King of Texas (As of yet Uncontested)

@ThrillaRilla369 My friends rode Huffys. I rode a Free Spirit with a giant over sized crank and mag wheels. Traded up for a Redline 102b series 3.

Age yourself by naming a popular bike brand from your childhood I’ll go first Haro

@hostis_black Try to print, get blocked, rotate object in slicer 5 degrees on the y axis, print away. The possible permutations of geometry of an object are infinite, and unless blocking every single print waiting for permission, this "law" has already failed before it was implemented.

On May 7th, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that New York's Fiscal Year 2027 budget will become the first law in the United States to mandate surveillance software inside every 3D printer sold within the state. It will make it a Class E felony to possess or share a 3D-printable file capable of producing a firearm component. Every printer sold in New York must ship with print-blocking algorithms that scan each job in real time and refuse to execute anything the algorithm flags. The sales pitch is "ghost guns." The mechanism is a permission gate inside a machine you paid for. Pilot tests of the proposed algorithm by an open-firmware team triggered the block on 17% of non-weapon prints. Brackets that resemble triggers. Cylinders that resemble barrels. A model train coupling. A bottle opener. The algorithm cannot tell. It will refuse the print and log the attempt to whatever server the manufacturer is required to maintain. The same arithmetic the printing-press licensors used in 1660. The same arithmetic the Stationers' Company used to brand a printer's son for distributing tracts the Crown had not approved. The same arithmetic the early DRM crowd used to make a DVD ripper a federal criminal in 1998. A tool you bought, in a room you own, with electricity you paid for, becomes a deputy of the state at the moment of purchase and remains one for the lifetime of the device. Anything that takes a digital design file and outputs a physical object is now within the reach of a state that has declared it owns the question of which physical objects you are permitted to bring into existence inside your own house. The fence has spent forty years moving inward. Around the song first. Around the page. Around the cipher. Around the camera roll. Now, finally, around the workbench. The state has run out of digital territory to enclose and has started enclosing the atoms. The maker who prints a bracket for a broken washing machine tonight commits the same act, technically, that the law is written to stop. The algorithm will not know the difference. It is not designed to know the difference. It is designed to fail closed, to refuse first and let the human appeal upward through whatever bureaucratic channel the manufacturer designs, if any, on whatever timeline the manufacturer chooses, with whatever paper trail attaches to the request. Permission to print, denied. Submit a ticket. Wait. Unfortunately for New York, and fortunately for us, the firmware on every consumer 3D printer is open or near-open. All of them forkable, all of them flashable, all of them already installed on millions of machines outside the reach of any future New York compliance certificate. The CAD files at issue are mathematical descriptions of geometry that will be mirrored on a thousand drives in a thousand jurisdictions before the ink on the bill is dry. The state cannot bind geometry. It can only bind the people who agree to be bound. Forty years from now nobody will remember the ghost gun argument. They will remember the year a state government decided that the physical output of a private machine was the state's business at the point of manufacture.

