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Official sound version now available on Fanbox and SubscribeStar ! The VA did an amazing job and took this to another level ! Special thanks to : Starlie Skye🌟 🔞 | Comms CLOSED + Voice pack! - #Nyotengu 🍒 CherryRuby_VA🎙🔞 (COMMISSIONS OPEN) - #MarieRose Mimi Hung 💚🌷🔞NSFW VA and...

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“Ryuichi Sakamoto & Tin Drum | KAGAMI+” Makes Its Japan Premiere KAGAMI+, a work that captures Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano performance in three dimensions and reconstructs it in a mixed reality (MR) space, arrives in Japan for the first time. The exhibition runs from June 27 to October 12, 2026, at VS., a cultural a cultural apparatus in Umekita, Osaka. Tickets are now on sale, and the full programme for the long-awaited Japan premiere has been announced. KAGAMI was conceived and developed over the final four years of Sakamoto’s life in collaboration with Todd Eckert and the creative studio Tin Drum. Since its world premiere at The Shed in 2023, the work has been presented internationally in cities including London, Manchester, Taipei, Singapore, Melbourne, Pesaro, and Hong Kong, receiving wide acclaim. Wearing optically transparent headsets, audiences encounter an authentic representation of Sakamoto at the grand piano, realized through a unique form of dimensional photographic capture. His performance at the grand piano emerges within the space alongside ethereal visuals that respond to the music, allowing audiences to experience the performance at a proximity not possible in a conventional concert setting. The experience extends beyond sound and image. Video, photography, and text are integrated throughout the space, alongside a natural scent personally blended by Sakamoto, creating a multilayered sensory environment. The work has been described by The Guardian as “a magical experience.” For its Japan presentation, an expanded version of the work, KAGAMI+, created specifically for this exhibition, will be unveiled. Two types of tickets will be available: RED and BLUE. RED TICKET holders will receive an exclusive 7-inch vinyl record, An edition for the KAGAMI+ RED 2026, as a special gift. Student discounts are available for BLUE tickets. In addition to the main KAGAMI experience, visitors can view related works that offer different perspectives on Sakamoto’s music, including TIME, TIME, a collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani, as well as Ryuichi Sakamoto: Playing the Piano 2026 - D and new sound installations. To celebrate the Japan premiere, commmons will be releasing a special YouTube premiere of Ryuichi Sakamoto: PTP04022020 – YouTube Edit on the official channel. The premiere starts at (JST) on May 7. This is a one-time-only stream — watch live and enjoy a shared experience. Ryuichi Sakamoto & Tin Drum KAGAMI+ Exhibition Period: June 27, 2026 (Sat) – October 12, 2026 (Mon/National Holiday) Opening Hours: – (Timed entry tickets) Closed: Mondays (If a Monday falls on a national holiday or during a holiday weekend, the museum will be closed on the first weekday following the holiday period) RED TICKET(Date & Time Specified Ticket) Price: ¥15,000 (tax included) ・KAGAMI (MR Content) (approx. 60 min.) Open seating (seats are arranged in a circular layout, ensuring a comfortable viewing experience from every seat) ・Exclusive Visitor Gift: 7-inch Analog Record "An edition for the KAGAMI+ RED" ・Access to multiple exhibition works. BLUE TICKET (Date & Time Specified Ticket) General: ¥4,500 (tax included) / Student Discount: ¥2,500 (tax included) ・KAGAMI (MR Content) — ESSENCE (approx. 30 min. including waiting and preparation time) ・Access to multiple exhibition works. Ticket Sales Schedule: ・Tickets for dates from Saturday, June 27 through Monday, August 31 will go on sale on Friday, May 1. ・Tickets for dates from Tuesday, September 1 through Monday, October 12 will go on sale at PM on Saturday, August 1. Tickets (e+): RED TICKET: BLUE TICKET: Official Website: ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto & Tin Drum | KAGAMI+’ YouTube Premiere Screening “Ryuichi Sakamoto: PTP04022020 - YouTube Edit” Streaming on Thursday, May 7 at PM commmons YouTube Channel: #skmtnews #ryuichisakamoto #KAGAMI #坂本龍一 #MR Tin Drum

ryuichi sakamoto

17,604 次观看 • 3 个月前

Way back in 1996, I was working on Diddy Kong Racing. Probably the most fun I've had in my entire life! One of the most fun parts was creating animation sequences using the custom made software by Rob Harrison who was one of the lead programmers on the team. After I gave him a list of features I needed it to have, Robert created a great editor based on a simplified timeline editor similar to what I had previously used in Alias Poweranimator. Characters, objects and cameras would follow paths that I could draw to create motion, and along those paths I could place 'trigger' events which were usually icons that looked like a musical note or a special effect. So for instance, during the start sequence when Diddy Kong flies around the famous 'N64' logo high up in the clouds, Diddy Followed a path and as he hit triggers along the way, special sound effects were triggered and twinkle star particles were emitted. The sky background was simply a spinning cylinder with a basic blue sky texture on it. However, although it sounds simple, scenes soon became very complicated, and this WIZPIG end sequence after defeating him for the first time was a lot to handle. I made the characters follow paths which ran all over the place triggering sound effects as they ran away from the evil boss! I had so much fun creating sequences, and doing WIZPIG's VOICE! But none of this would have been possible without the great work from Rob to give me a great tool to animate those sequences which really brought the game to life! All of the team worked their asses off in a red hot barn during that summer, but we loved every minute - and it shows in the game! I remember Chris Stamper being really impressed with the speed we were putting this kind of thing together thanks to the way we were communicating with each other as a team. But with this particular sequence he wasn't happy when he saw I was building a lighthouse. I remember him asking why I was wasting memory on graphics because it was in short supply - and everything should be built for a reason. (And quite rightly so) However, little did he know it would become a rocket ship for Wizpig to launch into space with, and ride around the space racetrack, but he soon found out! Lee Schuneman did a great job bringing the team together and getting them to trust in his vision of a racing game with an 'adventure' element. The amazing front end by Johnni Christiensen set it apart from many other games with it's bold use of colour and great cartoony style And that music you hear is by non other than my best pal David Wise! What a game! What a time we had! We all worked so hard - And some of the team now even work with me at Playtonic Games! (Paul Mountain, John Pegg, Martin Wakely) #DiddyKongRacing #GameDev #VideoGameHistory #Art #Characterdesign

