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Pulled down the underwear! There was something random between my cheeks. Needed a good nose to sniff. #trunks #used #drawls #joggers #sweats #funky #manfunk #manscent #dump #smelly #stinky #nasty #musky #musty #ass #butt #bootyhole #scratch #goon #gooning #sag #sagging #black

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👤 do you also share a wardrobe? 🐰 actually, except for underwear, we shared everything, even socks 🦊 no! you’ve worn my underwear many times too! ( 🐰 eum? pfthehehehehe… ah what was it again? 🦊 when the five of us lived together, there was so much laundry and we couldn’t separate them. since we couldn’t do “whose underwear? whose underwear?” so we just put them all together in one place 🦊 but soobin is just not good at telling them apart so he’s used my underwear out a lot 🐰 what gave me goosebumps was that during a dance practice, yeonjun hyung suddenly got serious pulled my pants down and went like “this is my underwear!” 🐰 (so i was like) “isn’t this mine?” (and yeonjun hyung was like) “it’s mine!” 🐰 from then on, yeonjun hyung wrote ‘YJ’ on the back of his underwear. so i’d check before i wear them and (if i see ‘YJ’, i’d go) “ah it’s yeonjun hyung’s” 🦊 but he still wore it even when i’ve written it down! 🦊 so i’d check his butt like this and turned (the pants) inside out and i’d be like “why is there a ‘YJ’?” 🐰 since we couldn’t tell them apart, we have assigned one underwear brand to each member so we won’t get confused 🐰 yeonjun hyung wears CK and i wear a different brand. but as i kept wearing it, no matter how i looked at it, CK looked the coolest 🦊 hahahahhahaha 🐰 so as we started living separately, i bought 20 pairs of CK (underwears). i guess i’ve been keeping it in. (i thought like) “i want to wear CK too but only yeonjun hyung wears it…” 🐰 even now… (pulls his waistband down to show) 🦊 me too… (pulls his waistband down to show)

💿

13,555 views • 2 months ago

The Cincinnati Police Department pulled over a woman whose car was being pushed by another vehicle after it broke down at a Shell gas station. BACKSTORY… I've been stuck at the Shell gas station on Reading Rd all motherfucking day and a random man pulls up and offers to push my car bumper to bumper all the way to my home so I didn't have to keep sleeping in my car because I didn't want to leave it while the night walkers were having a midnight festival right next to it. I ain't been able to work all day and I'm worried bout how my kids are going to get to school, feed them, feed myself, as well as my dogs then bills are due too. I use my car for work. I have a spotless driving record. I'm in crisis. Then this bitch ass niggas wanna pull me over after seeing me and this kind stranger bumper to bumper while both of have our hazard lights on. The first words out their mouth were "are there any drugs or weapons in the car?" | SNAPPED. THEY DIDN'T EVEN ASK FOR MY DAMN LICENSE FIRST OR TELL ME WHY THEY PULLED ME OVER. Then going have the nerve to tell me they ask every single car that same question when they pull them over in Cincinnati. NO TF YALL DONT, nose gotta be longer than Pinocchios whole family combined. Just Lying out the side of yo neck ass nigga!!! Just out here profiling motherfuckers trying to get to their destination ass niggas!!! I could've used a mechanic, a jump, some parts, a gift card to autozone or something but this bullshit right here- yall got the game fucked up big dawg. So hell yeah here's another incident of me cussing Cincinnati's Biggest gang clean tf out be yall really do got me bent all types of ways. As a matter of fact Venmo me here: GodsFavoriteTree some money for intentional infliction of emotional distress since yall so motherfucking nosey and doing yall job in such a predatory fucking manor. CHANGE THE CULTURE in this department or imma keep speaking up and out about yall fools. I ain't from here but I'm here now and today was one of the worst days of my life. Yall tried to kick me while I'm down and I was fully prepared to go out kicking and screaming cause yall wasn't bout to search shit or tow shit bitch ass niggas. I WAS LEGALLY PARKED BITCH. Now either fix my damn car or go fight some real crime.FAKE ASS BATMAN AND ROBIN WANNABE ASS NIGGAS.

LASHY BILLS

69,119 views • 1 month ago

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

Nicole Minét

407,633 views • 26 days ago

New car day part three…….I have a new car. This is a long one so grab a coffee and sit down - TLDR there’s more photos in the replies 🤣 and how much I paid is at the bottom of this essay 💷 Many of you guessed correctly, saying it’ll be a W211 E-Class Estate so I apologise if this is a bit anti climatic 😬 Jsl91 🦁🏎🥊 not only guessed the car but the bloody interior colours too! For reference though: It’s a 2007 ‘57’ Mercedes-Benz E320 CDI Elegance Estate which has the later 3.0 V6 CDI and 7G Tronic automatic gearbox fitted. It has a really nice upgraded spec from base spec including soft Nappa, electrically adjustable, memory and heated leather front seats, memory steering column and mirrors, very rare sunroof option, Bi-Xenon Headlights, COMAND APS infotainment upgrade with Bluetooth calling and the 7 seat option which seems odd but fold down perfectly flat as if they are not there. It’s averaged a new owner every 4.25 years which for a 17 year old car I really don’t think is bad, has a very decent MOT History and I have the last 10 years Service History physically documented on paper with the car. Prior to that is apparently with all with main dealer so I need to get them to send me it which will make it a full service history between Main Dealer and independents. Bit of an odd buying experience though, the dealer selling it insisted on picking me up from the Station and knew when I was coming in as I kept him updated - he was 30 mins late, I gave benefit of the doubt and assumed he’d of been having the car cleaned or something. No, it’s actually dirtier than I’ve ever let my cars get and needs a very, very good valet - of which I intend to do tomorrow afternoon myself 🧽 When did it become ok to sell a filthy car? We then drove 15 minutes back to a nondescript area of Wakefield where we pulled up on the side of the road and all of a sudden changed ownership on his phone. He then gave me his bank details and I transferred the money as the car had driven faultlessly on that test drive back to ‘his premises’. The guy was nice enough but it felt like he couldn’t wait to get rid of me, money hit his bank, he gave me the new keeper slip, shook my hand and said nice doing a deal with you, got out and walked off 👀 If I hadn’t done my due diligence I’d of genuinely thought the car was stolen or something. I then taxed the car, set my phone and Bluetooth transmitter up and got on the way home. It is an absolute pleasure to drive in fairness, that 221bhp V6 Diesel is powerful but lazy which suits the car so well. As you can see from the photos it averaged 44mpg on my 126 mile journey home. I stopped at Shell in Boston to fill it up with Diesel, something I can’t imagine I’ll be doing all too often ⛽️ Only other issues I can see is the scratches on the front bumper (I knew about) and there’s a scratch on the bonnet I’m hoping will polish out. It’s also due a service. It has a full set of Davanti Tyres on its tiny 16” Elegance wheels, all of which have tonnes of tread. Headlights could do with a polish maybe too. Oh and I paid £1695.00 for it 🤯 Really looking forward to sticking my dateless 3x3 plate on it and taking on our North Norfolk Coast getaway next week 😊 More photos in the replies below if you’ve gotten this far 😅

Sam Hosier

30,161 views • 1 year ago

"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 views • 1 year ago

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

aussie17

796,405 views • 2 years ago

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

1tokki

17,635 views • 11 months ago

I finished the DLC for Ninja Gaiden 4: The Two Masters. Here’s a quick little analysis. I liked it quite a lot. It lasts around 3 hours (I played it on Hard). It has small references to the previous games, and that’s definitely appreciated. You can tell they refined the combat system even more and made the game harder, because the three chapters really kicked my ass is a not stop action combat. Maybe I’m just rusty, but enemies respond much better during combat now. One good thing is that when you lose, you can now skip the death dialogue. If you run out of health and press the button, it immediately restarts, which makes everything feel smoother (that was one of the things I had been asking for). However, things like being able to save the game at UMI or the HDR issues were not added or fixed, which is a shame. I liked the new stages — especially the “hell” one. It feels like a sea without water. You can tell this game was designed to be played at night, because in daytime stages the characters look kind of weird. Maybe it’s just something you have to get used to. Yakumo’s new weapon is incredible. Ryu’s new weapon, on the other hand, I didn’t fully understand. It’s simple, but it feels like it’s missing hits — I noticed it felt kind of empty. It’s more of a “connector” weapon than anything else. It’s great that they added the option to customize which weapons you want to use, or even equip them all together. The new enemies definitely add challenge (there are 4 new enemies or bosses), and I liked the final boss — I’m not sure if more than the others in the base game, but I really enjoyed it. To sum it up, I liked the DLC. However, I feel like they’re going to release a BLACK version, because it’s missing unlockable content, costumes, and characters like Ayane. That honestly makes me sad. A game with such a fun combat system really needed that extra content. If this DLC had been included in the base game, it would have been incredible. Later I’ll talk about the new 100-level mode (it has 3 accessories to unlock — they’re probably for the new weapon). But overall, it’s a good, very playable DLC, just lacking in content. Great job by PlatinumGames and Team Ninja — but please learn to listen a bit more to the fans who have been supporting you for years. Adding more costumes or another playable character is enough to make us happy. 🥷 🥰 Team NINJA PlatinumGames Inc. Super Ninja™

Bayonetta Stuff

21,548 views • 4 months ago

"I'm not sure that we need the dog whistle at this point. And maybe there are ways to re-create it." ~Nolan "There might be a day when Skywatcher doesn't need to exist." ~Nolan "If I had been running the whole show, nobody would even know what Skywatcher is right now." ~Nolan ~My comments in ( )~ Garry P. Nolan: "We've got a lot of data from multiple alleged sightings, both radar and other kinds of data. First it was about getting the raw-data files all put in one place because some of the data was collected by James (Fowler) before there was, officially, kind of a Skywatcher. "And so, getting that data, getting the instrument names that he used for those, then getting the technical manuals of what the settings might be and how much of that information is collected in the metadata when you're collecting the thing... All of this is just the organization that you need to do before you do anything else. "And then, getting from the companies how it is that they parse their raw data. Because some of these data files are put into...I wouldn't call them encrypted, but they're stacked into a certain kind of file structure - and I've seen the file structure - which is, you can think of it as a giant spreadsheet with headings and numbers for each of the columns and time on the row axis. "And so, you know, we've started looking at some of the data and put it into, let's say, 3D tracking. And it's clear that there are some things about the data that we needed to go back to the vendor who makes the instrument and say, 'Why is this and this and this happening, you know, every few dozen milliseconds?'" (I wonder if some of what they saw in their data, and labelled as anomalous, has maybe turned out to be a sensor artifact?) Nolan: "And so, you know, just getting an answer from these companies, often, when you don't even own the instrument, they're like, 'Well, why should we give you the information about how our data is constructed? How do we know that you're not a competitor?' Right? I mean, and so these are the kinds of things that we then contact somebody who has a behind-the-scenes access to this so that we can, again, it's all of these little steps. "And I'm sure there's somebody who's gonna tweet, 'Well, why don't you just put all the raw data out on the internet?' For exactly the same reason you don't put the raw data from ancient DNA sequencing. Because people will make mistakes about it. And so, if I'm going to be involved, I'm not gonna make any mistakes like that. So I'm sorry if people want stuff early. "I think you know, perhaps, if... Well, if I had been running the whole show, nobody would even know what Skywatcher is right now. We'd just be collecting the data in a fully-stealthed mode. And...but, you know, it's...there's reasons, good reasons, why they wanted some publicity. And, you know, but I don't always get my way." Vinnie - 𝐕𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐞 𝐀𝐝𝐚𝐦𝐬 𝕏: "Would you say that the data is exciting?" Nolan: "Oh, there's some interesting stuff in there. I mean, frankly, perhaps some of the better data that we have is just a couple of pictures from the ground of the helicopter with something about, you know, 200 feet in front of it. It's a clear blue sky and there's an object right in front of the helicopter. And the people in the helicopter said at the time that they couldn't see anything, even though we could see it from the ground. "But meanwhile, all of their instruments are going haywire. So, there was an effect. So why couldn't they see it? Maybe it was just out of view? Who knows? So it wasn't a lens flare, and it certainly wasn't a seagull. Mick (both laugh)." Vinnie: "Not in the desert anyway." Nolan: "I can't help myself." Vinnie: "I'm all for it. I'm sure Mick would, too. Hopefully. You know, James Fowler, we know he's left and moved on working with a new company. You know, all the best to him. Am I right in saying some of the technology being utilized by Skywatcher was proprietary to him, specifically? Maybe the dog whistle even? Is that still going to be able to be used by Skywatcher? How's that going to look going forward?" Nolan: "Umm, I'm not sure that we need the dog whistle at this point. And maybe there are ways to recreate it. I'm not party to the discussions around that. And so, we'll see where that goes." (That sounds like Fowler is NOT going to allow Skywatcher to use the dog whistle. That's a big disappointment. I mean, if this is really NHI and the dog whistle works 100% of the time, as claimed, then the whole world deserves to know about it.) Nolan: "I mean, James is not like, gone and forgotten. I mean, I could Signal chat him right now. And so he's there to help us. But, you know, my take on things is, you know, James has a life to live and a family to feed, and maybe his focus isn't entirely on UAP. He certainly has an interest in it. And maybe he has, you know, a company to build, and an opportunity that, actually, we all see now in terms of detecting drones. And, you know, if he wants to run a company like that then running around with a bunch of UAPologists might not be to that benefit. "And there might be a day when Skywatcher doesn't need to exist. The whole idea of Skywatcher is to show that something like this can be done, and it can be done in a serious way." (jakebarber claimed that they could BRING DOWN a craft. If that's true, it would change the world. What happened with that? Barber also said, "Who is operating [UAP]? How are they being operated? Where are they coming from? We should be able to answer those questions, probably entirely, in the next 12 months." Time is running out. Does he still stand behind that? Full Barber post with video clip: ) ~ Nolan: "I mean, I would...I, frankly, hope that if UAPDA - Disclosure Act is passed, because then the information that can be allowed to be out can be let out, and the stuff that needs to be kept secret stays secret. Again, I'm not, I would never advocate for a data dump." (I would 100% advocate for a data dump, minus details on anything that can be used as a weapon. Nobody, including the USG or private contractors owns this information. If it's gonna be a slow drip, for decades, then I fully support an Edward Snowden-type of leaker.) Nolan: "And so, you know, call it controlled disclosure, what have you. It needs to be done the proper way. And, you know, if any of the claims are true, there are reasons why you want to be methodical about it." (Who gets to decide what "the proper way" looks like? It seems like we're having more gatekeeping on top of the original gatekeeping. Not good.)

