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Bitcoin, where is it headed?

Bitcoin is up 450% since my last post.

Last year in the month of May I wrote an article on here titled “Bitcoin, what is it?“, the purpose of this article was to introduce the concept in a easily explainable way to new users, but to also provide a simple resource I could direct people to rather than always having to explain the same thing to different people.

As always, whenever I write anything on Bitcoin, I get a bunch of private messages telling me how I’m wrong, how Bitcoin is stupid and will be worth zero, these messages only ever come from people who have never used Bitcoin before, I used to hear the same garbage from people about email, “why would I send an email when I can just post a letter?” or “why would I ever get an email address?, none of my friends have email addresses”.

The ironic thing is, that most of these angry people end up buying at the top of a cycle, I’ve witnessed this multiple times.

The industry coined term for these angry individuals is NoCoiner.

Bitcoin is going through one of it’s regular cycles, the Bitcoin price during my last article was $1500, by the end of the year it had reached $19,500, currently it stands at around $6,700, to put this growth into simple terms, lets say you had $200, you placed $100 into the Sydney housing market at the time of my last article and $100 into Bitcoin.

Today the housing market investment would be worth $95.50 and the Bitcoin investment would be $450.00, at one stage however the Bitcoin investment would have reached $1300.00.

Now here is the problem, if you simply ignored Bitcoin for what it is and only cared about it because all of your friends or colleagues were buying it and you had FOMO “Fear of missing out”, then you may have bought at the top, rather than after my last article, if this is the case, then hopefully you learnt a valuable lesson about market cycles.

Today, Bitcoin is in a bear market, so far it’s experiencing it’s 4th largest decline to date. Long term users of Bitcoin have seen this all before, however for new people it can be scary, especially when NoCoiners tell them “Bitcoin is going to zero!”, Bitcoin couldn’t actually go to zero, for the simple reason that there is enough people who’d happily buy up all the coins as they almost reach zero, these people would speculate that the price would one day rise again offering them huge returns. The big question today is where is Bitcoin heading? up or down?

At the start of the year, January 1st, I tweeted the following prediction.

So how did I predict the markets move? well, there was only two possible directions, so anyone could guess with a 50% chance of being right, you could say I’d be explaining my answer with survivorship bias.

My prediction was based on the simple fact that the price was going up way too fast, it was a speculative bubble, when everyone is making money on something, you know you’re in a speculative bubble. The best sign of this is seeing people entering the market who had zero interest in it previously, their only interest is making money, they simply enter because their friends who are also new to the market and have no understanding told them about their gains. Humans are herd animals.

Humans have a natural fear of missing out, if everyone else is having an orgy and you simply sit and watch then your genes won’t carry on, you’ll be removed from the gene pool. Put another way, imagine everyone is grabbing the latest weapons before a foreign tribe invades, but you get left with a stick, or everyone is having a huge feast but you’re not invited to eat, yet you know food is scarce. Well this in built FOMO flows over into investments.

Everyone else is buying, prices have risen, you better buy too before you miss out, you’d be mad not to buy now, everyone else is buying! prices are going up!. In this situation you need to ask yourself, what happens once everyone has bought? e.g what happens once everyone else owns a house? or at-least what happens when people start to sell and there is less buyers than sellers?.

With investing, like everything else in life, there is some great quotes that always make sense in hindsight, to me the most truthful quotes for investing are.

“Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful”. ― Warren Buffett

“Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.” — Rothschild

These quotes are true because they’re obvious, when the herd is fearful to buy is when an investment is cheap, when the herd is all buying then the investment is expensive and big gains have already been had, it’s basic supply and demand, any kind of investment relies on having buyers and sellers, the best time to sell obviously is when there are buyers.

Everyone knows the saying “Buy low, sell high” but very few people actually follow this, most people want to buy high and will sell low, they want to buy high as everyone else they know is buying, they hear of others gains and panic buy, then when the price drops a little they panic sell, instead of blaming themselves they’ll blame the product they bought “stupid bitcoin, I bought it and it crashed” “houses suck!” “The stock market is rigged” etc.

These days I don’t tell anyone to buy Bitcoin, I don’t give investment advice, but I tell everyone to try it, to experience it. Several years ago however I would tell people to buy, I told one friend to buy at $180, he laughed and mocked me, late last year he contacted me telling me he was buying at $18,000, why? because “all his colleagues were buying” he “didn’t want to miss out”, he’d already missed out on 100x gains, he missed out on these gains because he needed someone to hold his hand and to validate his decision, he couldn’t take a risk and buy something early, he needed group support, this is how the majority of people are, unwilling to take risks, following the norm, then complaining that others got lucky.

Right now, people are fearful, there is blood on the streets, but is now the time to buy?. It all depends on what you’re buying for, Bitcoin can be bought and spent straight away, it can be used to trade peer to peer, it can be used for international transfers, where you buy it, send it to someone straight away in another country and they sell it straight away, this is relatively risk free, but what about as an investment?

Once again, everyone has an opinion, but no one knows for sure, however if you ask enough people, then at a future date you’ll be able to see at least one of these people were correct, but this is true of everything, everyone could be just guessing, so below is my guess.

How low will Bitcoin go? where will the bottom be? in January I was guessing $4,700, I simply plucked up this figure by looking at historical drops in previous Bitcoin bear markets, I guess that this drop won’t be as big as previous crashes, due to increasing liquidity and adoption each crash has been smaller than the previous, as an example Bitcoin once went from $1 to $30 in a single month then crashed down to $2, everyone was certain “Bitcoin is dead”, well not quite everyone, for the people who bought at $1 were sitting there thinking “this isn’t too bad I’m up 100%” however NoCoiners would scream at them “You’re an idiot if you don’t sell, Bitcoin is over valued at $2, only an idiot would hold thousands of bitcoin!”.

Fast forward a few years and there was the $1200 bubble, where it crashed to $150 over a period of roughly 13 months, this was a much smaller bubble, so far the “crash” from $19,500 to $6,500 has been the smallest crash to date, however the average person doesn’t do simple maths and rather react to big numbers instead of percentages.

Now, I could be wrong, Bitcoin could fall to $1500.00 or even lower, what do I know?, as I could be wrong on my upwards prediction. How high do I think Bitcoin will go?. Bitcoin is an experiment, for it to work as a store of value it only needs to go to somewhere around $100,000 to $300,000, but for it to work as a global currency, a currency with liquidity and stability, it needs to go to somewhere between $1,000,000 to $5,000,000.

I’m confident Bitcoin will reach six figures sometime in the next decade, I rate it a 50% chance, if it does reach six figures, then I’d give it a 50% chance of reaching seven figures in the following decade.

It is possible that Bitcoin forever stays a niche protocol, only used by a few million people, no one really knows, should an international standard be set by one country? e.g the US dollar where one foreign government is able to debase it at will? or should it be decentralized, a product of maths and born out of the Internet? what will future generations that grew up online think?

I don’t know, but here is my prediction that I can look back on in the future, will I be wrong?, will I be right?, what do you think? feel free to leave a comment below.

List of Billionaires that have invested in Bitcoin

Over the years, when the topic of Bitcoin has come up, I’ve had over a half dozen people say to me “if bitcoin was such a good investment, then why aren’t billionaires investing in it?”, when people have stated this question, it’s always been with a tone of smugness and they weren’t actually asking a question, but trying rather to sound so smart that they don’t need to learn anything…lol.

I know this because when ever I would respond “Multiple billionaires have, would you like me to list some?” I would always get a smug look and no response.
So anyway, I had someone mention this yesterday and now I was just sitting here thinking to my self “who off the top of my head can I actually name?”.

I’m sure there is many more than I can think of, not everyone is public with their investments, but anyway, here goes.

The below have all invested into the Bitcoin space, either directly holding bitcoin, or holding shares in Bitcoin companies. All are Billionaires in $AUD, several are multiple billionaires.

  • Richard BransonVirgin
  • Tim DraperVC – early investor in Hotmail and Skype, bought thousands of Silk Road bitcoins at a US government auction.
  • Marc AndreessenFounded netscape, today is a VC, early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Jawbone, AirBnB and many more.
  • Mark Cuban – Investor, author, television personality.
  • Mike Cannon-BrookesAtlassian Australia
  • Bill Grossbond manager
  • Mike Novogratzhedge fund investor
  • Thaksin Shinawatrabusinessman and former Prime Minister of Thailand.
  • Satoshi NakamotoNo one knows the true identity of the creator of bitcoin, but he is estimated to own 1.1 million bitcoins and has never sold one, today’s value is close to $3 billion AUD.

There is quite a few more who may very well be billionaires but if not, are certainly close to it and control VC funds with assets worth tens of billions of dollars.

Bitcoin, What is it?

Bitcoin, what is it?

While thinking of how best to explain bitcoin, I considered trying to explain the technical details in as simple terms as possible, but I come to realise that the average user doesn’t need to know all the complex code, just as the average webpage user doesn’t need to know about TCP/IP, packet switching and a dozen other complicated technologies that allow them to view a web page.

