There was a version of the ultra-wealthy that at least felt some obligation — real or performative — to the world that made them rich. That version is being quietly escorted out. What’s replacing it is a cohort of ideological mercenaries who’ve convinced themselves that hoarding capital and influencing elections is philanthropy, and that Warren Buffett passing around a philanthropy pledge card was somehow the real corruption. What happens when “giving back “is no longer fashionable? I’m guessing “not good things” , and we will all soon find out.

Article Excerpt:

Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire and a frequent Gates critic, said in an interview that he had privately encouraged around a dozen Giving Pledge signers to undo it. ‘Most of the ones I’ve talked to have at least expressed regret about signing it,’ he said.

Article Summary:

In 2010, Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates launched the Giving Pledge — a moral commitment for billionaires to donate more than half their wealth to charity. It was, briefly, the fashionable thing to do. Oval Office visits happened. Fortune covers happened. Over 250 families signed on, including MacKenzie Scott, Mike Bloomberg, and Sam Altman.

The vibe was: big capitalism and big philanthropy can coexist, and being seen as a ‘good billionaire’ actually mattered. Fast forward to now, and the whole thing is being treated like an embarrassing yearbook photo.

Signups have cratered — 113 in the first five years, down to just 4 in 2024. The Trump administration views the Pledge as roughly a punchline. Peter Thiel has been actively lobbying signers to bail, calling it an ‘Epstein-adjacent, fake Boomer club’ (again — the man has his own Epstein ties, so that’s a bold rhetorical swing).

One signer actually unsigned it, which the article notes is ‘without precedent,’ which tells you something about the current climate. The new dominant ideology among ascendant tech billionaires holds that philanthropy is basically a PR scam, and that the real gift to humanity is just making more money and letting it trickle somewhere.

Elon Musk has said his “businesses are philanthropy.” That sentence exists. Meanwhile, the Gates Foundation’s causes — global health, gender equality — are being actively dismantled by the administration that many of these same billionaires helped elect. Also worth noting: the Pledge has no enforcement mechanism whatsoever. It’s a moral commitment.

Which, given the moral inventory of some of its critics, may be precisely the problem.

Read the Full Article

The post Fuck Philanthropy. Our Billionaires Want More Toys! first appeared on Sevenelles.

Somewhere between your first crush and your first real heartbreak, you probably experienced something that felt like love but operated more like a software bug. You couldn’t stop thinking about this person. Their lukewarm reciprocation would launch you into euphoria. Their silence would flatten you for days. You were convinced it was the most profound emotional experience of your life.

Congratulations. You may have had “limerence.” And if the psychology establishment wants to make that sound like a diagnosis, I’m here to push back a little.

The Word You Didn’t Know You Needed

Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, after interviewing hundreds of people about romantic obsession. She needed a new word because the old ones — infatuation, crush, being in love — didn’t quite capture the particular flavor of madness she was documenting. Limerence, she argued, is involuntary, intrusive, and organized entirely around one terrifying question: does this person feel the same way about me?

The hallmarks are pretty recognizable: the obsessive thinking, the mood swings tied completely to the other person’s behavior, the magical thinking, the replaying of every interaction like game film. Tennov was clear that this isn’t a choice. It happens to you. You don’t decide to be limerent any more than you decide to be constipated.

Modern psychology has more or less kept the word around, and the internet has recently rediscovered it with the enthusiasm of someone who just learned that their chronic condition has a name. There are Reddit communities, self-help frameworks, and no shortage of articles suggesting that limerence is something you should identify, manage, and ideally cure yourself of.

Puh-leaze. That’s where I get off the bus.

Pathologizing Puppy Love

Here’s my actual take: limerence, at least in its garden-variety form, is just what falling hard for someone feels like when you’re young and unjaded. It’s not a disorder. It’s not a trauma response dressed up in romantic clothing. It’s the emotional equivalent of being a newbie — you feel everything at full volume because you haven’t yet developed the scar tissue that turns down the gain.

Worth noting: the American Psychiatric Association agrees, at least implicitly. Limerence does not appear in the DSM-5-TR — the official diagnostic manual for mental disorders. It’s not a condition. It’s an experience. There’s a difference. Tom Bellamy, a neuroscientist at the University of Nottingham and author of Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last, makes the boundary explicit: “People sometimes tie it with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, OCD, and even stalking. None of that is grounded in research.”

We as a whole have become adept at turning normal human experiences into clinical conditions that require intervention. Sadness became depression. Worry became anxiety disorder. Now apparently, the gut-punch intensity of early infatuation is limerence, a state you should probably discuss with a therapist and track in a journal.

I’m not dismissing Tennov’s work. The research is real, the phenomenon is real, and yes — in its most severe form, limerence can become genuinely destructive. Journalist Amanda McCracken, who spent years cycling in and out of obsessive infatuations, put it plainly after finally seeking help: “Limerence was a safe place for me to hide from the vulnerability of real intimacy.” That version — limerence as a long-term avoidance strategy rather than a passing storm — deserves attention.

