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Two wheels are faster than walking, that's for sure, so if you're in a hurry a bicycle is a great way to get from here to there and back again, indeed. And while two wheels are not as fast as four, if those four are attached to a chassis that is propelled by a combustion engine, two wheels are certainly better for the environment and a great way to see nature while you get there. In short, bicycles are a wonderful way to enjoy the environment, run an errand, or travel to meet friends, but bicycles are vulnerable any time they are in close proximity to motor vehicles. An average motor vehicle can weigh three or four thousand pounds, and when that much weight is travelling at speed it can spell disaster for anything in its path—most certainly including bicycles.
Bicycle accidents can be deadly. Even when the cyclist is wearing a proper helmet, their entire body is exposed and susceptible to serious injury in a collision of any type with a motor vehicle. Just falling off a bike at speed, with no collision, can cause injury. Bikes are fun and a great way to travel, but every rider needs to understand the rules of the road, and be prepared for any situation, always. Bicycle riders need to ride with the expectation that motor vehicles are going to break laws, run lights, and veer too close. It all happens every day and any experienced bicyclist can probably list a handful of times that they have either been run off the road, nearly struck, or actually struck and lived to tell the tale.
At Shaw Law Offices, our hope is that we never meet you. That may sound strange, but in terms of bicycle accidents, it is our sincere hope that we don't, because we'd obviously prefer that no one suffer a bicycle accident injury. But we don't live in a perfect world, and people make mistakes. Drivers run red lights. They speed. They veer out of their lanes carelessly. And… they drive drunk. No matter how many laws are in place to protect citizens, there will always be people who break them. When they do, and their actions injure you, you need a bicycle accident attorney in Indiana who has been down that road before, a bicycle accident attorney who has a track record of success settling cases outside of court and winning them in court.
If you are someone you love has been injured in a bicycle accident, call us. We can help. We know how to win and we will fight to get you the maximum compensation you deserve for your injuries.
Attorney Jeff "JJ" Shaw understands that the laws regarding bicyclists in Indiana can seem confusing, but as an expert in this area of law, JJ can help you navigate through the confusion successfully. JJ recently tried two newsworthy cases successfully, trials that involved bicycle and scooter accidents (as mentioned in The Indianapolis Star article seen below). While Indiana has an increasing number of bicyclists on the road (some statistics state the number of bikers has doubled since 2000), most Indiana cyclists and drivers are unaware of the specific Indiana laws regarding bicycles. As experienced Indiana bicycle and bike accident attorneys we have represented numerous bicyclists who have been severely injured in accidents.
Many of these Indiana bike accidents are the result of crashes with car or trucks, while others are due to defective bikes, negligent placement of construction roadway markers, improper maintenance of roadway, and careless cycling by another cyclist on the road.
We've developed relationships with some of the best known biking experts in the country and have used them to testify at trials related to bike and bicycling accidents. It is important to hire an Indiana personal injury law firm that has experience with bicycle accidents and understands the rules of the road.
The laws in Indiana are a mess, and confusing to drivers and bicyclists alike. These cases are best suited to a bicycle accident attorney in Indiana that really understands biking and the laws that pertain to it.
Collision course: Confusing laws vex Indiana drivers, cyclists
INDIANAPOLIS – Since 2011, bicycle accidents have increased nearly 50 percent in Marion County.
Experts attribute the rise to the sheer volume of cyclists now joining motorists on the road, but there could be another factor at play — ignorance of the state's confusing bike laws.
Cycling advocates and legal experts say motorists and cyclists alike don't know how they're supposed to interact on the state's roadways. And while "share the road" makes for a great slogan, it doesn't come with a clear instruction manual. Even legal experts give conflicting interpretations of the state's convoluted — and largely untested cycling laws.
"There haven't been a lot of cases — that's the thing," said Marion County Superior Court Judge David Dreyer, whose court awarded settlements to two crash victims recently. "There's more bicyclists around than ever, and people on both sides don't know what they should be doing."
Nancy Tibbett, executive director of Bicycle Indiana, says that based on surveys done by her group, upwards of half of all Hoosiers don't even know that cyclists are allowed on the road — much less the nuances of who should yield to whom at an intersection.
"As much as I'd like to say common sense should always prevail, we also know that it doesn't," Tibbett said.
This month, a new law was added to the mix. On July 1, Indiana became the 16th state to enact what's known as a "dead red" law, allowing motorcycles, bicycles and mopeds to run red lights when the signal has been stuck on red for more than two minutes.
It's meant to solve a problem: Some stoplights only change when triggered by the mass of a vehicle, and even motorbikes aren't large enough to activate them.
But it's far from the only situation in which cyclists are at a disadvantage because our roads were designed for larger vehicles.
Take something as simple as where a cyclist should ride when there's no bike lane. Talk to three experts and you could get three different answers.
Some say visibility is king for cyclists, and recommend riding near the middle of the lane in some situations.
"According to the letter of the law, a cyclist can be in the middle of the road in his lane cycling, as long as he's following the rules of the road," says Lance Worland, a personal injury lawyer with Caress Law Group. "I think drivers a lot of times aren't aware of that, and don't realize the cyclist has a right to be there."
His take — shared by many cyclists — is based on the state bicycle law, which says cyclists have all the rights and responsibilities of motor vehicles.
But others say cyclists should cling to the curb, based on another state law that suggests slow vehicles should be "as close as practicable to the right-hand curb."
Road Rules: Indiana Bicycle Laws
"You'll hear bicyclists say, 'we have the same rights as motorists to be in the road' — I'm not sure I agree with that," said Dreyer. "As a motorist, I'm as irked by (cyclists using the middle of the lane) as anybody, even though I ride a bicycle all the time."
The judge acknowledges that the law isn't clear. The slow-moving vehicle statute actually says cyclists should be in the right-hand lane "or" as close to the curb as possible. One or the other may have been intended to apply to different situations, but the law doesn't explain what those are.
Tibbett suggests that cyclists use the right third of the lane. "But we actually don't say they should ride as close to the edge as possible," she said. "If they're too close to the edge, they might not be seen.
"The challenge with that becomes for the bicyclist, that if they're close to the right, a motor vehicle will take the liberty to pass the bicyclist in the same lane, and often that could be entirely too close."
Collisions Surging
Increasingly, ignorance of the rules of the road is becoming a dangerous proposition for cyclists, and a costly one for motorists.
Bicycle-related collisions in Marion County jumped from 170 in 2011 to 250 in 2013, according to state crash report data, a 47 percent rise. Statewide, such collisions increased 8 percent from 963 to 1,039. Exclude Marion County, and the rest of the state actually stayed about the same in that period.
Within the past eight months alone, huge settlements have been awarded to cyclists after drivers were found mostly at fault for crashes.
In one case, Dreyer upheld a $3.9 million ruling awarded to a then-17-year-old cyclist, Richard Bethel, after he was hit by a school bus in 2010. In another, a jury in Dreyer's court awarded a $240,000 settlement to David Asher, a moped driver who was hit by a car that turned in front of him while he was going straight through an intersection in a bike lane.
Worland says his firm has seen a "substantial" increase in cycling-related injuries in recent years, with most of them occurring at intersections.
"Normally, either a car's taking a left or a right at a light or a stop sign and fails to yield to the cyclist crossing the street," he said.
Clear Rules, Education Needed?
State law generally puts the burden on motorists to "exercise due caution" to avoid vulnerable road users. But it can be confusing for motorists what a cyclist is planning to do — and Worland said "rogue cyclists" who break the rules of the road make it that much more difficult for the two sides to get along.
"That means stop at stop signs, stop at red lights … there are a lot of cyclists that don't do that," Worland said. "It gives cyclists who are serious about it a bad rap."
Advocates like Bicycle Indiana are working to educate both groups. And they have their sights set on adding new protections to cyclists in state law. Currently, laws spelling out who can be in a bike lane and establishing a 3-foot buffer when passing a bicycle have only been adopted by a few cities, including Indianapolis and Carmel.
The discrepancies from one city to another are confusing at best, and legally problematic at worst. The Asher case hinged on Dreyer's interpretation that a Marion County law prohibiting mopeds from entering a bike lane conflicted with a state law urging slow vehicles to stay to the right.
"It's confusing," Worland acknowledged. "I would say that we do need clearer guidelines for drivers and cyclists alike."
If You're Injured, We'll Fight for You!
Here at Shaw Law, we believe that every accident is preventable. Every accident is due to someone's fault, and it's our job to make sure that the party that injured you pays for it, and provides you the compensation you deserve, not just for your immediate medical expenses but for your pain, suffering, and future care. Essentially, we will work to get you a financial settlement or award that will cover you for as long as your injury impacts your life in any way, even if that means forever. You should never be forced to suffer because of someone else's negligence.
You can hire us to start working on your case in less than 10 minutes. Contact us today.
Home » Bicycle Accidents


I am eager to create a place where people can begin to communicate again, on topics that vary of course, but can actually have open and honest conversation. A place where we can help each other with our own experiences, testimonies, and ideas, as well as agree to disagree on topics that are otherwise avoided. I am a Social Worker and I work in Mental and Behavioral Health as a Mental Health Para-Professional. I am also an Internationally Certified Prevention Specialist, Certified Prevention Consultant and Life Coach. I love helping people enrich their lives and assisting them in finding their purpose. I believe that no matter how diverse we are we have something to offer one another. Happy Communicating everyone!!!!! Let's Talk and remember NO QUESTION IS A DUMB QUESTION….


