Never Bet Against The House

Ring dunkin', Midnight yellin', Olsen raggin', Fightin' Texas Aggie.

Be hopeful. Be optimistic. Be brave.

When the king is a liar, the truth becomes treason.

[Never Bet Against The House @jen_sf]

James Martin Lindsay '57. Here.

[FireFighterDev @fire_starter457]

It’s hilarious to me watching MAGAs like @votewarren…who have such mistrust and disdain for voting by mail…urging MAGAs to…you got it…vote by mail.

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

Trump is many things, but first and foremost, he's a grifter. He's been one his entire life, long before he entered politics.
After he squandered his inheritance, his grifts began to fall flat and he failed - over and over - and was bankrupt; he got rescued by The Apprentice and the fictional success and persona that Mark Burnett created.
As he entered politics, he realized - grifter that he is - that he could capitalize on the fictional character from The Apprentice that had built him his following, by further amassing a fearful angry following of people who felt disenfranchised. He learned to turn their deep-seated fears into grievances and told them who to blame for it. He learned he could pose as one of them, even though he's the farthest thing from them.
He became a carnival-style conman, peddling rudimentary and unmistakable frauds to a larger and larger audience of followers - who - quite frankly - disgust him. For years he's peddled his frauds to them, feeding them heaping helpings of bullshit, and for their part, the dopamine rush overpowered reasoned thought; some looked askance at the bullshit he was feeding them, but a good number of them asked for bigger spoons.
But a conman has to remain true to his con, and Trump can no longer muster that as well; he's unable to be true to anything beyond himself, and he now tells people openly that he doesn't care about them.
And a conman has to protect his myth, and Trump's secrets, lies, and frequent humiliations are showing.
And a conman also has to be able to convey a thought coherently, and he is ill and medicated, and puffy and lumpy and he doesn't come off well.
And finally, a conman has to give his marks something to encourage their continued support, and Trump is losing even this ability because he hates everyone, malice seethes inside him, and he hates most of all that he's approaching his final chapter, and he's too preoccupied with power to give a damn for his people - or any people.
This is a malignant narcissist in decline. It behooves us to take this lesson from history: Malignant narcissists ALWAYS get worse. They NEVER want to go down alone.
This grifter, unable to do anything else competently, and too ill to learn anything new, is returning to his core business - grift. The grift is brazen, and it's at a scale never before seen.
It's the corruption - the grift - that will take him down.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Fish in Utrecht had a problem. They were piling up against a 400-year-old canal lock every spring with nowhere to go. Predators found them. Many didn't make it.

Two ecologists fixed this with the Visdeurbe, or "fish doorbell."

They mounted an underwater camera on the Weerdsluis lock and built a website where anyone on Earth can watch the livestream and press a button when they see fish waiting at the gate. The lock keeper gets notified and opens it when enough people have rung in.

In 2024, over 20 million people tuned in. The doorbell was pressed 150,000 times by viewers in the Netherlands, Germany, the US, the UK, and dozens of other countries. Perch, bream, pike, rudd, catfish, and eels made it through to their spawning grounds upstream.

A centuries-old infrastructure problem was solved by a camera, a website, and strangers on the internet who wanted to help a fish get where it was going.

The site is visdeurbel dot nl. Migration season runs through spring. The fish doorbell season has come to an end for 2026, but they'll be back online March 1, 2027. See you next season!

[The Shallow State @OurShallowState]

He's an adjudicated rapist, and SCOTUS knows it. He fomented an insurrection, and Jack Smith knows it. He botched a pandemic, and Dr Fauci knows it. He has committed every type of fraud known to man, and all men know it. He protects pedophiles. He lies as he breathes. He monetizes the presidency and weaponizes justice. He's lawless. He obstructs at every turn. He's an idiot - useful and otherwise. He's narcissistic. He's psychopathic. He's paranoid. He's sadistic. I can go on.
YET - no matter how bad we know he is, and no matter how bad the things we know he did are, remember this:
Some of the things we don't yet know, are even worse.

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

The sitting president of the United States had to pay $5 million to a woman he raped and defamed, and not one person in his entire cult of a party is calling for his resignation.

