Alessandra  Rich is an chi-chi woman. Her living room is so chi-chi that you are afraid to go in. Man, this place is piss elegant. Look at them lamp shades! In fact, she is always dressed in piss-elegant frocks she designs for her eponymous label, which counts the Princess of Wales among its fans.

Alessandra Rich really cuts a fine figure in her collection. Karina cut a fine figure since she bought some new clothes. Besides that fine-figured association, Alessandra stages rich fantasies of different strokes for different folk in her collections. Her stiletto-heeled creatures graced with a femme fatale & naughty ingénue, travel regularly from lady of the manor duties by day to officiating rituals à la Eyes Wide Shut by night. “Yes, there’s a noir vibe  in my representation of women,” she conceded. “Fantasizing about a  secret double-life is perhaps a way of rebelling against the taboos we as women have been forced to internalize.” Say no more.

Rich tells us her innermost feelings & secrets, playing the traditionalist versus the risqué with no holds barred. Bias-cut satin numbers fit for a 1930s star coexisted with nude lurex bras & micro panties from the lingerie line. They all had suggestions about how she could get the money from elsewhere. Elsewhere, underpinnings were barely concealed under a clear-latex microskirt pierced by metal studs, or worn unflinchingly on bare skin with low-slung black leather pants & a pair of long black patent leather gloves. “She’s never uncomfortable being undressed,” said  Rich. Nothing is given so freely as advice. Don’t hesitate to ask us what we think you ought to do. 

The intelligence agents finally broke her code. When they broke the code, they were able to decipher messages: Proper pleated-skirt floral print midi dresses with broderie anglaise collarettes would measure up to the required standards at a formal garden reception, & the see-through black stretch-lace studded catsuit studded was involuntarily dismounted by a zippered leather miniskirt not much wider than a belt.

The press found out some juicy secrets about the front runners & made them all public. Rich is curious about “secrets women hide in their minds,” she said. What she wants to offer them are tools to  play the self-representation game as they please, without taking themselves too seriously. She called the collection “Please, disturb.”

The unapologetic & sexy woman via gothic & fetish fuss to a gracious plenty

Alessandra Rich Resort 2024 | Chi-Chi Noir

One or more plaintiffs are filing and prosecuting Dinger Token, , & its technology officers, for perpetrating a fraudulent scheme through the unregistered sale of the crypto asset security, Dinger Token.

According to the complaint, the defendants promised a 'suite of products that make it easy for anyone to bring their Web 3.0 ideas to life' but instead of delivering, they wiped out millions in market capitalization, withdrew crypto assets from the project, & misappropriated investor funds for personal use.

Decentralized finance claims to deliver transparency & predictable outcomes, but unregistered offerings lack the disclosures & accountability that the law demands, & they attract scammers like Dinger's creator, who use these vulnerabilities to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

According to the complaint, in marketing Dinger Token, the project assured investors that funds were safely locked & could not be  withdrawn by anyone, including the defendants, while held in Dinger's liquidity pool, a collection of investor funds that provides liquidity to facilitate trading in the asset. However, as alleged, large portions of the liquidity pool were never locked, & the Defendants misappropriated millions of dollars to fund startup companies 'SuperBonsai' & 'Nectar Hard Seltzer', purchase cars, extravagant travel, luxury homes, & other things.

We urge investors to continue to exercise extreme caution in this space, as bad actors exploit the popularity of crypto assets to make promises while only delivering a crash landing.

The complaint alleges that Dinger Token skyrocketed in price by more than 5,200 percent from October 23, 2021 to October 29, 2021, & reached a market capitalization exceeding $16.8 million before its price plummeted by 99 percent when the public learned, by Dec 14, 2021, that Dinger's liquidity pool was not locked as claimed.

After this plunge, the token's creator used misappropriated assets to make large purchases of Dinger to prop up its price & manipulate the market. He also allegedly used an account he opened on a trading platform to buy & sell Dinger to create the impression of market activity, a practice known as wash trading.

The class action, will be filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, charges defendants with violating the  registration & anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 & the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

We appreciate the assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, which files a parallel criminal action, & the FBI.

If you purchased Dinger Token & would like to join the action, please contact superselection.io@protonmail.com with the subject line 'Join Dinger Token Class Action'

May 30th, 2020 the Mayor of California ordered the police a stand-down order during the BLMLA  marches. Scores of opportunists & masked armed looters took  advantage, damaging commercial & personal property & engaging in open theft, vandalism, & violent destruction of property

My neighbors—all mostly helpless, narrowly escaped. The only one showing  some courage to do something was knocked unconscious with a skateboard —  he suffered trauma to the back of his head & was carried away.  Unfortunately, I wasn't aware of the situation until it was too late. I called the police & they told me to stay home. By the time I got there, I witnessed the break-ins around me that were bonkers in their  scale & frequency that went on into late hours of the night, by the same criminals that looted my store & took everything — pure crime. Police were literally driving by as the jewelry store across the street was looted & my store was already completely robbed.

