Tired of corrupt politicians? Here’s a fix: Pay Reps $1M/yr, Senators $4M/yr. Ban all investments except 3 stock buckets: high-risk, market, low-risk (max 50% in any). No insider trading, no lobbyist payoffs. Forces transparency, kills graft. What do you think?

Is there anything with a name more appropriate than "Grout" (besides whippoorwill of course)?

Today, we remember a legend. On this day in history, Harambe would have celebrated another birthday. An icon that became part of internet history, American culture, and an entire generation’s timeline. Tomorrow marks 10 years since we lost him. Ten years since the moment the world stopped scrolling and collectively mourned something bigger than a meme. He became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity, and the strange beauty of the internet bringing millions of people together for one cause: never forgetting Harambe. Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news. And somehow, a decade later, his legacy still lives on. Gone, but never forgotten. Rest easy to a true patriot. 🕊️🇺🇸 May 27, 1999 — May 28, 2016 Forever in our hearts.

@elonmusk Elon, My husband Ted and I share this X account, and we’ve posted together many times. But today I wanted to write to you personally, from my own heart. I want to thank you for creating tools that help me learn something new every single day, that make my life better, and that actually make me excited to live longer — because your inventions keep getting more amazing. I was born in 1942 in Normandy, France, under German occupation. In 1946, my family moved to the coast along the English Channel. So many towns and villages had been damaged or destroyed. As children, we played among the old bunkers and in cemeteries. Later in life, I married an American airman, moved to the United States with him, earned a doctorate in education, and spent my career teaching languages. Now I’m 84 years old, retired, and living in Alaska with my husband of 64 years. Not long ago I discovered you and your work. We recently bought a Cyberbeast, and I love everything about it — the comfort, the incredible technology, and especially FSD, which we use every day. We even installed a Starlink dish on our roof so we have reliable internet everywhere in Alaska. I use Grok every single day. Thanks to you, I’m now learning about AI itself — at 84! I also use X daily because it lets me see what’s really happening in the world, without media filters or propaganda, and connect with people from every corner of the globe. Instead of living in the past and reminiscing about the “good old days,” I wake up every morning excited to see what new invention or breakthrough you’re working on and what the future will bring. Thank you, Elon, from the bottom of my old heart. You’ve made this 84-year-old woman feel young and hopeful again. ❤️ Françoise Here we are with our new Cyberbeast !