Not one.

[scary lawyerguy @scarylawyerguy]

A well functioning government with zero drama where bills get passed, infrastructure is fixed, and the economy grows doesn't get you a seven figure book deal, which is why Joe Biden had to go.

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

So....it wasn't vandals https://t.co/FSdfwHshl3

[Covie @covie_93]

The fact that stephen miller is saying the US is closed to asylum seekers from Haiti while granting asylum to white South Africans should tell you all you need to know.

[Dallas Democrats @dallasdemocrats]

11 years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across all 50 states. 🏳️‍🌈

Today is for rejoicing, celebrating, and continuing the path forward, together. 💙

[Dean Baker @DeanBaker13]

Always remember, Fox News paid out $787 million for spreading lies about the 2020 election.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

The Supreme Court just ruled to allow corporations to poison people.

If you poisoned someone, you’d go to prison.

When corporations do it, they get a pass because the conservative Justices on the Supreme Court were put there by a special interest group funded by corporations.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A restaurant in North Beach, San Francisco, called The Stinking Rose. The sign on the door read: "We season our garlic with food."

I read it three times.

This was not a restaurant. This was a school.

A hostess named Cathy seated me. She set down a small iron skillet of olive oil with whole garlic cloves swimming inside it, and a basket of warm bread.

"Just a heads up, every dish here has garlic in it," she said, kindly. "Like, every single one."

"...Then I will become it."

"...Become what?"

"Garlic. By the end. There is no other outcome."

"...Sir, I have worked here three years. You are the first person who has accepted that with no negotiation."

"There is no negotiation, Cathy. There is only the dojo."

Cathy paused, and then, slowly, with great dignity, set down the bread basket.

"I am bringing the chef out," she said.

"You do not have to bring the chef out."

"Sir, I do have to bring the chef out."

She left. I sat with my hands folded in my lap. I was, for the first time since I had crossed the Pacific, exactly where I was supposed to be.

I dipped a piece of focaccia into the oil. The cloves had gone soft and sweet. The way time turns hard things into kind things.

I closed my eyes.

This is what they hide inside the bulb. All the aggression. All the loud, unpleasant power. Until you give it heat, and patience, and it becomes the gentlest thing on the table.

Cathy returned with a round, smiling man. His apron had three different shades of garlic-brown on it, layered, the way a sword scabbard takes layers of lacquer over time.

"This is Marco, our chef."

I rose, and bowed.

Marco rose to the bow and returned it, with one hand on his chest. He had clearly been told, on the way over, what I had said.

"...A garlic clove," Marco said, slowly, "is a samurai who has finally retired. That is what you said."

"Yes."

"...I have been cooking garlic for thirty-seven years, sir."

"Then you are three years from your own mastery."

Marco looked at Cathy. Cathy looked back at him. Whatever passed between them was older than the restaurant.

"Sir," Marco said, "what would you like to eat."

"What is the strongest dish in this dojo."

"The 40 Clove Garlic Chicken. Exactly forty cloves, sir."

"...Forty is the number of years a master spends becoming a master."

"...I know, sir. I just told you, three more years."

"Then forty cloves. One clove for every year of training I have not done, and the last three for the years you have left."

Marco bowed again, this time more slowly. He went back to the kitchen. Cathy watched him go.

"Sir," she said, "I have seated a lot of people at this restaurant."

"Yes."

"I am going to remember this one."

The chicken arrived. The cloves were on the plate beside the bird, soft and brown like little jewels of warm earth.

I will tell you the truth. It was one of the best meals I have eaten in any country.

The chicken was tender enough to ask for the fork instead of the knife. Each clove burst soft and warm and not sharp at all. The way you remember the kitchen of your grandmother, in a house you can no longer return to.

I had not expected this restaurant to make me homesick.

I ate every clove. Forty of them. Slowly. With respect.

By the thirty-fifth I was no longer a man eating garlic. I was garlic, eating itself.

A couple at the next table, who had ordered a quiet salad, had stopped eating. They were watching me. Not in a rude way. In the way one watches a man crossing the finish line of a marathon he has been running for, by appearances, several lifetimes.