But most of us didn’t have that. Most of us had the version where you were seventeen, completely undone by someone, certain this was the most important thing that had ever happened, and then eventually — through reciprocation, rejection, or simple time — it passed. (Or it became that smoldering torch that flames back up whenever you have a row with your partner.)

Love Is the Follow-Through

The useful distinction Tennov actually drew — and the one that gets lost when limerence becomes a self-help buzzword — is between the obsessive “I want you to want ME” (tanks, Cheap Trick) state and the kind of love that shows up in the boring, unglamorous middle of a long relationship. Limerence is almost entirely about you and your internal state. Love, the kind that matters, is mostly about the other person.

Limerence asks: Do they want me?

Love asks: What do they need?

Bellamy, who experienced this firsthand when he met his wife, describes the transition well: “If you have two limerent people, it’s fantastic. Eventually, however, the limerence fades, and the two people must transition to a different form of love. This will involve affection, communication, respect — all the things we associate with healthy, mature love.”

That’s not a small difference. Limerence is a beautiful, consuming, somewhat selfish state. Love, as a practice rather than a feeling, is a decision you make on the days when you don’t particularly feel like it. Which doesn’t mean limerence is worthless. It’s the kindling. The problem is when people mistake the kindling for the fire and can’t understand why it keeps burning out.

A Word in Defense of Feeling Everything

There’s a version of emotional maturity that looks a lot like emotional deadening. You learn to recognize limerence, you label it, you manage your expectations, you don’t do anything rash. This is probably wise. It is also, at some level, a small tragedy.

Giulia Poerio, a psychologist at the University of Sussex who studies limerence, captures the paradox neatly: “It’s a real cognitive invasion of your mind. It’s also enjoyable, which makes it somewhat addictive.” That’s the thing about limerence that the self-help literature never quite admits — it feels terrible and wonderful at the same time, and some part of you doesn’t entirely want it to stop.

The completely undone feeling — the ridiculous, embarrassing, can’t-eat, checking-your-phone-every-four-minutes feeling — is one of the more vivid experiences available to human beings. It’s not particularly rational. It’s not particularly dignified. But it is alive in a way that’s hard to replicate once you’ve got enough experience to know better.

So yes, understand what limerence is. Know that it’s not a reliable signal of compatibility. Know that it can attach itself to people who are objectively wrong for you. Know that it will eventually end, one way or another, and that surviving it doesn’t mean something went wrong. And it is certainly not a mental affliction. It’s just a normal part of this thing we call life.

References

• What is limerence, and are you confusing it with love? — The Washington Post, March 2026
• Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love — Dorothy Tennov (Amazon)
• Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last — Tom Bellamy (Amazon)
• Limerence — Psychology Today
• Love and Limerence: Dorothy Tennov’s Research into the Confusions of Bonding — The Marginalian

The post Is it Love or Is it Limerence? first appeared on Sevenelles.

The article states. “The Interior Department has cited national security concerns from a classified Defense Department report as justification for halting renewable energy permits.” Yeah. Right. Renewable energy will be America’s downfall. While China races ahead of us in developing all types of energy.

Article Summary:

The Trump administration has agreed to pay French energy company TotalEnergies $1 billion to abandon two offshore wind farm projects off New York and North Carolina, redirecting the investment toward oil and gas development instead.

President Trump has long opposed offshore wind energy, calling turbines unattractive, costly, and harmful to wildlife—claims that industry advocates dispute. This settlement represents a new tactic by the Interior Department to halt offshore wind development, complementing previously issued stop-work orders on five permitted projects that were blocked by court injunctions.

Under the agreement, TotalEnergies will return its two wind leases to the federal government and has committed to avoiding future offshore wind projects in the United States. The company will redirect $928 million toward a Texas liquefied natural gas facility, shale gas production, and oil drilling. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the deal, stating it would free up funds from “expensive, weather dependent offshore wind” for “affordable, reliable and secure oil and natural gas production.”

Both projects—Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay—were still in planning phases and not yet fully permitted. The Interior Department has cited national security concerns from a classified Defense Department report as justification for halting renewable energy permits.

Read the Full Article

The post Trump to Pay $1 Billion to Stop Two East Coast Wind Farms first appeared on Sevenelles.

Based on the podcast conversation below, I would now amend that to read “We are so fucked. We are so totally fucked. Or maybe only for a decade or so.“

The podcast is a VERY interesting glimpse into the future. I highly recommend giving it a listen.

Above: The Moonshots hosts join Andrew Yang to unpack AI’s explosive collision with politics – deepfakes weaponizing elections, UBI surging as job-killer abundance hits, and radical fixes like open voting for anyone from Cuban to Robbins – while plotting democracy’s entrepreneurial reboot.

The post Psssst… Wanna Glimpse Into Our Future? first appeared on Sevenelles.