Police Chief Michael Moore kept hundreds of police in clustered units,  doing nothing under Mayor Garcetti's 'stand-down order'. Cops were  antagonizing protestors, while businesses in the vicinity were looted  & burned literally two blocks away. I witnessed police squad vehicles driving past live crime scenes, ignoring looting. Why didn't the police go after the looters & leave the protests? Both sides,  every time. The police aren't there for you. 'Protect & serve' is a  lie. Special scorn should be given to LAPD Chief Michel Moore & Mayor Garcetti for serving up the entire heart of the city to thieves & arsonists.

The protesters were honoring Dr. Melina Abdullah, lead organizer of Black Lives Matter’s LA chapter (BLMLA), who led call  & response chants of “disrupt white capitalism” a concept she  believes is the root cause of police violence in America. Melina Abdullah, who is also a college professor, went on to drop a string of  expletives that foreshadowed what was to come after the rally would end.  “F*** the police,” she shouted into the megaphone. “F*** white capitalism. F*** The Grove. F*** 3rd & Fairfax. F*** Beverly Hills.”

By nightfall, stores at every shopping district Abdullah mentioned had been vandalized & looted, & several LAPD cruisers in the Fairfax District were set on fire. Abdullah’s 16-year-old daughter, Thandiwe Abdullah, also addressed rallygoers. She co-founded the Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard & has been speaking at local protests for several years. In 2018, she was honored by Time Magazine as one of the most influential teens in the country.

“I know you want to cry, I know you want to tear some shit up,” Thandiwe said. “If you want to set some corporations on fire, you know what? I  don’t care about Target burning. I don’t care that capitalism burns. I  don’t care that white people in their f***ing office buildings are  upset. I don’t care that you can’t go nowhere because you’re stuck in  f***ing traffic. I don’t care that you can’t get to your job or your  doctor’s appointment or to wherever the f*** you want to go.”

How it went down: A city permit was given to Black Lives Matter to hold an event at Pan Pacific Park on May 30th in the afternoon — a small park, not an event park — it looks  crowded with 200 people in it. Whoever gave the permit should be fired — this was the first mistake that led to violence, theft, & hundreds  of millions of dollars in damage for many miles. At Pan Pacific Park, Dr. Melina Abdullah, lead organizer of Black Lives Matter's LA chapter, led call & response chants of "disrupt white capitalism."

Before the event ended, Melina Abdullah shouted into a megaphone: "F***  the police! F*** white capitalism! F*** The Grove! F*** 3rd &  Fairfax! F*** Beverly Hills! (The Daily Wire) — this was the 2nd mistake. Melina Abdullah was deliberately stoking a very large crowd into destructive action in the middle of the day as the  event was ending. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Organizers ended the rally while it was still peaceful, acknowledging  the situation could potentially become 'unsafe' for some people in attendance. A BLMLA leader said over the bullhorn. "The action is  officially closed," he announced. "Whatever y'all do from here on out  ain't my business." Tensions began to rise after the protesters began moving toward Beverly Hills & other areas. They were met by LAPD, which issued an 'unlawful assembly' order & instructed participants  & onlookers to leave. The LA Times  described the scene that developed as 'a tense standoff' with police  shooting rubber bullets & striking demonstrators with batons.

At this point, putting too many people in too small an area, firing them  up with angry rhetoric, then telling them to leave the park in the  middle of the day left the police in an untenable position. Should they direct the large crowd one way or another? This crowd was amped. A total  mess ensued. Many were driven North, to Melrose Avenue, only five  blocks away, where the police would not go for four hours. Who's fault?

The next mistake was LAPD's strategy of handling what was inevitable. There would be parts of this crowd plus opportunistic rallygoers  spreading out to tag, rob, & burn for many square miles.

All LAPD had to do was criss-cross and block critical streets with squad cars and bullhorns. It would have scattered the crowd. Wherever there were broken windows, put a car in front of it with police standing guard. It would have stopped all the fires and continuous looting that went on for hours.

Law enforcement officials, current and retired, criticized the LAPD response, saying it was riddled with flaws—from acquiescing to protesters gathering in huge numbers in a business district like Fairfax, to delaying two moves that would have increased manpower sooner—mobilizing the entire police force into action by canceling off-days and vacations, and calling in the National Guard—as they were given warning well-ahead of time.

