Worldwide🌎people are having meaningful conversations about why #equalopportunities aren't... enough & why equal isn't always fair. People start from different places. True #inclusion & #belonging require equitable action. Believe in, value & embrace #equity👉🏾show more

Leavitt: "US has MORE THAN ENOUGH weapons to not... only execute Epic Fury, 'but to go MUCH FURTHER'." "We've weapon stockpiles in places that many people in world don’t even know about" Bharat knows & that's why hit 'one' hard at Kinara Hills in Pakistan that made US desperate.😊show more

In Somalia, when someone close to you dies, it... is customary for family members especially women to wear white during the mourning period and at the ceremonies. This is different from what you see in many other places, where people wear black to show they are grieving. In Somali tradition, white stands for purity and the soul’s journey to the next life, so it is what people wear to honor the person who has passed away. But for Somalis living abroad, things can get complicated. I remember when I was a kid, my mother’s best friend lost her husband. Instead of wearing white like she would have back home, she wore black. I was confused because it did not seem right, so I asked her about it. She told me that because they were living in a diaspora community, wearing white would just confuse the people around her. Her neighbors would not understand why someone who was mourning would be dressed in white clothes. In the place where they lived, black was what people expected to see when someone had died. So, to avoid having to explain herself or having people misunderstand her grief, she decided to wear black instead. For her, wearing black was the easier choice, it let her mourn without having to constantly explain why she was not dressed the way people in her new surroundings thought she should be.show more

People have spent months complaining about Keir Starmer. They've... complained about immigration. They've complained about the economy. They've complained about taxes. They've complained about the direction this country is heading. And now we're being told who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Not asked. Told. Am I the only one who thinks that's insane? Millions of people are struggling. Millions of people are unhappy with the state of the country. Yet when it comes to deciding who leads it next, they don't get a say. Instead, politicians make the decision behind closed doors and the public is expected to just accept it. If people are unhappy enough to force one Prime Minister out, surely they should have a say in who replaces him. Otherwise, what's the point? We keep hearing about democracy, yet ordinary people are expected to sit quietly while one leader is swapped for another and nothing fundamentally changes. And if we keep accepting it, why would they stop? Why would they listen? Why would anything improve? We'll just keep moving from one disappointment to the next while being told this time will be different. At some point, people need to stop accepting whatever they're given and start demanding a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. Because if nobody speaks up, don't be surprised when the same thing keeps happening over and over again. So here I am, speaking out. Now it's your turn. Because if you don't make sure you're heard, nothing changes. Politicians won't suddenly wake up tomorrow and start listening. They'll keep doing exactly what they've been doing for years. And we'll keep getting exactly what we've been getting for years. More disappointment. More excuses.More of the same. Britain deserves better. We deserve better. It's time to demand it.show more

“Most people don’t care if someone says licensed instead... of certified.” AKA: You don’t care that Leah blatantly lied about her credentials and misled thousands of people. And that is exactly where you’re wrong. People absolutely care because those words are not interchangeable. They may ignore it because of the sunk cost fallacy, but people who have not tied their entire identity to apophenia and these conspiracy theories will understand why it matters. That is why Leah blocks people with a following when they call her out for lying. “Licensed” communicates a higher level of professional oversight, scrutiny, and accountability than “certified.” That is why people use the term. It carries more authority. A genuine question for the defenders of theleahfiles: You told us Erika’s alleged lies about her college accolades were enough to destroy her credibility. You even used those allegations to insinuate that she could be involved in covering up Charlie’s assassination. Meanwhile, Leah has been doing phony “deep dives” into financial structures and business dealings. As a licensed professional who reviews financials and has experience with multiple business structures, I can see that she is either ignorant of how these arrangements work or deliberately misleading people into believing there are nefarious financial dealings without sufficient evidence. Yet with Leah: • She publicly claimed she was licensed, doubled down when I asked where she was licensed, and later changed it to certified. • She publicly claimed she had been doxed, but later acknowledged that the image and information people found came from a public X post made by a former employer. Meanwhile, the person she accused, Lisa Knows, ended up having non-public personal information circulated online. Yet now Brave Report you are saying none of this matters. So which standard are you using while claiming to be “seekers of truth”? If alleged dishonesty was enough for you to conclude that Erika might be involved in a cover-up, why doesn’t the same reasoning cause you to question Leah’s credibility and integrity? Or was it never really about honesty? Is it simply about who you want people to believe? And if Leah’s followers paid for her content because they believed she was a licensed fraud examiner, and that was a major reason they trusted her “investigations”, I think they should ask for a refund.show more

