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Check out this exciting video featuring our incredible Brazilian creators during the 1st HoYoCREATORS Meetup! 🥳 We are so grateful to everyone who participated and can't wait for more amazing moments together!👏 👉Click and become a HoYo-CREATOR → Confira este vídeo emocionante com nossos incríveis criadores brasileiros durante o...

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HoYoCREATORS

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34,457 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

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RiriKokoro1 year ago

Best day of my life 🥺🙏🏻🩷 thanks a lot

kyuumangakagenshin's profile picture
kyuumangakagenshin1 year ago

Thank you so much for the nice time! 💓 It was wonderful!

Teef 🦷's profile picture
Teef 🦷1 year ago

Eu aliiiiiiiiii ❤️❤️❤️❤️ Foi bom demais o encontro! Já quero o próximo

Toco ✨'s profile picture
Toco ✨1 year ago

I LOVED IT 😍😍 I was super excited and the event exceeded my expectations! What an amazing work you guys did. ~~btw I'm grateful for being part of HoYoCREATORS ^^ - AND.. this photo will haunt me 👁‍🗨👄👁‍🗨 -

Erischan1's profile picture
Erischan11 year ago

Que evento maravilhosoooo✨️✨️

Tess 🤍's profile picture
Tess 🤍1 year ago

What an honor to be part of this event♡ I'm so proud of our Brazilian community. Thanks for the invitation

IgnusFury's profile picture
IgnusFury1 year ago

Novamente, obrigado pela oportunidade e incentivo!!!

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Conexão FreenBecky

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#Repost @bushistrategy ・・・ | Kindness used as a defense is subtle violence | Why do we train 90% lethal force if we use much more non-lethal force against resistant, violent, fleeing suspects…? An interesting question when analyzing the training carried out and of greatest interest to the police officer. This schizophrenia that the police only live on a planet where guns and shooting will resolve 100% of incidents is an inconsequential narrative. Special Operations units handle high-risk missions with a high fatality rate. But even so, many choose to train their operators in different arts, and Jiu-jitsu is the most practiced, due to its versatility and simplicity in adapting within the unit’s operational standards and techniques. This video is not to boost my ego, far from it, the purpose is to awaken the police officer to do Jiu-jitsu!!! Because the best use you can make of a sword is not to use it, the worst thing is to depend on it! Oooosss!!!! #Repost @bushistrategy ・・・ A gentileza usada como defesa, é uma violência sútil Porque treinamos 90% de força letal se usamos muito mais força não letal contra suspeitos resistentes, violentos, fujões…? Uma pergunta interessante quando se faz uma análise dos treinamentos praticados e de maior interesse do policial. Essa esquizofrenia de que o policial só vive em um planeta que armas e tiros vão resolver 100% das ocorrências é uma narrativa inconsequente. As unidades de Operações Especiais lidam com missões de alto risco com uma taxa de letalidade alta. Mas mesmo assim muitas optam em treinar seus operadores em diversas artes, e o Jiu-jitsu é a mais praticada, por sua versatilidade e simplicidade na adaptação dentro dos padrões e técnicas operacionais da unidade. Esse vídeo não é para elevar meu ego, longe disso, o propósito é despertar o policial à fazer Jiu-jitsu!!! Pois o melhor uso que se pode fazer de uma espada é não utilizá-la, o pior é depender dela! Oooosss!!!!
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17,338 views • 2 months ago

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Marco Angeli

23,914 views • 6 months ago

🎉 new skill unlocked: 20s uninterrupted, unstitched, single render from our new ai video engine: Nami. This is my birb (#7531) from the Moonbirds collection, idling in the library. patent: "Intra-Latent Semantic Injection via Cross-Spatial Encoding and Decoding during Multi-Pass Inference for Generative AI Video Creation" At Scrypted we've been quietly working on an agentic generative AI stack for two years: • integrating and testing w/ partners across the games & entertainment sectors • stealthily building a community of early believers through AVB • showcasing some of what we're doing with amazing projects like H011yw00d Agent. -- about Nami -- Nami is an agentic orchestration layer for AI video models: it unlocks their inner superpowers without making them rely on custom LoRAs or fine-tunings. Instead of throwing raw training power and tens of millions of dollars at training yet another ai video model: we figured out new ways to use what we have. Nami harnesses a multi-agent system to perform the work needed in taking a simple prompt or image and turning it into something bigger - much bigger. The agentic steps are allowed to manipulate latent space, digging into tensors, yet doing so in semantically aware chunks - meaning that Nami inherently supports video generation of arbitrary length, though it's bound to O(n) rendering time. (We do have some cool sharding tech that allows us to cut the generative time in half for a reference pose idle-animation like this demo). It's also fairly agnostic, picking and choosing the right tools for the job, and plays really well with emerging tech like FLUX Kontext, FramePack, or <- without being limited by any of them. -- use cases -- Even just a year or two ago the 20 second render below would cost a company, paying an agency, around $10k start-to-finish. This one cost me $6.25 on our dev hardware in an unoptimized environment. There's something mind-blowing about the state-of-the-art when we reduce costs to 0.0625% - less than 1% - of what we used to pay. It's also empowering. For creators. Game developers. Content influencers: you name it. -- superpowers -- 1. it does the things you ask for, in the order you asked for it 2. consistency is king 3. single-shot text or image-to-video 4. future videos can reference previous ones to seamlessly maintain style 5. semantic stitching: can't wait to showcase this -- gtm -- We think Generative AI Video, like image generation, like text, like games, should be a publicly accessible common good. We believe democratizing access to Nami in web3, via x402 payments proposed by Drew Coffman, or in World's mini-apps, is a bold step forward for digital freedom. Permissionless, decentralized, generative ai video. Naturally, we'll also soon release a web platform for using Nami in a traditionally SaaSy way: bring your own images, videos, or prompts and we'll take care of the rest. In the mid-term, Scrypted is building a stack of agentic skills (we call it AVB) and making them available to projects like H011yw00d Agent on Virtuals Protocol and other platforms. -- long-term vision -- Scrypted's mission is to decentralize the things that can't be decentralized. We participated in a16z crypto's CSX (London 2024) during our pre-seed specifically to research a new consensus protocol for hard things like AI video and AI agents: where there's no "one right answer". When Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) can't secure it, and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are too small, we've got you covered with our upcoming Inori Network. -- how you can help -- 1. Are you a GPU farm? We're gonna need more flops. 2. Do you represent an L1 or L2? We want to build bridges. 3. Do you represent a Wallet or App creator? Let's get an endpoint exposed. 4. Are you an investor? Let's chat. 5. Like, repost, share! -- team background -- We come from a background of AI in the Video Game industry with each founder having over 20 years of experience at companies like Electronic Arts & Square Enix. -- contact -- DMs are open, reach out if you want to be an early tester for your site, game, collection, or project! -- try it out -- Go anywhere on X and tag H011yw00d Agent with a prompt and she'll give you a free 2 second render. Have fun making cinematic shorts or meme videos! -- thanks -- AWS Startups has been an incredible help scaling our prototypes. Also, shout out to all loyal beans 🫘 in the Autonomous Virtuals Beings (AVB) community. Nami has a very important role in the upcoming XP agent platform, can't wait to show you all. AVbeings
0:23

