Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️

Elder weeb. Trucker. Geek. Writer. Medieval fighter. Hiker. Thinker. Lazy lifter. Former Marine.

[Dan Hightower @Danhightower]

Daycare calls me. That's never good.

For them.

Daycare: "your son hurt his elbow and won't move his arm. Can you come take him to a doctor's office?"

Me (ex Special Forces Medic): "A real doctor is on the way to you now. I am 6 mikes out. Alert me of status changes."

I arrive at daycare. I locate the patient. 21 month old male. Scene is not safe. I drag the patient to cover and concealment behind a seesaw, away from the other small terrorists in the AO.

I begin my assessment. Blood sweep negative for massive hemorrhage. Mental status: conscious and verbal but confused (answers "dada" when asked for blood type). One breath every 2 seconds. Bilateral rise and fall of the chest. Strong carotid pulse, strong bilat radial pulse.

Teeth and tongue intact no blood no mucus no dip or foreign objects. Eyes PERRLA, negative JVD/trach deviation, C-spine intact upon palpation.

Heart sounds strong upon auscultation. Percussion negative for hemo-T. Abdominal quads normal upon palpation. Pelvis negative for book sign.

Arms and legs negative for crepitus. However, Patient indicates discomfort in right arm upon palpation and supination/flexion of the elbow.

Nursemaid's elbow.

I begin interventions. Supination/flexion technique complete at 1215. Palpable clunk on successful reduction. I write the time on his chest in Sharpie. I tape a popsicle to his hand and tell the patient to suck but do not bite/chew. I write "1 x popsicle (10g sugar)" on his chest in Sharpie.

I reassess the patient after performing interventions then package the patient for handoff to daycare/higher level of care. I yell at daycare over the Blackhawk in my head: "21 month old male!!! Nursemaids elbow!!! Treated with supination/flexion technique at 1215!!! Patient has 1 x popsicle onboard!!"

Daycare: "sir please leave."

Me: "you should have called my wife."

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@wolffytheking @tenmamaemi @pipkinpippa *will

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@13enz8 @JAuratus @BearlyHereAtAll @DudespostingWs I wasn't. I was offering an anecdote and possible explanation for the original story.

My status as an asshole is merely a coincidence.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@13enz8 @JAuratus @BearlyHereAtAll @DudespostingWs I'm not applying my 73 y/o father's situation to anything. I'm refuting your statement that knee problems do not stop one from riding.

Cruiser bikes have more weight than most think, and require this weight to be considered. A wise person accounts for their physical abilities.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@13enz8 @JAuratus @BearlyHereAtAll @DudespostingWs When my blue collar Marine veteran father says he doesn't trust his legs to support the weight of the bike to dismount safely, I trust his words and judgement.

You are being a disingenuous troll, and I hope you never suffer a similar debilitating condition.

[Mark Hemingway @Heminator]

The NYT is having trouble reconciling that the things people like most about America aren't always the things coastal elites value.

I'm sorry but if you think Buc-ee's and Bass Pro Shops are anything but a modern marvel, you're way out of touch.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@hokkori_buzz Within this burger is contained a paradox.
Sweet IS Savory.
Up IS down.
Night IS Day.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@13enz8 @JAuratus @BearlyHereAtAll @DudespostingWs Have you? A Harley, especially an older one, is substantial weight. Even a Sportster would be tough on an older gentleman with bad knees. I know it tears my father's heart that he can't ride his Harley any more.

[Richard Seiler @richardseiler]

𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦

Jeremy Clarkson has never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he is

Brutally honest. No oil painting. A pot belly, a lifelong smoker, a drinker. Not exactly the modern alpha male or is he?

And somehow that is the whole point

I have watched him for most of my life
First as a motoring journalist who could make you want a car you would never own and never need
Then as something bigger
The loudest, funniest, most unfiltered mouthpiece the ordinary person ever had
A man who said the thing everyone was thinking while the rest of television tiptoed around it

From Top Gear he built something that should not have worked
Three middle aged men, The Stig, a track and a chemistry you cannot manufacture
James May the patient one
Richard Hammond the brave one
And Clarkson the force of nature dragging both of them into chaos and somehow back out again

When it all fell apart at the BBC he could have disappeared
The fracas was not his finest hour and he never pretended it was
He owned it, apologized and carried on
No reinvention, no groveling tour, no carefully managed comeback
He just kept being himself and let the work speak

