Aaron Ruhlig

Love God. Love Others.

[Officer Lew @officer_Lew]

WATCH🚨: Nothing beats a wholesome moment like this at the Boston Marathon 🥹 Restores your faith in people.

[Aaron Ruhlig @aruhlig]

Bump

[The Next Round @NextRoundLive]

Michigan is the ONLY school to have a team reach the national championship game in football & basketball in the CFB Playoff era (2014-present)

[Dan Wolken @DanWolken]

Michigan’s best players are a guy Mick Cronin buried, a guy who was a bust at North Carolina, a guy who came off the bench at Illinois and a guy who played at freaking UAB.

Get outta here.

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

🤣🤣🤣

[Home of the Brave @OfTheBraveUSA]

JD Vance in September 2025: "If you celebrate Charlie Kirk's death, you should not be protected from being fired for being a disgusting person."

[Damin Toell @damintoell]

10/22/24

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Norway is once again dominating the winter Olympics.

And this is their youth sports program:

Participation trophies for all kids.
No keeping score until 13.
No national travel competitions in youth sports.
No posting youth results online.
Motto: “Joy of Sport for All.”

They let kids be kids. And it works.

But…it’s the winter Olympics,right? Recently, they have had tremendous success in summer sports.

Karsten Warholm demolished the 400 meter hurdles world record. Kristian Blummenfelt broke the Ironman triathlon record and won Olympic gold. His training partner, Gustav Ivan, won the 2022 Ironman World Championship. Casper Ruud reached world number two in tennis. Viktor Hovland is a top ten golfer in the world. Erling Haaland set the record for the most goals in a season in the Premier League. Beach volleyball champs, a surge of elite runners. By any metric, Norway’s elite athletes are achieving on a global stage. Yet, if we turn to their youth sports, their programs are the opposite of the US.

Norway doesn’t allow for official scorekeeping until the age of thirteen. They dissuade early national travel teams in favor of local leagues. You can’t even post the results of youth games online without being fined. And almost sacrilegious in certain American circles, Norway doesn’t allow trophies unless everyone gets one.

As Tore Ovrebo, Norway’s director of elite sport, told USA Today writer Dan Wolken, “We think the biggest motivation for the kids to do sports is that they do it with their friends and they have fun while they’re doing it and we want to keep that feeling throughout their whole career.” Their youth sporting model can be summed up with their chosen slogan, “Joy of Sport for All.”

But not keeping score, giving out trophies, not being “win at all costs”...that’s anti-American! How can they be competitive?

Research backs their approach up.

1. The fire has to come from within

If you look at ​research​ on prodigies who eventually become standout adult performers, a deep intrinsic drive is paramount. Researchers found that intrinsically motivated football players were 3.5x more likely to make it to the next level, and athletes in general 2x more likely.

The problem is that early success often pulls young people away from this inner drive. Kids start playing soccer (or violin or chess—this isn’t just about sports) because it is exciting and fun. As they improve, they gain accolades and praise from their parents, coaches, and teachers. They start winning trophies or seeing their names in online commentary. Without even realizing it, their intrinsic drive gets replaced by external validation and a need to please and impress others.

The quickest way to kill that internal motivation? Hype achievements and be a crazy controlling parent or coach.

The best way to create and maintain intrinsic motivation is to let kids dabble, explore, and find something with which their interests and talents align. Then, let them enjoy it without an undue emphasis on success. Praise effort, character, and teamwork, not results. This is easy to talk about but hard to do. Find ways to reward and incentivize the values you want to instill. That means not taking the easy road and talking about who set a new mile best or scored the most points, but instead highlighting who hustled during the fourth quarter, rallied after it seemed like the match was over, or displayed exemplary sportsmanship.

2. Go Broad over Specialization

Even if the entire point of youth sports was to create future champions (which it’s not), we’d still adopt something similar to the Norwegian model. An ​analysis​ of over 6,000 athletes explored what separates athletes who reached world class and those who came up short.

Those who reached world-class had during their youth:
-More multi-sport than specialized practice
-Started their primary sport later
-Accumulated less overall formal practice
-Initially progressed slower than national class peers

Those who performed well when young, but didn’t progress:
-Started their primary sport earlier
-Specialized, engaging in more practice in one sport
-Made quicker initial progress

Norway doesn’t have 300 plus million people and an NCAA system to funnel talent. They have to develop theirs. And they realize the best way to do that is keep as many people in the system as possible.

Why? Because you can’t predict talent development very well! Just go look at the age group record books. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking early performance equals talent and potential. The kid running a 6-minute mile at 10 looks way better than the one running 6:45. But if the faster one is at track practice 5 days a week and the slower one rolls out of gym class in jeans and runs it off “fitness” from just playing, well I’m betting on the slower one!

When we assess performance early on, we’re not measuring talent, we’re looking at training age and opportunity. And we’re crowning winners based on who started grinding first.

America gets away with the insane achievement model because we can burn out 9 kids to get 1 survivor. Norway can’t afford to do that. They take the longer, more sustainable model.

