You won't regret adding these bras to your life

Adding to the essentials in your wardrobe is never done in singularity. You can never own only one t-shirt or pair of jeans. The same goes with cotton bras. They are worn day in and day out, so it's only natural for you to own them in pairs, triplets or even more. Cotton is a breathable fabric for lingerie and when you find a bra that's comfortable and supportive enough, what should you do? Buy an entire pack of them, of course. That way, you can ensure your lingerie collection is filled with pieces that work well for you.

Grab these cotton bra packs right away - you'll regret it if you don't.

The bras included in this 6-piece set are made of poly cotton material, do not have padding or wires and come in 6 muted solid toned shades of oranges, browns and purples.

The bra pack of 3 pieces are seamless, non-wired and made of stretchable cotton fabric in pink, blue and grey.

The pack of 3 cotton sports bras have a camisole pattern with narrow straps in front and cutout horizontal strap designbehind.

The pack includes 6 bras of hosiery cotton material. They come in a mix of colour blocked shades with a contrasting panel below the cup and S-shaped adjustable straps.

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Grab These Cotton Bra Packs Because Owning One Is Never Enough - NDTV Swirlster

Published on July 20th, 2020 | by Chanan Bos

Tesla has announced that its earnings call for shareholders will take place on July 22 at 2:30pm PST/5:30pm EST. While it might not be the most important investor call in the history of Tesla for the success of its mission, it for sure could be considered the most important investor call in Teslas history in terms of the stock market, as the outcome could decide whether Tesla enters the S&P 500.

As always, CleanTechnica will be there to stream it live with all the bells and whistles you have come to expect from our previous livestreams, and maybe even some new ones. Here is the link to our livestream, and its also embedded below. Just make sure to click that Set reminder button, and if you havent already subscribed to our channel, we recommend it. We will also be publishing an article tomorrow with all the analysts that might show up on the call, so keep an eye out for that, as its a critical report for anyone who owns shares or is interested in the company, and no one else publishes anything comparable.

Tags: Tesla, Tesla financials, Tesla S&P 500, Tesla stock

Chanan Bos Chanan grew up in a multicultural, multi-lingual environment that often gives him a unique perspective on a variety of topics. He is always in thought about big picture topics like AI, quantum physics, philosophy, Universal Basic Income, climate change, sci-fi concepts like the singularity, misinformation, and the list goes on. Currently, he is studying creative media & technology but already has diplomas in environmental sciences as well as business & management. His goal is to discourage linear thinking, bias, and confirmation bias whilst encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and helping people understand exponential progress. Chanan is very worried about his future and the future of humanity. That is why he has a tremendous admiration for Elon Musk and his companies, foremost because of their missions, philosophy, and intent to help humanity and its future. He sees Tesla as one of the few companies that can help us save ourselves from climate change.

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Tesla Q2 Earnings Call On July 22 Heres The Best Way To Watch It (Not Just Listen) - CleanTechnica

"The 1619 Project" from The New York Times refers to the year that the first enslaved people were brought to the U.S. and looks at how slavery continues to shape every aspect of American culture.

When it was first published last August, the magazine created a sensation, and this past May, "The 1619 Project" won a Pulitzer Prize. Now, Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate have teamed up with creator Nikole Hannah-Jones to bring the work to an even wider audience through multiple platforms.

"The 1619 Project" continues to resonate during ongoing Black Lives Matter protests because it contributes to the lexicon of how America reached this current period of racial reckoning, Hannah-Jones says.

"I think it has allowed many Americans, particularly white Americans, to connect dots that they werent connecting before," she says, "that this police violence and inequality, that these arent just unrelated incidents, but have a long and deep legacy that has to be confronted."

The project is also inspiring changes to school history curriculums in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Buffalo, New York. This marks the latest push for more accuracy in American history textbooks, which have been under scrutiny for being "highly politicized" and embodying a "nationalistic agenda," Hannah-Jones says.

Teaching a history "that speaks to American exceptionalism" downplays the role of slavery, she says, and "all of the other ways that America has not lived up to those ideals of exceptionalism."

"That has robbed Americans of the ability to properly assess their country and why things are like they are," she says.

What many parents have recognized is that "The 1619 Project" offers a counter to that narrative, which Hannah-Jones hopes will prompt people to question other narratives in U.S. history.

"There are many different stories that really need to be told so that we can have a fuller version of the American project," she says, "and not just one that seeks to glorify us, but really one that seeks to challenge us."

On if this period of racial reckoning will lead to reparations

"I dont think that there is enough of an appetite for it right now. I just was looking at some polling on this yesterday and it showed among white Democrats so, you know, the party that the vast majority of Black Americans vote for that only about 30% of white Democrats support the idea of reparations. So clearly, there is a lot of work to do on that. But at the same time, I think, again, its related to the work of 'The 1619 Project.' There is such a visceral response that many of white Americans have to the idea of reparations, and I think thats really based on the fact that they actually have no understanding of this history. They have no understanding of the singularity of Black suffering, of the dragnet of laws and policies that have created the generational disadvantage that Black Americans face. And part of what I try to do with my piece on 'What Is Owed' is really lay that history out and really show that there is nothing that Black Americans can do on our own to erase a 350-year system of racial segregation and economic exploitation.

"So no, were not ready for that yet. But part of the work that Im doing and that so many others are doing is trying to move that conversation forward so that we can maybe get to the point where we can be serious about addressing that. And we have seen movement. So when you look at the fact that in ... the Democratic primary debates, reparations was treated as a serious question by journalists and by people on that stage. Five years ago, you wouldnt have seen that. When you look at H.R.40, which is the bill to study the issue of reparations, its been introduced every year for 30 years and has never made it out of committee. But a few years ago, it had just three co-sponsors. Now it has well over 100 co-sponsors. So we are seeing some traction, and like many things, when it comes to racial justice, its a decades long struggle, not a months, a years-long struggle."

On the racial reckoning also happening in newsrooms

"Yeah, I think there is a reckoning happening right now. And of course, when you are a Black journalist, youve never bought into this idea that your identity is unrelated to your coverage. And weve known that thats not true for ourselves, and weve certainly known that thats not true for white journalists either. Of course, white journalists identity in a white-dominated society plays a role in how they cover stories, what they choose to cover and what they dont.

"So its always been interesting to me that our role as journalists is to explain the world to itself. And so here we are reporting on these national reckonings a racial reckoning is happening across all of these different institutions and all of these different organizations and private companies yet we dont fully understand this ourselves, and we have not dealt with these issues ourselves. So how can we explain to the world that which we dont fully understand? So I think this is a very interesting time that were in where Black journalists are speaking out and are really pushing our news organizations in a public way, which is more unusual. And I hope that the only reckoning that comes out of this time of protests, that it also comes to our industry as well. If we see ourselves as really the linchpin, the free press as a lynchpin of democracy, then we have to democratize our own institutions."

On if she is optimistic that this moment will lead to change

"No. No, Im not. I think Im realistic, and realistically, if you study history, then you know that massive transformation is very rare and only comes after very sustained periods of resistance, and then it never fully transforms society and is often faced by a backlash and a retrenchment. So Im already looking at how little news coverage the protests are getting, how little coverage were seeing in media around if theres actually going to be police reforms or not. Were already seeing this narrative because of a rise in shootings that, you know, we cant defund police because look at all this violence in these communities. So I think that what were fighting against is so deeply entrenched that its hard to be hopeful that were going to see that real necessary transformation. With that said, I am hopeful that people will keep fighting, because even if we dont think that were going to see that, we are, I think, obligated to fight for it."

Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Tinku Ray. Samantha Raphelson adapted it for the web.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

The rest is here:

Bringing The Pulitzer Prize-Winning '1619 Project' To A Wider Audience - WFAE

(Delphian)

THE performances by adventurous and original chamber quartet The Hermes Experiment were a stand-out of Matthew Whitesides The Night With . . . concerts in Glasgows Hug & Pint and elsewhere, in a season that was full of highlights. This debut album was recorded, for Scotlands dynamic Delphian label, in Edinburghs Greyfriars Kirk over three days in October of last year, and it will surely be representing Delphian, alongside guitarist Sean Shibes Bach set, on many best of lists come the end of this one.

There are many startling things about The Hermes Experiment, beginning with the groups line-up of soprano voice, clarinet, harp and double bass, which blends so well its singularity ceases to be relevant.

Nonetheless, commissioning new music has necessarily been central to the experiment, and ten of the 60 pieces written for them over the past six years are included here, alongside examples of the skills of the players themselves in arranging works for their particular combination of instruments.

That latter category includes bassist Marianne Schofields treatment of Anna Merediths Fin like a Flower, one of the shorter tracks, alongside the two by Emily Hall that give the disc arresting ways to start and finish.

Freya Waley Cohens We Phoenician Sailors, Josephine Stephensons Monteverdi companion-piece Between the war and you and Giles Swaynes Chansons devotes et poissonneuses are more substantial, and there are fine contributions from the catalogues of Errollyn Wallen and Misha Mullov-Abbado as well.

Crucially, however, it all sounds of a piece, and that is down to the collective, with Oliver Pashley on clarinets and Anne Denholms harp, in which frontwoman and vocalist Heloise Werner has no monopoly on exuding an irresistible charm.

