Popular far-left French politician Louis Boyard discreetly took off his Rolex worth $50,000 before giving an interview ‘denouncing the ultra-rich.’
Hypocrisy at its finest.
In America they told me the football game starts at 1 PM.
I arrived at 1 PM.
I was five hours late.
The parking lot was already a city.
A man had built a living room beside his truck. Not metaphorically. He had a couch. A television. A chandelier powered by a generator the size of a small horse.
He was grilling enough meat to feed a village, and when I walked past he said, "You hungry?"
I said I had not been invited.
He looked at me the way you look at someone who has apologized for breathing.
"Brother," he said. "You're here. That's the invitation."
He handed me a plate. It was not a small plate. The brisket hung over the edges like a man sleeping in a bed he has outgrown.
I ate it standing beside a stranger's couch in a parking lot in October, and it was among the finest meals of my life.
A woman across the row had a tent, a smoker, a speaker system, and a flag so large it could have sheltered a family of five beneath it.
She had been here since 6 AM.
The game had not started.
The game, I began to realize, was not the point.
I asked the man what time he would go inside the stadium.
He said, "Depends."
I asked on what.
He said, "On whether the ribs are done."
I want to be clear. He had a ticket. He had driven four hours. He had assembled a small civilization from the back of a pickup truck.
And he was considering not going to the game.
Because the ribs were not ready.
In Japan we tailgate nothing. We do not build living rooms in parking lots. We do not grill for strangers.
We sit quietly on trains and think about whether we remembered to bow at the right angle.
I have since attended eleven tailgates.
I have never once cared who won the game.
Nobody has.
The game is inside the stadium.
America is in the parking lot.
In Georgia I entered a Chick-fil-A drive-thru line of forty cars.
I turned off my engine. I prepared to wait the way my ancestors waited out a siege.
Six minutes later I was holding chicken.
I do not know what happened to the other thirty-nine cars. The line moved like water that had somewhere to be.
A young woman walked between the cars taking orders on a small tablet, on foot, in the sun, smiling like the sun was her idea.
I said thank you.
She said, "My pleasure."
I did not think about it then. I should have.
At the window I thanked the young man for the food.
"My pleasure."
I thanked him for the sauce.
"My pleasure."
I thanked him for thanking me—
"My pleasure."
I want to be clear about what was happening.
This was a duel.
In Japan I trained in courtesy for forty years. Bowing angles. Seasonal greetings. The correct depth of apology for seventeen distinct situations.
I was a white belt in that drive-thru.
I escalated. I used my most formal English. I thanked him on behalf of my entire family line.
He said, "My pleasure," and gave me extra sauce.
Extra sauce. Unprovoked. A counterattack.
I returned the next day to reclaim my honor.
It was Sunday. The restaurant was closed.
All of them were closed. In the entire country. They close every Sunday, and they have closed every Sunday since the beginning, because the founder made a promise, and the promise did not expire when he did.
I stood in the empty parking lot and understood I had lost twice.
Once to a teenager with sauce.
Once to a man I will never meet, who kept his word so long it became a building.
In my country we say a samurai's word is his life.
I had never seen a restaurant say it back.
I returned Monday. I ordered. And this time I said it first, before she could.
"My pleasure."
She smiled and said, "It sure is."
America, I surrender.
It was my pleasure.
Olive Garden announces they are requiring photo ID to obtain the Never-Ending Pasta Pass, meaning the pasta giant is taking ID requirements more seriously than the US does in its elections.
Last night, President Trump shared the importance of voter ID in our elections.
If only Washington cared about our elections like Olive Garden cares about its pasta.
In America I was taken to a warehouse called Costco.
At the door, a woman checked my friend's membership card.
At last, I thought. A checkpoint. A travel pass. Finally, this country has proper gate protocol.
Inside, the ceiling was so high that weather felt possible.
They sell mayonnaise in containers I would describe as architectural. Forty-eight eggs at once. Trousers next to televisions next to a kayak.
Old women stood at small stations, handing out free food on toothpicks.
I asked my friend when the festival ends.
He said, "It's Tuesday."
The festival does not end. The festival is the store.
Then he bought me a hot dog and a soda.
It cost one dollar and fifty cents.
I assumed I misheard. I checked the receipt.
One dollar. Fifty cents. The price has not changed since 1985.
I was alive in 1985. Everything I have purchased since then has betrayed me at least once.
Gasoline. Rent. Rice. All of them broke their word.
The hot dog did not.
I asked how this is possible, and I received a story I did not believe until I confirmed it.
The founder, before he stepped down, told the next chief what would happen if he ever raised the price of the hot dog.
He said, and this is recorded history: "If you raise the price, I will kill you."
Scholars believe he was joking.
The price has not moved in forty years.
I leave the conclusion to you.
At the exit, a man checked our receipt and drew one line across it with a highlighter.
A seal. A magistrate's signature, approving safe passage.
I bowed to him slightly.
He said, "Have a good one," which I now understand can refer to a day, a life, or a hot dog, depending on need.
In my country, we honor merchants who keep the same price for generations. There is a shop in Kyoto four hundred years old. We treat it as a national treasure.
Costco is forty years old and sells tires.
Give it time.
Empires fell. Currencies died.
The hot dog holds.
A nation is its promises.
I paid one dollar and fifty cents.
The promise held.
Breathing in hefty lungfuls of smoke as I get explosive diarrhea from salad, the sky turns apocalyptic orange while oil companies drill in protected lands, screwworms are eating cattle alive and the president just paid $6 million for rape. And I’m also able to bet on all of it!
“I’m sorry ma’am, but 6’3 athletic millionaires are not compatible with your physical or behavioral traits. I have several looksmatched alternatives for you.”
Elon just personally bought a $1 billion gas turbine company, and no one announced it. No press release, no tweet. The deal only surfaced because a firm holding a 5% stake had to disclose its $50.4 million payout in an SEC filing. What he bought tells you where the real bottleneck in AI is.
APR Energy operates a fleet of mobile gas and diesel turbines totaling over 1 gigawatt. Their units arrive on trucks and can be delivered, installed, and commissioned in as little as a month. The fleet was built for blackout zones and disaster response in countries with unreliable grids.
Here's the constraint that makes it worth $1B to one man: Nvidia can deliver 100,000 GPUs in months. A new grid connection for a power plant spends a median of roughly 5 years in the interconnection queue. The chips depreciate while the paperwork sits.
Elon already lived this. xAI's first Memphis cluster ran 100,000 GPUs on about 150 megawatts, much of it from roughly 35 leased mobile turbines while grid power was pending. Environmental groups sued. The DOJ intervened to keep the turbines running. He was renting the most important input to his most important company.
So he bought the landlord. At $1B for 1+ gigawatts, he paid roughly $1 per watt of dispatchable power he can park anywhere. A gigawatt runs on the order of 600,000 H100-class GPUs.
Every AI lab can buy the same chips. Only one of them now owns a power plant fleet that ships by truck.
Y'all REALLY GOTTA CONTROL WHO YOU DICK UP
Straight up fucking up your lives because you didn't have 'post nut clarity thought'
I'd be MORTIFIED if I had to pay a ratchet ghetto SHANIQUA LaQueefa MANDATED GOVERNMENT TAKEN MONEY EVERY PAYCHECK
That's LITERAL Hell on Earth
Man says he was voluntarily paying his baby mama $300 a week, but after asking for two months to recover financially, she filed for child support and was awarded just $13 a month!! 👀
Man FUCK this
We the CONSUMERS paid those tariffs because companies passed that expense on to us
Now corporations get the refunds too??
I’m so fucking TIRED