Jupiter's Quill

Joined January 2025

12 stories

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I’m Hafiz creator of Jupiter's Quill I share stories, ideas, and wisdom from others, adding my perspective to inspire thought and connection. Join me for honest conversations and meaningful insights as we weigh in on life’s moments together

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The Abyss Unveiled - Part 1
The first glance at the town of Black ridge viewed it as a small village that lay at the edge of civilization, sleeping its life away. On closer look, however, its peculiar charm seemed to be an amalgamation of rustic cottages, cobblestone streets, and an unsettling stillness hanging in the air. It was a place full of eerie legends, with thick woods looming over it like watchful sentinels rather than trees. With dense woods all around and eerie legends, the people there lived quiet lives until that night mist rolled in. It was late autumn, and the air was crisp with the scent of fallen leaves. The mist wasn't anything special in Black ridge, but this time it was different. Thick and unnaturally cold, it blanketed the village much like an oppressive shroud, muffling sounds and cloaking the streets with eerie silence. The mist crept into every crevice, carrying with it an almost tangible dread that chilled not just the air but the soul of anyone caught within its grasp. Radios crackled with static, streetlights flickered, and some strange hum seemed to reverberate in the air, sending shivers down spines.
By Jupiter's Quill12 months ago in Horror
The Lost Town. AI-Generated.
The day started like any other for Samuel and his family. They were on a road trip through the countryside, eager to escape the stress of the city. The winding forest roads were peaceful, the sun casting long shadows through the trees. But as the hours passed, their GPS began to glitch, showing them circling back to the same road over and over.
By Jupiter's Quill12 months ago in Horror
The Ghosts of Vorkuta. AI-Generated.
In the bitter cold of December 1943, deep in the snowy wilderness of Soviet Russia, the isolated mining town of Vorkuta was veiled in perpetual frost and fear. Officially, the town housed a labour camp where prisoners, criminals, and political dissidents toiled in brutal conditions to extract coal for the Soviet war machine. But beneath the surface both literally and figuratively something far darker stirred.
By Jupiter's Quill12 months ago in History
The Forgotten House
The rain had started softly at first, a steady drizzle tapping against the windows of the car as Claire drove down the long, winding road. She had never liked driving at night, especially on roads she didn’t know, but she had no choice. Her phone's battery was dead, and her GPS had long since lost signal. The map she found in the glovebox only made her more confused. She was supposed to be on her way to visit a friend, but the detour she’d taken had led her herea desolate, unfamiliar stretch of woods, deep in the countryside.
By Jupiter's Quill12 months ago in Horror
Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. AI-Generated.
The old man awoke alone in the woods, his body naked, exposed to the cold autumn air. The only sound he could hear was the haunting call of crows high in the gnarled trees above. His limbs ached as he struggled to piece together his fragmented thoughts. He'd been here before... hadn’t he? But everything felt distorted, as though his memory itself was betraying him.
By Jupiter's Quill12 months ago in Horror
The House at Willow's End. Content Warning.
The house at Willow’s End had always been an enigma, standing decrepit and alone at the edge of the forest. For decades, whispers of its dark past wove through the village like threads in a tapestry. They said the house had a soul, a malignant one, and that it preyed on those who dared to step inside.
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in Fiction
THE LAST DAY OF DINOSAURS
Dinosaurs ruled the earth for 160 million years it seemed they would forever dominate the biosphere but one day their world was destroyed by a huge rock the size of everest falling from space this is the story of how the era of ancient reptiles came to an end the last day of dinosaurs earth 66 million years ago the end of the cretaceous period of the mesozoic era the parts of the pangaea supercontinent almost completely drifted apart the planet looked very similar to its modern state but not quite the same south and north america have finally split by the end of the cretaceous period africa australia and greenland have the same shape as today at the same time the outlines of europe and asia were just starting to form the mountain ranges of siberia mongolia the andes and the cordillera the continents were actively emerging the cretaceous period lasted 79 million years and became the longest period of the mesozoic era the planet's climate changed several times during this time it was relatively cool by the end of this period ice caps have formed at the poles winters have become harsher in some places the temperature dropped below minus 10 degrees celsius and as low as minus 45 degrees celsius in alaska but still the world was warmer than it is now lush vegetation covered the continent's surface it was during this period that flowering plants emerged conifers ginkgo and other trees from previous eras formed thick forests which also included modern looking walnuts ash and beech the sod produced by these trees made the top layer of soil more fertile for newly emerging herbs with the advent of flowering plants insects also had to evolve butterflies and bees started to fly spreading pollen seeded fruits developed from pollinated flowers providing food for many animal species including birds this was what drove the evolution of some herbivorous dinosaurs as well as many mammalian species the number of carnivores ungulates insectivores and primates increased under these favorable conditions admittedly they haven't yet become as large as they are now most mammals back then were small rodents and predators for example a fossilized head of a 20 centimeter long granopio dentiacudus was found in argentina this small mammal is called the saber-tooth squirrel because of its elongated muzzle with long facts presumably this species ate some insects but larger animals have already appeared in madagascar the remains of a huge ventana certici marmot were found this herbivorous mammal had a rather unusual appearance it had massive crests on either side of its skull for self-protection and an excellent sense of smell the animal weighed nine kilograms and was three times bigger than modern marmots however ropena mammoths was the real giant among the mammals of the cretaceous period it had a one meter body and weighed 12 to 14 kilograms outwardly ropano mammoths resembled the modern tasmanian devil or a squat dog this predator even hunted small or newly hatched dinosaurs and yet dinosaurs were the pinnacle of prehistoric evolution they were at the top of the mesozoic food chain a great number of dinosaur species of various sizes populated all continents the smallest were ogdentavis congress the head of this miniature reptile was no longer than 14 millimeters beak included unfortunately paleontologists haven't yet found the bones of the torso but given its head size this dinosaur wasn't bigger than a modern hummingbird according to some estimates the largest animal that has ever lived on earth is alamosaurus these dinosaurs were 29 meters tall weighed 38 tons and had a 12 meter long tail five hours till the impact the day terrestrial life was changed completely all animals young and old were going about their day as usual doing some foraging and hunting a herd of 50 alamosauruses went to the yucatan peninsula looking for some fresh greenery these giants were herbivores they had to consume up to a ton of vegetation per day to stay in shape it could take them a few days to eat leaves from an entire forest which made them lead a nomadic lifestyle a middle-aged predatory tarbosaurus living on the territory of present-day mongolia and china was also looking for food this 14-meter long species is considered the largest among the predatory dinosaurs of the cretaceous period our tarbosaurus set out to hunt for prey in the floodplain medium-sized animals and small dinosaurs would often come there for a drink so the hunt was going to be a success like any tarbosaurus this reptile walked on two hind legs its two-fingered forelimbs were disproportionately small relative to the rest of the body and yet they were very helpful in holding the prey or catching fish with long claws tarbosaurus main weapon though was about six dozen of long sharp teeth reaching up to 85 millimeters three hours till the impact meanwhile one adult pachycephalosaurus was also going about his day in north america this 4.5 meter long dinosaur weighed about 450 kilograms and looked quite formidable its skull was protected by a 25 centimeter thick bone dome that surely softened the blows when the great reptile fought its enemies the back of the dome had bony projections and short spikes protruding upwards from its muzzle pachycephalosaurus was primarily herbivorous it crushed leaves seeds and fruits with its relatively small sharp teeth however it appears this dinosaur also included meat in its diet it ate small amphibians shellless animals mammals perhaps even newly hatched dinosaurs on this day our pachycephalosaurus got closer to the ocean where it found many trees with nutritious seeds it could also eat plenty of huge ammonite mollusks lizards and other critters in small lagoons meanwhile a female ankylosaurus went into the forest to grab some lunch in western north america she was guiding four newly hatched cubs this reptile looked like a nightmarish chimera it reached the size of a rhinoceros or even an adult african elephant the body of this tetrapetal monster was covered in powerful bone armor and it had a massive club-like knob on its tail but despite its intimidating appearance ankylosaurus was a harmless herbivore the mother with the cubs didn't seek to kill anyone with her club the tale served to protect against predators and cannibal reptiles and so being protected by their mother's formidable tail the family went into a thick forest near the newly formed rocky mountains two hours till the impact meanwhile young reptiles had a real massacre in north america hundreds of kilometers away from the site of impending disaster some absent-minded carnotaurus wandered into the territory of the tyrannosaurus rex and didn't notice the owner in time at the speed of up to 50 kilometers per hour carnotaurus could easily run away from its opponent who can only run at 40 kilometers per hour but the t-rex came