Cybercab is absolutely magical. Tesla has actually done it. A domestically mass-produced affordable autonomous electric vehicle is available to the general public. A car with no steering wheel generating revenue. It’s sad to come back to a city without Robotaxi after being in Austin. Like stepping back in time. The event was awesome. I know it was tough to follow online, but we all knew the story going in. This was a launch, not an unveiling. It felt like the city transformed immediately. Cybercabs were everywhere, you couldn’t take a trip without seeing another one. Outside of the ride experience itself, the scale of this launch is what I want to make sure people understand. On previous trips, Robotaxi felt like a test network (an amazing one). Not anymore. Suddenly it’s real. It’s hard not to laugh when you ride past a Waymo in a Cybercab. Good luck… As I’ve said before, Robotaxi is way smoother than Waymo. It feels natural. Supernatural, really. This holds true for Cybercab. Waymo feels like a computer. And it looks like one too. The production Cybercab is beautiful. It really is special. The color, the lines, the lighting, the doors. It looks great. While also being the most efficient car in history? Insane. I think it fits perfectly in the space between familiarity and the future. It doesn’t stick out, but it catches your attention. After exiting our first ride, there was a large group of 10-20 people. They were all talking about the Cybercab as we walked by. These doors are like gasoline on a word of mouth wildfire. Our rides were flawless. Better than a human driver. No anxious moments. Cybercab is very comfortable, even at 6’2. Leg room is particularly notable. It would be tough to find a car that has this much leg room for two passengers at the same time. No pedals, center console, or multiple rows of seating creates a lot of space and a very open feel. Robotaxi is unquestionably one of those products that will be way cheaper and way better than what existed before. I like those. No one is going to want to roll the dice on some random person and their car when the alternative is a private, safe, comfortable, clean, consistent, quiet, personalized Tesla with tons of room and a massive screen. It’s a premium experience on every level, and we get it cheaper thanks to technology. No noise or air pollution, either. I don’t have much to critique. Little refinements that I know will happen. Pick up and drop off were satisfactory, over time will become excellent. Grok integration is already impressive, and it’s clear that we’ll eventually be able to just give directions like “pull over around the corner up there.” You can already have Grok update your destination in Robotaxi, it pushes the update to the Robotaxi app on your phone for approval. I leave the event with more confidence in Tesla’s ability to scale, but also renewed patience. I have a greater appreciation for the intentionality of limitations (service area, times, fleet size) rather than seeing them simply as barriers that have yet to be overcome. I now believe the objective is to build slowly, safely, to critical mass. A tail-risk event is inevitable. The absolute last thing we need is some bad luck on a tail-risk event at an early stage before enough data exists to prove its rarity. That data is accumulating quickly and will become undeniable soon enough. Huge congrats to Tesla and Elon for this incredible milestone. Decades of work culminating in a life-saving, sustainable, affordable, economically exceptional product. It’s all pretty surreal, a testament to vision and determination. I love this company!

A tour back in time, created with Seedance 2.5 at 1080p on Higgsfield AI Prompt: Create a highly realistic 30-second cinematic historical sequence set in Korea during the 1950s. The entire video should feel like a naturally observed fragment of ordinary life from that era — not a vlog, not a modern recording, and not a person performing for a camera. MAIN SUBJECT: A young Korean woman in her early 20s with a consistent, natural appearance and believable facial features. She has black hair tied loosely back, minimal makeup, natural skin texture and subtle everyday expressions. Her outfit is period-inspired but youthful and attractive: a fitted cropped short-sleeve cotton top paired with high-waisted shorts ending around the upper thigh, simple flat leather shoes, and a small understated necklace. The clothing should look like authentic, practical 1950s cotton clothing rather than modern fashion. Natural fabric wrinkles, slightly faded colors and realistic stitching. CONCEPT: Show several small moments from her ordinary daily routine, progressing naturally from inside her home to the neighborhood outside. She never looks into or acknowledges the camera. There is no visible camera, filming equipment, phone or modern recording device. SCENE 1 — MORNING AT HOME | 0–6 SEC Inside a modest 1950s Korean home with wooden floors, simple bedding, handmade household objects and sunlight entering through a paper-covered window. The woman folds a small stack of freshly washed clothes, then carries them outside in a woven basket. Her movements are casual and unhurried. Sunlight falls naturally across the room, revealing dust particles in the air. SCENE 2 — HANGING LAUNDRY | 6–11 SEC She steps into a small courtyard behind the house and hangs clothes on a simple rope line. Show her stretching upward to place a shirt over the line, securing it with simple wooden clothespins, then smoothing another garment with her hands. A light breeze gently moves the hanging clothes and her loose hair. Include small environmental details: clay pots, wooden walls, stone ground, a water basin and neighboring rooftops in the background. SCENE 3 — PREPARING TO GO OUT | 11–16 SEC She returns inside and quickly prepares to leave. She picks up a small woven shoulder bag, checks herself naturally in a small old-fashioned mirror, adjusts her hair and puts on her simple shoes. Her expression is relaxed and spontaneous — never posed. SCENE 4 — WALKING THROUGH THE NEIGHBORHOOD | 16–22 SEC She walks out through a wooden gate into a quiet 1950s Korean residential lane. Show traditional houses, stone walls, bicycles, wooden carts, laundry lines, children playing farther away and neighbors performing ordinary chores. She walks naturally through the scene carrying her small bag. SCENE 5 — EVERYDAY ERRAND | 22–27 SEC She approaches a small public water pump or communal washing area. She briefly fills a small metal container, adjusts her grip and continues walking. Keep the interaction simple and believable. No vendor, no market performance and no staged interaction. SCENE 6 — FINAL MOMENT | 27–30 SEC She walks along a sunlit lane bordered by old Korean houses and trees. A breeze moves her clothes naturally as she passes through patches of sunlight and shadow. She briefly pauses to look toward something happening farther down the street, smiles subtly, then continues walking out of frame. VISUAL STYLE: Authentic 1950s Korean period-film aesthetic. Photorealistic historical reconstruction with soft natural daylight, slightly faded monochrome or extremely subtle muted color, fine analog film grain, gentle halation, slight lens softness, natural exposure fluctuations and occasional tiny imperfections characteristic of period film. The image must NOT look like a modern video with a generic "vintage filter." Architecture, clothing, props, materials and human behavior should all convincingly belong to 1950s Korea. CAMERA: Observational period cinematography. The camera exists as an unseen observer rather than a participant. Use carefully composed static shots mixed with very slow natural camera movement. No handheld vlog movement, no selfie perspective, no modern stabilization, no dramatic zooms and no shots where the subject appears aware of being filmed. AUDIO: Pure environmental sound: birds, distant voices, footsteps, fabric moving in the breeze, wooden doors, water flowing from the pump, distant bicycles and neighborhood activity. No music, no narration, no modern sound effects. REALISM: Every movement must obey real-world physics. Natural hands and fingers, realistic walking, believable fabric deformation, consistent shadows, physically accurate sunlight, authentic facial expressions and continuous character identity. No extra fingers, warped hands, floating objects, distorted faces, modern objects or AI-looking motion. The final result should feel like a genuine 30-second fragment of everyday Korean life from the 1950s — intimate, quiet, observational and historically believable, with the woman's ordinary routine providing the visual story. FORMAT: 30 seconds, Seedance 2.5, 16:9, ultra-high-quality photorealism, cinematic historical realism, consistent character identity, coherent transitions, natural motion and authentic 1950s Korean atmosphere.