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By party963 | October 21, 2021
Elton John and Dua Lipa lend support to the UK's efforts to win the Eurovision song contest
A-list artists Dua Lipa and Elton John are are throwing their weight behind the U.K.'s efforts to win the Eurovision Song Contest.
The "Cold Heart" duet partners, in conjunction with Tap Management, were selected to announce the search for who will represent Britain in the annual competition, which in the past two years has made global stars of "Arcade" singer Duncan Laurence and "Beggin'" rockers Måneskin.
Tap, which manages Dua, as well as Lana Del Rey and Elle Goulding, is taking over the selection of entries for the competition in an effort to have their country perform better in the contest. The U.K. hasn't won in 25 years, and last year, its contestant came in dead last.
Sharing her excitement for the new gig, Dua raved, "I'm a proud Brit whilst also being a proud Kosovan. I'm happy to lend my manager to the cause. I'll be cheering them on!," according to The Sun.
Elton added, "There aren't many televised events that are as big and global as Eurovision, so it's a wonderful opportunity for us to remind the world yet again of the depth and diversity of our talent. I can't wait to see what gems our friends at Tap Music will unearth."
Arguably the most famous artists ever to have competed in the Eurovision Song Contest, which has been running since 1956, are Céline Dion, who competed and won for Switzerland in 1988, and ABBA, who won for Sweden in 1974 with "Waterloo."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: How to get all the fields which do not contain specific 2 characters in SQL? I am using sqlplus and I want to extract all contact numbers which contains any character apart from [0-9, '-','+', '(',')',' '] in SQL? I tried this
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS where (VOICE not like '%[0-9]%')
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS where (VOICE not like '%-%')
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS where (VOICE not like '%+%')..

Example:
Expected output
As i am using sql for the first time so i am not able to combine these conditions, Can anyone help me on this?

A: Demo: http://rextester.com/PECYN79110
isnumeric ensures remaining values are all 0-9. replaces eliminate the characters we want to allow as valid.
with cte (Voice) as (
 SELECT '+65 8131 6259' union all
 SELECT '+64-21-126-0024' union all
 SELECT '+66 955940641??' union all
 SELECT '+abc' union all
 SELECT '+651234'union all
 SELECT '+1(555) 555-5555')

SELECT cte.*
FROM cte
WHERE isnumeric(replace(
                replace(
                replace(
                replace(
                replace(voice,' ','')  --Eliminate spaces
                             ,')','')  --Eliminate )
                             ,'(','')  --Eliminate (
                             ,'-','')  --Eliminate -
                             ,'+','')  --Eliminate +
               ) = 0                   --show only those not numeric remaining.

Will not be speedy due to string manipulation; thus no index use.  However, you could create a computed column using the where clause expression then you could just reference the computed column isValidVoice with 1 or 0.  We put the cost for performance on the data save instead of subsequent queries.  So if read performance is a concern; but save performance can wait a fraction of a second more, then you could have better performance.
Alternatively you could make the where clause a function passing in voice and it simply returns if it's isValidPhoneNumber based on your rules.  This way the function can be used in multiple places; or as a computed column on multiple column/tables; but that too would be slower.

A: You can try this.
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS WHERE (REPLACE(VOICE,' ','') like '%[^0-9+-]%')

Result:
VOICE
---------------
+66 955940641??
+abc

A: You may need something like below,  here you take all your three not LIKE conditions and combine into a single one, by using UNION
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS where (VOICE not like '%[0-9]%')
union
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS where (VOICE not like '%-%')
union
select VOICE from MERCHANT_MP_CONTACTS where (VOICE not like '%+%')

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
I Don't Want To Let You Down [EP]
Album Review of I Don't Want To Let You Down [EP] by Sharon Van Etten.
Home » Pop/Rock » I Don't Want To Let You Down [EP]
Record label: Jagjaguwar
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock
Buy I Don't Want To Let You Down [EP] from Amazon
I Don't Want To Let You Down [EP] - Very Good, Based on 13 Critics
PopMatters - 90
Based on rating 9/10
The title track of Sharon Van Etten's new EP is so effortlessly hummable, and so clear-eyed in its vulnerability, that it reminds of Aimee Mann's contributions to the 1999 film Magnolia. Those songs captured our need for human connection with unguarded poignancy, not hesitating to explore the anxieties and fears that often go hand in hand. (Nobody was better suited to cover Harry Nilsson's "One," ever.) Her influence on director Paul Thomas Anderson's labyrinthine story of human free-falls and renaissances cannot be overstated.
The Line of Best Fit - 85
It's a loud, frivolous world. We have to ensure that everyone knows how we're feeling, what we're thinking, what we believe in. And if no one's listening or hearing you, why, BE LOUDER of course. I've not been gobsmacked by an album like I was with Sharon Van Etten's Are We There for easily a decade.
AllMusic - 80
Like an unreleased side C of the musically mature, thematically searching Are We There, Sharon Van Etten enacts the same tone with repeat co-producer Stewart Lerman, and is lyrically still struggling, coping, and navigating trying relationships on I Don't Want to Let You Down. Some of those relationship problems were caused, she has admitted, by being absent in the pursuit of her music career, a dilemma of self-awareness that provides fodder for much of the five-track EP. In "I Always Fall Apart," accompanied only by wistful piano and strings, she tenderly repeats "It's not my fault/It's just my flaw/It's who I am.
Exclaim - 80
Idiosyncratic singer Sharon Van Etten may have titled her new EP I Don't Want To Let You Down, but she sings the title track's verses in a resigned tone, as if she's grown accustomed to the inevitability of such disappointment. That sentiment is echoed by the tune's mopey guitar work. It's an effective but straightforward song, which may come as a surprise to fans of her preceding release, last year's Are We There, which was praised for Van Etten's unflinchingly vulnerable lyricism and vocal tone, along with her unpredictable, distinctly herky-jerky singing style.
New Musical Express (NME) - 80
Based on rating 4/5
On last year's fourth album 'Are We There', Sharon Van Etten documented the end of a decade-long relationship with devastating candour. A year on, this new EP shows her wounds are still healing. "It's not my fault, it's just my flaw, it's who I am", she sighs over strolling piano chords on centrepiece 'I Always Fall Apart'. There's more determination in the title-track's downbeat Americana twangs, courtesy of The War On Drugs' Adam Granduciel on guitar, and the live rendition of 'Tell Me' is a spirited, though less gripping version of the 2012 demo version.
Based on rating B+
Just a year after her superb Are We There, which seemed to cap a run of continually more confident and capable releases, singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten returns with the half-sized I Don't Want to Let You Down EP. While it might be easy to dismiss an EP as a lesser body of work, this five-song set makes the case that Van Etten is in a period of songwriting where all her music is essential, regardless of the package it's delivered in. In just 22 minutes, we see Van Etten in a number of different forms, from the piano ballad of "I Always Fall Apart" to the full-band live cut "Tell Me".
Under The Radar - 70
Here's a quick little EP from the ever-industrious Sharon Van Etten, hot on the heels of last year's Are We There, which was deservedly heaped in acclaim. Van Etten has definitely mastered her thing, effortlessly employing her warm and occasionally acrobatic voice for wilting, wry explorations of human relations in all their disappointingness. The title track alone is worth the price of admission here, strumming along right for the heart, bursting forth with Van Etten's trademark vocal harmonies.
Once you've told someone, "I don't want to let you down," there's really no going back, is there? You know that you have or that you soon will, that something irrevocable has already come to pass. When Sharon Van Etten released 2014's Are We There, she talked about the imperiled 10-year relationship it documented in the present tense—though lines like "burn my skin so I can't feel you" didn't offer much hope for its recovery. In a recent NPR discussion about her new EP, the 34-year-old songwriter said of its subject, "It's someone I still care about but don't speak with any more.
Drowned In Sound - 70
It's probably best not to read too much into what the timing of this new EP from Sharon van Etten actually means for her; she's always been prolific, as four full-lengths in six years can attest, and she's in the thick of a world tour, too. It's certainly not as if her outstanding fourth LP, last year's Are We There, actually needed a coda of sorts; it was a taut, well-executed and perfectly self-contained affair, and presumably the four studio tracks on I Don't Want to Let You Down are leftovers from those sessions. You do wonder, though, whether the instrumental choices on the tracks are the reason they didn't make the cut the first time around, or whether instead Van Etten has chosen to experiment a little, safe in the knowledge that she can do so without interfering with Are We There's carefully-crafted atmospherics.
Rolling Stone - 60
Sharon Van Etten finds remarkable might in vulnerability, and her latest does what good EPs should: bushwhacks new paths. "Just Like Blood" pares imbalanced love down to the bone ("You set me off just like a gun/Then you run just like blood") with a string section suggesting unfinished business. The title track and "Pay My Debts" are unusually groove-driven near-pop.
Their review was very positive
The album artwork for Sharon Van Etten's last two records was saturated with chiaroscuro, be it Tramp's tight close-up or Are We There 's shot of a driver leaning out the window, a suburban landscape in the background. Her new EP, I Don't Want to Let You Down, departs from that formula with a glossy photo of Van Etten in a broad, Beck-channeling hat striking the 2008 Obama pose, lens flare obscuring half her face. The only black comes from her brim, the negative space white this time around.
Dusted Magazine
Sharon Van Etten — I Don't Want to Let You Down EP (Jagjaguwar)Faye Dunaway's character Wanda, the anti-heroine of Barbet Schroeder's drunken Bukowski biopic Barfly, drinks, casts an evil eye and even fights her way through her would-be soulmate's drunken haze of a world. The quiet moments between episodes, however, reveal her to be a fallen star, someone who still might have class, wit, a vocabulary, and a work ethic. She still knows how to get up in the morning and be a pro at whatever absolutely needs it.
Sharon Van Etten's most recent full-length album, Are We There, got perfect marks from me upon its release a year ago, and this new five-song EP is nearly as strong. The Brooklyn singer/songwriter's songs are often worried outpourings of confessions, apologies and anxieties sung to lovers and friends. She's hard on herself - sample song titles: I Always Fall Apart, I Don't Want To Let You Down, Pay My Debts - and she translates those feelings into exquisite melodies, deeply exhaled and searching in tone.
'I Don't Want To Let You Down [EP]'
More Pop/Rock Reviews:
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If you like Pop/Rock you might also be interested in Album Reviews in the Music Critic's Pop, Rock, Indie Rock and Britpop categories.