into view too unexpectedly the intruder smell gave it away a while ago t-rex had an excellent sense of smell compared to other dinosaurs and in terms of eyesight precision even a hawk might be jealous of this predator in addition the reptile's vision was binocular its eyes could look in different directions and then the input from each eye was combined to create a single visual image this enabled the dinosaur to accurately determine the distance to its prey and so the t-rex furiously attacked the enemy to protect its territory and get a delicious meal at the same time you see this dinosaur never missed a chance to enjoy the flesh of its own kind it was up to carnotaurus now to fight back if we saw this fight and had to take a bet everyone would put their money on the t-rex the carnotaurus had no chance the weight difference was huge tyrannosaurus weighed up to 6.8 tons and outweighed carnotaurus by almost 5 tons its muscle mass and therefore strength was multiple times greater even with its horn-like projections above the eyes the carnotaurus had no chance to fight off the t-rex's super-powerful jaws tyrannosaurus quickly tore the opponent to pieces and began its feast right away it was a great stroke of luck for the reptile according to some estimates t-rex needed up to 100 kilograms of meat per day this is equivalent to daily intake of three or four lions as it was preoccupied with lunch the reptile didn't care to look up and so it missed the bright light in the sky that was growing bigger by the second ten minutes till the impact a huge asteroid was approaching the planet in a few minutes it will kill 75 of all living creatures causing the cretaceous paleogene extinction event in 1980 scientists proposed a hypothesis that it was the asteroid impact that led to this disaster they found far more iridium in 66 million year old clays around the world than in layers above and below this is a very rare substance on earth but there's a lot of it in some types of asteroids which is why iridium is sometimes dubbed a space metal scientists suggested that the metal was probably brought by an asteroid in a collision event ten years later another team of researchers determined the exact site of the impact a crater with a diameter of 180 kilometers was discovered in the yucatan peninsula and was named chixula its age coincides with the dinosaur extinction chicxulub has a large amount of iridium and as you move away from the crater's center less and less metal is found in addition 25 000 animal fossil fragments were recently found in new jersey quarries these creatures died on the same day at the end of the cretaceous period this was another evidence of the mass extinction that followed the asteroid impact two minutes till the impact while our tyrannosaurus was enjoying its lunch a 10 kilometer rock weighing several trillion tons flew into the atmosphere the gravity's pull was becoming exceedingly stronger accelerating the object to a fantastic 20 kilometer per second speed like a piston the asteroid squashed one 20-kilometer air column after another along with friction this process heated the giant rock to tens of thousands of degrees celsius making it much brighter than the sun at the same time the tyrannosaurus was having a little break from its lunch it lifted its head up and was blinded by the light of the blazing sky the dinosaur quickly lowered its head closing its eyes but the light was burning them even through closed islands the heat incinerated the reptile skin set fire to the trees and grass around it a second later the asteroid disappeared over the horizon leaving the glowing sky behind tyrannosaurus rex got a little break but only for a moment nothing was happening for a few seconds but then the sky got blindingly bright the asteroid crashed into the gulf of Mexico near the northern coast of the Yucatan peninsula the energy released by the impact was approximately equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs in a second the asteroid penetrated about 20 kilometers into the earth's crust the whole globe was shuttering like a thousand bells from the impact to put this into perspective a relatively recent Krakatoa volcano eruption caused half of a crew member's eardrums to rupture on one of the ships 70 kilometers away the asteroid's impact was a million times more powerful furthermore shock waves rushed in all directions faster than the speed of sound right after the collision they were so strong that they skinned animals alive lifted them up into the air swirled them around and crushed everything even hundreds of kilometers away from the crater the heaviest dinosaurs flew like balloons the t-rex sustained a severe concussion and died in an instant immediately the shockwave lifted its body up into the air for several seconds the wave continued to spread going a few times around the globe but even before killing the t-rex the asteroid destroyed the herd of Alamosa uruses that we saw previously animals were grazing right next to where the infernal rock fell dinosaurs couldn't escape the unthinkable heat it burned everything to the ground turning animal bones to ashes meanwhile the female ankylosaurus with her four babies was peacefully eating leaves in the forest they were hundreds of kilometers away from the impact site however they died even before the Alamosa uruses the red-hot asteroid caused huge fires while passing through the atmosphere one of them broke out where a family of ankylosaurus were grazing the fire instantly incinerated the forest leaving the reptiles no chance to survive the asteroid also knocked out 15 trillion tons of rock from the planet and sent it high into the sky a small portion flew into outer space while the remaining parts including house-sized boulders began to fall back from orbit at the same time glass rain started it was raining hot 5 millimeter rock falls the stone hail and the scorching rain have killed innumerable animals however the pachycephalosaur us who was hunting near the ocean in north America was lucky it didn't die from fires and boulders falling from the sky but a bit later when a gigantic 100 meter tsunami rose from the ocean to get some idea about its scale consider the devastating tsunami in japan of 2011. those waves were barely 10 meters high nonetheless almost the entire island state incurred losses but the giant tsunami caused by the asteroid impact went thousands of kilometers deep into the land it flooded almost the entire territory of the future USA wave traces have even been found in north Dakota one of these waves took the pachycephalosaur us under dragged its body into the ocean and buried it in the abyss the area of modern Mongolia just then an elderly barosaurus was looking for a prey here kilometers from the explosion epicenter hundreds of dinosaur species still roamed wooded areas meanwhile the disaster was getting closer by the minute the asteroid impact triggered a series of terrible earthquakes measuring up to 11.2 points the tremors were about 50 times stronger than any earthquake known to humanity the most powerful great Chilean earthquake of 1960 had a 9.5 magnitude increasing this number by one point would mean 30 times more powerful energy release the planet was shaking so hard that all the volcanoes woke up and began to erupt about 70 billion tons of pulverized stones soot ash and carbon monoxide rose up as a result of eruptions then they began falling back into the atmosphere their friction against the air caused enormous temperature increase a huge hot cloud of dust stormed across the planet burning everything in its path it was approaching Mongolia at a speed of 18 000 kilometers per hour the temperature here rose to 150 degrees Celsius an hour and a half after the impact all living creatures died or rather almost all creatures our barosaurus and several other animals managed to escape by hiding in an underground cave they could hide out here while the killer cloud passed by soon the temperature began to drop this was followed by acid rain flooding the earth because several hundred billion tons of sulfur compounds were being thrown into the troposphere along with other rocks for weeks sulfuric acid was pouring from the sky all over the planet it poisoned the soil and water bodies a dense blanket of dust ash and soot wrapped around the planet after volcanic eruptions not letting any light and heat in even at noon it was as dark as at night the temperature dropped by 28 degrees celsius impact winter set in when hunger and thirst drove the tarbosaurus and other animals out of the cave they saw a world that looked strikingly different from before it was cold dark and deserted [Music] only decay fungi and molds were able to reproduce under such conditions there was no food for dinosaurs on the planet countless animals starved to death our tarbosaurus didn't manage to survive either perhaps it was the last dinosaur on the planet however one can assume that occasional dinosaur eggs have been preserved intact somewhere underground young individuals hatched from them after some time tiny groups of dinosaurs emerged here and there but cold weather hunger and disease contributed to their final demise the era of dinosaurs came to an end the cenozoic era began the dust clouds dissipated over the planet over the course of several decades and heat and sunlight were finally able to reach the surface nature revived from the ruins first huge horsetails and ferns emerged yet again they were closely followed by angiosperms and grass other animals who had been dominated by dinosaurs for millions of years were ready to march bravely into the new era mammals some of them survived the disaster in underground burrows others stayed on trees they've become well adapted to extreme conditions were quick to reproduce and consumed relatively little food they were guaranteed to thrive on the renewed planet the success of mammalian evolution led to the emergence of homo sapiens who is now the dominant species on earth but we're a long way from setting the dinosaur's record as it's been a few million years since we've conquered the world only time will show if people will rule the planet for 160 million years like ancient reptiles
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in History
Why Violence Is Rising With Global Temperatures
