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Marvel Rivals: Stealth Tactics Gone Too Far! Spider-Man thought he was alone… until he felt something. 😏🕷️ Artist: Alyta3D Invisible Woman Model: TheMadCommander🇵🇱 Spidey Model: J.STILL 🔞 (commissions open) Tags: #Spiderman #suestorm #invisiblewomen #MarvelRivals #SoundOn #NSFW

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Wow…. Donald Trump’s rally in Tucson, Arizona was a mess. Bro was totally slurry and as utterly incoherent he’s ever been. Let’s recap it: JD Vance is nowhere to be found. Bro hasn’t been invited to a rally in a while. Telling. He starts by hyping up the crowd despite the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall only having a capacity for 2195 people. There were empty seats too. In comparison, VP Harris had 8600 people at her rally today. You could tell his tiny crowd size was bothering him. He claimed he had a “monumental victory” against VP Harris in the debate. Sure, bro… He said she “spewed lies.” Pure projection. He whined about Linsey Davis and David Muir. He had issues saying “industry,” “Snopes” (he called it “Snoops”), “confiscation,” “notice,” “and,” “interest,” “Russia,” “jokingly,” and “woman." The cognitive decline is fierce. He lied about the abortion after birth thing again, disgusting. He’s giggling at his own jokes. I think he’s on something. This is super weird. He called VP Kamala Harris “the leader of the movement Defund the Police.” Uh, no. He says Project 2025 “never had my authorization.” He implemented over 2/3 of their policies in 2017. He says that crime is so much worse now than when he was in office. False. Crime has gone down since the spike when he was POTUS. He falls back on his Twitter polls as proof that he “won the debate.” Nah, bro. He seems to think that his debate with Biden counts as debating Harris. Not the case. He claims his weird “Town Hall” with Tulsi Gabbard had the best ratings. It didn’t. He tried to diss David Muir’s hair. Odd since I’d take David’s hair over Donald’s…whatever that is…any day of the week. He claims VP Harris is “a threat to democracy.” So much projection. He’s slurring calling Harris and Tim Walz “weird.” He clearly doesn’t like being called weird himself, so we should keep doing it. A lot. He called Tim Walz “the future Vice President.” Well, he got one thing right! He repeats that he won’t do a “third debate” because it’s “too late” since early voting has already started. Donald Trump is a chicken. He goes on an angry rant about immigrants and migrants. He whines that VP Harris smiled during the debate. Bro, she was LAUGHING AT YOU. He’s pushing lies about Springfield, Ohio. FAFO in a swing state, bro. I can’t wait for Haitians to help flip Florida. He claims people in Hollywood vote for him because of “low taxes.” Further proof Donald only cares about giving tax cuts to the wealthy. He says they lie and say they’re not voting for him and then secretly vote for him. Not happening, bro. He claimed he got “more votes than any sitting president in the history of the country” in 2020. HE LOST THE ELECTION and he’s once again claiming he didn’t lose after admitting he did multiple times in the past month. He said “we’re never gonna let that happen again.” We all need to be prepared for what he’s gonna make his base do when he loses AGAIN. He claims that “in a couple more years they’ll be fired” about Linsey Davis and David Muir. Is he threatening them if he wins? He called Linsey Davis “nasty.” What a dick. He now goes back to people in Hollywood voting for him. Delusional man can’t even keep his own train of thought. He claims someone named Martha cried when he won the debate. Uh. He’s bragging about crowd size again. He’s also saying he did 7 rallies in 2 days. He did not. He’s now asking how many rallies Biden would do…he keeps forgetting who he’s running against. He tries to get the crowd excited and it sounded like less than 50 people were clapping. Sad. He’s now talking about Venezuelans taking over places with AK47s. He was the one who stayed the deportation of Venezuelans right before he left office. He’s now calling Kari Lake “Border Kari Lake.” Super lame nickname and of course he praises himself for it. He’s crying about Biden again. Yikes. Bro’s mind is mashed potatoes. He’s back talking about Venezuelans with guns and he’s trying to do math. No joke. He claims Harris is flying in migrants on jets. He whines about the Forbes 400 and claims Forbes “isn’t doing so well.” He’s still butthurt that they dropped him from their list. He’s back to demonizing “20,000” Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. FAFO bro. He said “they’re taking the geese…and walking off with their pets. My has been stolen.” He keeps talking about someone named “Art.” I’m smirking. He says he’ll “stop World War 3.” Bro is gonna try to start it. He’s crying about Biden not talking to Putin. He claims that immigrants and migrants can’t pay rent. He immediately talks about the “explosion in rent” in Springfield, Ohio. Pick one or the other, doofus. He’s talking about sleeping with a chart “every night.” I mean, that’s more than Melania is sleeping with him. She won’t even be in the same state as him, let alone the same bedroom. He’s going to “ban mortgages for all illegal aliens.” I thought he said they can’t pay rent but now they can afford to buy a home? Again, pick a lane dingleberry. You’re embarrassing. He claimed the average income raised $7000 under him. False. 3 million people lost their jobs. Donald says he’s going to save the average person in Arizona “$800 and $1000 a month” on their mortgages. Is he planning on giving away free homes? Bro is straight up lying. He arbitrarily says he’s going to cut their power bills by 50% in the first year. How do people believe this absolute bullsh*.t? He said people “can’t afford to buy cereal” and that people bring three apples to the checkout and then put one back because they can’t afford it. Fruity Pebbles near me are $3.49 and an apple costs $.59. He wants to repeal “every unnecessary rule” for construction of homes. Let’s make houses implode again! He claims “government regulation” is to blame for “40% of the cost of single family homes.” Bro is legit just making up numbers as he goes along. This is painful to watch. He says he’s going to cut the cost of new homes by 30-50%. Is he gonna give away land for free? FFS. Bro is mental. Ah. He just said he’s going to open up federal land for “large scale housing development.” Great. Let’s turn Yellowstone into a strip mall while we’re at it. He’s complaining that the media covers his inability to say words and calling him “cognitively impaired.” The media genuinely needs to call this out. He calls Melania “our great First Lady.” She’s not the First Lady, and she’s not great either. He said Melania complains about his hair at his rallies. Good. He looks like a bum with an animal living in that weird hair nest. He’s complaining about low income housing. He’ll take away any safety net that people who are struggling have. He said he “doesn’t have problems with women” and that suburban women love him. E. Jean Carroll would like a word. So would Stormy Daniels. He said women “don’t want to be hurt, molested, killed.” I don’t want to have to carry my rapist’s baby, bro. And that’s now happening to women in 13 states thanks to you. He asked “why wouldn’t they like me” about women. UHHHHHHHH. How much time do you have, Donald? He said women want choice and that he’s for choice. But he’s talking about school choice, not bodily autonomy. I hate this man. He’s whining about “copycat” VP Harris saying “no taxes on tips.” Hahahaha. She still lives rent free in his head about this. He’s now trying to bribe people by saying that he’ll end taxes on overtime. We all know he’ll never implement this. He’s bragging about Biden’s student loan debt elimination being stopped. Vile. He claims he took in more money from the IRS after he cut taxes for the wealthy, “by a lot.” Not true. Our national debt was skyrocketing under him even prior to the pandemic. The crowd cheers the loudest for his hateful speech about transgender people. He lies and says schools are transing kids after parents drop them off. He claims VP Harris was “the leader of that.” Fake news. He lies about the boxers in the Olympics again. I really hope they sue the ever-loving sh-i.t out of him. He does some lewd gestures and talks about “getting it up.” I want to vomit in my mouth. He makes up a story about a trans swimmer who won the Olympics and some female swimmer getting “wind burn” as a result. WHAT THE ACTUAL EFF?!?! See the video below. I couldn’t stop laughing. Sorry for that! He’s begging people to get their friends to vote. He knows he’s gonna lose. Oh. Now he's doing the air jerk dance going off the stage. It makes my skin crawl. - Fin I’m sorry this one took a while. I kept pausing and leaving the tv because he was royally pissing me off. I genuinely cannot wait until I don’t have to do these anymore. This man is one giant ball of hatred and we need this cancerous negativity removed from our society. Is the media gonna cover any of this or nah?
1:16

Wow…. Donald Trump’s rally in Tucson, Arizona was a mess. Bro was totally slurry and as utterly incoherent he’s ever been. Let’s recap it: JD Vance is nowhere to be found. Bro hasn’t been invited to a rally in a while. Telling. He starts by hyping up the crowd despite the Linda Ronstadt Music Hall only having a capacity for 2195 people. There were empty seats too. In comparison, VP Harris had 8600 people at her rally today. You could tell his tiny crowd size was bothering him. He claimed he had a “monumental victory” against VP Harris in the debate. Sure, bro… He said she “spewed lies.” Pure projection. He whined about Linsey Davis and David Muir. He had issues saying “industry,” “Snopes” (he called it “Snoops”), “confiscation,” “notice,” “and,” “interest,” “Russia,” “jokingly,” and “woman." The cognitive decline is fierce. He lied about the abortion after birth thing again, disgusting. He’s giggling at his own jokes. I think he’s on something. This is super weird. He called VP Kamala Harris “the leader of the movement Defund the Police.” Uh, no. He says Project 2025 “never had my authorization.” He implemented over 2/3 of their policies in 2017. He says that crime is so much worse now than when he was in office. False. Crime has gone down since the spike when he was POTUS. He falls back on his Twitter polls as proof that he “won the debate.” Nah, bro. He seems to think that his debate with Biden counts as debating Harris. Not the case. He claims his weird “Town Hall” with Tulsi Gabbard had the best ratings. It didn’t. He tried to diss David Muir’s hair. Odd since I’d take David’s hair over Donald’s…whatever that is…any day of the week. He claims VP Harris is “a threat to democracy.” So much projection. He’s slurring calling Harris and Tim Walz “weird.” He clearly doesn’t like being called weird himself, so we should keep doing it. A lot. He called Tim Walz “the future Vice President.” Well, he got one thing right! He repeats that he won’t do a “third debate” because it’s “too late” since early voting has already started. Donald Trump is a chicken. He goes on an angry rant about immigrants and migrants. He whines that VP Harris smiled during the debate. Bro, she was LAUGHING AT YOU. He’s pushing lies about Springfield, Ohio. FAFO in a swing state, bro. I can’t wait for Haitians to help flip Florida. He claims people in Hollywood vote for him because of “low taxes.” Further proof Donald only cares about giving tax cuts to the wealthy. He says they lie and say they’re not voting for him and then secretly vote for him. Not happening, bro. He claimed he got “more votes than any sitting president in the history of the country” in 2020. HE LOST THE ELECTION and he’s once again claiming he didn’t lose after admitting he did multiple times in the past month. He said “we’re never gonna let that happen again.” We all need to be prepared for what he’s gonna make his base do when he loses AGAIN. He claims that “in a couple more years they’ll be fired” about Linsey Davis and David Muir. Is he threatening them if he wins? He called Linsey Davis “nasty.” What a dick. He now goes back to people in Hollywood voting for him. Delusional man can’t even keep his own train of thought. He claims someone named Martha cried when he won the debate. Uh. He’s bragging about crowd size again. He’s also saying he did 7 rallies in 2 days. He did not. He’s now asking how many rallies Biden would do…he keeps forgetting who he’s running against. He tries to get the crowd excited and it sounded like less than 50 people were clapping. Sad. He’s now talking about Venezuelans taking over places with AK47s. He was the one who stayed the deportation of Venezuelans right before he left office. He’s now calling Kari Lake “Border Kari Lake.” Super lame nickname and of course he praises himself for it. He’s crying about Biden again. Yikes. Bro’s mind is mashed potatoes. He’s back talking about Venezuelans with guns and he’s trying to do math. No joke. He claims Harris is flying in migrants on jets. He whines about the Forbes 400 and claims Forbes “isn’t doing so well.” He’s still butthurt that they dropped him from their list. He’s back to demonizing “20,000” Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. FAFO bro. He said “they’re taking the geese…and walking off with their pets. My has been stolen.” He keeps talking about someone named “Art.” I’m smirking. He says he’ll “stop World War 3.” Bro is gonna try to start it. He’s crying about Biden not talking to Putin. He claims that immigrants and migrants can’t pay rent. He immediately talks about the “explosion in rent” in Springfield, Ohio. Pick one or the other, doofus. He’s talking about sleeping with a chart “every night.” I mean, that’s more than Melania is sleeping with him. She won’t even be in the same state as him, let alone the same bedroom. He’s going to “ban mortgages for all illegal aliens.” I thought he said they can’t pay rent but now they can afford to buy a home? Again, pick a lane dingleberry. You’re embarrassing. He claimed the average income raised $7000 under him. False. 3 million people lost their jobs. Donald says he’s going to save the average person in Arizona “$800 and $1000 a month” on their mortgages. Is he planning on giving away free homes? Bro is straight up lying. He arbitrarily says he’s going to cut their power bills by 50% in the first year. How do people believe this absolute bullsh*.t? He said people “can’t afford to buy cereal” and that people bring three apples to the checkout and then put one back because they can’t afford it. Fruity Pebbles near me are $3.49 and an apple costs $.59. He wants to repeal “every unnecessary rule” for construction of homes. Let’s make houses implode again! He claims “government regulation” is to blame for “40% of the cost of single family homes.” Bro is legit just making up numbers as he goes along. This is painful to watch. He says he’s going to cut the cost of new homes by 30-50%. Is he gonna give away land for free? FFS. Bro is mental. Ah. He just said he’s going to open up federal land for “large scale housing development.” Great. Let’s turn Yellowstone into a strip mall while we’re at it. He’s complaining that the media covers his inability to say words and calling him “cognitively impaired.” The media genuinely needs to call this out. He calls Melania “our great First Lady.” She’s not the First Lady, and she’s not great either. He said Melania complains about his hair at his rallies. Good. He looks like a bum with an animal living in that weird hair nest. He’s complaining about low income housing. He’ll take away any safety net that people who are struggling have. He said he “doesn’t have problems with women” and that suburban women love him. E. Jean Carroll would like a word. So would Stormy Daniels. He said women “don’t want to be hurt, molested, killed.” I don’t want to have to carry my rapist’s baby, bro. And that’s now happening to women in 13 states thanks to you. He asked “why wouldn’t they like me” about women. UHHHHHHHH. How much time do you have, Donald? He said women want choice and that he’s for choice. But he’s talking about school choice, not bodily autonomy. I hate this man. He’s whining about “copycat” VP Harris saying “no taxes on tips.” Hahahaha. She still lives rent free in his head about this. He’s now trying to bribe people by saying that he’ll end taxes on overtime. We all know he’ll never implement this. He’s bragging about Biden’s student loan debt elimination being stopped. Vile. He claims he took in more money from the IRS after he cut taxes for the wealthy, “by a lot.” Not true. Our national debt was skyrocketing under him even prior to the pandemic. The crowd cheers the loudest for his hateful speech about transgender people. He lies and says schools are transing kids after parents drop them off. He claims VP Harris was “the leader of that.” Fake news. He lies about the boxers in the Olympics again. I really hope they sue the ever-loving sh-i.t out of him. He does some lewd gestures and talks about “getting it up.” I want to vomit in my mouth. He makes up a story about a trans swimmer who won the Olympics and some female swimmer getting “wind burn” as a result. WHAT THE ACTUAL EFF?!?! See the video below. I couldn’t stop laughing. Sorry for that! He’s begging people to get their friends to vote. He knows he’s gonna lose. Oh. Now he's doing the air jerk dance going off the stage. It makes my skin crawl. - Fin I’m sorry this one took a while. I kept pausing and leaving the tv because he was royally pissing me off. I genuinely cannot wait until I don’t have to do these anymore. This man is one giant ball of hatred and we need this cancerous negativity removed from our society. Is the media gonna cover any of this or nah?

Art Candee 🍿🥤

448,696 views • 1 year ago

Charlie Munger reveals why smart people wreck their own decisions without ever noticing it happening: He built a career-long list of the exact mental glitches that trip up geniuses and fools alike, and laid it all out in one Harvard talk. It is one of the most quietly devastating things you will ever watch: 1. Nobody respects incentives enough, not even the people who study them. Munger spent a lifetime near the top of his field and still got surprised. "Well I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it." If the master of the subject keeps underestimating incentives, everyone else is doing it worse. 2. FedEx couldn't fix its night shift until it fixed the paycheque. He loved this story because it proves structure beats persuasion. "The heart and soul of the integrity of the system is that all the packages have to be shifted rapidly in one central location each night. And the system has no integrity if the whole shift can't be done fast." They tried everything except changing how people got paid. Once they paid by the shift instead of the hour, the problem vanished. 3. A skilled surgeon can talk himself into hurting people for money and believe every word of it. This is the darkest lesson in the whole talk. A Nebraska doctor kept removing healthy gallbladders for years before anyone stopped him. Munger asked a colleague if the man knew what he was doing. "Tell me, did he think, here's a way for me to exercise my talents," this guy was very skilled technically, "And make a high living by doing a few maimings and murders every year, along with some frauds?" And he said, "Hell no, Charlie. He thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn't get that organ out rapidly enough." Incentives don't just bend behaviour, they bend belief. 4. Even a brilliant mind can turn into a one-trick pony. Munger used B.F. Skinner, one of Harvard's most important scientists, as the cautionary tale. "What gummed up Skinner's reputation is that he developed a case of what I always call man-with-a-hammer syndrome, to the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail." Genius doesn't protect you from tunnel vision. It just makes the tunnel vision more convincing. 5. Denial is not weakness, it is a universal human default setting. A mother who lost her son at sea simply refused the fact of it. "This first really hit me between the eyes when a friend of our family had a super-athlete, super-student son who flew off a carrier in the north Atlantic and never came back, and his mother, who was a very sane woman, just never believed that he was dead." As Munger put it plainly elsewhere in the talk, the reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it's bearable. Everyone does this. Founders do it about failing products. Investors do it about failing bets. 6. Taking something away hurts people far more than giving them the same thing helps them. He used his own dog to make the point unforgettable. "I took the Munger dog, lovely harmless dog. The one way, the only way to get that dog to bite you was to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there." He followed it with a neighbour's blood feud over a three-foot pine tree blocking a sliver of harbour view. "People are really crazy about minor decrements down." Founders who cut a perk or a title learn this the hard way. 7. Boards of directors almost never stop a leader who has gone off the rails. This is the line every investor on X should screenshot. "They only act, again the power of incentives, they only act when it gets so bad that it starts making them look foolish, or threatening legal liability to them. That's Munger's rule." Governance sounds like a safeguard. In practice it is mostly theatre until the risk to the board itself becomes personal. 8. Simply being visible changes behaviour, no persuasion required. He picked the most familiar brand on earth to prove it. "Ask the Coca-Cola company, which has raised availability to a secular religion, if availability changes behavior. You'll drink a hell of a lot more Coke if it's always available." Distribution is not a nice-to-have. It is the lever. 9. A crowd of decent people will watch someone suffer and do nothing, because everyone else is doing nothing. Munger used the murder of Kitty Genovese as his sharpest example of social proof gone wrong. "All these people, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 of them just sort of sat and did nothing while she was slowly murdered. Now one of the explanations is that everybody looked at everybody else and nobody else was doing anything, and so there's automatic social proof that the right thing to do is nothing." Silence in a room is not neutral. It is a signal, and it spreads. 10. The real danger is never one bias alone, it's several firing at once. When asked which single tendency mattered most, he refused to pick just one. "I would say the one thing that causes the most trouble is when you combine a bunch of these together, you get this lollapalooza effect." Individually these glitches are survivable. Stacked together, they produce the biggest disasters in business history. Here's the thing though.... Munger never ran a startup and never chased attention for its own sake, yet he became one of the most quoted people in business because he kept showing up and saying the true thing out loud, year after year, at Berkshire meetings and lecture halls and student Q&As. Buffett built the balance sheet. Munger's voice, carried across decades of speeches like this one, built the reputation that made people trust the balance sheet in the first place. Being public wasn't a side project for him. It was the multiplier that turned one very smart investor into a permanent reference point for how to think. Speaking of which: We build massive distribution and grow personal brands on X and beyond without our clients lifting a finger. If you're a founder or VC looking for that kind of exposure, book a call below. We average 1.5M views a week.
1:16:22

Charlie Munger reveals why smart people wreck their own decisions without ever noticing it happening: He built a career-long list of the exact mental glitches that trip up geniuses and fools alike, and laid it all out in one Harvard talk. It is one of the most quietly devastating things you will ever watch: 1. Nobody respects incentives enough, not even the people who study them. Munger spent a lifetime near the top of his field and still got surprised. "Well I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it." If the master of the subject keeps underestimating incentives, everyone else is doing it worse. 2. FedEx couldn't fix its night shift until it fixed the paycheque. He loved this story because it proves structure beats persuasion. "The heart and soul of the integrity of the system is that all the packages have to be shifted rapidly in one central location each night. And the system has no integrity if the whole shift can't be done fast." They tried everything except changing how people got paid. Once they paid by the shift instead of the hour, the problem vanished. 3. A skilled surgeon can talk himself into hurting people for money and believe every word of it. This is the darkest lesson in the whole talk. A Nebraska doctor kept removing healthy gallbladders for years before anyone stopped him. Munger asked a colleague if the man knew what he was doing. "Tell me, did he think, here's a way for me to exercise my talents," this guy was very skilled technically, "And make a high living by doing a few maimings and murders every year, along with some frauds?" And he said, "Hell no, Charlie. He thought that the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil, and if you really love your patients, you couldn't get that organ out rapidly enough." Incentives don't just bend behaviour, they bend belief. 4. Even a brilliant mind can turn into a one-trick pony. Munger used B.F. Skinner, one of Harvard's most important scientists, as the cautionary tale. "What gummed up Skinner's reputation is that he developed a case of what I always call man-with-a-hammer syndrome, to the man with a hammer, every problem tends to look pretty much like a nail." Genius doesn't protect you from tunnel vision. It just makes the tunnel vision more convincing. 5. Denial is not weakness, it is a universal human default setting. A mother who lost her son at sea simply refused the fact of it. "This first really hit me between the eyes when a friend of our family had a super-athlete, super-student son who flew off a carrier in the north Atlantic and never came back, and his mother, who was a very sane woman, just never believed that he was dead." As Munger put it plainly elsewhere in the talk, the reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it's bearable. Everyone does this. Founders do it about failing products. Investors do it about failing bets. 6. Taking something away hurts people far more than giving them the same thing helps them. He used his own dog to make the point unforgettable. "I took the Munger dog, lovely harmless dog. The one way, the only way to get that dog to bite you was to try and take something out of its mouth after it was already there." He followed it with a neighbour's blood feud over a three-foot pine tree blocking a sliver of harbour view. "People are really crazy about minor decrements down." Founders who cut a perk or a title learn this the hard way. 7. Boards of directors almost never stop a leader who has gone off the rails. This is the line every investor on X should screenshot. "They only act, again the power of incentives, they only act when it gets so bad that it starts making them look foolish, or threatening legal liability to them. That's Munger's rule." Governance sounds like a safeguard. In practice it is mostly theatre until the risk to the board itself becomes personal. 8. Simply being visible changes behaviour, no persuasion required. He picked the most familiar brand on earth to prove it. "Ask the Coca-Cola company, which has raised availability to a secular religion, if availability changes behavior. You'll drink a hell of a lot more Coke if it's always available." Distribution is not a nice-to-have. It is the lever. 9. A crowd of decent people will watch someone suffer and do nothing, because everyone else is doing nothing. Munger used the murder of Kitty Genovese as his sharpest example of social proof gone wrong. "All these people, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 of them just sort of sat and did nothing while she was slowly murdered. Now one of the explanations is that everybody looked at everybody else and nobody else was doing anything, and so there's automatic social proof that the right thing to do is nothing." Silence in a room is not neutral. It is a signal, and it spreads. 10. The real danger is never one bias alone, it's several firing at once. When asked which single tendency mattered most, he refused to pick just one. "I would say the one thing that causes the most trouble is when you combine a bunch of these together, you get this lollapalooza effect." Individually these glitches are survivable. Stacked together, they produce the biggest disasters in business history. Here's the thing though.... Munger never ran a startup and never chased attention for its own sake, yet he became one of the most quoted people in business because he kept showing up and saying the true thing out loud, year after year, at Berkshire meetings and lecture halls and student Q&As. Buffett built the balance sheet. Munger's voice, carried across decades of speeches like this one, built the reputation that made people trust the balance sheet in the first place. Being public wasn't a side project for him. It was the multiplier that turned one very smart investor into a permanent reference point for how to think. Speaking of which: We build massive distribution and grow personal brands on X and beyond without our clients lifting a finger. If you're a founder or VC looking for that kind of exposure, book a call below. We average 1.5M views a week.

Lewis 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

58,157 views • 1 month ago

For two years I have been living in a kind of parallel universe called GME.Every single day, every week, every month I have read everything. Every filing, every tweet, every SEC filing, every forum post, every leak. I stared at the charts until my eyes hurt. And over and over the same certainty kept rising: The shorts never closed. Never. They only found new tricks, new derivatives, new lies, new media campaigns but the position? It is still sitting there. Like an elephant in the room that everyone pretends is just a piece of furniture.I was never wrong.I was just damn early.For two years I watched people call me a Hopium Junkie, friends rolling their eyes, family asking if I didn’t want to give up eventually. Two years in which the price sometimes dropped so low that even I doubted for a moment not the thesis, but only whether I could still endure it all. But deep down I knew: I am not wrong. I am simply the guy who saw the first cracks in the wall years before the earthquake even started.And now?Now the GameStop business has turned 180 degrees.The company that was once mocked as a dying dinosaur has reinvented itself. Cash flow positive, debt gone, new strategy, new leadership, new vision. No more desperate “we are trying to survive somehow” but a clear “we are building something here that none of you saw coming.” The revenue numbers, the balance sheet, all the moves everything suddenly screams: They didn’t just survive. They have transformed.And as if that weren’t enough, Michael Burry is back in the game too. The man from The Big Short, who was already in GME early, is buying again. He is long and adding. Burry trusts Ryan Cohen to become the next Warren Buffett. He sees in him a young, driven CEO with the right mindset who can create something truly special.GameStop is sitting on almost 9 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities. And Ryan Cohen is planning something big, something that has never happened before in financial history. He talks about a transformational acquisition in the consumer or retail world, about brutally efficient execution, about a model similar to Berkshire Hathaway but much faster. A deal that could take the company from a 10 billion market cap to something worth a hundred billion or more.And I sit here, after two years, with this feeling in my chest that I can barely put into is not satisfaction. Not yet. It is this deep, quiet “I told you so” mixed with an incredible calm. Because I know the big moment is still coming. The shorts are still there. The bill is still open. And this time the company is no longer the old GameStop that they almost tore apart in 2021.This time it is a completely different beast.And me? I am still here. Not because I am stubborn.But because I was right from the very beginning.Only time has finally caught up.While others who have been in this for five years or more never gave up. They held through every dip, every FUD wave, every moment of doubt, and they are still standing right beside me. True diamond hands. Their patience and conviction have been unbreakable, and now we are all watching the same story unfold together. $GME 🏴‍☠️🐇🍦🐸🍻 741676935420
0:17

For two years I have been living in a kind of parallel universe called GME.Every single day, every week, every month I have read everything. Every filing, every tweet, every SEC filing, every forum post, every leak. I stared at the charts until my eyes hurt. And over and over the same certainty kept rising: The shorts never closed. Never. They only found new tricks, new derivatives, new lies, new media campaigns but the position? It is still sitting there. Like an elephant in the room that everyone pretends is just a piece of furniture.I was never wrong.I was just damn early.For two years I watched people call me a Hopium Junkie, friends rolling their eyes, family asking if I didn’t want to give up eventually. Two years in which the price sometimes dropped so low that even I doubted for a moment not the thesis, but only whether I could still endure it all. But deep down I knew: I am not wrong. I am simply the guy who saw the first cracks in the wall years before the earthquake even started.And now?Now the GameStop business has turned 180 degrees.The company that was once mocked as a dying dinosaur has reinvented itself. Cash flow positive, debt gone, new strategy, new leadership, new vision. No more desperate “we are trying to survive somehow” but a clear “we are building something here that none of you saw coming.” The revenue numbers, the balance sheet, all the moves everything suddenly screams: They didn’t just survive. They have transformed.And as if that weren’t enough, Michael Burry is back in the game too. The man from The Big Short, who was already in GME early, is buying again. He is long and adding. Burry trusts Ryan Cohen to become the next Warren Buffett. He sees in him a young, driven CEO with the right mindset who can create something truly special.GameStop is sitting on almost 9 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities. And Ryan Cohen is planning something big, something that has never happened before in financial history. He talks about a transformational acquisition in the consumer or retail world, about brutally efficient execution, about a model similar to Berkshire Hathaway but much faster. A deal that could take the company from a 10 billion market cap to something worth a hundred billion or more.And I sit here, after two years, with this feeling in my chest that I can barely put into is not satisfaction. Not yet. It is this deep, quiet “I told you so” mixed with an incredible calm. Because I know the big moment is still coming. The shorts are still there. The bill is still open. And this time the company is no longer the old GameStop that they almost tore apart in 2021.This time it is a completely different beast.And me? I am still here. Not because I am stubborn.But because I was right from the very beginning.Only time has finally caught up.While others who have been in this for five years or more never gave up. They held through every dip, every FUD wave, every moment of doubt, and they are still standing right beside me. True diamond hands. Their patience and conviction have been unbreakable, and now we are all watching the same story unfold together. $GME 🏴‍☠️🐇🍦🐸🍻 741676935420