In its endeavour of creating a platform for the photography lovers across the country, Canon India, a leader in imaging is back with its ninth edition of the most coveted live photo contest – Canon PhotoMarathon in Kolkata. After successful editions in the past, Canon hosted the competition for the first time in East India at Science City Auditorium, Mirania Gardens, Topsia, Kolkata on 9th February 2019. The theme-based day-long photography saw participation from over 500 participants who showcased their skills to compete for exciting prizes.
The 9th edition of Canon PhotoMarathon was flagged off in Kolkata by Mr. Eddie Udagawa, Vice President, Consumer Imaging and Information Centre, Canon India. The participants were judged by an eminent jury panel, including Mr. Ravi Dhingra- lifestyle and commercial photographer; Mr. Rambabu Dhanishetty- wedding and fashion photographer and Mr. Tejas Soni- renowned wildlife photographer.
Canon PhotoMarathon is an annual event initially conceptualised in Singapore. Since its initiation in 2009, the Canon PhotoMarathon has been growing immensely year-on-year. What initially started as a competition for professional photographers, has now increased significantly by participation from beginners, hobbyists and youngsters.
Deemed as one of the largest photo competitions, the event brings photography enthusiasts closer, while challenging them to push their boundaries and showcase their photographic creativity through their own perspective in line with given themes under time pressure. Two unique themes are announced before the event which makes the competition even more exciting. The highlight of the event is the Grand Prize – which is an all-expenses paid photography trip to Canon PhotoMarathon Asia Championship 2019 in Japan. Since the introduction of student category in 2016, Canon has been encouraging students to participate in this event in order to nourish their photography skills.
The highlight of the event was not only the Grand prize but exquisite prizes awarded to the second and the third winners with EOS 6D Mark II (EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM) and EOS 80D (EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM) respectively. Additionally, there were exciting prizes for the theme based winners, runners up and student's category.
To inspire photo enthusiasts and offer them a hands-on experience, Canon cameras and printers were on display at the event to deliver input to output solution. Living its commitment to the community, Canon had set up a free camera health check-up camp where Canon cameras can be thoroughly examined and cleaned by Canon's technical service professionals.
Vishal Singh, aged 17, student of KLS college Nawada Bihar, won the first prize in the student category.


Alexander hardly ever eats cucumbers.
Barbra looked like something the cat dragged in after his long night at the pub.
I've made up my mind to ask Brandon to marry me.
I was surprised when Jingbai bought a round of drinks for everyone at the bar.
I looked all over for Jones, but couldn't find him.
Nobody knew where Sanity went.
Thuan told me not to go there alone.
This is your chance, Hume.
Rex thinks that Hy is dishonest.
Srivatsan's parents live in a mansion.
Saqib didn't feel like talking.
Frederic doesn't think that he needs to use deodorant.
Yesterday, Morgan gave me a book with a blue cover.
Amigo is guilty, isn't he?
Sheila's guardian angel must have been watching over him.
Everybody looks up to Wendi.
This is the book Heinrich mentioned yesterday.
Barry wanted Tanya to help him clean the house.
Noam continued to play his banjo even after everybody asked him to stop.
Miriam pretended not to know what to do.
What does Belinda have on?
Mayo is a law-abiding citizen.
Dieter likes all of his teachers.
Jose was only gone for fifteen minutes.
Jay has done well here.
I'm going to go talk to Oleg again.
Phill comes home at around six.
Nhan didn't finish the race.
Lum remained silent during the meeting.
Anna thought the watch Jianyun had given him was ugly.
Spass got off his horse.


text:
WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Riverdale season three episode 13, titled Requiem. Riverdale season three returned to the small screen tonight following a mid-season break and leapt straight back into the drama by delving into Glady Jones's (played Gina Gershon) cunning plan to take over the town. The mother […]
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BioWare has outlined some imminent changes to Anthem's loot system, with changes expected to roll out February 28 or March 1, central US time. Posting to reddit, lead producer Ben Irving acknowledged recent player feedback on the matter of inscriptions and masterworks, and the slow grind associated with these. Here […]
Anthem is getting a loot overhaul tomorrow – here are the details
An arbitrator has ordered 21st Century Fox to pay $179 million in a dispute over profits with the stars of the long-running Fox TV show "Bones." source: abcnews.go.com
Arbitrator orders Fox to pay $179M in "Bones" profit dispute
Temple Run 2 Temple Run 2 review 2019🔥Game reviews ‼Most propular game‼viral game #sajidtechtube #viral game #game #review #game review #templerun #temple #run #sajid #techtube Worth A Try (ft. Serena Rutledge) by Leonell Cassio https://soundcloud.com/leonellcassio Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b… Music promoted by Audio […]
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Nokia EDGE 2019 is a rumored smartphone and the following mentioned specs are based on leaks, rumors and latest reports.Nokia announced that they will release Android Based smart-phone – Nokia Edge in early 2018. They haven't revealed the name of their upcoming Android-based smartphone yet. According to rumors, the name […]
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Price: (as of – Details) The Feather Whirl, As Seen On TV, is a fun and playful way to encourage healthy activity in cats. The erratically spinning feathers drive cats wild as it starts, stops, and changes direction on a wobbly weighted base. The quiet motor won't frighten off any […]
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FILE PHOTO – Tennis – Shanghai Masters – Shanghai, China – October 10, 2018 – Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina in action against Richard Gasquet of France. REUTERS/Aly Song (Reuters) – Juan Martin del Potro will not defend his BNP Paribas Open title in Indian Wells after doctors told […]
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US President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un discuss the day ahead as they begin talks. source: bbc.com
Kim and Trump start second day of talks
The 41-year-old BBC Breakfast presenter said goodbye to his colleagues earlier this month as he prepared to take some time off to head on a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro in aid of Comic Relief. Yesterday, as Dan Walker and his fellow celebrity hikers soldiered on through day five of the […]
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The FDA says the clinic improperly sold thermography machines. source: abcnews.go.com
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The horseshoe crab. Arto Hakola/Getty Images The horseshoe crab doesn't have to do much to haunt your nightmares. Their hard shell hides scuttling legs and pincers, they use their long, spiny tail to flip themselves over and they bleed milky blue blood. Think less "Sebastien from The Little Mermaid" and […]
Scientists discover horseshoe crabs are related to spiders – CNET
The KIC 8462852 star was first spotted by online astronomers Planet Hunters in 2015, which appeared to be dipping in brightness. Astronomers struggled to explain why the star's brightness was constantly fluctuating, leading some to believe an advanced alien civilisation had built a megastructure, or Dyson Sphere, around it to […]
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Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE Feb. 28, 2019, 1:48 AM GMT By Associated Press and Dennis Romero BOSTON — They're nestled amid bustling downtowns and tucked into nondescript strip malls across quiet suburbs. Brothels posing […]
Kraft case puts spotlight on illegal massage parlors
WASHINGTON — A bill introduced by a bipartisan pair of senators Feb. 27 would authorize an extension of the International Space Station to 2030 and also make permanent human settlement of space a national goal. Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) introduced the Advancing Human Spaceflight Act Feb. […]
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By Adrian ChoFeb. 27, 2019 , 1:05 PM Chemists have stumbled across a new way to separate reflected light into the colors of the rainbow—a phenomenon known as iridescence. The surprisingly simple technique, which is something of a hybrid of previously known ones, could have applications both scientific and aesthetic. […]
Scientists luck upon a new way to make a rainbow
Warner Bros has had a winner with their underwater adventure Aquaman. The studio's adaptations of DC Comics movies have all but been flops. Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman is one of the only hugely successful DC Extended Universe films to come from the studio. Until now. Is there a release date […]
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A prototype for U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed wall is pictured after being demolished to make way for a new section of actual border fencing near San Diego, California, as seen from Tijuana, Mexico February 27, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes (Reuters) – The prototypes for President Donald Trump's contest for a […]
Trump border wall prototypes torn down to make way for new barrier
(Reuters) – BlackBerry Ltd on Wednesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit accusing Twitter Inc of illegally using technology in its mobile messaging applications that had been developed by the former smartphone maker. FILE PHOTO – The Twitter logo is displayed on a screen on the floor of the New York […]
BlackBerry sues Twitter for patent infringement
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Armed assailants attacked an Ebola treatment center in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, setting off a fire and becoming embroiled in an extended gunbattle with security forces, health officials said. The identity and motive of the assailants were unclear. Aid workers […]
Congo Ebola center set on fire after armed attack
The moment Kim Jong-un answered a question from a foreign reporter at the US-North Korea summit. source: bbc.com
When Kim responded to a foreign reporter
Anne Hathaway shows off toned legs in black leggings…
COVID curbs over, China's tourists hit Thai…
Brooke Shields reveals post-college rape in 'Pretty…


GALESBURG — Nova Singers, the region's premier professional vocal ensemble, is scheduling auditions for the 2019-20 season.
Singers with extensive choral experience and vocal training are invited to audition at this time. All voice parts are encouraged to audition. Interested singers may contact Nova Singers' founder and music director, Dr. Laura Lane, at (309) 341-7229 or llane@knox.edu for more information or to schedule an audition.
The award-winning Nova Singers have remained committed to the highest artistic standards since their founding in 1986. The ensemble has performed throughout the Midwest, as well as at state, regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association. Nova Singers has been awarded grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to the Galesburg Community Foundation, the City of Galesburg and the Vitale Foundation. Nova Singers has also released nine professional recordings.


Kris Vallotton is a leader at Bethel Church in Redding, California, where he oversees the financial well-being of their network of ministries. The author of more than fourteen books, Kris is also a successful entrepreneur, and he regularly works with government and business leaders around the world, teaching and guiding them. He and his wife, Kathy, live in Redding. Find out more at krisvallotton.com.


