Michael R. Brown @emb021

Clarence Thomas calling out woke judges after the supreme court ruling on birthright citizenship 😭

In America there is a warehouse so large it has its own weather, and you cannot leave it without passing one final man at the door. He holds a yellow marker. He looks at your cart, looks at your receipt, and draws one short line across it. Nobody slows down for this. They walk through like it is nothing. I have stopped treating it like nothing. The first time, I rolled my cart toward the exit and a calm man named Dwayne raised one hand. Not to stop me. To receive me. He took my receipt with two fingers. He ran his eyes down the length of it, this paper longer than my forearm, and I understood that he was reading the record of everything I had carried out of the mountain. Forty-eight rolls of paper. A jar of peanuts the size of a helmet. A rotisserie chicken priced, impossibly, at four dollars and ninety-nine cents. The full ledger of my raid. He found the total. He made his mark. One yellow stroke, top to bottom, the seal of a man who guards the only door. I bowed. He said, you're good, buddy. I did not move. A pass had been granted. In my country a sentry who clears you at the gate has, in that moment, taken responsibility for your honor on the road ahead. I waited for the weight of this to settle between us. The family behind me also waited, though I believe for different reasons. Dwayne tapped the cart once and said, you can head on out. So I headed out, slowly, the way a man leaves a checkpoint he respects. And there, just past the gate, was the reward this warehouse gives its returning warriors. A meal. A whole meal. A great pale sausage in bread and a vat of soda the size of a small barrel, for one dollar and fifty cents. One fifty. I have paid more for worse and called it a feast. I ate it standing up by the carts, watching Dwayne clear the next traveler with the same fair and tireless hand. He does not know my name. He marked my scroll anyway. I go back twice a week now. I do not always need the paper towels. I need to be cleared by the man at the door, and to eat my dollar-fifty victory in the long shadow of the building, a free man on the right side of the gate.

A doughnut shop called Krispy Kreme. I was driving past when a red sign in the window lit up. HOT NOW. I have served three lords. None of them ever gave me an order that direct. HOT NOW. Not "hot soon." Not "hot, when it is convenient for you." Hot now. A command. From the building. To me. I pulled across two lanes of traffic. So did three other cars, which told me the building commands them as well, and that I had joined an army without learning its name. Inside, a woman handed me a single warm doughnut. The glaze had not yet hardened. I had done nothing to earn it. I had simply obeyed the sign. "First one's free when the light's on," she said. So this is the wage. You obey the sign, you receive the warm thing. Discipline, rewarded instantly. No lord I ever served paid this fast. I ate it standing up. I will tell you plainly: it was the softest thing I have put in my mouth on this continent. I understood, in that moment, why the army comes when the sign calls. I would come too. I have been coming ever since. There are three Krispy Kremes within an hour of my home. I have learned the hours their signs light. The first at six. The second at six thirty. The third at seven. A man who leaves home at five fifty can obey all three before the workday begins. My wife has asked why I smell of sugar at dawn. I told her I have taken an oath. She asked to whom. I could not answer, because the honest answer is "a sign," and a man does not like to say aloud that he has sworn his mornings to a sign. But the sign said HOT NOW. What was I supposed to do. Read it, and keep driving? I am not made of stone.

Hot Take: Financial illiteracy is the single biggest threat to national security.

You know how PepsiCo lowered the price of Lays products after RFK Jr. decided you can't use SNAP to buy them? The prices weren't high because it just costs so much to slice up and fry a potato. It was because they didn't care whether or not you could afford it because the people eating them were those getting it paid for by your tax dollars. When that was no longer a viable business model, they had to start pricing competitively again. You know, the way a free market is supposed to work. The same logic applies to healthcare and universities. These corporations get their money from the government via people who are subsidized by the government. That's why college tuition has increased at three times the rate of inflation since the 1970s, and prescription drugs somehow cost less when you don't use insurance to pay for them (even private insurers get money from the government). If you've ever wondered why TVs are among the only things that have gotten cheaper over the past ten years, that's why. The government doesn't buy TVs for people, so TV manufacturers actually have to care if consumers can afford them and must compete with each other on price. So what will happen when everyone loses their jobs to AI and no one has any money? Don't worry, Big Daddy Government will give them your tax dollars. And when those run out, they'll just print money and devalue what little you still have. But as far as they're concerned, that's your problem.