KEITH BRUCE

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'Adventurous and startling' Album review: The Hermes Experiment, Here We Are - HeraldScotland

The Dior Men designer joins fashion's favorite masked cowboy to discuss ego, David Bowie, and finding queerness in country music

Canadian musician Orville Peck and British fashion designer Kim Jones are singular talents, but in their singularity lies a profound connection: Both have established their careers by pushing against the grain, drawing inspiration from a countercultural, and often counterintuitive, approach to established ideas. Joness fanboy appreciation of punk and queer subcultures, and his extensive travels to Africa in his youth, have blossomed into one of the most distinctive talents in fashion. After earning his spurs revitalizing the staid British luxury brand Dunhill, where he was hired in 2008 as the first creative director in the companys history, Jones set about electrifying Louis Vuitton with his refined streetwear aesthetic. His focus on collaborationincluding with BritArt bad boys Jake and Dinos Chapman and, more spectacularly, James Jebbia at Supremehelped change the parameters of luxury fashion. Hes now doing thatand moreas creative director of Dior Men, using his obsessive and completist approach to pop culture as a springboard for a deep dive into the brands history. Not for nothing did the industry journal Business of Fashion exclaim, in a review of Diors Fall 2020 collection, The Future is Now at Dior. Jones has paid tribute to the brands extraordinary lineage through creative directors past including Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, and John Galliano, while injecting it with his enormous enthusiasm for contemporary culture. Its not only his collaborations with Kaws, Raymond Pettibon, Daniel Arsham, and Shawn Stussy that have marked his still-fresh tenure at the brand, but also his ardent appreciation for music, particularly in his ongoing work with DJ Honey Dijon, who develops the soundtracks for his shows.

Given all that, its hardly surprising that Jones was drawn to the pseudonymous singer-songwriter Orville Peck who has co-opted country music as a soundscape for his playful meditations on gay identity and desire. On the lush ballad, Turn to Hate, for example, Peck croons about heartache like the gorgeous offspring of a union between Roy Orbison and Lloyd Cole. Like Jones, what makes Peck exciting is the broad palate of influences that elevate his work into a league of its own. You can hear his early enthusiasm for punk in his debut album, Pony, but you also hear his love of camp, his fierce understanding of theater and performance, and an abiding love for country musics torch song tradition. For Document the two artists got together to talk about the beauty of collaboration, the enduring legacy of David Bowie, and Pecks head-turning Dior moment in Miami last December.

Jacket and pants by Dior Men PF20. Boots Orvilles own.

Orville Peck: Thank you for waiting. I just scratched my eyeball last night, and I woke up with a crazy inflamed eye. So I had to go to the doctor this morning, and it took forever because Americayou know how it is.

Kim Jones: Where are you?

Orville: Im in LA.

Kim: Youre skyrocketing at the moment, arent you?

Orville: [Laughs] Its so bizarre.

Kim: Yes, but you should enjoy it.

Aaron Hicklin: How did you come to work together?

Kim: I heard Orvilles music and found the album and put it on repeat and really admired his approach in terms of image and the music. So I contacted him because when I admire someones work, I like to work with them.

Orville: It came through really casually. I remember thinking it was fake at first. I was completely flattered and excited and thrilled by it. As a musician, Ive never really been involved in the fashion world, but Ive been a fan of it my whole life and, lets be honest, Dior is not too bad.

Kim: We met up in London and then worked out how many different connections we had.

Orville: It speaks a lot to who you are, Kim, as well. Everybody loves working and dealing with you because when you like something, it doesnt matter if its approved across the board, or if its even going to be advantageous to you. Youre the kind of person who reaches out and wants to work with people who inspire you, and I think its reciprocated.

Kim: If I like a persons work, I think its important to support it, especially in this day and age when everything gets segregated. To build a community of talented people who inspire people is important.

Aaron: Kim, youve referred to the role of the fashion designer in many ways being not dissimilar to the pop star. Music and fashion are handmaidens; they go together. I wonder if youve given much thought to where that comes from? Does music give rise to how you dress or does how you dress give rise to your musical taste?

Kim: I think it used to. Everything has blended together now. Subcultures have become more homogenized, just because of people seeing things. And when you see someone doing something on their own, distinct from the crowd, you pay attention to it, which is what Orville has done.

Orville: The older Ive gotten, the more I think of art with a capital A. For me that includes music, fashion, visual art, cinema. All of those things feed and inspire me to create. Whether thats a song or a look, I think those things go hand in hand. I think about an artist like David Bowie, who was a musician first and foremost, but he created so much more art than you could ever just call music.

Kim: He was an inspiration to a huge generation of people, and still is. When you think about how forward-thinking and shocking that must have been to the world. I was very lucky to have worked with him before he died, and he was absolutely the sweetest. He had all these books piled up. There was a massive pile of [cinematographer] Derek Jarman books and [British playwright] Joe Orton books. He was reading about all these different things, and telling me about when hed come up with different ideas, and how. It was mind-blowing.

Aaron: What is the relationship between musical mentors and heroes and your understanding of yourselves? What was it that helped you understand your evolving identities when you were younger?

Orville: The best creators, in any medium, draw inspiration from different places. My music is definitely inspired by fashion and cinema. Everyone has their personal mood board in their head. I grew up listening to punk and obviously country. It makes sense to find inspiration from all those different places. If you have a taste level, that has to be fed by interesting things. Youre not going to find that purely in your medium.

Kim: Yeah, the thing for me is that my eyes are always open; I cant not look at stuff. I like doing different things all the time. Thats probably why Im good at fashion, because Im on to the next thing straight away, hopefully not in a superficial way. I like to be moving forward always.

Orville: I think evolution is such an important part of being an artist because you understand that evolution is a crucial part of art.

Aaron: Kim, youre well known for collaboration and really valuing the exchange of ideas with artists as part of your creative process.

Kim: I collaborate with a studio full of people, and I respect their tastes, their ideas, and they know what I want. Youre the maestro leading an orchestra, so to speak, when you work in these big companies. Its not about sitting down and doing everything by yourself because thats not a feasible thing now. I like working with different people with different ideas. Its a conversationit makes me think of things in different ways.

Orville: I came out of a place where collaborating was a necessity because you couldnt do it alone. I would have to reach out and work with people. I come from a world of everybody making something out of nothing together. I have really tried to keep that collaborative spirit through my career, even though its not a necessity anymore. Ego and stubbornness kill art. I have no time for them, so I love collaborating on a creative level, a visual level, a sonic level. I love meeting someone who I can continue collaborating with because building those relationships, thats where magic happens, at least historically. Sometimes it comes out of an unlikely pairing, which I like even more.

Orville Peck wears jacket and coat by Dior Men PF20. Custom hat (worn throughout) by Dior Men. Ring Orvilles own.

Kim: I like things to feel authentic. Its not because its someone cool and I want to use them, it comes from respect and loving what they do.

Orville: I think it really shows in the diverse people you have around you. Its not even just fashion peopleif anything, fashion people feel like theyre in the minority, and that really speaks to who you are. When I was at [your show in] Miami, I sat next to the Kardashians, and Travis Scott and James Blake and David Beckham and Detox were there, such an incredible group of diverse people, and its really a testament to your collaborative nature and the fact that its how you like to work.

Kim: At the end of the day, theyre my friends, you know? I get blown away by that sometimes. Its actually funny thinking about music. Honey Dijons my main collaborator in music. Ive known Honey since 2001. We bonded because Im really into music, and Im into collecting club memorabilia. I dont think Ive kept everything, but Im a hoarder. I was thinking of all the people Ive worked with, like Giorgio Moroder, Nile Rodgers, Drake, Michael Stipe, Diplo, A-Trakyou know, its a privilege to be able to do that.

Aaron: Orville mentioned that theres no place for ego in the creative process. The New York Times said about Kim that he is a designer who never aspired to have his initials on his clothes. Orville, your presentation seems designed to sublimate your ego to your craft. Does that make your creativity more fruitful?

Orville: Its not that ego doesnt creep into my lifeI think for everybody, its something to keep in checkbut especially someone like me, who doesnt have loads of self-confidence, to be honest, I have to fake a bit of an ego to give me a bit of a boost at some point. But I would rather have the work speak for me. When youre passionate and confident in what youre making, and you have a vision, the idea of desperately trying to validate yourself through it becomes secondary because youre so focused on something that youre passionate about because you love it.

Kim: I just wish Id been as clever as you and worn a mask from day one so I could have some privacy! Thats a stroke of genius: Youre anonymous, but youre famous, and thats a weird thing to be.

Orville: Its definitely a little bit of comfort.

Kim: Im sure you get some stalkers who see you out and about and recognize your tattoos.

Orville: It happens more these days than not, but its fine.

A lot of the themes in classic country were about loneliness and disappointment and heartbreak and isolation, so it made complete sense that country music would appeal to a gay audience even more so than to a well-adjusted straight white man.

Aaron: Can we talk about the Dior pieces that Orville wore as part of the F/W Dior Collection?

Kim: It was the cowboy version of Dior, with the beaded fringing on the mask. It was fun to do just for one person. Even the fringe boots are a luxury for me because I dont really do that very often.

Orville: Ive always been so flattered and grateful that Kim respects that I have a certain look, and I think the kind of genius of it is that instead of trying to figure out how to work that, he just knows thats my aesthetic. And he does Dior for me, and it looks and works like a perfect collaboration.

Aaron: Orville, youve talked about the challenge of being a gay country musicianthe bullying and the discrediting that you have to deal with. How do you use your craft to disrupt the conventional associations we make with country music?

Orville: Sadly, to be quite honest, like any genre, if you go far enough to the top, its generally dominated by old white straight men, like most things in this world. But country, particularly, has been associated with very little diversity through the years. Its funny because I grew up loving country music, and I was always obsessed with cowboys. I grew up in Africa actuallyKim and I have that connection as well. My connection to cowboys was very pastiche; the idea of a cowboy was the Lone Ranger. A lot of the themes in classic country were about loneliness and disappointment and heartbreak and isolation, so it made complete sense that country music would appeal to a gay audience even more so than to a well-adjusted straight white man, which is a funny stigma about country. Its this really heartbreaking music that should be made for people whove experienced those things, and thats what I connected to when I was younger. When I knew I wanted to be a country musician, I wanted to portray that connection with country music that I had growing up. I saw that there was something missing from it, and when you see something missing, its usually good to jump in.