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Home Toys & Collectables Toy Store Giant Toys 'R' Us Files for Bankruptcy in America
Toy Store Giant Toys 'R' Us Files for Bankruptcy in America
Christmas is without a doubt the most lucrative time of the year for toy retailers but it seems that even the impending surge of Christmas shoppers isn't enough to save Toys 'R' Us one of the worlds largest toy retailers from having to file for Bankruptcy protection in the states. Further highlighting the plight and struggle of "Brick-and-mortar" retailers.
The company made the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing late Monday night in federal court in Richmond, Va., acknowledging that it needed to revamp its long-term debt totaling more than $5 billion.
The toy giant has faced increasing problems over the years as it struggled to compete with online retailers such as Amazon and Bargain chains in the states like Walmart.
The company faced $400 million in debt payment coming due in 2018 and was burning through its cash. It hired advisers, including the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, to help come up with a plan.
In a statement on Monday night, Toys "R" Us said the filing would help the company invest in long-term growth and "fuel its aspirations to bring play to kids everywhere and be a best friend to parents."
Other retailers have closed thousands of stores and laid off tens of thousands of workers as they try to cut costs and compete with e-commerce.
But the company said its roughly 1,600 Toys "R" Us and Babies "R" Us stores around the world would continue to operate "as usual."
What are your thoughts on the news that one of the biggest toy store chains in the world is in such dire straights? Do you predominantly shop online or do you enjoy strolling around an actual toy store rather than a website? As always let us know your thoughts in the comments below. And for all your daily toy, tech and gaming news, keep it here at clubit.tv
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Han solos BFF is the cutest, cuddliest plush toy in the galaxy
Super Mario Plush Toys


European University Cyprus accepts applications for the Spring Semester 2019 starting on February 4th, 2019. Applications for admission are open for all undergraduate, graduate and PhD programs of study.
The Spring Semester 2019 begins on February 4th and finishes on May 31, 2019, including final examinations. To apply for admission click here.
For more information feel free to contact us throught email info@euc.ac.cy or telephone: 00357-22713000.


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30 Rock: Season 3
Emmy Award winner Tina Fey writes, executive produces, and stars as Liz Lemon, the head writer of a live variety program in New York City. Liz's life is turned upside down when brash new network executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin in his Golden Globe winning role) interferes with her show, bringing the wildly unpredictable Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) into the cast. Now it's up to Liz to manage the mayhem and still try and have a life. 22 episodes.
Genre: TV Comedy, Television Shows, Deluxe Box Sets, As Seen on TV - Comedy
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Scott Adsit, Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski
Rating: M - Contains violence, sexual references and offensive language.
Location in store: Comedy (TV)
Arrested Development: Season 1 (2003)
In this critically acclaimed hit sitcom, you'll meet the suddenly penniless, and equally clueless, B...
The bitingly brilliant, Emmy Award-winning second season continues to follow the downward-spiralling...
This set includes the complete third and final season of the genius, Emmy-winning comedy that was ca...
30 Rock: Season 1 (2006)
Emmy Award winner Tina Fey writes, executive produces, and stars as Liz Lemon, the head writer of a...
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: The Complete Series (2006)
What goes on behind the scenes of a nationwide late-night comedy sketch show? Aaron Sorkin, creator...
Season two continues onwards and upwards, attracting great guest stars including David Schwimmer, Je...
Sports Night: Season 1 (1998)
Finally available, the first ever series from Aaron Sorkin (creator of 'The West Wing' and 'Studio 6...
Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin star as TV writer Liz Lemon and conservative GE Executive Jack Donaghy, wh...
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Seasons 1 and 2 (2015)
A woman is rescued from a doomsday cult and starts life over again in New York City. After being res...


Burning Cash is a book by Justin Collins that discusses the merits and problems with the Common Core education system. This is a promotional animation to discuss some of the ideas brought up in the book. It uses a combination of typography motion graphics and interview video to convey the message.


Can couplings between dissimilar metals be allowed?
Galvanically induced hydrogen stress cracking can occur in metals under conditions that will not necessarily lead to cracking under un-coupled conditions. Therefore, couplings between dissimilar metals should be avoided as much as possible. When dissimilar metals must be connected, the cathode to anode area ratio should be minimized. For example, tubing in a heat exchanger should never be anodic to tubesheets or shells in order to prevent an unfavorably large cathode-to-small-anode area ratio.


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SES and Isotropic Systems enter new phase of customer edge terminal antenna development to unleash O
Isotropic Systems, an innovator and provider of transformational broadband terminal technologies, and SES have announced a new developmental phase of their collaborative partnership to produce scalable, cost-effective multi-beam customer edge terminal antennas capable of unlocking access to the groundbreaking O3b mPOWER system across government and defence, telco and cellular backhaul, aero, maritime, and offshore markets.
Together with SES, Isotropic Systems will review, refine, and test key components of its full line of customised digital software-defined terminals throughout 2020, optimising the tiered platform to meet specific performance, cost, power, and connectivity requirements of user cases around the world. The development roadmap will culminate in a series of comprehensive engineering evaluations of Isotropic Systems' multi-beam antenna components, prior to the commercial launch of the customer edge terminals and the O3b mPOWER Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) system in 2021.
Many of the upcoming trials, the first underway this month, will focus on maximising the effectiveness of the circuits behind the optical beam-forming lens modules at the core of the Isotropic Systems adaptable multi-beam antenna. The patented lens module technology is a major differentiator, enabling seamless switching between SES's multi-orbit fleets, and opening the door to a new age of widely accessible and tailored high-performance Ku- and Ka-band connectivity.
"The SES-Isotropic Systems partnership is driving the development of innovative multi-beam customer edge terminal antennas using digital beamforming that will light up new market opportunities for the tailored scalability and flexibility of our O3b mPOWER network and our unique multi-orbit MEO-GEO constellations," said Stewart Sanders, SES's Executive Vice President and O3b mPOWER Programme Lead. "Our shared vision is keenly focused on bringing game-changing, high-performance broadband to both highly sophisticated and mass markets across the globe, on land, at sea, and in the air."
"The Isotropic Systems multi-beam antennas, featuring our patented optical digital beam-forming lens technologies, provide the high-throughput ground infrastructure required to unlock a new wave of HTS constellations, including SES's high-performance multi-constellation satellite networks across a wide range of markets," explained John Finney, founder and CEO of Isotropic Systems. "Our terminals are customisable to meet the performance, cost, and power requirements of countless applications – from the most complex government defence systems and mobile backhaul solutions capable of extending 5G, to next-gen connected experiences aboard commercial airliners, cruise ships, offshore rigs, and even small fishing boats at sea."
SES and Isotropic Systems first announced their partnership in 2018 when SES contracted Isotropic Systems to develop smart, high-throughput customer edge terminal solutions for the O3b mPOWER system. The fully funded, next-gen and highly flexible MEO satellite-based data communications system is a scalable terabit-level constellation supporting thousands of dynamic beams, and exponentially expands SES's first-generation O3b MEO system capabilities to deliver a whole new level of customisation.
Antennas & Terminals
Carlisle Interconnect Technologies debuts UTiPHASE™ microwave cable assemblies
Atlantic Microwave launches new range of antennas for satcom testing
Rajant receives six sigma quality process management certification


