iPad with twice the memory of my old iPad Air for a fraction of the price! So far, it works great! I also love the confidence the Amazon Renewed Guarantee gives me!" — Nancy Liesse Per the reviews, JBL noise-canceling headphones are really good quality, enough to be solid alternatives to the more expensive brands. Today, they're nearly 40% off and their lowest price ever on Amazon with Target matching the deal also! Promising review: "I mistakenly bought the over-ear version of these, and it was uncomfortable with my three earlobe piercings. This on-ear version is great, though! Connects very easily to an Apple silicon Mac and provides clear audio on video calls (Zoom, Google Meet, etc.). Highly recommend if you work from home and if you have ear piercings. The charge lasts a long time as well." — Photogirl Promising review: "As an Apple user, I wanted great over the ear headphones with noise cancellation, but there was Absolutely No Way I was going to drop the fat stacks on the Apple ones. I started looking around and considering my options, originally deciding on some SRhythm off-brand ones here on Amazon. When I came back with the money to buy, the SRhythms were sold out so it was back to browsing... Enter JBL, I realized the speaker brand that went from “a few of your buddies ride or die by this brand” to a sound-[lover] staple was IDEAL. I shopped around, looked at similar Skullcandy models, other brands similar in price but also not offering anything better than passive noise cancellation... I find the noise cancellation on these to be easily comparable to the AirPod Pros I have used before. Especially with music playing, I cannot hear a single thing outside of my little bubble. I’ve used these at work for two days straight without ever having to plug them in. They connect to my phone with ease and the buttons on the side are very useful. The audio quality is crystal clear, and I often use these in the car instead of my stereo. These things perform beautifully... All in all, I consider these to be five star worthy because it’s an excellent value for the price..." — Nicky [This review has been condensed for length. Read the full review here .] Already affordably priced, today, this handy, space-saving stand is even lower with a 20% discount. Just remember to clip the on-page coupon before adding it to your cart to get the savings . Promising review: "Perfect for my [home] office setup. Love the appearance and how it doesn't take up much space on my desk. It's great for extra charging portals. Helps me to keep my desk organized with the extra electronics. It's sturdy and has great quality." — Beth Bracaglia If there's any skin care product worth splurging on, it's gentle eye care, but today, you can get these luxurious cucumber detox eye patches at a discount anyway. The Peter Thomas Roth eye patches are meant to reduce puffiness and dark circles and per the reviews, they really can do just that They're 30% off and haven't been marked down this low since August. If you get nothing else, you should def nab these. 👀 Promising review: "I love these!! These are worth every dollar, i love to put them on in the morning when I am dragging a little bit. They instantly de puff, brighten and are so cooling and relaxing. They make my skin look bright and clear when I take them off and they are the perfect first step in my get ready process. I put them on for 30 minutes, but sometimes if I have more time I’ll leave them on as long as possible. Will definitely purchase again when I run out!" — Morgan S. Who said Black Friday has the best prices? Our trackers beg to differ. Grab this 4K UHD smart TV from Amazon's Fire series while it's over $300 off! Set your phone, watch or Airpods down on this to instantly start powering the devices back up. If you need to pick up your phone to send off a text or check your email? The charger will remain attached to the phone thanks to its magnetized design so you never stop juicing up. It's 28% off right now at Amazon, making it the cheapest price online. Walmart comes in at a close second for $2 more . Promising review: " The Apple MagSafe Charger has been a fantastic addition to my tech setup! It delivers fast and reliable wireless charging for my iPhone, and I love how it just snaps into place perfectly every time. It’s super convenient and charges my phone quickly, which is exactly what I was looking for. One thing to note is that you’ll need to buy a USB-C plug separately, as it doesn’t come with one. But once you have that, it’s smooth sailing. The charger works great, and the build quality is what you’d expect from Apple—top-notch. If you’re looking for a hassle-free, fast wireless charger, the MagSafe Charger is definitely worth it. Highly recommend!" — Jan Eric Welch If you love to grill, hate when grilling season ends, refuse to do it outdoors when the weather isn't good or just hate cleaning your big grill — behold, the beloved indoor smokeless Ninja griddle and grill in one . On sale for under $100. Welcome! Promising review: "I, absolutely, love this grill. It is so easy to use, easy to put together, easy to clean, great value. I can move it around because it's so light if I want to change it's location. It cooks everything great, strong construction and it is so easy to remove grease and clean. I've cooked steak, hamburgers, pancakes, eggs, sausage, chicken, quesadillas, seafood, and many more things. I use it as often as I can because it makes cooking and cleanup easy." — Amazon Customer Here's a small fan for keeping your personal space comfy. no matter the season — whether you're at your work desk, office cubicle, resting in bed or sitting on your living room sofa. This compact fan blows warm and cool air depending on your setting, plus it tilts 45 degrees so you can angle its airflow. It's also safe, with an auto shut-off that cuts the power if it tips over, preventing fires. No more switching out devices depending on the weather. This small appliance can do both! Clip the on-page coupon code to get the 20% off savings at checkout. This digital picture frame is an easy way to display your favorite photos. Just upload your preferred photos in the free app and they'll appear in the digital frame in seconds. This also makes a thoughtful gift because you can pre-load it with photos for loved ones. It's also a gift that'll keep on gifting long after the holiday season since you can randomly surprise them with fresh photos by adding to the display via the app. Already 35% off, you'll get an extra 10% off discount by clipping the on-page coupon — totaling 45% off in savings. Promising review: "I love this digital picture frame! It’s super easy to use – I can upload photos straight from my phone in seconds. The image quality is sharp, and the colors really pop. It’s perfect for displaying all my favorite memories without the clutter of traditional frames. Plus, it makes an awesome gift. Highly recommend!" — Serg If you're on strike from buying another appliance, then gather 'round. This two-piece copper air fryer basket by Gotham Steel does what the air fryer does — ensures crispy, evenly cooked foods without using oils — and all it takes is your regular convection oven. It holds 3 quarts of food, reviewers say it’s extremely easy to clean. Right now, you can nab this kitchen tool that “exceeds expectations” for only $24. Amazon's list price says it's usually $34.99 but per our trackers, it's more often around $30 so you're getting a 20% discount — and either way, it's still way cheaper than an actual air fryer. The electric spin scrubber has gone viral for a reason: It cuts cleaning time in half and you can do a whole lot of different things with just one device thanks to its many attachments. The spinning sensation is cordless, rechargeable with a 90-minute battery life and today it's on sale for less than $15 if you're a Prime member if you clip the on-page coupon . That's a Jackson or four Lincolns. If you don't have Prime, it's $10 more but you can still get a coupon if you're fast enough. Bonus: If you buy two, you get an extra 10% off! Yes, it’s true: toilet footstools really help. HuffPost learned from Jennifer Bonheur , a New York-based gastroenterologist, that some studies actually show potty stools help facilitate proper squatting and make pooping easier. Resting our feet on a stool while pooping allows our lower muscles to relax, resulting in more natural positioning. Of course, the granddaddy of all potty stools is also the one with the most fun name to say: the Squatty Potty. It’s synonymous with toilet footstools, and has helped so many reviewers that several have posed the question: “ How did I live without this? ” The spiffy bamboo-made Squatty Potty is currently on sale for 38% off and offers an elevated (pun intended) look to the basic plastic model ( also on sale for 20% off ). It has a glossy, laminated finish for a smooth feel on your feet and easy cleaning, a 7-inch side and a 9-inch side that you can flip between for adjustable heights. Plus, it’s super durable. These discounts match the lowest price of the year so make a move before the holiday deal season ends. Dyson cleaning products are loved by many (including us!) for their efficiency, reliable power and intelligent design. They can also cost a pretty penny. So, we recommend you don’t sleep on this deal: You can now take 25% off a Dyson Purifier Hot + Cool HP10 . This futuristic-looking home appliance pulls double duty, working as an oscillating tower fan, heater and an air purification system in one, cleaning the room as it cools or heats. It’s another highly-rated year-round Dyson product beloved by reviewers for its long-lasting air filter, magnetic remote control and its whisper-like operation — which one reviewer says is “perfectly quiet.” Usually $529.99, it’s currently chopped down to $399 which gives you more than $200 in savings. If you've ever been on a rocky boat and felt ill or on a road trip that made your eyes hurt, you know that motion sickness sucks. These handy glasses claim to relieve those nauseous symptoms without using medicine. Wear them on your face during your next motion-heavy adventure, and you could find some relief from general carsickness and waviness. Clip that on-page coupon, and you can get this travel must-have for 20% off . This particular iRobot robot vacuum cleaner “ changed my life ,” according to one reviewer, and it could change yours, too. It slides underneath sofas and cabinetry, sucks up debris and dirt and does so with the push of a button, tap of an app or even Alexa-enabled voice control. Paired with its app, you can also set it on a schedule, so if you're out for the day, you can come home to nice, shiny, clean floors. Grab this guy while it's 40% off this week, which is $100 off! No more alternating between two devices to get brushing and flossing done. This two-in-one electric toothbrush option is a quick, space-saving device that reviewers are actually singing praises for. Per folks who already own it, it's powerful, easy to store and super easy to clean. Today, this HuffPost reader favorite is on sale in black for $20 off and in white for $10 off. Heads up: It's priced cheaper for Prime members but all shoppers can get an extra $10-$20 off their purchase by clipping the on-page coupon . You can never go wrong with an extra cable, right? If your cable's like mine and the wires are a little exposed or you're always misplacing yours, then fix it all with the Apple USB-C lightning cable that's 16% off at Amazon and Walmart. Promising review: "No shocker. It works. I tend to try and stick with Apple brand charging cables because I have had bad experiences with charging cables from other brand. They either break too easily or they eventually cause me to have charging issues, so I stick with Apple to keep from having any issues." — Joshua These black Tozo earbuds are 33% off , plus, you get an extra $7 off coupon which ups the discount to 56% off. And over 50,000+ people gave these a 5-star rating. 👀 Just clip the on-page coupon before adding these to your cart to see the savings. Welcome! The second-generation Apple Watch is beloved for how it tracks a gang of your wellness goals on top of more handy features like fall, crash and sudden heart rate change detection! It'll pair seamlessly with the other Apple services and devices in your ecosystem. Grab it on sale for 24% off at Amazon and Walmart — in various colors and band styles. This just in, if you didn't already know: Crest Whitestrips aren't the end-all-be-all of at-home whitening treatments. Per 11,000+ people, this VieBeauti whitening kit delivers 5-star results. Grab it while it's on sale by clipping the on-page coupon to get 28% off. Per our trackers, it's never been priced this low and they're a great Crest Whitestrips alternative since those went back to full price . Grab 'em while ya can! This hair-straightening brush does you one way better than a flat iron. One look through the reviews and photos will show you that people with various textures and thicknesses love this brush's efficacy. It's 23% off with the on-page coupon today , but even better than the deal: So many users rave about how they don't get heat damage with this brush! That, more than anything, has our attention and qualifies this hair tool as worth trying at a great deal. Get it while the discount is live because per the trackers, you likely don't have long on this price. One reviewer says this handheld spin brush is so powerful, “it’s like having a professional cleaning service right in the palm of my hand.” It's good for cleaning grout, sinks, faucets, hard floors, stoves and more — and many say that it’s quite strong despite being a compact device. Another shocking selling point: it’s waterproof, so you can run it under water after cleaning the grime off of a stovetop or your tub. After charging its rechargeable battery, simply attach one of the five included scrubbing heads, turn it on, set it to one of two speeds and scrub away. Get it for 51% off with its on-page coupon (this accounts for the existing discounted price plus the on-page coupon). Note: This deal is for Prime members only. For non-Prime folks, it's still on sale and has an extra $5 coupon, but it's priced a bit higher. Although a devout lover of candles, I don't routinely spend much money on them. But Yankee Candles are an exception. With the best throw in the game, little to no tunneling so you get every drop of wax you spent money on and wax that lasts for days — they're always worth grabbing. Today, that's even more the case because they're 46% off! Bonus: Walmart is matching this price while Target is offering a BOGO 50% off deal . If you're planning a trip soon, this nifty carabiner can help you keep track of your luggage — provided you've got an AirTag, too. This gadget holds an AirTag in place and has a small three-digit combination you can set to unlock it, so you don't have to worry about someone in baggage claim or a random bystander meddling with your belongings. You can clip it to a piece of luggage or a backpack and keep track of your goods for safekeeping. Today it's 20% off! Sorry to tell you, but your bed is gross. The average mattress “can have thousands of dust mites that produce millions of droppings,” Manal Mohammed , a medical microbiologist and senior lecturer at London’s University of Westminster, told HuffPost in a previous report . These mites feed on your dead skin cells, sweat, food crumbs and sweat. Combat your germy bedtime woes by cleaning your bed with a mattress-designated vacuum cleaner with a UV light. The handheld device