Watching this video makes my jaw clench. Not because... I see courage. Not because I see progress. It makes my jaw clench because I see a husband standing outside a women’s restroom while his wife is inside, and another person is demanding that he ignore what his own eyes can see. Put Democrat politics aside for a moment and think about the people you love. Imagine your wife is in that restroom. Imagine it’s your daughter, your granddaughter, your mother, or your sister. Most husbands like us, aren’t going to start debating social theories at that moment. Their first instinct is going to be the same instinct men have had for thousands of years: protect the women they love. That isn’t hatred. It isn’t fear. It’s responsibility. What makes this video so powerful is that it exposes a much bigger disagreement taking place across the country. One side believes that biological reality determines who belongs in male and female spaces. The other believes that personal identity should be the deciding factor. Those are fundamentally different starting points, and that’s why these encounters keep happening. The anger you’re seeing isn’t really about a restroom. It’s about whether ordinary people are still allowed to trust their own judgment, speak honestly about what they see, and protect the people they care about without being told they’re the problem. Millions of Americans like me, have reached the point where they are exhausted by being told that common sense is offensive. They are tired of being told that protecting women is somehow controversial. They are tired of being pressured to deny what they believe is objectively true in order to avoid criticism. That’s why videos like this resonate with so many people. They aren’t seeing a debate about a bathroom. They’re seeing a husband doing what husbands have always done: standing watch over the people entrusted to his care. And for many Americans, the line gets drawn right there. Not with my wife. Not with my daughter. Not with my family. #SilentMajoritySpeaks #AStoneGrooveshow more

The FBI Los Angeles field office just announced arrests... tied to a horrifying sex trafficking investigation in Southern California involving multiple suspects, including allegations involving a minor. According to the FBI, one victim was allegedly threatened, stabbed, and injured after escaping. Authorities are now asking the public for help identifying any additional victims or anyone who may have information connected to the case. One of the individuals being widely discussed online is known as “West Coast Cowboy,” a longtime Dallas Cowboys influencer and podcaster who reportedly lived in California. The allegations coming out of this investigation are deeply disturbing, and if even half of what’s being alleged is true, there are likely more people out there who may be afraid to speak up. This isn’t internet drama. This isn’t sports rivalry. This is about protecting victims and making sure predators don’t keep hiding behind social media fame, podcasts, or online personalities while innocent people suffer in silence. The FBI specifically stated they believe there could be additional victims and are urging anyone with information to come forward. If you know something, saw something, or experienced something connected to this investigation, contact the FBI or local authorities immediately. One tip could help save someone else from becoming another victim. People spend years building trust online. Sometimes they build audiences large enough that nobody questions them anymore. That’s exactly why cases like this matter. Awareness matters. Accountability matters. Protecting children matters. If the FBI is putting this information out publicly, they want people paying attention. Blogging The Boys RJ Ochoa Marcus Mosher Jane Slater Jon Machota BryanBroaddus Voch Lombardi Locked on Cowboys Cowboys fans deserve to know who they’ve been listening to and supporting online. The allegations in this FBI case are beyond disturbing. If authorities believe there may be additional victims, awareness matters. If you know something, contact the FBI.show more

"Why are young women using walking sticks?" One of... the newer trends among Leftists is to use walking sticks or wheelchairs. I've seen this going on for a long time, but didn't think much of it until this article came out several days ago and Leftists had meltdowns over it. The people doing it tend to be fully capable of walking and functioning perfectly fine when they're in the mood to do it. They almost always identify as some form of LGBT, tend to be female, are often overweight, usually don't work, and are often self diagnosed with things like ADHD, chronic pain, fatigue, migraines..., which they claim cause their disabilities. There are countless people with actual disabilities who are often in severe pain, truly have issues with walking, are missing limbs, mostly paralyzed, have difficulty speaking, are deaf or blind, have different diseases that they fight against every day..., yet they try their best to function like most people, work, get degrees, have families, socialize.... People with true disabilities tend to treat them like abilities. They have something that may be seen as a a disability, but instead treat it as a slight disadvantage that pushes them try doing just as good, if not better than everyone else. They don't make it their whole identity. These "disabled" Leftists on the other hand make it their whole identity. Their bios and posts are full of them trying to push how "disabled" they are. The real disability of theirs is laziness and feeling the need to victimize themselves in order to get attention that they don't get otherwise and probably didn't get enough of when they were younger. There is now "disability pride month" to push how much of a victim their self diagnosis made them because they need a month to remind you of it every day instead of every other day. I'm all for having a month, week, or day to celebrate truly disabled people who overcome their disabilities every day, but most of what I've seen is these scumbags taking over such things. These same people would have a meltdown over "cultural appropriation," yet here they are pretending to be disabled. It's a disgrace.show more