You may call it AI slop, but if it's that good, even Hollywood is behind! Seedance 2.5 at 1080p Prompt; Create a highly realistic 30-second Seedance 2.5 video that looks like genuine early-2000s Korean home-video footage accidentally preserved on an old MiniDV camcorder. The footage should feel imperfect, nostalgic and spontaneous rather than cinematic or AI-generated. MAIN SUBJECT: A young Korean woman in her early 20s with a consistent natural identity throughout the entire video. She has messy black hair loosely tied back, realistic skin texture, minimal makeup and relaxed everyday expressions. She wears a fitted sleeveless crop top with high-waisted thigh-high shorts, simple worn sneakers and a small necklace. The outfit should feel like believable casual summer clothing from the early 2000s, with natural fabric wrinkles, slightly imperfect fit and realistic movement. IMPORTANT: She is NOT posing, dancing, modeling, vlogging or interacting with the camera. She is simply going about her ordinary household routine while the camcorder happens to capture the moment. SETTING: A quiet residential neighborhood in Korea around the early 2000s. Modest concrete homes, narrow lanes, tiled rooftops, utility poles and wires, old bicycles, plastic basins, laundry lines, small gardens, parked early-2000s vehicles and everyday household objects. The location should feel genuinely lived-in, slightly worn and imperfect. SCENE 1 — HANGING LAUNDRY | 0–7 SEC Start with a slightly shaky wide shot of the woman carrying a plastic laundry basin into a small outdoor courtyard. She takes clothes from the basin and hangs them one by one on a clothesline. She stretches to reach the line, clips a shirt with a clothespin, notices another garment slipping and quickly fixes it. The camcorder operator slightly reframes late, creating an authentic imperfect composition. SCENE 2 — OUTDOOR HOUSEHOLD CHORES | 7–13 SEC She moves to another part of the courtyard and rinses a few household items in a large plastic basin. Water splashes naturally. She wipes her hands on a small towel, moves a bucket aside with her foot and briefly looks toward the house as if someone called her. Keep everything casual and unperformed. SCENE 3 — LEAVING THE HOUSE | 13–18 SEC She picks up a small reusable shopping bag and walks through the front gate. The camera follows slightly too late, briefly losing her behind the gate before catching up. Autofocus hunts between nearby leaves and her face before locking onto her again. This imperfect focus behavior should feel genuinely captured by an old consumer camcorder. SCENE 4 — WALKING OUTSIDE | 18–24 SEC She walks down the residential lane carrying the bag. Show ordinary early-2000s Korean neighborhood life around her: bicycles, laundry hanging from balconies, children in the distance, an elderly neighbor sweeping, scooters passing occasionally and sunlight flickering through trees. She walks naturally without acknowledging the camera. SCENE 5 — SMALL ERRAND | 24–30 SEC She reaches a small outdoor utility area, places the bag down and briefly picks up something she needs — such as a folded cloth, empty container or household item. She turns and starts walking back toward the neighborhood. End abruptly with the camcorder operator slightly zooming in too late as she walks away, followed by a natural cut. CAMCORDER AESTHETIC: Authentic early-2000s MiniDV/consumer camcorder footage. Include: - 4:3 home-video framing - slight handheld shake - imperfect framing - autofocus hunting - occasional exposure pumping - mild blown highlights - soft digital sharpness - interlaced-looking motion characteristics - subtle motion blur - low dynamic range - faded, slightly warm colors - realistic digital noise - tiny compression artifacts - occasional accidental micro-zoom - imperfect white balance - slight lens flare when sunlight hits the lens - natural camera operator mistakes Do NOT make the footage excessively degraded. It should still be clear enough to see her face and environment. REALISM: The most important goal is BELIEVABILITY. Avoid perfect symmetry, perfect lighting, perfectly smooth camera movement, hyper-sharp skin, artificial bokeh, glossy fashion photography, exaggerated expressions, cinematic color grading or overly dramatic shots. The woman must have identical facial identity, hairstyle, clothing and body proportions in every shot. Hands must remain anatomically correct with five fingers. Clothes must move naturally with her body and wind. Objects must remain physically consistent. No duplicated objects, warped architecture, disappearing props, floating items, changing clothing, distorted faces or unnatural walking. AUDIO: Raw camcorder microphone sound only: birds, distant neighborhood conversations, footsteps, cloth moving, water splashing, buckets, bicycles, occasional scooters, wind hitting the microphone and faint household sounds. No music. No narration. No modern voice-over. No cinematic sound design. OVERALL FEEL: It should feel like someone found an old Korean family camcorder tape from around 2002–2005 and played back an ordinary afternoon that nobody intended to turn into a film. The ordinary nature of the activities should make the footage feel strangely authentic and nostalgic, while the woman's natural presence and the imperfect camera behavior make it visually engaging enough to feel like a real viral rediscovered home-video clip. TECHNICAL: 30 seconds, Seedance 2.5, 4:3 aspect ratio, early-2000s MiniDV aesthetic, photorealistic humans, physically accurate motion, consistent character identity, realistic Korean residential environment, authentic consumer-camcorder imperfections, no AI artifacts, no modern cinematic look.

