I want to talk about the steam-shovel graveyard that I discovered on the edge of Milford, Massachusetts.
Back in the day, those big yellow construction vehicles and dozers were all steam powered. And the biggest of them were called “steam-shovels”. Oh, for certain, they played a major role in the taming of the Industrial Revolution, but they became obsolete.
And were discarded.
And forgotten.
And one day, I am walking though the beautiful Massachusetts woods when I come into a lightly wooded glade; one that must have been a field decades ago, and there they were. Steam-shovel after steam-shovel. SO many. I started counting them.
I counted 37 of them. Then gave up.
Some had trees growing inside of them. Others were so ruined that they looked like rusty paper.
This is one of those things that you never think about.
What happened when the steam-shovels became obsolete?
Ah.
They went to Milford Massachusetts to die.
Don’t be a steam-shovel.
Today…
Why don’t churches open their doors at night so that homeless people have a warm place to sleep? Would you continue to give money to your church despite the fact they don’t help the homeless?
A youth church in my hometown used to do that. The door was always open, and the underfloor heating ran all night in winter.
In thanks, the homeless used to shit in the corners, despite there being a public toilet just outside the door. A free one, I might add.
A newly bought set of hymn books, worth a few hundred euros, had been pissed on and needed to be replaced, and their insurance wouldn’t cover it because the door had been unlocked.
They got angry phone calls from parents because they’d made teenage volunteers scrub the shit stains out of the floor and only told them afterwards what it was, and hadn’t provided anything even resembling proper equipment for handling human waste.
There were regular attempts to break into the sacristy to get at the valuables stored there, or to cause more damage to church property. Probably both.
The people who came there had no respect for the building or its occupants. They were actively, maliciously, destructive. At one point, somebody had not only shat on the altar, but also apparently spent some time stamping their still wet shit into the stone. The whole thing had to be replaced, which wasn’t cheap.
That was the point where their pastor decided that maybe locked doors served a good purpose after all.
Lots of churches do support homeless shelters or soup kitchens / food pantries.
And did you know that there are other issues in the world than homeless people? Shocking, I know. Some churches even do ridiculous things like send money to schools in India or Africa so kids there can get an education and have a better future! How dare they! Or support hospitals and clinics in developing countries! Or orphanages! What a disgusting waste of money!
Panama Agrees to “Not Renew” China Belt and Road Initiative; Will try to cancel early
The President of Panama, José Raúl Mulino has announced that following his meeting yesterday with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Panama has decided not to renew its 2017 Memo with China, regarding their “Belt and Road Initiative.”
Moreover, Panama told Secretary Rubio they will look towards voiding their Agreements with the Chinese Government prior to their End Dates set for 2027 and 2028.
Ah. The war with China has begun. Good thing that China has a deep sea port in Chili (finished last year). Rendering the strategic importance of the Panama canal less important. The primary goods transiting this Panama canal are (I believe, but am not sure) is to the United States. China can access South America via the Chilian Port to the West, and directly to the Eastern side via African sea routes. We shall see. Bottom line; I think that China has expected this to occur and has arranged other systems to utilize. -MM
Among Russia, the USA, and China, which do you trust the most, and which do you trust the least, and why?
That’s easy
The US – I trust the least
Simple reason
They are Liars and have been caught twice
First was the Iraqi WMD Lie
Second was the S&P and Moody both rating the Subprime Security CDOs as AAA or A+, 8 months before they went bust – clearly being in on the scam
The Chinese & Russians – I trust more as long as what they say makes sense
Also simple
I haven’t had evidence of China or Russia lying on major issues
I don’t count what Western Media say
Like I said, I lost trust of them when Powell lied to the UN about WMD in Ukraine
The Ukraine war is the best example
The West said Putin would collapse six times and Russia would collapse and Russia had enough weapons and missiles for 6 weeks
My own logic said this was BS
As early as 2022 , I stubbornly wrote off all the nonsense spread about Russian imminent collapse by people like Mischa firrer as total propaganda
Myself and a few others including the now banned Alexander Finnegan
Today logic has won and everyone admits Russia is winning
New Trump Foreign Policy?
How do you objectively evaluate China’s military strength?
We already know three incontrovertible facts:
- China has the world’s largest army (over 2 million).
- China has the world’s largest navy (more than 400 ships).
- China has an enormous nuclear arsenal (at least 500 nuclear weapons).
China is technologically very advanced, especially in the military.
- China has advanced hypersonic missiles (the USA doesn’t).
- China has the very advanced J-20 and J-35 stealth fighters.
- China has the advanced Type 003 supercarrier with a very innovative electromagnetic catapult.
- China has been making huge breakthroughs in submarine technology.
China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times greater than that of the USA. China can replenish its navy much, much faster than America can.
We also know that the US military is facing a number of huge challenges:
- Maintenance is a continuing woe, especially in the navy and the air force.
- At any given time, only about half of the F-35 fleet is operational.
- The US military has a serious recruitment crisis.
Some more facts:
- The USA hasn’t won a significant military victory since WWII.
- The USA has lost nearly all its wars, particularly against rice farmers and goat herders armed with AK-47.
- The last military peers the USA fought with were the Imperial Japanese and German Nazi. Today, the USA doesn’t know how to fight against a true military peer.
Given all of the above, I judge China’s military strength to be at least on par with the USA. Objectively speaking.
What was buying a gun like before background checks were implemented?
My parents bought me my first shotgun when I was 12 years old. They ordered it out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog (the big Christmas Wish Book) that had quite a few pages of guns available by mail order. The shotgun was delivered like anything else they ordered. It wasn’t the shotgun I had circled in the catalog and I was disappointed. My grandmother was visiting us for the holiday and sat me down and had a talk with me about gratitude. I acquiesced, and was glad I had a new shotgun. That afternoon my dad and my grandmother drove me out to the farm so I could try it out. I had walked about 50′ when a covey of birds flushed out of some cover and I got the very first bird I’d ever shot at on the wing and I fell in love with the shotgun. I carried that 16 gauge, bolt action shotgun for 10 years, harvesting hundreds of birds; pheasants, quail, doves, ducks, and geese, before I got a nice semi-auto 12 gauge.
When I was 13 and my older brother was 16, we walked to the farm store and went in and bought a Remington 870 pump shotgun in 12 gauge for our dad for his birthday. He’d always had to borrow a shotgun to go bird hunting and had bought me one before he had one himself! My brother and I walked a mile right down the sidewalk along Main Street going home with that shotgun and a box of shells… swapping who got to carry the shotgun a few times. Nobody thought anything about 2 boys walking down the street with a shotgun.
Guns have never been the problem. Society has become the problem.
Cheers | Cold Opens: Season 1
Your life matters
A couple of years ago, I noticed a hunchbacked figure standing in our front garden, but I had no idea what it was doing there. Instead of approaching the figure, I watched it patiently, and noticed that she seemed to be pulling weeds. And then she was gone.
Over the next few weeks and months, the woman reappeared on an irregular basis, and proceeded with pulling weeds on her own in our frontyard, slowly and decidedly, but also absently — as if she was meditating.
Sometimes, I also heard her singing.
One day, we walked up to her to have a chat. And so she told us she was a widow who had lived on her own for almost a decade now, only a couple of houses further down the road, and that in lack of any company (except for a son who only seemed to surface if he needed something), one day she had decided to pull some weeds — be cause she loved doing that.
And she had chosen our frontyard.
She asked us if that was alright, and we happily acknowledged. It was the start of a curious frontyard relationship which sublimated through (watching) pulling weeds, (listening to) old forgotten songs, waving hallo to each other with a smile, and the occasional short chat. It lasted for some years.
One day, the weeds kept on growing and the old songs started to fade, and in front of her old house, an ugly “TO SELL” sign appeared which symbolized her passing. In between the high grass and long thistles in our frontyard, you could still find some crumbled musical notes if you had some luck.
So to answer your question: it does matter to anyone.
It matters to us.
Steam Punk Aesthetic
What is the biggest lie that Chinese government tells its people?
As a Chinese who lived in China for 21 years, and in US for 6 years.
I think the biggest lie is how advanced western world is.
In Chinese TV or news, we are told how American kids do housework start from small age, how people are so polite and aware of protecting environment, how good their health system is, and the list goes on.
So in China, most people think white people are so educated and nice, and US is like heaven.
After I came to US, I realize it’s not like that at all.
All mankind in this world are alike, we have same weaknesses. I am not saying US is bad, but it’s not much different from China to my opinion.
Most Americans in my age that I know don’t know how to cook.
And the American health system is so so so expensive, maybe the quality is better, but it’s way too much more expensive compare to China.
Again, I am not saying US is bad, it’s better than China in some areas, I am gonna list few things that I really appreciate:
First, bribing is much less in US than China. I don’t see people bribing in US, but in China, people have to send money to doctors or teachers sometimes.
