Cynthia Miller (she/her) @articyn1

Hey @grok - create an image of what the world would look like if I were in charge, based on my tweets.

@mattlanza Yep

@BarredinDC Aga’s is FANTASTIC!

@kudzuinga @japan_nobunaga Me either. That’s the best way to make sure skills are lost.

@japan_nobunaga Except when he breaks his tail. Then he has a weak end.

I finished my breakfast and asked, with the humility appropriate to a foreign guest, for my bill. The waitress said, "Booth four already got it." I looked at booth four. Empty. There was a small pool of syrup on the plate, glinting quietly, still refusing to concede. I understood at once. A knight had settled my debt and departed the field before I could rise to meet him. He had denied me the shame of paying, which is the highest form of mercy a stranger can extend, and he had done it in a manner that made pursuit impossible. This is not generosity. This is warfare, conducted through kindness, and I had been outmaneuvered before the meal was cold. "Which man was in booth four?" I asked, in the tone in which one asks the name of a ghost. "Old fella. Baseball cap. Left about eight minutes ago." Eight minutes. He had walked among us. He had passed the salt, perhaps. He may have held the door for a woman I did not notice. And then, his campaign complete, he had faded into the parking lot. "Why did he do this?" She said, "He didn't say." She said it the way a monk explains the weather. A great deed had occurred, and the deed did not require an explanation, because the deed was the explanation. "How often does this happen?" "Sundays, mostly." Sundays, mostly. In my country, we ring bells for gods on the days they are honored. Here the gods wear baseball caps, walk among the ordinary, and pay for a stranger's biscuits before slipping back into the field. I have been bowing in the wrong direction for eight hundred years. I sat back down with the posture of a man who has been touched by heaven and must not, under any circumstance, visibly react. "Can you describe him again?" "Honey, he looked like everyone." The worst clue. The finest answer. He is everyone. Every man in this diner. Every man in the parking lot. Every man on the highway. The trick was never one old fella. The trick is that the next old fella might also be him. I paid, quietly, for the two officers at the counter. The waitress said, "Now you're doing it." I bowed my head slightly. She did not see it. A true bow is not seen. It is felt by the ancestors, who are keeping score. I have been doing it for six weeks. I do not know if it will ever reach him. I do not need it to. A debt is not returned to the man who forgave it. A debt is walked forward, along the same road he took, in the same direction he vanished. I have begun leaving the house on Sundays specifically.

I called a recommended electrician and he did not answer. I called again the next day. He did not answer. I mentioned this to the man who gave me the number, apologetically, assuming the man had died. He said, "Oh yeah, he's terrible with the phone." Then he said, "He's great though." Terrible with the phone. Great though. I asked how I am supposed to reach a man who does not answer his phone. He said, "Just keep calling. He'll pick up eventually." I called eleven times over six days. I left three messages of increasing formality. The third one was, I now realize, addressed to a dead man. On day seven he answered and said, "Yeah?" No apology. No acknowledgment of eleven calls. He answered as though we were mid-conversation. I have since learned the rule, and the rule is upsetting. The good ones do not answer. The ones who answer immediately, who have a scheduling system, who send a confirmation text, who arrive in a branded vehicle within twenty-four hours, are the ones you should be afraid of. Availability is the warning sign. A man who can come tomorrow is a man with nothing to do tomorrow. I said this out loud to an American and he nodded like I had recited scripture. He said, "My guy took nine days to call me back. Best tile guy in the state." Nine days. He said it with pride. He was bragging. He was bragging about being ignored. I asked the electrician why he does not answer. He said, "I'm in an attic." That is the whole answer. He is in an attic. He is in an attic every day. The phone is in the truck and the truck is in the driveway and he is in the attic. He said, "If I answered the phone I'd be a guy who answers phones." He fixed my problem in thirty minutes and did not charge me for the trip. I have his number. He will not answer it. That is how I know it is a good number. How long did your best guy take to call you back. Post the number of days. I want to see the correlation.

