snacks

father of 4; software engineer

[Stephen Miller @StephenM]

At the end of a particularly thrilling and rollicking meeting in the Oval Office, Lindsey Graham turned to the room and said: “I’ve never had this much fun in my life.”

I cannot describe to you how much joy President Trump’s leadership and friendship brought to Lindsey. Meetings with Graham at the White House were filled with camaraderie, kinship and uproarious laughter.

As heartbreaking as his sudden passing is, I hope it will bring some measure of comfort to those who cherished him to know just how much he was living his dream every day. Very rarely in life do you get to be exactly where you want to be, when you want to be there, with who you want to be with, doing precisely what you want to do — that was every moment for Lindsey.

When President Trump won in Nov 2024, Lindsey was exultant. Elated. And determined. He couldn’t wait to spearhead work, as the Budget Chairman, on the reconciliation bill that would cement President Trump’s most important campaign promises. I’ll never forget the senate lunch, when a couple Senators were a tad off the program, and Lindsey — in his inimitable way — made sure everyone was onside by the time we left. It was a glorious thing to witness. He knew how to move a room.

Lindsey was a senator’s senator. The job was everything to him. Truly did he believe in the splendor of the office and the noble lineage behind it, of which he was the worthy heir.

He was a senator in the mold of those who fashioned the institution, someone who still had the ability, in a heated exchange, to use rhetorical power to change the course of events.

Which is why we will never forget his legendary Kavanaugh moment. We rarely think that we are out of time with our friends, so while there is a lot more I wish I could have said to Lindsey, I am glad that more than once I told him what that moment meant to the whole nation and why he was the only Senator who could have done it with such utter perfection.

Most importantly, I had the chance to tell him on many occasions what his friendship meant to me and to us all. There was never once a time he didn’t answer a phone call and lend whatever assistance was required. It was never a question with Lindsey. He believed deeply in the code of friendship and loyalty.

The fact that Lindsey started out as a political opponent only to become one the President’s most steadfast and faithful supporters underscores that Lindsey believed emphatically in the voice of the people.

There is a lot more I would like to say. His passing, at a time when he had never been more dynamic, is as unexpected as it is shocking. In many respects, Lindsey was the last of a breed of American Senator whose like we may not yet see again for a long time.

He lived every minute in the arena, a political gladiator to the very last.

More than anything now, our thoughts are with his Sister, nieces and loved ones.

We pray that God will ease their sorrow and heal their pain.

Lindsey can never be replaced and will never be forgotten.

Godspeed, my friend.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

RIP Lindsay Graham

The internet will do what it always does: flatten a complicated human being into a villain, a meme, or a collection of his worst clips.

I understand why people disliked him. I disagreed with him plenty. But the man spent more than three decades in Congress and 33 years serving in the Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve.

He deserves a more honest accounting than “sycophant” or “warmonger.”

Graham was a serious public servant.

He came from a working class family in South Carolina, lost both parents while he was young, helped raise his younger sister, and became the first person in his family to attend college.

He served as a military lawyer, retired as a colonel, spent eight years in the House, and more than two decades in the Senate.

That does not make him correct. It does establish that his life was fundamentally organized around public service.

For much of his career, Graham was also the kind of senator people now claim they want. He was clearly conservative, but willing to work with Democrats.

He helped negotiate the Gang of 14 compromise on judicial nominations. He supported comprehensive immigration reform through the Gang of Eight. He repeatedly worked with Dick Durbin on the DREAM Act. He voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan because he believed a qualified president’s nominees generally deserved confirmation.

He took real political risk to solve problems. That matters.

He was also one of the Senate’s most engaged foreign policy voices. He understood alliances, knew foreign leaders, traveled to war zones, supported NATO, defended Ukraine, and believed America had obligations beyond its own borders.

His final public work involved meeting with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv and advancing bipartisan sanctions against Russia.

You can disagree with his worldview. I often did. But he treated foreign policy as a serious responsibility. Q

His shortcomings were also real.

Graham was too interventionist. His default answer to foreign policy failure was often more force, more troops, more sanctions, or more American involvement. He understood the costs of weakness better than he understood the costs of overreach.

His transformation from fierce Trump critic to loyal Trump ally badly damaged his credibility.

The charitable explanation is that he chose access and influence over irrelevance. The less charitable explanation is that he adapted to wherever Republican power moved.

Both are probably true.

Lindsey Graham was not a saint. He was inconsistent, overly hawkish, and sometimes far too willing to trade institutional credibility for political influence.

But he was not useless, stupid, or evil either.

He served his country for most of his adult life. He knew the Senate. He worked across the aisle. He attempted to solve immigration when both parties preferred weaponizing it.

