Brian, tried.

Bureaucracies live forever. The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used. So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And what about the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything, because bureaucracies live forever.

In 1907 a German chemist called Edwin Kayser walked into the offices of Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati with a patent and a proposition. The patent described a process for taking liquid cottonseed oil, bubbling hydrogen through it under pressure in the presence of a nickel catalyst, and producing a solid white substance with a long shelf life and no particular flavour. Procter & Gamble bought it immediately. They were not a food company. They were a soap company. Their interest in hardened cottonseed oil was that it could be turned into soap more cheaply than tallow, and tallow prices were rising. The hardened cottonseed oil made excellent soap. It also, the chemists noted, looked exactly like lard. It is worth pausing to remember what cottonseed oil actually was. For most of the nineteenth century, cotton seeds were industrial waste. The oil pressed from them was dark, foul, and used primarily in the manufacture of explosives, dyes, and roofing tar. Improvements in bleaching in the 1880s made it palatable enough to use as an adulterant in olive oil. Its chief virtue was that it was nearly tasteless and very, very cheap. Procter & Gamble looked at the hardened cottonseed oil sitting in their soap factory, looked at the lard market, and made a decision. They needed a name. They tried Krispo. Trademark conflict. They tried Cryst. Someone in management noted, delicately, the religious connotations. They settled on Crisco, derived from CRYStallised Cottonseed Oil, and launched it in June 1911 with one of the first modern advertising campaigns in American history. The campaign did not mention cottonseed. It mentioned purity. It mentioned modernity. It mentioned the marvel of factory production over the messy, old-fashioned business of rendering animal fat at home. It distributed free cookbooks containing six hundred and fifteen recipes, every single one of which called for Crisco. It paid railways to use Crisco in their dining cars. It targeted Jewish households on the basis that Crisco was kosher in a way lard could never be. By 1916, Americans were buying sixty million cans of Crisco a year. Three cans for every family in the country. Within one generation, lard had gone from the standard cooking fat in nearly every American kitchen to an old-fashioned ingredient your grandmother used. There was no health data driving this. There was an advertising budget and a soap company that had accidentally invented a food. The trans fats produced by partial hydrogenation, eventually banned in 2018 after killing an unknowable number of people, would not be flagged as a problem for another seventy years. The cottonseed oil itself, now joined on the shelf by soy and corn and canola and sunflower, is still the dominant cooking fat in the developed world. It is in your salad dressing. It is in the fryer at every restaurant you have ever eaten in that did not specifically advertise otherwise. It is the default. It started as soap. Then it was looking for something to do. Now it's the most-consumed fat in the Western diet, and the lard that built the American kitchen for two hundred years before it is the thing people are nervous about putting in their pastry. The marketing worked. It has not stopped working.

@EBryceLee @MissB53 @LeeKurtiss Now do big avocado.

I was raised vegetarian. Mostly plant-based. My mom cooked everything from scratch, no ultra-processed food, no shortcuts. I was still a fat kid. So when I see this graphic asking “what do you see”, my answer is simple. I see a stomach full of gas. I see eating every 2-3 hours and never feeling satisfied. I see constant food noise. I remember struggling to get enough protein. I remember low-fat everything. I remember eating one meal while already thinking about the next. Now I eat a 6-oz burger with butter and I am satisfied for 6 hours without feeling stuffed. Because hunger satisfaction is not about volume. It is about hormones. Leptin signaling. Stable insulin. Access to stored fuel. This graphic thinks more food volume is a flex. To me it looks like a full day of cooking, chopping, and prepping, and still being hungry two hours later. I used to believe Forks Over Knives too. Then I learned the difference between a stretched stomach and a satisfied body.

@SandyofCthulhu Pickled is the only way I can stand it.

How to eat okra. Be aware it has a gummy sap inside. So there are three ways to prepare okra. 1) soup (like gumbo). The sap thickens the soup and everyone's happy. 2) fried. This basically eliminates the sap and gives you little crunchy bombs of okra which is why it's so popular with fried chicken. 3) stewed. Usually with corn, tomatoes, and onion. The sap thickens the stew a little bit but not too much. One year we grew okra in our back yard and you have to pick the pods every day or two or they get too woody to eat.

