In America, a warehouse store. A fully roasted chicken costs five dollars, the raw chicken beside it costs seven, and I stood between them like a man between two truths. Golden. Hot. Seasoned. Spinning in glory under the lights, in a line of its brothers. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents. I checked the raw birds. Seven dollars. Pale. Cold. You must do everything yourself. This is not commerce. Commerce does not move backward. Somewhere in this building, mathematics lies defeated. I asked the man at the counter. "How is the cooked bird cheaper than the raw bird?" "Been five bucks forever. They keep it that way." "But the store loses." "Yep. On purpose." On purpose. I held my receipt with both hands. In my land, a lord who lowered the price of rice in a hard winter was remembered for generations. They built him a small shrine. This store does it every day, with chicken, and tells no one. A woman behind me grew tired of my reverence. "It's just a chicken, sir." It is not just a chicken. It is a wound the merchant takes on purpose, so that anyone, on any day, with five dollars, eats like a lord. The bird is the message. The price is the vow. I will confess: I bought two. I did not need two. The second was not hunger. It was gratitude, and it was delicious. Some prices are not prices. They are promises. I return every week now. I take one bird. I bow toward the deli, briefly, so as not to alarm the staff. They have begun nodding back. The vow holds. The bird turns. Five dollars. Long may it spin.

USA. A diner. The waitress asked me how I want my eggs, and my mind went completely blank. "How do you want your eggs, hon?" Want. How do I WANT them. No one has ever asked me this. In my land, the egg arrives as the cook decrees, and you thank the egg, the cook, and your ancestors, in that order. "Scrambled? Over easy? Sunny side up?" she offered, gently, the way one talks a man down from a roof. The terms did not help. Over easy — over WHAT, easily? Easy for whom? Sunny side up — these people have named an egg after the dawn. Who does that. I needed time. I have chosen battlefields faster than I chose those eggs. She refilled my coffee and said she'd come back. It was the second refill. I had been deciding for nine minutes. The man on the next stool leaned over. "Just say over easy, man. You can't go wrong." "And if I CAN go wrong?" "...it's eggs, buddy." It's eggs. Eight hundred years of my family training itself to want nothing, and this man dismissed all of it with a fork in his hand. He was right. I will never tell him. "Sunny side up," I declared, with the weight of a man choosing a path for life. "I will face the sun." "You got it, hon." The eggs came. Two small suns on a white plate, looking up at me. Golden. Ridiculous. Exactly what I wanted. So THAT is what wanting feels like. I had to cross an ocean and hold up a breakfast line to learn it. The man on the next stool got his check and left. "Good choice," he said. I have never been more proud of anything. A man does not ask the eggs to be simple. He only becomes a man who knows what he wants. Tomorrow: over easy. I am almost ready.

Charlie Munger: "The director's table in the Heinz Corporation cost $600,000. The director's table at Costco cost about $300. They are different places [with] different ethos." "If you get fat like that, somebody like 3G comes along and says, 'I want to buy you and cut you back to normal.'" "Of course, it's possible to over-cut — but my guess is there's a lot of fat in our successful places." (Daily Journal AGM || 2022)

Twitter told me to come back to see the reflection so I did.

🚨ICYMI: First test reactor in President Trump’s Pilot Program hits milestone to ramp up American nuclear power — a month ahead of schedule. All we needed was a new President, to unleash the American Nuclear Renaissance! washingtonexaminer.com/polic…

Another obsession in American is having a house meanwhile the American dreaming isn’t owning a house anymore - Caleb Hammer “It’s the freedom of renting, cause you can live wherever you want, you can move for a job easily” “With the incredible stock markets that we’ve had over the past 50 years, it beats it every time if you rent and just put your money into the stocks market”

#MeteorSighting: Eyewitnesses in New England and @NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite reported a bright fireball on Saturday, May 30, at 2:06 p.m EDT accompanied by a loud noise. The meteor appears to have fragmented at an altitude of 40 miles over northeast MA and southeast NH. The energy released at breakup is estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which accounts for the loud noise. Eyewitness accounts supplied by the American Meteor Society.

The coldest place in the Lower 48 tomorrow will be the Boston area Congrats everyone, we did it.

My last rent increase was because the landlord noticed that the market rate for the area had gone up Not because his costs went up, but because other landlords were charging more in my area and my landlord felt left out and thought I should pay him more for the same thing

The USDA has kept raccoon rabies out of the central United States for over 30 years by air-dropping fish-flavored ravioli from helicopters. Each one is a small packet coated in fishmeal with an oral rabies vaccine inside. Raccoons, foxes, coyotes, and skunks find them by smell, bite through, and swallow. Many animals that consume the bait develop immunity, helping build a protective barrier across populations. The bait is generally considered safe for pets and tested in many non-target species. The USDA's Wildlife Services has been running this since 1995. Without the bait program, raccoon rabies very likely would have spread much further west. A federal program you've probably never heard of is protecting your pets and your kids by feeding wild animals ravioli from a helicopter.