ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs

Handsome Dino King

[📜Echoes of Empire📜 @EchoesofEmpire_]

A 100-year-old veteran of the Revolutionary War named Nicholas Veeder poses in his uniform, 1860.

[𝔏𝔢𝔩 🌦️ político-social @ReinaCabreada]

los inmigrantes se están largando de Belfast

[rudy betrayed @rudy_betrayed]

During this drive you can see the Rockies in the distance the entire time

I always think about the pioneers. What takes us 10 hours now, took them months

Imagine walking toward an unclimbable mountain every day for months, every day it gets bigger. Your wife and 2 year old son are exhausted and bored. You have a stupid donkey carrying a bunch of canned green beans or some bullshit. You’ll probably have to eat him at some point

Every day you wake up and walk what feels like the same land. Flat, boring, nowhere to rest. And every day the mountain gets bigger. Psychological torture

[David Marcus @BlueBoxDave]

Sneaking millions of barrels of oil out of Iran every night is some straight up Sopranos shit.

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

@japan_nobunaga It’s gotta be China doing this to the West and Japan. They set up shop in Africa.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

DUDE LMAO THIS IS A GAS STATION😭😭😭

[GB Politics @GBPolitcs]

🚨PICTURED: Masked Belfast youths on the streets after migrant stabbing

[@BelTel]

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

@WarMonitor3 Wrong

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

@SomeBitchIIKnow JudgeMyJudge

[Joshwelt @weltszzn]

when i accidentally close my 45 tabs it's like the burning of the library of alexandria, but worse and much more dire

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

The crossover that needs to happen

[Shane Cashman @ShaneCashman]

There’s literally nothing weird about Thomas Matthew Crooks emailing a deputy from Butler, PA before the assassination attempt. It’s not weird that he practiced shooting at the same range Homeland Security used. It’s not weird that the local police and Secret Service spotted Crooks with a rangefinder, photographed him, and texted about him for over an hour and still let him climb the roof with a rifle. It’s not weird that the Secret Service wasn’t flying drones that day, but Crooks was. It’s not weird that Butler was the first Trump rally of the year with Secret Service anti-sniper agents on the roofs. It’s not weird that Crooks’ house looked like a sterile lab with no trash or silverware. And it’s not weird that his body was cremated ten days later before Congress could see it. This is like when people say the CIA was shadowing Oswald before he, and he alone, shot JFK.

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

@ba_dunkadunk @cevangelista413 @WRBolen 💯

[Mr. S.T.A.R. @favelaoverlord]

literally nothing more annoying on the fucking planet than when websites don’t have the US at the top of a country selection list. No, I am not going to select fucking “Afghanistan” boutique clothing brand based in Nashville. Fuck off.

[Patrick Webb @Patrickwebb]

BREAKING: U.S. Attorneys to investigate California elections over allegations of potential fraud, per POTUS.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A potluck. Everyone brings one dish. I have never been so out of my depth in my life.

I was invited to a gathering. "Just bring a dish to share," they said. Simple words. I did not sleep for three days.

Because I understood instantly what this was. A summit. Every guest, a lord of their own house, arriving bearing tribute. And tribute is judged. Tribute is ranked. To bring the wrong dish to the wrong table is to fall in standing before your peers, possibly forever.

So I prepared. I made my finest dish. I carried it to the door with two hands and a straight back, braced for the weighing of my worth.

The first lord arrived with a bowl of orange powder noodles. Macaroni and cheese. The crowd roared. He set it down at the center of the table. The CENTER. I noted this. The center is the seat of power.

The second lord brought a tower of small brown meat orbs in red sauce. "Meatballs," he announced, like a man laying down a sword. They were placed beside the macaroni. A strong showing. An alliance, perhaps.

I studied the table like a battlefield map. Potato salad: defensive, reliable, old money. A vegetable tray, untouched, clearly a hostage offering no one expected to win. And then a woman walked in, raised a flat box overhead, and the entire room turned and CHEERED.

Pizza. She had brought pizza. Store-bought. Still in the box.

I was stunned. She had not even cooked it. And yet the people rejoiced as if a king had entered. I revised my entire understanding of the hierarchy on the spot. Effort means nothing here. Only the roar of the crowd decides rank.

I placed my dish down, humbly, near the napkins. A peasant's position. I accepted it.

And then a man tapped my shoulder, pointed at my dish, and said the words that changed everything.

"Whoa, did you make this? This is amazing. Everybody, you GOTTA try this guy's thing."

