𝐓𝐨𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐃𝐞𝐜 𝟑𝟏 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐚 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝! 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒... 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐬 🔒 Caged 366 days (and still going!) 💦🕳️ Load count: 759 (that’s 2.07 loads per day on average and ~3 GALLONS of semen by volume) 🍆👤 Fucked & seeded by ~500 different breeders 📆 Cumdump events: 11 🍆🍆 DPs: 18 🤜🕳️Fists taken: 70 (earned my doubles and elbow badges this year!) 🟡😛 Drank from the tap: 15 🟡🕳️ Got pissfucked: 4 🔬 Monthly STI tests, daily PrEP, DoxyPEP kept me safe 🦠 STIs: gonorrhea 2x (not bad, considering the numbers…DoxyPEP works!) 🍆😵‍💫 Hands-free orgasms from getting fucked: 14 🔒😵‍💫 Vibrator on cage orgasms: 20 ✊🍆 # of times I jacked off: 0 (haven’t held my uncaged dicklet in my hand since 2023…I don’t even really remember what it feels like tbh)show more

12 months ago i was surviving on tuna cans... in Dubai this was the disgusting 12m² apartment I got kicked out for unpaid rent today I'm making $62K+/month from AI & live wherever I want in September 2024, i paid $4,000 to flew to Dubai for Hassan Haider's mastermind thinking I'd network for 3 days and go home what happened next was the most unhinged year of my life on day 1 I had a Closer Cartel sales interview at 12 AM Dubai time while staying at Paramount Hotel 1 AM: went to the balcony and met two men in their 40s first time I'd ever talked to actual millionaires they had yachts, showed me pictures with Real Madrid footballers, chain smoking on the top floor bars until 4 AM as a naive kid fresh out of college, i was completely enchanted by these guys they gave me the "sell me this pen" test on the spot - i remember nailing it half drunk lmao they were impressed enough to spend hours with me, showing off their lifestyle, promising rolexes, talking about making me rich after ONE conversation with these strangers, my 21-year-old brain made the most impulsive decision of my life: abandoned my entire US setup to move to Dubai permanently and join them on their venture of 'commodity trading' i thought i'd found my ticket to the top i didn't even attend a single mastermind event I paid $4,000 originally for my parents lost their fucking minds the household was in complete chaos for months thought I was getting scammed by "retarded people" I'd just met the honeymoon phase in dubai lasted exactly 14 days. then reality hit... these "mentors" were complete amateurs one was an alcoholic who'd be supportive one day, then threaten me the next would threaten me over 200 dirhams ($50) convinced me to invest my entire $4,000 net worth in commodity trading told me he had CIA connections who'd "take me down" as a 21-year-old dependent on visa sponsorship, these threats felt like death sentences a year later, still haven't seen that money back spent months trying to broker copper cathode, crude oil, gold deals worth tens of thousands thinking I'd make $50K commissions that would solve everything none of the deals ever closed just endless paperwork leading nowhere we were all inexperienced amateurs pretending to be commodity traders the survival period was insane my relationship w/ the landlord broke down when I couldn't pay rent for 2-3 weeks, i survived on 1-2 cans of tuna daily lost 22 pounds, went from 67kg to 57kg all my credit cards were over limits, all debit accounts negative, rent in dallas was overdue literally "live or die trying" mentality for 3 days couldn't even go back to my place had to go to bars and pick up different women just to have somewhere to sleep one from Iran, one from Eastern Europe, third i don't remember meanwhile i'm still trying everyday to make cash - training people at the gym, doing random gigs for anything get money in yet funnily enough despite being financially broke, i somehow maintained access to exclusive social circles would be invited to private superyachts with 7 millionaires and 30-40 Russian, Ukrainian, Swedish supermodels private mansion parties in Marina Bay the contrast i'd see on a day by day was surreal: one day surviving on tuna cans, next day in the burj khalifa at 3am at a girls place overlooking the business bay, then 4 hours later, i'm in my shoebox room the entire experience in dubai definitely taught me more lessons about life than i ever would watching a podcast or reading a book i learnt that personal energy & charisma matter more than financial status if i could access the highest social circles while being completely broke, then what can i not do? meanwhile, I was working remotely for Ticketmaster with massive timezone conflicts - getting warnings for poor performance daily. I wasn't even showing up to team meetings because I'd fuck off to random establishments to connect with people and try to make something happen if I'd been fired, would've lost my visa status and been permanently unable to return to the US was literally playing with my entire future amidst all this chaos, i did end up making one or two really good friends however the only solace i'd get once in a while was going to the Dubai Mall for hotpot, just having normal fun conversations one of them actually worked for the CIA - he'd have the coolest & most surreal stories, we would often hit the gym together and finally, the turning point came in November 2024 at 2 AM when i discovered a video about AI chatbots with nothing to lose, i built my first chatbot that night started selling basic AI services on Upwork began making real money from AI systems and kept doubling down on it around the start of this year, i returned to the US when AI work generated consistent income and since then, its been only up so yeah there was a fair amount of loneliness during that stint complete uncertainty on a day by day basis. in flight or fight mode pretty much 24/7 constantly thinking where i'm going to get my next 10 AED from but exposing myself to all of that turmoil has definitely given me an edge in business, whether it comes to negotiation, deal-making, seeing through shit, leading people, putting people in their place, etc if you're also chasing any kind of goal/ mission just remember that its never truly over it only is when you convince yourself it is you can always rise from the ashes and have an epic comeback story to tellshow more

Dear David Coltart, WHY I CANNOT SUPPORT QUINTUPLE C:... COLTART, CHAMISA AND CCC My attention has been drawn to your fraudulent and disgusting tweet you posted on my Twitter TL yesterday David, in which you quoted a tweet I posted four years ago on 22 January 2019 in memory of my father. I reproduce below both tweets for ease of reference: “I have always genuinely sympathized with you Jonathan - the loss of your father in such circumstances must be devastating. I just don’t understand why you continue to side with the party which brought such suffering to your family, and which still brings so much suffering.” – Tweet by David Coltart, 30 July 2023; commenting on my tweet below I posted four years ago: “1/5 On 22 January 1983 my father, Melusi Job Mlevu, was callously murdered in Tsholotsho by gukurahundi soldiers & the CIO. They tortured him upon his arrest & in front of his family; got him to dig a shallow grave, tortured him again; pumped bullets into his body & buried him!” – Jonathan Moyo tweet posted on 22 January 2019. Now David, are you really serious that you “have always genuinely sympathised with me”, because of “the loss of [my] father in such circumstances”? And since there’s no strategic ambiguity about the meaning of “always”, as it means exactly what it says, how have you “always genuinely” expressed your sympathy over all the years, since knowing about the circumstances under which I lost my father? The fact that your tweet yesterday is a response to a tweet I posted a long four years ago on 22 January 2019 – in memory of my father who was murdered by the Fifth Brigade in Tsholotsho on 22 January 1983 – shows and proves that you’re a fraud and a charlatan with neither sensitivity towards me and my family nor respect for us as Africans and human beings. All told, and typically of Zimbabweans of British colonial extraction and in particular of soul-free Rhodies, you’re contemptuous of our culture as a family and as Africans. You see David, it is fraudulent and utterly disgusting of you to claim that you have ever sympathised with me over my father’s loss. It’s actually patronising and very insulting in the extreme. Your fraud is clear even to yourself, that’s why you did not express your so-called sympathy when I first posted my tweet on 22 January 2019 in memory of my father who was murdered on 22 January 1983. In fact, until your fraudulent tweet yesterday, you had never before expressed any genuine or even non genuine sympathy for me and my family regarding the loss of my father on 22 January 1983. Even fools will immediately see that the key sentence in your tweet yesterday is not about your cruel declaration of fraudulent sympathy for me and my family over the circumstances of my father’s loss, a loss my family commemorated this year not yesterday but seven months ago on 22 January 2023, with no tweet of sympathy from you. The sentence in your tweet yesterday that captures what you really foolishly communicating to me is this: “I just don’t understand why you continue to side with the party which brought such suffering to your family, and which still brings so much suffering.” David: what I say, believe and do is without exception based on and an existential product of what I know, what I think and what I have experienced or lived. I never say, believe or do anything that I don’t know, don’t, I have not thought of or which I don’t believe. Now David, you pretend to be a democrat who believes in the rule of law as enshrined in the Constitution, so, what business of yours is my choice of what side to support or to not support in politics? Are my freedom of conscience and my right to make political choices freely now subject to your understanding, or are they my constitutional rights, as they are for every Zimbabwean, in terms of sections 60 and 67 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe? Are you aware David and do you understand that the Constitution in 67(1)(b) says every Zimbabwean citizen has the right “to make political choices freely”? And, David, are you aware that section 60 of the Constitution says every person, not just every Zimbabwean but every person, has the right to freedom of conscience which includes “freedom of thought, opinion, religion or belief”, and “freedom to practice and propagate and give expression to their thought, opinion, religion or belief, whether in public or in private and whether alone or together with others”. The fact that you quoted and abused my personal tweet I posted on 22 January 2019 in memory of my father who was brutally murdered by the Fifth Brigade on 22 January 1983 to say you “don’t understand why you [me] continue to side with the party which brought such suffering to your [my] family, and which still brings so much suffering”; shows that you are either ignorant of sections 60 and 67 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, and proves that you are a fraud and a charlatan with no constitutional values. Why do you want to police my freedom of conscience and my right to make my political choices freely? Just why do you and your lot in CCC, think that you can interfere with my freedom of conscience and my right to my political choices that are guaranteed to me by the Constitution of Zimbabwe? If you and your lot were genuine democratic change champions, as you claim and purport to be, you would be the first to understand and to propagate freedom of conscience and the right to make political choices freely as sacrosanct constitutional values and principles that must be respected for every Zimbabwean at all times. But this has not been possible because you are frauds and charlatans. Now, your attitude towards me, the one captured in the disgusting tweet you posted yesterday, leads me to conclude without any fear of being contradicted that you are a frivolous and stupid person, David. Otherwise, if you care to know, there are three months that are cruel to me. October in which I lost my daughter Zanele in 2015, November because of what happened to me, my family and some colleagues during the 2017 military coup – it was also on 11 November 1965 that Rhodesia under which you blossomed, unilaterally declared independence – and 22 January the dark day on which my father was murdered. These are traumatic days for me in the calendar year. You see, I was a student in California in the US when my father was murdered by the Fifth Brigade in cold blood on 22 January 1983, having gone to the US before independence in 1977. When this awful tragedy happened, I did not know who my father was. I was born when my mother was barely 16 years old, and I was raised by my maternal grandparents who, like my mother, did not want me to know who my father was for reasons best known to them. Although, as I grew up, I understood their position from our cultural perspective as Africans, it nevertheless profoundly pained me. Truth be told, I was most grateful and I still am to this day, that my grandfather was a great father and my grandmother a great mother to me in ways that made me who I am today. I got to know who my father was well after I had graduated with my doctorate in 1988 and long after his gruesome murder, about which I was first told only 10 years ago. Since then, while it's been a profound rebirth for me to connect with my father through the loving Mlevu clan at large, I owe my dear sister Simiso an existential debt of gratitude. Through her, my kids have a hand-holder gateway through which to know about their grandfather. I really thank God and the spirit of the Mlevu clan for Simiso. The fact that I was born on 12 January, and that my father was brutally murdered on 22 January, makes the month of January an unbearable time of anguish for me, more so given that my father and I never met in life. When four years ago on 22 January 2019 I posted the tweet that you abused yesterday with reckless abandon, as you exposed your disconnection from the African experience, I was existentially troubled by the worst that could have happened to me and to my family on 15 November 2017, which got me thinking about what happened to my father, and even more troubling against the backdrop of the events of November 2017, I was devastated by the fact that I never met my father, and I spent the better part of 22 January 2019 wondering what life could have been for me had I known him in life and grown up under his parental care and guidance. You see David, maybe this is not true of people of European ancestry like you but, for many Africans it is very common for kids to be raised by their grandparents, like I was. As things turned out, I grew up knowing many such kids as my peers, the majority of whom never got to know who fathered them, some of whom are leading very successful lives in society as you read this. Unlike them, I was fortunate to end up knowing who my father was, but I was unfortunate not to have met him, and even more unfortunate to have known of him long after his death, made worse by the tragic circumstances of that death. I do not have a fly by night connection with Zanu PF. When I finished my high school in California, I proceeded to university there for my undergraduate education on a scholarship I got through Zanu PF. While an undergraduate, I was the political commissar of the Zanu PF branch in Los Angeles. I did my masters and doctoral degrees with academic scholarships endorsed by Zanu PF and underwritten by the Government of Zimbabwe through a staff development programme at the University of Zimbabwe. Having gone through Mgagao run by Zanu PF, and having gotten university education to the highest level under the auspices of Zanu PF, I have a long history and experience with Zanu PF, and with Zanu PF people whose complexities define who I am as an adult Zimbabwean, for better or for worse. It's my history, I'm proud of it and I own it. It’s an inescapable truth that each individual, and each therefore each person has a unique existential history best known to himself or herself, family and to a small cohort that has been intimate parts of that personal history. It's hopelessly foolish for someone to hope to prescribe a history on anyone. Every human being is who they are. And it's a fact not exclusive to me that my association with Zanu PF has not always been rosy. Life is a personal struggle between the person or the individual and the social formations through which life goes on. It’s common cause, that the military coup was a traumatic experience for me and my family and that it was profoundly painful and life changing in untold ways. It’s also common cause and not surprising to any normal human being that I blamed Zanu PF for that traumatic experience. Anyone else in my situation would have done the same at point or another. Yet the bigger story is that I, my family and my colleagues survived that 2017 ordeal with the very direct, active and truly genuine assistance and support from Zanu PF people. Working with other African Angeles, and I emphasize African Angeles, it was Zanu PF people who made sure that we were able to be safe and to get out of the country to be where I am today, all of them at great risk to their lives or livelihoods. In 2017 I was saved to be alive today by Zanu PF people. During the life threatening 2017 ordeal that my family and I went through, there was not even one person associated with the opposition as it was then, or as it is today, who reached out to find out where I was or how I was doing. It is common cause, some of it is documented, that many in the opposition then and who are still in opposition today, actually wanted me dead, all because of my political differences with them. You David Coltart, who now wants to pretend that you “have always genuinely sympathised with me”, never inquired after me. That’s why I think you are a monumental fraud and a charlatan. I repeat, I was helped out of the traumatic ordeal in 2017 by Zanu PF people, not by anyone from your lot David, not even one. Of course, at some point and largely because of the 2018 general election I found myself connected with some of your lot, especially Nelson Chamisa and others who were close to him or working with him i the election campaign, as the MDC-A presidential election candidate. I will not rehash that story here, as it has been told very well by many others. From my experience, and the lessons I have extrapolated from the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, such as on the attached video clip, I have come to better appreciate that it is a mistake and wrong to a understand and define a political party with a deep-seated background and history like Zanu PF in terms of its leadership; rather, a grounded political party with a long history is necessarily defined by its founding values, constitution and membership, not least because the membership is permanent while the leadership comes and goes. By the same token, I have come to better appreciate that the mistakes or excesses of the leadership of grounded political parties with an entrenched history should not automatically or reflexively be ascribed or attributed to or blamed on the membership. On 15 November 2022, Patrick Zhuwao and I wrote an open letter to Zanu PF members to precisely make this point. I am attaching herewith a link to that letter, lest you missed it. It’s a self-explanatory letter which contextualises and explains everything that I did and said between 15 November 2017 and 14 November 2022. It also explains why do not support Nelson Chamisa and your CCC. I stand by the contents of that letter. In this connection, I draw your attention and that of your lot to an interview done by the late VP Joshua Nkomo in 1983 – which is attached herewith as already mentioned – in which Nkomo explains why the Fifth Brigade was not a Shona issue. Although Nkomo made it clear that gukurahundi was a political and not a tribal issue, I have come to understand and appreciate that it was a political issue not in the sense of Zanu PF as a political party in membership terms but, rather, in the sense of the political leadership and, more particularly, of individuals within that leadership. However, given your utter contempt for sections 60 and 67 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, I do not expect you to understand the dangers of painting a tribe or a political party with one brush, or to understand the misguided consequences of conflating the leadership of a political party with the party’s membership or even of treating the leadership of a political party as a monolithic formation that always acts in concert. Basically David, and just like Nelson Chamisa’s trolls, it's clear you believe that you can abuse my personal and tragic circumstances to blackmail me for your doomed political purposes in two ways. First, you think you can abuse the circumstances of my father’s brutal death to somehow generate cheap and outrageous propaganda for yourself, Nelson Chamisa and CCC that I support Zanu PF which killed my father, and you do this under your self-indulgent presumption that everyone who is in Zanu PF as a political party is murderous by definition. Second, and based on this falsification, you’re abusing my tragic personal circumstances regarding my father’s loss to blackmail me into supporting you in particular, given my attack on your imposition as CCC's Ward 4 councillor candidate in Bulawayo; Nelson Chamisa and CCC . Your outrageous position is that if I cannot support you, I must keep quiet about you, under the ridiculous presumption that you’re all by definition virtuous, competent, capable, the only and best democratic alternative for everyone in Zimbabwe. On the back of sections 60 and 67 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe and drawing from my knowledge, thoughts, experiences and received wisdom from the late VP Joshua Nkomo, I have dealt with your self-indulgent presumption that Zanu PF is a monolithic formation with undifferentiated leadership and membership structures, in which you take everyone in it to be murderous by definition. In light of the fact that you invited this intervention by your disgusting and intrusive tweet you posted yesterday, and because we are age mates, I conclude my rejoinder to your offensive tweet by telling you what I think about you, about Nelson Chamisa and about CCC. David, as a former member of the Rhodesian security services which were murderous and which committed unspeakable atrocities across Zimbabwe and beyond its borders into Zambia and Mozambique, you have no moral authority to pontificate about human rights or anything of the sort. You David Coltart operated in Matabeleland where you did dastardly things, some of which you narrate in your autobiography and many of which you will take to your grave untold, because you never faced a commission of inquiry to be grilled under oath about your service in the Rhodesian security services. The fact that a person like you has remained active in Zimbabwean public affairs for 43 years since independence is a huge credit to our national politics because, with your background in the Rhodesian security services, you would not have survived this long in public life elsewhere. It’s mind boggling that Chamisa has imposed you to run for Ward 4 councillor in Bulawayo, after you were resoundingly defeated in your party’s Ward 4 community candidate selection caucus in which you were clobbered and you came a distant last among the contestants. Thanks to your being power hungry, you have made it possible for everyone to see that you’re a fake democrat and a charlatan who believes in the imposition of candidates. Your criticism of what you say is Zanu PF's undemocratic practices is hollow and hypocritical. Furthermore, it’s shocking is that Chamisa is bent on imposing you from Harare as Bulawayo mayor. You don’t qualify for that position not least because you do not speak the language of the local community in Bulawayo despite having been born there 66 years ago. Unlike Members of Parliament or Senators, whose chambers conduct their business mainly in English, Councillors and Mayors work in the local languages of their local communities. For the above reasons, and as an expression of my freedom of conscience and my right to make my political choices freely, I do not and cannot support you at all David. As for Chamisa, having worked closely with him between 2018 and 2021, I came to the settled conclusion in November 2021 that he is a dictator with a very dangerous God complex, in that he sees himself as having been chosen by God to lead Zimbabwe, and more ominously, he claims to have direct communication with God who has the last word on what he should do or say in public. In politics, that’s an unworkable Jim Jones proposition. Because of his God complex, Chamisa is visible only when there are elections as he was in the 2018 harmonised general election, March 2022 by-elections and now for the 23 August harmonised general election. After he ditched his supporters in August 2018 when he called them "ma stupids" [stupid people], in January 2019 and in July 2020, his unavailability to provide leadership when his supporters needed it triggered a viral political joke that: ‘in Zimbabwe there are three things that are unavailable when you need them the most, the UN, a condom and Nelson Chamisa’. But even more telling aboutChamisa is the shocking way in which he has used CCC since its formation in January 2022, and particularly in the party’s candidate selection for the forthcoming elections, to ruthlessly purge the opposition. It's been scary and it explains why the opposition in Zimbabwe today is the most clueless and the weakest since independence in 1980. How can a democratic change champion insist on running a political party with no constitution, no structures, no bank account and no accountability? I cannot support a leader like that. There’s nothing more dangerous in politics than, a young 'popular' dictator with a God complex. My conscience and freedom to political choices freely do not allow me to support a leader like that. As for CCC, it has no ideology, no values, no constitution, no structures, no bank account, no policies and no other visible office bearers besides Chamisa, Gift Siziva, Fadzayi Mahere and Amos Chibaya; and it has not been launched to boot. There’s just no way anywhere on earth that a political formation like that can be supported by rational people with rational expectations. That’s why I cannot side with you David or with Chamisa or with CCC. You’re not “the alternative”, you’re just a worse and more dangerous alternative which can only be supported by polticidal people who do not mind moving from the frying pan into the fire! Jonathan Moyo 31 July 2023show more

