Time for some art along with some very interesting news.
Texas Governor Declares Federal Government has “Broken the Compact” with the States. Invokes INVASION Clause, Asserts Right to Self Defense
World Hal Turner 24 January 2024
The formal, official groundwork is now laid for actual Civil War inside the United States.
The Governor of Texas has declared, in writing, that the federal government has “broken the compact” with the states.
He announced he has invoked the “Invasion” clause of the Constitution and says Texas has a right to self defense which it will enforce with the Texas National Guard.
Here is Governor Gregg Abbott’s Declaration:
I have already told my wife that if this comes down to Civil War, I want us to sell BOTH houses, (NJ & PA) and move immediately to Texas.
What facts about the United States do foreigners not believe until they come to America?
I’m from India. I’ve been to 10 states all on the East Coast.
- People don’t believe that you can literally just drink water out of the tap in the bathroom. There is a reason why the glasses are kept in the Bathrooms of all American hotels & motels.
- Nobody believes that their pharmacies and retail outlets are big way way way bigger than you could imagine. CVS & Walgreens, which are both essentially pharmacies are probably even larger than small malls in India. Also, they just don’t keep medicines, they keep EVERYTHING.
- People don’t have any clue about the extent of diversity in America. I used to feel proud about being from a diverse nation. Then, I went to America. You see people from every race, races you probably didn’t even know existed, every religion, every gender and every form and somehow, they all just blend together.
- People don’t believe that America is a beautiful nation. Many Indians think of it as a culture-less nation. They often ask me whether there is anything to see in America. They have this image that it’s a nation with big buildings and wide roads. No. You cannot be more wrong. There is so much to see and so much to do other than big buildings.
- In Washington DC, all the Smithsonian Museums are free! It is very very hard to believe and also very very hard to resist going to all of them.
- Everybody isn’t fat. There are a lot of people who care about their health and fitness. I have seen people walking and running on busy streets of big cities.
- The thing that pinches the most, you have to pay for trollies at Airports. Also, you need to pay for luggage in flights which pinches because when you convert it into your native currency, it is very very expensive.
- If you think the portion size in American is big, think again. It isn’t big, it’s HUGE. Cookies, candies, chocolates, bags of chips etc are enough to feed a lot of people.
(For example- this is a pizza we cluelessly ordered in Chicago. This was around twice the size of a large pizza in India.)
9. If you come from a tropical country like me, American Summer is NOTHING like summer. It is usually comparatively cold, even in June & July.
10. Again, if you are from India, there are no motorbikes on the roads. Absolutely none. It’s very very weird because in India, it’s very common to see bikers riding motorbikes as if they own the road.
11. Majority of families in America have lunch around 11 am or 12 pm. This isn’t the case in my country because Lunch gets postponed to 2 pm or 3 pm.
12. Contrary to popular culture, the life of a regular American Teenager is nothing like what you see in movies and tv shows. Their life doesn’t revolve around parties, drinking and sex, they are probably only a tad bit less stressed than us.
13. I don’t drink coke but my friend pointed out that if you buy a cup of coke, you can get infinite refills.
14. Vegetarian or Vegan options are very very limited. If you are willing to survive on fries, then you’ll love it.
15. Almost everybody uses GPS. The fear of getting lost is negligible.
16. This is a funny one. In cold Northern States, when it snows and gets ridiculously chilly, people go to big stores like Walmart & Costco to walk. You can imagine how large these stores really are.
17. People are extremely patriotic. They have the American national flags everywhere like outside hotels, spas, homes, schools etc. We don’t enjoy flexibility when it comes to national flags in India.
(I took this picture from somebody’s backyard.)
18. It’s very common for people in stores or in museums or in public places to chat with you. This is very pleasant. People aren’t cold and reserved.
19. Flying by airplane is cheaper than taking a train. It’s the other way round in India.
20. This is weird, correct me if I am wrong, almost everybody has an iPhone. It may be the latest one or an older one but everybody has an iPhone. Even our Taxi driver had an iPhone.
21. People are also very obvious about the political party they support. I saw people wearing Clinton T shirts, Bernie Sanders jackets, Donald Trump hats etc. I haven’t seen such craze anywhere else though.
22. Houses don’t have ceiling fans. This is hard to believe because life without a fan is impossible in India. All of them have centralised heating/cooling.
