This is Shepard Humphries with the Jackson Hole shooting experience and I wanted to explain a bit about what you can expect at our concealed firearms permit classes. So, I'm talking now about our two hour class at the range. This is all range time there's no no academic stuff involved in this one. We do sell along with this class where it's included along with this class, our three hour video series which is me providing the lecture that I would normally do in a classroom so you get the three hour lecture. And you get the two hours of live shooting on the range. And that is considered proof of firearms familiarization provided you pass the training and you demonstrate that you can handle a gun safely and you understand the basics how it works and such. So how the classes go as you'll arrive at the range, and we will show you to the, the bay that we're going to be using the shooting area. And if you have your own hearing protection and eye protection that's great if not just let us know ahead of time. When we send you a confirmation email, and we're more than happy to provide that some loners for you. So yeah, come with your gun and your ammunition or if you choose the option of using our gun and our ammunition, then you can do that. If you do bring your own gun. Please do not carry it up to the shooting area exposed it needs to be unloaded and inside a case or a bag or a box or something like that, until you get up to the shooting area. We'll talk about the safety will start out with you and you know you have a different need than the person beside you, and you have a different level of experience and a different comfort level. And so what we really are proud of is our ability to look at you and say hey what do you hope to get out of this, how can we help morph this shooting experience today, so that you gain as much as you can. We want to talk over your head and we don't want to talk down to you so we'll kind of figure out where you are in your shooting journey and help you go to the next level safety is a huge thing with us we want to make sure you're handling the gun safely, safely, and then also basic skills handling skills and shooting skills. So essentially what you can expect, we're going to have a number of instructors that kind of depends on how many people register. If we have nine people attending then we'd have a minimum of three coaches. If we have three people attending, maybe just one coach, but generally there are 567 people in a class. And so you'll rotate between different coaches, you'll walk up to my bench, and we will shoot a little bit and I'll watch what you're good at what you're bad at and I'll give you some suggestions on how to improve, and then you'll be under over and you'll see that the coach beside me has space, and you'll jump in with them and you'll shoot a magazine with them and they'll have a completely new perspective, and they'll give you some suggestions, and then you go to the next coach or back to me and you get better and better and better as time goes on. We do start with 22 caliber, which is a small caliber that doesn't have a lot of recoil or noise, kind of lets everybody get comfortable. We haven't shot a gun before so it's good not to start with some really loud stuff happening. We're going to start slow and work our way up. And that those are the basics about what our classes about. So if you do have questions on that, please do send an email. We're happy to answer that. And otherwise, there are links down below for where you can register and we look forward to seeing you at one of our two hour concealed carry classes at the range.


Hi, I'm Stu Miniman with theCUBE and we're here at the Winslow Technology Group user conference for Dell EMC Happy to be joined by the keynote speaker for the event, Jeremy Burton, the CMO of Dell Jeremy, great to see you. Thanks, Stu. I was good to be on theCUBE. Yeah, Jeremy, you've been on theCUBE since the inaugural event Back at actually EMC World here in Boston. Yeah, just a short short drive from where we are today. Oh, seven years Yeah, seven years ago 2010. Wow, pretty amazing. One of the things you talk about about Dell and EMC coming together It's really the scale and distribution is a big piece of that. So being here at a user conference For you know, one of the partners a company that had been with Compellent Since like the earliest days and with Dell and now with Dell EMC, you know What is the importance of the channel to Dell and Dell EMC? Yeah, I think I mean look relationships Company like Scots. They've been around 15 years. They've they've had wins with customers They have trusted relationships there and sometimes actually they're better at presenting a solution to the customer than even we are I mean, we you know, we've got a lot of capabilities But that their business is delivering an outcome for the for the customer and so at times there, you know They're pretty adept at really understanding, you know in local markets in particular What that customer's business is and what the best solution for them is and giving them impartial advice. Yeah Jeremy in recent interview you did with us. I was struck by you talked about when we make strategy We used to put together the five-year plan these days two years things are changing drastically If you turn turn back to you said you've been with EMC and now Dell, you know for seven years You know two years ago was just when Dell was you know looking to buy emcee When you talk to your partners and and your end user customers, how are they keeping up with change? What are some of the biggest challenges you're seeing from the user base? Yeah, I think it's particularly difficult right now because you know We've all seen the cloud phenomenon You've also got the digital thing going on at the same time There's the big data thing going on at the same time and also look the computing devices that people are using are starting to change So I think What you've always got to do and what we always try and do we can't we don't know exactly what's going to happen in future But I think we've got a good idea of what the general themes are and so I think the best thing we can do to help our Users along with us is articulate those very clearly What do we think over the next three four five years the key themes that you should be watching are and then you're right Like a couple of years you can have a product roadmap and then some aspirations beyond that what you might want to do but the the reality is is if you lock into a three-four year road map and Articulate it and get committed to it I mean it could quite easily change and certainly is more of the development teams move to like agile methodologies There's not always really now the need to do that because you kind of build those cost corrections into the development process Yeah, Jeremy as the CMO I need to ask you about brand so you know We're sitting here in the shadows of Fenway Park used to be an EMC level. There's now a Dell EMC level In the keynote you talked about really how Dell is it is a lot like alphabet, which is the Google holding company Yeah, Dell Dell EMC virtue stream RSA pivotal VM where all these pieces All of the transformations going on. What do people look to the Dell family? Where do you make your mark in your brand? Yeah I mean all of the the brand campaign that we're in right now all of the effort is gone and all the money To the point has gone into Dell technologies That was the new company that we created and we want to make sure that people understand that Dell technologies is maybe not what you thought Dell was of all I mean most people think of Dell the thing of the PC That's what Michael made his name sell it but Dell technologies It's you know It goes a mile wide and a mile deep at this point And so really what we're trying to do with the brand campaign is put everything into Dell technologies understand the capabilities of that And then look over the next few years We can then reinforce what you know Dell the PC business Dell EMC the data center business VM where pivoted and so on how they plug in so Really, I think for the next year or so We're going to keep kind of beating on Dell technologies and make sure everybody understands that and then over time You know reinforce whether the ingredient brands it really is it in Dell technologies is a family of brands That's the approach you're taking. Yeah last thing I want to ask you Jeremy You talked about how we've seen the progression of kind of it responding to the business And now it really being a major driver for the business. Yeah, maybe you can talk You know, what are you seeing in customers? You know, how is it? You know it is a central point for so many companies. Yeah, I mean it's exciting times It's exciting and scary I think for the it teams because I'd even go further and say it is the business in many companies now um, I've seen many models some Companies have felt that their IT team couldn't adapt to be the new digital team and so they've created a a second IT function You know sometimes they hear it mode one IT mode two IT But look, I've also been to companies where the CIO has really been like on it with the business And they've built out that capability within the existing IT structure So I think the opportunity for IT folks is is being more relevant than they've ever been in the past and and and and actually Supporting the business doing a real competitive differentiation Which it's maybe been a while since some IT departments landed there And the and the threat though is that if if you don't get on board You could well find yourself with your nose pressed against the window looking at a A different IT operation doing the work that maybe you know, you want to do as an IT pro So it's exciting times and scary times together. All right. Well, Jeremy Burton Appreciate you joining us here on the cube and we have lots of coverage here from the wdg Dell emc user event. Thanks for watching the cube


