Jeff Donnay

Caruso and Castle are both running, they bump into each other. Caruso falls down, Castle doesn’t. Whistle goes to the Thunder.

Every Honeycrisp apple is a clone of a single tree planted at the University of Minnesota in 1962. Every one. Apple seeds are random. Plant a Honeycrisp seed and the new tree produces a small, sour apple that’s usually inedible. So apple growers do something old and clever. They cut a small branch off the original Honeycrisp tree, slot it into a slit in a young apple sapling, wrap the joint, and wait. The branch fuses to its new host and starts producing Honeycrisps. About 20 million Honeycrisp trees exist worldwide, every one a piece of that 1962 tree on different roots. Same goes for Gala, Fuji, Pink Lady, Granny Smith. Every Granny Smith on Earth traces back to a seedling found in 1868 by a woman named Maria Ann Smith in Australia. She’d thrown French crab apple cores onto her compost heap, one of them sprouted, and the apples it bore were unusually tart and good for cooking. That one tree is the ancestor of every Granny Smith in every grocery store on the planet. Wine has the bigger story. In the 1860s, a tiny aphid called phylloxera caught a boat from America to France, hidden in some grapevine cuttings. It eats grape roots. French vines had no defense and started dying everywhere. Within 15 years, French wine production crashed from about 11 billion bottles a year to 3 billion. The blight then tore through Italy, Spain, and Germany, and European wine was on the edge of collapse. The rescue came from Missouri and Texas. American grapevines had grown up with phylloxera and were immune to it. So growers chopped French grape varieties off at the trunk and joined them to American roots. Above the soil: still French grapes. Below the soil: aphid-proof American root. It worked. Today, almost every bottle of French, Italian, Spanish, Australian, and Californian wine you’ve ever drunk sits on top of an American root. The technique is ancient. Chinese farmers were grafting trees by 1000 BCE. A Greek medical text from 424 BCE describes it casually, like it was already old news. It works because plants don’t have a rejection system the way animals do. Cut two branches. Match the green layers just under the bark. Wrap them tight. In a few weeks the plumbing has fused into a single plant. A Syracuse University art professor named Sam Van Aken has spent 18 years building a single tree that grows 40 different fruits: peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, nectarines, almonds. In spring it blossoms in pink, white, and crimson all at once. He’s made more than a dozen. They sell for up to $30,000 each. Without grafting, there would be no commercial apple industry, no global wine industry, and most of the heirloom fruits humans have bred over the centuries would have gone extinct. One clean cut, and you’ve kept entire species alive.

Hey @Timberwolves maybe don’t turn the ball over so much. Lucky to only be down 3

@vikingsrube Been here for a minute 😀

@jdonnay Welcome to X

AYO!!! 40 burger

@GopherWBB is on 🔥 13 point victory against the #10 team in the land.

@pdouglasweather My grandfather, a farmer in central Minnesota, said there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes.

Refs are pro Georgia to the semifinals

@ESPNAusNZ Donte must be feeling good today after absolutely trucking Jokic on the foul call. 💪

WE NEED TO KNOW WHAT ANT SAID 🗣️ The delay of game tech we understand... but we have to know what Ant said to deserve getting EJECTED ON 44 POINTS IN OT ON CHRISTMAS DAY 😱 #NBA

@JonKrawczynski @MinnesotaMunn Much better execution down the stretch

That’s a gritty, gutsy win for the Wolves. Had to dig deep when they were pushed.

@KendrickPerkins comparing SGA to Jordan is one of the worst takes of all time. @notthefakeSVP check your boy harder than that next time. Comparing two point shooting percentage and scoring doesn’t come close to a comparison.

@PrimeVideo the audio for the @Timberwolves and @Lakers game is ahead of the video making this a tough watch. Help the fans!

@Twolves_PR @Timberwolves 82-0 season loading 🌲🌲🌲

NEWS: @Timberwolves Bring Back the Black Trees; Unveil 2025-26 Classic Edition Uniform and Court Full Release: nba.com/timberwolves/n…

@BleacherReport Is Kevin Costner the GM?!

Blazers traded Dame to Milwaukee in a deal for Toumani Camara and Jrue Holiday whom the Blazers then traded to Boston for Robert Williams III, Malcolm Brogdon, and first-round pick and the right to swap two first-round pick with the Bucks (2028, 2030) Nearly 2 years later the Blazers have: Dame, Jrue Holiday, Robert Williams, Toumani Camara and the first-round picks 🤯🤯

@unusual_whales I’m convinced nobody knows how tariffs actually work, including those in the White House.

The United States has proposed 17% tariff on all food exports to the EU per FT

Why do NBA players get to fall on the ground and it isn’t a travel? The best players in the world need special rules and help that doesn’t exist at any other level?

So SGA can’t be called for travel even when taking four steps.

SGA on pace to shoot one million free throws this series. #WolvesBack

Extending strong play for the Lakers in the 4th

Refs starting the second half strong for the Lakers.