SoFreeMe @SoFreeMe

A woman hiking in Canada nearly became a grizzly’s next meal and the video circulating right now is genuinely one of the most intense wildlife encounters you will ever watch - her dog is with her, a massive grizzly is right there, and somehow she kept her head together long enough for both of them to walk away breathing. That is not a small thing. Most people talk tough until nature is standing ten feet in front of them and every instinct in your body is screaming to run, and running is exactly the worst thing you can do. Grizzlies are built to chase, they top out over 700 pounds and can cover ground faster than any human alive. The people who survive these moments are the ones who override pure fear with pure discipline and this woman did exactly that. If you hike, camp, or spend any real time in the wilderness - bear spray is not optional, it is the difference between a story you tell and one somebody else tells about you. Could you have kept your cool? Hats off to her.

The US men’s soccer team sings along to the national anthem with their hands over their hearts. The vibe shift is real, American athletes are over the anti-American woke BS era. Awesome to see. Let’s kick ass again today.

@bev_hendry So glad you came!

@japan_nobunaga Now I want some

A small blue-roofed building on a corner in Inglewood, California. A walk-up window. A sign above it: CALIFORNIA'S ORIGINAL SOFT SERVE — SINCE 1946 I read it three times. A small cartoon ice cream cone in a chef's hat smiled at me from the sign. He had been smiling at the same corner for eighty years. I bowed to him. A man walking a small dog passed behind me, paused, and looked at the sign for one second too long, as if he had also just decided that the sign deserved something. I walked up to the window. A young woman leaned out. Name tag MAVIS, ponytail, summer job. "Hi, welcome to Foster's. What can I get for you?" "...The eldest item on your menu." "...Sorry?" "The dish that has been here since 1946." "Oh. The soft serve cone." "Then the soft serve cone." "You want it dipped?" "...Dipped." "Yeah. We flip the cone upside down into chocolate. Hardens around it." "...You take the offering. You turn it upside down. The chocolate seals around it." "...So that's a yes?" "That is a yes." In my country, a man entering a new house washes his hands and his face at the gate. The water shocks him. The shock cleanses him. This was the same thing. Mavis did not need to know. She turned to the machine. An older man at the back, white hair, apron, name tag BERT, walked up and took the cone from her. He carried it three steps to a small metal vat, turned it upside down, lowered it into the chocolate, held it for one second, lifted it. The dip slid down the sides and hardened almost instantly. A small dark roof over the white inside. He handed it through the window. "Three minutes, sir." "...Three minutes." "It melts. Eat it under three." "...The dip lasts three minutes." "After three, it goes." In my country, we have a word for things that last only three minutes. We have the same word for things that last only one season, and for things that last only one life. It is the same word. Bert did not need to know. I bowed to the cone before I touched it. A man behind me in line, in a Dodgers cap, holding his daughter's hand, said quietly, "did he just bow to the ice cream." His daughter, maybe six, said, "yeah." "...Why." "Because." The man removed his cap and held it against his chest. He did not look at me. He looked at the window. I took my first bite. The chocolate cracked, thin and clean, the way pottery breaks when it is meant to. Underneath, the soft serve was cold and gentle, the way a small kindness is gentle. The cone, when I bit through it, made the soft folded-paper sound a folded paper makes when you finally open it. I made a small involuntary sound. The girl behind me laughed once. I bowed to her, from the window, with the cone in my hand. She did not say anything. She just bowed back, deeply, the way only a six-year-old bows, with the whole upper body, because she does not yet know that adults bow only with the head. At one minute thirty, the chocolate roof was gone and most of the swirl with it. The cone had gone soft at the rim. I was a man eating against a clock that had been set, not by Bert, but by the chocolate itself, by the temperature of an afternoon, by the eighty years. At two minutes, an elderly woman walked up to the window. She was holding the hand of a small boy. She looked, for one full second, at the soft-serve machine through the window. Then she said, quietly: "Mavis, baby." "Hi, Grandma." "...You started this week." "Yeah." "You know this machine." "It's a Taylor." "...That is the same machine I stood behind, when I was your age." Mavis blinked once. She did not say anything. She turned to the machine and pulled the lever. The same low, contented mechanical sound. The same swirl rising into the cone. The grandmother turned, saw me with my half-eaten dip in my hand, and bowed. One inch. Not deep. The way one veteran bows to another in a parking lot, when neither of them expected to be recognized that day. I bowed back. The same inch. No deeper. She turned to her grandson. "Tell the lady what you want." The boy said, "dipped." Just the one word. I had thirty seconds left on mine. I ate the rest. I bit through the waffle. I tasted, at the very bottom of the cone, the small pocket of soft serve that always hides at the bottom of these things, the way the kindest part of a kind person hides at the bottom of them, and is found only by people who finish. I swallowed. There was no bell. There was only the machine, going back to silence, and the line behind me, moving forward by one. I bowed to the window. Mavis waved without turning her head. Bert nodded without lifting his eyes from the cone he was now dipping for the boy. The grandmother did not turn back to me, but lifted her free hand once, a small backward wave, the way a person waves who does not need to look to know. I stepped away from the window. I did not stagger. A man who has eaten an eighty-year-old cone must walk away straight, out of respect for the machine that did not refuse to keep going. In the parking lot, the small blue roof caught the late afternoon light and looked, for one moment, exactly the way it had looked in 1946, in a black-and-white photograph that I had not seen, and that I now somehow remembered. A country that keeps its own name on its own corner, for eighty years, is a country. A samurai does not dip his sword in chocolate. But he bows, in his head, to a man who has dipped ten thousand cones, kindly, for forty-five years, in the same window, in the same blue building, on the same corner. The cone melts. The custom does not. I am not on the wall. I am in the line.