He defended alliances when isolationism became fashionable. He remained engaged with the world until his final days.

My honest verdict is that Lindsey Graham was a flawed but net positive public servant.

A genuine institutionalist who became less institutional over time.

A knowledgeable foreign policy senator whose appetite for intervention often exceeded his strategic caution.

A conservative partisan who still understood that governing requires negotiation.

Criticize him honestly. He earned plenty of it.

But a country that cannot distinguish between a flawed public servant and a worthless one eventually stops producing public servants at all.

I write this to pay respect. Social media has created too many vile content creators who only see the bad. Want clicks. Let the man rest in peace and be honest about it. Hyperbole is just silly.

[snacks @snacks_unhinged]

@gigafactories Can we buy the fordite somewhere?

[Devan Costa @DevanCosta]

My raping days are behind me , time to become a politician

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

We liberated Belgium in 1944, and this is how they repay us? With an ass-whooping that will be remembered in America for hours, possibly even days, to come?

[Daniel @growing_daniel]

All the host countries got kicked out so now it’s like we’re hosting a party that has hours to go and we just want to go to bed

[Peer Richelsen @peer_rich]

claude code be like:

This command requires approval:

sudo netbind --flush-kernel /var/run/nullmux.sock && \
orbitctl phase --target=localmesh --entropy=9f2c:77aa --dry-spin && \
cat /proc/ghostbus/routes | awk '{print $3":"$7}' | xargs -n1 voidpipe --reindex --no-color && \
systemctl shadow-reload nebula-cache.service --until=epoch+43

[snacks @snacks_unhinged]

@wylfcen Muse would like to have a word

https://t.co/dMQ0UuZFAd

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

Happy 4th of July to everyone, including the haters and losers!

[S🤭ck B🤭y @CanadianSockBro]

14 year old me said "Wow I wish I could see Ellen Page's tits" and the monkeys paw slowly curled one finger

[Paul @WomanDefiner]

They should name ICE detention centers and prisons after famous American leftist. "Martin Luther King Deportation center" or Ruth Bader Ginsburg Super max prison".

[Clementine 🍊(clem harrington) @clemm1928]

My partner and I needed to pick a safe word since we’ve started exploring consensual con-consent. We decided on “nigger” because hearing such a vile slur—which is otherwise totally unacceptable for us to say—is shocking and will stop any play in its tracks. As anti-racists, we arnt messing around when we hear that word. It will allow us to take a minute to sit down, and remember that it’s unethical for people of colonizing decent to reproduce.

[Frank J. Fleming @IMAO_]

The obvious solution is that if an illegal alien has kids in the U.S., you deport the parents and raise the kids in some sort of ultra-patriotic super-soldier program.

[Harry Payne @HeadOfTVDept]

"My child was born in the Shire. It's a Hobbit."

[Carlos That Notices Things @QuetzalPhoenix]

Muscles only grow when you rest, after having stressed them during exercise.

Wisdom is the same. You can only grow wise once you cringe, having stressed your mind by being retarded.

[Ribdro @Ribdr0]

@ngxson This looks like a playoff bracket from hell.

[fedaykin reepicheep @mauddweeb]

@peterawolf @FreeNortherner I’m a prison abolitionist but most prison abolitionists won’t like what my solution for murderers is

[The Fourth Musketeer @IV_Musketeer]

Before the 1950s, clover was a STANDARD component of American lawns.

Seed mixes included it on purpose.

Then broadleaf herbicides were invented.

They killed clover along with "weeds." So the chemical companies rebranded clover as a weed — to sell more herbicide.

That's it. That's the whole story.

Clover is not a weed. It's the future of your lawn.

White Dutch clover (Trifolium repens):
Self-fertilizing — fixes nitrogen from the air into the soil. No fertilizer needed. EVER.

…and it feeds the grass around it for free.

Drought-resistant — stays green when grass goes brown.

Bee paradise — constant blooms from May to frost.

Chokes out weeds — dense growth shades out weed seeds.

No mowing needed (stays 4-6 inches) — or mow monthly.

Soft underfoot — kids love it.

Costs $5-10 to overseed 1,000 sq ft.

How to add clover to your existing lawn:
Overseed in spring or fall.

Scatter seed (2 oz per 1,000 sq ft).

Water lightly for 2 weeks. Done.

Stop using broadleaf herbicides (they kill clover).

Stop fertilizing (clover makes its own).

Mow at 3-4 inches.

The lawn industry told you clover was a weed so they could sell you chemicals.

Take your lawn back.

[Carlos That Notices Things @QuetzalPhoenix]

This statue cost the same as the reflecting pool project btw