The Blackwell Insane Asylum, later renamed the Blackwell Psychiatric Hospital, was founded by Ashton Blackwell in 1822. It remained in operation until 1986, after which it was shut down, and the building fell to the Blackwell family, specifically Roger Blackwell. Roger turned the building, the source of countless rumors in the surrounding town, a historical landmark, closed to the public except during events such as Halloween or the anniversary of its opening. However, these events became few and far between as Blackwell grew old and senile. In 2016, Roger Blackwell passed, leaving the property to his grandson, me. My name is Max Blackwell, and for years I'd heard the rumors surrounding my family's asylum. I'm in my 20s, and always being a bit of an urban explorer, I decided to finally enter the hospital. That's where this story starts. The gate was easy enough to get passed. Putting the key in the rusted padlock, I was surprised it even opened the lock anymore. The gate was solid and heavy, fitting in a way, for a monolithic structure behind it. The hospital, when first constructed, had six floors.  The building was constructed over heavy stone, with later additions being made with concrete and steel. Opening the large wooden doors, they creaked open, revealing a damp odor. In his later years, my grandfather stopped caring for the property, so it had fallen into disrepair. Looking for a light switch on the wall, I tentatively flicked it on. The lights flickered to life, again surprising me, considering the age of the place. Still, I'd come armed with a durable flashlight, just in case. Despite my granddad's efforts, graffiti covered the walls. Layers of dust covered every surface. A reception desk, half rotted away, sat front and center of the lobby area, with a large staircase behind it. To the right of the larger staircase was a descending one, leading to, I guess, the basement. Holding my breath, I went downward. The basement was dark, extremely so. My flashlight barely made a dent in the darkness, brightening the area just enough I could see a few feet ahead of me. Walking forward, carefully watching where I stepped, I could make out a door frame and a sign next to it. Wiping the dust away, I read the word archive, the door or what was left of it, barely hung on the hinges. I felt around on the wall of the archive room and found a light switch. I turned it on and the lights buzzed to life. Before me were dozens of filing cabinets. Blackwell, as I said, was open for a century and a half, give or take, so it had hundreds of patients. More interestingly, there were boxes, all labeled patient interviews. Besides what I told you earlier, I know next to nothing about the history of the hospital, so all of this definitely had me interested. Next, after leaving the basement, I returned to the lobby area and went upstairs. The second and third floors were mostly the offices of staff and areas for basic evaluations. Floor 4 was an infirmary for more self-destructive patients and staff injury. As the years went on, staff injury rates apparently spiked, leading to the eventual closing of the hospital. Floor 4 is also notorious for another reason. Legend says that illegal medical experiments were conducted on patients here, as well as lobotomies, to pacify the more violent patients. I'll admit, I believe the lobotomies part, but the illegal experiment stuff is total bull, if you ask me that is. Floor 5 was the staff cafeteria and quarters. Oftentimes, staff would need to be on call six days a week, so staff often lived here. Floor 6 was patient quarters and recreation for the more docile patients. You know, light schizophrenics, senile people were people who thought they were, I don't know, Benjamin Franklin, something grandad called the harmless kind of crazy. He never much cared for the mentally ill. That said, in his early years, this wasn't the case. Construction on Floor 7 began in 1831. Before then, patient intake was relatively low, but the more disturbed individuals were kept on Floor 6, with Floor 5 being the more docile patients. In the nine-year period between the initial construction and the addition of Floor 7 and 8, there were 17 suicides. Only 13 were patients. Floor 7 and 8, as mentioned previously, were constructed in 1831 and were for more violent patients. Each floor contained 15 cells, 30 total. Floor 7 had cells 1 through 15 and 16 through 30 were on floor 8. The walls, or the ones not caved in or broken down, of each cell were spattered in long, dried blood and scratch marks. I guess no amount of cleaning could get rid of the stains, or maybe the staff didn't care enough, either seemed plausible. Floors 10 through 15 began construction in 1859. 10, 11, and 12 contained more padded cells. These were much more intact. One cell contained drawings of dozens of eyes. Another was covered in numbers written on every wall. Another still had the phrases, I see you watching, and the hunger from the void calls. Written dozens of times, you get the idea. 13 was, as of 1932, used for electroconvulsive therapy. Before then, it was home to experimental forms of therapy. At least that's what the legend says. Truth be told, most of floor 13 was destroyed in a fire in 1875, not longer after its completion, and only really regained use in 1915, where it was used to treat symptoms of shell shock, now called post-traumatic stress disorder, in World War I. 14 and 15 were both dedicated to more traditional forms of therapy. Psychoanalysis, that sort of thing. Floors 16 through 20 were completed in 1953, while the officially given history says it was for a new influx of patients after World War II's end. Truthfully, it was to treat suspected communists. This included lobotomies and ECT. I'm not comfortable discussing it, because frankly, I'm ashamed and disgusted my family was involved in such things. The only exception was Floor 20, which was used for staff meetings and meetings of the board of directors that ran the place. Anyway, that was the end of my exploration of the building, your typical creepy asylum. The real reason I've written all of this was to give you an idea of this place's history. Not long after that initial entry, I had some people get the place's power up and running. I've read a lot of the old patient files and decided to share them here. See, I thought I knew this place's history, but there was so much more. Here are a few. File Name Patient 322 Name Jonathan Francis Date of Admission May 15th, 1825 Diagnosis Paranoia-Induced Madness Reason for Admission On the 17th of April, Mr. Francis butchered his daughter, wife, as well as their neighbors, one Jacob Friedman and Margaret Friedman. Mr. Francis insists they communed with the devil by means of the family dog. Upon arrest by authorities, Francis had hung the dog on a cross outside of the family home. He was sent to us upon sentencing from a court. Recommendation for Treatment Isolation from other patients. Patient is to be fed, but interaction is forbidden. Staff are permitted to harm patients in order to get decorum from the patient. File Name Patient 465 Name Matthew Ladson Date of Admission June 15th, 1825 Diagnosis Paranoia-Induced Madness Reasons for Admission Attempted murder of a lawyer from Illinois claimed it was to prevent some great calamity of brother fighting brother. Recommendation for Treatment Chemically induced tranquil state Injection into the front of the brain daily File Name Patient 2201 Name Unknown Date of Admission July 23rd, 1878 Diagnosis Under Investigation Reasons for Admission Patient claims to be under the influence of a deity he refers to as the void. Subject murdered 15 men, women, and children over the span of six days in tribute to this being. Seven days after admission, patient caught fire through unknown means and jumped from the roof. File Name Patient 5201 Name Abraham Johnson Date of Admission July 18th, 1883 Diagnosis Unknown Reason for Admission Claims to feel something scraping the inside of his skull. Attempted to cut it out with a hunting knife resulting in his admission to the asylum. Recommendation for Treatment None Shove him in a box and forget File Name Patient 2102 Name Constance Blackwell Date of Admission January 22nd, 1915 Diagnosis Madness Reason for Admission None Admitted under Recommendation By Director Blackwell Recommendation for Treatment Locked away in isolation cell 32 Subject is to be beaten and held in ice water if she makes too much noise. This one gave me pause for two reasons. Constance Blackwell was the daughter-in-law of Ashton Blackwell. And secondly, there was no isolation cells beyond 30, or so I thought, anyway. I read through these for hours. There were thousands. Anyway, after all of that, I'm staying here overnight tonight. For now, though, I'm going to get some sleep. I'll need my energy tonight. Update I found the cell. I was in the basement area, planning to search through the archives for any details. When I heard a thumping noise, it was coming from behind a wall. I grabbed a heavy piece of lumber, fallen from years of disrepair, and caved in the wall, masking the sound. That's when I saw fluorescent light and a hall. There were 13 cells with a person in each living people. The 13 people in the cells are six women, six men, and one of indeterminate gender. Their hair is overgrown, and their clothes look as though they haven't been washed in years. The cell numbers have faded, but not vanished. They're numbered 31 to 43. I can't find files on the people within and don't have a key to their cells. Frankly, I don't know how they got there. Blueprints of the building show that cell block shouldn't exist. Cell number 31 is a padded cell with a black-haired individual inside. They always face the back right corner of the cell, and I can hear them softly murmuring to themselves. They're bound in a barely held together straight jacket with S Kemper on the back of the jacket. I thought it'd be a name, but found no one named Kemper with a first name starting with S in the files. The room smells awful from what I can tell, with thousands of tally marks lining the walls. Cell number 32 is decorated with light furnishings, a sofa, a table and mirror, and a t-set specifically. Inside is a brown-haired woman in a ratty, filthy, Victorian-era dress. From what I can tell, she's always brushing her hair with a phantom brush inside of her cell or drinking tea. Cell number 33 had what I thought at first glance was one person. However, the person within has a small conjoined twin infant-sized attached to her chest or rather stitched to it. The cell is bare, only holding a small bed and blanket. I've never seen the larger twin's face as it's always obscured by her messy hair. The conjoined infant on her chest, however, always seems to catch my glance whenever I passed by. Cell number 34 had a man in modern doctor scrubs covered in dried blood and gore. There was no furniture in the room, but a wooden chair. He waved at me as I looked in. Cell number 35 was a woman bound in a straight jacket in a padded room. She continuously headbutts the wall, giggling to herself. Occasionally, she screams and even rarer. She speaks. On one occasion, I heard her say, make me better over and over again.  