23. Houses aren’t made of concrete and bricks like in India, they are made of wood. My parents jokingly said that these houses aren’t “majboot” (“strong” in English) enough.
24. There is McDonald’s everywhere. Even in the middle of nowhere, there will be a lone McDonald’s joint. I am not kidding.
25. They don’t home deliver McDonald’s in America. They do it in India though. India -1 USA- 0.
26. People LOVE coffee. Obviously not more than Indians’ love for masala chai.
All in all, it’s an amazing place to visit.
(Please correct me if I am incorrect with some facts)
How are firms in China getting Nvidia chips despite the US ban?
US restrictions are stupid
Especially the team with Raimondo as the core has formulated one stupid restriction policy after another.
Initially, Nvidia could provide chips with 100-point performance, leading the market and stealing away almost all Chinese customers. Thinking this was too good for China, they issued a ban banning American companies from exporting chips with a score of more than 80 points.
Nvidia chose to develop a 79-point chip to meet US regulations and they could continue to do business with the Chinese.
Nvidia’s business is still good, because even a chip with 79 point is still very good. The Chinese can make up for the performance gap by increasing the number.
Raimondo’s team is dissatisfied with Nvidia’s approach and believes that they are “stepping on the border and harming U.S. interests.”
So they updated their policy and demanded that “U.S. companies be prohibited from exporting chips worth more than 40 point .”
Nvidia had no choice, they developed a 39-point chip to sell to its Chinese customers.
However, this time all the Chinese customers left.
Because Nvidia’s competitor Huawei can provide chips with a score of 70 points. There are no sanctions, no limits, and the price is quite cheap.
Since those 79 point are not acceptable, why do these Chinese customers continue to play within the rules of the United States? A 40 point chip means nothing to them.
They gave orders to Huawei one after another.
Huawei has received billions of dollars in orders, and there will be more and more in the future.
They will transfer these gains to the R&D department to develop and produce 75-point, 80-point, and 85-point chips, and gradually catch up with Nvidia in the future.
The professional advice of Nvidia’s boss was completely ignored, and the whole world laughed at the stupidity of American politicians.
What is something you learned very late in life, but wish you knew much earlier?
This is interesting. You will damn agree with me after reading this.
Some years ago, one of my friends came to me asking for money.
I gave him (donated him) some money. After some days, he came again and asked for the same. Again I donated some.
After some days, he came to me and didn’t talk about money. He told me a sad story “How he lost all his money that I had given him”.
This time I provided him some work because I was busy with other projects. I let him handle one of my clients because he was as qualified as me.
He made some money because I gave him whole project fee.
He was happy.
Again, after some days, he came.
Again he asked for a project.
I told him “I have no projects right now to give him.”
Then he requested and I provided him another project.
But this time:
- Out of anger, he misbehaved the client. Because of him I lost a client.
- I asked him to leave the project so I can fix the design as well as relation with the clients.
- Out of anger, he again deleted one of my databases. And acted like he didn’t do anything.
- Then I kicked him out of my house. I had a real fight with him.
- He went to our close friends and told them “How I refused to provide him money. How I made him worked like a donkey. And how I had a fight with him. And he also acted like he is the poorest guy in the world ruining my relations everywhere.”
Today, I read one Hector’s answers. So, I remembered it.
LESSON 1:
You can’t help people who never want to help themselves.
LESSON 2:
People will always blame you for their failure after you help them. Because they think, your help is useless. They never think about their failure to execute your help.
LESSON 3:
“Don’t help anyone for free. Let them pay the price for it so they can understand how important your time, relation and emotion are”.
Election 2024 – Preliminary Assessment
At this point the U.S. presidential election of 2024 seems almost decided.
Today it looks likely that Donald Trump will again become president.
Trump has won the New Hampshire primary and the only other Republican candidate still in the race is the neo-conservative candidate Nicki Halley:
Donald Trump marched closer to the Republican nomination with a sweep of the first two contests, defeating former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley on Tuesday as voters turned out in projected record numbers in New Hampshire’s primary.
Trump’s lead here was decisive enough for the Associated Press to project his win shortly after polls closed. With nearly 75 percent of the vote tallied, Trump led Haley by about 11 percentage points.
…
Trump’s victory dealt another blow to critics in his party who saw the New Hampshire race as perhaps the last best chance to stop or slow him.