🎉 new skill unlocked: 20s uninterrupted, unstitched, single render from our new ai video engine: Nami. This is my birb (#7531) from the Moonbirds collection, idling in the library. patent: "Intra-Latent Semantic Injection via Cross-Spatial Encoding and Decoding during Multi-Pass Inference for Generative AI Video Creation" At Scrypted we've been quietly working on an agentic generative AI stack for two years: • integrating and testing w/ partners across the games & entertainment sectors • stealthily building a community of early believers through AVB • showcasing some of what we're doing with amazing projects like H011yw00d Agent. -- about Nami -- Nami is an agentic orchestration layer for AI video models: it unlocks their inner superpowers without making them rely on custom LoRAs or fine-tunings. Instead of throwing raw training power and tens of millions of dollars at training yet another ai video model: we figured out new ways to use what we have. Nami harnesses a multi-agent system to perform the work needed in taking a simple prompt or image and turning it into something bigger - much bigger. The agentic steps are allowed to manipulate latent space, digging into tensors, yet doing so in semantically aware chunks - meaning that Nami inherently supports video generation of arbitrary length, though it's bound to O(n) rendering time. (We do have some cool sharding tech that allows us to cut the generative time in half for a reference pose idle-animation like this demo). It's also fairly agnostic, picking and choosing the right tools for the job, and plays really well with emerging tech like FLUX Kontext, FramePack, or <- without being limited by any of them. -- use cases -- Even just a year or two ago the 20 second render below would cost a company, paying an agency, around $10k start-to-finish. This one cost me $6.25 on our dev hardware in an unoptimized environment. There's something mind-blowing about the state-of-the-art when we reduce costs to 0.0625% - less than 1% - of what we used to pay. It's also empowering. For creators. Game developers. Content influencers: you name it. -- superpowers -- 1. it does the things you ask for, in the order you asked for it 2. consistency is king 3. single-shot text or image-to-video 4. future videos can reference previous ones to seamlessly maintain style 5. semantic stitching: can't wait to showcase this -- gtm -- We think Generative AI Video, like image generation, like text, like games, should be a publicly accessible common good. We believe democratizing access to Nami in web3, via x402 payments proposed by Drew Coffman, or in World's mini-apps, is a bold step forward for digital freedom. Permissionless, decentralized, generative ai video. Naturally, we'll also soon release a web platform for using Nami in a traditionally SaaSy way: bring your own images, videos, or prompts and we'll take care of the rest. In the mid-term, Scrypted is building a stack of agentic skills (we call it AVB) and making them available to projects like H011yw00d Agent on Virtuals Protocol and other platforms. -- long-term vision -- Scrypted's mission is to decentralize the things that can't be decentralized. We participated in a16z crypto's CSX (London 2024) during our pre-seed specifically to research a new consensus protocol for hard things like AI video and AI agents: where there's no "one right answer". When Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) can't secure it, and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) are too small, we've got you covered with our upcoming Inori Network. -- how you can help -- 1. Are you a GPU farm? We're gonna need more flops. 2. Do you represent an L1 or L2? We want to build bridges. 3. Do you represent a Wallet or App creator? Let's get an endpoint exposed. 4. Are you an investor? Let's chat. 5. Like, repost, share! -- team background -- We come from a background of AI in the Video Game industry with each founder having over 20 years of experience at companies like Electronic Arts & Square Enix. -- contact -- DMs are open, reach out if you want to be an early tester for your site, game, collection, or project! -- try it out -- Go anywhere on X and tag H011yw00d Agent with a prompt and she'll give you a free 2 second render. Have fun making cinematic shorts or meme videos! -- thanks -- AWS Startups has been an incredible help scaling our prototypes. Also, shout out to all loyal beans 🫘 in the Autonomous Virtuals Beings (AVB) community. Nami has a very important role in the upcoming XP agent platform, can't wait to show you all. AVbeings

Tim Cotten

12,708 views • 1 year ago

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.
0:25

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.

Nelson Epega

43,574 views • 1 year ago

Happy 4th of July USA 🇺🇸🥳 New York's Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers the speech that President Trump should be delivering to mark the occasion 👏 "Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York harbor long before the name New York had ever been spoken. Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. " "It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazano and Hudson, after whom we've named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs. " "When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. " "They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising. A city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing worldwide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America. Tomorrow. " "Our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. 250 years of a grand experiment in self governance. An experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. " "From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. " "250 years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see here at City hall, as I sit behind George Washington's desk alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. " "But like so many who came before, I can see New York City. The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington in July of 1776. Our city simmered under the yoke of oppression the British had imposed, a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill. " "The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governor's island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned, and we were soundly defeated. " "After only a Few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse. But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental army survived to fight another day. " "Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river's edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City's waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since. " "An opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities, like everything in New York City, are not given. They are won. In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a, recently emancipated black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well and to help hundreds of others do the same. " "He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before. A, home. Weeksville still stands today. A living, breathing testament to what we know America to be. " "A place each of us has the power to make. The harbor was busy those years as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today Chinatown. " "Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity. Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. " "They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face, the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. " "But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew. Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City. " "And they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness extends to them too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of black Americans north during the Great Migration. " "It drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War. It invited countless others from the West Indies and South Asia and West Africa and across the world. And it is what brought my family to the city when I was seven years old. My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty. " "From the window of the plane, even from the air, we could make out the promise of America, the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped American exceptionalism. " "American exceptionalism, that conventional wisdom tells us makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the west, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here. And yet, the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. " "For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshiping the wrong gods, angering the wrong people. " "It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants from whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. " "The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all. " "It belongs, too, to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized nearly a decade ago. I, too, felt what you feel. The joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American, too. You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means. " "The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. " "The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit. How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through Exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. " "Division is the oldest trick in politics and the cheapest. But time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty. " "Hither have they fled. And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see? " "We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. " "We see mass agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone. " "And we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few. Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick. But that is not all we see when we look for America. We see it, too, in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighborhood. " "Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it, too, in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family. " "Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we the people. We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have as ice invades our neighborhoods. " "We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more, not just for themselves but for their fellow Americans. There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple love it or leave it they say. " "But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. " "After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free Today? I think not only of the 4th of July, I think too of the 9th of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in our New York City. " "Redcoats had disembarked on Staten island. More than 100 British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. " "It was known then as the Commons. Today we call it City Hall Park. There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world's mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow. " "That we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question, but a certainty. And yet, when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in the Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison, grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name. America. " "Those ideals upon which our nation was built, they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. " "Therein lies the work of America. The striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. " "What power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores. The greatness that for 250 years has been America. Thank you. God bless America, God bless New York City and happy fourth of July. "
13:41