A recent Pew Research Center survey reveals that the United States is the only country among 25 polled where a majority of residents view their fellow citizens as morally or ethically “bad.” Fifty-three percent of American adults hold this negative view, contrasting sharply with other nations like Canada, where 92 percent see their compatriots as good.

Experts attribute this phenomenon to several factors. Political polarization plays a significant role, with 60 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans viewing fellow Americans negatively. This partisan divide has intensified over time—a 2022 Pew poll showed substantial increases in Americans describing opposing party members as immoral, dishonest, and close-minded compared to 2016.

Scholars suggest that nearly every moral issue has become politicized in America, with political leaders and social media amplifying divisions. Christian author Karen Swallow Prior notes that antagonistic political parties demonize each other, lowering perceptions of collective goodness. Additionally, America’s religious diversity has historically prevented agreement on shared moral standards, allowing morality to be weaponized politically.

Sociologist Scott Schieman observes that Americans exhibit a stronger “negativity bias” than Canadians, who tend to direct criticism toward elites rather than fellow citizens. Scholar Victoria Barnett argues that intense political polarization, especially when framed through religious teaching, erodes trust across society.

Historical Gallup polling confirms Americans have consistently rated the nation’s moral values negatively since 2003, suggesting this pessimistic outlook isn’t entirely new but has deepened amid current political contradictions.

Read the Full Article

The post U.S. Is the Only Country to Say Most Fellow Citizens are Bad People first appeared on Sevenelles.

Daniel Smith’s essay in The Atlantic explores the author’s struggle with the profound boredom of parenthood despite experiencing fierce, protective love for his children. When his first daughter was born, he discovered an unexpected paradox: while his love was instantaneous and complete, he disliked being a father. The activities that once sustained him—reading, seeing friends, solitude—vanished, replaced by exhausting routines and mind-numbing repetition.

The author confesses that much of parenting consists of “blunt, basic, run-of-the-mill boredom”—playgrounds, picture books, endless requests to “do it again.” He felt deficient for finding child-rearing tedious when society celebrates it as life’s greatest adventure. After divorce and remarrying, he now has three children and confronts the same feelings again.

Drawing on philosophers and poets like Kierkegaard, Frost, and Joseph Brodsky, the author reframes boredom not as something to suppress or escape, but as an emotion to move toward and understand. Brodsky’s commencement address argued that boredom teaches us our “utter insignificance” and that the most meaningful aspects of life—enduring relationships, serious work, art—all display patterns pregnant with boredom.

The essay concludes with a tender Sunday morning scene: the author shopping with his young son, noticing small moments of connection over hot chocolate. He realizes that boredom and meaning are inseparable—boredom is “the price we pay for a life rich with meaning.” Accepting rather than fighting this reality makes the feeling more endurable, transforming it from a shameful deficiency into an inevitable companion of love and commitment.

Read the Full Essay

The post Boredom Is the Price We Pay for Meaning first appeared on Sevenelles.

Adobe Connect completely blows MS Teams and Zoom out of the water when it comes to producing dynamic, engaging learning events. (I mean, what the hell happened to Zoom? It started out pretty good. Then, COVID struck, and it began to metastasize into an unwieldy, ADHD-driven exercise in unfocused feature bloat. It is nearly unusable anymore. But I digress…)

So Adobe Connect is THE best platform for you to produce a bitchin’ worldwide learning broadcast. But, depending on your Adobe license, you may have only 500 seats for learners. The result: Thousands of people who would attend your totally bitchin’ learning broadcast are left out in the cold.

This SmartAss Guide will show you how to punch through that ceiling by simultaneously broadcasting your Adobe Connect Seminar as a YouTube Livestream, while still tracking ALL the attendance inside Adobe Connect using a two-Event setup and a Registration Group. It is not an obvious solution. Perhaps it is not the elegant solution. It is, however, the solution that has worked for me for many years.

In this Guide, You Will Learn To:

• Use two Adobe Connect (AC) Events in tandem to track attendance for a live learning broadcast hosted in an AC Seminar and simultaneously broadcast via YouTube (YT) Livestream
• Create an AC HTML Content object that serves as a “wrapper” around your YT Livestream so AC can track YouTube attendees
• Create a Registration Group in AC to connect the two Events so that registering for one automatically enrolls participants in both
• Configure the full broadcast workflow from setup through broadcast day — including the YouTube and OBS pieces that make the whole thing run

You Will Need:

• An Adobe Connect admin account. Not a host account. Not a limited admin. A full admin. The Registration Group step (Step 5) is admin-only — there is no workaround.
• A YouTube Studio (YT) account to create your broadcast Livestream link — OR the YT link handed to you by whoever in your organization is handling the livestream side.
• If you are handling the YT Livestream yourself: a dedicated PC running the free, open-source Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to capture the AC broadcast and pipe it to YouTube. Setting up OBS end-to-end is outside the scope of this guide — see the References section below for resources to get up to speed.
• Solid experience in the AC admin interface. If you need a refresher on AC administration basics, Adobe’s official User Guide is a reasonable starting point.
• Experience creating and administering AC Events, Seminars, and Content. This guide assumes you have done all three before. If Events are new territory, work through Adobe’s Events overview and the Adobe Connect Blog’s event creation walkthrough before proceeding.