When, in late 2013, ISIS recruiters first targeted the Tharthar area of central Iraq, they arrived with a grimly effective plan in hand. They went for some of the most drought-battered villagers, conscious of how hard they would find it to resist the cash. They made some of the most forceful pitches to those whose small fields looked extra pitiful after consecutive years of weak rains and fiercer heat. Aware of the depth of distrust of government after so many years of conflict, recruiters even got adept at casting these conditions as a product of state action. That drought? One villager remembered an ISIS member telling him that it was because of government scientists' manipulation of the weather, just another immiserating middle finger from authorities out to get them. ISIS varied its tactics elsewhere in Iraq and Syria. Sometimes, they preyed on the most shabbily dressed men at livestock markets. On other occasions, they doled out gifts of food and cash just as harvests failed. However, in focusing on farming communities, they were brutally consistent. The more water-deprived the village, the more they visited it. The poorer the farmers, the more relentless their pressure. As I ultimately concluded after years of groundwork, ideas might have jump-started the group, but it was climate-related disorder that padded its ranks and helped turn it into the thousand-strong force it soon fielded. I’ve spent more than a decade reporting on the links between climate and conflict. And working out of umpteen countries and conflict zones, I've come to see that there are increasingly few forms of violence that don't have some sort of climate angle. Take piracy in coastal Bangladesh. These pirate crews are making a killing from kidnapping fishermen who are sailing in ever-greater numbers into their lairs. Many of these fishermen are ex-farmers who’ve lost their lands to rising seas and then felt they had no choice but to seek an alternative living out on the water, the dangers be damned. Then, there are the clashes between farmers and herders across Africa's Sahel. Unsurprisingly, nothing good is coming from having more people with rival needs competing for shrinking resources across a poorly governed landscape that is less and less capable of providing them consistently. Even within Western countries, certain forms of violence appear to be rising in line with temperature. According to research that colleagues and I are conducting in Greece, the hotter the summer temperatures, the greater the risk of women being attacked. The examples are just coming thicker and faster. Now, no one is claiming that this violence or any other is down to climate change alone. The relationship between the two is as inexact and as dependent on context as the impacts of climate change in general. And it’s almost always intermingling with other drivers of instability, such as inequality or corruption. But we have a few, often generalizable rules. For one, climate change throws fuel on already smoldering fires. If you have pre-existing conflict, deep divisions across society and unresponsive institutions, then these stresses are extra liable to spark violence. For another, climate change eats away at the supports that we as individuals, communities and nation-states turn to in times of crisis. For example, having lost many of their leading citizens to migration, many communities now lack the wise old heads needed to keep the peace when tougher times come. Most importantly, climate change can just be a bridge too far, the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back for many communities that are already up to their eyeballs with trials of a different nature. It's depressing, isn't it? This is a planet that needs no more violence, and here’s the potential for an awful lot more of it. But there is room for optimism. Every bit of stifled warming means fewer people exposed to dangerous, possibly violent, triggering conditions. Every dollar dedicated to well-conceived and effectively implemented adaptation means more people with the tools to keep that peace when those tougher times come. Ultimately, if you're not motivated by melting ice caps, I'm sure you'll be motivated by not being shot. As faint a hopeful note as it might initially sound, the grand reality is that most of this remains in our hands.
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in Futurism
The Biggest Global Risks for 2025
Hello everybody happy 2025 wherever you are it is January the 6th it is snowing here in New York it is our first full week back in the office and our minds are naturally turning to whatever is coming in the year ahead now as we all know there is a lot going on in the world from ongoing Wars to technological uncertainty to the ever shifting landscape of global political landscape I am looking at you just Trudeau who resigned from the prime minister ship just today it is a wild world out there risk it seems is everywhere so who better to help us understand the nature of those risks and what we might do about them than president of Eurasia group and GZ media Ian brema joining us now hi Ian happy New Year Helen Happy New Year to you so you have just published your annual list of top risks of 2025 a hotly anticipated report that provides the worst bedtime reading known to man and we are going to go through some of the risks that you have identified now the first one the top top risk if you will is called the g0o wins and as I understand it the win that you're talking about here is actually a Global Leadership vacuum is is that right and why is this your number one risk this year it is I guess a lot of people would be wondering well shouldn't the United States and I mean president Trump coming in and he's very you know sort of unpredictable and he's going to break a lot of China including some literally uh isn't that you know the top risk not not at all actually he's the leading symptom and in many ways the top beneficiary of the g0o world and it's the global issue it's the fact that you have lots of global challenges lots of global opportunities but no Global Leadership the United States is by far the most powerful country in the world and it is not interested in providing collective security or promoting Global free trade architecture or promoting democracy or common values of rule of law it's much more transactional much more I'll get a deal with you and by the way I'm more powerful than you are so you're going to have to do much more of what I want in other words it's increasingly a much more Chinese perspective on how one engages in global Affairs or dare I say it's a Return To Rule of the Jungle to law of the Jungle and other countries are much weaker you already mentioned Justin Trudeau you could have easily mentioned uh soon to be ex-president Yun from South Korea working his way through impeachment getting confirmed by the Supreme Court constitutional Court there you could have mentioned the German government in disarray the French government um in disarray um go on and on countries around the world that are friends or adversaries of the United States are just in a weaker position and they are playing defense so they're not trying to say oh we'll be global leaders since you're not going to be we'll promote rule of law it's mostly can we stay out of the headlines and not get crosswise with either the Americans or the Chinese and so that reality that a g0o World Disorder a lack of Global Leadership that we've seen coming for 10 years but this year really is you know the the dominant theme for how geopolitics runs that is weaving its way through all of the risks that we see around the world whether it comes from the United States or from the US China relationship the US Mexico relationship it comes from ungoverned spaces you know Wars and power Vacuums in the Middle East in EUR Asia Europe all of that ultimately is coming from the g0 not a G7 not a G20 win it all right so let's dive into the United States let's talk about what's going to happen and what is to come in the year ahead Trump is coming back into Power he is going to be a lot more organized he knows a lot more this time around than he did last time around so he actually features as the rule of dawn on your list of risks talk about that and talk about what we should be watching as we as we watch the new president come come into office well as I said it's a feature not a bug uh that president-elect Trump is unpredictable and his supporters will say that's how he you know keeps everyone guessing um and he gets things done as a consequence he's got much more Consolidated power today not only because his allies and his adversaries are weaker but also because he controls the Republican party doesn't need their cells like they did in 2017 they need his he's got a much more Consolidated Administration around him it doesn't have you know Mike Pence and and others like Mike Pompeo um who were you know sort of adults from the Republican establishment he has a group of people that have distinguished themselves with their complete loyalty to him so you know the founding fathers of the United States were worried about what would happen if you didn't have proper checks and balances on the executive If instead of rule of law you had rule of man well I mean increasing what you have is Donald Trump and what he decides and what he wants is what you're going to have to respond to and that's true domestically especially as he looks to politicize um the power Ministries in the US like the FBI the Department of Justice the IRS um in a way that he believes that they were weaponized against him by democrats and the so-called deep state to investigate him to arrest him you know to to throw him in jail uh as they want wanted to um he's now going to take that and and use that against his enemies but also internationally so this rule of dawn which is going to lead to a lot of wins for the United States in the early days it's not that Trump is going to fail everywhere he tries to implement policy but that uncertainty that unpredictability is of course an enormous risk for everyone else dealing with him around the world I mean just today you have the United Kingdom um in crisis domestically not because they're trying to figure out how do we respond to Elon Musk you know who is not only by far the wealthiest person in the world but also is the closest adviser spending the most time with Trump and so you know he's attacking uh the the British government directly and in their view putting members of their cabinet in personal Danger and they have no idea how to respond because if they hit Elon are they then hitting Trump too is is that going to lead to blowback from the United States this is an immediate crisis for them in an unprecedented way um since the United States has become uh the world's superpower that that's what we mean when we talk about the rule of dawn you said something really interesting in the report that I just want to get you to say more about which is that democracy itself will not be threatened the US is is not hungry there has been a lot of talk over the last 48 years about the state of democracy and about the imperal state of democracy so I'm really interested to hear that you don't actually think that this is under threat so just talk more about that well I I don't believe uh that the United States is on the precipice of dictatorship and I also continue to see significant resilience in institutions that can push back against Trump's successes I mean we saw that you know with the effort to appoint Matt Gates um as attorney general running the doj and you know within two weeks Trump backed off and he hasn't said anything about get S Trump is by the way incredibly impressive about going really hard in favor of someone and then throwing them completely under the bus when he realizes that he's lost that one just just bounces off of them right but it's not just that it's that you still have a professional military in the United States still have an independent Judiciary yes 63 conservative appointees but independent uh from the president from the executive and continues to act uh that way uh you you have a very very thin margin um in for republicans in the house um you also have more adults that are institutionalists in the Senate um and finally of course the US is a federal system uh with with Governors that matter and elections system that is Run state by state um and then in two years time you're going to have midterms and frankly it's more likely than not the Democrats will come back in the House of Representatives then so I I take very seriously the fact that the United States is becoming more structurally corrupt that the system is increasingly captured by a small number of incredibly wealthy and Powerful special interest that that does not reflect a representative democracy that that has been getting pretty bad since you and I have known each other hell and far worse than any other Advanced industrial democracy and it's getting worse still in the incoming Trump Administration but that is very difficult from saying very different from saying that the US democracy is about to fall apart or that uh Trump is going to be able to ensure that he can stay in power he would change the Constitution and be allowed to run at 82 for a third term I think that this virally no chance uh that that could happen for example so there is a lot of uncertainty and instability coming from the institutional erosion that is affected by the Incredible strength of one man and those around him as president but that's very different from saying the Republic is facing existential danger the latter is not true I'm very glad to hear you say that okay let's talk about economics of course the state of the economy was a huge issue in the election and people really bought into the idea that Trump could bring about a healthy and strong American economy you have treponema's on your list of risks so talk to us about whether you think people are buying it are you buying it what's going to happen with the economy coming up the Trump uh risk economically um comes from the fact that uh his impact uh of his policies on the US and global economy uh I believe is going to be significantly larger uh than uh what is presently priced in um and there are a couple of points here uh one is on tariffs um he he to the extent that he has an ideological um you know sort of poll uh it's really about the utility of tariffs as the principal policy tool for economic outcomes and National Security outcomes that he wants and again he has a team that believes that supports him and is very aligned to him We're clearly going to see that uh with us relations with China also appears on the list that that relationship which has been comparatively well managed in the last 12 months even though there's no trust in it is likely to get it's likely to deteriorate significantly but also tariffs against other countries Friends of the United States where the US is running significant trade deficits much large than in 2017 when Trump was President you would have seen in the Washington Post earlier today there was a leak that said oh he's only thinking about tariffs verse on friends in a few National Security areas he's going to back off the markets went up and Trump immediately put out a social media post saying absolutely not true um I'm tariff man I'm gonna do this so that's going to have a big impact on the global economy secondly he's very serious about getting illegal immigrants out he wants to deport them they're 15 to 20 million in the United States right now he's not going to get rid of 15 to 20 million but in his first year can he get rid of a million I think he can and over four years three to five million is very very plausible and and he was voted in and Harris and Biden earlier were voted out because in large part of not handling illegal immigration just as we've seen play out across all of Europe over the last decade you're seeing play out in the United States now I'm not saying that it's wrong for him to try to remove illegal immigrants from the United States I'm saying there's going to be an impact the impact is labor costs are going up these people are also consumers in the US economy not when they're not there anymore they're taxpayers Medicare Social Security not when they're not there anymore right so there's going to be a meaningful impact on inflation and a fiscal constraint that comes from Trump putting these policies in place and and legal workers are not going to fill that Gap so you've got two areas of of extraordinary priority for the Trump Administration that are not priced into the market that are going to slow growth you also have um of course Market positive things he'll do like he's going to continue to reduce regulation and I'm sure that will be beneficial to the financial sector and crypto and uh fossil fuel companies and others he's also intending to um roll over the 2017 uh tax reductions on high net worth individuals uh and on corporations but the regulatory roll back most of that loow hanging fruit was already picked in his first term and it's an extension of the tax cuts it's not a further reduction me meanwhile um the macroeconomic environment is worse than it was before um companies are trading at a much higher multiple um you've got higher inflation you've got higher debt levels it's much more challenging for Trump to move the needle so what I'm saying is that Trump on omics actually is likely to be a much more significant downside risk this time around precisely because he's going to implement the policies he wants to he will be success uccessful politically and and then people people do not expect this right now I want to stick with immigration for a moment I think one of the lasting images that came out of the last presidency was of separated families on the southern border of the United States do do you think that we're going to see this type of visual again and how do you think he'll deal with that if we do and do you think that we'll see the same type of response to that that we saw in that first term the in the first term um the Mexican uh president Lopezoor uh basically cried Uncle uh it was one of Trump's successes uh The Mexican government was told that if you don't tighten the southern border of Mexico because so many of the people that come to the United States over the southern border are come coming from other countries across Central and Latin America um that you they're going to get hit by much harder tariffs and not only did The Mexican government uh actually take that seriously and so the numbers came down but they ultimately uh had a success um in the signing sumacs uh replacing NAFTA so Mexico I would argue in Trump's first term was pretty positive um this time around Trump has bigger problems with Mexico than he did last time around um it's not just um about uh illegal immigrants though that's one big part of it it's also the fennel crisis um it's a much bigger trade deficit and it's also Chinese Goods that are coming through Mexico into the United States he wants to address all four of those he does not have a single person very strong running point on the relationship like he did with Robert lighthiser and Jared Kushner uh facilitating the conversations behind the scenes that's not the case this time around there's a lot of cooks in that relationship also Trump had a good relationship with Lopezoor, Lopez oor is kind of a far-left populist ID logically very different from Trump but you know kind of grandiose charismatic roughly similar age and they liked each other they got along really well Claudia shine Bal I find very impressive but Helen she's a woman she's a PhD environmental scientist who got her degree at Berkeley I mean you couldn't find you couldn't dream up a demographic that would be more problematic in a personal relationship with Trump and so it's going to be hard for her to engage with him and get wins so I I I think that in the first year and let's also keep in mind this is on the back of a Mexican government that has had their peso get hammered uh for some of the Constitutional changes they're making like judicial reform in particular some social reforms as well the markets hate so the pesos just gotten destroyed um they have very little margin for error um in this first year year of trump in the relationship with the us so I think you know over four years us Mexico relations will be just fine but I think that in the first months of trump coming in uh it's going to be very very choppy Waters indeed what advice do you have for Claudia Shin bam who clearly she can't change the fact that she's a woman she can't change her educational background or anything about her she has a huge mandate from the Mexican population like what should she do to deal with Trump well give Trump wins early Mexico truly the Europeans can work together they're a large Marketplace they do business with lots of people around the world Mexico uh is only doing business with the United States they are fully integrated into the US supply chain they have no other place to go it would be like me advising the president of Lao how to deal with xiin ping you don't get to like hedge with the Americans or the Indians you've got one bet so they know that um I think a couple of things I would advise first uh and by the way I have advised um and and and I think her cabinet is very competent they're very technocratic um as opposed to the broader Marina party which is very popular but they're a new party and they've never they've never lost so they're overconfident what they think they can do it's going to be hard for her and she knows she needs to kind of get the party and get members of Congress under wraps and get her her cabinet taking the lead on all of this the easiest thing for them to do is kick the Chinese out there are a lot of places where you have Chinese parts that are actually passing through by the way Chinese investment into Mexico it's not creating Mexican jobs it's actually really angering in the textiles for example you've