Joe Murgia

32,437 views • 11 months ago

My cousin, Jonathan Ord asked me to teach the Come Follow Me lesson to his mission yesterday over zoom. This is the video I did and the full text. Hi. I am Brad Smith. I have ALS, which is a really weird disease that kills the motor neurons in my body. That means that I lose the connections between my brain and my muscles. My mind is still running at the normal rate. So, I can understand everything you say to me, but I can’t respond very quickly! I am getting faster, though. Last November I was the 3rd person in the world to receive the Neuralink brain implant. So I am controlling this computer with my brain. This is my old voice, recreated by AI from just two hours of me talking to my phone. I have come to see ALS as a calling, and I am trying to magnify it. I used to talk easily, but now I have to choose my words carefully, because it is hard and slow to type what I want to say. I joke that the Lord gave me ALS to get me to shut up. Those who knew me when I could talk laugh the hardest. President Ord is my first cousin. So we share grandma and grandpa Smith. Our grandma Smith was a character. When she taught at church, she would put a sign up that read: “thus saith the lord:” so I will try to keep this within what the Lord has actually said, while trying to teach you to look at a basic principle of the gospel in a different way. Ironically, the first verse of Doctrine & Covenants 93 starts with “Verily, thus saith the Lord”. This is an amazing section of scripture, Jesus Christ telling us to step up and be better! You should study it often. I will start with a story. I asked AI to make a video to dramatically tell the story. During college, I lived in Damascus, Syria, for a semester. It was a fantastic and wonderful experience. I especially loved exploring the Old City of Damascus. The Old City is built around the huge beautiful Umayyad mosque. Within the walls of the old city is a maze of narrow, winding, confusing streets and one really long straight street, as Saul found out in Acts 9:11. One day when a group of us were trying to get through this maze from the mosque to the Christian quarter of the Old City, we asked a man for directions. He thought for a second, then pointed and said, “Go left and then right, and then left and then right, and then left and then right, and then left and right, and you’ll be there.” Aren’t those the most ridiculous directions you have ever heard? We could have ignored him. But, we thought, he did know the city better than we did. So, with some laughter, off we went. Left. Right. Left. Right. And so on until, much to our surprise, we popped out at our destination. Life is a confusing maze. We face difficult choices, unexpected events, surprises, sorrows, opportunities, roadblocks. The Lord has given directions on how to get through to where we want to go. Sometimes the Lord’s directions seem odd, and we may struggle with the decision to follow. The Lord will not force us. It is our choice whether to choose and follow him. Wasn’t that fun? AI is getting crazy! I will be much less entertaining for the rest, but hopefully the spirit will teach you something new. The phrase “keep the commandments” (or “keepeth my commandments”) appears at least 4 times in Doctrine and Covenants Section 93, in verses 1, 20, 27, and 28. There are other references, like “keep my sayings” in 52 and “obeyeth my voice” in 1. So, commandments are really important in this Revelation. I suggest that making the gospel a more central part of our lives depends largely on how we look at commandments. When you think of commandments, do you think “I can’t. I’m Mormon”? (That was a popular T-shirt slogan during my college years.) Although, with the recent guidance from President Nelson, it probably should be “I can’t, I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”. It’s a common reaction: “Thou shalt not do Cool Things.” People LOVE to focus on all the things we CAN’T do, as if we are trapped and deserve pity for our beliefs. No pity is needed. Commandments are opportunities, not constraints. Commandments are awesome! Allow me to illustrate. Imagine a spectrum between Good and Evil. Somewhere in the middle is “the Line” that divides Good from Evil. As a teenager, I wanted to know where the Line was, so I could get close to it without going over it. I wanted to be on the “Good” side but still be able to do as many “Cool Things" with my friends as possible. From my experience, I believe God gives us two types of commandments: 1) Get Back over the Line commandments and 2) Come Further into the Light commandments. Type 1, the Get Back over the Line commandments, could also be called “Misery Avoidance” commandments. They are designed to keep us out of misery or, if we’ve crossed the Line, to bring us out of misery and back into the Good side. These are generally commandments with a clear and defined point of success, such as “Thou shalt not kill.” You will know, at the end of each day, whether you have successfully followed that commandment. I think all of the Ten Commandments fall into this category. The law of Moses was very black and white. The children of Israel had been in Egypt without a prophet for a long time when Moses received the law, and they needed to work on the basics. So, if you follow the Type 1 commandments, you will refrain from doing things that make you miserable. You will know you are in the Good if you can answer the baptismal interview and temple recommend questions honestly and faithfully. If you can do that, you have taken the basic steps necessary to avoid misery and are on a solid foundation for the next type of commandment. Type 2, the “Come Further into the Light” commandments, are the really cool commandments. Once we are out of the misery category, we can really start to pursue joy. So, God commands us to do things that he knows will make us happier and more like Christ. These commandments are the principles of eternal development, such as “Love thy neighbor” (Matthew 22:39). There is no clear end to loving our neighbor—it requires positive and eternal progression. We can always love more, and we can always find another neighbor who needs our love. It is an eternal principle taught by Jesus Christ. And if we truly love our neighbor, refraining from killing him becomes pretty easy. It is through these commandments that we find joy in Jesus Christ. Elder Christofferson taught about this spectrum in the October 2018 general conference: “Most of us find ourselves at this moment on a continuum between a socially motivated participation in gospel rituals on the one hand and a fully developed, Christlike commitment to the will of God on the other. Somewhere along that continuum, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ enters into our heart and takes possession of our soul. It may not happen in an instant, but we should all be moving toward that blessed state.” Our goal is to go THAT WAY (toward Christ) as much as possible. So first, get back across the line and stop doing things that will make you miserable. Then make every effort to try and be like Jesus, to “love one another as Jesus loves you.” The gospel of Jesus Christ is more than just “not doing” stuff. It is about coming unto Christ, being perfected in him, and denying ourselves of all ungodliness. Discuss with your companion what commandments and mission rules are for “Misery Avoidance” and which are “Come Further into the Light”! And, remember, commandments are ALWAYS connected to huge blessings. The Lord promised, “There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:20–21). Whenever we obey any of God’s commandments, we will get the blessing associated with that commandment. Elder David A. Bednar said: “The gospel of Jesus Christ encompasses much more than avoiding, overcoming, and being cleansed from sin and the bad influences in our lives; it also essentially entails doing good, being good, and becoming better. Repenting of our sins and seeking forgiveness are spiritually necessary, and we must always do so. But remission of sin is not the only or even the ultimate purpose of the gospel. To have our hearts changed by the Holy Spirit such that “we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2), as did King Benjamin’s people, is the covenant responsibility we have accepted. “This mighty change is not simply the result of working harder or developing greater individual discipline. Rather, it is the consequence of a fundamental change in our desires, our motives, and our natures made possible through the Atonement of Christ the Lord. Our spiritual purpose is to overcome both sin and the desire to sin, both the taint and the tyranny of sin.” I LOVE this concept—and as I have paid attention, I feel like apostles are trying to teach us this all the time. Are we listening? Let me repeat what Elder Bednar said. He said that the commandments help us change what we WANT. Why is that important? Remember my teenage desires? I wanted to be as close to the line as possible so I could still look cool for my friends. That is a good example of the “tyranny” of sin. Even though I was not actually sinning (probably because I was afraid of my mother), I still had some small desire to sin. I said, “I can’t. I’m Mormon” with many dramatic sighs. Overcoming the tyranny of sin is getting to the point where the sin no longer looks remotely interesting or fun because we are too busy loving our neighbors and trying to be like Jesus. Elder Dallin H. Oaks said: “The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become. It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions. The commandments, ordinances, and covenants of the gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.” This talk was given when I was on a mission, before most of you were born. It completely changed my perspective on the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is called The Challenge to Become” and I recommend that you study it. When the Lord says keep the commandments, he isn’t just telling us to stop sinning—he wants us to become like Christ and to have joy. Take a moment and think, Where am I on this continuum? Remember that none of us is perfect like the Savior, and we all need to lift one another. That is why we worship together. That is why we have priesthood quorums and the Relief Society, Primary, and youth organizations. The Lord taught us that truth when he said we all have different gifts: “To some is given one [gift], and to some is given another [gift], that all may be profited thereby. To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world. To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful” (Doctrine and Covenants 46:12–14). The Savior is still WAY over there: a thousand miles away somewhere. That is why we have quorums. We all have a long way to go. Let’s link arms and run together. Let me finish by telling a story from my mission to support my testimony of Jesus. Years ago my mission president said something interesting: “Either the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is truly the kingdom of god on the earth... or it is the greatest fraud ever in history.“ It is audacious to claim to be the true Church of Jesus Christ—but let me explain exactly why I know that to be true. I always BELIEVED that I was raised in the gospel of Jesus Christ. My parents taught me well and I felt good following the commandments and studying the scriptures. That led me to serve a mission in Brazil. My turning point of testimony came when I was 20–at least 2/3rds through my mission. We were invited into a house in the “fundos” of a property—a small structure built behind a larger house. The man was polite and allowed us to share our message. As I had done hundreds of times, I shared the story of Joseph Smith, a boy who sought the truth through prayer. I recited Joseph’s own words in response to his prayer: “I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me... When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" I felt the strongest feeling I had ever experienced—an undeniable confirmation that what I said was true. It hit me in a way I can never forget! I knew that Joseph Smith was truly a prophet, and therefore the Book of Mormon was the word of god. What about the man we were teaching? How had he responded to my life-affirming spiritual experience? He shrugged and politely thanked us for the message. I was stunned. I felt like the windows of heaven opened on me—and he felt nothing. I learned that receiving answers to our prayers is like tuning a radio: not everyone is on the right frequency. For some reason, the Lord decided to broadcast on my frequency that day. I received the undeniable confirmation that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. I have built on that foundation brick by brick since then. And every time someone has challenged me on Joseph Smith, I go back to that day in Brazil. I know that he was a prophet. My life has been blessed in ridiculously good ways since then. As I have tried to follow Jesus Christ, great things have happened to me. Even my hardest and most frustrating times have turned out to have a purpose. God has upturned my best laid plans over and over. But I look back and realize that I could never have planned any better. With the prophet Nephi I say: “I know that [God] loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things." (1 Nephi 11:17) When I say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true, that does not mean we have a monopoly on truth. I know Christians and Muslims who teach me to be better—and Members of the church who are far from disciples of Christ. We just have more truth: scriptures, living prophets, ordinances, personal revelation, and answers to many of life’s biggest questions! That is pretty cool. But we can’t be prideful about the truth we have. You have all probably met people to admire both inside and outside of the church. So, I am all in. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true—not a big fraud. And we are all trying to get closer to Christ. I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for me. Life has not been what I expected, but I trust him! I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of Jesus Christ and that the Book of Mormon is true. This is “intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.” With that knowledge, keep the commandments! In the name of Jesus Christ, amen .

Bradford G Smith (Brad)

