Rob Cornelius

2-time Western States Heritage Champion. The kind of person who would go to Tumbleweed for an Anniversary. Feat. Felix Sabates. #MACtion

[WVSports.com @WVSportsDotCom]

#WVU is up 14-1. There's a guy holding a raccoon in the crowd. I don't know what else to tell you.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. There is a white sauce here that the people pour upon everything, with the devotion of a sacred rite. I have become a believer.

I noticed it slowly. A bowl of it beside the vegetables. A cup of it beside the bread. Beside the meat. Beside the other sauce. Children dipped fruit in it. A grown man beside me poured it onto a slice of pizza that already had a sauce of its own, closed his eyes, and sighed like a man coming home.

I asked its name. They told me with a small reverence: ranch.

For it is written that every great people anoints its food with one sacred thing — a drop of gold pressed from olives, a paste of beans aged in cedar. This nation has chosen a cool white elixir, and it anoints not one dish but all dishes, holding nothing back. For to leave a single food unblessed would be the deeper impiety.

So I anointed. Everything. The vegetable, yes. But also the rice. The egg. The morning fish. I would not be the one barbarian who left his plate unblessed while a whole nation dipped in joy around me.

And here my heart rose, and I declared the thing a calmer man would not:

"I will pour this holy elixir upon every food beneath the heavens — the noble and the humble, the savory and the sweet — until I find the one dish it cannot improve. And on that day I will know I have reached the very edge of the world, for everything within it has been made better by ranch."

The teenager refilling the dip station watched me anoint a bowl of rice.

"...that's a lot of ranch, my guy."

"It is the correct amount," I told him, "for a god."

I have not yet found the dish it cannot improve. I have stopped looking. So I brought a great vat of it to the next gathering and set it at the center of the table, and the whole room descended upon it with cries of joy, and a woman I had never met looked at me and said, "okay — YOU get it."

I have never felt more accepted.

So tell me, America.

You call it ranch. A condiment. A thing on the side.

I call it the one sauce a whole nation agreed to love together —

and I dip, with all of you,

gladly.

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

He ain't the worst that you've seen …

👉 https://t.co/4Fus4ndYv2

[NyanChuu🔮🇯🇵🍭 @tanpukunokami]

USA. I ordered a large soda.

In Japan, large means slightly larger.

A small drink becomes a medium drink.
A medium drink becomes a large drink.
Everyone understands the agreement.

But in America, large means the conversation has left the restaurant.

The cashier handed me the cup.

I looked at it.

It looked back.

This was not a drink.

This was a private reservoir with a lid.

I held it with both hands, because one hand felt disrespectful. The ice moved inside like a small glacier. The straw stood there with the confidence of a flag planted on new land.

The cashier smiled like this was normal.

So I accepted it.

In America, a large drink is not a beverage. It is infrastructure.

I took one sip.

Nothing changed.

I took another sip.

Still full.

I took a serious sip, the kind of sip a man takes when he has decided to participate in his own future.

The level did not move.

At that point, I stopped drinking and began managing it.

I checked the weight.
I listened to the ice.
I adjusted the straw angle.
I monitored condensation on the cup wall.

I was no longer a customer.

I was the Department of Soda.

A child walked past holding the same size cup with one hand.

One hand.

No fear.
No hesitation.
No respect for the burden.

I understood.

He was born into the system.

I carried mine outside like a sacred responsibility. The sun was hot. The cup was cold. I was small. The soda was still winning.

By the time I reached the parking lot, I had accepted the truth.

I did not order a drink.

I was appointed temporary governor of a liquid province.

I did not finish it.

It finished me.

[Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630]

Totally at random, a guy I met at some men's even apparently just bought Fuddruckers.

[Trevor Bailey @trevorsports_98]

Keep doing what you're doing Larson ❤️👏

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

84 years ago today, a pilot running out of fuel made a decision that won the Pacific War. Most Americans have never heard his name.

June 4, 1942. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan's navy is undefeated. Four of the carriers that burned Pearl, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, are steaming toward Midway to finish off the US Pacific Fleet.

At 7:52 AM, Wade McClusky launches from USS Enterprise leading 32 Dauntless dive bombers. Here's the detail nobody mentions: McClusky is a fighter pilot. He'd been given the air group weeks earlier and had barely flown a dive bomber in combat. Now he's leading every SBD the Enterprise has at the most important target in the Pacific.

9:20 AM. He arrives at the intercept point where the Japanese fleet is supposed to be.

Empty ocean. Nothing for miles.

The Japanese had turned. Nobody knew where. And now McClusky owns the worst math problem in naval aviation: his fuel is bleeding away, and every minute he keeps searching, he condemns more of his own pilots to ditch in open water where nobody will find them.

Doctrine is clear. Turn back.

McClusky keeps going. He works a search pattern, squeezing miles out of dying fuel tanks.

9:55 AM. Far below, a single Japanese destroyer is cutting a white scar across the ocean at flank speed. It's the Arashi, racing to rejoin the fleet after depth-charging the American submarine Nautilus. Think about that. A failed sub attack is about to give away the entire Japanese navy.

McClusky reads the wake like an arrow and follows it.

10:02 AM. The horizon fills with the entire Japanese strike force. Four carriers, their decks crammed with planes being refueled and rearmed. Fuel lines snaking everywhere. Bombs stacked in the open.