Aaron: Kim, growing up in Africa was a seminal thing for you in terms of your aesthetic, and the way you perceive dress and color.

Kim: Im so grateful for that experience. It made me realize and appreciate that all over the world, everyone was very different. One thing that my father really instilled within me is that everyones equal. It doesnt matter about money; it doesnt matter about skin color. You have to be around different people. So my group of friends was a real mix of all these different people. And then my love of nature. One of the most amazing powerful images was in Ethiopia, seeing these super tall people wearing all this jewelry, and with these amazing wraps around them, and then these huge Kalashnikov machine guns. Just seeing that and thinking, Wow, these are the coolest people you are ever going to see.

Orville: Kims hit the nail on the head. I feel so proud and grateful to have grown up there. You experience so much culture and life that I think a lot of people in the West dont necessarily get to. The nature element is a really big one. I feel so clearly connected to the natural world around me, and I dont think of myself as separate from that, whereas a lot of the mentality in the West is that nature is something to look at rather than to be a part of. Kim and I have that in common. Oftentimes, we will send each other pictures of animals because both of us love wildlife so much, and I attribute that to our upbringing.

Aaron: Which animals did you send to each other?

Kim: It was a possum last time. Orville put it on Instagram, so we got talking about different marsupials.

Orville: Kim sent me some sharks recently.

Aaron: Kim, as well as your love of animals, youre a collector of books.

Kim: The books Im collecting right now are related to the Bloomsbury set, particularly Virginia Woolf. They lived their lives the way they wanted to live them in a time when it wasnt really possible, and yet they were still respectable in society. My two favorite books are both copies of Orlando: One is inscribed to [Woolfs lover and subject of Orlando] Vita Sackville-West by Virginia, and Vita has written in it as well. Then, I have a copy inscribed to [Woolfs sister] Vanessa Bell, inscribed from your slave and sister. Im very into stuff like that, of historic importance.

Orville: I love hearing Kim talk about things that he likes because he gets so into it. I think its so important these days because a lot of art is made from a place by people who arent fans of other things. You have to be a fan of art to make it, and its actually less prevalent than it should be.

Kim: When Im at home, Im like a librarian, organizing everything, rearranging books until theyre perfect. My friend came over to help me, and I said, People must wonder what a designers life is like, and there I am in my pajamas on a Saturday night organizing books.

Stylist Assistant Myles Xavier. Photographed at the New York EDITION.

Original post:

Kim Jones and Orville Peck talk art with a capital A - Document Journal

Map of the Soul: 7 held a few gems for BTS fans. That includes a subunit comprised of singers Jimin and V, and their song together, titled Friends. Heres what V and Jimin had to say about their subunit and what set them apart from other members of their K-pop group, BTS.

When BTS released Map of the Soul: 7 during 2020, it held a few surprises for fans. There were solo songs from rappers Suga and J-Hope and even songs from subunits within the K-pop group, like Suga and RM who collaborated on the song Respect.

One of the other subunits featured singers in the group, V and Jimin. Together, they named their team 95s and dropped a song together featured on Map of the Soul: 7, Friends. It became a favorite among BTS fans, earning millions of streams in a matter of days.

Friends touched on V and Jimins life together even before they were in BTS. The two actually went to school together and although theyll sometimes fight like brothers, as the lyrics state, theyre soulmates and theyll always be there together.

Their subunit nickname, 95s, actually is a nod to the year they were both born. When asked what set V and Jimins group apart from the other BTS members during a YouTube video, V answered, They dont have members of the same age.

Thats true, Jimin continued, speaking about 95s. Other subunits dont have members of the same age and I think our team feels more relaxed than others. We always look happy, bright.

Technically, Jimin and V released the song Graduation together, which discussed their time together at school. That song was never officially added to a BTS album, though. That means after seven years of performing with BTS, Friends is the first time Jimin and V released a song as an official subunit.

I liked it because it wasnt predictable, it was so original, V said. He further elaborated, saying that he would definitely collaborate with Jimin on future projects.

Aside from their duet on Friends, both V and Jimin have their own solo songs with BTS. For V, that includes Singularity off of Love Yourself: Answer. For Jimin that means Serendipity off of Love Yourself: Answer.

Fans can see BTS perform live during their Map of the Soul world tour, which has since been postponed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Music by BTS, including the single Stay Gold and Map of the Soul: 7, is available for streaming on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

RELATED: Is Jungkook the Last BTS Member to Create a Solo Song? Heres What We Know About Still With You and the Mixtapes of These K-Pop Idols

RELATED: Jimin From BTS Finally Puts the Dumpling Incident, Mentioned During The Late Late Show With James Corden, to Rest

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V and Jimin of BTS Nicknamed Their Subunit "95s" for 1 Obvious Reason - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

When many of us hear the acronym MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), we think of top-level scientists working on something diabolical you know, like in the movies. Naturally, a billionaire villain of vague origins is trying to get his hands on it, but then Tom Cruise swoops in and saves the day. Now, were not saying that MIT arent dangerously exploring technological singularity, robot astronauts or whatever the next step in technology might be, but the truth is that the American research universitys work extends well beyond what Hollywood has fed us including eradicating poverty.

This has been the goal of MITs Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) since its launch in 2003. As part of that goal, J-PAL is set to launch a new research centre at the American University in Cairo as an entry point to the Middle East. What the centre aims to do is innovate research and policy engagement, with the ultimate goal of reducing poverty in the region. The centre intends to do this by focusing on three areas: research designed to inform high-level decision-making; policy engagement with governments, NGOs and other organisations to bridge the gap between research and policy decisions; and professional training to build evidence-informed policymaking across the region. It all sounds pretty lofty, but when you break it down, it all comes down to a sort-of greasing of the wheels in a field that is forever complicated by its very nature a filler and connector of gaps in the fight against poverty in the region.

J-PAL have worked in collaboration with AUC before, but what a dedicated centre in the heart of the region does is dial up the urgency and trigger change from within.

For 15 years, our offices have forged close partnerships with governments, NGOs and foundations, Iqbal Dhaliwal, Global Executive Director of J-PAL, said. With the launch of J-PAL MENA, I am thrilled that we will have a permanent home in the region and deepen our work with partners in Egypt and MENA.

Originally posted here:

MIT to Launch Research Centre at AUC as Part of Ongoing Work to Fight Poverty in the Middle East - CairoScene

AI is being widely applied to speed up the search for new drugs and new materials that could dramatically improve critical technologies like batteries and solar panels. Most of this work is done in simulation or by trawling through databases, though, and a lot of science still requires work in the lab.

Robots are helping on that front as laboratory automation becomes increasingly prevalent, making high-throughput experiments possible in many different domains. But equipment tends to be tailored to very specific kinds of experiments and still requires considerable oversight by humans.

Now though, researchers at the University of Liverpool in the UK have created a mobile robot that can carry out experiments using standard lab equipment designed for humans and can make decisions on the fly about what experiments it should do next based on its previous results.

Our strategy here was to automate the researcher, rather than the instruments, project leader Andrew Cooper said in a press release. This creates a level of flexibility that will change both the way we work and the problems we can tackle.

The 400 kilogram wheeled system moves about the lab guided by LIDAR laser scanners and has an industrial robotic arm made by German firm Kuka that it uses to carry out tasks like weighing out solids, dispensing liquids, removing air from the vessel, and interacting with other pieces of equipment.

In a paper in Nature, the team describes how they put the device to work trying to find catalysts that speed up reactions that use light to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. To do this, the robot used a search algorithm to decide how to combine a variety of different chemicals and updated its plans based on the results of previous experiments.

The robot carried out 688 experiments over 8 days, working for 172 out of 192 hours, and at the end it had found a catalyst that produced hydrogen 6 times faster than the one it started out with.

Cooper points out to The Verge that this kind of research would normally not get done because its simply too time-consuming for a human to do. But by working around the clock the team predicts the robot can carry out the research roughly 1,000 times faster, opening up new avenues of research previously out of reach.

This isnt the first time researchers have automated the scientific process. A group at MIT built a robot that drags objects through water, observes the flows and vortexes this produces, and then intelligently analyzes the results to decide alterations to the setup to fine-tune the experiment.

Another at the University of British Columbia is using a robotic arm combined with AI to create and test thin films for use in solar panels.

The big difference with this new robot scientist is its generality. Almost all efforts to automate lab work involve static implementations and are hardwired into specific bits of equipment, Cooper told Chemistry World. In contrast, the new system is able to interact with equipment the same way a human would, and it can move around the lab, which should make it possible to adapt for all kinds of applications.

Its creators have launched a startup call Mobotix, which Cooper told The Verge will provide a range of different robots of varying capabilities within 18 months. He also told Chemistry World he envisages the robots eventually being able to analyze the scientific literature to better guide their experiments.

If everything goes to plan it may not be long before an army of robot scientists catapults us into a new age of exponential progress.

Image Credit: Cooper Group, University of Liverpool

Excerpt from:

This Robotic Chemist Does Over 600 Experiments a Week and Learns From Its Own Work - Singularity Hub

Purely personal accounts give languagewhatever Woolf might sayto the weird, woozy semi-reality of fevers, pain, exhaustion, nausea, and more. Image: By a sickbed, Michael Ancher

Illness has often been described as a landscape of sorts. In Virginia Woolfs essay On Being Ill she writes of undiscovered countries and the terrible wastes and deserts of the soul brought to light by a slight attack of influenza. Charles Lambs The Convalescent and William Hazlitts The Sick-Chamber respectively (and gloomily) deem illness a prison and a dull place where the folding-doors of the imagination remain closed. In Hilary Mantels Meeting the Devil, a mesmerizing description of the authors hallucinatory time recovering in hospital from major surgery, she recounts her first night flighted by morphine [thinking] that my bed had grown as wide as the world.

