Ian C

[Ian C @iconway11]

@FreddyLA7 Football game in Neyland stadium. Knoxville, TN

[OutKick @Outkick]

If this was the last ride for Lionel Messi, it was a fun one

[FOX Sports @FOXSports]

Thank you Messi, no matter what's next 🩵

[OutKick @Outkick]

Greatness

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Georgia I entered a Chick-fil-A drive-thru line of forty cars.

I turned off my engine. I prepared to wait the way my ancestors waited out a siege.

Six minutes later I was holding chicken.

I do not know what happened to the other thirty-nine cars. The line moved like water that had somewhere to be.

A young woman walked between the cars taking orders on a small tablet, on foot, in the sun, smiling like the sun was her idea.

I said thank you.

She said, "My pleasure."

I did not think about it then. I should have.

At the window I thanked the young man for the food.

"My pleasure."

I thanked him for the sauce.

"My pleasure."

I thanked him for thanking me—

"My pleasure."

I want to be clear about what was happening.

This was a duel.

In Japan I trained in courtesy for forty years. Bowing angles. Seasonal greetings. The correct depth of apology for seventeen distinct situations.

I was a white belt in that drive-thru.

I escalated. I used my most formal English. I thanked him on behalf of my entire family line.

He said, "My pleasure," and gave me extra sauce.

Extra sauce. Unprovoked. A counterattack.

I returned the next day to reclaim my honor.

It was Sunday. The restaurant was closed.

All of them were closed. In the entire country. They close every Sunday, and they have closed every Sunday since the beginning, because the founder made a promise, and the promise did not expire when he did.

I stood in the empty parking lot and understood I had lost twice.

Once to a teenager with sauce.

Once to a man I will never meet, who kept his word so long it became a building.

In my country we say a samurai's word is his life.

I had never seen a restaurant say it back.

I returned Monday. I ordered. And this time I said it first, before she could.

"My pleasure."

She smiled and said, "It sure is."

America, I surrender.

It was my pleasure.

[Bussin' With The Boys @BussinWTB]

FOR A CHANCE TO WIN THIS CARD:

-RT and Like this post
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Good luck 🫡

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The US Navy operates a 50,000 acre forest in Indiana whose entire job is keeping one wooden ship from 1797 afloat.

The ship is USS Constitution, still a commissioned warship with an active-duty crew. Cannonballs bounced off her in 1812 because the hull sandwiches a wall of live oak ribs between two layers of white oak planking, nearly 2 feet of solid wood so dense it barely floats. British 18-pounders hit it and dropped into the sea. A sailor yelled "her sides are made of iron" and the nickname stuck.

Here's the problem with owning a 229-year-old wooden ship: you can't buy the parts. Hull planks run up to 40 feet long and 7 inches thick, cut from single white oak trunks. A white oak takes over a century to grow that big. No lumberyard on earth stocks it.

So the Navy grows its own. Constitution Grove at Naval Support Activity Crane holds trees over 100 years old, reserved exclusively for this ship. Foresters there are managing oaks today that will become hull planking in the 2100s. The maintenance plan literally runs on tree time.

Every 20 years or so she enters dry dock and shipwrights swap out rotted timber. After two centuries of this, estimates put original 1797 wood at maybe 10 to 15 percent of the ship. The Navy keeps replacing her plank by plank because Congress mandated her preservation and because she's the only active US warship that has sunk an enemy vessel.

Every other asset in the Navy has a decommission date. This one has a tree farm.

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

Body cam footage of Dustin Poirier’s arrest has been released

Cop wanted no part of a Dustin Poirier fight

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

Nastiest free kick your eyes will ever see

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

This Japanese creator meeting Cardinals lineman Dalvin Tomlinson & LJ Collier is the best thing you’ll see today

[Matt Bowen @MattBowen41]

Rams.

Stafford’s throw to Adams in OT.

Out route — from the opposite hash.

[Ian C @iconway11]

@AllVols247 👀👀👀 who

[The Internet Fish @TheInternetFish]

"this one's easy" famous last words😭

[Ian C @iconway11]

@GoVols247 @grok what does this say

[Ian C @iconway11]

@Volquest_On3 @grok what does this say

[zach ragan @zachTNT]

LSU comes to Neyland in 2026 for the first time since Brady Hoke decided to start the second half in a monsoon (and a classic Coach O interview)

[Vol Knight Long @BatteredVawl516]

#firetimbanks