andrew

Dog dad, fireman, HAZ-MAT tech, traveling safety guy. Into music, craft beer, and just about everything else.

[andrew @dualretractable]

“When the world seems like it’s spinning out of control, and the inside of your skull feels like it’s being knawed on by angry wolverines, when you wake up, still tasting tequila, feeling shame, fear, and regret in equal measures, it’s good to have a friend.”-Anthony Bourdain

[tedfrank @tedfrank]

Engineer: “The concrete beams in our residential conversion of the Pfizer Building are buckling. The building could collapse! Did you correctly account for the weight of the additional floors we added?”

ChatGPT: “You’re absolutely right! I see the issue now—in using the Euler Critical Buckling Formula, I forgot to square of the length of the column in the denominator. I’ve recomputed it using 9.86*EI/KL and have confirmed that the beams are more than adequate to support the additional weight with a robust safety factor of 120. Proceed with confidence! That’s not just math—it’s prudent safety.”

[𝕭𝖊𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖊✨ @Bennieeexyz]

Jury duty letter came addressed to my cat.

Not a mistake. "Felix Martinez" - that's his full name according to his vet records.

My last name. His first name. Somehow he's a registered voter now.

Called the county clerk.

Me: My cat got summoned for jury duty.

Clerk: Is the name correct on the summons?

Me: Yes, but he's a cat.

Clerk: Is Felix Martinez a legal resident of this county?

Me: He's a legal cat.

Clerk: Sir, if the name matches our records, he needs to appear or file an exemption.

Me: He can't file anything. He has paws.

Clerk: You can file on his behalf.

Me: Under what exemption? There's no box for "is a cat."

Clerk: (pause) Check "unable to serve due to medical reasons."

Me: What's the medical reason?

Clerk: He's a cat.

Me: That's not a medical condition.

Clerk: It is if it prevents him from serving.

Sent in the form. Got rejected two weeks later.

"Insufficient documentation. Please provide medical professional's statement."

Took the letter to my vet.

Me: I need you to write that my cat can't do jury duty.

Vet: Why is your cat summoned for jury duty?

Me: Excellent question. No good answer.

Vet: This is the weirdest request I've gotten.

Me: Can you just write that he's medically unfit to serve?

Vet: On what grounds?

Me: He's a cat.

Vet: (started typing) "Patient is unable to serve due to species-related limitations including inability to speak, read, or comprehend legal proceedings."

Me: Perfect.

Sent it in. Got another rejection.

"Summons is mandatory. Failure to appear will result in contempt of court."

My roommate thought this was hilarious.

Roommate: Felix is going to jail.

Me: This is serious.

Roommate: Bring him to court. See what happens.

Decided that was actually the only option left.

Day of jury duty, put Felix in his carrier. Brought the entire paper trail of rejection letters.

Checked in at the courthouse.

Clerk: Name?

Me: Felix Martinez.

Clerk: (looked at the cat carrier) Is that Felix?

Me: Yes.

Clerk: (long stare) He's a cat.

Me: I've been saying that for six weeks.

Clerk: Why didn't you file an exemption?

Me: I filed three. All rejected.

Showed her the letters. She read through them, expression shifting from confusion to disbelief.

Clerk: Someone rejected the veterinary documentation?

Me: Twice.

Clerk: (called her supervisor over) You need to see this.

Supervisor read everything. Looked at Felix. Looked at me.

Supervisor: How did a cat get registered to vote?

Me: You tell me.

Supervisor: This is a data error.

Me: Took you six weeks to figure that out.

They dismissed Felix immediately. Apologized for the inconvenience.

Supervisor: We'll remove him from the voter registry.

Me: Appreciate it.

Supervisor: (pause) Out of curiosity, how would he have voted?

Me: Probably whatever party supports universal treats.

Got a formal apology letter a week later and a voter registration card.

For me this time. Apparently I wasn't registered, but my cat was.

Roommate: Felix committed voter fraud.

Me: Felix committed nothing. He's innocent.

Roommate: That's what they all say.

Felix is sleeping on the jury summons now.

Fitting end to his legal career.

[D @dschorrnyc]

Not the best complaint history on the former Pfizer building...

[(not) NOT jackson @JacksonFromTwit]

“me local pub is tree huntred and sixchy foor years old”

[William "Balloon Guy" Kim @TheKimulation]

There are two types of countries: those that can deploy a Tactical Burger King anywhere in the world and those that use the metric system

[Cranky Federalist @CrankyFed]

Your pub's flag isn't on the moon

[Retney @retneysholocron]

“This generation will not be defined by its great games or incredible tech, but rather by corporate greed, mismanagement, and anti-consumer practices.”