got a lot of small and medium Enterprises these are relatively poor and middle class Mexicans they're losing jobs because Chinese goods are coming in and undercutting them byd China set up shop and electric vehicles they're doing assembly they're not doing full manufacturing there very few jobs working for byd um in Mexico it's not like Ford it's not like GM so I I think it would benefit her from hitting China harder and earlier before her first meeting one-on-one with Trump she's had a phone call she hasn't gone to Mara Lago that was wise get her ducks in a row first that's what I would do I would also work on getting a good relationship with the incoming prime minister of Canada likely to be Pierre PV as soon as humanly possible because the Canadians will throw Mexico under a bus when usmca starts having negotiations Canadian leaders on the conservative side have made very clear hey we can have a good relationship with Trump we don't need Mexico right and NAFTA started off as a bilateral agreement between the US and Canada and it was only the US that said no we want Mexico let's make it trilateral they will try that again the Mexicans need to nip that in the butt and right now they really don't have a relationship with the Canadians and certainly not with the incoming conservatives that is a high priority in my view again that's something I have I have directly advised the leadership of Mexico all right let's stay um International let's talk about Russia um obviously the war with Ukraine has OCC Ed the headlines for a couple of years at this point you you seem to think that the ceasefire is coming but Russia is obviously still Rogue so talk to us about what we should be watching what we should be really paying attention to from Vladimir Putin and from Russia yeah Helen you and I first talked about this right after the invasion um and we've talked about it since uh back in January last year's top risks report um we had Russia Ukraine as our number three risk and we said that Ukraine was uh going to be partitioned which is not something I want at all uh but it was inevitable and now you've got just earlier today French president macron saying that zalinski is going to have to be realistic uh about what he's prepared to give up from a territorial perspective certainly that is Trump's perspective um and the ukrainians fully understand that they can't continue to fight the war the way they have um Russia also I mean you know they've got North Korean troops helping them now how much they're helping them is open to question there a lot of them getting killed um but they they could use a breather um and a ceasefire and Trump wants one and Trump has made very clear that if the ukrainians don't accept his deal he's going to cut off support and if the Russians don't accept his deal he's going to increase sanctions dramatically so I do think that over the course of the year we are likely to get a ceasefire now 2 point around that the first is before the ceasefire is actually Inked there's a lot of risk because the ukrainians are desperate and they want to be in a better position with more leverage so that's why you've got a new offensive in kers inside Russia by the ukrainians which they can hardly afford right now militarily they also are continuing to use American Rockets like attacks to hit Russian targets deeper into their territory assassination attempt and the rest Russia launching more missiles into Kiev into other uh cities civilian targets critical infrastructure energy infrastructure and of course all sorts of asymmetrical attacks against NATO allies so that is going to get worse before we have a ceasefire so there's a lot of risk around that even once we have a ceasefire that ceasefire is not a negotiated settlement which means the ukrainians are still arming up and building up and the Russians are too and the Europeans feel like that is a big risk to them so I fully expect that sanctions on Russia will stay in place I I fully expect that the freezing of hundreds of billions of Russian Sovereign dollars uh assets euros and the rest um will be used to rebuild Ukraine and that's unacceptable to Russia and they'll still be engaged in a proxy war against fr line NATO States like Poland and the bals and the nordics um they'll still use telegram to pay off locals to engage in arson attacks uh and vandalism and even assassination attempts so this is I mean Russia is the most powerful Rogue state in the world it is an ally of North Korea uh and Iran these are chaos actors on the global stage and they are absolutely producing a lot of risk and instability um Ukraine the war in Ukraine 3 years on should be heading towards a ceasefire so I think there will be less Ukraine in the headlines once that ceasefire is in place so let me just make sure that I'm understanding something because in that you describe Trump basically saying I want to cease fire and so that's what needs to happen doesn't that imply that America still does have the power and the sway and the influence that it once had or how does this how does that ladder back up to the idea of this being a gzero world I I think that the United States has an enormous amount of power but the big difference is this is Trump saying this unilaterally right I mean he's the one that is deciding um that there is going to be an outcome that he wants um and it's not like he's coordinating with NATO allies and saying we all have to sit down and make sure that we're Consolidated one of the interesting things I mean Biden did do that well in getting the ukrainians to the negotiating table he failed at that what Biden did well was ensuring that NATO was in lock step on policy every step of the way on sanctions on armaments for the ukrainians on intelligence sharing the rest uh Trump is not going to do that Trump wants to end Wars he wants to end wars in the Middle East he wants to get the Americans out he wants to end the war between Russia Ukraine he wants to get the Americans out um just like he did in Afghanistan I mean Afghanistan reflects a g0o now the United States I support ending the war in Afghanistan not that we care about what I want or don't want I mean the Americans had spent over a trillion dollars enormous numbers of lives that were lost since the US has left Afghanistan that hasn't happened but there's a power vacuum in Afghanistan it's not like anyone else has come in to try to provide any level of stability in that country and never mind just for the Afghans themselves but also exporting drugs and instability and all the like that that is what we are going to see coming from all over the place as a consequence of the United States that is saying not it you know we're focused on ourselves and we're going to get you know cut unilateral deals and you know the Allies you're gonna have to listen us I see so it's the unilateral nature of this and it's the kind of self-absorbed self-involved self-facing nature of the of the power that is different from that kind of collaborative allies Allied axis that we used to we used to know in years past that's right the United States is not becoming isolationist the United States is increasingly becoming transactional so if you think about what American exceptionalism was and frankly what globalism was to a degree it was the United States saying we support Global rule of law multilateralism and all of these institutions that we built up and we want you to to actually abide by those rules all of us together and by the way China your dictatorship and your not free market economy we're going to bring you into our institutions and we're going to expect that you're going to be behaving by those rules too so we want you to be responsible stakeholders now that last bet didn't work the Chinese got rich but they didn't become responsible Stak holders they didn't become Democratic they didn't become free market they didn't support rule of law what's really interesting is that the United States has instead move towards a more Chinese model in other words the United States is increasingly saying we don't care about these multilateral institutions we're not going to support the United Nations the the the United States might well stop paying its dues to the UN I mean certainly on the back of Elise stefanic um and the appointment of ambassador to the United Nations that appears to be the trajectory the Trump has said he wants to pull out of the World Health Organization um he's said you know Paris climate Accord out again right I mean the US is not interested in that the US is interested in in focusing on its own power its own priorities and other countries have to like it or lump it uh and so that's it's a radically different environment than a us-led global order that that is not there's no Global Order that's being led by the US it's a us-led us and and a China China and everybody else trying to hope they don't have to play sides you know and just on defense everyone playing defense okay let's talk about another geopolitical power that is hugely important always and that is Iran which in your view has gotten weaker over the last year or so obviously we've been seeing the war playing out in Gaza we've been seeing um Hezbollah was um has been weakened considerably in in Lebanon but what do you make of what's going on in Iran and what should be we be watching for in terms of risks uh I think Iran this year has become the most important Middle East risk as opposed to last year when we were focused on Gaza and the expansion of that war West Bank Lebanon Hezbollah um those Wars are going to be winding down um and Trump wants them uh to wind down and frankly the Israelis have accomplished most uh of what they have wanted to accomplish in them and they're the ones that are determining dictating how the war is being fought the wars are being fought because they have dominance in military escalation and capabilities Iran um is Israel's principal adversary in the region America's principal adversary in the region but they are at a historic weak point um post Revolution they've as you say lost uh their empire their their axis of resistance I mean you know Yemen and the houthis uh which was the most autonomous of the groups are still doing okay um but Assad is gone which means they can't get weapons to Lebanon um Hezbollah is basically gone and their leadership has been destroyed Hamas is gone um Islamic Jihad Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a lot of trouble um and so if you you are Iran um you know that you can't rely on your Regional strategy anymore uh they also have a lot of domestic problems their economy is doing horribly and Trump coming in is going to increase the pressure to prevent all of these uh non-flag tankers from getting out um and allowing the Iranians to sell their oil illegally