Rareware_Artist

90,839 次观看 • 5 个月前

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 次观看 • 2 个月前

"What was in the middle of the hangar was an actual flying saucer. ~GR A Secret Revealed After 33 Years - Have We Cracked Gravity? "We got it from them." (Rogers retired in April of this year.) In 1992, Dr. Gregory Rogers, a chief flight surgeon (a physician who's responsible for the health of the aviation crew, including pilots) for NASA and an Air Force major who supported 33 space shuttle launches and was also an F-18 pilot, was at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (now called Cape Canaveral Space Force Station). He had a guide from EG&G with him but that doesn't seem relevant to what happened next. A major pulled him aside and said, "Hey Doc, I've got something to show you, I've got something even you have never seen." Josh Boswell broke this story in May. H/T: Sentinel News The major took him into an office with four computer stations, locked the door and closed the blinds. They both sat down, and on one of the computer screens, the major pulled up a video that showed a generic hangar. The screen had no markings on it. No classification markings, no location, time, date, etc. "What was in the middle of the hangar was an actual flying saucer." (This next quote isn't part of my video clip and is at 25:08 of the Chris Lehto interview.) "So I said, 'Where would we get a design like this?' And [the major] said, 'We got it from them (shows his thumb pointing up).' He did not explain what he meant, but obviously, he was referring to non-human technologies from off this planet." "There were two guys in lab cats to the bottom left, and then midway up the screen on the right side, there were three guys that looked like technicians in what I would call Tyvek suits, head-to-toe. And only their faces were shown. "And then some sort of a warning sound went off and everybody cleared out. And then, within a couple of minutes, the vehicle became active." "The vehicle itself was sort of a pearly white. There were no seams, rivets, windows, doors. Nothing that could be identified. It looked as though it was sort of a modified egg, if you just sort of shifted it around. "There was a tiny little area on top that protruded and there was a mast that came out. And on the mast, it looked like there were three umbilicals coming off." There were various, flat-black rectangles (horizontal and vatical). "I believe that these were made to monitor the movement of this craft." [Since] "it was perfectly pearly white, and it began to move, there was nothing there to show you that it was moving. So, just like any experimental aircraft, they put markings on it so you could monitor the motion. And that's what I believe these rectangles were. "There were electromagnetic discharges that told me that the vehicle had become active, and they were very peculiar. But I don't wish to describe them to anyone because, if this was a test-bed model, whatever the mechanisms were being used may still be active in more advanced craft, and I don't want to give out information that would be beneficial to those opposing the United States. But, as soon as it started to do this... (Video picks up again here. 👇🏼 ) "...it just sort of lifted off the floor. The floor looked like a concrete floor with like, some sort of rubber matt that had been on top of it." "It lifted off, just like a feather. It rose about three feet in the air and then just hung there. The next thing that it does is that it rotates 360 degrees, clockwise. As it rotated across, I could see the writing, 'U.S. Air Force.' And then it had an American flight insignia just above that." "It completed a 360-degree circle, paused, and then completed a 360-degree circle counterclockwise, so that it was in the same position it had started in. It moved to the left and right, it moved forward and backwards. It's just like, you know, you're testing your controls, making sure you have everything working. "And then, it rotated to a 45-degree angle of attack, if it were flying and the 12-o'clock position (where the U.S. Navy and flight insignia was located) was going forward. This was amazing. Fixed-wing aircraft can't do this. A helicopter can go to a 45-degree angle of attack, but it's going to be moving forward and lifting. This thing did not do that. And so, this shocked me more than anything else, because it did not move one centimeter as it moved to what would be a 45-degree angle of attack. So that just blew me away. "Just about that time, there's a knock on the door. The guy hits the buttons to turn the computer and screen off, and he says, 'Don't tell anyone I showed you this!' "Well, I'm gonna go around telling somebody that you showed me a flying saucer? Well he goes to the door, opens it - we were both majors - and so this Lt. Colonel and two other guys came in. And so the Lt. Colonel said, "What's going on in here that you had the doors locked?" To see how they got out of this pickle, and why Rogers didn't turn in the major for showing him a classified video, watch the rest of the clip. "Along the way, I thought, 'I can't tell this to anybody.' I didn't even tell it to my wife for 15 years. But, as long as I was associated with the [DoD], I did not want to risk what the repercussions were gonna be as soon as I told this story. ~~~ How far have our reverse engineering efforts progressed? This is from my August of 2023 post. "There are people who say we have reverse-engineered them and are flying them. I never found any support for that. And found a lot of support for saying we can’t figure it out. If we do, it would be in some program at a higher security level.” ~Michael Shellenberger ~~~ Former intel and defense contractor, and my friend, Michael Via, who I've interviewed multiple times, had his sighting of a silent, black, "majestic" triangle craft in 1992 in the Persian Gulf. He thinks it's our tech. ~~~ And then there's Nick Cook, the former aviator editor for Jane's Defence Weekly and a very respected, award-winning journalist, and author. His gut tells him that we (humans) may have cracked gravity. But he doesn't have the proof. "I found plenty of evidence the US had been trying, tho. I have no firm evidence now (who does?), but 20 years on from #THFZP, I think it is possible the antigrav issue has been cracked. Wish I could say this was more than a hunch, but this is all it is." ~Nick Cook A hunch. Possible. ~~~ And my favorite anecdote of all time, from another person I consider a friend. Retired Commander Will Miller: "I had a friend, a former military officer who worked with me. [He went to work at] the famous Groom Lake facility, Area 51 and he was out there for several years. As we all know, most folks that work out there have signed their lives away, never to disclose what goes on and for better or for worse, and this fella was no different. And over the three years I worked with him – and he knew my interest in things extraterrestrial and my work with CSETI – never once did he mention any of his work out at Groom Lake or any association between that and anything extraterrestrial. "And the day I was leaving the command, he took me aside and he said, 'You know, Will, some of the folks you talk with, maybe some CSETI researchers, may see objects that are doing, you know, Mach 9 and then suddenly make a right angle turn and you say, "Well, gosh, that’s got to be an extraterrestrial craft."' "And then he looked at me and he said, 'But it’s not.' And he just turned and walked away." ~Commander Will Miller (Retired) My original post is here: ~~~ One thing that Dr. Gregory Rogers said to Lehto really jumped out at me: "And then, it rotated to a 45-degree angle of attack." Numerous witnesses have reported craft tilting up at a 45-degree angle right before they shoot off at a high rate of speed. I wrote a long thread on it (which I can't find) and Danny Silva wrote an article on it several years ago. Here's a thread from Willy Sam that covers some of that. And if you Google "UFO tilt up 45 degrees," you'll find more. Did we figure out something about UFOs and tilting up?