I have a story about addiction from a different... perspective. A story where recovery was not possible. I have one sibling. An older brother. Everyone loved him. It was easy to love him. He died 10 years ago. It was a horrible death that took him 20 years to accomplish, dragging everyone who loved him along the way. He was an amazing musician. He didn't read music. No lessons. Hand him any instrument, and he can play it. He had a big heart. He was easily the funniest person I've ever known. And he is the only other human being who speaks fluent movie-script-quotes with precision and skill. But alcohol took over in his mid-20s. Bam Margera is just 2 years younger than my brother. He reminds me of my brother *so* much. Everything Bam and his family went through with his addiction is what my brother and family went through. My brother left high school because he was a gifted songwriter and musician. Bam left because he was a gifted skater. My brother was really into editing and producing films, and so is Bam. When Ryan Dunn died, and Bam went off the deep end, I was watching my brother do the same thing every time a strong emotion hit him, and he simply didn't know what to do with it. My brother was so beautiful on the outside, yet unrecognizable at the end. I can not tell you how many times my brother would go missing. Hundreds of times. He would sometimes go missing for up to a week. Then we'd get a call from the police or a hospital. Usually, the hospital would be first because he'd be near death. Then they would keep him on a 5150 at a mental health facility. Then he would come home. One time, he chased me with a knife in his hand, screaming he was going to kill me as I was running out of my parents' home on a cordless phone dialing 911. I found a fifth of vodka in his room and poured it down the drain. He went looking for it 20 minutes later, and it was empty...and I told him I poured it out. When I was 24 years old, I landed my first job that came with an office. My name was outside of it. I was stoked. I worked my ass off to get there. But there was no happiness at that time in my life. I remember my father calling me at work, sitting in that office, to say he was coming to pick me up because he knew where my brother, who had been missing for 4 days, was. The credit card he stole from my mother showed he was at a little oceanfront motel 10 minutes away. And I remember thinking to myself on the way over there...I have to open the motel room door. I can't let my dad see him hanging. It will destroy his life. I told my dad to wait about 10 feet to my left, and I opened the door, and there was my brother fashioning a sheet into a noose. Another time he went missing, and they found him on the roof of a building with the inside of his arms slashed from elbow to wrist, just lying in a pool of blood. Dark shit. Both of the insides of his arms were mutilated from being sliced open so many times. At least 30, if not more. He stopped wearing short-sleeved shirts in public about 10 years before he died. He got to the point of seizures when he withdrew and had alcohol-related dementia for the last 3 years of his life, which would come and go. Then one day, after 2 decades, he called my parents and said something was wrong. My parents went over to his place, ended up calling 911, the ambulance got there, and he started walking outside with assistance from paramedics and collapsed. In front of my parents. He was rushed to the hospital. I had not seen my brother for the last 9 years of his life. He disowned me. Because he felt he had to. He killed my dog when he got drunk 9 years before he died. No one knows if he meant to or not, he was so wasted. He couldn't face me after that. So he disowned me. And a piece of my heart died the day he did it. I talked to my parents right before they left to see what was wrong that day. The last thing I said to my dad was, "Do not let him die without me having an opportunity to say goodbye." My dad called me from the er 2 hours later and said, "You should come over now. He won't know you're here." When I got there, I was shocked at what I saw. He wasn't the right color. He was in a coma. Severe internal bleeding. On life support. It was jarring even after seeing him in a much similar state hundreds of times for such a long time. He was taken to the ICU 3 hours later, where they would transfuse blood by the bag damn near constantly, and it just shot out of his nose. It was bloody. A lot of blood. After about 6 hours, I told my parents to go home and get some rest. I would stay with him. And I talked to him like he was right there. Like one of the hundreds of pillow-fort slumber parties we had as kids. Like no time had passed, and his addiction never existed. I showed him pictures of my life over the past decade on my phone...just like he was there. But he wasn't there. And after 3 hours and extensive talks with several doctors and specialists, I had to make the decision to remove his life support. After my parents returned and said goodbye, I told them to wait out in the hall until he passed because I could not allow them to have the memory of him dying, and I returned to my brother's side, and said what I needed to say, bawling my heart out. I told them to turn off the machines, and I held him in my arms as he died. It took just over 7 minutes. And I just held him. I had Nine Inch Nails playing for him. One of his favorites thanks to Pretty Hate Machine. He was a fan for life after that. He was my best friend. But he was also someone I had to protect myself from if he was intoxicated. This is the end that usually becomes a reality for addicts and their families. Then there's someone like Bam Margera. He went to the same place my brother went to in his head. And he came back. Bam is one of the greatest comebacks ever and a story of recovery worth knowing. I see YouTube shorts of Bam skating again every day, and I'm so moved that I just sit here and cry. You can see his personality is back. You have no idea how rare that is. Their personality shows very little while they're in their addiction. Recovery stories are incredibly personal to so many people, including those who have gone through addiction with an addict because they love them so much...they'd see anything they had to see and endure anything they have to endure just to be there with them at their lowest point. Addicts are not monsters. The stuff they use to numb the pain they do not understand is the real monster. And when you put enough of that into a human being, they do things they would *never* do without it. People are not pure. We are more complex than that. We are good and bad. Light and dark. Right and wrong. Chaotic and serene. You will find that the answer to every question you have about life is usually "both" for a reason. Because one can not exist without the other. With recovery stories like Hunter Biden's and Bam Margera's out in the ether, more people will be less ignorant as to how this disease plays out, and that will do nothing but good for so many families struggling with this issue. Addiction isn't just for the addict. Addiction is for everyone who loves them, as well. It's just a different perspective of hell. So listen to recovery stories with renewed respect because most addicts end up the way it ended for the only sibling I'll ever have.show more

Min Hee-jin (NewJeans Producer) NHK Music Interview 🔗 “Meticulously... planned debut ‘Attention’” 🧢: When I was preparing to launch NewJeans, I really struggled with deciding what our first piece of content should be. I thought about it for a long time and considered many possibilities. It was a project that came with high expectations, and for me personally, it was also my first opportunity to prove myself. So how I presented it mattered enormously. Even down to the smallest details… like the impression the very first released photo might give, or what kind of impact we could make at launch. I thought hard about what kind of content would be the most effective… should it be a video or a photo? What time of day would be most effective to release it? I consider things like that very carefully. For example, the way a person experiences content at night versus during the day can feel quite different emotionally. So I even thought about those subtle aspects. Eventually, the conclusion I reached was: “Let’s make the most of our situation.” At the time, the members hadn’t been revealed, and no one knew how many of them there were or what kind of group this would be. So I wanted to maximize that curiosity. You know how the more something is concealed, the more curious people become? I wanted to build that curiosity to a peak and then release everything all at once. That’s why we decided not to release a teaser and instead go straight into a full music video. (This was actually inspired by Hyein suggesting we skip teasers.) I didn’t think still images or photos would be enough to fully convey the feeling I wanted to express. I felt that video and music together would evoke the emotional response I was looking for because people experience things synesthetically. When sound, image, and feeling come together, the emotional impact is stronger. I believed the best way to present the members’ images was through music and a moving picture… that’s why we led with a music video. In the debut music video, “Attention,” there’s a scene where the members act out a little drama. I paid very close attention to that moment and created music that would fit it precisely. For me, I don’t just make content… I design the entire process of how it should be shown for the greatest effect. And I believe that’s incredibly important. That first feeling someone gets when they encounter something… that emotion, that spark… is so important to me. I’m very detail-oriented, but I also value fun deeply. So rather than just releasing content, I want to enjoy the process leading up to it. Even when we released our second album, since we shot the entire music video across the country, the sequence of how we released the videos was critical for me. It’s hard to explain all this simply in an interview, but maybe some people noticed: the first content we released that time was actually a teaser for the last track, “ASAP,” and then we followed that with the full music video for “New Jeans,” which was the first track. That order was a carefully calculated strategy. It was designed to guide the audience’s emotional journey. Seeing the audience react just as I had hoped—that whole process was honestly so fun and thrilling for me. I think I really enjoy that kind of thing. ——— “How 'Ditto' was born” 🧢: People often praise the music of NewJeans, and I hear a lot of talk about genres. But actually, I don’t feel bound by genre at all. I love a wide variety of music. I’m not the type to insist on only one particular genre. What I love are songs that blend genres cleverly… those are my personal favorites. So going forward, my focus is not on genre but on whether something feels fresh and whether it can create an emotional moment. I don’t want to define what kind of music we make. And I think you have to experience the flow of the times to really understand what’s meaningful in a given moment. For instance, the song “Ditto” was chosen because it delivered emotion. It matched perfectly with the winter album concept I had envisioned, both in terms of timing and mood. When I hear a song, I tend to trust my gut. I have a pretty strong intuition for which songs will resonate. It’s not about objectively predicting what will be a “hit,” but about whether a song moves your heart… you can just feel it. Of course, my own taste plays a big role. But I think that’s actually my strength as a producer, not as a composer. When I hear a song, I can immediately picture the visual… what kind of story, what kind of vibe it could carry. That allows me to work faster. For example, when expressing something like school uniforms, there are so many possible variations. But I always like to start from the basics… what’s the original idea of a school uniform? I try to return to that. So with “Ditto,” I wanted to tap into something primal… the pure, basic feeling of liking someone. That kind of emotion is universal. Everyone has it; it’s wired into us. When I saw Director Shin Woo-seok’s interpretation of it, I thought, “Yes, that’s it.” That’s the kind of complete interpretation I look for. I believe the completion of a project comes from every person involved thinking about their part down to the final detail… the maximum quality they can bring out. My role is to unify and refine all of that. I draw out the essence of each person’s creativity, trimming away anything unnecessary. So the final product is something that’s polished and high-quality, just the way I envisioned it. That’s my working style. So it’s not like I’m fixated on retro or stuck in a particular style. I don’t think human taste has changed all that much. Things people liked in the past are the same things we like now. It’s just the form of expression that changes with time. I don’t feel bound by “past” or “present.” I don’t even think in those boundaries. To me, it’s all just good taste. You know how kids sometimes have their own little treasure boxes when they’re young? I think my work is kind of like that. I want to make things that never feel dated—that are timelessly enjoyable. ——— “Dance Expression and 'Hype Boy'” 🧢: I had a vision of what kind of girl group I wanted to create. That’s why I chose a song like “Hype Boy.” And to bring out that feeling, we created four different versions of the music video. Every choice had a purpose, everything was designed to maximize the experience of the song. “Hype Boy” is such a unique song. It has this strange, piercing melody that gives people chills in a good way. To emphasize that tingling feeling, I had to break away from the standard K-pop choreography format… you know, the kind where everyone is in perfect formation, doing synchronized moves. But our songs don’t suit that kind of choreography. Our dances are much harder. They require the body to move very naturally with the groove of the melody and beat. So I think our members are incredible. It’s not easy to express naturalness with your body, and you have to really enjoy it to make it look effortless. But they pulled it off so well. They’re still young, but they’re so talented. And through it all, I wanted to avoid making them look like they were performing just for business. I wanted them to show the pure joy and bright spirit that’s natural for people their age… genuine, carefree, radiant. ——— “The difference between NewJeans and conventional K-POP” 🧢: Ah, for me, it’s all about naturalness. And honestly, naturalness isn’t something you can produce or direct into existence. It comes from how I interact with the NewJeans members on a daily basis… what kind of environment they practice in, how they live and work. There are so many things that don’t appear on camera, but those unseen aspects have to be in place in order for true naturalness to come through. That’s why I wanted to create that kind of environment for the girls. And also, I wanted to shape my own working environment in that way too. Only then can something truly natural, something unforced and not overly stimulating, really come out. To begin with, I don’t believe anyone can be completely natural in front of a camera or under the gaze of others. It’s human nature to become self-conscious. That’s why I think naturalness is our strength, but it can’t be our concept. If you try to turn “naturalness” into a concept, it actually becomes incredibly artificial. So why do I place so much importance on naturalness? It’s because the girls are still so young. While other kids their age are going through school and having a wide range of life experiences, these members are living very different lives. Before they officially debuted, I told them, “This is like studying together with me.” Our standard contract is seven years, which is about the same length as going through high school and college in Korea: three years of high school and four years of university. So I told them, “We’re going to school together. We’re learning together.” And in that sense, I want to be a good teacher to them. They’re also surrounded by an incredibly professional team, people they’d never meet even in a traditional school setting. I’ve never really liked the word idol. These days, that word is used more like a job title, something manufactured by the industry, and it’s far from its original meaning. To me, the term idol feels misplaced. It doesn’t really reflect who these artists are or what they represent. And I’m not the kind of person who clings to labels or terminology. In fact, what I really want is to break the stereotypes and preconceptions that come with the idol industry. I want us to show people something different… to challenge those assumptions and redefine what this can look like. That’s the kind of mindset I have. ——— “Isn't it difficult for the members to express "naturalness"?” 🧢: There were a lot of things I considered when forming the group. First and foremost, I think it was important that the members shared a similar vibe… like how I prefer working with staff who align with my taste. It’s important for the crew to be on the same wavelength. And by that, I mean more than just getting along… it also extends to shared values. Of course, people won’t all share identical values, but when we’re facing in a similar direction, everything becomes easier. It’s also just more efficient to work with people who have overlapping tastes. Now, when it comes to our members, they each have their own individual tastes, but those preferences are still in development. Just like we all went through as kids, they’re still growing, still discovering themselves. They’re not in a finished state. So we didn’t cast them based on some complete or polished version of themselves. It wasn’t like, “This person is fully formed, let’s pick her.” It was more like, “Ah, she has potential, there’s something there.” That sense of a spark… those were the kinds of subtleties I paid attention to. I didn’t cast anyone just because they were pretty or could sing well. I don’t work like that. I really value those finer, more delicate aspects. Even the design of the light stick wasn’t something that came from a long strategic planning session… it was actually a spontaneous idea. I didn’t sit down and think, “Let’s make a light stick like this.” NewJeans didn’t have a fixed logo, but I felt we still needed a unifying symbol. So one night, just before going to sleep, I kept thinking about it. Right before dozing off, I started sketching and it turned into a rabbit’s face. When I drew it out, the shape just continued and turned into a bunny. To me, the NewJeans members are like little bunnies… playful, innocent. Their visuals also resemble rabbits in a way. And rabbits symbolize abundance. That made me think: “Ah, maybe our fans will multiply like rabbits. That would be great.” So that bunny face became both a symbol for the members and the fans. The image came to me all at once, and I imagined a venue completely filled with bunny light sticks. That vision led to the creation of the light stick itself. Since I always prioritize fun in everything I do, the next idea that came to mind was making the light stick customizable. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if fans could personalize their bunny?” That way, each rabbit would represent a different person’s character. So we included accessories, allowing everyone to customize their own bunny. It’s symbolic of all these different bunnies coming together and enjoying a good time as one. Our light stick has a big head, so when it’s used in a concert hall, it lights up in heart shapes that are very visible. That was the image I really wanted. And that bunny face… it’s also a heart. It represents both the face of NewJeans and our hearts. It’s the love we’re showing to our fans, and the love we want to receive in return. Every time I see it, I feel deeply moved. It’s very emotional for me because it’s a perfect realization of what I envisioned. As someone with a background in creative direction, there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing an idea materialize exactly the way you imagined it. That kind of work holds deep meaning for me. ⸻ 🧢: Looking back, I think in 2023 we were able to achieve almost everything we had hoped for. I’m so incredibly grateful for that. Of course, this is an ongoing challenge… and the better things go, the more pressure there is. That’s why I always try to return to my original mindset. Just like I tell the members, I try to remind myself of the beginning and keep things fun. Back then, when we were first putting out content, planning the music, and working on visuals, I felt this thrill… this rush of excitement. I don’t want to forget that feeling. So I try hard to engrave that emotion into every album we release. I’m constantly working to rediscover the joy in all of it. So for 2024, I hope everyone can look forward to us with fresh anticipation. And even if we come out with something completely new, I hope people will receive it warmly and with excitement. That’s really my deepest wish. 🙏show more