Second, the competition is less in US than in China, people don’t need to work extra hours most of the time.
Third, media has more freedom to judge the government. Last, obviously people in US can enjoy a more advanced living condition.
But, it’s not as good as how it has been said in China.
Wouldn’t raising tariffs on foreign goods be better for American products? Especially since American laborers make so much more than foreign countries pay for labor?
What American products? Trump wants to slap a 60% tariff on all Chinese imports, and 10% on all others. Guess where many American companies do their manufacturing. Hint: not in America. Hanes and Fruit of the Loom do not make their stuff here. Tariffs are not going to change that. It’s simply going to increase prices on undies, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. What about consumer electronics? Are any being manufactured in the US? No. Everything from phones to computers to car parts to washing machines are made elsewhere, even when they have an American corporate name slapped on them. A few are put together here from Chinese and other foreign-made parts. Tariffs won’t help them. I could go on here, but I think you get the picture.
Pretty much every economist agrees: tariffs are bad, m’kay. The best-case scenario is that they are used to protect specific American industries, but there are few American industries to protect and Trump’s tariffs are anything but specific. American corporations will not build new factories in response to Trump’s tariffs because they are too expensive and take too long to build, and by the time these projects are completed, Trump and his tariffs will likely be gone. American corporations have built a worldwide supply chain, with parts and goods coming from everywhere in the world. As a truck driver, I’ve seen this with my own eyes. And we all saw what happened when it was disrupted. Remember? This is how business is done now.
The problem now, and in case you were wondering why Biden didn’t get rid of all of Trump’s tariffs from the first go-round, is that Americans, (half of them, anyway), have come to believe tariffs are good. Stubborn ignorance is extremely difficult to overcome. People will complain about high prices while having zero understanding of why they are high.
What is your opinion on Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Chinese imports? What potential consequences could this have for American consumers?
The Current Value of China US trade is approximately around $ 600 Billion a year
China exports approximately $ 460 Billion of Goods and Services to US and US exports close to $ 140 Billion of Good and Services to China
Scenario : Flat 60% Tariffs from US on all Chinese Exports & No Reciprocal Tariffs from China
Impact on China :—
- In three years – the Total Trade with China would shrink to $ 394 Billion a year
- That would translate to $ 282 Billion of Exports in Goods and Services and $ 112 Billion of Imports from USA
- It’s still a $ 170 Billion a year trade surplus
- Impact on GDP is 16% or roughly around 0.80% a year
- Number of Jobs lost due to transfers to Vietnam, Mexico and India would range at around 30%
- Currently around 4.25 Million jobs are dependent on US Exports, so Around 1.4 Million Chinese will lose their jobs
- That will rise unemployment from 5.1% to 7.6% in the course of three years
Impact on US :-
- If US replaces these imports with Vietnamese or Mexican then they are still mostly Chinese owned
- There would be an average of 36% added to the inflation or close to 1.44%-1.80% a year of additional inflation
- It would take 8–12 years to stabilize and around $ 80 Billion in subsidy investments
- So Inflation will be 40% higher for the first 2–3 years, then 30% higher for the next 2–3 years and then rest at around 15% higher for the last 6–8 years
- However the Chinese Economy will still make 60% of their export revenue back thanks to Vietnam and Mexico and India and regain back around 0.48% a year in GDP growth
Loss to China
- $ 70-$90 Billion Export Revenue a year
- 1.4 Million Job Losses over 3 years
- 0.32% to 0.40% a year dip in GDP Growth (4.7% go 4.30%/4.40%)
Loss to USA
- 1.50% additional inflation on an Average for the next 12 years
- Value Addition to US Economy lowered by 18% for the next 8–10 years
- No extra jobs created
Economic Impact on Chinese Economy (3/5 yr) :- $ 607 Billion / $ 895 Billion
Economic Impact on US Economy (3/5 yr) :- $ 2143 Billion / $ 3535 Billion
So the per capita Chinese over 5 years will lose around $ 611 each
The per capita American will lose around $ 10,552 each over the next 5 years
Conclusion
Even assuming Trump imposes 60% Flat Tariffs across Chinese Goods – China’s cumulative five year loss would be $ 700 Billion in terms of Job Losses & Export Substitution
US loses $ 3.6 Trillion in Inflation rise and Value addition substitution
China can solve this by rising its fiscal deficit to 0.9% (From 3.4% to 4.3%)
US needs to raise its Fiscal deficit to 1% or from 6.1% to 7.1%
So
EVEN IF CHINA DOESN’T RETALIATE IN ANY WAY IF TRUMP IMPOSES 60% TARIFFS FLAT ON CHINESE IMPORTS – US LOSES FAR MORE THAN CHINA DOES AND FOR FAR LONGER
Now Imagine if China retaliated and imposed an export tariff of 60% on all components it exports to Vietnam and India and Mexico which will be used in Assembly of Exports to US
Or
Imagine if Trump demanded even 30% Imports be made in US instead
US would be Royally Fucked.
Scenario : Win – Win Partnership
Trump removes tariffs from China and China goes back to buying US Farm Products and other exports
Trump agrees to remove export controls on technology and go back to 1/1/2019 status
Impact on China :-
- In three years Total Trade would rise to $ 775 Billion a year
- This would translate to $ 513 Billion of Imports and $ 262 Billion of Exports
- Trade surplus will shrink from $ 320 Billion a year to $ 251 Billion a year
- China gains nothing at all except that Chinese domestic high technology and advanced technology budding industries will slow down significantly
- Why buy Chinese Chips when TSMC floods China with 3 nm Chips and why buy Ascend Servers when A100 floods the country and why spend billions to try and make EUVs when ASML sells you everything again without restrictions
Impact on USA :—
- Continuing Deflation due to China
- Controlled Inflation
- Controlled Value Addition
- Minimum 75,000 new farming Jobs added in 3 years
- Farmers Revenue growth between 7% to 9% a year over 5 years (Against (-) 4% to (-)8% a year over the last 5 years)
Conclusion :—
US gains far more than China does with a win win partnership and maintains Tech Dominance for at least another 20 years
So as you can see
Chinese want Trump or Biden to do what they are doing
It causes short term pain but ultimately surges them faster to Tech Independence with the losses being painful but not irreparable
Meanwhile it will cause the US massive pain and damage and weaken them even further and make them more miserable
Meanwhile if the US decide to end the tariffs and export controls tomorrow
China loses $ 60 Billion Trade Surplus a year with US & with a flood of US Technology back in China, the local innovation slows down badly
It helps US significantly and is bad for China
They say when Stupidity and Corruption and Evil combine together – It’s end of the system
That’s the fate of the US
Any guy with brains would have kept the win win situation with China and maintained No 1 Status for another 30–40 years minimum
China gains with Trump or Biden and may actually lose with someone like Newsom in the White House
Chicken Cacciatore Soup
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients
- 1 cup uncooked rotini
- 3 cans vegetable broth
- 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 8 ounces)
- 1 (30-ounce) jar of extra chunky spaghetti sauce with mushrooms and diced onions
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic puree
- 1/3 teaspoon Italian seasoning
- 3 teaspoons red wine (optional)
- 1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes, cut up in juice
- 1 medium zucchini sliced
Instructions
- Cook rotini according to package directions, substituting 1 can vegetable broth for part of the water.
- Cook until done (about 10 minutes). Drain and set aside.
- Cut chicken breasts into a 1 inch dice. In a large pan, combine spaghetti sauce, 2 cans of vegetable broth, onions, garlic puree, chicken, Italian seasoning, red wine, tomatoes and zucchini.
- Cook until vegetables are tender and chicken is cooked through (20 to 30 minutes).
- Add cooked rotini, and cook until heated through.
Biden… OMG!
It’s so pathetic it is funny.
Why does China hate the United States so much? Is it because they’re number 1 and China is not?
This is quite understandable. The United States and China are like two shops in a community. China was running its business well, but the U.S. frequently tells the community residents that Chinese products are subpar and has its neighbors loitering in front of China’s shop, taking over their territory. This makes it difficult for China to do business and leads community residents to think that those working in that shop aren’t good people. As a result, many Chinese people develop a negative view of the U.S., and if their interests are directly harmed because of this, it can turn into resentment.
It is well known that China’s GDP is now the second largest in the world, and its manufacturing, cutting-edge technology, and international influence are all significant. To maintain its global hegemony, the U.S. has begun to fully suppress China’s development. Economic sanctions, factional opposition, and smear campaigns are all tactics the U.S. employs. The trade war that began in 2018, along with international efforts to encircle China and create issues in the South China Sea, openly violates the China-U.S. Joint Communiqué by selling military weapons to Taiwan, and undermining China’s human rights and democracy issues have all dealt blows to China’s economy and international image.
