@japan_nobunaga I have held off on visiting Japan because I've been so afraid I would not be able to catch a shrimp in my mouth. I'm so relieved by this message of truth.
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.
This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽
My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us!
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.
I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it.
Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought.
We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!
Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."
Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.
When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.
My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country.
People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.
Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.
We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."
@dullstar74@Joelmpetlin Same thing happened to Tucker Carlson! They both deserve answers, damn it!
Except the employer doesn't have to give them answers.
Anonyme : Je suis pompier et ce que j’ai vu hier dans les rues de Paris m’a brisé le cœur.
On est intervenus vers 22h, après l’appel pour un feu de poubelles qui dégénérait. On pensait à un simple incident de soirée. On est arrivés sur place et c’était l’enfer. Paris, ma ville, celle où j’ai grandi, où j’ai fait mes premières gardes, était devenue une zone de guerre. Des fumées noires partout, des cris, des explosions de mortiers. Des groupes de jeunes, souvent issus de l’immigration, cagoulés, organisés, qui chargeaient les forces de l’ordre comme sur un champ de bataille.
J’ai vu des collègues policiers se faire lyncher à coups de barre de fer. J’ai vu une voiture de police caillassée alors qu’on sortait juste pour éteindre un feu qui menaçait des familles. On a été pris à partie par des émeutiers qui nous hurlaient dessus, nous traitant de “chiens”. On essayait juste de sauver des vies, et on devenait des cibles.
J’ai ramassé un gamin de 14 ans, le visage en sang, qui pleurait en disant qu’il avait suivi “les grands” pour “s’amuser”. J’ai vu une mère de famille, volets fermés, qui nous suppliait de protéger ses enfants pendant que ça cassait tout en bas. Les vitrines défoncées, les commerces pillés, les voitures brûlées… tout ça sous prétexte de “fêter” quelque chose.
Fêter, ce n’est pas casser.
C’est ça, la France en 2026 ? Un pays où on ne peut plus sortir le soir sans risquer sa vie ? Un pays où des quartiers entiers sont livrés à des clans qui ne respectent ni nos lois, ni notre histoire, ni nos pompiers, ni nos policiers ? Où on regarde impuissant notre capitale, symbole de lumière et de culture, transformée en terrain de jeu pour des barbares qui crachent sur la main qui les nourrit ?
Cette nuit, en rentrant chez moi à 6h du matin, encore couvert de suie et de sueur, j’ai pleuré comme un gosse. Pas de fatigue. De rage et de tristesse. Pour mes enfants. Pour mes collègues blessés. Pour ce pays que j’aime et qui se laisse mourir.
Réveillez-vous. S’il vous plaît. Avant qu’il ne reste plus rien à sauver.
Tenía 29 kg de sobrepeso, una barriga enorme y quería alcanzar un 13 % de grasa corporal en 2026. Lo logré con estas 25 reglas:
Regla 1. DEJA DE CORRER.
Our child got a phone age 11, in 2020 when she was SO lonely and isolated. We'd just moved countries and the local kids were being shits. Within 10 days she "came out" trans. We didn't know WTF was going on but when the school found out they sent us for mandatory "counselling". The 2 psychs (wearing masks on zoom) spoke with such thick Cork accents we didn't understand most of it. They then asked to speak to her alone. I listened at the door. They didn't even ask about the horrible bullying the local kids had put her through, and she spent 15 mins saying "pardon" because she couldn't understand them. Then they told us she was trans and we had to affirm or she would khs. Sent us breastbinding info and sent our GP a letter telling him to refer us to the gender clinic. They put our name down for some bizarre "Big brother" type programme where an adult trans person, a total stranger, with no clinical training, was going to pick her up and take her for an ice cream so she could talk about her feelings. We of course refused, but as the Irish CPS has a horrific reputation for removing kids whose parents don't toe the line, we were deeply uneasy about all of it. We left Ireland shortly after that, returning to South Africa, where the govt does NOT trans your kids.
We found out that she had been groomed online, on her phone on tiktok and other social media, lovebombed by ADULT groomers like Fuzzz99, Jacob Tobia and Jeffrey Marsh (If you think you might be trans, YOU ARE TRANS! Cut off any family that doesn't affirm the REAL you... etc). She begged for blockers and T, which we refused. We did the pronouns and the name change but were very firm that hormones etc were NOT on the table. Natural puberty hit like a freight train. She started wearing push up bras for the breasts she used to tell us she wanted amputated, nails, hair, make up became super NB. Noticing boys, falling in love with her body.
She's now the MOST FEMME creature imaginable, has a long term boyfriend, is fantasising about the names she wants to call the children she told us she was never going to want.
Of the 14 trans kids in the support group we joined in 2022, only ONE is still "trans" and he's a super femme, super autistic "aromantic" and "asexual" gay boy. One of the other girls now has a deep voice and facial hair and is furious at her parents for puttin her on the T she begged for - that she had said she would khs without.
We have been through absolute hell. But thank the Goddess I trusted my instincts and KNEW MY CHILD. It was a trend, a gaslighting cult, an inhuman attack on the family. We were told we were bigots for daring to question any of it. Affirm, affirm, affirm was the only avenue allowed. The mothers have their voices back now and we are NOT GOING TO SHUT UP ANY LONGER.
Our summer days involved being dropped off at the mall with a friend before the stores had even lifted their gates. Then picked back up after mom's hospital shift was over that afternoon. We watched people, nibbled at the food court, and spent our babysitting money for 8 hours. Didn't happen every day, but it was part of a weekly lineup.