RESCUE OF THE KEEPER OF TARA EARTH This is... going to sound like absolute fiction, but the story still needs to be told. Let me preface by saying I’m not just sane, but an autodidact polymath with multiple quantum physics patents under exclusively my own name, not part of any collaboration. So by dismissing my testimony as someone who is just nuts is really reading a book strictly through its cover. This all actually happened, even if you’ve never heard of anything like this before. What we don’t know about ‘the real worlds’ out there you could barely fit in all of our skies, we’ve been that isolated here. Everyone in this preschool dimension have preconceived notions about who ‘god’ is, inflated to the realm of all-knowing and all-powerful, able to create whole worlds, complete with millions of species of flora and fauna, and all in just 6 days. And while it is true such powers do exist, they are not without collaboration with other ‘gods’ to make that all happen, no matter how grandiose your captors want to make themselves seem. Just one species of your apples or oranges here represents possibly trillions of years of development and perfection. They didn’t just magically appear. “God” is a psyop term that stands for the word “perfect”, of which there is no such thing. The term perfect is strictly subjective, because what may seem perfect to a caveman is going to seem rudimentary kid’s stuff to George Jetson. The real term for the creator of all things is not ‘god’, but rather Prime Creator. “God” is actually DOG spelled backward and got its name from the Dog Star, also known as Sirius A, the headquarters of the Anuhazi Elohim’s breakaway group that call themselves The Michaelube, Suns of Ba’al. The ‘Arch Angels’ want you to believe they are the creator god of all things in this world. That was a lie 560m years ago and it is still a lie today. In reality, Tara Earth existed more than 4 billion years prior to the Anuhazi’s arrival to take the Human Elohim Project spirit essences hostage. They DID in fact help create Tara earth, just like you did, because they are fractals of Prime Creator. But to present themselves as ‘one guy with a long white beard who created the world and everything in it’ is word magic and gaslighting, designed to demoralize and subjugate Humans. For more on the why to this psychopathic plan, see my article: 👉 HISTORY OF THE CHIMERA. With that said, there are MANY beings in the world around you that are secretly ancient ‘gods’ of past eras who really do have more powers than humans do. I know, because I’ve met some and dealt with others during my years of education from the keeper of our simulation. There are also beings here who have roles to play to keep our world functioning correctly so Tara is able to continue offering a holographic platform for your manifestation adventure, who also have god-like powers, such as the keeper mentioned above, and others that are part of the team I refer to as the ‘crew’. You would call them angels, I call them people. Scary powerful people, but still people. Among the ‘crew’ is the main ‘keeper’ of the simulation that you wind up referring to as god down through the ages, because once in a while humans get to meet the keeper and witness the power for themselves which is very obviously not human. But the keeper doesn’t have a long flowing white beard, doesn’t sit on a throne in the sky and certainly isn’t perfect. But like you, a work in progress. Always seeking greater balance. That is the one common denominator among all fractals of Prime Creator, regardless if they are currently playing ‘bad guy’ roles, or ‘good guy’ roles. Understand there are beings here constantly at war against the keeper that has control of the universal elements of the hologram. Also understand, like the other beings who came here from much higher dimension with ‘god-like’ powers, they fractalize themselves into many, many different bodies, so it is effectively impossible to ever ‘kill’ each other. You would have to not only find all the many hundreds or thousands of them, but have a fool-proof way of killing them all at the same exact moment, making sure they are gone-gone, not just that one avatar holding their spirit awareness. That’s not going to happen. Not to any of them from what I’ve witnessed. Which means simply, as far as you are concerned, they are eternal beings, continuously here since 560m years ago in some case, depending when each one of them arrived. The ‘gods’, and the keeper, live in mortal bodies that age and die. But their positions are always held by the next one of themselves that can step into that role to maintain continuity of their offices. These are all the same person and can appear exactly identical to each other, or they can take on totally different appearances as well. I’m not sure why or how, but I’ve seen them both ways. After I was contacted by the keeper and informed of my role where I was in contract to supply protection and help to the crew back in 2013, eventually I was activated for that help in September of 2017. Both the keeper and a portion of the worldwide crew support staff as it were, had been taken hostage in California. I was tasked to bring them out to safety. I won’t go deeply into the details of this, but it was a serious situation where the invader races had stripped the keeper of all access to banks and cash, making it impossible to remain safe inside of the place they had been using as headquarters, literally casting them into the streets. And before you imagine this would be ‘impossible’, the keeper can’t just manifest stacks of cash out of thin air, and also there were a massive amount of beings all working together to neutralize them so they could possibly remove them from the levers of power of the simulation. That’s really all I can offer for details about that for now. The alphabet agencies were keeping the entire crew isolated in that one city, living in a car, camping in the woods and basically making it impossible to look after Tara. The keeper was able to get donations through various support mechanisms, but were shut out of getting off the streets. They brought in specialists to help them all escape, but the agencies wound up permanently disabling them, or taking them out altogether. That’s when I was contacted for assignment. Not being one of ‘the gods’ like they are, I was naturally terrified of having anything to do with this mission because I had no powers I was aware of that could provide anything they couldn’t. Which is really a fantastic understatement, since the keeper and crew can translocate anywhere in the world in seconds, have ‘thousands of avatars’ scattered out as vessels they can use in any city around the world, and basically everything they can do we can’t are about as intimidating as they can be. But I was told I was the only one who could rescue them. And while that may sound like the perfect scenario for a deluded mind seeking validation with illusions of grandeur, like a classic mental patient would come up with in their insane mind, this is what I was actually told, and I do mean in real life. To this day I find it as confusing to believe as you will trying to believe me now. Nonetheless, I carry certain powers I have been fitted with for my contract here on earth that I have had no education about at all. And the main one I’ve learned of now is I have a frequency shield that blocks out ‘the gods’ from doing harm. As long as the keeper and crew were within that field, the invaders were rendered powerless. Wow, even I want to roll my eyes at that. But I watched it play out first hand now multiple times after I got the crew off the streets in a ‘place of safety’ over the next couple of years. As long as I was at the safe house, nothing nefarious happened. When I went shopping every other week for groceries in town over 10 miles away, that’s when all hell would break out back at the compound. Those stories too would seem impossible to you to believe, just like everything else I am covering here, so I won’t go deeply into them. But they included black helicopters, 10’ long rattlesnakes sealing off the safe house & even assassinations. I was even requested to get to town and back as quickly as possible and not to linger due to these threats. I was told that my frequency shield while blended to the natural frequency shield the keeper and crew all have reached ‘87.3 miles’ apart (or so, going by memory now. But it was a very specific number). But even though the overall power of our combined fields still increased within that distance, the closer I was to the group, the more powerful the shield. I’m just telling you what I was told. You can believe it or not. I certainly wouldn’t believe it had I not actually witnessed it myself, so I’m right there with you if that’s your position. That brings us to the story I intended to pass along to you here; regarding that flight from ‘homeless bondage’ out across the deserts that spanned well over 1000 miles I was brought in for. The keeper and crew had been held hostage and homeless for 2 ½ years by the time I got the call requesting me to sell everything I owned and fly half way around the world for their rescue. Their lives had been hell, trust me. I arrived late at night where they picked me up and the hard part of the journey began. I will skip the details of the truly insane things I witnessed starting then for another time after the separation, for obvious reasons having to do with breadcrumbs and the very real fluid war we’re inside of still. But I will tell you about the ‘angels’ that were with us for that escape I would only learn about myself after 2 days of running. In the video below you will see what appear to be asteroids or a meteor shower, but they are traveling horizontally, not downward at all. We’ve seen this now since late 2024 a few times. This time I saved one of the videos taken on 2/19/2025 in Germany so I could actually show people what I saw first hand on that second night of our escape. We had covered whole states by this time, but we couldn’t stop and rest until we made it to a ‘frequency zone’ that was somehow outside of the reaches of the keeper’s enemies. I’m under the impression that there are certain key cross-leyline areas on earth that are too high in frequency for the low-vibration invader races to penetrate with their hyper-advanced psychotronic & scalar weapons, and that had been our destination ever since our escape that began at about 3:30-4am in the dead of night when the least amount of eyes would be surveilling us. Boy do I have outrageous stories about just how absolute that surveillance really is too. It is like they are not just tracking us, but using time travel to put agents in areas we would be arriving to, posing like homeless people and everyday folks. While in real life they were monitoring my every word in secret. I was surveilled many times during the weeks in that city while arranging for the escape and it blew my mind every time. The asteroids that really look more like comets in the video is what the "guardian angels" that had been secretly escorting us from overhead looked like, WHEN they were uncloaked. They only showed up in my visible view at the moment we broke over a ridge at about 3:30 in the morning 2 days later after our run began, at the exact same moment I could see the city lights way off in the distance below that was the ‘safe zone’. Suddenly overhead three giant comets appeared immediately above my head. I was in the lead vehicle the whole way, because the keeper was following my taillights. This is the only way they can navigate at night, because they don’t see like you and I do, looking at solid shapes and images, but everything through their eyes are light waves. I couldn’t make up something like that if I spent 10 years trying to write this article, mostly because it is still not believable to me now, 8 years later. These 3 comets were massive, what looked to be around 50 feet across, with tails of flame coming off that must have been 150-200 feet behind streaking VERY low across the sky. As I came down the hill to the desert floor for the final 10 miles between us and the safe zone (small town lights), the ‘comets’ started coming straight down toward ground, one at a time. They appeared they were going to crash into the highway, now traveling vertically at hypersonic speed, then just stopped 50 ft away from impact and vanished. You would have to try to imagine being in the total dark desert with only very faint, far-away lights off in the distance, only to have 3 comets traveling RIGHT DIRECTLY overhead suddenly uncloak, then turn straight down to get an idea of how insanely frightening they appeared, since their trajectory was to strike directly in front of your vehicle on the highway, as if you were about to slam right into them as they hit like giant bombs that would certainly blow up on impact and basically vaporize you and your moving van, to appreciate how absurd this event was. I was only about 150 feet away from where they were set to strike, so there was no hitting the brakes and avoiding anything. They were right there. Which means it was sort of like watching 'god' just fill the night's sky with fire. I saw 3 of them myself, but I was informed there were an additional 9 ‘angels’ that my own frequency wouldn't allow me to see according to the keeper. It is because this story is so unbelievable that I avoid talking about it, as you can imagine. Since 99 people out of a hundred are only going to accuse you of being insane upon hearing it, some possibly trying to have you committed at the same time, and the other person is likely already crazy themselves, so they just glaze over it. Until you see something like that with your own eyes, I'm pretty sure you will *never believe it could be a real thing. But this is what we call angels look like when they are decloaked and traveling at night. I don’t personally know if they were inside vehicles, or they are just simply traveling in their own Merkabah fields. That part was never explained to me. I was told they were with us 'flying overhead the entire journey' since we escaped California and were basically ‘signing off’ as I gathered it, now that we had reached the safe zone. You can believe I'm crazy all you want to, but now you can see them with your own eyes in this video, sure as hell not acting like meteors, but acting more like flaming time crafts (‘space’ ships). Are you crazy too? - On X, to search for my articles, simply type in the name of the piece, enter one space, then from: plus my username in parenthesis such as shown here: CASTING THE APOCOLYPSE (from:iontecs_pemf) Off-site, you can look up any of my writings through this link below for my other more than 100 recent articles and many thousands of comments on X, regularly updated thanks to Justin This message will only be seen by your eyes if not shared, and if you want to reference this article again later, you will need to cut and paste it in your own notes off line, as it will surely be erased. This is the most accurate translation of these events I am aware of at this time.show more

Three days ago I asked myself a dumb question.... It was so stupid I was actually ashamed to Google it. Can AI earn money while I sleep? Not saving time. Not automating routine. I mean putting real money into my account while I am not looking at the screen. Everyone says ClawdBot will change how we work. Automation. Task management. Smart replies. But I was sitting in my kitchen thinking about something else entirely. You know that feeling when you look at a tool and realize everyone is using only 1% of its potential? It is like being given a race car and only using it to drive to the store for bread. I decided to test it. I started a notebook. I record everything. > Day One I started with something simple. I gave Clawdbot a task. Find wallets on Polymarket where the numbers do not add up. Where the profit is too high for the win rate. Where the result smells like a system rather than luck. It thought for 14 minutes. I had time to pour a coffee and forget about it. Then the screen flashed. 4 addresses. I scrolled through the first three in a minute. Big bets on politics. They guessed the election. Classic. On the fourth one I stopped. Not because it was the most profitable but because I did not understand what I was looking at. The wallet was not trading politics or sports or anything people write reviews about. It was trading the weather. I read it three times. Weather. Will it be 9 degrees in London tomorrow? Will it rain in Tokyo? These are markets I would not even click on by accident. Then I looked at the numbers. > It started with $27. It is now at $63,853. $27 is two trips to McDonald's. It is nothing. $63,853 is a new car or a down payment on an apartment. It is two years of someone's salary. Between those two numbers was only one thing. Thousands of bets on rain. I closed the tab. Opened it again. Checked if it was a glitch. Real dollars. On markets that look like a bad joke. > Day Two I could not get that wallet out of my head. I went to look at its transaction history. I expected to find one big win that explained everything. A lucky hurricane forecast. Instead I saw thousands of small bets. Boring. "Will the temperature in New York be above 15 degrees?" Then I noticed the detail that finally broke my brain. Its win rate: 33%. It loses more often than it wins. 2 out of 3 bets go to zero. Any normal person with that result would be posting about how the market is unfair. Yet this wallet is sitting on $63,000 in profit. How? I started deconstructing the trades. After an hour I got it. When it loses, it loses 10 or 20 cents. When it wins, it takes $1.00. Loses 9 times in a row? Lost $1.80. Wins 1 time? Got $10.00. > This is not trading. It is math that works as long as you do not interfere with your emotions. Here is how it works. Weather is one of the most predictable things on the planet. Governments invest billions in satellites. Data is updated every 2 or 3 hours. Precision to a tenth of a degree. This data is public. But Polymarket is not a weather station. It updates its markets with a delay of 6 or 8 hours. Imagine the situation. 6 AM. The weather service updated the forecast. The probability that London reaches 9 degrees tomorrow rose to 80%. Algorithms everywhere already recalculated the data. But on Polymarket the YES button is still sitting there for 10 cents. Because the market has not woken up yet. This bot sees the difference. It buys YES for 10 cents when the real probability is already 80%. It is not guessing. It is buying what is essentially already known. It just waits a day and collects the dollar. 10 cents turn into a dollar. On information available to anyone who can read weather APIs. That evening I called a friend. He has been trading for 3 years. He sits in analytical chats. Draws support levels. I asked him: "How was the last month?" "I broke even. The market is tough right now. Too much noise." I looked at the screen. A bot betting on rain with a 33% win rate. Profit: $63,853. My friend with 3 years of experience and hundreds of hours of analysis. Profit: $0. Who is doing it wrong? I am not asking you to take my word for it. The blockchain does not lie: > Day Three I decided to dig deeper. I looked at the wallet description. I expected something complex. A hedge fund. A team of developers. Secret data sources. I found one line: Claude plus public weather APIs. Ordinary Claude. The one on your phone. Connected to free weather services. No secret stations. No insiders. No millions for infrastructure. Just an AI doing what any of us could do. But we are too lazy. Or bored. Or we think it is too simple to work. If someone already built this with basic Claude and free APIs... What happens when Clawdbot gets direct access to trading? > Day Four I watched the wallet in real time. First bet: loss. Second bet: loss. Third bet: loss. I thought: this is it. The statistics are collapsing. Fourth bet: loss. Fifth bet: loss. Down $12 in an hour. I was ready to write a post about how I overestimated this. Sixth bet: Temperature in Chicago. Win. +$87. Seventh bet: Win. +$94. By evening: 9 losses. 5 wins. Daily total: +$385. No emotions. No posts about injustice. No strategy changes after a loss. Just the next bet. I wrote to my friend. The one who has been trading for 3 years. "How was your day?" "Down $200. Market makers caught my stop loss again." I looked at the screen. A bot with no posts and no loud claims. +$385 for the day on rain bets. My friend with 3 years of experience and dozens of books. Minus $200 and a post about how the system is against him. > Day Five I woke up with a thought that kept me up all night. It finally hit me. It is not about the weather. It is not about APIs. It is not that the bot is "smarter". > It is about what the bot does NOT have: an ego that hates being wrong. No urge to revenge-trade. No boredom from repetition. My friend trades against the market. He tries to be smarter than the crowd. This bot trades against human nature. And nature loses every day. Clawdbot found me this wallet in 14 minutes. The weather bot turned $27 into $63,000 on markets everyone else thinks are trash. Both use the same principle. Do something simple. Remove emotions. Repeat. I do not know when Clawdbot will start trading on its own. Maybe in a month. Maybe in a year. But I know one thing. While we discuss if it is possible... Someone already set up their bot and went to live their life. Right now as you read this. Somewhere a weather service updated a forecast. Polymarket is sleeping. The bot is already entering a position. And my friend is writing a post about how market makers do not let honest people earn. Guess who wakes up tomorrow with money in their account?show more