20,383 views • 10 months ago

I am the Director of the White House Office of Extraterrestrial Affairs. In 2024 this government completed the most thorough search for extraterrestrial life in human history. We checked the sky. We checked the files. We declassified the saucers. The verdict came back: nothing. No life out there. Not one. So I closed the telescope. I opened the window. I pointed it at a Home Depot. Three million by lunch. The trick was always the word. *Alien* had been sitting in the science fiction aisle for sixty years and we were too shy to use it in a press release. The dehumanization was already written. It was just shelved under Fantasy. This year I moved it to Policy. Same word. New department. My department. I should explain the jurisdiction, because there are two of us and we do not speak. Down the hall is the Department of War. It used to be the Department of Defense, but defense sounded woke, so we changed the name for two billion dollars, half of it letterhead. They renamed it back to what it was in 1789, before someone noticed in 1949 that the old acronym, N-M-E, sounded too much like *enemy.* We have now re-adopted the name they abandoned for sounding like the thing it does. I find this clarifying. The signage alone is seven hundred thousand buildings. We are spending a billion dollars on new doors so the doors can say War. The Department of War runs and has a tab for UFOs. Real ones. They post the actual files. The saucers. The eyewitnesses. The intelligence officer left "virtually speechless." They are searching the sky in earnest, declassifying everything, and what they keep finding is *nothing.* No craft confirmed. No biology confirmed. Decades of looking up and the honest answer is: unresolved. So you have two federal agencies, one word, opposite directions. searches the heavens for aliens and finds none. I open a window and find three million. They declassify the ones that don't exist. I classify the ones that do. They got a press release. I got a tip line. Guess which one rang. We are, technically, hunting the same species. They just keep aiming the telescope up, and I keep telling them, gently, at the inter-agency sync: lower it. The homepage was mine. ALIENS DECLASSIFIED. THEY WALK AMONG US. I tested "Immigration Portal." Eleven percent scroll. I tested *the truth's out there,* and a White House official told a reporter, on the record, that the strategy was to "draw eyeballs." We drew eyeballs. The truth was out there. It was in a parking lot in Bakersfield, getting into a white van we are now contractually obligated to call a craft. In 1938 a man read a story about an alien invasion over the radio and the country panicked in the streets, and for ninety years that was taught as a cautionary tale, the danger of a broadcast that makes people believe an invasion is real. We studied that broadcast. We did not study it as a warning. We studied it as a launch. The difference between Orson Welles and this office is that he apologized the next morning, and we put a counter on it. I named the van the Mothership. I named the prison Area 51. I named the 5 a.m. knock First Contact. I named all of it from the third chair. I keep a felt-tip for naming and a Mont Blanc for the part that can't be undone. Then we made the cards. I want to be precise, because people assume I'm exaggerating. We took the faces of the captured and we printed them as trading cards. "Worst of the Worst." Mugshot, nationality, charges, and a weakness level, and the weakness level was a snowflake, and the snowflake meant us. We are the weakness. We were proud of that. When a children's franchise objected that these were, in fact, their cards, our official response, which I helped draft, was: "To arrest them is our real test. To deport them is our cause." We set the abduction to the cartoon's theme song. Gotta catch 'em all. The first half is the slogan. The second half is the quota. A man told Congress in 2023 we were hiding non-human biologics. Everyone pictured a grey on a slab. Cute. We do run a reverse-engineering program. We take the biologic. We study what it makes. It makes the drywall. The 4 a.m. milking. The lettuce. And the lettuce is round now, because forty percent of it stayed in the dirt with the only people who knew where the dirt was. We reverse-engineered the alien completely. The blueprint was a back. We call the biologic "labor." We classify the screaming as ambient. Identification is a science here. We do not arrest at random. We read the markings. A crown inked on a forearm. A soccer crest. We have catalogued the species by its tattoos the way Linnaeus catalogued the finch. One of the specimens turned out to be autistic and the crown was just a crown, but the taxonomy held, because the taxonomy is not falsifiable, that is what makes it a taxonomy. I have a desk for this. I have a magnifying glass. I have never felt more like a scientist. There is a second species, and this one we keep. An alien with five million dollars is not an alien. He is a guest. We printed him a card. It is gold. We are printing a Platinum one for the aliens with even more money, who may remain on the planet two hundred and seventy days a year and pay no tax on the wealth they made on other worlds. The website for this is the cheapest-looking website I have ever approved, and I approved the one with the saucer on it. The same agency that scans a gardener's forearm for gang signs scans a financier's bank statement for extraordinary ability. The statement always has it. The forearm never does. The species was never a people. The species is a price. In the old films the alien lands and says, take me to your leader. We have improved the line. Pay five million and we take you to ours. He golfs with him on Saturday. There was a film about this, and I am told the man who made it meant it as a warning, which is the recurring problem with the warnings. A drifter finds a pair of sunglasses, and through them he can finally see which people are the aliens, and it is the rich ones, the ones on the billboards telling everyone to obey and consume and reproduce and not think. I have a pair of those glasses, conceptually. I issue them at the tip line. But mine are tuned the other way. You put them on and the alien is never the man in the suit who paid five million to skip the line. The alien is always the man holding the leaf blower. The lenses cost a thousand dollars in advertising and they only point down. We have sold a great many pairs. You asked about the Men in Black. Yes. Regulation now. A Man in Black photographs poorly, and the witnesses would not stop filming us peel a woman off the sidewalk in daylight, so we issued the masks, and leadership's only note was that the masks tested well. We are no longer the cover-up of the abduction. We are the abduction. We skipped a step. Efficiency. Our communications team posted E.T. last summer. The bicycle. The moon. "Even E.T. knew when it was TIME TO GO HOME." I want to walk you through what happened in that meeting, because nobody stopped it. We chose the one film where the government is the villain. The men with the flashlights and the unmarked vans who hunt the small frightened alien hiding in a child's closet. That is us. We are the flashlights. We watched that movie as children and cried when the agents came, and then we grew up and became the agents and made the poster ourselves and scheduled it for nine a.m. The intern asked if we were the good guys in this one. We told her engagement was up forty percent. She has since been promoted. I built an app where you abduct yourself. CBP Home. You open it. You confirm you are the alien. You beam yourself off the planet and you save us the gas. And here is the part I cannot believe they approved. We *pay* you. A thousand dollars to vanish. We raised it to twenty-six hundred when the first price didn't move enough units. We are bidding against ourselves for your disappearance. Four-point-six stars. The one-stars are from users who got beamed mid-review. I keep the unfinished ones in a folder. I find them very moving. We opened a facility in a swamp. We ringed it with alligators and we called it that, on purpose, in the brochure. Then we opened a gift shop. Thirty dollars for the shirt. Twenty-seven for the hat. Fifteen for a set of koozies, so your beer stays cold while you celebrate the prison in the wetland. The fundraising email called it "gator-guarded, python-patrolled," a "one-way ticket to regret" for anyone who didn't self-deport in time. We sold the koozies to fund the swamp. The swamp funds the next swamp. I want you to sit with the fact that there is merchandise. The quota is three thousand a day. Stephen asked for it himself. Three thousand is not a number. It is a metabolism. The building is hungry by nine and we feed it Marco, who does the landscaping, and the building goes quiet, and by one it stirs again, and we find another Marco. There is always another Marco. That is the part I find beautiful. The supply is the point. The supply is everyone. The Secretary signs the warrants. She is very firm on one point, which she repeats in every briefing: the aliens, she warns, eat the pets. They are taking the dogs. I have read her book. In her book she takes a fourteen-month-old dog named Cricket to a gravel pit and shoots it, because it would not obey, and she writes this down herself, proudly, as a story about leadership. She wrote the part about the dog. She also warns us about the dogs. I have stopped trying to hold both sentences at once. I just file the warrant. The tip line was the masterpiece. "Report your neighbor" hit the shame ceiling. "REPORT SUSPICIOUS ALIENS" tested as a hobby. We handed the callers Roswell instead of a snitch's guilt, and the phones lit up like a saucer, and they hung up glowing, every one of them, like they'd finally seen the thing. They had. He coached the Tuesday team. He was at the bake sale. That is the horror we are selling you. The alien brought the orange slices. He was undocumented and luminous and gone by Tuesday. Roswell taught us the other half of the trade. In 1947 something fell in the desert and the government said: it was a weather balloon, nothing here, go home. That was the first administrative error, the founding one, the original sentence that says the thing you saw was not the thing you saw. We still use it. We have only reversed the polarity. In 1947 they saw a saucer and we called it a balloon. Now they see a father of three and we call it a saucer. The skill is identical. You simply decide in advance which truth the public is allowed to keep, and you hand them the other one, printed, official, with a seal. We did have one administrative error. We abducted a man a court had ordered us not to touch, dropped him on a planet called El Salvador, and called it clerical. A judge made us beam him back. So the DOJ stood up and warned the others: insist on a hearing and we will re-abduct you to the same planet. The Supreme Court said the aliens are entitled to due process. A very Earth opinion. We are appealing it to a higher sky. The planet has a prison, and the prison is the elegant part. In the film about the camp, the aliens are not killed. They are put somewhere they are not permitted to leave, while everyone agrees this is temporary, for their own protection, pending a status that never arrives. We built that. It is called CECOT and we rent it. A man goes in and the man does not come out, and the genius is that nothing has to happen to him, the room does the work, the room is the whole sentence. You remember the Men in Black had a small device. A flash, and the witness forgets the alien entirely. We have something better. We do not wipe the memory. We wipe the file. The man remembers everything, the cell, the flight, the day, all of it, in perfect detail, and it does not matter, because there is no document that admits he was here, and a memory without a file is just a story he tells in a language the form does not accept. The witness keeps the truth. We keep the paperwork. Only one of those is admissible. I learned that the flash was never the point. The point was always the filing cabinet. We run all of it on a spell from 1798. Two hundred and twenty-seven years old. Written for a war we are not in, against an enemy we have not declared. It works because nobody reads the small print on a curse. Storm Area 51 was a joke once. A hundred thousand people Naruto-running at a fence to free whatever was inside. I think about it daily. We're the ones inside the fence now. We kept the running. We just turned it around. We have a precedent we cite in the deck, proudly, on slide four. In 1954 the government ran a program of exactly this kind, and the program had an official name, and the official name was a slur. They printed the slur on the letterhead. They did not flinch. The President holds it up as the model, by name, at the rallies, and the crowd cheers the name. I admire the honesty of 1954 more than I can say. They did not need a saucer to make it palatable. They just used the word. We are the same operation with better art direction. The only thing we added was the costume. I love the callers. I want to say that plainly. For years they told each other a hidden cabal was running everything from the shadows, harvesting the innocent, and that one day the truth would come out. They were right. There is a cabal. It has a budget of a hundred and seventy billion dollars, the largest in the history of federal law enforcement, and it sits in this building, and I have a desk in it. And the people who spent a decade certain that shadowy elites were disappearing their neighbors now call our line, unpaid, to help the shadowy elites disappear their neighbors. They wanted to expose the conspiracy. We made them the staff. Do your own research, they said. They did. They found the gardener. The Department of War posted another tranche on the twenty-second. Saucers. Lights. A pilot's voice going thin. I read all of it. I want them to find one so badly. I want there to be a real one up there, a genuine visitor, something that actually came from somewhere else, because then, and only then, would a single creature in my files have been an alien. They never find it. The sky stays empty. The ground stays full. I have stopped attending the inter-agency sync. We were two departments looking for the same thing in two directions, and only one of us was ever going to be wrong, and it was the honest one. And here is the thing that keeps me at the window past dark. There was a real one. A rock from another star, the genuine article, the first verified object from outside the entire solar system, and a Harvard man went on television and said it might be a ship. An actual alien, possibly, inbound, free of charge, after sixty years of asking. We did not open a file. We could not arrest it. It had no forearm to read and no bank statement to approve. It was the only alien in America we had no use for, so we let it pass, and went back to the parking lot. Last winter the sky over New Jersey filled with lights nobody could name, and the whole government, every agency, every radar, looked up and said it did not know. The one time the unknown actually arrived, we had nothing. Down here I have never once said I do not know. That is the difference between their department and mine. They look up and find a question. I look down and have already decided the answer. Last week the President leaned over mid-briefing and asked if any of them were real. I told him the engagement was extremely real. He nodded. We do not break frame here. The frame is the only wall still standing. That, and the office fern. Nobody waters it. It will not die. The only thing in this building allowed to stay without papers. My plaque came Thursday. FIRST CONTACT, VISIONARY OF THE YEAR. Bold. Unapologetic. Unafraid. I lifted that off the homepage. It was written about one brave man telling the truth. I decided the man was me. I wrote it about me. I am the truth I declassified. I am the secret I warned you about. They walk among us, and I sign their mail. The counter is still live. Three million and climbing. I am told it will not be removed. We are not alone. We are just short a few landscapers. A few line cooks. A few nurses. And the entire night shift at the plant that makes the flag. Up. And to the right.

Peter Girnus 🦅

60,370 views • 1 month ago

Make Something Wonderful is 250 pages of Steve Jobs in his own words, speaking directly to you. The book contains some of Steve's ideas that I've never found anywhere else. Notes from the book: 1. He didn't care about being right. He cared about being excellent. 2. His mind was never a captive of reality. 3. He said working with great people gives you access to wisdom that you can't buy for love or money. 4. He believed technology should be streamlined and practical, simple and sophisticated, and that it should be a tool for enhancing creativity as much as productivity. 5. He believed you should ambush your customers. Meet them where they are. 6. His ideas were not arguments, but intuitions. He had a true inner freedom and an epic sense of possibility. 7. He gave an extraordinary amount of thought to how best to use our fleeting time. 8. By the time he was thirty he was the public face of a Fortune 500 company. 9. At Apple’s first board meeting he put his bare feet on a conference room table. 10. He said you should think of your life as a rainbow arching across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. 11. He possessed unbelievable rigor that he imposed first, and most strenuously, on himself. 12. He saw clearly (1) what was not there, (2) what could be there, (3) what had to be there. 13. He said early Apple employees were more like poets and painters than cold technologists. That the passion they put into their products were completely indistinguishable from other creative fields. He said their work was a form of love. 14. He had a verbal mastery that was obvious at a young age. He used simple, descriptive language, told stories, and repeated lines and ideas that were important. 15. He thought it was inevitable that computers would be the dominant medium of human communication. He said this in 1983. 16. He had a talent for spotting markets full of second-rate products. 17. He said you could tell how important a product was based on the amount of time people spent interacting with it. As a result he thought it was inevitable that more design talent would shift from the automobile (1 or 2 hours a day) to computers (6+ hours a day). He said this in the 80s. 18. He said that books kept him out of jail and that it’s a shame there are so many mediocre teachers. 19. Like many great entrepreneurs before him, Steve knew what he wanted to do, but didn't know how to do it yet. He said he wanted to make an insanely great computer that was the size of a book. What he described sounded a lot like an iPad. He said this in the 80s. 20. He believed that you should use your unique set of talents to make things that make the lives of other people better. Most people just take. He said "the ability to put something back into the pool of human experience is extremely neat." 21. He would tell his team “You work for Apple first and your boss second.” He felt strongly about that. 22. He was constantly placing the products he was making in a historical perspective, like comparing the Macintosh to the invention of the telephone. 23. He believed you needed to give yourself more time to make mistakes. He said his taste got more refined as he made mistakes. He said that making mistakes over a long period of time made his aesthetics better. 24. He said the key ingredient to making something great was time. 25. He said he wanted to spend his life building things. He could have retired to a beach in his 20s and thought that was disgusting. 26. He was interested in learning how to hone a company down to its essence. 27. You read this book and a thought jumps out at you: How many people are willing to go through a decade of failure without quitting? Steve had the capacity to take pain. 28. He believed it was better to focus on what you're actually passionate about, instead of what you think will make you the most money. He made the most money that way. 29. He listened to older, wiser entrepreneurs and let them shape and mold his thinking. 30. He wasn't afraid to fail, but had to coach himself to adopt that trait. He didn't want to fail, but he wasn't afraid of it. 31. He said don't let your differentiation evaporate. 32. He said if you let your differentiation evaporate the only solution is innovation. 33. He believed great ideas don't map onto corporate hierarchy. 34. He was incapable of thinking that his work and his life were different, separate things. 35. He said the most important things in life are not the goal-oriented, materialistic things. He said you should tap into the world’s magical, mystical, and artistic sides. 36. He paid attention to subtle insights. He was guided by intuition. 37. He didn't believe in the concept or a career, or think it was wise to follow well-worn paths laid out by others. 38. He said most people make the mistake of not thinking about death. He said: "For me it’s the opposite: to know my arc will fall, makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky." 39. He thought Walt Disney had a great idea: Edit before you make it. 40. He said no amount of technology can turn a bad story into a good story. 41. He believed storytellers were the most powerful people in the world. 42. He believed if you didn't have great people you were doomed. 43. He found great people by looking at great results and finding out who was responsible for them. 44. This is how he interviewed people: "In an interview I will purposely upset someone: I’ll criticize their prior work. I’ll do my homework, find out what they worked on and say, “God, that really turned out to be a bomb. That really turned out to be a bozo product. Why did you work on that?” The worst thing that someone can do in an interview is to agree with me and knuckle under. What I look for is for someone to come right back and say, “You’re dead wrong and here’s why.” 45. He believed the job of the leader was to make sure the work is as good as it should be, and to get people to stretch beyond their best. 46. He believed the job of the leader was to cajole, and beg, and plead, and threaten at times—to do whatever is necessary to get people to see things in a bigger and more profound way and to have them do better work than they thought they could do. 47. He believed the priorities of the leader were (1) recruit, (2) set an overall direction, and (3) inspire and cajole and persuade. 48. He believed a creative company should have a risk-taking, creative environment on the product side and a fiscally conservative environment on the business side. 49. He believed you have to choose what you put your love into really carefully. 50. He had a remarkably consistent set of values that he held dear: Life is short; don’t waste it. Tell the truth. Technology should enhance human creativity. Process matters. Beauty matters. Details matter. The world we know is a human creation—and we can push it forward. 51. He thought when deciding what to work on that you should ask yourself: "What do I give a shit about?" And then go do that. 52. He would never sell Apple. Not for all the money in the world. 53. He believed you should master the basics, simplify the product line, and focus on the gems. 54. He believed marketing was about values. That the world is noisy and you should focus on telling customers what you believe in and what you stand for. 55. He believed one way to invest in yourself is by exploring uncharted paths that are different from your past experiences. You know it's an uncharted path when you have no idea where it will lead. 56. He believed that people that think they’re following a safe path pay the highest price of all. They won't realize it for a decade or two — and by then it's too late. 57. He didn't believe in resting on laurels or sleeping on wins. Make something great. Then do it again. 58. He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it. 59. He believed in straight forward, clear communication. If the work isn't good enough you have to tell them straight: "This isn't good enough. I know you can do better. You need to do better. Now go do better." 60. He remained driven by a mission to "put something back into the pool of human experience." 61. He believed in the basics: great product, great marketing, great distribution. 62. He believed you must keep up with innovations in distribution. 63. He believed brands take decades to build. 64. He would capture the evolution of his own thinking by emailing himself. 65. He viewed Apple has the world's premier bridge builder between normal people and the exploding world of high technology. 66. He wanted to demystify technology. 67. He believed excellence was a habit and we are what we repeatedly do. 68. He believed you should be curious about what came before you and you should spend time to learn about it. 69. He believed you simply could not mix messages when selling something new. A customer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone several. 70. He said it's a circus world and you'll never know what's around the next corner. 71. He believed in management by values. Which means (1) find people that want the same things you want and (2) figure out the best way to get those things along the way. 72. He believed in the mantra: Finding the right people is half the battle. 73. He said you can't plan to meet the people who will change your life. 74. He believed everything is temporary — there is no such thing as safety. 75. He believed that your life is a story and that you should remember that your life is a story and that you should always act like your life is a story. 76. He believed in rejecting dogma, which he defined as living with the results of other people's thinking. He said that dogma can be so loud that it can drown out your own inner voice and you should avoid this. 77. He believed a great place to start was by improving a product you hate. If you can make something you love, you can convince other people to love it too. 78. He said all glory is fleeting and you should just get back to making something wonderful. I'm really proud of the episode I made about this book. You'll learn a lot from Steve by listening to it. You can watch/listen to it in full here, or in your favorite podcast app.