This wins the internet for today. Tomorrow too. Next week and next month looking good too.

Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47

a day ago

💥

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It used to be like that here. In 1977-78 my oldest son walked a long walk to kindergarten with other neighborhood kids. This was Lowell, Massachusetts. When I was a kid in the 1950s I rode city buses by myself. In the 60s I went to high school on the Boston subway-- even riding at night after a basketball game. The trust is gone.

@japan_nobunaga Truth here. The bathrooms are awesome.

Shabbat Shalom. 🧡 May I get an 'Amen'? 🙏

Tucker is pushing lies. God bless @RaymondIbrahim5 for this!

Raymond Ibrahim @RaymondIbrahim5

2 days ago

JD Hall appeared on Tucker Carlson saying that Muslims were "very kind" to Christians, didn't "tax churches," and even "took care of our holy sites." In this brief video, I debunk these claims with the actual historical record:

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I now understand the American dream. I came to the World Cup because I was offered a last minute ticket to watch England play Croatia in Dallas and I started documenting my journey. The content went viral on social media. So much so, the President of the United States saw it himself. I was invited to attend the grand opening of the great American state fair for freedom 250 and halfway through Donald Trumps speech, I was told to come and wait back stage for a photograph. This sort of thing could only happen in America. As an Englishman I never really understood what America has to make it “the land of opportunity” But results speak for themselves.

Anti-Israel. Anti-America. Anti-Western Civilization. Why am I the only Democrat in the U.S. Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any of those self-identified communists?

Who made this clip? It would be good to give them the due credit.

Moshe @IsraelIDFend

2 days ago

Whoever made this deserves an AI award. MUST WATCH‼️

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@Remisagoodboy She's the best. No one comparable. She would have made an amazing monarch. Just saying.

@MikeSweeden @DavidLimbaugh Santa Monica Blvd?

@japan_nobunaga I hope you do a compilation of these essays. You have brought us real joy.

A barbecue joint in Texas. The line started before the sun. I joined it in the dark. By the time the doors opened I had stood five hours. I did not mind. A thing worth eating is worth waiting for, and the wait is part of the eating. They served it on butcher paper. No plate. A slice of brisket, dark bark on the outside, a pink ring beneath, soft enough to pull apart with two fingers. Smoked eighteen hours over oak. Salt and pepper and nothing else. A man named Earl ran the counter. He set a bottle of sauce beside my tray, the way you offer a guest a kindness. I did not touch it. This meat had been honest for eighteen hours. To pour sauce on it would call it a liar. Earl watched me lift the bare slice and eat it as it was. He smiled. "That's how you do it," he said. He had been waiting all morning to see who would leave the bottle closed. I took the bite. There was smoke, and salt, and time. That was all. Nothing hidden in it, nothing covered up, nothing to forgive. It tasted the way a man's word should sound. I closed my eyes. When a thing has no lie in it, you feel that too, somewhere behind the chest. I ate the whole slice, and then a second, and did not speak. Earl did not make me. Some things are better in silence. When I left, I bowed to the smoker, not the man. The man would understand. So tell me, America. You wait five hours and you leave the sauce on the table. Is it the meat you came for, or the proof that it needs nothing? And the cook who smoked it all night while you slept. When does he sleep?

@DavidFish7 Wow. Good one.

@MikeWingerii Actually I thought you were going to say that a true shepherd will absolutely know that certain sheep aren't there anymore and should be very concerned as to what happened to them. Is the shepherd only there for Sunday morning? Is he going to check on those missing ?

@CynicalPublius @Cyndichrishotm1 If you lived 100 years ago you would go to a sanitarium in Switzerland for a month and drink mineral waters while resting on a rattan chaise longue.