Happy 4th of July USA 🇺🇸🥳 New York's Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers the speech that President Trump should be delivering to mark the occasion 👏 "Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York harbor long before the name New York had ever been spoken. Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. " "It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazano and Hudson, after whom we've named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs. " "When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. " "They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising. A city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing worldwide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America. Tomorrow. " "Our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. 250 years of a grand experiment in self governance. An experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. " "From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. " "250 years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see here at City hall, as I sit behind George Washington's desk alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. " "But like so many who came before, I can see New York City. The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington in July of 1776. Our city simmered under the yoke of oppression the British had imposed, a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill. " "The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governor's island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned, and we were soundly defeated. " "After only a Few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse. But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental army survived to fight another day. " "Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river's edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City's waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since. " "An opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities, like everything in New York City, are not given. They are won. In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a, recently emancipated black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well and to help hundreds of others do the same. " "He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before. A, home. Weeksville still stands today. A living, breathing testament to what we know America to be. " "A place each of us has the power to make. The harbor was busy those years as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today Chinatown. " "Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity. Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. " "They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face, the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. " "But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew. Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City. " "And they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness extends to them too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of black Americans north during the Great Migration. " "It drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War. It invited countless others from the West Indies and South Asia and West Africa and across the world. And it is what brought my family to the city when I was seven years old. My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty. " "From the window of the plane, even from the air, we could make out the promise of America, the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped American exceptionalism. " "American exceptionalism, that conventional wisdom tells us makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the west, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here. And yet, the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. " "For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshiping the wrong gods, angering the wrong people. " "It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants from whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. " "The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all. " "It belongs, too, to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized nearly a decade ago. I, too, felt what you feel. The joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American, too. You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means. " "The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. " "The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit. How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through Exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. " "Division is the oldest trick in politics and the cheapest. But time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty. " "Hither have they fled. And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see? " "We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. " "We see mass agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone. " "And we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few. Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick. But that is not all we see when we look for America. We see it, too, in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighborhood. " "Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it, too, in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family. " "Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we the people. We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have as ice invades our neighborhoods. " "We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more, not just for themselves but for their fellow Americans. There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple love it or leave it they say. " "But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. " "After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free Today? I think not only of the 4th of July, I think too of the 9th of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in our New York City. " "Redcoats had disembarked on Staten island. More than 100 British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. " "It was known then as the Commons. Today we call it City Hall Park. There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world's mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow. " "That we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question, but a certainty. And yet, when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in the Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison, grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name. America. " "Those ideals upon which our nation was built, they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. " "Therein lies the work of America. The striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. " "What power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores. The greatness that for 250 years has been America. Thank you. God bless America, God bless New York City and happy fourth of July. "

