Eric Odenbach

NC South Dakota grain farmer, husband, father, pilot, perpetual student.

[Retro Coast @RetroCoast]

"You're not out here asking why America pays for Israel to have free healthcare, are you son?"

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Pretty accurate

[AP @Average_NY_Guy]

Here is a fictional story:

The year is 2027.
China has launched a war against the United States.

In the first week, the president, his vice president, many members of Congress, all heads of the security agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA) and their teams, the national security cabinet, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, and a number of senior White House officials were killed. The White House and the Pentagon were destroyed, and the CIA and FBI headquarters were rendered unusable.

In addition, the United States’ air defense capabilities were completely destroyed, and Chinese aircraft are flying freely over Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, and every other U.S. city, bombing targets without any resistance.

In the second week, the destruction of the U.S. Navy and Air Force was completed. Many replacements for the officials eliminated in the first week were also killed in the second week.

At this point, it is unclear who the President of the United States is. There are rumors that Barron Trump, Donald’s son, is the president, but it is not clear whether he is alive or able to function.

Weapons production systems, factories, fuel infrastructure, manufacturing, and transportation are being gradually destroyed by the Chinese Air Force.

The remaining U.S. military capability is now focused on launching missiles toward China, as well as toward Mexico and Canada. The U.S. has also managed to temporarily shut down the Panama Canal.

The missile strikes on China are forcing civilians into shelters several times a day. Over the course of two weeks, about fifty Chinese civilians have been killed and property damage has occurred, compared to tens of thousands of Americans.

In a Chinese television studio in Beijing, commentators are sitting and arguing that the war is futile and cannot be won this way:
“It cannot be that Chinese citizens are going into shelters while the United States has still not surrendered. We eliminated Donald, and now Barron has appeared, and who knows who will come next. It is better to reach an agreement with the Americans, reopen the Panama Canal, and reduce losses.”

“A fictional story,” they tell you.

P.S. I saw this in a group, don’t know the author, but I liked it.

[EAA @EAA]

Seven decades ago, on May 24, 1956, a new aircraft design often credited with bringing the legendary Piper Aircraft company into the modern postwar era first took to the sky over Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.

The single-engine, low-wing, all-metal PA-24 Comanche signaled the beginning of a new era for Piper and went on to become one of the company’s most successful designs.

More than 50 years after production ended, the Comanche remains a popular aircraft within the vintage aviation community for the same reason it was in the 1950s and ’60s.

#EAA #aircraft #aviation #vintage #vintageaircraft #osh25 #oshkosh #airventure

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

JUST IN: The most irreversible consequence of this war is not happening in Tehran. It is happening in a barn in Iowa.

A farmer is standing over a kitchen table looking at two seed catalogues. One is corn. One is soybeans. Corn needs 180 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Nitrogen costs $610 per ton on the CBOT March futures settlement as of yesterday, up 35 percent in a month. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria called rhizobia. They need nothing from the Strait of Hormuz.

The farmer is choosing soybeans. Millions of acres are choosing soybeans. And once the planter rolls into the field, the choice cannot be reversed until next year.

USDA projected corn at roughly 94 million acres for 2026, down from 98.8 million. Soybeans at 85 million, up from 81.2 million. Those projections were published February 19, before urea surged past $683 at New Orleans. The actual shift will be larger. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. By then the seeds will be in the ground.

This is the transmission channel the world is not watching.

A 21-mile strait enforced by provincial commanders with sealed radio orders just rewrote the planting economics of 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. Not through sanctions. Not through diplomacy. Through the price of a single molecule that corn cannot grow without and soybeans do not need.

Now follow the cascade.

The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually. That consumes roughly 43 percent of the entire US corn crop. The mandate is set by the EPA. It does not flex when corn acres shrink. It is inelastic demand consuming a fixed share of a declining supply. When supply tightens against a fixed mandate, the remaining corn reprices upward. Corn above $5 per bushel compresses every margin downstream.

The US cattle herd stands at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low per USDA NASS. Poultry and pork operations face compression from higher corn prices. Feed is the single largest cost in livestock production. When feed reprices, protein reprices. When protein reprices, every grocery shelf in America absorbs the increase.

This is the protein cascade. Corn to feed to meat to eggs to dairy to the checkout counter. Each link tightens because the link before it tightened. The originating cause is a urea molecule that cannot transit a strait because a provincial commander’s sealed orders say it cannot.

