I am starting a new drawing challenge for June. 12. Music

USA. A supermarket register. The man ahead of me handed me a small plastic bar, and I believe we signed a treaty. You know this bar. It lies on the conveyor belt between his groceries and mine. Two ounces of plastic. No lock. No blade. No authority of any kind. And it prevents ALL war. His ground beef ends. The bar stands. My vegetables begin. There has never been a dispute at this border. There will never be a dispute. In Japan, we would accomplish this with careful spacing and profound mutual anxiety. Here, a stick does it. My country needed four hundred years and three shogunates to draw borders this stable. America draws them at every register, every few seconds, with a stick, and nobody even looks down. When he placed it for me — placed it FOR me, an act of pure statesmanship — I thanked him with the depth the moment deserved. I may have bowed. He said: "Yep." Yep. The sound of a man who does not know he is a diplomat. The best ones never do. But here is what shook me. At the end, the cashier picked up our sacred border and TOSSED it into a little slot. Casually. Like trash. The treaty, concluded, simply ends. No archive. No ceremony. The border rests, and waits to serve the next two nations. Two ounces. No army. Undefeated since the invention of the conveyor belt. A border does not ask to be feared. It lies down, and is obeyed. I hand the bar to the person behind me now. Every visit. Personally. Before they can reach for it. The response is always a small, surprised "oh — thanks," and then peace between our houses. Yesterday a man received my bar, paused, and handed THE NEXT one to the woman behind him. It spreads, America. Statecraft is contagious, and your registers are the academy. Yep.

PS/ Meanwhile here are my two favorite books about growth investing. The first is obvious. The second one is a total gem and maybe my favorite investing book of all time.    Mindset by C. Dweck Engines that move markets by A. Nairn

Finally built myself the taboret I’ve been wanting for years. Gives me the elbow room to mix up large batches of color, drawers for my brushes and tubes, and it just exists now as a thing of beauty that draws me into the studio and my work. Enjoying the clean finish now as it will never look this good again;)

Every time I use the word ‘Twitter’ on X an angel gets its wings.

Never forget: No one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.

Spending 20 minutes yelling increasingly hostile variations of "REPRESENTATIVE" into a phone, only for the polite robot voice to say, "I didn't quite catch that. Did you mean: Check balance?"

USS Essex arriving at the Port of Los Angeles ⚓ It's always amazing to see a massive naval ship this close

Yo, what happened here dude?

I saw an unexpected swath of rainbow colors in a cloud today over the trails in a park as I walked this morning. Later, the man who pumped my gas performed magic tricks for me in front of my windshield as my car filled with gas. A whimsical kind of day✨

Thank you superhero 😭🧡

Never seen a confident person hate on someone else. It’s always the insecure ones.