As China’s countermeasures rendered these tactics ineffective, the U.S. escalated its efforts, completely breaking through the bottom lines of international law and national ethics. It imposed extremely high tariffs on electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic cells imported from China, simply because Chinese products far exceed American ones in terms of cost-effectiveness and technology. The U.S. has also unfoundedly exaggerated the “China threat” narrative, openly defining China-U.S. relations as a “new Cold War” in Congress, and even passed a bill to spend billions of dollars on efforts to discredit China. Even in U.S. elections, political support is often leveraged through an anti-China stance. It can be said that hostility toward China has become a form of political correctness—public and widely accepted—forcing China, which originally focused on its own development, to endure unfair external obstacles.
However, in the past decade or so, the United States had a huge attraction for the Chinese people, and the aspects of legal justice, advanced science and technology, high living standards, democracy and freedom made the Chinese people yearn for this so-called “most developed” country. But the actions of the United States today have made it clear to the vast majority of Chinese people that it is not the country they once thought it was. Instead of treating China with respect and friendship, the United States has been repeatedly suppressing and hostile towards China, just like it did with the Soviet Union and Japan before. It has also been creating and stirring up conflicts internationally in order to sell more weapons, including supporting Israel’s genocide, paying no attention to the international opposition or the lives of people in Gaza. Furthermore, the number of countries targeted by the United States for economic sanctions has increased by nearly tenfold in the past decade, affecting nearly 40 countries and half of the world’s population. While they are constantly accusing China of human rights issues, they are committing the most egregious violations of human rights and undermining people’s livelihoods, not just in China but around the world. People all over the world are disappointed in them.
Moreover, the “democratic atmosphere” that was hyped in the United States has long disappeared. The widening gap between the rich and the poor, the imperfections of the social welfare system, and the increasing pressure of inflation have made the rich richer and the poor poorer, and have also led to severe discrimination against minority groups and vulnerable populations. Racism, economic inequality, and social division are everywhere, but the leaders and capitalist groups at the top of the United States do not care. Instead, they keep drumming up the “China threat” to divert the attention of their citizens, and even shift the core of their domestic problems onto China, making their citizens believe that China is to blame for everything. As a result, 40 million people are living below the poverty line, 28 million people have no health insurance, an average of 300 people die every day from taking too much medicine, and more than 100 people die every day from gun injuries. Such a country no longer have anything to do with its image as the “freest and most democratic,” and even 78% of Americans themselves are dissatisfied with the way things are going in their country.
In general, the decline in favorable opinion of the United States does not exist only in China, but in the whole world, perhaps God is really “abandoning the United States”. Anyway, the United States has fallen to this point is self-inflicted. Such a country, relying on its economic and military strength, arbitrarily oppresses other countries, restricts the development of emerging countries, interferes in the internal affairs of other countries, and provokes disputes, wars that cause countless deaths, which is no wonder hated by the whole world. The so-called “first” has always been a false proposition, but a rhetoric used to beautify the means of exploitation and repression. All human beings are equal, and those who naturally treat other countries and nations as inferior and only allow themselves to control resources and interests should be resisted, spurned and condemned by the whole world.
Trump Will Make China Greater Again
You are woken from your sleep by a cellphone alert that an ICBM is streaking towards where you live. It will impact in 15 minutes. What do you do?
This happened to me while I was living in Japan. Three times.
6:02 AM on August 29, my phone started blaring. In my sleepy stupor, I thought it was my alarm… but it was too early for that… and wait, that sounds like the earthquake alert. I roll over to pick up my phone and see the above message.
I’m not entirely literate in Japanese, so all I can really gather from the message at first is:
ミサイル – mis-sai-ru…. missai-ru… missile. Missile?!
北…からミサイルが…された…です。 – …a missile has… had something done to it… from someplace North?
…な建物や地下に…して下さい。 – Please do something toward some kind of building or underground. Go there?
I’ve moved now from my bed to the toilet with my phone in hand, still staring at the message and trying to wake up. Then it occurs to me that I can put screenshots into the Google Translate app. Cleaning up Google’s brutal translation, it reads:
Missile inbound. Missile inbound. North Korea has fired a missile. Please evacuate to a secure building or go underground.
Only Japan would add “please” to an evacuation alert.
By now I’ve moved to the kitchen and am looking out the window. We were given a list of shelters and safe locations by our school, but I remembered that all of them were at least a couple miles away from my house and all I had was a bike.
How far is the missile? How fast do they go, anyway?
Would it be safer to hole up in my apartment or to try and make it to a shelter?
I start changing my clothes, in case I decided to leave.
Why would they strike Gunma anyway?
…and the most sobering thought…
Would I rather be inside at home when it hits or biking frantically?
I eventually decided to stay in my apartment.
It’s not that I don’t value my life, I do. I just figured that it would take me at least 15 minutes to get to a shelter with the winding roads of Japan and a good chance I’d make a wrong turn or two on my first trip to this place, wherever it was.
How long would it take a missile to sail from North Korea to Japan? At what point was the alert issued? An hour away? 30 minutes? 5?
I return to the toilet, this time putting the lid down and just sat there. It was the center of the apartment, had no windows, and was the safest place I could think of while I started checking News sites and replying to my coworkers’ messages who were in the same state of confusion as I was.
Luckily, I didn’t have to make peace with anyone, as a short time later it was announced that the missile had, in fact, flown over the country’s airspace and landed somewhere in the Pacific.
This happened twice more. By the third time, I rolled my eyes and went back to bed, tired of being woken up just to find that North Korea had been flashing their peacock feathers again.
The Law of Rare Events
Submitted into Contest #174 in response to: Write a story about a brilliant scientist making a startling discovery.… view prompt
Terry Wayne Carpenter
This story contains sensitive content
“Congratulations gentleman, we’ve just had our first encounter with an unexplainable species of marine life.” Pania addresses the two men in front of a wide video display of the octopus in the midst of its escape, backlit by the distant floodlights of the drones. “Here’s what we know: by size, the creature appears to fit into the Giant Pacific Octopus range, at somewhere between sixteen and twenty feet in diameter; it’s coloration would also suggest Pacific Octopus, the previous maximum depth for a Pacific Giant was 1,500 meters, and hyperthermophiles were thought to be at the physical limits of life just below the seafloor… but our little friend – Kali – was all the way down to 45,000 meters.”
“Grigori,” Chester says.
“What?”
“I saw the critter first, which means I get to name it.” Chester spits a mixture of sunflower seeds and Skoal into a plastic cup. “-and I’m naming it Grigori.”
“It’s just a nickname. We will have to give it an official name at some point, once we know more about its physiology, habits and habitat, and where exactly it fits into the evolutionary tree.” Pania says, returning to her dossier. “What we don’t know about… Grigori, is precisely how he/she got down to this depth, what its food source is, and why we haven’t seen it before now.”
“The Law of Rare Events,” Ronin says. “It’s predictable. A Poisson distribution of binomial random variables predicts this. It’s only a matter of time.”
“You wanna translate that into English for us bogans?” Chester says.
“The more times we travel down into the mohole, the deeper microorganisms go, the deeper large organisms go, and eventually, through that exploration, eventually the rare breakthrough event occurs and one survives. The probability of a breakthrough event is small, but predictably, inevitably it will happen.” Ronin holds his palm out to Chester, flexing his fingers in universal code for ‘gimmie,’ to which Chester obliges with a sprinkling of seeds.
“The questions are then, why and how?” Pania says. “Without answers to those, this isn’t a rare event, it’s an impossible event.”
“You have a Law of Impossible Events?” Chester asks.
“I have a theory,” Ronin says. “In organic chemistry, there is something called the Grignard Reaction Mechanism. Basically, organometallics form when magnesium bonds carbon to various metals. These can only occur in a waterless environment. However, my theory is that because of the extremely high temperatures, and extremely high pressure preventing the water from boiling at these depths, and the plethora of amalgams – if a creature started metabolizing magnesium and high volumes of other metals on a regular basis, eventually-”
“The Law of Rare events.” Pania says. “You’d get an organometallic life form. A carbon-based animal with metallic properties. Like organometallic skin. A creature like that could travel to these depths, in these temperatures, under this pressure.”
“Precisely.” Ronin says. “And an octopus would be particularly primed to accomplish this because of its regenerative ability.”
“Holy shit.” Chester looks at the other two. “We’re gonna be famous. We discovered a Robot Octopus. A Robo-pus!”
“It’s a working theory.” Ronin says. “We won’t know for sure unless we capture it and do some tests.”
“To that end,” Pania says. “Since we cannot continue mining operations until the creature is located and removed, I propose pulling Spider Captain away from the Moho and use it to force the octopus to the seafloor, where we can then use bait to lure it into captivity. We can flood the cargo hold and put it there.”
“What kind of bait exactly?”
“Well, we’re almost out of supplies, and there is that chuck roast in the freezer-”
“No. No way.” Chester jumps up in protest. “First you try to take my naming rights, now you want to take my meat?”
“It’s the only meat substance we have that won’t dissolve in the conditions near the hydrothermal vents.”