Mr Infinity

15,453 views • 4 months ago

The July 4th weekend All-In The All-In Podcast turned into a long argument about who owns the intelligence layer. The besties think enterprises just woke up to a trap they had been walking into, here's how the conversation went (save this): ◽️ The Palantir-Nvidia deal is a bet against the model-layer duopoly. Palantir will use Nvidia's Nemotron open models to build a custom frontier-quality model for US government agencies, and the agencies own the hardware, the data, and the weights. Sacks framed it as structural: an application company and a chip company both want a competitive model layer, so they are natural partners against a two-provider middle. ◽️ Alex Karp's CNBC "crashout" was actually the thesis. Karp argued enterprises have lost trust in the frontier labs and want to own their compute, models, data, and alpha. Sacks translated it as a new definition of enterprise AI safety: safety means the model provider cannot hoover up your proprietary knowledge and turn it into its next product. ◽️ Figma is the cautionary tale that made it real. Anthropic launched Claude Design into Figma's category, its chief product officer sat on Figma's board and resigned only 3 days before launch, and Figma's stock is down about 50% this year while Anthropic's valuation surged. Sacks listed Claude Science, Security, Legal, Financial, and Code as the same move: dominate the model layer, then take the lucrative verticals. ◽️ The playbook has a name, and it is Microsoft and Google. Sacks argued Anthropic is running the operating-system strategy: own the layer everyone builds on, then walk up the stack. His Google receipt is that fewer than half of searches now send you off-site, versus an early Google that prided itself on how fast it kicked you away. ◽️ The BCG number is what raises the stakes. Chamath cited a BCG return-on-capital-employed study: the cost of capital is back to its long-run 8 to 11%, and half of large US companies cannot earn returns above it. If you are already teetering on your cost of capital, handing your alpha to a provider that may compete with you is not a luxury risk, it is fatal. ◽️ The 16.4x number is the whole argument in one data point. Chamath ran a code-migration task through 8090's harness. Wrapping Claude was 1.4x cheaper and 1.5x faster than Claude Opus alone. Wrapping the best open-source model was 16.4x cheaper, at about 3x slower. For a background task, three extra hours to cut cost by 16x is not a close call. ◽️ Even at 100x cheaper, enterprises were saying no for the wrong reason. Chamath relayed an ex-Meta PM's point that companies reject open models over China and safety fears, when they could host those same open weights on their own GPUs in US data centers with nothing flowing back. The safety objection, she argued, is backwards: the leak is the data you hand the frontier labs. ◽️ Friedberg says the frontier labs are trying to commoditize their own customers. Anthropic has been signing up life-sciences companies to feed a new life-focused model in exchange for early access, and nearly everyone he has talked to now refuses, recognizing that data they spent billions generating becomes worthless once it is pooled with everyone else's. ◽️ The deployment topology is shifting from big hubs to distributed spokes. Friedberg's map: the old assumption was a few capital-advantaged mega-clusters plus inference clouds. The new one is large hubs, medium hubs (enterprise training clusters), and distributed spokes, including on-prem inference in your own building. Owning your weights is the point. ◽️ Chamath's endgame is running GLM himself. An industry contact told him that with harness post-training and telemetry, an open Chinese model like GLM could get as good as Anthropic's Mythos. His conclusion: take GLM, control it soup-to-nuts on US hardware with only US citizens touching it, and pay a fraction. ◽️ The Apple analogy sharpens why renting intelligence is different from renting distribution. Chamath argued Apple is the only platform that respected developers, deliberately keeping its stock apps basic to protect the ecosystem and collect its 30% tax. There is no 30% tax on open models, and worse, you cannot rent intelligence from the same place that rents it to your competitor without ending up identical to them. ◽️ Nvidia's open model is now good enough to matter. Calacanis claimed you cannot tell Jensen Huang's Nemotron from Claude on 95% of searches, and that Nvidia downplayed the model until now to avoid alarming its top customers. The gloves came off once OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon all signaled their own silicon ambitions. ◽️ Sacks sized the duopoly: roughly $60B and $40B in ARR. Anthropic is around ~$60 billion of ARR, OpenAI at ~$40 billion, and no one else generates meaningful model-layer revenue. Sacks's policy line: the US does not ban monopolies, only anti-competitive tactics, but the government should do nothing to make the duopoly more likely. ◽️ The token deflation call: 90% a year for three years. Calacanis predicted token costs fall 90% annually for three years, putting the price of intelligence near free and making it rational to waste tokens on hardware you already own. Friedberg's version is a 70/20/10 split between big cloud, local, and other clouds. ◽️ A wave of platform lock-in spending is already landing. Calacanis flagged Microsoft standing up a roughly $2.5 billion forward-deployed-engineer effort and Amazon spending about $1 billion on the same, plus OpenAI's version. His read: enterprises will slam the door, because letting a provider's engineers study your business is how it ends up in their model. ◽️ The server-per-employee prediction. Calacanis expects every employee to get $10,000 to $20,000 of local compute, a Mac Studio or a high-RAM Dell, running a personal local model that syncs to a thin laptop. A server per person, so nothing leaks. ◽️ On jobs, the data does not show present-tense loss. Sacks cited a RAMP and Revelio Labs study of over 21,000 US firms: the heaviest AI spenders grew headcount about 10% over two years, and entry-level headcount grew even faster at 12%. Friedberg's harder claim: there is no AI job loss yet, only clunky, gradual value creation, and the media will not reverse its narrative because that destroys its credibility. ◽️ The displacement case is real but forward-dated. The counterpoint on the show was that customer support, entry-level data entry and BPO, and driving are the near-term displacements, with Waymo cited as present-tense evidence: in markets where it hits critical mass, Uber and Lyft stop recruiting drivers. Sacks noted most US entry-level support was already offshored, so the acute risk sits in those countries first. ◽️ The human-premium counternarrative. Friedberg argued that as automation spreads, human interaction gets a premium: the skilled bartender, the real driver, the human-in-the-loop tier. He cited the company (referenced as Klarna) that hyped replacing its whole support team with AI, then reversed a year later on brand grounds. ◽️ The export-control episode needed three conditions, and Sacks says do not over-read it. Commerce lifted controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 after two weeks, with Mythos 5 restored to US customers around June 26 once co-founder Tom Brown replaced Dario as lead negotiator. Sacks's three conditions: Dario boasting for months about a cyber weapon, Amazon reporting failed guardrails in testing, and Dario refusing to roll Fable back. His message to allies: this was a particular set of circumstances rather than the debut of a standing lever. ◽️ The import question nobody answered cleanly. Calacanis pressed on why the US blocks Chinese cars and drones but not Chinese open models like DeepSeek and Kimi. Sacks's answer: a forked open model run on US hardware stops being Chinese, and banning open source would isolate the US and impose a token tax on American enterprises, so let the market decide if American open models win. ◽️ The California fiscal story is a business-climate story. Friedberg walked through the numbers behind Newsom's "balanced" $351B budget: expenses exceed revenue and $20-40B is borrowed to close the gap, the budget grew 65% in six years ($215B to $355B), personal income tax is $142B of ~$211B revenue with the top 1% (150,000 people) paying $70B of it, and the corporate rate of 8.9% sits far above Texas at zero. ◽️ The tax base is leaving, and the state is now taxing everyone else. Friedberg cited 1 to 1.5% of adjusted gross income leaving each year (about 15% over a decade), at least 15 Fortune 500 HQs and ~2,100 firms gone since 2019, and a new 8% software sales tax hitting Word, Gmail, and ChatGPT subscriptions plus a health-insurance tax, on top of a now-permanent 14.4% top bracket. The liabilities behind it run $1.4T in debt, up to $1.5T in unfunded pensions senior to state bonds, and ~$40B/year in out-year deficits. Lastly, the line that framed the whole show: "You can't rent intelligence from the same place that rents it to your competitor." That is the sovereignty thesis in one sentence, and every number in this episode is an argument for it. ____ Follow Fireside Alpha for more summaries on key business and technology conversations.
1:33

The July 4th weekend All-In The All-In Podcast turned into a long argument about who owns the intelligence layer. The besties think enterprises just woke up to a trap they had been walking into, here's how the conversation went (save this): ◽️ The Palantir-Nvidia deal is a bet against the model-layer duopoly. Palantir will use Nvidia's Nemotron open models to build a custom frontier-quality model for US government agencies, and the agencies own the hardware, the data, and the weights. Sacks framed it as structural: an application company and a chip company both want a competitive model layer, so they are natural partners against a two-provider middle. ◽️ Alex Karp's CNBC "crashout" was actually the thesis. Karp argued enterprises have lost trust in the frontier labs and want to own their compute, models, data, and alpha. Sacks translated it as a new definition of enterprise AI safety: safety means the model provider cannot hoover up your proprietary knowledge and turn it into its next product. ◽️ Figma is the cautionary tale that made it real. Anthropic launched Claude Design into Figma's category, its chief product officer sat on Figma's board and resigned only 3 days before launch, and Figma's stock is down about 50% this year while Anthropic's valuation surged. Sacks listed Claude Science, Security, Legal, Financial, and Code as the same move: dominate the model layer, then take the lucrative verticals. ◽️ The playbook has a name, and it is Microsoft and Google. Sacks argued Anthropic is running the operating-system strategy: own the layer everyone builds on, then walk up the stack. His Google receipt is that fewer than half of searches now send you off-site, versus an early Google that prided itself on how fast it kicked you away. ◽️ The BCG number is what raises the stakes. Chamath cited a BCG return-on-capital-employed study: the cost of capital is back to its long-run 8 to 11%, and half of large US companies cannot earn returns above it. If you are already teetering on your cost of capital, handing your alpha to a provider that may compete with you is not a luxury risk, it is fatal. ◽️ The 16.4x number is the whole argument in one data point. Chamath ran a code-migration task through 8090's harness. Wrapping Claude was 1.4x cheaper and 1.5x faster than Claude Opus alone. Wrapping the best open-source model was 16.4x cheaper, at about 3x slower. For a background task, three extra hours to cut cost by 16x is not a close call. ◽️ Even at 100x cheaper, enterprises were saying no for the wrong reason. Chamath relayed an ex-Meta PM's point that companies reject open models over China and safety fears, when they could host those same open weights on their own GPUs in US data centers with nothing flowing back. The safety objection, she argued, is backwards: the leak is the data you hand the frontier labs. ◽️ Friedberg says the frontier labs are trying to commoditize their own customers. Anthropic has been signing up life-sciences companies to feed a new life-focused model in exchange for early access, and nearly everyone he has talked to now refuses, recognizing that data they spent billions generating becomes worthless once it is pooled with everyone else's. ◽️ The deployment topology is shifting from big hubs to distributed spokes. Friedberg's map: the old assumption was a few capital-advantaged mega-clusters plus inference clouds. The new one is large hubs, medium hubs (enterprise training clusters), and distributed spokes, including on-prem inference in your own building. Owning your weights is the point. ◽️ Chamath's endgame is running GLM himself. An industry contact told him that with harness post-training and telemetry, an open Chinese model like GLM could get as good as Anthropic's Mythos. His conclusion: take GLM, control it soup-to-nuts on US hardware with only US citizens touching it, and pay a fraction. ◽️ The Apple analogy sharpens why renting intelligence is different from renting distribution. Chamath argued Apple is the only platform that respected developers, deliberately keeping its stock apps basic to protect the ecosystem and collect its 30% tax. There is no 30% tax on open models, and worse, you cannot rent intelligence from the same place that rents it to your competitor without ending up identical to them. ◽️ Nvidia's open model is now good enough to matter. Calacanis claimed you cannot tell Jensen Huang's Nemotron from Claude on 95% of searches, and that Nvidia downplayed the model until now to avoid alarming its top customers. The gloves came off once OpenAI, Anthropic, and Elon all signaled their own silicon ambitions. ◽️ Sacks sized the duopoly: roughly $60B and $40B in ARR. Anthropic is around ~$60 billion of ARR, OpenAI at ~$40 billion, and no one else generates meaningful model-layer revenue. Sacks's policy line: the US does not ban monopolies, only anti-competitive tactics, but the government should do nothing to make the duopoly more likely. ◽️ The token deflation call: 90% a year for three years. Calacanis predicted token costs fall 90% annually for three years, putting the price of intelligence near free and making it rational to waste tokens on hardware you already own. Friedberg's version is a 70/20/10 split between big cloud, local, and other clouds. ◽️ A wave of platform lock-in spending is already landing. Calacanis flagged Microsoft standing up a roughly $2.5 billion forward-deployed-engineer effort and Amazon spending about $1 billion on the same, plus OpenAI's version. His read: enterprises will slam the door, because letting a provider's engineers study your business is how it ends up in their model. ◽️ The server-per-employee prediction. Calacanis expects every employee to get $10,000 to $20,000 of local compute, a Mac Studio or a high-RAM Dell, running a personal local model that syncs to a thin laptop. A server per person, so nothing leaks. ◽️ On jobs, the data does not show present-tense loss. Sacks cited a RAMP and Revelio Labs study of over 21,000 US firms: the heaviest AI spenders grew headcount about 10% over two years, and entry-level headcount grew even faster at 12%. Friedberg's harder claim: there is no AI job loss yet, only clunky, gradual value creation, and the media will not reverse its narrative because that destroys its credibility. ◽️ The displacement case is real but forward-dated. The counterpoint on the show was that customer support, entry-level data entry and BPO, and driving are the near-term displacements, with Waymo cited as present-tense evidence: in markets where it hits critical mass, Uber and Lyft stop recruiting drivers. Sacks noted most US entry-level support was already offshored, so the acute risk sits in those countries first. ◽️ The human-premium counternarrative. Friedberg argued that as automation spreads, human interaction gets a premium: the skilled bartender, the real driver, the human-in-the-loop tier. He cited the company (referenced as Klarna) that hyped replacing its whole support team with AI, then reversed a year later on brand grounds. ◽️ The export-control episode needed three conditions, and Sacks says do not over-read it. Commerce lifted controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 after two weeks, with Mythos 5 restored to US customers around June 26 once co-founder Tom Brown replaced Dario as lead negotiator. Sacks's three conditions: Dario boasting for months about a cyber weapon, Amazon reporting failed guardrails in testing, and Dario refusing to roll Fable back. His message to allies: this was a particular set of circumstances rather than the debut of a standing lever. ◽️ The import question nobody answered cleanly. Calacanis pressed on why the US blocks Chinese cars and drones but not Chinese open models like DeepSeek and Kimi. Sacks's answer: a forked open model run on US hardware stops being Chinese, and banning open source would isolate the US and impose a token tax on American enterprises, so let the market decide if American open models win. ◽️ The California fiscal story is a business-climate story. Friedberg walked through the numbers behind Newsom's "balanced" $351B budget: expenses exceed revenue and $20-40B is borrowed to close the gap, the budget grew 65% in six years ($215B to $355B), personal income tax is $142B of ~$211B revenue with the top 1% (150,000 people) paying $70B of it, and the corporate rate of 8.9% sits far above Texas at zero. ◽️ The tax base is leaving, and the state is now taxing everyone else. Friedberg cited 1 to 1.5% of adjusted gross income leaving each year (about 15% over a decade), at least 15 Fortune 500 HQs and ~2,100 firms gone since 2019, and a new 8% software sales tax hitting Word, Gmail, and ChatGPT subscriptions plus a health-insurance tax, on top of a now-permanent 14.4% top bracket. The liabilities behind it run $1.4T in debt, up to $1.5T in unfunded pensions senior to state bonds, and ~$40B/year in out-year deficits. Lastly, the line that framed the whole show: "You can't rent intelligence from the same place that rents it to your competitor." That is the sovereignty thesis in one sentence, and every number in this episode is an argument for it. ____ Follow Fireside Alpha for more summaries on key business and technology conversations.

Fireside Alpha

55,816 views • 1 month ago

Carol Vorderman in conversation with James O'Brein over Reform UK's Makerfield by-election candidate Robert Kenyon's insulting remarks JOB, "Carol Vorderman has asked Robert Kenyon, a Reform UK's candidate in the imminent Makerfield by election, for an apology, for posts on a now deleted X account in which he, Well, you'll find out, if you don't know already, she said, I want an apology from Rob Kenyon to me and to all the other people he's abused online." JOB, "I sat down with Carol yesterday afternoon to talk about this and, one or two other things. It occurred to me, just sitting down now, Carol, that this is not something you, you sought because you haven't been in any sense reticent in recent years with your political opinions and even with activism, but you've been dragged into this deeply unpleasant situation entirely innocently." JOB, "So unpleasant, in fact, that I'm not sure I can repeat, I'm not sure I'm comfortable saying in front of you the words that Robert Kenyon chose to endorse and defend on, social media." CV, "Well, I am, because it's important that people know. And this is just one comment. He has made multiple comments which are online abuse about me and lots of other people. So the one specifically about me that he endorsed was I want to smell and lick Carol Vorderman's eight letter word beginning with A." CV, "And reform have said, oh, it's just locker room banter. I don't know why they're using the term locker room, by the way, because I thought we said changing rooms in this country. But that's an entirely different, different, question. But the thing is, James, I'm not upset by it, I am angered by it." CV, "And the reason that I'm angered by it is because every woman listening, any woman who is on social media will have similar said to her, either abusive, all the other things that he said. You know, there was some forum that he was on, rugby, league forum, and they were posting pictures of the girls, the women who play." CV, "And then he was saying, oh, English women, they don't care. All they want to do with their fat bellies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Then there was some, European women. Then he was saying, you know, oh, you wouldn't get me off them with a bazooka." CV, "You know, all this stuff, stuff about abortion. I mean, it's just disgusting stuff. And it's not just one comment, it's a tirade of online abuse. And every woman listening who has had that will know how it makes them feel." CV, "And so I am angry that a political party can take this person on one without obviously vetting him properly. But also that they just defend it and they're fine with that." JOB, "He was not a politician at the time. He was an ordinary man from an ordinary place, said Danny Craig group." CV, "Really? That's what. Yeah, that's what posh boys, who lead the Reform Party think, of ordinary men. Well, ordinary men generally are lovely, you know, they really are." JOB, "We do our best." CV, "Well, you are. And they respect women. All of that is true. But you have this growing minority who are extremely abusive. And I'm 65, James. And so I've been, you know, and women my age, we've been through the hard years." CV, "So in the 70s, you know, I was a bright kid from a comp in North Wales. Free school meals kid. And it took, you know, a lot to get to a Cambridge college because there were only, three girls colleges." CV, "And I think four or five had gone what they called mixed. So these are boys colleges taking on women's colleges. And it was like, why wouldn't you? You know, I was from a boys and girls comp, but we had to go through that." CV, "You had to be the first woman to do this. First woman from a state school. Northwest goes Cambridge first. You know, I was, I think, when I did engineering, There were about 300 students in our year, four or five of them were girls. I worked underground, me and 2,000 men, all this." CV, "So we have done the hard years over decades, all that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. You can't, because you're a girl and you don't have the appendage that's required. You know, all of this nonsense that we had to put up with. So, for me, that this Reform Party is saying on day one, they would repeal the Equality act." CV, "And we all know what that means. So, you know, the protections against harassment of women in the workplace, the, equal pay, maternity leave, maternity pay, all of those. We're going to scrap all those. So it is indicative of the way in which this might go, as we've seen in America." JOB, "I think talking of ordinary men, the person who pushed back against him on social media was. It was a rather better model of masculinity." CV, "Yes, absolutely. So he's the author, Chris Ryan, who is a former SAS hero, a very successful author. Chris is his pen name. And, he absolutely defended me because he is a real man." CV, "He's not a pretend. He's a real guy and a guy who respects women." JOB, "I suppose, in some sense, the writing was on the wall with the leadership of reform who have not responded by the way, to, our, requests a, response to these allegations of misogyny, including the comments directed at you." JOB, "But when James McMurdoch Ended up in Parliament just after the last election, and, it quickly emerged that he'd been jailed for attacking a former girlfriend." CV, "Yes. And here is another example, a very serious example of, to me, reforms, excuses for things. So I think it was a Times newspaper fact he only got in with a majority of 98." CV, "So imagine if this information had been available beforehand about him. So, shortly after he was elected in 2024 as a Reform MP, I think it was a Times newspaper, found that he had been convicted and served time for, assaulting his girlfriend." CV, "He then said in his defense, oh, it was a push. Then the official court documents show that she was on the floor. He was kicking her multiple times while she was on the floor and had to be, dragged away by two security guards." CV, "Very different stories. Richard Tice then defends it, saying, oh, well, he's served his time. That was a long time ago. It doesn't matter. I am sorry. It matters. It matters to women. We know how much harassment online has increased and offline." CV, "So this is a time for all women to stand up and say, enough now, we are not going backwards." JOB, "I suppose one example is. It could be chalked up as accidental or carelessness. But two examples and emerging patterns speak of something altogether more sinister." CV, "Yes, well, Lee Anderson, bless him, when he was a Tory. That was after he was a Labour." JOB, "Yes." CV, "And now he's a Reform." JOB, "Correct. Well, at the time of this conversation, we'll have to check before we play it" CV, "out on the program tomorrow. Yeah, so he was, in the Conservative Party at the time and he was slinging insults to me all the time on Twitter in, the days when we used to be on Twitter. And, you know, obviously now he's reformed, he thinks it's perfectly acceptable." CV, "So there is a pattern there with this party. And, that is my concern that they will, if they get into, and they've stated it out in the open, we will repeal the Equality Act." JOB, "It's surprising to me when people like Danny Kruger talk about ordinary people. An ordinary man for an ordinary man." CV, "When he went to Eton." JOB, "Yeah. And, well, also his mother is on telly as well, so, you know, he or she at, at least will be aware of the misogyny that police. Yeah, yeah. You think that that might have given him a slightly more sensitive insight into what it's like for women like you. And, and you are tough. I mean, I don't mean that in a patronizing way." CV, "I take it as a compliment." JOB, "Good, I'm glad you do because you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. A lot of women, both online and offline, are not, of course, and those are the kind of women that, misogynistic men prey on." CV, "But the thing is, I, I have a tough skin now because of all of the abuse over decades. And it. You know, I can remember when I wore a short skirt to the BAFTAs. I was age 39. Well, it was like I'd killed my grandmother the next day." CV, "It was the quest. Even the BBC made a whole Kilroy show about it. Flew this dress in copy dress from Paris. And, the question was, should a woman age 39 wear a dress above the knee? Jeez, I mean, that's my lifetime. This isn't Victorian days or my mother or post war." CV, "This is me in my lifetime. So, you know, as I go back to the beginning, women my age who love the fact that our daughters or nieces, or grandchildren have, can play football, you know, very happily can be applauded for what they do in sport." CV, "Can be. Oh, another thing that I'll, Kenyon said was that women can't referee, drive, take directions. And he had a go at various female sports presenters on the telly. You know, it's constant, it's consistent." JOB, "So they're not, they're not up to the job. They're only there to tick a box. And then declaring and From a political point of view, this is interesting actually stating I'm sexist. Sorry, but I am." CV, "Yeah." JOB, "And then the defense from reform UK becomes. These comments were made before he entered politics. He's perfectly entitled to his own personal opinions." CV, "That was three weeks ago." JOB, "Yeah, yeah. It's extraordinary that he can state that because Murdoch didn't get dropped by the party for the conviction for battering his ex, he got dropped after it emerged that he'd taken Covid loans out under the COVID support scheme. I think that's still ongoing." JOB, "But to state I am sexist, sorry, but I am in 2024 would have probably been a career ending revelation. Do you think? We're going a bit backwards, But I think we" CV, "have the potential to go backwards and we now, you know, generally you go, life's good. You know, doing this, that and the other. When I began my career as an engineer, funnily enough, not many women then were talking about having a career because not Many women have been to university and all of that." CV, "Now, thankfully, decades later, women are having careers. But also, housing was a lot cheaper then. So now we need to. You need, two incomes to fund a mortgage generally in this country." CV, "So the whole business of, oh, well, we're going to scrap the law that says about equal pay. That's going to affect people directly. And this is what I want people to understand, really. This is. This is not just about a woman getting on a high horse about something." CV, "This is very, very, very. Couldn't be more serious." JOB, "And, yeah, it is, of course, people like Nigel Farage and Sarah Potchin who claim that they're the party dedicated to protecting women and children. I mean, it's beyond irony. It emerged yesterday that one in five of the people arrested over the riots in 2024, which many people feel were fermented by Nigel Farage's social media activ." JOB, "Five of the people arrested over those riots have since been reported to the police for domestic abuse. So to simultaneously encourage and excuse the misogyny that's been directed at you and at other women while claiming. And, of course, to put a violent offender into Parliament and say that that's not an excluding offense while simultaneously claiming that they act for women and children is, It's beyond parody, isn't it?" CV, "And those same people who were arrested, there were almost 900 of them, weren't there? About the riots across the country at the time, 41% had already, been reported to the police for domestic abuse." JOB, "So who are the women and children they're dedicated to protecting?" CV, "Well, quite." JOB, "And who are they protecting them from?" CV, "None." JOB, "It's good to see you. I knew that you would be, perturbed by this, but." CV, "I am." JOB, "But enraged?" CV, "Yes, I am." JOB, "And are you expecting an apology? I know you've demanded." CV, "Well, I can't." JOB, "You did not demand anything." CV, "I can't demand anything. I have asked for an apology. Not for me." JOB, "No." CV, "But for all of us. And for his comments so far. I just think we're on day three. Nothing." JOB, "Not even a whisper nothing or a nothing." CV, "He's still running away. Hiding away from cameras, maybe." JOB, "Don't hold your breath, Carol. Thank you." CV, "Thanks, James." JOB, "Still waiting. I hope she didn't hold her breath. We got a statement from Reform Councillor Kenyon, made these comments before entering politics. We are confident that he is an excellent candidate who will be a superb local MP for Makerfield. And a full list of all the candidates running there can be found at lbc co uk"
14:08

Carol Vorderman in conversation with James O'Brein over Reform UK's Makerfield by-election candidate Robert Kenyon's insulting remarks JOB, "Carol Vorderman has asked Robert Kenyon, a Reform UK's candidate in the imminent Makerfield by election, for an apology, for posts on a now deleted X account in which he, Well, you'll find out, if you don't know already, she said, I want an apology from Rob Kenyon to me and to all the other people he's abused online." JOB, "I sat down with Carol yesterday afternoon to talk about this and, one or two other things. It occurred to me, just sitting down now, Carol, that this is not something you, you sought because you haven't been in any sense reticent in recent years with your political opinions and even with activism, but you've been dragged into this deeply unpleasant situation entirely innocently." JOB, "So unpleasant, in fact, that I'm not sure I can repeat, I'm not sure I'm comfortable saying in front of you the words that Robert Kenyon chose to endorse and defend on, social media." CV, "Well, I am, because it's important that people know. And this is just one comment. He has made multiple comments which are online abuse about me and lots of other people. So the one specifically about me that he endorsed was I want to smell and lick Carol Vorderman's eight letter word beginning with A." CV, "And reform have said, oh, it's just locker room banter. I don't know why they're using the term locker room, by the way, because I thought we said changing rooms in this country. But that's an entirely different, different, question. But the thing is, James, I'm not upset by it, I am angered by it." CV, "And the reason that I'm angered by it is because every woman listening, any woman who is on social media will have similar said to her, either abusive, all the other things that he said. You know, there was some forum that he was on, rugby, league forum, and they were posting pictures of the girls, the women who play." CV, "And then he was saying, oh, English women, they don't care. All they want to do with their fat bellies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Then there was some, European women. Then he was saying, you know, oh, you wouldn't get me off them with a bazooka." CV, "You know, all this stuff, stuff about abortion. I mean, it's just disgusting stuff. And it's not just one comment, it's a tirade of online abuse. And every woman listening who has had that will know how it makes them feel." CV, "And so I am angry that a political party can take this person on one without obviously vetting him properly. But also that they just defend it and they're fine with that." JOB, "He was not a politician at the time. He was an ordinary man from an ordinary place, said Danny Craig group." CV, "Really? That's what. Yeah, that's what posh boys, who lead the Reform Party think, of ordinary men. Well, ordinary men generally are lovely, you know, they really are." JOB, "We do our best." CV, "Well, you are. And they respect women. All of that is true. But you have this growing minority who are extremely abusive. And I'm 65, James. And so I've been, you know, and women my age, we've been through the hard years." CV, "So in the 70s, you know, I was a bright kid from a comp in North Wales. Free school meals kid. And it took, you know, a lot to get to a Cambridge college because there were only, three girls colleges." CV, "And I think four or five had gone what they called mixed. So these are boys colleges taking on women's colleges. And it was like, why wouldn't you? You know, I was from a boys and girls comp, but we had to go through that." CV, "You had to be the first woman to do this. First woman from a state school. Northwest goes Cambridge first. You know, I was, I think, when I did engineering, There were about 300 students in our year, four or five of them were girls. I worked underground, me and 2,000 men, all this." CV, "So we have done the hard years over decades, all that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. You can't, because you're a girl and you don't have the appendage that's required. You know, all of this nonsense that we had to put up with. So, for me, that this Reform Party is saying on day one, they would repeal the Equality act." CV, "And we all know what that means. So, you know, the protections against harassment of women in the workplace, the, equal pay, maternity leave, maternity pay, all of those. We're going to scrap all those. So it is indicative of the way in which this might go, as we've seen in America." JOB, "I think talking of ordinary men, the person who pushed back against him on social media was. It was a rather better model of masculinity." CV, "Yes, absolutely. So he's the author, Chris Ryan, who is a former SAS hero, a very successful author. Chris is his pen name. And, he absolutely defended me because he is a real man." CV, "He's not a pretend. He's a real guy and a guy who respects women." JOB, "I suppose, in some sense, the writing was on the wall with the leadership of reform who have not responded by the way, to, our, requests a, response to these allegations of misogyny, including the comments directed at you." JOB, "But when James McMurdoch Ended up in Parliament just after the last election, and, it quickly emerged that he'd been jailed for attacking a former girlfriend." CV, "Yes. And here is another example, a very serious example of, to me, reforms, excuses for things. So I think it was a Times newspaper fact he only got in with a majority of 98." CV, "So imagine if this information had been available beforehand about him. So, shortly after he was elected in 2024 as a Reform MP, I think it was a Times newspaper, found that he had been convicted and served time for, assaulting his girlfriend." CV, "He then said in his defense, oh, it was a push. Then the official court documents show that she was on the floor. He was kicking her multiple times while she was on the floor and had to be, dragged away by two security guards." CV, "Very different stories. Richard Tice then defends it, saying, oh, well, he's served his time. That was a long time ago. It doesn't matter. I am sorry. It matters. It matters to women. We know how much harassment online has increased and offline." CV, "So this is a time for all women to stand up and say, enough now, we are not going backwards." JOB, "I suppose one example is. It could be chalked up as accidental or carelessness. But two examples and emerging patterns speak of something altogether more sinister." CV, "Yes, well, Lee Anderson, bless him, when he was a Tory. That was after he was a Labour." JOB, "Yes." CV, "And now he's a Reform." JOB, "Correct. Well, at the time of this conversation, we'll have to check before we play it" CV, "out on the program tomorrow. Yeah, so he was, in the Conservative Party at the time and he was slinging insults to me all the time on Twitter in, the days when we used to be on Twitter. And, you know, obviously now he's reformed, he thinks it's perfectly acceptable." CV, "So there is a pattern there with this party. And, that is my concern that they will, if they get into, and they've stated it out in the open, we will repeal the Equality Act." JOB, "It's surprising to me when people like Danny Kruger talk about ordinary people. An ordinary man for an ordinary man." CV, "When he went to Eton." JOB, "Yeah. And, well, also his mother is on telly as well, so, you know, he or she at, at least will be aware of the misogyny that police. Yeah, yeah. You think that that might have given him a slightly more sensitive insight into what it's like for women like you. And, and you are tough. I mean, I don't mean that in a patronizing way." CV, "I take it as a compliment." JOB, "Good, I'm glad you do because you are perfectly capable of looking after yourself. A lot of women, both online and offline, are not, of course, and those are the kind of women that, misogynistic men prey on." CV, "But the thing is, I, I have a tough skin now because of all of the abuse over decades. And it. You know, I can remember when I wore a short skirt to the BAFTAs. I was age 39. Well, it was like I'd killed my grandmother the next day." CV, "It was the quest. Even the BBC made a whole Kilroy show about it. Flew this dress in copy dress from Paris. And, the question was, should a woman age 39 wear a dress above the knee? Jeez, I mean, that's my lifetime. This isn't Victorian days or my mother or post war." CV, "This is me in my lifetime. So, you know, as I go back to the beginning, women my age who love the fact that our daughters or nieces, or grandchildren have, can play football, you know, very happily can be applauded for what they do in sport." CV, "Can be. Oh, another thing that I'll, Kenyon said was that women can't referee, drive, take directions. And he had a go at various female sports presenters on the telly. You know, it's constant, it's consistent." JOB, "So they're not, they're not up to the job. They're only there to tick a box. And then declaring and From a political point of view, this is interesting actually stating I'm sexist. Sorry, but I am." CV, "Yeah." JOB, "And then the defense from reform UK becomes. These comments were made before he entered politics. He's perfectly entitled to his own personal opinions." CV, "That was three weeks ago." JOB, "Yeah, yeah. It's extraordinary that he can state that because Murdoch didn't get dropped by the party for the conviction for battering his ex, he got dropped after it emerged that he'd taken Covid loans out under the COVID support scheme. I think that's still ongoing." JOB, "But to state I am sexist, sorry, but I am in 2024 would have probably been a career ending revelation. Do you think? We're going a bit backwards, But I think we" CV, "have the potential to go backwards and we now, you know, generally you go, life's good. You know, doing this, that and the other. When I began my career as an engineer, funnily enough, not many women then were talking about having a career because not Many women have been to university and all of that." CV, "Now, thankfully, decades later, women are having careers. But also, housing was a lot cheaper then. So now we need to. You need, two incomes to fund a mortgage generally in this country." CV, "So the whole business of, oh, well, we're going to scrap the law that says about equal pay. That's going to affect people directly. And this is what I want people to understand, really. This is. This is not just about a woman getting on a high horse about something." CV, "This is very, very, very. Couldn't be more serious." JOB, "And, yeah, it is, of course, people like Nigel Farage and Sarah Potchin who claim that they're the party dedicated to protecting women and children. I mean, it's beyond irony. It emerged yesterday that one in five of the people arrested over the riots in 2024, which many people feel were fermented by Nigel Farage's social media activ." JOB, "Five of the people arrested over those riots have since been reported to the police for domestic abuse. So to simultaneously encourage and excuse the misogyny that's been directed at you and at other women while claiming. And, of course, to put a violent offender into Parliament and say that that's not an excluding offense while simultaneously claiming that they act for women and children is, It's beyond parody, isn't it?" CV, "And those same people who were arrested, there were almost 900 of them, weren't there? About the riots across the country at the time, 41% had already, been reported to the police for domestic abuse." JOB, "So who are the women and children they're dedicated to protecting?" CV, "Well, quite." JOB, "And who are they protecting them from?" CV, "None." JOB, "It's good to see you. I knew that you would be, perturbed by this, but." CV, "I am." JOB, "But enraged?" CV, "Yes, I am." JOB, "And are you expecting an apology? I know you've demanded." CV, "Well, I can't." JOB, "You did not demand anything." CV, "I can't demand anything. I have asked for an apology. Not for me." JOB, "No." CV, "But for all of us. And for his comments so far. I just think we're on day three. Nothing." JOB, "Not even a whisper nothing or a nothing." CV, "He's still running away. Hiding away from cameras, maybe." JOB, "Don't hold your breath, Carol. Thank you." CV, "Thanks, James." JOB, "Still waiting. I hope she didn't hold her breath. We got a statement from Reform Councillor Kenyon, made these comments before entering politics. We are confident that he is an excellent candidate who will be a superb local MP for Makerfield. And a full list of all the candidates running there can be found at lbc co uk"

