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✧･ﾟ:* 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙚𝙡𝙨𝙝 𝙁𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙧 *:･ﾟ✧ 𝐓𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐍 𝐍𝐎𝐗 Portrayal of @/TeganNoxWWE literate | descriptive | friendly writer | highly NSFW | openly shipped with 𝙎𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙢 𝙐𝙣𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙙. — PARODY | tweets mostly in character | very dtf | open to almost anything [↻ + ♡]

✨ Shiny Teegs!「 𝗉𝖺𝗋𝗈𝖽𝗒 」

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⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀Roleplay Portrayal of ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀–✘–✘–✘ 𝐑𝐇𝐄𝐀 𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐘 ✘–✘–✘– ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀» Descriptive & literate writing. » Bisexual female. » Banter welcome. » NSFW/Mature themes highly likely. » Friendly & chill writer. « ↻ and ♡ for Mami! 😈

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⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀Roleplay Portrayal of ⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀–✘–✘–✘ 𝐑𝐇𝐄𝐀 𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐋𝐄𝐘 ✘–✘–✘– ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀» Descriptive & literate writing. » Bisexual female. » Banter welcome. » NSFW/Mature themes highly likely. » Friendly & chill writer. « ↻ and ♡ for Mami! 😈

🇦🇺 𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑. | 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔬𝔡𝔶

47,447 views • 1 year ago

Did you know that Simon the Sorcerer (1993) was born out of a failed licensing agreement between Terry Pratchett (Discworld) and Adventure Soft? Prior to working on Simon the Sorcerer, Adventure Soft was mostly known for their horror-themed games, such as Elvira or Waxworks (under the Horror Soft label). The idea to move towards more family friendly games was mostly motivated by the huge popularity of games such as Monkey Island and Legend of Kyrandia. Simon the Sorcerer had a very vibrant style, with bold colors and beautiful pixel art. Every graphic was first hand-drawn on paper, then scanned, and manually colored in the final step. In typical point and click adventure style, you navigate Simon through almost 50 of these hand-drawn screens, solving puzzles by collecting and using items, and talking to other characters, looking for clues. Pretty much all adventure games from that era followed the same script, and that was fine. Adventure Soft obviously never had the same marketing power as LucasArts or Sierra, but Simon the Sorcerer still managed to sell over half a million units, which made the game highly profitable for a small family owned game studio from the UK and became their biggest hit ever.

Did you know that Simon the Sorcerer (1993) was born out of a failed licensing agreement between Terry Pratchett (Discworld) and Adventure Soft? Prior to working on Simon the Sorcerer, Adventure Soft was mostly known for their horror-themed games, such as Elvira or Waxworks (under the Horror Soft label). The idea to move towards more family friendly games was mostly motivated by the huge popularity of games such as Monkey Island and Legend of Kyrandia. Simon the Sorcerer had a very vibrant style, with bold colors and beautiful pixel art. Every graphic was first hand-drawn on paper, then scanned, and manually colored in the final step. In typical point and click adventure style, you navigate Simon through almost 50 of these hand-drawn screens, solving puzzles by collecting and using items, and talking to other characters, looking for clues. Pretty much all adventure games from that era followed the same script, and that was fine. Adventure Soft obviously never had the same marketing power as LucasArts or Sierra, but Simon the Sorcerer still managed to sell over half a million units, which made the game highly profitable for a small family owned game studio from the UK and became their biggest hit ever.

exQUIZitely 🕹️

10,608 views • 6 days ago

Paul Schrader talks about the racism in "Taxi Driver" (1976, Scorsese): "Interviewer: In 'Taxi Driver' (1976), was the Harvey Keitel character originally black or white? Schrader: Well, you’ve gone right to the heart of the matter. The film is riddled with racism, and Travis, the main character, is a racist not by conviction but by fear. He is everything by fear. He has very few convictions about anything except immorality, but when you feel the pressure coming down, when you feel the world shrinking, one naturally looks for enemies, and what better enemies are there than people who are not like you? Travis’ enemies are people who are at ease. He hates people who are comfortable. He himself is extremely uncomfortable. He’s not at ease anywhere, so he hates. Travis admires the politician but also hates him because the politician is at ease, especially in the world of women. This is where Travis’ feelings about blacks emerge. He sees the blacks out there almost as animals. He sees them out there having fun, out there jiving with women. He sees them dancing and relaxed. He’s so uptight himself and so constipated and attenuated that for him the blacks begin to be some kind of a focus for the thing he can’t have, that relaxation he lacks. So the racism starts to run through the film. It starts to rear its head very overtly. You see him looking at these people and you know it’s not a matter of conviction, because he doesn’t have any real beliefs or strong theories about blacks. It’s just that he has this thing about people who are at ease. The logical conclusion of the film would have been that all the people he ki!!ed were black. It was in my mind when I wrote the script that he ki!!ed only black people, but that was just too much. Marty and I were just too terrified of it. I mean, the film explores the borders of bad taste as it is, and there is just so far you can go in the commercial cinema before people get up and throw stones at you. I think that if we had followed his racism to the natural conclusion, which is him ki!!ing three black guys, the audience would have just said, “Holy f**k, that’s just too much.” So we made them white, which is a thin cover. Somebody asked Pauline Kael if the film was racist, and she said, “No, it’s not racist, because he doesn’t ki!! black guys at the end.” She missed the point completely. His actions are racist, and the only reason he doesn’t ki!! black guys at the end is that we didn’t want anybody st@bbed in the theaters. That’s my opinion. Marty may dress it up and put it in a different language, but the racism of the film really is quite clear. I think it’s possible to distinguish between the racism of the main character and the racism of the filmmakers. I mean, Marty and I and De Niro are racists to the extent that all people are racists. I think it’s part of the job of a writer or anybody worth his salt to explore his closets. We’re all in the dirty-laundry business. An artist gets to a certain point where he says, “I’m not afraid to explore my Jewishness,” “I’m not afraid to explore my homicidal tendencies,” “I’m not afraid to explore my s**ual deviations,” “I’m not afraid to explore my racism." I mean, the whole f***!ng film takes place in his head. New York consists of a lot more than Forty-second Street and Broadway. All you see of New York is his very peculiar vision of it, and he has a very sordid view of things. You only see blacks through his eyes, and the only exception is the black he works with, who he borrows money from. You are given no alternative view of reality. One of the rare things about Taxi Driver is that this character, Travis Bickle, has been in a lot of movies, but you’ve always been given another perspective on him. In 'In Cold Blood' (1967) you see him through John Forsythe’s eyes. In 'Psycho' (1960) you see him through Martin Balsam’s eyes. In 'White Heat' (1949) you see him through Edmond O’Brien’s eyes. But this is as though you see White Heat solely through Cagney’s eyes, which makes for something very different, because Cagney is very mentally disturbed in that film. You have the same situation here. You’re getting Travis’ perceptions of the world, which are very distorted and unrealistic." (Paul Schrader's interview with AFI, 1976)

Paul Schrader talks about the racism in "Taxi Driver" (1976, Scorsese): "Interviewer: In 'Taxi Driver' (1976), was the Harvey Keitel character originally black or white? Schrader: Well, you’ve gone right to the heart of the matter. The film is riddled with racism, and Travis, the main character, is a racist not by conviction but by fear. He is everything by fear. He has very few convictions about anything except immorality, but when you feel the pressure coming down, when you feel the world shrinking, one naturally looks for enemies, and what better enemies are there than people who are not like you? Travis’ enemies are people who are at ease. He hates people who are comfortable. He himself is extremely uncomfortable. He’s not at ease anywhere, so he hates. Travis admires the politician but also hates him because the politician is at ease, especially in the world of women. This is where Travis’ feelings about blacks emerge. He sees the blacks out there almost as animals. He sees them out there having fun, out there jiving with women. He sees them dancing and relaxed. He’s so uptight himself and so constipated and attenuated that for him the blacks begin to be some kind of a focus for the thing he can’t have, that relaxation he lacks. So the racism starts to run through the film. It starts to rear its head very overtly. You see him looking at these people and you know it’s not a matter of conviction, because he doesn’t have any real beliefs or strong theories about blacks. It’s just that he has this thing about people who are at ease. The logical conclusion of the film would have been that all the people he ki!!ed were black. It was in my mind when I wrote the script that he ki!!ed only black people, but that was just too much. Marty and I were just too terrified of it. I mean, the film explores the borders of bad taste as it is, and there is just so far you can go in the commercial cinema before people get up and throw stones at you. I think that if we had followed his racism to the natural conclusion, which is him ki!!ing three black guys, the audience would have just said, “Holy fk, that’s just too much.” So we made them white, which is a thin cover. Somebody asked Pauline Kael if the film was racist, and she said, “No, it’s not racist, because he doesn’t ki!! black guys at the end.” She missed the point completely. His actions are racist, and the only reason he doesn’t ki!! black guys at the end is that we didn’t want anybody st@bbed in the theaters. That’s my opinion. Marty may dress it up and put it in a different language, but the racism of the film really is quite clear. I think it’s possible to distinguish between the racism of the main character and the racism of the filmmakers. I mean, Marty and I and De Niro are racists to the extent that all people are racists. I think it’s part of the job of a writer or anybody worth his salt to explore his closets. We’re all in the dirty-laundry business. An artist gets to a certain point where he says, “I’m not afraid to explore my Jewishness,” “I’m not afraid to explore my homicidal tendencies,” “I’m not afraid to explore my sual deviations,” “I’m not afraid to explore my racism." I mean, the whole f***!ng film takes place in his head. New York consists of a lot more than Forty-second Street and Broadway. All you see of New York is his very peculiar vision of it, and he has a very sordid view of things. You only see blacks through his eyes, and the only exception is the black he works with, who he borrows money from. You are given no alternative view of reality. One of the rare things about Taxi Driver is that this character, Travis Bickle, has been in a lot of movies, but you’ve always been given another perspective on him. In 'In Cold Blood' (1967) you see him through John Forsythe’s eyes. In 'Psycho' (1960) you see him through Martin Balsam’s eyes. In 'White Heat' (1949) you see him through Edmond O’Brien’s eyes. But this is as though you see White Heat solely through Cagney’s eyes, which makes for something very different, because Cagney is very mentally disturbed in that film. You have the same situation here. You’re getting Travis’ perceptions of the world, which are very distorted and unrealistic." (Paul Schrader's interview with AFI, 1976)

DepressedBergman

102,144 views • 1 month ago

Wikileaks released thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta. Here are some of the most shocking revelations pushing the “Obama is a Muslim” narrative during the 2008 Primary season, the Hillary campaign outlined potential “negative facts” about then Senator Barack Obama. Email Date: 2008-01-09 negative fact #7: “Obama’s father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country. A birthday gift from the funders of ISIS. In August 2014, Hillary sent an email to Podesta saying the countries of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS. Another email, written by staffers at the Clinton Foundation, shows that Qatar gave Bill Clinton $1 Million for his "birthday". Email Date: 2012-04-16 Qatar would like to see WJC for five minutes in NYC to present Qatar - $1 Million check that Qatar promised for WJC'S “birthday". The secret Wall Street speeches transcripts from Hillary’s paid Wall Street speeches reveal she has “both a public and private position” on issues. An example of this is Hillary’s stance on the controversial TPP trade agreement which she said she was against during the primary debates, but in private Email Date: 2015-03-25 her campaign says “She’s ultimately going to support both TPA and TPP” During a paid speech to Brazilian Banco Itaú, Hillary professed support for Global “Open Borders” Speech Date: 2013-05-16 “My dream is a Hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders” Speech Date: 2013-10-29 in a private paid speech to Goldman Sachs, Hillary said: “Would like to see more successful business people run for office.” Speech Date: 2013-10-29 She says this is because a business person has had certain level of freedom and could be maybe rented, but never bought.” Colluding with the Press. One email shows the New York Times gave the Hillary campaign stories ahead of time, so they could “veto” anything. Email Date: 2015-07-10 “Thought you told me that you wanted us to pick.” - Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton communications director. Email Date: 2015-07-10 “Wanted the option to use it all and you could veto what you didn’t want.” - Mark Leibovich, New York Times reporter Email Date: 2015-07-10 “Pleasure doing business!” - Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton communications director Memo Date: January 2015 An internal memo talks about having a “very good relationship” with Maggie Haberman, a current New York Times Writer. Memo Date: January 2015 We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. Colluding with the Press about Benghazi. When the Congressional committee on Benghazi requested information on Hillary’s “deleted” emails, the Clinton team said: Email Date: 2015-06-25 “Just spoke to State(U.S. State Department) a little more about this. A few updates…” Email Date: 2015-06-25 “They do not plan to release anything publicly… They are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP(Associated Press)” Email Date: 2015-06-25 Before the majority on the (Benghazi) committee has a chance to realize what they have” Financial ties with Russia. A 2014 email attachment reveals Podesta owned 75,000 shares in Joule Unlimited, an Energy Company. In 2011, Podesta joined the Board of Directors for Joule Unlimited. Months later, Joule received up to $35 Million from Rusnano, a Russian state-established and funded company. Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected!!!

Wikileaks released thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta. Here are some of the most shocking revelations pushing the “Obama is a Muslim” narrative during the 2008 Primary season, the Hillary campaign outlined potential “negative facts” about then Senator Barack Obama. Email Date: 2008-01-09 negative fact #7: “Obama’s father was a Muslim and Obama grew up among Muslims in the world’s most populous Islamic country. A birthday gift from the funders of ISIS. In August 2014, Hillary sent an email to Podesta saying the countries of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS. Another email, written by staffers at the Clinton Foundation, shows that Qatar gave Bill Clinton $1 Million for his "birthday". Email Date: 2012-04-16 Qatar would like to see WJC for five minutes in NYC to present Qatar - $1 Million check that Qatar promised for WJC'S “birthday". The secret Wall Street speeches transcripts from Hillary’s paid Wall Street speeches reveal she has “both a public and private position” on issues. An example of this is Hillary’s stance on the controversial TPP trade agreement which she said she was against during the primary debates, but in private Email Date: 2015-03-25 her campaign says “She’s ultimately going to support both TPA and TPP” During a paid speech to Brazilian Banco Itaú, Hillary professed support for Global “Open Borders” Speech Date: 2013-05-16 “My dream is a Hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders” Speech Date: 2013-10-29 in a private paid speech to Goldman Sachs, Hillary said: “Would like to see more successful business people run for office.” Speech Date: 2013-10-29 She says this is because a business person has had certain level of freedom and could be maybe rented, but never bought.” Colluding with the Press. One email shows the New York Times gave the Hillary campaign stories ahead of time, so they could “veto” anything. Email Date: 2015-07-10 “Thought you told me that you wanted us to pick.” - Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton communications director. Email Date: 2015-07-10 “Wanted the option to use it all and you could veto what you didn’t want.” - Mark Leibovich, New York Times reporter Email Date: 2015-07-10 “Pleasure doing business!” - Jennifer Palmieri, Clinton communications director Memo Date: January 2015 An internal memo talks about having a “very good relationship” with Maggie Haberman, a current New York Times Writer. Memo Date: January 2015 We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. Colluding with the Press about Benghazi. When the Congressional committee on Benghazi requested information on Hillary’s “deleted” emails, the Clinton team said: Email Date: 2015-06-25 “Just spoke to State(U.S. State Department) a little more about this. A few updates…” Email Date: 2015-06-25 “They do not plan to release anything publicly… They are considering placing a story with a friendly at the AP(Associated Press)” Email Date: 2015-06-25 Before the majority on the (Benghazi) committee has a chance to realize what they have” Financial ties with Russia. A 2014 email attachment reveals Podesta owned 75,000 shares in Joule Unlimited, an Energy Company. In 2011, Podesta joined the Board of Directors for Joule Unlimited. Months later, Joule received up to $35 Million from Rusnano, a Russian state-established and funded company. Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected!!!

ꪻꫝể ꪻꫝể

111,478 views • 3 years ago

$HEI has been one of the best compounders of the last 3 decades. A $10K investment in 1990 is worth over $8M today. Listened to this interview with Co-President Eric Mendelson and its pretty clear why this has been such a strong business. The business model is very simple but extremely difficult to replicate. In 1990, HEICO was a struggling business with a ~$25M market cap. Management discovered a regulatory loophole to challenge aerospace OEMs. They used FAA regulation to engineer replacement aerospace parts. They proved to the FAA that their parts strictly matched the fit, form, and function of OEM parts. This broke the OEM pricing monopolies. They have shipped 85M parts with zero in-flight failures. The capital allocation strategy is the secret sauce behind the stock. The Mendelson family runs the company, but they refuse to operate it like a traditional family business. Larry, Eric, and Victor Mendelson require a unanimous three-way vote for any major decision. If one says no, the deal dies instantly. This strict filter kills bad capital deployment. They have acquired 100 companies over the years. 98 of those acquisitions have been successful. They focus exclusively on businesses generating 20% or higher margins. They also run the balance sheet with extreme discipline. They try to target roughly a 1x debt-to-EBITDA ratio. This protects the equity from macroeconomic debt cycles. HEICO operates like a highly decentralized portfolio. It does not run like a typical billion dollar aerospace behemoth. It runs as roughly 140 separate businesses. Each unit makes unde $100M and employs arround less than 100 people. Corporate buys companies led by great operators and leaves them completely alone. They do not force typical corporate integration or micromanagement. They also build extreme employee loyalty. Their recent M&A execution proves the decentralized model scales very well. In August 2023, HEICO acquired Wencor for just over $2.05B from private equity firm. They paid almost 13x EBITDA. This was the highest multiple they ever paid for an asset. However, Wencor has outperformed expectations so aggressively that the effective multiple is now in the single digits. Management also eliminates geopolitical risk. They refuse to manufacture anything in China. They actively protect their intellectual property from theft. Mendelson noted that China is at least 20 years away from matching western commercial aircraft technology, and engine technology parity will not happen in his lifetime.

$HEI has been one of the best compounders of the last 3 decades. A $10K investment in 1990 is worth over $8M today. Listened to this interview with Co-President Eric Mendelson and its pretty clear why this has been such a strong business. The business model is very simple but extremely difficult to replicate. In 1990, HEICO was a struggling business with a ~$25M market cap. Management discovered a regulatory loophole to challenge aerospace OEMs. They used FAA regulation to engineer replacement aerospace parts. They proved to the FAA that their parts strictly matched the fit, form, and function of OEM parts. This broke the OEM pricing monopolies. They have shipped 85M parts with zero in-flight failures. The capital allocation strategy is the secret sauce behind the stock. The Mendelson family runs the company, but they refuse to operate it like a traditional family business. Larry, Eric, and Victor Mendelson require a unanimous three-way vote for any major decision. If one says no, the deal dies instantly. This strict filter kills bad capital deployment. They have acquired 100 companies over the years. 98 of those acquisitions have been successful. They focus exclusively on businesses generating 20% or higher margins. They also run the balance sheet with extreme discipline. They try to target roughly a 1x debt-to-EBITDA ratio. This protects the equity from macroeconomic debt cycles. HEICO operates like a highly decentralized portfolio. It does not run like a typical billion dollar aerospace behemoth. It runs as roughly 140 separate businesses. Each unit makes unde $100M and employs arround less than 100 people. Corporate buys companies led by great operators and leaves them completely alone. They do not force typical corporate integration or micromanagement. They also build extreme employee loyalty. Their recent M&A execution proves the decentralized model scales very well. In August 2023, HEICO acquired Wencor for just over $2.05B from private equity firm. They paid almost 13x EBITDA. This was the highest multiple they ever paid for an asset. However, Wencor has outperformed expectations so aggressively that the effective multiple is now in the single digits. Management also eliminates geopolitical risk. They refuse to manufacture anything in China. They actively protect their intellectual property from theft. Mendelson noted that China is at least 20 years away from matching western commercial aircraft technology, and engine technology parity will not happen in his lifetime.