“That’s my celebratory chuck!” Chester says. “For going home. My last meal down here.”
“If we can catch this thing, you can buy all the chuck you can handle.” Ronin says. “Heck, you’ll be able to buy the whole damn cow.”
🐙🐙🐙
“This better work,” Chester pouts. “Damn octopus gets sous vide steak, while I’m sitting here, living off of sunflower seeds and crab paste.”
Ronin overrides the S.P-I.D.R. Captain’s internal intelligence and allows Chester to take manual control of the rig. It disengages with its stirring bit glooped in plastic rock at the edge of the Moho. The bit is shaped like an industrial whisk, and sticks straight up into the water bordering the smoldering glow.
Spider Captain thrusts itself upward in slow squirts toward the surface, illuminating the shaft with its broad flood lights, the hollow hum of the magnetohydrodynamic drive at its epicenter.
“Okay, good,” Pania says. “We can see everything.”
Spider Captain picks up drones as it goes, clearing the path to the seafloor. After several kilometers, the silhouette of the elusive octopus emerges.
“There it is,” Pania says, lurched over Chester’s shoulder. “Track it.”
The octopus climbs gradually, keeping steady pace ahead of the ascending Spider Captain.
As soon as the octopus reaches the seafloor, it darts between triangulations of rock, coral, tube worm colonies, and drones strobing lights at it, until it settles on the chuck roast at the mouth of the cargo hold. Spider Captain continues its chase, forcing the creature into the back of the bay, the drop door closing behind them.
🐙🐙🐙
The crew sleeps, having captured their prey, which has found a comfortable corner to lay inside its cell. Pania is the last to bed down, deciding to stay up and observe the creature in some semblance of stasis. Her eyelids grow heavy and her thoughts sway between her newfound discovery and the Ersatz. Thoughts of ravishing tentacles in every orifice.
She can’t remember when the dark fantasy started, or if it had always been there. A product of her upbringing, conditioning from living her entire life on the water, always around these creatures, a symbiosis with the sea. She wasn’t the first, certainly not the only one; shokushu goukan has been around for thousands of years, proliferating across the pacific, across the world.
36 hours until the transit submarine arrives. 36 hours until the world will know of their discovery, and all Pania can think about is her libidinous thirst for submission to the cephalopod. Was this why she became a marine biologist? Was this why she was miles deep in the Izu-Bonin arc? Was it fate or had she willed it all into being? The circumstances and the discovery.
I’ll be on every news show and podcast in the world, she thinks. I’ll be famous. Will they know? Will someone hack my Ersatz file? It’s happened before. Celebrities are always being hacked for their Ersatz fantasies.
Dozing off, Pania is startled by loud banging noises coming from the cargo bay. It’s Kali. She’s suctioned to the electrical paneling near the air lock door, piercing through the metal with her beak.
“That’s impossible. That’s T12 Alloy.”
Pania alerts the other two and sets the ship to red alert.
“We’ve got a serious problem.”
Dazed and startled, the two men crash into the observation room.
“She’s trying to break through the door.” Pania points at the monitor. “If she gets through it’ll flood the whole ship.”
“Use spider captain to peel her off the panel.” Ronin shouts commands to Chester, who mans the controls. Robotic limbs swing across the bay, molesting the octopus from behind. It’s only a temporary distraction, and Kali doesn’t stop tearing through the panel, using just two of her tentacles to rip the mechanical arm in half.
Ronin rushes to the airlock, putting on a deep diver suit, grabbing a welding rod he intends to use as a weapon.
“You can’t!” Pania yells. “You can’t kill her.”
“If I don’t, we’re all dead.”
Ronin closes the airlock, which quickly floods with steam and rising water. As soon as the port into the cargo bay opens, he races toward the sieging octopus. Chester flings a battery of repurposed mining appendages from Spider Captain at the creature, to no avail. The Octopus’s skin is too tough to penetrate with standard utensils. Ronin attacks with the welding rod, the bright tip of which catches the octopus’s attention. Tentacles wrap around his leg, flipping him sideways, immobilizing him in the briny water, making it impossible for him to retaliate in his cumbersome suit. Suddenly, his torso is snapped in half from the torque force of the muscular metallic tendrils. Kali enters the airlock unimpeded.
Boiling water erupts into the hallway outside the airlock as Kali enters the ship. Chester and Pania flee the scalding water, heading for port doors slowly closing in emergency. Chester trips on the mouth of the port, and Kali grabs him by the ankle. It is too late for Pania to save him. She watches his red face disappear into the pillows of water, as Kali drags him back into the jaws of death.
Pania rushes to the Ersatz pod, the only possibly safe place on the ship, but it’s only a matter of time before Kali finds her way through the port doors.
Which will get to her first — the transport, now an unassuming rescue ship, or the excited omnipresent monster outside the doors, born from the hellish improbable deep?
Upon seeing Kali drill through the second port door, Pania realizes she has less time than she thought and climbs into the Ersatz.
No time; she’s coming too fast.
Water and steam flood into the compartment as the lid of her coffin slowly closes, the raging tentacles above the glass slowly dissolve into the bright white light of the Ersatz.
The final ride
What’s the dark side of Switzerland?
When I was posted to Zürich, back in the 1990s, a colleague of mine said: “Switzerland is a wonderful place. Too bad it is inhabited by the Swiss”.
At first I didn’t subscribe with his rather radical views about the country, but after living there for a few months (and having had some run-ins with the natives and their rather peculiar views about people who, in their eyes, “didn’t belong”), I had to admit that they weren’t too much off the mark.
Maybe not all the Swiss, but a large chunk of the population over 50 at the time appeared to harbor a lingering disdain toward people who acted or looked “foreign” in their eyes, or simply didn’t conform to what they believed were the “rules” in force. And they wasted no time in making their point known right there and then, like they were the anointed guardians of an established order of things.
Pretty soon, anytime I parked my car in the street without steering my front wheels straight and parallel to the sidewalk, someone was there wagging his finger at me and pointing at them.
Within 24 hours from getting the keys to my rental apartment, an anonymous note mysteriously appeared in my mailbox, intimating to put a label with my name on it.
I was lucky enough to find an apartment in a building that once hosted a workshop, and was subsequently renovated to host a warehouse on the ground floor and my apartment on the upper floor, without anyone living above or beneath me. I listened to horror stories from my coworkers who had the misfortune to rent apartments in buildings where old and cranky Swiss neighbors made life unbearable for them by stealing and destroying their mail, having garbage strewn on their doorsteps, their laundry soiled or ripped when left in the communal washer/dryer, etc. And of course anytime they complained with the superintendent or the police, it was their word against their Swiss neighbors’, and guess who was always found at fault?
This attitude is masterfully resumed in a citation of the renowned Swiss author and playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt: “Any Swiss is both a prisoner and his own warden”.
Trump’s Victory Speech Was Absolute Cinema
Will the Balikatan combat drills between the US and the Philippines change China’s position in the South China Sea?
During the US-Philippines military exercise, soldiers on the warships were warned that it was strictly forbidden to use personal mobile phones on the deck. They were worried about being monitored by the Chinese Navy’s Type 815A electronic reconnaissance ship. The US-Philippines fleet did not even dare to turn on the radar, for fear that the electromagnetic signal would be captured by China’s Type 815A electronic reconnaissance ship at close range.
The imaginary enemy of the US-Philippines shoulder-to-shoulder maritime military exercise was originally China, and now it has come to the area near the South China Sea on the west side of the Philippine Palawan Province and Luzon Island. Since the US amphibious assault ships, dock landing ships, Philippine landing ships, patrol ships and even fighter jets are performing hard, China’s Type 815A electronic reconnaissance ship will certainly be a spectator.
Now, the US-Philippines warships are in an awkward situation. If the military exercise continues. Then, electronic signal communication must be carried out between warships, and communication must be maintained between aircraft and warships. Anti-submarine aircraft must send out electronic detection signals. Even US nuclear submarines must communicate by radio. However, China’s Type 815A electronic reconnaissance ship stayed quietly beside them, patiently waiting to receive various signals and instructions from them!! 🤣
- Philippines: “discovered a Chinese ship”
- South Korea: “there’s no display on the radar”
- Japan: “the radar screen is full of snow”
- USA: “how did you find it”
- Philippines: “see with my eyes”
China’s Type 815A electronic reconnaissance ship swaggered into the US-Philippines exercise area, and it was so close that it could be seen clearly with the naked eye. Did you see the surprised expressions of the Filipino soldiers in the camera? 😁
The West calls China’s Type 815A electronic reconnaissance ship “ghost”, and the Chinese call it “Street Fighter / 街溜子”. It is the most advanced electronic reconnaissance ship in the world.
Since US and Philippine warships are keen on running naked in front of Chinese electronic reconnaissance ships, the Chinese certainly like to watch. Why not?