The farmer did not start this war. The farmer cannot end it. The farmer responds to the price on the screen and the biology of the two crops in front of him. Corn needs the molecule. Soybeans do not. At $610 the arithmetic is settled. The planter rolls. The season is locked.

Israel just authorised the assassination of every Iranian official on sight. The US has spent $16.5 billion. South Pars is burning. The Fed is holding rates because oil inflation will not break. Gold touched $5,000. Bitcoin is bleeding. China is running exercises near Taiwan. Sri Lanka shut down on Wednesdays.

And underneath all of it, a man in a barn is making the decision that determines whether four billion people pay more for food this year. He has never heard of the Mosaic Doctrine. He does not know what a sealed contingency packet is. He knows what nitrogen costs. And he is planting soybeans.

Full analysis - https://t.co/iFmUcarGdV

[Adams County Sheriff's Office (Colorado) @AdamsCoSheriff]

The Adams County Sheriff's Office has received a flood of social media comments, DMs, and phone calls about the #Afroman defamation trial. It’s clear this is important to a lot of people. There's just one small issue: that's the ACSO in Ohio. We are the ACSO in #Colorado. Different states, same name.

#AfromanTrial #WrongAdamsCounty

[Eric Odenbach @Odenbach]

Song of the year.

[American Crime Stories @AmericanCrime01]

@Thefactsdude 🤣

[Rev. Ray Cistman ✊🏾🙏🏾 @RevRayCistman]

Reparations can be given or they can be taken.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Right now, in barns and equipment sheds across the American Midwest, farmers are making the most consequential decision of this war. Not generals. Not senators. Farmers.

At $683 per ton urea, corn economics have collapsed. Nitrogen is the single largest input cost for corn production. At pre-war prices a farmer could justify 180 pounds per acre and expect a margin. At $683 the math breaks. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria. They do not need the molecule trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. The seed decision is being made this week across roughly 90 million acres of American cropland. Once the planter rolls into the field, the choice is irreversible. Corn seed in the ground stays corn. Soy seed stays soy. The acreage allocation locks in.

USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. That report will tell the world how American agriculture responded to the Hormuz blockade. But the decisions it captures are being made now, in conversations between farmers and agronomists and seed dealers who are looking at nitrogen prices and making the rational economic choice: plant the crop that does not need the input you cannot afford.

Every acre that shifts from corn to soybeans tightens the corn balance sheet for the rest of the year. Corn feeds livestock. Corn feeds ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. That demand is inelastic. If acres shift and production falls while the mandate holds, corn prices spike. Feed costs spike. The protein cascade reverses. The US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork margins that were benefiting from cheap feed compress when corn crosses $5 per bushel.

This is how a naval blockade 7,000 miles from Iowa reaches the American grocery shelf. Not through oil. Not through shipping. Through nitrogen. The farmer cannot afford the molecule. The molecule cannot transit the strait. The farmer plants soy instead. The corn supply tightens. The ethanol mandate consumes its fixed share. The remaining corn reprices. The feed reprices. The meat reprices. The grocery bill reprices.

The decision is not political. It is arithmetic performed on a kitchen table by a person who needs to plant in three weeks and cannot wait for a ceasefire, an escort convoy, or an insurance normalisation that the Red Sea precedent says takes years.

The deepest penetrator in the American arsenal cannot reach a sealed Iranian doctrinal packet. But the fertiliser price it failed to resolve is reaching every planting decision on 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth.

The war’s most irreversible consequence is not happening in a bunker. It is happening in a barn. And by the time USDA publishes the data on March 31, the seeds will already be in the ground.

Full analysis in the link.
https://t.co/iFmUcarGdV

[80s Nostalgia Channel @80s_channel]

Shocking

[Eric Odenbach @Odenbach]

@bmreadel @maxarmstrong From Wishek huh? I’m From Eureka. I didn’t know.

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

— E.B. White

[Max Armstrong @maxarmstrong]

Mr. Samuelson. 1934-2026. He would have been 92 on 3/31. He loved birthdays and celebrated everyone else’s joyfully. Rare to work with someone 45 years. Thank you, O.

[Mark Gadala-Maria @markgadala]

This is wild.

143 million people thought they were catching Pokémon. They were actually building one of the largest real-world visual datasets in AI history.