BREAKING: President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter... Biden. The development comes after the Biden administration promised the public that he would *not* consider pardoning his own son. Biden now says "enough is enough." Official statement from Biden: Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter. From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department's decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted. Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form. Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently. The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election. Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the courtroom - with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process. Had the plea deal held, it would have been a fair, reasonable resolution of Hunter's cases. No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter's cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son - and that is wrong. There has been an effort to break Hunter - who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they've tried to break me - and there's no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough. For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They'll be fair-minded. Here's the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice - and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.show more

To Our Dearest Dustin Yu, Dustin Yu It’s hard... to put into words how much you’ve touched our hearts. From the first moment we saw you, there was something about you, a calm but powerful presence, a light that feels different. You’re not just someone we admire on screen, you’ve become someone who inspires us to keep believing in good people and genuine souls. We’ve seen you work hard, stay grounded, and rise above noise that could’ve broken others. Yet, you keep smiling, keep growing, keep proving that grace will always be louder than hate. And that’s why we’ll always stay, because you give us a reason to believe in authenticity, in quiet strength, and in goodness that doesn’t need to shout to be seen. We’re so proud of how far you’ve come, and even prouder of who you continue to be. Whatever the future holds, please know that you’ll never walk alone, your fans and dishes or us will always be here, loving you a little louder each day, cheering for your dreams like they’re our own. Keep shining, Dustin. You are loved more than you’ll ever know. Forever cheering for you, Dishes. WE LOVE YU DUSTIN #AzTin #DustinYu #AzMartinezshow more

Europe is quietly becoming what the United States once... promised the world. More and more people are looking at their best years ahead and choosing a place where everyday life is designed to work. Where the future feels stable enough to plan for. Where safety is not a luxury product. Where you can build a good life without gambling your health, your family, or your dignity on one bad month. In much of Europe, the “dream” is not about becoming a billionaire. It is about becoming unafraid. It is the freedom of walking home at night without scanning every shadow. The comfort of knowing that if you get sick, you do not need to calculate whether you can afford to be treated. The relief of having a society that still believes children should carry backpacks, not trauma, and definitely not weapons. The calm of streets built for human beings, not just cars. The ability to take a holiday without feeling like you are committing career suicide. The basic decency of labor protections that assume you are a person first and a resource second. And then there is the part people underestimate until they live it: the texture of life. The cities are older and more beautiful than you expect. The distances are smaller. Weekends are real. Food is real. Public spaces are not just decorative, they are functional. Parks are full. Cafes are full. Trains take you somewhere, often across borders, without turning travel into a stress test. You can live in one country, work with another, and visit a third like it is normal because, in many places, it is. The European dream is also a quiet confidence in the social contract. That if you contribute, the system does not abandon you. That you can raise a family without feeling like you are one accident away from ruin. That “getting ahead” does not require burning out. That a good society is one where normal people can live normal lives and still feel proud of them. This is why more and more Americans are not just visiting Europe, but staying. Some come for studies and never leave. Some arrive for a job and realise the lifestyle is the real promotion. Some originally planned a one year experiment and then cannot imagine going back to a place where stress is treated as a personality trait and insecurity is marketed as freedom. Europe is not perfect. It has bureaucracy. It has politics. It has problems that deserve criticism. But in many European countries, life is still built around a simple idea: society should reduce fear, not monetise it. That is the new dream. And people can feel it the moment they arrive. If you could choose one thing to trade for a better life, what would it be: more income, or more security? And what do you think your country would have to change for people to stop leaving, and start staying? Stay connected, Follow Gandalv Gandalvshow more