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Category Archives: Product-led Growth
Kellblog Predictions for 2022
Posted on December 27, 2021 | 4 comments
Well it's time for my annual predictions post, a series now in its eighth year. Before diving in, let me remind readers that I do these predictions in the spirit of fun, they are not business or investment advice, and that all of my usual disclaimers and terms apply. I'm starting to believe that the value of this series is more about the chosen topics than the predictions themselves because my formula for creating these posts is to select interesting topics that I want to ponder, research them, and figure out a prediction for each topic along the way.
Let's start with a review of my 2021 predictions, keeping in mind one of my favorite quotes, often misattributed (including by me) to Yogi Berra: "predictions are hard, especially about the future."
Kellblog 2021 Predictions Review
On my own admittedly subjective and charitable self-scoring system, 2021 was a pretty good year for Kellblog predictions.
1. Divisiveness decreases but unity remains elusive. Hit. This is totally subjective, but I'd say that divisiveness in the USA has decreased a bit and that unity has most certainly remained elusive.
2. COVID-19 goes to brushfire mode. Hit, until recently. Well, it certainly felt like brushfire mode until December. As I write, it's still early in the omicron wave, so I'm going to remain optimistic that current predictions of omicron being more transmissible but less lethal will hold true.
3. The new normal isn't. Hit. I don't think many people believe that we're returning to pre-Covid norms when, and indeed if, we enter a post-Covid world.
4. We start to value resilience, not just efficiency. Hit. I don't frequently write about supply chain, but I made this prediction because for years I have wondered if, in our quest to wrest inefficiency from the supply chain, we were undervaluing resilience to Black Swan events from wars to infrastructure failures to natural disasters [1]. One person's inefficiency is another person's insurance.
5. Work from home sticks. Hit. At this point perhaps for the wrong reasons (i.e., omicron), but where and how we work has already changed and many of those changes will become permanent. McKinsey is producing some strong content on the future of work as is my friend Dan Turchin on his AI and the Future of Work podcast.
6. Tech flight happens, but with a positive effect. Hit. A lot of Californians have moved to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada — but a lot have also moved to California (i.e., from the Bay Area to cheaper parts of the state). Florida, despite the hype, nudges out Oregon for fifth place. My point was that this is normal and healthy: you can long Miami and Austin without shorting Palo Alto which, by the way, would have been a bad idea in 2020.
7. Tech bubble relents. Miss, until recently. My world is probably best approximated by the WCLD ETF, which opened the year at $53, recently hit as high as $65, and (as I write) is at $51. Taking the longer view, WCLD has nevertheless more than doubled over the past 5 years, so a lot of this depends on what you mean by "bubble" and "relent."
Towards that end, revenue multiple is a better bubble indicator than share price, so let's take a look at the latest from Jamin Ball at Clouded Judgement.
Are multiples down? Yes, from a median high of nearly 20x to 12x, nearly 40%. So I'd say yes on "relent." On "bubble," well, we're still at 12x compared to what I'd say is a normal (eyeballed) range of 6-10x — so we're still running hot by historical standards. [2]
8. Net dollar retention becomes the top SaaS metric. Hit, depending on what you mean by "top" [3], but my real point was the NDR would replace churn rates as a method for valuing the installed base and I think it has. See my SaaStr 2020 talk or my GainSight Pulse 2021 talks for more.
9. Data intelligence happens. Partial hit. I'd say it's "happening" much more than "happened" because we're still early days in a multi-year category transformation. My friends at Alation continue to crush it driving their vision of data intelligence extending from the data catalog [4].
10. Rebirth of EPM. Hit. While the second-generation EPM vendors [5] continue to prosper (i.e., Adaptive within Workday, Anaplan and Planful as independent companies) the industry is nevertheless being reborn underneath with new firms such Cube, Mosaic, OnPlan, and Pigment blazing the trail [6]. It's exciting to watch.
Well, here we go with our predictions for 2022.
1. Covid goes from pandemic to endemic. I'm not sure we ever had a realistic chance to keep the genie in the bottle, as they did in New Zealand, but at least our actions bought us time to create and deploy vaccines. By the way, if you look at this chart, you might argue that New Zealand, in the end, failed to keep the genie in the bottle. [7]
See the big bump? Yes, it does seem that trying to bottle up Covid was destined to failure. Or was it? Look at the scale. Then compare New Zealand to Louisiana, which has a similar population.
The New Zealand peak is 200, the Louisiana peak is 30x higher at 6,000. If nothing else, and since this is something of BI-focused blog, Covid has taught us a lot about How Charts Lie.
But back to our prediction. I think 2022 will be the year we stop thinking in pre-Covid and post-Covid terms, and accept that Covid-19 will become endemic. Much as malaria brought us screened windows and cholera brought us clean water supplies, Covid will be with us for a long time and bring with it lasting (and hopefully in some cases, positive) changes to our day-to-day lives.
2. Web3 hype peaks. Is web3 going to change everything because, as Chris Dixon argues, the best entrepreneurs and developers have learned not to build atop centralized platforms? Or, as Stephen Diehl so indelicately puts it, is web3 bullshit whereby, "the only problem to be solved by web3 is how to post-hoc rationalize its own existence?" Or are Moxie Marlinspike's first impressions right — e.g., the missing element in "crypto" is cryptography and that decentralizing the internals of underlying layers won't prevent centralization at the more nimbly evolving layers above?
Is web3 a ploy to put crypto bros in charge where "the promise of decentralization is just a veneer — and blockchain is, in fact, the worst kind of vendor lock-in?" Or, did the venerable Grady Booch get web3 right in his retweet below?
Maybe Tim O'Reilly, the person who coined the phrase web 2.0, has the best take [8], arguing simply that it's too early to get excited about web3.
It sure does feel like 2005. There are a bunch of new ideas in circulation. Everyone is talking about them. People are struggling to understand them and building frameworks to organize and explain them. And sometimes it's hard to tell what's foundational to the new concept and what's trying to hitchhike a ride on the back of it. Based on this, I think we're building towards a web3 hype peak that should happen in 2022 [9].
I've always believed that blockchain was invented to support a specific use-case (i.e., bitcoin) and, unsurprisingly, is good for that use-case but has otherwise largely been a technology in search of a business problem — particularly in the enterprise. Imagine if you went to SIGMOD twenty years ago and predicted the database of the future would be:
A "ledger," not a database
A linked list
Append-only
Not ACID (nor BASE), but SALT [10]
Immutable at the block level, thanks to hashing and proof-of-work
Require crazy amounts of wasted compute because of consensus algorithms
You'd have been laughed out of the room. Despite that, the reality is that database (i.e., blockchain technology) is quite useful for cryptocurrency applications. The addition of smart contracts were a very a powerful extension that came with Ethereum. Changing from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake may eliminate the crazy wasted compute and associated energy consumption [11].
But, as I'd say with any special-purpose database — from an OLAP server to an XML database to the Hadoop ecosystem: it's great at what it's built for, but why should you use it for something else? The default answer is you shouldn't [12].
When it comes to the decentralization argument, enterprises are inherently centralized in power and rely on centralized systems run by a centralized IT department. Moving enterprises to decentralized internal systems does nothing to change lock-in factors of their products (e.g., network effects that lock you into Facebook). Nor necessarily does empowering distributed networks with decentralized technologies — see the above-linked proof-of-stake recentralization arguments. And if blockchain means automatic freedom from intermediaries, why is Coinbase worth $50B again?
I think DAOs are an interesting concept (great primer here), but the blockchain linkage seems contrived [13] — I could make a Dunbar-number-sized group with organic governance rules and run it via in-person meetings, Zoom, Slack, or of course, Discord. (Arguably, Richard Branson did, many times.)
I don't know why anyone would pay $10M for a CryptoPunk or $300K for a Bored Ape, but I do understand collectibles: an ape costs $300K in part for the same reason that a 1943 bronze Lincoln cent costs $1M — scarcity. I just thought we were going to use the Internet to eliminate scarcity, not artificially create it.
Finally, I think the self-referentiality of this ecosystem is interesting. If you want to buy a non-fungible token (NFT) of a Bored Ape, you're going to need to pay in Ether because that's the currency the price is listed in. Which in turn increases demand for Ether. Note interestingly that while you can use Ether to buy an NFT, you can't use an NFT to buy Ether because NFTs are not fungible, as Alexis Gay says, "in the sense that you couldn't funge them."
when you definitely understand NFTs pic.twitter.com/39I5EZ6Kde
— Alexis Gay (@yayalexisgay) November 2, 2021
3. Disruptors get disrupted. When I graduated from college, Oracle (founded 1977) was a ~$30M brash upstart challenging the entrenched leader, IBM, who no one ever got fired for selecting. I watched Oracle aggressively grow to $1B in revenues, flail several times trying to organically expand into applications, give up on building applications and instead acquire them, inexplicably get into hardware with the acquisition of Sun, and eventually plateau at $40B, effectively having become IBM in the process. As the saying goes, we become our parents.
Salesforce (founded 22 years later) is well into that cycle, going from brash disruptor to organic grower to M&A-driven grower, though they do a better job of preserving the entrepreneurial spirit if not growth (both were growing at ~25% at the $20B mark).
This is an ongoing pattern driven by Clayton Christensen's cycles of disruptive innovation. If you watch this cycle long enough, you can see the disruptors get disrupted — e.g. Siebel was disrupted by Salesforce who was disrupted by Zendesk who is being disrupted by Freshworks. What drives these disruptive cycles:
Feature creep, which leads to market overshoot over time.
Management changes, as leadership teams drift from a spirit of value creation for customers to value extraction from them.
Specialization, as market leaders build breadth with integration of good-enough products, an opportunity is created for great, point solutions (which often later expand to challenge the core product).
Technology platform changes, which antiquate previous architectures, allow new solutions to be built more quickly, and enable entirely new classes of applications.
For several reasons, I believe in 2022 we are going to see many disruptors get disrupted. Why?
Change to cloud-native. First-generation cloud solved a deployment problem; second-generation solves a development problem as well. When I build new apps, I can rely not just on my previously developed or open source modules, but on live, running services. Upstarts can stand yet again on the shoulders of giants.
Flood of venture capital (VC). VC is flowing at unprecedented rates driving record funding amounts at both the early company-creation stage (e.g., seed, angel) and the later growth stage as well.
High-growth. The combination of Covid accelerating digital transformation and unprecedented VC financing has accelerated software company growth (aka, the Covid boost). At the second order, I can't help but wonder if accelerating the growth cycle hastens the aforementioned process that creates new disruption opportunities. Software companies become their parents faster.
Product-led growth (PLG). SaaS provided provided both a market disruption opportunity and a total available market (TAM) expansion in each market segment. While I'll cover PLG more below, I think it will have a similar effect, providing both a disruption opportunity in existing segments while simultaneously expanding their potential.
4. Venture capital continues to flow. 2018 was the first year since "the OB" (the original bubble) that we again reached 2000-era levels of VC financing. 2019 dipped a bit, but 2020 came back strong, and 2021 looks to be a blockbuster [14].
PitchBook data reveals that while total funding and mega-funding (where the round raises $100M+) are up, deal is count slightly down, meaning average deal sizes are up and consistent with my view that VC today is have or have-not market. The haves can raise can raise a ton of money and on good terms. But the have-nots — those who have yet to demonstrate a strong team, product-market fit, or a scalable growth model — cannot, and face a frustrating form of hunger in the land of plenty.
They keys to success in this environment are two:
Raise when the raising's good. If you can raise money, you (likely) should. If you can't, figure out why — dig beyond superficial, "nice" explanations into real reasons, and then go fix them. Fast.
But trigger spending on business signals. You undoubtedly raised your most recent financing on the back of an aggressive operating plan. But don't, don't, don't — for example — hire 10 sellers because they're in the plan: hire them because the CRO made the last 10 productive and wants to hire 10 more.
One of these years — maybe 2022, maybe thereafter — VC will be in tighter supply. So raise money in large quantity when you can. Fear not dilution — you'll likely be raising at (what are, by historical standards) stratospheric valuations. Most of all, while you shouldn't follow my miserly great-aunt Jo's expense strategy (whose dying words were "don't spend"), you should spend if, only if, and when it makes good business sense to do so.
