Jay Currie Campbell

Kansas City Region | Economic Development | Design | Sports | Jayhawks

[Congressman Pat Harrigan @RepPatHarrigan]

Last night, an unmanned drone boat found two of our pilots floating in the waters off Oman and brought them home, marking the first time the U.S. has ever used an autonomous vessel for a real world rescue.

That happened because we made the decision years ago to invest in this technology, and kept investing even when the results weren’t visible yet.

China has already made that same bet at scale, with urgency, and without a doubt about whether it's worth it. Whoever wins the AI race controls how wars are fought, how fast decisions get made, and whether you can project power anywhere on earth without putting a crew in harm's way.

Last night was a glimpse of what winning looks like.

Most people saw a rescue, but I saw a weapons system, and a reminder of exactly how far behind we can't afford to fall.

[Governor Mike Kehoe @GovMikeKehoe]

We're officially one week out from the first match of the #FIFAWorldCup in Kansas City. ⚽

With six matches and celebrations throughout the tournament at the FIFA Fan Festival™, America's Heartland is definitely the place to be.

https://t.co/80W228yAyB

[Mayor Quinton Lucas @MayorLucasKC]

🇳🇱 Welkom to Kansas City, Oranje!

The third of our four FIFA World Cup 2026™ base camp teams just landed, and the heartland is ready for them. Bring the noise, because we have been waiting for this!

[Dion @2024dion]

In just the past year, both Lees Summit and now Overland Park have opened new permanent public market buildings. Downtown KC is working on revamping its best public square and building a new signature park on a massive freeway lid. Quality of life in the KC metro 📈📈

[Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano]

Ridership on the Kansas City streetcar also hit a new record high, up 200% compared to this time last year, in the wake of the main street extension to UMKC!

The system now has more ridership than the Portland streetcars, and is set to be extended to the riverfront this year!

[Andrew Lind @WIBWAndrew]

#KUBaseball's Dan Fitzgerald needed a few seconds to collect himself when asked how special it was to have his family in attendance/on the field postgame.

"That was unbelievably special."

@WIBWsports

(h/t @noahdarling_ )

[Kansas Baseball @KUBaseball]

LAWRENCE REGIONAL CHAMPIONS 🏆

[SportsCenter @SportsCenter]

JAYHAWKS MAKE HISTORY!

@KUBaseball takes down Arkansas and heads to Supers for the first time ever 👏

[KansasArchaeologist @KSArchaeologist]

Good evening everyone! This is post 39 in my series on Kansas history, and in honor of Memorial Day I have a post on the 10th Regiment of the United States Calvary that was given the nickname “Buffalo Soldiers”. Enjoy!

[Ken Ashley @kenashley]

Where is your city on the list?

[Kansas Baseball @KUBaseball]

BIG 12 BASEBALL BELONGS TO KANSAS 🏆

[Jeff Passan @JeffPassan]

The landscape in college baseball is changing. With the 34-player limit, Division I schools are turning more to junior college players for immediate impact. And no school embodies that more than Kansas. Free at ESPN: How juco turned KU into a powerhouse. https://t.co/lT0Kdy7OmR

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

What Elon just did in Beijing has a 2,000-year-old Chinese name. The Western feed isn't going to use it.

世家 (shijia). Sima Qian used the term in the Records of the Grand Historian for hereditary noble houses, the families understood to operate across generations rather than individual careers. Walking into a state-level meeting with your heir is the visible signal of shijia status. Arriving alone is a single-generation transaction.

Chinese business culture rewards this thinking more aggressively than almost any other major economy. Lee Kum Kee is in its fifth generation. CK Hutchison is in its third. The Cheng family at New World is in its third. The pattern repeats across every long-horizon culture. Murdoch had Lachlan running a News Corp business by 24. Bernard Arnault placed each of his five children in LVMH operating roles before 30. Mukesh Ambani named Anant to the Reliance board at 28.

Western feeds see a doting father, which is real. The room sees a foreign founder signaling the relationship outlives any single administration, which is also real.

A five-year-old in fresh sneakers. The Chinese side is doing math on the year 2050.