The 4Chan Archives @blacknredtext

6 days ago

351 529 16K 1.2M 787

Potential name for the AI industry regulatory authority: AI Associated Institute of America, Inc or AIAIAI, pronounced “ay yai yai”

A restaurant in Amarillo, Texas. Yellow building. Blue trim. Bull statue out front the size of a small house. Sign on the door: 72 OZ STEAK — FREE IF YOU FINISH IN ONE HOUR — $72 IF YOU DON'T I read it three times. A cowboy in a black hat was leaning on the door frame. "Howdy, partner. Doin' the challenge?" "...I have only just arrived." "Yeah, but are you doin' the challenge?" "You issue a duel to a man who has not yet removed his hat." "...I don't follow." "In my country a challenge is presented in a written letter, by a second, on horseback." "Sir, where I'm from, it comes with a baked potato." "...That is, I will admit, the better delivery." "You doin' it?" "I am." He pushed open the door. "Darla! We got one!" A hostess in a denim shirt looked up from the gift shop, name tag DARLA. She came over with the warmth of a woman who has seen everything walk through that door at least twice. "Aw, honey, you sure?" "I have signed nothing yet. I am still, by my own laws, allowed to leave." "Nobody's stoppin' you, sugar. You wanna leave?" "...I do not." "Then come on." She led me past the gift shop, past the arcade, past a hundred families eating regular steaks at regular tables. In the middle of the dining room, on a raised wooden platform under a spotlight, a table for six sat empty. "Up you go." I bowed to the platform. I climbed the three steps. I sat. Six hundred and fifty seats slowly noticed that the platform was occupied. "You want me to read you the rules, hon?" "Please." "Rule one. Eat all of it in one hour." "All." "Rule two. Don't stand up." "I am, then, chained to this seat by an honor I have only just discovered I have." "Yep, that's rule two." "Rule three." "Nobody helps you." "I would refuse help even if it were offered. Help is the death of the test." "Rule four. You get sick, you lose." "...I will not get sick." "That's what they all say, sugar." "I am, with respect, not them." "...That's what they all say too." Darla handed me the waiver. I signed it. She slid it into a binder that was, I noticed, already very full. "Last rule. You get one bite of the steak first. If you say it's cooked right, we start the clock." "...One bite to approve the opponent." "To approve the opponent. I like that. I'm gonna use that." A waiter arrived, a tall man with a clean apron and a stopwatch. Name tag MAVERICK. "Sir. The challenge." It was not a meal. It was a small landscape. The steak was the length of my forearm. The baked potato was the size of my fist with butter pooled in its center. Four pink shrimp the size of a man's thumb stood around a glass of cocktail sauce. A salad in a wooden bowl. A roll. A small pat of butter, sitting off to the side with the patience of a junior officer. "Take a bite of the steak, sir. Just to make sure." I cut a piece. I ate it. "...The opponent is worthy. Begin." Maverick clicked the stopwatch. Somewhere, a bell rang. The dining room, all of it, turned its head. For the first three minutes, no one spoke. I cut clean pieces. I chewed thoroughly. A man being watched by a room must eat as if the steak is also being watched. Then Maverick, who was standing at the foot of the platform with both hands behind his back like a butler at a state dinner, said: "Doin' good, sir." "...I am only three minutes in." "Yeah, but you're doin' it with style." "A samurai cannot eat without style. To eat without style is to insult the cow." "...I'm gonna write that down." He did not write it down. He had no pen. He had a stopwatch. At ten minutes, a small boy at a nearby table, maybe seven, stood on his chair and yelled across the dining room: "GET HIM!" His mother grabbed his sleeve. "Get who, baby? It's a steak." "GET HIM." I lowered my fork. I rose, just slightly, in my chair, and bowed to the boy from the high seat. The boy slammed both hands over his mouth. His mother turned to her husband. "Did the samurai just bow at our son." "He did." "What do we do." "I don't know." The boy bowed back. He did not know how. He just bent at the waist as far as a seven-year-old can bend, which is most of the way, and held it. I bowed deeper. The boy bowed deeper. His mother said, very quietly, "we're going to be here a while." At twenty minutes, half the steak was gone. Maverick had moved from "both hands behind his back" to "one hand on the railing of the platform, leaning slightly forward." "Sir." "Yes." "You're ahead of pace." "Define pace." "The average guy who finishes, he's about a third through right now." "Then I am one third faster than the average successful man." "Yeah." "This is concerning." "...Why?" "In my country, when one is ahead in a duel, one is usually about to lose it. The man who is winning relaxes. The man who is relaxed, drops his guard." "Sir, you're eating a steak." "That is exactly what the relaxed man would say." Maverick stared at the steak. Then at the stopwatch. Then back at the steak. "...Just keep eating, sir." "That is my plan." At thirty minutes, the baked potato. Butter had gone into it the way salt goes into a wound, but in this