The Steps:

1. Create the AC Seminar where you will host the broadcast
2. Create the AC HTML Content object that will wrap around the Livestream
3. Create your Main AC Event and link it to your Seminar
4. Create your Secondary AC Event and link it to your HTML Content object
5. Connect the two Events using an AC Registration Group
6. Advertise the registration link to your Main AC Event
7. Create your YT Livestream and link it to the HTML Content object
8. Broadcast Day: Final check and log-in links

Step 1: Create the Broadcast’s AC Seminar

If you have not already created the main AC Seminar you will use for your broadcast, do that now. If you need a refresher on creating Seminars, Adobe’s Seminar documentation has you covered. We are not going to walk through it here — this is not that kind of guide.

NOTE: This tutorial assumes you are using an AC Seminar room — not an AC Meeting room — for your broadcast. Seminars are purpose-built for large audiences (up to 1,500 participants), offer a proper broadcast-style layout, and are the right tool for this job. If you are running a Meeting room instead, some of the steps below will look different and your AC audience ceiling will be considerably lower (but the YT Livestream audience will still be unlimited).

Let’s begin a running example: Throughout this Guide, we will “illustrate” the steps via examples. To kickoff the example, we will name our Seminar “My Bitchin’ Broadcast Seminar.” Swap in your actual Seminar name wherever you see this throughout the guide.

Step 2: Create the Broadcast’s AC HTML Content Object

Now we will create an AC HTML Content object that will be linked to the Secondary AC Event you will create in Step 4. This is the piece that makes YouTube attendance tracking possible inside Adobe Connect — a small but clever bit of contortion that lets AC “see” viewers who are actually watching on YouTube. If you need a refresher on uploading HTML content to AC, Adobe’s meeting and content documentation covers the basics.

This step has two parts.

Step 2.1 — Create the iFrame HTML file

You need to create a small HTML file containing an iFrame that embeds your YouTube Livestream. Here is the code that gets the job done:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <title>Bitchin' Broadcast Livestream Wrapper</title>
</head>
<body style="background-color:black;">
    <div style="position: relative; width: 100%; padding-bottom: 56.25%;">
        <iframe
            style="position: absolute; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; top: 0; border: 0;"
            src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XbcJGxHHozk?autoplay=1"
            allowfullscreen>
        </iframe>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

A few things worth noting about this code:

• The padding-bottom: 56.25% on the outer div is what maintains a proper 16:9 aspect ratio at any screen size. Leave it alone.
• The ?autoplay=1 parameter at the end of the YouTube URL forces the video to start playing automatically when a participant opens the Content object. This matters — without it, your YouTube viewers will land on a static screen and wonder why nothing is happening.
• The YouTube video ID in the URL — XbcJGxHHozk in the example — is a placeholder. You will replace it with your actual Livestream ID in Step 7. Leave it as-is for now.
• The black background (background-color:black) is purely aesthetic — it keeps the page from looking broken while the video loads.

Copy the code above into your favorite text editor. On Windows, Notepad++ (free) is a solid choice. Plain old Notepad works fine too. On Mac, TextEdit will do — just make sure you save in plain text format, not rich text. Make sure you use the .html extension when you save it — AC will not recognize the file as HTML content without it.

Our running example: Save the file as “Bitchin-Broadcast-iFrame-Code.html”. Make sure you use the .html extension when you save it — AC will not recognize the file as HTML content without it.

Step 2.2 — Upload the HTML file to AC Content

Now upload the HTML file you just saved to the Content section of Adobe Connect Central. As an experienced AC Admin, you have done this a hundred times. Navigate to your Content library, find or create a folder for this broadcast, and upload the file.

Our running example: We are saving the HTML in a dedicated folder for this broadcast inside the AC Shared Content folder. We will name the Content object “Bitchin’ Broadcast iFrame HTML.”

With the Seminar and the HTML Content object both in place, you are ready to build the two AC Events that will tie everything together.

Step 3: Create Your Main AC Event

We are not going to walk through the full Event creation wizard here — you know how to create an AC Event. If you need a quick refresher, Adobe’s Event creation documentation is thorough. What matters are these specifics:

• On the Enter Event Information page, in the Custom URL section, we recommend that you create a custom name so that your registration URL will be attractive. For our custom URL, we will use “bitchin-broadcast-2026”
• On the Enter Event Information page, in the Presentation section, select “Present an Adobe Connect Seminar.”
• If your broadcast runs over multiple days, you can only configure the Event for the first day during initial setup. You will need to address subsequent days separately. We will discuss that more in Step 8.
• When you reach the Select Content step, select the AC Seminar you created in Step 1 — “My Bitchin’ Broadcast Seminar.”
• Set up your registration questions, email options, and other settings as you normally would for a public-facing event. This is the Event your audience will see and register for.

