USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
Bill Maher exposes Graham Platner,
“I wish the tattoo was the scariest thing about Platner. It’s not... There’s the sexting... Old posts about how he’s a communist and all cops are bastards and black people don’t tip.”
Elon Musk's companies employ roughly 170,000 people.
AOC drove Amazon out of New York, killing 40,000 jobs.
One creates. The other destroys.
They are not the same.
Absolutely shocked that the woman who thought the decision to play football in 2020 was worse than Jerry Sandusky is now expressing bewilderment that the South doesn’t stone visitors to death
🚨 Dr. Stacey Patton, a professor at Howard University, wrote an article in which she blamed Austin Metcalf – and his family – for Karmelo Anthony's decision to murder him.
Titled "Dear Jeff Metcalf: Your Son is Dead Because You Failed to Teach Him That Black Boys Have Boundaries," the article argues that Jeff Metcalf failed to teach Austin that "black children have boundaries." In other words, Jeff should have taught Austin that black people will try to kill you if you ask them to stop violating social norms.
While Patton falls short of outright defending Karmelo's decision, the entire purpose of the piece is to rationalize his behavior. Kind of like "Sure Karmelo shouldn't have stabbed him, but it was Austin's fault at the end of the day."
She writes, "We have to talk about Austin's decision to approach and confront." As if Austin didn't have the right to tell someone from another school to leave his school's tent. As if somehow that minor confrontation justifies stabbing him in the heart. It is complete insanity. Patton ties Austin's behavior to "a long cultural tradition of policing black bodies and space."
Right.
Patton's Substack has nearly 50k followers. He has 300k followers on Facebook. She is an accomplished professor and journalist. The article received thousands of likes. We've all seen the low-class black people causing a scene outside of the courthouse. But it appears that even many educated blacks believe that people of their race have the right to murder anyone who asks them to stop playing music in public, respect physical boundaries, and so on.
"Let us do what we want or we'll kill you" appears to be the message being broadcast by a sizable share of the black community. You don't have to be a far-right radical to recognize the many unsettling implications this holds for the future of American race relations.
When the U.S. enforces immigration law during the World Cup, we’re told it’s cruel, capricious, and arbitrary.
When Canada reportedly denies entry to Thomas Partey over legal concerns, it’s called a sovereign decision.
The reality: both countries have the right to decide who enters. Immigration enforcement isn’t a scandal—it’s a normal function of a sovereign state.
Surely Canada barring an actual player from Ghana will spark the same amount of outrage from sports media that the US denying entry to the Somalian referee did, right?
So the kid gets murdered. They convict the suspect of murder. Then the victim's family gets death threats?
Excuse my French. Fuck kind of stupid ass society are we living in?
.@ScottJenningsKY from the top rope after CNN reports that there are 494 port-a-potties needed for the UFC event at the White House:
“494 porta-potties. That's a lot of porta-potties. Somewhere Graham Platner is booking an airline ticket.”
OH MY GOSH. WHAT A LEGEND.
The other media strategy behind saying "resembled a Nazi symbol" is purposeful in sewing doubt that hey maybe it wasn't? Despite direct evidence that he knew what it was and he got it covered up.