Charles Sid Heal, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's commander, said the LAPD decision to allow protesters access to an area like the Grove and Farmers Market was a miscalculation. Keeping crowds away from vulnerable areas is a vital part of crowd control, he said. "That means place sentries where you don't want them to go in advance." (LA Times)

“We were very deliberate in deciding to disrupt spaces of white affluence. We want to make sure that it's not just black people who are suffering at the hands of white supremacy, that if we can bring a little bit of the pain that we feel to white communities, then maybe they'll have a vested interest in ... & disrupting these systems that kill our people." — Melina Abdullah

Who Stole their dad's crack, mom's Newports, sister's Mazda, & dog's choker collar, having the night of their lives

The entire object of this exercise is to devise a practical means of inter-translation between ordinary objective life, & the highest types of consciousness we can contact. Using alphabetical letters as symbols for Inner realities, & linking these with allied magical meanings is a very good method of communication from one level of being to another.

The methods of learning & using this 'Magical Alphabet' are similar to those employed in teaching infants their letters. A major difference of course lies in the terms of (association). The 'baby Alphabet' has all its letters linked with familiar objects in the understanding of a tiny child. 'A is for Apple, B is for Bed, C is for Cat', & so on. In some ways this is a pity, because those associations remain underneath all the others for life, & colour consciousness accordingly. The Magical Alphabet being linked with Eternal Verities, causes consciousness to formate on those Inner terms, & thus becomes a means of opening up contacts with Intelligences whose lives & existences are on far higher & different levels than those we know in the ordinary physical world. Without the cooperation of such Beings, we cannot work effective Magic.

My first task along these lines is to make my Magical Alphabet come to life, & then make meanings from it. A simple alphabet-rhyme is given which may be helpful for rote-learning at the beginning. After that we must learn to spell 'words' & that is what is meant by Magic 'Spells' — words spelled out of Inner Letters which changed basic conscious attitudes & the energies incorporating them. Refinements like the grammar, syntax, & styling of the Inner Language come with experience & development. It will be difficult enough at first to manage even 'baby talk' with it. Probably the simplest & most useful commencement is with the vowels.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N o P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

(G) is Wisdom & Mercy (most blessed are they)

(J) understands Justice (yet never knows Anger)

(K) Understands Beauty (that shines like the Sun)

(L) brings Mercy & Justice (together as one)

(T) tells a well-Founded & Beautiful story

(X) marks where Victorious Kingdoms are grounded

(Th) makes Foundation & Kingdom both meet, & this Magical Alphabet now is complete

Drawing, Graphite & Pigment Pencil on Paper

Cody: How long do I have to wait here? Dillon: For your information, we will be here until the bus driver feels that it is safe to travel.

Drawing, Graphite & Pigment Pencil on Paper

(M) is Mercy & Beauty (surpassingly fine)

Next, you should get a haircut, then get some new clothes

Don't Tell Me What To Do — Maybe I like The Way I Am

(H) is Wisdom & Beauty (a perfect display)

(Z) shows a most Glorious Kingdom at last

a solo exhibition by one of Australia's leading artist collaborations

Installation view. Lehmann Maupin 
London, January 2022

Part One: The Mountain — Alex Prager Studio

The Fall Of The Rebel Angels | Frans Floris

Walt Disney's animated film Pinocchio won two Academy Awards.

Carlo Collodi, the author of Pinocchio, was born on 24 November 1826 in Italy. His parents were servants at the house of rich Florentines. They did not want such a life for their son so they sent him to a seminary, however, he did not wish to be a priest. Having completed his studies, Collodi went on to work in a bookshop, then as a journalist, theatre critic, writer, & magazine publisher. Collodi began publishing Pinocchio in a children's magazine in 1881. At first, the tale was short with a tragic ending. The nameless Cat & Fox, disguised as bandits, robbed Pinocchio & then hanged him.

The young readers demanded a sequel with a happy ending. Collodi himself became famous, & in Italy Pinocchio was republished over 500 times!

It may seem surprising, but Collodi gravitated towards his fame as a children's writer & did not like his character. He wrote adult novels, plays, dreamed of becoming an Italian Dickens or Shakespeare.

Carlo Collodi died in 1890. His most famous work was translated into more than one hundred languages. Walt Disney himself produced a full-length animated Pinocchio movie in 1940. In 1956 in Italy, a monument to a mischievous 'son' of Carlo was erected with the inscription, "To the immortal Pinocchio, from the grateful readers, aged from four to seventy years". Carlo Collodi was buried at the Cimitero delle Porte Sante in Florence.

The original text of the tale was affected by Collodi's seminary studies. The failing priest overflowed the tale with morality in the spirit of the 19th century. An echo of this can be seen in the episodes with The Blue-haired Fairy who forced the mischievous Pinocchio to brush his teeth & then guides Pinocchio to his goal. The wooden doll with a long nose dreamt of becoming a living person, his nose grew longer as he lied. After escaping from the clutches of the Cat & Fox, Pinocchio became a donkey, then was in the belly of a giant fish. The adventures lasted many months until the mischievous wooden puppet became a well-mannered boy. A human being.