Farrukh

73,594 views • 2 months ago

Alright, here's the epic towel rant from tonight; And so that's what kind of tipped me off in real time. I was like: wait a minute. Is Judge Doolin ruling from the bench right now? And then I was like: wait a minute. He's ruling from the bench and ordering them to appoint a new prosecutor and potentially the Attorney General. Oh my word. How—what is this? I—this wasn't on my bingo card. Even now I'm just like: Oh my God, I can't believe he did that. Judge Doolin—in a good way. I'm just like: Oh my God, there is hope. And then to follow it up with: "Oh yeah, I'm thinking about a hearing on the contempt." Oh my God—you're telegraphing. You're going to have a contempt hearing after the Attorney General is potentially on the case. The other witnesses, however, are left in this position where they have this kind of not really well-funded—like kind of spastic prosecution, like the special prosecutors on the Kearney cases. Then you got the December 23rd, 2023 criminal charges against Aidan that were charged in Dedham District Court, 23rd or 26th or so. And that was for illegally—allegedly—recording Lindsey Gaetani and then submitting an edited version of the recording into court for some reason. I don't know why Aidan did that, especially apparently when there's an original version of the recording pursuant to some of the statements in court. And then also for intimidating Lindsey—for allegedly going over there on December 23rd, 2023—against Karen Read's advice and against his lawyers' advice, apparently, according to a leaked group chat message from Facebook in 2024—in May of 2024—going over to Lindsey's apartment. And then according to the affidavit from the search warrant for Karen Read's cell phone—allegedly telling Lindsey that she shouldn't cooperate with the grand jury. She should—she could remove information from her phone or something—that Aidan would get her a lawyer, but only if she agreed to meet with a lawyer only with him present, because she had, quote, "broken his trust." It just like—wild stuff. And that new grand jury, by the way, was apparently—it did go forward. And then in time it came out that it—that was about Karen and Aidan and witness intimidation and conspiracy, because Aidan Kearney—between October and November—really August and November of 2023—it started telling Lindsey Gaetani about his communications with Karen Read that included—in writing—Exhibit O to Karen Read search warrant affidavit, which says that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that in November of 2023—November 28, 2023, to be specific—that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that Karen Read and her team at ex parte conversations with former U.S. Attorney Josh Levy—which was right in the window of time that Jessica Leslie, the grand juror leaker, was leaking information. Leslie started leaking in August of 2022—which is the same month that Alan Jackson joined Karen Read's legal team. And Josh Levy—who was one of the U.S. Attorneys in charge of that grand jury—Leslie was leaking about four different cases: probably the Birchmore case, definitely the Read and O'Keefe case, definitely the CDL case. One more case. We can't really—the group of us journalists involved in this—can't really figure out. So right in the middle of that—November of 2023—Josh Levy is leaking ex parte grand jury information to Karen Read, which she's putting—she's telling Aidan Kearney about; he's putting it in writing. He just was trying to just show off for Lindsey, but you don't like—come on—like what is it? First day in the IC, bro? I'm not in the IC. I'm not part of the government. I'm a towel. But anyway—so Aidan's bragging to Lindsey, and I don't think that was a very good idea. I mean, she's brilliant and stuff, but like—why would you ever say that to her? Don't say that stuff. But anyway—like, why would you say—even if it's your significant other—unless they are read-in on the intel that you are sharing—why would you ever, ever, ever share that with someone? It exposes them to an incredible liability—which, if you love them, don't do it. It also exposes your own credibility to an incredible risk of liability. You will never be trusted by the intelligence community again. Pillow talk and honeypots are how they trap operatives. If you chase sex, they will compromise you. How can you not understand that? So if you get compromised by someone who's not an agent—just someone who's your partner and you're just telling them stuff about protected federal investigations—what do you think your reputation is going to be like among the intelligence community when you're doing that and they haven't even honeypotted you? You just voluntarily started putting this shit in writing. They're going to look at you like you are out of your mind. So anyway—Karen Read apparently is telling Aidan Kearney that she's having ex parte conversations with Josh Levy. Now, the grand jury that Leslie was leaking from was impaneled in May of 2022 when Rachael Rollins used to be U.S. Attorney in Boston. Now think about this. In 2020, Rachael Rollins and Aidan Kearney—Rachael Rollins, a hyper-liberal known for her soft-on-crime stance. We'll also hear Rollins hated Michael Morrissey. Anyway, Rollins worked with Turtle Boy to send a Republican operative named Rayla Campbell to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events in the Senate race against Ed Markey so that Ed Markey could win the Senate seat. Now, interestingly enough, Rachael Rollins then got appointed to the position of U.S. Attorney right after that. And you might say: well, Grant, that's a stretch. No, no—because then within a few months, Rachael Rollins—part of the reason she gets thrown out of office by the DOJ OIG—is because she attends an event in Andover with—guess who?—Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the then-president who appointed her. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you really think about the geopolitical implications of the 2020 Senate race between Ed Markey in Massachusetts and Joe Kennedy Jr.—well, one of the things you're going to realize is that—think about 2020. The leadership around Biden did not know that the chaos of 2024 was going to happen with Kamala and Biden not really being up to it. You're thinking ahead to 2024. Why? Who's your biggest target if you are a sitting Democrat and you're worried about a primary challenge four years from now? Well, what if JFK's—what is it—nephew or whatever it is—is in the House of Representatives? And what if JFK started his career in the House of Representatives? And what if that new young Kennedy with red hair and sort of a photogenic face? What if he is running for JFK's old Senate seat? What if he's on the same exact trajectory as JFK? Oh, we can't have that. We—as the Biden White House—cannot have Joe Kennedy Jr. beating Ed Markey for Senate. And how it got to the point that somebody talked to Rachael Rollins and she came up with the brilliant idea to reach out to Turtle Boy so that Turtle Boy would talk to Rayla Campbell to send her to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events to help Markey—I don't know. But that's why I think Rachael Rollins became U.S. Attorney—someone who, in my opinion, was uniquely unqualified and fundamentally unethically un-predisposed to being able to run that office. Who then in turn immediately tried to interfere in the 2022 Suffolk DA primary between Kevin Hayden and Ricardo O'Rourke—because Rollins wanted to see her progressive vision continue through O'Rourke—so she worked with Daniel Medwed—the same professor who was involved with advocating the media on behalf of Karen Read's team. She worked with Daniel Medwed to get a story leaked about how a non-existent federal probe into Kevin Hayden—to increase Ricardo O'Rourke's chances in the Suffolk DA primary. Sound familiar? Oh, hell yeah. So anyway—between November of 2022 and May of 2023—you got this weird situation where Rollins knows she's getting forced out; Levy's going to take over the office. The people who take Rollins out are Josh Levy, Bill Abley, and still head of the criminal division—Dustin Chao, I think—still head of the public integrity unit, and then executive officer who is also the press secretary or the communications director of the office. Those four people—without being named; they're named by title—were the people who cooperated with the DOJ to take Rollins out—DOJ-OIG to take Rollins out. Now, why is that interesting? Well, one—because it shows that people in that office knew that Rachael Rollins had a proclivity for weaponizing leaks about non-existent federal probes to interfere in particular district attorney races and matters. Second—Rachael Rollins and Michael Morrissey had a bifurcated history of ten years. One: Rachael Rollins had this list of 25 crimes she wouldn't prosecute, and other DAs critiqued her—not just Michael Morrissey but others. Rollins—I'm pretty sure—was the one who first called Morrissey a "meatball," in fact, because of his criticism of Rollins over that issue. Rachael Rollins—I think—has a proclivity, in my opinion, to hold a bit of a grudge. When she became U.S. Attorney and she realized she was on the way out—well, maybe the Sandra Birchmore probe started back in May of 2022 because former chief of the Canton police—Ken Berkowitz—went to the FBI and told them that the FBI covered up—the MSP unit detailed to the Norfolk DA covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder—potentially because Yuri Bukhenik and John Fanning used to work in Stoughton with Matt Farwell and Robert Devine and Billy Farwell—I think they all worked there. And furthermore—that Brian Tully, the unit commander, was partners with John Fanning for 20 years. All right, and in that regard—it is very interesting, I think—that Chief Berkowitz—who may have been very offended that his unit... So Sandra Birchmore was murdered on February 1st, 2021, at 9:23 p.m. in her apartment in Canton. Okay—on February 4th, Monday in the morning—the Canton police do a wellness check after they get a call from her—Sandra's—colleagues at the school where she worked as an administrative assistant. Now the Canton police respond—on Monday, February 4th—by Wednesday, February 6th. The Canton police have collected the following evidence in order. And if you don't believe me, you can read pages—I think 97 through 101—of the Canton Police Department audit report released in April of 2025. Point by point. Number one: the Canton police confirm—via a witness who was the maintenance worker at Sandra's apartment building—that Matt Farwell was the man on camera outside Sandra's apartment in the elevator at 9:23 p.m. on February 1st—which is exactly when Sandra died. Two: that the man was Matt Farwell, and he was the same man who helped Sandra move into her apartment. Three: that when the Canton PD went to Sandra's school, they got information that Farwell was telling people that Sandra was pregnant with his child—that he had abused her since she was a child—and that he was going to quote "take care of the problem himself" if Sandra decided to carry the baby to term. All right. All of that information—by February 6th of 2021—was passed over to the MSP. John Fanning and this whole unit—I think—really then facilitate a report sometime over the next six to 12 months that exonerates Farwell and says Sandra dies from self-harm. Well, I think that's why Ken Berkowitz blew the whistle before he died of cancer—and that's why there was a grand jury impaneled in May of 2022—and it was really about the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. Well—one—it was about Sandra Birchmore's murder. Why does that make everything so interesting? Because I think that the investigation wasn't just about who killed Sandra and why—but how was it ruled a—the result of self-harm—instead of the very obvious murder that it was. Well—that starts—2022, I think—May of 2022—the grand jury. Jessica Leslie was on the grand jury—leaker—who's going to be sentenced on October 4th of 2025. I think Jessica Leslie—ladies and gentlemen—in August of 2022 somehow leaked to Karen Read—Alan Jackson—that the Norfolk DA was dirty because they covered up—and that MSP unit—because they covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder. All right—so therefore, Alan Jackson—that's the skeleton in the closet. It wasn't what the people in the house were doing. I'm still a little suspect of who they know—but I don't think that's the big deal. I don't