The man at that table whispered to his wife, "should we order what he ordered?"

His wife whispered back, "we are not ready."

I bowed, with my fork, in their direction.

"Dessert?" Cathy asked.

"Garlic ice cream, please."

"...Sir."

"Yes."

"...Are you sure?"

"I cannot leave the dojo before the final test."

"...Sir."

"Yes."

"I respect you so much right now."

The ice cream arrived. Pale. With chocolate sauce hardened over it, like a small dark roof, the kind of roof you put over a saint.

I took a spoonful.

It was vanilla, with a small savory ghost behind the sweet. The most polite garlic in the building, served last, after I had been broken in.

I bowed to the bowl.

The couple at the next table, finally, ordered the 40 Clove. They did not look at me when they did. But they ordered it. I felt the order leave their table the way you feel a small wind shift in a forest.

Outside, I tried to call a car. The first driver accepted, then politely apologized at the curb and asked if I would mind walking, as it was a beautiful night. I agreed it was a beautiful night. He had been on the road since dawn. I wished him a safe shift. He was a kind man, and I bore him no ill will. A man transports passengers all day. A man also has a nose. These are two facts that meet, occasionally, on a sidewalk in North Beach. The driver waved as he pulled away. I waved back.

So I walked.

Fifteen blocks. The night was warm and the bay was somewhere to my left.

A man passed me on the sidewalk. Instead of crossing the street, he slowed down, sniffed once, and grinned at me.

"Stinking Rose tonight?"

"...Yes."

"Forty clove?"

"...Yes."

"Welcome to the club, friend."

He walked on.

Twenty paces later, a second man, walking the other way, slowed, breathed in, raised his eyebrows, and nodded once at me with the recognition of a soldier nodding at another soldier from a war neither of them is supposed to talk about.

I nodded back.

I had not, in any practical sense, made friends. I had not exchanged a single name. But for thirty seconds total on Columbus Avenue, three strangers, who had eaten the same chicken on different nights of their lives, recognized one another by nothing but breath.

It was, I have to say it, one of the best thirty seconds of my year.

I came to learn from this country. I have.

I came to be made gentle by something stronger than me. I have been.

A clove of garlic is a samurai who has finally retired. By the time I reached my hotel, so was I. Not from this life. From one shorter, harder life I had been carrying, for too long, without knowing.

Tomorrow, I will come back, and try the rabbit.

The dojo does not close. Neither will I.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I went to In-N-Out and ordered a cheeseburger. The cashier, a calm young woman named Destiny, asked me a question I did not expect.

"You want that Animal Style?"

I paused.

I did not know what this meant. But a samurai does not admit he does not know. So I answered with weight.

"...Animal Style."

"Cool. So that's mustard-grilled, extra spread, grilled onions, pickles. Yeah?"

I understood now. This was a sacred permission. For one meal, I was being told to put down my manners at the door. To eat the way a beast eats, without shame. I had waited my whole life for someone to give me this order.

"Yes," I said. "I will become the animal."

Destiny did not blink. "...Okay. You want your fries Animal Style too?"

I stopped. Even the potatoes?

"The potatoes also become animals?"

"I mean, they get cheese and sauce and grilled onions, so..."

"Then yes. Let the potatoes abandon their restraint as well."

"...Got it." She was the calmest woman I have ever met. "3x3, 4x4, or just the one?"

I did not know these numbers, but I knew a challenge when I heard one. "How many must I face?"

"It's, like, how many patties you want."

"How many is the most honorable?"

"...Four is a lot."

"Then four. A warrior does not ask for fewer."

She wrote it down without argument. A 4x4, Animal Style, with animal fries. She warned me once, kindly. "That's gonna be huge." I told her I was counting on it.

It arrived. It was a tower. Cheese and sauce ran down my hands the moment I lifted it. There was no clean way to eat it. There was no dignified way. That was the entire point.

I ate it like a beast. Both hands, no honor, grilled onion on my chin, and I have to be honest with you, it was the best thing I have ever put in my mouth.