case, making the wound delicious. A grandfather at the next table, in a cowboy hat, raised his beer at me. "You got this, partner." "...I have what." "You got this. It's just a sayin'." "You possess the situation." "Yeah." "Then I, also, possess the situation." "Damn right." He drank his beer. I ate my potato. We had reached, in twelve seconds, the kind of agreement that takes most countries treaties. At forty minutes, the salad arrived in my path. The salad is the trick. It looks easy. It is not. It has volume but no weight. A man at minute forty has run out of room for things that do not pay for their space. I ate the salad. I ate it with the dignity of a man who has agreed, by treaty, to eat the side of his enemy that does not deserve to be eaten. At forty-five minutes, the roll. The butter sealed something in my chest that had been threatening to open. At fifty minutes, the last shrimp. At fifty-three minutes, only the steak remained. About a quarter of it. Enough to be a meal in any country in the world that was not Texas. The small crowd at the foot of the platform had grown. The boy who had yelled GET HIM was now standing as close as his mother would let him, which was approximately three feet, holding a balloon shaped like a longhorn. "Sir." It was Maverick. "Yes." "Six minutes left." "I am aware." "You're gonna make it." "A samurai does not finish a duel by being told he is going to finish it. He finishes it by finishing it." "...So can I stop saying you're gonna make it?" "Please." He stopped. I ate. I did not hurry. A samurai accelerates the work, never the dignity. At fifty-eight minutes, one final piece remained. A small triangle. The corner of the cutting board. The last of Texas. I cut it in half. I ate one half. I ate the other. I swallowed. The bell rang. The dining room rose. Six hundred and fifty people, standing at their tables, clapping. The boy at the foot of the platform threw his longhorn balloon in the air. His mother did not stop him. His father took out his phone and started recording, four full minutes after he should have. Maverick clicked the stopwatch. He looked at it. He looked at me. "Two minutes, eleven seconds to spare." "...The opponent yielded with margin. Honorable." "Sir, the opponent was already dead." "...Then I was eating, for the last hour, a memorial." Maverick stared at me for a full second. Then he said: "I am writing that one down, I just don't have a pen." A man in an apron crossed the dining room. Bobby Lee, son of the founder. He climbed the platform with the calm of a man who has done this ten thousand times and still likes it. "Sir. You finished." "I finished." "Your name goes on the wall." He led me to it. It was longer than I had expected. Thousands of names. Joey Chestnut. Frank Pastore. Molly Schuyler, who had done three of these in twenty minutes and was prevented from a fourth by Bobby's brother calling "calf rope" across the dining room. "How do you spell your name." "...East." "East." "I came from there." "All right, East it is." He took a marker. In a free square between a man named Travis and a woman named Esther, he wrote, in black ink, in front of children: EAST The boy with the longhorn balloon read it out loud. "East." "Correct." "What's that mean." "It means the morning. You will see me in it tomorrow, and so will everyone in this room." The boy looked at his mother. "Mom, the samurai is gonna be in the morning." "...Okay, baby." "He told me." "...Okay." Maverick handed me a t-shirt. It read: I FINISHED THE 72 OZ STEAK CHALLENGE AT THE BIG TEXAN. "...I have not paid." "You finished. It's free." "...I have been given a meal worth the price of a duel, in exchange for the duel." "That's how it works." "Then I have been honored beyond the contract." I bowed to Bobby Lee. I bowed to Maverick. I bowed to Darla. I bowed to the boy with the longhorn balloon. The boy bowed back. The dining room, all six hundred and fifty seats of it, bowed back, none of them sure why, all of them sure they should. I walked to the door. The cowboy in the black hat was still there. "How'd it go, partner." "My name is on a wall in Texas." "Hell yeah it is. Walk slow on the way out, you hear?" "A man who has just won a duel does not run from the field." "Damn right." Outside, the Texas sky was the color of a baked potato split open. The bull statue stared at me without comment. I drove east. Slowly. T-shirt in the passenger seat. Name on a wall behind me. A small boy somewhere in Amarillo telling his mother that the samurai is going to be in the morning. In my country, when a man wins a duel, his name goes in a family register, in ink, by an elder who has watched him grow. Here, when a man finishes seventy-two ounces of beef, his name goes on a wall, in black marker, by the son of the man who started the wall, in front of a boy with a longhorn balloon. It is the same ceremony. A samurai does not eat seventy-two ounces of beef twice in one life. He does not have to. He has done it once, in front of a room, and the room remembers, and the wall remembers, and the boy with the balloon remembers, and the morning will arrive tomorrow with my name in it. I am no longer a stranger. I am on the wall. wandering-nobunaga.com/stories/i-am-o…