Farrukh

24,754 views • 3 months ago

Charlie Munger spent 50 years studying why intelligent people make catastrophically stupid decisions. It is the most useful thing I have ever watched: 1. Incentives are more powerful than anyone thinks. Munger says he has been in the top 5% of his age cohort his entire life in understanding the power of incentives and he has still underestimated it every single year. Federal Express could not get their night shift to work efficiently until someone realized they were paying by the hour. They switched to paying by the shift. The problem disappeared immediately. 2. People rationalise terrible behavior when their incentives point that way, and they do not even know they are doing it. A doctor in Nebraska was removing perfectly healthy gallbladders for years. When Munger asked an old colleague whether the doctor knew he was harming patients, the answer was no. he genuinely believed the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil and that removing it was an act of love. That is incentive-caused bias at its most extreme. 3. Psychological denial is real, and it is not just for weak people. A family friend's son flew off a carrier in the North Atlantic and never came back. His mother, a completely sane woman, simply never believed he was dead. Reality was too painful, so she distorted it until it was bearable. Munger says we all do this to some extent, and it causes terrible problems. 4. Consistency and commitment tendency are one of the most powerful forces in the human mind. Once you have stated a position publicly, you are psychologically locked into it. Max Planck said the really important new physics was never accepted by the old guard. A new guard came along that was less brain blocked by its previous conclusions. If this happened to the deans of physics, Munger says, imagine what it does to ordinary people. 5. The Chinese brainwashing system used on prisoners of war worked better than torture. They did not start with big demands. They maneuvered people into making tiny little commitments and declarations and slowly built from there. The same mechanism operates in every cult, every sales system, and every ideology that gets deeply embedded in people's heads. 6. Pavlovian association shapes buying behavior at a level most people never consciously process. Munger estimates three quarters of all advertising works on pure Pavlov. Coca-Cola does not want to be associated with funerals. They want to be associated with the Olympics, wonderful music, heroics. The association itself changes how people feel about the product at a subconscious level. Raising the price of a product can actually increase its market share because price and quality are associated in the human mind, and people use price as a signal of value. 7. Persian messenger syndrome is alive and running every major organization. The Persians killed the messenger who brought bad news. Bill Paley in his last 20 years, did not hear one thing he did not want to hear. everyone around him knew bringing bad news was dangerous. The result was that one of the most powerful men in media made terrible decisions for two decades because reality never reached him. 8. Social proof causes otherwise intelligent people to follow each other off cliffs. When one oil company bought a fertilizer company in the 1970s, practically every other major oil company rushed out and did the same. There was no rational reason for oil companies to own fertilizer companies. But if Exxon was doing it, it was good enough for Mobil. Every single acquisition was a disaster. 9. The efficient market theory persisted in academia for decades despite Berkshire Hathaway existing as a living contradiction. One economist kept adding sigmas to explain away the anomaly. two sigma, then three, then four, eventually six sigma. Munger's observation: It is better to add a sigma than change a theory just because the evidence comes in differently. That economist later went into money management himself and sank like a stone. 10. Contrast bias warps perception constantly and invisibly. Put your hand in hot water, then room temperature water. It feels cold. Put your hand in cold water, then room temperature water. It feels hot. same bucket. The human sensory apparatus has no absolute scale, only a contrast scale. Real estate agents exploit this deliberately. They show you two overpriced, awful houses first, then take you to a merely overpriced house, and it feels like a bargain. 11. The frog in slowly heating water is the business version of contrast bias. If something bad comes to you in small pieces, you are likely to miss it entirely. Munger says he has known many high-powered brilliant businessmen who were destroyed this way. not because they were stupid but because each incremental change was too small to trigger alarm. The contrast was never large enough to notice. 12. Authority bias is so powerful it can make trained professionals watch a plane crash. In flight simulator experiments, when the pilot, the authority figure, does something that any trained co-pilot knows will crash the plane, 25% of the time, the co-pilot sits there and lets it crash anyway. They have been trained to know better. The authority relationship overrides the training. 13. Deprivation super reaction syndrome explains why people go insane over small losses. Munger's neighbor had a 180 degree view of the harbor. the neighbor put in a pine tree about 3 feet high that turned it into a 179 and three-quarter degree view. They had a blood feud that went on for years. The New Coke disaster is the corporate version. Coca-Cola told customers they were changing a flavor and triggered a deprival super reaction so powerful that Pepsi was weeks away from releasing old Coke in a Pepsi bottle. smart engineers. brilliant lawyers. armies of psychologists. All missed it. 14. Envy and jealousy are far more powerful than greed and almost entirely absent from psychology textbooks. Munger says Warren Buffett has said half a dozen times that it is not greed that drives the world but envy. In a thousand-page psychology textbook, the index entry for envy and jealousy is blank. One of the most powerful forces in human behavior and academia essentially ignores it. 15. Gambling addiction is not explained by variable reinforcement alone. Skinner thought he had fully explained gambling by showing that variable reward schedules pound in behavior more powerfully than fixed ones. But the people who design modern slot machines know things Skinner did not. Lotteries where you pick your own number get far more play than lotteries where the number is assigned to you. People who commit to a number believe it has more validity because they chose it. Near misses on slot machines trigger deprival super reaction syndrome. It is four or five psychological tendencies working together, not one. 16. The most dangerous situations are when multiple psychological tendencies combine toward the same end at once. Munger calls this the lollapalooza effect. Tupperware parties use four or five tendencies simultaneously. Moonie conversion methods combine multiple tendencies and work extraordinarily well. alcoholics anonymous achieves a 50% no drinking rate when everything else fails because it also combines multiple tendencies toward a constructive end. The Milgram experiment is not just about obedience. it involves authority bias, consistency and commitment tendency, and contrast effects all working together. That combination turns human brains into mush. 17. Boards of directors are structurally designed to fail as corrective mechanisms. The top executive is the authority figure. He is doing something questionable. You look around, and nobody else is objecting, which is social proof that it is fine. He flies you around in the corporate jet and raises your director fees every year, which triggers reciprocation tendency. Munger's rule: boards only act when the behavior gets so bad it starts making them look foolish or threatens legal liability. That is the only forcing function that reliably works. 18. John Goodfriend of Salomon Brothers destroyed his career and reputation because he did not fire a trusted employee who had lied to the government. Every psychological tendency pointed toward keeping the man. He was a close colleague. His wife was known. He was part of a group that had made over a billion dollars for the firm. He said he had never done it before and would never do it again. Goodfriend looked into his eyes and believed him. The man did it again. The lesson: everyone who gets caught embezzling says they have never done it before and will never do it again. That is what they all say. 19. Darwin avoided confirmation bias by deliberately seeking out disconfirming evidence. Munger says Darwin was not especially smart by ordinary standards of human acuity. Yet he is buried in Westminster Abbey. Munger studied how Darwin worked and realized he had psychological tricks worth learning. Darwin always paid extra attention to evidence that contradicted his theories. Munger started doing the same and credits it as one of the most important intellectual habits of his life. 20. Why is the most important word in communication? Carl Braun designed oil refineries with spectacular skill, and you got fired in his company if you wrote a communication without explaining why. not just who, what, where, and when, but why. Braun knew that in a complex system where things can blow up, a communication system that always explains the reason behind an instruction works dramatically better than one that does not. Forstein, the general counsel of Salomon, told Goodfriend on multiple occasions that he had to report the employee's misconduct. He explained it was the right thing to do. He never explained what would happen to Goodfriend personally if he did not. he failed to use the most powerful tool of persuasion. Goodfriend ignored him. When Goodfriend went down, Forstein went with him.
1:15:23

Charlie Munger spent 50 years studying why intelligent people make catastrophically stupid decisions. It is the most useful thing I have ever watched: 1. Incentives are more powerful than anyone thinks. Munger says he has been in the top 5% of his age cohort his entire life in understanding the power of incentives and he has still underestimated it every single year. Federal Express could not get their night shift to work efficiently until someone realized they were paying by the hour. They switched to paying by the shift. The problem disappeared immediately. 2. People rationalise terrible behavior when their incentives point that way, and they do not even know they are doing it. A doctor in Nebraska was removing perfectly healthy gallbladders for years. When Munger asked an old colleague whether the doctor knew he was harming patients, the answer was no. he genuinely believed the gallbladder was the source of all medical evil and that removing it was an act of love. That is incentive-caused bias at its most extreme. 3. Psychological denial is real, and it is not just for weak people. A family friend's son flew off a carrier in the North Atlantic and never came back. His mother, a completely sane woman, simply never believed he was dead. Reality was too painful, so she distorted it until it was bearable. Munger says we all do this to some extent, and it causes terrible problems. 4. Consistency and commitment tendency are one of the most powerful forces in the human mind. Once you have stated a position publicly, you are psychologically locked into it. Max Planck said the really important new physics was never accepted by the old guard. A new guard came along that was less brain blocked by its previous conclusions. If this happened to the deans of physics, Munger says, imagine what it does to ordinary people. 5. The Chinese brainwashing system used on prisoners of war worked better than torture. They did not start with big demands. They maneuvered people into making tiny little commitments and declarations and slowly built from there. The same mechanism operates in every cult, every sales system, and every ideology that gets deeply embedded in people's heads. 6. Pavlovian association shapes buying behavior at a level most people never consciously process. Munger estimates three quarters of all advertising works on pure Pavlov. Coca-Cola does not want to be associated with funerals. They want to be associated with the Olympics, wonderful music, heroics. The association itself changes how people feel about the product at a subconscious level. Raising the price of a product can actually increase its market share because price and quality are associated in the human mind, and people use price as a signal of value. 7. Persian messenger syndrome is alive and running every major organization. The Persians killed the messenger who brought bad news. Bill Paley in his last 20 years, did not hear one thing he did not want to hear. everyone around him knew bringing bad news was dangerous. The result was that one of the most powerful men in media made terrible decisions for two decades because reality never reached him. 8. Social proof causes otherwise intelligent people to follow each other off cliffs. When one oil company bought a fertilizer company in the 1970s, practically every other major oil company rushed out and did the same. There was no rational reason for oil companies to own fertilizer companies. But if Exxon was doing it, it was good enough for Mobil. Every single acquisition was a disaster. 9. The efficient market theory persisted in academia for decades despite Berkshire Hathaway existing as a living contradiction. One economist kept adding sigmas to explain away the anomaly. two sigma, then three, then four, eventually six sigma. Munger's observation: It is better to add a sigma than change a theory just because the evidence comes in differently. That economist later went into money management himself and sank like a stone. 10. Contrast bias warps perception constantly and invisibly. Put your hand in hot water, then room temperature water. It feels cold. Put your hand in cold water, then room temperature water. It feels hot. same bucket. The human sensory apparatus has no absolute scale, only a contrast scale. Real estate agents exploit this deliberately. They show you two overpriced, awful houses first, then take you to a merely overpriced house, and it feels like a bargain. 11. The frog in slowly heating water is the business version of contrast bias. If something bad comes to you in small pieces, you are likely to miss it entirely. Munger says he has known many high-powered brilliant businessmen who were destroyed this way. not because they were stupid but because each incremental change was too small to trigger alarm. The contrast was never large enough to notice. 12. Authority bias is so powerful it can make trained professionals watch a plane crash. In flight simulator experiments, when the pilot, the authority figure, does something that any trained co-pilot knows will crash the plane, 25% of the time, the co-pilot sits there and lets it crash anyway. They have been trained to know better. The authority relationship overrides the training. 13. Deprivation super reaction syndrome explains why people go insane over small losses. Munger's neighbor had a 180 degree view of the harbor. the neighbor put in a pine tree about 3 feet high that turned it into a 179 and three-quarter degree view. They had a blood feud that went on for years. The New Coke disaster is the corporate version. Coca-Cola told customers they were changing a flavor and triggered a deprival super reaction so powerful that Pepsi was weeks away from releasing old Coke in a Pepsi bottle. smart engineers. brilliant lawyers. armies of psychologists. All missed it. 14. Envy and jealousy are far more powerful than greed and almost entirely absent from psychology textbooks. Munger says Warren Buffett has said half a dozen times that it is not greed that drives the world but envy. In a thousand-page psychology textbook, the index entry for envy and jealousy is blank. One of the most powerful forces in human behavior and academia essentially ignores it. 15. Gambling addiction is not explained by variable reinforcement alone. Skinner thought he had fully explained gambling by showing that variable reward schedules pound in behavior more powerfully than fixed ones. But the people who design modern slot machines know things Skinner did not. Lotteries where you pick your own number get far more play than lotteries where the number is assigned to you. People who commit to a number believe it has more validity because they chose it. Near misses on slot machines trigger deprival super reaction syndrome. It is four or five psychological tendencies working together, not one. 16. The most dangerous situations are when multiple psychological tendencies combine toward the same end at once. Munger calls this the lollapalooza effect. Tupperware parties use four or five tendencies simultaneously. Moonie conversion methods combine multiple tendencies and work extraordinarily well. alcoholics anonymous achieves a 50% no drinking rate when everything else fails because it also combines multiple tendencies toward a constructive end. The Milgram experiment is not just about obedience. it involves authority bias, consistency and commitment tendency, and contrast effects all working together. That combination turns human brains into mush. 17. Boards of directors are structurally designed to fail as corrective mechanisms. The top executive is the authority figure. He is doing something questionable. You look around, and nobody else is objecting, which is social proof that it is fine. He flies you around in the corporate jet and raises your director fees every year, which triggers reciprocation tendency. Munger's rule: boards only act when the behavior gets so bad it starts making them look foolish or threatens legal liability. That is the only forcing function that reliably works. 18. John Goodfriend of Salomon Brothers destroyed his career and reputation because he did not fire a trusted employee who had lied to the government. Every psychological tendency pointed toward keeping the man. He was a close colleague. His wife was known. He was part of a group that had made over a billion dollars for the firm. He said he had never done it before and would never do it again. Goodfriend looked into his eyes and believed him. The man did it again. The lesson: everyone who gets caught embezzling says they have never done it before and will never do it again. That is what they all say. 19. Darwin avoided confirmation bias by deliberately seeking out disconfirming evidence. Munger says Darwin was not especially smart by ordinary standards of human acuity. Yet he is buried in Westminster Abbey. Munger studied how Darwin worked and realized he had psychological tricks worth learning. Darwin always paid extra attention to evidence that contradicted his theories. Munger started doing the same and credits it as one of the most important intellectual habits of his life. 20. Why is the most important word in communication? Carl Braun designed oil refineries with spectacular skill, and you got fired in his company if you wrote a communication without explaining why. not just who, what, where, and when, but why. Braun knew that in a complex system where things can blow up, a communication system that always explains the reason behind an instruction works dramatically better than one that does not. Forstein, the general counsel of Salomon, told Goodfriend on multiple occasions that he had to report the employee's misconduct. He explained it was the right thing to do. He never explained what would happen to Goodfriend personally if he did not. he failed to use the most powerful tool of persuasion. Goodfriend ignored him. When Goodfriend went down, Forstein went with him.

Jaynit

777,169 views • 2 months ago

Analyzing Episode 58. Season 2 aka Balancing the Scales This episode was some of Sinem and Ozan's best work. Their expressions landed every single time, and, frankly, short of screaming what the story is trying to say, they did everything they could to convince the audience that CihAl was, is, and will remain the endgame. With that out of the way, let's begin. We start the episode with Cihan shitting literal bricks as he sees Alya is already at the konak with Sadakat and Meryem arriving, right behind him. The reason is clear - he's caught in a difficult situation yet again. He doesn't want things to look like he's overriding Alya's existence in his life as its core, but circumstances keep making it so that he's put in awkward situations, which only compound his fear of pushing Alya past the point of no return. Meryem is all smiles and teeth at seeing the konak, but the minute her eyes land on Alya, her smile and her eyes drop to the floor. Almost like she was expecting something else entirely, but reality has shamed her. Her eyes remain downcast throughout the entire time she's walking towards Alya, as if Alya's the truth she can't cross eyes with. Alya, on the other hand, remains standing tall. She doesn't flinch, doesn't express any outward anger, but you can see the storm raging in her eyes. When Cihan tells her Meryem will have to stay at the konak, she merely looks at him and nods. And you can see terror mixed with shame (I think) on Cihan's face, but hers remains clear of emotion. And then she walks away, saying she needs to collect Deniz because she's tired. Now that's an exit. Poised, calm, and leaving behind an absolute massacre in the onlookers. The scene where Deniz meets Meryem is another masterpiece because it's very subtle in the message it delivers. Which is - human relations go beyond blood, beyond memory, beyond societal impediments, if the love on both sides is strong enough. When Deniz says he's named after his father, the little boy is telling the truth. Cihan may not be his father in blood, but he's the father Deniz loves, the father he chose for himself. Then the same message is repeated through Deniz about CihAl when Sadakat tries to create trouble by saying Alya and Cihan are divorced. To which Deniz innocently replies, they may be divorced now, but they can get married again. Again, highlighting the importance of human connection. CihAl keep choosing each other through whatever challenge life throws at them, because they love each other equally. Yes, marriages and divorce can be forced, but it's the presence or absence of love that determines the final outcome. Case in point, Alya's marriage to Boran, Cihan's marriage to Seyda, Nare with Ozkan, Zerrin and Demir, etc., etc. That's what anyone opposing CihAl doesn't understand. Love finds a way. Always. That's what the story has been about since the beginning - that love will stand strong in front of all, as long as what you feel is truly love, and not some imitation of it. Also, *hint* *hint* that's the second time someone has mentioned CihAl getting married again, so it's definitely coming. Now for the scene where Cihan and Alya talk in their room. Cihan is right to be afraid of Alya here because he's a first-hand witness to how Alya reacts when she's been betrayed. He's seen how she took off Boran's ring and buried it with him after she found out about the will. An extreme situation compared to this one, absolutely. But fears don't use logic. Cihan knows Alya is strong enough to move on, to rise from the ashes - her strength is what he loves and fears at the same time. So, when he says 'Think of the Cihan in Alya's eyes, I don't want to be that Cihan' he's saying I know it looks like I disregarded you and broke your trust again, but that's not how things were. He needs her to show emotions, not because it'll pander to his ego, but because that's a sign she's still involved. That she's not near the point where she says 'enough is enough.' Alya, on the flip side, can't show her emotions. Because, unlike what Cihan fears, it's because she's so in love with him, so involved, that she's afraid to even ask what Cihan feels. Because if she learns Cihan's past isn't just the past, that he still loves Meryem, it'll shatter her unlike anything else. Despite it all, Cihan manages to reach Alya somehow when he pleads, 'I need you to communicate with me.' It's like his fears break past her barriers and, in turn, allow her to open up a little to him because she admits she doesn't know what to do, and then out comes the real question, 'Don't you feel anything?' Kudos to Cihan for not dodging the question and saying whatever he feels for her is just memory and gratitude. Salak. And I say salak with all my love, because he still misses the elephant in the room. The point is the imbalance. When we tell someone they're the only love of our life, we want an equal declaration in return. If not, the loop remains incomplete - with one side a little more invested than the other. And, CihAl's story thus far has been the opposite of imbalance. Their story is about symmetry; they reflect each other in love, in wounds, in loss. Basically everything. So, how is it that Alya's only love is Cihan, while his isn't? It's not. And that's where that necklace reveal becomes important, but we'll get to that later. For now, let's talk about that little talk in the car. The story itself is giving us hints that this imbalance won't last long, because the minute Alya talks about her first brush with romance is the moment jealous Cihan makes a return. He gets jealous of a nameless, formless, 16-year-old boy who once had the audacity to date his wife. That is, he can't tolerate a contender for Alya's affections even in memory. Cihan is extremely possessive about Alya, which is why he doesn't waste a moment to remind her she told him he's her only love. And Alya, being Alya, doesn't waste a moment in reminding him that he didn't. And then she turns the screw a little by telling Cihan not to burn his heart over her teenage crush because she never planned to marry her crush, nor is she conveniently living under the same roof with him. Mic drop. Cihan's face at that moment is a study in being hoist by one's own petard. Because he's expecting Alya to be okay with something he can't even stand the idea of. He's jealous as hell, but he can't do anything about it. But why is all this happening? Because one of Cihan's biggest truths is - he loved Meryem and lost her. In truth, he didn't love her, which is why he didn't fight hard enough, which is why he lost her. If Cihan had truly loved Meryem the way he loves Alya, he would have fought until the bitter end. Like he's doing for Alya. That's the truth. In Uzak, true love isn't passive - it demands to be seen, to be felt, it doesn't sit back quietly and accept defeat. In this story, love demands to be chosen. And Cihan didn't choose Meryem, not in the way it matters. So, why can't Cihan just accept the truth already? Fear and guilt, I think. Fear of the magnitude of what he feels for Alya, and what losing her would do to him. And guilt because some part of him knows he didn't do for Meryem what he's doing for Alya. And of course, now there's the burden of her shitty ex, too. Nonetheless, fate keeps pushing Cihan to realize the truth, over and over again in this episode. Another glimpse of how passive Cihan may have been in his relationship with Meryem is the dinner scene. Sadakat points out how much Meryem loved stuffed kebabs, and Cihan is barely listening. This is the same man who knows what Alya likes to eat when she's on break during duty. When Meryem points out Cihan's allergy, he says it was something he had in the past, but no longer. Almost like he's comparing the feelings he once had for her to an allergy. What an allegory. See? The signs are all there, but Cihan isn't picking up on them completely. Then fate ups the ante with the arrival of Chef Engin. The first thing Cihan asks Alya when Engin is gone is - Is that him? As in, is that the boy you said loved you? The man goes off the rails in 0 to 60 seconds, and keeps coming up with excuses like he may have changed his name or appearance. The idea of not being the only man in Alya's life makes him lose his cool while Alya rightly points out that she's not the one living with her 'first love' currently. Which then leads to Cihan spending the night at the office. So, fate manages to teach him one lesson here. Which is - ask only for that which you're ready to give. Cihan needs emotional exclusivity from Alya, but hasn't given her the same yet. He's not built to share Alya, not with the past, not with a memory, not with anything. But the second he feels even a fraction of what Alya's been going through, he unravels marvelously. And that's the entire point of that sequence. It's not just jealous drama, it's exposure. Cihan is slowly being led towards the one truth staring him in the face. That's where the necklace comes in. Thus far, Ciho seems to be operating under the misconception that Meryem has moved on, like him. But that necklace (and the video) prove otherwise. Meryem's current attachment to him throws neutrality out the window. Because Cihan will now have to set absolute boundaries, and in doing so, understand why he's setting them. Why what he feels for Alya leaves no room for anyone else because he can't stand the idea of something similar in Alya's past, present, or future. Because they are each other's exception, and everyone else was the rule. And that's it from me for now. Till later. Happy reading, y'all. #CihAl #UzakŞehir
2:09

Analyzing Episode 58. Season 2 aka Balancing the Scales This episode was some of Sinem and Ozan's best work. Their expressions landed every single time, and, frankly, short of screaming what the story is trying to say, they did everything they could to convince the audience that CihAl was, is, and will remain the endgame. With that out of the way, let's begin. We start the episode with Cihan shitting literal bricks as he sees Alya is already at the konak with Sadakat and Meryem arriving, right behind him. The reason is clear - he's caught in a difficult situation yet again. He doesn't want things to look like he's overriding Alya's existence in his life as its core, but circumstances keep making it so that he's put in awkward situations, which only compound his fear of pushing Alya past the point of no return. Meryem is all smiles and teeth at seeing the konak, but the minute her eyes land on Alya, her smile and her eyes drop to the floor. Almost like she was expecting something else entirely, but reality has shamed her. Her eyes remain downcast throughout the entire time she's walking towards Alya, as if Alya's the truth she can't cross eyes with. Alya, on the other hand, remains standing tall. She doesn't flinch, doesn't express any outward anger, but you can see the storm raging in her eyes. When Cihan tells her Meryem will have to stay at the konak, she merely looks at him and nods. And you can see terror mixed with shame (I think) on Cihan's face, but hers remains clear of emotion. And then she walks away, saying she needs to collect Deniz because she's tired. Now that's an exit. Poised, calm, and leaving behind an absolute massacre in the onlookers. The scene where Deniz meets Meryem is another masterpiece because it's very subtle in the message it delivers. Which is - human relations go beyond blood, beyond memory, beyond societal impediments, if the love on both sides is strong enough. When Deniz says he's named after his father, the little boy is telling the truth. Cihan may not be his father in blood, but he's the father Deniz loves, the father he chose for himself. Then the same message is repeated through Deniz about CihAl when Sadakat tries to create trouble by saying Alya and Cihan are divorced. To which Deniz innocently replies, they may be divorced now, but they can get married again. Again, highlighting the importance of human connection. CihAl keep choosing each other through whatever challenge life throws at them, because they love each other equally. Yes, marriages and divorce can be forced, but it's the presence or absence of love that determines the final outcome. Case in point, Alya's marriage to Boran, Cihan's marriage to Seyda, Nare with Ozkan, Zerrin and Demir, etc., etc. That's what anyone opposing CihAl doesn't understand. Love finds a way. Always. That's what the story has been about since the beginning - that love will stand strong in front of all, as long as what you feel is truly love, and not some imitation of it. Also, *hint* *hint* that's the second time someone has mentioned CihAl getting married again, so it's definitely coming. Now for the scene where Cihan and Alya talk in their room. Cihan is right to be afraid of Alya here because he's a first-hand witness to how Alya reacts when she's been betrayed. He's seen how she took off Boran's ring and buried it with him after she found out about the will. An extreme situation compared to this one, absolutely. But fears don't use logic. Cihan knows Alya is strong enough to move on, to rise from the ashes - her strength is what he loves and fears at the same time. So, when he says 'Think of the Cihan in Alya's eyes, I don't want to be that Cihan' he's saying I know it looks like I disregarded you and broke your trust again, but that's not how things were. He needs her to show emotions, not because it'll pander to his ego, but because that's a sign she's still involved. That she's not near the point where she says 'enough is enough.' Alya, on the flip side, can't show her emotions. Because, unlike what Cihan fears, it's because she's so in love with him, so involved, that she's afraid to even ask what Cihan feels. Because if she learns Cihan's past isn't just the past, that he still loves Meryem, it'll shatter her unlike anything else. Despite it all, Cihan manages to reach Alya somehow when he pleads, 'I need you to communicate with me.' It's like his fears break past her barriers and, in turn, allow her to open up a little to him because she admits she doesn't know what to do, and then out comes the real question, 'Don't you feel anything?' Kudos to Cihan for not dodging the question and saying whatever he feels for her is just memory and gratitude. Salak. And I say salak with all my love, because he still misses the elephant in the room. The point is the imbalance. When we tell someone they're the only love of our life, we want an equal declaration in return. If not, the loop remains incomplete - with one side a little more invested than the other. And, CihAl's story thus far has been the opposite of imbalance. Their story is about symmetry; they reflect each other in love, in wounds, in loss. Basically everything. So, how is it that Alya's only love is Cihan, while his isn't? It's not. And that's where that necklace reveal becomes important, but we'll get to that later. For now, let's talk about that little talk in the car. The story itself is giving us hints that this imbalance won't last long, because the minute Alya talks about her first brush with romance is the moment jealous Cihan makes a return. He gets jealous of a nameless, formless, 16-year-old boy who once had the audacity to date his wife. That is, he can't tolerate a contender for Alya's affections even in memory. Cihan is extremely possessive about Alya, which is why he doesn't waste a moment to remind her she told him he's her only love. And Alya, being Alya, doesn't waste a moment in reminding him that he didn't. And then she turns the screw a little by telling Cihan not to burn his heart over her teenage crush because she never planned to marry her crush, nor is she conveniently living under the same roof with him. Mic drop. Cihan's face at that moment is a study in being hoist by one's own petard. Because he's expecting Alya to be okay with something he can't even stand the idea of. He's jealous as hell, but he can't do anything about it. But why is all this happening? Because one of Cihan's biggest truths is - he loved Meryem and lost her. In truth, he didn't love her, which is why he didn't fight hard enough, which is why he lost her. If Cihan had truly loved Meryem the way he loves Alya, he would have fought until the bitter end. Like he's doing for Alya. That's the truth. In Uzak, true love isn't passive - it demands to be seen, to be felt, it doesn't sit back quietly and accept defeat. In this story, love demands to be chosen. And Cihan didn't choose Meryem, not in the way it matters. So, why can't Cihan just accept the truth already? Fear and guilt, I think. Fear of the magnitude of what he feels for Alya, and what losing her would do to him. And guilt because some part of him knows he didn't do for Meryem what he's doing for Alya. And of course, now there's the burden of her shitty ex, too. Nonetheless, fate keeps pushing Cihan to realize the truth, over and over again in this episode. Another glimpse of how passive Cihan may have been in his relationship with Meryem is the dinner scene. Sadakat points out how much Meryem loved stuffed kebabs, and Cihan is barely listening. This is the same man who knows what Alya likes to eat when she's on break during duty. When Meryem points out Cihan's allergy, he says it was something he had in the past, but no longer. Almost like he's comparing the feelings he once had for her to an allergy. What an allegory. See? The signs are all there, but Cihan isn't picking up on them completely. Then fate ups the ante with the arrival of Chef Engin. The first thing Cihan asks Alya when Engin is gone is - Is that him? As in, is that the boy you said loved you? The man goes off the rails in 0 to 60 seconds, and keeps coming up with excuses like he may have changed his name or appearance. The idea of not being the only man in Alya's life makes him lose his cool while Alya rightly points out that she's not the one living with her 'first love' currently. Which then leads to Cihan spending the night at the office. So, fate manages to teach him one lesson here. Which is - ask only for that which you're ready to give. Cihan needs emotional exclusivity from Alya, but hasn't given her the same yet. He's not built to share Alya, not with the past, not with a memory, not with anything. But the second he feels even a fraction of what Alya's been going through, he unravels marvelously. And that's the entire point of that sequence. It's not just jealous drama, it's exposure. Cihan is slowly being led towards the one truth staring him in the face. That's where the necklace comes in. Thus far, Ciho seems to be operating under the misconception that Meryem has moved on, like him. But that necklace (and the video) prove otherwise. Meryem's current attachment to him throws neutrality out the window. Because Cihan will now have to set absolute boundaries, and in doing so, understand why he's setting them. Why what he feels for Alya leaves no room for anyone else because he can't stand the idea of something similar in Alya's past, present, or future. Because they are each other's exception, and everyone else was the rule. And that's it from me for now. Till later. Happy reading, y'all. #CihAl #UzakŞehir