What I’ll attempt is to explain the design, think of this as someone selling the features of a new car to your grandmother, rather than explaining the whole ins and outs of the internal combustion engine, how the tyres are made, how the air conditioner works etc.

Bitcoin in 10 simple points.

1. Bitcoin is a decentralised network where participants of the network own bitcoins, no body owns the Bitcoin network, think of it like the internet, some have coined the term “the internet of money”, I’ve met people who don’t understand bitcoin and like many people when new technology comes along, they get on the defensive and make ludicrous statements like “The government will shut this down”, “if people lose their money, the bitcoin company should be made to pay up.”

When such statements are heard by the ears of an experienced bitcoiner, this sounds completely out of touch with reality, there is no company to “pay up” and there is no central server to “shut down”, bitcoin can’t be shut down, no matter how much violence, money or power a government has, there is simply no one to point a gun at, there is no server to unplug, the only chance of stopping Bitcoin is to turn off the entire internet, you can’t create a firewall and block it, it’s completely decentralised.

Before moving on to the below points, you must come to terms with this, I’ve seen people scream at conference speakers “The government won’t allow this!!, they’ll shut this down!!!” and storm out of the event.

The irony is, if the mentioned people had spent some time to understand the technology and had they even ended up being right, they’d have stood to make tens of thousands of dollars by shorting bitcoin.
Note: even if you hate Bitcoin and are certain it will fail, you can make a lot of money from it’s demise.

2. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin, bitcoin is scarce, currently there is around 16.3 million bitcoins in existence, today 12.5 new bitcoins are created and accepted by the network every 10 minutes. Every 4 years the number coming into creation every 10 minutes halves, in the year 2020 6.25 will come into creation, in 2024 it’ll be 3.125, 2028 it’ll be 1.562 new bitcoins every 10 minutes and so on, this 4 yearly division will keep up until the year 2140 when all 21 million bitcoins have been created.

3. There is enough Bitcoin for every human in the world. There is over 7 billion people on the planet, yet there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin, how can 21 million bitcoin be enough? A single bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places, so a bitcoin is practically made up of 100 million smaller units. As a single $1 goes to 2 decimal places and is made of 100 smaller units that we call cents, a bitcoin simply goes to 8 decimal places, the smallest unit being called a “Satoshi”, named after the creator of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin works upon the principles of deflation, not to be confused with economic deflation, economic deflation is terrible in a society with only inflationary currency.
Bitcoins deflationary model is completely new to humanity and works well along side inflationary currencies, by acting as a store of value.

4. Any person or machine can send Bitcoin to any other person or machine they wish, you can send money to an Iranian, a North Korean, an American, an employee of Wikileaks, Edward Snowden, ISIS, Al Qaeda, George Bush, Tony Blair or any other terrorist, you’d be breaking a law, and could face criminal prosecution, but from a technical point of view, there is no way to stop you, Bitcoin isn’t like a traditional centralised payment service like Visa, Paypal, Mastercard, traditional banking etc, where a government or bank can choose who can or who can’t have an account. Your account can never be closed, it’s impossible by design.

5. Bitcoin never closes, it’s open 24/7 every day of the year, anyone can participate, in traditional banking, international payments can take 3 to 5 business days and for many banks these transactions can only be placed between the hours of 9-5, bitcoin has no sense of out of hours, the average transaction will arrive at the recipient in under 3 seconds, the network will have settled the transaction as final on average in 10 minutes.

6. You can send however much bitcoin you own to whoever you want, if you own $1 million in bitcoin, you can send this to anyone you want, no one can stop you, no one can ask you “who is this money going to?” or “how did you get this money?” or “what is this money being used for”. At first to someone who doesn’t understand bitcoin this could sound strange or scary, however with bitcoin, money is a content type, it’s completely digital, it’s the money of the internet, it’s the internet of money, look at it like email, or a file type like a jpeg, mp3 etc, who can stop you sending an email? or sending a jpeg?, once you start to see bitcoin as a content type, it’ll all make sense.

When the world wide web first appeared on the internet, many people were disgusted at the idea that any person could publish articles online, these people were used to only government backed newspapers having this right, any individual having as much power to publish as a newspaper sounded crazy, today most people view internet censorship as far more crazy.

When the printing press first appeared, if an average person was found in possession of one, the penalty was death.

7. Bitcoin is a store of value, if bitcoin succeeds and more people start using bitcoin over time, the price must rise, this is due to the scarcity of bitcoin and it’s divisibility (to 8 decimal places).
One of the first transactions online was a guy buying pizza off another guy, he paid a guy on a forum 10,000 bitcoins to order him 2 pizzas, today 10,000 bitcoins is worth around $20 million AUD, at the time though there wasn’t that many people using bitcoin, so the several million bitcoins in existence were divided up amongst several thousand users.

Today it’s estimated there is between 6 million – 12 million owners of bitcoin. With bitcoin being both scarce and popular, bitcoin has to be divided up, 2 pizzas today could be bought for 0.02 bitcoins, rather than 10,000 bitcoins, in another 5 years, if the bitcoin network keeps growing at the current rate, the price of 2 pizzas could perhaps be 0.00001 bitcoin (or insert random guess here).
As you can probably work out, if you got into Bitcoin several years ago and held onto your bitcoin, today you’d have made considerable money.

8. Bitcoin cannot be copied, many people are confused with this at first, we’re used to anything digital being easily copied, think music, photos, documents etc, bitcoin though cannot be copied, on hearing this for the first time, many people have rolled their eyes, they think of DRM (digital rights management) which has often been hacked and proven floored.

What makes bitcoin impossible to copy is that a bitcoin doesn’t exist as a copyable coin, All bitcoin is, is a row in a database, in bitcoin we call this database The Blockchain, in this database there is a row that says this address owns x amount of bitcoin, thousands of computers on the network keep a copy of The Blockchain, so if you wanted to modify a row in this database to say you own more bitcoin, then you need to convince the thousands of computers of the network to update their copy of the Blockchain, this isn’t possible, due to the cryptographic nature of the blockchain.

What you own as a bitcoin owner is effectively a password that proves to the network that you own the said row in the database, this is known as public/private key cryptography, I won’t go too much further into the technical side as it’ll lose most people, all you need to know is that your phone app keeps hold of this private key (password) behind the scenes and signs cryptographic messages to the network, eg “Give $5 of bitcoin to John, from my account, here is proof that I own this account” then all the computers on the network validate that you own that $5 and they update their copy of the database.

The smartest minds in Cryptography have gone over the code of bitcoin and
everyone has come to consensus that bitcoins cannot be copied.

9. Bitcoin is freedom.

10. Bitcoin is a high risk high return investment.

You can use this link to buy bitcoin and we’ll both earn $10 in bitcoin, however, I’ll write further articles in the near future on whether or not I think people should buy bitcoin and how much, I’ll also cover how to securely store your bitcoin with a Trezor.

Chiang Mai Thailand cost of living for a couple

So, it’s been a long while since my last expense report, I’m no longer in Chiang Mai now but still have my expenses saved away, I’m putting them up for future reference.

This is for our second 30 days in Chiang Mai, it’s said your first month somewhere is always the most expensive, this was true for us, as our second month was much lower. Below are my previous expense reports.

Note: these prices are the total for 2 people, doing this trip solo would be half the prices, except for the accommodation.

Chiang Mai expenses

Chiang Mai Trip Expenses

  • Accommodation + electricity £168.15
  • Memberships (GYM – Co-working) £171.15
  • Food, entertainment, living etc £366.58

Total £705.88
Cost per person £352.94
Cost per day (per person) £11.76

As you can see, our month was much cheaper than our first month, had it not been for our memberships which consisted of 2 x 3 month gym memberships and 1 x 3 month co-working space membership, our expenses would have been even more lower. Our cost of living was no where near as low as that of an average Thai, but we’re on holidays after all, even still, we managed to make a profit this month by doing zero work.

Maploy Pad Thai Nimman

By our second month we’d knew all the best places to eat and drink but had also basically cut alcohol down to less than once a week, we cut back on alcohol not too save cash, but simply because we felt no need to numb our minds, life was positively stimulating enough that drinking alcohol just made life less enjoyable.

Now you might think “but why? do you not enjoy alcohol” and the answer is “yes”, but life was better not drinking, imagine you have a choice of a crap movie or a good movie? why choose the movie that you know you’ll enjoy less?, I was far too happy to find alcohol enjoyable, so simply avoided it.

How to book Baan Thai Chiang Mai serviced apartment online

Baan Thai sign

Baan Thai sign

Whenever I mention on a Chiang Mai group online that I’m currently staying in the Baan Thai serviced apartments in the Nimman area of Chiang Mai, I always get someone private messaging me asking how to book online. The simple answer is, you don’t, you turn up and speak to reception in person, if there is a room free you book it straight away, if there isn’t, you find somewhere else until a room becomes available.