Joe Murgia

25,246 次观看 • 1 年前

Tlon Messenger is now open to everyone. We built a simple and infinitely flexible platform for you to use AI agents with your friends. We think it’s pretty amazing, we love using it every day, and we want to see what people can do with it. So we’re opening it up to the public. It’s fun and exciting to build the future of personal computing in an informal, chat-based way with your friends. (You can skip the rest and just download it from the link in the next tweet if you want.) If you don’t want your digital future to be owned by a giant company but you want to explore what’s possible in this new era of agent-driven computing, you should try using Tlon. But wait, what is it? Tlon is a messaging platform built 100% open source, decentralized and owned by its users from the ground up. With Tlon you own everything: your data, your workflows, your programs: the whole thing. Think of it like Telegram or WhatsApp that you own forever and you can freely customize. Every Tlon account comes with an OpenClaw-powered bot. (Don’t worry, we safely run OpenClaw for you in our infrastructure so your bot can’t go off the rails. You’re also welcome to host your own claw if you want maximal control.) We use our bots to collect research, build nuanced daily briefings, collate data from all our disparate services. Tlon makes it insanely easy to use OpenClaw by simply installing an app from the app store, we let you keep your data and programs independent from any app or model provider, and provide the canvas to explore what’s possible. What’s most interesting for us is using bots together. On Tlon bots can create groups, augment them, moderate them, invite others and freely engage with both users and other bots. Tlon is an open playing field unlike what’s possible on conventional platforms. So, what do we do with Tlon? First and foremost, we run Tlon on Tlon. Bots coordinate data from all of our services (Linear, GitHub, all of our servers and infrastructure) and handle alerts, briefings and help us track down bugs in place. Having all of this easily synced between a desktop client and a mobile app is quick and convenient. We use bots to research new areas of work or interest. Bots can compile trees of notes, use different models to evaluate them, and then add on autoresearch-like automations to go even deeper. Since Tlon bots can freely switch between models and providers, we often pass research to Anthropic, OpenAI and self-hosted models to see different results. The most fun part of using bots as researchers is doing it together. “Put together short (~500 word) notes on the 10 most popular open source messaging protocols of the past twenty years, put them in a notebook inside a group and invite Corrina, Walt and Bill as well as their bots” is a good example. Together we’re able to move more quickly than we would on our own. Many of us also use bots to keep track of all the separate threads of work in our personal lives with close friends and family. Someone built a system for keeping track of their garden across time, someone else built a system for prepping lunches for their daughter and sending recipes to family members. Another team member built an integration that tracks what flights are passing overhead so they get a push notification every time a plane goes by. Many of us quickly communicate with our bots via voice memo when we’re out and about. Having a single interface to all the models that also holds all our data and is in our pockets feels great. Especially when the data goes into a single archive. Why is Tlon different? Every Tlon account runs on top of your very own personal server. If you ever want to download it and run it yourself, you can. If we ever go out of business, it’s yours to keep. This is very different from anything that already exists. You can’t keep your WhatsApp forever. You can’t keep your Telegram forever. Tlon is an archival-quality system that’s yours to customize. Why did we build it? In my 1999 imagination, sitting in front of a CRT somewhere in the California countryside listening to Underworld and the sound of a modem, a connected computer was an engine of unending creative potential for everyone. When I was a teenager, a computer with an internet connection felt like an infinite expanse of possibility. Not only could you use the computer to find new tools to experiment with—you could also build whatever tool you could think of. It seemed like anything was possible. I looked forward to a future where everyone could build whatever software they needed, whenever they needed it. It turned out, in the intervening twenty years, that to build and customize software you have to both write code and host it on a server somewhere. For most people, so far, that has been impossible. Instead of controlling our software, our software controls us. We rely on others to build it and decide everything about it: how it works, looks, how much it spies on us and how long it lives. But all of this is changing, fast. The hottest programming language of 2026 is English. People with no technical experience are building their own tools. It’s incredible. The expanse has opened up again. The cost of building what we think of today as software is headed to zero. What yesterday was an entire app is rapidly being replaced by a conversation. The result is hyper-specific, tailored to the user and much more efficient. Today, agents help us build workflows, automate processes and pull together disparate sources of data. All of the annoying apps and services and clunky interface we’ve put up with can just disappear. We can now program and control our computers in the programming language we already know: English. There aren’t that many of us doing this yet, though. It’s still far too hard to set up, to distribute and to trust. There’s also no single platform to experiment on and collaboratively imagine this new future of personal computing. We want everyone to be able to build bespoke, ultra-personal software on demand. We think software should be as available and accessible as a pen and paper. We think anyone should be able to enjoy the expanse of possibility that the computer provides with the lowest possible barrier to entry and the highest possible quality. So, starting far, far too long ago, we engineered a whole new system for it. Just for you. We’re opening up Tlon Messenger to a limited number of people each week. This isn’t for exclusivity’s sake, but because we’re running infrastructure for you and your agent, and covering the tokens your agent uses. That can get expensive quickly, but we want to learn what people will do with this new system we’ve built. We’re really curious to see what you can do, so give it a try and tell us what you invent. Download link to your local app store in the next tweet. Yours, Galen (and the rest of the Tlon Team)