The room turned. The room came. The room ATE. My dish vanished in ninety seconds. The pizza woman herself took a second helping and looked at me with respect.

I had won the summit. By accident. With a dish I placed by the napkins.

I understand nothing about this country. I have never been happier. I am hosting the next one.

So tell me, America.

Is there a system to the potluck? A secret rank? A hidden law?

I have decided there is not.

You just bring the thing you love, and everyone eats it, and somehow everybody wins.

It is the most insane way to hold a war.

I will fight in every single one.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will rename you in a single breath, and you are simply expected to come when called.

I went to eat at a busy restaurant. A young man at the front asked for my name, to mark my place in line. I gave it the weight it has carried for eight hundred years.

"Nobunaga."

He smiled, nodded, and wrote it down with great confidence. Then he read it back to me, to be sure he had honored it correctly.

"Perfect. Banana, party of one."

Banana. He had heard my name, held it a moment, and returned to me something rounder and more cheerful. To refuse the name a host gives is to refuse his welcome. I bowed. I was Banana now.

Then he handed me a small black disc, said it would "light up and buzz" when my table was ready, and turned to the next guest as though he had not just placed a living thing in my hands.

I held it in both palms, the way one holds a small sleeping beast that may wake. I found a place to stand. I waited, ready.

It woke.

It screamed. It flashed red. It leapt and shook in my hands like a captured spirit demanding release. A lesser man would have dropped it. I did not. I gripped it, steady, looked into its blinking lights, and told it, in a low voice, that its time had come. Then I carried it back to the host with both hands, the way one returns a hawk to its master.

He took it without looking and shouted across the entire room.

"BANANA! Party of one, your table's ready!"

A hundred strangers turned. I rose. I crossed that floor as Banana, spine straight, chin level, a man answering to his name. A child pointed at me. I gave the child a small bow. He had recognized me.

All through the meal they kept me. "How's it tasting, Banana?" "More water, Banana?" The check, when it came, said Banana, and thanked me for visiting. By the end the whole staff knew me. They waved as I left. "Night, Banana!"

So tell me honestly.

For eight hundred years my clan answered to one name. Tonight I answered to a fruit, calmed a screaming relic in my bare hands, and ate among people who were glad I came.

When the little disc lights up, is the table truly mine, or am I only keeping it warm for the next Banana?

Because I have already decided to return on Friday, and to ask, very humbly, for the same disc.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A backyard. One man guarding a grill for four hours.

He never left it once.

Everyone else drifted and drank and laughed. But one man stood alone before the flames, turning meat with a long fork, immovable. I knew him at once. The keeper of the sacred fire.

I took my place beside him and said nothing. After a while, he spoke.

"Low and slow," he said, eyes on the coals. "You can't rush it. Rush it, you ruin it."

I bowed my head. A blade, a tea, a life. None can be rushed. I had crossed four thousand miles to hear my grandfather's words from a man in a "KISS THE COOK" apron.

"Everything worth doing is slow," I agreed.

He glanced at me. Something passed between us.

"My wife says just use the oven." He shook his head at the fire. "She doesn't get it."

"They never do," I said.

And this is where it turned.

For the first time in years, this man had been understood. And he rose to meet it. His back straightened. His voice dropped low. A teenager reached for the grill and the man lifted one hand without even looking. "Not yet." The boy retreated. He was becoming what I already believed him to be.

A woman asked when the food would be done. "It's ready when it's ready," he told the flames.

Three people approached. Three were turned away with a single word. By the fourth hour, no one questioned him. The whole party had arranged itself around the man and his fire, the way a village arranges itself around a shrine.

Then he handed me the fork.

"Watch it a sec. I gotta pee."

I have been trusted with castles.

I have never been more honored.

He served everyone before himself, and ate last, standing, still watching the coals. We never traded names. We did not need to.

He believed he had finally met a man who took his cooking seriously.

I believed I had finally met America's last samurai.

Neither of us will ever correct the other.

So tell me, America.

Who is the man at your gathering who will not leave the grill?

Have you ever once asked him why?

I think he is still standing there.

Guarding the fire.

Waiting for one person to understand.

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

@Rothmus They don’t have the star power. MTG fed off of Trump until she bit the hand and Libertarians are a disaster.

[ℝe̷χ Ҡɨղɠ օf Ꮥςօɬs @RexKingofScots]

@DrunkRepub Can’t stop addicted to the mail in