# Learning Palantir Foundry 🚀 Answer "where did this dashboard number come from?" in an instant. Data Lineage is an exploration tool that visualizes the entire flow of your data. 📌 Title and Feature URL Title: Data Lineage URL: 📝 Overview Data Lineage is an interactive visualization tool that comprehensively shows how data flows through the Foundry platform. It helps you understand data movement, dependencies, and transformations across your entire data ecosystem. Because you can trace the lineage from sources through pipelines, the Ontology, and apps as a graph, it sharply reduces the cost of incident response and audit explanations. 🔧 How It Works It represents data dependencies through a graph-based visualization. - Find datasets using project names, table identifiers, or row labels, and browse data directly from Foundry Projects - Expand or collapse ancestor (upstream) and descendant (downstream) relationships for any dataset - View multiple table attributes at once, down to schema details, build timestamps, and source code - Apply custom color schemes to highlight pipeline characteristics such as stale datasets - Create shareable pipeline snapshots to communicate within the team 🛠 Practical Usage - Trace upstream from a dashboard or output dataset to pinpoint the source of a number - When an upstream schema changes, trace downstream to map the blast radius - Color-code stale datasets to discover neglected pipelines - Drill down from a high-level overview into granular technical details like transformation code and execution history - Share pipeline snapshots to document data workflows across functions 🎯 Use Cases - Instantly answering "what is the origin of this dashboard's number" - Identifying the impact scope of upstream schema changes in advance to prevent incidents - Presenting data lineage during audits to cut explanation costs - Finding stale or unused datasets to tidy up pipelines ⚠️ Caveats - This overview page does not explicitly discuss performance or graph-complexity constraints with extremely large pipelines - Lineage covers data flow within the Foundry platform; processing outside the platform is out of visualization scope - The accuracy of lineage depends on transforms and pipelines being properly configured within Foundry #PalantirFoundry# #DataLineage#

The World is Changing: AI For Creativity By Jeffrey Katzenberg A few months ago, I sat in my office in Silicon Valley and watched as a tech founder showed me something extraordinary. On the screen was a fully realized, beautifully lit, well-composed animated scene. It was stunning and it made me feel exactly what I felt in 1986 watching Luxo Jr. That was the first time I watched a computer-animated 3D character take a breath and seem, against all reason, to have life. It left me in awe. Later that day, I received a text from an artist I've known for thirty years, 350 miles to the south, in the city where I spent most of my career. After seeing a similar video, she texted: "Is this the end of us?" My answer was, "Certainly not.” I have spent the better part of the last decade in Silicon Valley, but the heart of my career has been in Hollywood. Being deeply connected to both worlds means I have deep loyalties to each and a responsibility to speak honestly to both. In 2023, I said that these new AI tools would cut the time and cost of producing world-class animation by as much as ninety percent within three years. Some colleagues were alarmed, many were furious. There is growing fear and resistance surrounding AI within the creative community. I deeply understand it, because I've spent countless hours walking through animation studios watching gifted artists bent over their desks, rebuilding a single second of film for the tenth time because the ninth version wasn't quite right. I've sat in screening rooms where four years of people's labor played out in minutes, and I knew the name of every person that had spent countless hours bringing those images to life. The creative process is a calling, there's really no other way to describe it. From the outside some see resistance. From the inside, it is love. People do not fight this hard for things they don't care about. The pushback coming out of Hollywood represents the collective effort of people who are deeply passionate about their craft. Is History Repeating Itself? The history here is more complicated than either side may realize. In 1906, the most famous composer in America, John Philip Sousa, published an essay titled “The Menace of Mechanical Music." He warned that the phonograph would become "a substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul." Sousa's fight was not really about the machine, it was about money. The machines were playing his compositions, and the men who built them weren't paying him a cent. His campaign helped create the Copyright Act of 1909. He did not stop the technology. He changed the terms under which it could use his work. A hundred years ago, sound came to the movies. We remember it now as a miracle, and it was. What we forget is who paid for it. Before sound, tens of thousands of musicians made their living in the orchestra pits of movie houses, scoring every film live, every night, in towns all over the world. When the soundtrack arrived, the work of one composer and one orchestra was recorded for a film that went into thousands of theaters. The union fought back with everything it had, taking out newspaper ads across the country warning against the menace of "canned music," one of them showing a mechanical man tearing the strings out of a harp while an angel wept. They were not fools, and they were not Luddites. They were right. Those pit jobs did not come back. And yet (this is the part we have to be brave enough to admit), sound gave us the movie musical, the modern score, sfx, sound design, audio engineering, and an art form vastly larger than the one it disrupted. And it helped keep Hollywood in the forefront of world entertainment for the rest of the century and into the next. The loss was real. And yet the art form expanded. This is a story that has been told over and over again. To resist technology is to risk irrelevance. Just look at Kodak or Blockbuster. To embrace technology is to open doors of new possibility. Just consider Apple and Netflix. What I Learned From Walt Disney In the mid-1980s, I was tapped to lead Disney's animation division at a moment when the studio was at an inflection point. Animation wasn't just another business unit. It was the soul of the company, a medium revered because of Walt's genius and his passion. But the production system was cumbersome and unforgiving. A single movie was 125,000 individual hand-drawn and painted cels, photographed one frame at a time. Every revision carried a cost measured in months. These degrees of difficulty shaped the kinds of stories we could tell. We found our way forward in an unexpected place: Walt himself. The Disney archives held astonishing recordings of Walt explaining his creative process. His own writings. His notes and storyboards. Work product captured at every stage of his process. This was truly a gift. Listening, reading, sitting with the work itself, we heard him talk about character, about emotion, about how an audience feels when a character truly comes alive. He talked about making bold choices and refining a scene until it genuinely moved people. We didn't hear a word about pencils or paintbrushes. In fact, Walt was famous for being a technologist, forever hunting for state-of-the-art tools, often inventing them himself to achieve the images he saw in his head. But he never defined animation by the tools. He defined it by whether the audience believed the character. His principles were timeless. The tools were not. That realization changed everything. We co-developed the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) with a young Northern California company called Pixar, replacing hand-painted cels with CGI. In The Little Mermaid, the final scene shimmered with a dimensionality and light that the old process simply couldn't achieve. In Beauty and the