I think Thomas is a misunderstood disciple. Thomas was ready to go up to Jerusalem and die with Christ (John 11:16) while the others tried to talk Jesus out of going back to Judea (John 11:8). Thomas told the OTHER disciples that he didn't believe THEM when they told him they had seen Jesus, but in the Bible Thomas is never actually described as having touched the wounds when Jesus offered, he fell down when he saw Jesus. Thomas was a stalwart follower of Jesus, just not of men. Seems like Thomas is a pretty fitting name indeed.

All of you know my X handle includes “Cynical.” Most of you know (post-doxxing) that my actual first name is Thomas. As a Roman Catholic, I have long struggled with who my patron saint namesake is, as my parents settled on none. For the longest time, I identified with St. Thomas Aquinas due to the importance of his writings. But as I have aged, I have identified more and more with St. Thomas the Apostle. You know, “Doubting Thomas.” It’s not that I ever doubted Jesus Christ, it’s that as the more I have aged, the more doubt I have in the American institutions I once trusted implicitly. Doubting Thomas is a model for many of us. He never doubted Jesus, but he did doubt the Resurrection: _________________ "Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” ________________________ Honestly, I think there is a message there for Christian Americans. We do not doubt our Lord, but nowadays many of us deeply doubt our country. Was our country purposely endowed by the Lord to create freedom and liberty where none had existed before? I believe it was. Let’s be faithful to the blessings our Lord has endowed on this nation, and not lose faith, no matter how much craziness we see on the Internet. Or, to put this sentiment in a far more secular manner, see the clip below. youtube.com/watch?v=YtlA-Z…

This is why Americans are the deadliest fighters on earth. I met a priest yesterday who just got accepted to chaplain school in Newport. I asked him the obvious question: Marines or Navy? Navy, he said. His face fell a little. He told me he could never be a Marine because every Marine is a rifleman, and as a priest he can’t carry a weapon. He’s hoping to get assigned to a Marine unit anyway. All chaplains are Navy officers, so that’s the only door in. I laughed. I feel a little bad about that. Then I explained to him what “Devil Doc” means. The Marine Corps doesn’t have medics. They use Navy Corpsmen. I told him: when you get out to the fleet, find a Marine sergeant with a couple of Purple Hearts and tell him Devil Docs “aren’t real Marines.” Be prepared to duck. Marines are violently particular about who gets to wear their uniform. Navy Corpsmen and Navy chaplains who have eaten dirt alongside them in combat qualify. Full stop. My dad was Air Force. Not even Navy. I remember going to VFW halls with him as a kid. Someone would ask him what service, he’d say Air Force, and the room would chuckle a little. Then they’d find out he was a medic, and the air in the room changed. Something close to reverence. Dad hated being honored. He had one line he used to deflect it: “I didn’t do much. Save your praise for my cousin the PJ.” That always broke the ice. PJs are the Air Force special operators who go into hell to pull downed pilots out. They will take casualties and are prepared to die to rescue a single pilot or crewman. The math doesn’t math out. Why would any combat force take multiple casualties to rescue one air force jet jockey? What the padre is about to learn is that the military has a hierarchy that has nothing to do with rank, and nothing to do with the service stitched on your chest. Have you deployed? Have you seen combat? In every firefight there are men who move toward the guns and men who hang back. And when the guy at the tip of the spear is pinned down, bleeding, with rounds cracking past his head, there is exactly one word he screams into the radio. “Medic.” Here is the catch, and it is the whole reason America fights the way America fights. That Marine is willing to push forward into fire BECAUSE he knows the Corpsman is coming. He knows the medevac birds will land in the hot LZ. He knows the Devil Doc will drag him out by his plate carrier if it comes to that. And, if the medic can’t help, if he has what Dad called “injuries incompatible with life,” he knows that chaplain will crawl on his belly to administer last rights and deliver him to heaven. The F-15 pilot punching out over enemy territory knows the same thing. He knows the PJs will move heaven and earth to reach him, and turn whatever is shooting at him into a smoking crater of hell on earth on the way in. This is the quiet math underneath American violence. Our warriors are the fiercest on earth not because they are more aggressive, not just because they are better trained, or better equipped, though they are all of those things. They are the fiercest because they know, in their bones, that when they key the mic and call for help, help is coming in hot. Take that away, and you don’t have the U.S. military anymore. You have a security force.