🚨 THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE 🚨 🚨NOBODY UNDERSTANDS... WHAT THEY JUST TRIGGERED. 🚨 🚨 People always talk about Iranian oil in terms of barrels, but rarely about what’s actually inside them. That’s the key difference—and the reason Western refineries have quietly relied on back-channel networks through places like Dubai for years to keep getting it, even under sanctions. Crude oil isn’t all the same. It’s a mix of hydrocarbons with different molecular weights, and that mix determines how easily it can be turned into the fuels refineries actually sell—like gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and heating oil. The main measure here is API gravity. Higher API means lighter crude that’s easier and cheaper to refine, and it produces more of those high-value fuels. Lower API means heavier crude that takes more energy, more processing, and more expensive equipment, while producing more low-value leftovers. Iranian Light crude sits right in a sweet spot, with an API gravity around 33–36 and moderate sulfur levels. It’s light enough to produce a lot of gasoline and middle distillates without high costs, but not so light that it limits what refineries can make. In industry terms, it’s close to an ideal blend. Now look at the alternatives. Venezuela’s Merey crude is much heavier, with very low API gravity and high sulfur. Refining it profitably requires specialized, expensive equipment like cokers and hydrocrackers. Some refineries are built for that—but it’s not interchangeable with Iranian crude. It’s a completely different type of input. On the other end, US West Texas Intermediate is very light and low in sulfur. Sounds perfect in theory, but in practice it’s almost too light. Many refineries—especially in Europe and Asia—are designed for medium-grade crude, so they can’t just switch to WTI. They often have to blend it with heavier oils to make it work. That’s where Iranian crude stands out. It fits right into the middle of the system. It doesn’t need the heavy-duty processing of Venezuelan oil or the blending adjustments required for ultra-light US shale. That balance is why it’s consistently in demand and often priced at a premium. It also explains why countries like India kept buying it despite sanctions, and why those complex trading networks through Dubai existed in the first place. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just a route for oil—it’s a route for this specific kind of oil that global refineries are optimized to process. If that flow gets disrupted, it’s not just about losing supply. It’s about losing the type of crude the system runs most efficiently on, forcing refineries to adapt with less suitable alternatives. That’s what’s really baked into oil prices like $82—not just how much oil is available, but what kind it is.show more

Unpopular opinion about El Salvador. A TON of workers... here are lazy as hell and i do hope this message reaches many Salvadoreños in the United States. You leave the job site, little will get done and yes tools and materials will disappear. I said it. If you’re going to build a home, start a business, or just hire a few helping hands for that side project, get ready to fire fast. Put in systems of checks and balances, hire solid management, use cameras, and lock up materials. If you have the time or money you or someone you really trust must manage the project on SITE. I’ve hired thousands of people throughout the last few 6 years while personally living in 9 Latin countries and El Salvador has been one of the hardest to work in. El Salvador also happens to be my favorite country at the moment with my favorite people. It’s beautiful, small, has a Chuck E cheese for my daughter but most important, it’s safe for my family. So why is it so damn hard to work with people here? I think it’s because of the civil war. This is going to sound crazy coming from a president of a non profit but free money destroys people. It enables them. It ruins their will to work ultimately creating a lazy and slothful person Over 2.5 million people from El Salvador live in the United States. MANY of them send money every 2 weeks to their aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews to “help” them. This has turned into dependency. It has created a cycle of entitlement rather than self-sufficiency. “Why would I work for 10 hours in the sun when I can tell my aunt that I need money for medicine?” There are kids here with no desire to self educate, no desire to work, because they’re sucking the tit of their families in the United States or Canada. 2 of my hardest workers who show up early, never miss a day are these two men in this video. No arms, and an elderly who just wants to work. Their speed compared to a young healthy man is slow in comparison but their will and desire to work is unwavering. They’re inspiring. They are happy at work. They don’t complain. They’re not rich working for me but they are ok. I believe they are hard workers because they were never a part of a welfare system given to them from family in the states. I also believe that the civil war has created a massive divide between the wealthy and the poor. Maybe this already existed but chatting with enough people you can put 2 and 2 together. The socioeconomic divides between the wealthy and the poor. Certain families growing incredibly rich over the suffering of the lower class. People have lost trust, they’ve lost hope. Their views on money and rich people are shaped by past experiences of being taken advantage of. People are sick and tired of making $75 per pay period in the farms of El Salvador. I know that’s a whole other discussion. How do we fix this? I don’t know but I know my mission with casa conejo is to inspire others to work their asses off and to get paid by the sweat of their brows. I want to create a micro economy that allows the poor of the poor to grow! To break the cycle of poverty. To shatter the idea of “we can’t make it in El Salvador” We can and we will by working our asses off and getting paid what we deserve. Once we’re open a percentage of profits will go towards these workers. The rest back into our projects of building schools, running our women’s shelters, feeding the elderly. Let’s do thisshow more

