Shawn Maus | Story Finder

I help people find the story they’re trying to tell—and turn it into clear communication that makes people care. Creator of the Story Finder System.

[Shawn Maus | Story Finder @MightyMausMedia]

@RpsAgainstTrump I hope they don’t give him one more second of air time!

[Frank Marshall @LeDoctor]

The Lucas Museum's opening night was an unforgettable night full of storytellers and fabulous narrative art. @lucasmuseum

[Cory Booker @CoryBooker]

Our history is not one person’s to erase.

[Shawn Maus | Story Finder @MightyMausMedia]

@storyandplot @DominicHailsto1 I’ve spent way too much time wondering what separates the good writer trying to break in from the writer getting paid.

Projects. Personality. Give people a reason to notice.

That’s a much more useful way to think about it. Back to work.

[Shawn Maus | Story Finder @MightyMausMedia]

I almost skipped The Bombing of Pan Am 103. Patrick J. Adams pulled me in. I remembered Lockerbie as a headline.

The show kept finding the people inside the investigation. That's the difference between information and story.

[Shawn Maus | Story Finder @MightyMausMedia]

A mission statement gives me the category.
A story lets me experience the stakes.

That’s the difference between describing an organization and helping people care.

[Alex Boge @alexboge]

I find these World Trade Center simulations by Kostack Studio fascinating because they remove the smoke and let you see the collapse much more clearly.

In the real footage, so much is hidden by fire, dust, debris, distance, and chaos that many people come away with the impression that the towers simply dropped straight down into their own footprints.

But that is not really what happened.

These simulations make it much easier to see that the collapse begins in the heavily damaged and fire-weakened region, the upper section starts moving and tilting, and the destruction then propagates downward through the structure.

The towers do not simply disappear vertically into their own footprints. Large portions of the upper structure and exterior are moving outward and to the side as the collapse develops. Much of that motion is simply obscured in the real videos once the enormous debris cloud forms.

And this is also why I find these simulations useful when people describe the collapses as looking like “controlled demolition.”

Strip away the smoke and dust and the resemblance becomes much less convincing.

What you see is a highly asymmetric structural failure beginning around the aircraft-damaged and fire-affected floors, followed by an enormous moving mass progressively overwhelming the structure beneath it. There is tilting, rotation, exterior columns peeling away, debris being thrown far outside the building footprint, and structural failure occurring chaotically as the collapse moves downward.

That is very different from the neat mental image usually implied by “controlled demolition,” where structural supports are deliberately severed in a carefully timed sequence to produce a predetermined collapse.

And importantly, we already know what preceded these collapses.

Both towers suffered massive aircraft-impact damage. Fireproofing was stripped from portions of the structure. Large, uncontrolled fires then burned across multiple floors - for about 56 minutes in the South Tower and about 102 minutes in the North Tower - heating and weakening structural components until collapse initiated.

Once that upper mass began moving, the loads imposed on the floors and structure beneath became vastly greater than anything they had been designed to carry.

The result was progressive collapse.

No, an animation is not proof simply because it looks convincing, and these are not official NIST simulations. They are visualizations built under particular assumptions.

But as visualizations, I think they are extremely useful.

They let you see something the original footage often cannot show clearly: beneath that enormous cloud of smoke and debris was a complicated, violent, asymmetric structural failure - not two buildings neatly dropping straight down into their own footprints.

A note on the simulation: this is not intended to reproduce the collapse down to the exact motion of every beam, floor panel, and fragment of debris. No practical simulation could do that. Its value is in modeling the large-scale structural behavior - how the major sections deform, move, tilt, separate, and progressively fail. Think of it as a visualization of the mechanics and overall collapse behavior, not a frame-by-frame reconstruction of where every piece of steel ultimately landed.

[60 Minutes @60Minutes]

“Over the last 40 years, the United States has been exposed to something that our biology was never intended to handle,” warns former FDA Commissioner David Kessler. https://t.co/ZQFqI3Y0YK

[Tony Tost @tonytost]

He isn't the biggest movie star in the world (though he's getting up there). He's probably not the greatest actor currently working (though he's definitely way way up there). But I do think he's the most interesting actor going right now. Consistently great oddball performances.

[Joe Trippi @JoeTrippi]

Umberto Eco, writer: “The tragedy of the Internet is that it has promoted the village idiot to the level of bearer of truth” - AS USA https://t.co/fJjQ3PA7Ah

[Amunet @VintageSitcoms]

The United States is 250 years old. Mel Brooks and Dick Van Dyke have been alive for 40% of it.❤️

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

MUST WATCH:

Clip from Larry David's new show "Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness"

Rob Reiner (before his death) as George Washington.

Trump is going to hate this.

[Shawn Maus | Story Finder @MightyMausMedia]

@donwinslow @ABC It looks like Britain has flipped the story of the American Revolution. The battle is now being fought in the courts and the FREE press! Bravo!

[The Sting @TheStingisBack]

Blowing up Paul Newman and Steve McQueen on the set of The Towering Inferno was just another day at the office in the 70s.
No CGI. Just Hollywood legends strapped to a wall, explosions blasting, and water cannons hammering them like it’s routine. The 70s were wild.

[Time Capsule Tales @timecaptales]

This 1982 Miller Lite commercial with Rodney Dangerfield, Dick Butkus, John Madden, Bubba Smith, Deacon Jones & others cannot be topped

[Covie @covie_93]

So Zelensky desecrated the White House by not wearing a suit but this is ok?????