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JD Vance’s journey through Silicon Valley led to him becoming Trump’s vice presidential running mate

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circleJD Vance was a student at Yale Law School in 2011 when he attended a talk by conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Vance didn’t know Thiel at the time, but over the next decade he became Thiel’s employee, friend, and recipient of his generosity. Thiel’s millions of dollars paved the way for Vance to become a senator.

Vance wrote that Thiel’s speech “was the defining moment of my time at Yale Law School.” Essays for 2020 Vance said Thiel’s talk about the failure of elite institutions and his Christian faith made him rethink his own faith and quickly planned a career outside of law, perhaps tinkering with technology and venture capital before entering politics.

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Vance is best known for the hardscrabble upbringing he described in his autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” but in the years after graduating from Yale he developed extensive ties to Silicon Valley investors and elites. His experience as a venture capitalist combined with his status as a rags-to-riches media fixture forged the core connections that powered his political climb and helped him assemble an influential following that pushed him to become Trump’s running mate.

After graduating from Yale and briefly working in corporate law, Vance moved to San Francisco and joined Thiel’s venture firm, Mithril Capital, in 2015. After his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” gained him national fame in 2016, he joined Revolution, a venture capital firm founded by former AOL CEO Steve Case.

Vance returned to Ohio and stayed in the tech venture capital world. Leaving the Revolution Vance received funding from Thiel in early 2020 to co-found a venture firm, Naria Capital, which, like Thiel’s, was named after the elven ring of power in “The Lord of the Rings.” Naria’s other notable investors include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist who endorsed Trump last week. The avowed goal of Vance’s firm was to invest in early-stage startups in cities that Silicon Valley often overlooks.


In 2021, Naria Capital led a group of conservative investors, including Thiel, to invest in Rumble, a video streaming platform positioning itself as a less moderated, right-leaning version of YouTube. Naria co-founder Colin Greenspon touted the investment as a challenge to Big Tech companies’ control over online services, a topic conservatives have frequently discussed amid the backlash against content moderation surrounding the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. It was also around this time that Thiel, a major financial backer of Trump during the 2016 campaign, invited Vance to meet with Trump for the first time, in a secret meeting at Mar-a-Lago in February 2021. According to the New York Times:.

Vance and Thiel’s longtime relationship also paid dividends in the 2022 Senate race, with Thiel pouring a massive $15 million into Vance’s campaign. According to the Washington Posthelped garner support for President Trump and led Vance to win the fiercely contested Republican primary and Senate elections.

While Thiel has vowed in recent years to stay away from donating to the 2024 election, Vance has since tried to ingratiate himself with Trump through other Silicon Valley connections. The Ohio senator introduced prominent venture capitalist David Sachs to Donald Trump Jr. in March. The New York Times reported.Vance attended a pro-Trump fundraiser for Sachs in June, which he co-hosted with Chamath Palihapitiya, Sachs’ co-host on the popular podcast “All In.” The event, which cost $300,000 to attend, was held at Sachs’ San Francisco mansion, where investors thanked Vance for helping make the fundraiser happen. During an informal conversation at the dinner, Sachs and Palihapitiya said Trump said: Vance as his running mate.

Sachs spoke at the Republican National Convention on Monday, days after calling Trump to endorse Vance as his running mate, along with Elon Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. According to AxiosThiel also voiced his support for Vance during a private phone call with Trump, according to The New York Times. After Trump confirmed Vance would be his running mate, Sachs and Musk tweeted their congratulations, with Musk saying the victory was “ringing off.”

Many of Vance’s wealthy tech elite and venture capitalist backers now appear ready to offer even more concrete support. Investors including Musk, Andreessen, and Thiel’s Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale have Reportedly Planning a donation Huge sums of money supporting the Trump and Vance campaigns.

Source: www.theguardian.com

The bird invites its mate into the nest with a gracious gesture

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Female titmouse flapping its wings

Toshitaka Suzuki

Great tits appear to flap their wings to signal their mates to enter the nest, suggesting that birds may use a variety of gestures to communicate.

Signals such as hand waving are common aspects of communication between humans and other great apes. To learn more about such behavior of birds, Toshitaka Suzuki Professors at the University of Tokyo installed hundreds of nest boxes in forests where great tits live (minor pulse) For the past few years, near the town of Karuizawa.

To mimic the tree cavities that great tits normally inhabit, each box had a 7.5-centimeter-wide hole, just large enough to fit one bird at a time.

During the breeding season, the researchers observed 321 nest visits by eight pairs, with great tits often carrying food to feed the hatchlings.

When the couple arrives at the nest together, each tit perches on a nearby branch before entering the nest. About 40 percent of the time, the female turned her chest toward the male and flap her wings for a few seconds. Immediately the male entered the nest first, followed by the female.

However, when neither bird was flapping, which accounted for 44 percent of nest visits, the female usually entered the nest first. Only one male was observed flapping its wings repeatedly, and then the female moved in first. No flapping of wings was observed when each bird arrived separately.

“We can conclude that this wing flapping conveys ‘after you’ and encourages the male to enter the nest first,” Suzuki says. “This study is the first to demonstrate that birds can use wing movements to convey specific meanings.”

The findings suggest that great tits, and perhaps other bird species, communicate in a much more complex way than previously thought.

“There is a hypothesis that language evolved from communication through gestures,” Suzuki says. “Thus, these studies help us understand the evolution of complex communication, including our language.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com