Michael E. Woodward

...who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly...

[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.

[𝗟𝗶𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗮𝘀𝗪𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿 @LiberTasWar79]

The image depicts Katherine Cathey, the pregnant widow of U.S. Marine 2nd Lt. James “Jim” Cathey, lying on an air mattress on the floor in front of her husband’s flag-draped casket the night before his burial. A Marine honor guard stands vigil in the background.

Jim Cathey was tragically killed in action in Iraq in August 2005. Overcome with grief, Katherine refused to leave her husband’s casket. She requested to spend one final night with him. Two Marines went to great lengths to provide her with a makeshift bed, using a mattress and pillows on the floor. One Marine stood guard over her and the casket throughout the night.

This powerful and Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph was captured by Todd Heisler in 2005 as part of his series “Jim Comes Home” for the Rocky Mountain News.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just measured your existence by how many times your atoms have been inside a dying star.

Musk: “How many times have your atoms been at the center of a star? I think it’s like on average three or four times.”

Every atom in your body has already survived the core of a star.

Multiple times.

Crushed under pressures that would flatten planets.

Superheated to millions of degrees.

Blown apart in explosions so violent they forged new elements.

Then gravity pulled those scattered pieces back together.

New stars formed.

And the cycle repeated.

For 13.8 billion years, your atoms have been fuel for the most violent process in the universe.

And they are not done.

Musk: “In terms of existence as measured by the number of times your atoms will be at the center of a star, we seem to be roughly halfway.”

Halfway.

Your atoms have been through the furnace three or four times.

They will go through three or four more.

But right now, in this impossibly thin sliver between cycles, those atoms are doing something they have never done before.

They are conscious.

For billions of years before you, they burned through stellar cores with no awareness.

No memory.

No sense of what they were or where they had been.

After you, they will return to that state.

Unconscious matter drifting through space until the next star claims them.

This is the only moment in their entire journey where they can look back at the stars that made them and understand.

Musk: “If you want to look at the big picture… that’s the really big picture.”

The big picture is not that we are small.

Everyone already knows that.

The big picture is that we are temporary witnesses to a process that does not need witnesses.

Stars do not need observers to burn.

Atoms do not need anyone to understand where they have been.

The universe ran for billions of years with no one in it.

It will run for billions more after the last conscious thing disappears.

But right now, matter is examining itself.

That has never happened before in 13.8 billion years.

You are not a person who happens to contain ancient atoms.

You are ancient atoms that briefly figured out how to think.

The universe did not design consciousness.

It designed stars.

Consciousness was the accident.

And the accident is half over.

[NN @NnPnemck]

Whenever I am sad, I watch this video and it immediately makes me feel a little better.

Trump’s face here will never not be hysterical…😂😅

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

When Disney was Disney.

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

🚨 She nails it!

“You're telling me this stupid-ass, goofy-ass bill, the Stop Nick Shirley Act, which could truly only be done and thought of and sponsored and brought to the floor by an actual Karen swamp hag, you're telling me it's now advancing?

It's advanced in the legislature now. Interesting. So now I'm digging more into this and I'm seeing that this bill is heavily sponsored by CHIRLA. That NGO sounded very familiar to me.

Ding, ding, ding went off in my head, and I'm like, oh wait, that's the same organization that literally took my taxes and used them for paid protesting against ICE during this last summer when all the cop cars were burned on fire, everyone's looting shit, and this same NGO is supporting the bill that would stop Nick Shirley and other independent journalists for investigating those same NGOs.

Oh boys, do I win the game? Do I win the fraud game? I figured it out. Can I have my taxes back?
Holy shit. It's like they're screaming, we stole your taxes, look at me!”

[Norm Macdonald @normmacdonald]

What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

🚨NYC Mayor socialist Zohran Mamdani has proposed lowering the exemption on the death tax (estate tax) from $7.1 million down to only $750,000.

He would also increase the death tax from 16% to 50%.

No other jurisdiction in the USA confiscates wealth at death from people with that small of an estate. Anyone with any equity in a home in NYC would likely exceed the $750,000 and have to pay the death tax.

There is a federal estate tax (death) for estate wealth that exceeds $15 million (individuals). However, you can deduct other state and city estate taxes before paying the federal estate tax. So effectively, Mamdani is preventing the federal govt from taxing estates, NYC and NY State are taking it all first.

Follow: @WallStreetMav

[Brandon @LibOrNormal]

If Star Wars had the MSM like the United States does....

[Bill Melugin @BillMelugin_]

Some photos from my border coverage during the Biden administration, when we were witnessing unaccompanied children being abandoned by smugglers at the border every single day.

18,954 of these children recovered by CBP in July 2021 alone.

Over 500,000+ by end of Biden term.
If you weren’t watching @FoxNews, you probably didn’t even know it was happening.

