Steve Jefferies

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A supermarket register. The man ahead of me handed me a small plastic bar, and I believe we signed a treaty.

You know this bar. It lies on the conveyor belt between his groceries and mine. Two ounces of plastic. No lock. No blade. No authority of any kind.

And it prevents ALL war.

His ground beef ends. The bar stands. My vegetables begin. There has never been a dispute at this border. There will never be a dispute. In Japan, we would accomplish this with careful spacing and profound mutual anxiety. Here, a stick does it.

My country needed four hundred years and three shogunates to draw borders this stable. America draws them at every register, every few seconds, with a stick, and nobody even looks down.

When he placed it for me — placed it FOR me, an act of pure statesmanship — I thanked him with the depth the moment deserved. I may have bowed.

He said: "Yep."

Yep. The sound of a man who does not know he is a diplomat. The best ones never do.

But here is what shook me. At the end, the cashier picked up our sacred border and TOSSED it into a little slot. Casually. Like trash. The treaty, concluded, simply ends. No archive. No ceremony. The border rests, and waits to serve the next two nations.

Two ounces. No army. Undefeated since the invention of the conveyor belt.

A border does not ask to be feared. It lies down, and is obeyed.

I hand the bar to the person behind me now. Every visit. Personally. Before they can reach for it. The response is always a small, surprised "oh — thanks," and then peace between our houses.

Yesterday a man received my bar, paused, and handed THE NEXT one to the woman behind him.

It spreads, America. Statecraft is contagious, and your registers are the academy.

Yep.

[Aelfred The Great @aelfred_D]

“All those years, Olivia…all those cases…all those victims…and you never thought one person could be behind it all. How could they be? Absurd. No one would ever believe it. And yet, one person was. It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem. It’s me.”

[Vic Lombardi @VicLombardi]

Such a sad day for the @AltitudeTV family.

Chris Dempsey is one of the nicest human beings I’ve ever met. He’s a fellow native. I’m gonna miss our thoughtful conversations about Denver sports.

Scott Hastings, often blunt but always fair, you carry more than a quarter-century of @nuggets lore. Thanks for teaching all of us the game. Will never forget how emotional you got during the final seconds of Game Five in ‘23.

Chris Marlowe — you are a mentor and a friend. Many of us consider you THE VOICE of Nuggets basketball. You will always be the voice. And we will truly miss that voice.

[Dan Carlin @dccommonsense]

Trump's constant crowing about election "rigging" is his "Big Lie". He says he doesn't need proof...he can just see it. Now he "sees" it in California."Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". And we've seen none. It's conspiracy theory stuff.

[David Burge @iowahawkblog]

This is Noah Shannon, model citizen, slated to be Hawkeye senior defensive captain 2023. He had guilt pangs for having bet $10 on the Iowa Women's Basketball team in the 2023 NCAA tournament. The only bet he ever made. He turned himself in to coaches for the transgression who forwarded it to the NCAA.

They ruled him inelligible for the entire season, effectively ending his career. If the NCAA allows someone else to play after making thousands of bets, including many on his own team, I am going to fucking riot

[Ballsack Sports @BallsackSports]

Elite work. The monetization structures have further incentivized the fake news plague.

I also think the slow degradation of long form journalism and slow replacement with hot take shows, social media and clickbait has contributed to the problem.

We’re not reading newspapers and magazines as much. Instead, we’re scrolling these algorithms, deciding what we want to read/watch in a split second. As such, creators & outlets have had to optimize how they can catch the attention of the reader in that split second, especially through:

•controversy
•bold, large fonts
•obscene headlines and embellishment
•speaking really loud and fast (every IG reel creator)
•straight up lying (it works)
•popular sounds/music

The media/creator economy has devolved into short garbage… that’s what sells, that what gets engagement and views. And now AI is being used to streamline, automate, deceive, and embellish even more. There’s a whole epidemic of AI IG models and singers on IG right now…. Hundreds of thousands of followers.

Trust, quality of work, and credibility doesn’t garner the attention it deserves. But it will win out in the end. It’s what will eventually stand out when the media becomes oversaturated with fake slop.

Great, great work

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

@Carsobi Did you watch the games?? Cuz all your takes have missed all the beats kid.

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

@Abdiaziz1h @SwipaCam At what? Shooting free throws? Falling down? Begging refs for life? Needing free throws to impact a game? Mf-er way too talented to need all that help. Show up. Grow up. Play a real game for once.

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

What little respect for Caruso I had is now completely gone. @okcthunder basketball has made you this. Bball gods have spoken, go home.

[NBACentel @TheNBACentel]

Stephon Castle on Alex Caruso:

“HE DOES THIS EVERY GAME BRO” 👀👀

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

@JoshMCallaway You think the problem is Chet?!?! 😂😂

[Kenjac @JackKennedy]

No disrespect but SGA is the worst superstar athlete of my lifetime

[Raves @Ravers]

This was Chris Finch 2 years ago, before OKC won anything.

Instead of the league doing anything about it then, the entire team has evolved into untouchable floppers.

Media heads are now all repeating the same PR propaganda acting like we’re all blind.

Shaimeless league.

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

@RTNBA So "287 other players" doing it makes it acceptable? I'm raising children to play ball, SGA and his antics show them rules don't matter if it's a "strategy". Fuck off Mr Breen, I'll respect your history but clearly you need to move on now. You're the problem.

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

@dieujuu Flirtation, by Eugene de Blaas, 1894

[Hater Report @HaterReport]

They calling the Thunder’s signature move the “Smooth Criminal” 😭😭😭

[Joseph Bien-Kahn @jbienkahn]

Tom doing the lord’s work here. No more OKC fan excuses. Your dude is a mathematically confirmed flopper…

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

@keithdunn Interesting. I've been a Samsung user for a decade and have never once been contacted. Turned off the ACR on my TV's years ago, zero issues. No issues with my privacy settings either. Can confidently say I absolutely did with Apple & Google products before I switched though!!

[Steve Jefferies @monsterinbsmt]

@statmuse If he ever gets up off the floor and plays we can talk about "Legend". Meanwhile this dude spends more time on his back than Kim K

[LakeShowYo @LakeShowYo]

BREAKING: SGA HAS WON MVP

[Nav Toor @heynavtoor]

THIS GUY BUILT AN ENTIRE WIKIPEDIA THAT IS 100% AI HALLUCINATIONS AND IT'S OPEN SOURCE ON GITHUB

it's called Halupedia.

nothing on the site existed before you clicked. every article was generated the second you arrived.

the site has one rule: the universe only exists when you visit it.

it looks exactly like wikipedia. same fonts. same layout. same scholarly citations. same "stumble" button for random articles.

the only difference is none of it is real.

here are some actual articles currently in the encyclopedia:

> the great pigeon census of 1887
> the ministry of slightly wrong maps
> chaldic arithmetic — a branch of mathematics where subtraction is forbidden
> armund the river mapper — a cartographer who mapped 14,000 leagues of river without leaving his chair
> the society for the prevention of unnecessary tuesdays

every article page also tells you how many people are reading it right now. it says: "you alone are consulting this folio at present."

the creator's own tagline for the site is the most unhinged sentence i've read this year:

"an encyclopedia of a universe that does not exist until you visit it"

the entire backend is a single open source repo called vibeserver. one guy. one description on github: "a little webserver making things up just in time."

we built the largest knowledge base in human history and the very first thing a guy did with it was make a hallucinated mirror universe and put it on the open web.

the internet is healing.