In the original story, Pinocchio killed Jiminy Cricket, got his feet burnt off, & was hanged & left for dead

Cat & Fox Hanged Pinocchio at the End of the 15th Chapter

In the early 1600s Caravaggio, barely thirty years old, was Rome's most celebrated painter, creating strikingly realistic & dramatic canvases commissioned by the most powerful & influential clients. He perfected the chiaroscuro technique of using dramatic contrasts of light & shadow.

Caravaggio's personality is no less dark & dramatic than his art. One contemporary wrote that after working for a fortnight, he spent a month or two strutting around town with a smug look, accompanied by a servant & carrying a knife, so he went from one company playing ball to another, always ready to engage in a quarrel or scuffle, it was not easy to get along with him.

Caravaggio would regularly get in trouble by being caught in a street fight or carrying a weapon without permission. After learning that his landlady had sued him for making a hole in the ceiling of her room, he & his friends came to her windows to throw rocks. Some claimed that his violent temper was caused by poisoning by the fumes from the paints he was using. In the meantime, Caravaggio was able to get away with it with the support of noble patrons, until May 28, 1606, when he killed a young man named Ranuccio Tomassoni by getting into a knife fight. The details of this story are unknown; art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon suggested that Tomassoni challenged Caravaggio to a duel in response to an insult. The artist inflicted a mortal wound on his opponent & fled Rome under threat of death.

However, his clandestine situation did not stop his career. He first went to Naples, where Caravaggio produced several major works, & then sailed to Malta. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta received him with honor, but after another brawl he had to escape again.

In 1610, after an unsuccessful attempt on Caravaggio's life, his patrons began negotiating a pardon with Pope Paul V, & he was already preparing to return to Rome. This plan was thwarted by sudden death of the artist in unclear circumstances at the age of thirty-eight.

Despite the enormous fame that Caravaggio gained during his lifetime, his scandalous reputation meant that Annibale Carracci, his rival in the painting field, had a far greater influence on the next generation of artists. While Caravaggio was secretive & unsociable, Carracci had many apprentices. However, as news of the Master Chiaroscuro's achievements spread across Europe, his authority grew & schools of Caravaggio emerged in many countries. According to art historian Bernard Berenson, no Italian painter, with the exception of Caravaggio, has had such an impact on later artists.

Then, in May 1606, he stabbed & killed a well-known Roman pimp named Ranuccio Tomassoni. Historians have long theorized that the men got into a fight over a tennis match

Caravaggio | The Violent Life & Crimes of An Artistic Genius

Advances Broadcom’s strategy to build the world’s leading infrastructure technology company, with track record of acquiring established platforms. Brings together two engineering-first, innovation-centric cultures. Broadcom Software Group to rebrand & operate as VMware. The new VMware, as part of Broadcom, to offer enterprise customers greater choice & flexibility to address the most complex IT infrastructure challenges. Accelerates software scale and growth opportunities for Broadcom, with pro forma revenue of more than $40 billion, including 49% software revenue. Broadcom to target adding approximately $8.5 billion of pro forma EBITDA from the acquisition within three years post-closing.

One of the largest tech deals in M&A history was announced last week. Chipmaker Broadcom entered into an agreement to acquire VMware $VMW for $69 billion in a cash or stock deal, which includes $8 billion of VMware's net debt, that will be assumed by Broadcom $AVGO. VMware was spun off from Dell Technologies $DELL on November 1, 2021. VMware was founded in the year 1998 & later acquired by EMC in January 2004 & eventually ended up with Dell after EMC was acquired by Dell in a massive $67 billion deal in 2016.

Bloomberg previously reported that Broadcom was in talks to acquire VMware. VMW's price after this announcement was $119.43. When I first heard rumors of the deal, I dismissed it because of both the size of the deal & the likely regulatory challenges a deal with Broadcom would encounter. Broadcom's highly acquisitive CEO Hock Tan was blocked from acquiring Qualcomm $QCOM in a hostile $117 billion takeover when President Trump prohibited the deal on national security grounds. Broadcom's acquisition of VMware will be reviewed by either the FTC or the DOJ, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) & multiple international regulatory agencies including China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR).

According to the terms of the deal, VMware shareholders will be able to elect to receive either $142.50 in cash or 0.2520 shares of Broadcom common stock for each VMware share. The shareholder election will be subject to proration, resulting in approximately 50% of VMware's shares being exchanged for cash consideration & 50% being exchanged for Broadcom common stock. The deal also includes a 40 day "go-shop" provision during which VMware can solicit alternative proposals.