Cell number 36 was completely dark, save a flickering bulb in the center of the room. An elderly woman sat within and even compared to the rest, she was filthy. The floor of her cell was coated in a reddish brown substance, which I only saw when the bulb briefly lit up the room. She never strayed far from the light, allowing me to see brief glimpses of her.  If you've ever seen the shining, she was like the woman in room 237, but covered in dirt and grime. Cell number 37's occupant had electrodes on his scalp, with the dangling wires occasionally sparking. He tried to grab me as I passed by his cell, begging me to make the voices stop. His teeth were rotten, almost black, and his breath stunk of rot. So much so, I could smell it feet away from him. He scratched desperately at the iron door, separating us, trying to grab the handle. I noticed as he did this, his lack of fingernails. He wore an orange jumpsuit, with the words Blackwell psychiatric on the back. Cell number 38's door had no window. The only reason I know anyone's in there is because I can hear a man pounding at the door and yelling obscenities for locking him in here, with it, and how he'd get John for this. Cell number 39 had a young boy wearing a red cape and pajamas.  His room was covered in newspaper clippings over the typical padding of an asylum cell. He creeped me out more than the others for a reason I can't place, so I didn't look long. Cell number 40 was a morbidly obese man, strapped to the wall. His cell was splattered with dried blood and bones. He grinned with yellow teeth as he noticed me. He said something in a foreign language, maybe French, and struggled against his restraints.  He was the most stereotypical lunatic, straight jacket, savage screaming and spouting nonsense about Democrats and how they wanted to eat our souls. The most unsettling thing was how his eyes were both covered with gauze. His straight jacket had its back collar ripped away at the back and commie trader was branded into his flesh. Cell number 42 was covered wall to wall in names written in what looked like blood. In the center of the madness was a woman quietly muttering to herself. She was saying random numbers and rocking back and forth. She looked in my direction and I could make out her eyes were a milky white. She then changed to a different set of numbers and she occasionally said my name. Cell number 43 finally was an emaciated woman. Her head was shaved completely bald. She looked like she hadn't eaten in weeks. Her skeleton's frame was clearly visible. She looked up at me as I passed and I noticed a small wound just above her eye. Food. Time for food. She said in a trembling voice. She tried to come to the door but was shackled to the wall. It was as she did. The lights in the hall died. I heard mad laughing as they did and one of the men said gleefully, we're gonna get you. We're gonna get you. In a sing song voice, I ran down the hall as fast as I could out of the basement and locked the door shut behind me. I turned around to face what should have been the lobby area but instead found myself in a bright white corridor on what looked to be the fourth floor. It seemed cleaner with the walls absolutely spotless. I heard screaming from down the hall and against my better judgment ran to the source. It was a patient medical treatment room. I swung the door open and I saw nothing.  With one change, a bed was in the center of the room. The bed looked freshly made with what appeared to be new leather restraints on the signs in the center of the bed was an identification bracelet given to patients upon being admitted. The label read patient number 53266 M Blackwell date of admittance 3003 2020. I turned around and found myself facing the front lobby. I went out the front door of the building and I found myself waking up in the basement area outside of the hidden room. I slipped and hit my head in the darkness after the blackout. I breathed a sigh of relief. This relief was short lived however as I noticed the ID bracelet on my wrist. I managed to get home for now. I'm going to bed even though it's nearly 2 a.m at the time of writing. I'll update you guys later. Hey everyone, Max here. I'm alive for better or for worse. Since my last post, I took the liberty of having a security system including cameras installed on the property. My family while not exactly billionaires is still quite wealthy so it wasn't a hassle expenses wise. Besides my weird experience on the fourth floor, I wanted to make sure no one was going to break in with all the urban legend surrounding Blackwell. The place was a bit of a rite of passage for teens daring their friends to break into the old asylum and bring back some item related to the hospital's dark history. But with my discovery in the basement coupled with my efforts to actually clean the place as best I could, it was in my best interest and that of any would-be trespassers to keep them out. I've been avoiding the fourth floor ever since my experience there. Dream or not, there wasn't a chance I was going there alone again. I spend most nights here now. In the basement, I've had the place furnished and now it's a man cave of sorts before any furnishing or man cave making. I erected a door between the basement and the hidden cell block which I took to calling the Phantom Zone after Superman comics. I put a heavy padlock on the door just to be safe. At night, some of them scream from within their prisons for hours at a time. They bang on the door, hurl obscenities, and yell promises of pain to come my way. During these, I venture once again to the other floors. I noticed over the past few days that the upper levels tend to be active at night. Phantom chains rattle in the cell blocks or the temperature dropping by several degrees in the staff quarters. At least twice, I've seen the silhouette of a hanging body dangling precariously from a ceiling fixture. Of course, when I look at where the shadow is being cast from, I find nothing. The worst area, however, is Floor 13. Ironic, I know. I hear screams, laughter, and crying from within the cells of Floor 13 some nights. I feel a phantom hand clutch my shoulder as I walk past the darkened rooms. And the worst part is the smell, sizzling flesh, and copper. Occasionally, I'd see flashes of light from one of the rooms on Floor 13. When I'm not walking the grounds, I'm in the archives. I've read many of the files contained here, the ones not destroyed by age, water, or rats anyway. In 1919, a man suffering from shell shock murdered his family, claiming a specter of war forced him to do so. He was sent here for treatment after a court ruled him insane and unfit for trial. In 1956, a man suffering from red syndrome, i.e., a suspected communist, was treated with electroconvulsive therapy, and later a full frontal lobotomy. During the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, the hospital also treated sufferers of the H1N1 virus. By the hospital's own count, over 1,000 people succumbed to the illness. Then there were the patient interviews. Most of the interviews were harmless enough, just a rudimentary check-up. But others? Well, I'll just let you read for yourself. Here's a transcript of one. Interview transcript This is Dr. Samuel Andrews of the Blackwell Psychiatric Hospital. The date is October 14, 1934. I am interviewing Joseph King, sent to Blackwell due to a psychosis of indeterminate origin. Good morning, Mr. King. Patient remains silent. All right then, Joseph. At the end of our last session, you mentioned a living shadow. I'd like you to elaborate on that. Watching is watching. I beg your pardon? It watches. Always watches. Never stops. Never blinks. I see. Could you describe this shadow for me? It looks like a man, but has no face. Made. It stands at the edge of nothing and everything. And it's always watching. How long have you seen this shadow, Joseph? Since I was a babe, it was always watching me. Never spoke. Just watched. When's the last time you saw it? Always there. It's there now. Where? Dr. Andrews begins to gurgle, and the sound of a snap like a bone being broken is heard. Joseph King begins laughing. I guess he was hungry. There's sounds of meat being eaten, followed by shouting 10 minutes later. The interview concludes with a new voice. Cause of death was the breaking of the neck at the base of the skull. We still don't know how Joseph King did it, as he was in restraints when we found him. He claims a shadow did it. I recommend to be given electroconvulsive therapy, and if no improvement is seen within three months or so, euthanasia. I shall bring this to Director Blackwell at once. We're still looking for the missing parts of Dr. Andrews. The tape ends there. After hearing this, I did some digging through the archives, but found no records of Joseph King having ever been treated here. Oh, I managed to get the elevator working, so no more having to walk flights of stairs to patrol each floor. Gotta find silver linings, you know? Also, helps me keep the place somewhat clean. I was up on floor five getting some sleep when I was awoken by a loud crash, then a blood-curdling scream. I ran out of the former staff quarters to the hall, and found myself once again in a stark white hallway. This time, however, I was on floor 13, as indicated by a plaque by the door leading to the stairwell. A figure wearing a nurse's uniform exited the room behind me. I assume it was a woman, but her face was smudged for lack of a better term. It was like someone had painted her, then smeared her face with her thumb. It's hard to describe. She grabbed my arm roughly, and it was then I noticed I was in a patient gown. Screams filled the hall as she led me to the elevator. I found myself unable to break away from her grip. The doors opened, revealing two more figures, seemingly large males. They forcibly shoved me on a gurney and tightened the restraints so much I could feel my wrist start to bleed from the pressure. She pressed a button. Floor four. The elevator began descending, and the beings began conversing. I can't understand what they said. It's like they were spouting gibberish with inflections of tone, indicating conversation. The elevator dinged, indicating we arrived at our destination. She wheeled me out with aid from the two men. They led me down the hall and turned me into a medical office. Another figure in a blood-spattered apron and lab coat nodded towards the nurse and the men who then left. He then said something to me, or I think he did. It was more gibberish. He picked up a small metal spike and hammer from a table. I heard more screams, but now they were mixed in with laughter. He placed the spike above my eyebrow. I struggled. I begged him to stop, but he either didn't hear me or didn't care. He brought the hammer down and I felt the spike pierce my skull. I let out a scream. The pain stopped, but I felt blood trickle down my forehead. I was back in the room on floor five, standing upright. My clothes were replaced by a dirty, barely held together, patient gown. I began running down to the basement to grab my stuff. I was going to leave right then, but I paused in the midst of my panic. I felt a breeze and heard the giggles of the 13. The door was open. I'd locked it shut. I was sure of that. I looked into the room for any signs of intruders, but the hall and its cells were untouched. Or so I thought. Because as I investigated and made sure all the cells were locked, I noticed cell number 34 while still locked was empty. I didn't bother to investigate further. I ran up the stairs of the basement and flung the front door open with all of my might. But instead of seeing the skyline of the town below, I instead found myself staring down a stark white corridor. I almost vomited and felt my heart beating rapidly. My phone began ringing, bringing me out of my fear-induced haze. It was an unknown caller. Hesitantly, I put the phone to my ear, hearing raspy breathing as I did so. Hello? My own voice responded. There's no way out. Then it hung up.  I tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. I slammed all of my weight against the door, but nothing. I was trapped. I pounded desperately on the door, screaming for help. I tried calling 911, but the line was busy. I haven't slept since then, because I know I'm not alone here. If you guys have any ideas, I'd love to hear them. I don't know what to do. My phone's battery is getting low, so I'll update you guys later. The place still has power, so I can at least charge it. Silver linings, right? Day two of being trapped in Blackwell. Or, I assume it's day two. It's, according to my phone, 11am, but the sun hasn't come up. I haven't slept since last night. I've holed up in floor nine.  I've rationed what little food I had, but I still only have enough for a few days at most. Occasionally, I'll hear a door slam or a scream from another floor. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I'll see movement. A shadow that isn't there or a flash of blue light. I'll hear a voice whisper, Help us in my ear. I've seen cell number 34's escapee who I've taken to calling Doc. He walks the halls, humming a tune to himself. He occasionally says something to himself, but I can never understand it. Today, when I was using the elevator, I noticed there were now 25 floors, according to the elevator buttons. I'm still debating going to those floors. That's not the only change. By my count, there are now 150 cells on floors seven and eight, 300 in total, all empty. The stairwell connecting each floor, meanwhile, seems downright endless. And I can hear a young girl crying at the bottom. I can still use it to traverse the building, but it loops, it seems like. I've gone down 30 flights today, and once I hit the bottom floor, it looped back to floor 25. I stepped out at floor 20 and went down via elevator. I'm going to try to get some rest on floor nine. Sorry to cut this update short. Max here. Sorry, I didn't realize how many days it'd been since I posted. Time in here, it flows differently. I'm still stuck in this damned asylum. Some of you think it's some other worldly force carrying out vengeance on my family through me. And well, I have an entirely discredited that theory in my head. What food I had is almost gone. Some of it has started to spoil. The building's heating system doesn't turn on anymore. And it gets cold here at night, like a meat locker. I made a controlled fire in the staff kitchen to keep warm, using paper, some old planks and an ovens flame. Two more cells are empty now, specifically cells 31 and 38. Curiosity got the better of me. And upon seeing the windowless cell number 38's door open, I peeked in. The walls of the room were coated with blood, entrails, and slash marks in the walls padding. In the center was a mutilated corpse missing all of its skin. When I exited the room, a blood trail dragged down the hall, like someone was moving a body. I could swear it wasn't there before I entered the room. I found cell number 31's occupant not long after. He sat in a corner of the elevator. He didn't seem to acknowledge my presence. The lights flickered. They suddenly went out for a split second and he was gone when they came back on. I felt a burning sensation in my forearm, a stabbing pain, like I had it in an oven coil. In my arm were four deep cuts. They formed a word. Hi. They didn't bleed despite their depth, but they hurt like hell. I felt faint and leaned against the wall of the elevator. I rested my eyes a moment and heard a faint ding. I didn't recall pressing the button, but stepped out of the elevator regardless, just wanting to get off. This was a mistake I soon realized as I gazed upon the stark white hall before me. I turned around to get back on the elevator, but only found a wall. Painting on it in black lettering was the number 21. I turned around, gulping, and faced the hall. There were now people. Unlike last time, these had faces. They were all in patient gowns. Some of them had their scalps peeled back, revealing brain matter. Others had small holes above their eyebrow, leaking blood. All of them had a black fluid leaking from the holes where their eyes should have been. And they were all facing me, not moving or making any noise. I tentatively stepped down the hall, walking through the group.  As I continued, the black liquid started pooling at their feet. They numbered in the hundreds, stretching down the hall for miles. An overwhelming sense of dread began to well in my chest as they started muttering among themselves. I began moving faster. As the fluid began filling the floor, individual puddles merging with each other. I heard movement behind me and I broke out into a sprint. It was up to my ankles now. The inmates began talking louder, speaking in the same gibberish as the nurses. The black substance was halfway to my knees and I began struggling to keep up a quick pace. How long was this hall? It was at my knees now and it was like tree sap, sticky and hard to move through. It was like the deeper it got, the thicker it was. It got to my thigh and I could barely move at all. The faces of my family's past staring me down at my waist. And it was like mud. I began feeling claustrophobic as it rose further. I couldn't move or breathe at this point. It was at my neck now and I felt hands dragging me under. I kicked at them or tried to at least, but it was for nothing. I felt it entering my mouth and nostrils and the world around began to fade. I suddenly fell to the ground, gasping and clawing for air. I could see I could breathe. I quickly sat up and took in my surroundings. I was in the basement. I studied my breath and let out a sigh of relief. Was that a dream? It felt so real. I took the stairs up to floor nine and froze as I opened the door. On the walls of the hall, written hundreds of times, was a phrase I couldn't understand. There was a hole here. It's gone now. That was written on the walls, floor and ceiling. Every square inch of the hall of floor nine contained that phrase. A door at the end of the hall creaked open and S Kemper as their straight jacket identified them as crawled out on all fours. Only thing was he was on the ceiling. Their jacket had been untied, rolled up sleeves, revealing clawed hands. From the distance I was at, I couldn't tell if those were their fingernails or talons. I stepped backward to leave and the floor creaked. The being looked up and cocked its head. Kemper jumped from the ceiling to the floor below, landing on all fours and then standing up. It grinned, curling back thin lips, revealing sharpened yellow teeth. The lights began to flicker and suddenly shattered, raining glass around us. Kemper began sprinting towards me and I quickly ran in the hall and slammed the door in its face. It stared through the window at me and even this close, I couldn't make out the features of its face. It scratched the glass, spelling the word high. It then licked the glass, revealing a long, black tongue. It rattled the handle and I was broken from my trance. I ran down the stairs, hearing the glass of the window of the door shatter as I descended. That was yesterday. I haven't seen Kemper since then, but I found slash marks on walls and ceilings. I haven't seen the doctor at all or who or whatever was in cell number 38. I've taken to sleeping in a locked cell only coming out during the day. I'm almost out of food and I'm getting hungry. I've been sleeping, but I feel like I haven't slept in days. Tomorrow I have to go to a floor above 20. Maybe there will be supplies there or maybe this place is finally getting to me. It's hard to tell anymore. How long have I been here? Days? Weeks? I don't know. My phone says it's April 5th, but it feels longer than that. Like I said, time flows differently here or at least it seems to. I think I'm going to get some sleep. Update. It's now April 7th. I'm still alive, at least I'm pretty sure. I was woken up by a loud slam. The noise was from somewhere above where I slept in the basement. I went up to the lobby and I saw it was the front door. It was open. Cautiously, I looked out and saw the front gate quickly. I ran out pushing through the gate. I'd never driven so fast in my life. I was laughing and crying as I pulled into my driveway. I quickly ran up the front steps of my home, unlock the door and swung it open. I ran inside up the stairs to my bathroom. First thing on my mind was a shower, a nice, hot shower. I swung the bathroom door open and began to draw the water. I turned to look in the mirror and froze. The room behind me wasn't in the reflection. In fact, neither was I. No, the image in the mirror was that of the hospital's reception area. I turned around and found myself facing the reception desk. I started to laugh because that's when I knew I was gonna die here.  This place would never let me leave, at least not alive. The entrance was still open but now led to another hall. Taking a breath, I stepped into the hall. The door slammed shut behind me, locking again. At the end of the hall was the reception area, but now clean and seemingly new. A woman sat behind it, filing her teeth. She gestured to me to step forward. She spoke as I did so. Now, now, little one, you don't belong in this place. There was a hole here. It's gone now. And remember, if you ever inherit an old haunted psychiatric hospital, don't go there.