What struck me about this video of “fake virginity... blood” being sold in Northern Nigeria is not the product itself, but the moral education that makes such a product necessary. Deception does not appear out of nowhere. It is learned. And as bell hooks reminds us, patriarchy is one of the most effective schools of deception we have. When a society places impossible and one-sided moral demands on women, while demanding almost nothing from men, it does not produce virtue. It produces performance. Virginity here is not really about sex. It is about proof. About a woman’s body being turned into evidence. The hymen becomes a certificate of value. Blood becomes currency. Honour becomes something that must be staged convincingly enough to satisfy male judgment. Growing up in Northern Nigeria, many of us heard the stories in whispers. Rumours about the lengths people went to preserve the myth of virginity. Women avoiding vaginal penetration entirely. Anal sex used as a workaround, so that on the wedding night the illusion could be completed. Blood shown. Husband reassured. Honour “intact.” Everyone colluding in a lie that everyone knows is a lie. This is not moral decay. It is moral absolutism doing what it always does. It teaches people how to deceive in order to survive. bell hooks writes that patriarchy teaches men and women to lie in different ways. Men learn to lie about vulnerability. They are trained to suppress fear, tenderness, emotional need, because honesty would cost them power or status. Women, on the other hand, learn to lie to stay safe. They learn that telling the truth about their bodies, desires, or histories can bring punishment, abandonment, or violence. So women learn concealment. Performance. Strategic silence. Seen this way, fake virginity blood is not shocking. It is logical. It is a market solution to a moral contradiction. If a woman’s worth is reduced to an anatomical fiction, she will find a way to manufacture that fiction. And we must ask the obvious question: where is the demand for virginity from men? Where is the obsession with their bodies as proof of moral worth? Where are the rituals, the products, the inspections? Men are assumed whole by default. Women must prove themselves worthy. The tragedy is not that women deceive. The tragedy is that honesty is made dangerous for them. A society that truly cared about morality would start with symmetry. It would care less about blood on bedsheets and more about kindness, responsibility, and mutual respect. Until then, deception will continue to flourish. Not because women are immoral, but because patriarchy demands purity while rewarding power. And whenever purity is demanded without justice, lies will follow.show more

Back when I had nothing… I was a nobody... to most people. TBH, my parents didn't even see me getting to where I am today. It's just the truth, the chips were stacked for my sister. Not me. But it's just not the reality today. However, there was ONE person in my life that didn’t see me that way. My significant other saw something in me before a lot of things. Before all my wins. Before the $. Before any proof. And honestly… that means a lot to me, if not the most of all. I’ve always been wired a little different. I’m a mix of finance, engineering, and tech, with a sprinkle of obsession. I learned and studied from the best. Warren Buffett for how to invest. Elon Musk for work ethic and where the future is going. And once I saw it… I went all in. Bc when you truly understand what you own… you don’t need 20 bets. What you really need is conviction and just a few bets. That’s how I approached everything in my life. All the way from Apple… to Tesla… to 𝕏… to xAI… and now SpaceX. I believe I have an eye for spotting the best entrepreneurs and companies early, before it becomes obvious to everyone. And when I see it, I back it 100%. That’s just who I am. I don’t need a big circle. I’ve already got my day ones. I don’t need approval. I grew up my whole life with doubt and hate, so what’s one more? At this point, the levels are just too different. And yeah… it's true, it actually gets harder to make new friends when you’re moving like this. So I stay loyal to the ones who were there when I had nothing. I made it with Apple - youngest in, youngest out. Then I made it with Tesla… while people were laughing, doubting, calling me crazy, telling me I was going to go bankrupt with Elon. Fast forward to today, now I'm heading into something even bigger. If the story plays out the way it’s shaping up… SpaceX could have the largest IPO in history this year. The company is talking about raising over $75B… at a $1.75-$2 trillion valuation. For context… the biggest IPO ever - Saudi Aramco - raised about $29B. This would be more than double that. Let that sink in deep. To me this is more than just an investment. This is owning a piece of the future of space, energy, AI... extending the light of consciousness forward in case something happens to Earth. People can call me crazy. People can call me cocky. Arrogant. But the people that actually know me know the truth - I’m just real AF. I say what I believe, and I stand on it. And I genuinely don’t care what people think. I have two middle fingers always held high for those kind of people. That’s probably why I’ve been able to win the way I have. My significant other tells me to slow down sometimes. And I get it. But for me… What’s the point of life if you play it safe? If you see an opportunity that can change everything… and you just sit back? That’s not me. I’d rather go all in on something I believe in… live with intensity… take the hits… and actually feel alive and live life with fulfillment. Laugh if you want, doubt if you want. Some play it safe, a few go all in. You can call it risky. You can call it stupid. You can call it crazy. I call it living. Bc at the end of the day, I'd rather go all in on something I believe in and fail... than spend my life wondering "what if."show more