I have two stacks on my desk. The left stack is financial disclosure forms from members of Congress. The right stack is waivers for members who filed their financial disclosures late. The right stack is always taller. On Wednesday morning, I watched a soldier get arrested on CNN. I am a Disclosure Analyst for the House Ethics Committee. I have held this position for eleven years. My job is to receive the forms, verify their completeness, and file them. I do not investigate. I do not flag. I do not refer. I file. I have a lanyard. The lanyard says ETHICS. The soldier's name is Gannon Ken Van Dyke. He is thirty-eight years old. He was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was Special Forces. In December, he created an account on a prediction market called Polymarket. On January 2nd, he bet $32,500 that the president of Venezuela would be removed from power. On January 3rd, he helped remove the president of Venezuela from power. He collected $409,881. He has been charged with five federal crimes. Commodities fraud. Wire fraud. Unlawful use of confidential government information. Theft of nonpublic government information. Unlawful monetary transaction. The Department of Justice called it "the first-ever insider trading prosecution on event contracts." I watched this on the television in our break room. Then I walked back to my desk and processed a late financial disclosure from a member of the House Financial Services Committee who purchased $250,000 in bank stocks eleven days before his subcommittee held a closed-door hearing on proposed capital reserve changes. The filing was forty-seven days late. The STOCK Act requires disclosure within forty-five days. The penalty for late filing is $200. I waived it. I waive most of them. In 2021, fifty-four members of Congress and senior staff violated the reporting rules. The fines were minimal. Most were waived. I have a form for the waiver. The form has a box that says "Reason." I write "administrative delay." In ethics, "administrative delay" means the member's office forgot and then remembered when a reporter called. My approval rate is one hundred percent. In any other field, that number would trigger an audit. In mine, it is called thoroughness. Let me show you what I processed this year. January. A senator on the Armed Services Committee sold defense contractor shares worth $1.2 million. Three days later, his committee received a classified briefing that the Iran campaign had exceeded its projected cost by 340%. The stock dropped 8%. He filed the disclosure sixty-one days late. I calculated the fine. $200. His chief of staff asked if it could be waived. He did not ask what the senator traded on. Nobody asks that. The form does not have a field for it. I waived the fine. The senator's portfolio returned 23.4% in 2025. The S&P 500 returned 16.8%. February. A representative on the Energy and Commerce Committee bought pharmaceutical stocks worth $400,000. Two weeks later, her committee advanced a bill that would extend patent exclusivity for the exact drug class she purchased. The stocks rose 14%. She filed on time. There was no fine. There was no investigation. There was nothing to investigate because buying stocks in companies regulated by your own committee is not illegal. It is legal. The STOCK Act made it legal by making it disclosed. In Congress, disclosed means legal. In my office, legal means filed. March. A member whose spouse manages a portfolio worth $9.2 million reported forty-three separate transactions in a single quarter. Twelve of them were in sectors directly affected by legislation the member co-sponsored. The timing on eight of those twelve was within a two-week window of committee action. I logged all forty-three. None were flagged. We do not flag. We file. I asked my supervisor once what would happen if I flagged a filing. She said we do not have a form for that. I never asked again. In 2020, I processed 847 disclosures. In 2023, 1,211. In 2025, 1,614. The number of enforcement actions in each of those years was zero. The numerator changes. The denominator does not. I want to tell you about the soldier again. He made $409,881. He tried to delete his Polymarket account by calling customer service and saying he lost access to his email. He moved his profits into a foreign cryptocurrency vault and then into a new brokerage account. He used his real identity. He placed thirteen bets. Every single one was connected to an operation he personally participated in. In my eleven years, I have processed disclosures from members of Congress who traded on: Pending FDA approvals they learned about in committee. Defense appropriations they voted on. Trade policy they negotiated. Pandemic response measures they drafted. Interest rate decisions they were briefed on before the public. None of them have been charged. None of them have been investigated by the Department of Justice. None of them have been referred to the SEC. The STOCK Act has produced zero prosecutions since it was signed on April 4th, 2012. Fourteen years. Five hundred and thirty-five members. $635 million in trades last year alone. Zero cases. My daughter asked me once what happens when someone breaks the rules. I told her we write it down. She asked what happens after that. I said it depends. She was nine. She is twenty now. It does not depend. Nothing happens after that. The soldier made $409,881 and faces decades in prison. Nancy Pelosi entered Congress in 1987 with a portfolio worth approximately $785,000. It is now worth $133.7 million. That is a return of 16,930%. The Dow Jones returned 2,300% over the same period. Professional fund managers who beat the market for three consecutive years are considered exceptional. She has beaten it for thirty-seven. If a hedge fund produced those returns, the SEC would subpoena the records on a Thursday. She produced them from a building with a chapel and a gift shop. She announced her retirement last year. No investigation was opened. No disclosure was flagged. Her filings were on time. In my office, on time means compliant. Compliant means closed. I want to tell you about the fine. $200. That is the maximum penalty for violating the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements. $200 for a member of Congress whose portfolio gained $4.7 million in a single quarter. I calculated what $200 represents as a percentage of $4.7 million. It is 0.004%. I could not find a comparison that made it meaningful. It is less than the price of the parking pass in the Rayburn garage. It is less than lunch at the members' dining room if you order the crab cakes, which I am told are excellent though I eat at my desk. Since 2012, thirty-one bills have been introduced to restrict congressional trading. I keep a list. The list is longer than the STOCK Act itself. On March 5th, 2026, a representative from Michigan introduced the thirty-second. He called it the "No Getting Rich in Congress Act." The bill would prohibit the President, Vice President, members of Congress, and their spouses from trading individual stocks, cryptocurrency, futures, and commodities while in office. The bill was referred to committee. The committee has not scheduled a hearing. The committee is chaired by a member whose spouse executed $2.1 million in trades last year. The bill will be reviewed. In my office, reviewed means read. Read means acknowledged. Acknowledged means a status has been assigned. A status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one. The soldier used classified information to make $409,881 on a prediction market. He has been charged with five federal crimes. The Department of Justice announced the case on the same day I processed three disclosures from members who traded on committee knowledge worth a combined $3.8 million. The difference between the soldier and the members is not what they did. It is the building they did it in. He did it from Fort Bragg. They did it from the Capitol. He used a prediction market. They used the New York Stock Exchange. He bet on a military operation. They bet on the legislation they write. He did not write the law. They did. They wrote the STOCK Act. Then they funded its enforcement at zero dollars. Then they set its maximum penalty at $200. Then they gave my office the authority to waive it. Then they traded $635 million. The soldier flew to Caracas. He breached a compound. He put his body between a mission and a bullet. The people who ordered the operation were in a building with a credenza and sparkling water. They did not go to Caracas. They went to their brokerage accounts. The soldier made $409,881 and is now in federal custody. The people who knew what he was going to do before he did it made more and filed less. His prosecution is not a failure of the system. It is the system. One conviction per decade, at the lowest level, so the briefing slides can say enforcement exists. The $409,881 is not the crime. It is the cost of making $635 million look supervised. In my field, we call this self-regulation. The soldier's Polymarket account has been frozen. His military career is over. He will spend years in federal prison. My office will process every congressional disclosure filed this year. Every trade logged. Every $200 fine calculated and waived. The system is immaculate. Fourteen years. Zero prosecutions. $635 million a year. A 16,930% return. I have not leaked a document. I have not filed a complaint. I have not deviated from the process one single time. The process was written by the people whose forms I process. As long as the disclosures go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations. My lanyard still says ETHICS. In eleven years, nobody has asked me to define the word.