5. The metaverse remains meta. If you've not taken the 10 minutes yet, you should probably look at this Facebook/Meta, rebranding launch video, a well-produced but at times amazingly awkward metaverse concept video.
The metaverse vision has provoked a range of reactions from dystopian nightmare to dead-on-arrival to heated discussions of "reality privilege" and accusations about the new billionaire utopian boondoggle.
It's also invited a fair bit of parody, my favorite being the Icelandic tourism board's, Icelandverse.
Back to the metaverse, I find the vision more Oasis-style (Ready Player One) dystopia than utopia. While I find the idea of reality privilege interesting intellectual banter, no, I don't think the best solution to humankind's problems is to hook everyone into an alternative, virtual reality. Good sci fi? Yes. Good reality? No. Not in the least.
Are virtual worlds fun for immersive gaming? Yes.
Do you need virtual (or crypto) currencies in those worlds? No, they're just an add-on money-making opportunity like a Starbucks card [15]. You can buy an upgraded weapon in a game today via a regular credit card [16].
Do you need virtual museums in which to hang your NFTs? They're cool and I guess collectors do like to show off their collectibles, so maybe [17]. That said, CryptoPunks weigh in at a slim 576 pixels so I don't think you'll need fancy display capabilities for some NFTs at least.
Do you need virtual real-estate within your virtual world? Second Life had a full economy with Linden dollars and real-estate, so the idea's not new, but metaverse real-estate is setting records today. If the key to real estate is location, location, location, that's not really a constraint in the virtual world. That said, a key theme of web3 seems to be manufactured scarcity (which generative NFT collections do well) and which ultimately comes down to a simple matter of trust [18].
Can augmented reality help business applications, like customer service? Yes, I think AR has numerous practical enterprise use-cases and, if nothing else, all the VR technology will benefit more pragmatic use-cases in enterprise.
6. PLG momentum builds. While I generally have a negative reaction to hype, and I don't like the either/or nature of the slogan below, I do think PLG is a good idea.
Let me separate PLG into what I see as two pieces:
PLG as business strategy, where the business is built around a model in which marketing and community relations drive end-users to try a product, hopefully like it, buy the ability to use it (or use it more fully), tell their colleagues (directly or virally, e.g., through a Calendly invite), and repeat the cycle. While Slack, Zoom, and Dropbox are frequently-cited examples, a full list might include over 300 companies. (You can read a great anatomy of them, here.)
PLG as as set of product requirements. I think PLG brings three core, generic product requirements, none of which have frankly been common to previous generations of enterprise software: build a product that (a) is quick to deliver end-user value, (b) is easy and even fun for the end-user to use, and (c) is built with the company's revenue growth strategy in mind, e.g., in-built virality and carefully-selected functional and enterprise-level pay gates.
Many of the concepts behind PLG aren't new. Open source has always been about building a community of users who love the product, though historically composed of developers and not end-users. Market-seeding isn't new, though prior-generation seeders like Crystal Reports did so not through marketing- and community-driven downloads and trials, but channels of distribution [19]. Consumerization of enterprise software isn't a new idea , but I'd argue that it's only become real with the advent of PLG. Velocity sales models aren't new either, but they're also a key part of PLG.
Some PLG ideas are new:
User-experience (UX) as job #1. Only when UX became critical to business/sales strategy did it get serious commitment instead of lip service (in the enterprise at least).
Growth teams, subordinating functional silos to united teams of marketers, engineers, analysts, and designers working together to drive growth.
Digital experience tools, that go beyond useability testing labs to track what users actually do in the software with an eye towards making it better — such as Pendo, Heap, and Amplitude.
While I think it's serious overstatement to say, "sales- and marketing-led growth is dead; long live product-led growth," I think it's equally dangerous to dismiss PLG along with quarter-zip sweaters as the latest VC fad. PLG brings many good ideas that companies should consider and map to their own business models. Despite the risk of PLG noise drowning out PLG signal, I believe companies will increasingly and intelligently apply PLG principles in 2022 — and if you're not thinking about how to do that, you should be.
7. Year of the privacy vault. While I'm not an expert in this field, I am learning more, and I see a lot of exciting things happening in information security:
Innovations in digital identity from companies like Ory and Presidio Identity [20].
Innovations in cloud security and governance from companies like Cyral and Privacera [20].
Innovations in enterprise privacy from DataGrail [20].
The emerging and ever-changing nature of information security is a big part of what interests me, because it means that a lot of smart people with interesting ideas are attacking numerous problems from different angles. While this leaves me in a near-perpetual state of confusion, I'll repeat what I've often said about the metadata space: anyone who isn't confused doesn't really understand the situation (Edward R. Murrow). In metadata, I feel like I finally do understand the space. In information security, well, I'm still working at it.
In the past ~25 years, there's a particular feeling I've had only on rare occasion:
When Bernard Liautaud explained the semantic layer during my interviews at Business Objects.
When Satyen Sangani explained the machine-learning data catalog as I was contemplating an angel investment in Alation [21].
When Anshu Sharma explained the privacy vault to me while we were having a drink talking about his latest company.
I've met a lot of great entrepreneurs and worked with a lot of great companies during those years, but only those three times did I have the immediate reaction:
This is obvious. (Well, post facto obvious, once you understood it.)
This is huge; everyone needs this.
I need to be a part of this.
In Anshu's case it admittedly took more than one drink for me to understand the idea, but what I liked about it, what made it seem so post facto obvious was this:
Enterprises, where possible, should get out of the business of handling sensitive information. I know it's not always possible, but if the data is non-core to operations, why not delegate storing it to someone else? While hospitals need to store medical images, does TurboTax really need to store your social security number to file your taxes once per year? It's hard. Let someone else do it.
You can replace sensitive data with tokens. You don't need to store someone's credit score when you can store a token that maps to it and isolate the score to a separate database. It's classic indirection. But it usually means you can't then do anything with the data — unless you incorporate the ideas in the next two bullets.
You actually need an API more often than you need access. Most of the time you don't need direct access to sensitive data, you just need to do something with it. You don't need to know someone's credit score; you need to know if you can make them a loan and at what interest rate. That is, you can pass a token for credit score to a service that returns approval status and approved rate in a loan approval application.
You can encrypt data without losing the ability to work with it. Polymorphic encryption lets you verify the last four digits or a social security number or return all phone numbers in the same area code without first decrypting the data. This means you can get utility from encrypted data. Not being a security person, this idea was entirely new and fairly mind-blowing to me [22].
Vaults are an existing design pattern. Google, Apple, and Netflix have taken a low-trust, tokenized vault approach to handling sensitive information in their internal systems.
We will see if my spider sense was correct a third time. While my sense is most developed in data and analytics, I love modularization, normalization, and specialization and this play is about all three. To hear the Skyflow story directly from Anshu himself, watch the video here.
8. MSDS is the new MBA. For decades, and often contrary to prevailing fashion, I've counseled people to consider getting an MBA during their career journey for any of the following reasons:
The knowledge. MBA coursework is generally useful in business, regardless of the caliber of school you attend.
The network. At a top school, you will likely become part of a great network that will benefit you throughout your career.
The career-change opportunity. The MBA offers a unique chance to switch roles or industries (e.g., from engineering into product, from consumer to enterprise).
Given the time and cost of MBAs, it's popular these days to say that MBAs aren't worth the trouble. Autocomplete confirms these doubts.
While I frequently still recommend MBAs to those who seek my advice, I find myself increasingly asking them: have you considered a master of science in data science? Such programs can be done in as little as half the time and at half the cost of an MBA, have numerous online and hybrid options, are offered by many prestigious schools, provide superior analytical training, and offer similar career change opportunity.
While a top-tier MBA will still be de rigeur in investment banking, VC, and management consulting for the foreseeable future, I do believe that mid-career professionals will increasingly evaluate the MBA and the MSDS as alternative means to advance their careers — and that many will take the MSDS route.
9. Get ready for social impact. Millennials, and for that matter, many of the rest of us, increasingly demand purpose in our work. If we're going to spend 40, 50, or more hours per week working, then we'd like the company to provide both a paycheck and a sense of purpose. In the workplace, according to a recent Gallup report, millennials want leadership to change its approach:
The sense of purpose, however, goes well beyond the workplace and includes the desire to address societal concerns related to sustainability, capitalism, human rights, and social justice. While Boomers and Xers were content to Party Like It's 1999, the next generation wants to focus on the future and solving the world's largest problems. Good.
This drives for whom and how they want to work, the products they buy, the brands they value, the vacations they take, the causes they support, the hobbies they pursue, the lifestyles they lead, and the money they invest. In short, everything.
This era has brought us everything from local organic produce and forks over knives to the 1% Pledge, the B Corp, DEI, impact investing, ESG funds, stakeholder capitalism, carbon offsets, and data rights as human rights.
I think Europe is leading the US on many of these changes so, as per the famous William Gibson quote, I get a glimpse into the future through my work with Balderton Capital which has not only committed itself to a set of sustainable future goals (SFGs), but also recently announced their first annual progress report on them.
ESG momentum will build in 2022.
10. The rise of causal inference. For the past decade I've told people that data science was the new plastics — in the sense of the famous quote from The Graduate.
While I think that was spot-on, this year I have a new "one word" — causal inference. Why?
Most of the data science we do today is some sort of classification and regression. We can group like entities, we can predict into which group a new one will fall. We can build a mathematical model of an independent variable and make predictions about it based on dependent variables. It's cool stuff, but in the end, this is about correlation. How things move together.
Yet, we all know that correlation does not imply causation. We know that windmill rotation doesn't make the wind blow [24]. We know that waking up dressed doesn't cause headaches and that ice cream sales don't cause drownings [25]. Yet, most businesspeople today forget that when they're interpreting data. We say that correlation does not imply causation and then we say stuff like, "all of the customers who churned last quarter filed more than five severity-one cases in the past year!" [26]
The first-generation of data science has given us lots of data and some great modeling tools to interpret data. The bad news is that we — not data scientists, but regular analysts and business people — are not very good at interpreting it.
Where possible, we need to figure not just where variables correlate but what actually causes what. To do so normally requires an experiment (i.e., a RCT) but sometimes causal questions can be correctly answered using observational data. The insight about how to do that, by the way, is not trivial — it won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics.
The big guys are doing it. A decade ago the hyperscalers had data science teams and typical companies, even large ones, didn't. Today, the hyperscalers have causal inference teams and typical companies don't. To the extent you believe the big guys are leading indicators of the mainstream, you should believe that determining not just correlation, but causation, is coming soon to a business meeting near you [27]. You can get ready the easy way or the hard way.
If you made it this far, thank you! Read the links — there's gold in those hills. Remember that I write this post in the spirit of fun and to force myself to research interesting topics. Have a happy, healthy, and Rule of 40 positive 2022.
Peace out / Dave.
[1] I did study seismology (i.e., geophysics) after all. Earthquakes happen.
[2] As mentioned in last year's post there are plenty of possible reasons for this including the possibility that the companies are higher quality and/or growing faster — see last year's post.
[3] Some might argue growth is top — particularly if you define top as most correlated to revenue multiple. Based on data as of this writing, the R^2 between EV/NTM-revenue multiple and NTM-revenue-growth is 0.52 vs. 0.24 for NDR. Play around here for more.
[4] Reminder that I am an angel investor in and sit on the board of Alation.
[5] Who are the first-generation cloud EPM vendors
[6] I am an investor in Planful and Cube, an advisor to OnPlan, and occasionally chat with Mosaic and Pigment, among others. Hey, I like EPM.
