Steve

🇺🇸 During the Mexican-American War, Lieutenant James Longstreet of the 8th U.S. Infantry was carrying the colors as they charged up the slopes of Chapultepec Castle outside Mexico City in 1847. He was shot in the thigh and fell. He then handed the flag to his friend and fellow officer, Lt. George E. Pickett. Pickett took the flag, carried it through fire, and eventually planted the Stars and Stripes atop Chapultepec Castle in one of the most iconic moments of the war. The castle fell, Mexico City was soon taken, and the war effectively ended. Longstreet’s wound was severe, but he survived. Pickett’s gallantry earned him a brevet promotion. The two young officers forged a bond that day that would last for decades. Pictured is a young Longstreet and young Pickett in their pre-CSA uniforms.

Startling satellite loop showing numerous intense, fast moving wildfires tonight from far northern Minnesota and into Ontario. Extreme heat signatures and thick smoke plumes are visible, with one fire even producing a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, a fire-induced thunderstorm.

Give that judge a fucking medal. @ShereleMoody

Sam Neill has sadly passed away at the age of 78.

On this day in 1944, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died in his sleep in a stone farmhouse in Normandy. He was 56 years old, and he had spent almost his entire adult life trying to be worthy of a famous last name. He was the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt. In the First World War he went to France and was gassed and badly wounded at Soissons leading his men. That same summer his younger brother Quentin, a pilot, was shot down and killed over France. Ted came home with lungs and a leg that never fully recovered, and before he even left Europe he helped found the American Legion so that ordinary soldiers would have someone looking out for them. Between the wars he did almost everything. Governor of Puerto Rico. Governor General of the Philippines. Businessman, explorer, writer. He could have spent the Second World War safe behind a desk. Instead, at 54, arthritic and walking with a cane, he talked his way back into uniform and into combat. By 1943 he was fighting in North Africa and Sicily under Terry Allen, and their loose, unpolished, soldier-first style rubbed General Patton the wrong way. Patton had them both relieved of command. Roosevelt didn't sulk. He asked for another job, any job, as long as it kept him near the fighting. They made him assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division. Then came D-Day. He hid a heart condition from the Army doctors. He wrote to his commander three separate times, in writing, begging to go in with the very first wave rather than watch from a ship. He was the only general to land in the first wave on any beach that morning, the oldest man in the invasion, walking through machine gun fire with a cane in one hand and a pistol in the other. The boats came in a mile off course. Officers froze. Roosevelt limped up and down the beach under fire, studied the ground, and said, "We'll start the war from right here." Then he spent the morning waving men forward and sorting out the chaos so calmly that terrified 20 year olds looked at this old man with a cane and decided that if he wasn't scared, they wouldn't be either. His son Quentin, named for the uncle killed in the last war, landed at Omaha Beach the same morning. They were the only father and son to come ashore together on D-Day. He died a month later. A heart attack in his sleep. And here is the part that gets me. On the very day he died, the orders had just come through promoting him to major general and giving him his own division. He never saw the paperwork. He never knew he'd earned the Medal of Honor either. At his funeral his pallbearers were seven of the most famous generals of the war, Bradley, Hodges, Collins, Barton, Huebner, and George Patton. The same Patton who had fired him. Patton wrote in his diary that Roosevelt was one of the bravest men he had ever known. Years later Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic thing he witnessed in all of World War II. He didn't pause. He said, "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach."

Canadians have lost their minds. The woke mind virus is out of control.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Friday.

Yesterday, four of the world’s most iconic tall ships raced head-to-head offshore before making their way to Boston for #SAIL250. This weekend, they’ll sail into Boston Harbor led by USCGC Eagle for the Parade of Sail. Don’t miss it! ⚓🇺🇸 #fivesisterstallships

Españoles de diario: "uff, que mal me caen los franceses" Españoles cuando se enteran que el partido de Francia es contra Marruecos:

Here is Roger Ebert's first paragraph of his review for "The Mummy" and it is why he was the greatest film critic to ever live

Windows has 200+ services running in the background right now. Most of them exist to collect data on you. Someone built a free, open-source tool that kills almost every anti-user decision Windows has shipped in the last five years. Cortana. Copilot. Start menu ads. Telemetry. Location tracking. Suggested apps you never asked for. Gone. One click. One 8MB .exe. It's called optimizerDuck. The closest thing to "install Windows the way it should have shipped" I've seen. → 35+ optimizations across performance, privacy, GPU, power, services, UX → 200+ services you can toggle, each labeled low, medium, or high risk → vendor-specific GPU tuning for AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel → bloatware remover with a preview of what dies → every action gets a rollback file → prompts you to make a restore point before touching your system No installer. No telemetry. No ads. No premium tier. GPL v3. Runs offline. Windows 10/11 x64.

Y'all a little overweight? 😳

We did exactly these exercises in boxing class yesterday at the end of it. Everyone was quasi-crying. They really work 👌

The HMS SURPRISE from Master and Commander is in such disrepair that the museum where she’s docked has decided to permanently close the exhibit. There is nothing to be done to save her. According to the museum, it would cost more than $25 million. The exhibit closes in August 2027. @russellcrowe Captain Aubrey, if you’d like a last look at your beloved Surprise, time is short. facebook.com/share/p/1EuRuv…

All of Twitter, immediately:

🚨 BREAKING: Nigel Farage has resigned as an MP to trigger a by-election in Clacton  "This will be a people vs the establishment by-election. A chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment"

Otto Skorzeny on his friend and Comrade Hans-Ulrich Rudel after his capture by Americans Talk about an honorless bunch of barbarians

Kinda incredible how effortlessly beautiful those ships are. Half of the shots are ready-made painting material

This guy is probably the most American person I've seen holy shit lmfao