Tommy Stafford

The Learjet 60 that crashed in Palm Beach County today went from 35,000 ft to the ground in 76 seconds. I rebuilt the last 3 minutes in 4D from ADS-B, ATC audio, a NEXRAD analysis and dashcam video, then ran the engineering. Here's what the data says, and what it doesn't. 🧵

Tucker Carlson just declared in no uncertain terms: “There will be a third party.” “The majority will get its way.” “Most people are opposed to … the Republican and Democratic parties.” “We need an alternative.” This is why we’re building a new party movement to take back our country on behalf of We The People. And we’re building it from the ground up, not the top down. This new party cannot be built by the same elites who gave us the crisis we’re currently in. Skyrocketing costs of living. Record levels of chronic disease. Mass surveillance. Endless wars. Instead of relying on the same elites who got us here, we’re building a whole new kind of movement. We are recruiting candidates across the country to run in local elections and fight back in our own communities. Why? Because that is the only proven way we can win. Local organizing is how We The People successfully cancelled Flock surveillance contracts in communities across the country. Local organizing is how We The People successfully shut down data centers in communities across the country. Local organizing is how medical freedom fighters successfully banned almost all mandates in Idaho. Our principles are simple: We are anti-corruption. Anti-mandates. Anti-corporate monopolies. Anti-money in politics. Anti-war. Pro-decentralization. Pro-transparency. Pro-accountability. Join us. @TuckerCarlson

🚨 Sylvester Stallone Goes Off on the U.S. Engaging in Foreign Wars “Now I realize all war is futile. It's stupid. It's a mechanism to make tons of money for the War Department and its manufacturers. These kids just going out there into a grist mill, being chopped up — and then when they come back with no arms, ‘Oh sorry, you're on your own.’ I hate it and I'm bitterly opposed to it.”

McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion dollars to find out why families stopped coming. I can save them the 8.5 billion. They took out the playground. The plan, announced Wednesday at investor day. Better food, faster service, new equipment, AI tools, hospitality training, and a bigger push into chicken and beverages. They call it Next. The goal, they say, is making customers feel more comfortable. Wall Street loved it so much the stock fell 5 percent to its lowest since 2022. Over five years McDonald's shares are down 3 percent. Burger King's parent is up 14. The owner of Taco Bell and KFC is up 13. This is not a hamburger problem. This is a McDonald's problem. So let us talk about who used to eat there. Parents. That was the whole business. Parents at 5:40 on a Tuesday with three kids in the back and nothing thawed at home. You did not go for the burger. You went because your kids could run screaming through a plastic tube for 40 minutes while you sat with a coffee and experienced silence. That was the product. The food was the cover charge. The first PlayPlace opened in 1971 in Birmingham, Alabama, and for fifty years it did one job. It made small children demand to go to McDonald's. Then 2020 arrived, every play area in the country closed, and a great many never came back. The equipment came out during a remodeling program named Experience of the Future. The Experience of the Future turned out to be a touchscreen. Their own chief executive said he did not know if ball pits were in their future. Sir, you were not selling ball pits. You were selling forty minutes. So now there is no counter, no playground, and no reason for a seven year old to want to go. A screen, a window, and a bag. And for that we pay prices that require a moment of reflection in the parking lot. For thin, overcooked, oddly uniform pucks that taste like a memory of beef. I did not love them because they were good. I loved them because I was eight and there was a slide. And have you seen the new buildings. The old ones were unmistakable. Red roof, yellow arches, legible from a highway at 70 to a child who could not yet read. The new ones are a flat gray box with a small logo and a drive through wrapped around it. A regional claims office with a fryer. They removed the color, the characters, the counter, and the playground, and then hired consultants to find out why it no longer feels like anywhere. Which is why, when I have to eat fast food, I go to Chick-fil-A. Not for the politics. For the competence. They have led the customer satisfaction index for fast food eleven years running, and average 8.5 million dollars per location against McDonald's 4 million. More than double, while closed on Sundays. Fifty two days a year with the lights off, and still double. A seventeen year old hands you a bag and says my pleasure and means it about 70 percent, which is 70 percent more than a touchscreen has managed. McDonald's is spending 8.5 billion on hospitality training. Chick-fil-A earns 8.5 million per restaurant by just having some. So here is my consulting proposal, free of charge, on behalf of mothers everywhere. Put the playgrounds back. Not a nostalgia campaign. Not a retro cup. The structure. Tubes, slides, a door the kids cannot open from the inside, and a bench where a tired woman can sit. And understand what you are buying, because it is not lunch. A six year old does not know your food is bad. He has no basis for comparison and no functioning palate. He thinks the burger is incredible because he is standing in a castle made of tubes. That is the window. That is the only window you get. You catch them before the taste buds arrive, and thirty years later they drive past your sign, feel something they cannot explain, and pull in anyway. That is not a menu strategy. That is imprinting, and you shut it down in 2020 to save on cleaning. Eight and a half billion dollars for AI tools and hospitality training. Or a slide. 🦋