I needed to move a sofa. I mentioned this to an American. He said, "You know anybody with a truck?" I did not know anybody with a truck. He looked at me with real concern. Not pity. Concern. The way you look at a man who has told you he does not have a name. "You gotta know somebody with a truck." I asked how one acquires such a person. He said, "You just do." This is the third time I have received that answer in this country. It is the answer to everything here. You just do. There is no process. There is only the eventual fact of having. He said, "Ask Kevin." I do not know a Kevin. He said Kevin like I should. He said it the way you say a shared uncle. I met Kevin four days later. Kevin owns a truck. Kevin does not own a truck for himself. Nobody owns a truck for themselves. Kevin owns a truck for a fifteen mile radius. Inside I said: THIS MAN HAS TAKEN A VOW. HE DID NOT ANNOUNCE IT. HE SIMPLY PURCHASED A BED AND ACCEPTED THE CONSEQUENCES. Kevin arrived on Saturday. He brought the truck. He also brought a second man. I had not asked for a second man. The second man's name is Tony. Tony came because Kevin came. Tony did not know me. Tony did not ask what we were moving. Tony brought gloves. They moved the sofa in eleven minutes. I offered them money. Both of them laughed at the same time, which felt rehearsed and was not. I asked what I owed them. Kevin said, "Buy the pizza." That is the price. That is the entire economy. The truck costs one pizza and the pizza is not negotiable and the pizza is also not expensive and everyone knows what size. Inside I said: THE FEE IS FIXED ACROSS THE ENTIRE NATION AND WAS SET BY NO ONE. We ate on the floor because the sofa was against the wall and none of us wanted to be the first to sit on it. Tony told me his daughter plays soccer. I asked if she is good. He said, "She's aggressive." I still think about that. Three weeks later, Kevin texted me. "You free Sunday? Helping Tony move a fridge." He did not ask if I wanted to. He informed me of a fridge. Inside I said: I HAVE BEEN CALLED UP. I DID NOT ENLIST. THE PAPERS WERE FILED ON MY BEHALF. I went. I moved the fridge. I have no truck. I contributed only arms. Afterward, a man I had never met asked me if I knew anybody with a truck. I said, "Yeah, I got a guy." I have a guy. I am somebody's guy now, too. Tony has told two people about me. He describes me as "the guy who's strong for his size." I have never been prouder of a sentence in my life.

🦔AI companies are bulk-buying rare books, scanning them through high-speed machines that cut the spines off, and shredding the originals. A service called ISBNdb facilitates orders of up to a million books and keeps buyers anonymous. Pre-2022 books are premium because they're free of AI-generated text. A federal judge ruled the practice is fair use because eliminating the original means only one copy exists at a time. Anthropic hired the former head of Google Books partnerships to obtain "all the books in the world." My Take This got to me. A bookseller told 404 Media that rare books with almost no surviving copies are being fed into this pipeline. Books that survived wars, fires, and centuries of handling are being shredded so an AI can learn to write a better marketing email. ISBNdb's website literally says "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," and they still built an entire business around making it happen quietly. They offer NDAs as a feature. They coach clients to call it "digital preservation." I've covered AI companies scraping the internet, torrenting libraries, and stealing music. This is worse because it's irreversible. You can re-upload a website. You can reprint a bestseller. You can't replace the last three copies of an 18th-century botanical text once someone shreds them for training data. And the judge said it's legal. So it's going to accelerate. "We shred rare books and offer NDAs so nobody finds out" is a legitimate business model in 2026. What a timeline. Hedgie🤗

@mattlanza I saw one the other day!

@mattlanza @NASAArtemis Tears in our house!

@mattlanza @HoustonDash @HoustonDynamo Oh! lol. It’s literally the jersey. Thank you.

@FlyersNation @mattlanza @CrossingBroad I mean, in a workplace that’s harassment so I get it.

@mattlanza Heaven forbid!

@Sadie_NC A tank

@mattlanza Downright bizarre! Scientists who don’t science?

@RepMTG Didn’t you kill your own dog?

@MrPitbull07 @FBIDirectorKash Yes. We shook our heads and said “see it is a problem!” But we are not looking to completely ban guns no matter what you tell yourselves.

@SpaceCityWX y’all are the goto weather information for so many of us in Houston. With the firings at the federal level do you feel you can be as effective in the coming hurricane season? I’m going be honest I’m frightened.