Chris Owen

Husband, father, step-dad, and @ManCity supporter. Graduate of @urichmond and @tulane. I also sell real estate in Arizona.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Eat a mouthful of grass and you get nothing. It goes in green and comes out green.

Eat straw and you get nothing. Your gut cannot touch cellulose.

Eat acorns and you get tannins, and a very bad afternoon.

Eat bracken and you get a carcinogen.

Eat nettles, thistles, brambles, rushes and moorland heather and you get a mouth full of blood and no calories.

Eat the beet pulp, the oat husks and the spent brewer's grain and you get the waste the factory couldn't sell.

Now feed the lot of it to a cow.

She turns every one of them into steak, butter, cream, milk and a hide, on land that will never grow a vegetable, using four stomachs and a fermentation vat you do not have.

The grass she eats grew on rain and sunlight, for free, on a hillside nobody can plough.

She is the only creature on earth that can take a field of inedible fibre and hand you back the most nutrient-dense food there is.

The cow is not competing with you for food. She eats the ninety percent you cannot.

Best plant-based diet ever invented. It just has a cow in the middle doing the hard part.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

La semaine dernière, je parlais avec un politique du projet de Musk. Sa réponse a tenu en trois mots : « Tu y crois vraiment ? »

Et dans ces trois mots, il y avait tout. Toute l'impuissance d'une classe dirigeante qui a cessé de pouvoir imaginer l'avenir.

Parce que le problème n'est pas qu'il soit en désaccord. Le problème, c'est qu'il est incapable de se projeter. Il vit une dissonance cognitive profonde : il ne peut littéralement pas se représenter un monde où le spatial devient une commodité, où la robotique se généralise, où l'énergie et l'abondance ne sont plus des hypothèses mais un décor. Ce monde-là n'est pas une croyance. C'est une trajectoire d'ingénierie déjà engagée. Elle arrivera pendant son mandat, pas dans un siècle. Mais il n'a pas les organes mentaux pour la voir, alors il hausse les épaules. « Tu y crois vraiment ? » Comme si le futur était une affaire de foi.

Et c'est là que je réalise l'ampleur du problème. Car ce monde qui vient sera d'une complexité inédite. Piloter l'abondance énergétique, orchestrer une robotique de masse, gérer une expansion spatiale cela ne se manage pas avec les outils mentaux de la rareté. Or c'est précisément à ça qu'on a formé nos technocrates : administrer la pénurie, gérer le déclin, répartir ce qui manque. Ils sont dressés pour le monde d'hier. Demain exigera autre chose. Il faudra mettre des ingénieurs de très haut vol au cœur des systèmes des gens qui pensent en ordres de grandeur, qui comprennent les boucles de rétroaction et les courbes exponentielles. Pas des gestionnaires du statu quo. Des bâtisseurs.

Et pour ça, il va falloir faire une chose que nous avons désapprise : réintroduire de la verticalité et du vrai mérite. Aujourd'hui, les postes stratégiques s'attribuent sur deux critères le bon diplôme, le bon réseau. On confie des systèmes critiques à des gens qui n'ont jamais rien construit, jamais rien risqué, jamais rien livré. Le mérite réel, celui qui se prouve par ce qu'on bâtit, a été remplacé par le mérite signalé, celui qui se déclare par ce qu'on affiche. Cette logique nous a menés jusqu'ici. Elle ne nous fera pas survivre à la transition qui vient.

Car le vrai clivage du siècle n'est pas gauche contre droite. C'est ceux qui peuvent encore se projeter contre ceux qui ne le peuvent plus. Ceux qui construisent le futur contre ceux qui, faute de l'imaginer, se contentent de demander aux autres s'ils y croient vraiment.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

This fish was caught at Lake Anna in Virginia. Any idea what kind of fish it is?

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

@guypbenson @varadmehta Are we going to start apologizing to whites for teaching about slavery?

[Jon Gabriel @exjon]

If we’re dropping Turkey for “Türkiye,” start calling Arizona “Alĭ Sonak,” the indigenous Tohono O’odham name that can be roughly translated to “it’s a dry heat.”

