Joseph Parker

Husband & Father | Executive | Author | Co-host of the 15-Minute History Podcast (Top 10 History Podcasts in the World)

[Big Popz @BigPopz72]

Imagine watching your child hear your voice for the very first time.

Watching these little ones getting their hearing aids and experiencing not only the sound of mom and dad, but feeling the love in their voices is amazing..

Their little faces tell the story 😍

[Joseph Parker @Josephpkr]

Glad everyone is okay and accounted for, but can we all agree this rocket is being a little extra? https://t.co/4eR0pK2e2g

[A Gene Robinson @AlBuffalo2nite]

So let me get this straight…

During COVID, government imposed eviction moratoriums across cities and states.

A lot of Americans still do not understand what that actually meant.

It did NOT mean government paid everybody’s rent.

It meant landlords were often legally blocked from removing tenants for nonpayment.

But the landlord’s obligations NEVER stopped.

Mortgage?
Still due.
Property taxes?
Still due.

Insurance?
Still due.
Water bills?
Still due.

Heating systems?
Still due.
Repairs?
Still due.

Code violations?
Still due.
So imagine a small Black landlord in a struggling neighborhood with a duplex or triple they worked decades to buy.

Tenants stop paying for months… sometimes years.
Meanwhile inflation explodes.
Material costs explode.
Insurance spikes.
Taxes rise.
Savings disappear.

That owner drains retirement accounts and maxes out credit cards just trying to survive while politicians stand behind podiums pretending compassion costs nothing.
Then comes the final insult.

Buildings deteriorate because cash flow collapsed…
and now politicians like Zohran Mamdani point at the deterioration THEY helped create and say:
“Negligent landlord.”
“Take the building.”
“Transfer ownership.”
So government creates the financial hemorrhage…
then blames the wounded for bleeding.

The wealthy corporate developers survive.
Massive investment firms survive.
Politically connected nonprofits survive.

But the working class landlord?
The old Black couple trying to leave property to their children?
The immigrant family that scraped together enough for 6 units?
The retired tradesman depending on rental income?

CRUSHED.
And Americans better wake up to what this really means.
Because once government decides “neglect” justifies control…
the definition of neglect expands every year.
Today it is deferred maintenance.
Tomorrow it becomes “underutilized property.”
Then “community necessity.”
Then “housing equity.”
That road always ends with less private ownership and more centralized control.

You do not save neighborhoods by destroying the people who stayed invested in them.
You do not stabilize cities by terrifying small property owners.
And you absolutely do not rebuild Black wealth by making ownership itself politically dangerous.

Watch carefully.

The people who suffered under the moratoriums are now being portrayed as villains for surviving the policies imposed on them.
#SilentMajoritySpeaks #AStoneGroove

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

The most interesting aspect of Zohran Mamdani’s housing plan is that it doesn’t simply transfer seized properties to the city as that could later be reversed by a future mayor.

Instead, it funnels them directly to NGOs and “community stewards” that are reliably aligned with leftist priorities and unlikely to ever relinquish control.

Even tenants who gain temporary possession will soon discover they lack the expertise and resources to manage buildings themselves, forcing them to rely on these permanent third-party intermediaries.

This expropriation strategy didn’t start with Mamdani.
Democrats laid the groundwork years ago but lacked the nerve to follow through fully.
Mamdani is openly commie and has no such hesitation.

The play:
>impose strict rent controls that make it financially unviable for owners to properly maintain or repair their properties
>blame the landlords for the resulting deterioration
>label the buildings “chronically neglected” based on your own standards
>seize the properties and transfer them to your political allies, the nonprofits, community land trusts, or tenant groups

Because the criteria are deliberately vague and subjective, virtually any owner can be targeted.
This gives authorities the power to confiscate private property at will.

Mamdani’s campaign made this direction explicit. It’s about pursuing “equity” by redistributing housing stock, often framed as taking from wealthier (white) neighborhoods to benefit others.

In reality, many of these properties are expected to end up under the control of nonprofits serving the city’s large foreign-born population, all within a framework of permanent “progressive” dominance.