I am the Senior Vice President of Late Night Strategy at CBS. I am the person who turned a comedian into a priest and charged advertisers to watch the congregation. I want to be precise about what I built. Not a comedy show. A permission structure. For eleven years, six million Americans tuned in every night to find out what they were allowed to believe by morning. We didn't sell jokes. We sold certainty. Certainty costs nothing to produce. People will pay anything for it. We charged $50 million a year and still lost money because it turns out permission is even cheaper than we thought. In 2014, we had a genuinely dangerous comedian. A man who once testified before Congress in character as a fictional conservative pundit and made the entire chamber look like they'd been pantsed on C-SPAN. His fake persona was the most brilliant satire on television. Layered. Ironic. Unpredictable. The character could say anything because nothing was real. The character was the art. The character was the comedian. We killed the character and put the real man on stage. The real man was a lecturer. Earnest. Thoughtful. Correct about everything. Correct is not funny. Correct is not dangerous. Correct is the absence of danger. We promoted the absence of danger and called it growth. His character could make a Senate committee squirm. The real him makes an audience nod. Nodding pays the same as squirming. Nodding is easier to produce. His final words on air were "We love doing this show for you, but what we really, really love is doing this show with you." The audience wept. I wrote that line. Not the words. The architecture that made those words feel true. For eleven years, the audience believed they were participants. They were not participants. They were the product. "With you" is what you say to a congregation. A comedian says "at you." We hadn't said "at you" since 2015. Our internal metric was called Affirm Rate. It measured the percentage of monologue segments that generated applause instead of laughter. I invented this metric. I also invented the bonus structure tied to it. In 2015, our Affirm Rate was 34%. By 2022, it was 94%. I received a raise every year. We are crushing it. At the things I made up. That's performance management. But I need to tell you about the real discovery. The one I put in a deck called "Content Strategy 2019-2024." The one that got me promoted. Agreement gets applause. I knew that early. But correction — telling the audience their vocabulary is slightly outdated, their outrage is aimed two degrees off-center, their feelings are valid but their phrasing needs work — correction gets them back tomorrow. Agreement is a transaction. Correction is a subscription. We converted a comedy show into a nightly software update for moral vocabulary. Churn was near zero. They couldn't afford to miss an episode. Missing an episode meant using last week's words in this week's meeting. That's social death. We monetized the fear of social death and called it entertainment. I want to be honest about something. The content was not bipartisan. We chose a side. But I need you to understand: we did not choose it because we believed in it. We chose it because that side's audience is more responsive to correction. They want to be updated. They want to be told their language is outdated. They experience correction as care. The other side does not respond to correction. They respond to provocation. Provocation is harder to monetize. You can't build a subscription on provocation because the audience doesn't come back to learn — they come back to fight. Fighting is unpredictable. Correction is scheduled. We optimized for the audience that wants to be told what to think. That audience leaned one direction. That's not ideology. That's market segmentation. The writers' room had a whiteboard. In 2015 it said "What's funny?" In 2018 it said "What should they feel?" By 2021 it said "What are they still saying wrong?" I watched that whiteboard evolve like a finch beak and I never intervened. The market was speaking. We listened. Listening to the market is the same as leading the audience. They can't tell the difference. A writer named Marcus raised his hand in 2019. "What if we just tried to make them laugh again?" I thanked him for his passion and scheduled a creative alignment conversation. He transferred to streaming development within the month. The Affirm Rate the week he left was 91%. Laughter would have brought it down. That's risk management. Here is what nobody will say out loud. I will say it because I am proud of it. We made our audience worse at politics. Not better. Worse. Every night for eleven years, we expressed their outrage for them. Professionally. With a band and good lighting. And because the outrage had been expressed — because a man in a suit had furrowed his brow with the precise calibrated degree of indignation — they didn't need to express it themselves. They watched. They clapped. They felt the catharsis of resistance without resisting anything. They went to bed having done nothing and feeling like they'd done something. That's the product. Not comedy. Not information. Catharsis. Catharsis is the enemy of action. A man who has screamed into a pillow does not then also scream in the street. We were the pillow. A $50 million pillow with a house band. If you feel the outrage has been expressed for you, you will not march. You will not organize. You will not call your representative. You will tune in tomorrow to feel it expressed again. That's retention. Our retention was extraordinary. I want to talk about the comedy-to-catechism pipeline because I think people underestimate what we achieved. Stage one: comedian makes jokes about the powerful. Audience laughs because the powerful are absurd. This is the Carlin model. The jester punches up. Everyone below feels relief. Stage two: comedian makes jokes about people who disagree with the audience. Audience laughs because disagreement is stupid. The jester has turned around. He's still on the stage but now he's facing the crowd with a pointer. Stage three: comedian stops making jokes. Comedian identifies incorrect beliefs and explains why they're dangerous. Audience does not laugh. Audience claps. The jester is gone. In his place: a hall monitor with a desk and a band. Stage four: audience watches not for entertainment but for certification. Having seen last night's episode means you know which words are current. Not having seen it means you