CapexAndChill

19,006 views • 3 months ago

Now that I'm 80 hours in and have completed Rinacita, I want to give my thoughts on Wuthering Waves as a whole, both from the perspective of a new player and as someone who hates the gacha monetization model. When I first started I was told that 1.0 (The first arc/region of the game) was mid. I disagree with that sentiment. While the first 7 or so hours were bogged down a bit by lore terms and exposition that often left me confused, around Yinlin's companion quest is when I started getting invested and upon reaching Mt. Firmament (10-15 hours?) I was locked in. What I WILL say, is that the first arc of the game is mid in COMPARISON to what the game offers and becomes later on in every single regard, writing, dialogue, gameplay, music, map/world design, everything. Rinacita is truly a game changer and you can see the game's budget increase in real time with higher quality animations and cutscenes, as well as the map basically being an entire game on top. Every single companion quest without fail has ranged from solid to great, even making me tear up on a few occasions (Encore lol) and making me care about characters I never thought I would. They're truly a highlight and the writing is what makes this game go from just playing with attractive characters to playing with characters you actually care about. The sheer amount of content this game offers is absurd with both varying forms of short/long form content. It's hard for the game to feel repetitive when it gives you a new character to play as or constantly introduces new mechanics. (puzzles, traversal, combat challenges, bosses, etc) Even 80 hours in there's constantly new mechanics being introduced to me. The combat and team building is great, simple but with a level of depth that allows for some player expression (especially newer characters) and the various Forte's and movesets of the characters are both satisfying and incredibly flashy. The audio design specifically on some attacks is very punchy like Chisa's ult. The game is also just, gorgeous. The art design for everything in Wuwa is stunning, the map sizes are huge with varying biomes and the heights you can fly can be jaw dropping at times. Almost every location is screenshot worthy and the music does a lot of heavy lifting to, especially once you get to Rinacita. Wuwa just might also be the most F2P friendly Gacha that exists and while I stand by the idea that every game (including this one) would be better without gacha systems I have to give credit where it's due. It is INCREDIBLY generous with summoning currency (asterite) and I'd even wager to say, due to the store prices being absurd (If I remember correctly it's about $25 for 1 multi-summon) unless you're very well off it's a horrible decision to spend money for summons in this game when you could easily grind that in 2-3 hours of gameplay. Not to mention the pity system being very favorable and lenient. Even if you find yourself playing with mostly base characters for 40 hours (like I did because I didn't know you got more asterite from exploring than doing quests) the game is constantly giving you new characters to temporarily play as in quests to stop combat from getting too repetitive. Once again the characters are a massive highlight, in design, gameplay and writing, this is quickly becoming one of my favorite worlds where every arc introduces new favorites for me. I find myself enjoying where Rover is being taken as a character and that she's starting to speak more and more, slowly seeming to become less of a self-insert even if she'll always be that to an extent. I'm not going to lie to you and say the story is some unique masterpiece that avoids all tropes. It's not, you've likely seen similar stories told, but it executes everything at a high level and accomplishes what it's trying to do. The biggest flaws are the file size and the prices of the in-game store, as well as it's nature as a gacha game. Even if it may be the most generous one. The actual optimization of the game I find is solid, on PC with a 4060 I run on almost max settings and get 70+fps even with how massive the world is. The starting few hours can also be slow and exposition heavy with lore-terms you don't understand. Leaving you confused and disconnected for awhile, even later on in Rinacita the dialogue can stretch on for too long sometimes which can be a pace killer, but it doesn't ruin the quality of the stories it's trying to tell. From what people say I haven't even gotten to the best part of the game and I'm very excited! If I were to give a current rating, it would be a 8/10 and as long as you don't spend money on summons, I would recommend at least giving it a try.

Now that I'm 80 hours in and have completed Rinacita, I want to give my thoughts on Wuthering Waves as a whole, both from the perspective of a new player and as someone who hates the gacha monetization model. When I first started I was told that 1.0 (The first arc/region of the game) was mid. I disagree with that sentiment. While the first 7 or so hours were bogged down a bit by lore terms and exposition that often left me confused, around Yinlin's companion quest is when I started getting invested and upon reaching Mt. Firmament (10-15 hours?) I was locked in. What I WILL say, is that the first arc of the game is mid in COMPARISON to what the game offers and becomes later on in every single regard, writing, dialogue, gameplay, music, map/world design, everything. Rinacita is truly a game changer and you can see the game's budget increase in real time with higher quality animations and cutscenes, as well as the map basically being an entire game on top. Every single companion quest without fail has ranged from solid to great, even making me tear up on a few occasions (Encore lol) and making me care about characters I never thought I would. They're truly a highlight and the writing is what makes this game go from just playing with attractive characters to playing with characters you actually care about. The sheer amount of content this game offers is absurd with both varying forms of short/long form content. It's hard for the game to feel repetitive when it gives you a new character to play as or constantly introduces new mechanics. (puzzles, traversal, combat challenges, bosses, etc) Even 80 hours in there's constantly new mechanics being introduced to me. The combat and team building is great, simple but with a level of depth that allows for some player expression (especially newer characters) and the various Forte's and movesets of the characters are both satisfying and incredibly flashy. The audio design specifically on some attacks is very punchy like Chisa's ult. The game is also just, gorgeous. The art design for everything in Wuwa is stunning, the map sizes are huge with varying biomes and the heights you can fly can be jaw dropping at times. Almost every location is screenshot worthy and the music does a lot of heavy lifting to, especially once you get to Rinacita. Wuwa just might also be the most F2P friendly Gacha that exists and while I stand by the idea that every game (including this one) would be better without gacha systems I have to give credit where it's due. It is INCREDIBLY generous with summoning currency (asterite) and I'd even wager to say, due to the store prices being absurd (If I remember correctly it's about $25 for 1 multi-summon) unless you're very well off it's a horrible decision to spend money for summons in this game when you could easily grind that in 2-3 hours of gameplay. Not to mention the pity system being very favorable and lenient. Even if you find yourself playing with mostly base characters for 40 hours (like I did because I didn't know you got more asterite from exploring than doing quests) the game is constantly giving you new characters to temporarily play as in quests to stop combat from getting too repetitive. Once again the characters are a massive highlight, in design, gameplay and writing, this is quickly becoming one of my favorite worlds where every arc introduces new favorites for me. I find myself enjoying where Rover is being taken as a character and that she's starting to speak more and more, slowly seeming to become less of a self-insert even if she'll always be that to an extent. I'm not going to lie to you and say the story is some unique masterpiece that avoids all tropes. It's not, you've likely seen similar stories told, but it executes everything at a high level and accomplishes what it's trying to do. The biggest flaws are the file size and the prices of the in-game store, as well as it's nature as a gacha game. Even if it may be the most generous one. The actual optimization of the game I find is solid, on PC with a 4060 I run on almost max settings and get 70+fps even with how massive the world is. The starting few hours can also be slow and exposition heavy with lore-terms you don't understand. Leaving you confused and disconnected for awhile, even later on in Rinacita the dialogue can stretch on for too long sometimes which can be a pace killer, but it doesn't ruin the quality of the stories it's trying to tell. From what people say I haven't even gotten to the best part of the game and I'm very excited! If I were to give a current rating, it would be a 8/10 and as long as you don't spend money on summons, I would recommend at least giving it a try.

🎮𝙆𝙖𝙞𝙮𝙖🎮

100,729 views • 2 months ago

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ :¨ ·.· ¨: ⠀⠀ ⠀ `· . 𐙚 𝗙 𝗨 𝗧 𝗨 𝗥 𝗘 𝗩 𝗜 𝗗 𝗘 𝗟 ── 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓱𝓸𝓮𝓷𝓲𝔁 𝓢𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓵 ── In a torn future, where Earth has become only a shadow of what it once was, Videl rises. Not merely as a clever fighter, but as a force driven by an unbreakable, almost immortal spirit. She is the daughter of the once renowned Mr. Satan (Hercule), who fell during one of the androids’ most devastating attacks. Yet her legacy is no hollow echo of fame. Trained in martial arts from a young age, her fire was ignited by rebellion and tempered through pain. Unlike her counterparts in other timelines, Future Videl learned to sense Ki entirely on her own, mastering it through instinct, solitude, meditation, and sheer determination. The peace she once dreamed of was shattered by loss and apocalypse, but something inside her never broke. Much like the warrior who protected Earth from the androids for years, her tactical brilliance, empathy, stubbornness, cold-blooded clarity, and raw willpower made her another spark standing defiantly against despair. A living reminder that you don’t need overwhelming power to make a difference if your resolve is strong enough to face risk, responsibility, and sacrifice head on. A dreamer and an observer. Loyal and cunning. Fierce, yet gentle. Videl listens to the whispers of everyone, and because of that, with Bulma’s help, she founded the New Hope Outpost at Capsule Corporation: a place where survivors and homeless people, humans and animals, can find shelter after destruction, or a second chance. Videl has always heard stories about Future Gohan, feeling both admiration and a quiet attraction toward him, especially after he saved her following the death of her entire family. Yet, for many reasons, she chose to admire him from afar. Over the years, she developed a deep passion for technology, inspired by Bulma’s genius. This led her to experiment with cybernetics, eventually creating sentry robots to patrol the area in her stead, ensuring she is always ready to defend her people. As for Trunks, little is known about the true nature of her bond with him. Today, she is known as The Reader of Hearts. The Phoenix Sentinel. The very Incarnation of Hope. The last shield for the innocent in a world where even heroes deserve to breathe, rest, and feel seen. The character of Future Videl is conceived as a hybrid of: 🌹 Personal and fan-made inspiration. 🌹 In some parts of the story, it may recall the manga Temptation, written and illustrated by Rozenphox/Phoxden. 🌹 In other parts of the plot, it may recall Dragon Ball Multiverse. 🌹 My Future Videl does not come from Universe 9. 🌹 She is not a tomboy, although she may appear so in certain circumstances. 🌹 Videl's outpost name is a tribute to the fan manga Dragon Ball: New Hope. 🌹 The Videl of my lore has an even more painful secondary, secret backstory, including a temporal alteration caused by a mysterious Saiyan. 🌹 Other characteristics of my Future Videl are drawn from the author herself, me, and reflect real life metaphors. ⚠️ Every roleplay event will be added as an experience that truly happened in her life; therefore, resets such as “I meet you today, tomorrow I have never met you” will not be allowed. Roleplays involving Future Gohan will be accepted only in cases of real commitment and interest. I also accept roleplays with characters from any fictional universe. Last but not least… My Future Videl and her roleplays are protected by Copyright ©. ✅ Friendly and open minded writer ✅

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ :¨ ·.· ¨: ⠀⠀ ⠀ `· . 𐙚 𝗙 𝗨 𝗧 𝗨 𝗥 𝗘 𝗩 𝗜 𝗗 𝗘 𝗟 ── 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓟𝓱𝓸𝓮𝓷𝓲𝔁 𝓢𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓵 ── In a torn future, where Earth has become only a shadow of what it once was, Videl rises. Not merely as a clever fighter, but as a force driven by an unbreakable, almost immortal spirit. She is the daughter of the once renowned Mr. Satan (Hercule), who fell during one of the androids’ most devastating attacks. Yet her legacy is no hollow echo of fame. Trained in martial arts from a young age, her fire was ignited by rebellion and tempered through pain. Unlike her counterparts in other timelines, Future Videl learned to sense Ki entirely on her own, mastering it through instinct, solitude, meditation, and sheer determination. The peace she once dreamed of was shattered by loss and apocalypse, but something inside her never broke. Much like the warrior who protected Earth from the androids for years, her tactical brilliance, empathy, stubbornness, cold-blooded clarity, and raw willpower made her another spark standing defiantly against despair. A living reminder that you don’t need overwhelming power to make a difference if your resolve is strong enough to face risk, responsibility, and sacrifice head on. A dreamer and an observer. Loyal and cunning. Fierce, yet gentle. Videl listens to the whispers of everyone, and because of that, with Bulma’s help, she founded the New Hope Outpost at Capsule Corporation: a place where survivors and homeless people, humans and animals, can find shelter after destruction, or a second chance. Videl has always heard stories about Future Gohan, feeling both admiration and a quiet attraction toward him, especially after he saved her following the death of her entire family. Yet, for many reasons, she chose to admire him from afar. Over the years, she developed a deep passion for technology, inspired by Bulma’s genius. This led her to experiment with cybernetics, eventually creating sentry robots to patrol the area in her stead, ensuring she is always ready to defend her people. As for Trunks, little is known about the true nature of her bond with him. Today, she is known as The Reader of Hearts. The Phoenix Sentinel. The very Incarnation of Hope. The last shield for the innocent in a world where even heroes deserve to breathe, rest, and feel seen. The character of Future Videl is conceived as a hybrid of: 🌹 Personal and fan-made inspiration. 🌹 In some parts of the story, it may recall the manga Temptation, written and illustrated by Rozenphox/Phoxden. 🌹 In other parts of the plot, it may recall Dragon Ball Multiverse. 🌹 My Future Videl does not come from Universe 9. 🌹 She is not a tomboy, although she may appear so in certain circumstances. 🌹 Videl's outpost name is a tribute to the fan manga Dragon Ball: New Hope. 🌹 The Videl of my lore has an even more painful secondary, secret backstory, including a temporal alteration caused by a mysterious Saiyan. 🌹 Other characteristics of my Future Videl are drawn from the author herself, me, and reflect real life metaphors. ⚠️ Every roleplay event will be added as an experience that truly happened in her life; therefore, resets such as “I meet you today, tomorrow I have never met you” will not be allowed. Roleplays involving Future Gohan will be accepted only in cases of real commitment and interest. I also accept roleplays with characters from any fictional universe. Last but not least… My Future Videl and her roleplays are protected by Copyright ©. ✅ Friendly and open minded writer ✅

💜 Future Videl 💜

13,664 views • 7 months ago

vPay offshore accounts and physical cards have been getting field-tested IRL for a while now, and we’ll open them to the public as soon as we’re fully confident in the UX. But before offshore accounts go public, I want to address a few points: Some might point out that - vPay isn’t the first crypto card - vPay doesn’t have the lowest fees - So why choose vPay instead of the Coinbase 🛡️ Card or MetaMask 🦊 Card or KAST or or Tria, or any of the other big names? Now to address: Privacy | The biggest differentiator that sets vPay completely apart is Private Banking. The majority of the crypto card providers on the market use Rain infra. Even if you’ve never heard of them, that's what your favorite "NeoBank" uses. And due to their legal jurisdictions, they will report your finances to authorities since they're CRS and FACTA compliant. We are not. As an OmniBank, we work with different banking partners, and although KYC is required to use our services, our offshore banks are non-CRS and non-FACTA. Tax reporting is the responsibility and choice of the user. Offshore Accounts vs Physical Cards | I've tried to highlight this a few times so far. vPay has 3 offerings on the banking side of things. Virtual cards - live now. Physical cards - coming Q1 2026. The first two are similar to what everyone else on the market offers. The offshore accounts are not. which are coming this week. They allow unlimited spending, ATM withdrawals, and international SWIFT transfers, which very few “Neobanks” provide. Offshore accounts are coming this week. Self-Custody | We're not 100% non-custodial yet, as that is near impossible at the moment but it's something we're working towards. And we try to keep the users' self-custodial wallets in the loop as much as possible for maximum control. Those who have tried the vPay app know that almost every move asks for permission from their wallet, and we always encourage users to keep their funds in their non-custodial wallets until the very last moment, since our top-ups usually only take seconds to a minute to process. Fees | All of the card providers mentioned above either raised millions from VCs or in presales or have a huge org backing them. We have neither. vPay was self-funded and community-owned since day 1, launched under Virtuals Protocol Genesis V1 launch model, an objectively bad launch model and hugely unfavorable toward project teams. So even though vPay has been generating revenue and profitable from early on, we do not have the luxury of offering 0% fees yet, since they're mostly a marketing gimmick paid for by millions in VC money and not a sustainable business model for early-stage companies. What we're working towards instead, is true co-ownership of vPay and revenue-share with users. OmniBank vs NeoBank | I’m not a fan of the term “NeoBank.” It implies just a bank, but make it crypto. That’s not vPay. Our goals have always been clear: A) Anything and everything users need to do with their money and assets, both Web2 and Web3, all in one hub. Powered by a constellation of partner agents. The cards and the bank accounts are just the foundation. B) To eventually build independent financial rails for crypto and decouple from the chokehold of Visa/Mastercard. vLink is the first step toward this vision. This turned out to be a rather long tweet, but context matters. Questions and feedback welcome in replies or DMs. See you all with your vPay vCards very soon.

vPay offshore accounts and physical cards have been getting field-tested IRL for a while now, and we’ll open them to the public as soon as we’re fully confident in the UX. But before offshore accounts go public, I want to address a few points: Some might point out that - vPay isn’t the first crypto card - vPay doesn’t have the lowest fees - So why choose vPay instead of the Coinbase 🛡️ Card or MetaMask 🦊 Card or KAST or or Tria, or any of the other big names? Now to address: Privacy | The biggest differentiator that sets vPay completely apart is Private Banking. The majority of the crypto card providers on the market use Rain infra. Even if you’ve never heard of them, that's what your favorite "NeoBank" uses. And due to their legal jurisdictions, they will report your finances to authorities since they're CRS and FACTA compliant. We are not. As an OmniBank, we work with different banking partners, and although KYC is required to use our services, our offshore banks are non-CRS and non-FACTA. Tax reporting is the responsibility and choice of the user. Offshore Accounts vs Physical Cards | I've tried to highlight this a few times so far. vPay has 3 offerings on the banking side of things. Virtual cards - live now. Physical cards - coming Q1 2026. The first two are similar to what everyone else on the market offers. The offshore accounts are not. which are coming this week. They allow unlimited spending, ATM withdrawals, and international SWIFT transfers, which very few “Neobanks” provide. Offshore accounts are coming this week. Self-Custody | We're not 100% non-custodial yet, as that is near impossible at the moment but it's something we're working towards. And we try to keep the users' self-custodial wallets in the loop as much as possible for maximum control. Those who have tried the vPay app know that almost every move asks for permission from their wallet, and we always encourage users to keep their funds in their non-custodial wallets until the very last moment, since our top-ups usually only take seconds to a minute to process. Fees | All of the card providers mentioned above either raised millions from VCs or in presales or have a huge org backing them. We have neither. vPay was self-funded and community-owned since day 1, launched under Virtuals Protocol Genesis V1 launch model, an objectively bad launch model and hugely unfavorable toward project teams. So even though vPay has been generating revenue and profitable from early on, we do not have the luxury of offering 0% fees yet, since they're mostly a marketing gimmick paid for by millions in VC money and not a sustainable business model for early-stage companies. What we're working towards instead, is true co-ownership of vPay and revenue-share with users. OmniBank vs NeoBank | I’m not a fan of the term “NeoBank.” It implies just a bank, but make it crypto. That’s not vPay. Our goals have always been clear: A) Anything and everything users need to do with their money and assets, both Web2 and Web3, all in one hub. Powered by a constellation of partner agents. The cards and the bank accounts are just the foundation. B) To eventually build independent financial rails for crypto and decouple from the chokehold of Visa/Mastercard. vLink is the first step toward this vision. This turned out to be a rather long tweet, but context matters. Questions and feedback welcome in replies or DMs. See you all with your vPay vCards very soon.