A lot of folks ask what do you learn from history? History teaches no lessons. What history does is provides a context so you can look to the future. In fact, there is no ability to understand the future except from the past. Our history makes us want to be brave. Our history is rich with a legacy of Marines that have made the ultimate sacrifice and have been very willing to do so because of that bigger purpose that we're taught. Happy birthday, Marines. On 10 November each year, wherever we are, we pause to celebrate the anniversary of our Corps and reflect on who we are, what we do, and why we do it. 70 years ago, when our predecessors paused to mark the anniversary of our Corps, they reflected back on a year of extraordinary combat in a amphibious drive across the Pacific. Despite the challenges and horrific conditions, Marines prevailed at places like Guam, Saipan, and Pelaloo. On 10 November 1944, Marines looked back with pride on their accomplishments, confident in their ability to meet future challenges. During the Pacific Campaign, Marines fought many hard-won battles from 15 September to 27 November 1944. The 1st Marine Division fought a determined enemy, 10,000 strong, on the small volcanic island of Pelaloo. I can remember, I don't think many of us slept the night before, anticipating to land in the next day. They usually feed you steak and eggs for breakfast, which is a terrible thing to do to you, because you're not used to it at all. When we went ashore, we got splashed several times with near misses. I was up on deck through the night, and I remember seeing a crossfire of anti-aircraft fire in the sky like this, and all of a sudden it blistered in flames, and I saw my first airplane shot down. We were supposed to go in, and there was a Japanese airplane in there, crashed, and that was our pivot point. We were supposed to go in and pivot to the left and go north. We were in the middle of setting up a short defense to see which way we were going to go further north. When we got hit, it wasn't long after that when we found out that we were surrounded. If there was one thing I believe that is the highest honor for a Marine, it is the opportunity to fight alongside another Marine. If you look back through our history and you study our history, that's one constant, and that's one thing that always stands out is the camaraderie and the spirit of the Corps and the Brotherhood of being a Marine and never failing and always coming through mission and accomplishment. A costly and controversial battle that would claim the lives of 1,252 Marines and nearly 11,000 of the enemy. In an environment of utmost savagery, the Marines prevailed. They were victorious because they were well prepared. They built mental and physical toughness. They were disciplined and they trusted each other. In 2004, 20,000 Marines deployed to the Anbar province in Iraq. Many Marines spent that birthday in combat at places like Ramadi, El Khan, in Fallujah. Marines would once again find themselves sent to root out an entrenched and determined enemy, this time in the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah Iraq. It was some of the heaviest urban combat Marines have been involved in since Way City, 1968. We received our mission statement as to what we were supposed to do when we entered the city of Fallujah and pretty much it was eliminate all threats for the most part in the nutshell. They had already received a warning of anyone that's left in the city, we could see the combatants or whatever the case may be and our mission was pretty much to clear the city of Fallujah to return it to the people. During the course of that battle when I was trapped and wounded bleeding out inside the house, if I ever had any doubts during that period of making it out alive or making it out of that building, I always knew without any doubt whatsoever that I would make it out because those Marines that were part of that unit, I just had that much confidence in them and their abilities that they would somehow figure out a way to find a way to never leave Marine behind. It's that camaraderie that makes us elite. It's the whole combined arms team. So here we are as a tank company, we couldn't move forward without the infantry to our left or right. We couldn't move forward without the logistic supportings, the fuel, the trucks, the bulldozers, the close air support, the artillery support as we were getting, the mortars. It all came together and I think every Marine in that city felt that. They understood that. The Marines who fought in the battle of Fallujah were 100% warriors. They should always be proud of the jobs they did and how well they performed and who they were and what they stood for. And like all times in history through all generations of the Marine Corps, those young Marines stepped up to the plate and executed and overcame great odds to become victorious in the end. I think I would rather fight in the jungle, not Pelladude type of jungle, but rather on Guantanel type of jungle or the Korean type of war than in Fallujah. What I know about it, door to door stuff, you don't know who your enemy is. That would be nerve wracking. We at least knew where our enemy was most of the time. Like Pelladude, the battle for Fallujah was the bloodiest of the Iraq war. Coalition forces suffered more than 100 killed and 600 wounded. More than 2,000 insurgents died and 1,500 were captured. Looking back at our history, whether Marines are storming beaches in World War II or Marines are patrolling the streets of Iraq, our warrior mentality, what we stand for, our customs and courtesies, our love for each other, our love for the Marine Corps, and our history since the founding of this nation, the people that we've protected and the ideas and the freedoms that we fought for. As we celebrate the 239th birthday of our Corps, Marines are in combat in a helmet province. And since we last gathered to celebrate, Marines responded to crisis in the Philippines, South Sudan, Libya and Iraq. Some things change. This year found us in different climes and places than our predecessors. Our organization, our equipment and our training have certainly changed since World War II. What we do in recruit training, whether it's San Diego or Pirate Island, what we do at Quantico in terms of training our officers and later all of our Marines, it instills something into each of us that's hard to explain. I've lived on the side of civilian and child of the Marine Corps, so going in and going to hopefully become a Marine myself, I know that the Marine Corps properly trained me for whatever situation is thrown my way. That's never been a question. You know, they're the best of the best. Honor, Courage and Commandment means to me that I'll be able to wear the title of United States Marine on my shoulders for the rest of my life, no matter how long I'm in the Marine Corps, if it's four years or 20 plus. I joined the Marine Corps because I wanted to accept the challenge. Nobody thought I could do it, so it was to prove myself and everybody else wrong. As I look and talk with some young Marines today, it's obvious that there is eager to be a Marine as I was, and that makes me feel good. The equipment of today that they have to fight with is awesome. We've learned lessons going back from hand-to-hand combat in World War I to the house-to-house fighting in Ways City in Vietnam. And so, you know, as long as we keep up with the lessons that we've learned from the Marines that come before us, we should be this fine. Some things never change. Marines attack this year's challenges with the same courage, commitment, loyalty, self-sacrifice and adaptability as their predecessors at Pelaloo and Fallujah. For that reason, on 10 November 2014, we Marines can look back with pride in our accomplishments, confident in our ability to meet future challenges. Marines are something special. They have a commitment to be in it their best when the times are at their worst. They have a commitment to be in the most ready when the nation's least ready. They have a commitment to each other that even at the cost of their own lives, they will stand by each other no matter what is going on on a battlefield. We are going to continue to live hard, train hard and fight hard, providing our nation the capability to contain crisis, fill the gap or hold the line. And like yesterday, we are ready to leave tonight. Happy birthday, Marines and Semper Fidelis.