Meanwhile, Alan Garners powerful essay The Edge of the Ceiling dwells on his touch-and-go experience of three serious illnesses as a young child. Confined to his bed during each bout of illness, the younger Garner escapes his own painful physical limits by willing himself out of his body and floating up into the childhood bedroom ceiling above him. To him, it is a fully realized terrain containing a forest with hills, and clouds, and a road to the horizon. Garners imagined landscaperemembered vividly by the adult writeroffers temporary reprieve to a boy with endless time and nothing to do but endure his own sickness. Memories exist of another geography too: that of the plaster in his parents ceiling, forming itself into the ominous shape of a plump little old woman with a circular face. Each time the young Garner witnesses this face he becomes keenly aware of his mortality, his illness taking him close to the edge. Each time though, he rallied. I was too angry to die, Garner remembers uneasily.

All of these writers delineate their own version of what Susan Sontag refers to in Illness as Metaphor as the division between kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. The latter, the night-side of life, is one, Sontag writes, that all of us are obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of. In the kingdom of the sick, illness is experienced as a wide and unpredictable vista: both expanding far beyond and hemmed in by the edges of a bed, forming a space in which time, reality, and sensation all waver. It is a kingdom, however, that requires careful consideration. Sontags book is primarily concerned with how clichs and metaphoric thinking cloud our understanding of illness as it actually is.

***

I have thought a lot about these essays in recent months, compelled by their various attempts to relate the odd, horizontal experience of sickness. For as long as people have been getting ill, they have been trying to put the experience of illness into words. Woolf mawkishly complains of a paucity of language in which to do so; Mantel, in direct riposte, lists a vocabulary of singing aches, of spasms, of strictures, and aches, tartly concluding that no ones pain is so special that the devils dictionary of anguish has not anticipated it. At a time when illness feels acutely present in all our lives, there may be solace found in reading accounts of those who have previously risen to the tricky business of articulating serious pain and discomfort.

In a way, there is some consolation in reading these accountsif only to appreciate the vivid singularity of each experience. Perspectives change. Bodies become alien. Death and other forms of uncertainty linger close at hand.

But something in them feels strangely distant too. Many of these essays read as definitive journeys with return tickets. In them the author ventures into the kingdom of the sick, is stuck there for a while, and then leaves again, perhaps bearing a new memento or two: insight; a scar; fresh gratitude for being able to stand upright. This journey requires the fixed certainty of a normal world to return to. It is this well world that stands ready to welcome these adventurers back when they recover. Even for those like Mantel, who concludes that needing more surgery, I am not sure what kind of story Im in, the story is still one in which that well world continues to whir as usual outside the sick room, waiting for her.

It is difficult to find present parallels with these narratives. Right now, illness is not just an individualized experience but a mass occurrence. One that makes it so much harder to draw any clear divisions between the well and sick. Some of the sick are symptomless, carrying around a virus that leaves them unharmed but can potentially kill others who cross their path. Various symptoms are still unclear or have only recently been added to official guidance. Over the past few months, fear and grief have become entwined with so many aspects of daily life: fear of becoming ill or watching loved ones become ill; grief at what has happened, and continues to happen, to countless individuals and families, perhaps including our own.

Theres no real normality awaiting the recovered either. Despite the move towards easing out of lockdown, much of what we previously took for granted remains just as uncertain. With so many usual aspects of life still currently turned upside downtouch, crowds, workplaces, education, restaurants, travel, forward planning, proximity to strangers, groups gathering for parties, weddings, funerals, festivalsits not just the terrain of illness that has transformed, but everything else beyond it.

None of this is necessarily unique to coronavirus, even if this pandemic feels uniquely bewildering in scale. Nor is it entirely unexplored territory for writers. For every description of illness with a beginning, middle and ending, there is another that refuses narrative closure. In recent years a spate of medical memoirsPorochista Khakpours Sick, Sinad Gleesons Constellations, and Anne Boyers The Undying among themhave signalled a shift towards approaching illness not from the safe, removed vantage point of the well, but as something more complicated, that extends into quotidian life.

Khakpours memoir, which dwells on her diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease, traces the ongoing challenges of chronic illness. In the epilogue she pithily compares The Book I Sold a narrative promised to her publishers about the personal triumph of a woman who got herself betterwith the actuality of accepting that illness will be with you as long as life is with you. Gleesons essay collection, too, focuses on the lifelong ramifications of ill health, including a major hip operation in her teens and a diagnosis of leukemia at the age of 28. Early on she describes herself as an accumulation of sleepless nights and hospital days, writing about these experiences not as a wholly distant vista but something that continues to inform numerous aspects of who she is now.

Boyers The Undying is especially bracing. At once sprawling and tightly focused, her book ostensibly figures as an account of her diagnosis and treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. But Boyer is not interested in standardor solitarynarrative paths. Instead she writes of her illness not just an individually experienced phenomena, but as something located within a specific nexus of capitalism, gender, language, medical history, the US healthcare system, and the lineage of those who have died before her. Echoing Sontags desire to investigate the punitive or sentimental fantasies surrounding sickness, Boyer rails against a culture in which the narrative spoils go to victors: she writes critically about our celebrations of those who have beaten breast cancer and can tell a story of surviving via individual self-managementthe narrative [one] of the atomized individual done right.

Boyer argues instead for sickness as something that exists in the social body, collectively produced and widely experienced with our ability to treat and respond to it mediated largely by money. Here the world does not ebb away during illness but remains firmly present, dictating difficult decisions over work, and access to treatment; who lives and dies, and to whom who care falls. The echoes found in current conversations are stark, especially when she lists some of the main systems medicine interlocks with: family race work gender education.

***

Relentlessly probing and politically excoriating, Boyer still offers something hopeful among her fragmented reflections: a practical kind of solidarity. Everyone who is not sick now has been sick or will be sick soon, Boyer writes: This is why I tried to write down pains leaky democracies, the shared vistas of the terribly felt. In illuminating those vistas she connects her experience to a constellation of others, creating what Lauren Berlant deems a commons of suffering: attentive to the singularity of each unwell experience, but also refusing the idea of illness as something wholly lonely, or held solely in any one individual body.

Perhaps both types of writing have their uses right now. Purely personal accounts give languagewhatever Woolf might sayto the weird, woozy semi-reality of fevers, pain, exhaustion, nausea, and more. They accurately and sometimes startlingly capture passage into the realm of the unwell, and reflect on their findings.

But one needs those like Boyer too, reminding us not just of the precariousness of these passages, but the way illness has always existed both individually and collectively: intensely personal, expansively wide-ranging, existing within the context of numerous communities and systems. At a point when all usual definitions of normality and sickness are still up in the air, this recognition doesnt provide much concrete comfortbut it perhaps offers another way of approaching the uncertain landscape we now find ourselves living in.

Read more:

Beyond the kingdom of the sick: What literature teaches us about illness - Prospect Magazine

Takashi Takeuchi draws poster for 34th issue, Scthach gets original manga story

The Fate/Grand Order Fes. 2020 event might be canceled due to COVID-19, but the popular smartphone game is celebrating its 5th anniversary with five new projects in collaboration with Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine, as follows:

Aniplex released the Fate/Grand Order smartphone game in Japan in summer 2015. The game received an English release in the United States and Canada in June 2017.

The game has inspired various anime adaptations. Fate/Grand Order Shinsei Entaku Ryiki Camelot: Wandering: Agateram, the first film in a two-part project, will open on August 15. The game is also inspiring the upcoming Fate/Grand Order Final Singularity - Grand Temple of Time: Solomon (Fate/Grand Order -Kyshoku Tokuiten Kani Jikan Shinden Solomon-) anime.

Sources: Weekly Shonen Magazine, Comic Natalie

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Fate/Grand Order Celebrates 5th Anniversary with Weekly Shonen Magazine - Anime News Network

John Hagel has more than 40 years of experience as a management consultant, author, speaker, and entrepreneur, and has helped companies improve their performance by effectively applying new generations of technology to reshape business strategies.

Hagel currently serves as co-chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, which conducts original research into emerging business opportunities that should be on the CEO's agenda but they're not yet on their agenda. Before joining Deloitte, Hagel was an independent consultant and author. From 1984 to 2000, he was a principal at McKinsey & Co., where he was a leader of the Strategy Practice. Hagel is the founder of two Silicon Valley startups Hagel is also the author of a series of best-selling business books, including his most recent book, The Power of Pull. Hagel is on the faculty of Singularity University in the Corporate Innovation department.

John Hagel is a management consultant and author who specializes in helping executives to anticipate and address emerging business opportunities and challenges. Hagel has spent over 40 years in Silicon Valley.

To help us better understand the future of business model innovation, the importance of trust, and the psychology of a growth mindset,Ray Wang, CEO and founder of a Silicon Valley-based advisory firmConstellation Research, and I invited John Hagel to join our weekly showDisrupTV.Here are my 10 main takeaways of our conversation with John Hagel.