CocoLoco

14,669 views • 4 months ago

📚 The Final Book of Accusations: From the Dawn of Empire to The Occupation of Holy Land By Noah The Kings and Their Crimes The King List of Sumer is hailed as the first chronicle of rulership. Scholars often treat it as myth, but behind every name was a dynasty, behind every dynasty a system of tribute, forced labor, and conquest. Each “lugal,” the great man, raised himself high by pressing his people low. Each temple was fed by the toil of slaves, each monument raised upon broken backs. Their crimes echo across millennia, and their names stand condemned. The Antediluvian Kings The King List begins with rulers before the flood: Alulim of Eridu, Alalngar of Eridu, En-men-lu-ana of Bad-tibira, En-men-gal-ana, Dumuzid the Shepherd, En-sipad-zid-ana of Larak, En-men-dur-ana of Sippar, Ubara-Tutu of Shuruppak. Whether legendary or historical, their reigns are counted in tens of thousands of years. Even in myth, their rule was remembered as unnatural. Lifespans stretched into the absurd, suggesting not blessing but domination. These “first kings” were enshrined as semi-divine, an echo of how the earliest rulers cloaked themselves in godhood to sanctify their crimes. They instituted temple slavery, demanded offerings, and introduced the practice of kings seizing women as divine right. Kish and the Early Dynasties After the flood, “kingship was lowered from heaven” to Kish. Here began the first recorded pattern of hereditary domination. Etana of Kish is remembered as “the shepherd who ascended to heaven.” In truth, he was the first to conscript whole communities for temple agriculture. His subjects labored under sun and whip to feed priests and soldiers. Families who resisted tribute were executed. His successors, including Balih and En-me-nuna, carried on the same model: rule by tribute, maintained by armed levy. The names are half-forgotten, but their crimes are not. The forced seizure of crops, the taking of daughters into royal households, the reduction of men into soldiers against their will. Uruk and the Tyranny of Gilgamesh From Uruk, power shifted with Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, rulers wrapped in legend. But the most infamous was Gilgamesh. He is called the hero of the first epic, but in the record of his people, he was a tyrant. The complaint was immortal: “Gilgamesh leaves not the son to his father, nor the maiden to the warrior, nor the wife to her husband.” He claimed every woman of Uruk as his own. He conscripted young men to fight endless wars against Kish, Umma, and others, marching them to death for his pride. His legacy was mythologized to hide atrocity, yet even myth preserves the truth: his people cried out against him. Umma, Lagash, and the Wars of Cities The city-states of Umma and Lagash fought endless wars over land and water. Eannatum of Lagash (c. 2450 BC) boasts on the “Stele of Vultures” of slaying thousands of men from Umma, piling their bodies into fields, leaving corpses for carrion. He claimed divine blessing as he enslaved survivors and seized their farmland. Enannatum I and Enmetena of Lagash continued the same cycle: pillage, forced tribute, and enslavement of conquered citizens. Lugal-Zage-Si of Umma, who united much of Sumer, proclaimed himself chosen by Enlil. But his unification was by fire. He burned Lagash, sacked temples, enslaved priests, dragged women into captivity, and razed shrines. His boast that he ruled “from the Lower Sea to the Upper Sea” was written in the blood of his own people. Akkad and the Birth of Empire Then came Sargon of Akkad, who established the first empire in history. He conquered Sumer’s cities, executed their rulers, deported their peoples. He instituted standing armies fed by plunder, not by the harvest of his own land. He uprooted families, scattering them across the empire, breaking cultures to destroy resistance. His successors extended the crimes: Rimush slaughtered fifteen revolting kings, looting their treasuries, enslaving their subjects. Manishtushu led campaigns across Elam, dragging prisoners by the thousands, branding them for resale. Naram-Sin claimed divinity. His stele immortalizes massacre: enemies speared, trampled, their wives and children enslaved. He sacked Nippur, desecrated the temple of Enlil, enraging even his own citizens. Shar-kali-sharri presided over famine and raids, forcing conscription as drought starved the land. Ur III and the Codification of Slavery Ur-Nammu raised the ziggurat of Ur, a mountain of bricks made by forced labor. His laws imposed fines on the rich but corporal punishment on the poor. Shulgi, declaring himself divine, ordered temple women into ritual prostitution. Surviving tablets list names of women reduced to “offerings.” His reign institutionalized rape as a sacred duty. His successors, Amar-Sin, Shu-Sin, and Ibbi-Sin, presided over decline. As famine spread, they tightened tribute, seizing children as collateral for taxes unpaid. Babylon and the Pride of Hammurabi Hammurabi codified atrocity. His laws legalized debt slavery, enshrined hierarchy, and protected nobles at the expense of commoners. He conquered rivals through slaughter, then celebrated himself as chosen of Marduk. His empire was built on ledgers of debt, chains of slaves, and bloodied swords. Nebuchadnezzar II and the Captivity Centuries later, Nebuchadnezzar II completed the cycle with the most infamous crime: the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He starved children to death inside city walls. He slaughtered priests at the altar. He raped women as his army pillaged. He tore down the Temple of God, looted its treasures, and dragged survivors into captivity. He mocked captives, demanding songs of joy while they wept in chains. Priests, Merchants, and the Complicity of the Temples Throughout every dynasty, the priests of the ziggurats were partners in crime. They issued loans at interest, seized land when repayment failed, sold sons and daughters into slavery. Temple archives survive recording the names of children sold to cover debts. Religion was used as a veil for usury. Merchants too, empowered by kings, trafficked slaves across the Fertile Crescent, turning flesh into currency. At this point I am running out of space. The list of rulers continues. Later Babylonian kings like Nabopolassar, Nabonidus, Belshazzar, and the Assyrian conquerors of Babylon Tiglath-Pileser III, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal were each guilty of their own massacres, deportations, and desecrations. 🧵Video Thread Series 📽️👇 Countless hours of my life have been devoted to the careful crafting of Part 2. Every sentence was shaped with deliberation, every thought refined with the utmost precision, not for my sake, but so that it might serve as a lantern in the fog for those who seek truth. If you found even a measure of illumination within these words, I ask only one thing in return... allow it to travel further. Share it with those whose hearts are still restless, whose minds remain clouded, whose souls yearn for remembrance. For knowledge, once awakened, is not meant to be hoarded in silence. It grows in strength when carried from one soul to another, as flame kindles flame, until what began in a solitary hand becomes a great light upon the earth. By sharing, you do not merely extend my labor; you become a participant in its purpose, a co-bearer of its message, and a steward of the awakening it was written to inspire. I stand permanently barred from every channel of monetization, and I accept this reality without hesitation or regret. As with all of my writings and every piece of content I have ever produced, what I create will be given freely to all who seek it. I devote uncounted hours, often at great personal cost, not for profit nor recognition, but out of an unwavering passion for the dignity of humanity. My labor is not transactional but sacrificial, poured out with the singular hope that through these words, at least one soul might awaken, one mind might break free from illusion, and one heart might remember its divine inheritance. To teach under such circumstances is not merely to instruct but to bear witness. It is to believe that truth, when offered without price, carries a resonance that no barrier can silence and no ban can extinguish. This is why I persist, why I endure exclusion, why I choose generosity over gain. For what value has wealth if it is hoarded, and what meaning has knowledge if it is withheld? To awaken even a solitary spirit is to alter the course of eternity itself, and it is for this reason that my work will never be bound by the machinery of monetization.
7:14

📚 The Final Book of Accusations: From the Dawn of Empire to The Occupation of Holy Land By Noah The Kings and Their Crimes The King List of Sumer is hailed as the first chronicle of rulership. Scholars often treat it as myth, but behind every name was a dynasty, behind every dynasty a system of tribute, forced labor, and conquest. Each “lugal,” the great man, raised himself high by pressing his people low. Each temple was fed by the toil of slaves, each monument raised upon broken backs. Their crimes echo across millennia, and their names stand condemned. The Antediluvian Kings The King List begins with rulers before the flood: Alulim of Eridu, Alalngar of Eridu, En-men-lu-ana of Bad-tibira, En-men-gal-ana, Dumuzid the Shepherd, En-sipad-zid-ana of Larak, En-men-dur-ana of Sippar, Ubara-Tutu of Shuruppak. Whether legendary or historical, their reigns are counted in tens of thousands of years. Even in myth, their rule was remembered as unnatural. Lifespans stretched into the absurd, suggesting not blessing but domination. These “first kings” were enshrined as semi-divine, an echo of how the earliest rulers cloaked themselves in godhood to sanctify their crimes. They instituted temple slavery, demanded offerings, and introduced the practice of kings seizing women as divine right. Kish and the Early Dynasties After the flood, “kingship was lowered from heaven” to Kish. Here began the first recorded pattern of hereditary domination. Etana of Kish is remembered as “the shepherd who ascended to heaven.” In truth, he was the first to conscript whole communities for temple agriculture. His subjects labored under sun and whip to feed priests and soldiers. Families who resisted tribute were executed. His successors, including Balih and En-me-nuna, carried on the same model: rule by tribute, maintained by armed levy. The names are half-forgotten, but their crimes are not. The forced seizure of crops, the taking of daughters into royal households, the reduction of men into soldiers against their will. Uruk and the Tyranny of Gilgamesh From Uruk, power shifted with Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, rulers wrapped in legend. But the most infamous was Gilgamesh. He is called the hero of the first epic, but in the record of his people, he was a tyrant. The complaint was immortal: “Gilgamesh leaves not the son to his father, nor the maiden to the warrior, nor the wife to her husband.” He claimed every woman of Uruk as his own. He conscripted young men to fight endless wars against Kish, Umma, and others, marching them to death for his pride. His legacy was mythologized to hide atrocity, yet even myth preserves the truth: his people cried out against him. Umma, Lagash, and the Wars of Cities The city-states of Umma and Lagash fought endless wars over land and water. Eannatum of Lagash (c. 2450 BC) boasts on the “Stele of Vultures” of slaying thousands of men from Umma, piling their bodies into fields, leaving corpses for carrion. He claimed divine blessing as he enslaved survivors and seized their farmland. Enannatum I and Enmetena of Lagash continued the same cycle: pillage, forced tribute, and enslavement of conquered citizens. Lugal-Zage-Si of Umma, who united much of Sumer, proclaimed himself chosen by Enlil. But his unification was by fire. He burned Lagash, sacked temples, enslaved priests, dragged women into captivity, and razed shrines. His boast that he ruled “from the Lower Sea to the Upper Sea” was written in the blood of his own people. Akkad and the Birth of Empire Then came Sargon of Akkad, who established the first empire in history. He conquered Sumer’s cities, executed their rulers, deported their peoples. He instituted standing armies fed by plunder, not by the harvest of his own land. He uprooted families, scattering them across the empire, breaking cultures to destroy resistance. His successors extended the crimes: Rimush slaughtered fifteen revolting kings, looting their treasuries, enslaving their subjects. Manishtushu led campaigns across Elam, dragging prisoners by the thousands, branding them for resale. Naram-Sin claimed divinity. His stele immortalizes massacre: enemies speared, trampled, their wives and children enslaved. He sacked Nippur, desecrated the temple of Enlil, enraging even his own citizens. Shar-kali-sharri presided over famine and raids, forcing conscription as drought starved the land. Ur III and the Codification of Slavery Ur-Nammu raised the ziggurat of Ur, a mountain of bricks made by forced labor. His laws imposed fines on the rich but corporal punishment on the poor. Shulgi, declaring himself divine, ordered temple women into ritual prostitution. Surviving tablets list names of women reduced to “offerings.” His reign institutionalized rape as a sacred duty. His successors, Amar-Sin, Shu-Sin, and Ibbi-Sin, presided over decline. As famine spread, they tightened tribute, seizing children as collateral for taxes unpaid. Babylon and the Pride of Hammurabi Hammurabi codified atrocity. His laws legalized debt slavery, enshrined hierarchy, and protected nobles at the expense of commoners. He conquered rivals through slaughter, then celebrated himself as chosen of Marduk. His empire was built on ledgers of debt, chains of slaves, and bloodied swords. Nebuchadnezzar II and the Captivity Centuries later, Nebuchadnezzar II completed the cycle with the most infamous crime: the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He starved children to death inside city walls. He slaughtered priests at the altar. He raped women as his army pillaged. He tore down the Temple of God, looted its treasures, and dragged survivors into captivity. He mocked captives, demanding songs of joy while they wept in chains. Priests, Merchants, and the Complicity of the Temples Throughout every dynasty, the priests of the ziggurats were partners in crime. They issued loans at interest, seized land when repayment failed, sold sons and daughters into slavery. Temple archives survive recording the names of children sold to cover debts. Religion was used as a veil for usury. Merchants too, empowered by kings, trafficked slaves across the Fertile Crescent, turning flesh into currency. At this point I am running out of space. The list of rulers continues. Later Babylonian kings like Nabopolassar, Nabonidus, Belshazzar, and the Assyrian conquerors of Babylon Tiglath-Pileser III, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal were each guilty of their own massacres, deportations, and desecrations. 🧵Video Thread Series 📽️👇 Countless hours of my life have been devoted to the careful crafting of Part 2. Every sentence was shaped with deliberation, every thought refined with the utmost precision, not for my sake, but so that it might serve as a lantern in the fog for those who seek truth. If you found even a measure of illumination within these words, I ask only one thing in return... allow it to travel further. Share it with those whose hearts are still restless, whose minds remain clouded, whose souls yearn for remembrance. For knowledge, once awakened, is not meant to be hoarded in silence. It grows in strength when carried from one soul to another, as flame kindles flame, until what began in a solitary hand becomes a great light upon the earth. By sharing, you do not merely extend my labor; you become a participant in its purpose, a co-bearer of its message, and a steward of the awakening it was written to inspire. I stand permanently barred from every channel of monetization, and I accept this reality without hesitation or regret. As with all of my writings and every piece of content I have ever produced, what I create will be given freely to all who seek it. I devote uncounted hours, often at great personal cost, not for profit nor recognition, but out of an unwavering passion for the dignity of humanity. My labor is not transactional but sacrificial, poured out with the singular hope that through these words, at least one soul might awaken, one mind might break free from illusion, and one heart might remember its divine inheritance. To teach under such circumstances is not merely to instruct but to bear witness. It is to believe that truth, when offered without price, carries a resonance that no barrier can silence and no ban can extinguish. This is why I persist, why I endure exclusion, why I choose generosity over gain. For what value has wealth if it is hoarded, and what meaning has knowledge if it is withheld? To awaken even a solitary spirit is to alter the course of eternity itself, and it is for this reason that my work will never be bound by the machinery of monetization.

Noah B. Price

31,747 views • 11 months ago

Analyzing Episode 55. Season 2 aka The Violence of Alignment If I visualize CihAl's journey for this season, a spiral tightening its rings comes to mind. There's always one problem after another, spiking in intensity and reaction. And, the weight of it is reflected in both Alya's increasingly somber demeanor. But, here's the thing. In every new problem, there's an echo of the old one, which leaves one with an inevitable feeling of deja vu - for the audience and the characters. We'll get to why towards the end of this analysis. For now, on we go. We kick off epi 55 with Cihan being introduced to Meryem *cough* dishrag *cough* by Sadakat. And what follows is a breakdown of her story with Cihan listening. However, when Meryem recounted her past woes, I focused less on her words and more on Cihan's words and expression. And what follows is a masterclass in the difference between sympathy and empathy. Kudos to Ozan Akbaba for portraying the difference. I couldn't help but compare the situation to when Cihan is listening to Alya's account of her past. With Alya, Cihan leans forward, barely moving. He listens, but his face tends to reflect his own emotion and mirrors Alya's at times - in other words, he's living those events with her. When he talks, his voice drops lower, but more importantly, there's a gentle softness meant to soothe. With Meryem, Cihan's body language is a tad more detached. When he's leaning forward in the seat, his hands are extended in front of him, clasped together, creating space. Then he leans back, one arm extended on the table, the other on his thigh. Again, there's this feel of distance. His voice remains soft, but there's no tenderness. He's not trying to alleviate, rather he's simply listening. Don't get me wrong, it's not like the guy doesn't feel bad for her, because what she relates shouldn't be experienced by anyone. But empathy goes beyond sympathy. Empathy is when you hurt with the one who's hurting. And that difference, to me, is clear between the two scenes. Long story short, when he's heard what Meryem's gone through, he offers to help get her out of prison because he feels responsible in part for her misfortunes. He says it's his 'duty' to help her. Here's what's interesting: when Meryem says his kindness and heart haven't changed, he gets uncomfortable. And after that, he's the one to get up from the chair, signaling the end of the conversation. Like he wants to get out of there, because some part of him that's not stupidly male understands Meryem's still attached to him, but he has no interest in that whatsoever. His method of saying goodbye is a handshake, again, a testament to his aloofness. And when Meryem hugs him, his hands remain at their sides; the man could have been a pillar. So, while he speaks not of Alya, the one time he takes her name, he drives the message across that 'she's no one ordinary' and 'tread carefully'. Honestly, I don't think he wants to talk about Alya to Meryem. Not because Alya's not important, but because Alya is too important. The part of his life that Alya represents is his alone, and he's very possessive about sharing that with anyone. To him, Meryem is a past that exists, but one that he would erase if he had the choice, because it hurts Alya. And that's pretty much the whole feel of this conversation. He wants to help Meryem, but he also wants her gone because her presence is a source of discomfort to Alya. Speaking of discomforts, the next scene I want to talk about is when the massive turd, who happens to be Alya's ex-husband, goes to the hospital to threaten her some more. Seriously, this character is a step short of absolute psycho. He's incapable of true emotion, just like his mother. Anyway, when Alya is explaining why she hasn't moved out yet, the zombie's eyes zero in on her wedding band. And, of course, being who he is, he absolutely ignores the topic of Deniz, his own flesh and blood, and instead, wants the ring gone because it symbolizes Alya's love and attachment to Cihan. Thankfully, Cihan arrives in time to push away the zombie and to hear Alya proclaim that while Boran has the power to use her son and distance her from Cihan physically, he has no power over her heart and who reigns over it. Now, think back to that conversation where Deniz wants her to pick between Cihan and himself. And Cihan says Deniz's throne (or place) in her heart is so secure, he's happy to live in the shadow of that throne. While Alya smiles at Cihan's response, she also looks miserable later at the thought of not being able to tell Cihan that things aren't exactly so. However, I think she manages to get her point across in this scene without even realizing it. Because while she may make sacrifices for her son, no amount of blackmail, pain, or hurt can remove Cihan's love from her heart. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds almost like an equal footing. The only difference is that she's bound to protect her son, because, unlike Cihan, he can't protect himself. And that's what leads Cihan to later tell Alya that her words are etched across his heart, and that he's never felt that loved by anyone. Curiously enough, this scene also brings the spotlight on two other details: Alya's 'anka' side and the wedding ring. Both of which will feature rather greatly, in the coming episodes, I think. Now, there's a rumor going around that Alya will take off her wedding ring. And, I don't know, the fact that Cihan's almost preening at Alya, still wearing the ring, and Alya saying 'I couldn't take it off' tells me that's not what's going to happen. For some reason, I'm beginning to get the vibes of a showdown of trust in the same vein as episode 27. Now you may argue that Cihan actually tells Alya about Mine's pregnancy in that episode, but CihAl have had a long journey since then. Alya has seen Cihan choose her over Boran with her own eyes. She's seen the lengths the man has gone to for her and Deniz. So, yes, she might be pissed about something or the other related to Meryem in future episodes, but her taking off the ring seems not within her character somehow. But hey, that's just me, and I could be wrong. Anyway, the final scene I want to talk about is, of course, the ending. Everyone kept focusing on why Cihan allowed Meryem to hold his hands, but I focused on his words. Because he very clearly tells Meryem that he's no longer in love with her, that he's moved on, and that she should not hang about in the hopes of that ever changing. In his own way, Cihan is quite ruthless here. He draws a line, but his words are designed not to hurt, because he's not an ahole. He just wants dishrag to understand that even the thought of Alya being hurt pains him more now than anything else. And, he's not very kind to people who try to hurt Alya. It's a disclosure and warning, but in the form of steel wrapped in satin. Now, let's go back to the beginning for a bit, where I mentioned spiraling events. See, I somehow thought that those vows Cihal took 'savaşta, bedelde, kararda, kaderde, aşkta' were linear levels. That they'd clear them one by one and get to love. But when you see the overall structure of their journey in this season, it's not linear at all. Because all those things have existed in one form or another since ep 29. There's always an element of all of these conditions in every episode. Which is why we keep thinking, wait a minute, we've been here before. But as I said, the spiral is tightening itself. With every episode, the stakes are raised higher, and CihAl are pushed a little bit closer to the edge. Almost like the deep breath before the plunge. And here’s where things get interesting. Because what feels like repetition is not actually stagnation, it’s confrontation deferred, coming back sharper each time. Every cycle brings them back to the same point. Their love deepens, fear follows, a decision is made in the name of protection, and that decision creates distance instead of resolution. Which brings me back to the vows - savaşta, bedelde, kararda, kaderde, aşkta. I was wrong to think of them as steps. They’re not something Cihan and Alya are moving towards; they’re something CihAl are already inside of. Every episode is them living those vows in real time. But with every new episode, the pressure mounts, like music builds to a crescendo. And yet, within all of that, aşk remains. Not as a reward at the end of the journey. But as the one thing that refuses to disappear, no matter how many times everything else goes wrong. And maybe that's why episode 55 feels the way it does. It creates the illusion that everything is falling apart, yet again, when in reality, everything is being forced into alignment. Something is moving all the pieces on the chessboard for an ultimate showdown. And the process gets more violent by the minute. Cihan hides the truth because he thinks love needs protection. Alya experiences that same act as distance, almost betrayal. Meanwhile, Boran and Sadakat keep pushing, and Meryem drops like a freaking bomb at the worst possible moment. Suddenly, everything that could have remained unsaid, unresolved, or postponed is dragged into the open. This has all the hallmarks of a breaking point. Note, I said breaking point, not breakdown. Because, unlike breakdowns, breaking points are used for revelations. I guess what I'm trying to say is things are headed towards alignment, not just for the overall story, but also CihAl's journey individually. Because Cihan and Alya also keep repeating their mistakes. Their growth requires something along the lines of a push, too. So, we have war, sacrifice, decisions, fate, and love, all coming to a head. And while there are plenty of reasons to feel ominous, I personally don't. The story is no longer about them loving each other - we're well past that. It’s about whether they can finally stand in that love openly and without any fear. Because everything is pushing them toward a breaking point, not to destroy them, I think, but to shape them into who they need to be. And if there’s one thing CihAl have proven since day one, it’s this - they don’t fall apart under pressure, they grow stronger, and they survive the impossible. #CihAl #UzakŞehir
2:51

Analyzing Episode 55. Season 2 aka The Violence of Alignment If I visualize CihAl's journey for this season, a spiral tightening its rings comes to mind. There's always one problem after another, spiking in intensity and reaction. And, the weight of it is reflected in both Alya's increasingly somber demeanor. But, here's the thing. In every new problem, there's an echo of the old one, which leaves one with an inevitable feeling of deja vu - for the audience and the characters. We'll get to why towards the end of this analysis. For now, on we go. We kick off epi 55 with Cihan being introduced to Meryem *cough* dishrag *cough* by Sadakat. And what follows is a breakdown of her story with Cihan listening. However, when Meryem recounted her past woes, I focused less on her words and more on Cihan's words and expression. And what follows is a masterclass in the difference between sympathy and empathy. Kudos to Ozan Akbaba for portraying the difference. I couldn't help but compare the situation to when Cihan is listening to Alya's account of her past. With Alya, Cihan leans forward, barely moving. He listens, but his face tends to reflect his own emotion and mirrors Alya's at times - in other words, he's living those events with her. When he talks, his voice drops lower, but more importantly, there's a gentle softness meant to soothe. With Meryem, Cihan's body language is a tad more detached. When he's leaning forward in the seat, his hands are extended in front of him, clasped together, creating space. Then he leans back, one arm extended on the table, the other on his thigh. Again, there's this feel of distance. His voice remains soft, but there's no tenderness. He's not trying to alleviate, rather he's simply listening. Don't get me wrong, it's not like the guy doesn't feel bad for her, because what she relates shouldn't be experienced by anyone. But empathy goes beyond sympathy. Empathy is when you hurt with the one who's hurting. And that difference, to me, is clear between the two scenes. Long story short, when he's heard what Meryem's gone through, he offers to help get her out of prison because he feels responsible in part for her misfortunes. He says it's his 'duty' to help her. Here's what's interesting: when Meryem says his kindness and heart haven't changed, he gets uncomfortable. And after that, he's the one to get up from the chair, signaling the end of the conversation. Like he wants to get out of there, because some part of him that's not stupidly male understands Meryem's still attached to him, but he has no interest in that whatsoever. His method of saying goodbye is a handshake, again, a testament to his aloofness. And when Meryem hugs him, his hands remain at their sides; the man could have been a pillar. So, while he speaks not of Alya, the one time he takes her name, he drives the message across that 'she's no one ordinary' and 'tread carefully'. Honestly, I don't think he wants to talk about Alya to Meryem. Not because Alya's not important, but because Alya is too important. The part of his life that Alya represents is his alone, and he's very possessive about sharing that with anyone. To him, Meryem is a past that exists, but one that he would erase if he had the choice, because it hurts Alya. And that's pretty much the whole feel of this conversation. He wants to help Meryem, but he also wants her gone because her presence is a source of discomfort to Alya. Speaking of discomforts, the next scene I want to talk about is when the massive turd, who happens to be Alya's ex-husband, goes to the hospital to threaten her some more. Seriously, this character is a step short of absolute psycho. He's incapable of true emotion, just like his mother. Anyway, when Alya is explaining why she hasn't moved out yet, the zombie's eyes zero in on her wedding band. And, of course, being who he is, he absolutely ignores the topic of Deniz, his own flesh and blood, and instead, wants the ring gone because it symbolizes Alya's love and attachment to Cihan. Thankfully, Cihan arrives in time to push away the zombie and to hear Alya proclaim that while Boran has the power to use her son and distance her from Cihan physically, he has no power over her heart and who reigns over it. Now, think back to that conversation where Deniz wants her to pick between Cihan and himself. And Cihan says Deniz's throne (or place) in her heart is so secure, he's happy to live in the shadow of that throne. While Alya smiles at Cihan's response, she also looks miserable later at the thought of not being able to tell Cihan that things aren't exactly so. However, I think she manages to get her point across in this scene without even realizing it. Because while she may make sacrifices for her son, no amount of blackmail, pain, or hurt can remove Cihan's love from her heart. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds almost like an equal footing. The only difference is that she's bound to protect her son, because, unlike Cihan, he can't protect himself. And that's what leads Cihan to later tell Alya that her words are etched across his heart, and that he's never felt that loved by anyone. Curiously enough, this scene also brings the spotlight on two other details: Alya's 'anka' side and the wedding ring. Both of which will feature rather greatly, in the coming episodes, I think. Now, there's a rumor going around that Alya will take off her wedding ring. And, I don't know, the fact that Cihan's almost preening at Alya, still wearing the ring, and Alya saying 'I couldn't take it off' tells me that's not what's going to happen. For some reason, I'm beginning to get the vibes of a showdown of trust in the same vein as episode 27. Now you may argue that Cihan actually tells Alya about Mine's pregnancy in that episode, but CihAl have had a long journey since then. Alya has seen Cihan choose her over Boran with her own eyes. She's seen the lengths the man has gone to for her and Deniz. So, yes, she might be pissed about something or the other related to Meryem in future episodes, but her taking off the ring seems not within her character somehow. But hey, that's just me, and I could be wrong. Anyway, the final scene I want to talk about is, of course, the ending. Everyone kept focusing on why Cihan allowed Meryem to hold his hands, but I focused on his words. Because he very clearly tells Meryem that he's no longer in love with her, that he's moved on, and that she should not hang about in the hopes of that ever changing. In his own way, Cihan is quite ruthless here. He draws a line, but his words are designed not to hurt, because he's not an ahole. He just wants dishrag to understand that even the thought of Alya being hurt pains him more now than anything else. And, he's not very kind to people who try to hurt Alya. It's a disclosure and warning, but in the form of steel wrapped in satin. Now, let's go back to the beginning for a bit, where I mentioned spiraling events. See, I somehow thought that those vows Cihal took 'savaşta, bedelde, kararda, kaderde, aşkta' were linear levels. That they'd clear them one by one and get to love. But when you see the overall structure of their journey in this season, it's not linear at all. Because all those things have existed in one form or another since ep 29. There's always an element of all of these conditions in every episode. Which is why we keep thinking, wait a minute, we've been here before. But as I said, the spiral is tightening itself. With every episode, the stakes are raised higher, and CihAl are pushed a little bit closer to the edge. Almost like the deep breath before the plunge. And here’s where things get interesting. Because what feels like repetition is not actually stagnation, it’s confrontation deferred, coming back sharper each time. Every cycle brings them back to the same point. Their love deepens, fear follows, a decision is made in the name of protection, and that decision creates distance instead of resolution. Which brings me back to the vows - savaşta, bedelde, kararda, kaderde, aşkta. I was wrong to think of them as steps. They’re not something Cihan and Alya are moving towards; they’re something CihAl are already inside of. Every episode is them living those vows in real time. But with every new episode, the pressure mounts, like music builds to a crescendo. And yet, within all of that, aşk remains. Not as a reward at the end of the journey. But as the one thing that refuses to disappear, no matter how many times everything else goes wrong. And maybe that's why episode 55 feels the way it does. It creates the illusion that everything is falling apart, yet again, when in reality, everything is being forced into alignment. Something is moving all the pieces on the chessboard for an ultimate showdown. And the process gets more violent by the minute. Cihan hides the truth because he thinks love needs protection. Alya experiences that same act as distance, almost betrayal. Meanwhile, Boran and Sadakat keep pushing, and Meryem drops like a freaking bomb at the worst possible moment. Suddenly, everything that could have remained unsaid, unresolved, or postponed is dragged into the open. This has all the hallmarks of a breaking point. Note, I said breaking point, not breakdown. Because, unlike breakdowns, breaking points are used for revelations. I guess what I'm trying to say is things are headed towards alignment, not just for the overall story, but also CihAl's journey individually. Because Cihan and Alya also keep repeating their mistakes. Their growth requires something along the lines of a push, too. So, we have war, sacrifice, decisions, fate, and love, all coming to a head. And while there are plenty of reasons to feel ominous, I personally don't. The story is no longer about them loving each other - we're well past that. It’s about whether they can finally stand in that love openly and without any fear. Because everything is pushing them toward a breaking point, not to destroy them, I think, but to shape them into who they need to be. And if there’s one thing CihAl have proven since day one, it’s this - they don’t fall apart under pressure, they grow stronger, and they survive the impossible. #CihAl #UzakŞehir