Hey, everybody. My name's Jay Little. I'm a principal security engineer at Trailabits. My hobby over this past summer was trying to sync archive nodes and then figure out why some contracts have been self-destructed. So I'm going to quickly go over how I did this and then share the results. In case anybody needs a brief refresher of what a self-destruct looks like, imagine that you have some contracts. People are using it. They're baking cookies. The owner's keeping track of who has what cookies. Then the owner wants to close up the shops. They do a self-destruct. When they do this, the owner gets all the money collected by the shop. And when this happens, the code and all the storage gets removed from all the Ethereum clients on the node. So because of that, the self-destruct is a type of internal transaction. So in order to get this information, you need to run full node with archiving. And these are some curated command line arguments I found from Stack Overflow that it'll be performance and do archiving.  It turns out this summer was a bad time to try to get a working archiving node. These have been fixed, but it felt like I was making a Zen garden out of my chain data folder. I'd have to remove it and start again. So I still wanted to make some results. So luckily, Etherscan has an API that will give you a list of all the transactions to a contract and all the internal transactions, too. It took about a few hours to download. Etherscan lets you do about five queries per second. And here are some results. So total, there's been about 2 million contracts created before block 6 million on mainnet. And of those, 32,000 are empty. And a subset of these empty ones have been self-destructed. It's a little hard to tell the difference between the two. So as we kind of apply some more heuristics for like, oh, is this self-destruct interesting or not? Like, is the account that caused the self-destruct the original creator or not? Or did it send money back to the original account or some new one? We get down to just 25 total self-destructs ever that send more than 0.1 ETH. This is kind of surprising. So I started digging through the results. And it turns out there's a lot of duplicate and noise. There's 10,000 copies of this contract that kind of read code in a loop. And some Stack Overflow post says this was a network DOS. Then there's this one's kind of unfortunate. There's been about 6,000 ETH loss by people sending some money to address 0 and then not giving any data. So these are gone forever. Then there's about 2,000 of these where there's 6,000 nulls. Nulls is just a stop. It doesn't do anything. So no contracts created, so it's empty. Then there's this thing that's really annoying. There's about 3,000 of these contracts that just do a push and then a self-destruct. So they just kind of transfer one or two away. And when you look at an ETHer scan, it looks like a huge mess. And it turns out that what these are doing is they will self-destruct and then that triggers a transaction and then it kind of does a little bit of a chain reaction. And this was really annoying to filter out. So we do all this filtering. And we're left with about 2,000 contracts that have been legitimately self-destructed that had code and now they don't. And again, if we apply some heuristics, there's actually only out of the 25 that have sent 0.1 ETH. There's only 16 that have sent more than one ETHer when they were being destroyed. So for a few of these kind of highlights of this result, this one, the original owner actually destroyed his contract and sent 50 ETH to 0 RIP. Then this one, I got excited because I'm like, ooh, 300 ETH in a self-destruct. But it turns out, when you look at previous transactions, the owner was intentionally changed by the original creator. So this probably wasn't an attack. Then the rest of the results are actually pretty much just gambling. This one had a few ETHer in it, 65. And it had a cool address. It begins with DICE. So it's like a trustworthy gambling contract. And then here's another one that transferred a few ETHer. This actually had source code and a pretty legit-looking website. This is a contract that was attacked and the attacker called a couple functions and then got a bounty of 0.2 ETH. I'm actually the original author of this contract. It was just a honeypot with no trap, just honey. And I wanted to see if anybody was scanning binary only contracts and attacking them. And the answer is yes. It happened about a day after I put the contract up on Mainnet. And for an example, that's not me. Here's an old contract. It turns out to be an open source dungeon style navigation game. But they copy and pasted some code and removed the only owner check on mortal. So somebody called it and got three ETH. So this is just a quick overview of what I was doing this summer. And it turns out only a small fraction of contracts have been destroyed when they had value. So I'm looking for other heuristics to apply. And if you have any questions or are curious about this kind of analysis, I'll be happy to chat outside. And thank you for your attention.


Poor habits lead to poverty, vice versa. It is the attitude and behavior of poor people that make them poor. It often looks as though there is an injustice that keeps the poor where they are while the rich keep prospering. The system really is not rigged. You can become whoever you want to be. Becoming is a transformational thing. You can't become simply by doing just one thing. It involves doing a series of things over some time and being intentional about your growth. It can entail having more clear-cut goals instead of aiming simply to be rich. One may, for example, decide to make $100,000 before the year runs out, even if they don't have jobs yet. They can start thinking creatively about how to accomplish their goals. Poverty is really not fun. Absolutely no one wants to be poor. It is not even an aspiration. It kind of just happens. We ultimately decide, unlike poverty, riches seldom just happen. With the exception of people from rich backgrounds and people fortunate to inherit a fortune, most rich people become rich. They didn't do it by chance.  1. Procrastination Many of you know him already. He steals time away from productivity. You will not accomplish anything or even become anything in life if you hang out with this guy a lot. His worst enemy is discipline. Discipline doesn't abide by his company. No wonder he hates him so much. You cannot procrastinate your way into success. It just never happens.  Saying you are planning to do it also means that you are not doing it. Fun fact, planning is actually part of work. But then, procrastinators don't plan. They plan to plan in their head but never come around to doing it.  Have you ever wondered what would happen if you worked on all the great ideas you came up with? Would you be more fulfilled? You will always wonder about things if you don't follow things true. Riches demand hard work. If you have a habit of procrastinating, you will never do what can make you rich, even if you were explicitly told what it was. You need to research problems and create value to become rich. This also means that people will have to rely on your ability to deliver on your brand promise. How can you deliver if you never get around to working on the idea? 2. Gambling You will not win your way to riches as certainly as you will if you put your focus on working hard and solving problems. When you put your faith on a chance to make you rich, you will seldom end up with nothing as is often the case. Casinos are not reaped. They simply have a lot of odds that make the establishment profitable while keeping you a fervent customer. It is all business. Gambling does not have a strategy. You cannot invent a method that ensures you always win. It is not a sustainable source of income. Again, it can be highly addictive. If you start, it is difficult to stop. You may even get loans because you believe you can win them back. It is also far worse when you have won once. Letting go of the idea that you can win again is quite difficult. Rich people know that money is far more valuable and than found. They do not rely on luck or the odds of a gambling machine to build their wealth. They also do not have notions of getting rich quick. They are ready to work hard at their dreams, build value over time, and thrive. They are in need for the long haul. Poor people don't think that way. They want to enjoy the luxuries of now. They are, therefore, driven to act in ways that suit their lifestyle. They don't want to take the train. They want to drive. They want to live like Elon Musk. But without the experiences and lessons that help him, both make and keep his fortune. Poor people are truly their own problem. 3. Drinking too much alcohol Alcohol is actually pleasant when you have an occasional glass. In fact, according to American Mayo Clinic, moderate alcohol intake can increase the risk of developing and dying of heart disease and possibly reduce your risk of diabetes. A lot of emphasis on moderate. People who are alcoholics take far more than a moderate amount of alcohol. A drunk can cough a carton of beers and still stay lucid. The trouble with drinking is that when you drink a lot, you will turn to oversleep. You may also become forgetful. If you become so addicted, you may not be able to fully start the day without whiskey. People who drink a lot are usually primarily focused on using their income to buy drinks. They can't get enough of it. This means no savings. This also means lots and lots of unproductive hours. If you want a scholarship or got hired by Goldman Sachs and you want to celebrate, that would be a different story. But going to have drinks every day is not likely the path of greatness. Rich people have very efficient saving habits. Drinking without reason is a time and money luxury. Many of them cannot afford it. They understand that not only money is involved, spending three years in a row drinking bottles and bottles every evening will accomplish only regrets and more bottles. If you want to be rich, abandon your excessive drinking habits today. 4. Having no goals A man with no goals is like a man with no plan. Rich people are focused and have their goals categorized and planned out with action plans and accountability system. People who don't plan saw them have much to aspire to. They don't have any drive to accomplish anything and often end up unhappy. There is no accidental rich person. Even those who inherited fortunes were planned by their benefactors. People who do not plan have no strategy to accomplish their dream. Dreams are like wishes without targets. If you decide to climb a mountain, determine for yourself how far you want to go and for how long. Something as simple as this can give your actions more meaning and help you gauge your progress. If there is no target, there is no way to measure progress. Poor people are not intentional about their growth. They do not even know the correlation between their growth and wealth. All they want to do is find a job and end money.  It can make you a slave to money instead of the other way around. Start small. It doesn't matter what your first target is and what milestones you have to reach to get there. What matters is your willingness to begin. 5. Spending without planning This one is the worst habit of poor people. They focus on what the money they have can get them rather than how it can be maximized. A poor person may buy a Gucci bag within the week and regret it towards the ending of the month. Poor people borrow to pay their rent all the time. They may also take a loan to pay for Netflix subscription but may think paying $50 for a cost on their area of interest is expensive. The value things that ultimately have little value and they seldom think of creating sustainable ways of getting income. Having a budget can help you cut down on unnecessary expenses and save. You may not always have all the money you need at a particular point in time but if you manage your finances properly, you would at least be able to do the things you need at every given time. According to CNBC, one in five Americans spend more time planning their vacation than managing their finances. According to the US bank, only 41% of American household follow a budget. You will always have something else you can spend your money on as long as you are alive. You really need to cut down on your expenses so you can afford important things. Did you take college loans as an undergraduate? How is paying back working out?  If no, then why not organize your finances in such a way that enables you to spend on what can empower you and help you on your journey to financial freedom? You need to think about your future and where you want to be. Continuing bad habits will only hinder your progress. There's so much to learn already. To get started, let go of your past experiences and ideals. None of them has made you rich. Seek new knowledge and ask people who are where you want to be, how they did it.