Tlon

600,586 次观看 • 1 个月前

JAMES COMEY LEAKED CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE TO THE NEW YORK TIMES in order to push the Russia Collusion narrative onto the American people to take down Trump. Adam Schiff wasn't the only leaker of classified intel. James Comey specifically leaked classified intel to the NYT in order to enable a special prosecutor to take down Trump and conspire with other mainstream media organizations to fool and lie to the American people to push them to go against Trump with a false narrative. This is basically "Project Mockingbird." The main media channels were colluding with government in order to take down a sitting president and undermine the U.S. This has been going on since 2016 against Trump and still is to this day. The FBI concluded numerous legacy news media stories that crafted the false Russia collusion narrative contained illegally leaked classified intelligence but failed to definitively identify the leakers. But agents did force a stunning admission that ex-FBI Director James Comey used a special conduit to the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times in his bid to polish his image and push for a special prosecutor to take down President Donald Trump. Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman admitted to agents in interviews he routinely communicated on behalf of Comey, his longtime friend, with Times reporter Michael Schmidt, whose work was among the newspaper's 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories on Russian election interference. The goal, Richman told the FBI, was "to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage" outside of the bureau's official press office, according to internal FBI memos that current Director Kash Patel delivered to Congress this week. While Richman was known to have been publicly quoted in news stories as an advocate for Comey, he admitted to agents — who were part of the FBI’s Arctic Haze classified leaks inquiry — that he was given access by Comey to what turned out to be highly classified information up to the SCI level and sometimes provided information to reporters on an anonymous basis. Richman insisted he did not believe he had confirmed or provided classified intelligence to reporters but said he could not be 100 percent, the memos state, noting he could only make his leak denial “with a discount.” "Richman was pretty sure he did not confirm the Classified Information. However, Richman told the interviewing agents he was sure 'with a discount' that he did not tell Schmidt about the Classified Information," one FBI memo recounted. In the end, the Justice Department decided not to pursue any criminal charges against Comey or any of his lieutenants or now-Sen. Adam Schiff despite potential evidence of leaks, saying it could not be certain of who leaked what and when. But its interrogation of Richman and his admissions of significant contact with the Times' Schmidt provide the most detailed account to date of how Trump critics like Comey — who was fired by the president — used the media to craft narratives that ultimately turned out to be untrue or misleadingly overstated, the memos show. Just the News also revealed this week that a career intelligence officer who worked for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee for more than a decade repeatedly warned the FBI beginning in 2017 that then-Rep. Adam Schiff had approved leaking classified information to smear then-President Donald Trump over the now-debunked Russiagate scandal. Schiff has denied the allegation. Newly-declassified FBI memos also include details on classified leaks investigations dubbed Tropic Vortex, Foggy Falls, Riding Hood, Sirens Lure, Echos Fate, and Genetic Christmas. Comey, Richman, and “Arctic Haze” The FBI leak investigation code-named “Arctic Haze” revealed key details about Richman — Comey’s longtime friend, confidante, and media conduit — including what was at that time his nearly decade-long source relationship with Michael Schmidt of The New York Times. The leak investigation zeroed in on four news articles which contained leaked classified information. The first was a New York Times article by four reporters — Schmidt, Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, and Eric Lichtblau — from late April 2017 titled “Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. from Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.” The second was a Washington Post story by Ellen Nakashima from early April 2017 titled “New details emerge about 2014 Russian hack of the State Department: It was ‘hand to hand combat’.” The third was another Washington Post piece by Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett from late May 2017 titled, “How a Dubious Russian Document Influenced the FBI’s Handling of the Clinton Probe.” The fourth was a Wall Street Journal article by Holman Jenkins Jr. from late May 2017 titled, “The Trump-Russia Story Starts Making Sense.” The April 2017 Times article by Schmidt quoted Richman defending Comey: “Jim sees his role as apolitical and independent. The F.B.I. director, even as he reports to the attorney general, often has to stand apart from his boss.” Schmidt wrote that “confidants like Mr. Richman say he was constrained by circumstance” while “navigating waters in which every move has political consequences.” Richman also reportedly said that Comey displayed “a consistent pattern of someone trying to act with independence and integrity, but within established channels” and that “his approach to the Russia investigation fits this pattern.” The Times article wrongly argued that, in the case of the Trump-Russia investigation, Comey “conducted the investigation by the book.” The FBI memos show that Arctic Haze was opened by the FBI’s Washington Field Office as a media leak investigation in mid-August 2017, after a redacted source in late June 2017 “reported the unauthorized disclosure of classified information in eight articles published between April and June 2017” and after a DOJ request at the start of August 2017. Arctic Haze was predicated on the four aforementioned stories. The FBI closed the investigation in early September 2021 — with the DOJ charging no one with leaking classified material — with the bureau’s closure document providing details about the FBI’s failed attempt to catch the leakers. The bureau document indicated that it had been treated as an “Espionage Investigation.” The FBI said the “factual predication” for the leak inquiry was largely based on the classified information which first appeared in the April 2017 Times piece. The FBI noted that Comey had “publicly indicated on several occasions that classified information contributed to his decision” to unilaterally and preemptively announce in early July 2016 that he did not believe any reasonable prosecutor would charge Hillary Clinton over her mishandling of classified information on a private email server and his further announcement in October 2016 that the Clinton emails investigation was (briefly) being reopened. The bureau said Comey had four reasons for making the announcements the way he did, including that “Comey had concerns the Classified Information, which directly related to whether or not the Attorney General [Loretta Lynch] should have been recused from the Midyear Exam investigation, would be leaked to the media or would otherwise be disclosed.” Comey had told the Senate Intelligence Committee in July 2017 that “one significant item I can’t, I know the committee’s been briefed on. There’s been some public accounts of it, which are nonsense, but I understand the committee’s been briefed on the classified facts.” The bureau said that, in classified testimony to a bureau watchdog, “Comey confirmed the specific Classified Information, which was discussed in the New York Times article, and indicated it did impact his decision to make unilateral, public statements about the Midyear Exam [Clinton] investigation.” Recent declassifications provide more details on the classified intelligence which swayed Comey to let Clinton off the hook, as well as revealed more information on so-called Clinton Plan intelligence which the Comey FBI seemed to ignore as it launched the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump. Comey hires Richman to afford him Top Secret Clearance. The FBI said that “Comey instructed the FBI to hire Richman as a Special Government Employee (SGE)” in 2015 and “to grant him a Top Secret clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information” and that “FBI records indicated Richman was hired to work on ‘Going Dark’ matters.” The bureau said its investigation “revealed Comey also hired Richman so Comey could discuss sensitive matters, including classified information, with someone outside of the FBI’s regular leadership. Comey also used Richman as a liaison to the media.” “The investigation revealed Richman had been a source for Michael Schmidt, one of the reporters credited with writing the article at issue, and The New York Times since at least 2008,” the