so uh the economic situation which is already in freef Fall with lots of um you know energy shortage and also some of the worst air pollution in the world because they have to burn anything they can find um is going to get much worse this reminds me of the Soviet Union in about 1989 when they lost the East block and suddenly the people in the Soviet Union saw the emperor had no close uh and that the system wasn't working now the Iranians have the capacity to engage in a lot of domestic repression but the Supreme Leader's 85 years old he's not well he has not picked a clear successor um and there are also insurgencies including with ethnic minorities in Iran in places like sistan and bistan so I mean frankly I don't think that Iran is on the precipice of implosion but they are heading there and the Americans and the Israelis may be interested in helping them get there um I mean Israel certainly sees this as a unique opportunity to take care of their Iran business now they can do a lot they can hit them with iage cyber um critical infrastructure they could take out some of the Islamic revolutionary guard Corp what they can't do by themselves is take out the nuclear capabilities they need American Military capacity for that and so the question is Will trump help and there are those in the incoming Trump Administration that thinks that's exactly what Trump should do not clear I I suspect he doesn't want to risk Another War um that could lead oil prices to get higher impact the global Marketplace I suspect he's going to hit the Iranians hard and see what kind of a deal might be cut by them so there's a possibility that you know a much tougher relationship with Iran creates more risk But ultimately creates a deal and Trump gets a Nobel Peace Prize I wouldn't bet on that I think it's unlikely the Iranians and a trump Administration will come to an agreement it's more likely that we're heading towards direct confrontation let's change Tac just a little bit so you and I have talked very directly about the need for regulation of artificial intelligence and you actually have been working very directly and very specifically on just that topic and yet you still have ai Unbound on your list of risks so does that mean that regulation is not coming for AI or where do you think we are with that and what do you think we should be watching for yeah Helen that's pretty much what it means uh it means that the efforts at regulation have been going a lot slower than the technological build not surprising given how extraordinary the technology is and just how much money is going into it and also that some of the regulation in place is actually going away or is eroding um the uh United Kingdom last year put their flag uh in the AI landscape by saying that they were going to host every year an AI safety Summit that's how they really wanted to make sure that everyone was paying attention to the UK they just rebranded it this year's is going to be called the AI action Summit tells you a lot they don't want to be left behind they want to make sure that they're competitive and they're building more capacity the EU feeling the same way the French feeling the same way really wanting to help their own nent unicorns and not overregulation probably going to end um the resend the uh executive order by Biden with the heads of the seven systemically important us AI companies uh he'll probably also stop the nent us Chinese um AI dialogue that was hoped over time would try to reduce the potential for an AI arms race of the kind that we had with the Soviets on nuclear weapons in the early Cold War um the US European trade and Technology Council likely to be Unwound under Trump so all of these early stage efforts that were not moving fast enough um are probably not going to be with us effectively for long um in addition to that uh we are already seeing that the advances in this technology and you know that I'm an Enthusiast for AI I believe that you know incredible human capital will be unlocked extraordinary industrial use cases in every sector around the world but I also see people Bad actors that are capable of using uh this AI in ways that are dangerous um and I'll give you example Le I mean you look at um meta and their open- Source llama chatbot and there are a lot of people out there that are basically re-engineering llama uh so that it doesn't adhere um to the constraints um the uh if you will the the the ideology of meta but what some would also say would be the safety um of meta and and some of my people have downloaded those on their laptops and started using it just what you can do and they've gotten the AI bot to explain how to use arsenic to assassinate someone to help them figure out how you would Target and kill a major CEO of a company now I mean we we're not doing that obviously but lots of people are um and that is not sustainable so I mean the extraordinary capabilities of these Technologies the the unfettered comp competition which is driving so much compute and energy use and capital and Entrepreneurship from the Americans from the Chinese and from others is not being met by anywhere close to an adequate regulatory environment and that means that we're only going to figure out you know where things break when they break uh and we are heading in that direction right so it's going to take some in intense catastrophe for people to start to take that seriously and as we know with gun control maybe not even take it seriously then that's probably right all right now this is Ted Ian we are not just about risks we all appreciate that you came here and you have detailed the top risks but I have to turn it on its head if you don't mind just for the last question because we love those who are looking for Solutions not just detailing the problems and I asked you this last time when we went through the risks of 2024 and so I have to ask you again what or who or where are the bright spots what gives you hope in 2025 well I mean first of all taking away the geopolitics the technology is a bright spot um the technology for AI the technology uh for sustainable energy uh I mean I I don't care uh if the US pulls out of Paris climate Accord and Trump says he's not going to subsidize electric vehicles anymore and he wants to help fossil fuels all of that is not going to stop an extraordinary transition to postc carbon energies which the Chinese are leading on globally and they may extend that lead um but I mean they're going to be carbon neutral a lot faster than 2030 um and a lot faster than they expected now some of that's because their econom is not doing that well but some of that is because the price of these Technologies at scale has been going down down down you know I mean following Moors law basically um so that's extraordinary I love the idea that in 20 to 30 years we're going to have sustainable abundant inexpensive energy for the world that's that's pretty exciting um I love the idea that um the use cases for AI every day are becoming more and more Earth changing and that will reduce waste that will allow us to better measure things around the world and when you measure them you can manage them when you manage them um you can improve upon them uh that's I mean we haven't had good real-time data on our world on our economy on our environment AI will give us that um and that will allow us to more efficiently use the resources the scarce resources that we've been blessed with so I'm a big Enthusiast about the Technologies as is Ted um but those aren't geopolitical upsides the geopolitical upsides I I'll give you a couple um one is that Trump is not going to be a failure the fact that Trump has such a strong position does mean that other countries will want to give him WIS and that is stabilizing where those winds occur so I mentioned that cloudia shine bomb is going to do everything possible to find a way to fix the relationship that Trump thinks is broken it may take her longer than she wants I think she will get there uh the Europeans and the Americans may get into a tit fortat tariff War but I also think they're going to work more closely on coordinating some policies on China I think they'll work more closely the Europeans will buy more natural gas from the United States there is a desire to get a deal done that's not going to work everywhere I don't think it'll work on China I don't think it'll work on Iran I don't think it'll fix the Russia conflict but where it does work it will be meaningful and you want the president of the United States to have some wins I mean at the end of the day he's the most powerful leader of any country in the world that's important secondarily one place I strongly disagree with Trump trump believes that a strong Europe is bad for the United States in a gzero world I think a strong Europe is good for the United States it's good for global stability and it's also good longterm for keeping American adversaries at Bay um Trump is supporting an Elon Musk particular is supporting all of these euroskeptic movements the Reform Party um in the UK the alternatives for deuts land um in Germany I suspect soon the national rally in France though he hasn't spoken about it yet now that macron's coming after me probably will the good news is that I don't think it matters I think that Europe is going to continue to stand up in 2025 it might even get stronger not economically where they're underperform compared to the US but politically from a security perspective as well they know they need to and the leaders that I see in Europe I see Mark Ruta uh as Secretary General of NATO I see Ursula vandine running the EU for a second term um I see a very capable Roberto metsola and Kaaya kalis underneath her um driving foreign policy for example in the European Parliament um the Germans are about to have an election know afd is not going to win despite Elon saying that they're going to it's going to be Frederick MZ and it's going to be a center-right government that's going to be quite close with all the European leaders at the EU level and quite close to macron macron is in big trouble in 2027 but he runs foreign policy still until then and he's going to be quite cohesive uh with the Germans and with the Europeans in 2025 so at least for this year I think the Europeans stand strongly and are more cohesive and coordinated it's a very important thing for what still is the world's largest common market well Ian I on behalf of our entire Community am an Enthusiast of these conversations we're very grateful to you for coming and sharing your wisdom and your Insight and thank you for coming back for the next thing that we will need to discuss and that we will need you to explain for now thank you so much and if you want to take a look at all of the risks you can see them online at euras group.