There is no need for the Philippines to be so petty. Since the purpose of the US-Philippines military exercise is to “deter China,” why did it send a diplomatic letter to protest against the Chinese watching?
If you want to “deter China” and force China to change its position in the South China Sea, you have to show something that can “deter” China. Am I right? 🤣
Joining the French Foreign Legion
Does the development of the high-power microwave weapon by Chinese scientists indicate that China is catching up the US in military technology?
My country’s high-power microwave weapons have been put into use, and low-configuration versions have begun to be exported.
High-power microwave weapons use high-power microwaves to irradiate targets. High-voltage currents are generated on the surface of the target. These currents enter the target through antennas and cables, breaking down or burning its electronic components, thereby disabling the target or even physically damaging the target.
High-power microwave weapons are directed energy weapons, which means they rely on radiation energy to kill targets rather than physical projectiles.
High-power microwave weapons are a powerful weapon to restrain drones.
China does not need to catch up with all US military technologies, but only needs to lead the US in some areas.
Mao said a long time ago, “You fight in your way and we fight in ours.”
After all, the military strategies of China and the United States are different.
China adheres to the national defence strategy of self-defence, focusing on the development of defensive weapons, and does not need too many offensive weapons. Focusing on defence has been China’s military ideology since ancient times, and the Great Wall is the best proof of that.
The United States pursues a “preemptive, unilateral” military strategy, with its main military assets deployed overseas. It has few domestic military forces and weak national defense capabilities. Therefore, terrorists easily broke through the U.S. defenses in the “9/11” incident.
A stray cat jumped on my car and wouldn’t leave no matter how I shooed it
Have you ever seen an employee get fired on the spot because of you?
I locked my keys in my car with it running one night, after work.
The tow truck took about 3 hours to come.
I was hungry – starving, exhausted and had to pee.
After many set backs with AAA, and many calls, only to find I’d again been moved to the end of the service line, I kinda lost it.
I was sick of someone asking me if someone else had a key.
(Would I still be standing there, on the phone with them, with my legs crossed if they did?)
I was tired of being asked if I could knock on someone’s door in the complex?
(If I could have … If it weren’t a complex, I’d have peed in the bushes.)
I was tired of hearing 5 minutes.
Someone finally showed, and he quickly got me unlocked.
Now, as he was doing this, a tow truck with a kid driver showed up. I forget the exchange, but he was annoyed I already, finally, had someone there. He was rude enough I asked for his manager’s card. I was in no shape to be trifled with. I reminded him that he could nicely give it to me, or I could just dial the number in BIG LETTERS on the side of his truck. He gave me a card.
As he made a U-turn to drive away, his little snit girl friend leaned out the window and yelled, “Biiiiiiiiitch.” I thought, “Oh, child, you have no idea.”
So I called the number. My husband was a family, 2-man company. I know how hard people work. I got the guy on the phone and sho-nuff, he was a small business and had two trucks. I told him up front, that I understood and wasn’t looking to necessarily make trouble, but I was certain he didn’t want people treated the way they did me. The driver had a legal and service liability sitting beside him in the truck, which could seriously impact his business.
We closed on chummy terms and I know that kid was probably ripped a new one. I’m also sure they blamed “that bitch” for getting them in trouble instead of looking at what they were doing. After all, that’s what teenagers do.
But… he could have very well lost his job. Hopefully he lost that snotty little girl friend.
Adopted
Shorpy
Bear Mace
Why are Western countries so rich when most of the manufacturing and production happens elsewhere?
Tom started as a cashier at a store. He was at the forefront of everything. After a few years he got promoted to be the manager of the store. Few more years as a general manager. The General Manager no longer produces anything tangible – he doesn’t move the stuff, doesn’t handle the cash register, doesn’t code the website and doesn’t do the direct sales. But, he still makes a lot of money. How?
It is a fallacy that you need to produce something tangible to make money. People who think that probably never took a business course. The greatest value lies in producing the intangbiles – of coordinating production, leading the execution of concepts, selling ideas to investors and creating the strategy of what business the company should be in. Tangibles are a commodity. Intangibles are rarer & thus highly valued.
Of course, you need to start producing the tangibles to be able to qualify to produce the intangibles. No one would let you create strategy until you spent years in the front lines.
Use the same analogy for economies. When an economy is small & less mature, it produces only the tangibles – food and later clothes, steel and then a plenty of low value commodities. You can touch and feel the production. Unfortunately, all of these are low valued. Then it gets promoted. It starts involving in design, research and innovation — all of them are intangibles. Slowly it moves out of all the commodities and moves up the ladder helping in coordination.
A lot of times the General Manager is primarily there because he has spent years in the company and so well connected. He becomes the primary way to connect the whole company. That is the role that London and New York do. They have been out there for centuries dealing with this and have become the center of trade. Other times, the GM can produce an ingenious strategy that might revolutionize the way they do business.
Think of a company like Apple. The physical phone you touch and feel is made in Taiwan & China. Those are less than 10% value of the product. The primary value is in connecting all the ideas to produce a product that makes sense to the customer or at the least convince everyone that it makes sense for them. That is a strength that Silicon Valley almost monopolizes.
If you really understand what McKinsey or Goldman Sachs do, you will not have much trouble understanding how US and UK economy work.
Many countries in Western Europe and the US do the high level coordination and produce the intangibles – consulting, software, finance, marketing and high tech manufacturing. Even the manufacturing at the levels some German companies like Siemens do involves a lot of the intangibles. That is why they are rich.
Donald Trump Wins. Here’s What to Do Next
“The entire country is screwed.”
Diary of a Scientist
Submitted into Contest #174 in response to: Write a story about a brilliant scientist making a startling discovery.… view prompt
Jack Bell
The old lady next door is deaf and her Chihuahua is a rat-faced, yap-throated, four-legged fur-ball of depraved pellet-spitting fecundity. Science, at its best, is supposed to be meditative.
Talked to Percy at Melville and, he’s right, I have to be patient.
Of course, Doctor Percy Jarmon has always been three-parts bean-counter. A good research scientist, don’t get me wrong. He’s done some solid work. Just prefers not to rock the boat. The brain remains a neat computational bottom-liner in Percy’s carefully scrubbed hands.
Thursday, May 31
Not much doing.
What’s the point of very little dogs, when you get right down to it?
Friday, June 1
total wank
* * *
Wednesday, July 20
You can’t stop science! Ha! Wheels turn, seams rupture, secrets heave!
Had a bit of luck, actually. The old lady next door moved away two weeks ago. And took her little dilly doggy with her. Bye-bye poo-poo.
Anyway, just spent the last two hours talking to Jarrod Johnson, the young chap who, along with his lovely wife Jasmine, has moved in. A very nice young couple, Jarrod and Jasmine, newlyweds, eager to begin a family.
When Jarrod found out I was a neurological research scientist, he showed an almost puppy-dog like enthusiasm. He shyly told me he’d never fully outgrown his love of dinosaurs. At school, chemistry had been his favorite subject. On the internet, he can’t get enough of Richard Dawkins. He works in a bank and seems to crave the microwave-manna of popular science.
So he was only too happy to help with my basement experiments! He’ll be over tomorrow, a bank holiday apparently, at 9:00 a.m. The world seems to be rolling on its back and asking me to tickle its tummy! Jarrod isn’t all that bright, but he’s a very pleasant, open, friendly sort of chap. A scientist cannot ask for more.
. . .
Just spoke to Percy, and he’s going to drop round this evening. He wants to see how the basement scrubs up, and even wants to meet Jarrod. I prickled a little, but didn’t argue. Percy’s help with converting the basement has been tremendous. Also, as a sounding board for my research aims, he’s been invaluable—encouraging despite his bean-tending skepticism.
Now that I’m finally about to dive in, he’s probably a bit nervous. If I were to create some sort of scientific scandal, his name could be tarnished by association. So I humored the old bean.
Thursday, July 21
What a day! Mark well the date! And affix to it your humble servant’s moniker, Doctor Richard Wrigglesworth!
I don’t want to get ahead of myself. What comes of today’s extraordinary breakthrough remains to be seen. But, doubt it not, the annals begin to gape.
Jarrod arrived at nine sharp and, after coffee and a scone, we got straight down to it. It was meant to be nothing but grunt work, building a database for future work. Jarrod sat at a table with just a LED monitor and a 5kg dumbbell before him. I flashed on the screen a series of images. Jarrod looked at each image for exactly eighteen seconds, then performed three standard bicep-curls with the dumbbell. An EEG cap and profuse body-sensor coverage recorded Jarrod’s every bodily blip and mental halloo.
After five hours of this, the data-collection was solid, but I was starting to worry. Jarrod really was a nice guy, didn’t have a bad word for anyone or anything. But was he, as a subject, a little bland, a little lacking in character, personality or substance? I was after dark mysteries of the mind, but Jarrod seemed a whole lot of sunshine and lollipops. Even the photograph of a Chihuahua being dangled over the ferociously eager maw of a wood-chipper didn’t provoke much more than a mild hiccup in his breezy brain wave.