David Senra

205,292 views • 11 months ago

In his continuing “Pool Monologues,” Trump hits a record ELEVEN AND A HALF MINUTES sitting with the NATO Secretary. I cannot emphasize enough… Try and read it. I dare you. 1/3 “The pool? Yes. It's in great shape. No. Ready? Thugs. They just told me a little while ago. Six have been arrested and like six or seven are under arrest. They have pictures and everything else. They went to the bottom and it's not a paint job. It's very expensive. It's not rubber but it's like rubber. And they went down with probably a box cutter or a very sharp razor of some kind of a knife. They cut and then they started ripping it up. You know why? Because there's sick people. And then the side of the pool, right at the water level, they took razors and they started cutting this very expensive stuff. It's incredible stuff. It's beautiful. And it's still beautiful. We have one area where they cut it. It's still holding. It's not leaking. But they hurt it so probably maybe after July 4th or maybe before. I don't know. Well, let a little water out because it's at the edge. They'll cut it. They'll replace it and it'll be as good as new. But these people should go to jail for a long time. You know, there's a statue that I saw when I had my first here that if you do anything to hurt statues or monuments, fountains in Washington, D.C. or federal fountain, it's actually federal all over the country. But you go to jail for 10 years and there's no shortcuts. In other words, it's not five years for good behavior. It's a very tough statue. And so tough that it really hasn't been used very much over the years. But I used it when they had a problem in Washington where they were trying to hurt the sickos, would try to hurt things, and I announced it. As soon as I announced it, read it, announced it. And I said, 10 years for anybody, everybody dropped what they had, including ropes. They had ropes. They were tying ropes around Thomas Jefferson's head, Andrew Jackson right up there, that a rope around his head on that incredible statue. I said, as soon as I invoked it, everybody left, that's still in play. They could go to jail for 10 years. They better be careful. They have a gash on that beautiful pool. It's a reflecting point. This is a very expensive material. Then on top of it, we did a much bigger job than we said we were going to do because we did all the outer areas. We did a beautiful job. It's like a piece of glass. And for some reason, this disturbed the radical left lunatics. You know, the guy that one of the guys, he's a member or a big pair to act blue. He's a big Hillary supporter. He's a big supporter of Sleepy Joe Biden. No, this is a very political thing. But as I understand it, six are under arrest. This was pure vandalism. It's an amazing thing that we did. Don't forget, it hasn't worked properly since it was built because it always leaked in 1922. So it was built in 1922. So that's 100 years more ago. It's never worked properly. I always said, had great potential. And I said in my first term, I'm going to do something. So Biden and Obama, between the two of them, spent over $100 million. It was a disaster. Obama, because of the environment, took the water from the Potomac, and it was horrible. It was bad. I don't want to have to tell you what happened, but it was really bad. You can read about it. Biden, he didn't have any idea what the hell they were doing because he didn't know what anything was happening. But they spent over $100 million. We spent 14 or 15 in a lot less than that because a lot of these people worked for the Parks Department anyway. So they're going to work. So I would say a lot less. And we put a great surface on it. This is a world-class surface. It looked beautiful. But they came in and they cut it. And then they grabbed it and they pulled it up. That's why it's all ripped. And who would even think of it? They're sick people. So I think they're in big trouble. But here's the bottom line.”

Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸

212,210 views • 27 days ago

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

Esther Crawford ✨

5,496,314 views • 3 years ago

Well, friends, the interview the John O'Keefe and Karen Read trial world didn't know they wanted has finally occurred. I appreciate The Glarer for having me on his program. We discussed Kate Peter, I defended Lindsey Gaetani's honor, both sides agreed as to the importance of civil debate and leaving people's families out of the fray and then Will helped Olivia and I move towards amicable discussion. Overall, a 10/10 way to celebrate the day towel become a YouTube partner. Here are my two favorite quotes from Will and myself; [Grant] "If any of you took 10 minutes --not on camera-- to talk to Lindsey Gaetani, you would find someone who believes in God, who cares about her children, who's a good mother, and who's not any of the things you made her out to be. And by God I will defend that 'till my last day." [Grant] "I realized that there was just this toxic atmosphere surrounding this case, and I couldn't just say I thought it needed to change — I had to reflect that change in my actions." [The Glarer] "If you believe so much in Karen Read’s guilt, then the facts should speak for themselves. You shouldn’t have to bring people’s family members into it. [The Glarer] "But you know what I think, Grant? I think that you're a really smart guy. And I think you know you're a really smart guy. And I think what you do is, you convince yourself — because of how smart you are — that if you came up with it, it must be gospel. And that's where I think you get cloudy between the truth and your opinion." Here's the full transcript: [Grant] Well, good afternoon towel friends. My name is Grant Smith Ellis and in addition to becoming a YouTube partner today I also decided to call into The Glarer's show. It was the collaboration that the world didn't know they needed but now they have. And if you'd like to listen to this fascinating conversation, related to new allegations as to Kate MafiaMasshole Peter being a PI in the orbit of the Aidan Turtleboy Kearney prosecution, as well as somehow both Will and I eventually coming to a discussion where I defended Lindsey Gaetani's honor, along with a closing segment about the importance on both sides of the Karen Read and John O’Keefe case of being mutually respectful, even if we have differences of opinion on those facts, you can do so right now. Will and I shared a belief that positive changes in the Karen Read and John O'Keefe trial world, at least in terms of that improving dynamic as to disagreeing without being disagreeable, are evident. So enjoy the conversation, folks. It was certainly an interesting one. [The Glarer] You're on — who am I speaking with? [Grant] Hey, Will, it's me. I'm Grant... [The Glarer] — hold on, I gotta give you applause, buddy. You made it. [Grant] Well, we certainly may have different views on the case, but I think we share respect for Jesus and we can talk bad about Kate Peter for sure. [The Glarer] Yeah, that we can do. Sure. Sure. So what's up, bud? What do you got to say? [Grant] Well, I think if people have been following me on X, they will know I've been yelling about Kate Peter taking an envelope of cash in the Chick-fil-A parking lot in front of me for months. And I feel vindicated as of the news of this weekend. [The Glarer] Okay. Okay, so wait a minute. That tracks. So the person who is in this sworn affidavit who claims to have seen Kate Peter with the manila envelope — you're claiming to have seen her with the same envelope. Is that what you're saying? [Grant] It wasn't a manila envelope. Well, there's two pertinent facts. So Kate Peter and I met up for the first time — I would say it was in the winter of 2024 — in a Chick-fil-A parking lot somewhere on the South Coast, maybe near Raynham or something. Anyway, she came and got in my car and she was like, "Well, I'm waiting for someone in a white Toyota Corolla to drop me off money. We try to do it with cash so it doesn't leave a record." And I was like, "Well, this seems a little weird." And then the car pulled up. I didn't actually see the car. She got out, went over to it, came back into my car. It was a white envelope with a green thank-you card. She opened it. There were probably four or five hundred — four or five fifties and a bunch of twenties. [The Glarer] Wow.... Okay, now Grant, I gotta ask you a tough question, buddy. I would be remiss if I didn't do that, all right? Now, a lot of people are thinking the same thing I'm thinking right now, which is: how can we believe you? Where's your credibility? Because you've lied about so many other things so easily. [Grant] Well, I would challenge that and say maybe you have different perspectives on me, but that should reinforce what I'm saying here. The Melanie Little and Alan Jackson Aruba thing — I apologized for that on stream and in a post (because Melanie Little told people not to go after Lindsey's kids, and I found that honorable). [The Glarer] Fair enough. [The Glarer] You did apologize. Okay, so you apologized for that. Okay. [Grant] But I'm critiquing someone [Kate Peter] who would ostensibly be aligned with what I believe about the case, and I still believe what I believe about Karen being responsible for John's death— we don't have to get into it — but I'm critiquing someone who supports that view. That should reinforce my credibility here. [The Glarer] Yeah, and MicroDots backs you up at least on this thing, you know, he says he believes you on this thing. I'm just saying — dude, I've read what you've written. You're a talented writer, clearly. But I can honestly say I've got a whole community of people here — a shit ton of people in this chat right now — that I know would agree with me that if you made a habit of reporting the truth, you'd have support, you'd have readers, you'd have a whole audience. I'd be a fan! But your credibility is fucked with me right now, dude. You know, and I hate that, because I actually enjoy reading what you write. [Grant] I appreciate what you're saying. I think I would just say maybe it's smaller than your community, but I just got made a YouTube partner today. I'm actually celebrating that. I have a small community, people do support me — maybe not as many as support your channel, but it's just people with different views consuming different content. [The Glarer] Yeah, but the thing is — like, I'm content with my audience. My audience could be bigger, but I cuss a lot and I use words that offend people and I just don't kind of play by the normal YouTube game that most creators play when they grow, you know? And I'm okay with the rate at which my channel grows because I get to be myself. But I don't hold back and I don't play by these rules. So I get all that. But I mean, I'm not ethically doing anything wrong. If I were spreading misinformation or contributing to any spread of misinformation, I would have a problem with myself and what I'm doing. You see what I'm saying? Like, it's a little bit different. You're telling me that you're content with your audience being small because you like to make shit up? You know what I mean? [Grant] No, no. Because it's a new channel. That's why the audience is growing. Anyway, the reason I shake your hand is I do think you're authentic in your beliefs, even if we disagree. And well — before I forget, one more thing about that Chick-fil-A parking lot cash that's actually important: when Kate got that money handed over, she told me it was for a donation drive to help other people offset babysitting costs or whatever nonsense. Someone sent a text message — a family member of the person who paid her that cash — and they put in writing that they sent the money for Kate's own expenses. So she lied to me in the car about what the money was for. Something’s up with that. [The Glarer] So she told you in the car that the money was for... [Grant] She said it was to pay for babysitters for people who need help and to donate to other people, which I don't believe. Like, of course not. Nobody believes that. [The Glarer] And then you found out — through what — that this money was actually for her personal expenses? [Grant] Eventually a text message got released from someone in the orbit of whoever paid Kate. It was a family member — I don't know who it was. I've only seen the text message. I'm happy to reshare it on my X later. In that text message, it says — quoting the person — "I sent that envelope with my sister over to Kate. It was for her expenses" or something like that. So even that is evidence. [The Glarer] Wow. Okay, so you are strictly of the opinion, based on things you've seen yourself, that Kate Peter is absolutely being paid by the Commonwealth to spin narratives? [Grant] I'll give you one more piece of information, Will, and maybe you or your audience can track this down: I don't think Kate was involved in the Karen Read investigation directly, but I think starting in the fall of 2023 she worked for a private investigator named Marty Kraft. And I believe by proxy she was then retained to work on Aidan's case through that PI firm. [The Glarer] Okay, and then she just became the mouthpiece between the PI firm and the Commonwealth is what you're saying. [Grant] I will say a few things: I reasonably believe she does have direct contact with the DA and agents of the Commonwealth — I've said that before — and I also believe that she has favoritism towards specific witnesses in the orbit of this case. Not all of them — specific witnesses. [The Glarer] Okay, well, I mean, we know who they are, but okay. [Grant] I will also say — I think — that your caller was prescient earlier, and they mentioned there might be some mutual blackmail. Well, we know that Lindsey Gaetani’s phone extraction was manipulated to remove messages from Brian Tully to Lindsey and from Kate Peter to Lindsey. [The Glarer] ...what's your deal with Lindsey? [Grant] Hold, on let's pull it back first. First of all, I think there was a bifurcation: there's charges from October 2023 against Aidan and December 2023 against Aidan. One set of charges, from October of 2023, involved the Karen Read witnesses; the other set, from December of 2023, involved Lindsey. I don't think anyone set Aidan up in December 2023. I think he was just in love with Lindsey and it kind of got out of control. [The Glarer] Bro... [Grant] Well, but hold on, Will... [The Glarer] I'm listening... [Grant] I think that cell phone extraction goes right to the mutual blackmail point your friend talked about earlier. Someone, during the course of the Aidan Kearney investigation involving Lindsey, manipulated that cell phone extraction, and it could have only happened while it was in State Police custody. That is the whole — that's everything right there because of Kate Peter is the only person who could have gotten Brian Tully to get Nick Guarino to manipulate that extraction while it was in State Police custody before Tully leaked it, by hand, to Aidan's lawyer. [The Glarer] Okay, so listen, Grant. Like, we know that Kate Peter and Lindsey were colluding. Now, I think Lindsey was used. But come on, we know that Kate Peter and Lindsey were colluding to try to set Aidan up. Like, you know this. [Grant] No, I disagree, because I've looked at the timeline closely. Aidan begged to go over there when his indictments got handed down in December. [The Glarer] Well, listen — why? [Grant] Because he got charged in October, but the indictments for the October thing came down December 20th. [Grant] Then when did he beg to go over to Lindsey's? [Grant] I'm about to explain. December 21st, Lindsey tells him, "Hey Aidan, I just got a subpoena for a grand jury." Aidan's mind has gotta' start racing. "Why would there be another grand jury? Is it about me and Karen Read? What is this about?" So he begged her to go over there so he could find out. And that's — like — he looked at her phone that night to see the messages between her and Kate to try to find out about what this new grand jury was about. So no one set him up. He begged to go over there. [The Glarer] So you're just assuming that he begged to go over there based on...? [Grant] I know he begged to go over there. He was pleading because he wanted to find out what the new grand jury was. [The Glarer] The difference between you and Aidan is Aidan posts receipts, dude. But you don't. You get the difference? That's why Aidan has as much of a following as he has. [Grant] If you're asking for receipts of him begging to go over there on that day, I'm happy to provide those. I'll post them. [The Glarer] Then why didn't you do that already? [Grant] Well, I think because what I understand to be the evidentiary record from going to all the hearings is different than what people consume, because not everyone goes to every hearing. But I'm happy to do that. I have it all archived. [The Glarer] Okay, but the point is — like MicroDots is saying — that he was baited to go over there. So even if he begged to go over there under whatever circumstance, we have proof — we've seen proof — that he was baited to go over there based on false information that she was pregnant. [Grant] No. No. She was pregnant. [The Glarer] Oh my, Grant, bro... [Grant] Okay. I will swear on my God about that. [The Glarer] Hold on... [Grant] Well, to move on, I was going to give you some credit. I was going to say you might have been right that the subpoena issued to Lindsey, without her knowledge, could have been to bait Aidan. [The Glarer] But she wouldn't — how do you explain the metadata on the pictures that she sent him of the sonogram, dude? [Grant] First of all, if you're talking about someone's pregnancy — that's a medical issue, and to bring it up on air disgraces Jesus. [The Glarer] Oh, come on, Grant. [Grant] Let's not. [The Glarer] Alright, fine. We won't talk about that anymore. But let's face it, dude — you're making excuses for this girl. And why? Like, do you have a crush on her? Is that what's going on here? And it's okay. [Grant] Oh, oh, please. When I first came into this case, I saw a woman walk into a courtroom, and I started listening to her story. And even in this conversation, there are multiple things I corrected where you were willing to say, "Okay, Grant, maybe that is what happened." And Lindsey doesn't have anyone out there who is voicing that for her, so I'm taking the opportunity to do it. [The Glarer] And do you wonder why she doesn't have anyone voicing things out for her, dude? [The Glarer] Because Aidan isolates people! [The Glarer] Get out of here with that. Stop. Again with the whole "it's Aidan's fault" shit, man. That's between you and Lindsey, dude. I'm asking — like, I asked you why you think that. Nobody is going to bat for Lindsey. And I saw receipts. I heard a recording of her — you're talking about somebody who I heard a recording of [that night with Aidan in December of 2023]. This is... Come on, Grant. [Grant] I was in the courtroom. I saw the people crying when that tape was played. And you know what I also heard, Will? I heard the original version of that tape that didn't have her consent to record, which is why Aidan got charged with felony wiretapping. [The Glarer] Okay, but you're not denying that she said that, right? [Grant] Listen, I have never been awake at 12:30 in the morning. I'm not a woman. I've never been confronted with that situation. I would never pass judgment on someone in that situation. [The Glarer] Every woman that I've ever heard express their opinion on it — pretty negative, dude. Just saying. Pretty negative. Especially the moms. Especially the moms. [Grant] So I don't think any people talking in that way — I don't think you've even met this woman. [The Glarer] You're right. I have not. I have not met her. [Grant] And if — I don't know if she will ever do this — but if any of you took 10 minutes, not on camera, to talk to this woman, you would find someone who believes in God, who cares about her children, who's a good mother, and who's not any of the things you made her out to be. And by God, I will defend that 'till my last day. [The Glarer] Alright. Declared. Got it. I gotta' ask you one more question though. Why are you saying stuff about Olivia Nile — Olivia Nile and her mom — being paid agents for the defense? Come on. [Grant] Okay. Hold on. Hold on. Let me just explain that. I know that's Olivia Lamb. Okay? [The Glarer] Right, yeah, same person. Yeah, yeah. [Grant] Okay, so we all know Christina Lamb does boutique PR consulting for lawyers. She's good at it. Olivia’s good at it. They should own it. I want to interview her. [The Glarer] What — how is that proof, though? That Olivia Lamb is being paid by the defense in some way? You see the problem? [Grant] Hold on. That is an extrapolation some people may make. My argument is only that what she does looks like PR for the defense. I think Olivia hasn't been paid since last year. [The Glarer] But she's saying that's not even what she does, dude. [Grant] Okay, maybe it's not. But I think Olivia's contract ran up at the end of the first trial, if you want me to be very blunt with you. [The Glarer] Contract? [Grant] Mm-hmm. [The Glarer] But her mom doesn't even do that either — what the fuck’s her mom got to do with it? [Grant] Well, why would her mom run some random boutique PR consulting firm for lawyers, and then Olivia just shows up with this extremely high-level acumen, rivaling lawyers? [The Glarer] But that’s not what she does. She's saying that's not even what her mom does or what she does. [Grant] Okay, well, I looked at her mom's website. I archived it going back a few years, so I can post the screenshots again. And I know what she advertised herself as doing. [The Glarer] But you know what I think, Grant? I think that you're a really smart guy. And I think you know you're a really smart guy. And I think what you do is, you convince yourself — because of how smart you are — that if you came up with it, it must be gospel. That's what I think. And that's where I think you get cloudy between the truth and your opinion. Because you state your opinions as though they're fact. And I think that's an ego thing. I don't even think it's malice. It’s just ego. That's what it comes off as, anyway, dude. Because everything you say — every time I ask you, "Where's your proof?" — you explain how you came to your opinion. You give me a laid-out story. Go back and listen to this later on — you'll see what I mean. [Grant] Well, I don't even doubt you, actually, that I'm firm in my convictions. If I'm not there to experience something, I do not know the truth. But I've seen the screenshots. I only found out Olivia Lamb was Olivia Lamb because I found an archived X post where she shared something very sentimental about her grandfather. I didn't like that. I didn't appreciate having to talk about that. But it became relevant because I wanted to know why she was involved in the case. I will listen to her tell me I'm wrong. I want to interview her. [The Glarer] Yeah, but you can't just, like, trap people into interviews by threatening to spread lies about them if they don't, bro. What kind of shit is that? [Grant] Nothing that I said about her grandfather, her acumen or her mother's work was incorrect... [The Glarer] But why are you even talking about her family, dude? Like, that's really low, man. Like — that's... It's low, man. It's low. Her family didn't have nothing to do with this, man. She's doing this because she cares about it. And then people start talking about people's family members and shit. And it's like — it comes off as a not-so-subtle form of intimidation, frankly, Grant. You know, trying to get somebody to shut up. [Grant] No, I don't want to do that. I want to learn about why she's interested in the case. [The Glarer] But you could see how somebody could see it that way, right? Because what if her family starts telling her, "Hey, stop talking about this. Why are we being brought into your shit because you're passionate about something?" What if her family does that and puts her in an awkward position? And then people are cheated out of some really good insight because of that. [Grant] My brother — my brother who at four years old had a colectomy, three-stage, and is developmentally disabled as a result — has a profile someone made mocking him on X. That's a profile that people I respect engage with. Usually I overlook that stuff because I don't believe the people engaging in it are trying to do that. And I hope people realize I'm not doing that to her. I authentically want to know why Olivia's covering this case. [The Glarer] That's all right. So — but that's my point, Grant. I'm just saying, like, if you believe Karen Read is guilty, why not just stick to the facts? Because you don't see me going after anybody's family. You don't see Olivia going after anybody's family, talking about people's family and exposing their family and what they do. You know what I mean? That's not cool. I don't do that. And Olivia’s saying that she will happily talk to you anytime about why she's interested in the case. You see what? That's my point. That's my point — if you believe so much in Karen Read's guilt, then the facts should speak. Everything that you put out there — the facts, the details of the case, and the way you interpret those facts — that should be enough. You shouldn't have to bring people's family members into it. Come on. I feel like you're better than that. That's all. I still have faith that you're better than that. [Grant] Yeah. And I think that's the perfect place to end, because you've given me a lot of time and I share your sentiments. I think that is crucially important. You don't see me out there in the past six months or twelve months talking about Melanie Little, or Olivia or her parents anymore. [The Glarer] I have seen improvement, yes. I have seen it. [Grant] And let me just say why: because I came to believe that there was this toxic atmosphere surrounding this case, and that I couldn't just say I thought it needed to change — I had to reflect that change in my actions. And that's why that happened. So that's it. That's how I feel. [The Glarer] Okay. Yeah, I mean, everybody’s entitled to their feelings and opinions, man. We all are. But yeah, I’m glad that we got this talk. I got to express some things I wanted to express to you. You were very receptive, and I appreciate you coming on and being respectful and being cool. And you’re welcome here anytime, Grant. I can see that we could talk about pretty much anything, and it's fine. That will always be welcome here — no matter what we disagree on. So I appreciate you, Grant. [Grant] God bless, Will, enjoy the rest of your Saturday. [The Glarer] Have a good one. Alright, Grant, y'all. Alright, I'm gonna take another call. Let's do that.