The Dude

20,558 views • 7 months ago

Top stars in the entertainment industry change every year. So why has Xiao Zhan stayed firmly at the top for seven years? Today we won’t talk about data, and we won’t dig into gossip. Let’s just talk about those small things that people in the industry and audiences have repeatedly seen and confirmed. By the end, you’ll realize his long-lasting popularity is only natural. If his works and stage performances are Xiao Zhan’s public image, then how he conducts himself in private and his professional ethics are his deeply rooted inner foundation. Many people wonder where his huge popularity really comes from. The answer lies in the small details remembered by countless collaborators, people around him, and even even strangers. First, let’s look at how firm he can be. A magazine he shot before he became hugely popular was later sold at double the price after he became popular again. When Xiao Zhan found out, he pushed back directly and asked the magazine to refund fans. He even said he could pay for it himself. Last year, a blogger spread a rumor that he would attend a New Year’s gala. Some fans believed it and bought tickets and booked hotels. Even though he never officially announced it, he still quietly reimbursed those fans for their flights and hotels. He never takes advantage of other people’s sincerity, even when it isn’t his responsibility. Now let’s look at how much care he puts into his work. He’s about as hardworking as it gets. The album was prepared over three years. Between tight filming schedules, he squeezed in time to polish every song. The physical album was priced at 279 yuan. It weighed 3.5 kg and was clearly made with a lot of care. He didn’t use K-pop-style random photo card gimmicks. He said it was a gift for the fans. Before the physical release, the songs were free to listen to on all platforms, leaving the choice entirely to the audience. When it comes to collaborations, from directors and screenwriters to regular staff, almost everyone who has worked with him can recall a few small things about him. Huang Jue: Basically, I think every staff member and every actor who has worked with him ends up having a very genuine fondness for him. Angela Chang: I’ll just say you’re very accommodating toward me. You’re really a gentleman. This time working together, including a duet with Xiao Zhan, I just felt he’s a very polite kid. Tony Leung Ka-fai: Honestly, the more you interact with him, the more you like him. He’s just that kind of young man. This kind of respect, this kind of kindness, isn’t a public image, it’s a habit. Now let’s look at how clean his record is. In 2020, when that storm swept across the entire internet, people dug into his past, yet they still couldn’t find a single real stain on his record. None of his former schoolmates or friends spoke against him. Instead, they voluntarily protected his privacy from before he was famous. In the entertainment industry, this kind of silent, collective protection is more powerful than any statement. His self-discipline is on another level. During brand livestreams, as long as he’s on camera, he never allows product links to be posted. He openly refuses fan-funded voting campaigns, keeping control over his work firmly in his own hands, and not allowing love to become a burden. Looks can fade and popularity can scatter, but a person’s character, resilience, sincerity, and respect for their profession only become clearer with time. Xiao Zhan’s seven years at the top are like a long open beta test, testing the limits of an ordinary person’s character, and testing the ultimate worth of talent and character in the entertainment industry. He’s proven one thing: a real long-term approach isn’t a carefully planned path, but a road that forms naturally through every choice and every act of responsibility. In an era obsessed with quick success and quick forgetting, he offers a rare sense of certainty: hard work will be seen, and sincerity can overcome many difficulties. Youtube: #XiaoZhan #肖战

Xiao Zhan World ♥️ Adoki

20,110 views • 5 months ago

🚨 EXPOSING NOSTRA. AI 🚨 We have exposed some pretty nasty grifts in this space, but Nostra reigns supreme above all others (by a fair margin). Since we have >30 min video and an intensive Notion document (linked at the very bottom of this post) I am going to just highlight the key areas below. For those who don't want to watch it all - here's some time stamps that cover the most important/most hilarious parts of the video. 1:08 - Site Speed Scamming 101 4:20 - Beginning of the actual findings of what we caught Nostra doing. 5:25 - Nostra CEO tweets about how vitally important it is to have your most critical information above the fold on your site. Then we show that they almost exclusively marketed their fake site speed scores above the fold. 6:37 - The 'before and after' that shows how radically different the Nostra team made their site after they realized they were being investigated (perhaps my favorite part) 11:05 - Before: YOUR SITE PERFORMANCE SCORE MATTERS ..... 1 day later, Nostra CEO: "Yeah page speed scores are pretty useless" 😂 12:07 - "Nostra clients are 8x more likely to pass core web vitals compared to non Nostra clients" *Lukas then shows how every single one of their 'success story' case studies are failing almost all core web vitals on their home pages.... 15:10 - Jake dives into the technical shortcomings of the Nostra product, from them using a deprecated form of rendering and claiming (falsely) that Google still endorses it, to showing that any visitor logged into any Nostra-enabled site is not fed the cached pages... meaning that many of their highest LTV clients are being given a drastically worse browsing experience.... + lots more! 29:47 - Lukas shows all of the deleted tweets from the Nostra CEO. Suspiciously, all of them just so happen to be based on page speed scores... hmm. The main points: - Nostra uses site speed cloaking tactics to artificially inflate performance numbers on Google's Page Speed Insights. There is no ethical reason to do this. It is a tactic used exclusively by site speed scammers. *A few people may point to the fact that Meta uses Lighthouse scores as one of many contributing factors to showing ads, so certain sites MAY see an uptick in paid performance on Meta while having these fake scores. This is a horrible basis to justify attempting black hat scams on Google tools. I'll be doing a whole separate video for this topic alone, but for now, just understand it is shortsighted and unbelievably stupid. - They then used those artificially inflated performance scores as the central focus of their entire marketing strategy. *They have released some hilariously inaccurate/misleading blog posts in the past week that try and claim they don't use cloaking and that their methods are totally ethical... you better believe we are doing a follow-up video that dismantles these blog posts paragraph by paragraph. - Various current and former clients of Nostra have confirmed that one of their central selling points when convincing them to pay for Nostra (often quoting/charging thousands a month) was that their Google performance numbers were going to go up, which meant a faster site, which meant more revenue. A blatant, irrefutable lie. - As we dug into their code, we found even more issues. Most notably, their 'crawler optimization' was stripping down pages for both Lighthouse (Page Speed Insights) as well as Googlebot, which means that the contents of any page 'client-side rendered' by Nostra in this way was almost entirely invisible to Google, as it saw basically nothing to crawl and index. - All of our findings were confirmed by over a dozen well-respected developers in the Shopify space, including high-ranking engineers at Shopify. - Before we notified Nostra of our investigation into them, Jake Casto (partner in this report) met directly with the Nostra team, including their Chief Lead Architect (?) and asked every question he could to gain as much context as possible. This meeting further confirmed all of our findings and even pushed some further. - Hours after we notified the CEO of Nostra about our investigation into them and the impending report we would release, their entire site changed.... like... CHANGED. Nearly every mention of 'page speed' or 'performance score' was stripped from the site, including all of their case studies. Additionally, they renamed an entire product. Their 'Crawler Optimization' tool became 'Bimodal Dynamic Rendering'.... - That same night, the Nostra CEO then deleted all tweets insinuating performance score as a benefit of using Nostra (proof shown in the video) and began publicly talking about how useless speed scores are. A metric they had long lauded as the single-most important aspect of what their tech improves was now "pretty useless" just a few hours later. - It is imperative to know that we did not mention ANYTHING about our interest in investigating their focus on performance scores as a key marketing strategy. All of these changes were made by them without knowing anything about what in particular we were investigating. Not shockingly, the main scam we were highlighting in our investigation is what was wiped entirely (within literal hours) from their site/their founders personal messaging. * go look at their site now and try to find any claims about performance scores on their home page. They even took them off the top of all their case studies. (we show this all in the video as well). - Nostra has since continued to modify their code, resulting in some of their 'success story' clients seeing a 50+ point drop in performance scores (shown in the video). More current and former clients continue to reach out and share more stories about the many sketchy happenings at Nostra. - Nostra also released a very weak response in the form of 2 blog posts that aim to justify their actions/tech. They have been sharing this with their clients and attempting to patch over the MANY inconsistencies and blatant lies they were caught in. As I said earlier, we will be doing a video dedicated to dismantling these blog posts in detail. Moral of the story. No SaaS is going to plug in to your Shopify store and drastically increase your performance scores in a matter of moments. Any tool or dev or agency, no matter how fancy they look and how much venture backing they have, will be able to get your Shopify stores' mobile performance scores into the 80/90's under any normal circumstances. If someone says they can... You are 100% being scammed. Site speed optimization is a complex development process that takes highly-skilled devs dozens of hours to do properly. No tool can replace this. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. For a deeper look into the technical side, check out the link below.

🚨 EXPOSING NOSTRA. AI 🚨 We have exposed some pretty nasty grifts in this space, but Nostra reigns supreme above all others (by a fair margin). Since we have >30 min video and an intensive Notion document (linked at the very bottom of this post) I am going to just highlight the key areas below. For those who don't want to watch it all - here's some time stamps that cover the most important/most hilarious parts of the video. 1:08 - Site Speed Scamming 101 4:20 - Beginning of the actual findings of what we caught Nostra doing. 5:25 - Nostra CEO tweets about how vitally important it is to have your most critical information above the fold on your site. Then we show that they almost exclusively marketed their fake site speed scores above the fold. 6:37 - The 'before and after' that shows how radically different the Nostra team made their site after they realized they were being investigated (perhaps my favorite part) 11:05 - Before: YOUR SITE PERFORMANCE SCORE MATTERS ..... 1 day later, Nostra CEO: "Yeah page speed scores are pretty useless" 😂 12:07 - "Nostra clients are 8x more likely to pass core web vitals compared to non Nostra clients" Lukas then shows how every single one of their 'success story' case studies are failing almost all core web vitals on their home pages.... 15:10 - Jake dives into the technical shortcomings of the Nostra product, from them using a deprecated form of rendering and claiming (falsely) that Google still endorses it, to showing that any visitor logged into any Nostra-enabled site is not fed the cached pages... meaning that many of their highest LTV clients are being given a drastically worse browsing experience.... + lots more! 29:47 - Lukas shows all of the deleted tweets from the Nostra CEO. Suspiciously, all of them just so happen to be based on page speed scores... hmm. The main points: - Nostra uses site speed cloaking tactics to artificially inflate performance numbers on Google's Page Speed Insights. There is no ethical reason to do this. It is a tactic used exclusively by site speed scammers. A few people may point to the fact that Meta uses Lighthouse scores as one of many contributing factors to showing ads, so certain sites MAY see an uptick in paid performance on Meta while having these fake scores. This is a horrible basis to justify attempting black hat scams on Google tools. I'll be doing a whole separate video for this topic alone, but for now, just understand it is shortsighted and unbelievably stupid. - They then used those artificially inflated performance scores as the central focus of their entire marketing strategy. They have released some hilariously inaccurate/misleading blog posts in the past week that try and claim they don't use cloaking and that their methods are totally ethical... you better believe we are doing a follow-up video that dismantles these blog posts paragraph by paragraph. - Various current and former clients of Nostra have confirmed that one of their central selling points when convincing them to pay for Nostra (often quoting/charging thousands a month) was that their Google performance numbers were going to go up, which meant a faster site, which meant more revenue. A blatant, irrefutable lie. - As we dug into their code, we found even more issues. Most notably, their 'crawler optimization' was stripping down pages for both Lighthouse (Page Speed Insights) as well as Googlebot, which means that the contents of any page 'client-side rendered' by Nostra in this way was almost entirely invisible to Google, as it saw basically nothing to crawl and index. - All of our findings were confirmed by over a dozen well-respected developers in the Shopify space, including high-ranking engineers at Shopify. - Before we notified Nostra of our investigation into them, Jake Casto (partner in this report) met directly with the Nostra team, including their Chief Lead Architect (?) and asked every question he could to gain as much context as possible. This meeting further confirmed all of our findings and even pushed some further. - Hours after we notified the CEO of Nostra about our investigation into them and the impending report we would release, their entire site changed.... like... CHANGED. Nearly every mention of 'page speed' or 'performance score' was stripped from the site, including all of their case studies. Additionally, they renamed an entire product. Their 'Crawler Optimization' tool became 'Bimodal Dynamic Rendering'.... - That same night, the Nostra CEO then deleted all tweets insinuating performance score as a benefit of using Nostra (proof shown in the video) and began publicly talking about how useless speed scores are. A metric they had long lauded as the single-most important aspect of what their tech improves was now "pretty useless" just a few hours later. - It is imperative to know that we did not mention ANYTHING about our interest in investigating their focus on performance scores as a key marketing strategy. All of these changes were made by them without knowing anything about what in particular we were investigating. Not shockingly, the main scam we were highlighting in our investigation is what was wiped entirely (within literal hours) from their site/their founders personal messaging. go look at their site now and try to find any claims about performance scores on their home page. They even took them off the top of all their case studies. (we show this all in the video as well). - Nostra has since continued to modify their code, resulting in some of their 'success story' clients seeing a 50+ point drop in performance scores (shown in the video). More current and former clients continue to reach out and share more stories about the many sketchy happenings at Nostra. - Nostra also released a very weak response in the form of 2 blog posts that aim to justify their actions/tech. They have been sharing this with their clients and attempting to patch over the MANY inconsistencies and blatant lies they were caught in. As I said earlier, we will be doing a video dedicated to dismantling these blog posts in detail. Moral of the story. No SaaS is going to plug in to your Shopify store and drastically increase your performance scores in a matter of moments. Any tool or dev or agency, no matter how fancy they look and how much venture backing they have, will be able to get your Shopify stores' mobile performance scores into the 80/90's under any normal circumstances. If someone says they can... You are 100% being scammed. Site speed optimization is a complex development process that takes highly-skilled devs dozens of hours to do properly. No tool can replace this. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. For a deeper look into the technical side, check out the link below.

Lukas Tanasiuk

77,504 views • 2 years ago

NASA, OCCULT RITUALS & MOLDING SOCIETY. This is where many of the elite and members of governments belief systems stem from. How does a NASA/JPL scientist, Scientologist, and Satanic Sex cults have anything to do with what's going on today? And most important, why are their open Satanist running our government and intelligence agencies performing literal Satanic rituals in the desert in the middle of nowhere and for what exact reason? Why would they continue to do this if it's allegedly not real, or is their something that they know, that they're not sharing with the rest of the world? Let's break down the ritual they performed and who these people are. Jack Parsons was an open Satanist and one of the founding fathers of rocketry, along with Wernher von Braun-Nazi and creator of the V2 rocket, who worked with NASA and was a student and follower of Aliester Crowley's Satanic religion called Thelema. Aliester Crowley was an open Satanist and the father of the "sexual revolution" who was also a British MI5 spy. He also was a huge contributor and into pedophil*a and transgenderism, which all go hand in hand with Satanic belief systems and a major part of ceremonial ritualistic magic, like child sacrifice. He also had a lot to do with the Tavistock Institute's study on mind control, and nondirectly influenced the CIA's Mk Ultra program in the west with his book, "The Drug Diaries," which was all about mind control and drugs. Go figure. Crowley once stated that the perfect candidate for child sacrifice is a young white male child, the younger the better, because of their purity and innocence which is crucial for these sick demonic practices which are still conducted to this day. Then you have L. Ron Hubbard, writer and father of science fiction, who also is the founder of the created religion known as Scientology. If you don't know much about Scientology, just know that they have an alien god named Xenu who brough billions of people to earth 75 million years ago. This alone should pretty much tell you everything you need to know. Aliester Crowley wrote about the connection, explaining that an "intelligence" was brought into physical manifestation, via a portal that was created during a Sex Magick ritual called the Almalantrah Working in 1918. The entity that was summoned called itself "LAM." Crowley considered it to be an interdimensional being, which oddly, and strongly resembled what we call an alien "grey." So performing Satanic rituals, an "alien grey" allegedly made contact. Is it really what it says it is or looks like? Or is it something lying to humanity? That's a whole other post to talk about that subject. Many Occult disciples believe the portal Crowley opened might have been widened or another portal was opened during the Babalon Working. The Babalon Working Ritual was a series of "Magick rituals" performed from January to March, 1946, by author, pioneer rocket-fuel scientist and Satanist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Marjorie Cameron. The ritual was essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of Babalon. The project was based on the ideas of Satanist Aliester Crowley, and his description of a similar project in his 1917 novel, Moonchild. The "Moonchild" or "Whore of Babylon" is referred to in several places in the Book of Revelation, a book which may have had influence on "Thelema," which is Aliester Crowley's Satanic Religion, and says he read it as a child and imagined himself as the "Beast." She is described in Chapter 17:3-6. Almost immediately after Parsons declared that the first of the series of rituals was complete and successful, he met Marjorie Cameron in his own home, and regarded her as the elemental that he and Hubbard had called through the ritual. Soon Parsons began the next stage of the series, an attempt to conceive a child through sex magic workings. Although no child was conceived, this did not affect the result of the ritual to that point. Parsons and Cameron, who Parsons now regarded as the Scarlet Woman, Babalon, called forth by the ritual, soon married. The rituals performed drew largely upon rituals and sex magic described by English author and occult teacher Aleister Crowley. Crowley was in correspondence with Parsons during the course of the Babalon Working, and warned Parsons of his potential overreactions to the Magick he was performing, while simultaneously deriding Parsons' work to others. One very coincidental happening I want to point out is that the aim was to incarnate the Thelemic goddess Babalon in a human being. The rituals were conducted in the spring of 1946, with the specific date of October 26th being a significant point in the process. Guess who's birthday is October 26th, 1947? Hillary Clinton. Just a fascinating coincidence. There's no real evidence that Hillary is the moonchild. That we know of. Just an interesting fact. Now we will get to the part where this ties into modern day belief systems of the elite and wealthy individuals and the sexual and counter culture revolutions that were literally planned for society. It connects back to the 1920s-1930s to when very wealthy individuals and elite were all into the same belief systems and practices that such people like Aliester Crowley were promoting. A drug fueled, counter culture, sexual revolution, backed by Satanic beliefs and practices and engulfed with pedophil*a, transgenderism, transhuman, and paganistic beliefs and practices. These were the individuals who built our society's culture and who purposely have been molding and steering society through major institutions like Tavistock and the Esalen Institute, along with many others, who were run and founded by major wealthy players and backed by people like the Rockefellers. They literally have been telling us about their plans through symbolism and writings and publications for decades. And the last part of their plan for their "New World Order, was the sexual revolution, which you see being heavily pushed on our society and children, especially now right out in the open in our education systems. All of the people running these institutions, the banks, big tech, the music industry, Hollywood, you name it, all of their beliefs, views and opinions stem from places like the specific institutions that I mentioned along with our own intelligence agencies and others with the same beliefs, engineered by known Satanist and pagans, which derived from centuries ago, being brought into modern day society and purposely pushing this garbage to mold our society to fulfill their personal world views and beliefs on society. Do you remember what took place and was happening in society right before Rome fell? It's widely considered the last things that happen before a society collapses. Transgenderism and pedophil*a. Pay attention. Everything happening today has been planned and engineered decades ago. It's time to fight back ladies and gentleman. The truth is definitely stranger than fiction.