Our running example: We are naming this Event “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Event.” When we create it, we will enter “bitchin-broadcast-2026” for our Custom URL, select “Present an Adobe Connect Seminar” as our Presentation type, and select “My Bitchin’ Broadcast Seminar” we created in Step 1 as our Content.

Publish the Event when you are done. You will come back to finalize registration settings and email templates before you start advertising it, but it needs to exist before Step 5 will make any sense.

Step 4: Create Your Secondary AC Event

Now create a second Event that will be linked to the HTML Content object you created in Step 2. This is the “wrapper” Event — the one that will log attendance for your YouTube viewers. A few key differences from Step 3:

• We will not be sharing the registration URL for the second event. But you will be sharing the login URL, so you should make it attractive. On the Enter Event Information page, in the Custom URL section, we will use “bitchin-livestream-2026”
• On the Enter Event Information page, in the Presentation section, select “On Demand.” This event is not hosting a live session — it is serving up pre-existing content (your iFrame HTML file).
• Set the start and end dates and times to match what you used for the Main Event in Step 3.
• When you reach the Select Content step, select the AC HTML Content object you created in Step 2 — “Bitchin’ Broadcast iFrame HTML.”
• Do not advertise this Event’s registration link. Participants will never register for this Event directly. The Registration Group you create in Step 5 will handle enrollment automatically.

Our running example: We are naming this Event “Bitchin’ Broadcast HTML Wrapper Event.” When we create it, we will enter “bitchin-livestream-2026” for our Custom URL, select “On Demand” as our Presentation type, and select “Bitchin’ Broadcast iFrame HTML” we created in Step 2 as our Content.

Step 5: Connect the Events Using an AC Registration Group

OK. Buckle up. This is where Adobe Connect’s administrative logic gets wonderfully convoluted, and where the whole two-Event architecture either clicks into place or makes you want to close the browser and go do something relaxing instead.

Here is what we are accomplishing: Anyone who registers for the Main Event (“Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Event”) will be automatically added to a designated AC Registration Group. That same group will be pre-loaded into the Secondary Event (“Bitchin’ Broadcast HTML Wrapper Event”) as approved participants. The result: one registration, two event records, zero extra friction for your audience.

This requires two sub-tasks: first, create the AC Registration Group, then wire it into both Events.

Step 5.1 — Create the AC Registration Group

You need full administrator access to do this. If you are a limited admin, now is the time to call in a favor.

1. In Adobe Connect Central, select the Admin tab.
2. Navigate to Users and Groups.
3. Click New Group.
4. Enter a name and optional description for the group. Leave membership empty for now — registrants will be added automatically.
5. Click Finish.

Our running example: Name the group “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Group.”

Step 5.2 — Link the Registration Group to the Main Event

Now tell the Main Event to automatically add approved registrants to the group you just created.

1. In Adobe Connect Central, click the Event Management tab.
2. Navigate to and select the Main Event — “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Event.”
3. Click Participant Management in the navigation bar.
4. Click Registration Groups.
5. In the Possible Groups list, find and select “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Group.”
6. Click Add. The group name moves to the Current Group Membership list.
7. Click Save.

Our running example: Edit the “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Event” created in Step 3 as described in the 7 steps just above.

From this point forward, every participant who registers and is approved for the Main Event will be automatically added to “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Group.”

Step 5.3 — Add the Registration Group to the Secondary Event

Now wire that same group into the Secondary Event as pre-approved participants.

1. In Adobe Connect Central, click the Event Management tab.
2. Navigate to and select the Secondary Event — “Bitchin’ Broadcast HTML Wrapper Event.”
3. Click Participant Management in the navigation bar.
4. Click Add User/Group.
5. In the Available Users and Groups list, search for and select “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Group.”
6. Click Add.
7. Set the permission for the group to Participant.
8. Click Save.

Our running example: Edit the “Bitchin’ Broadcast HTML Wrapper Event” created in Step 4 as described in the 8 steps just above.

The two Events are now connected. Anyone who registers for the Main Event is automatically an approved Participant in the Secondary Event — no second registration, no manual management, no explaining two different registration links to confused attendees.

A Word of Warning: Adobe Connect adds registrants to the Registration Group when they are approved, not when they merely register. If your Main Event requires manual approval, you will need to stay on top of approvals before broadcast day or your YouTube viewers will show up to find they cannot access the Wrapper Event.

Step 6: Advertise the Main AC Event Registration Link

At this point, you can finish building out all the registration settings, email templates, and branded event pages for the Main Event and start promoting the registration link to your audience.