glides over the surface, vibrating to loosen dirt, sucking up tiny particles and trapping them in a HEPA filter.Today, it's 25% off , and per reviewers, it's lightweight, easy to use and the gunk it'll get up just might shock your socks off. Just clip the on-page coupon to get the extra 25% off savings at checkout. If you're looking for some industry-leading headphones — a pair one reviewer says is “an absolute no-brainer” of an investment — hop on the Sony WH-1000XM4 . Right now, they're 43% off , and while they don’t sport as great of ANC technology as the more expensive big brother, the WH-1000XM5 , nor do they feature an adaptive mode, many reviewers still love them. “Overall, the headphones turned out to be quite an exceptional pair, especially when it comes to listening to music during commutes,” says one reviewer on Amazon . “The great noise cancelling, beautiful audio, and fantastic transparency mode definitely make these headphones a winner in my book. And the app only helps to improve the flexibility of the headphones, allowing for many different features to be unlocked.” Getting your steps in can be tough when the weather is awful out or your motivation is just low for the day. On those days when going outside feels tough, this little mini stepper could help maintain your fitness . Designed to mimic walking up a staircase, this gadget can easily stow away out of sight, whether in a closet or under a desk, and at 16 pounds, you can take it just about anywhere. One reviewer calls it their “stairway to fitness heaven,” saying it’s a surprisingly intense workout: “After just a few minutes, my legs were burning like I had climbed Mount Everest. But the best part? I didn’t even have to leave my house or put on real pants. Take that, gym membership!” Today, it's 16% off with an on-page coupon — making it under $40 which is the lowest price we've seen in months. If you’re looking for a coffee maker to bring that coffee shop experience to your kitchen, we might have found the appliance you’ve been looking for. The Ninja Specialty coffee maker makes hot and iced drinks with any coffee grounds you have on hand. Plus, it has a built-in foldable milk frother, a reuseable filter and a convenient removable water reservoir. “IMO it is the best coffee maker that I have ever owned in my 55 years of life,” wrote one enthused reviewer . But probably best of all, this machine is approved by many current and former baristas, one of whom called the Ninja’s cup platform a “genius invention” cup platform — a standout feature that gives this machine an incredibly unique style. You can raise and lower the cup platform to fit your chosen mug, cup, carafe or tumbler, preventing splashback while it’s brewing and giving the perfect bean water to start your morning. This no-mess brew is just one of the many features that make the Ninja so beloved. Grab it at 20% off while it's in stock! Reviewers say the Beats Studio Pro noise-canceling headphones are the “best bang for your buck.” People tend to love these specific headphones for how truly great they sound but also for how easy they are to use and travel with. Apple promises personalized spatial audio that intuitively tracks the wearer’s head movements to adjust the sound accordingly. And if you don’t want the fully adaptive noise-canceling feature, there’s also a transparency mode that allows users to listen while taking in their surroundings. Nab them now while they're 51% off list price. They literally were not this price last night and we can't imagine the discount lasts long. Dental health may be the last thing on your mind during the holiday season, but holiday deals are a strong reason why it should be at the top. Take this Philips Sonicare 4100 electric toothbrush, for example, on sale for up to a whopping 30% off discount with the extra $5 coupon . Reviewers rave it’s so good that “ you and your dentist will see the difference ” after using it, so we recommend you grab it now. We found this “ great little gadget to have ” during emergencies that can charge your devices in a jiffy. Amazon says its regular price is $109.99, but our trackers say it’s usually $99.21 but today, it's on sale with a $34 coupon . Just c lip the on-page coupon before adding it to your cart to get the savings. The portable power station has eight outlet ports, including one USB-C, two USB-A and two quick-charging USB-A. Plus, it even has a built-in LED light for seeing in the dark. This model is compact enough to easily be stowed away in your car in case of emergencies! Related From Our Partner
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Whether you're just visiting or you're a local looking for something fun to do this winter, we have a list of things we think everyone should do if they're out and about in Music City! Step into the season of joy with holiday light displays We've gathered a list of the best spots around the area for holiday lights! From Holiday LIGHTS at Cheekwood to the Holly Jolly Festival of Lights, there's something for everyone! These are in no particular order, but if you head out to one of these spots, be sure to share your pics with us! Hit the ice! You can glide through your weekend at Centennial Sportsplex Ice Arenas , Gaylord Opryland or the Ford Ice Center ! Going skating yourself not your vibe? You can watch the Preds skate around to victory at Bridgestone! Sip on some delicious hot chocolate or enjoy a holiday-themed bite! The Hot Chocolate Affair at Loews Vanderbilt Nashville Hotel November 1 through March Grinchmas Afternoon Tea at The Lounge at Blue Aster November 8 through December 29 Maneet Chauhan Cocktail Dinner at Chauhan & Ale Masala House November 13 We Need A Lot of Christmas Dinner Show at Fiddle Dee Farms November 29 through December 22 Holiday Teas at Cheekwood December 5 through January 3, 2025 Holiday Cocktail Bash at Five Points December 7 12 Bars of Christmas Crawl at Kung Fu Saloon December 14 Go see a show! Nashville Ballet's presents Nashville's Nutcracker at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center December 6 through 26 A Christmas Carol at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center December 6 through 22 Shop for your holiday gifts locally Skydeck Christmas Market at Skydeck at Assembly Food Hall November 29-December 22 (Thursdays-Sundays) Gulch Holiday Night Market at Noble Park December 5 Shop Local Holiday Market with Santa at Nashville Farmers' Market December 7 Porter Flea Holiday Market at The Nashville Fairgrounds December 14 Visit a holiday pop-up! Camp Bobby at the Bobby Hotel: November 2 through February 16 Hidden-Ville at Hidden Bar at Noelle Hotel: November 7 through January 1 Who's Tavern at Pancake Pantry: November 7 through December 28 Lodge 27 at The Westin November 16 through January 8 Misfit Bar at The Fairlane Hotel Kevin McAllister's Fun House at East Nashville Beer Works November 21 through December 29 Tinsel Tavern at Sports & Social Green Hills November 22 Candy Cane Janes at Jane's Hideaway November 26 through January 1 Saint Nicky's at Nicky's Coal Fired November 30 through December 23 Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at kelly.broderick@newschannel5.com. Rebecca: https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/a2/d9/fb69982545c59e9836fbe80fe431/rebecca-recommends.png Carrie: https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/2e/72/be0f23854c54a228c9d6138c9847/carrie-recommends-header.png Ben: https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/df/c4/19fa7c504480938f39a431e3b276/ben-recommends-header.png Amy: https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/b9/b6/1408516a4a91b97639b178fc1ba9/amy-recommends-header.png Rhori: https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/5b/25/a224d13d47739165c92b94e643db/rhori-recommends-header.png Lelan: https://ewscripps.brightspotcdn.com/af/54/833bf879454097a398bd44f723de/lelan-recommends.png It's truly the small things that add up to a great day - and Warrick in Lebanon is having a big impact. His familiar face is becoming a staple in one part of the community and inspiring closer connection in the simplest way. Enjoy his warm personality! You may even feel inclined to wave to a stranger today, too. -Rebecca SchleicherWhat's New The federal government released a new set of proposed rules and guidelines this week for self-driving cars. A rule from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to implement the plan won't be finalized before President Joe Biden 's term ends in January, leaving it in the hands of the next administration, which will be overseen by President-elect Donald Trump . Why It Matters Tesla CEO Elon Musk , appointed by Trump to co-lead a new "Department of Government Efficiency" aimed at reducing costs and regulations, has suggested he could play a role in developing safety standards for self-driving vehicles, a move that would directly impact Tesla 's own automated driving systems. Currently, no federal regulations specifically govern autonomous vehicles, leaving oversight to individual states. Self-driving cars, however, are still required to comply with general federal safety standards applicable to all passenger vehicles. What To Know Under the proposal released Friday, automakers and autonomous vehicle companies could join a program requiring them to submit safety plans and report certain data for self-driving vehicles operating on public roads. To participate, companies would need independent evaluations of their automated vehicle safety processes and would be required to report crashes and other issues involving the vehicles. Companies would be required to provide the NHTSA with data and information on the safety of their vehicles' design, development and operations. The agency would then determine whether to approve their participation in the program. Auto safety advocates argue that the plan falls short of establishing necessary regulations for self-driving vehicles. They point out that it lacks specific performance standards, such as requirements for the number and types of sensors or the ability of vehicles to detect objects in low-visibility conditions. The NHTSA will open a 60-day public comment period on the proposal before it moves through the lengthy federal regulatory process, which could take months or even years. The agency said it hopes the plan will accelerate understanding of autonomous vehicles while laying the groundwork for future regulations. The proposed rule states that "it is important that ADS (Automated Driving System) technology be deployed in a manner that protects the public from unreasonable safety risk while at the same time allowing for responsible development of this technology, which has the potential to advance safety." A request for comment on crash reporting requirements was sent to the Trump transition team on Friday. What People Are Saying Missy Cummings, director of the autonomy and robotics center at George Mason University said, to The Associated Press : "This is a big bunch of nothing." "It'll be more of a completely useless paperwork drill where the companies swear they're doing the right thing," Cummings, a former NHTSA safety adviser, added. Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety , noted that one of the plan's few positives is the requirement for companies to report data on crashes and other issues. However, he pointed to reports suggesting the Trump administration may consider rolling back an existing NHTSA order that mandates autonomous vehicle companies disclose crash data to the agency. What's Next The NHTSA acknowledges that it may eventually need to establish minimum performance standards for self-driving vehicles, similar to the mandatory safety regulations for human-driven cars. However, the agency says it currently lacks the necessary data and metrics to create those benchmarks. The proposed voluntary program, the NHTSA argues, would help collect that information. This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.VERMILLION, S.D. (AP) — Aidan Bouman threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Javion Phelps with 12 seconds left and South Dakota defeated FCS top-ranked North Dakota State 29-28 on Saturday to claim a share of its first Missouri Valley Football Conference championship. The Coyotes (9-2, 7-1) trailed 28-17 when Bouman threw deep to Jack Martens for a 40-yard touchdown with 3:22 remaining. They got the ball back with 1:16 left and six plays later Bouman was sacked. The Coyotes quickly lined up and Bouman found Phelps alone 2 yards shy of the end zone along the left sideline and he easily scored. South Dakota won its first game against the Bison in Vermillion since a four-overtime thriller in 2002. The Bison had won the last five meetings in the DakotaDome. The Coyotes took a 14-0 lead on two Travis Theis rushing touchdowns but the Bison (10-2, 7-1) tied the game with two scores in the final 2:26 of the first half, a 23-yard pass from Cam Miller to Braylon Henderson and a 3-yard TD run by Miller. Miller scored from 2 yards out late in the third quarter and CharMar Brown completed a 20-play, 99-yard drive that took nearly 11 minutes with a 1-yard score for a 28-17 Bison lead with just over four minutes to go. Bouman was 18-of-30 for 271 yards and two touchdowns. Miller was 9-of-21 passing with one touchdown and he rushed for 82 yards and another score. AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football . Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25
