Stephen Taft

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

Coming soon to every airline safety brochure.

[Nate Friedman @NateFriedman97]

The NYT and BBC are in an altercation competing for worst journalism.

[Owen Lewis @is_OwenLewis]

We can make our homes on Mars beautiful.

With these images I've deliberately decided not to include overhangs for cosmic ray protection. Instead, let me draw your attention to the windows, which are far thicker and reinforced, giving it a more realistic look.

Advanced window design for environments like this is an area that could use some work. Ideally, we want big windows, the more gracile and less bulky the better. So good bysiness idea for some enterprising young engineers, materials scientists, or someone really handy with AI who wants to do R&D along these lines.

[Daily Political Cartoons @cartoonAday]

FDR and his cousin by Miguel Covarrubias, 1933

[Rod D. Martin @RodDMartin]

Your cheat sheet for Trump's Greenland triumph.

[Gaius Marius @seventimeconsul]

Sounds familiar

[History With Jacob @HistoryWJacob]

On January 15, 1909, president-elect William Howard Taft ate an 18-pound possum at a banquet in Atlanta.

He'd asked for it himself. "Possum and taters," they called it, the whole roasted animal laid out on a bed of Georgia sweet potatoes, with persimmon beer to wash it down. Taft went at it so hard a doctor at the table told him to slow down.

He didn't. The next day he told reporters, "Well, I certainly like possum. I ate very heartily of it last night, and it did not disturb in the slightest my digestion or my sleep."

Then it got stranger. Teddy Roosevelt was leaving office, and toymakers feared the Teddy Bear would go with him. So Atlanta boosters handed Taft a stuffed possum that night and crowned it the next great American toy: "Billy Possum," successor to the bear.

It failed within a year. As it turns out, no child wants to hug a possum.

[Historyland @HistorylandHQ]

There was a time when a road trip across the United States meant unfolding a paper map and hoping you were heading in the right direction. Route 66, the 1950s.

[World's Amazing Things @Hana_b30]

Mongolian Girl Has a Laugh with her Camel.
The little girl’s name is Butedmaa and she was just 5 when this picture was taken in 2003 by photographer Han Chengli, who titled it “Inner Mongolian Child”.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

i ordered a simple bagel at a bakery in chicago.

the total was four dollars.

the worker did not ask for money.

he took the tablet on the counter and rotated it one hundred and eighty degrees directly toward my face.

the machine glared at me with three numbers:

18%
22%
25%

i went still.

in my homeland, a blade is presented point-first to demand submission.

here, they spin a glowing glass rectangle and make you evaluate your own honor in front of a line of ten strangers.

the worker turned his head away, pretending to wipe a clean counter, giving me the illusion of free will.

a man behind me in line cleared his throat.

the pressure of the realm rested on my single index finger.

if i press 18%, i am declaring myself a beggar.

if i press 25%, my balance will crumble.

i took a deep breath.

i hit "custom."

i typed in 100%.

i tapped my card.

the machine beeped with victory.

the worker turned around, looked at the screen, and his eyes widened.

he bowed his head, placed two hands over his heart, and whispered:

"may your harvest be bountiful, my lord."

i walked out into the cold with my four-dollar bagel.

my bank account was ruined, but for three seconds at a cash register, i was a shogun.

[Libertario 🟨⬛ @QuotesforGoal]

"El socialismo es una religión política cuyo Dios es el Estado y cuyos sacerdotes son los burócratas... Es una filosofía del fracaso, el credo a la ignorancia y la prédica a la envidia; su virtud inherente es la distribución igualitaria de la miseria"

Winston Churchill

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

🚢 Every ship that sunk during World War II.

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

I am still a fan of this way of living…

[Fugitive Caesar @ThomBrady5]

SOON

[Ramin Nasibov @RaminNasibov]

1998: "Save Matt Damon"
2014: "Find Matt Damon"
2015: "Rescue Matt Damon"
2026: "Let Matt Damon save himself"

[Daily Roman Updates @UpdatingOnRome]

I am old.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The US Navy operates a 50,000 acre forest in Indiana whose entire job is keeping one wooden ship from 1797 afloat.

The ship is USS Constitution, still a commissioned warship with an active-duty crew. Cannonballs bounced off her in 1812 because the hull sandwiches a wall of live oak ribs between two layers of white oak planking, nearly 2 feet of solid wood so dense it barely floats. British 18-pounders hit it and dropped into the sea. A sailor yelled "her sides are made of iron" and the nickname stuck.

Here's the problem with owning a 229-year-old wooden ship: you can't buy the parts. Hull planks run up to 40 feet long and 7 inches thick, cut from single white oak trunks. A white oak takes over a century to grow that big. No lumberyard on earth stocks it.

So the Navy grows its own. Constitution Grove at Naval Support Activity Crane holds trees over 100 years old, reserved exclusively for this ship. Foresters there are managing oaks today that will become hull planking in the 2100s. The maintenance plan literally runs on tree time.

Every 20 years or so she enters dry dock and shipwrights swap out rotted timber. After two centuries of this, estimates put original 1797 wood at maybe 10 to 15 percent of the ship. The Navy keeps replacing her plank by plank because Congress mandated her preservation and because she's the only active US warship that has sunk an enemy vessel.

Every other asset in the Navy has a decommission date. This one has a tree farm.