Then it happened. His eyes locked on the screen, a growl sounded from somewhere sub-thoracic. He began flipping the dumbbell about like it was a tea-cozy. The readouts and dials fritzed. According to the computer, the dumbbell now weighed exactly 34 grams… What happened to the other 4,966?!
Even after I shut off the monitor, it took a good thirty seconds for Jarrod to return to normal.
It remains, I have to say, somewhat of a mystery. But a mystery with a big “THIS WAY” arrow attached. The photograph that set him off was of a duck attacking a cute little rhesus monkey. The juvenile monkey had been sitting on the ground, eating a piece of melon, but was in the process of dropping it as he leapt quite hilariously away from the incoming duck. It was supposed to be a brain-pan cleanser, some light relief before something more experimentally hardcore was flashed up.
I quizzed him at length, got him to free associate with ducks and monkeys, but he was a bit shaken and washed out. I suggested we start again tomorrow, and he was more than happy to. He had a flexi-day owing at the bank.
Now I have a sleepless night’s work ahead looking for relevant pictures. But I love it. Seriously, who’d want be anywhere other than Science, the bosom of all curiosity?
Friday, July 22
Burn it to ashes. That’s the likely fate of this record of crime and folly! Dear God! Dare I speak of today? Dare I not? Could it be only yesterday that I… but no, this is a scientific journal. If hell itself yawns, somebody has to stay calm and sift the sulphur.
Jarrod arrived at nine, dot on time. I asked for his thoughts on yesterday’s proceedings—and he seemed not to remember anything out of the ordinary. Odd. “The duck and monkey?” I enquired. All he could remember was a sort of pressure in his head, which he’d put down to the EEG cap being too tight. I let it go, assuring him that today the cap would be roomy.
I must have shown him upwards of thirty duck-and-monkey photos, interacting in various ways, some comic, some violent, some both. Nothing. So I flashed up yesterday’s photo. The effect of it was instantaneous and truly awful. He leapt from his seat, tearing off the EEG cap, flinging himself across the room, crashing into the card table upon which sit the tea and coffee and scones. From there he literally began trying to climb up the wall. Hard to do when one hand was busy holding his head as he cried, “Make it stop! My head’s going to explode!”
I raced to him. He fell, crashing heavily onto the card table, destroying it and our untouched morning tea. He uttered a ghastly groan as he thrashed about in the rubble, finally coming to rest on his side.
I gently rocked his shoulder. “Jarrod?” Was he dead?
But he stirred and, with my help, began to sit up. It was only as he opened his eyes and turned his head to me that I saw it. Almost too awful for words. A teaspoon. The handle fully buried in the side of his head, only the metallic bowl sticking out, like a malicious little supernumerary ear.
“Oh, God, Jarrod!” I whispered.
He was groggy. “Guurrgh…what happened?”
“Jarrod, how—how do you feel?—No, no, God, don’t shake your head!”
“Actually,” he said, breaking into a pleasant smile, “I feel pretty good. Sorry, Richard, but I don’t think I want to wear the brain cap thing again.”
“Oh, that’s fine, no worries. I think we’re pretty much finished, anyway. So, um…your head? You mentioned before, while you trying to climb the wall, that it was giving you some trouble?”
“Yeah,” he grinned, lifting a hand toward the side of his head—which I grabbed and lowered just in time! He continued, “No, it feels good now. All last night it felt weird, a weird sort of pressure. But it’s fine now.”
“Okay. Great. Science is a labyrinth, that’s for sure, ha ha.”
I helped him to a chair—not that he seemed in need of help. I grabbed my phone, thinking I’d call Percy. But, before I rang, I went upstairs and made a cheese, gherkin and lettuce sandwich. I also poured a large glass of milk and took both items down to Jarrod in the basement. He thanked me and tucked in with a healthy appetite.
Possibly I should have been rushing Jarrod to hospital, but something made me hesitate. Something about the spoon, twinkling like a satellite dish on the side of an exposed hillock. As he finished off his sandwich, I went to my bookcase up the far end of the room. This peculiar neurological situation was ringing a bell. Once, an iron rod went straight through some chap’s cerebellum. And he was right as rain. However, instead of pulling a reference book out, I got down on my knees and ran my tongue along the spines of the neatly arrayed books. Each and every one. Made my tongue quite dry and yuck.
Returning to Jarrod, who was downing the last of his milk, I said, “Jarrod, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s…it’s a bit shocking.”
After a little burp, he said, “What is it?”
Stumbling a little at how to speak of the spoon, I instead stayed silent and blew him a kiss. He laughed at that, then stood up, saying, “Same time tomorrow?”
I nodded. And he left.
That was, what, four hours ago? There are really only two theories possible here. The shocking incident with the spoon may have caused my psyche to fray or fracture in some hopefully temporary way. Or—and my blood runs cold to write this in black-and-white—Jarrod has, through the mother of all accidental discoveries, gained an advanced form of cerebrokinesis, the ability to control the minds of others. Oh, if only I could divine exactly where the inside tip of his teaspoon sits!
To be honest, I’d prefer all this to be the result of my own madness. But, as I sit here writing this, my thoughts seem depressingly orderly.
If indeed they be my thoughts.
. . .
You know what’ll stop me sleeping tonight? This question: if Jarrod has gained a cerebrokinetic ability, why would he make me lick my books? The sandwich, sure, perfectly alright. I would have made it for him anyway, without the mental strong-arming. But the blown kiss? Smacks of smart-arsery.
Sitting here, the sun going down, his bland smile starts to seem sinister.
Saturday, July 23
It’s midday. I know what I have to do, but I hesitate. I’m fairly certain it’s not MY hesitation, so I can only sit here, awaiting a stray moment where I might be able to strike with an uncontaminated will.
Jarrod arrived three hours ago, smiling, spoon jutting as brassily as a cuckoo in a new nest.
My first question was, “So what did Jasmine say?”
“Oh, I didn’t see her before she left to visit her mother.”
“Really? How convenient. A sudden emergency, was it?”
“No,” he said pleasantly, “a visit.”
Time to cut the crap. “Jarrod, I need to know if you can control my mind. Did you make me lick my books yesterday?”
He gave an uncharacteristic, chilling little hee hee!
“I did,” he said, before adding another hee hee!
Despite the giggling, he was in fact prepared to talk openly and honestly about the whole thing, which was a relief. At one stage I gave him a fifty dollar note from my wallet—but he was only joking around. I’ve no doubt he’ll give it back.
He was as surprised as me when, yesterday, his desire for a sandwich was realized by my actions. Actually, a lot more surprised than I was. I’d experienced it as the most natural thing in the world. He admitted the book-licking was spur-of-the-moment and experimental. The blown kiss, harmless byplay. Well, obviously it could’ve been worse.
“I guess you realize the enormity of this?” I said to him. “For science, the fate of the world, etcetera.”
“I dunno, I’m a bit disappointed. After I left here yesterday, I went down the street and—”
I gasped. “But didn’t people see your spoon?”
“I wore a hat, dummy. But, you know, it turns out I can only control your mind, no one else’s.”
I felt relieved by that, although I wasn’t entirely confident of that relief. I was, right then, starting to think a lot of rather flattering thoughts about Jarrod. Bland? He wasn’t bland: quite spry, the ole Jazza, always up and about, a real player, this lad…
Now, surely that was nonsense. I would never say “spry”.
“Jarrod,” I said, holding onto the table edge, “this is scientifically—well, it’s off the scale it’s so big. But, at a personal level, we need to get some rules in place. Surely you see my precarious position here?”
He said, “I swear never again, under any circumstances, to control your thoughts, Richard.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been struck by a statement of such deep and unarguable sincerity. I thanked him and he rose to go with a charming, lively, intelligent smile.
It was a good thirty minutes after he left that I began to have second-thoughts. Charming, lively and intelligent? Jarrod? Phooey. And you can kiss those fifty smackers goodbye while you’re at it. This was all deeply distressing and disorientating.
And I’ve been sitting here in the basement ever since, a single sterile teaspoon sitting on the table before me.
It’s a one-in-a-million shot, but my only chance. I’ll fight fire with fire.
I’ll do it for science.
—a knock at the door? Now! NOW!
* * *
THE MELVILLE NEUROLOGICAL NEWSLETTER
The Melville Neurological Institute would like to extend its heartiest congratulations to Doctor Percy Jarmon upon his recent Nobel prize nomination.
Doctor Jarmon’s work on the Yersinia fustus parasite appears to be conclusive and truly ground-breaking. This ancient, insidious parasite, almost undetectable after more than one-hundred-million years of co-evolution, has often been purported, but never proven. There now appears to be little doubt of its existence, thanks to Jarmon’s recent courageous and brilliantly innovative field-work.