Rethinking Youth Sports:

The whole point of youth sports should be for kids to learn, develop, have fun, and want to come back and play again next season! The best chance of developing a D1 scholarship athlete is essentially to do the exact opposite of what our current youth sports fiasco promotes. Even the poster child for early specialization, Tiger Woods, ​acknowledged​ it’s not a good thing for parents to push their kids too hard: “Don’t force your kids into sports,” he says. “I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Keep it fun.”

While youth sports in America aren’t going to adopt the Norwegian model anytime soon, we can rebalance the equation. As I outlined in my book, it’s not getting rid of competitiveness, it’s rebalancing the equation to make sure that crazy mom, dad, or coach don’t extinguish the fire that makes great competitors (and sport fun!).

In research on performance orientation and grades in school, a teaching environment that supported and emphasized mastery[PA1] , where students focused on the process of learning and comprehension instead of a comparison to others, was also linked to better grades. But it wasn’t the direct relationship that an outcome orientation had. Instead, in one study on college students, a mastery approach was linked to challenge-seeking, which in turn predicted end-of-the-year grades. In another study, mastery goals predicted higher levels of interest and enjoyment. Mastery works on our approach system without activating avoidance. It frees us up to take on a challenge and pursue our interests without getting bogged down by the pressure or judgment that often comes with an obsession with outcomes. The same findings hold true when looking at sport or the workplace. In a large meta-analysis that analyzed the impact of goal setting in sports, process-orientated goals had a large effect on performance. Outcome goals had little to no effect.

These two paths represent a fast versus slow road to success. Both a mastery or outcome focus can lead to better performance, but the latter is akin to taking a shortcut. Obsession over outcomes is the most direct path to improvement, but it comes with some downsides that shift us toward avoidance. The slow path takes a longer, indirect route. It helps improve our performance not by focusing on the results themselves but by supporting the foundation that ultimately leads to better performance. It stokes the fire of enjoyment and interest to sustain our curiosity and work ethic over the long haul. It pushes us toward challenge-seeking so that when we inevitably hit a roadblock, we’ll take it on instead of trying to protect our ego. Both approaches work. One is more sustainable, providing success with less angst. Society has thrown us so far out of balance that we can’t even see the slow route right in front of us.

We can either instill a love of sport in our youth, or we can turn sport into a burden where kids are exhausted, stressed, and scared. We’ve seen this go both ways, and the results couldn’t be more different. One leads to happy, healthy, and better young athletes. The other leads to burnout, family tension, mental health challenges, and quitting. As parents, volunteers, coaches, and community members, let’s all do what we can to minimize the latter and champion the former.

-Steve

[Jono Barnes @JonoBarnes]

No seriously what did Bad Bunny do for people to be mad at?
He had fine women
He had a male and female gender wedding
He had the USA flag lead the way
He said God Bless America for goodness sake

If people still pretending to be mad at it, I’m sorry but..you might be racist 😅

[Travis Akers 🇺🇸 @travisakers]

This is the message MAGA was trying to convince you to be scared of. A message of unity and love.

[Mattie Timmer @MattieTimmer]

How about instead of using an uncredited piece of propaganda to conveniently scapegoat a teacher in the endless, boring and desperate GOP culture war - maybe @TomLeonard28 could fill in the bubbles for us.
But that would take courage, so probably not.

[Aes🇺🇸 @AesPolitics1]

Trump can’t touch this.

[AmericanPapaBear™ @AmericaPapaBear]

Top 100 movie one liners.

Which one is the best?

[The Green Dragon Tavern @greendragonhq]

Why be a red state when you could be a blue state?

Vote blue 2026, save your state.

States with highest Murder Rates
🔴 Louisiana : 16.8
🔴 Mississippi : 15.4
🔴 Alabama : 12.2
🔴 Missouri : 11.8
🔴 South Carolina : 10.5

States with the lowest Murder Rates
🔴 Utah : 2.2
🔵 Rhode Island : 2.0
🔵 Maine : 1.7
🔵 Vermont : 1.5
🔵 New Hampshire : 1.1

Bottom 5 public school systems (based on test scores)
🔴 Alaska
🔴 Louisiana
🔴 Arizona
🔴 Oklahoma
🔵 New Mexico

Top 5 public school systems (based on test scores)
🔵 New Jersey
🔵 Massachusetts
🔵 Connecticut
🔵 Vermont
🔵 Minnesota

States with the lowest life expectancy in years
🔴 Mississippi : 70.9
🔴 West Virginia 71.0
🔴 Alabama 72.0
🔴 Louisiana 72.2
🔴 Kentucky 73.5

States with the longest life expectancy in years
🔵 Hawaii : 79.9
🔵 Massachusetts : 79.6
🔵 Connecticut : 79.2
🔵 New Jersey : 79.0
🔵 New York : 79