Grant Smith Ellis

27,665 views • 1 year ago

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 views • 10 months ago

No, I don't think so. I think Conor McGregor's tailoring is best understood in the context of how labor has been deskilled for almost 200 years. Let me explain. Before the mid-19th century, most men who were not manual laborers wore bespoke clothes. In other words, their clothes were made specifically for them, typically by women working in the home or by bespoke tailors. This is how the King of Spain gets his clothes. When he was 11 years old, his father brought him to see a bespoke tailor in Madrid named Jaime Gallo. Gallo made the King's clothes using traditional methods: he measured the King's body and then used those measurements to draft a paper pattern from scratch. This pattern, which serves as the garment's architectural blueprint, is used to mark and cut the cloth. The pieces are then roughly basted together into a wearable fitting garment. When the King tries on this garment, the tailor takes notes on what needs to be changed, deconstructs the garment, and makes the necessary adjustment. This process repeats three times — basted, forward, and final fitting — with each step bringing the garment to its final form. This is partly why the King's clothes fit so beautifully: they were made by a skilled tailor and refined through multiple fittings. More important, however, is Gallo's technical skill. To be sure, not all tailors are so skilled, which is why I don't recommend going to just any random tailor. Gallo continued making clothes for the King until his own death in 2015. In the first slide, you can see three photos: two of the King wearing Gallo's tailoring at different periods of his life, and a meeting desk at Sastreria Jaime Gallo (Gallo's workshop). Most people today don't wear bespoke clothes. Instead, they wear ready-made clothes produced by manufacturers and sold by brands and retailers. The shrunken silhouette we see today was principally shaped in the early 2000s by three designers: Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane, and Thom Browne. These men were not rebelling against classic tailoring, which has not been culturally relevant since the late 1960s. Instead, they were rebelling against the oversized tailoring of the '80s and '90s, which was also created by designers (such as Armani). In the 2012 documentary "Antifashion," Simons explains that he felt oversized silhouettes were "too American" and "macho" (think Arnold Schwarzenegger). He wanted something that felt younger, more European, and made for thin, effete bodies. Slimane echoed this sentiment in a separate interview, saying that he felt bullied as a teen for not being very muscular, so he intentionally wanted to design things that felt more androgynous. He rejected the idea that every man needed to feel big and macho. Whatever you want to say about the shrunken suit trend, there were no technical issues with the original versions. Along the top row of the second slide, you can see two suits by Slimane and Browne. Notice that there's no puckering or pulling. The collar hugs the neck. I also think the clothes look pretty good on the models. This is largely because there are still people with technical knowledge working at this stage. The problems arise once those designs slide further away from such people. On the bottom row of the second slide, we can see Lionel Messi wearing a Thom Browne suit. IMO, it doesn't fit him as well as the model above him because he's a more muscular build. The original slim suits work best on thin figures with shoulders broader than the hips. Once you put these clothes on different figures, they can look egg-shaped. This mismatch can happen for all sorts of reasons. The people involved in selling or styling clothes today often lack technical skills: editors, writers, stylists, salespeople, marketers, and such. The designer was already one step removed from the tailor (a technical person), but at least they can work with a pattern maker (another technical person). Many people today are another step removed from that technical layer. Conor McGregor's clothes are from his own line, August McGregor, which he created with David August. Although David August works in custom clothing, he's not a tailor. He measures clients and sends those measurements to an overseas factory, where garments are produced by people who never meet the wearer. Conor's role is simply to market the product. He's a built-in influencer for the brand. There was a recent Wall Street Journal article about the emergence of "muscle suits," which is to say, very bulky guys wearing slim-fit tailoring. IMO, this can only emerge from the history we talked about. As more people lack technical skills and more layers or barriers exist between them and people with technical skills, the garment can look more distorted or strange. On the final slide, we see a video from Brimble and Clark, an custom tailoring company mentioned in the WSJ article. Like those from August McGregor, these are made-to-measure clothes produced in distant factories, though they use more stretch blends. Someone once told me that the owner of Brimble and Clark holds a ceremony when he delivers a suit to you. When you come into the shop to pick up your suit, a painting is mechanically lowered to reveal a collection of tiny knives. The company owner takes one of the tiny knives, sews it behind your lapel, and then ceremoniously puts the jacket on you. Then it's time for your own private photoshoot, where you get to pose around Chesterfield field couches while wearing your jacket concealing a tiny knife. The purpose, of course, is simply to make the wearer feel good. The business person understands something important: how a customer feels is more important than whether the product is good. This is essentially the system we have today. The company owner, salesperson, fitter, customer, writer, and influencer often possess little technical knowledge. The remaining expertise is concentrated among pattern makers and garment workers at the very end of the supply chain. I think about this sometimes when I read about AI, as I think it represents yet another step towards the deskilling of labor. Perhaps one day, someone who knows how to draw with pen and paper will look at an AI-generated image and recognize certain distortions that many have come to accept. But AI is outside my area of expertise, so I'll leave that discussion to others.