Armaghan Rehman, who runs a company in California, began... by sliding into my Facebook DMs with death and nuclear threats simply over criticism of the Pakistan Army. When I posted screenshots and recordings of his messages, people identified his LinkedIn profile. He panicked and changed his profile picture on Facebook, deleted his first message, and started claiming he is based in Switzerland to create confusion over jurisdiction. After sending his second message, he blocked me. Since then, he has been blocking and unblocking me at his discretion purely to send further abuse. He unblocks me long enough to deliver a message, then blocks me again so I cannot respond. Typical Paki coward. This is not some random trolling. It is ideological intimidation. The rage is not about disagreement. It is about silencing critics of Pakistan’s military establishment and asserting religious supremacy through threats. The abuse is explicitly targeted at my Hindu faith. Pakistan’s state narrative, its textbooks, and its public discourse, rooted in radical Islam, normalise hostility towards Hindus and Jews. Western democracies assume that migration leads to assimilation into pluralistic norms. In some cases, it may. But in most cases, it does not. This is why a Pakistani living in California still feels entitled to terrorise non-Muslims. If you believe in your faith, defend it with arguments. If you believe in your army, defend it with facts. But if your first instinct is death threats and religious slurs, then the problem is not the critic. The problem is what you have been taught to believe about those who are different from you. No one should have to tolerate threats for exercising free speech. And no one living in a democratic country should imagine that online intimidation is consequence-free. I call on the U.S. authorities to identify this racist and hateful individual with violent tendencies, as it is clear by his actions that his ideological conditioning from Pakistan did not evaporate at the immigration counter. He is a threat to the entire civilised world.show more

Announcing #buildshit! Calling all interaction fanatics, designers and engineers... for a fun and light interaction design challenge. The winner takes home $29. Challenge: Create a reveal interaction with two views: 1. The first view should showcase a photograph with the photographer's name and social handle. 2. The second view should present all the metadata and reveal itself through some interaction. Details: 1. Post your work with #buildshit to participate. Use the assets linked below. You may include additional metadata. 2. You have the complete freedom to design any layout and interaction as long as you have the two views and the required assets. 3. The post with the most likes wins (to keep things simple). 4. Tools do not matter. Participate with Code, Figma, Adobe, Jitter, Procreate, Spline, Rive or anything that you are comfortable with. 5. The submissions end on 1 September 2024 at 2:00 PM IST. 6. Do not take the challenge too seriously. This is all about having fun, exploring your creativity and learning from others. Assets: Why? I love thoughtful and delightful interactions. I believe there are always a lot of ways to approach a problem. I am interested in understanding how different people approach the same problem and learning from them. -- Participate for the fun of it, share it with others and let me know if there is something that you'd like to be done differently.show more

Most people's minds are wired to seek safety, comfort,... to avoid embarrassment or failure. Reduce risk as much as possible. Don't stand out. Don't attempt high greatness, because the fall if it doesn't succeed would be too embarrassing and painful. I actually had this mentality impressed on me from a powerful scene in the film 'Troy'. What made Achilles so unusual, what set him apart from other men? The boy is just being honest. "I've seen the Thessalonian you're fighting. He's the biggest man I've ever seen! I wouldn't want to fight him!" What would 99% of people say to that? "Yeah, this is gonna be a tough fight!" "I'm a warrior, this is what I do." "War is all hell." There's like a million things that different men would've said to that. The boy's telling him, "You're about to risk it all against a very big dangerous opponent! You could die! Maybe you can get out of it! You don't want to die, do you?" Well, what does Achilles reveal about himself in his response? He looks at the boy and he tells him something TRUE but does he does in a very cold way. "That is why no one will remember your name." And he rides away to battle. Why did Achilles react that way to what the boy said to him? Achilles understands how MOST PEOPLE THINK. He was telling the boy, "Great people who leave a name that will be remembered WANT to fight the Thessalonian. That's not you. You will be forgotten." They 'see the Thessalonian' they have to fight and immediately all their thoughts, their mind is bent on GETTING AWAY FROM THE DANGER, they start to plan and plot to ESCAPE FROM THE RISK, and to avoid the POTENTIAL FAILURE. Achilles wasn't WIRED that way. He WANTED to fight the Thessalonian. He WELCOMED the danger, the risk, the specter of failure, because he saw an opportunity for GREATNESS. Those who leave their biggest mark on the world aren't those who run from challenges, stay in the safe zones, wire themselves to steer clear of GREATNESS. Musk understands this. You're trying to make it sound like he's an autistic freak who can't help it. No, he CHOOSES to react this way to failure, to get up and keep going until GREATNESS ARRIVES. He's willing to pay the price over and over again to reach his goals, where many people would have given up after too many failures, too much lost money, too many times being laughed at. Achilles was the same way. He wanted to fight the most dangerous, impressive warriors. How else do you leave a name that will live forever?show more