@CJGRISHAM I'm not too far from Industry and Welcome.

Ding Dong, Texas

@IfindRetards Any vehicle with large rims and ultra low profile tires or the spoked rims that stick out from the tire for a foot or more.

What's the make/model or type of vehicle you see an automatically know a retard is driving it?

Working on a vanity project for work dealing with powershell scripts. Iterations with Copilot - 47 Iterations with Grok - 4 I should have thought to use Grok sooner, would have prevented me from bashing my head into my desk repeatedly.

@Chesschick01 And why is there a fee? If you wish to leave, you should be free to leave, for free.

Why are Americans renouncing their citizenship?

@GigaBasedDad Making an IPA tells me that you don't know how to make beer correctly. This is why most microbreweries make IPAs.

You can't change my mind.

@Mericamemed Can/does it integrate with a kestrel?

Now that’s a rangefinder

There is no such thing as failure unless you allow it. You have either succeeded, or more importantly, you have learned. If you do not learn from your mistakes, then you have failed.

There is a reason that we Gen Xer's are the way we are. youtube.com/watch?v=f6IOe2…

@Chesschick01 "The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous."

“Wars can be fought forever” Yikes!

(sigh). Once I am eventually confirmed as the King of Texas; "By Royal decree, Texas harbors no action, towards any nation or people, unless and except they initiate a strike directly against Texas. I will deign only to defend Texas borders, and Texas borders alone."

@MostlyPeaceful In N Out does not have bacon. McDonald's is better than In N Out and they don't even serve food.

In N Out > Whataburger

@alphafox A dog is God's gift to us. A perfect shining example of how we should be. They love us completely unconditionally, the way we should love each other.

Islam believes that owning a dog as a pet will stack up a ‘mountain of anti-good deeds’ against your good deeds that you can’t overcome. If you aren’t Muslim, then who cares and why does it bother them? Works based religion is not a thing in Christianity, that’s why Christ had to shed his blood to pay out debt - we can never repay our debt to God with good deeds - our good deeds are like dirty rags to him. If you are not Muslim then none of this should matter - so why do Muslims not want YOU to own a dog? How does you owning a dog affect their perceived ‘debt mountain?’ It shouldn’t affect them at all and this seems like just another power move on their part to see how far they can push their agenda and normalize their takeover ambitions. Open your eyes.

@SantaDecides A long gun, with the skill to use it. A pistol carried daily, again with skill to use it. A solid pocketknife with a blade at least two inches long, preferably 3 or more inches. A tailored suit (including shoes and a tie), and a Bible that is read from daily.

What item should every gentleman own?

@FightWithMemes He trapped the two wire, not the three. There's room for improvement...

Studies show that 90% of men think they can do a maneuver like this in real life, and the other 10% of men pee while sitting down.