RT @mattdykema: We worked 16–18 hour shifts producing the first versions of the Falcon 9 thrusters. To this day, it is still the hardest m…

Our son just sent us this vid from Ocean City, MD. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🤩

Amazing turnout at tonight's USA watch party as part of our Summer of Soccer presented by @rubyfallscave 🏆🇺🇸

USA soccer player Mark McKenzie leads the entire team in a prayer after the stunning victory tonight! This is what it’s all about!!! 🇺🇸🙏🏽

Vacation culture has gotten a little out of control to me. I live in southeast Tennessee, in the woods with my family and my dogs, and most of the time I do not have this huge itch to leave. We travel every now and then, but there is something really nice about actually enjoying the life you already have. People act like you’re supposed to always be planning the next trip, the next flight, the next escape. Then half the time you come home tired, behind, and wondering why you spent all that money to need a vacation from the vacation. America is huge. Especially where I live, I can drive a few hours and see mountains, rivers, small towns, lakes, back roads, and some of the prettiest places in the country. But honestly, some of my favorite days are just being home with my dogs, my family, the woods, and nowhere we have to be. That feels like rest to me.

A Stanford Business School dropout took a call from a college friend in 1980 and walked into Microsoft as a $50,000-a-year business manager. He negotiated his way to 8% of the company. That 8% now pays $303 million every quarter. He hasn't worked there in 12 years. That $303 million is Microsoft's quarterly dividend, a cash payment the company sends to everyone who owns its shares. Ballmer owns about 4.5% of the entire company. That stake is worth roughly $134 billion today and generates $1.2 billion a year, which works out to $3.3 million a day, just for sitting there. When Ballmer joined in 1980, he didn't own a single share. His deal was a $50,000 salary plus 10% of whatever profit he helped bring in. Microsoft grew so fast that his cut became a financial problem. The company needed to fix it. In 1981, when Microsoft officially became a corporation, Ballmer swapped the profit deal for actual ownership in the company. He asked for 8%. Paul Allen, one of Microsoft's two founders, refused to go above 5%. Gates stepped in, pulled 3% from his own stake, and gave it to Ballmer. When Microsoft went public in 1986, Gates owned 45%, Allen owned 25%, and Ballmer owned 8%, worth about $62 million on day one. Ballmer's 8% shrank over the years to about 4.5% as Microsoft sold new shares to grow the business. But the company's total value went from $780 million in 1986 to roughly $3 trillion today, about 4,000 times bigger. In 2014, Ballmer spent $2 billion to buy the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. He didn't sell a single Microsoft share to fund it. He still holds every share he had the day he walked out of the company. Every other person worth over $100 billion on earth built their fortune by starting a company. Jeff Bezos built Amazon. Elon Musk built SpaceX. Ballmer answered a phone call from a college friend. Gates gave up 3% of his own company to get Ballmer in the door. After decades of giving his money away to charity, Gates is now worth roughly $104 billion. Ballmer's Microsoft shares alone are worth about $134 billion. The man Gates hired to be his assistant now has more money than the man who hired him.

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Here is the first picture of @VP @JDVance and @SLOTUS from the new chicken coop at the Naval Observatory. The Vances are seen holding one of their new chicks in the coop window, built by Carolina Coops and provided at no cost to taxpayers.

Chick-fil-A has 37 cars in line with a wait time of just 1 minute 54 seconds. The workers make it rain condiments on me and treat me like I’m their favorite cousin. Meanwhile, McDonald’s has 2 and a 1/2 cars in line with a wait time of eternity. The workers make it seem like their condiments are bricks of gold and treat me like I’m the stepdad they blame for their parents’ divorce.

Kids these days have no idea what we went through...

Alright, this is beyond ridiculous at this point

The psyop men fall for is, “You can have kids anytime.” While true, the other side of this coin is, “Every day you delay kids is a day you don’t get with your grandkids.”

ATTN: Young men: Get married. Have children. God bless you.