And here's the miracle: the sky above them is empty. Minutes earlier, American torpedo squadrons had attacked at sea level and been annihilated. Torpedo 8 lost all 15 planes. One survivor, Ensign George Gay, watched what came next while hiding under his seat cushion in the water. Those doomed pilots dragged every Japanese fighter down to the waves. The door upstairs was wide open.

10:22 AM. McClusky pushes over from 14,500 feet. Both squadrons follow him down onto Kaga. It's actually a mistake, doctrine said split the targets, but Lt. Dick Best catches it mid-dive, pulls out with two wingmen, and goes after Akagi alone. His single bomb pierces the flight deck into the packed hangar. It's enough.

By 10:28, Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu, the third hit simultaneously by Yorktown's bombers, are floating infernos. Six minutes. Three carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor, gone. Hiryu follows them to the bottom that evening.

The cost of McClusky's gamble was real. Many Enterprise bombers never made it home, some shot down, others swallowed by the sea when their tanks ran dry. McClusky himself was jumped by two Zeros on the way out, took five bullets through his shoulder, and still flew his shot-up Dauntless back to the Enterprise.

Admiral Nimitz said McClusky's decision "decided the fate of our carrier task force and our forces at Midway." Japan never won another major battle.

One borrowed pilot. One destroyer's wake. One choice to keep flying when every gauge said go home.

[nascarman @nascarman_rr]

Shout out to the dude who wore a Paul Menard shirt to Game 1 of the NBA Finals

[Literally Shaking @mashaloo]

@japan_nobunaga “A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter”

[Todd Bodine (Official) @Team_Onion]

Priceless

[Super 70s Sports @Super70sSports]

Carrying around 64 ounces of RC in a glass bottle is a move that immediately establishes alpha dominance over any other adult males in the immediate vicinity.

[Braking Bob @BrakingBob]

This Ross Chastain ad for TMT Gravel is incredible. One of my favorite #Nascar advertisements in awhile

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A potluck. Everyone brings one dish. I have never been so out of my depth in my life.

I was invited to a gathering. "Just bring a dish to share," they said. Simple words. I did not sleep for three days.

Because I understood instantly what this was. A summit. Every guest, a lord of their own house, arriving bearing tribute. And tribute is judged. Tribute is ranked. To bring the wrong dish to the wrong table is to fall in standing before your peers, possibly forever.

So I prepared. I made my finest dish. I carried it to the door with two hands and a straight back, braced for the weighing of my worth.

The first lord arrived with a bowl of orange powder noodles. Macaroni and cheese. The crowd roared. He set it down at the center of the table. The CENTER. I noted this. The center is the seat of power.

The second lord brought a tower of small brown meat orbs in red sauce. "Meatballs," he announced, like a man laying down a sword. They were placed beside the macaroni. A strong showing. An alliance, perhaps.

I studied the table like a battlefield map. Potato salad: defensive, reliable, old money. A vegetable tray, untouched, clearly a hostage offering no one expected to win. And then a woman walked in, raised a flat box overhead, and the entire room turned and CHEERED.

Pizza. She had brought pizza. Store-bought. Still in the box.

I was stunned. She had not even cooked it. And yet the people rejoiced as if a king had entered. I revised my entire understanding of the hierarchy on the spot. Effort means nothing here. Only the roar of the crowd decides rank.

I placed my dish down, humbly, near the napkins. A peasant's position. I accepted it.

And then a man tapped my shoulder, pointed at my dish, and said the words that changed everything.

"Whoa, did you make this? This is amazing. Everybody, you GOTTA try this guy's thing."

The room turned. The room came. The room ATE. My dish vanished in ninety seconds. The pizza woman herself took a second helping and looked at me with respect.

I had won the summit. By accident. With a dish I placed by the napkins.

I understand nothing about this country. I have never been happier. I am hosting the next one.

So tell me, America.

Is there a system to the potluck? A secret rank? A hidden law?

I have decided there is not.

You just bring the thing you love, and everyone eats it, and somehow everybody wins.

It is the most insane way to hold a war.

I will fight in every single one.

[Cincinnati Reds @Reds]

June 4, 2002: The Reds select catcher Joey Votto out of Richview Collegiate Institute in Toronto with the 44th overall pick in the MLB Draft. #RedsVault

[greg @greg16676935420]

Boobs are back

[Magills @magills_]

I’m really gonna miss seeing Scott Pelley on my tv on those occasions where I fall asleep during the afternoon NFL game and wake up to hear his whistle-y lisp reporting on a civil war somewhere in Middle Africa that somehow is my fault.

[Mike Beauvais @MikeBeauvais]

The Curt Cignetti College Football 27 cover looks like the poster for a 1994 Disney movie in which a recently divorced NFL head coach decides to coach an underachieving high school team of misfits as a way to reconnect with his son who's grown distant after his parents split up.

[DocumentingLibs @HistorianUSA1]

😂💀 Insurance agent just casually dropped the most HOOD financial advice of all time:

“If you got a kid who likes to shoot people, bar folks, or stay in crazy situations… put ’em in a $100k life insurance policy for $25 a month. They get clapped THIS weekend? You getting a check, fam.”

This man said “be prepared… for the streets”

😭 Bro turned drive-bys into passive income.

[Flappr @flapprdotnet]

Never forget that in March 2020, Whoopi Goldberg said "I'm hoping Dr. Jill becomes the surgeon general... she's a hell of a doctor."

Her co-hosts then uncomfortably explained Jill Biden had doctorate in Education, not a medical degree.

All time retard moment.

[OU-OH Yeah! @OUCats1]

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