Channing

Getting Weird Out There Sundays @ 10 PM on 102.9 The Buzz

[Championship Rounds @ChampRDS]

🚨 The UFC just released Conor McGregor’s pre-fight warm-up footage, showing no obvious signs of injury coming into the fight

He was even drilling the exact same kick that appeared to injure him during the fight

[Conor McGregor @TheNotoriousMMA]

My head gasket is gone. Destroyed. I had no injury / injuries going into the fight. I was throwing kicks, planted and jumping, all throughout camp as well as backstage before the fight. This came out of nowhere. I am beyond dark here. I can only describe it as hell.

[Bussin' With The Boys @BussinWTB]

Drone shows in 2026 have peaked

[Channing @channingrome]

@Jonasastrophot @AdamCuker @ClaudiusNDX @NASASpaceflight Just an assembly area?

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸

[Channing @channingrome]

@Boyd_1212 Yeah, and there's one particular forward who's had a foot out the door since last season. Maybe he packages that player for a larger splash (Knies).

[Daily Caller @DailyCaller]

Supreme Court Rules Cell Phone Location Data Protected Under Fourth Amendment: 'No government official should have free access' https://t.co/yCWOO0wYfj

[FOX Sports @FOXSports]

THE KNOCKOUT STAGE IS SET 🍿

[Aleph @alephneuro]

We recently obtained the highest-resolution 3D images of the human brain ever taken from outside the skull. This is the first look.

Introducing Aleph, a research lab building brain interfaces for the telepathic future. (1/n)

[Zack Fradella @ZackFradellaWx]

Seven waterspouts formed offshore Fourchon this morning. Here’s three in one picture! 📸 Robbie Cantrelle #lawx

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

In 1989, Jim Varney and Robin Williams were caught on camera riffing with each other backstage at COMIC RELIEF III, and it's really amazing to see. The two had a known mutual respect for each other, first met crossing paths on the standup circuit, with Williams even saying that no one could keep up with him more than Varney 🔥 Two legends we lost way too soon

[Stefan Burns @StefanBurnsGeo]

Here we observe the seismic waves propagating outwards from the destructive M7.2 and M7.5 Venezuela earthquakes today June 24th 2026. This was the strongest earthquake sequence Venezuela has experienced since the 1812 Caracas Earthquake...

[Noah Bergren @NbergWX]

Pretty rare earthquake activity tonight on Earth.

Both of these things happening within 2 hours of each other:

1 in 1,000 to 1,200 years

• A “doublet” earthquake in Venezuela (two quakes of similar magnitude in the exact same spot)
• A totally separate 6.9+ quake somewhere else (Japan)

[Benchrates @benchrates]

Jack Drury has had the best season of his career with 27 points, 14:29 TOI, and a huge Contribution to #GoAvsGo defense

L'Heureux and Svechkov have good potential, as well as a Level of $3.8M and $2.4M

#Smashville

[Reed Timmer, PhD @ReedTimmerUSA]

We have been chasing the most violent storms on earth together for over 25 years.

Now, we are bringing the ultimate intercept to the BIG SCREEN. 🌪️🎥
I am beyond excited to announce that NEVER STOP CHASING is hitting theaters nationwide on August 21!

Huge thanks to Deadline for breaking the news this morning. You can read the exclusive announcement and watch the full official trailer here: https://t.co/zwTquSOoiY

Directed by my longtime chase partner Ken Cole, this documentary takes you directly inside the bear's cage. We mastered the entire film in Dolby Vision and immersive Dolby Atmos sound so you can actually feel the roar of a massive wedge tornado right in your theater seat. This is the real deal, and I can't wait for you to experience it with us.
Check out https://t.co/ULS5vzmnew for updates and theater info!
#NeverStopChasing #StormChasing #Dominator #Tornado#Dominator #Tornado

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A glimpse into a frightening future of intelligent micro drones.

[Nate @nnwakelam]

I once shelled one of the most secure military facing webservers on the planet at a hacking event by finding a file called logintest.aspx in the web root that would just generate you a global admin cookie for *.blank.blank. At the same event, someone shelled the same webserver using a coldfusion exploit from 2010. I’m not doubting that LLMs are amazing but the phrase “classified system” does a lot of heavy lifting here.

[Financial Dystopia @financedystop]

The “Boom Belt” is basically America’s new economic engine.

11 states:

Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Louisiana
Mississippi
North Carolina
Oklahoma
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas

Together, these states would have the 3rd largest GDP in the world.

They’re responsible for around 70% of U.S. population growth and 57% of all new jobs.