Mike Fry

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America they told me the football game starts at 1 PM.

I arrived at 1 PM.
I was five hours late.
The parking lot was already a city.

A man had built a living room beside his truck. Not metaphorically. He had a couch. A television. A chandelier powered by a generator the size of a small horse.

He was grilling enough meat to feed a village, and when I walked past he said, "You hungry?"

I said I had not been invited.

He looked at me the way you look at someone who has apologized for breathing.

"Brother," he said. "You're here. That's the invitation."

He handed me a plate. It was not a small plate. The brisket hung over the edges like a man sleeping in a bed he has outgrown.

I ate it standing beside a stranger's couch in a parking lot in October, and it was among the finest meals of my life.

A woman across the row had a tent, a smoker, a speaker system, and a flag so large it could have sheltered a family of five beneath it.

She had been here since 6 AM.

The game had not started.

The game, I began to realize, was not the point.

I asked the man what time he would go inside the stadium.

He said, "Depends."

I asked on what.

He said, "On whether the ribs are done."

I want to be clear. He had a ticket. He had driven four hours. He had assembled a small civilization from the back of a pickup truck.

And he was considering not going to the game.

Because the ribs were not ready.

In Japan we tailgate nothing. We do not build living rooms in parking lots. We do not grill for strangers.

We sit quietly on trains and think about whether we remembered to bow at the right angle.

I have since attended eleven tailgates.

I have never once cared who won the game.

Nobody has.

The game is inside the stadium.

America is in the parking lot.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Oklahoma the tornado siren went off.

I knew exactly what to do. I am Japanese. We drill for disasters the way other nations drill for war.

I had a helmet. I had a flashlight. I had a whistle, a radio, three days of water, and a laminated evacuation map I made myself.

I got under the table.

Then I heard laughter. Outside.

I looked through the window.

My entire street was on their porches.

Lawn chairs. Coolers. A man was grilling.

I want to be very clear. The sky was green. The sirens were singing the song of the end of the world. And Dale from next door was flipping burgers and watching the horizon like it was a football game.

He saw me in the window, in my helmet, and waved me over.

I asked him, should we not take shelter.

He looked at the sky for a long moment, the way my grandfather looked at the sea.

He said, "It's still two counties over."

Two counties. He measured the apocalypse in counties. Casually. The way you say the pizza is ten minutes away.

Then he handed me a lemonade and explained the system.

The siren does not mean hide. The siren means come outside and check.

You go inside when the weatherman takes off his jacket.

You go to the shelter when he rolls up his sleeves.

I thought he was joking. He was not joking. In Oklahoma the weatherman is not a man on television. He is a prophet. Families have trusted the same one for thirty years. Children stay calm in storms because his voice is calm.

Japan built satellites to watch the sky. Oklahoma watches one man's sleeves.

Both systems work.

Then the sky turned a green I have never seen, and the birds went silent, and every person on every porch stood up at the same time, without a word, like a church rising for a hymn.

The weatherman rolled up his sleeves.

Dale turned off the grill, picked up his chair, and said, "Alright, come on."

His whole family, and me, went down into the shelter under his garage. His wife had snacks ready. His daughter asked me about my helmet. We waited out the storm the way you wait out rain at a bus stop.

It passed north of us.

We came up. The porches refilled. Dale turned the grill back on.

I asked him if he is ever afraid.

He said, "Sure. That's why we watch."

I have lived in Japan for forty years and I have never once watched.

We prepare for nature. We hide from it, respectfully, behind walls our grandfathers spent lifetimes building.

In Oklahoma they sit on the porch and greet it by name.

I understand now. This is not recklessness.

It is a very old kind of courage. The kind where fear and dinner happen at the same time.

The burgers were excellent.

[Mor Edge Insight @MorEdge_Insight]

This is just so brilliant… wow🔥

England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 vs Norway 🇳🇴

Credit: @higgsfield

[Chris Pronger @chrispronger]

The conversation you have with yourself matters.

Elite athletes don't just visualize success. They reinforce it with positive self-talk. Confidence starts with what you tell yourself every day.

How are you visualizing your success, and what are you telling yourself?