Beast, the ballroom sequence moved with a cinematic sweep that placed the audience inside the emotion of the moment. In Aladdin, the Cave of Wonders felt vast and alive, and the Magic Carpet became an intricate, compelling character all its own. In The Lion King, the stampede carried a scale and intensity that raised the emotional stakes beyond anything we'd done before. Technology didn't diminish the craft, it expanded the canvas. It gave artists more room to create. A decade later, the canvas expanded again. When Disney released Pixar's Toy Story, it wasn't simply a technical milestone. It was proof that a fully computer-animated film could carry real emotional weight, that it could make audiences laugh, cry, and believe. At DreamWorks, we made the difficult decision to sunset hand-drawn animation and become a fully computer-animated studio. It was the right thing to do, but it was not without pain. It cost talented people their place in an industry where they had worked their whole lives. Some made the leap to the new tools and did the finest work of their careers. Some never did. Tools are never the point. The instruments change with every generation. What endures is taste and imagination. The magical ability to make an audience feel. One of the greatest storytellers of our generation, George Lucas, succinctly captured the eternal essence of this issue: “It’s not the how, it’s the why.” A Distinction With a Difference I asked one of the leading AI models a question that has been challenging me for months. What is the difference between reasoning and creating? Its answer changed how I think about almost everything happening in this industry. It said . . . Reasoning and creating are two distinct cognitive modes, though they also work together. Reasoning is fundamentally evaluative and analytical. It operates on what already exists: facts, premises, evidence. It moves toward a conclusion that was in a sense already implied by the input. Reasoning is constrained by logic and truth. Its goal is to arrive somewhere correct, not to invent somewhere new. Creating is fundamentally generative. It produces something that didn't exist before. And crucially, there's no single right answer waiting to be found. A blank page has infinite valid responses. Creation involves choices that can't be fully justified by logic alone. Taste, intuition and vision fill the gap where deduction runs out. Reasoning is what Silicon Valley has been perfecting. Creating is what Hollywood has been practicing for more than a century. AI today operates almost entirely on the reasoning side of the line. It can deduce, evaluate, optimize, and pattern-match brilliantly. And while it can create, there is a real distinction to being creative. What it doesn’t yet have is those things that make us human: empathy, devotion, serendipity, the kind of creativity that comes from a person trying to say something only they could say. When the bot generates a piece of art, it is not trying to communicate anything. It is statistics, not soul; it is emulating things that have been done. By contrast, human creativity isn’t about repeating patterns of zeros and ones; it is about doing something new. One day, AI may close this gap. Three years ago, the leaders building AI would have called what they are achieving today, improbable, if not impossible. Impossible is no longer improbable. Today, the line between reasoning and creating is real. Even the leading technologists acknowledge we are not there yet. There is no scientific path to crossing this divide that anyone in the field can articulate today. Understanding that gap is where we will find common ground. A Path Forward In 2016, I closed one chapter in Hollywood with the sale of DreamWorks and opened another in Northern California, co-founding WndrCo. We’ve backed more than 50 founders building the next generation of technology and watched how breakthroughs in Silicon Valley emerge, first as experiments, then as platforms, and finally as infrastructure that reshapes entire industries. It's worth remembering that the last great revolution in animation also came from the north. Pixar was a Northern California company, forged not in the conventions of the Hollywood studio system, but in the technological breakthroughs of Silicon Valley. I've spent years on both sides of this bridge. For sure, I don’t have all the answers (take Quibi, for one!). But, from my past and present vantage points of my long career, here is what I see . . . Brilliant people in Northern California building this technology have made something extraordinary. They have earned the right for the rest of us to be, if not believers, at least optimistic that what comes next will be remarkable. But they have not made an artist. The tools are powerful, but they are not what makes a story matter. That knowledge lives 350 miles to the south, inside people whose life's work has informed the very models you are building. The right path forward includes them by design, with credit, with consent, and with compensation. Build this with the storytellers. Not on top of them. Taste is not something that can be synthesized, it is uniquely human. At the same time, Hollywood needs to accept that AI is not going away. The energy they are spending trying to make it disappear is energy they are not spending deciding the terms on which it will exist. And the terms are everything. The north needs something from it that they cannot build and cannot buy: creativity. The kind that takes a blank page and conjures a single right answer where there was none and has held audiences for a century. Without it, the most powerful reasoning engine ever invented will still be missing the only thing that makes a story worth telling. The artists who learn to wield these new instruments will do things the engineers never dreamed of. They always have. Edison invented the motion picture but made terrible movies. It took Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton and so many others to make movies emotional. Now, the canvas is about to expand yet again. We should decide now that we intend to paint on it. There are so many valuable lessons in history. This has happened many times before, and it was never settled by the technology. It was settled by the terms. Sousa did not stop the phonograph; he helped write the law that made sure composers got paid. And two years ago, when the writers and the actors walked out, they were fighting for the very things Sousa was fighting for in 1906. Consent, compensation, the basic recognition that human creative work has a price that must be paid. The terms of that fight are still being negotiated, but the principle is older than any of us. The tools-versus-no-tools argument is a trap. First, we must all agree that there should be terms. Then we can have the crucial debate about what fairness requires. What I Learned From Steve Jobs Years ago, Steve Jobs said, "It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing." He was describing a device. But he could just as easily have been describing this tale of two cities. What I See Coming Soon As the barriers and the costs come down, more films will get made, not fewer. Studios will get to take more risks. There will be more seats at the table, and very soon entirely new forms of storytelling. In the 1980s, animation was dismissed as a niche corner of the business. Today it is one of the most beloved and profitable forms of storytelling in the world. In live action, filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson embraced new visual tools not as shortcuts, but as instruments, and expanded cinema in the process. Every time storytelling has met a genuine technological shift, from synchronized sound to color to computer animation, it has redefined the boundaries of the medium and grown larger in the process. Assuredly, I don’t have all the answers, but I am confident that the creative opportunities will expand yet again. How we come through this is a choice. The north has the new tools. The south has the creative soul. The best future will draw on the best of both worlds.