For thirty years I have kept my manners at every table in the world.

They handed me a burger and told me to be an animal, and I have never felt so free.

So tell me, America.

The whole country knows the secret menu. What else are you hiding in plain sight?

And "Animal Style." Was I eating the animal, or finally becoming one?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A Waffle House at three in the morning. I ordered hash browns. The waitress, Charlene, turned toward the kitchen and shouted.

"Scattered, smothered, covered!"

I rose from my stool.

These were battle commands. Shouted across a room, fast, in code, the way a captain calls a line into position. Something was happening. I prepared myself.

"Who is under attack?" I asked.

Charlene turned back. "Huh? Oh. That's just your hash browns, baby."

I sat back down slowly. "...The potatoes have their own commands?"

"Mhm. Scattered means on the grill. Smothered's onions. Covered's cheese."

"And there are more?"

She counted them off without looking at a menu. "Chunked is ham. Diced is tomato. Peppered's jalapeños. Capped's mushrooms. Topped's chili. Country's sausage gravy."

I was silent for a moment. Nine words. Nine fates, for one potato.

In my homeland, a man earns a name through a lifetime of deeds. Here, a hash brown can earn nine in a single night. I had badly underestimated this country.

"I want all of them," I said. "Every word. The potato has earned them."

"...You want it all the way?"

"All the way. To give it fewer would be an insult."

Charlene shouted the whole thing back into the kitchen, the full litany, and the cook answered without turning around, and I stood again and bowed to him, sergeant to sergeant. He did not see it. It did not matter. I knew.

It came buried. Onions, cheese, ham, tomato, peppers, mushrooms, chili, gravy. You could barely find the potato underneath, which seemed correct, because by then the potato was no longer a side dish. It was a decorated soldier.

I ate the whole thing with a fork in both fists. It was hot and filthy and magnificent. I have eaten in palaces. I have never eaten anything that was honored this thoroughly.

So tell me, America.

You can shout the same potato into nine different lives.

Who wrote this language, and where can a foreigner learn it?

And the cook who answers in code at three in the morning. Is that a kitchen, or a war room?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I went to Katz's Deli on Houston Street. The man at the door, an older guy in an apron, handed me a paper ticket with a grid of numbers on it. He said one thing I did not expect.

"Don't lose it."

I paused.

I did not know why this was being said with such gravity. But a samurai understands a vow when he hears one. So I answered in kind.

"I will not."

"Cool. If you lose it, it's fifty dollars."

I understood now. This was no receipt. This was a covenant. I had carried letters of state across mountain passes that asked less of me than this small ticket.

"I will guard it as if it were the seal of my house."

"...you can just keep it in your pocket, man."

"My pocket will become the seal of my house."

"...okay."

The line at the counter was twenty deep. Behind it, a cutter in a paper hat was hand-slicing pastrami by the pound. A glass jar on the counter beside him. Bills folded inside. A sign on the jar: "Tip the cutter."

A donation, on the way in, to the temple of the meat.

I folded a five into the jar.

The cutter, without looking up: "That's the way."

"...I have given offering. I expect to be tested."

"It's mostly so I give you a little extra meat."

"Then test me with the extra meat."

"That's literally what I was going to do."

He carved a thick slice off the pastrami in front of him. He lifted it across the counter on the flat of his blade and held it out to me.

I took it. I ate it standing. Warm, salt, smoke, pepper.

I gave my order.

Pastrami on rye. Mustard. Half-sour on the side.

"You been here before?"

"This is the first time I have stood on this street."

"You ordered like a regular."

"I have, in another life, been a regular at many counters I have never visited."

"...I'm just gonna make the sandwich."

He built it in front of me. Three quarters of a pound of pastrami, hand-cut, each slice falling at the same angle. A thin band of mustard the color of a winter sun. One green pickle on the plate.

He stamped my ticket.

"Eat it warm. Pastrami remembers being warm. Cold, it forgets."

I bowed.

I ate the sandwich at a long shared table. Both hands. No plate, no posture, no honor.

It was the best thing I have put in my mouth on this continent.