think Jen McCabe's social life is the big deal. Nobody cares—nobody fucking cares. Sorry for cussing. The big issue is that Jen was friends with Tully. Tully's unit knew literally where the bodies were buried. And they—I think—they brought on the PI—Marty Kraft—and Kate Peter—to insulate their exposure from the coming publicity that they knew was going to be brought upon them by Alan Jackson. And so they were worried. And who would you bring in if you had covered up a murder? If you were a MSP unit—you'd bring in someone like Kate Peter. Because you can read her in on that. She's hardened. She doesn't give a fuck. She lost two of her kids—and I don't think she even fucking cared. So who the fuck's the perfect person be like: "Bruh, if that shit gets national attention, we're fucked. So you better control that fucking narrative and handle all these like different people that get too close to this—or we're going to be exposed for Birchmore." But let me bring it back to the point here—which is in 2022, the feds clearly were starting to poke around. And come 2023—I think Brian Tully's unit was desperate. Who was going to find out because of the coverage of the Read case? Could they make sure that Kate Peter got close enough to Netflix and Gretchen Voss so that they couldn't find out what was actually going on? And could the Birchmore cover-up be kept up—even in light of the national spotlight? When you think about the fact that some people may not have been loyal to the Justice for John O'Keefe movement—but were instead primarily loyal to Brian Tully's unit. And when you think about the fact that maybe Tully's unit didn't run the best investigation of Karen Read—maybe there were some flaws. But if you think about the fact that they did get her—but if you think about it in the context of: Karen knew from the jump that the MSP were dirty over Birchmore—then you understand: Karen—that's why it was going to become an incident. Everyone knew—everyone around Tully, his friends, all of them—the unit—they knew they covered up Birchmore's murder. And they knew Karen had it in her hands if she could just figure out the PR. And that's exactly what she did—to put enough pressure on them. They took her to trial anyway—and it destroyed the fucking Norfolk DA—destroyed Brian Tully's unit. It cost them dearly—and she's a tactical fucking genius. I think Brian Tully thought he was slicker than he was by using the prosecution of Aidan Kearney—not to get a genuinely—in my opinion—bad guy who was deserving of the indictment handed up by a grand jury of his peers. But because Tully wanted to know what the real target of the federal probe is. If you don't know what a backhand is, folks—a backhand is where you investigate one thing on the surface because you're dealing with a very high-level operation like the state police—who are a paramilitary intelligence-gathering operation. So you trick them. You make them think they're under investigation for John's death and the investigation of that death. But really—you're investigating them for the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. And that's exactly what I think happened to this unit. That's what I think Brian Tully was trying to figure out—from August of 2023 until about December. I think they eventually put it together—and by August of 2024, Matthew Farwell got indicted. Now—it's a question of all this as a result of today. I want to be very clear: this is what was called for. There needed to be an independent voice with power and who takes no nonsense—who came into this and said: Nope—it's out of your hands. And that's what Judge Doolin did today. Someone just needed to not either be involved with Karen Read, Aidan Kearney, or the Norfolk DA—or Kate Peter or Marty Kraft—and prosecute this. Now, all those other witnesses—I have no idea what the hell is going to happen there. But at least for Lindsey—Judge Doolin was like: enough of this nonsense. And that's why today was such a big deal in light of that historical context—because just tracing that very insidious pattern of events over the past 18 months—you can see this became a proxy war. It was Michael Morrissey on one side with his marching soldiers: Brian Tully, Kate Peter, Marty Kraft. And then it was Karen Read and the DOJ on the other side. Okay. And their soldiers were like the Free Karen Read movement and Turtle Boy and Natalie and all these other people. This was an intelligence community proxy war. And that's why I've been trying to tell people for so long: Lindsey Gaetani was not involved. She was an unwitting pawn. These two factions both took advantage of her—including Brian Tully—who was more interested in preserving his unit's reputation than actually defending the interest of the vulnerable. In my opinion, I think Brian Tully is a terrible person. Does that mean that he's a bad person for trying to hold Karen Read accountable for John O'Keefe's death? No, of course not. He's a bad person because in what fucking world do you—as a fucking state police officer—who you—you are entrusted—not just to get the bad guys—but to protect the most fucking vulnerable? One: how do you justify what happened with Sandra Birchmore? Two: how the fuck do you get it in your fucking mind that you're going to take a 15-year unredacted extraction of a fucking vulnerable victim's cell phone and release it to a fucking defendant known for promulgating exactly that material? What fucking headspace? What satanic fucking chamber do you and Kate Peter have to be drinking blood from fucking cups in to think that that's fucking okay? Fuck you. How do you even get in the headspace where doing something like that to a fucking victim becomes acceptable. The rot in that unit—whether enabled by Morrissey or whether he didn't know about it—I don't fucking know. But the point is: the rot in that unit was so deep that they lost their fucking souls. They didn't think of victims as victims. They re-victimized victims because it was a political fucking war—and these people are so hardened, I guess, that they don't understand what it means to be vulnerable. And these were police officers—detectives—people entrusted to uphold and protect the dignity of the most vulnerable—and they fucking used victims to advance some political agenda—to deal with the fact that they covered up a fucking murder. I'm done being gentle about this. Fuck these people. And I'm not saying that it was wrong for them to investigate Karen Read. I am pleased someone tried to prosecute her. I'm pissed at them because they were thinking about it from the perspective of their own liability for an unrelated case—and they fucked everything up—and introducing Kate Peter to this shit. Oh my God. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace to the people who were hurt. It's a disgrace to the vulnerable. I frankly do not understand how Jen McCabe, Brian Tully, and Kate Peter go to bed each night. I don't get it. I don't know. Maybe there's something that shuts off the GABA-1 receptor or something and just makes you go to bed. I don't know. Never heard of such a thing. But I'm just saying: I don't know how you do it. How do you do it? But anyway—Judge Doolin—without giving a... extemporaneous, uh, bloviating cuss-based rant like I just did—instead, in my opinion, is like: fuck all of you! You're not being involved in this prosecution anymore. Someone's gonna protect this fucking woman—Lindsey Gaetani. I'm making you appoint someone! I love that man. Good for Judge Doolin. But still—we never should have gone to this point. This is incredible. With the... the... the MSP. The fact that they had a unit operating like this for so long. This is worse than what John Connolly and Whitey Bulger did. This is institutional rot that is so pervasive that it requires fundamental reform of the MSP. They're not incapable of—um, uh—solving crimes. I'm sure most of the MSP are wonderful. Anyway—my point is: I don't think the state police officers that I generally run into—or troopers—are bad people. I think most of them are wonderful. They've never been really mean to me. They do good work. They're out there protecting our roads. They stop people from speeding. They—what else do they do? They go after commercial truck violations. They investigate homicides—like, on the whole. And this is why I think we have to be careful about how we talk about this. I am not saying that the entire MSP is just rotten. I'm saying that when you have factions or sections within the institution that understand its machinations and are able to thus manipulate the bureaucratic structure and avoid accountability—you lose the confidence of everyone. And how do you think some of those good troopers feel when they have to go out there? Yes—people like me are going to smile at them and bless them and whatever—because I know they're not part of the problem. But most people look at them and they think that they're fucking hated. They don't deserve that. They literally put their lives on the line for us every day. And if we're going to give them the respect they deserve—if we're going to make the profession have the respect that it deserves—then this kind of institutional rot can't be looked at as just an embarrassment. And it can't be looked at as something that—oh, we just wish didn't happen. Maybe some guys are going to go away. No—you point at it. You scream it from the rooftops and you say: if this happens even once—then we have so failed as an institution; we must fundamentally reform from the ground up. And this wasn't just once. It was Birchmore. It was the phone extraction. It was the SA report leak over and over and over and over again. They knew the law. They were an old boys' club. They abused it. They had cover—and it was systemically enabled. And that's why I think—to save the profession of policing in Massachusetts—there needs to be a full-on unbridled discussion about how this happened—how the personalities involved were able to do what they did. And we can't be so tribalistic that because someone we support as to their views on one case, right? We cannot be so tribalistic that we just block out everything bad that they do. Or this rot will continue. And it is pernicious. It is insidious. It is invidious. It undermines the faith that citizens completely removed from this situation have in our system of government. It undermines victims' confidence in the ability to seek redress in the face of serious fucking harm—because they think the system doesn't actually care about them. It's just using them to get someone bigger. We cannot allow this to perpetuate. And the only way to fix it is to hold up situations like what happened to Birchmore—Sandra Birchmore—and what happened to Lindsey Gaetani—hold them up in the national spotlight—and say: we—the MSP—have failed you. Brian Tully failed these people. John Fanning failed these people. Nick Guarino failed these people. Yuri Bukhenik failed these people. We need to say that. We need to highlight it. We need to say: this happened even once. Therefore, we are not good enough. Not only are we not good enough—the very fact that either of these things were able to happen—the Birchmore cover-up, the phone extraction leak—is such a pervasive, systemic degradation of the faith that victims and the public have in the justice system—that our only option is to talk about this—congressional hearings. We need the State House to have congressional hearings. We need these people to answer for what they did. And we need to make sure it never happens again. And the only way you do that is by finding out what aspects of the bureaucratic structure allowed this to happen. And it's not going to be comfortable. I don't think it's going to be comfortable for anyone to talk about the fallout of any of this—but that's exactly what happened at the CCC on a smaller scale. And if this country matters—if this form of government matters—if this republic matters—then we will fix this. We will fix it together. We will address the hard questions. We will address the uncomfortable questions. We will shed our prejudices and polemical biases at the door. We will engage in no fear, no favoritism—and we will look only for the truth and nothing but it. And if you are incapable of doing that—you're contributing—either consciously or subconsciously—to the problem. It's our only option. And you can't just say: because they prosecuted Karen Read, we can't talk about anything bad that they did. That's tribalism. That's polemical. That's what drove us to this point.
1:17:36