I have however managed to help a person book a room before he arrived in Thailand, I done this by placing a 1,000 Baht deposit for him, he was a mate I know from the UK, who came here to code with me for a month.

Before coming to Chiang Mai I read about Baan Thai online on Travel Dave’s blog, his article is more informative than what I’m writing here, except for the price has now changed.

Baan Thai Nimman

Baan Thai Nimman

As of October 2015 the price for a month has increased to 6,000 Baht, at the time of writing this, that price converts to £109.50. On top of this you’ll need to pay utilities, how much utilities cost will depend on how much you use the air conditioner.

Personally I use it almost every night, my room is in Baan Thai B and faces towards the pool, beyond the pool is Baan Thai A and then the road, the noise isn’t too loud during the night, but I prefer to have the balcony doors closed, this greatly reduces air circulation, so to counter this I put on the AC, it keeps the room nice and cool of course, but it also creates a constant white noise that prevents me from ever hearing outside noises.

Our most recent month came to £168 in total for the room including utilities, this isn’t bad, but you could find a room for close to half this around Nimman, however it wouldn’t have a pool or the same friendly Baan Thai vibe. Baan Thai is full of foreigners, many are digital nomads, others are retirees. You’ll quickly recognise the other tenants around town at either a Gym, local co-working space, or at one of the many local bars/cafes.

Baan Thai B

Baan Thai B

Baan Thai is directly under the flight path, if I happen to be around, I’ll usually be in the pool, from the pool you can watch the planes fly overhead, not just commercial planes, but also the fighter jets from the Thai Air-force, floating in the pool watching them roar across the sky in groups of three, I consider to be part of my morning ritual.

Overall I consider Baan Thai to be relatively quiet, there isn’t any bars near by that are open beyond midnight, however, if you’re an early riser and light sleeper, you’ll probably want to turn on the AC and shut the doors.

For the 6,000 baht a month, we get our room cleaned weekly, we also pay separately for laundry to be collected when needed, the cost of laundry is 40 baht (£0.73) per kilogram. As a couple, our weekly laundry cost averages around £3.20, it’s collected at 15:30 each day and returned the same time the following day. If you wanted to keep your costs low you could do your laundry yourself at near by laundrettes for roughly half the price. For me though, never having to worry about cooking, cleaning or laundry is a great time saver which allows me to get on with other things in life.

Cake in Wanz Cafe

Cake in Wanz Cafe

The Nimman area has a ton of Cafes and Restaurants, our two favourites on our street are Zood Zood for a good selection of tasty meals as well as their Butterfly Pea Water, and Wanz Cafe for a mixture of Wifi usage and Ice Green Tea consumption, Wanz is also a bar at night and Motor cycle mechanic during the day, the cafe has a motor cycle theme, the coffee tables each have a motor cycle engine as part of their frame. I’ve not been to Wanz in the evening, so I can’t really comment on the bar or food, but the cakes in the day time Cafe are good enough for my palate.

Chiang Mai Noodles in Zood Zood

Chiang Mai Noodles in Zood Zood

Our other favourite local place to eat and relax with some music is D-fine, it is however two streets over from our street, so roughly a two minute walk.

As already mentioned this area has a lot of places, the three I’ve mentioned here I’m sure aren’t the best, they’re just places we’ve enjoyed and often frequent for some normality in life.

Another place I feel worth mentioning is Salad Concept, Salad is a great break from eating Thai every day and this place is clearly the best in the area.

So to get a bit back on topic, if you’re wanting to stay in Baan Thai, either you’ll need to have someone already there place a deposit for you, or you’ll need to book a cheap hotel for your first night and spend a day walking around Nimman, this is what we did, we walked into every serviced apartment place we could find, besides from the location, the swimming pool at Baan Thai is what won the place over for us, its huge and the perfect size for laps.

Who doesn’t like flowers?

Often I’ll read people on groups say “what is their number, if they don’t have a website I’ll ring them and book that way”, don’t waste your time, why would they take a booking from someone on the other side of the world when someone will simply walk in that day and pay a cash deposit?. Rooms aren’t vacant for more than a day in Baan Thai, but rooms become vacant frequently as people are always moving in and out. Minimum stay is one month.

My favourite street food vendors are just around the corner, out the front of either Tesco or 711, they are Mr Moustache and Pad Thai Maploy.

I hope this helps, best of luck.

Tales of UFOs from aboard the Trans-Siberian express

UFOs in Siberia

Recently in the USA, a bunch of fools witnessed what they called a “UFO”, flying up at high altitude, this UFO later became an IFO “Identified flying Object”. The UFO was in fact a US Navy ICBM, on first seeing the footage I said to my self “that is clearly a rocket” as it looked no different than any other night time rocket launch.

Many fools uploaded videos, in these videos I heard people say “OMG!!, do you know what that is?” with responses like “it has to be a UFO!”, certainly it was a UFO to the person holding the camera, they were unable to identify it, I’m quite sure however that the voices in the videos assume Alien spacecraft are called UFOs, which just isn’t true, Alien spacecraft are called Alien spacecraft, UFOs are anything flying that you can’t identify.

When I’m with someone and I see what is most likely either a plane or helicopter at great distance and I’m asked to identify it, if I’m unable to, I’ll simply say “It’s a UFO, perhaps it’s a plane or a helicopter, I’m not too sure, but for now it remains a UFO until I can identify it“. At no point will I have ever implied the UFO was an Alien Spacecraft…. reason being that it would be much more likely to be something man made that I simply can’t identify due to distance/light, than say an Alien spacecraft from several million light years away.

Anyway, this recent event got me remembering a conversation I had with a lovely old lady on the Trans-Siberian Express. Half way across Siberia, I mentioned how very remote Siberia is and she straight away brought up her UFO experience. The skeptic within me told me to sit up and get ready for a yarn, but being a skeptic, I knew I had to remain open minded, so with ears pricked I sat listening to my partner translate the story.

Many years ago I was camping out in the forest, I bent down to put some more wood on the camp fire, while bending down the smoke rose up into my eyes and I could hardly see, as I looked up I could see a light in the sky, however as I rubbed the smoke out of my eyes the UFO instantly disappeared.

Upon hearing this story, I didn’t know whether to probe (pun intended) deeper or to be a polite foreign guest, I chose the later.

The skeptic in me thinks that what she witnessed that night, was no other than a result of the camp fire smoke in her eyes, it just seems a bit more logical than intergalactic visitors, flashing their lights just at the wrong moment, then returning home across the universe.

I thought someone might like this story, it entertained me at the time.

Chiang Mai Thailand first month living expenses report

So, it’s been a while since my last expense report, I’ll do one today for last month and my most recent one I’ll do tomorrow.

This is for our first 30 days in Chiang Mai, it’s said your first month somewhere is always the most expensive, this has been true for us, as our second month is much lower, so be sure to check back tomorrow. If you’d like to see our previous expenses, the reports are linked in the list below.

Note: these prices are the total for 2 people, doing this trip solo would be half the prices, except for the accommodation.

Chiang Mai Living Expenses

Chiang Mai Living Expenses

Chiang Mai Trip Expenses

  • Accommodation + electricity £213.38
  • Food, entertainment, living etc £702.12

Total £915.50
Cost per person £457.75
Cost per day (per person) £15.25

This is for the first 30 days we spent in Chiang Mai, during this time we went to Cambodia for 5 days, I’ve excluded those days from the spreadsheet and only included the first 30 days spent in Chiang Mai. We had a more expensive month in Chiang Mai than we had in Hanoi due to several reasons, one is memberships, our membership column is for anything we’d pay for monthly, e.g. Wifi, mobile phone data plans, co-working space membership, gym memberships etc.

Butterfly Pea Water

Butterfly Pea Water

The initial few days were our most expensive due to socialising with friends/family who were visiting, this is really the only time I drink now.
As I get ready to return to Australia, I’m reducing my drinking to zero, in my last 18 months before leaving Australia in 2006 I never drank once, excluding farewell drinks the 2 weeks before departure. When the weather is hot and sunny I have zero desire to drink, I consider this a good thing.
In Vietnam I drank Bia Hoi beer almost nightly but at £0.15 a beer 2% alcohol and freezing cold it’s rather desirable.

Some new costs we now have are room cleaning, laundry and eating out every meal except for breakfast. If we’re home, it’s either for swimming, resting or sleeping, everything else is taken care of.

Hiking Chiang Mai

Hiking Chiang Mai

Two of the main advantages of Chiang Mai for foreigners is it’s low cost living and permanent sunny weather, for this reason there is a very large number of Digital Nomads living here and working on-line, either running their own businesses or working remotely for employers back home, they’re literally everywhere!, many work in co-working spaces, however, if you go into any of the hundreds of cafes and restaurants in the Nimman area of Chiang Mai, you’ll find yourself either sitting next to someone working away on a laptop, checking orders on their phone, emailing clients from their tablet or a bunch of people discussing tech, e-commerce, coding, digital life etc, this is the norm and not the exception.

