Rob Stretch Visual Art

I've spent most of my life living with the mountains of Northern California. Looking for work in the art world.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯 @japan_nobunaga]

Saburo Sakai was the greatest Japanese fighter ace to survive the war. Sixty-four confirmed kills. Flew the Zero against the P-40, the P-38, the Hellcat, and the Corsair.

Over Java, in early 1942, he caught a lone American DC-3 transport plane in his gunsight. An easy kill. Standard target. He closed to point-blank range.

Then he looked into the cockpit.

The cockpit was full of women and children, Dutch civilian refugees trying to get out of the East Indies ahead of the Japanese advance. One of the women, holding a baby, looked out the side window straight into Sakai's canopy.

Sakai did not fire.

He broke off, saluted the woman, and let the DC-3 fly west into the sun.

Years later, in American interviews, he explained himself plainly.

"I am a samurai. My father's father was a samurai. We do not shoot women and babies. If my ancestors saw me fire into that cockpit, I would not be able to meet them when I died."

Five months later, over Guadalcanal, Sakai took a .50 caliber round through the canopy of his Zero. The bullet went through his head. It blinded his right eye and tore open his skull.

By every medical reasonable expectation he should have gone down.

He flew his damaged Zero four hours and 650 miles over the Pacific, bleeding into his flight suit, half-blind, repeatedly losing consciousness. He landed it, intact, on Rabaul.

He survived the war with one eye.

After the war, Saburo Sakai did not hate Americans. He became a Buddhist. He said in interviews that he had killed too many men already and would not do it again, not even in his own thoughts. He corresponded for years with former American Navy pilots who had been his opponents.

When American pilots began visiting Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo to pay respects to Japanese pilots they had shot down, it was Saburo Sakai who met them at the gate and walked them in. Enemy pilot. Enemy pilot. Both with white hair. Side by side, bowing at the memorial of men they had tried to kill.

"We were warriors," Sakai told one American interviewer. "Now we are old. Only the young should hate. The old should remember."

Japan had Zamperini forgiveness. Japan had Fuchida reconciliation. Japan also had Saburo Sakai, who refused to fire at women, took a bullet through the head, and spent his old age walking American pilots into Yasukuni.

Warriors recognize warriors.

Even after the war is gone.

[Roy Rogers Happy Trails Music Shop  @RoyRogers_HTMS]

This acoustic Hotel California solo has been living rent-free on YouTube for years, and every time it gets taken down someone just uploads it again.
The bends on a steel-string are ridiculous, the tone is perfect, and half the comments are people arguing about whether it's the original Acoustician version or another copy. Meanwhile the Eagles have spent decades being notoriously protective of their catalog. So the question sits there: at what point does a viral guitar cover stop being free advertising and start being something they should actually go after?
Plenty of bands quietly benefit from stuff like this. Others treat every note as copyrighted territory. Curious where people land on the Eagles specifically.

[阿文 @zhngdu248060122]

小窍门大智慧

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

In 52 BC, Julius Caesar was surrounded by 300,000 warriors, yet he pulled off a move so brilliant that military academies still teach it 2,000 years later.

[Oscar Barbera MTV @OscarBarbera7]

El día que la guitarra dejó de ser un instrumento y pasó a ser una extensión de su cerebro. Lo de Eddie Van Halen en este video no tiene ningún sentido técnico, es pura magia extraterrestre. ¡Qué maldito demente! 🎸🤯💨 ¿Alguien lo supera? 👀 👇
#EddieVanHalen #RockHistory

[Wonder of Science @wonderofscience]

Fascinating drone footage looking down into a volcanic eruption from above.

📽: Bjorn Steinbekk

[Luqman Ali @luqman_talks]

🚨 Google Flight Simulator is now available worldwide for free! ✈️🌍
No download needed — just open your browser and pilot a plane over real 3D Earth!

How to start flying right now:

1) Open Google Earth on the web → https://t.co/lWONCuAsaE
2) Click “Explore the World” (top section)
3) Open the Tools menu
4) Select “Flight Simulator”

Fly over your city, iconic landmarks, or anywhere on the planet with realistic controls. Perfect for aviation fans, explorers, or just for fun! 🔥

Who’s taking off first? Drop your dream destination below 👇
RT if you’re about to crash into the Eiffel Tower 😂

#GoogleEarth #FlightSimulator #Aviation #FreeFlightSim #ExploreTheWorld

(Pro tip: keyboard shortcut — Ctrl + Alt + A on Windows / ⌘ + Option + A on Mac)

[Black Hole @konstructivizm]

On 1 March 1982, the Soviet Venera 13 lander punched through Venus’s sulfuric-acid clouds and slammed onto a basaltic plain east of Phoebe Regio — a world of 465 °C heat and 89 atmospheres of pressure, hot enough to melt lead and crush a submarine. Designed to last 32 minutes, it survived 127, drilling a soil sample, analyzing its chemistry, and returning the first color photographs ever taken from the surface of another planet. Those orange-lit slabs of volcanic rock, a discarded lens cap, and the lander’s own arm remain among the only images humanity has ever received from the Venusian ground.

Credit: USSR

[𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 @Old_But_Gold50s]

At just 16, Marcin was already making his guitar sound absolutely mesmerizing. It’s no wonder he’s been called the “Paganini of the guitar”!

[Alvin Foo @alvinfoo]

Probably and possibly one of the best speeches of all time. 😍

Mohammed Qahtani, a Saudi Arabian engineer, won the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking.

In his winning speech, he highlighted the power of words, stating that they can be a source of strength.

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

The spread of Christianity throughout the world.

[Craft Gallery @5min__crafts]

Save this before you need it! 🪢

[Craft Gallery @5min__crafts]

Wow, such useful tips! 🔥

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Insane CCTV footage of the EF3 tornado Pomas, France, on August 26, 2026.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

This is what happens when the soul merges with the violin: the music running in your veins.

[MP10 @MusicPills10]

Ten years ago a 12-year-old from Dnipro sat down and played like he’d already lived a few lives behind the kit. Most people only ever saw the clips. This is the full solo. 🥁

[Amazing Physics @amazing_physics]

Amazing Physics...

[Mishraji 🚩🚩😎 @R_Mishraji]

Pray for Nepal

[Weather Monitor @WeatherMonitors]

Terrifying CCTV footage from Gyirong Port in Tibet shows the scale of the disaster, as flash floods near the Nepal-Tibet border have left at least 380 people missing.

[Daniel Swain @Weather_West]

Aug update from ECMWF predictive ensemble is genuinely extraordinary from extreme #ElNiño perspective. One implication: it is now indicating not only 70-100% odds of above avg winter precip California-wide, but also 70-100% odds of DJF 26-27 being among the top 20% of wettest CA winters (!).