heard of that before.

Well, I'm the latecomer to this.

I got started, and this is one of the problems that we have within classical singing, operatic singing today, especially within this country, is that it's very hard for people that really haven't been in the business and don't know what the sound is to recognize the proper sounds.

And people thought I was a baritone.

And I want you to understand, yes, I have sung.

My debut was Escamillo, opposite of Thomas Booth, who's a great friend and, you know, great tenor.

And he would always look at me like kind of weird, too, sometimes.

Yeah, so let's do that.

Isn't that what every data center is, a gift package waiting to be opened?

Absolutely.

And on top of that, the majority of jobs being created are even higher paying jobs than would have been the case in your hometown back in the day for GM.

And again, it's not very much geography dependent.

The ability to host data centers is pretty much ubiquitous throughout the country.

So really, unless your state politicians or your local politicians are actively and affirmatively getting in the way, then your state and your community has the opportunity and your household has the opportunity for these tremendous benefits.

And there are really little, if any, legitimate objections that stand up to scrutiny.

What's the Heartland Institute doing to get the message out?

doesn't have any black people and so to people who are supposed to enforce civil rights group someone sent me a picture earlier after you said that there was a picture of the group of interns for this summer and then maybe about 50 60 of the interns none of them look like us either these odds were up against dr taylor

right and they're recruiting these young people for the next 40 years that's what they're doing and and we may not remember this real quickly but even the coke brothers About 10 years ago, gave $25 million to the United Negro College Fund to try to influence the HBCUs by producing a class of black conservative or a cadre of black conservative leaders and thinkers.

And we're beginning to see them pop up.

Here and there, every time, you know, every other week there's a new black face saying man, white dog, you know, black politics.

So that we all look at the person like they're insane, like this cop that people, you know, that's involved himself and gotten a good agent.

And TPUSA is now promoting him a black person.

You know, cop, ex-cop with a loud mouth.

Yeah, and I don't know if

You have less drops, less unit strength." But you gave it a go, and you started off with Travis Timm.

Yes.

And that was tough.

Uh, his first move set his troops up in such a way that I could not respond.

I got baited into a charge on something, went to go follow up with the rest of my charges, and realized I had none.

And then I had to stop, recover, and adjust to that.

I think I did well.

Um, and you, you played it really well.

When you transition from active duty to the reserves, what rank or rate are you at that time?

Well, for me, I was very fortunate.

In 12 years, I had moved up and had been selected for E-8, which is a senior chief in the Navy.

And I was able to keep that rank active.

in the reserves, many times in the reserves, they'll knock you down a rank or whatever, but I actually, they allowed me to keep senior chief.

And then as a senior chief, I was in a lot of different places over those years, besides going back to school and a lot of that sort of thing.

I went to Mayport where I was on a, on a, on a sub tender.

But he's always

So what, uh, what originally drew you to this idea that, like, you could, uh, could analyze decisions systematically and they should become a asset of the organization?

So it was about, I don't know, uh, something like 25, 20, maybe 30 years ago, 'cause I'm old.

Um, and, uh, I was working in financial services, looking at financial services applications.

And I was struck by the fact that we had a whole set of different applications that all used the same technology stack.

So you had origination systems, and they used the technology stack.

You had fraud detection systems, and they used the technology stack.

And you had, you know, um, you know, collection systems and, and, you know, account management systems, and they all used the same technology stack, and they all worked the same way.

... or am I overthinking it?

Black joy matters.

Because, you know, It emanates from a number of things, both historically and contemporarily.

Historically, what a lot of black people don't appreciate about their own history is documented in the work Slate of Culture by Sterling Stuckey.

Sterling Stuckey was one of the great black historians of along with William Julius Wilson, who died recently, but they were rivals intellectually.

They disagreed with each other on principle about Black culture and its importance.

But Black joy was rooted in something called the ring shout.

R-I-N-G, ring, shout, S-H-O-U-T.

Yeah, they can't do it through

Can you start by introducing yourself, please?

My name's James Taylor.

I'm the founder and CEO of Particular Audience.

Feels to me like AI has gone from being a hypothetical to legitimate applications and results and, and usage, and I don't know if this is a lesson so much as an observation, but retail media is very much present at Cannes this year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What were the common insights across

the groups? Say customers not really shopping completely on AI at this stage.

So just discovery.

Great for comparison.

Great for discovery.

Question was, you know, when you get three items returned by an AI to consider, is it really considering everything? Yep.

And does that matter? And I think actually it does matter.

Hey, UCP.

It's exhausting, isn't it?

Right, and regarding the study, that's just confirmation of what we've known for quite some time, and that is that the warming that is occurring, which has been occurring for quite some time, since long before coal-fired power plants and SUVs, that it's occurring primarily at night in winter and closer to the poles.

That's exactly how you make Earth a more livable planet for humans and for most species.

Regarding the lawsuit, basically you have, currently you have Boulder City and County in Colorado that's attempting to force policy change at the national level by virtue of a civil lawsuit.

They're saying we can sue the energy companies for what we say are all these harms of global warming, even though there are no harms, very little, and much more benefits.

but this is something that has already been and is in the domain of congress so the department of justice is is here in this suit but rather than saying this is the domain of congress so you don't have a right to sue and recover damages they're saying this is the domain of epa and that's a big problem because the most important thing that the trump administration is doing and has done is regarding environmental issues and really almost regarding any issue is that they have repealed the endangerment finding, which was a finding by the Obama EPA that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare and therefore must be regulated and restricted by EPA.