Authored by David B. Collum, Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology - Cornell University (Email: dbc6@cornell.edu , Twitter: @DavidBCollum), Dave Collum’s annual Year in Review covers a wide range of topics including finance, geopolitics, conspiracy theories, healthcare, energy, and cultural issues, with a focus on skepticism towards mainstream narratives and the potential for significant societal and economic shifts. Every year, David Collum writes a detailed “Year in Review” synopsis ( 2023 , 2022 , 2021 , 2020 , 2019 , 2018 ) full of keen perspective and plenty of wit. This year’s is no exception, with Dave striking again in his usually poignant and delightfully acerbic way. Click here for a PDF version of this report! Part 1 Part 2 (Coming Later This Week) Part 3 (Coming in January of 2025) I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to get to really know something. ~ Richard Feynman What is a woman? ~ Matt Walsh We have reached crisis levels of doubt. It is The Age of Unenlightenment or what Brett Weinstein calls the Cartesian Dark Ages. ref 1 NSA analyst and radical Islam expert Stephen Coughlin says he no longer knows who is calling the shots. ref 2 How do you know what is a fact? AI-generated images and videos have reached near-perfection. The pathological liars in the mainstream media spew agitprop for the pathological liars inside the beltway, all backed by the pathological liars of the Deep State running the fact-check programs. I use the Deep State phrase first introduced by Berkeley scholar Peter Dale Scott as a catch all to avoid wading through all the possible three- and four-letter agencies domiciled in multiple countries that might be the culprit du jour. A more pejorative and colloquial synonym, “The Blob”, was coined by Obama but has only recently begun trending. If this is all new to you, check out Mike Benz on the Joe Rogan Experience for a crash course (#2237). ref 3 My frustration levels soar when I try to provide what I believe is an uncomfortable truth and my victim responds, “I Googled it, and you are wrong.” Oh for fuck’s sake: how many Deep-State-sponsored fact-checkers told you that? It feels like we are suffering from a non-kinetic assault from somebody using Sun Tsu’s Three Warfares Doctrine: psychological warfare, media warfare, and legal warfare. ref 4 I have no idea where this is coming from, but I have ground my brain to mush trying to understand why so many of our leaders show no evidence of foundational beliefs in the American Experiment. Paul Harvey nailed it in his 1965 diatribe, “If I Were the Devil.” ref 5 Take the three minutes to listen. When finished, ask what Paul would add to a 2024 revision. Walter Kirn: I feel that my information gathering system is broken. Matt Taibbi: Yup. I feel the same way. ref 6 There are days in which I yearn for the return of the era of frontier justice. You couldn’t afford to be a dickweed in the olden days because it was too easy for someone to lay waste to you when nobody was looking. Throughout this document you will be introduced to people and ideas that make you wish some form of justice would return. I have a solution. We try to use the justice system under the new administration, but if that fails, we round up some of the most serious miscreants—I’m thinking Fauci et al. , a few Soros-funded prosecutors in the Department of Justice, and maybe even some of those iatrogenic doctors irreversibly damaging kids—and give them an all-expense paid trip—a three-hour tour—to the tropical paradise called “Snake Island.” Snake Island is a biological anomaly. It is teaming with the most venomous snakes in the world—an estimated 5 snakes per square meter. They feed on shorebirds that must be killed instantly. It is against international law to go there, which strikes me as government overreach. Let’s do a dump-and-run of these cretins: “We’ll be back in a couple hours, gents.” Conspiracy Theory. Every year I denounce people who shy away from conspiracy theories. When you find yourself saying, “I am not a conspiracy theorist but...” you just revealed that you are one. Embrace the label. Men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you disagree, I am baffled that you made it this far through this document. Buckle up because it is gonna get much worse. Michael Shermer, a professional debunker of conspiracy theories, included in his book Conspiracy a series of metrics somebody came up with to determine whether a theory is weak or strong. Michael morphed it into a metric of how nuts you are. He should know because he is a professional! He probably works for the See Eye Ay. As an aside, the word “debunk” is inherently flawed because it implicitly presumes the conclusion that something is wrong, and then you set out to prove it. I read and write to see where it takes me. It might show my suspicion I was right or wrong, but the theories I choose to examine—the rabbit holes I go down—are pre-determined to be worthy of further study. Occasionally, I am told to “stay in your lane.” I try to resist my favorite response—“You sack of shit”—which happens to be exactly the phrase I use when somebody doesn’t use their blinker. Then I calmly point out that nothing important is accomplished by people worried about staying in their lane. Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great. ~ Cher Let’s see how you do on the Collum Conspiracy Test (CCT) to obtain your CCT score (CCTS). Read the 30 declarative statements listed below that are in conflict with standard narratives. Keep score on a Post-it by giving yourself: I’ll give you my CCTS when you are done. Now for the quiz... If you got a perfect CCTS of either zero or 60, get professional help. You have an unstable personality. A CCTS above 50 suggests you only spotted the explicit sanity checks; you are a loon but not necessarily at risk of harm to yourself or others. A score of 40–49 tags you as a World-class rabbit chaser. A CCTS of 20–39 places you in the Zerohedge bell curve. Below 20 means you are not a die-hard conspiracy theorist but occasionally spot oddities. I hasten to add that, if you think the world is that straightforward, the Joe Rogan–Marc Andreessen podcast (#2234) ref 7 and Rogan-Mike Benz mind bender ref 8 combo platter will adjust your attitude. As promised, I scored 40; exactly which declarations scored me points is my business, although this Year in Review and previous Year in Reviews ref 9 , 10 , 11 offer some insights. Also, my scale is conservative... I did a curious experiment using Twitter’s “Grok” AI product. The result was rather humorous and serves a dual purpose as a stylistic biographical sketch and bolus for my insatiable narcissism. This is unedited. No phrases like “insufferable douche bag” were deleted: Hey Grok: Describe the general theme of posts on Twitter by @DavidBCollum Grok: Ah, @DavidBCollum, a character on Twitter, or should I say, X, whose posts could be described as a cocktail of wit, skepticism, and a dash of financial insight, all served with a side of humor. Here’s the general theme of his posts: In essence, @DavidBCollum’s X posts are a blend of financial wisdom, cultural critique, personal life, and a good dose of humor, all served with a side of skepticism towards the mainstream narrative. If Twitter were a bar, he’d be the bartender who knows all the good stories, tells them with flair, and makes you question your drink’s price. One of my Twitter buddies, @BenjaminWHart, has been calling me Andy Rooney for years now. I should just declare victory, type QED, quit while I’m ahead, and get a real life. This is the greatest thing I have ever seen that didn’t include female nudity of some kind. ~ John Ziegler, journalist This 2024 Year in Review, also called the Urine Review by my wife or YIR for short, comes in three parts. Bob Moriarty: When are you going to release part three? We wait patiently. Me: Not clear, but I am writing. It is a monumentally complex task compared to the other chapters. Moriarty: I hate it when you whine. Warning: I have provided an overview and implications of the election, but you will be shocked and disappointed (or not) at how little I dug into the nearly 200 pages of notes I had collected. Kilograms of ATP got fried and countless hours of my life were squandered trying to understand Biden and then Harris. And then—*poof*—on November 5th these two DNC Trojan Whores were both gone. We became unburdened by what could have been. 11/5 will live in infamy as the DNC’s 9/11. But all those quotes and anecdotes underscoring the total absurdity of the election seem irrelevant now. I am confident, however, that we collectively dodged a bullet by sending these two sociopaths to the political light. My wife created this for me in 2016... Of course, Trump’s victory was a bipartisan surprise as the polls convinced the Left that Kamala was a legitimate contender while those of us on the Right believed The Blob would find a way to stop Trump at any cost. The election was disruptive on so many levels, and has left us with a geopolitical landscape smothered by a pea-soup fog. I am confident that the Trump Presidency 2.0 will have little connection to the 1.0 release. I am optimistic because the system is broken and needs to be razed and rebuilt. The team he is assembling, for better or worse, includes some young brawlers with a sense of purpose gained from locking horns with the system. It is personal for many of them. Thus, the razing part looks like a lock whereas the reconstruction will be a far trickier task. As to the apparent non-trivial number of apparent losers being hired, I urge people to assume that they were vetted by The Donald’s inner circle and fit nicely in whatever is his plan. Doubtless, Trump et al. will generate plenty of material for a 2025 Urine Review. Source Material. You are born into the last chapter of a whodunnit mystery. If you wish to follow the thread you must read the preceding chapters. My efforts to do so are often reflected in the books I read compiled in the “Books” chapter (Part 2). I choose them carefully because my time is precious. They are invariably from the non-fiction shelf, although I often wonder if they have been shelved wrong. Jonathan Turley’s The Indispensable Right , for example, scrutinizes the battles for free speech in America at the Supreme Court level. It is scholarly and riveting, which are two words that are usually juxtaposed. Jonathan forces you to view free speech through a different lens. I write so that knowledge of these important matters may not fade away like the fleeting memories of a passing dream. ~ Thomas Hooker, 1586-1647, source vague I have come to realize that history is a highly fluid series of opinions that are prone to revision. By example, the section entitled, “A Revisionist History of WWII and FDR” is about a journey through a half dozen books that blindsided me. I gave a 20-minute talk on that topic at the New Orleans Investment Conference. ref 12 , 13 Yup. The revised history of WWII and FDR in 20 minutes. I also love ZeroHedge. Strap on your bullshit filter, but ZeroHedge is often at the vanguard of breaking stories. Twitter has become the other go-to place for the global events of the day. Love him or hate him, Elon saved the day by buying Twitter for the low, low price of $44 billion and then firing 90% of its employees who were contra-functional. Many are now working for FEMA where special skills are neither needed nor encouraged. Elon also brought in a number of new functions including its AI chatbot, Grok, and another AI-based editorial function in which a Tweet can be automatically clarified or revised based on follow up comments. I should add that this document was created without AI except when explicitly mentioned. Twitter was the only place to keep track of the rising stardom of Catturd and Brendan Dilley, legendary memers, and Hailey Welch, known by her boyfriends and now the world as Hawk Tuah Girl. Haliey is more than just a hot chick from the sticks; she pulled off a pump and dump on a new crypto. ref 14 That is how you “Hawk Tuah!” Twitter was also the only place to get the unabridged story of the assassination of Peanut the Squirrel by the New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), first reported on November 1. The head of the DEC had to go into hiding. ref 15 The memes—oh those fabulous Twitter memes—smothered the election posts for 24 hours. 11/1 is the 9/11 of 2024. No squirrel has done more to underscore the evils and overreach of government since Rocky the Flying Squirrel battled the Rooskies. You can’t help but notice that the political right dominates the meme world, which turns out to be of consequence. My theory is the left has no sense of humor. Twitter also serves as my LinkedIn, providing extraordinary digital networks and resources, but it can also break your spirit... Or get a little nasty at times... That Dave Collum guy. I think he is the greatest. I think he is smart as fuck. I enjoy reading his stuff. I enjoy reading his letter. I enjoy listening to him. But I don’t agree with everything he says. I agree with maybe half of it. But he is entitled to his point of view, and I’m entitled to mine, but it’s guys like that that make you think. ref 16 ~ Mark Cohodes (@AlderLaneEggs) This nugget of sociobiology serves as a reminder that this is my Year in Review, not yours. I am offering to share it at fair market value—no cost. You’re welcome. Don’t I risk losing readers? Nope. You’re it. Creating this review forces me to organize 500–700 pages of notes, quotes, and jokes before they go down the memory hole never again to see the light of day. This section is all me—my 2024 Dear Diary entry. I am often asked some variant of, “How do you still work at Cornell with those ideas?” My first answer is that Cornell University is a great institution that has a faction of nutjobs on the faculty. This question has, however, become more than rhetorical on occasion. In 2020 I got my ass whooped by a cancellation because of a statement on social media that got me publicly denounced in an open letter by the former President. The heinous crime: I supported the police in a Tweet. Oh the humanity! I still have a little scar tissue from sleeping with loaded rifles and steak knives strategically placed around the house. (I am not joking.) Occasionally somebody will denounce me on Twitter and tag Cornell (@Cornell). Trying to undermine somebody’s livelihood because you are offended is sinister. You certainly have the right to be offended, but you don’t have the right to never be offended. I respond to such subtle jabs by leaving @Cornell in the thread and then “bitch slapping” the asshat. It is better than hunting them down like a mad dog and “beating them with a bag of oranges”, which is my natural instinct. ( 23andMe DNA traced me back to an inbred tribe in the Neander Valley.) We have an enormous number of expensively schooled imbeciles who are badly educated at great expense. ~ George Will The younger generation is getting harder to understand and very easy to offend. I feel like Jane Fookin’ Goodall on her first day. They have no sense of humor because every joke has an edge—a butt of the joke—and they don’t think that is fair. I got into a kerfuffle with my class on day one by dropping too many jokes that would have been innocuous in smaller doses, but it largely subsided when they realized that I care about them and that many of my stories and anecdotes provide serious career and life lessons, albeit deeply embedded in my Tourettes-like outbursts. I talk to them about the highly distracting digital world that must be resisted. If you have been following social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s work such as Coddling the American Mind or his latest, The Anxious Generation , you realize it is not their fault: smart phones and social media have turned their brains into tapioca pudding. You might as well park them in front of a one-armed bandit in Las Vegas for 15 hours a day. Now imagine a 12-year-old boy with ritalin coursing through his veins deep-diving Pornhub. Would that kid ever study? Would he ever leave his room? If he somehow managed to get a date—the stats showing a collapse of teen dating are horrifying—would you want your daughter to beta test his new-fangled skills? As parents, do not underestimate the severity of this problem. OK. I got off topic again. I tend to do that. Overall, my year was uneventful, with most of it fitting neatly in the sections on “Investing” and “Healthcare”. I wrapped up my research program this year after a 45-year streak of pretty credible success. The final chapter was my call: I burnt the ships in the harbor by not submitting grant renewals. Credentialed experts and The ScienceTM say that, in addition to the void left by less responsibility, your serotonin and dopamine levels drop, which is offset by being too old to give a fuck. I can feel it. Here is a funny story. Cornell suffered a period of tremendous turbulence arising from Palestinian protests. One of my colleagues in the humanities in a moment of minimal clarity noted that he was “exhilarated” by Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7th, 2023. He seems to be light on the humanity part. This period of rampant free speech cost Cornell and Universities across the nation a ton of shekels as Jewish bazillionaires started disowning them. Imagine, however, if a WWII veteran came back to Cornell in 1969; it would have looked way worse. If you were donating to your alma mater thinking its faculty was a pillar of mental stability, that one’s on you. But the chaos just wouldn’t subside, so one night I gripped and ripped a tweet: I got a call from my