Michael Dell & Silver Lake, who own 40.2% & 10% of VMW, respectively, agreed to vote in favor of the transaction. According to the press release, both parties have agreed to a $1.5 billion termination fee, but VMware will only have to pay $750 million if it finds a superior offer by the July 5 deadline. The deal is expected to be completed in Broadcom's fiscal year 2023. 

Following the closing of the transaction, the Broadcom Software Group will rebrand & operate as VMware, incorporating Broadcom’s existing infrastructure & security software solutions as part of an expanded VMware portfolio.

One of the largest tech deals in M&A history was announced last week. Chipmaker Broadcom entered into an agreement to acquire VMware for $69 billion in a cash or stock deal. Broadcom's acquisition of VMware will be reviewed by either the FTC or the DOJ, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), & multiple international regulatory agencies.

Broadcom $AVGO to Acquire VMware $VMW for $69 Billion

Julia Soboleva is a Latvian mixed-media artist based in the UK. Her process involves painting & collage on found photographic imagery. Meditating on the themes of madness & reality, Soboleva constructs mysterious narratives with ominous overtones & absurd humor. Julia was born & raised in a post-Soviet era & without being able to find her own place against the complicated past of her nation, she explores the notions of family, taboo & trans-generational trauma in her work. She obtained a Master's Degree in Illustration at Manchester School of Art in 2018, & has gone on to work as an educator & freelance designer.

In other news, Balthazar Malevolent changes the way we think about sneakers.

Meditating on the themes of madness & reality, Soboleva constructs mysterious narratives with ominous overtones & absurd humor

Born in 1988, just three years before the end of the Soviet Union, Arseniy never knew Soviet rule. His experience of the former Soviet republics, all of which he visited & photographed over a three-year period, is like an exploration of the abandoned shell of the USSR no longer animated by the communist regime. He can see, as he says in his introduction to the book & as readers will discover, that the Soviet Union had great ambitions for the betterment of its people.

Arseniy’s work is not clouded by sentimentality. However, his photographs, many of them taken in the grey & unforgiving dusk or dawn, nonetheless show the range & power & beauty of the Modernist & Soviet architecture. Along with the great buildings of public culture, he photographs the vast housing blocks, their slab-like walls devoid of ornamentation. There is little to distinguish one from another, one city from another is absent.

Perhaps surprisingly, this frank appraisal is not ugly, Arseniy captures an unexpected beauty in these cities & barely differentiated dormitory suburbs, born out of revolution, war & a totalitarian state that exacted from its people a huge price for the USSR to make.

There’s an interesting debate about how we should experience Stalinist & communist architecture. For a niche crowd, it is endlessly fascinating if we are honest, in a very arms-length way, because even if we visit, we aren’t living under Soviet rule. We want to explore the landscape, savor the images, discuss the experiences of the residents of Khrushchyovka but we must have in mind the reality of life in the USSR. It’s not just endless queues for food staples or lack of choice, censorship, corruption, it’s also the effects of polluting & environmentally damaging industries located close to residential areas. For example, when Greyscape visited Nizhny Tagil, a monotown in the heart of the Urals (the expression refers to a city dedicated to one or a narrow group of industries) we were advised not to remain outside for more than 30 minutes.

Looking at these photographs, glimpsing the warmth leaking from the myriad homes, one gets a sense of life in the Soviet Union

Elad holds a Ph.D. from MIT & has degrees in mathematics & biology from UCSD. 

Previously, Elad was the VP of corporate strategy at Twitter, as well as ran various product teams (Geo, Search). He also spent many years at Google, where he started the mobile team & was involved in all aspects of getting the team up & running. He was involved with 3 acquisitions (including the Android team) & was the original product manager for Google Mobile Maps & other key mobile products. Prior to Google, Elad had product management & market seeding roles at a number of Silicon Valley companies.

Elad Gil is an angel investor who generally invests in young, emerging companies, with a tendency to do seed & Series A types of deals. Gil aims to assist portfolio companies focused on consumer web, mobile, geo, search, & advertising/monetization through his work as an entrepreneur at Mixer Labs, which was acquired by Twitter. His prior work also includes positions at Google, Twitter, & other startups. Gil seeks to help portfolio companies on product & business development deals.

Elad Gil co-founded Color Genomics among others like Taylor Sittler, Nish Bhat, & Othman Laraki, a native of Casablanca, Morocco, who serves as company’s CEO, in Burlingame, California.  In 2015, Color Genomics accepted an initial $15 million in funding. It raised an additional $45 million in September 2016. Katie Jacobs Stanton became the CMO of Color Genomics in 2016, & Jill Hagenkord became the Chief Medical Officer.