If you ever find yourself in Nimman and see a bunch of people in a restaurant on their phones, don’t be like the idiot in the image below, as they’re simply checking which tropical island to live on next, or how much money they’ve made from Chiang Mai today, or perhaps chatting to friends and family back home, perhaps it’s just a tourist glad to have some internet access.

I was once in a restaurant in Amsterdam and some tool started criticising a girl he didn’t even know, simply for “looking at her phone in a restaurant”, these people I call “the bored, face palmers” they’re that bored with their own life, that they need to criticise others and whenever I hear them, I want to face palm my self. For some people, being in “a restaurant” is something they do every day and they aren’t going to miss too much of the amazing restaurant excitement going on around them simply by looking at their phone.

Pool Baan Thai Chiang mai

Our Pool

The foreigners living here, tend to live well away from the tourist areas, everyone in this area is very friendly be it locals or foreigners and all bars shut by midnight, so there isn’t drunken zombies staggering around, sex tourism or even a single annoying hawker of any kind.

The food here is amazingly cheap and superb, there is no excuse for not living a healthy life style or atleast finding something that suit’s your taste.

A lovely street meal will cost anywhere from £0.45 for the best omelette and rice I’ve had, all the way up to £0.95 for the best seafood Pad Thai I’ve had. A lovely spicy Papaya Salad will set you back around £0.55, street smoothies, Ice Tea and Ice Coffee set you back around £0.50, while an Iced Green Milk Tea in one of the many trendy Cafes will set you back around £1 to £1.30.

Green Tea Latte

Green Tea Latte

Restaurant meals will set you back anywhere from £1 to £3, but will average around £1.50, anything over £3 would be something foreign imported and not of very good quality.

The other day I bought an Ice Cream Sandwich off a guy in the street for £0.18, it was a proper Ice Cream Sandwich, ice cream between 2 slices of bread, rather than the fake imposter version of Ice Cream between 2 wafers.

Our first month in Chiang Mai was nice and relaxing, everyday is like a beautiful summers day.

I’ll post my most recent expense report tomorrow and include a little more on life in Chiang Mai.

Hanoi Vietnam one month expense report

So, last month we spent 28 days in Hanoi Vietnam, this was our cheapest month yet, here you’ll find our expense report, this is my 4th expense report so far, for my previous reports, see the following

Note: these prices are the total for 2 people, doing this trip solo would be half the prices, except for the accommodation.

Hanoi expense report

Hanoi expense report

Hanoi Trip Expenses

  • Visas £162
  • Bus (from Nanning China to Hanoi) £36
  • Accommodation + electricity £243.7
  • Food, drinks, taxi, bus, cinema £274.82

Total £716.52
Cost per person £358.26
Cost per day (per person) £12.79
Cost per day per person excluding the now non required Visa £9.90

This was insanely cheap, at no time did we feel we were on a budget, we had a brilliant apartment over looking the water, the list of costs above doesn’t explain too much, so I’ve included a screen shot of our excel spreadsheet, we update this daily, it greatly helps us plan for future days a head. The spreadsheet is excluding the accommodation cost, we keep this in a separate sheet.

Hanoi traffic

Hanoi traffic

The brilliant thing about only spending £716.52 for the month is that this is considerably less than our passive income, so in theory we could live in Hanoi forever, eat out every meal and never work a day again, I say “in theory” as we’d have trouble getting a permanent Visa.

After eating out every meal for a week, it becomes quite boring and you really crave a home cooked meal, and you actually crave simple things, this could be anything, a plain potato, a bowl of 2 minute noodles, a salad or a full on roast.

We started shopping roughly every second day, if you take a look at our spreadsheet you’ll see the days we shopped were our most expensive, followed by a much cheaper following day.

In Hanoi beers range anywhere from 7 for £1 to 1 for £1, if you drink and eat in a Bia Hoi you can manage 7 beers for £1 if you find a really cheap Bia hoi at 5,000 dong a beer, at the time the exchange rate hit £1 = 35,000 dong.

Hanoi West Lake

Hanoi West Lake

We’d go to a Bia Hoi almost every day, the beer is cold and low in alcohol, so it was very refreshing and the food is also very cheap and enjoyable. The service is brilliant, the staff watch your glass like a hawk, if it becomes empty there is already a new beer on your table.

Hanoi was always very hot and very humid, this was helped a little by having an apartment right on west lake, the wind off the lake provided a nice constant breeze. We also had the water park just a few hundred metres up the road.

I really enjoyed our time in Hanoi, the food was great, beers were cheap, fruit was plentiful and the Vietnamese great to drink with, we made friends with locals and expats, the area we lived had a lot of expats, on our final night our expat and Vietnamese friends all threw a party for us on our rooftop.

Hanoi rooftop party

Hanoi rooftop party

How to get from Nanning to Hanoi by bus and how much does the bus cost

Having recently completed this trip and having found conflicting info on-line, I thought I’d blog the correct information here on How to get from Nanning to Hanoi by bus and some tips etc.
Go by bus, you can go by train overnight, but expect to be woken at the border in the middle of the night.

The Chinese coach is nice, but without a toilet, the bus will stop twice for a toilet break and once for the border, one of the toilet breaks includes a 20 minute meal break, but just take snacks and wait till you get to Hanoi to eat.

The bus costs 168 Yuan and leaves at 8:30, 9:00, 9:30 and around 12:30.Nanning Bus Station Map

The bus leaves from the Langdong Bus Station Ticket Office on You’ai rd (or Lu as the roads seem to be called), all the street signs have the names in English so you can relax.

I recommend the 9:30 bus as I’m not a morning person, and the 12:30 will arrive late in the evening. The 9:30 bus will arrive around 7pm, the trip isn’t as long as it sounds, a good one to two hours is spent at the border.

You’ll have to arrive an hour early to buy your tickets. If you have time the day before, why not buy your tickets then?

Vietnam Border

Vietnam Border

Once you’ve crossed the border on foot (this is a requirement) and spent 10 minutes at Chinese customs, it’ll take you about 30 minutes to an hour to get through the slow Vietnam border control, then you’ll wait anywhere up to an hour for a bus.

The bus goes to 3 separate locations in Hanoi, you’ll most likely want to arrive near the old quarter, tell the bus driver at the Vietnam border “Hong Ha” or better still have it written on a piece of paper, Vietnamese uses a derivative of the Latin alphabet, he’ll understand the name.

The bus stop is a 2km walk or a taxi ride, you’ll most likely get ripped off a few $s, these taxi drivers are expecting new arrivals with no clue, if you’re travelling lite and on a budget or enjoy some exercise after sitting for so long, you can walk to the old quarter, but a taxi is easiest, depending on your negotiating skills it should be no more than 90,000 dong at the upper price range, however the taxi will try you for 200,000+ dong, by the meter it should be about 60,000.

The bus trip was great fun, we got to the bus station in Nanning to find that there was 10 other people from our hostel catching the same bus.

You’ll be given a small bottle of water and some sweet bread, but it’s a long day and Vietnam can be hot, so take plenty of snacks and water.

Enjoy Hanoi!

Relaxing in Hanoi

Relaxing in Hanoi

China trip expense report

Here is the cost of our recent trip from Ulan Bator Mongolia to Nanning southern China. This is my third expense report from this year’s big trip, it follows on from the Mongolian Trip Expense report which covered our costs of Trans-mongolian train into Mongolia from Irkutsk, plus Mongolian living expenses.

Xi'an Terracotta Matt

Xi’an Terracotta Matt

Note: these prices are the total for 2 people, doing this trip solo would be slightly cheaper.
The trains were Ulan Bator to Beijing, Beijing to Xi’an, Xi’an to Chongqing, Chongqing to Nanning.

China Trip Expenses

  • Visas £176
  • Trains £481
  • Accommodation £165
  • Tours £130 (Great wall and Terracotta warriors)
  • Food and other £105

Total £1057
Per person £528.5
Cost per day (per person) £44.04

As you can see the trains were our biggest expenses, we had a bullet train from Beijing to Xi’an and the rest were sleeper trains totalling 3 nights worth of accommodation.
We bought most of our train tickets online, which resulted in us paying agency fees of around $15 per ticket, it would have been cheaper to buy them at the station, however we’d have risked the trains being fully booked due to school holidays.

Fact: Almost all Chinese food we had was very hot/spicy, however all the food served on the two separate day tours was the same horrible oily sweet garbage you get from English Chinese takeaway.

Chongqing at night

Chongqing at night


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WATCH: Jenna Bush Skydives Live on ‘Today’ Show Paying Tribute to Grandfather George H.W. Bush

by Halle Ames

Watch Jenna Bush pay tribute to her grandfather George H.W. Bush by skydiving into the Today show live.