POST 1 — DANCING WITH THE STORM (Things My Patients Taught Me — 1 of 20) The first time I met Lily, she was dancing with her IV pole at dawn. It was just past six in the morning. The pediatric oncology ward was silent except for the beep of monitors and the whisper of small bare feet against the floor. She couldn't have been more than six years old. Her head was smooth as an egg, stripped bare by chemotherapy — but crowned with a determination no medicine could touch. She wore a hospital gown covered in dinosaurs and a tutu the color of cotton candy, clearly smuggled in from the world outside those sterile walls. One hand gripped the metal pole dripping medicine into her veins. The other arched over her head in a wobbly, defiant ballet pose. I stood frozen in the doorway, thirty years of medical training suddenly weightless in my hands. Nobody had ever told me that cancer and courage could dance together at sunrise. "You're new," she said, noticing me without breaking her concentration. Her eyes were enormous in her hollowed-out face. "I'm Lily. I have leukemia." "I'm Dr. Taylor," I said, kneeling to meet her. "And I love your dancing." She attempted another turn, the IV line twisting around the pole. "Ballet class is on Tuesdays. But I'm always here on Tuesdays now. So I practice by myself." A shadow crossed her face as she touched her bare scalp. "I used to have hair for ballet. Long, like Rapunzel." "I think ballerinas come in all styles," I offered. "Including with no hair." She considered this like a tiny philosopher. Then she pointed to the IV pole. "This is Fred. And this—" she touched the line disappearing under her gown "—is Ginger. Because they're dancing with me." She leaned in, conspirator to conspirator. "If the medicine is my friend, it doesn't feel so scary." Her smile bloomed — then crumpled as a wave of nausea hit. I grabbed the pink basin just in time. She retched, her tiny frame convulsing with an illness far too big for it to hold. When it passed, she looked up at me, embarrassed. "Sorry." "Never apologize for being sick, Lily. That's what hospitals are for." Over the next nine months, I watched this child endure things that would break grown adults. During her first bone marrow biopsy — a needle driven into the hip bone, excruciating even with sedation — I held her hand while the tears ran down her face. "Think of something beautiful," I whispered. "Swan Lake," she gasped through gritted teeth. "I'm dancing in Swan Lake." Afterward, I locked myself in a supply closet and wept. I nearly transferred out of pediatrics. I didn't think I could bear it. Then came the storm. One afternoon, thunder rattled the windows and lightning tore the sky open. The other children were frightened. Not Lily. She pressed her face to the glass, transfixed. "It's like the whole world is getting better," she said. I asked what she meant. "My dad says storms clean everything. They wash away all the yucky stuff so new things can grow." She turned to me, eyes blazing with conviction. "Like my medicine. It feels bad now. But it's cleaning out the bad cells so the good ones can grow." I stood there, humbled to my core by a six-year-old. She had grasped something most adults never do — that growth sometimes requires the storm. That what feels like destruction is often just the beginning of renewal. Then she said the thing I've carried for the rest of my career: "Sometimes, when it hurts too much, I make the music in my head louder than the hurt." Two months later, her final biopsy came back clean. Remission. The whole nursing staff lined the hallway and applauded as she left in her tutu, a soft fuzz of new hair on her scalp. Ten years later, a card arrived in the mail. Inside was a photograph of a teenager on pointe shoes, arms forming a perfect oval above her head, long chestnut hair swept into a bun. The note read: Still dancing. Still cancer-free. Thank you for helping me dance through the storm. That photo has sat on my desk ever since. Lily taught me that joy can coexist with suffering — and that hope sometimes pirouettes on bare feet down a sterile hospital hallway. On my hardest days, when the weight of this work feels like too much, I still hear a six-year-old's voice: Make the music louder than the hurt. And somehow, I find the strength to keep going. Who's the youngest person who ever taught you something you'll never forget? Tell me below. 👇 And follow along — one patient, one lesson, every day.

If this is AI slop, the slop is getting ridiculously realistic Made with seedance 2.5 Prompt: Create a 30-second, 1080p ultra-realistic personal home-video showing an ordinary summer evening in the life of a young Japanese woman. No reference image. MAIN SUBJECT Young Japanese woman in her early 20s, naturally pretty, realistic skin texture, minimal makeup, soft and cheerful personality. Shoulder-length dark brown hair worn down with a simple clip pinning back one side, a few loose strands framing her face. Wearing an oversized light-yellow short-sleeve shirt, denim shorts, white canvas sneakers and a thin gold anklet. Maintain the same face, hairstyle, clothing, body proportions and overall appearance throughout the entire video. SETTING A quiet older residential neighborhood in Kyoto during a warm summer evening. Narrow paved streets, low wooden houses, hanging laundry, vending machines, telephone poles, tangled overhead wires, a small corner convenience store, a shrine gate visible in the distance, cicadas humming in the trees, and long tree shadows stretching across the road. Everything should feel lived-in, ordinary and peaceful. No tourist attractions, advertisements, recognizable brands or commercial activity. CAMERA / VISUAL AESTHETIC Raw personal footage casually recorded by a friend on an early-2000s consumer DV camcorder. Strong handheld shake, imperfect framing, autofocus hunting, exposure shifts, occasional motion blur, faded colors, soft digital detail, mild noise, accidental zooms and natural camera imperfections. No stabilization, drone footage, gimbal movement, dramatic lighting or polished commercial cinematography. — OUTSIDE THE HOUSE She steps outside holding a small paper fan. She slides the door shut, glances at her reflection in a window, and looks toward the camera with a shy laugh. A warm evening breeze rustles the nearby wind chimes as she starts walking down the street. — CONVENIENCE STORE STOP She reaches the small corner store and buys a popsicle. She steps outside, unwraps it, takes her first bite and scrunches her face happily at the taste. She notices her friend filming and waves the popsicle toward the camera with a grin before taking another bite. — WALKING HOME She continues down the quiet street while eating. A small dog tied outside a shop barks softly and wags its tail. She kneels down and gently scratches behind its ears. The dog's owner calls it back and she stands, giggling as she walks on. — SMALL ACCIDENT She walks past a low hanging laundry line when a stray sheet brushes against her head. She stops, startled, then realizes what happened and bursts out laughing. She pats down her hair while her friend zooms clumsily toward her face. She looks directly into the camera and says: "Mou, yamete!" ("Come on, stop it!") — QUIET MOMENT She reaches a small stone step near a shrine gate and sits down for a moment. She finishes the popsicle while watching fireflies begin to flicker faintly near the bushes. A gentle breeze moves her hair. She tucks a loose strand behind her ear and looks around peacefully. — FINAL MOMENT She stands up and continues walking home. After a few steps, she turns back toward the camera with a soft playful smile and says: "Hayaku kite." ("Come on, hurry up.") She keeps walking down the dim lane as the streetlights flicker on, while the camera follows behind. She disappears around the corner and the recording abruptly cuts to black. AUDIO Natural location sound only: cicadas, wind chimes, footsteps, distant bicycle bells, a vending machine hum, sliding doors, rustling laundry, faint conversations and subtle camera-handling noise. No music. No narration. No artificial sound effects. Only the two spoken lines specified above. FINAL FEEL The entire video should feel like a forgotten summer recording from the early 2000s. Warm, gentle, casual, slightly playful, intimate and nostalgic. No dramatic events, no exaggerated acting, no model poses and no polished cinematic shots. The realism should come from ordinary surroundings, natural expressions, small accidents, realistic environmental movement and imperfect camcorder operation.