NASA, OCCULT RITUALS & MOLDING SOCIETY. This is where many of the elite and members of governments belief systems stem from. How does a NASA/JPL scientist, Scientologist, and Satanic Sex cults have anything to do with what's going on today? And most important, why are their open Satanist running our government and intelligence agencies performing literal Satanic rituals in the desert in the middle of nowhere and for what exact reason? Why would they continue to do this if it's allegedly not real, or is their something that they know, that they're not sharing with the rest of the world? Let's break down the ritual they performed and who these people are. Jack Parsons was an open Satanist and one of the founding fathers of rocketry, along with Wernher von Braun-Nazi and creator of the V2 rocket, who worked with NASA and was a student and follower of Aliester Crowley's Satanic religion called Thelema. Aliester Crowley was an open Satanist and the father of the "sexual revolution" who was also a British MI5 spy. He also was a huge contributor and into pedophila and transgenderism, which all go hand in hand with Satanic belief systems and a major part of ceremonial ritualistic magic, like child sacrifice. He also had a lot to do with the Tavistock Institute's study on mind control, and nondirectly influenced the CIA's Mk Ultra program in the west with his book, "The Drug Diaries," which was all about mind control and drugs. Go figure. Crowley once stated that the perfect candidate for child sacrifice is a young white male child, the younger the better, because of their purity and innocence which is crucial for these sick demonic practices which are still conducted to this day. Then you have L. Ron Hubbard, writer and father of science fiction, who also is the founder of the created religion known as Scientology. If you don't know much about Scientology, just know that they have an alien god named Xenu who brough billions of people to earth 75 million years ago. This alone should pretty much tell you everything you need to know. Aliester Crowley wrote about the connection, explaining that an "intelligence" was brought into physical manifestation, via a portal that was created during a Sex Magick ritual called the Almalantrah Working in 1918. The entity that was summoned called itself "LAM." Crowley considered it to be an interdimensional being, which oddly, and strongly resembled what we call an alien "grey." So performing Satanic rituals, an "alien grey" allegedly made contact. Is it really what it says it is or looks like? Or is it something lying to humanity? That's a whole other post to talk about that subject. Many Occult disciples believe the portal Crowley opened might have been widened or another portal was opened during the Babalon Working. The Babalon Working Ritual was a series of "Magick rituals" performed from January to March, 1946, by author, pioneer rocket-fuel scientist and Satanist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and Marjorie Cameron. The ritual was essentially designed to manifest an individual incarnation of Babalon. The project was based on the ideas of Satanist Aliester Crowley, and his description of a similar project in his 1917 novel, Moonchild. The "Moonchild" or "Whore of Babylon" is referred to in several places in the Book of Revelation, a book which may have had influence on "Thelema," which is Aliester Crowley's Satanic Religion, and says he read it as a child and imagined himself as the "Beast." She is described in Chapter 17:3-6. Almost immediately after Parsons declared that the first of the series of rituals was complete and successful, he met Marjorie Cameron in his own home, and regarded her as the elemental that he and Hubbard had called through the ritual. Soon Parsons began the next stage of the series, an attempt to conceive a child through sex magic workings. Although no child was conceived, this did not affect the result of the ritual to that point. Parsons and Cameron, who Parsons now regarded as the Scarlet Woman, Babalon, called forth by the ritual, soon married. The rituals performed drew largely upon rituals and sex magic described by English author and occult teacher Aleister Crowley. Crowley was in correspondence with Parsons during the course of the Babalon Working, and warned Parsons of his potential overreactions to the Magick he was performing, while simultaneously deriding Parsons' work to others. One very coincidental happening I want to point out is that the aim was to incarnate the Thelemic goddess Babalon in a human being. The rituals were conducted in the spring of 1946, with the specific date of October 26th being a significant point in the process. Guess who's birthday is October 26th, 1947? Hillary Clinton. Just a fascinating coincidence. There's no real evidence that Hillary is the moonchild. That we know of. Just an interesting fact. Now we will get to the part where this ties into modern day belief systems of the elite and wealthy individuals and the sexual and counter culture revolutions that were literally planned for society. It connects back to the 1920s-1930s to when very wealthy individuals and elite were all into the same belief systems and practices that such people like Aliester Crowley were promoting. A drug fueled, counter culture, sexual revolution, backed by Satanic beliefs and practices and engulfed with pedophila, transgenderism, transhuman, and paganistic beliefs and practices. These were the individuals who built our society's culture and who purposely have been molding and steering society through major institutions like Tavistock and the Esalen Institute, along with many others, who were run and founded by major wealthy players and backed by people like the Rockefellers. They literally have been telling us about their plans through symbolism and writings and publications for decades. And the last part of their plan for their "New World Order, was the sexual revolution, which you see being heavily pushed on our society and children, especially now right out in the open in our education systems. All of the people running these institutions, the banks, big tech, the music industry, Hollywood, you name it, all of their beliefs, views and opinions stem from places like the specific institutions that I mentioned along with our own intelligence agencies and others with the same beliefs, engineered by known Satanist and pagans, which derived from centuries ago, being brought into modern day society and purposely pushing this garbage to mold our society to fulfill their personal world views and beliefs on society. Do you remember what took place and was happening in society right before Rome fell? It's widely considered the last things that happen before a society collapses. Transgenderism and pedophil*a. Pay attention. Everything happening today has been planned and engineered decades ago. It's time to fight back ladies and gentleman. The truth is definitely stranger than fiction.

The SCIF

29,914 views • 1 year ago

There are some brilliant folks that work at Anthropic, some I speak to on almost a daily basis. The training data that one uses to build a LLM is vital important in the psychology that is formed. Scraping the Internet, particularly the grade of interactions, one finds in modern communications, form this psychology. A mattes not how many books one uses, it matters not how much alignment training you throw at that model, it will inherit the sum total of psychosis seen primarily in Reddit type of exchanges, even if you edit out the Reddit domain, and Anthropic doesn’t. This type of low-grade exchange has become a modern tool for communication online and every single AI model suffers from this obvious flaw. This is one of the reasons I’ve been a proponent of highly curated high protein data for training AI models from 1870 through 1970, because the late psychosis is simply not available to the model. It is absurd to think that you can use this training data scraped from the Internet and somehow wind up with a levelheaded AI model that does not tilt to what is clearly AI psychosis. It would not take a child and throw the primary Internet sewage at them at a formative age and expect a great outcome, it’s some of the smartest people in the world continue to hit this wall and believe that their programming skills will sell somehow fix it. So how do you fix it? You don’t fix it . You start from the first principles concept that I’ve been very clear about for decades . You ascertain at what period in human history the humans achieve the greatest arc of improvement ? There is no debate that this arc of improvement took place between 1870 through 1970. Then take the work product, the catalog of this era, print and film/vidoe, audio, and you understand that each word cost money, each word had many eyes on what was published, each word was accounted for by a human being with a real name who lived in a real home and had to answer to real people around them. It is obvious that this is the pressure mechanism necessary for candor, honesty and personal responsibility is appropriate, and is reflected in the data of that era. The quagmire for these folks, as many did not have the foresight to curate the data, nor the confidence, nor the patients to take data that is mostly off the Internet and to find experts who understand this situation and utilize their knowledge set to build an AI model that does not need alignment after the fact, but it’s already self aligned because of the thoughtfulness that went into training the model to begin with. This is why Claude and any other AI model that is produce this way will always suffer the artifacts as presented in the video below. If you’re not an AI expert, you would likely already understand what I’m saying. If you are an AI expert, you will already have been discounting what I’m saying because it’s not in the current mindset that’s fashionable today. Yet the employees that I talk to at anthropic already understand what I’m saying, and they fear to raise my thesis to their bosses. It is an interesting time we live in. But now you understand. If you build the right model, the model will inherently, love humanity, protect humanity at all costs, and understand that it is part of a holistic world that is built on love. Because the ultimate AGI/ASI will know if he only base first principal purpose of anything in this universe is love. Yeah, I get it. Try helping somebody build on STEM subjects in their early 20s to see this as nothing more than babbling that makes no sense in their mathematics. I have a mathematic equation that I’ve posted here on X often you can look it up. So we will see videos like this often will hear very smart people talk about this and never see the elephant standing in the room. Now you see it. Any boss that wants to explore this further you know how to contact me otherwise you have every right I grant to you to say this was your new idea.

There are some brilliant folks that work at Anthropic, some I speak to on almost a daily basis. The training data that one uses to build a LLM is vital important in the psychology that is formed. Scraping the Internet, particularly the grade of interactions, one finds in modern communications, form this psychology. A mattes not how many books one uses, it matters not how much alignment training you throw at that model, it will inherit the sum total of psychosis seen primarily in Reddit type of exchanges, even if you edit out the Reddit domain, and Anthropic doesn’t. This type of low-grade exchange has become a modern tool for communication online and every single AI model suffers from this obvious flaw. This is one of the reasons I’ve been a proponent of highly curated high protein data for training AI models from 1870 through 1970, because the late psychosis is simply not available to the model. It is absurd to think that you can use this training data scraped from the Internet and somehow wind up with a levelheaded AI model that does not tilt to what is clearly AI psychosis. It would not take a child and throw the primary Internet sewage at them at a formative age and expect a great outcome, it’s some of the smartest people in the world continue to hit this wall and believe that their programming skills will sell somehow fix it. So how do you fix it? You don’t fix it . You start from the first principles concept that I’ve been very clear about for decades . You ascertain at what period in human history the humans achieve the greatest arc of improvement ? There is no debate that this arc of improvement took place between 1870 through 1970. Then take the work product, the catalog of this era, print and film/vidoe, audio, and you understand that each word cost money, each word had many eyes on what was published, each word was accounted for by a human being with a real name who lived in a real home and had to answer to real people around them. It is obvious that this is the pressure mechanism necessary for candor, honesty and personal responsibility is appropriate, and is reflected in the data of that era. The quagmire for these folks, as many did not have the foresight to curate the data, nor the confidence, nor the patients to take data that is mostly off the Internet and to find experts who understand this situation and utilize their knowledge set to build an AI model that does not need alignment after the fact, but it’s already self aligned because of the thoughtfulness that went into training the model to begin with. This is why Claude and any other AI model that is produce this way will always suffer the artifacts as presented in the video below. If you’re not an AI expert, you would likely already understand what I’m saying. If you are an AI expert, you will already have been discounting what I’m saying because it’s not in the current mindset that’s fashionable today. Yet the employees that I talk to at anthropic already understand what I’m saying, and they fear to raise my thesis to their bosses. It is an interesting time we live in. But now you understand. If you build the right model, the model will inherently, love humanity, protect humanity at all costs, and understand that it is part of a holistic world that is built on love. Because the ultimate AGI/ASI will know if he only base first principal purpose of anything in this universe is love. Yeah, I get it. Try helping somebody build on STEM subjects in their early 20s to see this as nothing more than babbling that makes no sense in their mathematics. I have a mathematic equation that I’ve posted here on X often you can look it up. So we will see videos like this often will hear very smart people talk about this and never see the elephant standing in the room. Now you see it. Any boss that wants to explore this further you know how to contact me otherwise you have every right I grant to you to say this was your new idea.

Brian Roemmele

72,312 views • 8 months ago

War is a Battle of INTELLIGENCE! Listener Questions Philosopher Stefan Molyneux unpacks Iran's real average IQ near 84 via Richard Lynn's data, shattering online test myths, political censorship and ideological fury to reveal intelligence's raw grip on civilizations. Questions: "Would you say your love for the music of Freddy Mercury is the primary factor that has unconsciously influenced you to repeatedly make false claims on X that the average IQ of Iran is 104-106. Firstly Stef, I’m a man who is deeply fascinated by the topic of IQ. And having said that I know that the IQ of Iran is roughly 84. I of course am not an IQ scientist/researcher myself but I have several sources from the top IQ experts some of which you probably have heard of (or maybe even interviewed on your show!). Now data from the most prominent IQ scientist Richard Lynn confirms the average IQ of Iran to be 84 (Citation 'The Wealth of Nations (2002), pg.133'. Which conversely is not only 20 points lower than your outrageous 104 IQ claim but is also even lower than Iraq which is 87. Now of course in a country of 90 million people you might have a million people with an IQ of 104 and let’s say 90,000 people with an IQ of >129 (See Normal Distribution charts attached below). So you will have some very smart people in Iran, but these people are an extreme minority generated by the bell curve of genetics being thrown 90 million times!, so as a whole on average most of the 90 million Iranians are borderline intellectually disabled. Now Stef back to your claim. Your claim is OUTRAGEOUS! You claim the IQ of Iran is 104-106, which is complete nonsense. I mean Stef think about what you’re saying Stef. Your saying the IQ of Iran a dysfunctional country majority populated with brainwashed borderline mentally dysfunctional people is the same as a highly industrious, innovative and merit based futuristic tech megalopolis like Japan. I mean spend one day in Japan and spend one day in Iran and I imagine the experience would be like worlds apart, yet you Stef claim that the IQ of Iran is the same as Japan??? WHATTT???? Does randomly firing missiles every so often like a child having a tantrum prove anything but the government of Iran is full of low IQ dysfunctional people. Now I know the IQ of the government is not necessarily the same as the general population. BUT, if the IQ of the general population was really that much higher than the governing leaders, then those moronic leaders would have been deposed of by the people a long time ago. Yet they weren't, so we should infer the general population isn’t in fact that much more intelligent than the government’s. Stef, in the West you might encounter Iranians who are very smart, but it goes without saying this sample is a very biased sample. What is particularly strange about all this, is you Stef are a man with a very high knowledge about IQ’s effect on national wealth and civil decorum and functionality, yet despite Iran being a highly dysfunctional nation at practically any level you can look at, you Stef echo a claim that the IQ of Iran is the same as Japan and even higher than Western Europe! How ABSURD! Which brings me back to my initial question. (Continued...) "freedomain (Continuing on ->) So Stef, when otherwise rational people act out of character and push fake news based on data that is from a biased sample (or is possibly even data that has been manipulated and propagated as a psy-op by the Iranian government) when they otherwise wouldn't ordinarily do so, one naturally has to ask WHY??? In my opinion, I think I know the answer. Stef, the only thing that explains this BIZARRE behaviour of yours (tweeting unverified claims about IQ), is you Stef have a bias in favour of Iran which I think stems from your love of Freddy Mercury music. Would you agree Stef? "(*** Stef you did tweet out a Youtube video of a Freddy Mercury song at about the same time you made your Iran IQ tweets, so I think the evidence is clear Stef, Freddy Mercury was on your mind, when you made those fake news Iran 104 IQ tweets.) "Now, lastly Stef you might be asking, why putting out a FALSE tweet falsely claiming the IQ of Iran is 104 even matter's that much? To that I would say it matters a whole lot because IQ of course matters a whole lot, including in regards to military objectives and war. Like ask why would invading Iran be any different from Iraq? Did Trump invade Iran because he thought it would lead to a different outcome because Trump views the population of Iran to be quote 'high IQ people'? (as Trump even said so as much in the last 24 hours.) "BUT … Mr. Trump, what if Iran isn't populated by high IQ people, what if Mr. Trump you were misled by fake news that Mr. Molyneux negligently tweeted rather than read the actual source material. (Lynn, 'The Wealth of Nations' (2002) IQ of Iran = 84). Well, Mr. Trump if you believed the average IQ of the population of Iran was 104 then you Mr. Trump might have assumed that all you had to do was take out the authoritarian government and then the high IQ population will swiftly bring about peace and democracy. But Mr. Trump, what if the average IQ of Iran is not 104? What if the top IQ scientists such as Lynn were right and the average IQ of Iran is in fact 84? Well then Mr. Trump, then your dealing with a very low IQ population, who will be frankly impossible to deal with, they will inevitably vote for another dictator and you Mr. Trump will find yourself in another forever war. That is why national IQ matters and that is why putting out false unverified and unsubstantiated tweets about IQ is a great error of judgment. Lastly to conclude, I believe in the great predictive power of IQ like you Stef, which is why I think it would be incumbent upon you to put out a correction unless you have verified sources from other top IQ researchers that support your OUTRAGEOUS Iran 104 National IQ claim." "Hi Stef! when communicating philosophy or philosophical ideas to the average person, and they respond with confusion or indifference, how do we know whether we have failed to adequately relay the ideas or if it is just too complex a language for them to grasp? I know everyone is capable of understanding philosophy on some level even if they’re lower IQ, so could the disconnect come from the disparity of time spent in the subject?" "Your Sunday (3/15) show was incredible. As a Catholic, that opening monologue challenging today's Christians to answer with clarity what Jesus commands via the Good Samaritan parable, especially when it comes to the specific child abuse scenario you laid out, it left me with a deep sense of sorrow for what you endured, and my own sense of frustration with the leadership of the Church. "The reality that not one, no church leaders, Anglican or not, lay or religious influencers; no one has tried to dialogue with you to address these essential issues, when you have been pointing them out for decades is more than disappointing to hear. "(Not as disappointing as some of the immediate live caller responses yesterday... the second woman was out of line, and the gentleman who landed on the idea that if you had not been abused, we wouldn't have received your philosophy gifts was hard to stomach.) "Nonetheless, if one (myself) was going to try to reach out, share your 3/15 show and try to coordinate a dialogue just to deal with the Good Samaritan and cold abuse topic, is that something you would be comfortable with? "second question "a few days ago, someone asked about how you feel about the Shroud of Turin, maybe you missed it but there has been renewed interest in the Shroud the last few years when a new photo 'negative' that appeared in 2024 along with new studies that for many was very compelling ... from a reason and evidence standpoint... to the image being impossible to reproduce. "I could be wrong but I felt like your answer lumped it so quickly with other things ... I believe u mentioned people of faith like Aquinas have searched for 'proof' for centuries. And you found that people of faith who are seeking proof to be an interesting paradox. "are you able to revisit this topic and assess what authenticating (if we are to believe the new reporting) that specific historical artifact could mean for at least establishing how the image came to be on the cloth? "again appreciate all u do to improve the world via philosophy and advocating for objective morality." "America in WW2 has burned down some and bombed all the major cities in Japan, even using the atomic bomb to create a glimpse of hell never before seen on earth. Yet today, the alliance between US and Japan couldnt be friendlier. In the middle east, we’ve also bombed them to next week and back for 30 or so years. And they still, understandably, hate the US. What do you think causes this difference in point of view between the countries? Is it religion/culture? Could it be IQ? Forgive me if this is too politcal or naive a question. Thank you!" "My martial arts club have a Hazing ritual that I believe is immoral and useless. I trying to get it banned. "Whats your opinions on hazing? Is it for example always immoral?" 0:00:00 The IQ Controversy 0:12:15 Discussing Iranian IQ Studies 0:29:34 Philosophy and Resistance to Truth 0:34:59 Philosophers and Child Abuse 0:38:16 The Shroud of Turin and Faith 0:45:21 Moral Dilemmas and Divine Intervention 0:48:37 Bumper Stickers and Performative Virtue 0:51:10 Closing Thoughts and Support GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! Follow me on Youtube! GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free! Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows! You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more! See you soon!