Halley is kept in the race by some billionaire donations, including from those who tend to donate to Democrats, in an effort to somehow still damage Trump:
Despite her shrinking path to halting Trump’s march to the Republican nomination, Haley’s showing in New Hampshire hinged on independents, who are permitted to vote in this state’s Republican primary.
…
New Hampshire voters in the Republican primary split about evenly between people who were registered as Republicans and those registered as independent or undeclared, with a tiny share saying they were not registered to vote before Election Day, according to early exit polls. Independents and undeclared registered voters supported Haley by about a 2-to-1 margin, while registered Republicans supported Trump by about 3 to 1.
The hope of the Halley supporters is that other open primaries may still give her a lead. Democrats turned Independents could flood such elections and make her look like a winner:
Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, released a memo as voting began Tuesday vowing to fight on through Super Tuesday in March, despite pre-primary polls showing Trump with a widening lead here and less favorable contests ahead for Haley. The memo argued that outperforming with independents could buoy her after South Carolina. Michigan has an open primary, and 11 of the 16 Super Tuesday states also allow non-Republicans to vote to some extent.
New Hampshire has already shown that this concept does not work as well as presumed.
President Joe Biden does not have to fear any primary challengers. His party is stuck with him. This despite some awful polling data that should have pushed the Democrats to retire Joe Biden.
Only 38.9% of voters approve of Biden and his policies while 55.7 % disapprove them.
Trump numbers are better. 43.1 % have a favorable opinion of him while 51.8% find him unfavorable.
General election polls have Trump leading over Biden by 5%.
There is little chance for Biden to turn this around. There is nothing in the policy queue that could be seen as a win for him. On domestic issues he is limited by a Republican majority in the House. Problem areas are the perceived state of the economy as well his failure to stop mass immigration. He is also losing in the foreign policy frame. His war in Ukraine is near total failure and the U.S. position in the Middle East is about to explode.
Trump still has dozens of open (kangaroo) court cases against him. But it is doubtful that any court will truly dare to put the leading presidential candidate into jail. In the end a conservative Supreme Court, and enraged Republican voters, would anyway find a way to get Trump out of the mess.
On foreign policy issues Trump has a rather dubious record. But I agree with Stephen Walt who finds that there are only few differences between Trump’s and Biden’s foreign policies. It is the deep state which is anyway formulating as well as executing them.
But is still more likely that Trump will find a way out of the mess in Ukraine than Biden. Trump is also way less a Zionist than Biden. His opinion about Netanyahoo and settlers is generally low.
My opinion on Trump is unchanged. He is just a run of the mill U.S. president. His biggest fault is his inability to select good people and to keep control over what they are doing. Previous Trump selections like McMaster, Bolton or Pompeo were all too radical and treacherous. They should never have been chosen. For someone who once had a reality show about selecting apprentices that is an astonishingly bad record.
Or, as Stephen Walt expresses it:
To be clear, I’m not saying that this election will have zero effect on U.S. foreign policy. Trump may try to take the United States out of NATO, for example, although such a move would undoubtedly face enormous resistance from the foreign and defense policy establishment. He may focus primarily on his domestic agenda—and his lingering legal troubles—which would further reduce his already-limited interest in foreign affairs and tend to reinforce the existing status quo. Trump was a poor judge of foreign-policy talent during his first term (and provoked unprecedented rates of staff turnover), and that tendency may hamstring U.S. policy implementation and lead foreign governments to hedge even more. There would be subtle differences between Biden 2 and Trump 2, but I’d bet against a radical transformation.
My concern with U.S. foreign policy is the huge damage it is causing all over the world. I see Trump as the better candidate to minimize that. He has avoided wars as far as the deep state allowed him to do so.
One can not say that of Biden.
Posted by b on January 24, 2024 at 12:32 UTC | Permalink
Can you provide an example of a time when a rude customer was told “You are not welcome here” or something similar? What was the outcome of the situation?
Years ago I was a Radio Shack manager. One of my employees was a young German immigrant – she was married to a soldier that was stationed nearby. Her name is Stefanie.
Stefanie was a very smart young lady; however there was a learning curve for a while with the specifics of connecting certain pieces of electronic equipment together – using adapters etc to get from one type to another. She never gave up and was eventually very successful.
One evening I was assisting a regular with something at the counter. Another customer came in and asked Stefanie for assistance with some connectors/adapters. After several minutes Stefanie’s customer suddenly yells, “You stupid nazi bitch!”