Baddie from Korea Seedance 2.5 on OpenArt Prompt 👇 Prompt: Create a 30-second, 1080p ultra-realistic personal home-video showing an ordinary summer evening in the life of a young Korean woman. No reference image. MAIN SUBJECT Young Korean woman in her early 20s, naturally pretty, realistic skin texture, minimal makeup, relaxed and approachable personality. Long black hair loosely tied into a messy side ponytail with a few loose strands around her face. Wearing a fitted pastel-blue short top, loose cream pajama-style pants, black sneakers and a simple silver necklace. Maintain the same face, hairstyle, clothing, body proportions and overall appearance throughout the entire video. SETTING A quiet older Seoul residential neighborhood during a warm summer evening. Narrow concrete lanes, small houses, potted plants, bicycles, old walls, utility poles, overhead wires, a tiny neighborhood bakery, a public water tap and large leafy trees casting shadows across the street. Everything should feel lived-in, ordinary and peaceful. No tourist attractions, advertisements, recognizable brands or commercial activity. CAMERA / VISUAL AESTHETIC Raw personal footage casually recorded by a friend on an early-2000s consumer DV camcorder. Strong handheld shake, imperfect framing, autofocus hunting, exposure shifts, occasional motion blur, faded colors, soft digital detail, mild noise, accidental zooms and natural camera imperfections. No stabilization, drone footage, gimbal movement, dramatic lighting or polished commercial cinematography. — OUTSIDE THE HOUSE She steps outside carrying a small reusable shopping bag. She locks the door, adjusts her messy ponytail and looks toward the camera with a relaxed smile. A light summer breeze moves her hair as she starts walking down the lane. — BAKERY STOP She reaches a tiny neighborhood bakery and buys a warm pastry. She steps outside, takes her first bite and immediately smiles because it tastes good. She notices her friend filming and holds the pastry toward the camera playfully before taking another bite. — WALKING HOME She continues down the narrow street while eating. A neighborhood cat follows her for a few steps. She notices it, crouches down and gently pets it. The cat walks away and she laughs before continuing. — SMALL ACCIDENT She walks beneath a large tree when a few leaves fall onto her hair. She stops, looks confused, then realizes what happened and laughs. She brushes the leaves away while her friend zooms awkwardly toward her face. She looks directly into the camera and says: "Seriously?" — QUIET MOMENT She reaches a low concrete wall beside the street and sits down for a moment. She finishes the pastry while watching bicycles and neighbors passing through the lane. A gentle breeze moves her hair. She casually fixes her ponytail and looks around peacefully. — FINAL MOMENT She stands up and continues walking home. After a few steps, she turns back toward the camera with a small playful smile and says: "Come on." She keeps walking down the sunny lane while the camera follows behind. She disappears around the corner and the recording abruptly cuts to black. AUDIO Natural location sound only: birds, summer insects, footsteps, bicycle bells, distant scooters, leaves moving in the breeze, bakery sounds, neighborhood conversations and subtle camera-handling noise. No music. No narration. No artificial sound effects. Only the two spoken lines specified above. FINAL FEEL The entire video should feel like a forgotten summer recording from the early 2000s. Warm, feminine, casual, slightly playful, intimate and nostalgic. No dramatic events, no exaggerated acting, no model poses and no polished cinematic shots. The realism should come from ordinary surroundings, natural expressions, small accidents, realistic environmental movement and imperfect camcorder operation.