TLDR: it’s leftist plunder and pillaging, again.

[Hon. Vickie Paladino @VickieforNYC]

Let's understand a few things about what's actually about to happen here if Zohran gets his way -- which he almost certainly will, unless courts intervene.

First and foremost, Cea Weaver and DSA 'organizers' will be unleashed with the full institutional and legal support of the city government to ramp up tenant complaints in targeted buildings. No complaint will be too small. No building will be too small. Everything will be treated as catastrophic. Full-scale demagoguery will ensue, complete with protests, rent strikes, street theater, and harassment of property owners.

Accordingly, the city buildings department will be weaponized to begin writing as many violations as possible in order to bolster the city's effort to justify a seizure. It won't matter how small or large the violations are, the total number will be breathlessly cited as evidence of mismanagement. It will be impossible for landlords to clear these violations in good faith.

The combination of a weaponized buildings department writing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, rent strikes, and constant threats and harassment against landlords by militant activists will make the situation untenable for any property owner to realistically fight back, and the city will seize the property. The landlord will be lucky to walk away without prison or being beaten to death in the street by an angry mob (as Zohran's buddy Hasan Piker referred to landlords -- 'let the streets run red with their capitalist blood').

But that's only the first half of the plan, and everyone needs to pay very close attention to the big picture here, because it's hugely important and has national implications.

The properties will then be turned over to nonprofits. This is no small detail. This is in fact the whole point.

The idea here is to build up Zohran's DSA-connected nonprofits with a multbillion-dollar portfolio of hard assets -- New York City real estate. This portfolio could theoretically reach into the hundreds of billions or even the trillions, depending on how aggressive they get.

Now these highly political nonprofits would become the new land barons of New York, complete with all the political clout, leverage, and reach that goes along with it. It would be a true nightmare scenario.

As it stands now, the nonprofits depend mostly on the largesse of grants, donations, and other third-party resources to stay afloat. They are lavishly funded of course, and many do hold significant assets, but it would all pale in comparison to simply handing them the keys to a New York City real estate empire, courtesy of Zohran Mamdani and the DSA.

The resources at their disposal would be immense. The organizing potential that goes along with those resources will have national implications. Every DSA candidate in every town and city in the country would be trained, funded, and staffed by organizers with ties to the NYC nonprofit empire backed by a trillion dollars in free real estate. And they would be shameless in leveraging those resources for pure political power.

That's the game plan here. That's the whole ball of wax.

Zohran isn't interested in making housing better for anyone. If he was, we'd be talking seriously about solving the NYCHA disaster.

Hell, if he was even remotely sincere about seizing these properties from 'bad landlords' for the 'public good' he'd be focused on turning them over to the city itself, as misguided as that would be.

No, this is about nothing more than consolidating political power for the DSA. Just like everything else these people do. Giving the DSA a massive war chest backed by seized real estate.

Once you understand that they have no interest in fixing anything other than elections, it all makes a lot more sense.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

That water clarity is an engineering decision, and the math behind it is wilder than the video.

Roman aqueducts ran on gravity alone. No pumps, no pressure systems. Engineers carved channels with a gradient so shallow it borders on absurd. The Pont du Gard in southern France drops 2.5 centimeters over 275 meters. That's roughly the thickness of a coin over the length of three football fields. They surveyed that accuracy with plumb lines and wooden leveling instruments.

The clarity you're seeing is a direct product of flow velocity. Too steep and the water erodes the channel walls, picks up sediment, turns brown. Too flat and it stagnates. Roman engineers targeted a slope of about 20 centimeters per kilometer, which kept the water moving fast enough to stay fresh but slow enough to stay clear. Before the water reached the city, it passed through multi-chamber settling tanks where velocity dropped near zero. Suspended particles sank. Clean water flowed out the top into the next chamber. Repeat three or four times.