Nothing exposes wokeism faster than their own actions.

This is one of the best illustrations of what socialism (in any form) does to the poor. It promises a ladder of programs & benefits but can’t lift people out of poverty. No country on earth has made the poor better off under socialist governments.

A Waffle House at three in the morning. I ordered hash browns. The waitress, Charlene, turned toward the kitchen and shouted. "Scattered, smothered, covered!" I rose from my stool. These were battle commands. Shouted across a room, fast, in code, the way a captain calls a line into position. Something was happening. I prepared myself. "Who is under attack?" I asked. Charlene turned back. "Huh? Oh. That's just your hash browns, baby." I sat back down slowly. "...The potatoes have their own commands?" "Mhm. Scattered means on the grill. Smothered's onions. Covered's cheese." "And there are more?" She counted them off without looking at a menu. "Chunked is ham. Diced is tomato. Peppered's jalapeños. Capped's mushrooms. Topped's chili. Country's sausage gravy." I was silent for a moment. Nine words. Nine fates, for one potato. In my homeland, a man earns a name through a lifetime of deeds. Here, a hash brown can earn nine in a single night. I had badly underestimated this country. "I want all of them," I said. "Every word. The potato has earned them." "...You want it all the way?" "All the way. To give it fewer would be an insult." Charlene shouted the whole thing back into the kitchen, the full litany, and the cook answered without turning around, and I stood again and bowed to him, sergeant to sergeant. He did not see it. It did not matter. I knew. It came buried. Onions, cheese, ham, tomato, peppers, mushrooms, chili, gravy. You could barely find the potato underneath, which seemed correct, because by then the potato was no longer a side dish. It was a decorated soldier. I ate the whole thing with a fork in both fists. It was hot and filthy and magnificent. I have eaten in palaces. I have never eaten anything that was honored this thoroughly. So tell me, America. You can shout the same potato into nine different lives. Who wrote this language, and where can a foreigner learn it? And the cook who answers in code at three in the morning. Is that a kitchen, or a war room?

A barbecue joint in Texas. The line started before the sun. I joined it in the dark. By the time the doors opened I had stood five hours. I did not mind. A thing worth eating is worth waiting for, and the wait is part of the eating. They served it on butcher paper. No plate. A slice of brisket, dark bark on the outside, a pink ring beneath, soft enough to pull apart with two fingers. Smoked eighteen hours over oak. Salt and pepper and nothing else. A man named Earl ran the counter. He set a bottle of sauce beside my tray, the way you offer a guest a kindness. I did not touch it. This meat had been honest for eighteen hours. To pour sauce on it would call it a liar. Earl watched me lift the bare slice and eat it as it was. He smiled. "That's how you do it," he said. He had been waiting all morning to see who would leave the bottle closed. I took the bite. There was smoke, and salt, and time. That was all. Nothing hidden in it, nothing covered up, nothing to forgive. It tasted the way a man's word should sound. I closed my eyes. When a thing has no lie in it, you feel that too, somewhere behind the chest. I ate the whole slice, and then a second, and did not speak. Earl did not make me. Some things are better in silence. When I left, I bowed to the smoker, not the man. The man would understand. So tell me, America. You wait five hours and you leave the sauce on the table. Is it the meat you came for, or the proof that it needs nothing? And the cook who smoked it all night while you slept. When does he sleep?