[7] Louisiana actually has about a 10% smaller population (4.6M) than New Zealand (5.1M)
[8] Tim's What is Web 2.0 post is well worth reading both for the history lesson and, more subtly, to beam you back to a time where something was emerging and what it looked like for people to try and understand and describe it.
[9] Gartner has a blockchain hype cycle (that lists numerous web3 technologies) but not a web3 hype cycle. Currently, NFTs are at the approximate peak of that cycle.
[10] Technically, BASE as a database concept didn't exist at the time.
[11] Though not without its own problems.
[12] A repeated pattern in database history — everyone wants to rule the world because it's a big world to rule. Most of the time, however — and relational databases are a notable exception — the new database is not a great general-purpose alternative. The reductio argument here is there should be no general-purpose databases as every purpose is a special one.
[13] See prior comment about hitchhiking.
[14] Sources include Statista, PitchBook, CBInsights, and (in one case) my estimates.
[15] In addition to providing Starbucks with consumer data, they have $1.6B in prepaid value today. Remember a big part of how Warren Buffet got to be Warren Buffet: float.
[16] Yes, I understand that games can force you into their currency by providing rewards in game-units and that you can create a one-way transformation between cash and game-units (i.e., you can buy units with cash, but not cash with units).
[17] Museums provide access as their core function but also offer security, preservation, and education (e.g., docents) surrounding their works.
[18] Trust that the promoters will keep their promise about number and trait distribution of works and avoid the tendency to excessively extract value by minting more and/or derivative works (e.g., mutant apes) that potentially undermine the original collection and devalue traits. Creating scarcity is easy. Preserving it might well be hard.
[19] In many cases because, well, the Internet didn't exist yet. Microsoft helped to put Crystal Reports on the map by distributing it with Visual Studio.
[20] Disclaimers: I'm an advisor to Presidio Identity. Ory is a Balderton portfolio company. I'm an advisor to and investor in Cyral. I have done some consulting with Privacera. I am an investor in DataGrail.
[21] Which quite happily I made.
[22] Read up on fully homomorphic encryption which enables you to perform calculations on data without first decrypting it. While fully homomorphic encryption is prohibitively computationally expensive, another key Skyflow insight was that many "numbers" aren't fully treated as numbers in practice — e.g., you might verify the last 4 digits of an SSN but you're never going to multiply two of them.
[23] The SFGs linked come from Balderton Capital where I work part-time as an EIR.
[24] Reverse causation.
[25] The third-cause fallacy. Going to bed drunk increases both waking up dressed and having a headache. Warm weather increases both swimming rates (which increase drownings) and ice cream sales.
[26] They also all had, e.g., brown-eyed CIOs, more than $500M in revenues, and parking lots with more than 200 spaces.
[27] Irony alert, I'm making a correlation-based argument here!
Posted in Crypto, Database, NFT, Predictions, Product-led Growth, SaaS, Security, Silicon Valley, Venture Capital
Tagged Disruption, metaverse, NFT, social impact
Should Your Website Drive Prospects to a Demo?
TLDR: Think twice before you do and three times about how you do it. While it's a very common practice, I think it's often a lazy one, done by default, and without regard for either the buyer or seller downstream.
When I visit enterprise SaaS websites these days, I see two primary calls-to-action (CTAs) in widespread use:
Try it: used by the product-led growth (PLG) crowd, and a great CTA — provided the company is actually executing a PLG strategy [1]. While we won't drill into this large topic today, know that I am working on a PLG post to go up soon.
Get a demo: in use by most others and typically promising a personal demo, but sometimes offering to watch a video or join a weekly live webinar.
See below for three clipped examples of both demo and trial CTAs from enterprise SaaS websites (read across) [2].
The question: while it's certainly a common practice, is it a good one?
My answer: often, not. Using a demo as your primary CTA, whether weasel-worded (e.g., "request demo") or not (e.g., "get demo"), can frequently lead to problems:
Double qualification. Typically, the prospect first speaks to an SDR who does preliminary qualification (e.g., BANT) and then passes the prospect to a seller to deliver the demo. The buyer thinks: I didn't click a button labeled, "speak to two people," I clicked one labeled, "get demo" [3].
Raising expectations. The SDR often justifies their call by saying, "I'm here to gather some information to ensure we personalize the demo to your needs." That's great if the ensuing demo is actually tailored in some way; it's criminally bad expectation-setting if it's not.
Horrific second-calls, reminding me of a quote from Fail Safe: "what you're telling me, I've been specifically ordered not to do." We tell sellers to do qualification and discovery, understand and solve business problems, and under any circumstances never to spew features — then we walk them in front of a largely unqualified prospect with whom we have set an expectation that they're going to see a feature demo [4]. It's a wonder they don't revolt.
Hampering sellers from doing their jobs, which at this point in the sales cycle should be discovery and qualification — i.e., asking a series of open-ended questions to determine if this is a real sales opportunity with a qualified buyer who has a business problem that our product can solve.
Super-awkward situations, where the seller thinks they're having a basic 1-1 demo and the entire buying committee shows up for "the demo" of your product, which will be delivered unprepared and without context. I've seen that happen; it's cringeworthy.
Wasting sellers' time. Doing a standardized demo is arguably not selling, but marketing — and your marketing team can likely do it as well as your sellers [5]. If sellers are doing lots of 1-1 demos for lots of semi-qualified prospects, marketing might be generating a lot of activity for sales, but don't forget the old saying about processionary caterpillars confusing activity with progress.
The root problem here is not that get-demo is somehow inherently an evil CTA [6], but that this may reveal a deeper problem in sales and marketing alignment. In a siloed company, where sales and marketing are not working together, the above problems can and do develop because marketing is trying to maximize clicks on get-demo without thinking enough about either the seller or the buyer downstream after they do. Think: we passed 47 get-demo oppties this month, we're not the problem. Buzz off.
There's an easy way to determine if this is a problem at your company:
Listen to Gong recordings of the first-calls with sellers (where they are notionally delivering this demo) and do so from the perspective of both the buyer (e.g., are they getting a demo? is it good one?) and the seller (e.g., are they doing qualification and discovery? are they spewing features?)
Talk to sales leadership. Bring your knowledge of the generic problems along with your learnings from the Gong recordings and have a discussion about how you can work together to improve the early sales cycle process for both seller and buyer.
Note that win/loss reporting will likely not catch these problems because this activity typically occurs upstream of opportunity creation, so there are definitionally no lost opportunities due to a bad initial demo [7].
Improvement Ideas for Get-Demo Calls To Action
Here are some ideas on how to mitigate these problems, all offered in the spirit reducing friction in the buyer journey while maximizing efficiency for the seller:
Always have an ungated 30-60 second explainer video that explains what your product does so curious people can quickly understand what it is.
Publish a 2-3 minute ungated short demo video of what your product does for those who want more information.
Publish an as-long-as-necessary deep demo video both on your website (possibly gated) and on your YouTube channel [8]. Remember David Ogilvy: "long copy sells!" If you solve an important problem to which I'm seeking a solution, I'll have plenty of time for a long, well-executed demo. Just make sure it's well-executed.
Hold a weekly live demo which (1) gets the buyer block time on their calendar to see the solution, (2) gets us the buyer's contact information, (3) offers the buyer the opportunity to ask live questions during the event, (4) gives us the chance to spot target accounts expressing interest and the chance to engage with them about that, (5) provides SDRs with an alternative CTA to "do you want to speak to a seller?", (6) provides a broad indicator of interest over time (i.e., weekly demo attendance), and (7) gives us a platform we can easily build upon — think: on Tuesdays, it's the product overview; on Wednesdays, it's the demo for retailers; and on Thursdays it's the demo for use-case X.
Basically, I'm trying to let the buyer decide what they mean by get demo, potentially let them get that right away, and provide a way to drive interested prospects who don't want to speak to a seller to a periodic live event where I can deliver a high-quality, in-depth demo while driving scale economies in so doing.
After the weekly live demo, the SDR calls and says, "how did you like the demo?" and "did you see anything relevant to the challenges you're facing?" If those answers are positive, then they can pass it to a seller for discovery and qualification.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge believer in also having a clear call to action that says, "have a seller contact me." I understand that it won't get pressed very often, but oh, when it does — it's likely to be a pretty interested prospect [9].
My Three-Point CTA
I'm aware that many marketers today don't want to paralyze buyers with choice, so there is a general preference for the fewest possible options in a CTA, but that notwithstanding, if I had to solve the problem myself, I'd use this as my default CTA [10]:
When is Get-Demo a Great CTA?
The first revision of this post prompted some questions along the lines of, "I understand you don't like get-demo as a CTA, but when is it appropriate?" to which my answer is:
I'm not against get-demo as a CTA. I just think we need to put more thought into what it means, the options we offer, and what happens to both the buyer and the seller when someone presses it.
For most companies, the vast majority of people who press get-demo are not worth investing in a personalized demo. If you want them to self-demo, adopt a PLG strategy and let them use the product. If that's not possible, then they'll need to see a demo somehow and my ideas above provide numerous options for doing that. I like the weekly live demo because it's cost-effective way to let everyone see the demo while allowing sales to focus on the handful of attendees who are most interesting.
If, somehow, you're in a model where you think it is worth doing a live, personalized demo for everyone who wants one, I'd first remind you about processionary caterpillars, and second say to set up a call center and drive people live into that call center. The key to velocity sales is friction elimination, so if someone wants a live demo, and you're willing to give them one without any real qualification, then get 'er done — don't let any time lapse in scheduling.
(Revised 11/22/21)
[1] And if it's not, marketing trying to do PLG on their own (because they want to, the investors want to, or the company would like to be PLG but isn't), with a product that's not designed to be easily adopted and sell itself, is a bad idea. In this "PLG is the new black" era, the only thing worse than not doing PLG is trying PLG tactics when you don't have a PLG company or PLG product. To mix metaphors, you could likely end up putting your best foot forward into your mouth.
[2] Note the wasted space by having login in this zone of the page. I'd put login buttons or icons somewhere else completely (e.g., top right, page footer) so as to make room to have 3 calls to action as presented below.
[3] Sometimes, it's actually triple qualification: the SDR does worth-passing qualification, the seller does worth-accepting qualification, and then the seller and a sales engineer do a deeper discovery call — all before the buyer gets their demo.
[4] The results in sellers spinning plates — doing qualification with one hand, demoing with the other, and doing a bad job at both.
[5] I'd argue generally that doing standardized things is definitionally marketing while doing personalized things is sales. Think: given what you've told me about your unique situation, here is how our product can help you meet your goals. That's selling. If you just want the White House Tour, then that's marketing.
[6] To which many website types were quick to object in my first revision of the post — but it gets clicked all the time. Well, perhaps that's because people actually do want demos and also because we give them no real alternative CTA!
[7] That is, the bad initial demo resulted in no opportunity being created. That said, you might get wind of it in your win/loss reporting from opportunities that made it into the pipeline if you ask customers about their high-funnel experience through both ratings (e.g., "what was your impression after the initial demo") and qualitative questioning (e.g., "how was your experience from when you first contacted us until you were put in touch with your seller?" or "how did your first meeting with your seller go?")
[8] Which I know makes it semi-gated, but it also enables people to find and watch it directly via Google/YouTube search. Have some faith that if they like what they see, they're not going to forget to find our contact-us form and fill it in. (And you're going to remind them to do so at the end of the video, of course!)
[9] When you've truly internalized that marketing is about generating sales via the creation of valid sales opportunities you stop caring only about how often something gets clicked (or how many leads we got) and start caring about how fast we can get qualified hand-raisers through the process and off to sales.
[10] Perhaps more interestingly, if you forced me to drop one, it would be stay-in-touch, not contact-us. I'd make stay-in-touch a backup offer on the get-demo page.
Posted in Marketing, Product-led Growth, Startups, Strategy
Tagged CTA, demos