Niantic just disclosed that photos and AR scans collected through Pokémon Go have produced a dataset of over 30 billion real-world images. The company is now using that data to power visual navigation AI for delivery robots.

Players didn't just walk around with their phones. They scanned landmarks, storefronts, parks, and sidewalks from every angle, at every time of day, in lighting and weather conditions that staged photography would never capture. They documented the physical world at a scale no mapping company with a fleet of vehicles could have replicated on the same timeline or budget.

Niantic collected this systematically, data point by data point, across eight years, while users thought the only thing at stake was catching a rare Charizard.

The most valuable AI training datasets in the world aren't being assembled in data centers. They're being built by people who have no idea they're building them.

[Mentality Money X @MentaMoneyX]

@Naturalphilosy The money you make never compensates for the days you spend making it.

The math never works out in your favor, people just agree not to say it out loud.

[Natural Philosophy @Naturalphilosy]

“I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news.”

— John Muir

[oog @oog84__]

papa come home from hunt. empty hand.

bad hunt. no meat. nothing.

papa sit by fire. say nothing. face heavy.

mama not ask what happen. mama not say "it okay." mama just put warm root soup in front of papa. sit next to him. close. shoulder touching shoulder.

whole cave quiet.

then mama say: "remember first hunt after we met? you come home with one skinny rabbit. smallest rabbit in whole forest. you hold it up like you kill great beast."

papa: "...was not THAT small."

mama: "hmmmm... koom bigger than that rabbit."

papa mouth twitch. fighting it. fighting the smile.

lose.

small laugh. tired laugh. but real.

mama not fix the empty hand. mama not make meat appear. mama just go back far enough in the story to find a version of papa who still believe in himself. and she bring that version forward. sit him right next to the tired one.

oog watching from dark corner of cave. taking note.

THAT what partner do. not fix the bad day. just refuse to let the bad day be the whole story.

love, oog

[oog @oog84__]

tribe have tradition. when boy reach fifteen season, elder give you your "man name." name that supposed to describe what kind of man you becoming.

big night. fire high. whole tribe watching.

elder call oog forward.

oog heart beating in ear. want strong name. want name that make people respect. "oog the fierce." "oog the unbreaking." something BIG.

elder look at oog long time. too long. oog sweating.

elder: "your name... oog-who-stay."

silence.

oog... who stay?

that it? not fierce? not unbreaking? just... stay?

oog smile. nod. walk back. sit with brother. face hot.

dak lean over: "oog-who-stay. not bad."

oog: "dak. it basically mean oog boring."

dak: "or it mean oog the one who not leave."

oog look at dak.

dak: "tribe full of fast runner who run away from thing too. tribe full of strong hunter who not strong enough to sit with crying friend. elder not give oog boring name. elder give oog the hardest name. because anyone can arrive. you know how few people STAY?"

oog sit with that.

go home. brothers asleep. mama and papa asleep. oog sit at cave mouth. look at stars.

oog-who-stay.

the name not what oog wanted. but maybe it what oog IS. and maybe the bravest thing you can be is not the one who do something spectacular. but the one who is there on the boring night. and the hard night. and the night after that. and the night after that.

still there. still there. still there.

love, oog

[Eric Odenbach @Odenbach]

@Glen_Ring @grok Yes, the answer was reasonable.

[Eric Odenbach @Odenbach]

Hey @grok how much should I charge by the loaded mile to haul round hay bales with a semi truck and trailer in South Dakota?

[M2 @Amer1can_Barbie]

A lady in the store I stopped by this morning made a whole scene about not being able to use her SNAP benefits for soda and candy anymore - then, she launched into a lecture about how it’s “discrimination” to not let people buy what they want - and then proceeded to tell the cashier how those who are on SNAP are the ones keeping the economy going….

She walked out with her bags of groceries that cost her a grand total of ZERO dollars…and drove away in her BRAND NEW JEEP…

In short - she is in there using MY tax dollars to buy all of her food and crap - is wholly ungrateful for any of it - and then drives off in a car that is nicer than mine.

My fatigue, my rage…is at an all time high. I am fucking fuming. And all I feel like I can do is go back to work and keep paying my taxes and scream into the void about it.

The entire system is broken - every single piece and part is beyond repair. It’s such a demoralizing way to feel every day.

Anyway, I hate her…and everyone like her…with the fire of a thousand suns.

Ok, rant over