The National Auditor of the New Nigerian People's Party and Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee that recently expelled some high-ranking members of the party, Ladikwa Johnson. Earlier, we know a fraction of the party of the New Nigerian People's Party under the leadership of Major Agbor expelled. The presidential candidate of the party, Senator Rabiu Mosa-Kwan-Kwa Sohova, what they called his alleged anti-party activities and misappropriation of the party campaign funds. Well, today we want to talk about what's transpired in the party and we have Ladikwa Johnson, who is the Auditor and Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee with us in the studio. Mr. Johnson, you granted interviews over and over on this issue of the NMPB, even when he started. I remember the first time we had this issue where Chairman of the different parties had said that they do no longer recognize Mr. Kwan-Kwa Soho as their party flag where I remember the headline in one of the papers that said that he should stop parading himself as the leader of the party. Who are these members and who are the people you have now expelled? Are they the same people? Good evening. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Well, firstly let me put on record that Rabiu Mosa-Kwan-Kwa Soho was never suspended. Neither was he expelled. You had a group of renegade members, now former members, who gathered themselves in Lagos, in Aqaqa, and said that they had suspended Senator Konkujo, myself, and the National Working Committee. They claimed that they were the board of trustees of the party. But look, we operate a constitution and our constitution is subject to the electoral acts which is subject to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. What actually happened was that two gentlemen were expelled right at the beginning of the saga and two states, the executive committees, were dissolved. These two, one of them ran to Dr. Agibunan, one of the founders of the party. I want you to put on record that Major Agbo announced the suspension and expulsion of these two men. The eight other states that had their executive committees dissolved Major Agbo announced the same thing, right? Somewhere in between, unfortunately Dr. Agibunan, being one of the founders, took it upon himself to write letters outside of the party to say he was reversing decisions that had been taken constitutionally by the National Working Committee and the National Executive Committee. And the National Working Committee felt that even if he was one of the founders, they couldn't take it any longer. And he was suspended along with Major Agbo. He had rules to play. Now they gathered immediately after the suspension and said they suspended or they expelled the National Working Committee and then they suspended Senator Konkozo. And then they purported to say that they had established a Board of Trustees and the National Working Committee. And once you do that, trying to establish a parallel, you're out, no matter who you are. And that's what happened. I think on the 29th of August, we had a National Executive Committee meeting. It was attended by INEC. They had due notice, 21 days notice. It had in attendance a governor of kind of state, senators, members of House of Reps, the National Working Committee and the members of the National Executive. The 36th state chairman. I want to put on record that they were all there. The 36th state chairman. And the entire NEC, except of course Major Agbo, who we still haven't replaced him with another national publicity secretary. Now what? I wonder why the press have never asked them. How do you go from complaining about your suspension within a week to saying that you are now a national chairman, you now have a faction? The definition of faction. And I've taken it up with a lot of members of the press, my friends, say Konkozo Group. There's no Konkozo Group. But this is one of the issues that we're being raised that Mr. Konkozo has decided to make the NNPP some part of his Konkoziya movement. No, no, no, don't get it wrong. I'll tell you what's happening. Mr. Konkozo has not decided. When they were happy, when Konkozo came in in March 2022, he came in with the Konkoziya with the National Movement, the TNN.  They had an MOU with what we call the old NNPP. Old NNPP said, oh, let's keep 13 states. At that stage, 13 men out of 36 isn't Konkozo in the majority already. It's because he has the people, right? But does that mean he owns the party? No, no, no. Does he own the party now? He doesn't. No one owns the party. We the people. And that is the problem they have. The mentality is that, oh, it is our party. It cannot be your party. It's the party of every subscriber, everyone who is a member of the party. And that is why we said you cannot continue to act as if it's a one-man business. This is a bigger party now. Who did you know the NNPP for? It's been registered for 21 years or so. But when we came in, yes, within a year, we didn't do as well as we wanted to do. But we had a state, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's on the map. So we say to them, look, a faction is this group, a small group that comes out of the other group. Now you would have been a faction of the party if you had remained within the party. But now you have been expelled, so you are no longer a faction of the party. So I think the press should address it properly. Major Albo and his cohorts or Arne Boonam and his cohorts have a group that claim that they are the real NNPP. And you have the national auditor of the NNPP here. Not Concoso's national auditor. National auditor of the NNPP. That's what it is. And we took them to court. We have a restraining order that they should stop parading themselves. If at the end of the day the court says, oh, give it back to them, fine.  But the bottom line is that the court has told them, stop parading yourselves. Come here, let's talk to the sinner. That's what we want to do. We don't just throw in casting aspersions. Does Concoso sell forms? They claim that there were forms sold up to a viewer. But let's go back to the start. Let's talk about the relationship, the internal working relationships between the party's flag bearer and, of course, the 16 other states that, you know, they were given. Even though, you know, could there be a reason for the people? It might not be all of them, but is there a reason for there to not be a sense of belonging? Tell us this agitation. This is it. When you have an MOU, right, you want to work together. Does I care about an MOU? They don't. The MOU was bringing you together. Once you begin to have Congresses, what they had at that time was that after the MOU they dissolved all organs of the party. They put in a caretaker committee, including people like Major Abo, put them in and they midwifed the Congresses from world to local government, to states, to Zono and then the National Convention. So you had the party established under the Constitution. So anything else you do must be under the Constitution. There are plethora of Supreme Court cases over the matter. And that's why you said, okay, let's go, let's come and sort it out. You don't not say that, oh, we had an MOU, you understand, unknown to the Constitution, unknown to INEC, that these people will come and work with us. And since we said that they should hold on to how many states and we hold on to whatever states at the beginning, that is what it has to be. No. But that aside, no one was going after their states. Some of the states affected where some people were states led by Cuan-Cosella members. A lot of the states, in fact, more states were states led by Cuan-Cosella members. And they didn't perform during the elections. Some of the states were dissolved because the structures were not there. There was a state, the man was chairman, his wife was the woman leader. He also made his wife the House of Reps candidates, all just to collect money, collection money. Some of the states, the money for agents got to them, they didn't disperse to the agents. Went away with millions. And you want us to keep looking at them. You see, that's the problem. In Nigeria, we have sentiments in everything. And that's where we are at today. And I remember the same Dr. Iebunam called me, called members of the National Working Committee. He set the whole thing up because himself and Senator Cuan-Cosella met. And I agreed that, look, let's overhaul this thing. Let's get ready for the future. And we started looking at the states. Just finally, before we go, because we're out of time, but there are those who posit that there is the hand of Esau in all of this. And you do know what I mean by that. Yes, I do. Do you agree that there might be the hand of Esau in this matter? Yes, we know for certain that, yes, we have problems here and there, but our friends who are no longer our friends, and I say they are no longer in the party, now have well established, I would call them the opposition, in the country who are funding them. And at the end of the day, it's all about, oh, it's Cuan-Cosella, let's destabilize him because of Kano. It's always about Kano. Kano is the jewel in elections when it comes to elections in Nigeria. So that is that. But we will face them. We will do what we can. We are ready for the rule of law. We'll do what we can, and as soon as we can face them, then we continue to rebuild and move our party forward. Well, here's to hoping that you can move beyond Kano. But Ladigwa Johnson is the national auditor and chairman disciplinary committee in the new Nigerian People's Party, NMPP. Always a pleasure to have you in the studio. Thanks for having me. All right. Well, that's the show tonight. I want to thank you all for being part of our conversations. We'll be back tomorrow talking for development. I am Mary Anaconda. Have a great evening.


