ebraun

Endurance sports fan, Rocky 100 and IronMan Texas finisher. I grill and drink too. Digital lead, Farm Progress. Past: Chron, mySA, MLive and Austin360. He/Him.

[Barstool SEC @SECBarstool]

It’s not easy to come to Texas and one-up A&M in weird yet awesome coordinated dancing

[ebraun @ebraun]

@RepNancyMace This was debunked ages ago. You’re just being willfully ignorant and hateful. An embarrassment to Congress and that’s not easy to do.

[Kansas City Royals @Royals]

Flippin' unreal.

[ebraun @ebraun]

@TheMFinKC They are so mad!

[Tyler Jones @TylerMJones]

This would be the #1 story in the world for a week if it was Joe Biden.

[LegUpPicks @legupofficial]

I’d hate to be an Australian today 🇺🇸

[ebraun @ebraun]

@RepBrandonGill Making Bonhoeffer the bad guy in your example was certainly a choice.

[𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖_𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 @SundaeDivine]

Donald Trump is amazing. My truck used to hold $60 of gas and now it holds $120 of gas. I don't know how he does it but the man is a jenius.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

This is the coolest thing ever. We’re at NASA getting a tour from astronaut Anne McClain. This is us entering the Orion capsule that flew around the Moon in April.

[ebraun @ebraun]

@GregAbbott_TX Typical MAGA, loses and claims they won.

[Adam Ryan 🤝 @AdamRy_n]

Aldon Smith passed away this weekend. Most people are talking about his incredible ability, potential, and performance as a football player.

Even though that is all true. He was so much more than that. He was a great friend and his kindness changed my life forever.

I met Aldon our freshman year at Mizzou. He was redshirted and relatively unknown as an athlete. His giveaway was the biggest hands you'll ever see and his ability to dunk at 250lbs, but his size in many ways didn't match his personality. He was relatively quiet and in most scenarios would try to shrink into the room vs stand out in it.

Over the course of the next year, we became close. We were very different people, from different places, but we both connected on the feeling of being a bit lost in the beginnings of adulthood. That year, I never really thought about him as a football player. He was just this gentle giant who loved to play video games and talk about life.

His sophmore year he broke the single season sack record at Mizzou, became an All American, and his life changed forever.

He became a celebrity on campus. He became a household name in Missouri. He became a top NFL draft prospect.

I remember how crazy his life became, and how quickly. ESPN doing interviews. Fancy cars being "loaned" to him. And people everywhere inserting themselves into his life.

Despite the craziness, my friend was always a text away.

My junior of college, I decided to take my first stab at entrepreneurship. I wanted to launch a chapter of Camp Kesem.

Kesem is a summer camp for children whose parents have been affected by cancer. The camp would be totally free and be a chance for a kid to experience the magic of being a kid again. As a son of a breast cancer survivor the idea of being able to create this camp in Missouri meant the world to me.

The Livestrong Foundation was hosting a nation wide contest to win $10,000 as seed capital to get started. To win, you had to have the most votes.

I tried really freaking hard to win that competition. I was going up against some really influential people at huge schools. As a somewhat awkward kid in Columbia, MO I had no chance.

So I asked my friend Aldon for a favor. I asked him if he would help me out and promote the link to vote.

He did more than just posting about Kesem on Facebook, skyrocketing us into the top place in the country. He kept supporting me the next 3 years while I was working on building Kesem.

He showed up to have fun with the kids. He helped me fundraise. He helped me get Kesem to become an official organization sponsored by the NFLPA so he could publicly endorse us as as a player.

Since then Torry Holt, Larry Fitzegerald, and many others have supported Kesem. But Aldon was the first.

Kesem led me to move to Austin to work for the Livestrong Foundation. Kesem is how I met my wife. Kesem gave me the confidence to start Workweek and continue the path of building something from scratch.

But in reality, Aldon enabled all those things.

Throughout the years we had many amazing memories together. Having my wife and I vacation to his house in San Jose. Going to New Orleans for the Super Bowl and seeing his entire family make the trip. Meeting his son and watching him be a dad. The hilarious night we met Derek Jeter. Having the most intellectual conversations about life while playing Call of Duty.

I also saw him struggle. There's no doubt he was a complicated person. Truthfully, I don't know if he ever really figured out who he wanted to be. I know just because your'e 6'4, 250lbs, and get 5.5 sacks in a single NFL game doesn't necessarily mean you want to be a football player. No matter the reasons, he made many bad decisions in his life. Some of those mistakes made it hard for me to stay as close as we'd once been.

One day, not too long ago, I just decided to text him. It had been years since we really chatted. I just wanted to say thank you for all that he had done for me and that I was sorry I wasn't there for him more through his struggles. We FaceTimed after that, and it was like the old days all over again.

Aldon was more than the headlines, the mistakes. He was a generous, gentle soul, a kid at heart, someone who was endlessly curious about life... all in the body of a world class NFL player, bearing the weight of professional pressure and personal circumstances that most of us can't even imagine.

People are complex. People who make bad decisions can also do great things. A person can be hated by almost everyone and, yet, there are people in that person's life who still love them deeply.

I learned many of these lesson due to Aldon, and I'll carry them with me forever.

Rest in peace, Aldon. You won't be forgotten.

[͏b͏l͏a͏n͏c @dqveed]

They’re slowly taking away the second amendment see

[Mick Shaffer @mickshaffer]

Cameron gives up one hit and gets pulled after 87 pitches. Erceg gets to close after three straight blown saves. If that's analytics, I don't understand analytics.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

On July 30, 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson did something no American president had ever done before.

Instead of signing historic legislation at the White House, he boarded a plane and flew to Independence.

His destination was the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum.

And waiting there was Harry S. Truman the man who had first proposed national health insurance for elderly Americans nearly twenty years earlier.

Truman had introduced the idea back in 1945.

At the time, many people mocked it as impossible.

Critics called it “socialized medicine.”
The American Medical Association fought it aggressively.
Congress repeatedly blocked it.

Year after year, Truman kept pushing for healthcare protections for older Americans.

And year after year, he lost.

But Lyndon Johnson never forgot who planted the idea first.

So when Medicare finally passed Congress in 1965, Johnson decided the moment didn’t belong only to the president signing the bill.

It also belonged to the president who spent decades fighting for it before the country was ready.

Johnson flew senators, representatives, cabinet members, and guests to Missouri for the ceremony.

Then, standing beside the 81-year-old Truman, he signed Medicare into law.

The moment carried enormous symbolism.

One president had planted the seed.
Another had finally made it bloom.

After signing the bill, Johnson turned toward Truman and did something deeply personal:

He officially enrolled Harry Truman as Medicare’s very first beneficiary.

Johnson handed Truman Medicare card number one.

Then he handed Bess Truman card number two.

The room reportedly filled with emotion.

Truman looked at the card and told Johnson:

“You have done me a great honor in coming here today, and you have made me a very, very happy man.”

It was more than a political ceremony.

It was one generation honoring the unfinished work of another.

Within six months of Medicare becoming law, millions of older Americans had already received hospital coverage through the program.

Today, tens of millions of Americans rely on Medicare for healthcare.

And it all traces back to that warm afternoon in Missouri when two presidents sat side by side one who dreamed of the idea, and one who finally made it reality.

History often remembers the person who crosses the finish line.

But sometimes the most meaningful moments happen when the person who finishes the work pauses long enough to honor the person who started it.

[Eric Graves @EricGravesKMBC]

Incredible scene in Kansas City right now! Bikers from across the metro are joining with three men who have biked all the way from Argentina to KC. It’s been a 10 month, 10,500 mile journey that ends today at the Argentina team hotel. @kmbc

[ebraun @ebraun]

Happy Pride everybody.

[Wu Tang is for the Children @WUTangKids]

Happy Pride 🌈

[Manu Ginobili @manuginobili]

Let's say it again... "The Spurs are the Western Conference Champions!". My first one as a fan!

[ebraun @ebraun]

@BanjoTanJoe @3YearLetterman @martinamcbride @nmcbride13 @WuTangClan @TigerWoods @BACtrack @KidRock @Rockefeller @PizzaRanch @Quiznos @Whitesnake Look, BangedJoe, Coach isn’t some random clown, you should sit this one out.

[danny @dabbs346]

NRSC is also actively scrubbing their website on Ken Paxton releases. So embarrassing.

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring.

They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died.

France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend