skg802

Audiobook coming soon !! All profits from sales goes to My Agent .. Don Vito @VitoCatleon .. his “Extended Family” and their needs have been a life-long undertaking! Dream of Animal Sanctuary getting Closer every day!! 🙏🏻 #blessed #catsoftwitter

@Kristinartz Me

What do you call a woman who lives alone, without a husband or partner?

@gothburz And this is why I stopped watching CBS years ago … I don’t need someone to think for me.

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.

@elonmusk 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

😑

@RandyRRQuaid I find a lot of them filled with so much jealousy they can’t even reason why. Instead of making something of their lives they hate people who do.

Neither Trump nor Michael Jackson has ever been a pedophile; only money-grubbing evil people say they are.

@JoelKatz What if it was your family? All he does is stir the pot. I would take up for my family as well. Just like I’ve taken up for XRP for over 10 years. Just because someone can do it doesn’t make it right. 😕

This is an example of government pressuring a private company to censor speech the government disfavors. It is also entirely permissible under current First Amendment law.

@robertmblakejr1 @Matt_Pinner 👍😂

@Matt_Pinner I'll see your 20 and add two: Telephone party line with a five digit phone number.

I got only 3 point. You?

@elonmusk .. help me sell this … I need to buy a Tesla 😬

Nashville TN 1065 Sioux Trail | The CityLiving Group nashvillecityliving.com/home-search/li…

@bgarlinghouse @SenatorHagerty @berniemoreno @SenatorTimScott @JohnBoozman I’ve been believing and holding for 10. Having real people with a brick and mortar location, not to mention the technology and concept, completely sold me !

Yesterday, I celebrated 11 years at Ripple. Back then, I couldn’t have predicted that we’d still be fighting for regulatory clarity. The fight has been worth it. After a day in DC having great conversations with @SenatorHagerty, @berniemoreno, @SenatorTimScott, @JohnBoozman and @patrickjwitt - and on stage at @Semafor World Economic Summit - I know we are closer than ever. The CLARITY Act window is open. And now is our moment to act.

@True_News_On_X @RepOgles @GovBillLee @MarshaBlackburn Governor …. Don’t let Nashville turn into NYC before anyone realized what happened. 🤨

@GovBillLee, FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY! STOP the Islamification of Tennessee and Islamist indoctrination in public schools, from K-12 and also universities. @MarshaBlackburn, when you become Governor of Tennessee, CRUSH the Jihadist invasion in Tennessee! x.com/RepOgles/statu…

Muslims are trying to Islamify Tennessee. The Nashville Schools bell schedule was just changed in accordance with the Islamic calendar. They want conquest.

@JohnCleese They are attention obsessed idiots that are oblivious to reality or reason.

Anyone ?

@NYCMayor How on earth did you even get elected !?

Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.  Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace. I am focused on making sure that every New Yorker is safe. I have been in contact with our Police Commissioner and emergency management officials. We are taking proactive steps, including increasing coordination across agencies and enhancing patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution. Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders. You will be safe here.

@elonmusk 🙏🏻

Whoever said “money can’t buy happiness” really knew what they were talking about 😔

TIM ALLEN - ON TRUMP: Whatever your feelings for Trump, these are some interesting points that Tim Allen makes. Put your hatred aside and think about these observations. Tim Allen is credited with writing this ... Tim Allen wrote... Here are some interesting points to think about prior to 2020, especially to my friends on the fence, like moderate Democrats, Libertarians and Independents and the never Trump Republicans and those thinking of "walking away" from the Democratic party: - Women are upset at Trump's naughty words --they also bought 80 million copies of 50 Shades of Gray. - Not one feminist has defended Sarah Sanders. It seems women's rights only matter if those women are liberal. - No Border Walls. No voter ID laws. Did you figure it out yet? But wait... there's more... - Chelsea Clinton got out of college and got a job at NBC that paid $900,000 per year. Her mom flies around the country speaking out about white privilege. And just like that, they went from being against foreign interference in our elections to allowing non-citizens to vote in our elections. - President Trump's wall costs less than the Obamacare website. Let that sink in, America! - We are one election away from open borders, socialism, gun confiscation, and full-term abortion nationally. We are fighting evil. - They sent more troops and armament to arrest Roger Stone than they sent to defend Benghazi. - 60 years ago, Venezuela was 4th on the world economic freedom index. Today, they are 179th and their citizens are dying of starvation. In only 10 years, Venezuela was destroyed by democratic socialism. - Russia donated $0.00 to the Trump campaign. Russia donated $145,600,000 to the Clinton Foundation. But Trump was the one investigated! - Nancy Pelosi invited illegal aliens to the State of the Union. President Trump Invited victims of illegal aliens to the State of the Union. Let that sink in. - A socialist is basically a communist who doesn't have the power to take everything from their citizens at gunpoint ... Yet! - How do you walk 3000 miles across Mexico without food or support and show up at our border 100 pounds overweight and with a cellphone? - Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wants to ban cars, ban planes, give out universal income and thinks socialism works. She calls Donald Trump crazy. - Bill Clinton paid $850,000 to Paula Jones To get her to go away. I don't remember the FBI raiding his lawyer's office. - I wake up every day and I am grateful that Hillary Clinton is not the president of the United States of America. The same media that told me Hillary Clinton had a 95% chance of winning, now tells me Trump's approval ratings are low. - "The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money." — Margaret Thatcher - Maxine Waters opposes voter ID laws; She thinks that they are racist. You need to have a photo ID to attend her town hall meetings. - President Trump said — "They're not after me. They're after you. I'm just in their way." Now, go Back & Read this Again like your Future Depends upon it, Because it Does!!!

@dr_ericberg I wish more medical professionals looked into peoples diets before prescribing meds for erratic behavior. Out of all the people I know that take antidepressants to “cope”, not one of them have good diets. It’s terrifying to see people so oblivious.

When someone gets irritated easily, it could be more than stress. A vitamin B1 deficiency affects the nervous system, and consuming refined starches is a major cause of B1 depletion.

@HugoWoolley01 @Neo_Tech01 I think it was an update or something. They reappeared later. Nothing like the crypto market to keep you on edge. Lol

@SEK1331 @SEK1331 When assets disappear from an exchange like Coinbase, it usually points to an authorization or internal system issue. For a proper investigation and guided recovery steps, I recommend reaching out to @Neo_Tech01. They specialize in tracing and restoring missing XRP.

Coinbase and Uphold scheduled maintenance. 🧐

@allthemoney It’s back … phew. 😬😂

@allthemoney All my XRP have disappeared on Coinbase 🤦‍♀️

@_jmit74 @allthemoney Probably their update today. Can’t help but make me cringe !

@SEK1331 @allthemoney I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one that opened up Coinbase and everything was gone,

@realspitfire @jimmykimmel Sad this is his idea of humor. He hasn’t been funny in a very long time. Never was very talented. This was very poor taste.

I didn’t think I could hate @jimmykimmel more but he is subhuman. “This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody he [Trump] called a friend. This is how a 4-year-old mourns a gold fish, okay."