Munetsi

and we're back

[John Ternus @johnternus]

hello

[Munetsi @africut]

@thecinethology Silo

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

There’s been a lot of speculation about where we stand on open-weights models. We’ve outlined our views in full here: https://t.co/NtXQuWm2g5

[Mark Zuckerberg @finkd]

Open source is a positive and important force for both empowering people and preventing centralization. Proud to support this.

[Wode Maya ® @wode_maya]

I was ridiculed and mocked, but see what the Lord has done!

[Munetsi @africut]

@CrimeWatchZW The first amendment is a real thing in the US.

[ICC @ICC]

𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄-𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 🏆

A milestone home #T20WorldCup triumph for India 🙌

[freelance @PhillipSibanda8]

Amana

[Munetsi @africut]

@wode_maya Reminds of the days of the great Kwame Nkrumah when Ghana lead Pan Africanism. Great to see that the spirit is still alive!

[Munetsi @africut]

@LukeMiani Condensation since it’s air

[Munetsi @africut]

@LukeMiani Liquid glass 😂

[Tyler Stalman @stalman]

iPhone 17 Pro action mode is so good it looks looks fake on the new 8x lens

[JerryRigEverything @ZacksJerryRig]

I'm ready.

[Aaron @aaronp613]

Apple released their best video of all time 6 years ago today - Wonderful Tools.

Give people wonderful tools
And they'll do wonderful things

[Sam Sheffer @samsheffer]

17 Pro

[Marques Brownlee @MKBHD]

Next up is iPhone 17 Pro

[Munetsi @africut]

@daviddunn177 Mr Don’t Boo Vote

[Mark Halperin @MarkHalperin]

****WORLD EXCLUSIVE****

MANDATORY CREDIT: MARK HALPERIN’S WIDE WORLD OF NEWS CONCIERGE COVERAGE NEWSLETTER

https://t.co/yNkpCTRnMA

Here is the next chapter I've obtained from a source in advance of @KamalaHarris book release ("107 Days") later this month.

Happy holidays and enjoy!

****

CHAPTER 8: THE SACRED GEOMETRY OF BLAME
August 8, 2024

The campaign woke up shaped like a triangle and went to bed a Möbius strip.

Every conversation ended where it began: whose feelings were the most historically valid, and who got the chair closest to the diversity consultant.

Power used to be a straight line—boss, deputy, intern. Now it’s a mandala drawn in dry-erase marker by a twenty-two-year-old with a septum ring and a graduate certificate in “Restorative Circles.”

I used to love Venn diagrams. Now I keep seeing them in my sleep, overlapping until they swallow the country.

We started the morning with a “values calibration.” The diversity consultant—Ariadne, PhD, vibes—sat at the head of the table with a stack of laminated cards that said things like Hold Space and Decenter Yourself and Assume Radical Welcome. The closer you sat to Ariadne, the more sacred you felt. That is not a metaphor. Julio elbowed his way into the seat to her left and instantly looked forgiven for everything he hadn’t confessed.

Shanti arrived two minutes late and landed a seat by the ficus, which is where dissent goes to photosynthesize. James, our data monk, hovered behind a pillar like a repentant algorithm. Our new Obama ’12 whisperer—name’s Brick, actually Brick—took a chair against the wall and said nothing. Brick believes in scripts, verbs, and elections that occur in material reality. His presence calmed me the way duct tape calms a leaky pipe.

Ariadne opened with pronouns. Not mine—the room’s. A check-in, a ritual, a little call-and-response to summon the better angels of our branding. Someone introduced themselves as “they/ze,” another as “she but exploring,” and then Brick, God bless him, said, “Brick. He.” It was like a plate shattering at a Greek wedding. People clapped without knowing why.

Then Julio gestured to the whiteboard: AMERICAN ANCHOR—DEBATE PREP LEAD. I took a breath.

“I’d like to appoint Riley,” I said. “They’re a non-binary, vegan, ex-Marine Buddhist. Combat experience, mindfulness training. Speaks fluent opposition research. No one will out-discipline Riley.”

Silence. The kind that makes air heavier.

Finally, a low whistle from the ficus zone. Shanti: “You want a non-binary vegan ex-Marine Buddhist to beat Trump in a split-screen?” She didn’t say Are you high? but the ficus leaves trembled.

James tried to help. “Veganism underperforms with roast-beef counties.”

Ariadne folded her hands like a patient therapist. “Let’s name our discomfort.”

Brick: “Voters.”

Julio leaned in. “Riley’s a killer. In a non-carceral, restorative sense.” His eyes said please, dear God, let this land.

It did not land. By lunch, the Hill was leaking “Harris Taps Non-Binary Monk of War To Prep Debate.” The right called it woke cosplay. The left called it vet-washing. Marines on Facebook posted pictures of steaks. Buddhists posted pictures of nothing. Bipartisan disgust—the only unity project left in Washington.

At 1:42 p.m., my phone buzzed with a push alert. DON LEMON: “Girl, what is happening??” No link. Just the tweet, screen-capped into eternity. Don has always had a gift for the concerned-auntie tone that makes you feel scolded by better lighting.

Two minutes later, we discovered the next land mine. Leaked emails. Capital L, capital E. A subject line that read: NH—Trip? A forwarded chain from six months ago in which I had typed, with the doomed breeziness of a person who trusted her inner circle, the phrase: “New Hampshire is emotionally Confederate.”

It was shorthand, an exasperated aside after a diner where a man told me to smile and asked if I took my hash browns “Kamala-style.” Still, words travel like pathogens and mutate when they meet oxygen.

The first headline arrived within the hour.

