Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Oh, wait… yes, I do.

🚨 Get ready for Wave 2 of the LIVE TWEETSTORM on June 13th! 🌌 Join the worldwide mobilization and let's make some noise. We need everyone! 🕒 Paris : 23h00 🕒 New York : 5:00 PM EDT 🕒 Los Angeles : 2:00 PM PDT #SaveStargate youtube.com/live/XaPWvu_ig5A

#SaveStargate tweetstorm today!

🎵 You post sixteen tweets, what do you get? Another day older and filled with regret Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go The next one’s gonna be a banger fo sho 🎵

You know what, HELL YEAH.

Happy Friday.

never give a squirrel matches

I thought she was making soup but...

In America, a stranger will say "bless you" when you sneeze. It is meant to be nothing. A reflex. They do not even look up. I know this. That is the problem. The first time, I sneezed in a grocery line. The man behind me said "bless you" and kept scrolling his phone. He had guarded my soul. In its weakest moment, when it tried to leave my body, he called it back. Then he forgot he had done it. Where I am from, a debt like this is repaid over three generations. I turned to thank him. He was already gone. So I started a list. Every voice that has ever caught my soul mid-flight and asked for nothing in return. The list is forty-one names long. I will never find them all. So I have chosen a different path. If I cannot repay them, I will become the one who guards. Now I stand near the registers. Silent. Listening for the moment a soul tries to flee. Yesterday I blessed four sneezes, two coughs, and one shopping cart whose wheel cried out as it passed. The cart, I admit, was a mistake. But I could not take the risk. Its soul, at least, is safe. Has anyone here ever heard a soul leaving, and known you were the only one close enough to call it back?

THE PINK TOASTERS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop. I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls. Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors. In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves. This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift. The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were. So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply. The owner asked if everything was okay. "It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter." He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?" I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter. I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer. So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen. And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it. Reborn. A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.

I’d call California a third world nation, but to be fair third world nations count votes faster.