The Royal High Courts are certainly a place of... grandeur and perhaps some are intimidated by the surroundings. Well that impressive 19th century Gothic architecture is a sight to behold but the Judges less so. I’ve seen too many judges in the UK and Pakistan and by God, they leave a lot to be desired. Especially when one comes across McGowan the Mediocre. What should have been a straightforward win has turned into a cheating exercise by the very judiciary meant to uphold justice in this country. Why do I say straightforward? Let’s recap. After 3-4 failed complaints to the GMC, the Jewish lobbies upped the ante. First came my loss of contract at South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust where I was doing some clinics. No investigation. Just blocked from the email and can’t address patient queries. Then started the defamation in the press – articles in the Jewish News, Jewish Chronicle and Telegraph followed by loss of contract with Medinet with whom I’d worked since 2018 intermittently and had glowing reviews. The GMC now opens an investigation – given the pressure from Wes Streeting, elected in July 2024. They wanted an Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT) to decide if any sanction should be imposed whilst I was being “investigated”. I had a trip abroad for my brother’s assassination case and I had clinics. Patients who had waited 12-18 months to see a Neurologist. The GMC and MPTS didn’t care. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) is allegedly an independent body to the GMC and runs the IOT panels. They would not move the IOT by 11 working days as the GMC had refused (so much for independence!) – instead of 20th December I had suggested 13th January 2025. Recall this was over the Christmas period – people going on holidays and yet I was expected to get legal advice when I was in clinic from 8am – 6pm. I told them patients came first – I stand by that. Hurt Jewish feelings aren’t urgent and they don’t come before my patient care. I requested deferment by 11 working days, told them I would defend every single tweet and indeed, looked forward to it. This was all via email. Multiple emails. All ignored – including the one letter that contained my “defences”. They would not budge – the Jewish lobbies were demanding action and the GMC wasn’t going to risk their ire again. Wes Streeting was breathing down their necks. On 20th December 2024, I saw my Neurology patients and on 23rdDecember, I found out that I’d been suspended for 18 months. No other doctor had an 18-month suspension or got one since – in their absence. My remaining clinics in December and January all cancelled. Some patients were cancelled as they were making their way to my clinic. I requested the transcript of the IOT hearing – the GMC had been demanding conditions on my license on public interest grounds yet 3 batty women decided I should be suspended for 18 months for public interest and patient protection! Later, the barrister for the indemnity body stated he “couldn’t get purchase on” how they came to that decision. In any case, after being misled by my indemnity body – who suggested that I first ask for an early review, delayed asking for it and then the GMC refused. They were refusing to allow me to be heard after claiming I wouldn’t attend. The indemnity body then reneged on the agreed High Court action. The GMC even send me the Rule 7 letter – the final “allegations” against me on 5 February 2025 which they then updated in March. Ordinarily this takes about 9 months to send – in my case, they managed to do it within 6 weeks! Yet one of the reasons they claimed I needed to be suspended for 18 months was because of the lengthy investigation…. I had to reply by 5 May 2025 which I did via a191-page response. The GMC usually respond within 3-4 weeks. As of 21 January 2026, I have yet to hear from them. I then took matters into my own hand. Let down by cowardly lawyers except one (Yasmin), I filed a High Court application under Section 41 A(10) of the Medical Act 1983 to challenge my unlawful suspension. I requested an urgent expedited hearing as I was being left with no way to earn a living. There were 10 grounds of appeal. The High Court date was set for 10th July 2025. Meanwhile, the MPTS is obliged to give a 6-month review – 16th June 2025 afternoon was scheduled. I stated I wanted this in person and in public. I flew back from Kashmir on 9th June – it’s cheaper to live there - and found myself arrested at Holyhead under s12 of the Terrorism Act for “alleged support of proscribed groups” – apparently I was “on the wanted list. I’m released 14 hours later. They’d seized my mobile phones and laptop and wait for it, all my GMC documents that I’d carefully put together. I’m still not sure why I couldn’t get those back. I learn that the GMC is seeking information about this non-reportable arrest within 24 hours of it – they know. In any case, I go for the IOT hearing – and the GMC Counsel attempts to utilise the arrest. I object. The panel agree that it will not be considered. However, the MPTS have set an insufficient amount of time for the hearing – they would have known. There were over 1000 pages in the bundle of nonsense – the only worthwhile part of that was my beautifully written 191-page response. I was quite proud of it if I’m honest. It could be considered my second PhD thesis. As I have to return to Pakistan for hearings and the High Court case was 10thJuly, the IOT hearing was re-scheduled for 14th July 2025. So, fast forward to 10th July 2025. Under 48 hours before the hearing is due, the GMC submit their skeleton arguments – ordinarily submitted 7-14 days before – no doubt, to wrong foot me. They finally admit that the IOT panel made an “error of law” in not properly applying the Article 10 rights but argue they got to the “right decision but by the wrong route” (!) I am self-representing in Court 1 at the Royal Courts of Justice – the GMC have their in-house lawyer, their GMC Counsel and her clerk. But I have the best lawyer (currently abroad) and an excellent McKenzie friend, Sean Naughton and my well wishers who attended to support me. We start at 10 30am – and I ask the Judge to review the admission of illegality. On that basis alone, my suspension should be revoked. She declines and wants to hear the case. I then detail the IOT powers and how the grounds to sanction me had not been met – they had not proven public interest or public protection. I discussed the GMC actions, the unfairness, disproportionality, the abuse of process, the outright lies by the GMC, the draconian 18-month suspension, the persecution by the Jewish lobbies and the breach of my rights under Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the ECHR. My opening lines: “I submit that the suspension was political in nature. It was subject to bias and external pressure was clearly evident. It was unlawful and demonstrated seriously flawed reasoning. It was manifestly wrong and the panel erred in law. It was completely unnecessary. It’s been tainted by marked procedural errors, unfairness and it has demonstrated gross abuse of process by the GMC and the MPTS and the IOT panel and those abuses have continued. The suspension is draconian and disproportionate and inconsistent with other decision makings of the IOT panels. It is a complete violation of my rights under Article 8, 9 and especially Article 10 of the European Court of Human Rights. And it is demonstrated also limitation of the panel’s expertise, both in terms of law, but also, importantly, the context of the rights of the Palestinian people and it brings into serious question whether the GMC should be policing speech of doctors. It should certainly not be policing or interfering in political speech.” I went through each ground in detail giving the relevant case law. I talked openly about the nature of that persecution: “All of the complaints against me have been made by Jewish and pro-Israeli affiliated organisations and I think it’s necessary to list them – Lawyers for Israel, in collaboration with Gnasherjew, the Jewish Medical Association twice; the unnamed Jewish Zionist doctor; the Jewish News who defamed me; the reporter is Michelle Rosenberg - who is Jewish and Zionist; the Daily Telegraph defamation - George Chesterton is married to a Jewish woman; Miranda Levy and Jacob Freedland are both Jewish and Zionist. I had the Jewish Chronicle defamation - Jane Prinsley is Jewish and has a home in Israel; Campaign Against Antisemitism by Stephen Silverman, who is Jewish and has submitted three similar tweets in March 2025 to the GMC which have been included in my Rule 7 letter without due process the GMC is obliged to follow on receipt of a new complaint. And then, twice in the Jerusalem Post - Mathilda Heller and Michael Starr are both Jewish Zionists. And despite the suspension, Sabrina Miller, a Jewish Zionist journalist at the Daily Mail attacked a number of pro-Palestinian doctors, including myself. So, these previous complaints that have been dismissed by the GMC included tweets of a similar nature. The tweets have not changed, but I would contend that the priorities of the GMC had and my complaint was clearly being handled by individuals who appeared conflicted. In my witness statement, I have detailed the behaviour of XXX, XXX, XXX who refused to respond to emails on where disclosures from the GMC themselves, since I submitted this appeal, have since revealed that XX XX had made false notes on my record claiming I had prior FTP history. In addition, in July 2024, Wes Streeting became the Health Secretary. I refer Your Honour to pages 327 to 337 of the bundle. There’s a Declassified article, incidentally, that’s been written by a Jewish journalist, Matt Kennard. He has investigated Streeting’s support of Israel since his days at the National Union of Students. It documents that he visited Israel in 2022 paid for by the Labour Friends of Israel. That organisation’s former chair was Joan Ryan, infamously found to be discussing her £1 million payment from Israel with Shai Masot, the Israeli diplomat. Streeting has taken over £20,000 from Israeli lobbyist, Trevor Chinn. Trevor Chinn’s father heads the Jewish National Fund which supports illegal Israeli settlements and from Lord Mendelsohn and David Menton. The Jewish Chronicle even ran a profile of him entitled “Wes Streeting, our friend at the NUS”. So, there’s little surprise that Wes Streeting made comments in The Telegraph stating he would urge medical regulators to discipline staff expressing views which he, as a pro-Israeli and Zionist, opposed. He stated that regulators had the power to set conditions that a healthcare professional must work under. Suspend them or strike them entirely from the medical register. He made similar comments to The Times. He then met with the Board of Deputies for Community Security Trust, which is also behind my complaint, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Jewish Medical Association, reiterating “I expect employers and regulators to take action”. The idea that this political pressure by the Health Secretary in November 2024 was irrelevant to my suspension is untenable in the face of this clear intervention, which actually represents political interference and undermines the alleged independence of the GMC.” And I made clear the Jewish privilege at play “So, from what I’ve just presented, it’s very clear that the red line concerns Israel. Tweets, that’s words. Criticising an entity, carrying out the mass slaughter against innocent civilians will be punished more severely than malpractice, blatant dishonesty, criminal convictions or even genuine Jew hatred, as long as you are not a Muslim. And if you’re Jewish and you belong to a powerful lobby group like the Jewish Medical Association, then the GMC gives you a clear pass as shown in the case of Liz Lightstone and Justin Stebbing.” I made clear that even the GMC referral to the MPTS explicitly stated “that there was no evidence of [her] racially discriminating against anyone or discriminating against Jewish people.” I stated in the High Court “And I should point out that the Jewish people are not a race; Judaism is a religion” and “It is my inalienable right to be able to disagree with the narrative from Israeli lobbies and express it. Their free speech does not trump mine.” I made sure that she understood that my patients and even Grok approved of me: “In fact, Grok is positively glowing – “Dr Rehiana Ali’s tweet carry a fiery, unapologetic tone blending sharp intellect with a raw defiance against injustice echoing the spirit of Malcolm X, mirrors Malcolm’s blend of moral clarity, confrontational rhetoric and distain for oppressive systems.” “I can’t think of a better person to be compared to.” I further stated “I do not believe that legal, that legitimate political commentary or reporting facts can be antisemitic. I do not believe that any groups, be they Jewish, Muslims or Christians, are exempt from criticism where the situation warrants it. I do not believe in hate speech, as that’s the very antithesis of free speech, but also, importantly, there is no tweet of mine that demonstrates hatred for any group simply by virtue of their religious identity and, indeed, none has been identified as such.” I even quoted the Queen: “I do not accept that stating facts becomes anti-Jewish simply because the majority of those committing the crimes are Jewish. If you take that to the logical conclusion, that would mean that no Jewish person could ever be criticised for their bad behaviour. That cannot be right. I would also point out that the late Queen, according to the Israeli press, and the ex-President of Israel Rivlin, was reported to have viewed every Israeli as a terrorist or the son of a terrorist. Who would have thought that the Monarch would have been so based?” At 1pm, the Judge wants a lunch-break – I haven’t finished. We continue after lunch break – and I complete my submission dealing with the GMC’s arguments. “Before I sum up, I’ll just briefly address the skeleton arguments that the defence submitted on 8 July. And obviously I’ve already raised disgruntlement about that but I think it’s important to note, that the GMC has finally conceded, after over two months since receiving my skeleton arguments, that the IOT erred in law. On that basis alone, that suspension should be quashed today. If the GMC was capable of self- reflection, it would have withdrawn its objections to my appeal gracefully but that is probably too optimistic an outcome to expect of this bureaucratic monster which has become a law unto itself…” Then the GMC repeats their arguments and argues that the High Court have broad powers and should take original jurisdiction over the matter: “And that is an exercise that this Court can properly make, exercising its original jurisdiction” In fact, the words “original jurisdiction” were repeated about 7-8 times. The GMC Counsel repeated to the Judge “We accept that you have a free-er hand” and again “Because, as I say, this Court is free-er to exercise the original jurisdiction” and so on. Look at the tweets! She said “Mossad did 9/11” and that “Israelis shouldn’t be allowed near humanity”. She said “Israelis are involved in organ trafficking”. All true. I was amused. Ordinarily the High Court usually looks at technical and legal aspects without going into the actual details of the issue itself (e.g. on covid, they wouldn’t debate the merits of the covid vaccine – the issue was whether the conditions/suspension was legal according to rules and procedural fairness). I reply I have no issue but it wasn’t necessary – the grounds did not require that. However, if the Judge wanted to look at the tweets she should acquaint herself with the facts that I presented in my 191-page response. I request a judgement that day or the next day. I had no faith in the MPTS and GMC. That review hearing was due a few days later on 14 July 2025. Judge McGowan was fully aware of that review IOT hearing. She stated “We need to finish this during the course of today. It cannot go part heard and I understand that your review hearing is listed on Monday next.” She stated the following: “And if there is not a decision from this Court today then, presumably, the review hearing will be made aware of these proceedings, but their decision is independent of this. If they decide to not lift the suspension, then my decision either does the same or lifts or terminates the suspension. If they terminate the suspension on Monday, then my decision probably becomes quite academic, but necessary, nonetheless.” Even the GMC Counsel admitted that the Court’s decision was “of interest” I didn’t agree it was “academic” The Judge continued: “There is too much material. It is too important.” And later that her decision was “nonetheless, an important exercise.” I emphasised in my response that I wanted the High Court to rectify that injustice done to me in December 2024 and that “the overarching question is “was my original suspension, was it correct or not?” McGowan replied : “I – I do understand that and in order to reach a decision about that I have to look at what you say are the procedural mistakes. I have to look at what you say are the errors of law. I have to look at what you say is unfair about the way the hearing was conducted...” and again,“Until I have made my mind up about the procedural unfairness and all the other points you have raised, I have got to consider everything.” I again pointed out “..I would argue it’s an abuse of the system and I’m actually paying the price for their deficiencies, or rather procedural irregularities. I’m having to live with the consequences of being deprived of an income…” In other words, there have been consequences for me – financially and professionally. And I ended with “I have no faith in the IOT. I have no faith in the MPTS, and I have no faith in the GMC, and I am not the only one to feel that way. The fact that we are calling for a different body and we’re calling for the GMC to be dismantled. I’m simply asking that the injustice that was done in December is rectified…” The concluding remarks of McGowan? “Well, I am certainly not going to give judgment in this case at 3.55pm. You raised an awful lot of important issues. The importance of a decision to you, personally, is obviously great. The importance of a decision to your potential patients is high and the importance of a decision to the public is equally important. So, all of those matters have to be considered and balanced and I will get to a decision early next week. I think that is probably the best way, which will be handed down in the usual way. All right, well thank you both very much. Thank you all very much for your attendance.” At no point did McGowan state there would be no Judgement. On 14 July 2025, my suspension was revoked. I self-represented and I didn’t concede a single point or any tweet. What happened next was a shocking abuse of the judicial process. My registration was reinstated – no conditions. But that 7 months suspension remains on my record visible to every employer. The very next day GMC emails the Court to state that the High Court no longer has jurisdiction over the matter as the suspension was revoked! The IOT panel has very limited powers so whilst it revoked my suspension, it will not deem it unlawful or indeed make any comment about the previous panel’s decision – and certainly not its legality. The MPTS admitted that only the High court could rule it was unlawful. I contacted the Court pointing this out and that I was expecting a judgement as per McGowan’s position in the High Court. The High Court had a full day’s hearing and the court was independent of the tribunal and had seized jurisdiction. All my grounds including the legality of the suspension were outstanding. The revocation was to some extent irrelevant to the Court issuing the Judgement – if anything, it rather supported my contention that the suspension imposed on me in December 2024 was unlawful. I ask the GMC to provide what law they’re relying upon….they quote this section and claim it is written in the present tense! “Section 41A(10 of the Medical Act 1983, Interim Orders, states Where an order has effect under any provision of this section, the relevant court may –..” Yes – that is the best they could come up with it. Needless to say, the convention in UK legislative drafting is the simple present tense …because the law is “always speaking”. I call and even visit the Royal Courts of Justice. The Court staff chase the Clerk …I’m asked to be patient and await the Judgement. Even up to 6th August 2025 I was told that the Judgement was coming. On 11th August 2025, I am informed by email that there will be no Judgement!! I spoke to a number of barristers and solicitors – it’s almost unheard of. They're all useless though. I get no replies to my emails to the High Court. So in November 2025, I requested the Hearing transcript. On 12th December 2025 – over 5 months after the substantive hearing – I received an Order (not a Judgement). It was a bare order – simply stating “Upon the Court hearing the substantive hearing on this matter on 10 July 2025 And upon following consideration of the documents lodged by Respondent on 15 July 2025 confirming revocation of the Interim Order pursuant to Section 41A of the Medical Act 1983, the application is dismissed.” No reasons whatsoever as to why the Judge had contradicted her own position in Court. I replied to the Court and file an application for permission to appeal – not just to McGowan (the system is so barmy that you have to ask the same judge for permission to appeal) but also to the Court of Appeal – the latter for both permission to appeal and the appeal itself concerning McGowan’s bare unreasoned order. McGowan now responds (miraculously) via the Court staff wanting a 30-minute hearing for permission to appeal – that is set for Tuesday 13 January 2026. So, yet again I am at the High Court now requesting permission to appeal. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. McGowan had shown she lacks the spine to address the issues – and has zero integrity. You don’t get a DBE in the UK for nothing. In fact, she started this hearing by asking the GMC to interpret the Section 41A of the Medical Act!!! Then she turned to me – the Claimant – and asked if “I understood what was being said”. I replied that I understood full well. English after all is my first language and I’m a Cambridge graduate. I can understand basic English. She clearly has difficulties though – I later learnt that she dropped English at Manchester University for Law. At the expense of sounding very snobbish, I just knew she wasn’t Oxbridge material…. I present my arguments – including case law. The GMC has no relevant case law – their arguments are “it is written in the present tense” (I did correct them that in actual fact, it was written in the simple present tense to be more precise) and that the decision of the High Court “is final”. Of course, I point out that finality is based on two aspects – firstly, getting a reasoned Judgement! I never got a judgement. I effectively got a blank piece of paper. On no grounds, could that be considered “a decision”. And secondly, if there were any errors of law, procedural irregularities …they were always appealable. Appeal however was not automatic – all that meant was that one had to request permission to appeal. Can you imagine a system where a Judge makes an error but you can’t appeal it?! I point out that every issue remains live. I even simplify it for them – I point out that in the case of rape, and using GMC logic, we’d never prosecute the rapist – after all, the rape was no longer in progess. That is not justice. The High Court seized jurisdiction by having a substantive hearing and had to produce a judgement. Of course, I understood that had I appealed after the revocation, the application would have been dismissed. McGowan sat there clearly not listening. This was merely an exercise to show there’d been a hearing. She tried to claim she has “no power”!! She then had the audacity to say “You’ve had a success. Why aren’t you satisfied with that?” I point out that I was suspended unlawfully – I had 20 years of an impeccable record and it states “misconduct” on my record. I have a right to get that unlawful suspension struck from my record and remedy with regards to the consequences I had suffered. The GMC – a public body – should be held accountable not just for my sake but for other doctors and I remind her of her own words “for the wider public interest”. In fact, I quote liberally from the transcript and point out her contradictions. At no point did she ever state – because it’s not possible – that the High Court lost jurisdiction. That’s the legal principle: “Once seized, always seized.”show more