The life cycle of Y. fustus turns out to be both simple and ingenious. After invading a host Homo sapiens, the bug, mimicking a billion-branched glial cell, quickly colonizes the cerebrum. Within a very short time the host develops an irrational but irresistible desire to violently puncture his own cranial vault, by any means necessary. Fantastic delusions, sometimes resulting in murder or art, often accompany this process. After the host’s skull is successfully punctured, the parasite’s spores are then released and have a very short time in which to find a new host.
The parasite seems to be very rare but, where it does exist, is rabidly contagious. The strain involved in Jarmon’s recent field-work has been destroyed.
When contacted by this newsletter, Jarmon’s only comment on his Nobel-nominated research was, “Hee hee!”
Is anyone else losing complete respect for the US at this point?
It’s the worst election result of my lifetime. And reveals something absolutely horrifying about my fellow Americans: they will vote for a literal criminal sociopath over a qualified black woman.
I thought Gore’s loss to W. Bush was terrible—but that was largely the result of cheating (it’s almost beyond question Gore got more votes in Florida than Bush did). …Then I thought Hillary’s loss to Trump was pretty awful as well, but it was a small comfort that HRC won the popular vote by literal millions (they’ve never been quite THAT far apart before).
With both, you could basically take comfort in the fact that the majority of the country clearly didn’t want the inferior candidate.
But now? Trump is a worse candidate than he was in 2016 in every way (mentally, morally, legally) and there were some horrible things about him then that either weren’t yet known (his charity fraud, his university fraud, his Stormy Daniels affair) or hadn’t happened yet (the indictments, the two impeachments, his horrible CoVid handling, becoming an adjudicated rapist, cheering on Putin for invading Ukraine, “The Big Lie,” his f***ing coup attempt, endless comments making it clear he wants to go after “the enemy within”).
By contrast, Kamala is arguably a better candidate than Biden or Hillary were, and she’s committed NONE of their supposed flaws (she did plenty of rallies in the Midwestern three, she did plenty of interviews that Hillary avoided, loads of energy that Biden was lacking, more clear than Biden, less legal baggage than either HRC or Joe, she didn’t bring up being a woman which supposedly turned people off of HRC) and ran a brilliant campaign from a terrific DNC to high-energy rallies to popular proposals (Trump’s are mostly about making people’s lives harder) to absolutely killing Trump at the debate.
But now we get this phony crap from Trump voters about how Kamala was a “bad candidate” (yeah…sure…) and from the media where they point out some mistakes she supposedly made (yeah…sure…) and how Trump will be better for the economy (yeah…sure…the guy who wrecked Obama’s economy and bankrupted three separate casinos and still believes in tariffs will magically give you a better economy…)
Point blank: this country would rather risk an autocratic regime, economic collapse, environmental ruin, and a complete wrecking of American justice and freedom than vote for a black woman. …It is a DISGUSTING result, and the fact that Trumpers are flying their covert KKK-flag openly on social media instead of being ashamed of voting for a criminal sociopath is repulsive.
Some fun pictures
TOP 100 Hyper-Realistic Female Robots INDISTINGUISHABLE From Humans
Why do so many Europeans seem to think the United States is backward?
Originally Answered: Why do so many Europeans seem to think the United States is backwards?
Possibly because they see us the way a repairman I once talked to saw the American engine maker Briggs & Stratton. I was buying my first mower, and I had bought a big yard and had put most of my cash into the purchase, so I was shopping carefully for a lawn tractor that would last a while but not clean me out.
I talked to this greasy guy with hearing aids at a repair shop where I happened to have some business, and he explained the difference between the Briggs & Stratton engines I’d grown up with and, well, everything else.
He said Briggs made the best engine in the world…in the 1940s…but that the rest of the world had moved on. Everyone else’s engines used newer alloys, fuel injection, superior noise and pollution controls, etc., while Briggs was still cranking out the same old reliable Joe that had been their cash cow for forever.
Understand, we weren’t talking best of class here, just your literal garden variety engine. He said “a Jap engine” would cost you half again as much, and if you ever let the oil get dirty or didn’t keep the filter clean, it was scrap. But if you kept the filters clean and changed the plugs every few years, it would start on the first crank, every time, for the life of the mower.
A Briggs, on the other hand, was cheap and would last forever—but you’d pay for it time and again. It would leak. It would lose compression. It would need its carburetor and points worked on every so often. But if you enjoyed working on engines, it could survive catching on fire and having the head knocked off with a sledge hammer, it just “never will run like shit.”
That’s the dichotomy here. Americans see America as the country that defeated Hitler and went to the moon. The old reliable. The “takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.” The rest of the world sees us as an obsolete design, built on good principles, but trying really hard not to live by them, and getting away with it because we’re big and rich and mean. But our system “runs like shit,” and our population pays for its cheapness each and every day.
I’m not saying that’s right or that’s wrong, but I believe that’s how they see us. And if they judge us by our movies, they are not seeing any of the shiny bits that might make a counter argument.
The UK Sounds The ALARM: Russia Sunk The SHIP Сarrying British Soldiers┃RU Army Captured ‘TRUDOVOYE’
Chinese Meatball Soup
Ingredients
Soup
- 2 (14 ounce) cans chicken broth
- 1 cup water
- 1 (6 ounce) package frozen snow pea pods
- 1/2 cup green onions, thinly sliced
- 1 (1 1/2 inch) cube fresh ginger, finely grated
- 1 clove garlic, finely minced
- Olive oil for roasting
Meatballs
- 1 pound lean ground beef, chuck or sirloin
- 3/4 cup oatmeal or bread crumbs
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon dry sherry
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced finely
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 cup chicken broth
- 1 egg
Vegetables
- 1/2 pound baby carrots, cut in half
- 1 1/2 cups fresh or canned bean sprouts
Instructions
Soup
- Combine soup ingredients in large saucepan over low heat to simmer (reserve snow pea pods and carrots for broiling or stir frying).
Meatballs
- Stir ingredients together, shape into 1 1/4 inch meatballs and place on lightly oiled broiler pan. Spray lightly with an olive oil spray if using very lean meat. Broil until nicely browned or bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes.
Vegetables
- To roast the baby carrots, cut carrots in half, lengthwise. Rub in 1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil, and sprinkle between the meatballs on the broiler pan. Do the same with the thawed snow peas. Check while broiling, and remove carrots, snow peas and meatballs as they begin to brown. Drain on paper towels briefly and add to soup. If you wish to skip this step, you may alternatively brown the meatballs, snow peas and carrots in a wok.
- With all ingredients now in soup, simmer over low heat for 15 to 20 minutes and season to taste with salt, pepper, a pinch of Chinese Red Pepper, if desired, and a dash of soy sauce.
Why is America doing its best to set China and Taiwan at war with each other? It’s half a world away from America and nothing to do with them. Why are they there at all?
There is only one answer: the United States wants to stop China’s rise! That’s why they want to suppress China with all their might and with everything they have.
Moreover, Taiwan is just one of the places, and if you scuttle the world pattern, you will find that the target of everything the United States has been doing all these years is China.
1. The Russian-Ukrainian war is not the ultimate goal of the United States; its ultimate goal is China.
The United States treats China as the number one enemy, whether economically or militarily, the United States has been unable to subdue China, so Washington provoked the Russian-Ukrainian war, the ultimate goal is to provoke a ‘New Cold War‘, through the Russian-Ukrainian war to Europe to create a ‘horror’ of the enemy Russia, so they are afraid of, under pressure to do the bidding of the United States.
The purpose of the United States in stirring up the ‘New Cold War’ is actually to unite the forces of the entire West and then deal with China with all its might.
The purpose of dealing with China is to maintain its hegemony. The United States believes that China has already threatened the global hegemony of the United States and that China must be eliminated as soon as possible.
2. The United States is endeavouring to make preparations for provoking a war in China’s neighbourhood.
After the United States has used the power of the Russia-Ukraine war to force its Western allies to listen to the United States, his next goal is to provoke a war around China to further unify its Western allies by forcing China to step in, and then to sanction China in the same way as it has sanctioned Russia.
In order to achieve this goal, the United States is bound to provoke a war in China’s neighbourhood to force China’s hand, and then the United States will lead the entire West to sanction China.
Based on this logic, China’s surrounding dangerous areas will be the next U.S. to provoke war conflict points, such as the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea, China-India border are dangerous areas, especially the Taiwan Strait conflict, will be the next U.S. is bound to want to provoke a military conflict.
The intention of the United States in provoking a war in the said region is to force China to send troops, and then the United States and its allies condemn and even sanction China, urging its allies to impose sanctions on China as they did on Russia.
At the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war, the United States actually began to lay out early!
Especially in the Taiwan Strait, the United States and Britain have begun to discuss how to detonate the military conflict plan!
At the present stage, China has practically no choice but to make preparations for a military struggle, and it can only make preparations for the unification of Taiwan by force!
But in a twists and turns, Trump is back. Trump’s presence disrupted Biden’s deployment. 😁
The next 4 years with Trump in the White House will be 4 years of rapid development in China.
The Russia-Ukraine war won’t stop, the Middle East is in an even bigger crisis, Europe has been abandoned by the US, and the US is at the peak of domestic infighting.
China is on a rampage and the next 4 years will see us laying a solid foundation for a whole new order of global industry and trade!
Trump will mercilessly teach Europe, Japan, South Korea and other allies (parasites) a lesson, frantically withdrawing from all kinds of international organisations and international treaties and becoming more and more isolated, and that’s exactly when China is holding up the flag of free trade and developing at a high speed!
What is the result of the Trump era’s opening of a trade war and technology war against China?
China’s chip technology rapid breakthroughs, Huawei is far ahead; China’s position as an industrial hegemon is as stable as Mount Taishan, shipbuilding took nearly 3/4 of the world’s orders, and new energy vehicles rode in the dust; China’s foreign trade exports are increasing year by year, and it takes more than 1/3 of the global surplus.
Do you think the Trump still has cards? 🤣
Do you really think Russia can’t defeat Ukraine? You are too naive. China and Russia are comprehensive strategic partners, and the Chinese and Russian governments have the same strategy.
Yes, the United States and the West want to use war to consume Russia’s national strength, but the United States and the West are greedy for immediate benefits and do not know the consequences.
Protracted war is Russia’s strong point, and Russia also wants to use war to consume the United States and the West. The more the US and the West invest in Ukraine, the more it will be consumed.
Russia buys time for China, and the United States and the West will decline rapidly.
Trump DROPS his plan to DISMANTLE the Deep State! MASSIVE FOR AMERICA (MUST SEE)
Why did Trump win the 2024 election?
Yesterday I was walking in the city and two young Moroccan guys were discussing the US election outcome. “He did it, the old warrior!” said one of them, admiration obvious in his voice. These were two young Muslims from what Trump had referred to as “shithole countries” during his first tenure…
People underestimated how many people do love Trump.
The media, journalists, writers of opinion pieces and intellectuals were in this little bubble where everyone, surely, must have realized after the first Trump term that he was no good? And that’s just not the way of the world.
Oh but he’s was found guilty of sexual assault, surely now no one can vote for him?
Wrong!
No one gives a shit.
Chris Brown beat the living daylights out of Rihanna and I still hear people blast his music.
We think that, as soon as someone is accused of someone heinous, that’s it.
Curtains.
They’re done for.
Now, the world has moved on from #MeToo and “cancel culture” is dead and buried…
You cannot cancel someone when no one cares about his crimes.
Oh there’s Russian interference in the elections? Big deal — plenty of people find Putin kinda cool, anyway, and at least he’s “not woke”.
Elon Musk pushing fake news and misinformation on Twitter? Again, no one cares.
“But, he was mean to transgender people! He disowned his transgender daughter!” Yeah, that’s awful, sure. But no one cares.
There’s so many scandals, so many awful things you can accuse Trump and his allies off.
But in “real world”, people don’t care…
It also seems that people are tired of “woke” topics and the right has simply won the “culture wars”, at this point.
Because even Latinos, African Americans and other non-white ethnic groups voted for Trump in record numbers.
And I’ll let you in on a little secret — a lot of immigrants and their descendants are very religious. They don’t like LGBT issues, they couldn’t care less about transgenders, pronouns and puberty blockers being given to kids, in fact they’re highly susceptible to negative campaigning about such issues.
They actually are bothered by people saying “happy holidays” instead of “merry christmas” and other such things that progressives would dismiss as silly memes only boomers care about…
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz seemed to spend 80% of their campaign attacking the character of Trump.
When everyone already knows he’s a dickhead — and they don’t care because he’s their dickhead.
People almost always love the villains in movies more than the heroes. The Joker is far more popular than Batman ever was… and Kamala Harris made for a rather poor Batman.
U.S. Lost the Moon Because of Sanctioning China
Actually this is very interesting. Not a rehash of known stuff in a click-bait video. This is full of great intel.
How would imposing a tariff on all goods imported from China affect Americans and businesses in America?
Trump 1.0 started imposing tariff on all countries around the world, not just on China. Biden continued with Trump’s policy.
After 8 years (Trump+Biden), many US scholars said Trump’s tariff policy does not work (on China).
It was tariff that USA suffered (high) inflation.
The plan of Trump 1.0 was to attract US investors in China to go back to USA. After 8 years, it is found that some US investors still stay in China. Some did move out of China but to other southeast countries eg Thailand. … US investors still did not go back to USA. They continued to do business with China 1 way or another.
Those who added 1 extra step, say, to Thailand actually cost Americans more because they added this 1-extra step to the commodity price, worsening the US inflation.
(High) tariff on Chinese products has already proven a failure to Trump 1.0. Why Trump 2.0 continues to impose (high) tariff on China is beyond our understanding.
One possible reason is that USA-Trump badly needs money to boost the weak US economy. And that may be the reason why Biden continued with Trump’s policy too.
Since Americans hate tax increase, Trump & Biden had no choice but to disguise tax increase as tariff.
Tariff 2.0 is crazier/higher than tariff 1.0. Let us watch if tariff 2.0 will cause global recession.
Why do gun owners not understand that I don’t like being around guns and they should be banned for public safety?
Greetings from England, where we all apparently hate guns.
I believe you are confused.
The gun owners do understand that you don’t like being around guns, they just don’t care. Why should they?
Americans are often mistaken about their own gun laws. The public safety you speak of is partly due to the gun owners. They are why your government can never turn too tyrannical and why you can never be invaded by land. This is why you have a right to own guns. Its not necessarily to stop burglars, it’s to prevent your government from turning tyrannical.
Just like with our third world quality socialist health services, my country is always held up as a success story for banning guns. This is bullshit. Murders happen constantly in Britain and the lack of guns just makes it slower. Knives, acid and bombs are used instead. Murder is unfortunately natural, and British murders are incredibly brutal.
So in conclusion, if your government like mine is not currently sending everyone to prison for Facebook posts, and if your country doesnt have an acid attack epidemic going on, you have gun owners to thank for this. The very idea of killing or disfiguring someone with acid would become ridiculous in Britain if we had guns, but we don’t. We instead get our faces burned off by chemicals.
You arguably have gun owners to blame for murders on the streets (though i would disagree), but this pales in comparison to the genocide you will probably never face, unlike most countries eventually.
Why are anti gun owners so incredibly smug that they don’t think a disagreement towards themselves can even exist without ignorance? Is it just your smuggery that causes your smuggery or have you
actually accomplished anything in your life?
I bet your’e not even one of those loud, fat, friendly Americans we all love. You probably got purple hair and a constantly pissed off face.
Don’t travel. We don’t want you. We want the ‘rednecks’. You think I’m lying? Nobody wants to travel to your shitty liberal cities anymore either, just to get robbed and/or raped all whilst having to listen to unhygienic propaganda junkies barking unrequested opinions all day. We want to go to middle America where the men are strong and hard working, where the women are clean, beautiful and not hopelessly brainwashed like yourself. I bet it’s awesome in those places with all the gun owners; fresh air and friendly people. Meanwhile your town is probably covered in turd and homeless people.
Genocide Joe
Genocide Joe, may his feeble mumbling brain rest in peace, was extremely effective at restoring order to domestic American affairs, lining all US allies in a row, and making Sinophobia a global instead of solely an American policy.
Trump will throw a monkey wrench into that once again.
Trump will immediately throw Ukraine under the bus and let Europe deal with the fallout; he’ll raise major trade tensions with American partners; he’ll throw EVs and all environmental policy under the bus too; he’ll threaten the ICC and ICJ and likely cut off all funding to the UN once the General Assembly recommends expelling Israel.
He’ll recognize Israeli settlements. He’ll threaten and probably defund universities that allow Palestine supporters any freedom of speech, sowing pandemonium and terror in academia.
And that’s with ruling out the assumption that Project 2025 is real.
The Western alliance, which goes back to World War II, is too strong to suffer permanent damage from four years of demented leadership. So is American society, which is very resilient. But for the next four years, there will be tremendous chaos, infighting, and blows to prestige.
This is an opportunity for China to demonstrate its abilities at world leadership, as it did very successfully during the first Trump term.
Economically, China is prepared for the return of Trump. Its GDP is 25% larger than in 2020 and it’s much less dependent on US technological imports. The threat of major tariffs on Chinese exports to the US is serious. During this period, fiscal stimulus will have to be a key driver of growth. However, central government debt is very low. The spending and borrowing discipline exercised by the central government for many years has prepared it well for this occasion.
The combination of decreased export revenue and emergency-level use of fiscal stimulus will accelerate the transition to service- and consumption-led growth.