Here are some goats on a vertical cliff face. They are not alarmed. They are not reconsidering their choices. They are licking salt deposits with the energy of animals that have been doing this for ten thousand years and find your concern mildly irritating. The Zagros Mountains. 10,000 BC. Humans look up at the bezoar ibex going places no other animal will follow and think: that one. Not the sheep. Not the aurochs built like a barn with opinions. The goat. Because the goat had solved a problem no one else had. Access to terrain that predators couldn't reach, minerals that nothing else could get to, and the structural confidence of an animal that has never once considered that cliffs are supposed to be difficult. We domesticated it first. It is the oldest livestock animal on earth. And it still goes up cliffs to lick salt. Because it works. Because it always worked. Because ten millennia of agricultural revolution didn't make the goat forget what it already knew.

@HollyS2022 @AlaskanNative95 @SamaHoole I've made it before, I used a very small amount of olive oil, mostly tallow, and whipped it with a handheld mixer. Easy to scoop out a glob with your fingers like lotion from a pot instead of a tube.

@AlaskanNative95 @SamaHoole Do you make your own moisturizer? Would love to know.. I see so many people doing things but they always add essential oils.. I don’t like those..

Vitamin D is not a vitamin. It's a steroid hormone synthesised in the skin from cholesterol via ultraviolet light, then converted in the liver and kidneys into its active form, where it regulates gene expression in virtually every tissue in the body. We called it a vitamin because we discovered it while studying deficiency diseases in people who didn't go outside. The name stuck. The modern guidelines, designed for people who eat seed oils, avoid animal fat, apply SPF 30 before going to the letterbox, and work in offices under fluorescent lighting, are very effective at suppressing it. You need cholesterol (eat fat) and sunlight (go outside) to make it. We've managed to pathologise both.

@yoursimmo11 Get the unflavored one. No citric acid. Problem solved.

LMNT is meant to be the "clean" electrolyte everyone recommends. But, you realize that citric acid is the third ingredient which is manufactured from black mold (Aspergillus niger) grown on GMO corn substrate? Citric acid chelates minerals out of your body which is the exact opposite of what an electrolyte is supposed to do. $45/month to deplete the minerals you're trying to replenish.

The why is easy, my son and I researched this. They're allowed to cut olive oil with seed oils up to like 60 or 80 percent and still call it olive oil without labeling differently in the US. The bitterness you're tasting is probably the seed oil they cut it with. Real olive oil pressed from olives and nothing else is very expensive and somewhat hard to come by but absolutely delicious when you find it.

Speaking of oil, when leaving Athens last year, the hotel gave us going away presents. One was a small jar of olive oil (center). It’s just sooooo clean & smooth. I literally just put a little on my tongue occasionally for the taste…I don’t dare waste it cooking. I’d been using the oil on the left & it has a bitter aftertaste that I suppose I didn’t mind before, but now I do & imagine it imparts something to my cooking. Kids & I did a taste test…oil on right is closer, but I can’t find a replacement for that little jar of excellence that we all agree is superior & I don’t understand what process has made it so.

@megbasham This is hilariously beautiful.

WOW!!! That he did not recognize the reference is peak irony. For those who do not understand, look up CS Lewis, and the acronym NICE. This is the organization Lewis invented for his novel That Hideous Strength. While NICE claims to be working for the betterment of humanity and looks respectable, corporate, and elite from the outside, that polish hides a deep, antihuman evil within. Could not be a more perfect allegory for French’s own transformation.

Please contact these senators

@TheMuppetPastor It's like Voddie used to say, "for the modern church, the 11th commandment is 'thou shalt be nice' and it supersedes the other 10". But there's a difference between 'kind' and 'nice'. Nice is not hurting anyone's precious feelings, kind is correcting them when they're wrong.