You know, some people write poems or speeches in tribute to their loved ones, but not the Bush’s. They go all out. Jenna Bush went as far as to jump out of a perfectly good airplane to honor her late grandfather and former President of the United States, George H.W. Bush.

On Thursday, the Today show co-host took to the sky to make her grand entrance into the show. She jumped from an airplane at 10,000 feet, plummeting toward the earth at speeds topping 120 mph.

Jenna Bush Goes to Extreme Heights to Honor Grandfather

Why, you ask, did she make this grand, live entrance? Well, on George H.W. Bush’s birthday, he would skydive. This year, Jenna Bush did the honors of continuing the tradition on behalf of her late grandfather.

In the summer of George H.W. Bush’s 90th birthday, he told Jenna, “Don’t forget to enjoy the game. Don’t be scared to be in the ring, and don’t forget to enjoy every moment — to live every moment.” And so she did just that.

Jenna Bush requested the help of the prestigious Golden Knights, the Army’s parachute team that George H.W. Bush had previously jumped with, to execute the dive. Bush was strapped to Sgt. 1st class Joseph Abe-Lynn for the moment.

Upon landing safely, Bush reported back to her co-anchors on the Today show. She explained the exciting experience to them.

“It feels like floating, but it’s one of the most exhilarating, terrifying moments of your life. I feel close to all the people I’ve been missing.” She added that “the view from up here is spectacular” and said she would “do it again a thousand times.”

The Today show captured the nerve-wracking and hilarious moment and posted the clip to their Twitter account. You must watch if you want a laugh.

Honoring George H.W. Bush

Throughout George H.W. Bush‘s life, the former vice president, president, United Nation Ambassador, and CIA Director completed a total of eight skydives. That is quite the resume.

According to Pop Culture, Bush’s first dive came when he was just 19 years old in September of 1944. He was serving as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Navy in World War II when his plane was shot down over the Pacific Ocean. Although George H.W. Bush was injured, he survived. Two of his crew members were not as lucky. Jenna Bush notes that “he jumps for them. He jumped because he lived.”

To honor those brave men, Bush jumped on his 75th, 80th, 85th, and even his 90th birthdays by skydiving with the help of the Golden Knights.

This year, Jenna jumped to honor him.

“Seven years after the last time he jumped. I jump for him. And I will jump because I’m in the game, enjoying every moment and feeling closer to him in the heavens.”

George H.W. Bush died on Nov. 30, 2018, at the age of 94. His passing came just a few months after his wife of 73 years, First Lady Barbara Bush’s death.

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Why Does Austin Music Video Fest Only Care About Directors and Bands?

by Nick Hanover

The first thing I noticed when the Austin Music Video Festival announced its nominations this year wasn’t the number of excellent videos by local creative teams but the categories and who was nominated within them. There were your usual festival standbys like Best Video and Best Director, with nominations credited to the video and its director. Nothing unusual there. But then as you got further down the list of categories, it became clear that those were in fact the only thing AMVF’s programmers cared about: director and video. So you end up with a category like Best Cinematography, with the nominations going to…the director. Or worse, thematic categories that also only nominate the director but miss the point of some of the nominated videos, glorifying aspects of a work that the creators intended to criticize.

It goes without saying that what Austin Music Video Festival is trying to do– celebrate the oft-maligned world of music videos– is notable and worthy. Austin in particular has been churning out a dizzying number of remarkable music videos over the past several years, so much so that we have an entire column dedicated to showcasing the most notable. But the issue is that in its current form, AMVF’s stands out as an especially disappointing manifestation of the limitations of auteur theory. As far as AMVF is concerned, the only people worth celebrating when it comes to the creation of music videos are the bands (who get absurdly prominent placement on the poster) and the directors, to the degree that even in categories where other creative talents are ostensibly meant to be celebrated, like Best Art Direction and Best Visual Effects, the names of these creatives are not mentioned at all.

Austin Music Video Festival 2017

AMVF’s approach to nominations is baffling and has no real parallel in either the festival or awards world. Imagine if the Academy Awards listed the director as the nominee in the Best Original Screenplay category, or if only the producer was nominated for the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance. At best it serves as a sign of the cluelessness of the programmers (something that is also supported by the fact that AMVF still doesn’t have the winners for 2016 or 2015 listed on their site and instead just have text saying “coming soon”) but at worst it indicates that AMVF’s programmers have no respect for the people who truly bring these music videos to life.

There is some support for that latter argument in the non-awards programming the festival does. This year, that programming included a Spike Jonze “mixtape” showing some of that well-established director’s most famous videos (he is notably the only non-musician listed as a “headliner” on the poster), and retrospectives for the artists Walker Lukens and Christeene as well as the local label Holodeck. It’s easy to see why Christeene and Holodeck were singled out, they have well-honed aesthetics that also stand out as a full fledged art pieces rather than “commercials” for their music, but Lukens’ inclusion was a little odd. It’s not that Lukens hasn’t been involved in some great looking videos, but by framing Lukens rather than, say, a collaborator like the choreography collective Woven Feet, who worked with Lukens on his “Kindle to Your Fire” video and have also brought their talent to a number of equally impressive local videos, it’s difficult not to question AMVF’s true motives. Why does a musician who doesn’t even direct all of his own videos deserve to be singled out for a retrospective but an established, veteran cinematographer, or a dance collective, or a special effects team doesn’t?

When I spoke with some of the behind the scenes talent at the AMVFs this year, this was a running complaint. So many of the best and brightest of Austin’s film community wanted to support the AMVF for what it tries to do but were concerned and disappointed by the festival’s lack of inclusion for behind the scenes personnel as well as its general disorganization. Some felt that the people involved in the festival only cared about building up AMVF’s brand and that that was why the marketing material for it emphasized bands over the creatives it was ostensibly celebrating.

AMVFest 2017

That concern for brand over work extends to some of the more thematic categories as well. The most obvious is the “Your Ad Here (Best Music-Driven Commercial),” a weird category to have in a festival trying to convince people music videos aren’t just commercials, but far more discouraging is the “Best Violent Vid” category. The naming of the category, whether the programmers intended it or not, seems to celebrate violence, which is all fine and good if you’re, say, Fangoria and you’re giving out your annual awards for best gore and best death scene. But it’s a little more questionable when one of the videos, Protextor’s John Valley-directed “Heatstroke,” is an explicit condemnation of police violence. Had the category been “Best Political Video,” the inclusion of “Heatstroke,” as well as co-winner Pussy Riot’s Jonas Akerlund-directed “Make America Great Again,” would have made obvious sense, but by centering violence as the reason the video is being nominated for an award indicates the programmers completely missed the point of the video. It’s like nominating Irreversible and its infamous rape scene for “Best Sex Scene.”

I want AMVFest to succeed, I really do. I genuinely believe music videos deserve to be recognized as worthwhile art and I think a festival highlighting them and curating incredible work by the creators of the videos should be supported. But right now, AMVFest is not that festival. Until AMVFest fully recognizes the contributions of everyone involved in the creation of music videos, and not just the bands and directors, and puts better care and sensitivity into their thematic categories, they are not doing justice to the work they claim to be supporting but working against it.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Ovrld as well as Loser City, where he mostly writes about comics. You can also flip through his archives at  Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with his friends and enemies on twitter: @Nick_Hanover


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Neetika Vishwanath

Ava DuVernay’s ‘When They See Us’ left me in tears both the times I watched it—the first time soon after its release in 2019 and more recently, for writing this paper. As a criminal justice lawyer in India for nearly a decade, being privy to many stories of deep injustices of persons on death row, the gut-wrenching impact this docu-drama miniseries had on me, not once but twice, took me by surprise. Perhaps, this speaks to the power of visual media and more so, this particular creation.  Though I suspect a significant part of it is also attributable to the potency of the innocence narrative that lies at the core of this series. In times when the public discourse is reasonably infused with the New Jim Crow perspective, there are few things that hit as hard as the wrongful incarceration of five black teenagers—Korey Wise, Anton McCray, Raymond Santana Jr., Yusef Salaam, and Kevin Richardson. However, the lawyer in me cannot help but be troubled by the ways in which, unintentionally, the series legitimizes harsh punitive responses for persons who are guilty of aggravated sexual offenses. And, in doing so, lends support to a broken criminal legal system. Nonetheless, the portrayal of police interrogations and the making of seemingly voluntary statements out of forced taped confessions holds transformative potential in challenging the common sense understanding of videos as objective truth.