derek guy

167,811 views • 20 hours ago

If you want to understand the Joe FlipperHead, Olivia Lamb, Karen Read and Aidan TurtleBoy Kearney chaos; FlipperHead (a guy named Nick from Philly) got confirmation Aidan recorded Karen Read. Then the recordings leaked. Basically, Olivia works for Aidan as a paralegal, now, but Olivia used to be close to Karen in the past (and Olivia and FlipperHead used to be close, as well, on a personal level). FlipperHead, for his part, is loyal to Olivia and Karen but FlipperHead doesn't like Aidan (much like other people close to Karen). Aidan, in turn, seems to be using Olivia to discredit Flipperhead (potentially without Olivia's permission). VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: [Opening remarks on social media and focus] Grant: [Lindsey Gaetani's] been talking about on social media, but let's get to that second. What I wanna start with—let me find the tab—I wanna start with the developments related to Aidan Kearney and Karen Read, okay? So we're gonna jump right into that, and what I have here is the actual discussion. Now, if you go on my X, you will be able to see the entire transcript. I'm gonna try to scroll with you as the video plays. It's a lot, okay? And then we're gonna do part two as well. So eventually, we're gonna hit part two of the transcript. I'm gonna pause, and we're gonna go to the second video. Now, this discussion—the reason why I wanna go over this—is I was listening to it, and I was like, "Wait a minute, I speak this language that they're all talking. I understand sort of the subtext of all of this, but they weren't really talking on the surface." It's a conversation between somebody named Chris, who Aidan Kearney calls a "koala," somebody named Joe Flipperhead—who's actually named Nick from Philadelphia, who was apparently close to a woman named Olivia Lamb, who is gonna come up in this as well. Now, Olivia Lamb did a lot of social media posts about the Karen Read and John O'Keefe trial on her profile on Twitter under Olivia. Now, then Olivia started—in a public announcement—saying that she started working for Aidan Kearney. And what you're gonna hear in this conversation is there's also a woman named—who else? There's a woman who's Australian that Aidan also knows named Lily. She introduces herself in the beginning, and then she's kind of the moderator-mediator. And then there's another woman that pops up in the middle named Erika Walsh. She only speaks two or three times. She's one of Turtle Boy's moderators. She interjects at two random times: one, when someone starts talking about Meredith; and two, when Aidan starts saying how bad the content of the conversation in question—that was allegedly recorded and sent to Karen Read, between Aidan and Karen—is for Karen. And then there's a third unknown voice that pops up at the end, who sounds like—it's a female, she's American. I don't know her voice, but it sounds like she's very close to Joe Flipperhead, this guy Nick. And she uses this phrase about Nick "leaving Olivia's ass" in a way that makes me think maybe this girl is close to Nick, and like, she got close to him after Olivia and Nick separated. Now you might say to yourself, "Oh dear God, why—first of all, Grant, why do you know all this?" These people post a lot; I don't know. Tracking this thing is something I've been doing for a while. So it's not like I went into it because I wanted to know who the hell Joe Flipperhead was, or Olivia Lamb was. They entered into a world that I knew a lot about because they were trying to cover this case. And so inevitably, I just had them on my radar, and when things pop up like this, I just connect the dots. [Background on Olivia Lamb] In terms of Olivia though—so she, I don't know. There was this weird situation, I think, at the end of trial one for Karen Read. So somewhere in—I don't know—late 2024, summer 2024 or so. Weird situation where Olivia kind of then, for a few months, wasn't around as much, or she was, but not as much. And then she came back around for Aidan and said she was working on his team or something. Now, Olivia—I don't think Olivia Lamb's necessarily a bad person. I think whoever she is, and whatever she's doing, is very intelligent. But if you kind of look into that family, her mom is named Christina Lamb, and her mom does boutique consulting for law firms. I think her mom might be a lawyer, but she doesn't really—I think the way that she does consulting is more like tactically how lawyers should think about how a case is presented in the public, et cetera, stuff like that. And you have to tie this into this Elizabeth Dombrowski person out of New York that runs this Good Counsel Legal Services that proclaimed that Jen Altman and whoever else were paralegals for Aidan. You see what I'm saying? And what I think Olivia's role is—I think she just does PR. She does some paralegal work clearly, but I think she's mostly like a PR specialist. But I think why there's so much obfuscation—and I'm giving you all this background, because the conversation you're about to hear makes no sense if you don't know all this background. The context there, I think, is that—I think Olivia is a person. Like, I think she is real. But I think the reason why there's so many smoke and mirrors is that she's a conduit for implausible deniability. In the world of public relations—especially this kind of public relations—is incredibly important. So I think she's like a conduit for more entrenched public relations interests, which—okay, fine. I don't see that as per se evil. I'm a critical theorist. So I study propaganda. So like, if you are doing anything that emerged from Edward Bernays's systemic weaponization of his uncle Sigmund Freud's study of the mass psychology of the mind—if you do any of that—you're inevitably gonna catch my attention. Not because I necessarily per se think it's evil, but because that's my wheelhouse. Like, I reconstruct public relations and then I figure out what's driving that. Okay. So she—Olivia—got on my radar because of that, not necessarily because she's evil. Same, because I never really saw it. Now maybe some of the witnesses in the trial would think differently, but that's not my role here. I am like—I'm an objective observer. And um, Olivia was never really cruel. Like she just does PR. So I wouldn't necessarily say like everything she did was like right. But if you look at her style, it's not polemical. It's not—it's mostly analytical. Okay. So that's not an aphoristic or manipulative or evil person really. That's a PR specialist. And this guy, Nick—very similar, Joe Flipperhead. Okay. If you look at his posts—like, I wouldn't exactly say he's a cruel human being, you know, like he memes and stuff. Okay. He's kind of like Dave Cullinane a little bit, but he's just like a human. And you can hear it in this conversation. Like Joe is the one who's really holding Aidan accountable. Joe Flipperhead—whose name is Nick—he's from Philly. And um, I noticed 'cause I watched the stream of them one time—I don't know—he seems all right. I don't have anything against him or Olivia. In fact, I think they did a damn good job, at least Joe. Because what you'll also see here is there's another subtext. What this conversation is about is an allegation that Aidan Kearney sent a recorded conversation to Karen Read—a conversation with her—and then someone—nobody knows who—sent the recording to Karen's lawyers, David Yannetti and Alan Jackson. Now, what's weird about this is that there's also—and I don't like, whatever, I guess it is what it is—but the host, one of the hosts, Chris, this Australian guy—he might be a New Zealander, I don't know. But anyway, he starts saying directly to Aidan, "Listen Aidan, you went to lunch with Meredith—this Turtle Boy's former girlfriend—but her name is Meredith O'Neill (Meredith O). She's a person; she has an existence outside of Aidan Kearney and whether—a lot of people, I think, rightfully so, will take issue with some of the things Meredith has posted. But that's for her soul to deal with. She has to reckon with it, reflect on it, whatever the fuck, okay? That's separate from; she exists outside of the fact that she used to date Aidan Kearney." And I just wanna make that as a blanket point that like Aidan Kearney does not own someone's soul because they had some connection to him at any point in time. These people are independent people who have their own lives. So Meredith O'Neill is her name. And Meredith—like, clearly something happened between Aidan and Meredith because over the past few weeks—like, first of all, there's some more subtext to this, which is Aidan's paralegal team before Olivia Lamb came on was Courtney Healy and this woman named Tina Murray. Tina Murray —I didn't even know THE NAME until two weeks ago—but I had seen her before because she had silver hair when she was in court one time. I had no idea who it was, but she was sitting next to Courtney Healy. Now, way back when Aidan Kearney was incarcerated in late 2023, early 2024—apparently these two women, Courtney Healy and Tina Murray, were very close to Aidan Kearney. Someone had his logins, allegedly. They were helping like post for him while he was in jail, et cetera. Now, there's time back to that as well. Jen Altman is a key figure in all of this. And the reason why is that Jen Altman was the reason that Aidan Kearney and Karen Read got hooked up initially through Natalie Wiweke-Bershneider or whatever her name is. Jen Altman was also among this weird group of people. It was Tina Murray, Courtney Healy, Jen Altman, I think, and maybe just them three, who had access to Aidan in jail on a paralegal list. And at one point, Tim Bradl, Aidan's lawyer, wrote down that Jen Altman was a lawyer. She got so mad that she messaged Bradl, and then those messages got leaked. So there's all this discontent brewing within Aidan Kearney's kind of like organization, if you wanna call it. I'd call it more like a—yeah, it's like a hierarchy. And like he's at the—it's like a politician almost, but he's not a politician. You have like a top person at the top, and then you have all these staffers, and you have to manage the staffers. That's what he's dealing with. And he's gotta keep everybody like in line because like at one person breaks—especially a key—all right, two things. One, there's a reason you compartmentalize information, and you're not gonna be able to get in these type of operations because nobody needs to know everything. If you did that, then everyone would be a weak link. The problem is though, in order to compartmentalize in a bureaucracy or a schema like this, you have to have some people who actually know what's going on. Those people are liabilities. They're weak links. If you have someone who is too close and they know how you compartmentalized information, they'll see the full picture. They're the weak link. That's Courtney Healy, Tina Murray, Jen Altman, Meredith, Lindsey a little bit. These people are the weak links for Aidan because they see the full picture, whether they are aligned with him, don't like him, etc. etc. It's just they're the biggest weaknesses for him because they see the full picture. That's why he tries to either control them—in my opinion—or destroy them. But Aidan's in a real tough spot here because you can't run that playbook on Karen Read. Clearly, these people are incredibly loyal to her. Flipperhead, Olivia, etc. They may have been helping Aidan, but they're incredibly loyal to Karen. Now, what I've always suspected is that the whole point of charging Aidan Kearney was—one, he did bad things to the witnesses in the retrial, Lindsey Gaetani. He did bad things allegedly. Okay, the grand jury indicted him. But I think Brian Tully and the MSP unit that investigated Aidan—they were more interested in two different goals. Okay, they had parallel objectives beyond just the criminal proceeding. One: get information about who the target of the federal probe was after August of 2023. And it was Tully's unit and Matthew Farwell related to the Sandra Birchmore murder coverup. Number two: I think Tully wanted—and Kate Peter and Marty Keach wanted—Aidan Kearney and Michael Morrissey wanted Aidan Kearney to flip on Karen Read. It was a pressure tactic. It was always just a pressure tactic. That's what I fully believe. Now, I'm not saying he didn't do bad things. I just believe in the mind of the DA—these people were using pressure tactics to get Aidan Kearney in a tactical position where he would flip. Why do I think this? Well, a few things. One: in the fall of 2023, between like August and November, Aidan Kearney didn't need an intermediary with Karen Read. Natalie was out of the picture, although I'm suspect, because there's this new text from Natalie from August saying that like she was still loyal to Karen Read—although ostensibly they had a falling out in June of 2023 because Natalie called Karen late at night and she was upset about it. I always thought that was BS. Now I know why it was BS because there's also a March 24 message about like Joe Warren and Natalie wanting to go to court. I just have this suspicion that Natalie was never really like against Karen. What Natalie was doing was using Turtle Boy as leverage with Karen's permission—using it's called a limited hangout. Limited information about Turtle Boy's culpability for witness intimidation to the MSP so that the MSP would trust Natalie—so that Natalie could relay information back to Karen about the ongoing investigation of Karen and Aidan for conspiracy under 2747 and witness intimidation under 26813B. Now they did try to eventually indict Karen on that in March of 2024 at No True Bill, but they can do it again. They got more evidence—the state in May of 2024 about Aidan saying in Facebook messages that one Karen told him not to go to Lindsey Gaetani's apartment on December 23rd, 2023, and then some other stuff—basically where Aidan was implying that someone told him to run Jen McCabe's license plates. Who would that be? Karen Read. He didn't say it but he implied it to Jenna Rocco and Amy D'Angelis and whoever else was in that internal chat that got leaked. So I really believe that the reason why Aidan Kearney was such a liability to Karen Read—and why she was saying it out loud—is that Karen Read always saw Aidan Kearney as vulnerable to flip. Why? Because Brian Tully did his homework—whatever his motives were—and he found a few things. And I think that him and Kate Peter profiled Aidan Kearney. That's why Kate Peter had some role in this—because they thought Kate Peter should really like Aidan in a lot of ways because he used to be colleagues. Two: I think the state police thought she saw his psyche—Aidan's psyche—and could help them profile him. Three: I think Kate Peter is very hard into the world, and Tully and those other people in the unit could say like, "Yeah, we're worried about Birchmore; we got to do damage control here. Nothing's really wrong with the O'Keefe death investigation," and just—they're going to find out about Birchmore—and Kate would go along with it. That's my opinion. But Tully gets this video of Aidan that he had sent to Lindsey—and it's out there on the internet. I don't want to play the content; it's sad. But this is why I think this is what was in the prosecutor's mind when they were going—and the MSP's mind—when they were going after Kearney. Yes, he did bad things—especially to people that knew the DA and Tully like McCabe, Jen McCabe, etc. But also Aidan was an Achilles heel for Karen. Think about MSP, right? And the way we're analyzing Aidan's weaknesses via weak links in the compartmentalization chain. Okay, flip it around and think about MSP thinking about Karen. What's a weak link in her compartmentalization chain? Aidan Kearney. Now, in that regard, Aidan Kearney—if he flips on Karen Read—guarantees a conviction for Karen Read for the state, even if they can't get her on John's death. It was a backup plan. Second to that, I think though—it's a dynamic situation—and that something must have fucking happened recently. Okay, and I've long thought—and we'll read Lindsey's post on this later because she was talking about it on Twitter overnight, and I was reading it this morning, and it made me think about this—I've long suspected that Kate Peter made a deal with Aidan Kearney in the past like 6-8 months. And the deal was involving the Norfolk DA and the people prosecuting Kearney, and the goal was to get Kearney to flip. And I also think Kate wants Kearney in the Netflix documentary that she's working on with Gretchen and Sandpaper—which, they don't really understand. Like, bro, you think you're getting my footage and me if you're going to enable Kate Peter and try to portray her as the Charlotte of the internet? What planet are you on? No. No, the answer is no. But anyway, I really believe that this deal was made because why else—and I think Karen found out about it—because why else would Karen—[we're going to—the conversation is going to clarify all this]—why else would Karen on Friday authorize Joe Flipperhead to release information that confirms that Aidan recorded Karen. Now, why Karen is not going to do this if she didn't hear the fucking recording? She's not a moron. She's a tactical genius. I'm telling you—I don't necessarily agree with all the things she's done. I personally think she's responsible for John's death, but like—she's a fucking tactical genius. And you have to understand in some sense—like she wouldn't do this unless it's real. Like someone sent her that recording, and I don't believe Aidan Kearney sent it to intermediaries because if Meredith is the closest person to him—or was—in the world, and he's going to lunch with her and will only play it for her allegedly—okay, there's no way in hell that he would just send it to people. I believe—whether through a fake account or otherwise—Aidan Kearney sent that to Karen's lawyers. That's just my opinion. I think there's strong reason for him to do it. It's a message. Okay. As a result, I think Karen Read doing this had to sense that this was the moment—like this was the moment where the decision was going to be made about whether or not he cooperated. And now is Aidan's kind of like signal flare that I'm thinking—from Karen Read's perspective—Aidan sending that recording to Jackson and Yannetti is a signal flare that if she doesn't act now, he's making the choice to flip on her. Okay, well, what did she just do? She in essence just put him in the worst position possible because he had to be able to—him and Kate Peter—had to sell the narrative in public that—and this is why I was on Lindsey's profile earlier. Let me see if I can bring that up—him and Kate Peter had to sell the narrative in public that Karen was worse than Aidan Kearney. All right, so let's take a look at Lindsey Gaetani's post here. Let's read this first and then let's look at the post from Kate Peter. So Kate Peter post last night: "Karen Read has killed a man before and to my knowledge, Aidan Kearney has yet to do anything like that. Take that as you will. Regardless, they're both giant DBAGs, but you can decide who is worse. My vote is Karen Read." That's Kate Peter—one of the closest people in the world right now to Brian Tully, Michael Morrissey, and the decision makers who were initially prosecuting Kearney—telling you in plain sight what's going on. So let's read Lindsey's post: "Yes, we already know a deal was made a long time ago. How cute of Kate trying to win over the turtle riders after she pretended she was still trying to put him in jail the past several months. Does anyone of the turtle riders know who Christine Gagne is? I have no idea who that is. Does anyone know who that is? That's the woman Kate Peter blamed for wiretapping charges with TB and the person she blamed when I asked her where her deleted Google Drive went with the state's evidence. Why would Kate blame this woman for deleting evidence when this woman's name was never mentioned during the grand jury or in a single email or police report? Interesting." Well, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. So we know Kate Peter was providing evidence to the grand jury. We know that from the recently released court documents and discovery in the Kearney criminal case. Why was—why is Kate Peter blaming someone? Who is Christine Gagne, who—why is Kate blaming her when Kate was the one who was—there's evidence that Kate was directly providing this material to Tully, who was taking it to the grand jury. And by the way, I want people to understand: my anger here is not because Aidan Kearney was prosecuted. I think he should be held accountable. My anger here is because the people prosecuting him had ulterior motives. Lindsey Gaetani didn't have an ulterior motive. She was victimized. She was an unwitting pawn in this proxy war between Karen and the DOJ—Karen and the DOJ and Aidan on one side, and the Norfolk DA and the MSP unit on the other. But instead of trying to prosecute Aidan, it was all tactical. And nobody was told—that's the worst part. And that's why I'm so upset about all of this, because it was a disgrace. It was a disgrace to the process. If you're going to hold someone accountable, do it. You don't use it as leverage to get someone else. And if you're going to do that, be open with the people who are victimized. Otherwise, you are going to build resentment. Why would you ever want to be in a situation where you have to handle a victim? Because if they were made aware of what was actually going on, they would be upset. That is a very prime example—on its face example—that something is very wrong. Not because Aidan Kearney is absolved of liability or because I think he did nothing wrong. Absolutely not. No. Other way around. But because that kind of behavior—given impunity basically, because there's a larger fish—it's an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, not because the prosecution exists. In my opinion, a grand jury indicted him; he should be prosecuted. That's what happens when indictments get handed up. But because the aim of the prosecution was not to seek justice—it was to get—it was to pressure Kearney to flip on Karen Read. [Transition to the conversation] Now, to bring this all back—because we got to go—I want to look at this conversation here. I want to actually listen to this chat a minute. I'm going to explicate; I'm going to try to tell you what happens. "Hi, Bunny Towel. Hi, Christina. No haircut. But guess if you want to send donations—today's a good day for that. We got to get Towel to the end of the month. Towel's not going to be able to move very much for the next few days. So I could use some food if you want to send me some gift cards. I just need some help. All right. I'm a little towel. I got a lot going on. And anyway, so I'll—I'm sitting in my chair. That's as much as I can do right now. I can talk; my brain works. I can sit in my chair. I'm not doing anything else, but I should eat at some point. Anyway, so we're going to listen to this conversation because you have to think of all that background when you're analyzing. Why right now? Okay, why would Karen Read tactically right now burn Aidan Kearney? Aidan Kearney supporters are very loyal, but a lot of Aidan Kearney's base are becoming alienated because either they care more about Karen Read than Aidan Kearney or because Aidan Kearney's been on this weird tear recently where he like been attacking middle-aged women who are most of his fans. All right. Most of his fans are middle-aged women. And he goes after people's looks like whatever. So there's already this alienation happening. I believe the only reason Karen Read does this right now is because what it did—and what it's doing to Aidan Kearney—is it's decimating his support. Okay. Well, why are you decimating his support? Why are you forcing people to pick sides? Why would you do that right now? Either [he] cooperated or he's about to. All right. Now Karen Read—if she was—here's my read of this—if Karen Read was just going to cooperate, she wouldn't have done this this way. Okay. I'm sorry. It would have been completely different. I don't believe that she would have done it this way. I believe she would have done it a completely different way. And the reason why I believe that—we're going to read the text from Karen before we start listening to this. By the way, you can see I have the video here for you. What happened? By the way, just to give you a little more context. So this X Spaces that we're going to listen to—I have the full 37-minute X Space. This X Space, okay—it was before the text messages from Karen to Joe Flipperhead got released. So what you have to realize is these texts you're seeing on the screen got released because of this conversation. You're going to hear Joe Flipperhead say it.