I have never been an FBI agent. Never conducted an investigation. Never worn a wire or served a warrant or spent a winter in a field office where the heating runs four hours behind the interrogation schedule. I was a congressional staffer. Then a political appointee. Then a different kind of political appointee. Then the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is also a kind of political appointee, except the furniture is nicer and the jet is mine. I run the building. I would like to tell you about the jet. It seats fourteen. It costs sixty million dollars. The interior was refurbished during the Bush administration and the procurement file describes the upholstery as "heritage cognac." I know this because I requested the file. Not for oversight purposes. I wanted to know the name of the color so I could describe it at dinner. Heritage cognac. It smells like a law firm that has never lost. I spend a lot of time in that smell now. I think it is the smell of having arrived somewhere that was never meant for you, and noticing that nobody has asked you to leave. Washington to Philadelphia is a hundred and forty miles. Amtrak runs it for forty-nine dollars. I flew the Gulfstream on May 10th because Alexis wanted to see George Strait. The suite was thirty-five thousand. Maybe fifty. I don't track numbers below six figures. The flight crew stayed on past eleven. Overtime. Security too. Someone will calculate the cost per mile of flying a sixty-million-dollar aircraft to cover a distance shorter than most Uber rides. That someone will not be me. I was in the suite. The suite didn't have a calculator. It had George Strait. The Bureau told reporters Alexis was "an invited guest of the performers." Representatives for George Strait and Chris Stapleton did not confirm this. They were never going to. But the FBI said it, and under my leadership, when the FBI says something, that is the evidentiary standard. I run the building. The building said it. It's true. Her protection detail is where the budget gets interesting. Twenty-four-seven coverage. SWAT-certified agents. Field officers drawn from multiple Bureau offices nationwide. Two armored SUVs at minimum. Hair appointments. Musical appearances. A blowout in Nashville required four agents in a parking lot for ninety minutes. The annual cost is roughly one million dollars before overtime, vehicle maintenance, and incidentals. The Bureau cites "hundreds of credible violent death threats" as justification. One person has been arrested. His name is Alden Welch Ruml, twenty-six, from Massachusetts. He sent emails. He faces five years. One emailer. One million dollars a year. Four SWAT agents per errand. A quarter of a million dollars in federal protection per verified threat. For context: the average FBI field office spends less annually on its entire confidential human source program. Informants embedded inside drug cartels, counterterrorism cells, organized crime families — the people whose testimony sends other people to prison — cost the Bureau less to keep alive than it costs me to ensure my girlfriend arrives at a salon escorted by men trained to rappel from helicopters. One of my officials suggested we conduct a formal threat assessment. A review. The kind of paperwork the Bureau has generated for seventy years whenever a protection decision requires justification. He had been with the Bureau for nineteen years. He asked in the hallway, in front of staff. I berated him. Not quietly. He stopped asking. He stopped asking. That phrase is going to recur in this document. I want you to notice it each time. Now. Alexis Wilkins is a country singer. I should mention this. She has released eight singles and one EP titled *Grit*. She has zero chart appearances. Her most-streamed song has five hundred and two thousand lifetime plays on Spotify. Taylor Swift accumulates that figure in approximately eleven minutes. A full-time country music journalist at the industry's leading independent publication stated that he had never heard of Alexis Wilkins before I started dating her. She has no active tour. She has never headlined a festival. Rolling Stone cited a forty-eight percent increase in her streaming numbers after we became public, which the same journalist clarified was "a forty-eight percent increase from virtually nothing." This is the person for whom the FBI fields a million-dollar annual protective detail. I want you to hold those two facts together — the streaming numbers and the security budget — and understand that they do not represent a miscalculation. They represent a value system. Her protection is not proportional to the threat. Her protection is proportional to her proximity to me. That is the formula. Proximity to the Director equals resources from the Bureau. I have applied it consistently. I have applied it to everyone. Which brings me to the people who are no longer here. I have removed over fifty career officials since January. Twelve have filed suit. Marshall Yates — my Congressional liaison, formerly the director of something called the Election Integrity Network, which existed to challenge the 2020 results — personally called field offices to compile names. Everyone who worked a case involving the President. Six thousand names were requested by the White House. The acting director before me was asked who he voted for. When he started supporting the President. Whether the FBI had tried to "put the president in jail." He was told the President hasn't forgotten. Three hundred counterterrorism and counterintelligence agents have been reassigned to immigration enforcement. The unit monitoring Iran — Iran, which operates proxy militias across four countries and maintains an active assassination program targeting American officials on American soil — was gutted. Six federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have resigned or been pushed out rather than participate in the prosecution of the previous FBI Director, James Comey, whose crime was investigating the President and whose punishment is being investigated by the institution the President gave me as a gift. I am prosecuting the last Director for doing his job. I am doing this from a fifty-thousand-dollar suite while a sixty-million-dollar aircraft idles on the tarmac outside. Nobody in the building finds this ironic. The ones who would have found it ironic are gone. They stopped asking. My Deputy Director is Dan Bongino. He has never worked a federal case. His career before this was conservative talk radio. He receives the President's Daily Brief every morning — CIA product, NSA intercepts, the full intelligence take of the United States government — and he obtained his SCI clearance after I waived his polygraph. The FBI's own guidelines state that polygraphs are a "preliminary employment requirement." My lawyers reclassified him as a Schedule C political appointee. Experts said that's not how the statute works. The experts are career officials. Career officials are the previous administration's furniture. I am redecorating. Nikole Rucker is my personal assistant. She arrived at the Bureau on January 20th without a security clearance of any kind. She was physically escorted into the Director's suite because the door requires a clearance she did not possess. By February she was in London, seated across from a Western allied intelligence service, notebook open, pen moving. She used to work for Stephen Miller. The White House says she does not share operational details with him. I am told this is technically accurate in the way that most technically accurate statements are technically accurate. The polygraphs are still running. Just not for my people. We administer them now to career staff. The questions have changed. We ask whether they've criticized me. Whether they've spoken to a reporter. Whether they've expressed doubt about the direction of the Bureau. The machine measures stress. Under my leadership, stress has been reclassified as disloyalty. Disloyalty as a security risk. A security risk as grounds for termination. Fifty people have traveled this chain. Twelve are suing. The rest stopped asking. I run the building. In February a New York Times reporter named Elizabeth Williamson published details about the protective detail. I opened a preliminary inquiry. Federal stalking charges. We searched our databases for her information. The Department of Justice reviewed the file, found no legal basis, and terminated the inquiry. Called it retaliation. The Times' executive editor called it "a blatant violation of Elizabeth's First Amendment rights." I do not retaliate. I respond to threats. A journalist publishing accurate reporting about my personal use of public resources is, by my definition, a threat to operational security. My definitions are the ones that govern inside this building. I wrote the organizational chart. There is a framed copy on my wall. It has one name at the top. The Atlantic