Matthew.

[Football Tweet ⚽ @Footballtweet]

🫡 The BBC's World Cup 2026 montage is utterly sensational. https://t.co/lzOUWxwTuM

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[USA Hockey @usahockey]

THE GOAL HEARD AROUND THE WORLD 🥇🥇 #WINTEROLYMPICS

[Alec Lewis @alec_lewis]

This is 5+ minutes that every NFL owner should watch. Ton Brady providing gold.

[Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) @adamscochran]

We do stand at the edge of a pronounced crisis of identity, but, only in the fact that it will happen simultaneously for so many.

This has happened again and again in small ways to you, and to everyone ever.

In my philosophy undergrad, I was lucky enough to have a prof named Litke who is one of the rare few philosophers that actively had classes taught about his works while he was still alive (and oddly enough, one of the best garlic collectors/cultivators in the world)

But his passion was the philosophy of self.

And one thing he spoke about frequently was this concept of “the long body of self”

He gave the example, that when he was in highschool, he was a top swimmer, and expected to go a top college on a swimming scholarship and do a degree biology.

However, in his last year of high school, he was in a car accident that severely damaged his shoulder, and broke both his legs leaving him in a wheelchair for months, and never able to swim again at his top form.

He had always defined himself as “a swimmer” with that internalized language. His friends were his swimming friends. His girlfriend was a swimmer.

He could no longer swim. He no longer spent time with his swimming friends, and eventually they and his girlfriend drifted.

His identity came crashing down.

Until he built it up into something new.

It was around then he discovered his love of botany and of philosophy.

But to each of us, these identity arks happen many times in our lives.

How you defined yourself as a child or a teen likely doesn’t match how you’d define yourself now.

We build up a new version of self, only for it to come crashing down, and we eventually build back up a new identity. In this on-going loop-de-loop pattern.

The thing is, none of these were really our “self”

They are externalities we defined ourselves as, and the self is what you see if you were to turn that set of loops 90 degrees and look through the collective snapshot of life.

Each one taught us something, and led to the next one, but none are defining.

After all, did you call yourself a mathematician because there was no one better than you at math, or did you think you weren’t good at arithmetic because a calculator could add faster than you?

No of course not.

You being good at math, and you understanding math, has in fact not changed.

The productivity output of math in the world has changed - but you have not.

(Plus let’s remember, even if people can output the math they can’t apply it if they don’t understand it)

You as a person are more than any one part or talent, and this is also a talent you still retain and do uniquely well; and those who are both top brass at their talents and apply it with unique perspectives are more likely to be more productive with AI rather than replaced by it.

Because the one thing that any system will struggle with is the same thing we humans do: originality.

And you are good at originality, and at a thirst for pursuing it.

So in your life, in a thousand little ways, and in a handful of large ways, you will redefine yourself, but it is only the collection of those experiences that are “you” and that is always a unique and valuable thing.

And know that after each crash, no matter how bleak it can seem - we always do redefine ourselves and often it becomes so natural that we struggle to remember the ways we identified ourselves in the past.

There will always be human experiences to have.

There will always be new ways we define ourselves.

There will always be new places we fit in the world, no matter how out of place we feel.

And you will always be good at math.

🫡

[Ruben Hassid @rubenhassid]

BREAKING: Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.

They just memorize patterns really well.

Here's what Apple discovered:

(hint: we're not as close to AGI as the hype suggests)

[Kyle Porter @KylePorterNS]

Some final Masters thoughts.

1. Five is so many. Adam Scott, JT and Scottie combined. It's so, so many. Only 14 players since WW2 have won five or more. Tying Brooks and Seve with the best golf of your life, and now, improbably, Palmer is back in play.

[critter @BecomingCritter]

You hear Costco is great. One friend describes it as a 'shopping Disney World'. You start thinking about it. You have some extra cash. You decide to try it out, you'll save that much money in gas anyway! What's the worst that can happen?--

[Matthew. @jasonmplank]

@FBGreatMoments Manning - $3
Peterson - $2
Smith Jr - $1
Moss - $5
Gronk - $4

[Matthew. @jasonmplank]

@Kent_Wilson Kent you may not remember me but I ran Fear The Fin when you were at Flames Nation. I’ve always admired your prose and way with words. I’m sorry to hear 2024 was such a tough year, but admire your courage to tell your story. All the best to you in 2025.

[Matthew. @jasonmplank]

@LombardiHimself

[Matthew. @jasonmplank]

@WKNDRD @dieworkwear I’m a big fan of American Giant’s shirts and hoodies

[Matthew. @jasonmplank]

@TheMikeMorton Honest question— does this pattern show itself in other elections as well (regardless of side)? Put another way, was there more votes for President than Senator in 2020, 2016, 2012 etc.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Hot dog style guide

[Kurt Benkert @KurtBenkert]

Kirk Cousins needs to fix these 3 things to get the Falcons where they need to be

🧵 (A thread)

[Matthew. @jasonmplank]

@MikeHohler77 @KNBR @JohnJKerley Congrats Mike, so well deserved!

[Andrew Rousso @AndrewRousso]

the guy who invented fondue:

[Men in Blazers @MenInBlazers]

The Killers put the England game on a big screen at their concert in London. The transition from final whistle to Mr. Brightside is every bit as incredible as that sentence sounds. 🤩

Destiny is calling me & this Three Lions team. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
https://t.co/Sof0wNENIA