u/wamih

Megathread 5/18/26 - The Basement: Rizwan Virk

Megathread 5/18/26 - The Basement: Rizwan Virk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UT0ieAE7bk

Rizwan Virk built games downloaded millions of times, invested early in Discord, and taught at MIT. Then he put on a VR headset in Sausalito and nearly fell over reaching for a table that didn't exist. That five-second moment sent him down a rabbit hole connecting quantum physics, Eastern mysticism, and video game design and he's not sure he's found the bottom yet.

u/wamih — 3 days ago

Megathread 5/16/26 - Compilation: The Machines Are Watching You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQIVPoQ9NPM

Secret listening posts sit inside ordinary buildings in major cities. Numbers stations still broadcast coded messages over shortwave radio and no one officially admits why. This compilation traces the full arc of modern surveillance, from hidden urban infrastructure and sonic weapons to subliminal influence campaigns and a computer virus that nearly started a world war. Havana Syndrome left diplomats with brain injuries and no official explanation. A wire encircles New York City that most residents have never heard of. And at the end of it all sits the quantum computer a machine powerful enough to crack every encrypted secret humanity has ever kept. Nothing stays hidden forever.

u/wamih — 5 days ago

Megathread 5/11/26 - The Basement: Luigi Vendittelli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHL4YXeFOrY

Luigi Vendittelli was 9 years old when his grandfather came inside shaking, saying he'd just seen a flying saucer over Montreal. Nobody believed him.

That moment turned Luigi into Canada's foremost UFO investigator — and eventually led him to cold-call Bob Lazar, spend five years rebuilding S4 from scratch in 3D, and uncover a 1941 government map that shows exactly where the hangar doors are.

And then his bank tried to shut him down. This is one you're going to want to watch twice.

u/wamih — 10 days ago

Megathread 5/8/26 - What Science Found at the Edge of Death

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVJ7QASPMio

Hundreds of survivors across a century climbers, sailors, divers, soldiers all report the same thing. At the moment they were about to die, a calm presence appeared beside them. It gave directions. It knew the way out. It disappeared the moment the danger passed. A neuroscientist built a machine that can summon something like it. But what his subjects experienced and what survivors describe are not the same thing.

u/wamih — 13 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2w43bYK5QU

Before YouTube. Before millions of subscribers. Before Friday Night Tights, Gary Buechler had a story almost nobody knew. It starts at Folsom Prison, a neighbor's jar of pennies, and a double-murderer cellmate who wouldn't leave him alone.

His memoir is called Waiting For. That title alone should tell you something. He sat down with AJ in The Basement and held nothing back. Watch to the end.

(episode link will be updated when it drops)

u/wamih — 17 days ago