Former bee rancher. ASVAB waiver holder. Volcel. Noble Eagle Veteran. I am like sunshine and kittens. Third Amendment absolutist. Sometimes known as Dave.
Make Hamburger Country!
Joined November 2010
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When I got home I stopped to say hello to the bees and I discovered that they had left.
This is very disheartening.
Bee-Positive retweeted
Ordering a real fruit smoothie in most cities means waiting fifteen minutes at a juice bar and paying ten dollars plus tip.
Walk into a 7-Eleven in Tokyo at 2:00 AM, open the freezer case, and you can make a fresh mango-pineapple or strawberry-banana smoothie for exactly 300 yen ($2.00).
You do not grab a pre-mixed bottle of corn syrup. You pull out a clear cup packed with whole frozen strawberries, ripe mango chunks, and frozen fruit puree cubes made from produce that would otherwise go to waste on Japanese farms.
You pay two dollars at the register, walk over to the white robotic counter machine next to the coffee maker, and scan the barcode printed on the peel-off lid.
Why does the machine force you to scan the lid before the door will even unlock? Each fruit recipe requires a different blade speed, water ratio, and blending duration, so the scanner programs the exact cycle for that cup and prevents anyone from opening the chamber mid-spin.
You peel the film, set the cup inside the clear round window, and tap start. High-speed steel blades drop down, spin the frozen fruit into a bright velvet vortex in seventy seconds, hand you your drink, and sterilize the blades automatically for the next person.
You know a country lives in the future when its two-dollar midnight convenience store drink is healthier than a ten-dollar cafe.
🤖 Made with AI
Bee-Positive retweeted
It is remarkable even now how many people need to be told that allowing your enemies to win means you lose.
Bee-Positive retweeted
An 18th-century traveler's account of bear hunting among the Finns:
The moment he sees the peasant, he rears himself upon his two hind legs ready to tear him to pieces. The Finlander instantly puts himself in the attitude which is represented in the annexed plate; that is to say, he brings back the iron lance close to his breast, concealing from the bear the length of the pole, in order that he may not have time to be upon his guard, and consequently to parry with his paws the mortal blow which the hunter means to aim at his vitals.
The Finlander then advances boldly towards the bear, nor does he strike the blow till they are so near each other, that the animal stretches out his paws to tear his antagonist limb from limb. At that instant the peasant pierces his heart with the lance, which, but for the cross-bar, would come out at his shoulder; nor could he otherwise prevent the bear from falling upon him, an accident which might be highly dangerous.
By means of the cross-bar the animal is kept upright, and ultimately thrown upon his back; but what may seem to some very extraordinary, is, the bear, feeling himself wounded, instead of attempting with his paws to pull out the lance, holds it fast, and presses it more deeply into the wound.
When the bear, after rolling upon the snow, ceases from the last struggles of death, the Finlander lays hold of him, and calls for the assistance of his friends, who drag the carcase to his hut; and this triumph terminates in a sort of festival, where the poet assists, and sings the exploits of the hunter.
Bee-Positive retweeted
Solid summary of Poland crisis:
🇪🇺EU backed Donald Tusk wants to overthrow the elected President
🇪🇺Needs constitutional court judges to do so. Tries to appoint 8...
🇵🇱President swears in the 3 Tusk is constitutionally allowed to
🇪🇺Tusk holds a fake swearing in for the other 5 anyway
🇵🇱President leaves country on planned trip
🇪🇺One of the fake judges order the removal of 2 existing legitimate judges
🇪🇺Tusk order police to blockade the constitutional court
🇪🇺Tusk announces to save Democracy he needs suspend Democracy
🇵🇱Constituional court declares a coup
🇵🇱President turns his plane around
🐷Police start hedging their involvment on X
I was looking for recipes earlier, and Grok suggested something called agonizingly delicious ham buri.
I will be riffing off of that recipe this evening.
Bee-Positive retweeted
I would also point out that the sequels really turn on a full rejection of fatherhood. In many ways, they invert the story told in the first six movies.