A few important reminders:

• Share only the Main Event registration link — In our example, that would be something like https://your.adobeconnect.com/bitchin-broadcast-2026/event/registration.html. Do NOT share the Secondary Event link. Ever. The Registration Group handles enrollment in the Secondary Event automatically. Sharing the Secondary Event link publicly will produce confusion, double registrations, and the kind of support emails nobody wants to answer.
• Your audience does not need to know the Secondary Event exists. As far as they are concerned, they registered for one event and will receive one set of communications.

Step 7: Create Your YT Livestream and Link It to the AC HTML Content

Ideally, your organization has a dedicated team or person who will handle the OBS capture and YouTube Livestream setup while you focus on running the AC Seminar. If that is not the case — if you are the one person doing all of this — the details of configuring a full OBS-to-YouTube workflow are beyond the scope of this guide. But here is a quick orientation and pointers to go deeper.

What is YouTube Livestream?

YouTube Livestream is YouTube’s built-in broadcasting feature, available to any verified YouTube account. It lets you stream live video to a public (or unlisted) YouTube URL using an encoder — in this case, OBS (see next paragraph). Viewers watch in a standard YouTube player, no registration required, from any device with a browser. The stream is automatically archived as a YouTube video when you end it. For our purposes, the key output from YouTube Livestream setup is a unique video ID embedded in the stream’s URL — the string of characters you will drop into the HTML file from Step 2.

What is OBS?

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) is a free, open-source application that captures video and audio from one or more sources — in this case, your Adobe Connect Seminar room running in a browser window — and streams it to an external platform like YouTube. It is the bridge between what is happening in your AC Seminar and what appears on the YouTube Livestream. OBS runs on a dedicated PC, captures the AC broadcast as a Window Source, mixes in audio, and pushes the signal to YouTube using a Stream Key and RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol) URL provided by YouTube Studio.

How they work together

The flow looks like this: Your presenters are live in the AC Seminar. A dedicated OBS machine captures the Seminar room as a window source and streams it — in real time — to YouTube via RTMP. Meanwhile, your registered AC attendees are watching through the AC Seminar room directly, and your YouTube audience is watching the same content through the embedded iFrame in the Secondary Event. Both audiences are watching the same broadcast. One group is tracked in AC natively; the other is tracked through the HTML Wrapper Event you built in Step 4.

For a thorough walkthrough of the OBS-to-YouTube-to-Adobe-Connect workflow, this HowlRound guide describes the exact approach — capturing an Adobe Connect session as an OBS Window Source and broadcasting to external platforms — in practical detail. YouTube’s own encoder-based streaming guide covers the YouTube Studio setup, stream key configuration, and going live.

Update the HTML Content Object with your Livestream ID

Whether someone else sets up the YouTube Livestream for you or you do it yourself, the stream will have a unique YouTube video identifier — a short string of characters that appears in the stream URL. You need to update the HTML file from Step 2.1 with that identifier.

Find this portion of the HTML code:

src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XbcJGxHHozk?autoplay=1"

Replace XbcJGxHHozk with your actual YouTube Livestream video ID. The rest of the URL stays exactly as-is — including the ?autoplay=1 parameter.

Save the updated HTML file and upload it to AC Content to overwrite the existing “Bitchin’ Broadcast iFrame HTML” object. Confirm the overwrite when prompted. The Secondary Event will now serve the updated iFrame pointing to your real Livestream.

IMPORTANT Timing Note: YouTube does not generate the final stream URL until you actually create the Livestream in YouTube Studio. You can set up the stream in advance and schedule it, which is the recommended approach — it gives you a stable URL to work with before broadcast day. Do not leave this to the morning of the event.

Step 8: Broadcast Day — Final Pre-Checks, Log-In Links, and Attendance Reports

Broadcast day is not the time to discover something is broken. Here is what to verify and communicate before you go live.

8.1 – Pre-Broadcast Checks

• Test the iFrame HTML Content object. Log in to the Secondary Event as a test participant and confirm the YouTube embed loads and autoplays correctly. Do this after the YouTube Livestream is created but before the actual broadcast.
• Confirm Registration Group population. Check that registered participants from the Main Event are appearing as approved Participants in the Secondary Event. If approvals have been sitting unreviewed, handle them now.
• Coordinate with your OBS operator. Confirm they have the YouTube Stream Key loaded, have done a test stream, and know when to start broadcasting.
• Run a dry-run of the AC Seminar room. Confirm layouts, presenter permissions, and audio/video are working before participants arrive.

8.2 – Broadcast Day: The Two Log-In Links

On broadcast day, registered participants need two things:

1. The direct log-in link to the Main Event (the AC Seminar) — for those joining through Adobe Connect directly. In our example, that link will look something like https://your.adobeconnect.com/bitchin-broadcast-2026/event/registration.html.
2. The direct log-in link to the Secondary Event (the YouTube iFrame wrapper) — for those who will be watching via YouTube but whose attendance you want tracked in AC. In our example, that link will look something like https://your.adobeconnect.com/bitchin-livestream-2026/event/registration.html.