🇨🇳 Before I post this, I need to warn everyone that this story is extremely disturbing. It's an important story because it showcases how evil the communist regime was. How evil socialist dictator Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing (on the right) was. During the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing had the daughter of Premier Zhou Enlai (on the left), Sun Weishi, arrest out of pure personal jealousy. She was China's first female director and far more talented than Mao's wife ever was. Since communism is driven by jealousy for more talented people, Sun Weishi was the perfect target. In March 1968, on Jiang Qing’s orders, Sun was thrown into a secret Air Force prison. For the next seven months she endured mass torture. Guards later testified she was repeatedly rap*d & handed over to male prisoners, convicts and other communists. Every part of her body was broken. On October 15, 1968, Sun Weishi died from the abuse. Her body was found naked, still shackled by the hands and feet, left to rot in the cell. Even after her death, Mao's wife blocked any investigation. She cremated her and had the ashes destroyed so the family couldn't mourn her. This is the real face of Mao's communist regime: power used for sadistic personal vendettas, with zero limits on human suffering. Never forget what communism actually looks like in practice and never forget that this is what they want to do to us if they ever gain full power.

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@luckydogtwit88 @fandompulse It's on Amazon

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving. Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free. I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these." "They just come with the table, man." They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner. This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat. I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared. "Did we…?" "Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless." Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude." Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy. Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most. Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

In 1878, Bishop Milton Wright came home from a trip and tossed his two young sons a flimsy little toy. Wilbur was eleven. Orville was seven. It was a contraption made of bamboo and a twisted rubber band. You wound it up and it flew across the room to the ceiling. The boys played with it until it broke, then built their own copies from scratch. Their father traveled constantly and he always came home with his pockets full of small surprises. Books and gadgets and odd things he'd picked up on the road. That night it was a toy that didn't cost much. Twenty-five years later, those same two boys stood on a windswept beach in North Carolina and became the first men in history to fly. They pointed back to that toy for the rest of their lives. You never know which small thing you do as a father will be what your kids carry forever. Happy Father's Day.

"Go ahead and play while you wait, hon." The woman set a wooden triangle on my table. Fourteen pegs. One empty hole. She left before I could ask the stakes. A trial. Before the meal. Eight hundred years of my house, and never a host bold enough to test a man at breakfast. The rules were carved in the wood. Jump a peg, remove it. Clear the board. I studied it like a battlefield. I jumped. I jumped again. Seven pegs left. The sign named me for it. "Leave 4 or more: just plain eggno-good." I did not know the rank. I knew the shame. The waitress came back with water. "Oh, nobody beats that thing, sweetie." Mercy. She was sparing me in front of the boy. "You honor me." She blinked. "You want the pancakes?" The second trial. I reset all fourteen. Jump. Jump. Sweating onto a placemat shaped like Tennessee. Five left. "Pretty smart," said the sign. A full rank, and no sword had been drawn. The boy leaned over. "You're doing it wrong, mister. You gotta go backwards." Backwards. The child was a master sent to test my humility. I thanked him. The waitress set down a plate I had not ordered. "On the house. You've been at it twenty minutes." A vigil. I stood and bowed the way my father bowed at funerals. "...it's hash browns, buddy," said a man at the register. I sat back down. One peg left standing. The sign said "you're genius." My eggs were cold. My hand would not close. But a boy taught a stranger to think backward, and a woman fed me for trying. A house that hands you a riddle before the bread believes you can win.

update: orcs are feeling unsafe in Rohan after attacks by the Rohirrim

Daily Gondor 📰 @DailyGondor

3 weeks ago

A single radical Uruk-hai blew up the walls, yes. But people attacked the all of the moderate orcs who entered through the breach and who didn't blow anything up. This is Aragorn's Middle-earth.

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