The return of Infomediary - John Hagel created the term 'Infomediary' 20 years ago -- short for 'information intermediary'. Customers would increasingly need a trust third party or personal agent to act on their behalf to help get more value from data about themselves. Three factors are shaping the infomediary opportunity according to Hagel: 1. customers are gaining power and visibility into options and becoming more demanding of services from companies, 2. digital technology is making it easier to capture and share information, and 3. customers are facing more choices of new products and services. The growth of the Internet and digital networks led to the need of having trusted data brokers. Hagel reminded us that artificial intelligence is quite stupid without data. If AI doesn't have data, it is useless. The problem is not scarcity of data, but scarcity of trust. Trust is eroding in our institutions. In the absence of trust, you are not willing to share your data. Hagel believes that companies that will prevail in this world, and create the most value, are the ones who manage to rebuild trust with customers. People will share their data with companies that they trust most, when the companies demonstrate that they can develop value for their stakeholders. The more you can demonstrate tangible value based on the data that you provide, the more likely to establish long-lasting relationships - a virtuous cycle of creating value with mutual benefits to all.

Trust is about people and we need to treat trust holistically. Hagel reminds us that trust is about people. Hagel also talked about the shift in the nature of trust. In the past, trust was about skill. Today, the focus of trust shifts from skill to will. The changing needs and evolution of skills is now about your ability to stay teachable - your willingness to learn and adapt. Hagel uses a pyramid model to describe the layers of trust. "To build deep trust with others, we're going to have cultivate multiple layers of trust, with each layer building on the layer(s) underneath it," Hagel. The trust pyramid has four layers:

"Rebuilding trust in our institutions is an imperative. To succeed in this challenge, we need to address trust holistically. We need to recognize that the foundations of trust are shifting and that many layers of trust will need to be cultivated. We also need to address the opportunity to strengthen trust by connecting people into impact groups, so that they can become even more excited about the opportunity to deliver impact that matters to others. It's ultimately all about people, finding ways to move beyond short-term transactions and instead build deeper and enduring relationships that can help all to achieve more of their potential." -- John Hagel

There are no experts of tomorrow. The label of expert is more suspect in a world of constant and accelerating change. The erosion of trust is also based on experts struggling themselves in terms of guiding us towards the future. Expertise is based on skill and experience from the past. What matters is excitement and passion for exploring, while maintaining humility and a beginner's mindset.

The bigger question is not 'how do we drive mindset?' but rather 'how do we drive the heartset?' We have to focus on the emotions of what is driving people, behaviors, and actions. Hagel emphasizes the importance of focusing less on credentials and skills and more about what motivates and excites people to achieve more.

Cultivate the passion of the explorer. Growth of fear is now the dominant emotion around the world. How can leaders help move us from fear to hope and excitement? Hagel talks about the growing need to find and cultivate the passion of the explorer to achieve far more of our potential. Hagel advises executives to look inwards and go to the level of emotions. The mark of a strong leader is to get things done. But remarkable leaders are willing to show vulnerability and recognize the real presence of fear or uncertainty. Hagel studies extreme performance and found common elements in those environments. All the high performing leaders had passion about their work. They also had real fears. But because of their passion, they were able to overcome their fears, moving from mounting pressures to expanding opportunities.

The three elements of passion for an explorer: Long-term commitment to a specific domain and impact, questing disposition, and connecting dispositions. " Explorers can realize their full potential in their chosen domain and contribute more value to the enterprise," said Hagel. What are the key attributes of passion? "Passion is all about commitment to personal improvement. Passion is all about connecting with and developing, one's own capabilities. Passion and engagement are not the same things.

The two key dispositions, or orientations towards action, define the domain of passion:

The best teachers are lifelong students. I agree with Hagel, the smartest people that I know all share a passion of an explorer. Hagel also talked about companies focused on worker engagement. But how many companies are measuring and cultivating worker passion? Engagement means do you like what you do, do you like the people you work with and do you like your company. A passionate worker is thrilled about facing opportunities to change and grow.

A shift from scalable efficiency to scalable learning is the key to relevance and growth.Automation has to be more than just reducing the workforce and reducing costs. Automation is about scalable efficiency. Hagel believes we must change the jobs of the worker to create more value. The routine tasks can be automated. Passionate workers in the right environment can create value but this requires a change in institutional models. The key is to shift from scalable efficiency to scalable learning. In a rapidly changing world, institutions must further invest in training and upskilling their existing employees. The most powerful learning is the creation of new knowledge - not learning in training programs that are sharing existing knowledge - in the working environment, through action, addressing unseen problems and opportunities. The models of efficiency and learning are at odds with each other.

The lifeblood of your business is based on flows, not silos. Silo mentality is about capturing resources, protecting resources, and then extracting as much value from said resources (knowledge, budgets, headcount, market share, etc). In a rapidly changing world, it is all about how do you participate in a greater set of knowledge flows so that you can learn faster. I believe speed to value defines relevance which leads to growth. I also believe that to achieve optimal speed and minimum friction, institutions, and people must design an environment for optimal movement.

How we respond to mounting pressure will determine our path to success. Hagel said that one way to face mounting pressure is to reduce our time horizon. When we shrink our time horizons we begin to adopt a fixed view of the world. The battle for resources leads to a win-lose mindset. The scarcity versus abundance mindset leads to loss of trust. This is the main reason we need to move from a fear mindset to one that is driven by purpose, passion, and the love of exploration.

Focus is not about doing less. Focus is about doing more of what matters most. Hagel reminds us that when you find work that brings you joy, it is easier to respond to mounting pressures. Hagel is working on his 8th book right now. The book is about Hagel's research over the past 40 years and the notion that business success is less about strategy and more about psychology. How do we move from fear to hope and excitement? What is the journey and the tools that we need to find the passion of the explorer?

I highly recommend you watch the entire video conversation with John Hagel. Hagel is a brilliant thought leader and he shares incredible insights throughout our conversation.

See original here:

Successful digital business transformation is a shift in mindset and heartset - ZDNet

For the last six weeks, EVE Online has been under siege by an extradimensional enemy known as the Triglavians. Recently, players were asked to join alongside the Triglavians and help them gain a foothold in the EVE universe. Many players accepted this challenge and fought alongside the alien invaders against the NPC empires and against fellow players. With the start of Zenith, the third quarterly update for EVE, the results of this invasion will begin to show.

In a late May update, EVE players were given the choice to side with the invaders or to drive them back into the abyss they originated from. In the weeks since, many battles have been fought in dozens of star systems, involving tens of thousands of players, with several key victories being earned by each side. Where the defenders won, the Triglavians were forced away and the systems were locked against them, preventing further incursions.

However, in areas where the Triglavians and their player allies were victorious, mysterious space stations began to appear in orbit around stars. These stations began to transform those stars, changing their appearance and causing space in their proximity to take on different characteristics, similar to what players have seen inside Abyssal Deadspace, the Triglavians home. An additional effect of the star systems being conquered by Triglavian forces has been the creation of automated defensive structures guarding the entrances to the solar system. These automated turrets make short work of players attempting to enter the system who dont have sufficient positive standing with the Triglavians, which is earned by helping them in their quest for conquest.

In the trailer for the Zenith release, a massive, ring-like structure can be seen being created by the Triglavians. It seems to have a singularity inside of it, which is similar to the graphical effect of the Triglavian weapon systems. The popular theory from many players is that the final fate of the stars in the centre of Triglavian-controlled territories is to be collapsed into singularities and used to power further Triglavian activities in the areas. There is no telling what effect Triglavian control of the stars could have on the EVE universe.

In addition to the ongoing storyline elements being deployed with Zenith, a new feature will be added to the game by way of a special event. A major overhaul is transforming the current Abyssal Proving Ground feature, which is currently only used by a small group of EVE players, into a way for players to find instant PVP action. Players can use special items to launch themselves into an arena where they will be pitted against other pilots in a deathmatch style contest. The winner of the fights will be tracked on a leaderboard visible by the entire game, and rewards will be handed out to players based on their standings at the end of the Zenith quadrant.

These battles will rotate through different scenarios on a weekly basis, with each scenario changing the type of ships allowed, the number of players allowed into the arena, and whether or not players can bring teams in. The first three formats have been announced, with more, scheduled to last through October, remaining a mystery.

This feature offers a way for players to find combat action and short session gameplay. Players will no longer have to roam the stars for hours to find people to fight with, only to either return empty handed or run into a fleet that is much larger than their own and die. Additionally, with the cancellation of the Alliance Tournament years ago, players who enjoy structured battle for prizes have been missing that element of the game. The Abyssal Proving Grounds offer a new platform for CCP- and possibly even player-run tournaments to happen within the game, and could make these organised tournaments a possibility again.

The Zenith quadrant launches today with both the next stage of the Triglavian Invasion and the Abyssal Proving Grounds, with more content releases coming through the third quarter of the year. 2020, while pretty much a dumpster fire, is nevertheless shaping up to be one of the most exciting years of EVEs recent history.

Read more:

The Next Stage Of EVE Onlines Alien Invasion Is Here - Kotaku Australia

Written by Suvir Saran | Updated: July 12, 2020 10:13:58 am Through my articles and images I hope to make you ask questions more than find answers. (Source: Suvir Saran)

Each of us is born unique, into a moment in time that is altogether different even from the births in our own nuclear set that predate or post-date ours. This physical singularity is a requisite, yet it can be of no consequence. Character, individuality, personality, selfhood these are our own markers and definitions. These are the traits that showcase our true uniqueness.The society we are born into, the home that gives us our playground to come of age, the schools we study at, the friends we find in our early years, the habits we form these are defining markers, too. Imprints associated with us until the completion of our journey. These early associations are most lasting in their informing powers. They never lose their grip on our psyche. Consciously or subconsciously, willingly or as puppets, we come back to them as guiding lights. Not always to our benefit.