Nailed it

[Sofoets @mosuyanagi]

black ops 3 had a functional mini fridge

[andrew @dualretractable]

Why even fucking try anymore you can’t come home and escape into a game without the company getting in the middle of it

[BuBBliK @k1rallik]

> be a PS5 owner
> you paid extra for the disc drive
> Sony ends physical discs for new games in 2028
> PS Store on PS3 and Vita dies by 2027
> 551 movies wiped from UK and EU libraries Sept 1
> zero compensation
> GTA 6 ships as a code in a box
> some Switch 2 games ship as empty cards, just a download key
> used games and rentals could be next
> analysts warn discounts might disappear too
> Sony would control the entire price curve
> 87 percent of pre 2010 games are already out of print

They didn't kill physical media. They stopped pretending you ever owned anything.

[Marc J. Randazza 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 🇧🇷 @marcorandazza]

We bombed them into the stone age and they love America more than Massachusetts does.

[🇺🇸 The American Culturist 🇺🇸 @MericaCulture]

You know who didn't complain about the summer heat in France? The U.S. Army back in June of 1944

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional definition of birthright citizenship — meaning all children born in the United States are U.S. citizens.

[1776 Live @250YearsAgoLive]

Thomas Paine publishes an open letter in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, under the name “Republicus,” which advocates for the name “United States of America” for the new nation now emerging.

This is the first time such a term has been used.

[Serf @RoyalSerf]

We'll get our revenge during Thanksgiving

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A Five Guys in a strip mall. I had heard the burgers here were honest. A samurai goes where the food is described in the smallest number of words.

At the door, a barrel.

A wooden barrel, knee-high, full of raw peanuts in the shell. A small wooden scoop. A sign:

FREE PEANUTS - HELP YOURSELF

I stopped.

I read it three times.

In my country, when a host places food at the threshold of his house and tells you to take it, he is testing whether you understand the difference between hospitality and theft. The wrong man takes too much. The wrong man takes nothing. The right man takes a small handful, bows, and proceeds.

I took a small handful. I bowed to the barrel.

I proceeded.

At the counter, a young man, name tag MARCUS.

"Hey man, welcome to Five Guys, what can I get you?"

"...I have taken your peanuts."

"Yeah, that's what they're there for."

"What is the obligation."

"...The what?"

"What do I owe."

"Nothing, man. They're free. Help yourself."

"...Help yourself."

"Yeah."

"Marcus. In my country, when a stranger is told to help himself, it is a kindness given to a man who is far from home. I have not yet introduced myself. You have already addressed me as a man who is far from home. You are correct. I am."

Marcus smiled the way you smile at someone you have decided you like.

"Hell yeah. What can I get you?"

"A cheeseburger."

"Want any toppings? They're free."

"...Free."

"Yeah. Lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, mushrooms, jalapeños, green peppers, mayo, mustard, ketchup, BBQ, A1, hot sauce, relish. All free. Bacon's the only thing extra."

I had not been read a list this long since I was made to recite the names of my ancestors.

"...You are giving a man as many options as he has weapons."

"Pretty much. What you want?"

"All of them."

"All the way?"

"All the way."

"You got it. Fries?"

"Yes."

"Regular or Cajun?"

I stopped.

The word landed somewhere inside me that had been arranged, recently, by a different meal.

"Marcus. Cajun is a people. From Louisiana."

"...Yeah?"

"I have eaten with them. They served me crawfish on newspaper. They called me brother. I did not know I had brothers in that country."

"Damn, sir. That's beautiful."

"Then bring me their salt. I will not refuse the seasoning of a people who fed me on a table without plates."

"Cajun fries it is."

"Size?"

"The smallest. I am one man."

"You got it. Little Cajun."

I paid.

I sat at a small table by the window with my brown paper bag. The bag was heavier than I expected. The boy at the counter had told me, as I picked it up, "bag's heavier than you think, sir." I had taken this as a piece of philosophy. It was, I now understood, a literal report.

I opened the bag.

The Cajun fries were in a cup. The cup was inside the bag. Around the cup, the bag was full of more fries. Loose. Spilling. As if the cup had given up trying to contain itself, and the bag had taken the overflow without complaint.

I lifted the bag and looked at Marcus across the room.

"...Marcus."

"Yes sir?"

"You give the man who asked for little, more."

"Yeah, that's how we do it."

"That is the most American sentence I have heard this week."

He laughed. I looked at the bag again.

I lifted one fry. The seasoning came off red on my fingertips. I ate it.

I had to set the cup down.

This was not the salt of the Cajun people. This was the war salt of the Cajun people. The men who had fed me on newspaper had been holding back. Marcus was not.

My eyes filled with water. Not from feeling. From paprika.

I lifted the burger. Two patties. Lettuce, tomato, onion, mushrooms, jalapeños, green peppers, pickles, mayo, mustard, ketchup, BBQ, A1, hot sauce, relish, and cheese. The thing was a small mountain wrapped in foil. I held it with both hands, the way a man holds the head of his enemy after a long battle, with respect and a small amount of fear.

I ate.

The bun was sweet. The patty was salty. The peanut oil it had been cooked in was, by some quiet miracle, present in everything. I was eating, I realized, a burger that had been raised on the same oil the fries had been raised on, and that oil had been raised on the peanuts in the barrel at the door, which were free, which were the same peanuts that were now still in my coat pocket because I had not eaten them yet.

I stopped chewing.

"...The barrel. The fries. The burger. They are all one animal."

The man at the next table, a man in a work shirt with the name CARLOS embroidered on it, who had been eating fries with one hand and looking at his phone with the other, looked up.

"Cajun fries, huh? Those'll get ya."

"Carlos. I have been gotten."

"Right? Best in the game."

"I yield. I have been ambushed by salt three times in one meal, and twice by people I did not see coming."

Carlos laughed, the small full laugh of a man who is finally understood.

"Welcome to Five Guys, man."

I finished. I finished everything. The cup. The loose fries. The burger. Even the small flecks of seasoning that had fallen onto the paper of the wrapper. A samurai does not leave the field with the enemy's salt still on the ground.

I crumpled the foil. I rose. I bowed to Carlos. Carlos raised his half-finished Coke and tipped it slightly toward me.

I bowed once more, to the barrel at the door, which I now understood was the beginning of the meal and not merely the lobby of it. I took out the peanuts I had stored in my pocket, cracked one shell, and ate it as I walked out.

The salt of the peanut. The fourth salt.

This entire restaurant was a single quiet declaration: that a man should not be allowed to leave hungry, that nothing he eats should cost the dignity of being measured, and that the smallest order in the house is still more than one man can finish alone.

This is a country that puts a barrel at the door and trusts you with it.

This is a country that gives a man as many weapons as he has options, and charges him for none of them.

This is a country that overfills the bag of a man who asked for little, on principle.

Tomorrow I will return. I will order the same. I will eat the same. I will lose the same battle. A man does not flee from a salt that has already named him.

The Cajun fed me crawfish on newspaper. The man at Five Guys fed me their war salt on a fry. I have eaten with the same people, in two states, on two coasts, and they did not know they were the same.

I knew.

I have been gotten.

[Uptown Charlotte @GoUptownCLT]

People are shagging in Romare Bearden to some #carolinabeachmusic #musiceverywhereclt

[maddy 🦅 @maddadelphia]

i hope dog train pops up on my tl forever. this stupid video makes me so happy

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I went to In-N-Out and ordered a cheeseburger. The cashier, a calm young woman named Destiny, asked me a question I did not expect.

"You want that Animal Style?"

I paused.

I did not know what this meant. But a samurai does not admit he does not know. So I answered with weight.

"...Animal Style."

"Cool. So that's mustard-grilled, extra spread, grilled onions, pickles. Yeah?"

I understood now. This was a sacred permission. For one meal, I was being told to put down my manners at the door. To eat the way a beast eats, without shame. I had waited my whole life for someone to give me this order.

"Yes," I said. "I will become the animal."

Destiny did not blink. "...Okay. You want your fries Animal Style too?"

I stopped. Even the potatoes?

"The potatoes also become animals?"

"I mean, they get cheese and sauce and grilled onions, so..."

"Then yes. Let the potatoes abandon their restraint as well."

"...Got it." She was the calmest woman I have ever met. "3x3, 4x4, or just the one?"

I did not know these numbers, but I knew a challenge when I heard one. "How many must I face?"

"It's, like, how many patties you want."

"How many is the most honorable?"

"...Four is a lot."

"Then four. A warrior does not ask for fewer."

She wrote it down without argument. A 4x4, Animal Style, with animal fries. She warned me once, kindly. "That's gonna be huge." I told her I was counting on it.

It arrived. It was a tower. Cheese and sauce ran down my hands the moment I lifted it. There was no clean way to eat it. There was no dignified way. That was the entire point.

I ate it like a beast. Both hands, no honor, grilled onion on my chin, and I have to be honest with you, it was the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.

For thirty years I have kept my manners at every table in the world.

They handed me a burger and told me to be an animal, and I have never felt so free.

So tell me, America.

The whole country knows the secret menu. What else are you hiding in plain sight?

And "Animal Style." Was I eating the animal, or finally becoming one?

[OTUS Project @project_otus]

Intercept today in Jeffersonville, IL 🤯