Johnathan Bowman

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[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I attended a county fair and watched a child sell a pig.

The pig is worth, I am told, somewhere near four hundred dollars. I looked this up afterward because I did not believe what happened.

The girl is twelve. She walked the animal into a ring wearing a white shirt and a numbered card. She had raised it herself, from a piglet, for nine months, which I confirmed, and she had a binder of records because the program requires one.

The bidding began. Local men. A man from a bank. A man who sells tires. A woman who owns a restaurant I had eaten at the previous evening.

It did not stop at four hundred.

It stopped at three thousand two hundred.

I turned to the man beside me and asked whether the pig was of exceptional quality.

He said, "It's a fine pig."

I asked whether it was worth three thousand two hundred dollars.

He said, "No."

I asked why the price was three thousand two hundred dollars.

He said, "She's a good kid."

I stood up. I could not remain seated. I said, out loud, in a metal building that smelled of animals, that a market which knowingly and deliberately misprices a good in order to put a child through a university, and does so every year, in the open, with an auctioneer and a microphone, is not a market at all but a rite, and that I have never seen a province conduct one so cheerfully.

He said, "You want a lemonade?"

I said that I did.

Here is the part I had entirely misread. The men bidding against each other were not rivals. They were raising it together. The tire man bid, then the bank man bid, and the tire man nodded at him, and they were pushing the number upward on purpose, in public, in front of the girl. She knew. Everyone knew. The auctioneer knew. The rite requires that nobody says it.

Afterward the girl shook every buyer's hand. She writes them letters later. That is also part of it. She writes letters.

I asked the restaurant owner why she bids every year.

She said, "Somebody bought mine."

She is fifty-eight.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@hasanthehun You are just the left's version of @RealCandaceO. I don't think you believe what you say, you are just doing it for the money.

[Dustin @r0ck3t23]

Elon Musk just said the one thing about America they made sure you’d never learn.

The one thing that should’ve made you proud, not ashamed.

Musk: “After World War 2, the US could have basically taken over the world and any country. Like we got nukes, nobody else got nukes. We don’t even have to lose soldiers. Which country do you want?”

One nation held a weapon no civilization had ever possessed.

Total monopoly on destruction. No rival. No consequence. No limit.

Every empire in history that held that kind of power did the only thing empires know how to do.

They took until there was nothing left to take.

America had a greater advantage than all of them combined.

And rebuilt the nations it just defeated.

Musk: “The United States actually helped rebuild countries. So it helped rebuild Europe, it helped rebuild Japan. This is very unusual behavior, almost unprecedented.”

Not almost unprecedented.

It had never happened. Not once in 5,000 years of recorded civilization.

The nation with the power to take everything chose to rebuild instead.

Enemies became allies. Rubble became economies. Surrender became partnership.

Germany went from ashes to the economic engine of Europe in a single generation.

Japan went from unconditional surrender to the third largest economy on earth.

Three years after the war, America was flying food into Berlin.

Into the capital of the country that just tried to end the free world.

That decision reshaped every economy, every alliance, and every trade route on the planet.

Billions of people lifted out of poverty over the next half century trace back to one moment. One nation choosing restraint over domination.

No other country in history can make that claim. Not one.

Musk: “There’s always like, well America’s done bad things. Well of course America’s done bad things, but one needs to look at the whole track record.”

Every nation on earth has blood in its history.

But the measure of a nation was never its worst chapter.

It’s what it does when nobody can stop it.

When nobody could stop America, it fed its enemies and rebuilt their cities.

You’re being told every day that this country is something to be ashamed of.

By people who have no idea what the world looks like without it.

Every free market. Every open border for trade. Every democracy that took root outside Europe stands in the shadow of that single decision.

The values that built this country didn’t just shape America.

They shaped the modern world.

AI is about to hand a small number of people a power advantage that makes nuclear monopoly look primitive.

1945 was the first test.

AI is the last.

That power is going to exist. The only question left is who holds it.

The most powerful thing America ever did wasn’t building the bomb.

It was having the power to take everything and choosing not to.

The people trying hardest to tear that story down have never built a single thing worth defending.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

Seven sentences. Five audiences. Every word is a weapon aimed at a different target. This is the most compressed piece of strategic signaling in the history of social media diplomacy.

On April 15, Trump posted: “China is very happy that I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz. I am doing it for them, also - And the World. This situation will never happen again. They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran. President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks. We are working together smartly, and very well! Doesn’t that beat fighting??? BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!!”

Decode every sentence.

“I am permanently opening the Strait of Hormuz.” The blockade is not a blockade. It is a service. Trump reframes the entire operation from aggression to provision. The navy enforcing interdiction is now the navy “opening” the strait. And “permanently” signals to oil markets, Asian importers, and Iran that the US intends to remain the guarantor of Hormuz transit indefinitely. Not as leverage. As architecture.

“I am doing it for them, also - And the World.” China imports over 50 percent of its energy through Hormuz. Trump positions the blockade as a gift to Beijing. The country whose Iranian oil he just cut off is now the beneficiary. Bessent said hours earlier: “They can get oil. Not Iranian oil.” Trump completes the sentence: and I am the one making sure they can.

“This situation will never happen again.” A doctrine in five words. The Hormuz crisis, Iran’s closure, the tolls, the mines, the 46 days of disruption will not recur because the United States is establishing permanent enforcement. No treaty. No negotiation. A unilateral declaration of perpetual chokepoint control posted on Truth Social.

“They have agreed not to send weapons to Iran.” Unverified. China’s MFA called the arms reports “entirely fabricated” hours earlier. But the sentence forces Beijing into a trap. If China confirms, it concedes publicly. If China denies, it implies the weapons were under consideration. Silence reads as confirmation. Every response validates the claim. The rhetorical structure is designed to be unfalsifiable in real time.

“President Xi will give me a big, fat, hug when I get there in a few weeks.” The May 14 to 15 summit confirmed in the most disarming language possible. “Big, fat, hug” humanizes the relationship for domestic audiences while signaling to Beijing that Trump views the summit as a victory lap. The framing shapes expectations before a single agenda item is discussed.

“Doesn’t that beat fighting???” The carrot. Three audiences: To China, cooperation beats confrontation. To Americans, this president ended a war with a deal. To Iran, fighting is the alternative and you are losing.

“BUT REMEMBER, we are very good at fighting, if we have to - far better than anyone else!!!” The stick. The hug is conditional. The cooperation is optional. The carrier strike group is not. The same paragraph offers peace and threatens war, and both are credible because the blockade proves both simultaneously.

One post. Seven sentences. Five audiences: China, Iran, domestic voters, oil markets, and the May summit negotiating table. Every word measured. Every ambiguity deliberate. Every claim unfalsifiable in the window that matters.

Trump did not write a tweet. He wrote a treaty draft disguised as a social media post.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@billieeilish if someone found your address and squatted in your house you just gave them license to use the "no one is illegal on stolen land defense."

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@Variety It's the camel in the tent. Let the comedians go in there and push boundaries. Then the boundaries will get pushed a little more and before you know it, Saudi Arabia *will* have true freedom of speech.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@elonmusk Please start a new fully automated port just to spite this guy.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

Hey, all you celebrities that have ever said that if you were in Germany in the 1940s, you would have spoken up to stop Hitler: if any of you were ever at any of @Diddy's parties then I don't believe you would have spoken up because you didn't. #presentism @AandGShow

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

I used to think I wanted to be POTUS but now I think being president of China to stop stuff like this would have a greater effect on the world.

Man who wore 'seditious' T-shirt is first to be convicted under new Hong Kong national security law https://t.co/gYWrFnIg3H @nbcnews

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@nerdlegame Make it a girl and name her Nerdie.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@intel I think our phones connected to docking stations are going to replace PCs. We'll have dual boot phones with both Android or iOS paired with Windows. Your chips should be in every phone for the Windows side when you plug into the docking station.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@MagicEden Land

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@KenBurns Wow, his biography of the Wright Brothers is one of my favorite books ever. We've lost a great one.

[Ken Burns @KenBurns]

It is impossible to conceive that David McCullough is no longer with us. He is among our greatest historians, writing with an almost magical command of language and story. 1/2

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@WonderBreadUSA every day you kill billions, BILLIONS, of innocent microbes to make your bread so fluffy and soft. #PETA

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@TravisFarrar @LavishlyPosted I'm talking about supply and demand. If builders would build two 900sf houses instead of one 1800sf house then we'd have 2x supply so prices would come down. Why are they only building giant houses anymore?

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@mikeroweworks @Discovery would it be a trademark violation to call a scholarship "[surname] scholarship for dirty jobs?"

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

@TS_DRLB It was strategy to let people pay what they think it is worth even if it was pure emotional speculation. The same reason there is an 800 number for gambling and every stock bubble and Tickle Me Elmo and Beanie Babies. People are emotional (greedy), not logical.

[Johnathan Bowman @emaciator]

I always start with 23+45=68, what do you start with? #nerdle #nerdle100

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