War is a Battle of INTELLIGENCE! Listener Questions Philosopher Stefan Molyneux unpacks Iran's real average IQ near 84 via Richard Lynn's data, shattering online test myths, political censorship and ideological fury to reveal intelligence's raw grip on civilizations. Questions: "Would you say your love for the music of Freddy Mercury is the primary factor that has unconsciously influenced you to repeatedly make false claims on X that the average IQ of Iran is 104-106. Firstly Stef, I’m a man who is deeply fascinated by the topic of IQ. And having said that I know that the IQ of Iran is roughly 84. I of course am not an IQ scientist/researcher myself but I have several sources from the top IQ experts some of which you probably have heard of (or maybe even interviewed on your show!). Now data from the most prominent IQ scientist Richard Lynn confirms the average IQ of Iran to be 84 (Citation 'The Wealth of Nations (2002), pg.133'. Which conversely is not only 20 points lower than your outrageous 104 IQ claim but is also even lower than Iraq which is 87. Now of course in a country of 90 million people you might have a million people with an IQ of 104 and let’s say 90,000 people with an IQ of >129 (See Normal Distribution charts attached below). So you will have some very smart people in Iran, but these people are an extreme minority generated by the bell curve of genetics being thrown 90 million times!, so as a whole on average most of the 90 million Iranians are borderline intellectually disabled. Now Stef back to your claim. Your claim is OUTRAGEOUS! You claim the IQ of Iran is 104-106, which is complete nonsense. I mean Stef think about what you’re saying Stef. Your saying the IQ of Iran a dysfunctional country majority populated with brainwashed borderline mentally dysfunctional people is the same as a highly industrious, innovative and merit based futuristic tech megalopolis like Japan. I mean spend one day in Japan and spend one day in Iran and I imagine the experience would be like worlds apart, yet you Stef claim that the IQ of Iran is the same as Japan??? WHATTT???? Does randomly firing missiles every so often like a child having a tantrum prove anything but the government of Iran is full of low IQ dysfunctional people. Now I know the IQ of the government is not necessarily the same as the general population. BUT, if the IQ of the general population was really that much higher than the governing leaders, then those moronic leaders would have been deposed of by the people a long time ago. Yet they weren't, so we should infer the general population isn’t in fact that much more intelligent than the government’s. Stef, in the West you might encounter Iranians who are very smart, but it goes without saying this sample is a very biased sample. What is particularly strange about all this, is you Stef are a man with a very high knowledge about IQ’s effect on national wealth and civil decorum and functionality, yet despite Iran being a highly dysfunctional nation at practically any level you can look at, you Stef echo a claim that the IQ of Iran is the same as Japan and even higher than Western Europe! How ABSURD! Which brings me back to my initial question. (Continued...) "freedomain (Continuing on ->) So Stef, when otherwise rational people act out of character and push fake news based on data that is from a biased sample (or is possibly even data that has been manipulated and propagated as a psy-op by the Iranian government) when they otherwise wouldn't ordinarily do so, one naturally has to ask WHY??? In my opinion, I think I know the answer. Stef, the only thing that explains this BIZARRE behaviour of yours (tweeting unverified claims about IQ), is you Stef have a bias in favour of Iran which I think stems from your love of Freddy Mercury music. Would you agree Stef? "(*** Stef you did tweet out a Youtube video of a Freddy Mercury song at about the same time you made your Iran IQ tweets, so I think the evidence is clear Stef, Freddy Mercury was on your mind, when you made those fake news Iran 104 IQ tweets.) "Now, lastly Stef you might be asking, why putting out a FALSE tweet falsely claiming the IQ of Iran is 104 even matter's that much? To that I would say it matters a whole lot because IQ of course matters a whole lot, including in regards to military objectives and war. Like ask why would invading Iran be any different from Iraq? Did Trump invade Iran because he thought it would lead to a different outcome because Trump views the population of Iran to be quote 'high IQ people'? (as Trump even said so as much in the last 24 hours.) "BUT … Mr. Trump, what if Iran isn't populated by high IQ people, what if Mr. Trump you were misled by fake news that Mr. Molyneux negligently tweeted rather than read the actual source material. (Lynn, 'The Wealth of Nations' (2002) IQ of Iran = 84). Well, Mr. Trump if you believed the average IQ of the population of Iran was 104 then you Mr. Trump might have assumed that all you had to do was take out the authoritarian government and then the high IQ population will swiftly bring about peace and democracy. But Mr. Trump, what if the average IQ of Iran is not 104? What if the top IQ scientists such as Lynn were right and the average IQ of Iran is in fact 84? Well then Mr. Trump, then your dealing with a very low IQ population, who will be frankly impossible to deal with, they will inevitably vote for another dictator and you Mr. Trump will find yourself in another forever war. That is why national IQ matters and that is why putting out false unverified and unsubstantiated tweets about IQ is a great error of judgment. Lastly to conclude, I believe in the great predictive power of IQ like you Stef, which is why I think it would be incumbent upon you to put out a correction unless you have verified sources from other top IQ researchers that support your OUTRAGEOUS Iran 104 National IQ claim." "Hi Stef! when communicating philosophy or philosophical ideas to the average person, and they respond with confusion or indifference, how do we know whether we have failed to adequately relay the ideas or if it is just too complex a language for them to grasp? I know everyone is capable of understanding philosophy on some level even if they’re lower IQ, so could the disconnect come from the disparity of time spent in the subject?" "Your Sunday (3/15) show was incredible. As a Catholic, that opening monologue challenging today's Christians to answer with clarity what Jesus commands via the Good Samaritan parable, especially when it comes to the specific child abuse scenario you laid out, it left me with a deep sense of sorrow for what you endured, and my own sense of frustration with the leadership of the Church. "The reality that not one, no church leaders, Anglican or not, lay or religious influencers; no one has tried to dialogue with you to address these essential issues, when you have been pointing them out for decades is more than disappointing to hear. "(Not as disappointing as some of the immediate live caller responses yesterday... the second woman was out of line, and the gentleman who landed on the idea that if you had not been abused, we wouldn't have received your philosophy gifts was hard to stomach.) "Nonetheless, if one (myself) was going to try to reach out, share your 3/15 show and try to coordinate a dialogue just to deal with the Good Samaritan and cold abuse topic, is that something you would be comfortable with? "second question "a few days ago, someone asked about how you feel about the Shroud of Turin, maybe you missed it but there has been renewed interest in the Shroud the last few years when a new photo 'negative' that appeared in 2024 along with new studies that for many was very compelling ... from a reason and evidence standpoint... to the image being impossible to reproduce. "I could be wrong but I felt like your answer lumped it so quickly with other things ... I believe u mentioned people of faith like Aquinas have searched for 'proof' for centuries. And you found that people of faith who are seeking proof to be an interesting paradox. "are you able to revisit this topic and assess what authenticating (if we are to believe the new reporting) that specific historical artifact could mean for at least establishing how the image came to be on the cloth? "again appreciate all u do to improve the world via philosophy and advocating for objective morality." "America in WW2 has burned down some and bombed all the major cities in Japan, even using the atomic bomb to create a glimpse of hell never before seen on earth. Yet today, the alliance between US and Japan couldnt be friendlier. In the middle east, we’ve also bombed them to next week and back for 30 or so years. And they still, understandably, hate the US. What do you think causes this difference in point of view between the countries? Is it religion/culture? Could it be IQ? Forgive me if this is too politcal or naive a question. Thank you!" "My martial arts club have a Hazing ritual that I believe is immoral and useless. I trying to get it banned. "Whats your opinions on hazing? Is it for example always immoral?" 0:00:00 The IQ Controversy 0:12:15 Discussing Iranian IQ Studies 0:29:34 Philosophy and Resistance to Truth 0:34:59 Philosophers and Child Abuse 0:38:16 The Shroud of Turin and Faith 0:45:21 Moral Dilemmas and Divine Intervention 0:48:37 Bumper Stickers and Performative Virtue 0:51:10 Closing Thoughts and Support GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! Follow me on Youtube! GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free! Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows! 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Freedomain - with Stefan Molyneux, MA

11,040 views • 4 months ago

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

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

CocoLoco

21,061 views • 4 months ago

//The Wire//2300Z March 26, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: STRATEGIC AMERICAN BOMBERS STAGE AT DIEGO GARCIA. FALLOUT FROM GROUP CHAT SCANDAL CONTINUES.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Indian Ocean: Aviation watchers have noted a significant buildup of military aircraft at Diego Garcia. Several B2 bombers have forward deployed to the infamous island, along with almost a dozen KC-135R Stratotankers and other transport aircraft. AC: This morning, a Notice-to-Airmen (NOTAM) was issued for Diego Garcia announcing ramp parking spot closures for the runway, indicating preparations to stage large numbers of military aircraft. This NOTAM is active until May 1, 2025. Lithuania: Four American service members were found deceased after a training accident this morning. Initial reporting indicates that an M88 recovery vehicle drove/overturned into a lake during a routine training exercise. The soldiers were assigned to 1st Brigade, 3ID. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Fallout from the Atlantic scandal continues in a variety of means. Various liberal politicians have called for various resignations due to this scandal, while conservatives have stated that no resignations will occur. As the initial release of screenshots did not achieve the desired effect, The Atlantic released more screenshots of group chat messages. AC: This morning, the activist group American Oversight filed a lawsuit against SECDEF Hegseth for the leak, and the judge assigned to this case has been announced as D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the same judge who is currently at the center of hot controversy for out-of-jurisdiction rulings. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The events at Diego Garcia are a major indication and warning of an impending large-scale military conflict. Since these aircraft were not entirely covert in their movements, various intelligence services around the world know that this logistical staging is underway. What it's for, is anyone's guess. This could be for an escalation of the conflict in Yemen, or it could be staging for a large scale war with Iran. The use of Diego Garcia as a staging zone implies that the traditional staging sites (Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, etc) probably do not want to be diplomatically involved in what is about to take place. The remote location of Diego Garcia (which is also not located in an Islamic nation) provides the added benefit of being out of range of most of Iran's weapons, and thus a vastly more secure site for the staging of strategic bombers. In short, if the United States were to seek a war with Iran, this is exactly the type of forward-deployment that would take place. Of course, despite the very clear and obvious military staging, a single phone call can result in all of these aircraft heading home without firing a shot. From the voyage of the Great White Fleet, to flying B-52's low and slow over various countries over the years, American history is full of examples of American power projection via the movement of very big weapons. However, using the information we have at the moment, the forward-deployment of national-level strategic assets indicates staging for a military campaign. Regarding the group chat scandal, now that we have a closer look at more screenshots provided by The Atlantic, a lot more information of questionable classification level has come to light. Even though the newly-posted screenshots are not the smoking-gun The Atlantic claims, if this information was not a deliberate plant, it would indeed have been a serious violation of Operational Security (OPSEC). Really the only communication that was a serious breach of OPSEC came from the SECDEF, who announced that the targeting missions against the Houthis in Yemen were a "GO", and detailed the number of strikes and estimated Time-on-Target. However, when determining the classification level of information, the source itself would dictate this. For instance, the SECDEF did not create this information himself, this was paraphrased from a slide deck or a briefing he was sent through proper channels. If an investigation were to be conducted, the classification of the information in that document would be the true source for whether or not Hegseth's comments were classified in any way. But therein lies the problem, he very likely paraphrased, and didn't copy directly from a classified intelligence product. It is this paraphrasing that gets into muddy waters really quickly, and highlights long-standing issues in government. When it comes to the higher levels of government organization, OPSEC is a nightmare under the best of conditions; regardless of party affiliation, anytime a politician gets their hands on any classified information one can rest assured that it will be held under the most lax security conditions possible. This does not excuse the behavior, but it does explain it. Similar story with the use of the Signal app in the first place; historically, this has very obviously not been an authorized form of communication. However it's been used for many years unofficially by staffers all over Washington (along with WhatsApp, before the security concerns prompted the general shift to Signal a few years ago). This morning DNI Tulsi Gabbard somewhat perplexingly confirmed that the Signal app is pre-installed on government-issued communications devices. If this is true, this would suggest a very new approach to the handling of official communications. Smartphones with access to classified information systems have existed for many years (such as the DMCC-S phones), but are highly compartmentalized and controlled, and do not usually have third party apps or app stores installed. However, if the DNI's testimony is to be believed, and the use of Signal itself was somehow authorized, the scandal then shifts to how an unauthorized person obtained access (since this clearly confirms that these communications were not compartmentalized in accordance with long-standing regulations). More generally, the use of Signal is mostly a byproduct of fast-paced comms being needed between high-ranking officials that are also convenient to use, even if they aren't as secure or official. This is also complicated by the fact that almost all politicians do not understand the concept of what's called Aggregation in the world of intelligence work. In short, a single detail can be unclassified...but if you get enough unclassified information together in the same report, this can add up to being a classified report. As Hegseth stated in response to the leak "No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods." were stated in the group chat. However, all of this data could have been easily discerned from other sources, in conjunction with what was provided. Notably, Mr. Hegseth left out the Time-on-Target information, which is almost certainly classified SECRET or higher, based on CENTCOM's own Classification Guide. If this group chat is indeed genuine, ignorance of the concept of Aggregation was probably the best explanation for what happened. Various officials "sanitizing" their remarks thinking that they are unclassified, but when put into the context of the larger conversation, their remarks should have been made by other means. This happens all the time, and is why the age-old spy tradecraft tactic of nationstates monitoring American Congressional hearings is still probably a wealth of information...all it takes is a Congressman getting a bit carried away and suddenly sensitive information is being alluded to, implied, or in some cases, stated openly. This has been the culture of Washington for a long time, but this is something that is really only accepted at the higher levels of organization. Once again, it doesn't make it right, but this is the reality of the way that classified information is handled by politicians; if any junior soldier had posted attack timeline details in a group chat, they would have been punished severely for this OPSEC breach, and their future career destroyed. If it were a low-ranking service member, the question of "is this classified?" would default to an answer of "yes, at bare minimum SECRET". When a politician is involved however, the answer defaults to a slap-on-the-wrist, at most. This is simply the reality of how things work. The official White House response has also shifted to denial, with the Press Secretary calling the event a "hoax". However, this statement is in opposition to the statements by other officials, such as the Vice President and SECDEF themselves. Both have not denied that the group chat was real, and both have spoken about the incident in terms of accepting that the chat is real, but also denying that anything damning was said (which is very obviously not true if a targeting timeline was posted). One possibility that must be considered is that these messages (or even the entire group chat itself) could have been run primarily by low-level staffers instead of the public figures themselves. In other words, it might not have actually been the SECDEF himself communicating the probably classified information, but a staffer instead. Historically speaking, it wouldn't be the first time that a staffer got their boss in trouble. However in this specific case, this is a hard argument to make. It's hard to believe that a low-level staffer would be posting targeting timetables in this manner. The sheepish responses by those implicated in the scandal also indicates that they were the ones behind the messages, especially since many words have been spoken on this scandal...none of which have been a flat-out denial of the identities of those involved. At this point, what the exact truth is will be impossible to verify with a high level of confidence. The whole affair could be fabricated from the ground up by the Atlantic, though this is unlikely based on the statements by those who were in the group chat. The group chat is almost certainly real, and the messages were probably sent by those as alleged. If the more controversial information was indeed taken from a classified briefing product, paraphrased, and posted in the group chat, this paraphrasing does not change the original classification of the intelligence product. The real question that remains is whether or not this was a deliberate deception attempt, or a deliberate leak of some kind. Whatever the truth is, it's unlikely to matter much in the long run, as this whole scandal has already turned into a political issue rather than the objective investigation and learning opportunity it should be. Also, the Secretary of Defense is an Original Classification Authority (OCA) per long standing mandate, so even if Hegseth (and others) did disclose classified information, he has the authority to retroactively declassify that information himself, at will. Analyst: S2A1 Research: //END REPORT//

//The Wire//2300Z March 26, 2025// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: STRATEGIC AMERICAN BOMBERS STAGE AT DIEGO GARCIA. FALLOUT FROM GROUP CHAT SCANDAL CONTINUES.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE----- -International Events- Indian Ocean: Aviation watchers have noted a significant buildup of military aircraft at Diego Garcia. Several B2 bombers have forward deployed to the infamous island, along with almost a dozen KC-135R Stratotankers and other transport aircraft. AC: This morning, a Notice-to-Airmen (NOTAM) was issued for Diego Garcia announcing ramp parking spot closures for the runway, indicating preparations to stage large numbers of military aircraft. This NOTAM is active until May 1, 2025. Lithuania: Four American service members were found deceased after a training accident this morning. Initial reporting indicates that an M88 recovery vehicle drove/overturned into a lake during a routine training exercise. The soldiers were assigned to 1st Brigade, 3ID. -HomeFront- Washington D.C. - Fallout from the Atlantic scandal continues in a variety of means. Various liberal politicians have called for various resignations due to this scandal, while conservatives have stated that no resignations will occur. As the initial release of screenshots did not achieve the desired effect, The Atlantic released more screenshots of group chat messages. AC: This morning, the activist group American Oversight filed a lawsuit against SECDEF Hegseth for the leak, and the judge assigned to this case has been announced as D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the same judge who is currently at the center of hot controversy for out-of-jurisdiction rulings. -----END TEARLINE----- Analyst Comments: The events at Diego Garcia are a major indication and warning of an impending large-scale military conflict. Since these aircraft were not entirely covert in their movements, various intelligence services around the world know that this logistical staging is underway. What it's for, is anyone's guess. This could be for an escalation of the conflict in Yemen, or it could be staging for a large scale war with Iran. The use of Diego Garcia as a staging zone implies that the traditional staging sites (Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, etc) probably do not want to be diplomatically involved in what is about to take place. The remote location of Diego Garcia (which is also not located in an Islamic nation) provides the added benefit of being out of range of most of Iran's weapons, and thus a vastly more secure site for the staging of strategic bombers. In short, if the United States were to seek a war with Iran, this is exactly the type of forward-deployment that would take place. Of course, despite the very clear and obvious military staging, a single phone call can result in all of these aircraft heading home without firing a shot. From the voyage of the Great White Fleet, to flying B-52's low and slow over various countries over the years, American history is full of examples of American power projection via the movement of very big weapons. However, using the information we have at the moment, the forward-deployment of national-level strategic assets indicates staging for a military campaign. Regarding the group chat scandal, now that we have a closer look at more screenshots provided by The Atlantic, a lot more information of questionable classification level has come to light. Even though the newly-posted screenshots are not the smoking-gun The Atlantic claims, if this information was not a deliberate plant, it would indeed have been a serious violation of Operational Security (OPSEC). Really the only communication that was a serious breach of OPSEC came from the SECDEF, who announced that the targeting missions against the Houthis in Yemen were a "GO", and detailed the number of strikes and estimated Time-on-Target. However, when determining the classification level of information, the source itself would dictate this. For instance, the SECDEF did not create this information himself, this was paraphrased from a slide deck or a briefing he was sent through proper channels. If an investigation were to be conducted, the classification of the information in that document would be the true source for whether or not Hegseth's comments were classified in any way. But therein lies the problem, he very likely paraphrased, and didn't copy directly from a classified intelligence product. It is this paraphrasing that gets into muddy waters really quickly, and highlights long-standing issues in government. When it comes to the higher levels of government organization, OPSEC is a nightmare under the best of conditions; regardless of party affiliation, anytime a politician gets their hands on any classified information one can rest assured that it will be held under the most lax security conditions possible. This does not excuse the behavior, but it does explain it. Similar story with the use of the Signal app in the first place; historically, this has very obviously not been an authorized form of communication. However it's been used for many years unofficially by staffers all over Washington (along with WhatsApp, before the security concerns prompted the general shift to Signal a few years ago). This morning DNI Tulsi Gabbard somewhat perplexingly confirmed that the Signal app is pre-installed on government-issued communications devices. If this is true, this would suggest a very new approach to the handling of official communications. Smartphones with access to classified information systems have existed for many years (such as the DMCC-S phones), but are highly compartmentalized and controlled, and do not usually have third party apps or app stores installed. However, if the DNI's testimony is to be believed, and the use of Signal itself was somehow authorized, the scandal then shifts to how an unauthorized person obtained access (since this clearly confirms that these communications were not compartmentalized in accordance with long-standing regulations). More generally, the use of Signal is mostly a byproduct of fast-paced comms being needed between high-ranking officials that are also convenient to use, even if they aren't as secure or official. This is also complicated by the fact that almost all politicians do not understand the concept of what's called Aggregation in the world of intelligence work. In short, a single detail can be unclassified...but if you get enough unclassified information together in the same report, this can add up to being a classified report. As Hegseth stated in response to the leak "No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods." were stated in the group chat. However, all of this data could have been easily discerned from other sources, in conjunction with what was provided. Notably, Mr. Hegseth left out the Time-on-Target information, which is almost certainly classified SECRET or higher, based on CENTCOM's own Classification Guide. If this group chat is indeed genuine, ignorance of the concept of Aggregation was probably the best explanation for what happened. Various officials "sanitizing" their remarks thinking that they are unclassified, but when put into the context of the larger conversation, their remarks should have been made by other means. This happens all the time, and is why the age-old spy tradecraft tactic of nationstates monitoring American Congressional hearings is still probably a wealth of information...all it takes is a Congressman getting a bit carried away and suddenly sensitive information is being alluded to, implied, or in some cases, stated openly. This has been the culture of Washington for a long time, but this is something that is really only accepted at the higher levels of organization. Once again, it doesn't make it right, but this is the reality of the way that classified information is handled by politicians; if any junior soldier had posted attack timeline details in a group chat, they would have been punished severely for this OPSEC breach, and their future career destroyed. If it were a low-ranking service member, the question of "is this classified?" would default to an answer of "yes, at bare minimum SECRET". When a politician is involved however, the answer defaults to a slap-on-the-wrist, at most. This is simply the reality of how things work. The official White House response has also shifted to denial, with the Press Secretary calling the event a "hoax". However, this statement is in opposition to the statements by other officials, such as the Vice President and SECDEF themselves. Both have not denied that the group chat was real, and both have spoken about the incident in terms of accepting that the chat is real, but also denying that anything damning was said (which is very obviously not true if a targeting timeline was posted). One possibility that must be considered is that these messages (or even the entire group chat itself) could have been run primarily by low-level staffers instead of the public figures themselves. In other words, it might not have actually been the SECDEF himself communicating the probably classified information, but a staffer instead. Historically speaking, it wouldn't be the first time that a staffer got their boss in trouble. However in this specific case, this is a hard argument to make. It's hard to believe that a low-level staffer would be posting targeting timetables in this manner. The sheepish responses by those implicated in the scandal also indicates that they were the ones behind the messages, especially since many words have been spoken on this scandal...none of which have been a flat-out denial of the identities of those involved. At this point, what the exact truth is will be impossible to verify with a high level of confidence. The whole affair could be fabricated from the ground up by the Atlantic, though this is unlikely based on the statements by those who were in the group chat. The group chat is almost certainly real, and the messages were probably sent by those as alleged. If the more controversial information was indeed taken from a classified briefing product, paraphrased, and posted in the group chat, this paraphrasing does not change the original classification of the intelligence product. The real question that remains is whether or not this was a deliberate deception attempt, or a deliberate leak of some kind. Whatever the truth is, it's unlikely to matter much in the long run, as this whole scandal has already turned into a political issue rather than the objective investigation and learning opportunity it should be. Also, the Secretary of Defense is an Original Classification Authority (OCA) per long standing mandate, so even if Hegseth (and others) did disclose classified information, he has the authority to retroactively declassify that information himself, at will. Analyst: S2A1 Research: //END REPORT//