By arguing in the Supreme Court that EPA has primary authority to regulate and restrict carbon dioxide emissions, The Department of Justice is undermining the EPA's very argument, which is a solid argument, as for why EPA cannot, should not, and will not be reducing and restricting carbon dioxide emissions.

And to refer to CO2 as a pollutant is scientifically dishonest, isn't it?

Were there any, like, big things you felt like you got wrong early on, and then you're like, "Phew, that was a near miss just because I was new to this" [laughs]?

Yeah.

I think, um, our biggest, like, uh, near-death experience, I suppose, was, uh, when we started to scale our channel and, and scale our sales team.

And so we had, um, everyone wants to go fast.

We wanna go fast.

Investors wanna go fast.

So then you hire your professional to come and lead the sales team and, and take things over, and we had sold, you know, a fair number of systems by then.

Okay.

a bit confused.

But anyway, we did that for 10 or 11 years, us boys, and it was great.

We did some unreal projects.

Yeah, we fought every day and all that, but we were pretty good.

So that was one of my first low points.

My other one was the back of COVID, and I'm sure every other builder here can relate to that.

the the last half of covert um where we were involved with some fixed price contracting same old story all the prices went up we lost a bunch of money doing it right on our knees basically um banks that kept saying yes to everyone said no to us which was really annoying um i was at a real low point i was ready to chuck the whole thing into clear bankruptcy had enough basically had enough everything um and then yeah i just thought no hang on i've got to change this somehow i've got to turn this around and i was flicking on facebook or one of these stupid things and um tpb came up and i was marty he was talking about it and i thought Yeah, I do need some – something's got to change.

so walk me through so a heck of a journey tell me a little bit more about where you want to take the business you know i blew you know clear skies smooth seas like where would you like to see the business over the next couple of years like what role would you like to be playing uh who do you think you would add to the team next or elevate up um you know position wise and what kind of projects you want to do more of less of that sort of stuff

In the past four years, kind of like post real COVID shutdown stuff, what is the biggest good change to venues and the industry in general and the biggest bad change to venues in the industry in general?

Well, I mean, I think thanks to Dana Frank and the work of NIVA, um, people are paying attention to local independent music venues more than, you know, your big box, uh, live concert promoters.

And I think that Minneapolis just being on the map of the live music ecosystem, like, I love when I see an artist is playing, you know, seven shows and they're playing New York, Chicago, Seattle, LA, Austin, and Minneapolis.

Like, it's important that Minneapolis is one of the meccas of live music.

You know, James, you've gone from a for-profit venue to now a nonprofit venue, and as everyone is feeling this, you know, constricting economic reality, do you think that that's going to be a conversation that more venues might consider, like a nonprofit model?

I can't speak to what other venues might do, but I know that for me it's exciting to be at The Cedar and be able to present international artists or, you know, drone experimental ambient artists, or artists who there's a bit more discovery involved, and I can take bigger chances because I have grant money and donor money that helps offset some of my costs, and we're volunteer-run, and I'm not as reliant on alcohol sales and some of the other struggles that other independent venues, uh, deal with.

Wow.

And so Dr. Jones's life is, is, is all over Black life from the bus boycott to, you know, modern-day problems of, you know, patriarchy and, and, and, and, and sex, um, uh, you know, uh, uh, behavior that, that's brought attention to Russell, um, Simmons, which is why he's out of the country.

But to come back to Dr. Jones, 'cause I know he wouldn't want that to be the focus of this, this discussion, but I wanted to get that out there because it's like Russell's getting away with it, [chuckles] and nobody knows, and Dr. Jones's daughter was one of his victims.

Look it up.

Ask a researcher to look it up.

I, I wouldn't say that on your show unless I could prove it, because it would be irresponsible of me to do that.

Um, but Dr. Jones and Fred Gray, these are what we would call the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement.

Uh, do you think what happened in, in New York City is gonna be play out tomorrow in, in LA?

Oh, you have.

You could put that in there too, DeSmog.

Um, but anyway, no, um, I, I'll, I'll give you, uh, an overview.

I was in Europe for a week and a half, uh, just recently, and it's absolutely amazing to see how truth spreads, um, how as long as people have access to information, I, uh...

Humans are intelligent.

Humans are discerning.

And even when you get, when someone tries to pull the wool over your eyes over and over again, eventually the truth will come out if people have access to the truth.

Well, James, I imagine that, you know, it's, it's been a little bit of an uphill battle to, you know, get this movement going in the first place because Europe, even if they say that they have free speech in their countries, they don't have free speech the way we understand it.

Yeah

... that you lapped at Anglesey last year, and then the previous older.1 GT3.

So this is their new kit for the, the current regular GT3, and it's, it's pretty incredible.

It's, um...

Like other Manthey kits, they don't touch the powertrain, so no changes to the engine or the, the gearbox.

It's all about the suspension and the aero.

And this one also had a few extra bits as well, 'cause it was a kind of rolling catalog of parts.

Yeah.

I began our conversation by asking James what he could actually remember of that day in Cambridge.

Oh, do you know what? I think it might have been the second morning of the game.

I think, I think it was the 6th of April, twenty sixteen, uh, twenty sixteen, um, ish.

I mean, I should really know that given my life changed forever on that day.

[chuckles] Um, but yeah, it was, it was crazy.

I-- I'll keep this story very brief 'cause it's a long, um, winding story.

But, um, yeah, that first morning, it was the second morning of the game against a student, um, against Cambridge University, where I'm thinking I'm gonna fill my boots 'cause I've just come back from an international tour.

Yeah.