VTubing is for everyone! I don't like to bring... this up, but recent events in the VTuber community made some people really vile. I had my M&G at HolMat last week and had people come up and just yell at me for being a girl in the "womans world", that is VTubing, no idea about who I was, or why I was there. I had the same group return to my handler multiple times, I felt really worried about the person carrying me around having to deal with this repeatedly and tried to steer them away from the group. It seems they found my YT and left me a handful of the same comments, luckily all caught by moderation tools. While I will refrain from M&G's for a little until this calms down I want to say this; I have been managing for over 1.5 years now, I deliberately take on male VTubers to show them that they can still do it. I take on people that have babiniku accounts, those that are changing from one gender presentation to another and want help, and those that have no gender presentation in their avatar. A lot of male VTubers struggle to find a manager because the stereotype is that all male VTubers are evil and it perpetuates a stereotype that extends beyond entertainment industry subcultures like streaming. VTubing has always been a medium, while character and marketing matters, it's about what makes you happy, YOU are the person that makes the content. Use whatever you want as an avatar, use a voice changer if that's what you want to do. Every month I have a male client bring up they can't do it the same way, that it's easier if jiggle physics or a cute voice is the answer to fast growth. And I tell them yeah, I can also do ASMR, I can do drama content, collab with a larger person, and get to x amount of viewers. There are shortcuts in every entertainment profession and subculture. Does it last? Do quick fixes for anything ever last? Yes, great physics and an expensive model can get people in, but if your value, your way of interacting with people, your content plan and marketing is ass, you can pack up. Most of us start on a small budget, premade or resold models, and it's the same in the big league entertainment industry too. Can I take out a loan and put myself on a billboard tomorrow, can I pay the most expensive model artist and rigger and get in along corporate VTubers tomorrow? Sure. Will it last, will it be genuine, will people trust me? Hell no. Genuine communities and growth build trust. I think streaming, creative industries, entertainment, are full of people, regardless of gender, that will see success and call it "easy", because of what they see as the end product. They don't see most VTubers working a second job, they don't see the managers, they don't see 100+ hours a month going into content production, years invested in singing and voice lessons, model redebut after redebut. I think a lot of male VTubers get a bad rep, because so many boys are raised without putting emphasis on empathy and creativity, watching my brothers be told they should not pursue art, that theatre class is a waste of time, and that they needed to go study x or y to make money for their families in the future was heartbreaking. Nobody should have to look at others and feel so much hatred for society they turn against a whole group of people. If you want to pursue entertainment, please do. If you want to grow and try and make a name for yourself, you should start there, not with yelling about how you already failed. "Oh but I can't", "Oh but the odds are stacked against me", look at the big streamers, look at Ironmouse who overcame everything with hard work, look at Kiara who rose from the ashes, look at everyone that fights against their odds every day and give it your all. If you already think you lost, then you have nothing to lose. Don't give up on your dreams because others tell you to.show more