brother-in-law who happens to be a trustee and knows everybody . He opens the convo by reciting part of that tweet. The dialog ensued: Me: “How the hell did you see that?” Brother-in-law: “My boss sent it to me.” Me: “Your wife? How did she see it?” Brother-in-law: “My other boss.” Me: “You are self employed. You don’t have a boss.” Brother-in-law: “The Chairman of the Board of Trustees.” As the story goes, the Chairman cold-called him and asked if he by chance knew this guy Collum. Apparently, a faculty member who isn’t whining like a little punk-assed bitch about being oppressed is a trustee-level moment. “Yes. He is my brother-in-law.” Laughter ensued. Enjoy every sandwich. ~ Warren Zevon on his deathbed He who frames the question wins the debate. ~ Randall Terry This year, I did a Zerohedge Debate organized by Liam Cosgrove of The Grayzone and moderated by Bill Fleckenstein. Steve Keen asserted mankind would largely end by 2050—that is not one of my snarky fake claims—whereas I dismissively called it a gigantic grift to monetize the sun. ref 1 , 2 My intellectual high-water mark was the allusion to AI as “squeegeeing drippings from the floor of the internet.” My now-annual trip to the House of the Rising Sun for Brien Lundin’s New Orleans Investment Conference is always a blast where I meet up with old friends, press the flesh with digital friends, and make new friends. Brien dug long and hard to eventually find the bottom of the barrel (me). You can spot some serious contemporary legends. You think that is cool? Take a look at past participants... I averaged one podcast per week (>70 year-to-date). In one with Mike Farris and Diana West on her studies of WWII (see the section “Revised History of WWII and FDR”), Diana noted that her twice-weekly appearances on The Lou Dobbs Show to discuss current events prevented her from thinking deeply or writing seriously. That captured what I was experiencing. Podcasts do, however, serve a purpose much the way gigs at comedy clubs help comedians test drive their ideas. My list of podcasts below is for archival purposes. Mike Farris takes the gold for most invites. Nick Bryant is the scholar on pedophile networks. His chat was important to my studies of child trafficking (Part 3) and in expanding my network of experts and confidants. Tommy Carrigan’s four-way Rumbles in the Jungle with Tom Luongo and Jim Kunstler are always raucous. My interview with Michelle Mikori set the click-count record this year, but the comments section suggests the viewers would have enjoyed it without the audio on. A couple of sites offer bot-driven compilations, including one that professes to rate them. ref 3 , 4 I like the freedom of podcasting. With podcasting, you can really mess around with the form and the format. You can do as much time as you like without having to pause for commercials. ~ Adam Carolla Here is a list of podcasts and links for 2024: Collum could narrate a proctology exam & make it interesting. ~ Vincent J. Curtis (@VincentJCurtis1) I once live-tweeted a cystoscopy: “It burns! It burns!” I will rise to meet Vincent’s challenge. Last year I had a 1.5 inch bladder stone removed by Dr. Darth Vader with his light saber. He inflicted superficial damage that forced him to re-insert the catheter and leave it for a week. Why an entire week? Because he works on Wednesdays. I was not happy about that. This year, my prostate, which was very large due to old age in manly sort of way I guess, was removed by a surgeon named Dr. Weiner. The non-statistical probability of choosing a career that reflects your name is called “nominative determinism”, ref 1 which suggests you should steer clear of Doctors named Butcher, Hack, or Ripper. It is not a perfect rule: Dr. Richard Titball is not a gender reassignment surgeon but rather a professor of biochemistry. ref 2 His students must be ruthless as evidenced by my irresistible urge to make him the “butt” of my joke. You will not hear this often, but I highly recommend the procedure. I went from two-minute dribbles with countless sleep interruptions to blowing out 14 ounces in 4–5 seconds in a 6–8 foot arc. (I should add that those were separate measurements; I am not that talented...yet.) Livin’ the dream. But let me give you old farts a little advice. For the first couple of post-op urinations, sit your ass down unless you wish to see a replay of the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. It was a ten-minute cleanup of the floor and walls. When I was a kid, I wanted to be older. This is not what I expected. The only room I can enter and remember why I went there is the bathroom. Over-nourishment makes me hold my breath while I tie my shoes. I can no longer get off the floor without grunting. I am dotting my ‘t’s and crossing my ‘I’s. As my hearing gets worse, the blinker on my car runs unabated. I repeat: old age is not for pussies. The decay of our healthcare system continues. For the first time in US history, life expectancy is dropping. Last year I took a cue from Gretchen Morgenson’s and Josh Rosner’s These are the Plunderers ref 3 and wailed on the swath of destruction to the healthcare system by the private equity Borg. ref 4 Monetary policy incentivizes private equity strip-mining of companies by making capital too cheap. When you buy up hospitals, sell off their assets, and sell the shells to dumb money with a 47% probability of bankruptcy down the road, you are a menace to society. Healthcare is now almost completely corporatized, which means that there is a big middleman who wants the Big Vig. Doctors must act in the corporate interests ref 5 by upselling costly tests and treatments. I am not breaking any HIPAA rules: this is my chart. Are they upselling me? The growing number of doctors in the US has not kept up with the demand as the aging boomers increasingly burden the system. It remains a challenge to attract doctors to less profitable subdisciplines and practices in rural settings. Ken Langone endowed NYU Medical School several years ago, making it free and the most desirable med school in the country. As the movement toward endowed tuitions has spread to other schools, the stated logic is that graduates can serve the public better if they are debt free. ref 6 Alas, tuition benefits have not achieved their stated goals but have made being a doctor even more profitable. Meanwhile, the wait time to get an appointment has increased 24% in 20 years ref 7 (much worse from personal experience), which starts looking serious when you have a big, bloody turbocancer lesion hanging off your face. Firing doctors for refusing to vaccinate was about as helpful as defunding the police. ref 8 The soft corruption infecting the healthcare system over the decades undercuts the quality of patient care. The CDC set up a not-for-profit organization ref 9 to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars from pharma to put a chokehold on healthcare. ref 10 I highly recommend The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy; ref 11 your blood will boil. For a less biased treatment, and I say less biased because Kennedy hates Tony Fauci, try Sickening by Harvard’s John Abramson in which he describes his role in the scandal in which Vioxx caused 60,000 deaths ref 12 as well as other disasters emanating from the highly conflicted clinical trial-industrial complex. ref 13 A recent study found that clinical trials paid for by pharma showed 50 percent higher drug efficacies than those funded independently. ref 14 This so-called ”sponsorship effect” worked so well with the bond rating agencies leading up to the Great Recession. This year I added Sharyl Attkisson’s Follow the Science to my reading list. She brilliantly describes 25-year career at CBS writing about science and the pharmaceutical industry. Her journey has led to her deep-seated revulsion of the Pharma Blob. ref 15 I also forced myself through The Pfizer Papers , ref 16 which is more of a reference book than a reading book. An army of 3200 volunteer doctors and scientists mowed through gazillions of documents pried loose from Pfizer by a FOIA request. I elaborate in the section entitled “Covid-19 and the Vaccine.” Plot spoiler: Pfizer knew from the very start that the vaccine was wreaking havoc. I would suggest that the whole imposing edifice of modern medicine, for all its breathtaking successes is, like the celebrated Tower of Pisa—slightly off balance. ref 17 ~ King Charles (no kidding) In my consultations with colleagues across academia, I sense a widely held belief that the quality of students has dropped precipitously. This stems from a host of factors including iPhone addiction, helicopter parenting, participation trophies, and upbringings in which no-pain no-gain seems to have gone out of favor. The common refrain is, “Why should I learn it if I can just look it up?” The simple answer is that you need an operating system to think. Why is this being mentioned in a section on healthcare? Your future doctors may be surgically rooting around in your chest cavity like a truffle pig guided by YouTube videos. We return to related issues in the section on “College”, but I urge you to find doctors who are old enough to not be the iPhone Walking Dead. Let’s shoot back. Rumor has it Trump won the election, and Kennedy is being put in charge of Health and Human Services. There is no reason to doubt that he will be the most aggressive leader of that massive government organization in its history. At the next level down, the frontrunner to run the National Institutes of Health is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Medical School. He is a mild-mannered, very bright health policy expert who has developed new attitudes about the healthcare system as one of the three creators of the Great Barrington Declaration. ref 18 (For laughs, I looked at Wikipedia’s writeup on the Great Barrington Declaration, ref 19 and it is a complete sack of propaganda to push the authoritarian narrative that I have come to expect from that once revolutionary idea.) Both Kennedy and Bhattacharya have battled the Healthcare Balrog and emerged victorious. They could be revolutionary. While on the topic of eating organic food, brother-sister pair, Calley and Casey Means, appeared out of nowhere in a Tucker Carlson interview discussing decidedly unhealthy food and healthcare. ref 20 This was not by chance but rather the first salvo in the battle to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) that is a major plank of the Trump administration. Ozempic, Wegovy, and other related anti-obesity drugs hit the ground running this year. The drug companies have restrictions on what they can advertise off-label, but they bypass the restrictions by exploiting famous Hollywood butterballs trying to become marketable again. We have created the ‘solution’ to treat the problem, without really being disciplined and empathetic enough to stop the creation of obese children in the first place. ref 21 ~ Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, pediatrician I am guessing that somewhere down the road we will discover huge side effects. You are treating the symptom not the disease. Bypassing the most overt phenotype arising from eating dogshit—Dunlop’s Syndrome in which your “belly done lops over your belt”—may not be healthy. And yet some health authorities, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommend it for teens, which will enable consequence-free Cheeto-Mountain Dew diets while they sit around staring into their iPhones. ref 22 Yay. That cannot be good, but I am expecting worse. Side effects include Anxiety, insomnia, and depression, all accompanied by a 45% rise in “suicide ideation.” ref 23 Muscle loss ref 24 seems to be causing “Ozempic Eyes” or “Ozempic Face” ref 25 in which you pick up that starving-POW look. When you are talking about the human biome, it is likely to be FAFO (fuck around find out.) At least your pall bearers will thank you. That BBC headline is spot on: death is the leading cause of not ageing. The profitability of a drug that must be taken for life causes spittle to drool down the chins of pharma CEOs. At $1000 per month without prescription coverage, Ozempic Wallet may become a thing. Euthanasia seems to be cool again. A depressed 28-year-old Dutch woman scheduled to be euthanized in May found happiness as the big day approached. ref 26 In Canada, its popularity has exceeded that of the ice bucket challenge. The CEO of United Health got assassinated by a pro. ref 27 Inscriptions on the bullet casings—“Deny, Depose, Defend”—suggested the company’s record of having the highest denial of coverage percentage in the business ref 28 left one critic a little grumpy and offered him complementary body piercings. This is a rapidly evolving story. The perpetrator has supposedly been identified, leaving the world mystified about why and even if he did it. ref 29 Note to the Elites: this is the shit that happens when the plebes feel like they have no civilized path forward. This is a Fourth Turning move. With especially poor timing, insurance company Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced that they would not cover the cost of anesthesia if the surgery took longer than a prescribed time. That policy was retracted fast , ref 30 presumably straight from the desk of the CEO trying to avoid the wireless hole puncher. I suspect that the announcement was already in the chamber to be fired out to the public when the United Health CEO got whacked. FAFO. The new shingles vaccine, Shingrix, was released in time to battle the shingles pandemic among the recently vaccinated. But they are provided for free! Yeah. Right. Government handouts mean you are paying. How broke will we be when all pharma products are free? That would have tremendous palliative benefits of reducing the diseased CPI. And since you have no idea what is in those devilish jabs, I should point out that Shingrix is an mRNA gene therapy. Are you going to jump on that bandwagon again and hope it doesn’t cause bleeding from every orifice? I’ll pass, thankyou very much. I’ve seen claims that healthcare is approaching 20% of US GDP. I have witnessed a huge spike in construction of healthcare facilities in my little college town of Ithaca. Economists love GDP, but let’s unwrap that. Would you be better off if you needed no healthcare whatsoever? Of course. Soaring boomer healthcare costs reflect the cost of keeping a rapidly depreciating fleet of aging Chevy Chevettes, Ford Pintos, and Corvairs on the road. And a headline from Bloomberg... Health and Human Services’s 2025 budget includes the keyword “equity” 829 times. Hundreds of billions are spent chasing the DEI bogey while your health falters. ref 31 And, by the way, why is DEI considered so profoundly important while tagging a hire as a DEI hire is verboten? Dear Kamala: the gold miners are gouging the price of gold. It’s up 10% per year under President Jill Biden. Can you please tell them to stop? Thanks. ref 1 ~ Zerohedge Gold had both a strong year (+30% ytd) and was not particularly newsworthy. Gold bugs always look forward to Ronald-Peter Stöferle’s and Mark J. Valek’s In Gold We Trust comprehensive treatise on the yellow metal and related topics. ref 2 I am not a technical analysis guy but the most highly respected technical analyst of gold, Mike Oliver, said gold would launch if it broke $2500. Although I would not call $2600 a launch, it held above that level to close the year at $2650 (as of 12/16/24) despite a sell-the-news $200+ swoon following the 2024 US elections. While some viewed the election sell-off to be about fundamentals, I