Color Genomic’s purpose is to surge availability for genetic testing. Part of this is to develop access to tests for minorities, in order to better understanding non-Caucasian gene variants.  The original cost for the test was approximately 10% of the cost of testing through traditional companies. Later on, the company offered a discounted price for the family members of those who test positive for inherited mutations.  In 2017, Color Genomics began taking health insurance for the Color Test.

The technological startup companies have also begun adding Color Genomics testing to their medical packages.  The University of Washington & Color Genomics released a widely obtainable database of variants in 27 breast cancer genes based on the given samples from over 70 years old women who have never had breast cancer. The samples were gathered from samples given to the Women’s Health Initiative between 1993 & 2005.  In 2018, Color added a new health area, medication response, to evaluate genes related with commonly prescribed prescriptions, & report on how those genes can affect how individuals process & react to those treatments. Color grew its offering to include a $249 test for genetic heart health. The test examines 30 genes to observe for risk of a wide range of genetic heart conditions, including cardiomyopathies, cardiac arrhythmias, & arteriopathies.

The NIH recognized Color funding on September 25, 2018, for their All of Us Research program. 

At least 30 startups in Gil’s portfolio have become 'unicorn' companies. Some of the early checks he wrote to startups that are now raising serious venture dollars, including Character.AI, backed this year by Andreessen Horowitz, Perplexity.AI, backed by NEA & Harvey, backed by Sequoia Capital.

Elad Gil is a serial entrepreneur, investor, operating executive, & advisor to private companies including Wish, Stripe, Square, Pinterest, OpenDoor, Instacart, Gusto, Checkr, Coinbase, & Airbnb

Together with Larry Page, Sergey Brin co-founded Google. Brin was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He & Page are living large now but remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders, board members, & employees. As of April 2021, Brin is the 8th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of ̶$̶1̶0̶0̶.̶2̶ ̶b̶i̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶ 82.1 billion.

Brin immigrated to the United States with his family from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father's & grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, & they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in Susan Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park.

During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. The two men seemed to disagree on most subjects, but after spending time together they "became intellectual soul-mates & close friends." Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers". Together, they authored a paper titled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine".

To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub's web crawler into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin & Page developed the PageRank algorithm, & realized that it could be used to build a search engine far superior to those existing at the time. The new algorithm relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of the backlinks that connected one Web page to another, & allowed the number of links & their rank, to determine the rank of the page.

Combining their ideas, they began utilizing Page's dormitory room as a machine laboratory, & extracted spare parts from inexpensive computers to create a device that they used to connect the nascent search engine with Stanford's broadband campus network.

After filling Page's room with equipment, they then converted Brin's dorm room into an office & programming center, where they tested their new search engine designs on the web. The rapid growth of their project caused Stanford's computing infrastructure to experience problems.

Page & Brin used the former's basic HTML programming skills to set up a simple search page for users, as they did not have a web page developer to create anything visually elaborate. They also began using any computer part they could find to assemble the necessary computing power to handle searches by multiple users. As their search engine grew in popularity among Stanford users, it required additional servers to process the queries. In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available on the Stanford Web site.

By early 1997 the BackRub page described the state as follows:

Some Rough Statistics (from August 29, 1996)

Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million

Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes (now there is google amount of gigs downloaded)

BackRub is written in Java & Python & runs on several Sun Ultras & Intel Pentiums running Linux. The primary database is kept on a Sun Ultra series II with 28GB of disk. Scott Hassan & Alan Steremberg have provided a great deal of very talented implementation help. Sergey Brin has also been very involved & deserves many thanks.

BackRub already exhibited the rudimentary functions & characteristics of a search engine: a query input was entered & it provided a list of backlinks ranked by importance. Page recalled: "We realized that we had a querying tool. It gave you a good overall ranking of pages & ordering of follow-up pages." Page said that in mid-1998 they finally realized the further potential of their project: "Pretty soon, we had 10,000 searches a day, & we figured, maybe this is really real."

Some compared Page & Brin's vision to the impact of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing:

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles for mass consumption. The technology allowed for books & manuscripts‍—‌originally replicated by hand‍—‌to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge & helping to usher in the European Renaissance ... Google has done a similar job.

The comparison was also noted by the authors of The Google Story: "Not since Gutenberg ... has any new invention empowered individuals, & transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google." Also, not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that was at the time beyond the web," such as digitizing books & expanding health information.

Brin is working on other, more personal projects that reach beyond Google. For example, he & Page are trying to help solve the world's energy & climate problems at Google's philanthropic arm, Google.org, which invests in the alternative energy industry to find wider sources of renewable energy. The company acknowledges that its founders want "to solve really big problems using technology".