[Black Rifle Coffee @blckriflecoffee]

The making of The Greatest Rendition of the Star Spangled Banner is out now! @MatBest11x @TravisPastrana

[Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth]

250. America. @USMC

[John Ringo SF Author @Jringo1508]

For 250 years this bizarro experiment in representative democracy has been confidently predicted to fail by all the 'right sorts'.

Guaranteed. Any moment now. The walls are closing in! This is the moment!

AND WE KEEP RIGHT ON FAILING!

UPWARDS!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU WEIRDO FAILURES!

NOW LET'S DRINK BEER AND BLOW SOME SHIT UP!

[Magpul @Magpul]

The Bicentennial Phantom 🇺🇸

[PJ Ace @PJaccetturo]

Everything they taught you about July 4th, 1776 is a lie.

The Redcoats weren't soldiers. They were something else.

We recovered the real footage using Utopai 🧵👇

[U.S. Marines @USMC]

Happy 250th, America!

Celebrating 250 years of independence and the enduring ideals of liberty, opportunity, and justice that shape our nation.

Since our nation's founding, Marines have upheld these ideals around the world, serving with honor, courage, and commitment.

Today, we honor the freedom they defend and the nation we’re proud to serve.

#July4th #FREEDOM250 #USMC

[TJ Oshie @TJOshie77]

What an American. This is how you speak about your country, your teammates and the @usahockey brotherhood. #USA #TEAMUSA 🇺🇸

[🎸 Rock History 🎸 @historyrock_]

They played this, then refused to play it for 20 years

[Every movie 🎬🍿 @everymovieandtv]

Anger didn’t just change him. It ended him.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

My CISO called me at 3 AM last Tuesday.

"We caught someone."

I asked, "Caught them doing what?"

He said, "Typing."

Let me explain.

We have an employee in IT. Great worker. Always online. Never complained. Perfect Slack etiquette.

One problem.

His keystrokes were arriving 110 milliseconds late.

One hundred and ten milliseconds.

That's 0.11 seconds.

The average American remote worker has 20-40ms of latency.

This guy? 110ms. Every. Single. Keystroke.

My security team ran the numbers.

That latency doesn't come from a bad router in Ohio.

That latency comes from Pyongyang.

Our "Senior DevOps Engineer" was a North Korean operative.

Running his work laptop through a laptop farm.

In America.

While he worked from a government building.

In North Korea.

He passed the interview. He passed the background check. He passed the vibe check.

He did not pass the speed of light.

Here's what people don't understand about physics:

Light travels 186,000 miles per second.

But it still has to go through China.

And China adds latency.

Since April, Amazon has caught 1,800 of these attempts.

Eighteen hundred.

I called an emergency meeting with my board.

I said, "We need to implement Keystroke Velocity Auditing across all remote employees."

They said, "That sounds invasive."

I said, "You know what else is invasive? The Democratic People's Republic of Korea in your Jira tickets."

They approved the budget.

We now monitor keystroke timing to the microsecond.

If your latency exceeds 60ms, you get a call from HR.

If it exceeds 100ms, you get a call from the FBI.

We've already flagged 47 employees.

Turns out 44 of them just have bad Wi-Fi.

3 of them are "still under investigation."

The lesson?

You can fake a resume.

You can fake a background check.

You can fake an American accent on Zoom.

But you cannot fake the speed of light.

Physics is the ultimate background check.

Hire accordingly.

[Mike Fry @mfry4]

@monsterhunter45 It's funny I was briefing my wife last night on what we new about the event. When I told her the shot was 200 yards and the point of impact was the neck area, her comment was another amateur that didn't know what he was doing.

[Mike Fry @mfry4]

@monsterhunter45 Weekly status report...feeds to departmental status report...feeds to management / steerco reporting. Pretty standard stuff.

[Mike Fry @mfry4]

@CCMHockey #12DaysofCCM

[Jocko Willink @jockowillink]

Sometimes:
No help. Just you.

[Mike Fry @mfry4]

@heatdaddy99 @IanKennedyCK I haven't looked it up but millions might be false. Entry level contract is still >750k and he won't see all of that. I get your point conceptually you are just overstating contract values.

[Mike Fry @mfry4]

@Margaux_moo @IanKennedyCK We used to (still do) have all kinds of differently Weighted pucks. Some heavier for building strength and speed and others lighter for development. We use them both depending on the situation. It is situational decision. Not gender or age based.