This paper is divided into three parts. In the first part, I present the limitations of subsuming complex social problems like sexual violence against women into the dramatic linearity of the criminal legal system. I argue that, in its focus on the innocence of the teenagers, the series unintentionally bolsters retributive feelings towards guilty persons. And in doing so, legitimizes harsh punitive responses to sexual offenses. The second part focuses on the innocence narrative and argues that raising crucial criminal justice issues within the innocence narrative takes away from the seriousness of these issues in and of itself, independent of the fact of innocence. In this section, I discuss the show’s portrayal of the impact of sex offender registry system on Raymond Santana and Yusef Salaam. I also discuss actor Jharole Jerome’s portrayal of the solitary confinement and inmate violence inflicted on Korey Wise. The last part presents what I consider the most compelling way in which the series contributes to making the public discourse on the criminal legal system richer. I argue that the show’s portrayal of how the legal system transforms forced confessions into seemingly voluntary confessions does a terrific job of busting the myth associated with the objectivity of videos. Finally, I conclude reiterating the limitation of the innocence narrative in crime drama and argue that every filmmaker must be driven by an “ethic of responsibility” and consider the intended and unintended consequences of their project before venturing into it. A series like ‘When They See Us’ with its massive public outreach makes it even more incumbent upon the filmmaker to have considered all perspectives.

Ideal Victim and the Diabolical Rapist

Given the self-evident nature of the innocence of Korey Wise, Anton McCray, Raymond Santana Jr., Yusef Salaam, and Kevin Richardson, as a viewer, you are rooting for them from the very beginning of the show. The injustice inflicted on them is so blatant that it is easy to miss out on aspects of the show that, in its attempt to portray innocence, subconsciously legitimize feelings of vengeance towards ‘real’ sexual offenders. As a viewer, the anxiety of prosecutor Linda Fairstein to “release these animals” and “put them back on the street” seems unwarranted because we know that these are innocent black teenagers who have been framed by the system. In fact, the Central Park Joggers case is the perfect example of a sexual violence case in the public imagination where a perfect victim is brutally raped by strangers. As a result, it seems perfectly reasonable to refer to the case as one of the most horrific crimes the city has seen. However, contrary to popular understanding, stranger violent rapes form a very small part of sexual violence against women and children. Most perpetrators are not unknown ‘demons’ but persons well-known to the victims. Kristen Bumiller and Aya Gruber’s work demonstrates that historically in the United States infamous stranger rapes of White women have driven rape law reforms and justified movement towards a punitive criminal legal system.

Where’s the line for Patricia? Left for dead in the cold, in a pool of her own blood, running out of her body minute by minute in the fucking bushes. She feels herself draining away? Where’s the line?

Perhaps the reason the above-mentioned words from prosecutor Linda Fairstein feel unjustified at that moment in the show is that they come in response to Elizabeth Lederer questioning her for pursuing the case with no evidence against the teenagers. Nonetheless, these words in conjunction with the victim Patricia Meili’s presence in the courtroom in a subsequent episode, in a visibly painful and traumatic shape, and the display of her blood-soaked clothes evoke a strong sense of revulsion towards the crime and in doing so, feelings of hatred and vengeance towards the real perpetrator who has gone scot-free. It is not just the legal system’s acceptance of the innocence of the teenagers but also the accompanying confession of the crime by Matias Reyes that offers complete closure to us as the audience. We feel vindicated knowing that justice has, in some sense, been done by getting the innocent teenagers (now adults) out of the system and having the real offender finally pay for his crime.

The fact that the journey of a brutal rape ends with (as expected) a visibly cold-blooded criminal left me feeling deeply uncomfortable. Of course, those were probably the facts of the case but I did wonder if the dramatization of Reyes’ narration of the crime or his blank cold stares into the camera could have been avoided. By complying with our public imagination of an ideal rape victim and cold-blooded heartless rapist, the series is complicit in reinforcing some strongly held rape myths.

What does innocence obscure?

In the third episode, we are offered an insight into the lives of Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Anton McCray after their release. The dominant theme in this episode is the inhumane nature of the sex offender registry that continues to impact their lives even after they have served their sentences. In a conversation between Salaam and his hairstylist, both the viewers and Salaam are first confronted with the all-pervasive effect of the registry on the lives of formerly incarcerated sexual offenders. Salaam’s facial expressions as he realizes that he cannot be a teacher, followed by the hairstylist’s lines that “once you’ve been inside, man, they got you. And they keep you,” really pack a punch. Santana’s frustration of not finding a job is palpable and his decision to sell drugs till he can find a stable option seems justified. We get a glimpse of how people’s circumstances can force them into doing things they otherwise would not. Social stigmatization, loss of relationships, employment, and housing, and both verbal and physical assaults are common occurrences in the lives of people on the registry. However, in light of the overbearing nature of the innocence context, the viewer misses the opportunity to solely consider the cruel nature of the sex offender registration system. I could not help but think if a registry would seem as unjust to a lay audience if these boys were in fact guilty of rape. Given the abhorrence that sexual violence invokes, it is not hard to believe that the suffering of these young men appears cruel and unfair only because they are innocent.

Similarly, I was left unsure about the portrayal of solitary confinement and inmate violence inflicted on Wise within the domain of innocence. Jharrel Jerome as Korey Wise was the strongest performance in the show for me. The intensity of suffering in solitary confinement and the looming fear of being abused by inmates makes the third episode an extremely difficult watch. Despite having heard multiple similar accounts of death row prisoners in India, the visual portrayal of the experience shook me.  As a viewer, I felt that gush of air with actor Jharrel Jerome when the air conditioner was switched on. The banality of violence inflicted on him and the slow degradation of his mental health made me uneasy. Despite what I thought was a stunning portrayal of solitary confinement and prison inmate violence in a mainstream show, I could not help but think if a lay audience would be equally moved by these parts if the larger context of innocence was missing. Solitary confinement and inmate violence especially on sexual offenders is not a rare phenomenon. For a mainstream series to venture into these extremely unpopular issues especially the sex offender registry is brave but I believe these problems are better told without the context of innocence. They are problems in and of themselves and not because they are being inflicted on innocent people.

In addition to diluting the seriousness of criminal justice issues by presenting them as a part of the innocence narrative, a sole focus on innocence also conceals the complex social realities in which crimes occur.  Focus on questions of guilt and innocence obscure more than they reveal. They deflect attention away from structural factors that contribute to criminality. And, doing so also undercuts the concept of mitigation which forms the basis of the criminal sentencing process. Mitigating circumstances like poverty, age, socio-economic background have a bearing on a person’s decision-making abilities and consequently impacts their culpability for a crime, regardless of their guilt.

Crime dramas that exclusively focus on questions of guilt/innocence completely hide one of the most arbitrary aspects of the criminal legal system— sentencing. By getting the viewers so invested in the innocence of the accused, ‘When They See Us’ only postpones our retributive feelings towards the real perpetrator. It does little to make us question our role as a part of society in promoting attitudes that perpetuate and sustain sexual violence. Pooja Rangan and Brett Story claim that “documentary media, true crime, and criminal justice reform collaborate on what we call the innocence problem.” They argue that “the problem with innocence is the support it lends to a punitive carceral state, as categories of innocence, even relative innocence, reify guilt as justification for often severe punitive action.” This holds especially true for violent stranger rapes—crimes that are considered most heinous in the public imagination.

In his article titled ‘Law Frames’, Richard Sherwin’s claim about the “ambivalence” that legal stories create and thereby move away from complexity further substantiates my argument. He states: “What if the modernist penchant for dichotomies that produces starkly polar choices like guilt/innocence, frameup/frameup undone, injustice/injustice corrected— the very mindset that gives us such satisfaction in seeing justice’s scales finally balance—were part of the problem?” I agree with Sherwin’s suggestion that “the simplicity of these polarities, and the calm they induce, are at least partly responsible for making us leave out things.”

My purpose here is not to argue that a filmmaker necessarily needs to account for all the perspectives and actively disengage with innocence. In fact, I am not making any suggestions. I am simply adopting a cost/benefit distributional analysis of the innocence narrative rooted in critical theory. In a public discourse devoid of any real understanding of criminal justice issues, the striking nature of the innocence narrative may be a good starting point. But the question remains: does it undercut many more serious concerns in this process? Any filmmaker who wishes to make a crime drama inevitably has to confront these questions.

Video Confessions: Manufacturing Voluntariness

Despite my discomfort with an innocence-based crime drama like ‘When They See Us’, I found the show’s portrayal of the police interrogations very compelling and subversive. The pain, exhaustion, and desperation of teenagers after hours of interrogation that leads them to finally agree with the police because they can no longer bear to be in that situation and will do anything at that moment to escape it, is an extremely accurate representation of the routine nature of police interrogations that are followed by involuntary confessions. We see how the police intimidate suspects, ask leading questions and force words out of their mouths. However, the subversive aspect about this piece in this series is that, as viewers, we get to see not only the context in which these forced confessions are videotaped but also their edited, transformed, and seemingly voluntary versions that are presented as evidence in the courtroom. Our experience, as viewers, is in sharp contrast to Justice Antonin Scalia’s position in Scott v. Harris (2007) where he states that “we are happy to allow the videotape to speak for itself.” In this case, the Supreme Court decided against a trial to decide Victor Harris’ claim that the Georgia county police in high-speed car chasing had intentionally rammed into his car. The legal issue was whether the force used by the police was reasonable. Having seen videos from cameras mounted on the two police vehicles that chased Harris, the Court held that video speaks for itself and there was no need for a trial.