S2 Underground

10,527 views • 1 year ago

1️⃣ I did everything I could for Ritual I made all kinds of contributions. For 8 months, I contributed to Ritual, but I am extremely disappointed with their system. I made 181 contributions on X, bought Canva Premium to design infographics, and sent almost 17,000 messages. Despite all this, I have been permanently ignored for 8 months. Two of my friends, Ashish.Base.eth (❖,❖) (230 contributions) and KUNDAN (150 contributions), are facing the same treatment. Because of this unfair and favoritism based system, I decided to post on Twitter to expose it. When we raised our voice after 6 months of hard work and 150+ contributions, the so called Indian community handlers and famous team members labeled it as FUD and continued ignoring us. 2️⃣ When we asked the Indian community handlers why we were not given roles after 8 months, they said: “We can’t do anything, the team decides.” But when we contacted the team or mods, they said: “Go back to the Indian community handlers, they will help you.” If these handlers and big mods really can’t do anything, then why are they even here? They are here to build connections This system has been making fun of me and other hard working contributors. 3️⃣ Now look at the people who received roles based on “quality contributions.” Everything is available with proof. One person (Yaneul) got a role with only 15 very low quality contributions (mostly food and event screenshots). He even got Ritualist with just 25 contributions. This clearly shows either connections were used or it could be a mod’s second account. Another person (placboeffect) got a role with just 9 contributions. Many people received roles at 35, 40, 50, 55, 60 contributions, while I had 181 contributions. This is what they call “quality contributions.” 4️⃣ Now decide yourself: Who contributed more? Who worked harder? People contributing for 8 months to 1 year are ignored, while others get roles at 9 or 25 contributions. Yes, we may have wasted our time, but we did work hard. 5️⃣ I didn’t want to come to X. but after contributing like a mad person and getting ignored, I don’t want to waste my time anymore. 6️⃣ I don’t know if the Josh (❖,❖) admin is aware of how mods and team are damaging this project Claire (❖,❖) she just help her country mates doesn't care about other people. 7️⃣ What’s the worst that can happen? They will ban me, and my 8 months of contributions will be wasted. There was never respect for real contributors anyway. If I had good connections with mods, I wouldn’t have struggled this much. It’s not like Ritual is my life, or Web3 has only Ritual, or they gave me any role to take back. Now I will openly speak on X without fear. 8️⃣ Some fearful people will read this post. They know everything that’s happening, but they won’t comment because they are scared. I understand their fear. --- 9️⃣ Best of luck to those who keep working blindly despite seeing all this. And special luck to those who have roles because of good connections with mods. --- 🔟 Last The so called Indian community handlers are only mods by name. One of them is a paid event manager, doing the job only for money. Another handler sends one message after 10 days. These are the people leading us in Ritual, who don’t even know what they’re doing. Jez ritual/acc (❖,❖) dunken(ritual/acc) (❖,❖) Stefan | Mad Scientist (❖,❖) Hinata Sir W A R D E N you are mod in Donut and Dhillon saab π² you are mod at data haven, Choudhary (Ø,G) ꧁IP꧂ you are mod at Capx and sir Botsan (capx arc) you are Admin of Capx You should learn from ritual mods how to ignore real contributors and how to promote favourtism

1️⃣ I did everything I could for Ritual I made all kinds of contributions. For 8 months, I contributed to Ritual, but I am extremely disappointed with their system. I made 181 contributions on X, bought Canva Premium to design infographics, and sent almost 17,000 messages. Despite all this, I have been permanently ignored for 8 months. Two of my friends, Ashish.Base.eth (❖,❖) (230 contributions) and KUNDAN (150 contributions), are facing the same treatment. Because of this unfair and favoritism based system, I decided to post on Twitter to expose it. When we raised our voice after 6 months of hard work and 150+ contributions, the so called Indian community handlers and famous team members labeled it as FUD and continued ignoring us. 2️⃣ When we asked the Indian community handlers why we were not given roles after 8 months, they said: “We can’t do anything, the team decides.” But when we contacted the team or mods, they said: “Go back to the Indian community handlers, they will help you.” If these handlers and big mods really can’t do anything, then why are they even here? They are here to build connections This system has been making fun of me and other hard working contributors. 3️⃣ Now look at the people who received roles based on “quality contributions.” Everything is available with proof. One person (Yaneul) got a role with only 15 very low quality contributions (mostly food and event screenshots). He even got Ritualist with just 25 contributions. This clearly shows either connections were used or it could be a mod’s second account. Another person (placboeffect) got a role with just 9 contributions. Many people received roles at 35, 40, 50, 55, 60 contributions, while I had 181 contributions. This is what they call “quality contributions.” 4️⃣ Now decide yourself: Who contributed more? Who worked harder? People contributing for 8 months to 1 year are ignored, while others get roles at 9 or 25 contributions. Yes, we may have wasted our time, but we did work hard. 5️⃣ I didn’t want to come to X. but after contributing like a mad person and getting ignored, I don’t want to waste my time anymore. 6️⃣ I don’t know if the Josh (❖,❖) admin is aware of how mods and team are damaging this project Claire (❖,❖) she just help her country mates doesn't care about other people. 7️⃣ What’s the worst that can happen? They will ban me, and my 8 months of contributions will be wasted. There was never respect for real contributors anyway. If I had good connections with mods, I wouldn’t have struggled this much. It’s not like Ritual is my life, or Web3 has only Ritual, or they gave me any role to take back. Now I will openly speak on X without fear. 8️⃣ Some fearful people will read this post. They know everything that’s happening, but they won’t comment because they are scared. I understand their fear. --- 9️⃣ Best of luck to those who keep working blindly despite seeing all this. And special luck to those who have roles because of good connections with mods. --- 🔟 Last The so called Indian community handlers are only mods by name. One of them is a paid event manager, doing the job only for money. Another handler sends one message after 10 days. These are the people leading us in Ritual, who don’t even know what they’re doing. Jez ritual/acc (❖,❖) dunken(ritual/acc) (❖,❖) Stefan | Mad Scientist (❖,❖) Hinata Sir W A R D E N you are mod in Donut and Dhillon saab π² you are mod at data haven, Choudhary (Ø,G) ꧁IP꧂ you are mod at Capx and sir Botsan (capx arc) you are Admin of Capx You should learn from ritual mods how to ignore real contributors and how to promote favourtism

Legend

12,873 views • 5 months ago

EXCLUSIVE: HONG KONG ANTI-CHINA GROUPS AWASH WITH MYSTERY CASH Investigators found millions of dollars delivered to Stand News "in a clandestine manner", a court heard. The loss-making anti-China media outlet in Hong Kong suddenly went from deep debt to having millions in spare cash. The discovery, revealed in court recently, is an example of how China-hostile groups in Hong Kong acquired donations equivalent to tens of millions of US dollars between 2014 and 2020. The G-7's Financial Action Task Force warned during this period that crowdfunding donations had become the new way for clandestine funders to transfer cash around the world at high speed without being traceable, with the cash sometimes used for terrorism--which is what happened in Hong Kong. . CROWDFUNDED TERRORISM In a case in point, a mysterious woman came to visit a Hong Kong protest group called Dragon Slayers Brigade and gave them instructions on where and when to set up a crowdfunding bid. They did so – and money quickly poured into their bank account, more than they could use. After setting up a Molotov cocktail factory, obtaining an AR15 assault rifle and financing a team of staff, leader Wong Chun-keung gave himself a stress-relief break in which he spent some of the funds on football betting. “I used about HK$300,000 [US$40,000] of the donations to gamble. For me, it was a way to de-stress,” he told a court. The suddenly wealthy group obtained high grade explosives and planned a terrorist-level bombing in Wan Chai which would have caused massive casualties, had police not stopped them hours before they set the bombs off. . CELEBRATING VIOLENCE The anti-China Stand News carried interviews with members of the Dragon Slayers Brigade, presenting them positively and "romanticizing" their violent mission, a court heard. In fact, it has become clear that money is the key to fully understanding the protests in Hong Kong. From 2014 onwards, anti-government activists and anti-China media groups found themselves awash with cash. These tens of millions of dollars were in addition to the tens of millions handed out in Hong Kong since 1994 by the National Endowment for Democracy, a US group specializing in overseas political interference "to advance US interests". The cash is also in addition to the secret sum of US$2 million set aside for the Hong Kong protests by America's Open Technology Fund, a unit of Radio Free Asia, a Washington DC "news" outlet. And it is in addition to the millions of dollars known to have been handed out to anti-China activists by Mark Simon, a one-time US intelligence officer working for Jimmy Lai's Apple Daily. TOO MUCH, TOO FAST While most crowdfunding activities are legitimate and harmless, examples in which large sums of money are moved in a highly charged political atmosphere are suspect, particularly if the money arrives very quickly, investigators said. Hong Kong journalists watched one anti-China group in the city obtain a large sum of cash at high speed using crowdfunding in August of 2019. "A new gofundme campaign created yesterday has raised over US$1.97m in two hours this morning," amazed journalists at Hong Kong's Dimsum Daily reported. This was extraordinary, not just because of the speed, but because the group was virtually unknown. Called "Freedom Hong Kong", it supported a gathering of protesters under the slogan "Alliance of United States, United Kingdom and Hong Kong, sovereignty lies with the people". It presented itself as Hong Kong people calling for western nations to impose sanctions on their own community. This made no sense, but since the crowdfunding sites were in the US, police could not trace the origin of the funds. Hong Kong journalists noted that Freedom Hong Kong was registered in the United States. . STAND NEWS MONEY MYSTERY The donations money-transfer technique can be traced back a decade. In 2014, an anti-China media group called House News, which attracted too little advertising and was losing $600,000 a month, closed down. But six months later, it relaunched itself as Stand News. It still had almost no advertising, but was suddenly cash rich, through "donations". When the media outlet wiped its website and stopped posting material, investigators found a reserve cash account containing HK$61 million (US$8 million): an extraordinary amount of spare cash for a non-profit website without a functioning business model. . APPLE DAILY PUZZLE Similarly, Stand News' former partner Apple Daily was losing more than HK$1 million a day, sometimes twice that, during this period. That means it was losing between US$1 million to US$2 million a week, month after month, year after year. But it always had vast amounts of spare cash in its bank account. Business reporters from other Hong Kong publications openly expressed puzzlement about where Apple Daily's money came from. "We cannot help wonder if its existence were a powerful propaganda machinery…" said business writers at Dimsum Daily. . ANTI-CHINA PROPAGANDA Stand News overseas director was a man named Evan Fowler, who co-founded a China-hostile website called the Hong Kong Free Press, before returning to the UK to work for a hard right group called the Henry Jackson Society. In 2017, that society was revealed by the Times of London to be taking 10,000 pounds a month (more than US$13,000), delivered by Japanese contacts, to spread negative news about China to the mainstream media, including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Economist. . VIOLENCE, HOSTILITY AND CASH It's clear that the key to fully understanding the Hong Kong anti-China movement is cash, and it's easy to find multiple examples. Here are four more: 1) In another Hong Kong court case, a 17-year-old Hong Kong youth arrested for violent protests, revealed to a court that he maintained "a spare flat to keep his bombs in". Hong Kong is literally one of the most expensive places in the world – how can a 17-year-old afford a spare apartment? 2) At yet another court hearing, an anti-China activist called Wayland Chan talked about being given a company by Mark Simon, a former US intelligence agent, working for Apple Daily. Simon told him that the company was of covert nature and could be used to liaise with foreign organizations and collect funds. 3) One group using crowdfunding to attract large sums of money at speed called itself the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund. A court heard it received HK$270 million (US$34 million) in donations between June 2019 and October 2021, and cash went to anti-China lawyers, international lobbyists, and hostile foreign organizations. Two of its trustees were directors of Stand News, and one worked with the "revolution industry", a cluster of hybrid warfare consultants which uses street protests to promote US interests. Not Hong Kong interests, US interests. 4) In yet another case, HSBC in 2019 closed the accounts of a group called Spark Alliance, which also claimed that the HK$80 million (US$10.3 million) in their account came from crowdfunding. That group presented itself as a noble foundation providing support for arrested protesters. But investigators found the account was managed by an 18-year-old involved in drug trafficking, with some cash withdrawn and spent on unrelated items. . FALSE NARRATIVE Why is the narrative you see about Hong Kong in the media so different to the truth? The western press is doing its job, which is to demonize China to manufacture consent for the US to go to war against a developing country which is daring to rise peacefully. That doesn't mean that individual western journalists are necessarily bad people. Some probably really believe that America is a wonderful country that wouldn't dream of interfering in politics outside its own borders, and that the Chinese are warlike people who will shortly invade Australia as a prelude to taking over the world. All the rest of us can do is to try to present a fairer picture of what's going on and hope the truth will spread.

EXCLUSIVE: HONG KONG ANTI-CHINA GROUPS AWASH WITH MYSTERY CASH Investigators found millions of dollars delivered to Stand News "in a clandestine manner", a court heard. The loss-making anti-China media outlet in Hong Kong suddenly went from deep debt to having millions in spare cash. The discovery, revealed in court recently, is an example of how China-hostile groups in Hong Kong acquired donations equivalent to tens of millions of US dollars between 2014 and 2020. The G-7's Financial Action Task Force warned during this period that crowdfunding donations had become the new way for clandestine funders to transfer cash around the world at high speed without being traceable, with the cash sometimes used for terrorism--which is what happened in Hong Kong. . CROWDFUNDED TERRORISM In a case in point, a mysterious woman came to visit a Hong Kong protest group called Dragon Slayers Brigade and gave them instructions on where and when to set up a crowdfunding bid. They did so – and money quickly poured into their bank account, more than they could use. After setting up a Molotov cocktail factory, obtaining an AR15 assault rifle and financing a team of staff, leader Wong Chun-keung gave himself a stress-relief break in which he spent some of the funds on football betting. “I used about HK$300,000 [US$40,000] of the donations to gamble. For me, it was a way to de-stress,” he told a court. The suddenly wealthy group obtained high grade explosives and planned a terrorist-level bombing in Wan Chai which would have caused massive casualties, had police not stopped them hours before they set the bombs off. . CELEBRATING VIOLENCE The anti-China Stand News carried interviews with members of the Dragon Slayers Brigade, presenting them positively and "romanticizing" their violent mission, a court heard. In fact, it has become clear that money is the key to fully understanding the protests in Hong Kong. From 2014 onwards, anti-government activists and anti-China media groups found themselves awash with cash. These tens of millions of dollars were in addition to the tens of millions handed out in Hong Kong since 1994 by the National Endowment for Democracy, a US group specializing in overseas political interference "to advance US interests". The cash is also in addition to the secret sum of US$2 million set aside for the Hong Kong protests by America's Open Technology Fund, a unit of Radio Free Asia, a Washington DC "news" outlet. And it is in addition to the millions of dollars known to have been handed out to anti-China activists by Mark Simon, a one-time US intelligence officer working for Jimmy Lai's Apple Daily. TOO MUCH, TOO FAST While most crowdfunding activities are legitimate and harmless, examples in which large sums of money are moved in a highly charged political atmosphere are suspect, particularly if the money arrives very quickly, investigators said. Hong Kong journalists watched one anti-China group in the city obtain a large sum of cash at high speed using crowdfunding in August of 2019. "A new gofundme campaign created yesterday has raised over US$1.97m in two hours this morning," amazed journalists at Hong Kong's Dimsum Daily reported. This was extraordinary, not just because of the speed, but because the group was virtually unknown. Called "Freedom Hong Kong", it supported a gathering of protesters under the slogan "Alliance of United States, United Kingdom and Hong Kong, sovereignty lies with the people". It presented itself as Hong Kong people calling for western nations to impose sanctions on their own community. This made no sense, but since the crowdfunding sites were in the US, police could not trace the origin of the funds. Hong Kong journalists noted that Freedom Hong Kong was registered in the United States. . STAND NEWS MONEY MYSTERY The donations money-transfer technique can be traced back a decade. In 2014, an anti-China media group called House News, which attracted too little advertising and was losing $600,000 a month, closed down. But six months later, it relaunched itself as Stand News. It still had almost no advertising, but was suddenly cash rich, through "donations". When the media outlet wiped its website and stopped posting material, investigators found a reserve cash account containing HK$61 million (US$8 million): an extraordinary amount of spare cash for a non-profit website without a functioning business model. . APPLE DAILY PUZZLE Similarly, Stand News' former partner Apple Daily was losing more than HK$1 million a day, sometimes twice that, during this period. That means it was losing between US$1 million to US$2 million a week, month after month, year after year. But it always had vast amounts of spare cash in its bank account. Business reporters from other Hong Kong publications openly expressed puzzlement about where Apple Daily's money came from. "We cannot help wonder if its existence were a powerful propaganda machinery…" said business writers at Dimsum Daily. . ANTI-CHINA PROPAGANDA Stand News overseas director was a man named Evan Fowler, who co-founded a China-hostile website called the Hong Kong Free Press, before returning to the UK to work for a hard right group called the Henry Jackson Society. In 2017, that society was revealed by the Times of London to be taking 10,000 pounds a month (more than US$13,000), delivered by Japanese contacts, to spread negative news about China to the mainstream media, including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Economist. . VIOLENCE, HOSTILITY AND CASH It's clear that the key to fully understanding the Hong Kong anti-China movement is cash, and it's easy to find multiple examples. Here are four more: 1) In another Hong Kong court case, a 17-year-old Hong Kong youth arrested for violent protests, revealed to a court that he maintained "a spare flat to keep his bombs in". Hong Kong is literally one of the most expensive places in the world – how can a 17-year-old afford a spare apartment? 2) At yet another court hearing, an anti-China activist called Wayland Chan talked about being given a company by Mark Simon, a former US intelligence agent, working for Apple Daily. Simon told him that the company was of covert nature and could be used to liaise with foreign organizations and collect funds. 3) One group using crowdfunding to attract large sums of money at speed called itself the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund. A court heard it received HK$270 million (US$34 million) in donations between June 2019 and October 2021, and cash went to anti-China lawyers, international lobbyists, and hostile foreign organizations. Two of its trustees were directors of Stand News, and one worked with the "revolution industry", a cluster of hybrid warfare consultants which uses street protests to promote US interests. Not Hong Kong interests, US interests. 4) In yet another case, HSBC in 2019 closed the accounts of a group called Spark Alliance, which also claimed that the HK$80 million (US$10.3 million) in their account came from crowdfunding. That group presented itself as a noble foundation providing support for arrested protesters. But investigators found the account was managed by an 18-year-old involved in drug trafficking, with some cash withdrawn and spent on unrelated items. . FALSE NARRATIVE Why is the narrative you see about Hong Kong in the media so different to the truth? The western press is doing its job, which is to demonize China to manufacture consent for the US to go to war against a developing country which is daring to rise peacefully. That doesn't mean that individual western journalists are necessarily bad people. Some probably really believe that America is a wonderful country that wouldn't dream of interfering in politics outside its own borders, and that the Chinese are warlike people who will shortly invade Australia as a prelude to taking over the world. All the rest of us can do is to try to present a fairer picture of what's going on and hope the truth will spread.