Both links should go out to all registered participants. Let them choose. Some will prefer the richer AC experience; others will watch on YouTube. Both audiences are tracked.

8.3 – Post-Event: Attendance Reports

To get a full attendance report, you need to pull the attendance data from both Events and combine it into a single clean record. Here’s how:

Download the attendance spreadsheets

1. In Adobe Connect Central, click the Event Management tab.
2. Navigate to and select the Main Event — “Bitchin’ Broadcast Registration Event.”
3. Click Reports in the navigation bar.
4. Select Participant Report (or Attendance Report, depending on your AC version).
5. Click Download to export the report as a CSV.
6. Repeat steps 1–5 for the Secondary Event — “Bitchin’ Broadcast HTML Wrapper Event.”

You now have two spreadsheets: one for your AC Seminar attendees, one for your YouTube/iFrame attendees.

Combine and deduplicate

Open both files in Excel (or your spreadsheet tool of choice). Copy all rows from the Secondary Event report and paste them below the rows from the Main Event report in a single sheet. You will have duplicate entries for any participant who logged into both Events — this can happen if a registrant toggled between the AC Seminar and the YouTube wrapper during the broadcast.

To remove duplicates in Excel: select the combined data, go to Data → Remove Duplicates, and deduplicate on the participant email address column. That gives you your final headcount — each registered attendee counted once, regardless of which room they watched from.

8.4 — Multi-Day Events

If your broadcast runs over multiple days, there are two things you need to know before you start rolling dates forward.

Download before you roll.

This is the one that will ruin your week if you skip it. After each day’s broadcast, download the attendance reports for both Events before you change the Event dates for the next day. Adobe Connect’s reporting is tied to the Event’s configured date range — once you roll the dates forward, the previous day’s attendance data becomes inaccessible. It is gone. Download first, roll dates second. Every time, without exception.

Once you have the daily spreadsheets, you can combine them using the same deduplication process described in 8.3 above — either per day (for daily attendance counts) or across all days (for overall unique attendance).

Create a new HTML file and Content object for each day.

YouTube Studio generates a unique video ID for each Livestream you create — Day 1 and Day 2 are separate streams with separate IDs. That means you cannot reuse the same HTML iFrame file across days. For each day of a multi-day broadcast, you need to:

1. Create a new Livestream in YouTube Studio for that day’s session. Note the new video ID from the stream URL.
2. Create a new HTML file using the same code from Step 2.1, with the new video ID substituted in place of the placeholder.
3. Upload the new HTML file to AC Content as a new Content object — do not overwrite the previous day’s file. Name it clearly (e.g., “Bitchin’ Broadcast iFrame HTML — Day 2”).
4. In Adobe Connect Central, navigate to the Secondary Event — “Bitchin’ Broadcast HTML Wrapper Event” — and update its Select Content setting to point to the new Day 2 Content object.

Do this before each day’s broadcast. The Secondary Event itself stays the same — you are only swapping out which HTML Content object it serves.

(Yes, this is a lot of steps for what should be a trivially simple thing. Adobe Connect was not exactly designed with multi-day livestream workflows in mind. Welcome to the club.)

And that’s that. If you have any questions or suggestions, please put them in the comments below!

References and Resources

The following resources were used in building this guide and are worth bookmarking for deeper learning:

Adobe Connect — Events

• About Adobe Connect Events — Overview, roles, and event lifecycle
• Create and Edit Adobe Connect Events — Event wizard, Registration Groups, participant management
• Manage Adobe Connect Events — Reporting, engagement tracking, analytics
• How & What Is Needed to Create New Events — Adobe Connect Blog walkthrough covering Registration Groups and event wrapping

Adobe Connect — Seminars and Administration

• Working with Adobe Connect Seminars — Seminar room setup, sessions, and licensing
• Connect Central: Group Basics — Creating and managing custom groups
• Broadcast Controls / Green Room — Managing the broadcast lifecycle in a Seminar room

YouTube Livestreaming

• Create a YouTube Live Stream with an Encoder — Official YouTube guide: stream key, RTMP, Live Control Room
• YouTube Studio — Where you set up and manage your Livestream

OBS Studio

• OBS Studio — Free, open-source broadcast software. Download and documentation.
• How to Produce a Livestream Event, Part 2 — HowlRound; the most directly applicable guide for capturing Adobe Connect in OBS and streaming to external platforms

The post Expand Your Adobe Connect Audience with a YouTube Livestream first appeared on Sevenelles.

President Trump has leveraged his second term to profit extensively from the presidency, amassing at least $1.4 billion—a figure likely underestimated due to undisclosed earnings. This total represents approximately 16,822 times the median U.S. household income.