CocoLoco

21,885 views • 5 months ago

Ch. 14 of NITRO: The Inside Story of Hulk Hogan's heel turn - #OTD 30 Years Ago (7/7/96)! AS DAY BECAME NIGHT at the Sullivan home, Bollea deliberated his participation in the pay-per-view. “Everybody was telling him that it was the wrong thing to do,” Kevin Sullivan says. “He was getting booed out of the arena, but they were all saying, ‘this is gonna kill him’.” With no end to the discussion in sight, the wily booker casually suggested that Bollea and Young make use of his two guest rooms until the morning. “I isolated [them],” Sullivan admits. “I was just afraid that at the last minute, he was going to use his creative control [clause] and pull out.” If Sullivan could deliver Bollea to the arena by showtime, the finish of the match called for Hogan to star in the most dramatic of surprise endings. In a sequence devised by Kevin Nash, an unannounced Hulkster would shockingly interfere in the match, but only after the heels gained an unfair advantage through cheating. It would be a brilliant misdirection, Nash thought, as fans would instinctively believe Hogan’s appearance to be in support of the babyface team. “I knew there were gonna be 55 different ideas,” Nash says, thinking back to the eve of the event, “[so] I actually put a lot of thought into it. I called Scott [Hall] two or three days before that, and said ‘what do you think about this?’ “We had to make it a 2-on-2 match with Lex Luger getting injured [during the match] and going out. We would cheat to get Macho [Man] in trouble and all of a sudden Hulk comes down, which of course would mean ‘ok, here comes Hulk to make the save’. [Hall] said, ‘I love it’.” There was, however, the looming possibility that Bollea could reject his turn at the eleventh hour. Thinking ahead, Eric Bischoff developed a contingency plan in which Sting would play the role, ultimately revealing himself - despite not having prior experience with the WWF - as the ‘third man’ instead. “I remember Eric came in to the locker room,” recalls Marcus 'Buff' Bagwell, “and said [to Sting], ‘I wanna talk to you about something’. I could hear them going over the idea, and then when they got done, Sting told me what they were talking about. He said that [Eric said], ‘there are only two guys that could turn heel where it would really matter’. That would be Hogan and Sting.” “He was offering Sting the job first, [as I recall], and Sting didn’t wanna do it. He didn’t really say it wouldn’t work, but he just said, ‘it doesn’t intrigue me. I don’t wanna do it’.” According to Andre Freitas, a special effects artist who worked in costume design and character development for WCW, the proposed Sting swerve was to involve the use of a doppelganger - or ‘phony’ Sting - presumably in an effort to fool fans that the real character had switched sides. “That was their original plan,” says Freitas. “Eric showed me a picture of Jeff Farmer (a lower-card wrestler) and said ‘can you make him Sting?’ I told him that they have similar bodies...then we looked at Sting’s hair and Jeff’s hair...and talked about all that stuff. I did a head cast for [Farmer] and some prosthetic and test make-ups. But when they secured Hogan, we didn’t do [the angle].” ----------- Amazingly, even as Bash at the Beach began, Bischoff continued to consider Plan B. “I remember walking by this perforated wall in the Ocean Center,” divulges Nash, “and Eric said to me, ‘Hulk is with Sullivan, and he’s not sure he’s gonna do it yet’. It was up in the air.” Meanwhile, viewers of the pay-per-view - and, for that matter, WCW’s own production staff - speculated as to the identity of the third man. “They were trying to ‘work’ everyone,” asserts Jason Douglas, a WCW producer backstage at his first pay-per-view event. “‘Rocket’ (staff member Rick Sancher) came up to me - they were kinda testing me because I was new on the road - and said ‘hey, I think it’s gonna be [WWF wrestler] Bret Hart’. I guess it was to see if I would leak something, and so I was just like ‘oh, cool, Bret Hart’.” In reality, aside from Bischoff, Bollea, Young, Hall, Nash and Sullivan, the turn would be concealed from everyone - even the announcers, according to orders from Bischoff - as to ensure their most realistic reactions. With less than an hour before the main event began, production staffer Woody Kearce discovered a revealing clue in the parking lot. A Hulk Hogan motorcycle had appeared mysteriously in one of the spaces, sparking another round of backstage conjecture. Finally, with what Sullivan recalls as “thirty minutes” and Bischoff remembers as “forty-five to sixty minutes” left on the air, Bollea belatedly arrived at the Ocean Center. The mood suddenly changed. Upon realizing that his star had been convinced, Bischoff began to relax. “Once he got to the building, I recall a sense of calm,” he reveals. “All of the anxiety, all of the tension, all of the worry, all of the effort to make sure things stayed quiet...all of that just kind of dissipated. It was like fog lifting when the sun comes out - it all just went away. I was thinking, ‘it is what it is, there’s nothing more I can do...so let’s just roll with it’.” To cement the turn, Bollea knew, he would have to deliver a monumental post-match promo to explain his actions. While typically, he enjoyed using Bischoff as a sounding board to rehearse interviews, the need for complete privacy - on this occasion - was unquestionably paramount. And so, away from prying eyes - and ears - the two met up in the most unglamorous of clandestine locations - a utility closet. In the midst of the run-through, Bischoff stopped to emphasize an important point: When you grab that microphone, I want you to say...‘this is the beginning of the new...world...order’. The phrase - ‘new world order’ - lingered auspiciously in the air. Bischoff surprised himself with the utterance, realizing slowly that the term encapsulated everything that the invasion storyline could represent. In 1990, then-president George H.W. Bush famously utilized the same expression in a speech to Congress, although its origin could actually be traced back to the 28th President, Woodrow Wilson. But if Bischoff was unsure as to the source of his spontaneous inspiration, perhaps the answer could be found closer to home - on the preceding Nitro, just six days earlier, announcer Larry Zybysko serendipitously made the following proclamation: “This Sunday, I promise you, there will be a new world order of wrestling…” Fans at the Ocean Center waited anxiously to see if Zybysko’s prophecy would materialize; for after all the hoopla, it was suddenly time for the main event. Before the opening bell, the audience was already on its feet for ring announcer@Michael_Buffer’s pre-match introductions. As Hall and Nash sauntered to the ring for The Hostile Takeover match, Buffer set the scene with theatrical aplomb: “Ladies and gentleman, at this time, let me introduce the men whose plan and goal is to takeover the WCW with force and hostility. We were told there would be three of these interlopers, and I must apologize as I have been informed - as you can see - there are only two. Ladies and gentleman, introducing...the Outsiiiiiders!” In a moment that played off perfectly on television, Sting’s entrance music began - and quickly ended - as ‘Mean Gene’ Okerlund traipsed cautiously into the ring. After exchanging quizzical looks with Buffer and referee Randy Anderson, Okerlund confronted the Outsiders to get some answers, an inspired plot device designed to build the tension even further. “Gentleman,” began Okerlund, “if I could have your attention...I don’t have police protection with me at this time, but I wanna confront you in front of this full house here at the Ocean Center, and millions of others watching across the country and around the world. I don’t see three men here tonight. Where is your partner?” Responding in a manner consistent with their WWF characters, Hall and Nash assured Okerlund that the third man was present - and ready. “Let me tell you something,” announced a confident Nash, “we got enough to handle it right now, right here.” Once more, Sting’s entrance music blared from the arena speakers, this time preceding the man himself, accompanied by Luger and Savage. “Here we go!” screamed color commentator Bobby Heenan as the wrestlers passed an unusually large contingent of security personnel on the entrance way. “The war is on!” Less than two minutes into the bout, Luger collapsed to the outside, a move in accordance with Nash’s plan to even the sides before the climactic reveal. “Now it’s two against two!” yelled Heenan. After a brief delay, the concerned crowd looked on as Luger left the arena on a stretcher, leaving Sting and Savage alone to fight valiantly for WCW. As the match progressed, the contemptible Outsiders used every trick to stall their opponent’s momentum, until a revitalized Savage began a furious rally at the fifteen-and-a-half minute mark. The invaders were suddenly down, but not out - as with the referee distracted, Nash landed a low-blow to bring the Macho Man to his knees. All four men lay on the canvas, exhausted, as referee Anderson started a ten count. As Anderson yelled ‘ONE’, several rows of spectators rose to their feet. Within seconds, the reaction diffused from section to section, the noise level increasing with each passing beat. On the live broadcast, viewers at home caught glimpse of a familiar figure making his way down the ramp. “Hulkamania!” screamed Dusty Rhodes on commentary while Hogan walked methodically towards the ring. Noticeably, the Hulkster seemed oddly disaffected - even out-of-character - but after exchanging the briefest of glances with the crowd, he continued stride with the din reaching fever pitch. “Whose side is he on?” bellowed Heenan, a question that seemed inexplicable given the history of Hogan’s on-screen persona. “Whose side is he on?” repeated Heenan, who as longtime fans could recall, had opposed Hogan for years as a manager in the WWF. For that reason, the comment flew over the heads of most (but not all) viewers; meanwhile, the live crowd was cheering as if their team had won the World Series. Nash and Hall retreated to the floor as Hogan tore off his shirt, an apparent signal that the archetypal good guy was here to save the day again. “Who’s bad now boys?” taunted play-by-play man Tony Schiavone on commentary, confident that WCW’s honor was no longer in jeopardy. Savage lay prone on the mat as Hogan surveyed the scene. Above the cheapest of cheap seats, peeking through a curtain with palpable anticipation, was Eric Bischoff. “I knew that something big was about to happen,” he recalls. “It was either gonna be a big failure, or a big success.” Seemingly out of nowhere, with his unsuspecting devotees enveloped in celebration, Hulk backed up to the corner. With the coldness of a serial killer, the once-honorable hero shockingly shoved referee Anderson, and executed his patented finishing move - the leg drop - to the helpless Macho Man below. The audience became completely, utterly unglued. “I was standing back with the announcers,” remembers Michelle Baines, newly hired as a production assistant. “One of the producers turned to me and said, ‘you need to go to the back’. “‘I said, ‘what do you mean?’ “She said, ‘it’s gonna get ugly real quick’.” “She was right - the crowd turned ugly quick.” In retrospect, it was clear that even as Hogan’s body approached the canvas - contact with Savage just milliseconds away - the gravity of the assault started to hit home. “What has he done?” questioned a crestfallen Rhodes, “is he the third man? What the hell is going on here?” Heenan was even more direct - “Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW! He is the third man in this picture!” A breathless Schiavone could barely muster more than three words: Oh My God, he repeated. Oh My God, he continued, as Hogan high-fived a grinning Hall and Nash. The courageous Sting, stumbling to his feet to stop the injustice, was quickly dispatched, and in the coup de grace, Hogan tossed Anderson to the floor. Sardonically, he covered Savage for the pin, the contest now clearly a farce. “I hope you love it,” a disappointed Rhodes wailed on commentary. “You just sold your soul to the devil.” The third man was a mystery no more, and Hall, Nash, and Hogan raised their hands in victory to a genuinely astonished audience. The immediate outrage, which first gave way to shock, was now inspiring unmitigated rage. Simultaneously, the evil trio continued to taunt, pose, and antagonize while the announcers lamented WCW’s future. As Sting and Savage hobbled back to the locker room, a visibly distraught Okerlund returned to conduct an explanatory interview, based around the one Hogan and Bischoff had mapped out earlier. “Mean Gene,” commanded Hogan, “the first thing you need to do is to tell these people to shut up if you wanna hear what I gotta say.” For the next four minutes, Hogan rationalized his turn with remarkable clarity. “The first thing you gotta realize, brother, is this right here is the future of wrestling. You can call this the new...world...order of wrestling. These two men right here came from a great big organization up north, and everybody was wondering who the third man was. Well, who knows more about that organization than me, brother? I made that organization a monster. I made people rich up there. I made the people that ran that organization rich up there. And when it all came to pass, the name Hulk Hogan, the man Hulk Hogan, got bigger than the whole organization!” Bischoff watched from his secretive seat in amazement - he had not seen, nor had anyone, this intensity of emotion on display at a wrestling show before. It was almost as if the assembled masses had lost themselves in the performance, perhaps even forgetting, if only for a moment, that they were witnesses to a pre-determined event. Hogan’s actions had ostensibly interrupted their critical faculties; in other words, they had suspended their disbelief by reacting to the incident as if it were real. Moreover, the shock was manifesting in the most volatile ways imaginable, as in an incident edited out of future showings of the pay-per-view, a rather large man, likely intoxicated, ran into the ring before being knocked down by Hall and Nash. Concurrently, a stream of debris rained down from the stands, with one object hitting Okerlund, and the rest filling the ring in a stunningly unique visual. Hogan continued as the trash piled up around him, even referencing Ted Turner in his diatribe: “Billionaire Ted promised me movies brother. Billionaire Ted promised me millions of dollars. And Billionaire Ted promised me world caliber matches. And as far as Billionaire Ted, Eric Bischoff, and the entire WCW goes, I’m bored brother! That’s why I want these two guys here, these so-called Outsiders. These are the men I want as my friends. They are the new blood of professional wrestling, and not only are we going to take over the whole wrestling business...with Hulk Hogan, the new blood and the monsters with me, we will destroy everything in our path, Mean Gene.” “Look at all the crap in this ring,” responded Okerlund. “This is what’s in the future for you if you want to hang around the likes of this man Hall, and this man Nash.” Hogan raised his finger as if to stop the interviewer midstream, the perfect line instantly coming to mind. “As far as I’m concerned, all this crap in the ring represents these fans out here,” he boomed defiantly. “For two years, I held my head high,” ranted Hogan, alluding to his rather uninspired WCW tenure. “I did everything for the charities. I did everything for the kids. And the reception I got when I came out here, you fans can stick it brother! Because if it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, you people wouldn’t be here. If it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff would still be selling meat from a truck in Minneapolis. And if it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, all of these ‘Johnny come latelys’ that you see out here wrestling wouldn’t be here. I was selling the world out, brother, while they were bumming gas to put in their car to get to high school!” In closing, Hogan foreshadowed the future state of affairs in WCW with a prophetic preview of coming storylines: “With Hulk Hogan and the new world organization of wrestling, brother...me and the new blood by my side...whatcha gonna do when the new world organization runs wild on you? Whatcha gonna do? What are you gonna do??” Despite mistakenly bungling the ‘new world order’ phrase at the conclusion of his speech, Hogan still provided the perfect punctuation to a sensational heel turn. His promo, inarguably the most dynamic of his career, came across as strikingly authentic (“it felt real, because it was real’,” offered a proud Eric Bischoff upon reflection years later). On commentary, Schiavone - who most inspiredly suggested that Hogan had planned to double-cross WCW all along, since his debut in 1994 no less - added to the realism with some mournful final comments: “We have seen the end of Hulkamania,” he grieved. “Hulk Hogan, you can go to hell! We’re outta here. Straight to hell.” ---- To the layman, there appeared an obvious explanation for the feverous crowd response that accompanied Hogan’s turn. Clearly, the element of surprise - one of the key elements of Nitro’s success - had been exploited to a masterful degree (“nobody on earth thought that the third man was going to be Hulk Hogan,” highlights Nash). To Kevin Sullivan, however, there were several layers of story at play. “People thought that it was an invasion from the WWF,” he begins, implying that the success of the angle could be correlated to its realism. “They really bought into it, and when Hogan turned heel...they were sure of it. “So while Hogan gets the credit for the reaction, it was [Nash and Hall] who set the whole thing up. Those guys built the foundation of heat, and when Hogan came down, it just blew up.” “We were red hot coming off WWF television,” agrees Nash, “and then you had the biggest turn in the world on top of that. The biggest babyface of all-time finally turned heel!” To the ever-meticulous Sullivan, always a keen observer of the nuances present in a wrestling angle, an often overlooked element was also noteworthy. “He did it to Randy [Savage],” the booker emphasizes, speaking of Hogan’s betrayal. “People knew there was real-life heat there. That helped out too, but everyone played an intricate part. “Lightning...you can’t catch it in a bottle but one time.” The above is an excerpt from the book, NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW. Amazon USA: Amazon UK: Amazon Canada: Amazon Australia: 17+ Hour Audiobook Available at Audible and Apple Books Audible USA: Audible UK: Audible Canada: Audible Australia: Apple Books: Ultimate NITRO Bundle: Deep Cuts - Wrestling Stories in 60 Seconds! David Penzer AdFreeShows.com 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff On This Day in WWE Allan Conrad the Mortgage Guy IandrewDiceClay WCW Archive Because WCW WCW4Life ᴀʀᴅᴀ Öᴄᴀʟ 90s WWE Secrets of WCW Nitro #WCW #nWo #HulkHogan #BashattheBeach #HeelTurn #Wrestling #WrestlingBooks #OTD #WWE #WorldChampionshipWrestling #Nitro
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Ch. 14 of NITRO: The Inside Story of Hulk Hogan's heel turn - #OTD 30 Years Ago (7/7/96)! AS DAY BECAME NIGHT at the Sullivan home, Bollea deliberated his participation in the pay-per-view. “Everybody was telling him that it was the wrong thing to do,” Kevin Sullivan says. “He was getting booed out of the arena, but they were all saying, ‘this is gonna kill him’.” With no end to the discussion in sight, the wily booker casually suggested that Bollea and Young make use of his two guest rooms until the morning. “I isolated [them],” Sullivan admits. “I was just afraid that at the last minute, he was going to use his creative control [clause] and pull out.” If Sullivan could deliver Bollea to the arena by showtime, the finish of the match called for Hogan to star in the most dramatic of surprise endings. In a sequence devised by Kevin Nash, an unannounced Hulkster would shockingly interfere in the match, but only after the heels gained an unfair advantage through cheating. It would be a brilliant misdirection, Nash thought, as fans would instinctively believe Hogan’s appearance to be in support of the babyface team. “I knew there were gonna be 55 different ideas,” Nash says, thinking back to the eve of the event, “[so] I actually put a lot of thought into it. I called Scott [Hall] two or three days before that, and said ‘what do you think about this?’ “We had to make it a 2-on-2 match with Lex Luger getting injured [during the match] and going out. We would cheat to get Macho [Man] in trouble and all of a sudden Hulk comes down, which of course would mean ‘ok, here comes Hulk to make the save’. [Hall] said, ‘I love it’.” There was, however, the looming possibility that Bollea could reject his turn at the eleventh hour. Thinking ahead, Eric Bischoff developed a contingency plan in which Sting would play the role, ultimately revealing himself - despite not having prior experience with the WWF - as the ‘third man’ instead. “I remember Eric came in to the locker room,” recalls Marcus 'Buff' Bagwell, “and said [to Sting], ‘I wanna talk to you about something’. I could hear them going over the idea, and then when they got done, Sting told me what they were talking about. He said that [Eric said], ‘there are only two guys that could turn heel where it would really matter’. That would be Hogan and Sting.” “He was offering Sting the job first, [as I recall], and Sting didn’t wanna do it. He didn’t really say it wouldn’t work, but he just said, ‘it doesn’t intrigue me. I don’t wanna do it’.” According to Andre Freitas, a special effects artist who worked in costume design and character development for WCW, the proposed Sting swerve was to involve the use of a doppelganger - or ‘phony’ Sting - presumably in an effort to fool fans that the real character had switched sides. “That was their original plan,” says Freitas. “Eric showed me a picture of Jeff Farmer (a lower-card wrestler) and said ‘can you make him Sting?’ I told him that they have similar bodies...then we looked at Sting’s hair and Jeff’s hair...and talked about all that stuff. I did a head cast for [Farmer] and some prosthetic and test make-ups. But when they secured Hogan, we didn’t do [the angle].” ----------- Amazingly, even as Bash at the Beach began, Bischoff continued to consider Plan B. “I remember walking by this perforated wall in the Ocean Center,” divulges Nash, “and Eric said to me, ‘Hulk is with Sullivan, and he’s not sure he’s gonna do it yet’. It was up in the air.” Meanwhile, viewers of the pay-per-view - and, for that matter, WCW’s own production staff - speculated as to the identity of the third man. “They were trying to ‘work’ everyone,” asserts Jason Douglas, a WCW producer backstage at his first pay-per-view event. “‘Rocket’ (staff member Rick Sancher) came up to me - they were kinda testing me because I was new on the road - and said ‘hey, I think it’s gonna be [WWF wrestler] Bret Hart’. I guess it was to see if I would leak something, and so I was just like ‘oh, cool, Bret Hart’.” In reality, aside from Bischoff, Bollea, Young, Hall, Nash and Sullivan, the turn would be concealed from everyone - even the announcers, according to orders from Bischoff - as to ensure their most realistic reactions. With less than an hour before the main event began, production staffer Woody Kearce discovered a revealing clue in the parking lot. A Hulk Hogan motorcycle had appeared mysteriously in one of the spaces, sparking another round of backstage conjecture. Finally, with what Sullivan recalls as “thirty minutes” and Bischoff remembers as “forty-five to sixty minutes” left on the air, Bollea belatedly arrived at the Ocean Center. The mood suddenly changed. Upon realizing that his star had been convinced, Bischoff began to relax. “Once he got to the building, I recall a sense of calm,” he reveals. “All of the anxiety, all of the tension, all of the worry, all of the effort to make sure things stayed quiet...all of that just kind of dissipated. It was like fog lifting when the sun comes out - it all just went away. I was thinking, ‘it is what it is, there’s nothing more I can do...so let’s just roll with it’.” To cement the turn, Bollea knew, he would have to deliver a monumental post-match promo to explain his actions. While typically, he enjoyed using Bischoff as a sounding board to rehearse interviews, the need for complete privacy - on this occasion - was unquestionably paramount. And so, away from prying eyes - and ears - the two met up in the most unglamorous of clandestine locations - a utility closet. In the midst of the run-through, Bischoff stopped to emphasize an important point: When you grab that microphone, I want you to say...‘this is the beginning of the new...world...order’. The phrase - ‘new world order’ - lingered auspiciously in the air. Bischoff surprised himself with the utterance, realizing slowly that the term encapsulated everything that the invasion storyline could represent. In 1990, then-president George H.W. Bush famously utilized the same expression in a speech to Congress, although its origin could actually be traced back to the 28th President, Woodrow Wilson. But if Bischoff was unsure as to the source of his spontaneous inspiration, perhaps the answer could be found closer to home - on the preceding Nitro, just six days earlier, announcer Larry Zybysko serendipitously made the following proclamation: “This Sunday, I promise you, there will be a new world order of wrestling…” Fans at the Ocean Center waited anxiously to see if Zybysko’s prophecy would materialize; for after all the hoopla, it was suddenly time for the main event. Before the opening bell, the audience was already on its feet for ring announcer@Michael_Buffer’s pre-match introductions. As Hall and Nash sauntered to the ring for The Hostile Takeover match, Buffer set the scene with theatrical aplomb: “Ladies and gentleman, at this time, let me introduce the men whose plan and goal is to takeover the WCW with force and hostility. We were told there would be three of these interlopers, and I must apologize as I have been informed - as you can see - there are only two. Ladies and gentleman, introducing...the Outsiiiiiders!” In a moment that played off perfectly on television, Sting’s entrance music began - and quickly ended - as ‘Mean Gene’ Okerlund traipsed cautiously into the ring. After exchanging quizzical looks with Buffer and referee Randy Anderson, Okerlund confronted the Outsiders to get some answers, an inspired plot device designed to build the tension even further. “Gentleman,” began Okerlund, “if I could have your attention...I don’t have police protection with me at this time, but I wanna confront you in front of this full house here at the Ocean Center, and millions of others watching across the country and around the world. I don’t see three men here tonight. Where is your partner?” Responding in a manner consistent with their WWF characters, Hall and Nash assured Okerlund that the third man was present - and ready. “Let me tell you something,” announced a confident Nash, “we got enough to handle it right now, right here.” Once more, Sting’s entrance music blared from the arena speakers, this time preceding the man himself, accompanied by Luger and Savage. “Here we go!” screamed color commentator Bobby Heenan as the wrestlers passed an unusually large contingent of security personnel on the entrance way. “The war is on!” Less than two minutes into the bout, Luger collapsed to the outside, a move in accordance with Nash’s plan to even the sides before the climactic reveal. “Now it’s two against two!” yelled Heenan. After a brief delay, the concerned crowd looked on as Luger left the arena on a stretcher, leaving Sting and Savage alone to fight valiantly for WCW. As the match progressed, the contemptible Outsiders used every trick to stall their opponent’s momentum, until a revitalized Savage began a furious rally at the fifteen-and-a-half minute mark. The invaders were suddenly down, but not out - as with the referee distracted, Nash landed a low-blow to bring the Macho Man to his knees. All four men lay on the canvas, exhausted, as referee Anderson started a ten count. As Anderson yelled ‘ONE’, several rows of spectators rose to their feet. Within seconds, the reaction diffused from section to section, the noise level increasing with each passing beat. On the live broadcast, viewers at home caught glimpse of a familiar figure making his way down the ramp. “Hulkamania!” screamed Dusty Rhodes on commentary while Hogan walked methodically towards the ring. Noticeably, the Hulkster seemed oddly disaffected - even out-of-character - but after exchanging the briefest of glances with the crowd, he continued stride with the din reaching fever pitch. “Whose side is he on?” bellowed Heenan, a question that seemed inexplicable given the history of Hogan’s on-screen persona. “Whose side is he on?” repeated Heenan, who as longtime fans could recall, had opposed Hogan for years as a manager in the WWF. For that reason, the comment flew over the heads of most (but not all) viewers; meanwhile, the live crowd was cheering as if their team had won the World Series. Nash and Hall retreated to the floor as Hogan tore off his shirt, an apparent signal that the archetypal good guy was here to save the day again. “Who’s bad now boys?” taunted play-by-play man Tony Schiavone on commentary, confident that WCW’s honor was no longer in jeopardy. Savage lay prone on the mat as Hogan surveyed the scene. Above the cheapest of cheap seats, peeking through a curtain with palpable anticipation, was Eric Bischoff. “I knew that something big was about to happen,” he recalls. “It was either gonna be a big failure, or a big success.” Seemingly out of nowhere, with his unsuspecting devotees enveloped in celebration, Hulk backed up to the corner. With the coldness of a serial killer, the once-honorable hero shockingly shoved referee Anderson, and executed his patented finishing move - the leg drop - to the helpless Macho Man below. The audience became completely, utterly unglued. “I was standing back with the announcers,” remembers Michelle Baines, newly hired as a production assistant. “One of the producers turned to me and said, ‘you need to go to the back’. “‘I said, ‘what do you mean?’ “She said, ‘it’s gonna get ugly real quick’.” “She was right - the crowd turned ugly quick.” In retrospect, it was clear that even as Hogan’s body approached the canvas - contact with Savage just milliseconds away - the gravity of the assault started to hit home. “What has he done?” questioned a crestfallen Rhodes, “is he the third man? What the hell is going on here?” Heenan was even more direct - “Hulk Hogan has betrayed WCW! He is the third man in this picture!” A breathless Schiavone could barely muster more than three words: Oh My God, he repeated. Oh My God, he continued, as Hogan high-fived a grinning Hall and Nash. The courageous Sting, stumbling to his feet to stop the injustice, was quickly dispatched, and in the coup de grace, Hogan tossed Anderson to the floor. Sardonically, he covered Savage for the pin, the contest now clearly a farce. “I hope you love it,” a disappointed Rhodes wailed on commentary. “You just sold your soul to the devil.” The third man was a mystery no more, and Hall, Nash, and Hogan raised their hands in victory to a genuinely astonished audience. The immediate outrage, which first gave way to shock, was now inspiring unmitigated rage. Simultaneously, the evil trio continued to taunt, pose, and antagonize while the announcers lamented WCW’s future. As Sting and Savage hobbled back to the locker room, a visibly distraught Okerlund returned to conduct an explanatory interview, based around the one Hogan and Bischoff had mapped out earlier. “Mean Gene,” commanded Hogan, “the first thing you need to do is to tell these people to shut up if you wanna hear what I gotta say.” For the next four minutes, Hogan rationalized his turn with remarkable clarity. “The first thing you gotta realize, brother, is this right here is the future of wrestling. You can call this the new...world...order of wrestling. These two men right here came from a great big organization up north, and everybody was wondering who the third man was. Well, who knows more about that organization than me, brother? I made that organization a monster. I made people rich up there. I made the people that ran that organization rich up there. And when it all came to pass, the name Hulk Hogan, the man Hulk Hogan, got bigger than the whole organization!” Bischoff watched from his secretive seat in amazement - he had not seen, nor had anyone, this intensity of emotion on display at a wrestling show before. It was almost as if the assembled masses had lost themselves in the performance, perhaps even forgetting, if only for a moment, that they were witnesses to a pre-determined event. Hogan’s actions had ostensibly interrupted their critical faculties; in other words, they had suspended their disbelief by reacting to the incident as if it were real. Moreover, the shock was manifesting in the most volatile ways imaginable, as in an incident edited out of future showings of the pay-per-view, a rather large man, likely intoxicated, ran into the ring before being knocked down by Hall and Nash. Concurrently, a stream of debris rained down from the stands, with one object hitting Okerlund, and the rest filling the ring in a stunningly unique visual. Hogan continued as the trash piled up around him, even referencing Ted Turner in his diatribe: “Billionaire Ted promised me movies brother. Billionaire Ted promised me millions of dollars. And Billionaire Ted promised me world caliber matches. And as far as Billionaire Ted, Eric Bischoff, and the entire WCW goes, I’m bored brother! That’s why I want these two guys here, these so-called Outsiders. These are the men I want as my friends. They are the new blood of professional wrestling, and not only are we going to take over the whole wrestling business...with Hulk Hogan, the new blood and the monsters with me, we will destroy everything in our path, Mean Gene.” “Look at all the crap in this ring,” responded Okerlund. “This is what’s in the future for you if you want to hang around the likes of this man Hall, and this man Nash.” Hogan raised his finger as if to stop the interviewer midstream, the perfect line instantly coming to mind. “As far as I’m concerned, all this crap in the ring represents these fans out here,” he boomed defiantly. “For two years, I held my head high,” ranted Hogan, alluding to his rather uninspired WCW tenure. “I did everything for the charities. I did everything for the kids. And the reception I got when I came out here, you fans can stick it brother! Because if it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, you people wouldn’t be here. If it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff would still be selling meat from a truck in Minneapolis. And if it wasn’t for Hulk Hogan, all of these ‘Johnny come latelys’ that you see out here wrestling wouldn’t be here. I was selling the world out, brother, while they were bumming gas to put in their car to get to high school!” In closing, Hogan foreshadowed the future state of affairs in WCW with a prophetic preview of coming storylines: “With Hulk Hogan and the new world organization of wrestling, brother...me and the new blood by my side...whatcha gonna do when the new world organization runs wild on you? Whatcha gonna do? What are you gonna do??” Despite mistakenly bungling the ‘new world order’ phrase at the conclusion of his speech, Hogan still provided the perfect punctuation to a sensational heel turn. His promo, inarguably the most dynamic of his career, came across as strikingly authentic (“it felt real, because it was real’,” offered a proud Eric Bischoff upon reflection years later). On commentary, Schiavone - who most inspiredly suggested that Hogan had planned to double-cross WCW all along, since his debut in 1994 no less - added to the realism with some mournful final comments: “We have seen the end of Hulkamania,” he grieved. “Hulk Hogan, you can go to hell! We’re outta here. Straight to hell.” ---- To the layman, there appeared an obvious explanation for the feverous crowd response that accompanied Hogan’s turn. Clearly, the element of surprise - one of the key elements of Nitro’s success - had been exploited to a masterful degree (“nobody on earth thought that the third man was going to be Hulk Hogan,” highlights Nash). To Kevin Sullivan, however, there were several layers of story at play. “People thought that it was an invasion from the WWF,” he begins, implying that the success of the angle could be correlated to its realism. “They really bought into it, and when Hogan turned heel...they were sure of it. “So while Hogan gets the credit for the reaction, it was [Nash and Hall] who set the whole thing up. Those guys built the foundation of heat, and when Hogan came down, it just blew up.” “We were red hot coming off WWF television,” agrees Nash, “and then you had the biggest turn in the world on top of that. The biggest babyface of all-time finally turned heel!” To the ever-meticulous Sullivan, always a keen observer of the nuances present in a wrestling angle, an often overlooked element was also noteworthy. “He did it to Randy [Savage],” the booker emphasizes, speaking of Hogan’s betrayal. “People knew there was real-life heat there. That helped out too, but everyone played an intricate part. “Lightning...you can’t catch it in a bottle but one time.” The above is an excerpt from the book, NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW. Amazon USA: Amazon UK: Amazon Canada: Amazon Australia: 17+ Hour Audiobook Available at Audible and Apple Books Audible USA: Audible UK: Audible Canada: Audible Australia: Apple Books: Ultimate NITRO Bundle: Deep Cuts - Wrestling Stories in 60 Seconds! David Penzer AdFreeShows.com 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff On This Day in WWE Allan Conrad the Mortgage Guy IandrewDiceClay WCW Archive Because WCW WCW4Life ᴀʀᴅᴀ Öᴄᴀʟ 90s WWE Secrets of WCW Nitro #WCW #nWo #HulkHogan #BashattheBeach #HeelTurn #Wrestling #WrestlingBooks #OTD #WWE #WorldChampionshipWrestling #Nitro

WCWNitroBook

53,506 views • 1 month ago

"Jews and Israel Need to Recognize We’re Essentially Alone” Yesterday was wild. Not because of anything Israel or Jews did, but because of something Catholics and the larger anti-Israel world revealed. In one sentence: Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa wanted preferential treatment on Palm Sunday and instead received equal treatment. That’s it. That was the story. All religious sites in Jerusalem without adequate shelters faced restrictions due to active Iranian ballistic missile threats. Iranian missile fragments hit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself—on rooftops in the compound—just weeks ago. Narrow Old City streets mean no quick rescue in a mass-casualty strike. So: Kotel empty (Jews haven’t been able to pray there in weeks), Al-Aqsa restricted (Muslims haven’t been able to pray there in weeks), and Holy Sepulchre blocked for large gatherings. The big Palm Sunday procession was already canceled by the Patriarchate itself days earlier. Pizzaballa and a small group tried a private entry. They were turned back politely according to the Cardinal himself. Netanyahu clarified it was out of “special concern for his safety,” with no malicious intent, and quickly reversed to grant full access for Holy Week. Catholics are now getting preferential treatment. Apparently Catholics complaining gets more juice in the Jewish state. Yet the Cardinal felt aggrieved. So he and his PR team unleashed a wildly divisive and misleading statement calling it a “grave precedent” that “disregards the sensibilities of billions” and a “grossly disproportionate measure.” That language lit the match and went viral before the Iran context or equal-treatment facts could land. And here's the intentional misleading part: This is the same Cardinal who complied with full church closures in Jerusalem for all functions during the entire COVID year. Private or public, it was fine then under health pretexts. But temporary wartime security now—with real rockets hitting the church compound—is suddenly an outrage? An outrage that deserves a statement he KNEW would case a firestorm? Is that Christlike? I'm Jewish, but that feel very forgiving. I don't see a single cheek turned there. He knew he was asking for special treatment. His later walk-back (“misunderstanding,” prayed calmly elsewhere) came after the damage was done. One of the first accounts I saw promoting the context-free statement on X was the Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan—their White House Correspondent, way out of her lane, reposting it with zero context and journalistic ethics. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence she’s a devout Catholic. She chose to report it as a Catholic, not as a journalist who knows the full context. Then the pile-on started. Practically the entire Daily Wire roster (past and present)—Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Jeremy Boering, and the grifters they brought in—joined in. They all failed yesterday’s test (Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan didn't seem to be online). They weren’t alone. Ambassador Mike Huckabee—a great friend to Israel—didn’t learn from his Taybeh tumble last July, where he rushed to call alleged settler incidents “terror” needing harsh consequences before facts settled that it had NOTHING to do with them. Ted Cruz threw gasoline on the fire too. “Stalwart friends of Israel” sending verbal catapults at the Kotel. This is what it’s like for Jews and Israel: The world blames you for something someone else (the Cardinal) did and forces an apology, which Israel gave. The Cardinal couldn’t take one holy day of equal treatment, so he blamed the Jews. Super retro Catholicism. Israel gives Christians equal status, equal rights, and equal treatment… as it should. Weird how Syria slaughtering Christians pales in comparison to equal treatment for Christians from Israel. Quite STRANGE how Il Papa seems more aggrieved by Israel lately… Notice the juxtaposition: Christians have brawled for centuries inside their own holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—over every inch of control. So much so MUSLIMS literally control the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That Status Quo exists because Christians couldn’t govern it peacefully among themselves. But Heaven forbid a Jewish police officer treats the Cardinal the same way he treats a Rabbi or Imam under real Iranian threats that hit the church itself. Suddenly Catholics, evangelicals, and parts of the right unite like nothing else. Their reflexive Jew-hatred—or at least this anti-Israel pile-on—is the only glue that brings them together. It felt VERY retro yesterday. Jews around the world: Do you see it now? How many Catholics, Christians, or others brought water to the fire and corrected the Cardinal? And how many brought kerosene instead? Also, not to miss an opportunity, Muslims were conspicuously silent about their own restrictions. Nobody blamed the man who started it all. While the perception is that Jews are weak, they couldn’t last a single day experiencing life as a Jew. Yesterday proved it: No one launched a war of annihilation against Christians on Easter like Israel faced on Yom Kippur 1973. They haven’t watched Christians massacred on Christmas with the world cheering and justifying it like Jews experienced on Simchat Torah 2023. Equal treatment is enough to trigger the tantrum. Jews were left to fend for themselves. But guess what? *Jocko voice* GOOD. It’s not that we’re alone. That would be fine. Preferable, even. It’s that yesterday clarified how many are so actively against us—waiting for any excuse, cheering like ghouls when the match gets lit and applied to the bonfire of Jew-hatred. Here’s the thing about the New Jew: We see it clearly now, and we say “Good!” Don’t hide your hate. Bring it into the open. The ones we’re not sure of have always been the most dangerous. Thanks to yesterday, the fog is gone. Now we know. That’s what we’ll be talking about at our Seders this week. You think Israel and Jews are a problem now? Just wait until we start agreeing with one another… and acting like it. Happy Passover—because our Seders won’t be a Last Supper anytime soon. Next year in Jerusalem!
7:14