Often to our detriment. Habits have that phenomenon. Peculiarities that bring out unfortunate results. Our memories of food are such an association. They are deeply polarising. Our first impressions of certain tastes and dishes can keep us from ever being able to accept healthier versions. When presented with two choices of the same dish one made with honest and simple ingredients, fresh and seasonal, and the other made with horrid analogous products the quality of the food will not sway our gustatory memory to accept the better version. Our taste buds are overruled by the lasting impact of those early culinary impressions.

Lifestyle choices can make or break us. They are the key to being mindful and sustainable. Often the choices we make today will haunt us for our entire lifespan. Action today can influence outcomes decades later. Bits and bites we nosh on today can bite us with poor health tomorrow, or save us through healthier outcomes. Chasing fads and diets, getting lost in the rat race that is the darker side of capitalism/materialism and a market-driven economy can steal our mojo from us. Material wealth is as fleeting as the happiness and comforts it brings. Vanishing as easily as vapour. Leaving us as broken pieces of ourselves. Hard to piece together and harder still to please with each fad indulged in mindlessly.

In a world at odds with itself, aimless mindlessness is celebrated and perpetuated by 24x7x365 marketing campaigns. Profiteering by numbing the minds of masses. Questioning and thinking, reflecting and meditating these are the essentials we seem to have forgotten. Indulgences that ought to be more frequently indulged. Keeping a journal, meditating in the celebration of quietude, walking alone to wrestle with cathartic questions. Investing in a handful of honest and true friendships these are the gems that help and heal.

Travel can help us overcome many of the biases even about food that life teaches us in our journey from birth to adulthood. Travel helps us open our eyes and broaden our horizons. It teaches us to think beyond the comforting sameness of our familial and familiar grounds. Taking us to the unfamiliar far far away, it helps us find union with our inner self. Discovery of the other brings us closer to our shared humanity. Exploring adventures, we have a greater chance of discovering ourselves. By travelling far and wide, we get the chance to fulfil our souls cry of becoming one with the other.I left home at 18 to go to Mumbai for the study of commercial arts at the Sir JJ School of Art. Two years later, after leaving for New York City to further my studies at the School of Visual Arts, I found myself embracing difference and diversity.

I encountered the hustle and bustle of urban sprawls and independence at a tender age. Food memories, my familys open table, and my parents unflinching love and support of one and all that showed up at our home were my calling card in cities very foreign to my roots. They provided me an entry into circles that might have been impossible to break into otherwise. They brought me friends, fans and admirers at an age when I could have been odd as a person, and at odds with life. My upbringing and my taste buds became solid anchors providing for me in more ways than one. I became a retailer, a consultant, a cooking teacher, then a caterer, and, the next thing I knew, a chef. Later, a restaurateur, a farmer, an author, a photographer. And who knows whats next.

I have now come full circle, back to Delhi, to my familys support and open table. Ive returned with experience and an abundance of blessings, friendships, and wisdom. Ive come hungry to grow and hone my skills in the motherland, eager to repay the debt I owe to my fortuitous heritage. In Slice of Life, every fortnight in these pages, and weekly online, my hope is that, together, we explore the nuances of life and living. Through my articles and images I hope to make you ask questions more than find answers. In questions we discover the route needed to get deeper into our own selves. In the inner sanctum of our being, we find answers that have been most elusive.

Suvir Saran is a chef, author, educator and world traveller

The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines

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How our experiences of life, love and food make us who we are - The Indian Express

What does the term digital transformation mean to you?

Before Covid-19, digital transformation was merely a long-term aspiration for many businesses planning to introduce more technology namely software and virtualisation into their operations. But then everything changed.

Following the lock-down, businesses of all shapes and sizes have been forced to digitise aspects of their operations in order to continue servicing their customers and keep their employees connected. For example, schools have introduced online studying, restaurants have shifted to online businesses, and banks have transitioned to remote sales.

Digital transformation has become a priority for all businesses as they look to keep pace with the demands of their customers and create more flexible, cost-effective operating models. There will be no going back to the world we had known before.

There is also a confluence of technologies that is powering digital transformation. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is steadily underway and encouraging cloud adoption to keep pace with technologys rapid change. McKinsey estimates AI can deliver global economic activity of around $13 trillion by 2030. By 2023, the worldwide number of IoT-connected devices is predicted to increase to 43 billion.

As Covid-19 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution collide, IT organisations will have to transform their business to compete. But what constitutes digital transformation? I believe there is an 80:20 rule to follow that will help businesses embrace digital, as follows:

Also, businesses must consider the fail fast and elevate success concepts. The ability to experiment rapidly and fail fast to solve business problems is key to innovation.

Digital adoption requires a greater focus on organisational culture and investing in upskilling employees with a continuous learning mindset. The introduction of digital technologies, like AI and machine learning, do not in any way mean that humans role in the business value chain is diminished. They will have to learn how to apply creative thinking to the data that can be generated from these technologies. They will also have to learn to operate the technology in different environments.

Businesses need to take note of new methodologies like DevOps, technologies such as microservices, and journeys like cloud migration. These are areas that will ensure business agility, preparing the workforce for the next significant evolution to the way they operate.

According to research from Amdocs, consumers are using new digital channels more than ever due to Covid-19. For example, 30 per cent of U.S. consumers are using remote work for the first time, 32 per cent are taking advantage of new online food or grocery services, 29 per cent are trying new media and subscription services.

Keeping a close eye on new digital frontiers and creating unique ecosystems of offerings for consumers will be critical moving forward. This also creates new revenue streams and business models that will be at the centre of our digital future. Partnerships will be meaningful here, as well as hyper-personalisation thats synced across customer-facing channels.

To support advanced business operations, IT organisations worldwide must embark on transformation journeys centred on the cloud and the flexibility that this infrastructure brings. The move to cloud will also be critical for businesses as they look to keep pace with industry developments and customer behaviours, and subsequently launch new offerings or pivot.

As we fast-forward to a digital future, an era of coexistence between traditional and emerging networks will face increasing operational business challenges. Creating a transparent hybrid cloud approach (on-premise, cloud and multi-cloud), will ensure businesses can tie together current applications with the latest technologies and network updates.

However, as IT organisations embrace public cloud environments, the threat of cyberattacks and malicious hacking attempts becomes a growing phenomenon. As part of a hybrid environment, companies will need to look into security and interoperability as well.

Being able to leverage pools of data to make better business decisions is the backbone of any digitalisation effort. Its also a way to figure out what consumers or businesses may need before asking for it. AI will play a critical role in the future of data analysis, allowing businesses to extract insights and patterns from large sets of data, then automatically making predictions and decisions.

Applying artificial intelligence to all of the data that your business collects, will help it make critical business decisions and also keep pace with an ever-changing, connectivity-first society. For example, communication service providers can use AI technology to monitor network traffic and identify any issues before they occur in high-risk locations, like hospitals. Video content providers can use AI and data analysis to quickly create new offerings based on an understanding of what consumers are enjoying and demanding during lock-down.

You may have heard the term of technological singularity, where technologys rapid evolution outpaces what humans can comprehend. Operations will also have its own singularity event, due to the increased pace of real-time demands and machine learnings increasingly vital role. This is when AI will be needed to automate processes with a focus on continuous learning, development, and governance, across every aspect of the business.

To stay one step ahead, businesses will have no choice but to implement AI-driven operations, focusing on making continuous improvements to IT environments. Itll be the only way to remain adaptable and respond faster to change.

Any business transformation is a jump into the unknown, but those who continue to think the old way will be left behind. This is especially true as Covid-19 thrusts us all into a digital-first world. Those who take steps to evolve their business can move into the future with agility and adaptability.

Avi Kulshrestha, President of Global Services Division, Amdocs

Read the original here:

In the post-Covid-19 world, digital must be more than an aspiration - ITProPortal

In 2016, an 18-wheeler jam-packed with cans of Budweiser made a beer run from Fort Collins to Colorado Springswith no driver at the wheel.

It was one small 120-mile jaunt for a robot big rig (and its maker, Otto), one giant leap for beer delivery. Four years on, TuSimple, another self-driving truck maker, is planning to extend autonomous beer shipmentor more accurately, whatever cargo their customers so chooseto the whole country with a coast-to-coast network of robot trucks.

This week, the company and several big name partners, including UPS and Penske, announced plans for an autonomous freight network of self-driving trucks, digitally mapped routes, terminals, and a central operations system to monitor the lot.

According to TuSimple, theyll build the network in phases. The company already operates seven routes between Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and Dallas. Later this year and into next theyll add routes to Houston and San Antonio. New routes from Los Angeles to Jacksonville will link West Coast and East Coast in 2022 and 2023. And in the following year, the company will roll out commercial availability and further expand to major shipping routes throughout the contiguous US.

Our ultimate goal is to have a nationwide transportation network consisting of mapped routes connecting hundreds of terminals to enable efficient, low-cost long-haul autonomous freight operations, TuSimple president, Cheng Lu, said in a press release.

If this strategy works, TuSimple will copy-paste it in Europe and Asia, and just like that, their robot trucks will be cruising the worlds highways loaded with goodies. Maybe.

Given the state of self-driving car timelines, which have long overpromised and underdelivered, TuSimples coast-to-coast network might sound overambitious. Indeed, the company behind that inaugural Colorado beer run, Otto, is no moreit was acquired and subsequently shuttered by Uber two years later. Starsky, another well-known self-driving truck startup, saw a Series B investment fall apart last November and, after looking for a buyer in the ensuing months, was forced to shut down when none could be found.

Still, there are reasons to believe self-driving trucks are closer to practical and mainstream commercial use than general purpose self-driving cars.

For one, there are plenty of big companies and startups working the problem, from Daimler and Aurora to Waymo and Embark. TuSimple, in particular, has long partnered with veteran shipping companies, has already raised $298 million at a valuation of $1 billion, and according to TechCrunch, is currently going after another $250 million.