Apple’s iPad “Crush” Ad Is Bleak, Ominous and Threatening... I don’t know if you’ve seen Apple’s just-released commercial for the “New” iPad Pro, but it’s pretty awful. It is dark, humorless, and feels like a not-so-thinly veiled threat to writers, musicians, game makers, developers, and artists of all kinds. …and children, even. I’ve watched it at least five times today alone, and I’m left with one big question. “Who on earth approved this?” It’s absolutely baffling that the world’s largest technology company, with the world’s biggest marketing budget, thought this would be a good idea. What kind of idiot—or idiots, since dozens or hundreds of people had to be involved in the writing, staging, producing, recording, and editing—felt this kind of ad would somehow create a positive emotional connection with consumers? Seriously, it’s terrifying. In a dank, cold warehouse, devoid of all life and humanity, an industrial crusher comes to life, and slowly starts destroying a collection of musical, philosophical, and artistic devices and instruments. For no apparent reason, everything starts getting smashed: first, a trumpet, then an arcade video game, then cans of paint, a piano, a globe, a metronome, a guitar… on and on it goes, obliterating everything in sight into a colorful, gooey, explosive mess. Books, camera lenses, lamps, a guitar, a sculpture, and a typewriter—all tools of the liberal arts—get mangled into a garbage heap as Sonny & Cher cheerfully sing, “All I ever need is you.” In the penultimate moment, a goofy yellow smiley emoji becomes a bug-eyed scary-clown freak as it, too, is crushed to death. Worse, if you enable closed captions like I do by default, the video says: “[POPPING] [SPLAT]” right as its eyeballs pop out of its head when Cher sings, “Give me a reason to build my world around you.” It’s enough to make a child cry. It has all the comforting vibes of the burnt pink teddy bear floating in the swimming pool on Breaking Bad after two planes crash in mid-air. I have so many questions (aside from simply wondering the names of the soon-to-be ex-employees who greenlit this abomination). First of all, as a trumpet player myself, I am personally offended that they made me watch a perfectly good trumpet get smashed to smithereens like it’s no big deal. Why would they torture me like this? Second of all, what is the message here? No, not that “the most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest,” as the voiceover artist states in the last few seconds of the clip. I mean: what is the message? Ostensibly, pulverizing children’s toys, arcade games, architectural models, and ceramic Angry Birds into a paste implies something like “We’re taking all the best of humanity; all the collective works of Western Civilization, smashing it into pieces and putting it inside this remarkably thin device so you can have all of it in the palm of your hand.” But my oh my, is there an elephant in this room… he’s hiding behind the monstrous destroying machine. Did anyone inside Apple realize that everyone outside Apple will recognize this imagery in a metaphorical sense, but not the one Apple intended? We don’t see a crushing machine gently consolidating the greatest output of all our artistic endeavors, simply reformatted for a digital age and consumed by everyone with instant, fingertip access. We see what is painstakingly obvious to us, and the timing couldn’t possibly be worse. We see a giant, soulless machine consuming our work in a very different way. Right now, AI models are training themselves on our intellectual property and even our very own personally-identifying data. We aren’t the ones doing the consuming. We’re the ones being consumed. The tech industry has become one massive gaping maw, opening wide and swallowing everything in sight, chewing it up into little bits and pieces of comminuted waste, like a paper shredder or a garbage disposal. It’s destruction in its most literal form. And for what? For a newer version of the iPad that is only slightly thinner than its predecessor? For an only marginally improved version of Apple’s tablet device that has been around for 14 years? For increased profits? This is a terrible look for Apple. They may as well be saying: “All your work are belong to us.” Personally, I am a fan of artificial intelligence. I am eagerly embracing our robot overlords and I welcome our new CSV god (as the actual developers of AI models like to say). I look forward to the freedom and innovation that will come as a result of humanity augmenting our intelligence with AI like a force multiplier on a battlefield. But if Apple has the same perspective I do, they’re selling it in the worst possible way. When I see this video, I see that Apple is definitely crushing something… but I’m not sure what. -Crushing small companies that develop apps for the extremely heavy-handed App Store, which imposes byzantine restrictions on what they can and can’t do with their own apps? -Crushing competitors by limiting what they can do on the iOS and MacOS platforms with arbitrary and capricious rules about enabling functionalities that Apple doesn’t like, even if users do? -Crushing publishers and content creators with a punitive 30% fee on all subscriptions and in-app purchases? -Crushing choice and competition by not allowing app makers to make apps and programs that do the same thing that native apps already do, even if they do it better? -Crushing all human creativity and innovation by automating and systematizing everything? In the early days of the “Google vs. Apple” fight over the web and app stores, I was really concerned that Google was becoming way, way too powerful. Specifically, in 2015, when Google came up with “app streaming,” they announced a desire to form a “web of apps.” This was concerning. Especially when coupled with Google’s efforts to steal content from other websites and provide it to users via the “knowledge graph” results, ending up with the creation of “zero-click” search results pages, which absolutely punished website owners and content creators. By taking the most valuable content off a website and showing it to Google users without them needing to click through to the website itself, Google had essentially stolen everybody’s intellectual property with only the most minimal attribution possible (to fend off lawsuits no doubt, but with no intention of users actually visiting the website in question anymore). “Google is eating the internet,” I thought, and said out loud, (although I probably wasn’t the first person to use that phrase) But what I meant was purely an analogy. It was vague and ambiguous, almost silly. Maybe I was wrong, though: maybe it’s Apple that’s doing the eating. Maybe Apple is not only gobbling up everyone else’s work, but also homogenizing it—and us—and forcing us to use their platform, pay their fees, abide by their rules, and constantly keep upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, to an ever-thinner iPad in order to use it. Watch the video again. This is the stuff of nightmares. To be perfectly fair, even if I were to take the commercial at face value and ignore it’s off-the-charts creepiness and just stick to its one stated claim—that the new iPad Pro is thinner—it still fails as a commercial. Why? Because nobody cares how thin an iPad is. Seriously. I’ve owned an iPad since 2010: that means I’ve carried around a version of Apple’s already-thin tablet every day for over a dozen years. Never once have I said to myself: “You know what improvement I’d really like to see in this thing? I wish it were thinner.” Never. That thought has never crossed my mind, even once. You know what has? -Better battery life. -I’d like my iPad to not get hot to the touch when I use the Apple Pencil to take notes. -I wish it wasn’t so fragile: I dropped my brand-new iPad 2 back in the day when it slipped out of the arm-hold I was carrying it in, it bounced on the pavement, and the screen shattered into a thousand pieces, making it unusable. -I wish it had more storage. -I wish Apple would stop changing the type of cable connector it uses: I’ve gone from the original 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector, and now to the current USB-C/Thunderbolt connector. -I wish I could view the screen in direct sunlight. -I wish it wouldn’t overheat and turn off automatically when I use it outdoors in the summertime. Those are announcements I would welcome in a new iPad Pro commercial. None of this “now even thinner” nonsense nobody needs or cares about. So, back to the commercial. In my opinion, whoever made this ad should be fired. I almost never say that about other companies, especially for good-faith marketing efforts gone wrong… those of us who work in marketing make mistakes sometimes, and we learn from them. But cases like this warrant a special exception. Marketing and advertising are designed to make people want to buy your products. This commercial doesn’t just not make me want to buy Apple’s products. It makes me not want to buy Apple’s products, which is something altogether different. It turns me from someone who likes iPads into someone who is almost rethinking iPads entirely. That’s not just a bad advertisement; it’s a harmful advertisement. Apple’s usually known for great commercials. The legendary 1984 Super Bowl commercial was, of course, their best. I thought “Hello, I’m a Mac” was absolutely brilliant. They have made some missteps along the way, but this one is really bad. Not even their nauseatingly preachy and woke “Mother Nature” ad from a few years ago was this bad. Steve Jobs once said, “Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” My goodness, that last line alone is poetry itself! This ad seems to be Apple signaling that they don’t believe in that anymore. And I don’t think all this handwringing is an overreaction to where you could say “Oh, c’mon, it’s just a commercial! What’s the big deal?” It is a big deal. It tells you about the values of the company, and what they intend to communicate. Really, how is this the same company that used to sell iPhones by showing grandmas using FaceTime to connect with their baby grandchildren from afar during the holidays? Everything about it is wrong: even the thumbnail they chose for it (the bulging-eyed smiley face) and the fact that they gave it the title “Crush!” It was fun to see the reactions to the video online today. I find it fascinating that Apple shared it on YouTube but turned off the comments. On X, Tim Cook shared it Tuesday, and the video, which so richly deserves to be mocked, is getting it in spades. Some people are calling it “anti-art.” One user called it “soul-crushing,” which was about as literal and logical a response as you’d expect. It turns out Apple actually made an announcement about the commercial. In response to the (apparently unexpected) poor welcome it got, Apple wrote: “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.” Lame response from a tone-deaf tech behemoth, but still, they hopefully got the message. C’mon, Apple. I have seen the future, and this ain’t it.show more

The following is a message from Diana Bloom, an... anonymous Iranian activist living in Germany who is being threatened with potentially extremely dangerous "exposure" by what appears to be a lunatic. I am passing this message on since Diana has deleted her account for her own protection and safety. To note, I don't think I should be involved with this crazy Evil Evi woman or her OSINT dramas whatsoever since she went bonkers the other day, but she is acting in defamatory ways and with malicious recklessness in a way that endanger an anonymous Iranian dissident I believe to be good, so I must pass this along. A MESSAGE FROM DIANA BLOOM This is a post in two parts. Part one is a brief summary of what has happened so far. Part two addresses the defamatory claims being made about me. PART 1 - [JL: Diana's explanation and responses] For everyone who doesn’t understand what led to this point, here’s the shortest summary possible: Evi [Kokalari] and I had been friendly in DMs since the end of June. She messaged me first. After [DataRepublican] published her piece on the State Department, I asked Evi not to go too hard against DR. Evi did anyway, and James Lindsay defended DR. I didn’t like the way Evi went after James, including citing Milo. So I unfollowed and removed Evi. She confronted me in DMs, and I explained why. Evi then made a post attacking James that started and ended with me and used my profile picture. I responded once, as politely as I could. Evi then repeatedly threatened to dox me, so I deactivated my account. Now, regarding the substance of the accusations she has made so far: 1. I am not a man. My name is not Derek. 2. I am Iranian. 3. I do know stuff about American politics because (and that is the boring truth) German television is really bad. So I’ve only watched English/American stuff for the past, I don’t know, 15 years, podcasts, late night shows, etc. I didn’t think about it, I just did. Little did I know that that would give me an understanding of the inner dynamics of what’s going on within the Republican Party that would tie back to the Iranian people’s cause in 2026. Believe me, I’m still baffled by it whenever I pause to think about it. But that’s the truth, and here we are. 4. I am not in the United States. I shared a blog, and the provider of that blog (a big, common one) is in the United States. My VPN location is sometimes in the United States. Not me. 5. I am not responsible for the content of people defending me. I have no control over it. It’s not my content, and I keep my distance whenever I see problematic stuff. Many accounts defended me, but going to look for one that has done/said problematic stuff to tie it back to me is not right or fair. I am not responsible. I have nothing to do with it. 6. I wanted to help DR because Evi was threatening to go after her hard, and I didn’t think DR deserved that. I meant no harm, I wanted to help. I made a mistake, and I regret it now, but my intention wasn’t bad at that moment in time. 7. Evi herself was the first to come into my DMs and tell me not to fight with an account named Stephanie. So I did Evi that favor. Meaning: Evi came into my DMs first and tried to calm down a public disagreement between me and someone else. When I did this in defense of DR, I did the same thing Evi had done before. I would never think to accuse Evi of restricting my right to free speech because of it. 8. Publishing private DMs from someone without their permission is wrong. It is something both Evi and Stephanie have now done. Both have shared private messages from me without my permission. 9. Part of Evi’s “sources” seem to be Azi Yazdi (granddaughter of Khomeini’s first foreign minister), Benji, and Nima Yamini, as well as his ghost accounts (I have blocked multiple of them by now). If you know any of them, you know this is insane. None of them are reliable. It’s like using Milo as a source against James Lindsay. This is not about truth but about a (malicious) takedown to silence me and get me out of the way. 10. Evi has threatened to dox me (there is no doubt) multiple times, and she keeps going after me. This puts my life and my family’s lives in Iran in real danger, but she doesn’t care. She keeps going, and I can’t stop her. She keeps putting out one lie after another, and it traps me in a forever loop of defending myself. If I don’t respond to more and more accusations from her against me, rest assured, my silence should never be taken as agreement with the lies she puts out there. Be sure there is always context, a counterargument, counterevidence, etc., that would show that none of what she shares is fair or true. But it’s a forever war that is meant to drain me. So me not commenting on her stuff moving forward is never, ever, ever an admission that she is right about something. It’s just a rejection of playing a game I cannot win. To ALL the people who wrote/shared one or multiple posts and comments in my defense: Thank you very, very, very much. I’ve seen it, and I am grateful. But I think it’s best for my own and my family’s safety, as well as for the whole situation, that I step away and stay away from X. I hope that’s understandable. And Evi, for the last time: if you are not malicious, please just stop. Let me out of this. I am not your target. Just leave me and, through doxxing/"exposing", my family out of it moving forward. I beg of you, please. PART 2 - proof - [JL: The following are direct quotes from Evi indicating her intention to "expose" Diana, which she tries to claim is different than "doxxing," though for all practical purposes the effect will be the same and this is a distinction without a difference. The video below shows all of these quotes from her own posts.] 1. “I’m getting enough information on her from her own community. I may share it…” 2. “Either log back in with your real name, or I will start exposing you. And trust me, you will not like that.” 3. “So stop provoking me. If you continue, I will look much deeper into who you are and what your actual role is behind this anonymous account.” 4. “You know what...WAR IT IS. I will start with Diana!! STAY TUNED” 5. “So I will take those words seriously and dig as deep as I can” 6. “The identities of the "Iranian activists" would never have been called into question had they not attacked my right to freedom of speech in my own country.” 7. Someone: “She deleted her account because she’s concerned for her safety and the safety of her relatives in Iran your threats to dox her” Evi: “She should be...but if she turns out to be clean, I shall protect her identity. But trust me, she is not who she claims to be” 8. “Last I checked, Support on X is against fake accounts. Why are we being threatened for wanting to know the true identity of certain accounts…” 9. “Do you think I know who Diana bloom is? No but I need to find out at this point” 10. “... because I asked one of their group operatives from Germany to debate me using her/his true identity, or I would expose who’s behind the account.” 11. “So I don’t know what you’re all thinking, but this isn’t simply about Diana being scared of the IRGC in Iran. The IRGC has been significantly weakened and has plenty of other things to worry about. There are thousands of Iranian accounts fighting for Iran’s freedom under their own names while still having family members back in Iran. At this point, I think people have every right to ask who is actually behind these anonymous accounts… After a few more new posts on her feed, I was forced to tell her to either come back on X and do this under her real name, or I would expose who she was, so at least we would be having this discussion on equal grounds.” 12. “Don’t freaking interfere with other people’s business like that retard did and no one comes after you. So go ahead down and sue me and I will push harder to expose her and you and anyone else…” MY OWN [JL's] COMMENTS, which Diana has nothing to do with and doesn't know I'm appending here. I now believe Evi is likely to be a malignant narcissist who is incapable of admitting that she is wrong. She will not stop in her behavior, and she will aim to harm anyone who attempts to intervene. I do not recommend you do this. I recommend you mark, avoid, and block. Fighting with her will only fuel her because she simply cannot admit that she's wrong about all of this and can only double down in increasingly insane, dangerous, and reckless ways, including toward Diana and her safety. She believes everything she sees that's trying to talk sense into her about any of this is part of an elaborate "op" that "disrespects her free speech" (which isn't a thing, by the way). No one is silencing her. People are just trying to talk sense into her to stop spreading defamation and reckless "exposure" of people who she will put at risk with it and who do not in any way deserve it, people she considered friends and allies until literally four days ago when she suddenly blew up. Therefore, not only is her reckless belief hermetically sealed against any disagreement, she turns any disagreement into proof of allegedly coordinated attacks against her from a network that simply doesn't exist. As a response, in her malignancy, she is threatening to damage, "expose," or otherwise reputationally harm anyone who even tries politely to talk sense into her, much less to disagree with her or oppose her. I strongly recommend everyone realize what they're getting into if they work with or ally themselves with this crazy woman going forward. You do so at your own risk. I can attest from watching her over the last few days that her research abilities, at least when agitated, are so sloppy as to be beyond worthless, even dangerous. The post I'm quoting below is proof of that. She's trying to prove Diana is secretly an American because she's too sloppy and stupid to realize that a Wordpress domain has an American location. She isn't doing research in good faith or with fidelity on this issue, or about me. She is looking for any information she can to hurt people who have upset her. In fact, she is presently being sued for defamation by an Albanian singer (Evi is an Albanian immigrant to the United States and a U.S. citizen for at least a couple decades), so we might recognize this bad behavior and poor praxis as a pattern with her. I can provide just from the last few days, as can others, much evidence that she's simply grasping at the nastiest straws she can find to try to harm people she has suddenly decided are her opponents because of her jealous outburst at DataRepublican and her narcissistic injury at being called on it. The sloppiness and outright retardation of her "fact" finding and "analysis" are so shocking that it's hard not to laugh even given how horrifically dangerous it is. We can therefore infer this sloppiness, recklessness, and malice-when-opposed to be at least partially true of her other "research" against her other targets, by extension. That's a shame because many of those targets are worthy of real scrutiny, which she is undermining with her loose cannon. Therefore, I insist her OSINT "research" is at best worthless and at worst maliciously harmful. In either case, it cannot be engaged by people who want to make a positive difference in the world, so mark and avoid. Evi seems good at making connections. She was quite positively in my own DMs for a while, trying to find ways to work productively together, even suggesting we start an alternative to CPAC (lol). She appears to be friends with both Eric Trump and Don Jr., though the relationship with the former appears to be more solid. She seems to have worked behind the scenes with a lot of relatively prominent Republican groups. I find all of this incredibly concerning after the events of this week, even though I wouldn't have beforehand. My own assessment from this stupid and nasty drama is that Evi's primary motivation is that she is pathologically envious of DataRepublican and her influence, likely believing it should be her in DataRepublican's place. As we can see, she isn't nearly careful or accurate enough for that. Mark and avoid. Further, though, while DataRepublican has no driving interest to be who or what she is and is doing it in service to the best of her abilities (which are considerable but still limited and imperfect as are anyone's), Evi appears to covet the role, which she has demonstrated she cannot possibly handle responsibly. Again, mark and avoid. Block if you will. I will not unblock her for this post or in the future. You can think of that whatever you want. I will rarely, almost never, say anything about her except in the defense of others she is wantonly and recklessly attacking. I will NEVER interact with her directly again, no arguments, no back and forth, no dunks, nothing. My involvement here is pure exposure and nothing else. Thank you for your attention to this matter.show more

Here’s my full Rivian R2 Performance review, covering features,... design, some things I liked and didn't like, going off-roading, and more: At the end of my weeklong test, it dawned on me that the R2 Performance is a competitor to the Model Y Performance. I say "dawned" because the two vehicles couldn’t feel more different in their overall ethos. The R2 feels at home off-road. It soaks up bumps well, the suspension is well tuned, and it feels like an adventure vehicle. The Model Y Performance feels at home on-road, tackling corners and eating miles with FSD. Exterior: A boxy design might not be the most efficient, but I love the look. I'm a fan of the oval shaped front lights. The side profile and rear also both look great. There is a F1-style light at the top when braking. The 5.2 cu ft frunk is large for a vehicle in this class. The 9.6" ground clearance (3" more than Model Y) gives you a commanding view of what's ahead, but you do get a decent amount of body roll even in firm suspension mode. Fit and finish was good. The 20" Black Sand wheels with all-terrain tires look sweet. Fit and finish was good overall, and the 20-inch Black Sand wheels with all-terrain tires look sweet Interior: I'm a fan of the design. I’ve seen some people say the interior feels cheap, but I mostly disagree. The main touch points use nice textile, wood, and vegan leather trim. One material choice I don’t like, though, is the A- and B-pillars. Instead of textile, Rivian uses a hard, textured plastic designed to look like fabric. It’s also slightly lighter than the all-black headliner, which makes it more noticeable. The entire rear cargo area, aside from the floor, and the tailgate trim are also covered in hard plastic. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on how you use the vehicle. It’s easier to clean and probably better suited for hauling dirty gear, but textile or fabric like you get in the Model Y would do a better job absorbing sound and preventing cargo from sliding around and making noise. The front seats are extremely comfortable, and the lumbar support is great. It's easier to spend hours in them. The heated seats and steering wheel get nice and toasty. The cooled seats are some of the best I've ever experienced, but they are also the loudest. You can hear them at 60 mph. You can also feel like motor humming a bit, although that disappears when the vehicle is moving at speed. The sound system is an improvement over the R1S, but I’d still like deeper, more powerful bass, clearer highs, and better overall tuning for a more immersive sound. The dual glove box/storage setup is fantastic. Since both compartments are lockable, I’d use them all the time. The R2 in general has a ton of storage and little cubbies, with 90 cu ft of total storage space. The dual wireless phone chargers are also some of the best implemented I've seen. They use MagSafe, so your phones stay securely in place even when you’re throwing the R2 around off-road, and there is a little area for the phone camera bumps so the phone is flush. The infotainment system is fast and responsive, aside from the occasional minor lag, and the graphics look crisp. I absolutely love the huge navigation view that fills the screen. I wish I could do this in my Model Y. The Gauges section is also really cool, giving you real-time information like battery and motor temps. The Autonomy system works well, but it’s fairly limited in its current form. Think of it as advanced adaptive cruise control with lane keeping and the ability to change lanes on command. It can’t currently handle stop signs, traffic lights, or city driving. RJ has said an FSD (Supervised) like system is coming later this year, so we’ll see. The current R2s use Rivian’s older Gen 2 autonomy hardware. The next-generation Gen 3 hardware arrives next year and is expected to bring a significant increase in capability. It won’t be retrofittable to Gen 2 vehicles, though, so that’s something buyers should keep in mind. The second row has plenty of legroom and headroom. I was a little surprised that it doesn’t have acoustic windows, but it’s still pretty quiet back there. The full glass roof is nice and doesn’t make the cabin feel excessively hot. The interior lighting is VERY bright, which I love. It does a great job illuminating the entire cabin at night. Efficiency: I had the 20" all-terrain wheels, which are rated for 307 miles of range. Over my weeklong test, I averaged about 250–270 miles of range, or 12–19% below the stated range. During a 50-minute trip, with 85% highway and 15% non-highway driving and no crazy acceleration, I averaged 2.83 miles per kWh at an average speed of ~60 mph. That equates to 249 miles of range from a full charge to empty, despite being in Conserve mode. I had a few other trips with similar numbers. Will be interesting to see the what the winter range is like. If you're someone who doesn't go on long trips often or mostly stays in your area and charges at home, these efficiency numbers probably won't matter to you. Final thoughts: I won’t write out every thought here, you can check out my full review video below for that, but overall, the R2 is a great vehicle. It’s a very capable off-roader while still being a comfortable daily driver. The lack of an FSD-like system is a deal-breaker for me personally since I use FSD for virtually all of my miles. It's the most luxurious and mind-blowing vehicle feature on the market today, but that might not be a deal-breaker for other people, and that’s okay. The fact there there are good EVs available is great for consumers. Thanks again Rivian for letting me test the R2 for a week!show more