"Jews and Israel Need to Recognize We’re Essentially Alone” Yesterday was wild. Not because of anything Israel or Jews did, but because of something Catholics and the larger anti-Israel world revealed. In one sentence: Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa wanted preferential treatment on Palm Sunday and instead received equal treatment. That’s it. That was the story. All religious sites in Jerusalem without adequate shelters faced restrictions due to active Iranian ballistic missile threats. Iranian missile fragments hit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself—on rooftops in the compound—just weeks ago. Narrow Old City streets mean no quick rescue in a mass-casualty strike. So: Kotel empty (Jews haven’t been able to pray there in weeks), Al-Aqsa restricted (Muslims haven’t been able to pray there in weeks), and Holy Sepulchre blocked for large gatherings. The big Palm Sunday procession was already canceled by the Patriarchate itself days earlier. Pizzaballa and a small group tried a private entry. They were turned back politely according to the Cardinal himself. Netanyahu clarified it was out of “special concern for his safety,” with no malicious intent, and quickly reversed to grant full access for Holy Week. Catholics are now getting preferential treatment. Apparently Catholics complaining gets more juice in the Jewish state. Yet the Cardinal felt aggrieved. So he and his PR team unleashed a wildly divisive and misleading statement calling it a “grave precedent” that “disregards the sensibilities of billions” and a “grossly disproportionate measure.” That language lit the match and went viral before the Iran context or equal-treatment facts could land. And here's the intentional misleading part: This is the same Cardinal who complied with full church closures in Jerusalem for all functions during the entire COVID year. Private or public, it was fine then under health pretexts. But temporary wartime security now—with real rockets hitting the church compound—is suddenly an outrage? An outrage that deserves a statement he KNEW would case a firestorm? Is that Christlike? I'm Jewish, but that feel very forgiving. I don't see a single cheek turned there. He knew he was asking for special treatment. His later walk-back (“misunderstanding,” prayed calmly elsewhere) came after the damage was done. One of the first accounts I saw promoting the context-free statement on X was the Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan—their White House Correspondent, way out of her lane, reposting it with zero context and journalistic ethics. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence she’s a devout Catholic. She chose to report it as a Catholic, not as a journalist who knows the full context. Then the pile-on started. Practically the entire Daily Wire roster (past and present)—Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, Jeremy Boering, and the grifters they brought in—joined in. They all failed yesterday’s test (Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavan didn't seem to be online). They weren’t alone. Ambassador Mike Huckabee—a great friend to Israel—didn’t learn from his Taybeh tumble last July, where he rushed to call alleged settler incidents “terror” needing harsh consequences before facts settled that it had NOTHING to do with them. Ted Cruz threw gasoline on the fire too. “Stalwart friends of Israel” sending verbal catapults at the Kotel. This is what it’s like for Jews and Israel: The world blames you for something someone else (the Cardinal) did and forces an apology, which Israel gave. The Cardinal couldn’t take one holy day of equal treatment, so he blamed the Jews. Super retro Catholicism. Israel gives Christians equal status, equal rights, and equal treatment… as it should. Weird how Syria slaughtering Christians pales in comparison to equal treatment for Christians from Israel. Quite STRANGE how Il Papa seems more aggrieved by Israel lately… Notice the juxtaposition: Christians have brawled for centuries inside their own holiest site, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—over every inch of control. So much so MUSLIMS literally control the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That Status Quo exists because Christians couldn’t govern it peacefully among themselves. But Heaven forbid a Jewish police officer treats the Cardinal the same way he treats a Rabbi or Imam under real Iranian threats that hit the church itself. Suddenly Catholics, evangelicals, and parts of the right unite like nothing else. Their reflexive Jew-hatred—or at least this anti-Israel pile-on—is the only glue that brings them together. It felt VERY retro yesterday. Jews around the world: Do you see it now? How many Catholics, Christians, or others brought water to the fire and corrected the Cardinal? And how many brought kerosene instead? Also, not to miss an opportunity, Muslims were conspicuously silent about their own restrictions. Nobody blamed the man who started it all. While the perception is that Jews are weak, they couldn’t last a single day experiencing life as a Jew. Yesterday proved it: No one launched a war of annihilation against Christians on Easter like Israel faced on Yom Kippur 1973. They haven’t watched Christians massacred on Christmas with the world cheering and justifying it like Jews experienced on Simchat Torah 2023. Equal treatment is enough to trigger the tantrum. Jews were left to fend for themselves. But guess what? *Jocko voice* GOOD. It’s not that we’re alone. That would be fine. Preferable, even. It’s that yesterday clarified how many are so actively against us—waiting for any excuse, cheering like ghouls when the match gets lit and applied to the bonfire of Jew-hatred. Here’s the thing about the New Jew: We see it clearly now, and we say “Good!” Don’t hide your hate. Bring it into the open. The ones we’re not sure of have always been the most dangerous. Thanks to yesterday, the fog is gone. Now we know. That’s what we’ll be talking about at our Seders this week. You think Israel and Jews are a problem now? Just wait until we start agreeing with one another… and acting like it. Happy Passover—because our Seders won’t be a Last Supper anytime soon. Next year in Jerusalem!

Jake Donnelly

43,738 views • 5 months ago

Analyzing Episode 54. Season 2 aka Disruption by Design When you first watch episode 54, your focus immediately goes to how the bad guys keep winning. Be it Ecmel, Boran, Demir - all the aholes seem to be living it up. But scratch the surface, and another concept appears entirely. Destino, Karma, Kader, Fate - call it whatever you want. That's what I want you to remember as we don our Sherlock caps for yet another analysis. I've divided the whole thing into segments based on characters for easier navigation and understanding. So, here goes nothing. * Sadakat One of the characters to truly surprise me this episode was Sadakat. My vitriolic hatred for this woman is no hidden fact, but this one episode managed to make me see her side of things for once. And, maybe even understand her a little. We were all shocked by the scene where Nare, Alya, and Sadakat are talking about Boran and Cihan. I was mostly surprised because, for once, in 54 freaking episodes, Sadakat accepts her fault and doesn't look for a scapegoat. Her dialogues serve to impart extremely important points about herself, Boran, and Cihan, and how her upbringing helped shape the present circumstances. She admits that she was always afraid of the shadow of Ecmel lurking within Boran, which causes her to hand leadership to Cihan and keep Boran away from everything. But, in trying to protect her family and Albora, Sadakat inadvertently brings about the very thing she fears most - Boran becoming another Ecmel. Now, cast your mind back to the very first episode. We're introduced to Sadakat as an evil witch who's evil to Alya from the get-go and absolutely mental about keeping Deniz with the family at all times. I think I finally understand why. Guilt. Sadakat keeps pushing Boran away, until one day he takes it upon himself to go k-word Sulaiman to prove his worth, so to speak, which results in exile for him and supposedly death in a foreign country. Everything she does from that point on is based on years' worth of accumulated guilt. Alya is driving the car that results in the accident, so she wins the 'get the most shit from Sadakat' award immediately. But, again, that's just her guilt exacerbating things. As for Deniz, was Sadakat trying to avoid the same mistake she made with Boran with Deniz by holding on to him by hook or crook? So that Ecmel's shadow would never shape another family member's life again? Yep. That's probably also why she hates the idea of Cihan and Alya, because her guilt forces her to keep protecting Boran even in death. Because how could she allow Boran to lose yet another thing? In short, Sadakat tries to control the future of her family by trying to shape the circumstances, to make Cihan Aga and keep Boran away, but fails spectacularly. Why? Because fate has other plans. Boran was never meant to be kept away, and no matter how much Sadakat toiled as a mother, he was meant to take Ecmel's side over his own flesh and blood. And maybe Sadakat binds everyone else with a promise except herself because she might be the one to end what she started all those years ago. * Cihan Cihan's struggle in this episode was to try to find a way to neutralize Boran's poison. Because he's the reason Cihan's life is unraveling, because he's the man who controls Alya via Deniz. Throughout the episode, it seems like all is lost for him. Alya is forced to give in to Boran's condition, and Sadakat is framed for Vurgun's murder. And while Vurgun keeps his promise to Boran and takes his secrets with him to the grave, his death helps him speak what he could not say in life. It's no coincidence Cihan is the only one to find Vurgun's secret phone stashed in a hidey hole in the wall right after Cihan says he will bury Boran in regret. In this instance, too, we're shown that circumstances are pressing in on Cihan from all sides, but one dusty footstep later, Cihan finally finds what will possibly be the key to defeating Boran. As for Alya, she's Cihan's greatest strength and weakness - as it generally is in love. She comes into his life as an impossibility and ends up becoming his greatest truth. Cihan relents to Alya finding an apartment because he understands her duty to her son. But just as fears things are all out of his control, fate intervenes and gives him the opening he kept ignoring. Why? Because, as Cihan says, a man low enough to kill someone who saved his life is capable of pretty much anything. So, Cihan's course is redirected subtly, too, to a possibility that will help him achieve what he needs most at the time. * Boran Yeah, I don't really care much for the zombie, but this needs to be said. Throw your mind back to how Sadakat says all Boran's calculations turn out wrong. Though he's a sneaky troll who's not entirely as stupid as I thought, karma has a mile-long shit-list on this ahole. First, he records a will video to punish Cihan. He hopes that Cihan will fall for Alya but will forever suffer the pangs of conscience. In doing so, he'd never find completion in his love for Alya and would keep suffering. But, an Amal Bakir turns up at his grave out of the blue, runs into Cihan, and bam - he finds Boran. Which ironically helps Cihan overcome all his guilt pretty quickly. Next up, Alya. The video Boran records to control Alya's life ends up becoming the key to her freedom from him eventually. The one card we know he has now is Deniz, but there's Vurgun's phone to counteract this one now. And, finally, I get the feeling that the zombie has a hand in Meryem turning up like a bad penny out of nowhere. However, this ploy will fail too, because Meryem will have the same effect on Alya that Boran has on Cihan. In other words, destiny has all ends covered here, too. * Alya While there are those in the fandom who'd rather Alya be sick rather than expecting, I think that Alya truly might be pregnant. Here's why. And keep the overall theme of kader in mind as we go through this part. In the scene right before Alya gets dizzy, Kaya tells her, 'I don't know what to say to you, yenge, may God help you.' Then she walks into her office and just as she's about to continue her search for apartments, wham, a wave of dizziness. And right after the dizzy spell, lo and behold, Boran messages her saying, 'Your path can't cross with Cihan, or I take my son.' See, there it is again. That push and pull between circumstance and fate. While mere mortals can shape circumstances, like Boran, there's no interfering with fate. And, what's fate always tried to do in this story? Keep Alya with Cihan. So, how does a pregnancy fit into this angle? Boran doesn't simply want to keep Alya and Cihan separated. He now wants to put an end to their relationship in every way. Because if he can't have Alya, neither will Cihan. He's done everything in his power to try to cut all bonds between CihAl, but every time he tries, fate throws out another trump card. And what's the best way to forge a bond between two people, no one, not even themselves, can break? A child. A link that will bind Alya to Cihan in the most elemental way there is. The perfect personification of Boran's defeat. Now, I may be wrong (wouldn't be the first time), but those are the vibes I keep getting from as early on as ep 47, where Sadakat is the one trying to convince Alya to leave. Besides, maybe baby, fate also has another surprise up its sleeve for Alya *cue Jaws soundtrack* I'm referring to Meryem, of course. Why do we need Meryem in the overall scheme of kader, anyway? Because Alya needs to learn what fate's already taught Cihan. That love is not something you quietly step away from. Nor is it something you protect by distance, or preserve through sacrifice. Cihan has already gone through that trial. He tried to bury his feelings under duty, under guilt, under everything Boran set in motion, but still ended up right back at Alya. Not just by choice alone, but by something stronger than it. Something that kept correcting his path every time he strayed too far from it. And that’s where Meryem comes in. The final piece of the puzzle to make Alya realize she's changed, even though she doesn't know it yet. While she may think she can distance herself from Cihan, her own actions prove her false. Meryem will help remove the illusion in Alya's head that distance is sustainable between herself and Cihan. So you see, even though there are all kinds of mess in the episode, underneath it all is a disruption. Be it in the form of bitter clarity, a hidden phone, a possible new life, or an unexpected return. When things look like chaos but are actually headed towards something much more deliberate - a resolution where the story corrects every path back to where it was always meant to lead. Till later, happy reading, folks. #CihAl #UzakŞehir
1:42

Analyzing Episode 54. Season 2 aka Disruption by Design When you first watch episode 54, your focus immediately goes to how the bad guys keep winning. Be it Ecmel, Boran, Demir - all the aholes seem to be living it up. But scratch the surface, and another concept appears entirely. Destino, Karma, Kader, Fate - call it whatever you want. That's what I want you to remember as we don our Sherlock caps for yet another analysis. I've divided the whole thing into segments based on characters for easier navigation and understanding. So, here goes nothing. * Sadakat One of the characters to truly surprise me this episode was Sadakat. My vitriolic hatred for this woman is no hidden fact, but this one episode managed to make me see her side of things for once. And, maybe even understand her a little. We were all shocked by the scene where Nare, Alya, and Sadakat are talking about Boran and Cihan. I was mostly surprised because, for once, in 54 freaking episodes, Sadakat accepts her fault and doesn't look for a scapegoat. Her dialogues serve to impart extremely important points about herself, Boran, and Cihan, and how her upbringing helped shape the present circumstances. She admits that she was always afraid of the shadow of Ecmel lurking within Boran, which causes her to hand leadership to Cihan and keep Boran away from everything. But, in trying to protect her family and Albora, Sadakat inadvertently brings about the very thing she fears most - Boran becoming another Ecmel. Now, cast your mind back to the very first episode. We're introduced to Sadakat as an evil witch who's evil to Alya from the get-go and absolutely mental about keeping Deniz with the family at all times. I think I finally understand why. Guilt. Sadakat keeps pushing Boran away, until one day he takes it upon himself to go k-word Sulaiman to prove his worth, so to speak, which results in exile for him and supposedly death in a foreign country. Everything she does from that point on is based on years' worth of accumulated guilt. Alya is driving the car that results in the accident, so she wins the 'get the most shit from Sadakat' award immediately. But, again, that's just her guilt exacerbating things. As for Deniz, was Sadakat trying to avoid the same mistake she made with Boran with Deniz by holding on to him by hook or crook? So that Ecmel's shadow would never shape another family member's life again? Yep. That's probably also why she hates the idea of Cihan and Alya, because her guilt forces her to keep protecting Boran even in death. Because how could she allow Boran to lose yet another thing? In short, Sadakat tries to control the future of her family by trying to shape the circumstances, to make Cihan Aga and keep Boran away, but fails spectacularly. Why? Because fate has other plans. Boran was never meant to be kept away, and no matter how much Sadakat toiled as a mother, he was meant to take Ecmel's side over his own flesh and blood. And maybe Sadakat binds everyone else with a promise except herself because she might be the one to end what she started all those years ago. * Cihan Cihan's struggle in this episode was to try to find a way to neutralize Boran's poison. Because he's the reason Cihan's life is unraveling, because he's the man who controls Alya via Deniz. Throughout the episode, it seems like all is lost for him. Alya is forced to give in to Boran's condition, and Sadakat is framed for Vurgun's murder. And while Vurgun keeps his promise to Boran and takes his secrets with him to the grave, his death helps him speak what he could not say in life. It's no coincidence Cihan is the only one to find Vurgun's secret phone stashed in a hidey hole in the wall right after Cihan says he will bury Boran in regret. In this instance, too, we're shown that circumstances are pressing in on Cihan from all sides, but one dusty footstep later, Cihan finally finds what will possibly be the key to defeating Boran. As for Alya, she's Cihan's greatest strength and weakness - as it generally is in love. She comes into his life as an impossibility and ends up becoming his greatest truth. Cihan relents to Alya finding an apartment because he understands her duty to her son. But just as fears things are all out of his control, fate intervenes and gives him the opening he kept ignoring. Why? Because, as Cihan says, a man low enough to kill someone who saved his life is capable of pretty much anything. So, Cihan's course is redirected subtly, too, to a possibility that will help him achieve what he needs most at the time. * Boran Yeah, I don't really care much for the zombie, but this needs to be said. Throw your mind back to how Sadakat says all Boran's calculations turn out wrong. Though he's a sneaky troll who's not entirely as stupid as I thought, karma has a mile-long shit-list on this ahole. First, he records a will video to punish Cihan. He hopes that Cihan will fall for Alya but will forever suffer the pangs of conscience. In doing so, he'd never find completion in his love for Alya and would keep suffering. But, an Amal Bakir turns up at his grave out of the blue, runs into Cihan, and bam - he finds Boran. Which ironically helps Cihan overcome all his guilt pretty quickly. Next up, Alya. The video Boran records to control Alya's life ends up becoming the key to her freedom from him eventually. The one card we know he has now is Deniz, but there's Vurgun's phone to counteract this one now. And, finally, I get the feeling that the zombie has a hand in Meryem turning up like a bad penny out of nowhere. However, this ploy will fail too, because Meryem will have the same effect on Alya that Boran has on Cihan. In other words, destiny has all ends covered here, too. * Alya While there are those in the fandom who'd rather Alya be sick rather than expecting, I think that Alya truly might be pregnant. Here's why. And keep the overall theme of kader in mind as we go through this part. In the scene right before Alya gets dizzy, Kaya tells her, 'I don't know what to say to you, yenge, may God help you.' Then she walks into her office and just as she's about to continue her search for apartments, wham, a wave of dizziness. And right after the dizzy spell, lo and behold, Boran messages her saying, 'Your path can't cross with Cihan, or I take my son.' See, there it is again. That push and pull between circumstance and fate. While mere mortals can shape circumstances, like Boran, there's no interfering with fate. And, what's fate always tried to do in this story? Keep Alya with Cihan. So, how does a pregnancy fit into this angle? Boran doesn't simply want to keep Alya and Cihan separated. He now wants to put an end to their relationship in every way. Because if he can't have Alya, neither will Cihan. He's done everything in his power to try to cut all bonds between CihAl, but every time he tries, fate throws out another trump card. And what's the best way to forge a bond between two people, no one, not even themselves, can break? A child. A link that will bind Alya to Cihan in the most elemental way there is. The perfect personification of Boran's defeat. Now, I may be wrong (wouldn't be the first time), but those are the vibes I keep getting from as early on as ep 47, where Sadakat is the one trying to convince Alya to leave. Besides, maybe baby, fate also has another surprise up its sleeve for Alya *cue Jaws soundtrack* I'm referring to Meryem, of course. Why do we need Meryem in the overall scheme of kader, anyway? Because Alya needs to learn what fate's already taught Cihan. That love is not something you quietly step away from. Nor is it something you protect by distance, or preserve through sacrifice. Cihan has already gone through that trial. He tried to bury his feelings under duty, under guilt, under everything Boran set in motion, but still ended up right back at Alya. Not just by choice alone, but by something stronger than it. Something that kept correcting his path every time he strayed too far from it. And that’s where Meryem comes in. The final piece of the puzzle to make Alya realize she's changed, even though she doesn't know it yet. While she may think she can distance herself from Cihan, her own actions prove her false. Meryem will help remove the illusion in Alya's head that distance is sustainable between herself and Cihan. So you see, even though there are all kinds of mess in the episode, underneath it all is a disruption. Be it in the form of bitter clarity, a hidden phone, a possible new life, or an unexpected return. When things look like chaos but are actually headed towards something much more deliberate - a resolution where the story corrects every path back to where it was always meant to lead. Till later, happy reading, folks. #CihAl #UzakŞehir

CocoLoco

32,285 views • 5 months 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 ✨

5,502,358 views • 3 years ago

Mike Duggan’s Poisoned Dirt Scandal Is Unraveling The city suspended a contractor for dumping bad dirt into demo holes, and now a sprawling organized crime investigation is underway By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Detroit — An ancient Buddhist proverb says there are three things that cannot long be hidden: The Sun, The Moon, and The Truth. In the “new” Detroit there is now a fourth: The Dirt. The city has quietly put out bid requests to dig up and replace poisoned dirt used by a contractor to fill demolition holes. That contractor, Brian McKinney, was suspended from city work last month after an independent investigation alleged that his company, Gayanga, used contaminated soil from the old Northland Mall to backfill holes in Detroit neighborhoods where houses once stood. McKinney, who once served prison time for weapon and drug possession, has also been banished from the city’s wrecking board pending a final report from the city’s Office of Inspector General. McKinney is appealing his suspension, claiming he got the dirt from a city-approved source. And now the whole sordid affair is starting to unravel. Michigan Enjoyer has since learned that McKinney and the city’s demolition practices are now the subject of a sprawling organized crime investigation. We have also learned that the office of Mayor Mike Duggan has ordered the name and likeness of McKinney and his companies not be mentioned or posted on the city’s social media accounts. That’s a remarkable change by Hizzoner: disappearing the man he once touted at the State of the City address as a model of minority contracting. McKinney donated to politicians, rubbed elbows with Detroit’s high society, and was even appointed to the board of Detroit Institute of Arts. McKinney—a demolition contractor by trade—rose so high in the world of fine art that he was named co-chair of the DIA’s 2024 gala. In just a few short years under Duggan’s tutelage, McKinney also became fantastically wealthy, winning $64 million in city demolition contracts alone. brian mckinney partying He leaves behind a string of angry former employees and subcontractors who claim they’ve been stiffed by McKinney for work provided. Mckinney did not respond to requests for comment on this story. How far this goes is anyone’s guess. According to city records, McKinney’s company tore down approximately 2,500 houses in the city. A random sampling of 40 of those sites revealed that 33 (80%) were filled with toxic fill dirt containing arsenic, chromium, lead, mercury, and cadmium among other potential killers. This isn’t the first instance. Last year, the cost of cleaning up just one poisoned site like this was $60,000. At that price, the city might very well slide back into insolvency. Even Big Oil thinks McKinney is too toxic to deal with. On the city’s southwest side, near the Marathon refinery, sits another hellscape created by McKinney’s company. At least a dozen structures were ground up and dumped in their holes. They remain there, covered in plastic, next to lots where children live. It’s so bad, Gayanga got kicked off the job. “We have hired and onboarded a new demolition contractor,” said Amy Nusbaum, a spokeswoman for Marathon Petroleum Corp. “We are aware that Gayanga Company’s contract was suspended by the City of Detroit.” That’s of little consolation to residents of Liebold Street, who have battled the company and the city for decades over health concerns. “All I want to say is they need to clean up all this,” said Mary, an elderly woman whose grandchild was peeking through the plate glass. “Kid’s can’t play. No sidewalk. Nothing.” “They forgot all about you,” I said. “I guess so.” There is no doubt in my mind that the mayor and the city council knew about the grift in the demolition program. How could they not? I’ve been telling them for years. I sat in their offices and walked them through the documents. I wrote dozens of articles. Did a dozen television reports. So did other media outlets. There was a federal grand jury empaneled. A raid of the Land Bank Authority. A yearslong multi-million-dollar Treasury Department investigation. It all disappeared under Joe Biden, Duggan’s close friend. Now Biden is gone, and Duggan’s moving on. But the people of Detroit are still here and so is the poison. Duggan’s demolition program is quite likely Michigan’s biggest environmental catastrophe of the century. But just like the sun, the truth is finally coming out.
1:52

Mike Duggan’s Poisoned Dirt Scandal Is Unraveling The city suspended a contractor for dumping bad dirt into demo holes, and now a sprawling organized crime investigation is underway By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Detroit — An ancient Buddhist proverb says there are three things that cannot long be hidden: The Sun, The Moon, and The Truth. In the “new” Detroit there is now a fourth: The Dirt. The city has quietly put out bid requests to dig up and replace poisoned dirt used by a contractor to fill demolition holes. That contractor, Brian McKinney, was suspended from city work last month after an independent investigation alleged that his company, Gayanga, used contaminated soil from the old Northland Mall to backfill holes in Detroit neighborhoods where houses once stood. McKinney, who once served prison time for weapon and drug possession, has also been banished from the city’s wrecking board pending a final report from the city’s Office of Inspector General. McKinney is appealing his suspension, claiming he got the dirt from a city-approved source. And now the whole sordid affair is starting to unravel. Michigan Enjoyer has since learned that McKinney and the city’s demolition practices are now the subject of a sprawling organized crime investigation. We have also learned that the office of Mayor Mike Duggan has ordered the name and likeness of McKinney and his companies not be mentioned or posted on the city’s social media accounts. That’s a remarkable change by Hizzoner: disappearing the man he once touted at the State of the City address as a model of minority contracting. McKinney donated to politicians, rubbed elbows with Detroit’s high society, and was even appointed to the board of Detroit Institute of Arts. McKinney—a demolition contractor by trade—rose so high in the world of fine art that he was named co-chair of the DIA’s 2024 gala. In just a few short years under Duggan’s tutelage, McKinney also became fantastically wealthy, winning $64 million in city demolition contracts alone. brian mckinney partying He leaves behind a string of angry former employees and subcontractors who claim they’ve been stiffed by McKinney for work provided. Mckinney did not respond to requests for comment on this story. How far this goes is anyone’s guess. According to city records, McKinney’s company tore down approximately 2,500 houses in the city. A random sampling of 40 of those sites revealed that 33 (80%) were filled with toxic fill dirt containing arsenic, chromium, lead, mercury, and cadmium among other potential killers. This isn’t the first instance. Last year, the cost of cleaning up just one poisoned site like this was $60,000. At that price, the city might very well slide back into insolvency. Even Big Oil thinks McKinney is too toxic to deal with. On the city’s southwest side, near the Marathon refinery, sits another hellscape created by McKinney’s company. At least a dozen structures were ground up and dumped in their holes. They remain there, covered in plastic, next to lots where children live. It’s so bad, Gayanga got kicked off the job. “We have hired and onboarded a new demolition contractor,” said Amy Nusbaum, a spokeswoman for Marathon Petroleum Corp. “We are aware that Gayanga Company’s contract was suspended by the City of Detroit.” That’s of little consolation to residents of Liebold Street, who have battled the company and the city for decades over health concerns. “All I want to say is they need to clean up all this,” said Mary, an elderly woman whose grandchild was peeking through the plate glass. “Kid’s can’t play. No sidewalk. Nothing.” “They forgot all about you,” I said. “I guess so.” There is no doubt in my mind that the mayor and the city council knew about the grift in the demolition program. How could they not? I’ve been telling them for years. I sat in their offices and walked them through the documents. I wrote dozens of articles. Did a dozen television reports. So did other media outlets. There was a federal grand jury empaneled. A raid of the Land Bank Authority. A yearslong multi-million-dollar Treasury Department investigation. It all disappeared under Joe Biden, Duggan’s close friend. Now Biden is gone, and Duggan’s moving on. But the people of Detroit are still here and so is the poison. Duggan’s demolition program is quite likely Michigan’s biggest environmental catastrophe of the century. But just like the sun, the truth is finally coming out.