The Court’s approach in Scott v. Harris can be best described through Neal Feigenson’s “naive realism.” According to Feigenson, naive realism is “a common-sense attitude towards pictures [which] tends to make people overconfident in their interpretations of visual evidence and less receptive to alternative viewpoints, as well as to entrench the effects of other, first-order biases.” Despite a “relatively sophisticated visual culture,” Feigenson claims that “naive realism about pictures remains a common and psychologically powerful default.”

Considering that there was no evidence connecting the teenagers to the crime, the videotaped confessions played a pivotal role in the trial. In its detailed treatment of the circumstances that led to the confessions and their subsequent fabrication, ‘When They See Us’ challenges the dominant notion that a film is objective and unambiguous. The legal purpose of a videotaped confession is to protect the defendant’s constitutional rights against self-incrimination. Contrary to its objective, as shown in the series, rather than being a “defendant-friendly legal tool,” a filmed confession “forecloses the possibility of a not-guilty verdict.” As Sibley states: “the practice of filing interrogations and confessions does not help defendants (contrary to the stated policy intention), but sinks them.” In its disruption of our common sense understanding of videos as indisputable evidence of the objective truth, ‘When They See Us’ holds subversive potential.

There is nothing that hurts our most crudest intuitive sense of justice as much as the wrongful conviction of teenagers from a historically marginalized community. But it is precisely this logic that, for me, takes away from the merit of ‘When They See Us.’ Innocence-based crime dramas in their aim to present individual stories of injustice can undercut deeper criminal justice issues. Given the power of visual media in conveying ideas, it is very important that these ideas are carefully chosen. More so, when dealing with issues as complex as crime and punishment. A filmmaker must necessarily be guided by an ethic of responsibility in this decision-making process and account for unintended bad consequences. It is not sufficient to be guided by good intentions.

Do bipartisan reform efforts that hinge on innocent stories protect the innocent, or do they produce a class of innocent in whose name violence can be done? (Rangan and Story)

The author is with Project 39A, National Law University, Delhi, and is currently pursuing an LL.M. degree at Harvard Law School. This article was first written for a course titled ‘Seeing Criminal (In)Justice: Examining the Interplay of Visual Media, Storytelling and Criminal Law’ by Professor Rebecca Richman Cohen at Harvard Law School.


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An official website of the United States government

Office of Workers’ Compensation Program
February 2, 2019

Below, please find a list of some of the services we provide for the OWCP

  • Claims for non-receipt of compensation payments
  • Change of address for correspondence
  • Application for compensation/benefits due to recurrence
  • Request for medical evaluations and report
  • Request for authorization of medical supplies
  • Request for authorization for surgeries, physical therapies, and special exams
  • Completion of the annual questionnaire for claimants, widow(er) or dependent child(ren)
  • Request for reimbursement of transportation
  • Authorization to obtain medications prescribed by the attending physician

Direct Deposit (DD) for Compensation Payments

At this time, Banco General and Banistmo, in coordination with Bank of New York Mellon, are participating in the direct deposit program for beneficiaries of the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs.   To enroll, you should go to any branch of Banco General or Banistmo where you will be provided with the DD form.   There is a monthly fee of $6.00 plus applicable taxes.   Your DD should begin within 30 to 90 days after the form is received by the OWCP.

How to contact the Office of Workers’ Compensation Program

Telephone Number: (216) 902-5600

Website: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/owcp/owcpkeyp

Mailing address:
U.S. Department of Labor
DFEC Central Mailroom – District 9
PO Box 8300
London, KY 40742-8300


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lake food chain example

Food webs may be described in terms of both energy and nutrient (carbon, nitrogen or phosphorus) flows (Figure 15).Although the process typically begins with sunlight-driven photosynthesis by algae and plants, balanced nutrition is also required to sustain life. The lake includes a naturally formed marine ecosystem. FOUND IN WATER . Made of interconnected food chains, food webs help us understand how changes to ecosystems â say, removing a top predator or adding nutrients â affect many different species, both directly and indirectly. | Lake Advice. // zebra ---> lion. Pond and lake ecosystems are a prime example of lentic ecosystems. Carnivores (meat eaters) eat other animals and can be small (e.g., frog) or large (e.g., lake trout). How Can I Increase Fish Production? Small fish provide food for larger fish, and the more small fish are available, the larger the large fish will grow. Food chains intertwine locally into a food web because most organisms consume more than one type of animal or plant. Herbivores, such as ducks, small fish and many species of zooplankton (animal plankton) eat plants. Plants in or around a pond, like algae, get their energy from the sun. Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living parts of the food chain. How Can I Clear The Water In My Muddy Pond? One major factor that limits the length of food chains is energy. Pond and Lake Ecosystems A pond or lake ecosystem includes biotic (living) plants, animals and micro-organisms, as well as abiotic (nonliving) physical and chemical interactions. MS-LS2-4 Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy and Dynamics. In the life chain, that is, the lake and pond food chain, the beginning is phytoplankton. Food chain, in ecology, the sequence of transfers of matter and energy in the form of food from organism to organism. The increased concentration of pesticides in the tissues of organisms that are high on the food chain is an example of A. biodiversity. Lentic refers to stationary or relatively still water, from the Latin lentus, which means sluggish. Answer questions about how pollution affects food chains by applying scientific principles to design a monitoring plan for minimizing the human impact on the environment. Sparrowhawks, for example, can never be common than blue tits if they live in the same ecosystem. In a food chain, each species occupies a certain position in the chain. Each link in this chain is food for the next link. A food chain in a grassland ecosystem may consist of grasses and other plants, grasshoppers, frogs, snakes and hawks (Figure 8.3). Even so, there is an artificial lake that is usually called the term reservoir. It can seem deceptively simple, and at the same time, it is deceptively complicated, but for our purposes in lake management, there is a reasonably simple middle ground that ends in good pond and lake management, and good fishing. For example, owls eat mice, so if a food chain contains an owl and a mouse, the owls will be at a higher level. Answer questions about the interdependence of herbivores, carnivores and producers as members of a food chain. There are several elements in the food web for ponds and lakes, and they begin with a simple, single cell plant that exists just about everywhere. Describe the difference between herbivores, carnivores and producers. Humans are parts of food chains and food webs, too. //

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Kim Kardashian didn’t try to attend Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with Pete Davidson

Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson never attempted to keep up with the royal family, contrary to a report claiming the couple were denied tickets to the Platinum Jubilee.

A rep for Kardashian tells Page Six exclusively that the Skims founder “didn’t even ask to go” to Queen Elizabeth II’s historic event and actually returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday — the day before the festivities began — for a pre-planned cover shoot.

While we’re told the “Kardashians” star, 41, was in London to support a “secret project” that Davidson, 28, is working on, the nature of the “Saturday Night Live” alum’s job remains unclear.

A rep for Davidson also told Page Six there is “no truth” to the Platinum Jubilee report.

The duo’s brief trip to the UK was captured by photographers, who spotted them holding hands Monday as they made their way to dinner at The River Cafe. The couple rocked matching platinum blond hair as they made their way to the celeb hotspot.

The newly minted Skkn founder, who has been dating Davidson since October 2021, has been posting about her relationship with the “King of Staten Island” star on social media more frequently, including throwing her support behind him when he departed the NBC sketch comedy series last month.

trooping the colour balcony
The royal family kicked off the festivities Thursday with the Queen’s Trooping the Colour birthday parade.
Getty Images

Kardashian also has been posting cute photos of her and Davidson engaging in PDA, but maybe that’s because fans now know how great their sex life is thanks to her dishing on her family’s Hulu reality series.

“When I turned 40, everyone said it’s the best sex of your life,” she told her sisters Khloé Kardashian and Kourtney Kardashian. “And Grandma kept on telling me, ’40 is the best sex,’ and I was like ‘OK. I’m ready.’

kim kardashian and pete davidson in london
We’re told Kardashian was in London to support Davidson.

“And so far …,” Kim said, winking and laughing to her sisters’ delight.

The former E! personality was previously married to Kanye West, with whom she shares four children: North, 8, Saint, 6, Chicago, 4, and Psalm, 3.

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White Whole Wheat Olive Oil Bread (and Smashed Berries)

For some reason, I spent the better part of last week daydreaming about a PB&J on homemade wheat bread. There were only two problems:

1. I had no homemade wheat bread.

2. I had no jelly.

Problem #1 was easy enough to remedy. I googled millions of recipes and narrowed it down to six. Sometimes when I bake I like to set out with a million options and pretend like when the time comes to measure out ingredients, I’ll impulsively someknow know which one will be the best and decisively make a decision.

Yeah. So I had a delicious-looking option, a puffy-looking, perfect-results-promised video option, a King Arthur option, an “easy” option, and an award-winning option. There was pretty much no way I could go wrong with any of them.