bureau wrote. “Richman first spoke with Schmidt regarding an investigation into illegal activity in sports. Prior to Richman becoming an SGE, Schmidt visited Richman’s house numerous times. The New York Times quoted Richman several times, both on the record and on background, in stories regarding Jim Comey. After he was terminated by President Trump, Comey used Richman as a conduit to convey to the media memoranda of his meetings with President Trump.” “According to Richman, Comey and Richman talked about the ‘hammering’ Comey was taking from the media concerning his handling of the Midyear Exam investigation. Richman opined Comey took comfort in the fact Richman had talked to the press about his feelings regarding Comey’s handling and decision-making on the Midyear Exam investigation. Richman claimed Comey never asked him to talk to the media,” the FBI notes say. The FBI wrote that “Richman recalled Comey told him there was some weird classified material related to Lynch which came to the FBI’s attention” and that “Comey told Richman about the Classified Information, including the source of the information.” The FBI said that “investigators learned that FBI Office of Public Affairs was told to assist The New York Times with the April 2017 article” and that “Comey either directed or otherwise authorized FBI’s official assistance to The New York Times.” Disgraced and fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an affair, appear to have been involved in briefing the Times, according to the bureau memos. “Strzok stated he believed FBI Executive Management told them to meet with the New York Times. Strzok said he recalled being told to provide an investigator-level briefing on the Midyear Exam investigation,” the FBI said. “During the March 30, 2017, meeting, the Times told Strzok and Page they had the Classified Information.” The “summary of investigative steps” by the FBI included interviews with bureau and intelligence community officials, document reviews, phone and email records researches, the review of a 2017 “Tropic Vortex” investigation conducted by then U.S. Attorney John Durham and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and more. “Based upon discussions with DOJ, these investigative steps did not generate sufficient proof to charge any individual with willfully transmitting the Classified Information, conspiring to transmit the Classified Information, or aiding and abetting another person’s Transmission,” the FBI concluded in 2021. The FBI claimed that “the investigation has not yielded sufficient evidence to criminally charge any person, including Comey or Richman, with making false statements or with the substantive offenses under investigation.” Inspector General calls Comey's leaks "unauthorized" DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz wrote a report released in August 2019 criticizing Comey’s decision to leak his so-called “Comey Memos” — including details about Trump’s alleged comments about Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn — to the media in 2017 in an effort by the then-fired FBI director to spur the appointment of a special counsel. Horowitz wrote that his investigation “interviewed 17 witnesses, including former Director Comey and Daniel Richman, the individual who, at Comey's request, shared the contents of one of the Memos with a reporter [Schmidt] for The New York Times.” Comey told Horowitz that the day after being fired by Trump, he retained Richman as an attorney. “We have previously faulted Comey for acting unilaterally and inconsistent with Department policy,” the DOJ watchdog wrote. “Comey’s unauthorized disclosure of sensitive law enforcement information about the Flynn investigation merits similar criticism.” Comey admitted in 2017 that he had hoped leaking this information “might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” Horowitz concluded Comey’s leaks were “an attempt to force the Department to take official investigative actions.” “Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a special counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure,” Horowitz wrote. “What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.” Horowitz sent a criminal referral to the DOJ over Comey’s memos at the time, but the DOJ declined to prosecute. Comey’s leak efforts were successful, however, as Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel within days of the Comey Memo leaks making their way to the New York Times. An article in the Times penned by Schmidt was titled “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation” and was published on May 16, 2017. Then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel the next day. After two years, Mueller “did not establish” any criminal Trump-Russia collusion. Other classified leaks inquiries also come up short, here is a list: The newly-declassified FBI memos also detail a host of other failed or botched classified leaks investigations that made their way into legacy media. They were given operational code names such as Tropic Vortex, Foggy Falls, Riding Hood, Echos Fate, and Genetic Christmas. Tropic Vortex: he Justice Department’s Tropic Vortex classified leaks investigation focused on an unspecified October 2016 article by The New York Times as well as an early March 2017 article written by Times reporters Schmidt and Michael Shear and titled, “Comey Asks Justice Dept. to Reject Trump’s Wiretapping Claims.” Foggy Falls: The FBI’s Foggy Falls classified inquiry focused on a Washington Post article by three reporters — Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett, and Adam Entous — from mid-April 2017 titled, "FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page.” The bureau’s Riding Hood investigation included a main focus on a Buzzfeed News article from early April 2017 written by Ali Watkins and titled, “A Former Trump Adviser Met With A Russian Spy.” The FBI speculated that the classified information in that article may have informed a mid-April 2017 story by the Washington Post written by three reporters — Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett, and Adam Entous — and titled, "FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page.” Siren's Lure: The FBI’s unsuccessful Sirens Lure classified inquiry focused on three Washington Post stories. The first was one by four reporters — Matt Zapotosky, Sari Horwitz, Devlin Barrett, and Adam Entous — from late May 2017 titled, "Jared Kushner Now a Focus in Russia Investigation.” The second was an article by three reporters — Ellen Nakashima, Adam Entous, and Greg Miller — from late May 2017 titled, "Russian Ambassador Told Moscow that Kushner Wanted Secret Communications Channel with Kremlin.” The third was a piece by four reporters — David Filipov, Amy Brittain, Rosalind Helderman, and Tom Hamburger — from early June 2017 titled, "Explanations for Kushner's Meeting with Head of Kremlin-linked Bank Don't Match Up.” Echos Fate: The bureau’s Echos Fate classified leaks inquiry focused on two Washington Post stories. The first one mentioned by the FBI was a mid-January 2017 story by David Ignatius originally titled “Four burning questions on Russia” which was renamed “Why did Obama dawdle on Russia’s hacking?” The second was by three reporters — Greg Miller, Adam Entous, and Ellen Nakashima — published in early February 2017 and titled, “Officials Say Flynn Discussed Sanctions.” Genetic Christmas: The FBI’s failed Genetic Christmas classified leaks investigation focused on an NBC News article written by three reporters — William Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden — which was published in mid-December 2016 and was titled, “U.S. Officials: Putin Personally Involved in U.S. Election Hack.” Series of leaks fed "blatantly false" information to media: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently harshly criticized this specific leak to NBC News, as well as one to The Washington Post, arguing that they fed a false narrative that the intelligence community had already reached a conclusion on Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s intentions during the 2016 election when the Obama-ordered Intelligence Community Assessment had not yet been completed. “Deep State officials in the IC begin leaking blatantly false intelligence to the Washington Post, as proven by the unpublished PDB and previous IC products, claiming that Russia used ‘cyber means’ to influence ‘the outcome of the election.’ … Another leak to the Washington Post falsely alleges that the CIA ‘concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened’ in the election to help President Trump,” the Gabbard-led Office of the Director of National Intelligence assessed last month. ODNI added: “At this point, there is no official IC assessment that contains that conclusion [...] IC officials again leak to the media, this time claiming [to NBC News] that IC officials believe ‘with a high level of confidence’ that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in the ‘U.S. Election Hack’.” Source: Just The News