Guys, I'm Toby Lee and I'm here at Blackstar to show you some of my favourite tones that I can get out of my HT20. And it's so versatile, you can have clean tones and distortion tones but you can really clean it up, it cleans up really really well. So I thought I would take you through some of the tones I can get out of it. This is one of my favourites, I love the clean tone because it's so rich and warm and I just love it, especially with the reverb up because the reverb is amazing on these amps. So this is my favourite, I'm just going through my 335 on the neck pickup and it's my favourite sound I think because it's just really warm and lovely, so yeah, there it is. I love that warm clean tone because it's just so pure and lovely and then with the voice setting it's really nice because it's still the lovely warm tone but you still get a little bit of distortion out of it which works really well on the bridge pickup of this because it just distorts it even more and so this is what you can kind of get out of it without moving to a distortion channel. So you see it gives it that kind of lovely 70s crunch sound that I really like because it's not too distorted but it's just got that little breakthrough of crunch and then when you move on to the distortion channel it really really gets amazing because most distortions that I've tried through amps, I've found my favourite now because it's with this but some of the distortions I've tried are really really fuzzy and a bit too tinny but this one still has the warm clean sound of the kind of clean channel but with distortion which is amazing which I haven't found before but now I've found it I'm completely obsessed and so I think you'll see what I mean. So this is with the neck pickup and then I'll kind of move to the bridge but because the bridge is quite amazing but this is the neck pickup. So there's your neck pickup sound but when you move on to the bridge this is when it gets amazing. Is the sounds you can get out of this absolutely amazing amp? As some of you know I do a jam every Sunday my Sunday jams and I've been doing them for about four and a half years so far and I don't think I've missed one. I've been doing them for quite a while now so I can't actually remember but I've been using this amp on them for the last few months and it's really really good because with me I find a tone that I absolutely love and work everything around it and I use that tone as well but I kind of use the guitar to change like the settings kind of like with the tone and the volume and the amp cleans up really really nicely so I'll give you a little example I'm on the distortion channel now no voice just the distortion channel and I'll put it on like 10 on my guitar and you'll you'll see it's kind of like a normal distortion but then if I move that down to say like a four I get a bit of a crunch like a four four and a half it kind of halves the distortion which is really nice and then if I move that down to like a two two and a half the amp just cleans up so so nicely so this is like a two and a half so you go so as you can see I'm still on the distortion channel on my foot switch and obviously still on the amp but by kind of playing around with the volume and the tone you can get like if I use the tone now you can get like a really flat kind of cream crossroads kind of sound you've got here so you can just really play around with it and you can get loads of different sounds and that's why I love it so this is how I have the knobs on the amp set for this particular tone and so me personally I absolutely love reverb because it just makes even though the amp has the warm sound anyway it just makes it a lot fuller and I just really really like reverb so as you can see I have my reverb on like a nine and a half so yeah I love reverb and yeah I have my ISF just before twelve o'clock because it kind of gives you the best of both worlds and it just I know I just love it at that kind of setting because it just gives me the best of both worlds and I like that I don't always have too much treble because I don't want it to be too tinny because I love warm tones and I don't like ruining the warm tone that this has by putting too much treble on it so I have that just a bit over one o'clock which I like I never have too much bass because otherwise with this guitar when I hit if I put that on like full when I hit this wet with my Sunday jams we have the Volkswagen bus on the back of the wall and if I have too much bass that starts rattling so I never put too much bass on it because if I was at home right now doing that the bus would be very very rattling and so I don't put too much bass on for that reason and because I kind of it might it really vibrates the surroundings and the guitar and it kind of puts me off a bit so I have a little bit but not too much for overdrive I have not too much gain because this is a hollow body and most of you will know that a hollow body goes quite like buzzy and it howls in not a necessarily good way when it has too much gain so I have just about one o'clock of that because I don't really I don't really need too much gain either because I get it out the guitar and I also kind of play around with the volume on the amp to get a bit more of a crunch out of that with my clean I have quite a lot of tone because I feel that it adds to it in a very nice way and then I've not done my volumes very well but it's quite nice because I've set it so it's kind of like the same level for clean and distortion which which is good when you're changing mid solo or mid song which is brilliant so I that's that's my settings on my Blackstar HD 20


What's up everybody Jason here for Jasper's case race comm this feels mosaic picker team number four and random teams number two Would I guaranteed pick your team or random team spot team random? So again 13 total spots we take all 13 customer names or randomize them only and then we'll match you up with the list below From the Bears as a top prize all the way down to the Raiders in mosaic picker team number four So here you go. Here's a dice roller. Here's a customer name So George down a date and bought those straight up and then Rick won those from prestige three down a brand at home Paid a fraction of the price of congrats So let's roll the dice and it is a two and a six for eight times Remember number one matches up with the bears all the way down to the Raiders two and a six eight times. Good luck one two three four five six seven and Eighth and final time two and six eight times Boom Neil at the top all the way down to Shawn Maddock at the bottom After two and a six. Let's match you up here. Boom So Neil you got the Bears. Congrats Richard with the Steelers Rick with the Cowboys Bob with my Eagles George spot and random team Neil spot and random team Evan spot and random team Kevin spot and random team Dayton spot and random team Ryan with the Broncos Berna with the Colts CJ with the Cardinals and Shawn Maddock with the Raiders. So there you go guys. Appreciate everybody So coming up next is random teams first and then we'll do the pick your team And then after that continue on the day with some more sold-out break. So appreciate you guys. Jasper's case breaks calm


As we transition from childhood into adulthood, we begin to realize that things, people and events are often not what they appear to be. At times, this realization can be funny, but can also be disturbing or confusing. Children often recoil at this murky confusion, preferring a simple world in which what you see is what you get. Adults, on the other hand, often love this confusion, so much so that we oftentimes tell ourselves stories just to conjure up this state. Whether we run from it or savor it, make no mistake, irony is a dominant feature of our lives. In simplest terms, irony occurs in literature and in life whenever a person says something or does something that departs from what they or we expect them to say or do. Just as there are countless ways of misunderstanding the world, sorry kids, there are many different kinds of irony. The three most common kinds you'll find in literature classrooms are verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony. Verbal irony occurs whenever a character tells us something that differs from what they mean, what they intend, or what the situation requires. Any popular internet memes capitalize on this difference, as in this example. Edgar Allen Poe's short story, The Cask of a Montillado, offers a more complex example of verbal irony. In the story, a man named Montressor lures another man named Fortunato into the catacombs beneath his house by appearing to ask him for advice on a recent wine purchase. In reality, he means to murder him, brutally, by walling him up in those catacombs. As the two men travel deeper underground, Fortunato has a coughing fit, and Montressor appears to comfort him in the following richly ironic exchange. Come, I said with decision, we will go back. Your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved. You are happy, as I once was.  For me, it is no matter. We will go back. You will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Enough, Fortunato said. The cough is a mere nothing. It will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough. True. True, I reply. If we only paid attention to the appearance of Montressor's words, we would think he was genuinely concerned with poor Fortunato's health as he hacks up along. We would also think that Montressor was trying to be nice to Fortunato by agreeing with him that he won't die of a cough. But knowing Montressor's true intentions, which he reveals at the start of the story, we are able to understand the verbal irony that colors these assurances.  This scene is also a great example of dramatic irony. Dramatic irony occurs whenever a character in a story is deprived of an important piece of information that governs the plot that surrounds them. Fortunato in this case believes that Montressor is a friendly shrub with a terrible wine palette and a curious habit of storing his wine near the dead bodies of his ancestors. The pleasure of reading the story stems in part from knowing what he doesn't, that he's walking into Montressor's trap. We delight in other words in the ironic difference between our complex way of understanding the world and Fortunato's simple worldview. Finally, the story also includes arguably a great example of situational irony. As its name suggests, situational irony occurs when a character's intentions are foiled and people do certain things to bring about an intended result, but in fact produce the opposite result. At the start of the story, Montressor tells his readers that his project will succeed only if he, quote, makes himself felt as such to him who had done the wrong, end quote. In other words, Fortunato must not only know that he's been tricked, but also why he was tricked, and why he must die. If this is Montressor's intention, however, he goes about it in a rather strange way, offering Fortunato countless sips of wine on their trip into the catacombs that gets his antagonist pretty drunk. At the end of the story, Montressor has certainly got away with the crime, but it's far from certain that Fortunato or even Montressor knows why he was given such a terrible death. So why does Montressor insist on telling us that his story is a success? One reason might be that he's anxious about the situational irony that envelopes his story and wants to cover the reality of that irony with a simple appearance of triumph.  If readers push back against this desired outcome, testing it against Fortunato's confusion and being chained to a wall and bricked into place, he travels further than even Montressor is willing to go into the murky catacombs of irony.