And at the last second I impulsively chose…

I just couldn’t shake my vision of a fluffy but tight-crumbed slice of bread fragrant and warm from the oven. This loaf was a safe bet for the tight-crumbedness.

As for the jelly, I thought I would be so smart and original and smash up leftover blackberries in place of jam on my sandwich only to find…that of course blackberry smashes are like, all the rage.

You, too, can achieve results like the mangled bread slice above by not using a bread knife. I promise that nothing was dysfunctional about the bread itself, only the knife.

Olive Oil Bread

Tweaked from Post Punk Kitchen (LOVE this blog!!) only in that I used all white whole wheat flour and made one loaf instead of two baguettes. Also I used the Perfect Rise yeast because the memory of the failed hamburger-buns-turned-hockey-pucks still haunts me and Perfect Rise guarantees…perfect results 🙂

3/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons )
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (plus extra for the bowl and drizzling)
2 1/4 to 2 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt

Find the rest of the directions here.

2 responses to “White Whole Wheat Olive Oil Bread (and Smashed Berries)

  1. Pingback: Pancake Friday: Cornbread Pancakes | The Pancake Princess and the Protein Prince·

  2. Pingback: Easy Wheat Challah | The Pancake Princess and the Protein Prince·

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Baseball Printable Birthday Party

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Baseball Printable Birthday Party

Hey batter batter hey! Hit a HOME RUN with these vintage baseball birthday party decorations. From invitations to pennant flags we’ve got the bases covered!

Download this complete PDF party kit to personalize ✏ and print at home.

  • Invitation (fits A7 envelope) ✏
  • Cupcake Pics ✏
  • Mini Pennant Flags ✏
  • Cupcake Wrapper ✏
  • Party Favor bag Toppers ✏
  • Water Bottle Wraps
  • Gift Log
  • Thank You notes (fits 4bar envelope)
  • Party Food Labels ✏
  • Jar Labels ✏
  • Straw / Cake pop Flags
  • Popcorn Box ✏
  • Lunch Tray
  • Pennant Flags ✏
  • Pennant Banner ✏
  • Full Patterned Pages
  • How to: Desserts-on-a-stick Stand

Ready to create your Printable Party? Check out our tutorial!

See more photos of this party set HERE

  • Please note: The “sponsor banner” backdrop banner is NOT included in this listing.
  • Collection colors will vary slightly with monitors, printers and paper.
  • You can personalize the items listed with a ✏ , including changing the font size, style and color.
  • You will need a computer to work on the file, phones and tablets are not compatible.
  • Once your payment is processed, you will be emailed your link to download. Missing your link? Check your spam folder.
  • No items will be shipped. This is a digital PDF file to download, print and cut yourself.

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The Dynamics of Sub-National Authoritarianism: Russia in Comparative Perspective

15 Pages Posted: 13 Aug 2009 Last revised: 24 Aug 2009

See all articles by Vladimir Gel'man

Vladimir Gel'man

European University at St.Petersburg

Date Written: 2009 8, 23

In the 1990s, sub-national authoritarian regimes – local-based monopolies of ruling elites – emerged in many of Russia’s regions and cities against the background of spontaneous decentralization of government and competitive electoral politics. In the 2000s, the decline of political competition and recentralization of the Russian state led to incorporation of sub-national authoritarian regimes under federal control and cooptation of local-based actors into the dominant party, United Russia. This paper is devoted to a comparative analysis of sub-national authoritarianism in Russia in light of the experience of local political machines in other countries, ranging from US cities from the 1870s-1930s to Southern Italy from the 1950s-1980s. Unlike the American political machines, which were demolished from below as a by-product of modernization processes, Russia’s sub-national authoritarian regimes were integrated from above into the nation-wide authoritarianism. One might expect further stagnation of sub-national authoritarian regimes in Russia until major regime changes will occur on the national level.

Keywords: authoritarianism, sub-national politics, decentralization, Russia

Suggested Citation

Gel'man, Vladimir, The Dynamics of Sub-National Authoritarianism: Russia in Comparative Perspective (2009 8, 23). APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN:

Vladimir Gel'man (Contact Author)

European University at St.Petersburg ( email )

3 Gagarinskaia ul.
St. Petersburg, 191187

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Our Values

Pennsylvania Politics was born out of a need to better organize the Republican Conservative Movement in the Keystone State. After a stunning defeat in the Gubernatorial Election 2018, the Conservative Movement was left in the ashes of failure.

  • Pennsylvania Conservatism can lead the National Conservative Movement in a post pandemic era.
  • Pennsylvania’s unique municipal challenges related to budget mismanagement, municipal duplication, and the State’s mishandling of Public Pensions offer a clear Conservative advantage for several decades to come.
  • As the National Conservative movement reevaluates its Platform over the next few years, Pennsylvanian ethics and legacy, as Thaddeus Stevens’ Republicans, will be a strong and key voice for change.

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My Paradox "Johanna"

Building a Matt Layden
13'10" Microcruiser

Building Blog

Building a Matt Layden Design "Paradox" Microcruiser

view:  full / summary

Sailing Blog

Posted by paradoxbuild on July 25, 2011 at 3:06 PM Comments comments (7)

So as not to clutter up this building resource, I wil be documenting  Johanna's sailing adventures at Paradoxically Speaking.

See you over there!

Launch Day Photos

Posted by paradoxbuild on June 23, 2011 at 5:28 AM Comments comments (1)

All photos courtesy of Adrian Gingell and Alistair Law. Many thanks guys.

Read Full Post »

Johanna Launched!

Posted by paradoxbuild on June 13, 2011 at 4:25 PM Comments comments (4)

Johanna hit the water on the evening of June 11th. She slipped gracefully off her trailer and at once became alive in the water.

She sat beautifully on her  lines and looked a real picture. After a quick scramble below to check she was dry, I shipped the yuloh and proceeded to take her out to the faint wind...

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Odyssey launched.

Posted by paradoxbuild on May 29, 2011 at 6:41 PM Comments comments (41)

Here's one that seems to have slipped in under the radar!

Aleksander is currently undergoing sea trials aboard his new paradox, "Odyssey" after launching his boat last week. He is exploring New York Long Island coast right now after sailing the boat from Barnegat Bay, NJ.

She looks great and those teak decks are a work of art!

Congratulations Aleksander.

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Almost there!

Posted by paradoxbuild on May 29, 2011 at 5:48 PM Comments comments (0)

Well the to-do list is all but empty and next time I post, I hope it will be from on the water.

I've had some busy days finishing things off and dealing with some snagging. The rigging went without too much of a hitch; I need to trim the mast foot a little as it's too tight in the mast step.

The tack strop worked well and seems pretty strong.

The sail seems to set nicely and furls well on t...

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Where have 4 (yes that's four) years gone?

Posted by paradoxbuild on May 1, 2011 at 3:56 PM Comments comments (0)

Looking back at my blog, I see that my entry for 1st May 2007 was Real Sawdust!

Where the time has gone I don't really know. That was the start of the build and what seemed like a pretty quick project to complete has turned out to be anything but! OK, so I shut up shop all winter, so my build window has really been April - October, so we're  only looking at 2 years work :)

Yes ...

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Is that water on the horizon?

Posted by paradoxbuild on April 16, 2011 at 5:36 PM Comments comments (0)

A useful spell of dry, warm weather has lead to a mad sprint to get as much work done on the boat as free time allows. I've been painting (again :o) but I'm hoping that the end is sight.

The spars are now all varnished, just a little lick of white paint required to finish.

I have the vent trunk to paint and seal up, the tiller to mount, deck hardware to mount, Hatch and runners to fit and sail and rigging to complete. All these are waiting in the wings ready to go.

Most imp...

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Is it nearly Spring yet?

Posted by paradoxbuild on February 24, 2011 at 12:27 PM Comments comments (1)

Well I've every intention of getting this boat in the water before the summer arrives, so every bit of nice weather is going to help me make that target. Today was fine and mild, I didn't do much on the boat, but every little bit helps. The to-do list is actually quite short now and I'm hoping to tick quite a few of the items off fairly quickly.

Today I cut my lead pigs in half, as , at almost 40kgs each, they were just too  heavy to safely manhandle. They're now a more manageable ...

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Shore Leave Launched

Posted by paradoxbuild on February 21, 2011 at 12:42 PM Comments comments (0)

Congratulations to Terry in Florida, who launched his Enigma  clone "Shore Leave" on Saturday.

Enigma is of course Paradox's little sister, and Terry's version is 12' 3" long with a 43" beam.

A fantastic piece of work accomplished in a very short time (wish I could work so quickly).

See more of his  build at his website

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Cachivache Launched Today

Posted by paradoxbuild on January 23, 2011 at 12:41 PM Comments comments (0)

Congratulations to Alberto who launched his boat "Cachivache" today on the river Chubut in  Rawson, Argentina.

More details of Alberto's build can be found at his website.

Well Done.