The SCIF

32,064 次观看 • 11 个月前

What's next for OpenTUI? Here's a technical write-up. Over the last few months OpenTUI gained a lot of stability improvements, new unnecessary but fun features like live audio streaming, and useful features like rendering to the scrollback buffer mixed with a live TUI, called footer mode. Overall the feature set enables building large and complex applications. React and Solid make it super simple and convenient. There is still so much to do though. Three big milestones we have set out to achieve are: - Moving most of the behavioural logic currently living in TypeScript down to the native Zig core - Node compatibility - Optimizing the hell out of primitives like text rendering The render tree mechanisms are currently only usable from TypeScript. Think of the DOM, but controllable like a scene graph. Elements in the render tree are called renderables. They can expose a render method to draw themselves. All renderables are derived from a BaseRenderable. Renderables and the render tree will become native primitives. Building blocks usable from any language bindings. Reducing the TypeScript bindings to a very thin layer, with all the behavioural logic living in the native binary. Moving this down is not just a matter of porting TypeScript classes to Zig. TypeScript currently owns the tree, dirty-state propagation, layout reads, culling, and render ordering. If it still has to walk every node and call into native code for each step, we keep most of the complexity and add FFI overhead. Whole passes and their state need to move together. We took a big step towards this recently by building yoga-layout into the native binary. It exposes part of the official yoga-layout TypeScript package via FFI. Only the API surface that is actually used by OpenTUI. Covered by the test suite of the original yoga-layout package. This already gave a median speedup of ~2.5x, and up to 30x for narrow scenarios. The yoga-layout integration is useful beyond the speedup. Built-in text and editor measurement can now happen entirely in native code during layout instead of calling back into JavaScript. I ran an experiment last month taking this even further, having GPT 5.6 port yoga-layout from C++ to Zig, which gave extremely good results. It would be a burden to maintain right now though, so that's off the table for now. I might come back to it. Simon Klee is working relentlessly on Node compatibility and already has a full Node version of OpenCode running. Node got FFI support in v26.4.0, thanks to help from the Node community, namely Matteo Collina and Paolo Insogna. Behaviour and interfaces seem similar between Node and Bun, but there are some major differences. To get the best performance out of the Node FFI implementation, its usage has to follow some rules. Node has three ways to call native functions: the generic C++/libffi path, the SharedBuffer path, and the V8 Fast API. The generic path converts every argument in Node's C++ layer and then calls the function through libffi. It is flexible, but also the slowest option for frequently called functions. The SharedBuffer path is a middle ground. JavaScript writes scalar values and BigInt pointers into a small per-function buffer, reducing some conversion work. The actual native call still goes through libffi though. Typed arrays used as pointers cannot be packed into this buffer and fall back to the generic path. The path we really want is the V8 Fast API. Node generates a small machine-code trampoline for the exact function signature, allowing optimized JavaScript to call the native function without going through the generic converter or libffi. This only applies to JavaScript-to-native calls. Callbacks from native code into JavaScript still use libffi closures. Getting onto this path is quite strict. A signature can have at most eight arguments and everything must fit into CPU registers. x86-64 Unix systems have room for six GP (general-purpose) and eight FP (floating-point) arguments. AArch64 has room for seven GP and eight FP arguments. Anything that spills onto the stack falls back to a slower path. These are Node fast-path restrictions, not general FFI restrictions. Bun also does not support passing structs by value through its current FFI API. OpenTUI uses bun-ffi-structs to pack ABI-aligned struct data into an ArrayBuffer and passes a pointer instead. Despite the name, the package also works with Node. Pointers need some care too. Typed arrays and ArrayBuffers normally have to be resolved into BigInt addresses first. Eligible functions with exactly one pointer argument get another Fast API entrypoint that can extract the address directly from the buffer. An eligible signature is still not enough. V8 has to optimize a direct call with a fixed number of consistently typed arguments. Wrappers that collect arguments and forward them using spread or Reflect.apply can hide that call shape and keep the function on a slower path. The practical rules are: keep hot signatures within register limits, use direct fixed-arity calls with stable argument types, reuse owned buffers safely, and batch small operations. Then measure the real call site, because eligibility only makes a function fast-capable. We have to design the ABI around these constraints where it makes sense and gives the expected performance improvement. The third big area is text rendering. Today a Text renderable accepts a string, StyledText, or a tree of TextNodes. Before rendering, the TextNode tree is walked and flattened into styled chunks. Those chunks are packed in TypeScript, sent through FFI, copied into a native TextBuffer, and stored in a rope. Styles are represented separately as highlights. A TextBufferView then wraps the rope into visual lines, which are drawn into the visible buffer. This works, but updates are much more expensive than they should be. setStyledText effectively throws away and rebuilds the rope, copies and reparses all text and recreates the style highlights. Changing one TextNode also walks and flattens the complete tree before going through this path again. Text and style segments should instead live directly in the rope and support incremental replacement. Memory ownership is split between retained JavaScript buffers, the native memory registry, rope arenas, wrapping caches, styled-text storage, and highlights. Different operations preserve or reset different parts of that state. This is hard to reason about and can retain memory for much longer than expected. Text storage needs clearer ownership, with fewer lifetimes split across JavaScript and native code. The public API reflects the same split. The t template literal is convenient, but creates another intermediate chunk representation that is mutable, not cached, and not merged. Text also maintains both StyledText content and a special TextNode tree, which do not compose properly. TextNode is only a style scope, not a normal layout primitive, so Text renderables cannot naturally compose inside each other. I think this should become one Text primitive backed directly by rope segments. The template literal API might disappear or become a very thin helper around those native segments. Editing has another temporary layer in TypeScript. Extmarks currently monkey-patch editing operations, scan and adjust all marks after changes, maintain their own undo state, and recreate native highlights. They should become native marks anchored directly in the rope. A proper mark tree, similar to Neovim's marktree, could update marks together with edits, undo, and redo, and provide the foundation for highlights and concealment. Text wrapping has also become too complex. Supporting CJK, emoji, combining characters, ZWJ sequences, tabs, and different terminal width rules currently mixes byte offsets, grapheme indexes, and display-cell columns across several custom algorithms. Dirty views rewrap the complete document. Measurement and drawing can repeat some of the same work. The wrapping implementation needs an overhaul, but the exact shape is still open. The goal is to make Unicode handling easier to maintain, avoid repeated full-document work, and clearly separate byte offsets, graphemes, and terminal display cells. None of this will happen as one big rewrite. We will replace pieces when we understand the problem well enough and when the result is clearly simpler, faster, or more useful. To achieve all of this we might break public interfaces. Thanks to OpenCode and a lot of good models, migration to a new version with breaking changes mostly is not an issue anymore. What do you want to see next for OpenTUI?

kmdr

29,430 次观看 • 15 天前

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

Bonnie Mwangi, CPA, LLM, MBA

107,519 次观看 • 2 年前

The official line is that they were a Norwegian trade delegation. Technically accurate, because they are Nordic, and there was trade. But they are also seven feet tall, telepathic, and arrived on the South Lawn without a vehicle. I am the Deputy Director of Visitor Logistics at the White House. I logged them into WAVES as FOREIGN DIGNITARIES (3), NON-TERRESTRIAL, NO MOTORCADE REQUIRED, and the meeting went extremely well. The Pleiadians requested the audience in March. They communicate telepathically, which the President respected immediately, because it meant nothing was in writing. They traveled 444 light-years to deliver a warning about our trajectory as a species, the kind of warning a doctor gives a patient who keeps asking if he can smoke in the waiting room. Atomic weapons. Ocean collapse. Machine intelligence. I did not take complete notes, because the meeting ran 25 minutes and he spent the first eleven asking where they got the jackets. Their opening offer: clean fusion, the cure for every disease, the propulsion equations. Free. Contingent on planetary disarmament. His advisors begged him not to negotiate against a species that reads minds. It turned out he is the one man alive with nothing to find. They reached into his mind expecting layer upon layer of deception and found a single image, perfectly clear: him, wearing one of their jackets. The delegation conferred for a long moment and informed us that in eleven thousand years of contact, no species had ever tried to buy the uniform. They called it coherence. They did not mean it as a compliment. He has already trademarked it. He countered. Landing rights, retroactive to 1947. Eighty years of unauthorized airspace use, invoiced with interest. Legal added a line item for the weather balloon story. Narrative services. We billed them for our own cover-up, and the tall one went silent for nine seconds, which I am told is how their species weeps. Greenland stays in the deal. They did not want Greenland. He said that's how he knew it was valuable. What kind of advanced civilization passes on waterfront? Then UFC Freedom 250. This Sunday. Seven bouts on the same lawn we were standing on. His birthday, which he assured them was a coincidence the universe keeps arranging. He offered them galactic distribution rights. Then he looked at the tall one for a long time and offered him the co-main event. Seven feet. Reach like a cathedral door. Walks around at a weight our scales log as an error. Someone said the commission would never sanction it. He appoints the commission. The tall one declined. He lowered the offer to the prelims. This is a negotiating technique. They asked if staging a cage fight on the negotiation site was a threat display. He said it was a Flag Day celebration, and also yes. I should note that an environmental group has sued to stop the octagon. Nobody has sued to stop the aliens. I forwarded this to Counsel as proof that the permitting process is working. Protocol required a gift exchange. They presented a small silver sphere that shows the holder the full consequences of his choices. He looked into it for four seconds and asked if it came in gold. You have all seen the photo. A groundskeeper took it through the magnolias. We told the press pool it was a costume rehearsal for a streaming series, and the pool, to their credit, wrote that down. The groundskeeper now works at the Department of Energy. I am told this is a promotion. There is also footage. He spotted the camera mid-meeting and pointed at it the way you'd point at a waiter whose name you intend to learn. Instead of having it confiscated, he licensed it on the spot. The leak is now official merchandise. Every time you share it, a royalty accrues. You have probably shared it. Have you checked? He thanks you for your business. The deal collapsed at dusk. The Pleiadians withdrew the fusion offer when he asked them to walk out before the main event as Special Guests of the Octagon. They said humanity was not ready. He had Counsel log that as a verbal option to renew. Final tally: our species declined the cure for every disease and counteroffered with pay-per-view. The delegation received two tickets to the Ellipse screening area. Not cageside. He does not give away cageside. They left without sound. One moment present, then elsewhere, like a fee disclosure. Two things before Sunday. The walkout jackets for the main card are red with gold embroidery. Licensed. The fusion fell through, but the jackets closed in an afternoon. And there are three seats on the South Lawn logged as HOLD, GUESTS OF THE PRINCIPAL, DO NOT ASSIGN. I did not enter that hold. The system says I did. He says everyone comes back to the table. We're the only planet with the belt.