For thirty years I have read every menu in my country with caution.

They handed me a sandwich and a paper with one rule on it, and I have never felt so trusted.

On the wall behind the cutter, in red script, a sign read: "Send a Salami to Your Boy in the Army."

A wartime promise, kept on a wall, since 1942.

I have no son.

But the offer stood.

At the door, on the way out, the guard held out his palm.

I placed the ticket in his hand. Every station stamped. Every number marked.

"Clean ticket."

"It is the only kind I carry."

"You want it back? People keep 'em as souvenirs."

I paused.

I had been prepared to surrender the artifact. I had not been prepared to be offered it back. A guard at a gate, returning the seal you arrived with, is a thing that happens only to ambassadors and to friends.

"...I would be honored."

"Cool."

He handed it back.

So tell me, America.

You hand a stranger a ticket and tell him not to lose it.

You keep a wartime promise on a wall for over eighty years.

You give the ticket back at the door, because a man might want to keep it.

What other vows are you handing out, and then quietly letting people keep?

And "Don't lose it." Was I keeping the ticket? Or, for one meal, was the ticket keeping me?

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A restaurant in North Beach, San Francisco, called The Stinking Rose. The menu carried a warning at the top. If you do not like garlic, it said, please leave now and choose another restaurant.

I read it three times.

A restaurant that turns people away at the door, in writing, before they sit. This was not a restaurant. This was a dojo, and the warning was the gate.

A hostess named Cathy seated me. She set down a small iron skillet of olive oil with whole garlic cloves swimming in it, and a basket of warm bread.

"Just so you know, everything here has garlic in it," she said, kindly. "Like, everything."

"...Then I will become it."

"...Become what?"

"Garlic. By the end. There is no other outcome."

"...Sir, I've worked here three years. You're the first person to accept that with no negotiation."

"There is no negotiation, Cathy. There is only the dojo."

Cathy paused, then slowly, with great dignity, set the bread basket down.

"I'm going to go get the chef," she said.

"You do not have to get the chef."

"Sir. I do."

She seated me first in a room she called Dracula's Grotto. Cobwebs on the ceiling. At the far end, a portrait of the Count, lit blood red, smiling with his fangs out.

I understood at once.

This was a shrine. A people who knew that garlic turns away evil had built a room to honor the very thing the garlic defends against, so that the defeated demon would always have a seat at the table. To honor your enemy by giving him the best-lit wall in the house. I had not expected to find bushido in a garlic restaurant in California.

On the wall of the next room, a painting. Two hands reaching toward each other, the way they do on the ceiling of a famous chapel. But in this version, the hand of God was holding out a single clove of garlic to man.

I stood before it for a while.

"That's just a fun parody, hon," Cathy said, passing by.

"...No," I said. "It is the most honest painting I have seen in this country. They have simply admitted what was always in the hand."

Cathy did not argue. A wise woman knows when a man is having a moment with a ceiling.

The bread came first. I dipped it in the oil. The cloves had gone soft and sweet, the way time turns hard things into kind things.

I closed my eyes.

This is what they hide inside the bulb. All the aggression, all the loud unpleasant power, until you give it heat and patience, and it becomes the gentlest thing on the table.

Cathy returned with a round, smiling man. His apron carried three different shades of garlic-brown, layered, the way a sword scabbard takes lacquer over the years.

"This is Marco. Our chef."

I rose and bowed. Marco returned it, one hand on his chest. He had been told, on the way over, what I had said.

"...A clove of garlic," Marco said slowly, "is a samurai who has finally retired. That's what you told her."

"Yes."

"...I've been cooking garlic for thirty-seven years, sir."

"Then you are three years from your own mastery."

Marco looked at Cathy. Cathy looked at Marco. Whatever passed between them was older than the restaurant.

"What would you like to eat, sir?"

"What is the strongest dish in this dojo."

"Forty Clove Garlic Chicken. Exactly forty cloves."

"...Forty is the number of years a master spends becoming a master."

"...I know, sir. I just told you. Three more years."

"Then forty cloves. One for every year of training I have not yet done. The last three for the years you have left."