Alright, here's the epic towel rant from tonight; And so that's what kind of tipped me off in real time. I was like: wait a minute. Is Judge Doolin ruling from the bench right now? And then I was like: wait a minute. He's ruling from the bench and ordering them to appoint a new prosecutor and potentially the Attorney General. Oh my word. How—what is this? I—this wasn't on my bingo card. Even now I'm just like: Oh my God, I can't believe he did that. Judge Doolin—in a good way. I'm just like: Oh my God, there is hope. And then to follow it up with: "Oh yeah, I'm thinking about a hearing on the contempt." Oh my God—you're telegraphing. You're going to have a contempt hearing after the Attorney General is potentially on the case. The other witnesses, however, are left in this position where they have this kind of not really well-funded—like kind of spastic prosecution, like the special prosecutors on the Kearney cases. Then you got the December 23rd, 2023 criminal charges against Aidan that were charged in Dedham District Court, 23rd or 26th or so. And that was for illegally—allegedly—recording Lindsey Gaetani and then submitting an edited version of the recording into court for some reason. I don't know why Aidan did that, especially apparently when there's an original version of the recording pursuant to some of the statements in court. And then also for intimidating Lindsey—for allegedly going over there on December 23rd, 2023—against Karen Read's advice and against his lawyers' advice, apparently, according to a leaked group chat message from Facebook in 2024—in May of 2024—going over to Lindsey's apartment. And then according to the affidavit from the search warrant for Karen Read's cell phone—allegedly telling Lindsey that she shouldn't cooperate with the grand jury. She should—she could remove information from her phone or something—that Aidan would get her a lawyer, but only if she agreed to meet with a lawyer only with him present, because she had, quote, "broken his trust." It just like—wild stuff. And that new grand jury, by the way, was apparently—it did go forward. And then in time it came out that it—that was about Karen and Aidan and witness intimidation and conspiracy, because Aidan Kearney—between October and November—really August and November of 2023—it started telling Lindsey Gaetani about his communications with Karen Read that included—in writing—Exhibit O to Karen Read search warrant affidavit, which says that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that in November of 2023—November 28, 2023, to be specific—that Karen Read told Aidan Kearney that Karen Read and her team at ex parte conversations with former U.S. Attorney Josh Levy—which was right in the window of time that Jessica Leslie, the grand juror leaker, was leaking information. Leslie started leaking in August of 2022—which is the same month that Alan Jackson joined Karen Read's legal team. And Josh Levy—who was one of the U.S. Attorneys in charge of that grand jury—Leslie was leaking about four different cases: probably the Birchmore case, definitely the Read and O'Keefe case, definitely the CDL case. One more case. We can't really—the group of us journalists involved in this—can't really figure out. So right in the middle of that—November of 2023—Josh Levy is leaking ex parte grand jury information to Karen Read, which she's putting—she's telling Aidan Kearney about; he's putting it in writing. He just was trying to just show off for Lindsey, but you don't like—come on—like what is it? First day in the IC, bro? I'm not in the IC. I'm not part of the government. I'm a towel. But anyway—so Aidan's bragging to Lindsey, and I don't think that was a very good idea. I mean, she's brilliant and stuff, but like—why would you ever say that to her? Don't say that stuff. But anyway—like, why would you say—even if it's your significant other—unless they are read-in on the intel that you are sharing—why would you ever, ever, ever share that with someone? It exposes them to an incredible liability—which, if you love them, don't do it. It also exposes your own credibility to an incredible risk of liability. You will never be trusted by the intelligence community again. Pillow talk and honeypots are how they trap operatives. If you chase sex, they will compromise you. How can you not understand that? So if you get compromised by someone who's not an agent—just someone who's your partner and you're just telling them stuff about protected federal investigations—what do you think your reputation is going to be like among the intelligence community when you're doing that and they haven't even honeypotted you? You just voluntarily started putting this shit in writing. They're going to look at you like you are out of your mind. So anyway—Karen Read apparently is telling Aidan Kearney that she's having ex parte conversations with Josh Levy. Now, the grand jury that Leslie was leaking from was impaneled in May of 2022 when Rachael Rollins used to be U.S. Attorney in Boston. Now think about this. In 2020, Rachael Rollins and Aidan Kearney—Rachael Rollins, a hyper-liberal known for her soft-on-crime stance. We'll also hear Rollins hated Michael Morrissey. Anyway, Rollins worked with Turtle Boy to send a Republican operative named Rayla Campbell to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events in the Senate race against Ed Markey so that Ed Markey could win the Senate seat. Now, interestingly enough, Rachael Rollins then got appointed to the position of U.S. Attorney right after that. And you might say: well, Grant, that's a stretch. No, no—because then within a few months, Rachael Rollins—part of the reason she gets thrown out of office by the DOJ OIG—is because she attends an event in Andover with—guess who?—Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the then-president who appointed her. Now, what does that mean? Well, if you really think about the geopolitical implications of the 2020 Senate race between Ed Markey in Massachusetts and Joe Kennedy Jr.—well, one of the things you're going to realize is that—think about 2020. The leadership around Biden did not know that the chaos of 2024 was going to happen with Kamala and Biden not really being up to it. You're thinking ahead to 2024. Why? Who's your biggest target if you are a sitting Democrat and you're worried about a primary challenge four years from now? Well, what if JFK's—what is it—nephew or whatever it is—is in the House of Representatives? And what if JFK started his career in the House of Representatives? And what if that new young Kennedy with red hair and sort of a photogenic face? What if he is running for JFK's old Senate seat? What if he's on the same exact trajectory as JFK? Oh, we can't have that. We—as the Biden White House—cannot have Joe Kennedy Jr. beating Ed Markey for Senate. And how it got to the point that somebody talked to Rachael Rollins and she came up with the brilliant idea to reach out to Turtle Boy so that Turtle Boy would talk to Rayla Campbell to send her to Joe Kennedy Jr.'s events to help Markey—I don't know. But that's why I think Rachael Rollins became U.S. Attorney—someone who, in my opinion, was uniquely unqualified and fundamentally unethically un-predisposed to being able to run that office. Who then in turn immediately tried to interfere in the 2022 Suffolk DA primary between Kevin Hayden and Ricardo O'Rourke—because Rollins wanted to see her progressive vision continue through O'Rourke—so she worked with Daniel Medwed—the same professor who was involved with advocating the media on behalf of Karen Read's team. She worked with Daniel Medwed to get a story leaked about how a non-existent federal probe into Kevin Hayden—to increase Ricardo O'Rourke's chances in the Suffolk DA primary. Sound familiar? Oh, hell yeah. So anyway—between November of 2022 and May of 2023—you got this weird situation where Rollins knows she's getting forced out; Levy's going to take over the office. The people who take Rollins out are Josh Levy, Bill Abley, and still head of the criminal division—Dustin Chao, I think—still head of the public integrity unit, and then executive officer who is also the press secretary or the communications director of the office. Those four people—without being named; they're named by title—were the people who cooperated with the DOJ to take Rollins out—DOJ-OIG to take Rollins