Also, TuSimple isnt building their network of robot trucks from scratch. Founded way back in 2015, the company is now one of the more established players. In 2018, they started testing a route on public roads between Tucson and Phoenix and another in Shanghai. Today, they operate a fleet of 40 autonomous trucks running some 20 trips a week.

Finally, theyve adopted a sensible model based on trucks that handle themselves on highways with a human in the cab (for now). Long haul trucks spend the vast majority of their time on highways, and highways are simpler to navigate than city streets. TuSimples trucks will hand the wheel over to a human for off-the-highway driving.

The trucks use cameras, lidar, and radar to construct a real-time view of their surroundings. But TuSimple is also making digital maps of a highways every twist and turn on each route. Combining these maps with sensor data, TuSimple says their trucks can safely drive routes in any conditions.

Theyre not alone in this strategy. Volvo, which is also developing self-driving trucks, recently announced itll offer passenger cars that can drive themselves on mapped sections of highway. The software behind Waymos self-driving cars and trucks similarly relies on intricate digital maps.

Even as TuSimple maps routes across the country, its competitors will be doing the same thing. Waymo also announced this week the expansion of self-driving truck routes across the Southwest and Texas. Whereas TuSimple is building its own trucks, Waymo is focused on developing a software platform, Waymo Driver, thats compatible with anyones trucks.

In the coming years, companies will install a massive new layer of infrastructure. Under asphalt and painted lines, an invisible road in binary to keep these machines on track.

Its hoped self-driving trucks, which can be on the go 24/7no sleep, no coffeewill prove safer and more cost-efficient, even with a backup human driver in the cab. When theyve proven themselves over tens of millions of miles, and the legal and regulatory frameworks have been worked out, they may even go it entirely alone.

While this may mark the end of many long haul driver jobs, TuSimple and others argue theres already a shortage of drivers that will only grow in the future. And there will be other opportunities for work, whether its backup safety drivers to supervise trucks in the near term or drivers that can take trucks the last mile from highway to final destination.

Itll likely be years yet before trucking is fully automated. Still, you may one day pass a big rig and, with a startled glance into the cab, notice no ones at the wheel. There might not even be a cabjust a 20-ton box on 18 wheels doing 75 down the interstate.

Image credits: TuSimple

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TuSimple's Robot Big Rigs Will Automate Freight Coast to Coast - Singularity Hub

Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs are at a crossroads.

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Over the next three weeks, well be preparing for the NBAs long-awaited restart by attempting to answer the single most important question facing every franchise that will be present and accounted for in Orlando. This is 22 Questions.

For the last 24 seasons, Gregg Popovich has proven his bonafides as the greatest basketball coach of all time. Although Popovich may not be able to match Phil Jacksons six championships (let alone Red Auerbachs 11), his adaptability and versatility are unmatched. Over the course of three decades and five championships, Popovich has continually reinvented and reimagined the San Antonio Spurs, gradually folding in more and more creativity and movement until they fully evolved from a stolid post-up leviathan in the 90s to the hardwood singularity that they achieved during their most recent title run in 2014. Along the way, Popovich sprouted the richest coaching tree in the league; seven current head coaches, including the Milwaukee Bucks Mike Budenholzer, have worked for the Spurs organization under Pop. In this light, to watch any NBA game is to indirectly witness Popovichs greatness. And yet, while Popovich has long lifted the Spurs from inertia and mediocrity, he now might be trapping them in it.

Popovich, as all great coaches are, has been blessed by great players: Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli and Kawhi Leonard, to name a few. But more than simply collecting talent, hes maximized it, winning a very nice 69 percent of regular-season games since his abridged first season. Most impressively, hes holistically developed his own stars (none of Parker, Ginobli or Leonard were considered particularly special pre-draft prospects), in large part because the Spurs organizational stability enabled him to invest in the margins of the roster; Duncan, arguably the best player of the generation sandwiched between Michael Jordan and LeBron James, was unequivocally That Dude and enabled the Spurs to focus on supporting him with unproven youngsters and veteran reclamation projects. Similarly, the trust and equity that Popovich built afforded him the privilege to take a long-term view and avoid short-sighted panic.

Just as Kawhi Leonards ascendance to the NBAs most rarefied air seemed to mark an eternal endurance of the Spurs dynasty, his 2018 trade demand marked its spiritual end; Popovich, for the first time, panicked. Rather than opt for hearty packages draft picks and and young all-stars like Jaylen Brown or Brandon Ingram, the Spurs shipped Leonard (and role player extraordinaire Danny Green) to Toronto for DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and what would become the 29th pick in last years draft. Even though this was very clearly a below market-value return, the logic behind it was clear: a young core takes time to gestate, so by the time the Spurs would be ready to compete, Popovich would be in his mid-to-late 70s, an age associated with more leisurely pursuits like running for President. As a result, the team committed to respectability, prioritizing their present with Popovich over their future without him.

After a successful 48-win season last year, the Spurs now languish at 27-36, four games out of the playoffs with odds of winning a championship that require a working understanding of significant figures to decipher. Worse, years of success have caused a dearth of promising youngsters, while the current team remains too good to truly bottom out. The present iteration of the Spurs is a fairly talented squad, but an unworkable one a knotty, Frankensteined gumbo of malapportioned parts. The two leading scorers, DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge, are both masterful mid-range shooters, albeit ones who occupy the same spaces of the court and uneasily trade 15-foot jumpers like dueling pianists. Dejounte Murray and Derrick White, the teams two most productive young players, overlap as big predatory defensive guards who are similarly deficient in elements of basketball such as making shots and doing good passes. Too, the team lacks any clear internal paths to improvement, unless Lonnie Walker and Jakob Poeltl can actualize their potential. The 21 year-old Walker is a supremely likable guard with weapons-grade athleticism, but is prone to mental lapses that relegate him to Popovichs doghouse. In the wake of Aldridges injury, Poeltl will have the chance to prove himself as a starting center, potentially answering whether his shockingly elite advanced stats are an accurate representation of his impact or merely the skewed product of a noisy but small sample size.

Overall, the Spurs are a cautionary tale what happens when a win-now gamble doesnt actually result in winning. In an honorable attempt to give Popovich the send-off he deserves, theyve inadvertently wandered into the bland dellof mediocrity that theyve so deftly side-stepped for years. Interestingly, this upcoming offseason could be an inflection point for the franchises and Popovichs future: DeRozan will most likely enter free agency. The face of the Spurs post-Kawhi era, DeRozan is the NBAs ur-floor-raiser, a warhorse scorer who can prop up a mediocre offense through volume alone, but lacks the dynamism or efficiency to succeed at a higher level (tellingly, DeRozans regular season stats have always far outpaced his playoff output). By resigning DeRozan, the Spurs could signal their commitment to Popovich, delaying the rebuild in favor of letting their coach bow out with dignity. If DeRozan walks, though, it would usher in the kind of protracted shittiness that could force Popovich to finally pass the reins to Becky Hammon, the WNBA legend whos become his protg. Either way, its evident that San Antonios era of good feelings will end with a whimper, not a bang. The Spurs have reached their expiration date, whether theyre willing to admit that now or in a few years. Whenever that may be, the prevailing wisdom of rebuilding is uncompromising nothing old can stay.

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22 Questions: Would the San Antonio Spurs Be Better Off Without Gregg Popovich? - InsideHook

Our funds focus on individual health; thus, obviously, we view the impact of the COVID crisis from a unique VC perspective. Here are some observations that have emerged from our recent experience.

COVID is accelerating changes in health care.

With hospitals overwhelmed, clinics closed, and practitioners locked down, digital and AI platforms that before the pandemic only contributed to supplemental care are now being asked to actually dominate care. We have long expected the transition from institutional centricity toward personal centricity in care but thought it would take years to happen. Due to COVID, it is happening now. The shift toward at-home individually-driven care will expand hugely this year and will never return to the status quo ante.

COVID is increasing consumer focus on personal space.

Being isolated at home, consumers are rethinking their views on personal space, how to use it, and what it means to them. In the pre-COVID world of external work and outside activities, for many, the home was a place mostly just for quick breakfasts and sleeping. In a locked-down world, it has become the center of existence. We are seeing a persona rethink of furniture, water, food, entertainmentevery aspect of personal space. Its too soon to know exactly how this shift will play out, but were experiencing a deep change in the concept of home and hearth. Even when things open up, personal space will remain a much more specialized and transformed element of life.

COVID is deepening existing trends toward self-reliance.

The rising generation is showing increasingly worldwide signs of self-reliance. They want to be the masters of their universe. They co-participate. They demonstrate. They speak truth to power. They dont want to be dependent on any traditional power structures. This has expressed itself for some time in increasing interest in products that allow one to stand alone to control ones own outcome. COVID is radically accelerating this alteration. We are seeing products focused on growing ones own food, controlling personal water, directing personal experience, and owning individual mental health and mood. We stand at the edge of an era of self-reliance. Products and companies that facilitate self-reliance will rise.

COVID is altering the worldwide approach of science.

Science has always been more collegial and cooperative than business or politics. But suddenly, pressed by the desperate need to find a COVID vaccine, science has become entirely borderless. Efforts and data are shared worldwide as never before. All the brainpower and capacity of global science is brought to bear on a single problem in an unprecedented way. Individual government policies dont seem able to blunt this forceful internationalization of effort. We hope and expect that the genie of coordinated worldwide problem-solving in science, once loosed, will never be limited again.

COVID isnt a singularity it is the initiation of a new normal.