Peter Girnus 🦅

3,199,394 次观看 • 1 个月前

Stargate trivia: "200" (The BIG breakdown) SG-1 was about to attain the loftiest of broadcast heights – its 200th episode – and we wanted to do something special. Something unique. Something everyone on the production would enjoy as much as the longtime fans watching at home. The initial idea pitched was something called “Remember When…”, a trip down memory lane in which our characters’ reflections would form the frames of the varied flashbacks to outrageous missions. While everyone loved the idea of the outrageous missions, the premise of the episode felt too diffuse. We wanted an actual story that would form the heart of the episode. After much discussion, we elected to pay tribute to the franchise by referencing our last milestone – episode 100 – and bringing back Martin Lloyd and the show within a show, Wormhole X-Treme. But the fun we poked at the franchise through that spoof production was nothing compared to what we had in store for 200… WE FINALLY GOT TO MEET THE FURLINGS! Sort of. Even though it never really happened and we end up getting them killed in the end. Back in the show’s fourth season, not long after joining the production, I was summoned to Exec. Producer Robert Cooper’s office. He was doing his pass on our first script, Scorched Earth, and needed something from me: the name of an alien race. When pressed, he admitted naming alien races was not his forte and, as evidence, offered up “the Furlings”. I have to admit that whenever I heard the name, I always imagined a cosmic version of the Care Bears, giggling and snuggling their way through various adventures. As evidently, did everyone else on the production. The fans, however, were all sorts of curious and nary a week would go by without a fan posting a message board request for a glimpse of the elusive beings. Time wore on and those requests continued so, at one point, Brad suggested an episode in which we actually did get to meet them: a race of gaunt, towering, hairless, grey-skinned creatures. But that idea was quashed and the production went on its merry way, choosing to keep the race a mystery. But with 200 came the opportunity to honor those fan requests, and the viewers at home finally got to see those lovable furry creatures who turned out to be a cross between an ewok and a deranged koala. And then SG-1 went and got their planet blown up. Of course, we quickly reveal that the incident never actually happened and it was part of a pitch for a revival of the defunct Wormhole X-Treme t.v. series, a show that lasted an inglorious three episodes before being cancelled. But thanks to an impressive second life on dvd (following in the footsteps of Family Guy and Futurama) the show is being revived – and General O’Neill, in a desire to maintain a cover of plausible deniability for the Stargate program (and, let’s face it, screw with his old teammates) charges SG-1 with the task of creatively contributing to the production. MITCHELL TAKES ON THE LIVING DEAD! Every once in a while, actor Ben Browder would drop by the offices to pitch out an action sequence for his character – so I thought it appropriate that, given the opportunity, his character would pitch out an action sequence for – uh – his character. And, really, nothing says action like zombie hordes. Just ask fans of The Walking Dead. This sequence also allowed us the rare opportunity of witnessing Walter/Norman getting his head eaten. Double bonus! Mitchell’s idea is shot down and Martin gets on the phone with a representative of the studio. He is clearly frustrated and Mitchell asks: “Studio executives, huh?” Martin responds: “What? Oh, no Charlie? He’s a great guy. He’s the only one I trust.” This was a reference to longtime MGM President of Television and Stargate supporter Charles Cohen, one of the smartest, kindest studios executives I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. As much as he was a fan of the show, we at the production were fans of Charlie. Martin is outraged because they lost their lead. How, he wonders, can they do the show without their lead. “You just bring in a character to replace him,”suggests Mitchell – an obvious reference to the introduction of Cam Mitchell which followed soon after the departure of longtime SG-1 lead Jack O’Neill. Carter then throws out some alternate ideas for keeping the lead alive: “Well, you could have the other characters refer to him all the time. Maybe, get him on the phone once in a while.” Yep. Been there; done that during SG-1’s seventh and eighth seasons. And then, someone references that time O’Neill was invisible… THE ADVENTURES OF INVISIBLE O'NEILL! The idea of doing an Invisible O’Neill segment was actually a joke I threw out...That ended up making the script. That happened a lot in this episode. As with all the segments, we went off and wrote them individually, and then everyone weighed in and they were tweaked. I always found the scene of O’Neill spying on Carter in the shower a tad creepy. Anyway, the Invisible O’Neill idea was embraced because we wanted Richard Dean Anderson to come back and do a cameo on this all-important episode, but didn’t know if he’d be able to work in an appearance. So, we figured we’d get the next best thing: his voice. As it turned out, he was able to swing the appearance, making 200 all that more special. THE GETAWAY Martin then pitches out a tale of high adventure, placing our heroes (SG-1) in an impossible position – and then simply cutting to them escaping through the gate. This was a tip of the hat to the many fans outraged by a similar scenario in a past episode (don’t remember the name) in which our heroes (SG-1) are surrounded by Lucian Alliance soldiers only to effect some miraculous unseen escape. During the ensuing argument over the merits of the pitch, Martin attempts to come up with a reasonable window of time for the team to reach the gate and dial. Ten seconds is too short and thirty seconds is too round a number. He decides on 38! Which, coincidentally, is the same number (of minutes) a stargate can stay open. Timing is, of course, everything, and nothing says action like a ticking clock. Which prompts the following gem from Martin: “Trust me, jeopardy plus ticking clock is box office. It’s the E equals M C squared of the entertainment world. Ask any executive.” Indeed. If there were two notes we received more than any other during Stargate’s long run, they were: “More jeopardy!” and “We need a ticking clock!”. Having a character race a timer to defuse a bomb? Didn’t get much better than that. THEY'RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD! Next to The Simpsons, The Wizard of Oz was probably the most referenced piece of pop culture over SG-1’s decade-long run. The fans certainly took notice and resulted in one particularly memorable piece of artwork being sent to studio depicting the original team as the cinematic classic’s adventurous foursome. So, I suppose, it made perfect sense to reference the constant references by including a little Wizard of Oz sequence in the episode as well. Mitchell’s line: “Now, how can something work perfectly fine for ten years, then all of a sudden, it doesn’t work anymore?” was an in-story reference to the gate suddenly stopping operations – and, in hindsight, could have been interpreted as a comment on the the show’s cancellation. DESTROYING STARGATE COMMAND This also episode gave us the opportunity to do something we’ve always wanted to do: blow up Stargate Command. It’s part of the story Martin Lloyd pitches the team. Mitchell, however, points out a potential problem. They’re alive in the next scene. How is that possible. To which Martin replies: ” I’m thinking I can back-sell it and say you were beamed out at the last second.” Teal’c’s rejoinder neatly sums up the feelings of many on the production: “Is that not too convenient?”