Don’t want it. Either stop this creepy spyware or all Apple devices will be banned from the premises of my companies.

In which Nobunaga-San discovers Costco. 🙏

Bourbon brands. I beg of you. Please stop dedicating your resources to creating new Honey Whiskey releases.

Bourbon flavored Bourbon is OK!

The next astronauts on the Moon won't just walk. They'll drive. In a Toyota. This is not science fiction. The contract is already signed. NASA and Japan shook hands in 2024. Japan builds the vehicle. America flies it to the Moon. Its name: the Lunar Cruiser. Yes. Named after the Land Cruiser. The Moon is getting an off-roader. Two astronauts can live inside it for 30 days. No spacesuits needed inside. It runs on hydrogen. The tires are solid metal. Range: about 6,200 miles across the lunar surface. And NASA reserved seats on Artemis for Japanese astronauts. The first humans on the Moon who aren't American will get there riding with NASA. As NASA's chief put it, America won't be walking up there alone anymore. One more thing. The Moon has no wind. No rain. Nothing to erase a mark. Those Toyota tire tracks will still be there in a million years. Right next to the American footprints from 1969. I get goosebumps every single time I think about it.

USA. A gas station register. I was three cents short, and what happened next has quietly ruined my life. The cashier did not sigh. She did not wait. She reached into a small dish beside the register, took three pennies, and paid my debt with them. "There you go, hon." I asked whose coins those were. "Take a penny, leave a penny," she said, pointing at a sign, as if those six words explained the dish, the store, and the entire country. A tiny treasury. Open. Unguarded. By the door. Fed by anyone, for anyone. No ledger. No guard. No interest. Let me be clear about what occurred: I, the head of an eight-hundred-year house, was bailed out at a gas station by an anonymous dish. I could not sleep that night. A debt is a debt. The dish had stood for me. I would stand for the dish. I returned the next morning with three pennies, plus one for honor. The cashier said I didn't have to do that. I returned the day after with five more. She said, "Sir, it's a penny dish." By Friday she had stopped explaining and simply waved when I came in. A man does not ask three cents to be nothing. He returns four, and keeps returning. The dish is now full. She says it has never been so full. Other customers have started adding to it — possibly out of confusion, possibly because a full dish invites fullness. Yesterday a man took two pennies and left a quarter. The economy of the doorway is booming. I borrowed three cents. The debt was small. The honor was not. The cashier calls me "the penny guy" now. I came to this country with one name, eight hundred years old. I have since been Banana, and now the penny guy. I answer to all of them. Of course I answer to all of them.

It’s not unusual…

#postcards from #marsalasicilia wine tastings at #feudostagnone #italianwineweek

Esto es Vida, Malvar @VinosdeMadridDO y una ensalada refrescante.

They made me sign a waiver before the wings arrived. A paper. To eat. As though courage came with a release form. The cheerful waiter set the plate down like a man delivering a verdict. "These are the Infernos. Most people tap out. There's milk if you need it." I looked at the milk. The milk looked back. We understood each other. Neither of us would be needed tonight. "I will not be requiring the milk," I said. The first bite arrived like a small sunrise behind the eyes. (My tongue filed a formal complaint. My eyes opened a second one. I overruled them both.) A man does not ask the fire to be gentler. He only becomes harder to burn. I did not reach for water. I did not wave a hand before my mouth. I sat, straight-backed, and ate the Infernos one by one, the way a man receives ten thousand letters of bad news without changing his face. Beside me, a college boy attempting the same challenge was weeping openly into a napkin. So, between bites, I turned to him and said, calmly, that the fire is not the enemy — the wish for it to stop is the enemy. He stared. Then he picked up another wing. When the waiter returned, expecting wreckage, he found an empty plate and a samurai sitting in perfect, sweating peace. "...sir. You want the wall? You're on the wall now. People take a photo." I rose. I bowed to the plate. I bowed to the kitchen, where unseen hands had forged so worthy a trial. "Thank you for the fire," I told them. Then I turned to the room and said, with smoke still somewhere in my soul: "Comfort teaches a man nothing. Bless the meal that fights back." The college boy lifted his last wing like a torch. The cook came out to shake my hand. The whole table behind me began, softly, to applaud the strange calm man who had thanked them for the burning. I walked out into the cool evening, mouth aflame, heart entirely at peace. A small fire, faced well, is just another way to know you are alive.