think it was just an unwinding of a doom bet on election carnage (rioting, eating cats and dogs, shit like that). Despite detractors, gold is the #2 reserve currency below the dollar. Most are unaware that gold “IPO’d” in August 15, 1971, it has delivered a nearly 8% annualized return priced in dollars. The claim that gold is 5x gain relative to equities and bonds if that is a mean regressing proportionality. Remember that what follows this period of recessionary deflation will be MMT or some facsimile thereof. That is the ‘big bomb of debt’ monetization that ends up sending gold beyond a bull market towards a parabolic surge. ~ David “Rosie” Rosenberg A few nuggets are worthy of mention: Another wage-price spiral attributable to rising oil prices would be very reminiscent of the Great Inflation of the 1970s, when the price of gold soared. In this scenario, $3,500 per ounce would be a realistic target for gold through 2025. ~ Ed Yardeni (@yardeni) The most likely wildcard path to a gold price of $3,000/oz gold is a rapid acceleration of an existing but slow-moving trend: de-dollarization across “Emerging” markets central banks that in turn leads to a crisis of confidence in the U.S. #dollar...” ref 10 –Citigroup analysts Silver is schizophrenic in that it is less of a monetary metal than gold and much more of an industrial metal. As shown below, US traders smack it around, but that is just day trading. When powerful short sellers in the big banks get caught offsides on a big bet, the price will likely get stepped on temporarily. The silver bulls view silver as a leveraged play on gold, but will that be true going forward? A bullish argument is that Joe Sixpack gets more bang for the buck for silver—an ounce for $30. But that seems like a relevant rallying cry only in the final meme/mania phase, and this is no mania yet. The gold–silver ratio is said to have been 7:1 in ancient Rome and is now in the ballpark of 90:1. Some say that the 16:1 ratio in the Earth’s crust is the target for mean regression, but that is probably too simplistic given the complexities of the mining industry. Doomberg warns that there are no big advances in battery technology, and the incremental advances are all in large companies. He urges you to never invest in a story stock promising a breakthrough. Silver’s importance in the Samsung’s newest rechargeable batteries does seem encouraging. The importance of silver in solar panels and the difficulties in recycling them makes silver a good bet should the climate cult continue to help the climate grifters who, in turn, are playing into the hands of the authoritarians. That every electronic device on the planet uses largely non-recyclable silver should drive demand for silver. ref 13 One of the best rules anybody can learn about investing is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, unless there is something to do...I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up... I wait for a situation that is like the proverbial ‘shooting fish in a barrel.’ ~ Jim Rogers, in Market Wizards Let’s begin with savings. I think you save for retirement whereas you invest to fight inflation. Four decades ago (1981), I was a cash-poor new homeowner. I began furnishing it from yard sales but eventually progressed to 18th and 19th century American antiques. They were in a bull market as boomers began homesteading and caught the country bug in large numbers. I now live with really nice furniture that may not be worth what I paid but has not followed IKEA crap off the depreciation cliff. I was doing OK in these formative years including steady flows into retirement accounts, but one day I was reading a USAir magazine story that asked rhetorically, “Are you saving enough for retirement?” I realized I could do better and followed their suggestion to increase the rate of savings incrementally. For many years now I have sheltered 25–30% of my gross salary into retirement. This was true even during the kids’ college years. Last year, for example, I socked away 25% despite purchasing a new SUV for my wife and some aggressive distributions to the next generation. Well, this year, owing to wrapping up my research program, the 25% of my salary deriving from Federal grants evaporated, and my savings dropped to 4%. Technically speaking, I lived paycheck-to-paycheck. I also realized, however, that next year I turn 70 and will get nearly $60,000 per year salary boost from Social Security, which was good timing. I am, however, pondering retirement so that I can go to my office everyday as usual but work for free. Raising children is an enormously expensive endeavor. ~ Malcolm Gladwell My son, a professional violinist, went on a 6-week whirlwind tour of Europe shopping for a new violin. He found nothing of interest until, on nearly the last day, this 1725 Carlo Antonio Testore came across the auction block at Tarisio, and, with 100% funding by the Bank of Dad (BoD), he grabbed it. This six-digit purchase (with all six to the left of the decimal point) is owned by the BoD; he will inherit it. Was it a good buy? I think so. The kid has a good head, keen eye, and fabulous ear. I do not include this violin in my personal savings calculations; it is a hard asset. The mid-19th-century dining room table with the stunning tiger maple on which the Testore resides cost $700. That was a good buy too. An interesting aside, a 1714 Stradivarius is about to cross Sotheby’s auction block at an estimated World-record-beating $12–18 million. ref 1 (Of course, the very best are owned by institutions and will never hit the auction block.) To recap my 45-year investment history, I was 100 percent long-bonds via TIAA from 1980–1987 until a discussion with a colleague in the wake of the ’87 crash convinced me I should hit the equities hard. I averaged in , but did so aggressively, and became wildly enthusiastic about tech by the early ‘90s. I was a poster child for the bubble. However, I had learned enough about markets to conclude that something was wrong. In July of 1998 I jettisoned half of my CREF-based index funds and watched the market tank into the Asian Flu. Feeling half genius and half moron, I was determined to get the second half out if the market rallied back. It did, and I was out of indexes by early ’99 and had tight stops on tech favorites as well as a handful of other real winners. They were all gone by mid ’99, pocketing 700% each on Worldcom and Dell, for example. (I never bought a dot-com.) Without a single share of an equity, I paid off the tail-end of my mortgage (debt-free ever since) and went long gold (cost basis 10% of My Net Worth Positions 1.0–10% of My Net Worth Positions 0.10–1.0% of My Net Worth Positions 50%). The bottom is in when the Fed stops dropping rates. The Fed started dropping rates in March 16th, 2024. Let the games begin. I hasten to add that these correlations of rates and returns don’t necessarily indicate causation. The greatest credit event of all would be a recession in which US yields went up, not down. ~ Michael Hartnett By the end, we’re 40 times leveraged with 0.1% growth to get what looks like 4% growth...find me an economist who can tell me what the real unleveraged growth of America is, and people will have an epileptic fit even thinking about it because it’s teeny. ~ David Murrin I am getting increasingly concerned that we have to endure another decline of 5 percent or more before the year is out. ref 33 ~ Sam Stovall, CFRA Research’s chief investment strategist, way over his skis I feel like a lot of what’s perceived as wealth is an inflation illusion. ~ Stephanie Pomboy The Magnificent Seven. The Mag 7—Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—are the modern-day Nifty Fifty of 1967 or the 14 Japanese companies rounding out the top 20 companies in the world in 1989. Both offered up spectacular gains, culminating in catastrophic prospective losses. Sometimes the ten largest are discussed, but they lack the catchy name recognition. The Mag 7 are collectively overpriced, moreso than when I launched a diatribe against them in 2022, gloating about their recent beatings only to watch them humiliate me. ref 37 Nvidia (NVDA) has become the market and will be the focus of my scorn. Before projectile vomiting my sour Nvidia grapes, I want to share a few random bullets about the collective Mag 7 and the other players in the Mag 7—the Mag 6—that caught my attention. The only thing less valuable than Tesla stock is a fully grown adult at P. Diddy’s house. ref 38 ~ Lewis Black If you think Silicon Valley knows what it’s doing financially, you really have to rethink things. ~ Jim Chanos, Kynikos Apple’s index representation is set to increase after Buffett’s sale fully unleashed the amount of stock available for trading. In turn, index-tracking funds will need to purchase the shares to mimic its growing heft. ref 43 ~ Bloomberg, failing to understand the definition of “float” ref 44 Nvidia (NVDA) is the poster child of the New Era. I have seen cats chase laser pointers with less enthusiasm. I suspect NVDA and its CEO will be pictured on milk cartons when the next big whoosh lays waste to the indices. Some hang the Ponzi moniker on NVDA owing to massive valuations (50x revenues), shady dealings with Coreweave, and a CEO with bad press from past shenanigans. ~Me, 2023 YIR Nvidia. While nuclear-powered AI is said by some to be the greatest thing since the internet, profits from AI seem to not be materializing. The big players could spend huge bucks just to keep up with each other. Google is at risk of its invader-proof moat drying up. If the generations of technology roll over faster than the R&D can be amortized, AI companies could suffer death by creative destruction. ref 46 Meanwhile, the pick and shovel maker Nvidia has become the first $3 trillion company with a capacity to gain or lose hundreds of billions of dollars in a single day. They added more than the equivalent of Goldman Sachs in one night. Nvidia has become the technology market. To get to a [pre-10:1-share-split] $740 share price simply requires NVDA to maintain a monopolist-like operating profit margin of 55% for the next decade, while also growing sales 10x to more than $600bn. For context, the entire industry sold $527bn worth of chips last year. ~ Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) not knowing that the price would soon double The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Nvidia’s appeal of a court ruling that accuses the company of committing securities fraud. ref 60 ~ Bezinga Headline NVDA investors won’t want to read (and apparently didn’t) Nvidia gets subpoena from US DoJ, Bloomberg News reports –Reuters, another headline NVDA investors didn’t read Nvidia has been a high-wire act for some time. ref 64 ~ Marc Cohodes, 2002 There are a number of people who could have put Jensen in jail. ref 65 ~ Marc Cohodes, 2024, quoting a source I think it is the biggest bubble I’ve ever seen. Nvidia is up $1 trillion in one month. ~ Fred Hickey, The High-Tech Strategist Nvidia is highly unlikely to be a long-term winner as the demand for picks and shovels occurs at the beginning of a gold rush, and then rapidly fades. ref 69 ~ Dhaval Joshi of BCA Research So there you have it. Nvidia is the market. It has offered investors >170% one-year return and a 2400% five-year return. Will their 80% profit margins and valuations at >40x revenue and 100x levered-free cash flow hold up over time? During the dot-com bust Nvidia swan dived 90%. Could the drop be bigger this time? I said yes, ref 70 but what do I know? Here is the bullish case that says they just keep going up. ref 71 AI will likely be transformative and highly profitable, but probably to those who can buy the body parts at a deep discount after a period of carnage. Nvidia provides the infrastructure—the pipes—for AI. Corning provided the infrastructure—the light pipes—for the telecom sector and internet. I have a few questions. Will history refer to the “Magnificent Seven” as a success story or will they become the “Malignant 7” and join the Nifty Fifty and Dotcoms in the Hall of Shame? That I need not even define “Mag Seven” for the reader is a tell. The Yahoo Finance page has a picture of Jensen Huang every...single...day. He has been on countless magazine covers. This seems like the magazine cover jinx that is now an infamous top call, but—and this is Kim Kardashian-sized but—Jensen has not yet been on The Economist . However, as they said in Starwars, there is another... Market Bullets. Before my final wrap up, let’s peek at a couple of funny stories of the type that emerge before the proverbial tide recedes. Chewy surges after ‘Roaring Kitty’ discloses stake. ~ Yahoo Finance Headline When a stock surges 90% because of the “Return of Roaring Kitty”, you know we are currently living in one of the most speculative environments in history. ~ Otavio Costa By the way, what does a whale that can move markets by simply spouting out his blowhole actually look like? This is Roaring Kitty. Are you not entertained now? The Game is indeed nearly over. In conclusion, we are witnessing the great cycle of life. As the markets pull out of some secular low and climb the wall of worry, credit loosens, entrepreneurs begin taking baby steps at creating new wealth, eventually reaching a climax—a blow-off top. Prior to the collapse, the smart guys will have already snuck out the back door to safe havens, leaving the risk in pension plans run by Hillbillies. As the collapse wreaks havoc and crushes the nouveau poor, the “elites” will foreclose on the malinvestment and confiscate the portions of the wealth that survive the washout for pennies on the dollar. Who bought the real estate that went on the auction block in 08–09? Not you or me. Après le deluge, the cycle starts all over again. A 1994 paper by Romer and Akerloff described the great wealth transfer of the boom-bust cycle. I’ve saved my really big concern for last. We appear to be in yet another investment mania. Wall Street guys call it a “blow-off top”, which is coded language for getting you to keep putting your money in through fear that you will miss the best part—the Grand Finale. Lincoln made that mistake too. Yet, somehow, nobody seems euphoric. The Roaring 20s got their name for a reason. The dot-com boom felt like we had catapulted into the future. The housing mania that drove the markets to the ’07 top was euphoric as nouveau homeowners thought Oprah would be giving everybody a house and a pony. During this latest high, by contrast, the Left Half think their lives are over because the Orange Man won. The Right Half voted for the radical reform because they have had enough of the Left Half. The Bottom Half are working two jobs to pay their bills because of the surging cost of living. The Top Half will do anything to avoid returning to the Bottom Half (including selling into a panic). Politicians are despised, the mainstream media is hated, and the healthcare profession killed people. Universities are viewed as neo-Marxist training camps and too damned expensive. It feels like a mix of 1860 USA and 1789 France. Here is the Really Big Question: If everybody is so grumpy at the top, what the hell is the next recession and accompanying bottom going to look like? There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. ~ Albert Einstein, 1932. To state the obvious, energy runs the world. The entire growth of civilization is about harnessing enthalpy (heat) to overcome entropy (chaos). Without the constant input of enthalpy, civilization will decay into a state of maximum entropy, and Bartertown may be our best-case scenario. Beginning with The Quest for Fire , every major advance in cultural evolution demanded increasing energy efficiency from trees, peat bogs, whale blubber, coal, oil, natural gas, and the atom. I am convinced that anthropogenic climate change is a load of anthropogenic crap brought to us by tens of trillions of dollars of anthropogenic grift and global authoritarianism. I have run out of patience with policymakers, corporate decision-makers, and investors who collectively throw up their hands and say, ‘Don’t blame me.’ There is no excuse to fall for the myth of being victimized by the unprecedented. –Stephen Roach in Myth of the Unprecedented Here is where I cut the psychopaths some slack: maybe they are in a position to see that changes are coming and, to quote a famous former governor, “Fuck your freedoms.” The Club of Rome was not nuts asserting exponential growth on a finite orb is arithmetic nonsense as brilliantly described in talks by Albert Bartlett. ref 1 The obvious and final play is nuclear. Perceived risk is amplified by the vivid imagery of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima setbacks; there were no fatalities at the former two, and an estimated 31 died in the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl. By contrast, wind turbines kill several dozen people per year. My interest in energy and electric vehicles is a combination of curiosity, investment opportunity, and tracking the twisted globalists’ quest for global domination. There are plenty of energy experts; I find the pseudonymous Doomberg to be a fabulous source of grounded wisdom. ref 2 The energy transition is failing and will fail. ref 3 ~ Barry Norris, the founder and chief investment officer of UK hedge fund Argonaut Capital Partners LLP Electric Vehicles. The electric vehicles (EVs) came on too fast. You cannot legislate solutions to technical problems. The EV market appears to be heading for a shakeout that is not just about a bursting bubble on Wall Street. It is bullet time: Something super weird is going on, as Tesla was the *only* car company attacked! ref 11 ~ Elon Musk on the German attacks on Giga factory The investment community’s belief that EVs will displace the internal combustion engine remains as strong as ever. We vigorously disagree... Despite claims to the contrary, our research suggests EVs are less energy efficient than internal combustion engine automobiles. As a result, they will fail to gain widespread adoption. ref 15 ~ Goehring & Rozencwajg Electric vehicles (EVs) are piling up on lots across the country as the green revolution hits a speed bump, data show. ref 18 ~ USA Today, November 14, 2023 The road to electrification could be bumpier than anticipated. ~ Stephen Scherr, Hertz CEO...oops...ex-CEO The Twittersphere pointed out that Volkswagen was run by Nazis. She deleted her Twitter account. Well, hells bells. Let’s get more government in the game... I have a particular fondness, I must tell you, for electric school buses. I love electric school buses! I just love them for so many reasons! Maybe because I went to school on a school bus. Hey, raise your hand if you went to school on a school bus! ~ Kamala Harris, former future President The bottom line seems to be that EVs cost way more than ICEs to buy, finance, insure, and repair. They hold value like bananas left on the countertop. You can’t refuel them in two minutes. They can catch fire, rip through tires because of the excessive weight, get written down near zero after a fender bender because the integrity of the battery is unknowable, experience software crashes worse than Windows 95, witness precipitous drop in miles per charge in cold weather, strain the grid, and bankrupt rental agencies because of all of the above. ref 34 Otherwise, they’re great! That leads to the ultimate question: where will we get all the green energy to power all those green cars? The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself. ~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt Biomass-Derived Energy. I’ve written about biomass before. its problems were vividly laid bare by, of all people, Michael Moore in his Planet of the Humans documentary. ref 35 Destroying the World’s arable soils so that you can drive your car is insane. Of course, the corn lobby will keep the ethanol subsidies coming much the way wool subsidies refuse to die. Otherwise, I sense the idea has already died on the vine. We built a heck of a lot of wind capacity in 2023 in the United States, but the actual amount of wind electricity produced went down simply because you have wind droughts. ref 36 ~ Dan Kish, energy economist, Institute for Energy Research (IER) Wind Turbines. Wind is close behind. Construction and disposal of wind turbines are environmentally brutal. The ornithologists detest the deaths of migratory birds while missing the possible benefits of catching them with nets to make raptor stews. Turbines turn pristine landscapes into eyesores. I used to fish off Wolf Island in the Saint Lawrence River. It is now a big wind farm. Next time you drive by a windfarm, count how many turbines are not turning. Wind turbines seem likely to follow biomass into the dustbin of history. If you want an interesting takedown, listen to this 4-minute riff on wind turbines in the show Landman . ref 37 Let’s shoot them with a few bullets anyway. Solar Power. Cradle-to-grave analyses of the efficacy of alternative energies require a detailed investigation of the overall cost, resource depletion, net energy cost after the consumption of fossil fuels have been accounted for, and all of the above when it comes time for the grave. Analyses by many including David MacKay, ref 43 , 44 , 45 whose work came highly recommended by energy security analyst Iddo Wernick, ref 46 have convinced me alternative “green” energies cannot replace fossil fuels. The incentives for those in the alternative energy industry to carry out such detailed analyses is akin to the incentives of Pfizer to find all the flaws in their drugs and vaccines. The problem of solar panel disposal will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment because it is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle. ref 47 ~ Forbes Hundreds of millions of solar panels are in service; most have a lifespan of under 30 years. Each year, their electric output drops by at least half a percent, and given enough time they must be replaced. Best I can tell, nobody has figured out how to solve the “intractable problem of hazardous waste disposal” ref 48 once the solar panels have gone to the light. I am by no means an expert, but this serves as a warning to eco-bliss-ninnies who embrace alternative energies without much thought. Developers who pocketed huge profits and are arguably responsible for them cradle-to-grave will be long gone when that grave part arrives. I am just topping off years of casual reading about energy, admittedly accruing wisdom incrementally: As Europe and the rest of the World get pounded by energy shortages, people may soon be begging for nuclear power plants in their backyards — NIMBY turns RIMBY (right in my backyard). ~ Dave Collum, 2023, cited In Gold We Trust Nuclear Energy. I have been confident for awhile now that nuclear power was going to return. It must return. The bombing of the Nordstream pipeline struck me as a trigger. Freezing a few asses off in a chilly Northern European winter would have the Germans begging for a plant in their backyards. That didn’t happen, but there emerged an urgent push for nuclear energy that came with little warning inside the Trojan Horse of AI. Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter. ~ Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Chips used for AI suck up 5–10x more power than standard CPU systems. ref 58 I call it a Trojan Horse because I believe the enthusiasm for AI is not just putting pressure to find better sources of energy. AI is being used to generate the “buzz” to get sign-off by the public on nuclear energy. I can imagine a future in which Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are the largest components in the XLE energy index. All the cool kids like Gates, Fink, Jensen, and Altman are on the bandwagon. Moreover, the timescales often cited are in years not decades. Something has changed. The big money is all in, which means nuclear energy is surging. I am playing catchup here, but the “next gen” or “second gen” small modular reactors (SMRs) can be mass produced. Our nuclear sub fleet illustrates the basic idea. Cost estimates are all over the map, but the wild variations appear to trace to regulatory uncertainties, which can be bulldozed if the mood is right. Energy whiz Doomberg did a back-of-the-envelope calculation showing that the footprint of a traditional reactor is Watch NBC Bay Area News 📺 Streaming free 24/7 Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Singh one of India's "most distinguished leaders" in a post on X. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party defeated Singh's Congress alliance in the 2014 elections and has been in power since. Singh was a "respected economist," Modi added, who left "a strong imprint" on India's economic policy. Before he became prime minister in 2004, Singh served as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 1982 and as minister of finance in 1991. As finance minister, he led a series of reforms that deregulated India's economy and opened the country to foreign investment. Facing an acute balance of payments crisis, then-Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Singh liberalized the economy that paved the way for its rapid expansion in the following decades. "History will forever honour his pivotal role in the transformative 1991 reforms that reshaped India and opened its doors to the world," wrote Gautam Adani, India's second-richest person and chairperson of Indian conglomerate Adani Group. Singh returned to politics in 2004 when a Congress-led coalition swept the elections, and party leader Sonia Gandhi appointed him prime minister. Under his tenure between 2004 and 2014, India's gross domestic product initially expanded rapidly, allowing Singh to deploy the new wealth to programs such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act , which guaranteed jobs for the poor. The later years of Singh's stint as prime minister were, however, marred by sclerotic growth, a stalling of reforms and allegations of corruption against certain members of the government. Singh played a pivotal role in strengthening India's ties with Washington, visiting the U.S. multiple times as prime minister. In 2006, when U.S. President George W. Bush visited India, Singh managed to broker a deal that gave India access to U.S. nuclear technology. "Dr. Singh was one of the greatest champions of the U.S.-India strategic partnership, and his work laid the foundation for much of what our countries have accomplished together in the past two decades," wrote the U.S. Department of State on Singh's passing. Apart from the U.S., Singh also strengthened India's ties with Russia. He was a regular attendee of the India-Russia Annual Summit, which began in 2000, and aims to deepen cooperation between the two countries and among BRIC nations. Russian Ambassador to India Denis Alipov said on X that "Dr Manmohan Singh's contribution to our bilateral ties was immeasurable."New York, NY, Dec. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NorthView Acquisition Corporation (Nasdaq: NVAC) (the “Company”) announced that it has received a notice (the “Notice”) from the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq”) indicating that (i) the Staff has determined that the Company’s securities will be delisted from The Nasdaq Stock Market; (ii) trading of the Company’s Common Stock, Rights, and Warrants will be suspended at the opening of business on December 27, 2024; and (iii) a Form 25-NSE will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), which will remove the Company’s securities from listing on The Nasdaq Stock Market. Pursuant to Nasdaq Listing Rule IM-5101-2, a special purpose acquisition company must complete one or more business combinations within 36 months of the effectiveness of its IPO registration statement. Since the Company failed to complete its initial business combination by December 20, 2024, the Company did not comply with IM-5101-2, and its securities are now subject to delisting. The Company will not appeal Nasdaq’s determination to delist the Company’s securities and accordingly, the Company’s securities will be suspended from trading on Nasdaq at the opening of business on December 27, 2024. The Company intends to apply for the listing of its securities on the OTC market under the same ticker symbols after they are delisted from Nasdaq. The delisting from Nasdaq does not affect the Company’s previously announced business combination with Profusa Inc., as both parties continue to work to effectuate the closing of the business combination. The merged entity will apply for listing of its securities on the Nasdaq Stock Market in connection with the closing of the business combination. The Company will remain a reporting entity under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, with respect to continued disclosure of financial and operational information. About NorthView Acquisition Corporation NorthView Acquisition Corporation is a blank check company incorporated in Delaware for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, stock purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains statements that constitute “forward-looking statements”. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company’s registration statement and final prospectus for the offering filed with the SEC. Copies are available on the SEC’s website, www.sec.gov . The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law. Company Contacts: Fred Knechtel Fredknechtel@hotmail.com (631) 987-8921If you want to wager on the Seahawks to defeat the Bears – or for Chicago to snap its lengthy skid and play spoiler – sportsbooks are giving great promos with loads of site credit and bonus bets available. Best sportsbook promos for Thursday Night Football FanDuel Sportsbook: Bet $5 Get $250 in Bonus Bets if Your Bet Wins DraftKings Sportsbook: Bet $5, Get $150 If Your Bet Wins Fanatics Sportsbook: Bet and Get up to $1000 No Sweat Bets BetMGM Sportsbook: Up to $1500 in Bonus Bets if your first bet loses Caesars Sportsbook: Bet $1, Double Your Winnings Your Next 10 Bet BetRivers Sportsbook: 2nd Chance Bet Up To $500 bet365 Sportsbook: Bet $5 & Get $150 in Bonus Bets Plus, just in time for the holidays, FanDuel Sportsbook is dialing up a great new-user promo for smart bettors. New players who sign up, deposit at least $5 then place a first wager of at least that amount will get $250 in bonus bets when their wager settles as a win. Users will get their bonus bets, which are paid out as a lump sum of site credit, immediately upon their wager settling as a win. 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But the Bears are 4-5 against that line over their nine-game losing streak and have dropped three straight by at least 17 points. We have seen teams who are fighting for their playoff lives blow games against eliminated squads with nothing to play for – especially going on the road across time zones on a short week. Plus, the Seahawks have dropped two straight. But the Bears have a hapless offense and a lame-duck interim head coach, which means the Seahawks should do enough to take care of business.