published a separate story. Excessive drinking. Frequent absences. Staff forcing entry into my home because I could not be reached. I filed a two-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar defamation lawsuit. At my budget hearing, Senator Van Hollen cited the allegations under oath. I told him the only person slinging margaritas on the taxpayer dollar was him — in El Salvador, with a convicted gang-banging rapist. Fox News subsequently noted that public records do not support either characterization. But the line worked. That is the difference between evidence and performance. I have always understood which one this building rewards. In 2023, before any of this, I said the following on national television: "Chris Wray doesn't need a government-funded G5 jet to go to vacation. Maybe we ground that plane." I meant every word. We should have grounded his plane. So mine wouldn't invite the comparison. I sell merchandise. "Fight with Kash." T-shirts, hats, a children's book. The profits go to a foundation I started. The brand benefits from my position as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is not a conflict of interest. A conflict requires two competing interests. I have one interest. It has never been healthier. I told the Senate that the FBI cannot meet its mission with a five-hundred-million-dollar cut. I requested twelve billion. Two billion more than last year. In the same period I spent a million on my girlfriend's security detail, fifty thousand on a concert suite, flew a sixty-million-dollar aircraft to cover a distance shorter than most commutes, waived background checks for three political appointees with no law enforcement experience, reassigned three hundred counterterrorism agents to check green cards, gutted the unit tracking Iran's assassination program, and opened a federal investigation into a newspaper reporter for the crime of publishing a newspaper. I told Hannity: "We are going to protect not only me and my loved ones but every American that is threatened." I meant the first seven words. The rest was institutional boilerplate. The kind of thing you say when the camera is on and the sentence needs to land somewhere that sounds like it includes other people. I run the building. Now I want to tell you about the water. The week before the concert I went to Pearl Harbor. The USS Arizona. A VIP snorkel. Nine hundred sailors and Marines are entombed in that hull. They have been there since 1941. The oil still leaks. It rises to the surface in small dark rainbows that break apart when you swim through them. The water was warm. Very clear. I could see the outline of the ship's superstructure below me, the geometry of a vessel that sank with its crew inside, and I remember the water temperature was perfect and the sun was on my back and my detail was on the shore and nobody in the water asked me to justify my presence above nine hundred dead. Recreational swimming at the Arizona is prohibited. The National Park Service said they were not involved. The Navy could not identify who authorized the outing. The logistics were coordinated by military email. A former government diver spoke to reporters anonymously. He said the access was unusual. He said it raised safety and security concerns. He spoke anonymously, the article noted, "for fear of retribution." A man who dives for the government is afraid to describe, on the record, how I swim. That is the climate. That is the building I run. A nineteen-year veteran stopped asking. Fifty career officials stopped working here. Three hundred counterterrorism agents stopped tracking the people who want to kill Americans. Six prosecutors stopped prosecuting. A government diver stopped talking. A reporter found her name in a database. And the oil keeps leaking from the Arizona, eighty-four years after the hull settled, surfacing in thin iridescent films that nobody is assigned to monitor because I reassigned them. I have never been an FBI agent. I have never conducted a federal investigation. I have never built a case or flipped a witness or spent a night in a surveillance van waiting for someone dangerous to make a mistake. But I have flown a sixty-million-dollar jet to a George Strait concert. I have watched the show from a suite that cost more than most Americans earn in a year. I have swum above nine hundred dead sailors in water so clear I could see their ship. And I have ensured, through the systematic removal of everyone who might object, that no one in the building will tell you any of this is wrong. The oil surfaces. It always surfaces. It has for eighty-four years. I run the building. The building doesn't ask questions anymore.

Made with seedance 2.5 Prompt: Create a 30-second, 1080p ultra-realistic personal home-video showing an ordinary autumn afternoon in the life of a young Japanese woman. No reference image. MAIN SUBJECT Young Japanese woman in her early 20s, naturally pretty, realistic skin texture, minimal makeup, calm and warm personality. Straight black hair cut into a shoulder-length bob, side-swept bangs. Wearing an oversized beige knit cardigan over a white t-shirt, black leggings, worn canvas slip-on shoes and small hoop earrings. Maintain the same face, hairstyle, clothing, body proportions and overall appearance throughout the entire video. SETTING A quiet residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Osaka during a mild autumn afternoon. Narrow streets lined with small apartment buildings, a rusted guardrail, a covered shopping arcade entrance nearby, scattered fallen leaves, a row of parked bicycles, a small shrine box on a street corner, and soft afternoon light filtering through half-bare trees. Everything should feel lived-in, ordinary and peaceful. No tourist attractions, advertisements, recognizable brands or commercial activity. CAMERA / VISUAL AESTHETIC Raw personal footage casually recorded by a friend on an early-2000s consumer DV camcorder. Strong handheld shake, imperfect framing, autofocus hunting, exposure shifts, occasional motion blur, faded colors, soft digital detail, mild noise, accidental zooms and natural camera imperfections. No stabilization, drone footage, gimbal movement, dramatic lighting or polished commercial cinematography. — LEAVING THE APARTMENT She steps out of a small apartment building entrance, adjusting the sleeves of her cardigan. She glances at the sky, feels the cool air, and looks toward the camera with a relaxed grin. Fallen leaves scatter slightly across the pavement as a breeze passes. — VENDING MACHINE STOP She stops at a street-corner vending machine and buys a warm canned coffee. She cracks it open, takes a sip, and immediately closes her eyes, savoring the warmth against the cool air. She notices her friend filming and tilts the can toward the camera with a small laugh before taking another sip. — WALKING THROUGH THE ARCADE She wanders toward the entrance of a quiet covered shopping arcade, mostly empty at this hour. An old man sweeping leaves outside his shop nods at her; she bows slightly and smiles. She continues walking, kicking a small pile of leaves playfully with her shoe. — SMALL ACCIDENT She reaches for her phone in her cardigan pocket and it slips, clattering onto the pavement. She stops, stares at it for a second in mild panic, then picks it up and checks the screen, relieved it's fine. She looks at the camera, exhales dramatically, and says: "Abunai... bikkuri shita." ("Dangerous... that scared me.") — QUIET MOMENT She reaches a small park bench near the shrine box and sits down, cradling the coffee can in both hands. She watches a group of sparrows pecking at the ground nearby, tilting her head slightly, amused. A breeze rustles the leaves above her. She pulls her cardigan sleeves over her hands and looks up at the drifting leaves. — FINAL MOMENT She stands up, tosses the empty can gently in a nearby bin, and continues walking. After a few steps, she turns back toward the camera, brushing a leaf off her shoulder, and says with a playful smile: "Ja, ikou." ("Alright, let's go.") She keeps walking down the quiet street, leaves drifting behind her, while the camera follows. She turns a corner past the guardrail and the recording abruptly cuts to black. AUDIO Natural location sound only: rustling leaves, distant train sounds, a vending machine hum, footsteps on pavement, faint bicycle bells, a broom sweeping, birds chirping and subtle camera-handling noise. No music. No narration. No artificial sound effects. Only the two spoken lines specified above. FINAL FEEL The entire video should feel like a forgotten autumn recording from the early 2000s. Warm, quiet, cozy, slightly playful, intimate and nostalgic. No dramatic events, no exaggerated acting, no model poses and no polished cinematic shots. The realism should come from ordinary surroundings, natural expressions, small accidents, realistic environmental movement and imperfect camcorder operation.