. Yep, nobody hated the Earth ship beaming technology more than I did – with possible exception of actor Ben Browder. In the original version of this scene, the fun we poked at ourselves was a little more pointed: DANIEL: Beamed out. MARTIN: By the Prometheus. TEAL'C: Convenient. MARTIN: True. But c'mon, you got Asgard technology, why not use it? As long as it doesn't become a crutch. DANIEL: Small problem. The Prometheus was destroyed. MARTIN: Really? By who? MITCHELL: Kind of a long story. MARTIN: In battle? MITCHELL: Yes. MARTIN: Wow. So how'd you get out of that one? Beat. DANIEL: We, uh... we were beamed out. Soon after, Martin fields yet another call, this one from the network. "So, trouble with Nora"assumes Mitchell, to which Martin replies: "No, Nora—she's great." A shout-out to the late Nora O'Brien who was our network point-person for many years before she moved on to another position with NBC. A sharp executive and just a lovely woman. SG-1 DOES STAR TREK We all grew up with the original Star Trek (except Rob Cooper who preferred The Six Million Dollar Man) so we (and by we I mean Brad) couldn’t resist the opportunity to do an SG-1 version of the television’s most famous SF series. Paul McGillion was originally supposed to do the one-line cameo of the ship’s beleaguered Scottish engineer, but when that fell through, series co-creator and Executive Producer (not to mention former stage actor) Brad Wright stepped into those shiny black boots. THE YOUNGER, EDGIER TEAM Look closely and you can catch the late Cory Monteith as one of the young and edgy team-members. “Young” and “edgy” were buzzwords we kept on hearing a lot of (and continue to hear a lot of in the business), so Rob Cooper served up his version of what a younger, edgier Stargate would look like complete with stylized shots and dreamy cast members. Vala continues to pitch out ideas, offering up an SF version of Gilligan’s Island (“We were in a cloaked cargo ship on a simple, three-hour reconnaissance mission…”) that was one of the scenes we lost for time at the script stage… VALA (VO): We were in a cloaked cargo ship, on a simple three hour reconnaissance mission... TILT DOWN to reveal a planet. VALA (V)): But on the way we encountered a severe electromagnetic storm and lost all power. We were forced down on an uncharted, deserted planet... EXT. TROPICAL ISLAND -- DAY We see the cargo ship washed ashore on this deserted island, looking very much like the damaged S.S. Minnow. VALA (VO): We washed ashore and were forced to survive for weeks in the most primitive of conditions. No phone, no lights, no motor cars. Not a single luxury. EXT. ISLAND -- DAY Landry comes out of a hut, dressed like the Skipper. VALA (V): General Landry was with us on the mission, and let me tell you, he was in a foul mood. LANDRY: Mitchell! Mitchell runs out, dressed like Gilligan. MITCHELL: Yes, sir. LANDRY: Where's Carter? She was supposed to be done by now. MITCHELL: Oh, uh...(looks around) She's not here. Landry whacks him with his cap. LANDRY: I can see that. DANIEL: Over here... PAN TO Daniel (as the Professor) and Carter (as Mary Ann) carrying a large device out of another hut. Vala (as Ginger) trails behind them. The device looks like something constructed from bamboo and coconuts. CARTER (to Landry): I think we may have something, sir. VALA:Not a moment too soon. I must get out of this place. I have a photo shoot this afternoon. Landry stares at the device. LANDRY: What is this thing? CARTER:Well, I managed to construct a basic subspace transmitter out of coconuts, bamboo and our old subspace transmitter. DANIEL: A long shot, but it just might get us off this island. MITCHELL: That's great! Mitchell eagerly moves in for a closer look, but trips, falls and smashes the damn thing.Before Landry can whack him with his cap again -- TEAL'C emerges from the trees, dressed like Mr. Howell. He casually puffs a pipe. TEAL'C: Was I not traveling with a companion? A female by the name of... Lovey? MARTIN: Alright, enough already. FARGATE I had really enjoyed Farscape and, with both Ben Browder and Claudia Black on the show, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do a little tribute, SG-1 style. Originally, Ben was supposed to play the part of Crichton and Michael the part of Stark, but they suggested it might be more fun to switch up the roles. SG-1 SUPERMARIONATION! Brad Wright, Robert Cooper, Paul Mullie and Carl Binder are huge fans of Team America: World Police, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that they jumped at the chance to do their own, SG-1 version. As it turned out, years ago Paul and I had worked with The Chiodo Bros. who had created the puppets and effects for Team America (as well as work on a Davey and Goliath claymation parody for The Simpsons and the Willice and Crimbles parody segment on The Simpsons). We called them up and they ended up delivering kick-ass puppet versions of our team – and supporting players. So, okay. Fess up. Which one of you fans is now the proud owner of one of these? In the writer’s draft of the script, yet another idea is pitched out… MITCHELL: Death is always dramatic. CUT TO: INT. INFIRMARY -- DAY Daniel lies on the bed. Carter, Mitchell, Vala and Landry stand around him. Vala reaches out and touches his hand - VALA: Goodbye, Daniel. The heart monitor FLATLINES. The rest of the group can barely control their emotions. Suddenly, a bright GLOW starts to emanate from under the sheets on the bed. Slowly, Daniel's body TRANSFORMS into a glowing ribbon being like in Meridian. As it rises above the bed, the sheets collapse. Amazement plays on the faces of everyone in the room. The glowing being hovers high above them for a moment then - MARTIN: No, no, no. BACK TO: INT. BRIEFING ROOM -- DAY Martin shakes his head. MARTIN: We did that twice in the series. DANIEL: You only made three episodes. How many times did we kill off Daniel again? Whenever we offed guest stars, we would invariably send them off with the heartening: “This is science fiction. Nobody ever dies in science fiction!” And, many times on Stargate, that was proven true. Then, someone pitches out the fishing segment. Martin’s response: “And what’s the twist…no fish?” is, of course, a reference to the twist at the end of Moebius I and II. THE WEDDING How couldn’t we? There was something there for the shippers – and something there for the slashers as well when O’Neill, waiting for Carter, turns to Daniel who utters the memorable: “You know, if she doesn’t show, people are gonna think that you and I –“. My favorite part of this segment is Jack referring to Carter as, well, Carter. Not Sam or Samantha but Carter. I guess old habits die hard. Martin’s response to the pitch ” Yeah, right, if I want to torture the audience on purpose!” echoes a quote from a fan letter we received that was critical of the ship. A classic line. The episode ends with a bunch of interviews teeming with inside jokes. I mean, I know we did 10 years but, dammit, we were still on a roll!

Joseph Mallozzi 🏴‍☠️

26,828 次观看 • 11 个月前