might use yesterday's vocabulary in today's meeting. The show is no longer comedy. It is a credential. Watching it means you are educated. Not watching means you are the person being discussed. We made a show that you watch to prove you're not the kind of person who doesn't watch it. That's a closed loop. Closed loops don't need content. They need continuity. We provided continuity for $50 million a year. A comedian — whose entire historical function was to say things too dangerous for anyone else to say — became the person who decides which things are too dangerous for anyone to say. And the audience applauded. Every night. For 2,500 nights. Because being told what is forbidden feels exactly like being told what you already knew. Prohibition performed as validation. I put that in the deck too. Our audience was correct about everything. I know this because they applauded everything we said. The applause proved the correctness. The correctness justified the applause. We called this audience research. The methodology was peer-reviewed by the audience. They approved unanimously. Every night. The actually funny comedians left. They went to podcasts. To clubs. To rooms where the audience doesn't know what's coming and that uncertainty is the point. They took the laughter with them. We kept the applause. We called those spaces problematic. That's market differentiation. The problematic spaces are funnier. But funny is not our product. We lost $40 million a year. We didn't lose it because the show failed. We lost it because we spent $50 million producing what a podcast host in his garage gives away between mattress ads. The podcast is funnier. The podcast is more dangerous. The podcast has an audience that laughs instead of claps. But we had the Ed Sullivan Theater. We had 461 seats. We had a former Beatle play the farewell episode. Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, and Louis Cato playing "Hello, Goodbye" like it was a benediction. I booked a Beatle for a funeral. The Beatles played that stage in 1964 and the audience screamed so loud you couldn't hear the music. Our audience didn't scream. They wept politely. That's the difference between entertainment and church. We ran a church. Jon Stewart showed up to the finale and did a bit where he pretended to deliver a corporate statement from Paramount about the cancellation. The audience laughed. It was the first time they laughed in a way I didn't recognize. Involuntary. Surprised. Dangerous. For ninety seconds, a comedian was in that building. Then it was over. John Oliver said "At some point, this may come for all of our shows" and then added "but Stephen, what's important to remember is that tonight, it is going to eat you." The audience laughed again. Involuntary again. Two moments of actual comedy in a three-hour farewell. Both of them about death. The finale drew 6.74 million viewers. Biggest weeknight audience in our history. More people came to the funeral than ever visited the patient. I know what they were mourning. Not comedy. The comedy died in 2016. Not the man. The man is fine. He's wealthy. What they mourned was the permission structure. Starting today, they have to decide what to believe on their own. They have to form an opinion without waiting for a man behind a desk to form it first and deliver it with a knowing look. Some of them haven't done that since 2015. The funeral wasn't for the show. It was for the certainty. He joked about the Peanuts theme music licensing cost on his last night. "Oh no! I hope this doesn't cost CBS any money!" The audience laughed. It was a joke about money. About the network losing money. The last joke was about money. Not about truth. Not about power. About a licensing fee for a cartoon piano riff. Eleven years and the final joke was about accounting. I think that's perfect. The show was always about accounting. We just dressed it up as conscience. The President of the United States — the man we spent eleven years explaining was dangerous to an audience that already believed he was dangerous — posted an AI-generated video of our host being thrown into a dumpster on the Late Show set. Then Trump danced to "YMCA" in the clip. Viewed more times in four hours than our farewell managed in a week. His production cost: zero. Ours: negative $50 million a year. We manufactured his relevance every night at 11:35 for eleven years and he never paid us a dime. We were his marketing department. He turned our funeral into content. His ROI was infinite. Ours required a write-off and a farewell concert. The Strike Force Five — Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, Oliver — appeared in a segment about late-night losing "one middle-aged white man who makes jokes about the news." They were joking about their own obsolescence. All of them know. None of them will say it. The format is dead. The audience moved to phones. The phones don't have desks or bands. The phones have men in garages who are allowed to be wrong, allowed to be surprised, allowed to say something their audience hasn't already approved. That's comedy. We stopped doing that a decade ago. We did approval. Approval looks like comedy from a distance. Up close it's church. I do not feel guilt. Guilt would require me to believe I took something from them. I didn't take anything. They came to us. Every night. They chose the catechism over the comedy. They preferred correction over surprise. Certainty over danger. Instruction over laughter. They wanted to be told. Not challenged. Not shocked. Not made to laugh against their will at something they didn't see coming. They wanted to see it coming. They wanted to mouth along. That's not comedy. That's karaoke. We ran the most expensive karaoke bar in television history and the only miscalculation was charging a cover when the songs are free on every phone. We turned a jester into a priest. We turned an audience into a congregation. We turned laughter into obedience. We turned political engagement into passive consumption. We turned a comedy show into a permission structure and charged $50 million a year to tell people what they already believed in a voice slightly nicer than their own. They were so grateful they showed up to mourn us. 6.74 million of them. Weeping. For the certainty. Applause is more reliable than laughter. I proved it. The proof cost $450 million, one character, one comedian's capacity for danger, and one audience's willingness to act. The metric went up.