Recently I got some hands-on time with Crimson Desert... and below are my first impressions as well as some of the gameplay I was able to capture. Crimson Desert is a good game, but it won’t be for everyone. I know the devs claim this isn’t an RPG, but I don’t know any other way to describe this game other than a HARDCORE action RPG. If you need the yellow paint to know where to climb this game isn’t for you. But if you love getting lost in a whimsical world with a boat load of content this game is going to be right up your alley. I think what impressed me most is the attention to detail. There’s so many little things the dev team took into consideration that I think people who enjoy being immersed into a world are going to appreciate. Even if you aren’t that person; on a basic level I think most will enjoy the game's combat. It’s fast, fluid and provides a ton of player expression with its deep skill tree. The world of Pywel is vibrant, large in scale and full of life. It’s easy to get lost off the main quest line as there’s always something to do and someone to speak to. An example being I was wandering through the open world and encountered a distressed woman seeking help. I agreed to follow her only to find out moments later she was with a gang and they were trying to back door me. That had me cracking up. I think if the open world is consistently full of fun, unique side content like that & the main quest line is fire this game has a lot of potential to impress. It’s just a shame that I didn’t get to spend more time with the main quests as I kept getting side tracked with cool stuff to do in the open world. So I can’t give you much insight into that. What I can say is after the opening section there’s NEXT TO NO tutorials in this game, the puzzles are hard & the default controls are a bit clunky. You will be getting lost and I can see that frustrating some people who aren’t interested in a challenge. That’s why I mentioned earlier that this is a hardcore RPG. It does not do a lot of hand holding. Because of that I predict you and your friends will be sharing tips and tricks similar to when Elden Ring first launched and nobody knew what they were doing. If you are a patient person and take the time to learn the game's systems I promise you will be able to put together some awesome combos that will make you feel like the main character. My biggest fear for this game is that I won't finish it. Not because it’s a bad game, but I can just tell from my brief time with it that it’s next level massive. As someone who's been gaming for 30+ years it’s very rare you’ll hear me say a game was overwhelming, but this game is. For people who lack a ton of free time I can see that being a turn off because once again the game doesn’t give much direction or tutorials outside the opening area. Not to mention this game could be big just for the sake of being big. I was curious to know how much of the content was engaging versus just open world bloat? Hard to tell because I only got a few hours with the game. I also fear that the Ai isn’t the best in this game. The Ai issues I encountered zapped all immersion away for those moments. I’m not sure if the final build will differ from the vertical slice we played, but what I can tell you is that on the build we played I wasn’t impressed by the Ai. Several times I attacked enemy camps and they never reacted to me attacking them. They just stood there and took it which made the world feel less alive. There were also times where enemies were looking dead at me just standing still as the battle music played threatening to beat me up, but they never did anything. It was 3 or 4 times I encountered this poor Ai which is a red flag for me because I only got two hours of hands on time with the game. Mind you in those two hours a good portion of it was just me working my way through the prologue and the early quests, so I didn't spend a ton of time in the open world. What I'm trying to get at is the janky ai was very noticeable. It wasn't something that took long to find. I will say when the game works it's great, but when I tell you the Ai was bad at times it was bad. It reminded me of the dumb NPC’s often found in Ubisoft open world games. I’m not looking for this to be a Souls game but I want some level of challenge in the combat. Hopefully that stuff gets patched out. That being said, I’m confident in saying this game is good. I just didn’t have enough time with it to determine if it’s good, or GREAT. Only time will tell when Crimson Desert drops on March 19th, 2026 for the PC, PS5 and Xbox Series. Pros —---------- - Combat makes you feel like demon - Deep Skill tree - Vibrant world - Solid voice acting - Fire OST - The little details (trust system, you can commit crimes ect.) - No Fall damage - Puzzles are creative & challenging - Game doesn’t hold you hand (some people will hate this) - You can swap in and out of 3rd and 1st person at will. Wasn’t able to explore much of how that changes the game, but it’s nice that it's an option. - EASILY over 100hrs of content (some will hate this though) Cons —---------- - Clunky controls (Default controls take some time adjusting too. I hope there’s other control schemes at launch) - Inconsistent Ai (Ubisoft bad at times. sometimes the enemies wouldn’t attack during combat or act like they never saw you) - Long load times (we were playing on PC’s, but idk the specs) - Your horse can faint & when they do traveling the large world wasn’t as fun (and I couldn’t figure out how to get him back - most likely a skill issue) - Early stamina management is OD. Early game it’s easy to drown & get tired running. I’d imagine it gets better late game, but early game it’s frustrating trying to explore. - Camera takes some getting used to in combat. Sometimes its too close and others too far. - Early arrows have no impact. Felt useless. Hoping later upgrades fix thatshow more

BOOM!!! 💥💥💥 Dr. Aseem Malhotra's testimony was delivered in... the Helsinski District Court on April 12, 2024, with the understanding that any deviation from the truth would constitute perjury. This clip was immediately banned by YouTube so please share widely. I've trimmed the clip, removing the interpreter's segment for a smoother listening experience. Here's the first hour of the testimony. ---------------------------------- My name is Doctor Aseem Malhotra. I am a consultant cardiologist. I've been a qualified doctor since 2001. I have held various roles both in academic health policy. In England, in the United Kingdom, and of the various roles, I won't bore you with all the details. I think three of the most relevant and prominent are the fact that I was an ambassador for the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges for six years, which represented every doctor in the UK. I served a full term of six years as a trustee of the King's fund. I was the youngest member to be appointed to this body which advises government on health policy. I was a founding member of Action on Sugar and a first science director. And through that role I'm considered the lead campaigner on bringing about a sugary drinks tax in the UK. And also, finally I served for five years as visiting professor of evidence based medicine at the Bahiana School of Medicine in Salvador, Brazil. In early 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic I was most vocal doctor on the mainstream, making the link very early on between COVID and those who are vulnerable to suffering serious complications from COVID In fact, in March 2020, I was asked to go on Sky News to explain my initial research findings of the link between especially obesity and COVID, but also to give people an opportunity and to suggest to the government this was a great time for them to implement public health policy to help people enhance or optimise their immune system, which could happen within just a few weeks of dietary changes and optimising vitamin D. This was later also backed up by medical journal publications a few months later. And I was first to mention on the back of an article I published in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which became a front page commentary and was picked up by BBC News and Good Morning Britain, where I had said that it's likely our prime minister, Boris Johnson, was hospitalised because of his weight. As a result of that, the then secretary for health, Matt Hancock, and this was publicised in the news, had asked me to advise him on the link between COVID and obesity. ...before I explain my journey and in many ways U-turn on my understanding in terms of the benefits and harms of the COVID vaccine, my experience in this area over the last couple of years has made me realise more than ever that even for that the greatest barrier to the truth are not factual or intellectual barriers, but psychological. I think all of us as human beings are vulnerable to these psychological barriers and we should have compassion for ourselves. And I will just very briefly summarise those three psychological barriers before I get into my detailed account of what I was involved in in regards to the COVID vaccine. The first psychological barrier is one of fear. And many of us understandably, and I still remember from early on in the pandemic, we were all scared. We did not know what we were dealing with. The issue with fear is that when people and populations are in a state of fear, we are less likely to engage in critical thinking and we are more likely to be compliant. Although COVID was particularly devastating for vulnerable groups in the elderly and I even have managed and still manage people with long COVID, the fear was grossly exaggerated. And one of the examples of that is that when we had good information on the mortality rate of COVID in the United States, one survey in 2020 revealed that 50% of Americans believed that if they caught COVID, the risk of 19 hospitalisation was 50% one and two, when the actual figure, certainly an average for people in middle age, was less than 1%. The second barrier to the truth, which I think is very relevant to the situation we find ourselves in now, is one called willful blindness. This is when human beings, all of us, are vulnerable to this, turn a blind eye to the truth in order to feel safe, avoid conflict, reduce anxiety and to protect prestige and fragile egos. Some examples of this include, on a personal level, willful blindness can occur when a spouse turns a blind eye to the affair of their partner. On an institutional level, some great examples of willful blindness include Hollywood and Harvey Weinstein, the Catholic Church and child molestation. I believe the current situation we find ourselves in, with much of the mainstream narrative and the medical establishment and policy makers not acknowledging quite horrific, serious and common harms from this vaccine, is another example of willful blindness. And I also say this with full empathy, because I was one of those people that was for a very long time, willfully blind to the harms of the COVID vaccine. In January 2021, I was one of the first people to take two doses of the COVID mRNA vaccine because I volunteered in a vaccine centre. I still believe that traditional vaccines are some of the safest amongst all pharmacological interventions in medicine and I could not conceive of any possibility whatsoever of this vaccine causing harm. As a public figure and respected doctor in the UK, I have built relationships across the board with many other public figures, including celebrities and politicians, who often come to me for medical advice. One of those people was film director Gurinder Chadha, who you may be familiar with some of her work, including the movie "Bend It like Beckham", who had asked me whether or not she should take the vaccine and had sent me blogs which I dismissed and regarded as anti vax nonsense. I was then asked to go on good morning, Britain because Gurinder Chadha, the director herself tweeted that I had convinced her to take the vaccine. The main reason for this TV appearance was to help tackle vaccine hesitancy, which was very prominent amongst people from ethnic minority groups in the UK. I made the point on that programme that I understand where vaccine hesitancy was coming from because of the history that I have been involved with over many years in highlighting the shortcomings of pharmaceutical industry influence over medicine. And I even made the point, if I remember correctly, that they have been found guilty of fraud on many occasions, that the third most common cause of death, prepandemic after heart disease and cancer, is prescribed medications. I, however, reassured the public and said that despite these figures, of everything we do in medicine, traditional vaccinations are amongst the safest. I still believe this to be the case. A few months later, in April 2021, I met with a colleague and friend of mine who I regard as one of the brightest cardiologists in the United Kingdom. I was surprised when he told me that he had not taken the COVID vaccine. He explained to me that he had concerns because he had seen in the supplementary appendix of Pfizer's original trial that there were four cardiac arrests in the vaccine group and only one in the placebo. These numbers were small and did not reach statistical significance. So this could be random chance, or his concern was it could represent a signal of problems in the future. And if this was the case, we are going to have a huge problem. He said he'd rather wait and see what happens before taking the vaccine. On July 26, 2021, my father, aged 73, who was a very prominent, well known doctor in the UK, including being the honorary vice president of the British Medical Association and had received honours from the Queen of England with an OBE, suffered an unexpected sudden cardiac arrest. I was particularly devastated by this happening and I was also I find it difficult to understand why my father, who was a fit and well man, I knew his cardiac history and his cardiac status, would suffer a cardiac arrest. But also my initial investigation was to try and understand why there had been a 30 minutes ambulance delay arriving to his apartment. Two weeks later, the deputy chief nurse of NHS England, a government health body, called me up. She was very upset, she knew my father very well and she was crying and she told me, Aseem, there's something I need to tell you. She in effect told me that throughout the country, for the last two months prior to my father's cardiac arrest in most regions of the UK, ambulances were not getting to patients in time for heart attacks and cardiac arrests. And there had been a deliberate, and I will use these words because I mentioned it, I've mentioned it before, a cover up involving the government and the Department of Health to withhold this information from doctors and the public. I worked with an investigative journalist with the I newspaper in the UK to write an article and a news story that became BBC News headlines a few months later, exposing this. Just before I exposed this, I messaged a professor of cardiology who I trust in the UK. He has a leadership role to explain to him what had happened and what I was about to do. I have text message evidence of this. He told me not to do this because it would make me enemies. I explained to him that I had a duty to patients and the public. I'm highlighting this as one example and I'll give you more examples of a cultural problem within medicine. The next part of this story is the post mortem findings of my father. They did not make any sense to me. I am considered a leading expert, maybe in the world, on the development and progression of coronary artery disease. My father had two severe blockages in his coronary arteries. There was no actual evidence of heart attack and likely there was a rhythm disturbance because of reduced blood supply that led to his cardiac arrest. Then in, within the space of a few weeks, around October and November, 3, different sources of information was brought to my attention that made me realise that there was probably a significant problem with the COVID mRNA vaccine. The first in October 2021. I remember I was giving lectures in Stockholm. I was contacted by a journalist with a Times newspaper who reported to me and said, Dr Malhotra, we have reports of an unexplained 25% increase in heart attacks in hospitals in Scotland and asked me what I thought was going on. I explained to her that at that time, with the evidence I knew in my own experience, I said that two likely contributory factors were lockdown stress. We know that when populations undergo severe stress after war, for example, there is an increase in heart attacks and strokes that can last for many years. She asked me whether I thought that there was a contribution. I was surprised when she asked me whether I thought there may be a contribution of the COVID vaccine to these heart attacks. I said to her, a good scientist should never exclude any possibility. But I felt at the time it was unlikely to be related to the COVID vaccine. But we should watch this space and keep our eyes open. A few weeks later, a publication appeared in the Journal Circulation, which is considered the highest impact cardiology journal in the United States that revealed a potentially very strong link between the COVID mRNA vaccines and acceleration in heart attack risk. Very specifically, in several hundred people of middle age, there was a plausible mechanism, by use of inflammatory markers in the blood, that increased the baseline risk of those people having a heart attack in five years, from 11% to 25%, just within two months of having the COVID mRNA vaccines. Of course, this is one bit of data, but even if partially true, that is a huge increase in risk in a very short space of time. And for me now made me think and link back to why my father may have suffered a cardiac arrest six months after having two doses of the vaccine. I remember thinking and speaking to a colleague, that if this was true, then we were going to see an increase in cardiac arrests, heart attacks and excess deaths in heavily vaccinated countries for the next few years. Then within a few weeks, I was called up by a whistleblower at a very prestigious british institution. I will name that institution, which I have not done publicly before as a University of Oxford. This cardiologist explained to me that a group of researchers in his department had accidentally found, through the use of very specialised imaging of the heart, that there was a signal of increased inflammation of the heart arteries, which was there in the vaccinated, but not there in the unvaccinated. The lead researcher of that group had sat down, the juniors, and had said that we are not going to explore these findings any further because it may affect our funding from the pharmaceutical industry. At that point, with these three bits of information, I then felt it was my ethical duty to speak out. And I went on GBNews to talk about what I'd found what I'd heard and I'd asked for the Vaccine Committee of the UK on TV to investigate this, to see whether there was a real problem with the vaccine in relation to heart issues. Around the same time which I found very strange is that the Secretary of State for Health at that stage, who was not Matt Hancock, was Sajid Javid, had announced in parliament that we are going to introduce legislation to ensure that all healthcare workers are mandated to have the COVID vaccine. For me, this, by that stage had no ethical or scientific justification, because certainly after the summer of 2021, it had become very apparent that the COVID mRNA vaccine was not stopping infection and it certainly was not stopping transmission. It was understood that approximately 80,000 NHS workers had refused at this stage to have the COVID vaccine. And now they were threatened with losing their job if by April the following year they had not been fully vaccinated. Many of these people were very concerned and contacted me around that time, I was also conducting many interviews, both through the BBC and Sky News and GBNews in regards to what happened with my father's ambulance delay. And I used it as an opportunity on the mainstream media to call for Sajid Javid, the secretary for health, to U-turn on the introduction of a mandate for healthcare workers based upon the fact that I felt it was not scientific and it was unethical. I also received my own personal backlash from these comments where I was contacted by the Royal College of Physicians who I had an affiliation with, and they asked me to respond to anonymous complaints from doctors that I was spreading, in quotes, antivax disinformation. I felt with my own knowledge and experience of the healthcare system that this was a direct response probably fueled by a combination of willful blindness and institutional corruption. To elaborate a bit further, when I say institutional corruption, I mean that my view was that the complaints were likely being fueled by academics with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. I felt very concerned about the potential introduction of the vaccine, well, the vaccine mandate. And therefore I decided there were two things that I decided to do. The first was I made a phone call to the chairman of the British Medical Association in December 2021. I had a good relationship with him and he respected my opinion. And I spent 2 hours on the phone explaining to him everything that I knew up to that stage about my concerns of the COVID mRNA vaccine. He said to me, "Aseem, nobody appears to critically appraise the evidence on the COVID mRNA vaccine as well as you have from our conversation, he said, most of my colleagues are getting their information on the benefits and harms of the vaccine from the BBC". This was replicated by the former chair of the CDC in the United States, Rochelle Walensky, who in an interview later on had said that her initial optimism of the vaccine benefits came from CNN News report. I say this just to emphasise that we should all accept our vulnerabilities to where we receive health information. Even doctors, policymakers, judges and lawyers are all influenced on the public massively by mainstream media. The chairman of the BMA also agreed with me. There was no ethical or scientific justification for mandating the COVID vaccine. He said the BMA also did not support it. And he said because of my conversation with him, he would speak directly to the secretary for health, Sajid Javid. One month later, at the end of January 2022, the COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers was overturned. I at that stage, given the fact that there was some backlash happening towards me, I realised that because this is a very big issue and area, and not my initial area of expertise, I needed to carry out my own critical analysis of the COVID mRNA vaccines. I spent six to nine months critically appraising the data, including speaking to two Pfizer whistleblowers, three investigative medical journalists and eminent scientists from the University of Oxford, Stanford and Harvard. The most critical bit, the most critical research that was published on this issue, which I think the whole court should acknowledge in August 2022, was published in the journal Vaccine. That research was conducted by some of the world's top independent of drug industry influence academics. That research, we was able to reanalyze the original randomised control trials conducted by Pfizer and Moderna. They were able to do this because new information was made available on the FDA's website and Health Canada's website. The conclusions of that paper were really very disturbing. The original trials that led to the drug regulatory approval of these vaccines revealed that you were more likely to suffer serious harm from taking the vaccine, specifically hospitalisation, life changing event or disability, than you were to be hospitalised with COVID That rate of harm at two months was very high at 1 in 800. Just to give you some perspective, historically we have suspended other vaccines for much less. In 1976, the swine flu vaccine was pulled because it was found to cause a neurological syndrome called Guillain-Barre syndrome In one in 100,000 people. In 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was suspended because it was found to cause a form of bowel obstruction in children affecting 1 in 10,000. This was 1 in 800. In my view, it was very clear that given this information, published in the highest impact Vaccine journal in the world, peer reviewed, and has not had any significant rebuttals, that this vaccine now, in my view, should never have been approved for use in a single human being in the first place. In my view, this very important court case in some ways, actually is a distraction from the much bigger issue, which is there should be court cases around the world with a full inquiry into the pharmaceutical industry and an inquiry as to how we got this so very wrong. Of course, one could argue this is just one bit of research, but actually, unfortunately, there are different, many different strands of research that are showing a signal of considerable and common serious harm from these vaccines. From pharmacovigilance data that is reporting what we call yellow card reports from the public. We have plausible biological mechanism of harm. We have other research called observational data. We have autopsy data also confirming that certainly with the majority of people who died within a short space of time of having the vaccine in relation to the heart, was definitively caused by the vaccine. This is really a very, very, very horrific situation we find ourselves in. One would hope and expect that the regulators should be independently evaluating all medications. But of course, the evidence reveals this is far from true. There was an investigation by the BMJ, also published in the summer of 2022, which revealed that most of the major regulators across the world were taking most of their money from the drug industry. For example, the MHRA in the UK receives 86% of its funding from the drug industry, and the FDA in America receives 65% of its funding from the drug industry, A fact that most doctors do not know. And therefore, I would not expect members of the court to know this either, is that very, very rarely do drug industry sponsored research get independently evaluated. Clinical trial data can often involve thousands of pages of information on individual patients. The drug companies hold onto that raw data. They then give summary results to the regulator, who are then paying, who have an incentive to approve the drugs, and the drugs are then approved. I made these points in my peer reviewed article published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance in September 2022, where I concluded that we should pause and investigate the issue around the COVID mRNA vaccines. I have since then been campaigning and advocating for a return to ethical evidence based medical practise around the world. Some of the clear solutions moving forward would be changes in the law that are required so that patients, doctors, members of the public can have greater confidence in the information they receive to make decisions about their health. Two very clear, low hanging fruit solutions, which are both ethical, scientific and democratic, would be that the drug industry should be allowed to develop drugs, but they shouldn't be allowed to test them themselves. And they certainly shouldn't be allowed to design their own research to and hold onto the raw data. Their information needs to be independently evaluated. One other clear solution would also be that the medical regulators, again, should not be taking any money from the industry, as this is a gross conflict of interest. I also want to highlight for people to understand the bigger picture. Prior to the pandemic, I had realised that there was a big problem with the reliability of clinical research, where invariably the results of clinical trials on all drugs sponsored by the drug industry, grossly exaggerate their safety and benefits. I have taken this information to the European Parliament, where I spoke in 2019, and I spoke to very senior politicians in the UK government. But although they were sympathetic, they felt that the issue was much bigger than them as individuals, and therefore it also needed media attention to get public awareness on the importance of such an inquiry. Before we continue with further questions, as I've been speaking for quite a long time now I'll just finish with two references just for the court and the judges to understand just how bad this problem is. Prepandemic the man who I call the Stephen Hawking of medicine is Professor John Ioannidis from the University of Stanford. The reason I call him the Stephen Hawking of Medicine is he's the most cited medical researcher in the world and is a mathematical genius. In 2006, he published a paper which was entitled why most published research findings are false. In that paper, he makes a point that the greater the financial interests in a given field, the less likely the research findings are to be true. I say this in context of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine which has made the company $100 billion. The other point that he makes in a further paper in 2017 is, again, the reason the system continues as it is is most doctors are unaware of the information they receive when they make clinical decisions has been corrupted by commercial influence. The other credible name I will mention is the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton, who I personally know. In 2015, he wrote an article in the Lancet in relation to a secret meeting that had taken place with himself and some of the world's top medical academics. In that, he wrote that possibly half of the medical published literature may simply be untrue. And he said that science has taken a turn towards darkness. But who's going to take the first step to clean up the system? I believe in this case and in this court today, this is going to be a very pivotal potential moment in history for that first step. ---------------------- Dr Aseem Malhotra H/T: Tiina Keskimäki 🇫🇮show more