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in Futurism
The Tale of the Three Laughing Monks
Once upon a time in ancient china there lived three old monks their names are not remembered today simply because they never revealed them to anybody in china they are simply known as the three laughing monks they always travel together and did nothing else but laugh they entered a village or a town stood in the center of its main square and started laughing slowly but surely the people who lived and worked there and the passersby couldn't resist and had to start laughing as well until a small laughing crowd had formed and eventually the laughing had spread to the whole village or town that was the moment when the three old monks moved on to the next village their laughter was their only prayer all of their teaching because they never spoke to anybody they just created that situation [Music] all over china they were loved and respected the people had never known such spiritual teachers before or after they seemed to communicate that life should be taken only as a great opportunity to laugh as if they had discovered some kind of cosmic joke so they traveled and laughed for many years spreading joy and happiness throughout china until one day while being at a particular village in the north province one of them died the people were shocked and came running from afar leaving the fields unattended for the day only to witness the other two monks reaction to this dramatic event they were expecting them to show sorrow or even cry and the whole village came to the place where the three monks were two alive and one dead but the two remaining monks were laughing only harder they were laughing and laughing and could not seem to stop so that a few of the good people who were assisting to this scene in this belief approached them and asked them why they weren't mourning at all for their deceased friend and for one time the monks actually responded because yesterday on our way to your village he proposed the bet on who of us would beat the other two and die first and now he won the old rogue he even had a testament prepared the tradition required to wash the dead and change his clothes before putting him on the funeral pyre but the old monk had explicitly asked to leave the old clothes on him since he had never been filthy for one day i never allowed any of the filth of this world to reach me through my laughter his testament stated so the old man's body was placed on the pyre with the garments he was wearing when he had arrived and as the fire was lit and started licking on his clothes to everyone's astonishment suddenly fireworks of a hundred colors went exploding up and down and to all directions and finally the people who had gathered there also joined the laughter of the two wise men you see in life in your life maybe the only reason that we are here on this earth is so we can laugh and laugh and never stop experiencing joy and laughter so next time you face a problem look in the mirror and just laugh the problem away because your joy is what makes you alive.
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in Motivation
The First 20Hours
Hi everyone. Two year ago, my life changed forever. My wife Kelsey and I welcomed our daughter Lela into the world. Now, becoming a parent is an amazing experience. Your whole world changes over night. And all of your priorities change immediately. So fast that it makes it really difficult to process sometimes. Now, you also have to learn a tremendous amount about being a parent like, for example, how to dress your child. (Laughter) This was new to me. This is an actual outfit, I thought this was a good idea. And even Lela knows that it's not a good idea. (Laughter) So there is so much to learn and so much craziness all at once. And to add to the craziness, Kelsey and I both work from home, we're entrepreneurs, we run our own businesses. So, Kelsey develops courses online for yoga teachers. I'm an author. And so, I'm working from home, Kelsey's working from home. We have an infant and we're trying to make sure that everything gets done that needs done. And life is really, really busy. And a couple of weeks into this amazing experience, when the sleep deprivation really kicked in, like around week eight, I had this thought, and it was the same thought that parents across the ages, internationally, everybody has had this thought, which is: I am never going to have free time ever again. (Laughter) Somebody said it's true. It's not exactly true, but it feels really, really true in that moment. And this was really disconcerning to me, because one of the things that I enjoy more than anything else is learning new things. Getting curious about something and diving in and fiddling around and learning through trial and error. And eventually becoming pretty good at something. And without this free time, I didn't know how I was ever going to do that ever again. And so, I'm a big geek, I want to keep learning things, I want to keep growing. And so what I've decided to do was, go to the library, and go to the bookstore, and look at what research says about how we learn and how we learn quickly. And I read a bunch of books, I read a bunch of websites. And tried to answer this question, how long does it take to acquire a new skill? You know what I found? 10,000 hours! Anybody ever heard this? It takes 10,000 hours. If you want to learn something new, if you want to be good at it, it's going to take 10,000 hours to get there. And I read this in book after book, in website after website. And my mental experience of reading all of this stuff was like: No!! I don't have time! I don't have 10,000 hours. I am never going to be able to learn anything new. Ever again. (Laughter) But that's not true. So, 10,000 hours, just to give you a rough order of magnitude, 10,000 hours is a full-time job for five years. That's a long time. And we've all had the experience of learning something new, and it didn't take us anywhere close to that amount of time, right? So, what's up? There's something kinda funky going on here. What the research says and what we expect, and have experiences, they don't match up. And what I found, here's the wrinkle: The 10,000 hour rule came out of studies of expert-level performance. There's a professor at Florida State University, his name is K. Anders Ericsson. He is the originator of the 10,00 hour rule. And where that came from is, he studied professional athletes, world class musicians, chess grand masters. All of this ultra competitive folks in ultra-high performing fields. And he tried to figure out how long does it take to get to the top of those kinds of fields. And what he found is, the more deliberate practice, the more time that those individuals spend practicing the elements of whatever it is that they do, the more time you spend, the better you get. And the folks at the tippy top of their fields put in around 10,000 hours of practice. Now, we were talking about the game of telephone a little bit earlier. Here's what happened: an author by the name of Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book in 2007 called "Outliers: The Story of Success", and the central piece of that book was the 10,000 hour rule. Practice a lot, practice well, and you will do extremely well, you will reach the top of your field. So, the message, what Dr. Ericsson was actually saying is, it takes 10,000 hours to get at the top of an ultra competitive field in a very narrow subject, that's what that means. But here's what happened: ever since Outliers came out, immediately came out, reached the top of best seller lists, stayed there for three solid months. All of a sudden the 10,000 hour rule was everywhere. And a society-wide game of telephone started to be played. So this message, it takes 10,000 hours to reach the top of an ultra competitive field, became, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to become good at something, which became, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something. But that last statement, it takes 10,000 hours to learn something, is not true. It's not true. So, what the research actually says -- I spent a lot of time here at the CSU library in the cognitive psychology stacks 'cause I'm a geek. And when you actually look at the studies of skill acquisition, you see over and over a graph like this. Now, researchers, whether they're studying a motor skill, something you do physically or a mental skill, they like to study things that they can time. 