States with the highest infant mortality rates
🔴 Mississippi : 9.11
🔴 Arkansas : 8.59
🔵 Delaware : 8.07
🔴 Lousiana 7.65
🔴 West Virginia : 7.47

States with the lowest infant mortality rates
🔴 North Dakota: 3.29
🔵 Massachusetts : 3.31
🔵 New Jersey : 3.61
🔵 New Hampshire : 3.66
🔵 California : 3.95

States most reliant on the federal government (per dollar)
🔴 Alaska : $2.36 per $1 in taxes paid
🔴 Kentucky: $3.35 per $1 in taxes paid
🔴 West Virginia : $2.72 per $1 in taxes paid
🔴 Mississippi : $2.34 per $1 in taxes paid
🔴 South Carolina : $3.42 per $1 in taxes paid

States least reliant on the federal government (per dollar)
🔵 New Jersey : $0.35 per $1 in taxes paid
🔵 California : $0.50 per $1 in taxes paid
🔵 Minnesota : $0.58 per $1 in taxes paid
🔵 Massachusetts : $0.41 per $1 in taxes paid
🔵 Illinois : $0.60 per $1 in taxes paid

States with the most domestic violence arrests
🔴 Nevada
🔴 Oklahoma
🔴 Missouri
🔴 Kentucky
🔴 Florida

States with the lowest domestic violence arrests per capita
🔴 North Dakota
🔵 New York
🔵 Rhode Island
🔵 Vermont
🔵 Massachusetts

Lowest GDP per capita
🔴 Mississippi : $53,061
🔴 Arkansas $60,276
🔴 West Virginia $60,783
🔴 South Carolina $61,616
🔴 Alabama $65,889

Highest GDP per capita
🔵 New York : $117,332
🔵 Massachusetts : $110,551
🔵 Washington : $108,468
🔵 California : $104,481
🔵 Connecticut : $99,035

States with the highest incarceration rates
🔴 Louisiana : 775
🔴 Mississippi : 717
🔴 Arkansas : 614
🔴 Oklahoma : 598
🔴 Texas : 563

States with the lowest incarceration rates
🔵 Massachusetts : 116
🔵 Maine : 130
🔵 Rhode Island : 152
🔵 Vermont : 153
🔵 New Hampshire : 165

highest obesity rates
🔴 West Virginia : 41.2%
🔴 Mississippi : 40.1%
🔴 Arkansas : 40.0%
🔴 Lousiana : 39.9%
🔴 Alabama : 39.3%

lowest obesity rates
🔵 District of Columbia : 23.5%
🔵 Colorado : 24.9%
🔵 Hawaii : 26.1%
🔵 Massachusetts : 27.4%
🔵 California : 27.4%

States with the worst public transportation:
🔴 Mississippi
🔴 Nebraska
🔴 Wyoming
🔴 North Dakota
🔴 Alaska

States with the best public transportation
🔵 New York
🔵 Massachusetts
🔵 Washington
🔵 New Jersey
🔵 Illinois

States with the lowest college graduation rates
🔵 New Mexico
🔴 Nevada
🔴 Idaho
🔴 Oklahoma
🔴 Alaska

States with the highest college graduation rates
🔵 Massachusetts
🔵 New Jersey
🔵 Connecticut
🔵 New Hampshire
🔴 Virginia

highest sex crime rate
🔴 Alaska : 118.4 per 100k
🔴 South Dakota : 72.6 per 100k
🔴 Nevada : 70.2 per 100k
🔴 Arkansas : 52.0 per 100k
🔵 Michigan 72.4 per 100k

lowest sex crime rate
🔵 New Jersey : 15.1 per 100k
🔵 Connecticut: 18.2 per 100k
🔵 New Hampshire : 19 per 100k
🔵 Maine : 21.3 per 100k
🔵 New York : 22.7

most teen pregnancy
🔴 Mississippi : 26.4
🔴 Arkansas : 24.5
🔴 Louisiana : 23.8
🔴 Oklahoma : 22.9
🔴 Alabama : 22.0

lowest amount of teen pregnancy
🔵 Massachusetts : 6.1
🔵 New Hampshire : 6.6
🔵 Connecticut : 7.6
🔵 Vermont : 7.8
🔵 New Jersey : 8.3

[Brad @BraddrofliT]

History has seen this playbook before and it never aged well. It wasn’t about pride or culture then, and it isn’t now. It’s about division dressed up as entitlement.

Let that sink in

[Christian Nightmares @ChristnNitemare]

Newly resurfaced clip of Kid Rock at Woodstock 99 saying, "Monica Lewinsky is a f*cking ho and Bill Clinton is a godd*mn pimp!" before launching into his song "Balls In Your Mouth." Kid Rock is performing at TPUSA's Christian-focused All-American Halftime Show this Sunday.

[Owen Wheelson™ @Quadcarl]

I’m not a very smart man but it looks to me like a computer thought this said Don and redacted it.

In case you don’t realize it yet this is a big cover-up.

[Jake Broe @RealJakeBroe]

Here is an explanation why American democracy has fallen.