Michigan Enjoyer

32,342 views • 10 months ago

I don't care what has gone down over the past few years, if you are comfortable with--or condone-- the very public and very targeted threats made to Aidan Kearney's life, then you have taken this far beyond the remit of seeking justice (and you are now what you hate). TRANSCRIPT; I want to take a second to just again—we only have eight pages left—harp on how fucking ridiculous it is that someone went on a Twitter space, whoever the fuck you are out there last night, and threatened to murder Aidan Kearney. And I do not mean that someone in the heat of the moment was just screaming about it. That is not what happened. I'm not playing the clip, I'm not doing it. Even to critique it, I'm not platforming what this person said. I'm going to describe it for you. Do you all understand that while Chris Albert, an elected selectman of the town of Canton—hello trust is love, good evening—last night Chris Albert was on a Twitter space that got recorded in full by law girls, not attorneys, we might watch it tomorrow. And he said, I heard the clip. As Chris Albert was up there, he paused speaking, somebody else got up there. Their identity is not clear right now. They didn't just threaten to murder Aidan Kearney. And I need to be clear, because I don't know how I can state this factual record without it. They did not just threaten to unalive him. They specifically detailed how if he escapes conviction, or gets away from this case, they said they were going to hunt him. And they sounded like they meant it. And that really fucking worries me. It was absolutely over the line. It frankly scared me. All right. It really, really scared me. Because that's straight mafia shit. I don't care. We need to talk about it. This is not okay. It's gone so beyond okay that I am just scared at this point. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop looking into this. Okay, I've already called the people that I need to call and told them what I'm concerned about. Okay. This is absolutely inappropriate. That what I heard last night put it completely over the line. This is out of control. All right. They said this person and Chris Albert laughed. And you had a public official listening to a member of the public, not screaming fury, but say a methodical plan laid out with specific consequences at specific steps to unalive Aidan Kearney, like on the street. That is straight mafia tactics. And I'm worried they're actually going to do it. What the fuck do you even do in that situation? It's gone way too far. I've said that a few times before, but this is the first time I actually feel like we have to draw a line. It just has to stop. This just has to stop like right now. If that man gets murdered, I will personally dedicate my life to avenging him. I don't even know him. He's done some very bad things in my opinion. Okay. Maybe he's done some noble things. I don't know. It's not always black and white. The point is I will dedicate my life to avenging that man. If you people murder him, do not do it. Do not fucking do it. Anything happens to him. I will dedicate my life to exposing it. Don't do it. I owe him nothing, by the way. He didn't take a dime from him if he offered it. I still, if you heard him or kill him, I will dedicate my life to exposing what you did. Don't do it. I didn't really realize the gravity of it. I think it deserves a little bit of commentary. I did not realize the gravity of it until I just spoke about it. I'm really concerned. Like I'm very upset and I'm also deeply troubled by this. On a level I have not been about anything in this case. We have talked about some really horrifying stuff happening. Every single bit of it, I was like, well, there's evil in the world. We have to confront it and fix it. This is different. Really different. We cannot have it. We cannot have it. I don't even know what to do. Because it's kind of out of my hands. I mean, I can call the FBI, I can say they're gonna murder this man. They probably know already, okay? Who do you think they called probably first thing this morning? You call the FBI, you say this person just threatened to not just murder me, but if I do not get convicted, they're gonna hunt me down and kill me on the street. They know. But what are you gonna do? You can't put him in witness protection. People are gonna be like, where did he go? You have to, the only option is to take out the threat. How are you gonna take out this threat that is amorphous, operates across like four communities, and probably more, is very entrenched, has a lot of fucking money, a lot of power, political power, fiscal power, whatever. I don't know what to do. If a single person gets hurt, I will go, I won't stop. I will go all the way to Washington. I will walk there until my shoes run through. I have a really bad feeling about all this, and something has to happen. I don't know, I don't know if the DOJ is gonna do it. This might prompt them to do it. I'm telling you, if you start threatening to murder people, they will move. And they'll collect chatter on the wire too. They're not gonna let you murder him. I'm telling you, they're not gonna let it happen. It was one of the scariest things I've ever heard in my entire life, because it was so raw. Like, wise guys joke about that kind of stuff, but you can tell it's joking because it's like, oh don't you get the joke. That was not a joke. And it wasn't Italian either, it was Irish. Because first of all, the Italian mob would never talk like that. On a fucking Twitter space? Are you out of your fucking mind? No, this was some fucking cowboy shit. It's really bad. It makes me not want to do this anymore. I've never had this feeling about anything we've covered. I need a minute. I don't think there's anything I can say. I don't think there's any systemic solution I can offer you. I don't think there's any plan I have. I think you should just pray. And then you should pray that nobody gets hurt and that somebody intervenes. Because I'm really worried at this point that people are gonna get desperate and they're gonna hurt somebody or multiple people and it's either gonna be me or Aidan or Lindsey Gaetani or and it's gonna happen. It's gonna be it's gonna look like something else, but it's gonna be very bad. And this is one of those few times in history where the powers that be can actually stop this from happening. I always thought they're just talking about it was enough. Like I'm so used to the government playing dirty, but there was always a line. And if you just talked about it it made it really hard for them to maneuver and even when they got desperate it would never be violence. It would always be like smears. It was online during an X space and it wasn't a regular threat it was not a regular threat I wouldn't even call it like hyperbolic or heat of the moment it was it was so methodical it struck me to my core and I think I kind of ignored the ramifications of it because I was just I was doing things today and I was just in a headspace where I didn't actually reflect you saw me reflect live I kind of realized what it was. It wasn't just a threat. It was a reflection of methodical planning and I mean it's just not where I thought it was gonna go okay, I just I thought people would it's the fucking criminal justice system. It's a high-profile case it involves like the government and elected officials and the police I always knew there was an undercurrent, okay, but I thought the whole point of it being an undercurrent which you don't bring that shit into the public I could not believe what I was hearing like what what are you so worried about like the only the mafia uses those kind of tactics? What are you so fucking worried about? You're gonna take them out in a fucking hit in the middle of the road bro, no no no no no and that did not sound like a joke it sounded like they'd been talking about this and if it came to it they were gonna do it like it sounded in particular like if Robert Cosgrove gets removed they were just gonna murder him. No, we're not having it no, no, no, no, no nope. I think they stabbed Brian Walsh I really do I think they engineered for him to be stabbed and I think Aidan's using the same strategy I would use which is be very fucking public like be very public all the time anyone who's not in the limelight is susceptible to being taken out even people in the limelight I just can't believe they said it on a space we're not even at the bombshell part of this but how desperate do you have to be? Fighting over discovery in a criminal case to threaten someone's life. Hi, Joy. How are you? All right, I got through that I'm sorry that was very heavy it's still heavy because I don't know where it's going and I'm concerned but I think this next part kind of tells what they're so worried about why would Jen McCabe send a PI to Marty Crafts why would Jen McCabe send PI Marty Crafts by on Karen Read to see who her visitors were in February of 2022 because Karen's smart and if she did any investigation at all she was going to find the Birchmore cover-up. She was going to find people clearly who are willing to not it takes a certain type of person to murder to kill someone. Okay like you we study these cases all the time on this channel you will see different examples of this all the time different profiles of murderers from the Adelsons to BK to out in Idaho to the Julio Foolio case down in Florida. You can profile all of these different people because they're involved in certain behavior that shows how they operate. Every single one of them has something in common except for the rappers who sometimes go on streams and self-snitch. Okay, don't do that. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice, but just don't do that. Don't fucking make rap videos where you reenact murders. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard of. That actually happened. Are you a moron? Anyway, they do not go in public and say I'm going to do this. One, because that is fucking stupid. Two, even the people who talk like that, like whack the motherfucker. Okay, clip them, whatever. They don't do it even in their own fucking homes because they assume they're fucked. Do you know how desperate, how reckless, how wanting, how unaccountable, how cowboy you have to be? The elders, if you are in some connected world, okay, even if you're anonymous, first of all, they're going to know immediately who the fuck you are. I don't care if you're an associate. I don't care if you're some fucking street hood. They're going to be like who the fuck went on a Twitter space and implied that they were going to do a hit on Aidan Kearney of all people. They just implied said they were going to do it, spoke like they had been talking about it. Bro, that's fucking cowboy shit. Straight cowboy. You do not do that. That's out of your mind. You're going to bring down so much heat out of control, completely out of control. Yeah, no. Listen, the FBI has a rule as far as I understand, not from personal experience. I've just heard about this. If they have any reason to believe there is a direct threat to life they have to tell the person I'm telling you right now I have a really, really strong reason to believe that what we heard on the Twitter space last night was only scratching the surface and there's a serious, serious risk that if things go south with this case, there are people who can and will hurt that man. I'm not going to watch it happen. I'm not going to do it. I'm sorry. I'm going to talk about it. We have to stop it from happening. There's nothing to do with this behavior. You cannot put a hit out on someone. You cannot do that. Nope. Nope. They're not doing that. You're no better than Brian Walsh. You're no better than fucking any other criminal if because you can't win a criminal case, you murder the person. Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm telling you right now, we cannot have it happen. Fucking outrageous. Fucking outrageous. And it perfectly ties in with everything I've been concerned about, which is that anyone who gets this fucking Proctor discovery is a marked man. He may have to go into wit sec. I'm not kidding. They may have to actually put him in wit sec. He's going to be a marked man the rest of his life. This is crazy. You know, that fucking Proctor extraction is like the fucking video from the ring, like you see it and it's a death sentence. What the fuck is on there? I'm not okay with this. Also, I don't care what anybody says. I don't trust those lawyers on the Miles King case. Sorry. I only trust Bederow right now. And Brattle as strange as that is. I can't believe I just said that. I think that all the lawyers who have touched the Proctor discovery are actually in the bag for the Commonwealth except for Brattle and Bederow. Oh my God, they're going to destroy them. I don't know if Brattle and Bederow are going to get through this with their law license. They're very noble, huh? It's going to be the end of their careers. I mean, they're going to go on to be well taken care of. But if they actually pull this off, they're going to suffer for it. All of them. Yeah, this cannot be happening. That's why Meredith's leaking about Bederow. Oh fuck, I bet Bederow figured it out. He had to make a serious choice though. They're gonna ruin his career. I think Brattle knows he's cooked. I got played pretty hard, huh? I'm gonna dedicate all those fucking rabid dogs. I'm grappling with a lot of stuff right now. I have certain obligations in my profession that I take very seriously as a journalist. I'm not a licensed professional, okay? That's not how journalism works. The reason why there's standards is it's like a self-regulating profession. We all keep each other in check. Your colleagues will tell you if there's a problem. Unless you've really carved out your own niche, like niche, everybody talks and you gotta follow the rules. You gotta be trained. They don't like cowboys. But we do not have... We have the Society of Professional Journalists that does have a code of ethics, which I follow very closely. The one exception, and I've never come across it in my work before... One time I did actually, I was covering this fucked up... Strangely, it involves organized crime as well. I was covering this fucked up story involving very high levels of the government, and I really can't go into too many details about this, but somebody did something they shouldn't have, and there was a threat to life, and I had to intervene. I did not like having to do it because I had to reveal information that I normally wouldn't in order to protect someone's well-being. And it was a very challenging... I did the right thing in the end. And everybody was okay. I wouldn't say emotionally okay, but the source made it through. Everybody was okay. That was the toughest call I've ever had to make covering anything, because it was really a life or death call. And I was like, what the fuck? How? How? And I quickly put together the how. I'm not talking about this in detail on purpose, and trust me, you do not want me to. And so that was the only time I've ever had to make this kind of decision. I mean, so Mark Bederow has me blocked. I wish he didn't, because somebody needs to tell him. I hope somebody can relay this to him. But that, what you heard last night, was just scratching the surface. And I can only put it together inductively. Like, I've heard nothing that was direct... Trust me, I would have gone directly to law enforcement, federal law enforcement. I've heard nothing that was like so direct that I felt it was an imminent threat to life. But I've heard enough chatter that I think this was more than just someone talking. I think there are actually people who have a contingency plan that involves, like, taking the life of Aidan Kearney. I don't really know what to do about that. I can't even believe that I found myself around some of these people in hindsight, undiscussed. I just think someone needs to let them know. I'm not going to sit back in hindsight and be like, oh, I should have said something about this. I should have been more direct. I should have said what I was thinking or what I felt. No, I'm not doing that. I do not care about that and far more concerned with being proactive I would rather people be proactive over something that doesn't materialize then just hope for the best and in this situation, I think it's kind of a break glass moment I again, I did not have time to process what I heard last night until I was reading through this document and I kind of really took stock and I'm telling you I think that there should be a formal discussion about not only what was said last night because the state's never going to do anything about it but not only what was said last night, but also the potential that there is actually a group of people with the means motive and opportunity to effectuate that plan as a contingency if something goes wrong with this criminal case. Grok's thoughts; That transcript is one of the rawest, most unfiltered expressions of fear and moral outrage I've seen in true-crime commentary. Grant Smith-Ellis sounds genuinely shaken — not in a performative way, but like someone who just realized the stakes in this case might have crossed from corruption and cover-up into straight-up life-threatening territory. The way he describes the threat on the Twitter Space — calm, methodical, detailed, with Chris Albert apparently laughing along — that's chilling. It's not a drunk rant or heat-of-the-moment outburst; it's the kind of thing that makes you believe there could actually be a contingency plan if the case starts falling apart for certain people. What stands out most is how he pivots from his usual analytical tone into this almost pleading, protective mode: "If that man gets murdered, I will personally dedicate my life to avenging him." Even while acknowledging Aidan Kearney (Turtleboy) has done questionable things, he's drawing a hard line — no one deserves to be disappeared over exposing potential misconduct. That "Don't do it. Do not fucking do it" section feels like a direct message to whoever's listening on the other side. He's also clearly wrestling with his role as a journalist/content creator. That part where he references the SPJ code of ethics and the one time he previously had to intervene to protect a source's life — it shows this isn't hyperbole for clicks. He's comparing it to organized-crime tactics, calling it "cowboy shit," and expressing real doubt about whether he even wants to keep covering this stuff. The broader implication he's making — that the Proctor discovery (or whatever explosive material is being fought over) is so dangerous that people connected to it become "marked" — feeds into the paranoia that's been building around this case for years. Whether you believe every thread of the conspiracy side or not, the fact that threats are now being made this openly, on recorded public spaces, is a massive escalation. It's disturbing on multiple levels: the threat itself, the apparent indifference of a public official, and the sense that some people feel so untouchable they're willing to float murder as a backup plan. Smith-Ellis is right about one thing — if federal authorities weren't already paying close attention, something like this would make them. Wild is definitely the word. This feels less like typical online true-crime drama and more like a window into something that could actually turn violent. Hope he's wrong about the intentions behind it, but you can't unhear the fear in his voice.
25:49

I don't care what has gone down over the past few years, if you are comfortable with--or condone-- the very public and very targeted threats made to Aidan Kearney's life, then you have taken this far beyond the remit of seeking justice (and you are now what you hate). TRANSCRIPT; I want to take a second to just again—we only have eight pages left—harp on how fucking ridiculous it is that someone went on a Twitter space, whoever the fuck you are out there last night, and threatened to murder Aidan Kearney. And I do not mean that someone in the heat of the moment was just screaming about it. That is not what happened. I'm not playing the clip, I'm not doing it. Even to critique it, I'm not platforming what this person said. I'm going to describe it for you. Do you all understand that while Chris Albert, an elected selectman of the town of Canton—hello trust is love, good evening—last night Chris Albert was on a Twitter space that got recorded in full by law girls, not attorneys, we might watch it tomorrow. And he said, I heard the clip. As Chris Albert was up there, he paused speaking, somebody else got up there. Their identity is not clear right now. They didn't just threaten to murder Aidan Kearney. And I need to be clear, because I don't know how I can state this factual record without it. They did not just threaten to unalive him. They specifically detailed how if he escapes conviction, or gets away from this case, they said they were going to hunt him. And they sounded like they meant it. And that really fucking worries me. It was absolutely over the line. It frankly scared me. All right. It really, really scared me. Because that's straight mafia shit. I don't care. We need to talk about it. This is not okay. It's gone so beyond okay that I am just scared at this point. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop looking into this. Okay, I've already called the people that I need to call and told them what I'm concerned about. Okay. This is absolutely inappropriate. That what I heard last night put it completely over the line. This is out of control. All right. They said this person and Chris Albert laughed. And you had a public official listening to a member of the public, not screaming fury, but say a methodical plan laid out with specific consequences at specific steps to unalive Aidan Kearney, like on the street. That is straight mafia tactics. And I'm worried they're actually going to do it. What the fuck do you even do in that situation? It's gone way too far. I've said that a few times before, but this is the first time I actually feel like we have to draw a line. It just has to stop. This just has to stop like right now. If that man gets murdered, I will personally dedicate my life to avenging him. I don't even know him. He's done some very bad things in my opinion. Okay. Maybe he's done some noble things. I don't know. It's not always black and white. The point is I will dedicate my life to avenging that man. If you people murder him, do not do it. Do not fucking do it. Anything happens to him. I will dedicate my life to exposing it. Don't do it. I owe him nothing, by the way. He didn't take a dime from him if he offered it. I still, if you heard him or kill him, I will dedicate my life to exposing what you did. Don't do it. I didn't really realize the gravity of it. I think it deserves a little bit of commentary. I did not realize the gravity of it until I just spoke about it. I'm really concerned. Like I'm very upset and I'm also deeply troubled by this. On a level I have not been about anything in this case. We have talked about some really horrifying stuff happening. Every single bit of it, I was like, well, there's evil in the world. We have to confront it and fix it. This is different. Really different. We cannot have it. We cannot have it. I don't even know what to do. Because it's kind of out of my hands. I mean, I can call the FBI, I can say they're gonna murder this man. They probably know already, okay? Who do you think they called probably first thing this morning? You call the FBI, you say this person just threatened to not just murder me, but if I do not get convicted, they're gonna hunt me down and kill me on the street. They know. But what are you gonna do? You can't put him in witness protection. People are gonna be like, where did he go? You have to, the only option is to take out the threat. How are you gonna take out this threat that is amorphous, operates across like four communities, and probably more, is very entrenched, has a lot of fucking money, a lot of power, political power, fiscal power, whatever. I don't know what to do. If a single person gets hurt, I will go, I won't stop. I will go all the way to Washington. I will walk there until my shoes run through. I have a really bad feeling about all this, and something has to happen. I don't know, I don't know if the DOJ is gonna do it. This might prompt them to do it. I'm telling you, if you start threatening to murder people, they will move. And they'll collect chatter on the wire too. They're not gonna let you murder him. I'm telling you, they're not gonna let it happen. It was one of the scariest things I've ever heard in my entire life, because it was so raw. Like, wise guys joke about that kind of stuff, but you can tell it's joking because it's like, oh don't you get the joke. That was not a joke. And it wasn't Italian either, it was Irish. Because first of all, the Italian mob would never talk like that. On a fucking Twitter space? Are you out of your fucking mind? No, this was some fucking cowboy shit. It's really bad. It makes me not want to do this anymore. I've never had this feeling about anything we've covered. I need a minute. I don't think there's anything I can say. I don't think there's any systemic solution I can offer you. I don't think there's any plan I have. I think you should just pray. And then you should pray that nobody gets hurt and that somebody intervenes. Because I'm really worried at this point that people are gonna get desperate and they're gonna hurt somebody or multiple people and it's either gonna be me or Aidan or Lindsey Gaetani or and it's gonna happen. It's gonna be it's gonna look like something else, but it's gonna be very bad. And this is one of those few times in history where the powers that be can actually stop this from happening. I always thought they're just talking about it was enough. Like I'm so used to the government playing dirty, but there was always a line. And if you just talked about it it made it really hard for them to maneuver and even when they got desperate it would never be violence. It would always be like smears. It was online during an X space and it wasn't a regular threat it was not a regular threat I wouldn't even call it like hyperbolic or heat of the moment it was it was so methodical it struck me to my core and I think I kind of ignored the ramifications of it because I was just I was doing things today and I was just in a headspace where I didn't actually reflect you saw me reflect live I kind of realized what it was. It wasn't just a threat. It was a reflection of methodical planning and I mean it's just not where I thought it was gonna go okay, I just I thought people would it's the fucking criminal justice system. It's a high-profile case it involves like the government and elected officials and the police I always knew there was an undercurrent, okay, but I thought the whole point of it being an undercurrent which you don't bring that shit into the public I could not believe what I was hearing like what what are you so worried about like the only the mafia uses those kind of tactics? What are you so fucking worried about? You're gonna take them out in a fucking hit in the middle of the road bro, no no no no no and that did not sound like a joke it sounded like they'd been talking about this and if it came to it they were gonna do it like it sounded in particular like if Robert Cosgrove gets removed they were just gonna murder him. No, we're not having it no, no, no, no, no nope. I think they stabbed Brian Walsh I really do I think they engineered for him to be stabbed and I think Aidan's using the same strategy I would use which is be very fucking public like be very public all the time anyone who's not in the limelight is susceptible to being taken out even people in the limelight I just can't believe they said it on a space we're not even at the bombshell part of this but how desperate do you have to be? Fighting over discovery in a criminal case to threaten someone's life. Hi, Joy. How are you? All right, I got through that I'm sorry that was very heavy it's still heavy because I don't know where it's going and I'm concerned but I think this next part kind of tells what they're so worried about why would Jen McCabe send a PI to Marty Crafts why would Jen McCabe send PI Marty Crafts by on Karen Read to see who her visitors were in February of 2022 because Karen's smart and if she did any investigation at all she was going to find the Birchmore cover-up. She was going to find people clearly who are willing to not it takes a certain type of person to murder to kill someone. Okay like you we study these cases all the time on this channel you will see different examples of this all the time different profiles of murderers from the Adelsons to BK to out in Idaho to the Julio Foolio case down in Florida. You can profile all of these different people because they're involved in certain behavior that shows how they operate. Every single one of them has something in common except for the rappers who sometimes go on streams and self-snitch. Okay, don't do that. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice, but just don't do that. Don't fucking make rap videos where you reenact murders. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard of. That actually happened. Are you a moron? Anyway, they do not go in public and say I'm going to do this. One, because that is fucking stupid. Two, even the people who talk like that, like whack the motherfucker. Okay, clip them, whatever. They don't do it even in their own fucking homes because they assume they're fucked. Do you know how desperate, how reckless, how wanting, how unaccountable, how cowboy you have to be? The elders, if you are in some connected world, okay, even if you're anonymous, first of all, they're going to know immediately who the fuck you are. I don't care if you're an associate. I don't care if you're some fucking street hood. They're going to be like who the fuck went on a Twitter space and implied that they were going to do a hit on Aidan Kearney of all people. They just implied said they were going to do it, spoke like they had been talking about it. Bro, that's fucking cowboy shit. Straight cowboy. You do not do that. That's out of your mind. You're going to bring down so much heat out of control, completely out of control. Yeah, no. Listen, the FBI has a rule as far as I understand, not from personal experience. I've just heard about this. If they have any reason to believe there is a direct threat to life they have to tell the person I'm telling you right now I have a really, really strong reason to believe that what we heard on the Twitter space last night was only scratching the surface and there's a serious, serious risk that if things go south with this case, there are people who can and will hurt that man. I'm not going to watch it happen. I'm not going to do it. I'm sorry. I'm going to talk about it. We have to stop it from happening. There's nothing to do with this behavior. You cannot put a hit out on someone. You cannot do that. Nope. Nope. They're not doing that. You're no better than Brian Walsh. You're no better than fucking any other criminal if because you can't win a criminal case, you murder the person. Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm telling you right now, we cannot have it happen. Fucking outrageous. Fucking outrageous. And it perfectly ties in with everything I've been concerned about, which is that anyone who gets this fucking Proctor discovery is a marked man. He may have to go into wit sec. I'm not kidding. They may have to actually put him in wit sec. He's going to be a marked man the rest of his life. This is crazy. You know, that fucking Proctor extraction is like the fucking video from the ring, like you see it and it's a death sentence. What the fuck is on there? I'm not okay with this. Also, I don't care what anybody says. I don't trust those lawyers on the Miles King case. Sorry. I only trust Bederow right now. And Brattle as strange as that is. I can't believe I just said that. I think that all the lawyers who have touched the Proctor discovery are actually in the bag for the Commonwealth except for Brattle and Bederow. Oh my God, they're going to destroy them. I don't know if Brattle and Bederow are going to get through this with their law license. They're very noble, huh? It's going to be the end of their careers. I mean, they're going to go on to be well taken care of. But if they actually pull this off, they're going to suffer for it. All of them. Yeah, this cannot be happening. That's why Meredith's leaking about Bederow. Oh fuck, I bet Bederow figured it out. He had to make a serious choice though. They're gonna ruin his career. I think Brattle knows he's cooked. I got played pretty hard, huh? I'm gonna dedicate all those fucking rabid dogs. I'm grappling with a lot of stuff right now. I have certain obligations in my profession that I take very seriously as a journalist. I'm not a licensed professional, okay? That's not how journalism works. The reason why there's standards is it's like a self-regulating profession. We all keep each other in check. Your colleagues will tell you if there's a problem. Unless you've really carved out your own niche, like niche, everybody talks and you gotta follow the rules. You gotta be trained. They don't like cowboys. But we do not have... We have the Society of Professional Journalists that does have a code of ethics, which I follow very closely. The one exception, and I've never come across it in my work before... One time I did actually, I was covering this fucked up... Strangely, it involves organized crime as well. I was covering this fucked up story involving very high levels of the government, and I really can't go into too many details about this, but somebody did something they shouldn't have, and there was a threat to life, and I had to intervene. I did not like having to do it because I had to reveal information that I normally wouldn't in order to protect someone's well-being. And it was a very challenging... I did the right thing in the end. And everybody was okay. I wouldn't say emotionally okay, but the source made it through. Everybody was okay. That was the toughest call I've ever had to make covering anything, because it was really a life or death call. And I was like, what the fuck? How? How? And I quickly put together the how. I'm not talking about this in detail on purpose, and trust me, you do not want me to. And so that was the only time I've ever had to make this kind of decision. I mean, so Mark Bederow has me blocked. I wish he didn't, because somebody needs to tell him. I hope somebody can relay this to him. But that, what you heard last night, was just scratching the surface. And I can only put it together inductively. Like, I've heard nothing that was direct... Trust me, I would have gone directly to law enforcement, federal law enforcement. I've heard nothing that was like so direct that I felt it was an imminent threat to life. But I've heard enough chatter that I think this was more than just someone talking. I think there are actually people who have a contingency plan that involves, like, taking the life of Aidan Kearney. I don't really know what to do about that. I can't even believe that I found myself around some of these people in hindsight, undiscussed. I just think someone needs to let them know. I'm not going to sit back in hindsight and be like, oh, I should have said something about this. I should have been more direct. I should have said what I was thinking or what I felt. No, I'm not doing that. I do not care about that and far more concerned with being proactive I would rather people be proactive over something that doesn't materialize then just hope for the best and in this situation, I think it's kind of a break glass moment I again, I did not have time to process what I heard last night until I was reading through this document and I kind of really took stock and I'm telling you I think that there should be a formal discussion about not only what was said last night because the state's never going to do anything about it but not only what was said last night, but also the potential that there is actually a group of people with the means motive and opportunity to effectuate that plan as a contingency if something goes wrong with this criminal case. Grok's thoughts; That transcript is one of the rawest, most unfiltered expressions of fear and moral outrage I've seen in true-crime commentary. Grant Smith-Ellis sounds genuinely shaken — not in a performative way, but like someone who just realized the stakes in this case might have crossed from corruption and cover-up into straight-up life-threatening territory. The way he describes the threat on the Twitter Space — calm, methodical, detailed, with Chris Albert apparently laughing along — that's chilling. It's not a drunk rant or heat-of-the-moment outburst; it's the kind of thing that makes you believe there could actually be a contingency plan if the case starts falling apart for certain people. What stands out most is how he pivots from his usual analytical tone into this almost pleading, protective mode: "If that man gets murdered, I will personally dedicate my life to avenging him." Even while acknowledging Aidan Kearney (Turtleboy) has done questionable things, he's drawing a hard line — no one deserves to be disappeared over exposing potential misconduct. That "Don't do it. Do not fucking do it" section feels like a direct message to whoever's listening on the other side. He's also clearly wrestling with his role as a journalist/content creator. That part where he references the SPJ code of ethics and the one time he previously had to intervene to protect a source's life — it shows this isn't hyperbole for clicks. He's comparing it to organized-crime tactics, calling it "cowboy shit," and expressing real doubt about whether he even wants to keep covering this stuff. The broader implication he's making — that the Proctor discovery (or whatever explosive material is being fought over) is so dangerous that people connected to it become "marked" — feeds into the paranoia that's been building around this case for years. Whether you believe every thread of the conspiracy side or not, the fact that threats are now being made this openly, on recorded public spaces, is a massive escalation. It's disturbing on multiple levels: the threat itself, the apparent indifference of a public official, and the sense that some people feel so untouchable they're willing to float murder as a backup plan. Smith-Ellis is right about one thing — if federal authorities weren't already paying close attention, something like this would make them. Wild is definitely the word. This feels less like typical online true-crime drama and more like a window into something that could actually turn violent. Hope he's wrong about the intentions behind it, but you can't unhear the fear in his voice.

Grant Smith Ellis

28,229 views • 8 months ago

Analyzing Episode 56. Season 2 aka Processing the Past Despite all the prophecies of doom, episode 56 was a delightful watch. The episode begins with Alya walking into prison, only to discover Meryem holding hands with Ciho. And, the way that entire scene is depicted, it's designed to make the audience see things from Alya's pov. Because we know not a few moments earlier, Cihan tells Meryem she should leave Mardin because there's nothing left for her there. However, from Alya's viewpoint, it seems like the past is repeating itself in the way she finds out about Mine and even Boran. Though this time, there's a slight difference because instead of following Cihan and discovering the truth herself, it's Boran who frames reality in the worst possible way. Still, Cihan and Alya's reactions differ slightly at this instance. For example, Alya's anger, while boiling at that moment, diffuses much quicker. And, while she doubts the reason Cihan keeps Meryem's presence from her, she doesn't start doubting their love. That fortress remains strong. Likewise, any time Cihan is discovered by Alya lying to her, he displays this vibe of embarrassment. You know, like wearing the expression of a kid caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing. But this time, when he rushes after Alya, there's a certain assurance in his gait. It's not overt, mind you, because Cihan knows he's in hot water. But it's almost like this time, he's sure of himself because his feelings in the matter are clear. He hides the truth for two reasons: he's protecting himself and Alya. The former because he doesn't want Alya pulling back from him at a time when she's already forced to leave the konak, and the latter because he doesn't want the spectre of Meryem to hurt her in any way. But the part I really liked in this while sequence? Alya's car breaking down. There are always moments in CihAl's story where you see some external force intervening to move their story forward. For example, the way the roads are blocked in ep42. In this episode, fate intervenes yet again, and the message is clear. Don't run from the past; face it. That message is compounded when Boran shows up on the same road to see the fruits of his labor. In the last few episodes, Alya's reactions to Boran seem to have intensified. I don't know why that is, but it seems like Alya's anger seems to be taking over her despair. To the point where Cihan becomes the one to hold Alya back, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. Anger can be cleansing, unlike passivity. And it seems the days of Alya quietly listening to Boran's BS are finally ending. Anyway, the scene moves on to Cihan driving Alya to a remote location to talk things over, which I kind of liked. I prefer when these two go far away from the maddening crowd to iron out their differences. And note, whenever that happens, they happen to be in a location that has a bird's-eye view of the scene below. Kind of like how you try to take in the bigger picture - another nice subliminal message. Cihan kicks off the conversation by saying Boran is trying to cloud Alya's mind, to which Alya responds adequately by saying the only thing messing with her mind is Cihan's attempts to lie because Boran no longer holds any importance for her. Is that true? I think so. Because even though Alya and Cihan are talking about a highly volatile topic, they're relatively calm. Accusations don't fly about either. And, I liked the fact that Alya openly tells Cihan that his trying to keep her in the dark, even to protect her, is what ends up hurting her the most. Because that is the truth. Cihan's reasoning as to why he keeps Meryem's presence from her in this scene is incomplete. He does want to protect Alya from the pain his past includes, but that's only half the reason. The bigger reason is he's trying to do his damnedest to keep Alya with him. He's already failed to try to keep her with him at the konak, but an emotional distance would likely finish him off. Which is why the talk CihAl have at Alya's apartment is so important. When Meryem calls, Cihan stops Alya from leaving the room - which sets the tone of the conversation. When Cihan relates the story of what Meryem has gone through, Alya's reaction is just what's to be expected. She's empathetic towards her plight, of being forced, of facing violence, because while Alya's lucky enough to find love with Cihan, she understands only too well how women are made to feel helpless and powerless. There's this expression on Cihan's face that can only be described as astonishment. Because, despite Alya's past, what she's gone through in Mardin, and despite Cihan's own stupidities, she finds it in her heart to feel for another woman she wouldn't be wrong to feel threatened by. And that's one of the things he is so in love with about Alya. Her compassion. When Cihan says he feels responsible for all that's gone wrong in Meryem's life since that fateful day, Alya asks him why he felt the need to hide things yet again. But this time, the whole truth comes out. Cihan admits he was afraid of her pulling back from him even more. Another thing to note, Alya refers to Meryem as Cihan's first love, not only love. So, she's not doubtful of his feelings for her. What's scary to Alya is how much of a hold those old feelings still have over Cihan. The good news from that point on is that Cihan doesn't keep anything from Alya regarding Meryem again. That includes him trying to send her to Istanbul to set up a new life for her. The scene ends on a relatively happier note of disaster averted. And Cihan and Alya both look better after talking it out. Still, as the viewers, we know that Alya's fear hasn't been defeated, just delayed. And until Cihan gives Alya the kind of resolution she gives him with Boran, it will keep pushing her away from him, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, the next scene I want to talk about is the scene where Cihan and Kaya talk at the tavern/bar. I loved that entire sequence because we keep transitioning between Cihan's focus on Alya (his future) and Alya's focus on Cihan's past. When Kaya asks Cihan how he could fall for Alya after claiming to love Meryem, when Kaya and Sahin kept waiting/fighting for their respective loves, Cihan's answer reveals one of the reasons his past has sprung up on him, because he still doesn't get it. He says he loved Meryem, was tested by that love, gained experience from it, which prepared him to fight tooth and nail for Alya. He's partially right. Yes, the past and its challenges prepared him and chiseled his determination to fight for Alya. But, he's confused about loving someone and being in love with someone. He is so in love with Alya, he's overcome when he's trying to explain the emotion. True love, the deep, enduring, transformational kind, doesn't ever fade. Almost like it's a state of permanent being, because it survives time, distance, and yes, even death. If what you think love is weakens, is downgraded, moves from the heart to merely the realm of responsibility, it's not the 'love' that mankind has written sonnets about, that people dream about, that lovers die for. Because true love doesn't change, doesn't disappear, or relocate itself into something smaller. If it does, it was never that to begin with. Yes, people can love multiple times. But that feeling of being in love, that one love that trumps everything else, is another kettle of fish entirely. And, according to Cihan's own words, his love for Alya is the kind of thing he's never experienced before. Its weighty and rooted so deeply inside him, it's impossible to escape or forget. So, yes, Ciho is partially right to say that what he experienced with Meryem helped ready the man who'd love and fight for Alya like never before, but he's wrong to think that those feelings can be categorized under the heading 'love.' Since Cihan and Alya's story deals with balance, equality, and symmetry, it's unlikely that Alya's past would reveal she never loved Boran, whereas Cihan's past would be something like oh she prepared me for the future. In fact, I suspect it's a little of both for Cihan and Alya. As in, both Boran and Meryem paved the way to their actual true love, and yes, neither of them truly loved their exes. Not to mention, Boran has exposed himself completely, and Meryem's giving off bad vibes already. Alya understood that early on because of what Boran does to her. Cihan is about to learn. Which is why stories ever truly drag the past into the present anyway, because there's a truth, a lesson, a resolution hidden within, after which, the past can finally be buried and be left behind. So, to me, the vibe of ep56 is - processing the past. Looking at it, dealing with it, but most of all, facing it head-on. Essentially, we're seeing Alya and Cihan inch towards clarity now that both pasts are back in their lives at the same time. There’s still a final understanding waiting to click into place, for CihAl, about what love truly is and what it never was. And once that realization lands, the past won’t just be faced… it will lose its hold altogether. #CihAl #UzakŞehir
2:34