In October 2010, for example, they invested in a major offshore wind power development to assist the East coast power grid, which will eventually become one of about a dozen offshore wind farms that are proposed for the region. A week earlier they introduced a car that, with "artificial intelligence", can drive itself using video cameras & radar sensors. In the future, drivers of cars with similar sensors would have fewer accidents. These safer vehicles could, therefore, be built lighter & require less fuel consumption. They are trying to get companies to create innovative solutions to increasing the world's energy supply. Brin was also an early investor in Tesla.

In 2004, he & Page were named "Persons of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight. In January 2005 he was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders". In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in Space Adventures, the Virginia-based space tourism company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures' proposed flights in 2011. Space Adventures, the only company that sends tourists to space, has sent five of them so far.

Brin & Page jointly own a customized Boeing 767-200 & a Dornier Alpha Jet, & pay $1.3 million a year to house them & two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.

In 2012 Brin was involved with the Project Glass program & demoed eyeglass prototypes. Project Glass is a research & development program by Google to develop an augmented reality head-mounted display (HMD). The intended purpose of Project Glass products would be the hands-free displaying of information currently available to most smartphone users, & allowing for interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands.

Brin was also involved in the Google driverless car project. In September 2017, at the signing of the California Driverless Vehicle Bill, Brin predicted that within five years, robotic cars will be available to the general public.

Where is Sergey Brin today? According to Forbes, Brin is reportedly funding a high-tech airship project. While he is no longer president of Alphabet, he remains a controlling shareholder and board member. He has two children with his first wife & one child with Shanahan.

Brin is working closely with a group of researchers & has convened weekly discussions of new AI research with Google employees building Google's long-awaited AI model Gemini.

Sergey Brin is an American businessman & internet entrepreneur known as the co-founder of Google, a company that specializes in internet-related services & products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, & hardware

Sergey Brin | American Computer Scientist & Internet Entrepreneur

Elon Musk & his company Neuralink will inform the world on its progress. The company was founded in 2016 with the goal of creating a computer-brain interface to help people keep up with the ongoing artificial intelligence revolution. Now Elon wants to find a way to stream music directly into one's mind without headphone stoppage through wiring thinner than human hair, which would be connected directly to the brain through implants. 

The Tesla CEO announced back in July 2019 that positive experiments have been carried out on mice & apes & he intends to start studying human subjects. He explained Neuralink's mission statement in a series of tweets revisited by Complex: "When you can't. Beat em, join em" obviously referring to humanity trying to keep up with modern machine learning innovations. Elon also referred to a variety of questions, suggesting Neuralink would help avoid the rapid firing in neural networks for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) diagnoses. Users also have been brainstorming about adding serotonin & other chemicals for those in need. 

Elon Musk appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2020 where he explained his computer-brain interface in greater detail.

Neuralink recruited several high-profile neuro-scientists from various universities since its establishment. By July 2019, it had raised $158 million in investment, $100 million of which was from Musk & hired 90 employees. Neuralink announced at that time it was working on a "sewing machine-like" tool capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, demonstrating a system that reads information from a lab rat through 1,500 electrodes & anticipated starting human experiments by 2020.

Elon brings new meaning to having a song stuck in your head 

Elon Musk Will Start Streaming Music Directly To Your Brain

Brian Armstrong (born January 25, 1983) is a billionaire American business executive & investor who is CEO of cryptocurrency trading company Coinbase. He received media coverage for his policy of keeping the workplace free of political activism.

Armstrong was born on January 25, 1983, near San Jose, California, to engineer parents. He attended Rice University in Texas, & earned a dual Bachelor's degree in economics & computer science in 2005, followed by a Masters in Computer Science in 2006. While at Rice, he started a business matching tutors to students, & after graduating, spent a year in Buenos Aires while working on the education company. While in Buenos Aires, he saw the effects of hyperinflation that were affecting Argentina at the time.

Armstrong's early career included working as a developer for IBM & consultant at Deloitte. In 2010, he came across the bitcoin white paper published under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. In 2011, he joined Airbnb as a software engineer, & was exposed to payment systems in the 190 countries Airbnb operated in at the time. While at Airbnb, he saw the difficulties of sending money to South America. He began working weekends & nights to write code in Ruby & JavaScript to buy & store cryptocoins. In 2012, he entered the Y Combinator startup accelerator & received a $150,000 investment, which he used to found Coinbase.

In 2012, Armstrong & Fred Ehrsam co-founded Coinbase, as a way for cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade bitcoins & other digital currencies. Armstrong was its first CEO. A 2018 funding round valued the company at $8.1 billion, & in December 2020, the company filed with the SEC to go public through a direct listing. Following a direct listing in April 2021, Coinbase’s market cap rose to $85B, & Armstrong's total net worth passed $10B.

Armstrong self-funded & founded the scientific research site ResearchHub, modeled on the GitHub code repository, as a way of making research papers available to the public.

