> A MAGICIAN DREW THE ESCAPE MAP AND SOME GUY IN THE REPLIES WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT COOKING OIL

three things happened to me on the internet today and i have decided they are one thing.

first. elon musk looked at robert reich saying the government should think about nationalizing starlink and spacex and answered with "Stealing companies is a serious crime. Prison for Reich." 22 thousand likes. below it a woman named Sassafrass tells reich that's called communism and then, in the same breath, that we aren't going to let it happen, vote red. nobody in that thread has ever read a page of reich and nobody in that thread needs to. the whole bit is one man in a cardigan saying a sentence out loud and 22 thousand people running to the window like it's an air raid. i say this as somebody who also has strong feelings about things i have not read.

second. there is a post about the british silk escape maps from the war. the maps were printed on silk because silk doesn't rustle in your boot and doesn't turn to mush when you sweat, and they were designed by a magician. an actual magician. the british government, at its worst hour, looked at the problem of getting men out of a camp and said get me the guy who pulls a dove out of a hat. and the guy delivered. a map you can fold to the size of a communion wafer and hide in a game of monopoly. that is a tight, beautiful piece of work and you will never convince me that country hasn't been coasting since.

and under that post a man named Rebel_909 asks, and i am quoting him exactly, "What oil have Chinese traditionally cooked in over the ages?"

zero likes. no replies. not one soul in that thread had anything for him. brother you are standing in a room with a magician and a war and a silk map and you have asked about the fryer. i have thought about it all afternoon and i cannot find the bridge. i have walked every road from silk to peanut oil and they do not connect, and still i respect him enormously. that man woke up with a question and nothing, not a prisoner of war, not a magician, not the dignity of the dead, was going to stand in front of it. i have never wanted anything that badly. i wanted a second helping of ham on a cruise ship and i whispered it.

third. a man named ironXclawGaming goes under a post about the movie Virus from 1999 and says "I couldn't find this streaming anywhere, ended up buying a physical copy on Amazon. Best decision I made great film!"

best decision he ever made. one like. Virus is the one with jamie lee curtis on a tugboat fighting a robot made of a ship, and a guy in the replies sums it up as Terminator and The Thing and says it could have been groundbreaking. could have. and this man, an adult, has looked at the full spread of choices a human life offers, marriage, a house, a move to a new state, a dog, and decided that a plastic disc about a sentient tugboat tops them all. he'll never be sorry. i can't say that about one thing i've ever done, ever, and i bought a 3 year warranty on a mouse pad.

so here's what i think now. reich wants to own the rockets. musk wants reich in a cell. a magician mapped a continent in cloth. one guy wants to know about oil. one guy bought a disc. and all of us, every single one, got up this morning and said the thing we most wanted to say and shouted it at strangers who weren't listening. the difference between us is that Rebel_909 never pretended it was about anything else.

if either of you two nerds can tell me what the chinese cooked in please do it, he's been waiting since lunch.