Pliny specified the minimum slope in writing. Vitruvius published the exact mortar ratio for hydraulic cement: one part lime to two parts volcanic ash for underwater work. The pozzolana from Pozzuoli reacted with water to form a calcium-aluminum-silicate compound that actually gets stronger the longer it sits submerged. Modern concrete degrades in water. Roman concrete bonds with it.

Scale the whole system and it gets harder to process. Eleven aqueducts fed Rome at its peak. Combined output: roughly 1 million cubic meters of water per day. That works out to about 250 gallons per person for a city of one million. Modern New York delivers about 125 gallons per person per day. Ancient Rome had access to double the per capita water supply of the largest city in the United States, running entirely on slope and stone.

The Trevi Fountain in Rome is still fed by one of them. Two thousand years, same source, same gravity, same water.

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.”

-C.S. Lewis

[Claude @claudeai]

You can now create more with Claude Design.

We've doubled token limits across every plan.

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

Justification gets you out of Egypt, but sanctification gets Egypt out of you.

[Speaker Mike Johnson @SpeakerJohnson]

House Democrats started the current mid-decade redistricting battle in NY before the 2024 election. Now that it’s backfired on them, they are pushing a stunning next step: nuke the judicial branch of government and pack the court!

They are anarchists now.

[WWUTT? @WWUTTcom]

😆

Yup. This was our worship service this morning.

[Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy]

The radical, miserable left has noticed our awesome Great American Road Trip trailer…

and they hate it.

It’s too wholesome.
It’s too patriotic.
It’s too joyful.

They’re upset because they don’t want you to celebrate America! And they definitely don’t want you to teach your kids civics & patriotism. So they tell lies to undermine the mission.

Here are the facts:

1. Production costs were paid for by the Great American Road Trip Inc., not taxpayers. Zero taxpayer dollars were spent on my family.

2. Neither myself nor my family received a salary or production royalties. The five part series will be freely accessible by the public on YouTube.

3. The series was filmed in short, one to two day production windows — such as weekends and the kids’ spring break.

4. Career ethics and budget officials at the Department of Transportation reviewed and approved both my participation and individual travel in accordance with federal rules.

5. Under my leadership, DOT has become the most responsive, productive, and transformational in its history — modernizing air traffic control, hiring 20% more controllers annually than my predecessor, moving grants at record speed, and removing illegal truck drivers from the road.

Don’t let the haters stop you from visiting our spectacular national parks, monuments and sights in honor of America’s 250th birthday!

Our message is really simple: to love America is to see America. So put the phone down, hit the open road, and rediscover what makes America great.

[Joseph Parker @Josephpkr]

@LostMyHats Thankfully, the sermon I heard today had nothing to do with this topic, and our pastor challenged all to bring Glory to the Lord who is kind, sovergin, all powerful, full of grace and mercy, and worthy of praise.

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

“Read books. Travel when you can. Learn how to cook one meal exceptionally well. Sit in old bars and talk to strangers. Wear your best jacket to dinner. Appreciate good wine, good music, and good conversation. Do the right thing, even when no one is watching. Set the example for younger men who are watching you. Call your parents. Take long walks. Leave your phone behind sometimes. Become the kind of man people feel better after being around. Life is short, so live it well.”

-J.B. Lloyd

[David Limbaugh @DavidLimbaugh]

This needs to be on a perpetual loop.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 WOW! Major respect moment as King Charles III took time to pay TRIBUTE to President Trump after he survived another assassination attempt 🙏🏻

To think — this angers the left.

“May I also just start by paying tribute to your own courage and steadfastness, as well as to your security services for their swift actions on Saturday evening in preventing further injury."

"My thoughts and sympathies are very much with you, the First Lady and all those guests, for whom this must have been a very upsetting incident."

Pray for 47!

[Words of Wise | Mindset Coach @Wordofwise_]

“The difference between humans and animals is that animals never allow a fool to lead the pack.”

— Winston Churchill

[The Ways of A Gentleman @Gentleman_Ways]

The strongest predictor of a young man’s future is his father.

While talent and education are important factors, a boy will learn how to be a man by watching his dad.

We must never forget the influence we have on the next generation and carry ourselves accordingly.