Armstrong wrote a blog post in September 2020 calling Coinbase a “Mission Focused Company”, discouraging employee activism & discussion of political & social issues at work. He offered severance packages for anyone at Coinbase who wasn't comfortable with this policy. 60 employees left Coinbase. Prior to this, Armstrong supported the Black Lives Matter movement & tweeted when George Floyd was killed: "I’ve decided to speak up. It’s a shame that this even needs to be said in this day & age, but racism, police brutality, & unequal justice are unequivocally wrong, & we need to all work to eliminate them from society.”

In 2018, Armstrong was the first cryptocurrency executive to sign The Giving Pledge, when he pledged to give away the bulk of his wealth to philanthropic causes. He also set up a philanthropic effort called GiveCrypto.org, to allow people to make public or anonymous donations to help others living in poverty.

Brian Armstrong is the chief executive of Coinbase Global, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. A former Airbnb software engineer, Armstrong cofounded Coinbase in San Francisco in 2012 with former currency trader Fred Ehrsam.

Brian Armstrong | Co-Founder of Coinbase, Digital Currency Exchange

Jonah H. Peretti (1974) is an Internet entrepreneur, a co-founder and the CEO of BuzzFeed, co-founder of The Huffington Post, and developer of reblogging under the project "Reblog".

Peretti was born in California and raised in Oakland, California. His father, a criminal defense lawyer and painter, is of Italian and English descent and his mother (née Cherkin), a schoolteacher, is Jewish. His stepmother was African-American. He attended The College Preparatory School in Oakland, followed by the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he graduated with a degree in environmental studies in 1996. He taught computer science classes at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, in the mid-1990s. He completed a postgrad at the MIT Media Lab.

While at MIT, his email exchange with Nike over a request to print "sweatshop" on custom order shoes went viral.

Peretti co-founded The Huffington Post along with Kenneth Lerer, Andrew Breitbart and Arianna Huffington in 2005. He left The Huffington Post in 2011 after it was bought by AOL for $315 million.

In 2005, Peretti hosted the Contagious Media Showdown at Eyebeam in New York City, where he worked as director of the R&D Lab from 2001 to 2006. During the process Peretti developed the concept of the "Bored-at-Work Network", which he supposes to be larger than some major television network audiences.

Peretti founded the "Internet popularity contest" site BuzzFeed in November 2006. After leaving The Huffington Post, Peretti began working at BuzzFeed full-time. While originally known for its mix of internet memes and lists, the site was the first to break the news that John McCain would endorse Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican Primary. The site continued to grow afterward, raising over $35 million in funding from investors the next year. In August 2014, the site raised another $50 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, more than doubling its previous rounds of funding. The site was valued at $850 million by Andreessen Horowitz.

In 2019, Peretti announced that BuzzFeed would be cutting its overall workforce by 15 percent. Peretti said he wanted to reduce costs without resorting to additional fundraising. Its remaining workforce then officially unionized, their first successful fight being over laid-off staffers getting their earned paid time off.

In 2021 at a virtual company meeting, Peretti, as BuzzFeed’s chief executive, fired 47 employees at Huffington Post in a controversial manner. Employees were given a password to enter the meeting — “spr!ngisH3r3,” a variation on the phrase “spring is here.” The staff members were then informed that if they did not receive an email by 1 p.m., their jobs were safe. The website Defector first reported on the password and other details of the meeting, which were confirmed by two people who attended the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. A BuzzFeed spokesman told The New York Times that the company regretted the password’s tone.

The HuffPost Union, which is affiliated with the Writers Guild of America East, said in a statement that the layoffs had affected 33 of its members, nearly a third of the local union. “We are devastated and infuriated, particularly after an exhausting year of covering a pandemic and working from home,” the union said in a statement.

Jonah Peretti is an American entrepreneur known as the co-founder and CEO of Buzzfeed, an American Internet media, news and entertainment company.

BuzzFeed & Huffington Post Founder Jonah Peretti

There are energy fields which can be contacted & there are special persons who are born with a more acute development of certain faculties, often accompanied by an inferior development of some other faculties. There are some that are able to become more conscious or more aware than the average individual, but that this doesn't mean either magic, sorcery, or the presence of some extraordinary mystical element exists as a permanent or characteristic trait.

The average human being, dedicating his resources to the perpetuation of a ‘static’ self is in a state of psychic tension, has little (if any) opportunity to unfold resources of exceptional ability & special distinctions, of which are naturally his. 

When we think of the extra sensory perception such as telepathy we use general terms which perhaps are not sufficiently precise to indicate the large variety of phenomena.

Astral configurations in astrology represent for Jung an example of synchronicity, of a parallel, non-causal relationships between the development of celestial phenomena & those marked by terrestrial time.

We live in a world of dimensions, powers, faculties, propensities, most of which are unknown to persons of the statistical norm

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