His revenue streams include: $867 million from cryptocurrency ventures, with foreign investors secretly buying Trump family coins to gain influence; $90.5 million in settlements from major tech companies like Amazon, Meta, and ABC News for questionable legal claims; $28 million from Amazon for a Melania Trump documentary (far exceeding typical payments); $23 million from overseas licensing deals for Trump-branded properties in countries like Vietnam, Oman, and Saudi Arabia; and a $400 million Boeing 747 gift from Qatar that he’ll use as Air Force One and keep afterward.

These financial arrangements raise serious corruption concerns, as favorable policy decisions often follow payments. Vietnam received reduced tariffs after fast-tracking a Trump golf project, while the UAE gained chip access after committing $2 billion to a Trump firm.

Historically, presidents avoided even the appearance of profiting from office—Harry Truman left the White House without a car and refused jobs that would commercialize his service. Trump’s conduct represents a stark departure, with influence-seekers—including foreign governments—openly purchasing access through his businesses.

This corruption undermines democratic legitimacy and public trust. When leaders prioritize personal enrichment over public service, citizens lose faith in government institutions, creating a cynical spiral that threatens democratic participation and the rule of law.

Article Excerpt:

“The demands of avarice gradually corrupt the work of government as officials facilitate the accumulation of personal wealth. Worse, such a government corrupts the people who live under its rule. They learn by experience that they live in a society where the laws are written by the highest bidder. They become less likely to obey those laws, and to participate in the work of democracy — speaking, voting, paying taxes. The United States risks falling into this cynical spiral as Mr. Trump hollows out the institutions of government for personal gain.”

Read the Full Article

The post How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000 first appeared on Sevenelles.

Perhaps it is because I still think like a biologist. Or, perhaps it’s being an agnostic/atheist. But I still don’t get why people avoid the discussion of death. I guarantee you none of us is getting out of here alive. Most people avoid discussing death like they do bowel movements or masturbation. But unlike those, your death will be very public and completely unavoidable.

I used to think that one of the selling points for religious faith was that it made death more palatable. But now I think it mostly gives us permission to repress our fears of death. Dana Milbank’s article illustrates that if we can discuss death openly, we can make peace with it and, thereby, improve our lives and our legacy.

Article Summary:

In another great article, Dana Milbank tell us about a group of seven women aged 78-89 in Virginia’s Rappahannock County meet monthly as the “RONettes” to discuss death, end-of-life planning, and aging. What began as participation in a local “Ready or Not” program—helping seniors draft advance directives and organize their affairs—evolved into a close-knit support group that has continued meeting for three years.

During their gatherings over potlucks, these widowed or elderly women candidly discuss topics most avoid: green burials, body donation, do-not-resuscitate orders, and even property values with backyard graves. Rather than being morbid, members describe the experience as life-affirming and fear-reducing.

Research supports their approach: planning for death reduces psychological distress and improves well-being by prompting reflection on life’s meaning and legacy. The women have written their own obituaries, completed “Five Wishes” advance directives, and openly discuss medical decisions, downsizing, and cognitive decline.

Their remarkable honesty extends to personal struggles—one member is moving to assisted living due to cognitive impairment, another worries about unfinished research, and several keep deceased relatives’ ashes in their bedrooms. Most eschew cremation for environmental reasons, preferring green burials or body donation.

The group’s demystification of death has brought unexpected peace. Members report that confronting mortality directly has eliminated nightmares, reduced anxiety, and helped them focus on enjoying their remaining time. By creating a safe space to discuss the undiscussable, these women have transformed their final years into a period of meaningful companionship and purposeful living.

Article Excerpt:

“It may sound macabre, and terribly depressing. But the women, all but two of whom have been widowed, say it has been just the opposite for them: a life-affirming exercise that has given new meaning to their final chapters. It seems that by demystifying death, by refusing to deny that their lives are near the end, they have freed themselves from some of the fear of dying. Instead, they are able to focus on “how we enjoy these last few trips around the sun,” as one of them put it. And it’s no surprise that those final years are more enjoyable if filled with companionship — in this case, a group of peers with 600 years of combined life experience.”

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The post One Path to a Happier Life: Thinking More About Death first appeared on Sevenelles.

In this article, Curt Buermeyer discusses how the traditional model of trading time for money is rapidly becoming obsolete due to AI-driven productivity gains. For over a century, hourly billing has been standard across professions, but the workplace is now shifting from “pay-per-hour” to “pay-per-problem-solved.”

The most vulnerable workers are those whose value is measured by presence rather than performance. When employers pay for time, they’re actively seeking automation solutions to eliminate those costs entirely.

The new paradigm focuses on “problems solved per dollar.” A marketing strategist using AI to create an excellent plan in two hours delivers the same value as a traditional team spending 100 hours—clients only care about the outcome, not the process.

To adapt, professionals must reframe their value around specific problems solved rather than hours worked. This requires identifying the 20% of work requiring human judgment, strategy, and empathy that AI cannot replicate, while using AI to handle routine tasks efficiently.

Read the Full Article

The post The Death of the Billable Hour: Why Your Salary is at Risk in 2026 first appeared on Sevenelles.