[Michael Davies @embassydavies]

Davo’s still way too early World Cup Power Rankings II:
1. USA (as the Great Prophet Lalas decreed, the greatest half of SOCCAH played by any SOCCAH team ever*)
2. Paraguay (scored against the USA)
3. Germany (scored 7 past an island with more feral goats than male adults)
4. Sweden (it takes a special group of footballers to find that kind of form under Graham Potter)
5. Australia (also good at cricket)
6. Mexico (number one in partying with South Koreans)
7. South Korea (number one in Souths)
8. Scotland (number one in “Lands”, tartan, beer consumption and bagpipes)
9. Ivory Coast (number one in Coasts)
10. Netherlands (number two in lands)
11. Japan (number one in cleaning up after themselves)
12. Brazil
13. Morocco
14. Canada
15. Bosnia
16. Herzegovina
17. Switzerland (number three in lands)
18. Qatar
19. Czechia
20. Ecuador
21. Haiti
22. Turkey (number one in large birds)
23. South Africa (number two in Souths)
24. Tunisia
25. Curaçao (it took me forever to find that little hook under the second c on my keyboard)
26-49. Everyone else and anyone I missed (who on Earth can keep up?)
50. Italy
51-208 The rest of the known world
* in group play, at a World Cup, off the top of his head, in that particular moment

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

This is one of the funniest things I have seen on this app in a very long time.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

Started running earlier this year and have come to love it. It sucks, but the feeling of being done is amazing!

[The New York Times @nytimes]

From @TheAthleticFC: If referee calls had been correct, the Premier League title race would have entered the final match round with Manchester City two points clear of Arsenal, according to our analysis of key match decisions. https://t.co/FSWGZMMBRL

[Nick shirley @nickshirleyy]

Hey @Tim_Walz and @IlhanMN one of the biggest fraud bust in Minnesota history took place this week and you guys said nothing

Shouldn’t you guys celebrate when fraud is exposed in your state and district?

Or are you upset because it was exposed? Silence speaks volumes.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

@250_Revolution Can’t find something you aren’t looking for.

[Don’t CA my AZ @DontCAmyAZ_]

California is what happens when politicians ignore every warning sign.

Families leave.
Costs rise.
Trust collapses.
Government grows.

And somehow, the people in charge demand even more power.

Arizona does not need to learn this lesson the hard way.

#DontCAmyAZ

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

@StevenMcinerney Pelligrini was tough (This Charming Man). How do you let go a manager that just won the League? But this one is very different. I didn’t cry like this when my grandparents passed away. Not sure how I’m going to make it through the summer.

[ZUBY: @ZubyMusic]

A culture is in severe decline when condemning a sin is viewed as a greater sin than the sin itself.

[Don’t CA my AZ @DontCAmyAZ_]

Arizona may not be as unaffordable as California or New York YET…

But we are trending that way faster than almost any other state.

That should be a warning sign.

DONT NY MY AZ
DONT MI MY AZ
DONT CA MY AZ

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

@CityzenAmerica A little help from either Burnley or Palace please.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

@chrismartenson @garrytan You are using one of those data centers every time you post something on X, check your email, ask ChapGPT a question, or make an online purchase etc. We all benefit from the additional computing power these data centers provide.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

I love to see @ManCity playing such fluid football. The boys look like they are really enjoying themselves tonight!

And that back heal by @PhilFoden was next level.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

@marcthiessen @willchamberlain @SenMarkKelly @margbrennan He’s an embarrassment to all of us in AZ.

[Chris Owen @AZ_CEO]

I am embarrassed that Mark Kelly is my Senator. Does the man not understand what “classified” means?

[Margaret Brennan @margbrennan]

After hearing the Pentagon classified brief on Iran war impact on US weapons stockpiles, Senator Mark Kelly says it is "shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines." He said the Tomahawks, ATACMS, SM-3, THAAD rounds, Patriot rounds, so those interceptor rounds to defend ourselves have been hit hard. He says it'll take years to replenish those stockpiles, which could affect a hypothetical US conflict with China. @FaceTheNation