'Cause you can quantify that, right? So, they'll give research participants a little task, something that requires physical arrangement, or something that requires learning a little mental trick, and they'll time how long a participant takes to complete the skill. And here's what this graph says, when you start -- so when researchers gave participants a task, it took them a really long time, 'cause it was new and they were horrible. With a little bit of practice, they get better and better and better. And that early part of practice is really, really efficient. People get good at things with just a little bit of practice. Now, what's interesting to note is that, for skills that we want to learn for ourselves, we don't care so much about time, right? We just care about how good we are, whatever good happens to mean. So if we relabel performance time to how good you are, the graph flips, and you get his famous and widely known, this is the learning curve. And the story of the learning curve is when you start, you're grossly incompetent and you know it, right? (Laughter) With a little bit of practice, you get really good, really quick. So that early level of improvement is really fast. And then at a certain point you reach a plateau, and the subsequent games become much harder to get, they take more time to get. Now, my question is, I want that, right? How long does it take from starting something and being grossly incompetent and knowing it to being reasonably good? In hopefully, as short a period of time as possible. So, how long does that take? Here's what my research says: 20 hours. That's it. You can go from knowing nothing about any skill that you can think of. Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw? Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws? (Laughter) If you put 20 hours of focused deliberate practice into that thing, you will be astounded. Astounded at how good you are. 20 hours is doable, that's about 45 minutes a day for about a month. Even skipping a couple days, here and there. 20 hours isn't that hard to accumulate. Now, there's a method to doing this. Because it's not like you can just start fiddling around for about 20 hours and expect these massive improvements. There's a way to practice intelligently. There's a way to practice efficiently, that will make sure that you invest those 20 hours in the most effective way that you possibly can. And here's the method, it applies to anything: The first is to deconstruct the skill. Decide exactly what you want to be able to do when you're done, and then look into the skill and break it down into smaller pieces. Most of the things that we think of as skills are actually big bundles of skills that require all sorts of different things. The more you can break apart the skill, the more you're able to decide, what are the parts of this skill that would actually help me get to what I want? And then you can practice those first. And if you practice the most important things first, you'll be able to improve your performance in the least amount of time possible. The second is, learn enough to self correct. So, get three to five resources about what it is you're trying to learn. Could be book, could be DVDs, could be courses, could be anything. But don't use those as a way to procrastinate on practice. I know I do this, right? Get like 20 books about the topic, like, "I'm going to start learning how to program a computer when I complete these 20 books". No. That's procrastination. What you want to do is learn just enough that you can actually practice and self correct or self edit as you practice. So the learning becomes a way of getting better at noticing when you're making a mistake and then doing something a little different. The third is to remove barriers to practice. Distractions, television, internet. All of these things that get in the way of you actually sitting down and doing the work. And the more you're able to use just a little bit of willpower to remove the distractions that are keeping you from practicing, the more likely you are to actually sit down and practice, right? And the fourth is to practice for at least 20 hours. Now, most skills have what I call a frustration barrier. You know, the grossly-incompetent- and-knowing-it part? That's really, really frustrating. We don't like to feel stupid. And feeling stupid is a barrier to us actually sitting down and doing the work. So, by pre-committing to practicing whatever it is that you want to do for at least 20 hours, you will be able to overcome that initial frustration barrier and stick with the practice long enough to actually reap the rewards. That's it! It's not rocket science. Four very simple steps that you can use to learn anything. Now, this is easy to talk about in theory, but it's more fun to talk about in practice. So one of the things that I've wanted to learn how to do for a long time is play the ukulele. Has anybody seen Jake Shimabukuro's TEDTalk where he plays the ukulele and makes it sound like -- he's like a ukulele god. It's amazing. I saw it, I was like, "That is so cool!" It's such a neat instrument. I would really like to learn how to play. And so I decided that to test this theory I wanted to put 20 hours into practicing ukulele and see where it got. And so the first thing about playing the ukulele is, in order to practice, you have to have one, right? So, I got an ukulele and -- My lovely assistant? (Laughter) Thank you sir. I think I need the chord here. It's not just an ukulele, it's an electric ukulele. (Laughter) Yeah. So, the first couple hours are just like the first couple hours of anything. You have to get the tools that you are using to practice. You have to make sure they're available. My ukulele didn't come with strings attached. I had to figure out how to put those on. Like, that's kind of important, right? And learning how to tune, learning how to make sure that all of the things that need to be done in order to start practicing get done, right? Now, one of the things when I was ready to actually start practicing was I looked in online databases and songbooks for how to play songs. And they say, okay, ukuleles, you can play more than one string at a time, so you can play chords, that's cool, you are accompanying yourself, yay you. (Laughter) And when I started looking at songs, I had an ukulele chord book that had like hundreds of chords. Looking at this and "Wow, that's intimidating". But when you look at the actual songs, you see the same chords over and over, right? As it turns out, playing the ukulele is kind of like doing anything, There's a very small set of things that are really important and techniques that you'll use all the time. And in most songs you'll use four, maybe five chords, and that's it, that's the song. You don't have to know hundreds, as long as you know the four or the five. So, while I was doing my research, I found a wonderful little medley of pop songs by a band called Axis of Awesome. (Whistles) -- Somebody knows it. -- And what Axis of Awesome says is that you can learn, or you can play pretty much any pop song of the past five decades, if you know four chords, and those chords are G, D, Em and C. Four chords pump out every pop song ever, right? So I thought, this is cool! I would like to play every pop song ever. (Laughter) So, that was the first song I decided to learn, and I would like to actually share it with you. Ready? (Applause) Alright. (Music) (Singing) Just a small town girl, living in a lonely world, she took the midnight train going anywhere. I heard that you settled down, (Laughter) that you found a girl, that you're married now. Every night in my dreams (Laughter) I see you, I feel you, that is how I know you go on. (Laughter) I won't hesitate no more, no more. It cannot wait, I'm yours. 'Cause you were amazing, we did amazing things. If I could, then I would, I'd go wherever you will -- Can you feel the love tonight. (Laughter) I can't live with or without you. When I find myself -- When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, Sometimes I feel like I don't have partner. No woman, no cry. Yeah mama, this surely is a dream. I come from a land down under. (Laughter) Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong. Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, (Laughter) but here's my number, so call me Hey sexy lady, op, op, op, op, oppan gangnam style. (Laughter) It's time to say goodbye. Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. (Singing and music ends) (Applause) Thank you, thank you. I love that song. (Laughter) And I have a secret to share with you. So, by playing that song for you, I just hit my twentieth hour of practicing the ukulele. (Applause) Thank you. And so it's amazing, pretty much anything that you can think of, what do you want to do. The major barrier to learn something new is not intellectual, it's not the process of you learning a bunch of little tips or tricks or things. The major barrier's emotional. We're scared. Feeling stupid doesn't feel good, in the beginning of learning anything new you feel really stupid. So the major barrier's not intellectual, it's emotional. But put 20 hours into anything. It doesn't matter. What do you want to learn? Do you want to learn a language? Want to learn how to cook? Want to learn how to draw? What turns you on? What lights you up? Go out and do that thing. It only takes 20 hours. Have fun.
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in Education
The future we're building -- and boring by Elon Musk
Chris Anderson: Elon, hey, welcome back to TED. It's great to have you here. Elon Musk: Thanks for having me. CA: So, in the next half hour or so, we're going to spend some time exploring your vision for what an exciting future might look like, which I guess makes the first question a little ironic: Why are you boring?
By Jupiter's Quillabout a year ago in Lifehack

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