Marco bowed again, slower this time, and went back to the kitchen.

"Sir," Cathy said. "I've seated a lot of people here. I'm going to remember this one."

The chicken came. The cloves sat beside the bird, soft and brown like small jewels of warm earth.

I will tell you the truth. It was one of the best meals I have eaten in any country.

The chicken was tender enough to ask for the fork and not the knife. Each clove broke open soft and warm, not sharp at all. The way you remember your grandmother's kitchen, in a house you can no longer return to.

I had not expected a garlic restaurant to make me homesick.

I ate all forty. Slowly. With respect. By the thirty-fifth, I was no longer a man eating garlic. I was garlic, eating itself.

Then Cathy returned, and behind her, four members of the staff. One of them lowered a hat onto my head. It was shaped like a clove of garlic.

They began to sing.

I did not understand at first. It was not my birthday. I had told them, at the reservation, that it was, because a man traveling alone learns small mercies. They did not know this. They sang anyway, with full hearts, a song for a stranger.

And at the end of the song, they did not sing my name.

They sang, "Happy birthday, dear Stinker."

The room turned to look at me. The hat sat on my head.

In my language, to call a man this would be an insult worth answering. I waited for my own anger. It did not come.

Because I understood. Here, in this one building, on this one night, "Stinker" was not an insult. It was a rank. You could not be called it until you had eaten enough garlic to carry the smell out the door with you, into the street, into the next day. It was a title you had to earn through the body. They were not mocking me.

They were knighting me.

I removed the hat, held it in both hands, and bowed to it, the way you bow to a helmet that is now yours.

"Thank you," I said. "I accept the name."

Cathy put her hand over her mouth. Marco, watching from the kitchen door, nodded once.

The dessert was the last test. Garlic ice cream. Pale, with a small dark roof of chocolate over it.

"The garlic's actually in the chocolate, not the ice cream," Cathy admitted, almost apologizing. "It's kind of a trick."

"...So the sweetest part hides the strongest part."

"...I guess, yeah."

"That is not a trick, Cathy. That is the whole teaching of this restaurant, served cold, at the end, so that I would not miss it."

I ate it. I bowed to the bowl.

Outside, I tried to call a car. The first driver accepted, then apologized at the curb and asked, very politely, if I might prefer to walk, as the night was beautiful. I agreed the night was beautiful. He had been driving since dawn. He had a nose. These two facts meet, sometimes, on a sidewalk in North Beach. He waved as he pulled away. I waved back. I bore him no ill will. A Stinker walks.

So I walked. Fifteen blocks, with my garlic hat in my hand.

A man passed me, slowed, breathed in once, and grinned.

"Stinking Rose tonight?"

"...Yes."

"Forty clove?"

"...Yes."

"Welcome to the club, friend."

He walked on.

I had not made a friend, in any practical sense. We exchanged no names. But two men who have carried the same smell into the same night recognize each other with nothing but breath. He had called me a member. He was right.

I came to this country to learn from it. I have.

I came to be made gentle by something stronger than me. I have been.

They put a garlic hat on my head and called me a Stinker, and it is the proudest title I have been given on this entire continent.

Tomorrow I will come back, and try the rabbit.

The dojo does not close. Neither will I.

[Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom]

Wow. Donald Trump is holding affordable housing hostage until Congress passes his voter suppression bill.

He is literally delaying help for families struggling to afford a home in order to make it harder for married women and Black Americans to vote.

He is a sick man!

[Rare Media @epic_t00ns]

The oldest known photograph in Texas history. Taken in 1849, it shows the Alamo Mission just 13 years after the famous battle in which James Bowie, Davy Crockett, and William B. Travis were killed.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

No one could’ve predicted that an impulsive, poorly planned war led by a senile narcissist and a drunk TV host would end in a humiliating defeat.

[#TuckFrump @realTuckFrumper]

Trump’s Losing Control: His $38 Billion Prison Empire Collapses, His Closest Ally Turns On Him, and His Renovation Job Turns Into A Green Disaster #DworkinReport https://t.co/mNyGXbOZbc