Grant Smith Ellis

36,588 views • 9 months ago

"If [Ross] had phrased it like that in the N2K segment, I think most people wouldn't have pushed back so hard." ~Murgia Lockheed, Landing Drones, Stupor, and Trump Did think this would be another LAP (Long-Ass Post), but here it is. Ross Coulthart: "It's been a very interesting week with the public response to the comments that I've made on the show that I do with my friend and colleague,Bryce Zabel, "Need to Know," where we discussed what I've been told by my sources, multiple sources, by the way, that Lockheed Martin was indeed behind the Tic Tac encounter of 2004 with the USS Nimitz battle carrier group." Let's rewind: This is what Ross and Bryce said on the @Coulthart_Zabel episode uploaded on July 6th. My comments in ( ). Ross: "I now know, categorically, that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology. Categorically." Bryce: "Ooookay." Ross: "The Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology. Why are we being lied to? This is the issue. Why is the United States government now participating - at White-House, executive level, in collusion with the national-security state - to keep secret the fact that they've made these advances? I suspect it's because they've realized that they're being overtaken by their foreign adversaries, and they don't want you to know that." Bryce: "Okay, the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin. Well, in some respects, given how insane the Tic Tac behaved during the Nimitz, where it went from 80,000 feet to sea level in less than a second, then I would say, well there's one for the U.S. team. Obviously, we have some good stuff out there, if that's the case, right?" Ross: "How much of that is being shared with the actual Defense Department that's responsible for the defense of the United States? This is the kind of questions that Congress should be asking." Bryce: "So you're saying Lockheed Martin might - or anybody, but Lockheed Martin in this particular case - has a Tic Tac that they are testing, and have been testing, and have access to." (One can argue that when Bryce said LM has a Tic Tac that they've been testing, that could include the possibility that it's an NHI craft they somehow acquired and not something they built. That would go against my "Ross is flip flopping" allegation.) Bryce: "But they might not have shared it with the Defense Department of the United States? Which probably paid for it in their trillion-dollar budgets. That's kind of mind-blowing in itself." Ross: "Those are the questions I think Congress should be asking. I mean, what I'm saying, basically, is..." Bryce: "Why are you saying this, by the way? Where did you? Where is this from? How do we know this? What's going on?" Ross: "I'm...I'm sorry, Bryce, I can't go there." ~ Bryce: "Frankly, the only major row that you and I have ever had, which was over eminent domain, and who can... Is it not possible that that legislation has eminent domain in it as an issue that the government would be able to go seize potential things from private enterprise, if the government, in fact, thought that Lockheed Martin had a Tic Tac? Wouldn't we want to go seize it?" Ross: "Bloody hell we would. Exactly. But that hasn't happened. And, you know, I can tell you, David Grusch has told them exactly where to look. Jake Barber has told them exactly where to look. This is why I just found it, in many ways, I find it absurd that we're still debating the issue whether the NHI technology recovery is real. Of course it's real!" (I think/suspect it's real. But if I'm gonna play journalist, I need to see proof before I say, "Of course it's real!" Or, "I know it's real." Walk me into the building and show me. I don't think this has happened with Ross so a debate is still warranted, IMO.) Bryce: "This thing you just said about Lockheed Martin. Is this the first time you've said that in public, or have you said that before?" Ross: "Look, there's been speculation for a while that it's Lockheed Martin, but I'm now very, very sure that it was Lockheed Martin. And I think the Tic Tac is part of two, at least two different platforms that Lockheed's been working on. Different platforms that they've been working on. And it's technology that, until very recently, most of Congress was completely unaware of." (To me, that sounds like Ross is saying, that whatever LM is working on, they built it.) Bryce: "Well, I just hope, if there's a war with China or a war with NHI, I just hope Lockheed Martin remembers who helped pay for it, and they're on our side. That's what I would say." Ross: "Well, I hope they are. I don't think we can have any expectation, though, unless the public demands answers, that we're going to get the truth." Full post here: ~And more from yesterday's "Reality Check"~ @MeaganOurada reads a question: "You recently mentioned the Tic Tac was a produced/manufactured by Lockheed Martin, but you never mentioned if it was under autonomous flight or piloted." (This shows that others took Ross's original comments as LM manufacturing a Tic Tac and not figuring out how to fly an NHI Tic Tac that they somehow had acquired.) Ross: "That's a good question, and I'll be honest with you, I don't know for sure." (Here was a chance for Ross to say, "I didn't mean to suggest it was 100% produced/manufactured by Lockheed, just that it was one possibility. The other is they operated a NHI Tic Tac that they had acquired.) Ross: "I have been told previously that when Tic Tacs... You see, one of the other things I want to clarify here as well is, there are NHI Tic Tacs." (We don't know that for sure, and later on, Ross adds that they are "suspected" to be NHI.) Ross: "A lot of people seem to be thinking that I'm suggesting that all Tic Tacs are Lockheed Martin. That's not the case at all." (A few people who follow me thought that but I think the overwhelming majority realize that Ross didn't say that.) Ross: "What I was told, and I'm reasonably sure that this is the case, is that Tic Tac was being operated by Lockheed Martin, and it's conceivable that that was being operated neuro-meditatively, psionically, by a human psionic, which is what I understand, is the way that these retrieved, non-human craft are being operated." ("Reasonably sure" and "operated," is different than what he said on N2K: "I now know, categorically, that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin technology. Categorically." I think most people took that as: "I now now, categorically, that Lockheed built a Tic Tac and that's what Fravor chased in 2004." That's why you saw such a pushback from people on social media.) Ross: "It's not clear to me, though, whether this is a craft that was built by Lockheed Martin, or whether it is Lockheed Martin testing the use of neuro-meditative signaling, as our friends at Skywatcher called it, to operate one of these craft. I just can't answer that question, specifically." (If Ross would have said this in the N2K episode and didn't use the word, "categorically," I think the reaction would have been, "Oh, that's interesting." I'm still skeptical that Lockheed has ANY role in the 2004 Tic Tac incident but I'll keep my mind open.) Ross: "All I can do is tell you what I've been told by my multiple sources, which is that the operation of the Tic Tac was being controlled, on the day, by Lockheed Martin." (Again, if he had phrased it like that in the N2K segment, I think most people wouldn't have pushed back so hard. I hope humans have developed the ability to control a Tic Tac and make it perform like what was reported on November 14th, 2004. But, again, I'm skeptical. The SPY-1 radar on the USS Princeton tracked objects for a week or so, leading up to the encounter Fravor and the others had with the Tic Tac. Were all of those objects LM-controlled craft? Seems unlikely. In 2019, at UFO MegaCon, Kevin Day said that on around November 10th, he started witnessing these strange tracks on his radar scope. He wasn’t really concerned with them because there was a lot of air traffic off the coast of California and they were a significant ways from the strike group. So they just monitored them and reporting them to 'higher authorities' and maintained track of them. They stood out and were anomalous because they were at 28,000 feet and going at 100 knots. Day said that was, 'extremely bizarre.' His entire job was to identify stuff and he had no idea what these were. None. Radar was shut down so they could do an extensive diagnostics to make sure it was working and these were real contacts. They were. ~ Just going through all the possibilities I can think of.... Did LM "hijack" or summon one of those craft, psychically, and "make it" have an encounter with Fravor and Friends? Or, maybe none of the above? Maybe it was a NHI craft and had nothing to do with LM? Remember, Fravor said it looked like it might be docking with a submerged object, so maybe that's why it was in that specific area? To me, that suggests NHI.) Ross: "Now I want to say here, let's be really clear about this: There is always the possibility that sources that talk to a journalist like me may be maligned. They may indeed be running some kind of psyop." (I know he has said that kind of thing in the past but I wish Ross had reiterated that point in the N2K segment. I have heard from a few people who think that's exactly what's happening here. And also, if his sources are so sure LM was involved and "operating" a Tic Tac, to me, it would make sense that they would also know whether it was a Tic Tac LM acquired or...a Tic Tac LM manufactured, based on reverse engineering the real thing.) Ross: "And of course I've taken that (disinformation/psyop) into consideration in asking the question. The difficulty is, I can't go into the detail, for very obvious reasons, about who these sources are and why I think so strongly that those sources are telling me the truth. And I can tell you, there are a lot of people who are assuring me that I'm flat wrong. And that's fine. But let's have a discussion about this." (Well now that "categorically" seems be to off the table, we can discuss it. BTW, back in 2019 on my blog, Dave Beaty 🇺🇦 and I discussed the possibility that the Tic Tac was human tech. I know others have discussed that, too, so it's not a new idea.) ~Ross then switches gears to the drones~ Ross: "And also, let's talk about what I think was actually another of the major points that I was trying to make in the course of that conversation I had with Bryce. Which is that there is an obvious contradiction between what the White House has said - that these were FAA-authorized drones operating [in] the continental United States in November, December, January - and what the U.S. Air Force has said. Which is two senior generals, one former, one serving commander of NORTHCOM, NORAD, responsible for the defense of the United States northern aerospace, stated categorically, on the record, that they have no idea who is responsible for those drone craft that were hovering over the continent of the United States. That's an obvious, logical contradiction." (In the March 16th episode of 60 Minutes with Bill Whitaker., we learned... Retired four-star general, Mark Kelly, went up to the roof and saw drones over Langley, from the size of a quadcopter up to the size of a small car. General Glen VanHerck (now retired) is the former commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM and told "60 Minutes" that we can't track the drones over Langley or see where they originated. "It's a capability gap. Certainly, they can come and go from any direction. The FBI is looking at potential options but they don't have an answer right now." General Gregory Guillot is the current commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM and told "60 Minutes," that, "the threat got ahead of our ability to detect and track the threat." Could we detect drones flying into Langley today? "At low altitude, probably not, with your standard FAA or surveillance radars. I don't think we know entirely what happened. It is alarming." And, as I've (Joe) been saying forever, a big problem was/is the rules of engagement that detail when and how you can shoot down drones. VanHerk: "It's been one year since Langley had their drone incursion and we don't have the policies and laws in place to deal with this? That's not a sense or urgency.") ~ Ross: "And if the president, think about this... If the president...it's actually a good point that actually supports the possibility that I might, in fact, be right, and that my sources are in fact telling me the truth. If the president is telling the American public they don't need to worry about these drones - drones which we know are operating anomalously, with anomalous characteristics - then what the hell is going on? It implies he's been briefed. (Okay, what Ross is saying here: If you combine the president telling us not to worry about the drones, along with these drones making anomalous maneuvers, it bolsters his claim that LM (and others) has advanced tech that can also be used in drone tech. And that the president has been briefed about this advanced tech. But the problem with that line of thinking is, when you look at what eyewitnesses have said about the drones (or whatever they were), in 99% of the cases, the only anomalous behavior was their ability avoid detection and go stealth. That's the low observability part of the UAP five observables that Lue Elizondo popularized. But no 90-degree turns or anything like that. I don't think anything the generals or Trump said bolsters the idea that Lockheed was involved with the Tic Tac in 2004.) Ross: "Just to add more smoke to the fire, earlier on today, I had a message from a guy in New Jersey who has seen one of these drones land in a New Jersey backyard. He was illegally pointing a laser beam at one of these drones, which you should not do. Naughty. Even if they are NHI or whatever they are." (I wish Ross had said, "a guy in New Jersey who CLAIMS he has seen one of these drones land." Ross was in Barcelona when recording this episode of Reality Check so there was no time for him to vet this story. It's such an outlier from everything else we have heard about the drones that I think we should remain skeptical about if it actually happened. Does this person have photos or videos? Are there any other eyewitnesses?) Ross: "This is what he told me: "I was beaming [the drones] one night around midnight, and the one flew straight over my backyard, stopped slightly above, and to my left, and seemed to sink down into the trees along the little street on the side of my house. The next thing I see is this rectangle-looking, box-like thing floating just above the street, about the size of an old Ford station wagon. It was the most incredible, starkly-lit thing I've ever seen. I've never seen colors so radiant, so intensely liquid-like in my life. Several shades of blues with oranges and yellows like intense neon lights. "'It scared the hell out of me, and I