out. Now, why is that interesting? Well, one—because it shows that people in that office knew that Rachael Rollins had a proclivity for weaponizing leaks about non-existent federal probes to interfere in particular district attorney races and matters. Second—Rachael Rollins and Michael Morrissey had a bifurcated history of ten years. One: Rachael Rollins had this list of 25 crimes she wouldn't prosecute, and other DAs critiqued her—not just Michael Morrissey but others. Rollins—I'm pretty sure—was the one who first called Morrissey a "meatball," in fact, because of his criticism of Rollins over that issue. Rachael Rollins—I think—has a proclivity, in my opinion, to hold a bit of a grudge. When she became U.S. Attorney and she realized she was on the way out—well, maybe the Sandra Birchmore probe started back in May of 2022 because former chief of the Canton police—Ken Berkowitz—went to the FBI and told them that the FBI covered up—the MSP unit detailed to the Norfolk DA covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder—potentially because Yuri Bukhenik and John Fanning used to work in Stoughton with Matt Farwell and Robert Devine and Billy Farwell—I think they all worked there. And furthermore—that Brian Tully, the unit commander, was partners with John Fanning for 20 years. All right, and in that regard—it is very interesting, I think—that Chief Berkowitz—who may have been very offended that his unit... So Sandra Birchmore was murdered on February 1st, 2021, at 9:23 p.m. in her apartment in Canton. Okay—on February 4th, Monday in the morning—the Canton police do a wellness check after they get a call from her—Sandra's—colleagues at the school where she worked as an administrative assistant. Now the Canton police respond—on Monday, February 4th—by Wednesday, February 6th. The Canton police have collected the following evidence in order. And if you don't believe me, you can read pages—I think 97 through 101—of the Canton Police Department audit report released in April of 2025. Point by point. Number one: the Canton police confirm—via a witness who was the maintenance worker at Sandra's apartment building—that Matt Farwell was the man on camera outside Sandra's apartment in the elevator at 9:23 p.m. on February 1st—which is exactly when Sandra died. Two: that the man was Matt Farwell, and he was the same man who helped Sandra move into her apartment. Three: that when the Canton PD went to Sandra's school, they got information that Farwell was telling people that Sandra was pregnant with his child—that he had abused her since she was a child—and that he was going to quote "take care of the problem himself" if Sandra decided to carry the baby to term. All right. All of that information—by February 6th of 2021—was passed over to the MSP. John Fanning and this whole unit—I think—really then facilitate a report sometime over the next six to 12 months that exonerates Farwell and says Sandra dies from self-harm. Well, I think that's why Ken Berkowitz blew the whistle before he died of cancer—and that's why there was a grand jury impaneled in May of 2022—and it was really about the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. Well—one—it was about Sandra Birchmore's murder. Why does that make everything so interesting? Because I think that the investigation wasn't just about who killed Sandra and why—but how was it ruled a—the result of self-harm—instead of the very obvious murder that it was. Well—that starts—2022, I think—May of 2022—the grand jury. Jessica Leslie was on the grand jury—leaker—who's going to be sentenced on October 4th of 2025. I think Jessica Leslie—ladies and gentlemen—in August of 2022 somehow leaked to Karen Read—Alan Jackson—that the Norfolk DA was dirty because they covered up—and that MSP unit—because they covered up Sandra Birchmore's murder. All right—so therefore, Alan Jackson—that's the skeleton in the closet. It wasn't what the people in the house were doing. I'm still a little suspect of who they know—but I don't think that's the big deal. I don't think Jen McCabe's social life is the big deal. Nobody cares—nobody fucking cares. Sorry for cussing. The big issue is that Jen was friends with Tully. Tully's unit knew literally where the bodies were buried. And they—I think—they brought on the PI—Marty Kraft—and Kate Peter—to insulate their exposure from the coming publicity that they knew was going to be brought upon them by Alan Jackson. And so they were worried. And who would you bring in if you had covered up a murder? If you were a MSP unit—you'd bring in someone like Kate Peter. Because you can read her in on that. She's hardened. She doesn't give a fuck. She lost two of her kids—and I don't think she even fucking cared. So who the fuck's the perfect person be like: "Bruh, if that shit gets national attention, we're fucked. So you better control that fucking narrative and handle all these like different people that get too close to this—or we're going to be exposed for Birchmore." But let me bring it back to the point here—which is in 2022, the feds clearly were starting to poke around. And come 2023—I think Brian Tully's unit was desperate. Who was going to find out because of the coverage of the Read case? Could they make sure that Kate Peter got close enough to Netflix and Gretchen Voss so that they couldn't find out what was actually going on? And could the Birchmore cover-up be kept up—even in light of the national spotlight? When you think about the fact that some people may not have been loyal to the Justice for John O'Keefe movement—but were instead primarily loyal to Brian Tully's unit. And when you think about the fact that maybe Tully's unit didn't run the best investigation of Karen Read—maybe there were some flaws. But if you think about the fact that they did get her—but if you think about it in the context of: Karen knew from the jump that the MSP were dirty over Birchmore—then you understand: Karen—that's why it was going to become an incident. Everyone knew—everyone around Tully, his friends, all of them—the unit—they knew they covered up Birchmore's murder. And they knew Karen had it in her hands if she could just figure out the PR. And that's exactly what she did—to put enough pressure on them. They took her to trial anyway—and it destroyed the fucking Norfolk DA—destroyed Brian Tully's unit. It cost them dearly—and she's a tactical fucking genius. I think Brian Tully thought he was slicker than he was by using the prosecution of Aidan Kearney—not to get a genuinely—in my opinion—bad guy who was deserving of the indictment handed up by a grand jury of his peers. But because Tully wanted to know what the real target of the federal probe is. If you don't know what a backhand is, folks—a backhand is where you investigate one thing on the surface because you're dealing with a very high-level operation like the state police—who are a paramilitary intelligence-gathering operation. So you trick them. You make them think they're under investigation for John's death and the investigation of that death. But really—you're investigating them for the cover-up of Sandra Birchmore's murder. And that's exactly what I think happened to this unit. That's what I think Brian Tully was trying to figure out—from August of 2023 until about December. I think they eventually put it together—and by August of 2024, Matthew Farwell got indicted. Now—it's a question of all this as a result of today. I want to be very clear: this is what was called for. There needed to be an independent voice with power and who takes no nonsense—who came into this and said: Nope—it's out of your hands. And that's what Judge Doolin did today. Someone just needed to not either be involved with Karen Read, Aidan Kearney, or the Norfolk DA—or Kate Peter or Marty Kraft—and prosecute this. Now, all those other witnesses—I have no idea what the hell is going to happen there. But at least for Lindsey—Judge Doolin was like: enough of this nonsense. And that's why today was such a big deal in light of that historical context—because just tracing that very insidious pattern of events over the past 18 months—you can see this became a proxy war. It was Michael Morrissey on one side with his marching soldiers: Brian Tully, Kate Peter, Marty Kraft. And then it was Karen Read and the DOJ on the other side. Okay. And their soldiers were like the Free Karen Read movement