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Home \ Archives \ No fishing, boating in anthrax-affected areas – ministry
No fishing, boating in anthrax-affected areas – ministry
2017-10-23 11:02:04 1 years ago
John Muyamba Rundu People living along a stretch of 139 km from Mahango Core area in Bwabwata National Park in Mukwe Constituency - where anthrax was confirmed - to Katere Village in Ndiyona Constituency are to avoid fishing in the river and are also to avoid the use of boats on the river, where 109 hippos and 20 buffalos died from anthrax earlier this month. "Please be informed that the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources hereby invites the public not to catch, handle, move or eat fish from the affected area due to the outbreak of anthrax, in this case from the Botswana border up to the Quito River conjunction at Katere, a 139 km stretch of the Kavango River in the Kavango East Region," the Fisheries Ministry said in a statement last week. The ministry said the movement of nets and boats from the affected area should also not take place. "It is just a notice, because of the anthrax outbreak. It's not really a ban, it's just a precautionary notice to minimise the movement of boats, nets and people from the infected area to the rest of Namibia, because we don't know how far the anthrax has spread. The outbreak was in the mahango core area, but some hippos went as far as up to Andara side from the park," said the acting chief fisheries biologist Francois Jacobs. "People must just take notice, because we do not know if the anthrax affects fish; we do not know if through fish consumption people can contract the anthrax. That's why we're notifying people living along this affected area. "But it is not illegal to fish. People can still continue fishing, we just want them to be vigilant. You know, if you are fishing and you put your hands in the water and you have a sore you can easily get the infection," Jacobs added. Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium bacillus anthracis and is spread by contact with the spores of the bacteria. There is a possibility and concern that fish that have been in contact with anthrax-contaminated water can spread the spores.
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Evil Dragon
(Redirected from Evil Dragons)
The Evil Dragons and their creator, Black Smoke Shen Long
The Evil Dragons (邪悪な 龍, Jaakuna Ryū; FUNimation "Shadow Dragons"; Literally meaning "Evil Dragon") are the evil beings created by the overuse of the Dragon Balls over the duration of the series, and were the final antagonists of the Dragon Ball metaseries. The fight against the Evil Dragons makes up the events of the Shadow Dragon Saga. The battle against the Evil Dragons can be considered the closing segment of the series (finding the Dragon Balls was the beginning) that teaches the Earthlings to stop relying on the Dragon Balls to solve their problems and can be seen as a metaphor for where the Dragon Balls finally turn against the Z Warriors. The Evil Dragons are (in order of appearance): Black Smoke Shen Long, Haze Shen Long, Rage Shen Long, Oceanus Shen Long, Naturon Shen Long, Nuova Shen Long, Eis Shen Long, and Syn Shen Long – who later becomes Omega Shen Long after absorbing the other six Evil Dragons' Dragon Balls. They are eventually all defeated by Son Goku except Nouva Shen Long, who was killed by Omega Shen Long. Of the seven, only Nuova, Eis, and Syn Shen Long have martial arts skills which pose a serious challenge to Goku. Nuova Shen Long is believed to have the least Negative Energy of the Evil Dragons due to his morals and the wish that created him. While most of the other Evil Dragons were made by very selfless wishes (or in the case of Oceanus, a wish that can be seen to be in a gray area), Nuova is created by a very selfish wish made by Piccolo Daimao, who wished for his youth and power to be restored.
Wishes and personalities
All of the Evil Dragons' personalities were inversely proportional to those of the wishes that created them (whether they were selfish or selfless). They also bore a direct relation to their time in the manga (comical or dark). Their battle powers were also directly proportional to the strength of the wishes used to give them life.
Haze Shen Long was the most comical of the Evil Dragons, created by a wish that took place during the the early half of the Fortuneteller Baba Saga – a very comical part of the anime in and of itself. The wish that created him revived only one person (Bora), and so the wish used relatively little power and lead to Haze being the weakest of the Evil Dragons.
Rage Shen Long was one of the deadliest Evil Dragons, created by the wish that revived Goku after he sacrificed himself to kill Raditz (only one person was affected directly, but it was designed to save everyone from the Saiyans). Rage Shen Long's power of Elasticity was strong enough to withstand Goku's 10x Kamehameha even though his offensive power was not even enough to hurt Super Saiyan 4 Goku at all. Rage was relatively dark compared to Haze or Oceanus, but was created in Dragon Ball Z, considered a much darker anime than Dragon Ball. He was also the only Evil Dragon to be defeated out of pure natural causes and not with any people involved (although the finishing blow was delivered by Goku). He would have won if it had not rained on him and caused his large body to short-circuit and diminish his power.
Oceanus Shen Long was the second most comical dragon, created in a time when the series was still very comical (specifically, the Emperor Pilaf Saga). She was both good (in that she provided free Fish to the townfolk, and it was only the townsfolk, not Oceanus, who abused their new-found laziness, although she may have counted on this) and bad (in that she used several dirty tactics to try and defeat Goku and polluted the town with rotten Fish), created by a wish which was neither completely good nor completely evil. Oolong wished for a hot girls' panties, or the most comfortable underwear in the world in the dubbed version. (Oolong's purpose for making the quick wish was to save the world from Pilaf, but the content of the wish was rather perverse).
Naturon Shen Long was the darkest of the first four Evil Dragons, created in a very dark time in Dragon Ball Z. He used very evil tactics (such as using Pan as a Human shield) mirroring the selfless wish to revive Majin Vegeta's victims in the Majin Buu Saga.
Nuova Shen Long was created by Piccolo Daimao's wish for eternal youth, which was undeniably selfish, and as such was the most noble and honorable of the Evil Dragons. He was very serious, as the King Piccolo Saga was a very dark and serious time in the Dragon Ball anime.
Eis Shen Long was among the dirtiest of all the Evil Dragons (he used both Pan and Nouva as shields to protect himself), created by a wish that was made so that, of all people, a mass murdering creature initially made to destroy everything could get a second chance, arguably making it the most selfless wish made.
Syn Shen Long was created by the wish that most likely revived the most victims since one can only reasonably assume that others besides the Namekians were killed by Freeza and his henchmen in the preceding year. Therefore, just as Haze (being created by a single person's revival) was the weakest, Syn (created by the most people's revival) was the strongest. Going further, just as this wish canceled out damages from Freeza's Force, the most terrible and feared force in the universe for a long time, Syn would absorb all of the Dragon Balls and achieve a form powerful enough for his Negative Energy to potentially rot away the entire universe - the entire universe which, before this could happen, provided the energy for the Genki Dama that was used to defeat him.
Their names in the English dub are related to the name "Shenron". When the dragons are ordered by ascending number of Dragon Ball stars, the first letter of their names spells SHENRON. These are their names, listed from 1 star to 7 star:
Naturon
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Marvel releasing 'Black Panther' for November 3rd, 2017
By Kwame Opam / @kwameopam
Oct 28, 2014, 6:30 PM UTC |
At an event in Los Angeles, Marvel just announced that Black Panther will hit the big screen on November 3rd, 2017. Plot details are currently thin, but the news is big. Black Panther is one of Marvel most important black superheroes. He'll be played by Chadwick Boseman, who's perhaps best known for his recent role as James Brown in Get On Up.
In the comics, Black Panther, otherwise known as T'Challa, is the leader of the high-tech African nation of Wakanda. He's also an Avenger, having joined the team in 1968. T'Challa has yet to make an appearance in the films so far, but rumors abound that one of his arch enemies, Ulysses Klaw, will make an appearance in Avengers: Age of Ultron, setting the stage for the character's debut. Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige also stated that he'll also be in full costume in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War.
After receiving much criticism for the lack of diversity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the introduction of Black Panther and Captain Marvel should help put some critiques to rest. The company has also made concerted efforts to diversify its superheroes in comics, recently unveiling a new female Thor and replacing Steve Rogers with Sam Wilson for the role of Captain America. But for right now, since we know little about what Marvel has in store for Black Panther himself, pictures will have to be enough:
More from this stream Marvel's Black Panther: all the trailers, updates, and commentary
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Nnedi Okorafor is writing a comic series about Black Panther's Dora Milaje warriors
Mar 17, 2018, 8:00 PM UTC
Black Panther has crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide