Fish & Fix

Renovation, aquarium, scale models, architectural design, schnauzers & art. On X to see what Japanese people are doing! Greatest respect for Japan! 🇯🇵🇺🇸

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@tuuu28283 Met a lot of Mikes. I know only one Tom.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@tanpukunokami About buying with our own money- it's a curious question. How else would one acquire property? 🙃 Two generations ago, many guns were brought back as captured war trophies. And it's still true that many guns are inherited, and are treasured family heirlooms.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.

I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.

Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.

In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.

This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.

The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.

So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.

The owner asked if everything was okay.

"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."

He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"

I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.

I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.

So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.

And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.

Reborn.

A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@GoingParabolic I bought in, first time, yesterday. Just a little FOMO insurance. I'm bullish in the long term. But if it goes to zero it will be worth it for the Schadenfreude, after being heckled by friends for not buying it when it was at 100k lol.

[AntisepticMoose @AntisepticMoose]

Today we remember Marvin Heemeyer 🫡 killdozer day

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@tuuu28283 Maine. IYKYK

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@Rothmus I'm so old I remember NAFTA being sold to the public as getting rid of oppressive factory work that is beneath us Americans. As if unemployment, cubicles and fentanyl is better.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@dixieprim @MrEncouragement @KangusB3 Bro, you network by cutting off all the people around you who are broke losers, and you seek out people who are ambitious and effective. Because it's true -- you become the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most. So hang out with winners and ditch the losers.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@TiffinyR24 @Cobratate @philkellr Lol, he does. But your idea of care is not his idea of care.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a stranger will love you on sight, and you are simply expected to allow it.

I entered a coffee house. The young man behind the counter beheld me as though I were his brother home from war. "Hey man! How's it going! Love the whole look."

He loved my look. We had known each other four seconds. In my country such warmth is earned across years, or across a battlefield. This boy had granted it before I spoke a single word.

I resolved at once to be worthy of so sudden a friendship.

He asked my name, to write upon the cup. I understood the weight of this. He wished to record our meeting for all time. I drew myself up and gave it the breath it deserved.

"Nobunaga."

He paused. He nodded slowly, as a man does when he has heard greatness. Then he wrote, with great care, "NUGGET."

I looked at the cup. I looked at him. He was beaming, proud of the gift.

A samurai does not correct a gift. To refuse the name a friend bestows is to spit upon his kindness. He had heard my name, weighed it in his heart, and returned to me something he believed finer. Who was I to say he was wrong?

So I became Nugget.

When the drink was ready he called it out with feeling. "NUGGET!" I rose. I answered to it as a man answers to his own honor. I bowed to the room. Several people clapped. I did not know why, but I accepted their respect for the name I now carried.

I have returned every day for a week. I am Nugget at this establishment. The whole staff knows me as Nugget. They greet me warmly. "Nugget's back!"

I have built a life here, under a name I did not choose, given by a boy who could not hear me, and I find I do not wish to give it up.

So tell me honestly.

Eight hundred years my family carried one name. I lost it in four seconds at a coffee counter, and I have never felt more welcome.

Was it a fair trade?

Because Nugget, I think, is happy.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@MrEncouragement @KangusB3 The existence of some successful millennial homeowners doesn’t disprove that the housing market has become structurally brutal for their generation. Record high price to income ratios, stagnant wages relative to housing costs, massive student debt, etc.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@BoydCro00242283 @Mappy6984 Hot girls don't get rude awakenings until the looks they relied on are gone.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@iky_fwjett @Bennieeexyz Daily cooking and cleaning is a one hour job for a single fella. Any more than that is inefficiency or a hobby.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@MrEncouragement @KangusB3 Lol. GenX is officially over the hill, giving out Boomer advice like it's fresh new wisdom. "Listen here, Sonny, you can start a shoe shine stand! All ya need is a fruit crate and a can of Shinola!"

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@memeticsisyphus I had a German friend with a degree in "Amerikanistik" (an actual academic field at German universities that examines the United States.) She's NEVER been to the USA, but she would tell me how it is here. Of course all her opinions were garbage leftoid talking points. 🙄

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@bzogrammer Divorce courts are full of "intuitive women."

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@venom1s Women love drama. They don't love stability and reliability.

[Fish & Fix @FishAndFix]

@SaysSimulation For every spinster like her, is a rejected aging bachelor. Nobody talks about that.