There is a sign in the American store that promises something a merchant should never survive: buy one, and the second is yours, free. I read it three times. "Buy One, Get One." I assumed I had misunderstood the language. So I found an employee, a young man stocking shelves, and I asked him to correct me. "Nah, you got it right," he said. "Buy one, the next one's free. We call it BOGO." BOGO. I want you to understand the weight of this. A merchant lives by the exchange. One thing for one price. That is the oldest fairness there is. And yet here was a tradesman who looked at his own goods and said: take two, pay for one, walk away richer than you came. "Why," I asked, "would you give away the second?" He shrugged. "So you'll come back. And honestly? People like getting stuff. Makes their day." Makes their day. He was not protecting his chest. He was opening it on purpose, so that a stranger might have a small, unexpected joy on an ordinary afternoon. "This is BOGO," I said, mostly to myself, the way a man names a thing he intends to remember. So I bought one. And received two. And then I understood the true shape of the gift, because I did not need two. So I turned and gave the free one to the woman beside me, who had been eyeing the same shelf. She blinked. "Oh — no, I can't take that." "You must," I said. "It was never mine to keep. The merchant gave it freely so it could keep moving. I am only passing the second one forward." (My voice was steadier than I felt. A free thing in your hands is a strange and heavy honor.) The young man watched the whole thing and put his hand over his mouth. "Dude. That's not... that's not how people usually do BOGO." "Then your custom is even more generous than you know," I told him. "It does not stop at two. If you let it, it never stops." The woman took it, laughing, and gave hers — the one she'd already had — to the teenager behind her, who gave his to no one, because he was sixteen and still learning. We will get him next time. So here is my question for you, America: when the world hands you a second one, free — who are you going to hand it to?

Back on #Twitter again @CHARLIEWINES @peitrosd @TravelFoodiesTV to tell about fun new #Paris discovery for funky #FrancoColombian #cuisine and #rockandroll natural wines in the reopened instagram.com/jonesrestauran…. Catch it before it goes viral!! Check out vintage #Worldcup jerseys

Cracking news Gromit! New Royal Mint 50p coin celebrates 50 years of Aardman trib.al/HUFlTde

King George VI's diary recording #DDay & visiting the Normandy AO 10 days after the landings. In his message to Gen Eisenhower: "I have visited the Beaches of Normandy, which will be forever famous. All that I saw, on my journey and on the soil of France, has moved me deeply.”

Good morning all & OTD in 1944, as the Allies commence the liberation of France, Monty (in his bomber jacket!) drives past German POWs to the British #DDay front on the approaches to Caen.

Wonderful, clear, straightforward, and uplifting, message written for #DDay by then General Sir Bernard Montgomery to his Allied troops about to land in Normandy. A stark contrast of Monty, a methodical planner with drive, with our endless lost wars made by the 'hollow men'

Good morning all & OTD 82 years ago, Operation OVERLORD commenced with a massive naval and air bombardment of German positions, concurrent with Allied paratrooper and glider landings in occupied France, as well as Allied landings on the beaches and cliffs of Normandy. #DDay

On June 6, 1944, a 56-year-old general with a secret walked onto Utah Beach under fire, armed with a cane and a pistol. The secret: his heart was failing. He had hidden it from the army doctors so they wouldn't pull him from the mission. His name was Theodore Roosevelt Jr. Son of the President. He had begged three separate times to lead the first wave ashore at Normandy before his commanders finally said yes. When his landing craft drifted 2,000 yards off course, every instinct said redirect the following waves to the correct zone. Instead, Roosevelt walked the beach himself, alone, under artillery fire, cane in hand, reading the terrain. His verdict: "We'll start the war from right here." He then stood on that beach and personally greeted every regiment that landed after him, pointing them inland, cracking jokes under shellfire, steadying 18-year-olds who had never seen combat. He did this for hours. Years later, Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic act he had ever witnessed in combat. His answer, without hesitation: "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach." Roosevelt's son, Captain Quentin Roosevelt II, also landed at Normandy that same morning. He was named after his uncle, Quentin Roosevelt, who had been shot down as a fighter pilot over France in World War I. Three generations. Three wars. One family. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died in his sleep 36 days later. Heart attack. The thing he had been hiding finally won. He never learned he had been awarded the Medal of Honor. He was buried at the Normandy American Cemetery. In 1955, his family had his brother Quentin, killed in WWI, exhumed from where he fell in France and reinterred right beside him. Quentin is the only World War I soldier buried there. Two brothers. Two world wars. The same French soil. Their father had once said: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." Both of his sons did exactly that.

Happy spritz season! 🍊 Aperol, crisp Val d'Oca Prosecco DOC, and sparkling soda come together for the ultimate bittersweet pour, served over ice with an orange slice and made for slow afternoons in the sun. 📸: @ValdocaProsecco

In Spain, Monastrell is frequently bottled as a single-varietal wine. In France, however, it is known as Mourvèdre (moohr-VED-ruh) and is rarely bottled alone; instead, it is blended w/ Grenache & Syrah to create famous GSM wines. Learn more... everwonderwine.com/blog/2026… #wine