Growing up in the United Church of Christ, you didn’t hear much about the prophets, certain epistles like Romans, or the book of Revelation. But something you heard weekly was “love thy neighbor”. What did that mean? Usually, being nice. Sure, some of that meant giving food, helping older people with yard work, and homeless ministries, but often it meant loving people where they were and “accepting them for who they are.” “We’re loving of all people here, not like those Reformed Presbyterians! Did you hear what they said about gays?” “Did you know the Baptists won’t even allow women to preach God’s Word?!” Why were so many “Christians” so unloving, I wondered? Why were they so mean and close minded? We had female ministers and they were nice. And gays came to church with their partners because we wouldn’t cast them out. Why didn’t others love their neighbors? But what did Jesus actually say? “Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”” Mark 12:29-31 ESV If you don’t know, Jesus is quoting the Shiva Yisrael from Deuteronomy 6. The entire text tells Israel to meditate on God day and night, to write Bible verses on the walls, to wear them on your person, to talk about them at meals, and to teach them to your children, for loving God meant OBEYING God. So naturally, I began to ask questions. How could anyone disobey God (who condemned gay sex) and love their neighbor by telling them this action is acceptable? How could anyone love their neighbors by advocating for abortion, which literally kills a neighbor? You CAN’T define love as “what makes you feel good”. Some people think pedophilia “feels good”, so you need a standard of acceptable behavior. The Bible tells us GOD is love, and in God there is no sin. Therefore, sin cannot be love. That’s why it’s evil to call a gay man a slur, and also evil to affirm his active sexual relationship. That’s why we sin by barring women from speaking a word at church, and also by enabling them to become pastors. Sin affects us via commission and omission. Many people think they’re free when they have merely moved to another cell in the same prison. Satan blinds us because he wants us enslaved to sin, chained, and locked away. He loves to make us feel empowered and in charge because then we fail to see the bars. A 180 degree turn is just a different look at the Slammer. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Only Jesus can set you free and only the Holy Spirit can guide your walk.

@lsferguson Simple enough response from Trump. Pass it this week, then I'll endorse when it's on my desk.

Rumor has it that Leader Thune want's a deal from President Trump where Trump endorses Cornyn and Thune will do a filibuster to pass the Save America Act. Here's what I envision: Trump endorses Cornyn. Thune makes a half assed effort to pass the Save America Act. Makes it fail. Cornyn gets endorsed. President Trump and the American people still have no Save America Act and lose "bigly". Am I being cynical?

Outstanding video from the @FreedomCaucusF making the case for the SAVE America Act—and explaining how we can use the talking filibuster to pass it in the Senate Please spend 60 seconds watching it—and share it if you agree!

Congressional GOP can’t codify DOGE cuts. Can’t codify Trump’s border policies. Can’t mandate Voter ID. Can’t cut $6 billion noncitizen welfare program. Can’t cut NED funding for communist color revolutionaries. CAN pass a resolution for “Bipawtisan” Mardi Gras dog parade.

Not unified on using the talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act? It’s time to *get* unified We can’t afford the consequences of inaction GOP senators who aren’t supportive should identify themselves & make their case—rather than silently stalling Share if you agree

@unseen1_unseen The zombie filibuster just needs to go period. It was never the intent of the filibuster to effectively make every vote a 60/40 or nothing gets passed. The filibuster is to allow as much time as needed to voice objection and attempt to sway votes. Nothing more.

Why can't they do a talking filibuster on the DHS funding first then do one on the save act after the dems are exhausted filibustering dhs funding? They are gaslighting you again.

We need the list. Which members of the Senate Republicans are resisting a talking filibuster. We need the names and we need to start calling them out.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune confirms discussions are underway to enforce the talking filibuster to pass The SAVE America Act, but says it does not have the support of 50 Republican Senators. Name them.

@BasedMikeLee @TRHLofficial @LeaderJohnThune Reject the zombie on ALL bills, starting now. It was always meant to allow opposing senators a chance to have their views heard, not to allow the minority to nuke a bill by apathy.

@TRHLofficial @LeaderJohnThune Reject the zombie on this bill Demand the real thing!

Great that @LeaderJohnThune has agreed to force the Senate to vote on the SAVE America Act A vote isn’t enough; President Trump and the American people are calling on us to PASS this bill For that reason, senators wanting to filibuster it must be required to speak