Eric Ratterree

[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.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

The World Cup begins tomorrow, and many will watch the matches. Soccer reminds us of something we must not forget: life is not a race to show off on our own, but a path we learn to walk together. Anyone who does not know how to pass the ball, even if they have talent, has not yet understood the game. Anyone who does not know how to live with and for others has not yet understood life. #ApostolicJourney

[Enes Kanter FREEDOM @EnesFreedom]

To my Oklahoma family;
this piece comes straight from the heart.

I hope you’ll take a moment to read it and feel what I felt.
Thank you for allowing me to be a small part of it.

I came to @okcthunder to play basketball. I left carrying 168 lives.

When I was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder, I was thinking about basketball, nothing more.

I didn’t know that before I ever stepped on the court, this place would show me something that would stay with me far longer than any game.

Like any player, my mind was on the game. A new team, a new city, a new opportunity. I expected the usual routine when I landed in Oklahoma City. Physicals, practices, meetings, and a jersey waiting in a locker.

But before any of that, Sam Presti pulled me aside and told me there was somewhere we needed to go.

He didn’t explain much, and I didn’t think to ask. I was focused on the next step in my career.

What I didn’t understand was that, before I could represent the place I was about to play for, I needed to understand it.

So instead of heading to the facility, he took me to the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum.

I walked in without knowing what I was about to see, and within minutes, everything slowed down.

There are 168 chairs at the memorial, each one representing a life lost on April 19, 1995. They are arranged in quiet rows, each engraved with a name, each standing where a person once stood in that building. Then you notice something that is impossible to process the first time you see it. Some of the chairs are smaller.

They belong to children.

There is no speech that prepares you for that, no headline that captures it. You simply stand there, and the silence carries a kind of weight that is hard to describe but impossible to ignore.

As you walk through the memorial, you pass between two gates marked 9:01 and 9:03. At first, they seem like simple numbers, but then you understand what they hold. One marks the last minute before the attack. The other marks the first minute after. And in between those two gates is 9:02, the moment when everything changed.

That minute does not feel like history when you are standing there. It feels present.

The reflecting pool stretches across what used to be a city street, its surface calm and still. When you look into it, you do not just see water. You see yourself standing in a place where unimaginable loss occurred, and for a moment, everything else in your life becomes quieter.

Nearby stands the Survivor Tree, an American elm that was damaged in the blast but endured. It is not untouched. Its scars are part of what it represents. But it is still standing, and in that, it carries a kind of strength that does not need to be explained.

We did not speak much while we were inside. It did not feel like a place for conversation. Some places ask for words. This one asks for reflection.

When we stepped outside, Sam Presti looked me in the eye and said, “This is what this state has been through.”

Then he said something I will never forget.

“Every time you step on that court, you are not just playing in front of fans. You are playing for a state that carries this with it. Give them everything you have. They deserve that.”

In that moment, basketball felt different.

Not smaller, but clearer.

Because what I had just seen was not only about what was lost. It was about what remained. A state that had experienced unimaginable pain and still chose to come together, to rebuild, and to move forward without losing its humanity.

From that day on, every time I stepped on the court, I carried that with me.

On the nights when I was tired, when I was hurt, when I was dealing with challenges that felt heavy in the moment, I would think about those chairs, about that minute, about the people behind those names. And I was reminded that what I was going through did not compare to what this state had endured.
https://t.co/XfNLliRVaO

[Rock'n Roll of All @rocknrollofall]

Mick Jagger karaoke at Saturday Night live.

His sense of humor is as good as his frontman capabilities🤘

[The REF @KREFsports]

The OU defense is No. 1 in the SEC with 13.67 points allowed per game.

Not only did that lead the SEC this year, it’s the lowest number the conference has seen in the last four seasons.

ELITE!

[Eric Ratterree @RatterreeEric]

@texas_sonof @brettachapman Only 80 years later…

[Eric Ratterree @RatterreeEric]

@texas_sonof @brettachapman Ahahaha, that’s a movie.

[Jon Favreau @jonfavs]

Please take the time to listen to George's story and share it.

Even if you're a Trump supporter.

Just put yourself in this man's shoes for a minute.

No one should face this kind of brutality from their own government - let alone a veteran with three kids was just trying to get to work.

They knew he's a citizen. They knew he wasn't a threat. They terrorized him anyway - his fellow citizens whose salaries we pay, who are supposed to protect us. And it's not an isolated case. It's happening every day.

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Gavin Newsom: “People are scared to death of this guy. It’s the appaling silence, it’s the complicity. It makes me sick. Is it worth it to you? To watch this 249 years just vanish in real time? We’re losing our moral authority by the hour as he continues to exercise his formal authority by the minute”

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

JUST IN: Every Republican on the House Rules Committee voted to block the Epstein Files Transparency Act from advancing.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

Bernie Sanders rallied with Graham Platner – the progressive challenging Susan Collins for Senate in Maine – before several thousand in a packed Portland arena on Labor Day. Platner drew one of the night’s loudest ovations, a 30-second standing roar, when he brought up Gaza. “We watch from the sidelines of struggle as incomprehensible amounts of wealth and power are consolidated by the very few. We are looking at that and we wonder why can we not all share in that success,” he said. “Our taxpayer dollars can build schools and hospitals in America, not bombs to destroy them in Gaza.”

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Here's some good news: Catelin Drey won a special election this week to flip a seat blue in the Iowa Senate and break Republicans' supermajority. This seat had been in Republican hands for 13 years. When we are organized and support strong candidates who are focused on the issues that matter, we can win. Let's keep this going.

[Maine @TheMaineWonk]

We are ruled by the dumbest people in America.

[Rod (Izzy) 🇺🇸🦅 @1zzyzyx1]

This administration is so full of shit, denying these two full retirement after they have served their country because Hegseth and Trump think they don’t deserve it because of who they love. They did what they signed up for in the military; America owes them. #DemsUnited

[Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D @RVAwonk]

I don’t know, I kinda think poor people deserve the same things as everyone else and it’s weird that you think they deserve less.

Go micromanage the line item budgets of defense contractors, not the minuscule grocery budgets of poor people.

[Eric Ratterree @RatterreeEric]

@Imposter_Edits @WinsleyMelan

[Rolling Stone Politics @RSPolitics]

The White House says "South Park" is not "relevant," "hanging on by a thread," and a "fourth-rate show."

The $1.5 billion Paramount is reportedly paying for five years of streaming rights begs to differ.

https://t.co/q8LlyWHJJP

[Blinkin @blinkinriley]

If every single one of the 340 million people in the US paid $170 per month into this, it would take over 50 years to pay off the debt.

This will have no effect on the debt.

They just want to take your money, and they know that many of you are stupid enough to give it to them.