I would not wish ill health or death on... anyone, including my enemies, unless I was genuinely in mortal fear for my own life. But let's be straight about this. Politicians can post their deepest sympathies, families can insist they were “good boys”, and social media can produce all the usual excuses. None of that means the rest of us have to rewrite reality. Driving a car at high speed the wrong way down a motorway, knowing innocent people could be coming towards you at 120 km/h, isn't normal driving and it isn't some innocent mistake. It is an extraordinarily reckless decision that could have killed an entirely innocent family. Does that mean I think they deserved to die? No. Do I take pleasure in their deaths? No. But I'm also not going to pretend that people repeatedly involved in serious criminality are “little angels” simply because they're dead. If the newspaper reports about their previous activities and encounters with Gardaí are accurate, they were far from angels. They were thugs whose behaviour should have resulted in meaningful intervention long before things reached this point. And yes, I'll use another unfashionable expression: Live by the sword, die by the sword. Not because I'm celebrating anybody's death, but because repeatedly choosing extreme risk, violence and criminality eventually has consequences. Tragically, sometimes those consequences are irreversible. Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I'm becoming intolerant. But when I was growing up, there were consequences for our actions. Thankfully my parents never hit me, but discipline existed. We got the rod in school I can still remember it drying beside the paraffin heater and the strap was used in secondary school, although I missed most of that. I'm not suggesting we start beating children again. But where exactly did we go from discipline and personal responsibility to being terrified of telling children NO? When did participation become more important than achievement? When did allowing children to run around shops and restaurants like little maniacs become enlightened parenting? When I was young, if you behaved like that, your parents dealt with you. You quickly learned that other people existed and that your behaviour affected them. Manners and respect are free commodities. When I hear children telling their own parents to “f*** off”, I wonder what they're going to be like as adults. If that's the respect they have for the people who brought them into the world, fed them, clothed them and cared for them, what respect are they going to have for a teacher, Garda, employer or complete stranger? Then we wonder why workplaces increasingly need chill-out spaces and “mental health days” because ordinary pressures become too much. In my day we respected our bosses, did the job we were employed to do and were happy to have a job. Yes, society has changed, and some of those changes were unquestionably for the better. But removing consequences wasn't one of them. And I'm going to use another expression that will undoubtedly upset people: Feral scumbags. Because when young people are repeatedly stealing cars, carrying knives or machetes, attacking people and terrorising neighbourhoods, I'm considerably more interested in protecting their victims than finding another fashionable euphemism for their behaviour. And yes, perhaps we need to discuss bringing back industrial schools. Before somebody deliberately misunderstands that sentence, I don't mean resurrecting the religious institutions, brutality or abuse associated with parts of that system. I mean the basic principle of removing persistent young offenders from the streets and putting them into secure residential institutions with discipline, education, vocational training and consequences. If you're 16 or 17 and repeatedly terrorising a community, perhaps knowing that you're facing several years in a secure institution followed by the adult criminal justice system if you continue offending after 18 might make you think twice. Because whatever we're doing now clearly isn't frightening some of these young offenders. Young lads can apparently parade knives and machetes on social media as though they're fashion accessories. Communities are terrorised. People accumulate conviction after conviction. And I have seen an example of the attitude I'm talking about with my own eyes. I had reason to attend court in Loughrea, Co. Galway, around this time last year. There were three young offenders in the dock, one of them flanked by two prison officers. I was sitting in the public gallery immediately behind the legal teams. When this individual spotted me, he apparently decided that making disparaging remarks about me would be great entertainment. He laughed. He jeered. It was all great craic. What struck me particularly was how relaxed the whole thing appeared. He was joking with the prison officers beside him and, from where I was sitting, they appeared to be laughing along with some of it. The judge lost patience with him on two occasions. It didn't appear to bother him in the slightest. I obviously cannot know what was going through his head, but the impression he gave me was that he believed he was untouchable. What stayed with me wasn't the insults themselves. I've heard considerably worse. It was the complete lack of respect for the court, the judge and everyone around him. When the court adjourned for lunch, I couldn't resist a little dig of my own: “Where are we going for lunch? I really fancy a steak. I wonder what the prisoners get?” That wiped away some of the laughter. His response was to start shouting abuse at me, including calling me a “f*ing f**t”. Charming. I walked away thinking that if somebody can stand in a courtroom, in front of a judge, flanked by prison officers, and still behave as though the entire proceedings are a joke, what exactly is supposed to deter him when he's back outside? I doubt that scene was unique to one courtroom in Galway. And everybody waits for the inevitable tragedy. Then, when it finally happens, politicians express shock and sympathy and everyone asks how this could possibly have happened. Perhaps we should start asking that question before somebody dies. Call me old-fashioned. Call me intolerant. Call me whatever you like. I believe in manners. I believe in respect. I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in rehabilitation. And I believe in consequences. Because allowing feral scumbags to terrorise communities without meaningful consequences isn't compassion. It's abandoning their victims and ultimately abandoning the offenders themselves. Live by the sword, die by the sword. It's an old saying for a reason.show more