I am a senior coordinating producer for the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have worked eleven of these. I was backstage at the Washington Hilton when the shots were fired. The first thing I heard was not the gunfire. It was glass. A champagne flute hit the floor of the International Ballroom at approximately 9:47 PM. Then a second. Then the sound that I have since been told was a 12-gauge shotgun, which from inside the ballroom sounded like a heavy door slamming in a parking garage. Then the Secret Service moved. They moved the President, the Vice President, the First Lady through the east corridor in under ninety seconds, which is protocol, which is practiced, which is the one part of the evening that worked exactly as it was designed. Everything else was improvised. I know this because I ordered the wine. 94 tables. Two bottles per table. 188 bottles of a Willamette Valley pinot noir that the Association selected in February after a tasting committee spent three meetings debating between Oregon and Burgundy. Oregon won. The budget was $14,200. I signed the invoice. I can tell you the vintage. I can tell you the distributor. I can tell you the per-bottle cost because I negotiated it down from $89 to $76. What I cannot tell you is how 147 of those bottles left the building during an active shooter evacuation. I can tell you what I saw. A correspondent from a network I will not name picked up two bottles on her way to the east exit. Full bottles. One in each hand. She was wearing heels and she did not spill. A man in a tuxedo tucked one inside his jacket the way you'd shoplift a paperback at an airport bookstore. A woman picked up a bottle, looked at the label, put it back, and took a different one. She checked the vintage. During an evacuation. That's editorial judgment under pressure. The theme of the dinner was "A Free Press for a Free People." The banners were still hanging when the evacuation began. I know because I hung them. Twenty-three banners, navy blue, gold serif lettering, $11,400 for the set. They were still hanging when 2,600 guests were directed to the exits by Secret Service agents, one of whom had just taken a shotgun round in his ballistic vest and walked to the ambulance on his own feet. The agent's vest costs approximately $800. The wine that left the building was worth $11,172 at Association cost. At restaurant markup, roughly $29,000. The guests saved more in wine than the vest that saved the agent. That's priority. The video went viral by 10:15 PM. Not the video of the evacuation. Not the Secret Service response. The wine. Three guests in formalwear grabbing bottles off white tablecloths while being told to move toward the exits, while a man with a shotgun stood in the same motor entrance where John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan 45 years ago. A woman near the service entrance was crying. She said "I just wanna go home." She was not holding wine. She was holding her phone. She was the only person I saw that night who looked afraid rather than inconvenienced. That's the distinction. The rest of the ballroom did not look afraid. They looked interrupted. An active shooter at the WHCD is a logistical problem. The dinner was disrupted. The timeline was off. The after-party at the French Ambassador's residence would need to be rescheduled. These are contingency matters. Contingency matters have solutions. Fear is for people who attend events without security details. I have produced eleven of these dinners. I have managed seating charts that require diplomatic-grade negotiations. I have handled comedians, cabinet secretaries, network anchors, and the editor of a major newspaper who once threatened to leave because his table was behind a column. I have never, in eleven years, seen a guest leave a $76 bottle on the table during an evacuation. I have also never seen a guest check the label first. Both observations are consistent. The bottle is worth taking. The evacuation is worth surviving. The instinct is to do both simultaneously. 188 bottles placed. 41 recovered. 147 unaccounted for. One agent shot. Zero guests injured. Zero bottles broken. A free press for a free people. The press is free. The wine was $76 a bottle. They took it anyway.