CONCORD MONITOR: HARRIS SLAMS GRANITE STATERS AS “EMOTIONALLY CONFEDERATE”

The second came with a subhead:

BOSTON GLOBE: Veep’s Email Sparks Fury; Locals Say She Doesn’t Get “Live Free or Die”

By 3 p.m. a state senator with a flannel collection was demanding an apology, a refund, and perhaps a duel at dawn. I wondered if he meant pistols or snowballs.

We huddled in the war room. Screens everywhere. Polls like EKGs. Julio paced, hands in prayer, as if the Lord managed media cycles. Shanti crafted statements like tourniquets. James made a chart titled “Emotional Confederacy—Semantic Fallout by DMA.” Brick stared at the floor like a man waiting for a hurricane to pass through drywall.

Ariadne suggested a listening circle. “We’ll pass the talking stone,” she said, as if stones weren’t already aimed at my head.

“I’m not passing a rock,” Brick said. “We need two things: a line and a person to say it.”

“Three things,” Shanti added. “A scapegoat.”

“May I suggest the staffer who forwarded the email?” James offered, like a man volunteering a goat for a volcano.

“We are not throwing a junior staffer into Mordor,” I said, though the idea warmed me for half a second.

The phones lit up. Donors wanted reassurance. Governors wanted distance. The DNC wanted a ritual sacrifice. The internet wanted blood; it never cared whose.

“How bad does it model?” I asked James.

“Bad,” he said. “But oddly fixable if we show spine and humility simultaneously.”

“Like yoga with knives,” Shanti said.

Julio typed, eyes on fire. “We’ll frame it as an inelegant shorthand for cultural stubbornness—American, not Southern. You’ll apologize to New Hampshire while gently implying they prove us all right every four years.”
“Say less,” Brick said. “Literally, say fewer words.”

Then a staffer rushed in holding an iPad like a bomb. “Riley’s here,” she said.

They/ze stepped into the room wearing a neatly pressed blazer, dog tags, and the calm of a person who has meditated through artillery. “I’m not here to be a symbol,” Riley said. “I’m here to make sure you win the split-screen. We’ll rehearse until your answers become muscle memory and your face stops trying to please people who don’t like you.”

“I like them,” I said, which was not the point.

“America respects force and forgiveness,” Riley said, voice like gravel. “You’re going to show both.”

“Twitter hates you,” Julio offered helpfully.

“Screw Twitter,” Riley said, and set a stack of color-coded drills on the table.

The headings: Pivot Under Fire, Answer Like a Prosecutor, Smile Like an Aunt, Dismiss Without Disdain.

For the first time all day, I felt the floor.

We drafted the New Hampshire statement. Brick wrote it, of course.

“I spoke clumsily about a state I’ve visited often and respect deeply. Granite Staters are proud, independent, and stubborn in the best American way. My job is to earn their votes, not stereotype them.”

Short. Non-defensive. A little flattering. It went out at 4:17 p.m. At 4:23, a selectman from Nashua posted a selfie in front of a snowplow with the caption “Apology accepted. Now shovel the mess.” That counted as a win.

Then Shanti briefed me on the Lemon situation. “We ignore the tweet,” she said, “but book you on his show next week. Kill with kindness. Let him ask, ‘Girl what is happening??’ to your face. You answer, ‘We’re fixing it.’”

“And Riley?” I asked.

“We announce them tonight,” Julio said. “Three sentences. ‘Veteran, public servant, and debate-prep lead Riley X will help sharpen our message.’ No descriptors beyond ‘veteran.’”

“What about vegan Buddhist?” Ariadne asked, almost plaintive.

“Not a seasoning we need,” Brick said.

We broke for debate drills. Riley dimmed the lights, queued a countdown clock, and played the audio of an old Trump rally to recreate the ambient heckle. I stood at a lectern. Riley stood ten feet away like a stern lighthouse. “Again,” they said, each time I over-explained. “Again,” when I apologized with a paragraph. “Again,” when I sounded like a spokesperson for best practices. “You’re not a consensus committee,” they said. “You’re the person who hires committees.”

In a break between rounds, my phone buzzed. A text from a number I never labeled but always recognized: HRC. It was a single line.

Stop negotiating with the cafeteria and start running the kitchen.

I smiled despite myself. Somewhere, a thundercloud put on a headband.

By sunset the chaos had cooled from grease fire to controlled burn. The statement held. The Riley rollout didn’t crash the plane. Don Lemon’s tweet migrated down the feed, displaced by an otter video and a congressional scandal that, blessedly, wasn’t ours. We re-arranged the conference room chairs so they formed a boring rectangle again. Ariadne blessed the space and left to decolonize a conference.

Brick stayed. “Tomorrow, jobs and crime,” he said. “No metaphors. Rust, locks, bridges, cops. American Anchor, nailed to the ground.”

Riley nodded. “We’ll run the law-and-order segment until it stops tasting like kale.”

Julio exhaled. “We live.”

Shanti packed her bag. “Until Don tweets again.”

I walked the hallway alone. The portraits stared as if measuring the math of my odds. Past the loaded whiteboards and the dead ferns, into the quiet where the building hums like a tired ship.

We are a coalition of temperaments held together with tape and caffeine. Every day we draw a new shape around our blame and call it strategy. But somewhere under the geometry, there’s a country that wants something simple: steadiness with teeth. Forgiveness with locks. Work with wages. A president who can take a punch and keep the sentences short.

Back in my office, I opened Twitter one last time. Don’s tweet hovered there, still collecting likes like lint. I typed and deleted three responses. Then I put the phone down.

“Girl,” I told my reflection in the dark window, “we are happening.”

And for the first time all day, I believed it.

[Wes Moore @iamwesmoore]

lol