Luminar Bolsters Ranks with Tech Industry Leaders
Osisko Metals Corporate UpdateBOULDER, Colo. — A 72-year-old lifelong Colorado fan with end-stage kidney failure waited to the side of the field in his wheelchair for Travis Hunter and the rest of the Buffaloes. One by one, players strolled over and signed a football for Riley Rhoades, his face lighting up with each signature. Standing close by and taking in the scene was Jeremy Bloom. He's become a wish facilitator for older adults. Bloom, the former Colorado wide receiver and Olympic freestyle skier, started the Wish of a Lifetime foundation in 2008, which has made thousands of aspirations turn into reality for older adults. The list of granted wishes range from taking veterans back to the beaches of Normandy to helping late-in-life authors publish a book. He's staged concerts for musicians, assisted some in daredevil feats such as jumping out of an airplane and even lined up a meeting between an Olympic medalist and former President Barack Obama. For Rhoades, his wish was simply to return to Folsom Field again, the place where he used to have season tickets but hasn't attended a game since 2004. "Everybody has somebody in their life —a grandparent, friend, neighbor — at that age where you wish you had more resources to help," said Bloom, whose college career was cut short two decades ago when the NCAA denied his reinstatement to play football and still ski professionally after receiving endorsement money to fuel his Olympic dreams. "Nothing can compare to seeing someone else's eyes light up because you helped make their dream come true." Granting wishes The foundation is a tribute to his grandparents. But the concept began to take root when he was a teenager. He was in Japan for a World Cup freestyle skiing competition when a woman tried to hop on a crowded bus. There was no room, but everyone in front rose from their seats to make space. That stuck with him, along with seeing these acts of kindness for older adults all over Europe and Asia as he traveled. An idea formed — bring that same level of appreciation to the United States, with a wish-granting element. Bloom's organization has been a charitable affiliate of AARP since 2020. Special moment It was the yearning of Rhoades that brought the two of them to Folsom Field last weekend. Rhoades, who had season tickets at Colorado for 27 years, wanted to see the Buffaloes in person after watching the team's resurgence on television. A few years ago, Rhoades, who was born with spina bifida, was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure. Being among the 54,646 fans Saturday stirred up plenty of emotions for Rhoades, as he watched the 16th-ranked Buffaloes (8-2, 6-1 Big 12, No. 16 CFP) beat Utah. Colorado remains in the race for not only a conference title but a spot in the College Football Playoff. "It's just great to be back here again," Rhoades said as he pointed out the section where he used to watch games. "It's just ... so cool." For Bloom, the success that coach Deion Sanders has brought to the program means more reunions with teammates as they pass through town. "I've been through many years where nobody comes to visit," Bloom said. "It's fun that Boulder has become the epicenter of college football." Paying athletes Leading the way for Colorado this season have been quarterback Shedeur Sanders and two-way star Hunter, who's the Heisman Trophy frontrunner. But what particularly pleases Bloom is that Sanders, Hunter and the rest of college football players are able to finally profit through name, image and likeness. In his day, Bloom got caught in the NCAA crosshairs for wanting to play both sports and to have sponsors in one (skiing) so he could fund his Olympic aspirations. How time have changed. "I'm just really grateful that this generation of athletes gets to monetize their skills and ability," said Bloom, who finished sixth in moguls at the 2006 Winter Games in Italy. "It's the right thing." He's thrown his passion into fulfilling wishes such as learning ballet, riding in a Formula 1 pace car or taking a flight in a fighter jet. He's also helped reconnect families and friends, including a reunion for a trio of centenarian sisters who hadn't seen each other in more than a decade. This granted wish has stuck with Bloom: A person in Alabama wasn't able to travel after being diagnosed with end-of-life emphysema. So he asked for postcards to be sent, just to learn what made someone's town so special. He received 2,000 postcards from 26 different countries. "There's no end to the things that they've done for us in the world," Bloom said of older adults. "We're one of the organizations that reminds them that their dreams still do matter and that we still appreciate them and we cherish them."Upbound Group announced on Thursday its acquisition of financial technology company Brigit in a $460 million cash-and-stock agreement. This strategic move is supported by high-profile investors such as actor Ashton Kutcher and basketball star Kevin Durant, aligning with Upbound's goal to boost services for credit-poor consumers. The acquisition provides Upbound access to Brigit's data modeling and technology platform, facilitating the creation of more precise customer financial profiles. Brigit offers financial services, including cash advances and credit building, to nearly 2 million active monthly users through a digital app. The financial transaction includes a $325 million payment set for early 2025, predominantly in cash, with subsequent payments tied to performance targets. According to Upbound CEO Mitch Fadel, Brigit's profitable app promises immediate contribution to business and cross-selling opportunities, given the minimal customer overlap between the two firms. (With inputs from agencies.)JERUSALEM — A new round of Israeli airstrikes in Yemen on Thursday targeted the Houthi rebel-held capital and multiple ports, while the World Health Organization's director-general said the bombardment occurred nearby as he prepared to board a flight in Sanaa, with a crew member injured. "The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged," Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media. He added that he and U.N. colleagues were safe. "We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave," he said, without mentioning the source of the bombardment. U.N. spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay later said the injured person was with the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service. Israel's army later told The Associated Press it wasn't aware that the WHO chief or delegation were at the location in Yemen. Smoke rises Thursday from the area around the International Airport after an airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen. The Israeli strikes followed several days of Houthi launches setting off sirens in Israel. The Israeli military said in a statement it attacked infrastructure used by the Iran-backed Houthis at the international airport in Sanaa and ports in Hodeida, Al-Salif and Ras Qantib, along with power stations, claiming they were used to smuggle in Iranian weapons and for the entry of senior Iranian officials. Israel's military added it had "capabilities to strike very far from Israel's territory — precisely, powerfully, and repetitively." The strikes, carried out more than 1,000 miles from Jerusalem, came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "the Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad's regime and others learned" as his military has battled those more powerful proxies of Iran. The Houthi-controlled satellite channel al-Masirah reported multiple deaths and showed broken windows, collapsed ceilings and a bloodstained floor and vehicle. Iran's foreign ministry condemned the strikes. The U.S. military also targeted the Houthis in recent days. The U.N. says the targeted ports are important entryways for humanitarian aid for Yemen, the poorest Arab nation that plunged into a civil war in 2014. Over the weekend, 16 people were wounded when a Houthi missile hit a playground in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, while other missiles and drones were shot down. Last week, Israeli jets struck Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people, calling it a response to previous Houthi attacks. The Houthis also have been targeting shipping on the Red Sea corridor, calling it solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The U.N. Security Council has an emergency meeting Monday in response to an Israeli request that it condemn the Houthi attacks and Iran for supplying them weapons. Relatives and friends mourn over the bodies of five Palestinian journalists Thursday who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Meanwhile, an Israeli strike killed five Palestinian journalists outside a hospital in Gaza overnight, the territory's Health Ministry said. The strike hit a car outside Al-Awda Hospital in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The journalists worked for local news outlet Al-Quds Today, a television channel affiliated with the Islamic Jihad militant group. Islamic Jihad is a smaller and more extreme ally of Hamas and took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel that ignited the war. Israel's military identified four of the men as combat propagandists and said that intelligence, including a list of Islamic Jihad operatives found by soldiers in Gaza, confirmed that all five were affiliated with the group. Associated Press footage showed the incinerated shell of a van, with press markings visible on the back doors. The Committee to Protect Journalists says more than 130 Palestinian reporters have been killed since the start of the war. Israel hasn't allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza except on military embeds. Israel banned the pan-Arab Al Jazeera network and accuses six of its Gaza reporters of being militants. The Qatar-based broadcaster denies the allegations and accuses Israel of trying to silence its war coverage, which has focused heavily on civilian casualties from Israeli military operations. Mourners cry Thursday while they take the last look at the body of a relative, one of eight Palestinians killed, during their funeral in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. Separately, Israel's military said a 35-year-old reserve soldier was killed during fighting in central Gaza. A total of 389 soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the ground operation. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250. About 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israel's air and ground offensive has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry. It says more than half the fatalities are women and children, but doesn't say how many of the dead were fighters. The offensive caused widespread destruction and hunger and drove around 90% of the population of 2.3 million from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are packed into squalid camps along the coast, with little protection from the cold, wet winter. Also Thursday, people mourned eight Palestinians killed by Israeli military operations in and around Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The Israeli military said it opened fire after militants attacked soldiers, and it was aware of uninvolved civilians who were harmed in the raid. Get local news delivered to your inbox!
December 12 - Tetairoa McMillan, one of the best wide receivers in Arizona history, will skip his final year of eligibility and enter the 2025 NFL Draft, he announced on social media on Thursday. Projected as a top-10 draft pick, the 6-foot-5, 212-pound McMillan finished his illustrious career at Arizona with 3,423 receiving yards, breaking the mark set by Bobby Wade (3,351). In three seasons, the Hawaii native also posted the fourth-most catches (213) and third-most touchdowns (26) in school history. "Wildcat Nation, this journey has been everything I dreamed of and more," McMillan wrote on Instagram. "From the moment I committed to the University of Arizona, to every second spent wearing that Arizona jersey ... it's been an absolute honor. "The University of Arizona has provided me with the platform to grow and chase my dreams. ... Thank you from the bottom of my heart. To the best fans in the country, I appreciate you for all of the love and support you have given me these last 3 years. I will always be a Wildcat." In 2024, McMillan totaled 84 grabs (ninth in Division I) for 1,319 yards (third in Division I) and eight touchdowns for the 4-8 Wildcats. He also ranked third in Division I with 109.9 receiving yards per game. McMillan is a finalist for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the most outstanding receiver in college football. --Field Level Media Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tabChatGPT-maker OpenAI's ‘next big thing’ may have landed in trouble
The kind gesture of two National Democratic Congress (NDC) Members of Parliament-elect has earned the commendation of Ghanaians. As part of activities to mark the Boxing Day celebration, John Dumelo and Edem Agbana, the Members of Parliament-elect for the Ayawaso West Wuogon and the Ketu North Constituencies, have visited hospitals in the Ayawaso West Wuogon Constituency to help needy patients. The two young future lawmakers who are going to Parliament for the first time paid the medical bills for those in need. They also provided food to the patients. This was captured in a Facebook post by Accra-based Onua TV. The gesture of the duo has triggered massive discussions on social media, with many praising them for putting smiles on the faces of the less privileged in society. “The ordinary Ghanaian doesn’t need much but a little care and pampering and his or her little share of the National Cake and you are endeared to them. The act of compassion is the fundamentals of leadership. Congratulations to you Hon,” one person wrote. Great work, Hon. But seriously, Hon.John Dumelo, you are really doing great things. “I pray you become a great and powerful President one day,” another person added. The Ayawaso West Wuogon Contest Dumelo, who was running under the banner of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), secured a significant victory after a fierce campaign that captivated both young and old voters alike. His win marks a major achievement in his political career, after his first attempt in 2020, when he narrowly lost to the NPP’s Mrs. Lydia Alhassan. In the final results, John Dumelo garnered 47,560 votes, defeating Mrs. Lydia Alhassan, who secured 39,214 votes, a margin that demonstrates growing support for Dumelo’s vision for the constituency. Source link https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid026BUzdSYbqqmchU6b63tyQY7fg5ZW7rJFWtQg9R4i2YfyRzeh1Hm696HCkDLeSW36l&id=100043366522994&mibextid=ZbWKwL Remember to like, comment, share, and follow for more updates.WASHINGTON — Drivers and airline passengers without reindeer and sleighs better make a dash for it: it's beginning to look like another record for holiday travel in the U.S. The auto club AAA predicts that more than 119 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home between Saturday and New Year’s Day, which would top the previous holiday-season high set in 2019. The two weekends on either side of Christmas look to be some of the most crowded times on the road and at airports. Trade group Airlines for America also foresees record travel , saying it expected U.S. airlines to carry 54 million passengers during a 19-day period that started Thursday and ends Monday, Jan. 6. The number would represent a 6% increase over last year. A government shutdown that could start as soon as Saturday would likely be too close to the holidays to immediately affect flights and airport operations, but that might change if a shutdown dragged on. Airlines expect to have their busiest days on Friday and Sunday, and on Dec. 26, Dec. 27 and Dec. 29. Flight traffic is expected to be light on both Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The slowest U.S. air-travel day this year — by a wide margin — was Thanksgiving Day. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million passengers over the holidays and through January 2. About 90% of Americans traveling far from home over the holidays will be in cars, according to AAA. “Airline travel is just really high right now, but most people do drive to their destinations, and that is true for every holiday,” AAA spokesperson Aixa Diaz said. Gasoline prices are similar to last year. The nationwide average Thursday was $3.05 a gallon, down from $3.08 a year ago, according to AAA. Charging an electric vehicle averages just under 35 cents per per kilowatt hour, but varies by state. Transportation-data firm INRIX says travel times on the nation’s highways could be up to 30% longer than normal over the holidays, with Sunday expected to see the heaviest traffic. Boston, New York City, Seattle and Washington, D.C., are the metropolitan areas primed for the greatest delays, according to the company. Because the holiday travel period lasts weeks, airports and airlines typically have smaller peak days than they do during the rush around Thanksgiving, but the grind of one hectic day followed by another takes a toll on flight crews. And any hiccups — a winter storm or a computer outage — can snowball into massive disruptions. That is how Southwest Airlines stranded 2 million travelers in December 2022, and Delta Air Lines suffered a smaller but significant meltdown after a worldwide technology outage in July caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Many flights during the holidays are sold out, which makes cancellations even more disruptive than during slower periods. That is especially true for smaller budget airlines that have fewer flights and fewer options for rebooking passengers. Only the largest airlines, including American, Delta and United, have “interline agreements” that let them put stranded customers on another carrier's flights. This will be the first holiday season since a Transportation Department rule took effect that requires airlines to give customers an automatic cash refund for a canceled or significantly delayed flight. Most air travelers were already eligible for refunds, but they often had to request them. Passengers still can ask to get rebooked, which is often a better option than a refund during peak travel periods. That's because finding a last-minute flight on another airline yourself tends to be very expensive. “When they rebook you, they will pay for the fare difference. If my flight to visit grandma that I booked six months ago for $200 gets canceled, and I turn around and book a flight four hours from now for $400, I have to pay that difference,” said Sally French, a travel expert at consumer-affairs company Nerdwallet. People traveling on budget airlines with fewer flights and no partnerships with other carriers may face a difficult choice in the event of a canceled flight . “They will put you on the next outgoing Spirit or Frontier flight, but that could be a while from now. Sometimes waiting three days for that next flight is not going to work for you," and paying more to rebook on a big airline might be worthwhile, French said. Some airlines are taking advantage of a provision in the new Transportation Department rule that defined a significant delay as three hours for a domestic flight and six hours for an international flight. According to Brett Snyder, who runs the Cranky Flyer website, airlines that previously issued refunds for shorter delays — Delta, United and JetBlue, for example — are now using the government standard. Delayed flights increase the risk that bags will get lost. Passengers who get separated from their bags should report it to the airline and ask what the airline will cover. Links to the customer-service plans of major U.S. airlines are at the bottom of this page . A government shutdown could occur if Congress doesn’t pass a funding bill with a midnight Friday deadline . Most TSA workers at airports, air traffic controllers and customs agents are considered essential and would be required to work without pay in the event of a shutdown. More uncompensated workers might call out sick the longer a shutdown lasts, which could lead to longer security lines and other delays. That appeared to be the case several weeks into a government shutdown that started in December 2019. "While our personnel have prepared to handle high volumes of travelers and ensure safe travel, an extended shutdown could mean longer wait times at airports,” TSA spokesman Carter Langston said in a statement. AAA advises travelers to “continue with their holiday plans, even if the shutdown materializes,” spokesperson Diaz said. “Airport operations will continue as normal, but perhaps run a bit slower than usual, so travelers should be aware of that.” Airline fares were up 4.7% in November, compared with a year earlier, according to U.S. government figures. But early 2025 is a good time to start planning next year's trips, including for spring breaks and summer vacations. “Because travel is so popular, you're not going to find anything that feels very rock-bottom, but January and February are great times to plan for March, April and May,” Laura Motta, an editor at travel-guide publisher Lonely Planet, said. “If you want to go to Paris in the spring, you need to be thinking about that in January." ___ AP Reporters Mae Anderson in Nashville, Tennessee, and Mike Pesoli in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
The No. 3 Texas Longhorns (9-1) face a fellow SEC opponent when they host the Kentucky Wildcats (4-6) on Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024 at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium. What channel is Texas vs. Kentucky on? What time is Texas vs. Kentucky? Texas and Kentucky play at 3:30 p.m. ET. Texas vs. Kentucky betting odds, lines, spread Odds courtesy of BetMGM Texas schedule Kentucky schedule This content was created for Gannett using technology provided by Data Skrive.
