LIFE returns to print 11.23.26. Read our Editors’ Letter and learn more about the new LIFE here: new.life.com

Can we please just come together as a country and ban HOA's? There is no reason that it can't be the next 80/20 issue...

If the U.S. is harboring a fugitive from justice, is Brazil allowed to invade the U.S. and kidnap Flavio Bolsonaro like they did with Maduro in Venezuela?

In the United States, buying an egg salad sandwich from a convenience store or gas station at midnight is a gamble with your digestive system. In Japan, a two-dollar 7-Eleven egg salad sandwich is a culinary religious experience that late chef Anthony Bourdain famously called pillows of love. Why does a humble convenience store sandwich in Tokyo taste better than a fifteen-dollar cafe lunch in New York? It comes down to two obsessions: agricultural engineering and thermal logistics. First, Japanese convenience chains do not use pale, industrial powdered eggs. They use farm eggs from hens fed marigold-enriched diets that produce deep sunset-orange yolks, whipped with yolk-only Kewpie mayonnaise and tucked inside crustless Shokupan milk bread that is steamed and kneaded to stay cloud-soft. Second, those sandwiches do not sit on a frigid shelf for four days. Delivery trucks restock Japanese convenience stores three to four times a day using dedicated temperature zones, keeping bread in mildly cooled compartments so refrigerator chill never hardens the wheat starch.

?^?

For the record, I never authored even one opinion piece for the Daily Wire. You guys ghostwrote all of them and then slapped my name on it as the author for clicks. Good luck finding the intern (or AI system?) you’re upset with. @CommunityNotes

Almost all the politicians on every level of representative government are lawyers. I don’t think that was the future envisioned by the Founding Fathers. We have been legislated and regulated to death. Politicians spend their days writing laws addressing problems that don’t exist

Billionaires in California are spending $333 million to wage a war. Against what? Homelessness? No. Cancer? No. Child poverty? No. They’re waging war against a 5% billionaire wealth tax. They’d rather poor kids with cancer die than pay a little more in taxes. That is obscene.

She got asked one simple question and her brain immediately started malfunctioning

Happy birthday to the smartest, strongest, most selfless person I know. I love you.

Joe McCarthy was correct. It's why they had to destroy him.

My niece is tired of borrowing my guitars and wants one of her own. She's smart enough to know that she doesn't need anything pro-grade until she can play up to it. She expressed interest in "something like" my cheap but lovely Austin goldtop Les Paul copy. I'm not real crazy about what Austin is doing right now, so I started looking around, and found Firefly Guitars. That prompted many hours of research running all the way to serious macro looks at the world market. I've ordered this Firefly FFSP for her and it'll be delivered next Tuesday. $226.96, shipped. When it arrives, I'll be there to take a damned close look at it.

If this is true, then we already have a MASSIVE problem on our hands. Stay vigilant, people.

What Your Watch Says About You 1. Rolex: Bought it with his first bonus to stop the bullying. 2. Two-tone Datejust: Gullible enough to believe it when the AD said he'd move him up the list for a real watch. 3. Cartier: It was a gift from a girlfriend who won't let him attend bachelor parties. 4. Richard Mille: Still goes clubbing after 40, and wears it every day except when he's being deposed for fraud. 5. TAG Heuer: Got it for his 18th birthday and then never amounted to anything. 6. Patek Philippe: Judges you if you don't recognize it, and makes sure you notice. 7. F.P. Journe: Threatened to leave California until the board invented a new class of stock. 8. Tudor: Drives a Toyota but says, "it's basically a Lexus." 9. Audemars Piguet: Uses Instagram like a chick, and still tells Vegas stories. 10. Vacheron Constantin: Has two Rolexes at home, and no regard for your opinion about anything. 11. Hublot: Owns a chain of car washes but says he's in private equity. 12. Jaeger-LeCoultre: Thinks he's James Bond but is watching porn alone at 2 a.m. 13. Omega: His dentist lives a more interesting life. 14. IWC: Never gets promoted, and his wife cheats on him. 15. Panerai: The action-hero watch for guys who brag about cheating on their wives. 16. Breitling: Regional sales, medical devices. He flew on a Cessna once and still talks about it. 17. Apple Watch: Hits on girls by talking about Padel and his biomarkers. 18. Grand Seiko: Doesn't get invited to parties. 19. Whoop: Hasn't worn a watch since the Series A. 20. No watch: When he controls time, he decides what time it is. Or he's just poor. 21. Two watches at once: So he'll know what time to get out of the next FTX.

For anyone curious about what it actually looked like to kill a generation of functioning cars, here’s an actual video from 2009 and brief explanation: The dealer first replaces the oil with sodium silicate solution. It’s a clear-ish liquid that crystallizes under extreme heat. As the engine warms up the solution begins to form small abrasive crystals in the oil system that shred the bearing and score the cylinder walls. Within seconds of starting the car you can see smoke billowing from the exhaust, this is the crystals scratching the cylinder walls and leaving small grooves for oil and solution to leak past into the combustion chamber and ignite/evaporate, producing the white smoke. Pretty soon the entire crankcase is full of crystals and freshly shredded metal flakes, the engine seizes. It took about 40 seconds in this video. Some engines reportedly lasted up to 7 minutes, but all were destroyed. That strikes me as sort of sad in a way, like watching a great warrior slowly lose a heroic last stand. Now, this is the part that gets insanely wasteful. These cars were sent to federally approved recycling facilities where they had 180 days to sell the non-engine parts before they were required to prove that they had shred the entire thing into scrap steel. But, in talking to a guy who ran one such facility at the time, he typically just sent them straight to the crusher. The timeframes allotted weren’t long enough to dismantle all of the cars, and even if you could, the marginal prices of the parts was greatly diminished. You cannot sell 1000 transmissions when only 50 went bad that year, they became worthless. So just like that, in order to increase prosperity and save the environment, 677,000 entire running cars and trucks were turned directly into rebar worth a few cents per pound. The entire Obama administration was like a chapter out of atlas shrugged.

Barack Obama was horrible in a million different ways, but he doesn’t get anywhere near the hate he deserves for destroying the used car market for an entire generation. 15-year-old cars with 150,000 miles that should be selling for $3,000 are going for $15,000. It’s abominable. Pure destruction and thievery.