[Zachary 🏙️ @ZachIsHere]

St. Louis Post Dispatch today asking and answering the question of why Kansas City is such a great soccer town and is hosting the World Cup.

[Kevin Stock, DDS @kevinstock12]

My Dad had some interesting parenting ideas.

To earn our daily $1 allowance, my brothers and I had to do 100 pushups and 100 sit-ups.

On Sunday, we'd get the $7 payout, and then have to put $1 into the collection basket at church.

If we acted up, we weren't sent to our rooms for timeout, we were sent into pushup position. "Time in."

Before drives, he'd line all 4 of us up in the street to race, a genius idea to wear us out so we'd sit still in the car.

I often wonder about the impact of childhood rituals.

For example, my chest and abs have always been comparatively overdeveloped (was it the 100 pushups and sit-ups per day?).

It makes me wonder what other unconventional rituals parents have their kids do (and potential positive / negative outcomes)?

[Drew Mitrisin @DrewMitrisin]

Last night, the Overland Park City Council unanimously approved the rezoning of the Black & Veatch HQ, which includes:

✅ 1 million sf of office space
✅ 162k sf of retail
✅ 700 multi-family housing units
✅ 88 townhome housing units
✅ 25k sf daycare
✅ 250 room hotel

Build, baby, build.

[Interface gallery @Interface_art]

Imagine this: it’s 1980. A Yale trained abstract painter walks into a store, buys a cheap Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer… and instead of picking up a brush again, he teaches himself to code. That painter? Mark Wilson. One of the most important pioneers of digital art you’ve probably never heard of /1

[Ari Meirov @MySportsUpdate]

Donald Trump had the owners of Slap's BBQ from Kansas City at the White House today and had one question for them:

“How’s Patrick Mahomes doing?!”

(🎥 @MargoMartin47)

[Jay Yang @Jayyanginspires]

https://t.co/K6sAtTelrM

[Trooper Ben @TrooperBenKs]

Today, in a hallway at Salina Regional hospital, I was reminded that we never fully know how far our words can reach.

I was there with my father in law, spending time by his side as he continues recovering. At one point, I stepped out of his room for just a moment. As I stood in the hallway, I noticed a staff member walking toward me from quite a distance away.

Before she even got close, I heard her say, “I just had to come up and talk to you for a little bit.”

When she reached me, she introduced herself and shared something with me…. 🥹

She told me her mother was one of my strongest supporters and followed my Facebook page closely. She said that about a month ago, her mother had commented on one of my posts, the one that said:

“One day your child will sit across from someone and explain to them what it was like to be raised by you. Make sure it’s a story worth telling…”

Then she told me something that stopped me and cause a little emotion between her and I...

About a week after leaving that comment, her mother passed away.😔

Her name was Alice Crawford

After I left the hospital, I spent a couple of hours looking through her Facebook page, learning a little more about the woman behind that comment.

What I saw was a woman who loved her children and grandkids deeply. I saw someone who had a strong heart for first responders, especially the fire service. I saw love for Frankfort, Kansas. I saw a woman who noticed people, cared about her community, and believed in doing good where she could.

One of her posts showed her with several children after they found bags of trash dumped along a road. The kids wanted to stop and clean it up. Alice wrote about it with pride, frustration, and a little fire in her words.

That told me something about her.

She was teaching those kids that when you see something wrong, you can still do something good. You can stop. You can help. You can leave a place better than you found it.

And today, her daughter did the same for me.

She could have kept walking. She could have let that moment pass. Instead, she walked down that hospital hallway and shared her mom with me.

I stood there thinking about how a person can leave this world, yet a few words, a photo, a story, a comment, and the love they gave their family can still be sitting there for the rest of us to find.

Alice’s comment may have looked small when she typed it.

Today, it felt anything but small.

The story we leave behind is not only written in moments. It is written in the way our children talk about us. It is written in the way our grandkids remember us. It is written in the people we encourage, the places we care about, the roadsides we clean up, and the kindness we leave behind.

I never had the chance to meet Alice in person.

But today, through her daughter, her words, her photos, and her love for others, I got to know a small part of her story.

And it was worth telling.

Be safe,
Trooper Ben
#HelpMore