If someone tells you Mercedes "Level 3" DrivePilot is... more advanced than Tesla FSD, they are either clueless or lying to you. Mercedes DrivePilot: 1. Only works on certain models of the top end S class and EQS with special hardware. So only some versions of their most expensive car support it, or almost no cars. By contrast any Tesla built since October 2016 can run FSD. 2. Only works on pre-mapped highways in California or Nevada. By contrast Tesla FSD works on any road, highway or city streets across North America (and soon, Europe and China) 3. You must be in a traffic jam on the highway traveling under 40 miles per hour. By contrast FSD allows you to go up to 85 miles per hour. 4. You must have a vehicle right in front of you to follow, if they pull too far ahead you will be asked to take over. By contrast FSD does not require a lead vehicle. 5. You must have clear lane markings — if they are faded you will be asked to take over. By contrast FSD works without any lane markings. 6. Only works in good weather — if it's rainy, foggy, sun shining directly at car, etc you will be asked to take over. By contrast FSD works in a wide range of inclement weather conditions (but of course has limits too) 7. Only works in the daytime. Does not turn on at night. By contrast FSD works 24 hours a day. 8. You have to click ok to accept the first time you turn it on per drive. By contrast FSD just turns on without requiring you to click ok 9. DrivePilot still has a driver monitoring system that will beep at you / ask you to take over if you do anything that is not allowed (like leaning too far back) 10. You may be asked to take over at any moment for any reason and need to be ready to do so within 10 seconds. 11. If you don't take control, the vehicle will come to a dead stop in the middle of the highway 12. DrivePilot cannot handle interchanges or change lanes. By contrast FSD can handle lane changes and interchanges completely automatically. Mercedes can do lane changes in Level 2 mode, but in Level 3 mode you need to do them yourself. You will always need to pay attention to make sure you don't miss the exit 13. "Don't think of it as a fully automated do everything for you sytem. It's more like Level 2 enhanced, but enhanced in a really impressive way" 14. Relies on HD mapping to function. Mercedes needs to build and maintain these maps or the system will not work. The system does not work anywhere the maps don't go, such as city streets. 15. System is so reliant on maps to tell the car where to drive that they have to account for things like continental drift 16. When the system asks you to take over, you're sent back into manual driving mode — all lane keeping is turned off 17. Once it goes out of its operating conditions, you are liable again. So, for example, if someone changes lanes and there's no longer a lead car in front of you the system suddenly turns off, stops in the middle of the highway, and you're liable again "so it's always good to pay attention, even when these systems are on" (so what is the benefit exactly?) 18. Because mapping is so expensive to maintain, it costs $2,500 a year. By contrast FSD costs only $1,200 a year. It does so much more for less than half the price, and works on any Tesla. 19. No way to retrofit DrivePilot onto a car that doesn't have the LIDAR etc 20. "I came away from my time with DrivePilot a bit mystified. It's clear that developing this system was a complicated endeavor, with all the added sensors and complexity and while it was on I have to say it worked pretty flawlessly. But with the operating conditions being so narrow, I couldn't shake the thought of 'is this all worth it?' from my head. Even trying to film this video was difficult, as the vehicle would hand control back just as we were getting going especially with that low 40 mph speed threshold. And if I were paying $2,500 a year to use this system and it wouldn't stay on, I would find that pretty frustrating" It is crazy and sad that people are being so misinformed about important safety technologies that could save or change their lives. If anyone tells you this system is more advanced than anything else out there, they are either a moron or a liar.show more

My fellow Kenyans, Many of you have seen my... recent posts about the deadly cancer that is corruption in our country. In my last post, I tried to paint a picture of the disconnect between our potential as a country and the economic circumstances we find ourselves in today, and the connection between corruption and the incalculable pain and suffering and cruelty that is meted out every single day to the most vulnerable among us by thieves operating out of public office. And after covering the goings-on in Mandera County, I told you that in my honest opinion, our governments exist to cater for the filthy-rich lifestyles of the vilest and most corrupt among us, at the expense of everyone else. I received tremendous support from all of you, for speaking on behalf of so many struggling Kenyans who don’t have a voice, or the audience necessary to spark the much-needed discussion about where we are heading as a country. But even with all that support, I have received messages asking me to be careful. One compatriot told me: “prepare to be relentlessly pursued, threatened, enticed, guilt-tripped, and gas-lit”. This is from a someone who knows how our government operates, and how it uses violence and its monopoly on power to silence those who question why politicians are stealing so much. I am not naive about the dangers of speaking up and calling out thieves who control state machinery, and who possess the ability to shut me up in a few seconds. But I will tell you why we CAN NOT and MUST NOT keep quiet. In November of 2023, I stumbled upon the story of a young man from Turkana, Calvin Esekon Esewit , who, despite scoring an A-, and getting an acceptance into medical school, spent two years not knowing whether his dreams of becoming a doctor would ever come true. I was moved by that story in a way that I can never adequately explain. I could not understand how it is possible that, in our country, a young man who appears to be every parent’s dream child can spend two years in limbo while we as a country possess the ability to invest in our best and brightest. And so, I spent weeks trying to chase down Calvin to see how I could help him attend college. After a lot of searching, I finally found Calvin, and by this time he had managed to get some help and is now in college. While this story has a great ending, it did not to be this way. And we know that the number of cases that end like this, with some success, are a small fraction of those ones which end tragically, with broken dreams. This is what happens when corruption consumes anything and everything in a country. It destroys lives. See attached video to learn about Calvin's story. I tell you all this story because it provides context to today's topic. For one story like this one that you see on the news, there are millions that never make the news. But they are real situations, nonetheless. There are millions of your compatriots who are devastated by this killer cancer of corruption that is perpetuated by people that you and I have put into public office ostensibly to improve our lives. They go into these offices and abuse the trust you bestowed upon them and deny you and everyone else a decent opportunity in life. You see, Calvin and millions of other victims of this shameless level of corruption and plunder have no voice, and no real ability to look the thieves that are destroying lives and generations of Kenyans in eye and tell them to stop this unbearable pain and the cruelty. This is the reason I embarked on this journey to attempt to expose this shameful situation. Watch the attached video of Calvin’s situation, and I am sure that you will agree that the millions of Calvins in our country need a voice, NO MATTER THE RISK. The thieves that are destroying the futures of millions of children just so they can have beachside homes in Miami, Dubai and other places count on the idea that most people will fear for their lives, and therefore not speak up. They count on the growing apathy in the Kenyan psyche. But we cannot give in to that. We cannot cower to thieves. We must look them straight in the eye and tell them that they MUST STOP. If we don't, our children and their children are guaranteed the same level of cruelty. And so with that, today I want to talk about the utterly insane crime scene that is Turkana County. I don’t know any other way to describe it, other than, it is a “shit-show”. Just follow along, and let me know if you disagree. As I did in my previous commentary, I will ask you to indulge me a little bit, and allow me to use a couple of pictures, because pictures speak louder than a thousand words. The first picture shows the state-of-the art County Government offices, that the County Government of Turkana decided to invest an ungodly amount of money on. Close to a billion shillings. The second picture is a classroom in session. In Turkana County. These two realities are occurring in parallel in the same county, at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, let me just tell you that I do not go out of my way to find bad news. I want stories that would help re-affirm our belief in the fundamental decency of human beings. When I find good news as I review these Counties’ decisions and how they behave with our resources, I will be the first one to report it to you. But I don’t have any good news today. I have bad news. If you read my commentary yesterday and were offended by what you saw, I am afraid you might not make it to the end of this article, because what you will hear will be quite shocking. The cancer of corruption, particularly at the County Government level, is worse than your wildest imagination. And so, as I like to do, I like to start off by putting some numbers on the table for us to use as reference points. Bear in my that all the information I put in this article is publicly available. Nothing came to me through a whistle blower. The first number is KSH 100 Billion. With a B. In the last decade or so, you and I, through the National Government, has sent over KSH 100 billion to Turkana County. To support recurrent expenditure, and development. For example, in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, we sent KSH 12.6 billion. In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, we sent KSH 11.4 billion. And on and on and on. The second number is 1 million. This is the population of Turkana County. The third number is KSH 18.4 billion. This was Turkana County’s budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The fourth number is KSH 190 million. This was the amount of money that Turkana County was able to generate on its own accord within the county, from all its investments and other activities in the period in question. This number is an important proxy, in my view, for the value of the county’s economic prospects for the foreseeable future, and to people that are not driven by greed and corruption, would be an important consideration when they are thinking about how and where to deploy your money as taxpayers. If you are doing the math, Turkana County, for the 2022-2023 fiscal year, was only able to raise 1% of the funds needed to keep the lights on. 99% came from you and I, and a tiny amount from grants. The next number is KSH 129, 040. This is the average ANNUAL [emphasis added] income of a resident of Turkana County ( Keep that number in mind when we are discussing the massive theft of public funds by Turkana County leaders. The next number is 80%. 80% of the residents of Turkana County live below the poverty line. They have a really difficult time putting food on the table. ( The next number is KSH 12 Million. This is the basic salary of the Governor of Turkana County before other benefits that, as I explained yesterday, can often double the salary. Remember the “housing allowance”, the “hardship allowance”, the “commuter allowance”, the “risk allowance”, the “extraneous allowance”, etc.? Remember that? I still cannot figure out, for the life of me, what “extraneous” means in the context of County business, but we don’t time to dwell on this. The next number is 93. The Governor of Turkana County makes 93 times the average Turkana County resident’s annual income. 93 times! The next number is 82%. This was the percentage of people that were illiterate in Turkana County in 2013 ( Could not read or write. A point to note about the above literacy figure. Ten years later, and despite over KSH 100 billion is spent in Turkana County, including many billions for education, that literacy rate HAS NOT CHANGED ONE BIT. Only 20% of the population can read or write today. ( KSH 829 million. This is how much it cost to build the County Government offices. Yes, the ones shown in the first picture. KSH 120 million. The County Government decided that it was prudent to pay a contractor KSH 120 million to construct the Governor’s personal residence. Get this, even after this payment, no construction took place. The money was stolen. All of it. KSH 90 Million. This is the amount that the County Government paid to another contractor, to build the Governor a mansion, having previously lost KSH 120 million. So, the tally for the Governor’s residence now stands at KSH 210 million. Never mind that the limit allowed by law is KSH 45 million. KSH 5 billion. In the last days of his term in office, an outgoing Governor of Turkana, Koli Nanok, EGH. , sought to inflate pending bills by adding KSH 5 billion so that it can be paid to his criminal cartel. KSH 5 billion. We have our key numbers, ladies and gentlemen, so let us discuss. So, we have a county that is dead last in literacy, and in the top 2 of the poorest counties in the republic. Only 20% of the population can read. The Governor earns 92 times the average citizen. The Governor lives in a house that cost over KSH 200 million. When he leaves his house in the morning, he goes to his office that cost KSH 829 million. And this is all happening when 80% of the County residents struggle to put food on the table. Those are the facts, and they are not in dispute. During the same time, the County Government geniuses decide to build the Speaker of the County Assembly a house. And a home office, and a garage. The house was initially estimated to cost KSH 75 million. But due to circumstances that not a soul in the government could explain to auditors, the contract expired before the house was completed, and the County Government found a new contractor to complete the job for an additional KSH 29 million. But this palace in the jungle worth apparently worth over KSH 100 million in Turkana County was not enough. The County proceeded to build the Speaker a guest house for another KSH 19 million, and a few other amenities, and so the whole cost went to KSH 276 million! The legal limit for a Speaker’s house is KSH 35 million, and they spent close to KSH 130 million just for one residence. By this time, I am sure you are getting tired of these obscene numbers. You and I work, and pay taxes. Nobody pays you 92 times the income your average neighbor is making. And for sure nobody will drop KSH 100 million to build you a house. These are the perks of working in government in a poor country. Go figure. And so, as a country, we need to answer for ourselves the question I posed yesterday, which is, what is the point of government? What is its role in our lives. If this level of criminality and pillaging can occur in our country in the midst of so much poverty, questioning the need for government is a totally valid question. I said in my last post that, when the average citizen looks at the thug on the street and the government, and is unable to discern any meaningful difference between them, that society from that point on is on its journey to becoming a failed state. A journey to anarchy. Over the last two months or so, Kenyans have been shouting at the top of their lungs, begging for their government to listen. To hear them out. Kenyans have asked that their government stop this unbelievable level of plunder. Dozens of Kenyans have died, thousands injured, and many more are missing today. To this day, the people that govern us continue to use the power of the gun to subdue Kenyans, until they can take everything in their sight. And so, as a society, we all have to ask whether today there is any difference between the thug on the street and our governments. Every Kenyan will have to answer this question for themselves. And before answering this question, everyone needs to remember the many Calvins in our society. Smart, upright children whose only crime is to be born in an unforgiving, lawless, and corrupt purgatory that is Kenya today. For myself, I have concluded that there is no difference between the thug on the street and our governments, county and national alike. If you can see any meaningful difference, let me know. I am willing to listen. So despite over KSH 100 billion in money sent to Turkana County, there is almost no measurable improvement in people’s life today. None. And it makes sense, when you look at how that money is spent. I want you to forget for a second the obscene obsession by the County Government with spending ungodly amounts of money on themselves. The houses, etc. If you step back and look at how the government is actually spending the hard-earned money on other things, you will be depressed. I am telling you that I wept three times in the middle of the night trying to make sense of this crazy situation in Turkana County. Three times. I have never imagined that human beings can be so greedy and cold-blooded. Think about this: In the couple of years I reviewed, the County spent around KSH 400 million annually in “tourism” initiatives, including marketing, and apparently upgrading certain facilities. KSH 400 million for tourism. In Turkana County. In 1 year. KSH 400 million per year in marketing and other money pits. The government’s own website says that the county gets around 3000 visitors per month. Around 36,000 per year. That’s them saying that, on their website. Are you curious to know the return on that KSH 400 million investment? I have an answer for you. Remember that I told you that the County has never raised more than KSH 200 million in a year within the county, despite its KSH 18.4 billion budget? Let me walk you through the breakdown of the absolutely embarrassing shit-show that is the County Government’s “own source revenue” operations. In 2022-2023, the County Government collected KSH 190 million locally against their KSH 18.4 billion budget. 1% of the budget. Remember, there is absolutely no requirement on the County to cut costs, or achieve certain local revenue targets today. So they raised KSH 45 million in single business permits, KSH 72 million in CESS, KSH 8 million in market fee, KSH 9 million in “slaughter fees”. And then finally, there is the return on the tourism investment that you were looking for. A whopping KSH 209, 000 in “park fees”. KSH 209,000 in fees, after investing KSH 400 million. And so, take this as an example and extrapolate it across the entire budget, and you can see how one can spend KSH 100 billion and get NOTHING in return. You don’t need to be a genius to see the absurdity of this situation. Let me explain using an example that should illustrate the utter dimwittedness of this situation. Remember the KSH 100 billion sent to Turkana by you and me? Part of this amount is supposed to be for “service delivery”, or “recurrent expenditure”. Usually about 70% of the budget. The balance, 30%, is designed to go to development projects. With that in mind, from KSH 100 billion, the County apparently has made KSH 30 billion worth of investments, right? 30% of the KSH 100 billion. Now, if you employed someone to run a business for you, and they asked you to invest KSH 30 billion, which is no small fortune, at some point you would have to start seeing returns, right? That’s common sense, isn’t it? So, when we look at the revenues streams that make up this paltry sum of KSH 190 million, and see things like “slaughter fees’ and “market fees”, what does it tell you? It tells me there is no real “development” happening in that county. Trust me, if you had real development totaling KSH 30 billion, you would have corporate taxes in the hundreds of millions or billions, a booming real estate market, rising wages and standards of living, etc., low unemployment, etc. You would not have 80% of the people living hand-to mouth, and a County Government that can not afford to support itself for 5 days out of the year that has 365 days! We do not have enough time, trust me, to deal with the shit-show that is Turkana County. Dealing with that mess would require a forensic team. I will just highlight a few of other “in your-face” type of theft of public funds, and then conclude my submission. A government that has a budget of KSH 18.4 billion annually, and which has never raised more than 1% of its budget had the wisdom to do the following with your money: · Spend KSH 222 million on a project building something that NOBODY uses. You got that right. They spent KSH 222 million on a facility that NOBODY uses. KSH 222 million gone to waste, in a county that is dead last in pretty much all measures of human progress. · Remember the County Government offices that cost KSH 829 million? The County spent KSH 82 million on “air-conditioning” for that building. · Despite the County Spending hundreds of millions for the top three officers of the County, the Governor and his Deputy, in the 2022-2023 year, illegally charged the county (you and I) KSH 2.2 million in housing allowance! · Built two facilities for KSH 16 million, that were completed, but NOBODY uses them. · Entered into a contract for the construction of a plastic use facility for KSH 13 million in 2021. The contractor gets paid KSH 4.9 million, and has never been seen since. · Paid out KSH 62 million in salaries that were not supportable in just one year. They could not point to anybody and say, that is who we paid. · Paid out KSH 27 million in legal fees that nobody could say what they related to. And the County’s Legal Advisor, who, in 2022-2023, had a budget of KSH 123 million, apparently did not know anything about it! · Had an outstanding bill at Kenya Revenue Authority in the amount of KSH 486 million, that did not show up on the County Government’s financial statements. Think about that. KSH 486 million owned to the Kenya Revenue Authority, and that liability is not on the financial statements! This only means that someone took those funds for themselves, which is why the liability would be missing from the county’s books. · Could not account for KSH 367 million in expenditures for 2022-2023. KSH 367 million, in unexplained expenses. · Awarded a contract worth over KSH 200 million to a bidder with no bank statement, against the law. This contract was entered into and approved before the statutory time after the bidding process lapsed. Someone was in a hurry to get paid. KSH 200 million, illegally awarded to a bidder who did not have a 6-month bank statement. · Apparently purchased KSH 1.5 billion in assets in 2022-2023, but kept no records of the said assets. For this reason, NOBODY can verify where these assets are located. KSH 1.5 billion. Let me just say this. In my last article, the most common critique was that it was too long. Too many words. I did not intend to make another long article. Trust me when I tell you this, we do not have the time to detail half of the problems in Turkana County. For just 1 year! We do not. Now, you recall my point about how societies descend to madness and anarchy. In our country today, our leaders are accusing those of us who are agitating for honest and transparent governance of being traitors to the country. They call us anarchists, criminals, and merchants of chaos. They are questioning our patriotism. You have all seen the government and its horde of propagandists threatening the Ford Foundation and others because they may have helped civil society keep the lights on, and investigative journalists to have the capacity to continue to do the Lord’s work of investigating criminality in government. As though citizens are so dumb and ignorant, that they cannot see what is going on. The reason why millions of Calvins in this country will never graduate from college and earn a decent living is not because of the Ford Foundation. No. It is because of the thieves we have in office today, like the ones in Turkana County. In this post, I copy our leaders, the President and his deputy. I copy them because I want them to help Kenyans understand the following conundrum, about crime and criminals. There is nothing so special or peculiar about criminals or where they pop up. There are criminals in the US, Canada, France, and other places. Just like we have criminals in Kenya. The difference between banana republics and failed states, and civilized societies, is WHAT we do to and about criminals. In civilized societies, criminals are prosecuted and punished heavily. They are shunned. In some places, those charged with serious crimes such as corruption are executed. These are societies that are committed to sending the message that corruption, which robs citizens of their rights, is not acceptable. And they demonstrate this commitment by heavily punishing those who steal from the most vulnerable in society. In Kenya, we see the opposite. Criminals are exalted. They are promoted and embraced in government. It was just last week that the president unveiled his nominees for his Cabinet. Among them, are the likes of Hassan Ali Joho, EGH. , @GovWOparanya , and Davis Chirchir, ALL people who have been accused or charged with massive corruption against Kenyans. And am sure you remember that I mentioned Koli Nanok, EGH. , the man who tried to steal KSH 5 billion in his last days in office. Would you believe it if I told you that he works in government, at State House? He plunded billions of your money, got no measurable improvement in the lives of his subjects, and now has a government job in State House. Let that sink in. And so, the question is, how is it that in a country of 55 million people, with thousands of highly qualified people who have never ever stolen from Kenyans, he ends up with the criminals and thieves in the government, despite the fact that their crimes are in the public domain? How is this possible? Is it possible that these thieves possess a certain unique ability to run government, save Kenyans billions, and solve problems in a way that the president performs a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefits outweigh the costs of their theft? If not, what message does it send to Kenyans, when their own president puts into office known thieves? I think that is a fair question, don’t you? Dr. Ekuru Aukot Rigathi Gachagua William Samoei Ruto, PhD Okiya Omtatah Okoiti Citizen TV Kenya Nation Breaking News TI-Kenya CNN County Government of Turkanashow more