and Turtle Boy and Natalie and all these other people. This was an intelligence community proxy war. And that's why I've been trying to tell people for so long: Lindsey Gaetani was not involved. She was an unwitting pawn. These two factions both took advantage of her—including Brian Tully—who was more interested in preserving his unit's reputation than actually defending the interest of the vulnerable. In my opinion, I think Brian Tully is a terrible person. Does that mean that he's a bad person for trying to hold Karen Read accountable for John O'Keefe's death? No, of course not. He's a bad person because in what fucking world do you—as a fucking state police officer—who you—you are entrusted—not just to get the bad guys—but to protect the most fucking vulnerable? One: how do you justify what happened with Sandra Birchmore? Two: how the fuck do you get it in your fucking mind that you're going to take a 15-year unredacted extraction of a fucking vulnerable victim's cell phone and release it to a fucking defendant known for promulgating exactly that material? What fucking headspace? What satanic fucking chamber do you and Kate Peter have to be drinking blood from fucking cups in to think that that's fucking okay? Fuck you. How do you even get in the headspace where doing something like that to a fucking victim becomes acceptable. The rot in that unit—whether enabled by Morrissey or whether he didn't know about it—I don't fucking know. But the point is: the rot in that unit was so deep that they lost their fucking souls. They didn't think of victims as victims. They re-victimized victims because it was a political fucking war—and these people are so hardened, I guess, that they don't understand what it means to be vulnerable. And these were police officers—detectives—people entrusted to uphold and protect the dignity of the most vulnerable—and they fucking used victims to advance some political agenda—to deal with the fact that they covered up a fucking murder. I'm done being gentle about this. Fuck these people. And I'm not saying that it was wrong for them to investigate Karen Read. I am pleased someone tried to prosecute her. I'm pissed at them because they were thinking about it from the perspective of their own liability for an unrelated case—and they fucked everything up—and introducing Kate Peter to this shit. Oh my God. It's a disgrace. It's a disgrace to the people who were hurt. It's a disgrace to the vulnerable. I frankly do not understand how Jen McCabe, Brian Tully, and Kate Peter go to bed each night. I don't get it. I don't know. Maybe there's something that shuts off the GABA-1 receptor or something and just makes you go to bed. I don't know. Never heard of such a thing. But I'm just saying: I don't know how you do it. How do you do it? But anyway—Judge Doolin—without giving a... extemporaneous, uh, bloviating cuss-based rant like I just did—instead, in my opinion, is like: fuck all of you! You're not being involved in this prosecution anymore. Someone's gonna protect this fucking woman—Lindsey Gaetani. I'm making you appoint someone! I love that man. Good for Judge Doolin. But still—we never should have gone to this point. This is incredible. With the... the... the MSP. The fact that they had a unit operating like this for so long. This is worse than what John Connolly and Whitey Bulger did. This is institutional rot that is so pervasive that it requires fundamental reform of the MSP. They're not incapable of—um, uh—solving crimes. I'm sure most of the MSP are wonderful. Anyway—my point is: I don't think the state police officers that I generally run into—or troopers—are bad people. I think most of them are wonderful. They've never been really mean to me. They do good work. They're out there protecting our roads. They stop people from speeding. They—what else do they do? They go after commercial truck violations. They investigate homicides—like, on the whole. And this is why I think we have to be careful about how we talk about this. I am not saying that the entire MSP is just rotten. I'm saying that when you have factions or sections within the institution that understand its machinations and are able to thus manipulate the bureaucratic structure and avoid accountability—you lose the confidence of everyone. And how do you think some of those good troopers feel when they have to go out there? Yes—people like me are going to smile at them and bless them and whatever—because I know they're not part of the problem. But most people look at them and they think that they're fucking hated. They don't deserve that. They literally put their lives on the line for us every day. And if we're going to give them the respect they deserve—if we're going to make the profession have the respect that it deserves—then this kind of institutional rot can't be looked at as just an embarrassment. And it can't be looked at as something that—oh, we just wish didn't happen. Maybe some guys are going to go away. No—you point at it. You scream it from the rooftops and you say: if this happens even once—then we have so failed as an institution; we must fundamentally reform from the ground up. And this wasn't just once. It was Birchmore. It was the phone extraction. It was the SA report leak over and over and over and over again. They knew the law. They were an old boys' club. They abused it. They had cover—and it was systemically enabled. And that's why I think—to save the profession of policing in Massachusetts—there needs to be a full-on unbridled discussion about how this happened—how the personalities involved were able to do what they did. And we can't be so tribalistic that because someone we support as to their views on one case, right? We cannot be so tribalistic that we just block out everything bad that they do. Or this rot will continue. And it is pernicious. It is insidious. It is invidious. It undermines the faith that citizens completely removed from this situation have in our system of government. It undermines victims' confidence in the ability to seek redress in the face of serious fucking harm—because they think the system doesn't actually care about them. It's just using them to get someone bigger. We cannot allow this to perpetuate. And the only way to fix it is to hold up situations like what happened to Birchmore—Sandra Birchmore—and what happened to Lindsey Gaetani—hold them up in the national spotlight—and say: we—the MSP—have failed you. Brian Tully failed these people. John Fanning failed these people. Nick Guarino failed these people. Yuri Bukhenik failed these people. We need to say that. We need to highlight it. We need to say: this happened even once. Therefore, we are not good enough. Not only are we not good enough—the very fact that either of these things were able to happen—the Birchmore cover-up, the phone extraction leak—is such a pervasive, systemic degradation of the faith that victims and the public have in the justice system—that our only option is to talk about this—congressional hearings. We need the State House to have congressional hearings. We need these people to answer for what they did. And we need to make sure it never happens again. And the only way you do that is by finding out what aspects of the bureaucratic structure allowed this to happen. And it's not going to be comfortable. I don't think it's going to be comfortable for anyone to talk about the fallout of any of this—but that's exactly what happened at the CCC on a smaller scale. And if this country matters—if this form of government matters—if this republic matters—then we will fix this. We will fix it together. We will address the hard questions. We will address the uncomfortable questions. We will shed our prejudices and polemical biases at the door. We will engage in no fear, no favoritism—and we will look only for the truth and nothing but it. And if you are incapable of doing that—you're contributing—either consciously or subconsciously—to the problem. It's our only option. And you can't just say: because they prosecuted Karen Read, we can't talk about anything bad that they did. That's tribalism. That's polemical. That's what drove us to this point.

Grant Smith Ellis

41,546 views • 1 year ago

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. 🫡
14:49

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. 🫡

Esther Crawford ✨

5,506,001 views • 3 years ago