Luke fails Kylo. He’s not the father figure he should be. And Han fails Kylo. He’s not the father he should be. And then the son kills the father. Instead of following any sort of redemptive arc, Kylo gives in to his evil side and murders his own father. It’s the exact opposite of Luke refusing to kill his father.
And consider what they do to Luke. The man whose greatest heroic act was refusing to give up on his murderous father becomes a man who briefly considers killing his own nephew because he fears what he might become.
Then there’s Rey. She doesn’t need Luke. She’s already awesome without him. And Luke has become a bitter old man because he didn’t live up to his own idealism. Yoda pops in, but he’s not really much of a father. He mostly just mocks Luke.
And Rey gives herself over to the matriarchy more than anything. The characters she learns from, for the most part, are strong, independent, feminist sorts of leaders. She doesn’t need the kind of fatherly guidance that Luke desperately needed in the original trilogy.
So you can see the sequel trilogy as a full rejection of fatherhood. Fathers are either failures, obstacles, or unnecessary. Rey doesn’t need a man, and Kylo is ultimately brought back to the good side largely through Rey’s awesomeness.
I love prequel memes. And I’ve been enjoying the sort of Zoomer take on the Star Wars prequels floating around X for the last couple of days.
A lot of these takes hinge on the idea of Anakin as representative of the white male experience in a progressive culture, where the good guys are actually the bad guys, and the bad guys are the good guys. And there is a good deal of truth to that.
But I think there’s something important being overlooked, something that is central to how I read the story.
I see the first six Star Wars movies as essentially being about fatherhood.
Anakin has no father. He comes from a single-parent home. Qui-Gon Jinn takes an interest in Anakin as a person. He is a benevolent fatherly presence who advocates for Anakin, sees his potential, and wants to protect and guide him. And part of that protection is even from the Jedi Order itself, since Qui-Gon disagrees with some of its ways.
The great tragedy of that first movie is that Qui-Gon, Anakin’s only true father figure, dies. Anakin is left to be raised by a cold Jedi Order and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who functions more like an older brother. Obi-Wan loves Anakin, but he is no father.
Without fatherly guidance and protection, Anakin struggles to enter the world of men and is used by two sides: a cold, detached Jedi Order and a manipulative false father in Palpatine.
And just as Anakin becomes the one thing he never had, a father, he loses much of his humanity, his wife, and his family.
That is the central tragedy of the prequels.
Now consider the original trilogy.
You have a son who is raised by a father figure in Uncle Owen and eventually finds himself under the care of a much older and more fatherly Obi-Wan. So, Luke was actually fathered, unlike Anakin. The series slowly turns into Luke’s quest to see his father redeemed.
In the end, Luke is unwilling to kill his father. And Anakin finds his redemption by killing his own false father to rescue his son.
That is the triumph of the original trilogy: a son pulling his father back from the darkness by becoming the man his father once desired to be.
And that father, even at the very end of his life, being awakened and doing what it takes to give his son a future.
That’s how I read Star Wars.
The tragedy of fatherlessness, and the triumph of sonship and fatherhood.
Bee-Positive retweeted
Patrick Stewart. Turned up so early and so unobtrusively to be a star in the reasonably priced car, we mistook him for a delivery driver and asked him to go round the back. Took his hat off and said, “But I’m the captain of the Enterprise”. Fucking nice guy.
Bee-Positive retweeted
Buckingham Palace Honours Sir Patrick Stewart (1940–2026) with Star Trek Theme Tune 🕊️
The Band of the Grenadier Guards performs the iconic Star Trek theme at Buckingham Palace in honour of Sir Patrick Stewart, following the sad news of his passing.
Queen Elizabeth II knighted Sir Patrick Stewart in 2010, recognising his outstanding contribution to drama and the arts 🇬🇧
🎥 @KingsGuardTours
📆 30 October 2026
📍 Buckingham Palace
#SirPatrickStewart #StarTrek #GrenadierGuards #BuckinghamPalace #BritishArmyMusic