From Creator to Founder: The Rollercoaster Journey of Building... Chatter Social Man, what a journey it’s been so far. Four years ago, I was just another creator, spending late nights on Clubhouse during the height of the pandemic. Like so many others, I was searching for connection, for community, for something meaningful. But what I found there wasn’t just connection—it was purpose. Alongside my brother, Jonathan Bing, we built a nightly show that reached over 5 million people. Imagine that: 5 million lives touched by conversations that felt real and unfiltered, all on a platform that at its peak had 10 million monthly active users. Clubhouse was magic. But then the decline began. Watching the platform struggle, I couldn’t help but reflect: what made it great? What went wrong? And what could the future look like if we did things differently? The Spark of Chatter As a content creator, I understood the needs of both creators and users. I knew what excited people, what kept them engaged, and what made them leave. Clubhouse had tapped into something special, but it had missed the mark on scalability and sustainability. By September 2023, I couldn’t stop thinking about the potential for something new—something that brought back the magic of real-time interaction but made it scalable, engaging, and sticky. And so, I set out to build Chatter Social. But I wasn’t a tech founder. I didn’t have a background in software development or a network of Silicon Valley insiders. What I did have was determination and the belief that if I could bring the right people together, we could build something extraordinary. Building the Team The journey to build Chatter started with assembling a team. Through my network from my days on Clubhouse, I found Samir, my first CTO. He believed in the vision and was instrumental in getting the project off the ground. Shortly after, I connected with Tyler, our Head of Design, whose creativity brought life to our ideas. A developer joined us soon after, and we were off to the races. By the end of 2023, Samir had to step away due to other commitments, and we promoted the developer to CTO. At the same time, I brought on Banko, a Sony music executive, as our CMO. Banko’s connections led to one of our biggest early wins: landing Davido, a global superstar, as an owner-ambassador. To this day, I still marvel at the fact that Davido believed in our vision when all we had were Tyler’s Figma designs. From Dream to Reality Early 2024 was a whirlwind. We hired Yurii and Vasyl, two developers from Ukraine who brought incredible skill and dedication to the team. Vasyl, in particular, stood out as a leader and has since earned an equity position in the company. But despite these wins, we were facing growing pains. Our new CTO struggled to meet deadlines, and as a result, I found myself constantly pushing back the launch date. What started as a January release turned into February, then March, then April, then May. By then, people on Twitter Spaces—where I had been hyping up the platform—started doubting if we even had a product. Launch and Lessons June 1, 2024, marked a turning point. It was the day my son Noah was born and the day we launched Chatter in private beta. We started with just 40 users, but by the end of the month, we had grown to 1,000. The engagement was unbelievable. Users loved it, even though we had launched with just one feature: live rooms. This represented less than 20% of what we had planned, but it was enough to show that we were onto something big. In July, we launched our public beta on the App Store as an invite-only platform. Within 48 hours, Chatter ranked as a top 30 social app in over 30 countries. But our invite system throttled access, and most users couldn’t get in. While engagement metrics soared for those inside, our AWS costs exploded. In August, our AWS bill hit $10,000. By September, it had climbed to $15,000, and we were drowning in bugs and glitches. The breaking point came when our CTO became unresponsive, often disappearing during critical moments. Users were dropping off, frustrated by the issues, developers were confused and the team was also growing increasingly frustrated, I made the tough decision to let him go. A New Beginning Enter Horane, a long-time user of Chatter who had been with us since private beta. He was the first to discover some of the most innovative use cases for the platform and had a deep passion for its potential. After meeting him in person at a Chatter event, I knew he was the right person to step into the CTO role. When Horane took over, we discovered just how bad the situation was. Key areas of the codebase were locked, and there were no separate environments for development and production. Every fix seemed to break something else. But through sheer determination and countless 18-hour days, Horane stabilized the platform. Today, Chatter is far from perfect, but it’s stable. The bugs that plagued us have been reduced to moderate issues, and our core users—those who stuck with us through the chaos—are still engaged on the platform. Looking Ahead: Chatter V2 While the platform is stable now, we’ve shifted our focus to Chatter V2. This is where the magic really begins. V2 isn’t just an improvement; it’s a complete reimagining of the platform. It includes all the features we couldn’t release in V1 because we were too busy putting out fires. Imagine this: Chatter V1, with only one live feature, was incredibly sticky. Now think about what happens when we release a fully loaded platform with all the innovative features we’ve been working on behind the scenes. The possibilities are endless. V2 is slated to hit TestFlight by the end of December, with a public release in January 2025. And this time, we’re ready—not just with the product but with the lessons we’ve learned. The Hard Lessons This journey has taught me more than I ever thought possible: 1) Your Team is Everything: The right people can make or break your vision. Finding people who believe in your mission is just as important as finding people with the right skills. 2) Adaptability is Key: As a non-technical founder, I had to learn about development, DevOps, and product management on the fly. Challenges will push you to grow, whether you’re ready or not. 3) Trust the Process: Every setback, every delay, every bug—it all taught us something. Without those lessons, we wouldn’t be building the incredible V2 product we are today. 4) Resilience is Non-Negotiable: From technical disasters to predatory investors who tried to exploit my desperation, I’ve had to fight for this vision every step of the way. What’s Next December is shaping up to be an exciting month. We have some amazing events planned on the platform to close out the year, bringing our core community together as we prepare for the V2 launch. When V2 drops, it will mark a new era for Chatter. This isn’t just a social audio platform or a social audiovisual platform. Chatter is all about interactive experiences—making social media social again in ways that are truly unique. The public launch is slated for February 2025, and for the first time, we’ll have the marketing dollars to tell the world about Chatter. Our core community has been our biggest cheerleaders, and I can’t wait to see how the world reacts when they experience what we’ve built. Final Thoughts This has been the hardest year of my life, but also the most rewarding. To other founders, or anyone thinking about starting a company: know this—it will test you in ways you can’t imagine. You’ll face betrayal, doubt, and moments where you feel like giving up. But if you believe in your vision and refuse to quit, you’ll find a way forward. Thank you to everyone who has supported me, my team, and Chatter. We’re just getting started. Let’s talk about it. 🚀 If this story inspired you, please like and share it so others can learn from my experiences. The journey is far from over, but I’m more excited than ever for what’s to come.show more

Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty... of opinions about Twitter > X and figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company. I tweeted for years into the void for the love of it like many of you, but after selling my startup to Twitter in 2020 I finally got to see it from the inside. Up close it was both amazing and terrible, like so many other companies and things in life. As someone with a maniacal sense of urgency built into me, Twitter often felt siloed and bureaucratic. Dumb power plays, reorgs and team name changes for the sake of someone’s ego were distractions that occurred too regularly. You couldn’t just be a builder — you also needed to be a politician. I was shocked by how old and bespoke the infrastructure was, but there was little will to think beyond quarterly earnings calls because we were all beholden to the masters of mDAU and revenue growth as a public company. It often felt like things were held together with duct tape and glue, and that many people had just accepted that a small product change could take months or quarters to build. Management had become bloated to accommodate career growth and the company culture felt too soft and entitled for my own taste. Healthy debate and criticism was replaced by a default refrain of “no, that can’t be done” or “another team owns that so don’t touch it”. Teams could spend months building a feature and then some last-minute kerfuffle meant it’d get killed for being too risky. Just talking directly to customers could turn into a turf war and create deadlocks between functions. I recall one such episode where a teammate spent a month trying to get clearance to reach out to some creators. He went through 3 layers of management and 6 different functional teams. In the end 4 executives were involved in the approval. It was insanity, and unfortunately I saw several top performers get burnt out and demoralized after exhausting experiences like that. Most people were good at their jobs but it was nearly impossible to fire poor performers — instead they got shuffled around to other teams because few managers had the will or resources to figure out how to get them out. A high performance culture pulls everyone up, but the opposite weighs everyone down. Twitter often felt like a place that kept squandering its own potential, which was sad and frustrating to see. The person who was best at cutting through the BS and inspiring a vision during my tenure was Kayvon Beykpour, but he wasn’t fully empowered to run the company since he wasn’t the CEO. Despite those real issues, I was lucky enough to work with some of the most talented people in the business at Twitter in product, design, engineering, research, legal, BD, trust & safety, marketing, PR and more. Often it was a small cross-functional team of intrinsically motivated people who made the biggest impact by challenging some core assumption. Those teams were very fun to be on but they felt like the exception rather than the rule. The months of waiting for the deal to close in 2022 were particularly slow and painful; it felt like leadership hid behind lawyers and legal language as all answers about the company’s future notoriously included the phrase “fiduciary duty”. Colleagues openly talked about how Twitter was being sold because leadership didn’t have conviction in their own plan or ability to fix longstanding problems. Although I didn’t know much about Elon I was cautiously optimistic – I saw him as the guy who built incredible and enduring companies like Tesla and SpaceX, so perhaps his private ownership could shake things up and breathe new life into the company. My take on what’s happened since then is full of lived nuance. When people ask why I stayed it’s easy to answer: optimism, curiosity, personal growth and money. From the beginning I saw that some changes Elon was going to make were smart and others were stupid, but when I’m on a team I uphold the philosophy of “praise in public and criticize in private”. I was far from a silent wallflower. I shared my opinions openly and pushed back often, both before and after the acquisition. I made peace with the fact that I didn’t have psychological safety at Twitter 2.0 and that meant I could be fired at any moment, and for no reason at all. I watched it happen repeatedly and saw how negatively it impacted team morale. Although I couldn’t change the situation I did my best to shine a light on folks who were doing important work while being an emotionally supportive leader for those who were struggling to adapt to the more brutalist and hardcore culture. In person Elon is oddly charming and he’s genuinely funny. He also has personality quirks like telling the same stories and jokes over and over. The challenge is his personality and demeanor can turn on a dime going from excited to angry. Since it was hard to read what mood he might be in and what his reaction would be to any given thing, people quickly became afraid of being called into meetings or having to share negative news with him. At times it felt like the inner circle was too zealous and fanatical in their unwavering support of everything he said. When individuals encouraged me to be careful about what I said I politely thanked them and said I would not be taking their advice. I had no interest in adding to a culture of fear or walking on eggshells around Elon. Either he would respect me for being real or he could fire me. Either outcome was okay. I quickly learned that product and business decisions were nearly always the result of him following his gut instinct, and he didn’t seem compelled to seek out or rely on a lot of data or expertise to inform it. That was particularly frustrating for me since I believed I had useful institutional knowledge that could help him make better decisions. Instead he'd poll Twitter, ask a friend, or even ask his biographer for product advice. At times it seemed he trusted random feedback more than the people in the room who spent their lives dedicated to tackling the problem at hand. I never figured out why and remain puzzled by it. I don’t think things had to be as difficult or dramatic as they turned out to be but I can’t say I’d bet against Elon or count him out. He’s smart and has enough money to make a lot of mistakes and then course correct when things go awry. As the largest shareholder he can tank the value in the short-term, but eventually he’ll need things to turn around. His focus on speed is incredible and he’s obviously not afraid of blowing things up, but now the real measure will be how it get reconstructed and if enough people want the new everything app he is building. I learned a ton from watching Elon up close – the good, the bad and the ugly. His boldness, passion and storytelling is inspiring, but his lack of process and empathy is painful. Elon has an exceptional talent for tackling hard physics-based problems but products that facilitate human connection and communication require a different type of social-emotional intelligence. Social networks are hard to kill but they’re not immune from death spirals. Only time will tell what the outcome will be but I hope X finds its footing because competition is good for consumers. In the meantime, I have a lot of empathy for the employees who are working tirelessly behind the scenes, the advertisers who want a stable platform to sell their stuff on, and the customers who are experiencing chaotic updates. It’s been a madhouse. Twitter moved at the speed of molasses and suffered from bureaucracy but now X is run by a mercurial leader whose instinct is driven by the unique and undoubtedly weird experience of being the biggest voice on the platform. Many of you know me from the sleeping bag incident where I slept on a conference room floor, so I figure, let’s talk about that too. Going viral was an odd and interesting experience. I was attacked by people on the left and called a billionaire bootlicker, while simultaneously being attacked by people on the right for being a working mom who was demonized as an example of a woman choosing her career over her family. Thankfully I can laugh at myself and I don’t take armchair keyboard ideologues too seriously. Being the main character on the timeline, even for a few minutes, requires a thick skin and a strong sense of self. The real story is pretty simple. I was given a nearly impossible deadline for his first project and as the product lead I would never ask anyone to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself. So I worked round the clock alongside an amazing team spanning many timezones, and we delivered it on schedule – truly against the odds. It was intense but also fun. Those first few months were wildly crazy but I wanted to be there and I have no regrets. Showing up and giving it your all should, in most cases, be celebrated. Obviously you can’t work at that pace forever but there are moments where bursts are mission critical. I’ve pulled many all-nighters in my career and also when I was a student for something that mattered to me. I don’t regret putting in long hours or being ambitious, and feel proud of how far I’ve come from where I started thanks in part to that type of work ethic. I think of life as a game, and being at Twitter after the acquisition was like playing life at Level 10 on Hard Mode. Since I like taking on difficult challenges I found it interesting and rewarding because I was growing and learning so rapidly. I realize our society today trends toward polarization but when it comes to this app, its owner, and its future, I am neither a fangirl nor a hater — I’m an optimistic pragmatist. This may really irritate the internet but you cannot pigeonhole me into some radical position of either loving or hating every change that’s occurred. I escaped my fundamentalist upbringing and am a free thinker these days. Everyone can be seen as both a hero or a villain, depending on who is telling what angle of the story. Elon doesn’t deserve to be venerated or vilified. He’s a complicated person with an unfathomable amount of financial and geopolitical power which is why humanity needs him to err on the side of goodness, rather than political divisiveness and pettiness. I disagree with many of his decisions and am surprised by his willingness to burn so much down, but with enough money and time, something new & innovative may emerge. I hope it does. Sometimes I get asked about how I felt when I got laid off, and the truth is it was the best gift I’ve ever received. Sure the headlines and punchlines wrote themselves but I was battle hardened by then. I knew that I’d worked in a way where I could walk out with my head held high. I have no bitterness about the Product Management team being dismantled, and it made sense for me to exit as nearly all of the remaining PMs were let go. Going on a sabbatical afterward has been exactly what I needed to decompress and I’m finally feeling rested and relaxed. I’m a creative and a builder, so sooner than later I’ll jump back into a high intensity company but I’m grateful for this season of thinking, reading, traveling and being with people I love. After having time to reflect I believe more than ever that the very best outcomes flow from great leadership that combines the head and the heart. I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that in all of this there is also a cautionary tale for anyone who succeeds at something — which is that the higher you climb, the smaller your world becomes. It’s a strange paradox but the richest and most powerful people are also some of the most isolated. I found myself frequently looking at Elon and seeing a person who seemed quite alone because his time and energy was so purely devoted to work, which is not the model of a life I want to live. Money and fame can create psychological prisons which may worsen mental health conditions. We’ve all seen high profile cases of celebrities who end up with some combination of depression, paranoia, delusions of grandeur, mania and/or erratic behavior. Living in an echo chamber is dangerous and being at the top makes a person even more susceptible to being surrounded by yes people when nearly everyone around you is on the payroll and somehow stands to benefit from being in your orbit. Figuring out how to keep “better angels” around in the form of family, friends, and teammates is critical to staying on the rails and enduring intense ups and downs. Everyone needs to hear hard truths sometimes and if you fire all the people who speak up then the reality distortion field may just turn into a vortex. I was drawn to Twitter because I’m obsessed with the problem of loneliness and connection between people. I find it fascinating & troubling that humans are getting lonelier as we simultaneously create a world that’s both safer and wealthier. I don’t believe that trade-off has to exist, which is why I keep returning to that theme in my personal and professional life. I realize this is too long of a tweet but Twitter was a weird and special place on the internet, and I’m grateful to have played a teeny tiny role in its story and evolution. I’m here for whatever comes next — on this app and in new places. Consumer social is very much alive and at a fascinating juncture, so I’ll be watching and participating and sharing hot takes because I don’t want to, and probably can’t, turn that part of me off. Perhaps X becomes a resounding success. Or it fails epically. Either way, I expect it will continue to be a very entertaining ride. 🫡show more