It appears that after a 4 year hiatus - some politicians suddenly have a reignited interest in the subject.

[Paul Rees. ex Rucksack. @HannahIamthest1]

#Utterly_useless_facts 😊
1. When you say "a, e, i, o, u" your mouth gets smaller with each vowel you say.
2. You don't really wash your hands; They actually wash each other while you stand there and watch. (Imagine)
3. If a man says you're ugly, he's being mean. If a woman says you're ugly, she's envious. If a little kid says you're ugly, you're ugly.
4. Things are not on fire. Fire is on things.
5. When you say 'forward' or 'backwards', your lips move in those directions.
(yes, just like that)
6. The word 'Australia' has three A's, all of which look the same but are pronounced differently.
7. If You Rip a Hole in a Net, There Are Actually Fewer Holes in It than there were before.
8. This sentence "All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life." is actually correct.
9. Sometimes you have to sing the whole alphabet in your head just to find the next letter.
10. The latest scientific research has shown that you can travel on an aeroplane without announcing it on Social media.
11. What's more dangerous than running with scissors?
Falling on them (imagine).
12.Lazy fact #1725402648207549
You are too lazy to read that number

13. “Dammit I'm Mad " backwards is still "Dammit I'm Mad".
14. Nothing is behind Your Back. it is always in front of your back.
15. Most of the time, the people who tell you to calm down are the same people who made you angry in the first place.
16. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia
It's not fun to say, but ironically, this is the medical term for the fear of long words.
🤣🤣

[Michael E. Woodward @Xenomorph31]

@BarbarianDisco https://t.co/y8iQFIROAm

[Sarah Fields @SarahisCensored]

RIP Scott Adams. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

“You can change only what people know, not what they do”

“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?”

“There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.”

[Michael E. Woodward @Xenomorph31]

You will be missed

[Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays]

A Final Message From Scott Adams

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Konstantin Kisin on the terrifying shift in the West:

"Freedom of speech — once the cornerstone of Western civilization — is now treated as a right-wing value."

The radical left must shut down dissent because their ideas "crumble like a house of cards" when challenged with facts or logic.

Challenge intersectionality, structures of oppression, or any part of the narrative → you're automatically evil, racist, white supremacist.

"White supremacist" used to mean people who proudly admitted it.
Now it's a label for anyone who disagrees.

From someone who fled a society without free speech: this reversal is insane.

2:29 clip — the new reality exposed

When did defending free speech become "conservative"?

Your thoughts.

[Daniel Concannon @TooWhiteToTweet]

Wednesday, January 7, 2026.
Houston, Texas.

Brayden Smith, 17, boards a Houston METRO bus where he immediately spots gang rival Patrick Scott, 18.

Smith is out on "juvenile" probation for attempting to commit aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Scott is out on reduced bond for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Neither man may legally posses a firearm.

Both men, of course, are carrying firearms, and immediately begin a gunfight inside the public bus.

Brayden Smith fires first, and Patrick Scott returns fire. Neither man is hit, however, Smith manages to shoot an unnamed 16-year-old bystander in the leg, wounding him, and shoots White 25-year-old Caitlin Stup in the head, killing her.

Smith has been charged with the murder of Caitlin Stup, but faces no charges for shooting the unnamed 16-year-old. Scott faces only a misdemeanor charge of unlawful carrying of a weapon.

Caitlin, originally from Iowa, was quietly riding the bus to her job at a nearby restaurant when her life was suddenly taken from her. She leaves behind her family, her boyfriend, and her passion for photography, cooking, and cats.

Even when White people aren't the target, proximity to Diversity™ still costs them their lives.

[LaughBreak: Dad Jokes ‘N More @MediocreJoker85]

The IRS suspected that a fishing boat owner wasn’t paying proper wages to his deckhand, so they sent an agent to investigate.

The agent boarded the boat and said, “I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.”

The boat owner replied, “Well, there’s Clarence, my deckhand. He’s been with me for three years. I pay him $1,000 a week, plus free room and board.

“Then there’s the mentally challenged guy. He works about eighteen hours a day and does roughly ninety percent of the work around here. He makes about $30 a week, pays his own room and board, and every Saturday night I buy him a bottle of Bacardi and a dozen Budweisers so he can cope with life. He even gets to sleep with my wife occasionally.”

The IRS agent frowned and said, “That’s the guy I want to talk to—the mentally challenged one.”

The boat owner nodded and said, “That would be me. What would you like to know?”

[Warren Smith @WTSmith17]

CNN Reporter CONFRONTS Nick Shirley & it Backfires Spectacularly:

[Michael E. Woodward @Xenomorph31]

@akafaceUS

[Michael E. Woodward @Xenomorph31]

@DyerbolicalDB San Andreas