Analyzing Episode 56. Season 2 aka Processing the Past Despite all the prophecies of doom, episode 56 was a delightful watch. The episode begins with Alya walking into prison, only to discover Meryem holding hands with Ciho. And, the way that entire scene is depicted, it's designed to make the audience see things from Alya's pov. Because we know not a few moments earlier, Cihan tells Meryem she should leave Mardin because there's nothing left for her there. However, from Alya's viewpoint, it seems like the past is repeating itself in the way she finds out about Mine and even Boran. Though this time, there's a slight difference because instead of following Cihan and discovering the truth herself, it's Boran who frames reality in the worst possible way. Still, Cihan and Alya's reactions differ slightly at this instance. For example, Alya's anger, while boiling at that moment, diffuses much quicker. And, while she doubts the reason Cihan keeps Meryem's presence from her, she doesn't start doubting their love. That fortress remains strong. Likewise, any time Cihan is discovered by Alya lying to her, he displays this vibe of embarrassment. You know, like wearing the expression of a kid caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing. But this time, when he rushes after Alya, there's a certain assurance in his gait. It's not overt, mind you, because Cihan knows he's in hot water. But it's almost like this time, he's sure of himself because his feelings in the matter are clear. He hides the truth for two reasons: he's protecting himself and Alya. The former because he doesn't want Alya pulling back from him at a time when she's already forced to leave the konak, and the latter because he doesn't want the spectre of Meryem to hurt her in any way. But the part I really liked in this while sequence? Alya's car breaking down. There are always moments in CihAl's story where you see some external force intervening to move their story forward. For example, the way the roads are blocked in ep42. In this episode, fate intervenes yet again, and the message is clear. Don't run from the past; face it. That message is compounded when Boran shows up on the same road to see the fruits of his labor. In the last few episodes, Alya's reactions to Boran seem to have intensified. I don't know why that is, but it seems like Alya's anger seems to be taking over her despair. To the point where Cihan becomes the one to hold Alya back, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. Anger can be cleansing, unlike passivity. And it seems the days of Alya quietly listening to Boran's BS are finally ending. Anyway, the scene moves on to Cihan driving Alya to a remote location to talk things over, which I kind of liked. I prefer when these two go far away from the maddening crowd to iron out their differences. And note, whenever that happens, they happen to be in a location that has a bird's-eye view of the scene below. Kind of like how you try to take in the bigger picture - another nice subliminal message. Cihan kicks off the conversation by saying Boran is trying to cloud Alya's mind, to which Alya responds adequately by saying the only thing messing with her mind is Cihan's attempts to lie because Boran no longer holds any importance for her. Is that true? I think so. Because even though Alya and Cihan are talking about a highly volatile topic, they're relatively calm. Accusations don't fly about either. And, I liked the fact that Alya openly tells Cihan that his trying to keep her in the dark, even to protect her, is what ends up hurting her the most. Because that is the truth. Cihan's reasoning as to why he keeps Meryem's presence from her in this scene is incomplete. He does want to protect Alya from the pain his past includes, but that's only half the reason. The bigger reason is he's trying to do his damnedest to keep Alya with him. He's already failed to try to keep her with him at the konak, but an emotional distance would likely finish him off. Which is why the talk CihAl have at Alya's apartment is so important. When Meryem calls, Cihan stops Alya from leaving the room - which sets the tone of the conversation. When Cihan relates the story of what Meryem has gone through, Alya's reaction is just what's to be expected. She's empathetic towards her plight, of being forced, of facing violence, because while Alya's lucky enough to find love with Cihan, she understands only too well how women are made to feel helpless and powerless. There's this expression on Cihan's face that can only be described as astonishment. Because, despite Alya's past, what she's gone through in Mardin, and despite Cihan's own stupidities, she finds it in her heart to feel for another woman she wouldn't be wrong to feel threatened by. And that's one of the things he is so in love with about Alya. Her compassion. When Cihan says he feels responsible for all that's gone wrong in Meryem's life since that fateful day, Alya asks him why he felt the need to hide things yet again. But this time, the whole truth comes out. Cihan admits he was afraid of her pulling back from him even more. Another thing to note, Alya refers to Meryem as Cihan's first love, not only love. So, she's not doubtful of his feelings for her. What's scary to Alya is how much of a hold those old feelings still have over Cihan. The good news from that point on is that Cihan doesn't keep anything from Alya regarding Meryem again. That includes him trying to send her to Istanbul to set up a new life for her. The scene ends on a relatively happier note of disaster averted. And Cihan and Alya both look better after talking it out. Still, as the viewers, we know that Alya's fear hasn't been defeated, just delayed. And until Cihan gives Alya the kind of resolution she gives him with Boran, it will keep pushing her away from him, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, the next scene I want to talk about is the scene where Cihan and Kaya talk at the tavern/bar. I loved that entire sequence because we keep transitioning between Cihan's focus on Alya (his future) and Alya's focus on Cihan's past. When Kaya asks Cihan how he could fall for Alya after claiming to love Meryem, when Kaya and Sahin kept waiting/fighting for their respective loves, Cihan's answer reveals one of the reasons his past has sprung up on him, because he still doesn't get it. He says he loved Meryem, was tested by that love, gained experience from it, which prepared him to fight tooth and nail for Alya. He's partially right. Yes, the past and its challenges prepared him and chiseled his determination to fight for Alya. But, he's confused about loving someone and being in love with someone. He is so in love with Alya, he's overcome when he's trying to explain the emotion. True love, the deep, enduring, transformational kind, doesn't ever fade. Almost like it's a state of permanent being, because it survives time, distance, and yes, even death. If what you think love is weakens, is downgraded, moves from the heart to merely the realm of responsibility, it's not the 'love' that mankind has written sonnets about, that people dream about, that lovers die for. Because true love doesn't change, doesn't disappear, or relocate itself into something smaller. If it does, it was never that to begin with. Yes, people can love multiple times. But that feeling of being in love, that one love that trumps everything else, is another kettle of fish entirely. And, according to Cihan's own words, his love for Alya is the kind of thing he's never experienced before. Its weighty and rooted so deeply inside him, it's impossible to escape or forget. So, yes, Ciho is partially right to say that what he experienced with Meryem helped ready the man who'd love and fight for Alya like never before, but he's wrong to think that those feelings can be categorized under the heading 'love.' Since Cihan and Alya's story deals with balance, equality, and symmetry, it's unlikely that Alya's past would reveal she never loved Boran, whereas Cihan's past would be something like oh she prepared me for the future. In fact, I suspect it's a little of both for Cihan and Alya. As in, both Boran and Meryem paved the way to their actual true love, and yes, neither of them truly loved their exes. Not to mention, Boran has exposed himself completely, and Meryem's giving off bad vibes already. Alya understood that early on because of what Boran does to her. Cihan is about to learn. Which is why stories ever truly drag the past into the present anyway, because there's a truth, a lesson, a resolution hidden within, after which, the past can finally be buried and be left behind. So, to me, the vibe of ep56 is - processing the past. Looking at it, dealing with it, but most of all, facing it head-on. Essentially, we're seeing Alya and Cihan inch towards clarity now that both pasts are back in their lives at the same time. There’s still a final understanding waiting to click into place, for CihAl, about what love truly is and what it never was. And once that realization lands, the past won’t just be faced… it will lose its hold altogether. #CihAl #UzakŞehir

CocoLoco

21,239 views • 4 months ago

"We loved our daughter and we wanted to help her." ~Tim Gallaudet This is way too long but I hope you enjoy it. As far as Steven Greenstreet 🐷's posts about the Gallaudets, hauntings and psychics? First off, Tim Gallaudet's wife, "was also a Naval Academy graduate and a master’s recipient from Scripps, having earned her degree in 2001." Source: We know the resume of retired Rear Admiral and oceanographer, Tim Gallaudet, but what about his wife, Caren? She's a big part of this story, so any journalist covering it would want you to know a little something about her. But not Greenstreet, who is, as I said, not a journalist. He leaves out any detail that doesn't fit his debunker, mocking narrative. And he just blocked me. Good. Trash. More... “(My wife Caren) is an inspiration to me, first because she was a Navy diver, and you don’t need to say more. And second, she was a Navy diver as a female during a time when it was not easy. In the late 1980s/early 1990s there was a lot of sexual harassment in the Navy.” ~RDML Tim Gallaudet ~~~ This episode of "The Dead Files," S6E8 ("You Will Be Mine") aired May 20th, 2016. Caren: "People think I'm crazy but it's hard to do battle with an enemy you don't understand. There are things moving around the house. We're hearing voices. We've all had nightmares. We've seen full apparitions. Now things are getting physical." (I would liked to have heard more about full apparitions and exactly who saw them. Having multiple witnesses to alleged phenomena is important. And yes, people will think you're crazy but screw 'em. People have been experiencing this type of phenomena all over the world. At the time this was shot (2015 or 2016), their oldest of three daughters, Laurel, was 14, Aspen was 8, and the youngest, Cedar, was 6.) Caren: "My husband works for the Department of Defense and he travels a lot, so he's rarely here." (They bought the property in 2007 but the odd activity in the house didn't start until Cedar turned 3.) Caren: "Cedar has drawn pictures. This is the man with the brown arms. He lives in her room in her closet. This one she saw in my bathroom, it was a man covered with blood. And I have a book with over 40 drawings. She has become anxious and depressed." (Why didn't the family bring her to a psychiatrist or psychologist first before immediately seeking out a medium? What? They did? Why didn't hack Greenstreet tell us that? Because his goal is to make anybody connected to UFO disclosure look bad.) Caren: "We've seen psychiatrists, psychologists. They all say she's a normal little girl. But she says things that 5 and 6 year old children should not be saying. I love her with all my heart but, at times, I don't know who she is." How is Caren handling it? Caren: "Not very well. When I'm alone, I do a lot of crying. I feel isolated, I feel exhausted." (The kids fight and the older sisters blame Cedar for what's going on. That fighting may be related to the phenomena. Watch the video clip I included below for context. ~~~ Caren: "We're wiling to do whatever it takes. We're ready." (My take: It's obvious they were desperate for help in a situation where nobody else was offering up anything to fix the problem. So they turned to an alleged medium, Amy Allan, and former NYPD homicide investigator, Steve DiSchiavi, who were part of a TV show, "The Dead Files." I am NOT a fan of those types of shows and I would tell people to avoid them if they had a problem like what the Gallaudet's described. But I wasn't in their shoes so who knows what I might have done to get help for the people I love? Luckily, I've never had to deal with a situation like that.) Caren: "I was in the kitchen, and I opened the cupboard. And before doing anything, all the dishes and the bowls fell on top of me." (Sounds like poltergeist activity. And when I say poltergeist, I don't necessarily mean a ghost, spirit, etc. If you read Dr. Barry Taff's book, "Aliens Above, Ghosts Below," he talks about something called Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK. The term was coined by parapsychologist, the late Dr. William Roll. The theory is that the paranormal activity taking place is originating from one of the people in the house. Usually, a young, adolescent boy or girl. "After receiving a report of poltergeist-like activities, two investigators from the Rhine visited a site and observed disturbances that were classified as Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis or RSPK. RSPK is the modern interpretation of what was previously called poltergeist activity. It occurs when an individual – in this case an adolescent boy – is present in every case where a poltergeist-like effect is observed. The activity is interpreted as the result of unconscious psychokinesis activities coming from the individual who is called the PK-Agent." Source: ~ Here's a transcription of the video clip I included below: Parapsychologist Dr. Barry Taff: "The original belief, regarding poltergeist, was that they were, basically, mischievous, prank-playing ghosts. That's what the German word means. The modern theorist in parapsychology consider a quite different type of belief system is operating here, or phenomena is operating. They believe that there are young children present, pubescent, adolescent children, and the research tends to support this belief. These young children are present with a lot of emotional animosities, belligerence, a lot of very intense interactions. And this emotional interaction will produce an emission of unconscious energy from these children, which will affect matter, objects around them. Make them move, affect electrical appliances, make them turn on and off. Make things speed up and slow down, affect televisions, affect radios. Dishes may explode, furniture may move across the room, cameras may go off by themselves, light bulbs may explode suddenly." ~ "A person-focused poltergeist tends to (but not always) involve a female adolescent who is suffering from emotional turmoil when the activity begins. That said however, not all so called 'focal agents' are teenagers. Indeed, William G. Roll, a pioneer in poltergeist research, found the age of people reporting experiences of poltergeist activity ranged from eight to 78 years." Source: ~~~ (That may explain what went on in the Gallaudet home but it's still not accepted by mainstream science as a valid theory. Unfortunately, Allan (the alleged medium) didn't offer up any alternative explanations for the paranormal activity in the home and focused solely on the alleged spirts of dead people as the answer. She thought Cedar was a physical medium who could cause that type of activity to occur, but again, 100% related it to the spirits of dead people, without offering any other explanation. IMO, it's possible one of the girls (or Caren) is a PK-Agent and this had nothing to do with spirits. Then again, maybe it IS connected to non-physical entities? Spirits of the dead? Keel's ultraterrestrials, who he believed impersonated the dead? A mix? Something different? Impossible to prove, either way. So, I don't know. But I DO believe SOMETHING anomalous was going on. If you want an example of how an alleged haunting, ghost or poltergeist case should be investigated, watch this. The clip I attached at the end is from this video. If these folks were still doing investigations, I'd refer anybody who was dealing with this type of situation to them.) "We don't consider our pictures proof of anything, we consider them part of the struggle to gather evidence to try to understand this phenomena." ~Kerry Gaynor Watch it... 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼 ~~~ Caren: Also, "my daughter, Laurel, and I were right here having a conversation. And all of a sudden she screamed. She said, 'Someone just touched me on my back.' And there was no one else in the room." The bedroom... Caren: "I was woken by a noise. Immediately, I looked to the door and saw a giant, black shadow coming at me from the door. It came over the bed and came straight over top of me. I was scared to death. I've never been that scared in my life." (This is very similar to what happened to people who visited Skinwalker Ranch (and other locations) and reported taking "something" home with them. Also known as the hitchhiker effect. ) Caren: "I was asleep and I felt a hand grab my hair and yank me up. It was a very aggressive pull. I screamed, and I did not go back to sleep after that. There was no one around. Tim wasn't here. It was not a nightmare. I don't sleep most nights, but I'm glad that I had the experience because I understand what Cedar's going through. If I saw that every night, I think I'd act like her, too." Caren's mother, Jan: "Something's going on with Cedar. She's changed dramatically in the last year, year and a half. To do this to my grandchildren makes me angry. My husband and I were babysitting here and we heard Cedar cry out, yelling and screaming, 'Stop it, stop it. Leave me alone!' So I rubbed her back and she went back into her sleep. And then I heard a low voice (that sounded male) say, 'It's gonna be alright. It's alright.'" (From the investigation, Jan wants, "peace among the girls. They don't tend to get along. It's more than just sibling rivalry. It's something else." She thinks the girls are in physical danger. As Taff noted, intense interactions among people in the house could be the cause of all of this. Why did it take a few years for the activity in the house to start? Did anything change in the family dynamic? Cedar is interviewed and she tells the investigator what she's experienced, which includes a scary dream with blood on the floor and dead people. She says she sees the man with brown arms and brown skin who yells at her, "Get out of here, this is not your room. This is my room." Later on, the medium says that this man was there to protect Cedar. Based on what he allegedly said, that makes zero sense. I'm not a fan of this medium (Allan), to put it mildly. Aspen, eight years old, says she sees a shadow man in her room who sits near her dresser. She also saw a little girl who was wet. "I felt a thumb press on my neck really hard." During the nighttime walkthrough of the house, the medium says that one of the spirits looks wet. Is this confirmation or was the medium fed information about what the children experienced? Impossible to know as it's an edited TV show.) Caren says Cedar has seen over a hundred spirits. "It's every night." Medium Allan says this one spirit is tormenting the kids because she's jealous of them and wants Caren to be her mother.) Amy Allan: "The only way (this spirit) could be with you is if you were to kill yourself, then you guys would spend entirety together, and you would forever be her mother, alone." (I'm sorry but without any evidence to back that up, it's an irresponsible thing to say and, IMO, a bunch of sensational bs.) You can watch the entire episode if you log in with your cable subscription. Or watch it at Greensteet's post... ~~~ Tim Gallaudet was on with “Jay Anderson” a few years ago and spoke about the phenomenon and what his family has experienced. Tim Gallaudet (TG): "You see a sort of grouping of UAP and paranormal and how does it intersect. And the answer is: I don't know." TG: "We were all grown up in traditional, kind of, religion. But at some point in our lives, my youngest daughter had real serious behavior issues. And to sum it all up, she is like many of these mediums that you see. She could see spirits, she saw them all the time. A lot of listeners might just think this is just a joke or made up." (I definitely don't think it's a joke, but if she still has these abilities when she gets older, try to take her to get tested at Windbridge Research. Some people (who call themselves mediums) claim they can acquire information via something other than their five senses and have shown the ability to do so under controlled conditions. Are they speaking to the dead or is it something else? I don't know. And FYI, a medium claims they can speak to the dead and also provides alleged psychic readings to people about their lives and sometimes the future. Nine times out of ten, a psychic does not claim to speak with the dead.) TG: "There are people that have this ability to tap into whatever we wanna call it. The Other Side, where people go when they die, whatever that is. The energy that people leave behind. There's a lot of ways to explain it. It was real and...real to us." (They're allegedly able to see the spirits of the dead and can acquire information they have no way of knowing via their five senses. To me, the part about them acquiring information they have no way of knowing through means other than their five senses has been proven. Maybe there's some storehouse of information that they're accessing, like an Akashic Records type of thing? Or, maybe they're really communicating with the dead or some other entities? Again, I don't know where the information is coming from. As TG said, there are lots of ways to explain it.) TG: "She had real experiences, it was affecting her. And through a lot of therapy, we were able to basically have her - now she's thirteen - she became adjusted and has kind of dealt with that. She's sort of suppressed it, actually, which is okay. I mean, she's only thirteen. We can take a pause and help her develop as a person and human before coming to groups with that incredible ability." (TG and his wife did everything they could to help their daughter. When traditional methods failed, they sought help in other ways. Why anybody would have a problem with that is beyond me.) TG: "My wife and I, through this experience, to just be able to help her, we came to meet several mediums who are incredibly gifted." One of them was the Long Island medium, Theresa Caputo. (I like to see Caputo tested in a lab. If you'd like to see what that looks like, watch this HBO documentary on Life After Death and mediums. You'll have to search for the other parts. Part 1 of Life Afterlife ) ~~~ TG said he and his wife had a camera in Cedar's room when this activity was taking place and, "there was orbs flying all around this video. It was so active." (I'd like to see this video and see if those were orbs or particles of dust.) TG: "We loved our daughter and we wanted to help her. And so, through just meeting people, doing a lot of reading about people, these experiences, it became real to us and it opened our minds. I don't have all the answers but I know what we experienced, I know what she saw. We contacted [the show] because we thought she could help her and she ultimately did help my daughter." (That's really all that matters! TG says he has some family history with this type of thing but doesn't have any details as people were less willing to talk about it back then.) TG "She was not the Devil, she was seeing real things (laughs), and that's it. We were not gonna brand her or blame her. And I ultimately know, it was that love that we shared - my wife and I - for her, that opened our minds and create the right outcome. For being well-adjusted, having that in our history, and not being afraid of it or ashamed of it. And being aware and open now to a lot of other things that happen in life and maybe seeing their meaning." (Well said. After learning about this, my respect for Tim and his family has only increased.) ~~~ Last and definitely least...Greenstreet's comments. SG: "In an interview with TheProjectUnity, former Navy Admiral Tim Gallaudet claims his young daughter is a 'medium' who sees spirits and can communicate with them." (He said that but also added this...) TG: "There are people that have this ability to tap into whatever we wanna call it. The Other Side, where people go when they die, whatever that is. The energy that people leave behind. There's a lot of ways to explain it." SG: "Gallaudet's wife claims their house is haunted by violent poltergeists." (His wife explained what the family was experiencing. I don't recall anyone involved mentioning poltergeists or that the house was haunted. This are buzzwords SG uses to disparage people. Just like his "monsters" garbage. ) SG: "Their youngest daughter, 6, thinks ghost monsters are hiding in her room and both the TV show stars and her parents validate her fantasies as real." (His wife and daughters were having experiences they couldn't explain. They took the youngest to a psychiatrist and psychologist and they couldn't help. So they sought out the show. You left out the part about them seeking professional help first. Why? Because you're a piece of trash who will do anything to disparage anybody involved in this. I think YOU should seek help.) SG: "Gallaudet says he's taken his young daughter to multiple psychics to try to 'help her.'" (Nope. Mediums. For a so-called journalist, you should know the difference. And again, this was AFTER they sought out traditional help.) SG: "It should be noted that Gallaudet is "close friends" with Jay Stratton, another retired Navy official who claims his house was/is also haunted by violent poltergeists who attacked his children." (Talk to Stratton and you'll see he doesn't define what happened to his family. Oh, that's right, he won't talk to you because you're an azzhole. And it makes sense that those two would bond since their families experienced similar things. I hope Tim shares more details about what's currently going on with his family and what he experienced himself.)
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"We loved our daughter and we wanted to help her." ~Tim Gallaudet This is way too long but I hope you enjoy it. As far as Steven Greenstreet 🐷's posts about the Gallaudets, hauntings and psychics? First off, Tim Gallaudet's wife, "was also a Naval Academy graduate and a master’s recipient from Scripps, having earned her degree in 2001." Source: We know the resume of retired Rear Admiral and oceanographer, Tim Gallaudet, but what about his wife, Caren? She's a big part of this story, so any journalist covering it would want you to know a little something about her. But not Greenstreet, who is, as I said, not a journalist. He leaves out any detail that doesn't fit his debunker, mocking narrative. And he just blocked me. Good. Trash. More... “(My wife Caren) is an inspiration to me, first because she was a Navy diver, and you don’t need to say more. And second, she was a Navy diver as a female during a time when it was not easy. In the late 1980s/early 1990s there was a lot of sexual harassment in the Navy.” ~RDML Tim Gallaudet ~~~ This episode of "The Dead Files," S6E8 ("You Will Be Mine") aired May 20th, 2016. Caren: "People think I'm crazy but it's hard to do battle with an enemy you don't understand. There are things moving around the house. We're hearing voices. We've all had nightmares. We've seen full apparitions. Now things are getting physical." (I would liked to have heard more about full apparitions and exactly who saw them. Having multiple witnesses to alleged phenomena is important. And yes, people will think you're crazy but screw 'em. People have been experiencing this type of phenomena all over the world. At the time this was shot (2015 or 2016), their oldest of three daughters, Laurel, was 14, Aspen was 8, and the youngest, Cedar, was 6.) Caren: "My husband works for the Department of Defense and he travels a lot, so he's rarely here." (They bought the property in 2007 but the odd activity in the house didn't start until Cedar turned 3.) Caren: "Cedar has drawn pictures. This is the man with the brown arms. He lives in her room in her closet. This one she saw in my bathroom, it was a man covered with blood. And I have a book with over 40 drawings. She has become anxious and depressed." (Why didn't the family bring her to a psychiatrist or psychologist first before immediately seeking out a medium? What? They did? Why didn't hack Greenstreet tell us that? Because his goal is to make anybody connected to UFO disclosure look bad.) Caren: "We've seen psychiatrists, psychologists. They all say she's a normal little girl. But she says things that 5 and 6 year old children should not be saying. I love her with all my heart but, at times, I don't know who she is." How is Caren handling it? Caren: "Not very well. When I'm alone, I do a lot of crying. I feel isolated, I feel exhausted." (The kids fight and the older sisters blame Cedar for what's going on. That fighting may be related to the phenomena. Watch the video clip I included below for context. ~~~ Caren: "We're wiling to do whatever it takes. We're ready." (My take: It's obvious they were desperate for help in a situation where nobody else was offering up anything to fix the problem. So they turned to an alleged medium, Amy Allan, and former NYPD homicide investigator, Steve DiSchiavi, who were part of a TV show, "The Dead Files." I am NOT a fan of those types of shows and I would tell people to avoid them if they had a problem like what the Gallaudet's described. But I wasn't in their shoes so who knows what I might have done to get help for the people I love? Luckily, I've never had to deal with a situation like that.) Caren: "I was in the kitchen, and I opened the cupboard. And before doing anything, all the dishes and the bowls fell on top of me." (Sounds like poltergeist activity. And when I say poltergeist, I don't necessarily mean a ghost, spirit, etc. If you read Dr. Barry Taff's book, "Aliens Above, Ghosts Below," he talks about something called Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis, or RSPK. The term was coined by parapsychologist, the late Dr. William Roll. The theory is that the paranormal activity taking place is originating from one of the people in the house. Usually, a young, adolescent boy or girl. "After receiving a report of poltergeist-like activities, two investigators from the Rhine visited a site and observed disturbances that were classified as Recurrent Spontaneous Psychokinesis or RSPK. RSPK is the modern interpretation of what was previously called poltergeist activity. It occurs when an individual – in this case an adolescent boy – is present in every case where a poltergeist-like effect is observed. The activity is interpreted as the result of unconscious psychokinesis activities coming from the individual who is called the PK-Agent." Source: ~ Here's a transcription of the video clip I included below: Parapsychologist Dr. Barry Taff: "The original belief, regarding poltergeist, was that they were, basically, mischievous, prank-playing ghosts. That's what the German word means. The modern theorist in parapsychology consider a quite different type of belief system is operating here, or phenomena is operating. They believe that there are young children present, pubescent, adolescent children, and the research tends to support this belief. These young children are present with a lot of emotional animosities, belligerence, a lot of very intense interactions. And this emotional interaction will produce an emission of unconscious energy from these children, which will affect matter, objects around them. Make them move, affect electrical appliances, make them turn on and off. Make things speed up and slow down, affect televisions, affect radios. Dishes may explode, furniture may move across the room, cameras may go off by themselves, light bulbs may explode suddenly." ~ "A person-focused poltergeist tends to (but not always) involve a female adolescent who is suffering from emotional turmoil when the activity begins. That said however, not all so called 'focal agents' are teenagers. Indeed, William G. Roll, a pioneer in poltergeist research, found the age of people reporting experiences of poltergeist activity ranged from eight to 78 years." Source: ~~~ (That may explain what went on in the Gallaudet home but it's still not accepted by mainstream science as a valid theory. Unfortunately, Allan (the alleged medium) didn't offer up any alternative explanations for the paranormal activity in the home and focused solely on the alleged spirts of dead people as the answer. She thought Cedar was a physical medium who could cause that type of activity to occur, but again, 100% related it to the spirits of dead people, without offering any other explanation. IMO, it's possible one of the girls (or Caren) is a PK-Agent and this had nothing to do with spirits. Then again, maybe it IS connected to non-physical entities? Spirits of the dead? Keel's ultraterrestrials, who he believed impersonated the dead? A mix? Something different? Impossible to prove, either way. So, I don't know. But I DO believe SOMETHING anomalous was going on. If you want an example of how an alleged haunting, ghost or poltergeist case should be investigated, watch this. The clip I attached at the end is from this video. If these folks were still doing investigations, I'd refer anybody who was dealing with this type of situation to them.) "We don't consider our pictures proof of anything, we consider them part of the struggle to gather evidence to try to understand this phenomena." ~Kerry Gaynor Watch it... 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼 ~~~ Caren: Also, "my daughter, Laurel, and I were right here having a conversation. And all of a sudden she screamed. She said, 'Someone just touched me on my back.' And there was no one else in the room." The bedroom... Caren: "I was woken by a noise. Immediately, I looked to the door and saw a giant, black shadow coming at me from the door. It came over the bed and came straight over top of me. I was scared to death. I've never been that scared in my life." (This is very similar to what happened to people who visited Skinwalker Ranch (and other locations) and reported taking "something" home with them. Also known as the hitchhiker effect. ) Caren: "I was asleep and I felt a hand grab my hair and yank me up. It was a very aggressive pull. I screamed, and I did not go back to sleep after that. There was no one around. Tim wasn't here. It was not a nightmare. I don't sleep most nights, but I'm glad that I had the experience because I understand what Cedar's going through. If I saw that every night, I think I'd act like her, too." Caren's mother, Jan: "Something's going on with Cedar. She's changed dramatically in the last year, year and a half. To do this to my grandchildren makes me angry. My husband and I were babysitting here and we heard Cedar cry out, yelling and screaming, 'Stop it, stop it. Leave me alone!' So I rubbed her back and she went back into her sleep. And then I heard a low voice (that sounded male) say, 'It's gonna be alright. It's alright.'" (From the investigation, Jan wants, "peace among the girls. They don't tend to get along. It's more than just sibling rivalry. It's something else." She thinks the girls are in physical danger. As Taff noted, intense interactions among people in the house could be the cause of all of this. Why did it take a few years for the activity in the house to start? Did anything change in the family dynamic? Cedar is interviewed and she tells the investigator what she's experienced, which includes a scary dream with blood on the floor and dead people. She says she sees the man with brown arms and brown skin who yells at her, "Get out of here, this is not your room. This is my room." Later on, the medium says that this man was there to protect Cedar. Based on what he allegedly said, that makes zero sense. I'm not a fan of this medium (Allan), to put it mildly. Aspen, eight years old, says she sees a shadow man in her room who sits near her dresser. She also saw a little girl who was wet. "I felt a thumb press on my neck really hard." During the nighttime walkthrough of the house, the medium says that one of the spirits looks wet. Is this confirmation or was the medium fed information about what the children experienced? Impossible to know as it's an edited TV show.) Caren says Cedar has seen over a hundred spirits. "It's every night." Medium Allan says this one spirit is tormenting the kids because she's jealous of them and wants Caren to be her mother.) Amy Allan: "The only way (this spirit) could be with you is if you were to kill yourself, then you guys would spend entirety together, and you would forever be her mother, alone." (I'm sorry but without any evidence to back that up, it's an irresponsible thing to say and, IMO, a bunch of sensational bs.) You can watch the entire episode if you log in with your cable subscription. Or watch it at Greensteet's post... ~~~ Tim Gallaudet was on with “Jay Anderson” a few years ago and spoke about the phenomenon and what his family has experienced. Tim Gallaudet (TG): "You see a sort of grouping of UAP and paranormal and how does it intersect. And the answer is: I don't know." TG: "We were all grown up in traditional, kind of, religion. But at some point in our lives, my youngest daughter had real serious behavior issues. And to sum it all up, she is like many of these mediums that you see. She could see spirits, she saw them all the time. A lot of listeners might just think this is just a joke or made up." (I definitely don't think it's a joke, but if she still has these abilities when she gets older, try to take her to get tested at Windbridge Research. Some people (who call themselves mediums) claim they can acquire information via something other than their five senses and have shown the ability to do so under controlled conditions. Are they speaking to the dead or is it something else? I don't know. And FYI, a medium claims they can speak to the dead and also provides alleged psychic readings to people about their lives and sometimes the future. Nine times out of ten, a psychic does not claim to speak with the dead.) TG: "There are people that have this ability to tap into whatever we wanna call it. The Other Side, where people go when they die, whatever that is. The energy that people leave behind. There's a lot of ways to explain it. It was real and...real to us." (They're allegedly able to see the spirits of the dead and can acquire information they have no way of knowing via their five senses. To me, the part about them acquiring information they have no way of knowing through means other than their five senses has been proven. Maybe there's some storehouse of information that they're accessing, like an Akashic Records type of thing? Or, maybe they're really communicating with the dead or some other entities? Again, I don't know where the information is coming from. As TG said, there are lots of ways to explain it.) TG: "She had real experiences, it was affecting her. And through a lot of therapy, we were able to basically have her - now she's thirteen - she became adjusted and has kind of dealt with that. She's sort of suppressed it, actually, which is okay. I mean, she's only thirteen. We can take a pause and help her develop as a person and human before coming to groups with that incredible ability." (TG and his wife did everything they could to help their daughter. When traditional methods failed, they sought help in other ways. Why anybody would have a problem with that is beyond me.) TG: "My wife and I, through this experience, to just be able to help her, we came to meet several mediums who are incredibly gifted." One of them was the Long Island medium, Theresa Caputo. (I like to see Caputo tested in a lab. If you'd like to see what that looks like, watch this HBO documentary on Life After Death and mediums. You'll have to search for the other parts. Part 1 of Life Afterlife ) ~~~ TG said he and his wife had a camera in Cedar's room when this activity was taking place and, "there was orbs flying all around this video. It was so active." (I'd like to see this video and see if those were orbs or particles of dust.) TG: "We loved our daughter and we wanted to help her. And so, through just meeting people, doing a lot of reading about people, these experiences, it became real to us and it opened our minds. I don't have all the answers but I know what we experienced, I know what she saw. We contacted [the show] because we thought she could help her and she ultimately did help my daughter." (That's really all that matters! TG says he has some family history with this type of thing but doesn't have any details as people were less willing to talk about it back then.) TG "She was not the Devil, she was seeing real things (laughs), and that's it. We were not gonna brand her or blame her. And I ultimately know, it was that love that we shared - my wife and I - for her, that opened our minds and create the right outcome. For being well-adjusted, having that in our history, and not being afraid of it or ashamed of it. And being aware and open now to a lot of other things that happen in life and maybe seeing their meaning." (Well said. After learning about this, my respect for Tim and his family has only increased.) ~~~ Last and definitely least...Greenstreet's comments. SG: "In an interview with TheProjectUnity, former Navy Admiral Tim Gallaudet claims his young daughter is a 'medium' who sees spirits and can communicate with them." (He said that but also added this...) TG: "There are people that have this ability to tap into whatever we wanna call it. The Other Side, where people go when they die, whatever that is. The energy that people leave behind. There's a lot of ways to explain it." SG: "Gallaudet's wife claims their house is haunted by violent poltergeists." (His wife explained what the family was experiencing. I don't recall anyone involved mentioning poltergeists or that the house was haunted. This are buzzwords SG uses to disparage people. Just like his "monsters" garbage. ) SG: "Their youngest daughter, 6, thinks ghost monsters are hiding in her room and both the TV show stars and her parents validate her fantasies as real." (His wife and daughters were having experiences they couldn't explain. They took the youngest to a psychiatrist and psychologist and they couldn't help. So they sought out the show. You left out the part about them seeking professional help first. Why? Because you're a piece of trash who will do anything to disparage anybody involved in this. I think YOU should seek help.) SG: "Gallaudet says he's taken his young daughter to multiple psychics to try to 'help her.'" (Nope. Mediums. For a so-called journalist, you should know the difference. And again, this was AFTER they sought out traditional help.) SG: "It should be noted that Gallaudet is "close friends" with Jay Stratton, another retired Navy official who claims his house was/is also haunted by violent poltergeists who attacked his children." (Talk to Stratton and you'll see he doesn't define what happened to his family. Oh, that's right, he won't talk to you because you're an azzhole. And it makes sense that those two would bond since their families experienced similar things. I hope Tim shares more details about what's currently going on with his family and what he experienced himself.)

Joe Murgia

88,583 views • 2 years ago