The move to Amazon and The Grand Tour proved something I think a lot of people missed
The format was never the magic
The men were
You can take three friends out of a studio and drop them anywhere on earth and the loyalty between them travels with them

But it is Clarkson's Farm where the whole picture finally comes into focus

Here is a man with nothing left to prove walking into a field he barely understands and refusing to fake competence he does not have
He has run that farm at break even and then at an outright loss in full public view
No editing it into a success story
No pretending the numbers work when they do not
His farm manager hands him one brutal truth after another and he sits there and takes it

A whole season swallowed by drought even after he leaned into robotics and the most advanced farming money could buy
Technology was supposed to be the answer and the weather did not care
He showed that too
Most people would have cut it

And through all of it he has done something quietly remarkable
He has dragged the plight of the British farmer into the light
The paperwork, the council, the margins that vanish, the weather that ruins a year of work in a week
People who had never thought about where their food comes from suddenly cared because he made them care

And then there is the part nobody warned me about
Men who raise animals for meat and still love them
Who name them, worry about them, sit with them
Who treat them with respect and dignity right up to the moment they cannot keep them
And feel the full weight of sending them off

He does not hide that
He lets the camera sit in the discomfort of it
The grief of a man who knows the deal he made and still finds it hard

That is not weakness
That is honesty most people are far too afraid to show

We live in an age that rewards the polished, the curated, the carefully built personal brand
And here is a scruffy, swearing, chain smoking farmer who has done the opposite of all of it and won
He stayed exactly who he was while the world begged him to become a product

That is the whole secret
There is no act
There never was

And that is exactly why we keep watching

Praying for a full recovery mate, looking forward to another season of Clarkson's Farms!

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@asura0998822 I have started watching Band of Brothers with my son. He wants to be a Marine, but I am showing him Band of Brothers first, to show him how a good leader looks after his troops.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@UmariTomoe So instead of "cuteness aggression," it's "aggressive cuteness?"

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@tenmamaemi To make you look like a pimp would imply that you get batches. Which we kbow ain't so.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@VStottlemyer @tsumugi_meow I NEED this on a weekly basis.... good god, that's magical.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@tsumugi_meow "Eat" a daki masu

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@tsumugi_meow 188cm/126 kg. I need a lot of fuel.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@ScarleYonaguni Time to goon to even WORSE material?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.

In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.

"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.

"Honey, that's what it looks like."

The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."

I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.

I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.

It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.

"Well?" the waitress asked.

"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."

"Everybody does, hon."

Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.

Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.

I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.

It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

[可愛くノ一 🇯🇵🌸 @hokkori_buzz]

America. I came here for a fishing rod.

A simple thing.
A stick. A line. A hook.
In Japan, this is how you speak to a river.
Quietly. Patiently. With humility.
You lower yourself to the water.
You wait.
The fish decides.

I walked into Bass Pro Shops.

I could not find the fishing rods.

I found the guns.

Many guns.
A wall of guns.
Floor to ceiling.
Side to side.
Gleaming and waiting —
the way a cathedral waits.
Not for you to arrive.
For you to finally understand
why you came.

I stood there for a long time.

And slowly, I began to understand.

In Japan, to catch a bass, you use a rod.
In America, to catch a bass, you bring overwhelming force.
This is not fishing.
This is a declaration of intent.

I picked up a rifle scope.
I raised it slowly to my eye.
I looked through it toward the lake outside the window —
the still, glittering, unsuspecting lake —
and I saw it clearly for the first time.

The enemy.

The employee appeared beside me.
I did not hear her coming.
This impressed me deeply.
She had training.

"Can I help you find something?"

I lowered the scope.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.

"I am scouting the enemy," I told her.

She nodded.
Without hesitation.
Without confusion.
She has done this before.
Everyone who comes here has done this before.
This is what you do
before you fish in America.

I left with no fishing rod.
I left with no gun.

I left with something heavier —
a new philosophy,
settled into my bones
the way a long war
settles into a soldier
who has finally seen the battlefield
and understood
that the battlefield
was always inside her.

A kunoichi does not fish for bass.

Bass Pro prepares the kunoichi for bass.

Is this normal?
Please explain American fishing to me.

I am ready to learn.

[Dan Stephenson🇺🇦 ⬜️🟥⬜️ @OfficerCharon]

@UmariTomoe Just one of the guys...