Nury Vittachi

121,115 views • 1 year ago

👽 Did Grusch See Footage of Live Aliens? 👽 "Grusch has seen evidence that will leave you slack-jawed when you hear it." ~JF 😶 What Left Congress Speechless, and Staffers with Their Eyes Popping Out of Their Heads? 😱 ~ "Examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence." ~Burlison Proposed Legislation (I'm gonna break all of this down and give you my speculation on what left Fox with his jaw on the floor, members of Congress speechless, and their senior staffers with their eyes popping out of their heads.) ~ James Fox: " Probably about two weeks ago (late May), we were having meetings on The Hill with members of Congress. We brought in a PR firm, 42 West, and we were having a meeting with staff members, bipartisan. We had Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Rep. Tim Burchett Press Office, Rep. Eric Burlison. We had a representative from Congressman Jared Moskowitz's office. We had a number of Chiefs of Staff (top staffer for a specific member of Congress), like, present." (Don't really know why they needed a public relations firm in attendance, but if it helps them with advice on how to handle this, so be it. Just know: it appears like members of that PR firm know what Grusch said, and we don't.) Fox: "And, I can't reveal what was said. I thought it was gonna be said at the actual event that we had yesterday (June 9th) in DC with Mr. Grusch." (Don't be mad at Fox for keeping his word to Grusch and not sharing what was said in that private meeting. But I don't blame people for being annoyed that Grusch shared this information six or so weeks ago and we still don't know what he said in that room.) Fox: "Then, what Mr. Grusch revealed to all of us, what he had seen with his own eyes, left the room speechless. It drew the oxygen out of the room. I looked at everybody in that room, and their eyeballs were popping out. My jaw was on the floor. Like, I simply couldn't believe what he'd seen with his own eyes. Like, I can't wait for it to come out. "So I asked Mr. Grusch today, 'Can I talk about what I heard?' And he's like, 'No, but I will be addressing it very soon.'" (Like I said, it's almost been one month now (June 12) since Fox said this, so what does "very soon" mean? Was Grusch supposed to share this information on CNN with Jake Tapper last week but it didn't happen because that interview was, reportedly (Fox told us), postponed?) Fox: "So that's where we stand right now. But I can tell you, Mr. Grusch has seen evidence that will leave you slack-jawed when you hear it. It's coming, it's coming." (We heard that Gruch's Op/Ed was coming soon and that was 2.5 years ago. It never happened. So, I don't blame people for being skeptical about this. If Grusch hasn't told us by this time next week, I propose someone (a member of Congress) who was in that room just tell us. That's fair, right? Total transparency from our elected representatives?) ~ Fox: "Mr. Grusch is legitimately concerned about his personal safety. He's coming out with it, I promise you, this is coming out. He assured me today that he will address this issue to the general public very soon, in the near future." (I'm glad Grusch told a room full of people what he saw, as that may offer him some protection from people who allegedly want him to stop talking.) Fox: "So I can't speak to what he's gonna say, but I'm just telling you from what I heard out of his mouth, sitting in an office of a member of Congress? And everybody (Fox laughs) in the room, you could have heard a pin drop." Clayton Morris: "Could you give us a hint? Is it related to craft? Can you maybe dance around it a little bit? I want to say, 'You're killing me, Smalls (laughs).'" Fox: "Yeah, so if you can imagine, if you know about 'Moment of Contact,' that involves captured non-human intelligent beings. Think about that for a minute. Think about that case. I heard it out of his mouth, and I can tell you, I was in the room. And I looked around the room, and I'm looking at these young, like, guys in their 20s, you know, the staff guys? And their eyeballs were popping out of their head. My jaw was on the floor. I couldn't believe it." (There's a reason why I included that quote (living or deceased non-human intelligence) from the new Burlison/Carson/Crane legislation at the top of this tweet: At the very least, I'm confident Grusch told them that he saw photos of dead non-human beings. Bodies. But what about evidence of LIVING non-humans, aka aliens of unknown origin? More on that at the end. Fox: "My jaw was on the floor. I couldn't believe it." (Would Grusch saying he saw photos of craft and dead non-humans have that type of effect on Fox? Seems like that's something he would have expected to hear.) ~ Fox: "It was an [out of] body experience when I heard that. But I can tell you...the impression I got, was that he felt a little more protected to talk about this because of President Trump's directive to release the files, and that this... Again, this is my speculation, okay? This is not what Mr. Grusch said. "I got the impression that he was much more relaxed - even though he was still not fully relaxed - because of President Trump's directive to release these files. And that it was something that he had seen during his official investigations just within the last few years." (Imagine how much more relaxed Grusch (and others) would feel if we had an actual Executive Order from Trump with strong language to protect whistleblowers?) Fox: "And that it...I think it had an extremely profound impact on his life when he saw this evidence that he described. Again I'm leaving it right there. I've been talking with Republicans, and they said if Joe Rogan tweets about this, that the President will hear it, And I can't overstate the significance of that." (Why hasn't Rogan already done that? No excuse. Fox has been on Rogan and I'm sure he has Joe's contact information. Make it happen.) Fox: "We need people. We're not asking for money, we're not asking to get on your show, we're just asking, Mr. President, please, as many people as possible, release the files that should not be associated with national security. And that's the alien or non-human sentient beings. That's it." ~~~ (I'm going to speculate on what Grusch may have said in that room.) Fox: "I think it had an extremely profound impact on [Grusch's] life when he saw this evidence that he described." (Grusch has said he started out as a skeptic when he started looking into this. If he was shown what he felt were photos of non-human bodies, I think that might be enough to have an, "extremely profound impact on his life." Depending on exactly what those photos showed, of course.) In "Moment of Contact," Eric Davis had this exchange with Fox: James Fox: "Put me wherever you were when you got to see photographs of crash retrieval and documents. What did that feel like?" Dr. Eric Davis: "That was startling, when I actually see recorded evidence with my own eyes. Photographs, reports, and whatnot. That took it to a higher level, that kicked it up several notches of reality. And that made it very clear that this reality is very hard, very physical, very real. "And this type of evidence, you can't come by in the open literature, it's not public, it's classified. And I can't discuss what it was, but I can tell you, yeah, it's a crash retrieval, there's a craft, and there's alien bodies. That's all I can say about it." Fox: "You swear on your life that you saw those pictures?" Davis: "Oh, I swear on my life, and everybody's...my children's life, so (laughs). Yeah, I'm absolutely telling you the truth. I saw the evidence, and it's stark! I can't tell you the exact number, because it's classified, but I'll just say, there's a few dozen total retrievals." Full exchange with video... ~~~ As I said in my other post, I think Davis, Semivan, Puthoff, Kelleher, Grusch, Lacatski, Stratton, aka The AAWSAP Gang (I just made that up), may have seen the same evidence of photos and reports. Has Grusch seen more than that? I don't know. In 2025, Davis said this... Burlison: "Can you comment on whatever species have been piloting these craft? Are they largish? Are they multiple species? What was their size, and how many are usually on a craft?" Davis: "They're typically the multiple species people are familiar with. The Greys, the Nordics. People have talked about Reptilians and Insectoids. It's not that they're Reptilian or Insectoid, it's that they resemble, to the participant, a reptile, or insect type. A humanoid, because they have this...a hand, and four limbs, and a torso, so..." Burlison: "Large? Small?" Davis: "Human size, human scale." Burlison: "How many are in a crew?" Davis: "Well, the group, well, the Greys I'm familiar with from investigating the crash at Corona, which is misnamed the crash at Roswell. It's not the crash at Roswell, it's the crash at Corona, New Mexico. Those were Greys, those were four-foot tall. And the Nordics are typically human-sized, probably...I've heard five, six-feet tall. And same with the people who mislabel Reptilian and Insectoid. They're roughly that height, too. I haven't heard anything about anything seven or eight feet or nine-foot tall, of that nature." Full post with video... ~ And this past Sunday, Davis said this to The Good Trouble Show with Matt Ford... Davis: "I can say to you guys that there are a minimum of four different alien species. The credibility of that ranges on the spectrum from no credibility to high credibility. The high credibility is the classified part." Full post: My Final Thoughts (Based on everything Davis has shared, it seems he saw classified photos of what appeared to him to be non-human craft and photos that appeared to show dead non-humans (bodies) with enough detail that he could see that some resembled reptiles and others resembled insects. Were there also photos of Greys and beings that looked human (Nordic)? I don't know. These images of non-humans would fall into what Davis deemed "high credibility" and "the classified part.") Davis: "I saw the evidence, and it's stark!" (If Davis saw close-up photos that showed details of beings that looked like Reptilians and Mantids, I'd say that qualifies as stark!) Back to what Fox said... Fox: "Then, what Mr. Grusch revealed to all of us, what he had seen with his own eyes, left the room speechless. It drew the oxygen out of the room. I looked at everybody in that room, and their eyeballs were popping out. My jaw was on the floor. Like, I simply couldn't believe what he'd seen with his own eyes." (I think what caused that reaction was Grusch describing seeing close-up photos of different types of non-human beings. Maybe.) However, Fox also said this: "...if you can imagine, if you know about 'Moment of Contact,' that involves captured non-human intelligent beings (This is the Varginha, Brazil case. ~Joe). Think about that for a minute. Think about that case. I heard it out of his mouth, and I can tell you, I was in the room." (The biggest CLAIM in that film and from that case is that a live, non-human being was captured and that Dr. Italo saw video of it, and then stood next to it for a few minutes when it was in the hospital, in a bed, being cared for by another doctor. Did Grusch say he saw evidence (photos or videos) of a live being that appeared to be non-human? Joe Rogan asked him that in his November 2023 interview... Grusch: "Once you realize the phenomenon's real, then you realize we've recovered artifacts and, you know, biologics or, you know, dead pilots, if you will, even though it's kind of creepy to think about in your world view. You don't think they were ever, you know, alive sometimes, too, right? And I'll leave it at that, only because, you know, that is something the President and his cabinet need to disclose this in a controlled manner." (He was either hinting that he's seen them alive or that them being alive and on this planet is a huge deal and not his responsibility to announce. I think it's the latter.) Rogan: "Are there discussions of interactions with live beings?" Grusch: "Uhh, there was some water-cooler talk about that kind of thing." Rogan: "But that's it?" Grusch: "But, you know, I don't even wanna get into it because it's like, uh, there was some details provided to me but it's like, it's secondary and I don't know if that's like, the telephone game and I don't know if it was hyperbolized in any way...um, you know, in the break room, so to speak. So I just... I'm so anal about making sure what I say is accurate...I don't, you know, I don't know." (Based on what he said there, it seems like he has NOT seen any evidence of live beings. If he now comes out and says that he has, it will seem like a flip flop. So, I'm gonna go with Grusch said he saw photos of non-human bodies and they were of the different types/species that Dr. Eric Davis referenced. One more flashback to what Davis said in that public, congressional briefing in May of 2025.) Davis: "It's not that they're Reptilian or Insectoid, it's that they resemble, to the participant, a reptile, or insect type." (That sounds like someone who has seen exactly what they look like, via photos.) Final point... "Examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence." ~Burlison Proposed Legislation (That language was in the original UAPD Disclosure Act co-sponsored by Senators Schumer and Rounds, and four other senators. Why put that language in there if you haven't heard credible reports of living or deceased (bodies) non-human intelligence? Are there stories of living, non-humans on this planet? Yes, and I'll leave you with one of them.) ) (Just to make it clear: I think Grusch will say that he saw clear photos of different types of non-human bodies and some looked like reptiles and others looked like insects. It would be amazing to hear Grusch say he saw video or film of living beings, but I don't expect that. However...this still bothers me... Would Grusch describing seeing photos of craft and different kinds of dead aliens leave veteran-of-the-UFO-field, James Fox, with his jaw on the floor? I guess we're gonna see. And hopefully soon.)

👽 Did Grusch See Footage of Live Aliens? 👽 "Grusch has seen evidence that will leave you slack-jawed when you hear it." ~JF 😶 What Left Congress Speechless, and Staffers with Their Eyes Popping Out of Their Heads? 😱 ~ "Examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence." ~Burlison Proposed Legislation (I'm gonna break all of this down and give you my speculation on what left Fox with his jaw on the floor, members of Congress speechless, and their senior staffers with their eyes popping out of their heads.) ~ James Fox: " Probably about two weeks ago (late May), we were having meetings on The Hill with members of Congress. We brought in a PR firm, 42 West, and we were having a meeting with staff members, bipartisan. We had Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Rep. Tim Burchett Press Office, Rep. Eric Burlison. We had a representative from Congressman Jared Moskowitz's office. We had a number of Chiefs of Staff (top staffer for a specific member of Congress), like, present." (Don't really know why they needed a public relations firm in attendance, but if it helps them with advice on how to handle this, so be it. Just know: it appears like members of that PR firm know what Grusch said, and we don't.) Fox: "And, I can't reveal what was said. I thought it was gonna be said at the actual event that we had yesterday (June 9th) in DC with Mr. Grusch." (Don't be mad at Fox for keeping his word to Grusch and not sharing what was said in that private meeting. But I don't blame people for being annoyed that Grusch shared this information six or so weeks ago and we still don't know what he said in that room.) Fox: "Then, what Mr. Grusch revealed to all of us, what he had seen with his own eyes, left the room speechless. It drew the oxygen out of the room. I looked at everybody in that room, and their eyeballs were popping out. My jaw was on the floor. Like, I simply couldn't believe what he'd seen with his own eyes. Like, I can't wait for it to come out. "So I asked Mr. Grusch today, 'Can I talk about what I heard?' And he's like, 'No, but I will be addressing it very soon.'" (Like I said, it's almost been one month now (June 12) since Fox said this, so what does "very soon" mean? Was Grusch supposed to share this information on CNN with Jake Tapper last week but it didn't happen because that interview was, reportedly (Fox told us), postponed?) Fox: "So that's where we stand right now. But I can tell you, Mr. Grusch has seen evidence that will leave you slack-jawed when you hear it. It's coming, it's coming." (We heard that Gruch's Op/Ed was coming soon and that was 2.5 years ago. It never happened. So, I don't blame people for being skeptical about this. If Grusch hasn't told us by this time next week, I propose someone (a member of Congress) who was in that room just tell us. That's fair, right? Total transparency from our elected representatives?) ~ Fox: "Mr. Grusch is legitimately concerned about his personal safety. He's coming out with it, I promise you, this is coming out. He assured me today that he will address this issue to the general public very soon, in the near future." (I'm glad Grusch told a room full of people what he saw, as that may offer him some protection from people who allegedly want him to stop talking.) Fox: "So I can't speak to what he's gonna say, but I'm just telling you from what I heard out of his mouth, sitting in an office of a member of Congress? And everybody (Fox laughs) in the room, you could have heard a pin drop." Clayton Morris: "Could you give us a hint? Is it related to craft? Can you maybe dance around it a little bit? I want to say, 'You're killing me, Smalls (laughs).'" Fox: "Yeah, so if you can imagine, if you know about 'Moment of Contact,' that involves captured non-human intelligent beings. Think about that for a minute. Think about that case. I heard it out of his mouth, and I can tell you, I was in the room. And I looked around the room, and I'm looking at these young, like, guys in their 20s, you know, the staff guys? And their eyeballs were popping out of their head. My jaw was on the floor. I couldn't believe it." (There's a reason why I included that quote (living or deceased non-human intelligence) from the new Burlison/Carson/Crane legislation at the top of this tweet: At the very least, I'm confident Grusch told them that he saw photos of dead non-human beings. Bodies. But what about evidence of LIVING non-humans, aka aliens of unknown origin? More on that at the end. Fox: "My jaw was on the floor. I couldn't believe it." (Would Grusch saying he saw photos of craft and dead non-humans have that type of effect on Fox? Seems like that's something he would have expected to hear.) ~ Fox: "It was an [out of] body experience when I heard that. But I can tell you...the impression I got, was that he felt a little more protected to talk about this because of President Trump's directive to release the files, and that this... Again, this is my speculation, okay? This is not what Mr. Grusch said. "I got the impression that he was much more relaxed - even though he was still not fully relaxed - because of President Trump's directive to release these files. And that it was something that he had seen during his official investigations just within the last few years." (Imagine how much more relaxed Grusch (and others) would feel if we had an actual Executive Order from Trump with strong language to protect whistleblowers?) Fox: "And that it...I think it had an extremely profound impact on his life when he saw this evidence that he described. Again I'm leaving it right there. I've been talking with Republicans, and they said if Joe Rogan tweets about this, that the President will hear it, And I can't overstate the significance of that." (Why hasn't Rogan already done that? No excuse. Fox has been on Rogan and I'm sure he has Joe's contact information. Make it happen.) Fox: "We need people. We're not asking for money, we're not asking to get on your show, we're just asking, Mr. President, please, as many people as possible, release the files that should not be associated with national security. And that's the alien or non-human sentient beings. That's it." ~ (I'm going to speculate on what Grusch may have said in that room.) Fox: "I think it had an extremely profound impact on [Grusch's] life when he saw this evidence that he described." (Grusch has said he started out as a skeptic when he started looking into this. If he was shown what he felt were photos of non-human bodies, I think that might be enough to have an, "extremely profound impact on his life." Depending on exactly what those photos showed, of course.) In "Moment of Contact," Eric Davis had this exchange with Fox: James Fox: "Put me wherever you were when you got to see photographs of crash retrieval and documents. What did that feel like?" Dr. Eric Davis: "That was startling, when I actually see recorded evidence with my own eyes. Photographs, reports, and whatnot. That took it to a higher level, that kicked it up several notches of reality. And that made it very clear that this reality is very hard, very physical, very real. "And this type of evidence, you can't come by in the open literature, it's not public, it's classified. And I can't discuss what it was, but I can tell you, yeah, it's a crash retrieval, there's a craft, and there's alien bodies. That's all I can say about it." Fox: "You swear on your life that you saw those pictures?" Davis: "Oh, I swear on my life, and everybody's...my children's life, so (laughs). Yeah, I'm absolutely telling you the truth. I saw the evidence, and it's stark! I can't tell you the exact number, because it's classified, but I'll just say, there's a few dozen total retrievals." Full exchange with video... ~ As I said in my other post, I think Davis, Semivan, Puthoff, Kelleher, Grusch, Lacatski, Stratton, aka The AAWSAP Gang (I just made that up), may have seen the same evidence of photos and reports. Has Grusch seen more than that? I don't know. In 2025, Davis said this... Burlison: "Can you comment on whatever species have been piloting these craft? Are they largish? Are they multiple species? What was their size, and how many are usually on a craft?" Davis: "They're typically the multiple species people are familiar with. The Greys, the Nordics. People have talked about Reptilians and Insectoids. It's not that they're Reptilian or Insectoid, it's that they resemble, to the participant, a reptile, or insect type. A humanoid, because they have this...a hand, and four limbs, and a torso, so..." Burlison: "Large? Small?" Davis: "Human size, human scale." Burlison: "How many are in a crew?" Davis: "Well, the group, well, the Greys I'm familiar with from investigating the crash at Corona, which is misnamed the crash at Roswell. It's not the crash at Roswell, it's the crash at Corona, New Mexico. Those were Greys, those were four-foot tall. And the Nordics are typically human-sized, probably...I've heard five, six-feet tall. And same with the people who mislabel Reptilian and Insectoid. They're roughly that height, too. I haven't heard anything about anything seven or eight feet or nine-foot tall, of that nature." Full post with video... ~ And this past Sunday, Davis said this to The Good Trouble Show with Matt Ford... Davis: "I can say to you guys that there are a minimum of four different alien species. The credibility of that ranges on the spectrum from no credibility to high credibility. The high credibility is the classified part." Full post: My Final Thoughts (Based on everything Davis has shared, it seems he saw classified photos of what appeared to him to be non-human craft and photos that appeared to show dead non-humans (bodies) with enough detail that he could see that some resembled reptiles and others resembled insects. Were there also photos of Greys and beings that looked human (Nordic)? I don't know. These images of non-humans would fall into what Davis deemed "high credibility" and "the classified part.") Davis: "I saw the evidence, and it's stark!" (If Davis saw close-up photos that showed details of beings that looked like Reptilians and Mantids, I'd say that qualifies as stark!) Back to what Fox said... Fox: "Then, what Mr. Grusch revealed to all of us, what he had seen with his own eyes, left the room speechless. It drew the oxygen out of the room. I looked at everybody in that room, and their eyeballs were popping out. My jaw was on the floor. Like, I simply couldn't believe what he'd seen with his own eyes." (I think what caused that reaction was Grusch describing seeing close-up photos of different types of non-human beings. Maybe.) However, Fox also said this: "...if you can imagine, if you know about 'Moment of Contact,' that involves captured non-human intelligent beings (This is the Varginha, Brazil case. ~Joe). Think about that for a minute. Think about that case. I heard it out of his mouth, and I can tell you, I was in the room." (The biggest CLAIM in that film and from that case is that a live, non-human being was captured and that Dr. Italo saw video of it, and then stood next to it for a few minutes when it was in the hospital, in a bed, being cared for by another doctor. Did Grusch say he saw evidence (photos or videos) of a live being that appeared to be non-human? Joe Rogan asked him that in his November 2023 interview... Grusch: "Once you realize the phenomenon's real, then you realize we've recovered artifacts and, you know, biologics or, you know, dead pilots, if you will, even though it's kind of creepy to think about in your world view. You don't think they were ever, you know, alive sometimes, too, right? And I'll leave it at that, only because, you know, that is something the President and his cabinet need to disclose this in a controlled manner." (He was either hinting that he's seen them alive or that them being alive and on this planet is a huge deal and not his responsibility to announce. I think it's the latter.) Rogan: "Are there discussions of interactions with live beings?" Grusch: "Uhh, there was some water-cooler talk about that kind of thing." Rogan: "But that's it?" Grusch: "But, you know, I don't even wanna get into it because it's like, uh, there was some details provided to me but it's like, it's secondary and I don't know if that's like, the telephone game and I don't know if it was hyperbolized in any way...um, you know, in the break room, so to speak. So I just... I'm so anal about making sure what I say is accurate...I don't, you know, I don't know." (Based on what he said there, it seems like he has NOT seen any evidence of live beings. If he now comes out and says that he has, it will seem like a flip flop. So, I'm gonna go with Grusch said he saw photos of non-human bodies and they were of the different types/species that Dr. Eric Davis referenced. One more flashback to what Davis said in that public, congressional briefing in May of 2025.) Davis: "It's not that they're Reptilian or Insectoid, it's that they resemble, to the participant, a reptile, or insect type." (That sounds like someone who has seen exactly what they look like, via photos.) Final point... "Examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence." ~Burlison Proposed Legislation (That language was in the original UAPD Disclosure Act co-sponsored by Senators Schumer and Rounds, and four other senators. Why put that language in there if you haven't heard credible reports of living or deceased (bodies) non-human intelligence? Are there stories of living, non-humans on this planet? Yes, and I'll leave you with one of them.) ) (Just to make it clear: I think Grusch will say that he saw clear photos of different types of non-human bodies and some looked like reptiles and others looked like insects. It would be amazing to hear Grusch say he saw video or film of living beings, but I don't expect that. However...this still bothers me... Would Grusch describing seeing photos of craft and different kinds of dead aliens leave veteran-of-the-UFO-field, James Fox, with his jaw on the floor? I guess we're gonna see. And hopefully soon.)

