Milo M.

There is a hotel in the southern United States that employs a man whose official job title is Duckmaster. The position exists nowhere else in the world. Twice a day he puts on a red and gold uniform, takes the elevator up to the rooftop, and walks five ducks down to the lobby. They march across a red carpet to a marble fountain in front of the guests, then swim there until evening. The tradition started in 1933 when the hotel’s manager came back from a duck hunting trip with too much whiskey in him and dumped his live decoys in the lobby fountain as a prank. Guests loved it. A few years later, a former circus animal trainer working as a bellman at the hotel volunteered to look after the ducks and taught them to march. The hotel gave him the title of Duckmaster. He kept the job for 50 years. The ducks now live on the rooftop in a marble palace that cost the hotel $200,000 to build, with their own miniature replica of the hotel inside. The hotel’s French restaurant has refused to serve duck on the menu since 1981.

TRAN: Driscoll testified he refused to strike the names of 2 female and 2 Black officers from a promotion list due to their exemplary service, names which were ultimately removed. Did you order him to do that? HEGSETH: I removed those names TRAN: Why? HEGSETH: Because we review every general officer

Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Ruling Opens Door for Southern States to Redraw Maps, Dismantle Majority-Black Districts

AR 95-1 (Flight Regulations) and DoDI 4515.13 (updating prior DoD 4515.3/4515.13R refs) restrict passengers on Army aircraft to specific authorized categories: official duty, emergencies, approved orientation flights, or public affairs per high-level approval. Apaches are combat aircraft, not passenger-configured (tandem crew seats only, min 2-pilot crew per operator manuals). Civilian "joyride" with one pilot to free a seat violates passenger/crew rules unless waived at general officer level—and Kid Rock (non-DoD, non-official) doesn't qualify under standard eligibility. Security risks: uncleared civilian in cockpit exposes classified avionics, targeting systems, and flight controls to potential OPSEC compromise.

AR 95-1 (Flight Regulations) and DoDI 4515.13 (updating prior DoD 4515.3/4515.13R refs) restrict passengers on Army aircraft to specific authorized categories: official duty, emergencies, approved orientation flights, or public affairs per high-level approval. Apaches are combat aircraft, not passenger-configured (tandem crew seats only, min 2-pilot crew per operator manuals). Civilian "joyride" with one pilot to free a seat violates passenger/crew rules unless waived at general officer level—and Kid Rock (non-DoD, non-official) doesn't qualify under standard eligibility. Security risks: uncleared civilian in cockpit exposes classified avionics, targeting systems, and flight controls to potential OPSEC compromise.

Scoop: Kid Rock flew to Fort Belvoir this morning on his private jet and took a little joy ride on 2 Apache helicopters with War Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to multiple Army sources, and backed up by flight data. Apaches typically have 2 pilots, but they went up with one so the boys could each ride shotgun, I'm told. Apache helicopters are not stationed at Ft. Belvoir so unclear where they came from. A spokesperson at the base referred questions to the secretary's office.

“What? So no fuckin ziti now?”

People have been charged in North Carolina with involuntary manslaughter involving accidental discharges. None appear to have been law enforcement officers.

BREAKING: Justice Department announces it's readopting the firing squad as a means of execution

Liver and onions was on the kitchen table of roughly every British household in the country, at least once a fortnight, from approximately 1850 to approximately 1985. A Tuesday meal. Whatever day the butcher had lamb's liver in, or pig's liver if you were further down the week, or ox liver if the household was stretching the budget. Your mother bought it that afternoon. Still warm, or nearly. Deep burgundy, slick and glossy on the butcher's paper. Half a pound. Tuppence. Change from a shilling. She sliced it quarter of an inch thick, dusted it in seasoned flour, and laid it in a pan where a pound of onions had been going soft in bacon fat for twenty minutes. Two minutes one side. Two minutes the other. The middle still faintly pink. Overcooked liver was a mortal sin in a British kitchen, spoken of by grandmothers with genuine sadness, the way a priest might discuss a lapsed parishioner. Pan juices deglazed with water and Worcestershire, poured over. Mashed potato. A pile of cabbage. A rasher of bacon laid across the top if it was a good week. The whole thing cost, in 1962, approximately 8p per serving. It delivered, in a single plate, the highest concentration of bioavailable vitamin A in any food on earth, more B12 than any supplement will ever contain, haem iron at absorption rates a plant source cannot match, copper, zinc, choline, folate, and selenium. Nobody called it a superfood. Nobody called anything a superfood. It was called Tuesday. Then, between 1985 and 2005, liver quietly disappeared. Mothers stopped buying it. The butcher stopped ordering it. The supermarket stopped stocking it. By 2010, most British adults under thirty had never knowingly eaten it. The word now carries a faint cultural embarrassment. A food your nan ate. Something to move past. Meanwhile, 20% of British women of childbearing age are anaemic. The NHS prescribes them ferrous sulphate tablets that cause nausea and take six months to address a deficiency one plate of liver a fortnight would correct in weeks. The women taking the tablets are, in many cases, the granddaughters of the women who ate the liver. The deficiency is cultural amnesia with a prescription attached. Your butcher still has lamb's liver in the counter. Ask him. He will be delighted. He might throw in the kidneys. Flour. Bacon fat. Onions. Four minutes total. Worcestershire. Mashed potato underneath. The grandmother is gone, but the dish remembers her, and so do you, whether you knew her or not. Eat it. Pass it on.