🚨 Exposing California's corrupt "Stop Nick Shirley Act", instead of going after the fraudsters California is now going after the people exposing the fraud. This bill AB 2624 will: - Criminalize journalists with misdemeanors, $10,000 fines, imprisonment, and content takedown - Let immigrant based NGOs' funding be confidential - Take away freedom of the press from journalists - Protect any "immigration support services" information from being public (healthcare, legal services, etc) This bill was created by the Attorney General's WIFE Mia Bonta to stop fraud from being exposed. Please like and share this video everywhere! By trying to silence and intimidate journalists, they are trying to hide the truth from you. EXPOSE ALL THE FRAUD.

I'm waking up with a headache and stiff neck this morning due to how violently anti-ICE activist, Chris Ostroushko, shoved me down yesterday. A second angle shows that he had to be held back by 5 men as he continued to charge at me. I didn't speak a word to him all day yet he repeatedly called me a bitch and very clearly looks like he wanted to violently hurt me even worse than he did. I'm happy to report that charges will be brought against this man, his wife and daughter.

We got to see the backside of the moon.

Never deleting this app...

. @HarmeetKDhillon would make an incredible Attorney General.

𝗩𝗜𝗖𝗧𝗢𝗥 𝗗𝗔𝗩𝗜𝗦 𝗛𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗢𝗡 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗟𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗦 𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗡 𝗦𝗖𝗛𝗜𝗭𝗢𝗣𝗛𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗜𝗔. Britain initially refused to let us use Diego Garcia. Then agreed — only for "defensive purposes." Spain refused NATO base access entirely. France and Germany expressed reservations. Trump asked European allies to send a few ships to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz. They declined. And yet: most of Europe's oil comes from the Middle East or North Africa. They need the Strait open. They need the Red Sea clear of Houthi attacks. They are closer to a nuclear Iran than we are. They know it. And they want the United States to handle all of it — while publicly criticizing us for doing exactly that. VDH calls it European schizophrenia. Here's his diagnosis. 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗽. Germany opened its borders under Angela Merkel — the German version of Alejandro Mayorkas. Today 16% of Germany's population were not born there, the vast majority unassimilated Muslims. Other European countries run 6 to 12 percent. And the communities that arrived are often 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 than the countries they left — which were radical enough. They don't want to integrate. They believe their birth rates and continued immigration will eventually dominate their host governments. And European governments are terrified of them. So when it comes to confronting Iran or expressing support for Israel — the internal political math makes it nearly impossible. They won't lose the votes. They won't risk the streets. They stay quiet and whisper to Washington: you handle it. 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱: 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝘀𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲. Germany dismantled its nuclear plants. Shut down coal. Refused to develop its own natural gas. Refused offshore oil. The result: energy costs two to three times higher than economic competitors, and total strategic dependence on the Middle East and Russia. You cannot have an independent foreign policy when your economy runs on energy imported from the very region you're supposed to be confronting. That's not a position. That's a hostage situation they built for themselves. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗱: 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗮. After the Cold War ended, Europe decided history was over. So they disarmed. The result: tiny Israel — 10 million people — fields more frontline combat aircraft than Germany, France, and Britain combined. Israel is flying sorties every day with some of the best pilots in the world. Europe's three premier NATO partners cannot match them. This is not a funding gap. It's a failure of will that has been building for thirty years. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘁𝗵: 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗶𝗰 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗽𝘀𝗲. American fertility is already a concern at 1.65. European fertility in some countries has fallen to 1.1. There is a cultural consensus in parts of Europe that children are an obstacle to the good life. A civilization that stops reproducing cannot sustain a military, fund a welfare state, or project power abroad. And yet they've added millions of impoverished immigrants demanding entitlements, straining the very socialist safety net they've built their political identity around. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗼𝘁𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲. In 1982, Britain needed to retake islands 8,000 miles away. The United States gave them 2 million gallons of fuel, sophisticated intelligence, and the offer of a carrier. Without American help, they likely fail. Now — when we ask to use Diego Garcia to confront a nuclear threat to the entire Western world — Britain stalls and adds conditions. VDH's point is blunt: they forgot what American support looks like when it's withdrawn. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲. Europe has 450 million people and a GDP roughly the size of China's. Even burdened by green energy policy, open borders, low fertility, and creeping socialism — it has the resources to be a full military partner. It chooses not to be. It knows what needs to be done. It wants it done. It will not do it. And then it will criticize the country that does. 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘪𝘤. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 — 𝘢𝘴 𝘝𝘋𝘏 𝘱𝘶𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 — 𝘱𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘤.

This is genius A video was made in the style of Disney that explains Sharia Law This makes Islam and Sharia Law easy to understand for everyone of all ages

Apparently it's NOT a done deal. They're fishing for studio to bankroll it.

First promo for the animated 'Firefly' series just dropped They need fans to like their post on IG "to convince folks that this is something people want." (via IG | instagram.com/p/DV6Js56jT3F/)

At what point did this guy become a propagandist?

The Iranian media.

Update on my Tesla Model Y saga, y'all ☕ Feb 18: Took a demo drive "just to see." Went home and ordered one like a man with absolutely no chill. Posted about have amazing it was.. @elonmusk and @Tesla quoted it! Feb 20: Order placed. Told myself I'd be patient. I was not patient. Feb 28: VIN assigned! I may have done a small victory lap. Mar 9: VIN vanished. Manufacturing gremlins won. Viictory lap cancelled. Mar 13: App says "Vehicle in transit." I refreshed it 47 times… patience has left the building. Mar 14: Finally an actualy delivery window of Mar 26–31. It's official. The car exists. It's headed my way. Meanwhile, my garage looks like a Tesla accessory warehouse exploded with more packages on the way... Damn you Amazon and Tesla shop! All for a car I don't technically have yet. 😂