Ken Cook

I am convinced that most X bookmarks are the result of somebody clicking in the wrong place and inadvertently creating a bookmark for the post they were in.

It's now been over a year since "Choosin' Texas" by Ella Langley was released (10/17/25) and today it is still the number one song in the country according to the Billboard Hot 100.

Now I like the song just fine. It's a really good song. But it's had a good run. Aren't there any good current songs out there that can finally knock this one out of the top spot?

I remember when the Billboard Hot 100 used to have 30-40 songs a year hitting the top spot. Has pop music really gotten so bad that one good song can dominate the charts for over a year?

x.com/talkofthechart…

Interesting take. I think this has merit.

In light of the recent pranking incident involving the Red Baron employee, I got to wondering if it is even feasible to steal money from another phone simply by holding your own phone in proximity to it.

So I researched it and (with assistance from Grok), this is what I found:

- Putting one iPhone near another cannot steal money from another iPhone user.⁠ Apple Pay (and similar mobile wallets) does not allow one phone to pull money from another just by being close.

- Standard in-store or contactless payments require explicit authentication on the payer’s device (Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode) before the Secure Element releases a one-time tokenized credential to a payment terminal. Simply holding phones near each other does nothing.

- There is no built-in peer-to-peer “tap to take money from someone else’s iPhone” feature. Apple Cash or similar transfers need deliberate user action on the sender’s side.

Now that said, I am not trying to insinuate that the Red Baron employee overreacted. In fact, had I not just now done the research for myself, I would have fallen for this prank as well.

I post this so that others know not to worry about this if they ever encounter some snot-nosed kid trying to prank them for social media clicks.

While this woman deserves a hard lesson for threatening to shoot President Trump and should have the book thrown at her, it is still sad that she threw her life away because she got caught up in the hate that the Left has been filling her mind with.

During the course of my life, I have had many elections not go my way and so I've had a few presidents get elected that I did not care for. However, I never let myself get consumed with hate for them. I would sulk for a day or two after the election but then I'd get on with my life with a "we'll win it next time" attitude.

But I learned that even when my candidate wins, life does not become hunky-dory. I still face the same struggles and challenges in my personal life and I still need to make my own happiness and my own success - no president is going to do that for me.

For the past 10 years, the Left has been whipping up mindless Trump hate and it is destroying far too many people for no good reason.