moved away from the window so it couldn't see me. I slowly poked my head around the window, and it followed every move I made. It knew I was watching it. I would pull back and it came up the street. I would move into the window and it moved back down the street. It was like we were synchronized, and I was completely freaked out to the point that I quickly ran into my kitchen and considered hiding under my sink, of all things. I found myself in some sort of stupor, like I was being drugged, confused and slowed down. So I went to my bedroom and got my point two five, and just laid back in bed. I awoke the next morning, still holding the pistol.' ~End Alleged Eyewitness Account in NJ~ Ross: "Something really anomalous that has no visible means of propulsion is landing in New Jersey, and your president is telling you he's not concerned about it. Yet, two generals responsible for the defense of the United States aerospace are telling you they're concerned about it, and they don't know what these objects are. Why is the president not concerned? And why are two U.S. Air Force generals, presumably, not briefed into what the president is briefed into? Think about that." (Allegedly landed in NJ. I don't think Trump knows more than the generals, and I don't think he was briefed into a program that they were left out in the cold on.) ~~~ @MeaganOurada reads another question: "Even if Ross seems confident that Tic Tac is U.S. tech, does he think it's a reverse engineering tech from NHI, or a tech 100% created by humans?" Ross: "As I've mentioned earlier, we're not saying all Tic Tacs are Lockheed Martin. And it's quite clear that some Tic Tacs are indeed non-human intelligence, or suspected to be non-human intelligence. But what we're talking about are objects that are showing the five observables, doing maneuvers and operating in ways that don't conform to terrestrial craft. "I can't answer the question, definitively, whether they are constructed by Lockheed Martin, or whether it's Lockheed Martin operating a recovered, retrieved craft." (Again, if he had said that in the N2K segment, there may have been less pushback. Did his sources not explain that aspect of the claim? Pretty important detail.) Ross: "Because what I've been told, and what jakebarber told me in the interview that you've all watched, hopefully, on NewsNation, is that there have been retrievals of craft, including Tic Tacs. So, why is it a surprise to people that a contractor, that I'm alleging is directly involved in the Legacy program, is involved in operating these craft." (Because when Ross spoke about this the first time, he made no mention of LM OPERATING the Tic Tac in the 2004 incident . If he didn't mean that Lockheed had BUILT or MANUFACTURED it, he should have made that clear. He must understand this.) Ross: "And moreover, why would we necessarily expect that people, even those flying in the carrier battle group, would actually know about this or be briefed into this?" (We didn't, and don't, expect that, and have been discussing it for the last 6 or so years.) Ross: "It would have been a really good idea if they were going to test this technology against the carrier battle group, to have let the people know." (Which people? How many? Fravor said they had around 6000 people on the Nimitz and Princeton, combined. If it was SAP-level, classified technology, they would've had to read all those people into the program before the test. Not realistic, IMO.) Ross: "And I think people need to be reminded that my good friend, Kevin Day, who I know disputes the possibility that the Tic Tac is Lockheed Martin... In my book, Kevin Day told me - and he said this in many, many interviews - that when, I think it was the admiral in charge of the carrier battle group, was told about the Tic Tac, he didn't seem very alarmed. Why not? Why aren't people asking these questions? Why was the commander of a carrier battle fleet - that was suffering incursions by anomalous objects doing the five observables during a hugely important and sensitive naval exercise - why wasn't he concerned about those craft? Think about it." (When I met Keven in 2019, he left the door slightly open to the possibility that it was our tech. And I can't find anything about an admiral onboard the Princeton in Ross's book, "In Plain Sight." The only thing that resembles that claim is this excerpt about the captain. I also wrote about the captain in my blog in 2019.) From In Plain Sight... Kevin Day recalls asking his captain on the Princeton afterwards what he thought the object was. 'He told me, “I think the objects were spontaneously forming ice falling from space”.’ Day laughs at the absurdity of such a conclusion. His captain left him with the clear impression he knew a lot more than he was letting on about the phenomenon." From My Blog in 2019... "November 14th, they’re doing air defense exercises, also known as ADEX. Day pulls Captain Smith aside and tells him about the contacts that he and the others had been tracking and that he’s worried about 'safety of flight' because they could have a mishap with one of these craft as they conduct their exercises. Day highly recommended that they go check them out. Smith agreed and told him to take the Fast Eagle flight and 'go get ‘em.' Day said, “in the back of my mind, I was like, hell yeah! We’re going to intercept these things!” (audience laughs) It turned out to be his very last intercept in the Navy." (So, apparently, the captain WAS concerned leading up to the encounter. More from my 2019 blog...) "Voorhis shared that his captain had started a rumor that the objects were spontaneously forming ice in the atmosphere. He said he and his buddies would all sit there, smoke and say, 'Yeah, right.'" (For me, none of that is enough to suggest that the captain knew LM or some other humans/military/USG were behind the Tic Tac events. Maybe the captain thought it was something alien but didn't want the sailors to lose focus for their upcoming role in Iraqi Freedom? Or, maybe he was scared of the possibility of a non-human intelligence among us? I don't know. I'm not positive, but I think Ryan Graves mentioned one of his superiors giving a muted reaction to some of the UAP events they were facing on the East Coast.) ~ "Commander David Fravor responded to me: the Tic Tac 'was not Lockheed Martin', according to him. He seemed very confident and matter-of-fact." ~Jesse Michels Ross: "Let me first say I have nothing but admiration for David Fravor. He's given service to his country, he's a patriot, and he deserves respect and recognition for that. I'm not getting involved in a stash with a person who's done so much, honorably, for his country. It's not, though, outside the realm of possibilities. In fact, I think it would be extremely unlikely that, if there is, as I know there is, a compartmented, secret program where Lockheed Martin is one of the primary contractors operating retrieved, non-human technology and attempting to reverse engineer that technology, there is absolutely no way that David would be briefed into that, unless it was absolutely necessary for the doing of his job." (I've been saying this for several years and I agree 100%.) Ross: "As we all know, when the government wants to protect a secret, it compartmentalizes it. Even if you have a Top-Secret classification - which I'm sure David probably had - it's also compartmentalized. And that's how the U.S. keeps its secrets. And I've spoken to people, literally in institutions in the United States, one of whom knows about the program, and the other of whom is in an adjoining office and has absolutely no idea. "I've had a situation where I've spoken to the head of a government agency that ought properly to have known about the Legacy program. That head of a government agency was not informed about the fact that we are recovering non-human craft and attempting to reverse engineer that technology." (Journalistically speaking, I would say, "The head of a government agency was not informed about the CLAIM that we are recovering non-human craft." No way for Ross to know that's a fact unless he's been read in to the program to see for himself. Belief? Yes. Knowing? No. I harp on this all the time and it's a pet peeve of mine because I think it's important.) Ross: "A person two rungs down was the person that the Legacy program was using to gate keep inside that institution. It's really interesting how they compartmentalize all of this. And so, absolutely no disrespect to David Fravor or my good friend, Kevin Day, but they're good men. The simple fact is, compartmentalization works." (Again, I agree 100%. If Admiral Wilson, the vice director of intelligence, and deputy director of the DIA, was denied access, then there's a very good chance David Fravor was, too.)

Joe Murgia

22,656 views • 1 year ago

I think I can finally report some success training a quite accurate IDM capable of recovering keystrokes from Minecraft gameplay, even in quite PvP-heavy situations. At this point the model does not only know what keys are pressed to the extent reasonably discernible, it also knows how fast it is moving in 3D space at all times, even when knockback is mixing with the self-move impulse. Now, recovering keystrokes from normal external capture footage is just about impossible. E.g. W/A/S/D does exactly nothing during partial tick frames and jumping mid-air is also equally useless, so asking the model to recover key down states is inherently unreasoanble. Mouse deltas are also completely arbitrary units, as game mouse sensitivity introduces an arbitrary scale factor into the equation. The only good option is to think carefully about your model-environment contract, and only record "logical actions", not raw keystrokes. So here's a few unfortunate lessons I had to learn in roughly this order. - Choose good units. (bad: mouse deltas, good: delta radians [yes, you will need game-internal state]) - Capture from inside the main game loop and read the game fbo to get consistent frame-action pairing. Doing post-mortem pairing is hopeless. - Carefully define when you think keystrokes actually have an effect. (jump only works on ground, when flying or in water etc.) More subtle: The key may already be down, but no tick has happened yet to actually use the value. Hence: ignore Seperate gamestate into "fast and slow-moving" components. E.g. movement is likely tick based, camera rotation is very likely updated every frame in essentially every game ever. - Think about your frame-action correspondance contract (How old is the frame in relation to the inputs you capture? Will double or tripple buffering affect you?) Think about the game loop timeline, where you are sampling, how old the data you are reading is, and where the ticks are happening around you. Language models used to simply not have a model-environment contract, but even now with the model "living" in a designated harness, the contract still boils down to formatting, and tool implementation intrinsics. While also important, it is still quite a bit more obvious because the violations are in some way shape or form reflected as text you can actually see. - ffmpeg dropping frames cummulatively screws the model the further you get into the sequence because your targets are now shifted. If you can't encode the video in real-time, too bad. - Sodium has a frames in flight system different from vanilla Minecraft, which will also offset your targets from your frames. (there goes that data...) - Models are succeptible to latency. If there is too big of a delay between action and on-screen reflection, your performance degrades. At this point I realize ~100hours of gameplay is essentially no longer usable as a dataset. You can train on this data, but all you'll get is a mushy mess. However, some good news: - Making the model predict physics gamestate scalars helps the model generalize. For instantaneous events like jump, it's unreasonable to ask the model emit a short burst of jump=true at exactly the right time, however if you also predict your current y-velocity, the model has supervision signal for the "latent" from which that onground jump becomes apparent. Recovering x/z motion is also somewhat easier than unmixing it into plausible keystrokes for inertia-heavy player controller logic. - Regressing physics gamestate scalars also seems to make your dataset "bigger". While pure keystroke classification will overfit quickly, predicting exact physics gamestate scalars forces the model to generalize more and you can tolerate far more epochs before validation loss starts to stall out. This is the only reason why it was bearable to dump 100h+ of dataset hours and replace it with ~3 hours of gameplay after the 4th revision of the file format (yeah...) and somehow still have better performance. Now, you might be asking, "isn't this brittle?" and the answer is yesn't. Frame-action correspondance matters for training, but not so much during inference. So as long as you are sampling in roughly the same interval as your training data, you aren't violating any hard contract per-se. Somewhere around the frames ticks are happening, and during training you capture various tick-capture offset relations per random chance, so nothing is too obviously wrong here. HOWEVER, you will get screwed by gui scale, shaders, resource packs, "shit that recording is 1920x1040 because somebody doesn't know fullscreen exists" and other unfortunate edge cases of reality. But I suppose this is the role of dataset size. If all those "contract violations" that a youtube video has compared to the training data are addressed, I think this is a way to turn Youtube into a labeled dataset. I could never shake the feeling that VPT is a sound idea in practice, while never having been properly executed, and I think one reason why it hasn't is because that label boostrapping part is just a pain in the butt to get right. Now, what the player is doing is of course not the only label you can extract from video, but it has to be one of the targets predicted during pretraining to "align" the pretraining objective. Some notes on the video here, the colored dots on the analog visualizer are the ground truth, while the gray dot is the model prediction. Green means correct prediction, red means incorrect prediction at that frame. Model P(key) reports how wrong the prediction is from green (0.0) to red (1.0). You will also notice that during periods of rapid slow down, left and right actions become close to irrecoverable, because there is just that little motion. And some jump actions are not predicted correctly because I got the detection condition for jump events wrong... (duh) LMB/RMB for other than sustained events (like item-consume and block break) also seem to be hopelessly irrecoverable for now. Swing was supposed to do the same thing as motion y did for jump, but its too well behaved as an increasing counter. Maybe partial-tick interpolated values work better (v5 file format then... ugh..)

mike64_t

18,762 views • 3 months ago