floma

antenna engineer | iraq war vet | bronze age/ greek/ roman history nerd |

[floma @risibleusername]

@TMTLongShort St Bessent will save the world

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In Alabama a man said "Roll Tide" to me as a greeting.

Later that same day, the same man said "Roll Tide" as a goodbye.

I asked a woman at the store what it means.

She said, "Roll Tide."

I asked what it means.

She said, "It means Roll Tide, sugar."

So I began collecting evidence. I kept a list. I am not embarrassed about the list.

I have now heard "Roll Tide" used as: hello. Goodbye. Thank you. I am sorry. Congratulations. That is unfortunate. I agree. I disagree. And once, in a hardware store, as a complete set of instructions for installing a ceiling fan.

I heard it said at a funeral.

It was appropriate. It was the most appropriate thing anyone said that day.

I began using it. Carefully at first, the way a man handles a borrowed sword.

I said it to a cashier. She said it back.

I said it to a police officer who had stopped me for a broken taillight.

He looked at me for a long moment. He looked at my face. He looked at my taillight.

Then he said it back, and nodded once, and did not write the ticket.

I wish to be extremely clear that I am not claiming those two events are related.

I am also not claiming they are unrelated.

A man at a gas station heard my accent and asked where I was from. I told him Japan.

He said, "Roll Tide."

He meant welcome. I knew he meant welcome. There was no ambiguity at all.

I have been in Alabama eleven days.

I have one word.

It has been enough for everything.

I have started saying it in other states.

It does not work in other states.

I said it in a warehouse store in Oregon. One man turned around.

He was from Alabama. He said it back. We did not speak after that. We did not have to.

I say it anyway.

[Mahir 🇹🇷🇬🇧 @ScrewderiaF1]

USA goalkeeper on Belgium’s third goal

[Boppa 🧟‍♂️ @ihatebbls]

That shit cool and all but ain’t a soul on Belgium meeting Derrick Henry in the A gap in the middle of december

[Trey Rowland @trey_rowland59]

US getting red cards overturned.

Mexico getting home knockout games.

canada:

[Troll Football @TrollFootball]

How USA will play against Belgium now that they have Donald Trump's presidential red card immunity

[1776 Live @250YearsAgoLive]

Continental Congress HAS SIGNED A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE! 

The UNITED STATES are OFFICIALLY INDEPENDENT from BRITAIN.

LIBERTY BELLS ring out throughout Philadelphia; the streets ERUPT IN ECSTASY.

[greg @greg16676935420]

USA: 2
Bosnia: 0
Herzegovina: 0

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Wilson F. Ball🇺🇸🇦🇷 @WillyFoosball]

Tonight you are FUCKING LOSERS!

[Gain of Fauci @DschlopesIsBack]

Me and the boys going to FIFA Headquarters to appeal Balogun’s red card so he can play against Belgium 🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Gavin McHugh @gavinmchughh]

Maybe the greatest American video ever filmed

[Saffron Sniper @Saffron_Sniper1]

Chinese people are trolling Europeans by posting videos on social media showing that even their pigs have air conditioning, while many Europeans can’t because of government rules.

[Michael Mathes @MichaelMathes]

“England historically has struggled here in Massachusetts”
— #WorldCup announcer on Fox
👀

[Faux Pelini @FauxPelini]

Iran-New Zealand was a tie
does this mean NZ has to give them 300 billion dollars

[floma @risibleusername]

@conksresearch I wake up every hour throughout the night to check the rates and they never drop…..

[Steven Huffman @Poeslawisalive]

A Coalition of 44 Countries have signed on to a resolution requesting that the United States attack them also. Because they could use the money.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.

I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.

In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.

"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.

"Honey, that's what it looks like."

The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."

I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.

I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.

It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.

"Well?" the waitress asked.

"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."

"Everybody does, hon."

Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.

Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.

I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.

It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.

[floma @risibleusername]

@TheMichaelEvery Headlines war is so much more fun than shooting guns war

[Michael Every @TheMichaelEvery]

Always a pleasure talking to Nate, and we cover a lot of ground beyond Iran… but, yes, despite the current news headlines (fast-changing as they are!), I underline that a TACO is the whole enchilada in terms of the geostrategic damage it would wreak on the US - and the West.

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

The most surreal thing of our trip so far. Currently driving towards Louisiana and the radio station we were listening to started talking about our trip and played Ella Langley especially for us😭😭😭