I immediately excuse myself and tell her customer that we’re done here for tonight and he needs to leave. He’s welcome back another day but tonight he needs to leave the premises. He starts getting loud towards me. I walk away from him and back behind the counter. He comes over and continues yelling, swearing etc.
Remember my customer? He’s watching and listening. He casually pulls his wallet from his pocket and places it on the counter open showing a badge. The irate man looks at the badge and says “So, you’re a game warden, what are you going to do?” My customer then says “Take a closer look, I’m a federal game warden and a sworn peace officer.” “You were asked to leave and if you don’t I will arrest you for trespassing which means hours of paperwork for me and I hate paperwork.” “If I arrest you I will be in court to testify. You have 30 seconds to leave.”
Irate man left. Problem solved. Game warden asked if Stefanie could ring him up as she was paid commission. He spent a fair amount of money that evening.
Illustrator Fernanda Suarez Shows How Disney Princesses Would Look Like If They Lived Today
In recent years, we’ve seen quite a few reimagined ‘modern’ versions of the Disney princesses we grew up loving and admiring. This latest interpretation by Chilean digital artist Fernanda Suarez, however, might be the fairest of them all.
Starting with Snow White back in July, Suarez has gone on to illustrate 7 classic princesses in hip, present-day fashion. These sketched-up smoke shows look like they follow Luxy Hair tutorials on YouTube and shop for clothes at Forever 21. They probably post selfies with their ‘princes’ on Instagram and all agree that NAKED2 is the best eyeshadow palette. Oh yeah, they probably also campaign non-stop on social media for the equal rights of dwarfs, marine wildlife, and big cat conservation.
More info: DeviantArt, Patreon, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, ArtStation, Tumblr (h/t: boredpanda)
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What do you think about your experience in prison?
I really didn’t notice at first. After 29 years in prison I was just happy to be out. I didn’t think I had PTSD. But soon certain sounds ,smells and places would cause me to have like flash backs. Fortunately, I don’t have dreams that some ex cons have said they have.
I went to prison as a 17 year old Missouri farm boy. I was sent to the worst prison in the state at the time. I was only there 5 years before being transferred. But it changed me dramatically. It was there that I learned not to show true feelings. I masked being scared, I did not dare cry . If someone was lying bleeding it was none of my business unless it was someone I hung around with. I came to believe that no one made it out of that place alive. I had a life sentence and with that thought I only wanted to survive as long as I could. No one though was going to disrespect me or try anything . I had life and didn’t think I would survive anyway. But I did.
I was eventually transferred. All the other prisons ,although violent seemed tame in comparison. But I though I now had at least a chance. I tried to better myself in any way possible to prepare myself for possible release. I did this until I eventually did get out
I was ready for the world . I think I am doing good, but much of prison remains with me . Like I said the flash backs, not liking crowds to the point of being paranoid. I love people and will go out of my way to help someone. But I get nervous and on edge in crowds. In restaurants I sit with my back to the wall and have to see everyone. Know where they are at. My family and friends will not walk up behind me without announcing that they are there. This is not fair to them . My neighbor/boss and my wife told me one day” you go out of your way to help others, but no one can help you if you don’t let them” I told them I didn’t need help. They explained that while I have support and people that are there for me that I needed to let them in . In my mind I was letting them in . I loved them and still love them . I would do anything for them. But apparently I do not open up to them when they are concerned about me.
No matter how much or how little time you have prison will change you. This also applies to C/ Os. They see the same shit the prisoners see. I encourage all of you who have done time or worked in a prison to try to be more open to those who you are close to. It will help a lotb
As a teacher, have you ever bumped up the grade of a student due to unusual circumstances?
Here’s the one I remember. A girl in my earth science class was there every day, took notes, asked questions, was obviously interested. First midterm. She is way below everyone else. Second midterm, same. Final, ditto. I decided I was not going to flunk her so I closed my eyes and gave her a C. Which meant I had to bump up a bunch of other people, too.
She was in ROTC and I had just joined the Reserves, so we had something to chat about. She told me she was going active after college. I asked what branch. “Intelligence.”
This is me biting my tongue until it nearly bled.
She went into imagery analysis. She made far more effective use of my class than the people who made easy A’s and forgot it all. She did a tour at DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency. I know people who would KILL for a tour at DIA. They ASKED specifically for her. She took a buyout as a major after the Gulf War and that’s the last I heard of her.
Bar none, by light years, best judgment call I ever made.
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