We know life will open back up. It already is in many places. But whatever happens post-COVID, it wont be a return to what we had before. The phrase a new normal has been bandied about enough to become trite. But COVID will produce exactly that. Our future will not entirely resemble our past.The power of the pandemic has propelled the world to an alternate track. It will take years to fully know how the new normal will differ from the old, but we can see already that those differences will be profound.

We dont live in the same world we did a few months ago. COVID has driven a fundamental alteration of the individual health landscape.

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Individual Health in the Time of the Pandemic - AlleyWatch

Marcus Wheldon, CTO at Nokia, explained why 5G is accelerating the fourth industrial revolution and how it will impact peoples daily lives.

Imagine using augmented reality (AR) to deeply learn any topic in real time from the comforts of your home. Once a plot point from The Matrix, it is becoming a closer reality on a daily basis as 5G networks are rapidly integrated.

During a short presentation at this years online Collision conference, Marcus Wheldon, CTO at Nokia (NYSE:NOK), spoke about 5G and the ways it is accelerating the fourth industrial revolution.

Describing an AR knowledge overlay outfitted on everything, Wheldon talked about the ability to have perfect knowledge.

I think being perfectly augmented is the one (5G aspect) that I like to focus on, he said. That I will become a superhuman in some ways. Not by putting on a suit and growing muscles and laser beams coming out of my eyes or whatever it is, but by having access to perfect knowledge.

When asked if this would lead to the singularity, a hypothetical point in time when machines become smarter than humans, he was clear it would not. Wheldon pointed out that he prefers the idea of augmentation, or assistance using a machine, to the scarier singularity concept.

If you think about the (main) problem confronting humanity in terms of data and information, it is an overwhelming deluge of data and information, said Wheldon, who is also president of Nokia Bell Labs.

Theres something called the Buckminster Fuller Knowledge-doubling Curve, he added. In a 1982 book, Buckminster Fuller suggested that until 1900, knowledge had doubled every century; at the time he was writing, the doubling rate had increased to every 18 months.

According to Wheldon, knowledge is now doubling at a staggering rate of every 12 hours. Meanwhile, human capabilities to absorb this massive influx of data have not increased.

He then referenced the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. This theory states that humans forget learned knowledge in only days or weeks if the new information isnt reviewed consistently.

Wheldon believes artificial intelligence (AI), AR and 5G will come together to allow humans to absorb, interpret and then deploy new information.

So if you think of that as the perfect setup, the only way that works is this incredibly reliable, high-performance fabric that connects human, machine and AI systems. And thats the 5G network. So yes, its the nerve system of the future, said Wheldon.

AR may seem like the fodder of science fiction, but there are many ways 5G is already impacting our lives. Especially in the last few months of growth due to the spread of the coronavirus.

As countries locked down in March, the majority of the global workforce switched to working from home. The shift was widely facilitated by enlarging 5G networks.

But what I think COVID-19 has taught us is that fundamentally, all businesses need the ability to remotely optimize themselves over a digital media, Wheldon told listeners.

Since March, remotely controlling, managing, diagnosing, operating on, interacting with and having an expert at a distance have become part of our daily routines.

The transition to work-from-home software and programs has not been seamless, but it has proven to be efficient. These technologies will only be made more useful and harmonious as 5G-enabled AR and virtual reality systems become mainstream, according to the Nokia CTO.

The mining sector is one space that is presently utilizing 5G to advance. Mining has been in the vanguard of automation because of the perilous nature of the mining task, said Wheldon.

He went on to explain that autonomous vehicles programmed to drive the roads in and out of open-pit mines reduce the chance of human injury or error.

Other areas, like offshore oil rigs and energy-generation systems, as well as agriculture, will all benefit from the functionality that 5G-enabled remote access provides.

Its this massive amount of efficiency that could be improved, he said. I love the phrase necessity is the mother of invention. The ones that have led industrially are the ones where theres the greatest need.

Dont forget to follow us@INN_Resourcefor real-time updates!

Securities Disclosure: I, Georgia Williams, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

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Nokia CTO: 5G Networks are the Nerve System of the Future | INN - Investing News Network

HBO Max has won an auction and committed to a put pilot on Chinos, an original animated series idea from Fresh Off the Boats Eddie Huang. The writer/producer (and food personality) is executive producing the series with his producing partner Raf Martinez, acclaimed tattoo artist Dr. Woo and comics artist/designer Bernard Chang, who will also serve as art director.

Chinos is a show that will shatter the model minority myth and hopefully usher in a generation of Asian American storytellers that do not feel beholden to the expectations of others, Huang told Deadline. It is a project that seeks to shine a light on our singularity as individuals and the shared problems that bring us together as a community. Even my mom approved of this deal, excited to do this with HBO Max.

Audiences will witness the urban subcultures of Los Angeles through the lens of the Asian-American experience with Chinos. The show will shatter the model minority myth and hopefully usher in a generation of Asian American storytellers that do not feel beholden to the expectations of others, Huang added.

Huang is currently in post on Boogie, the film he directed for Focus Features with Taylour Paige, Taylor Takahashi, Domenick Lombardozzi and Mike Moh starring with the late Pop Smoke. He will direct Elephant Mountain in Taiwan, based on his original idea.

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HBO Max wins bid to put pilot on animated series 'Chinos' - - Animation Xpress

By: Alex Holder, (Hashtag Ltd.)

Some weeks ago, there was commentary addressing the subject of cost as it relates to our treasured regional airline LIAT and it is unfortunate we all now sit and observe the very public regional disagreement about its future.

Yes, LIAT is not the most viable airline for any tangible operation, based on its current structure and top-heavy management style; certainly not form the business level. And, it is most unfortunate that we, as a region, have not been able to capitalize on our collective talents and ambitions to effectively grow this airline as a viable asset for us today, and our future generations.

Still, do we need to do away with it?

We are a CARICOM collective of nations and within that an OECS collective literally larger than the singularity that is Caribbean Airlines out of Trinidad and Tobago. Are we unable? Incompetent? Or unwilling?

Arguments from the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda as well as the former Chief Executive of LIAT augurs well with many consistent sentiments on the viability of what is truly ours.

And, while Antigua is poised to continue the legend that is the Leeward Island Air Transport (2020), we must still accept that LIAT has served more than the Leewards and it is, without doubt, the longest-standing Caribbean Airline.

Many things within the region attract opposition and indifference integration being top amongst them.

Why though cant we argue as strongly about the unfortunate restrictions of travel amongst CARICOM states, as we do about the actual airline that connects us all?

The simple answer, in my view, is we are too caught up with what is more important to us as individual states than what is important us a collective.

Looking at the United States or even the European Union, it is obvious that we have failed or outright refused to follow any guidelines form those that have established similar systems before us.

A collective currency is only so far-reaching within the Caribbean, with the EC dollar. Airlines are invested in by the selected few and freedom of movement is demanded accordingly.

But we are an Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) AND, we are a Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Some of us can relate to the challenges of immigration and movement. But lets not forget the advantages we enjoy as Caribbean nationals in another state.

Being able to land in London and travel the European Union without interruption. Being able to land in Miami and move the states without challenge. Traveling at a domestic level in each domain. Enjoying freedom of movement within a collective, that we are having so much difficulty achieving between our islands.

It is understandable that not every Caribbean destination is financially equipped to carry an airline on its own. But, it should be equally understood that some of us could to a large extent handle the collective burden of such an enterprise.

What we need to do is set politics and egos aside and allow the collective to be a collective. There is a reason insurance companies and banks work the simple trust and reliance on coming together and pooling of resources.

Dominica, Saint Vincent, Grenada, Guyana these are some of the economies within CARICOM that are not nearly as viable as that of Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, and Saint Lucia; but we are still a collective.

For too long we have allowed our individual development to affect the freedom of movement of our people. Forgetting that regardless of the individual moving, the cost is the same. The tax is the same. This is akin to some of us paying taxes two folds, and to others, it is a deterrent to even want to move.

How do we explain this unfortunate challenge to those who are stranded in islands that are not their native?

Do we expect them to travel to the United States, get quarantined for two weeks, then travel to their respective territories, and get quarantined again? Taking away four weeks of their liberty and time because we cant handle the simplicity of movement?

And, who are we to even entertain the idea that most or any of these individuals have a US Visa, or more so have the revenue to move that way.

Let us take it to another level and examine the challenges of CARICOM nationals without the CSME Free Movement Certificate or those OECS nationals who are free to move between the individual states. How are they expected to anchor themselves in non-native states for extended periods? Are we asking these people to pay for residences (temporary or otherwise) with non-existent incomes? Are our immigration departments prepared to overlook these challenges and allow these travelers to move on with their lives without a red stamp in their passports?

We are a collective and regardless of how we might view our territories, we are THE CARIBBEAN to the outside world a singular grouping. Our small islands do not matter to most. And that makes us responsible for each other.

LIAT is our airline. Not Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, St. Vincent, and St. Kitts, Nevis. It is ours as Caribbean nationals because we all contribute to each others economies in one way or another.

Unfortunately, some of us can look at LIAT despite that literal threat to our overall freedoms and consider dissolving it, as opposed to putting our minds together and establishing systems that cater to our individuality as a region with according airport and other facility taxes and considerations for regional movement.

The maturity of the Caribbean as a collective outside of the OECS and CARICOM as individual sub-groupings is demanded today.

Are we mature enough to step up, or do we subject ourselves to a consistent atmosphere where it is cheaper to travel directly on the likes of British Airways from Grenada to Antigua for less than is required to travel the same space on OUR regional airline?

Let us defy the odds and expectations of those that want to see differently and connect on this if not for anything else for our present, future, and collective history.

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LIAT Discussion Bigger Than That Of An Airline And Travel; It Is About Us - St. Lucia Times Online News