I organized an intervention to stop Elon from starting SpaceX. Here is the story... Twenty five years ago, Elon and I sat in a car on a dark stretch of Long Island highway, two neurodiverse geeks staring at the night sky and wondering what came next. We had both experienced substantial exits and felt the weight of possibility ahead of us. When I joked about 'space' while gazing upward, neither of us imagined we were planting the seed for what would become the largest IPO in history. We spent the next two hours debating why space was so hard. In the end, rockets are fuel and metal. We also debated where to go, and it was crystal clear that Mars was the only real destination. Upon returning to NYC, we embarked on a global tour of space, meeting space agencies and luminaries worldwide. This opened our eyes to an industry stuck in bureaucratic thinking. If things continued at that pace, it was clear that we would never explore space in our lifetime. So, we launched Life to Mars to show the world that two ambitious young men (29 and 30 years old), could send life to Mars without any government backing or support. We planned to send and grow plants on Mars, though some were pushing us to send mice. We had a $50 MM budget that rested on our purchase of two Russian ICBMs for $7 MM each. We assumed one ICBM would fail, and we would learn and fix everything before launching again. When Elon went back to actually buy the ICBMs, the Russians tripled the price, bringing out launch costs from a total of $14 MM to $42 MM. Our ambitious Life to Mars plan was no longer viable. As you might imagine, Elon was not pleased. So, he decided to start SpaceX and create his own Mars rockets. Now, this is a crazy idea, both now and at the time, so I organized a large panel of top space experts, and we ambushed him at the Georgian Hotel one morning. It was set up like an intervention for an alcoholic, but for space. Elon looked me in the eye when leaving the room and said, "I am going to do this." The intervention failed. Elon was committed. The rest is history. I am excited to see this IPO after 25 years of hard work. What SpaceX has done is a testament to human will and overcoming insurmountable obstacles. It's nothing short of amazing. Congratulations, E. Amazing.

General Omar Bradley called it the most dangerous mission of D-Day. He was not wrong. At 6:30am on June 6, 1944, 225 Army Rangers approached a 100-foot sheer cliff face on the Normandy coast called Pointe du Hoc. Their mission: climb it. The cliff was vertical. The Germans were at the top with full visibility of everyone below. As the Rangers fired grappling hooks upward, the Germans cut the ropes. Shot the men hanging on them. Dropped grenades over the edge onto the climbers beneath. The Rangers kept climbing. It took roughly 40 minutes. Men fell. Men were shot off the ropes. The ones behind them grabbed the ropes and kept going. They reached the top. Then came the gut punch: the massive 155mm artillery guns they had been sent to destroy were gone. The Germans had moved them inland before the invasion. The entire mission had been sent to destroy guns that weren't there. Most commanders would have regrouped and called it done. The Rangers fanned out. Two miles inland, they found the guns, hidden in an orchard, already aimed at Utah Beach and loaded to fire. They destroyed every one with thermite grenades. Then they dug in. Cut off, with almost no ammunition, no reinforcements, and no resupply, 225 men held Pointe du Hoc against relentless German counterattacks for two full days. When relief finally arrived, only 90 Rangers could still stand and fight. Their names are carved on a memorial in Normandy. Most Americans today cannot name a single one.

They’re slowly taking away the second amendment see

Very proud of our 6-year-old daughter Natalie, who has Trisomy 21, a.k.a. Down Syndrome. Is it sometimes tough raising a child with special needs? Of course, but the world is a kinder, gentler & happier place because of people like Nat. We love her! #NATitude

This is the most detailed MRI scan of an unborn baby. At just 20 weeks, she is moving, turning her head, kicking—even standing. Her beating heart is also visible. Children are a gift from God.

The Bible predicted your phone addiction...

My current lifemaxxing stack: - 5:30am read bible/pray before family is up - lift in home gym for ~1.5 hours - test and make content on gym equipment - train up my 6 kids in the way they should go - church every Lord's Day - finish a book about every 2-3 weeks - Debate w/ buds on every topic under the sun

The deepest preparation isn't gear. It's character.