The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and for many it will rapidly pass in a flurry of shopping, gift wrapping and, maybe, snow. But The Daily Progress is reminding the greater Charlottesville community that some things are here to stay. One of them is the Santa Fund for Schoolkids, the Christmastime charitable campaign that The Daily Progress has run since 1894 and is marking its 130th anniversary this year. The Santa Fund is one of the oldest newspaper-run charities in the entire U.S., if not the oldest. Established by founding publisher James H. Lindsay two years after the newspaper’s first edition, the Santa Fund collects donations every year to provide vouchers for local families to purchase the essentials their children need but too often go without. “Much has fortunately changed since the Lindsay family founded The Daily Progress in 1892 and established the Santa Fund two years later. But much unfortunately remains the same,” said editor of The Daily Progress Reynolds Hutchins. “Too many of our children see Christmas come and go without even the bare essentials: shoes, socks, glasses, coats, books and medicine.” Hutchins “Any child who goes wanting is one child too many, and in our corner of Virginia, 12.6% of the population lives below the poverty line,” he continued. Today, the Santa Fund is a joint collaboration between Charlottesville’s newspaper of record, radio station WINA and the United Way of Greater Charlottesville. The trio work together to serve children in need across Charlottesville and the surrounding counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson and Orange. They have raised roughly $4 million since that partnership was forged. Till “As we mark 130 years of the Santa Fund’s extraordinary legacy, we are reminded of the profound impact the campaign has had on the lives of schoolchildren in the Charlottesville area,” said Daily Progress publisher Kelly Till. “This is more than a campaign – it’s a commitment to our communities’ future.” Last year, the Santa Fund raised $199,135.05. While falling short of its $250,000 target — in a year marked by a precipitous drop in charitable giving nationwide — the fund still managed to assist more than 1,700 children. This year’s target is $225,000. It’s an ambitious goal, but one that Ravi Respeto, president of the local United Way chapter, believes is achievable. Respeto “It has been a program that has always raised money for itself, because it’s so popular and it’s been in our community for so long,” Respeto told The Daily Progress. “Families really look forward to contributing to this program. Also, people love to make a gift in memory or in honor of those people or pets that are really meaningful to them.” Financial contributions ranging from $50 to $75,000 will fund one-time vouchers distributed to the parents or caretakers of children in need, who are identified by teachers, guidance counselors and other school officials. Families can then use the vouchers to shop at one of several participating retailers, including Kid-to-Kid, Marshalls, Shoe Show and TJ Maxx. The store sends the receipt to the United Way for reimbursement, and all the while, the children are entirely unaware they are the beneficiary of any charity. “It’s a pretty seamless program; it doesn’t make a child feel like they have a special circumstance or they don’t even realize that their family, their parents, can’t afford those things,” said Respeto. “It kind of gives the family an easy way to address the needs of their children without it feeling like they’re being singled out.” While the charitable initiative is focused on meeting some of the basic needs for children in the area, the broader priority is on improving their early education experience. “A kid doesn’t just need a coat in December, he needs shoes in March,” Markiana Smith, the local United Way’s engagement and belonging manager, told The Daily Progress. “We understand that kids cannot learn if they don’t have the resources to learn, so I take this as a step in the right direction to early education.” Smith Smith is in charge of operating the Santa Fund, which provides assistance year round. But the holiday season is the busiest for Smith, whose responsibilities include opening, reading and transcribing the hundreds of heartwarming notes attached to every donation to the fund, often made in honor of family, friends, neighbors, pets and heroes. Last year, a $500 donation was made “in honor of the USPS letter carriers delivering for your in spite of trying conditions,” while another $52.50 gift was contributed “in memory of Tigger the tiger cat, every kid deserves a coat.” “These great little notes that are just out there for people in the community to realize that we’re only as strong as our community is strong,” said Respeto. “[The] fabric of community is built by people coming together and pulling the resources, and that’s what Santa Fund represents.” This “warm and fuzzy dynamic” that becomes palpable among the donors, organizers and recipients of the Santa Fund is part of what has allowed the charitable campaign to continue raising hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for well over a century, according to Respeto. Hutchins agreed. “That this charity has raised $4 million since The Daily Progress partnered with the United Way of Greater Charlottesville is admirable,” said Hutchins. “That this charity has not just survived but thrived for 130 years is remarkable. There is evidence this may be the oldest newspaper-run charity in the entire country. That is not only a testament to the good work of The Daily Progress and the United Way, but the good hearts in our community.” Those interested in donating can do so online at thesantafund.org or via the post by mailing a check to Santa Fund for Schoolkids, 200 Garrett St., Suite I, Charlottesville, VA 22902. This year, for the first time ever in honor of the fund’s 130th anniversary, the names of donors will be published in The Daily Progress and every one of its subsidiary newspapers in Central Virginia, including the Orange County Review, the Greene County Record, the Madison County Eagle and the Rural Virginian. “The days are shorter, colder and harder for all of us. I know how easy it is to see the numbers at the gas pump, to read the bank statement, to watch the stock ticker rise and fall, and then draw the purse strings tight,” said Hutchins. “But I beseech our readers, our neighbors, to remember that we only make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. “Let us honor Christmas in our hearts as its founder, himself a child, instructed us, ‘Give. ... For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.’” Emily Hemphill (540) 855-0362 ehemphill@dailyprogress.com @EmilyHemphill06 on X Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. 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Avior Wealth Management LLC increased its holdings in shares of First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF ( NASDAQ:FTQI – Free Report ) by 32.7% during the third quarter, Holdings Channel reports. The fund owned 17,672 shares of the company’s stock after purchasing an additional 4,354 shares during the period. Avior Wealth Management LLC’s holdings in First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF were worth $362,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the business. Fifth Third Securities Inc. acquired a new position in shares of First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF during the second quarter worth approximately $3,814,000. TrueMark Investments LLC bought a new position in First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF in the 2nd quarter valued at $3,353,000. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC boosted its position in First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF by 951.3% in the 2nd quarter. Commonwealth Equity Services LLC now owns 125,394 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,561,000 after buying an additional 113,467 shares during the last quarter. Ameritas Advisory Services LLC raised its position in shares of First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF by 102.9% during the second quarter. Ameritas Advisory Services LLC now owns 218,058 shares of the company’s stock worth $4,453,000 after acquiring an additional 110,613 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Cetera Investment Advisers lifted its stake in shares of First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF by 357.6% during the first quarter. Cetera Investment Advisers now owns 98,956 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,033,000 after acquiring an additional 77,330 shares during the period. First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF Stock Up 0.6 % Shares of FTQI stock opened at $20.89 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $482.56 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.15 and a beta of 0.52. First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF has a 12 month low of $18.23 and a 12 month high of $21.18. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $20.60 and a 200 day moving average price of $20.36. First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF Dividend Announcement First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF Company Profile ( Free Report ) The First Trust Nasdaq BuyWrite Income ETF (FTQI) is an exchange-traded fund that mostly invests in large cap equity. The fund is an actively-managed portfolio of US stocks, with an options overlay of short calls on the Nasdaq 100. FTQI was launched on Jan 6, 2014 and is managed by First Trust. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding FTQI? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF ( NASDAQ:FTQI – Free Report ). Receive News & Ratings for First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for First Trust NASDAQ BuyWrite Income ETF and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .
Revolutionary Transparent Antenna with Ultra-Thin Copper Circuit Technology SEOUL, South Korea , Dec. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- CIT Co. Ltd., a leading startup in advanced materials, has been awarded the CES 2025 Innovation Award in the Vehicle Tech & Advanced Mobility category for its revolutionary transparent antenna, "Dolphin." Inspired by a dolphin's ability to detect a wide range of frequencies, Dolphin represents a groundbreaking innovation in the field, supporting the broadest range of frequencies among transparent antennas. Meeting the Needs of Next-Generation Vehicles The automotive industry is rapidly transforming with autonomous driving technologies and the rise of Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs), often described as "smartphones on wheels." These advancements demand fast and reliable data transmission, yet existing transparent antennas are limited in frequency range and application. CIT's Dolphin addresses these challenges with a design that combines unparalleled performance and flexibility. Dolphin operates across six frequency bands, from L-band to K-band, and supports frequencies up to 20 GHz, making it uniquely suited for 5G communication. Its exceptional frequency coverage significantly surpasses that of conventional antennas, meeting the needs of modern connected vehicles. Transparency and Sustainability at Its Core Dolphin achieves an extraordinary 90% transparency using ultra-thin copper circuits less than 10 nanometers thick—1,000 times thinner than a human hair. This innovative design ensures the antenna is virtually invisible when integrated into car windows or other glass surfaces. In contrast, traditional antennas rely on copper circuits 5 to 10 micrometers thick, which cannot match Dolphin's sleek and flexible design. In line with CIT's commitment to sustainability, Dolphin is manufactured using recycled copper wires, reducing its carbon footprint to just 1/1000th of that of traditional antennas. This eco-friendly approach supports CIT's goal of environmentally responsible production. Expanding Applications Beyond Vehicles Dolphin's potential extends far beyond automotive applications. It can be utilized in smart building windows, streetlights, and bus stop glass panels, enabling innovative solutions for urban infrastructure. Additionally, CIT's advanced material technology has been applied to create transparent displays. These displays use ultra-thin copper circuits that are invisible to the human eye, delivering a clear and seamless viewing experience. Transparent displays are increasingly popular in digital signage, exhibition halls, commercial spaces, and transportation systems such as cars, buses, and trains. Showcasing Innovation at CES 2025 CIT will present its award-winning transparent antenna, Dolphin, alongside its transparent display technology at CES 2025 in Las Vegas . Visitors can experience these innovations firsthand at the Venetian Expo, Halls A-D, Booth #50769. For additional details about CIT's CES 2025 Innovation Award-winning transparent antenna, Dolphin, visit CIT's Innovation Award Site. To learn more about Dolphin's groundbreaking technology and applications, watch the product introduction video: Discover Dolphin. About CIT CIT is a leading advanced materials startup founded in 2023. Since its foundation, the company has been growing quickly and steadily, specializing in innovative materials like low-dielectric FCCL (Flexible Copper Clad Laminate), transparent antennas, and transparent displays. These advanced products are used in industries such as automotive, smart buildings, and AR/VR technology. CIT has earned recognition for its innovative technology by winning major awards, including the CES 2025 Innovation Award, the FLY ASIA Advanced Manufacturing Award (2024), and the Public Technology Commercialization Innovation Award (2024). The company also focuses on sustainability by using recycled copper wires to manufacture its products, reducing carbon emissions to 1/1000 of traditional methods. By collaborating with global companies, CIT is working to bring its groundbreaking products to market and striving to become a global leader in advanced materials for next-generation technologies. View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cit-wins-ces-2025-innovation-award-for-transparent-antenna-302339322.html SOURCE CIT Co. Ltd.
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