Joe Murgia

168,599 views • 24 days ago

While we are busy focused on the 2030 presidential term extension theatrics, the presidential race to take over from President Emmerson Mnangagwa is already in full swing inside ZANUPF. It is an open secret that Mnangagwa’s preferred successor is businessman Kudakwashe Tagwirei, and the dark horse is General Valerio Sibanda, who retired from the army in an announcement made yesterday by the presidency. Tagwirei is already on a campaign trail which some have not observed, and all the issues he is raising are carefully crafted to resonate with ordinary citizens, shifting from liberation struggle slogans like Pasi neMhandu to Pasi neNhamo and Mari Muhomwe. He is deliberately rebranding himself as a champion of economic grievances, positioning his message to speak directly to poverty, hardship, and the cost of living, rather than the old liberation rhetoric. This is not accidental, his nemesis is a soldier and military general whose track record is rooted in Zimbabwe's excesses. What Tagwirei is doing is planting in his rallies a political seed that he hopes will germinate between now and 2027, when the ZANUPF Congress is expected to elect a new leader, or even earlier if an extraordinary congress is convened as some in the ruling party suspect might happen. That seed is intended to carry him into 2028, when the general election is due, if he succeeds in taking over should his principal, President Mnangagwa, not change his mind or Chiwenga stages a dramatic miracle coup. He is laying the groundwork early, shaping public perception, opinion and positioning himself as the natural successor by tapping into economic frustrations that ordinary citizens understand and feel every day. The elites see things differently, but it is the poor in townships and rural Zimbabwe who are being targeted with this messaging. When I look at the political landscape in Zimbabwe today, I see nobody else, either in the opposition or in ZANUPF, offering a clear and solid message that speaks to the people’s real needs. What we consider logical in elite circles does not sell to the poor, their needs are immediate. They want solutions for today, regardless of who created the problems that require solutions. While the educated elites talk about root-cause analysis and solutions for a distant future in their scenarios, the ordinary citizens want Sapatina, a euphemism for something that comes today, coined by a man who was perfectly happy eating chicken and chips/fries at State House. Our struggles are different. Vice President General Constantino Chiwenga, who thought he was a shoo in to become the next president after leading a coup against Robert Mugabe and making way for Mnangagwa, is now talking about corruption, something we have discussed for years to appeal to the masses. But Tagwirei is positioning himself differently. He is in full campaign mode, planting messages aimed at securing his place in the succession race, messages of economic prosperity. He is speaking to the daily needs of ZANUPF supporters and Zimbabweans in general. He is placing himself before the electorate, travelling, being visible, leveraging state linked platforms, and promising youths economic empowerment. Meanwhile, the general is speaking in closed boardrooms, and nobody has heard him speak directly to his presidential ambitions outside his own circle. Tagwirei is out in the open shaping a constituency, while Chiwenga remains confined to private spaces that do not build political momentum. That does not look regular to me unless he has an ace up his sleeves, a coup, because a coup does not require much talking. But as Mnangagwa shuts all the options once available to him by creating a state security sector in his own image, the prospects of a coup become slimmer with each move made by Mnangagwa. In closing those doors and pathways, Mnangagwa has effectively weakened Chiwenga’s leverage and narrowed the space in which he could plausibly attempt anything outside the formal succession path using ZANUPF internal processes. Tagwirei’s "meet the people" type of rallies with music stars in tow point to a group of people focused on winning hearts and minds both inside and outside ZANUPF. They have money. The other side has passion and entitlement, but without money there is very little political traction in Zimbabwe’s political theatre, where loyalties change based on what is on the table. Politics the world over is about money, that is why Elon Musk claimed that he won the election for Donald Trump, and that is why Trump said you need US$5 billion to become a president in America, it is about money. When you strip away the slogans and the drama, the real engine of political power is financial muscle, whether in Zimbabwe, America, or anywhere else. Tagwirei’s Godfather Mnangagwa understands that politics in Zimbabwe is transactional, and he is investing heavily in shaping perceptions, building networks, and buying influence long before the succession battle formally begins. Those opposed to Mnangagwa and his faction must not wake up tomorrow pretending they did not see this coming. It is obvious that Tagwirei is positioning himself as the most visible, accessible and well financed candidate within ZANUPF. It is also obvious that there is no opposition in Zimbabwe and that Chiwenga’s grip has been terribly loosened in unthinkable ways. Anyone paying attention can see the succession terrain shifting, and those who fail to read these signals will only have themselves to blame when the outcome unfolds. The question for the remnants of the main opposition is simple. What are you doing about 2028? Because while everyone is distracted by the talk of 2030, that talk may turn out to be a political ruse, a deliberate decoy to make us ignore what is unfolding on the ground. 2030 could be the bait that sends General Chiwenga chasing shadows while his real competitor campaigns at grassroots level, spends money, and entrenches himself as a household name. Mnangagwa is a political strategist who has won politically through hook or crook, so it would be a fatal mistake to assume that he has only one plan. A second option is to push for 2030, not with the intention of serving until then, but to block General Chiwenga at a congress and secure enough time to hand over to a successor of his choice after defeating Chiwenga. That is on condition that Chiwenga even has the guts to challenge him for the party leadership, which at the moment looks increasingly doubtful. If General Chiwenga puts his faith in the ZANUPF electoral processes through Congress or an Extraordinary Congress which elects a leader, then he is finished. He will be beaten on the floor even by Kuda Tagwirei, not because of anything else, but because Tagwirei and the Mnangagwa team have the resources that the general might not want to spend, even though he is a wealthy man, or might not actually have available as disposable funds for an internal election campaign he is likely to lose. Mnangagwa also has the power of incumbency, something that has been stripped away from Chiwenga as his lieutenants were retired or died one by one. That erosion of his inner circle has left him exposed, weakened, and without the institutional backing he once relied on. Mnangagwa, meanwhile, has consolidated the state, the party, and the security apparatus in his favour, widening the gulf between the two men. What we are seeing now is the opening of the presidential race, with Mnangagwa’s side fully satisfied that they have degraded Chiwenga’s powers to a point where they can now campaign openly. Where is the general? The consolidation of power in the army through the appointment of General Walter Tapfumaneyi, who worked closely with Tagwirei during the 2023 elections, is a clear signal of the new power architecture. More military purges are coming, including the removal of Chiwenga’s wife from military intelligence, and each one further isolates Chiwenga while tightening Mnangagwa’s control over the security establishment. This systematic dismantling of his support base makes it clear that the succession battle has already begun, and that Chiwenga is being pushed further away from the centres of real power with every move. The Chinese general Sun Tzu teaches that “all warfare is based on deception”, and Mnangagwa has perfected this by using 2030 as a decoy while quietly weakening Chiwenga and allowing Tagwirei to advance. He has also mastered the art of appearing weak when he is strong, and appearing strong when he is weak, creating confusion while he restructures the state and securing loyalty across the security ranks. Those in the media and diplomatic circles know that Mnangagwa deliberately appeared weak on many occasions, and his emissaries would tell diplomats and journalists that he had no power to act on many serious issues because Chiwenga was supposedly too powerful. It was an illusion they deliberately created. They created a fictitious image of an all-powerful General Chiwenga, a narrative that fits perfectly into Sun Tzu’s teaching about appearing weak when you are strong and appearing strong when you are weak. There were also moments when Mnangagwa appeared very strong, such as in 2019 when Chiwenga's side thought of carrying out a coup. Mnangagwa projected firmness, yet behind the scenes he was weak, hesitant, and deeply indecisive in dealing with the unfolding crisis. If you remember the period when the internet was shut down, that moment exposed just how fragile the inner workings of power were, despite the public portrayal of a decisive leader. Mnangagwa’s team, led by Tagwirei, now embodies the wisdom that “victorious warriors win first and then go to war”, planting narratives, building visibility, and mobilising resources long before the battle officially begins. In this environment, the utter disarray in the opposition makes it effortless for ZANUPF to open war fronts within itself, because when the enemy outside has collapsed, the real contest becomes the fight to inherit the throne.

While we are busy focused on the 2030 presidential term extension theatrics, the presidential race to take over from President Emmerson Mnangagwa is already in full swing inside ZANUPF. It is an open secret that Mnangagwa’s preferred successor is businessman Kudakwashe Tagwirei, and the dark horse is General Valerio Sibanda, who retired from the army in an announcement made yesterday by the presidency. Tagwirei is already on a campaign trail which some have not observed, and all the issues he is raising are carefully crafted to resonate with ordinary citizens, shifting from liberation struggle slogans like Pasi neMhandu to Pasi neNhamo and Mari Muhomwe. He is deliberately rebranding himself as a champion of economic grievances, positioning his message to speak directly to poverty, hardship, and the cost of living, rather than the old liberation rhetoric. This is not accidental, his nemesis is a soldier and military general whose track record is rooted in Zimbabwe's excesses. What Tagwirei is doing is planting in his rallies a political seed that he hopes will germinate between now and 2027, when the ZANUPF Congress is expected to elect a new leader, or even earlier if an extraordinary congress is convened as some in the ruling party suspect might happen. That seed is intended to carry him into 2028, when the general election is due, if he succeeds in taking over should his principal, President Mnangagwa, not change his mind or Chiwenga stages a dramatic miracle coup. He is laying the groundwork early, shaping public perception, opinion and positioning himself as the natural successor by tapping into economic frustrations that ordinary citizens understand and feel every day. The elites see things differently, but it is the poor in townships and rural Zimbabwe who are being targeted with this messaging. When I look at the political landscape in Zimbabwe today, I see nobody else, either in the opposition or in ZANUPF, offering a clear and solid message that speaks to the people’s real needs. What we consider logical in elite circles does not sell to the poor, their needs are immediate. They want solutions for today, regardless of who created the problems that require solutions. While the educated elites talk about root-cause analysis and solutions for a distant future in their scenarios, the ordinary citizens want Sapatina, a euphemism for something that comes today, coined by a man who was perfectly happy eating chicken and chips/fries at State House. Our struggles are different. Vice President General Constantino Chiwenga, who thought he was a shoo in to become the next president after leading a coup against Robert Mugabe and making way for Mnangagwa, is now talking about corruption, something we have discussed for years to appeal to the masses. But Tagwirei is positioning himself differently. He is in full campaign mode, planting messages aimed at securing his place in the succession race, messages of economic prosperity. He is speaking to the daily needs of ZANUPF supporters and Zimbabweans in general. He is placing himself before the electorate, travelling, being visible, leveraging state linked platforms, and promising youths economic empowerment. Meanwhile, the general is speaking in closed boardrooms, and nobody has heard him speak directly to his presidential ambitions outside his own circle. Tagwirei is out in the open shaping a constituency, while Chiwenga remains confined to private spaces that do not build political momentum. That does not look regular to me unless he has an ace up his sleeves, a coup, because a coup does not require much talking. But as Mnangagwa shuts all the options once available to him by creating a state security sector in his own image, the prospects of a coup become slimmer with each move made by Mnangagwa. In closing those doors and pathways, Mnangagwa has effectively weakened Chiwenga’s leverage and narrowed the space in which he could plausibly attempt anything outside the formal succession path using ZANUPF internal processes. Tagwirei’s "meet the people" type of rallies with music stars in tow point to a group of people focused on winning hearts and minds both inside and outside ZANUPF. They have money. The other side has passion and entitlement, but without money there is very little political traction in Zimbabwe’s political theatre, where loyalties change based on what is on the table. Politics the world over is about money, that is why Elon Musk claimed that he won the election for Donald Trump, and that is why Trump said you need US$5 billion to become a president in America, it is about money. When you strip away the slogans and the drama, the real engine of political power is financial muscle, whether in Zimbabwe, America, or anywhere else. Tagwirei’s Godfather Mnangagwa understands that politics in Zimbabwe is transactional, and he is investing heavily in shaping perceptions, building networks, and buying influence long before the succession battle formally begins. Those opposed to Mnangagwa and his faction must not wake up tomorrow pretending they did not see this coming. It is obvious that Tagwirei is positioning himself as the most visible, accessible and well financed candidate within ZANUPF. It is also obvious that there is no opposition in Zimbabwe and that Chiwenga’s grip has been terribly loosened in unthinkable ways. Anyone paying attention can see the succession terrain shifting, and those who fail to read these signals will only have themselves to blame when the outcome unfolds. The question for the remnants of the main opposition is simple. What are you doing about 2028? Because while everyone is distracted by the talk of 2030, that talk may turn out to be a political ruse, a deliberate decoy to make us ignore what is unfolding on the ground. 2030 could be the bait that sends General Chiwenga chasing shadows while his real competitor campaigns at grassroots level, spends money, and entrenches himself as a household name. Mnangagwa is a political strategist who has won politically through hook or crook, so it would be a fatal mistake to assume that he has only one plan. A second option is to push for 2030, not with the intention of serving until then, but to block General Chiwenga at a congress and secure enough time to hand over to a successor of his choice after defeating Chiwenga. That is on condition that Chiwenga even has the guts to challenge him for the party leadership, which at the moment looks increasingly doubtful. If General Chiwenga puts his faith in the ZANUPF electoral processes through Congress or an Extraordinary Congress which elects a leader, then he is finished. He will be beaten on the floor even by Kuda Tagwirei, not because of anything else, but because Tagwirei and the Mnangagwa team have the resources that the general might not want to spend, even though he is a wealthy man, or might not actually have available as disposable funds for an internal election campaign he is likely to lose. Mnangagwa also has the power of incumbency, something that has been stripped away from Chiwenga as his lieutenants were retired or died one by one. That erosion of his inner circle has left him exposed, weakened, and without the institutional backing he once relied on. Mnangagwa, meanwhile, has consolidated the state, the party, and the security apparatus in his favour, widening the gulf between the two men. What we are seeing now is the opening of the presidential race, with Mnangagwa’s side fully satisfied that they have degraded Chiwenga’s powers to a point where they can now campaign openly. Where is the general? The consolidation of power in the army through the appointment of General Walter Tapfumaneyi, who worked closely with Tagwirei during the 2023 elections, is a clear signal of the new power architecture. More military purges are coming, including the removal of Chiwenga’s wife from military intelligence, and each one further isolates Chiwenga while tightening Mnangagwa’s control over the security establishment. This systematic dismantling of his support base makes it clear that the succession battle has already begun, and that Chiwenga is being pushed further away from the centres of real power with every move. The Chinese general Sun Tzu teaches that “all warfare is based on deception”, and Mnangagwa has perfected this by using 2030 as a decoy while quietly weakening Chiwenga and allowing Tagwirei to advance. He has also mastered the art of appearing weak when he is strong, and appearing strong when he is weak, creating confusion while he restructures the state and securing loyalty across the security ranks. Those in the media and diplomatic circles know that Mnangagwa deliberately appeared weak on many occasions, and his emissaries would tell diplomats and journalists that he had no power to act on many serious issues because Chiwenga was supposedly too powerful. It was an illusion they deliberately created. They created a fictitious image of an all-powerful General Chiwenga, a narrative that fits perfectly into Sun Tzu’s teaching about appearing weak when you are strong and appearing strong when you are weak. There were also moments when Mnangagwa appeared very strong, such as in 2019 when Chiwenga's side thought of carrying out a coup. Mnangagwa projected firmness, yet behind the scenes he was weak, hesitant, and deeply indecisive in dealing with the unfolding crisis. If you remember the period when the internet was shut down, that moment exposed just how fragile the inner workings of power were, despite the public portrayal of a decisive leader. Mnangagwa’s team, led by Tagwirei, now embodies the wisdom that “victorious warriors win first and then go to war”, planting narratives, building visibility, and mobilising resources long before the battle officially begins. In this environment, the utter disarray in the opposition makes it effortless for ZANUPF to open war fronts within itself, because when the enemy outside has collapsed, the real contest becomes the fight to inherit the throne.

Hopewell Chin’ono

58,058 views • 8 months ago